Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call the supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Health, to be followed by the supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

In the Douglas Fir Room, Committee A, I call the supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Nat­ural Resource Operations and Rural Development, to be followed by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture supplementary estimates.

[2:30 p.m.]

Committee of Supply

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES:
MINISTRY OF HEALTH

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

The committee met at 2:33 p.m.

On Vote 30(S): ministry operations, $89,000,000.

N. Letnick: Perhaps the minister would like to have some opening comments about why he needs this money.

Hon. A. Dix: Thank you to members of the House. I think that everybody in the Legislature recognizes the value of health research in British Columbia — the value of health research, first of all, to patients. This past week the Michael Smith Foundation visited the Legislature — six outstanding researchers in various areas of health, from mental health and addictions to type 2 diabetes care to fall prevention and so on, who are involved very much in the Michael Smith Foundation’s effort to improve the quality of care in British Columbia.

[2:35 p.m.]

So that’s a great place to start — of our developing a community of researchers that can help do this work, of us developing, obviously, a life sciences sector that creates jobs and builds innovation in our society. At its core, the work particularly of the Michael Smith Foundation and of Genome B.C. I think is at the centre of our efforts to promote health research. This has been, I think…. It’s one area, amongst many, that is genuinely bipartisan.

I know that members of the House will know, for example, that the Michael Smith Foundation was founded under an NDP government but strongly supported — I think it was 15 to 17 years — by a Liberal government after that, consistently supported in a similar way. Founded under the NDP, supported under the Liberal government and then again supported as the New Democratic Party government came back into office last year, with a $17 million grant at year-end. Traditionally, these expenditures have been supported at year-end.

Equally, Genome B.C. plays a critical role in developing partnerships for health and life sciences innovation. I think we all know that all of the dollars invested by the province in Genome B.C. over the years have been matched and grown by the private sector, by the federal government and others as we’ve built out that network, that partnership, for B.C. The result has been that over a couple of decades of these programs, B.C. has developed, I think, an outstanding centre for health policy innovation and health research innovation that goes beyond one government or any other.

What we’re proposing here today is to build the future, not for this year, obviously, but for the coming years — for the coming three years with respect to the Michael Smith Foundation and the coming two years with respect to Genome B.C. as they finish their current five-year plan. That is what this $89 million investment in the coming years for our province will do — one-time funding, yes, but to be used over a period of years to continue the effort that dates back two decades to improve health research.

I would say, if you consider the legacy of Michael Smith and his legacy to the people of B.C., the foundation is an important part of that — a generation of researchers, and more to come, who make life better, who make innovation happen in the community. I’m very proud to support this supplementary estimate.

Before sitting down, I’d like to introduce, to my right, the Deputy Minister of Health, Stephen Brown. To my left…. If people know the Ministry of Health, they know that the assistant deputy minister of finance and corporate services was long held by someone named Manjit Sidhu. Well, we now have a new person in that position, after some decades of outstanding service. That’s Peter Pokorny, who’s to my left. Assistant deputy minister of finance and corporate services is the title. Immediately behind me is Heather Davidson, the assistant deputy minister, partnerships and innovation.

I look forward to answering any questions that the opposition or anyone else would have on this subject.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister for his opening comments. Yes, he is surrounded by some very capable people, and I welcome them as well. Also, to his rear is the Minister of Agriculture, another very capable person. So he’s got it made in the shade, and I’m alone here with my wall.

Back to business, $89 million. This is supplementary for the current fiscal year. I thought I just heard the minister say that this is for the upcoming years. Could the minister please correct my misunderstanding — that the $89 million is for 2018-2019 and not for future years?

Hon. A. Dix: As the member will know, at different times in the past…. I recall, in fact, a debate about supplementary estimates — it might have been in 2009 — where I think I asked nine questions about the supplementary estimates, all of which were declared out of order. That was the time. That was then; this is now.

The member is absolutely correct. These are supplementary estimates, as noted when I introduced it for the 2018-19 fiscal year. They provide financing going forward. Obviously, the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. will not be spending that money in this fiscal year. They’ll be spending it into the future.

[2:40 p.m.]

The plan is that by spending this money, using the supplementary estimates, it secures the future, from the point of the view of government funding, for the next three years for the Michael Smith Foundation, which is $60 million over three years, and for Genome B.C., which is $29 million over two years to finish off the amount that has been left unfunded or not funded in the Genome B.C. five-year plan.

If you want specifically about the money, it’s $89 million. It is expensed this year. It will be provided to the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. this year, with the intent that they use this money to support both current initiatives and future initiatives in the coming years — three years in the case of Michael Smith and our expectation of two years in the case of Genome B.C.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister for clarifying that for me.

Has it been the practice in the past for year-end funding — because that seems to be what this is now — to be allocated on a go-forward basis of three years, in the case of the Michael Smith Foundation, of $60 million, and two years, $29 million, for Genome B.C.?

Hon. A. Dix: Well, if you look at past funding for both the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C., generally speaking — and the majority of that time was obviously under the previous government — their funding has been year-end funding — not, to be fair, to supplementary estimate, which has a difference in terms of the financing models. It was used by the previous government but not for this funding.

Year-end funding has generally been the pattern for the Michael Smith Foundation, Genome B.C. and other agencies. I’ll just give you an example of an agency that receives year-end funding, not supplementary estimates. It would be the First Link program of the Alzheimer Society. I know we’ll be seeing them this week. It has traditionally been funded by year-end funding, sometimes multiple years of year-end funding granted at the end of a fiscal year to allow them to proceed with such a program into the future.

That’s been the pattern for some funding agencies. It’s certainly been the pattern for Michael Smith and for Genome B.C. in the past. In fact, both agencies received year-end funding at the end of the 2017-2018 fiscal year.

N. Letnick: Could the minister please outline a little more in detail what the Michael Smith Foundation will be using $60 million for over the next three years and what Genome B.C. will be using $29 million for over the next two years? In particular, what outcomes does he anticipate them achieving that would benefit patient care in British Columbia?

Hon. A. Dix: Well, the organizations are slightly different but have, shall we say, overlapping objectives.

The Michael Smith Foundation has five main objectives for its $60 million. The attracting and retention of high-quality researchers to B.C. Attracting additional non-government funding to B.C. That could include other levels of government, as well, so matching funding.

Funding research that aligns with B.C. health sector priorities. For example, some of the work we saw just last week — with respect to wound care, with respect to mental health and addictions, with respect to primary care — is all part of that. The member may have some questions for that later.

Funding research and translation activities that lead to commercialization opportunities. In other words, providing some basic research which will help build the life sciences sector in general, and the health sector in B.C. in particular.

[2:45 p.m.]

The fifth goal is important in their case and in Genome’s case. It allows them a period to diversify their funding sources so they have less reliance in the future on the provincial government — although I suspect, into the future, the Michael Smith Foundation will continue to have such a reliance.

With respect to Genome B.C., it’s working with the Ministry of Health to support the implementation of genomics into clinical practice for the benefit of B.C., particularly highlighting best practices from around the room and supporting strategic initiatives and pilot projects around a vision for precision health in B.C., which the member and I have been briefed about at a number of sessions over the last year; ensuring that Genome B.C.’s suite of programs, such as GeneSolve, sector innovation program and sector development activities, position B.C. to compete well in their large-scale research competitions outside of British Columbia; and supporting a balanced portfolio of discovery research, applied research and user-driven co-investment.

The two organizations have different models, I would say. The Michael Smith Foundation is much more oriented towards the health care system and the needs of patients but, as well, of broader research. But these are the goals under both funding regimes. They’re consistent, I think, with the pattern over time, and they build out over time.

For example, Genome B.C. is currently engaged in the last two years of a five-year plan, which has been out there and presented for some time. These are the last two years of provincial contributions into that plan. Between now and two years from now, it would be our expectation they would come back with their future vision or their next five-year plan. With respect to Michael Smith, similarly, providing three years of funding gives them the opportunity in some cases, with some researchers, to make commitments over a period of time which, if they didn’t have three years of funding, they wouldn’t be able to make.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. Any budget item is always a choice between competing priorities, competing uses. When we go out to the public and explain to them that we are investing $89 million of their tax dollars, a lot of them will ask, I assume: is that going to make my hip surgery come faster or access to a primary care physician a little better, or am I going to get ambulance service or something else in my rural community? So let me ask it again a different way.

The $89 million that is being invested in research and supporting these two organizations. What concrete benefits to patients will the taxpayers of British Columbia realize? I’m happy if he takes a long time to do the work and then come back and report out. That’s fine.

Hon. A. Dix: Just to say that I think we in the Legislature…. I realize that people don’t sometimes have these opportunities to see, although Genome B.C., for example, is hugely integrated into B.C. schools. It may be in communities that the member represents, but it’s certainly in communities I represent. Promoting the value of research and sciences is an important thing that most people recognize.

I can tell him that the work of the Michael Smith Foundation for people with type 2 diabetes is of central importance, I think, to the lives of the 400,000 British Columbians who have type 2 diabetes. That work of essentially reducing people’s dependence on medication and increasing our knowledge about the value of exercise programs that are a possibility for people reduces costs. It doesn’t increase costs in the health care system.

Similarly, I saw — and I’ll come back to the member with the name of the researcher lead on this issue — the work in wound care that the Michael Smith Foundation has supported in recent years that dramatically saves costs and medical interventions — in one case, by millions of dollars. The work in wound care that’s been done and supported by the Michael Smith Foundation is an extraordinary thing.

If we’re going to build and reduce costs in the future — that’s a real orientation of the Michael Smith Foundation — so that we can ensure that we have the money to invest in other things, we have to have progress and response and learn. Both the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. do this.

Just to give you a sense in terms of hereditary cancer, because I spoke about Michael Smith…. Genome B.C., in terms of hereditary cancer, is doing work on earlier testing and regular screening for cancers directly being linked to health outcomes. So a made-in-B.C. genomic solution reduced test result wait times from over one year to three weeks.

[2:50 p.m.]

More than 3,600 B.C. patients have benefited from this more efficient and effective genetic test — one test in place of numerous tests accelerating diagnosis, treatment and quality of life. This new test is able to screen for 17 genes simultaneously, up from the previous four genes. This increases diagnostic accuracy and eases the administrative burden.

These are the practical things that make a difference for people. Yes, there’s the economic development that Genome B.C. does — the research work it brings into the province, the opportunity for B.C. researchers that builds the economy — but also a more effective, more efficient health care system that improves things like mental health and addictions care by improving and understanding best practices, improving type 2 diabetes care, improving wound care and numerous other areas of more technical research but also of broad public application.

That’s been the work of the Michael Smith Foundation, and that was the vision of Michael Smith, I’d argue, at the beginning. He wasn’t in any way an elitist in his view. He felt that such contributions should have practical applications, and they have throughout the history of the Michael Smith Foundation. I know the member knows this — that making these investments makes life better into the future and provides hope for a lot of people now who face enormous medical intervention to address issues that we hope they’ll be able to get back sooner with if we proceed with the research.

Research has value. I know that, and I know he knows that the research that’s been done in Canada for a very long time, often with the support of government, has made a real difference in people’s lives — in my life and the lives of many of the people I know and, I know, the lives of people he knows.

These are always choices. I agree. We could decide not to spend the money on research. We could decide not to continue with, really, the 20 years of investment of government. But also, let’s be clear, the taxpayers of B.C. who have made those investments with their hard-earned tax dollars have had enormous benefits through the system in savings and in advances, and we have to continue to do that if we’re going to have a health care system that meets the needs of people in 2030 and 2040 and 2050.

There are going to be, for example, many more people — maybe twice as many people — who have, because of an aging population, to deal with cancer in 20 years. We have to improve our responses to these things to have a public health care system that meets those needs into the future. That’s where research comes in. Genome B.C. and the Michael Smith Foundation are an important part of that.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. I agree with the minister. Research is extremely important. Actually, the first time I met his deputy minister was when I was working on a particular project on divisions of family practice. He wasn’t the deputy minister at the time, so look how far he’s come.

Hon. A. Dix: That was a long time ago.

N. Letnick: That’s a while, yes. I had hair back then. So did he, actually.

Anyway, getting back to the issue at hand: the bid process. Was there one? The government is paying out $89 million — over three years, in the case of the Michael Smith Foundation, and two years, in the case of Genome B.C. Did they have to compete for this money against other research houses or organizations? Or something else?

Hon. A. Dix: I think both the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C., which is part of the broader Genome Canada…. I mean, there is enormous competition, in fact. They’re the central places, and then others, from universities and other institutions, are competing for their funding. They are our main provincial competition.

Obviously, it’s not the provincial government that chooses the researcher or chooses the project. It’s the people and the experts at the foundation who do that work. So it’s the centre of enormous competition for research dollars, of course. What they talk to us about is what the priorities of the health care system we’d like to view are, in the case of Michael Smith. But there’s lots of competition. The competition occurs from Michael Smith dollars and from Genome B.C. dollars in the community and the community of researchers.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. Once again I find that I’m not communicating very well.

[2:55 p.m.]

Are there any other organizations like the Michael Smith Foundation or Genome B.C. that would also have liked to have $60 million over three years or $29 million over two years that got nothing — that the minister chose to provide the $89 million to these two organizations alone? For example, would the UBC School of Population and Public Health have liked to have been funded directly with some research dollars, or UVic or SFU or some other national organization that would also be able to do the work that the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. are going to be doing for us?

Hon. A. Dix: Well, I think it’s possible that, say, the Minister of Health would do a better job distributing research grants than the Michael Smith Foundation in its 20 years of expertise and credibility supported by multiple governments. I understand the debate, but the idea is that we’ve set up these outstanding foundations — one in terms of health research and, in Genome B.C., as part of a national effort in genomics — in order to ensure that we have independent, research-driven decisions.

Some of the priorities are guided by government, in our requests, but independent processes to set up funding, not have the Minister of Health or the Deputy Minister of Health or anyone else make those decisions. We’ve set up these two agencies to do exactly what the member is talking about, which is allow researchers to bid into those funds in an independent way and to support independent research in the province.

I think it’s the right way to go. Certainly, it’s consistent with the decision taken 20 or so years ago by a previous government and supported, since then, successively by governments with this kind of funding.

We think that the Michael Smith Foundation does an outstanding job. I don’t think replacing it with another organization would be better. In fact, I think we need to build on the success of the past in the case of both organizations. That success has been considerable, particularly in recent years. So I think this is the right way to go — not trying to carve up that funding or that support among different agencies and have, say, the Ministry of Health make the research funding decisions that the Michael Smith Foundation makes.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. Again, I’m lacking clarity. Are there any other organizations in Canada that would have been happy to receive some provincial tax dollars which they could then distribute for research similarly to what the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. do?

