Fifth Session, 41st Parliament (2020)
REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(HANSARD)
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY,
SECTION C
Virtual Meeting
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Afternoon Meeting
Issue No. 10
ISSN 2563-352X
The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.
The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.
CONTENTS
| Committee of Supply | |
THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2020
The committee met at 1:46 p.m.
[S. Malcolmson in the chair.]
Committee of Supply
Proceedings in Section C
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT
AND
CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY
(continued)
On Vote 23: ministry operations, $188,132,000 (continued).
The Chair: Good afternoon, Members.
I want to recognize that I am on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, today known as the Songhees and Esquimalt people. Members from across the province are participating from their own First Nations territory. We extend our appreciation to First Nations across British Columbia for us being able to work on their land.
We’re meeting today to consider the budget estimates of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.
P. Milobar: Heeding your advice at the beginning, my colleague from Columbia River–Revelstoke will have questions till until around two o’clock today, and then I will be clicking back in and probably running out the rest of the day. With that, I will pass the floor over to the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke, with your permission.
D. Clovechok: Chair, I appreciate it. To the minister, I appreciate the opportunity as well.
The budget consultation process heard from British Columbia’s experts on invasive species. They’re asking for a single invasive species act that provides robust funding for education, prevention, monitoring, response and, of course, enforcement. This would include streamlining regulations to better monitor and manage high-risk pathways that introduce and spread invasive species, and ensure an aggressive remediation process.
The question I have is: will the minister acknowledge the advice received during these consultation processes and establish an invasive species act?
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member for the question.
We’re certainly aware of the suggestions and proposals that came forward as part of the budget consultation, also as part of our consultation on species at risk. Similar ideas were put forward with respect to invasive species, including the possibility of legislation. We’ve been reviewing and studying the feasibility of some of those for some time, but I am not going to speculate on a result of that and how we might bring those issues together.
In the meantime, of course, we continue to devote resources to invasive species management and protection, including, for example, zebra and quagga mussels. We evaluate the success of those every year. We make adjustments where necessary, redeployment of resources where necessary. In addition, although they’re not my ministries, FLNRORD as well as Agriculture, to a lesser extent, also devote resources to the management of invasive species.
We have heard the suggestions that the member references. They have been under active consideration in the ministry.
D. Clovechok: The minister will know that his ministry parcels funds to the HCTF, which grants lake monitoring to regional groups to work on the mussel issue. Two questions. Will the minister confirm the amount that is in the budget this year for the HCTF and also confirm that this program will receive continued funding into the next fiscal?
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member.
In 2017, under the former government, a grant of $350,000 was given to HCTF in order to do work, largely educational. Under the HCTF workplan, they anticipate using up that funding for the workplan this fiscal year. We have been, for some time, looking at longer-term funding provisions with them and other partners and are currently in discussion with them.
In addition to that, under this government, we have allocated around $2 million per year specifically for programs related to invasive mussels. That is ongoing funding in the service plan.
D. Clovechok: The minister will know that the control of invasive species, specifically zebra and quagga mussels, is of paramount importance to the future and the health of B.C. waterways and lakes, thus the need for a comprehensive defence program. I’ve got four questions associated with the mussels.
Given the nature and the severity of this issue, I’m wondering if the minister, first of all, can explain and offer a bit of a breakdown of the budgetary allotments for the invasive species file. Will the minister confirm this funding will continue? The last question. Will the minister confirm that the stations that check mussels throughout the province will remain intact, that there have been no cutbacks from the COVID-19 and that those defence systems will remain unaltered going forward?
Hon. G. Heyman: I only heard three questions. Was there a fourth?
D. Clovechok: For the sake of time, I cut one out.
Hon. G. Heyman: We have a total of about $3.75 million that is expended on control of invasive mussels. Roughly half of that is funding from partners, partner contributions — for instance, B.C. Hydro and FortisBC — who have an interest in this. Half of it is secured within the ministry budget. Those partnership agreements are ending, but we’re already in discussion with the partners about renewal.
The stations remain intact. There was some disruption because, during COVID, there was some delay in training that normally would have proceeded, but stations continued to run. There’s been perhaps a bit of a reduction in overlap with some staff, and there was some redeployment. Frankly, the border has been closed, so we haven’t been dealing with the same influx of boaters as we would have in a normal year. We basically have stations up and staffed in accordance with what the review of last year indicated we should be doing.
I hope that answers the member’s question.
P. Milobar: Just to follow up on that, then, to be clear, the minister is saying there’s $2 million directly from the government, $3.75 million spent in total a year. And $2 million is in the ministry budget. The other $1.75 million comes from those outside partners. If the minister could clarify I have that correct. Also which operational budget the $2 million comes out of. If the minister could clarify that as well.
The Chair: For the benefit of the public who are tuning in, in huge numbers, I’m sure, here to watch the mechanics of government in action, this is the budget estimates process. Members of the opposition have an opportunity to ask questions of the ministers on their budget.
This is Budget 2020, which was presented in the Legislature back in February, but we are still doing our review. Ministers sometimes answer questions all day, sometimes multiple days, depending on the ministry, the number of questions, the size of the budget. In the end, the committee will vote on whether the particular ministry’s budget should be adopted or not.
As a point of comparison, when I was serving as Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, we would have a minister for an hour and would share our questions between all three recognized parties in the House of Commons, including the government, who got more questions to ask of their own ministers than anybody. This is a very different process.
This is simultaneously happening in another room right now, which you can tune into if this one wasn’t as gripping as you hoped. I believe it’s the Minister of Agriculture who is answering questions.
I’m glad you’re out there and appreciative to all the members of the committee here doing their work on behalf of the public.
Hon. G. Heyman: The member asked if he had the numbers correct. We have about $2 million in partner agreements. Our expenditure that’s slated is a total of about $3.75 million, but we will top up if we need to go a bit over that. When I said we’ve spent $2 million, that’s the most recent experience. That’s what we actually did, and that comes from ministry operations.
P. Milobar: Thank you for clarifying that. That makes a little bit more sense with one of my other questions. Could the minister just clarify which account this program was run out of?
Hon. G. Heyman: The funding is shared across different lines in the ministry but is delivered through the conservation officer service primarily. Primarily, the money would be found there.
P. Milobar: If there was the $2 million expenditure last year, there’s about $1.7 million in this year’s budget…. Last year when the ministry was asked to come up with the cost savings, one of the cost pressures identified was the mussels program, at a $300,000 cost pressure, which was late September. So that program was essentially done by then, I would assume — most of it. It sounds like that’s how we got to the $2 million.
I recognize there are contingencies that keep getting tapped into. Again, it’s tough to do estimates if all we’re going to rely on is contingencies. It’s a good thing that there are contingencies for overruns. I was glad to hear that the minister said that they will look at that and have contingencies for this year.
Has there been any discussion…? Why is there not just an actual uplift to this program, given that it seems like it was well recognized last year that it needed more? The lakes aren’t getting any smaller. The tourism pre-COVID — especially as this budget is pre-COVID — wasn’t slowing down. Why is there just not a move to actually increase the budget to give that certainty to these communities that every year are asking what the budget is going to be for this type of programming?
The Chair: Members, it has been brought to my attention that we have lost quorum. So we will recess for five minutes. We’ll see you back here in five minutes, when we will reconvene. Thank you.
The committee recessed from 2:16 p.m. to 2:26 p.m.
[S. Malcolmson in the chair.]
Hon. G. Heyman: In answer to the member’s question, first of all, in 2018, this program for invasive mussels received a $1 million lift in the ongoing budget. As I mentioned, the partnership agreements are expiring, so we’re in the process of preparing to discuss renewal of those agreements in concert with evaluation of this year’s results and the expectations of our partners. So it’s hard to say, at this point, what we will end up deciding is the necessary budget in the ministry.
I will say that we do an annual evaluation of the program to ensure that resources are where they should be, that they’re adequate, that they’re being deployed and moved around as needed. I think it’s fair to say that we believe the program has been successful to date, because the evaluations and the consultations with the interested community groups and stakeholders have resulted in the appropriate decisions being made.
Having said that, we are always in consultation with the communities and interested partners. We’re in conversation with our funding partners. We review, and we’ll revise budget amounts as needed. If we hit a point where we find that the budgeted amount needs to be augmented in a year, we would certainly approach Treasury Board for access to contingencies if needed. I’ve certainly had that discussion in the past with the Finance Minister.
P. Milobar: I’m going to switch gears again, back to some more CleanBC and some LNG-related questions.
Earlier we had established that the operating certificate for LNG was 0.16, and 0.24 is the max threshold they can be at. On the break, I decided to dig around a little bit, and it was interesting. I wasn’t in the Legislature back in 2016. Certainly, the minister was, in opposition, and back then opposed Bill 2. Bill 2 set out 0.16 as an operational threshold, and 0.23, not 0.24. So actually it was 0.01 stricter of a standard.
Can the minister confirm that what eventually wound up being the agreement for LNG is, in fact, very similar to Bill 2 in terms of how the emissions are being dealt with in terms of offsets, in terms of targeting, in terms of being able to claim back dollars? I’m sure that the minister probably remembers that he did speak on it at length in the media and did vote against it at the time.
