Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. In Committee A, I call the estimates debate for the Ministry of Citizens’ Services.

[1:35 p.m.]

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ENERGY,
MINES AND PETROLEUM RESOURCES

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section B); R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 1:36 p.m.

On Vote 21: ministry operations, $95,006,000 (continued).

T. Shypitka: I’d like to try to wrap the estimates up today. I see the staff from B.C. Hydro here, so we’ll start with the B.C. Hydro questions. Then we’ll move to just a couple of last questions on mining at the end. That should do it.

I’ll introduce my colleague.

T. Redies: I’d like to pick up on the impact of the potential Site C termination on the rates plan.

First, before we go there, under the balance of the current rates plan, how much are rates expected to increase? Will the rate freeze that B.C. Hydro has applied for with the BCUC require higher rates in the balance of the rate plans period? I’m speaking to the ten-year rates plan.

[1:40 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: Just to let the member know…. I’m sure she knows this, but let’s just make sure it’s on the record for clarity. The rates for the last five years of the ten-year rate plan that was put forward by the previous government are not, in fact, established. They are merely models.

They would be established if the B.C. Utilities Commission had already approved those rate increases, which it had not. The previous government had not received approval for those future rate increases from the B.C. Utilities Commission. Rather, that 2.6 percent that goes up every year in the last five years of the ten-year rate plan has not actually been approved by BCUC. It has just been modelled by B.C. Hydro. I hope I said that clearly.

Of course, the review that we are doing in relationship, which is part and parcel of a rate freeze, is intended to look at that long-term rate planning and to make sure that we can improve affordability for British Columbians so that we are able to reduce rates as much as possible. It’s not just about this year. It’s about looking forward into the future and ensuring that we have affordability for British Columbians.

T. Redies: Does the minister expect that the current forecast of 2.6 percent for the balance of the ten-year rate plan — that the rates will be lower than what they’re currently projected to be in the ten-year plan?

Hon. M. Mungall: I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t say definitively what will happen in the future, but our goal, no doubt, is to improve affordability for British Columbians. So if we can reduce that 2.6 percent rate increase per year in the five-year back end of that ten-year rate plan, absolutely, that’s our goal.

T. Redies: How can you possibly deliver lower rate increases in a scenario where you’re freezing rates and you’re potentially terminating Site C? We talked about this. It’s a $4 billion, at least, expense that has to be amortized. It would seem to be inconceivable. The company has already said, and gone on record, that in the event that there was a termination, there would be a 10 percent rate hike necessary to keep the company whole, which we attribute to be about $400 million to $450 million a year.

I must admit that’s very confusing to me. They must have a really, really skookum person working on the review for Hydro to be able to find that amount of money and keep the company whole. How is that possibly going to be achieved?

Hon. M. Mungall: I believe I have heard this question in different iterations many times, and I believe I’ve answered it. It’s all part of the review.

T. Redies: Well, I would say that the minister has actually not answered the question, which is why we keep having to ask it again.

Perhaps the minister or her staff can confirm what rate increases are projected after the completion of Site C, assuming that it does go ahead.

[1:45 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: Presently B.C. Hydro has not forecasted rates beyond that ten-year rate plan. So that 2.6 percent per year rate increase that I already mentioned, in the back end of the ten-year rate plan, is what is projected.

The member asked specifically in reference to Site C, should it go forward. That is what is there, should it go forward. That being said, whether Site C proceeds or is terminated, BCUC always oversees rates. Should Site C go forward, BCUC will ultimately determine how the costs associated with building the dam will be brought into rates, whether it’s over a ten-, 30-, 70-year amortization or if there’s another mechanism as well.

T. Redies: My mistake, Minister. I thought that B.C. Hydro had done some net-present-value analysis with respect to the value of Site C. Wouldn’t they need to have done some work around the rates and the revenue that they would be expecting? Perhaps they could give us some indication of what that looked like. How much revenue were they expecting to bring in with Site C on an annual basis?

[1:50 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: The member is talking about the net-present-value calculations around Site C. What B.C. Hydro did is provide the B.C. Utilities Commission with several scenarios around the net-present-value calculations, but they are not tied to rates. They’re entirely separate. So to be able to give the member opposite an answer in terms of how Site C would impact rates, those calculations are separate. They’re just not associated.

T. Redies: In the interest of time, I’ll move on, but it would seem that to calculate the net present value, you’d need revenues. Revenues in Hydro’s case would require, I think, recovery through some sort of rate mechanism. So I find it kind of odd that that information is not available.

I guess what I’d like to do now is summarize sort of what we’ve been talking about in terms of the financial implications of Site C over the last several days. I’d like to summarize that and summarize what we’ve heard on this side of the House with respect to what a termination of Site C might involve.

A termination of Site C would result in a write-off of the $2.1 billion in sunk costs and trigger, potentially, $1.8 billion in remediation costs. It could force the company to carry a $400-million-or-more amortization expense over ten years. It could give pink slips to over 2,300 workers and their families at Christmas and put at risk tens of millions of dollars in impact-and-benefit agreements with First Nations and communities.

It could require the company to pay back, potentially, $4 billion in debt for the sunk costs and for the remediation costs, with no offsetting revenue from any asset. It could potentially cripple the company’s income statement and balance sheet for many years to come and put at risk the day-to-day operations and the ability of the company to carry out its highly necessary non–Site C capital investment programs.

It could put at risk B.C. Hydro’s ability to pay back debt and reduce its debt-to-equity to 60-40, as currently planned. It could result in the company having to balloon its deferral accounts by more than $4 billion, thereby, essentially deferring paydown of the deferral accounts by many, many years.

It could also potentially lead to a downgrade in B.C. Hydro’s credit rating and potentially even the province’s. And it could force the company to fork out billions of dollars to find alternative energy sources at uncertain cost, effectiveness and timing.

Would the minister say that about captures the financial issues associated with the termination? Is there anything we might have missed in terms of potential impacts?

[1:55 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: The member is obviously entitled to interpret the results of her questions however she wishes, but I would point out that there’s another list. She provided a list. Well, there are other lists of concerns associated with proceeding as well.

I said this yesterday in question period. There is just no consensus amongst the experts or in this province in terms of the implications of going forward or not going forward. There’s a variety of opinions. There’s a variety of information, absolutely. No scenario is without risk. No scenario is an easy solution. That’s the reality.

I would have preferred — and I don’t want to make this a partisan issue, but this is true — if we’d had the opportunity to go through the BCUC before shovel hit the ground. I think it would have brought in a lot of public concerns in a formal manner and been able to address a lot of those, and every step of the process to get to Site C would have been appropriately ticked off. That’s not what happened. So we ended up with a very controversial project that still is controversial. As I said, none of the scenarios around it lack risk. They all do.

Going forward, we’re taking all of that into consideration, as I’ve said before. All of the information that I’ve shared with the member is part of our decision-making process, and we’re in that process as we speak.

M. Bernier: With that answer from the minister — and she does have representatives from B.C. Hydro right next to her — is she now saying, then, that the 9½ years, 8½ years of studies, consultation with local First Nations communities and expert panels that were consulted before a decision was made…? Is she now saying to this House, in front of their B.C. Hydro representatives, that all that work was done for nothing?

Hon. M. Mungall: I think I made it very clear repeatedly now that all of that information is part of our decision-making process.

M. Bernier: Actually, what the minister said was she was very politically accusatory of the fact that a decision might have been made differently if it had gone to the Utilities Commission prior to government making a decision.

The point I’m trying to make is that eight years, approximately, of work and studies — 46 binders, at last count…. I’m assuming and hoping that the minister has read all those because she has to help make a decision on this file and this important issue. So with the minister’s comments — and she’s trying to make it a political one, and I’m trying not to — the Utilities Commission was asked, on 90 days, to make a decision and give some feedback back to government.

B.C. Hydro, which I have a huge amount of respect for, and the staff have spent dang near a decade going through this and doing consultations. Somehow the minister is trying to put it on the record that almost ten years of studies equates to zero as far as decision-making because it’s all about whether it should have gone to the Utilities Commission or not.

Again to the minister: can she confirm, then, that all that work that B.C. Hydro did actually validated and was good information put forward for government to make a decision?

Hon. M. Mungall: I’ve answered this question.

M. Bernier: Well, actually, the minister hasn’t, with all due respect. The minister continues to say that a different decision might have been made if it had gone to the Utilities Commission. What I’m trying to get the minister to acknowledge is the fact that B.C. Hydro did a lot of work. B.C. Hydro did a lot of consultation. It’s been held up in the courts, the consultation that’s been done.

All I’m trying to do is get the minister to acknowledge the fact that B.C. Hydro did a lot of work prior to the past government making a decision to move forward on the Site C project. Whether it went to the Utilities Commission or not, this is a grandstanding stunt, I would argue, that she and the government are doing right now, because she should be able to acknowledge the fact that all of that work had been previously done by B.C. Hydro. Will she do that?

Hon. M. Mungall: I am hearing the exact same question repeatedly. I will say again that I’ve answered it.

[2:00 p.m.]

The Chair: Maybe today the committee Chair can assist. It seems like the opposition has made valid points, and the minister has answered. She believes she has. Let’s move on.

M. Bernier: Thank you, hon. Chair, for that advice.

I will ask the minister, though, this then, which hopefully will rectify the situation: does she trust the work that B.C. Hydro does and the advice they give government?

Hon. M. Mungall: As I’ve let members opposite know before, this government is doing its due diligence. It is doing its analysis. The BCUC also did its analysis of B.C. Hydro, as it is actually mandated to do, and all of that information is part of our decision-making process.

T. Redies: I’d like to now turn back to the BCUC report and its findings with respect to the comparable alternative portfolio. I think it’s really important we talk about that portfolio’s true viability with respect to B.C. Hydro and whether or not it’s actually realistic.

The alternative portfolio put forward by the BCUC, which is…. The portfolio I’m speaking about is the one that’s most comparable to hydro. It suggests that we would need 440 megawatts of wind power. Does the minister or her staff know how much land is required to generate that amount of power?

Hon. M. Mungall: That’s a great question. We don’t have the answer for you in the binders that we have with us today, but if the member would indulge us, we’ll get it to her as soon as we possibly can — whether today or at a later date.

T. Redies: I actually have done a little bit of research around that. It’s quite interesting, actually.

Wind power only has a capacity of 32 percent to 47 percent, so the number of wind turbines that would be required to generate 440 megawatts of power would need, apparently, 114 square miles or 72,000 acres at the higher-capacity range and 158 square miles or 101,000 acres at the low-capacity range.

Does the minister or her staff know where we would put that many wind turbines?

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Hon. M. Mungall: That the member knows…. I do commit to getting her those calculations around land and how we’ve been doing it here in British Columbia. I think that would be the best way to have analysis around what’s viable.

Right now we already do have 700 megawatts of wind power — those turbines going here in B.C. We also have many more proponents who are stepping forward with potential projects. So from our perspective, being able to build another 440 megawatts is actually very possible.

Where you would see that, for the most…. You would not see it in Nelson-Creston, for example, where we don’t have rich wind resources whatsoever, but where we do have those rich wind resources is in the Peace valley as well as Vancouver Island.

[2:05 p.m.]

T. Redies: Thank you, Minister, for that answer. I was aware that we do have wind power in place. I guess I was wondering where we would put the incremental turbines. Also, could the minister speak to the environmental impact of having to use that many acres? Has that ever been an issue, as far as Hydro and its IPPs are concerned, in terms of deploying wind turbines?

Hon. M. Mungall: To date, in terms of that 700 megawatts of wind that B.C. already has, there hasn’t been any controversy in terms of siting it and the land use and so on. Going forward, though, if there was a larger wind project producing, I believe…. I did not get this number from my staff before I stood up. I know the 440 megawatts, but in terms of what would trigger an environmental assessment. Once you get to a certain amount of megawatts, it automatically triggers an environmental assessment.

As the member would know, that process would then look at any potential effects of land use and any other environmental effects of a large-scale wind project. To date, in those environmental assessment processes, there hasn’t been any controversy.

T. Redies: Just turning to another energy alternative that was put forward by the BCUC. That was geothermal power. I wonder if the minister could tell us where geothermal power has been used in Canada to date and what she understands about the viability of geothermal in the province of B.C.

Hon. M. Mungall: Earlier we canvassed this issue a little bit with the member for Prince George–Valemount and the Leader of the Third Party in reference to a company, Borealis, that’s doing some exploratory work for geothermal near the Prince George and Valemount area. To date, all the geothermal exploration has not yet been able to establish geothermal electrical production.

I want to state for anybody who might be watching at home that when we talk about geothermal electrical production, that’s different than the geothermal that could heat your home, which many people in my area actually do.

Where geothermal is at, from our perspective, is that it’s very much in its early development phase. We do see potential in B.C. It’s believed there’s actually considerable potential in B.C. As of yet, though, it has not been established.

T. Redies: Thank you to the minister for that very candid answer.

[2:10 p.m.]

Geothermal has not actually had a tremendous amount of history in Canada, although in other jurisdictions, it has. I think for the Borealis geothermal plant that they’re looking at, they’re looking at, potentially, if they take the standing order issue away, 50 to 100 megawatts of power, far short of what we would need to replace Site C.

One other point, I guess, with the geothermal issues. I don’t know if the minister is aware that Iceland — which is one of the larger producers of geothermal energy, for obvious reasons — has only about 660 megawatts of installed capacity, which, of course, is much smaller than the 1,100 that we’re talking about.

I’d like to turn now to the IPP financing that is also included in the alternative portfolio put forward by the BCUC report. In that report, it assumes that B.C. Hydro will finance all new resources — presumably, I guess, from IPPs — to offset Site C.

Why would BCUC do this? B.C. Hydro, as far as I am aware, has never financed IPPs in the 30 years of sourcing new energy supply.

Hon. M. Mungall: I think the member’s question is a good question. Technically, I am not able to speak on behalf of the B.C. Utilities Commission unless they have been upfront or have said publicly…. I could repeat what they said publicly about any particular issue. But the reason I think the member’s question is a good one is because our deputy ministers are asking that very question, as well, in their letter to the B.C. Utilities Commission, seeking further clarification on their report.

T. Redies: I understand this is…. BCUC has put this in. I think, perhaps, it’s because they were asked to find a comparable alternative portfolio to Site C, and the only way they could do that was to use a low load forecast and IPP financing to make Site C more comparable with the higher-cost alternative portfolio that they were looking at. But that’s just my supposition.

Can the minister or B.C. Hydro confirm the relative costs of IPP power to the hydro power produced by the heritage assets?

Hon. M. Mungall: I appreciate the member’s question. I had to giggle a little bit, because I think for several years when the NDP was in opposition, we asked this very question of the former Minister of Energy, Bill Bennett, particularly around the time when that government in 2009, 2008, was changing legislation and opening up the floodgates, so to speak, for independent power projects. The costs that B.C. ratepayers were having to pay through these IPP contracts was quite concerning.

The average cost per megawatt hour for an IPP is $100, and the average cost per megawatt hour for our heritage assets is $32.

[2:15 p.m.]

T. Redies: Thank you to the minister for being so candid in that answer. It’s quite a big difference.

Just going back to the suggestion that B.C. Hydro would finance the IPPs. How would that affect Hydro’s debt position? And could we possibly be in a situation, with a termination of Site C, where we would see $4 billion in sunk costs and $1.8 billion in remediation costs go onto…? I guess it’s a contingent liability. But then we would be looking at potentially putting the debt of the IPPs onto Hydro’s balance sheet. How would that work?

Hon. M. Mungall: I just want to preface this. Again, no decision has been made regarding Site C. No decision has been made in terms of if we terminate and then move with an alternative portfolio, exactly how we would do that.

The BCUC did presuppose, I’m guessing, that somehow it would be B.C. Hydro that would take on development of that portfolio. Like the member, we also have the same question of: why did they presuppose that? It has not been done like that for well over 30 years. So why? And hopefully we’ll get those answers. Actually, I’m sure that we’ll get those answers from BCUC. I do respect their strong professionalism.

The member is curious. If B.C. Hydro did have to finance the development of an alternative portfolio, would they incur debt on their balance sheet? And yes, if they were financing it, absolutely. Any debt incurred as a result of that financing would be on B.C. Hydro’s balance sheet.

