Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. In Committee A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued debate on committee stage of Bill 4, Witness Security Act. In the Birch Room, I call continued debate on the estimates of Indigenous Relations.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — ZERO-EMISSION
VEHICLES ACT

(continued)

S. Gibson: I appreciate this opportunity to make this presentation today on behalf of my constituents in the Abbotsford-Mission riding. I appreciate the opportunity to represent them here regarding Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. Important legislation but it requires considerable attention, I think, by every member of this House.

The implications are significant. I think all of us…. There’s unanimity in this place with regard to the desirability of reducing emissions significantly, and these kinds of vehicles that we’ll be discussing today are all a part of that paradigm.

There are some reservations that rise to the surface as we examine the materials that have been disseminated. I want to thank the minister for arranging a briefing. A number of my colleagues went to a proposed Zero-Emission Vehicles Act briefing, which was quite helpful. We were able to engage the staff with some questions that we thought were relevant, and I believe most of their responses were timely and well-thought-out. So I want to make that comment here.

It’s my concern that what I would call a measure of hollow optimism, as government moves ahead with this, in some ways quite expeditiously, notwithstanding the long window which will approach us quicker than we might imagine — 2040….

We do acknowledge, I believe, on this side of the House the desirability of pursuing lower emissions, ultimately leading to zero emissions. The question is: at what price, and how is that executed?

As I talk to my constituents, there is the realization that the internal combustion engine will continue in many iterations but that its application, particularly as we pursue this means, is something that will be reduced over the years, perhaps significantly.

[1:40 p.m.]

I do want to honour government to this extent. I believe the intentions are good. I believe that they’re honourable. Of course, we would agree that it’s a tampering with the marketplace. Who better knows how to provide these kinds of vehicles to the public but the manufacturers and dealers themselves? So the vision that the government has may not necessarily be congruent with the aspirations of the various companies that make these vehicles.

Now, there are a lot of vehicles registered in our province. As a matter of fact, interestingly, in my riding of Abbotsford-Mission, I’m advised that in the Abbotsford side of the riding, it’s the most percentage of vehicles per population. In other words, we have a 140,000 population in Abbotsford, and the largest percentage of those adults own a vehicle. You can tell we are a very vehicle-oriented community, and we’ll continue to be so around it.

I also want to make some comment with regard to what industry’s aspirations are. I was having a look at the growth of the Nissan LEAF, which is the largest electric vehicle, EV, sold in the world — hundreds of thousands sold in the U.S., Japan, Canada and other places. But it should be noted that this vehicle was really brought about by the initiative of Nissan itself and, in particular, the CEO. He said to his team: “We need an electric car.” The result, of course, is one that is selling widely in all parts of the world.

Although it’s true that the nature of society was moving in that direction, it was not regulated. I want to make that comment. Wherever commerce is regulated, you need to be suspicious. You need to remember that the values that government imposes on the free marketplace will have some repercussions.

I’ve noted, in particular, that the profitability of companies is essential. If companies can’t be profitable making these kinds of vehicles, zero-emission vehicles, then so what? The companies will collapse, or there’ll be other issues and maybe some bailouts. We’ve seen bailouts of car companies, a number of instances, in the financial crash in the U.S.

It’s interesting to note that a Labour government in the U.K. — which would be characterized as a left-of-centre government, perhaps similar to the government here — nationalized a good portion of the auto industry in the mid ’70s in the U.K. Of course, subsequently, that auto industry collapsed, and now you see that the manufacturing of automobiles in the U.K. is, largely, boutique luxury vehicles.

I want to make that point. I’m hoping that government will review that, because as we move in this trajectory, which is laudable to some extent, we are saying to the manufacturers: “This is what we want you to do, and here’s how you’re going to do it.” I’m a bit alarmed about that.

In addition, the changing marketplace is going to have an impact, repercussions like little dominos clicking together, with regard to the future of the internal combustion engine. It should be noted, for the record, that the internal combustion engines today, with all of the catalytic converters and the other paraphernalia that are added to vehicles, are considerably cleaner than those that I had as a university student, driving my big, gas-guzzling, old V8 Buick.

I wanted to make that point. Although I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be pursuing these kinds of vehicles, it should be noted that internal combustion engines now are much cleaner than they’ve ever been, which is why the AirCare stations have been closed in the Lower Mainland. They really were no longer a necessity.

[1:45 p.m.]

The planning for this is in place. I won’t review too much, other than the fact that there’s a sequence of requirements, and I think that’s a good thing. But in terms of history, we’re going to accelerate it quite dramatically, to the point where we are going to have a full imposition of this policy in 2040. So it’s a significant change.

Also, I would recommend to government that they have a plan in place to review what the future of the internal combustion engine is, with regard to those vehicles above a Ford 150 pickup and all light-duty vehicles. I’m advised, when we had the briefing, that every other vehicle above that would be still internal combustion. Now, that may be moderated in due course, but that’s the plan right now. You’ve got larger pickups and other vehicles — delivery vans, small buses — that are all going to have internal combusion engines. As we are adding more of the charge stations, then, of course, the need for more gas stations is going to be really compromised. This is another implication.

I might add, as well, that the whole infrastructure of our society is, in many cases, based upon the availability of people to work on cars, work in the transmission repair places. In all of the shops and those other kinds of businesses in my community, they’re working on cars — transmissions, air-conditioning, radiators, all of those things. Most of these will not be found on the new EV cars. Now, I’m saying that, really, to point out to government that when you interfere with the marketplace dramatically — and I understand the aspiration — there’s going to be an effect of connecting with people who are feeding their families by taking care of internal combustion vehicles.

Of course, there are going to continue to be used dealerships selling these kinds of vehicles. Eventually they’ll disappear, if that ultimately is the case.

We need to remember that. On both sides of this House, we’re glad to have people working on cars. I would say that everybody in this room knows somebody who has a livelihood working on internal combustion vehicles — whether it’s the radiators, the transmissions, whatever it is. Many of these components are not found on zero-emission vehicles.

I want to make a comment, if I may, with regard to government’s attention to the manufacturers. When we had our discussion, it was really an emphasis on the manufacturers of vehicles. Some, of course, are more prepared than others. There are companies that are just starting to get into zero-emission vehicles. Mitsubishi is coming into it, and we know Chevrolet is working at it. Of course, the premium companies, such as Tesla and others, are grabbing a lot of headlines with some pretty amazing cars, but they’re out of the reach of most people. I want to speak to that in just a moment.

With regard to automobile manufacturers, I think we have to be quite careful in trying to understand who they are. Just because a company calls themselves Chevrolet and they get the acknowledgment or recognition, it doesn’t mean that they make those cars. Many manufacturers will buy one vehicle and put their label on others. A recent example is a car made by Subaru, but Toyota puts their name on it. It’s a sports car. Some of you are familiar with that.

The auto industry is extremely competitive. I want to make sure that anything that this House supports is sympathetic to the fact that the auto industry operates sometimes on razor-thin profitability.

Interestingly, when you look at a car…. You’ll see a Volvo drive by on the street. Most of us will think of Volvo as being a Swedish car. As a matter of fact, it’s now owned by Geely, out of China. The Lotus, which we think of as an English car, is also owned by the Chinese.

[1:50 p.m.]

Jaguar has just produced their brand-new, first zero-emission car, a very handsome car and very expensive, which I’ll speak to in a moment. Jaguar and Land Rover are both owned by Tata of India.

You might say: “Well, what’s the relevance?” The relevance is that if we’re going to start categorizing companies and doing our best to encourage them to produce the cars that we want to see here, we’d better make sure that we’re categorizing the cars appropriately and under the correct manufacturer.

I want to say, in addition to that, that my comments regarding the competitiveness of the auto industry…. I think we all know around here, this place, how many car marks, companies, have declined or died in the last few years. I just casually made a list, and some of you here could probably help me with the list. I remember Mercury. Mercury is gone. Plymouth is gone. Pontiac is gone, Oldsmobile, Hummer, Scion, Suzuki and many others. Well, these were pretty big names. When I was a young student in university, I owned a couple of Pontiacs. They were pretty nice cars. They’re gone, and that was a result of GM’s bankruptcy.

We’re a small market here in British Columbia, if you contrast the overall in Canada or the U.S. However, I think we need to be sensitive to the fact that car companies are vulnerable. We need to make sure that when they produce zero-emission vehicles, they are doing it in a trajectory that they feel comfortable with, not one that we impose on them.

What about these zero-emission vehicles? I worry significantly that these cars are likely going to be out of the price range of average families. On both sides of this House, we characterize our work we do here as benefiting families, in particular. Well, if you look at the zero-emission vehicles, I believe a Nissan LEAF is early $40,000s, $40,000 plus for a small car. That’s out of the range of a lot of young people and young families. Tesla makes three different models. The two most expensive ones are around $140,000, $150,000 — something in that area, putting on options. Their new one, which is kind of a mid-size, I’m given to understand it’s around $60,000 to $65,000 — out of the range of most people.

We can see that government needs to think about the implications of that, because if they’re going to impose this dramatic model on the public and the public can’t afford these cars, what they’re going to do is just buy used vehicles that have internal combustion engines. I have a Toyota 4Runner ’02, not a very new car, and it’s got 215,000 kilometres on it. The guy that looks after it for me, my buddy, says to me that I can go probably 400,000 kilometres with that car.

You imagine in 2040, you’ve got all the lots filled with used internal combustion engine cars. Those are the ones that can be afforded by young families. It’s only going to be rich people that are going be riding around in the zero-emission vehicles. So you’re going to get a hierarchy of society. You’re going to have the people with limited means driving internal combustion engine cars, and then you’ve got the other folks driving the zero-emission cars. I think this government needs to be sensitive that they’re not having a kind of bifurcated society, bifurcated between those who can buy them and those who can’t.

One of the things that we’re going to have to anticipate is availability of power, clean electricity. I was very happy to see this government finally acquiesce on Site C and clean power, clean energy. I was very thrilled to be a part of a government that moved that goal forward to the extent that we now are constructing it and providing clean energy. But may I say that government, this government in particular, seems to be nervous about clean energy. I want to say that if we don’t have clean energy, we’re sure not going to have zero-emission vehicles.

In addition, I want to make the point that the point system — and I refer to the document that was disseminated here — is complicated. It’s not easy to understand. I had a look at it. My colleagues looked at it, and it’s a bit perplexing. We discussed it with staff.

[1:55 p.m.]

I don’t think it’s insurmountable, but I can tell you that if a manufacturer is looking at a point system…. There’s a ratio. If you make this many vehicles, then you get this kind of point system. If it’s overly complicated, I wonder if some companies are going to look and say: “Why are we going to bother with B.C.? This is, like, really complicated. It’s only a small market. There are only five million people in the population. Let’s work on California more.” California’s population is more than that of Canada. What is it? It’s 34 million — something like that — against five million.

So I worry. If this document is too perplexing and too complicated, I fear that manufacturers are going to be quite uncomfortable. They won’t want to bother with this market.

Overall, I think it’s laudable that we’re going in this direction. However, I must say that I’m worried that this government hasn’t anticipated all the possible challenges. I think they’re moving in a trajectory that could be problematic. Yes, we need zero-emission vehicles on the road within a certain time frame. But whether we’re doing it in a way that’s respectful for families, for the auto sector, for dealerships, for people who work on cars right now — all of those things…. If it’s not respectful of them…. I think really, to some extent, it’s a social agenda, which isn’t bad, wrapped in some kind of ideal, which really compromises the objectives for this.

I’m going to register those concerns. I know we’ll be discussing it further. I do appreciate this opportunity, today, to speak to it.

Hon. J. Sims: It’s my pleasure to rise and speak in favour of the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. As you know, our government is very committed. We have launched CleanBC. This is just one component of our total package to make sure that we have a program in place, policies in place, so that we’re taking actions to make sure that we’re looking after Mother Earth.

I don’t think there are too many people in this House who would be in denial about climate change. We don’t need to read scientific tomes to know that the climate is changing. We just have to turn on our television set and see images of the North Pole, and in the south, of the melting of the glaciers. We just have to look at the kind of climate we have experienced over the last number of years and see what kind of a massive shift has occurred, with massive fires, floods and temperatures that have varied greatly.

One of the ways of starting to address climate change is to take a look at our biggest polluters and start moving towards zero-emission vehicles. I’m so glad that my colleague across the way who just finished speaking spelled out that we have to do this judiciously. When we are bringing about this kind of change, it can’t just be a massive shift.

That’s why I am so pleased that this legislation does exactly what my colleague across the way was asking for. It’s not asking for the manufacturers and the retailers to have zero-emission vehicles in the next two or three years — 100 percent of their fleet, let’s say. The legislation requires automakers to meet increasing annual levels of zero-emission vehicle sales to reach 10 percent of the new light-duty vehicle sales by 2025.

We’re not starting from zero. We’re already at 4 percent. So I think that kind of an increase, up to 10 percent by 2025, is very judicious. Then, by 2030, to build up to 30 percent, and by 2040, we’re looking at 100 percent. The reason that I think this is a very thoughtful way to proceed is because it takes into consideration the very issues I’ve heard being raised here about transitioning, about transitioning the economy, transitioning our automakers.

[2:00 p.m.]

We all know that when the automobile was first manufactured, it was out of bounds for most people. It could only really be afforded by the very, very rich, and very few people had a car or an automobile. But then as more people began to buy and more cars got to be produced, the prices became reasonable. I’m absolutely convinced that’s what’s going to be happening with ZEV, the zero-emission vehicles. That is exactly what is going to be happening with them, because as more are produced, more sales will be made.

I know that in our province here in B.C. — I’m only going to speak on behalf of B.C. — we do have a shortage. I have a number of friends who are on wait-lists. They have been waiting. I know that when my vehicle went through a need for a renewal…. I’m one of those people who buys a vehicle and then keeps it forever, until it kind of gives up. I had to go out and buy one a few years ago, and my first choice was to get a hybrid or an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of waiting, and there was no vehicle available at that time that I could have purchased.

So the demand is definitely here. I know my children and my grandchildren vocalize this. They expect our generation to do something about climate change. They expect us to take steps to make sure that we’re looking after Mother Earth. And for those of you with children, you know that after our children finish kindergarten and grades 1 and 2, they come home and become the police for recycling as well.

I can remember me throwing a piece of paper into the wrong bin and getting a lecture from my little ones, saying: “Mom, you’re not supposed to do that.” Our children are very, very much into this, and they’re expecting us, as adults, to set policies, to set targets, to make sure that we do move into zero emission and are looking after the planet.

I’m so proud of the recycling that goes on in so many of our cities, especially of the organic waste. Talking about organic waste, I really want to talk about Surrey’s state-of-the-art biofuel plant. This facility will actually reduce the city’s carbon footprint by up to 50,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually. That’s huge. And who would have thought that your potato peelings and banana peelings could lead to this?

The city unveiled its new industrial-scale biofuel plant, and I had the pleasure of being there for the opening, the ribbon-cutting, and then getting a tour of this facility where organic waste will be converted into natural gas, which then fuels the city’s waste collection fleet. To me, that’s another example of a creative and innovative way of using our produce, our waste, to make sure that we are looking after our emissions. The Surrey biofuel facility has capacity to transform up to 115,000 tonnes of organic waste into biofuel, according to the city. It will reduce local greenhouse emissions, as I said, by 50,000 tonnes per year.

That’s a city that I’m very proud of, the city of Surrey, and the steps it has taken over the last number of years — not just the city but the residents of Surrey — in protecting our environment, getting involved with recycling and also in reducing our emissions.

As you know, Madam Speaker, April 13 is Vaisakhi month. Even though Vaisakhi was on April 13 here in B.C., we like to celebrate Vaisakhi all month. I think all of us have been to a number of Vaisakhi celebrations.

When I was in Kelowna this past weekend, lo and behold, they were having their Vaisakhi celebration there on that day. In Surrey, it was an amazing Vaisakhi parade. We had over 500,000 people in the streets of Surrey — safe, secure, eating amazing food and listening to some religious lectures along the way, as well, but really enjoying the Nagar Kirtan.

[2:05 p.m.]

What was special about this Vaisakhi is the work that is being led by Bal and Sarj Sabharwal, two brothers from Surrey who are hoping businesses and families that serve free food at last year’s Vaisakhi parade would find alternatives to Styrofoam to cut down on the waste headed to the landfill. I believe that in Surrey, this was the first Styrofoam-free Vaisakhi. A huge, huge shout-out to the initiative of two citizens who took this upon themselves because they care so, so deeply about Mother Earth and about our planet.

When I talk about electric cars and the importance of us moving toward zero-emission vehicles, it is something that is no longer a luxury. It’s not something we can just keep talking about and hope it will happen by osmosis. We know that when we reach that target, then we have something to aim for. So does the industry. And it gives the industry a clear road map.

I don’t think the automakers are going to find it hard to read the charts that are going to be provided to them. If they do, I’m sure they’ll know which minister to phone. It certainly won’t be me. But I can tell you that giving automobile makers and the retailers a road map of the targets actually helps them to do the planning and actually helps them to transition from the old to the new.

That is really, really important, because that’s the kind of thing…. Businesses want to know that ahead of time. They don’t want to be surprised one day and then told a year later or smacked: “Why aren’t you doing this?”

I’m very, very happy with the way that this is going to be rolled out. It is a transformative tool. Setting targets will transform the production, but it will also be transformative in changing habits, as well, because we know that we need to have cars, clean electricity from batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. We need to have that up and running, and it is no longer something we can talk about.

I heard my colleague talking about the Tesla and the luxury end of that market. Absolutely, even in the traditional cars fuelled by gasoline, we have the luxury end of the car market as well. You know, you can go out, and you’ll see the Hummers being driven. You’ll see the Lamborghinis on the streets of Vancouver and Surrey. And you will see the luxury cars that we were talking about.

I’m sure that in the electric category, there will be luxury cars. But also, when you have targets like this and when the practice of the consumer is changing and the government is helping with that transformation, you know what’s going to happen? It’s going to give manufacturers that incentive. It’s going to allow them to do that planning. It’s going to allow them to start transitioning their workforce as well.

All of that is very important. And this is about growing jobs. It will grow jobs. Absolutely. It’s not about getting rid of jobs, as was hinted at earlier. This is about jobs as well. But we do know that zero-emission vehicles use cleaner energy. And absolutely, I don’t think there is anybody on either side of the House that does not support clean energy. Of course we do. It improves air quality, and it costs dramatically less over time to fuel and operate.

There was a time when even recycling was unheard of, and now we take it to be part of our lives. We either compost or we have a green bin, and it gets picked up and gets taken away. Electric cars. Yes, they’re still very expensive, but even at the expense they are at, there are people out there who are wanting them because they care about the planet.

There’s the luxury end, absolutely. Not everybody will be able to afford those. But as more vehicles are produced and we move more into the electric vehicle zone, I think what we will see is a dramatic shift in the prices as well.

Who would ever have thought that the other cars, the regular cars that use gasoline, would have come down in price from when the automobile was first invented, when only very few people and those with lots of money could afford to buy those cars?

[2:10 p.m.]

So it is without any hesitation that I speak strongly in favour of this plan. One of the main reasons I speak in favour of this plan is it’s well thought out. It’s laid out like a road map, both for the consumer and for the automakers and those who retail. It gives them the time to make the transition that we must all make, because at the end of the day, what we have at risk is our planet, is Mother Earth.

As my colleague said earlier, from the other side, all of us want to move towards zero emission. Here, then, is a prime example for all of us to stand together and say that each and every one of us, no matter where we sit in this House, is committed to looking after Mother Earth.

J. Thornthwaite: I’m pleased to rise today to talk about Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. The challenges that do come with climate change are an action item for all governments, and the B.C. Liberals are no different than that.

We do support — I support — the thrust of this legislation. Obviously, it sounds like a great idea with regards to moving British Columbia vehicles towards zero emissions.

Our government set the stage for that to happen. Basically, I’m talking about Site C. We had a lot of doubters from the other side. I know that it was a campaign issue in the 2017 election. I had a lot of people from the other side, the NDP side, telling me that the Site C dam was not needed.

Well, we’ve had folks from B.C. Hydro since tell us that if everybody is going to go to an electric vehicle, then we’re not going to need just one Site C dam; we’re probably going to need three. It was the leadership from the B.C. Liberals that certainly got that one started.

The other thing that…. Before I get into specifics about my situation, being an owner of an electric vehicle, I’d like to have a caution. I think there are a few cautions that my colleagues from this side have brought forward, but one of the main ones is that there’s a huge assumption in this bill that the price of zero-emission vehicles is going to be the same or go down. In other words, it’s the very foundation of this bill that zero-emission vehicles will be affordable. Right now they’re not affordable to the average person.

I’ve talked to numerous people, because they always ask me about my car, and then they want to know how much it was. Even with the rebate, they are not classified as a cheap car. One thing we do know is costs never go down. They always go up.

According to the bill, in six years, 2025, at least 10 percent of the new light-duty vehicles, sold or leased, will be zero emission. Then it goes up. Five short years later it is expected to triple again, making an increase in affordability critical. Then by 2040, all light-duty vehicles will have to be zero emissions.

The viability of this entire legislation, and for the targets for the zero-emission vehicles, relies on the affordability of the cars. Ten, 15, 20 years from now, the government is counting on price drops in technology to make zero-emission vehicles more affordable, to make the sales targets. I’m worried that this whole thing will fall apart if prices do not drop.

It was us, the B.C. Liberal government, that brought forward the proposal for the rebates — the CEV for B.C. vehicle incentives for point of sale, which I’ve been able to benefit from. But we worry, again, that it doesn’t necessarily mean that in the future these vehicles are going to be affordable.