Hon. G. Heyman: The member is correct that 0.16 was contained in legislation. It is now replicated in the operating agreement that was established under our government when LNG Canada decided to make a final investment decision. The performance benchmark was established this year. It’s 0.24, based on the world-leading benchmark average of 5. That will be reviewed every five years.
P. Milobar: Thank you. Again, diving in, just to try to make sure what would have been in the workplan as this budget was being established for staff, especially in the climate secretariat.
We had some discussion around B.C. still looking at emissions trading to offset the effects of the LNG development and how that would be used to help meet CleanBC targets, overall. The minister had indicated there were supposed to be meetings in Glasgow, which have been postponed indefinitely at this point, and that it would be a federal negotiation.
My understanding, though, is that because of the structure of how Canada has been formed as a country and the way the provinces interact with the federal government, on an international environmental conference such as that…. The provinces from Canada actually get a higher standing at the United Nations than, say, even the states, even something as significant as California would get, because of the way the government structure is set up down in the U.S.
Could the minister have his staff confirm that had Glasgow gone ahead…? Glasgow could still go ahead this year. It may just happen in a virtual form. Climate change is still marching on. At some point, people are going to want to start negotiating and having Zoom calls.
Although the federal government would be one of the lead negotiators, British Columbia would actually have a fairly significant ability to have direct input in discussion around article 6 as it’s being debated at the international stage.
Hon. G. Heyman: The member is partially correct.
I am a member of the official Canadian delegation to COP when I’ve attended. There are a lot of levels of things that go on at COP, many of which are extremely relevant to subnational jurisdictions, like provinces and states, even large cities. There are panels and forums and bilateral meetings that go on all the time. We share our experience in B.C. We answer questions about what we’ve done. We learn from other jurisdictions, and we sometimes form agreements and alliances to work together.
In terms of the actual negotiation of a treaty, that is entirely the purview of the federal government. Neither I nor anyone else in British Columbia sits at that table. The federal negotiators and federal government delegation will give a general briefing about what’s happening on a daily basis, but even that briefing isn’t filled with specifics.
P. Milobar: I understand that, but provinces do have a part to play to try to advance what they would like to see happen with the federal government. The Premier was doing a victory lap earlier today about sick pay, a federal program the Premier was touting as pressing forward on. One would think that it’s not just the Premier but it’s other ministerial responsibilities that would be pressing federal counterparts to try to get what they feel would be in the best interests of British Columbia.
In that sense, it sounds like the trading of offsets is needed for CleanBC to be able to meet its targets. Is the intention of the minister to continue to press the federal government to negotiate article 6 so that those offsets can take place and CleanBC would be able to meet its targets?
Hon. G. Heyman: The member is correct. Obviously, I have conversations with my federal counterpart on a range of issues, as he does with me, and we regularly urge each other to do certain things. But if the member is assuming that I’m busy urging the federal government to get a move on to achieve a system of offsets because CleanBC depends on it, he’s simply incorrect.
Our intention is to meet our targets within CleanBC by emission reductions, not by the use of offsets. Even if article 6 was completed, there’s still the need for a system of international verification of potential offsets as truly being additional, truly resulting in net reduction of GHGs overall, no matter what the particular product we’re talking about is.
It will take some time to develop those, and they need to be independently verified and based on science. So we are not hanging our hat on that. We’re proceeding with trying to find a number of ways to reduce emissions in B.C., absolutely, to bring CleanBC to the place it needs to be to do our part to contribute to holding overall global warming to around 1.5 degrees.
P. Milobar: It’s interesting, because CleanBC is supposed to be the document. Certainly, the former leader of the Green Party has wrapped himself in CleanBC as justification for holding government to account around LNG. I’m not sure where the other two members of the Green Party actually fall on CleanBC as it rolls out more and more and gaps start to be seen within it.
The minister earlier made it clear that the emissions trading would actually help CleanBC to meet its emissions targets. Yet we have emissions standards for LNG that mirror — actually are 0.01 higher on the high end — Bill 2, in April of 2016, that was being debated. The minister voted against and spoke out against it because he just simply couldn’t have that work to still meet the emission profile.
In fact, on June 3, 2016, in the Province, the minister is quoted as saying: “The trouble with Gordon Wilson’s statement is there’s absolutely no evidence B.C. LNG will result in the use of less coal in China. He shouldn’t be inventing wildly exaggerated claims of saving Chinese lives to justify LNG development in British Columbia.”
The minister seemed to be fairly consistent about the LNG thresholds back in 2016, which he has agreed are the same as they are now. In 2016, he said that using trading offsets would not work and were wildly exaggerating the benefits. There are articles out now saying that the B.C. government is still pursuing that with the federal government, through article 6 of the Paris accord.
The minister won’t confirm that they’re encouraging the federal government to get an agreement around this. The minister had contradictory statements to the benefit of this in the past. So is the minister saying that he’s encouraging the federal government to not negotiate these types of offsets being available if he’s confident that CleanBC can be accomplished without these types of offset tradings?
Hon. G. Heyman: First of all, I want to make clear that I have never said that B.C. needs offsets in order to meet our CleanBC targets. I think the member is taking a statement I may have made in one particular context, which we’ve canvassed at length today, and imputing a different meaning to it.
Quite frankly, I’d appreciate it…. If the member wants to say what I said, then quote me. But don’t paraphrase me to reach a certain conclusion that isn’t consistent with what I’ve actually said or what I believe or what I’ve done. It’s just, frankly, in my view, not helpful nor appropriate.
With respect to the member’s question, no, I’m not urging the government not to pursue article 6. International negotiations take a long time. Article 6 negotiations are part of the Paris accord. They’re ongoing, but they will take some time to complete. We don’t have a lot of time, frankly, in British Columbia or around the world, in order to take the actions necessary to reduce our emissions to hold our warming to 1.5 degrees. So we’re proceeding to implement actions to reduce emissions in B.C.
P. Milobar: I agree that time is of the essence. That’s why these questions….
I am not trying to fabricate what the minister said or means. Unfortunately, I think it’s due mainly to the technology we’re being forced to use. Blues are a little bit slow to get to repeat back to the minister verbatim what he had said earlier in the day. I’m not trying to invent what he had said, but he made it very clear earlier in the day that offsets would help CleanBC meet its targets. That’s what is critical here, and these questions are relevant, because there is a lot at stake.
There’s a lot invested in terms of government marketing around CleanBC and how they feel they are going to move forward, but there are a lot of unanswered questions around CleanBC. It’s not me that has now gone on 19 months without having the other missing 25 percent of an emission reduction plan in place. It is the minister that does not have that in place for the public to scrutinize and to look at. There’s a great amount of skepticism out there. We have reports that the province is still actively having conversations with the federal government and on the international stage around the use of using LNG trading offsets to try to meet targets.
I guess I’ll try this a different way. If the federal government does come to an agreement with offsets…. Again, time is of the essence. No one knows for sure how quickly governments may move in a pandemic to try to reset the table. We’re doing this on Zoom. I’m assuming that environmentalists wouldn’t be opposed to doing a large conference by Zoom, as opposed to flying and creating carbon that way.
If the federal government does come to an agreement that enables the use of trading offsets to bring down emissions under CleanBC, will the government take advantage of that? Or will the government decide that they will, in fact, forgo that as a way to reduce emissions under CleanBC?
Hon. G. Heyman: Once again, I simply disagree with the member that I have stated that offsets would be a net benefit to the CleanBC plan or were essential to the CleanBC plan. I think the exchange to which the member is referring was in a very specific and defined context and referred to offsets in B.C., which of course would result to a neutral or net benefit in B.C. I’ve said that we are working toward absolute real reduction in emissions in B.C. to meet our CleanBC targets.
International discussions on article 6 are an important part of the UN climate plan to which Canada is a signatory. The reason for that is that article 6 was designed to find a way, if there is, to reach agreement among nations for internationally trading mitigation options — emissions in one place that may result in larger emissions in another place so that globally, overall, we reduce our emissions.
Several things have to happen, and they’re all speculative. First, there has to be agreement on the wording of an article 6 emission trading agreement. That’s proved hard and elusive. There’ve been two COPs where that was attempted in negotiations, and both of them resulted in failure. Whether or not Glasgow happens, we don’t know if an agreement will be reached.
Once an agreement is reached, it would be important to then define an independent, scientifically verifiable way of determining if — and let’s stay away from one particular product — the emissions associated with any activity or product in a particular nation are actually resulting in greater emission reductions in the receiving jurisdiction in a way that is truly verifiable and additional and that actually wouldn’t have happened regardless of the activity in the originating jurisdiction.
If all of those agreements, mechanisms and verification procedures are concluded, and the world has confidence in a system to actually look at if we start moving emissions and products from one jurisdiction that could potentially push the originating jurisdiction over their climate target but are overall beneficial to our world global target because they result in lower emissions, then I would think we should all be in favour of that, because the goal is to reduce emissions globally.
We don’t yet know if that’s possible. We don’t yet know if a treaty or an agreement under the treaty will be reached on that, and we don’t know what the scientific basis or independent verification procedures in which everyone in the world can have confidence would look like. Those are a lot of things that have to be done before we could truly consider the answer to the member’s question.
