2017 Legislative Session: Sixth 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 14, 2017
Afternoon Sitting
Volume 43, Number 9
ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)
ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)
CONTENTS | |
Page | |
Routine Business | |
Introductions by Members | 14327 |
Orders of the Day | |
Second Reading of Bills | 14327 |
Bill 6 — Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017 | |
Hon. M. de Jong | |
D. Routley | |
Hon. S. Anton | |
K. Corrigan | |
Hon. A. Wilkinson | |
S. Robinson | |
R. Sultan | |
Hon. R. Coleman | |
Bill 4 — Election Amendment Act, 2017 | |
Hon. S. Anton | |
G. Holman | |
Hon. D. Barnett | |
R. Austin | |
L. Throness | |
N. Macdonald | |
J. Thornthwaite | |
C. Trevena | |
Hon. B. Bennett | |
L. Krog | |
TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2017
The House met at 1:32 p.m.
[Madame Speaker in the chair.]
Routine Business
Introductions by Members
D. Routley: I’d like the House to help me make welcome a group of people who I don’t think are in the gallery now but have been here all morning. They are from the Cowichan Valley intercultural association. They’re a group comprised of mainly immigrants and refugees, and many of those people are from Syria.
They have visited the House, and I’ve attempted to make them familiar with my version of the tour. They’ve had the official tour. It’s all in the effort that they might feel a connection to what will be their government and a sense that we might, in fact, be working in their interest in this place.
Orders of the Day
Hon. M. de Jong: Second reading on Bill 6, the Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017.
Second Reading of Bills
BILL 6 — INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
(DOCUMENTING GOVERNMENT DECISIONS)
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017
Hon. M. de Jong: I move that Bill 6 be read a second time now.
These amendments to the Information Management Act are, I believe, an important step in ensuring B.C. remains a leader when it comes to information management, transparency and accountability.
[R. Chouhan in the chair.]
The amendments will enable strong oversight and consistent information management practices right across government. The Information and Privacy Commissioner has, I think, appropriately made the analogy that government information assets are like the financial assets that are entrusted to us and should be treated with the same rigour and discipline. I think that is an entirely appropriate and helpful analogy.
Good information management practices are ultimately the foundation of good governance, access rights and even the protection of privacy.
These amendments build on our progress, to date, in addressing the recommendations made by David Loukidelis, a former commissioner. As you all know, Mr. Loukidelis was engaged in 2015 to advise on actions that could be taken to strengthen and enhance information management practices across government. To date, happily, I can tell and remind the House that we have addressed or partially addressed 18 of the 27 recommendations made by Mr. Loukidelis.
These amendments to the Information Management Act will address two more of his recommendations and provide the enabling authority to address another three of those recommendations.
Briefly, the bill, I believe, will accomplish two things. It will create a legislated duty to document, and secondly, it will enhance the oversight powers of the chief records officer.
Maybe I can deal, firstly, with the first point, around the duty to document. I take the view, and the government does, that the information that government employees create and receive belongs to the citizens of the province. As public servants — and I include myself and members of the executive branch in this — we have a duty to make information available to citizens on matters that interest them. In order to support this kind of transparency, accountability and engagement, public servants need to ensure they are creating adequate records in the first place.
Perhaps even more importantly, creating the right records supports employees in doing their jobs effectively and providing high-quality services to the public. When there is a legal or a policy requirement on public servants to create adequate records documenting the key decisions of a government body, this is what is generally referred to as a duty to document. The amendments contained in the bill before the House will make British Columbia the first Canadian province to enshrine that duty to document in our information management legislation.
Though we will, hopefully, have an opportunity to canvass the sections of the bill, I cannot help to have heard some of the public commentary from others and some members of the House, in advance of this debate and discussion, questioning that fact and questioning some of the mandatory nature of the provisions.
We’ll have an opportunity, I hope, to canvass in detail section 5, where “the head of a government body is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate system is in place within the government body for creating and maintaining, in accordance with applicable directives or guidelines issued under section 6…government information that is an adequate record of that government body’s decisions.”
I suppose the public commentary I want to address briefly is that which would suggest there is some option around that. That is mandatory. That is a requirement.
If the provision is adopted by the House, there will be nothing optional about the requirement of the head
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of the government body to ensure that those systems are in place and that there is an adequate record of that government body’s decision. In anticipation of some of what may be offered during the course of this debate, I would make the point that that is a mandatory requirement, should this pass.
Similarly, subsection (2) states as follows: “The head of a government body must take reasonable steps to ensure that the government body (a) complies with directives….” Again, nothing optional, nothing that would suggest that duty can be avoided. It is a mandatory requirement under the terms of the provisions that are before the House.
These provisions require heads of government bodies — that is, the deputy minister or equivalent — to ensure that there is an appropriate system in place within their organizations to ensure information is created that constitutes a record of the government body’s decisions.
The proposed provision has been designed with the flexibility to allow ministries and government bodies to identify their key lines of business and ensure that employees are supported in creating the right records at the right time to document important decisions. This approach aligns with Mr. Loukidelis’s recommendation that we should consider a duty to document that is sufficiently flexible for government bodies to implement the requirement in a manner most suitable to their operations, organizational structure and record holdings.
Importantly — and I think it is important to reflect on this part of what Mr. Loukidelis had to say — a duty to document is not a requirement to keep every note or scrap of paper, or even every single electronic message. In fact, that is something he cautioned against, insofar as maintaining low- or no-value records would actually make it, in his view, more difficult to find and use the records that it is not just appropriate but, in our collective view and the government view, necessary to maintain.
I believe that public service employees are diligent about their responsibility in maintaining the right records. Ministries and government bodies were consulted on the proposed amendment, and I have to tell the House that they overwhelmingly agreed that this is something they do as a matter of course in their normal business practice. And, I would say, they welcomed what this amendment does, which is to formalize or codify this good practice in legislation. A related amendment gives the chief records officer clear authority to issue directives to government bodies on what records constitute an adequate record.
There are provisions here for increased oversight and compliance. The other focus of the bill, in fact, is on increased oversight and improved policy and direction-setting in information management. The amendments expand and clarify the powers of the chief records officer to support consistent, good information management practices across government. The chief records officer already has the ability to issue directives to government bodies. These amendments will expand her authority to clarify that she can issue non-binding guidelines, in addition to directives.
A related amendment expands the breadth of topics on which the chief records officer is empowered to issue directives or guidance. Mr. Loukidelis recommended that the chief records officer should establish guidance to assist government bodies in meeting their obligations under the act. These amendments are required in order to implement that recommendation effectively. Having clear guidance from the chief records officer will help to increase consistency and improve information management practices across government.
The chief records officer also currently has the authority to access the information she needs to carry out her mandate by making a request to a government body for that information. This bill clarifies that the chief records officer has the authority to require information from government bodies rather than simply request it — again, a very specific and mandatory provision. This provision is necessary to support enhanced oversight and address recommendations made by both Mr. Loukidelis and the Information and Privacy Commissioner to increase oversight over information management practices.
The bill also provides the chief records officer with new authority to assess a government body’s compliance with the requirements of the act, including the new duty to document. The chief records officer will conduct structured reviews and make recommendations to assist government bodies in improving their practices, where advisable. Finally, the bill adds a requirement to prepare an annual report. This report will, again, increase transparency and accountability and will inform and educate the public about the act and how information is being managed within government.
In closing, I would commend the bill to the House. It reinforces the government’s commitment to leading in its role as a trusted steward of the public’s information. Good information management practices are, in many ways, the foundation of good governance, access rights and, ultimately, even the protection of privacy.
These amendments will provide that foundation for improvement to the way we manage the valuable information that we create and hold on behalf of the citizens of the province. I’ll look forward with interest to the contributions to the discussion around this bill from other members of the House.
D. Routley: I’m pleased to be able to rise to respond to the minister on the subject of Bill 6, the Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017.
If what the minister had offered were accurate and supportable, I think I’d vote for this bill. But I won’t, be-
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cause what the minister offered in no way represents, with respect, the actual content of this bill or adequately describes the problem that we’re trying to solve. I think we have to go back to the beginning and consider why we’re here.
Before we do that, let’s become familiar with the role of freedom of information and privacy protection in a modern democracy. Every person should be free from intrusion by the state. Every citizen should be able to protect their personal information, and that information should belong to them. Every person must have the confidence, in a democracy, that the information they’re receiving from government is both accurate and fulsome in order for us to have confidence in democratically decided positions.
There was a British political philosopher, John Plamenatz, who said: “If there is to be responsible government, information should be so distributed amongst professionals and ordinary citizens that competitors for power, influence and popular support are exposed to relevant and searching criticism.”
Isn’t that the basis of how we run our affairs in a democracy? We elect people to represent us. The party with the most seats forms the government of the province, and they begin to respond to the needs of citizens. In order to judge the performance of the government, we need to have accurate and fulsome information. That is the problem.
James Madison was the fourth president of the United States. He was considered one of the founding fathers and the father of the constitution. He said: “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to farce or tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
So a long time ago we were being instructed, as representatives of people in a responsible democracy, that we had not a choice but an obligation to provide information to people that allows them to properly pass judgment on the people who represent them. That is not happening in British Columbia.
One of the initial architects of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in British Columbia in 1994 was a lawyer by the name of Rob Botterell. He’s presented several times to the committee that reviews the act. In referring to what the government could reasonably refuse to disclose, what grounds they could refuse to disclose information upon, he pointed out that embarrassment is not an exception under the act.
In fact, it’s not the government’s handling of innocuous, unimportant information, or even important information that is not politically embarrassing. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the notions of open government, were put in place in order to prevent government from hiding things that it does not wish the people to see. Those are exactly the documents that the people need to see, more than any. This is a problem in British Columbia.
Barack Obama said: “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears…. All agencies should adopt a presumption in favour of disclosure in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOI and to usher in a new era of open government.”
This is the backdrop. Those are the principles — the ownership of information by the people and their right to the protection of their privacy. The government is responsible for both of those things. They have failed in both of those duties, and that’s why we’re here.
We’re not here because the government suddenly decided that it felt: “Well, you know what would really improve access in British Columbia? It would be if we had a duty to document.” No. We’re here after a succession of disasters and wilful evasions of the law by the government attempting to hide information from the people of British Columbia.
Now, that’s pretty serious stuff. The minister stood up, and he said: “Hey, in our quest to be so much better than we already are, we’re actually going to introduce this. It will keep everybody accountable, and everything will be great.” Well, it won’t be, because the act doesn’t do that. But primarily, it won’t be, because the government, rather than default towards a presumption of disclosure, defaults to a practice of concealment.
The head of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association of British Columbia said at a committee hearing reviewing the Freedom of Information Act that FOI laws were meant to backstop a culture of openness, that the culture that would develop in government would be one where information would be routinely shared and regularly created. The information would be documented. He said that what was meant to be a culture of openness has become a culture of concealment. That’s what we see in the B.C. Liberal government. That’s what’s brought us here today. That’s what’s got us here.
You look back over the last little while and watch what’s happened to the people of B.C. and their rights to access to information. We can go all the way back to Premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy, Ken Dobell, who proudly answered a question about access to information by saying: “I just don’t write anything down. I like it better that way.” He was foreshadowing the ultimate behavior of this government that has become routine in itself, that the government is constantly found to be hiding information from the people.
You know, if the government released information that weren’t embarrassing to it, we would have long since understood what happened with B.C. Rail, what hap-
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pened in the scandalous sale of B.C. Rail. We didn’t find out, because the government paid off a settlement in court. But we didn’t find out subsequently because they refused to share information. Look at the firing of the health researchers several years ago in this province, a totally unfair act that ruined lives and, in fact, drove one of the health researchers, Roderick MacIsaac, to kill himself.
So this is indeed what’s brought us here, not the minister’s overwhelming concern for open government and the health of our democracy. It’s a response. It’s a weak-kneed response to continual criticism from officers of the Legislature about their poor and shoddy treatment of information access issues.
Look at the issue of the firing of the Premier’s former chief of staff, Ken Boessenkool. He was fired because of impropriety with a staff member, and there were no records. The head of the public service looked into that issue and found no records. That’s why we’re here, not because the minister is overwhelmingly concerned with democracy and the foundation of democracy, as he put it. He’s here, and this bill is here, because of embarrassment, because this government has finally been embarrassed into pretending that it’s taking action on this issue.
There was the triple-delete scandal that led to the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s damming report entitled Access Denied. In the triple-delete scandal, it was found that government ministers and high-ranking bureaucrats were deleting, double-deleting and triple-deleting off the servers important records of the business of the B.C. government. In fact, with that scandal, it was only the good conscience of a bureaucrat named Tim Duncan…. He actually confirmed that he had been instructed to delete information, critical information, related to meetings that discussed the missing and murdered women along the Highway of Tears. What could be a more atrocious act than to suppress information about that issue?
That’s why we’re here: because the Information Commissioner found that the government had been wilfully destroying important documents — wilfully — and against the provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. In fact, Mr. Duncan’s senior in his office took his computer from him and deleted the information when Mr. Duncan refused, and he said to him: “This is what we do. We do what it takes to win.”
That’s why we’re here. We have a government that does what it takes to win above all else, above any consideration of the public interest. This is the perfect example of that. That’s why we’re here. That’s why the government has been embarrassed at the 11th hour into bringing forward Bill 6, which is a wholly inadequate response to these issues.
We had the ethnic outreach scandal in the Premier’s office. Brian Bonney, one of the Premier’s staff at the time, was criminally charged. In that case, the government was wilfully avoiding freedom-of-information statutes by using private emails to avoid scrutiny. Calculated, purposeful behavior. The Premier of British Columbia, her office, wilfully evading what the minister says is the foundational piece of democracy. The minister said it himself. The minister created the context. In fact, if we do respect the notion of open government, then I would have to agree with what the minister said — that it is, indeed, a foundation of democracy. But that doubly condemns the behavior of the B.C. Liberals when it comes to this issue.
Then we found out that the person in the Premier’s office responsible for FOI requests to the Premier’s office never records anything. He uses sticky-notes. Can you imagine? Can you imagine that the person responsible for freedom of information in the Premier’s office used only sticky-notes to record things and then quickly destroyed them? It seems impossible, but it’s true.
That’s why we’re here. We’re here not because this minister had such a concern for that foundation piece of democracy, but because these repeated misbehaviors by this government and condemnations by successive officers of the Legislature have driven the government, finally, in embarrassment, to pretend that they’re taking steps to create a duty to document.
We’ve got a government that has recently been in the news for putting a price on policy, for collecting donations from big donors and then writing policy in their interest. Do you think there’ll be a clear paper trail that FOI can discover to follow that bit of behavior? I doubt it. I doubt those documents were created, and I doubt they would be available if they were.
So we have a government that doesn’t want you to know what they’re doing, and they’ll go to great lengths to prevent you from knowing what’s going on. They won’t create records, so you can’t know what’s going on. If they do mistakenly create a record, they’ll do whatever they can to destroy that record. That is the record of the B.C. Liberal government when it comes to open government, access to information and recordkeeping.
Since the act was passed in 1994, and up to 2015, there have been 50 amendments to the act. Of those 50 amendments to the act, zero were expanding openness. Zero expanded access for British Columbians.
Probably the worst of those, in terms of performance under FOI requirements, was that government rather cynically changed the time limitations on fulfilling a request from 30 calendar days to 30 working days, thereby giving themselves about 40 percent more time to answer a request, which immediately put us, in B.C., in last place in this country when it came to information access requests, according to the Canadian journalists association at the time. This is the record of the B.C. Liberals.
When you look at it, access to information is all about the people. Access to information and open government are about putting the people first. The government’s be-
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haviour is about putting the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. Liberal government ahead — putting them first, ahead of the people. We see a government that has received repeated recommendations to establish a duty to document, to move towards proactive disclosure and many other provisions that would increase access but has refused to do so over a very long period of time.
I co-chaired the committee which reviewed the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act in 2010 and 2016. In both those cases, there were recommendations made to the committee that a duty to document must be established.
The reason for that is that so many requests for information from this government were coming back with the answer “no records exist.” That’s what first brought the attention of the Information and Privacy Commissioner — the growing frequency of requests answered by there being no responsive records. It seemed impossible. It was impossible, in fact, because what we found was that different requesters making the same request were getting information. Some were getting no information.
It was clear that either the government wasn’t being honest about what records existed, they didn’t know they existed, which is an archiving problem, or they had destroyed the documents, which is a problem of integrity in government. This is a government that has had so many challenges when it comes to integrity and honesty in its business and its conduct. People feel as though they do not know what’s happening in their government.
I’d like to talk a little bit about the definition of a “duty to document.” The duty to document is, essentially, according to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, a duty to create records that document key actions and decisions. It is not overly onerous. It is adaptable to a public body’s purpose and lines of business.
It must be expressly written into the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act. That was the recommendation of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Instead, the government is bringing a stand-alone bill that really does nothing to force government to create documents and, in any case, does not apply throughout the public service because it is being managed by the chief records officer. It is being brought as an amendment to the Information Management Act.
The Information Management Act only refers to core government, to ministries. If this government had followed the recommendations of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, they would have brought a duty to document as stand-alone legislation or, as we have recommended, accepted the recommendation from the Information and Privacy Commissioner that the duty to document be a part of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act so that the independent commissioner would have oversight over the issues of the creation of documents.
Instead, the chief records officer, under the Information Management Act, is responsible to government, is not independent, does not report to this Legislature, reports only to government and serves at the whim of government. I’m sure most thinking, reasonable British Columbians would agree that it would be better for an independent officer of the Legislature to make decisions around what information British Columbians should have access to, not someone whose employment future depends on the whim of the minister that they are reporting to.
The recommendation around the duty to document included a recommendation on the oversight of the destruction of records, and there was a recommendation to create an offence and give the commissioner jurisdiction over these matters. That was ignored by a government that knows that if it did adopt that, it would be standing in its own trap because its behaviour is so abysmal when it comes to managing information.
When you think of some of the largest scandals in this government’s history…. There is a long list of them, and some of the biggest ones have a very interesting component that accompanies them, and that is a complete absence of record. This has been a problem since before I and you, Mr. Speaker, served in this House. It’s been a problem since the B.C. Liberals came to power.
We have a situation where the government has refused to acknowledge what it does and has done anything it can to cover that up and to prevent British Columbians from knowing it. Then contrast their record of managing information that’s embarrassing to them. I mean, try to get it. It’s impossible. It either wasn’t created, it’s been destroyed, or they won’t give it out.
Contrast that against their record on the protection of privacy of British Columbians. There was the education privacy breach which involved over three million student records, where their records were stored on a shelf in a warehouse, on a hard drive that wasn’t encrypted, that wasn’t even passworded. An unsecure location to store personal information, including financial information of parents, information about special needs, information about behavioural issues, information about the financial standing of families and other very, very personal issues.
That was just cavalierly lost in a warehouse. Stick it on the shelf. You know why? Because they didn’t want to pay $15,000 for that period of time to store that amount of information. Instead, they spent multiple millions having to track down 3½ million students and tell them that they, the B.C. Liberals, had breached their privacy.
That’s their standard of protecting information when it’s embarrassing to you. When it’s embarrassing to them, the record vaporizes. You’ll never see it.
We had the B.C. Lotteries website privacy breach, where the website went up and, the same day, was brought down. The minister responsible at the time, now the Housing Minister, said that the site crashed because it
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was so terribly popular. What happened? The individual players were able to access other players’ money, and the government had to bring down the system because of a privacy breach. Would they tell the truth about that? No.
There were the dumpster docs, where thousands of documents of people on assistance were found in a dumpster, an employee having taken them home and then thrown them away in a dumpster.
We had a fraud artist hired by this government who, on a false name, attained employment with the government and then took home and breached the records of thousands more British Columbians. This is the way they handle documents when they are in your interest, in the interests of the people of British Columbia.
When the documents are something that might embarrass the government, well, there’s a shredder for that, there’s a delete button for that or there’s a sticky-note for that. But the government will not acknowledge its responsibility and will not move to improve the situation of open governance in this province.
We heard a submission to the committee reviewing the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act from a woman named Laura Millar — not the famous Laura Miller of the B.C. Liberal Party but a person who is a very accomplished archivist. She said that there’s a need for a robust and cohesive set of requirements that apply to the whole of government throughout the entire life cycle of government records, from a duty to document through to archiving.
This points to the fact that if we don’t archive, if we don’t create the document, you can’t find it. If you don’t create it, FOI can’t find it. So we have to have a way to create documents. We have to have a duty to create documents — documenting not every piece of information of government, as the minister suggested, but the critical pieces, particularly those pieces that could be most embarrassing to government.
How will the judicial system make sense of issues that come before it, when it turns to government and asks them what was meant or what was done and the government says: “Well, we don’t know because there is no record”? Just think of the Ken Boessenkool affair and how that might have turned out had that wound up in the courts with no records, with no record of what happened.
