Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call Committee of the Whole, third reading of Bill 14, Sheriff Amendment Act, 2017. In Committee A, I call continued estimates of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. When Children and Family Development finally finishes, we will do the estimates of Environment and Climate Change.

[1:35 p.m.]

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 14 — SHERIFF
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 14; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 1:36 p.m.

On section 1.

A. Wilkinson: In subsection 1(2), it refers to conducting “a threat or risk assessment in respect of a person, facility, building or property in relation to which the sheriff has a power, duty or responsibility referred to in section 4.1.” And if we look at section 4.1 of the act, it says: “In addition to the powers conferred and the duties and responsibilities established at common law or under any other Provincial or federal enactment, sheriffs have the powers conferred and duties and responsibilities established under this Act.” So not only is it the Sheriff Act that has stated powers; it’s also common law and a wide variety of any other enactments.

I think the essence of this is that it’s an extremely broad and vague description of the ambit of potential responsibilities for a sheriff. This, of course, raises the prospect of when sheriffs have access to CPIC and PRIME and other databases, are there any reasonable boundaries on this that can be clarified?

I think the underlying concern that many members of this House will share is that the prospect of wide-open access to sensitive databases, whether it’s PharmaNet or CPIC or anything else, does raise the spectre of the boundary problems and where it’s appropriate to limit access or to provide for supervision of access and, certainly, for a record of access so that if an individual is accused of having overstepped their boundaries, there’s a record of what they’ve done and they can be appropriately contained or disciplined.

Hon. D. Eby: I note we still have a few people in the gallery who might be interested in what we’re doing here. We’re looking at the Sheriff Amendment Act. This gives sheriffs authority, by law, to do threat assessments. Sheriffs are, functionally, like a police service in the courts that provide a safe and inviting atmosphere for people to resolve their disputes in B.C. courts.

As part of that, they do threat assessments. We do a lot of criminal charges that are administered in Provincial Court. As a result, there are individuals who may be coming to the court who would present a safety risk to staff, judges, lawyers, members of the public who are attending, so the sheriffs do risk assessments.

[1:40 p.m.]

The issue has been that the sheriffs were doing risk assessments without apparent legislative authority to do that. So when the administrators of CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre, realized that, they asked for British Columbia to correct the oversight of not having the legislative authority for accessing this information service. That administrator is actually the RCMP. This is coming about as a result of the request of the RCMP.

To the member’s question, this section actually prescribes the areas in which sheriffs may do threat or risk assessment, whereas previously, there was no legislative provision. So it’s a great improvement in terms of circumscribing that. But more than that, there is a memorandum of understanding between the RCMP and the sheriff service about the use of the CPIC database. It restricts even further the use of the database beyond just allowing wide-open access. For example, it doesn’t permit use of the CPIC system for executing civil processes, as one example.

It’s not a wide-open thing. In fact, this is tightening up and legislating and articulating to the public where sheriffs have the legislative authority to do these kinds of risk assessments.

A. Wilkinson: The answer starts to address the question, but I have heard now that it won’t be used for civil process. But there’s apparently no other restriction anticipated or placed upon the use of this information. I also haven’t heard an answer about any kind of supervision process to catch the odd and rare sheriff who might be engaged in inappropriate activity with the databases.

Of course, that leads to the question of who would conduct the review and how it would be done, given that this has arisen in the past with police misuse of databases. It happened in a suburban Vancouver police force about 20 years ago. The ongoing concerns about the misuse of PharmaNet were finally addressed about the year 2003, when practitioners had to be subject to an ongoing cumulative record of their access, which could then be reviewed to determine whether or not it was appropriate.

I’m looking to the minister to provide some kind of answer. Is there any review process anticipated here or any supervision process? It certainly doesn’t appear in the statute, and it’s the sort of thing that one would hope to see in the statute, rather than left to regulation, because I don’t see any provision here for regulations.

Hon. D. Eby: We’re in the happy circumstance of having two members that have some history with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association discussing this and a shared interest in ensuring that authority for law enforcement to access this kind of information is appropriately regulated. I’m happy to advise the member that certainly, within the sheriff service, they have policies around appropriate access.

More importantly, in terms of oversight outside of the sheriffs service, the memorandum of understanding between the Canadian Police Information Centre, the RCMP and the sheriffs prescribes an audit process whereby a third party will be looking at and ensuring that access made of the CPIC system is for law enforcement purposes only. In particular, it requires the sheriffs to permit the auditors to come on site for the purpose of auditing. They can look at anything. They can also do off-site audits and reviews of records.

In fact, as I understand it, CPIC has systems built in that detect, as some provincial systems do, unusual patterns of searches engaged in by individuals in order to proactively detect this kind of thing.

A. Wilkinson: I may have missed it, but the agency responsible for initiating the audit.... Is that the RCMP, or is it CPIC? Who is the overseer of sheriff access, if I can put it that way?

Hon. D. Eby: It is the RCMP.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 1:44 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[1:45 p.m.]

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 14 — SHERIFF
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

Bill 14, Sheriff Amendment Act, 2017, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call committee stage on Bill 12, Public Safety Statutes Amendment Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 12 — PUBLIC SAFETY STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 12; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 1:48 p.m.

On section 1.

M. Morris: Probably in the interest of time, I just want to say that I’ve looked through this, and I’ve had some great briefings from the folks around you, Solicitor, and am well up to date on this particular file. This is something that I’ve been quite passionate about over the years, when I was in government as well, and this side of the House has no objection to any part of this bill right from start to finish.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I thank the member for his comments. If the member wishes, then, we may be able to proceed right through this bill in its entirety, as we have sometimes done in the past.

I know you, hon. Chair, remember a time when we did sections 1 through 150 in one go, so I leave that in the Chair’s hands.

Sections 1 to 14 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 1:49 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[1:50 p.m.]

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 12 — PUBLIC SAFETY STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

Bill 12, Public Safety Statutes Amendment Act, 2017, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading, Bill 16, Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 16 — TENANCY STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that Bill 16 be read a second time.

Tenants have been raising concerns for years about a loophole in fixed-term tenancy agreements that has been used to increase rent far in excess of what is allowed under the legislation. This is done by including a vacate clause in the fixed-term tenancy agreement which requires the tenant to move out at the end of the term. Near the end of the tenancy, tenants are presented with the option of staying in the rental unit at a substantially higher rent or moving out with little time to look for other rental accommodation. This has contributed to significant rent increases and housing instability for many tenants right across the province.

This bill proposes to change this problem in two ways. Rather than eliminating the use of this type of tenancy agreement completely, the use of a vacate clause in fixed-term tenancy agreements will be limited to only certain circumstances, and rent increases between fixed-term tenancy agreements with the same tenant will be limited to the maximum annual allowable amount, which is currently 2 percent plus inflation. This means that if the tenant stays, they are protected by rent control.

Far too many years went by under the previous government where the struggles of renters were ignored. These changes will protect the 1.5 million renters in British Columbia who have had to deal with the stress of not knowing when their rent would be hiked beyond reasonable limits, beyond their capacity. The amendments will still allow flexibility for landlords.

We have also included in this bill some administrative penalties. This bill strengthens the ability of the residential tenancy branch to encourage and enforce compliance with tenancy laws. Administrative penalty provisions already exist in the legislation, and these amendments will allow the branch to take stronger action to enforce tenancy laws with repeat and serious violators.

The amendments will allow the residential tenancy branch to compel the production of documents as part of an administrative penalty investigation. It will also allow the branch to publish administrative penalty decisions. The branch will be allowed to refuse to accept an application for dispute resolution if an administrative penalty is owed and pursue prosecution of an offence where a penalty has been levied but has not resulted in compliance. These changes, along with a new compliance unit, will go a long way to ensure that landlords and tenants comply with the law.

Through this bill, we are proposing a streamlined dispute resolution process for the return of security and pet deposits. If a landlord doesn’t return a deposit or make an application to keep the deposit, a tenant will be able to apply for a monetary order through an expedited process, similar to the direct request process available to landlords requiring an order of possession.

[1:55 p.m.]

This will ensure that tenants get their security deposits back without having to wait for months for a dispute resolution hearing. This will eliminate the lengthy waits and minimize the real financial hardships, which we have been hearing for years, that tenants face when they’ve been waiting for the return of their deposit.

There are other amendments in this bill to fix minor issues of language and interpretation related to sublets, float home jurisdiction, service of documents and notice of proceedings. This bill provides better protections for both landlords and tenants, clarifies rules that have caused confusion, and supports streamlined and improved dispute resolution processes.

I look forward to the other members of this House speaking to this bill. I look forward to hearing their comments with regards to what we’re proposing, and I obviously am looking forward to committee stage of the bill when we’re finished with second reading.

I am pleased to move second reading.

S. Sullivan: Thank you, Minister, for this bill, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act. Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition supports your work and supports, certainly, the intent of this bill, you will be very pleased to know.

It is certainly the government’s duty to ensure that tenants are not at the mercy of predatory landlords. One of the ways that I approach these types of bills is…. Sometimes it is possible, when government wants to protect tenants, renters, they can actually harm them by doing things that have unintended consequences.

We know that strict rent controls — it seems like economists on the left and the right both agree — can do harm to renters. It can take rental properties off the market and actually have them run down in their maintenance. So this actually is a very laudable effort here. We want to ensure that landlords remain incentivized to rent properties. There was a concern that some landlords may just take the property off the market. I don’t think that will happen with this. I think we feel quite confident.

We are also pleased to see that LandlordBC, the advocacy group for landlords, is in favour of these changes. They have claimed that those abusing the existing rules, to apply higher-than-allowed rent increases, were not following the spirit of the legislation. It is a very small subsection of landlords that have chosen to try to circumvent the rules and the intent of the legislation. Most landlords are unhappy about that and are very disappointed with their fellows who have chosen to do that. So this helps to rectify this.

We are encouraged that the government does not feel the bill will cause landlords to take rental properties off the market. We’re concerned that there may be some unintended consequences, ones that may adversely affect the ability of renters to find a place to live, and we will be canvassing these concerns during committee stage. The retroactivity of the bill does change existing tenancy agreements, which may cause disruptions for some properties around the province.

The new arbitration powers for security deposits will also, hopefully, help tenants and landlords to move on and clear the waiting lists by reducing waiting time for security deposits to three weeks, down from six months.

The legislation makes some changes that we support. However, we feel we must be sure that the consequences are fully considered before it is put in place.

The legislation removes the ability of landlords to use vacate clauses in fixed-term tenancy agreements, except for some specific circumstances, and it also limits the rent increases between fixed-term tenancy agreements with the same tenant to the maximum allowable amount, 2 percent plus inflation. This is really a safety valve for market changes, and it does protect tenants from unusually high changes in their rents.

[2:00 p.m.]

Under the existing laws, some would enter into fixed-tenancy agreements and use the vacate clause to raise a tenant’s rent above the allowable amount. The landlords could threaten to invoke the vacate clause unless the tenant signed a new agreement with a much higher rent increase. The government does not have specific numbers on how prevalent this situation was; however, advocacy groups say it has become much more common in recent years.

There are some issues that are related especially to agricultural situations where there are short-term employment contracts related to housing. Then, at other times of the year, vacate clauses are needed so that the seasonal employees will be able to get their housing back.

These are some of the issues that we would like to canvass during the committee stage, but in general, we’re pleased with the direction of this, and we commend the government for their work.

R. Singh: I’m proud to rise today to speak in favour of Bill 16, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act. For far too long, British Columbians have been hard-pressed to find and keep suitable rental housing, due to low vacancy rates and the escalating cost of living in the province. This bill will help to protect our 1.5 million renters in this province who are struggling to make ends meet, and it’s part of our government’s commitment to make life more affordable for all British Columbians.

According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rental vacancy rates in many cities around this province, including Surrey, are below 1 percent — only 1 percent. This low vacancy rate has led to skyrocketing rental prices, and the fixed-term-lease loophole has enabled some unscrupulous landlords to circumvent legislated annual rent control, to the detriment of B.C. renters.

We are committed to protect the rights of renters who have been vulnerable to massive rent increases for far too long. By closing this loophole, renters will no longer be faced with the terrible choice between staying in an apartment they can’t afford and entering the fiercely competitive and unaffordable B.C. rental market.

These amendments will limit the ability of landlords to use the vacate clause in fixed-term tenancy agreements. They will only be able to do so in certain circumstances. Landlords will still be able to end tenancy when there is cause. These amendments simply mean that tenants signing fixed-term agreements will no longer be subject to unfair rent increases.

The bill will also limit rent increases to 2 percent per annum plus inflation for fixed-term tenancy agreements with the same tenant. It will also strengthen the ability of the residential tenancy branch to enforce compliance with the Residential Tenancy Act, a resource for both tenants and landlords. Importantly, these new rules will apply to both new and existing tenancy agreements, which means that we can end these loopholes once and for all today.

Housing affordability was a key election commitment of our government. As such, we are not only looking to close these loopholes; we are also taking steps to develop a far-reaching and comprehensive housing strategy. We have committed $208 million to build 1,700 affordable housing units and are providing $291 million in funding to build 2,000 modular homes in order to address homelessness, as part of our broader commitment to build 114,000 units over the next ten years.

We have increased funding to reduce wait times for tenancy disputes by funding a new compliance unit to take action against landlords and tenants who are repeat or serious offenders, and we have launched a new on-line application to make it easier and faster for tenants and landlords to apply for dispute resolution.

[2:05 p.m.]

Our government is committed to mitigating the effects of 16 years of Liberal government that did not care about keeping life affordable for everyday British Columbians. This bill will help to protect renters in this province from unfair and unaffordable increases or evictions.

I’m looking forward to voting for this bill, because I know it works to immediately help people in my constituency and around the province. For this reason, I sincerely hope that all members of this House will join with me and support this bill.

A. Olsen: I rise today to speak to the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act. It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of an affordability crisis that is having profound and wide-ranging impacts on people and families in our province. Renters are particularly vulnerable in this market. It is in this context that I support this bill.

Young British Columbians are of the hardest hit in this crisis, as young people are disproportionately renters and are being priced out of the housing market as homeowners. Appropriate and affordable rental units have become extremely difficult to find, especially for families. As a result, our friends, neighbours and family members are forced to live in unsafe, unstable, unsuitable and unaffordable accommodation.

Social stability begins and ends in the home. The stability of a person’s housing situation determines their quality of life, mental health, productivity at work and with the family. If we truly want a strong, productive, flexible, diverse and agile 21st-century economy, then establishing a strong foundation in the home should be our priority.

This is why I was so particularly motivated to get elected into this House — to be involved in addressing the situation and finding solutions to the dramatic housing affordability crisis that the previous government let grow out of control in order to prop up their strong-economy rhetoric. This crisis has not just affected homebuyers but also owners and landlords, and one result is that renters lack security and have become vulnerable to abuse by some landlords who are taking advantage of the situation.

In the last few years, we’ve seen an egregious practice emerge. Some landlords are forcing renters to sign a fixed-term tenancy agreement with a vacate clause, which forces tenants to either move out at the end of the tenancy or agree to an entirely new lease that comes with rent increases that go well beyond the allowable rental increases under the law of 2 percent plus inflation.

In a market with a vacancy rate near zero percent and skyrocketing rents, renters have very few options. They often feel forced to agree to massive rental increases to stay in the same unit. I’ve heard stories of rents going up 10, 20 percent or even more from one year to the next.

It’s obviously unacceptable that renters have to deal with this kind of housing insecurity and that some landlords are skirting the law by using this loophole to increase rents. So I support the intention of this bill to protect renters from this practice by banning the use of a vacate clause in fixed-term contracts except in special circumstances.

But I would like to emphasize a few things here. First, only a small minority of landlords engage in this practice. Most landlords are responsible and fair. We need to strike a fine balance between the rights of tenants and landlords and do more to protect both. In our current market, the scale has been tipped too far towards landlords, but we also need to have a conversation about how to protect people who rent out their homes and how to encourage people to provide secure, long-term rental accommodation at affordable prices.

We need to protect good landlords, and we need to ensure that we are not discouraging people from providing long-term rental accommodation. It would be a travesty if people, instead, turned to short-term rentals because it was perceived to be easier.

