Orders of the Day

Motions Without Notice

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY
TO SIT IN TWO SECTIONS

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move:

[That this House hereby authorize the Committee of Supply for this Session to sit in two sections designated Section A and Section B; Section A to sit in such Committee Room as may be appointed from time to time, and Section B to sit in the Chamber of the Assembly, subject to the following rules:

1. The Standing Orders applicable to the Committee of the Whole House shall be applicable in both Sections of the Committee of Supply save and except that in Section A, a Minister may defer to a Deputy Minister to permit such Deputy to reply to a question put to the Minister.

2. All Estimates shall stand referred to Section A, save and except those Estimates as shall be referred to Section B on motion without notice by the Government House Leader, which motion shall be decided without amendment or debate and be governed by Practice Recommendation #6 relating to consultation.

3. Section A shall consist of 17 Members, being eight Members of the Government Caucus, eight Members of the Official Opposition Caucus, and one member of the Third Party Caucus. In addition, the Deputy Chair of the Committee of the Whole, or his or her nominee, shall preside over the debates in Section A. Substitution of Members will be permitted to Section A with the consent of that Member’s Whip, where applicable, otherwise with the consent of the Member involved. For the Fifth Session of the Forty-first Parliament, the Members of Section A shall be as follows: the Minister whose Estimates are under consideration and Jagrup Brar, Mitzi Dean, Bob D’Eith, Mable Elmore, Rick Glumac, Jinny Sims, Rachna Singh, Dan Ashton, Peter Milobar, Ben Stewart, Jordan Sturdy, Ralph Sultan, Steve Thomson, Jane Thornthwaite, John Yap, and Sonia Furstenau.

4. At fifteen minutes prior to the ordinary time fixed for adjournment of the House, the Chair of Section A will report to the House. In the event such report includes the last vote in a particular ministry Estimate, after such report has been made to the House, the Government shall have a maximum of seven minutes, the Official Opposition a maximum of four minutes, the Third Party a maximum of two minutes, and all other Members a maximum of one minute cumulatively to summarize the Committee debate on a particular ministry Estimate completed. Such summaries shall be in the following order:

(1) Other Members;

(2) Third Party;

(3) Official Opposition; and

(4) Government.

5. Section B shall be composed of all Members of the House.

6. Divisions in Section A will be signalled by the ringing of the division bells four times.

7. Divisions in Section B will be signalled by the ringing of the division bells three times at which time proceedings in Section A will be suspended until completion of the division in Section B.

8. Section A is hereby authorized to consider Bills referred to Committee after second reading thereof and the Standing Orders applicable to Bills in Committee of the Whole shall be applicable to such Bills during consideration thereof in Section A, and for all purposes Section A shall be deemed to be a Committee of the Whole. Such referrals to Section A shall be made upon motion without notice by the Minister responsible for the Bill, and such motion shall be decided without amendment or debate. Practice Recommendation #6 relating to consultation shall be applicable to all such referrals.

9. Bills or Estimates previously referred to a designated Committee may at any stage be subsequently referred to another designated Committee on motion of the Government House Leader or Minister responsible for the Bill as hereinbefore provided by sections 2 and 8 of this Order.]

Motion approved.

[1:35 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber I call second reading on Bill 7, the Arbitration Act, and in Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call the estimates of the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 7 — ARBITRATION ACT

Hon. D. Eby: I move the bill be now read a second time.

This bill supports modernization of British Columbia’s arbitration regime and enhancement of British Columbia’s standing as an arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. The government commenced reform efforts in this area in 2018, when we updated the International Commercial Arbitration Act. With this bill, there will now be increased harmony between international and domestic arbitration practice. Whether disputes are international or domestic, arbitration should proceed in a just, speedy and economical manner, leading to a final and binding arbitral award.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

This bill builds on our history. British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt the 1985 United Nations Commission on International Trade Law model law in international commercial arbitration as a freestanding act. More than 100 jurisdictions in the world have now adopted the model law. In 2016, the Uniform Law Conference of Canada created an updated Uniform Arbitration Act, which is heavily influenced by the concepts and principles of the model law.

This bill is largely based on the Uniform Arbitration Act, and British Columbia will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to adopt it. Accordingly, with this bill, British Columbia will have two arbitration acts, one international and one domestic, readily recognizable and understandable as model law legislation. This will benefit business parties, legal counsel and arbitrators.

The courts will also benefit. Under the model law, courts are provided discrete and confined places of interface with arbitration. Consistent with the model law, unless ex­pressly authorized by this bill, court intervention in arbitral proceedings will be limited.

The bill sets out an orderly structure, which can be readily followed and understood. The structure tracks the common flow of arbitration proceedings. The bill addresses such core matters as arbitration agreements; commencement of arbitration proceedings; arbitral tribunal composition; arbitration proceedings, including arbitral powers; arbitral awards; and recourse against and enforcement of arbitral awards.

The bill respects party autonomy. Consistent with the model law, the bill preserves the freedom of parties to agree how their disputes are to be resolved, subject to minimum requirements from which they may not deviate.

This bill also includes features not found in the model law but known to British Columbia arbitration practice for decades — for instance, the appeal provision. Appeals of questions of law arising out of arbitral awards were an English arbitration innovation, which British Columbia adopted decades ago.

[1:40 p.m.]

This bill includes the established appeal provision — however, with some necessary modifications. The existing structure of the appeal provision has created too much court process and unwelcome delay. Arbitrations decided within months from commencement until final award should not then be subjected to several years of appeals in court, as has occurred under the present provision.

This was not the fault of either the courts or the parties. It was a regrettable consequence of the design of the provision itself. The bill updates the provision to streamline appeals and speed up the process, thereby lowering party costs and conserving court resources.

The proper functioning of the appeal provision cannot be understated. The Supreme Court of Canada has been called on, on several occasions in recent years, to clarify the scope of arbitration appeals from British Columbia and has helpfully confirmed that such appeals are narrowly circumscribed and that a deferential standard of review applies. Consistent with this approach, the modified appeal provision directs leave-to-appeal applications from questions of law arising out of the arbitral award straight to the Court of Appeal. The bill further allows parties to now expressly opt out of appeals altogether.

The bill confirms other departures from the model law. The British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Centre maintains a prominent role at the centre of British Columbia arbitration. The bill and regulations to follow will accord the centre — soon to be renamed the Vancouver international arbitration centre — the key role as designated appointing authority.

The centre maintains an extensive roster of qualified arbitrators. In the event the parties cannot agree who should arbitrate their dispute, the centre will quickly make the arbitral appointment. Further, the bill provides the centre a new role in quickly and summarily solving fee disputes between parties and arbitrators. The centre is ideally placed to quickly and efficiently dispose of such secondary disputes, consistent with the parties’ objectives to resolve their disputes by an alternative process outside of court.

The bill also moves family law arbitration from the current Arbitration Act into the Family Law Act. The Family Law Act is the primary family law statute in the province and is a better fit for the provisions. The Family Law Act governs the substantive law about the matters that can be addressed in a family law arbitration. The act already includes provisions relating to other family dispute resolution processes, and the Family Law Act regulation contains training, practice and experience standards for family dispute resolution professionals, including family law arbitrators.

Family law arbitration has important differences from civil litigation and commercial arbitration, and moving family arbitration sections into the Family Law Act acknowledges those differences. Despite the change in statute, the Family Law Act sections in this bill do not create significant changes for family law arbitration practice. The sections have been modernized and aligned with the language of the new Arbitration Act where appropriate, but the policy underlying the practice remains largely unchanged.

I am pleased to provide this legislation for members’ consideration. I hope they will join me in supporting this initiative.

M. Lee: I’m also pleased to speak to Bill 7, the Arbitration Act, in the second reading stage. This bill repeals and replaces British Columbia’s existing Arbitration Act, the governing statute concerning arbitration in British Columbia.

I would like to start off by recognizing that the proposed Arbitration Act set out in this Bill 7 is the final product of a long process that was actually begun under the previous B.C. Liberal government. Former Attorney General Hon. Suzanne Anton, the former MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview, saw the need to modernize B.C.’s Arbitration Act, which had not been significantly updated since it was first adopted in 1996, thus beginning the work that also resulted in the International Commercial Arbitration Amendment Act, which was introduced in April of 2018, and of course Bill 7, before us today.

British Columbia has had a long and deep history in arbitration. B.C. was the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt the 1985 United Nations Commission on International Trade Law model law. B.C.’s International Commercial Arbitration Act still follows UNCITRAL’s model law, which was amended in 2006.

Included in this bill are changes to the role of the B.C. International Commercial Arbitration Centre, soon to be known as the Vancouver international arbitration centre. That centre was established in 1986, thanks to the efforts of Brian Smith, the former Attorney General and member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head. That same year, Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, the late Hon. John Crosbie, introduced legislation to parliament to implement the United Nations convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, also known as the New York convention. This legislation was passed with unanimous consent from all parties.

[1:45 p.m.]

On May 12, 1986, Canada filed its instrument of accession to the New York convention with the United Nations. This was instrumental in laying the foundation for arbitration to work in Canada and in British Columbia.

I will say that’s it’s through the recognition and the work of Mr. Smith and the late John Crosbie, with leadership in British Columbia and Canada, that brought arbitration to the forefront in this jurisdiction. Since then, the centre has become a leader in arbitration in Canada. It provides fully administered arbitrations, mediations and dispute resolution services, all while upholding the highest standard of domestic and international arbitration.

The centre maintains panels of both international and domestic experts and offers disputants a choice of rules depending on the size and complexity of the matter. Successive B.C. Liberal governments have been the leader in ensuring that arbitration in British Columbia is updated to reflect current best practices. It is important to us to see the successful implementation of a bill for which the previous B.C. Liberal government laid the groundwork.

Arbitration is an integral part of any legal system, and it has grown tremendously across the world in the last 20 years. In view of this, it is important that we ensure that our legislation is fully modernized and that it keeps pace with the best practices and leading standards.

I also would like to acknowledge the work that was done in consultation with B.C.’s arbitration community, which, as I understand, included more than 50 meetings with stakeholders. I look forward to hearing from the Attorney General the results of that consultation process in great detail, particularly in relation to this bill.

I understand that in terms of that consultation, there was consideration by the Ministry of Attorney General as to how the rules of the centre would continue to operate and how this would fit with the new act. Also, in terms of the nature of the consultation itself, that the consultation relied primarily on arbitrators themselves. There is some question in terms of the level of consultation with the centre as well as those who are non-arbitrators.

I recognize that this bill is intended to streamline and to make understandable the arbitration process here in British Columbia — for it to be more user-friendly — but we’ll need to understand from the Attorney General the nature of the consultation and whether those who are non-arbitrators have been given the opportunity to consider the changes under this new act.

I also understand the centre will be given, by regulation, a unique position under the new act as a designated appointing authority. This bill authorizes the designated appointing authority to quickly appoint an arbitrator when the parties are unable to agree and resolve few disputes between parties and arbitrators.

An obvious question to be considered at the committee stage will be: if it’s the case that the centre is to provide that kind of role, why isn’t it directly named in the act itself? We know that over the last number of decades, what is to be called the Vancouver international arbitration centre has provided leading-edge work, not only in British Columbia but for international commercial arbitration disputes. So it’s the centre that, I believe, this province will want to continue to support and ensure is well recognized.

What better way to do that than to name it directly in the act, as opposed to relying on a regulation? As parties look to come to this jurisdiction and utilize this commercial Arbitration Act, they’ll want to be able to find the best resource, the best support for that. If the centre is going to be designated as such, it would make sense to put that right in the act itself.

I also understand that, of course, the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s model law was a significant touchstone for this bill and that other centres of arbitration, globally — namely, London, Paris, Geneva and Singapore — were also looked to as examples and for best practices. It will be important to discuss with the Attorney General the nature of what was included in this act versus the current act.

As arbitration becomes a preferred method of conflict resolution due to lower costs, higher speed and the potential for expert arbitrators, compared to court litigation, we need to make sure and ensure that the legislation properly supports its use — specifically, in how arbitration can commence, the responsibility of arbitrators and parties and witnesses, the appeal process and confidentiality.

[1:50 p.m.]

This new legislation will certainly make arbitration a more streamlined process, but this also raises questions in terms of a person’s and a party’s ability to make appeals. It is certainly streamlining that process and simplifying it, but I think we’ll want to walk carefully through those provisions.

I also understand the new act, of course, will bring it closer in line with B.C.’s International Commercial Arbitration Act as amended in 2018. This is certainly a necessary step in making sure that there is consistency across our legislation and in the process of arbitration.

As the Attorney General just commented, this does move the family arbitration provisions from the existing Arbitration Act to the Family Law Act. It will certainly be important to consider, at the committee stage, any potential impacts on those utilizing those important family arbitration provisions arising from this change.

Given the nature of the significant implications of the changes that are being presented under the new act, I look forward to considering those sections more closely at the committee stage with other members of this House.

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

Hon. D. Eby: Thank you to the member across for his comments related to the bill. The member raised one issue that I think I can deal with right away and which I raised in my speech. It must have just been an oversight.

It is the intention of government to name the current B.C. International Commercial Arbitration Centre as the designated appointing authority in the regulations. The member asked why it would be in the regulations instead of the bill. Well, the answer was also in the speech. They are changing their name to the Vancouver International Arbitration Centre. They haven’t yet changed the name. They may change their name again. They may cease to exist — because they go bankrupt, because the board resigns en masse, any number of things.

Not a great reason to get everyone back into the Legislature to amend the statute. It’s much better to have the name of the organization that’s the designated authority in the regulation so that it can be changed and updated as the organization does.

With that, I look forward to addressing his other issues at committee stage, and I move second reading.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 7, Arbitration Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading, Bill 10, Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2020. I just ask for a two-minute recess for my colleague to arrive.

Deputy Speaker: This House will be in brief recess.

The House recessed from 1:53 p.m. to 1:54 p.m.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

BILL 10 — MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS AND
HOUSING STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that the bill now be read a second time. This is for Bill 10, intituled Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2020.

I’m pleased to have an opportunity to talk in more detail about this important piece of legislation which gives local governments a new tool to help address a pressing issue for commercial tenants, particularly small businesses, non-profits, and arts and culture organizations. Most importantly, this legislation offers a tool that local governments can use, starting in the 2020 tax year, to give relief to those who need it now.

Under the current system, B.C. Assessment assesses all properties based on their market value. How much is this property worth? It’s the market that informs that.

[1:55 p.m.]

When we became government, we inherited an out-of-control real estate market that was hurting everyone, including small businesses. We started working with a task group last year to address the severe impact that out-of-control real estate was having, combined with a highest and best use framework, an international assessment system that is used throughout the world, and a triple-net lease framework. All of these elements — rapidly rising land values, highest and best use framework and triple-net lease — and the interplay between these elements have created a crisis situation for many small businesses, mostly, but not exclusively, in large urban centres where land values are highest and where local governments are making land use decisions to bring more much-needed density to some neighbourhoods.

When a neighbourhood plan changes or a property is rezoned because the local government, the mayor and councillors, recognize that the land would be better suited to build more homes or commercial opportunities in that neighbourhood, the highest and best use framework says that because more can now be built here, the market will pay more. So property taxes reflect that. The intent is to encourage and stimulate the landowner into redevelopment so that the desires of the mayor and the council of the day — in essence, the desires of the city — can be realized.

However, most tenant agreements use a triple-net lease framework. It’s an old framework, originated from England, which is hundreds of years old and is still practised today. This framework usually has the tenant sign a private contract, making the tenant financially responsible for rent, utilities and all property taxes. So while the landowner will ultimately benefit from the increased property value based on the market assessment, it is the small business person or the non-profit or the arts and culture group that will bear the brunt of this increase.

Now, these tenants have been asking for relief, and it’s really unfortunate that it’s come to this, quite frankly. It should have been addressed a decade ago. We know, from talking with the CFIB, that they were raising this issue with the previous government a decade ago. Because they failed to act, each year the problem has only been getting worse for the small businesses, the arts groups and the non-profits that are caught in this situation. Those groups are hurting, and they need relief now.

Earlier this week Brian McBay, who is the executive director of 221A in Vancouver and on the city of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Advisory Committee, spoke about the impact that a decade of inaction has had on the arts and culture sector. He said: “Vancouver is being emptied out of music and performing art venues, art galleries and artist studios.” He went on to share that the city has reported that over 20 cultural spaces with more than 400 artists were closed in the last year alone. The arts and culture sector needs action now.

We see the same story being played out in the small business community. Empty storefronts in communities are clear demonstrations of the toll taken when skyrocketing property values mean significant tax hikes are passed on to small businesses on triple-net leases. So small businesses need action now.

With this legislation, we are providing a way to help those who need it the most right away, while we continue to do the collaborative work needed to address this situation with a permanent solution. We are working with local governments. We are working with small business representatives and others.

I want to take a moment to thank the handful of Metro Vancouver local governments for working with us on this complex issue and for helping identify some real, viable, permanent solutions. We are committed to working together with them as we continue to explore how to best address this permanently.

The ideas are good ones and worth exploring. From developing a split assessment framework to reviewing the Commercial Tenancy Act, there are some really good ideas that are worthwhile pursuing. We look forward to continuing the work to develop greater fairness in the system and to working with local governments across the province and the UBCM and small business groups as we continue this important work.