T. Redies: The past practice, of course, has been negotiating contracts with IPPs. They pay for their own capital costs, and they recover a price from B.C. Hydro for the energy they produce. In this circumstance, the IPP…. The total cost of that replacement power would go onto Hydro’s balance sheet as debt. So wouldn’t that significantly impede Hydro’s ability to get to a 60-40 debt-to-equity, which is the current plan?

[2:20 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: If B.C. Hydro had to take on the financing of any alternative portfolio, would it impact the debt-to-equity ratio that’s currently in place to meet the target that’s in place of 60-40? The answer, in short, is yes. I want to reassure the member, though, that there has been no decision that that would be the way forward. In fact, we are exactly where I said earlier, which is that BCUC has made an assumption, we are seeking further clarification on that assumption, and we’ll be doing analysis accordingly.

T. Redies: Thank you, Minister, for that. I think, again, we all understand that you have not made a decision yet. What we’re trying to get to is sort of what the level of due diligence is and the questions that are being asked, before that decision is made.

My learned colleague from Saanich North and the Islands would like to ask a question, so I’ll pass it over to him.

A. Olsen: In listening to the line of questioning…. Perhaps I’m not quite as learned but curious — curious to maybe the other aspects from the line of questioning that the member for Surrey–White Rock has been asking.

The suggestions that these investments in alternatives would be something that B.C. Hydro would take on a loan is something that I’d like to challenge. In my time around here, and in my time as the interim leader of my party, I met with a number of investors whose money and capital was literally locked at the border. It wasn’t able to be spent in our province because B.C. Hydro and the former government, the apparent free-enterprise coalition, were not allowing that money to be spent in here because they had other ideas.

The number of meetings that I had…. Frustration was expressed with respect to the fact that they couldn’t invest in our province and exploit the resources, the alternatives, that we had — so $1 billion in one case, or $800 million in one case, for projects here. There are multiple billions of dollars that want to invest in the north Island, in a storage facility that hasn’t been able to be invested in.

I just want to know. I guess I would like to hear your philosophy or, going forward, the different approach that you might take from the others to say that maybe this is not going to be entirely an investment that B.C. Hydro makes, but perhaps there are other investors in this province that we want to welcome in. By using the call for power, maybe we don’t need to pay the amount that was suggested, $100, but we could put it out to the marketplace to see if they would come in at a competitive rate.

[2:25 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: Absolutely. I mean, government and B.C. Hydro, regardless of which party is in power…. Government is aware of the high level of interest of investors in renewable energy for this province. We have tremendous opportunity, and that’s why part of my mandate letter is all about building that road map. What is the future in terms of our renewable resources when it comes to energy production?

That being said, the member asked what our philosophy is. Generally, a particular philosophy might be outside the scope of an estimates debate, but I think we can be quite clear on that, as we committed to making life more affordable for British Columbians. So whatever we do going forward in terms of building that road map, we are going to be making sure that it’s through the frame of what is affordable for British Columbians.

At the end of the day, I know that the seniors on fixed incomes in my riding have been telling me for years that they’re seeing their hydro bills go up, and they’re really struggling to afford that, along with increased costs of food, increased costs of car insurance, and so on. We have to always keep in mind that affordability for British Columbians is a top priority.

T. Redies: Just if I can also add in here, we’re actually not supporting the idea that B.C. Hydro would take on the financing for independent power producers. In fact, we’re challenging the BCUC comparable portfolio that has this in as a way of making B.C. Hydro power more expensive through Site C, more expensive than the comparable alternative that they’re putting forward. So I think we’re on the same page.

I think what was also interesting is the minister’s last statement about affordability, given that the IPP costs of power relative to heritage hydro costs are about three times more expensive with the numbers that she gave me. In opening up our energy needs to other independent power producers and potentially financing them, how is that going to be more cost-effective than a hydro dam that we can amortize over 70 years?

Hon. M. Mungall: The member is absolutely correct to point out that we have to do our due diligence in analyzing the difference in costs — to meet our future generation requirements — between an IPP or an alternative portfolio and the existing Site C, as well as heritage assets. We are definitely doing that.

[2:30 p.m.]

To be honest, being aware of what IPPs have historically cost, we also need to keep in mind that prices for some of those technologies are coming down. So to say that they are still at $100 perhaps isn’t quite fair, especially if we’re looking at maybe five, ten, 15, 30 or 70 years into the future. What is our forecasting for that? But as it stands, we are doing that due diligence to ensure that we are comparing those costs, because we need to make sure that rates are affordable for British Columbians.

T. Redies: Thank you for that, Minister.

The alternative portfolio put forward by the BCUC also suggests that B.C. Hydro could use aggressive conservation tactics to reduce energy consumption. Are the minister and B.C. Hydro comfortable that they can deliver this much energy through conservation? I think it would be around 700 megawatts.

Hon. M. Mungall: The 700 megawatts of demand-side management that was assumed by the B.C. Utilities Commission in their review of Site C is aggressive. It is an aggressive assumption, and it’s based primarily on involving load curtailment at peak hours.

They would, day to day, I guess, see more people, perhaps, turning their dishwashers on at midnight or at 10 p.m. rather than at 8 p.m. Or they would see, maybe, people cooking at 6 p.m. but not turning the TV on, or something like that — some type of broader, very aggressive educational program that would have people turning more power off at those peak hours in the day. Essentially, they would see their demand-side management really having a massive shift in human behaviour.

T. Redies: Yes, that would be a massive shift, and I doubt it could be just an education program in order to get behaviour to shift. I suspect that B.C. Hydro would have to implement some aggressive differential pricing strategies, intraday pricing strategies, in order to shift that behaviour.

Can the minister or B.C. Hydro provide some indication as to the extent to which they think prices would have to rise in order to curtail demand, based on their empirical price elasticity modelling?

I know there has been a little bit of dispute back and forth with B.C. Hydro and BCUC on the validity of their price elasticity modelling, but it is empirical, and I would like to understand how much prices would have to rise in order to achieve that curtailment of demand and also, perhaps, some comment from the minister as to how that would work, given the government’s desire to produce more affordability for British Columbians.

[2:35 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: I understand that the member opposite is getting to the issue around time-of-use pricing, which is a scenario that the BCUC did put forward in terms of how you could meet that demand-side management.

First, I’d like to say that governments of any level always look at types of incentive programs that can alter behavior to do something that would be beneficial. For example, when I was on Nelson city council, we wanted people to recycle more, so not only did we institute door-to-door pickup, which incentivized people to recycle more, but we actually started charging for garbage. It was $1 a bag, and it was free to put out recycling. We actually saw a reduction of recyclables in the waste stream by 95 percent. So that’s a good example of a program that can incentivize behavior change.

B.C. Hydro actually has done some pilots, some experimenting to determine whether time-of-use pricing can incentivize demand-side management. What they’ve found is that it’s actually extremely difficult. They didn’t see a tremendous amount of behavior change, because people come home from work and they make dinner at six o’clock. I’m hungry at that time, and I’m sure the member opposite is, as well, when she gets home. When you start cooking, that is what requires a large load of electricity in the home.

BCUC, when it talked about time-of-use pricing, looked at both industrial and residential, doing some work around that. We have actually asked further questions around the industrial side — if they could illuminate for us more of what they were thinking on the industrial side.

When it comes to time-of-use pricing, overall what B.C. Hydro has on that issue right now is that they don’t have a policy. They did a few pilots, a few experiments on this issue, and found that if we are going to use that type of policy mechanism to alter behavior so that — rather than have such high peak loading at certain points of the day but actually try to level it off throughout the day, it’s very, very difficult.

T. Redies: Thank you, Minister, for that very candid answer. I think that’s why they say electricity is very price inelastic.

[2:40 p.m.]

It’s because people need the electricity at certain times of the day. I would have been surprised if you had been able to model a scenario where prices were high enough that people stop cooking at six o’clock in the evening.

With all due respect to the BCUC, they were asked to find a comparable portfolio to Site C, but it kind of debunks the validity of that portfolio if the empirical evidence suggests that you can’t price electricity high enough to actually curtail demand at the peak periods.

From my perspective — and again, I’m not trying to be disrespectful to BCUC — it calls into question the whole purpose of the BCUC report, because it seems increasingly that Hydro can’t use the comparable portfolio. They won’t be financing IPP producers — at least they’ll try not to, I’m sure.

It just seemed to be a very…. I’m not sure if it’s been as helpful an exercise. I think what we are seeing here, what has happened, is that the BCUC has essentially tried to put a square peg into a round hole in order to come up with a comparable unit energy cost. It was only by using somewhat unrealistic assumptions that they could do that.

I do want to talk a little more about this conservation and its impact on energy, because if it’s hard to get people to reduce using energy, then perhaps it’s easier to get industries to stop using energy.

I wonder if the minister could speak to industry curtailment in that context and what that would mean for industry in our province, potentially. What would it mean for the competitiveness of our energy-intensive industries in this province?

Hon. M. Mungall: In the BCUC proceedings, the Association of Major Power Customers, which are primarily the pulp mills and some of our major mines, did actually propose industry curtailment — so demand-side management from the industry side. They saw that as a possibility to address some of the future capacity that would be needed.

[2:45 p.m.]

That being said, B.C. Hydro has also done pilots with industry over the years, and not surprisingly, industry has been very, very keen, as you would expect, based on that submission to the B.C. Utilities Commission. Those pilots, for the member’s information, have typically focused on offering industry savings, particularly when rates were high, looking at ways to offer them savings to their bottom line.

I would say, overall, that industry has been quite keen on seeing opportunities for curtailment.

T. Redies: Could the minister speak to what it cost Hydro to do that type of incentive for industry?

Hon. M. Mungall: I’m just going to answer a previous question that the member asked while we’re searching for that information that she just asked for. This is about the wind farms and the amount of land that they would use.

To give you an example of what’s actually happening here in B.C. — I’m hoping I’m pronouncing this correctly because it can be pronounced a few different ways by its spelling — the Meikle wind farm up in the Peace region near Tumbler Ridge is 400 megawatts, generated by 61 towers on 750 acres of land.

T. Redies: Thank you for that information. I guess in B.C. we’ve been able to do things much more cost-effectively than perhaps some places in the United States.

Today, Minister, we heard from Governor Inslee. He spoke to the successful $200 million and soon to be $300 million carbon fibre plant in Washington — the largest in the world. It might be interesting for you to hear why the company located in Washington. In fact, when asked, the German executive who’s leading the project said that in respect to the additional $100 million that was announced just recently by early next year — drawn by the cheap and renewable hydroelectricity of eastern Washington — this state will have the largest carbon fibre plant on earth.

Would the minister agree that access to cheap, reliable power is important to not just traditional industries but also to the industries of the future? And how will we attract industries like this in the future if we go down the path suggested with the comparable alternative energy portfolio by the BCUC?

Hon. M. Mungall: I mean, absolutely, this government wants to ensure that B.C. always remains competitive for our traditional industries as well as emerging industries, and making sure that we’re competitive in terms of price of power as well as a variety of other issues that do impact investment decisions we are very aware of.

T. Redies: In estimates the week before last, the minister clearly indicated that the cost of electricity was very important in terms of the viability of mines in our province. The minister also mentioned the challenges of carbon tax on the viability of mines, as they are with other energy-intensive industries.

[2:50 p.m.]

Would the minister agree that B.C.’s low-cost power has been a comparative advantage to the province in terms of attracting and supporting energy-intensive industries? And if yes, are you not concerned about another potential policy decision that ratchets up electricity costs on the viability of mines and the communities they operate in?

Hon. M. Mungall: Again, absolutely this government is aware of the value of pricing for energy when it comes to attracting investment from existing industry, new emerging industries. Just to give an example of that, when commodity prices were low in the mining sector, for our major mines, we actually did put in a special plan for them so that we could retain them.

T. Redies: It reminds me now that the minister didn’t get a chance to answer my last question, which was: how much does it cost for these incentives to get industries to curtail their use of power?

Hon. M. Mungall: Perfect timing for coming back to that question because we actually just got the numbers for her. It was $14 million for two years for those pilot projects with industry in terms of curtailing their load. In fiscal ’16, we were able to reduce their load by 126 megawatts and in fiscal ’17, by 83 megawatts, for the total cost of $14 million.

T. Redies: I think that we’d pretty much established, unless I’m mistaken, and I believe that B.C. Hydro and the minister last week, or the week before last…. The BCUC portfolio is not a portfolio that they would feel comfortable pursuing. Is that still the case?

[2:55 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: I would have to go back in Hansard to double-check, but I’m fairly certain that I did not say that this government wouldn’t pursue that particular portfolio that BCUC has put forward. Rather, should Site C be terminated, what would B.C. Hydro be doing in terms of pursuing alternatives? Would it pursue that illustrative portfolio that BCUC has suggested?

Again, BCUC is very clear in its report that it is merely illustrative. It’s not definitive. It’s not final, by any stretch, from their perspective either. What would B.C. Hydro do in that scenario, should Site C be terminated in terms of looking at other alternatives for generating power? They would not likely go with the exact mix suggested by BCUC. They would likely be looking at a different type of portfolio.

T. Redies: Thank you, Minister. I think you’ve confirmed what we were saying.

Yesterday the minister spoke that they were looking at these alternative portfolios of power and that they could probably, through these alternative portfolios, deliver the same power needs for B.C. Hydro in a time that suited B.C. Hydro. Could the minister, or B.C. Hydro staff, explain what type of alternative energy that they’re using? Is it wind? Is it solar? Is it geothermal or pumped-up storage? Just give us a flavour of what they are looking at.

Hon. M. Mungall: In B.C. Hydro’s submission to the B.C. Utilities Commission, their alternative portfolio was wind, plus pump-storage. I would add that conservation measures were included in that portfolio as well as their Site C portfolio, so conservation is included in all of B.C. Hydro’s portfolios.

Wind and pump-storage. The reason why B.C. Hydro has gone with wind and pump-storage as opposed to, say, solar, is that this is the most economical at this time. We’ll see what maybe happens to solar in the future, several years down the road, but wind, at this time, would be the better alternative according to B.C. Hydro.

T. Redies: Thank you for that answer, Minister. If wind power and pumped-up storage was a better alternative to Site C, why did B.C. Hydro put Site C forward and not a combination of wind power and pumped-up storage and conservation?

[3:00 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: The process under BCUC required B.C. Hydro to look at alternative portfolios, so they did. They looked at the best alternative to Site C. From their calculations and from their analysis, it was a wind and pump storage.

T. Redies: Sorry. I probably wasn’t clear enough in my question. If that’s a better alternative to Site C, then why did they not put that forward to government back in 2014, when this decision was initially recommended forward to government?

Hon. M. Mungall: This particular portfolio was put before government in 2014 for consideration.

T. Redies: Why was it not chosen?

Hon. M. Mungall: Unfortunately, I don’t see anything anybody in the House right now who may have been involved with that government in 2014. You would need to ask them.

T. Redies: I’m sorry, but there is a B.C. Hydro executive sitting next to the minister who I think knows the answer to this question.

Hon. M. Mungall: I understand that the member opposite expects that the executives here from B.C. Hydro are able to give an answer to the particular question. Maybe she wants to rephrase it. What I’m hearing from her is why government in 2014 made a decision the way that they did. B.C. Hydro is just not able to comment or to speak for that government at that time. That government made that decision at that time. I mean, I don’t know why they did that. Only they do.

M. Bernier: I was one of the people that was around when this discussion was happening, so I’m very aware of the comments that were made. Maybe the minister, then, could ask again a bit more directly, since she has the members, albeit not the original president at the time but was definitely involved with the discussions. What was the final advice that was given from B.C. Hydro to government as the best alternative?

Hon. M. Mungall: The recommendation of B.C. Hydro at the time, under its leadership at the time, was to move forward with Site C.

T. Redies: Why was Site C recommended forward over the other alternative energy portfolio that B.C. Hydro is now currently looking at?

[3:05 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: B.C. Hydro, at the time, believed that Site C was a more cost-effective project.

T. Redies: Thank you for the candour in that answer, Minister.

Is the minister aware that under the Clean Energy Act, one of B.C.’s energy objectives is to achieve electricity self-efficiency? With the alternative portfolio that B.C. Hydro is considering — alternative to Site C, rather — could we be guaranteed that B.C., the province, would be self-sufficient in electricity in years to come?