Then just an aside, because I know that my colleagues from rural British Columbia will be bringing this up in more detail. What I worry about, and I worry about it with regards to the options of transit and other non-car ways of getting around, is that those of us who live in areas that do not have access to public transportation — or, in this case, say, a neighbourhood charging station and long distances…. We don’t want to punish those folks.

[2:15 p.m.]

Certainly, in rural British Columbia, they seem to get the brunt of these decisions often that we make here in urban British Columbia. Even some of us in urban British Columbia don’t have those things close by. The point being is that I think we have to have an appreciation of how this legislation will affect my colleagues in rural British Columbia.

I’d just like to talk a little bit about my personal situation. I’ve had a 2018 Chevy Volt for almost a year. I was very pleased that I was doing my part for the environment by purchasing an electric car. The Chevy Volt, just so you know, is part gas, part electric. I get, on average, 85 kilometres on a charge, which is okay for bombing around in the riding and even Vancouver. But you can’t get very far if you’re going on a trip, certainly not in rural British Columbia, on 85 kilometres.

I do have a gas tank. So when I do go up to Whistler, because my sister lives up in Whistler, I basically make it to Squa­mish, and then it kicks into gas. Thankfully, Squamish gas is cheaper than here. Then you’ve got to try and find where you are going in Whistler and whether you have a plug-in. That’s where it becomes really interesting.

Although the idea of having an electric car came to me, and I enjoy driving it, the number one barrier right now is the lack of charging stations. I can charge at home, and because I don’t have a fast charger in my home, I use the regular outlet. It takes an overnight charge to get it up to snuff. If I am driving because I have to be somewhere at an appointment outside of downtown Vancouver — so going to visit my colleague in Surrey — there is no place for me to plug in close to the area that I want to go to meet that person.

I’ll give you another example. I’ve got some friends that live in the Interior. Traditionally, I would probably gas up in Abbotsford or Chilliwack and then head on the Coquihalla or the Hope-Princeton or whatever, wherever I’m going. But this particular example is what happened to me last year.

I thought: “Okay, this is going to be good. I’ll go to Abbotsford.” I was going to meet my girlfriend there, because she works at the university. I thought: “Well, the university will have charging stations.” Well, they do have charging stations, except that all of them were full. This is in the summer. Who knows who was filling up all of these charging stations, but they weren’t available to me.

One of the problems that I’ve noticed in owning an electric car is that there’s no etiquette when it comes to charging stations. People will go and park in those one or two charging stations that you’ve got in an area, and they’ll park there for the whole day. So everybody else that’s maybe commuting and coming to a meeting in that area and wants to plug in…. If it’s a fast charger, you can sometimes get it charged in a couple of hours, which is good. But if those charging stations are unavailable or full, then that kind of defeats the purpose. So back into gas.

Then what did I do? I didn’t get a charge in Abbotsford, so I decided to go to Chilliwack. Okay, notoriously, where you can fill up your car is at district halls. Municipal halls have charging stations. Are they always available? No. But sometimes they are. So I thought: “Okay, well, there’s….” I didn’t know where another charging station was. Yes, I do have the app that has the points of charging stations, but one of the ones that they alerted me to was this one at the municipal hall.

If you’ve ever been to the municipal hall in Chilliwack, it’s kind of out of the middle and not exactly in the centre of town. You can’t go to London Drugs or Starbucks or whatever. There’s actually not a heck of a lot there. But I thought: “Oh, okay. I’ll go visit the mayor.” I know the mayor in Chilliwack. So I did. I went and visited the mayor, but she wasn’t there. She was on holidays.

[2:20 p.m.]

The point is that I plugged in my car. I got to plug in my car, but I wasn’t there very long — say, half an hour or so. Then I came back. And you know how much charge I got? I got enough charge to get me from the municipal hall to the highway. So I’m back on gas.

This is the point. There is a significant problem right now with the lack of infrastructure for charging stations and for fast chargers.

Funnily enough, last year I was in Europe on a holiday with my family, and I was talking to a guy from Ireland, actually. He had an electric car, but he was selling it. He was selling it, Madam Speaker. Why? Because he lived in an apartment, and he needed to plug in his car. His apartment didn’t have a charging station, so he had to find charging stations all around the place.

As I just alluded to, trying to find a charging station that’s actually free — I don’t mean free in cost; I mean free like available — because there are too many people that are charging their cars…. They might charge up in two hours, but their car is sitting there for eight.

Then I can tell you another story that happened just last Friday, when I was at the BCSTA convention, which was in Richmond, at the Sheraton. I was elated when I saw that the Sheraton had five parking spots devoted to electric vehicles, except for — guess what — only four charging stations. So I went in, and I paid for my parking — at parking spot 141, or whatever it was — then went to go charge. No charging station available, because they only had four for five spots. That seems a bit ridiculous.

I went and told the person at the front desk, and of course, they acted like I was from Mars and I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I had already paid for my parking spot, in parking spot 141. I don’t want to move, do I?

These are the kinds of things that people that don’t own an electric car — huge frustrations. And if we’re having more people get electric cars and not the accompanying charging etiquette as well as the number of places that you can charge up, then it’s going to be a huge problem.

The other thing that I think people aren’t talking about. I mentioned that I was eligible for the $5,000 rebate. And that’s all good, but it still doesn’t make the car affordable. I’ve got a Chevy Volt, not a Tesla. I think I’ve got probably the cheapest electric vehicle on the market, and it’s not cheap.

The other thing that I think people are not talking about…. I actually asked the Attorney General about this last year. It’s the insurance. I compared my insurance, the new insurance for a new vehicle, to my old vehicle, which actually wasn’t that old. It was a leased vehicle. It was four years. I was trying to figure out, when I was buying my insurance by the ICBC guy at the dealership: why is this insurance so expensive? He said: “It’s because the electric cars are big computers. They cost a lot to replace or repair, and your insurance reflects that.”

Nobody is talking about the affordability here when they’re talking about how much more expensive the insurance is just to insure an electric vehicle because of all of the bells and whistles that are all in the car.

The other thing that I think is something that is a barrier: what about the home charging stations? I mean, I mentioned that I’m okay getting my car charged up overnight at my house. But what about incentives for private businesses? As I said, I’m not going to go to a district hall to plug in my car when my meeting is down somewhere else. I mean, this sort of thing has to be convenient. I don’t think that the majority of these charging stations are convenient.

Private businesses. If I was going to go to a Starbucks or a coffee shop or even someplace in Deep Cove, there is absolutely no place to charge your car in Deep Cove. Yes, I do take transit a lot of times, but if I have to be there quickly, I have to take my car, because transit only comes once an hour to go to Deep Cove.

[2:25 p.m.]

I talked about those examples. And the enforcement issue — I talked about that. And the apartments. I really do want to get onto the apartments, because here we are in Metro, where not everybody expects anymore to be in a single-family home. Granted, some of the newer apartments probably do have plug-in stations, but the older ones don’t. So where are these people going to plug in their cars down the road?

Maybe in the city of North Vancouver there’s a couple of plug-in stations in their district hall, but I’m not aware of very many plug-in stations right in the city of North Vancouver. What about that? If everybody has an electric car and the grid isn’t prepared to provide electric cars for everybody in your apartment complex, what about that? I don’t know. Has anybody thought about that?

For sure, if you’re in a single-family home, it’s maybe not so much of a problem. But if we’re all trying to do our part and get into the electric car business or to purchase an electric car or lease or rent or whatever, then we have to have a really easy and convenient and affordable way of charging, if we happen to live in an apartment.

Then the last thing I wanted to mention with regards to some of the barriers of owning an electric car is the HOV lanes. We all thought that was great. You get your little decal there, you stick it on, and then you can whip in onto those HOV lanes.

Well, guess what. Every time I’ve…. To be fair, I’m in North Van. There’s no such thing as HOV lanes. If I was going to Vancouver or going further beyond on the highway, they have HOV lanes. But the HOV lanes are already packed, not just with electric vehicles, obviously with people that have more than one person in the car. If everybody’s driving an electric car and they’re all going to be piling into these HOV lanes, then that’s not going to do anything for congestion.

I guess what I want to say is that I like the idea of Bill 28. I like the idea of it. But I think, in practical terms, there has to be more of a concern of the barriers to ownership, either affordability of ownership, because they’re expensive, as well as the lack of infrastructure to accommodate more of the usage of electric cars, even today.

D. Routley: It gives me great pleasure to stand in support of Bill 28. That’s because it answers all of the basic principles that I and the NDP stand for. Those are equity at the core, but using the three pillars in our society to achieve the goals that we all share. One of those goals is environmental protection.

Using the market forces, using directed action through public policy, as has been done in so many other jurisdictions, is definitely an effective way to go about achieving your goals. It’s really surprising to hear the party that claims to be the free market representative reject the use of market force to achieve goals. I mean, I think it really runs counter to the basic principle that they stood for when they introduced the carbon tax, which they said was using a market force in order to achieve a goal. I think all of us should be supporting that.

Also, I think this represents a shift, because it takes us from expressions of hope in agreements with targets, which essentially put off action, to a place of action. This bill takes action. This bill is not telling these students: “Hope for the best. It will work out.” It is actually saying that by this time, we will achieve these goals, and we will use these forces to make their futures better and also protect our economy at the same time.

It also represents a just transition, which is core to the principles I represent and that my party represents. A just transition means effecting change in a way that doesn’t displace people or harm them. When you provide predictability to a marketplace, that protects jobs. That creates security and protects prosperity.

[2:30 p.m.]

Similarly, the Vancouver building code, which looked out and had several phases of change, told the industry to expect those changes. Those changes could be predicted. The leaders in the industry actually leapfrogged ahead and met those conditions early in order to be more competitive. There are so many examples of using market forces to achieve these goals — California, which demanded higher vehicle safety standards. We all benefited, because the marketplace demanded it. They had a large enough pressure in the marketplace. Similarly, California vehicle emission standards meant that every vehicle in every jurisdiction met those standards.

The member refers to other jurisdictions. The member before the member for Abbotsford-Mission recommended against any tampering with the marketplace. It’s obvious that we do not live in a free market. We live in a marketplace that is guided by regulation and law.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

We exist in a marketplace that has restrictions as well as freedoms, and adjustment of those is the responsibility of every government, to the benefit of the people we represent. So it seems odd to see the B.C. Liberals standing up and opposing the constructive use of market forces to achieve the goals that we all share, or we, at least, purport to share.

Prosperity usually goes to early adopters, and in this case, that couldn’t be more true. Not only will prosperity come to those who are early adopters, but so will the cars. You know, California, the state that the member mentioned, is, in fact, doing a very similar thing. They’re joining together with seven other states to become ZEV states. They are ZEV states, and in ZEV states, there are rules and regulations. It’s already paying off, in that those states are receiving far greater shipments of zero-emission vehicles than other states. They’re receiving the newest models up to six months earlier than any other state.

If you go into dealerships in states that are not ZEV states, you may face a six-month waiting time to get the car that you want, whereas in a ZEV state, it’s much less. In that way, again, this bill protects our local marketplace, our provincial marketplace. The car companies, far from what the member opposite suggested, aren’t saying, “Why bother with B.C.?” because B.C. is demanding more zero-emission vehicles. They’re going to be saying: “Why bother with jurisdictions that aren’t requiring this? We need to go where this is a requirement, where there is a demand.”

I didn’t know I would be standing up and tutoring the B.C. Liberals on marketplace dynamics, supply and demand. But it’s pretty clear that a jurisdiction that takes these steps along with California, along with Colorado, along with the six other states and along with other jurisdictions, I’m sure, that will be leaping to do this as well…. We will, in fact, be protecting jobs, protecting the economy and protecting prosperity at the same time that we’re protecting the environment. That, to me, is a pretty good equation.

The member for Abbotsford-Mission said that interventions will have consequences. Interventions in the marketplace will have consequences. Well, I certainly hope so. I anticipate that the consequences will be excellent, because, in British Columbia, companies, including car repair service outlets, will be able to have time to adjust — not only adjust their business to the demands of the marketplace but also have time to put their employees ahead of the curve in training for new technologies. That’s a very important advantage that jurisdictions like ours will capture by taking these steps with public policy.

In fact, I would read from an article. When we look at California and Colorado, ZEV states that adopt California’s rules establish a system that requires they attain specified numbers of ZEV credits for low-emission vehicles. Automakers must comply with these numbers or face financial penalties.

[2:35 p.m.]

This is very clearly the wave of the future, when the largest marketplace in North America — California, the marketplace that was responsible for vehicle safety standards that we enjoy now — demanded lower emissions from vehicles so we don’t have leaded gas anymore. That’s what they did, by using the marketplace to achieve the goals that we all share.

That’s what this bill does. Not only does it do that, but it puts us in that critical mass with California, with Colorado, with other states and, hopefully, with other provinces. That will create the demand, and we’ll be the place that those car companies come to in order to supply and in order to train and maybe even in order to manufacture and design. That would be a wonderful thing. This bill puts us on that path.

This article goes on to say that non-ZEV states have a six-to-12-month waiting period for new models, after they go on sale in these ZEV states. For example, in December of 2018…. Subaru started selling its first electrical vehicle, the Crosstrek Hybrid, in January of 2019. The reporter who wrote this article went to her dealership in Colorado, which was not yet a ZEV state, and was told that she would have to wait for at least six months, and they would have likely no cars to test-drive in the foreseeable future. So she had to order sight unseen and then wait six months to 12 months.

Becoming a ZEV state will motivate automakers to deliver more models and thus increase future sales in Colorado and right here in B.C. That will help. That will help the environment, that will help the economy, and that will help our communities. There will be fewer people displaced from the current industry. That’s an important principle for us to remind ourselves of.

The member for Abbotsford-Mission, I think, mistakenly reminded us of that when he said: “There will be conse­quences.” I agree with him. He said: “If car companies fail, so what?” He thought that if the marketplace caused a company to fail, well, so what?

There’s a lot more to it than that, isn’t there, Mr. Speaker? It is a marketplace that we affect by the rules and the expectations and the regulations of government, governments past and inherited by governments now and handed off to governments in the future. Obviously, we live in that kind of an environment — that these things have consequences in the marketplace.

I think it’s rather callous to just say: “Well, if these companies fail, so what?” Well, so a lot. If we are setting public policy that can help transition an economy into a new phase, ahead of the curve, thereby protecting jobs, protecting the economy and encouraging and supporting prosperity, why would we not do that? We’d be derelict in our duty if we did not do that. That’s what this bill does.

He also was worried, he said, about those workers who work on internal combustion engines. So am I, which is another reason that I support this bill. Those workers will have a greater and advantaged opportunity to train for future opportunities that will be coming due to this bill and its requirements.

He then went on to say that car companies are vulnerable. Well, that’s a debatable notion, but I don’t think I need to spend much time on it.

He said he worries that these technologies will be priced out of people’s reach. So did the member for North Vancouver–Seymour, who said that prices only go up and that this technology will only go up in price. Well, I’d ask the member to harken back about eight or ten years ago when a flat screen TV cost $6,000. A bigger one now costs $600, some 20 years later.

Interjection.

D. Routley: Yeah. We created demand, right?

[2:40 p.m.]

The notion that technology costs will go down when there’s a greater demand created seems nonsensical to me. In fact, when California, which is a fairly large economy and not known for being an outlier but in fact a leader, is leading their partner states, in ZEV states, to create the demand necessary to get those vehicles into their market so that they can make the transition as quickly as possible, with the least disruption to the current marketplace and also protecting jobs by ensuring those vehicles actually come there, thereby protecting the environment.

States and jurisdictions that fail to take these steps will be left out. They will not receive the inventory, and they will not receive the latest technology, because it will go to places where there is a demand. That demand is being created by that critical mass south of us, and we need to get on board with that. We need to get on board with that and make B.C. one of the leaders, rather than a laggard. This is about just transition. This is about achieving goals. This is about using the principles that we believe in, in order to satisfy our goals, the dreams of British Columbians that they would have a future that’s worth hoping for.

I think we owe it to the students who were here earlier, and to future generations, to take whatever steps we can to transition our economy to a low-emission and zero-emission state as quickly as possible. It’s too late to avoid the effects of climate change — we are going to have to cope and to manage through them — but it is not too late to begin to turn that around. This bill is part of doing that.

I think it’s even more principled or more important than the goals, specific and technical, of this bill: to achieve so many cars in a certain length of time. That is, obviously, the thing we’re trying to achieve here, to have an impact on the environment. But to do that in a democracy, we need to persuade people. We can’t simply…. We need to persuade people to make that change, and this is part of doing that. This is part of making a step in government that will encourage not just hope. Hope, in climate agreements that put targets off, simply puts off action. We’ve seen that.

People, particularly young people, can be forgiven if they become skeptical or even cynical about the steps that governments will take. The pronouncements that they will achieve certain goals within a certain time period are met only after a while, with an adjustment of that time period. They need more than that. They need to see us do more than that. They need to see us take action, not just issue words, not just proclaim goals with no specific plan.

This is a specific plan. This is helping us transition. I support it because it does it in a just way. It does it in a way that protects the marketplace, the economy, our society and our communities. Those are the pillars of our core principles. The third one is the goal that we’re all aiming at here. That is to improve our environment. Then I think we can go home after the end of this session and feel as though we’ve taken a step that we can be proud of to all the young people that we encounter in our communities. We can legitimately stand in front of them and say that we are taking concrete steps to improve their lives, improve their environment and make their communities and their economy more just and fair.

Those are laudable goals. This is a worthy tool. This is something that deserves support from all sides of the House, and I hope that the government that claims to support using the free market to achieve goals will do just that. I am sincerely hopeful they will do that. That’s what this bill does. It uses that tool of the marketplace economy to achieve a goal shared by all of us. Then we can go home, hold our heads high and tell people that we have actually taken action to address climate change.

[2:45 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: The member for Kelowna West.

Member, would you please move adjournment of debate?

B. Stewart moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Reporting of Bills

BILL 4 — WITNESS SECURITY ACT

Bill 4, Witness Security Act, reported complete with amendments, to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth: As the ravages of time require me to have my glasses…. In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. In the Douglas Fir Room, I call the estimates of the Ministry of Labour.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — ZERO-EMISSION
VEHICLES ACT

(continued)

B. Stewart: It’s a pleasure, after that little bit of confusion, to kind of…. I have watched this before, but it’s kind of like I’m one of the animals, and I don’t quite know the direction I’m supposed to be, where I’m supposed to be standing or sitting.

It gives me pleasure to rise and speak on Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. The challenges that come from climate change are a call to action for all governments of every stripe — no individuals, no matter where they live. Our government set the stage with the introduction of a carbon tax way back in 2007, the Clean Energy Act, and the improvements that we were aspiring to, to reduce emissions that were emitted by vehicles and transportation, the built environment and manufacturing.

I don’t know if anybody has really referenced that, but the first report-out on the CO₂ emissions in British Columbia…. With growing GDP, an economy that was one of the best in Canada, we saw CO₂ emissions decline in British Columbia because of the revenue-neutral carbon tax that this government had brought in. I’m talking about our government.

What I do find about Bill 28 is that it is an attempt to be more prescriptive, and it’s a narrow point of view. What is really missing is that…. There appears to be a lot of effort that’s gone into the credit system around cleaner vehicles, which I think is good. But what’s lacking in it are the other things that are so important and vital to making this a success.

People have spoken…. I can’t help but think about the comment that the member for Chilliwack-Kent made yesterday about a photograph that was taken in 1903, and there’s a single automobile in there. The question was: can you find the vehicle? Ten years later, in 1913, there’s another picture. You can’t…. Where is the buggy in the picture? That’s how quickly technology can change.

It is changing, as we’ve seen by the growing list of vehicles that meet the requirements about CleanBC. I look at this page, and there are, pretty clearly, over 25 different options here. We’re starting to fulfil a need, and I think that that is great.

[2:50 p.m.]

I’m not necessarily certain that everybody is buying those vehicles because they’ve thought through, as the member for North Vancouver–Seymour just mentioned, in the sense that there are fundamental things when you buy an electric vehicle. You think that you’re going to be able to plug it in and find charging stations. You don’t know the range, and all of those things. These things are very complicated. Buying the vehicle is only one small component.

What is expected in this plan that’s laid out by government here is to put people into new, completely emission-free vehicles by 2040. Is that realistic? I mean, that means that we’re going to be selling a number that I don’t even know if they actually manufacture that many in the world yet.

The reality is that our vehicle sales today are about 80,000 per year. It’s going to increase over that period of 16 years. The reality is that the government’s Bill 28 mandates that we’re going to be at 10 percent in 2025, which is a more than 60 percent increase. Today’s sales are roughly…. As an earlier speaker from the government mentioned, it’s about 4 percent today of all vehicle sales. It has to grow in six years from 3,200 to over 8,640, I think it is.

The reality is that there’s an affordability issue in there, and there’s the other things that the member for North Vancouver–Seymour mentioned — the whole availability of where the electricity plug-in stations are going to come from.

I’ll talk more about how much consumption this is going to be and how it all works. You know, I think that most of us have been frequent visitors to California during the wintertime, maybe Disneyland and other things like that. I can tell you that there are a lot of regular internal combustion engines on the road in California. I don’t know where their numbers are at, but there are certainly not charging stations on every corner, and they haven’t got it figured out. But one thing that I did notice when I was down there recently was that they do have a charge when you go to charge up. You can get a rapid charge, etc., and you’re expected to pay for it.