Businesses can’t wait for the results of that important work. They need relief now. That’s why we are proposing these amendments. The proposed amendments enable a tax exemption intended to provide relief to tenants of commercial properties, particularly small businesses, arts groups and non-profits which have been struggling with these unexpected spikes in property taxes.

[2:00 p.m.]

These amendments, while targeted to commercial tenants, provide significant flexibility to municipalities to determine what businesses and organizations are most in need of tax relief. If passed, municipalities across British Columbia would be able to provide interim business property tax relief for 2020.

While municipalities have some tools already to address these spikes in taxes, such as averaging or phasing in assessed value increases, we know that municipalities are calling for more help to deal with this issue, and that is what we are proposing here today.

Broadly speaking, the legislation would authorize municipalities to exempt by bylaw a portion of the value of commercial properties — that’s classes 5 and 6 — from taxation. This would reduce the property tax burden for tenants of exempt properties responsible for these taxes. It would be up to municipalities to decide whether to use the legislation to provide property tax relief. They have the flexibility in establishing the different thresholds and criteria used to select properties within the legislative framework.

The exemption would be implemented through an annual bylaw that would have to be adopted by April 22 for the first year and March 31 for subsequent years. Local governments let us know that to have a March 31 deadline for this year would make it extremely difficult for them to implement, so we extended it because of that feedback. It would allow municipalities to determine eligibility and the amount of the exemption that it makes sense to provide.

Now, the legislation would be available for up to five years through the 2024 property taxation year. The basic framework would require that all or a portion of the property be classed as class 5, light industry, or class 6, business and other, or a combination of the two, in order to qualify for the exemption. The property would also be required to have at least one commercial tenant responsible for all or a portion of the property taxes under the terms of a commercial lease, the amount of which varies with the amount of the tax imposed.

Beyond that, municipalities would be able to set certain thresholds, such as a minimum increase in commercial land value, so that they can focus the relief on those properties that need it most, because they know what their communities need. The exemption would apply to school taxes in addition to municipal taxes, and while the work on a permanent fix continues to be underway with local governments and sector stakeholders and will continue, we know that many small businesses, non-profits and arts and culture groups need relief now. They need it in 2020, and that’s why we’re introducing this legislation in the interim. It’s about helping businesses now.

We recognize that for 2020, the timelines are very tight. We’ve made several adjustments for 2020 to support municipalities in adopting bylaws for this year if they choose to do so. We’ve even developed a model bylaw and a user guide to help simplify the implementation. B.C. Assessment will also provide data as needed to help local governments narrow their focus on those most in need.

We designed this proposed tax exemption to give municipalities significant flexibility in identifying the properties to exempt because we know that this issue looks very different in different communities. We have heard clearly that they want to be able to ensure that relief reaches the groups in their community that need this relief most. This interim legislation is a necessary step in giving that relief to those that need it most and those that need it now.

We will continue working with the local governments, the Union of B.C. Municipalities, small business representatives and other stakeholders on a permanent, more comprehensive solution, because our government is committed to making life more affordable for British Columbians. The old government heard these concerns and did nothing. We listened and got to work on solutions for people right away.

Additionally, there are four other items in this bill which will complete individual amendments to the Assessment Act, the Local Government Act, the Community Charter and the Vancouver Charter. The first moves to align B.C. Assessment’s fiscal year with that of government and all other Crown corporations. B.C. Assessment is currently the only provincial Crown corporation that operates on a calendar-based fiscal year. The province, as well as all other Crowns, use a fiscal year that runs from April 1 through March 31, and this puts B.C. Assessment out of sync with the rest of government for purposes of budgeting and reporting.

The differing fiscal years create an unavoidable inconsistency between the numbers that B.C. Assessment reports to the public and the numbers that government reports out in both its yearly and quarterly updates. By changing B.C. Assessment’s fiscal year, the corporation’s financial information will be more transparent and easier to understand.

The second item will remove the authority for the commercial vehicle licensing program. The proposed amendments to the Local Government Act and the Vancouver Charter will remove the authority for the commercial vehicle licensing program. This program was originally established in 1906 to provide a source of revenue to participating municipalities to offset costs associated with commercial vehicle use on municipal roads.

[2:05 p.m.]

In 1987, UBCM assumed administration of the program from the province, and now UBCM has requested to terminate its administration of the program based on its financial assessment that this program was ineffective and no longer meeting its original purpose.

The third item will raise maximum fines for bylaw contraventions for all municipalities and decrease the time frame in the Vancouver Charter for completing remedial action requirements. These proposed amendments enhance local government bylaw enforcement tools.

First, the amendments propose increasing the maximum fine that local governments can set out for serious bylaw contraventions that are prosecuted through the courts from $10,000 to $50,000 to create a significant deterrent to contravening these bylaws. These increased maximum amounts are optional and may be used by a municipality for significant offences, but municipalities remain able to set lower limits as maximum fines.

Second, the amendments propose targeted amendments to enhance Vancouver’s authority to address standards of maintenance. The proposed amendments will allow the city of Vancouver to complete work that is intended to ensure that a property meets standards of maintenance in urgent situations — for example, where there is a significant health or safety risk and if the owner does not do so within 30 days of receiving notice. Currently the owner has 60 days to take remedial action before the city can take action at the owner’s expense.

We’re bringing these changes in order to make sure that it’s consistent with the time frame for remedial action under the Community Charter for all other local governments. In addition, the proposed changes include minor amendments to ensure that the language is clear in the relevant sections of the Vancouver Charter.

The fourth item will make amendments to parallel the authority that all other local governments have under the Local Government Act to provide Vancouver with the statutory authority to enter into latecomer agreements and impose and collect latecomer charges in relation to multiphase developments. Latecomer agreements enable local governments to require developers to build excess services and infrastructure beyond the requirements of the initial development to accommodate expected future growth in an area.

Future developers in that area may connect to the excess services upon payment of a latecomer charge. This charge is calculated, imposed and collected by the local government and then remitted to the initial developer to recover costs for the excess services. Vancouver, however, currently relies on private cost-sharing arrangements between developers to obtain the same outcome, and these arrangements can be cumbersome and difficult to enforce, especially over long periods of time.

The proposed amendments will give Vancouver authority for a streamlined and enforceable development finance tool consistent with the authority for all other local governments.

I hope that everyone in the House joins me in support of Bill 10.

With that, I move second reading.

T. Stone: It gives me a great deal of pride to rise and speak to second reading of Bill 10.

The minister just used a number of phrases that she used in question period earlier today, that she has used many times in recent weeks and recent months. Phrases like, “We all need to work together to help businesses, because businesses need help right now,” “Businesses can’t wait. They need relief now,” or: “We need to find solutions. We need to do that now.”

I think we all would agree with those phrases. The problem is that the solution this minister has brought forward completely and totally misses the mark. It is a solution that is not actually going to provide a tool that local governments are going to easily be able to put in place that will provide the tax relief that is so critically needed by small businesses in communities across this province.

Let’s just take stock, first, of what the issue is. What is the challenge that we’re trying to address here? I think, at a macro level, the facts speak pretty clearly to the reality that small businesses in British Columbia are getting hammered. They’re getting hammered under an increasing weight of taxes and regulatory burdens that this government has placed on their shoulders.

[2:10 p.m.]

The employer health tax. The government loves to talk about the fact that there is no MSP anymore. They don’t like to talk about the fact that they simply took the MSP out of place and replaced it with the employer health tax, which sits on the shoulders of small businesses.

In fact, small businesses are hit with a $1.8 billion obligation every single year with the employer health tax. That is in addition to the fact that the government has changed the rules with respect to the additional school tax. I don’t think most British Columbians know. Small business owners know that the additional school tax is applicable on the unused airspace above a small business. It’s ridiculous, but it’s true.

We know the stated intentions of this government to make the spec tax applicable to the unused airspace over small businesses’ heads. That’s ridiculous, but it’s true.

We know that in British Columbia now, according to the CFIB, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, British Columbia has the unfortunate distinction of having the second-highest payroll tax burden in all of Canada. We’re second only to Quebec.

We also know that property taxes continue to go up in most communities. Most local governments do great work, hard work to try to minimize the tax burden, certainly the increase in the tax burden on an annual basis. There are others that have more work to do, I would suggest, on behalf of municipal taxpayers in their communities.

The city of Vancouver was surprised that their taxpayers didn’t throw them a parade when they reduced the tax increase this year from the original proposal of 8.2 percent increase to a 7 percent increase. People were supposed to feel good about that. Not just the residential taxpayers in Vancouver but the small business taxpayers — property taxes are going up.

Retail sales are down. Exports are down. Consumer confidence is down. Small business optimism is down. In fact, CFIB just put out an update on business confidence and small business confidence in British Columbia today and indicated that, yet again, business confidence is down. I wonder why. I think it probably has something to do with the significant increase in tax and regulatory burden that small businesses have to address.

So that brings us to this issue of skyrocketing property taxes on the unused airspace above the heads of small business owners. It’s not just the small business owners; it’s also arts and culture groups. It’s also non-profits and other types of organizations that are increasingly opening up their tax notices and realizing or, through their triple-net lease obligations, being advised of significant increases to their property taxes.

Why? Because they might be classed in class 5 and have the…. They’re classed at the commercial tax rate. Sorry, class 6. They’re actually paying the taxes on an assessed value as if they were a 200-unit residential condo tower at some undetermined time in the future. Why is that? Because we have a principle in our assessment approach in this province which says that you’re going to be taxed on your highest and best use.

So there are a lot of communities around British Columbia, particularly in the Lower Mainland, particularly in communities like Vancouver, Surrey, Coquitlam and even here in Victoria to some degree…. We’re seeing this issue arising in Kelowna, where you have a significant amount of growth in an urban centre. Along with that growth comes an upward pressure on the land values.

Municipal councils update their official community area plans and whatnot that speak to the future intended use of different parcels of property in different neighbourhoods in their communities.

[2:15 p.m.]

That is having an unintended consequence of, as I said, small businesses — which have been where they are for, in many cases, decades — realizing that they have a significant problem on their hands because of the increase in the assessed value of their land and the property taxes that they have to pay on that.

Mr. Speaker, I believe there might be an introduction that another member would like to make. So I’ll just sit down for one moment, but I’ll resume comments in a moment.

R. Kahlon: Thank you to the member for allowing me to make a quick introduction.

I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

R. Kahlon: We have, in the chamber right now, 37 grade 5s from Gibsons Elementary from North Delta. They’re here with their teacher, Nicole Lewis, and they’ve got some parents who are chaperoning them, bringing them here. I just talked to them briefly outside, and they said that the ferries were the best part. But I know that they’re just going to see the Legislature, and after they leave, this will be the best part. Then on the way home, they may see the vending machines. Then that might be the best part.

Anyways, I want to make them welcome. I hope the House can join me in making them welcome.

Debate Continued

T. Stone: I was saying that the issue here is: because of the increase in the land values in our densely populated urban centres, where there has been significant growth, small businesses that exist within class 6 of our assessment system are paying the higher tax. They’re paying the class 6 mill rate on a value of some future highest and best use, which may or may not take place any time soon.

We’ve been saying for the better part of a couple of years now…. As this issue has continued to escalate, as it has continued to become more and more chronic in neighbourhoods around British Columbia, we have been calling on the government to take some action.

We have heard from all kinds of small businesses, and the examples are jarring. Marpole Physiotherapy Clinic, a 63 percent increase in their property taxes over a four-year period. That’s not sustainable. There were three small businesses in a White Rock strip mall that I was talking to that are grappling with combined property tax increases of over $70,000 in one year — year over year, a $70,000 increase or 40 percent increase. Interstyle Ceramic and Glass in Burnaby, a 250 percent increase in the assessment on the air over their heads.

There’s a dance studio in Mount Pleasant that reached out to me and wanted me to know that their taxes had gone up $19,000 in one year. That’s in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver. Pacific Sun Produce in Burnaby — 37 percent increase in their taxes to a level of $6,600 per month. That’s not sustainable.

I could go on and on and on with examples. I’m hopeful that even members on the other side will agree that there is a significant challenge here. It is resulting in an increasing number of small businesses having to actually close their doors, having to lay off their employees — that gut-wrenching decision to move on — because they cannot continue to make a go of it.

There was a lot of work underway on this issue, going back to 2017, 2018. The government across the way, through their Small Business Task Force, which reported out in October of 2018…. In their report, it included a recommendation to implement a particular solution that would address this issue — split assessment classification, which I will talk about in a moment.

The Union of B.C. Municipalities has passed numerous resolutions over several years to move forward with split assessment classification as the preferred solution to address this problem. There was even an intergovernmental working group that brought forward a number of recommendations.

[2:20 p.m.]

But they put a priority on the recommendation to implement split assessment classification, recognizing that as the most viable solution and imploring government to implement it. That intergovernmental working group included senior staff from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, senior staff from the Ministry of Finance, senior staff from B.C. Assessment, as well as representation from a range of local governments in the Lower Mainland, including Metro Vancouver, Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey and West Vancouver. They did a lot of good, hard work and looked at all angles of this issue. As I said a moment ago, they prioritized the recommendation to implement what’s called split assessment classification.

Now, what the split assessment classification concept entails is, essentially, creating a new commercial subclass that would be available to local governments to use at their option. No local government would be forced to use this tool. But the local government would be able to use this tool and apply that commercial subclass on a particular parcel, an entire street, an entire neighbourhood within their community, and the local government, at their option, would be able to set the mill rate for that tool. They could set the mill rate anywhere from zero to just under the existing commercial mill rate.

The thinking here is that local governments could very easily and very quickly utilize this tool with minimal administrative work required on the part of local governments. They could utilize this tool by applying it very surgically, again, on a particular piece of property, on an entire street, on a designated area or neighbourhood within their community. That would serve the effect of actually applying a much lower tax rate on that undeveloped airspace over the small business owners’ heads. It would immediately reduce the tax burden.

I introduced a private member’s bill on this. I first introduced it in the fall of last year. I reintroduced it a number of weeks ago. The details in that private member’s bill were not written by me. They were written by local government experts. They were written by and vetted by municipal lawyers. The language that’s used in that private member’s bill comes directly from the written recommendations of the intergovernmental working group, of the local governments that are part of that group, of the legal advisers that work for those local governments.

The wording in the private member’s bill represented a coming together of the minds of local government officials, arts and culture groups, small business organizations. In fact, when you talk to the small business organizations, they said it was an incredibly refreshing, if not rare, example of the coming together of minds, from elected local officials to small business officials, to address a tax issue that would actually result in reducing that tax burden and reducing potential revenues for a municipality.

You don’t hear of that kind of collaboration very often. But they did the heavy lifting, and they brought the wording for that recommendation forward. We took that wording, we put it into a private member’s bill, we introduced that bill in this House last fall, we reintroduced that bill again a few weeks ago, and the government refused to call it.

Now, the minister has said the details in that bill are unworkable. Her officials, in a technical briefing earlier this week, referred to this private member’s bill as potentially having unintended consequences. Yet I point back to those officials and to the minister, in particular, that, again, it was this intergovernmental working group, all of those local governments, all of that external legal expertise, those small business organizations that all came together and vetted this and determined that it was workable.

I would, again, argue that worse than unintended consequences of moving forward with our split classification proposal is doing nothing or bringing forward a solution, as the minister has, that is not going to get the job done. It’s certainly not going to provide the tax relief that small businesses and other organizations need — and need now.

[2:25 p.m.]

This split assessment classification proposal is widely supported. I mentioned all of those local governments. There are dozens of business improvement associations throughout Metro Vancouver that signed off on this proposal — the BIA on West 4th, the BIA in Marpole, the BIA in North Vancouver–Lonsdale, just to name a few. Chambers of commerce all over the Lower Mainland — the chambers of commerce, actually, over three years in a row, passed resolutions calling on the government to implement a split classification. But the government has opted to go in a different direction.

Let’s talk about what the minister has brought forward. The minister has brought forward a solution that has been widely panned by local government mayors and councillors as being unworkable. They have also pointed out, in the last couple days since this bill was introduced, that it is not what they were asking for. They were not asking for this complex tool that the minister has brought forward.

I’ll run through some of their commentary in a moment, but what exactly is it that she brought forward, and how does it differ from what local governments are actually asking for? Again, split assessment classification is what local governments were asking for.

Here’s a summary of the benefits of what the local governments were actually asking for. Number one, it targets the root of the problem. Business is being taxed on the airspace that they don’t use — very, very specifically targets that unused, undeveloped airspace above their heads.

Next, in cities with appropriate zoning, apartments with ground-floor commercial and upper-floor residential are assessed and taxed separately on those parts. That’s critical. That’s critical to be able to separate that tax obligation between the existing use of the existing building and the unused potential in the air above the building.

Next, by separating the classification of the airspace from the actual business, councils can tax the airspace at a separate rate from the business rate. That’s where that commercial subclass comes in at a lower mill rate that gets applied to the unused airspace — very simple, very elegant. City councils would define the eligibility requirements for properties. They would define the duration of tax relief, and they would set a tax rate for unused airspace ranging, again, from zero percent to just under the existing mill rate for the commercial class.

Next, the valuation of development potential would remain. The bill that we brought forward, which embodies that split assessment classification solution, is equitable. It can be applied consistently as local governments see fit within their communities. It does not in any way alter the highest and best use methodology, which is, again, not just the standard for assessment here in British Columbia but is an internationally recognized standard for assessment. So no unintended consequences or negative impacts on that assessment standard.