Hon. M. Mungall: The answer is very short for the time we took. I apologize for that. The answer is yes. The alternative portfolio does comply with the current Clean Energy Act.

T. Redies: The fact that Site C was more cost-effective in 2014. Does it remain more cost-effective in the current environment, from B.C. Hydro’s perspective?

Hon. M. Mungall: I do believe that I’ve answered this several times. That is precisely something that we’re looking at as part of our decision-making process — is if it does remain cost-effective.

T. Redies: So if it remains cost effective, does that mean that the government…? If Site C proves to be the most affordable solution for B.C. ratepayers, will the government proceed with Site C?

Hon. M. Mungall: I just can’t pre-empt a cabinet decision like that.

T. Redies: I’m surprised. I think that I heard from both the Premier and yourself, Minister, that affordability was the most important criteria for British Columbians. So one would think that it would be a relatively straightforward answer — that if Site C is more cost-effective than any other alternative, that would be the decision that the government would make. But I see that the minister does not want to answer that.

[3:10 p.m.]

I will move on, just briefly, to the opportunities for our energy in other markets. B.C. Hydro has a subsidiary called Powerex, which, as we probably know, trades power with other energy jurisdictions. Can the minister or B.C. Hydro staff inform us as to how much Powerex has contributed to the bottom line over the last five years? Ballpark is fine. And on average, can you also provide us with how much power they do sell to other jurisdictions?

Hon. M. Mungall: The amount of power sold varies by year. It’s not as straightforward as we might think. We’re going to get you those numbers, and if we don’t get them to you by the end of today, we’ll definitely send you a letter with that detail. In terms of the profit, though, it’s around $120 million each year. I hope that answers the member’s questions.

T. Redies: That does. So $600 million a year. Would the minister or B.C. Hydro confirm that that actually helps British Columbia in terms of keeping rates low?

Hon. M. Mungall: Yeah, absolutely. Powerex’s income is consolidated into B.C. Hydro for that very purpose — keeping rates low.

T. Redies: On that basis, would it not be beneficial to have surplus power to sell to other jurisdictions through Powerex?

Hon. M. Mungall: The question from the member, I feel, is a little bit simplifying an issue that is extremely complex. Having been a board member at B.C. Hydro, I think she knows that selling and buying power is actually a very complex endeavour. Just because you generate more power, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be able to sell it at a profit for ratepayers.

No surprise that there is some difference of opinion between B.C. Hydro and BCUC as well as experts around the province in terms of: “If we just generate more power in B.C., well, can’t we just sell it at a profit and reduce rates for ratepayers?”

[3:15 p.m.]

Because there are those differing views in terms of price, in terms of market, we’re taking all of that into consideration as part of our broader decision-making process around Site C.

T. Redies: All right. California is going 50 percent plus solar. Of course, one of the challenges with that is that the sun goes down at night, as we know. Can the minister or B.C. Hydro speak to the opportunities for B.C. Hydro and Powerex with the California policy? Also, could they speak to what they think the potential is with Alberta’s new policy to close down the coal-fired plants?

Hon. M. Mungall: We have the answer to the member’s previous question around the amount of power that’s typically sold by Powerex. Last year, in fiscal ’17, the surplus sales were 5,756 gigawatt hours and $133 million. Those are the exact numbers.

In terms of the member’s question about selling power to California and Alberta as they move to embrace more renewables, I’m happy to talk a little bit about that, actually. Obviously, both California and Alberta are important markets, where flexibility will be needed, especially as we go to renewables that are intermittent, and Powerex absolutely does view that.

In Alberta, though…. The member opposite will know, because I learned in a conversation with her that she spent some years in my hometown of St. Albert, Alberta. Alberta is actually presently moving their electrical generation, not to more intermittent power as much as they are moving to natural gas. As they shut down coal, they’re actually bringing on more natural gas. Alberta has hundreds of years of natural gas available to them. They are also ramping up wind power. She’ll know, from living in Alberta herself, that the wind certainly blows almost everywhere in that province, so they have ample wind resources.

Interjection.

[3:20 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: I see one member disagrees with that. I lived there for 23 years of my life, travelled the entire province to all of my family members. The wind was very, very ample throughout the year. That, of course, is the Alberta government’s analysis, as well, and the reason why they’re moving to wind.

Interjection.

Hon. M. Mungall: I assure the member, who is adamant, that that’s not the case — that I’m not making up that information at all.

That’s what they’re doing, and California is moving to solar. But if we generate more power in B.C., can we just start shipping it elsewhere? There are other factors involved with that, including power lines and inter-ties, and so on. Would they be able to handle the capacity and the load?

Those are all questions that have to be involved with that type of analysis. As we want to build B.C.’s energy resources, are we going to be able to get it to other jurisdictions, and what would that take to do so? I wouldn’t want to leave her with the impression that it is just a matter of: “Great, we build more power, and we send it off through the lines.” We need to make sure that those lines can handle the load, as well, and that other jurisdictions are wanting our power.

T. Redies: I’m very glad that you brought that up, Minister. Actually, in the B.C. Hydro submission, I believe, to BCUC, they indicated that they had an operational capacity of export lines from B.C. to Alberta and the U.S. that allows approximately 26,000 gigawatt hours of annual surplus to be exported. Site C’s energy averages about 5,300 gigawatts, so it would seem that there is a lot of surplus, unless those lines are not operating properly. It seems, by B.C. Hydro’s own admission, that they do have capacity.

I’m conscious of the hour, and I’m sure the minister would be very happy if I came to some conclusion on my questions. I will do that, but I do still have a lot of questions that I would like to submit to the minister in writing and ask respectfully that she and her staff come back with written answers prior to the decision around Site C.

We’d also like to see the answers to the questions that were sent to BCUC. I imagine that they’re going to be public, but I just want to make sure that we also see the answers to those questions. We’re asking all of these questions not to be difficult but to just show the amount of due diligence that is involved in making this decision.

I want to say that from this side of the House, obviously, we’re supportive of Site C, and we would like to see it go ahead. I would just like to read into the record the joint review panel’s findings about Site C. After 3½ years of researching this, both environmentally, economically and financially, the joint review panel found that the benefits are clear.

“Despite high initial costs and some uncertainty about when the power would be needed, the project would provide a large and long-term increment of firm energy and capacity at a price that would benefit future generations. It would do this in a way that would produce a vastly smaller burden of greenhouse gases than any alternatives, save nuclear power, which B.C. has prohibited.

“The project would improve the foundation for the integration of other renewable, low-carbon energy sources as the need arises. The project would also entail a number of local and regional economic benefits, though many of these would be transfers from other parts of the province or country. Among them would be opportunities for jobs and small businesses of all kinds, including those accruing to Aboriginal people.”

Minister, on that note, I would like to request again that we be able to submit the balance of our questions and that they be returned to us in writing before the Site C decision is made.

I would like to thank the minister and the B.C. Hydro staff and the minister’s staff for this opportunity to discuss Site C at length.

[3:25 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: Without seeing any of the questions or the volume of questions, all I can commit to is that we’ll get the answers to her as soon as we possibly can.

In terms of what BCUC’s answers are to the deputy minister’s questions to them, they will be posting them on their website. They’ll be able to access it as soon as, likely, we will as well.

T. Shypitka: I don’t really want to call a recess right now, but I’ve just got maybe one or two questions on compliance and enforcement with mining. So if the minister could bring her staff in for that, that would be great. Appreciate it.

I guess I started this marathon; I might as well finish it off here today. Thank you once again, Minister, and thank you to her staff for all the time that they have put into this. It’s been a little longer than we thought, but lots of valuable information has come out of it.

A couple of weeks ago I asked the minister a question on goal-setting, because the former government set some fairly aggressive goals in mining. I wanted to know if the minister and the ministry had set any goals of their own. The minister stated that the industry wasn’t interested in hard numbers and hard goals, that they’re interested more in sustainability and being competitive is what their priority is. I think that’s great. I think we all understand that sustainability is part of the industry.

She also mentioned that commodity prices are the determining factor for industry, which is very apparent. If commodity prices are a determining factor for industry and sustainability is the government’s primary objective, how does the minister propose to bring sustainability to the mining industry when commodity prices are obviously out of her control?

Hon. M. Mungall: The member’s point is exactly the type of conversation that would be had at the mining jobs task force. By no means do I think that I know everything. In fact, bringing a group of people together who live and breathe this industry every day is exactly why we want…. To answer these questions, we want to bring them together to do just that.

We’re just working on the terms of reference for the mining jobs task force. We’re in very initial conversations with industry associations. We’re all very excited to get this task force up and running in the new year so that we can start answering these very questions.

T. Shypitka: Last time, when I asked about roadblocks, hurdles — i.e., on the opposite side, what makes the industry more sustainable — the minister told me to check with MABC and the AME, which I told her I’d already done. I did go back. I took the minister’s advice, and I did check with some of the industry.

I’ve been a business person my entire life. I know a lot of business people, and some of them are actually in the mining industry, so I have gone back. The minister stated that she goes and sees the industry on a regular basis. I have found out what are two issues on sustainability in the mining industry. I would just like to ask the minister if she knows what those two points would be.

Hon. M. Mungall: I would hope we don’t need to really do this type of quiz time in estimates. If the member wants to share what his conversations were, I’m happy to hear it.

T. Shypitka: Well, not so much of a quiz. The minister said that she’s in touch with industry all the time. She’s mentioned that sustainability is the number one priority and objective, and she talks to industry quite a bit. So I would think that those answers would come to her. But I’ll lay it out.

[3:30 p.m.]

The first one was time. We’ve all heard the expression that time is money, and it’s no different in mining. As a matter of fact, the MMPO, the major mines permitting office, mandate is to bring clear accountability to both industry and government to ensure that timely and durable decisions are made with respect to permitting major mines of B.C. So we need a streamlined process — that’s one of the issues of sustainability I heard — and we need it from start to finish, from exploration right to reclamation.

The second one I heard was a consistent framework on decision-making. Industry is okay with compliance and enforcement. It serves us all well, as long as it’s consistent with the projects they have been permitted with.

Would the minister agree that these two points would assist industry in sustainability?

Hon. M. Mungall: I would say that if the member has had an opportunity to read my mandate letter, he would see that both of those issues are actually in the mandate letter.

We want to ensure that we’re getting projects to fruition in a timely manner. We want to make sure that compliance and enforcement are also working with industry, as well as an appropriate regulator for communities, so that it’s consistent across the board and so that everybody understands exactly what to expect.

T. Shypitka: Thanks, Minister, for that.

Would the minister also agree that the people that work in permitting have literally hundreds of issues to deal with in the permitting process?

Hon. M. Mungall: Permitting is a complex process, as it has been for many, many, many years. It’s one of the reasons that industry is able to boast that products mined here in B.C. have better standards than mines in other jurisdictions as well.

T. Shypitka: The minister stated that her ministry was going to act on all 17 recommendations that were set out by the Auditor General. The overall recommendation that the Auditor General laid out was to “create an integrated and independent compliance and enforcement unit for mining activities, with a mandate to ensure the protection of the environment.” The expectation is that this new unit would not reside within the ministry.

Based on the minister saying that she was going to follow through with all of the Auditor General’s recommendations, when does she expect to see the independent unit separated from Energy and Mines?

Hon. M. Mungall: We’re working on that very issue in terms of what that independent oversight is going to look like. We have not made a decision as of yet.

T. Shypitka: That’s where it gets a little bit muddy for me. You were quoted as saying in the House, in reference to compliance and enforcement…. The last time we were here you said: “What we are looking at are different models around the country. Most other jurisdictions don’t have the people who are permitting also doing compliance and enforcement.” You also went on to say: “That’s what B.C. has done for quite some time, and that’s exactly the issue that we’re trying to deal with so that people who are doing the permitting are not the same who are doing the compliance and enforcement.”

It’s clear to me that the minister wants compliance and enforcement removed from the ministry. The Auditor General’s recommendation is to remove it as well, which the minister supports.

A two-part question here. What other different models in Canada are you looking at that don’t have the same people who are permitting and those that are in compliance and enforcement?

[3:35 p.m.]

Hon. M. Mungall: Just on the member’s question, I heard him read back what I said. I did hear him start to extrapolate in terms of what the decision would be. As I said, there is no decision that has been made. So where a compliance and enforcement unit would lie is a decision that has yet to be made. It has not been made.

Some of the models that we are looking at…. We’re looking at how things are done at the Oil and Gas Commission. We’re looking at how things are done in Ontario and in Quebec. Just as some examples in terms of other models that he’s interested in.

T. Shypitka: So you’re saying that in Ontario and Quebec, compliance and enforcement are separated from the permitting. The people that do permitting are separated from the people that are doing compliance and enforcement in Quebec and Ontario.

Hon. M. Mungall: In Ontario and Quebec, those who do permitting are not the same people who do compliance and enforcement. Those people are not the same. They are reporting to different supervisors and up the chain.

T. Shypitka: They’re within the ministry. All right. Are there any others in Canada? You said most jurisdictions in Canada. So that’s two of 14, I guess.

Hon. M. Mungall: We don’t have all the jurisdictions that we’re looking at right now. Obviously, there are provincial and territorial, but how each one does it is different.

We’re happy to get the member those answers and that information at a later date.

T. Shypitka: The previous government acted on 16 of the 17 recommendations by the Auditor General. The one recommendation the previous government questioned was taking compliance and enforcement out of the ministry as an independent unit.

Senior ministry officials have been on the record. They’ve argued that it makes a lot of sense to keep permitting and enforcement in-house, as it requires specific knowledge gained working within the ministry. Does the minister disagree with these senior ministry officials?

Hon. M. Mungall: Again, no decisions have been made in terms of the exact model that we’re going to be doing. What the two most senior officials may have said in the past, in my mind, is not what’s relevant today. What they are doing is working on this issue. They’re providing cabinet with very good information, and no decision has been made yet.

T. Shypitka: What the minister is saying is there has been change in attitude, I guess, in senior officials within mining in B.C. — that perhaps they want to separate it. If the minister is suggesting that compliance and enforcement be separated within the ministry, then it affects what it does, really. It creates a silo. It creates separation.

Those who know…. You’ve said, just earlier, that people that are in permitting deal with literally hundreds of issues. Very complex, as a matter of fact, is what you said. I couldn’t agree more. It is very complex. Therefore, there’s an integrating system in place that provides information. The people that do the permitting understand what the compliance side and the enforcement side should look like because they’re the ones that permitted it in the first place. To separate it creates this division, this non-integration of decision-making.

[3:40 p.m.]

To the minister, what would be so terribly wrong with having a board of senior officials from the Environment and Mines ministries as well as the environmental assessment office to oversee compliance and enforcement?

Hon. M. Mungall: Thanks to the member for the suggestion. Again, we are working on this issue.

T. Shypitka: All right. Final question. Why are we considering adding costs? If we’re going through this special task force, some of this seems to be a foregone conclusion. Why are we considering adding costs, timely delays, which we have already stated and already decided are part of sustainability — time is money — and disconnected information? Why are we considering that?

Hon. M. Mungall: These are very important recommendations by the Auditor General. It looks at very serious compliance issues that have happened over the years, such as Mount Polley. And we all know what happened there.

In terms of adding time and cost and reducing sustainability, reducing competitiveness, when we have a clear process and strong compliance and enforcement that allow the sustainability of our mines, we are not adding problems to the industry. We are building the industry up.

T. Shypitka: Well, noting the time, I don’t want to get into the Mount Polley thing. We would like to conclude. This side of the House would like to thank the minister and her staff for all the time that they’ve put in place. I’d like to thank my side, as well, for doing all the work they did. I know this took a little bit longer than we’d thought, but we appreciate it and thank the other side very much.

Hon. M. Mungall: Just some closing comments. This has been quite the marathon of budget estimates. I don’t think, in my time, I’ve ever seen estimates for one particular ministry go on as long as this has, but I appreciate that there is a lot of detail. I really want to thank the member for Surrey–White Rock, who has done a tremendous job in terms of asking very detail-oriented questions about a major decision that impacts all British Columbians. I appreciate the questions that she brought forward on that issue.

I want to thank all the members of the opposition, as well, for their questions. This is an important process in government and to ensure that we are able to drill down and understand what happens in the ministries. I especially want to thank all of the staff who have supported answers for the members opposite over the last several days. I also want to thank my ministry office staff and my constituency office staff, who I know are also watching and supporting this process any which way possible that they can.