When I’m thinking about the grid system and I’m thinking about the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, it doesn’t take very long to get out of town. Squamish was mentioned earlier. What about Hope? Maybe Chilliwack. Or the University of the Fraser Valley was cited, right? The fact is that they’ve got a couple of charging stations there. We don’t have it figured out how we’re going to have these charging stations so that everybody in 16 years can have a plug-in vehicle.

It kind of reminds me of when I used to live in Calgary back in the ’70s. Every parking lot had a plug-in for a block heater. Maybe that’s the kind of grid that we have to build up.

I don’t see anything in here — nor do I see it in the government’s plan — in terms of its CleanBC plan as to how they’re going to build that infrastructure out. In estimates earlier, the Minister of Citizens’ Services talked about money to go in to putting in charging stations. Not specific — the design and the actual numbers haven’t been determined or planned out. But $5 million to randomly — and I would say random at this point, because it’s not a plan — put in electric charging stations in government offices, whether that’s Service B.C., or maybe it’s forestry offices, conservation offices, wherever it might be.

The bottom line is that these charging stations are not…. I don’t know if it’s clear as to whether those are for the public or just for the electric vehicles that government plans to put into its fleet.

When I hear numbers about how far and the distance that the vehicles can actually travel in terms of…. Again, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour said that her Chevrolet Volt did 83 kilometres, which is about what it says it does on the electric range. It does a full range of 676 kilometres based on the gas-electric mix.

Are we prepared to accept that as a lower standard, even though it’s not really meeting the CO₂ emission targets, by allowing vehicles in rural British Columbia that have to have backup? I mean, I’m sure that when you hear from some of my colleagues that represent the ruralest parts of British Columbia that they’re going to talk to you about the impracticality of even driving from Dawson Creek to Fort St. John, which is a good hour. That is not likely to be on electric power.

I have to say that one of the things that I really wonder about is when it comes to this planning about…. We talk about the grid, and we talk about the goal, this target, of having 100 percent of the vehicles in 16 years being all light-duty vehicles and being emission free.

[2:55 p.m.]

I guess the real question is: well, where is the plan? Where is the electricity coming from? I mean, it’s all great to be self-righteous and to say that we’re going to do this. We’re doing this, I am assuming, because of the confidence and supply agreement. I think that it says that, that this is a fundamental part of why the Green Party has joined up and created a coalition to have two minority parties that are basically running the government — saying that they want this.

I understand that they want it. We wanted it too. But the reality is that we have to have the electricity. We have to have the grid. We have to have the costs. I’m assuming that costs will decline. What about the recycling of all of these leftover batteries?

Now, I happen to have a business that uses electric forklifts. We prepay for the battery, and we get five years use out of the battery out of a forklift. At the end of it, that battery has to be recycled, and that is in place. But the new batteries that are going into electric vehicles are not the same, and they do need to be recycled at some point. There’s an end-of-life use that has to be considered, and I haven’t heard anything from the Minister of Environment on that.

I think the minister that’s working on this initiative…. No doubt, I think it’s probably near her riding, where Teck is actually doing a lot of this complicated recycling with rare metals. But it is still a big project. Where do you take them to?

I remember as the minister having to recycle electronic goods. We had a depot in Surrey — for all of British Columbia, one depot. Now it’s expanded, and we have a system that’s grown. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but the reality is that we can collect used television sets, stereos and all of those things. We can take it back to a place where it will be properly disposed and put those mined minerals back to good use. But there’s nothing in this plan that talks about it.

Even the member for Cowichan Valley mentioned about the building code, and I do think that we have to address that. Is the Minister of Housing dealing with how we’re going to incentivize existing buildings? New buildings. How are we going to put charging stations in for everybody that’s in those buildings? If the life cycle of the building is 50 years and it’s only a ten-year-old building, we still have to retrofit it. We’ve got to come up with that. Who’s paying for it?

When I talk about planning, I can’t help but think about starting out with a small winery. I started out making a few bottles of wine. It takes roughly 1½ plants to make a bottle of wine. The reality is that we’re still a small winery. We make just under one million bottles a year. It takes a lot of plants and a lot of management to do that, and we’re still a tiny winery in the scheme of the global things.

To put it in perspective, all of these things that…. The grid system — think about it. Look at the Internet. We’re talking about expanded Internet services into rural and remote communities. We’re not talking about hard-wiring every house. We’re talking about putting fibre optic on highways and then distributing through local systems. We know how much money…. The Minister of Citizens’ Services has just announced $50 million to the Northern Development Initiative Trust to help build out the system. It takes years and years of planning. Technology changes. The reality is that our grid system…. We don’t have that plan.

We’re talking about Site C. We’re talking about maybe…. I don’t know if it’s 1,500 gigawatts. The member for Langley East would probably know the terminology because I always get that turned around. But the reality is: how many Site Cs is it going to take to power the number of vehicles that we want to achieve or convert to electric?

Three Site Cs. There you go. Where are those going to go? I mean, we didn’t have plans to build more. We tried to improve. We reinvested. We put more efficient generators in there, reconstructed old dams.

What’s going to happen about affordability? All these people that are demanding electricity for these vehicles are going to be increasing demand. How is B.C. Hydro expected to be able to deliver affordable energy in terms of electricity for homeowners?

Some of them were convinced years ago to put electric heat in. As demand goes up and the cost of electricity generation goes up, these people are going to be forced into the situation…. Maybe the minister has the answer to that. How are we going to make certain that we keep the prices in a realistic, affordable range for the average homeowner?

[3:00 p.m.]

I mean, the electric vehicle user is going to have to pay a fair market price for the electricity. Maybe the new energy that we’re talking about — wind, solar, whatever it is — is going to come way down in price, etc. I didn’t see that when I was in Asia, by the way, even though it’s widely adopted. Hydroelectric would still be the number one preferred choice, in any of the countries I visited, for electricity use.

One of the things that I really worry about in this particular bill is the fact that it lacks the completeness and a plan so that we can count on delivering this in the sense that you, as government, and ourselves, as members of the Legislature, can be adequately prepared that we don’t go off and embark on something that is great marketing but…. What about the rest of the thing? What about the cost to the rest of British Columbians?

We’ve got in estimates this year “Making life better.” Not only have we seen the carbon tax go from roughly just around $1 billion to $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion this year; we have $679 million for funding to CleanBC to reduce carbon pollution and to promote the use of clean energy to power B.C.’s economy.

What have we got here? We’ve got $90 million out of that $679 million of new funding, it says. But it’s still $90 million out of the $1.7 billion that the government is going to collect. Only $90 million is being put into the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources to encourage and accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles. So we’ve got $42 million that’s going into the point-of-sale incentives, $20 million to support the creation of new public fast-charging and hydrogen fuelling stations and $10 million to offer more incentives for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, including trucking, port, airport, ground equipment, buses and marine vessels.

It seems to me that port electrification…. I seem to recall that we were a big investor in port electrification when the former minister and member from Cloverdale…. We tried to reduce emissions with bunker fuel, etc., in the port of Vancouver and many of the other places and, I’m sure, right here in Victoria — $6 million in support of training programs for automotive technicians, $6 million to help the light-duty vehicle fleets adopt zero-emission vehicles, and $5 million and another $1 million. So this year $96 million is going into this program.

Then we have ’20-21, $6 million, and ’21-22, $5 million. It’s front-end loaded with $96 million. What type of plan is that? How are we going to get to over 8,600 vehicles that are clean energy vehicles — going to be incentivizing people to buy these? We don’t have the charging stations. We don’t have the grid. We don’t have the vehicles. All we’ve done is we’re putting an imposition on the people that are in business to sell vehicles, trying to provide fair value, to make certain that they’re clean and energy-efficient.

If people want electric vehicles, we want to have those too, but I don’t see that Bill 28 actually delivers — with all of the credits and the complicated accounting and the bureaucracy it’s going to create — a system that’s going to have people running to the car lots to buy new electric vehicles, because they don’t have the infrastructure or the plan. And especially if they know that the money is running out this year, they get their vehicle, and then they start to find out that there are other costs with it.

I think it’s unrealistic — the timelines that are put on this. It’s not that I don’t like aggressive timelines, but let’s be realistic. We don’t have the buildout. We don’t have the plan that I’ve talked about.

You know, I think that it’s fine to legislate. As the member from North Cowichan mentioned, it’s about… I think he used the term: “We do not live in a free market.” It’s up to the government to tell people what to do. That’s not the way that…. I’m trying to think that people are raised to make their own decisions. The situation is that we’re not going to be successful if the government is there telling everybody: “You know, you have to….”

[3:05 p.m.]

Of course we know that we have to reduce emissions. I’ve had dozens and dozens of people that have come to my office because after they’ve retrofitted their homes and reduced energy, now the carbon tax costs more than the fuel that they’re using. They can’t square the peg on this, in the sense that they’re completely perturbed by the fact that we’re allowing this to go on. There’s a disconnect.

Anyways, I think that when it comes to this, it’s got to make sense. People have to be brought along. We have to be thoughtful about where these millions of charging stations have to go — I mean, not just a few hundred thousand, millions.

First and foremost, I think the other thing that’s really missing is that we need to ensure that this legislation remembers the realities of living in rural B.C. I mean, I have places in my riding that are ten minutes from my office that are considered to be almost off the grid. I don’t think that they’re going to be having charging stations at their home, unless somebody can explain to me how this is going to end up happening with some other legislation that’s yet to come in.

I don’t want to sound cynical, but it seems this government is embedding itself deep into the sales process in a way that is fraught with dangers to consumers, to the cost of vehicles and to the very goals of the program itself.

Then there’s the government’s continual lack of transparency, again reflected in this legislation’s reliance on regulation to come later. There are a lot of unanswered questions. It’s difficult, when something like this doesn’t have the planning behind it, to really believe that the act and giving the ministry the power through regulation is going to come out in the best interest of British Columbians.

It’s going to end up costing British Columbians, because as taxpayers — we’re all taxpayers here — we have to fund what government’s spending or investing. We want to make certain that that investment is not only idealistic or ideological but that the whole process of this investment works out in the end to achieve the ultimate goal of reducing CO₂ emissions.

Many of the specifics of the program have been left to be developed behind closed doors, lacking the security of this House, pushed out through regulation without any consultation. I’d say that this is just a bad way to develop the system that’s supposed to help to accomplish an important goal: a transition to zero-emission vehicles. This is more than a lofty goal. It represents a fundamental change in the daily lives of the vast majority of British Columbians, and it has the potential to have major impacts on their pocketbooks.

I look forward to the committee stage, to digging deeper into the complex system the government is establishing and making sure that we can actually reach the 2040 aspirational targets laid out in Bill 28.

R. Coleman: I’m pleased to stand up and speak to this legislation. The aspirational goal of EV vehicles is an interesting one and one that is fraught with not just one or two questions but probably a thousand questions. The thousands of question come from a number of places.

I want to spend a couple minutes just talking about how the previous government actually got to the idea of maybe putting in place an incentive for people to buy hybrid or electric vehicles back starting in about 2009.

There was a period of time where we went on a very extensive public listening and hearing process, with regards to thousands of people and actually 160-plus meetings with everybody from the automotive industry through to the David Suzuki Foundation to all the environmental groups — scientists, environmentalists and all kinds of other people that were concerned about climate — and had a conversation about how you could improve the climate in the country and in the world.

It was quite eye opening, to be honest with you, because you got an opportunity to hear all aspects of the discussion. I’ll give you an example. In one day, we were having a conversation with a variety of groups about what was clean energy. One group came in and said: “There’s only one clean energy in the whole world that’s clean energy, and that is nuclear.” Well, knowing that B.C. doesn’t want to mine uranium and that B.C. doesn’t support nuclear power, that wasn’t going to be something in the future that the government would put in policy to say this is how we’re going to get our clean energy.

[3:10 p.m.]

We had people come in and tell us: “Well, in actual fact, because it’s cleaner than coal, natural gas is clean energy.” Of course, that led to the conversation about learning what GHGs were and what the calculations per tonne were and what all of those things were about.

It also led to a conversation about hydroelectric. Some people, including members of the Green Party who I know, actually said that Site C was a good idea at the time and that it should be pursued because it was clean energy. Today you’d get a different answer on that particular conversation. But it does take you down a road where you try and put together a plan where you’re trying to create opportunities for change in your economy with regards to getting cleaner energy into the marketplace, reducing your GHG profile and finding a way to help the rest of the world at the same time.

That’s not an easy task. This actually gets pretty compli­cated, complicated to the point that one person, one organization…. Not an auto industry. It was actually, I think, one of the scientific magazines that came in and presented us with what I will refer to as the life-cycle environmental impact of a Hummer versus a hybrid Prius.

They went through all the aspects of all of the things that went into building the one and the other, frankly, from mining to commodities and what had to go into building them; what their life cycle was; what the life cycle of each of them was with regards to what their waste would be at the end of the cycle; and the inability to actually recycle the batteries, at that time, relative to the Prius. I was shocked. They came up with the conclusion that, at that time, the Hummer had less environmental impact in its life cycle than the Prius did.

You’re trying to figure this thing out, and you get these people who are actually considered to be experts in their field coming in and giving you that example. So as you go through this, you start to say: “Okay, how do we get to where we need to get to?”

Now, the biggest change that was made to try and drive a change in climate in any province in Canada or any jurisdiction in North America was to actually come up with a workable carbon tax, a carbon tax that would actually be reinvested in the economy to promote issues relative to encouraging people to go green, whether it be that you add money from the carbon tax so you can recycle the old televisions to replace what are now the high-definition televisions in your recycling programs or whether it’s to enhance the recyclability of tires by having money invested from the user of the carbon to being able to deal with the carbon that you want to dispose of.

It’s to take that carbon tax and make sure it’s revenue-neutral relative to incenting the marketplace with other taxes to reduce use in certain areas and to increase the use of other clean energies in other sectors.

Well, I fought the campaign of the $30 carbon tax. I remember the Axe the Tax campaign. I remember the pro­test outside my constituency office — led by, at that time, a member of the New Democratic Party of British Columbia who was running for politics — to axe the tax. We shouldn’t have a carbon tax. It was no good for people and the economy. It was the wrong tax. It wasn’t fair to people, and it should go.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, on the first of April, the NDP government raised our carbon tax to $40 a tonne, $40 a tonne paid for by every single person that goes to a gas pump in B.C. but, just notably, not by the newest industry to come to British Columbia, which has got a holiday at $30 a tonne guaranteed for 20 years.

As I looked at the numbers with regards to this program, as I started to debate this legislation…. It’s about $96 million, if I’m not mistaken, in the first years to try and encourage people to buy electric vehicles. So we’re going to give them an incentive to go buy a vehicle, but on the flip side, we give out $600 million tax-free on PST for 20 years to a company when you’re only putting $96 million into actually incenting people into an electric vehicle market. That PST thing is to push for another resource. I don’t have a problem with that. I support the resource. But I think it can be a bit hypocritical.

As we went through this whole thing, with these 160-plus meetings and the conversations and whatever, I actually handled a couple of portfolios as I came through that. I found out some things that were kind of staggeringly interesting.

[3:15 p.m.]

First of all, let’s talk about vehicles themselves before I get into their life cycle. I’ll admit that my wife owns a small SUV, and I own a pickup truck. I happen to be an RV’er. I’ve been RV’ing with my kids since they were little, and my oldest is now in her 40s. So I like trucks for that particular purpose, and for others.

One of my children had a hybrid vehicle that turned out to be not so good at the end of its life cycle. As they tried to get a change in the battery piece because it was starting to go down as the car had aged about three or four years in, they were told that it was $8,000 to replace the batteries in the vehicle if they wanted to continue owning that car, for which they would only say the value was $6,000. You have to think about that as a life cycle, because in a car of the same size, to replace it with a rebuilt engine was actually about $1,200, which would then give that vehicle a life cycle of another five or six years, whereas the other one now has to be disposed of and recycled.

I remember sitting in a room with people from B.C. Hydro when I was the minister responsible for Hydro, talking about the future needs and supply of electricity in British Columbia. We knew we had a growing population and that it wasn’t going to stop: “We’re predicting a million more people in British Columbia over the next 15 or 20 years. What do we need for electricity?”

At that time, you could have made the argument that we were not energy-self-sufficient in British Columbia, because we were actually buying power from other jurisdictions. Even though we liked to say we were clean energy, we were buying coal power from Alberta on a pretty regular basis. We traded some of our electric power into the U.S., but the reality is that we did not have the mix that says we’re energy-self-sufficient but that also we’re as clean as we thought we were.

We moved to push that, to try and attract ourselves to more things like wind and solar, to figure out how we could do deals with First Nations based on megawatt prices, to be able to make it a business case with some subsidies to try using the carbon tax to incent people to come up with other forms of power. We did that.

As we did that, of course, we got criticized, because the megawatt price of energy that was coming from run of the river, from wind or from solar was higher than what would come over the top of a dam. The criticism, by the way, that came from the now Premier, very aggressively, was about us buying junk power. He would have preferred at the time to just have us keep buying power by coal, which would never have met any climate goals whatsoever.

The next thing I found interesting, though, is that…. I said to B.C. Hydro one day: “Okay, we have the incentive program. We’re moving towards electric and hybrid vehicles as we go through this. Tell me: if every single vehicle in British Columbia” — forget the grid; forget the capacities; we’ll get to that in a minute — “went electric, how much more power do we need?” The answer was: “Minister, you would probably need to build three more Site C dams, because the juice has got to come from somewhere.”

Now, people talk about — and California is a classic example — how clean California is with regard to its encouraging electric vehicles. But do people in this room know that 35 percent of the power in California still comes from coal — that you’re actually burning more coal in California to power electric vehicles? What’s coming out at the end on the electric vehicle…. They call that clean, but the source of the power is not.

The interesting thing, when I got into that piece recently, looking at that part — I have a keen interest after sitting through 160 meetings back in 2007 to ’09 — was that I asked them, through the transportation people in California: “What does the internal combustion engine do today in California versus what it used to?” The answer was kind of interesting.

They said today’s car, a modern car driving down a highway in California today, puts cleaner air out of its tailpipe than it takes in through its intake. The modern car actually treats air, and there’s more H₂O than CO₂ coming out of the tailpipe of a car. In one case, one guy said to me: “It’s actually like an air cleaner.” It’s actually helping us with our own environment of air down here because the cars have gotten modern. It’s the reason, quite frankly, a whole lot of air got cleaned up — because technology helped, from the old leaded fuel–type engine all the way through to the new technology today.

[3:20 p.m.]

Here’s where I found the conversation the most interesting: if you have to add more electricity. It’s a given, because you won’t have enough, with a million people coming, the cars that’ll be here and the electric car and all of the other electric aspects of the economy. So then I went down to the nub, and I said, “Tell me something. In a subdivision built in the last 20 years, and one built in the previous 30 years, how many homes on a street can handle the voltage that’s required for a quick charger or a charger in a home for an electric car?”

This answer was not very good. To use an example of a subdivision with two cul-de-sacs, with a T-intersection coming into them, if six went onto that, with one charger per home out of six homes, the lights would flicker in the rest of the houses when they’re all being charged. He said: “You’ve got a problem with transformers outside of that because of the underground power, simply because there’s a load capacity here.”

I was shocked to find out that in actual fact, as we go and move down these roads, we have to look at what the costs are to the next stage of what we want to do. It’s great to say — and I believe we should try to get to it — as many zero-emission vehicles as possible by a certain date. But let’s understand the downstream. First of all, you need to have bigger KVR lines in a number of areas of the province just to bring in enough electricity. A place like Prince Rupert, for instance, has a relatively small KVR line compared to the one that goes up Highway 33. It was built a few years ago.

The lines into Kitimat and Terrace, because they actually have to deal with Rio Tinto Alcan, are pretty large and are being upgraded by LNG Canada for the purpose of taking a bigger load. But Rupert has no backup. Their line goes into there, and if it goes down, the city is in trouble. That means that nothing would run, that nothing would charge. So you’ve got to be careful with what that load is coming in there.

If you take the number of cars that are possibly docked that day, forget the incentives. It’s not anywhere near the number of cars that would be on the roads of British Columbia, but if you incent every one of them, you could be running up around $5 billion to $15 billion in incentives to try and reach your goal. That’s not the scary number. The scary number is how you then handle the capacity in subdivisions and in communities where, in some cases, all the power lines need to be replaced. They need to be bigger, they need to be stronger, they need to be able to take a better transformer, and they need to take the load.

As you do this and you start to look at it, you’ve got to keep in mind that you need to deliver. Otherwise, you end up doing some things like you’ve done in other aspects of government over the years. You have a great idea, and the inability to deliver actually makes it unattractive to accomplish the actual goal you wanted to accomplish, which was to clean up the environment.

Back in the day when we did the 160 meetings, one of the interesting conversations we had was about the subsidy for an EV or a hybrid. Even when you put it in place, that conversation took place with all kinds of groups, both environmental and business groups. One of the things that struck me in that whole conversation — I heard it from a group of people in my own riding when we were sitting around at a round table — was that middle-class and working people said to me: “Has it occurred to you that your subsidy to the electric vehicle is a subsidy to the richest people in the province of British Columbia? Has it occurred to you that we can’t afford the car even with the subsidy? We can’t get in on this, because we can’t afford it.”

The one lady, who had a couple kids, said: “You know, every time I see a Tesla and I’m driving my five-year-old SUV, I’m offended, because somebody subsidized that for somebody to buy that car, and I could never afford it.” As you start to do this sort of social engineering, remember the people that you’re actually working with and representing. In this case, you forgot about a whole bunch of them. A whole bunch of them are the people that actually would like to have themselves in a situation where they could get an EV.