Hon. A. Dix: Interesting. Most provincial jurisdictions have an organization like Michael Smith that provides research funding across the health spectrum, including to all universities. The majority of health research funding, it should be said, comes from the federal government, so this allows us, in British Columbia, both to leverage that funding and to support our own sector here in British Columbia. This makes sense for us, especially with the significant goals of this government.

The only jurisdiction that doesn’t have this, that sees this research funding directed from the ministry, is the government of Ontario. I don’t have sufficient expertise to comment on whether that’s a better model — in other words, to have the Ministry of Health dividing up the funding rather than setting up this foundation. But I think what we’ve invested in this model — its success, its performance over time, the quality of the research — indicates that we’re on the right track and we’ve been on the right track for the last 20 years.

N. Letnick: Again, thank you to the minister. To summarize for me, what I’m hearing is that for 20 years or so, we’ve been supporting the Michael Smith Foundation for doing research. We also support some dollars going to Genome B.C. There are no other organizations out there that, right now, are thinking: “How come we didn’t get any money that we could have redistributed for health research purposes?” That’s the answer I’m feeling I’m getting. Again, I might have misconstrued the answer.

[3:00 p.m.]

If that’s the case, how is the government going to hold these two organizations accountable for delivering on outcomes? What outcomes has the government set out for these two organizations to achieve? And what evaluation process will be used to measure whether or not these two organizations, since they seem to have a lock on the marketplace for money in this area…? How will those two organizations be evaluated so that in three years, Michael Smith gets to get more, less or no money; and in two years, Genome B.C. also gets to get more, less or no money?

Hon. A. Dix: We do support, as the member will know, some other organizations. For example, we provided…. By we, I mean the government of British Columbia has provided support in the past to UBC and TRIUMF, to the Rick Hansen Institute, to the Centre for Drug Research and Development, the Canadian Institute of Health Research and other such organizations of the B.C. health sciences and networks. Some smaller grants have been done, but the main funding arms are for the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C.

Just to give the member a sense, because I think it is important to do as he says — to take a check every once in a while to make sure that we’re achieving the goals that we want to achieve…. I’d be happy, by the way, to share this with the member afterwards as well.

Against the performance objectives for 2017-18 to attract and retain high-quality research talent in B.C., the Michael Smith Foundation — 13 percent higher than the national average, in terms of what’s called the citations impact measure.

For Genome B.C., a five-year rolling success rate of 32 percent in Genome Canada competitions, obviously considerably above our percentage of the population, our percentage of the economy. That’s five years, so that dates back to 2013 — that period.

Attracting non-provincial-government research dollars to B.C. The average Michael Smith scholar receives an average of $90,000 from the Michael Smith Foundation and $375,000 from other sources. In the case of Genome B.C., they attracted $60 million of co-investments. So that’s the second priority.

The third priority: research aligns with government’s strategic priorities. In the case of Michael Smith, $8.3 million is targeted to inform health sector planning decision-making. In the case of Genome B.C. — and this is established in our contractual relationship — 78 percent of awards are directly applicable to sector priorities.

In the case of research translation activities leading to commercialization opportunities…. In the case of Michael Smith, ten recipients received $800,000 in value of Innovation to Commercialization Awards. So that’s a significant thing against what they received. In the case of Genome B.C. — $19.5 million invested in B.C. companies.

Finally, in diversifying funding sources to reduce the reliance on provincial public funding: $3 million in co-investment — that’s co-investment from partners, in the case of Michael Smith — and $2.5 million in loans provided to busi­ness venture companies through the industry innovation program.

Just to say that the other way in which we maintain governance is that the Ministry of Health has ADMs on boards, either as an observer, in the case of Genome B.C., or as a board member, in the case of Michael Smith. So we have constant oversight of the membership and the board and its activities. We’re not the majority partner, but we’re on those boards to have oversight on a regular basis.

We set out these performance objectives, and then, in each year, we would expect both the foundation and Genome B.C. to act and achieve success against those objectives. To date, that’s why, continuously, period after period….

Sometimes both organizations received multi-year funding under the previous government at year-end, though it was effectively multi-year funding into the future — for example, I think $50 million over three years in 2015-16, which was roughly the $17 million we expended in the past, in our first year in office. They’ve consistently met the test of bringing value both to the health care system and patients across B.C. and to the economy.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. Making reference to the previous administration I find interesting, especially…. Sometimes it works in government’s favour, and sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s okay.

[3:05 p.m.]

The issue for me is to make sure that the valuable work that they are doing is recognized over the long period, right? In the past, there were awards at the year-end, and now it would appear that we’re into the same construct, the same paradigm, which is that we’re going to ask for supplementary dollars for these two organizations, as opposed to bringing them into the main estimates process, the main budget process.

Did either of these two organizations receive or get assurances of getting funds, in 2018-2019, out of the main budget — not supplementary but the main budget itself?

Hon. A. Dix: The answer to the member’s question is no. As I say, in the case of these two organizations, though, they’ve consistently received year-end money.

We could go back even further than 2015-16. But that’s an example where the year-end before that, which would have been the end of ’14-15, I think, they received the $50 million with the intention of that being used and rationed out over the following three years, allowing them to plan. We extended that level of funding at the end of the 2017-18 fiscal year, essentially, for 2018-19, and that’s been the pattern.

I think what’s a fair question…. It is a fair question to ask in these things, because this is true of year-end funding that has been traditionally provided to organizations, which is sometimes challenging for organizations to deal with because you don’t know until year-end.

Last year, just as an example — that is, as usual, only mildly on topic — the previous government had provided funding for First Link through the end of 2018-19. But at the end of 2018, we decided to provide the same amount of money, effectively, for 2019-20 — to take away this being a year of pressure, where you’re entering in at the end of the year, to a question of whether they’d get funding or not for a program that’s become essential for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and their families.

In a general sense, I think year-end funding can be difficult for organizations, although I’m sure they’re always happy to get it. There has been, I would say, in general, over the last ten or 15 years, an increase in that kind of funding. I think most organizations would prefer that that be transferred into the base, in a general sense. I think that’s probably true, and that’s something we can look at.

In the case of these two organizations, we’re continuing to do it, using the tool of the supplementary estimates this year for the coming years. It does allow them, on the other hand, to plan into the future, to receive the money and then plan into the future and make some of their own decisions.

You lose a little bit, I think, as the member is suggesting, in terms of government accountability when that happens. You do, because the money has been transferred out. So there’s an expectation, a contractive expectation of certain activities that should take place. I think there are some advantages to organizations, such as these, that engage in long-term planning. Most organizations — I think it would be fair to say — would prefer to have money in the base.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister. If I understood correctly, that means that for the next three years for Michael Smith, and the next two years for Genome, there won’t be any money in the base budget for them because they’re getting a lump sum in this fiscal year — thanks to the supplementary estimates. Therefore, even though they don’t show up in the base budget, they will have been funded for that time period.

Hon. A. Dix: The short answer is yes, I think. Yes, it’s yes. Just to say that it might be that the government would target funding for specific research to these organizations. It might be.

[3:10 p.m.]

I don’t envision that has happened. We haven’t decided to do that. That’s possible that they would receive other funding, but this is really intended to support their continuing operations under their strategic plans for the next three and two years, respectively.

N. Letnick: Given that, in the past, these organizations have been funded with year-end dollars, and given that the health budget is approximately $20 billion a year and we’re talking $89 million, which is small in comparison to the full budget, even though I know the minister needs to fight for every dollar, and that’s important…. I’ll put in a good word with the Finance Minister on his behalf, if he wishes.

Is there anything that can happen…? Because we’ve seen it now between two successive governments and maybe even three. I’m not too sure what happened in the ’90s. I try to forget the ’90s, quite frankly. Is there anything that can happen so that we can move these two organizations into the base budget along with the other organizations that the minister has talked about?

I think he mentioned five other organizations that get money for research out of the base budget. He also didn’t mention the therapeutics initiative, which I assume gets money out of the base budget — I know the minister is very proud of their work — and which might have wanted some of this $89 million themselves. So is there a way that we can see Genome B.C. and Michael Smith Foundation’s work accepted to the point where they don’t have to rely on the good wishes of whatever minister happens to be in the chair at the time?

Hon. A. Dix: I think, certainly, that’s something that, I would say, when we’re looking into the future, we could consider and would consider three and two years from now. Clearly, we will be hearing from Genome B.C. and other organizations and their requests into the future.

I think this is the challenge. One organization that the member will be familiar with is the Better at Home program that United Way is running. It’s traditionally been out of year-end. Those are some of those things that we’re thinking and hoping to try and bring into the base so that it doesn’t become such a stressful question at year-end.

I think it is sometimes a useful and efficient mechanism for a government to provide long-term funding to an organization like the Michael Smith Foundation. As long as government is aware of this, it may not be the worst way to go. It is, after all, what we’ve been doing, roughly, for two decades in the case of both Genome B.C. and Michael Smith. It started in 2001.

I think that’s something to be considered. But obviously, given that we’re looking at three years out for Michael Smith and two years out for Genome B.C., it would be considered then, in that budget round. It’s something to look at seriously.

Obviously, the Ministry of Health itself does other research work to improve the efficiency of the health care system. In many respects, because a lot of the work that traditionally was done in the Ministry of Health — MSP and other things — has been contracted out for some time, the Ministry of Health itself is a powerful policy arm of the health system and has been for some time. That’s been the focus for some time, and the means of delivery of health care services have been primarily the health authorities in that time.

I think that what’s probably true is that this mechanism, in that it will provide multi-year funding and have these organizations plan it, is a pretty efficient way for them to operate.

I’d remind the member as well that while going into the base is useful and is a good thing, obviously, governments can change and change direction, and being in the base isn’t a guarantee of funding into the future either. So for an organization like Michael Smith, which is preparing multi-year fellowships and everything else, this might be, for them anyway, and for Genome, the most efficient way to go.

N. Letnick: Could the minister comment on whether or not either of these two organizations are going to be looking at research and technology, things like wearables?

[3:15 p.m.]

We see a lot of new equipment that’s out there trying to bend the cost curve down, trying to provide patients when they’re home with the ability of knowing whether or not they’re having atrial fibrillation, whether or not their blood sugar levels are off, what their BP is. Those technologies are communicating directly with their patient primary care home or their physician or somewhere else.

It’d be nice to know if these two organizations, or any other organizations that the ministry is funding, are looking at the state of the art when it comes to technology and health care.

Hon. A. Dix: I think the member is right. I think there’s enormous opportunity in this and in supporting improvements in technology that give people power over their own health, whether it’s their own health records or providing them with information at home and allowing them to link in with their specialists or their family physician.

The government, for some years, as the member will know, has been doing some of this work on home health monitoring with Telus — I believe on Vancouver Island, for example, with cardiac patients. The value of those programs is assessed and is of significant value to patients. Telus has its own commercialization ambitions for all those technologies, as you’d expect, but for the health care system, they provide a real utility in terms of both saving time of patients but also providing better ongoing monitoring.

There’s a lot of this work going on in very practical ways now and, I think, very useful ways at the system delivery level. I would expect to see more of that in the future. I think that new generations of health care patients, especially younger patients, are more inclined to those kinds of responses — system responses, information on line, information they can directly access, ways to connect to doctors that are not traditional visits to doctors’ offices.

I’ll just say, in terms of the Michael Smith Foundation…. I’ve been forwarded this, so I’m reading it on the fly here. We’ll see how that goes. You’ll be glad to know that it’s been directly circled, so I can’t read the thing above it.

“The Michael Smith Foundation, for example, has invested in research on seniors’ aging and frailty across 154 projects and awards, including Dr. Kendall Ho, 2017 health professional investigator, and also as part of the 2006 research unit. Ho and his team are using home monitoring technologies to help patients and care providers monitor and manage chronic illness from home.” Very interesting. “This gives patients peace of mind and helps spot potential problems early, reducing unnecessary trips to the emergency room.”

Obviously, the possibility of that is significant for patients.

The use of technology, of course, sometimes reduces costs and sometimes, at least initially, dramatically expands costs as new technologies are commercialized. You see that in areas where home health monitoring and health monitoring is used, such as diabetes care and others, where you’re systematically keeping up with information, monitoring it both yourself and in conjunction with your family doctor, nurse practitioner or endocrinologist, in that case. I would expect that work to continue and become better.

The member will know that glucose monitors, when I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, were kind of new and interesting and expensive in their own right: $1 per test strip. There has been a transformation, both in insulin delivery and in glucose monitoring, to more sophisticated and subtle machines. Now there’s new technology around continuous glucose monitoring, which has to be assessed for its value but is obviously of great value to some patients, as well as insulin pumps.

[3:20 p.m.]

Now they’re on the delivery side, which moves us from syringe to insulin pens to insulin pumps, which allow a great more control on the part of not just the individual but a lot more information for health care practitioners who are supporting those individuals. When you talk about just that disease, it’s 30,000 people with type 1 diabetes, 400,000 people with type 2 diabetes.

N. Letnick: Thanks to the minister for sharing his personal story as well. I always find that these proceedings touch home much more when we can bring in our constituent stories or our own stories.

I’m very familiar with Dr. Kendall Ho. He and I and a few others were talking about this kind of research for the past couple of years. I’m very supportive of his work. He’s doing good work.

It brings me to the overlying question: why do we need supplementary estimates at all? The minister mentioned 2008-2009, I believe. We had just gone through a sub-prime mortgage crisis. We went quickly from budget surpluses to budget deficits in the province — all over the world, for that matter. We needed supplementary estimates at that point because the ground upon which the budget was made quickly evaporated.

Here we continue a balanced budget. We continue with strong economic growth. Many people argue as to what precipitated that economic growth. Of course, I would argue that a lot of that had to do with policies coming out of the former Finance Minister and government — I would argue probably correctly on that — which have been continued by the current government in some ways.

I won’t get into the whole piece of taxation, because I don’t want to spend a whole bunch of time on that. We’ll leave our Finance critics to fight on that account. But why supplementary estimates of $89 million for a budget of 40 percent of the provincial budget?

It just seems to me that it’s basically March Madness all over again. I don’t want to see this happen on a yearly basis, because then what will end up happening is we’ll have all of these organizations come to the minister’s door — hopefully, he meets with these organizations — as they lobby for dollars. If they don’t get them in the base budget, they’ll lobby him for dollars for the March period, before the budget supplementary estimates period ends.

I don’t think that’s the best way to run government. I would suspect the best way to run health care…. I wouldn’t presume, because I’m not in the minister’s chair, and I don’t have his experience to do that. But I would assume, based on my business experience, it’s always better to get all the asks in at once and be able to show how each of them meets or doesn’t meet the best interests of the whole, as opposed to cherry-picking one versus the other versus the other.

Could the minister comment on why he really needed $89 million? Or maybe he didn’t need $89 million. Maybe the Finance Minister said: “I have all this money. I have to spend it, so you will spend $89 million. Where do you want the money to go to?” I’m not too sure how that worked. I wasn’t in the room at the time.