With huge thanks to everybody, I now move the vote.

Vote 21: ministry operations, $95,006,000 — approved.

Hon. M. Mungall: I move that the committee rise, report resolution and completion of the estimates of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 3:44 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call committee stage on Bill 15, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 15 — LOCAL ELECTIONS
CAMPAIGN FINANCING
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 15; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 3:47 p.m.

Hon. S. Robinson: Before we start, I just want to give kudos and thanks to my staff who are here with me today in the House. I have, to my left, Tara Faganello, the ADM, local government. I have Lesley Scowcroft and Nicola Marotz, who have been stellar in helping us develop this bill to this stage.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

T. Stone: I, too, will start off by acknowledging the good work of the minister’s staff and again thank the minister’s staff for the time that they made available to me and some colleagues ahead of time in preparation for going through this bill.

Section 2, if I understand correctly, removes a section that specifies that election advertising that does not fit into the other subsections counts the sponsor as the individual or organization that transmits the communication. I’m not absolutely certain that that’s the reason for this section. I’m wondering if the minister could just elaborate briefly for the benefit of the House as to exactly what the purpose of this particular section is.

[3:50 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: The intention of this amendment is to ensure that small-scale advertisers, like those who make a handmade election sign and choose to display it in their window, can engage in political self-expression and are not captured as third-party advertisers to ensure consistency with a Supreme Court of Canada decision made in January of this year. It also provides some consistency with the approach that we’re taking in the provincial act.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

T. Stone: With respect to section 3, I’m wondering if the minister could describe in a little bit of detail what sort of non-monetary services would now be exempted as contributions.

D. Routley: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

D. Routley: I’d like to introduce a family that I just met in the building. As I like to do from time to time, I like to tour tourists through the building and show them what we do, how we do it and the back end of the building. This family were particularly interested.

I’d like to introduce Edward Corallo. He’s a retired money manager. Don’t you think all good money managers end up retired at a young age? He’s pretty young. Tracy Corallo, his wife, is a substitute teacher — the dangerous profession of substituting in a class you don’t know. Their daughter, Alexandria, is a student, a grade 11 junior in high school. They’re all from Moraga, California. Can the House please make them welcome, and we’ll send them a copy of this.

Debate Continued

Hon. S. Robinson: In this section, there is no policy change here. It’s really for clarity, and it’s a consequential amendment. So for example, if you’re running your campaign and you wanted to use your own printer, that would be fine. It was just about making sure what was understood about non-monetary, and that your own equipment that you would normally have was not considered a campaign contribution.

T. Stone: Again, just to be absolutely clear, this is if the individual in question has a piece of equipment or something that they own themselves that they want to use in their campaign. However, this would not include another person saying, “Hey, I have a computer for you. You can use it during the campaign,” or: “I have a car that you can use for the period of the campaign.” Can the minister just be absolutely clear with me that I’ve got that right?

Hon. S. Robinson: The member is correct. It’s about your own use of your own equipment.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

T. Stone: Section 4, again, if I understand correctly, creates rules that only an eligible individual may pay for a fundraiser, and any ticket greater than $50 becomes a campaign contribution. I see the staff nodding, so that’s good.

It also creates the loan framework where permissible loans are not contributions, but loans from individuals count towards their annual limit. I’m just wondering, under this section…. I want to be absolutely clear. So one person could buy any number of tickets to a fundraiser as long as the total cost of those tickets does not exceed $50. Is that correct?

[3:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I think it’s important to be clear on this point. It’s not about the number of tickets. It’s just about the payment. So as soon as you spend more than $50, the rest of whatever you’ve purchased is considered a campaign contribution.

T. Stone: Again, part of what I’m trying to do through this, as well, is just reconcile the approach that’s being taken with this piece of legislation and the other legislation that’s before the House with respect to the provincial campaign finance limits. There are a lot of similarities — the banning of union and corporate donations. Lots of the details are the same, but there are some differences, and I just want to understand the difference in approach.

My understanding is that whereas with this bill…. Again, the limit is $50, but a person could purchase any number of tickets up to the $50. On the provincial side of the equation, one contribution of any amount under $50 is the maximum that can be made.

I’m just wondering if indeed I’ve got that correct. It’s a slight difference between the two approaches. If there is a difference in approaches, I’m wondering if the minister could provide some insight as to why a slightly different approach is being followed here, with the local government campaign finance reform, in comparison to the approach being taken with the provincial campaign finance reform.

Hon. S. Robinson: I think it’s really important to recognize that while there are some similar principles that are being shared right across these two pieces of legislation, they’re very, very different, given that there are over 200 different elections that occur for local governments and the scale is very significantly different right across the many different local elections that will take place next October. They’re all very, very unique and very different.

What we’ve done with local elections is we wanted to account for the vast difference that you might have and recognizing that there’ll be smaller-scale fundraisers in local elections. So making this a little bit different than what you’ll see in the provincial legislation is what we have here.

T. Stone: Fair enough. Because this bill allows loans from individuals to be made — and this section is structured, if I understand it correctly, so as to make a loan a contribution once it is past due — what protections are being put in place or potentially being contemplated to ensure that individuals or candidates will make the efforts to actually collect on those loans?

Hon. S. Robinson: I think it’s really clear to understand here that if you don’t collect on the loan and someone makes another contribution, then, in fact, you’ve now exceeded your contribution limit. It becomes an offence, which will trigger action from Elections B.C.

[4:00 p.m.]

I think everyone is motivated to follow the rules and live within the guidelines that are set out here.

T. Stone: I was trying to determine in this proposed legislation if there is any time frame specified in which a loan from an individual must be collected. I didn’t see anything, but I may have missed it. I’m just wondering if the minister could point me in the right direction on that particular point.

Hon. S. Robinson: It’s really important when you receive a loan that you record the date that you’ve received the loan. There’s a requirement to pay back that loan within six months. If it remains unpaid for six months and no attempts to recover the loan have been made, the loan is actually considered a contribution.

T. Stone: Just wondering if the minister could indicate the rationale in this piece of legislation for why individual loans are provided for, why they’re allowed, when that’s not provided for in the provincial campaign finance reform approach that her government has brought forward as well.

Hon. S. Robinson: This speaks to, again, another difference, given that we have over 200 different elections that occur during the local elections next October. So it’s really important that we have enough flexibility built in, given the different size and scope of these various elections that occur right across our province.

We thought it was very important to provide flexibility for local election participants who may rely on loans from friends or family members to finance their campaigns. Once again, we’ve made sure that we’ve captured it within the limits, so that it’s reasonable, should someone choose to not pay back the loan, it becomes a contribution.

We’ve put in all of these other pieces. Again, it’s about creating a level playing field, and we’re doing our best to be as flexible as we can in this legislation.

T. Stone: One last question on this section. Could an individual actually make a loan, say a $1,200 loan, but consider the due date for that ten years down the road, just as an example? At what point does that loan then transfer over to a contribution?

If there is an agreement in place, for example, between the individual and the candidate.... Here’s a loan, and you’re going to pay it over ten years. Is that allowed under this proposed legislation, or are there specified time frames after which the loan automatically is deemed a contribution?

Hon. S. Robinson: A loan automatically becomes a campaign contribution six months after it becomes due.

Sections 4 and 5 approved.

On section 6.

[4:05 p.m.]

T. Stone: Again, a really quick question. I think I know the answer to this, but I just wanted to clarify.

I presume that this section is here to deal with the very rare situation of an individual trying to run for office in multiple jurisdictions. The minister is saying she’s actually seen that? That’s interesting.

Perhaps she could stand and just maybe tell me about the situation where she’s actually seen it. But I would assume it’s a very rare circumstance. Nevertheless, if she could confirm that that’s why this section is here, that would be great.

Hon. S. Robinson: I’ve just double-checked with staff. There were about 30 people in the last local elections that ran in multiple. Yeah, 30. I do have one in my constituency, before my time, who ran for both school board and council, and won in both. So I do think it does happen, and we wanted to make sure that we had legislation that would ensure that there was some clarity about which campaign was using funds appropriately — making sure that they were using funds for their respective campaigns appropriately.

T. Stone: Again, has the minister seen individuals try to run for, say, school board and municipal at the same time or between two municipalities?

Hon. S. Robinson: Believe it or not, there was one candidate in the capital regional district that ran for mayor in every single municipality in the region. And certainly in my community — it was a number of years ago — there was somebody who was on council and on school board simultaneously. It’s absolutely possible.

Section 6 approved.

On section 7.

T. Stone: If I understand this section correctly, it removes the ability of an elector organization from having separate campaigns in multiple jurisdictions, and making transfers between campaign accounts for different campaigns, and changes loan to permissible loan.

This was mentioned in the briefing that the minister’s staff were all too kind to provide me. It was indicated that this would prevent elector organizations from transferring money between the council campaign and the school board campaign, for example, in the same community. We’re talking about a small number of communities where there are elector organizations. I think they’re all mostly in the Lower Mainland.

I just wanted to confirm. Is that the intent of this particular section, to prevent those transfers within an elector organization from one campaign to another campaign — i.e., school board to municipal or vice versa?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes, that is the reason for this. It’s about keeping these campaigns separate.

T. Stone: That’s what I thought. In the past, depending on the community in question, one has simply donated money to an elector organization, and the elector organization obviously allocated those funds as the elector organization saw fit.

Just wondering if the minister anticipates that this section is actually going to cause some concern, frustration or consternation within these electoral organizations in certain communities where they exist. Certainly, I’ve heard from a number of these electoral organizations that have expressed a high degree of concern that this is really going to limit their ability to really advance the core values or the core positions of their particular elector organizations.

Just wondering if the minister has had that feedback. Has the minister received any of that kind of push-back or concerns or red flags raised by elector organizations that this will really limit their ability to function as they have in the past?

[4:10 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: What we’re doing here, because we have contribution limits now, is making sure that funds that are collected for a particular campaign are used in that campaign. If you are collecting funds for a particular campaign, you can’t choose to then shift those funds to a different campaign. So the intent here is to provide clarity and to make sure that funds are used appropriately.

T. Stone: I guess, to put a finer point on it, perhaps the most common pushback that I’ve received or concern that’s been flagged by some of these electoral organizations is that this section really will serve to make it difficult for the elector organization to perhaps support some of their lesser-profile campaigns than the bigger-profile ones. For example, in Vancouver, the parks board is a much lower-profile campaign in comparison to the municipal campaign that’s going on. In other communities, it would be the municipal campaign being much more prominent than the school board campaign.

Again, did the minister have some thoughtful discussions with a number of these elector organizations and hear concerns raised by them insofar as their ability to adequately support these lesser or lower-profile campaigns adequately as a result of the changes that are being proposed with this legislation?

Hon. S. Robinson: I think it’s important to recognize that the intent here is to level the playing field so that all candidates have the opportunity to compete fairly. That’s what this bill is about. It’s making sure that you can’t use your higher-profile candidates, as the member suggested, as a fundraising mechanism that then gets diverted to a lesser-known candidate and what that does for the playing field for candidates who might not be so aligned. This is really about making sure we have a level playing field.

T. Stone: I’m wondering if the minister could let the House know if this legislation will essentially require an elector organization to present a very clear choice as to how they want their funds donated. For example, if you’re in Vancouver and you want to support Vision Vancouver or the NPA — for on-line contributions, for example — do there have to be totally separate donation mechanisms to separate these contributions? Or can a donor just donate $1,200 to Vision Vancouver or NPA, and the electoral organization can distribute that donation as they see fit?

Does the donation have to be specified that it’s going to a specific candidate that’s running for NPA, or a specific campaign, let’s say the school board, and they want the contribution going to Vision and it’s for the school board? Does it have to be specified? How exactly would that be required, I guess, from an auditing and accounting perspective?

[4:15 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Given that we have different campaigns, and you might have an elector organization that is engaged in two or three campaigns, they need to specify where they want the contributions to go.

They also have a reporting requirement. When they do their disclosure, there is a requirement to make note of what campaign funds were used for which campaign, so all of that needs to be taken into consideration.

T. Stone: A final question on this section, to put a fine point on it then. If an individual was to walk into a campaign office for, let’s say, Vision Vancouver and say, “I would like to donate,” I suppose there are two ways that that individual could do that, both of which would require the same reporting requirements.

Either it’s done manually, in which case it’s tracked and then reported out, as per the requirements…. That individual would have to specify that this $1,200 is for the school board elector organization campaign or it’s for an individual candidate who’s running as the Green candidate or the NPA candidate in this community. Or the individual, presumably…. If the elector organization has a website and allows for electronic fundraising, then it would be the elector organization, presumably, that would have to provide for a clear separation of those contributions — i.e., require the individual to select which campaign he or she wants to contribute to or a specific candidate.

Could the minister just confirm that the reporting requirements will — whether it’s done electronically or whether it’s done manually — require that very clearly stated intention of the donor as to where he or she wants his or her contribution to actually go?

Hon. S. Robinson: The principle here is that contributions are connected to campaigns. In this particular instance, you can give up to $1,200 to each campaign. School board is one campaign. Local government is another campaign. How the EOs choose to track is really up to them, but there is a requirement that they track those contributions separately.

Sections 7 to 9 inclusive approved.

On section 10.

[4:20 p.m.]

T. Stone: I believe we canvassed this earlier, but I just wanted to make absolutely certain that I’m clear.

Under this section, my understanding is that the section prohibits an organization or an individual, other than an eligible individual, from making a campaign contribution and prohibits an organization or an individual from making campaign contributions indirectly.

Again, much like we talked about on an earlier section, could the minister confirm that the intent of this section is to allow individual candidates to contribute to their own campaigns — a photocopier or a printer or whatever — but not to accept those kinds of in-kind contributions from third parties.

Hon. S. Robinson: The member is correct that, in this case, for the self-contribution, there’s a limit applied. So this is a self-contribution that’s permissible.

Again, to confirm what was earlier canvassed, if you are using your own vehicle or your own computer or your own television, all of those things are permissible. You just can’t accept that from a corporation, and if another person is going to give it to you, then that is considered a contribution to the campaign.

Sections 10 to 13 inclusive approved.

On section 14.

T. Stone: I haven’t done this before. I would like to move an amendment to this particular section. I’ve got a copy of it here that I would be pleased to provide to the minister for her to take a quick look at, if we could do that.

[SECTION 14 by adding the underlined text as shown

30.01 (3) Subject to any applicable regulations, in relation to the 2018 general local election, for each of 2017 and 2018, the campaign contribution limit is $5,000 for a candidate who is not endorsed by an elector organization in relation to an election campaign of the candidate as long as a candidate is contributing to their own campaign.]

On the amendment.

T. Stone: I’m proud to move an amendment to Bill 15, an amendment to section 14. This is, perhaps, the piece of this legislation that we in the opposition have heard more about from municipal elected representatives across the province, local elected officials from across British Columbia, than anything else.

[4:25 p.m.]

I have heard from all kinds of mayors and councillors, as have my colleagues, particularly from small-town British Columbia, from rural B.C., where it is and always has been a very common practice for someone running to be mayor or to be councillor or to be a school board representative in a small town of 500 or 1,000….

I think of communities like Barriere and Chase in my riding, or Valemount in the member for Prince George–Valemount’s riding, and communities like that all across the province where an individual steps up, decides to run for office locally. Because it’s such a small community and because you can’t really spend much money in that community anyway, the individual running opts to just self-finance their campaign. In doing so, the individual often will incur more than $1,200 in expenses but not a tremendous amount more.

I was hearing amounts from most of the mayors and councillors that had reached out to me — and certainly this is the case for a number of my colleagues in the opposition. Many of these individuals spend in and around the $5,000 mark in terms of expenses on their own campaigns. They simply…. In most of these cases, these individuals in small rural communities don’t want to have to suddenly go out and engage in a fundraising campaign.

We’re not talking about multi-millionaires and the Donald Trumps of the world. We’re talking about hard-working men and women who are putting their names forward and don’t want to bother their neighbours and their friends and family in the community, asking for $50 donations. They just want to write a cheque to their own campaign — in some cases for $1,200, for $1,500, $2,000, $5,000.

I heard from a number of individuals that would have preferred to see the number at $10,000 as a maximum contribution for self-funded campaigns. We have tried to offer an amendment here that we think is reasonable and balanced based on all of the feedback that we’ve received and with what the majority of folks who have provided the feedback have indeed told us. The most common number seems to be $5,000.

