Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading of Bill 5, Employment Standards Amendment Act.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: This House will be in recess for five minutes.

The House recessed from 2:36 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 5 — EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

(continued)

M. Dean: I am very pleased to respond to Bill 5, the Employment Standards Amendment Act, to make life better for people facing domestic or sexual violence. These changes ensure that people have up to five days of paid leave without the stress of losing income. This is in addition to five days of unpaid leave and up to 15 weeks of intermittent unpaid leave.

Domestic and sexual violence is a painful and traumatic experience for too many people, and the impacts of abuse on children and youth can leave a lifetime of harm and vulnerability. We know this can happen anytime and to anyone, but women and girls are overwhelmingly at risk, being seven times more likely to face this type of violence on any given day. Indigenous women are 3½ times more likely to be impacted than non-Indigenous women, and LGBTQ2S+ people are more than twice as likely than hetero people to face it. Three out of five children in every classroom have lived with violence.

We also know that in times of crisis, violence can really increase. That’s been a really massive concern during this COVID-19 pandemic. Domestic and sexual violence remains all too prevalent, and in this unusual time, many women are forced to spend more time at home, which may be the most dangerous place for them.

I’ve worked in the social services sector for most of my career. I remember when I was a social worker, I worked with a mom of five kids whose second husband was incredibly violent. But eventually she did manage to get away from him, and she tried to rebuild her life. She got into a new house with her children, but he followed her. He found out where she lived, and one day he set fire to the house with her in it.

Later as an employer, I’ve seen firsthand how this bill will help people. One Monday morning, a team member arrived at our offices, and she was clearly in a traumatized state. I took her to one side, and we sat down. She told me that she’d been date raped at the weekend here in Victoria. She hadn’t known what to do, and she hadn’t gotten any help or spoken to anybody else about it.

I helped her get to the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre. There she could receive trauma-informed support, including a medical examination and counselling. She took the following day off in order to access services and build her own recovery plan before returning.

This bill is important because for many people, there is no choice. They cannot risk losing even a day’s wages, sacrificing economic security, even though they want to protect themselves and family. This is, sadly, a widespread issue across all regions of B.C., and women are making tough decisions on a daily basis. Hundreds of women are admitted to B.C. hospitals each year with severe injuries caused by their partners. In an average year, 12 lives are tragically lost to domestic violence in B.C.

People who have faced domestic and sexual violence need time and space to rebuild their lives. You can imagine that you might need to go to the doctor or go and see a lawyer, or you might have to find a new home, a new school for children to keep them safe and supported and make sure they can sleep soundly at night.

For many women and children, their lives will never be the same. Being able to access supports and services at the right time and take those steps that are needed to rebuild their lives without additional barriers or penalties will give them much more opportunity for a strong and successful recovery and future.

In Canada, most provinces, including the federal government, require some domestic or sexual violence paid leave — between two to five days. And thousands of B.C. businesses and communities and advocacy groups and individual British Columbians have come forward with their support for paid leave. This will mean that someone facing this type of violence will know that they can have the space and time to move quickly and make the necessary changes to ensure that they and their children are safe.

When we introduced these changes to the Employment Standards Act on March 3, we had a number of people join us in the Legislature: employers who want the very best for their staff, people who see the face of those who have experienced violence in the work they do every day, and people who have experienced violence and are looking to us to help their voice be heard.

[2:45 p.m.]

There were tears that day from several people, and I know this topic is not an easy one. But domestic violence and sexual abuse is not a private matter to be kept behind closed doors, which brings us to today and the second reading of this bill.

We want the women in our province to be safe at home and in their communities. We want our girls to be able to play outside with their friends without fear. We want our female colleagues and staff to be able to walk home at night without having to always look over their shoulder. We want a province where people of all backgrounds can live in peace and safety. But we aren’t there yet. There is so much more to do.

With this bill, however, we do have an opportunity to provide supports for people to find safety and rebuild their lives at a most critical time. I want to take this opportunity to say a special thank you to Minister Bains for his work, for his leadership and for partnering with me on this very important topic.

Deputy Speaker: No names, Member.

M. Dean: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

R. Singh: This is my honour to speak in favour of Bill 5. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity has already…. She has said it very well how important this bill is. We know that British Columbia was one of the only two provinces in Canada which did not have this provision of five days of paid leave for the victims of domestic violence or sexual violence. Having worked in the field myself, having experience, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from so many women who have experienced domestic violence.

It is a tough topic. It is a tough topic for anybody. But for a person who is dealing with it, it can be very traumatic. Along with the trauma that the person is going through, what their family is going through, and then also having to have to worry about going to work, not missing work and not being able to take the help of the resources, go for medical appointments, go for counselling, always being fearful that if I miss work what is going to happen — we can’t even imagine. I heard so many such stories while in my work as a counsellor when I was working with a non-profit organization.

When this bill was introduced, I cannot say how pleased I was and how thankful I am the Minister of Labour for all the discussions and all the consultations that he did with the stakeholders to come to this point. We know that we, our government, wants to support women. We want to support the victims of domestic violence. Everybody has the right to have a safe living. We want them to have a…. We want to provide an environment that is safe for them.

I really hope that we can build a society without domestic or sexual violence. But when these things are happening, those people should have the proper resources. That’s why this bill is so important. So it took us a long time, I know, to reach this point. There’s a lot more that needs to be done for the victims, but these are the steps that our government is taking to help them.

I can tell you that since this bill was introduced in March, I have heard from so many organizations in my community of Surrey. So many people who were victims themselves tell me personally how important this bill is for them, how important it is for their families. I stand to support this bill, and my hope is that all of the members who are going to speak should be supporting it. I will take my seat now.

J. Routledge: It’s my pleasure and honour to speak on Bill 5, the Employment Standards Amendment Act.

[2:50 p.m.]

Thirty-five years ago I volunteered in what was then called a shelter for battered women. On occasion, I staffed the crisis line, sometimes on night shift, because we would get calls from women at all hours. Some of them were whispered calls and some of them were very tentative calls because they felt so ashamed, so that no one would hear them. We would talk about their options. I remember reassuring women that they weren’t alone, that it was not their fault that they were being beaten up and that this was not normal behaviour.

I think one of the most important things that we did in that shelter was to believe them. Because many people in their lives did not believe them. They did not believe that they were being abused. In those days — still, often — the police who came to the calls didn’t believe them, their friends didn’t believe them, and many members of their families didn’t believe them. One of the things that we would talk about when they called was the importance of making a plan and how to make a plan.

I remember, often, these women would arrive in the middle of the night, delivered by police. They had nothing with them other than the clothes on their back. That was it. That’s all they had. In those days, very few of these women had an independent income. In fact, in those days, very few women in relationships — married women — worked outside of the home.

I remember, this many years later, from my time as a volunteer in a shelter, that escaping a violent relationship involved lots of appointments. Often we would accompany women to some of these appointments. It involved a lot of medical appointments, sometimes as a result of physical injury. Sometimes women came with broken jaws, broken noses and broken arms. To recover from that, it never just took one appointment. There were multiple medical appointments to get past their injuries.

Many of them arrived with an incredible amount of anxiety and depression, and they needed to go to appointments for psychological counselling. Sometimes they had to take their children to appointments because of the trauma that they experienced.

They needed to find a new place to live. The shelters were temporary, so they needed to move, which meant that they needed to find new housing. They often weren’t able just to go to one apartment or one house. They would often have to go and see several. They needed appointments to take their children to get registered in a new school. They had many, many legal appointments. They had to file police reports. They had to prepare for family court. They had to get restraining orders. Sometimes they had to go to trials.

So if we ever find ourselves wondering why she didn’t just leave an abusive relationship, let’s remind ourselves that leaving is complicated. It takes work and it takes planning to ensure that she and her children are safe, physically and economically.

Let’s fast forward to today. What’s changed? Well, sadly, women still are being physically and emotionally abused in their relationships, but they still have to make a plan to escape and recover. Implementing the plan takes a lot of appointments.

One of the things that is different today is that most women, most adult women, whether they are married or in a relationship or not, work outside of the home. That is a huge difference from 35 years ago. Having a job, having one’s own income, can be a lifeline to someone escaping domestic violence and trying to build a new life for themselves and their children.

[2:55 p.m.]

That lifeline could be cut if they are denied time off work to attend one of these appointments or to look for a new place to live, and that lifeline can be cut if they’re afraid to ask for time off to go to court or for one of the other appointments for fear of being judged an unreliable or poor worker.

Bill 5 strengthens that lifeline. I am so proud that we’re introducing it and that we’re going to make huge changes in the lives of people who are suffering from domestic violence.

S. Furstenau: It’s great to be back in debate for this important bill after our spring session was so abruptly cancelled by COVID in March.

Unfortunately, as with so many issues over the last three months, things have worsened amidst pandemic conditions. As reported by crisis and support centres, rates of sexual assault and domestic violence in British Columbia increased as stay at home and social distancing orders came into force.

While we collectively follow the guidelines of the provincial health officer, staying isolated in our homes as much as possible, it’s clear that keeping the wider population safe from COVID-19 has increased the risk for some of our most vulnerable citizens. Women and children have been at an increased risk of experiencing or witnessing domestic violence during this time, with limited ability to leave an unsafe situation or access their support networks. This risk is exacerbated by economic hardship and uncertainty.

I can speak, hon. Minister, of the commercial that plays regularly where women are shown how to give a hand signal over Zoom or Skype to indicate that they’re in danger in their homes. Every time I see that commercial I am wrenched by that experience of imagining what it must be like in these conditions.

Noting this, the provincial government responded by supplementing current shelter spaces with additional accommodations in hotels, working with the sexual assault centres and shelters to increase services and coordinating with the federal government, who announced an additional $40 million for women’s shelters and sexual assault centres, with $10 million invested in emergency shelters meant to benefit Indigenous women and children needing to flee unsafe situations. There has also been additional media coverage on this issue, which is important for awareness and combatting stigma, and crisis phone, email and text services set up to support people.

While an immediate response to these concurrent crises is needed to keep people safe in the short term, as policy makers, we need to address the root causes of domestic and gender-based violence. We need to create solutions not just for women and children fleeing violence but for the perpetrators of violence themselves. Intergenerational trauma, economic uncertainty, a lack of social networks and substance dependency all contribute to domestic violence. We should strive to create support and perpetrator accountability systems that help move us forward as a society and away from violence and abuse.

In that regard, I support this bill because it works to address a structural aspect of this issue — that survivors of violence and abuse can be further harmed by a system and a society that do not support or facilitate their recovery.

Bill 5 amends the Employment Standards Act to provide a new employer-paid leave of up to five days for employees experiencing or who have specific family members experiencing domestic or sexual violence. It builds upon the unpaid job-protected domestic or sexual violence leave this government introduced for employees last year and represents further progress on our commitment to support individuals experiencing this type of violence.

This change will help people who have faced domestic or sexual violence by giving them a bit of time and space to address their most pressing needs, as so wonderfully articulated by the member for Burnaby North describing her personal experience as a support worker. This may mean getting medical, psychological and legal support, or it could mean that they have the time to find a new place to live or a new school for their children without having to lose their job or financial security in the process. These amendments will modernize B.C.’s employment standards and bring our laws to protect workers in line with other jurisdictions.

[3:00 p.m.]

The immediate aftermath of an assault is horrific enough as it is. Survivors should not have to also worry about sacrificing their livelihood to attend to a crisis that someone else created.

I would also like to recognize that the shift to include victims of sexualized violence in addition to domestic abuse survivors was instigated last year by the official opposition and is central to the strength of this policy.

As we advance solutions, we must always be careful to not inadvertently create a hierarchy of victims that leaves those who are assaulted by someone other than their partner without the services they need and deserve just as much as people in relationships. And while today’s progress is worth celebrating, we must continue to work to reduce and better respond to instances of sexualized and gender-based violence in our province.

The decision by multiple governments over many decades to consistently underfund the medical and justice services needed by survivors of sexualized violence is inherently sexist and dangerous to women. We have a long way to go. According to government’s data, roughly two-thirds of those who have faced domestic violence in Canada are women. One in four sexual assault victims were children aged 13 and younger. Three to five children in every classroom are exposed to domestic violence. Indigenous women and girls are 3.5 times more likely to face violence than non-Indigenous. And LGBTQ2S+ people are more than twice as likely to experience violence than the rest of the population.

I would like to also acknowledge two related tragedies that have happened since we left this House in March: the horrific mass murder inflicted in the Maritimes in April and the appalling crime committed in my caucus colleague’s riding earlier this month.

The day after the news about Nova Scotia broke, my heart sank when I learned that the perpetrator began with an attack on his partner. This means that one of Canada’s worst tragedies is yet again connected to domestic vio­lence. Misogynistic beliefs underlie all of the worst mass shootings that have taken place in Canada in my lifetime. The 1989 Polytechnique shooting is the most infamous. The Toronto van attack perpetrator was radicalized by an online incel subculture. In addition to his racist, anti-Muslim views, the Quebec mosque shooter routinely attacked feminists online.

The latter two have not been widely discussed in the context of violent misogyny. This is a mistake. By failing to examine the underlying toxic views of the perpetrators, we are ignoring a critical aspect of these crimes. Larger-scale analyses confirm this pattern. An analysis of FBI data on mass shootings found that 57 percent of mass shootings between 2009 and 2015 included a spouse, a former spouse or other family members among the victims.

We need to be vigilant and uncompromising, even when the behaviour doesn’t yet constitute outright physical abuse. Violence exists on a spectrum. People who know the Nova Scotia shooter say that his jealous treatment of his girlfriend was a red flag. Indeed, experts say that misogynistic treatment of women and other family members by a perpetrator is often observed before it escalates to mass violence. Before the perpetrator has terrorized society, they terrorize those who are closest to them.

The responsibility for combatting misogyny must be shared by everyone. We all need to speak out when we encounter instances of misogyny, educate ourselves and build the underlying conditions that support gender diversity and inclusion. We need to do all of this urgently, and we need to do it all the time, not just in the wake of a tragedy.

In particular, we need to see more proactive efforts from men. People of marginalized genders have long been at the forefront of fighting to address gender-based violence, taking on the work of advocating for policy change and building victim support organizations. Men need to show that they are united in the fight for equality, especially by fostering alternative visions of masculinity that are not tied to the control or domination of others.

This need not be a daunting task. The majority of men already model equitable treatment of others, and much progress towards equality has been made. As we all embrace more learning and open dialogue, we will build a society where everyone can enjoy a healthy sense of identity that doesn’t diminish or threaten anyone else.

[3:05 p.m.]

Likewise, women with privilege must go above and beyond to centre the experiences of women who face compounding threats, such as those associated with racial discrimination and poverty. By sharing the responsibility for combatting gender-based violence and discrimination, we will all share the rewards of a more peaceful, equitable province.

I thank the members of this House for their collaboration on this important bill, and I trust we will continue working together to advance systemic solutions to the systemic discrimination facing women.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Seeing no further speakers, the minister will close the debate.

Hon. H. Bains: I want to begin by thanking all the members of this House who participated in the debate and shared their stories and talked about how strongly they feel about this very, very important bill that we are discussing here today. I want to especially thank the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity for all her hard work, advocacy, dedication to gender equity and especially her work on peer, domestic or sexual violence.