What I can say is that as a result of CleanBC and as a result of the carbon pricing in British Columbia, which was begun under the previous government and Gordon Campbell and which we have continued after about a six-year hiatus and scheduled increases, as well as putting in place enhanced credits for low- and middle-income people and a return to industry in a way that rewards their emission reductions and provides funding for technological innovations that will further reduce emissions associated with more heavily emitting industries, British Columbia is in a position to remain very competitive and to supply lower-carbon-intense products and commodities to the world, and that’s a good thing.
P. Milobar: I’ll have to try to remember to send the minister the Hansard from my discussion with the Finance Minister about the rebates for low- and middle-income families. It’s at the exact same schedule per $5 of carbon tax as it was under the previous government. It’s not enhanced. It goes up with every $5, like it did under the old system as well. But that’s just one aside.
Back, though, to CleanBC and the emission targets. Again, we operate a little bit in the dark because of the missing 25 percent and trying to figure out where all these things land. That missing 25 percent should be coming forward sometime in this fiscal year, so I’m assuming staff are still working on it through this budget and allotment of staffing dollars.
Has there been modelling done? Can the minister clarify, if there’s been modelling done, what would happen to our emission profile in British Columbia? How much extra will regular everyday businesses and citizens have to do in their own day-to-day life to meet our overall provincial GHG reduction targets if there is no agreement found under the Paris accord for the trading of these offsets?
In other words, have we looked at both sides of it? And what is the order of magnitude of work that’s going to need to be done and undertaken by every individual in their home so that LNG can come on stream, versus LNG coming on stream and there being a trading mechanism for these credits to offset our footprint within the province?
Hon. G. Heyman: To the member, who regularly says there’s a missing 25 percent, I’d simply say we have a real plan to reach our legislated targets. That’s what CleanBC is.
We scrupulously modelled and are implementing, with $1.3 billion plus allocated over a four-year period, the measures in CleanBC to reach those modelled results. We’re actively working very hard on the remaining 25 percent, and we’ll have more to say about that in the coming months. I think that’s pretty positive, and I’m certainly very proud of it.
With respect to the member’s question, what we are concentrating on in CleanBC is a number of systemic changes, regulations, incentives and measures to reduce sources of emissions. Whether it’s personal transportation vehicles, whether it’s heavy-duty trucking, whether it’s industrial transportation, we’re planning and implementing measures to make those as clean as possible. We have, in some cases, legislated targets.
In addition, for buildings and homes, we’re looking at systemic programs to retrofit existing buildings and homes to make them more energy efficient, as well as to plan the standards for new buildings and homes — importantly, as well, provincial government and broader public sector buildings — to ensure that they are as energy efficient as possible, all of which has a number of beneficial aspects.
In all these cases, in transportation and home and commercial energy use, it results in greater comfort, greater efficiency, lower operating costs and more affordability. Those are good things. Those are net positives for everybody, once we put in place and work with people on the necessary capitalization, whether it’s a commercial vehicle, a personal vehicle, a home retrofit, a new home, an existing building or a new building.
In addition to that, we’re working with industry to help them find ways to reduce emissions, particularly emissions-intensive industries, while remaining competitive, whether it’s new technology, whether it’s upgraded capital investments in infrastructure, all of which gives British Columbia businesses greater efficiency, greater productivity, lower operating and energy costs and a big competitive advantage globally in a world that is hungry for lower-carbon-intense products and services.
That’s the best answer I can give to the member’s question, but I think it’s good news for British Columbians.
P. Milobar: We have a missing 25 percent, and it is a missing 25 percent still. I’ve never once said it wasn’t on its way. We all acknowledge that it’s on its way. I had, admittedly, hoped it would have been here by now so we could be scrutinizing and looking at it.
That said, the minister is still within his 18- to 24-month window, so I don’t take great issue with that. But we do have to still, as a population, figure out what these impacts will mean for the average person moving forward, as it relates to things like offsets and what they will have to do if there are not offsets in place.
The minister has made no bones about saying that regardless of what the federal government says when it relates to a project like a Kinder Morgan, they are going to do what they feel is right for the province, whether the federal government agrees with it or not. I believe he’ll agree with the quote “every tool in the tool box” — I hope I’m not paraphrasing that one — that they are going to go after, trying to stop the project.
It sounds like the Premier has now come to the realization, based on yet another losing court battle — not that the government was involved in this last court battle — that the project is moving forward. My point is that the province, on that project, had no problem coming out and saying: “No. We’re just not going to support it, regardless of what the federal government says. We don’t agree with it. We are going to press the issue to the nth degree.”
Here we have a way of trading offsets globally to help an emission profile of an industry that, four years ago, the minister — then in opposition — spoke out strongly against for hitting the exact same benchmarks that he has now signed off, as the minister, as a signatory to that LNG agreement. We have discussion going on about these international offsets potentially happening, being negotiated by the federal government with input by the provincial government. Those would change our emissions profile in the province.
I’m not hearing the minister say they have profiled what the result would be to the general public if we did not have the ability to trade these. I guess I’m confused, though. The minister will not encourage the federal government to negotiate these, but he’s also not saying that he’s encouraging them or telling them that British Columbia would opt out.
Maybe the minister, again, could go back to why the province, then, is not prepared to stand by what their position was four years ago, in opposition, to say that they would be opting out of these types of scenarios that they were very strongly opposed to. The previous Chair, before lunch, had very strong comments as the former Environment critic, as well, on this subject. It’s not just this minister and this Premier that have had these long-held views.
Why is it, then, that we cannot get confirmation that the province would be accepting of the federal government doing this or be indicating to the federal government that they would stand on principle, like they said they were trying to do with the TMX project, and tell the federal government: “It doesn’t matter what you negotiate. We’re not taking part in that. We’re not going to use that in part of our calculations to meet our emissions targets”?
Hon. G. Heyman: I tried to be clear, and I’ll try to be clear again. First, let me deal with the two situations the member put forward, which I don’t believe are analogous.
The position of the government of B.C. with respect to the TMX project was that we believed it was a significant environmental and economic risk to British Columbia in the event of an oil spill. That’s why we opposed it. We believed that British Columbians expected us to do everything that we could to protect our interests and the environment and the coast and the economy of British Columbia in the face of that project, so we proceeded to put forward some measures through regulation that we believed could assist with that.
There was one of those that the government of Canada objected to. We said: “Okay, let’s let the courts decide.” The courts did decide, and I regret the decision of the court that the only jurisdiction that exists in this regard, with TMX and the regulation we proposed, rests with the federal government. But we do accept that decision. It’s a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.
We have continued to press the federal government that if this project goes ahead, we need the highest possible degree of environmental protection — spill response capacity, spill response timelines, other measures to ensure that we don’t have a catastrophe in British Columbia that could risk tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity and permanently ruin our coast. In that case, our position and our continued activity, which are now guided by the court decisions, are to protect and enhance B.C.’s environment.
Similarly, our position with respect to negotiations at COP are that any final agreement at COP that has the net result — and I stated this in my answer to the last question — of a net decrease in global emissions in order to meet our international targets would be a good thing. The key there is that they must be verifiable and based on science.
My comments to which the member refers when I was the opposition critic pre-existed the Paris Agreement, pre-existed any discussion whatsoever of article 6. What I said was that Mr. Wilson and others were claiming — without any documented scientific evidence, without any independent verification, without any mechanism to prove it to be true — that the use of LNG in China would result in a reduction in the use of coal. That’s a reasonable statement to make. It’s a statement that I might make today.
If a system is put in place that says, “Here’s what we have to do to verify that we’re getting absolute emission reductions through displacement, whether it be through any particular commodity, and it’s verifiable and based on science….” What I said in my answer to the last question and what I say again now, which I believe is completely consistent with my earlier statements for many years, is: “If it absolutely reduces emissions, it’s a good thing, but it must be provable.” If it is provable and independently verifiable, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t embrace it.
P. Milobar: Although the minister is absolutely correct — the Paris Accord and article 6 didn’t exist back then — the premise that the statements made by Mr. Wilson and others around LNG and the global good that would come from it is the exact same as what drives the conversation for article 6.
In terms of the enhancements and spill response and spill recovery with TMX, it’s not surprising that the government is okay with that now. Most of that was dealt with by the previous government, much like Bill 2, where that was dealt with by the previous government. This government signed off on and agreed to the same thresholds and 0.16s and 0.23s of the LNG industry, as was in Bill 2 back in 2016. So there is an importance to it.
I guess I’ll try it this way, then. We know that the LNG will be about, I believe, 6.5 percent of the overall emissions of British Columbia now. If there was an agreement, how much of the missing 25 percent of emissions plan would an offset trading agreement create? How much room would that take up?
We know the federal government recalibrated the numbers, so 4 percent has been found by the ministry already. If a trading agreement was to be agreed upon, how much of the overall emissions profile does the ministry expect that would take off the table for having to find?