To this end, my colleagues and I will be raising more specific questions about this bill at committee stage. I want to discuss further the circumstances that will be provided for in regulations when a vacate clause will still be allowed. And I want to discuss some of the risks to ensure that we have fully thought through the consequences of this legislation.

[2:10 p.m.]

Finally, I would like to emphasize that this issue, the fact that some landlords are abusing the vacate clause to increase rents, is a symptom of an out-of-control housing market. This bill takes steps to protect some of the people who have been the most vulnerable in this crisis.

In evaluating any legislation to do with housing, we need to stay focused on the crux of the issue. The ongoing housing affordability crisis is hurting British Columbians in many ways. It’s piling massive financial burdens on individuals and families, and it’s damaging people’s health and well-being. People are struggling and being driven out by rampant speculation, huge amounts of international capital, as well as domestic speculation, amidst many other pressures.

The crisis is, in turn, damaging our communities. It’s turning our cities into the exclusive purview of the very wealthy as neighbourhoods empty and businesses struggle.

I read an article this week by journalist Jessica Barrett in the Tyee on her decision to leave Vancouver. I assume some members of this House have read it. If you have not, I encourage you to do so. I want to quote it here because I think it captures some of what we lose when we allow this housing crisis to continue. On the neighbourhood where she lived in Vancouver, she says the following:

“The neighbourhood itself was like living on an abandoned film set. Aside from our landlord, we only ever saw construction workers, landscapers and, on occasion, the squatters who lived in the empty mansion across the street — just a line on someone’s investment sheet somewhere.

“All the places that felt like home — the coffee shops where I loved to write, the grocery stores where I had shopped all those years earlier — almost all of them were gone, either slated to become condos or simply languishing as vacant storefronts. Contrary to Vancouver’s reputation, I’d never felt isolated as long as I’d lived there until my last year, when the loneliness became unbearable.”

We cannot allow this to continue. We must protect the integrity of our communities, and homes are at the heart. Homes are the fabric of our communities. We must protect what makes our cities special. They must be livable and accessible to people from all demographics and walks of life — students, creative professionals, entrepreneurs and young families. Our cities must provide a space for small and independent businesses to thrive. Businesses must be able to retain workers and afford to pay their leases.

To do this, to keep our communities vibrant and protect the well-being of the people who live here, we must take a bold action and address the root of the issue, not just make tweaks at the margins. We must curb the over-commodification of our homes. Housing should exist to provide homes first, and a means of investment only second.

British Columbians expect this government to follow through on their commitment to fix the housing affordability crisis. I’m eagerly waiting to hear more from this government on the concrete actions to reverse current trends and make our cities livable and affordable, to make them places where British Columbians from all walks of life and all demographics can live and flourish. HÍSW̱ḴE.

J. Thornthwaite: I’d like to start out by expressing my support for the intent of Bill 16, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act, 2017. I think you’ll find that there is pretty much universal agreement in this House that tenants should not be at the mercy of predatory landlords and that in our current housing and rental market, more can be done to protect them.

I’m also encouraged to understand that LandlordBC and tenant advocacy groups, such as the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre, are in favour of these amendments as they do not feel the bill will cause landlords to take rental properties off the market or cause adverse effects for renters.

While there is concern that this bill may produce unintended consequences for both renters and landlords alike, I will be further following up with these concerns during the committee stage to ensure that these concerns are addressed on the record.

On that note, I’d like to bring your attention to an email I received from a constituent who had concern about the stated amendment in section 3 of this bill that would eliminate “the option of including a requirement to vacate the rental unit in a fixed-term tenancy agreement.”

[2:15 p.m.]

The constituent understands this is being proposed to prevent landlords from forcing tenants to enter a new tenancy agreement with higher, uncontrolled rent at the end of the fixed term. However, he goes on to argue:

“There are circumstances that warrant fixed-term leases, especially in the case of short-term tenancy agreements where the landlord is renting out parts or all of their principal residence: if a landlord is travelling for a fixed term — snowbirds, for example — and wishes to rent out their property for a period that matches the fixed travel term; or if the landlord has a suite in their principal residence occupied currently by family members, and a family member will be away for a fixed term — perhaps to school, or they’ll return in the summer or end of their school period; or if the owner of the property passes away and their estate wants to rent it out for a fixed term while the estate is settled.”

I think my constituent raises some very valid points, and that is why I was pleased to see the exceptions to this bill that, to my understanding, address this concern.

As I understand it, there do exist provisions to the changes in the bill that would allow a vacate clause to be enforced, one such exclusion being that if a property owner has prior plans to be away for a determined amount of time and has a firm commitment to return on a specific date, they may enter into a tenancy that contains a vacate clause.

Knowing that this exception will account for landlords that may be away for school or work or may wish to go on extended vacation will, I’m sure, help to address my constituent’s concerns. But that being said, I recognize that addressing vacate clauses in fixed-term leases is just one step in addressing the rental and housing crunch here in British Columbia — in particular, in the Lower Mainland.

There is much that this bill does not do. I look forward to further canvassing the government in committee stage to better understand the mechanics of this bill and its potential unintended consequences and, on the whole, to ensure that it speaks for the best interests of both tenants and landlords.

S. Chandra Herbert: I must admit that standing today to speak on this legislation, Bill 16, on changes to the Residential Tenancy Act feels a little unbelievable to me. For nine years, I sat on the other side of the House. From the first day I was here, the first speech I gave was calling for changes to the Residential Tenancy Act to help renters — renters facing mass eviction, renters facing massive rent hikes, renters facing unfairness in their ability to live in their homes in peace.

These are tough stories. I can think back, and faces come to mind more than names now. I used to be great with names, but nine years in, you start to forget names and just remember faces and stories of people who would come to my office, people who would stop me on the street, people I would speak with on the phone.

I remember the sound of their voices as they shared their anguish. They’d done everything right. They’d followed the rules. They’d worked incredibly hard to maintain a good life. Sometimes they were Conservative, sometimes they were Liberal, sometimes they were Green, and sometimes they were New Democrat. Most of the time, they had no political persuasion at all. They just wanted to be able to live a good life in their home.

They followed their residential tenancy agreements. They paid respect to their landlords. They were happy to have a roof over their heads. Unfortunately, for far too many of them, they were too trusting. It gave me such pain to hear that, when they said: “You know, I trusted my landlord when they said I needed to sign this new agreement, sign a new lease.”

“Sign this piece of paper to just update the record” would often be how it was sold to them. Often it was seniors being approached by their friendly landlord, or so they thought; their friendly building manager, or so they thought; and told to sign this new, updated contract.

They would come to me and say: “What do I do now? They’re telling me I’m being evicted next month. I’ve done nothing wrong.” I’d ask to see the paperwork, and unfortunately, they would have been tricked into signing a fixed-term tenancy agreement, self-evicting at the end of their term, often a year.

Finally, after the opposition, advocacy groups — and, so often, the renters themselves — talked to the media, pled with ministers, pled with MLAs to act, a government is acting. Finally, after nine years of trying to raise this sort of issue in the House, we now have a government on this side of the House who will act.

[2:20 p.m.]

Within its first 100 days, this bill was brought forward. I’m so proud of the New Democrat government for hearing this call, for committing to act and for actually acting, because fixed-term tenancies have been the plague of so many peoples’ lives, my constituents in particular. They’ve lost their homes, or they’ve signed new agreements because they could not possibly imagine leaving their community. They agreed to 30 percent rent increases, 50 percent rent increases in some cases, just in order to stay in their home.

In many cases, these were people on pensions. I think of folks on pensions, fixed incomes, agreeing to 20 percent rent increases because they were so afraid that they would never be able to find a home to rent in our neighbourhood again. They agreed to take money from their food budget to pay for the rent, because the former government refused to end this practice.

Over a year, two years ago, the then Housing Minister, now Leader of the Official Opposition, promised the public that they would end this practice. They’d heard that this was a problem. They’d heard that people’s lives were being harmed, were being hurt. They were going to act to end the fixed-term tenancy con. I say con because people were conned into signing agreements that they didn’t have to. They trusted people, and they lost trust.

It’s horrible to me that I had to talk to them about how, yes, some people are untrustworthy; how, yes, some people did break their promises; how, yes, their landlord may have been breaking their word to them and tricking them into signing things they never should have done. But I had to counsel them that yes, they needed to get advice more often. They needed to seek a second opinion before agreeing to sign anything.

The number of times I had to send letters into buildings in my constituency, letting everybody in the building know that a few people in the building had been conned and that they might be next, are too many to list. It’s something that gave me no pleasure — to have write to renters to say: “I understand that your neighbours have been tricked into signing fixed-term tenancy agreements.” I didn’t use those words. I just laid out the act as it was and said that they didn’t have to sign anything, but too often it was too late. People would come to say: “I wish I’d known this earlier, but I was conned.”

That con ends with this bill. No longer will my constituents have to face a landlord coming to them, saying: “Sign today, and I won’t do this. Sign today, and maybe you won’t lose your home, but maybe you will. Just update your contract now in terms of fixed terms.”

There are other things that we need to change in the Residential Tenancy Act, like geographic area increases, to name one. The challenges of renovictions, to name two. I could give you a longer list that I’m working on and that I know our government is working on, but this is a really good first step, because it was being abused to get around the residential tenancy rent controls in a big, big way. The former government refused. We are acting.

The other thing this bill does, and I’m really happy to see it, is that it’s actually, finally going to help allow a government to go after bad apples. I say “bad apples” because it’s a quote coming from the now Leader of the Opposition, who, when he was Housing Minister, numerous times would say: “We’re getting tough on those bad apple landlords. We’re going to make sure they don’t harm those poor renters.” He would say it again and again and again.

Any time I raised a case where, clearly, a tenant was being abused, they would pull: “Well, we changed the act so that we can go after those bad apple landlords.” Then he never did. It was a great sound bite for TV, but it offered no comfort and no assistance to the tenants actually in those situations.

This bill is allowing us to actually enforce administrative penalties, so if somebody is breaking the law — if somebody is lying, is cheating, is finding some way around the rules — and they get caught, we’re actually, now, going to be able to go after them.

You know, there was legislation introduced in, I think, 2006-2007 by the former government that they could point to. They pointed to it numerous times, saying: “See, we introduced administrative penalties so we can go after those people who break the laws, so we can go after those people who cheat at the residential tenancy system.” But they never actually did.

This law change that we’re bringing in is going to give the government the ability to actually say, “Provide us evidence,” if somebody is cheating the system; to say, “We’re going to compel you to give us the documents so we can check your facts. We don’t just have to rely on your word. We can actually see whether or not you’re telling the truth by looking at the evidence.”

[2:25 p.m.]

All those bad apple landlords that the former Housing Minister used to talk about could just say: “No, we didn’t break the rules.” And the government had no ability to actually go in and check, to really go in and find out if that, in fact, was true. So of course penalties could never be levied.

Here we are, probably about ten years after that legislation was brought in to allow administrative penalties to be issued by residential tenancy branch. Ten years later, we’re actually putting in place rules to make that possible. It strikes me as incredibly disrespectful to renters and landlords across this province that a government said that we were going to go after the bad apples ten years ago and never did, never made that actually possible.

Well, we’re making that possible, and not just bad apple landlords, bad apple tenants. If they’re breaking the rules again and again and again, and there’s a pattern, the residential tenancy branch will be able to go after them, to fine them, to hit them with penalties so that, clearly, they’re not able to do that again. It’s no longer just the cost of doing business.

The current context has been that even if you get caught breaking the rules, it’s a slap on the wrist with a wet noodle and told, “Don’t do that again,” until you come back again the next month, after having done it again, and you’re told: “Don’t do that again.” And then another slap with the wet noodle. That’s how this act, so far, has been enforced.

I’m really pleased that that is going to change, because not only is this act going to allow them to compel evidence, but it’s going to allow a proper procedure done that will stand up in courts of law so that they can actually show there has been procedural fairness, so that everybody gets a fair chance to be heard and so that you can actually do the right thing.

We’ve changed the law. Of course, with the budget changes, we’re actually going to hire compliance officers so that you can actually go out and enforce the law. That’s the other thing. Introducing a law and then not actually hiring anybody to enforce the law and, as we earlier stated, not actually giving the law the teeth to actually be enforced…. You might as well not have even introduced that law.

We’re fixing that wrong now because landlords and tenants deserve so much better. Compelling documents, conducting investigations, administrative penalty procedures to actually be fair — you have to do those things. And that’s something that the B.C. Liberal government refused to do numerous times for their 16 years of being in government.

Within the first 100 days, we introduced legislation to do that, because we do respect landlords and tenants. We do respect renters rights, and we think that they deserve their rights to be actually respected. We do respect the law, and if people are breaking the law, they should actually be penalized, not just slapped with a wet noodle, as had been the previous practice when the Leader of the Opposition was the Housing Minister — if that.

One notorious case was that a building was collapsing in on its tenants. They were hit with, I think, a $400,000 fine. I was so excited. Administrative penalties were actually finally being used. But you know what the former government did?

They let that landlord off the hook by saying: “Oh, well, you’ve repaired the building, so it’s no longer a deathtrap for your tenants. Well, we’re not going to fine you anymore. You didn’t follow the law. You broke the law numerous times. You required tons of taxpayer resources to be used to go after you. But now you’ve finally complied with the law. We’re not going to charge you the fine that we gave you, even though you profited by breaking the law and the taxpayers suffered.”

That was the previous government’s approach to bad landlords and dealing with the Residential Tenancy Act. That’s not the way it’s going to be, I hope, any longer. We need to respect the law, and that means respecting landlords and respecting tenants.

I just want to finish by saying that the other thing in this bill is returning security deposits and pet damage deposits faster. That’s something that this legislation is also going to help make possible.

Believe it or not, I once had a senator, an American senator from one of the Eastern states, come to my constituency office. I said: “A senator. That’s a big deal. You’re a big deal in the States. You have lots of staff. You’re an important person. What are you doing visiting a lowly member of the Legislature, and one in opposition, to boot?”

She said: “Well, it’s because my daughter can’t get back her damage deposit.” Her daughter was studying, I think, in Vancouver, had rented in the West End, couldn’t get a damage deposit back from the landlord.

[2:30 p.m.]

The landlord, in my experience, was a bit notorious for not giving back damage deposits, for finding ways to game the system and hope that residents and renters would never actually go through all the rigamarole of trying to get them to give it back, hoping that they would leave town, as in the case of the senator’s daughter, who was about to leave town. She wanted help then so that they could actually get the damage deposit back.

Well, eventually she did, but it took many months and a lot of trying — assistance from my office, from the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre, gummed up the residential tenancy system — all because the landlord knew that on a probability case, many tenants would give up and wouldn’t continue to press the case. Then they would profit from never having to give the damage deposit back.

Well, while we helped and solved that problem, this bill is going to make it much easier for expedited return of damage deposits and pet deposits. When you’re in an affordability crisis, as we are, and many people are living paycheque to paycheque, a damage deposit might be their only chunk of money, which they need in order to get a new apartment or in order to pay a big bill or pay a debt or pay moving expenses down the road.

It’s really important that these damage deposits not be held as a “maybe you get it back, maybe you don’t.” Maybe you’ll get it back in six months time; maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have to go to small claims court or something like that. No, people deserve the money. It’s their money as long as they’ve not damaged the suite.

So a shout-out to my renter friends out there. Make sure you take pictures, if you can, of the suite before you move in. Make sure you get a condition assessment report done before you move in, because those are very important things, down the road, to getting your damage deposit back.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

If your landlord doesn’t give you a condition assessment report, they can’t claim your damage deposit back. That’s just a little note, an FYI for folks back at home, because a lot of people don’t know their rights when it comes to Residential Tenancy Act rules.

Again, for those in my constituency who currently are on fixed terms — and unfortunately, some developers have decided to use fixed terms exclusively in their buildings because they can get around rent controls, and it seemed to be given the go-ahead by the former government — this act will also make it so that your fixed term becomes a month-to-month tenancy, unless you’d already agreed to move out or unless another tenant, before this legislation was offered, had already signed a tenancy agreement to move into that suite.

For everybody else, if you’re coming up to the end of the year where your landlord normally says to you, “Well, it’s time again to sign another fixed term, and we’re going to give you a $100-a-month” — or a $200-a-month — “rent increase, or you’ll be evicted,” you’re going to move to a month-to-month. That’s going to mean that you get the annual allowable rent increase, not a massive rent increase of the hundreds and hundreds of dollars variety that the former Liberal government seemed to think was appropriate, affordable and acceptable.