I’d also like to acknowledge the work of the MLA for Surrey South for her passion and support of this legislation. And I want to thank the Leader of the Third Party. I want to say thank you for supporting this bill as well and also sharing your thoughts and stories that you’ve brought forth. I think those are tremendous pieces of information, and the comments, that we could all take from you and from others as we move forward to make this province and the lives of people in this province much better.

The paid leave will support workers experiencing or who have specified family members experiencing domestic or sexual violence by allowing them to relocate or to pursue legal and medical counselling or other support services without the risk of losing their income or their jobs. I’m grateful for the public employers, labour representatives, Indigenous women organizations, the groups supporting individuals and families who have experienced domestic or sexual violence, and gender equity groups for sharing their views and perspective on how to improve domestic or sexual violence leave.

It’s an important bill. I’m so proud that I am the one sponsoring this bill in this House. I want to say thank you for the tremendous amount of support that I received from members from all sides. It’s not a political issue. It is an issue that affects all of us as a society.

I now move second reading of Bill 5.

Motion approved.

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

Motion approved.

Bill 5, Employment Standards 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 of Bill 11, Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act.

BILL 11 — ATTORNEY GENERAL STATUTES
(VEHICLE INSURANCE)
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

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

[3:10 p.m.]

I think most members of this House know the current auto insurance system in our province doesn’t work. We have a system where ICBC is both required by law to provide benefits to people but also required by law to provide a robust defence to drivers who are at fault in the system. That’s what they bought insurance from ICBC for in the first place. That dual role of providing benefits while also, at the same time, showing up in court against the same person they’re supposed to provide benefits to results in an incredibly problematic situation where costs continue to go up, benefits are not keeping up and we need to do better.

We also have an issue where those injured in a vehicle crash aren’t necessarily getting the care they need. This is especially true in a situation of a one-car collision where someone runs into a moose, for example, or hits black ice and goes off the road — a situation where someone is at fault for a crash, whether due to inexperience, a moment of inattention or otherwise. But also, people who aren’t at fault in a collision who go to a multi-year court battle and have a significant portion of their award eaten up by various costs — expert witness reports, disbursements, legal fees, and so on.

In addition to the legal fees paid by those who have to go to the court system, government, through ICBC, is spending a great deal on legal costs as well. All of this while rates continue to go up. Obviously, we need something that works for British Columbians and puts the recovery of those who are injured in crashes at the forefront. We also need a system that provides affordable rates.

Fortunately, we have two systems in Canada that have been operating for many years that are doing just that with public auto insurance systems. It is on those systems that the proposal in front of the House is modelled.

Now, I know that there are many people who say that the solution to the issue is simply to privatize the system or to “open it up to competition.” We can look at other provinces where they’ve done that. We did. The results are not good.

In Alberta, where the insurance system is fully private, drivers are facing rate hikes as high as 30 percent, and they see those rate hikes with significantly less care coverage than British Columbians have in our basic insurance. In Ontario, their own Finance Minister said they have the highest auto insurance rates in Canada. Even when private insurers issued a report about what private insurance, in what they call a full-competition scenario, would look like in our province, they had double-digit rate increases for every driver under the age of 40.

Now, obviously, we need to fix the situation. It’s just not obvious to me that any of those provinces have much to offer us by way of solution. Those are all private jurisdiction provinces with full competition, what I’ve heard some people suggest is a solution for our province. The provinces with public insurers and enhanced care–type systems like we’re proposing here…. Manitoba, for example, just asked for the largest rate decrease in their history. Already one of the lowest-cost provinces, and the rate decrease that they’re asking for is 10.5 percent. So just imagine that.

With the amendments to the Insurance Corporation Act, this bill fulfils our government’s commitment, as well, to ban the transfer of ICBC profits to government by eliminating the authority of government to direct ICBC to make payments to government from profits from the corp.’s optional business. This means that in future, ICBC profits will only be used for the purposes of public auto insurance — for drivers in the province, to benefit them, because it is their money that they paid in premiums.

With the amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act, this bill will restrict actions and proceedings with respect to bodily injury caused by a vehicle for accidents occurring on or after May 1, 2021. Actions for certain damages will still be permitted in limited circumstances, such as when you have, for example, a negligent vehicle manufacturer — the brakes on the car don’t work the way that they’re supposed to — negligent vehicle repair shops, where a repair that was supposed to be done to the brakes results in a collision, or a liquor licensee overserves someone, for example, and that contributes to bodily injuries. Those are all actions that will continue, or are proposed to continue, should this bill pass.

Dangerous drivers will continue to be held accountable for their reckless behaviour, so there will, of course, be the existing criminal and administrative sanctions at the federal and provincial levels. But it’s important to note that those that are convicted of certain driving-based Criminal Code offences, like impaired driving and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, may also still be personally sued for certain damages under the proposed system. These limited actions would be in addition to what the injured driver would be able to access under the enhanced care benefits under the proposed system.

The amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act also set out the entitlement of B.C. residents to enhanced care benefits when they’re injured in vehicle accidents on a highway anywhere in Canada outside of British Columbia or in the United States, as well as for certain off-highway vehicle accidents. The amendments also set out the entitlement of non-residents to enhanced care benefits when they’re injured in vehicle accidents in British Columbia or when injured by a B.C.-licensed vehicle outside British Columbia.

[3:15 p.m.]

The amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act impose a legal duty on ICBC to advise and assist an individual with making a claim for enhanced care benefits and to endeavour to ensure that the individual is informed about and receives the enhanced care benefits that they may be entitled to. We’re doing this to ensure that the culture at ICBC shifts away from one of adversarial battles in the courts to one where ICBC’s job is to work with care providers to provide people with the care they need to get better after a collision.

The benefits people are entitled to and proposed under the act include medical rehabilitation and related benefits, which are increased to at least $7.5 million. That’s 24 times more care than current accident benefits, which I note our government increased in April 2019 for the first time since 1991 — to give you an example about how long ago it was that these benefits were increased and how dramatic the increase under the new system will be.

New benefits will be in place for compensation for permanent impairments and injuries. The amount will depend on the severity of the injury. It’s expected for catastrophic injuries that the compensation for permanent impairment will be up to $250,000. This is in addition to the medical rehabilitation and related benefits and is intended to replace the so-called pain and suffering awards given currently in the court system at a similar level for the most serious injuries, which is what British Colum­bians expect.

Extended benefits for those with catastrophic injuries are also new benefits that will be available. They’re up to $1.2 million for those who need it most as they transition to living with their automobile-related injuries.

There’s an income replacement benefit for earners — including the self-employed — and non-earners, as well as for students and minors. There’s a loss of studies benefit for students and minors when they can’t go to school because of their injuries from the collision. And there are also family and caregiver benefits and death benefits to support those closest to those injured in a collision as the whole family struggles to adapt to a new life.

All in all, we are significantly increasing benefits so all British Columbians who are injured in a vehicle accident can have peace of mind that they will get the care they need for as long as they need it. That we can do all of this while proposing to reduce rates, on average, by 20 percent tells you how much we’re currently spending on legal expenses in the system.

I want to point out to the members that the amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act also set out the limits on actions and proceedings with respect to vehicle damage. It will create a new first-party coverage for vehicle damage which further simplifies auto insurance, improves fairness — so that those with the most expensive vehicles are paying the most expensive rates — and eliminates unnecessary litigation with respect to vehicle damage.

Amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act also provide for pre-litigation payments with respect to vehicle accidents occurring before May 1, 2021, to increase the portion of an award that goes to an injured person rather than towards legal costs. These are amounts where there is no dispute that the person is entitled to it, ICBC should pay it, and they shouldn’t have to pay a lawyer to access that money.

The bill makes other consequential and related amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act in the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act.

With these amendments, British Columbians injured in a vehicle accident will get the care they need for as long as they need it, and we will continue to hold bad drivers accountable. Determinations of which drivers are at fault or responsible for vehicle accidents will still occur, and if you cause a vehicle crash, your premiums will still go up.

These changes are fundamental and overhaul a system that was too focused on the litigation process and associated costs. With these changes, we’re creating an auto insurance system that provides significantly improved benefits that British Columbians need to recover from a vehicle accident while ensuring stability, predictability and fairness with more affordable premiums. I hope all members will support this badly needed reform.

J. Johal: It’s a pleasure that I get to rise here today and provide my thoughts on Bill 11, the vehicle insurance amendment act, 2020.

Now, it goes without saying that the ups and downs and tumultuous story of ICBC is not lost on anyone in this room or joining us virtually from home or the office. The back and forth on the subject is such a hallmark of this space that recently some members of the media were even blessed with a fully playable board game satirizing the whole ordeal. ICBC Monopoly, which I’m sure will become a bestseller, perfectly encapsulates the issues.

[3:20 p.m.]

First and foremost, the title says it all. It is a monopoly controlling the province’s auto insurance options, giving little leeway for a competitive market, even though other jurisdictions seem to operate just fine with the access to choice. The whole game is really just a big tongue-in-cheek joke, but I guess that’s the real point. The operations and decisions of this Crown corp. have, in their own right, become a joke. However, in this case, the reality isn’t so funny.

Comparative to other provinces, British Columbians pay the most for their auto insurance — and not just by a little bit either. Our province holds the distinction of overcharging its citizens for auto insurance with little or no option for change. We all witnessed last fall, when the new pricing scheme came into play and rates skyrocketed for thousands of drivers, some by thousands of dollars a year, forcing heart-wrenching decisions for many young British Columbians as to whether they attend post-secondary or insure a car.

Those types of ultimatums should not be placed on people. The question remains: what provides the best solutions for British Columbians? Is it decades of monopoly that is generally tolerated but certainly not well liked by most of this province? Or is it a more modern framework that provides the right balance of options and opportunities to give the people of this province choice and a secure thought that their rights are protected and respected. With the introduction of this bill, I question whether things will be getting any better at all for your average driver here in British Columbia.

Now, we all saw, earlier this month, when the Attorney General touted the elimination of the previous cancellation fee that came in with reducing or exiting your current coverage. Now, I’ll agree that was a welcome rebate for those that saw themselves no longer in need of insurance or their current form of insurance during the previous few months of stay-at-home orders, home offices and business closures. But that still does not equal anywhere close to the reductions seen in other jurisdictions — insurance companies that provided $685 million in relief to Ontario drivers or about 70 percent of policyholders who are receiving some form of relief with an average savings of about $150. This correlates to roughly 5 percent of the total annual premiums Ontario drivers pay.

This type of reduction was similar to some other provinces that saw insurance companies giving back to its residents that had been facing so much hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was backed by government. Where is that type leadership here in B.C.? No rebates in sight, just raised premiums. B.C. has also seen a large reduction in accident claims due to a reduction in driving, yet none of these savings will be passed on to taxpayers.

I find it truly discouraging that this government is going to hike rates to the degree they have and then deny a warranted reduction or rebates at a time when British Columbians are facing a uniquely challenging financial challenge outside of their control. The Insurance Bureau of Canada has laid out its own issues with how this government has handled the changes forced upon drivers due to the pandemic. They have highlighted how ICBC is not only still paying for ads trying to convince British Columbians that a move to no-fault is great but that they are also not engaging British Columbians to discuss how they can reduce their rates or change their plans as their driving habits changed over the last few months.

This, again, comes back to the issue of choice. The IBC said in a release last month: “Where drivers have a choice, insurance companies are compelled to return premiums because, if they don’t, their customers are free to shop around and find a company that does.”

Why are British Columbians forced to accept this? This is just the latest example of ICBC business practices that would never be tolerated in a system where there was choice and competition. That is the crux of the argument — choice. We do not have that luxury here, as ICBC controls the auto insurance market and, accordingly, nearly all of the optional coverage market. Choice is not even a reality here. We are at the whim of whatever ICBC decides. How is that fair?

As we touch on the conversation of rebates that we are not receiving, it is well known that this government has claimed that drivers will see rebates starting next spring, which, coincidentally, lines up with election season. Understandably, the Attorney General will toss that coincidence aside, but we know what that is about. It is a shiny carrot to dangle at election time. But I truly believe that the people of this province are becoming wise to the fact that this system is simply not working for the bulk of the province.

Choice is something that should be readily available to residents as it is in other jurisdictions. Choice brings competition. Competition creates the incentive to act in ways that will benefit drivers.

One of the ways that ICBC has really separated itself from better functioning programs is the failure to innovate its practices or improve efficiencies. You can see this in regards to how long it has taken for us to move to online access and to deal with the virtual world. These are commonsense 21st-century adaptions that are needed. Innovation and ease of use is a hallmark of the private sector as it needs to compete.

[3:25 p.m.]

The lack of competition and choice means that this Crown dinosaur can just continue along at its sluggish pace without stepping its game up, and unfortunately, that means costing British Columbians more.

Now, given the points that I’ve made, it’s important to touch on where this government is moving this insurance scheme. This bill is bringing in the enabling legislation for no-fault insurance, though they’re not calling it that. But we all know this is the introduction of no-fault insurance here in B.C. The Attorney General has spent enough time denouncing the very framework he is bringing in to call it its real name, hence the charmingly worded “enhanced care model.”

The claim is that the move to no-fault will also see ICBC make a move from an adversarial and defensive operator to one that prioritizes the care of all injured in an auto accident. Given the reputation and history of how ICBC has fought claimants tooth and nail for settlements, I will agree with that statement when I see it.

Even with the move to no-fault, on which the details are yet to be outlined in this legislation, it’s important to know that we still will not see the same rates as other jurisdictions. In fact, public insurers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec operate in no-fault regimes. In Manitoba, drivers pay, on average, $1,150 per year in premiums. In Saskatchewan, they pay just over $1,200 on average. This government itself estimates B.C. drivers will pay $1,900 for auto insurance. That is an almost comical difference, but again, not a single ratepayer is laughing.

Where I find concern is that cabinet retains a regulatory ability to establish requirements, procedures and an evaluation process for settling disputes, as well as grounds for exemptions from the process. Where are those details, and how will we know where the Attorney General is landing with the regulations that will follow the passing of this bill?

The AG himself says: “Regulations are a significant part of this new system…so it’s certainly a framework.” So I hope that the member opposite can shed light on this in a more meaningful way.

This broad regulatory authority has, understandably, invited skepticism from critics. Pre-COVID-19 pandemic the initial consultations were expected to be between February and May of 2020. Where this is at now is unknown, though I do hope we will get a better understanding of this in the weeks ahead.

Understandably, there have been stakeholders who have argued that there is a conflict of interest between meeting ICBC’s financial goals and cabinet ensuring that they provide adequate compensation. On this note, one thing is clear: there is still a substantial piece of the puzzle missing. ICBC still hasn’t come clean on its finances and exactly how many billions it has lost on its investments. Where is the current update on its books? This, of course, is something that we have been asking of the Finance Minister — as well as any budgetary projections or models are basically trash in the wake of the pandemic.

