Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued debate on the budget.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Budget Debate

(continued)

J. Thornthwaite: I’m carrying on with my remarks that I started last week. I know I only got a little bit started. I did do all my thank-yous and an introduction. So I’m going to carry on right from there.

As everybody knows, I am the opposition critic for Mental Health and Addictions, so I’m going to focus the initiating part of my remarks right now on the budget and how that pertains to mental health and addictions. I’ll preface my remarks, firstly, by saying that I’ve always been a proponent, a supporter, of a separate ministry for mental health and addictions. Certainly, the Select Standing Committee for Children and Youth, the committee that I chaired for four years in my role in government….

I absolutely agree that we need to have a laser focus on mental health and addictions. Having an individual responsible for just that is very important. But I’m very, very disappointed on the lack of focus in this budget on mental health and addictions. In fact, I don’t think the Minister of Finance, when she was talking about the budget, even mentioned the words “opioid crisis.” I think that’s a real concern, because we know that the opioid crisis is still a crisis.

We had a report released earlier on today that said that the number of deaths had been reduced. That’s good.

[2:40 p.m.]

Then carrying on with the measures that our government brought forward, starting in 2016, with recognizing that it was a public health emergency and all of the extra resources that went to helping prevent deaths — the increased naloxone kits, overdose prevention kits and everything that we really pushed on with our Minister of Health at the time. It’s good that this ministry and this government are continuing on.

What we’re not seeing is any kind of decrease in actual overdoses. This is the key. The deaths have gone down because of our positive measures with harm reduction. But the actual numbers of overdoses have not gone down. What that means is that we are not dealing with the root of the addiction. We are not helping people recover from addiction. We’re not addressing their pain, their trauma, their adverse childhood experiences. We’re not dealing with the root of the addiction.

The other thing that’s not happening is that the gaps are still there. One of the whole ideas of having a separate minister and a separate ministry was to have one-stop-shop services and to have seamless care for all levels of treatment of addictions. That’s not happening. I know it’s not happening because I have people coming to me talking to me about the gaps.

I had a mother that was very, very frustrated that there was a requirement for her to take her son to a drug-and-alcohol drop-in centre before she could even get on a waiting list for a recovery facility. When she would go and take her son to the drug-and-alcohol centres, the addicts were being approached by the dealers at those exact places. So they were not a safe place for somebody that wanted to get treatment. It was not a safe place for them, and her son was at risk.

I had to fight for her to get her son immediately into a treatment and recovery facility, which I did. But the gaps are there for everybody else. Of course, if I hadn’t been alerted to this issue, who knows what would have happened to that young man.

We have the four pillars. One that we’re doing quite well with is the harm reduction. But certainly, the treatment is not going so well. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis from this government on recovery. When I looked at the service plan for ’20-21 to ’22-23, I was hoping that there would be something mentioned in here. It does say: “Deliver an immediate, escalated response to the overdose public health emergency that keeps people safe and improves the health and well-being of British Columbians.”

I’m just saying that with regards to that goal No. 1 of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, I would give this minister pretty much a C-minus or a D.

Carrying on, the other thing that has not been addressed with regards to the number of overdoses is that we’ve also seen that the calls for 911 for accessing help when somebody overdoses have skyrocketed. We’ve got more people overdosing. And yes, the people that are overdosing are not dying as much because we’ve got these first responders that are there at a drop of a hat. But the problem is that the overdose calls are not being reduced.

Certainly, we could make a little mention — I’d like to put in a mention — in support of our first responders that are working so hard and sometimes reviving the same individual two or three times a day, which, of course, is obviously not good for the patient but certainly not good for these poor first responders who, themselves, are suffering from PTSD because it’s really, really rough on their jobs and in their lives.

Again, I’m thinking that I’d like to give kudos for the report that came in earlier today. But again, I’m disappointed because we’re not really getting to the root of the addiction. We’re not getting to the root causes, the pain, the trauma, etc.

[2:45 p.m.]

The other thing that I would like to kind of throw out there with regards to mental health and addictions is: how do we evaluate the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions?

I have mentioned before that there has been a report that was published a couple years ago from the B.C. Centre on Substance Use on recovery. They actually consider that one of the definitions of the success of a plan would be not just the amount of people getting back into recovery — in other words, improving the access to recovery beds, which we do not have in this province — but also measures like quality of life, getting help for their mental health, reconnecting with family, reducing criminal offences and building social responsibility.

These are the types of measures that the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, in their report Strategies to Strengthen Recovery in British Columbia: The Path Forward, indicated would be a good way of looking at the success of the ministry or the success of any kind of plan that is designed to help people with their mental health and addictions. Again, I don’t see any movement from this ministry in helping people into recovery.

We’ve seen that there have been positive results in, for instance, the Nanaimo Correctional Centre, which actually does have a mini therapeutic community within the corrections facility. They’ve actually seen positive results within that small community. So we know not just from the report that the B.C. Centre on Substance Use published but also in our own province the positive results that are coming with getting folks directly into recovery and, in this particular case, helping them in a therapeutic community.

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about other therapeutic communities in other jurisdictions, either in Europe as well as in the United States and other countries. Therapeutic communities have been evidence-based. They have the evidence to say that getting people into recovery, seamless care into treatment, really does help not only to keep these people out of the criminal justice system but helps them to live good, productive lives back with their families, etc.

The other thing that nobody seems to be talking about, which is also very, very important, is that the population that is being saved — in other words, the people that are overdosing and then getting saved — but also the 85 percent of the people that are using alone in their homes, which we’re also not getting to, that are overdosing…. The issue that nobody seems to be talking about is the level of brain damage that these unfortunate individuals do suffer from and the health implications for young people that have suffered from brain damage because of an overdose but have not died.

We are looking after these unfortunate people. Their families are looking after these unfortunate people. There is no recognition that the costs in the health care system to help them is not being addressed by this government. In fact, nobody is actually talking about it. That’s going to be a huge burden on the Ministry of Health with regard to health care services, both in the acute care and also in the extended care environment.

Then the last thing — second to last, actually — that I wanted to mention with regards to this topic is that addiction affects everybody. Addiction affects all walks of life. It’s not limited to a sociodemographic. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, and it actually often doesn’t matter whether or not you grew up with a very stable family. Addiction affects everybody.

That’s why the idea of having a separate Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions is a good one. What we need to have is the entire focus of government focused on helping individuals and families to get help for their addiction, and I don’t see that cross-ministerial emphasis at all.

I’m sure the minister goes up to her cabinet colleagues and goes up to Treasury Board or whatever begging for more money. But the fact is that I don’t see that commitment coming by what the government has laid out in their budget. So again, I’m disappointed in that.

[2:50 p.m.]

It’s not just me saying that. I think that, certainly, the new mayor of Vancouver has already commented. He did a statement on the budget and said that on the overdose crisis…. There is no mention of new support for opioids. So he’s basically negating the benefit of this ministry in actually putting a dent on the overdose crisis.

I’d also like to talk a little bit about the final coroner’s report on that young man, 16-year-old Elliot Eurchuk. There was a report that just came out. They basically highlighted the problems that the family and poor Elliot had getting help before he tragically died. Their recommendations, in amongst other things, said that the jury recommended better detection, treatment and transition plans for youth struggling with mental health and substance use in schools. The lack of long-term substance abuse treatment for youth and a total absence on Vancouver Island was also flagged.

I’d like to just kind of talk about that because I have brought forward now, twice, the safe care act. What the safe care act would do…. I have lots of support from lots of parents and people in the province that would like this. What this would have done is helped people like Elliot if they were admitted. What happened with Elliot…. He was admitted and then let go and then discharged, even though they knew that he was in for an overdose. But they discharged him. He went right back, and then he died.

This is tragic, and it could have been prevented because the safe care act would have allowed us to keep that young child safe, not discharged, and, for a short amount of time, be able to stabilize them and then get them the help that they needed. Once again, I will put another plea to this government to at least bring forward the safe care act and at least let us debate it. Of course, they’ve ignored us, now, for two years on that. People and children and youth are still dying.

Just going on a little bit further on the opioid crisis. It’s not just happening in Vancouver. I’m just reading a headline here: “People think it’s bad. It’s ten times worse: residents, businesses want decampment at Oppenheimer Park.” I drove by there on my way to the helijet yesterday. It’s still there, and businesses are still suffering because of crime around not just there, but around tent cities that are popping up all over the province.

“Prince George’s top cop says city needs help from province to address social issues downtown.” “How the Opioid Crisis is Hammering B.C.’s North.” “‘Really fed up’: businesses abandoning downtown in B.C. Interior cities due to housing, opioid crisis.”

One of the journalists that I admire, Daphne Bramham: “Time for a serious debate about how to deal with the opioid crisis.” Then I heard this week…. An article was published in Postmedia, I think in Calgary, is that Alberta, because of the investments that they’ve put into recovery, has now become or is getting to become a leader in treating addictions. That goes really flat in the face of this ministry, because that government has done more with regards to recovery than this government has for the amount of time that they’ve been in government, which is very tragic, I would say.

I’ve visited many cities around the province. Oppenheimer Park is only one that the media tends to concentrate on. But I’ve seen this in Nanaimo, Parksville, Terrace, Victoria, Maple Ridge, Grand Forks, Surrey, Kelowna and Penticton. Take your pick. I have been there. The sad part is that we know the solutions: access to immediate and seamless detox treatment and recovery options, and a government that is committed to delivering those services in seamless care without the gaps. No, that is not happening now.

Then, just before I leave this topic, I want to talk about what happens to the first responders. I already mentioned that first responders are suffering because of PTSD because of the opioid crisis. I brought forward a private member’s bill last year on trying to space out the distribution of welfare cheques. I got tremendous support on that from first responders.

[2:55 p.m.]

To date, I have seen nothing from this government, even considering that perhaps, maybe, it would be better and have less effect on first responders if these cheques were distributed more equally throughout the month as opposed to one day. It’s been evident — quite frankly, everybody has documented it — that the overdoses increase around that welfare cheque day.

The other thing about…. As I said, I’ve been on a few ride-alongs with police, and they spend an exorbitant amount of time on mental health and addictions. If somebody has to be admitted to hospital, then those police or first responders are spending a lot of time in hospital waiting for them to be seen by a doctor. That comes out of their budget. Of course, they would be wanting a lot more services, at least in the hospital, in the overdose triage.

In St. Paul’s, where I went, they do an excellent job. But I think, for the time that I was there, which was early in the evening, there were cohorts of six police that were there waiting with their patients to see doctors. They sometimes spend hours and hours of time in hospitals waiting for their patients to be seen by a doctor.

Again, these are the things that are not being fixed by this government. These are the things that first responders and doctors, obviously, have brought forward to me. So I stick with — my way of saying — my score to be about a C-minus or a D on this.

It’s not just the opioid crisis or mental health and addictions that people are upset about with regards to this budget. There was a report out last week that said that B.C.’s provincial budget fails to give adequate funding to victims of crime, youth at risk of homelessness, people fleeing domestic and sexual violence and women who need legal aid. This is from community groups.

I’m going to quote Karin Kirkpatrick, who’s the CEO of Family Services of Greater Vancouver: “The wait time is unacceptably long for victims of support. The organization has 18 support workers for victims embedded in police and RCMP departments across Metro Vancouver, helping those who suffer assault, exploitation and trafficking.” And they can’t access the supports. But Kirkpatrick says that there aren’t enough workers, and there’s not enough stable funding to handle all the cases.

We know that the report that was just announced last week from the Representative for Children and Youth, who had gotten youth to devise a government plan…. Certainly, they wanted a distinct plan to end youth homelessness and start implementing it by the end of the year. I didn’t see any budget numbers that would go to support the homeless youth that we have in all of our cities.

Moving on to other topics, my colleague the member for Chilliwack-Kent has done an excellent job of getting down to the nitty-gritty of the number of child care spots. He indicates that the NDP have abandoned their plan to implement universal $10-a-day child care for all parents who need it. This was one of their premium promises in the 2017 election. Gone. They backed away from universal child care, saying subsidies for child care will be based on need rather than need or want, as the NDP promised in their 2017 platform.

The $10-a-day daycare is still a temporary pilot program with 2,500 child care spaces. That’s just 2 percent of 119,000 total spaces. Temporary means that it ends. Parents in North Van that I know, who have approached me, are worried about when that ends. So the $10-a-day daycare plan is a ten-year plan. The year’s funding, $675 million, will flatline at one-third of the projected cost, which is $2 billion of a full $10-a-day program. Three years from now, the NDP will be five years into their ten-year plan at one-third of that funding.

While more families, 28,000, happen to pay less than $10 a day under government subsidies, that was also true under our government. This is not part of the $10-a-day plan. They claim to have funded 10,400 new spaces, but in actual fact, only 2,000 have actually been delivered.

[3:00 p.m.]

What about transit? Transit I hear a lot about with this government, except for…. They quietly cut funding for public transit in Tuesday’s budget — quietly. Provincial funding for public transit operations fell almost 2 percent to $119 million in the budget, according to the Ministry of Transportation.

All of the projects that they’ve mentioned, and my colleague from Kamloops went through a whole list, were actually B.C. Liberal projects that they’re taking credit for, including the Lower Lynn highway improvement project, the bottom of The Cut, in my riding — $198 million. We announced it before the last election. It’s merrily coming along. I’m sure we’ll see the ribbon cutting happen in the next little bit about that. But unfortunately, that wasn’t their project. That was ours.

The only thing that they can really, really take credit for, for instigating a transportation project, is actually the Pattullo Bridge. So we will be replacing a four-lane bridge with a four-lane bridge — yippity-doo. And the Pattullo Bridge is going to be $100 million higher in cost because of the decision on the other side to impose union-only requirements.

Then, just before I leave transit, I’d like to mention to the others across the line who say they’re the only ones that care about transit that the CBC, one of their reporters, did a tweet a while back. He talked about the transit SkyTrain extensions and building of the Evergreen line, the South Perimeter Road, Port Mann Bridge, Golden Ears Bridge, Canada Line, Pitt River Bridge and Millennium Line, all done under the B.C. Liberal government.

I see my time is almost up. So I’d like to just summarize some things that are in the budget that I haven’t mentioned.

There’s a 7 percent added PST tax that’s going on Netflix — and it’s not just Netflix; it’s Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV, Crave TV, YouTube Premium — and also on carbonated sugary beverages. What this means is that it’s going to target all of them that contain sugar, natural sweeteners or artificial sweeteners. It applies to soda drinks in both can and bottled form, including those purchased in stores, kiosks, cafés, restaurants and vending machines, as well as soda drinks in dispensable forms, such as soda fountains and soda guns. We’re thinking about all of those small mom-and-pop organizations that are suddenly going to be faced with dealing with another tax.

By the way, there are 24 either new or increased taxes that this government has put on British Columbians since they got into government. The only reason why they’ve got these new taxes is because it was the only way they could balance their budget.

Our member for Prince George–Valemount, who is the co-Finance critic, did an excellent job in her remarks with regards to going nitty-gritty and absolutely coming to the conclusion that the only reason why we’re dealing with these 24 increased or new taxes is because that was the only way that they could balance their budget.

R. Singh: It is such an honour to be standing here and talking about our budget. Before I do that, I really want to thank my constituency staff, Sarina Grewal and Balkaran Singh, for all the assistance that they give to me and to the constituents of Surrey–Green Timbers. So a big thank-you to them.

I’m so pleased to stand today and speak to you about our government’s third budget, Budget 2020, which is all about the work that we are doing together to build a stronger B.C. for everyone. We have made a lot of progress, and Budget 2020 is our plan to keep B.C. moving forward. We are putting people first. This is what we have always said.

[3:05 p.m.]

I remember when I was running for election in 2017. This is what I was hearing from people — that they were being neglected and that they were falling behind. I’m so proud that our government, through this budget, is putting people first and making different choices than the former government. We are repairing the damage that their choices created and fixing the problems facing families today.

Budget 2020 is about making life more affordable, improving the services that people count on and creating good jobs and opportunities in every corner of British Columbia. We cannot afford to turn back. There’s much more to do, but by focusing on people, life in B.C. is getting better every day.

Budget 2020 is a plan that builds on the progress that we have made. It is a plan that makes life more affordable, it’s a plan that protects and strengthens the services that we all count on, and it’s a plan that creates good jobs and more opportunities. We continue to build on the actions we laid out in Budget 2018 to improve access to affordable housing and child care, from building the homes people need to increasing access to quality, affordable child care spaces.

We fast-tracked our investments in our K-to-12 schools and classrooms. Budget 2020 provides even more resources to improve those learning environments to make sure all kids can succeed. This includes giving children with diverse abilities and needs the supports they deserve to try and get ahead.

We are providing the additional investments needed to continue repairing and strengthening our health care system. From tackling wait times for surgeries, increasing access to MRIs and taking better care of our loved ones, we are seeing real results.

I’m so glad that, over the next ten years, our province will see more than 860,000 new job openings in health care, early childhood education, skilled trades, tech and much more. Budget 2020 looks to this future. We are putting college and university within reach for more people and ensuring B.C. companies have access to the skilled talent that they need.