[3:25 p.m.]

You have this interconnection; you have the power load. What’s it going to cost? I know what it costs to bring power into a single-family residential home. I know what it would cost, in addition to that, to increase that for capacity. Let’s assume that we build 30,000 homes in British Columbia a year. Let’s say we added an extra power line in there for capacity. For the homes, at about $10,000, that’d be $300 million in additional costs for the homeowners who might want to buy homes in B.C. That doesn’t count the million or so homes that we already have, which takes you into $10 billion plus, just to get the power.

That doesn’t get the power down the street. Now you have to dig up the street, or you have to go down, whichever way you put the power in, and pull in more wire in order to handle the volume. I know how expensive that is and how difficult it is because when I was minister for Hydro, I actually watched the project proceed. It snaked wire through a neighbourhood, from downtown Vancouver, underneath the water and into Vancouver, to replace the 40-, 50-, 60-, 80-year-old vaults, as we would then call them, with big switches in them, to make sure that Vancouver had the power, just in case they started to go. That was about 300 million bucks.

Now, I’ve just talked about the single-family home. Let’s talk about condominiums and townhouses for a minute. Condominiums are wired to be able to handle branch-off wires into each individual unit. If they’re concrete, it’s not so simple to actually add the power — to bring it in, necessarily, to do the ability to handle the number of chargers.

My colleague from North Vancouver was talking earlier about how difficult it is to get a charge. Well, I just sat down with somebody who asked me about whether…. Their strata council wanted to look at how they would put in electric chargers. Are there incentives for them to do that?

Here’s a big argument. The big argument is if you have 50 people in the condominium, 50 units, and ten of them say they might like to get electric cars. They want the strata to pay for ten EV charging stations at their parking spots. They don’t want to pay; they want everybody else to pay. The other 40 say: “No way. If we’re doing one, we’re doing them all.”

What was going to be a fairly simple project of a number of thousands of dollars is now running up close to north of $1 million, and somebody has to pay for it. With 50 people divided into $1 million, are they all going to get electric cars next week? No. Are they going to get one in two years? Not likely. Will they sell some of them and not care? Who knows?

The reality is that this initiative ignores all that. It ignores the ability for people to actually make use of what this is about. This is really about saying: “You have to do something. We’ll incent you to do it to a point. We’re going to run out of money, but it’s okay. We’ll dish it out somewhere else. We’ll reduce the carbon tax for somebody over here, but we’ll keep charging it over there. We’re going to take that into general revenue and actually not put it into the infrastructure that’s required to build this program in the first place.” What we’re talking about is a multi-billion-dollar hole — in the production of power, how it’s used and how you will access it.

The neatest thing about all of this — or the sad thing, actually — is that people that get electric cars today think that electricity is a free good. It’s not free when you have to build the dam. It’s not free when you have to build the power line or bring the line underground into a subdivision, a condominium or an office tower. It’s certainly not free when some municipality is putting up these quick-charging stations. If the demand goes to them that they need ten, 20, 30 or 40, they will start to charge for electricity.

If there’s a draw on electricity and there’s not enough of it, we then have to start buying it in the marketplace because we haven’t thought the other piece through, and electricity is going to get very expensive. British Columbia right now pays about the fourth-lowest power costs on the continent. It looks a lot more attractive when your power cost is four or five times higher in some states in the U.S.

[3:30 p.m.]

The U.S. answer to this is to build more power stations, but they don’t build power stations with hydroelectric. They build them using coal and natural gas. In actual fact, they’re polluting at one end to call something clean at the other end. They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth, and it isn’t true.

We need to get our head around this before we decide we’re going to vote for this bill or make sure some of the committee stage debates are taken care of, because quite frankly, if we don’t, there’s no reason to vote for this. Why would you vote for something where thousands of cars are going to be put on the road with a subsidy to people that can most afford it, as opposed to those that can least afford it in your community, because they can afford the more expensive option of an electric vehicle?

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

Why build an infrastructure that disenfranchises those people with less income and ignores them and, at the same time, give away $30 a tonne in carbon tax to one company and charge every single person in the province $40 a tonne every time they get their fuel, their natural gas at home, their electricity or if they get the simplest of things, like fill up at the pump?

Every single person in B.C. is now subsidizing one industrial deal. And the carbon tax, which is supposed to help them have an incentive to buy an electric vehicle, is not going back into this, because the last $10 a tonne that has been charged to everybody at the pump in B.C. is going to general revenue and is not actually being spent on environmental initiatives at all. There is no revenue neutrality, and there is no ability to look at this thing and say: “There’s a good reason why I’m paying this, because this is helping over here on the environment.” That’s no more. That does not exist in British Columbia anymore.

It’s all about the cash grab and then, in this case, subsidizing the cars that only the people with money can actually buy. As we do that and we move people down this road and we try and hurt the auto industry and the other industries in B.C., we’ll find out that we don’t have the money at this stage to actually make the grid perform with the ability to charge the cars in a way that’s convenient for those people that want to run them.

I think, in this particular piece of legislation, somebody’s gone into a room and said, “Let’s make this announcement. We’ll do a deal with the Greens. We’ll make all the cars in B.C. electric by such and such a date. Oh, and don’t worry about how much power you need. Don’t worry that you might need three Site Cs. Don’t worry that you might have to rewire 90 percent of the houses in B.C. to be able to handle the load. Don’t worry that the wires in the subdivision, whether they’re on the power line up on the telephone pole or underground, need to be upgraded to handle capacity. Let’s just make the announcement, and let’s pass a piece of legislation,” knowing full well you can’t perform.

You don’t have a business case. You don’t know the numbers. If you even sat down with the people that have worked at Hydro or are still at Hydro that know capacity, know growth and know power and know what the wiring is in the places in British Columbia, given the age of some homes and buildings, they would say to you: “Go cautiously. Don’t put too much pressure on the grid until you know you have it. Make sure that if you say you’re going to get out of the car and plug it in at night and it’s going to be charged by morning or in a couple of hours, you have the ability to deliver that electricity, because today you’re not wired for that.”

We’re talking about a decision on a thing that could run up in the hundreds of billions of dollars. What we’ll do is we’ll incent people to go buy a Tesla or some other electric vehicle, because we’re going to give that rebate to those and have other people have to live with what they have. And then on the back of the very people who are living with what they have and having to pay the higher gas prices, we will rewire the province. I’m assuming that’s what they want to do, at a cost of billions of dollars.

Reality is going to come home to roost on this one. The reality is that all that work, all that study, all those meetings I went to back in 2007, 2008, 2009…. The reality of listening to how the NDP tried to campaign on axing the tax, the carbon tax, which today they take $10 more a tonne and take it out of every single person’s pocket at the pump — and they subsidize industry elsewhere, because they don’t want to actually give it back to British Columbians to clean up the climate — is what they’re faced with today.

[3:35 p.m.]

I won’t call it a fraud. I will call it a multi-billion-dollar misdirection, for a piece of legislation, that can’t be accomplished in the reality of how you actually get electricity to flow to the right places at the right time in British Columbia.

D. Davies: It gives me pleasure to stand here today and give my two bits on Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. Certainly, I’m going to come at it from a perspective of rural B.C. — of course, speaking on behalf of the great constituents of Peace River North — and how this bill is going to have significant impact on more rural and remote areas of British Columbia.

We’ve heard in the House here many, many times how diverse our province is, which is great. I think we all embrace the diversity that we have in our province. From up in my area, I look to the west, and I see the Rocky Mountains. I look to the east, and I can see Winnipeg, with the Prairies and the vast agriculture; moving over to the coast, of course with the ocean; and down into the Interior, where we have the wine region. I mean, this is what makes British Columbia beautiful, fantastic. The diversity is what I certainly appreciate from our province.

However, often we see these bills come forward, policies coming forward, with a cookie-cutter approach. It is something that even before, when I served in local government, we would see government come out with cookie-cutter policies that might work well here in Victoria or Vancouver but do not work well for Fort St. John or Kelowna — or Terrace, for that matter.

I think that this is one such policy. This is one such bill that I don’t think has taken into consideration British Columbia’s diversity. It is definitely a cookie-cutter approach.

When I see places like Fort St. John and our winters…. I’ll briefly define winter in the North Peace, and the South Peace would be very similar.

Interjection.

D. Davies: “Usually a little warmer,” he says. Just a smidge.

My children never…. Well, they get to wear Halloween costumes, but it’s usually under their snowsuit, because usually about mid-to-end October, that’s when the temperature is dropping down to about minus 10, minus 15, even colder sometimes. It just keeps going down and down. By the time we’re hitting toward the end of November, we are usually hovering around the minus 25 to minus 30 mark. It’s usually in and about there, between minus 15 and minus 30, right through until — well, this year — March. I think it’s important to keep that in mind when we’re talking about electric vehicles.

Just before I came here today…. You just have to do a quick search. There’s lots of research on batteries — the lithium-ion batteries, which is now the main battery that’s used in electric cars — and how the cold weather impact these batteries.

I found it quite funny. This is a lot of American information, so bear with me. They’re talking about when a battery is cold, they know for a fact that the battery performs less efficiently, does not hold a charge as long — in fact, a 20 percent reduction in energy from the battery — on tempera­tures from 32 degrees Fahrenheit to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, put that in perspective: 20 degrees Fahrenheit is minus 6, and we’re already looking at losing 20 percent reduction in capacity and output at minus 6. Well, minus 6 — that’s a September temperature in Fort St. John, maybe an early October temperature. As it gets colder, the research shows that there’s permanent damage to batteries.

[3:40 p.m.]

Some of the recommendations…. I printed off — this is, I think, from the Tesla website — tips for driving while cold. I’ll read a couple of them here. “Turn off your wipers in the winter to avoid damage.” I mean, when it’s snowing and we have ice and everything else, I’m not too sure how we’re going to do that.

“Preheat and warm up the cabin as well as the battery for at least 20 minutes prior to driving your car.” A lot of people don’t have garages in Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Dawson Creek and other communities. People that live in apartments have to park outside.

“Expect substantial range reduction in the cold.” I’ve already talked a little bit about that.

“Short trips dramatically reduce the range in cold temperatures.” Well, when it’s 40 below, you’re going to be driving to the grocery store. You’re going to have to drive to pick your kids up at school. Then you’re going to be driving them to the sporting events that each of your children attend. You might have to go to your employment. You might need your car as a delivery service. Short trips in cold are a no-no for electric vehicles.

It talks about limiting use of brakes.

“Turn on the chill mode.” Okay, I think minus 40 is a little bit beyond chill.

“Park in a garage or covered area.” I talked about that. Again, a lot of people do not have garages or even covered ports. I’m not sure of the number of apartments that we have just in Fort St. John, but there is a significant amount of people that live in apartments or in townhouses and park in the street and will not have access to this.

“It is strongly recommended….” And remember, we’re talking minus 6. I could not find anything other than talking about extreme temperatures, which are critically harmful to batteries. At minus 6, it’s strongly recommended that you use a battery heater when you’re charging in the cold — not 110 volt, as it cannot keep up. So there opens up a whole new range of infrastructure that I know my house doesn’t have. Well, I guess my dryer plug-in is 220. The oven, I think, is the other one that’s 220. I guess I could get an extension cord and run it from out there…. I don’t know.

My point on this is…. We’re talking 20 years from now. I don’t think any of us in this chamber or that work in this place argue the fact that we want to reduce our emissions. We want to see improvements on what we’re going to leave behind for our children and our grandchildren. But I also need to stress the point that with the diversity of this province, we also need to take a realistic approach when we are introducing any kind of legislation in this House, and I don’t believe Bill 28 has it, for just some of these reasons.

I talked briefly about the freezing. Again, we’re talking minus 40 sometimes for up to seven or eight days, an entire week. In February this year, I think we had in excess of — I don’t know — ten to 15 consecutive days where we were below 30 below.

When I see “permanent damage for frozen batteries” or “significantly impact the ability to hold a charge from batteries freezing,” that’s going to be a fact of life for electric vehicles up in the northeast, up in the northwest. I mean, Terrace gets 20-below weather. Prince George gets 20- or 30-below weather. This is much easier, I would say, certainly, to have in the Lower Mainland or here on the Island, but it’s not going to work in regards to the extreme temperatures that we experience in the north.

[3:45 p.m.]

Another thing: distances. We have great distances to travel pretty much when you leave the Lower Mainland. Your distances to travel to go shopping, distances to travel to go to schools…. Everything increases, and it increases more as you head further north.

Just an example, my riding alone, and I’ve talked about a lot in this chamber, is almost 170,000 square kilometres. It’s the size of four small European countries. When we talk about batteries having a 300-mile range, 200 miles in the cold weather…. When I say 200 miles, that’s 321 kilometres. Remember, when they’re talking cold temperatures and all the stuff I found here, that’s minus 6. So when it’s minus 30 or minus 40, we could significantly reduce that again, and I’m not even sure what it goes down to. Maybe 100 miles is all.

When I look at even just maybe travelling to Fort Nelson, which I do every four to six weeks to visit my constituents up in Fort Nelson…. I have an office in Fort Nelson. When I go up there, we’re talking upwards of 500 kilometres, with a little community called Wonowon that’s roughly 70 kilometres north of Fort St. John. When I say community, I should say a service station and some houses. The next place is Mile 143, Pink Mountain, which has got a service station. When you get north of that, there’s nothing. There are certainly no charging stations up north of Fort St. John. So what are people to do that need to travel between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson?

We’ve talked lots in this House, as well, about rural health care. People in the north, people in rural B.C., have to travel significant distances to obtain specialty health care. People in Fort Nelson cannot have a baby. There are no maternity services in Fort Nelson. They are advised to go to Fort St. John three weeks prior to their due date and have their baby in Fort St. John. Now, I can talk about the health care issue. That’s a complete other issue. I’ll save that for another day. But people have to travel from Fort Nelson to have their baby. They have to travel to Fort St. John, 450-plus kilometres.

This puts people at risk on a remote highway. Yes, there are vehicles going back and forth. But in the wintertime…. I’ve driven that highway before. If you’re travelling at night because you need medical treatment in Fort St. John, there are not a lot of vehicles that travel that highway. I guess they’re all going to be electric in 2040 anyway, so everybody is going to be facing the same concerns and same issues. But it puts people at risk that have to do this.

Prince George is the home of the northern cancer centre. The province has put a significant amount of money into that, which is a great thing. There are a lot of people in Fort St. John or Dawson Creek or Fort Nelson, other areas, that have to drive on a regular basis from Fort St. John to Prince George to receive medical treatment, to receive cancer treatment as well as other specialty treatments. Prince George is 438 kilometres from Fort St. John.

The range is not there, especially, again, if we go back into the winter months. I have real concerns that the range is ever going to be there. I mean, technology will improve. We know that technology will improve, but I don’t think, in 20 years, that we will be to that point to make the significant changes and mandate that everybody buy an EV by 2040.

[3:50 p.m.]

A lot of people, again, travel to Edmonton for appointments, for medical appointments. Edmonton is much easier to get to for us than going down to Vancouver. We’re talking a difference of a 15½-hour drive versus a seven-hour drive. A lot of people get referred to Edmonton for specialty appointments. So we’re talking almost 700 kilometres now. Now, granted, you go through a couple of communities. The city of Grande Prairie is approximately, I think, in the area of about 50,000 people or thereabouts. They currently have two charging stations, by the way, in Grande Prairie — only.

I think Whitecourt would be the next town that has a charging station. But people are travelling, again, great distances in vehicles that will not have that capacity, unless you’re going to stop somewhere and charge. Again, this is Alberta, and I don’t foresee Alberta bringing in this legislation any time soon. But people are still going to be required to travel to Edmonton to go to their appointments.

We won’t have an internal combustion engine to drive. We’ll be taking an electric vehicle into Alberta, where who knows what the infrastructure is going to look like in Grande Prairie. Again, it’s a city of almost 60,000 people, and they’ve got two stations today. I didn’t look at how many charging stations Edmonton has. I know they do have some, obviously, but what is that going to look like in just 20 years from now?

It’s unique up in the northeast corner because there is a lot of movement of people between British Columbia and Alberta — a lot of movement. Whether we’re talking commerce, medical appointments…. Like I said, there are a lot of people that go to Edmonton — and Grande Prairie, for that matter — for medical treatment. There are a lot of people that work, of course, with the oil and gas industry, back and forth. A lot of work happens in between the two provinces. How is that going to work?

In the bill, it talks about light-duty motor vehicles — a half-ton pickup and under. A lot of people up there have a half-ton pickup because they require that for employment. They require that if they work in the oil and gas industry, when we’re hauling around a surveyor that requires a quad to go surveying in the back country. The tools that are required to do a lot of jobs that are required up there…. There is a requirement to have a pickup, and a half-ton pickup is significantly cheaper than when you start going in to your three-quarter-ton or your one-ton pickups.

I think there is also the luxury tax that starts playing a role there as well. A half-ton pickup would not be captured under that, but when you go up to a one-ton vehicle or other, it will be. Again, it’s a cookie-cutter approach that is penalizing people that are required to do certain things that aren’t required elsewhere.

One of the biggest concerns, then, that I do have for rural B.C. and the people in my riding is the travelling of great distances, not because they just want to. It’s the travelling of great distances because we have to. We need to go to these medical appointments. We need to go to Edmonton. We need to go to Prince George. I might also add, too, that driving to Prince George, you have to go through one of B.C.’s passes, the Pine Pass, which often isn’t the greatest pass to be going through in the winter. Once you get out of Chetwynd, you’ve got one little gas station at Mackenzie Junction, which does not have a charging station, by the way, and I’m not sure if they will have a charging station 20 years from now.

[3:55 p.m.]

I just see so many issues with this legislation for my riding, and certainly for more rural ridings, that are going to be challenged on just access to the infrastructure around it. I’m not going to belabour the point here. It’s been talked about numerous times by my colleagues. But it is an issue, and it will be an issue, even in Fort St. John.

There are only two charging stations in Fort St. John. There are a couple of vehicles that are electric vehicles. They don’t drive in the winter, by the way. I’ve never seen an electric car in the winter, but I do see them in the summertime. So those people must have a garage that they can park it in and keep it warm all winter. But even then, those two electric charging stations in the summer, you know, people just park at them. They plug their car in, and they’re there all day long. So I see significant issues coming that way as well.

We’ve talked about consumption of electricity. Site C, of course, is in my backyard. It’s roughly eight kilometres away from my home. You know, there was lots of opposition in this chamber by the government side initially about Site C. As B.C. electrifies…. When I say electrifies, I’m talking a push to move to more electric vehicles, a push to move away from fossil fuels, so we’re talking heating homes, heating apartments. We’re talking, even in industry, a move to move off of fossil fuels, to electric-driven motors. There is a massive move to electrify British Columbia. And when you layer, of course, the electric vehicles onto this….

I’m just going to go a little off here. I talked earlier, from the Tesla website, about plugging in the extra battery warmer in the wintertime. There is already incredible surge on the grid right now that pushes it to the limits in the wintertime when everyone’s heaters are on. Things are always plugged in. We’re almost, right now, at maximum capacity. And again, 20 years is not very far away. When we start driving all of this stuff — pardon the pun — onto our electrical grid, as mentioned here before, we’re going to need three Site C equivalents to put everything onto the grid that we are pushing toward. Where is that going to come from?

I know where it’s going to come from. Well, I don’t know where it’s going to come from, but I know who is going to be paying for it. It’s going to be every single one of us, as British Columbians, paying for this incredible push of required infrastructure. There will be significant costs to do this.

We’ve already, again, seen challenges about how some of this is going to be drawing onto our grid. I wonder what the plan is for our communities that are not on the grid. I’ve got communities in my riding…. Toad River. I’ve got two First Nations communities, Kwadacha and Tsay Keh Dene. They’re off grid. They run on diesel generation. How is this going to impact them, for them to be required to have electric vehicles in these remote areas that don’t have access to the B.C. Hydro grid? There is no plan. There is no talk about that in this bill.

I’m sure there are other communities in my riding that aren’t on the grid that are on diesel. But those are three fairly significant communities that are in my riding. So I would be really curious to see what the plan is for some of these communities that are remote, on diesel power generation and how that is going to work. Actually, I believe even Fort Nelson is not on the B.C. Hydro grid. They’re through cogeneration at the Spectra gas plant.

[4:00 p.m.]

There are some significant challenges that I don’t see addressed in this bill. I’d be curious. Again, these will be certain questions that I’ll be asking in committee stage as well.

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned or not, just about the aspect of the lithium and the mining of lithium. Like any resource in our world, lithium is a finite resource. Right now lithium is mainly being mined in Australia, Chile, Argentina, China and Zimbabwe. Those are the top five countries that mine lithium.

Well, as we start talking about a resource being depleted, what happens with that resource? It goes up in value. Electric cars are already only pretty much affordable to people because of significant subsidies. I will guarantee that as lithium becomes a rarer resource, the cost to produce electric cars is going to increase significantly. Maybe the word astronomically even comes to mind, when you start having something that’s…. Well, look at gas prices. We’re talking about a supply issue right now, and we’ve seen gas prices go off the charts. Well, imagine what’s going to happen when lithium gets down to that end piece where it’s rare.

Now, granted there are recycling stations, but the recycling of these batteries is nowhere near able to absorb what is expected. If we look…. I don’t have the number here, but I did see something on…. In 2040, the amount of batteries that will need to be recycled is an incredible number. And they don’t expect the recycling facilities to be anywhere near capable to be handling all the batteries that will need to be recycled.