These are the reasons we’re here. We’re not here because the minister had an epiphany and suddenly thought: “You know what? We need a duty to document in order to have integrity as a government.” No, we are here because they were embarrassed.
The ultimate insult in all of this is that this does not create any such thing as a duty to document. This is the Seinfeld bill. It’s about nothing. There is nothing in this bill that creates a legislated duty to document. It’s quite the opposite. In fact, there is less direct control over the creation of documents than there might have been had the government followed the recommendations of the 2010 committee or the 2016 committee or the recommendations of Mr. Loukidelis, when he reviewed the situation.
The minister indicates that we’re the first Canadian province to adopt a duty to document. Well, that’s just not true, because we haven’t done that. And we are not going to do that if we pass this bill. This is not a duty to document. This bill encourages government to document its business.
In the words of Vince Gogolek, the executive director of B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, this creates no duty on anybody. He goes on to say: “It’s not even half measures. A legal duty uses the words ‘must’ or ‘shall,’ not the word ‘may.’”
That’s what the government has done. It’s basically created a duty to document that says a head of a public body may require the creation of documents. This is in no way adequate. This has been condemned roundly by the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, by the opposition, by journalists.
Mr. Speaker, I am the designated speaker on this bill.
I think of what British Columbians must think as they look at this government’s behaviour. They see their own government wilfully evading its own laws and wilfully and purposefully avoiding scrutiny of citizens and preventing citizens from what the government itself acknowledges is their own information that belongs to the people.
The minister indicated that the ministry is playing a leading role as trusted management of privacy and access. Well, we must remember this is coming from a government who has placed in responsibility a minister whose claim to fame on this issue was using personal emails to evade disclosing the salary bonus of a university executive he was responsible for as a board member of that university.
That seems a little bit cheeky to me. You put somebody in charge of freedom of information whose claim to fame on the file is using personal emails to avoid scrutiny? Perhaps that’s congruent with the rest of the government’s behaviour. We’ve seen the minister himself proudly announce that he doesn’t use emails. So what kinds of records are being kept of the minister’s business?
We have the former deputy to Premier Campbell, as I said earlier, Mr. Dobell, confirming that he doesn’t write anything down. We have the person responsible for FOI in the Premier’s office saying: “I don’t write anything down. I use sticky-notes.”
That’s why we’re here. We’re not here because the minister acknowledges that freedom of information and access is a foundational piece of any democracy. We’re here because they’ve just been embarrassed one too many times, so they’re trying to pretend that they’re answering the calls of the stakeholders, of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and of the opposition. But they are falling far short.
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In fact, all the definitions of duty to document have been offered to the government, and they’ve refused to act.
We have received recommendations that adopt this duty to demonstrate their commitment to public accountability in order to preserve the historical legacy of government decisions and as a key records management component of proactive disclosure programs. It’s been recommended by a number of participants in the process of review, when the special committees met to review the act. It’s been defined by Mr. Loukidelis. It’s been defined by Mr. Fraser. It’s been defined by Ms. Denham. It’s been defined by the current commissioner. And it’s been ignored every time by this government — ignored every time.
That’s the bottom line. That’s why we’re here. We’re here because the government has chosen to deny the recommendations of the committees and has chosen its own definition of a legislated duty to document, which falls far short.
So I have to ask myself: is the government serious? I have to ask myself: do they adopt this as a distraction? Do they adopt this as an excuse? Or do they adopt it in order to indicate to the people of B.C. that they do not endorse oral government, that they do not endorse sticky-note government, that they do not endorse the triple deletion of important government documents, that they do not endorse the evasions of the Premier of British Columbia in her office when it comes to freedom-of-information and access issues?
I hope that that’s what they mean: that they do not endorse the behaviour of their own government when it comes to protecting information. But I, sadly, fear that that is absolutely not what this bill will do.
With that, I will end my comments and express my disappointment that an issue that is so important to British Columbians, an issue that the minister has just pandered to in his remarks — that issue has not been worthy of an adequate response from this government.
They have failed to recognize the damage that they’ve done to the whole notion of open government in British Columbia. They fail to recognize, as Mr. Loukidelis said when he was commissioner, that failing to create records of government business puts the historical record of British Columbia at risk. Those were the words of a previous commissioner. The failure to document government business puts the historical record of British Columbia at risk.
How will people who sit in this House after we are all gone look back and decide why government did what it did, why decisions were made the way they were, when no documents were created? This bill does not create a duty to create documents. That is the problem with the bill.
This government has shown its absolute disrespect for the issue, and that remains unchanged. So unless the minister wants to accept some of the amendments that I’ll be bringing forward to improve this bill, then we will remain one of those provinces without a duty to document.
Maybe he could dial up Newfoundland and look at the recommendation their commission put forward. It mirrors all the recommendations this government has received. It looks like they’ll be the first ones to actually institute a duty to document. British Columbia is not creating a duty to document; they’re recycling an excuse.
Hon. S. Anton: I have had the honour and pleasure of being the MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General for the last four years, and I live in a different world than the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan. His world is a world that is not occupied by any of the civil servants in our most impressive and illustrious bureaucracy. His world is a world where you want to beat up the people who do good work.
In fact, the professionalism of our staff — I’ll speak about the Ministry of Justice staff, because those are the ones that I have the most direct relationship with, of course — is remarkable. They bring in….
Interjections.
Hon. S. Anton: When the House is ready, Mr. Speaker.
Deputy Speaker: The minister has the floor.
Hon. S. Anton: The documentation of decisions is remarkably well done. It’s done in very detailed briefing notes which are signed off, if an important change, by the minister. Those….
Interjections.
Hon. S. Anton: There’s a real echo chamber over here, Mr. Speaker. It’s a little hard to hear.
Deputy Speaker: Continue, Minister.
Hon. S. Anton: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I guess they realize there’s no merit in their own position. And the other….
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Members, please come to order.
Hon. S. Anton: The other thing — a couple of other things — that I’m constantly impressed by is the ability to retrieve information. If I say, “What about X?” — something that happened in the past, or a matter that we dealt with in the past — the information is before me almost immediately. It’s a fantastic record of information and decision-making and a fantastic ability to bring up
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that information again, should it be needed. All of that is about recording information.
As I said, our bureaucracy, our civil service, really does a remarkable job in managing this information and keeping the important information. Let me say again that this is about important information. It’s not about trivial information. It’s not about lunch dates and minor things along the way. It’s about the duty to document a government body’s decision, and the goal is for key government decisions to be properly documented.
Is it enough, what we’re doing? Certainly, there were a number of recommendations made by Mr. Loukidelis in 2015. As the Minister of Finance mentioned a few minutes ago, 18 of those 27 have been addressed or partially addressed. This does two more things.
Interjections.
Hon. S. Anton: This is obviously bothering the members opposite quite a lot — that government is acting on the recommendations that we got from Mr. Loukidelis — but we are, as a matter of fact, in this bill, acting on two other things recommended by Mr. Loukidelis. The bill creates a legislated duty to document, and it enhances the oversight powers of the chief records officer.
This is, as I said, a different world than the one occupied by the member who spoke a moment ago. This is a government of robust decision-making, of well-documented decision-making and decision-making that is available to the public through a robust, highly functional freedom-of-information regime. I reject pretty much everything said in the member’s speech and, in particular — as is the habit of himself and his colleagues — the criticism, implied in his speech, of the professional civil service.
In other words, our decision-making in government is made, in my case, through my deputy, through my ministry….
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, please.
Continue.
Hon. S. Anton: They clearly don’t like this very much. They clearly don’t like that government, the civil service, actually does a very good job of recording decisions and keeping decisions.
When he says things like, “Government doesn’t want you to know what they’re doing,” that is ridiculous. That’s a ridiculous assertion. We are so public in what we are doing, and there is such a good record kept of it. But how do we make sure that that recordkeeping has some oversight? That’s the purpose of the changes proposed in the Information Management Amendment Act, which adds the ability for the officer “to examine, evaluate and report on the management of government information by government bodies and to make recommendations considered advisable.”
The chief records officer obviously has a job to do here, which is to ensure that decision-making is properly recorded.
“The chief records officer may issue directives and guidelines to a government body in relation to a matter under this Act, including…(a) the digitizing and archiving of government information; (b) the effective management of information by the government body; (c) the creation of records respecting the government information referred to in section 19 (1.1)…including, without limitation, directives and guidelines respecting the types of records that constitute an adequate record of a government body’s decisions.”
In other words, every little trivial matter that is dealt with, one way or the other…. It’s not necessary to keep all that information. In fact, that can clutter things up when, in the future, you are — as the member referred to — trying to figure out why a decision was made. You want to have the important documentation in front of you which records not only why the decision was made but the decision itself. I agree with him. You need to have a good record of that. That, of course, is the purpose of this legislation proposed here today.
Public servants, in fact, are already required by government policy to ensure that adequate records are created of key decisions. They do this. Speaking, again, for my ministry — and I’m sure that I am safe to say this across all ministries — that’s what public servants do.
I know the member laughs. He thinks it’s funny. It’s part of the constant laughing and demeaning of our professional public service. I’m sorry that they like to do that on the other side of the House, but they should not. They should get out of that habit. It’s a very bad habit.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Order, members.
Hon. S. Anton: A little echo chamber over there.
Creating a legislative requirement strengthens this requirement and extends the requirement to other government bodies listed in the Information Management Act regulation. This is not an expectation that there’s a record created on every small thing as a decision is made, but this requirement pertains to key business decisions.
The chief records officer will be mandated by this legislation to provide guidance to government bodies as they prepare to meet this new legislative requirement.
Of course this is in the Information Management Act. This is not part of freedom of information. We have a very robust freedom-of-information regime in government, and that is a related — I grant you — but separate matter. This is about the information which is created, not about how it is given out to the public on request or how it is put on the government website.
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The Information Management Act is the ideal statute to do this duty to document, because it sets out requirements for the life cycle of government records, which begins — in this case, in what we’re dealing with today — with the creation of those records.
The legislation already requires government to retain records related to key business decisions, and adding this duty to document to the Information Management Act will ensure that all legislative obligations respecting the life cycle of records will be contained in a single piece of legislation and fall under the oversight of the chief records officer. Why the members opposite have a problem with that proposition is entirely beyond me.
This approach is consistent with all of the jurisdictions outside of Canada that have legislated a duty to document. Of course, once again, in British Columbia, we are ahead of the pack, and we are the first province in Canada to legislate this particular duty to document.
This will enhance the oversight powers of the chief records officer, who will be better equipped to enhance compliance and support government’s role as the trusted steward of the public’s information. As recommended by Mr. Loukidelis and the commissioner, this flexible approach enables government bodies to implement the requirement in a manner most suitable to their operations, organizational structure and record holdings.
This is part of our commitment to open governance. It enhances compliance with best practices and information management. It helps improve the way the province manages valuable information on behalf of its citizens. As I said, it is a first in Canada — duty to document, duty to record decisions.
The one thing I do agree with the member opposite on is that history is important. It is important for all of us to be able, now, to go back and see how decisions were made so that the historical record is there and so that…. From time to time, the legal record is needed as well. All of those records are properly created, properly stored and properly kept so that we can go back whenever necessary and see the record of not only the decision but how it was made. That record is consistently and properly kept in government for the benefit of us right now, for the benefit of the province of British Columbia both now and into the future.
So needless to say, I am totally in support of the Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017.
K. Corrigan: I was so glad to be enlightened and corrected by the Minister of Justice, who says that we’re not living in the same world, that we’re living in a different universe and talks about us criticizing staff. It is the minister who is not living in this world.
I’ll quote from the Information and Privacy Commissioner, an independent office of this province. The commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, is so well esteemed in her field that we lost her, unfortunately, and she went to the U.K.
Interjection.
K. Corrigan: I wasn’t blaming anybody. She went to U.K. because she was so highly esteemed.
Interjections.
K. Corrigan: Well, she may have had twice the salary, but don’t look for criticism when it’s not there. There’s plenty of criticism to go around.
[R. Lee in the chair.]
The Information and Privacy Commissioner went to the U.K. She was so highly respected that we lost her here because she took another job — just to be clear.
Here’s what the Information and Privacy Commissioner said about this government. We are not throwing staff under the bus. Listen to what the commissioner said. She said, with regard to destruction of documents or not creating documents:
“I am deeply disappointed by the practices our investigation uncovered. I would have expected that staff in ministers’ offices and in the Office of the Premier” — the head of this government —”would have a better understanding of records management and their obligation to file, retain and provide relevant records when an access request is received….This investigation uncovered major issues that require immediate action. In order to address the very serious issues uncovered in this report, I have recommended that government make a technical fix to stop employees from permanently deleting emails. I have also called for mandatory training and records management.”
That is about as much of an emergency as somebody like an independent officer of this Legislature can call. That is about as emergent as anything and as serious a criticism as I have ever heard from an independent officer of this Legislature — an officer who’s highly respected.
I’ll put it in a slightly less careful way. Here’s what Rob Shaw said about it:
“A long line of critics, most notably B.C.’s freedom-of-information commissioner, says the real problem” — and he was talking about the B.C. government — “is a pervasive culture of avoiding transparency within the government’s political arm, a lack of ethical leadership by the Premier, and a small army of mostly young political loyalists whose futures are tied to the success of the party and, despite working in taxpayer-paid positions, consider it their top job to protect their ministers.”
He was paraphrasing and rephrasing what the Information and Privacy Commissioner and others said about this government.
So for the Minister of Justice to suggest that we are somehow off the wall, out of this universe, when we criticize the behaviour and express concern about this pathetic attempt to get rid of criticism about their record…. To try, at the last minute, yet again, before an election, to
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bring in the bare minimum of what they could do…. To criticize us is actually pretty entertaining, I think.
Actually, this move to bring in what is called a “duty to document….” I was pretty excited when I heard that there was going to be a duty to document, because I sat with the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan on the Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It was a non-partisan committee.
We made dozens of recommendations, one of the centrepieces of which was the duty to document. We worked for months. It was recommendation No.2 and certainly one of the paramount recommendations. We worked very hard on both sides. Members from both sides. With the help of fabulous staff, we thought that we came up with a pretty good report. But it certainly was after and in recognition of this culture that I’ve just described — the fact that this government does not document properly, does not provide information, has blocked information and has had past practices that are inconsistent with the spirit to be open and transparent.
So that’s what the Privacy Commissioner said.
As I said, I was pretty excited when I saw that there was going to be legislation that said: “Duty to document.” I was talking to people about it, and they said: “No, there is no duty to document.” This is typical of this government. This is, yet again, an attempt to try to do something just before an election. To be able to say one thing when in fact they’re doing the opposite — doing absolutely nothing.
The press release from the Minister of Finance was: “B.C. will become the first Canadian province to legislate a duty to document.” That was the announcement. “A legislated duty to document means public services will have to create records that document the key business decisions of government. Inclusion in the Information Management Act also will extend this legal requirement to the government bodies listed in the legislation.”
Without reading the act, I thought that that sounded pretty good, because one of our recommendations…. It almost always gets ignored every time we have one of those committees, every five years or so…. I thought it was great that we were going to have this duty to document. But really happened?
If you take a look at what is actually in the act…. I couldn’t even find exactly what section it was. I kept looking for the section that says “duty to document” — that there would be a mandatory duty to document decisions and information of government. Well, the first section — the old section 3 — was changed to add that the chief records officer’s mandate was to include examining, evaluating and reporting on the management of government information and “to make recommendations considered advisable.” No duty to document there.
“The chief records officer may issue” — may; not must — “directives and guidelines to a government body in relation to a matter under this Act, including…the creation….” One of the items listed is the creation of records respecting the government information. That is not a duty to document. That is a discretionary power to require that there be information created, or creating guidelines and directives.
When you say “may,” that is discretionary. That does not require anything. When you say “must,” that means you have to do it. This is permissive; it is not mandatory. So there is no mandatory duty to document.
I have another concern as well. The power has been given to the chief records officer. The chief records officer is not an independent officer of the Legislature of British Columbia. The chief records officer reports to a minister, to the Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services. The chief records officer, or the chief information officer, is an employee of the government. The chief records officer or information officer can be hired and fired.
I’m not suggesting that the officer would be hired or fired as a result of doing or not doing what the minister of the day wanted. But when we have, through this report, a demonstrated history of a government which flaunts access to information, which intentionally did not follow the rules — intentionally denied access to information, intentionally destroyed records….
When you have that history, you want to do everything that you can, in a piece of legislation, to (1) ensure that the duty is mandatory, and that is not the case in this legislation; and (2) give the power to oversee that duty to document and to create records and to preserve records. You want to make sure that that power is with somebody that has independence from this Legislature and this government, which does not have a good history in this regard. I am concerned that this power has been given to the chief information officer. It was called the records officer. I think it’s the chief information officer. The name has been changed.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner agreed. I sat on the committee, as I mentioned earlier. I sat on the special committee of this Legislature to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. We took a really close look at this issue of duty to document.
We produced a report, just a little less than a year ago, May of 2016, Report of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The duty to document was raised by many, many of those who made submissions, including government. Certainly, it was raised by the Information and Privacy Commissioner in her submission.
It was also a recommendation that had been made by the same Information and Privacy Commissioner in her October 2015 investigation report, Access Denied: Record Retention and Disposal Practices of the Government of British Columbia. I read a few quotes from that at the beginning, the Privacy Commissioner expressing her deep
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disappointment by the practices that their investigation uncovered.
I think it’s interesting that the name is called Access Denied. That’s pretty flamboyant, I guess — or strong; flamboyant wouldn’t be the right word. That’s a very strong name — Access Denied. The Privacy Commissioner was saying her findings were that access was denied to citizens of British Columbia who made access requests.
The recommendation of the Privacy Commissioner is that “government should create a legislative duty to document within FIPPA” — the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — “as a clear indication that it does not endorse ‘oral government’ and that it is committed to be accountable to citizens by creating an accurate record of its key decisions and actions.”
Contrary to what the minister said, who laughed when it was suggested from this side that the duty to document should be within FIPPA and who said, “Of course, it has to be in the records management act,” that very respected Privacy Commissioner disagreed and thought it was not only appropriate but also the right thing to do to put it in the Freedom of Information Act.
We on both sides of the House agreed with that and put it in as a very short recommendation but, as my colleague pointed out, in recommendation 2, “add a duty to document” to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It did not say “add a duty to create directives and have a permissive power put in the records management act to be overseen by an employee of this government.” That is not what we suggested. It’s not what the freedom-of-information commissioner recommended, and it’s certainly not what, with the exception of government, several other bodies recommended.
I’m going to explain, give a reason…. It’s a bit of a technical thing, but I think it’s important. The commissioner, in her submission, indicated why she thought it would be preferable to have the duty to document being added to FIPPA rather than the Information Management Act. She said:
“While I have previously stated that a duty to document could be placed in information management legislation, there are compelling reasons why FIPPA should contain this requirement. The Information Management Act only applies to ministries and designated government agencies, whereas the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act applies to all public bodies. Further, there is an integral connection between the duty to document and access rights. Last, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act contains the oversight framework that is needed to ensure that the duty to create and retain records has the appropriate oversight.”
So not a laughing matter, not something from another universe, not something from people who have no idea what’s going on in the world. It is the recommendation that the all-party committee made and that the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act made.
You can certainly understand why we on this side are disappointed to hear that we have this watered-down version of what we thought the duty to document was going to be, what the legislation was going to be. As I said before, I believe that this is simply so that the B.C. Liberals can get one more thing off — another tick box they can have before the election and claim…. Most people, they know, don’t necessarily look too closely. They can simply claim that they care about access to information, that everything has changed — that they don’t have a culture of delete, delete, delete anymore, because look, they have a duty to document.
Here’s what the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association said in a media release. This association is concerned about access to information and protection of privacy, and that is their sole mandate. That is what they are concerned about, and they take it very seriously. Vince Gogolek is their executive director. He’s a very dedicated citizen of British Columbia.
Here’s what they said a few days ago: “The bill introduced this afternoon by the Finance Minister is a sad excuse for action on creating a duty to document government decisions. Despite demands from the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Information Commissioner’s office and the recommendations of a special legislative committee, the B.C. government has introduced a law that is entirely discretionary and does not create any duty whatsoever.”
And a quote from Vince Gogolek: “What the minister is proposing is a pathetic excuse for a response to massive pressure for action on this issue…. A legal duty uses the words ‘must’ or ‘shall,’ not the word ‘may.’”
He goes on to say that in the wake of the triple-delete scandal and recommendations from the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and many others, including a special legislative committee, recommended the creation of a legislative duty to document to ensure that government records are created and maintained. “The bill introduced today does no such thing, merely giving the chief information officer the discretion to bring in ‘directives and guidelines’ on the creation of adequate records. Further, the Information Commissioner will not be able to review any of these decisions, contrary to the recommendations of the special legislative committee.” From my perspective, this is entirely inadequate.