We are building infrastructure to improve services, create jobs and support our growing province. B.C. is growing. We know that. That’s what we really need to put the investment…. We need to build and expand our infrastructure across the province, and that’s what Budget 2020 projects — record levels of three-year capital spending to expand and sustain provincial infrastructure over the three-year plan.

This includes capital investments in schools, hospitals, roads, transit and housing. I will go more into detail on what is happening in my community.

Talking about infrastructure, I’m so glad about changes that we are making to two of our old bridges and the new investment that we are doing in replacing the Pattullo Bridge. This is something that we have been hearing from my community a number of times. Everywhere we went, that was one topic that we heard about. I’m so glad to see that investment coming. Just at the beginning of this year, I was standing with the Premier when we finalized those plans. We have given the contract out. This is such great news, not just for me but for all my community of Surrey.

These kinds of projects help to create jobs, ensure that people have access to the services that they depend on and support our trade corridors and businesses to keep goods and people moving. Work on approved projects in our infrastructure plan is expected to support over 100,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction.

Making housing more affordable also remains a key priority for our government. We are working hard to tackle the housing crisis by addressing speculation, closing loopholes and cracking down on fraud, making renting more secure and building more affordable homes for people across British Columbia. We put our Homes for B.C. plan in place in 2018 to work with partners to build 114,000 affordable homes, with a historic investment of $7 billion over ten years.

This plan will also create more than 54,000 jobs. It will also strengthen local economies by providing the housing that employers need to attract and keep workers. Over the first two years, nearly 23,000 homes were completed or are underway in nearly 90 communities across B.C.

[3:10 p.m.]

I’m so glad that one of those…. Surrey is also one of the places where supportive housing is happening. B.C. Housing is providing a record $29 million in capital funding to RainCity Housing supportive recovery, which will create almost 130 supportive recovery homes in Surrey. Over the first two years, nearly 23,000 homes were completed. They’re also underway in nearly 90 communities throughout B.C. This includes more than 5,200 new mixed-income affordable rental homes.

For individuals and families who rent their homes, the government has limited their yearly allowable rent increase to the rate of inflation — to 2.6 percent in 2020. We are giving more support to help families and seniors afford rent through the rental assistance program and Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters. This is something very important. In my constituency, we hear from a number of seniors who are really struggling with the rent. Putting a cap on that rent and also providing assistance through the organizations like SAFER, I think, goes a long way to helping our elderly community.

Budget 2020 continues our investment in housing with the fiscal plan reaching a record high of $4.3 billion over three years to support housing initiatives. This includes $50 million in program spending for homelessness initiatives also.

Over the next decade, more than 860,000 new job opportunities will open up across B.C., and more than 75 percent of these jobs will require some post-secondary educational training. With new opportunities in every region, it’s critical that British Columbians have access to the training and education that they need to benefit from B.C.’s momentum. That’s why we eliminated tuition fees for adult basic education and English language learning programs within the first 100 days of forming government.

I can say that this is so important for the people in Surrey. Surrey, as you know, is a fast-growing community. It gets more than 1,000 people who make Surrey their home. Most of those people are new immigrants, just like me. I was a new immigrant to this country in 2001. We see those new immigrants coming to Surrey every month. These are the resources. These efforts that our government is putting in, in adult basic education and also English language learning. This goes a long way to help these people come to this new country, to their new city, and get the skills they require to get into the job market.

Last year in Budget 2019, we eliminated the interest from all new and existing B.C. student loans. Budget 2020 takes the next step in making life more affordable for B.C. students. A new needs-based, upfront B.C. access grant will remove barriers to education and provide supports for learners to complete their studies. This new grant will benefit more than 40,000 students in B.C. attending public colleges and universities.

I have heard from so many parents. As I mentioned, my community has a lot of newcomers, a lot of new immigrants, who are really working hard to get their children the education that they deserve. But sometimes I hear from these new families that it is really hard for them to afford post-secondary education. I think this new grant that is coming up, this new access program, will really help not only the students but also the families who are struggling. They really want their kids to do very well. This new grant will really benefit those families.

The B.C. access grant also expands eligibility for students pursuing shorter-duration certificate and diploma programs, which means that labour market priorities like early childhood educators, health care assistants and trade workers will receive support.

[3:15 p.m.]

Budget 2020 also fulfils the government’s commitment towards expanding post-secondary technology programming. This will complete a six-year expansion that will result in 2,900 new post-secondary spaces in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the most significant investment in tech programming in more than a decade.

I’m so proud that out of these 2,900, more than 500 seats are in my community of Surrey. With a fast-growing community like Surrey, we needed more seats. We needed our kids to stay in the community that they grew up in and get the post-secondary education. So proud of this investment.

In 2018, Childcare B.C. was launched as our government’s plan to bring affordable, accessible and quality child care to families across the province. I’m so glad and I think I’m so privileged that I sit on the child care working group.

I’m so proud of the work that my colleague the member for Burnaby-Lougheed is doing to make Childcare B.C. a reality. I really commend her for her work. In less than two years, with what the member for Burnaby-Lougheed has done, our government has funded more than 10,400 new licensed child care spaces and helped parents save thousands of dollars through the affordable child care benefit and the child care fee reduction initiative.

Childcare B.C. also recognizes the important work of early childhood educators and supports and grows the workforce through targeted wage increases and bursaries.

Investment in total child care program funding will reach a record high of $2 billion over the next three years. Out of this, I’m so proud that my community of Surrey gets more than 1,200 child care spaces, with the help of the different child care providers there. So thankful to our government for making that a reality.

For me, that means a lot. Coming here as a new immigrant with a two-year-old child, I did not have access to affordable child care. I remember me and my husband struggling with how to take care of my young child. Seeing these new changes coming in and helping the younger families makes me so proud of the work that our government is doing.

The growth in child care funding will continue to create thousands of child care spaces, reduce costs for parents and support the workforce our kids rely on.

As announced as part of Budget 2019, government will implement the new B.C. child opportunity benefit this fall. This will help to make sure children in B.C. have the opportunity to thrive. The benefit provides a monthly tax-free payment, putting more dollars in the pockets of low- and middle-income families with benefits as high as $1,600 a year for the first child and higher benefits for larger families.

The child opportunity benefit will replace the early childhood tax benefit, which ended when your child was six. The new benefit will provide support until your child turns 18, with families receiving up to seven times more over your child’s lifetime, up to $28,000 for one child and up to $40,000 for two children.

For anyone raising a child, they know how transformational that kind of support would be. From the ability to put healthy meals on the dinner table to being able to buy your child a good winter coat or enrol them in activities like soccer, dance or art, that kind of support is going to make an incredible difference.

Kids in British Columbia deserve the support needed to set them up for future success. High-quality K-to-12 education has been a priority for this government from the beginning. As a mother of two children, this has been my priority. I see the efforts that our government is putting in, the efforts that we are putting in to improve our schools and to give our kids a better start.

We have hired more than 4,200 teachers and 2,000 new education assistants, and we have announced more than 80 capital projects for building, expanding and upgrading schools.

[3:20 p.m.]

For that, I can say, for my community of Surrey, which, as I mentioned before, is one of the fastest-growing communities…. We were seeing that the previous government was not giving Surrey the attention that it deserved. We saw, during the previous government, that more and more kids had to study in the portables. But what our government is doing is putting the efforts…. Our efforts are demonstrated by a record $2.7 billion budget for new and expanded schools, seismic upgrades and land purchases for future schools. Also, these investments are helping up to 7,300 students in Surrey move from portables to classrooms by September 2022.

These are the numbers till September 2022, but I can say that until now, we’ve had more than 2,500 students move from portables to the new and better classrooms. I think that is really good for Surrey families and Surrey children.

Interjection.

R. Singh: It is.

We have also opened 100 new playgrounds, benefiting more than 25,000 children. It was such a great moment for me when I was…. In December last year, I had the opportunity to open up a new playground in my riding at Westerman Elementary. The joy on the children’s faces that I saw that day, and the little cards that they made for us — they were so happy to be able to play in that playground.

It was really emotional for me, because that was the school, Westerman Elementary, where my child, my son, started school more than 15 years ago. So it was such a proud moment for me and for my government.

Budget 2020 also provides the Ministry of Education $339 million over three years to continue to support the K-to-12 education system. This brings the total investment to over $20 billion over the fiscal plan. The new investment includes funding to support approximately 5,100 new students, including students with special needs, as of September 2019, and for additional projected growth for September 2020.

Making sure people can get health care when and where they need it continues to be a key priority, with over $1 billion in additional funding over the next three years. This builds on previous investments we have made to give people faster and better access to the day-to-day health care services they need.

We are opening new urgent primary care centres in communities across the province. I want to mention here that Surrey was one of the first cities to have an urgent care centre, and we are really advocating with our Minister of Health to have a second urgent care centre for Surrey. With the growing community that we have in Surrey, we are really looking. All the Surrey MLAs are advocating for a new urgent care centre, a second urgent care centre for Surrey.

Interjection.

R. Singh: Also, hearing from the colleague from the other side, it was such a great moment to stand with the Premier and the Minister of Health when we announced the second hospital for Surrey. This was something that we have been hearing from the people of Surrey. Every third house that I have gone to, this was the thing that they talked about. So I’m so glad that we have purchased the land.

Interjection.

R. Singh: I see my colleague talking about the Surrey hospital. He should remember that it was their government that sold the land that we had allocated for the Surrey hospital.

[3:25 p.m.]

That was allocated. If we still had that land, this process would have been much quicker, and it would have been the Surrey hospital that would have been in the budget today. Unfortunately, this is not what the previous government thought. Their Minister of Citizens’ Services…. I don’t know what he was thinking when he decided to sell off that land.

We made a commitment to the people of Surrey that we will build the hospital. The land is purchased, and the hospital will be built. Whatever the members opposite might be saying, this is our commitment to the people of Surrey. This is our commitment, and we will see that happening very soon.

People are talking about health care. Obviously, I had to talk about the Surrey hospital, but I also want to talk about how people are getting the surgeries and diagnostic procedures that they need, much faster. The wait times for hip and knee surgeries are falling, and the number of MRIs being done each year has increased by over 23 percent. We are also improving access to PharmaCare by reducing or eliminating deductibles for 240,000 B.C. families with net incomes under $45,000.

When this government was first elected, we set out with a plan with people at the heart of it. Our commitment was to make life better for people, to make life more affordable, to improve the services British Columbians rely on and to create more opportunities for everyone. People are starting to see the progress. When we fully eliminated MSP premiums on January 1, 2020, we delivered one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, saving individuals up to $900 a year and families up to $1,800 a year.

I meet so many constituents who are so thankful, who are so happy to see this cut happening. For a number of years, they were paying this unfair tax in the form of MSP payments. When this was eliminated this year, I heard from so many of my constituents who are so happy. They are saving the money that they will be able to invest in their families, in their children and in the things that matter to them the most.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Once our policies like the B.C. child opportunity benefit are fully implemented, families with an income of $100,000 will see a 22 percent net reduction in their taxes, with $80,000 will see a 42 percent net tax reduction in their taxes, and with $60,000 will see a 60 percent net reduction in their taxes. This is compared to when we first formed the government.

Our plan is working, and we are sticking with it. Budget 2020 is all about building on the progress that we have made: from new measures to keep life affordable, to new investments in schools, hospitals and roads that will mean better services, thousands of good jobs and training programs to ensure that people can take advantage of these opportunities. This is a budget that keeps building a better, stronger B.C. for everyone.

P. Milobar: Thank you for this time to speak to the budget. I have to say that I’ll touch on a few of the remarks of the previous speaker, from Surrey–Green Timbers, as well.

After a throne speech that could best be characterized as “meh,” we’ve followed it up a week later with a budget that was kind of the same: meh. You know, it’s really quite shocking. When you go through the various programs, what’s become apparent, in listening to the few speakers that have spoken to this point from the government side, is that they’re very good at reading whatever has been put in front of them by the speechwriters in the back rooms, to make sure that the speaking lines of the government are maintained and the slogans are maintained.

[3:30 p.m.]

I know that slogans are a big part over there, but the reality, when you really dig into the numbers…. I would challenge any of the future speakers coming from the government side to, maybe, think back to all those 16 years that they were in opposition, when they would actually look with a critical eye at the numbers being put in front of them and actually dig into the numbers. The numbers they are parroting on their speeches simply do not mesh with the reality of what’s in the documents.

The previous speaker spoke at great lengths about Surrey and the hospital. I’m from Kamloops. We have a long history with NDP governments and promised health care initiatives. We were promised a cancer clinic during Mike Harcourt’s election. As soon as the election was over, the cancer clinic was pulled and moved to Kelowna instantly. So I’m always a little bit leery with NDP health care promises.

In fact, in the last election with the $420 million hospital expansion that was soon to be getting going, the NDP candidates were very hesitant to actually commit the government to that project continuing on. They would not actually publicly commit to it during the election. It made people in Kamloops very nervous about what health care plans are.

To the people in Surrey, I would say be careful about what promises are made when it comes to a new hospital. Because when you look in the budget book, and the simple reality is this. In the budget book, for the people at home that aren’t aware, the fiscal plan on page 48 through to 52 is a guide. It’s a guide for projects over $50 million of capital spending. It’s an ongoing running guide. It shows projects that are already underway. It shows projects that are slated within the years within this fiscal plan.

This fiscal plan goes from 2020-2021 to 2022-2023, so it’s for the next three years. Lo and behold, on pages 50 and 51, where health facilities are all listed, for the next three years, there’s nothing for Surrey. It talked about Surrey hospital that the previous speaker just was talking about. The promise isn’t there.

Now Surrey is much larger than Kamloops. Kamloops’ hospital expansion is $420 million for this next phase and $80 million for the first phase. Both of those would have wound up in this book. One’s still in this book actually, because it’s being worked on. It started under the B.C. Liberal government. The other one started and completed under the B.C. Liberal government.

The only thing I can think is that unless the government thinks they’re building a hospital in Surrey for under $50 million, there is no promised hospital on its way over the next three years in this fiscal plan. We have challenged all the members from the government side from Surrey to point to the page number in the budget that the Surrey hospital is accounted for. Not one has been able to, because it simply does not exist.

What also doesn’t exist for Surrey is any money for SkyTrain. That doesn’t seem to be in here at all either. There are certainly some broken promises in Surrey’s future. It does make one question the rest of the budget. As I say, when you really start to delve into the numbers, it’s quite shocking as you look into some of the speaking lines versus reality and the double counting that continues to happen.

On the one hand, the NDP insists that we did nothing for child care, that we did nothing for housing, that we did nothing, nothing, nothing. Yet, they keep double counting all of our projects and all of our numbers. In fact, that’s the bulk of the numbers of the projects that they keep announcing.

Child care. They promised they were going to implement $10-a-day child care. Now, in the throne speech, it was backed away. Now subsidies will be based on need rather than universal for all.

The $10-a-day child care is a temporary pilot project. It’s about 2,500 child care spaces for the whole province. It’s about 2 percent of the 120,000 spaces that have been talked about. It’s also a ten-year plan based on their own numbers.

[3:35 p.m.]

So $675 million that’s flatlined is one-third of the projected $2 billion a year that the daycare program would require. There are some families that happen to pay less, about $28,000, but that was true under the B.C. Liberals as well. So here’s our first bit of double-counting. Of those people, 22,000 were already paying actually less than $10 a day based on need. The NDP claim they have funded 10,400 new spaces, but less than 2,000 are actually working. Again, misleading numbers to the general public designed to cause confusion as to what’s actually happening or not.

There are a lot of other question marks as it relates to promises, as it relates to deliverables. I mention this almost every time that I have a budget speech or a throne speech, because these are the government’s own words. These were the campaign promises of this government that I’m quoting. These are what they told people they were going to do.

In fact, what they told people they were going to do, in the election, was fund all of this under an existing funding envelope that the B.C. Liberals were operating under before they knew they had a $2.7 billion surplus. Instead, they’ve added an extra $10-plus billion of taxation and still-unmet promises and unfulfilled targets.

It’s disheartening, to say the least, but it’s not just during the election campaign. When you start reading through some of the documents, you start to have question marks.

I’m going to delve in a bit on the Environment and Climate Change budget, as I’m the critic for that as well. Let’s look and see what their agreement, CASA, has to say — their agreement with the Green Party that enabled them to govern.

I found it interesting. It’s good timing today, given that the leader of the Green Party was frustrated with the lack of an answer being provided, in spite of the fact that the questions from the Green Party are provided to the NDP in advance, before question period. Even at that, they can’t get a proper answer. Maybe this is why. Frankly, the NDP don’t seem to want to hold up to much promise within the CASA agreement either, not on some fundamental climate action issues.