Again, I think we’re kind of putting the cart before the horse. That’s a double pun as well. Not bad, right? Not bad at all. This is the cheap entertainment you get here today, folks.

I want to make sure I don’t miss anything on my incredible notes here that I was making.

Interjection.

D. Davies: Oh, great. Thank you.

I also want to talk briefly, just to mention a comment on the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, who mentioned earlier today that…. He was talking about when you buy an electric vehicle, you drive it off the parking lot, and you never have to go back to the dealership until you buy your next electric car. Well, I’m sorry. I’m going to call him out on that. There are issues, just like every other car has. There are powertrain issues. The number one issue right now on new vehicles are electrical issues, and they’re the most expensive and hardest to diagnose in a car. Electric cars are no different.

I just want to call him out. He made it sound like you buy an electric car and drive it off the parking lot, and you’re hassle-free for the entire time you own your vehicle. Well, that is just not true. There are equal amounts of issues that can happen and do happen to electric cars, as any other car.

Just finally, talking about Alberta. Myself, Peace River South actually even more so, where you are right against…. You’re one hour from Grande Prairie. I just wonder the challenges that are going to be, as people are obviously…. Again, I mentioned Alberta is not going to change much, I don’t think, moving to….

[4:05 p.m.]

I certainly don’t think they’re going to be beating us on a move to electric vehicles, but there are going to be signifi­cant challenges as well, I think. Certainly, in our border communities that border with Alberta, there are going to be challenges to having gas vehicles being sold one hour away from Dawson Creek, in Grande Prairie. I think these are some challenges that we’re going to have to be looking at.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to committee stage. I’ll take my place. I’m happy to speak on behalf of my constituents.

J. Rustad: It’s a pleasure today to stand to say a few brief words about Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, 2019.

When I first heard of this act, I had this vision in my head — thinking about the future, thinking about my riding of Nechako Lakes. You know, no gas stations needed. Everybody would get around in electric vehicles. I thought about what that would mean throughout the riding. Then I quickly realized, as I thought about it: “Well, my riding is 2.2 times the size of Vancouver Island. It’s 72,000 square kilometres, and just to go from one side to the other along Highway 16 is 280 kilometres.”

I figured: “Well, okay, let’s take a look and see what vehicles have a range of 280 kilometres, just to get from one side to the other but not to get back.” To my surprise, there wasn’t any. I thought: “Oh, that’s kind of interesting. So if I needed to go around in my riding, to go from one community to another and back, how much time would it need to be able to do that in an electric vehicle?”

I’d have to find a vehicle that I could max out the range on and could get out there. Then when I’d get there, I’d have to be able to have a charging station that could charge it fast enough so that I could actually get home that night in terms of it. Those are some real challenges for rural B.C. and the distances in rural B.C.

Of course, when I was looking at the range on some of these vehicles, I then quickly saw the fine print. That range is only if you aren’t using air-conditioning, the heater or the other electronic devices in your vehicle. As soon as you turn on the heater — in my riding, it’s not uncommon to hit minus 30 or minus 40 in the middle of winter — suddenly now your range goes from a potential of maybe a maximum of 250 to where maybe you can get 100 to 150 out of your vehicle. I couldn’t even get from one side of my riding to the other with the current technology.

I think: “Well, you know, it’s a worthy goal. It’s a nice thought to be able to have this, but the realities in rural B.C. just don’t allow for it — not with the current technology.” Now, I know that technology will advance, and battery technology will advance. These are good things, and I look forward to seeing those types of advancements. But a bill that is designed to set a limit based on an unknown technology and capacity just doesn’t make sense. What is it we’re trying to do here?

Then I thought, “Well, maybe it’s an aspirational goal,” like it was for the $10-a-day daycare that was talked about by the NDP. “Maybe this is what this really is: it’s just an aspirational goal.” But does it make sense to be setting policy and setting rules within the province based on some aspirational thought, without basis in reality? That just doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t quite understand it, except that it’s about politics and votes, perhaps.

Now, I know that the people in my riding would love to be able to get around using things like electric vehicles, but it’s not just about passenger vehicles. I’ve got lots of people that go to work. They need pickups. They need half-tons. They need the ability to be able to go out on tough roads and get around. How does that work with an electric vehicle?

For people that are going out logging, they can easily drive 150 kilometres or more, one way, in the middle of winter, to get out to a logging site, have their vehicle sit in minus 25 to minus 30 degree temperatures all day while they’re working and then have to drive back. How does that vehicle charge? How do they get the range for something like that for vehicles? I scratch my head, and again I think: “This just doesn’t make sense. Why would this be happening?”

Now, I think we can all agree we would like to see that utopian world. Sure, we’d love to see all the vehicles be green, especially cities like this. I think in Vancouver or Victoria, these types of places, it makes a lot of sense, but for most of the province, it would be very, very difficult to imagine this type of policy being implemented.

Recently I had an opportunity to see some things that were going on in European cities. You know, they have bikes everywhere where you can just go in, scan the bar code and can rent it. You can go. They even have these little trike things or these little two-wheeler things set up with batteries on them. Once you get going, the battery kicks in, it’ll go and move you along.

[4:10 p.m.]

People are zipping around all over the place. It makes great sense. I love to see that sort of stuff. Imagine that on ice and snow. I don’t think it will quite work. These policies and stuff make sense in those types of communities, and I’m happy to see that happening. It’s helping people get around. It’s healthier. It’s all done and based on electricity. Those sorts of ideas make sense.

Once again, with a bill like this, you’re setting targets that are not achievable in the real world with the technology we have today. Maybe there will be the advancements. Maybe there won’t be. What if there isn’t? How do I go out and buy a new vehicle and get around in rural B.C.? Do I have to go to Alberta to buy it and then come back? I mean, is that what we’re trying to do? Are we trying to say that for a province like this, when you’re living in rural B.C., you’ve got to go somewhere else to be able to have the mobility to get around?

My colleague had mentioned going for doctor appointments and these types of things. That’s regular in my riding too — people having to drive long distances for appointments and to be able to get around because there aren’t the services within communities.

Now, of course, all of this is…. Like I say, they’re worthy targets. I think it’s a great thing to be able to aspire to this, but let’s put some reality behind it. The electricity alone, when I think about passenger vehicles…. I did this math during the last election, back in 2017. I thought: “Okay. If we’re going to have electric vehicles on the road, how much power does that need?”

I know many of my colleagues have talked about this, but it’s worth mentioning. If just a third of the vehicles in British Columbia were to become electric, passenger vehicles only…. We’re not talking about transportation trucks or heavy-duty type stuff. If just a third of those were to become electric, you would need 100 percent of Site C to power them on an ongoing basis. That means that if all of the vehicles were electric, you would need three Site Cs, plus a fourth just to meet all the additional power requirements that are up in the province.

Where is that going to happen? Where are we going to build additional dams? We already have a government that’s opposed to independent power and independent power production and that wants to move away from that. Where are we going to get this electricity? Certainly, we’re not going to be doing coal-fired plants. I’m sure that’s not what the government is thinking about doing.

Where is this power going to come from? Is it going to be nuclear? Are they going to be putting solar panels and windmills all over the place and linking a major grid all around the province so that they can move this power around? Maybe. Maybe that’s what they’re thinking of doing. But how are you going to back up that power? How are you going to firm that power? Are you going to have gas-fired plants? What are you going to be doing?

Maybe you’re thinking that there will be battery storage for all of this. That’s what all these cars will be doing — running around storing all the power that comes out of this system. I don’t know. The reality is that there isn’t a plan. At least, there’s not a plan laid out in this bill.

In addition…. My colleague from Langley was talking about this. Some of my other colleagues have talked to me about this as well. Our grid doesn’t have the ability, at a local level, to be able to do massive power charging of vehicles. You start wanting to put in a high-speed charging system in your house. That’s good. You can do that. But if everybody in your neighbourhood did it…. The grid is not designed to handle that. You’re going to have to do major upgrades to infrastructure around the province even to come close to trying to meet these goals.

Right now we have these free charging stations all over the place in the province. It’s good. It’s a way to encourage people to get into electric vehicles. How does that work in terms of people wanting to charge up their vehicles? Are we going to have free power stations for everybody everywhere? When is that going to switch over? What’s the plan around doing that so that suddenly road sides…?

Road taxes. Gasoline taxes. All that is designed to help with our roads and our infrastructure. If we’re not having gasoline come in…. Where’s the plan on replacing the carbon tax? Where’s the plan on replacing the revenue that’s going to come in on the various gas taxes?

And 2040 is an interesting target, but there are a lot of things that need to be put in place in order to make something like this work. Otherwise, this is just pie-in-the-sky politics without those kinds of plans. I don’t think a person…. I don’t think a government should be making policy based on pie-in-the-sky ideas. I think they should have a firm plan. If they’re committed to this, if they’re committed to the policy of zero-emission vehicles by 2040, put all the rest of the pieces in place to go with it. Have a general plan. Have how government is going to lay this thing out and roll this thing out over the next ten to 20 years so that it can be achievable.

[4:15 p.m.]

That’s what we did with LNG. With our government, when we looked at putting a plan in place around liquefied natural gas and an industry, we put all the ministries behind it. We put the pieces in place. We did all the structure that we needed to do to support it and to build it, and now we have an LNG industry. That’s how you do policy. You don’t just put a policy out there saying: “Hey, we want LNG in B.C.” and hope it’ll happen, or put a policy in place, “Hey, we want zero-emission vehicles by 2040,” and hope it’ll happen.

You have to have a plan that has goals and targets and be able to address all of these kinds of issues. How do you get around in rural B.C.? How do you get charged? How are you able to make sure that people can get around in winter and through these challenges? How do you make sure we have the power in this province? How do we have the grid to deliver that power? How do we deal with taxation and that side of things?

You have to have a plan. This is a big issue. It’s a worthy goal. I think it’s a worthy goal to go after, but you have to have a plan in terms of how you’re going to deal with these things. If you don’t, then this is just politics. I don’t think government should be just running things based on politics and that sort of process.

When I think about countries around the world — in particular, Germany — they’ve got a big push to go to electric vehicles. They’ve got subsidies and stuff in place. There was a recent report that was just done that actually came to a conclusion that electric vehicles produce more carbon dioxide than a combustion engine does when you look at the broader thing. So what are we trying to do?

Believe me, I think it’s great if we can move away from fossil fuels. I think that side is good. But if the rationale for doing this is because you want to reduce greenhouse gases, how does that work? If a vehicle is going to be producing more greenhouse gases than the current type of vehicle, when you look at the whole life cycle, are we actually making things worse by this? How is that going to change? What’s the plan within government, then, to deal with these types of issues? Once again, there is no real plan around it. It is just, once again, politics.

It is interesting, though, when you look at it, because other countries around the world are looking at this as well, looking at trying to get to zero g emissions. Vehicle companies are talking about stopping vehicle sales that aren’t electric vehicles and changing over structure and stuff. Hey, you know what? That’s great. That’s the way the world changes, and that’s a good thing. I’d be happy to be able to be part of it, if it can fit where I live.

I live in a little place called Cluculz Lake in my riding of Nechako Lakes. I have to drive 35 kilometres to get to my office. I’ve got to drive 70 kilometres to go into Prince George. I’ve got to drive 80 kilometres to get to the airport. Can I get to the airport and back in the middle of winter — and my car has got to sit there for a week while I come down to the job here? Or does the airport now have to put in infrastructure so I can plug in my car at the airport? How would that work?

It’s a good question, an interesting question that has not been thought about and addressed in terms of all the structure that goes in place.

When I look at this, once again, I think the goals that they’re trying to achieve make sense. I think we all want to see this movement away from fossil fuels. I think we want to do this, but there has to be some planning. You have to be able to go to the voters and explain how you’re going to get from point A to point B. What is it that you’re going to do? Are we going to be putting in large-scale electric-generation plants of some kind? Is that going to be nuclear? Not going to do coal, obviously. Are we going to say that we can do natural gas–fired? Where is the plan?

I used to do a lot of work with the clean energy sector when I was the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, as it was called back then. It seems almost like a long time ago now. I did a lot of work with the clean energy sector. They were very keen on the projects and bidding on the infrastructure and the ability to be able to get some of these projects going. I was very pleased that we could move forward on a bunch of these types of agreements and the projects, the First Nation involvement, the revenue streams that came with it. We have got 25 percent of our power now, today, on the grid, coming from these independent power projects.

That’s a great thing. And 98 percent of our power in this province is clean and renewable. That’s an even better thing. There isn’t a country in the world that has our stats in terms of what that electricity and energy is. But how do we meet that future need? Costs would have to go up dramatically.

When you look at the cost of wind or solar and think about adding in what that would be for the grid here, you’re talking about doubling the power prices in this province, if not more. Are you going to go out and talk about that in terms of meeting your target for 2040, of all new vehicles being electric?

[4:20 p.m.]

That’s an interesting conversation to have. I wonder what the voters would say about that. Is that where they want to go? Maybe it is, but it’s a conversation that needs to happen, as opposed to just setting targets out in the sky without any plans whatsoever.

It’s disappointing to see this type of a bill come forward. Goals are worthy, but it’s disappointing to see it come forward without those kinds of thoughts and plans. You know, I was thinking about it. Maybe, if I were to drive down to the Legislature, maybe it would have to be like the old Pony Express, where I jump in the vehicle and drive until I run out of juice. I get out at whatever that station is going to be, at 100 Mile House or 80 mile house, and go in there and change out my batteries, right? Then I can drive on, and those batteries would be charged.

Maybe that’s the way the world would work. I don’t know. Seems kind of odd to me, but you never know. I suppose people have to do what they have to do to be able to meet government policy once it becomes law, because short of that, you’re going to have to break the law.

Not to mention, for those people that still have gasoline vehicles: are we still going to have stations for filling up? How are we going to get gas around this province? Mind you, that may not be an issue if we can’t get a pipeline built, I suppose, down the road. But regardless of all that, I digress.

Interesting concept. Happy that we’re having this kind of conversation, but let’s make it a much broader conversation about all the other issues that need to be solved in order for this to be realistic legislation in this Legislature.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing Columbia River–Revelstoke.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to see you.

Here I’m very pleased to stand and speak to Bill 28, the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act. The challenges that come with climate change — we’re all very aware of those. It’s becoming more top of shelf. I was just recently at a municipal government conference in Castlegar this last weekend. The Columbia Basin Trust did a fantastic workshop on climate change. It’s top of shelf for all municipal governments and certainly should be top of shelf as well for provincial and federal governments.

There is something definitely amok, as the climate goes right now. For individuals, no matter where they live…. I know that where I live the biggest issue for us is wildfires. That is something that we’re going to be, unfortunately, likely dealing with this year. The Meachen Creek fire that actually put Kimberley on alert last year and evacuated St. Mary Lake….

This climate change is having great impacts, as I already said, on wildfires but also on wildlife. The changes in wildlife patterns, the loss of habitat because of climate change. Not only the loss of, but it’s changing animal behaviour in terms of we’re seeing animals that are migrating north into our regions that have not been here before.

It’s creating behaviours that are different in animals. I can cite an example, what they call now the coywolf, where coyotes and wolves are mating and creating a new kind of animal called a coywolf. They’re running in these massive packs, these super packs, of anywhere from 25 to 40 animals.

We’re starting to see this climate change phenomena certainly having an impact on wildlife and the way that these animals behave and, frankly, the creation of new strains of animals. Of course, there are the invasive species that we’ve got to deal with. We’re seeing insects that we’ve never seen before and, I think, the spread of disease.

The bottom line is that climate change is very real, and it’s something that we’ve got to be aware of. This is why, I think, if you look at this legislation, which I don’t think is broad enough or comprehensive enough to even consider passing…. But I think the broad thrust of this legislation is important in helping B.C. move towards zero-emission vehicles, if that’s ever achievable by 2040.

You know, I look back at our previous government. We set the stage, really, for this to happen — this shouldn’t come as any surprise to anybody — in a way that had nothing to do, really, with vehicles and the emissions that they produced.

[4:25 p.m.]

Despite, if you look back in history, an army of doubters, we went with the vision to build the Site C dam. The reason we wanted to do that was to create electrical opportunities for future generations so that we would have enough power, if we ever needed to draw upon that, and to have that electrical capability to move more of our economy toward zero-emission and clean, green energy.

I’m pleased the members opposite have had a good, strong look at the policies that we were putting forward and have adopted those. It speaks, I think, volumes to the vision that we had at that time. There were those who questioned the need for that power, as they charged their multiple electronic devices. We live in a world of electricity.

I think there’s only so much that you can charge and there’s only so much that you can do with the electrical capabilities that we have today and, in some cases, even the drawdown of water. That in itself is a bit of an issue. But let’s be clear. There’s no way you can have a province where every vehicle is zero-emission without readily available and plentiful electricity. We know for a fact…. That is a fact. You’ve got to have that electricity. I’m not sure the folks that are putting this bill forward truly understand that concept.

In 2017, there were close to 3.7 million vehicles registered in the province of British Columbia. That’s a lot of vehicles. On average, they say that’s going to go up by about 80,000 a year, so by 2040, we’re talking about approximately five million vehicles. That’s a lot of vehicles that are running on electricity. If that year seems far away, it is kind of far away, when you think about it.

Honestly, when you look at a bill like this, it’s not visionary in the sense that no government, unless they have a crystal ball — I don’t think that the folks across the aisle have one of those — and no corporation can know exactly what the world will be like in 2040. We just don’t know. I’m not sure how this forecast can possibly be realistic.

A 21-year plan or a 20-year plan from now — I think it would be more feasible to look towards five-year plans or even a ten-year plan. So 20 years out, I don’t know how they’re going to figure that one out. But I think it’s really dangerous to make assumptions about something as simple as the price of a zero-emission vehicle in ten years, let alone 21, as I mentioned. I really don’t get that.

Yet the foundation of this bill is an assumption that zero-emission vehicles, which are financially out of reach for the working family in B.C., will be cheap and plentiful. Again, I’m not sure where that crystal ball comes in. Right now it’s very expensive, and it’s tough to buy these things. Then again, when you consider the exorbitant price of gas today, even gas vehicles are almost out of the reach of most people.

As a matter of fact, I just got a call last weekend from a very distressed young man in Canal Flats. He drives a lumber truck, a logging truck, and has got a couple kids — just a solid young man who’s working so hard. You know, with the gas prices and everything going the way they are, you could tell he was emotionally distraught. “How am I going to continue to support my family? How is this affordable?” This is what his question was. “These guys keep saying they’re making life more affordable. Well, they’re not. They’re not making life more affordable. It’s causing my family distress.”

If you look at the gas prices and then you think about how this young guy is going afford to fill up his logging truck, let alone try to run a logging truck on electric, it’s just not feasible.

Needless to say, I think it’s an aggressive timeline for such a massive shift. Where is the education associated with this as well? I’m from the business world, and I would hope that there’s a business plan out there that has some key performance indicators, year by year, that would indicate whether or not they’re on track with this and how you are going to get from A to B, because without a business plan, you have no plan at all. I don’t see that in this bill at all.

In six years — that’s 2025 — at least 10 percent of the new light-duty vehicles sold, at least in B.C., must be zero-emission. Five short years later, it is expected to triple, making an increase in affordability so critical. But where is the plan? Where is that? By 2040, all sales of light-duty vehicles will have to have zero-emission vehicles.

[4:30 p.m.]

The viability of the government’s legislative targets for zero-emission vehicles sales relies on the affordability of these cars for the average British Columbian. Again, how do you forecast?

In the business world, when you’re looking at budgets and you’re looking at changes and being pre-emptive in your visioning, how do they know how this is going to affect…? Where is the pricing for this? How do they understand what those cars are going to be worth in 2040? How are they going to be affordable for British Columbians? That’s what British Columbians need to know. They need to know that the government has a plan.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

When it comes to affordability in cars, there are some British Columbians who would love to see a zero-emission car today, thanks, quite frankly, to the record prices at the gas pumps right now.

Welcome, Mr. Speaker. Good to see you.

Well, maybe we’ve stumbled on the reason the government refuses to do anything about North America’s highest gas prices. It’s absolutely shameful that this government has the ability and the capability of helping British Columbians, yet as recently as question period today, we saw a refusal of this government to even address any potential solutions that might be offered. Yet the Premier himself said that there would be. Unfortunately, that’s something that British Columbians aren’t buying.

I think it’s a plot to make the internal combustion engine more expensive. We all know that internal combustion engines produce the emissions, but they’re also becoming way more efficient, and they continue to become more efficient, especially with hybrid vehicles. I know that during my campaign, I had a Prius, which is a hybrid vehicle. I know how efficient and effective that vehicle was in terms of gas mileage, and that sort of thing.

I guess what we’ve got to look at is the whole concept of the fine folks across the aisle here just refusing to give up tax dollars rolling in to these record prices. So you wonder. It makes you question the motive. When you have to question the motive in such a bill, you really think…. It makes you really stop and put a check by that box and say: “Darn, I don’t understand what this is all about.” If I don’t get it, I know British Columbians aren’t going to get it either.

Ten, 15, 20 years from now, this government is counting on price drops in technology. Well, where is the crystal ball yet again to make zero-emission vehicles more affordable and to meet their sales targets? How do they know that? How did they get that information? I’m worried, like my colleagues on this side of the House, that this whole thing will fall apart if the prices don’t drop. That is a real potential. That’s a concern, no question about it.

We worked to make vehicles more affordable by introducing CEVs for B.C. vehicle incentives, for point-of-sale purchase incentives on new zero-emission vehicles.