As I said, it was a split assessment classification proposal that was endorsed by the UBCM and all these local governments. Very importantly, if the government had called this bill for debate, the private member’s bill I’m speaking of…. If they had actually called it for debate and brought forward the solution that had been recommended by local governments last fall, it could have been debated, it could have been put into law, and it would have enabled local governments to utilize this tool in time for the 2020 tax year and provide the tax relief that small businesses and organizations need.

Let’s talk a bit about the permissive tax exemption approach that is embodied within the minister’s Bill 10. Again, this bill requires municipal councils to individually sort through…. They have to sort through, and they have to pick which properties with triple-net leases…. That’s an important point. If you don’t have a triple net-lease, this doesn’t apply to you. That’s not fair.

They have to sort through and pick the properties with triple-net leases, based on the percentage increase in their taxes, and then give those properties a discount on a portion of their property taxes. Again, this is not what local governments asked for.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Bill 10 is going to mean that there’s going to be a shift in the taxes onto other taxpayers and businesses that don’t qualify. So as I mentioned, if you don’t have a triple-net lease, you don’t get to even think about asking a local government to lower your taxes a little bit.

[2:30 p.m.]

The minister’s approach requires cities to maintain the same level of school taxes collected for the province. Well, isn’t that convenient? So the local governments have got to make sure that they keep the province whole. Again, that’s about increasing the burden of these taxes on some taxpayers versus others.

Bill 10 requires each municipality to literally go through thousands of different properties and determine who is eligible for what level of relief. What does this mean? Does this mean that local governments are now going to have to ask a private individual for a copy of their triple-net lease? That’s got privacy issues all wrapped around it.

Huge administrative burdens. Local governments are saying that Bill 10, this approach, is going to be very, very difficult and time-consuming and rigid for them to implement. It has the opportunity to result in inequity between properties. And given the amount of work required to identify properties and apply the exemptions, councils, through Bill 10, may also not be able to meet the deadline, even though it was extended to April.

I also want to point out that there’s no mention of the Local Government Act in this piece of legislation. It only references the Community Charter and the Vancouver Charter, which means that this tool is not available for use by regional districts. Yet we heard the minister, over and over in question period earlier today, reference how she’s hearing about all these issues of skyrocketing property taxes in the Cariboo regional district. Like, seriously, let’s get real here.

This bill is not workable. It’s not the opposition members that have arrived at that conclusion independently. It’s what local governments and others have said. What have they said? Well, Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart has said this: “We started talking about this with the province in late 2018. There has been time to get this right. What scares me is how many businesses will go down before we get this fixed.”

The mayor of Vancouver goes on to say that this law “fails to provide tax relief for small business and non-profits, and it could wind up costing them even more. We need to be able to target development potential and airspace, and this does not allow us to tackle skyrocketing property values. These changes won’t do that. What we’d really like is for the province to drop these proposals” — listen carefully — “and work with us on what we’ve proposed.” That’s the mayor of Vancouver, who I know is a good friend of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and her colleagues — a bit of a gap in their support for this initiative there.

North Vancouver mayor Linda Buchanan had this to say the other day:

“…the proposed legislation will fail to alleviate the burden small businesses in the city of North Vancouver are feeling. The proposed changes won’t allow us to target businesses who are disproportionately being affected by property value and could even possibly result in tax relief for large international companies. I’m disappointed the province hasn’t delivered a more community-oriented and workable solution as recommended by the intergovernmental working group.”

Again, that was Linda Buchanan, the mayor of North Vancouver.

Dennis Marsden in the city of Coquitlam, the minister’s hometown, had this to say: “A disappointing outcome to nearly two years of work.” Two years of work, and the minister says that she didn’t have enough time to put in place a proper solution. It was two years. But I’ll carry on with the quote: “A disappointing outcome to nearly two years of work by a joint task force — cities told there’s not enough time to bring a proper solution, so we’re forced to try and implement this dog’s breakfast in less time and with no access to the information needed to determine qualifications.” That’s Coun. Dennis Marsden in Coquitlam.

Craig Cameron in West Vancouver — he’s a councillor there — had this to say: “The province’s fix for small businesses facing unsustainable property tax hikes is unworkable on several levels. Many municipalities have told them this, but they refuse to listen.”

[2:35 p.m.]

Dylan Kruger, a city councillor in Delta said this: “This tool, as proposed, is quite convoluted. It largely targets the wrong population and would not help the majority of small businesses in Delta that are desperately seeking tax relief.”

What does the Canadian Federation of Independent Business have to say? They’ve done a tremendous amount of hard work on this over the years. Here’s what they had to say:

“Monday’s announcement passes the issue back to municipalities ‘like a hot potato.’

“‘It’s not really a tool that’s useful or that would actually provide meaningful relief. Unfortunately, when you look at main streets across Metro Vancouver and even in Victoria, you see empty storefronts boarded up. We don’t see this being a solution to help small businesses not close their doors.’”

That was Muriel Protzer of CFIB, just earlier this week.

So this is a bill that is riddled with all kinds of complications, all kinds of complexities, all kinds of red tape. This is a bill that essentially illustrates an abdication of the province’s ability here and willingness to actually lead on this issue and provide a solution, a workable, achievable, quickly implemented solution via the assessment side of the equation as opposed to the taxation side of the equation. This is a bill that the minister, no matter how many times she says otherwise, does not have the support of many of the local governments, certainly in the Lower Mainland. It does not have the support…. It is not what the Union of B.C. Municipalities asked for. It is not what BIAs have been asking for. There are significant privacy concerns that flow from this bill. We’ll have a whole bunch of questions for the minister on that piece.

The amount of work that the local governments would have to go through in order to sift through hundreds if not thousands of properties to determine what they’re paying in their property taxes through their triple-net leases and to make some kind of determination as to what that maximum level of taxation is that they’re willing to charge, and whoever is above that is going to get a discount….

How that’s all going to work is anyone’s guess, but I would suggest that from the sounds of what local officials are telling us, and what they’re saying publicly, it will be a heck of a lot of work, a lot of work that probably would not be easily accomplished within the time frames between now and April to actually make any difference this current year for small businesses. And they need help now.

The split assessment classification proposal, which everyone was asking for, which we embodied in our private member’s bill — that’s the solution that would get this job done, that would provide relief to small businesses. That is not what is contained here in Bill 10.

I have said to the minister, and I’ll say it again: my feelings would not be hurt if she wants to take those ideas and make them her own and incorporate them into her own legislation. I’d be thrilled with that. But what she needs to do is she needs to scrap this Bill 10. She needs to take the advice of the mayor of Vancouver and those other mayors and councillors that I just mentioned, and she needs to bring forward a proposal to implement split assessment classification. And she needs to do that very, very quickly so as to provide the help that so many small businesses, arts and culture and non-profits and other organizations need as a result of the soaring property taxes that are literally killing many of these organizations. We don’t have any more time to waste.

A. Olsen: I listened with interest to the previous member speak to this, and I know and thank the member for Kamloops–South Thompson for raising these important issues that indeed have been on the front of my mind since being a municipal councillor in the district of Central Saanich.

[2:40 p.m.]

The issues around property taxes, the issues around the relationship between the provincial government and local governments has been one that has been problematic going back a long way. Indeed, we’re seeing and we have definitely heard from small business owners and from others — the arts and culture community is an example — of the challenges that are being faced when properties are being redesignated or upzoned and the impact that has on them when the owner of that property has not yet developed the full potential of the newly zoned or the newly designated area.

I do note that there have been issues that I’m aware of as well that those same small business owners also have challenges once those buildings have been redeveloped in being able to maintain and stay in those places because now they’re not able to pay the increased leases.

I think that it’s important to point out that while…. There is an aspect of this that I think the member raises that’s really important in terms of the urgency and the time it has taken to get to where we’re at. I think that there is a much deeper problem that has been raised by municipalities and by the organizations that represent municipalities that has largely fallen on deaf ears when it comes to the provincial government’s willingness to engage local governments on the challenges that are faced with the revenues that they’re able to generate and where they’re able to get their revenues from.

I point back to when I was in local government, when I was on the Central Saanich council. In 2013, the Strong Fiscal Futures report was put together by the then mayor of the city of Port Coquitlam Greg Moore, the then mayor of the district of Saanich Frank Leonard, then mayor Taylor Bachrach from the town of Smithers and others who were identifying the significant challenges that municipalities had in being able to generate enough revenue so that they were able to do the things that they needed to do on behalf of their citizens — make sure that their infrastructure was maintained and make sure that they were able to upgrade their infrastructure.

There’s always been this challenge with local governments in the heavy reliance that they’ve had on property taxes. It has created a scenario in which, yes, they’ve gone and redesignated. They’ve upzoned.

Some of it has been a response to the fact that densification is the way that we need to go. That clearly is the case, where we need to be densifying land that’s already been developed and making the most out of it. It needs to be done in order to be able to create compact communities. No question about it. Part of it is done because municipalities are looking for ways to generate revenue because the access to other streams of revenue has not been made available to them. That’s exactly what the Strong Fiscal Futures report, which fell on deaf ears back in 2013, was trying to achieve in its five-point agenda.

I remember back at that UBCM. I remember when that report was brought in. I remember the work that was done by the local government. Our colleagues, many of the people that are sitting in the seats here today, were local government officials at the time who remember the impact that this fiscal relationship between the provincial government and municipal governments has had. We were collectively asking the provincial government to please listen to the fact that local governments are being asked to do more and more, yet the availability of funds to do that has not increased in order to keep up with the demands on the local government tax base.

There wasn’t even one mention of that report. There wasn’t even one mention of that report by the government of the day, that it even existed. After all the work that was done by local government officials, elected officials, it was completely ignored. It was like that 90-page report, that five-point agenda, the invitation by local governments to get around the table and to have the conversation….

[2:45 p.m.]

It’s not just to deal with an issue that is emerging and needs to be immediately addressed but a deep-seated, long-standing problematic relationship between where revenue is generated and the need for local governments to be able to maintain and update and upgrade infrastructure. The infrastructure that we, in this place, talk about so often. It’s the infrastructure — the economy — that we talk about in here rides on.

We’re all too happy to have local governments making those investments to ensure that the economy has roads to ride on, that there’s water and that there are sewer services. Those local government services are there to support the economy that we talk about in this place. But for years, local governments have been asking for access to other revenue streams, and it has fallen on deaf ears.

One of the challenges that local governments are facing now is they’re facing demands with the opioid crisis. They’re facing demands with the homelessness crisis. They’re facing increased responsibilities to improve infrastructure and to strengthen infrastructure because of climate change. So there are good reasons why this needs to be solved, and it needs to be solved expeditiously. The small businesses that inhabit those sites that are currently undeveloped to their potential are experiencing unsustainable increased tax bills.

It’s important that we tell the whole story. There is also a reality that when those buildings are redeveloped, those small businesses will face increased costs in terms of their lease. That’s true as well. That’s an important piece that needs to be acknowledged in this.

Just simply dealing with this measure in terms of a split assessment classification, as has been talked about and has been put forward as a solution to this particular part of the problem, this slice of the bigger picture, does help provide relief in the meantime, between now and when those properties are redeveloped. Unfortunately for small businesses, those costs of development are handed along in the new lease, and it makes it very difficult for them to be able to survive in those locations anyway.

So when I look at this bill — I heard the minister — I’m prepared to see this bill move forward to third reading. I’m very interested in hearing the debate with the minister on the varying aspects of this. I’ll be engaged in that debate. I see that there’s an opportunity here for municipalities that want to use it, to use it. For those municipalities that have an issue with it, they won’t. That’s going to become very clear in the coming weeks, should this bill proceed.

I would just say that while I hear the conversation here about the urgency that’s happening right now, that has been a growing urgency over a long period of time. Anybody who has been in local government and that now inhabits one of these seats knows very well that this is a long-standing issue that has gone unresolved. It’s much deeper than the unused airspace. It is about the resiliency of our communities. It’s about the sustainability of our communities. It’s about how communities in our province are able to generate revenue to be able to support the increased costs.

I encourage the minister…. It’s one of the reasons why I got frustrated at the local government table as we were chasing around conditional grants, as we were chasing around priorities of the provincial government, rather than the provincial government coming to the table and saying: “How can we support you?”

With that, I’m going to take my seat, and I’m very interested to hear the debate as it goes along.

P. Milobar: It’s my pleasure to rise to Bill 10. Certainly, as we’ve heard from the previous speakers and the minister herself, this is an issue that is very important.

[2:50 p.m.]

Time is of the essence. It is a very serious issue, and certainly, this side of the House takes this issue very seriously and intends to fully debate and comment. We look forward to hearing any further comments from the other side as to what they have to offer, comments as to why this is a piece of legislation that should be supported. As it stands right now, it appears to be a deeply flawed piece of legislation. Taking action for the sake of taking action, with a piece of flawed legislation, does not seem like a good path to take forward.

It’ll be interesting. The Leader of the Third Party finished up comments, and as we saw with the budget as well, had some pretty significant concerns. But it sounds like there’s already a leaning towards supporting this piece of legislation. That would be unfortunate, frankly, because it is flawed. It is not going to work as intended. Last I checked, this is not a confidence vote. I say that because I believe that in the confidence and supply agreement, the only votes that the Third Party has committed to actually supporting the government on are votes on a matter of confidence.

One would hope that the Leader of the Third Party, with the municipal background experience that he has — as do myself and several others that will speaking this afternoon — would see that this flawed piece of legislation should not be supportable, for the very reasons we’ve already heard. I’ll touch on a few of those, because that’s really what is at its core here.

This isn’t a bill that is going to figure out how to replace or improve municipalities’ ability to fund their operations, as we heard from the previous speaker. This isn’t a bill that is going to solve all the problems of the municipal government. It’s not going to replace grants. It’s not going to do any of that. I think it’s important that we focus in on what this bill is purported to try to do, because what it’s saying it’s going to do is not actually what is going to happen in practice.

Now, I say with 15 years of municipal experience in my background: this simply is a tool that will be unworkable. It will pit city councils, mayors and councillors with having to pick and choose, on a property-by-property basis, who gets to have a lower property tax bill and who doesn’t — but not everyone.

If you’re the small operator that’s got a generational business in my city…. There are several in Kamloops where people have a smaller mom-and-pop type operation, have various types of goods that they sell. They don’t want to develop. They don’t want to become developers and put in highest and best use to the airspace at this particular time. But they own their property, and under this legislation, there’s no relief for them whatsoever.

If you’re a non-profit that has the small one-or two-storey walk-up that your non-profit worked very hard over the years to acquire, and you were the owner of that property and you did that so you could get away from monthly lease payments to make sure you can still do good work in your community and maximize the benefit of that good work in your community, this bill penalizes you. You do not get any tax relief if you’re a non-profit, an arts group or a daycare that happens to own their own property in an area within an official community plan and that would necessitate highest and best use, taking into account the airspace.

The minister, every single time in answering and trying to deflect away as to why not a split-class assessment, clings to some local government in the Cariboo, which is a pretty big geographic area. It’s too bad the minister is not a little more accurate with what place in the Cariboo is seeing unprecedented spikes in airspace speculation for development. I’m sure that area in the Cariboo would love to know that their airspace has become so valuable. It sounds to me that it’s so valuable that it blocks proper legislation being brought in. Their airspace has suddenly been deemed to be more expensive than the corner of — I don’t know — Georgia and Burrard in Vancouver, to have the minister tell it.

[2:55 p.m.]

This makes it very clear. The reason that the member for Kamloops–South Thompson’s private member’s bill was not brought forward for debate in the fall, was not brought forward for debate now — instead, a piecemeal piece of legislation that was not what anyone was asking for — is that frankly, from my view, it appears the minister is not confident enough to bring forward ideas and thoughts from this side of the House that, everyone else seems to agree, are the right solution to the problem.

We saw that happen with vaping. It wasn’t word for word the same as the vaping bill that the same member for Kamloops–South Thompson brought forward. The Minister of Health did take it under advisement, did turn that piece of legislation into his own, but the core pieces were the same. I guess that’s the difference between a minister that’s confident in their portfolio and one that would rather ignore what is a proper action to bring relief to the people that are purported to want it.

September 23, 2019. I’m going to read a paragraph out of a letter that was sent to the Premier.

“The policy on the table that is being endorsed by the municipalities, the business community and the arts community is the creation of a new commercial property subclass. This will allow municipalities to tax the unbuilt development potential above businesses at a rate lower than the current commercial rate. We urge the government of B.C. to take the immediate steps needed to provide municipalities this tool, which can provide real, targeted tax relief to those small businesses which are the most impacted, in time for the upcoming tax year.”

That was in September of 2019. That was the first time, last fall, that we brought forward the subclass private member’s bill.

That was in a letter sent by the Vancouver Business Improvement Association; the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture; the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade; the B.C. Chamber of Commerce; the Great Northern Way Scene Shop and Arts Factory Society; Canadian Federation of Independent Business; Urban Development Institute, Pacific Region; National Association for Industrial and Office Parks, Vancouver; Building Owners and Managers Association of British Columbia. They all signed off on that letter. In fact, their signatures took up a whole other page of the two-page letter.