I’m going to read here — page 4, 2a, Climate Action — from CASA. “Implement an increase of the carbon tax by $5 per tonne per year, beginning April 1, 2018, and expand the tax to fugitive emissions and to slash-pile burning.” Well, that will sure help the forest industry out. “Deliver rebate cheques to ensure a majority of British Columbians are better off financially than under the current carbon tax formula.”

Well, an interesting thing to that. In the budget, there is an increase each time the carbon tax goes up for low-income offsets so people can get their carbon tax cheque at the same time as they get their GST rebate cheque. But you know what? It’s not making British Columbians financially better off than before, because it’s designed to go up by the same increments every $5 as the rates were set under.

At $10, when we first brought in carbon tax, there was a low-income subsidy. Every time it went up by $5, there was an uplift to that low-income subsidy. Every time that we’ve added $5 under this government, the uplift has been the exact same. So we now have a situation where low-income people are paying more in carbon tax than the cost of the natural gas itself to heat their homes in winter time. They’re no better off financially than under the old system.

Maybe the Greens are worried that their promises aren’t being met, or not. I guess we’ll only know if they actually vote with this budget or not.

The next bullet is: “Implement a climate action strategy to meet our targets.” Again, the Greens don’t seem to be very fussed about the fact that CleanBC only accounts for 75 percent of that target and that there’s a missing 25 percent. We’ve been waiting around 15 months now since CleanBC was first introduced to get any semblance of idea where that money might be.

[3:40 p.m.]

Let’s look at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy’s budget, as after all, this is a budget debate. It’s interesting to me that there are about 13 ministries that have all seen cuts — 13 ministries, the bulk of which are what we consider the dirt ministries or the economic ministries. The ones that rural B.C. count on the most are the ones that have seen the cuts in a budget that still has increased spending, which means there has been even more of a focus pushed down to other areas and taken away from some.

It’s interesting. When you say this, the other side will say: “That’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true. There’s no cut.” Well, it’s right here in black and white. In fact, if you go to the Supplement to the Estimates Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 2021, pages 38 and 39, the Ministry of Environment is right there. You’ve got bolded out on the far left side the total 2019-2020 operating expenses, and on the far ride right side, total 2020-2021 operating expenses. It’s pretty easy to see. There is $4.6 million less in the operating expenses, but they would have you believe there has not been a cut.

Let’s look at this, and remember, this is the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. This is the ministry in a government — a minister in a government who used to be head of the Sierra Club — propped up by a green party, and this is their environmental budget. It’s quite shocking, actually.

Let’s see where the cuts have come. Environmental protection down $400,000 — for environmental protection. The NDP and the Greens feel it’s okay to pass a budget that is going to cut environmental protection by $400,000. Environmental sustainability. They feel it’s okay to cut that by $1 million. B.C. Parks. Surely there has not been a cut to B.C. Parks. Oh, look at that. Cut by another $1 million. Conservation officer service. Well, there was supposed to be an increase in conservation officers in last year’s budget for the next three-year fiscal plan, so certainly, that can’t have a cut. Yet we see a $200,000 cut, approximately.

Climate action. Certainly, there is no way climate action has seen a cut. So $2 million taken out of climate action — gone. Executive and support services. Those were cut $200,000, although interestingly enough, the minister’s office budget doesn’t get a cut. The minister’s office makes sure its budget stays exactly the same. Just the rest of the ministry have to figure out a way to be a little more efficient, I guess, than the minister himself.

Where else would there be? Oh, look at that. The one program other than the minister’s office that sees an even line is the CleanBC program for industry, the rebate cheques for industry for carbon tax increases. Industry still pays $30 a tonne, net, in carbon tax. Because the government has taken so long to come up with anything they consider as the world-leading standard, there is an automatic rebate, once industry files their emissions report, to take them from whatever the current rate in that fiscal year was, in carbon tax, back to $30. So the government has to make sure there is money in there.

In fact, a lot of the $420 million they talk about of extra spending under CleanBC in this budget is designed to go back to industry, much like a large portion of the $900 million over three years last year was targeted to go back to industry. So not a lot of relief to make sure that people are financially better off than under the old formula — none whatsoever. This is now in a backdrop of where today we have the provincial government of Alberta winning in court about the constitutionality of the federal carbon tax or not. We could soon be faced with the fact that with this accelerated rate to get to $50….

We went from a $30 jurisdiction that people had kind of figured out how to manage to potentially a $50 jurisdiction that’s no longer revenue-neutral. There’s no way the government can extract themselves out of that $2.2 billion a year they’re expecting to bring in.

[3:45 p.m.]

In this budget, they talk at great lengths about how they’re going to get $420 million more spending going out the door for CleanBC, but that’s — a large portion, about $120 million — for the low-income subsidy, which we support. We brought it in, in the first place. We support that, but that doesn’t change your emission profile. About $165 million, I think it is, out of the remaining $300 million is going for industry.

The interesting part is the government makes it sound like this is all new spending. What they fail to mention is they’ve added an extra year because we’re one year further down the road. So this financial plan has another year of revenues to it as well. That extra year of revenue, the difference between a $30 carbon tax and a $50 carbon tax, is about $880 million.

They’re going to bring in $880 million, and they tell us we should all be happy and the Green Party should be happy that $420 million of it will be spent on the environment. But not in the Environment budget, a budget that has seen a $4.6 million decrease. And that’s before you factor in that the Ministry of Environment in particular provides a lot of service to people, not a lot of actual capital to people. So when you look at the operating budget, the vast majority of that is actually staff.

Why I bring that up is last I checked, the government settled with the unions. That’s fine. They got a 2, 2 and 2. But if you factor in 2 percent of the operating budget, that’s $3.8 million. So let’s be generous and say maybe only half of that operating budget is actually salaries. That’s still $2 million.

That means that just to have a static budget this year, the Ministry of Environment should have had a $2 million uplift at a minimum. Instead, they had a $4.6 million cut, which means that net, at least $6½ million has been removed in this year’s budget for the Ministry of Environment compared to previous years. That’s troubling when you consider they’re bringing in record dollar values in carbon tax that is no longer revenue-neutral.

It’s troubling when you consider that it was pointed out to them last year, the government, that those revenues are needed to actually balance the budget, because they actually show emissions rising under CleanBC to be able to balance their budget. When CleanBC was first introduced, there were taxes collected at $30 a tonne and at $35 a tonne. Then CleanBC came in. Those taxes were collected at 41.6 and 41.7 megatonnes of emissions. We are now going to see carbon tax collected on 43¾ tonnes, topping out at 44 megatonnes at $50.

The first three years of CleanBC in the fiscal plan and, in fact, the new year being added in this year’s plan, so four years…. The first four years of existence of CleanBC have actually budgeted for emissions to rise, which means that they’re down to seven years left to hit their first 2030 target, but all they have done financially is budget for an ever-increasing rise in emissions to make the budget balance.

Now, where else have we seen that happen in this budget? Oh, that’s right. We used to say that there were 19 increased or new taxes. Once the government realized this year they were going to be in deficit, that number has changed. We’re now at 23 new and increased taxes, strictly to make the budget balance.

[3:50 p.m.]

The government needs CleanBC to fail in its emissions targets, or they won’t hit the revenue projections they need — several hundred million dollars, if it actually succeeds. That’s a problem.

They need to tax sugary drinks or non-sugary drinks, basically anything that has a little bit of carbonation in it. They want your money. That will result in volunteer groups, small concession stands raising money for this or that at ball fields and hockey rinks and everything else — to have to go out and register and get a PST number and start filing paperwork with the government about the pop they sell at baseball games. Talk about a bureaucracy run amok.

They had to add that as a brand-new tax. That is the only way they wind up with a surplus. It is quite remarkable. It’s a very slim surplus. So that’s why today, even in question period, we were trying to inquire, essentially, about the impacts to the economy that we’re going to be seeing with the slowdown with the protests that are happening, with the slowdowns that we’re seeing with the ships and the coronavirus issues that are happening, which is a very serious health issue.

We’re not suggesting that the response from the government on the coronavirus has been inappropriate on the health side of things at all. We’re simply trying to find out what modelling is being done, what contingencies are being done for these serious economic disrupters, when you’re talking about razor-thin budgets. Even the existing budget that hasn’t finished off for this year will be getting impacted by the rail blockades. As you see forestry struggle, as you see other issues struggle, all of that is going to hit this budget. We don’t see much in the way of contingencies.

“Act immediately to improve transit and transportation infrastructure in cooperation with the Mayors Council and the federal government to reduce emissions, create jobs and get people home faster.” It’s on page 5 of CASA. Then I reread it, and I reread it. I’m thinking to myself: “Well, I guess they technically didn’t break this promise, because what they really hammered away at in this year’s budget is B.C. Transit, not TransLink.” B.C. Transit doesn’t have the Mayors Council, because that’s only a TransLink body.

Apparently, the Greens and the NDP shared a view, with that part F on page 5. “Don’t worry about the Interior. Don’t worry about the capital regional district when it comes to transit.” A party that’s saying they’re going to reduce emissions is cutting funding to B.C. Transit, and not just this year but in the following two years as well, in this plan.

I can tell you that as a former mayor, as a former board member of B.C. Transit, planning for transit takes a long time to get buses ordered, to add hours, to add to your fleet, to get extra staff trained and hired, to get the route planning done. You can only do it at certain times of the year to make sure that you’re minimizing the disruption to people and maximizing the new usage. You usually try to time it right near the end of summer to bring in the new service so that university students and that that typically maximize the use during the day can get access to it.

This isn’t going to be as simple as just flipping the switch and saying: “Oh, we found some money. Go ahead and add hours.” When you get rid of the flow of constant year-over-year increases that municipalities can slowly afford and slowly build up ridership to justify, it actually creates a ripple effect for years.

“Establish an innovation commission to support innovation and business development in the technology sector, and appoint an innovation commissioner with a mandate to be an advocate and ambassador on behalf of the B.C. technology sector in Ottawa and abroad.

“The mandate and funding of the innovation commission will be jointly established by representatives of both the B.C. Green caucus and the New Democratic government.

“The innovation commission will be created in the first provincial budget.”

Wonderful words. Lasted two years. Now they’re rejigging the position. Didn’t renew the commission.

[3:55 p.m.]

Took the word “innovation” out of the trade minister’s title when they did the cabinet shuffle too. It’s gone. In fact, they took “trade” out of that minister’s title. It’s problematic because, for a government that tries to portray itself as being all about transparency, it’s interesting that, as I understand it, when the innovation commissioner writes a report that does not shine a very favourable light on the actions this government has been taking towards innovation and technology, the contracts are not renewed and the report is not going to be released any time soon.

It doesn’t sound very open and transparent to me. Who knows? Maybe the party that’s propping this government up will actually be able to get an answer. But based on question period today, I’m not going to hold my breath on that one. They don’t seem to be able to extract any answers out.

Again, we have a budget that seems to target in on the ministries that rural B.C. relies on the most and says to them: “Go ahead, and do small, stealthy cuts.” And the scary part is that the members on the other side speaking don’t even want to acknowledge what is literally in black and white from their own government. They’re free to point us to the page number and the line item that we’re reading wrong, but to this point, they haven’t been able to do that. They just come up with slogans.

Forestry in crisis. Forestry in crisis doesn’t get mentioned in this budget until two-thirds of the way through the budget speech. I might add, there was not one number actually mentioned in the budget speech about any program until well over halfway into the budget speech. Talk about slogans at their finest: lots of slogans about nice things; no dollar figures attached to any of the slogans of all the wonderful things and sunshine that they are going to do.

I fully expect that next year, to make the budget balance, they’ll have figured out a way to try to convince us that they’re going to issue carbon tax on unicorn flatulence or something. I’m not sure.

That’s what this budget is about. Forestry has no new money in it. They did not renew the rural dividend fund. Rural communities are hurting, and this government doesn’t seem to care, and this budget shows that. They froze the rural dividend fund last year and told everyone that they would roll over the applications to this year automatically. That would make people believe they were going to reinstate the rural dividend fund, but they didn’t do that either.

There is no new money in this budget for any improvements on the Highway 5 corridor from Kamloops to Jasper. That’ll be three years in a row of zero work done on that major corridor, a major corridor that’s going to be full of truck traffic now hauling pipes around dangerous corners, a couple more of which could have been straightened out. A couple of extra passing lanes could have been done over these last three years. Instead, this government was so worried about trying to block a project they knew they couldn’t block. They’re now going to create a different type of safety issue for the travelling public on that corridor.

I could go on and on and on about the broken promises in this budget. It’s shocking with Surrey, the lack of attention for all the promises around schools. They have two elementary schools’ worth of kids born every year in Surrey. They’ve added nothing but portables since they’ve gotten in. Portables are at an all-time high in Surrey. They were promised, under this Premier, that in four years there’d be no portables in existence in Surrey. So, again, it’s another massive broken promise to Surrey, let alone to the rest of the province.

I do hope the next speakers will actually dig into these numbers, not just parrot the lines they’ve been given, and put a critical eye to their own budget document and understand what’s in their own budget document.

Hon. K. Conroy: Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people and the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, on whose land we work.

I am really pleased to be able to respond to Budget 2020, because I know this budget is definitely about making life more affordable for people. It improves the services that people right across the province count on, and it’s creating good jobs and opportunities all across B.C.

[4:00 p.m.]

We’ve made a lot of progress, and Budget 2020 is our plan to keep B.C. moving forward. People are starting to see the difference in their everyday lives. Making life better starts with the choices we make every day here in this building as government. From affordability to services and a strong, sustainable economy, our government is fixing problems and making progress on things that matter most.

It’s a real honour to continue to serve the constituents of Kootenay West. I want to take a few minutes, before I talk about Children and Families, just to acknowledge the really great work being done in my constituency office by my constituency assistants, Angelika Brunner and Cyra Yunkws.

I’m not in the constituency office as much as I would like to be, and they do an incredible job of making sure that the constituents of Kootenay West are well taken care of. I’m always running into people who are saying to me…. When I do get home, they tell me that not only did they get really good service in my constituency office, but that they’re really both great people to work with.

I also want to give a shout-out to my incredible family as well, who all, in their own very special ways, help me to be able to do the work that I’m doing for these number of years now, work I’m really honoured to be doing. As we all have family members, we miss special family days. Yesterday was my granddaughter Sarah’s fifth birthday. I just want to give a shout-out to Sarah, because her mom told her I would do that. Happy birthday, Sarah.

She woke up this morning, and her mom told her: “Get ready for preschool.” She said: “I’m five now, Mom. I’m going to kindergarten.” Her mom had to explain to her that you don’t get to go to kindergarten until you graduate from preschool. She was really upset about that, but she has such great preschool. Here she is ready to go to kindergarten at five.

There are so many things I could talk about, about my constituency. I just want to tell one story before I talk more about the budget. It’s a story about The Slocan Valley Seniors’ Housing Society. The society built the Passmore Lodge, a lodge for seniors housing, over 20 years ago. I believe it was 23 years ago. They had to raise money to do it. They had a three-day Hike or Bike for raising funds, and they called it “Bike for Housing.” At the time, 73-year-old Lydia Kania — she was in Vallican — walked 233 kilometres in three days and raised over $8,000 for the construction of Passmore Lodge.

Now, fast-track to 20 years later. Lydia once again led the charge on fundraising for seniors housing in the Slocan Valley. This was two years ago. She was 93 years old. She again walked, raising money. They had another walkathon to raise more money. She walked 50 kilometres — she’s 93 — and again raised over $8,000 to raise funds for the new Slocan City Suites.

I was there with four of my grandkids and my daughter. We made ten kilometres that day, but that was hiking with a two- and three-year-old, and a nine- and ten-year-old. We watched in amazement, watching Lydia walk and just be part of this incredible project. Never would that small community of Slocan Village have been able to build these homes for seniors if they hadn’t had the tenacity of people like Lydia, The Slocan Valley Seniors’ Housing Society, the overall community support, the donation of land from the village of Slocan, financial support from the Columbia Basin Trust and B.C. Housing, to name a few.

I want to acknowledge the incredible work of our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for the work that she is doing. At the last minute, they needed more funds, and they were able to find more funds in the Housing funding so that they could build all of these housing complexes for the seniors.

Just this last weekend Lydia turned 95. There was a big celebration for her, and she now lives at Slocan City Suites, one of the seniors housing that she helped to raise money for. There are so many stories like this to tell about the amazing people in Kootenay West and how they persevere, and Lydia is one example of that. Again, I’m humbled to represent these incredible people in our area.

One thing I do get asked a lot when I am home, when I do get home, is how the Columbia River treaty negotiations are going. I’m really always happy to talk about what’s happening with all things Columbia, as we like to call it, but especially around the Columbia River treaty. In 2018, we started meeting with the Canada and U.S. governments to start the negotiations and talk about the future of the Columbia River treaty. Since then, in negotiations, we’ve met regularly to discuss what a modernized treaty might actually look like.

[4:05 p.m.]