We also had a number of other concerns about this legislation and issues. We look forward to exploring it in committee stage. That’s certainly going to be a great opportunity to sit down and drill into some of these really important issues that are associated with this bill.

From a 60,000-foot view, you can’t argue with it. You can’t argue with it when you think about climate change and things that I’ve already mentioned around climate change. But it’s going to be interesting to see the strategy and the purpose and the stages that they’re going to unroll this. First and foremost, I think we need to ensure that this legislation remembers the realities of living in rural British Columbia.

I am from rural British Columbia, as you know. I live in what is classified by the province of British Columbia as a remote rural riding. It takes me five and a half hours on a good driving day to go from the west end in Revelstoke to the south end in Kimberley. That’s on a good driving day — five, 5½ hours, depending on traffic, and certainly much more when it comes to weather. So this is going to have a significant impact on rural British Columbia.

I think it’s really critical that this legislation or this proposed legislation looks at and ensures that it doesn’t punish those living past the greater Vancouver regional district. It makes sense in greater Vancouver, in the Lower Mainland. But we just want to make sure that rural British Columbia is always considered in these decisions. The way it sits right now, from what I have been able to see and read, that’s not there.

[4:35 p.m.]

It doesn’t come as a surprise, because, honestly, of some of the things I’ve seen of late happening in rural B.C. around legislation and moves, especially around wildlife. It concerns me greatly that rural communities and rural municipal governments aren’t being considered or discussed or engaged in these systems.

Again, we’ve got to make sure that their lives in rural British Columbia…. Basically, in my riding, with the loss of Greyhound, there is virtually zero public transportation — zero public transportation. This new transportation…. To the credit of the Transportation Minister on the other side, we’ve had long discussions. I’m meeting with her again very shortly about this situation in my riding.

There is some movement now, I think three days a week, that they’ll be coming out of Alberta and going directly to Vancouver, but that doesn’t service the south end of my riding, nor does it service those that want to go to Kelowna for medical appointments. It’ll go by Sicamous, through Salmon Arm, through Kamloops and on to Vancouver. It won’t head south, down through the Shuswap and the Okanagan.

In rural British Columbia, it’s a different story. It’s a different way of life. We have different opportunities, but we also have different challenges. I don’t see that here, and that concerns me greatly.

In my neighbourhood where I live, I’m very proud to say that we do have some charging stations now. There are charging stations in Invermere. There’s a charging station in Canal Flats. Yeah, I’m really excited to see that. Not many people driving those vehicles, though. Most of these vehicles are small, and where I live, we always are dodging elk and deer. I’d rather hit an elk…. I don’t want to hit one at all, but if it was to happen, that accident, I’d rather have it in my Tundra than a Prius; I can tell you that.

Even though we’ve got charging stations, the distances…. I want to come back to the distances — like I said, 5½ hours. I know a government official from Cranbrook came down our way to Invermere and drove an electric vehicle and spent an hour at the charging station in Canal Flats. Well, it takes me five minutes to fill up my truck. It’s a loss of time, and so on and so forth.

I think what I really want to focus on when it comes to rural British Columbia and this bill is the practicality of it. Where I live, we have two mountain passes. There’s the Salmo pass, and there’s also the Rogers Pass. In the summertime, they’re the most beautiful passes you could ever imagine anywhere in the world, both Salmo and the Rogers Pass. Some of the most striking scenery is through the Selkirk Mountains — initially coming through the Rocky Mountains and then on to the Selkirks and then on to the Monashees. You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful drive.

In the wintertime, it’s a different story. I think the record was up to 50 feet in the Rogers Pass at one time. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s very high and very cold. Golden can get the same kind of weather patterns as Alberta, with minus 20, minus 30 types of temperatures. That’s going to have a huge impact on these vehicles as people try to get across these very large and very dangerous, in the wintertime, mountain passes with these vehicles.

I think there needs to be more thought. Even from a research perspective with the automobile folks, they, too, are struggling with the batteries and how long these batteries will last. To be stranded in the Salmo pass in the wintertime, or the Rogers Pass, because your battery ran out of juice…. I’ll tell you, Mr. Speaker, that there are absolutely zero charging stations in any one of those passes. That’s a big deal.

I think the range of vehicles and how far they can go on that charge, as I mentioned, is a big deal. The temperatures I’ve mentioned, and the incredible snow cover. Will these vehicles be able to capably navigate these treacherous winter road conditions? Maybe they’ll have an electric 4-by-4. I don’t know. Electric trucks. I know they’re talking about that. If you’re living in downtown Vancouver, okay, you’ve got your pickup, and you’re doing all right. But where I live, there are very few charging stations, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work.

Emergency vehicles. We transfer, from a medical perspective…. Our B.C. ambulance services go to Alberta quite frequently and come back, and Alberta comes back.

[4:40 p.m.]

How is that going to translate between interprovincial trade and interprovincial travel? My understanding is that you just won’t be able to buy a new vehicle. You can buy an old vehicle, which is likely less emission-friendly than the new vehicles. And what are they going to do in Alberta? It’s a service issue.

I think that there are so many unforeseen consequences that aren’t discussed here yet that are so important that we talk about, and that will be done, obviously, in the committee stage. As an opposition member, I think we’re going to have to remain vigilant in monitoring the measurements taken by government to legislate the supply of zero-emission vehicles. That’s something that we’re going to take on and, with great pride, do that.

When governments step into the market this way, there are, as I mentioned already, the unintended consequences. I think, like in any good business plan when you’re forecasting your five-year-out, whether you’re in the oil business or the technology business — any business where you have a business plan — it’s incumbent upon the president, CEO and his financial people and all of the senior people to really look at those forecasts. What are those…? “We’re going to do A, but will A create what? What is the potential of that happening?” I don’t see any of that here. You can avoid unintended consequences by thinking about them before they happen, and that certainly isn’t the case here.

Costs often rise and get passed on to consumers. Consumers are being bled dry right now, as you know, Mr. Speaker. I mean, you drive as well as I do. We know how expensive fuel is, and they’re getting bled dry already. And they’re not happy about it. So if this is going to be another cost to them, they’re going to be even less happy, and we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes. When the next government changes, of course, that’s going to….

A. Weaver: Green government.

D. Clovechok: Oh well. Good luck with that. All the very best, sir.

Anyway, apparently, the esteemed member just woke up.

A. Weaver: No, I’ve been listening intently.

D. Clovechok: You have so, sir. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. I say all of this respectfully to you.

Just like the NDP’s health tax is getting passed on to British Columbians through the higher municipal taxes…. Listen, I’ve got to tell you. This one kind of makes my head hurt a little bit, because they keep telling you…. There’s a pattern. There seems to be a pattern emerging here.

I certainly don’t want to ramble and get off topic here, because we’re about emission-free vehicles. But we’re talking about gas prices and other things. How can you possibly say that you’ve eliminated MSP on the backs of small businesses? I don’t get that. I just don’t get that. So it’s gone. We gave you a whole bunch of cash when you took government over to be able to accomplish that goal. But you haven’t eliminated it; you’ve just passed it on to another group of people through your taxes.

When governments step into the markets this way, as I said, costs rise, and they always get passed on to consumers. As I mentioned, the health tax…. Once again, with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, these fine folks across the aisle from me just seem to love red tape. They love it. They thrive on it. I continually hear this from people in my constituency. It’s so difficult to get anything done, whether you’re applying for a grant or…. God forbid that you’re applying for one of those. It takes forever. So less red tape.

I’m concerned that this bill will kind of lead down that road again, because it’s complicated, and there’s more to it than meets the eye. This act introduces massive increases in the reporting requirements of suppliers. So that’s another one.

I think the act introduces a complicated credit-debit system that will create even more burdensome red tape, again, for zero-emission vehicle suppliers. It’s about suppliers to you. You’ve got to think about who is going to provide these vehicles. You’ve got to make it easy for people to do their jobs and make money, because when you make money, you get to pay taxes. That’s how the government survives. Or they tax people that have money, then they leave, and then there’s no money left at all.

[4:45 p.m.]

Under this system, a director in government will report each year on whether the year’s targets were met. That director will receive reports from vehicle suppliers while using this information to ensure an adequate supply of zero-emission vehicles. More red tape.

The challenge here is that government — not the market, not consumers — will determine the supply of vehicles. On what planet does that make any sense? In what universe does that make any sense? Supply and demand directed by government. Man, oh, man, I can see a disaster waiting to happen there.

The director can also order investigations and administer fines — so more government control; bigger government; more taxes; bigger government, not less government; not letting people make money and enjoy their lives. But Big Brother knows the best, I guess.

Under this complex system, suppliers are awarded credits and debits based upon supply levels. This is where it gets really complicated. Consumer sales of zero-emission vehicles and other agreements with the director concerning actions a supplier may take to reduce GHG emissions in B.C. for motor vehicles…. When you hear all that stuff, if you’re a dealer, all of a sudden your eyes get blurry.

Suppliers also submit a model year report — now, what the heck does that mean? — to the director, who’s in charge and has the power, each model year. This information will be used to report their point balance information. There’s some jargon that we’re definitely going to have to get to the bottom of and define that. Based on this, then, the director can administrate an automatic administrative penalty if the balance of credits versus debits is less than zero. Seriously. Seriously, the hand of god. Unbelievable.

I don’t mean to sound cynical here. I don’t. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but it seems like government is embedding….

Interjections.

D. Clovechok: I got them talking to me now, so that’s obviously a good thing.

This seems like government is embedding itself deeply into the sales process in a way that is fraught with dangers to consumers — and that’s who we should be protecting here and talking about — to costs of vehicles and to the very goals of the program itself.

Interjections.

D. Clovechok: I’ve got the member from over here talking to me now. Everybody’s talking. That’s a good thing. You know you’re doing your job right when that’s happening.

Anyway, then there’s the government’s continual lack of transparency. My goodness, I’ve never seen a less transparent government. It’s just time and time and time again.

Let’s talk about wildlife management just for a minute, because it has to do with gas emissions. It has to do with gas emissions. In one of the communities that I represent, which is Revelstoke, around the caribou issue, I had to push…. And to the credit of the minister, he finally relented and said: “Yes, I will meet and talk with the local municipalities, and I’ll talk with them.” That’s not transparency. We won’t even get into the Maple Ridge issue.

A. Weaver: What happened there?

D. Clovechok: Oh, you don’t want to know. It’s still ongoing, lock and load.

Then there’s the government, again, as I say, the transparency…. So many specifics of the program will be developed behind closed doors. It seems there are a lot of closed doors going on. We don’t want closed doors — we want it open; we want to have transparent discussion — lacking the scrutiny of the House and pushed out through regulation without consultation. People need to be talked to, and they’re telling us straight up.

At the conference I was at in Castlegar last weekend, the municipal folks that were there said: “We’re tired of being…. These guys keep telling us that you’re listening, but you don’t do any action around the listening.” It’s really important to listen when you’re in jobs like we have, but it’s really important to action the listening. That’s what they’re not seeing, and that’s why they’re so frustrated. And this is part of the problem I have with this bill.

It’s a bad way to develop the system — I think, anyway — that’s supposed to help accomplish goals, transition to zero-emission vehicles. It has the potential to really impact people’s pocketbooks.

The act introduces…. As I said, it’s just so darn confusing. It’s going to be interesting to listen to this one in committee. The details of making all of this happen deserve to be debated in public, and by goodness, we’re going to have a good hearty debate when it comes to this, Mr. Speaker, and I know that you’re looking forward to that.

[4:50 p.m.]

It’s critical that British Columbians work to protect our environment and work towards lower emissions. This member believes that with his heart. I believe that we have to work towards it, but we also have to do it responsibly and transparently.

I look forward, in the committee stage, to digging deeper into this complex system the government is establishing and making sure that we actually reach 2040 targets envisioned in the legislation. As always, Mr. Speaker, it’s been a pleasure to stand and speak to bills here in the House. I thank you, and with that, I’ll take my seat.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Well, it’s an honour to get up and speak to this, and I’m sure if the member wants to heckle me, he can. The other person is finished right now.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member, continue.

M. Bernier: I’d love to continue as soon as the member opposite would maybe calm down a little bit.

The issue here is really to sit here and talk about Bill 28. I just want to start off by saying that I hope that the members in government, the minister…. I know that the minister, hopefully, was paying attention to a lot of the comments. A lot of people, a lot of colleagues on my side of the House here, stood up and, I want to say, brought forward some very pointed and very good arguments during this part of this debate — some of the things that it looks like the government has left out when we’re looking at this bill, things that really should have been considered when a bill like this was being brought to the House.

Let me set the stage, first of all, by saying that I don’t think there’s any argument in this House about doing the best job we can for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the province of British Columbia and looking at every opportunity to be able to do that. Where some of us, I think, are going to debate is when you bring a bill forward without looking holistically at the issue at hand.

Now, to say that we want to make, by 2040 — that every vehicle sold in the province of British Columbia must be an electric vehicle, again starts that whole conversation around affordability, around accessibility and around practicality as well, I would say, on a bill like this. If the government had put this bill forward and said that this was an aspirational goal, that it’s a target that we’d like to shoot towards, it’s something that we’d like to consider trying to achieve, then there might be some merits in a bill like this.

But to follow it up in the same bill and say it’s no longer aspirational…. If you actually don’t meet these targets, or if you fail to do the simple things like report, we’re talking about fines of up to $1 million to individuals or companies, half a year in jail, just because the government is trying to now make something illegal — selling a vehicle in the province of British Columbia unless it’s an electric vehicle. In my world, this is just a pure example of something that was not considered.

Now, it is the government’s job to try to curb habit with policy. I’ll give them this. I’ll agree that the government can put things forward, such as…. It was found that for safety reasons, people should be wearing seatbelts in cars, and people weren’t necessarily following those regulations or those policies. So the government had to put in a law to say that you must wear a seatbelt; otherwise, there’ll be a fine. You know, they do the same. We’ve done the same around drinking and driving because it’s proven that this has to happen — that we have to have policies around drinking and driving to make sure it doesn’t happen. If not, there are going to be fines and consequences.

But to go to the extreme of saying that we now have to curb spending habits in the province of British Columbia, that we’re now going to dictate how the free market is going to work, and if not, there are going to be actual large fines and jail time associated if you don’t follow through with the direction that this government wants…. Well, we’ve gone a step too far.

[4:55 p.m.]

The government has…. The few members that actually spoke to this bill talked about how hard it is right now to get an electric vehicle because of the demand. Well, I’d say that’s a good thing. I’m not sure anybody is going to argue that. But if it’s working so well, if companies are already having a hard time keeping up, if people are already wanting to change their habits and buy electric vehicles, is this not a redundant piece of legislation that’s being brought in to try to accomplish something that members opposite have said is already happening?

The member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan tried to use the example of how technology changes so quickly, and he used the example of how we used to have old projector TVs and now we have the big screen TVs that have flat-screen and LED technology. Well, government didn’t put in legal policies to curb those changes. They let the market dictate and allow what people wanted, and the suppliers tried to keep up with consumer demands. That’s what happens in our society. But to actually mandate, to tell people: “This is how you have to purchase something now….” Well, if you can’t afford it, I guess you don’t get it.

We look right now at the affordability of a vehicle. People who can’t afford a nice new vehicle are buying used vehicles. People are buying internal combustion engine vehicles because they can’t afford a Tesla or a full zero-emission vehicle right now. Again, it’s aspirational. This government has said: “If there are more on the market, the price will come down. Look at the TVs.” Well, okay, I’ll give them that, but nowhere in this bill is it allowing for that time. Nowhere in this bill is it actually allowing for choice in the marketplace. In fact, it goes to the extreme of saying: “There are going to be penalties associated if you don’t follow through.”

Hon. Speaker, I should maybe let you know, too, that I will be the designated speaker on this bill. I forgot to let you know that, and I’ll give you as much notice ahead of time as possible on this.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: This is something that obviously, the leader of the Green Party, I know…. I’ll give him ample opportunity to heckle me through this, which I encourage him to do, because I’d probably acknowledge that….

I’m not sure if this was part of the CASA agreement or not. I would hope and assume that the minister and government would have done their due diligence when they were putting a bill like this forward and not just being pressured by the leader of the Green Party. Looking at the bill, though, I fear the latter, because I don’t see anywhere in here where the research was done. You know, the leader of the Green Party wants to take credit for this. Well, maybe I’ll give him that too, because now he’s batting one for four. How’s Site C doing? How’s PR doing? How are Trans Mountain, LNG?

I think it’s really important to highlight, again, that allowing the market to meet the demands, I think, is important. Society knows that we are going to be moving down this path. We also know — whether it’s zero-emission vehicles or other technologies that might come up over the next five, ten or 15 years — that we need to allow for that as well.

It does concern me, though, when government tries to put these timelines into policy here and it says: “By 2030, we’re going to have 300,000 fully zero-emission vehicles, fully electric vehicles, and by 2025, we’re also going to be at about 10 percent of our fleet.” Well, we’ve seen in California, which has about a ten- to 15-year head start, that they’ve been unable, as aspirational as it was, to meet those targets. And what does this government do? They come in and say, “Well, we’re going to actually put it into law, and we’re going to beat those targets that California has been unable to achieve,” with no work being done, no studies being done and nothing practically to prove that it’s achievable.

[5:00 p.m.]

One of the points…. The member for Chilliwack-Kent, I thought, did an excellent job of highlighting the history and disruption and how technologies will meet demands, how people’s spending habits will change depending on need and technology. We’re starting to see that in zero-emission vehicles as well.

When we put a bill forward, which is a cookie-cutter approach, that is actually going to mandate and change the selling requirements — I won’t necessarily say purchasing habits, and I’ll get to that in a minute — of companies without taking into consideration our geographical diversity, the difference between rural and urban….

There are a lot of things that have been unexplained, and even in the briefing — I want to thank staff that gave us a briefing — these answers can’t be given. Why? Because I don’t think the work was done. Let me just highlight a few of the things, first of all. I know some of my colleagues have touched on these.

Of course, I come from a riding that for many parts of the year will be down at 30, 40 degrees. I actually have an electric hybrid vehicle, and I’ve seen, if I’ve left it out overnight in the wintertime, how it struggles to operate in the morning. If I’ve left it in my shop or my garage all night, then maybe it’ll actually be able to start. But not everybody’s in a position where they have a garage to park their vehicle in overnight to stay warm.

We hope and we think the technology will advance, that the lithium-ion batteries and the technology will try to keep up with some of these issues, but it’s not there yet. So for government to come forward with legislation and law that’s going to mandate people to only be able to purchase, if they want a new vehicle, an electric vehicle in B.C. is really going to be problematic, I’d say, for rural B.C.

It’s not just the temperatures. It’s the distances that people have to travel. I look at remote First Nations villages. What has government planned? Nothing. If we have a remote First Nations community, the only way they can now buy a new vehicle is if it’s electric, but they’ve got no mechanisms. Some of them don’t even have power, aren’t even on the grid, let alone have the ability to charge a vehicle.

When you look at the distances that electric vehicles can travel…. I looked for myself. Just to go from my riding to Prince George is about 400 kilometres, to go see my daughter at university down there in Prince George. These vehicles aren’t going to be able to get me to where I have to go in today’s technology and today’s systems that we have, with the lack of charging stations around the province.

When we asked the question: “Okay, fine. Where’s the meat and potatoes to this bill…?” Where can we show and hear and relate this to the budget that says: “Don’t worry. Here’s a bill that says we’re going to be able to have all of our vehicles sold electric. Here it is in the budget in our three-year budget plan that says the billions” — and I said it with a “b” — “of dollars that will be required to upgrade our hydroelectric systems or our grids that we have around the province so that we can travel those distances?”

We kind of made the joke earlier that at least if I have to drive right now from Dawson Creek up to Fort Nelson in my vehicle, I can carry a jerry can in the back if I don’t have enough gas. If I think I’ll get stranded, I can carry a jerry can. I can’t really carry a spare battery for an electric car — thousands of dollars.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Well, the member…. How ironic this comment is from the leader of the Green Party. He says: “Yes, but you can carry a diesel generator, so you can start that up to plug in.” Okay, I’ll give him that one. I’ll give him that one.

[5:05 p.m.]

I can buy diesel to carry to start up my generator to charge my electric vehicle while I sit on the side of the road for 12 hours or so looking at the beautiful, I will say, scenery that we have up in the Peace country. I’ll watch, especially up in that area, the huge amount of wildlife and caribou prance through the area being chased by all the wolves. But I digress, like my friend from Columbia River–Revelstoke.

One of the challenges we have, obviously, when we’re looking at not only subsidies for electric vehicles but at policies to make people buy only new electric vehicles…. What we’re saying is that we’re now…. This government is putting in policies to support people who can actually already afford it.

There is nothing in here to actually help people who might be struggling. In fact, this is going to hurt them. At the end of the day, if we have to spend billions of dollars to upgrade our electric grids, who’s going to pay for that? Is that going to be now in our housing supply? People who are already struggling in some areas around affordability to pay their power bill are now going to have to have increased hydro rates because of all of the money that’s going to have to be spent to upgrade the grids?

I also look at: if I purchase an electric vehicle, am I stuck in British Columbia? My colleague from Peace River North I think brought up a really good point. In my riding, there are a lot of people that drive to Edmonton for health reasons, to go to the hospital. That’s about a six- or seven-hour drive from my region to Edmonton without the opportunities, which I know of in many places, to stop to charge a vehicle. If I’m forced to buy an electric vehicle, I’m also being forced to stay in my area.