They were dead wrong then. They said it was too hard to change. Well, within 100 days, we’ve showed that it’s not too hard to change. It’s not too hard to have respect for renters and landlords. It’s not too hard to do the right thing. That’s why I’m so glad to be supporting this legislation.

I’m so incredibly proud of my colleagues. I want to say thank you to them for listening to my cries for help on this, for listening to the renters of B.C.’s cries for help on this and so many others who’ve advocated on this issue. Thank you for advocating. It’s been worth the fight. It’s been worth the persistence. I just know that those who are going to be helped in the future are…. It’s going to make such a difference for too many people who’ve had to deal with this horror show that has been the fixed-term tenancy con for far too long. I’m so glad we can support this legislation.

A. Weaver: I rise to take my place in the debate at second reading on Bill 16, Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act.

As we’ve heard, this bill has three main goals. It makes amendments to the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act and the Residential Tenancy Act. The bill makes the following changes.

First, it restricts the ability for landlords to use a vacate clause with fixed-term leases except in special circumstances that will be provided for by regulation. Two, it limits rent increases between fixed-term tenancies with the same tenant to the maximum annual allowable amount. Three, it enables the residential tenancy branch to take stronger actions to enforce tenancy laws on repeat violators, and also it streamlines the dispute resolution process for the return of security and pet deposits.

I rise to speak to this bill as someone who historically has both been a renter and a landlord — a landlord since 1986 in one form or another. I rise to say that I approach this bill very cautiously.

[2:35 p.m.]

I recognize that there is a crisis facing affordability in Metro Vancouver and in metro Victoria, where vacancy rates are below half a percent, or 0.6 percent. And I recognize that there are a number of bad apples out there — I come back to the Leader of the Opposition’s term “bad apples” — who have created a crisis in terms of fixed-term leases being used as a means of avoiding the law, the law which limits rent increases for people who are there.

Now, I approach this also from the side of those who are landlords to recognize that the fixed-term lease often is one of the only means to actually get a tenant out of a property if the tenant is actually not responsibly taking care of that property.

I understand that there is the rental tenancy agency and the agreement. I’m concerned that without an injection of substantial funds — something I’ll explore in the committee stage, and I understand these will be forthcoming — the intent will be lost of this one tool that landlords have to ensure that they can evict a tenant in a timely fashion without having to drag through the RTA process. We do know that there are some cases where we have irresponsible landlords, but we also have irresponsible renters.

I respect the need for this legislation in a basically zero-vacancy market. We have a crisis on our hands. We need to deal with that crisis to ensure that renters, the most vulnerable in our society, are not being taken advantage of by those exploiting it. But at the same time, in the longer term, I think we need to look very carefully at how we actually move the whole Residential Tenancy Act forward to ensure that we protect good landlords.

I come to my own personal circumstance as somebody who has been a landlord for many, many years and, also, from a family of people who worked in the restaurant business, who did not have a pension. They had no pension other than by the fact that they squirrelled their savings into real estate to ensure that their pension would be the rent from this real estate in their retirement.

Now, again, the single most important thing a landlord can do is get a good tenant who lives in the same place for a long time. A good tenant is more valuable than $100 a month, because you know a good tenant is one that will take care of the property. It’s one that you do not price out of the market.

One of the means and ways that landlords will use this fixed-term clause is you’ll sign a one-year agreement but not automatically go to the month-to-month, because automatically going to the month-to-month will start to invoke the RTA process. You view it both for protection of the landlord and the renter. This one-year period is a period to see whether the relationship…. In a tenant or renter case, for most small business landlords — not the multinationals or the big property owners but the small business ones who are really trying to get the best tenant — this is a good check to ensure that you’re a match.

In my personal case, I viewed it as a way to give back. We, for years and years, have given below-market rent in a house or two houses because we could give someone a leg-up. We could give them a chance. We’d know that they’d be there, and they’d take care of the property for a long, long time.

I mean, some members here would think it kind of odd if I said that we rented a four-bedroom house for a $1,000 a month. That’s what we did here. It covered our costs, it gave people a break, and it allowed us to protect ourselves for the future, and our children, in this escalating real estate market.

With that said, we can look to those bad apples. Those bad apples have actually taken this and made it into a crisis, and I have no sympathy for that.

People taking advantage of other people because of a difficult time in affordability is wrong at a fundamental level. That is why, ultimately, I support this bill, with the caveat that I’ll explore at committee stage some of the attempts that government will take to actually ensure that the rental tenancy office is resourced properly, so that delays are not there for the sake of delays, that people can get responses for their concerns in a timely fashion and that landlords and renters are protected. Ultimately, I think the collective view here is that we want to make this system better.

[2:40 p.m.]

As we know, there’s a small minority of these landlords who’ve been engaged in this business. And again, for those out there, other landlords, we really need to turn to those irresponsible landlords and say: “You know what? This is your fault.” Government has responded as it must respond to a crisis that was created by irresponsible landlords taking advantage of a system. For that, again, I come back to the reason why ultimately I think this is an important bill to support.

In terms of the enforcement laws, this too is important. The amendments that are being proposed will allow the branch to more strongly enforce the tenancy laws. Again, this is important because they will be able to compel the production of documents as part of penalty investigations, publish penalty decisions, refuse to accept an application for dispute resolution if an administrative penalty is owed and pursue prosecution where penalties have been levied but there is still no compliance.

This largely protects the renter, but there are clauses in here that do also protect the landlord with respect to administrative penalties if they have not been paid as well. Again, this is a good component of the legislation, which I’m very pleased to support.

Finally, when it comes to streamlining pet and damage deposits, again, this legislation…. I understand the need for doing it, but ultimately it comes back to the fact that those few bad apples out there have required such legislation be put in place.

The overwhelming majority of landlords take the return of pet and damage deposits very seriously. They follow due process. They ensure that they’re not retained for inappropriate means. To be blunt, the process, if the renter knows — going through the rental tenancy branch and the whole adjudication process — is very, very cumbersome, and nobody wants to do that. So the majority of landlords have been following process appropriately. But again, those bad apples have made this necessary.

I come to the compelling arguments put forward by the member for Vancouver–West End, who is in an area of Metro Vancouver with a very low vacancy rate, very high rental accommodations — frankly, a whole bunch of vacant places as well — and I hear his concerns. I hear his concerns, and I support the amendments, as we’ve seen fit, to ensure that the retention of security deposits is not done inappropriately.

In conclusion, I support the intent of this bill to end the abuse of the current act by a small number of landlords who skirt rent controls and evict people from their homes if they won’t agree to large rent increases. I look forward to discussing the bill in committee stage and, in particular, exploring the means and ways the tenancy branch will actually be funded and the means and ways that will allow disputes to be dealt with in a timely fashion, and I look forward to listening to others in this second reading debate.

D. Barnett: Housing affordability is an issue that affects all British Columbians, and not just those in highly populated areas. We need to ensure that renters have access to quality housing and that their rights are respected. The same applies to landlords. Bill 16, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act, addresses many of these issues in a balanced and fair approach. It is, after all, government’s duty to ensure that tenants are not at the mercy of predatory landlords.

At the same time, we also wish to ensure that landlords remain incentivized to rent properties. It is our understanding that LandlordBC is in favour of these changes. LandlordBC recognizes that under the existing rules, there is a segment of landlords who are actively abusing the existing rules. The problem is significant, and this legislation is aimed at those landlords who are not following the spirit of current laws and applying higher-than-allowed rent increases.

After careful examination of this bill, my colleagues on this side of the House are satisfied that this legislation will not cause landlords to take rental properties off the markets. That being said, we want to explore any unintended consequences of this bill, which we will be canvassing at the committee stage.

[2:45 p.m.]

We take special note of the fact that the bill also protects landlords who have firm commitments or tenants who are subletting. These are unique situations and, again, make sense to exclude from the legislation.

We do have concerns that the retroactive aspect of the bill does change existing leases, which could cause disruption for many properties around the province.

In addition, the new arbitration powers for security deposits will assist tenants and landlords by clearing wait-lists. This bill also reduces the wait time for security deposits to three weeks, down from six months.

At first glance, this legislation makes a lot of changes that we support. But we must ensure that the consequences are fully vetted before it is put in place.

S. Furstenau: I rise today to speak briefly in support of Bill 16, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act. Today renters are in an incredibly precarious situation, and I can speak personally to the stress of being a renter while also being a student and a single parent.

When I knew that I needed to move from one rental place to another, I found it difficult to focus on my studies or to focus on being a good mother. All of my time and mental energy was focused on trying to find a suitable place for me and my son to live. I experienced this in the 1990s and early 2000s, well before the market escalated to the heights we see today. It’s unimaginable now what people are facing, trying to find affordable, safe, secure places to live, especially if they have a family.

Alongside rising rents and nearly zero percent vacancy levels, some renters have to deal with landlords who use the so-called vacate clause loophole to increase rents well beyond the annual allowable rates. These landlords force tenants to sign a lease with an agreed-upon move-out date, and then make them agree to rent increases that go well beyond the allowable year-over-year increases if they want to stay in their home.

Cracking down on this practice is simply the right thing to do. People deserve to have safe, stable and appropriate accommodation. And with our growing inequality in B.C., more and more people have found themselves in these challenging situations. We need to recognize how difficult life can be for renters in our province.

If you can’t predict where you’re going to live in a few months from now or how you’re going to be able to afford your rent, everything else in your life becomes marginalized. You cannot focus on being a stable parent, advancing your career or doing well in school. And if rent eats up too much of your income, you have trouble finding the necessities for you and your family.

I see this legislation as one piece of the puzzle towards providing greater housing security for renters. I’d like to echo the comments of my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands. Houses in B.C. should be first and foremost for homes, yet we’ve seen a disturbing trend that has allowed more and more houses turned into commodities, which is leaving more and more neighbourhoods hollowed out and more and more unnecessary pressure added to the housing and rental markets.

This bill deals primarily with a symptom of the housing crisis, and I will support it while I wait for government to take comprehensive, targeted action to addresses the drivers of our out-of-control housing market.

S. Cadieux: I, too, am pleased to take my place to speak to Bill 16, the Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act.

I am in general support of the legislation, although I have a few comments related and will take a few moments just to start off with something that may seem a little bit unrelated, but I’ll circle back to why I’m talking about it. That is that of late in the city of Surrey, there’s been quite a controversy brewing over an attempt to enforce bylaws by the city on landlords with illegal suites. For many law-abiding citizens, that would seem to be a good thing.

[2:50 p.m.]

The challenge then comes when in a particular neighbourhood, a particularly densely populated neighbourhood that was actually designed with coach houses and the like, we see not the intended number of families in those single-family homes but, in fact, two and even three families in many of those homes. In many of those townhouses, as well, there are suites. It has led to a large parking problem in this particular neighbourhood.

Now, many of us will know, because we’re legislators and because many of us have come out of the municipal system, that bylaws that are in place in cities around zoning and these sorts of things are generally a complaints-based process. People make complaints about things not being adhered to or done appropriately, and then bylaw enforcement officers go in and see to the issue.

Certainly, in this case, it’s an issue that has been raised over many years but just now has come to sort of the breaking point. What complicates matters is that now we have a situation where there are landlords who have registered illegal suites with the city knowingly — but the city has taken taxes on those illegal suites — and they’re now being told they can’t have those suites and to evict their tenants. That puts in immediate difficulty at least 175 families.

But when you delve further into this, there are actually more than 2,400 illegal suites registered with the city, and those are just the ones they know about, not the ones they don’t. What we also know, at the same time, is that we don’t want, as a city, to see 2,400 families out on the streets in a rental market with less than a 0.4 percent vacancy rate.

I come back to this not because I think the city is not within their rights to enforce bylaws, nor do I think that the landlords are entirely faultless in having illegal suites in their homes, nor do I think the tenants are faultless in not knowing that they were entering into an agreement that may be tenuous.

The reality is that we have a challenge in our rental market. The reality is that — we all know this — we don’t have enough rental units in our marketplace. That has come about over a long period of time for a great many reasons, not the least of which has been that — from the conversations I’ve had with landlords, or past landlords in many cases, over the years — the challenges of being a landlord and the challenges of dealing with tenants aren’t easy ones. It’s not for everyone.

Then we have the challenge of the fact that in the municipalities, we haven’t zoned for rental buildings. We haven’t encouraged the building of rental properties. We haven’t incented that. In fact, through time, I think, through regulation and legislation at the provincial and municipal levels, all involved have made it harder and harder for landlords to be good landlords, for people to invest in property for that purpose. And we have forgotten that, ultimately, the landlord is the owner of the property. The landlord owns the property and should have, with that, rights to do with that property what they wish at a period of time, within reason. We need those rental units, and we need good landlords.

Then we come to the situation that we are faced with today, where we just don’t have enough rental units in the marketplace and we have a percentage of, as colleagues in this House have said, “bad apples” amongst landlords, who have chosen to use a loophole to unfairly raise rents. We are now faced with having to make change to the legislation. I support the change that we’re trying to make. I think many members in this House that have spoken previously have talked about the things we want to ensure we’re not accidentally doing by doing this, to make sure that we’ve thought about all of the consequences of doing this.

The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, just before me, mentioned a number of situations where a fixed-term lease actually is a good option for some landlords in some circumstances. It provides landlords with some certainty. So we want to make sure that what we’re doing with this legislation isn’t inadvertently causing a new problem we’re going to have to solve in six months or a year.

[2:55 p.m.]

Certainly, I, along with others on this side of the House, support the legislation in its intent, given the circumstance we find ourselves in. I think that, given the opportunity for some exceptions to the rule for some reasonable circumstances, that allows for some flexibility here.

I am a little bit concerned about the retrospective clause, not because we don’t want to protect the tenants. We do. But we also don’t want to be creating situations we’re unaware of. So I’m curious to hear a little more about how that’s going to work in situations where we have landlords that have a need to end that lease for a purpose. I’m sure that that’s been thought about, and I’m sure that we’ll get into that detail in committee stage.

I think, as well, it’s great that we seem to have agreement, between the tenants groups and the landlords groups, that this is a good change to make and that it won’t negatively affect the marketplace. We don’t want it to reduce the number of rentals on the market, certainly. So that’s good.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t say…. There are, again, challenges on both sides of this — not to place blame but just to recognize the fact that in every circumstance, there are two parties. While we know there are circumstances where people have taken advantage of their power, or perceived power, in that relationship, we also know there is another individual in that relationship that has willingly signed.

While I understand what we’re trying to do to fix this, I think we need to recognize that part of our challenge, beyond the tight marketplace that we’re working within, is that we need to do a better job of ensuring that both tenants and landlords, when they are new to that relationship, are well informed of their rights and obligations on both sides of that agreement — from a tenant perspective, that they understand what they are signing in their lease or their month-to-month situation or whatever it might be; and that landlords, who propose to provide a space for rent, know what their obligations are to the tenant, as well, in that circumstance, and what they are locking themselves into in terms of their rights and obligations.

I think that that’s really important. The better we have education and understanding on both sides of that arrangement…. We’re going to lead to less situations that end up in dispute at the tenancy branch. I know that this government has added dollars to the budget at the residential tenancy branch to improve the service there. I think that’s a good thing. But I’m hoping that, through that process, we’re going to see the balance of those decisions, and the decisions that come out of there, be more effective, as well, so that both landlords and tenants feel that that’s a resource they can count on.

Again, both landlords and tenants probably could use a little better information when they are starting off in this market. I know young people, especially, willingly enter into agreements without really understanding their full obligations, without understanding the need for renters insurance, for example, and things like that. I think that there might be the opportunity for some additional education programs, whether that be through LandlordBC or Tenant Resource and Advisory or the RTB itself or the provincial government’s website.

[3:00 p.m.]

I think there is an opportunity there, while making these very important changes that we’re looking to make, to protect renters. We also recognize that we don’t want to disincentivize the market and, as such, look to find ways to incentivize the provision of rental housing and encourage people to feel comfortable in becoming landlords. Also, to make sure that through our process and through the government’s move housing strategy, we’re looking not only at social housing and government-purchased-and-run housing but, also, at how we’re going to increase and improve upon the supply of rental housing in the private market.