Perhaps the minister can tell us how $89 million out of a $20 billion budget is on the table today and he’s asking for permission, as opposed for it being in his base budget?

Hon. A. Dix: First of all, the member referred to March Madness, which for many people out there involves basketball. But not for the member for Kelowna–Lake Country. I don’t want to presume. Everybody can play basketball. It’s a great sport. His colleague from Kelowna is more the basketball player, I suspect.

Interjection.

Hon. A. Dix: No? Not a basketball player? He thinks basketball is too soft a game, I think.

In any event, that process which occurs and has occurred under this government, and really occurred for some years under previous governments…. Often March Madness occurred during years when money became available at the end of fiscal year. We’ve seen that occur in budget years into the past — for example, the $50 million that was provided to the Michael Smith Foundation in 2015-16. Well, that $50 million that was transferred to the Michael Smith Foundation hadn’t been in the base budget, but there was no important public debate like this one.

One of the important things that supplementary estimates do is they increase transparency. We’re proposing to spend this money in this way. It’s consistent with 20 years of government practice. I think it’s good public spending, and we’re having a public debate about the expenditure of that $89 million. So that’s the first set of things.

[3:25 p.m.]

Secondly, it allows us to make excellent use of the projected surplus for 2018-19. It frees up, essentially, space in the budget in future years, both in 2019-20 and 2020-21, to support the delivery of other health care services. This is a good way to allocate these dollars into the future. It builds on our work and is an important technique to do that. That’s why the Minister of Finance, I think, rightly proposed the use of this technique.

The member will know, because he made reference to it, that the operating debt of the province is gone, which is a difference, obviously, between now and the last time supplementary estimates were used, in 2008 and 2009. When there was a discussion of those estimates, as I recall at the time, I don’t believe I objected to the use of the supplementary estimates, although I naturally wanted to talk about things beyond the scope of the estimates. I was clearly an inexperienced opposition member at the time, right?

Those are the reasons we’re using supplementary estimates. It’s more transparent. It’s straightforward. We’ve retired our operating debt, which is a good thing for the province. We can have a debate about that in the future. It allows us to make excellent use of the projected deficit for this year. For all of those reasons — and the fact that the Michael Smith Foundation and Genome B.C. are important investments for the future of the province, for the future of all the people living in the province today and people in the future — I think this is a supplementary estimate that’s worthy of support by the House.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister for that. I agree that the relief from the operating debt is extremely important. I always believe that government, as we do in our own households, should live within their means. Yes, we had something that went beyond our control back in ’08-09 with the sub-prime mortgage crisis. We were able to make some tough decisions over the years after that.

I remember being on that side with limited funds, trying to get back to a balanced budget, which we did rather well, and then, of course, continue to pay down the operating debt so our children wouldn’t have to pay interest on our credit card, but they basically would continue with the debt that’s incurred on capital, which is totally legit. It’s an intergenerational investment. Therefore, there should be an intergenerational payment.

I’m really pleased that — and we can argue this point — the majority of the work to pay off the operating debt was done prior to this current government, but the current government continued with that. I’m pleased to be in the House with all 87 of us that are able to see that done.

Having said that, there still is a competition for resources, whether it’s through the main budget process or whether it’s through the supplementary budget process that the minister so capably outlined as to how we got to where we are today and where we’re probably going to go in future years as the current government continues to be in power.

You never know. At some point in the future, if government changes, the next government might continue to do it the same way as well. We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get there.

Given that there are competing interests, even for the supp, could the minister describe what efforts…? I don’t want to get into the dollars, per se, because this is a very limited forum that we have here. Preventative health care is so important. I guess it should be preventative illness. How do we prevent illness? How do we manage chronic illnesses the best way possible?

A lot of people, when they come to me as the critic, want investments today for things that they say will save money down the road. I’m sure the minister gets that all the time. “Just give me,” I don’t know, “$89 million today, and I could save you $1 billion five years from now.” But the challenge, of course, is: how do you prove it? How do you prove that $89 million today is going to save $1 billion five years from now?

Some players out there are trying different ways of doing that — pharmaceuticals, for example, which we’ll talk about in the full estimates process. But pharmaceuticals are saying: “We’ll guarantee you. Use this drug, and if it doesn’t work the way we said and save money down the road, you won’t have to pay for it.” Right?

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

That’s one thing. That’s one tool that they’re bringing up. We’ll talk about that at a different time so I can get the minister’s perspective as to: is that a good thing?

[3:30 p.m.]

Is there anything else that the ministry uses, any other tool that the ministry uses, when it looks at spending $89 million in supps for these two research organizations, to compare that to other research or preventative health measures they can invest in today that there’s some reasonable expectation will save money to taxpayers down the road — and, if not save money, at least bend the cost curve so that we can address the growth in use of health care more effectively?

The Chair: Minister.

Hon. A. Dix: Thank you, hon. Chair, and welcome. It’s the first time that you’ve been in the chair — when I’ve been here, anyway. I’m sure you’ve been here a few times when I wasn’t speaking.

I’d say, first of all, that one of the interesting parts of the health debate is the degree to which the things that we need to do as a society to improve health outcomes, quality of life and quality of health are not in the Ministry of Health at all. This is the debate that I think every government has, between both health inflation and the growth of spending in the Ministry of Health, against other priorities of government.

I talked about type 2 diabetes earlier. The main indicator, the main determinant of getting type 2 diabetes or not, is poverty. Is it a more efficient way to spend, to spend money on pharmaceuticals to treat the disease or to spend money to reduce inequality, to raise people up or give people access to the social circumstances that might allow them to avoid type 2 diabetes? These are the debates.

As we provide the best HIV/AIDS care in the world — we’ve done so over a matter of decades at St. Paul’s — is it important also to invest in housing? If someone gets the best care in the world and they go home with inadequate housing, what will that mean for their long-term health? These are complicated questions which we can get into, but the social determinants of health are important.

I think every investment we make should consider outcomes against cost. Let’s give the member examples of that. When we make decisions about funding insulin pumps…. This decision was originally made by Premier Campbell’s government — I believe Mr. Abbott was Minister of Health — and then subsequently expanded, in terms of service, when Terry Lake was Minister of Health and Christy Clark was Premier, and then subsequently extended now that the member for Langford–Juan de Fuca is Premier and I’m Minister of Health.

On each of those occasions, there was a judgment made about the value of that against the potential outcome, as there is routinely, especially in the approvals of prescription drugs — the work of the common drug review and other agencies. We do that with respect to investments all the time, especially long-term investments. In this case, I think this is a useful way to go forward: to provide multi-year funding of either three or two years to an important area of health research which we know, from our past experience, is worth the investment on our part.

By taking that action now through the supplementary estimates, we free up investment in other health priorities that people would have while maintaining this long-standing investment in these two important agencies. It allows us, effectively, in 2019-20 and ’20-21, to support the very types of programs that the member is suggesting we might consider.

What I think in general, in a time when there are always pressures on spending — there always are; one could always spend it on more — and when we have individual prescription drugs that cost $250,000, $500,000, $750,000 per patient per year, these are always considerations. The more that we can reduce spending in some areas, spend more efficiently in some areas and find more efficient ways to spend in some areas, it will allow us to expand services and spend on the other priorities, not just of government but of society, that are important in terms of the enjoyment of life, the extension of life and the quality of life of people across the province.

[3:35 p.m.]

The Chair: Member.

N. Letnick: Well, thank you, hon. Chair, and welcome to the chair. It’s great to see you there.

Thank you to the minister for his answer.

I recognize — and I would assume that every member of the House recognizes — that social determinants of health play an extremely important role in the health of British Columbians. I attended a poverty forum on Saturday night, actually, with my granddaughter. I found it invigorating, the conversation that we had. People shared their stories about poverty, and we had table discussions. My granddaughter, on the other hand, decided it was time for a nap, so she didn’t quite stay awake for the whole thing, but it was, and it continues to be, an important piece of the health care puzzle.

Having said that, my angle and my question is more to do with what systems are in place, if any, which help to support the minister when the minister is looking at these competing interests. Again, you have $89 million for these two organizations in this supplementary estimates process. They’re not going to get any money over the next two or three years as their base budget, because they’re getting lump sums now. We’re going to watch to make sure that they do good work, by putting our own people on their boards to make sure they achieve those outcomes that we agreed to. That’s great.

When you have a new ask — I just used a drug company as an example; I don’t want to focus on the drug companies — from a non-profit organization or some other advocacy group that says, “If only you’d spend money on this, we can save you all of that,” how does the ministry advise the minister on how effective or not effective that ask will be in achieving those goals, so that the minister, on behalf of taxpayers, can make an intelligent decision? I’m sure all of his decisions are quite intelligent. He’s shaking his head: “Maybe.” Okay, I’ll give him that. How can we make sure that the decisions are in the best interests of taxpayers, not only those today but those of the future?

Hon. A. Dix: One of the things that I always say — and I strongly believe — in this role, even more so now than I did when I started as Minister of Health, is that every affirmative decision, by definition, is also a negative decision. In other words, if we decide to spend X millions of dollars on this, it means we’re not doing something on something else.

The Chair and my colleague from Coquitlam, the Minister of Housing, will know that we recently supported an emergency room expansion to Eagle Ridge Hospital. Well, by definition, the decision to do that, which I think is the right decision and is based on all of the rigorous work that happens on capital projects by the ministry, by the health authority and by Treasury Board, is still a decision made that potentially means that that money is not available for other priorities. You are making choices. To govern, to a degree, is to choose. One has to be conscious of those all the time, rigorously compare and make choices.

We made some choices this year, which we’ll debate in the main estimates, around the importance of primary care. We’ve, I think, in a significant way, set aside money in that area, which has always been under pressure. If someone breaks their leg in here — we hope that doesn’t happen — they’re going to go to the emergency room and they’re going to get care, and it doesn’t matter what the Minister of Health says. That money is accounted for. Often, primary care, when there’s a squeeze, gets squeezed, because they’re often trying to keep people healthy into the future but not immediately.

Acute care has long had a pressure, within the broader health care program, on primary care. We know that the number of seniors is going to grow into the future. Regardless of what our expectation is now — and there’s pressure now — we know that that’s going to get greater in the future. We have to build capacity to that. In British Columbia, unlike other jurisdictions, where, after the baby boom generation leaves, there might be a lessening of that…. Here in B.C., because this is a wonderful place to live, people are going to keep going. So we’re going to have to prepare our health care system for those circumstances.

We have to make those choices — I agree — every single time. Sometimes the longer-term choices, in government, lose out to the shorter-term crises, or the urgency of the moment. That’s why I think we do have to — and why it’s important to — invest in research, as we are now, as we are today, as this sees fit to do.

[3:40 p.m.]

If you were competing today urgently, people would say: “Well, why worry about the changes that the Michael Smith Foundation and the work of all its researchers will make ten years from now? We need something now.” We have to, I think, do some of both; otherwise, we’ll constantly miss out on the longer-term decisions we need to do to make the health system better.

These are challenges every day. I think that every member of the House, when we propose things, should always reflect on the path not taken and understand that when you make a decision such as this one, there would be consequences of not taking it. There would be no money going forward for these organizations that have contributed a lot. Nonetheless, there’s an alternate that we could have funded, which may well have served as well. Those are always the judgments, I think, that ministers should make.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister.

In my schooling, I learned about net present value. It’s one of the things I remember. I try to forget it sometimes, but there it is, always coming back. And comparing of alternatives — one alternative has a certain net present value versus another alternative. The minister is right. When you do one thing, you’re not doing something else.

What I’m looking for — and I think maybe we’ll canvass this a little more under the full estimates — is: what analysis, if any, does the ministry provide to the minister in terms of competing interests? Do they use a net present value calculation somehow? Do they estimate with a weighted average cost of capital and come up with, you know, the financial implication, or is it all political? Is it somewhere in between? What construct?

I know we celebrated engineers today in the House prior to question period. Well, engineers, when they decide to build a road, for example, use, definitely, a comparison in numbers, as to what something will cost versus how long it’s going to last versus the operation of it. There’s a lot of number crunching, and I would hope that there’s no politics involved.

In the case of health care, there’s a lot of judgment, I believe. That’s why it’s important to have good people in the ministry and surrounding the minister to make these judgment calls. I’d like to canvass that a little more.

Take, for example, the ICU announcement in Nanaimo. I’m hearing now that that announcement was about new dollars for an ICU, but people are telling me that’s not the case, that Island Health has to come up with dollars and repurpose dollars from what they were planning on doing before now to pay for that ICU. That’s the challenge, right? We can canvass that in full estimates as well, so maybe the minister can get some briefing on that prior to full estimates.

Interjection.

N. Letnick: Well, if the minister wants to answer it now, that’s fine too.

These are the kinds of questions that the critic now, formerly the minister, gets, and it’s always difficult to be able to point to something and say: “Well, that’s not the way it works.” The way it works is there’s a structure. There’s a format. There’s a process by which the minister gets to make these decisions on which urgent care centre is going to go first, which is going to go last, which ones are going to go in which communities, whether or not we are going to fund B.C. Ambulance.

All of these questions that come up are competing inte­rests. If you put money in one pot, as the minister says, you’re not funding something else. It would be nice to understand a little better as to what that process is so that the public has a good comfort in decisions being made in, I would argue, one of the most important ministries in the government — obviously, the most important in terms of financial impact on the budget, being 40 percent of the budget. That’s just on the ministry itself. That’s not including other health delivery mechanisms through other ministries, which provide even more money out of the budget.

If the minister…. I think he wishes to address my questions now. No? Then I’ll move on to a different piece. I don’t see him jumping up. Oh, he is. Okay. So the question is: can the minister enlighten us a little more on the process? If not today, that’s fair enough. We can wait for the full estimates to talk about it.

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. A. Dix: Of course, historically, if you think…. Let’s just give an example of a decision that was made in the 2012 to 2014 period about the disposition of assets by the government. Members will remember this. The government decided that it had to balance the budget, and it decided to, in 2012 and 2013-2014, sell a lot of government assets. And they did. They sold a lot of government assets in that period. I think it’s fair to say that the sale of assets in that period helped the government to the extent that in the electoral period of 2013, it allowed them to show on the record a balanced budget. They sold a lot of assets.

I think given what happened to, especially, the land assets that were sold, objectively, you would call that a terrible decision for the taxpayers, because, of course, the value of those assets has grown enormously over the last number of years. Sometimes government needs land assets. You can only sell them once, and they did. That’s a decision that was taken that wasn’t the right decision.

In other cases…. I think one of the problems, though — and the member outlines this — is the experience I had going to Dawson Creek, when we announced the hospital project there. So I go to Dawson Creek. Some will recall that the member for Peace River South won by a small margin in the 2017 election. I think the margin might have been 55 percent. I don’t follow these things closely.