It was very clear what groups were wanting to see it brought forward, and it was very clear what municipalities wanted to see brought forward. What they wanted to see brought forward, through the work of the minister’s own committee, was what is encapsulated in the private member’s bill currently hung up at second reading in this House. It’s not going to be called for debate. Why? It’s because the minister, out of spite, would rather bring in flawed legislation that’s not going to do anything to help anyone, to actually bring forward what is being requested, what is being needed by municipalities.

The sad part is that the vote will probably pass because the Green Party — although they recognize that it’s flawed and although it’s not a confidence vote — will wind up voting for it. But let’s think about what happens if we could vote this down. I think it would send a very clear message to the minister that we should be debating that private member’s bill and that we should still be able to get the relief for the businesses and the small business owners that they need in time.

We do still have the ability to move this forward, if we had a minister that was willing to do what is right, not what is spiteful. Let’s be clear: this does not create the split assessment that we’ve been hearing about. It’s simply a tool that will be unwieldy, that will be very hard to implement even with the updated timelines that the minister has given for tax rates to be set. There will undoubtedly be some people that get missed in it, and then it’ll be too late and no relief for them moving forward. It is simply flawed.

[3:00 p.m.]

Now, I haven’t been around a municipal table since May of 2017, I guess. So things could have changed a little, I guess — maybe my thoughts on how assessed values work and what a split assessed value bill would do, compared to this flawed piece of legislation. But it seems that there are a whole lot of current elected officials in municipal land that have that same opinion, that have that same point of view. Let’s look at a few of the quotes.

Vancouver Courier, February 25, 2020, “When the highest and best use applied to their properties and their leasing, they’re getting hit with very heavy property taxes because of that. Split assessment would have really helped” — Mayor Kennedy Stewart of Vancouver.

Last I checked…. I’m pretty sure that before he got into municipal politics, he flew a banner federally that’s fairly similar to the governing party. He doesn’t seem to agree with this minister on this. But it’s full steam ahead with flawed legislation.

Another quote from Mayor Stewart. “The ministry said on Monday there was not enough time to address those issues for 2020. But Stewart disagreed. ‘We started talking about this with the province in late 2018. There has been time,’ he said. ‘What scares me is how many businesses will go down before we get this fixed.’”

We could get this fixed in time for this tax year. We could vote this down. And we could debate the split assessment private member’s bill and get that implemented in time if we had a minister that was confident enough to actually make sure we’re taking the proper actions in this chamber, instead of worrying more about the appearance of trying to do something.

Sarah Kirby-Yung, Vancouver city councillor, again in the Vancouver Courier: “It would require literally each municipality to go through thousands of different properties and determine who would be eligible, so there’s lots of room for inequity. And also administratively, it’s almost impossible to achieve.”

That’s fairly telling that this legislation is not going to accomplish what they say. Again, I’ll be curious to hear the other side’s defence of this legislation, as we go through this debate of Bill 10 throughout this afternoon, and to hear what exactly the other members, other than the minister, have to say in defence of a completely flawed piece of legislation. I think that — to a person on that side of the House — their own mayors and councillors have said this is not workable. It is not an appropriate piece of legislation.

Dennis Marsden, Coquitlam city councillor, the minister’s own city: “A disappointing outcome to nearly two years of work by a joint task force. Cities told there’s ‘not enough time’ to bring a proper solution, so we’re forced to try and implement this dog’s breakfast in less time and no access to info needed to determine qualifications.” Pretty damning statements.

Paul Sullivan — he’s a property tax expert and a B.C. real estate appraiser. One would think Mr. Sullivan is probably pretty well versed on all things property tax and real estate. This is what he had to say on February 24. “This is a passing the buck and leaves little time to make this process meaningful,” he said. “I would be surprised to see municipalities having adequate time to properly impose such a bylaw.”

This is an added workload to municipalities that already have staffing levels that are stretched pretty thin. If you look at development permit time frames in the Lower Mainland area and you think of how punitive the increased airspace cost is on the property tax bill…. Well, if they were still trying to actually develop that land and they’re sitting and waiting for a development permit, how is that same department going to suddenly have the resources and the manpower to help to guide the taxation department within a city on which buildings and which properties should qualify or not?

[3:05 p.m.]

It will be through development services that a great portion of this work gets done in most municipalities. Most taxation departments, most revenue departments, in cities don’t have a lot of extra time, don’t have a lot of free time around tax time, especially, to be trying to implement this. There are work plans within the municipalities for the level of work and applications that they reasonably expect to normally get. This just adds to that workload. This will require the hiring of more people in those municipalities and the time to hire them to try to implement this properly.

Why? Because the minister is not confident enough to stand in this House and just say: “You know what? The recommendation from the policy committee that recommended the split assessment that is contained within the private member’s bill is the right way to go to bring in proper reform, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Instead, the minister brings in flawed legislation and prattles on about 16 years. Well, people need to pay their property tax bill this year. There is tangible, real action the minister can take this year that doesn’t include going on and on and on about 16 years.

We get it. The minister wasn’t happy being in opposition for 16 years. Well, you know who decided the minister should be in opposition for 16 years? The public did. So if they’re not happy about the 16 years, that’s who they can look to and wonder why they were in opposition for 16 years.

This tool, this unwieldy, gangly tool in Bill 10, will not accomplish what its stated goal is. And frankly, I would challenge anyone on either side of this House. When a piece of legislation is so fundamentally flawed that you know it is, to blindly support it when you know it’s not going to deliver anything towards what its stated goal is….

This isn’t about an ideological deliverable. This is about: is it actually going to deliver any tangible result to a property owner, to somebody leasing? Well, a property owner it won’t deliver anything to, because if you own the property and happen to operate the property, you don’t even get to qualify for this — or if you’re a non-profit that owns the property.

Let’s just look at the people leasing, with triple-net leases. Will this actually help them? Not if the municipalities can’t implement it properly. So far, it’s been pretty easy to find people that say this is not a workable tool.

The minister comes up with some mythical spot in the Cariboo that is demanding that the split assessment doesn’t get implemented because there’s some spot in the Cariboo that’s got massively expensive airspace parcels. Maybe we could at least get map coordinates, because there’s a great portion of the Cariboo that you actually do need your longitude and latitude to know where you’re going. Then we could pinpoint it on a map where this hotbed of activity in the Cariboo is that no one’s quite aware of.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: Yeah, it’s not likely. Exactly.

Let’s see what the CFIB says, Muriel Protzer.

“Monday’s announcement passes the issue back to municipalities ‘like a hot potato.’

“‘It’s not really a tool that is useful or that would actually provide meaningful relief,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately, when you look at the main streets across Metro Vancouver and even Victoria, you see empty storefronts boarded up. We don’t see this being a solution to help small businesses not close their doors.’”

Again, take all of the partisanship out of this that you want. These are former NDP MPs. These are NPA members. These are business communities. It cuts across all political spectrums, just like local government does, actually. They’re all saying the same thing.

I can understand the back and forth in this House if this is an ideological type of conversation, but I’ve heard the other side say that they want to see tax relief for small businesses. We certainly want to see tax relief and tools for municipalities for small businesses. We appear to agree that a solution needs to be found for that.

[3:10 p.m.]

But what everyone seems to be saying, except for the minister and members of the government, once they get their speaking notes from the minister’s office…. They’re the only ones saying that this bill is good. No one else is.

Again, it’s not a confidence vote. It might be a little embarrassing for the minister. I get that. It didn’t have to be. Could have just brought forward the private member’s bill or done like the Health Minister did, slightly tweak the private member’s bill, bring it forward as if it was their own and left the private member’s bill to languish away. We would have been able to, as an assembly, deliver the necessary tools for small businesses and municipalities to be able to implement those tools.

We’re not seeing that. We’re not seeing that because of one person’s desire to not have to look like they’re caving in. What would the minister be caving in to? The minister would be adopting the recommendations that the minister’s own committee brought forward as the solution.

This is the madness to this whole debate right now. The legislation we’re debating is actually totally, 180 degrees, different than what the minister’s own committee is recommending be done to solve this problem. The solution that the committee is recommending is still sitting on the order paper in this House at second reading for debate.

I can understand why municipalities are frustrated, why business groups are frustrated, because not everyone understands the processes that this House goes through. They hear: “Relief is on the way. We’ve got a private member’s bill, a split-class assessment. We got exactly what we’ve been asking for on the order paper. Perfect. It’s going to get debated.” Then they find out what the process really is, that it’s going to go nowhere because this government does not have the fortitude to pull it forward for debate. But what will come forward is a completely flawed bill that is not going to come close to doing anything that people have been asking for.

Now, I’ve touched on whether or not this applies to people that own. Do not underestimate the number of long-standing non-profit agencies that own their own buildings. It’s very common practice that, over the years, especially the older and more established ones found ways to slowly get a mortgage, get a building bought and start doing their operations out of there to avoid lease payments. They obviously can’t get away from the triple net, because taxes still need to get paid, utilities still need to get paid, but they could get away from that monthly lease payment. They could put more back into doing good in their communities.

Most of those buildings are a couple-of-storey-walk-ups. They’ve got valuable airspace, but the non-profits are not in a position to get going with development. Even if they are, even if they filed their paperwork today, we know that they would be four to five years before they were able to actually have anything tangible in the air, if they were lucky. Even if they applied today for a building permit, a development permit, they would be paying, under this legislation, the full shot for four, five, six, seven years straight, even though they’re trying to do the right thing and maximize the airspace to try to get some housing into that area of their city.

Under this legislation, even if the municipality wanted to exempt them, they can’t. No help for the non-profits.

That’s why this is so flawed. It’s flawed. It needs to be defeated. It is not a confidence vote. I’m going to keep repeating that, so hopefully somebody in the Green caucus or staff are taking notes that this is not a confidence vote.

[3:15 p.m.]

There’s absolutely nothing in CASA that says that the Green Party has to support this legislation — nothing. If they actually truly believe that this is not good for local government, just as all the local governments are saying, they’re free to vote against it. The world won’t stop spinning. There are other options that we can still get implemented as an assembly to bring forward relief for people. The minister will probably be a little bit embarrassed, but life will go on for the minister as well.

We can actually, as an assembly, get back to working to deliver the tools that municipalities, business groups, lessees, building owners — everyone — is saying they need, which is split-class assessment. It might not be 100 percent perfect the first time out of the gate, but as we saw today with the Attorney General, with 22 different miscellaneous statute amendments, things can always be amended. But getting it 95 percent right, right out of the gate and having to tweak and amend it a year or two down the road is a lot better than getting it 100 percent wrong with Bill 10 and seeing no relief whatsoever.

Let’s think about this moving forward. If the minister today is saying that what’s in the private member’s bill is not workable and not a solution, that’s the last solution that’s out there, and that’s the one everyone wanted. This is supposed to be the temporary measure. So will it be less embarrassing for the minister a year from now to bring in what is in the private member’s bill? Two years from now? How long do we have to let business owners, communities and municipalities struggle with this to save the minister a little bit of embarrassment? Do we have to wait for a cabinet shuffle, maybe a new minister? Because that’s, at its core, the problem here.

When everybody, including the minister’s own handpicked committee, comes up with a solution that the minister is willfully willing to walk away from — frankly, in my opinion, out of spite — there’s something fundamentally wrong with how this place operates, because we are not debating whether or not there should be relief. We’ve all agreed. The minister has agreed, we’ve all agreed and the Green Party has agreed that businesses need help, that municipalities need tools to give them that help. We all agree with that, and everyone but the minister seems to agree what that tool is: split-class assessment.

This doesn’t change the minister’s revenue projections in her budget — the difference between Bill 10 and the private member’s bill. It doesn’t affect any of that. So I hope that this assembly does what’s right and not just rubber-stamp a bad piece of legislation — because that’s what this is, a bad piece of legislation — and votes it down, and we can actually deal with and implement the solution that everyone has been asking for and is literally sitting on the docket ready for us to debate. We could have that passed in time for this tax season. People could have that relief on the way, and municipalities would have a workable tool that they’ve actually asked for to be brought forward.

I look forward to hearing what the other side has to say in defence of this incredibly flawed legislation, through second reading.

M. Hunt: I must admit that I was hoping that there was someone from the government side that would speak to this, but let me just start by saying how proud I am to be able to represent my community here in this wonderful place. When you’ve been in government, in elected positions, for as long as I have, it’s amazing that your citizens put confidence in you to come and take on the challenges that they face and work in government for that. It’s a tremendous privilege to stand here.

[3:20 p.m.]

I’ve had a number of years with the privilege of being a councillor in local government in Surrey. I know that you, Mr. Speaker, have had the awesome privilege in your community to be able to serve for, well, literally decades in local government. It’s a tremendous privilege.

Actually, one of the wonderful things about this House is that there are a lot of us here that have come from local government. A lot of us have come here not because we wanted to get a promotion or think that one order of government is superior to the other, so we’re moving our way up the ladder, but for many of us, it’s the frustrations that we had at local government.

If I can just pause for a moment here, you realize I’m following the former mayor of Kamloops. I believe that shortly after me will be the former mayor of Dawson Creek, speaking to this bill. It’s because there are a lot of us that have been very involved in this kind of work — not only as a councillor. I also had the absolute, awesome privilege of being able to serve on the executive of the Union of B.C. Municipalities and had that wonderful privilege, for five years, of going through the process of being on the executive and, ultimately, being the president of the UBCM. It’s an absolute….

I’m going to come back to that, because I think it’s very important that we check the legacies out. I realize that there are a lot of individuals here who have not been around as long as I have for some of these things. Now, I know that some have actually been in this House for a considerably longer time. But, you know, it’s one of the things where the more we see life, the more we see life repeating itself. Unfortunately, I forget who stated it, but it says that if we don’t study history, we’re doomed to repeat it.

One of the things I love about local government is that in local government, we can go in with all of our different perspectives, our different ideas and our different political philosophies. We put forward our opinions, and through debate in council, we come up with legislation, rules for our city, which we live by. We work together, with each of us bringing a perspective to the table and building on that. Unfortunately, that has not always been the reputation of this House over here in Victoria — particularly, obviously, between the two sides of the House, or the three parties, but also in the process of actually getting work done.

There’s also a tension between the local governments and Victoria. I can go back to the 1990s as an example, where we used to have unconditional grants. The province had this arrangement with local municipalities to help to finance them, because we shared the bounty of this province in unconditional grants. Well, in the 1990s, that all disappeared.

I was listening carefully to the member for Saanich North and the Islands, who is also the current Leader of the Third Party. I listened to him talking in recent terms about, again, some of the challenges, some of the downloading, the tensions between local government and provincial government and recognizing that part of our job here is to enable, help and assist the local governments to do their job so that we can have good government and that we can get good things happening in the midst of our cities in our province.

The minister was speaking to Bill 10 here that is before us. As she was speaking to it, I noticed that she said that this piece of legislation is for large urban centres. But then when the issue was raised in question period, she said that she can’t go along with a private member’s bill and that she had to reject it because of Whistler, the Cariboo and Fort St. John.

Well, Whistler is unique. It’s the first place…. It became the resort municipality of Whistler because of the uniqueness of Whistler. We recognized Whistler is unique. So I will give that, as Whistler…. But we deal with special legislation for them, to deal with that. Cariboo? There’s no municipality called Cariboo. It’s a very large region of, actually, small places. I don’t know where in the Cariboo she was referring to.

[3:25 p.m.]

Then she said: “And Fort St. John.” Well, actually, I’ve been to Fort St. John. If my memory serves me correctly, there are two buildings that are six storeys high. Those are the tallest buildings in Fort St. John. As a matter of fact, we’ve been in communication with the mayor concerning this whole issue of dealing with the unused airspaces and the taxation of that. The mayor says: “I don’t think land values are high enough to value airspace.” So I don’t know what the minister’s challenge is with Fort St. John and how the whole private member’s bill can’t be used for Fort St. John. I don’t understand that at all.

But having served on the UBCM executive, one of the interesting things that happens at the UBCM is that the UBCM is bound by previous resolutions. The executive just doesn’t get to go off and say whatever they want to say or talk about whatever they want to talk about. They are bound by previous resolutions of the memberships, which, at my time, was 183 municipalities. I think it’s something like 189 now or something like that — some such number.

But let me just go to the resolutions from 2019. This was the end of September 2019. Let me deal with the resolutions that were passed by the UBCM. This is representing all of the municipal government officials in this province of British Columbia.

Interestingly, the first resolution they had was an SR, which is a special resolution put forward by the executive. Interestingly enough…. And these are all public documents. I’m not giving anything that’s secret or confidential. This is all publicly debated resolutions. It says:

“Whereas section 2 of the Community Charter acknowledges that consultation on matters of mutual interest is a key principle defining the local-provincial relationship, recognizing that citizens of B.C. are best served when both orders of government respect each other’s jurisdictions and work together, and whereas recent examples of provincial processes and programs affecting the land base have not been conducted in a manner consistent with the principles espoused by the Community Charter, therefore be it resolved that the provincial government ensure that the principles of mutual respect, consultation and cooperation as outlined in section 2 of the Community Charter are adhered to and implemented as it moves forward with future initiatives.”

Now, that was September of 2019 — not that long ago. That, of course, was endorsed. The resolutions committee, in fact, said that they’re bringing this forward in response to members’ concerns about some of the new provincial processes and programs that have come forward that do not reflect the key principles outlined in the Community Charter. Then it lists a few of the different challenges that they’re facing.