I want to remind people where this came from. The main impetus for this, for Commissioner Denham to do an investigation, was the fact that there had been several complaints about the treatment of applicants and what had happened with information that had been applied for under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
I want to do a really quick timeline of the main issue in this. It involved a gentleman, Tim Duncan, who actually came to our caucus deeply troubled by what he had witnessed as a faithful staffer. We talk about whether or
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not we respect the staff. Here is a man who was highly ethical, and what happened to him tore him apart and ended up with him leaving government, largely because he was so disturbed by the behaviour that he saw of this government in a particular instance.
In 2014, Ministry of Transportation staff held meetings with 80 communities and First Nations leaders along the Highway of Tears to discuss transportation options. In late 2014, we filed an FOI request for records related to those meetings. The request was extended twice.
Frankly, my experience, from my many years before I came to this Legislature, was that one way to deny requests is to delay requests. You can deny, you can add…. I think my colleague talked about the fact that one of the things this government did was to change the requirement to respond to a request from 30 calendar days to 30 working days. Then if you add on the top that you get another 30 days in order to contact third parties, and if you add on top of that another 30 working days — always working days — because you say that it’s too difficult to get things together, you can go months before you get a response to a request.
An Hon. Member: Years.
K. Corrigan: Years and years, if there are appeals and denials — if there’s a denial of the information or if they say there are no records, which is what happened in some of the investigations of the Privacy Commissioner. That was my experience when I worked making requests before I became an MLA — repeated systemic denials that we believed were simply so that we wouldn’t get hold of the information.
So the request was extended twice. In February, we received a “no records” response to our request. Then finally, we criticized government for this, and we received heavily severed records.
Then Tim Duncan wrote us in May of 2015, outlining the serious concerns he had with the government’s handling of FOI requests. And he said to us that when he was an EA in the Minister of Transportation’s office, when that 2014 Highway of Tears request was received, he was instructed to delete emails related to this FOI by ministerial assistant George Gretes. He also said that deleting records is a widespread practice in this Liberal government. That’s why this investigation started in May of 2015.
There were several other complaints, several other requests, including a request for information from the Premier’s office. I recall reading a report that the Premier’s office had a record number — and increasing since the present Premier came to the office — of responses to applications that no records existed. When further requests were made, the Privacy Commissioner decided that she would look at that, as well as the Advanced Education Ministry’s handling of requests.
The report was scathing, as I’ve said earlier. The report verified Tim Duncan’s story, despite members — who are sitting in this Legislature now — laughing at us and telling us once again that we were being outlandish and unfounded and so on. The report verified Tim Duncan’s story. In fact, George Gretes was charged and has pleaded guilty.
There is a large and a long background of behaviour described as systemic behaviour, a culture that was the reason for her report and, certainly, for our concern. For the reasons for my concern about that culture, which….
Every time the B.C. Liberals get caught for doing something egregious, get caught for a culture of denial, for a culture of avoiding transparency within government, they do something minor, often, like this and create a pathetic little duty to document, which really isn’t a duty to document. Usually right before an election, they’ll take some kind of action and then go on until we hit the next scandal. I’m sure we’ll have…. Well, maybe not. We’re pretty close to an election. Maybe we’re done with the scandals.
Anyways, for that reason, I’ve got to say that I’m terribly disappointed in this legislation. Particularly after the good work done on both sides of the House on the review of the act, I had hoped that out of that would come some real action. To me, actually, the most important recommendation was the duty to document. This is not a duty to document. For that reason, I’m certainly very disappointed.
I’m looking forward to the amendments that my colleague from Nanaimo–North Cowichan is going to be bringing forward. I think that with that, I will take my seat.
Hon. A. Wilkinson: Before I embark on a review of the Information Management Act and its merits, I just want to make a quick remark about my former critic, the member for Burnaby–Deer Lake, who just spoke and who did an admirable job, although I hope to think not terribly effective as my critic in Advanced Education. She carried herself with dignity and aplomb and always proved to be a person that one could do business with. I thank her for her contributions to the House over these many years that she has served.
Now this act, of course, is amending existing legislation which was first considered when I was the Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services. The issue that came to mind was how to manage electronic information into the future, because this government had not fully addressed the legislative basis for managing large data files, which accumulate with remarkable speed in government. A government maintains very large data files in off-site data storage facilities and data centres. Of course, the issue becomes how they can be properly maintained so that they don’t simply become a garbage dump.
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This piece of legislation, the Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, provides for a mechanism for cataloguing that information in a way to determine which of those documents are important to document particular decisions having been made. This, of course, requires the chief records officer to address the issue with directives and guidelines so that those electronic records can be maintained over time.
Of course, this takes us back into the history of the public service — which, when this building was put together in about 1898, was in the early days of the typewriter. There was still a lot of handwritten documentation at that time. It accumulated in files that some of us have had the pleasure of seeing, which are essentially almost inaccessible. They’re in the nature of archives which are generally uncatalogued. Those became rapidly unmanageable, and government developed file management systems to deal with all the paper documents.
That continued until about 1985, when computers came into widespread use. Of course at the time, they weren’t networked. Each computer had its own memory, whether they were floppy disks or hard drives, and those discrete documents were created in abundance in the 1980s until network systems became available in the 1990s — which allowed centralized storage of documents, although there was still documentation on individual computers. This created its own management problem, in that the proliferation of information on these machines made it very difficult to archive them in any meaningful way.
Coming into this century, we have been fortunate to have cloud computing and centralized data storage, because we can now search those drives and search the information for meaningful documents. Nonetheless, if one is looking retrospectively, it can be looking for a needle in a haystack.
The important feature of this act is that it will create the opportunity to have clear directives and guidelines provided by the chief records officer, who will then determine the importance of digitizing and archiving of government information and the effective management of that information by a government body. That has been pointed out to be an essential service — by the Attorney General, in her presentation about the need to archive our records.
In some cases, this is done more or less automatically with major decisions such as Treasury Board or cabinet, but that is, in so many ways, a legacy of the old paper world, because documents are produced as if they were to be on paper. The more modern electronic world requires a much more subtle approach, in that decisions may be documented in an electronic format. That is, indeed, the role of the civil service.
In my time as a deputy minister about 15 years ago — I served in that role for almost five years — it was one of our core functions to make sure that the documentation of government, in terms of government expenditure and government decisions, was properly documented.
That goes back now 17 years. We still find ourselves in the situation where the civil service takes a remarkably responsible and coherent approach to documenting decision-making. It may not be obviously apparent to the general public or to a freedom-of-information requester. Nonetheless, the work is done. It’s really a matter of making it readily accessible, which is exactly what this act anticipates in providing for these directives and guidelines to be put together by the chief records officer so that we will have the ability to essentially tag and label the decision-making process in government, to establish that the documentation does exist.
My own experience is that there is abundant documentation of decisions. This is not a matter of the issue never having been addressed — it’s been addressed for 130 years — but the issue is finding those documents. This new amendment will do exactly that by providing, in section 5, to amend section 19, that “the head of a government body is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate system is in place within the government body for creating and maintaining, in accordance with applicable directives or guidelines” issued under section 6(1), and that there is “an adequate record of that government body’s decisions.”
I am fully confident that this happens already, but as I say, it’s merely a matter of being able to find these records in a timely fashion and to have them designated or flagged as records of decision.
Now clearly, some discretion is required here on the part of the chief records officer, because the nature of decision-making and the nature of documentation changes over time. It has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Once we’ve got this in legislation, it needs to be flexible to provide for changing environments and new recordkeeping techniques. That is anticipated here in that the chief records officer can make those decisions, anticipate change in developments, and be in a position to provide a flexible and effective system of recordkeeping and archiving.
That is where we come to the issue of the discretion of the chief records officer to determine what is truly transitory. If a meeting changes from the Oak Room to the Cedar Room, there is no need to flag or record that, because it is simply a transitory record somewhere in someone’s Outlook about having changed the meeting. That could be deemed to be a decision if a rigid set of rules were put into place, and it would be a complete and utter waste of time and money to document that move.
At the other end of the spectrum, we of course have already the budgetary and Treasury Board decision-making processes that are extensively documented, as I said earlier, as if they were still conducted on paper.
In the middle, there is a vast spectrum of decision-
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making by statutory decision-makers, by ministers, by suitable members of the senior civil service and also right down to the functional level, at the client interface that this government operates extensively. Increasingly, that interface is on the Internet rather than in person, so flexible directives that anticipate those changes must be brought into play. That is the role of the chief records officer.
There has been the suggestion that this should be built into the freedom-of-information legislation. In my encounters with Elizabeth Denham, when she was our freedom-of-information guru, that was a school of thought that she thought might be productive because it was legislation that she was responsible for. But I’m comfortable that if she were here today, she would view this legislation as being entirely appropriate and certainly in keeping with her requests of me at the time as minister. Here we are, less than a couple of years later, and we have it going to legislation.
I have to speak thoroughly in support of this piece of legislation. This amendment is a highly functional and desirable piece of legislation. It brings us into the modern age to keep up with the avalanche of electronic information that we now face. It’s my pleasure to speak in support of it.
S. Robinson: I rise today to speak to Bill 6, Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017.
I have some very serious concerns about this piece of legislation that’s here before us in the House. It’s also known as the duty to document piece of legislation.
I have to say how disappointed I was, when I got elected, about the fact that this didn’t exist already. I mean, I come from a professional background. I’m a family therapist. I have a professional duty to document. I’ve had to keep case notes. I have to keep reports. I have to keep them for seven years, and I have to be able to retrieve them, because that’s what you do when you’re a professional. You document.
I also worked in the social service industry for many, many years. It’s an industry — certainly in the non-profit sector — that receives government funding. In fact, this government funds a whole bunch of social service agencies that I worked at over the years. The amount of documentation that we were required to do to demonstrate to this government that we were accountable, that we were transparent and that we were using these public resources to meet a requirement and the goals that were set out for us…. The volume of paper that we had to complete was quite substantial. We were given a duty to document.
If we made decisions as an organization, we would have the details of who was there and how the decisions came to be made. Then we had to store it, and we had to keep it for a number of years. That’s what a duty to document is.
Well, here we have a situation where a government got caught. They got caught because they were triple-deleting. They were getting rid of evidence. They were getting rid of information about what they were doing or what they weren’t doing.
It was based on the fact that people wanted to know what was going on around Highway 16. There was this culture of: “Well, let’s just get rid of the evidence. Let’s just get rid of the documentation about what we’ve been doing so that we don’t have to report it.”
When you have a culture of triple-deleting…. I don’t even know how to triple-delete. I can double-delete, but I can’t triple-delete. I don’t know how to do that.
Then it became this really big scandal about how this government’s culture of not being transparent became a problem and resulted in having to develop some legislation that says that they have a duty to document. Then we get a hold of this piece of legislation, and it falls short. It falls short because there’s all this discretionary “they may do this” and “you may do that.” That kind of discretion…. The minister who spoke earlier talked about needing to make sure that there’s flexibility. Well, you can have all kinds of flexibility around that when you may do this or you may do that. It means that you don’t have to. You don’t have to.
When you have the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner and others who recommend legislation to document and ensure that the government records are created and maintained and then a bill that doesn’t quite hit the mark, that’s a problem. When you have the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association say, “What the minister is proposing is a pathetic excuse for a response to massive pressure for action on this issue” and “A legal duty uses the words ‘must’ or ‘shall,’ not the word ‘may,’” I think you have a problem.
I think you have a very weak piece of legislation that doesn’t quite hit the mark. I would expect, given the triple-delete scandal, that this government would put together some very strong language to make sure that it holds itself accountable, because right now I don’t believe that British Columbians trust what this government is doing, especially when you put in weak language like “may.” When you do that, it means that you have lots of wiggle room. It means that you don’t have to do anything. And it calls into question: why bother with this at all?
As a professional counsellor, I wasn’t given the option of “you may write notes” or “you may keep a report.” It was really clear. I’m required to keep notes. I’m required to document. I’m required to keep track of dates. I’m required to keep reports. I’m required to report out on them. I’m required to keep them for seven years. You follow the rules. But when you have a may, a wishy-washy may, you don’t have a rule. You have a suggestion. You have a guideline.
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Given this government’s history with triple delete, I would suggest that they very seriously consider some of the amendments that are going to be proposed, because I think that will strengthen this piece of legislation. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.
R. Sultan: As I see it, Bill 6 is a short bill with big consequences. It will impose upon our government the duty to document. If government makes important decisions, it must document how it reached those decisions. It cannot simply say: “Here it is. Like it or lump it.” They are now legally obligated to document, as I see the interpretation of the bill, how they got there.
Two sections of Bill 6, taken together, impose the duty to document. The first of these sections, section 5, spells out the duty to document itself: “…the head of a government body is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate system is in place within the government body for creating and maintaining” — and I underline that phrase “and maintaining” — “…government information that is an adequate record of that government body’s decisions.”
I take the words “creating and maintaining” as being a firm directive to the head of a government body to neither destroy, erase, expunge nor otherwise obliterate government information.
The second of these sections, section 2, gives the chief records officer of the government the authority to guide, which I take as a gentle word actually meaning to instruct, direct or order government bodies on implementing this provision effectively. In other words, in my interpretation, the chief records officer is expected by this legislation to be the cop who exercises oversight and ensures compliance.
What does all of this add up to? The government asserts that passage of this amendment will make British Columbia the first jurisdiction in Canada to legislate a duty to document. I think this is a significant shift in the definition of responsibilities, duties and accountabilities within government.
What has prompted the shift? Certainly, there’s been a change in public expectations about information. With all of the world’s history, literature and opinion — honest and truthful, or not — available at the flick of a finger on one’s iPhone, why shouldn’t everything you ever wanted to know about government be similarly accessible, including all of the deliberations, pros and cons and counter-arguments that may be involved?
Governments ignore such public concerns at their peril, but addressing them can also imperil good public policy, in my view, because flooding the data marketplace without limit has its problems. Let me tell you about my first disillusionment with government data without limit.
I wanted to get to the root source of key pricing information on the electrical industry in the United States for academic research, which occupied more years of my life than it should have. I travelled to Washington, D.C., to find the details and the source. I was directed to a large warehouse on the outskirts of town, about the size of an unused airplane hangar, where behind chicken wire, was the source of the data I sought. Stacks and stacks of paper, 15 or 20 feet high, were spilling over the floor, resembling a trash transfer station.
That’s what it was — trash. I have never had quite the same confidence in American economic data ever since. Every month more paper kept arriving, but nobody did anything about it.
Fast-forward to the computer age and, as the member for Vancouver-Quilchena pointed out, one of the motivations for this bill, the fact that the data world has indeed changed. Not necessarily for the better, I might interject.
We learned recently that Microsoft has transferred one of its data storage clouds to Canada — Quebec, actually. Microsoft now has 22 cloud regions, we read, supporting 90 countries. Microsoft probably has well over 300 petabytes of data storage around the world right now.
A petabyte is a multiple of the unit byte used for digital information measurement. The prefix “peta” indicates the fifth power of 1,000 and implies ten to the 15th power. So what is one petabyte? Well, it’s one quadrillion bytes. Got that? Good.
The point is that whether we are talking about health records or legal precedents or government rule-making, information creation and storage are exploding. How, then, can ordinary citizens exercise their right of access to information so they can, in turn, exercise their obligations in democracy to be informed of what government is up to and pass judgment on it?
Clearly, the information is growing at a faster rate than our citizens’ capacity to either access it or understand it. What’s the solution, therefore? The answer must lie in selection and triage of information. It is in the determination of just what is the factual and analytical basis of key decisions which is very important. The rest may be dismissed as the chaff of civilization.
Accordingly, if we are to make available to citizens the information basis of the decisions which are important, somebody who understands the big picture must decide what those big decisions were and the information basis which was critical, including key arguments invoked in reaching them. Somebody must exercise judgment.
That’s what Bill 6 is about. Mr. Loukidelis, in his report on information and privacy management, said the government should consider introducing a general — and I underline the word “general” — legislative duty to document, with the details to be worked out in policy at the ministry or program level.
This is not quite the absence of discretion or rules that the member who spoke just prior to myself referred to. We’re talking about a very general approach, and working things out on the fly, as you might say. We are talk-
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ing about general rules and intentions. We are not talking about specific directives or details. We are talking, as well, about creating a culture of disclosure of the key things but, disappointing to some, not the specifics.
Will this satisfy those who want specific rules for this and that in fine detail, backed up by microdata? No. Will it lead to a solid, never-shifting benchmark against which information disclosure and confidentiality rules can be measured? Unfortunately, the answer, again, must be no.
The realities of big data in our ever more complex world, in our ever more complex $50 billion enterprise called the B.C. government, in our abilities to grasp the big picture and sort out what is highly relevant and what is merely static, means the environment is constantly changing. What is important changes over time, and we are forced to entrust a significant portion of information categorization and triage to those who know what it all means. And what it means evolves over time.
This can be disquieting to those who demand to see it all, raw and in the flesh, unedited, right now. One leader in this House asserts that the public needs to know why decisions are made, including who is influenced and who is consulted on decisions. That is true. But in judging who exactly those persons and those arguments were, we have become reliant, in our complex world, upon the judgments of those actually engaged, whom we trust to be forthcoming. That is the spirit of Bill 6. That’s the underlying premise of the reality of the world we live in. I support Bill 6.
Deputy Speaker: Seeing no more speakers, the minister closes the debate.
Hon. R. Coleman: Seeing no more speakers, we would call the second reading debate vote.
Motion approved.
Hon. R. Coleman: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for the next sitting of the House after today.
Bill 6, Information Management (Documenting Government Decisions) Amendment Act, 2017, 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. R. Coleman: I call second reading debate on Bill 4, intituled Election Amendment Act, 2017.
BILL 4 — ELECTION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017
Hon. S. Anton: I move that Bill 4 now be read a second time.
This bill would add an extra layer of transparency and timeliness to British Columbia’s election financing system by requiring major political parties, candidates and constituency associations to report political contributions on a biweekly basis. The bill would also create new reporting requirements for contributions received through ticketed admissions and sponsorships of fundraising functions.
Currently the act requires political parties and constituency associations to file annual disclosure reports, and parties and candidates also must file financing reports following an election. Those reporting requirements will not change. What will change for all political parties, candidates and constituency associations is a new, lower threshold for reporting political contributions from an individual donor. Currently that threshold is one or more contributions that, in total, are greater than $250. The bill would lower the reporting threshold to over $100.
The most significant aspect of the new bill is the requirement for major political entities to report such contributions from a contributor within 14 days of receiving them. This change would greatly shorten the time between a contribution being made and the contribution being reported. At present, under the act, the public is able to see who has made contributions only when annual reports and election financing reports are filed, which, in most cases, is many months after the contribution has been received.
Added transparency also comes with the requirement for the Chief Electoral Officer to publish these new disclosure reports as soon as practicable, and explicit authorization to publish them on the Internet.
These new 14-day reporting provisions will apply to major political actors as follows. Firstly, political parties. Political parties must report if they have membership on the Election Advisory Committee or if they raise more than $50,000 in a calendar year. The Election Advisory Committee is made up of representatives from political parties that have elected Members of the Legislative Assembly or that had registered candidates in more than half of the electoral districts in the most recent general election.
Candidates must report if they represent a political party that is on the Election Advisory Committee or if they raise more than $10,000 in relation to their candidacy. Constituency associations must report if they represented a political party that is on the Election Advisory Committee, if they raise more than $10,000 in a calendar year or if they are a constituency association for an independent Member of the Legislative Assembly.
In short, we are exempting those parties, candidates and constituency associations that do not raise significant funds. In our view, it would be unnecessarily onerous for them to track and report contributions in the same manner as major political actors, who are presumed to have the necessary staff and infrastructure to comply
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with these new, time-sensitive requirements. We believe the public interest in real-time reporting is far higher for political entities that are represented in the Legislative Assembly and who are receiving significant contributions.
The amendments include significant penalties for late filing. First, there is a late filing fee proposed of $100 if a contribution is not reported within 28 days of the filing deadline. Then, if the contribution is not reported by the end of the late filing, the penalty is half the amount of the contribution if it is reported before the date the next annual or election financing report is due. After that, the penalty is the entire amount of the contribution.
I should note that these fees and penalties apply to each contribution, so a lack of timeliness and diligence by a political party, candidate or constituency association will quickly add up. The Chief Electoral Officer will be publishing notice of any reporting entity that has contravened the filing deadlines.
With these changes, British Columbia would join Ontario as the only two jurisdictions in Canada who require reporting of political contributions in such a short time frame. I note that Ontario’s rules apply only to political parties and leadership contestants.
The amendments in this bill would also require more information to be reported about political contributions received at fundraising functions. Specifically, contributions greater than $100 would need to identify whether they were because of a sponsorship or a ticket price to enter a function and the time, date and place of that function. For major political parties, candidates and constituency associations, this information would need to be reported within 14 days of depositing the contribution.
Further, major political parties would be required to post information on their websites about past fundraisers. This permits the public to see, in short order, who donated, how much and at which fundraising event.