It goes without saying that the province’s coffers have taken a sizeable hit in the wake of the last few months, and as you know, we as opposition have asked for an update on this. This bodes the same for ICBC. What is the state of the books? Has it lost money like WorkSafeBC has? Has it retained more funds over the past few months? Has its investment been affected? Given the V-shaped recovery of the stock market, I would hope that the bottom line has not been too negatively affected, but we will wait to hear the results of that.

On this topic, it is prudent to point out that the Finance Minister has stated that first-quarter financials won’t be available until September, after the session. This seems like an obviously intentional deflection of accountability. In some ways, it is redundant to think of debating and discussing financials when there’s no clear snapshot of the current state of the government’s books.

Waiting until the Q1 report, which will be right in time for an election, does not sit right with me, and it shouldn’t with British Columbians. We need a true and full fiscal update of where ICBC’s finances are at.

Additionally, given the closure of legislative proceedings over the next few months, the evidence act wasn’t passed before March 31. This means that government won’t be able to fix its $400 million loss in the previous fiscal year, meaning last year had a larger loss than anticipated. So it is hopeful that the disparagement can also be commented on. The point being that there are a lot of unknowns at play, and I am pleased that we are back and able to ask these important questions and get a clearer understanding of just what is going on.

I have made it clear that the current operations of ICBC denies British Columbians a choice, but it also affects the rights of accident victims and puts them at the mercy of ICBC’s decision-making process. There is story after story of ICBC lawyers trying to limit settlements, reduce compensation and, in some cases, go out of their way to deny the rightful claims of victims of motor vehicle accidents. To me, that carries with it an inherent issue. Where is the recourse to ensure that the rights of British Columbians are protected?

[3:30 p.m.]

Now, as I’ve said, the NDP are marketing the no-fault insurance to British Columbians as the enhanced care model of insurance. They have touted it as being able to provide higher care, treatments and income benefits, all of this being paid for by an apparent reduction in legal costs.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

However, this is all being accomplished by largely removing the ability of victims to sue an at-fault driver for a vehicle accident. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are quite limited and specific. There will still be the option to sue at-fault drivers who are convicted of specific Criminal Code offences, like impaired driving, for additional compensation. In addition, for those who have committed the set-out criminal offences, people retain the right to sue certain non-motorist parties.

In actuality, these exceptions do not amount to a large portion of cases, which is why the government believes that ICBC will be able to save as much as $1.5 billion due to the elimination of litigation costs associated with accident claims.

My reservations about this bill fall into two broad categories. First, my doubts about no-fault itself, which I believe strips British Columbians of certain rights, while also likely failing to accomplish its goal of making insurance more affordable for the people of British Columbia.

Second are my reservations with the bill itself, which leaves so much to be determined by regulation, and in doing so, means that much of the details of the transition to no-fault are yet to be determined. This means that we do not yet have a full picture of what it will look like in practice, while also creating a possible situation for a conflict of interest for cabinet.

Let’s first take a closer look at no-fault. The NDP are making the case that the major reason ICBC is losing money, and in turn, charges such high insurance rates, is because of the cost of litigation and settlements. They believe that a switch to no-fault will mean a nearly 90 percent decrease in legal costs.

However, this fails to take into account the other factors that contribute to rising claims costs. These include inflation and increase in policies, as well as an increase in the cost of vehicle repairs, which have increased by 56 percent over the last ten years and are only expected to increase over time. While the government points to other provinces as guidelines for this switch, it doesn’t highlight that few have pure no-fault systems in place. Saskatchewan even uses a hybrid system, where drivers can choose between no-fault and the current system. Why have they decided against offering this option to British Columbians?

At the heart of the problem with no-fault is that it strips rights away from B.C. drivers. It abolishes the right to sue for compensation for pain and suffering, and instead awards compensation to victims based on a meat chart of pre-set amounts for specific injuries, not allowing for unique experiences and impacts on individuals and their families. No-fault will also force those who have a significant injury to deal with ICBC for the rest of their lives, adding increased hassle and the complications of bureaucracy.

The switch to no-fault will also fail to address other existing problems with ICBC, having no impact on its failure to innovate or improve efficiency. It will only continue to give more power to this out-of-date government monopoly while simultaneously taking more choice away from the people of B.C. This is directly in contrast with what we have been hearing from British Columbians. They want choice in auto insurance. They want to be able to choose what works best for them and their unique circumstances. Taking away their right to sue an at-fault driver for appropriate compensation does not allow for this.

After all this, there is still no guarantee that the switch to no-fault will mean more affordable rates for B.C. drivers. The NDP are estimating that there will be savings, but this is not a sure thing. The government is asking B.C. to trust that they know best — this after they spent years in opposition arguing against this very system and even promising that they themselves would not introduce it in B.C. Yet here we are today.

In addition to those overarching problems with what this bill will usher in, there are also significant concerns with the structure of the bill itself that are worth discussion, and we’ll certainly be asking questions about this when we move into committee stage.

The biggest issue is how much of this bill is left to be determined by regulation. Cabinet has the power to make regulations establishing the amount of income replacement benefits, benefits for non-earners, loss-of-studies benefits for students, benefits for minors and benefits for people incapable of holding employment. These are a lot of important details that will not be put up for debate in this House, a lot of details that can be changed quickly based on the discretion of cabinet.

The minister himself has referred to this legislation simply as a framework, admitting how significant regulation will be to this new system. This broad regulatory authority is why many people have argued that there is a significant conflict of interest at the heart of this bill. It leaves it up to cabinet to weigh the interests of meeting ICBC’s financial goals against the needs to provide adequate compensation for British Columbians.

[3:35 p.m.]

The people of B.C. deserve to know the details of how their compensation will change. They deserve to know exactly how this bill will affect them. Yet there is so much that is still not known.

Now, I understand the government’s desire to make insurance rates more affordable for British Columbians. In fact, affordability is a significant issue here in B.C., and people should not have to work three jobs to be able to pay for their car insurance. However, it’s still unknown if no-fault will really bring significant savings for the people of B.C. While the proclaimed benefit of this change may not pan out, it will certainly diminish the rights of British Columbians in the process.

I understand that under the current system, versus where the NDP is taking B.C., there will be some presumed cost savings on the books. But does that reduction in cost equal a better system for British Columbians? Where is the recourse to not go the no-fault route like other jurisdictions have? Again, choice and rights are the issue. This is just another example of the NDP’s “government knows best” approach.

Will this Crown corp. fight for every victim’s best-case scenario or aim for settlements that benefit their bottom line? That is still unclear, and it worries me to think that choice is simply not a factor. It is a case of ICBC’s way or the highway, and that does not bode well. Competition breeds choice and forces institutions to fight for customers, which in turn could provide serious cost savings for drivers.

Frankly, this is about choice and rights. I worry that British Columbians will not see a benefit in either avenue with this legislation. This bill will move us in the opposite direction of where we should be going in B.C. — removing choice in car insurance when we should be increasing it.

In committee stage, I hope that we’ll be able to get more clarity about what these changes will mean for the people of B.C. But if they are looking to see massive savings in their car insurance, I don’t think they should hold their breath.

S. Furstenau: I’m pleased to stand today and support Bill 11, the Vehicle Insurance Amendment Act. This bill will fundamentally reform ICBC from its current litigation-based system and adopt a public care-based model. The B.C. Green caucus has long advocated for the need to fundamentally reform ICBC, and we welcome the decision to adopt a public care-based model.

ICBC, in its current form, hasn’t served the needs of British Columbians very well. It’s become extremely clear in recent years that the status quo is financially unsustainable for ratepayers around the province. At the centre of our conversation about reforming ICBC needs to be the health and well-being of British Columbians, particularly those who are injured on the road. Looking at the evidence, I’m convinced that a care-based model, if implemented correctly and carefully, can provide significantly better care for anybody injured on our roads, particularly those who face catastrophic injuries.

It’s why I’m pleased to stand today to welcome this transformation of ICBC. In correspondence and meetings with people since the legislation was first introduced, I know there were many questions about how this change is going to work. One theme that has come through again and again is a widespread lack of trust in ICBC. For these reforms to be successful, government and ICBC will need to earn the trust of British Columbians as they work to implement this new system.

It is absolutely critical that the government lead the way in creating a significant cultural shift in ICBC in order for the public to trust that they will receive the care and financial supports they need if they are injured. Government needs to lead the shift away from our current adversarial model and towards a collaborative approach between ICBC and our health care system — one that puts the recovery of people at its centre.

ICBC’s mandate must be reformed to leave no doubt that its focus is supporting British Columbians to get the care they need to be well. ICBC, like all insurance, should be there to support people when they need it. Adequate coverage to get well should not be something people have to fight for in the courts.

Our current litigation-based model provides some support for injured drivers, but beyond a relatively modest level, they are forced to sue for what they need in the courts. You can only access additional compensation if you successfully sue someone at fault. This means that in cases where you’re injured but there’s no one to sue — like if you run into black ice or hit an object — you can be left with completely inadequate care. This will change with the transition to a care-based model.

[3:40 p.m.]

It is critical that under this new system, people are able to smoothly and quickly access the support and compensation they need for their recovery. A care-based model only works if British Columbians can quickly and reliably access the care they need. This includes making sure the new system works well for the many British Columbians who do not have a family doctor.

Throughout the province, particularly in rural areas, people already struggle with access to medical professionals. The success of the proposed care-based model hinges on health care professionals working with ICBC to ensure people will get sufficient care. It is critical that the system equally serve the needs of the many people in our province who don’t have a family doctor. Otherwise, people without a family doctor risk being left behind by this system.

ICBC’s finances, year after year, have led to escalating rate hikes for drivers, worsening the already crushing impact of our affordability crisis on people across B.C. The billion-dollar-a-year write-offs we have seen in recent years are also fiscally unsustainable for the government.

Fundamental reform to ICBC has clearly been needed for years. In fact, the 2017 Ernst and Young report that was written for the government, where they provided four options to reforms to provide more affordable and effective insurance, found that numerous and substantial changes to the current system were required, even just to slow the trend of year-on-year rate hikes, let alone provide any rate relief.

They found:

“This suggests the current system is not working as intended. B.C. drivers are having to pay significant and increasing auto insurance premiums to fund a system that is returning less than 60 percent of premiums to the premium payers as claimant benefits. In order to achieve the goal of being able to reduce basic premiums,” they wrote, “one option is to fundamentally change the design of the product from its current expensive and adversarial nature to a treatment-focused comprehensive care model.”

That is what we are debating today.

Ernst and Young estimated that savings under this objective could be approximately $1.4 billion. They found that a similar scheme design achieved stable costs and highly affordable premiums in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Zealand. All are publicly managed auto insurance schemes.

Indeed, ICBC expects to save more than $1.5 billion in legal fees and other costs associated with the current litigation-based system. These projected cost savings are what allow for substantially higher levels of care and financial support to all injured drivers.

Currently B.C.’s premiums are amongst the highest in Canada. The government believes that in addition to delivering better care, this change could lower ICBC premiums by approximately 20 percent or an average of $400 per driver.

It’s also important to note that drivers are still held accountable in this new model, as ICBC premiums are still based on driver risk and driving record. So if you cause an accident, you are still held accountable and will be paying higher premiums.

The other option that has been raised by the opposition and select stakeholders has been the move to privatize ICBC. While we’ve been clear from the beginning that all options for reform should be on the table, a move to a private system would carry many risks for B.C. It seems unlikely that the private system could provide better care and improve health outcomes for people injured on our roads. I’ll be discussing the extent to which government modelled other alternatives in committee stage and look forward to this discussion.

The potential of the reforms in this bill to deliver substantially better health outcomes for injured drivers and more affordable rates for all is why my colleague and I are happy to support this transformation of ICBC. This change, if done properly, can ensure that all those who are injured on the road will get the care they need to recover, without having to go to court to sue for what help they need.

M. Lee: I wish to also rise to speak on second reading of Bill 11. I will be the designated speaker for this bill.

[3:45 p.m.]

First, I would like to walk through the roles of the Attorney General and the conflict that he is in as the minister responsible for ICBC. This conflict taints this bill in the same way as with Bill 9, the Evidence Amendment Act. In the Bill 9 second reading and committee debate so far, the Attorney General has raised a number of points to try and deflect and distract from this fundamental issue and the concerns that I have raised again. It is important to address this, as it is a fundamental challenge to the way that this Bill 11 is being presented to this House.

The Attorney General is not an ordinary MLA. He, of course, holds a critically important role that demands complete neutrality. The Attorney General of our province represents justice in the purest way possible.

As members of this Legislative Assembly, we have the heavy responsibility to continue to seek, to maintain and to hold the confidence of British Columbians in our public institutions. The Attorney General has an additional critical role, which is to protect our democratic institutions.

Let me just give some historical reference to the role of the Attorney General. The Ministry of Attorney General was established in 1871 under its first name, the Attorney-General’s Department of the Province of British Columbia, by authority of the Constitution Act of 1871. Prior to that, from 1863 to 1866, the origins of the ministry were in the offices of the Attorney General for the colony of Vancouver Island and for the colony of British Columbia. In 1866, the colonies united to form one colony, with one Attorney General, who remained in place until British Columbia became a province of the Dominion of Canada in 1871.

Historically, the Attorney General was the official legal adviser of the Lieutenant-Governor and of the executive council. He was responsible for the settlement and approval of all documents issued under the public seal of the province and for the supervision of magistrates, the police and the constabulary.

In 1899, the department was reconstituted by the Attorney General Act, which expanded the duties and powers of the Attorney General to include the administration of public affairs, the provision of legislative and legal advice to the representative of the Crown and the heads of government departments, the administration of justice within the province and the regulation of all litigation for and against the Crown and public departments within the jurisdiction of the Legislature.

The Attorney General remains the chief law officer of the Crown. As such, the Attorney General is someone who holds powers. It’s out of a very long history. These powers go back to the constitutional history of the U.K., from where this office and its important role in government are derived. In accordance with section 2 of the Attorney General Act, the Attorney General, above all else, “must see that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with law.”

The role of the Attorney General in a free and democratic society has been commonly recognized in this House by former Attorneys General and Premiers. Simply put, that role includes safeguarding the rule of law, protecting society from arbitrary laws or actions, protecting human rights and ensuring that the administration of justice in this province is not brought into disrepute.

While the office of the Attorney General is unique in that it can, at times, be separate and apart from any political role, these responsibilities also are carried out through a role as a cabinet minister, where the Attorney General is responsible for ensuring that cabinet actions are legally and constitutionally valid, ensuring that legislative enactments are in accordance with the principles of natural justice, fairness, civil rights and consistent with provincial legislation and advising on the constitutionality and legality of legislation. That is the role of the Attorney General now, and it has been the role in the past as well.

[3:50 p.m.]

As I mentioned, the Attorney General at one point never used to be a member of cabinet. The role of Attorney General was so important in its independent aspect that the Attorney General had to be completely neutral. The Attorney General was representing justice as much as representing the government of which he or she is a part.

The Attorney General is not only the head of a department and is obliged to advance the interests of that department among cabinet, caucus and the Legislature, but the Attorney General must also be able to advise government and provide legal opinions irrespective of the political implications and independent of the political consequences that may arise either to his or her department or to the government generally.