But as recently as this last September, the most recent UBCM, the members of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, are saying to the provincial government: “Please consult with us. Please talk to us, because you’re implementing things that affect us that you’re not talking to us about.”

Then let’s move a little bit later in that week, as we get into the resolutions — resolution B78, to be precise, the title of which is “Support for small business and creation of non-residential subclasses in property tax assessment.” This resolution was, in fact, put forward by Port Moody, and in fact, there was debate on this. The debate was such that there were amendments made to it. But before I get to the amendments, let me just talk about what had previously happened.

Here are the comments from the resolutions committee as they spoke about this to the members of the UBCM. It says: “The resolution committee advises that the UBCM membership has not previously considered a resolution calling on the provincial government to create new assessment subclasses for small businesses to allow local governments to apply differentiated non-residential property tax rates to smaller businesses and cultural hubs.” So this had not been discussed previously, or this particular solution had not been discussed previously.

[3:30 p.m.]

However, the committee notes that the membership has endorsed a resolution in 2018, which was B115, that sought relief for small businesses through provincial assessment reform. It also further notes that the membership endorsed, in 2018, B114, which sought new assessment subclasses in order to address, in this case, housing affordability.

The issue, the concept, the problem, the challenge had been brought up previously in 2018. So here we go into 2019. And what happens? We get an amendment to the resolution.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Here’s what was endorsed and passed by the UBCM at its September 2019 conference. It said:

“Therefore be it resolved the province…work with municipalities to make the necessary legislative and regulatory changes to enable implementation of the ‘split assessment through a new commercial subclass’ approach in time for 2020 to enable municipalities to lower commercial property tax rate on properties where development potential has made it difficult to operate and provide the much-needed relief for smaller businesses and the arts, culture and non-profit sectors.”

That’s the resolution that was passed. The resolution from the UBCM was very, very specific. No doubt, this was in response to the Intergovernmental Working Group and their recommendations that were put forward saying that a split assessment was the best way to deal with that.

Now, just so that we understand what we’re talking about here…. What we’re saying is this. Let’s take a commercial building. I’ll put this in downtown Surrey, where we have…. In the city centre, we’re going to have a building…. Well, I know what I’ll do. Let’s use 3 Civic Plaza as an example of this. For those of you that are well familiar with the city of Surrey, you have the main city library, you have city hall, and you have this big tower right beside the SkyTrain station. That is 3 Civic.

It is three things in one. It is a hotel, it is a residential property, and it is KPU. Kwantlen Polytechnic University has five floors of their campus there. So you’ve got one building with three uses in it. How is that property taxed? Well, the property is taxed based on the different uses within the property. So it isn’t one tax bill for the entire property. Rather, there’s a tax bill for the residential part, which is taxed at a residential rate. There’s a part that is dealing with the university, which is done at an institutional rate. There is the hotel, which is taxed at the hotel rate.

If there was other commercial or whatever, the assessment is broken up. These are what are called subclasses. On a piece of property, there can be these different categories, and they’re taxed according to appropriate rates, which everyone has agreed is a fair and reasonable way to assess.

Now let’s take that to a property…. Let’s take it a block or two away from 3 Civic. Oh, I know. What we could do is…. Let’s go to the roller rink across the street. Okay? What used to be the roller rink is now in the development process, but we’ll use that as the illustration. We had the roller rink, which was simply one floor of commercial use, and then there was nothing above it. Because of what is happening in the city centre of Surrey, there’s the potential for a large highrise to be there. As a result, the assessment that has been put on that property is…. Oh well, it’s really not reasonable.

Again, we’re supposed to be taxing them according to their assessed value, which is approximately market value. What is the market value of that roller rink? Well, that roller rink, that building by itself, really isn’t worth an awful lot. The land is what’s really the value. It also has a value based on what could go in up above it, all the potential future airspace and what could done.

[3:35 p.m.]

That’s where the problem lies. You’ve got this little roller rink that is just a roller rink to keep kids off the streets, keep them occupied, keep them learning some skills, a bit of athletics, a social place. They’re being charged taxes as if they’re a 30-storey commercial building, which is absolutely and utterly absurd.

The proposal is to make two different classes — a subclass, where you can have the airspace as just that, an airspace. So whether the use is the single-storey roller park, whether we’re dealing with the three-storey office building or whatever it is, B.C. Assessment can go in and very clearly articulate what is the value of that airspace, that part that hasn’t been built at all.

That’s the challenge that was before us. That’s the problem that the municipalities want to see addressed. The problem is the bill that we have before us, Bill 10, is not what small business asked for. It is not what local governments asked for, because the local governments asked for action on that unused airspace.

But what do we have? Well, what we have is this convoluted thing, where basically the NDP government has simply come up with a solution that is not a solution. It requires businesses to go and lobby their local government to get an exemption. I would note that in — what is it? — section 20 of the bill, it says that this is going to be done by permissive tax exemptions.

Well, those of us that come from local government know the huge challenge we have in the fall of every year, where we get this massive pile of paper sent to us which is dealing with statutory and permissive tax exemptions.

For the people who are watching this, who don’t know what that is, that’s…. In about September or October of every year, there is a whole list of addresses in the newspaper. For the city of Surrey, if my memory serves me correctly, it’s about two or three complete pages of the local newspaper where these addresses are all specifically listed for permissive tax exemptions for various and sundry different reasons. It could be a daycare. It could be a home that’s dealing with abused women. Or it could be this, that or the other thing. There are lots of different reasons for doing that.

What you’re going to have, Mr. Speaker, is page after page after page in the local newspapers listing each and every address of each and every commercial building that’s got to get this dealt with. Based on what? Not based on the building and what’s going on. It’s based on the lease agreement that you have with the owner. Well, what about those not-for-profits, those arts and culture pieces?

Oh my, let’s think about the city of Surrey. In the city of Surrey, we have arts and culture groups that have their own property. Someone gave it to them. It was bequeathed to them. Normally we’d say: “Isn’t that great? Wonderful.” Well, this bill says: “No, no, no, no, no. Not so fast. You don’t get out of it.” So we’re making winners and losers.

If you happened to sign an agreement that was a triple-net lease, you’re a winner. If you didn’t sign that kind of a lease and you got some other kind of arrangement with the property owner, you’re a loser. If you happen to own that property, you’re a bigger loser because this doesn’t give you anything.

This is crazy. Talk about inequity. Talk about being unfair. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Then, of course, like I said, you’ve got the municipality having to scurry around all their…. Well, it’s going to go one way or the other. Either the municipality has got to try and scour all of their assessments, all of their properties to find out which ones try and put them on here and be fair about it, or it’s going to be the other that says: “Well, you’re going to have to lobby us; you’re going to have to bring it to our attention.”

Now, in a place like the city of Surrey…. We can pick on Vancouver. We could pick on Burnaby — any of the larger municipalities. Can you just start, Mr. Speaker, to imagine how much work this is going to be?

[3:40 p.m.]

It’s not like municipalities are so overstaffed that they’ve got people sitting all over the place just waiting to find some work to do. The people in local government are busy. They’re already overtaxed and overburdened and busy doing their stuff. But now we’re going to sit there, and they’ve got to run around and try to find out what kind of lease you have. “Do you have a triple-net lease? What about you?”

This is absurd. The amount of work that’s involved in this is absolutely crazy. But it isn’t dealing with the problem of the airspace, which was the problem that they were asking to deal with. If you get into this formula that we have, the formula gets you to get an exemption on the basis of a percentage of the property tax that is eligible based on this weird formula that is dealing with a past year’s taxes and where you are. It is so unbelievably complicated — for what reason?

It’s really simple. If they simply went to split assessment, split-class assessments, it would be easy. It would be very functional. It would not create winners and losers. It would treat all businesses the same. Isn’t that ultimately what we want? We want our taxation systems to be fair to everyone. This is a permissive exemption, which means lots and lots of work.

What have people been saying about this? What have the responses been? Well, I would note that the chief financial officers of the city of Vancouver, city of Burnaby, city of Coquitlam, city of North Vancouver, city of Richmond, city of Surrey, city of West Vancouver…. If we take those cities, we’ve got the majority of the businesses in the Lower Mainland. I would almost say that we might have the majority of businesses in the province of British Columbia that are having this problem, because contrary to what the minister said, this isn’t a problem in Fort St. John. It’s not. The mayor told us so.

The Lower Mainland chambers of commerce have said this. The boards of trade have said this. It keeps going on and on and on. All of them say that they support the UBCM resolution and the UBCM solution to the problem. They don’t support what is before us.

We can go on. We’ve heard it before. We’ll hear it again. The mayor of North Vancouver: “For too long, this issue was unaddressed by provincial government.” Well, there’s a reason why it was unaddressed. I can tell you that when I was in local government, which was only six years ago — I know, for some of the members of government, they think it was much longer than that, but only six years ago — this was not a problem in the city of Surrey. This was not on the radar in any way, shape or form.

Maybe it’s because of the way that we do zoning and we do our local community plans. I’m not sure why it wasn’t a problem back then, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t a concern to us at all. But now it has become a concern. She goes on to say:

“The proposed legislation will fail to alleviate the burden small businesses in the city of North Vancouver are feeling. The proposed changes won’t allow us to target businesses who are disproportionately being affected by property value and could even possibly result in tax relief for large international companies. I’m disappointed that the province hasn’t delivered a more community-oriented and workable solution as recommended by the intergovernmental working group.”

Oh, that’s right. The intergovernmental working group. Now, wasn’t that the group that the minister and the ministry set up with the Union of B.C. Municipalities and brought other stakeholders in to so that they could all get input and come to a solution? How is it that once again, we find this government goes through a process of consultation to stall and delay things and then doesn’t even listen to them? Doesn’t even listen to them.

[3:45 p.m.]

What about a councillor from the city of Vancouver, Sarah Kirby-Yung? She says, “It would require literally each municipality to go through thousands of different properties and determine who would be eligible. So there’s a lot of room for inequity, and also administratively, it’s almost impossible to achieve” that equity.

She goes on and says that this is dealing with “a patchwork of regulations” and development that would happen and that the taxation should be “predictable, consistent and equitable,” which is not what we see here. She said: “It’s a tool that’s not going to yield the results, and it’s probably less likely be used.” I would argue that municipalities most likely won’t use it, because it’s just simply too cumbersome. They will wait for a real solution that actually can make a difference. “It’s not going to be feasible because it’s not going to deliver the benefits that we anticipated and that we want.”

Again, the minister is from the city of Coquitlam. She used to be a councillor in the city of Coquitlam, and even a councillor from the city of Coquitlam is saying it is a disappointing outcome to nearly two years of work by a joint task force — cities told there’s “not enough time” to bring a proper solution. So we’re forced to try and implement this dog’s breakfast in less time, no access to the information needed to determine qualifications.

We can go on to those from West Vancouver. Delta has exactly the same problems. We can just keep going on and on. But you know, it’s not like this is something new. The minister had this. There was an open letter written on September 23. It begins: “Today marks the first day of the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention.” I’m going right back to the resolutions that I talked about at the very beginning.

What is the theme? The theme is resilience and change. To start the dialogue, several large businesses and arts and culture stakeholder groups “are calling for your government to take bold action to help small businesses struggling to survive massive property tax increases.”

It goes on:

“The policy on the table that has been endorsed by the municipalities, the business community and the arts community is the creation of a new commercial property ‘subclass.’ This will allow municipalities to tax the unbuilt development potential above businesses at a rate lower than the current commercial rate. We urge the government of B.C. to take the immediate steps needed to provide municipalities this tool which can provide real, targeted tax relief to those small businesses which are the most impacted, in time for the upcoming tax year.”

This was September 2019. This was actually before the fall session that we had. Hmmm.

“When this proposal is discussed during UBCM” — and by the same token, we now know it was approved with amendment — “we expect that there will be significant municipal support,” which there was. “By giving this optional tool to municipalities, the government of B.C. will demonstrate to local governments, the business community, the arts and culture community, and to the public that it recognizes the problem facing our local business owners, and it has taken action by allowing an option that will help them thrive.”

Then it goes on to quote the mayor of Vancouver, who is not exactly on the other side of the political fence from the current government. But this is signed by the Vancouver Business Improvement Authority, the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, Great Northern Way, Scene Shop and Arts Factory Society, the Federation of Independent Business, Urban Development Institute, Pacific Region, the National Association for Industrial and Office Parks and Vancouver building owners and managers and associations.

There is a tremendous amount of support for a split-class assessment. There is zero — zero — support for the proposal that is before us. The minister…. Where is she getting her endorsements from? Her endorsements are nonexistent.

I see my time is up.

M. Bernier: It’s an honour to stand up and speak to this, following my colleague from Surrey. It’s unfortunate. It seems like the government doesn’t want to stand up, so it continues to be members from this side of the House standing up speaking to Bill 10.

[3:50 p.m.]

It’s unfortunate, because we’re hearing of all of the impacts that this is going to have, specifically on Bill 10, on local governments.

Now, let me just start by saying I want to thank the member for Kamloops–South Thompson for a couple of things that he’s done specifically around this important issue. He’s been meeting with local governments. He’s been meeting with affected stakeholders. He did analysis over the last couple of years and brought forward a well-thought-out private member’s bill a year ago, last year, in 2019, that could have helped address this situation.

What’s even more important with that private member’s bill that came forward was that it actually had solutions in there that local governments, small business, communities were asking for. They were asking for help. Over the last couple of years, assessments have been skyrocketing, and there’s nothing worse than having to pay taxes on air, taxes on something above your head that you’re not even using.

It seems to be a theme with this government of looking for opportunities to tax whatever they can. Maybe if you shot a Netflix show up into the air above you, it’s a double tax now, I guess. But the government, instead of listening to the actual information that was being presented in front of them of solutions that could actually help small business and help communities, ignored it.

Now, I know government in this specific situation would not want to look at a private member’s bill put forward that actually would have solved a legitimate problem that was trying to be solved. It could have been a perfect example of what this government likes to tout of working together with all sides of the House to solve a problem. Again, they completely ignored what they like to preach.

I think the member for Kamloops–South Thompson, after all the work he’s done on this, would have been more than happy for them to take his bill, reword it — whatever they had to do —pretend it was theirs and put it forward last year and start solving the problem. We would have been okay with that. I know the member would have been okay with that because it would have been addressing the issue that people were asking to be fixed.

I can tell you as a former mayor, nothing would irk me more than something like this, where government has put forward a bill to say they’re trying to solve a problem, when in fact all they’re doing is trying to change the problem to somebody else’s problem.

What they’re trying to do…. You can see it, basically, black and white in this bill. The minister wants to be able to point to this in a year from now, when things have gotten even worse and small businesses have closed and municipalities have struggled to deal with this issue. The minister is just going to look at the bill and say: “Oh, but I put a bill on the floor. Not my problem. Go talk to somebody else.”

The problem with this bill is that it doesn’t address the issue. It doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it amplifies the issue by deflecting it to local governments that are already stressed with the downloading that this government has put on them, whether it’s the employer health tax or whether it’s the emergency preparedness budgets that they now have to come up with. Local governments are going to be forced to raise taxes and defer the taxes to other classifications in order to meet their budget requirements, on top of them already having to look at increasing taxes because of the downloading from this government to them.

I know it’s the practice of this government to do that and to try to deflect it so they can put the blame on somebody else when things get worse. But at the end of the day, aren’t we supposed to be trying to solve the problem?

This minister today in the House, in her speech, said we need action now. Well, she’s known about this for two years. Two years ago the minister struck a working group, a committee, to help bring information forward to say: how do we solve this problem? So it’s interesting that two years ago, when it actually was an issue that was being brought forward to the minister, it wasn’t taken that seriously. It wasn’t that important.

[3:55 p.m.]

Then two years later, when the committee and people in her own ministry, community groups, local governments…. People were actually handpicked and put on a committee to bring forward recommendations that could have looked at helping solve the issue for small business and municipalities. A lot of those issues — which were captured last year in the private member’s bill, I’ll add again — instead were completely ignored. And let’s just put a bill on the floor that’s actually going to make things more problematic.

How does it make it more problematic? Well, the member before me started talking about some of those issues. When you’re actually going to be asking a municipality now — a place like Vancouver, North Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond, places that actually are growing…. The assessments going up, and businesses are struggling because of the increased taxes. Well, now a local government, magically overnight, I guess, according to this minister, is going to be able to solve this problem with this bill but not have, necessarily, the resources to do it.

It’s going to help create…. Well, not help. It’s going to create inequities within these municipalities. And it’s very specific in the bill that this is only for municipalities. Regional districts have been excluded. Once again, this is one of those interesting things. A minister that’s supposed to be working with everyone in that sector has chosen one group again over another that is going to be able to have opportunities.

She’s also put a bill on the floor that means that a local government is going to be in the position now to be accused, unfortunately, of picking winners and losers. I know that’s not going to be their intent, but now they’re going to have to put a bylaw in place. They’re going to have to possibly look at classifications of thousands of businesses in larger cities like Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond, North Vancouver, and they won’t have the tools to do this, or if they want to try to achieve it, how is that going to happen in the next couple of months that the minister thinks it will be achieved? There’s a process here that she is downloading that could take a very, very long time. In the meantime, businesses are still going to be taxed at a higher rate.