With that, I will conclude my remarks, provide my general support for the act and look forward to committee stage debate.

Hon. R. Fleming: I’m very pleased to be able to stand and say a few remarks about something that is very, very critically important to my constituents that is contained in this legislation — to close the fixed-term lease loophole. That has been the subject of considerable abuse in a variety of situations that have been to the detriment of tenants in greater Victoria. It has resulted in former tenants being evicted and finding themselves in a situation where they were vulnerable to homelessness and, in fact, finding themselves in situations where they were without a home, living in cars and finding that their health was deteriorating and declining.

This is not a new problem, but it’s one that I’m very, very pleased that, within almost 100 days, our government has sought to fix. The previous government had ample opportunities, even acknowledged that it was an issue, and did not close this loophole.

I’m pleased that our Minister of Housing and others in our government have been able to get support from all of the critical stakeholders in the housing sector, including landlord organizations, to agree that the bill that is before the House this afternoon is absolutely in the public interest — that it is balanced legislation, that it is good for tenants and that it will not impact landlords’ ability to administer their responsibilities under the landlord-tenant act. I think we should all be very pleased that at our first legislative opportunity, a commitment that was made is one that is being delivered on by this government.

The problem, as I mentioned, has been raised for a long time. It was seen as a way to basically do an end run around rent control limits, such as we have them, that capped the amount of annual increases that could be put upon a tenant each year. What it essentially did was give certain landlords…. We’ll call some of these people unscrupulous, because what they did was unscrupulous — evict tenants, kick them to the curb, break their tenancy, bring in a new tenant and jack the rent up.

In this tight rental market…. In my region, the vacancy rate is actually the lowest in Canada, even worse than Vancouver, at 0.4 percent. In greater Victoria, we have seen skyrocketing rents because the controls, as we have them in place through legislation and regulation, were made an ineffective laughingstock through the loophole that the bill this afternoon seeks to close.

Not a difficult solution, either, it must be said. The bill that is before the House is quite simple in terms of how its clauses are laid out. This is a solution that was identified a long time ago and — I think what people will understand — is the missing ingredient to get us to a place where we’re going to have more effective landlord-tenant legislation and protections as they were meant to be for renters. The missing ingredient to getting us to the bill today was the political will to do anything about it.

And 65 percent of people who reside in my constituency are renters. Some of them will wish to be homeowners. Some of them may be landlords someday. But today they’re renters — two-thirds of my constituents in Victoria–Swan Lake.

[3:05 p.m.]

You better believe that this legislation today will positively impact a great many lives and allow people to sleep a little bit better tonight by relieving the anxiety that, at the end of their fixed-term lease, if they’re on one — and a significant number of tenants are — they will have protection as it was meant to be under the Residential Tenancy Act.

Again, I have to applaud the work of the Housing Minister and others in the government who got onto this issue quickly, who listened to stakeholders who had raised these concerns and got nowhere on it with the previous government, and created a path for us to get a broad consensus out there in British Columbia — and that’s hard to get on any issue — on this critical issue. We have representatives from all the sectors within housing agreeing that this is good legislation, that this is constructive change and that it will make the system fairer and better for people.

There are some changes in here around compliance, as well, that I think are commonsense, housekeeping-type amendments — long identified, as well — that will help the residential tenancy branch to enforce compliance against those who would continue to disobey, without effective penalty, judgments that have gone against them.

There are some changes here to streamline the security deposit disputes that clog up the residential tenancy branch that should be much, much simpler and fairer and allow people to get on with their lives once a tenancy is over. To drag these things on for months and months at considerable public cost and personal cost for those who might be involved in a dispute made absolutely no sense.

To have an expedited approach, I think, is a really, really important justice reform within the system around the residential tenancy branch. A million and a half renters will have better protection in our great province when this bill becomes law.

The struggle to be able to find and afford and keep accommodation will be made a little bit easier because of this law. People’s security will be increased now when they sign a rental lease. It will be: what you see is what you get. The law will be consistently applied, and that is critically important.

I think MLAs on all sides of the House understand that part of what our offices do is provide a good deal of education about how landlord-tenancy laws apply in British Columbia, what the rules are. It was very, very difficult — I can speak from experience, having held town hall meetings and working with residents in my community, constituents who were being renovicted — to come in and describe to them how we had this unbalanced disequilibrium of the law being applied to different types of situations and how they may have been induced into signing a tenancy that worked against their interests.

I think now, all of us, every member of this chamber who uses their office resources to educate tenants and landlords about how the law is applied in British Columbia, will have an easier job doing it. There will be more consistency and certainty about how different types of tenancy are applied. So this is good news.

Our government will be moving to work on issues around supply. Low vacancy rates are a critical issue in my area. I am working and meeting with university and college presidents who have innovative ideas about how they can create more student residences, for example, to add to the regional supply.

Those were issues that were, again, brought to the attention of the previous government for ten years. It was even featured in the 2006 throne speech that the previous government was going to work with university leaders to allow post-secondary institutions to borrow to build housing.

This is the safest investment we can make to increase the supply. For ten years, nothing was done about it, even after it was referenced in a throne speech.

[3:10 p.m.]

These are the kinds of things that a new government, a fresh set of eyes and a group of people on this side of the House who actually want to work to make life better for people us going to be able to get around to doing. This is one of the issues that has been long discussed. I note that even the previous Minister Responsible for Housing talked about it year after year after year and did absolutely nothing about it.

How sad that what we are doing today could have been done years ago. People were evicted and thrown out into the streets, including a 71-year-old woman who was thrown out of an apartment block in my riding and lived in a car for nine months. How sad that their rights could have been protected previously, that their health wouldn’t have deteriorated under the uncertainty of not having a roof over their heads. We are going to make life more secure and certain for people like that by passing this legislation.

Again, I applaud and salute the Minister of Housing for leading the effort, for getting so quickly on to this issue. Here we are on day 109, or something like that, of a new government. We’re passing legislation that the other side used to talk about but never did. They paid lip service to it. I hope they’ll be voting for this bill because they once promised people that they would introduce something like it.

It would be great if the 1½ million tenants in British Columbia knew that every MLA in this place believed that strengthening their rights and balancing the Residential Tenancy Act was a good idea. I hope they’ll vote for this bill when it comes time to vote on it.

With that, Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak on behalf of my constituents today in favour of this bill.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the minister to conclude.

Hon. S. Robinson: Before I move second reading of Bill 16, I want to take a few moments to thank all the members in this House who spoke. I want to express appreciation to the members for Vancouver–False Creek, Surrey–Green Timbers, Saanich North and the Islands, North Vancouver–Seymour, Vancouver–West End, Oak Bay–Gordon Head, Cariboo-Chilcotin, Cowichan Valley and Surrey South and the Minister of Education.

On behalf of 1.5 million renters in this province…. I think they’re certainly going to appreciate the sense, which I got from people’s comments in this House, that people are caring about what happens to them and what their future looks like for housing. I do want to mention, very briefly, great appreciation for the member for Vancouver–West End, who has been a tireless advocate around addressing the shortcomings in this act. I really appreciate the work that he’s done to get us here, and it’s just unfortunate that it took so long. I think that’s the saddest part of this.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’d like to move second reading of Bill 16.

[3:15 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Second reading of Bill 16 approved unanimously on a division. [See Votes and Proceedings.]

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

Bill 16, Tenancy Statutes 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. M. Farnworth: I call continued second reading on Bill 6, Electoral Reform Referendum Act.

BILL 6 — ELECTORAL REFORM
REFERENDUM 2018 ACT

(continued)

S. Cadieux: Yesterday afternoon I was discussing the experiences of my family in the Netherlands as they relate to proportional representation. I might come back to that in a bit, but I’ll get back on track with the content of the bill.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

In fact, what’s proposed in this bill is a referendum on our system of democracy with the lowest possible threshold, a bare majority of the returned ballots of just 50 percent plus one. Now, that’s not sufficient in the government’s or the members’ minds in terms of a person to represent a riding, but in their mind, it’s enough to change our entire system of voting, and that, to me, is beyond hypocritical.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

There is no requirement for proportional representation in the vote in the sense that there’s no requirement for regional representation or a minimum voter turnout for this referendum to pass. That means that a very small portion of our population, both in terms of numbers and in terms of regional concentration, has the potential to decide the future of our democratic system for the whole province.

That bothers me. What we saw in the last election was certainly, or at least appears to be, quite a rural and urban divide. Now, our party did return seats from both rural and urban ridings, and the NDP did manage to retain a couple of seats way out in the nether regions. But the majority of the rural seats in this province are represented on this side of the House.

That suggests to me.... Much as the members opposite like to point out that we lost seats in the urban areas, the reality is that there’s a big divide in the people and the values and the understanding of what makes British Columbia go — what makes our province work and what it’s like to live in those different parts of the province and what’s important in those different parts of the province. Now we’re looking to change that whole system by allowing a group of people — likely primarily located in the Lower Mainland, if we look at it by population — to decide how we’re going to elect our future governments.

In spite of two previous referendums on the issue where voters rejected electoral reform and where the support for reform actually declined from 2005 to 2009, when those two referendums were held…. If British Columbia doesn’t succeed in passing a referendum with appropriate criteria or checks and balances in place, the answer isn’t simply to remove the barriers.

[3:25 p.m.]

There should be a referendum on a fundamentally important issue like this. There’s no argument, but there should also be criteria on a referendum that is this fundamental to our democracy. Such criteria already exist in the Referendum Act. But that has been ignored, shoved aside by a government with a clear preference, a stated preference by both the government and their coalition partner. And that government doesn’t have a clear mandate from the people on this. They promised one thing, and they’re proposing something quite different.

A referendum is supposed to be used to get a clearer understanding of voter wishes on a serious issue, the kind of understanding that isn’t always possible in a representative democracy. On important issues, when we use a direct vote like a referendum, we should be treating this exercise as a gauge of where British Columbians’ opinions lie. In our democracy, we shouldn’t be trying to rig the results of that referendum or any other vote like it.

All of these factors taken together suggest to me that this referendum is no more than a public approval exercise, one which would provide the governing coalition with the licence to carry out their predetermined plans to reform our electoral system — essentially, to give them a mandate.

Again, those same two parties think that 50 percent plus one of the returned ballots is enough for a mandate and a change to our electoral system but not enough riding-by-riding to select the representatives for this House. As reporter Mike Smyth of the Vancouver Province summarized: “It appears the deck is being stacked for this referendum to succeed.” I agree and fear very much that it’s true.

Contrast this process with the way that the previous referendums in this province have played out. As members of this House know, as I briefly mentioned before, B.C. has held two referendums on this issue in recent years, in 2005 and in 2009. These previous referendums were shaped by an independent and non-partisan Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. That assembly was made up of 161 members from throughout the province, including one man and one woman from each of B.C.’s electoral districts at the time, two First Nations representatives and a chair.

As I said previously, it was really this assembly composed of members of the public that guided our previous exploration of electoral reform. For three months, the assembly was responsible for learning in detail about a variety of electoral options. They then held hearings across the province, consulting members of the broader public and ensuring an even larger segment of the population had the chance to have their say on this important topic.

Following this education and consultation, the assembly deliberated and ultimately recommended an alternative electoral option for British Columbians to consider, which ended up being a single transferable vote system termed BCSTV. This alternative system was put to the province in a referendum, initially in 2005, but when the results of the referendum were close, another referendum was held in 2009.

The contrast between the process that shaped the two previous referendums and the process that this bill proposes for a third is stark. There’s no doubt that the process that went into shaping the referendums was extensive and, I’d argue, very appropriate when we’re looking at a change that is this big.

Electoral reform wouldn’t just change the process of how British Columbians vote, though this may be the most obvious impact of the change. Indeed, it would be one of the effects British Columbians could expect to see. But changing our electoral system to a form of proportional representation would have impacts that reach far beyond election day and that, ultimately, would fundamentally alter the way we do government here in British Columbia.

By increasing the geographical area that elected officials represent, proportional representation systems mean voters have less of a link with their elected representative. It gives them less of a connection to their representative, and it makes it harder to hold those representatives accountable.

[3:30 p.m.]

Under proportional representation, we also see in systems around the world a rise of minority and coalition governments. We only need to look at the current government to recognize the instability of this prospective situation. While our current first-past-the-post system tends to produce majority governments and elections with clear results, under proportional representation, coalition governments would likely be the norm, and election results would become much less clear.

Rather than one party receiving an election night victory or defeat and British Columbians knowing immediately which party will form government and what they can expect, given the platforms and the commitments made by those parties during the election, under proportional representation, the post-election period would instead be characterized by political wrangling, as parties negotiate with each other, trying to secure alliances that would allow them to be the group that forms government.

This period of negotiation leads to parties trading platform promises for the sake of these alliances, meaning that British Columbians would really have no idea what to expect from the members who eventually form government.

That’s exactly what we’re seeing now, where promises are “irrelevant” and where taxpayer-funded secretariats that are supposed to negotiate between two parties and mediate between these two parties, where two parties that have the secretariat seem to be completely surprised by each other on a regular basis in this House. Ultimately, this makes government less accountable to British Columbians, and no longer would British Columbians have a clear idea of who or what they’re voting for.

Right now, when you vote, you make a choice between a platform and commitments by one or another party. Then, during the course of that government’s time, if the government doesn’t produce the results or meet the expectations by the next time, as we have seen, voters make their voices heard again. But, rather, instead, we would see that, after an election and after British Columbians had cast their votes, governments would then decide what their platforms are going to be and what they’re actually going to move forward on.

We’ve seen examples of trading campaign promises with the current alliance. Despite the NDP’s campaigning heavily on $10-a-day child care and a $400 renters rebate, we’ve heard from the government’s Green partner that he won’t support either policy, and therefore, by extension, British Columbians shouldn’t expect to see them, campaign commitments aside.

This is one example of the confusion and broken promises that can result when parties are, first and foremost, beholden to other parties rather than accountable to the electorate, as should be the case in a democracy.

The unstable government that we have here in British Columbia today is dependent only on two parties. Under proportional representation, we could see our party system fracture, as small, extreme minority parties emerge, as we’re seeing in other parts of the world, as my relatives in the Netherlands are seeing in their government.

These are parties that would not currently be able to gain seats under the first-past-the-post system. Sometimes that’s for good reason. Not that those individuals and people with extreme views don’t have the right to hold those in British Columbia and in Canada and in our democracy, but because they are minority views, they are not represented here in the House.

First-past-the-post ensures that any parties that form government have a wide base of support. Parties like the ones that make up the House here in British Columbia today have appeal to a large range of British Columbians. But under proportional representation, fringe parties that appeal to only a very small segment of the population, those on the very far left or parties with a singular-issue focus, do have the potential to gain seats in this House.

Alarmingly, because of the need for political wrangling to form a government in a minority situation, these parties would have the potential to gain disproportionate influence over government policy and direction. They effectively end up holding larger parties hostage to their niche interests and shut out the ideas that have wider support. Ultimately, coalition governments are inherently less stable.

[3:35 p.m.]

All of these political negotiations bring about risk of legislative gridlock or political inconsistency. We’ve seen fractures in the two-party alliance we have now. We have a disagreement over ride-sharing, for example, and the back-and-forth that that issue has caused. While the instability we see here is far from ideal, the reality is that under proportional representation, we can only expect the situation to worsen.

Thankfully, the alliance that governs today came about under first-past-the-post. We have a solid party system, and the parties represented still have to appeal to a broad range of British Columbians, by design. But we only have to look to other jurisdictions where we see coalitions taken to the extreme. For example, Belgium went nearly 600 days without an elected government, after a general election returned 11 parties to their Chamber of Representatives.

Here, we heard concern from, primarily, the opposition at the time, now the government, about the fact that during the interregnum period, the period just after the election, when there was some uncertainty about the future of the government — concern over the fact that decisions weren’t being made, things were being stalled, and we were in caretaker mode for too long. It was just over a month. Can you imagine 600 days of caretaker mode? This meant delaying crucial decisions on major issues.

When government was formed here, at the end of June or into July, it was a coalition between two parties and it took a relatively short period of time for that to happen. But when government was formed after 600 days with 11 parties returned to the Chamber of Representatives in Belgium, it took a coalition of six parties to form government, and it only held together for two years because those relationships, those give-and-takes on issues where parties were too far apart in their views, eventually fractured the government.