The Chair: For the benefit of the public, you are watching a committee of the Legislature review the budget estimates. In this hour, this is for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
The opposition has an opportunity to ask the government questions about the 2020 budget and the programs associated with it. It’s not the fastest process, because as you can see, the minister’s now off screen, talking with his senior ministry staff to make sure we get the best information to the opposition. It’s not quite an open book exam, but it’s totally legitimate to ask for help.
It’s a slow process. Thanks for hanging in there. It is an example of the public being able to watch government in action, and sometimes that is not the most gripping thing. I’m glad that you’re out there, hanging in with us. This could go on for hours or days.
The minister’s back, and he’s got the floor.
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to member for the question, but it’s not one I can answer. It’s hypothetical and speculative, and we’re not proceeding on that basis.
We’re proceeding on the basis that we’re doing work to identify the remaining emission reductions for 2030, as well as working on emission reductions that we’ll need to achieve our 2040 and 2050 targets. You have to plan long term, and we’re doing that based on not expecting or counting on an agreement that has yet to be reached and certainly won’t be reached by the end of this year in a way that could be counted as part of the 25 percent. So the question, in my view, is speculative and not relevant to the work that CAS is undertaking.
P. Milobar: Can the minister confirm, then, just at the very end of that answer…? Oh, sorry. It’s the climate action secretariat. Too many acronyms. I was thinking the CASA you referred to was your confidence and supply agreement. It just clicked in my head there. So there we go, Minister. I saved both of us a tedious question-and-answer.
I’m going to move on a little bit here. I may come back to CleanBC near the end, but I’ve got a couple assorted things, and then I was going to go into a little bit of some parks as well.
My understanding is that Metro Vancouver…. I’ve canvassed this before with the minister around Metro’s desire to amend some solid waste bylaws and bring some new ones in. I believe it’s 308 and 309, or it 208 and 209? It’s off the top of my head right now. My understanding is that the Ministry of Environment contracted for a consulting company — I believe it’s Elevate Consulting — to do up a report around that. I believe it’s due in November.
Can the minister confirm if the ministry did indeed contract with Elevate Consulting to do some work around Metro Vancouver solid waste issues?
Hon. G. Heyman: The role of Elevate is to act as an intermediary between the waste haulers association and Metro Vancouver with regard to resolving some issues and answering some questions that we suggested strongly to Metro Van would need to form part of their subsequent submission of a waste management plan, and the bylaws in question, in order to be accepted by the ministry.
Both parties wished us to be in an intermediary or mediator role, and that’s why we issued the contract to Elevate Consulting. But the funding for that contract is coming from Metro Van and is simply flowing through the ministry.
P. Milobar: Did the ministry put out a call, or was it a sole-source contract situation?
Hon. G. Heyman: Elevate Consulting was chosen because they were acceptable to both of the parties between whom the mediation was taking place.
It was a direct award, in accordance with government policy on financial controls that allows a direct award when the cost of the contract is being paid by a third party.
P. Milobar: In terms of the steward programs, there’s just been a fairly significant change when we’re dealing with bottle returns — everything going to the standardized 10 cents and that. But I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people within the industry with concerns around process.
Has the minister officially signed off on all the changes? Are they now permanent to what Encorp was trying to accomplish with their changes to Recycle B.C. and all the rates and setup?
Hon. G. Heyman: There are a couple of possible answers to the question, depending on, specifically, the bottle return policy that the member is referencing. So I wonder if I could ask him to clarify it before we answer.
P. Milobar: Yes. I apologize. As I was asking, I realized I was convoluting it a bit. Yeah, it’s around the bottle return. I was mixing in Recycle B.C., which used to be MMBC, with the whole Encorp program. So it’s about the bottle return program and the sign-off on the changes that were made and if those are now permanently signed off on by the minister or not.
Hon. G. Heyman: If the member is referring to the increase and the combination to a single bottle return rate, the answer to that is yes. The regulation has been deposited. If the member is referring to some other aspect of bottle returns, I’d be happy to answer with more clarity if I get the clarification.
P. Milobar: Yeah. It’s partly around the returns, the setting of the pricing. There will, obviously, be a little bit of a change. Nickel deposits go to the dime, the 20 cent will drop to the dime. On balance, it will come out in the wash, probably, in terms of what was already out there versus what moves forward.
Where there are a lot more concerns, though, which I’m hearing about, is in terms of the whole process around the beer can — BDL contracts with Encorp, contractors that have contracts with BDL, and independent depots feeling like they’re being squeezed out of the market.
Are any of those changes permanent? Are they a pilot? If they’re permanent, what consultation with the stakeholders did the ministry themselves undertake versus just the Encorp side of things?
Hon. G. Heyman: The regulation requires extended producer responsibility. It requires producers to take responsibility for return and recycling, but it is silent on exactly how that is done, as long as the objective is met — in other words, which contracted agency does it.
There currently is a…. Encorp has a pilot project. They also have a stewardship plan that is up for review by the ministry, and we’ll review the pilot as part of that review.
P. Milobar: Can the minister confirm, then, that as part of that review, there will be ministry outreach to affected independent and other actual operators within this sphere, as opposed to strictly just the steward agency itself?
Hon. G. Heyman: Yes, there will be.
P. Milobar: Now, this next question…. Again, please, everyone, separate any person from position within the ministry with this. I’m sure the Chair will understand why I gave that disclaimer when I start the actual question here. It’s around the plastics and parliamentary secretary area within the minister’s purview.
Last year, in mid-September…. It was created last year. So it’s understandable why last year, midyear, it would be identified as a $400,000 cost pressure to the ministry, when the minister was needing to find potential cost savings and identify cost pressures. This was, again, September 18.
That was $400,000 last year. What was, as a result, put into the budget this year? It would have been an addition, a new thing that didn’t exist for last year’s budget. I’m assuming that going into this year’s budget, it was a new program and service that was added in. Or was the money pulled from other programs and repackaged?
Hon. G. Heyman: When the 2019-20 budget was created, there was no parliamentary secretary, and there was no mandate to the parliamentary secretary to review marine plastic debris and derelict vessels. Therefore, that’s why it was identified as a cost pressure, because there was an agreement to undertake additional work that was unbudgeted.
That work also involved travel — and not full-time dedicated staff resource but certainly some substantial staff work to support that new initiative. That travel and review are largely complete, with a report being completed by the parliamentary secretary, to be submitted.
The parliamentary secretary continues that and some other work that assists me in some of the consultations that I do on a range of issues. Recycling, waste and plastics are a part of that. The parliamentary secretary receives some support from one of my ministerial assistants on a part-time basis. As well, staff in relevant parts of the ministry will give advice and answer questions when asked. But there is no additional funding in the budget that is targeted specifically to that work.
Like many other things in the ministry, staff answer questions and deal with emergent issues as they arise. They often, as we all do, work long hours to accomplish that.
P. Milobar: That does make some sense. I just wanted to make sure if it was an ongoing program or if it was more side-of-the-desk staff support, which it sounds like and which is understandable. That’s pretty common with governmental things.
In terms of legal expenses, last year — again, cost pressures from September 18 on the FOI — the legal budget was identified as $1.5 million for the Ministry of Environment for the year. Six months into the fiscal, it was forecast to be $2.6 million, based on spending to date — I’m reading directly from the document there — which put it at a little bit more than $1.1 million over budget halfway through the year. Now, that’s obviously forecasting it to the end of the year.
I’m wondering if the minister…. I’m not asking for any legal firms to be named. There are probably many, and many different files they would have worked on. Was the cost overrun of $1.1 million, from a budget of $1.5 million, due to court challenges around the Trans Mountain pipeline?
Hon. G. Heyman: I was just waiting a minute to see if we could break it down. Certainly, TMX would have been part of those costs, along with a number of other ongoing and regular, as well as unpredictable, legal issues and advice that we seek within government.
I’m not sure if the member is aware that legal work in government flows to the Ministry of Attorney General, but it’s on a cost recovery basis. They may well bill us back for some of the work they do or some of the work that is sent out of house, with regard to issues within our purview or which we’ve requested.
P. Milobar: I had assumed that it would be the AG that would spearhead the work, but I did expect that there would be an allotment back to the ministries responsible for creating the charges in the first place.
If I’m hearing correctly, there was a memo created that was a summary of pressures and savings. I would point out there is not one savings identified on the Ministry of Environment sheet. It was all cost pressures, so staff are under an enormous amount of pressure to deliver, so I feel for them. There’s nothing wrong with that. I understand the concept of checking in and making sure where you’re at and referencing where you’re at and making adjustments within budgets within a year to stay within your budget.
However, is the minister saying that this report comes forward, trying to identify cost savings at the time of $6.76 million, also identifies cost pressures of $14 million, and one of the larger single items is the legal expenses being almost double of what was budgeted and there was no follow-up to ask why the AG’s office is billing back so much money to the ministry? It was just blindly accepted, and neither staff nor ministry got in contact with the Attorney General’s office while they were trying to find, literally, $20 million worth of cost pressures. They just blindly accept an extra $1.1 million bill from the Attorney General without asking any follow-up questions as to what that is being billed back for.