Members will know that project was on the go in ’05 and ’09 and then ’13 and ’17 and had never gone forward. When I got to Dawson Creek, arrived in town, I was, oddly for me, in a…. I guess you’d call it a bar restaurant. Someone comes up to me and says: “So what are you doing here?” I said: “Well, you know, we’re making an announcement at the hospital tomorrow.” They couldn’t believe, given the electoral result, that we were funding the hospital. A lot of cynicism about the impact of politics on decisions of all kinds.

I said: “Absolutely we’re doing it, because it’s absolutely needed.” The hospital was built in 1960. It had been recommended for a long time, and we were proceeding.

I think what’s really important, I would say to the member, is that we consistently, in a rigorous, thoughtful way, show why we’re spending money — why the supplementary estimates process, I think, is useful in that sense — because there’s cynicism out there about the way decisions get made. Some of the debate at the federal level that’s going on right now — maybe even right here in this chamber, about the way money gets spent — contributes to that cynicism.

My experience is that I get absolutely outstanding advice. Not easy advice — not “this is the only possible answer,” because there is often more than one possible answer and possible direction to go in — but excellent advice. Then the government gets excellent advice from central agencies such as Treasury Board. We try to do the best job at making the right decision for people. That’s my experience.

I suspect, certainly at that level, that that was the case when the member opposite was Minister of Agriculture, making those choices within the realm of the Ministry of Agriculture. Because even though the budget is big for the Ministry of Health in a relative term, a lot of that is accounted for. We run hospitals. We run emergency rooms. We have an MSP program. We’re going forward. A lot of that program and a lot of the money you spend is accounted for already.

What I try and do, and what I’ve tried to do — and I think the member, in his approach, is trying to do as well — is take away some of that cynicism by simply saying, “Here are the decisions we’re making,” and by showing, I think, especially in the case of health capital, that issues like how a particular constituency voted are not relevant.

In the case of my work, I can tell you that the first hospital announced was Williams Lake. The second was Terrace, right? And the list went on. Until we announced St. Paul’s, I don’t think we got to a government riding. In that case, it was moving from one government riding to another government riding. I think that experience…. I would say, as well, that one of those main projects that the government is spending on right now is Royal Columbian Hospital, which, obviously, was decided by the previous government in an opposition riding, if we think back to that.

[3:50 p.m.]

I think part of what’s important for all people in politics and in government is to continually show why you’re making decisions, that they’re not easy decisions and you’re not always right, but that you’re trying to make the decisions in the public interest. Because that helps all of us, I think, build public support for our joint goals and aspirations.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister for that. As I said, I will canvass this issue when we get to full estimates. Hopefully, at that point, there might be other material available. On the issue of land sales, I can tell you those land sales were appropriate and they had a process by which they were decided. So I look forward to seeing what the current government’s process is for appropriate decision-making.

Speaking of making choices, one of the choices that we could have made for the $89 million in supp was to look at some of the recommendations from the Auditor General when it comes to access to emergency health services. Now I will give the minister some leeway, as I like to do, because this report actually came out after the last year’s estimates process. It came out just last month.

Since the firefighters are in town for the next couple of days, I thought we might take just a few minutes — I think we have another ten or so minutes left on our schedule before the House Leaders tell us we’ve been having too much fun — to talk a little bit about the summary of recommendations that the Auditor General is making to the Ministry of Health. The reason why is we have a colleague here that has a specific story that she wishes to share and ask the minister and her staff a question on.

In the summary of recommendations, the Auditor General recommends that the Ministry of Health work with local governments and the health service to ensure that BCEHS can implement a coordinated approach to pre-hospital care that results in:

(1) medical oversight, to the extent appropriate, across agencies to ensure that patient care meets acceptable medical standards;

(2) data sharing between agencies to better understand whether patients are getting the right medical interventions at the right time;

(3) signed agreements outlining the roles and responsibilities of fire departments, including the level of care provided, which is where I’d like to focus the questions on; and

(4) confirmation that first responders are being notified of events where they can best contribute to patient care, which is another place that we could look at.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is the rules have changed now for call-outs between B.C. Ambulance and firefighters. In the past…. I don’t know how long the past was, whether a year ago or two. I’m sure the minister and his staff can help educate me on that. But in the past, when you called 911 when you had an emergency, both firefighters and paramedics were called out, in a lot of cases, to go to events. The minister, again, can educate me on that.

It seems that today there’s a new system in place, based on what the information is and hierarchy — that in a lot of cases, firefighters are not called out to go and attend calls. That has seemed to be having some growing pains, if I can say that. And you know, this is a big province with a lot of moving parts, so I don’t think that it’s unusual to have those pains. But this is a good place for us to discuss them, especially in light of the firefighters being in town. I’m sure one of their asks will be about this whole issue itself.

With that, the minister can address it, or it can wait for a moment. We have a specific example, which my colleague from Boundary-Similkameen could bring up — whatever the minister’s pleasure is.

Hon. A. Dix: I’m always delighted to answer questions in the Legislature and also to hear from my colleague from Boundary-Similkameen. We’re working together on a number of issues, including primary care, in her community, so I’m always respectful of that.

Just to put it in context, because the member mentions the Auditor General’s report. I just want to note that since July 2017 — I’m trying to remember what happened July 2017, but I think we all know I became Minister of Health then — we’ve added a total of 119 full-time and part-time paramedic positions, partly in response to those issues that have developed over time.

[3:55 p.m.]

Some of this work was done prior to my becoming Minister of Health. A lot of it has been done since then. We’ve added a significant number of positions in Vancouver; in Nanaimo; in Williams Lake; in 100 Mile House; in Fort St. John; in Dawson Creek; in Castlegar; in Trail; in Kelowna, 16 new permanent full-time positions — four in West Kelowna, two in Lake Country, for a total of 22 positions; in Kamloops; in Chase. We’ve also added a dedicated airplane, a fixed-wing airplane and aircraft, in Fort St. John.

What’s happened over time…. The effect of these things, as you would expect, is to improve response time in many of those communities, including in Metro Vancouver. I think it’s the right investment. Some of that investment reflects change over time.

I could talk a little bit — I won’t today — about community paramedicine, which is really helping us maintain services across British Columbia. That was, in some ways…. That model — at least in terms of Ministers of Health; a lot of people worked on it — came originally from a former Minister of Health, George Abbott, who knew the area well. I think he’d either been an ambulance paramedic or he’d been a first responder. He knew the area well.

The idea is and was that ambulance paramedics, in rural and remote areas, also take on other community health responsibilities in the community, and the community paramedicine program has been extraordinary success, I think, in a general sense. So that has been the response over time.

Some of what’s being said in the Auditor General’s report is really dealing with the period before this change has occurred. We’re making a significant investment, and we’ll have to continue to do so over time. I think it’s increasingly challenging for all first responders, from ambulance to fire to police, to respond to incidents in some of our larger communities. It includes Kelowna at times. It certainly includes Metro Vancouver. They are more and more difficult places to get around.

I think what the member is referring to are changes in the response model that occurred. I think it was in May of 2017. Subsequently, we’ve made and are making more changes to ensure that we would get the model right. Those changes in the model meant that, on some calls, there’s a reduction in calls — not just for firefighters but for ambulance paramedics themselves.

Obviously, we don’t want people going out with full lights, or even without full lights, to calls that are not necessary. I don’t think people misuse the ambulance service, but there are occasionally calls that would be better suited to other responses from the health care system than sending a paramedic to someone’s door. There have been cases in the past, and this is an issue raised by past Ministers of Health as well, about people using the ambulance paramedics — for example, to renew prescriptions, and so on.

Part of the response model has been to reduce the total number of calls, which, to a degree, has affected both ambulance paramedics and firefighters. But the current president and head of BCEHS…. For a number of years, Linda Lupini, has done, I think, an excellent job in advancing the service and working with ambulance paramedics and others.

The CRM model was put in place in consultation with fire chiefs as well, although I think there’s been some criticism of that consultation and whether people really heard what the changes were. So we’ve already made some adjustments to that, and we’re going to continue to work between ambulance and fire to ensure that we get it right so that for people who are waiting by the side of the road, or waiting in their home, or waiting at the community centre — wherever they’re waiting for emergency care — they get it promptly.

People brought individual cases to my attention. I’ve met with firefighters about this and will continue to, as well as ambulance paramedics and BCEHS. Hopefully, we’ll continue to make progress to make the advancements in the clinical model, which many people view as the right model and I think we view as the right model, to ensure that people get the response they need when they call.

We’re listening to individual cases. I’d be happy, as well, to brief and to have Linda Lupini brief members of the opposition in detail about any changes to clinical responses — the changes they’ve made in recent months that aren’t corrective but that changed somewhat the scope of the changes brought — and to hear comments from members of the opposition. I would be happy to arrange for a briefing from Ms. Lupini for that.

[4:00 p.m.]

L. Larson: My issue is very much the dispatch protocol that is happening right now. Whoever is answering the 911 call is now responsible for judging whether it is an ambulance or a fire department that is needed for this particular call. Is it an accident? Is it just medical, or is it fire?

What’s been happening in the rural area this winter…. Again, you have to imagine the snow, etc. Most of my small communities have a volunteer fire department that lives in the rural community. The ambulances are located in the major centres, not in these remote rural areas.

I’ve had a couple of incidents just in the last few weeks where a medical emergency…. The 911 dispatcher has said, “This is an ambulance call,” and has actually told the fire department to stand down. In this case, the fire department did not stand down, got to the medical emergency in ten minutes. The ambulance was an hour. Not only that; it could not make it to the residence because of the snow, because of the driveway, etc. It required the fire department to literally drive the paramedics and the ambulance crew up to the person’s home and back to the ambulance.

The process was lengthy and would have been, I’m going to guess, close to fatal. This person spent ten days in hospital from this particular medical emergency. That’s one. I’ve had two or three of those just in the last little while.

I can understand the protocol if you are in any kind of a major centre where the ambulance is also situated in the same community as the fire department. But in the case of the rural areas in my riding — from Christina Lake to Princeton, Osprey Lake, Tulameen — all of those places have a volunteer fire department who answer calls at very small cost to their regional district or municipality and ambulances that are more than an hour away.

I would really like you to consider looking at those protocols, when it relates to these rural remote areas, so that there is not an hour wait for an ambulance and so that those fire departments, who’ve all been trained in a lot of first aid and medicine, as well, are actually called to attend and stabilize until the ambulance gets there. That’s my issue.

Hon. A. Dix: What I’d suggest is, because obviously, these are really important issues for communities…. There’s, I think, a different set of issues in urban communities. One of the things that I believe strongly in is that we have to improve the base of the ambulance service, BCEHS, throughout B.C. That’s what you’ve seen in some of these decisions. Community paramedicine does this, and these decisions of essentially bringing more full-time paramedics to communities around the province are the right decisions for the very reason the member suggests — because having ambulance paramedics attend in those moments is critically important for people.

About specific issues with respect to fire and ambulance, I’m happy to take what the member says under advisement, to arrange, as I suggested to the opposition Health critic, a briefing on changes at the ambulance service. We’d be happy to hear from….

If specific cases come…. What I’ve asked to do, because sometimes cases get brought to my attention…. There’s absolutely a commitment at BCEHS to review individual cases in order to see what can be learned about those. We have to, I think, be very rigorous in assessing those processes, both to ensure we provide the best possible service and sometimes…. I mean, the reverse can also be true. We have to ensure that we’re not putting too much of the onus on the volunteer fire departments.

In my view, what had happened over time was the ambulance service had declined somewhat in rural British Columbia, largely because of the change in the rural economy. Many of the jobs that supported ambulance paramedics when they were on $2 call-outs…. Those jobs themselves have disappeared, and now we don’t have people in those communities. We have to strengthen emergency response in rural B.C. That’s what these decisions are, and I strongly believe that that is essential to the future of rural B.C.

[4:05 p.m.]

The specific question as between ambulance and fire and the clinical response model that’s been brought forward, I’d be happy to take all the information from the member, see that she gets a response and see that opposition members, in particular from rural B.C. but from everywhere, have an opportunity to discuss those with the president of the BCEHS, the head of the ambulance service, Linda Lupini.

L. Larson: Thank you. I do understand what you’re discussing there. My issue is with dispatch, okay, and it’s the appropriateness of the dispatch when it relates to rural area. I’m quite concerned, Minister, that somebody in a dispatch in the middle of a city is looking at a map where a little red light blinks and has no idea the actual time frame it takes for that particular ambulance to get to that little dot when it’s listed as a medical emergency.

That’s my issue. It’s more with dispatch and how that’s put out there. I’m just not sure that they’re doing that appropriately. Anyway, I will leave that in your hands and leave those questions for further on with estimates and stats.

Hon. A. Dix: I understand the question was dispatch, but it’s who and how dispatch takes place. I think the people who do that dispatch work do outstanding work. They’ve always made those kinds of decisions about calls. I mean, I think we all understand that. They make them all the time. But they’re doing it based on criteria. I think it’s absolutely reasonable that we have that discussion of criteria involving everyone. That’s what I’ve tried to do on this issue, and I’d be happy to arrange a briefing where we go into those dispatch decisions and resource allocations in the Ambulance Service.

N. Letnick: Thank you to the minister for that. If he would have his staff contact our caucus staff and arrange for a caucus briefing, that would be the preferential way of doing it. I look forward to that happening soon. Clearly, it would be great.

I think we’re just about done. However, I did get a couple of comments from some of my colleagues. One was the percentage up in the Dawson Creek area that he was looking for. It was more like 78 percent. I’ve been asked to reinforce that 78 percent.

Interjection.

N. Letnick: And 56 was incorrect.

The last piece is…. I didn’t get a message from this member, but I know if I don’t mention it, I will get a message. That is, when he starts listing out the B.C. Liberal capital investments that he’s making, soon he better invest in Prince George hospital. I know if I don’t mention it now, I will get a note later. So Prince George should be next on his list. Of course, I’m sure that’ll come up in estimates as well, along with a few others.

With that, my questions on the supp estimates are complete.

Vote 30(S): ministry operations, $89,000,000 — approved.

The Chair: The committee will recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:09 p.m. to 4:12 p.m.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES:
MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS
AND HOUSING

On Vote 36(S): ministry operations, $135,400,000.

The Chair: Do you have an opening statement, Minister?

Hon. S. Robinson: I do, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon. I’m pleased to speak today to the supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, appropriations for fiscal 2018-19.

Before I get into the specifics for my ministry, I just want to introduce the people who are here with me today. I can tell you that they are among the hardest-working people in government, and I do highly value their work. I have assistant deputy ministers Tara Faganello and David Curtis, as well as our new deputy minister, Kaye Krishna, who is here joining us today. I want to just express gratitude for their hard work and for everything they do for us.