What we’re proposing in this amendment here, which we think is eminently reasonable and is really driven from a place of common sense, would be to add an additional subsection (3) to section 30.01 of the bill. This would provide for a third category of individual contribution, which would be a $5,000 maximum contribution that an individual can make to his or her own campaign.

We’ve specifically stipulated in this amendment that that contribution cannot be made to an elector organization and a candidate cannot donate to their own campaign if they’re a member of an elector organization or they’ve been endorsed by an elector organization.

Again, having had the opportunity over the last week, personally, as the Municipal Affairs critic for the official opposition…. I have racked a number of kilometres on my vehicle in the last week. Part of that was talking to mayors and councillors. I have heard loud and clear from a lot of these folks that they would really appreciate some serious consideration of lifting what they view as an unnecessarily low cap for a self-funded campaign. Again, this is particularly prevalent in small-town, rural British Columbia.

We offer this amendment as a solution to what we are hearing from a number of these communities. It’s something that they see as highly problematic.

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the work that has gone into looking at this issue. I think it’s really important to address the principle that’s guiding this legislation, recognizing that part of the work…. This work has also been to recognize that as a large province, with various different-sized communities, trying to find a place that we can settle on that addresses both large and small communities is certainly quite challenging — recognizing that there are certainly some challenges in smaller communities that you don’t see in larger communities, and in larger communities, there are different kinds of challenges that you don’t see in smaller communities.

[4:30 p.m.]

In our approach here, we wanted to be very sensitive to the fact that we are not creating an advantage for candidates who have access to a greater pocketbook than those who don’t have access to that same pocketbook. Again, it’s about that level playing field. Trying to find where that is, is certainly always a significant challenge.

I’ve heard from some folks who are expressing those concerns that the member is hearing, but I’m also hearing from others who are excited about the opportunity to participate. They really feel now like they can participate, because they don’t have the funds to write a significant cheque, and they feel like it’s going to be a much more level playing field.

I appreciate the proposed amendment, but I’m not going to accept it at this point.

A. Weaver: I have a number of questions germane to this amendment, which I’d like to pose to the member who’s brought the amendment forward in order for us to think about this. My question to the member is: where did the number $5,000 come from, what extent of consultation was done, and who was consulted to come up with the number $5,000 for this here?

The Chair: Please comment.

T. Stone: Okay. Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Leader of the Third Party.

Much like the $1,200 number is an arbitrary number, to be straight up with the member, the $5,000 number is an arbitrary number. We received a lot of feedback in the official opposition from communities — again, particularly those small rural communities around the province — who just felt that the $1,200 was far too limiting within a small community, where it has been the practice….

You talk to some of these mayors and councillors who have been elected three, four, five, six times. Not once have they asked their friends or neighbours or families to contribute to their campaigns. They’ve funded their own campaigns. But not campaigns in the tens of thousands of dollars — campaigns, in some cases, of $3,000, $5,000, $7,000, $2,000. The majority that I heard from were certainly well below $10,000.

If we think of a community like Chase or Barriere or Cumberland, there are very limited opportunities to incur costs for advertising. You might purchase a few signs. You might photocopy a few leaflets to put up and hand out around town. You might provide some food for some volunteers who might be knocking on doors with you. We’re talking fairly limited expenditures here. In small communities, it has typically been the practice to just self-finance your own campaign.

There is no magic to the $5,000 number. We just wanted to reflect a number that was much more in sync with the feedback that we have been receiving from communities across British Columbia. That is why we are suggesting that $5,000 be the maximum contribution limit for self-funded, for a candidate to contribute to their own campaign, assuming that candidate has not been endorsed by an elector organization.

The Chair: The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head has further comment or a question to the minister? A comment.

A. Weaver: Further comments and questions.

I very much appreciate the spirit of this, and to be honest, I support it. What I would like to do is get some more sense of this number.

The $1,200 was justified. It’s a similar number…. It’s the same number, essentially, that you can donate provincially. I get where $1,200 comes from. I’m wondering if the member is open to some variant from $5,000 and just discuss this now. Why I said that is…. We had a discussion within our caucus. I understood, when speaking with your colleague, the member from just south of you, that something like this would come in. I told him that I would support this, and I do.

What I have some difficulty with is the actual number, because I had thought it might have come down lower than this. So again, I’m wondering if there are any jurisdictions that the member can point to where $5,000 is used, or some multiple of provincial amounts are used, to justify…. We know that provincially it’s a $1,200 limit. We know we’ve done it civically — $1,200.

[4:35 p.m.]

What I’m saying is: are there any other best practices out there where the amount an individual can contribute is some multiple of that $1,200? Say, do we know what Quebec does? Do we know what Ontario does? Do we know what Manitoba does?

In fact, I’m going to address this question to the minister, who’s got the experts sitting beside her who can provide the information for that. So I ask the minister this question.

Hon. S. Robinson: Thank you very much for that. Again, I do appreciate that there is some expression of concern. One of the things that we will be looking at, because I, too, have heard some of these concerns, is regulation. And putting in some…. There will be some opportunity for us to take a look at the self-financing component.

I do think it’s important to get on the record where things are at in other jurisdictions around self-funding. In Quebec, where a $100 contribution is the maximum, candidates have an $800 self-financing max. We all know that Quebec has some significant very tiny, tiny, tiny little communities as well.

In Newfoundland, it’s $1,000. And that’s it. If you’re self-funding, you’re under the same limit. In Manitoba, it’s $1,500. There are no additional rules for self-funding.

There’s certainly some variation across the nation around this. I think that there’s some recognition that making sure that there’s a level playing field…. Again, I want to point out that it’s really important that the principle that we’re working on here is that anyone can put their name forward, that finances and access to big bank accounts that you can self-finance doesn’t give certain privilege to certain candidates and potentially disqualify other candidates. That’s why we’ve put in this limit.

A. Weaver: A supplemental question to the minister, then. I recognize it’s odd to ask this question about the bill in general, but can she point, in the bill, where regulatory powers would exist to grant cabinet the rights to bring in changes to financing for self-funded campaigns?

The reason why I’d like to see that is that…. I believe this is an important issue. It’s something I do support. I have questions, as I mentioned, about the number, but I’m open to hearing about where the regulatory powers are granted within the existing bill.

Hon. S. Robinson: Thank you very much for the question.

It’s in existing legislation that provides us with the opportunity to do that. That is section 100(4) of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. It says, and I can read it into the record, “Where this act contemplates that a provision of the act may be subject to regulations, the authority to make the contemplative regulations includes authority to do any or all of the following: a) provide exceptions to the provision; b) establish limits on the application of the provision.” and so on.

P. Milobar: I rise to speak to the amendment and just to maybe clarify a couple of points too. I had talked with the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head last week around this. I apologize for the last-minute nature. With the unknown nature of the estimates, it kind of got away from us here today.

But, really, the question around $5,000 or not, part of that is just based on past experience. I know in my own situation…. I’ve run twice as a city councillor. Both times it cost around $3,000 to run a proper campaign in the city of Kamloops.

When I ran for mayor, this $5,000 limit would not do, and you would be expected to still have to go out and fundraise to run a full-scale campaign for mayor in a city the size of Kamloops. So that’s all right, in my opinion, that people in certain positions that would be expected to fundraise in certain size cities anyways would still be expected to go out there and do that.

The reality, though…. When we hear about a level playing field at $1,200, I would point out that’s only a level playing field if everyone’s capped at spending $1,200. And there’s no cap at the spend of $1,200. So if I’m a better fundraiser than my competitors, I can still spend more money.

[4:40 p.m.]

What the bill does by capping it at $1,200 is actually encourage people to go out and start fundraising, who might otherwise not have gone out and fundraised, to run a campaign of $3,000 or $4,000 in a city the size of Salmon Arm or Kamloops — even some of the areas down in the Lower Mainland in terms of the Maple Ridges of the world.

So $5,000 is really a number, in practice, that tries to capture cities from the size of a Kamloops and a Kelowna, all the way down to the small towns, without having to get into population limits and making it a very confusing piece of the legislation.

It’s really around just giving that flexibility for people to run a reasonable campaign, if they choose to, out of their own bank accounts, not creating a situation where those people then need to actually have to start fundraising, who previously had never gone out to fundraise before. I think that’s what we’re trying to avoid — the volume of fundraising that needs to be done for an election.

That’s really where I think the $5,000 and the want to still have that ability for people to self-finance come in. It should actually reduce the number of asks in the communities for people to go out and fundraise. It’s a number that, frankly…. If the $1,200 doesn’t work, finding that out after an election is really doing a disservice to the communities for a four-year term, in terms of how their local election may run — versus setting it at $5,000 and letting the election run its course, seeing if there are still any huge problems with this.

It’s always easier to keep ratcheting it down, if need be, into the next election, as opposed to playing with the municipal democratic elections by arbitrarily saying: “Now you can only spend $1,200, unless you’re prepared to go out and start fundraising.”

That’s really, I think, the underlying key tenet to all of this. We wanted to make sure that we captured the spirit and the intent of electoral organizations and not make this as a workaround for people in communities that have political parties within municipal government. We fully agree with that and with that piece of the legislation that’s been brought in.

This is really around allowing that flexibility in smaller communities, not having people feel the need to have to go out and fundraise. They still can if they so choose. They don’t have to put any of their own money in if they can fundraise enough dollars from private citizens to run a campaign. That flexibility is still there. What this really does is address those small to mid-size communities, allows people to run a reasonable level of campaign if they so choose.

As I say, the level playing field is a great concept, but the problem is: if you’re not very adept at fundraising, you’re still playing against the game. There are a lot of people that are not great at fundraising, but they’re very good at being a local government representative. And this gives them that ability.

I know you can put away, apparently, $1,200 a year if you wanted to self-finance over the four years, but there are a couple problems with that. My understanding is that it’s very tough to try to open a campaign account ahead of an election — any time in advance of any significance. The banks very much shy away from that. So it would be very hard to even open a bank account for your election.

Secondly, you would have to know four years ahead of time that you were actually running in an election. Lots of people, myself included…. I decided on the last day of nominations the first time I ran for council and filed my papers with 15 minutes to go. I would not have had that opportunity to bank money ahead of time for a campaign.

Thirdly, if you suddenly decide that you’re not going to run, and you have put away three or four years’ worth of money, you also aren’t allowed to get your money back if it’s an election account. That goes into trust with the city. It gets held by the city, and there’s a whole process around that. But you cannot personally get funds that have been held for election purposes back to your own self.

Interjections.

P. Milobar: Okay, sorry. I’m getting a note that says keep talking and another one that says to cede the floor.

The Chair: Members, we have to interrupt the proceedings of this House so that we can provide new instructions to Committee A. So we are going to ask the minister to move progress, and then we’ll continue after that.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 4:44 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: Given the speedy resolution of the estimates of Citizens’ Services, much sooner than anticipated, I call the estimates for the Ministry of Tourism, and Bill 15 in this chamber.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 15 — LOCAL ELECTIONS
CAMPAIGN FINANCING
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 15; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 4:46 p.m.

On the amendment to section 14 (continued).

P. Milobar: As I was saying before the short recess there, really, the spirit and the intent of this amendment is not meant to undermine the spirit and the intent of the overall bill. It’s meant to augment it. It’s meant to make sure that there’s a way to see elections still run without the influence of big money, corporate money, without a workaround for electoral organizations in larger centres that have those in existence.

This is really about those communities, a large portion of which…. People run. They run with their own kind of pride at stake, and they want to just run with their own dollars at stake too. A lot of times, they’re feeling…. It may be their first time into politics. They’re a little unsure about maybe taking family’s and friends’ contributions. They feel like that would add even more pressure to them in terms of their performance, especially if they’re not successful in an election.

I took the opportunity over the week that we were away to go through with Elections B.C. filings. They’re all right there on line for previous municipal campaigns. When you go in and just randomly select other cities, you start seeing that there are a lot of campaigns that are in that $3,000 range for an expense. There’s a great many of them that have no donations whatsoever.

That’s where that $3,000 to $5,000 starts to make sense. It does allow people to reasonably market themselves to the public to try to present to the public what they would bring to municipal council or to a school district, without creating such a high bar that it’s impossible to meet.

That’s why, when you hear things like a $10,000 suggestion, we dismissed that as well. We are trying to find that sweet spot of making sure that municipal elections, which already suffer from chronically low voter turnout — chronically low…. In fact, we have ten times as many candidates run for local government as you do for a provincial election, yet you get half the voter turnout in an election.

I would suggest that limiting the ability for people to properly get their message out and let people know that there’s an election even going on at the civic level could actually impair that even further and see an even lower voter turnout happening with municipal elections. So that’s really the key to all of this. How do you balance both out? How do you say to communities that, by and large, already aren’t getting large corporate donations anyway…? Trying to ban something that doesn’t already exist in those communities doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The large corporate donations I can totally understand, as you run for mayor. I saw corporate donations myself, running for mayor. That I can understand, and that I can accept happening in a larger city. It doesn’t have to be just Vancouver. It can be the size of a Kamloops or a Kelowna that that happens in, or a Prince George. So that’s understandable, and that’s supportable.

However, there are a great many campaigns that really do rely on the ability to self-fund, to self-finance, to run their campaign, to try to get a reasonable amount of signage out, to try to get some reasonable advertising out there. To try to do it with a $1,200 limit is very problematic.

We have already seen, and it was supported…. We now see a spending limit already in place. Depending on the size of the city, we have spending caps in place for municipal campaigns. I think that’s a very good thing, as well, because that will help contain things further.

[4:50 p.m.]

When you look at it on balance, if we’re restricting corporate donations and we’re restricting what can be done with party organizations and third-party advertisers and we’re restricting the overall spend limit that you can have in a campaign…. I think that all of those are very good things. The problem is, though, if you’re telling people that you can only spend $1,200 of your own money, you have created a situation where you have now told those people: “You need to go out, and you need to fundraise.”

There’s another practical reality of running a municipal campaign that I don’t think was thought through, in terms of this bill. That’s to say, I’ve run in five municipal campaigns. Well, a lot of times, what happens in a municipal campaign is you don’t have a finance person. You’re your own finance person, as a candidate, as well. You’re trying to set a budget. You think you’ve figured out what you want to do for a campaign.

If you budget, say, $4,000 for your campaign, and you have a $1,200 personal donation limit, what happens when the donations don’t roll in but you’ve already committed to advertising for that campaign? You’ve then put a lot of extra stress and nervousness on somebody who is trying to do the right thing for their community, trying to run for office in their community.

Now they’re standing there feeling like: “Okay, now what do I do? I’ve committed to advertising. I’m technically in breach if I have to self-finance the $4,000. I have to get very creative with my family on how I get that $4,000 back to my account so I can pay the bills, because I’m capped at $1,200.” If you budgeted for way over the $5,000, as proposed in this amendment, well, at a certain point there’s a bit of self-responsibility. You are running for elected office. You should share some of that self-responsibility.

Unlike running for provincial office, where you have this whole other group of people that are there to support you behind the scenes…. You have accountants and lawyers that are looking through the legal side of things for you. You have accountants working, generally, as your finance people, making sure you’re not in contravention of Elections B.C. acts and everything else like that.

The vast majority of local campaigns…. Again, they’re right on the disclosure form. You can see who they list as their financial agents. It’s the candidates themselves. They don’t have big fundraising machines. They do not have a mechanism of accounting behind them to figure out how to make all of this work. They’re, generally speaking, full-time employees. They’re trying to fit in campaigning as they can, and they’re trying to do the right thing within the legislative framework that they are dealing with.

To have an unrealistic cap of $1,200 gives them zero margin of error if their fundraising goals are not met. We see that all the time in Kamloops, where people start out…. They have the GoFundMe pages now, and they have all sorts of ways to try to raise funds. They get met very quickly with how hard it is to try to get even $20 donations from people, especially when there’s no tax receipt attached to it.

That’s really what we’re trying to do here. We’re not trying to create this class of self-funded campaign for the super elite. We’re not trying to create something that would be so unworkable as to make it seem like you’re buying your seat on council. The reality is that if you’re popular enough, as you’re getting your message out, to get elected in a campaign, you probably would be able to fundraise.