In Spain, when no party or parties could decide on who should form government after a general election, the country held another general election just six months after the last. Their second election also failed to produce a clear winner, and the country ended up going nearly a year without government until a new one could finally be negotiated.

Then there’s Italy. Italy has had two different proportional representation systems since 1993. The country has had 65 governments in 70 years, with an average length of 21 months. And it has had as many Prime Ministers since World War II as Canada has had in our entire history. I find that particularly difficult to imagine, because for the last five years, as I held the post of the Minister of Children and Family Development in the previous government, I heard about how that was the post that couldn’t hold a minister. I reached the point of being the longest-serving minister in that file at two years and ten months.

The greatest criticism about the fact that there was a regular turnover of ministers in that file was that there was no consistency; no ability to get things done; no proactive, forward thinking as a result. Now, I lasted five years, so there was some continuity and we were able to get some things done. I think that was of value, but that is the same on the larger scale of government. Changing governments every year would allow nothing to be done.

In Italy today, there are 28 elected parties forming six separate alliances. And looking around to other jurisdictions, we’ve been seeing the examples of small fringe parties making up part of those governing coalitions, like the anti-LGBTQ Christian Union party in the current Netherlands Parliament. I don’t ever want to see a party with those views represented in our Legislature. It wouldn’t be right. We’ve come too far as a society to allow those minorities’ views to influence policy.

[3:40 p.m.]

Shifting our first-past-the-post system, which is by no means perfect, to proportional representation isn’t without consequences, and it’s not something to be taken lightly. It’s not without risks, and we need to consider those. The public needs to be able to consider those. It’s, ultimately, not up to us as elected representatives to be setting the terms for how we get elected. On significant issues like this, it’s important to go back to our constituents and make sure that everyone has the opportunity to have their say.

But when we do this, it’s incumbent upon us to be genuine about the effort and not presuppose the outcome. That doesn’t mean engineering a referendum without any meaningful consideration in order to simply rubber-stamp a seal of approval on a political bargain. When we go back to the public with a proposal, we need to acknowledge the issue’s inherent significance and the differences that are at stake and treat the issue with the respect it deserves. A change of this magnitude should not be this easy for a government to make.

Hon. J. Sims: It’s my pleasure today to rise and speak on Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act.

As you know, Madame Speaker, proportional representation refers to any method of voting that produces a result in which a political party’s share of the seats in the Legislature represents its share of the popular vote. We all know, and I think everyone of us in this room values, our parliamentary democracy.

Ever since we’ve had a parliamentary democracy here in British Columbia, we’ve had the first-past-the-post system. That system is the one that is most widely used right across this country. But what that system does is it leaves a significant part of our population feeling that their vote does not count. What proportional representation does is take every vote that is cast into consideration, because it’s that vote that is going to determine the makeup of this House.

This piece of legislation does not take away political parties — any of the current ones or any new ones that may want to form — nor does it take away anybody’s right to vote. Nor does this legislation unilaterally give the government the right to impose a form of proportional representation.

I was pleased to hear my colleague across the way from Surrey mention that people should be consulted if we’re going to be changing the way they elect their legislators. That’s exactly what is going to be happening. We are going to make sure that as a result of this legislation, there is a debate, a public debate in community after community across this country, as they examine our parliamentary democracy, examine how we vote and look for structures that will give us our proportional representation.

As a result of this consultation, the vote may come in as leave it as it is. Who knows what it’s going to be? I’m certainly not going to prejudge what the referendum is going to be doing. But what the referendum does is it puts into place a discussion for people to have with what we have currently and also to discuss what the options are with proportional representation.

[3:45 p.m.]

I am hoping that colleagues across both sides of the House will engage in this public debate. I think that nothing is as important to the survival of our democracy than for us to reflect on what we have. If there are going to be changes, those changes are to be made after a thorough consultation with the public. This is a referendum.

This is a referendum where people are going to get to vote after they receive the information. My colleagues across the way will be free to provide the information that they want to provide in their ridings. People on this side will be providing information. The government will be putting out information that is balanced for both sides, because our job is to make sure that British Columbians make an informed decision. As a teacher, I realize the value of informed decisions.

We are talking about a fundamental change to the way people who sit in this House are going to be elected. We think that it’s an important conversation that British Columbians need to be engaged in. That is why this is not legislation to bring in proportional representation. I think we all need to understand: this is legislation to have a referendum on electoral reform, and after public education, public information is provided.

This will be a provincewide referendum. We want to make it easy for people to participate in this, to take away the barriers that sometimes exist. It’s going to be a mail-in ballot. It’s going to be a mail-in ballot so that every British Columbian who wants to participate can.

We need to know, as much as there are a lot of people who are scared of this debate, that we shouldn’t be scared of this debate. Proportional representation exists very effectively and is serving the populations well in other countries. And just as in some countries — and I won’t have to go too far — or provinces, where first-past-the-post doesn’t always get you the results that people want, in the same way, through proportional representation, what’s going to happen is that people with different points of view will actually have to work together.

You know, I am not scared of having that debate or debating differences, different perspectives, and then making a decision that’s best for British Columbians. When we’re elected, no matter which political party platform we run on, once we are elected we are here to serve British Columbians. We have to rise and always make decisions that are good for British Columbians right across this province, as well as representing those who live in our riding.

I think that we should not be scared of working together across party lines. We should not be scared of collaboration. Collaboration works really well. Also, when people with different perspectives actually sit down at a table or in a House, like this, and actually debate the issues on their merits, some amazing things can happen. I’m actually looking forward to that. I think that as legislators…. Certainly I, myself, am really welcoming an opportunity to debate this, to debate the whole issue of how we elect our representatives.

Sometimes when you have a very large majority, you can see happen — and I’ve seen it happen in many jurisdictions — where the majority forgets that they are there to govern everybody, where they have their favourites and where they then become so out of touch. In many ways, proportional representation, when people are working together as a team, what it forces people to do is make decisions that are good, that are debated, where people are not scared of taking different perspectives and defending them.

[3:50 p.m.]

Sometimes I have found that as a teacher, often I had one perspective, but sitting at a table with my students, they were easily able to change my perspective because of their passion, their intelligence and thinking things through, and maybe with a lens that I hadn’t looked at.

In the same way, I’ve sat with many members in this Legislature in a different room. They’re able to say to me: “Jinny, that’s your perspective. But you know what? Here is a different perspective.” Every one of us should welcome those different perspectives and look at decision-making with a different lens. When we are using those different lenses, I think it only benefits British Columbians.

It’s not rocket science that working together is far preferable to working alone. Decisions made in collaboration — where we hear the challenges and different perspectives, and we end up at a decision that is a win-win for everyone — are a good thing.

I had the pleasure of talking to colleagues from other countries, while I was a Member of Parliament, who’ve got proportional representation. They will say: “Sometimes it may take an extra hour or two to make a decision, but the decision we make at the end is truly worth taking that extra time on. And that is okay.”

During that referendum period, what we want to ensure is an active, healthy debate and a discussion on which voting system or systems of proportional representation should be on the ballot. We need to have that healthy debate.

I’ve been hearing about proportional representation, as have members on the other side of the House, for a long, long time. I know that British Columbians are ready for this debate. They want to have this debate. This referendum is there. I would encourage my colleagues. Don’t look at collaboration and working together with people who might have a slightly different perspective than you from the lens of fear. Let’s look at it from the lens of opportunity, and let us see the decision British Columbians will make.

It’s 50 percent plus one. A 50-percent-plus-one vote is what it’s going to take. I’ve heard some criticism. Why 50 percent plus one? Well, that’s a majority. After you get beyond 50 percent plus one, then you’re looking at making value judgments on whether it should be 55, 65, 70 or 85. For me, the simpler is 50 percent plus one, and I’m really, really pleased to see that.

I’m also pleased that it will be the province’s Chief Electoral Officer who’ll be overseeing this process to make sure that people are getting the information they need. We will all, I know — all of us on both sides of the House — make sure that we have a healthy debate, an open debate, and be open to hear different perspectives.

In my constituency of Surrey-Panorama, I’m not going to prejudge. I’m not going to prejudge the debate that we will be having there. As a matter of fact, I look forward to engaging with those who live in my riding and those who live across B.C. in a debate so that we do end up at this place where it is truly British Columbians who will decide whether we want to move towards proportional representation or not.

[3:55 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Prince George–Mackenzie. [Applause.]

M. Morris: Thank you to my colleagues for that resounding applause.

This has been very topical up in my area and right across the province, as it should be. It’s part of the foundation of our system here in British Columbia and across Canada. No changes should be made to such a fundamental part without a lot of input and a lot of discussion.

We’re one of the few communities that has a daily newspaper here in Prince George, the Prince George Citizen. There’s a well-revered professor from UNBC who provides a weekly article in there. The article is called “As I See It.” Over the last 20-odd years that I’ve been back to Prince George, he’s been quite prolific in his articles. This individual has, I think, been an NDP supporter in the past, but over the years, especially in the last two or three years, I think he has been coming over to my way of thinking. I’m certainly encouraging him to come on over to the right side.

The reason I bring that up is…. He has written a couple of articles in the last couple of weeks here. The last column that I read that he had in there was titled “Proportional Representation Not the Answer for B.C.” He goes into quite a bit of detail in the article on that. I certainly respect the view that he had, and a lot of people in Prince George and the surrounding area respect the view that he’s got on that.

I have to bring up the title of the article that he wrote in the week before that. It was called “Electoral Reform Promise Best Left Unfulfilled.” He went into a little bit of depth about his views on proportional representation and electoral reform. Again, I welcome him over to our party, if he ever decides to take that leap.

What caught my attention in the paper this last week, when I was home, was the letter to the editor from another individual that I’ve noted over the years. I think he’s been a supporter of the NDP, and he’s come out with a lot of letters over the years to the editor. Quite well thought out. He’s very articulate. He puts up a great argument in most of his letters.

I’m just going to quote a small part out of that letter. It says — and he’s referring to proportional representation: “As this rises to a fevered pitch despite” the Prime Minister “and, here in B.C….” He names them, but I’ll call them the leaders of the Green and NDP parties. “I have been pondering what is so very wrong with a system we’ve had since Confederation, one outcome of which is a country whose citizens love to think theirs is the best in the world.”

I have to emphasize that. I think he’s got it right. We do have one of the best countries in the world, and we’ve got a system that we’ve had in place, with a couple of attempts to change it over the years, since Confederation. Here in B.C., of course, we saw an iteration of a different system back in 1952-1953, but we reverted back to first-past-the-post shortly after that. Then again, we saw some others take place which I’ll comment on later on.

I was listening over the last number of weeks, since this government took office, to some of the comments that were made during the interregnum period from various members in government and from the Green Party. There was a lot of criticism about the B.C. Liberals clinging to power. I wonder…. You know, the criticism that they have….

They felt that, you know, here we are. The B.C. Liberals won the plurality of votes. We won the election, and convention states that the party that wins the election makes government. So we had a duty to fulfil, under convention, to follow convention and form government. If the people, the other elected members of this House, felt that we didn’t have the strength to maintain that government, then it was up to them to enter a vote of non-confidence in the peoples’ House.

[4:00 p.m.]

It wasn’t left up to a backroom deal or some agreement that the Greens made with the NDP sitting in the back of a room someplace saying: “Hey, guess what. The two of us can get together here, and we can form government ourselves. So you guys get out of there, and we’re going to go and sit in those seats.” We had to go through that process. We went through that process. There was a vote of non-confidence. Everybody expected that that was going to happen. We followed convention, and here we sit.

The genesis of the bill we have before us right now seems to have originated by the Green Party’s thirst for more power and the NDP’s desperate attempt to become government at any cost. They’re relying on legislating their way into the pockets of British Columbia through this bill and others that have been introduced in the House this session, financing their parties through taxpayers rather than convincing their voters that their policies and vision warrant sufficient enough support from them to form government properly.

I’m going to quote something here, another quote. I’ve got a few quotes in this. I’ve looked into a bunch of different areas here.

“The weight of evidence from both established and new democracies suggests that longer-term democratic consolidation — that is, the extent to which a democratic regime is insulated from domestic challenges to the stability of the political order — requires the growth and maintenance of strong and effective political parties, and thus, the electoral system should encourage this, rather than promote party fragmentation.

“To do this, electoral systems can be framed specifically to exclude parties with a small or minimal level of support.”

This quote is from ACE, which is the Administration and Cost of Elections. It was established back in 1996. It’s since been changed, since 2006, to ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. It’s interesting. The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network — I just quoted one of their quotes — has got quite a document there that I’ve gone through.

I’m just going to name the members of this association of ACE: Elections Canada; the Carter Center, from the United States, with the ex-president Jimmy Carter and his wife and a bunch of other very well-qualified individuals; the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division; the United Nations Development Programme; the International Foundation for Electoral Systems; the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance; and the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa.

There’s a bunch of very learned people in ACE that have collaborated together to come up with advice to help assist countries, evolving countries, around the world — to help them choose democratic systems or electoral systems suitable for the environment they’re in or to help them change the system to assist in moving their countries forward. They’re well-referenced. They’ve done a lot of work around the world.

The experts also say….When I refer to the experts, I refer to the experts that were instrumental in collaborating and putting this text together. It’s quite a document. I think if you query aceproject.org, you should be able to find it in there. They say that the choice of an electoral system is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy. I have to agree with that. It’s one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy wherever you might be in the world.

Let’s have a look at that. They say the choice of an electoral system is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy, but here we have this government that is rushing this legislation through without any public consultation. Yet they’re consulting on ride-sharing. They’re consulting on Site C. They’re consulting on the Massey Tunnel. They’re consulting on the foreign buyers tax. They’re consulting on ICBC.

[4:05 p.m.]

They’re consulting on aquaculture policy and licensing, money laundering, marijuana, Human Rights Commission, minimum wage, ride-sharing and who knows what else is going to take place. Not on constitutional reform or electoral reform, which the experts say is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy. I find that profound.

The international experts also say that the decisions to change an electoral system are often affected by one of two circumstances. The first one is that the “political actors lack basic knowledge and information.” I don’t think that’s the case here. The second one is: “Conversely, political actors use their knowledge of electoral systems to promote designs which they think will work to their own partisan advantage.” These are from the experts.

They say that the decisions to change an electoral system are often affected by one of two circumstances. So political actors use their knowledge of electoral systems to promote designs which they think will work to their own partisan advantage. I think that’s the case we have here. Let’s look at that.

The NDP has not had the opportunity to win an election since 2001 —16 years. We hear that all the time. They had to sit over on this side of the opposition, or as opposition members, for 16 years. That would be frustrating — 16 years in opposition would be extremely frustrating. The only way they’ve been able to form government was to make a backroom deal with the Green Party. They haven’t been able to convince enough British Columbians that they have the policies, that they have the platform worthy of enough votes for them to form government on their own.

The NDP were willing to do anything to form government. With the chokehold that the Greens had on the NDP, we see the introduction of Bill 5, to reduce the number of members needed to form an official party status from four to two. Hmmm. They also moved the election date to 2021. They’re trying to legislate themselves into a position, along with the electoral reform, so they will have a chance of holding onto government.

How about Bill 3, the Election Amendment Act, where they’re placing the burden of party financial support on the B.C. taxpayers? They had a significant amount of debt. The cost of running a campaign is high. The cost of financing a political party is pretty high. There are a lot of activities going on out there.

I refer to my own self. Before I became a politician, I was involved with the riding association. I had no idea what the division was between the responsibility for the riding association and government. I was like most of the public out there, thinking that everywhere I saw my MLA, it was supported by government, when, in fact, the party is supporting the MLA in getting out in the public and doing a lot of things necessary to inform — the riding association — the constituents about what’s going on in the riding. It takes money.

Of course, we’ve gone through some changes here to get corporate donations out, and the big money that has been paid into the NDP by the unions. I know the Greens have also received some fairly significant corporate donations as well. That’s limited, but they’re now realizing they can’t function on their own, and they won’t be able get their message out unless they’ve got some more money in the coffers, so they’re relying on B.C. taxpayers to help fund that, to the tune of $26 million.