We do have four items that we will be able to advance through supplementary estimates. I just want to say, for the record, that supplementary estimates are an established tool that reflects a strong provincial economy and disciplined budgeting that we’ve been engaging in. It allows us to make additional appropriations for things that are critically important in the province.

It’s important to know and celebrate that it is possible that we’re able to do this because of a retired operating debt in the current fiscal year. We want the people of our province to benefit from those efforts and the strength and opportunity that we have before us.

Our newest initiative is the northern capital and planning grant. This is an exciting new $100 million fund that we have just created. It is about investing in success for northwest British Columbia communities by addressing long-standing infrastructure needs that have been holding the people in the region back. The Premier made a commitment to northwest mayors to make sure that local workers and communities can reap the full benefits of resource development in their region.

[4:15 p.m.]

We are making good on that promise by ensuring that four regional districts — Fraser–Fort George, Bulkley-Nechako, Kitimat-Stikine and North Coast — and their 22 municipalities will share in this one-time grant.

Now, many of these communities have significant aging infrastructure, and it makes it very difficult for them to manage the growth and to manage opportunities that come with a diversified economy that they’re all working hard to develop. This grant will also help those communities meet their infrastructure needs today and set them up to benefit from development opportunities in the future.

One significant part of how we’ve designed this grant is that smaller communities will get a larger proportion of the share to compensate for their reduced commercial and industrial tax base. Municipalities over 10,000 people will receive between $6 million and $9 million, municipalities under 10,000 people will receive between $1 million and $6 million, and regional districts will receive between $1 million and $6 million.

Local governments can use the grant to meet an immediate infrastructure need, they can save it for a future opportunity, or they can leverage it to secure other sources of funding for major infrastructure and long-term planning initiatives. I know that community leaders in the northwest are breathing a collective sigh of relief. I think this grant is something we can all support, because it addresses some serious, long-standing challenges that I know that all members of this House have heard about.

We’re also looking at the Peace River agreement. It’s another tool that supports the development of northern communities. The agreement provides funding to the eight local governments in that region. The funding helps local governments meet a range of infrastructure, planning and servicing needs to support the region as a centre for industry and its workers.

Under the agreement, the province will provide $50 million for fiscal 2018-19. The ministry has a base budget allocation of $41.6 million for this agreement in 2018-19 and access to contingencies. However, by requesting the remaining $8.4 million through supplementary estimates, government will be able to release the contingencies for other purposes.

Still on the topic of infrastructure, the next item I just want to outline involves the clean water and wastewater fund. That is a joint federal-provincial infrastructure funding program to rehabilitate and renew drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and plan and design upgrades for future facilities. We are requesting access to $17 million in 2018-19.

The Building Canada fund is another infrastructure funding for small communities fund. This fund supports investments in a wide range of infrastructure projects of national, regional and local significance that support economic growth of clean environment and strong communities. The small communities fund is also part of a bilateral agreement with the federal government. We are requesting $10 million in 2018-19 for administration of the program.

Those are the four items for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. By accessing current fiscal-year surpluses for these initiatives, we can reallocate contingencies to a broad range of programs and services that the people of British Columbia need. This has allowed us to create a new initiative to serve communities in the northwest, creating more certainty for the communities and people we serve and better utilizing public resources.

With that, I’m happy to answer any questions.

T. Stone: I want to start off by also acknowledging the terrific work that the staff and the ministry do. I’ve worked with several of the individuals that I’m looking at across the floor, and they are consummate professionals.

I think where we would like to start today with respect to these supplementary estimates is really at a high level, first, and then we’ll drill down into the actual allocations in the different areas.

I think the minister indicated that, due to the elimination of the operating debt in the province, which I think all British Columbians can appreciate…. It was a heck of a lot of heavy lifting by British Columbians, primarily, over a lot of years to get to that point. I do think that British Columbians have a number of questions around what the government has decided to do now that it finds itself with no operating debt and the process around budgeting and being held accountable for those budgets.

[4:20 p.m.]

The reality here is that the government has come to this chamber at a moment here in the early spring to seek approval for an additional $375.1 million in total, across, I believe, nine different ministries — this being one. It really begs the question: why was the expenditure of these funds not allocated in the current fiscal year’s budget?

With respect to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs…. I think it’s actually the largest traunch of funding contained in these supplementary estimates, $135.4 million, mainly for a variety of local government grants.

I would like to start with the minister with this question. Where did the $135.4 million number come from insofar as that being the determination of an additional expenditure — essentially, overspending — for the previous fiscal year? How did she and her officials land on $135.4 million as the amount that they would overspend? And therefore, they’re here today seeking approval from this chamber for the allocation of those additional funds.

Hon. S. Robinson: The answer to the question is no. The ministry has not overspent its budget. All of the ministry’s expenditures and commitments are accounted for under the existing base budget and contingencies.

Supplementary estimates, I want to remind the member, do not mean that the government is running out of money or that ministries are not carefully managing their budgets. I want to let the member know that careful monitoring happens on a regular basis. Supplementary estimates are an established budgetary tool that reflects a strong provincial economy and disciplined budgeting and expenditure practices by government.

It is important to note, I think, and to celebrate that supplementary estimates are only possible as government has retired the operating debt, like the member had said, in the current fiscal year. So we’re able to do this because of that. We believe that the people of British Columbia deserve to have a transparent process like this to understand how we’re making use of the resources that are available to us.

T. Stone: Well, the last time supplementary estimates were undertaken in this Legislature was back, I believe, in the 2008-2009 fiscal year. I think everyone in this chamber and any British Columbians watching would recall that that was at a time of significant financial crisis, not just here in British Columbia. Obviously, what was experienced here in British Columbia was directly related to a global financial crisis.

The government of the day took it upon itself, rightfully so, to come back to this chamber and to seek approval for the expenditure of additional or supplementary funds to fund a number of programs to assist British Columbians generally, and the province generally, and to work its way through a significant financial crisis.

[4:25 p.m.]

I guess the challenge that I’m trying to reflect here is…. When you set a budget and you break down that budget, in terms of all the different categories of spending, and then you get to very near to the end of that budget period, the annual fiscal year, and you’re coming back seeking approval for $135.4 million, that no longer represents living within the budget that was previously approved. That’s a budget that you’ve gone over.

I guess the logical question would be: in light of the fact that the government put a budget in front of this House a year ago and is here today seeking the approval to spend another $135.4 million for the Ministry of Munici­pal Affairs and Housing…. That is, again, about a third of the overall supplementary estimates total request. In light of that — there was a budget, and they’re now asking for a third of a billion dollars more to be added to the budget — what level of confidence should British Columbians have that the current fiscal year budget, which was presented in this House only a few weeks ago, will be met globally by the government?

In the case of the estimates that we are here today to talk about and that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs…. What guarantee or certainty is there that we won’t be standing here again, one year from now, discussing a supplementary request from the Minister of Municipal Affairs for additional funds above and beyond what the Finance Minister has presented to this House only a couple of weeks ago?

Hon. S. Robinson: I look forward to canvassing on that budget with the member opposite, I expect, in the coming weeks.

Again, I want to point out that the use of supplementary estimates does not mean that government has overspent in any way, shape or form. In fact, additional surplus that has materialized since Budget 2018 was tabled allows us to have the fiscal room to table supplementary estimates. It is a transparency exercise so that we can come forward with a significant surplus and say: “Okay, now that we have been good stewards…. We have a good, strong economy. We have this surplus. We believe that these are the areas where we need to be doing additional investments on behalf of British Columbians.”

We’re here before the House being transparent, having the opportunity to discuss that, so that British Columbians know exactly how their government is operating.

T. Stone: Well, if this is a transparency exercise, then perhaps the minister could advise this House why this $135.4 million was not contemplated as part of the fiscal budget. Why, if these programs are so critically needed…?

You can certainly make a case. My quibble here is not on a specific bridge here or a specific piece of infrastructure for a community there. I was the Infrastructure Minister for four-plus years. Unfortunately, there are never enough resources available to meet all of the current needs that communities have around the province. I was proud to actually negotiate and sign the New Building Canada program, the small communities fund and clean water and wastewater programs, which are critically needed by municipalities.

We don’t quibble on that at all. Rather, if we’re truly focused on transparency, then…. I’m trying to understand why these $135.4 million worth of needed infrastructure priorities were not included in the fiscal year’s budget. That would be the transparent thing to do. It would be to say: “We’re going to spend X. We’re going to live within that budget and spend X.” Not: “We’re going to spend X and get close to the end of the year and spend a larger dollar amount.”

In summary, why were these expenditures not contemplated for inclusion in the main budget as opposed to having to bring them forward today for approval of this Legislature as part of this supplementary estimates process?

[4:30 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Once again, I think we just need to remember that supplementary estimates allow government to access current fiscal year surpluses — which are the result, again, of a strong economy and prudent fiscal planning — to reallocate contingencies to a broad range of programs and services that the people of British Columbia need. Again, it’s a fiscal planning tool that allows government to fund new initiatives as well, which we’re doing here. It also creates more certainty for the communities and the people we serve and better utilizes public resources.

Now, it’s also important to acknowledge that we are close to the end of the fiscal year, and we have a high degree of certainty about program costs. We can move some program funding out of the contingencies envelope and into ministry appropriations base budgets. These are the kinds of things that we need to be doing to make sure that British Columbians understand, by coming into the supplementary estimates process, how we are stewarding these resources.

T. Stone: Did the minister undertake any analysis within the ministry as to offsetting reductions in expenditures to accommodate this $135.4 million of priority projects that she’s seeking supplementary estimates approval for?

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

If so, why would the minister not have wanted to, essentially, deliver within the confines of the budget that was approved by this body a year ago…? Why would she not have wanted to find any offsetting expenditure reductions or capital projects that could potentially not be done to make room for these apparently higher emerging priorities that represent this $135.4 million of additional funds that she’s now asking for this Legislature to approve as part of the last fiscal budget?

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, I want to reiterate that these supplementary estimates are about a very strong economy. It’s about good stewardship, and it’s about having an opportunity, that I think is worthy of celebration from everybody in this House, because we’re able do more with more. This process is about saying we have more here that is available to us because of surpluses, and this is what we are proposing to do, because communities have been asking for it and we are delivering for them.

T. Stone: Could the minister advise this House what the criteria was that drove the process within the ministry to determine what additional investments she and her ministry were going to presumably pitch to the Finance Minister, in the context of these supplementary estimates? What was that process or that analysis that was done internal to the ministry that resulted in: “Here are the specific priorities that…. Finance Minister, we have $135 million additional; here’s how we would like to spend it”?

[4:35 p.m.]

I don’t need to say this, but I will. I mean, there is a tremendous amount of worthy programs and services and capital projects in many ministries, in particular in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. So could the minister shed some light for us on…? How did that decision process actually take place? Was she given an allocation and it was her choice to prioritize projects within an envelope of $135.4 million? Or was it the other way around? Here are a whole series of things that represent priorities that the minister wanted to spend some more money on, and then she was given news back from Finance on what priorities would be funded and which ones wouldn’t be.

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the question, because I know that the member knows full well that there is always more and that the need is significant and that we have to make decisions. I was listening to the previous minister talk about the decision-making in his ministry, in Health, and about the challenges are always really tough. If you’re making a decision to do one thing, then it means you’re not doing something else.

In this case, we certainly had heard over the last number of years…. I’m sure the member had heard from the northwest about some of the infrastructure challenges and the pressures with increase in mining and other explorations and the challenge that local governments were having, and they’ve been quite vocal and very organized around making sure that we understood what the challenges were. It was based on that that we focused our efforts. But also, the member had asked: what was the process? It was an iterative process. It was an opportunity to say: if there is a surplus, what do you think we can do? And we would go back and forth.

I guess the process is one where it would go back and forth between the Minister of Finance and us around what would be possible and what it could look like. I know that the member appreciates that the Minister of Finance had to look at the whole picture. I just had to look at my one little thing and go down on bended knee and say that my people are more important than anything else. We landed on this amount because it felt like it was the right thing, and she was able — that we could deliver this. I’m not going to presume to speak for the Minister of Finance, but I’m assuming that this rounded out her ability to deliver for the people of British Columbia.

T. Stone: Just following on that response from the minister. Can the minister express to this House those areas of priority that would be next in line here, that she perhaps asked for some additional funding and it was not provided as part of these supplementary estimates? What would those next priorities be that we don’t see reflected here?

[4:40 p.m.]

I mean, there’s $135.4 million. It’s not a lot of money necessarily in the context of infrastructure. It’s a lot of money in the context of other capital programs that could be of huge impact in housing and in other areas. Again, I’m trying understand what didn’t make the cut as much as how these priorities made their way to the approval list or got the big check mark next to them from the Ministry of Finance.

Hon. S. Robinson: As the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, I have 189 local governments. I love them all equally. Although, I see Kamloops is well represented here.

I have to give them credit. They do a really good job, I think, of advocating for what their communities need. They gather with us as a group, certainly, once a year at the UBCM, but they also gather at the regional, area meetings. They contact our ministry office. They speak with staff about funding opportunities.

The demand is always pretty significant. We work as diligently as we can, making sure that we can support the communities in their efforts to build places where people can live their lives, where communities can thrive, where people can grow their businesses, where people can grow old and where people can just have a good life with their families.

Like I said in my earlier response, there’s always much more need. The way that I work with communities is to listen to what it is that they’re looking for, look for themes, because I think themes are really important. It helps us to understand what the trends are and to respond accordingly. That’s what we did here. There was a really strong theme in the northwest, and we had the opportunity to deliver for those communities.

P. Milobar: Thank you to the minister for those answers. I have a couple of questions around the Home Adaptations for Independence, or HAFI, program. I know the minister was in estimates listening in last week. I’m not sure if she heard my one comment about it.

I’m just wondering if I could get some clarification from the minister. My understanding is that it’s a $5 million program. It’s administered by B.C. Housing. It should have been in this most recent budget year and the budget we are currently discussing with the supplementals.

I’m just wanting to clarify if the $5 million…. It’s a little unclear, when I was doing some of my research, whether it’s all federal money that gets administered by the province or if it’s matching money or if it’s 100 percent provincial money. If I could get confirmation, I guess, that it is administered by B.C. Housing and where the $5 million split comes between federal and provincial government, if any.

Hon. S. Robinson: I did actually catch the question, but I wasn’t anticipating it. I don’t have my Housing staff here, because our supplementary estimates are about the Municipal Affairs file. But I can certainly get the information to the member when I can contact the staff that represents Housing.

P. Milobar: Well, I guess when I look on line, it’s most definitely a B.C. Housing intake. So it would obviously fall under the administration, if nothing else, of the government.

[4:45 p.m.]