Hon. G. Heyman: The member is incorrect. All of the cost recovery from the Ministry of Attorney General is, like legal bills anywhere, itemized in detail, so we don’t have to ask. We get that information, and we closely scrutinize the work that’s being done on our behalf to ensure it aligns with our expectations for priority and expenditure.
P. Milobar: Well, I asked that question because it would have been surprising if there was a different answer than what the minister just gave. But in his previous answer, he wasn’t sure what it all accounted for and gave vague references that there may have been other things that popped up. He did acknowledge that some of it was probably TMX, but one would think that…. Dollar figures, at least in my head — I tend to like numbers — stick in my head.
I was surprised that no one within the ministry staff that’s advising the minister right now recalls, off the top of their head, out of the $2.6 million, under the $1.1 million over budget while this memo was being drafted…. Surely some of those staff probably helped draft the memo. The owner of this one particular item is “all.” There are names next to other items, but this one actually says “all.”
I’m assuming that although there have been staff changes within the ministry, there are still several very well-qualified, great people advising the minister. For those at home, the speaker has done a good job of laying out process. But part of the process is that the minister isn’t necessarily tip of their fingertips for every single answer. That’s why they bring all of their staff to help advise — so that the public and the critics can get full, wound-out answers with some depth and detail to them and the minister can relay back to the public what the staff are providing them for information.
Again, out of the $2.6 million — which was $1.1 million, projected, over budget as of September 18, 2019 — how much of that would be accounted for, for the TMX court filings and various actions that the minister had decided to use every tool in the toolbox to advance?
Hon. G. Heyman: The amount that we were billed back from the Attorney General’s ministry for legal services with respect to Trans Mountain was $162,000.
With that, Chair, might I suggest a recess?
The Chair: Certainly. We are switching Chairs in about 12 minutes.
Hon. G. Heyman: I can wait.
The Chair: Do you want to wait till then? That would be great. We’ll take ten minutes at that point so we can do disinfection procedures and so on. Thanks for hanging in there.
I’ll return to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson.
P. Milobar: Thank you. Can the minister, then, shed some light on what other major events were happening within the Ministry of Environment that would have triggered an almost doubling of the legal budget if the Trans Mountain Supreme Court filings amounted to $162,000 being billed back to the minister? I can appreciate that might be all that was attributed to you, and there’s probably more within the Attorney General’s ministry or other ministries.
I take that answer at face value, but then I’m even more curious how it is that the legal bills would be that much over budget. I’m hard-pressed to think of any other major actions that were happening. So maybe we could get a flavour of various things that were being undertaken unexpectedly by the ministry.
Hon. G. Heyman: Some examples of other legal expenditure were on the issues related to Neucel pulp’s abandonment and subsequent issues regarding coverage of the contaminated site and potential spills, issues related to South Island Aggregates and our orders and the challenges, conservation officer prosecutions, park acquisitions, wrongful death and injury claims in parks and, of course, regular drafting of legislation and regulations.
I’m advised that the actual expenditure for particular legal cases is not revealed publicly while the case is ongoing. Once it is concluded, they’re included in the following year’s public accounts.
P. Milobar: Thank you to the minister. I can accept that. I know back in my city days…. I wasn’t expecting exact dollar figures and exact case file numbers because of those reasons. I just wanted to get an overall flavour.
Just one last one before we take the break, then, just to follow up on the Neucel piece of the legal. That expense on the legal side was in addition to the $6.3 million of cost pressure that the ministry was staring down the barrel at. That didn’t actually have to get triggered until this fiscal, it sounds like. So that’s in addition to, not part of.
Hon. G. Heyman: Of course, in the case of Neucel, cost pressures would have been an estimate, but the legal costs and our estimate of them were included in the cost-pressure figure.
P. Milobar: I will switch gears again, back over to parks, and probably spend most of the rest of our enjoyable time together, Minister, with….
The Chair: Member, why don’t we break five minutes early, and we’ll leave you to start your new section. It’s been a pleasure working with you all. Carry on.
We will take a ten-minute recess so that we can carry out our cleaning protocols associated with switching of the Chair. This meeting is recessed, and we’ll reconvene in ten minutes.
The committee recessed from 3:56 p.m. to 4:06 p.m.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
P. Milobar: We’re going to move on to some parks questions. I believe the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin has just joined us. She had a question around some parks issues as well, and then she has to jump over to the other estimates. So I was thinking maybe we could let her ask a question or two. Then I’ll jump back in, if that works.
The Chair: More than happy to, Member.
Acknowledging the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin.
D. Barnett: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson.
In my region, I have a lot of lakes that are utilized by many, many people, both residents and tourists. We have a situation where some of these lakes have boat launches. The boat launches are not in good condition, Minister. I’ve tried many places to get these boat launches paid attention to.
My question to you, Minister, is: how could we get these boat launches brought up to date so that the residents and the tourists can utilize these launches and enjoy the lakes that we have?
Hon. G. Heyman: B.C. Parks has a $13.98 million annual capital plan. We naturally have a backlog of infrastructure that requires attention. Every year we try to get to it, and we try to prioritize where the greatest needs are.
Boat launches and access are part of that, and part of the priority will depend on if there are alternate access points in addition to the park. There are also other infrastructure matters in the park we have to address.
The ADM responsible for parks, Jim Standen, has indicated that he’d be happy to have a meeting with the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin to review the state of the requests and the infrastructure needs in her constituency and take feedback on her view of where they fit on the priority list. If the member is interested, that can be facilitated through my office.
D. Barnett: To the minister, I would be happy to meet with Mr. Standen. If you could facilitate it and let me know, I will be there. Thank you very much.
Thank you to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson.
P. Milobar: Actually, the minister’s answer leads into an area where I was going to go anyways with parks. The capital plan. I think the minister said $13.98 million is in the capital plan in B.C. Parks. When was the last time that saw a lift? Was it last year to this year? If not, how long has it been at that level?
Hon. G. Heyman: There has been no change to that part of the capital budget since before our government took office. However, there have been very specific additional funds accessed for campsite expansions, for example. We make an application to Treasury Board for that.
We needed to update a number of vessels. That was, again, a separate capital expense, which we received money for from Treasury Board, in addition to what’s in the capital budget.
P. Milobar: I’ve got a few situations to read into…. I want to preface all of this to make it abundantly clear that I recognize that our professional civil service is very professional. They do a great job. None of these are meant to personalize anything, but there is really no way to, maybe, convey some of the frustrations the public is feeling without reading them out.
As I say, staff can only do so much with the dollars allotted to them by elected officials and people with the purse strings. I get that they are trying to do the best they can, given the resources they are given every year, in every budget across government. In this case, I happen to have known Mr. Standen for a few decades now. So it’s certainly not that I question his commitment to parks, or anything of that nature. I hope that disclaimer is understood.
I hope it does not come as a surprise that through the closure and through the reopening, there has been quite a high level of frustration from the public, in terms of parks. I’m just going to read briefly from one. Most of these letter writers do not want to be identified publicly. Some have actually messaged through to the minister. Some have gone through other colleagues of mine.
There’s one: “I want to add to the ever-growing pile of complaints concerning our underserviced B.C. parks.” This one referenced Manning and Golden Ears Parks. They were shocked to see the sad state of both parks. “This is, of course, on top of the hours-long process to register for a campsite on Discover Camping, which repeatedly crashes and freezes.”
Now, one would think that was right when the parks reopened. This was sent July 7. Again, I’m trying to give a bit of the benefit of the doubt of the surge on that, but this is now several weeks after reopening. Several weeks after systems crashing, we’re still receiving these complaints, based on real examples.
“Manning Park was actually not too bad. However, many park amenities were obviously neglected, including high-use hiking trails, which are littered with dozens of fallen trees. Anyone with mobility issues would have to turn around. Thankfully, I could climb over the trees. Many amenities were simply closed for most parks. This park is in satisfactory condition.
“In Golden Ears Park, however, the campground required more gravel. Sites are mud pits. We enjoyed a safe, COVID-friendly family gathering around the fire pit with all of our feet in about one inch of mud. Next to the campground, a lake had formed, due to the rain. Then the lake started to drain into our campsite.
“The outhouse toilets were absolutely disgusting. The tank was visibly full of human waste and needed to be pumped out. Signs were posted advising of the importance of using hand sanitizer, yet none was supplied anywhere in the park. The roads in and around the park contained potholes, and many roads were just gravel, as it appears they have given up.”
Then it referenced Washington state parks.
“It’s a bit more expensive, but they are five times nicer.”
The question, I guess, is…. This is now in July. The minister indicated there was $8.1 million added to the budget, due to COVID, for enhancements around parks, in terms of extra services, PPE and all of those types of things.
We do know that between B.C. Parks, the conservation officer service and the park enhancement fund, there was a $2 million cut to the budget, but it should still be net $6.1 million more than when this budget was first presented, even with COVID factored in.
Why are these problems still persisting for the travelling public this far into summer?
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member for raising these issues.
I want to begin by…. To any British Columbian or any user of B.C. parks who has experienced one of the situations the member for Kamloops–North Thompson’s letters outline or something similar that negatively impacted their camping experience, we apologize. We want people to have a really good experience in B.C. parks, and we’re going to continue to work hard to address the issues of which we’re made aware and enhance that experience.