As the conversations continue about the treaty’s future, what’s equally important is that our government is meeting to talk about the negotiations with residents of the B.C. Columbia Basin throughout this process. Over the past two years, our government has actively engaged with First Nations, local governments and communities in the region. We hosted 22 community meetings throughout the basin to update residents on negotiations and to talk about community interests and concerns that should be considered around the negotiations. We’re also really active on social media, through our newsletter and website, and we’re in the media and working with local governments and stakeholders.

Governments 50 years ago didn’t consult with basin residents. They didn’t consult with Indigenous nations. We’re making sure that everyone still has a voice in the treaty’s future. Last year the government of Canada took the historic step of asking Canadian Indigenous nations affected by the Columbia River treaty to participate in the negotiations process as official observers. So representatives from the Ktunaxa, the Secwépemc and the Syilx Okanagan Nation now all attend the negotiation sessions between Canada and the U.S. They also work very closely with Canada and B.C. to develop our negotiating positions, as they’ve been doing so since early 2018.

As we move forward together, the Indigenous nations will continue to be partners with us in this negotiations process. Beyond their role in negotiations, the basin Indigenous nations are enhancing the discussions in other important ways. Their research into the basin’s ecosystems will be a key part of discussions on including ecosystem values in the modernized treaty. The First Nations have also led the way in the process that resulted in a multi-government agreement to explore bringing salmon back to the upper Columbia River.

We believe everyone who has an interest in the region should have a chance to participate in the future of the Columbia River treaty, and we’ll continue to listen and do our best to give the B.C. Columbia Basin a voice when we meet with the governments of Canada and the U.S. These negotiations are going to take some time. It’s a generational issue with the negotiations, but as we move forward together in the current discussions, we do so having built a stronger foundation through engagement with the people most affected by the treaty.

I also want to talk about our budget and how it has benefited so many children and families in B.C., especially in my ministry. Budget 2020 builds on the progress that my ministry has already made to make life much better for children, youth and families right across our province. I’m really proud to stand in favour of this fiscal plan and get down to the work it supports through an overall lift, an increase, for the Ministry of Children and Family, an increase of $160 million.

Now, you never heard that…. I think you heard twice, in the 16 years prior to us becoming government, that there was an increase to our ministry. There were always cuts. I just met with staff in the Interior, and I told them that we were again having an increase in our ministry. I can’t tell you how happy staff are to be able to look at us and say thank you. They’re moving forward to be able to provide services.

That brings our total ministry budget to more than $2.2 billion annually. We’re continuing to build on investments made in previous years by focusing on creating a universal child care system, a system that’s going to take ten years to create. We’re starting into year 3, and we know the benefits that this program is bringing about.

We’re also helping children and youth with special needs and on mental health. We’re being there for youth as they transition into adulthood. We’re supporting out-of-care options for families and increasing family preservation and cultural connections. Specifically, this year we have $500 million to help children and youth in care to connect to their culture and heritage. We have 37.6 million additional dollars for caseload pressures, including autism supports, medical benefits and helping children and youth in care and those with additional needs. We’ve further increased support for year 3 of our Childcare B.C. plan.

We’re also boosting the budget for child and youth mental health services to $114 million. We’re expanding the eligibility for agreements with young adults programs, and we’re providing wage increases for social service sector staff.

[4:10 p.m.]

Budget 2020 also invests $23 million over three years towards services that support the health, safety and well-being of children and youth. These include child protection legal services, medical benefit programs and permanency services — services aimed at reducing the number of children and youth in care and improving outcomes for children, youth and families.

Now, my ministry is committed to ensuring all children and youth in B.C. live in safe, healthy and nurturing families, strongly connected to their communities and culture. Part of this commitment is reducing the number of Indigenous children and youth in care. We are working in partnership to change the child welfare system to keep Indigenous children out of care, safe within their families and connected to their cultures.

We have recently amended legislation to focus on better supporting families to safely stay together. We’re working with individual First Nations and the federal government to sign agreements that will ultimately see the nations exercise their jurisdiction over child and family services. We’re changing the way we work with supporting vulnerable expectant parents to keep newborns safe and families together.

Last September I announced the end of birth alerts, and we have boosted the monthly rate given to eligible extended family caregivers. All this work is making a real difference for families across British Columbia. We are seeing the lowest number of children in care in over 30 years and the lowest number of Indigenous children in care since 2014. Last year almost 86 percent of Indigenous children who had been in need of protection were able to return to living safely with their families after receiving supports, including culturally specific services such as knowledge-keepers, sweats and Elder-led healing services.

We are expanding opportunities for children and youth to make important cultural connections to help preserve the vibrancy of B.C. Indigenous cultures for future generations. Through Budget 2020, we are providing $5 million to support the creation of new cultural connections programs. This program will provide opportunities for children and youth in care to connect or, in some cases, reconnect with their Indigenous community. This could include supporting travel for children and youth to attend cultural events or visit with community members or allow children to learn traditional languages.

Last year over 400 ministry and delegated Aboriginal agency staff met to talk about how Indigenous child welfare needs need to be done differently. It was here I heard stories from former youth in care on the importance of knowing where they came from. I listened to Raven McCallum tell her story, the long road she endured to connect with her community and heritage, literally travelling many, many kilometres to make that happen. I also heard from Olivia Reynolds, her struggles as a child in care and her determination to transform her life and become her true self.

Through this new investment in Budget 2020, more young people like Raven and Olivia will be able to make that important connection with their own Indigenous community and learn to be proud of where they come from and to celebrate it.

We want to support all children and youth in government care. This includes youth who are moving into adulthood. As their legal guardians, we need to continue to be there for them to help them succeed. Through a variety of programs and partnerships, we offer resources that help young people in and from care with additional supports like life skills, education and financial supports.

One of the first things the Premier and I did with support from the Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Training, which was over two years ago…. One of the first announcements we made was to introduce the provincial tuition waiver program. Now hundreds of former youth in care are accessing free tuition at B.C.’s public post-secondary institutions.

Just two weeks ago my colleague the Minister of Education announced a new funding supplement to help children and youth in care. This means that for the first time, schools can provide more support, like trauma counselling, school breakfast or lunch programs, tutoring and mentoring. My ministry is complementing those supports by enhancing and expanding the agreements with young adults, or the AYA program, as we like to call it. AYA helps cover the cost of things like housing, child care, tuition and health care while young adults go back to school or attend rehabilitation, vocational or approved life skills program.

When we first started, we started with a $30 million investment as part of Budget 2018. Through that investment, we added an extra year of program eligibility, increasing the upper age limit from 26 to 27. We increased the maximum monthly amount from $1,000 to $1,250, and we made supports available for the full calendar year. I had talked to youth who were going to school, who were on the AYA program, who went homeless in the months that they weren’t in attendance at schools. So we made the program available for the full year.

[4:15 p.m.]

More young adults than ever before are now accessing AYA, and we’re building on the success after listening to and engaging with former youth in care, caregivers and community services. I’m excited to share with you that through Budget 2020, we are expanding eligibility to the agreements with young adults program, and I look forward to sharing more details about this exciting expansion in the near future.

Last year I again stood alongside the Premier and announced, for the first time in ten years, a lift to the monthly maintenance rates given to foster parents, adoptive caregivers and extended family caregivers. Those rates now align with the federal government’s Canada child benefit and will increase any time that the Canada child care benefit does. As a result of this hike, foster parents are receiving an additional $180 a month to help cover basic necessities for children in their care, including food, shelter and clothing — things that they used to provide out of their own pockets.

Plus, I’ve talked to grandparents and other relatives caring for young members through the extended family program, who are now receiving monthly financial assistance, on par with foster parents, for the first time. Grandparents are telling me that they’d felt that they needed to put their grandchild into foster care so that their grandchild could get the benefits that other foster kids were getting, that they couldn’t afford to provide for their own grandchildren and that they are now able to provide to their grandchildren that are living with them.

For many extended family members who are caregivers, this increase has nearly doubled their monthly payment. Extended family caregiving is helping keep children and youth connected to their communities, to their families and to their cultures. Additionally, eligible adoptive parents received an additional $120 per month for post-adoption assistance to help meet increases in the cost of living.

We’re going to continue to support B.C.’s caregivers and the children and youth who count on them, because we know how critically important it is. In fact, with this harmonizing of rates in December, we had more kids out of care and receiving services out of care than actually in care for the first time in years. Kudos to the ministry staff who were able to do that and to the caregivers who are providing those services.

We’re also continuing to support children and youth with special needs and their families. Last year we announced $6.3 million to cut wait-lists. That’s one difference, I think, between the two governments. Our cuts are to wait-lists, not to actual programs. We actually increased the respite services and the annual funding available to families, and it’s the first increase since 1989, for families, for respite services.

Last year Budget 2019 also provided $31.3 million to address ongoing growth within the demand-driven caseloads files, like autism. We’re building on that investment again this year, through Budget 2020, with an additional $8 million for autism supports to accommodate that increasing caseload growth. This is expected to benefit over 1,400 additional children, youth and their families each year.

In addition, to better meet the specific needs of children with additional needs and their families, we are developing a framework that will guide the delivery of services. There has been a consultation across the province with people that are providing services with families, and we’re going to start implementing this new framework in the coming year.

We’re also continuing to improve mental health services for B.C.’s children, youth and families. This year our budget for children and youth mental health services has increased to $114 million.

My ministry is working extremely closely with the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions to focus on prevention, early intervention and treatment of mental health issues in children. Through Pathway to Hope, we’re working across government to identify and implement key initiatives to build a better system for mental health and substance use care with a focus on youth. My ministry has 100 intake clinics throughout B.C. where children and their families can walk in for immediate assessments and referrals to treatments and programs.

We’ve created a new program: Everyday Anxiety Strategies for Educators. That provides strategies for teachers to help children manage anxiety, one of the top mental health concerns in childhood nowadays. With the Canadian Mental Health Association and through Confident Parents, Thriving Kids, we’re providing telephone counselling and coaching for parents, no matter where they live in B.C., to help with their children’s behavioural and anxiety issues.

[4:20 p.m.]

We relocated the Maples Adolescent Treatment Centre and provincial assessment centre from its aging facility in Burnaby into the brand-new Healing Spirit House in Coquitlam. This Healing Spirit House combines mental health treatments and programs with Indigenous healing practices. I was able to visit the facility just in the fall. It’s an incredibly beautiful facility, and I give kudos to the former minister for starting this initiative because it’s worked so well. You go in there, and you just know that youth are going to benefit by this incredible program that’s been established and the services that the kids are getting. It’s amazing.

We’ve also provided the non-profit FamilySmart program $1 million to deliver emotional support, training and resources to families whose kids are struggling with mental health or substance use issues. This even includes the unique parents- and youth-in-residence programs that support families whose children are struggling and get support from those who’ve already been where they are now with their own kids.

In the next three years, new integrated child and youth teams in five school districts will bring mental health services directly to children and families at schools and in communities. Maple Ridge and Comox are the first districts to receive these.

We’re providing some of the front-line child and youth mental health staff within the Foundry centres throughout B.C. I just had the opportunity to visit the Foundry in Kelowna, an amazing centre providing great services for the kids and youth in Kelowna. In addition, we’ve hired more front-line staff and increased pay to attract practitioners to rural areas of the province, where we really need practitioners. And it’s working.

I also want to talk a bit about community-based service organizations that work in partnership with us and provide so many important services to people right across the province. They’re services that people in our communities all across the province count on every day. Last year we established a working group to develop a recruitment and retention strategy. This group developed an action plan for government’s consideration that focuses on compensation, recruitment and career-pathing, training and workplace safety. As a result, there will be modest new funding provided to the social service sector for recruitment and retention.

We recognize the important role community agencies play in the health, security and well-being of British Columbians right across the province. We’re committed to working together to find ways to strengthen services in our province. I want to acknowledge the good work of the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, who has been leading this initiative and is doing amazing work, along with the representatives of the federation of children’s services across the province. It’s been really exciting to see this happening.

I also can’t talk about the budget without saying how proud I am of the work our government is doing to make life more affordable and to get families ahead by our investment in child care. We came into this government committed to making it easier for families to find affordable, accessible, inclusive child care. We launched our Childcare B.C. plan do just that, starting with a historic $1 billion investment over three years.

Budget 2020 continues our commitment to our child care plan, the largest social policy change in B.C.’s history. We’ve increased child care funding over the last year by $88 million, and we continue to invest responsibly to build up the plan in the coming years. We’ve always said the path to universal child care will take time. We’ve said that; advocates have said that.

Even the $10-a-day program that the advocates have been advocating for, for years, that suddenly the members of the opposition are finally realizing is a plan that they should have paid attention to many years ago…. Their plan was also a ten-year plan, because it takes time to do this and to do it properly. So we’re committed to building a child care plan that focuses on the three pillars: affordability, accessibility and quality. And in just over two years, we’ve made incredible progress in each of those areas.

Families are seeing up to $1,600 a month per child in savings for 65,000 children through the affordable child care benefit, and 56,500 child care spaces have had their rates reduced through the child care fee reduction initiative. Many low-income families are seeing care for the equivalent of $10 a day or less, while middle-income families have access to support for the first time in the history of this province. Families earning $80,000, for example, may now be eligible for more than up to $15,000 a year. That’s a huge step forward, when you consider that nothing was available for middle-income families previously.

[4:25 p.m.]

For some, these new measures have been life-changing. Many families have told me they are no longer having to live paycheque to paycheque. For the first time ever, I have families telling me they can afford to start to save to have a down payment for their own house, for a home. I’ve talked to people that live in rural B.C., where sometimes transit is not that great. You need a car in rural B.C. They’ve been able to afford a car for the first time ever, or to let their kids participate in activities like figure skating, skiing, hockey, art classes, music classes — things they were never able to do before.

I talked to one mom who got choked up when she said she could…. For Christmas, she got to buy her son a new skateboard and all the protective gear. He’s an avid boarder. He was so excited. She was just so happy to be able to get him that for Christmas. But she couldn’t afford to buy all the protective gear, and now she can, and her little guy is an awesome skateboarder.

Not only are these initiatives helping parents. They’re also lowering the cost of living right across the province. In fact, in May last year, we saw the living wage for families in Metro Vancouver had dropped for the first time in more than a decade as a direct result of our investments in child care. Now the living wage stands at $19.50. Without our investments, it would have increased again to $22.47.

We’re seeing the same impacts in other communities right across the province. Just to give you a perspective, in Kootenay West, just in my little constituency in the Kootenays, over $7 million has been funded towards child care programs since we started this initiative. Of that $7 million, over $3 million had been put back into the pockets of parents in the West Kootenays, in my constituency. We’re creating, just up to now, over 200 spaces, with more to come.

If you take the entire Kootenays, and you look at the entire Kootenays — including Kootenay East, Columbia River–Revelstoke, Nelson-Creston — $20 million has gone into child care programs and almost $10 million back into the pockets of parents, just in the Kootenays. Now, I don’t think there’s ever been a tax break like that in the history of the province, where parents can actually see more money back into their own pockets — and over 500 spaces in the Kootenays.

The member from Kamloops was speaking. I think he needs to know that $20 million has gone into child care programs just in Kamloops and $12 million back into the pockets of parents in Kamloops. Over 250 spaces, with more to come, just in Kamloops. You can go to any constituency in the province: Langley, Abbotsford, Sea to Sky, Pemberton, Whistler. I just talked to Whistler. They’re looking at it. Squamish is getting…. There are spaces across the province, even Abbotsford.

I tell any MLA to go talk to parents. Go talk to parents and say to them: “How is the child care initiative helping you?” It is incredible, what it’s doing. There were eight more infant-toddler spaces announced in a little community school called Blueberry Creek in Castlegar a couple of weeks ago. I got calls to my home, asking me: “When are they opening? How do I get on the wait-lists?” I got emails and texts. My husband was taking messages at home.

Parents are so excited that they’re getting more spaces in the community. There’s going to be more to come, now that all of the UBCM grants that UBCM has done with communities, right across municipalities, across the province, who now have more opportunity to say: “This is what we need.”

I was in West Kelowna in the fall, and they were so excited. We put a shovel in the ground to announce new spots, and they were incredibly excited. There’s so much more that I could talk around the quality we’re doing with early childhood educators. But I know that the ever-eager and committed and resolute Minister of State for Child Care is going to be speaking soon. She’s going to talk more about these initiatives, because they’re absolutely fantastic.

I’m just so happy that our Premier had the foresight to say that we need a Minister of State for Child Care. This is not going to be done just as part of a ministry, but it’s going to be a minister of state. We work together every day to ensure that the child care is coming to parents right across the province. There’s nothing better than good-quality early childhood education.

One of our initiatives is with the Aboriginal Head Start program. On Friday, I was in Rutland at the Awasiak Achakos Head Start program. It was an amazing program, and I would love to talk about it more. But I know the Speaker is going to tell me that I’m out of time. But I just want to say how happy I am to support Budget 2020. It’s a way of moving our province forward and putting money back into the pockets of parents with a child care program.

[4:30 p.m.]