What happens when the Attorney General is placed in a dual role, as this Premier has done, where he must represent not only justice in his role as Attorney General but also the financial interests of the province’s largest litigant, ICBC? It’s an obvious and clear conflict. This Bill 11 — as with Bill 9, Bill 20 and Bill 21, the orders-in-council made relating to the limitation of experts in litigation and the expansion of the powers of the CRT — is yet another example of the perils of this conflict of interest.

As Attorney General, the member for Vancouver–Point Grey must oversee and supervise the administration of justice and the rule of law. With his dual role, which he has been given by the Premier, on the other hand, he must enhance the profitability of ICBC, as the minister responsible for ICBC.

To the extent that one role must give way to the other in order to achieve success in each role, there is a necessary and impossible web of conflict that the Attorney General must attempt to disentangle. To think that he can do this effectively quite clearly shows a lack of self-scrutiny.

Let’s not forget that from day one the member for Vancouver–Point Grey was specifically tasked with conducting “a comprehensive operating review of ICBC.” In his mandate letter from the Premier, it clearly states that the government’s “first commitment is to make life more affordable.” How does that economically framed goal square with the complete neutrality that is required in his role as Attorney General?

The member for Vancouver–Point Grey may say or believe he can do both, but his work so far on ICBC strongly suggests otherwise. To demonstrate this point, we need to look at the basic tenets of what an Attorney General must do to successfully fulfil the important responsibilities that attach to the position.

One, the Attorney General is supposed to stand up for the law. Rather than stand up for the law, this Attorney General is seeking to tear it down in the name of ICBC’s balance sheet. This is evidenced by the now abandoned minor injury regime, the limit on experts, Bill 9 and now the introduction of a no-fault insurance scheme under Bill 11.

Two, the Attorney General is supposed to stand up for the courts and the rule of law. Rather than stand up for the courts and the rule of law, our Attorney General of this province is actively taking steps to make it impossible for British Columbians to access courtrooms in search of fair compensation for their injuries.

Three, the Attorney General is supposed to stand up for the basic legal rights of citizens. Rather than stand up for the legal rights of citizens, this Attorney General has gone farther than any of his predecessors when it comes to diminishing the legal rights of vulnerable and injured British Columbians.

Four, when it comes to legislation, the Attorney General is responsible for ensuring that laws are in accordance with the principles of natural justice, fairness and civil rights.

[3:55 p.m.]

One principle of natural justice that I learned growing up is that a person who makes a mess must be responsible for cleaning it up. In the context of a car accident, that means that if you are distracted by an incoming text message on your phone and you crash into the rear end of my car and mess up my life, you need to be responsible for cleaning up the mess that you made.

The idea that a person who makes a mess must clean it up is the fundamental foundation upon which our tort system was built. Both the member for Vancouver–Point Grey and I will remember this law school lesson.

Instead of seeking to reinforce this structure, the Attorney General has decided to replace our system with a model that equalizes the legal rights of those who make a mess — in other words, irresponsible or careless drivers — and those who suffer great harm at the hands of irresponsible and careless drivers. How is this consistent with the principles of natural justice? More importantly, how do these changes encourage responsible behaviour and careful driving. If you know you have to clean up the mess you’ve made, you’re more likely to avoid making the mess in the first place.

In terms of legislation that’s consistent with civil rights, I have one point to make. The most fundamental civil right of all is access to justice through the front doors of the courthouse. The Attorney General seeks to erase civil rights entirely through the imposition of no-fault. This is a striking step and has grave consequences for those involved.

Now the Attorney General, as he just did in his second reading speech, will attempt to distract us with claims that the new benefit system means that British Columbians are entitled to millions of dollars — millions and millions. If he truly believes that British Columbians would receive more under the new system than the old system, then he wouldn’t be pitching this as a cost-saving change for the corporation.

What he doesn’t say and what we know very well is that benefits are only as good as the person holding the purse strings. When the person holding the purse strings is an employee of a corporation whose job depends on his or her ability to make the corporation operate effectively, efficiently and cost-effectively, there will always be a natural resistance to the deployment of benefits. It’s simply not cost-effective to give everyone optimal care. At a certain point, they will get cut off in the name of cost savings.

Like my colleague from Richmond-Queensborough just stated, a major challenge of this bill is that much of the details are left to regulation. It’s easy to promise without those details in mind.

We were already seeing this happen in terms of cutting off care for the sake of cost saving. When you look at an example where a person needs physiotherapy…. That injured British Columbian gets it from ICBC but only to a certain point. Eventually ICBC says, “This is no longer improving your condition, so we cannot continue to pay,” to which the injured person says, “But it gives me relief from my pain and allows me to get through my workday in the absence of pain,” to which ICBC says: “Sorry, we don’t have to pay for your treatment unless it’s somehow curative. Your pain levels are not relevant to the benefit approval process.”

This is what we’re facing more and more under this bill. Increasing the maximum benefits that a person is entitled to is just window dressing if a person seeking benefits must jump through a series of hoops and reams of red tape to gain access to those benefits. You can set the maximum benefit limit to $7.5 million, but it’s meaningless if nobody has a chance of getting anywhere near it.

Now, as was just mentioned by the member opposite and the Attorney General, there needs to be a complete overhaul of corporate culture. But a corporation will always focus on maximizing revenues and reducing costs, even if these economic goals conflict with the recovery needs of customers. One could say that there’s a conflict between what ICBC must do to help the corporation versus what it must do to help people recover after an accident. We have an Attorney General who fails to recognize his own conflict, pitching a system that promotes yet another conflict.

[4:00 p.m.]

This irony is probably lost on him, but it all comes down to this. The Attorney General has been able to provide legal opinions and advise government irrespective of political implications and independent of the political consequences that might flow from them. He has to be able to advise on the constitutionality and legality of legislation. Has this Attorney General fulfilled his role in this regard?

Well, let’s look further at his track record. Since being appointed, our Attorney General has created a minor injury compensation cap that prevents specific classes of British Columbians from accessing the courts. The constitutional status of this system is still currently being challenged.

Following the creation of a minor injury regime in February of 2019, our Attorney General attempted to place limits on the use of expert evidence for those British Columbians with non-minor injuries. Without proper consultation with the legal community, including the courts, our Attorney General unilaterally enacted rule 11-8. As we all know, rule 11-8 was ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

About a year after the failure of rule 11-8, our Attorney General announced plans to implement retroactive caps on disbursements, which further impacted the ability of a litigant to advance his or her case. He also simultaneously announced a shift to a no-fault system. Now, in the process of speaking with the media about the no-fault announcement, he admitted that the minor injury regime was essentially bogus and that he had been working on developing a no-fault system, in secret from this House, since late 2018. Like the minor injury regime that came before it, the no-fault regime is also being challenged on constitutional grounds.

If our Attorney General is supposed to advise the government on the constitutionality of legislation coming out of this government, then he has clearly failed with the declaration of rule 11-8 as unconstitutional. We’ll have to wait and see how he does with no-fault. But what’s to say they will face a different result, with changes that are even more far-reaching than rule 11-8?

All of this raises another question. Is the Attorney General focused on acting in the best interests of British Columbians or in the best interests of ICBC? Clearly, the two are not one and the same if our courts are sending a very clear message that his proposed solutions to the problems at ICBC are unconstitutional.

Ultimately, the Attorney General is proposing to create a regime whereby injured British Columbians no longer have access to the court system. He is proposing to take away the legal rights of British Columbians simply because he has labelled the current system as too costly. Even the mere appearance of a conflict ought to be sufficient to recognize that we have a significant problem here.

But it goes beyond appearances. One need look no further than the Attorney General’s comments to the media to see his preference for ICBC profits over the protection of legal rights. For example, he made the following comment after his legislation limiting expert evidence, rule 11-8, was ruled unconstitutional: “It’s really a significant setback for us. The savings are obviously not going to be realized.”

It’s interesting how his first inclination is to comment on the loss to ICBC as opposed to the impact on British Columbians — on the impact on those British Columbians who are in the midst of litigation, who, as a result of the court’s ruling on rule 11-8, get to maintain the legal rights they started with in litigation — those same rights that this Attorney General tried to take away with rule 11-8. This sort of statement just goes to show that the Attorney General’s ability to advance the legal interests of the people of British Columbia is in direct conflict with his obligations as revenue minister for ICBC.

[4:05 p.m.]

To put this in even further, starker contrast, consider this. If the member for Vancouver–Point Grey only held the post of Attorney General and a different member of the government’s cabinet was responsible for ICBC, would the member have green-lit the rule 11-8 legislation that was later deemed unconstitutional? Either he got it wrong or he had multiple interests that he was attempting to juggle. The only problem is that the legal interests of the people are diametrically opposed to the financial interests of a Crown corp. They cannot be juggled. Our Attorney General’s progress to date clearly shows this.

Perhaps the clearest evidence we have of the Attorney General’s hypocrisy goes back to an exchange that took place in this very House on May 29, 2018, with my colleague for Richmond-Steveston, who asked the member for Vancouver-Point Grey about his perspective on no-fault at the time. In answering the question, the member for Vancouver-Point Grey gave a very personal response that reflected on his own family’s experience, with his father having been a personal injury lawyer in Ontario who was practicing during the 1980s when the transition to no-fault occurred in that province.

Here’s what the Attorney General said about no-fault just two years ago in this very House. It’s night and day from what he has to say about it now, of course, and what he just said on his second reading speech:

“I don’t see no-fault, as some people do, as a panacea. I’ve seen the harms that it can cause people who are dependent on the existing system on a very firsthand basis. I’ve seen the benefits of the tort system for accident victims through my father’s practice, through the practice of my colleagues and the practice of law as a lawyer, before coming to the government.”

And:

“…I had quite a clear understanding of no-fault insurance as something that, frankly, was not that attractive based on my family’s experience. I had, absolutely, a perspective on our courts and the independent judiciary and the ability of counsel representing people to deal with disputes independently of government and the benefit of the court process.”

The Attorney General indicated that he was then opposed to no-fault. In his words, he recognized that it was not in the public interest from a legal perspective. Now the Attorney General is saying, essentially, that ICBC’s economic circumstances are so dire that there are simply no options left. Well, the Attorney General’s flip-flop needs further discussion, because it further emphasizes the conflict the member finds himself engaged in. As evidenced by his journey to this point, he first thought he could strike a balance between the rights of British Columbians and the financial needs of ICBC. By flip-flopping on no-fault, he admits now that he was wrong.

If there was ever any sort of balance in the past, it’s clear now the pendulum has swung all the way towards the interests of ICBC. Meanwhile, British Columbians are left wondering when their Attorney General — the chief legal officer of the province — is going to stand up for their legal rights, rather than acting as a cheerleader for ICBC and championing the stripping of the very rights he is obligated to protect.

His hypocrisy goes actually one step further. When our Attorney General was pushed in his exchanges with my colleague, the member for Richmond-Steveston, on his true motive behind the minor injury caps and his plans to curb ICBC’s loss projections at the time, he denied that. As “the son of a personal injury lawyer whose practice was devastated by no-fault insurance,” as he described himself…. He was trying to secretly “sneak in” no-fault insurance as some sort of realization of an NDP’s lifelong master plan.

At the conclusion of this lengthy retort, the Attorney General offered us another poetic moment of pure foreshadowing, at least for those who were listening carefully.

[4:10 p.m.]

This is what he said: “It’s a wonderful theory. It has elements of art. It has elements of creative spirit and tenacity, and it has every element of fiction.” Fiction. Two years ago the Attorney General called it fiction. Well, today we’re standing in this very House debating a bill that’s reality. It’s been tabled. It’s not fiction.

Now our Attorney General will say that he had a change of heart. The circumstances were just so dire that he had no choice. Also, the Attorney General will say: “Well, B.C. is not the first province to attempt the transition to no-fault.” But what the Attorney General disregards is that the catalyst for change, the person spearheading this movement and all of the other jurisdictions across Canada was never a person who wore two hats in conflict.

When I asked this question in Bill 9 committee to the member for Vancouver–Point Grey, he wasn’t able to address the two hats that he wears. There is no precedent for this. Because in Canadian history, there has never been a single individual who has been responsible for protecting the legal rights of those injured in automobile accidents and enhancing the profitability of the province’s monopoly automobile insurance provider.

I would also like to address the concerns around access to justice with this Bill 11. In other sessions, when this clear conflict of interest is brought up, the member for Vancouver–Point Grey has said that his actions pale in comparison to a former Attorney General of this province almost two decades ago.

Aside from being another example of this Attorney General forgoing the opportunity to look in the mirror for a compulsive preference to look instead in the rearview mirror, it provides a good opportunity for a comparison. To the displeasure of the legal committee regarding Geoff Plant–involved budgetary decisions that had a negative impact on legal aid funding, the concern was that access to justice would be impaired as the result of the budgetary decisions made at the time.

We all know that the cost of hiring a lawyer is a significant barrier for most people. At least until recently, British Columbians injured in motor vehicle accidents have not historically experienced a problem with access to justice. This is because all lawyers in this area were historically prepared to work on a contingency basis and be paid at the conclusion of the claim, rather than charging an hourly rate for the work as it is done.

The importance of contingency fee arrangements as a mechanism for enhancing access to justice has been recognized by the highest court in the land: the Supreme Court of Canada. These fee arrangements make court proceedings available to people who could not otherwise afford to have their legal rights determined. The Supreme Court of Canada has gone as far as describing this fee structure as a commendable goal that ought to be encouraged.

Rather than commend and encourage this sort of model, our Attorney General has done the opposite by tearing it down. In other words, this is the one area of the law that did not face the sort of access to justice crisis that plagued so many other areas of law. In spite of this, this Attorney General is creating an access to justice issue where one never existed.

He’s creating a system whereby injured British Columbians cannot access legal counsel or the court system. He’s creating a system that places injured British Columbians at the mercy of a revenue-driven Crown corporation. He’s asking citizens to blindly trust an organization that has historically been untrustworthy.

Under this new system, if British Columbians believe they have been treated unfairly, they will have no viable remedy in the court system. When that inevitable moment comes — when they are cut off from their benefits — they will have no one to turn to except ICBC’s very own fairness commission. It’s kind of like complaining about the linesman to the referee.

[4:15 p.m.]

If they don’t like that, they can proceed to the civil resolution tribunal, whose members are appointed by order-in-council on the recommendation of the Attorney General, meaning that currently the minister responsible for ICBC has complete control over who sits on the independent tribunal expected to decide ICBC cases. This may be why 30 out of 31 decisions made by the CRT in 2020, this year, went in ICBC’s favour — 30 out of 31.

The chance of a CRT ruling being appealed to the courts is virtually impossible because of the very high standard of patent unreasonableness for judicial review. By essentially eliminating an entire area of law, our Attorney General has taken great steps to erode access to justice, something he is supposed to preserve and enhance. For him to suggest that the circumstances around the former Attorney General are in any way similar to the dismantling of an entire branch of the justice system is patently disingenuous. This is a conflict that is unique in British Columbian history, a conflict that this member continues to avoid addressing and a conflict that taints the very nature of this bill.