I go back to the ACE report I was referencing earlier. I’m going to quote another paragraph out of that report. “The background to a choice of electoral systems can thus be as important as the choice itself. Electoral system choice is a fundamentally political process rather than a question to which independent technical experts can produce a single correct answer. In fact, the consideration of political advantage is almost a factor in the choice of electoral systems. Sometimes it is the only consideration.”

[4:10 p.m.]

Let me repeat that. “The consideration of political advantage is almost always a factor in the choice of electoral systems. Sometimes it is the only consideration.” I think that’s the case here.

I’ve heard individuals throughout the community, throughout the province reference this current government as illegitimate, clinging to power by virtue of some backroom coalition between the Green Party and the NDP. If they really think they’ve got the support of the people, then call an election and get the majority vote.

I’ve also referenced some other sources when I was doing my research into this. I looked at the Broadbent foundation, which the members opposite are probably aware of. On the Broadbent website I had a look at, I found somewhere in there the figure that 38 percent of the world electoral systems use proportional representation — only 38 percent. So the majority of the systems are using first-past-the-post.

There was an Abacus Data poll in there that was done in December of 2015 for the Broadbent Institute. I just want to go over some of the results that I found in that poll, that study. There were a series of questions in there. They had to rate whether it was…. There were a number of things that they wanted to find — you know, what ranked as important for them in an electoral system.

The one that came out first and foremost was that the ballot had to be simple and easy to understand. Fifty-five percent of the respondents said that that is the most important thing in an electoral system, in the voting system — to have a ballot that’s simple and easy to understand.

I’ve looked at a lot of different ballots during my research for this. Over the last few years, I’ve seen a few of them on proportional representation ballots and STV ballots. They’re complicated. Some of them are so complex that if I had to vote on one of them, I wouldn’t know where to put my X.

The second-most important thing that they were looking at is that the system produces stable and strong governments; 51 percent of the people said that’s important. It also said that the system allows you to directly elect MPs who represent your community; 46 percent of the respondents said that’s important. This was third on the list of the most important things. The system ensures that government has MPs from each region of the country; 43 percent felt that was important.

Proportional representation wasn’t in the top priorities for people in that Abacus Data report. It was way down there. I think you were getting into 28 percent of people who were supporting that kind of an initiative.

The Abacus report. I’ve got it here, and I’m just going to reference one of the questions they had in there — preference for a voting system. They had descriptions of our current voting system and three possible alternatives, and they wanted to rank them in order, from one to four, of what your most important ones were. This was right across Canada.

Mixed-member proportional came out fairly high. On the preference for a voting system, the current first-past-the-post system that we have right now — 43 percent of the respondents said they’d like to keep that one, and 24 percent of them said that was their second choice. So in all, 67 percent of the polling results from across Canada said: “We’re going to stick with the same system here.” The 67 percent said: “We like the first-past-the-post system that we have.” This was done in December of 2015. I’m sure this is one that maybe the federal government relied on to maybe change their mind about going in that particular direction.

[4:15 p.m.]

There’s another poll that I looked at here from a well-known polling company in the country. It looked at British Columbia here. They asked a question about whether individuals supported either the existing first-past-the post system or proportional representation. Their question was this: “Based on what you know, please indicate which of these two options you prefer.”

Well, I’m not an electoral reform specialist. I’m just an ordinary British Columbian, lived in this great country all my life. I’ve voted in every single election since I was old enough to vote. I’m engaged as a politician now, and I do the best that I can to represent my riding. But try as hard as I can to fully grasp the meaning of what proportional representation is all about, I struggle. You know, what’s transferrable votes all about?

Whatever the question is going to be that is going to show up in the referendum, or the number of questions on there, I still think this is probably one of the most complex issues that a lot of the voters are going to be facing in this country. And the experts have already said, keep it simple.

The poll that I was looking at asked the question: “Based on what you know, please indicate which of these two options you prefer.” The majority of the people came out in favour of proportional representation. I guess I equate it to the grass is always greener on the other side. If you don’t get what you want — and there is this utopic view of the world out there — maybe this other system will help you get what you want. Until you get into it and then you realize: “Oh, my goodness. I had it better in the old system.”

“Based on what you know, please indicate which of these two options you prefer.” People are very well aware of the current system that we have, the first-past-the-post. Particularly in the…. It shows the age group here. There’s an age group here. Where the people that were 35 to 54 — it was pretty neck and neck with whether they’d vote for one system or the other. Those are the ones that are most familiar with the system.

The young people, the younger ones, 18 to 34 — 78 percent of them said: “I want to go for this proportional representation thing. I don’t understand that system to the point where I can adequately make a statement and say I’m going to go for one or the other.” I don’t know how somebody who is not familiar with the system can make that declaration.

I heard the member from Nanaimo, it was, I believe. I was watching him on the screen here yesterday. He was saying that if you can’t explain proportional representation to your grandmother in a minute and a half, then you’re not going to be able to explain it to the public. I’m paraphrasing. It was something like that. And I’m thinking: “Wow, that’s amazing.”

I’m really waiting for somebody that can explain proportional representation or some of these other electoral issues in a minute and a half where I can fully understand and comprehend what’s going on. Maybe I’m not as bright as I thought I was, and, you know, maybe I’m just kind of missing the boat here, but I think a lot of the people that are voting in British Columbia are in the same position. We don’t understand that system.

So this is being thrust upon us to make a decision. The legislation will most likely go through because the Greens and the NDP have this coalition, and they’re going to support each other, because at the end of the day, this benefits them more than it benefits anybody else in the province, including the people.

I’m going to go back again to ACE, another quote from ACE. It says: “Most experts also agree that the electoral system should encourage the development of parties which are based upon broad political values and ideologies as well as specific policy programmes, rather than narrow ethnic, racial or regional concerns.” In this case, I want to emphasize regional. The NDP have basically regionalized in urban B.C. The Greens are regionalized on southern Vancouver Island.

[4:20 p.m.]

They’ve got a very narrow focus on British Columbia. There was a map that was circulated. I think it even hit some of the media outlets. It showed beautiful British Columbia, and it showed where this 50 percent plus one of the population resides — in this little tiny dot in the bottom left-hand corner of British Columbia, Metro Vancouver. That’s a scary thought. We have to watch that.

The experts also talk about the criteria for design. When you’re going to sit down and design a new electoral system, they ask: “Who designs the system? Who puts the ideal of electoral systems change onto the political agenda? Who has the responsibility for drawing up proposed new or amended systems and through what kind of a process?” Those are very fundamental questions in how we’re going to design this.

What are the mechanisms built in the political and legal framework for reform and amendment? A lot of countries don’t have…. They’re starting from scratch. They’ve got a very archaic system in place. Ours is relatively new. We’ve only been around for just over a 100 years or so.

What process of discussion and dialogue is necessary to ensure that a proposed new or amended system is accepted as legitimate? I go back to 2004. My colleague who spoke just before me talked about the B.C. citizens’ assembly on electoral systems and the referendums that we had back in 2005 and 2009.

That was purposely put in place so that these people would…. They were given training. They were given all the information they needed so they could go out and canvass British Columbians as to what their thoughts and ideas were on what a new electoral system should look like. It was comprised of a broad section of people from ethnic origins, backgrounds — male, female. It was a broad cross-section of people representing British Columbians.

They came up with a view of what the system should look like. The maps were produced to show people what the new electoral boundaries would look like, who it would be including. People voted on it in 2005. People voted on it in 2009. And they lost the referendum. It didn’t pass.

The threshold at that time was a little bit higher. It was 60 percent. But it was designed from the ground up. It wasn’t legislated. They were given a task to do by the Premier. They went out and did their task, and the referendum was held, and it failed to gain the support of the people in British Columbia. In fact, the one in 2009 got less votes than the one from 2005, so that sends a message.

When we look at that and we look at the fact that the Broadbent Institute had that report done by Abacus Data in 2015…. They’re Canada-wide. I’m sure the federal Liberals looked at that and said: “Oh, we better not go in that direction,” so they’re not going to have a look at electoral reform.

But here we have recent data. We’ve had two referendums in B.C. in the last dozen years that never passed muster on that. Yet this government is insisting on changing a system so that it fits their criteria. They can’t garner enough votes out there from the people to win a majority on their own, so they’re scrambling together every little piece that they can. They’re going to try to change the rules to suit them so that they can win an election coming up.

We’ll have a whole pile of confused voters out there. Many of them will be just like me. They won’t understand what a proportional representation system looks like. So they’ll think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

This will be the last quote from ACE. The international experts also say: “The details of the electoral system are still more often to be found in regular law” — which they are — “and thus can be changed by a simple majority in the Legislature. This may have the advantage of making the system more responsive….” I won’t continue on, but you can find the thing on line and read it for yourself.

[4:25 p.m.]

T. Redies: It’s my privilege to rise today to speak on Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act. As we know, this bill puts forward a proposal for another referendum on our electoral system, exploring whether there is public support for moving from our current single-member-plurality system — or what is commonly referred to as the first-past-the-post — to a system of proportional representation.

There are many types of proportional representation. This term represents a category of electoral systems rather than actually a system itself. As members of this House are now well aware, British Columbia has already had two referendums on electoral reform, one in 2005 and one in 2009. In these referendums, British Columbians had the choice between adopting a type of single transferable vote system, termed the BCSTV, or maintaining our current first-past-the-post system.

In each case, the yes vote, the votes in favour of reform, failed to meet at least one of the two required thresholds. While in the first referendum the yes vote passed one threshold, the requirement that BCSTV had to receive a simple majority in 60 percent of the province’s ridings — that’s at least half the votes in 60 percent of our province’s ridings — it fell short of meeting the required 60 percent overall provincial threshold.

However, because the vote was close, our province repeated the referendum on the issue in 2009. But as some of my colleagues have already said, in 2009, support for reform actually declined. Not only did the yes vote fail to meet the 60 percent provincewide threshold, with those who favoured first-past-the-post roundly outnumbering those who favoured STV this time around, BCSTV only received majority support in eight of the province’s then 85 electoral districts.

If this House passes the bill we’re discussing today, which we know is supported by the NDP government and our Green colleagues, British Columbians will vote on electoral reform for the third time in just a decade, with a vote taking place no later than November 30, 2018. And contrary to the previous referendums, which coincided with general provincial elections, allowing voters to weigh in on the referendum at the same time as they cast their ballot for their MLA, this bill proposes holding the referendum by mail-in ballot.

Also contrary to previous referendums, this bill allows for more than one alternative system to be considered at the ballot. Now, I have a couple of concerns about this. First, fully learning about the mechanisms and implications of different electoral systems is no small task, even for those of us who are involved in government and who follow politics closely. As my learned colleague from West Vancouver–Capilano said, he has two degrees from Harvard and he still doesn’t understand it.

Electoral systems can be complex, and this is especially true for proportional representation systems, which tend to be much less straightforward to administer than first-past-the-post. There are many variations and modifications that can be applied to proportional representation systems. For instance, the BCSTV was a variation of the single transferable vote system adapted to fit B.C.’s context.

Now, the complexity of the electoral systems was recognized in the 2009 BCSTV referendum, where the B.C. government provided funding to registered groups to carry out public information campaigns on both sides of the issue.

To really understand an electoral system change, it takes a lot of education and effort, and for each additional electoral system on the ballot, the amount of effort that voters must put in to understand the referendum increases exponentially, making it more and more difficult for voters to participate in this process in an informed way. So if we are asking British Columbians to decide B.C.’s political future, as we should do, we need to make sure we’re designing a process that is accessible to them and encourages them to get involved.

The second issue I have with this approach is that by presenting multiple proportional representation systems as options, first-past-the-post is outnumbered and therefore at a distinct disadvantage right from the start.

[4:30 p.m.]

The government can opt to use a ranked ballot in this referendum, which is where the disadvantage really becomes clear. If voters are able to rank electoral options, and these electoral options include first-past-the-post as one option and more than one system of proportional representation as the other options, our current system is simply outnumbered.

The mathematical reality is that unless first-past-the-post receives a majority on the first ballot, not just a plurality but a majority, the votes in favour of proportional representation would likely outnumber first-past-the-post, simply because there are more proportional representation options on the ballot.

Now, when conducting a referendum, I don’t believe we should be favouring one type of system over another, whether that’s first-past-the-post or a type of proportional representation. The whole purpose of a referendum is to allow the public to have their say directly, and it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that this process is designed fairly to accurately reflect voters’ wishes, rather than having biases built into the very system design. This illustrates the problems of having government set conditions of a referendum where, as a political party, they have a direct interest in the results.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Now, this bill was brought about in large part by the NDP government’s alliance with the B.C. Greens. The two parties’ confidence and supply agreement, which they signed in May, explicitly states: “Both the B.C. New Democratic government and the B.C. Green caucus are committed to proportional representation.” I think that’s a pretty clear statement of the government’s stance on this issue. It’s not objective.

The agreement then goes on to specify that the government would introduce legislation to hold a referendum in the next session of the House, which is what we see before us today. Both parties, in their agreement, agreed to “campaign actively in support of the agreed-upon form of proportional representation.”

It is fundamentally flawed to have parties involved in changing an electoral system to suit their own interests. The bill we’re discussing here today came about as a part of a political negotiation where both partners in the governing coalition explicitly stated their bias for proportional representation. This is not an objective process. If we are going to change the voting system in British Columbia, it needs to be the public who decides that. Government shouldn’t be approaching a referendum with an outcome in mind.

When B.C. first started looking at electoral reform, this process looked much different. Instead of being driven by government or by politicians, it was driven by an independent, non-partisan Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. This assembly was made up of 161 members — one man and one woman from each of B.C.’s ridings, two First Nations representatives and one chair — all from outside the political process. The members were responsible for learning at length about the different electoral options, consulting British Columbians across the province and recommending an alternative electoral system for consideration, which was ultimately the BCSTV.

This time around the bar for proportional representation is also much lower. The threshold for this referendum to be binding is only going to be 50 percent plus one, with no requirement for regional support. This is really troubling. This bare-majority threshold stands in contrast to the super-majority thresholds of the previous two referendums, which were 60 percent of the provincewide vote and support in 60 percent of the province ridings, which I think reflected the significance of the issue that was being put before British Columbians.

Proportional representation wouldn’t just change the way we vote. It would fundamentally change the way our democracy works in B.C. While there are some positives to proportional representation, of course, there are also some significant risks. We only need to look at other jurisdictions to see the challenges that this system can bring, including legislative gridlock, unstable coalition governments and the emergence of extreme parties that are able to gain disproportionate influence.

[4:35 p.m.]

With all due respect to the very entertaining member from Nanaimo, who gave a very animated speech yesterday, I fail to see how proportional representation is going to make this House more collaborative.

I’d like to quote a friend of the government’s. He’s been a longtime friend of the government, Mr. Bill Tieleman. He says: “And while proportional representation supporters are keen to say that no party having a majority means genuine cooperation in legislatures, the reality is that minority governments are completely dependent on deal-making between parties, often in back rooms where election pledges go to die to satisfy the demands of small parties.”

I think we’ve seen an early view of this. In the most recent budget, the $10-a-day child care and the $400 renters allowance, which the government campaigned extensively on during the campaign, were no longer. They were nowhere in that update. And then we find out, surprisingly, from the Green Party leader that the platform promises are irrelevant because they have a confidence and supply backroom agreement with the NDP. So we’re seeing an early example of how proportional representation…. The small party can wag the tail of the dog in terms of policy.

As we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, this is a real challenge — proportional representation. Just this year, the Netherlands went 208 days after a general election until the government could be formed. The new government is a coalition involving four of the 11 parties in parliament. One of the coalition members is the Christian Union party, a party that opposes same-sex marriage. Now, when Germany gets a new government next year, the Alternative for Germany party will have 94 seats in their parliament. This is a far-right party that also advocates for a return to Nazism.

Italy, which has had two separate proportional representation systems since 1993, has had 65 governments in 70 years with governments only lasting 20 months, on average. I don’t think that’s what B.C. voters want to see. Italy currently today has 28 parties, and these parties form six separate alliances.

As we’ve heard, Spain went more than 300 days without a government after their 2015 election failed to produce a clear majority. When no new government could be formed, the country held a second election just six months after the first. This election, too, failed to produce an obvious government which led to nearly a full year passing before a new government could finally come in.