In fact, the more unknown candidate, who might have something to offer and be able to get that message out over the time of an election but wouldn’t be well known enough to be able to start soliciting donations of any serious form, would actually be left behind in this process, where the people that are well connected through the Rotary clubs or other service clubs or those types of situations would have a much easier time collecting donations — having that kind of mechanism, almost a provincial party, municipal party system behind them but not officially called a party. They’re officially an independent person running.

As much as I applaud the attempt at a level playing field, I don’t think we can ever get it to a 100 percent level. I think we can get it close. I think we can get it to a place where we’re making sure that corporate interests are not putting undue money into an election. I think we can make sure that electoral organizations aren’t playing fast and loose with the rules, working around and all of those scenarios. I think we can get it where we have spending caps, depending on the size of the population, so you can’t spend at will to try to get yourself elected. We have all those in place.

The only glitch in all of this…. We’ve gone through 13 sections of this bill, previous to this, with no amendments. So it’s not a case of trying to change, fundamentally, everything to do with this bill.

[4:55 p.m.]

It’s about trying to make sure that this bill really reflects what actually happens on the ground in a municipal campaign. I can tell you, I’ve talked with a great many…. I’m not that far removed from municipal government, as many of the newly elected in this House are as well, and there are a lot of my former colleagues that are nervous about the $1,200 limit.

I don’t think they fully realized that that was going to be included in this. When they heard a $1,200 contribution limit, I think they were under the impression, and rightfully so, that it would be for donations you’re receiving. Because they’ve always had an ability to donate an unlimited number of dollars to their own campaign, that’s where I think it took them by a bit of surprise.

I would much rather err on the side of caution on this, in terms of making sure that we give maximum flexibility in a municipal campaign, knowing that the result of that campaign will result in four years around the council table for who gets elected. We have seen examples over this last 3½ years — three years now of the four-year term — of cities that have worked remarkably well together as councils, and we’ve seen a few notable examples where it has not gone quite so well, and people can’t wait for the four years to come to get a new council in place.

That doesn’t get helped if you have an election process where you have people that aren’t able to run proper campaigns, get their proper messaging out and make sure that people understand what it is they bring to the table and offer for their community, to be a champion for their community with.

If you’re an unknown person in a community, you could have great ideas. If you have a $1,200 personal spend as a candidate, and you don’t have deep enough connections in the community to try to seek out donations, your voice will go totally unheard in a municipal campaign. If you have a slightly higher personal campaign limit, your voice can be heard, and you could be the change-maker around your council table or your school district table that makes all of the difference moving forward in a city.

I was fortunate the first time I ran to get elected the first time out of the gate, but that doesn’t happen all the time. In fact, I came in eighth out of eight possible seats. Now, there was a large margin between me and nine, but nonetheless, there was no other place for me to go if I didn’t come in eighth.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: Well, in terms of the ranking.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: The second time around I came in fourth. I was able to convey to the public on the first time I ran, with the bare minimum to get in, that I had something to offer the community. The next time I ran, I came in fourth. The next time I ran, I was the mayor.

That’s how we develop leadership within our communities. That’s how we get people to come out and run. The gentleman that I replaced in this seat here…. The first time he ran for city council in Kamloops, he came in ninth. He didn’t get on. He had to run the next time and got elected at the same time I did, and I think he came second in that election. One term later, he was mayor. One term later, he was an MLA, and we know the rest of that resumé.

That’s how people get elected and are able to start moving through the system. I self-financed both of my first two campaigns — well, myself and my family did. Under these new rules, it would be much more problematic trying to make those numbers work, and it wasn’t a huge, huge campaign. It was a few thousand dollars. It was around $3,000 or $3,500, I believe. The second time was around the same as well, so there are those pieces that are in place.

There’s also the power of incumbency. If you’ve run once and you keep your signs, you already have an ingrained advantage in terms of the spend on your next election. Yes, you have to account for a depreciated value of the signs, but it’s not dollar for dollar. So you can start to have some built-in advantages, where the incumbents, because of the name recognition and other factors, start to have even more of an advantage than the non-incumbents.

When you look at typical council turnovers, there’s usually, out of a council of eight, two to three that come in — whether it be by open seats or by defeating an incumbent. In my case, I actually defeated an incumbent the first time I got elected, so there was one empty seat and one incumbent that was replaced. That’s not unusual. In the next election, I think we had two incumbents that got defeated.

[5:00 p.m.]

The only way that new people are able to reasonably mount a campaign to try to challenge an incumbent in local government is to try to be able to get their message out. If we’re saying to them: “You can go ahead and get your message out….” But this isn’t a bill designed to limit fundraising in municipal elections. I see this as a bill trying to limit corporate influence of the party structure in municipal elections. Otherwise, what we’re really saying to people is that unless you’re prepared to run a $1,200 self-financed campaign, you better go out and start fundraising.

This bill, the way it stands, unless this amendment goes through, is actually encouraging people to go out and start to fundraise. It’s telling them that they need to go out and talk to their friends, talk to their neighbours and try to figure out how to get some extra funds when they otherwise wouldn’t have to if we just moved the limit slightly.

That’s really the underlying theme to this whole piece — that we want to make sure that people have a reasonable opportunity to make sure that local government, people running for local government, especially in areas that are not dominated by parties….

The Chair: Thank you, Member.

D. Barnett: I’m pleased to stand up and speak to this amendment. I come from local government. I started my experience in 1986 running for mayor of a small rural community. We didn’t think of fundraising. We did it ourselves. And to this day, many rural small communities do their own self-financing for their elections.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

For example, in 100 Mile House, $1,200 would probably self-finance a well-known incumbent. But for somebody new who came along and wished to get their profile out there and spend some money advertising — on the radio, in the newspaper, buying some signs, doing some other things — they would have to fundraise. And in small communities, it is not that easy. You take my other community of Williams Lake. I know the mayor there did his own self-financing the last election — $4,000 — because he wanted to be the mayor. And as I did, we wanted no conflict of interest.

When you live in small, rural communities, there is only so much land base. There are times when development has to be done, and these people may be ones that…. If they financed your campaign, you would have to remove yourself from the council table. In that instance, it would create a problem. It would stop development in small communities. It would stop a lot of things. Small communities spend more time collaborating and communicating than anything else. And to say that you could only raise $1,200 of your own money is absolutely ridiculous.

I have spent the last week or so talking to many people in small, rural British Columbia, regional districts and local governments, and they did support changes at UBCM, as has been said, to local government financing. But many of them didn’t realize that this was on the table.

I’ve been to many, many UBCMs, believe you me. Most of the time, members are meeting with government. They’re meeting with somebody else. They’re not even there when the vote’s taken on the floor. I have seen delegations of 1,200 registered delegates at UBCM, and a hundred people show up for the vote. So the people I talked to had no idea that this $1,200 self-financing was in this piece of proposed legislation. And they certainly are not happy with it.

We’ve gone out. I’ve done my consultation. Everybody has done their consultation. Some of us who have a lot of experience in local government know how it functions and know how it works, and find this not acceptable at $1,200. But with this amendment, the act would be one that keeps the spirit, keeps the philosophy and keeps the changes that probably need to be made.

I feel that we do need to make a change. And this amendment would certainly, certainly do what needs to be done.

[5:05 p.m.]

I feel my colleague here has spoken for half an hour. Hopefully, he’s been convincing. Hopefully, I can be convincing. I ran for local governments quite a few times, and it’s a lot nicer when you get in by acclamation. You don’t have to worry about money. But that doesn’t always happen. So you have to make decisions.

As my colleague has said, you need a budget. But you don’t make a budget until you decide whether you’re going to run or not. As he said — and I’ll agree to it — lots of times it’s 24 hours before you have to throw your name in the hat that you make a decision whether you’re going to run or not.

In local government, it’s easy to do that because you don’t have to raise a bunch of money. You don’t have to go out and get a campaign team. You don’t have to go out and figure out how you’re going to have coffee parties or whatever you’re going to do to raise the money. You can just put your name on the docket, get a couple of signatures and away you go with your own dollars and cents.

To say $1,200 would do it…. It won’t. It will cause many complications. In a lot of rural British Columbia communities, we don’t have parties in local government. We have individuals, and we want to keep it that way. If you make it too difficult, you might start to have parties. I think the more independents you can keep in local government, the better off we’re all going to be.

Taking a look at the rest of the bill, I think it’s pretty good. I really don’t have any issues with it. But to me, this is important — that we don’t accept the $1,200 and that we do accept the amendment that my colleague has put on the table.

You talk about money, you talk about freedom, and you talk about those people that can’t afford big dollars. If you’re a hard worker and if you’re sincere, you don’t need big dollars. You need the ability to run a campaign that is going to get you to the top of the docket.

I keep hearing we have to treat people who don’t have any money the same as people that have a little bit of money. That’s all more a mindset. I don’t feel any different than my colleague across the room who has probably got a lot more money than I have. I think we’re equal. I think we go out, and we sell ourselves. We show our ability to do the job, not the dollars and cents. Dollars do not win elections. I think that’s been proven over and over and over again in this country and in this province. It’s who you are and your honesty and your integrity.

You have to give people the ability to fund their own campaigns and not to have to knock on doors to keep that independence. With that independence, you have integrity. You have your own decision-making. Nobody owns you in local government. This way, we would ensure that people will step up to the table and run. We will encourage more people to run.

I’ve heard, actually, many other issues around the Local Government Act. A lot of people figure four years is too long. Well, we’ve got four years. I’ve heard a lot of other issues.

If we make it more difficult for people to run, it’s not going to encourage people at the local level. I think everybody will agree with me. So let’s make this as friendly as we can, let’s continue to look at this piece of legislation, and let’s work together and increase this $1,200 to the amendment that my colleague has put on the table.

I think that we’ve all made up our minds. I would hope that our minds have been made up with openness, realizing the importance of what we’re doing here today, and encourage everybody to take a good look at this amendment and to support this amendment in good spirit, as we’re trying to do in this House.

I think there are many questions that people might have. I think when we go out on our days off or whatever we call them…. I don’t call them days off. I call them good days at home working with my constituents and asking my constituents questions, as I did this past week and got input not just from my constituency but from other constituencies — from people in the Kootenays, from people up north.

[5:10 p.m.]

They, too, felt that $1,200 was restrictive on them in the next election. They don’t want to fundraise. They want to continue to utilize their own money. They want to continue to be independent. They have no problem with the ceiling on it, but the ceiling at $1,200 for self-financing is just too small, and they need it increased.

I don’t know if I have another colleague that wishes to speak. If not, I will turn the floor over to the colleague across the floor and thank you.

S. Furstenau: I’m rising to speak against the amendment. Having run in local elections myself, I would say that $1,200 is a sufficient amount for a candidate to be able to contribute to their own election campaign.

Fundraising is actually an important part of a campaign — not just provincial or federal, but it’s also really important at the local level — because to do fundraising means that we have to reach out to people in our communities and we have to speak to them about the vision that we have. At the local level, that vision is very important, because we are impacting people in their day-to-day lives in the decisions that we make, particularly around land use and community planning.

This does not put an unnecessary limit on what you can raise to run your campaign as a candidate in a local election. It says that we keep the field fair and even, that it’s not your bank account that determines whether you can be a successful candidate in a local election. So $5,000 is an amount that is far too much for a lot of people who would be contemplating running in a local election.

I think about what we want to see more at community municipal tables. We want to see more women. We want to see more young people. We want to see a diversity of the socioeconomic spectrum that we see in our own communities. To do that, we need to make the playing field very level in terms of who can and cannot afford to run in a local election. A $1,200 personal contribution is more than sufficient to be able to kick-start your campaign.

Door-knocking is important. Door-knocking puts you in touch with people in your community who you wouldn’t otherwise speak to. When you go to the door, you listen to their concerns. That informs the kind of decision-making that you want to be making at the board table or the municipal table.

I would also say that the more that we have to work on fundraising, on engagement and on door-knocking, the more engagement we’re going to see at local elections. We have very low voter turnout in local elections. We want to see that voter turnout go up, because these are decisions that really impact communities that are made at municipal tables. So to knock on doors, to host these coffee parties, to do the fundraising engages more people in our local elections and actually increases voter turnout and encourages a wider variety of people to engage and to possibly run.

I want to see more people on the ballot, and I don’t want to see a situation where the person with $5,000 contributing to their own campaign can outspend all of the other candidates because they don’t have that kind of money to be able to put into their campaigns. This really is an issue of fairness.

The $1,200 number is also very important. It’s consistent with what we’re saying should be a maximum contribution at the provincial level, so it makes things very clear and very simple. You can contribute a maximum of $1,200 to provincial. You can contribute a maximum of $1,200 to your own campaign, as a donor. We’re making things simple. We’re making things clear. We’re making things consistent. That’s a good thing in wanting to see more transparency, more fairness in all of our elections.

I cannot support this amendment. I think that as it stands, the proposal of $1,200 for a personal contribution is more than sufficient to be able to see the kind of engagement that we want to see at local elections.

[5:15 p.m.]

T. Stone: I certainly appreciate the comments that have been made on this particular amendment. Some of the discussions that have been taking place, as members have been speaking, have led to members of the Green caucus — at least a couple of the members; I’m not sure all — and the official opposition just having a discussion around potential amendments to the amendment that would be acceptable to both the official opposition and, potentially, some members of the Green caucus.

I would like to move a subamendment to the amendment for clarity’s sake. However, I’m wondering if we could get leave of the committee for me to just replace the original amendment with a new amendment that provides for the changes between the two amendments. Essentially, what we are looking to change here, what the new amendment would reflect, would be a self-funded maximum contribution limit of $2,400 and not $5,000.

There is some additional language, which I will quote, that is intended to ensure that the spirit of this amendment is actually carried through in the language of the amendment — the spirit being that if an individual opts to self-finance their campaign, then they’re making the choice to be the only contributor to their campaign. So an individual seeking elected office at the municipal or school board level would be able to contribute the $2,400 to themselves, to their own campaign, but if they choose to do that, they would not be able to accept any contributions from any other individuals to their campaign as well. They would have that choice.

The language that we’ve added that reflects that says: “Other than a candidate who is endorsed by an electoral organization, any candidate who contributes to their own campaign in excess of $1,200 cannot accept any contributions from any other individual for their campaign.”

I’m just seeking leave to withdraw the original amendment and replace it with this new amendment to this particular section.

The Chair: If it is the will of the committee, shall leave be granted to withdraw the original amendment?

Leave granted.

Amendment withdrawn.

T. Stone: If I may provide the minister with a copy of the new amendment.

[SECTION 14 by adding the underlined text as shown

30.01 (3) Subject to any applicable regulations, in relation to the 2018 general local election, for each of 2017 and 2018, the campaign contribution limit is $2,400 for a candidate who is not endorsed by an elector organization in relation to an election campaign of the candidate as long as a candidate is contributing to their own campaign. Other than a candidate who is endorsed by an electoral organization, any candidate who contributes to their own campaign in excess of $1,200 cannot accept any contributions from any other individual.]

On the amendment.

Hon. S. Robinson: I, too, have appreciated the debate that we heard initially. I do want to sort of remind everyone in the House that this really is about creating a level playing field, that we do know that pocketbooks do affect people’s ability to run independently.

[5:20 p.m.]

Making sure that there’s a level playing field is a key consideration in this legislation. I think that really needs to be at the forefront. However, I, too, have heard some concern, particularly from smaller communities, where there are some significant challenges.

The concern with this amendment is that it actually changes the entire structure of the legislation and would really not work with the legislation that we’ve created. I want to let the members who are proposing this flexibility…. There’s an opportunity in the regulation to make room for this. That’s something that we’re looking at because we have heard some concerns. That’s why we are putting the specific numbers.

As we’ve heard here, the numbers are all over the place, and it’s varied. Although there’s some recognition that for smaller communities…. It’s interesting that the member landed on $2,400. That’s an interesting number. How do you find some wiggle room, where there are certainly some challenges in smaller communities? Really, at the end of the day, we want everyone to feel like they can fully participate. I want to point out that regulation is the opportunity where we can put this in.

We also know that this is the very first election where we’re actually going to have campaign expense limits as well as contribution limits. Making sure that we have the opportunity to see how this plays out, both sides of this legislation, will provide us with the opportunity to adjust. Regulation is where we believe we can actually do that. We can fine-tune it going forward and make sure that it hits the mark.