R. Coleman: To the minister who spoke before me, you’ve got another 35, 40 seconds, but I’m not going to try to stretch it that far. Maybe I’ll go an hour.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

I am pleased to, obviously, stand in this House again and speak to the budget. It wasn’t that long ago, a week to ten days ago, that I actually spoke to the throne speech in this House. When I did that, I remembered some people who had lost their lives that had been in and around public life. It’s amazing what can happen in less than ten days.

We had a colleague in this House for many years, Randy Hawes from Mission, whose wife, Alma, just recently passed away in the interim between now and then. I sent Randy our best wishes and our prayers the other day.

After the speech, a little less than a week later, Bob Lee, or Robert Lee, who was one of the really important people in B.C. history relative to building the University of British Columbia endowment fund and all the housing and the stuff that took place at UBC in its development, as well as being a very successful businessman and philanthropist, also left us. So it’s amazing, when you get a chance, to think about just how short and scary life can be for any one of us.

As we were away, a number of people celebrated the Olympics that we had in 2010 — the ten-year anniversary of the Olympics. I was reminding someone of a story…. The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast isn’t here at the moment, but he’ll be back. I was up in that constituency recently, and I looked at a housing project up there that I was very familiar with. It was actually a modular housing project that was built in Sechelt subsequent to the 2010 Olympics.

The entire Olympic Village in Whistler was modular, and the city of Whistler did not want the modular housing. So one of the projects was built in Sechelt. There was one in Saanich. There’s one in Chilliwack, Chetwynd, other communities across B.C. where we actually moved the housing to provide supportive housing across British Columbia. I was thinking about that, and I was looking back at the numbers. We got a pretty good deal on this. I think we paid about 30 cents on the dollar, and we were in at the front end of designing it when we did that housing.

About the housing that’s done in British Columbia today. Now, there’s a commitment of this government, first of all, to build 114,000 units over a ten-year period in British Columbia. About 2,500 are said to have been built. Some of those were actually started by the previous government.

The challenge with it is that in the budget, the Minister of Finance said $7 billion to build 114,000 units of housing over a ten-year period. That’s $64,000 a unit. In the city of Kelowna, you’ll pay about $40,000 of that just for the development cost charges before you even get in the ground. So $64,000 a unit….

I’m a bit of a real estate junkie, so I have a pretty good idea of what a lot costs just about anywhere in British Columbia. One of the cheapest lots you might find will be in Wells, B.C. for about $9,000. But then have you some servicing issues in that particular community. You’d spend another $10,000 or $15,000 on that.

I don’t know how you intend to build 114,000 units over a ten-year period for $64,000 a unit. That in itself is a challenge. Add to that challenge, however, how many you’ve actually had built and how long it will actually take to build 114,000 units at the present rate of build. At the present rate of build, it would be just under 100 years to build 114,000 units.

Now, as I look at what’s been going on with regards to housing, I think that the government and B.C. Housing have moved in the right direction to do some pretty good modular stuff. We did some in Sechelt after the Olympics. I’ve seen how this product has grown and developed. We did some of it when I was actually the Minister for Housing.

My biggest concern, however, is that the whole notion of the building of the housing for supportive housing, particularly for people with mental health and addictions across our province, although a laudable goal, needs something else. As the members who have actually dealt with this particular file — some of them are sitting in the House right now — will tell you, the challenge is not just the housing. It’s the challenge of what you do with a population that’s as vulnerable as it is and where the services are going to come from.

[4:35 p.m.]

In my first pass-through in the budget, I saw no increase in money for services in this housing. Whether it be the modular housing in Nanaimo, which has had some challenges and difficulties, or the modular housing in Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows or in other communities across the province, the reality is that if you look at the operating budget for B.C. Housing in this budget, there’s no money for them to provide the services — if you need a nurse practitioner on site or a person that can deal with the addictions or staffing. That money has to come from somewhere else. When you dive down into the budget, you cannot find where that money is going to come from.

The challenge is that if you build the housing and you just put people in it and you don’t give them the wraparound services, you are going to have nothing more than a failure. That worries me, because I think it’s important that we all recognize that people who are vulnerable need services and need the assistance when they move into this housing. We’ve learned that over the years, and we need to continue to be able to understand that as we go forward.

The minister actually spoke in the budget about the fact that they’re the first ones to do First Nations housing. Not correct. We did a number of them, even some on reserve. It’s fine. I understand they want to have their messaging. But the reality is that anybody that wants to have a conversation around First Nations housing, I would welcome.

If you want to see the worst form of housing in British Columbia, go to a remote First Nations community and see the standard of construction and the water and sewer systems and what have you that our friends, the First Nations in B.C., live with. Any initiative that is actually going to get better housing on First Nations land, I support. I support that because I think it’s important to do. It’s important to do it in a way that is understanding of how that housing can be supported long term for its capital plan and its operation and also for its maintenance. Once we build it, we can actually make it into something where it can stand by itself for a long time.

I read the budget, and I did a few numbers, and this is my concern. The continuing tax-and-spend approach of this particular government concerns me, and I’ll tell you why. The NDP have raised tax revenues by over $3,025 for each household in B.C. Total taxation will be over $4,667 for each household by the year 2022. Taxation is up $5.7 billion per year since 2016-17. Spending is up $11.4 billion per year since 2016-17. The government overspent their budget by $550 million last year. And over $1 billion in infrastructure projects promised in 2019 have now been delayed.

Now, the reason that I bring that up is that I think of the daily life of the people that I represent in my community. I think of the person who gets up, takes their kid to daycare, drops another one at school, goes to work, goes grocery shopping and maybe has a repair done on their car. Each and every thing they do today is taxed higher than it was three years ago.

The carbon tax is on everything. Carbon tax affects the price of food. It affects the price of gasoline for people who are trying to drive their kids to and from school. And by the way, not everybody has the luxury of being able to have an electric car, which, if you charge it at home, has a carbon tax on it.

The reality is that I worry about those folks because that $4,667 comes down out of their pockets before they’re allowed to deduct anything personally from their income tax and their take-home pay. They’re paying that.

Now, as we go with this piece, there’s a whole bunch of additional stuff that has an impact on it — and not necessarily a provincial budget. But it’s something that provincial budgets have always got to be mindful of. For instance, in my community, unacceptably to me, the notion of thinking is that we should have a residential tax increase to 3 percent this year and a 6 percent tax on properties that are commercial. So every small business in my community will now be taxed higher, and every small business will have a higher cost of 6 percent, when, frankly, inflation is nowhere near that for them and the ability to raise their prices and meet their margins is very difficult.

[4:40 p.m.]

I worry about that because I know some small businesses in my community that are about to close because of the tax burden that’s hit them in the last year. One, in particular, I know of has had an increase in costs with the employer health tax of $30,000. Then the carbon tax on all its products and services, the increase in his property taxes and his triple-net lease and the other costs have all come down to the fact that that particular small business has to do an extra $100,000 of business this year just to maintain the business and keep the doors open. You can’t just snap your fingers like this and bring in an extra $100,000 in revenue.

On the residential side, it worries me that there seems to be a continuous basis for municipalities to continually think that it’s okay to add and add to the property tax for people in their homes. The property tax affects everything. One of the things is that if you have a property tax and you happen to be a person that owns your home and you’re on a fixed income, you get no increase in your income to actually to help you with that tax. So you either defer it against the value of your home, or you pay it out of money, and it lessens, more and more, how much you might have in your own pocket to live on.

The residential tax, though, that goes onto residential taxes in the rental market concerns me even more. B.C. has struggled for many years, as we’ve tried to incent different ways for people to build residential properties that would be for rent to our citizens. So to remember, with what we’re doing right now with the Residential Tenancy Act changes, to go to just CPI as an annual increase for people who own the property…. They’re not able to pass anything on to the tenant. Seeing a property tax increase of 5 or 6 or 7 percent that can’t be transferred through actually erodes the ability for the owner of a building or a rental property to maintain it, upgrade it and keep it in good shape.

Eventually, over time…. We saw this in the decades between the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, we built a lot of rental product because we had an incentive plan, called a MURB, out of Ottawa. That product started to deteriorate. What happened was this. People reached the point with their frustration that they couldn’t recoup their costs on the operation of their building, that the best way to deal with the issue was to tear the building down and build condos, replace rental stock with market stock, avoid the recapture on some capital gain and actually move forward.

That’s something that I talked to successive Finance Ministers about, even back in the day when I was the critic and even with the Minister of Housing at the time — that we had to get to where we would understand how we could flow through investment to incent rental housing in this country. In the past ten years, previous to this government, on an annual basis, the housing ministers across this country were unanimous in asking the federal government to do something with regards to that little piece — to incent investment into rental housing. Quite frankly, we were going to be facing a rental housing crisis.

Unfortunately, we still are today. There is less rental housing being built this year than there was even anticipated, because people have walked away from the market and put their projects on the shelf, about 12,000 units in B.C. So there needs to be a look at how we incent and do things differently.

One of the things I’ve often said, and I’ve said it in my community…. They do a little bit of this, but certainly the city of Surrey, in the area of Clayton Heights, does a lot of it. That is that they’ve actually deliberately looked at their planning in those particular communities where areas are growing to have a basement suite allowed legally in a house, or a coach house above a garage. Ironically, in Surrey, that’s the one place where rents are able to maintain their price, because there’s supply that meets its demand. It’s there, and as new housing comes in and fills in, there are more of these particular products being put in the marketplace.

We have to think about that. The budget has to think about that when it talks about what it wants to tax and what it wants to do, relative to how we, as a society, will be able to afford to pay for things.

[4:45 p.m.]

The budget is in trouble. I’ll tell you why. It concerns me, and it should concern the government. It’s probably in big trouble. The economy is being smashed very, very hard, internationally and globally, by the coronavirus, and internally to the country by things like blockades and what have you.

Can you imagine that there are 42 ships sitting out there in the Georgia Strait — it’s actually a lot off on the other side of little islands all around this side of the Georgia Strait, because they have to be in areas where they aren’t going to get heavy seas — waiting to come in and pick up product that’s made in British Columbia and take it to markets around the world? That product can’t get there. The ports can’t do it.

Now, the flip side of this problem for the North American economy, particularly us and the United States, is that it’s also slowing down how products can get out of areas like China, where people who make your iPhone and what have you need products and certain components to make those phones, and they can’t get them. They’re not coming to North America right now.

The big concern is: what does a grain farmer from Alberta do? Somebody sent me a picture the other day of lineups and lineups of grain cars ready to be triaged onto rail lines to move the product to the coast so that it could be shipped. Farmers want to be able to sell their stuff.

The reality is that this particular issue with the blockades needs to be dealt with. I saw one being brought down today, but I think it’s important that everybody understand that rail, ports, personal transportation — all of the things you use daily — are presently being affected. That is a big challenge for the provincial government budget, because we’re subnational. We’re not a huge country. We’re four million, five million people, and we rely on a lot of things.

The budget is also a challenge because of the resource sector. Let’s just talk about forestry for a second. Forestry is having a tough time. A number of things are a factor there. The countervailing duties that they have to pay going into the United States are really hurting our forest sector.

For almost ten years, we had a softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. that functioned and did well. This government came in and said they would make it their priority. The Minister of Forests or the Premier should have been on a plane meeting with every other minister of forests across this country, coming to a decision on how they wanted to approach the file, going to the federal government and to the ambassador in Washington, D.C., our ambassador, and getting to work on formulating what could be the outline of a softwood lumber deal.

Now, if they said that couldn’t be done, they’d be wrong. It was done in 2005-2006. I negotiated it with David Emerson and Michael Wilson, who was then our ambassador in Washington. You can’t sit by and wait for somebody to come to you to negotiate a deal. You’ve got to go to them, and you’ve got to have your thoughts down with clarity — what you want to negotiate with and what options there are that you are prepared to deal with.

This industry affects thousands of people. The big strike on Vancouver Island affects a few thousand people, but the reality is that there were thousands more who couldn’t go to work. They couldn’t log. They couldn’t truck. They couldn’t move anything, because they had nowhere to go. That had a big impact, and it will trickle down through this year into what would affect the provincial budget.

At some point during the year, I’m sure, there’s going to be a first or second quarterly report where the minister is going to have to adjust. My concern with that is that there’s not a big forecast allowance and not a big contingency to do that with, so heading into deficit can be pretty quick.

Then when you head into deficit, when you’re spending that amount of billions over what you’re bringing in, you head towards what was occurring when we became government in 2001: a $5 billion structural annual deficit. In other words, every year they were spending $5 billion more than they were taking in, year over year over year. That wasn’t money that was going into capital projects like schools and hospitals; it was money going into overspending of government.

You can’t tax your way out of this. The reason you can’t tax your way out of this is because, at some point, your own internal economy and people can’t afford what you’re taxing away.

[4:50 p.m.]

You can imagine the conversation the other night when I sat down with a couple of friends and neighbours of mine, both in their 80s, both on fixed pensions, and they asked me what was in the budget. Of course I said that health care is up, because it’s always going to be up.

They weren’t interested in that. They wanted to know about the rumour they had heard in the park where they live. “Are they really going to tax Netflix, streaming services like Crave and what have you?” I said: “Yes. Unfortunately, they are.” They said: “Don’t these people understand how expensive it is for somebody, a senior, to go out to the movies, that this is our form of entertainment and that taking another $60 or $65 per year, per service that we’re using hurts us?”

When you make a budget, you’ve got to think about who you’re touching. In this case, you’re touching people on fixed incomes — seniors, people who don’t have the ability to go out and get a bunch of extra money. You’re taking it right out of their pockets. You raise the carbon tax to $50 a tonne. That same senior needs to drive. There’s no transit near where they are, so they need to drive. That affects them. Every little thing affects — price of tires, whatever, carbon tax and all these different things.

People say: “Well, just take another two cents here or 5 percent there or 7 percent there, or we’ll tax this over here.” Well, it hurts people, real people, and those real people then lose consumer confidence and start spending less within their communities. The next thing you know the small business in the community is not doing as well either.

I agreed with the previous speaker when he said, “We got to leave money in people’s pockets,” and trumpeted that, for some reason, all of this spending has left more money in people’s pockets and that it was the biggest increase in money in people’s pockets in B.C.’s history. Actually, I was there the day that happened — really happened. In 2001, the B.C. Liberal government got elected and went immediately and cut all personal income tax by 15 percent across the board. That was in spite of the fact we had a $5 billion structural deficit to deal with.

We believe, and I believe it today: leave more money in people’s pockets, and they’ll decide where they want to spend it. They will drive the economy. What you’re doing right now is taxing them out of life, taxing them and taxing them to the point where they won’t be able to have disposable income that they can do things with. That, quite frankly, is just a shame.

Now, other important information to know is that you need a vibrant housing market, whether to drive affordability or to drive supply. It’s anticipated that there’s going to be 22 percent fewer new homes built in the next year. You know what that means? The supply problem becomes a problem, and demand problem goes up. The price of supply goes up because people are willing to pay more because there’s nothing in the market for them to buy. So the reality is that taking this approach that you’re taking on housing is not good.

One thing that may save them here is that 32,800 people’s jobs were lost last year. First time in a decade and a half that that happened. But what does it look like for 2020, as this budget comes into full force? I can tell you I know people now in business who are saying they can actually find employees because it’s not as overheated of a job market. But they also have noted that a number of their competitors have left the market altogether and they don’t do business in B.C.

Back in the ’90s, we saw Finning move to Edmonton. They moved because of the burden of tax that was being put on their company to operate in British Columbia. The province of Alberta talked about the fact of going to an 8 percent corporate tax. We’re at 12. You know what happens then? Head offices in those businesses leave, building on the long-term plan when they want to look for stability to where they can do business.

We saw the Teck announcement the other day. Frustrating, but it’s not totally surprising, given the fact that this country has been unable to actually get its act together to get major projects done in this country. International investors are saying: “No more.”

[4:55 p.m.]

You know, we got LNG Canada done. It took a lot of work to do that. We have another couple of FIDs on that, both with Fortis and up at Woodfibre. But the fact of the matter is that the rest are sitting there, saying: “Man, if you want to invest money in the world, B.C. may not be the best place to go.” This money will invest wherever it thinks this it can go to create the jobs and have the ability to get a deal done and get the job done.

Today I had the opportunity to observe the Attorney General of this province talking about one of the things in the budget, the conversation about money laundering. Now, all of you know that there are lots of people who would like to have certain people come and talk to the public inquiry — which, by the way, I support and will cooperate with.

For the Attorney General of a province to stand in front of a camera and talk about an independent process, with a judge presiding over the event, and telling the media who he thinks should be on his witness list for them to do is the most outstanding interference I’ve ever seen in an independent legal process in my career in politics. Imagine trying to tell the commissioner, through the media, who he should be actually listening to and who the witnesses should be. I’ll leave that to the legal community to mull over, but it’s pretty stunning.

I have a couple things I want to mention here so that people understand why nobody around here is going around and panicking about a public inquiry. In the 1990s, there were two Premiers that resigned in British Columbia over gaming files. One was Premier Mike Harcourt over Bingogate, the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society scandal in Nanaimo. The other one was, unfairly, albeit done, Glen Clark, the Premier of B.C. in the late ‘90s. Both of these men I respect, and both of these men I have the utmost trust in.