With this Bill 11, the Attorney General and the Premier are asking British Columbians to trust them. Trust them that there will be cost savings and a better insurance model, yet no details are being provided. There are a lot of important details that are not being included in this bill and, therefore, not being debated in this House. We will not have that opportunity, because those details will be left to the discretion of the cabinet.

The minister himself has referred to this legislation simply as a framework, admitting how significant regulations will be to this new system. This broad regulatory authority is why many people have argued that there is a significant conflict of interest at the heart of this bill.

This is another conflict of interest. This is the conflict which leaves it up to cabinet to weigh the interests of meeting ICBC’s financial goals against the need to provide adequate compensation to British Columbians. The people of British Columbia represented by the members of this House deserve to know the details of how their compensation will change. They deserve to know exactly how this Bill 11 will affect them, yet there is still so much that is unknown. British Columbians need to know those details and where the Attorney General will be going with those regulations after the passing of this bill.

Now, those important details that are left to be determined by regulation include — no surprise — all the benefits. All the listed benefits are subject to regulation. The health care, the promised rehabilitation, the permanent impairment compensation, income replacement benefits, benefits for students, benefits for minors, retirement income benefits, family and caregiver benefits, death benefits — all subject to regulation. All to be defined by regulation.

Those regulations go on to specify other aspects, including repayment of benefits paid, services or assistance for which ICBC may provide funding to an insurer to facilitate and ensure its rehabilitation, expenses incurred respecting rehabilitation for which ICBC may provide reimbursement, services respecting rehabilitation ICBC may provide or arrange, decision-making or recommendation-making bodies that ICBC may establish for the purpose of making assessments respecting any matter in relation to insurance rehabilitation. Schedule of permanent impairments. The amount, manner and frequency of payment of benefits. Circumstances in which ICBC may adjust or renew benefits.

[4:20 p.m.]

“Prescribed meaning” comes up 15 times. Many definitions that are left to regulations include catastrophic injury, full- and part-time basis, temporary basis. The part 7 benefits payable for the provision of health care are to be set by regulation. “Subject to the regulations” — that phrase comes up 41 times in the bill. As I mentioned, all of those categories relating to permanent impairment compensation and income replacement benefits are all subject to regulation.

There’s a particular section that provides for further regulation around providing exceptions to the provision of benefits, establishing conditions to the entitlement of the benefit, establishing limits on entitlement, establishing conditions in relation to the operation of an exception or a limit established by regulation, establishing procedures for claiming a benefit and establishing duties and obligations of a person claiming a benefit. This effectively means that the government gets to establish an injured person’s legal duty.

There are other regulations that are to be set, regulations under which the corporation may reduce, suspend or cancel or refuse to pay benefits for situations where the accident was willfully caused by the insured, the insured’s bodily injury was willfully caused by the insured, the insured fails to comply with a particular requirement and other prescribed circumstances. It’s very important that British Columbians understand the circumstances under which all of the so-called enhanced benefits may be taken away, suspended or cancelled.

There are other provisions that talk about expenses, that term, within itself, such as: “Subject to the regulations, the corporation may pay an insured, or reimburse an insured, up to a maximum of the prescribed amount, for reasonable expenses incurred by the insured in relation to an accident, if those expenses are within the prescribed category of expenses.” There are at least three determinations there by regulation within one provision. A provision like that makes it meaningless for members of this House to debate. We have no idea of the scope of expenses and how that’s going to be dealt with, because the three major components are all to be dealt with and specified by regulation.

This is, in the words of the Attorney General, purely a framework document. The details are not there. The purpose of committee and second reading, as we’re doing right now, is to enable members of the House to put forward their concerns and to ask their questions — to understand the details of the bill that’s being proposed. Without those details, this bill is not in a position to be approved by this House. We don’t have the substance of the bill. We don’t know the details of what and how the benefits will operate.

Given the nature of a no-fault model, which puts all of the authority in the hands of ICBC, as a rules-based scheme, you’d think that we would have those details, because that’s all that’s going to determine it. There’ll be that rulebook that every ICBC adjuster will turn to. So in the absence of those details, it’s hard to have this debate.

[4:25 p.m.]

Just like the Attorney General and the Premier said with the referendum on electoral reform, it’s trust them again. Well, in 2017, British Columbians all over this province rejected that approach. And again this time British Columbians, through ourselves as their representatives, are not being given that opportunity to understand the details of this very fundamental change. On the first day of the session back, when the province ought to be concerned and focused on economic recovery, the government has continued to pursue this bill, which is just a shell. On the first day, they are rushing this through the House.

Well, even with their consultations that were supposed to take place with stakeholders between February and May…. We’ll be looking to the Attorney General for an update on those consultations. The details of this no-fault benefit scheme will be determined by the cabinet, behind closed doors, as currently presented. This is undemocratic. With such a fundamental change in taking away the legal rights of British Columbians, the details should be considered by all members of this Legislative Assembly.

As we have seen with stakeholders who saw this challenge before, when the Attorney General made a significant change to the minor injury legislation — passed even after promising to stakeholders that he would not expand the definition to include brain injury and concussion…. He broke that promise. He did that by order-in-council. He did that after the definition of “minor injury” was determined and approved in this House by the government.

As my colleague the member for Richmond-Queensborough talked about, the importance of understanding the state of ICBC’s finances, the fact that we’re approving this fundamental change in the absence of even being provided by this government with an update on the state and the financial status of ICBC, particularly in the face of COVID-19….

There was also another path of lack of transparency. The BCUC provides regulatory oversight to be able to provide some true insight into ICBC’s finances that are apparently so dire that they require the introduction of a no-fault insurance scheme. ICBC was due to make their application on February 1 this year. So what did the application reveal? Nothing. Zero. That’s because there was no application. This government made an order-in-council on February 6 exempting ICBC from applying to the BCUC — zero regulatory oversight from the independent agency that is mandated to do so.

With that February 6, 2020, OIC, ICBC was exempted from its rate-filing reporting requirements with the BCUC, effectively giving this government a free pass from regulatory oversight, disclosure and review. In the course of that, we’re being asked to review and approve this bill as a fundamental change without any disclosure, even to the regulatory oversight, because, as I understand, the next application will be going forward at the end of this year, well past this bill.

This change under Bill 11 is so fundamental that it’s not something that should be done in the shadows. It shouldn’t be done in a way that we have to keep guessing as to what the details are and not knowing the financial position of ICBC.

A recent poll had shown that 75 percent of British Columbians were in favour of ending the car insurance monopoly for ICBC and allowing customer choice in car insurance in British Columbia. Now, this is likely due to the experience that British Columbians are having with ICBC. Any British Columbian injured in a car accident knows what to expect when dealing with ICBC, including their medical or wage loss benefits potentially being denied, arbitrarily being ignored or disbelieved, or even receiving a lowball, unfair settlement offer.

[4:30 p.m.]

In February of 2019, this government implemented or approved an ICBC meat chart policy that gives an insured British Columbian two options: accept a lowball offer, or go to court. This is something the Attorney General has stood in this House denying the existence of in response to my questioning. All this government and ICBC have done is show how important it is for British Columbians to have access to the courts and an impartial judiciary to ensure some level of basic fairness and to prevent the bullying tactics of this insurance monopoly being forced upon an injured citizen in this province.

This government has acknowledged this need. The Attorney General stated in his January 29, 2020, press conference: “I think it is no secret that many British Columbians simply don’t trust ICBC.” The Attorney General then announced a Fairness Office with ICBC to deal with this lack of trust. This is despite the fact that ICBC has had a fairness commissioner since 2012.

With the no-fault scheme under Bill 11, how does this Attorney General, after acknowledging the woeful job ICBC has done in treating people of this province fairly, now expect British Columbians to trust ICBC with the lifetime care of their severely injured child or loved one? This is what Bill 11 is asking for.

Adjustors at ICBC will still have the same targets to meet and expectations to abide by. Their allegiance will still be to ICBC. They will still make every claimant struggle for their compensation, all the while attempting to recover from potentially serious injuries.

ICBC’s paramount objective has always been and will always be to ensure that premiums cover costs. ICBC wants to approach each case with compassion and empathy, giving injured victims the benefit of the doubt. But while these are lofty goals, they tend to increase operating costs, which, of course, is not good for policyholders.

ICBC’s historical conduct only highlights how important it is for British Columbians to have access to the courts and an impartial judiciary to ensure some level of basic fairness and to prevent the strong-arm tactics of ICBC being forced upon injured British Columbians. Under the no-fault scheme with Bill 11, injured British Columbians may be dealing with ICBC indefinitely, with increased reliance on ICBC.

In the event of an injury being long term, that person will need to continually establish with ICBC that they’re entitled to accident benefits. Every few months, or yearly, the person will need to submit medical evidence of ongoing impairment to continue receiving benefits. An injured person will need to seek approval from ICBC for every dollar lost in wages or spent on treatment. The more severe and prolonged the injury, the longer the person will be reliant upon ICBC, sometimes for the duration of their life. Simply put, ICBC is the WCB for motor vehicle accidents.

No-fault will have and result in a significant increase in the number of ICBC employees, with commensurate benefits, salaries and pensions. The bureaucracy and administration required to monitor and approve benefits for the duration of an injured person’s life will eventually cost far more than providing the same injured person a lump sum payment and the freedom to choose their own care without continuous governmental oversight.

No-fault will give almost absolute decision-making authority to ICBC — the same ICBC employees that have been wrongfully denying benefits, ignoring customers and disbelieving injured British Columbians for decades. The authority that ICBC will have over the lives of injured British Columbians is significant. For example, while receiving benefits, ICBC may decide that a person could perform another job instead of their previous job, and if that person doesn’t pursue it, their benefits can be reduced.

Another example is that treatment may only be continued if ICBC determines that it is improving the person’s functioning. Without establishing that it actually makes a person function better, such treatments may not be covered.

[4:35 p.m.]

Similar to WorkSafeBC, ICBC will maintain a list of medicines it deems appropriate for a condition based on its own understanding of scientific studies and literature. Its determination will override a patient’s or a doctor’s experience.

As I’ve said, the no-fault scheme under Bill 11 takes rights away from British Columbians. An injured British Columbian will have no right to sue and no access to an independent judiciary if they are being treated unfairly by ICBC. Under no-fault, the only recourse an injured party will have, if they are being treated unfairly by ICBC, will be to bring complaints higher and higher up through ICBC.

There will be no damages for pain and suffering, including for British Columbians with brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations and burns. There will be no additional protection or compensation provided for people with pre-existing conditions or disabilities. There will be no option for persons to retain their ability to sue for fair compensation.

Under the no-fault scheme in Bill 11, ICBC determines when a person is injured and their eligible benefits. It is challenging for the vulnerable, including the elderly and new Canadians, to be advocating for their own rights and benefits in dealing with ICBC, including to demonstrate causation. For example, if ICBC determines unilaterally that the cause of leaving work was workplace stress and not related to the original injuries, that person will not qualify for further wage-loss support or psychological treatment.

Under the no-fault scheme in Bill 11, ICBC and its adjusters will have far more power and will never have to answer to the court system or an independent judiciary for their actions. The only safeguard a British Columbian will have in dealing with an unfair ICBC employee will be to complain to their manager at ICBC. If that ICBC manager is unfair, our British Columbian will have to then complain to that ICBC manager’s ICBC manager. If that ICBC manager’s ICBC manager is unfair, the British Columbian will have to complain to the ICBC Fairness Office and then the ICBC ombudsperson.

Then, if they are still being treated unfairly, they can complain to the CRT, which, as I indicated earlier, is overseen by the same minister who is in charge of ICBC. With the CRT, there is no reasonable way for injured British Columbians to obtain legal help. Instead, vulnerable and injured British Columbians are expected to navigate this complex system on their own, including people with severe brain injuries, psychological injuries and language barriers.

The Attorney General has claimed that the CRT will ensure the fairness of ICBC towards accident victims and that it will act as a safeguard for injured British Columbians. The Attorney General has based this idea of fairness, in part, on the idea that the CRT, the civil resolution tribunal, is an independent administrative body free from governmental influence.

In this House, the Attorney General has stated that the CRT is independent of ICBC and independent of government. This is not true.

CRT members are government employees who are appointed via an order-in-council on the recommendation of the Attorney General of this province. The Attorney General has, in practice, almost complete control over who sits on the CRT. The Attorney General of this province is also, as I’ve been talking throughout my comments here, the minister in charge of ICBC. So in practice, the person in charge of ICBC is also in charge of the CRT.

Further, members of the CRT are appointed by the Attorney General for two- to four-year terms. This means that if the minister in charge of ICBC does not like the rulings of a member of the CRT, that member can simply be released. Further, many of the CRT members used to work for the WCB, which is what many British Columbians know to be unfair, slow and frustrating to deal with.

[4:40 p.m.]

The CRT is not independent. It’s not free of government. In effect, ICBC has control over that administrative body, this administrative body that is supposed to protect British Columbians from ICBC.

I want to also comment on the appeal process. We’ve talked about the appeal process for no-fault. That if you want to challenge the decision of an ICBC adjustor, you might turn to the fairness office. Well, that would have a low likelihood of success, given where it’s situated within ICBC. The CRT also likely will take a deferential standard of review to ICBC’s decision, which again lowers the likelihood that decisions would be overturned. Finally, on judicial review of CRT decisions, the standard of review in most situations is patent unreasonableness, which is the most deferential standard of review.

So the appeal process does underline the importance of decisions made in the first stage by ICBC adjustors, which is made on available medical insurance, as it appears likely that the CRT will be limited reviewing those decisions, rather than reconsidering them afresh. Then the same limitation would be the case for judicial review of CRT decisions by the B.C. Supreme Court. As a result, only egregious oversights will proceed to the point of judicial review and then would only do so slowly.

In North America, insurance premiums in no-fault jurisdictions are, on average, 25 percent higher than in traditional tort jurisdictions. In 2018, 75 percent of insurance premiums increased after this NDP government brought in the cap system. Now the NDP have promised savings of $400 on average after they bring in no-fault insurance, as they anticipate, in May 2021. This would likely be another broken promise. And even if this is true, it’s simply a reduction on already increased premiums.

The irony of the $400 savings announcement should not go unnoticed. The NDP increased premiums significantly right before announcing no-fault, with an associated promise of a future $400 savings. This is like raising the price of an apple by 50 percent and then proudly announcing a 20 percent sale on apples.

More importantly, how can we trust these changes will actually result in promised savings? After all, the Attorney General promised that ICBC would save $400 million from his last round of changes — that is, limiting expert reports. Well, those savings, apparently, quickly evaporated when the legislation he championed and rushed through the system via improper channels was deemed unconstitutional.

If we give the Attorney General’s plan the benefit of doubt, it’s still unclear how the public will realize $400 in savings. The Attorney General has been saying repeatedly that people injured in motor vehicle accidents will be eligible for $7.5 million in care and recovery benefits. Once again, this applies to good and bad drivers alike. Under the current system, bad drivers do not have access to this level of benefits. Conversely, good drivers at least have the ability to fight for this compensation.

What the Attorney General is proposing to do now is to remove the fight from the equation and instead offer compensation and benefits to everyone involved in an accident. But it should not be lost in this debate that this same offering is being made to innocent and negligent drivers alike.