Is the minister able to clarify whether or not…? If it is 100 percent federal money administered by the province, would there be anything stopping the province from being able to top up that funding and to be able to put more money in than the federal government, since the province is the administrator of these funds?

Hon. S. Robinson: Like my previous response, I wasn’t anticipating a Housing question. I don’t have my Housing staff here to provide the member with a specific answer to his very specific question, but I am committing to getting him an answer.

P. Milobar: Well, it’s a very specific question that actually a constituent coming into my office had, and that’s why I’m trying to drill into this, because today, the supplemental budget, and on Thursday, depending when they end today, and possibly tomorrow…. They’re all about decisions that government makes when they choose to exceed budgets and top up in certain programs or not and to move forward with certain programs or not.

In this case, it’s the Home Adaptations for Independence, which means it’s people that have mobility issues that need to be able to retrofit their homes to be able to try to either personally move around in their household or have a loved one that’s living with them try to be able to stay in the family home and move around. It’s a very critical program. There’s a $20,000 cap on it, so people are only qualified up to $20,000. So $5 million…. Assuming everyone went to the cap, that’s only 250 applications in a year, first come, first served.

This program was fully subscribed approximately six months into the year. When you go to the program…. Anyone with mobility challenges in their house, for the last six months, has been told, when they click on line: “Sorry. The fund has been expended. Come back in April next year, if and when we have more money approved.”

I guess my question to the minister is: why did the Home Adaptations for Independence program, the HAFI program, which helps people in a very vulnerable state stay in their homes…? We all acknowledge that trying to stay out of the health care continuum system would be much more beneficial than having people go back into supportive care, when their family members can have supportive care for them, if they can get them around in lifts and things of that nature, for baths and other types of adaptations that qualify.

It’s a $5 million program, fully subscribed six months in. I believe the government is spending upwards of $2 billion in these supplemental estimates, yet there was no top-up money whatsoever for the home adaptation, yet I spent the better part of two or three hours last week talking about a bump in subsidization for electric vehicles, which I fully support. But I would suggest that someone in a wheelchair or that needs help to get lifts and slings in their house installed might feel that that might have been a better prioritization of the funds.

Could we maybe get some clarification from the minister, please?

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. There are many needs. I don’t think the member was in the House when the Minister of Health was here talking about the various challenges, as the member from the other side was asking questions about the health decisions in terms of: why this and not that? Those are, I think, very good questions, and I would expect that we would have an opportunity to canvass that during the full estimates that we’ll have for this upcoming budget.

In terms of these supplementary estimates, again, this is the direction we’re going. I don’t want to discount that there are tremendous needs. It’s interesting. The communities that we’re looking to allocate these funds to…. One of them still has wooden pipes in their community. That presents significant risk to not just a handful of residents but to 13,000 residents, and they’ve been struggling for a long time to address those infrastructure needs.

These are hard choices. I don’t think anyone would dispute that — about how do we decide where to spend limited dollars. They are limited, but we’re fortunate that we have a strong economy. We’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to deliver more, with more, for British Columbians.

[4:50 p.m.]

These estimates are focused on this particular vote for Municipal Affairs, so I can’t provide any other detail around the HAFI program. But I would welcome the member’s questions in the full estimates.

P. Milobar: I’m not trying to diminish that there’s a need across the spectrum when it comes to governmental programming. Coming from a local government background, we knew going in that it was always oversubscribed 8 to 1, 9 to 1, 10 to 1 — whatever program you were seeking funds out of, be it a joint federal-provincial fund, be it strictly provincial or strictly federal funds.

I think people within the HAFI program understand that when they see that it’s oversubscribed. People understand there’s a budget that they have to live within, the government has to live within. Although they might not like it, they tend to understand, okay, at least it’s been expended.

What my constituents don’t understand, and what I’m trying to ascertain a bit better here, is the decision-making that the minister used in coming to the list of what was going to see top-up funding or not. That is what people in my constituency are wondering. How would something like the Home Adaptations for Independence program not hit a threshold of any top-up money, when you’re talking about a global budget of $5 million, when you’re talking about a provincial budget that’s $58 billion, when you’re talking about supplemental estimates spending of $2 billion, when it’s a program that was fully subscribed around half a year — less — into its one-year, over-a-year, program?

I, personally, can understand why those constituents are wondering where in the decision-making cutoff was this program. Was it even considered by the minister as a problem and flagged? And if not, have steps been taken by the minister to start flagging programs that get oversubscribed when they’re not even close to the end of their fiscal year? Because that is where people’s unease starts to come with the extra spending that happens, when it seems to be a random assortment of things versus: is there a defined way to start working through?

Certainly, there would be much more of a need than the $2 billion of extra spending that the government has come up with across all ministries. We have nine ministries that are spending $2 billion extra. Yet a program that will help people stay independent, stay in their own homes, keep them out of the health care system, save dollars in all sorts of areas, was completely — it sounds like — overlooked.

Perhaps the minister can correct me if I’m wrong and say that it was looked at, but it didn’t make the cut. If it wasn’t looked at, why was it not looked at, at all, for this supplemental process?

Hon. S. Robinson: I asked staff: how many programs do we have? We have dozens and dozens and dozens of programs. When we took a look at what the opportunity was and we take a look at what the needs are, we certainly had heard loud and clear from communities in the northwest that were absolutely desperate.

In fact, I have to say that when we talked with the mayor from Terrace, when we called her to tell her that this was a fund that we were putting together, she started to cry on the phone with relief. There has been desperation in these communities to have the opportunity to provide the kind of infrastructure that their communities have been desperate for, for a long time.

[4:55 p.m.]

So while I absolutely…. This isn’t a dispute that HAFI isn’t an important program, that it doesn’t deliver things that people need. It absolutely does. All of our programs deliver things that people need and that communities need. That is why we’re here, to help move these things forward so that people have what they need so that they can have opportunities to live their lives in a way that’s meaningful and in a way that allows them to contribute. We’re committed to making sure that happens in all of our programs.

In this particular instance, we had heard that there had been absolutely nothing available for these communities that would help them deliver for the pressures that they were experiencing, so this was a decision we made.

Again, when we do the full budget estimates that are going to be coming up in the coming weeks, I look forward to having the member canvass this program.

P. Milobar: Thank you, Minister. I will definitely be taking you up on that offer, time permitting.

I just want to make very clear. I don’t dispute that there’s a need, especially if there are cities and towns with wooden pipes and that. I’m not disputing need out there by anyone. I’m trying to simply get answers for my constituents that are wondering where on the priority list their needs were. Hearing the minister’s latest answer would lead me to believe…. I will make sure to pass on the Hansard to them so they see the full answer.

My take from that is that they, in fact, did not meet the need threshold of prioritization in this supplemental budget and to stay tuned for the main budget — hopefully, in the main budget, in the next week or two when we get to that. Now that the minister is well aware — and should have been well aware heading into the regular budget process — that there is a program that was oversubscribed and cut off from people being able to access five to six months into the year, one would hope that that would have seen an acknowledgment moving forward.

If it didn’t make the cut for supplemental prioritization, I certainly hope that there’s more than the $5 million in the budget in this coming fiscal. But obviously, we’ll have to wait for that budget estimate to find out what moneys were allocated to a fund which was not even halfway into the year when it was fully funded, and people with accessibility issues in their homes have been told to wait till April. While we work on other priorities with our supplemental spending of $2 billion, we cannot come up with $2 million extra, $3 million extra. They, I’m sure, will be interested to understand that logic and that mindset.

I thank the minister for her questions. I know that other colleagues still have some questions as well.

T. Stone: If we may, we’ll move on to the northern capital planning grant. This is the $100 million component of the $135.4 million supplementary estimates request with the ministry that we’re here today to discuss.

I completely understand that this $100 million northern capital planning grant was announced back on February 16, so very recently. I understand that it will go to four regional districts — Fraser–Fort George, Bulkley-Nechako, Kitimat-Stikine and North Coast — for a total of $16.3 million; and 22 municipalities in the northwest, as well, for a combined total of $83.7 million.

Obviously, this is good news for these communities. As we discussed moments ago, I think we’re all in agreement that there is never enough funding available to meet all of the needs that municipalities and regional districts have. But I think it’s very important at this point, where we’re talking about $100 million of supplementary requests to the fiscal plan, that we understand what the framework looks like for the expenditure of these funds. I think it’s important to understand what the eligibility criteria will be, what kinds of projects will be funded, how the funds will actually be allocated and so forth.

I’ll start off with a few general questions, and then I’m going to turn it over to a number of my colleagues who are from the north and who represent the communities that are most impacted by this northern capital planning grant.

[5:00 p.m.]

First off, can the minister express to this House, within the confines of this $100 million envelope, how exactly are these four regional districts and 22 municipalities going to know how much they’re getting? Is it based on specific projects that these communities will submit to the ministry for approval? Or is this $100 million going to be allocated to all of these local governments, for the local governments to do with as they see fit? How exactly will those allocations be determined and the decisions around those priorities be made?

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to thank the member for the question. This is a one-time allocation that is provided to the communities. We have apportioned…. For small communities, they’ll get a large proportional share to compensate for their reduced commercial and industrial tax base. In general, municipalities over 10,000 people will receive between $6 million and $9 million. Municipalities under 10,000 people will receive between $1 million and $6 million, and regional districts will receive between $1 million and $6 million.

Local governments can either use the grant to meet an immediate infrastructure need, they can save it for a future opportunity, or they can leverage it to secure other sources of funding for major infrastructure and long-term planning initiatives.

T. Stone: The $100 million envelope — is that the number that these four regional districts and 22 municipalities asked for and were provided? Secondly, does this funding replace any other infrastructure funding programs? I think of the rural dividend program. There’s a myriad of other programs that are in existence and that are vital to meeting the needs of smaller communities, in particular. I’d appreciate understanding if these funds, in any way, are intended to replace funds that would have otherwise been forthcoming from other, existing programs.

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: The member had asked if it replaced any other funds, whether it was rural dividend or anything else. Absolutely not. In fact, what I can say to this House is that what this allocation does that is pretty unique is that local governments can leverage it to secure other sources of funding. They could actually use it as part of their portion for other funding streams. So it provides them with the opportunity to compete for other resources where there are required matching funds.

T. Stone: Can the minister provide some details, then, with respect to how the dollars will actually be allocated? It’s very high-level, the comments made to this point, the announcement, the news release. We’ve tried to understand.

If the maximum amount is $9 million for municipalities with populations over 10,000, but the range is $6 million to $9 million, how exactly is it going to be determined as to how much municipality A gets if they’re the same population size, if municipality A gets $6 million, and municipality B gets $9 million? Surely that must be driven from a place of some criteria wrapped around certain types of eligible projects and so forth.

Could the minister shed some light for us on how, at a more granular level, she expects the funds to actually be allocated on a municipality-by-municipality and regional district–by–regional district basis?

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. We took a look at a number of factors. In particular, we looked at population and residential assessment, because we wanted to target small communities, given that small communities have said time and time again that they can’t do a third-third-third — they can never come up with their third — and, even if they only have to come up with 10 percent, just how hard it is.

We did a combination of population and residential assessment, recognizing that small communities don’t have the benefit of commercial and industrial taxation in their boundaries. We wanted to make sure that they had the opportunity to have access to the resources so that they can create the kinds of communities that can respond to community needs, whether it’s upgrading the water system, upgrading the wastewater treatment system, building a rec centre or paving roads that they just don’t have the resources to do. This is an opportunity for them to decide what their priorities are and to use the money accordingly.

T. Stone: Well, I’m certainly a fan of paving roads. That’s an important priority in small communities all across the province.

I’m going to turn it over to my colleagues after this question. But I’m still trying to understand if this $100 million envelope is application-driven. If it’s not, then can the minister confirm that there’s actually a set matrix or schedule that lists out: “Okay, if you’re in Telkwa, you’re going to get this exact amount, and if you’re in Prince George, you’re going to get this exact amount”? I’m not sure how this would work otherwise.

[5:10 p.m.]

You either ask municipalities and regional districts to apply for funding, and they have to…. That’s the traditional way of doing it in all these other programs. “Here’s our wastewater upgrade project,” or whatever it is. It goes into the ministry, and it’s evaluated based on a whole, broad range of criteria. There are winners, and there are those that don’t get their funding approved in that particular fiscal.

If this is “Telkwa, you’re going to get X” and “Prince George, you’re going to get Y,” then can the minister confirm that those dollar amounts have actually been determined by the ministry? If so, is she prepared to release that information?

Hon. S. Robinson: I do want to reiterate, again, that this is an allocation-based opportunity for local governments. We have a grant regulation OIC to be approved in the coming weeks to enable us to deliver this grant. At that point, we’ll be able to share specific allocations based on the formula that I just described to the member.

S. Bond: Thank you to the critic for the opportunity to ask a couple of questions today. There may be very few questions depending upon the answer to this question. Are McBride and Valemount included as two of the 22 municipalities?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes.

S. Bond: Well, that’s certainly good news. When the announcement was made, you can imagine that I did hear from my constituents in the Robson Valley. We’re not going to quibble over names when money will be flowing to small rural communities, but it talks about the province reinvesting in the northwest. It doesn’t actually reflect the geographic distribution of the program that the minister is talking about. I don’t think Prince George–Mount Robson or Prince George–Valemount or McBride would consider themselves in the northwest.

It also references the fact that this grant honours the Premier’s commitment to northwest mayors. Were other mayors along the Highway 16 corridor consulted?

[5:15 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the description of northwest when there are communities that aren’t technically part of the northwest. So I appreciate the lack of clarity around how that would be experienced. If those communities don’t want to be part of this, then we can just distribute the money elsewhere, but I think that they probably do want to see the benefit.

The framework was to help communities prepare this. We took a look at the liquid natural gas corridor within a 70-kilometre catchment area of the Kitimat liquid natural gas facility, and that was how we came up with the determination. It was a way to recognize that even if there weren’t communities that had been organized to voice concern, we recognize that there were going to be some pressures on them to deliver for those communities. So we took a broader frame and a broader lens to address the needs that we knew that were there.

S. Bond: I do want to recognize the minister’s and the ministry’s comments about small, rural communities having a small tax base. That is the quintessential problem with small and rural communities and, certainly, something that, you know, I have championed for many, many years in my career. They simply are not in a position to be able to deal with those big infrastructure programs. So I am quite certain that this will be a welcome investment in infrastructure.

I did want to confirm, though, that this is a one-time allocation. The minister has made that clear. I’m wondering. In the guidelines that will be provided to small, rural communities, for example, is there going to be a reporting requirement? You know, the municipality needs to report back in terms of what the spending was done on.

Will there be a sense of direction that this isn’t for phase 1 of a two-part project or that it isn’t invested in something that requires ongoing operating costs? Because the potential for that to happen also exists. I mean, obviously, with one-time funding, we want to make sure that there are no ongoing additional costs that ultimately will be carried by those small communities.