When I became the minister responsible in 2001, my job was to fix this a little bit. Now, you should know that big money coming into casinos actually happened under the NDP watch in the 1990s, because they raised the betting limit in charity casinos, which didn’t have a whole lot of security in them. Some of you may have actually worked late nights in those casinos as you raised money for your local charity.

The fact of the matter is that we wrote the Gaming Control Act. It was written with a very specific goal in mind: that no person in public office would have any influence on a licence investigation direction, relative to gaming in British Columbia — period. It would set up a statutory authority, both with the gaming policy and enforcement branch and with police to conduct and manage the investigations relative to gaming.

No minister ever influenced that or tried to influence that. In actual fact, no minister or Premier had to resign in 16 years over the gaming file, for the very purpose that this was actually firewalled so it would be run by independent people, statutory officers and police. They did their jobs. There were major investigations that were done, major seizures of civil forfeiture.

Would a minister ever talk about one of those investigations? Not a chance. Major investigations — where people are undercover or people that were actually embedded or people that were witnesses or people that were informants — could put those people at risk the minute a minister ever opens up their mouth and talks about the details of an investigation. That’s why I never have, and I never will.

I welcome this inquiry, simply because if we can get better at something — because we’re never perfect — we should. And we will.

Then the Attorney said that we were not providing any documents. He said that when it already had been announced by the member for Abbotsford West that all of the documents were being prepared. Stunning. To go out and say that when it’s not actually the case. So as we go through this process, it will be interesting.

I want to go back, for just a second, to the actual budget. You’re taxing people to death. So 4,600, about $500 — every household. It’s going to affect them. It affects seniors. Even the simplest thing as Netflix.

[5:00 p.m.]

You forgot something in this budget. You forgot about the real people who are affected by your spending and who, long term, are going to have to carry the burden with their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren if you don’t stay fiscally responsible.

Deputy Speaker: As we continue debate on the budget, I recognize the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

M. Dean: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

I’d like to start by recognizing that we do our work here in chambers on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, now known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. It’s my honour and privilege to represent them here in chambers, as well, as the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

I’d also like to acknowledge that today is the day of the Moose Hide Campaign, which is a really important and powerful campaign that I really support. They deliver such leadership in the area of trying to prevent violence against Indigenous women and girls and are showing community leadership in this area.

It was an honour and a privilege to stand on the lawn of this building at lunchtime today and to hear, for example, the voice of young Sage Lacerte. She rallied and inspired so many other young people who now understand the importance of doing this work and also what they can do, what actions they can take. Her older sister, as well, Raven, was there. She talked about her journey, talked about her community. I’m very privileged to have worked and walked alongside them and to continue to follow their leadership and their footsteps in this work that we do.

I want to say thank you to the Finance Minister. I know building the budget is an awful lot of work — a lot, lot, lot of work. Again, she’s provided our province with a balanced budget, balanced over three years, fiscally responsible, and, at the same time, making sure that we are providing services, the services that British Columbians need, that we’re building an economy that’s sustainable and creates good-paying jobs for British Columbians.

We’re making life more affordable, because, as we know, people were struggling to get ahead. This budget is our plan to keep B.C. moving forward. So I feel so honoured to stand up here in support of this budget.

It gives me an opportunity, as well, to shine a spotlight on the people who help me do my work every day. I want to thank my teams, all of my constituency assistants, Lawrence Herzog, Andrew Barrett and Nubwa Wathanafa. I also thank my legislative assistant, Noah Mitchell, who’s moving on to new passages very soon. I wish him the very best. I want to say hello to Quinn, and thank you for joining my team soon.

My gender equity office as well. Dr. Melanie Stewart is my ADM, and she does a really admirable and very powerful job with very limited resources. Ange Liu, who’s my assistant, helps me in that really important work that we’re all so passionate about.

This budget is, for the very first time, a gender-responsive budget. We’ve employed the gender-based analysis plus tool to this budget. We did it for the first time in the last budget. We’ve applied it again here. So we’re really increasing the impact of that tool as we build each successive budget and we’re able to analyze and evaluate the impact of applying that tool and making sure that it actually is closing gaps where there are gaps of inequality evident in the population of British Columbia.

The gender equity office has trained thousands of public servants already. My office only just celebrated being open for two years, and we’ve already had a lasting impact on the public service of this province. We also have trained independent offices staff and Crown corporation staff. The Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia has had all of her staff trained in gender-based analysis plus. She talks about that with such pride.

I feel so proud of the work that my team has done in offering that service and in showing such leadership in providing that training and, therefore, leaving that legacy and making sure we lift the standard so that everybody is applying that lens in what they’re doing on behalf of British Columbians and with the money of British Columbians as well.

[5:05 p.m.]

There are results in already. The point of having GBA+ is to close those gaps, as I said. For example, there are now new jobs programs for people with unique needs, for people who have been traumatized by violence and abuse, for seniors to retool and get back into the active economy.

We’re building new homes — this includes transition homes, seniors housing, housing for people with disabilities, housing for Indigenous people — on the basis of recognizing the cumulative disadvantage that has been experienced and the need to close that gap so that there are opportunities fairly across the province for everybody.

We’ve created the tuition waiver for youth in care for post-secondary institutions. More than 1,100 youth have taken advantage of that program. Youth in care are already at a disadvantage, and we can help them by giving them a lift, by waiving their tuition fees.

We’re supporting vulnerable youth in schools with trauma counselling, school meal programs, helping kids with mental health and those living in poverty. We’re supporting the vulnerable and those who are the most left behind. After years and years of cutbacks and neglect, we need to make sure that we’re helping everybody catch up.

We’re providing support for kids in care, extended care and services to people who need CLBC support and protecting the continuity of care for the 23,000 people with diverse abilities who receive support through CLBC.

Poverty reduction. B.C. now has a poverty reduction strategy, and that is aiming to lift 140,000 people out of poverty by 2024. Let’s remember that a significant amount of those people are single moms.

What about people living in poverty who have legal issues? We’re providing low-income people with quicker access to justice by funding new clinics in B.C.

We’re also investing in and improving access to justice for Indigenous people. Indigenous people are far too overrepresented in our criminal justice system. I went to Duncan a few months ago to visit a new justice centre that was opening up that’s helping Indigenous families stay together longer, helping people get ahead rather than leaving them so much further behind.

Through GBA+, we are closing those gaps for the marginalized and people who have been left behind for far too long. We’re taking steps to ensure people of diverse genders receive the care they need and to ensure that our community is more inclusive and is safe for people of diverse genders. Gender “x” identification has been implemented, and now we have access to gender-affirming surgeries in B.C., rather than going out of province.

We’ve created the new Resilience B.C. Anti-Racism Network, and that’s providing grants and funding for communities to provide information, supports and training. We’re committed to a province that promotes cultural diversity and multiculturalism.

Our little GEO team is creating mighty results right across government, and we’re making life more affordable. We’re continuing to support British Columbians who for so long were left behind and unable to get ahead.

For example, you will see, in this budget, we’ve created the child opportunity benefit. I am so excited about this. This is going to support families, especially disadvantaged families, particularly, for example, families living in poverty, single-parent families. How many single-mom families are there that this is going to support?

It’s launching in October 2020, and it’s going to provide 290,000 families with more money to support their kids. Starting October 1, 2020, this is a tax-free payment for families with children under 18 years of age. It’s going to help with basic necessities like food, clothing and daily life costs and will also create opportunities. It will make sports or arts possible in some families.

[5:10 p.m.]

For one child, it’s up to $1,600 a year. For two children, it’s $2,600 a year. For three children, it’s $3,400 a year. What an impact that’s going to have for families. Combined with B.C.’s affordable child care benefit and the fee reduction initiative for licensed child care spaces, families with one child might save up to $20,000 in a year. Families with two children could save up to $28,000 each year.

Our investment in early childhood education is historic. Let’s not forget that universal, affordable child care, early childhood education, is the single most impactful social policy that closes the gap between the wages and salaries of men and women. It creates and offers those choices for women to pursue their career and their economic activity. It might mean that they have more opportunities for promotion, for example. It means that when they get to their senior years, their pension is healthier and they’re less likely to be at risk of living in poverty.

We have actually created more than 10,400 new spaces, and 28,000 children have benefited from $10-a-day early childhood education. Rates have been reduced for over 55,000 spaces, there has been a wage lift for more than 11,000 early childhood educators, and there are 5,400 bursaries for early childhood educators. In my constituency of Esquimalt-Metchosin, over $10 million has been invested through the early childhood education system, with over $5 million returning to the pockets of parents in Esquimalt-Metchosin. What does that do? That benefits our local economy as well. So I’m very proud of our continuing investment in the universal early childhood education system.

Another way we’re creating increased affordability: families and individuals in British Columbia no longer pay MSP premiums. That’s $900 a year for individuals and $1,800 for families. This is a big change for people living on fixed incomes or living in poverty. There is a seniors couple from my community who had actually contacted the office, asking about the MSP because they thought they’d maybe missed their bill. They’d heard something in the news; they weren’t sure exactly what it was. They couldn’t believe that it was totally eliminated.

Education, as well, is a foundational service for all societies, provinces and communities. It creates opportunities for children from all backgrounds. Budget 2020 strengthens the health, education and community services that all British Columbians depend on. Now, remember that we’d already lifted the budget in the Ministry of Education very, very significantly. We took action quickly in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

This budget delivers an additional $339 million to strengthen B.C.’s K-to-12 education system. This is building on the recent investments to upgrade schools and hire more than 4,200 new teachers. We’re going to be able to hire more special education teachers, psychologists and counsellors. This is going to better support the system. At the end of the day, that means more of our students, our children, are going to find success and fulfil their potential.

A friend of mine is an EA in her local school in my community, and she was always telling me how limited the resources were in her classroom. She’d get pulled between different priorities in the classroom on any given day, depending on the teacher of the day, what else was happening and how the kids were. Now she works with one teenager. She can focus on him for the whole day. She understands his needs, and she’s really able to actually anticipate his needs to make sure that he’s much more successful in the classroom and then with friends and with his family as well. We have already reduced class sizes. We’ve increased classroom resources. We’ve been acting quickly.

The seismic upgrade program has nearly tripled in pace, with 39 projects announced in just two years.

Now, we have to acknowledge that we’re facing a climate crisis. A clean environment is the foundation of a prosperous and sustainable economy. In Budget 2019, we invested approximately $900 million into CleanBC.

[5:15 p.m.]

Budget 2020 accelerates the transition to a cleaner future so that we’ll get there faster, with an additional $419 million over three years for CleanBC. I’m very proud of this leadership that we’re showing in our tackling of the climate crisis. This funding includes incentives to buy electric vehicles and build charging stations, for example.

We’ve increased the program for EV purchases by $20 million in Budget 2020. Why have we done this? Because the takeup has been fantastic. We have seen such wonderful takeup in this program across the province. And guess what. We have actually almost reached our target for EVs this year, in 2020 — the target that was set for us to achieve by 2025. So I’m really proud of the incentives program that we have. It’s fantastic to see that so many of my neighbours and my friends and colleagues are so supportive of this kind of a program and doing their bit for the economy as well. Everybody wants to do their bit.

My neighbours are concerned about emissions, about old growth, about logging, about fossil fuels, about our oceans, about our wildlife. In fact, if you look at the public engagement on plastic pollution in 2019, it attracted so much interest that we had to extend it so that everybody could actually participate. In total, over 35,000 people gave input. So we are going to build a plastics action plan and increase our steps to keep plastic waste out of our environment.

We’re going to be upgrading the B.C. building code to make every new building more energy-efficient, using rebates to help people and businesses make their homes and their workplaces more comfortable and energy-efficient. Additionally, this year’s budget increases support for industries, moving towards clean, low-carbon solutions and projects to make B.C.’s schools, universities, colleges and hospitals more energy-efficient.

Now, a couple new things in the budget. I’m really happy to see that we’re going to begin charging PST on sweetened carbonated beverages. Now, I sit on the Legislative Assembly Committee on Finance and Government Services, so I’ve been part of the committee that tours around the province. Every year, we’ve heard from people advocating for this tax to be levied. It has also been advocated for by health professionals, because it’s young people between the ages of 14 and 18 who are the top consumers of pop. So this is good public health policy as well.

It was under the leadership of the chairing of the committee by the member for Maple Ridge–Mission. We’re now successfully following forward on this recommendation.

Something else that we heard at the Finance Committee as well was to look at a new needs-based, upfront grant for post-secondary students. We already eliminated interest of the B.C. portion of student loans, and to support low- to middle-income post-secondary students when they need it most, Budget 2020 takes the next step in making life more affordable for B.C. students. The B.C. access grant will remove barriers to education and provide support for learners to complete their studies. It has been recommended by students for years. We listened to those students. It’ll be ready in time for the 2024 semester so that more than 40,000 eligible students at public colleges and universities throughout the province will receive immediate support with upfront costs of their education.

Eligible students enrolled in a program under two years in length may receive up to $4,000 a year in B.C. access grant support. Eligible students enrolled in a program of more than two years can receive up to $1,000 a year in the B.C. access grant support in addition to up to $3,000 a year under the Canada student grant for full-time students. So, again, they might be able to access up to $4,000 each year.

[5:20 p.m.]

The grant design reflects best practices and research that shows that needs-based, upfront grants improve access to education. They also increase rates of completion by making life more affordable for students as they begin post-secondary studies at the start of each school year.

Budget 2020 creates a new $24 million investment over three years and adds to the fund with a redesign of old grants. As a result, this means that almost double the number of students will receive support. It’s flexible, and it’s going to be responsive to high-demand occupations like early childhood educators, who we need to recruit and train, health care assistants and trades workers. These are important areas and high-priority areas for B.C.’s economy, now and into the future.

This is the first time that provincial grants will be available to part-time students, students in programs of less than two years and in a much broader range of programs. It builds on our historic investments in the post-secondary system across the province. It’s so important to invest in our future, to train our young people and to make sure that they have the skills to be able to enter the workforce and to continue building our province.

We launched the provincial tuition waiver program for former youth in care to access free tuition at all 25 public post-secondary institutions, and more than 1,100 students have benefited already. We eliminated interest on B.C. student loans. That’s going to save a typical student who graduates with about $28,000 in combined B.C. and federal student loans $2,300 in interest charges over a ten-year repayment period.

We reduced the cost of education by investing more than $3 million in open textbooks. We created B.C.’s first graduate scholarship fund with a $12 million investment, the largest investment in graduate scholarships in the history of the province. We also made housing more affordable by investing $450 million to build approximately 5,000 new beds for students over six years, and 1,975 new beds have been funded to date.

We need to be creating these opportunities. We need to be investing in young people going into post-secondary education, because 77 percent of all job openings over the next ten years are going to need post-secondary-level education and training, 41 percent more require a certificate or diploma, and 36 percent are going to need an undergraduate or master’s degree. We’re investing in people who are going to be the workforce. They’re going to be our economic leaders and actors in our province in the years ahead.

In Budget 2020, we are investing significantly in capital. Taxpayer-supported capital spending over the fiscal plan is a record level at $22.9 billion. It includes new investments to sustain and expand provincial infrastructure. So this is our schools, post-secondary facilities, housing, transit, roads, bridges, hospitals. B.C.’s population is set to grow by more than one million people in the next 15 years. So we need to deliver the infrastructure and the services that people need. This is key to maintaining a strong economic foundation and improving everyone’s quality of life.

There’s work that’s underway on new and upgraded hospitals, health facilities, highway and transit projects, schools, new housing. All of this infrastructure investment and work is creating more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction.

For example, we’re investing $6.4 billion to support new construction projects across health, like upgrading health facilities, medical and diagnostic equipment and information management systems. Major projects like the redevelopment of the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, new patient care towers at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, the Penticton Regional Hospital, replacing Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace and building a new St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.

[5:25 p.m.]

Transportation. We’re investing $7.4 billion for priority projects that include the Pattullo Bridge replacement, the Broadway subway, four-laning on Highway 1 through Kicking Horse Canyon, improvements to highway corridors in Delta, Langley and along the southern coast of Vancouver Island. Already, I hear from members of my community how happy they are with the new bus lanes and the expansion of the bus lanes. People who ride, particularly from West Shore, into downtown Victoria are saying that it’s cutting at least ten minutes off their journey already.

We’re investing $2.8 billion into education to maintain, replace, renovate or expand K-to-12 facilities in North Vancouver, Sooke school district, Quesnel, Coquitlam, greater Victoria, Vancouver, Abbotsford and an addition to Valleyview Secondary in Kamloops. Really, essentially, for the health of our communities, these new and upgraded schools are also going to also include neighbourhood learning centres and child care spaces, spaces for early childhood education. Since 2017, we’ve announced more than 80 capital projects for expanding, building and seismically upgrading schools.