Political parties, candidates and constituency associations who do not fit the definition of “major” would still need to report this new information but only in the annual financing reports and election financing reports that they are currently required to file.
This is a significant change. No other province requires this level of timeliness and transparency over contributions received at fundraising functions.
These amendments also provide explicit authority for the Chief Electoral Officer to post the information contained in the 14-day disclosure reports, as well as other financing reports, on the Internet. The act already provides for the public availability of this information, but in keeping with language in other provincial statutes respecting public information on the Internet, these amendments clarify that authority for the Chief Electoral Officer.
Finally, the amendments will be brought into force by regulation and will provide for a transition period. The purpose of this approach is to ensure that Elections B.C. has the necessary time to complete systems upgrades and to educate potential reporting entities about their new responsibilities under the act.
G. Holman: As the spokesperson for democratic reform and the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands, I’m very pleased to speak to this legislation.
Unless there are major changes to this bill, we on this side of the House don’t really view it as a serious attempt to get at the root of the problem here that has been identified in British Columbia, which is the undue influence of political donations from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
As one of our caucus members put it, this bill does many things; it doesn’t really ban big money from politics, and that’s the primary problem that we’ve got to deal with in this province.
As the minister indicated, the bill defines, for major political parties, the new rules that would apply to them. And political parties are those receiving over $50,000 in contributions annually or having a representative on the Election Advisory Committee.
[R. Chouhan in the chair.]
It lowers the threshold for reporting political contributions from a single contributor from $250 to $100, and it requires reporting contributions to major political parties, candidates and constituency associations within 14 days of their deposit, including the nature of the contribution — whether it’s a donation, a ticketed event or a sponsorship.
The bill requires fundraising functions to be posted on a political party’s website within five days of the event, and there are penalties, as the minister just described — pretty severe penalties — for failing to publish that information.
Finally, though, the bill doesn’t really take effect…. Formal disclosure of contributions is not required during a transition period, which is defined from January 1 of this year to the day the bill comes into force. But to bring it into force requires regulatory change, and the date for that change is unknown. So there’s a bit of a problem here, too, in the sense that this so-called transition period doesn’t really have an end date.
It’s not at all clear whether we’re going to get through this legislation even before the election. It’s not clear whether it will even be passed before the election.
But the fundamental problem with it is that it doesn’t get to the root of the issue in British Columbia. It doesn’t include any ban on union or corporate political donations. It doesn’t have any restrictions on foreign or outside-B.C. donations. It has no limits on the size of the donations. It does not include any ban on a second salary for the Premier, cabinet ministers, elected officials.
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Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we presented legislation a number of times to try and get at the root cause — since 2008 and prior to elections in 2009, 2013 and prior to this election. The latest private member’s legislation presented by the Leader of the Official Opposition included all of those four fundamental problems with our current election financing rules: around political donations; around restrictions on outside donations; on limits to donations, limits to personal donations; and a ban on the so-called top-up to the Premier’s salary.
None of that is included in this legislation. Unless those things are addressed, it’s very difficult for this side of the House to take this legislation very seriously.
We should perhaps go back and look at the genesis of these rules. They certainly appear to be a conversion on the road to Damascus, on the road to the election, where government has been mired in controversy and scandal regarding concerns about undue influence of large corporations who are getting government contracts, undue influence over the Premier, who is getting a direct salary top-up from the Liberal party. Those are the kinds of things that have spurred this legislation. In our view, this is really just a smokescreen, because it doesn’t really address the fundamental problems that we have with our election finance system in British Columbia.
And it’s not just our view. It’s certainly the view of a number of political commentators, of organizations, independent organizations, that scrutinize governance in Canada, in British Columbia. For example, Democracy Watch characterizes this bill: “The B.C. Liberals’ donation disclosure bill is too little, too late, and even if it is enacted before the election” — which is as I say, Mr. Speaker, questionable — “voters shouldn’t believe the Premier’s likely false claim that future changes are possible. If the B.C. Liberals were serious about changing the province’s unethical, undemocratic political donation system, they wouldn’t have spent the past year dishonestly claiming that the current system is fine and rejecting changes proposed by opposition parties and many others.”
That’s a comment by an independent organization — no political axes to grind, non-partisan in nature.
It’s not just the opposition that has concerns about this. The member from Delta who we lauded this morning for her fine career in this House and the contributions she made to her community and made to the debate in this Legislature…. Comments from her are also quite telling: “All it is, is lip service before an election to an issue that’s causing them a great deal of embarrassment. A panel will be appointed, and all of it is a complete deflection of the issue. There is legislation sitting on the table right now that could correct all of these problems.”
I should acknowledge at this point that not only has the official opposition presented private member’s legislation to fix the root problem of big money in politics; so has the member from Delta, several times, and she should be commended for that.
To continue on with her comments: “Isn’t it a masterful piece of deflection?” And she states the proposed bill would cap individual donations…. No, I’m sorry. The opposition bill would deal with all these fundamental problems.
Mike Smyth, the columnist for the Province, is quoted as saying: “Talk about shutting the barn door after the cash cows have bolted. Premier Christy Clark’s promise of an independent panel to review…”
Deputy Speaker: Member, Member.
G. Holman: “…British Columbia’s out-of-control political fundraising is way too little and way too late.”
Deputy Speaker: Member.
G. Holman: Yes? Sorry, Mr. Speaker.
Deputy Speaker: Member, no names, please, in the House.
G. Holman: I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker?
Deputy Speaker: You’re not supposed to name any members’ names.
G. Holman: I’m sorry. My apologies.
In any case, to continue with Mr. Smyth’s quotes:
“This review of British Columbia’s out-of-control political fundraising is way too little and way too late. The Liberal Party has refused for years to modernize B.C.’s obsolete and unlimited fundraising porkapalooza. It’s easy to understand why: the Liberals have raked in vast sums of cash from corporations, lobbyists and even foreign organizations, giving themselves a massive money advantage over their opponents. But with the next election looming, the Premier is clearly feeling the heat of public pressure.”
That’s Mr. Smyth from the Province.
Gary Mason, another columnist for the Globe and Mail, I believe — and again, no raving socialist — has made the comment: “For a government that’s all about politics, all of the time, the mounting criticism the B.C. Liberals were facing over the absence of any substantive rules around campaign financing became a threat to the one thing they value above all else: power. There is no other explanation for the Premier’s sudden reversal on the matter.”
Mr. Mason goes on to say that in terms of the suggestion made by government — but again, I neglected to say, not included in this legislation — the proposal for a panel that would review election finance rules…. Again, a promise made before the election. We’ve heard these promises before from this party. Mr. Mason states: “There is nothing binding about this panel the government is setting up. It could well produce a report that the Liberals, if re-elected, could end up ignoring. After all, the Premier set up a showy, high-profile expert panel on
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climate change and then chose to ignore its recommendations. So there is precedent.”
There is precedent for establishing a panel as an indication that something important is going to happen and then completely ignoring it.
Mr. Mason goes on to say: “The fact is, we’d be far more impressed if the Premier had announced on Monday that she’d finally seen the light and was committing her government to ending union and corporate donations and placing firm limits on individual donations.”
Again, we’ll be interested, during committee stage, to be looking at the devil in the details in this bill, but it’s fundamentally important to understand that it doesn’t address the real problem with election financing in British Columbia. It does not ban big money. It does not limit big money in any way, including from non-residents.
Some comments from the members opposite, from the Premier, from other ministers. The Premier is acknowledging now that the public wants more to be done on this issue. She’s quoted as saying: “We can’t say that just transparency will solve all of the problems, because we know that’s not enough.” That was a quote just recently in the Globe and Mail. So if there is an understanding by the government and the Premier that it’s not enough, it’s puzzling to us why we’re just coming forward with these fairly cosmetic changes.
The Premier has insisted for months that the public would be satisfied if all political parties provided more transparency on donations. “The system works well,” she says, “and it’s the way it’s always been.”
Of course, we all know here, and much of the public knows and understands, that we already have to declare these donations. People already know where the Liberal party, where the NDP, where the Greens…. The public already knows, because it’s already a legal requirement to disclose donations. All this bill does, really, is to make those disclosures more frequent, a little more up to date. But in terms of the fundamental problem of the donations themselves, it does nothing at all to address that.
Another minister of the Crown stated this week: “We’re not heading down the path of banning any kind of donations, because we think the public needs to know who is donating, and that is the primary issue.” That’s the red herring that’s being presented to us today. That’s the smokescreen that’s being presented to us today, that the disclosure is essentially a non-issue when you compare it to the big issue of big money in politics.
Another minister, the Minister for Housing, was quoted as saying…. He made it clear that the government is quite happy with the current system. “As far as I’m concerned” — this is the Minister for Housing — “we haven’t changed anything. We’re not about to change anything.” The minister says: “The government has no plan to ban such donations, and organizations that want to support a political party have the right to do it. We’re totally transparent about that, and we’ll continue to be so.”
The real issue here is the public’s concern. Opinion polls have told us that a large majority of British Columbians feel that our election financing rules are not strong enough and they’re not stringent enough. There is real concern — not just by politicians, not just by the opposition, but by the public — that important decisions around spending of taxpayer dollars, around legislation, are being unduly influenced. There is a huge perception out there that political decision-making in British Columbia is unduly influenced by big money. This legislation does nothing at all to address that.
The claim that this is somehow groundbreaking in Canada also, I think, is a bit misguided, a bit misleading. In fact, there are a number of jurisdictions which have this kind of legislation — maybe not the precise number of days before you have to disclose donations. But this legislation isn’t rocket science. It’s also in place in a number of other provinces. The claim that this is somehow groundbreaking and leading the way in Canada — nothing could be further from the truth.
What is really true, and what many provinces, including at the federal level, have in place are regulations that actually have an effect on undue influence of big money in politics. There are a number of provinces that have those rules. This government refuses to even consider them.
I’m winding down, I think, with the….
M. Farnworth: We need to hear more.
G. Holman: We need to hear more? Okay. So you shall.
Let’s get back to this panel that’s being proposed. Again, no mention of that at all in the legislation, even though there are public comments being made about the possibility of setting up a panel that’s going to review….
We’ve seen what has happened with other panels that government has set up. The climate action panel I mentioned before. This government seems to have a bit of a problem with independent watchdogs in British Columbia. The B.C. Utilities Commission, for example, completely precluded from reviewing huge public infrastructure investments in British Columbia — another public independent watchdog that has been sidelined from this government.
I don’t think the public should be too comforted by the notion that, somehow, after the election, this government is going to set up a panel, review election finance rules and then actually adhere to, or even pay attention to, the recommendations.
I want to quote another minister. The Minister of Finance, again, recently stated: “Full disclosure is the only real requirement imposed on donations in B.C., and it will stay that way for a while.” The minister goes on to say that changes or limits are “not in the cards right now.”
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This was a statement made in the Prince George Citizen. The minister is quoted as saying: “The issue that seems to be at the forefront today is whether or not we’re proposing or thinking about eliminating corporate and union donations, and we’re not.”
It’s abundantly clear that this government will not address the election finance rules in British Columbia — perhaps, in part, because they benefit greatly, politically, from those rules being in place. To quote Mr. Smyth again…. Mr. Smyth is quoted in a recent quote on CKNW, in March: “I mean, this is a government that has said for over a year that the current system is fine. They’ve said for more than six years that they’re going to change it. They’ve rejected every attempt to reform the system. They said the public doesn’t care about it. Now, with an election two months away and the RCMP investigating, all of a sudden now you’re committed to changing this somehow, later. ‘But of course, re-elect us first, and then we’ll change it.’”
There again, in a nutshell, is a summary of the concerns about this legislation. It’s a red herring. It’s a smoke screen to try and change the topic, to try and divert the public’s attention and divert the public’s real concerns about election finance reform in British Columbia. It’s putting something forward that really…. Essentially, all it does is mean that you’re disclosing donations maybe a little bit more quickly than you were before. So really, nothing is fundamentally changing here.
You know, we could just quickly look at the provinces, the political finance rules across Canada. Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia — all of the major provinces — and, of course, also the federal government. All of them have a ban on corporate and union donations in place. All of those jurisdictions that I’ve mentioned, in addition to New Brunswick, also have a cap on individual donations. Other jurisdictions, other politicians in this country and in other provinces, have recognized the real problem here, and they’ve dealt with it.
The first piece of legislation that the Alberta government brought in, on its stunning election in 2015, was to ban political donations from unions and corporations and establish personal limits. If you look at the distribution of the donations, the Liberal Party donations, of course, are skewed quite markedly to large corporations and wealthy individuals.
I believe the number is something in the order of…. There are several million dollars in donations to the Liberal Party that are accounted for by less than 300 individuals, something like that. The average size of the donation to the Liberal Party is quite a bit larger than for any other party in British Columbia. There certainly is a skewing of their support, a huge amount of support from wealthy individuals.
Of course, what that does is give them — we think, on this side of the House — an unfair advantage in elections, and that’s precisely why they want to keep those rules in place.
It’s not at all clear here what we’re doing with Bill 4. As I said before, it’s not at all clear we’re even going to get to the committee stage on this. It’s not at all clear that the legislation will be passed. It’s not at all clear that the panel being promised by government to review political donations, election financing rules, will ever get established in this province.
It really is not at all clear what this legislation is about, except for one thing. It’s to try and divert public attention — and, I think, with some success, unfortunately — from the real problem in this province around election finance rules, which is the undue influence, or the public’s concern about undue influence, of corporations, large organizations like unions, and wealthy individuals. There is no other purpose, really, that one could attribute to a bill of this nature.
All it really does, fundamentally, is require that donations are disclosed a little bit more quickly than they’re already required to be disclosed. We know where donations are coming from. We know who is supporting political parties in this province. We know, for the most part, for the Liberals, that it’s large corporations and wealthy individuals.
For the NDP’s part, we’re going to play by the rules in this election, and if we form government after May 9, we’re going to change the rules, as we’ve been proposing since 2008. This is going to level the playing field. It’s going to enable smaller parties in this province — including the Greens, including the Conservatives, including independents, like the member from Delta…. Changing the rules and restricting big money from politics is going to make it fairer for everybody. It’s going to alleviate voters’ concerns about undue influence of big money in the political system.
That’s a promise from us. That’s a commitment from us that we’ve made since 2008. Six times we’ve presented legislation in this place to try and ban big money — both from corporations and from groups that are viewed as being our friends, the union sector. We are going to do that if we’re elected in 2017.
I will be interested to see if we get to the committee stage. We’ll get to the devil in the details. We’re very interested about this transition period. It’s a bit mysterious about when it actually ends, because that transition period has to be changed by regulation, and that’s not going to happen until after the election.
It’s not at all clear if and when this transition period is ever going to end. That’s important, because the legislation, essentially, is not in effect until that transition period is over. So I’ll be very interested to hear, in committee stage, some of the details on that.
I do want to make clear: we are prepared to debate this legislation. We believe that the changes proposed in this bill are not fundamentally getting at the problem in
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British Columbia with election finance rules. We will be looking for amendments to strengthen the legislation.
In the end, I think we could be convinced to support it, even though it’s really not getting at the root of the problem. But it is a very, very, very modest step forward in transparency. We want to be absolutely clear, on this side of the House, that this is a red herring. This doesn’t get at the root problem of politics in British Columbia, which is, unfortunately, now driven by big money.
On this side of the House, we’re going to play by the rules. We’ll play by the rules until we get through this election. If we form government, we’re going change those rules to make it a level playing field for all parties in British Columbia, to make it a level playing field for independent candidates like the member from Delta. We’re going to seriously address the public’s concerns about the undue influence of big money in British Columbia.
I think that, for now, those will be my comments. I look forward to committee stage. I hope we get to committee stage. It’s not at all clear that we will. It’s not at all clear that we’re actually going to pass this legislation. Even though it is a red herring, it’s not at all clear that we’re even going to pass this bill.
With that, thanks very much. I’ll take my seat and look for others to speak on this issue.
Hon. D. Barnett: Why do we get into politics? There are many reasons.
Being young once and naive, I had a new business with my husband. We were young parents, community owners, volunteers and, of course, voters. My husband and I became aware of the world of B.C. politics in 1972 when an NDP government was elected. What made us stand up and become involved? Being small business owners in a small community, a new government came, we had new taxes, and we had new policies, all that were not business-friendly. We quickly realized the difference between free-enterprise government and a social government.
We proceeded to join the Social Credit Party and became involved. I remember my first involvement in a fundraiser. Two of us cooked a prime rib dinner with Yorkshires and all the trimmings. We sold 100 tickets. We had an auction sale, and we made $10,000 back in the early ’70s. That was big money. Our MLA was Alex Fraser. The people who came were developers, millworkers, loggers, small business owners, mineworkers, ranchers, tourism operators and just normal everyday hard-working citizens.
Since then, I have been involved in my constituency in many ways. My constituency has always raised funds, has always had fundraisers for both the Social Credit Party and now the Liberal Party. No one has to donate. There are no pressures to donate, and there are no promises if you donate. Whether you donate or whether you even live in my riding, myself, my staff and our government are here to do what we can to make life better for all in British Columbia.
The accusations of the opposition party, to me, are insults. I believed we lived in a free society. My mother brought us up with trust and honesty, and she said those two will always win. This side of the House has been a pillar of my mother’s teachings. Why are the opposition parties so anxious and excited to make false accusations in this House? Sad that they trust no one. We, over here, believe in what is good for British Columbians.
Is this the opposition’s platform that they’ve stood up and talked about for the past two weeks? Is this their platform for the upcoming election? The speaker before me talked about a smokescreen. He should know all about a smokescreen. He should know what their platform is.
Our platform is about getting to yes, getting to jobs and balanced budgets so that we can afford health care and education and look after our seniors and our young people, with a promising future in this province.
I support this legislation. Even though my mother’s philosophy of honesty and trust…. Those that give to my election are honest people, and I challenge anyone to stand up and say they’re not. This legislation is a step forward to more transparency and timeliness. It builds on reforms like our lobbyists registry, the first in Canada, that allows the public to see who is lobbying on what issues.
To say that banning corporate and union donations will solve the problem is not enough. You know, union workers are a hard-working people — honest, hard-working people that look to us for good jobs. Our corporations are honest, hard-working people who create jobs.
Some provinces use tax dollars to directly fund political parties. This is not something we will pursue in British Columbia. This Bill 4, Election Act, 2017, will hopefully bring some closure to accusations from across the hall here, from other political parties that have no substance and no truths. This bill, hopefully, as I’ve said, will put to rest those in the public who are unsure of what and who to believe. But I know. I, too, look at polls. I, too, talk to many, many people, and I know that this side of the House has honesty and integrity. I look forward to moving on with this bill.
R. Austin: Seeing as this is the last piece of legislation at the end of this parliament, and this will probably be my last opportunity to speak in this House, with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I’m going to take the opportunity to say a few words that aren’t necessarily pertaining to this piece of legislation.
Of course, like many people who are retiring from public life, I’d like to make some acknowledgments and thanks to the people who got me here.
First of all, like everybody else who is very fortunate and successful to be elected by the people in their community,
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I’d like to thank the voters of Skeena. I think it was a big shock to many, in 2005, when I was able to win this seat.
I had not been involved in politics prior to deciding to run. I think most people who come into this House have a background either in municipal politics or in school board politics. But I did not have that. I just put my name forward and was fortunate enough to win the nomination.
Then, I think, as a surprise to many, I was fortunate enough to remove a member of the B.C. Liberals who had actually won with a very large majority, albeit it was 2001, a special election. He did have a very large majority, and there was a big mountain to climb. With many other folks helping me, we were able to climb that mountain and be successful.
Like others in the House, of course, I want to thank my wife. I don’t think she knew what I was getting into when I said: “Hey, I’d like to run for politics.” She still doesn’t really know what I was getting into. My kids were teenagers. They were 14 and 16 when I decided to run. I had to have that usual conversation that I’m sure many people in this House have had with their kids, if they’re teenagers, to explain to them that now that you’re going to go into politics. “All of a sudden, the world is going to change. Some of your friends, who you thought were friends, might be saying some nasty things about me, because at the dinner table at home, they hear all kinds of horrible things about my political party, and not to worry about it. That’s just the way politics works.” Actually, they came through it very, very well.
I’d also like to, at this point, just mention something in terms of what it does to family. I think many people in this House recognize that I went through a very sustained attack in the 2013 election. It involved me having to go to court and spend a whole whack of money. Actually, to this day, almost four years later, I still don’t have complete resolution to that, although the court came out very much in favour of myself.
I want to take this opportunity to thank members from all sides of the House here. There were private notes that came to me from both sides of the House thanking me for standing up for what is right and what is decent.
We cannot have a politics where people are attacked for who they are. We cannot have a politics where false accusations are made. I think everyone who ever wants to enter public life needs to realize that there are limitations to the kinds of things that are said about people. We banter back and forth here, and that’s fair enough. But I think it’s very important that all of us recognize that there are limitations to free speech. I’m glad that the courts recognize that, and I want to thank everybody for their support.