Now, another unfortunate part of this, which has been addressed by our critic, the member for Kamloops–South Thompson as well, is the fact that this is only going to give opportunities for people who have signed a triple-net lease.

So if you own…. If you were in a business, a small business, and decided in Vancouver that “I’m going to buy this little business….” I come from small business. My family had a couple of small businesses in North Vancouver when I was growing up. So if they had actually…. I’d have to check with my dad. I think we actually leased under a triple net. But if he had actually bought the small, little building that his business was run out of, he’d be out of luck. “Sorry. You’re going to have to pay these high taxes.” There is no way to avoid it.

I can tell you, coming from a family of small business, there’s a reason why so many businesses right now are going to be struggling to stay in business. They are looking for help. They are looking for assistance. They are looking for a bill that will actually accomplish something so they can do what they’re trying to do, which is employ people and try to keep a business open in a community.

Now, we’ve heard from so many of these people that are affected about why they’re going to be struggling with this bill. I look at even Paul Sullivan, the property tax expert and B.C. real estate appraiser, who actually said that this is again just passing the buck and “leaves little time to make this process meaningful.” He said: “I will be surprised to see any municipality having adequate time to properly impose such a bylaw.”

That’s what we’re talking about here. The minister stood up and said: “Don’t worry. We’re solving all your problems by letting municipalities do it.” But again, even the municipalities and the people in those municipalities are saying: “We aren’t going to have time to be able to do this.” You know, I look at even a quote from Mayor Linda Buchanan from North Vancouver, where I was from. She was quoted as saying: “The proposed legislation will fail to alleviate the burden that small businesses in the city of North Vancouver are feeling.”

These are messages that the minister heard loud and clear from her working group that we had to try to solve. The minister herself has acknowledged that this working group has brought forward recommendations. Unfortunately, the minister is also saying that we were ignoring those recommendations.

[4:00 p.m.]

You know, this government has an odd way, sometimes, of operating and doing business. They either do all these studies and study things to death and then ignore the recommendations, or in the case of what they just did up in my riding, they do no studies at all and then announce a partnership agreement that is going to possibly shut down the back country and affect jobs. It’s one extreme or the other. This is what is frustrating for the people in British Columbia.

You can’t say you’re listening to local government when you actually don’t hear what they’re saying. Local governments have put forward recommendations. They’ve put forward ideas. I sat on the UBCM executive, as did the member that spoke before me from Surrey, who was the president for a time, and I was there. Again, nothing would irk those groups and local governments more than governments doing something like this without really, truthfully, considering the ideas that they put forward.

It is insulting to ask somebody to sit on a group, to bring forward recommendations, and then just to shelve those recommendations and do your own thing without even publicly really acknowledging that the information they brought forward was actually going to solve the problem.

You can’t support a bill that is not going to solve an issue. Again, if the minister truly wants to do what’s right, she should be scrapping this bill, taking the private member’s bill that was put forward last year — add her name to it, if that’s going to help her sleep better at night — and then put it back here. I guarantee you it’s something that would be, probably, passed unanimously in this House, because it would actually, truthfully, be doing what it’s intended do, which is helping the people and the businesses and the communities in the province of British Columbia.

That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here, not downloading more problems to municipalities just so the minister and this government can try to deflect away from the challenges and the issues by making it somebody else’s issue.

I cannot support this bill. The minister can do better. She’s got tools in front of her and ideas in front of her to solve the problem. I only wish that she would have taken the time to actually do that.

G. Kyllo: I’m happy to take my place standing today and speak to Bill 10, Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2020.

I think that the lack of speakers that are being put up by the government speaks volumes to the lack of support that even this bill has within the caucus of the current government. It is very unusual that any bill that comes before the House actually isn’t spoken to by other members of government and in support of the bill that’s before us today for debate.

It’s very concerning — not just to myself but by local government leaders across the province — on the lack of interest in this current government and the minister in actually listening to the requirements to try and address this very concerning issue.

As was shared earlier by some of my previous colleagues, the fact that the government went out and asked for an intergovernmental working group to be struck, to have opportunities for a range of different people to come in and actually speak to this issue and come up with a solution…. For two years, they worked on providing a solution and presented that recommendation to the government, and the government flatly rejected it, cast it aside, ignored it.

This is a pattern we’re seeing from this government that doesn’t listen. We only have to go back last year when the government formed the MSP Task Force. Now, this was a task force that was selected and identified by the current government. It was their expert individuals that actually sat on that panel. They made a specific recommendation to the government. In every case, they came forward and said: “Whatever you do, do not put the full cost of the MSP replacement tax on the backs of B.C. businesses.” But we do know that that is exactly what the government did.

The government asks for recommendations. They look for consultation, but then they cast that advice aside and absolutely ignore it.

[4:05 p.m.]

I can understand and appreciate why so many members that participated on that task force are absolutely enraged at the lack of attention and the fact that this bill before the House will not address the issue.

There is a letter that was actually sent. This is an open letter to the hon. Premier of our province back in September 23 of 2019. In this letter, it was very clear that the request was for government to take bold action to help small businesses that are struggling to survive massive property tax increases. Local businesses and community arts and cultural organizations are being pushed out of our communities. The province has the opportunity to take action to make our communities more resilient by protecting our local businesses and arts organizations to help them flourish.

Now this was an absolute appeal to the Premier and to the current government to ensure that they address the affordability crisis that businesses are experiencing, largely in metro centres. For those of you at home that might be concerned that, well, maybe businesses should be paying more tax.

Just as an example, in most municipalities…. I know that the actual mill rates will change from municipality to municipality. But let’s just assume a tax assessment on a $10 million property. On a $10 million property, if that was a residential property, the annual tax bill would be roughly $30,000. Businesses pay, on average, between 2.4 and 3.6 times the residential rate. So where that residential property might pay a tax bill of $30,000, a business would pay $72,000 to $108,000. So businesses are already paying significantly more than residences.

That’s what they determine the business classification. I think a lot of people agree that businesses, because they are for-profit, have more of an opportunity to actually pay a higher share toward all of the different services that are provided within a municipality. So businesses are already paying 2.4 to 3.6 times the residential rate for taxation.

Here’s what’s happening in many of these areas where B.C. Assessment is taking into consideration the potential future development on the air above a particular business. They’re going to be taxed based on zoning and official community plan directions as far as what the potential highest and best use for that property could be.

We do know, through some of the letters that have actually been written in to our caucus…. And I know that the government is in receipt of those as well. Oftentimes it can be as high as five to ten times the value of your property. So that $10 million property could be potentially worth anywhere from $50 to $100 million, based on the development that goes on above the head. So these businesses are being taxed on something that is yet to be built. They may not even have the zoning. But they’re being taxed based on the potential viability of construction that is yet to actually occur.

When you think about that — these businesses are already paying 2.4 to 3.6 times the residential rate — because they’re now being taxed also on the development potential of these properties, that same business, based on an initial $10 million valuation, could be paying taxes based on a valuation of $50 to $100 million.

When I mentioned that the tax rate at the 2.4 to 3.6, $72,000 to $108,000…. Those tax rates could be upwards of five to ten times that amount. It’s not about the ability of that business to pay. It is strictly based on the airspace above their head. So this is a serious problem that has arisen over the last number of years.

I know that the government, when they were in opposition, had all of the answers. This is not a brand-new issue that only came forward here in the last few months. The government has been aware, for 2½ years, of this concern. Yet, in 2½ years, they come forward with a failed piece of legislation that does not hit the mark. It misses the mark. It is not a solution. It is a distraction.

[4:10 p.m.]

It is absolutely offensive to have a government that gives the impression and speaks in rhetoric that they’re actually listening to British Columbians, and they want to find a solution, only to see that they reject the recommendations that are coming forward from the group that they asked to actually go out and provide opportunities and some recommendations to this current government.

Now, you certainly don’t have to just take my word for the lack of endorsement for this current bill that’s before the House. Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart, in the Vancouver Sun on February 25: “There’s a huge gap between what we are asking for and what this is. At the core of our ask was for the province to give us the tools to deal with development potential, and it’s not here.” North Vancouver mayor Linda Buchanan: “Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and fundamental in creating vibrant, livable communities. We all want to see these businesses be successful, as well as to attract entrepreneurs to our region.”

Now, we know that the business community has been under attack by this government for the last 2½ years, with their punishing employer health tax putting a $1.9 billion additional cost burden on employers. We have increasing corporate taxes. We also have the increased cost of the carbon tax. Businesses are really struggling, and they need support.

The response from this government is absolutely pathetic. It does not meet the mark. Typically, we will see bills being presented in this chamber and the government is only too quick to give a long list of endorsements from different organizations that are actually providing support for the legislation they’re bringing forward. Today in this House, I heard nothing, absolutely nothing. If anything, all of the quotes that we have seen in the communications that have been in the news media are all about how this bill fails to meet the mark.

Paul Sullivan, a property tax expert and B.C. real estate appraiser, was quoted in the Globe and Mail on February 24: “This is passing the buck and leaves little time to make this process meaningful.” He goes on to say: “I would be surprised to see municipalities having adequate time to properly impose such a bylaw.”

Now, many of my colleagues expressed concern about the awkwardness of this bill, the administrative burden it’ll put on municipalities. But the other piece that is also extremely important is the fact that, again, we have a government that is quickly picking winners and losers. If you’re a business owner and you happen to be leasing your facility, this bill may provide an opportunity for a municipality to provide some relief, but it is yet to be seen what that relief is going to look like.

However, if you happen to be the owner-operator that chose years ago to make the investment and actually buy the real estate which your business operates from, you get no relief. You’re exempt. This bill doesn’t even provide the opportunity for municipalities to give consideration if they want to treat owner-operator businesses similarly to a lease operator.

Then we have to have a look at the non-profit sector. The non-profit sector provides such important services around our province, in our communities. Any additional tax burden that they pay just results in and correlates to a reduced amounts of services and the good they can do in their respective communities.

Again, this government is picking winners and losers. If a non-profit group happens to lease, there’s a potential for some relief. However, should the non-profit have either been gifted the property in which they have ownership or have made strong and wise investment decisions and actually own that real estate, again, what does this bill do? What does this provide for those operators that actually own their property? Zilch, absolutely nothing. It’s concerning for me that we have a government that is big on rhetoric but absolutely tone-deaf when it comes to listening and providing relief that is requested by businesses and municipalities around our province.

With that, I’ll conclude my remarks and wait for our next speaker.

D. Barnett: I, too, at one time represented local government for 17 years as the mayor of a small rural community.

[4:15 p.m.]

Looking back over time, governments, from time to time, do download on local governments. This here, to me, is shocking. This here will do nothing to help small business, even though in rural communities, it probably wouldn’t affect us because we don’t build the types of buildings that take airspace above a certain height. But it’s not to say it couldn’t happen.

I was shocked at the minister talking about the Cariboo. The Cariboo — is that the regional district? I have no idea what she’s talking about — no idea whatsoever. But this is something that was asked for — a change to help local governments by local governments and small business — and it’s going to do exactly the opposite. You know, it surprises me.

I follow local government very closely because my constituents are taxpayers. They pay taxes to every level of government. Just recently, I had many taxpayers in my office quite upset in the rural Cariboo regional district because the taxes, they say, are going to go up 4.5 percent. The reason they said the taxes had to go up was because of emergency planning — once again, a download from the provincial government. That is the provincial government’s responsibility, not to download it all on local governments so local taxpayers, once again, get hit with another increase in property taxes.

On and on it goes. Small businesses, whether they be in rural British Columbia, whether they be in Vancouver, Burnaby, Kelowna, Richmond…. Everyone here says they’re the backbone of our community. Well, they are the backbone of our communities in the province, but when you take a look at this bill, the other side forgot to look at the backbone. This is not helping. This is only increasing the burden and the paperwork. How one local government could ever figure out within even a long period of time, not just a short period of time, the administration and how this would be implemented is beyond my perception.

And the cost. How many more bureaucrats are they going to have to hire to figure this out? Each municipality will have to go through thousands of different properties and determine who would be eligible for relief. It also has privacy implications and has an opportunity for inequity between properties and municipalities, so you’re pitting one municipality against the other municipality for investment and small business. And given the amount of work required, councils probably would not be able to meet the deadline.

It’s time the government took responsibility, which they were asked to do. It’s time they took a look at the bill that the MLA from Kamloops proposed, which is something that local governments and small businesses asked for.

We don’t always agree on things. Probably most of the time we don’t agree on too many things. But when local governments and small businesses work together and ask for something, I think that that’s the time that government should say: “Yes, we agree. We agree with the opposition, and we agree with the private member’s bill that was put forward.”

You take a look at all the taxes that have been put on local businesses. They need relief. The new health care tax, additional school tax, higher taxes for this and higher taxes for that and they all get downloaded to the consumer, the taxpayer.

Split assessments should be done by highest and best use, as we’ve asked for. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You’re going to implement this provincewide? And then next year, when rural communities maybe do need some help, what are we going to do then? We’re going to come back here, and we’re going to look at something, and who knows what that will look like.

[4:20 p.m.]

The responsibility is with the provincial government to help local governments. The provincial government makes the legislation that gives them the authority to do things, and it’s time that the authority stays where it belongs: here in the provincial capital with the government.

The assessment authority is an authority that has been around for I don’t know how many years. They have a tough job, and they know that. But local governments now know that when the assessments come up, they have the flexibility of the mill rate. This is not going to help one iota, not one iota. And I think maybe the government could be a little bit scared that they might lose a bit of school tax if they do what we have asked them to do. That is one of my fears. Will the school tax increase under this? We have no idea.

The other thing is — in my personal opinion and from watching governments over the many, many years and especially the last 2½, almost three, years — as I’ve said before, download. Download not just responsibilities, because with responsibilities always come dollars and cents. That does not make living more affordable for taxpayers in British Columbia. When you download to local governments, they have to download to the taxpayer. And guess who, at the end of the day, takes the responsibility for it. Local governments, when it is not local governments’ responsibility.

I cannot support this bill, and I know many of my colleagues, most of my colleagues, feel the same. Many were in local governments for years, and they actually know how it works, how the assessment authority works, how downloading works, how bylaws work. And this here would certainly create a huge burden on local government, municipalities throughout the province of B.C. So I encourage the minister to stop, listen and act.

E. Foster: I’m pleased to stand and speak to, I guess, the bill that was supposed to deal with a lot of problems on taxation in the city. But what I am very surprised at is that no members from the government side chose to stand up and defend a bill that was so important and so urgent to help the business communities around the province. You know, the Leader of the Third Party spoke and a group of members from opposition that, I must also say, including the Leader of the Third Party, are former local government councillors and mayors.

This bill does nothing for the business community. Especially, it eliminates an entire group of people and businesses that either own their own business…. This bill is penalizing people who had the foresight years ago to buy property, to build their business on a property they owned, and now they’re being penalized for that. Or a not-for-profit, for example, that doesn’t have a triple-net lease. Somewhere along the line, the property owner has got to recoup this money that’s going to be levelled on them for paying taxes on airspace.

I don’t know if…. I see the Assistant Deputy Speaker coming in, and I think he might be the only one in the building who put more time into local government than I did. I don’t remember ever seeing a piece of legislation — and I’m going back through three different governments — that dropped the ball to the degree this one does. It does not address the problem.

[4:25 p.m.]

It is really troubling to me that the solution was on the table. The minister had the ability to take her working group — take their advice, which was a split assessment. The member for Kamloops–South Thompson put a private member’s bill on the floor, both in the fall session and again this spring, which spoke to split assessment, which was what the municipalities wanted, what her own hand-picked working group had advised.

I guess it doesn’t surprise me that the government wouldn’t take their advice. I mean, if you look at the committee that the Minister of Finance put together to look at removing the MSP, the number one thing they said was: “Don’t enact an employer health tax.” This is a group of very learned people who were brought forward and engaged by the minister to examine the best way to remove the MSP. The one thing they said was, “Don’t initiate an employer health tax” — first thing.

The caribou recovery plan. There was no plan. There was a closed-door meeting. There was no community consultation whatsoever. Then when there was an uproar from all the local communities around the province, the government hired a local person, a very knowledgable person about both local government and provincial government. He put a proposal together, and it was completely ignored. There were no intentions of ever using the information he had gathered.

The big thing about this piece of legislation…. It fails in every aspect of it. There will be a few businesses that manage to get some relief if they happen to have a triple-net lease, if they happen to be in the right area. It’s all being downloaded on the municipalities to figure it out. There was a simple solution. The solution was put forward by the minister’s own working group, and it was put forward by the member for Kamloops–South Thompson.

I’m sure the people that are riveted to their televisions right now, watching this, would love to have me go through the long list of mayors and all the newspaper articles. But just suffice to say that I don’t see anywhere any outpouring of endorsement of this piece of legislation. It fails business, and certainly fails the municipalities.

As I said a few minutes ago, in all the many years I spent in local government, I don’t know if I ever saw a piece of legislation brought forward by the ministry that was so off the mark as far as the opportunity to help the small businesses and certainly municipalities.

I grew up in a small business household. My dad and mom ran a small business, and then my younger brother became involved and took over. When you see the types of tax increases that people are seeing now…. Our business would never have survived.

The whole purpose of government is supposed to be to help citizens, to help businesses — certainly, the provincial government to help municipalities manage their concerns. This bill misses the mark on absolutely every aspect.