Now, this might be fine if you’re in a real urban area. I’d give this to government. If government had come forward and said, “We’re not going to make this mandated provincewide. We’re going to phase this and say let’s start in the urban areas, where there are opportunities, and let’s see if that works,” and allow some flexibility, allow the market to take place, allow the people’s choice to be heard…. Then we’ll see how that actually rolls out. That’ll also give time for the rest of British Columbia to adapt and to look at opportunities.

I do find it ironic, especially when I had a briefing on this issue. I asked government and said: “How are you planning, in the short term, to achieve this goal of having 300,000 fully electric vehicles on the market within the next ten years? How is this even going to be achieved in B.C.? Where are we getting the power from?” The comment I got from government is: “That’s why we’re happy to have Site C being built.” Now, isn’t that an ironic comment coming from a government who fought, and was opposed to, Site C tooth and nail? Now they’re bragging that they can move forward with a policy like this because of Site C.

What they neglect to say, though, is that in order to achieve these aspirational — they’re saying no; they’re saying it’s going to happen — goals in the province…. Again, they have neglected to say where this power is coming from for the long term, for that 2040 target. You’re going to have millions of vehicles on the road, according to them, that are electric, with no charging infrastructure yet — I guess that will come; no one knows how — with no power being able to get the electrons through the lines to those charging stations, even if we had the infrastructure.

It does, again, get a little complicated but a little ironic when, if we’re not going to be having enough power…. Good thing we have Site C in the short term, we’re told. I don’t see anywhere in the plans two or three more dams or any other major electrical facilities in order to meet that demand.

The only alternative, then, is to buy coal-fired power that is being generated from other jurisdictions to come into British Columbia — for us to feel really good about our­selves, I guess, for having an electric vehicle, while we’re being powered by coal or natural gas from other areas, rather than looking at being energy self-sufficient in our own province.

It highlights, again, that this government has put a bill forward with no studies, no work and pretty well close to zero consultation, except for maybe with a few environmental groups who have been pushing for this for a long time.

[5:10 p.m.]

On that point, maybe I’ll digress a little bit. Some of these same environmental groups who have been out there saying they want to increase the carbon tax, who want to have fully electric vehicles, are the same ones that are out there saying we have to have these laws to change habits, and then, in the same breath, say: “Don’t worry. We’re actually reaching peak oil in the world, and this is all going to happen naturally anyway.” Well, if we’re reaching peak oil, why do we need to have laws like this that are going to curb behaviour that’s going to be forced to change anyway?

I look at other countries around the world and how we differ. We try to compare ourselves sometimes, but I think we have to acknowledge our geographical differences and also our societal differences and our habits that we have. I had the pleasure of going over to see my son David a couple of years ago — it was four or five years ago now — in Austria and travelled around Europe.

One of the things he was showing me and talking to me about is the abundance of electric vehicles that they have over there and how they’ve really been able to be successful in that avenue. I said: “Well, okay, but if I’m in Salzburg, and I want to drive up to Vienna, that’s quite a drive. What do you do for charging when you’re going through parts of the Alps?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. He said: “Why would anybody drive that far? That’s two hours away.” He goes: “We don’t drive two hours. That’s not part of our society. We actually are able to stay in close proximity. We have everything in our cities. We don’t have to travel long distances.” Well, maybe in situations like that, electric vehicles could work if they have the infrastructure, if they’re actually not going long distances. It’s not practical for so many families and so many people in the province of B.C.

Now, we said by 2040. I just want to try to explain this, not only for the few people that might be watching, but I’m hoping for the government and for the minister as well to take into consideration these comments. A lot of my colleagues have made some great points, again, that I sure hope are being listened to.

[Interruption.]

M. Bernier: It’s nice to know at least one person is listening right now on the other side.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Yeah. Usually, when the leader of the Green Party speaks, his voice sounds about the same as the other voice I just heard.

Interjections.

M. Bernier: For you, that’s a compliment, actually.

At least he’s dressed well for the House, as well, today.

One of the things that I’m hoping Zavier and everybody will listen to as we’re going forward is that I don’t think this was completely thought out well — when we’re saying that by 2040, new vehicles are the only ones, if they’re electric, that can be sold. Then I asked the question: what about other jurisdictions that we have no control of? Well, we can’t tell Alberta what to do. In Dawson Creek, where I’m five miles from the Alberta border, the question I asked was: “What’s stopping me from opening up a car dealership five miles down the road, selling really nice half-ton pickup trucks?”

As people in the House have said, that’s the most popular vehicle sold last year: the half-ton pickup truck. What’s stopping me from selling brand-new, internal combustion engine, gas-powered vehicles five miles down the road from Dawson Creek? The answer is: nothing. In fact, I can go, still buy one out of jurisdiction, five miles away, come to British Columbia, register it and drive it here. There’s nothing changing that.

As other people have mentioned before me, where I see a huge market now is going to be in the used vehicles, not in the new vehicles. As it is right now — I can’t remember the number I heard earlier — it’s about ten to one. There are ten used-car lots in British Columbia for every one new lot. Well, all we’re going to see is more people driving less fuel-efficient and less environmentally safe vehicles on the roads because they’re not going to be in a position to meet the demands that this government is trying to impose on society in the province.

Interjection.

[5:15 p.m.]

I’m being accused of fearmongering, but there’s nothing in this bill, there’s nothing in the budget, and there’s nothing anywhere to prove me wrong. If you actually want to say that this is not going to happen, then show me anywhere in this bill, show me anywhere in the budget, show me anywhere in practicality that putting a law forward to tell people how to spend their money is going to actually force them to change their habits.

[Interruption.]

M. Bernier: Now, I guess the next one will be…. Actually, I will acknowledge that after having five kids, I’m not even really noticing that. I’m enjoying it. At least, I can get some good heckles from the other side.

Again, the big problem that we’re facing, which has been mentioned in the House but I don’t think government has thought about, is how you actually make this come to fruition. We’ve seen the few electric vehicles here at the Legislature. We’ve seen the few charging stations. I took a walk around. I just wanted to try to understand this a little better. There’s one charging station at Uptown by Walmart. I can definitely see the 100,000 vehicles on the south Island here fighting for four charging stations and the one at Walmart. We know that there are going to be a few more.

The other problem is, though…. Where’s the infrastructure going to come from to upgrade all this? I went for a walk through one of the apartment buildings across the street from the Legislature, and 200 people live in that unit. There are 240 parking stalls. I found, in the entire complex, six 110 charging outlets — six.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Okay. The leader of the Green Party says he’s got some work to do. Well, I’m glad to see that he’s acknowledged that this is going to cost the people of British Columbia a heck of a lot of money. If a strata is now going to have to upgrade 200-plus parking stalls, even if it’s 110 — let alone if we’re going to be putting in some fast-charging systems — who’s paying for that?

I can tell you right now that in the one that I went and looked at, the majority of that unit was rental units. So now, I guess, rent rates are going up. If everybody has to have an electric vehicle, if they’re going to have that there and if all the stratas are now going to have to upgrade all their facilities, I guess rent is going up again. So much for affordability.

This is the point, though: putting a bill forward — a visionary, aspirational bill — I’d give government credit for that if it didn’t have the actual penalties attached to it, if it didn’t actually have members opposite who stood up and instead of saying, “This is aspirational; we’re trying to do our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the province,” they actually said: “No. This will happen. We’re going to force everybody to buy electric vehicles.”

What’s next? Are they going into grocery stores to tell you what food you can or can’t eat? Is that going to be next? I guess from now on, it’ll be only green food.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: You can’t have that.

The big part, though, is allowing for flexibility and allowing for the free market to actually do its job in a lot of places.

Interjections.

M. Bernier: The member of the Green Party wants to keep going. He kind of continues to make my case for me every time he heckles and says: “Yeah. There’s lots of work to do.” Yet in this bill, it’s not there. This is another example, unfortunately, of this government using a cookie-cutter approach to try to solve an issue.

Again, I will give them credit for trying to acknowledge the fact that we need to do our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the province. They need to look at this, though, and remind people that this does come with a cost. The price of vehicles could go up. The price of your rent could go up. The price to get hydro into your property is going to go up. Affordability to get a new house is already tough. What’s going to happen now when they’re told: “Sorry, you have to upgrade to a 200-volt system in your house because that’s the only thing that’ll accommodate 200 watts for your system?”

Interjection.

[5:20 p.m.]

M. Bernier: If you really want it, we can get into the debates about electricity and how it works later, if the member would like, because you still need…. Whether it’s a dryer plug, you’re still going to need power running through to the houses in order to do that. Now, you can only have so many electrons running through an existing line, if the line is not big enough. If you don’t have a big enough power line running to a house, if you don’t have a big enough power line running to a subdivision, to an apartment building, you cannot and will not be able to charge enough electric vehicles in order to do this. This is simply how electrons work for charging vehicles.

We need to know how this government is actually planning on doing all that. They are going to cost the people of British Columbia a lot of money.

Interjections.

M. Bernier: The members still don’t understand, I don’t think, how electrons flow, how pipes work, how wires work to flow power. The way they’re trying to talk, it’s like trying to fight a fire with a garden hose rather than a fire hose. You need to bring the appropriate tool to the event. If you’re going to actually be building a new subdivision and you do not put a high enough kV line into that subdivision, you will not be able to charge all of the vehicles in that subdivision, plain and simple. So in order to do what this government is wanting to do, they will have to increase the costs. Somebody is going to have to pay for that.

I’m not saying that it can’t be done. It can all be done. Who is paying for it? There’s nothing in the budget here that says government is paying for it. There’s nothing saying there are going to be subsidies in here. I guess that means that it’s going to be going back to the homeowners and to the people who are actually going to be trying to rent places in the province.

I think I’ll end by saying that….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Well, I would like to go on, because I could continue to highlight the flaws in this bill that the Green member forced — it looks like he’s trying to take credit for this — this government to put forward.

One of the main things, again, where this is flawed is not in the intent. It is flawed in the execution. It is flawed because in order to achieve this, there is no plan that has been put into place. There has been no discussion about how this will work out in reality for people in rural British Columbia mostly, how this is going to affect not necessarily just the transportation habits but how this is going to affect the livelihoods of people in British Columbia and what they have right now.

Again, this was not thought through, I’d say, for 90 percent of the province out of the Lower Mainland where there are not the charging facilities, where we don’t have the ability to do this and it’s just not practical. I will say, though, that there are people like myself, and others, who could have a vehicle, if you’re not taking it long distance in parts of rural B.C. We’re starting to see that play out. That is taking place slowly. The market is trying to keep up, as we’ve heard. But consumer choice is a big part of that.

I think, as people in the province start to realize that this government is telling them how they have to spend their money, that’s going to be problematic. That completely goes away from the society that I know, where we allow choice, where we allow freedom, where we allow people to work hard for their money and then decide how they are going to spend it.

[5:25 p.m.]

I know a lot of these things are going to be brought up in committee stage. This is a hard bill for some of us to support because of the lack of clarity and the lack of information that has been put forward — the lack of answers to difficult, maybe, questions for government to answer because it’s out in rural B.C. But they’re still ones that they need to acknowledge.

I look forward, in committee stage, myself and others, to ask the minister, to see what kinds of answers we get. We would hope and assume that if they are going to stand up en masse and support this as a government, they, too, have asked these tough questions that we’re going to ask and they have answers to them and will share those answers with us and, more importantly, the people of British Columbia, because they deserve to know why they’re being pushed into something, rather than being allowed choice.

Thank you very much for the time.

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

Hon. M. Mungall: I want to thank all the members who have taken the time to speak to this bill. It’s a unique bill of its kind for British Columbia, and I’m really glad that it got a good debate in the House. Listening to many of the comments that have been made, I would like to just speak to some of them.

Most recently the member for Peace River South was saying that he’s concerned that this bill is effectively telling people how they need to be spending their money. I just can’t disagree more. That is not at all what this bill is about. We’re not telling anybody how to spend their money or what cars to choose. What we’re making sure of is that the cars that they are choosing to buy are going to be available to them. That’s the impetus for this bill.

British Columbians want zero-emission vehicles. We know this because we have the highest adoption rate in Canada. Four percent of new vehicles sold last year were zero-emission vehicles. The wait lists for zero-emission vehicles are quite lengthy. Many members have actually commented on that from both sides of the House. We know that British Columbians want this type of vehicle, but some of the challenges that exist in the marketplace to get these vehicles to British Columbians need to be addressed. That’s what this bill is doing by having a zero-emission vehicle mandate.

We’re not the only jurisdiction to have thought of this. In fact, many jurisdictions…. One-third of North America’s car market is covered by a zero-emission vehicle mandate, because so many jurisdictions are getting on board with this. In Canada, we have Quebec. We had Ontario. Unfortunately, that government decided to pull back on its mandate for ideological purposes. Ten states in the U.S. have zero-emission vehicle mandates. China has a zero-emission vehicle mandate. Many countries around the world have this type of mandate, because it is ensuring that there’s an availability of vehicles.

As the availability increases, prices begin to drop. That’s just basic supply-and-demand economics that you learn in any econ 101 program at a university or college anywhere in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia. That’s just basic economics. I know that some colleagues pointed out, for an example, that we saw that happen with the change in types of TVs. We saw that happen with VCRs to DVDs — all of that.

The reason why we have a mandate here for types of vehicles is because it’s more complex and impacts our roadways. It impacts the roadways that governments build and impacts the type of fuelling and the regulation over fuel, and so on and so forth. So we have this mandate. That’s why governments are getting on board with doing this mandate.

Some of the members were concerned that there wasn’t a plan to meet the increased electrical demand with zero-emission vehicles. And they were like: “Why isn’t this plan in this legislation? Where’s the plan? Where’s the plan?” Now, let me just take a moment to respond to that. The plan is found in the integrated resource plan of B.C. Hydro that goes to the B.C. Utilities Commission on a periodic basis. The next time will be in 2021.

[5:30 p.m.]

I would hope that the members opposite are familiar with that process. That particular plan is where we identified the load demand, projections for that load demand going into the future and how we’re going to meet that demand. That type of planning does not happen in legislation. That happens in the appropriate place — through B.C. Hydro’s integrated resource planning process.

I heard comments around battery recycling. Yes, that is a present-day issue. Are we going to be able to solve it? Of course we are, because the more vehicles come on line, the more opportunities there are going to be. For what? A free market to start to address these very issues. There are going to be opportunities for the free market to be able to get into the recycling business and have the actual economy of scale to do so.

Again, economics 101. I would think that the party of free enterprise would understand those basics. I hear their comments, and I hope that they understand that a lot of this has been thought out, keeping in mind that their friends, their proponents of the free market, are well involved.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

Now, I know that some people also commented on a concern around charging, having sufficient charging infrastructure, and wondering where the plan is for that. Well, that’s part of our CleanBC plan, which has been well supported throughout the province. Many people are speaking to how thoughtful and how well developed our CleanBC plan is, including rolling out infrastructure for charging stations. I spoke in my opening remarks that we already have over a thousand charging stations in B.C., and that is growing.

Just in the 20 months that we’ve been government, I’ve already seen the charging infrastructure in my rural area of British Columbia, the Kootenays, expand. Now you can actually drive from the Alberta border all the way to Tofino with enough charging stations along the way that you don’t have to worry about being caught out without the opportunity to charge your vehicle and get you to your ultimate destination. So the idea that we don’t have enough infrastructure I would not say is accurate, because it is growing.

Now, I won’t be able to comment on the etiquette that might happen at charging stations, as was a concern for the MLA for North Vancouver–Seymour. I don’t think it’s responsible for government to start legislating the etiquette that might occur at those charging stations, but again, as use of vehicles of this type increases, and as I see many members from the official opposition talked about their own experience with their own zero-emission vehicle, I imagine that perhaps people’s etiquette will improve, as it may in restaurants when somebody across the way might be on their cell phone really loud. I mean, I can’t explain that. It’s rude. And I can’t explain people being rude at charging stations.

Nevertheless…. I don’t think that that is the primary concern that is being put forward by anybody in this House, but I wanted to acknowledge that the charging stations…. We have a plan for rolling that out — that is happening very, very quickly — and that is why a lot of people are seeing that particular barrier to zero-emission vehicles being removed.

I heard some members talk about range anxiety, and I don’t want to dismiss that. That is a real concern that a lot of people do have. They want to be able to make sure they can get from point A to point B, and that’s exactly why we’ve included plug-in hybrids into our zero-emission vehicle mandate. Now, those plug-in hybrids will not have the exact same ZEV units as a full electrical, as I explained in my opening remarks, but we want to include those because, of course, for people in places like rural B.C., it makes more sense to have a plug-in hybrid at this time than to have a fully electric.

People have that range anxiety, not just in terms of distance travelled but the demand on a battery in a particular driving situation. I’ll give you the very situation that concerns a lot of people where I come from in the Kootenays: the Kootenay Pass, one of the highest passes in Canada, to get up and over that mountain. Going from Creston to Salmo, perhaps to Nelson, perhaps to Castlegar, maybe the other way, on the way to Cranbrook and so on, you want to make sure that you’re going to be able to get up and over that pass in any type of weather.

[5:35 p.m.]

People want to know: will the battery of an electric vehicle be able to take not only the demand of going up the hill on a beautiful sunny day — and I’ll tell you it does, because I’ve done that test drive — but will it take the demand of going up that hill in a blizzard? Because you never know when you might be caught out. Will the battery be able to do that? People have those legitimate concerns, and that’s exactly why those concerns need to be addressed as more people start to adopt these vehicles.

The member for Abbotsford-Mission talked about his concern around ZEV credits and that they might be too strenuous and, perhaps, too difficult for manufacturers to understand. I just want to take this moment to say I have every faith and confidence in the intelligence of vehicle manufacturers, which are large, large companies that hire very smart people with very, very strong brain power.

They have a very strong brain trust to be able to address and understand all of the way in which we are going to be able to calculate ZEV units, not just because they’re very smart but because our credit system is similar to every other jurisdiction. So this is not new for them. In fact, this is something that they’re already working with in other jurisdictions. The fact that British Columbia has this same system — we might be calling it ZEV units instead of credits or whatever the name might be someplace else — is something that they are going to be very familiar with.

I am very proud of this legislation. I feel that, as I said in my opening remarks, it brings the cars of the future to today. It might not be the cars that were promised to us by Doc Brown and Marty McFly in Back to the Future — of course, as a science fiction fan, I have to pay tribute to that movie — but they are the cars that are part of our reality. We’re bringing them to people so that we can start getting on board with them, not just because we want to drive them, not just because they’re peppy vehicles, not just because they have lower maintenance costs associated with them.

We’re making them more affordable with our rebate programs as well. A lot of people talked about affordability. We’re addressing that as well.

We all have a duty, not just as legislators, not just as company heads, but every single one of us in this society, in this world, has a duty to do our part to reduce our impact on climate change. Some of us compost in our backyards. Some of us reduce the plastic packaging that we use. Some of us wash those plastic bags over and over and over again, bring them back to the grocery store, fill up our veggies in them, wash them again, and so on. We all have a part to play.

One of the parts that we can play as British Columbians is to move to a zero-emission vehicle, and British Columbians want do that. We’re making it easier for them. That’s part of building a better B.C. That’s part of our CleanBC plan.

I’m very proud of this legislation. I look forward to answering questions in the committee stage, and I look forward to seeing all members of this House support this legislation.

I move second reading of Bill 28.

[5:40 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Members, the question is second reading of Bill 28.

Second reading of Bill 28 approved on the following division:

Point of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)

D. Routley: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to rise to reserve my right to raise a matter of personal privilege.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — ZERO-EMISSION
VEHICLES ACT

(continued)

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

Bill 28, Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

[Interruption.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: The translation was that Bill 23, the Land Owner Transparency Act, be called.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

BILL 23 — LAND OWNER
TRANSPARENCY ACT

Hon. C. James: I move that Bill 23 be read a second time now.

This act, the Land Owner Transparency Act, addresses the government’s commitment, in our 30-point plan for housing affordability, to end the hidden ownership of land.

[5:50 p.m.]

For years, people have been able to obscure property ownership in a variety of ways — using shell companies, using trusts, using partnerships — which leaves a loophole and makes it easier to launder money and to evade taxes.

Transparency International Canada, which has done some extraordinary work around raising these issues across our country, has put together some very good data and very good reports, raising concerns. According to their last report in 2016, nearly one-third of the 100 most valuable residential properties in greater Vancouver were owned by shell companies. That statistic alone raises all kinds of concerns.

We’ve seen other reports, as well, and data leaks that have come out, things like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers. They’ve also pointed to examples of Canada’s reputation as an attractive place for setting up anonymous companies and hiding wealth. That’s certainly not something that British Columbia should be known for. It’s certainly not something, when you talk to the public in our province, that they believe is right — that people should be able to avoid taxes, avoid the opportunity to pay their fair share as everyone else is doing in our province, or use a loophole to be able to launder money in British Columbia.

This act will identify the hidden owners of land, and it’ll require transparency around information from corporations, from trustees and from partnerships in three situations. One would be on transfer of legal title. The second would be on change of beneficial owner or interest holder, even when that change doesn’t trigger a transfer of legal title, and for existing owners. The purpose of this is to ensure that we have a clear picture of true land-ownership in British Columbia.

High-level information that’s going to be contained in the transparency reports is also going to be publicly accessible, very similar to the disclosure requirements that we have for individual property owners. I think most British Columbians know that if you buy property, you register on the land titles. Your basic information is there. This will be the same requirement now for corporations and trusts and partnerships.