More than 10,000 spaces have been created to improve the learning environment for students in growing communities. My community, for example, is one of the fastest-growing communities in British Columbia. The Royal Bay high school was built, but it wasn’t built to projected numbers. So within a year of a brand-new, beautiful high school being built in my community in Colwood, it had portables, and students were learning and experiencing their learning, trying to fulfil their potential in portables already. So we’re investing in an expansion, and then Royal Bay will actually be the largest high school on the whole of Vancouver Island.

We’re investing in infrastructure in post-secondary education: $3.1 billion to build capacity and help to meet the province’s future workforce needs in key sectors. I’ve talked a lot in the chamber before about housing, such a critical part of the infrastructure that’s needed, particularly in my community and, I know, across the whole of the province. We have a ten-year plan to work in partnership to create more affordable housing for British Columbians.

We’re investing more than $1 billion over three years to support the construction of new low- and middle-income housing throughout B.C. As I mentioned earlier, this includes more housing for seniors, for Indigenous people, for families — for people who really, really need it. Budget 2020 also provides an additional $56 million for 200 new units of supported modular housing for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness — again, another critical issue, particularly for my community but I know across the province. Already 23,177 new homes are underway or completed.

I want to talk a little bit, as well, about transition houses. We’re investing in transition houses. It’s important to me as Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity, important to me as the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin, because in my community in West Shore, we don’t have a transition house. That means that people who are facing violence and their families that are at risk of violence have to move a long way and relocate their families, including their kids, from their schools and their neighbourhoods, all the way out to Sooke or to downtown Victoria.

I just want to say, finally, that we’re investing in people. It’s people who work in our economy. They drive our economy, and they’re going to keep our economy healthy and thriving. Our economy is doing well. It has led the country with the lowest unemployment rate and is among the leaders in employment growth across Canada. A strong economy is one where we treat workers fairly and there is equal opportunity and diversity and inclusion. It’s an economy where workers are safe and return home to their families at the end of their shift or day.

Deputy Speaker: As we continue debate on the budget, I now recognize the member for Parksville-Qualicum.

[5:30 p.m.]

M. Stilwell: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

As I begin my remarks today on the budget, I’d like to first acknowledge that we’re on the traditional territories of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. It’s their traditional land that we gather on today.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend a minute or two to at least acknowledge some of the very special people who help me and support me in my role here in the Legislature.

First and foremost, my husband and my son. When I first got elected to this House, he was just 11 years old, and he is now almost 19 years old, at university and engaged in the political conversations that we have in our house, always asking very relevant questions. It’s been such a delight to watch him grow into the fine young man that he is. Of course, my husband, Mark, continues to do the laundry and cook the food and take care of the house while I’m away. All his love and support enable me to do this job here in Victoria.

Of course, our constituency assistants and our staff in this building make it possible for us to be successful. Tamie Nohr, Tamara Rook and Wendy King are those individuals for me, along with the communications and the research staff down in the basement who often get forgotten about because they are down in the basement. So all those wonderful people who make it possible and, of course, the constituents of Parksville-Qualicum, who give me the privilege to represent them here in Victoria and to be their voice.

The budget, I think we will see…. We have, obviously, heard from a variety of people who have spoken already to the budget. There are different perspectives. I think the former member who spoke before me has a different perspective on the budget, because it’s clear that this government has no idea how to put us on a path to affordability in a sustainable way. Here we are, three years in, and the NDP continue to fail on keeping their big election promises. There’s an increase to the annual spending and a declining surplus.

The people of British Columbia have found themselves faced with a very large and increased tax burden since the NDP came into power in 2017. The total tax burden borne by B.C. residents and businesses is set to climb from $28.2 billion in 2017-18 to a proposed $36.9 billion in 2021-22. That’s according to the government’s own budget documents that were released just a week ago. That means that by 2022, total taxation in B.C. will have increased by almost $4,700 per household courtesy of the NDP government. For those math whizzes, that’s an increase of $8.7 billion, or 31 percent, in just five years.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Now, don’t get me wrong. We do know that some of this is understandable. As the economy grows, so does income, and the government gets its fair share of that income. Yet at the same time, when we think about it, the NDP expenses have increased $11.4 billion.

I think it’s important for us as opposition members to help people understand the impact that government is having on them. A 30 percent increase in five years is more than simple organic growth. For those watching at home — I think there are a few — that is a cumulative impact, along with organic growth, of more than $26 billion through 2022.

Where do all those dollars come from? Well, simply put, it’s 23 new taxes or increases to the existing taxes. So it’s coming from the pockets of British Columbians. Adding injury to insult, the NDP confirmed in their budget that they overspent last year by $500 million, and they failed to follow through on capital projects that are worth over $1 billion. So there’s one thing that is clear: the NDP have no problem spending other people’s money.

[5:35 p.m.]

The average person may not see it on a daily basis. They may not see it clearly. It could be everything from little drops in the bucket, like the provincial gas tax in Victoria, which is bringing about $28 million over the next four years. Or maybe it’s the B.C. Hydro crisis fund, which is adding another $16 million over three years.

With nearly two dozen tax hikes spread gently and nearly invisibly across the landscape, from the gas pumps to your B.C. Hydro statement, your restaurant tab and your grocery bill, the impact on people’s wallets is the same, and it’s being felt. The NDP just keep digging a little bit deeper into the pockets of British Columbians.

I can tell you that British Columbians were certainly surprised to learn there was a new Netflix tax on software. There’s also the expansion of the PST to include sugary drinks, whose impacts at this point are not known. Who knew? Who knew that British Columbians who enjoy things like Netflix and Crave are going to face the additional PST? It’s just one of those little nuggets, one of those little details, that gets tucked into the budget.

It’s going to impact the people…. I know my colleague earlier spoke of the seniors who can’t afford to go to the movies, so they stay home and watch Netflix or Crave and enjoy that. Those are the people that are on fixed incomes. Every little additional cost that they’ve been seeing over the last almost three years is having a dramatic impact on them. They are being squeezed.

I know we’ll need to get some more clarity to understand more, during the estimates time, of exactly what that 7 percent PST will have. But I know it will be coming into effect on July 1, 2020. It’s not just Netflix. It will be those other channels as well. It could be Disney and Crave and the other channels that many British Columbians enjoy. But we’ll have to figure out what the impact will be to British Columbians and their wallets. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates that it will be $16 million a year that will be taken from British Columbians.

I also look forward to being enlightened by the minister as she explains her expectations related to the carbonated sugary beverages tax. It’s not a new concept. It’s not a new discussion. When I was first elected as Parliamentary Secretary for Healthy Living, it was something that we were discussing, something that British Columbians have been discussing for a long time. But the question is: what will be the efficacy of the tax? I hope that the minister will be able to demonstrate exactly how the tax will make a difference, other than as a means to generate more revenue to balance her budget.

In the case of income tax, the five-year increase in personal taxes totals just under $11 billion, and that’s not counting the impact of the new surtax on high income earners over $200,000 that was announced in the budget. Corporate taxes? Well, there’s approximately a hike of $3.1 billion over five years. A hike to the carbon tax, $5 per tonne, brings in another $2.2 billion for the government in the next five years.

Now, that might be understandable if the increase was revenue-neutral and was designed to actually reduce the emissions, as the original carbon tax was, but sadly, that’s not the case. Those dollars are going directly into general revenue and into the abyss. Unlike most taxes, it’s one of those taxes that you can watch ticking by you right before your eyes every single time you fill up with gas.

Can you just imagine for a moment if the government had walked into office in 2017, when they formed government, and dropped a 30 percent rate hike across the board? There would have been a revolt by the people. But instead, they’re just being squeezed slowly, painfully.

In her speech, the minister speaks of life getting better every day and how we’re an economic leader in Canada with zero operating debt. Well, how does she think all that happened? It certainly didn’t happen in the last 2½ years. It was the heavy lifting by the previous B.C. Liberal government that made it possible. It was the fiscal responsibility of the previous government that made that possible.

What we have now are British Columbians that aren’t getting ahead in life. Life is not more affordable. It’s less affordable than ever before, while the NDP balance the budget on the backs of hard-working British Columbians with all these increased taxes.

[5:40 p.m.]

Budget 2020 also confirmed that this Premier has no intention of keeping the promises he made to British Columbians 2½ years ago. In many cases, those promises have been completely abandoned. It’s just another tax-and-spend budget with no real plan on how to grow the economy or help people get ahead. The only source of revenue that the NDP is interested in is the pockets of taxpayers.

Now, that being said, the sad part is that even with these new and increased taxes, the money is tight. The surplus is small. In the words of the Finance Minister, we’re not here to deliver a large surplus. That’s one way of getting around it. Well, that is something she can stand by, because she inherited a $2.7 billion surplus from the B.C. Liberal government, and they have spent almost all of it. Plus, they’ve added $6 billion in new and increased taxes, and now this year’s budget predicts a surplus of a mere $227 million, while adding $5.8 billion to the debt.

The Finance Minister said there will be small surpluses expected in the coming years: $203 million in 2019-20, $374 million in 2022. Certainly mere millions compared to the billions they received.

The budget is balanced on a razor’s edge, with growing debt. It has failed to include any meaningful funding for things like the Massey Tunnel replacement. There is no relief for employers. There was a tepid reannouncement of some union-focused trades apprentice programs but no new money for capital projects and no mention of bringing back the rural dividend fund.

Today we have people who are stuck in traffic as part of their daily routine. I don’t even live on the Mainland, and I feel the pain of commuters on the Mainland. If the NDP had just stuck with the plan that was in progress with the Massey Tunnel, it would be 60 percent complete today. Tens of thousands of commuters should be quite angry being stuck in B.C.’s worst bottleneck. The money has been completely blown, the money that should have gone to the Massey, and in the meantime, commuters are paying the price.

Instead, the NDP will overspend billions of dollars on projects like the Pattullo Bridge, which will replace an already overcapacity four-lane bridge with just another four-lane bridge and do nothing about traffic congestion, all while at least a hundred million extra dollars will go into the pockets of the Premier’s union friends and insiders. Add to that the Broadway subway and Highway 1 expansion. Then there’s the fun fact that we have workers who have skills and training who want to work on public infrastructure projects, but 85 percent of those construction workers are being told they can’t work on those projects if they aren’t part of one of the NDP’s hand-picked unions. How exactly is this helping British Columbia?

Commuters are also spending hundreds of dollars on gas, while waiting for this Premier to deliver on the gas price relief that he promised two years ago. ICBC rates will skyrocket this year, and any relief will be found conveniently after the next election.

People who are calling my constituency office are angry, and they can’t believe the price tag on their ICBC bills. They’re struggling to manage all the additional costs. The costs are piling up. Under the NDP, the average premiums have gone from $1,550 to $1,832. They’ll rise to $1,900 this year, and it’s certainly not affordable for citizens. It’s a mystery how the NDP believe any of this is helpful for British Columbians.

The B.C. budget also predicts a massive 22.1 percent drop in housing starts this year, followed by another 8.5 percent the next year. On the other hand, the budget anticipates a 10 percent jump in the total annual value of home sales over those same two years, which means fewer homes and higher home prices. Now, the Premier told British Columbians they could expect significant improvements in housing, but now the NDP’s own numbers say new housing construction will decrease over the next three years, making it more expensive to rent or to buy a home. On top of that, the NDP has only built 2,400 new affordable housing units, versus the 114,000 that they promised. At this rate, it’s going to take them 98 years to fulfil that promise.

[5:45 p.m.]

The reality is that nothing is being done to increase housing supply. Instead, the NDP taxes are causing project cancellations. What is needed the most is to increase the supply to help this affordability crisis. So while the minister sits idle and fails to address the housing starts or not pushing city halls and cutting the red tape of new home construction, the minister is really presenting a recipe for a cake flop.

On one hand, they’re patting themselves on the back saying how they’ve slowed the real estate market, yet their own budget and priorities predict prices will explode over the coming years. The MLA advisory 2019 Year in Review says: “Many larger scale developments took a pause in 2019, with less than 4,000 concrete pre-sale units released in 2019 compared to over 12,000 in 2018. This is a 75 percent decrease in concrete pre-sale inventory….”

Do you know where that leaves homeowners and potential homebuyers, people looking for their new first home? What they’re learning is that mansions are more affordable for millionaires, but finding a condo, a townhouse or an entry-level home is still out of reach. Although we’re seeing home prices are going back up after a modest decline, they’re still not remotely affordable for most. This is coming from a Premier who said they could get decisive action on affordability. They certainly are not getting it.

Let’s not forget there’s a $400 renters rebate that’s still missing in action. People voted for this government in hope that they would have a helping hand, but instead, the hand has been snagged back, and there are crickets on the topic of the $400 renters rebate.

Another policy that’s having a huge negative impact would be the employer health tax. The government has traded medical service plan premiums paid for by both employers and employees in most workplaces for a new employer-only payroll tax which affects every business in B.C. with a payroll of over $500,000 a year. The total hit: a little over $6 billion in five years. If people are not paying MSP premiums on their paycheque, they sure are paying for them in the price hikes and on every good and service that they consume. And if an employer can’t actually afford that hit to their bottom line? Well, people might just pay for it in another way, with a loss of their job.

The layoffs have already started. People are learning that their favourite local restaurants are either laying off, charging them more or, even worse, outright closing down. Michael Colwill, the manager of Fernwood Inn, says everybody needs to get used to paying $10 a pint and $20 a burger across town. Right across the street from the Legislature, at Belleville’s Diner, they’re now adding a fee to customers’ bills to cover the EHT so that they don’t have to lay off staff or raise their prices.

Every single community is being impacted. Municipalities are being impacted. Property taxes are going up. So this claim of people not having to pay the MSP — what a fallacy. The minister says people are no longer paying MSP. Well, who does she think the business owners are? Are they seen by her like farmers are by the Minister of Agriculture — not people?

There is the forestry industry. All resource sectors are declining, but forestry is dropping 40 percent since 2018. On the Island, forestry workers have been hit hard, and there is absolutely nothing in this budget for the forestry workers. People who live beyond Hope are watching rural communities die while this government ignores the forestry industry that feeds their family.

The sector is in crisis, with massive layoffs and shutdowns consistently announced by this government. More than 100 mill curtailments; ten permanent and indefinite shutdowns in 2019. The Minister of Forests says it’s not a crisis, and the parliamentary secretary says there are too many mills. The NDP ripped the rural dividend fund out of rural and forest-dependent communities last year, calling it a slush fund, and now this budget has no mention of the dividend fund whatsoever.

[5:50 p.m.]

I could talk for way more than half an hour, but I think we need to look at the facts. What we see with this NDP government is so many squandered opportunities, so many broken promises. The result is that nobody is getting ahead. They pretend to care about the environment and transportation, but then they cut the funding. They want you to believe that B.C. is stronger. But how does that balance out with the fact that there are so many job losses?

As the former Minister of Social Development, I was pleased to hear of the increase to persons-with-disabilities earning exemptions. It was something I advocated for. The problem with this announcement is that government hasn’t created an employment climate for those people to thrive and to find employment.

You’ve heard members in this House speak of the job losses — 32,000 private sector job losses in the past eight months. So although the announcement of an increase to earning exemption is positive, it needs to be matched with an environment that actually provides opportunity and promotes opportunity. With the current climate, the first people to lose jobs and to be laid off will be those people with disabilities.

You top this with the fact that investor confidence is down. You know, back in the day, the NDP slammed every single B.C. Liberal budget despite the big annual increases to health and education and other key services that were paid for with prosperity, I might add. But now they’re learning what happens when you run out of other people’s money and when you stall the economy. What’s evident is that this Premier and the NDP have no idea how to create jobs and that every single economic indicator is actually pointing the wrong way. Life isn’t getting more affordable for B.C. families. It begs the question: are you actually getting ahead under the NDP?

Let’s review the facts. They’ve squandered the opportunity to help people, with no focus on growing the economy or delivering on their promises to make life more affordable. There is no $400 renters rebate and no new money for $10-a-day daycare. We’re still 98 years away from the NDP fulfilling their affordable housing target. There is no more money added to reduce congestion to get drivers out of traffic. There is no money for the George Massey Tunnel, which is the biggest bottleneck in B.C. There’s no money for the commuter rail in the Fraser Valley, even though, during the throne speech, there was a hint of it.

No new money for the opioid crisis. No action to run out new market housing or make housing affordable. There are fewer housing starts in British Columbia. The K-to-12 funding is flat through 2023. There is inadequate money for victims of crime, homeless youth and legal aid. There are now more tax brackets. There is a provincial soda tax and a Netflix tax. The B.C. debt is going to grow faster than the economy, and the carbon taxes will increase each year by 29 percent over four years.

Still the Premier and this government have abandoned so many promises to help British Columbians get ahead. We are headed in the wrong direction, and I will do everything I can to ensure that people know the opportunities that they’re missing out on while this Premier lacks any semblance of leadership.

What this budget should have represented was a blueprint for creating more opportunity for all of B.C. By that measure, it misses the mark, and it actually fails British Columbians. What it needed was an action plan with urgent relief for families and communities that depend on our struggling forest sector. What was needed was meaningful tax relief that will jump-start our economy and help our families, our seniors and our working British Columbians to balance their budgets at home.