In attempting to get rid of legal costs, the Attorney General is willing to go so far as to financially reward bad and negligent drivers. Removing the legal costs associated with the system is one thing, but rewarding bad drivers in the process is a slap in the face to anyone who has been injured on our roads at the hands of a negligent driver.

[4:45 p.m.]

Finally, even if a $400 saving were to be realized, the public is still paying more than they ever have paid for car insurance. The only difference now is that the most grievously injured British Columbians are now being reliant upon a lifetime of dealing with ICBC.

Under our tort system, an injured person would be able to recover 100 percent of their lost income, treatment costs, pain and suffering. No-fault has fixed limits on what injured British Columbians can recover for wage loss, a maximum of $1,200 per week; and treatment costs, pursuant to the ICBC part 7 limits; as well as no compensation for pain and suffering, as I mentioned, meaning injured British Columbians will be undercompensated unless they purchase additional insurance. This will be on top of what they pay for ICBC insurance premiums and will result in British Columbians spending more in total on car insurance.

Under a no-fault system, bad drivers and good drivers are treated the same when an accident occurs, as I’ve mentioned. What that means in the example that I gave earlier is that the person who is distracted on their phone and crashes into the rear of another vehicle at near full speed will have access to the exact same benefits as the person who innocently stopped at the red light. It is clear from British Columbians that they want bad drivers to be treated differently than good drivers.

The Attorney General referred to Saskatchewan as having a system of no-fault. As much as I don’t want or like to talk about this example, the tragedy of the Humboldt Broncos — under that system, the driver who struck the bus is entitled to the exact same benefits package as the victims on the bus.

The Attorney General has mentioned a new permanent impairment benefit that could provide a lump-sum payment of up to $250,000. Presumably, this applies to the at-fault motorist, such as the driver in the Humboldt Broncos tragedy. In essence, the newly proposed system seems to reward bad drivers by offering them large lump-sum payments. At the very least, it treats bad and good drivers the same.

No-fault means that an injured person will recover only what ICBC says they can recover. As I have mentioned before, that’s 90 percent of your wages up to $1,200 per week, even if you used to make $100,000 plus per year or own your own business, and provides for set costs for treatment. For example, you can only recover $80 of a $100 physiotherapy session and nothing for pain and suffering.

The right to sue drivers is also a falsity. The Attorney General has said that a British Columbian still maintains an ability to sue drivers convicted of criminal offences, as he just said in second reading. What the Attorney General has failed to explain to British Columbians is that criminal convictions for driving offences are incredibly rare. Even if they are successful, an injured person would have to sue their driver personally. If that convicted driver had no assets, that injured person is out of luck. If the driver has assets, the injured person would have to go through a long, expensive and potentially unsuccessful collections process.

This should be compared to the current tort system where ICBC still honours the policy of the convicted driver so the injured person can be compensated, but then ICBC can collect any payment made to the injured party from the convicted driver.

The Attorney General has compared the no-fault systems in Manitoba and Saskatchewan with the changes coming to ICBC. He says these systems are delivering better benefits already. What the Attorney General doesn’t say is that in those provinces, if someone is injured in a car accident because of a drunk driver, it is not as simple as suing the drunk driver.

In Saskatchewan, the no-fault system that the Attorney General seems to hold in such high regard makes it virtually impossible to sue a drunk driver. In some cases, even when a drunk driver has been convicted of dangerous driving causing death, the courts in Saskatchewan have prevented a deceased family from pursuing a claim against a drunk driver, because they were not able to show that the drunk driver intended to cause the death of the person.

[4:50 p.m.]

Lastly, I will want to point out that Bill 11 discriminates, in its treatment, against children, students, stay-at-home parents, part-time workers, high earners, women, minorities and people who are retired. A person is only entitled to 90 percent of the wages they were earning at the time of the accident, up to $1,200 per week. If you make more than that, were planning on going back to work, at home caring for children, a student, a new immigrant or own your own new business, you will not be able to retain full recovery.

Wage-loss benefits for the unemployed will be based on the average earnings of British Columbians, which are about $50,000 per year. If a person is not in the labour force at the time of the accident — that is, not working or not looking for work — they will not be entitled to wage-loss benefits. This includes people who have temporarily left the labour force but plan to return, such as new parents.

Wage-loss benefits will be awarded under no-fault based on current income, similar to those temporarily not working. This hurts those who work part-time but intend to return full-time. Often a new parent will work or move to working part-time before their child is old enough to attend school.

Wage-loss benefits for students will be based on the average earnings of British Columbians. So about $50,000 per year, as I mentioned. Many students, particularly university and graduate students, have the potential to earn much more than $50,000 per year.

Wage-loss benefits will be awarded based on current income. This also hurts and has a discriminatory effect on young workers whose wages quickly increase once they start gaining experience.

The no-fault scheme will only compensate wage loss up to roughly $93,000 per year. Anyone earning more will be undercompensated. Since women and minorities experience a wage gap and the current system cannot consider discrimination in wages, the wage benefit under the no-fault scheme in Bill 11 will be based on existing discrimination.

In closing, it is clear that Bill 11 is tainted with the conflict of the minister responsible for ICBC, and his dual role as Attorney General for this province, in taking away the rights of injured British Columbians to save costs for ICBC.

This bill is flawed from the outset in the way that it is being tabled in this House. The bill is also defective, with too many important details being left to be determined by regulation. As I’ve said, we need to see those details to consider this fundamental change. With what we have, we’re left with pursuing those details as much as we can during the committee stage. I’ve also raised numerous concerns about the no-fault scheme, which we’ll need to review in detail at the committee stage.

With that, Mr. Speaker, that concludes my remarks. I look forward to the committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

This concludes the debate on this bill. The member for Vancouver-Langara is the final speaker.

I now look to government for the next step in the process.

Hon. C. James: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. If I could ask for a two-minute recess while the Attorney comes back to close off debate.

Deputy Speaker: We will take a two-minute recess until that time.

The House recessed from 4:54 p.m. to 4:55 p.m.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: I recognize the Attorney General, closing debate.

Hon. D. Eby: Thank you to the members for their remarks. I wanted to just take a moment to respond to some specific concerns that were raised by the opposition in relation to the bill. I note there was a lot of conversation. Some of it actually talked about the legislation that’s proposed.

It’s not totally clear to me yet where the opposition is in terms of voting either for or against the new system. I look forward to seeing how these votes are going to go. But in terms of the proposals that have come forward from the opposition…. If they’re opposed to it, it’s not clear to me what their solution is for more affordable insurance in British Columbia with better benefits.

Now, we’ve heard privatization. The members know that the private insurers issued a report that said that that would result in a 37 percent increase in basic insurance for those under 20 costing $700, a 24 percent increase for those 20 to 24 years old costing $400 and an 18 percent increase in basic insurance for those 25 to 34 years old costing $200. So that’s one option that they’ve floated. A significant rate increase for many British Columbians under privatization or what was described by the private insurers as the full competition model.

The member for Richmond–Queensborough was on CBC. So we do know a little bit about what his perspective is. He said we could have a public insurer. It can be a private insurer. It may be a hybrid of both. He wasn’t sure when he was on CBC Victoria, All Points West. One thing he did know was that he wanted to do a thorough review of ICBC. “Look around the English-speaking world and see what jurisdiction does it better.”

That’s also something the Leader of the Opposition emphasized as the B.C. Liberal approach to ICBC: “We need to have a complete review of auto insurance in this province. Let’s look at the best examples from around the world — New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., across Canada — find out what the best options are and give drivers a choice. We’re stuck in this la-la land of the NDP monopoly, and it doesn’t work anymore. Be honest about it.”

Well, it is interesting. The B.C. Liberals did so many reports when they were responsible for ICBC they forgot they actually did this report. In July of 2017, they commissioned a report from Ernst and Young that “includes comparing ICBC against other relevant jurisdictions across Canada and internationally, including the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and select European countries.”

Isn’t that interesting? The work has already been done, and the verdict is in that the model that is in front of the House is the best approach for reducing costs and improving benefits for British Columbians.

The B.C. Liberals, when they were in charge, did ten different reports. Every six months they did a report. Yet here we are with ICBC in a mess, which is what they left us, and on the verge of huge success.

Keep in mind the zero percent rate increase this year, which was actually based on the costs faced by ICBC; 20,000 accidents reduced pre-COVID; ICBC finding its feet again under the existing system, slowly but surely, due to the reforms we’ve already put in place. These new reforms are delivering 20 percent savings to drivers. Benefits increased to $7.5 million.

The members on the other side want to do a review. They want to hire another third-party business firm. They want to do more and more reports about ICBC. That’s their prerogative in opposition, but I hope they will see that a report will not save British Columbians money.

[5:00 p.m.]

This legislation in front of the House will. A report will not improve benefits for British Columbians. This legislation in front of the House will.

I’ll look forward to seeing them vote for drivers in British Columbia instead of for the other interests that they’re representing, clearly, if they vote against it.

I move second reading. After that, I do look forward to the committee stage.

An Hon. Member: Division.

Deputy Speaker: This will be deferred until a later sitting.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading debate on Bill 4.

BILL 4 — BUDGET MEASURES
IMPLEMENTATION ACT, 2020

Hon. C. James: I move that Bill 4, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2020, be now read a second time.

The people of our province, along with the rest of Canada and countries around the world, have been through incredibly trying times in the months since Bill 4 was introduced in the House. We’ve witnessed the private sector, not-for-profits and charities, individuals, families, seniors, our health care professionals — nurses, doctors, care providers, cleaning and administrative staff — and other essential service workers like grocery clerks, transit drivers, municipal workers, public servants and child care providers coalesce around this crisis to produce an incredible response.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Part of this response, as we all know in this House, involved an unplanned but necessary interruption to the business of this House. I want to thank all the members for their dedication and cooperation during this time as we’ve spent time briefing each other and talking about the kinds of needs that the public needs during this time.

Today I rise to return to Bill 4, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2020, which works to implement critical aspects of Budget 2020. While the pandemic has certainly changed the economic landscape in our province — I will be bringing forward an economic update on July 14, and also, the first quarterly report will come out mid-September — there are many critical aspects of Budget 2020 that continue.

There are some amendments that will need to be made as a result of the pandemic. I’ll speak about those in a bit. They’re mainly the pieces that come from the $5 billion and changing timelines around pieces.

Just to speak for a moment about the bill, which contains two parts. Part 1 amends a number of statutes in order to implement the tax measures in Budget 2020. The bill amends the Income Tax Act to extend the farmers food donation tax credit for three years. This extension reaffirms our government’s commitment to support for B.C. agriculture while providing food banks with local nutritious food.

This bill also introduces a precertification requirement for corporations intending to claim the production services tax credit, and it formalizes the precertification notification introduced by Creative B.C. in fall 2019 after consultation with the film industry. Mandatory precertification ensures that the government will receive information on tax credit claims early in the production process.

[5:05 p.m.]

This bill also sets the fees for various certificates under the Film Incentive B.C. and production services tax credits. These changes were done by consultation, working with the industry, and I want to express my appreciation to them for being able to come forward with these kinds of changes that will make a difference to the accountability around when we get information and what we can build into the budget.

Effective January 1, 2020, the Income Tax Act is amended to introduce a new top marginal personal income tax rate of 20.5 percent. This new top rate will apply to incomes over $220,000. The top tax bracket of $220,000 will be indexed to inflation, and this change will only affect the top 1 percent of income earners in our province. Even with this change, top earners in the province will continue to pay very competitive income tax rates.

This bill also makes technical changes to the Income Tax Act to ensure consistency with other measures and improve administration. These amendments include reducing the deadline to claim the Film Incentive B.C. and production services tax credits to 18 months, which aligns the deadline with most other B.C. corporate income tax credits, and amending the political contributions tax credit to be in line with election laws and clarify that corporations are not able to claim that tax credit.

Bill 4 makes several amendments to the Provincial Sales Tax Act. It amends the act to provide refunds for real property contractors who perform value-added work on goods and then install those goods in real property outside the province. Our government’s heard from those businesses and understands when they follow the existing sales tax rules, the PST is embedded in the cost of materials they install for customers at locations outside of B.C. This makes it hard for them to compete with similar businesses outside B.C. that don’t face this cost. So these amendments will address this issue.

This bill also responds to a long-running recommendation of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. This multiparty committee has, for seven consecutive budget consultations, recommended that a tax be applied to unhealthy drinks like pop.

Likewise, when experts on the MSP Task Force considered the existing PST exemption for food and beverages, they noted that many drinks have some degree of sugar or sugar substitute content and that that brings no nutritional or other benefits to justify preferential treatment under the PST system.

That’s why our government is taking a step in this direction by removing the PST exemption on what the bill refers to as soda beverages. We see this as a positive step for the health of British Columbians and particularly our youth, who are price sensitive.

The last significant change to the PST made by this bill helps bring our revenue collection system into the modern era. The Provincial Sales Tax Act, from the time it took effect in 2013, already imposed PST on streaming services, software, and goods that British Columbians purchased from suppliers located outside our province. What it does not do, however, is require many of those outside suppliers to collect the PST that was owed. Instead, it leaves tax payment obligations to the consumer. This isn’t fair, nor is it efficient.

The collection system was designed for the way commerce used to be before the digital era. The existing rules leave bricks-and-mortar businesses in B.C. at a disadvantage when compared to competitors that are not required to collect the PST. So this bill fixes that by ensuring that Canadian sellers of goods, along with Canadian and foreign sellers of software and telecommunication services, will be required to collect this tax if they have more than $10,000 in revenue from B.C. customers.

Additionally, recalling our government’s recent move to increase the rate of PST on vaping products, this bill requires all Canadian sellers of vapour products to collect B.C. sales tax on sales made to B.C. customers, even if their revenues are less than $10,000. B.C.’s arrangements with the federal government will continue to govern how the PST is collected on goods, including vapour products, when these goods are imported from outside Canada.

[5:10 p.m.]

This bill also includes a series of minor technical and housekeeping amendments to the Provincial Sales Tax Act. The technical amendments are made to align the legislation with long-standing administrative policies concerning leases. They also provide authority for effective dates as early as February 19 for sales tax measures that will be given effect through regulation.

These measures under this include new exemptions and refunds related to electric aircraft, an expanded exemption for machinery and equipment used for pollution control and waste management, and various housekeeping amendments.

Bill 4 amends the Carbon Tax Act to align B.C.’s carbon tax rates with the emission factors used by the federal government to determine its carbon backstop rates. This ensures that B.C.’s carbon tax is based on newer science and that its methodology is consistent with that which applies in the backstop provinces. Using these new emission factors, we see very small changes in the rates for fuels, small decreases for gasoline and small increases for other fuels like natural gas.

Bill 4 amends the Tobacco Tax Act to address a new class of tobacco products: so-called heating tobacco products that we’re seeing in the marketplace. These are close substitutes for cigarettes. The amendments made by this bill ensure that they do not receive preferential treatment under the Tobacco Tax Act.