Perhaps no case better illustrates the struggles of coalition government and proportional representation than the country of Belgium. Following the 2010 general federal election, Belgium went a record 589 days without a government, as the 11 elected parties struggled to negotiate a workable coalition. The government that resulted was a coalition of six parties which lasted only two years — not much longer than the time it took to negotiate this government in the first place.

Proportional representation hasn’t resulted in more collaborative governments. It’s only led to political instability to the detriment of the countries, and their economies, who have implemented it.

Now, I know some of the members opposite have accused us on this side of the House of fearmongering. But we have to realize the extent that this House and, indeed, our system of government as a whole is shaped by our electoral system. To disregard the way in which a different electoral system would alter this context is, frankly, naive.

We’re so used to the way politics looks and acts in British Columbia currently that it can be difficult to imagine that this could significantly change. For instance, looking around the Legislature today, it’s difficult to imagine we could be joined by fringe parties representing extremist views. But these cases that I’ve just referenced are very real and recent examples of situations that have actually happened. I think if we’re considering to make a change to this kind of system, it’s incumbent upon us to carefully examine the benefits, yes, but also the risks.

[4:40 p.m.]

The benefits of proportional representation are implied by the term. Proportional representation systems lead to greater proportionality in an elected House. But as the previous examples show, unfettered proportionality isn’t necessarily a positive thing.

It’s clear that proportional representation is very beneficial for small parties. Therefore, it makes sense that the Green Party would be so interested in electoral reform because they stand to benefit the most under proportional representation.

Now, I respect my Green colleagues across the way, and it goes without saying that they bear no resemblance to the extreme parties that I just mentioned. Nevertheless, we need to carefully consider the potential for proportional representation to be exploited by fringe parties, special interests and those on the far right or far left because of the way it favours small parties over those with broad-based appeal. For that reason, we need to carefully weigh any proposed changes to our electoral system, and when I say “we,” I mean we as British Columbians.

Mr. Speaker, I’m conscious that Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor may be with us shortly. With your leave, I’d like to reserve my right to continue, and I move to adjourn this debate.

Deputy Speaker: Member, would you please adjourn the debate to later on today.

T. Redies: Yes, and I would like to reserve my right to speak later.

Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members, you have heard the motion.

Motion approved.

[4:45 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I am advised that the Lieutenant-Governor is in the precinct. Please remain in your seats.

Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor requested to attend the House, was admitted to the chamber and took her seat on the throne.

[4:50 p.m.]

Royal Assent to Bills

Deputy Clerk:

Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2017

Constitution Amendment Act, 2017

Miscellaneous Statutes (Minor Corrections) Amendment Act, 2017

Health Professions Amendment Act, 2017

Provincial Court Amendment Act, 2017

Public Safety Statutes Amendment Act, 2017

Pooled Registered Pension Plans Amendment Act, 2017

Sheriff Amendment Act, 2017

In Her Majesty’s name, Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor doth assent to these acts.

Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor retired from the chamber.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: I know it’s usually customary, after the LG, for the House to often adjourn, but I know that my colleague the member for Prince George–Valemount and I both share the same concern about standards and the amount of work time that there is still left.

With that, hon. Speaker, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 6.

A. Weaver: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

A. Weaver: I would like to take this opportunity, as the first time a formal member of the B.C. Green Party is speaking, to introduce and thank our amazing staff who are downstairs and are coming to the gallery: Claire Hume, Jaymini Bhikha, Liz Lilly, Evan Pivnick, Taylor Hartrick, Sarah Miller, Jillian Oliver, Allie DeLarge, Judy Fainstein, Aldous Sperl, Luke Cross. We couldn’t have done this without them. We’re eternally grateful, and we thank them for all that they’ve done on a continuing and ongoing basis.

[4:55 p.m.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 6 — ELECTORAL REFORM
REFERENDUM 2018 ACT

(continued)

T. Redies: Just before the break, I was speaking about the fact that we need to carefully weigh any proposed changes to our electoral system, and when I said….

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: Member, just hold on a second, please. Let the members leave the House.

Please continue.

T. Redies: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said before our break, we need to carefully weigh any proposed changes to our electoral system. When I said “we,” I mean we as British Columbians, not as elected representatives who have a vested interest in one system or another. While I do believe it is ultimately the public’s mandate to decide on electoral reform, I do have some serious reservations about proportional representation, and I wouldn’t be doing my job in this House if I didn’t voice them.

These concerns largely centre on the fact that proportional representation would decrease voters’ connection with their elected representatives. Proportional representation only works if we either significantly decrease the number of our single-member constituencies or do away with them altogether. It’s not hard to see how a move like this would make representatives less accountable to their constituents, particularly in rural areas.

Now, as the MLA for Surrey–White Rock, I very clearly represent an urban-suburban area, but many of my colleagues on this side of the House represent rural ridings or ridings that are a mix of rural and urban areas. As ridings are based largely on population, this means that MLAs in areas with less population density can represent very large geographic areas, like my colleague for Fraser-Nicola, for example, whose riding includes 25 First Nations bands, eight municipalities and many more communities in between. When she tells me about her trips to see her constituents, I get tired listening to everything that she has to do and the miles that she has to travel.

That’s under the current system. Under any system of proportional representation, we could expect MLAs to be representing much larger geographic areas. Whether that means larger ridings or whether that means some members will represent the province as a whole depends on the system of proportional representation. Nevertheless, MLAs would be responsible for representing even more individuals over even larger areas, whether rural or urban.

For example, under the BCSTV proposal, this House would not have seen fewer representatives, but these representatives would have come from only 20 ridings, rather than the 85 ridings there were in 2009. This isn’t without its challenges, both for representatives and for British Columbians.

As an MLA, I feel it’s my job to effectively represent my constituents. That’s the essence of this work. There will always be diverse interests and needs within any community or any group of people. I’ve been part of the Surrey–White Rock area for many years, and my husband and I were very privileged to raise our four children there. I’ve got deep personal ties with my community, as do all the MLAs in this House. Since I’ve become an MLA for Surrey–White Rock, I’ve actually really enjoyed getting to know even more people and organizations in my community and, in just even a few months, recognizing more and more familiar faces.

I think that’s how it should be. There’s a lot to be said for representatives knowing their constituencies. It allows us to be much more successful at our jobs. Conversely, there’s a lot to be said for constituents knowing their representatives, for having a point person they can turn to on government matters, knowing who this individual is and feeling comfortable approaching them.

Residents are also able to hold their representatives accountable and ensure their MLA is indeed acting in the best interests of the community. This only works if we have MLAs tied to their communities. We could see this connection significantly diminish if we move to a system of proportional representation, taking away from the very core of our democracy.

I mention that rural British Columbians will feel this most sharply, but remember that they will also get the least say in this referendum. With a threshold of only 50 percent, it could be the Lower Mainland voters deciding this vote, and that’s not fair. Any change in our electoral system has to come from our province as a whole. It needs to come from British Columbians who are informed about and able to meaningfully participate in this process.

[5:00 p.m.]

Government should be staying out of that process. They shouldn’t be drafting the referendum question. They shouldn’t be deciding which system or systems to consider, and they certainly shouldn’t be setting the terms for what constitutes a pass and what constitutes a fail. A referendum turns the decision over to the people, and we should respectfully be doing just that.

Because of these concerns, I will be voting against Bill 6 as it stands.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Vancouver–West End. [Applause.]

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you. I appreciate the support.

I guess I’ll just start this out by saying that this is a bill that allows a referendum. It allows the public to vote on whether or not we should change our electoral system. No one party is deciding this. This is a vote put to the public, put to British Columbians, to allow them that chance.

There have been concerns raised that somehow this is just going to change everything. It only changes everything, or changes some things — some would argue it doesn’t change that much — if the public votes yes, if they vote to change the system.

There’s going to be a consultation period where people get to suggest what should be on the referendum question, where people are given the opportunity to argue for what system they want, whether it be first-past-the-post — which, I know, is the system that has benefited the B.C. Liberals primarily, at least in the last while, and I’ll show you how — or a proportional system, which could change things as different parties evolve, or it could keep much the same sort of party coalitions, party developments as they are.

Now, I guess what I think needs to be said here on behalf of Vancouver–West End and my constituents is that they voted yes to both previous referendum questions that were brought to the public around STV. I wondered why, so prior to this speech, I asked constituents on the street, in the apartment buildings — the ones that I could find who were willing to talk to me about this question — why, if they had voted, did they vote yes?

I guess what struck me most is their desire for parties to work together, their desire for MLAs to try and focus on the issues, put the partisanship aside and force us to work together in some sense. I think one oft-repeated remark was: “Well, we don’t like it when one party gets to ignore us and forget about us for year after year after year if we don’t happen to vote for the governing party.” That was a consistent concern.

Maybe it’s because I have a lot of renters. Renters were particularly hard hit over the last 16 years of the previous government, and ignored. Maybe that’s why they were upset and wanted a change. Maybe it’s because we live in small, little shoeboxes stacked on top of each other, primarily in apartments and condominiums. We’re forced to work with our neighbours. We’re forced to share space, try and collaborate where we can, to try and solve problems. We don’t say to our neighbour, “Well, you’re part of that party. You lost the election, so I’m not going to listen to you,” which, unfortunately, the first-past-the-post system can create.

The first-past-the-post system that we have right now can create artificial majority governments who win with a minority of the votes. I know the opposition likes to criticize the NDP and Greens working together to create a working majority, so to speak, a minority government but working with support, saying that maybe it’s not legitimate or it doesn’t work or they don’t like it.

I actually think that constituents do want parties to work together and actually listen to each other and try and solve things. That’s something which, until the B.C. Liberals lost the throne speech vote, we used to agree on. I think they said in their last throne speech that they thought we all should all work together for the best interests of everyone and: “We’ll look at all good ideas.” They’ve thrown that away now, as they’re not government anymore. They’re now saying that, no, somehow only one party should be able to rule, and through a majority, as they used to do.

What did that majority look like? Let’s go back to 2001. They had 77 seats. All of the other voters in this province, which was 43 percent, voted for other parties. They got two seats. Now, is that proportional? Is that representative? I don’t think so. I think it’s around approximately 97 percent of the seats when you win 57 percent of the vote. That’s not fair.

[5:05 p.m.]

That’s a false majority, in the sense of how big it is. That was one election in B.C. where a majority voted for one party. That doesn’t happen very often. That happens very rarely.

I think, clearly, we should be listening to more than just that percentage point, because there are MLAs elected right now who may have won by 1 percent, maybe even less than a percent. Some would argue that that takes away the votes, takes away the ability to listen to all those folks who didn’t win, who lost by that percentage point.

I would rather that we have a system where every vote counts, where everybody’s voice matters, where we’re forced to listen to the public of all sorts of diversities and ideas. We don’t have to agree with them all, but to create a system where you win sometimes a majority government with 39 percent support, and all of a sudden you are the government, and the 60 percent, 61 percent who may not have voted for you don’t get a chance to help craft the policy in the same way as a government does, doesn’t seem to me to be all that fair.

I would much prefer and have long argued in this House for more uses of committees to break down the partisan boundaries to try to work together in a more fair way.

Now, that was 2001 where the Liberals won a massive majority but not with a massive mass of proportional support. We can jump back to 1996, and it’s on the other foot. In that election, the NDP won government but didn’t win the popular vote. Now, I know at the time the Liberals said that was horrible. That should never have been allowed. We have to respect the popular vote. At that time, they seemed to argue for listening to proportionality but now seem to be arguing against it because it doesn’t work in their partisan interests.

I’d rather say: “Let’s open the door. Let’s let the public vote.” If they truly don’t want their every vote to count, they will tell us. If they do want a more proportional system where parties work together more often, where you’re forced to listen more often to the strength of your opponent or the opposition’s points of view to get legislation through, I think that leads to better legislation. It’s certainly what my constituents have supported twice now, and I am guessing that they may well support it again in this upcoming referendum.

I think that we have to listen to all voices. Might doesn’t make right. Just because I’m bigger than you doesn’t mean that I have a better idea or I’m smarter than you. Just because I have a few more seats because I win an artificial majority and I’m thus the government doesn’t mean that I get to shut out the opposition. No, I think we should be looking to make sure every vote counts in this House and every vote counts in British Columbia, and that’s why I do support a referendum on this. I do think the public should be given a chance to have their say.

My constituents, many of them, told me they didn’t even want a referendum. They just wanted the system. I said: “Hold on, wait a second. That to me, in my view, would not be fair. I think we should ask the public what they think.”

If MLAs are okay…. And I know many MLAs arguing against this referendum say it’s not okay because it would be 50 percent plus one. Well they’re arguing that, when they didn’t even win 50 percent of the vote themselves. So if their being elected an MLA is legitimate with 40 percent of the vote, why do they not respect that a majority vote of 50 percent plus one would be acceptable for a referendum to pass? It’s: do as I say but not as I do. I certainly think that we should listen to the votes of the public, the voices of the public, in this upcoming consultation and in this upcoming referendum.

I am happy to support this bill. I think the public should be given an option to have a say on whether they want their vote to count through a proportional system or if they want to keep with the current system. Either way they choose, I’m going to accept that result because I think it should be their voice and their vote.

J. Isaacs: Listening to the members that have risen before me, it is clear. There is grave concern about the mechanics of this bill. I think the concern is for good reason, because changing a well-established, functioning electoral system cannot be done without unintended consequences.

Today’s debate on Bill 6, Electoral Reform Referendum Act, will fundamentally change our political system. It proposes to change the fabric of our democracy, and it will affect British Columbians across the province, regardless of who they vote for, and perhaps for generations to come.

[5:10 p.m.]

I have to ask myself why. Why are we trying to change a system that is already working, a system that has been working for years here in British Columbia, in Canada and in other democracies around the world? A system that is effective and uncomplicated. A system where, simply put, the person or party with the most votes wins.

People say politics can be compared to a competitive sport. Whether it’s a team sport or an individual competition, someone will come in first, someone will come in second, and someone will be in third place. All of the participants will be ranked all the way down the line, even if they come in dead last.

Every person will fight for their position because people fight for what they believe in. Sometimes it’s on a single issue, and sometimes it can be for a lifetime of work. But people fight for their core values and principles, and rightly so.

But imagine a winner is declared, a winner who came in first place. After a clear win, the winner is then denied his or her rightful place as the winner. Despite there being a clear winner, somehow every participant is now entitled to the famed ParticipACTION ribbon — every participant, regardless of their ranking, even if they came in dead last. What’s more, and what I feel should be of concern to every citizen, is that every single participant, even the ones who ranked in the bottom percentile or came in dead last, are still able to participate.

What this bill suggests is that it doesn’t really matter where you rank. It doesn’t matter that you won. It doesn’t matter if the judges or the spectators vote against you. It doesn’t even matter if the majority of participants don’t want you to be involved. You still might have the right to remain in the race. So long as you are a participant, you are in the game, and you have the right to comingle or pool your ranking with one or more of the other losers after the race is finished.

This raises even more serious concerns — concerns around what kinds of negotiations and backroom deals can be made in a robust effort to gain a higher ranking, a ranking that could result in personal gain, monetary gain or the gain of an affluent position, a ranking that could material change the status of a party, including a single-issue party, whose views may not represent the values and principles of the majority.

In fact, just in the last few weeks, the now Prime Minister of New Zealand had to come to the most uncomfortable realization. She was forced to make a political bargain and form a coalition government with the anti-immigration, populist party New Zealand First, an anti-immigration party that secured just nine seats out of a 120-seat parliament and that most certainly did not represent the views of the majority, a fringe party who controls the balance of power.

But to better understand this bill, I believe we need to take a long and hard look at the array of major legislation that has been brought forward by this government in recent days. We have a bill that changes the law surrounding campaign finance fundraising, a bill that amends the Constitution Act to ascribe to a different meaning to the definition of what it means to be a political party, and now this bill, which attempts to significantly change our electoral system.

A trend is developing where a party looks to radically overhaul our democratic system in a way that stacks the deck for itself. Having discourse on campaign finance reform, a re-evaluation of our Constitution Act and electoral reform is positive, and these are topics that deserve debate in an open democracy. But when examined together, the self-serving nature of these three bills becomes apparent. They speak to this party’s desire for self-preservation.