I don’t think I’ll repeat all of the things that were said by my colleagues as well as the Leader of the Third Party. But just to say in closing that the minister has completely failed the business community with this piece of legislation. It doesn’t do what they want. It doesn’t do what the municipalities wanted.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

She could have taken the advice of her own handpicked working group and gone to a split assessment. She could have easily taken the private member’s bill that was put forward by the member for Kamloops–South Thompson, both last fall and in this spring session, reworded it, put her name on it, and put a stamp on it. We would have spent 20 minutes today going through this in the debate, thanked her very much for her efforts. But that didn’t happen. This bill fails. We will go through it in committee stage.

[4:30 p.m.]

I just don’t understand how, with the remarks that the Leader of the Third Party made, he’s going to be able to support this, but I guess he probably will. But he’s failing his constituents, both at the local government level and certainly in the business community.

With that, I will take my seat. I’m very, very disappointed in this bill. We had an opportunity here in the House over the last couple of weeks to solve a very serious problem that we have identified over and over again. Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t do anything to help the business community, and certainly…. Not only does it not help the local government; it adds another level of bureaucracy that they don’t need, of work, and it’s not going to help them solve the problem of losing small business.

Deputy Speaker: I now recognize the minister to close debate.

Hon. S. Robinson: It’s sort of an interesting afternoon.

This bill is absolutely about providing relief to small businesses. It’s absolutely about providing relief to non-profits and the arts and culture centre that I want to remind the House has been asking for relief for ten years. They started asking for relief back in 2008.

I remember who was on this side of the House back then, and they did nothing. I’m very proud of our track record for working for small business and making sure that they have what they need in order to survive and to thrive. We’ve reduced the small business tax rate. We are now, in Canada, the second-lowest business tax rate. We’ve eliminated PST on electricity. That’s saving $100 million a year for a small business in this province.

We have record investments in child care, in housing. We are investing in the labour force. This current budget has the B.C. access grant, making sure that we have a labour force that is educated and ready to work. We are investing in transit infrastructure, the largest investment ever. All of these investments are good for business.

Now, I want to make sure that I correct the record, because I think that there were some misrepresentations or inaccuracies that I heard here in the House. The member for Kamloops–South Thompson went through a list of businesses that are facing soaring property taxes. These are the examples of exactly why this bill is needed. It’s because while the important work of developing permanent solutions continues, this bill will allow local governments to focus on exactly those properties most in need.

When he points to his own private member’s bill, he conveniently forgets to mention the fact that it would, in fact, allow no way of focusing on those most in need. Instead, in a single step, it would change the tax treatment of tens of thousands of properties right across the province. In fact, if implemented, it could leave small businesses worse off as tax cuts for big developers and speculators that are sitting on development properties lead to rising taxes for small businesses and residents. It is a poorly, poorly, poorly thought-out idea that the member on the other side has.

Now, the member for Kamloops–North Thompson raised the question of why this would be limited to tenants and not provided to people who own properties in question. But what the member ignores is that those owner-occupiers will be the ones who will benefit from any increases in value in their property. So when we look into who needs the kind of urgent relief, it’s clear that tenants are in a very, very different situation.

Several members on the other side suggested on numerous occasions that the recommendation for….

Interjections.

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, they seem to have a lot to say, still. Perhaps they would like to continue to complain.

The recommendation for a split assessment had come….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Order, please. Order.

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to correct, for the record, that the recommendation for a split assessment that is still under consideration came from a committee. They’re saying that it came from a committee struck by my ministry, and that therefore, it should simply be adopted without any further work needed.

Well, I need to correct the record. This was a self-selected group of staff from a number of Metro Vancouver local governments. They raised several ideas, including the commercial subclass. I am very thankful for their initial work that they did. But that group didn’t look at what a change would mean outside of their region. No one took a look at what it would mean for Kamloops, for Victoria, for Kelowna, for Penticton or, in fact, the majority of the 189 local governments in the province.

[4:35 p.m.]

In fact, at the UBCM, there were a number of local governments that said: “We don’t want this. This is not a good thing.” So if we’re going to change tax policy, we have to make sure that we check in with everybody. That’s a critical element.

I find it a little surprising to hear and still hear from the members opposite that represent many of those communities outside of the Lower Mainland. They think it’s okay…

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members, please. Let her finish.

Hon. S. Robinson: …that the Lower Mainland has had its say and therefore it’s good enough. Well, I think that’s a terrible way to represent your constituents.

Now the Leader of the Third Party has highlighted the important broader question of how we support local government finances. This is an incredibly important question, and it’s why any suggestions to change something as fundamental to local government revenues as the assessment of property values requires a conversation with local governments across the province, not just those in the Lower Mainland.

This bill gives the best of both worlds: the opportunity to do that important work on a permanent solution, while also giving local governments a tool to address small businesses, non-profits and arts and culture groups in our communities that are hurting now and have been hurting for a number of years. We can give them relief now with this bill.

With that, hon. Speaker, I move second reading of this bill.

[4:40 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Second reading of Bill 10 approved on the following division:

[4:45 p.m.]

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

Bill 10, Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2020, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading, Environmental Management Act.

Point of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)

Hon. S. Robinson: I reserve my right to rise on a point of personal privilege.

Mr. Speaker: So noted.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 3 — ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

Hon. G. Heyman: I move that this bill be read a second time now.

This bill proposes amendments to the Environmental Management Act that will enhance protection of human health and the environment. We have had contaminated soil regulation for more than two decades in this province. During that time, we have learned lessons that have informed the changes we are proposing today.

We’ve learned that the current soil relocation process is not working, and there is a lack of transparency for the public, local governments and Indigenous Nations. The existing system is unclear and complex and is designed to overcapture soil movement. The proposed system focuses on commercial and industrial sites and volumes that can potentially be a concern for the protection of human health and the environment.

Currently all movements of contaminated soil require an authorization from the ministry. The province has overseen the remediation of more sites over the years. This increase ought to have meant a correlative increase in applications. That has not, however, been the case. One possible explanation for this is that soil is being sent to landfills, preventing beneficial reuse. Also, because the current process is lengthy and expensive, it leads to delays in remediation and construction projects.

This bill addresses these concerns in three different ways. One, it establishes a robust and transparent notification system to track soil movement throughout the province. The public will now be able to view the submitted notifications on line. The ministry will have the information it needs to enforce penalties for those who don’t follow the rules.

[4:50 p.m.]

Secondly, it streamlines the process by focusing on soil that exceeds a certain volume and that originates from sites where regulated industrial or commercial activities have occurred. Currently all soil being moved, regardless of volume or origin, is captured by the province’s requirements. For example, an authorization is currently required for soil being relocated from a site that may not be a concern to the ministry. The new process will focus on soil that poses a potential threat for human health and the environment.

Three, this bill will prevent contamination of the environment by adding robust and enforceable requirements for sites receiving high volumes of soil. The current regime does not consider the fact that large amounts of soil may have a bigger impact on the receiving environment, nor does it consider how that environment may change over time. The new system does. For example, it will look at whether a receiving site is likely to flood in the near future as a result of climate change.

This bill will also make the requirement to characterize soil prior to removal more explicit, to improve protection of human health and the environment. For example, if a site was accepting soil that had not been tested, there was a potential for contamination of the receiving site. Now, with the changes, no soil can be lawfully removed from an industrial site without prior characterization.

The proposed changes follow consultation with Indigenous nations, with local governments, with the federal government and with stakeholders going back to 2014. Feedback from these groups supported a more transparent and streamlined process, coupled with improved ministry oversight. That is what I am presenting to this House today.

The proposed amendments to the Environmental Management Act will come into force when the necessary corresponding changes to the contaminated sites regulation come into effect no later than fall 2021. This schedule will provide stakeholders and regulated persons adequate time to adjust to and implement the changes.

Existing authorizations will remain in effect after this bill comes into force. The current provisions will continue to apply to applications for authorizations made before these amendments come into effect. Consequential amendments are proposed to the Vancouver Charter to reflect the amendments made to soil relocation in the Environmental Management Act.

I am confident that the changes proposed today will increase protections for the environment and human health.

P. Milobar: It gives me pleasure to rise to Bill 3, the Environmental Management Amendment Act. On the surface, it appears to be as straightforward as the minister has just laid out, and certainly, any piece of legislation that has taken five, six years to get to the assembly, from working through with all the various stakeholders and interest groups, is something that’s worth making sure that we deal with in an expeditious manner here today.

I won’t have too many comments today. I do look forward to committee stage, delving in a bit more into the practical application of these changes to see how certain circumstances would work, with things like agriculture and some other sectors, with this.

As I say, on the surface, it seems to be fairly straightforward and cut and dried in terms of trying to streamline and improve the soil reporting and to make sure that not only is it streamlined but that it’s improved in terms of tracking and takes into account some more modern technologies and the like, which wouldn’t have been around when the legislation was first brought in. So I look forward to committee stage and delving deeper into the bill at that time.

S. Furstenau: I am delighted to rise today to speak to Bill 3. I never would have imagined, maybe ten years ago, that I’d be the one in the chamber that would be talking about contaminated soil the longest, but here we go.

[4:55 p.m.]

The B.C. Green caucus has long advocated for changes to the Environmental Management Act to address the gaps in legislation that don’t adequately protect communities from potential impacts from the movement of contaminated soil throughout the province.

My community has experienced the impact of these risks firsthand. We have, as many people know, spent the last eight years in a relentless effort to try to protect the Shawnigan watershed, which supplies water to 12,000 people. In 2013, the provincial government granted a permit to Cobble Hill Holdings for a contaminated landfill site in Shawnigan. It was revoked in 2017, yet the saga continues.

Now, this bill today doesn’t speak to landfill sites or regulated sites. This is about the movement of contaminated soil.

What’s interesting is that long before we had a permitted contaminated landfill site in Shawnigan, we had a contaminated soil problem in Shawnigan that the Ministry of Environment was well aware of. Indeed, in 2012, Ministry of Environment came to the Shawnigan watershed, sampled numerous sites around the watershed and identified at least 12 that had contaminated soil on the sites.

Despite the fact that these sites had been identified in 2012, nothing has really been done. Currently trucks continue to roll to many of these unregulated fill sites all around the Shawnigan watershed. We don’t know what the origin of those soils is, so I’m very hopeful that this bill will help us identify what’s coming into our watershed.

What causes us the most concern and the distress is that the burden of monitoring, the burden of taking samples of water, taking samples of soil, following how much soil is coming in, determining how many trucks are coming, monitoring when soil slides happen and come right into a creek…. That burden and responsibility has almost entirely fallen to the citizens of Shawnigan Lake and, in particular, the Shawnigan Research Group and the Shawnigan Basin Society, a number of volunteers who have spent many, many years looking at this very serious issue of the impacts of contaminated and non-contaminated soil to our watershed.

Even non-contaminated soil can be an issue when it’s piled up, we have heavy rains, and the runoff from that soil goes into a creek that is salmon-bearing or fish-bearing. The sediment can kill the salmon fingerlings and wipe out an entire year of salmon.

Indeed, I just got a report last week from the Shawnigan Basin Society about one of these fill sites that the Ministry of Environment identified as having contaminated soil on the site in 2012.

When MOE sampled the site — it’s on Goldstream Heights road — there were certain parameters found to be in excess of 200 percent of the schedule 7 numerical criterion for iron in 2012. Since 2012, this site has continued to receive soil, including soil from provincial government contracts, despite the fact that the community and the residents of Shawnigan Lake have identified that this is an unregulated site with massive amounts.

What kind of soil has been dumped at this site? Hog fuel wood waste continues to be dumped, infill that has passed over onto the neighbouring property. So the soil that’s been passed onto the neighbouring property has been sampled by the Shawnigan Basin Society to determine what parameters that soil might have. Indeed, iron exceeded the contaminated soils parameter with an average level of 133,600 micrograms per gram, which is 382 percent above the standard of 35,000 micrograms per gram.

This is on a residential property, next to a site that has been used as an unregulated landfill, soil fill, for many, many years. Soil has come to that site from ministry of British Columbia works.

[5:00 p.m.]

I’m delighted that this bill is coming to the chamber, and I hope that it does pass, but I want to point out to the Speaker and to this House that the movement of soil around British Columbia and into communities and into watersheds has not been enough of a concern to either of the governments in this House over the last decades. It does impact water quality and soil quality and the health of people. We have to take this very seriously. As we look at impacts to our water quality from many areas, we should at least have government regulating the movement of soils.

I think, ultimately, what brought me here to this chamber was that my community and I didn’t feel like we could trust government, because we didn’t feel like government was making decisions that were putting our well-being as a community first.

Deputy Speaker: Excuse me, Member. I’m advised that the member for Kamloops–South Thompson has something he’d like to share with the House.

Personal Statements

WITHDRAWAL OF COMMENTS
MADE IN THE HOUSE

T. Stone: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the indulgence of the member.

I just wanted to say that earlier today I made some remarks that I wish to withdraw.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Debate Continued

S. Furstenau: I’m glad that the member for Kamloops–​South Thompson was able to get that off his chest and speak to those comments that he made. I wasn’t in the House when that happened.

What I was talking about before that happened was the trust index. I’m very interested to look at the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2020 in Canada. The Trust Barometer is going down. It was at 56. It’s now at 53 in terms of trust. And the people in Canada are feeling a strong sense of injustice and a desire for change, and they feel a lack of confidence in the institutions that are meant to protect us.

One of the quotes from this report that just came out, this Trust Barometer, was somebody saying: “I do not have confidence that our current leaders will be able to successfully address our country’s challenges.” I think it’s very important that we recognize how important it is — that trust is the factor of a government that matters the very most. People need to trust that we are working in this place in the interest of the well-being of the citizens of this province, current and future.

Back to Bill 3. I cannot stress enough that it is essential that there’s accurate information about the location of contaminated soils in our province, including any risk that they may pose to local areas. In that sense, this bill is a positive step towards bringing more accountability and transparency to the movement of soil in B.C., but there is much work to be done to ensure that a situation like what is happening in Shawnigan never happens again. An additional step would be to consider the history of operators when making decisions to determine the sites for the deposit of contaminated soil, akin to the fit and proper cause used in other acts.

In an era when droughts are more common and our water resources need more protection, government must have the ability to ensure water security for all of our communities. I welcome the introduction of this bill. I hope it will benefit communities across the province. But I remain adamant that much more needs to be done to protect our drinking water.

From my reading of Bill 3, the main changes are as follows. The bill seeks to repeal the section about soil relocation agreements and introduces a new soil notification process instead. The amended bill, if passed, would require anyone moving soil from commercial or industrial sites to do a soil characterization first. As I understand it, this is already a requirement in many cases, but it has been found to be unclear as to whom it applied, so it is severely underused. The government is proposing to change the act to clarify that it is required for all soil from these sites prior to the soil’s removal.

As explained to our office in the bill’s technical briefing, following the test, if the soil is found to be more contaminated than the receiving site, it will need to be authorized through regional operations, which would, in turn, require public consultation and an analysis of potential impacts, neither of which, apparently, is happening now. The mover would then have to provide notice that details where the soil is coming from, where it is going, how much is moving and what is in it.

I would appreciate more detail from the minister on the logistics and sequence of events here, because it is crucial that we get this right. That information is already supposed to be included in contaminated soil relocation permits, but the requirements are not very well described and are underused, so we really must strive for a sharp balance of clarity and effectiveness here.

[5:05 p.m.]

Currently it is hard to quantify how much contaminated soil has been moved to unsuitable locations because we have such terrible records. I have heard that there were something like 5,000 soil movements in the past few years, and only seven people used soil relocation agreements. That basically tells me that there’s been no tracking as to where contaminated sites exist in our province and what the impact of those sites may be now or in the future.

If we don’t even know where contaminated soil has been dumped, we can’t begin to understand, let alone address, the harm that is being done to the environment. With a better tracking system, hopefully, government will be able to take compliance and enforcement actions.

Transparency and accountability for communities are critically important, as my riding continues to show. Local communities have, time and time again, proven to be the best champions and protectors of drinking water.

From the ministry’s perspective, these amendments are a better way to keep track of soil being moved. They say it will be much easier to follow and better for soil management.

Bill 3 is trying to avoid situations where someone is developing, for example, a former gas station. They dig it up and dump somewhere else without doing the paperwork that would allow tracking, community notice or comprehensive cumulative analysis. If passed, it would allow for additional soil-matching opportunities. Soil that was previously going to a landfill, regardless of content, could now be used as fill if it matches the soil profile of the receiving location. If not, it would be disposed of appropriately.

As I said from the opening, my initial reading of the bill looks promising. However, there are a number of sections I’d need additional clarity on in committee stage to ensure the amendments achieve the stated policy goal.

I’m grateful to be seeing some movement on this important issue, but we have such a long way to go with improvements to this act. In fact, in the court decision about the Shawnigan case, Supreme Court Justice Sewell said that what happened in our community struck at “the heart of the integrity” of the Environmental Management Act. I don’t think that the heart that was struck at has been healed in the time since this government has come in, unfortunately.

The challenge that we face in Shawnigan remains such that…. The conditions by which the permit was granted for the contaminated landfill in our community and the foundations, literally and figuratively, upon which that landfill was built are not trustworthy. It was not a trustworthy process. It was not a trustworthy construction of the landfill. It has not been a trustworthy monitoring.