The bill also amends the Ports Property Tax Act to provide greater flexibility to municipalities to set a class 4 tax rate for designated ports. This amendment results from the review of the ports competitive initiative and addresses an unintended consequence of the act. The change will provide greater flexibility to municipalities in setting their tax rates while giving the industry the certainty it needs on its municipal taxes. Again, I thank the municipalities and the ports for taking part in this review.

The Land Tax Deferment Act is amended to fully realize the benefits of centralized electronic filing of property tax deferment applications. Service enhancements will include a faster processing time and a reduction in responsibilities for municipal tax collectors.

The Property Transfer Tax Act is amended to clarify the treatment of transferees who do not qualify for a principal residence exemption only because the property is greater than one-half hectare in area or contains improvements which are not in the residential class. This amendment will confirm current administrative treatment.

Finally, the bill also amends multiple acts to allow the Minister of Finance to further delegate appeal decisions. This includes amendments to the Carbon Tax Act, Employer Health Tax Act, Forest Act, Home Owner Grant Act, Income Tax Act, Insurance Premium Tax Act, International Business Activity Act, Land Owner Transparency Act, Logging Tax Act, Mineral Tax Act, Motor Fuel Tax Act, Property Transfer Tax Act, Provincial Sales Tax Act, Speculation and Vacancy Tax Act and the Tobacco Tax Act. It provides the minister the authority to delegate appeal decisions to ensure that taxpayers can continue to expect tax appeals to be reviewed and decided in a timely manner.

Bill 4 was drafted before COVID-19 reached B.C. and, of course, before our government announced our COVID-19 action plan in March. With this in mind, looking ahead to our committee debate of Bill 4, our government intends to introduce a few House amendments which will uphold commitments concerning delays to the implementation of certain tax measures — delays that are already public and that we’ve introduced to help ease some of the economic impacts that people are facing as a result of the pandemic.

That was part 1 of the bill. I’ll now move on to part 2 of the bill, which includes amendments to the Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act, the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act and the Financial Administration Act, mainly to address the recent change in the fixed election date to the third Saturday in October.

The bill amends the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act to set a budget date on the fourth Tuesday in March following the October fixed election date to allow additional time for the budget and estimates development process. The amendments also provide clearer rules for budget and estimate presentation dates when an election is held on dates other than the third Saturday in October.

[5:15 p.m.]

These rules will allow a new, incoming government up to 120 days to present a budget and estimates to the Legislative Assembly if the budget and estimates have not already been presented. If an election takes place after the estimates are presented to the Legislative Assembly, the new government will continue to have 90 days to present a budget, as is the case with the existing act.

New provisions are added in the act to clarify the timelines in cases where there is a delay in the constitution of a government following an election. Accordingly, in cases where the first government after an election is replaced, the amendments ensure the period of 120 days for tabling the estimates is available to both the first as well as the subsequent government that may be constituted after an election.

The amended act will also allow for adjustments to release dates for quarterly reports and annual service reports as a result of elections in a fiscal year. So this part of the bill actually addresses each of the pieces that occur with a budget, with quarterly reports, with financial statements and with service plans and does them based on a variety of dates that may occur in the forming of a government.

The quarterly report will not be required if the due date for such a report falls in the period from the date an election is called to the date that is 40 days after a new government is in place. Also, a quarterly report may be delayed by up to 30 days if that delay allows it to be included in the estimates. Similarly, the amendment will remove the requirement for the budget consultation process to be conducted in an election year.

We also propose to amend the act to extend by one week the regular annual budget date for non-election years to the fourth Tuesday in February. This change allows slightly more time to complete our due diligence and also recognizes the impact of the Family Day holiday on the budget development schedule.

This bill also includes some technical housekeeping amendments to the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. A government organization will not be required to make public an annual service plan if that organization was established or included in the government reporting entity within 60 days before the main estimates are presented. Annual service plans for two or more government organizations may be consolidated with the approval of the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance will also have the authority to allow and to request a revised service plan for a ministry or a government organization.

Finally, the requirement date for an annual service plan report and for a government strategic plan report is amended for election years to allow up to 40 days after the new government is in place.

The Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act is proposed to be amended to update and clarify the rules around ministerial holdbacks in relation to the change of government after an election. With the proposed amendments, the ministerial holdbacks for an incoming government apply from the date that the government has passed a supply act. The restoration of the holdbacks to outgoing ministers will be based on the last quarterly report issued by the outgoing government if the public accounts were not issued before the appointment of the incoming government.

The Financial Administration Act is proposed to be amended to complement the amendments to the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. This amendment includes extending the special warrant spending authority provisions while the Legislature is not in session during an election year from 90 days to 120 days after the constitution of a new government. Corresponding to the new provisions in the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, the 120-day period for the special warrant will apply to a first as well as a subsequent post-election government.

The amendment also introduces a very limited-term, short-term special warrant spending authority while the Legislature is in session to recognize the tabling of a budget and estimates on the last Tuesday of March. This amendment ensures that limited funding remains available should an interim supply act not be enacted by March 31 and would only apply to address election-year scheduled impacts.

[5:20 p.m.]

While that seems very complex, it basically takes into account what we’ve learned over the last few years, which is that if you end up with a government shifting after an election, it impacts the dates for budgets, for quarterly reports and for service plans. So basically, these changes will permit whatever the public decides in democracy, in a government, and allow sufficient time for due diligence to be done by the good public servants who work for all of us in British Columbia.

With that, I’ll take my place.

S. Cadieux: I’d like to remind the few members of the public who might be watching that this debate isn’t about the budget. We had the debate on the budget earlier this year, and we’ll have greater debate, in detail, during estimates as they continue.

To be clear, this bill implements measures in the budget that will require legislative amendments. It does all seem a bit odd, though, to be discussing measures to support a budget that no longer has a shred of credibility. If we’re going to intelligently debate this bill and provide the necessary and objective criticism that it requires, then we certainly do need to know what has changed since February.

We need a clear, current picture of B.C.’s finances on which to deliver that objective review, but we aren’t being provided that information. Government is choosing to keep the opposition and the public in the dark and blame that on the pandemic. That’s just not good enough.

No one on this side of the House is going to say that government is at fault for the pandemic, nor for the need for emergency spending measures. But it’s only reasonable to ask for an accounting of that spending and for the changes that have undoubtedly befallen the provincial budget as a result of the economic turmoil.

The Finance Minister has said today that she will give an update on some of the information on July 14, but we’re not sure what that will entail. We are asking for a full fiscal update, not just figures on the debt, and we don’t know if we’re going to get that full picture on July 14, before this House rises.

Government is surely — and the minister admitted this — getting weekly, if not daily, financial updates. There’s no reason that she can’t tell British Columbians where the budget stands and their plan to get our economy back on track. Understandably, things will continue to change and evolve, as they do even without a pandemic. So it certainly isn’t an excuse not to share where we are today so that the debates here can be informed with the latest information and projections.

To keep us in the dark is to say: “Don’t worry about it. Trust us. Give us a blank cheque.” I think government needs to do better than that. It’s not unreasonable for us to be asking how much revenues have declined and how much spending has increased.

Where has the pandemic response money been committed and spent? What are the data on indicators like unemployment, retail sales, exports, real estate starts and sales, foreclosures, bankruptcies? What is all of that saying? What information is government using and tracking to make their decisions today? What is the current state of the province’s finances? What is the size of the anticipated deficit?

We could argue — and, I admit, probably will — that the NDP has wasted previous surpluses and now, therefore, lacks fiscal capacity.

What is the debt-to-revenue ratio as of today? With that clarity, the opposition could then ask legitimate questions of a budget implementation bill. The questions we instead will have to propose we will place on conjecture, which is certainly not my preference.

There are some minor changes and some technical provisions in this bill, which we can cover in committee, that the minister has mentioned today. Of course, there are some larger pieces that I’m going to spend a few moments on here today.

This is, of course, a technical bill that allows government to begin implementing some of the more than $250 million in new taxes that it imposed on British Columbians with Budget 2020. We know that of the $5½ billion in new taxes that were introduced by government in their first real budget in 2018, 60 percent of those tax increases were borne by business. In 2019, 88 percent of the tax increases were borne by businesses that were already reeling from that 2018 budget. With businesses all tapped out, this bill focuses on taxes that will hit individuals’ wallets.

The NDP have introduced 23 new or increased taxes since coming into power. Despite record taxation under this government, they were still struggling to balance the budget in February and had to add four new taxes with this budget to balance.

[5:25 p.m.]

This implementation bill is part of another tax-and-spend budget that’s devoid of a plan to grow the economy and help people get ahead. They’ve squandered the opportunity to help people, with no focus on growing the economy or delivering on promises to make life more affordable. And that was all before COVID-19.

Now with the pandemic taking priority, with the budgets of all levels of government thrown into shambles, is this government taking another look at their plan?

In response to COVID-19, government saw fit to announce deferrals on a bunch of tax measures, delayed the implementation of these new taxes, not because, necessarily, they saw the importance of lessening the impacts on taxpayers, but simply because this bill had not yet passed.

The questions that naturally follow for us are: is now the right time to be adding these additional new taxes? Is there now an even greater risk of driving away ever-more important investments in our economy?

Again, I recognize that the bill was conceived prior to the pandemic paralyzing the economy, but as we saw last week, this government still has no plan for economic recovery, and they think economic recovery can wait until the fall. So this bill and the measures in it really fall into a completely new reality.

Bill 4 introduces four new taxes, as I said, bringing the total number of NDP taxes to 23, again in the now largely irrelevant Budget 2020 that would have been in deficit without these four new taxes.

First, the Netflix tax on digital services that the minister mentioned will apply the PST to streaming channels like Disney, Spotify. This tax was originally slated to bring in a whole $11 million in 2020. Now, this would cost consumers as much as $15 a year per streaming service, which might not sound like much, but 15 bucks in taxes is 15 bucks you don’t have to spend on groceries. This will also apply to pay-for-use video conferencing services like Zoom, which certainly we are using to stay in touch with our families and work from home — even do our work in the Legislature in these unprecedented times.

People earning above $220,000 will now be taxed at 20.5 percent — now, I admit, popular as long as you’re not in this earning bracket. But it’s just another dip into the pockets of people, like the family doctors that we’re desperately trying to convince to make B.C. home. Government was hoping that this would add another $216 million to the revenue line.

The sugary drink soda tax was hoped to bring in an estimated $27 million in tax revenue this year. And lastly, while the province introduced a tax on vaping devices and substances in January, this budget adds heated tobacco as a separate class. I’m certainly not opposed to this one, and I’m sure government will be thrilled to hear that.

When it’s all said and done, it’s main street that ends up bearing the disproportionate brunt of the devastation of cumulative effects of 23 new tax measures over the short tenure of this NDP government. It’s not the rich. It’s main street, British Columbia. It’s families. It’s small business owners. It’s your neighbours. And it’s you.

The NDP plan for 2020 was continuing to tax and spend. They’ve raised taxation revenue equal to $3,025 per household since forming government. It will rise again to over $4,667 per household by 2022. That’s if they add nothing from today forward. Taxation is up $5.7 billion per year since 2016-17 and will rise to $8.8 billion this year. Spending is up even more, at $11.4 billion per year, and will rise to $14.9 billion per year over the course of the three-year budget plan.

We must absolutely remember that this was before COVID-19 and the economic collapse that we’re witnessing. Now, certainly, it is not one policy that tips economies or markets into sharp decline. It’s usually a buildup of various government policies that leads to a change in business sentiment or another extreme factor — like we’ve, of course, borne witness to with COVID-19 — that sends economies into panic and into recession.

The NDP had inherited the leading economy in the country, something the previous Liberal governments worked hard to achieve. Yet just three years into this government, the economy in January was already showing signs of stress. It was still stronger than other parts of Canada, but our lead was decreasing. The signs were there. The economy was slowing. Business and economists were warning that the actions of government were having implications.

[5:30 p.m.]

Housing starts were projected to slow 22 percent. We’d already lost 32,000 jobs in the previous eight months. Consumers were less confident in their buying habits. The community benefits agreements were inflating construction costs, and exports had fallen 6.4 percent.

Business and international investors were scratching their heads and wondering why government was working so deliberately to ruin our reputation as a business-friendly environment. The tax measures imposed by government over a series of budgets were indeed starting to have a domino effect on the provincial economy. The business response to the budget in February didn’t pull any punches to this effect: “The budget does not pay sufficient attention to the storm clouds facing us due to slower global growth and escalating tax and regulatory costs at home.” That was the BCBC executive vice-president in February.

Another quote: “Given the cumulative tax increases, the business community is feeling thoroughly tapped out.” That was the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. We, as the official opposition, had put the government on notice early, and we continued to signal with each budget and announcement that the significant increases in program spending — that $11.4 billion that they’d initiated over their first three years in office — were unsustainable. We did that, and we cautioned that any downturn in the economy would place our province in an untenable position.

Guess what. Right after they’d presented the budget, the world economies faced a pandemic. Emergency measures needed to be taken — unprecedented measures for our lifetimes — and we, as opposition, supported government to do what was needed, trusting them with the additional $5 billion to tackle the pandemic response and steward our province through. Sure, it would have been nice if we’d had a government with a $2.7 billion surplus at the ready, but instead, that additional spending will all be debt-financed. That’s one big credit card bill.

Now we see that forecasts have been downgraded again for Canada and for B.C. The growth forecast next year — hopefully, of 4.8 percent — doesn’t sound bad until you realize that this means that by the end of next year, our economy will only have recovered halfway. The reality is that the restart will be bumpy and slow, and so will the recovery, with tens of thousands of jobs likely to be permanently lost.

We’ll have plenty of questions about the measures taken in the current state of the financial picture through estimates and, certainly, about the $1.5 billion in recovery funds that has yet to be allocated, but this bill is largely about new tax measures. The other side will likely say we’re fearmongering. They’ll say we’re alarmist and that we only care about business, but I assure you that we aren’t simply pointing out what decades and decades of evidence have told us about the economy. This has played out in jurisdictions throughout the world.

Tax competitiveness matters. Beautiful B.C…. Don’t get me wrong; I love where we live. There is so much to offer, and I am excessively proud and thankful to be here and living through this pandemic here in British Columbia. But it is only so much of a draw. High taxes for individuals and businesses ultimately chase away highly skilled people and, hence, chase away job creation. That is going to matter now. It’s going to matter now more than ever as we need to create jobs and stimulate growth for the economy to recover.

Why does it matter? Why do tax rates and competitiveness matter for all earners and for business? It’s because it’s people and businesses that generate the bulk of the tax revenue for government. If they feel they’re overtaxed and overregulated to the point where conducting their business or doing their chosen job in a jurisdiction is no longer economic, they just leave.

They leave, and you don’t have the kind of industries and jobs that drive the economy — not in clean tech, not in high tech, not in manufacturing, not in finance, not in forestry or mining. The jobs simply won’t be there for British Columbians, and we won’t be able to attract the talent and investment that we need to build an even more sustainable and resilient economy for the future.

Now, I know that “the rich should pay more” is a very popular sentiment. The challenge, though, is who defines “rich.” We saw that the NDP defines this as anyone with an income over $150,000 with the tax increases that government introduced in 2018. I guess it’s good to see that they at least included themselves. But now with this budget and this particular act, another increase is there on those with incomes over $220,000. So obviously, government feels that is a high-income earner — the rich.