If nothing else, I think the experience of COVID this year has demonstrated how incredibly important and valuable B.C. parks are to British Columbians and their overall sense of well-being, connection to nature and mental and physical health. To arrive somewhere where you expect to have a natural but a clean and a serviced experience and to find something else when you’re there with your family is a disappointment. I understand that, and we don’t want that to happen.
I will say, with respect to the reservation system, that the times that it has not performed well have been those times when it was experiencing extremely high volumes, as it did on the first day it opened. Despite the glitches, we still made 50,000 reservations that day, which, frankly, is incredible and far in excess of anything we’d experienced before. One of the things this demonstrates is that there is more demand on B.C. parks this year than there has been historically — more interest by British Columbians and, unfortunately, some more frustrations.
I can say that my deputy and I are aware of these. There are a number of issues about which we’re dissatisfied, and we’re conducting a review that will continue at the end of the camping season with a view to ensure that we enhance the system and we relieve British Columbians of the frustration that comes when the reservation system isn’t working smoothly at all times. We’re never going to be at 100 percent. I think to say that any IT system is going to work at 100 percent is a nice concept, but I personally have yet to experience it, including my attempt to get Internet in my hotel yesterday.
We will work hard to ensure that in almost all cases, it’s the experience that it’s meant to be. People don’t have all day to spend online trying to get a campsite for their families. We don’t expect them to, and we don’t think it’s good when they have to. We want to address that. I’m sure the member would agree with me on that.
I appreciate the other issues that have been raised. Part of my delay in answering was that I was trying to find out from our staff in Parks if some of these rang bells, if we were familiar with them. Some of the letters may have come to us; others may not.
If the member gets complaints, please forward them to B.C. Parks. Things like trees across trails need to be dealt with. We want to deal with those expeditiously. If a park operator is not meeting their commitment, for instance, to ensure that the facilities are clean and sanitary and that outhouses are not full, we want to deal with that, and we will deal with that. The sooner we get the information, the better.
We have a range of other issues in parks, and we’re working hard to catch up. We will continue to work hard so that British Columbians can go to a B.C. park and fully appreciate it and not worry about any of the issues the member has raised.
P. Milobar: Another one here. I’m glad the minister touches on the reservation system and it having issues in busy times. This is an email. It went to the minister, as well, yesterday afternoon, at about 5:30. He probably hasn’t seen it, but his staff hopefully have — not necessarily the ones in estimates but probably in his office. This is an email out of frustration. I’ll clip through it fairly quickly, because it’s three pages.
The crux of it is that last August, they booked a group campsite at Kokanee Creek in Nelson for August 24 to 31 this year, total cost of $1,383.90. Although they were disappointed in May that the reservation was cancelled, they understood the decision in terms of safety for people. They believed the reports that refunds would be given out. Not receiving any correspondence from B.C. Parks, they connected on B.C. Parks’ Facebook, and that’s when the runaround began.
May 21, on Facebook, they inquired. Advised to contact the call centre.
May 31, talked to the call centre. “May 31, emailed the cancellation number to the information line to ask when and how I would receive my refund of almost $1,400. No response.”
June 11, another Facebook question. No response.
June 18, another email to B.C. Parks. No response.
June 25, another email to B.C. Parks. No response.
“June 29, I see on Facebook that B.C. Parks were again allowing group reservations.” He makes an inquiry on Facebook. “The B.C. Parks people respond to tell me to quit emailing as there is a lot of volume. Note, that comment was deleted, but to be fair, I did ask on someone else’s comment because my questions were not being answered, so they probably deleted the whole thread.”
June 29, yet again called the Discover Camping reservation number at 10 a.m. “After waiting for 45 minutes on call, I hang up. I call several more times that day but hang up after ten minutes. Why does your phone queue not have a callback option?” A very important question.
“June 29, yet another email to B.C. Parks referencing that you are allowing group reservations again, which is in very poor form, as you have not processed refunds yet. No response.
June 30, another several attempts to get through on the reservation line. Still on hold for longer than 15 minutes twice.” This person works regular business hours so can’t wait longer than a coffee break to speak to an agent.
July 8, more Facebook questions. “Again, no direct responses to my inquiry, but B.C. Parks is responding to other consumers. I also requested a refund request through the Discover Camping website, but I forgot to record the date of that request.”
The long and short is that this person’s saying that, after multiple contact points and over seven weeks waiting for a refund for a cancellation that was initiated by B.C. Parks, they want to know when they can expect to see their almost $1,400 reservation fee that was cancelled by B.C. Parks.
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member. We spent a little time. The member’s correct. I haven’t seen that letter yet. I will. There’s usually a bit of delay.
It’s difficult for me to comment on something that I haven’t seen and I haven’t had a chance to run down. Regardless of that, let me first of all say that it’s pretty clear that the writer experienced incredible frustration, and I want to apologize for that. I think that people have a right to expect an answer and a response, even if it may not be what they’re looking for.
Specifically, we’ve had 47,000 cancellations to date. That is not something that we ever prepared to handle or is usual. Obviously, it was brought about by COVID and, in addition, our decision to give preferential treatment to B.C. people booking. So we had a backlog of refunds. We’re not quite through it, but we’re working through it, and we’re close to being through it.
What I would say to the member is we’re going to track down that letter and make direct contact with the letter writer to discuss directly their experiences and ensure that we take steps to deal with them. We’d be happy to communicate with the member, as well, and keep the member abreast of how we propose to address the particular situation as well as any systemic issues that we may identify through them.
Hopefully, we will not have another COVID summer, but certainly, that’s not guaranteed. We want to ensure that if British Columbians are seeing B.C. Parks as a refuge, as I said previously, they’re a welcoming and hospitable environment, that people do not, frankly, experience frustrations in interacting with B.C. Parks by telephone, by website, by social media or in other ways.
I need to look at the letter. I can’t comment further until I have, but I want to assure the member that we take the issue seriously. We’ll look at them. We’ll make contact with the person, again, about the frustration. I understand that $1,300 is a lot of money. It’s a lot of money to wait for. My apologies to the person who’s waiting for a refund, as well as for the loss of the opportunity to camp, although the writer did understand that aspect of it.
P. Milobar: I certainly was not expecting that the minister, and I hope I made that clear as well, would know all the details of these two letters. I selected them to highlight on purpose. I think they show the frustration around people trying to get a reservation and, when they finally do, the condition of the parks once they finally get out into the parks, as well as the frustration on the side of people trying to get their refunds and that from the cancellations.
The minister referenced both scenarios in both his answers, which was good, in terms of the system having a problem with the spike of 50,000 people trying to book a reservation but also the 47,000 cancellations that the ministry initiated on their own by making the decision to close all the parks.
Now, I understand the ministry is saying that this is because of COVID. I get that. I’m not so thick as to not realize that logic. However, government, across ministries, was, by and large, taking their direction directly from the public health officer in terms of the steps that they were taking of changing regulations or operations within their own ministries to respond to orders or direction from the public health officer.
My understanding is that the complete closure of the parks and the complete cancellation of all the parks reservations was not done at the request of the public health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry. It was not done by way of order. It was strictly a ministerial decision by the Minister of Environment.
Can the minister provide some insight as to why, of all the things, at a time when Dr. Henry was encouraging people to go out, encouraging people to go and be in the open spaces, to go hiking, to get some physical fitness for your own mental well-being, to be with your small family unit from inside your own house and to find safe ways to be out in the bigger spaces…?
At the same time as those pieces of advice were being given by our public health officer, who, I think everyone can agree, has been giving great advice to this point…. It was, essentially, ignored by the Minister of Environment, and a decision was made to close those exact spaces the public health officer was encouraging people to go and access.
Hon. G. Heyman: The member asked…. The question was, I believe: what was the process that led us to the decision? Because it wasn’t an order of the provincial health officer.
Let me start by saying we didn’t announce a closure of our parks until April 8, which was sometime into the heavy concern about the pandemic. One of the reasons we didn’t was we heard clearly the need for people to get outside, to get some exercise, to do it in open spaces — that it was important for their mental and physical health. So we saw the role that B.C. Parks played as quite central and integral to that.
At the point at which we closed the parks, however, we did so for a variety of reasons. I would note that on April 8, when we closed the parks, the national parks system had already been closed. Around the same time, both Saskatchewan and Alberta also closed their parks. I haven’t checked to confirm this, but my memory tells me that Ontario did as well.
What we were seeing were issues of crowding, issues of crowding at trail heads. It’s true. A park is a wide-open space. It’s also a space that has certain concentrations of people and chokepoints. We were seeing a lot of crowding in those places — trail heads, parking lots. In some cases, we had people parked three deep. Playgrounds. We were seeing spillovers to neighbouring communities that were causing concerns that were expressed to us by neighbouring communities. They were also expressed to us by some local law enforcement agencies, as well as by some neighbouring Indigenous nations.
The member — I’m going to anticipate a question — might have asked: why didn’t you close the areas where you heard the complaints? The answer to that is that it’s difficult to enforce a decision like that, in some cases, without causing a rush in movement to some other place that, therefore, takes the problems with it and results in rolling closure orders. It just didn’t make sense to us to do that. We thought we should be definitive.