In fact, we just found out on Monday that there were very low volumes of leachate coming off the site for — well, let’s see — several months, including some of the rainiest months we’ve had. It took at least two or three months to determine that a valve at the landfill site had been accidently closed and that water had been accumulating under the soil on to what we believe, as we watched it being constructed, is not a particularly reliable liner. Anyway, we heard during the long process about liners during the Environmental Appeal Board that liners, by their nature, are going to leak and have a very limited lifespan.

It’s yet another example of our community being told, “Hey, you’ve just got to trust that everything is being taken care of,” even though evidence piles up, occasion after occasion, month after month, that things are not being taken care of properly. This is another example of why it’s very difficult for my community to trust in what has happened in our watershed, not just at the contaminated landfill site but at all of these other sites that have been used for accepting fill for the last decade.

I hope that in addition to the actions that are going to be taken in this bill, there is a longer-term view about the absolute, essential importance of a watershed to a community. We absolutely need to know that our watersheds are going to provide us with clean, safe water as we move forward with our communities. In order to achieve that, there is going to be a need for a vision for the future of watersheds in this province that far surpasses what has been there for a long time and, in fact, has been degraded over the last several decades.

[5:10 p.m.]

Watersheds need to be protected, particularly community-designated watersheds. This is one small piece of that. What we need is a full vision. We have the Water Sustainability Act, which needs to be brought to life with regulation and with examples like the Koksilah water sustainability plan that was recently signed.

We need to see an urgency in this government in both the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources, to recognize that time is running out for us to ensure that every community in this province has safe, reliable, secure watersheds for future generations.

With that, I will end my comments. I will be supporting this bill, and I look forward to canvassing it in committee.

Deputy Speaker: As we continue examining the Environmental Management Amendment Act in this place, I now recognize the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast.

Interjections.

N. Simons: It’s not question period, my friends. Well, we know that. It’s not called answer period. You know that.

It’s a pleasure to talk to Bill 3, the Environmental Management Amendment Act. I appreciate the comments from my friend in the Third Party and the introduction from the minister.

I’ve been here quite a long time, and I remember hearing about the Shawnigan Lake issue quite a long time ago. In fact, I remember Bill Routley, who was a renowned orator in this House. He used to speak endlessly about the concerns that his constituents had with the dumping of contaminated soil in proximity to their watershed. He, along with many community members, obviously, was trying to make a point to the government that the regulations and the legislation that governed this activity did not suffice in terms of protecting the interests of the public.

In fact, probably when we were planning to be government, we were already starting to think about how we would change the legislation in order to better protect watersheds. I couldn’t agree more that our interest in protecting water sources for communities needs to continue to be strengthened. We’re taking some steps in that direction, I believe, that are necessary and timely.

So I appreciate the fact that this legislation is before us today. I’m just going to go over some of its characteristics that I think reflect the fact that it’s an improvement on the previous legislation.

One of the values that we have in government is to ensure that there is a lot of transparency with respect to legislation. This particular act clears up some of the lack of clarity that existed in the previous legislation. It was unclear to those who would likely be required to adhere to it, and because of that, the adherence level was not great.

For example, previously only seven contaminated soil relocation agreements were issued between the years of 2014 and 2018. Because of that, soil was being relocated from contaminated sites around the province without the kind of tracking and oversight that would have been necessary to protect the public interest. That would, of course, have a negative impact on human health and, as well, on the environment.

The relocation requirements also led to delays in remediation and in construction projects. The lack of transparency shielded information from the public, local governments and Indigenous communities. So that’s the basic reason why we needed to update the Environmental Management Act with this amendment before us today.

[5:15 p.m.]

The three elements that the minister outlined include the necessity for a notification system that is unlike the previous legislation to ensure that the public is aware of the plans that are being made to relocate a certain minimum amount of soil. So when the act is streamlined to make compliance more possible, I think that we are all better served.

What we essentially want to do is to ensure that we do not contaminate our watershed and that we can protect human interests, protect the environment. For that reason, I think this is legislation that is entirely supportable.

Just for fun, I’m wondering why members from the opposition aren’t standing up and speaking to this legislation. We heard that as a theme today. It may not be of interest, or it may be a difficulty in admitting that this should have happened earlier. I’m pleased that it’s happening now. I think that the residents of not just Shawnigan Lake but around the province should be pleased that our government is taking a strong interest in ensuring that our environment is well protected.

I think it’s important, as well, to note that this will allow those involved in industrial or commercial activity that includes the removal or moving of soil to understand the process, that it’s straightforward and streamlined. I thank the minister for introducing this legislation, and I look forward to more discussions at the next stage of debate.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I invite the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy to close debate.

Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, the House Leader for the Third Party and the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast for their comments and their support of the bill.

I think the characterization of the bill by the Third Party House Leader is correct in terms of the purpose of the bill. It’s to provide a robust and transparent notification system to track movement of soil that actually is of concern because of its point of origin; its characterization, in the case of soil from a contaminated site or a potentially contaminated site; as well as volume, which could have a significant impact. It’s important to streamline the process, and as the member pointed out, it’s also important to ensure that subsequent enforcement and monitoring and transparency with the public takes place. All of this will be provided for through this bill.

It’s critically important, also, that members have their questions answered. The House Leader for the Third Party raised a number of issues that I’m sure we’ll explore thoroughly in committee stage of this bill, where we’ll be able to entertain the questions, provide answers and also take valuable input from her and from other members. I think this bill is an important piece of a broader and farther-reaching review of a number of things to do with protecting water and ensuring that we deal with contaminated sites and contaminated soil appropriately.

The Third Party House Leader and her community have undergone a lot in terms of potential contamination of Shawnigan Lake. Our ministry continues to work with the community, with Indigenous nations in the area, with local government in the area to ensure that we keep a stringent watch and monitoring system on the wind-down and closure of that particular site.

We have pressed pause on increases of amounts of contaminated soil heading to dumps or the permitting of any new contaminated soil dumps, while we ensure that we have the right regulatory and legislative framework in place to ensure that we place watershed protection and drinking water protection at the top of the hierarchy, where it should be, where people and communities can rely on clean, safe drinking water as the right it should be. We’re taking that work very seriously.

[5:20 p.m.]

This amendment to the Environmental Management Act is also an important piece of ensuring that we have an effective, transparent and robust system in place to monitor soil movements in British Columbia — in terms of where they come from, the volumes of them and where they go — and to ensure that British Columbians can get the information they need, as the Third Party House Leader pointed out.

With that, I am happy to close debate. I look forward to questions and further explanation and clarification in committee stage. I look forward to the implementation of this bill, once passed, as well as a range of other measures to ensure that British Columbians can feel secure in the environmental oversight of soil, potentially contaminated soil, large volumes of soil, and the protection of their watersheds.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 3, Environmental Management Amendment Act, 2020, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Heyman: I call continued debate on the throne speech.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

Hon. C. Trevena: It is with true pleasure that I stand here to talk about the throne speech delivered just a little over two weeks ago. I have to say that I find it very exciting to see what was being delivered, just to recap on what has come before in our 2½ years of government, as well as looking ahead to what we will be doing in this next session. I think it really is an extremely exciting time to be in British Columbia, to see what a government can do with the support of and working in collaboration with other parties to move an agenda along.

I would like to, first off though, acknowledge my own constituency. I’ve been extremely honoured, extremely privileged, to have been the MLA for the North Island. I’m in my fourth term now. It is always a true privilege to represent your community. My constituency is extraordinary. It is from, as the Speaker well knows, Campbell River, where he has his own ties, up to beyond the north end of the Island. It includes the islands to the east of the north end of the Island, as well as up into the mainland inlets. It’s hugely diverse.

It has a strength of character. The people who live and work there have a strength of character and a tie to the community that is, I think…. Everyone says that their constituency is unique. I would say that mine is the one that is unique for people and for place.

At the moment, as a minister, I don’t get back to my constituency as often as I used to. I have to acknowledge that. Always there’s part of me that is sad. I’m extremely privileged to be a minister of the Crown, to be in the executive council, but it does take me away from my constituency. But while I’m away, I have extraordinary staff who make sure to keep things running. I think that we all rely on our constituency assistants more than anyone outside this place would know.

I would like to acknowledge my full-time assistant, Mary Carstairs, and my two part-time assistants, Sandra Doran in Campbell River and Fred Robertson on the north Island in Port Hardy, who really do deal with a huge amount of concerns and deal with people every single day. So I’m really pleased that they are working with me and continue to want to work with me.

[5:25 p.m.]

I’d also like to acknowledge my former constituency assistant, who became my executive assistant. I mentioned to the House about a week ago that she took the very brave step of retiring, leaving a big hole for me because she had worked with me for the 15 years since I’ve been an MLA. It’s now life without Lynne Stone, who has been a real mainstay.

We started at the same time with her as my constituency assistant to me as the MLA, and we worked through. When I became a minister, she became my executive assistant. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve travelled many roads together, both metaphorically and, really, literally. So it was with sadness that I said goodbye, but she’s taken that very brave step in her life.

I also would like to thank the staff who work in my office here in Victoria. We are all, really, the creatures of those whom we work with, and I have extraordinary staff — the administrative staff as well as the political staff in my office here in Victoria.

I have to say also that the Ministry of Transportation is a fantastic ministry. The people who work in the Ministry of Transportation are supreme professionals, dedicated to their work as public servants. Whether they’re working at a scale in Terrace or they’re working in Kamloops, in the ministry offices there, or down here in Victoria or wherever they are in the province, they give their whole to true public service — front line, policy-makers, all the way through. I am extraordinarily lucky to be working with such a dedicated ministry.

I’d just like to take a moment to reflect on some of the impacts that the work our government has been doing has been having on my own constituency first. I’m going to go and talk a bit more about the ministry side of it in a moment, but I did want to have the opportunity — because I don’t get that opportunity very often — to talk about the impact that our work is having in the north Island. One of the keys — I think one of the cornerstones of our commitment — is a commitment to affordability and a commitment to a sustainable economy. To do that, we really need to invest in people.

One of the ways our government is investing in people is investing in child care. We have an ambitious child care program — a child care program that is really revolutionizing life for so many families in British Columbia. I talk to both families and child care providers in my constituency about the impact. What they say is they find that through the measures that we as a government have taken, they actually have more money in their pocket. At the end of every two weeks, when their wages have come in, they are left with more money in their pockets.

That’s thanks to the work that my colleague the Minister of State for Child Care has done, the commitment that we have to child care, in reducing the rates as well as supporting the families. It has really made a huge difference. People have that opportunity to do other things with that money, whether it is spending it on luxuries or spending it on necessities. So often it is the necessities. It’s a new pair of shoes, or maybe it’s going to the movies. Whatever it is — that luxury or the necessity — people now have more money in their pockets because of it.

We’re also moving and have been increasing the pay of the child care workers, which is fundamental because of recruitment and retention. I used to be the spokesperson for child care when I was on the other side of the House, and recruitment and retention was a massive issue in keeping good, qualified child care workers. We’re ensuring that we do and ensuring that we get more people into the field, training more people, because this is fundamental. It’s fundamental because it is an economic necessity.

If we have high-quality child care that people can afford, whether it is a $10-a-day one in the prototype sites that we have around the province — including one in Port Hardy, in my own constituency — or whether it is by reducing the cost generally so that people are paying no more than $20 or $25, this has a big impact on families. They have more money to spend — which, like our increase in the minimum wage, means that more money goes into the local economy, because people tend to spend locally, particularly those on a lower income. People do spend locally. So more money goes into the economy.

[5:30 p.m.]

It also means that more people are available to work. Knowing that they have safe, affordable and accessible child care allows more people to get back in the workforce, which in itself is an economic driver.

So I think that this has had a major impact, and what people will see in the coming months…. In October of this year, about 300,000 families are going to be benefiting from the child opportunity benefit. It’s a tax-free benefit for families with children under 18. It’s not cut off at six. It’s not cut off at 12. It goes until somebody is 18 years old. It’s going to mean that for a family with one child, they’re going to get approximately $1,600 a year. It’s going to have a massive impact. For families with two children, it’s $2,600 a year, and for families with three children, $3,400 a year. I think this is really going to have a huge impact.

Another area that our government has been focusing on is, obviously, housing. We’ve been investing, over ten years…. We’re going to be building more than 100,000 homes across B.C. in ten years. And in my constituency, it’s been significant. Some of the homes that we have seen building…. It really is significant. A couple of the Indigenous reserves are having housing built which is coming through our government’s approach.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

It has never happened before that the provincial government has invested in housing on reserve. It is usually a federal issue. This is again something that is very near and dear to my heart. I was strongly campaigning…. I was working with the community, really raising the profile of overcrowded and unhealthy homes on some of the reserves in my constituency over the last number of years as the MLA, and it is with great, great pleasure that I saw that we are making this move. Having a safe house, having a clean house, having a good house, having a home makes a difference for everyone, for everyone who is living there, everyone in the community.

I’ve got to say we’ve invested a lot in supportive housing, again, around Campbell River and around the north Island — the latest being that the Campbell River Head Injury Support Society is getting some funding for its supportive housing.

We’re also seeing new opportunities. I think one of the very exciting things that we saw in the budget that is also, obviously, through the throne speech, is our investment and our commitment to post-secondary, to people learning the trades. This, to me as the minister, is vitally important because we have the community benefits agreement, which is looking at how we’re going to be training people, training Indigenous people, training women, making sure that we really have a good, strong, trained workforce when we’re building projects for the province of British Columbia.

The student grant, I think, creates so many opportunities for so many people because it is not just for degrees. It’s not just for the four-year courses. It’s available for diplomas. It’s available for trades. It’s going to open up post-secondary to so many people to have this opportunity for a student grant.

I’ve got to say that I grew up in the era where there were student grants. I was very lucky. I never had to have a student loan. There were student grants, and it makes the world of difference. It opens up post-secondary to anyone, really, who has the ability to move on with their life in that direction. It will open it up.

I’d just like to also mention a couple of things that our government is doing in forestry. Forestry is still a mainstay of my constituency. My constituency hurt very, very badly over the last eight months with the forestry strike. I know that there were a lot of calls from people saying the government should intervene. But it was a dispute between the private sector and a private sector union, and it’s not the role of the government to intervene in that sort of dispute.

That being said, it caused huge problems, not just for the families directly impacted, the people who work as either fallers or work anywhere in the bush for the forestry company. It had a huge impact on the contractors. It had a huge impact on the communities.

[5:35 p.m.]

Going into a coffee shop where the owner had gone down to one member of staff, was scared about paying her hydro bill, is really worried about whether she will still survive…. And that is still the case, because discretionary spending doesn’t come straight back when the strike is over. A restaurant that had been open for many, many years — the owners, again, scared that they will not keep afloat because nobody was coming in. And still, there is the fear of getting through this time while people get back on their feet, the strikers get back on their feet.

It has been an extraordinarily hard time for our community. We are resilient. People will come together. The strike is now over, thank goodness. I think everybody is extremely relieved about that. We’ll continue, and we’ll be able to continue because of some of the things our government is doing.

We have the coast forest sector revitalization plan, which is getting underway and which is keeping more of the timber we harvest used locally. We don’t want to see logs shipped out of province. I mean, there’s always going to be some shipped off. I accept that, and some from my constituency will always be exported. That is part of the logging. But there is so much we can do with the resource. We can really make sure that we are investing it in our communities, in the jobs that that natural and very renewable resource can create.

There’s some contention at the moment in my constituency because we have the old growth review underway. Some people want to say that there should be no logging of old growth. Others say that it is absolutely vital for the continuation of a healthy industry in the constituency and in the north Island. We have a panel assessing this, and I look forward — like everybody, I think.

I know my colleague the Minister of Forests and everybody in the north Island who is attuned to the forest sector is looking forward to hearing what those results are from that panel, knowing that this is going to have an impact, really, for a lot of people and the way that the industry develops, which way it’s going to go.

Mr. Speaker, noting the hour, I’m happy to take my place in the debate, or I can continue on. I’m just very aware it’s a Thursday afternoon, and there’s some anticipation….

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps if we could just go another three minutes. Thank you for your consideration, Minister. Another three minutes, and we’ll be good.

Hon. C. Trevena: Absolutely. Just give me the signal, Mr. Speaker, and I will stop.

There are so many things I want to talk about in this throne speech. The work that we’ve been doing has been making a positive difference in people’s lives. There’s no question about it. It really has been making life better.

Looking a bit at some of the things that have come through my ministry. Starting from day one was the removal of the tolls on the Port Mann and the Golden Ears bridges, which has been saving people $1,600 a year for families, which is hugely significant, and more than $4,000 a year for commercial drivers. This is absolutely significant. People have been able to travel across these bridges without having to worry about the cost.

When we look at new infrastructure, the Pattullo Bridge, which we’re very excited about, as well as the replacement for the Massey crossing…. Those will also be toll-free, so people will be able to travel around without having to worry about that extra cost.

With that, I’d like to reserve my place in the debate on the throne speech. I have lots more to say, because it’s a very exciting document in front of me, but with that, I move adjournment of debate.

Hon. C. Trevena moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. C. Trevena moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until Monday, March 2, at 10 a.m.

The House adjourned at 5:39 p.m.