I’d like to also, of course, mention those who have worked hard on my behalf. When I first decided to run, I befriended somebody who I’d met through my school board days called Roberta Walker. She became my constituency assistant in Kitimat. For 12 years, she’s been my constituency assistant there.
To tell you how useful and how successful that was, I did not know anybody in Kitimat, really, when I decided to run for public office. Roberta ran my campaign, essentially, down in Kitimat. Lo and behold, we won every single poll. That’s quite astounding, I think. For an outsider, living in Terrace, to come to a community 62 kilometres away and win every single poll, I think, really is a testimony to Roberta and all the folks down in Kitimat who, for many years, have worked on NDP campaigns and who embraced me and helped me to win down there.
I also want to thank Denis Gagné, who has been my full-time constituency assistant in Terrace. Now, one of the great things about being an MLA is you get to meet lots of people, and you get to be involved in lots of different things. One of the things that my office has been involved in is having a connection with UNBC whereupon we have taken in social work students from the UNBC social work program, both in third and fourth year, who get to come and work in an MLA’s office as part of their practicum placements. First of all, that’s a great opportunity for those students to be in an office where you get to have a great variety of things that take place.
I was very fortunate. Denis came as a fourth-year practicum student ten years ago. Just as he was about to finish, my then CA, Alisa Thompson, decided that she would go to work for the city of Terrace. When I went home one weekend and found out that Alisa was leaving, I was able to say: “Hey, Denis. You’re finishing your practicum placement here. How about having a full-time job?” He goes: “Oh, that would be wonderful.” He’s from Quebec. “That would be wonderful, Robin. What were you thinking?” I said: “Well, I’d like you to start on Monday as my CA.” Essentially, that’s what happened, and he’s been with me for ten years. I’d like to thank him.
Also, I’d like to spend a little time just to thank my LA here, Gurbrinder Kang, who has worked for several years making sure that I’m in the right place at the right meetings down here. She’s done a wonderful job, and I thank her for all of her work here.
I was listening to the previous speaker talk about what draws you into politics. For me, certainly the issue that drew me into politics was education. I was working as a community schools coordinator in Terrace, working with very vulnerable communities in the downtown schools and setting up after-school programs and other kinds of programs that support kids in schools, particularly vulnerable kids.
It’s the changes that occurred in 2001 and 2002, under this government, that really fundamentally changed the outlook for a lot of kids in Skeena. I felt it was unfair, wrong, immoral and lots of other things. Finally, of course, my perception of those things was finally ruled and judged by the Supreme Court of Canada, who, thankfully, ruled all of those actions unconstitutional.
It’s a strange thing in politics. You come here. You fight for years in the hope that you can change things from here. But sometimes you just have to agitate enough that it becomes an issue, and eventually, it goes into the court system, as this did. Fifteen years later the Supreme Court ruled that all of those actions that hurt and harmed the kids were unconstitutional.
Now we have a government that finally, whether it’s being dragged kicking and screaming, is being dragged back to do the right thing. I’m very thankful that I am at least here to witness that because what occurred there is something really unconscionable.
For years, I sat here. I was the Education critic for about three years. For years, I sat on this side of the House, as all of my colleagues have, railing against the government on the whole issue of public education, listening to minister after minister after minister of public education justify all the things that were done to strip teacher-librarians, to take away counsellors and teachers, to increase class sizes, to have more special needs kids in a class than was really the ideal thing for teachers to be able to handle.
In my school district, we were actually forced to go into a four-day school week, which is really an incredible thing. I grew up in Africa, and even in the country I grew up in, the kids went to school five days a week. So it was quite extraordinary to think that in a country as wealthy as this, we were reduced to having our kids go to school four days a week. I’m thankful that that’s over with now, but it just reminds me that some of the battles are really long and hard.
That brings me to this particular bill. I don’t know how many years people, not just those of us on this side of the House but people in general, have been concerned about the way that our democracy is getting infused with huge amounts of money. Sometimes I think those of us who live in Canada like to hold ourselves high and look down at what happens in the United States and go: “Well, thank goodness we’re not down there. Thank goodness, as politicians, we can actually spend most of our time doing work for our constituents, unlike our brethren and cousins to the south of us who spend about 90 percent of their time, once they get elected, just going out and raising more money for the next election.”
We look to ourselves and go: “Well, we’re much better than them.” In reality, in this province especially, far more than any other province, we are not doing justice to the citizens of this province when we think that we can somehow take in huge amounts of money and pretend it doesn’t affect our decisions. It was Aldous Huxley who said this: “You pays your money, and you takes your choice.” The great author of Brave New World, dystopian science fiction, some of which is coming true to this day. “You pays your money, and you takes your choice.”
The previous speaker stood up here and said that she believes firmly that all of the people in that party are moral and honest. I’m not suggesting here. I’m not making accusations here. But the perception of the public is not a good one when you have political parties taking in millions of dollars from people who are high and mighty and important, whether they be people in the corporate sector, whether they be people who control large sums of money as part of union donations. It is inevitable, certainly in the public perception, that if you take that kind of money, somehow you’re going to be more willing to look aside and give some favours to those who are expecting something in return. That is human nature, and it’s something that needs to be stopped.
I am really delighted that this issue is now coming to the forefront at election time. People are starting to realize and wonder. If we don’t have limitations to the kinds of fundraising that have been allowed to take place in this province, we are essentially saying: “Look, democracy is for purchase.” You know what? Buy the government of your choice by putting in money in these kinds of quantities.
I am hoping that change will happen. In fact, I’m hoping that there is lots of change that will happen after the next election, not just simply the obvious one.
I’ve had conversations with members on the other side. One of the great things about this job is that…. People think that question period is everything that happens in this place. In reality, we actually form relationships with members of the other side.
I think one of the most enjoyable parts of this job has been when we were travelling throughout the province on various committees. You actually get to have real conversations — not partisan conversations, real conversations. Obviously, when you’re travelling as part of a committee, you’re sitting with members who are on the back benches, so perhaps they feel a little bit more free to speak than those who are in government. But in reality, they’re also aspiring to go there, and I’ve had many conversations with backbenchers who have ended up working in cabinet.
There’s an understanding that we do not use this place very well. The talent in this place, the knowledge in this place, of all the individuals is not put to good use, quite frankly.
If you think of the work that’s done by committees and people standing up, when they give a report, saying how great it was to be going out and looking at an issue and coming up with some solutions, speaking to British Columbians right around the province, getting input from regular citizens, from experts, from academics and coming together with some ideas, it’s sad that we have a committee process where we actually don’t go out and strike committees to go and do this work.
We sit here, in between sessions. In my 12 years, we’ve had an awful lot of time sitting at home, in our constituencies, not doing work here or not doing valuable work for British Columbians. That’s the reality.
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If, as politicians, we’re back in our constituencies not doing that kind of valuable work, all we’re doing is trying to get re-elected. It’s no better than going out and spending all your life trying to get money, if you’re not actually doing fundamental work for the citizens of British Columbia.
I hope that whoever wins in this upcoming election recognizes that committees are a great way for people who are elected — we’re paid a very good salary here — to be working on a much more frequent basis, doing the kind of work that’s important in bringing ideas forward.
It’s a great way to encourage citizens to be involved. Whenever we go out…. I’m sure many people in this House have been part of a Finance Committee or a Health Committee. Just think how excited people are to come to these committees and express their views and tell politicians what they would like to see happen.
I hope that that kind of thing and those kinds of changes take place and we actually make real use and value of the talent that is in this House, on both sides.
As I was saying earlier about our democracy, we like to uphold it and think that our democracy is something special. But in reality….
I’m always reminded of a terrific interview that took place when I was a teenager. It was before I came to this country. I was watching an interview on a television show in Britain called Panorama, a longtime political program which was fronted by a longtime journalist of great renown by the name of David Dimbleby.
He was actually interviewing a dictator at that time, a man by the name of Zia-ul-Haq. He was from Pakistan, and he had been a general in the Pakistan Army. As, unfortunately, is quite often the case in Pakistan, he decided to take off his general’s outfit, kill a few people and suddenly became the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
David Dimbleby was questioning him on the value of democracy and really putting him in his place, trying to make out what a terrible place Pakistan was because they had given up their democracy and now were under the rule of a general and were a dictatorship.
Zia-ul-Haq, after listening to David Dimbleby go on about the Mother of all Parliaments and how important it is to have democracy, turned to him and said: “You know, Mr. Dimbleby, in this country, every four or five years, you ask your electorate who they would like to run you. You call that an election. One day — an election. And then after that election is over, whoever wins has total power to do whatever they want for the next four or five years, no matter what. So in reality, Mr. Dimbleby, we in Pakistan have one less day of democracy than you do every five years.” That’s basically it.
I relate that because, in truth, we have to realize that our democracy is very precious. On election day, on May 9, one group of people will be given all the power, and the others won’t be given any power.
But it’s not simply that. It’s a question of the concentration of power in our democracy that really is taking a hold and making people feel devalued — that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for because the day after you vote, you get them in, and then they tend to do whatever it is they like. Maybe it’s not even done in such a way that everybody feels, even on the winning side, that they have input into all of these policies.
So we need to really assess, after this election, both on the money side and on the democratic side, how we can renew this place to make it worthy of the name it is and so that we can have citizens feeling excited about voting, citizens feeling that it’s important to be involved, in between elections, with the kind of public policy ideas that are being put forward and are being discussed here in this House.
Because in reality…. We all know this. All we do is get up and make lots and lots of speeches. But because people’s lives are busy and because people feel disengaged with the political process, they don’t pay too much attention. That’s not a good thing, because that enables us to basically do whatever we want — if you’re the winning side — and not be concerned by what people are thinking about in their communities.
I really hope, moving forward, that after this election people take this into consideration and that there’s a debate, by whoever wins and whoever loses, to have a more free-flowing set of ideas and use the committee stage as they do, very well, in Ottawa, at the federal level.
I would like to just thank everybody for your indulgence for letting me speak on things other than this bill. I wish everyone here well with their families. I hope that you will have exciting times ahead. For those who are retiring, I hope you have a healthy and long retirement. For those who are running again: bonne chance, my friends, but better chance to these guys.
L. Throness: It’s a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill 4, but first I want to pay tribute to the member for Skeena. I’ve known a great many politicians in my life, hundreds of politicians, and almost to a person they are good and decent people, very highly motivated people. I put the member for Skeena in that category. He’s a good and decent man, and we all thank him for his service to our province.
It’s a pleasure to speak to Bill 4, which amends the B.C. Election Act. This bill brings in a number of welcome changes in terms of transparency of political donations. I want to enumerate just a few before I go on to the main thing I want to talk about.
At the moment, political contributions are only disclosed in annual reports and election financing reports after an election every four years. This bill will require more timely disclosure of donations, within 14 days of deposit. That’s as close as you can get to real-time disclosure.
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There will be more transparency about fundraising events. They’ll be tracked by date of the event that was attended or sponsored, and we’ll make sure that a public record is kept of past fundraising functions so the public can easily see what contributions were made at a specific function. We’re also lowering the threshold for reporting of all political contributions, from $250 to $100, so many more donations will be made public than before. That’s about transparency.
These are all good things, but I want to move on to talk about the larger issue of limits to political donations, in which there seems to be so much interest today. I’m a bit of a historian, so I always like to look back to the past in hope that it will shed some light on the present.
I went way back to 1995 in Hansard, when the NDP brought in their own changes to the Election Act on June 1 of that year. Colin Gabelmann was the minister. In his opening speech to what was then known as Bill 28, he said that the previous occasion when comprehensive reform was made to the Election Act was in 1920. That’s a long time ago. So there have been, really, very few attempts to significantly change the way our electoral system runs. It’s a very stable system. There have been very few changes to it over the years.
Two things really stood out to me as I read the debate of the bill that went on in this chamber 21 years ago. The first thing that stood out to me is what the NDP government did not include in the bill. There were 300 clauses in the bill. It was a massive bill. It made sweeping changes in all branches of our electoral law, including the first-ever laws on electoral financing. There were brand-new spending limits on campaigns and third-party advertising. There was more transparency of donations, but nothing whatsoever was said about limits to those donations.
Donation limits were not in the bill. They were not in the discussion about the bill. Nobody even asked about it. Nobody seems to have thought about it at all. I would remind the House that the NDP were in power at the time. They were the government of the day, and they could have introduced limits on donations, but they, for some reason, didn’t want limits on donations.
The second point I want to draw from this little historical look back is that when it came to the transparency of donated labour to political campaigns, the NDP were also silent. It was common knowledge at the time, and the discussion is all through Hansard in 1995, that societies like the B.C. Federation of Labour would donate highly paid union staffers to work on NDP campaigns and help them win. But the salaries of those staff members were never disclosed as donations, and the NDP saw fit not to include such donations-in-kind in the bill.
There was a lot of criticism from the opposition at the time about this because, of course, the NDP had a natural advantage from their symbiotic relationship with the union movement, and of course they didn’t want to surrender that advantage.
Now, I want to enlarge on these two points, the first point being that the NDP didn’t suggest limits to donations when they were in power. For some reason, this practice had always been the practice in B.C. There have never been limits to donations. Only now, only today has the opposition — and the media — taken up the full-throated cry on this matter. Only now is the NDP filled with outrage at the lack of donation limits.
Why now? Why should there be limits to donations today when there have never been limits before, including when the NDP was in power? What has changed? I would suggest that donation limits are called for today because the NDP are no longer benefiting from higher donations. Many of their union friends have forsaken them. They’re being abandoned by their traditional constituency. The NDP are not raising as much as they did before.
So the question is: why have their donations fallen off while the B.C. Liberal donations have remained stable? I’ll give you one reason. I’d like to cite a news story from a couple of weeks ago where the Ironworkers, Local 97, in a truly historic and astonishing move, publicly denounced the NDP and supported the government because of the NDP’s opposition to the bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel. Their message to the NDP was simple: you’re not supporting our workers so our workers are not supporting you.
Let me quote what Doug Parton, their business manager, said at a press conference. “My members, for years, have been a labour party. What has happened in the past has made my members very concerned. We may not agree with the Premier on every issue, or the B.C. Liberals, but we believe their plan for economic growth, for apprenticeship training and all the lunchbucket, kitchen table issues that affect our members are the right ones for us.”
Now, the NDP, of course, pooh-poohed the message. It’s only a union of 1,800 members, they said. That’s not very many, right? But this is the tip of the iceberg. Many more are saying privately what this union dared to say publicly, and so the NDP is losing the support of their traditional voters.
How does this relate to political donations? Well, our system of donations is a mirror of our democratic system, which is a wide-open system that relies on public support for political survival. Here’s the way it will play out. A political party will arise out of society. It’ll give vent to frustrations and ideas that people are feeling. It will address issues that no other party does. It gains a following, it starts to run candidates, and eventually it may form government. That’s how our system works.
A good example was the Reform Party of Canada, which came out of nowhere in just a few years to topple the Progressive Conservative government nationally, decimating the Progressive Conservative Party, bringing it
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down to two seats in Parliament. It was a remarkable thing and a wonderful lesson on how our democracy works.
A political party adopts policies that appeal to voters, those voters get excited by those policies, and they reciprocate by volunteering and voting and supporting that party financially. I think this is a great characteristic of our democracy. A democracy is a political popularity contest. Party politics need to appeal to voters for support, and political parties should either live by the support they’re able to generate in the political marketplace or they should be allowed to die by the lack of support, as many political parties across Canada have both lived and died.
But now the NDP have hit upon hard financial times. So what’s the answer, according to them? They’re not going to change their policy to appeal to voters. Instead, their answer is the answer the NDP always give: let the government pay for it. Have the government fund all political parties. That way you don’t need policies that appeal to voters.
There’s a weakness for democracy here. By having the government pay for everything, a political party doesn’t need broad support. It can appeal to a smaller group of more radical or narrower thinkers and still be viable.
The NDP wants to do things like flirt with the Leap Manifesto, which is a radically leftist document, popularly rejected by British Columbians. Under full government funding, they would be able to consider Leap Manifesto policies without any financial repercussions. Government would still foot the bill. But I don’t think that is good for democracy.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Members.
L. Throness: Parties should have to earn broad support through their policies.
The NDP accuses the government of having an advantage in political donations, but there is no advantage at all. The NDP has access to precisely the same donor base as the B.C. Liberals — all two million adults in B.C., every large company, every small or medium-sized business, every union and every union member. But they don’t have policies that appeal to them, so they are not supported. Instead, they’ve been adopting a tactic that includes a subtle threat.
[R. Lee in the chair.]
I want to read from a letter today that has been read before in this House. It’s from the president of the B.C. New Democrats. It was dated November 2016, and it says this, to a certain company that has “contributed significantly to the B.C. Liberals since the last election.” It names the company. I don’t know the name. It’s a total of — something; it’s been blocked out — probably $10,000. “It is my hope that you will adopt a more balanced approach in this crucial period leading up to the election in May and consider making a contribution in the range of $10,000 to the B.C. NDP. For your convenience, we have set up a secure website link for on-line business contributions.”
I think this is actually quite coercive. The letter doesn’t say: “We have made policies and are suggesting programs and tax measures to help your business, and we want to earn your support by making the business environment better in B.C.” No, it’s all about entitlement. “You gave to them, so you owe the same thing to us.” The subtle implied threat is this: “You better pony up, because if we win government, we’re going to remember that you gave us nothing.”
The failure of the NDP in the political donation market, if you can call it that, is sending a market signal to the NDP that they need to change their policies to suit voters. But they’re not listening. They’re not getting the message. They are too doctrinaire, too ideological, too far removed from the mainstream of our society and too stuck in a 19th century socialist philosophy to change.
Just read the first few paragraphs of their party constitution, and you’ll see that it’s textbook socialism. That’s why business naturally distrusts the NDP. Our whole society moved beyond this a century and a half ago. You’d think the NDP would at least drag themselves into the 20th century, but instead of changing their platform, the NDP and the media — which always seem to lean their way — are now demanding that the entire province change the way things have always been in our democratic system in order to suit moribund NDP policies.
I say the opposite. Let the NDP change their policies to appeal to the average voter. I say let them step up to the plate and compete with the B.C. Liberals — talk about economic development and about business, the things that business believes in. Then maybe they’ll get their support.
Now I want to make a final point, and I want to refer back to the debate from 1995 to make it. The NDP did not want to make in-kind donations public in 1995 because they wanted to protect their advantage in having union help, on the union payroll, working on their campaigns. So they protected their position and tried to weaken all the other parties by refusing to include these kinds of donations in their bill.
Even today they’re trying to bring down their political contribution by having government fund all political parties. This would reduce, and perhaps even remove, the advantage from any other party that’s actually doing something to appeal to voters, winning their support and earning it through their attractive policies. The NDP would also happily force British Columbians who profoundly disagree with the NDP policies to fund the NDP fully and directly. It would be a perfect solution,
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from their perspective, to resolve their money problems by forcing their political enemies to support them.
It’s our view that British Columbians should be free to financially support the political party of their choice and should not be required to directly subsidize all parties through their taxes.
This same type of protective activity by political parties is not confined to the NDP. I’ve seen it on the federal scene too. In the past decade or so, federal governments of both stripes have tried to hamper the fundraising ability of the other side through laws related to donations. They’re all acting in their own interest.
That’s why I like what the Premier has proposed, which, I might suggest, is a remarkable announcement in terms of openness. The government has tasked our Deputy Attorney General to form an independent panel of non-partisan experts to consider ideas around campaign finance reform. This is remarkable because it’s not self-protective. It’s not about self-interest. Instead of simply adopting laws and policies to disadvantage other parties, our Premier and our government are going to create an independent body to make recommendations.
The panel could recommend policies that run counter to what the B.C. Liberal Party and the government would like, but that’s what happens when you have an independent body. Although they may not be legally binding, I think it would be very difficult for the government to ignore them. I think that’s a very open policy.
The opposition is angry that the companies have chosen, over a period of a decade or more, to give thousands of dollars to the B.C. Liberals and not to the NDP because we have policies that enhance the business community and economic development in B.C.
Should there be a limit on those donations, something we’ve never before had in B.C.? I think that’s a good question, because there could be a donation so large that it would be unreasonable, one that might bring the political party system into disrepute. I think that question should be referred to the expert independent panel, and I think they should make a recommendation on that question.
I have no doubt that our government, when those recommendations come, will do the right thing. I say that because we’re doing the right thing today, creating more transparency in the system while retaining the freedom of people to donate to causes that they choose to support. So it’s a pleasure today to speak in support of Bill 4.
N. Macdonald: This is my third last speech, but I’m going to come right to it. I actually think this issue is one that, over the 12 years, has been one of the central problems in politics in British Columbia. I think it deserves a more sincere and thoughtful approach than what we just heard.