So what kind of work will be done to work alongside of communities? They’re going to be happy to be getting a cheque in the mail, but they also need to know what the expectations are around reporting. I’m assuming there will be some pretty clear direction about: don’t expect this to come with operating dollars, you know, in the next year or two. Could the minister just comment on that?

[5:20 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. I think it’s a critical one in terms of accountability and making sure that the moneys are used well. Local governments…. It’s making it very clear that this is one time, so that there is understanding that this isn’t about being able to come back — like phase 1, and you can’t finish it without phase 2.

They need to set up a reserve fund, and they can use the money for planning, capital and infrastructure. For some, it’s about planning in order to do something later on. They do need to report back in terms of how the money was used so that we have a clear understanding. And they need to, as local governments, ensure that the project is viable.

I want to reiterate and, again, thank our staff. Our local government division works very hard with a lot of these local governments, these small communities who don’t often have the staffing resources. Our team at the local government division is always available and will express their availability to help steward some of this.

Again, I don’t want to imply that we know what these communities need. I have confidence that they know what their priorities are and that they’ll make the right decisions for their communities.

S. Bond: I know I have other colleagues that have specific questions. I just have two more that are important. I’ll do them one at a time so that we give the minister time to respond.

I wanted to just confirm that this will not preclude applications to other funds. My colleague asked about some of the things I was going to ask about in terms of the rural dividend and small communities. But for example, there are programs that relate to airport funding, which is a high priority for many small communities. Lift stations, things like that — water, sewer — are very important. I’m well aware, and I’ve written letters of support for my community in a number of project areas.

I just want to confirm that this will not preclude any other grant applications and that those would proceed along the normal course and this is completely in addition to applying for those other programs.

Hon. S. Robinson: I can assure the member that this is in addition to. In fact, they can use this to leverage and access other funds if they need to come up with a portion.

S. Bond: I appreciate the minister’s answer and that concept.

The last question, I guess, is…. I noted, in the release and the information that was provided, that municipalities will receive $83.7 million. The minister has been clear today that there will be a formula. And if you are like my small communities…. Prince George, I know, will do very well. But McBride has, you know, 500 or less people. Valemount has between 1,000 and 1,200. So I know this will be a welcome infusion of resources.

If the minister could explain to me…. The four regional districts, then, I gather, receive cumulatively, between the four of them, $16.3 million. My communities are captured within a regional district. So how are the funds going to be allocated differently or used differently when you have the overarching regional district and then you have smaller communities? Will they be doing other things — cross-community projects? Or will there be specific criteria for the regional district funds?

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, I really appreciate the member asking the very specific questions about how this works. I think it’s important that communities understand how all the pieces interconnect.

The local governments, where there is a local government, will get their portion, the regional district will get their portion, and the bodies will make decisions based on their respective priorities.

[5:25 p.m.]

S. Bond: It won’t preclude, for example, a regional district saying: “There’s another worthwhile project that we’d like to support in the municipalities that have also received funding on a formula basis.” In other words, they could benefit from both pots of funding.

Hon. S. Robinson: Once again, the local governments that exist within a regional district can…. If the regional district wants to support a particular project, wherever it’s located within the regional district, that’s fine. They have to decide as a body, but the regional district can’t tell a local government what to do with their portion. Local government is independent.

E. Ross: Thank you to the minister for the chance to ask questions.

Just a quick clarification before I get to my question. There are different pots within government, like the rural dividend fund. Just to clarify the leverage question, is it possible to leverage this $100 million fund against existing funds that are within the provincial government like, for example, the rural dividend fund?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes, it is.

E. Ross: I’ve been listening to the allocation and the one-time grant and the formula and the accountability that will be factored in later on. But when I was chief councillor, Haisla Nation Council, there was a general understanding between our council and the previous government that Skeena would need tremendous upgrades in advance of an LNG FID. Highways was just one discussion — the hospital, the Kitimat River bridge. But we had many other discussions, as well, in terms of the other bridges that would need upgrading, as well as sewer and water — infrastructure that was needed.

I knew there were other talks about potentially different pots of funding that were already in discussion — say, the revenue benefit alliance, for instance. But it was my understanding with the previous government that Skeena would be treated specifically for the oncoming impact of LNG. I’m just wondering if this government is still considering Skeena in the context of the impact that LNG will bring to our region especially — apart from any existing pots of funding, whether it be the rural dividend fund, this recent $100 million or any other pot of funding, for that matter.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question. There are ongoing conversations with the region around that. This is a completely separate and independent decision.

E. Ross: That’s good news, because $100 million spread over 26 communities is not enough funding to address some of the issues that will be coming to Kitimat, let alone Terrace. But it’s a welcome announcement.

[5:30 p.m.]

In terms of the formula itself, though, it doesn’t seem to fit what’s coming, in terms of Kitimat. There’s an allocation based on a formula based on the population, for example. Kitimat has been hovering around 8,000 members, population-wise, for the last six years or so. Funding-wise, Kitimat is not going to get any substantial pot of funding under this formula for the $100 million announcement.

In your talks that are apart from the $100 million grant or apart from the rural dividend fund, are there talks specific to Kitimat and Terrace for the impacts that will be coming, or will there be another funding announcement that incorporates a number of different municipalities and regional districts?

Hon. S. Robinson: This is a very welcome announcement for communities. And the conversations around what’s to come? Those are conversations that are ongoing and are going to continue. We’re committed to continuing those conversations. When there’s something to say, I’m sure that the member will know all about that.

E. Ross: The only reason I ask is because the $100 million announcement came as a surprise to me. I knew about the revenue benefit alliance talks. I was well aware of the rural dividend fund. I was wondering about whether or not it would conflict with the existing funds.

I know this is hard in terms of confidentiality and whatnot, but is there any other way that we can keep in touch in terms of what’s happening in my region, in terms of talks — even if it’s just to say that talks are going good or when the meetings are happening or what kind of progress they’re making?

Hon. S. Robinson: I know I can appreciate that the community is anxious about understanding exactly how we’re going to be working together. There is the LNG secretariat, out of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, as part of taking a whole-of-government approach about how to help communities when these sorts of pressures come. Those talks and that conversation will all continue to happen.

E. Ross: We have a number of communities that have shared infrastructure needs. Just to clarify, I understand that the Kitselas and Kitsumkalum, for example, are within the municipality of Terrace. Kitimaat Village is not really mentioned there, but some of the highway infrastructure there actually goes to both the village as well as the marina that’s being well used today.

Are we talking about communities that have shared infrastructure needs? Say Nisga’a, for example — their highway upgrades. They are within the catchment area, as I understand it.

Hon. S. Robinson: I just want to remind the member that the regional district is getting an allocation. It will be up to the regional district as a body to determine what their priorities are and where to invest this grant money.

[5:35 p.m.]

M. Morris: This was good news. Any time we can get a few meagre dollars thrown our way, I’m sure all the communities in the area appreciate it.

I guess I want to speak philosophically, first, before I ask a couple of questions. We, in the resource-based communities that we have in northern B.C…. A lot of the information I gleaned from the latest State of the North Report that MNP put out for the Northern Development Initiative Trust. We see populations declining in northern B.C. They have year over year for a number of years now.

What we’re finding…. It’s probably not unique to northern British Columbia. It’s probably happening all over the world, in fact. We see people living in Courtenay or Comox or other areas on Vancouver Island or the Lower Mainland and commuting to work in the Mount Milligan mine or some of the other resource sectors in the community.

They’ve moved out of the Mackenzies of the world, and they’re living down there now. It’s caused quite an imbalance in those communities, trying to keep up with the infrastructure, because of the lost population that they have. I look at Mackenzie, for an example. Mackenzie used to have a thriving population of about 6,000 people at one particular time. I think now they’re down to around 3,000 people, but they still have that same infrastructure that they have to maintain all the time. So that’s problematic.

I’ve been listening carefully to your comments about the criteria for determining how much money goes to the respective communities. Is government taking these kinds of dynamics into consideration?

When we look at the fact that the resource sector, mainly based in rural British Columbia, contributes a significant portion to the GDP overall…. It’s a step in the right direction to help mitigate some of the costs that these communities have, to provide the money that the resource sector has. So is government taking into consideration the population fluctuations, these dynamics where we have people now moving down to the sunny south and enjoying the services that they have down there?

The Lower Mainland is growing. B.C. is growing by 50,000 people a year down south here, but we’re shrinking by several hundred a year in northern communities. I’d be curious to see how you look at the population base to determine who gets what for money here.

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the member’s question, because it’s certainly something that I’ve been hearing from small communities. It is something we’ve been hearing from northern British Columbia around: how do we keep people here? Part of the problem has been that they haven’t been able to invest in infrastructure, because they just didn’t have the capacity.

We’re hoping and our plan is that with this investment they’ll be able to do the things that they have been really dying to do for a long time. They can invest in their communities, and that will help keep people in their home communities and keep the local economy thriving and making it work for families so that families choose to stay in northern British Columbia.

M. Morris: That’s going to be a relatively complex, difficult discussion, I’m sure, internally, when you’re working on your OIC for how that is going to be distributed at the end of the day.

It’s not only happening in places like Mackenzie. We have Tumbler Ridge that has those fluctuations, and of course, we’ve seen it in many other communities throughout British Columbia here.

The other part of that is when we look at the communities on a regional basis. Prince George sits right smack in the middle of the province, with north, south, east, west highways, railways, pipelines, hydro lines. Everybody that goes to northeast B.C. or northwest B.C. travels through Prince George. So the pressure on the infrastructure that a community like Prince George has…. I’m going to go out and say I think they deserve the maximum amount that’s available to hand out here, because everybody comes into Prince George from all these areas and uses the infrastructure within Prince George.

Is something like that going to be part of the criteria? Are you going to be looking at that at all when you make your determinations?

[5:40 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: The focus of our efforts around this was smaller communities because they have such significant challenges. But we also know that the hub centres that exist feel the pressures as well, and that’s why we did include Prince George in this allocation. We felt that they, too, experienced pressures, albeit they have different capacities to do different things. But we recognize that there are additional pressures that come to these centres because of the through traffic, and we wanted to make sure they were included in this.

M. Morris: You know, I listen to that kind of an answer, and I know Mayor Lyn Hall is probably watching or listening or will hear this conversation as well. The hopes of receiving a significant amount of money to go towards some of the infrastructure there is probably dissipating quite quickly before his eyes here. A $100 million doesn’t go very far when it’s spread amongst the communities that you talk about. But the entire northern 80 percent of the province, which is solely based on resources more than anything else, needs a heck of a lot more than $100 million, for sure.

When we look at the downturn in the forest sector — this is the other part of the conversation here — I see a significant downturn in forestry-related activities. The economy is going to suffer a significant loss in these communities. Fort St. James, Mackenzie are solely dependent on forestry.

Are these kinds of issues going to be looked at in your criteria as well? You don’t need a crystal ball. It’s happening right now with the advent of pine beetles, spruce beetles, fir beetles. The lumber markets themselves are running out of fibre. Are these going to be forming part of the criteria as well?

Hon. S. Robinson: The criteria was canvassed a little earlier. I’ll repeat it here. The criteria is based on population and residential assessment. I agree with the member. For some communities and some of the mayors, they sort of spent the range of allocation — because we’re still working on the finalized numbers — five times over because the need has been so great for so long. But they also know that this is an opportunity for them to work together in their communities, identify their priorities and make some significant investments where it matters most to them in their community.

I know that there’s always more that we can do. I think it’s important that we, as a government, pay attention to small, rural, northern communities. They have unique challenges. Investing in their communities with a program like this allows them to think about: how do they diversify? How do they sustain themselves? What are the kinds of things that they might need to do, whether it’s finding ways to bring on line high-speed Internet, for example, in some communities, who just could never make it happen. But now there are some opportunities here.

These are the kinds of things that we want to encourage small communities to consider. But again, it’s really up to them. They know what their needs are. They know what their priorities are. This is an opportunity for them to put those forward and make those things happen for the people that they serve.

M. Morris: Just one more. So I go back to…. Did you say the criteria is going to be based upon assessment and population? Residential assessment and population based on 2018, 2017? Or is there going to be a time on that?

Hon. S. Robinson: A very detailed question. The average residential assessment will be 2016 to 2018, so it’s an average. The population, I think, is the 2016 census.

M. Morris: So the 2015 census, did you say?

Hon. S. Robinson: We’re checking. I think it’s ’15 or ’16. We’re not 100 percent sure. I’m waiting for an answer.

[5:45 p.m.]

M. Morris: I’ll just throw one more concern out, because the populations have fluctuated. In a small community, the loss of 20 people is significant for those smaller communities. Residential property assessments have gone down in many of the small communities like Mackenzie, compared to what it may have been at one particular point in time. Again, if we look at a certain year, the value might be significantly less than what it would be this year or five years ago.

Hon. S. Robinson: I do appreciate what the member is trying to get across. We just got a note that it’s a three-year average for assessment and for population, the most recent three years.

D. Barnett: Thank you to the minister for the opportunity for these communities to move forward.

My question to the minister is: where is the assistance for the Cariboo-Chilcotin? Where is the assistance for the rest of the small communities in British Columbia and, in particular, those of us that have had fires, have had floods, have had mine closures, have now got forestry companies that are laying off and shutting down and taking weeks off, a month, at a time? These communities too, Minister, need assistance. Why was this area chosen and the rest of rural British Columbia put on the back burner?

Hon. S. Robinson: The member wants to know what funds are available for her community. There are a number of funds — everything from the rural dividend fund to the community, culture and recreation fund, the CleanBC fund. But also the rural and northern communities fund, which I think is really worthy of mention, that our government, for the first time ever, has done. For communities between 5,000 and 10,000 people, 90 percent of the funding is covered by the province and the feds.

[5:50 p.m.]

For communities under 5,000 people, there is no requirement for the local government to come in with a share. We recognize that small, rural communities don’t have the capacity to match grants. So we made the decision, as a government, that that was a barrier to small communities. We announced it at the UBCM. It was met with tremendous gratitude and relief for small communities, certainly in the member’s region. That’s certainly been, I think, a welcome opportunity for many small, rural communities.

D. Barnett: Thank you for that, Minister, but my question is: is the rest of rural British Columbia, and in particular areas that have been hit hard since 2017, such as the Cariboo-Chilcotin…? Will they have the same opportunity in the not too distant future for the same kind of funding as you have just announced for these other communities?

Hon. S. Robinson: The rationale for this is because of major industrial development that is occurring in that region. We have certainly heard from the members who represent that region about what the impacts are for their communities and the angst that that’s creating. This is about providing them with a one-time — only a one-time — opportunity, to prepare themselves and make the kinds of investments that they need to make because of the specific demands of this significant investment that is happening in that region.