We’re not going to accept this amendment because we believe that in regulation is where we can address some of these particular challenges.

A. Olsen: I’m just wondering. To the minister: can you provide a little bit more clarity for me about, when you say, in the regulations is where we can fix this or make it right? Can you provide a little bit more clarity for me on what exactly we could do to make this change that members in this place are hearing?

Hon. S. Robinson: In subsection 100(4), there is a note that says that the legislation allows us to provide exceptions to the provision of campaign contributions. It allows us to make an exception to the contribution limit, and it’s under that piece of legislation that we would look to make the exception.

A. Olsen: I want to speak to this amendment.

First of all, I would like to say that I do need to address how this was brought forward. I don’t know that $1,200 is the perfect number or that there’s any perfect number. When you look at provincial elections…. The member of the opposition, when questioning the minister about this bill, was comparing it to the other Election Act amendments that are being made. I don’t think that it’s applicable or that you can directly draw the comparison between provincial elections and municipal elections.

What we have in this province is a wide variety of communities, from very small communities to quite large communities. While it might be easier for us to set a specific number for ridings that are generally, I understand, the same size, whether they be geographic or in terms of demographic numbers and population…. When it comes to municipal elections, $3,000 or $2,400 or $1,200 is much different in a very small community — say, Oyster Bay or Chase or somewhere — than it is in Central Saanich, where that contribution of $2,400 is a fairly good amount. I could run a campaign in Central Saanich for that.

[5:25 p.m.]

It would be a lot more money in a community that’s much smaller. Say, Highlands, for an example — $2,400 would be a very well-funded campaign in the Highlands. It wouldn’t be enough if you were running in Saanich, for an example, where there are over 100,000 people. They don’t have electoral organizations, and $2,400 would be not enough.

In this case, the way that it’s been a subamendment or the amended amendment…. The problem with that is that in a place like Saanich, for example, it would be highly unlikely that someone would take advantage of this opportunity to put the $2,400…. Furthermore, what’s somewhat unclear to me is…. I’m not sure whether or not it’s $1,200 plus one, so $1,201, that makes it so that you can’t collect any more donations, or if it’s the number of $2,400.

I need to address the process here. It’s not that I don’t want to engage in this conversation. I know that a week and a half ago, when we had this conversation, there was this perception that I wasn’t ready or willing to engage. That’s not the case. What it is, is that I want to get the right number. I want to make sure that there’s fairness so that people can enter in.

I know that when I ran, I was 32 years old. We’d just had our first child, and I was entering into municipal politics. There was no way that I could have even contributed $2,400 to my own campaign. But as I shared with the member in the opposition, there was a candidate that I was running against there that could have funded seven or eight campaigns.

There is a desire, I think, to create a level playing field. That said, there needs to be flexibility. That’s what I think the member for Kamloops–South Thompson and the member for Kamloops…. It seems like the Kamloopses, the Kamloopseses or the Kamloops…. The Loops, I think they’re called — Blazer country. I think the Premier would appreciate the sports reference.

I want to say that what we’re trying to achieve here on the floor…. It was brought forward last week. There was an opportunity for us to discuss this, for our staff to be able to look it over and see the implications of it. I feel like I’m in a situation right now where there are a lot of questions that I would like answers to.

This was the question that I had for the minister. How does this get addressed in regulation? If we leave it, if we don’t amend the bill today and it gets left to regulation, how is that achieved? If we do amend this piece of legislation today, with the amended amendment, then perhaps we’re also leaving something on the table that we could have dealt with.

I’m in a bit of a situation here in which this amendment, which appears to be something that is rather simple…. Actually, there’s some complexity to it, and I don’t fully understand it. I don’t think that, on the floor right now, we can fully understand the implications of the decision that we’re making.

I guess it could be argued, as well, from the members, and I would accept it…. Why $1,200, right? We’ve set that. We’ve set it at a provincial level. It’s set. It’s a good number. But the fact is that we’ve got this added layer of frustration in that $1,200 is not $1,200. And $2,400 is not $2,400 in the various communities. It’s not equal. It’s not consistent. For me, that’s a fundamental challenge that I have. Frankly, I’m standing up right here, now, in this House trying to work through this.

I think, actually, that I need to point out something that we mentioned last week, which is that when we’re bringing these amendments forward…. I understand that there should be room in this place for a bill to be amended. That’s the debate. I recognize that. But when we’re given…. Shake your heads. That’s fine. But when we’re given notice a week and a half before….

Interjections.

A. Olsen: No, no. Hold on.

When we’re given notice that this change is going to come and then we get it at the time that it came, rather than the opportunity to go through it and work back and forth — we’re working it back and forth — we are not able to get the full implications of this.

[5:30 p.m.]

Frankly, at this stage, I am not likely to make an amendment to this. I think that there’s a process. We talked about it at second reading — that we go back to the UBCM and look at the number. But at this stage, I think that there is, on principle….

I said last week that if you’re going to bring an amendment forward, put it on the order paper, let us go through it, let us understand what the implications of it are. I think that there is room for places in this debate to have an amendment that comes up, but when we’re notified that there’s a likelihood of an amendment coming, and we don’t see it until the very end — the number, the implications — I think it’s very difficult for me to be able to support that on principle.

A. Weaver: I have a question to the minister, if I might. Then I’d like to speak. I have not spoken yet to the amendment.

The question to the minister is: if she is to bring in regulatory changes to account for the intent, as exhibited in the amendment before us right now, do those regulations need to be passed and enforced prior to January 1, 2018, for them to be applicable for the 2018 municipal or civic elections? If that is the case, is it the minister’s intention to actually pass regulations prior to January 1, 2018, in order to account for the conversations that we’ve heard right here today on the floor?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes.

A. Weaver: That’s very reassuring. I will speak to the amendment, though.

I’d like to start by saying this is one of the highlights of the five years I’ve been in the Legislature, because this debate is very healthy. It’s exactly the sort of debate that I think we should be having more often.

You see, the conflict my colleagues and I have…. I share the views of my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands, where he’s concerned about the fact that this was brought in at the last minute. I have a slightly different take on that, in that I had some good conversations with the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, and — unlike last week, where that came out of nowhere — I knew the spirit and the intent were to bring in legislation to do this, but we didn’t actually see the wording. So we have a slight difference there.

I see my colleague from Cowichan Valley — both of my colleagues, who have had experience in local governments — talking about the compelling case of self-funding and having an unfair advantage for those who are wealthy and those who aren’t.

I have heard from rural communities. I have heard from other communities about the importance of such legislation. I have also heard from the minister that she intends to bring in regulations. With that said, and reading this, I believe I will support this amendment, because I see that, in spirit, it reflects upon exactly the intent of the direction we can have.

Then I do note that even were this amendment to pass, it starts by saying: “Subject to any applicable regulations.” That’s an important caveat right up front, because it still gives the minister the ability to have some regulations which may supersede this, if that is the case.

I speak in favour of this amendment. I recognize that it’s different for my colleagues, but, frankly, I think it’s one of the healthiest debates we’ve had in this Legislature, and I look forward to seeing how the vote goes.

S. Bond: I just want to add a couple of comments to the reflections that have been made today.

I have the advantage, I guess, in some ways, of having been in this place for a long time — for 16 years. It’s unfortunate when a discussion turns into a discussion about the process instead of the policy. We realize that, in fact, perhaps this could have been done better, in a more collaborative approach in advance. But to the member who was asking questions about what this is about — it’s a pretty simple principle. It’s about enshrining the ability for someone with a reasonable monetary framework to actually self-finance.

The amendment that has now been tabled allows the person, the candidate, to make a choice. It’s about deciding whether you are going to self-finance to the tune of now…. It’s a number that there was much discussion about, and, in fact, there’s been some movement on the floor of the House today.

Making legislation isn’t perfect, and it shouldn’t be. We have the chance to have that kind of discussion today. Today is about having an opportunity for many small rural communities, for politicians in some of the communities that I represent, to be able to finance their own campaigns, and a monetary sum has been attached now of $2,400.

[5:35 p.m.]

It means that you either make the choice…. You decide whether you’re going to pay for it up to a maximum of $2,400, or you’re going to go and ask for donations, again, using the thresholds that have been brought into the bill.

I think it is a principled discussion, but the decision is a simple one. It’s about self-financing, allowing for there to be that opportunity. The amount now has been looked at, and it’s $2,400. I think there’s probably more frustration about the process that’s taken place than about what is a pretty simple amendment. You build in an opportunity to self-finance at a certain amount of money, and then you make a choice as a locally elected politician whether you’re going to self-finance or whether you’re going to seek donations.

I think it is an amendment that is supportable. I think we have to, at times, live with the frustration of how you get an amendment to the floor. But we need to concentrate on the policy: why it matters, especially in rural B.C., that there be an opportunity, particularly with an amount of $2,400, to self-finance. I think it’s pretty self-evident. I think the frustration is about the process. I think we should concentrate on what is a pretty straightforward policy recommendation.

Hon. S. Robinson: Once again, I’ve had the opportunity and appreciate the debate on the amendment to the amendment. Is that what they call this? A subamendment?

Again, a couple of comments to make about it. First of all, there are some serious flaws with how this amendment is written. There are some constitutional concerns, and we’ve got a consultation from leg. counsel that has some serious concerns about how this is written. It changes the whole nature of the legislation, and there are some concerns about different kinds of candidates identifying them differently. So that’s certainly a challenge that we have in terms of accepting it.

Fundamentally, again, I want to express some concern about the lack of flexibility by putting it into the legislation. We have the opportunity to do some regulation. And remember, we’re going to have to monitor this. This is the very first election that is going to be coming forward where we have expense limits and we have contribution limits. If we put something like this, this specific, into the legislation, then we’re really stuck with it, and it creates a real problem to have to go back into the legislation to change it.

While I’ve heard the debate…. It’s been a robust debate. I think people have done a stellar job representing their communities and representing those voices, and I’ve really appreciated that. I’ve been hearing those voices too, and I’ve certainly consulted with other groups around those concerns. We have heard that and are considering that for regulation to make sure that those who are needing to self-finance have a little bit more room than what we’re currently proposing.

We recognize that. We think it’s important. We also think it’s important that we get it right, that we do it in a way that makes sense for this province and that makes sense so that everyone can participate. I just want to make sure that everyone here understands that we understand the intent, and we’ll have an opportunity to address that in the regulations.

D. Davies: I certainly want to speak in favour of this amendment. Coming from a smaller rural community, this certainly plays a role in how I’ve run my last four campaigns, serving in the city of Fort St. John for 12 years. For most of my campaigns, especially my first campaign, I had the opportunity to do a little bit of fundraising. But I was raising a young family at the time when I first started running for city council. I was a full-time school teacher. I was taking university courses.

When I first started thinking about running to represent the citizens of Fort St. John, this was something that really drove me to want to make a big difference in my community, a community that my family has lived in since the Second World War — how I could really contribute. So when I first started down my very first campaign in 2005, I didn’t have a lot of time to fundraise. I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to go out and chase around $5, $10, $15, whatever, in donations. I didn’t have a lot of time to have fundraisers.

[5:40 p.m.]

When I started down the road of my campaign, I was really always thinking about needing to self-fund my own campaign, and I made that choice as an individual. I certainly don’t call myself rich, by any means, from a school teacher’s perspective, but I made that choice as an individual, to focus my energy not on doing all these fundraisers, not on chasing money around leading up to my campaign. I’d rather focus my energies on my family.

When looking at the initial bill that’s been presented, having the $1,200 limit, I really feel that that cuts me off — or people in the position of running for elected office as a city councillor. It really cuts my legs off for that ability to run a campaign. I would say, with my first campaign, I probably spent around $3,000. Now, will I say I didn’t get any fundraising? No. I probably had a couple of hundred dollars that was given to me by individuals. But for the most part, that was money that I contributed to myself.

I contributed into my own campaign, because I had an absolute true desire to run as a city councillor to make a difference in my community. So I made that choice, to self-fund my campaign. Again, it was around the tune of $3,000.

Looking at the now proposed $2,400 limit, I look at other communities now within my riding, Fort St. John being the biggest community. If I were to look at a community like Fort Nelson…. Fort Nelson is a community that we know has been, for a few years now, suffering some incredible economic downturns. If we were to limit an individual’s ability to self-fund their own campaign by forcing individuals now to go to their friends, to search out….

In a community where people aren’t working, people cannot necessarily afford to be making a contribution to a campaign. Again, I really feel that in some of these smaller communities where there might be some economic turmoil, some economic problems, there’s going to be a real issue for attracting people who want to give back to their communities.

In these smaller communities where there is economic downturn…. Again, I talk about Fort Nelson, and I’m sure we could look at many other rural communities across the province. There already is some challenge attracting individuals to run for city council. By adding more layers into making it more difficult for individuals to run for city council, I really think that we are doing the province a disservice. We’re doing the smaller communities an absolute disservice by making it even harder for someone who has a true desire to put their name on the ballot and represent their community by limiting their ability to self-fund.

I completely disagree with the aspect that…. Why do I, as an individual, not have that right to completely self-fund my campaign if I want to? If I want to represent my community and if that has been something that I’ve been working toward for a number of years…. Again, I go back to my 2005 election in Fort St. John. I had been working up to that election for probably five or so years, thinking about running for city council. So I had made the plan. I had already thought out my next steps to self-fund my own campaign.

Again, when we look at putting more limits and more challenges on having people run for local office, I really think that the people who are going to be affected the most are going to be in the smaller rural communities, where there already is a challenge right now to try and get more people to run for city council.

[5:45 p.m.]

I certainly am completely in favour of this amendment. I feel the $2,400 is certainly inadequate. In fact, I was also in favour of the $5,000 but certainly willing to look more at the proposed $2,400 amendment that is on the floor right now. I feel that is something that will give more people in rural B.C., smaller communities in rural B.C., more motivation to want to run. It eliminates some of the barriers that I feel we already put in place for people trying to run for local government. As an individual wanting to run and represent my own community, I feel that that really kind of infringes on my right to want to self-fund my own campaign, to maybe follow a dream of running for city council and representing my constituents.

With that, I will again just reaffirm that I am completely in favour of this amendment that we are speaking to right now and feel that, if the amendment does not pass, I think the smaller rural communities throughout British Columbia are going to be the ones that are going to certainly be the hardest hit, when they’re already often trying to seek people to run for local office.

S. Thomson: I appreciate the opportunity to provide a few comments on the intent of the amendment and the legislation. I missed some of the earlier debate and discussion on it, being in estimates, but watched the last part of it and wanted to come in and support the amendment as proposed. I think we’re calling it the amendment now — not a subamendment to the amendment — to set the figure for self-financing a campaign at $2,400 rather than the $1,200.

I think, based on the discussion…. I was quite taken by the comments from the Leader of the Third Party that this has been a good process. In my view, this is the place to have this discussion. While we all may agree that maybe there was a little better process that could have got us to this point, I think the point that we’re at is what is most germane to the discussion here, in terms of what we want to achieve for those individuals and people, particularly in those smaller and rural communities, who want to self-finance their campaigns.

I am coming from this having never run for local government, so I haven’t had the process — as many who can speak to this have — in terms of being involved in the local government election process. But I certainly have been aware of and have friends and individuals who have in our communities.

Now, Kelowna is not a necessarily one of those smaller rural communities that is being referred to here with the intent of this amendment, but there are many parts of Kelowna and outside of Kelowna that do fall into this. When I look at running for regional district representation on the outside of our communities, smaller communities that are close by Kelowna, this is why we’re proposing the amendment and the intent to move it to the $2,400.

I also know that in my own community, even in a larger community like this, there are people who run for local government who want to self-finance their own campaigns — some of them because that’s their intent and their principle, as has been talked about before. Others do it because they want to finance…. They feel they can be successful on that basis.

[5:50 p.m.]

I have a good friend, and I’m sure he probably won’t mind me talking about him or saying his name here in the Legislature. This was a long-standing representative of our community at the local government level — a very, very well-respected councillor for many, many years who went on to be chair of UBCM in the process. He prided himself, all the way through all of his election campaigns, on self-financing his own campaigns.

Now, I’m not sure, without direct discussion with him, whether $1,200 would have worked for him or not, but $2,400 provides that additional scope, that additional flexibility for those that want to finance their campaigns. And it’s clear in the legislation that if you make that choice, you don’t take those other contributions or those other donations. If you want to accept other financing and other contributions, then you’re in under the limits of the $1,200 and the limitations that are placed there in that process.