None of that makes sense. It does not make sense. The bill that’s before us is not a sincere bill. It is about creating a fog on an issue that is hurting the B.C. Liberals politically. That’s the reality of it. Everybody here knows that. It’s to create a fog. There’s no intention to pass this. There’s no intention to put anything in place. It’s to get past the election. That’s the reality.
The question that we should be debating here is: does big money distort public policy? The answer to that is self-evident to every single person — in this House in particular, because you know it does. You, on the government side, get the phone calls. You get the pressure. There is a quid pro quo that comes with millions of dollars in donations. You would have to have such a low opinion of the intellect of people in British Columbia to think that that is not what is happening here in British Columbia.
This legislation that’s before us does nothing to remove big money. I’ll give you a story from 2005. We were in an election. Wendy McMahon was the B.C. Liberal MLA. It came up in one of the all-candidates debates that we had. We were asked about B.C. Rail. Well, that’s an interesting story. Let’s just park on that story for a second.
The chairman of the board of CN Rail starts to fund Gordon Campbell’s takeover of the B.C. Liberal Party in 1993 — the chairman of the board of CN Rail. Let’s remember that. The chairman of the board of CN Rail remains as a major donor and actually was head of the B.C. Liberal fundraising for the provincial election — a pretty prominent person raising a lot of money for the B.C. Liberals. All of that is a fact. That’s indisputable.
What flows from that — I would suggest, flows pretty directly from that — is the B.C. Liberals promise they’re going to sell B.C. Rail in 1996. It does not work. They lose seats all along that corridor. So in 2001, they promise not to sell it. They immediately, upon taking government, set into motion the sale of B.C. Rail. So they break the promise that they made to the electorate.
Of course, in the all-candidates debate, it came up that there was a lease; it wasn’t a sale. Wendy McMahon said that: “It’s not for sale; it’s a lease.” Well, it was a 1,000-year lease, and everyone laughed because everyone saw through what was going on. It was a ridiculous assertion.
I’m exaggerating. It’s 999 years, sorry.
You try to claim that it’s a lease, but it turns out that the lease is for 1,000 years. So in the end — surprise, surprise — CN Rail gets B.C. Rail for a ridiculously low price. Remember, even though $1 billion sounds like a lot, coming with that sale CN got hundreds of millions in acquired losses, which CN could write off against the taxes.
The government backed those up. They said that if the federal government gives you trouble with those, we’ll pay it. So suddenly that price comes down to — what? — half of what it was publicly stated.
Is it a fair deal? Well, what does Canadian Pacific say? They pull out of it. They remove themselves from the bid process because they say it’s fixed in CN’s favour. So you get this mess that starts, I would suggest, from what hap-
[ Page 14354 ]
pens with the fundraiser — the funds raised by CN and given to the B.C. Liberals.
We have B.C. Liberal operatives, which we know were bribed. We have the Legislature raided. We have the current Premier’s home raided. Now, he wasn’t the target of the raid, but they did find confidential information at his house. All of that flows from it. The CN takeover of B.C. Rail led to CN stock soaring — the CN share paid in CN stock.
If anybody hears that, how can you suggest anything other than it’s a bit of an odd story. It only makes sense if one considers the money to the B.C. Liberals. That is the only way that makes sense.
Now, if somebody on the other side is going to say that that is an unfair assertion, well, why don’t we get to the bottom of it? Of course, we can’t get to the bottom of it because this government paid $6 million to end the court case, to make sure that the information that would have come out in the court case would not come out. Do they want a public inquiry? No. So any normal person that would look at that would reach the conclusion that money distorts public policy.
Closer to home we have Sullivan mine. This was a mining company that controls Sullivan mine. They donated over $1 million to the B.C. Liberals. They own Sullivan mine, which is a decommissioned mine in Kimberley, which I represent. May 2006 — four people tragically died in a water sampling shed on the Sullivan minesite. A contractor died May 15. He was not noticed missing until May 17. An employee of the mine went to look for him, and upon entering the shed, he also died. Then two paramedics were called to the shed, and they both died.
Rules were broken by that company. Mines Act rules were broken. The shed that killed the four people was built above a water collection pit where water coming off the mine tailings was tested for acidity. The tailings were then sealed to limit the water needing to be tested.
The first warm day after the tailings were sealed, oxygen-depleted gas flowed along pipes and into the pit, creating an oxygen-depleted enclosed space that killed anyone who entered it in two breaths. This was something that was built and killed them in two breaths.
That company did no due diligence laying the pipes. The oxidation of tailings is predictable. But there was no U-trap, like you would always have on a toilet or a sink.
Interjections.
N. Macdonald: You know, if you want to speak to me, you can speak to me outside. You can go and speak to…. I know you know those people.
Deputy Speaker: Members.
N. Macdonald: I knew those people as well. I know exactly the conversation you had with those people as well.
Interjections.
N. Macdonald: Why don’t you leave, then? Why don’t you leave? That’s what you usually do.
Deputy Speaker: Members.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Members.
N. Macdonald: The oxidation of the tailings was predictable. But there was no U-trap, like you always have on a toilet or a sink to stop gas that, predictably, is oxygen-depleted.
No due diligence on the shed that created enclosed space. This is a fact. There was no due diligence on that shed. There was no due diligence before the tailings were sealed. The Mines Act was contravened when the first victim failed to sign in coming onto the site. It is a Mines Act that was broken.
There was no protocol in place. The Mines Act was contravened when the first victim was not contacted every two hours, not noticed dead for two days. The Mines Act was contravened when paramedics entered the minesite instead of the emergency mine safety team. And there was no penalty.
Deputy Speaker: Member, I would like to remind the House that the debate should be relevant to the bill.
N. Macdonald: Well, the relevance should be clear. The relevance is clear. We are talking about the implications of donations on public policy. At a news conference, government ministers in Cranbrook repeatedly called the tragedy unprecedented and unforeseeable. For anybody that was there, the government seemed to be on the company side, rather than on the people’s side. And they will tell you that. That’s what they’ve told me. They will tell this minister, if he wants to speak to them. There was no accountability at all for the company. And it only makes sense in the context of the influence of that company.
If you look at Mount Polley….
Interjection.
N. Macdonald: If the minister wants to talk, let’s talk about Mount Polley, Minister. This minister was in charge of Mount Polley as well. The owner of Mount Polley hosted a $1 million fundraiser in Calgary in 2012 that the deputy minister certainly attended. The minister says he didn’t attend, and I accept that, although the newspaper said you were there. The candidate said that you were there. Your candidate said you were at that fundraiser. I didn’t see you. Our local media says you were there.
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Interjections.
N. Macdonald: Fair enough. You know what? I just accept….
Interjections.
N. Macdonald: Fine. Whatever. The owner of Mount Polley also donated separate….
Deputy Speaker: Member, sit down. Take your seat, please, Member.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members, the debate should be relevant to the bill.
Interjections.
Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members, the debate before the House is Bill 4, the Election Amendment Act, 2017. All the debate should be relevant to this bill, second reading.
N. Macdonald: Okay. The very clear connection is that we have in front of us a bill that is supposed to take care of big money and the influence of big money in public policy and the distortion of public policy. What I can say clearly is most people see it for what it is — that that distorts public policy tremendously. For anyone to suggest it doesn’t…. Okay, take umbrage with it. Maybe it’s sensitive to you. Whatever. But look at the facts. The facts speak for themselves.
Let’s talk about Mount Polley. The facts speak for themselves. Was the owner of the mine a major donor? Most people know that’s true. They organized a $1 million fundraiser for the B.C. Liberals. They also donated, on their own, half a million dollars.
What did we have at Mount Polley? Dams shouldn’t collapse, if basic rules are followed. But at Mount Polley, it did collapse, and 24 million litres of tailings surged into what was pristine Quesnel Lake. Mount Polley built a dam structure that was too steep. It was without a proper beach and with improper material. Despite requirements to keep the water well below the top of the dam, the dam tailings storage facility was overtopped, an event which the mine falsely claimed had not happened.
That is all on the public record. Without permits or engineering, Mount Polley had workers digging at the base where the dam collapsed just prior to its collapsing. But the government was always on Mount Polley’s side. No penalties, zero accountability for what we all saw on TV. No penalties. It only makes sense to the public if one considers the donations. That’s the reality.
Let’s talk about the health researchers firings. Pharmaceutical companies — significant donors, first to the Premier’s leadership campaign and to the B.C. Liberals. The Premier shuts down an investigation by researchers into a drug used to help smokers quit. The drug is linked to negative health outcomes. The Premier’s office puts on the front page of the Vancouver Sun that health researchers are abusing patient information, and they’re all fired.
The Premier’s office says there is an RCMP investigation, but none of that is true. A man dies. Others live under a cloud until they sue the government. The B.C. Liberals settle out of court. But it was all a smear of public servants working to protect the health of British Columbians.
One of the falsely fired researchers was clear, in their suit, that they were fired by the B.C. Liberals to protect B.C. Liberal donors. That was what they sued for, and the government accepted that argument and settled with them. In this case, again, most neutral people would look at it and see that big money distorted public policy in a significant way.
You can look at one questionable action after another by this government, and you can tell the story of a major donor or an insider benefiting and the greater public good compromised. You look at the private power contracts, which will cost B.C. Hydro ratepayers $55 billion — $55 billion. What drove that policy decision? Was it truly just a mistake that put $55 billion into the pockets of individuals, public wealth into private hands?
You have WorkSafe B.C., which somehow is organized in a way that it mishandles the investigation into two mill explosions, something they should have been on top of to begin with, and they certainly should have been able to investigate it properly. Four deaths, dozens more injured and no accountability — nobody at all was held accountable for that failure.
You look at real estate, sale of government properties, lack of fines, contracts, advertising, and on and on. The B.C. Liberals have been paid — what? — $32 million, $42 million. You lose track, but it’s money that comes from a small number of people, and while there will never be real public knowledge of what is said or how that money is handed over or what the understanding is, the reality is that the public will see it as big money influencing public policy.
[Madame Speaker in the chair.]
Once every four years there’s a chance for people to say no to the influence of big money. My experience is that public policy in B.C. is driven, to a far greater degree than the public wishes, by big money.
Now, how does this bill change any of that? How does this bill change any of it? It does nothing to address that. It just has you report a little faster and talks about a panel.
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It’s not even in the bill, but the previous member talked about a panel that is promised for some time in the future to make recommendations in some way.
Now, the essence of the B.C. Liberal argument is that the NDP does it too. I was an elementary school principal, so I am familiar with that argument. And when a grade 2 makes that argument, there’s a certain innocence. But when it comes from members opposite, it loses that innocence, in my view. It’s not in any way a strong argument.
The debate is simple. It’s not whether we raise money that way; it’s whether we should. What I would say is that if we are serious about making this place work better and if we’re serious about the public looking at B.C. politics in a more favourable light, this is the issue that you would take care of. Does big money distort policy decisions to favour the few to the detriment of the vast majority of British Columbians? It indisputably does. It just does.
The only logical step is to eliminate big money with laws and then to enforce the laws. That is the only logical thing that we as parliamentarians should be doing.
There is a real bill that was put forward by the B.C. NDP leader. It would remove big money. Now, that would be a bill that would be worth debating. That would be real action.
This bill does nothing to remove big money. It allows a continuation of big donors and insiders getting what they want, to the detriment of British Columbians.
My colleague talked about improvements, but if there was one thing that would improve things in this Legislature, it is doing that — removing big money. Like I say, you could go through a long list of examples.
I understand members take umbrage with it. I understand that members get upset about the assertion. But for those assertions to go away, you have to have rules in place that don’t raise those questions, and when questions like that are raised, you have to not shy away from a proper investigation. When I talked about these issues, each one of them shied away from proper investigation of what actually went on. Certainly, the health researchers’ findings — that’s gone on for years now. B.C. Rail — they got away with it.
That would be the final thing that I’ll say in this House. If you have one thing to improve, it’s to get rid of big money. Get rid of it, and you’ll see a political system that changes dramatically with that one action. Thank you for the opportunity.
J. Thornthwaite: I’m delighted to stand here and support Bill 4, the Election Amendment Act, 2017. I believe it’s a major step towards improving transparency and timeliness, and it builds on reforms like the lobbyists registry, the first in Canada that allows the public to see who is lobbying who on what issues and when. The legislation covers the changes that were promised last year.
Ontario is the only other Canadian jurisdiction that requires reporting of political contributions in a similar time frame, and those provisions apply only to political parties and leadership contestants. Improving reporting allows British Columbians to see who is donating to which party and how much they are giving, in a much more timely way. At the moment, contributions are only disclosed in annual reports and election financing reports after an election. We’re also lowering the threshold for reporting of all political contributions, from $250 to $100.
I’m just getting a bit tired of all of these accusations that keep coming from the other side with regard to cash for access or influence and all of that. I’ll tell you from a personal perspective that I’ve had the Premier, as well as many ministers, in my riding to talk to constituents, either in my office or even meeting them at the Premier’s office downtown, and I can guarantee you that those meetings cost my constituents nothing.
Not only do I arrange these meetings for constituents when they request them — and sometimes even when they don’t request them, when I think that they need more information from the minister’s or the ministry’s perspective — but I’m also a very accessible MLA. I’m out and about in the community. I go to thousands of events, like many of my colleagues do.
I have appointments in my offices. People can drop in. Of course, I’ve got my regular Join Jane coffee meetings, where people can drop by, in either their library or at Parkgate. These meetings with me and the meetings that I arrange with ministers, or even the Premier, are all absolutely free. Nobody has to pay for anything. There’s no cash for access. People can come and talk to their MLA or their minister or the Premier, for no cost.
I kind of wanted to put that into perspective, from my perspective, because I do want to make it really clear to people, to my constituents, that they don’t have to pay for any access to meet with me or any of the ministers or the Premier.
What I will say about what’s been going on with this back-and-forth here is something about union and corporate donations, because we hear a lot about that. It’s kind of like: “Do as I say, not as I do.” I’ve got some evidence here about what the opposition parties have been doing with regard to their corporate donations. I can just go back to the list that I have, which is public. I know that other people have mentioned it in this House before.
Apparently, there was a fundraising reception at Hawksworth Restaurant on January 24 — $10,000 to see the Leader of the Opposition. Last November, there was another fundraiser at Hawksworth Restaurant again, a VIP dinner — $10,000 again.
In March, last year, there was a corporate breakfast fundraiser at the Toronto Board of Trade with the Leader of the Opposition — $5,000. Then there was one, a spring reception, again at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, a very popular hotel — $2,500.
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I’ve got a list here that I need not go back on to. If you’re going to say that you do not support union or corporate donations, then don’t do it yourself. Right now, this is what I see.
The other thing that I’d like to mention, as well, is also about the Greens, because I know that the Greens have said that they are also against corporate and union donations. Well, it just took a little bit of research to find out what they had accepted over the past few years.
Between the end of 2005 and 2015, the Green Party had accepted over $160,000 in corporate donations. Not as much in union donations, but they did accept union donations of over $6,000. They stopped accepting union donations in 2013, but they were receiving them.
I just kind of wanted to put this in a little bit of a perspective, because it’s important for people, my constituents, to know that political parties do accept money for fundraising, because we require those funds to run our campaigns. The alternative — and this is the alternative that our party has a different opinion, a different philosophy on than, perhaps, the other parties — is that taxpayers will have to pay for political parties. That’s where we kind of draw the line.
Again, I got my research staff to do a bit of digging, and they went on to the Elections Canada on-line Compendium of Election Administration in Canada: A Comparative Overview. They compared jurisdictions — provinces as well as federally, in Canada and the territories. They compared the reimbursement of election expenses, reimbursement of election expenses to candidates, political parties, reimbursement of auditor fees and allowances to political parties, tax credits, etc.
When I went through and I compared what those criteria were for Canada as well as all the other provinces, it’s really only British Columbia and Alberta that do not demand that taxpayers pay for reimbursement of election expenses to political parties, reimbursement of election expenses to candidates, reimbursement of auditor fees and allowances to political parties.
There is a catch if you’re not going to allow donations from, say, corporations or unions. That would be that the taxpayers would have to put up the tab. Right now I can’t see that happening here with the philosophy on this side of the House.
Interjection.
J. Thornthwaite: I did talk about Canada.
Interjection.
Madame Speaker: Members.
J. Thornthwaite: As I said, some provinces and the federal government do accept that tax dollars would directly fund political parties. But as I mentioned before, our philosophy does not support that.
In the bill that we are discussing today, our system in British Columbia is based on fair and simple principles that political parties compete for financial support from those who share their values, just as they compete for votes. My colleague from Chilliwack-Hope was very eloquent in his description of the fact that perhaps the timing of the opposition not wanting these donations is relative to the fact that the B.C. Liberal Party actually receives more donations.
Our proposal here in this bill, if passed, is all about the transparency and the timeliness of donations. These changes ensure that contributions are tracked by the date of the event that was attended or sponsored and that a public record is kept of past fundraising functions so the public can easily see what contributions were made at specific functions.
Political contributions must be reported within 14 days, and there is a requirement to report contributions that singly or in combination are greater than $100 in a calendar year and are from the same contributor. This applies to major political parties, candidates and constituency associations.
For fundraising functions with a ticket price of greater than $100, all parties, candidates and constituency associations must record and report contributions received from ticket prices and sponsorship at such functions. Major reporting entities must publish information on party websites within five days after the event, and details, including the date, time and location of the function and on whose behalf it was held.
In addition, our Premier has instructed the Deputy Attorney General to develop a framework for an independent panel to regularly review B.C.’s electoral finance system and make recommendations for reform to the Legislature. The independent panel would be modelled on existing bodies such as the Electoral Boundaries Commission and would provide a venue that is above partisan politics to achieve reforms that are fair, effective and accountable to citizens.
The key elements would include: selection to an expert panel must be unanimously approved by the Legislature; the independent panel will make recommendations every eight years after reviewing submissions from political parties, MLAs and the public, as well as reviewing reforms and procedures in other jurisdictions. Current proposed legislation in British Columbia, as well as all other reforms proposed by the federal government, would also be included in the review.
The Deputy Attorney General’s work would be completed in the summer of this year and would form the basis of legislation to be introduced immediately afterwards. The independent panel would commence its work following the passage of legislation into law.
So you see, Madame Speaker, these measures with the independent panel, as well as Bill 4, entitled Election
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Amendment Act, 2017, are a great step forward to more transparency in political donations.
C. Trevena: It’s with great pleasure I take my place to stand and speak about Bill 4, the Election Amendment Act. There seems to be something of a damascene conversion here. Suddenly we have a Premier who is talking about needing to do something about election financing. It’s just 50-odd days till the election, and there happens to be an RCMP investigation in the wind. So it does really make one wonder: just what is the driving force behind any of this conversation?
Before I start talking more broadly about the whole question of election financing, which is what this bill skirts…. It’s to address the fact that this bill skirts the central question that many, many people have been raising, which is the way that political parties are financed and campaigns are financed.
We have been hearing a clamouring, an absolute clamouring, to fix the system, to get big money out of politics. We on this side of the House have, time after time after time, tabled private members’ bills, which could be adopted by this government, which would take big money out of politics. Instead, what do we get? We get Bill 4, the Election Amendment Act, 2017, which talks about reporting donations and does nothing — absolutely nothing — to deal with what is a significant problem in B.C.
British Columbia has a reputation around the country — and now, unfortunately, around the world — of being not the most liberal of democracies, not the most rational of places to work at. I have to say, I originally came from Ontario. When I first came to Canada, I lived in Ontario. When I mentioned to friends that I was going to be running in B.C. for politics, they laughed at me. They said: “You do know that it’s crazy out there?”
I feel that I’ve been working very hard with my colleagues to make change. What we have seen, though, is that when it comes to political fundraising, it is absolutely crazy. We have even the New York Times, we have Maclean’s, and we have national and international papers talking about us being the Wild West.
So 50 days before the election — when there has been a major investigation into the way that, particularly, the B.C. Liberal Party is funded, seen in the national newspaper the Globe and Mail — we suddenly get to hear that there might be a change. We get the Premier, and we had the member from North Vancouver — sorry, the member who was speaking before me — talking about the panel that the Premier wants to introduce. She didn’t seem to acknowledge that this panel is separate from the bill. “There will be an independent panel,” the Premier says, “if this government gets re-elected, which will review political financing.”
I would suggest that the Premier just forget the panel, forget waiting until after the election, take the opposition’s legislation and run with that, rather than taking on a political panel which, in itself, is fraught with difficulties. The Premier has had several other independent panels and has chosen to ignore them. I think the climate action panel is the most disgraceful one. That came up with a number of solid recommendations, and the Premier just turned her back on it and has gone against all the climate initiatives that have been suggested.
I think that what we really need to look at is…. There are a number of things that this makes one think about. Why are political parties, particularly the B.C. Liberal Party, so avaricious? What is it that they need this money for?