The member also said that the provincial health officer did not order the closure, and that’s correct. She also didn’t order the closure of many retail spaces or many malls. But B.C. Parks and our decision-making process in the ministry office worked the same way that many of those operators did. That was to look at the general direction of the provincial health officer, which at that time was: stay close to home; minimize or eliminate unnecessary travel; ensure you maintain social distancing, because we need to flatten the curve. It’s important to flatten the curve quickly rather than to see it go up.
Like those other places, and like the national park system and Alberta and Saskatchewan, our interpretation was that given what we were seeing, we needed to take the action to close the parks. It’s true that when asked in an interview, the provincial health officer said on April 29: “It was not me who closed the parks.” But she went on to say that a primary reason for the closure of the parks was increased concern about people gathering, certainly in particular areas, and using the facilities, which was exactly the reports we were getting and exactly why we acted.
I’m not going to claim that the decision was perfect or the decision-making process was perfect. But I think it’s fair to say that whether it’s across government, the private sector or our communities at large, nobody has ever actually experienced this before in living memory or had the opportunity to have a game plan for addressing it.
We did the best we can, and we erred on the side of protecting public health and communities, in particular, from the possibility of outbreaks with very severe consequences, which in many cases, on April 8, were largely unknown. But at that time, we had a chance to view northern Italy. We had a chance to view Spain. We had a chance to view parts of France. We knew British Columbians didn’t want to experience that here.
P. Milobar: Well, the minister references that it would be much more difficult to do rolling closures and that. Yet the ministry seemed to find no problem doing rolling openings.
We have a situation now where there are parks like Garibaldi Park, which is still closed to this day, even though we’re in phase 3 — that’s my understanding — yet smaller, heavier-used parks in the same region have been open since parks started to reopen, especially the more day-trip parks, not even the camping side.
Why is it that we are still seeing parks that are very large — Garibaldi’s a very, very large park — closed? There seemed to be no problem to do a unilateral “everything is closed.” There does not seem to be that same willingness to open up and have more parks open so people could actually spread out — same amount of people in more parks versus putting people into those smaller parks in certain areas.
Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the member for the question. Obviously, British Columbians, particularly people who want to use those parks that have yet to open — very beautiful parks, very popular parks, like Garibaldi — want to get there and want to get there soon, and they’re asking why.
As I explained when I talked about the closure all at once — we did close a couple of parks early, but the rest we did close all at once, on April 8 — it was because that was a different time. We were on the upswing in COVID cases. We were trying to flatten the curve. We didn’t know what the impacts of the infection rate would be or if it was going to go on a steep curve upward or not.
I’m not saying that those concerns and risks have disappeared, but we are in a different time. We’ve flattened the curve, and we’re taking measures to keep it flat and under control while opening gradually.
Obviously, we want to open as many parks to the public as possible as soon as possible so that we can spread out usage, but there are some parks that we have not yet opened that are high use. They have not yet opened; they’re high use when they’re open. They have not yet opened because we’re working hard to put in place the measures that will ensure that we don’t create an overcrowding situation at choke points, as well as in the park generally, so that we have to roll back. We want to do it well the first time so that we can maintain an opening.
We’re working hard on Garibaldi, and we hope to open it very soon.
P. Milobar: Thank you to the minister for that. I’m going to, with the Chair’s permission, turn it over to Kootenay East for a quick question, and then I think we’ve pretty much hit the end of my time allotment. So we’ll do that, if that works.
T. Shypitka: Thanks to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson for the opportunity and to the minister himself as well.
I just wanted to get some clarification, if anything else, with this question. I want to draw the minister’s attention to an area around the Koocanusa reservoir known as the Koocanusa recreation strategy area. It’s an area that’s been identified to put a management plan in place. Through that management plan, we’ve seen a section of the Forest and Range Practices Act, otherwise known as FRPA, section 58, enacted on that piece of strategy area, which includes the closure of Crown land to overnight camping and also to off-road vehicle use other than designated trails.
I just wanted to ask the minister if this is under his purview or not, or is this something I need to take to FLNRO on decision and on the management of that recreation area?
Hon. G. Heyman: The member is right. It’s under the direction and authority of FLNRO, and that’s where the question should be directed. We did assist them with compliance on the long weekend but, again, under their direction and authority.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Members.
All right. So seeing no further questions at this point, does the Minister have any closing remarks?
Hon. G. Heyman: I’d like to thank primarily the member for Kamloops–North Thompson but also many other members of the opposition and the Opposition House Leader for the Third Party for asking thoughtful questions and questions their constituents want and deserve answers to.
While it’s hard to hear some of the issues the member for Kamloops–North Thompson raised about parks, we appreciate hearing them, and my commitment is to follow up. Likewise, with the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin and others where there is some follow-up needed. I would add that estimates is not the only time the member can bring issues to my attention. We want to address them.
I want to thank the staff of the ministry, whom I introduced at the beginning of the process a little over a week ago, for assisting with this process, providing information and answers, and also for the work they do every day to assure British Columbians that we have a meaningful park system, meaningful oversight of environmental issues and a meaningful climate plan.
Vote 23: ministry operations, $188,132,000 — approved.
Vote 24: environmental assessment office, $21,482,000 — approved.
The Chair: We’re going to take a short recess, about five minutes, give or take, as we prepare for our next set of estimates, which will be Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.
The committee recessed from 5:08 p.m. to 5:20 p.m.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
MENTAL HEALTH AND
ADDICTIONS
On Vote 36: ministry operations, $9,712,000.
The Chair: Did the minister have any opening statements or want to acknowledge staff?
Hon. J. Darcy: I do. Let me begin by acknowledging that we’re on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.
I’d like to introduce the ministry staff who are attendance, some in the room here, others remotely: Deputy Minister Neilane Mayhew; Assistant Deputy Ministers Nick Grant and Taryn Walsh; the ministry’s chief financial officer, Dara Landry; the head of the overdose emergency response centre, Justine Patterson; and a few others. I’m very grateful for their support 365 days a year, and I’m very grateful for their support preparing for estimates this year.
Yes, I do have some opening remarks. Our ministry was created almost three years ago, to the day. Since that time, we have been working flat out with a really dedicated team in our ministry but also in concert with so many partners in the community and health authorities right across the province, people on the front lines of mental health and addictions.
I want to begin by expressing my incredible gratitude to the ministry staff and to everyone who works in mental health and addictions. It takes very, very special people to do this work. It is about policy expertise, clinical expertise and financial expertise. It’s about a lot of expertise, but it’s also about issues that you pour your heart and your soul into, because this is not work that you should be doing if you aren’t totally passionate about these issues. Our teams certainly are.
We have been working flat out for three years now, working to get to a place in this province where everybody in British Columbia is able to get the mental health and addictions care they need when they need it and where they need it. For far too long, people have been left waiting. They’ve been having to navigate a broken system for too long that allows too many people to fall through the cracks. Our government is working at full speed to build that comprehensive system of mental health and addictions care that British Columbians want and that they deserve.
We’re also working, on every front, to respond to the overdose crisis by strengthening treatment and recovery and prevention and early intervention and saving lives. Last year, you will know that we launched A Pathway to Hope: A Roadmap for Making Mental Health and Addictions Care Better for People in British Columbia. This is a ten-year plan. We are one year into it. We have already begun transforming the system of mental health and addiction care. We’ve accomplished a lot, but we certainly recognize that we have much more to do.
I want to begin by just saying a couple of things about the social determinants of health, because people experience mental health and addiction challenges for many different reasons, all of them very complex. Each person’s story is unique. Each person’s recovery journey looks different. I want to thank all of those people in all corners of the province who have shared their stories with me — their family’s stories, their struggles and the help that they need — because that certainly guides our work every single day.
We’re working across government to build strong foundations that support good health outcomes. When we speak of social determinants of health, of course, that means things like secure housing and reducing homelessness. It means tackling poverty reduction. It means a true commitment to reconciliation and to gender equity. It means improving access to education and post-secondary education and better opportunities for all, to name just a few.
By focusing on the social determinants of health and strengthening our continuum of care for mental health and substance use, we really are working from every conceivable angle in order to try and stem the tide of the overdose crisis and to help more people on the road to recovery, more people on the road to good mental health. That includes that we’re integrating mental health and substance use care into primary care, hon. Speaker.
I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Chair, being called hon. Speaker.
The Chair: Very kind, very kind.
Hon. J. Darcy: Okay. Good, hon. Chair.
This is really important because we have said over and over again — it’s sort of a driving theme for our ministry — that mental health issues are not signs of weakness, and addiction is not a sign of moral failure. These should not be treated as criminal issues. These are health issues — period. It’s critical that we treat them that way.
Integrating mental health and substance use care into primary care is a really important way of recognizing that overriding theme. When you go for primary health care, we want more and more to be able to see mental health and substance use integrated into that. We are doing that through urgent and primary care centres that embed mental health and substance use through patient care networks, through a new nurse practitioner–led clinic that has mental health and substance use clinicians — and much more to come. We are indeed working very hard to build a continuum of care.