For a better idea, let’s take a look at the mechanics of the bill. To do that, I think we need to look back to the 2005 referendum on proportional representation, when the process was handed over to the public, not government. The B.C. Citizens’ Assembly consisted of a 161-member panel and was established in an effort to determine both what kinds of improvements needed to be made and how the referendum question would be asked. British Columbians from every corner of the province were consulted, and the process was universally lauded for its independence and impartiality.

[5:15 p.m.]

From this extensive consultation, the Citizens’ Assembly recommended a referendum on the single transferable vote model of proportional representation, and a simple yes-or-no ballot question was put to British Columbians. The level of voter approval needed for the referendum result to be binding on government was set at a minimum of 60 percent, with a simple majority of 48 of the then 79 electoral districts.

After being put to a vote in 2005 and ultimately failing to meet the threshold requirements, the question was again posed to British Columbians in the second, 2009, referendum. This time the government advanced public awareness and understanding of the two electoral systems by providing equal public funds to both supporters and detractors of each system. Each side had access to a total of $500,000 in public funding. There was also another $500,000 that funded a neutral public information campaign, something that is mysteriously absent from this round — no neutrality here.

While the first referendum was close, the second referendum on single transferable vote was far from it, with a resounding 61 percent of the vote against proposed reform. Mr. Speaker, 61 percent of the public thought it was a bad idea to change our electoral system.

In the postmortem that followed the referendum, it became clear why the public voted against STV. It was complicated and confusing. It would have reduced local accountability. It would have increased the size of ridings. It would have allowed MLAs to avoid direct accountability for their decisions. It would take control away from the elected MLAs and substantially increase control for political parties. It would have allowed special interest groups to dominate party nominations, and it would have given smaller parties disproportional power in government.

After not one but two lengthy, rigorous bouts of public engagement and two costly referendums, British Columbians have made it clear twice: they do not want proportional representation.

With a historical lens in focus, it becomes easier to identify the problematic mechanics of this proposed referendum. And again, I have to ask: why? Why now? What has changed so significantly, and after two definite no votes, that we now need to alter our voting system? How exactly would the third referendum on proportional representation in 13 years differ from the first two?

Well, the most obvious difference from the referendum proposed in this bill and referendums in 2005 and 2009 is the lack of transparency in the public engagement process and the lack of non-partisan independence. Instead of an independent citizens’ assembly, the NDP say that government will ultimately determine the ballot question after they hold non-binding public consultations. Non-binding, meaning that even if after the public consultations the public clearly does not wish to radically change the voting system, too bad. The public consultations are non-binding.

What would those public consultations look like? The NDP has announced: “Public engagement is expected to place significant measures on education through social media and on line, as well as a dedicated website where British Columbians can join the discussion and provide their feedback and options.” So I guess we can get all our information from the unbiased government website or get our information from social media, where I’m sure there will be a fair and balanced education process so that voters can have all the information that they need to make an informed decision.

As for the specifics of the engagement process, the NDP says it will “be announced in the coming weeks in a formal launch.” If that isn’t ambiguous enough, the NDP has stated that they will actively campaign in favour of reform. With impartiality out the window, it only makes sense that they further stack the deck of the referendum to greater improve their chance for success.

[5:20 p.m.]

Instead of the previous 60 percent provincewide popular vote threshold and the regional threshold of 50 percent in at least 51 of the province’s then 85 electoral districts, the NDP and the Greens have dropped the thresholds to a 50-percent-plus-one majority vote and have done away with regional thresholds.

This means that Vancouver’s population alone may very well decide for the rest of the province if British Columbia will change its electoral system from a first-past-the-post system to a system that will redesign the way we determine and measure accountability of our elected officials and government and one that will seriously impact how public policies will be made.

Most strata bylaws have thresholds built into them. There are always detrimental consequences when decisions are made by a small group of individuals, particularly when those decisions are clearly self-serving and do not necessarily represent the views of the remaining strata owners. The same holds true for shareholder meetings, committee meetings and school PAC meetings.

One must reach a reasonable threshold, a quorum, which is the built-in mechanism to protect the majority of stakeholders when a minority wishes to make significant policy or financial decisions. This threshold of 50 percent plus one would not even pass the minimum standard that auxiliary club members would expect to have in place, even when it applies to auxiliary club members creating policy and procedures to handle petty cash.

To not have a minimum threshold in place for a bill this significant, one that could radically change our system of democracy — well, I think it would be impossible to set the bar any lower. But we’re not done yet, as this government has yet to even commit to how many questions will be on the referendum ballot.

Despite assurances from the now Premier, back in May, that the referendum question would be a simple yes-or-no question, in reality the bill is structured so that a ballot with more than one question could be accommodated. It looks like the voters will now have to choose between multiple proportional representation options — options which would be complex and confusing for most of us — and weigh those options against the first-past-the-post system.

It’s also been decided that the yet-to-be-determined ballot questions would be listed on a ranked ballot. If no option reaches 50 percent on the first count, second and third choices would then be redistributed and counted. But let me ask you this, Mr. Speaker: why would a voter who is in favour of proportional representation be compelled to pick first-past-the-post as their second pick on a ranked ballot?

Well, if one is still having doubts about the mechanics of this referendum, then perhaps the assessment of Keith Baldrey in the October 10 issue of Burnaby Now will clarify its sham nature.

“This means that if two or more different proportional representation models are offered as choices in front of voters, along with the choices of the first-past-the-post system currently in use, it seems likely one of the PR models will cross the 50 percent hurdle needed to pass into law.

“If no option crosses that 50 percent threshold on the first count, then the second choices of voters and the third choices, as well, are redistributed and counted, and it would seem logical that a person voting for one particular PR model would make the alternative PR model their second choice.

“It seems far less likely that someone favouring a move to PR would make their second choice to be the first-past-the-post model. Thus, if the current first-past-the-post model doesn’t hit 50 percent in favour on the first count, the odds of it growing from voters’ second choices do not look good.”

With its lack of impartiality, its self-serving motivation, its low majority threshold and its skewed ballot question, it looks like the fix is already in on this referendum. That should be disturbing to everyone.

But apart from its simplicity and the ease of understanding that our current system, the first-past-the-post system, brings to voters, it is the best system for assuring desirable results, as it provides effective, accountable government. If the results are not desirable, voters can vote their MLA or their party out of government.

[5:25 p.m.]

The first-past-the-post system is more likely to produce stable majority governments. It also produces strong opposition governments, which keeps governing parties in check. The strong link between constituents and their elected representatives provides a greater degree of accountability, and voters should rightly expect accountability.

How would one rank representatives that have been appointed by the government, and who may reside outside of their appointed ridings, making decisions that affect constituents who live in the riding? How will they be accountable? How will extremists or fringe parties represent the majority of people that live and are invested in their respective communities? Voters will not be able to vote them out.

What exactly is the government’s vision of the 21st-century democracy? Well, with models of proportional representation currently in place around the world, we can look at them as a possible model here in B.C. I suggest we look to Europe, where proportional representation is commonplace and where elections have produced fractured parliaments, unstable coalitions and more extreme governments.

Take the case of Spain — the 2015 election, for example — where the country went 314 days without a government and where they now have 12 different parties sitting in parliament, or Belgium’s 2010 election, where the 11-party parliament was at a stalemate for 589 days before a six-party coalition formed government. If you guessed this to be a tenuous alliance, then you guessed right. It only lasted two years before collapsing. Perhaps they should have considered a taxpayer-funded secretariat to help to manage the relationship, but I digress.

The rise of anti-immigration and far-right support we see throughout Europe in the recent elections is a very disturbing trend, and we need to take it seriously. It will take just two people to come up with their own mandate and form a party here in British Columbia. Who knows what sort of similar extremist parties will surface here? For example, there are still people who are very uncomfortable with the sexual orientation of others and who strongly oppose some of the basic rights that the LGBTQ community and civil society have been working towards protecting.

Under Bill 6, a group that rejects LGBTQ rights would have an easier pathway to achieving political representation. The same would be true for groups that espouse racial ideology. How prevalent are racist attitudes here in B.C.? Well, ask a member from the South Asian community, the Chinese community or a member of any other ethnic community if they have ever been discriminated against, and I’m willing to bet the answer is yes.

What is very disturbing is the rise of homegrown Canadian fringe-right organizations whose membership numbers are on the rise in British Columbia and throughout Canada. Should the popularity of these groups continue to increase and they become more politically organized, Bill 6 would create a pathway for radical fringe groups to have a proportional seat at the governing table.

Last week when my colleague from West Vancouver–Capilano stated that he didn’t want to provide the opportunity for Nazis to emerge and have a voice at the table in British Columbia politics, he was scoffed at. A member opposite shouted out: “That would never happen. The government doesn’t believe that giving a two-member party status would lead to Nazism in B.C.” Well, unfortunately, neither the member opposite nor his party would have any control over which political organizations could form party status and which could not.

My colleague from Langley recently talked about the power of one. We are all familiar with this saying. It only takes one person to change things, just one person. We always link that statement with a positive outcome, but let’s not forget the downside of the power of one. It can take just one person to instigate a very negative outcome as well.

I’m not suggesting a direct correlation between Bill 6 and Nazism arising next week. Nor am I suggesting that past outcomes will necessarily predict future outcomes here in British Columbia. I am, however, suggesting that should this bill even so much as create fertile ground for such politics, to not address it — or, worse, to dismiss it as a possibility, as the NDP has done — suggests a severe lack of judgment and a cavalier attitude.

[5:30 p.m.]

Policies have longevity, and this bill will have longevity. The organization and unrest we see by so many fringe groups poses a real threat to our unambiguous democracy, where the voices of the majority are represented and not the voices of those who would seek to undo our democratic system.

As I said earlier, I believe I have to ask why. What exactly is behind this government’s motivation and urgency to change our electoral system? After all, we have seen two failed referendums. We also recently saw the federal government abandon the idea that proportional representation would benefit Canadians.

Well, the Greens have a vested self-interest, and they are certainly motivated to change our voting system. It is why they’ve made the referendum on proportional representation their number one priority. It’s not affordable housing, it’s not transportation and infrastructure, and it’s not even health or education. Their number one priority is proportional representation.

Our current first-past-the-post system is likely a major hurdle to the Greens gaining more seats in future elections. Proportional representation pretty well guarantees an ongoing presence for their party in the B.C. Legislature. They don’t want a system or process where they are duly elected by the public. They want to ensure themselves a guarantee. And because, with the first-past-the-post system, it is so difficult for them to gain further representation in the Legislature, they can only achieve this guarantee through proportional representation.

In fact, if the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head had his way, he would have forced proportional representation on British Columbians a long time ago. Here’s a quote from that member and what he said earlier in May. “Our position had been that we would bring in proportional representation without a referendum…but we would be open to discussing a referendum afterwards.” Andrew Weaver, Canadian Press, May 18, ’17.

Incredibly, we now have a three-member Green Party, a party that has the support of only 16 percent of the popular vote and who represents less than 3.5 percent of the total seats in the Legislature, happily and recklessly dictating policy for all British Columbians.

With their alliance so shaky, the NDP and the Greens are in a rush to get this bill passed and quickly. Hardly a big surprise — this government is breaking yet another promise. It promised to hold the referendum in conjunction with the municipal elections. Now instead, there will be a mail-in ballot next fall.

With the cost of the referendum nowhere in the current budget, British Columbians have been told, “Projected costs for the engagement process will be provided when the process is announced. Costs to implement a proportional representation voting system will vary significantly, depending on the system chosen by the voters, so cannot be estimated at the time.” B.C. government backgrounder, October 4.

Not only is the cost of running a referendum a burden for taxpayers to have to pick up, but “Interestingly,” as a Times Colonist editorial on August 9, 2016 argues, “the higher government spending in PR countries is financed to a greater extent with deficits, borrowing, than spending in other countries.” In other words, “countries with PR election rules tend not only to spend more than other countries but also tend to borrow more to finance such spending.”

With wholesale changes being made in our electoral system, it’s near impossible to isolate each significant variable to understand the effect that each change will have in our democratic system. We’ve yet to understand the ramifications of publicly subsidized elections, an amended Constitution Act that lowers the threshold for official party status or the change in a fixed election date, which prolongs this government’s hold on power.

This government is asking taxpayers to pay for political party campaigns. Now it’s asking the public to pay for a partisan engagement process that will use taxpayer dollars to advertise their agenda.

This bill gives me great trepidation. To, again, quote from the August 9, 2016 Times Colonist article, proportional representation “disproportionately empowers voters for small, even fringe parties, at the expense of the majority of voters who tend to vote for one of a few main parties.”

[5:35 p.m.]

Weaker governments, more frequent elections, an overrepresentation of special interest groups and a politically splintered Legislature. This is not a conduit for stable, secure governments. This is a bad idea for British Columbians, and I wholeheartedly reject this radical piece of legislation.

J. Tegart: It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to Bill 6, Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act.

I represent a large rural riding in the interior of this beautiful province. My riding starts at the U.S. border, comes through Manning Park all the way to Hope, up the beautiful Fraser Canyon, north to 70 Mile and out to Pressy Lake. It includes the incredible Bridge River valley, the Lillooet area and east to Deadman Creek. My communities depend on tourism, waste management, mining, forestry, agriculture and technology.

My constituents live where they are able to work and play, provide for their families, support their communities and contribute to the provincial economy. My constituents expect to know who their MLA is, what work we are doing on their behalf and how to get in touch with their MLA — sometimes too close to how to get in touch with their MLA.

As many colleagues know, to be a provincial representative in a large, diverse riding has its challenges. I want you to compare a riding like Fraser-Nicola to a Metro riding that has maybe ten square blocks but many, many people in it.

My riding has more than eight municipalities, eight local governments to work with and three regional districts that I work with. We have health care issues. We have hundreds of kilometres of roads. I would suggest that my colleagues in the urban areas with the ten-block distance between east and west aren’t looking at the same sort of challenges that we are.

When I look at this legislation, I am very concerned about what is going to happen to the representation in rural B.C. I am also very, very concerned about the political interference in the process. I think that in order for us to review the electoral system, we need to have a process that people buy into, that people cannot point at and say that this has been politically motivated, that has an agenda that is very, very clear, and we are being manipulated by the process.

So when we look at the past processes where the citizens’ assembly was used, I think we were able to go through a process where people felt very comfortable with how that was developed. My concern is that we’re going to go through a process that will continue to be pointed at as political and will continue to have people question its validity because citizens have not been a part of that. The cabinet will make the final decision.

I’m very concerned about timelines. We are talking about a very, very important issue, not just to those of us in this House but to everyone in this province.

[5:40 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

To change a voting system from first-past-the-post to consider a number of other models will take time. It will take time to explain to people. It will take time to have discussions. It’ll take time for people to understand what it means. To think that we are looking at an artificial deadline of 12 months out seems to, again, bring the validity of this process into question.

I’m very concerned about the threshold of 50 percent plus one and the lack of regional consideration. Fifty percent plus one makes me wonder what everyone north of Cache Creek’s representation will look like. I’m very aware that north of Cache Creek has less population than the city of Surrey. So what kind of representation will we have?

Representation is more than numbers. Those of us who live in large, diverse ridings understand how difficult it is for people to feel like they’re represented when they live miles and miles away from the centre. If we are looking at a system that will limit the number of MLAs in the rural areas, my people will have very, very grave concerns about that.

I would hope that the members opposite are listening to the concerns that have been expressed here and not throwing them out because they’re from the opposition. If this vote is to be validated and to be respected, I think the concerns about the politicalness of it should be addressed.

The other thing also is the simplicity of the question. I listened to many of the speakers talk about the complexity of proportional representation and how we are going to explain it to those people in our ridings. The member for Nanaimo said: “If I can’t explain the system to my grandmother in a minute and a half, then it’s much too complex.”

I think that there are a number of things that I would ask those across the aisle. I hear often that we need to work together, that we need to listen to each other, that we need to cooperate. I’m saying if we are taking a referendum to the people, there are some very, very real concerns that have been expressed in the debate on this bill.

Noting the hour, I would like to reserve my right to continue my remarks but for now will move adjournment of debate.

J. Tegart moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[5:45 p.m.]

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

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until November 6 at ten o’clock.

The House adjourned at 5:46 p.m.