D. Barnett: So this is a one-time funding because of the LNG project proposed?

Hon. S. Robinson: There are other significant major developments happening in the area. There’s some mining that’s going on as well, so it’s creating significant challenges in some communities. It’s a combination of all of these things that are creating some significant challenges right across that corridor.

I do want to correct one thing for the record. I got my numbers mixed up here. On the rural and northern communities, it’s communities between 5,000 and 25,000 people that need to come up with only 10 percent. Before, I said 10,000, and it’s 25,000.

D. Barnett: I have one last question to the minister.

Minister, those communities that have been hit hard since 2017 with fires, mill closures, mine closures — are there going to be any opportunities, or assistance, for these rural communities in the near future, or are they on their own?

[5:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I certainly appreciate the member’s questions, and I would encourage her, when we do the general estimates, to continue canvassing with these questions.

These particular supplementary estimates are about the particular funds that we’ve allocated here for this vote.

T. Stone: We’ll now turn our attention to the $17 million allocation for clean water and wastewater. The clean water–​wastewater fund, if I recall correctly, was announced back in 2016. I believe it was a $450 million bilateral agreement between the province and the federal government. I was right in the middle of all of that as one of the ministers responsible. It was a 50 percent federal funding, 33 percent provincial funding cost share.

Initially there were 35 approved projects. That was followed by an additional 144 approved projects. Those additional 144 approved projects were announced on March 17, 2017. So there was a total of 179 projects that I was aware of up to the spring of 2017. I think we’re all clear on what the focus is on this fund in terms of helping local communities meet their needs with respect to clean water and wastewater systems and so forth.

With that context, I’m just wondering if the minister could indicate what this $17 million additional supplementary allocation is actually for. Are we talking about some of the 179 previously approved projects, that some of these projects maybe have been delayed, or they didn’t actually fully expend the funds that had been allocated to them — i.e., is it leftover…? Is the $17 million really representative of leftover dollars from previously approved projects, those 179 projects, or is this $17 million a net new allocation that’s on top of the funding that was announced and distributed to those 179 previously approved projects?

Hon. S. Robinson: This amount was in previously approved contingencies, and we’re moving it into the base budget.

T. Stone: I understand that — previously approved contingencies being brought into the current budget. Has all of this $17 million in funds been allocated to specific projects, and if so, which projects?

[6:00 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: This $17 million is part of the cash flow. It is a claims process, and it’s just being brought down.

T. Stone: I’m wondering if…. With respect to the $17 million and the projects that these dollars will be used to fund, is the same cost-share framework in place — again, 50 percent federal, 33 percent provincial and the balance by the local community?

Hon. S. Robinson: Nothing has changed in the program.

T. Stone: Can the minister advise the House as to timing around the disbursement of these funds? Are they…? I apologize if she’s already answered this in the previous question, but are these projects that have been already approved? Are they net new projects? Are they top-ups to existing projects to complete projects? If they’re net new projects, have they been approved, and if so, when will the disbursement of the funds actually take place?

Hon. S. Robinson: The claim is for this year. Projects have to be done by 2020. There are no new projects. This is just part of the claims that have been coming in.

T. Stone: Again, not wanting to beat a dead horse here. I’m just trying to understand. Are these new projects, distinct from the 179 previously approved projects? Or are they existing…? Are they those 179 projects that required a top-up in order to complete?

Hon. S. Robinson: No top-ups. They’re just previously approved. They’re continuing their work moving forward.

T. Stone: So these are in addition to the 179 previously approved projects? If so, how many net new projects are we talking about here?

Hon. S. Robinson: There are no new projects. There are no top-ups. Of the 180 projects, 114 have made claims, and this is part of that — the claims.

T. Stone: So the $17 million, then…. Am I correct in understanding that this is just the disbursement of funds from a previous fiscal year? I recall in estimates that we talked about…. We had a number of questions and answers back and forth on the infrastructure funds.

I’m well aware of how this can work. Often a project is expected to start and finish in a particular fiscal. There are certain portions in one fiscal year and another fiscal year, but there are often issues that arise that push a project out a bit or, in some rare instances, can actually result in a project finishing sooner. Is that what we’re talking about here? This is not new money. It’s not new projects, not new top-ups. This is just simply accounting for when the work on these projects was actually done — i.e., which fiscal year we’re talking about?

Hon. S. Robinson: In fiscal 2018-19, the ministry will book $75 million in expenditures and $58 million in federal recoveries, netting a fiscal impact to this program of $17 million. Payments under this program are made throughout the fiscal year as claims are submitted.

[6:05 p.m.]

T. Stone: Are we talking, then…? I think we’re on the same page here in terms of understanding the $17 million is not net new projects and top-ups and so forth. But are we talking about $17 million worth of existing projects, the expenditure of which didn’t take place in the last fiscal for whatever reason? Or are we talking about $17 million that would have actually been incurred in the next fiscal that you’re bringing into this fiscal? You’re either sliding one way, or you’re sliding the other. I would just appreciate understanding which way.

Hon. S. Robinson: I think it’s important to be clear that these funds are funds that were contingencies, and we’re moving them out of contingencies and into base funding. It’s already allocated within the fiscal year as contingencies. We’re just moving it into the base budget and having an estimates process about it.

T. Stone: Okay. But again, can the minister then indicate…? Are we talking contingencies within the clean water and wastewater fund envelope that are being allocated to these projects? Or are we talking about moneys being allocated from other contingencies? If so, what would those other contingencies be?

[6:10 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: Just to remind the member, this is normal work to move resources from the contingency vote and into the base budget. That’s what we’ve done here. So there’s no change to the program. Allocations have not changed, and any variation that we see is based on project progress, but there has not been any acceleration.

This is about being accountable and transparent. We’ve received claims for these projects, and this is about flow-through and making sure that those who oversee these funds are getting the resources that they need.

T. Stone: I appreciate that. We all want the communities in question to get the funds that they need and that they are expecting.

I absolutely stand to be corrected, and the minister can correct me if I’m wrong in what I’m about to say, but my understanding of the clean water and wastewater fund is that there is no contingency built into that fund. These are projects that are approved. Fifty percent of the cost share on each project is shared by the federal government, the 33 percent was provincial, and the balance was the local communities in question. I’m not aware of any contingency that was incorporated as part of the clean water and wastewater fund.

Perhaps that’s not what the minister meant or what the minister’s talking about. Perhaps the minister is talking about the surplus and the redirection of surplus funds that have been generated this fiscal and spending those dollars on these projects. If that’s what’s going on, that’s an explanation.

Then I come back to my original question. If that’s the case, then the funds are either going towards net new projects or they’re going towards cost overruns on existing projects, or we’re dealing with, again, the accounting of project completion from one fiscal to another.

My last question on this piece is just hopefully to get some clarity on that from the minister, if she could.

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, I think the member is getting his contingencies mixed up. There is no contingency fund for the project. This is about: the province commitment was supported through a contingency vote. It’s about where the vote is. We’re moving this money into the base budget, and that’s what this is about.

T. Stone: Well, that is a very simple, straightforward answer, and that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to get at. The minister’s previous responses somewhat muddled the waters here in terms of the interchangeable use of contingency, contingency vote, surplus and so forth. I’m glad to hear we’re on the same page, that we’re not talking about any contingency that exists within the clean water and wastewater program. So I’m clear on where these funds are coming from.

[6:15 p.m.]

The next piece is the $10 million for the New Building Canada Fund–Small Communities Fund. Again, about $217.8 million was announced several years ago. There have been, I believe, somewhere around…. I think the first intake had 55 approved projects. That was followed with 26 approved projects. So a total of 81 projects.

Perhaps this is just one question and one response. If we’re talking about the exact same scenario as we just canvassed thoroughly with respect to the clean water and wastewater fund — i.e., this $10 million is simply moving some dollars from the contingency vote to account for some pressures relating to projects of the Small Communities Fund…. If it’s the same scenario, I’d be happy to just pose that one question on this subject and have the minister respond.

Hon. S. Robinson: It’s the same scenario.

T. Stone: Thanks to the minister for that.

We’ll move on from these programs. The last piece of this $135.4 million supplementary budget request from the ministry relates to the Peace River agreement — $8.4 million for Peace River infrastructure under the Peace River agreement.

On this point, I’m going to turn it over to my colleague from Peace River South, who has a number of questions that he would like to canvass on behalf of the official opposition with respect to this component of the supplementary estimates.

M. Bernier: First of all, let me just say to the minister: as a former mayor of a small town, a small northern town, and a former president of the local association, NCLGA, of course the $100 million, which is new funding that we talk about here in supplemental, is welcomed. I mean, this is obviously something that has been talked about for a long time. I was even part of trying to secure funding for those areas. I was also part of securing funding under the Peace River agreement.

Where my confusion comes in — about why it’s here in the supplementals — is this isn’t new. The $100 million that was recently announced by government is new funds. The Peace River region agreement itself has been around in one form or another for almost 20 years. The new Peace agreement of $50 million, which adds a little bit every year, has been around for only a couple of years. It was actually built into, it’s my understanding, last year’s budget.

Can the minister explain, if there was $50 million put in the budget because it was part of the contract that was already there with the Peace region, why it would have to be here at supplementals?

[6:20 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: There’s no change to the Peace River agreement. Our community wholeheartedly and completely supports the $50 million agreement. Good fiscal management is about putting some of these resources into contingency vote in case there’s an underspending of some kind, so you don’t strand the resources. This is us moving it forward, making sure that it is part of the base budget.

M. Bernier: I appreciate what the minister is trying to say, but I want to go back to the point that this isn’t a surprise. This is something that has been agreed upon in previous governments. Of course, we had, through the Fair Share, now doing business as the Peace agreement…. It was built in. It was paid. Nobody had to come back to the House and ask for more money.

I’m trying to understand what the minister is saying when she’s saying that…. I think it was $8.4 million. Is she saying that the $50 million was not built into the budget, which is why she’s having to move money around now to be able to pay it?

Hon. S. Robinson: What we’re saying is that we allocated the $50 million. Some of it was put into a contingency, making sure that the program continued to work the way it’s supposed to. Now that we’re at the end of fiscal, it’s appropriate to move it into base budget.

M. Bernier: Please indulge me, but that doesn’t make any sense. If you have something that you know you have to pay every year under an agreement, why would you only put two-thirds of it into the budget and then have to come back in front of the House, now in supplementals, to ask for the rest of the money?

If this vote were to fail, does that mean that the government is going to be reneging on the Fair Share Peace agreement?

Hon. S. Robinson: No, we would just pay for it out of contingencies.

M. Bernier: I’m not trying to, by any means, make this difficult, because, believe me, I worked for many years on the Peace agreement. I know the benefits that it brings, no different than, I’m sure, the mayors on the $100 million one-time announcement will be talking about what that means for them. But I have to go back to the point, to the minister. I’m not trying to, as my colleague was trying to, beat the dead horse. I just want to try to understand this.

In every other year, it’s been part of the budget. We’ve made the announcements. We’ve gone with the regional district. They do the disbursement under their formula. It’s never had to come back to the House, whether it’s surpluses, contingencies, Vote 1. The point is it’s been built into the budget, and it’s been paid.

The reason why I’m bringing this up, though, is because, of course, as not only the local MLA but as the opposition that was part of the government at the time that brought this in — making these commitments — it makes me a little nervous that the minister is not budgeting appropriately, then, for this.

Is she able to commit, then, that if it wasn’t done properly last year and put in as the base, in this next budget is it going to be part of the base so this doesn’t have to be brought up again next year?

Hon. S. Robinson: I expect that the member will be canvassing those questions when we do the full estimates for this coming budget.

M. Bernier: That’s why we’re here, exactly. So it’s unfortunate that the minister doesn’t want to answer a simple question — that yes, she’s committing to sticking with the Fair Share. In her opening comments, she said, if I can paraphrase possibly, that they were relooking at the Peace agreement. She brought up that the Peace agreement was being looked at. I’m just curious. When she says that, I’m assuming….

I just see the minister shaking her head. Maybe I misunderstood her comment — that when she said it was being looked at, it was that it was here in front of us for supplementals. But of course, when we look at this one…. Of course, I will canvass it again, just to make sure we have that ongoing commitment from the Ministry of Finance and from the minister involved.

[6:25 p.m.]

It is — hopefully, she can appreciate — a little perplexing when we have something that’s built long-standing into a budget and that specific issue, of all issues, for some reason, had to come in front of the House today. The minister, in her opening remarks, said that this was all about new things, new projects, spending money on people. I commend her for the announcement that she’s making. This doesn’t fit into that, and that’s why I’m bringing this up.

Maybe a simple question, then, hopefully, as we’re getting close to wrapping up here. I will canvass the Peace agreement a little bit further. It’s good to know that she’s applied for money to put in, out of contingencies, to ensure that that commitment is there. I would be a little nervous if she wasn’t in front of the House right now to do so.

Was the Peace agreement looked at, at all — the formula, the style — when the government was looking at the $100 million announcement for the west side? Of course, that’s always been looked at as a bit of a comparison.

I gave a bit of a wrap-up there on a few things that I’m hoping the minister can answer for me.

Hon. S. Robinson: First of all, I want to, for the record, reassure the member that we’re not revisiting the agreement and that the full $50 million will be paid. I want to remind the member that there is a reporting requirement for the Peace agreement, and the Peace has met those requirements.

As a result, the $8.4 million that is going to be released from contingencies, that vote, will be paid in full, and that’s a reasonable budgeting process for making sure that everything is fulfilled from the Peace’s perspective.

T. Stone: Noting the hour, we’re very much coming up on the dinner hour here. We don’t have any other questions as an official opposition for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

We’ll end on this note, though. We’ll definitely come back on the Peace River agreement. This was an agreement that was signed and announced back on May 15. It’s a $1.1 billion agreement over 20 years. It provides a calendar of fixed payments. Not once since the signing of this agreement has any government had to come into this chamber to seek supplementary budget approval to fund a portion of the annual commitment that is detailed in contract between the province of British Columbia and the municipalities of the Peace region.

To say this is bizarre…. I know I speak for my colleague from Peace River South. The answers were inexplicable as to why, at this particular time, the government has seen fit to come into this chamber and seek approval for $8.4 million on an agreement that has a set schedule of payments that was signed in good faith by all the communities in the Peace region and the province. That just makes no sense whatsoever. I would suggest it’s the furthest thing from the transparency exercise, which the minister repeated over and over in the two hours that we’ve been canvassing here.

With that, I will certainly thank the staff from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs who were here and thank them for their continued good work and professionalism.

Vote 36(S): ministry operations, $135,400,000 — approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that the committee rise, report resolution and completion of the supplementary estimates 2018-2019 of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:30 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Committee of Supply (Section B), having reported resolutions, 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 moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 6:31 p.m.