[5:35 p.m.]

It’s the DNA of government to go after those highest-income earners. Once they’ve exhausted that avenue of taxation, who’s next? I hate to inform you, but it is everyone else. That’s exactly what they’re doing by taxing your Netflix and your carbonated drinks. So what’s coming next?

Average British Columbians are being told, not asked, that they need to send a little more to government to pay for the gifts that government is giving them. I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty unimpressed if someone gave me a gift and then told me how I was going to pay for it, especially if that gift was something that I hadn’t asked for or didn’t need, like cost overruns on government union benefit projects or a $10-a-day child care program that my kids will be too old for by the time government’s ambitious plan is implemented.

We’re talking about a spending spree which has led to an unprecedented amount of new taxation. It’s a clear indication that this government believes it can spend your money better than you can. Essentially, they’re taking a bigger and bigger slice of your pie, and they aren’t coming to dinner with anything to help you bring home a bigger pie.

I believe the government’s spending should be undertaken, of course, with the mindset that this is the people’s money, not government’s money. I know and appreciate that we live in a society where we pay somewhat high taxes, and in return, we have important universal services. But there will never be enough tax money to pay for everything.

Trade-offs have to be made. Tough decisions have to be made. However, this is a government that thinks your pockets are bottomless. I doubt you’d find many who agree with that in any tax bracket. This is lazy, and it’s irresponsible.

Last year during debate, we were talking about government’s new child opportunity benefit, which will come into effect in the fall of this year. We discussed how well the benefit will be welcomed by some. There will be other families who have been receiving a benefit but will see their benefits fall or be eliminated altogether.

When we asked families without kids who are making less than $80,000, for example, who are also finding it hard to get ahead, especially in the Lower Mainland, seniors who are renting or young people who are living paycheque to paycheque, trying to work hard to save up for a down payment for an apartment or a townhouse…. We asked them: what are they getting? Despite the billions of dollars in new spending between 2017 and today, despite the billions of dollars in new taxes, there was nothing for them except more new taxes.

With this bill, we see the same. New taxes, all of which will impact individuals. No new supports from government that they’ll benefit from.

Now government is facing the worst situation. The economy has been catapulted into recession, and government is left facing high spending costs with dwindling tax revenues. The economists are predicting GDP declines of more than 7 percent and a B.C. deficit of between $7 billion and $10 billion.

What will government do? Will they choose to run structural deficits or raise taxes again on the broader middle class? Clearly, we saw with Budget 2020 and this budget measures bill here that there is no plan to stimulate the economy, only a plan to add taxes.

We need for government to be focused right now on stimulating the economy. If not for strategic economic development, there will be no job creation and no growth in the private sector. And it’s ultimately the private sector that grows sustainable jobs, not the public sector.

When government spends on programs and services, taxpayers pay. When government spends on capital infrastructures, taxpayers pay. We need both. There’s no argument that we need both, but we can’t pay for it without a healthy climate for the private sector to invest in and to create jobs.

If businesses were feeling the pinch before COVID-19, it was because of government. It was because of government’s clear lack of understanding of the small business economy in British Columbia. Now add on the challenges thrust upon them by the pandemic and the lacklustre response to the immediate needs of the 98 percent of businesses in our economy that are small businesses, the businesses that struggle every day to employ over 643,000 people.

Now we have predictions that thousands of businesses may fail or never reopen. With them go many tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars, ultimately, in tax revenues.

[5:40 p.m.]

The B.C. Business Council said on May 30 that “it’s likely that at least 10 percent and perhaps as many as 15 percent of the 200,000 B.C. businesses with paid employees could be gone by late 2021. Some will make the difficult decision to cease operations, while others will be forced into insolvency because they are no longer able to cover their bills or service their debts.”

Those are the concerns of the business community that we’ve been raising for the last number of months and waiting for government to provide relief on. Again, on that chilling note, I recognize that this bill was conceived prior to the pandemic paralyzing our economy. We’re here to debate the measures directly in this bill — four new taxes that bring the total number of taxes to 23.

I’ll close by saying that all I see with this bill is the continuation of tax-and-spend policy without reservation, without prudence. I do that with an acknowledgment that the bill now falls against an economic backdrop far more bleak than anyone would have hoped or conceived. We will approach the committee stage with that in mind.

P. Milobar: It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to Bill 4 today around these budget measures.

As we’ve heard, times have changed dramatically from when this was first introduced back in February. I was glad to hear the minister mention that in committee stage there would be some proposed amendments to this. It struck me, when I was reading through the bill yet again today in preparation for getting up to speak, that we have already deferred certain tax measures in this bill, and some will be carried along for some time.

When you consider that the Attorney General in his bill today was looking at the ability to essentially have extra powers for a year, I think we can all agree that things that have been deferred originally for three months…. The likelihood of them being deferred for this whole fiscal year is very strong, given the state of the economy that we’re in right now. That is a good thing to see that those amendments will be coming forward, and hopefully, that’s what the amendments will be around. I would assume that’s what they are going to be around.

But as we’ve heard, we have to remember and not just look at everything with the lens of what has happened with COVID, because this bill was introduced pre-COVID. This bill was introduced with the intention of raising taxes, amending tax structures and to bring the number of taxes up to 23 — 23 new taxes, or amended and increased taxes, by this government since they’ve taken office. That’s really at the core of the concerns.

Now, this morning when we had private members’ time, we had a private member’s motion: “Be it resolved that this House encourage economic opportunity for all British Columbians.” I was the last on that list, and with some of the new procedural changes and that, the debate was cut short — both a member from the government and myself not being able to speak to that. That’s fine, and that’s understandable.

What I was going to reference in my comments, though, and it ties into this bill, I think, and the 23 new taxes…. The speakers on the list earlier this morning from the government side of the House…. When they were talking to the motion around “be it resolved this House encourage economic opportunity for all British Columbians,” within their comments, there was an underlying theme and a continuing reference to taxation. It seems that the government strategy around ensuring economic opportunity is to continue down the road of taxation.

If it was not going to work pre-COVID, it certainly is not going to work trying to get out of the COVID economic mess that is going to be created here. We know businesses are struggling. We’ve heard that. We know that the taxation was burdensome to business. How do we know that? We know that because one of the first measures taken by the Finance Minister was to suspend and-or defer taxes to small businesses. That right there, in itself, should serve as an acknowledgment, one would hope, within government that taxation is making things uncompetitive in British Columbia and that the business owners need a break from the 23 new and increased taxes.

[5:45 p.m.]

Why that’s important is that we’re seeing that play out right now. We’re seeing that play out with businesses trying to reopen and looking at the cost structure of what happens if they try to reopen. If they try to force a reopen or try to get up to full employment back in their job sites too quickly and bring back people that were on temporary layoff to try to avoid a big severance payout, they’ll go bankrupt. But if they stay with a reduced workforce or a closed shop altogether and try to stretch it out for a few more weeks but still wind up having to trigger the temporary layoff severance package for an employee they fully intend to bring back in, say, three weeks, but in two weeks it triggers the severance package, they go bankrupt.

The response, looking forward, for British Columbians that we’re getting back from the government this morning, and now in continuation with this bill that talks to 23 taxes, is discussion around taxation and blame for 16 years, this and that. It was really 19 years now, so maybe we could move on from that — it’s two decades — because the shop owner trying to play the bills, trying to re-employ somebody, the person who’s trying to get re-employed back at the work that they took great pride in before COVID hit…. They don’t need to hear that 19 years ago this happened or that happened.

That doesn’t pay their mortgage tomorrow. That doesn’t pay their rent tomorrow. They want to know what the government is going to do tomorrow. They want to know what the plan is, moving forward, to get them back in a competitive state so they can open their doors in a safe way, can be safe for their staff, can be safe for their customer base, and they can re-employ those 133,600 people that are on temporary layoff right now, who are on the verge of being fired because of a procedural quirk within the labour act that never envisioned something like COVID.

We have employers out there wanting to bring staff back, but they need a little more time to be able to get their operations running properly so they can actually bring those laid-off staff back, and we have a government forcing them to be fired instead, with a severance package that will bankrupt the company and have no jobs for people to come back for. Instead of us debating an updated and modern bill based on the current time and getting a look at the current and modern financial situation within the province, we’ve come back to do the dance around Bill 4, and other bills, as it relates to finances or estimates, to try to make assumptions around what may or may not be in the bill, to do a whole bunch of research behind the scenes to try to figure out what the government’s actual true plan is.

Although I’m happy to hear that there will be some amendments at committee stage, one would have hoped that we could have been provided those amendments ahead of time so we at least would know what we were fully debating here today in second reading, as well, on a bill that has fundamentally changed, on a bill that wound up with COVID-19 sales tax changes issued on April 22, 2020. It talks about the deferring of the motor fuel tax and the carbon tax and the tobacco tax and the provincial sales tax. All of those were in there.

Now, I recognize that some of this is about synchronizing the rates within carbon tax in this bill in terms of how they actually get calculated, but the point being that even as far back as April, a month after we had last sat in this House, the government was making changes to the tax act, recognizing that taxes were too burdensome on the general public and business. So here we are, two months later, debating a bill from February.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

It’s unfortunate we didn’t see the amendments that may come forward, when we eventually get to committee stage, on this ahead of time. But nonetheless, here we are. We have 23 new taxes, increased taxes. Again, pre-COVID…. We have to remember there are things that you can easily point to and explain within a provincial budget as COVID having that impact. But to suggest that businesses were not already starting to feel the impact of cost over cost over cost being added to their operations — governmental regulations, governmental policy, governmental taxes — that were all coming into play for the last couple of years….

[5:50 p.m.]

I know that the government probably thought that they really weren’t that impactful of cost pressures onto businesses pre-COVID, because they talked about all these tax increases for the first six or nine months that they were in office. They talked about it long enough that because there didn’t seem to be a big blip to business, they must all be fine.

The problem is that talking about it was one piece. The actual implementation and start dates of these taxes were last April and this April. So businesses were only going to start actually paying all of the extra double dip of the employer health tax nine months after it first got talked about. That’s when they started getting their bills. Other taxes and fees that were going up were being implemented last April and this April 1.

What happened for this April 1, when the minister recognized how much of a burden all these extra taxes actually, truly are on business? They got delayed or deferred because of COVID. Well, a closed business isn’t going to pay a tax regardless, moving forward. They need a competitive regime to be able to reopen, thrive and employ all of those 133,600 people that are on temporary layoff right now and turn them back into full-time positions. All those people that businesses have spent thousands of dollars training and getting as part of a well-oiled machine within each of their own operations — for what their business needs to succeed and within their own customer base — provide the services and supplies that their customers need.

Those business owners don’t want to fire these people. They don’t want to pay severance, not because they don’t think severance is due and proper in the right situation. It’s because they never wanted to lay them off in the first place. They weren’t looking to fire or lay them off. They weren’t looking to pay them severance. They want to have them gainfully employed. They don’t want to have to fire them and then go out and try to find somebody new to hire back in and spend thousands of dollars of training on top of it.

They need a government that’s willing to work with them and listen to the pleas that have been going on since April, around the same time that we saw the sales tax changes come out from the government. A lot of these changes that have been deferred and delayed are within Bill 4. So that’s the key here.

When you look at the so-called Netflix tax, when you look at the sugar tax…. The sugar tax is being, on the one hand, applauded by the Finance Minister. On the other hand, it’s part of the deferred or delayed taxes of April 22. So a brand-new tax that hadn’t even been fully implemented yet due to COVID is suddenly no more. Not quite sure why. I’m not quite sure why it was critical to delay a new tax that the government felt was so important and critical to the province.

The government seems to be wanting to have it both ways on Bill 4 and on taxes in general. They don’t want to openly admit that their tax structure they’ve implemented over the last three years has created a cumbersome burden for businesses and their employees. Instead, what they’ll do, under the cover of COVID, is they’ll delay, and they’ll defer.

Now, deferring taxes doesn’t actually get the business away from that bill, which the government is still going to want to come and collect in the fall or spring, right when a business is still trying to desperately get their cash flow going, hopefully, because they haven’t already flat out closed. But again this morning speaker after speaker after speaker from the government side, when we were talking about encouraging economic opportunity for all British Columbians, talked about taxation, talked about the very taxes that are in Bill 4.

[5:55 p.m.]

The tone and the tenor of their comments were very much — at least the impression I received from their tone and what they had to say — that they thought this was a good thing that taxes were going up and being layered on and fees were going. By only taxing the heck out of business will they be able to have the programs to support people. I think everyone agrees that people need supports, especially now. But you can’t tax businesses into oblivion, take away those same people’s jobs that are working in those businesses and expect to have a functioning economy for any length of time. The federal government cannot keep bailing out the provincial government non-stop, as the Premier seems to hope will happen every time.

People need real action moving forward. What people really need is the government to back up by their own actions and comments on their response with COVID right now — which is acknowledging that their taxes have been a burden on people….

That’s why it’s unfortunate, although we see the tweaks within Bill 4, in some of it. Then a lot of it is procedural jargon, as the minister said near the end, around election dates and when budgets come in and not. I don’t have a huge opinion on those, one way or the other. I do think it’s important, though, if those measures are coming in about giving a government a proper amount of time to make sure that they have proper transparency and accountability to the taxpayer — which I fully agree should happen — that the taxpayers….

If that’s the premise of Bill 4, that should be happening right now as well. That should be happening on the current budget, which is totally different than what was introduced in February. If that theory and philosophy in Bill 4 is good enough for Bill 4, which was introduced back in February, why is it not good enough in the here and now as we’re all dealing with COVID?

Everybody knows we’re in deficit. That’s no great secret. Every government jurisdiction in North America is in deficit. That’s no great secret. But what people want is the transparency and the understanding of where we happen to be today. Even a regular budget, pre-COVID…. Our best guesses of where people think the economy is going to go and what tax revenues are going to be and what employment numbers are going to be…. There are very wise and well-educated people making those assumptions and guesses, but they do that pre-COVID. They’re doing it right now.

Surely we could have a more up-to-date glimpse of what’s going on than debating Bill 4 based on February, based on a bunch of taxes that the Finance Minister has actually suspended for the time being. Not suspended — deferred. Sorry. They still want their taxes. They haven’t fundamentally walked away from taxes. They’ll just give you an extra month or two to pay.

Noting the hour and recognizing that we’re in a new situation of division votes and other votes that will be beginning at six, I will note the hour and adjourn debate and reserve my spot to speak further.

P. Milobar moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Deputy Speaker: A deferred motion will take place shortly. That will take place at 6:10.

For that purpose, hon. Members, the House now does stand in recess until that time.

The House recessed from 5:59 p.m. to 6:10 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Members, I now call the House back to order.

[6:15 p.m.]

Members, we will now proceed with the deferred division. The question is second reading of Bill 11.

[6:20 p.m. - 6:25 p.m.]

BILL 11 — ATTORNEY GENERAL STATUTES
(VEHICLE INSURANCE)
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

(continued)

Second reading of Bill 11 approved on the following division:

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

Bill 11, Attorney General Statutes (Vehicle Insurance) 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 moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:29 p.m.