What was needed was bold investments in public transit, roads and bridges to help commuters and to reduce emissions. What was needed was measures to reverse the declining housing starts and rapidly increase the housing supply so that every British Columbian at all income levels can afford to rent or buy a home. What was needed was a strong economic plan to restore B.C.’s leadership in Canada, to generate that prosperity that funds quality public services, so that every British Columbian could have the opportunity to achieve their dreams.

Instead, the NDP raised the hopes of British Columbians, and then they walked away from those provinces. There are so many gaps in what they said they would do and what they’re actually doing. The people of B.C. should not have high expectations for the coming years, with all these increased taxes and with the unfulfilled promises, along with the increased spending. There’s no comprehensive strategy. There’s no relief for struggling small businesses, along with declining investment.

[5:55 p.m.]

That surplus that the NDP inherited is almost gone. Taxes and debt are up, and affordability is getting worse. It was certainly very telling that even the government’s own coalition Green partner described this throne speech as underwhelming and backwards-looking. Now, if only they had a way to do something about it. I don’t know — like join the rest of us in voting against this budget. That’s what I’ll be doing.

Hon. K. Chen: I am really honoured to have the opportunity to speak here today in favour of Budget 2020 and also really thank the Minister of Finance for her important work and her team’s work to put together such an important budget and continue the work that our government has been doing to make life more affordable for British Columbians, to provide better services and also to build a strong economy at the same time.

I really want to begin by thanking my constituents from Burnaby-Lougheed for allowing me the opportunity to represent the beautiful riding of Burnaby-Lougheed here in the Legislature. I have been trying my best, whenever I am back home and in the community, to connect with local residents, local businesses to hear the stories that they share with me, to learn from them and really to talk about issues that are important to local families so I can bring those stories back in the Legislature and make sure that our government is working on those very important initiatives.

I cannot thank my local constituents enough for their advocacy, for their stories, for their trust to allow me and, of course, many of our colleagues, to represent beautiful British Columbia and also to bring people’s stories into this House.

I also need to thank my constituency assistants — Gurveen, Lynn and Jessica — for working on the front line every single day. As a former constituency assistant myself, I know how important their work is every day, making sure that our local constituents’ cases, concerns and issues are being addressed and also making sure that I’m up to date with what happens in Burnaby-Lougheed when I am working in this House, in Victoria.

I really want to start by supporting this budget to highlight how Budget 2020 provides crucial investments and really a record level of capital spending to expand and sustain provincial infrastructure over the three-year plan, including capital investments in schools, hospitals, roads, transit and housing that will benefit communities and families across B.C. and are also supporting our strong local economy.

If you think about how we’re building that infrastructure…. We’re building communities at the same time. When you build a school, build a hospital, when you build transit services, local families move to the area. It supports housing initiatives, and it also makes sure that business comes and supports the local economy as well.

I want to start by talking about some of the capital investments right in Burnaby, where my home is, to show how, really, every day — when I’m back home, I do hear about it — the investments that we’re making for local families make a huge difference, especially when you think about how those investments have not been there for a long, long time. When the opposition members were in government, some of the investments have…. People have been waiting for some of the investments, and those investments are long overdue.

The first example would be the Burnaby Hospital — finally. I remember how when the opposition members were in government, they talked about their redevelopment plan and a new Burnaby Hospital. They made announcements. They talked about it for many, many years, but there was really not a plan behind it. The funding was not in place until we became government. I’m so proud that we’re now finally putting the money that has to be there to build phase 1 for the Burnaby Hospital redevelopment plan so more people can get quality care in a very high-quality facility.

I had my son at Burnaby Hospital. I remember I really was very thankful for the care that I got from the professional staff there, from my doctors and from nurses. However, the facility is so old. It’s so long overdue, and I’m really proud that our government has made sure that the capital investment is in place so many families, including myself, and many families from my local riding can have a newly upgraded, new facility with expansion.

[6:00 p.m.]

We have, of course, something that I was really excited about that’s also included through our budget. It’s a renewed and also expanded housing project, with a dining hall, at Simon Fraser University. That’s right in my riding of Burnaby-Lougheed. There are 369 student beds that will be available for students at SFU, and that does not just address the needs of SFU students.

I remember that when I went to SFU it was hard enough to find housing, but nowadays you can barely find housing in Burnaby. It doesn’t only help the students make sure they have the housing that they need; it also helps to support the local rental market.

I remember that during the 2017 campaign I met a family, a mom with three kids. She told me how her family was homeless for about four to five months because their landlord gave them two months’ notice to find a new place, and they couldn’t find a place in two months. She wanted her kids to continue to go to the local school. She worked in the neighbourhood, and she didn’t want to uproot her family and move to a totally different community.

She couldn’t find a place until four or five months later. So she had to separate her family. She had to take some temporary measures to put her kids in some friends’ place. With her and her husband trying to juggle between things, they put all of their stuff in a storage place until they found housing in Burnaby. This investment to support student housing will also really help with the local rental market. So it’s really exciting news for my local community.

Also, through the B.C. knowledge development fund, our government is supporting SFU again, to make sure that we provide specialized equipment to expand the Cedar supercomputer on the Burnaby campus with $6.6 million provincial funding, to make sure we support our post-secondary institutions.

We have also been really supporting local schools as well. Some of the exciting news that we’ve been sharing in my riding of Burnaby-Lougheed are seismic upgrades, class size, expansion, including right at SFU again. It’s a busy and growing community, and University Highlands Elementary School is now getting new class sizes, with child care added to it. Also, Armstrong Elementary and Seaforth Elementary have been going through seismic upgrades, making sure students can have safer schools.

There’s also Burnaby North Secondary School — again, another promise that was made by the previous government. For many years, they’d talked about how they wanted to rebuild Burnaby North Secondary School. It’s a very old school, a huge school with a lot of students. They promised to do that for many years, and unfortunately, it still didn’t happen until we became government and the funding was finally in place to make sure that we had a new Burnaby North Secondary School, with a neighbourhood learning centre and, again, with child care. I’m always excited when projects have child care added on school grounds.

Of course, we have been also supporting the local school district, such as our new playground funding that have been benefited many schools in Burnaby. My constituency has two elementary schools, Second Street and Sperling Elementary, that have received new playgrounds. As a former school trustee, I remember how I would hear from PAC parents about how hard it is for them to fundraise for the playground. I remember one school where the PAC fundraised for about seven years to get a playground. With this support, it means that many, many schools across B.C. no longer need to have parents fundraising hard for their playground. The provincial government is there to support.

Actually, Second Street School is where my son goes to. He’s really happy about the new playground. It’s an accessible playground, and all the kids are able to spend their break times at the playground, enjoying different types of activities.

Of course, one thing that’s always at the top of our minds is housing, making sure there’s more housing support for local families across B.C., including in Burnaby. B.C. Housing is providing $15 million in provincial investment in affordable housing funds to develop 91 units for low- to moderate-income families and seniors. We need to continue to do the work that we’re doing in housing.

I thank the minister responsible for Housing for a lot of the initiatives she has rolled out, which have also benefited a lot of Burnaby families, including $17 million in capital funding through the affordable rental housing program to New Vista Society, with a 125-unit affordable rental project. That’s really exciting news for our community.

[6:05 p.m.]

B.C. Housing is also providing capital funding of $10.2 million through the rapid response to homelessness program, for 52 units of modular housing. I remember being there for the opening of the modular housing and hearing all the stories of how the housing project would really change many, many peoples’ lives. We’re moving people from the street to make sure they have a roof over their head and making sure that they can have a new start for their lives.

Of course, we have been investing in other post-secondary institutions in Burnaby, as well, including BCIT, which has got a health sciences centre for events simulation for $88.2 million, and many other initiatives.

I would definitely not miss child care. We have been investing a lot in Burnaby in child care spaces. We’ve created several hundred spaces, with more to come. That will benefit many, many Burnaby families that have been on long wait-lists. As a mother with a young child, I struggled to find child care in Burnaby when my son was born. Ever since he started kindergarten, I am now trying to look for before- and after-school care.

Definitely a lot of work to do there. But in a short two years, we’ve brought several hundred spaces to Burnaby, with a total of $31 million to support the child care sector, to support family, to support workers and child care operators and early childhood educators in Burnaby — $31 million, just in Burnaby.

About $18 million in the $31 million is going back to parents’ pockets. If you think about $18 million going back to parents’ pockets, that means so many parents in Burnaby can now provide better food for their children, more activities, spending more time together and making sure that they can get ahead and support their other needs in housing, in transportation.

I’m proud of the investments that we’ve made in Burnaby. If you really think about it, after years and years of neglect from the previous government, I can see how my own community is changing. I can hear it at the doorsteps. Just a few weeks ago, I was knocking on doors listening to stories. I hear parents who are happy to get into a child care space. I’m hearing parents who are happy with their new classrooms. Those stories encourage us to do the work that we do and we need to continue doing. We need to make sure there is a lot done but also more to do.

One issue I definitely need to talk about that is definitely at the top of my mind and also at the top of mind for many of my local constituents is how…. I still hear it at the doorsteps. Constituents are very concerned about how the previous government just totally neglected the risk of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. We have the Trans Mountain tank farm in the middle of my riding and also the Westridge terminal. I hear about the concerns all the time and the risks all the time. I cannot thank the Minister of Environment and also our government enough for working really hard to focus on those risks of the expansion project that were totally, again, neglected by the previous government.

We need to focus on the risks of oil spills. We need to make sure we protect our environment. At the same time, in my riding, it’s about people’s lives. I really want to invite all the members in this House to take a tour of my riding. I just drove by where the Trans Mountain tank farm is, seeing how they’re getting ready for the expansion. It’s just heartbreaking seeing all the residents living around the tank farm and also all the families and the schools and all the infrastructure we’re putting in. But now people do feel like they are threatened by the expansion, and we need to continue to stand up for our local families to make sure their safety is protected, our environment is protected, our coast is protected.

I cannot thank some of our local stakeholders enough, including a lot of professionals from the city of Burnaby, our local firefighters for continuing engaging with us in those dialogues to make sure local community safety is protected. We need to work with local communities, of course, on every issue that we’re working hard here in this House for. We need to continue to engage with local communities, including Indigenous communities that, on our path to reconciliation…. It is definitely hard work. It is a tough journey, but we have to go on this journey together.

I’m really proud that our government is the first government, really — one of the first in the world and the first jurisdiction in Canada — to introduce the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples to ensure that we recognize the human rights of Indigenous people. We continue to make sure that we affirm, through Budget 2020, those principles that we have committed to with additional funding and support to make sure that we improve cultural inclusion with our social and justice programs and systems. At the same time, we have made a commitment to share provincial revenue with First Nations, which is estimated to be about $3 billion over the next 25 years.

[6:10 p.m.]

Again, we do need to recognize that reconciliation is hard work. It’s a shared journey that we are on together. If we’re going to achieve it, we have to stay committed to this process and keep engaging with one another and find common ground together. It is really about working together and making sure we can build a better future.

Speaking of a better future, I really cannot say how much I support our government’s CleanBC plan. It’s a very robust plan that really helps our government to be on the right path to build a better future. If you look at Budget 2020, it builds on a lot of initiatives that CleanBC has been doing during the past two years. It will bring CleanBC funding to nearly $1.3 billion over the next four years.

Some of the new funding initiatives include the Go Electric B.C. program, which is a very popular program, to make sure more electric vehicles are available, affordable and accessible for British Columbians. We are also working on providing more support to encourage building efficiency of schools, hospitals, universities and colleges — that’s really exciting news — to make sure we have sustainable infrastructure down the road. We also want to encourage the CleanBC program for industry and provide incentives for industries to achieve emission reductions.

Through Budget 2020, you can see the climate action tax credit is also helping to support making life more affordable for lower-income families and many more British Columbians.

While we are working on this to make sure we build a sustainable clean future, it is also about supporting our local economy. I’m really proud to say that B.C.’s labour market has continued to be really strong. Employment grew by 2.6 percent in 2019, with a total of 65,400 net new jobs created. We are among the leaders in employment growth across the nation last year, and our employment rate remains the lowest in Canada at 4.7 percent in 2019.

Really, over the next two years, 2020 and 2021, B.C.’s economy is forecasted to be strong, sustainable and resilient within a context of ongoing global uncertainty and trade tensions. When you think about a lot of the investments that we’ve been making in people, in families, in children and in infrastructure, that is really about building a strong economy.

I’m proud that ever since we became government, one of the first things we did was to cut small business tax, making sure that we always put local families, local business first as our priorities.

If you really look at a lot of the work we’re doing, in 2020, we can see how if you are a family with an income of under around $100,000, you will see a 22 percent net reduction in taxes. That includes the elimination of MSP and includes a lot of the support that we’re investing in child care and housing.

At the same time, I’m so proud that we have a B.C. child opportunity benefit that’s providing relief. Families can get the benefit. If you have one child, it’s $1,600; two children, $2,600; and with three children, you get $3,400. I was talking to a friend of mine with three kids, and she was so happy. She’s a stay-at-home mom, has been eager to go back to work, trying to find child care and struggling with a lot of things on her plate. She was really happy about this new support that’s going to come to her family, the $3,400 she can get from the new B.C. child opportunity benefit.

If you are a family that’s making about $60,000, you are actually going to see an up to 60 percent net reduction in taxes. That’s significant. That’s about lifting families up and making sure a lot of families that live in our constituencies can get the support that they need.

Of course, speaking of supporting families, I’m also proud of our government’s poverty reduction plan that has been working across ministries to make sure that we can make life better for a lot of vulnerable families who are living below the poverty line.

We definitely have to highlight, in Budget 2020, one of the…. Great news that I saw is definitely the B.C. access grant. Thanks to the Minister of Advanced Education and also the Minister of Finance. It’s great news for students across B.C. I’m pretty sure all members in this House have heard from students across B.C. about the need to make sure that we can support them with their education.

[6:15 p.m.]

Let’s not forget how, in 2004, the previous government, the B.C. Liberals, cut and got rid of this needs-based grant in 2004, leaving B.C. the only province in Canada without a needs-based grant. We’ve been hearing from students across B.C. about how the grant could really support their education as they continue to struggle with the high costs of education, finding housing and being able to balance their study, work and life.

This is great news for B.C. students. I really want to give a shout-out to a lot of student advocacy groups, including the Simon Fraser Student Society. I’ve had tons of meetings with them. I need to give a shout-out to their president, Giovanni, such a young activist, who has been working hard to push for better changes.

We’ve met with students from Alliance of B.C. Students, from B.C. Federation of Students, and they’ve been advocating for this for many, many years. It’s great news for student communities as we continue to make sure we make education and life more affordable for students and British Columbians. Of course, that includes our investments in housing. I talked a little earlier about the student housing investments that are in my riding and very exciting for students and also help to support the rental market.

Just in about two years, our government has supported the creation of nearly 23,000 homes that are completed or are underway in nearly 90 communities. This is historical. If you think about how housing has been in crisis for so many years in B.C., this is a huge start that we need to be really proud of. These investments include more than 5,200 new mixed-income affordable rental homes. For individuals and families who are renting, we have also limited the yearly allowable rent increase to the rate of inflation, which is 2.6 percent for 2020. I think this is an important initiative and step for many renters in this province.

We’re also happy to say that we are giving more support to help families and seniors to afford rent through the rental assistance program and the Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters, the SAFER program, which is also a very popular program. In 2020, we also include $50 million in program spending for homelessness initiatives. That definitely has to continue to support many individuals in our province who are having challenges finding a home.

Of course, we continue to invest in a lot of essential services that people count on, including our public health care system. Other than being really excited about the Burnaby Hospital, we are opening new urgent care centres across the province, including Burnaby. This has provided a lot of immediate relief to local families. It’s great news. People really are providing very positive feedback in my community about the urgent care centres and the network. Our local doctors, physicians, medical professionals and nurses are providing those very crucial services for families.

Also, thanks to the Minister of Health, our government…. Together we’ve been working hard on reducing wait times and also improving access to PharmaCare by reducing or eliminating deductibles for about 240,000 B.C. families with net income under $45,000. This is significant. This is going to be a huge support to make sure those families can have access to better PharmaCare.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Of course, we are continuing to invest in education. I am really excited about the funding model review that has been released by the ministry to make sure we provide more support to students with special needs, to also support more vulnerable students, lower-income families and also youth in care. Those are important initiatives that we have to take on.

Last but not least, how can I not support this budget without talking about our investment in child care? We have been working hard to make sure that we create an inclusive, affordable, quality child care system for all B.C. families. I remember when I started the work in 2017. It is quite a broken system. Not much has been done, and we want to continue to make sure we build that work.

I know time is coming to an end for today. I would like to reserve my right to continue to respond to the budget, if that’s allowed, to continue to talk about our government’s investment in child care and early learning.

Hon. K. Chen moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Eby moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:20 p.m.