They need the money to pay for their election campaigns. How much money do they need to pay for their election campaigns? You’ve got to ask. They have enough money to pay, I believe, for at least the next two election campaigns. And possibly, they’re on their way to paying the third, which in reality means they’ve already paid the 2017 election, which is coming up. They’ve paid the 2021 election. They’re a good way down to paying the 2025 election. One has to ask: what is in their interest, really? It’s not going to hurt them to change the rules right now.
That being said: why are they charging so much? Is it really, as has been discussed and as is perceived, that it is cash for access — that you can pay your money and you get to see the Premier? You have the exclusive meals with the Premier and you then can influence policy, and you can influence politics. This may be wrong. Perhaps everything is clean. Perhaps there is no influence in politics and there is no influence in policy, and in which case, I think that the government would have no problem in changing the rules. But this is the perception.
One of the problems with this perception is that it…. One is if it is a perception and is not a reality. I feel it is a reality and that the big money is directly influencing politics. We have had a number of questions here in question period about the links between money that has been handed over to the party and people in the place, who are doing fundraising, and the benefits that they have accrued. We have seen that a lot. We hear it a lot. So whether it’s a perception or a reality, I believe that it is a reality. But for the public, it is a perception that there is that cash for access also.
For all good intentions of the preceding member who was talking, who says that she often sees her constituents and, occasionally, has her constituents meet a cabinet minister and sometimes even the Premier…. I mean, she’s a genuine, I’m sure, quite hard-working member for her constituents. She is also in the back bench, so she isn’t a policy-maker in that sense.
This is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about money that influences policy.
We get Bill 4, which has nothing to do with the root problem and which is, basically, pay to play. You pay your money, and you’re going to get the influence. Even the federal Liberals have suddenly retrenched from that.
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If I might just cite a few people who have been watching this. One, Democracy Watch. I think it’s important to cite Democracy Watch, because we are here as the upholders of the democracy in B.C. We are elected as legislators and, as such, are representatives of our communities, working to uphold our democracy, working to enhance our democracy, working to make sure that there is representation. That everybody gets a fair share. That everybody gets a fair hearing. That our laws are made in the fairest possible way.
I mean, my colleague from Skeena, who was speaking previous to me, was talking about how we could improve our democracy here, and I fully agree with him. I think that there are so many things that we could do to make this place and make our democracy work One of the ways we could do it is by dealing seriously with this perception of cash-for-access, this reality that there is a huge amount of big money driving politics.
We have said that we want to get rid of corporate and that we want to get rid of union donations. That is where we would like to change the law, make sure that that was the law. We’ve said that if we are to be elected in May, this would be one of our first orders of business, as it was for the Alberta NDP when they formed government back in 2015. It was one of the first things they did. They changed those laws so that you wouldn’t have that influence or that perception of influence anymore.
We have the criticism of: “We see this brown envelope, this letter being read out. Oh dear. We’ve had a request. The NDP has requested a potential $10,000 donation.” We are working very strictly under the current laws. We want to get rid of it. We want to stop it. But while those are the current laws, we want to work on as much of a level playing field as we can.
It is not a level playing field because of the vast amounts of money that the B.C. Liberals are getting and because of the way that the B.C. Liberals have been allegedly getting that money, if we are to believe the Globe and Mail’s report, through people who are writing personal cheques and getting repaid, and so on and so forth. This is wrong, and it needs to be stopped. Elections B.C. has passed this off to the RCMP to investigate, and let’s hope that they get to the bottom of it. But we need to have a level playing field.
We would like to see that level playing field mean that political parties are funded by individuals, just by individuals. It’s not that far out of reach. As I say, Alberta did that. Quebec has a ban on corporate and union donations. They have a cap on individual donations of just $100. Think what you could do if that’s all that parties were being funded by, how clean it would be.
I mean, I go back to my memory of elections in the U.K., where you didn’t actually have any television advertising for political parties when I was growing up. You had some billboards, and some very effective billboards. You had billboard advertising. On television, you would have paid party political broadcasts, which were just the party giving its platform to the public, but each party got that funded publicly.
So Quebec — $100 for individual donations. Ontario — they’ve got the ban on corporate and union donations, also a cap on individual donations. Manitoba, Alberta, Nova Scotia — all have a ban on corporate and union donations.
We have to remember that the federal government also has a ban on corporate and union donations. My friend from Nanaimo reminded me that it was actually the Liberals that brought that in. And the Conservatives…. The coalition that we have opposite is a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, the neocons that we see have taken over the mantle of the Red Tories. The Conservatives left it in place. They didn’t try to get rid of it. They didn’t say: “We’re going to allow corporate donations or union donations anymore.”
It really is, as I was saying, an issue fundamentally about our democracy and how our democracy works and how we are going into the most important part of a democracy, which is an election. If you go into an election with such an unfair playing field and with such a perception — and, as I say, I think reality — that one side is being bought, people are going to lose faith.
On this bill, which is sadly, sadly far from the mark, Democracy Watch has said:
“The B.C. Liberals’ donation disclosure bill is too little, too late, and even if it is enacted before the election” — we still have the time to do that, Madame Speaker — “voters shouldn’t believe the Premier’s likely false claim that future changes are possible.
“If the B.C. Liberals were serious about changing the province’s unethical, undemocratic political donation system, they wouldn’t have spent the past year dishonestly claiming that the current system is fine and rejecting changes proposed by the opposition parties and many others.”
I think that there really isn’t that much more to say. It is too little. It is too late. It doesn’t deal with the real problem. It doesn’t deal with the fact that we have huge amounts of money flowing to a political party to fund its election campaign and fund its activities and fund the extra salary for the Premier. Or was it the car allowance; I forget. So $300,000, I believe, for this extra little bit. It’s a pretty good car allowance. I’ve been driving the same car for 15 years.
Yes, this doesn’t actually deal with any of those real issues that we need to face. It skirts that. It talks about reporting. And we need to report our donations. Of course, we need to report our donations. We need to report our donations in a timely way, clearly. But it doesn’t do anything to actually say who donated what, when.
We were back here on Valentine’s Day. The B.C. Liberal Party had a Valentine’s Day fundraiser here in Victoria. While we had the rapid disclosure that they had a fundraiser, there was no actual money linked to any of the people who attended that. Even though you are announ-
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cing that you’ve had your fundraiser and had had money, there is no way of tracking where that has come from, nor is there a way of saying that it is enough, that people have spent enough.
What we have is the hint that something might happen, possibly after the election. It’s a bit like dealing with the MSP, really, isn’t it? “Vote for us; trust us.” Trust us? I don’t know why anybody would even consider trusting this government after the last 16 years. “Trust us. We will put your MSP levels back to the levels they were when we were first elected. We’re going to put them back. They’ve been doubled. We’ll put them back there.” And “Trust us. We’ll fix all of this. We’ll have a panel that we will appoint.”
I think people will have to look at that and say: “Well, we don’t trust you. We’ve seen what you do. We’ve seen what you have done for the last 16 years. Why should we trust you on this? Why should we trust you, either, on the MSP when we could get rid of the MSP?”
It’s a bit like: “We are saying that we’re going to get rid of the MSP. Trust us on corporate and union donations. Trust us that we will have a panel that actually is independent and that when it comes up with a result, we will act upon it.”
Why should anybody even consider that as a good move when we have the ability, in this Legislature…. We’re here. The election doesn’t start until April 11. That’s when…. We have fixed-term elections. We have the date. We know it’s going to be May 9. The writ is dropped, and the official start of the election period isn’t until April 11. We have a lot of time when we could be dealing with a fundamental aspect which is hurting our democracy.
I really don’t think this government knows the damage it is doing to the democratic system by allowing this to continue. The lack of trust there is in our institution, which is an important institution. I know, Madame Speaker, that you care passionately about this institution and that you are involved with the Commonwealth, involved with parliamentary associations.
Parliamentary democracy is a cherished, cherished thing that we shouldn’t deal with lightly and that we shouldn’t abuse by allowing this corruption — and I say it is corruption — through this sort of financial business. These donations undermine our system. They undermine the trust that people have in our institution and the trust that they have in individual members and in politicians wanting to run generally.
We’re all going to be…. Not all of us. It’s very sad to see a number of my colleagues, two who spoke earlier…. The member for Columbia River–Revelstoke and the member for Skeena, two of my colleagues, are not running again, and I’m very, very sorry to see that they’re not running again. I think they’ve brought a very valuable voice to this chamber and a very rational and measured approach to both their thoughts in this chamber as well as their work in their constituencies.
Those of us who are remaining have campaigns to run. Under the present system, we are all trying to fundraise, but we’re all trying to fundraise, I would hope, in a decent way that is not coercive, that is not putting pressure, that is not implying “If you don’t give to me, you’ll never get to see the Premier” or “If you don’t come to my event, you’ll never actually have any influence. I will close my door to you.”
I would hope that that isn’t the way. But unfortunately, what we have seen over the past number of years and what we’ve seen in the latest revelations in our national newspaper, the Globe and Mail — showing the way that money is effectively extorted and donated — really is, I think, a huge detriment to the system.
I think that we can do so much better. We can work well without this. We see other places where you can have that cap on individual donations and a ban on corporate and union donations. We have suggested to do that.
I have one last comment. That is that, again, it was a Liberal Prime Minister — not my favourite Liberal Prime Minister…. I did not like Prime Minister Chrétien when he was the Prime Minister, particularly. I’ve never been a Liberal, and I take my politics very seriously. He was elected just when I first came to Canada. Once a Liberal, always a Liberal, I see. But his government did something very brave. Not only did they put an end to corporate and union donations, they did change the way that political parties are funded.
We on this side of the House are not suggesting that we change that. We are saying that we will rely on individual donations. But we also want, when we ban corporate and union donations, to go to an independent third party and have some sort of panel set up that will, possibly through Elections B.C., examine the best ways of funding political parties.
I want to say that I found that the system Stephen Harper tore up, the way it was actually funded through the public purse — I thought that was a very smart way of doing it. It was relative to the amount of votes that each party got, and I thought that that was a healthy way of looking at part of the funding of the political system. That is not something this opposition is saying. That is a personal view.
We need to do something. We need to make sure that this…. The free-for-all, the Wild West, out-of-control exploitation that we have seen from this government when it is doing any political fundraising, has to come to a stop. We have the opportunity to do that. We have bills from the opposition leader. I think if this government really wanted to deal with it, they would act on those. If they don’t want to act on those, the whole thing is a joke, and one has to wonder why we are even here having the debate.
With those words, I will take my place in this debate and hope that the Minister of Justice listens to this and accepts that she needs to be looking instead at the Leader of the Opposition’s bill.
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Hon. B. Bennett: It’s a pleasure for me to speak in the House today on Bill 4.
This probably will be the last time that I will ever stand up in the House as an MLA. That is the only way you get to stand up in the House — as an MLA. The opposition has not asked me any questions so far. We’ll see whether that happens in the next couple of days, but it seems doubtful.
I wanted to start my comments about Bill 4 by stating what my approach has always been as a politician. I came into politics very unexpectedly. I had no desire to be a politician. I started when I was 50. I did it because nobody else in my community would do it. I moved to B.C. 25 years ago, mostly to get better hunting and fishing in the mountains but also, frankly, because I was moving from Ontario. Bob Rae’s NDP had gotten elected, and I knew what was going to happen. Of course, it did happen, and the province of Ontario has never recovered from that.
When I arrived here in British Columbia, I found that there was an NDP government in place and realized that I’d made an error in terms of what I was moving to. It was at least as bad as what it was in Ontario.
The approach that I’ve taken over the years is to be completely transparent about who we get donations from in my constituency and how much the donation is. Then I think it’s up to my constituents to decide whether what I have done as a politician is appropriate or not. There are strict rules on how you spend the money. Elections B.C. has made certain that we are extremely transparent and restricted on how we spend that money.
It has always been my belief that the key to fundraising is to be transparent in terms of how much the donation is and where you got it. And then, as I say, I think it’s up to the voters, actually, to decide whether you’ve been acting appropriately or not.
I have to say that I have never, in my 16 years as an MLA, ever had a constituent come up to me and talk to me about the rules around donations or suggest that the rules we have are somehow or other advantaging our party or advantaging the business community or suggest even that there’s some problem with them.
That’s not to say that the rules are without fault and that they don’t need improvement. That’s what we’re talking about here today. But the fact of the matter is that when you let voters decide, as I have, about how you do business as a politician, I think that that is the way democracy is supposed to work.
The legislation that’s before us does improve the approach by building in a requirement that the disclosure of the who and the how much is made public more expediently than we currently have to. I think that’s an important improvement. I think it’s important for the public to have a real-time opportunity to see how much is being donated and who it’s coming from.
Ontario is the only other Canadian jurisdiction that requires reporting of political contributions in a similar time frame, and those provisions apply only to political parties and leadership contestants.
Improving reporting allows British Columbians to see who’s donating to which party and how much they’re giving, in a much more timely way. Again, I think that’s a positive thing.
This change that we are proposing in this legislation is consistent with many reforms we have made, certainly over the time that I’ve been here with government over the past 16 years. It’s easy to forget some of the things that this government has done to improve the democratic process. The Budget Transparency and Accountability Act is something that, when I look back at all the things we passed in this Legislature, is one of the acts I’m most proud of.
Cabinet ministers in a B.C. Liberal government have a 20 percent holdback. Of every dollar that we earn, 20 percent of it is held back. We get back 10 percent of it if the government balances its budget. We get back the other 10 percent if you, as a minister, balance your ministry budget. Now, I don’t know if members on the other side of the House are actually aware of that. But no other government that I’m aware of in Canada does that. I’m not aware of any other government in the world that does that. We’ve been doing that in this place for the last 12 years at least. I’m proud of that. It’s an indication of how seriously we take our job as trustees of the public purse.
I remember that as a private member, in 2001, we all got together because it was difficult in those days. The government was spending way too much money. We had a structural deficit that we had to deal with. Our government was too large. Our economy was down in the dumps. The province was the laughingstock of Canada. Go back and search the media if you don’t believe it. The province was a laughingstock. We were a joke in 2001 in this country.
So the B.C. Liberal caucus got together and said: “You know what? We’re going to take a voluntary 5 percent pay cut just because we think we should do our share.” We did that. For three years, the B.C. Liberal caucus took a voluntary 5 percent pay cut. I don’t think anybody else, any other group of politicians in Canada, has ever done that.
Madame Speaker, you were there, and you remember this, before you were Speaker. I’m proud of that as well.
The opposition has said that banning corporate and union donations is some kind of a panacea that’s going fix everything having to do with fundraising. I’d like to say that it’s naive for them to say that. But I have reason to think that maybe it might not be naive; it might be duplicitous. In fact, it might be that the opposition is doing certain things during campaigns that they would rather the public not know about and that they would rather not have this conversation here in 2017.
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I’ll just give you an example. I’ll tell you something that happened to me in one of my campaigns. I believe it was the 2009 campaign. I’m in the campaign, we’re in the writ period, and I get an email from a total stranger who works at city hall in Toronto. He’s a CUPE worker. It just so happens that he’s not an NDP supporter.
He sends me an email: “Mr. Bennett, I don’t know you, but there’s something happening here at Toronto city hall with the unionized workforce, and I really think you should know about it. There are about 75 people here in Toronto at city hall who are spending their shift phoning into your riding on behalf of the provincial NDP.” I investigated this, and it turns out it was true. They had union people from city hall in Toronto phoning in to the East Kootenay as a free phone bank. Now, I know what I’ve paid for phone banks in my campaigns. I’ve spent $20,000 or $30,000 on phone banks.
My question to the members who are so self-righteous over the past three days that I’ve heard in this place: did the NDP claim the value of that? No. No, they didn’t. Where do they do that? Do they do that in other places?
Interjections.
Madame Speaker: Members.
Hon. B. Bennett: They want to ban union donations. It sounds pretty good in the context of Bill 4. It sounds pretty good. Then you can ban corporate donations, evil corporate donations — not just corporate donations but evil corporate donations. That’s what they want to do, but they don’t want to talk about all of the paid labour that they get in campaigns and which they never report to Elections B.C. I was at a seminar. I asked the question of Elections B.C.
I might be out of order on that, Madame Speaker, so I’ll go to a different point.
They want to ban corporate donations, so they say — and I’m sure they do, because they can’t compete — and they want to ban union donations. But let me just give you some of the folks who were here for ten years. They hate talking about this. I’m not going to say what decade it was, because they hate it when you say the decade.
I’m not going to mention the decade, but I’m just going to say that when they were in government for ten years, their leader, the member for Juan de Fuca, was chief of staff to a Premier. Their former leader, a very bright guy, was the principal secretary to a Premier. The almost leader, from Port Coquitlam, was a minister of the Crown. There are two other NDP MLAs who were also…. One was a minister of the Crown, and the other was a long-serving, very distinguished MLA. They were here, and they had ten years to ban union donations. Did they? No, they didn’t. They did not.
Some provinces approach this, I think, in a way that certainly I could never support and that I don’t believe our party could ever support, and that is to say: “Look, this is too complex. We’re just going to take tax dollars from the people who are out there working, from single mothers, from families who earn a living, work hard and look after their kids. We’re going to take their tax dollars, and we’re going to distribute it out to political parties.” We don’t support that. We’re not going to support that. We’re fundamentally opposed to doing that. So our system….
Interjections.
Madame Speaker: Members.
Saanich North and the Islands.
Hon. B. Bennett: Our system in B.C. is based on a fair and a simple principle — that political parties compete for financial support, the same way that they compete for votes. I know why this is such an important topic to the NDP. I know why it’s so important for the NDP to do their best to make this into a public issue and try to force the government to stop corporate donations: because they can’t compete.
Do they ever ask themselves: “Why is it that we can’t raise money as the NDP?” Do they ever just look themselves in the mirror and say: “Gee, I wonder. Could it possibly be it’s our policies that prevents us from raising money?”
I don’t know if they ask themselves that or not, but I think they should. Certainly, over the last, I guess, ten days, we’ve heard a loud noise. I can still hear the loud noise coming from the other side of the House. They think they’ve found something that’s going to stick, and they’re just up on their high horses putting forward their holier-than-thou judgmental pronouncements.
But alas for the NDP, they have a record on these matters as well. And the record seems not to be consistent with their self-righteous claims of moral superiority. I have to get this in the record, because it’s true. They actually funded their party by taking money from a charity. I believe that there were nuns involved with that charity, and I don’t believe that they ever paid the nuns back. Congratulations. That is moral superiority if I ever heard it.
In November of 2012, the leader of the NDP, I guess supremely confident that he would win the election, sent out a shakedown letter. This is how the NDP raises money when they think they’re going to win. I won’t read the whole letter — it’s from the leader of the NDP — but I’ll just read a couple of snippets out of it here.
The company’s name is blocked out. “You” — the company — “contributed significantly to the B.C. Liberals since the last election, a total of….” Blank. A whole whack of money, I assume. I don’t know. It’s blocked out. The leader goes on. He says: “It is my hope that you will adopt a balanced approach in this crucial period heading up to
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the election in May and to consider making a contribution in the range of $10,000 to the B.C. NDP.” In the range of ten, 15, 20…. I don’t know what a “range of” means.
“For your convenience, we have set up a secure website link for on-line business contribution.” The Leader of the Opposition, not that long ago.
A few other examples. March 30, 2016, that same Leader of the Opposition jumped on a jet. I don’t know if he flew economy or business class. But he jumped on a jet, and he flew to Toronto. He did a breakfast with the Toronto Board of Trade, where everyone who attended paid $5,000 a plate. I guess, you know, good for him. He got to Toronto, he did a fundraiser, and he raised some money.
The only thing is there’s a sniff of hypocrisy, because seven days later that same leader introduced the Campaign Reform Finance Act. It was a bill to ban big money — seven days later. And $5,000 apiece for breakfast.
On May 5, 2016, at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia — I think that’s the Georgia Hotel — there was an event where you paid $2,500 a ticket. This is less than a year ago
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— 2,500 bucks a ticket. The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant was there; the Leader of the Opposition, I think, was there; the member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain. They were featured — that’s what they said on the invitation — for 2,500 bucks a head.
On November 22, 2016, which is not long ago, really, the Leader of the Opposition held a resource dinner. It was a $10,000 executive reception with the resource sector in Vancouver, at the Hawksworth. Now, one time I had dinner in the Hawksworth, one time in my life. I can’t afford…. Somebody else paid for it. It was less than the $250. I didn’t have to claim it because it was less than $250. I can’t afford to go there myself.
Anyways, the NDP Leader of the Opposition had a $10,000 executive reception there in the Hawksworth. Now, single guests only had to pay $2,500; two guests, $4,000; five people, $10,000.
Then on January 17, 2017 — that is not long ago at all — there was a $2,000-a-plate dinner fundraiser in Vancouver, apparently put on by the liquor industry. January 24, 2017, there was…. Oh, I did that one already. That’s that $10,000-a-plate at Hawksworth.
One of my colleagues would like to make an introduction, so I’d like to sit down just for a second. But I do want to stand up again.