In the break week, while we were away from here, I did have conversations with local government representatives in our community who recognized that the bill as proposed, with the limitation in it at $1,200, had significant limitations for those that wanted to self-finance, even in a community like Kelowna. I think the amendment that is being proposed is a reasonable amendment in terms of addressing the concerns that have been heard — that everybody has mentioned they have heard. I haven’t heard anybody say that there isn’t an issue or there isn’t a concern. They’ve all heard about those concerns as this bill has had discussion out in the communities.

I have heard from colleagues, particularly those who represent areas in the province that have many of those smaller rural communities, that the limitation that was being proposed in the bill was too limiting for those that wanted to self-finance their own campaigns. So I am supportive of the amendment that has been proposed. I think this is the appropriate place to do this.

I recognize that the minister has indicated that this could be done by regulation. The concern about that process is, as everybody knows, the regulatory process doesn’t involve this whole Legislature. It involves a process where a regulation is taken through and dealt with by cabinet. I would be concerned that despite some assurances, we may not see the intent of what we’re trying to achieve here come all the way through that process.

I would much prefer that it was dealt with here on the floor of the Legislature. As was pointed out, this has been a healthy debate process and one that has come to a point where I think we have a very reasoned amendment to the bill. It recognizes the concerns that have been raised, concerns that have been heard around the province.

I’ll be supporting the amendment. I think this is the point and the place to deal with this, acknowledging that the process could have maybe been better in terms of how we got to this point. But I think it shows, with the discussion that has taken place and the engagement on it, that with some work, we can get to a point where we agree with what is meant to be achieved here.

I think the intent is clear. I think this will provide the opportunity for those that want to self-finance their campaigns in those situations. It provides them that greater flexibility, recognizes the concerns that have come forward from our communities — from our rural areas, from those regional districts and others, and even from my own community, a larger community, where somebody wants to self-finance.

[5:55 p.m.]

When you’re needing to self-finance in a larger community, the additional ability to have this level of contribution that you could make to your self-financed campaign provides you a little bit more of a level playing field, a little bit more of a balance in the process as well.

I appreciate the opportunity to stand and provide a few comments on the amendment and will be supporting the amendment.

M. Bernier: It’s a real honour to speak on this particular bill but, more importantly, to the amendment that we have in front of us right now.

When we put bills on the floor and we have the opportunities just like this to put amendments…. We have great discussion that takes place in the House to make sure that we make the bill better and that, at the end of the day, when the bill is passed, it’s going to meet the needs of not only all the people of British Columbia but, specifically, in this case, of elected officials that choose to run to represent their communities.

I want to speak for a moment on my history. I spent three terms as a local elected official in the great city of Dawson Creek, one as councillor and two as mayor. In all of those elections, I self-financed myself. That’s not uncommon in rural British Columbia. I spent some time, as well, on the UBCM executive. One of the things that was really important that we talked about there is the flexibility and the opportunities for people in rural British Columbia and small communities, even in large communities, who want to be able to put their names forward, who want to represent their communities, who want to represent the values that will help them get elected.

There are a lot of people that choose to do that on their own, knowing that they want to make a personal decision and to say: “I’m going to self-finance myself going forward in this next election.” Sometimes it’s done with a bit of notice. Sometimes it’s actually something that’s maybe a last-minute decision, within the last month or two. It’s hard for some people to decide, with a long runway, that they are going to do fundraising. They might choose to say: “You know what? I am willing to self-finance.”

I know there are a lot of people in this House who have spent time in local government, and I would probably argue there are a lot of people in this House that also self-financed their campaigns. It was a choice that they made. It’s a choice that we need to have out there.

The problem with the way the bill is presented is the $1,200. In order to be able to self-finance, even in a small community…. Now, I’m not talking just about as a councillor or as a mayor. It could be as a park board member in some jurisdictions. It could be as a school trustee. All of these need to have that flexibility and the choice. If somebody chooses to spend more money on a campaign and they want to fundraise, then we have these limits that are in place under this bill that will allow for that. The limits will actually curb what they can fundraise and what people can donate.

I think we’re all okay with that. In fact, leading up to this bill, when we’re talking…. Whether it’s provincial elections or local government elections, there was a big discussion and a lot of agreement on the fact that we need to make things more fair, and we need to make things better for elections. At the same time, though, especially from a local government perspective….

I look at when I first ran for city council. I spent around $2,000. Under the rules that are there right now, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. I wouldn’t have been able to say: “I’m willing to self-finance and then allow the voters in my community to decide whether I should be on council or not.” We really need to be able to be flexible.

I think what’s really important is the discussion that we’re having in this House today. I really want to thank and commend the members from a third party, from the Green Party, as well, for understanding that there are times where, whether it’s with notice or whether it’s last minute because of changes, we need to have these discussions. At the end of the day, it’s about: how do we make the bill better? How do we work in this House on a section to make sure we make the proper changes?

My colleague from the North Peace who spoke, again, spent a couple of terms like myself, the same amount of time almost — actually, one term longer — on local government. I went to the other side and came to provincial government one term sooner than he did.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Yeah. I crossed to the provincial side. I won’t say to the dark side.

[6:00 p.m.]

I know from our part of the world, just like other jurisdictions in rural British Columbia, it is not uncommon to self-finance your campaign. In fact, it’s actually the norm, I would say, in most areas. When you look at school trustees, I’d be hard pressed to find a school trustee who actually did a fundraising event, when I look in the rural parts.

Now, albeit, when we have…. In larger jurisdictions, there are different issues, there are different political organizations than local governments, and there are regulations that are coming in. The minister has spoken to those, and the minister has put forward a bill that’s trying to reflect some of those challenges that are faced there.

At the same time, though, we have to remember that we can’t be doing a cookie-cutter approach all the time to try to solve the problems for one community or one area that’s going to fix all of British Columbia. That’s why we need to be flexible. That’s why we have to have opportunities for other people to have different areas where they can actually step up and say: “You know, I want to run to be a councillor. I want to run to be a mayor or a school trustee or a parks board member in my community.”

Fundraising is not for everyone. Fundraising is actually one of those things in smaller communities that they want to…. I see the minister actually shrug on that, but I’m curious if the minister has actually talked with all of the members of the UBCM from small communities. I was on the UBCM executive. I beg to differ with the minister because I can tell her wholeheartedly that I’ve spoken with members from small communities.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

I was on the UBCM executive. I was the president of our local government association — one of the longest-serving. I can tell the minister that most rural communities, most small communities…. I hate to say it just that way, but it’s because of the unique differences in rural British Columbia that we have, that a lot of people self-finance. And $1,200 will not self-finance a campaign in a small or medium-sized community.

When I ran to be the mayor for the city of Dawson Creek, I spent between $5,000 and $6,000 on my campaign. I self-financed that as well. I chose to do that, and it was between $5,000 and $6,000. Under these new rules, if we go down under this amendment, which I hope passes, it’s going be $2,400. That would be a decision I’d have to make, then, if I was running for mayor. Do I choose to fundraise and spend that amount of money, or do I choose to self-finance for that?

The point, though, is that we need to allow for that moderation, that flexibility in all of these communities. I believe the way the bill is written right now, to say $1,200 for Vancouver and $1,200 for Pouce Coupe is fair and the same…. We can’t do that. We’re talking apples and oranges when we’re talking about how communities are run, how elections are run and how people support their candidates.

In small communities like Charlie Lake, when they get out in Pouce Coupe…. I know Charlie Lake is not incorporated yet, but they might someday yet, as the member said from up there. Hudson’s Hope, Pouce Coupe, these small communities, they don’t do fundraisers. They decide that they want to do right by their community. They have an idea. They have something that they bring forward because they want to give back to their community, and they put their names out there, and they want to be part of it. They want to represent their community. They want to be inspired by the ideas that come forward and represent the community at the council table.

To then tell those people, “Sorry, now you have to go out and fundraise if you want to spend more than $1,200,” absolutely flies in the face of what most rural communities do. In most communities, rural communities, people are inspired to make a difference. They’re inspired by their friends to step up to make a difference. They’re inspired to make sure that those rural communities stay nice, rural communities where people choose to live. But to do that, we need to have that flexibility again.

Again, I want to thank the Green members, because when we put a motion forward to amend, the intentions are there, and the good intentions are about making a bill better.

This is not to criticize government. This is not to criticize the minister. This is about the minister and government bringing forward a bill that has good intentions. But the whole point and purpose of having these discussions and these debates is for all 87 members to be able to look at it and then decide how we ensure, before we vote in favour of a bill, that it meets the best intentions possible, that we make sure that we’ve looked at and scrutinized all the different issues.

[6:05 p.m.]

I’m sure that at the end of this, after an amendment of $2,400 hopefully passes, we’re going to get scrutinized by people saying we didn’t go far enough. There are going to be some people saying it should have been $5,000, or it should have been $10,000, or there are other issues we could have looked at. I know, whether it’s in Saanich and areas that people choose to self-finance, people might actually say that $2,400 isn’t enough. But the point is that we have to allow those opportunities and that flexibility.

Again, when we look at this, I appreciate the fact that we’re having this discussion. These discussions need to take place. I’m hoping the minister will acknowledge the fact that we’re trying to make this better. And again, it’s no criticism to her.

My hope would be the addition of $1,200 added in this amendment. We’re not talking large sums of money here. We’re talking just a little bit that’s going to make a huge difference, a big difference to small communities.

I would implore and ask the minister and the government, in this case, to actually side with everybody in the House and agree that this amendment is reasonable. We’re not asking for the moon. We’re asking for something to be reasonable. We’re asking for an opportunity here for all of the House to collectively stand up. We all said that we want to work together. We’ve all said that we want to do the right thing by the citizens of British Columbia. Here’s an opportunity to do that.

I am hoping the members from the Third Party, the Green Party, the members, are going to say that this is reasonable. It sounds like they understand that we’re trying to actually make this bill better, and it’s reasonable. I think it’s important that the members of the NDP and government recognize the same thing.

It’s only $1,200 to us, we say, but that will make the difference of somebody’s decision of whether they’re going to run or not in a small community. And the last thing we want to be accused of in this House is discouraging somebody from putting their name on the ballot and actually trying to make a difference for their community.

Again, I hope that everyone in this House will understand that that’s what we’re trying to do — encourage people to be part of the system, encourage people to be inspired, encourage people to make a difference for their small communities, if that’s where they choose to run and make a difference. Far be it from us to actually discourage anyone. That’s why I’m in favour of this amendment, and I hope everybody in this House is as well.

M. Hunt: I rise to speak to this proposed amendment to Bill 15 that has been put forward. Just for a little disclosure, so that the context is fair, I ran in 11 local government elections, so I have a little bit of experience. Fortunately for me, I won the majority of those. I’ve been very involved in this.

I was with the minister, or the minister was with me — whichever way around you wish to say it. We both served on the committee that was dealing with local election campaign financing. We both served on that together, and at that point in time, our mandate was only one mandate. It was to set expense limits. That’s what it was.

The minister knows quite well that we heard a number of presentations, particularly in the urban areas, that were made to us on spending limits as well. Certainly, that was there. The minister has taken the initiative, as the minister, in order to work at addressing that.

Now, the reason why we were out there listening to the public concerning election campaign financing on the spending limits was because we were trying to create a level playing field. The goal was to have a level playing field so that people couldn’t literally buy an election. There was a perception, whether it was true or not…. In most of the province, it wasn’t true. As a matter of fact, when we looked at the data, we saw many times….

The Chair: Members, the member for Surrey-Cloverdale has the floor. Please cut down your voices so that we can hear what he’s saying.

Thank you, Member. Carry on.

M. Hunt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The intent was to level the playing field, because there were examples…. Now certainly, those were outliers. They were ones that were not the norm.

[6:10 p.m.]

From time to time, we could see, as we looked over election results in the past, that there were individual municipalities’, individual areas’ elections where individuals would spend phenomenally more than anyone else, and it just had the appearance of them buying the election. Most of the time, this was, in fact, happening in rural B.C. The tendency within the Lower Mainland is that there’s a lot more money that’s available. There’s a lot more money that’s involved in elections. Also, when we look at the larger municipalities, we have electoral organizations.

The focus was on financing, the spending side of it, trying to create a level playing field. Now, the interesting thing is that if my memory serves me correctly — and I didn’t look this up just before I came — we set a limit, something like $5,000. Here we’re, in fact, having an unintended consequence, where we’re saying that if somebody finances it, they now have a new spending limit, and that new spending limit is $1,200.

I am concerned over this, because I think there are some unintended consequences. The first one that is obvious to me is we are setting new campaign limits on those who choose to self-finance. The interesting thing, as we look…. We had a number of elections’ worth of results. In fact, in the…. What would it have been? It would have been the 2015 election, somewhere in there. We had all the stats, because what we had done was ask Elections B.C. to record all of the spending that was done and then make that available to the committee. So the committee had volumes of information to deal with on how the money was being raised, the amounts that were being spent throughout all of the province.

That’s why we came up with the limits that we did. One limit was dealing with the more rural areas, and one was dealing with the more urban areas. The first problem is an arbitrary campaign spending limit. Second is what we’re doing with this bill. To me and looking at this, by trying to line up with the provincial election bill — the two are financed in very different manners — what we’re also doing is taking those candidates and we’re literally forcing them to go into electoral organizations if, in fact, they want to spend something significant.

One of the interesting debates, or the presentations, as we were going along, particularly in the Lower Mainland…. I’m thinking of particular presentations that came to us from the city of Vancouver. We had individuals who were running who were not in the large electoral organizations, but they felt that they could actually run a campaign for $5,000 in the Lower Mainland.

Well, again, I would argue that that’s mission impossible. But when I ran in one of the previous elections, I ran as an independent, because I wasn’t comfortable with the electoral organizations that were available in Surrey at that particular time. I ran as an independent. With the group of independents that were running, there was a sense that, yes, for $5,000, they could run a reasonable campaign.

The interesting thing is even in the Lower Mainland, we had individuals who were self-financing. I know much of the debate has been on the rural areas and the rural communities, who have considerably less spending.

Again, we’re tying this into those who are living in the urban areas, as well, in the Lower Mainland. To me, we’re basically setting a new campaign limit, an unintended consequence that we’re forcing on people.

My question is: why is this particular portion so out of sync with the rest of the act that we’re supposedly trying to amend? That’s the title of Bill 15, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Amendment Act. But by this amendment, we are actually completely out of sync with the original bill and the spending limits that were put in the original bill.

We have a member here who certainly has run for more local government elections than I have, and that is the member for Abbotsford-Mission. If my memory serves me correctly….

Interjections.

[6:15 p.m.]

M. Hunt: There he is. He’s behind me now. He’s in the House. He’ll most likely have his own turn to speak, but from my memory of his tremendous streak of…. I can’t remember how many elections he has had, through the process of Matsqui, the amalgamation with Abbotsford and all the rest of this, but he has been one in the Lower Mainland who has chosen to self-finance.

Now we’re sitting there saying: “No, this is the new limit.” That’s why, although I see the amendment that is before us is actually only going up to $2,400, I would actually argue that it should be whatever the spending limit is for that area. I think if someone chooses to self-finance, why are we saying no to that? It’s not like….

The original intent, from my understanding, is that we were dealing with people unduly influencing the politicians, as we got elected, by making large donations. Well, if they’re making large donations to themselves, guess what. They’re only influencing themselves, and we do that every time we think.

I have real problems with where this bill has gone. I certainly am in favour of the amendment. I wish it would go, in fact, a little bit further, but I am satisfied that it seems as though that’s where the consensus is going, or potentially going. So I would support the amendment. Thank you for my opportunity to speak to this amendment.

Noting the hour, I would move that we rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

Interjection.

M. Hunt: Oh, thank you. I move adjournment of the debate.

No, hold it. I’ll sit down.

The Chair: Minister, do you want to note the hour?

Hon. S. Robinson: …report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Interjections.

The Chair: Members, I hope you heard the motion. There are too many conversations going on, so I’ll ask the minister to repeat her motion again, please.

Hon. S. Robinson: I ask this committee to rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:17 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

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

Hon. M. Farnworth: After an interesting afternoon, I move the House do now adjourn.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:20 p.m.