More detailed information is going to be available to law enforcement, to tax authorities and to certain regulators, within parameters. This information is going to help those authorities crack down on tax evasion and identify tax fraud and money laundering.

The public registry will have built-in protections around privacy. So it will omit information for any individuals who are under the age of 19, for example, as well as for those who are legally incapable of managing their financial affairs. Protections are also going to be provided for vulnerable people. The example that often comes up is people fleeing domestic abuse. There are legitimate reasons to have that information protected and eliminated from the registry. The opportunity in this registry, as you will see through the act, provides the opportunity for people to come forward and give that information and not have that information included on the registry.

I think it’s important to note that this registry is part of a package of work that we have done as government to be able to address the issue of transparency when it comes to real estate and when it comes to legal procedures as well.

This legislation also will ensure that there are considerable penalties and offences to make sure that people are complying with this regulation and with these requirements. We take this very seriously. Violations of this act will result and could result in administrative penalties of up to $50,000 or 5 percent of the assessed property value, whichever is greater. Offence fines can be up to $100,000 or 15 percent of the assessed property value. We want to ensure that people follow the law, that they pay their fair share and that we close the loopholes around money laundering.

I’m really proud to say that with this registry, B.C. is going to be the first province in Canada to make all land-ownership transparent. We followed the best practice in other jurisdictions across the world to make sure that we have a very comprehensive approach to this. We certainly hope that other provinces will join us. I think it’s very clear that people who are involved in illegal activities don’t look at the borders of provinces. They don’t look and say: “We’ve got to stop here.” This activity can take place anywhere.

[5:55 p.m.]

Certainly, from our perspective, the ideal would be that this would happen across the country, that we wouldn’t provide the opportunity for money launderers anywhere in Canada. I think, again, that we will be able to share the work we’ve done with other provinces and with other governments to take a look. I think everyone will have their own unique plan that fits their province. I think we’re all very different across our country, but I think there are some commonalities around transparency and around closing loopholes that I would certainly hope others will be taking a look at.

As I mentioned, this bill is just one step that our government is taking to address the housing crisis and to address transparency, along with some of our other actions like the condo and strata assignment integrity register, where we now are requiring people to register condo flipping, as it’s often known out there. We are now requiring registration of that flipping. Often you would see a condominium, for example, flipped to four, five, six different owners before the building was actually completed or before the final sale got to the end. Now you actually will be required to register who has owned each of those flips to ensure, again, that people are paying their fair share of taxes, which we think people expect in British Columbia.

We’re delivering on our commitments in our 30-point plan to both improve supply and to address demand, and to increase transparency and fairness — again, critical work from our perspective, and preventative work. There is no question that leaving loopholes open provides that opportunity for criminals, for people who want to use illegal activity. This work is not only ensuring that we’re able to follow up on any criminal activities that may be happening, but it’s also a preventative piece. It’s also making sure that we’re closing those loopholes, that people won’t be able to hide behind numbered companies.

People won’t be able to hide behind a register and think that they’re not going to be publicly identified. If you buy land in British Columbia, whether you’re in a partnership, whether you’re in a trust, whether you’re a corporation, you will be identified on the registry, just as other British Columbians are identified on the registry.

It’s very clear. As I talked about this work and as we’ve done the work through the 30-point plan, the Minister of Housing and myself, we’ve heard from British Columbians. We’ve heard from experts. We’ve heard from municipalities that they want government to end hidden ownership.

This is a very well-supported piece of legislation. We put it out for consultation. We actually provided an opportunity for people to be able to give their feedback. I’m very proud that with this legislation, we are doing just that.

T. Redies: I’m pleased to rise today to speak to Bill 23, the Land Owner Transparency Act.

As the official opposition, we welcome real measures aimed at halting tax evasion and tackling money laundering in British Columbia. And I can say, as a 25-year banker who spent a lot of my time trying to figure out, to make sure that our institutions were not subject to money laundering, that I appreciate the fact that the Finance Minister has brought this legislation forward.

It’s critical that we, as legislators, come together to ensure that we provide police and public officials with the tools they need to track down and tackle lawbreakers. This should not be a partisan issue. In particular, we need dedicated police investigators armed with the appropriate tools, information and facts to bring the perpetrators of tax evasion and money laundering to prosecution.

What is critical is information, data, the facts. The world of tax evasion and money laundering relies on a lack of information to circumvent the law. It hides in the shadows to process the proceeds of crime. And it keeps secrets in order to avoid paying what is due. This act will shine a light on the facts around land-ownership in B.C., as the legislation we’re debating today aims to put an end to anonymous land-ownership.

If the bill passes, the identity of the real owners of real property will no longer be able to be shielded by numbered companies, offshore and domestic trusts, and corporations. This will be accomplished by requiring extra information when title is registered in the name of a corporation, a trust or a partnership. And if such registration takes place, a declaration will be required to name the beneficial owner behind the entity.

As well, each individual interest owner will have to provide detailed information, including date of birth, social insurance number, individual tax numbers and whether or not the individual is resident in Canada. To cap all of this, the list of beneficial owners will become available and searchable on line, as the minister said, in the same way the public can currently access the land title registry. This, for the most part, is very welcome transparency.

[6:00 p.m.]

The legislation is also providing the police and public officials with tools to tackle tax evasion and money laundering. The act provides sweeping powers for inspections by enforcement officers, ministry officials, tax authorities, law enforcement and regulators. It also gives them the ability to share information with agencies outside of Canada if there is an existing arrangement, written agreement, treaty or a law of B.C. or Canada to enable that cooperation.

In general, I think, on this side of the House, we’re positive with respect to this legislation. But while we welcome the tools and transparencies, we do have some concerns based on what we’ve seen from this government in other areas. For that reason, our primary concern will be to ensure the legislation is being used purely for what it articulates, to address tax evasion and money laundering.

The government does talk a lot about transparency, yet over and over what we’ve seen is that they’re not always transparent about their ultimate intentions.

They crafted the so-called speculation tax that taxes British Columbians, all the while saying that British Columbians wouldn’t have to pay. The Premier and the Finance Minister both said, at first, that the people who paid income tax in British Columbia wouldn’t be hurt by the speculation tax, but we know now that that is not the case. British Columbians who’ve worked hard and saved their money and invested in second properties will have to pay the speculation tax unless they can rent out their properties.

To add insult to injury, while these British Columbians who saved and invested for their futures and families are stuck paying the tax, actual speculators are not. Moreover, the government has said the focus of the tax was on the so-called satellite families, immigrants living here but not paying their fair share of taxes. However, we now know that the tax is capturing seniors who’ve put their children on title to help manage estate issues at the time of their passing — if their child lives and pays tax outside of Canada.

We also know now that the speculation tax is capturing Canadians who were born in this country and have paid tax here all their lives but, because they married a foreigner who’s still working in their home country, are now classified as a satellite family. So if their spouse makes more than 50 percent of the family income and is paying tax outside Canada, these Canadians are now facing a 2 percent speculation tax, even though they are Canadian born, resident here all their lives and have paid tax only here in this country.

Interjection.

T. Redies: I will get to that, Member.

These are the unintended consequences of blunt taxation. The government also introduced an additional school tax that doesn’t pay for education. It just goes into general revenues, and this tax is raising a lot of money from British Columbians.

Our concern here, again, is that this particular legislation is used for the purposes that the minister’s articulating, that it’s about tax evasion and money laundering and not a fishing exercise to more broadly tax corporations and find additional tax revenues.

The government says that they’re, for example, eliminating the MSP. But in fact, all they’ve done is actually created a shell game, with businesses now paying not just the balance of the tax to be eliminated but an additional $500 million a year. Again, this was something that was not anticipated. Our concern on this side of the House remains, again, that this legislation does not result in additional taxation.

We have seen a litany of stated intentions, but the actual realities of how some of these things have played out have not been what turned out to be the reality. That’s why we’re going to be raising a number of questions at committee stage to ensure that there is a balance between the tools to fight crime and the rights of citizens.

To start, it’s critical that this legislation, like all legislation that passes through the chamber, respects British Columbians’ right to privacy and civil liberties. The legislation also raises, rather than answers, serious questions about exactly how and when information is collected and how it’s going to be shared. That is especially important when it comes to the sharing of information with agencies outside of Canada.

As well, it’s critical that British Columbians are assured that all personal information collected under this bill, much of it incredibly sensitive, is protected from misuse and that access is limited to the authorities specified.

As we’ve seen with the new speculation tax registry, the government is collecting the personal information of 1.6 million people in British Columbia using a third-party software solution of a company headquartered in the U.S., which itself has been the subject of hacking of the personal information of 1.7 million people in Michigan.

[6:05 p.m.]

I’ve received many calls from people who are downright angry that they have to provide their social insurance number on this registry. I suspect a large number of the 96,000 people who did not register for the speculation tax exemption by March 31 actually didn’t do that because they didn’t want to provide their social insurance number.

A much broader concern we have goes back to Budget 2018 and how the government has suggested that there may be new tax models or taxes spawned by this registry. While it will be used to identify and tax people who have second homes and satellite families, I think we all have reason to be fearful that this speculation tax registry has a much broader ultimate goal.

Again, to say that we’re a bit skeptical that this new Land Owner Transparency Act will not be used for purposes other than what the government is stating would be an understatement. I may not be from Missouri, but I don’t have to be after two years of watching this government in action.

The government promised that the speculation tax also would target speculation and that British Columbians wouldn’t be paying for it. In the end, of course, it’s British Columbians who’ve worked hard and who’ve saved for their retirements that have become the targets of the tax.

The fear we have is that this new registry could be used to extract additional tax from individuals and companies. It has the potential to be a taxation temptation that this government will find hard to resist. After all, when it comes to taxes, this is a government that seems to have no compunction about taxing British Columbians more and more. The reality is that taxes under this government are increasing about $11 billion since they took office. Somebody’s paying for that. Again, this government has not, I’m sure, completed all the things that it wants to do. So I would not be surprised to see additional taxes coming forward.

At the end of the day, again, our concern with these registries, whether it’s the speculation tax or the landowner transparency tax, is that they are used for the purpose that the ministry has indicated and not for looking for more ways to identify how to tax British Columbians beyond the original stated intention. While this side of the House supports the increased transparency with Bill 23, we’re still concerned that the use of the bill will be limited to stopping tax evasion and money laundering. With taxation revenue going up $11  billion under this government, we think British Columbians are already taxed too much.

In summary, while we agree that tax evasion and money laundering must be stamped out, we’ll want assurances from this government that this doesn’t become a tax fishing exercise for this government’s appetite to tax British Columbians in new and less transparent ways. We look forward to the committee stage of this bill.

A. Weaver: That took me a little bit by surprise, as it was so succinct, the previous speaker. She was so timely in her words that she was speaking in, I think, support — caveated support — to this bill, but I’m not quite sure. I was indeed listening.

It gives me pleasure to rise and stand in very strong — let me be very clear — unequivocal support of Bill 23, Land Owner Transparency Act, at second reading. This is something that is long overdue in British Columbia. I am absolutely delighted that the government is stepping up to create the important registry required to ensure that partnerships, trusts and corporations that own property in British Columbia have beneficial ownership registered in such a registry.

This legislation will require owners of such corporations and partnerships and trusts to file a transparency declaration when there is a transfer of legal title of property or change in beneficial ownership. Pre-existing beneficial owners will also be required to file a declaration. It doesn’t apply to individual owners. The ownership information of individuals is already publicly available through the land title office, as we know. You and I have to do that whenever we buy a property.

Therein lies the problem. This is an issue that I’ve been raising in this Legislature since not long after I got elected in 2013, within the context of what was going on, when I asked question after question after question to the then B.C. Liberal government about what they were going to do to close the so-called bare trust loophole, which is continuing to this day to be used to avoid paying property transfer tax and to avoid disclosure of who is buying or is not buying property in British Columbia.

This is a first step there. This is a requirement that beneficial ownership now be declared in the registry.

[6:10 p.m.]

Let me give you an example about why that’s important. Let’s suppose I want to speculate in the Victoria or Vancouver real estate market. I assign somebody to go and buy a property, and to buy that property and put it in a trust. I’m going to put it in a trust, and there may be a corporation that owns that trust. The beneficial owners of that corporation may be some people who were there initially to buy that property and develop the corporation. Those individuals have no need to disclose the owners of the shares of the corporation that owns the trust.

The trust is on title. The trust is all that’s on title. No matter how many times those shares in that corporation change, no matter how many times not only the beneficial but majority ownership of that corporation changes, there is no change of the registered owner at the land title office. It is the trust, the bare trust.

We had examples of properties being flipped, typically high-end properties being flipped from owner to owner to owner, not through the sale and change of land title but through the change of the transfer of the shares of the corporations that owned the trust that owned the land title. And all the time avoiding property transfer tax, because you only pay property transfer tax on transfer of title, not on transfer of beneficial ownership, which is an area that I hope government, at some point in the future, will move towards closing.

I understand the rationale they’re bringing forward now. They want to gather the data first to see how the scale of the problem is in order to deal with the problem, rather than going straight to deal with the problem. I have some sympathy from that argument. It’s taken some time to get here, but we are here, and I’m absolutely delighted that we are here. The registry that will be there will be publicly searchable, but with some information only accessible by government and law enforcement for reasons that were articulated by the minister in her opening remarks.

The bill also allows individuals to apply to omit information if their health or, as the minister alluded to, safety is at risk from public disclosure. You might imagine, for example, the issue of someone fleeing domestic violence or someone in the witness protection program. It would be kind of odd to have the beneficial ownership of a property of someone in witness protection to actually be in their original name. So there are reasons that we have that.

Coming back to the background for this article, the confidence and supply agreement the B.C. NDP and the B.C. Greens signed back in 2017 states as follows that we will collectively focus on shared values to “make housing more affordable by increasing supply of affordable housing and take action to deal with the speculation and fraud that is driving up prices.” The B.C. Green caucus has been calling for this for I don’t know how long. We know we’ve been calling on government to eliminate the ability of buyers to hide their identities through shell companies, numbered companies and trusts.

We’ve been calling on them to improve transparency in the land title registry — not only this government but the previous government before that — and to improve the land title and corporate registry by requiring the disclosure of beneficial ownership. Disclosure is critical to actually dealing with any issues that may be out there. We also have been, for quite some time, pleading with government to make existing and new data more regularly and freely accessible to researchers and the public. We hope that as the registry is created, as was promised in Budget 2018, that this will be the case.

This registry is, without a doubt, a significant step forward for transparency that ends hidden ownership. As we know, hidden ownership is intricately tied into speculation tax avoidance and money laundering in our housing market. One of the issues raised by the minister and, prior to that, by the member from Point Grey when in opposition, was the notion of shadow flipping, a notion where I put in a contract to purchase a property, but it’s me or my assignee who purchases that property.

With the member for West Vancouver–Capilano…. I may buy his property. I may put an offer on his property with “the MLA for Oak Bay–Gordon Head or assignee.” The member for West Vancouver–Capilano might say: “That’s a great offer. I want it.” But my “or assignee” clause is such that I could actually start assigning this contract to whoever I want, who can reassign it to whoever they want, who can reassign it to whoever they want, and they can jack up the price as we go along.

Now, steps have been taken. I think it was the previous government, or was it this government? I can’t remember. This place becomes a blur after a while. But certainly, we now have legislation that requires that any profits realized after the shadow flipping goes on actually go back to the original seller of the property.

[6:15 p.m.]

The member for West Vancouver–Capilano would not lose out if I were shadow flipping, but nevertheless, the transfer of the properties in between those stages would not be required, even today, to be disclosed. This registry is critical. All stages of the process — transparency.

The use of shell companies, as I mentioned, and trust and proxy ownership structures has obscured who has owned property in this province, undermining efforts at gathering and analyzing and allowing for an analysis of large-scale tax evasion and the data used to support this.

A report by Transparency International found that governments can’t identify the owners — now get this — of almost half of Metro Vancouver’s most expensive homes. Government, whether it be Metro Vancouver or the city of Vancouver or the province or the federal government — no government knows who…. More than half of the high-end properties in Vancouver — we don’t know who owns them.

What a recipe for abuse. It’s just unbelievable this has been allowed to go on for so long. It’s absolutely unacceptable. This bill will close that. It will ensure that transparency is there.

We know that wise accountants, who know full well about the existence of the bare trust loophole, have been advising clients to avoid paying property transfer tax by buying their property in a trust. If I, for example, were to buy a property in a trust…. Any house that I wanted to live in I buy in a trust instead of me. As soon as I buy it in a trust…. The very first time it happens, you will pay property transfer tax. But every single time that house is traded from thereon in, you will never pay any property transfer tax as you transfer the shares of the corporation that owns the trust from one to another.

This is one of the reasons why the higher-end homes, so many of them, have been put into trusts, because when they flip, there is no property transfer tax, and the property transfer tax can be expensive.

There are also means and ways of hiding foreign ownership behind…. Some of that was indeed closed, again, by the previous government after much pestering.

We know that some of the money laundering has taken advantage of this, too, in Metro Vancouver. We still await Peter German’s report. We still await at least another chapter. We got one chapter. There’s got to be more coming. It’s clear…. We continue to push, and I will be doing so in the weeks ahead, for a public inquiry. We need a full-scale public inquiry into money laundering in this province. It is inexcusable that we have had as much as $5 billion laundered through Vancouver’s real estate market since 2012 distorting housing prices, particularly in the high-end market.

I forget how many thousand homes are empty in the member’s riding, the member for West Vancouver–Capilano. He met with the council and mayor of West Vancouver–​Capilano, who were at odds, not knowing what to do to actually go after the owners of these vacant homes that they simply are leaving there, not paying the social cost that has been historically developing by these homes being left vacant and distorting a market that would otherwise not be where it is, if it weren’t for some of the laundering and nefarious activities going on.

We know, for example, that just in 2016, over $1 billion of Vancouver’s property transactions have links to Chinese organized crime. Over $1 billion in one year alone had links to Chinese organized crime. That’s not counting any Russian organized crime, any Canadian organized crime, any American organized crime — just one. It’s rampant in Vancouver, and we’ve sadly got a reputation internationally for being the home to the so-called Vancouver model of money laundering. Not a nice thing to be known for.

The president of the Law Society of B.C. stated: “This groundbreaking move by the B.C. government will increase the transparency of land ownership in B.C. and make it more difficult to use such arrangements for tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. British Columbians will benefit from a fairer and more transparent real estate market.” Those are pretty powerful words of support from the president of the Law Society of British Columbia. I think that’s a strong, independent endorsement of this legislation.

[6:20 p.m.]

Transparency International has applauded the establishment of this registry — another pretty strong endorsement from an international organization. A former director of FINTRAC has said that the province is now leading the country with this legislation. I can tell you, hon. Speaker, that if there is one thing I want British Columbia to be, it is a leader. We’re seeing, finally, leadership and transparency in the real estate sector in our province, and for that, the minister deserves a great deal of credit. I thank her, and I thank this government for bringing this forward.

If ever there was a moment that we have second-guessed our decision in 2017 as to whether or not we support this side or that side in terms of a minority government, let me tell you that legislation like this makes us not question for a second that we did the right thing. The Liberals opposite had many, many years to deal with this, but they ignored it.

I can’t remember how many times I stood up in this Legislature and posed questions to the then Finance Minister, asking him when he would take steps to deal with the transparency and beneficial ownership and close the bare trust loophole that was being used to avoid paying property transfer tax and also being used to launder money. The public record of this is available on my blog site. You can see it there, going back years.

The answers I was getting were platitudes, because, to be honest, the members opposite simply had no idea. They had been in government too long. They’d lost ability to determine what the issues were, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this issue is before us.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Thank you to the member for Prince George–​Valemount for calling for relevance. Thank you. The reason why I called it to your colleague…. It’s because every time anybody in our caucus stands up, you have the audacity to stand up and call relevance, yet you’re not willing to accept others calling relevance to the other side. So it’s part of the hypocrisy that we see. I enjoy the conversation, and I will make this relevant, hon. Speaker, before you must tell me to make this relevant.

Coming back to the bare trust loophole, as I noted, I’ve been calling on government for years to deal with this, and frankly, this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully government will move forward to closing this. I know that the market had discounted this, both the real estate market and the accounting market. They had both already discounted that government was going to close the bare trust loophole. They didn’t, but now they’re collecting data, and that probably will lead it up to move forward.

Looking at this, we also need to expand this progressive approach to transparency to the corporate registry. Right now, the corporate registry is not searchable by director name. As it’s hampering transparency and accountability, hopefully we’ll be able to see this transparency that we’re seeing here with respect to land-ownership move into the corporate registry as well. The Attorney General has called this issue a “deliberate or grossly negligent decision that limits transparency, a benefit to firms and individuals who wish to evade accountability.” I urge government, as well, to move beyond this and to change the corporate registry to fix this problem, in line with the spirit of the legislation before us today.

In conclusion, this legislation is an important step forward for opening up hidden ownership in real estate in British Columbia, and it’s timely. I’m very pleased the government has done it. It’s just a shame that we’ve gotten to the position we’re in after so many years of neglect in this sector. We need to go further and crack down on tax avoidance, using the ownership structures that the data will be collected. I’m looking forward to government stepping in to close that bare trust loophole, which many use to avoid paying property tax. I look forward to seeing information in the registry and will continue to push for action on this file and get to the root of the housing crisis.

With that, I do note the time. I would like to move adjournment of the debate and reserve my right to continue at the next sitting of the House after today.

[6:25 p.m.]

A. Weaver moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

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

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. C. James moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:26 p.m.