Madame Speaker: Maple Ridge–Mission is seeking leave.
Leave granted.
Introductions by Members
M. Dalton: In the gallery today, I have a friend, a colleague from many years ago — 36 years. I haven’t seen him since then until today. Jonathan Follows is a doctor practising here in Victoria and he is here with his partner, Beth Turner. Would the House please make them feel welcome.
Debate Continued
Hon. B. Bennett: Doctor, you think you get your hands dirty?
One person in this five-person group that the Leader of the Opposition had at the Hawksworth…. If you had five, they paid 10,000 bucks. One person could stay and have a VIP dinner and a cocktail event — don’t want to forget the cocktail event — with the leader. The guest could talk to the NDP about their concerns over the future of the resource sector. Well, we know what happened in the election, so whatever was said there must not have resonated with those in the resource sector.
There are some upcoming events that I wanted to make sure members know about in case you have some spare time and some spare money. The member for Coquitlam-Maillardville is having an event at the Vancouver Golf and Country Club. That sounds kind of posh — 600 bucks a table for that.
The member for Vancouver-Kingsway is having an event on April 6, coming up — $1,200. He’s worth double what the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville is worth, apparently. That’s $1,200 a table to meet with the former leader of the NDP.
The member for Vancouver–Point Grey, probably the most righteous member in all of this House, is having a $1,000-a-table. You get a chance to hear some of his preaching.
They’re, frankly not very good at competing for donations, and that is really at the basis of all of this. They are so bad at getting donations for their party that they actually have to squeeze money out of their own candidates. They actually have to squeeze it out of their own candidates.
In the 2014 NDP leadership bid, I understand there may have been many people who wanted to compete to be the leader of the NDP — that party of the common person, that party that represents ordinary people — but they had to come up with a non-refundable fee of $25,000.
It’s no wonder…. I’m not surprised to see the United Steelworkers, who said, not long ago — April 15, 2016: “The party only views the labour unions as an ATM. The only time our views are heard is when they are attached to a cheque.” That was an internal memo. I don’t know how that ended up in the Vancouver Sun.
Then the United Steelworkers, again, said: “NDP, engage us without asking for money.” That could explain why the private sector unions are coming over to the B.C. Liberal team. That probably does explain it.
What does the Leader of the Opposition have to say outside the House about fundraising? Well, this is what he had to say here not too long ago. Less than a year ago he said, “If I have someone who wants to sit down and talk to me, and they want to give me 50 grand, I’ll take that” — Globe and Mail, April 7, 2016. I guess that’s what he really thinks. He doesn’t say that in here.
The Leader of the Opposition also said, in May of 2016: “We don’t have a lot of money. They outraise us 4 to 1. That’s one of the major reasons we want to get big money out of politics.” Hmm. Kind of makes you wonder what their real motivation is for all of this, doesn’t it?
Now, I do want to go to an area I’m passionate about, and that’s mining. I do want to point out…. I wouldn’t have, actually, but I do want to point out, given that a member from the other side raised the topic, that after the horrible accident at Mount Polley happened, there was a three-person geotechnical expert panel appointed. They took several months to determine what the cause of the accident was, and they determined that there was a faulty site investigation at the site of the tailings storage facility at the Mount Polley mine.
When the mine and the tailings storage facility and the attendant dam were designed, whoever investigated that site didn’t find this unstable glacial lacustrine layer of clay. When was that? Actually, that was in the early 1990s, when the NDP were in government. That’s a fact. That’s what the independent panel said.
Interjections.
Hon. B. Bennett: Okay. They want to talk money now. They don’t want to talk about geotechnical stuff. They come out on the wrong side of it when they talk about geotechnical stuff.
Madame Speaker: Minister, I’ll draw you back to the content of the bill.
Hon. B. Bennett: Yeah, okay.
On Bill 4, what we are proposing is that whoever receives a donation should disclose it to the public more expeditiously than they currently do. For example, when the NDP accepted $34,000 from Imperial Metals, did they disclose that right away?
Interjection.
Hon. B. Bennett: Actually, post Mount Polley.
Now, this is what the Leader of the Opposition said after the accident: “I don’t blame the company.” Hmm, interesting. Two days before that statement they received a $1,500 donation from Imperial Metals.
This is a good place for me to just stop a little bit and talk about what’s really going on here. I actually don’t believe that the Leader of the Opposition would do anything for that $1,500. I actually don’t believe that. But for the NDP to stand in this House, MLA after MLA, and suggest that because we belong to a political party that’s different than theirs…. “You give us money. We’ll do anything.” That’s ridiculous.
It’s not only ridiculous. It’s a comment on the people who make those kinds of comments. It’s ridiculous to make those kinds of comments.
Interjection.
Madame Speaker: Surrey–Green Timbers, from your seat.
Hon. B. Bennett: Still with mining. At the same time that I was on my feet in this House answering questions about HD Mining and the temporary foreign workers that the federal government allowed to come in to do the bulk sample — not operate a mine, just do a bulk sample…. At the same time that we were being criticized — of course, a federal decision — the NDP accepted $31,650 from HD Mining. That’s the NDP record.
We’re not saying, on this side of the House, that it’s a terrible thing to take donations from the evil corporations. We don’t believe that. I don’t get up in the morning and worry about…. “The world is against me. I’m a victim. You can’t trust anybody.” I don’t get up that way in the morning. That’s not who I am, but it seems to be the way the NDP is. If you take a donation, then you are bought. That’s what, essentially, they are saying. That is not only insulting, but it’s not rational.
I have never once, ever, in 16 years…. I probably will after today. I’m thinking somebody is going to come up to me in Cranbrook after this speech and say: “Hey, I want to talk to you about corporate donations.” But to this point in time, I have never had a constituent, in 16 years, ever come up to me and talk to me about this.
This is a manufactured issue by the NDP and the media. Frankly, what people care about is getting good government — government that takes their tax dollars and spends them wisely, government that makes hard decisions. I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve been in on some of those hard decisions. They’re difficult decisions, but they’re decisions that you have to make in a family, in a household. They’re decisions that you have to make in a small business. They’re decisions that you have to make in government.
Sometimes you just can’t spend the money that you’d like to spend, and that’s why this side of the House has balanced its budget five consecutive times. That’s why….
Interjections.
Madame Speaker: Members.
Hon. B. Bennett: That is why, with all the self-righteous stuff that comes from the other side, we stick to our
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knitting. We stick to the business at hand, which is giving good government to the people of British Columbia. On May 9, 2017, we’re going to be rewarded for that.
L. Krog: Well, well, well. I wondered when it would finally drift over the border like some gaseous cloud. But the minister has confirmed my worst fears that Trumpism is flying north, just as we speak. We heard it in the last few remarks, in reference, when he said: “It’s manufactured by the media and the NDP.” I suppose the next step will be that he’ll request we don’t have Hansard anymore, lest anyone actually hear what we say in this chamber, for fear it will create an unnecessary crisis amongst folks.
The last thing one would ever want to do, of course, is draw attention to an issue which, I’m hesitant to suggest to the governing party, is in fact — according to polling and surveys and the people who actually talk to me, unlike the people who don’t speak to the minister — actually an issue in their minds, that the concept that you have unlimited donations to political parties is actually not such a good idea.
I want to tell everyone…. I want to pay my compliments to the member for Surrey–White Rock, who, if I’m lucky, I won’t see here next time, because he’s leaving for sure. I will miss him, because he has brought wit and humour to this chamber. One of the things that I’m never going to forget is his wonderful two-minute statement about daydreaming.
I must say, as I’ve tried to step back from this debate mentally, so to speak, and sort of look down and hear what’s said on both sides — and no disrespect to the governing benches or the opposition benches or the independents — I’ve tried to bring some perspective to this debate. I’m reminded of all the arguments we have heard throughout history when it comes to reforms.
Now, I want the government members to listen for a moment. This bill is actually the tiniest of steps forward. This will give a more, how shall I say, expeditious transparency to the donations that are made by individuals and corporations and unions to political parties. So in a sense, it is a good thing.
But the level of debate, the resistance of the government members to the concept that in 2017, you’d want to ban corporate and union donations, is laughable. This is just plain silly. I’m sorry. It’s just silly. As the Prime Minister said when he appointed…. Half his cabinet were women, and someone asked him, and he came up with one of those great lines of Canadian history that no one is ever going to forget: “Because it’s 2015.”
Here we are in 2017, in British Columbia, and the Premier’s solution to what is a growing political crisis, for the governing party in particular, is Bill 4, which, by the way, defines a “major political party” as, in what will be section 1:”the political party accepts, in a calendar year, political contributions that, in total, have a value greater than $50 000.” Well, I would say the bill itself acknowledges that this is all about money, isn’t it? Isn’t that what it’s all about?
You would think that what the opposition is saying was somehow some form of modern heresy. There was a time when the power of the Christian church in the western world asserted that the world was flat. People were literally burned at the stake for speaking this heresy. But over time, good, decent, honest, believing people accepted that the world was indeed round. You know what? Civilization did not collapse. The fact the world was round did not lead to the collapse of civilization.
Here we have, in this bill, the tiniest step, as I say, to move us forward around electoral reform when it comes to financing of political parties.
There is a time when you have to accept that you can’t continue to resist the great tide of history. There was a time when Members of Parliament in this country stood up and argued, as they did in the Houses of Parliament in Great Britain, that if you gave old people pensions, oh my goodness, they’d stop saving for their retirement. It would be heresy. People might get lazy because they’d be waiting to get old so they could collect pensions. They argued that public health care would mean that people would be disrespectful of the need to look after their own health care, and that would be a bad thing. They argued that if you gave social assistance to people, it would discourage them from working, and that would be a bad thing.
We have heard, throughout history, all of these arguments, and did civilization collapse? Did the world collapse? Did the electoral system collapse? No.
Jean Chrétien, who I admire in this sense, who was one of the wiliest Canadian politicians of the last century, and I emphasize the last century, left as his crowning legacy — I would argue, the one crowning legacy of his time as Prime Minister — something which is being resisted in this chamber with such incredible ferocity that it only satisfies me that those of us on the side of saying that banning corporate donations is the right thing…. It satisfies me that we’re on the right side.
In the last century, the Parliament of this great country passed legislation that banned corporate and union donations and fixed limits on campaign contributions. Did Canadian democracy fall apart? Did politicians fail to seek elected office? Did the Houses of Parliament shut their doors? Did something dramatic happen that destroyed the fabric of this nation? Did we fall apart? No. And here in British Columbia, as we debate Bill 4, our great step forward, our participation in the reform of Canadian democracy, is to get political parties to report faster the money they receive.
G. Holman: It’s huge.
L. Krog: It’s huge. The Member for Saanich North and the Islands says it’s huge. My son always says I can never
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say “huge” properly, so forgive me, hon. Speaker, but I’m sure Hansard will get it correct.
Now, the interesting thing about what happened in the federal Parliament is that they were succeeded by a Conservative government. In the old days, Tommy Douglas would have talked about the black cats and the white cats and why the mice kept electing those cats all the time. Sometimes they’d elect grey cats, which were a combination of the white cats and the black cats, and that was called a coalition, as Tommy Douglas said.
But my point is this. Over here, we have the assembled coalition in governance in British Columbia, as it has been, you can argue to their credit — Social Credit, mainly, pun intended — since the ’40s. A Liberal-Conservative coalition lasted for a long time, till Wacky Bennett knocked it out of the park. Then it became the Social Credit Party. It was another coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives.
Then, very occasionally, my party has come into power. It came pretty close in ’52. That’s another story around the preferential ballot and the beauties and wonders of it, which didn’t work out very well for my party. But my point is this. Even the kissing cousins of the members opposite in the federal Parliament, when they’ve been in power in the last couple of decades and in the last century — let me emphasize the last century — one brought it in; the other sustained it. And here we are in British Columbia today — me, standing up, at my age — having to debate in this House a concept whose time has come.
Now, historically, many of the great reforms that drove this nation forward were brought about by provincial governments, and then federal governments followed. But here we have a reform which is really more in tune with what happened in our federal Parliament. I can’t remember whether some of these provinces…. I think Quebec might have beat the federal government, but that’s neither here nor there. We now have all of these significant jurisdictions representing the vast majority of Canadians…. The province of Quebec, the province of Ontario, the province of Manitoba, the province of Alberta and the province of Nova Scotia all ban corporate and union donations.
Here in British Columbia, in 2017, I have to stand up on a Tuesday afternoon to speak to a bill that takes us this tiny little step forward, and we have to argue about it. I have to listen to history lessons from someone who complains that when they came to B.C., it was like Ontario and how bad it was and how terrible this was and blah, blah, blah — and listen to the fiction again, which every modern economist has debunked, about the structural deficit.
I’ve heard it all today from the government benches — all. It all is designed just as this bill is designed. It is designed for one purpose. All the rhetoric and all the talk are designed to draw attention away from the fact that this government wants to resist, till the end of its time, which may be closer than they think, to the end of its days, the possibility of a small amount of political reform.
That’s what this bill is about. It is the essential red herring. It is the kicking of the can down the road, as the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head said a couple of days ago.
We live in a democracy. Corporations don’t get to vote. Land doesn’t get to vote. All the other creatures don’t get to vote. There’s only one species that gets to vote, and that’s the human species. And we only get one vote. One vote because that’s what a democracy is. It’s a vote. It’s the right to vote. The vote of any individual is equal to the vote of another. What a remarkable concept.
I know the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan has said, at least a couple of times in this House, how someone explained to him that that was the essence of it — that everybody’s vote was equal. As George Orwell said in Animal Farm…. The argument was that some pigs are more equal than others. That was a putdown of communism. Every smart school child in British Columbia, through their times — and I trust it’s still being taught — reads that book and understands the meaning and the message that’s contained therein.
If you believe in one person, one vote, then you believe, or should believe — and it logically follows, I would argue — that people should not have more influence over governments than other people. It’s not an illogical concept. You believe that one person, one vote, translated into electoral financing, means that you don’t give authority, influence, power to a union or to a corporation.
Is it logical to accept money from individuals? Sure it is. Should there be limits? Well, you know, more than half the country’s provincial governments….
Interjection.
L. Krog: Ah, I’ve got the member from Nechako up. It always makes me feel good to know that he’s listening to me. He’ll learn something if he listens long enough.
If over half the provinces in this country are functioning under a system that bans corporate and union donations…. If the federal government of this great nation is functioning with the banning of corporate and union donations and, again, limits on what individuals can give to a political party, what is wrong with this?
We broke during the course of the last speech, from the member for Kootenay East, to allow the introduction of a doctor. I thought, “How utterly appropriate,” because I’d already intended to say this as part of my speech.
You know what the Hippocratic oath is all about. We’ve all heard it, and we all understand it. One of the prime things that any doctor learns is, firstly, to do no harm. So in your remedy, in the way you try and bring some solution to the health problem of the individual you’re treating, the primary rule is to do no harm.
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What is the harm? I’m asking the members of this House. I’m asking the few folks who are listening today. What is the harm in banning corporate and union donations? Instead of this bill being this sideshow that it is, what is the harm in doing that? It’s been tried nationally, in other provinces and around the world, and nothing bad has happened.
This whole debate has moved me from sometimes amusement to disappointment to downright disgust that we should be here, in 2017, going into a provincial election with our Wild West campaign laws. I’ve got to tell you that “Wild West” is the best description. The only other thing you might say is, maybe, that “gold rush mentality,” but that’s not really applicable. It’s Wild West. It is a place where the rule of law is weak, where the state is weak. That is because we continue to allow a system that is unreasonable, that is antiquated, that is unacceptable and that is not supported by the majority of British Columbians.
I have heard — and I’m probably going to hear a little more — this: “Oh, you folks do it too. Oh, the NDP have $10,000 breakfasts and $5,000 dinners and whatever.” With great respect, we’re kind of missing the point on that one. We want to get rid of that, but the members there say: “Oh no. No. We’re happy with the system. We’ve got a gun to bring to the fight, you’ve got a knife, and we like it that way. Maybe we’ll ban the gun the next time. But right now we still like the gun and knife fight, and that works for us. The reason we get more money is because we’re so successful.”
It reminds me of the incredible concept of any business. The member for Kootenay East would understand this. He was a lawyer at one time. Clients bring you retainers, and some clients don’t. Now, I don’t want to sound cynical, but I’ve got to tell you that for the client who brings you a retainer, their file probably gets attended to first. The client who doesn’t bring you a retainer may be a little further down the priority list.
It’s like running a store. You might have a whole range of customers, but the customer who comes in frequently and buys a lot of whatever it is you’re selling…. Are the members opposite trying to tell me that that customer doesn’t maybe get a little extra smile? Maybe the store clerk is told by the owner or the manager to just be really nice to Ms. Smith or Mr. Jones or whatever the case may be. Because you know what? They spend a lot of money in this store. The server at a restaurant isn’t told: “These people are big tippers, and they come here frequently. Make sure they get good service.” Well, that’s a commonsense, I would argue not even a small-town, approach. It’s just a commonsense approach.
For the members opposite to pretend that Bill 4 is somehow going to make things fair and right and proper is just nonsensical. It’s nonsensical. By implication, there is no question that money has its influence. It is ridiculous and it defies common sense to suggest it doesn’t.
I think most members know that…. British Columbia’s entry into Confederation was brought about through the promise of a national railway. The province, the colony itself, was in deep debt. One of the terms, amongst others, was, firstly, the federal government taking over the debt and the promise of a national railway to bind us together. You could say that we got bought here. My point is this. Even after we sold out, so to speak, and became part of Canada — which was the smartest thing the people of British Columbia ever did, arguably — we continued to ask for more and ask for more.
Some of those elitist eastern writers have suggested that we’re the spoiled child of Confederation. I don’t know if we’re the spoiled child of Confederation. That may be an unfair criticism, but what I can tell you is that we are certainly childish in our attitude towards campaign finance reform — banning corporate and political donations, banning donations from people outside of the province of British Columbia and banning donations from people who are other than our citizens and voters.
What’s the point of this today? I’ve talked about resisting the great tide of history. I’ve talked about the adamant refusal of this government to acknowledge that. But I want to remind the member for Kootenay East as well. He talked about this being a “reform.” That was his word. He called it a reform.
I guess I have to assume that he thinks this bill is a good idea — he certainly spoke in favour of it — and that he believes that if it’s a reform, we must be moving in some direction, to a goal that is somewhat better, much as the colonists came to North America in search of a better life. We all understand that wonderful concept of the Americans building a New Jerusalem, a city on a hill. When the member for Kootenay East, the minister, called this a reform, he hit the nail on the head. By implication, he made it clear that he thinks what we have needs fixing.
What we’re arguing about today is where in the course of history we are on that continuum towards the city on the hill, to the better place, to the reform to that which is important and pure and perfect — perhaps, to that which is ideal. This is what, I suspect, drives most of the members in this chamber: some desire to move forward, to get to a better place, to achieve something that you can be proud of, to look back on a career and be able to say, as some of the members have, that they were proud to have served here.
Surely, by implication, that’s what this is all about today. The government is saying: “Oh, just a tiny little bit of reform, not too much. It’s pretty scary. We have an election coming, and we’ve got a lot of money in the bank, but it’s not enough. We’re going to really spend a lot more too. And just in case you folks come into power, we want to have a pile of money for the next time, because you bad people over here are actually going to model yourselves on our federal kissing cousins, the federal Liberals
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and the federal Conservatives. You’re going to bring in bans on corporate and union donations. You’re going to bring us into the 21st century, out of the Dark Ages of the 20th century.”
So I get it, why there is such resistance. I get it, in some respects. But I guess what I’m really saying, as I bring my remarks to a close….
Interjection.
L. Krog: Thank you, hon. Member. Like I would forget, this close to a night when we’re going to have a small party.
As I bring my remarks to a close, I really want the members to think long and hard about what’s been said in this chamber and what it must look like to people who are watching, people who are paying attention to this issue and people who’ve moved way beyond this. Do you want to be on the side of history that is for reform and progress, or do you want to continuously be resisting it?
Personally, I made that choice for myself a long time ago. I’m not talking about everything that members on the opposite side believe or accept, but I am talking today specifically about this bill and the concept of election reform and finance reform. I’m proud to be on this side of the House speaking for those issues, as opposed to being on the side of this House that is resisting that progress. So let us step forward towards the ideal. Hopefully, in this House, in the not-too-distant future, we will pass the legislation that will get us in step with the rest of this country.
As Thoreau said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” Now he did also say: “Let him step to the music that he hears, however measured or far away.” Well, the music I hear is not measured or far away. It is the music of this country. It is the music that says this is the time to make this reform, and we are way past it in British Columbia. It is time to stop acting like the spoiled child of Confederation. It is time to institute what the vast majority of Canadians support. It’s just too bad this government won’t do it.
L. Krog moved adjournment of debate.
Motion approved.
Hon. M. Polak moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.
The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.
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