Let me say something about prevention, because that continuum of care has many different pieces, and prioritizing prevention is really critical. It’s so important that we start with our youth, our young people, that we tackle small problems before they become big ones and try and avoid mental health issues or childhood trauma from turning into substance use issues in early adult life, in teenage years, or later on in life. Prevention and early intervention are key to ensuring that children and youth and young adults can get the help they need for better outcomes in life so they don’t just survive, but they’re able to thrive, now and later on in life.
A prime example of our work in this area is the Foundry youth centres. It’s really a shining example of the work that our ministry is doing, and I want to pay tribute to the people who are working in those Foundry youth centres. This is really about connecting young people to the care and connection and support that they do need, not just to survive but to thrive.
We’ve recently announced, as the Chair will know, eight new Foundry locations in rural and urban communities, for a total of 19 — count them, 19 — Foundry youth centres right across the province once we’re complete. Two of those Foundry centres are Indigenous-led organizations, in Port Hardy and in Cranbrook. But certainly, there are partnerships with Indigenous people and First Nations all across the province. And to ensure that young people who don’t live near a Foundry centre still have access to the vital services that they provide, a new virtual service has also been launched.
That’s not it, hon. Chair. I know we’ll have a chance to talk about this further, but in the area of prevention, child and youth mental health teams that we’re beginning to build in school districts, mental health programs in schools…. That’s so important that we start with our young people, both because we want to give them support early in life but also because they’re the leaders. They’re really the leaders in combatting stigma. They’re the leaders in bringing down the walls of silence surrounding mental health and addictions, leading the way in saying, “It’s okay to say: ‘I’m not okay.’”
The work we’re doing in schools is critically important, the work in Foundry. So is the work in post-secondary education, where my colleague the Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, earlier this year, this spring, announced a 24-7 mental health line dedicated to students in post-secondary education.
Another critical part, of course, of the continuum of care is treatment and recovery, because people who are ready to start their recovery journey from addiction need to be able to get the treatment and recovery services as soon as they possibly can. To be frank, over the last decade, investments in mental health and addictions did not keep up with demand, and that has resulted in long wait-lists and lack of services in many communities, especially rural and remote areas.
We are working as quickly as we can to address the gaps in that system, and there are many, many gaps. We have a long way to go, but we are making headway. We are making a difference. We have opened new residential treatment beds. We have significantly expanded access to counselling, because access to mental health and addiction care should not depend on the size of your bank account. But too often it has, and we want that to change. We think that’s wrong.
These counselling grants, which have been distributed to 29 organizations across the province and then expanded further when we went virtual during COVID to an additional 20 agencies, are a critical part of being able to access these services where you need them, when you need them.
The overdose crisis, the dual public health emergencies. We were making some progress on the overdose crisis before COVID-19 hit. We still had a long way to go. But for the first year since 2012, which was when we began to see very noticeable increases in the numbers of people who were overdosing…. Since that time, the first year that the overdose death toll started to go down was last year. It went down by 36 percent. Still a long way to go, but we were headed in the right direction.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control, along with Dr. Bonnie Henry — they’ve kind of become household names now — have estimated that 6,000 deaths were averted because of the initiatives that our government had taken and because of all the efforts on the front lines. Then COVID-19 hit. We know — and the coroner has been crystal clear about this — the spike in overdose deaths that we’re dealing with today, tragically, and that continues to rise is a direct result of a drug supply that is more toxic than it has ever, ever been before.
We did move very quickly. I’m sure we’ll be talking about that further, with questions from the opposition. We’ve moved very quickly since COVID-19 hit, to move counselling services virtual, with $5 million investments. We moved very quickly to put risk mitigation guidelines in place so that there were safe prescription alternatives to the poisoned drug supply.
We recently announced more beds and, as I mentioned, more substance use integrated teams and also very direct support to the recovery sector. Like so many other sectors, whether they’re social sectors or economic sectors, they were hit hard by COVID-19, and we gave some important support for them, because we know how important the recovery sector is in this continuum of care.
In conclusion to my opening remarks, the fact is, the reality is, we are living in an unprecedented time of two public health emergencies here in the province of British Columbia, the fentanyl poisoning crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and a collaborative approach is absolutely essential. To those who work tirelessly on the front lines every single day in mental health, in addictions and in the overdose crisis, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you on behalf of a grateful province. Thank you to the staff in our ministries and across government and our partners provincewide.
Let me just say, before we begin the questions, that the way we pulled together as British Columbians, the way we pulled together as a province during COVID-19, we showed that we could move mountains. We showed that we could lead not just Canada but jurisdictions around the world in our response to COVID-19. We need to come together in exactly the same way in order to turn the corner on this terrible crisis that continues to take brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles and close friends.
To all of my colleagues and to whoever is listening — I’m sure tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands across the province — my appeal to all of you is we need to come together as one, all hands on deck, so that we can turn the corner on the overdose crisis in the same way we did with COVID-19.
I look forward to hearing questions from my opposition colleagues.
J. Thornthwaite: I, too, would like to thank all the health care workers, front-line workers out there across the board, all of those that are working with mental health and addictions and those in residential care. Certainly a shout-out.
I’ve got some initial questions. Then I’m going to get some of my colleagues to step in and ask some questions specific to their ridings.
First of all, I’d just like to get something on the record. Today, Minister, the Premier was asked about treating the opioid crisis with the urgency of COVID-19. He responded with a quote, saying: “These are two separate things. We have an insidious virus that affects anyone at any time, and we have an opioid crisis that involves people using drugs. Those are choices, initially, and then they become dependencies.”
Does the minister agree that addiction is a choice?
Hon. J. Darcy: Well, I think I was pretty clear in my opening remarks about what our government’s position is. We’re very clear that addiction is not a moral issue. Addiction is not a criminal issue. It’s a health issue, and it should be treated that way.
We don’t want people to continue to face stigma if they’re struggling with mental health or addictions. We want them to be seen as people who need health care and who need support in order to regain their health, and we want them to get well.
Our Premier has been very, very clear that he supports, as do I, the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs call for decriminalization of individuals who have small amounts of drugs in their personal possession for personal use, but we believe we absolutely need to crack down on organized crime. We need to crack down on the big drug pushers. We need to crack down on those people who are importing drugs and who are concocting these deadly substances that are killing people every day.
I haven’t heard the opposition critic or the Leader of the Opposition say where the opposition stands on the issue of decriminalization. We’ve made it very clear that we’re encouraging the federal government to move forward on that issue because we think it’s critical to this being treated as a health care issue, not a moral issue. I’d be very interested to hear where the opposition stands on that issue.
J. Thornthwaite: I didn’t get an answer, actually. I’d like to know if the minister agrees with the Premier’s statement that addiction is a choice.
Hon. J. Darcy: It was crystal-clear. I think we’re very clear on the issue. This is not a moral issue. This is not a criminal issue. This is a health care issue. We believe it should be treated that way.
All the work that our government has done, all the work that our ministry has done, has been to address this as a health care issue, to address issues like trauma, like poverty and homelessness, which are some of the social determinants of mental health and addictions, and, very importantly, to recognize that for Indigenous people, who are dying at a rate 5.6 times higher than the population at large, this is an issue that is directly related to our dark legacy in this province, in this country, of colonization, of residential schools, of racism in the health care system that continues to this day.
We are working in very close partnership in order to tackle those issues, which are absolutely what mental health and addiction’s issues are all about.
J. Thornthwaite: I will take that that the minister, then, disagrees with her Premier saying that addiction is a choice. Does the minister think that his comments this morning were contributing to the stigma by saying that addiction is a choice?
Hon. J. Darcy: The member opposite is trying to put words in my mouth. It’s not a very helpful exercise.
We’re very, very clear, as a government, where we stand on this issue. This is a health issue. From day one, we have treated it that way. We have done major campaigns to combat stigma in this province, which the member opposite is well aware of.
The member will have seen billboards. Millions of British Columbians will have seen billboards right across this province, in transit shelters, in buses, on social media, that say people who use drugs are real people — they are our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, our sisters, hockey players, our co-workers — and appealing to people to get information, to get informed, to get help, to go to stopoverdosebc.ca.
We’ve done a tremendous amount of work, as a government, right across this province, in combatting stigma and in trying to break down the stigma that does exist in a variety of different communities, with people from all walks of life. I think our record speaks for itself.
J. Thornthwaite: I haven’t gotten an answer to my question. I was asking specifically if the minister agrees with her Premier that addiction is a choice.
Hon. J. Darcy: I could repeat myself, but I think the question has been asked and answered.
J. Thornthwaite: Does the minister think that those who were prescribed opioids for surgery, for pain, and who subsequently got addicted when their prescriptions ran out and then had to go to the illicit drug market, overdosed and died did so by choice, like what the Premier said?
Hon. J. Darcy: Again, the record of our government is very clear on this. In my opening remarks, I said there are many different…. For anyone who is struggling with an addiction, people are on very many different journeys, and their journeys began in very different places.
I’ve told this story before, but I think I will again because it’s very relevant. In literally my first week on the job, I visited the Downtown Eastside. I visited Surrey, where there was the homeless strip, the homelessness encampment on 135A. It’s, thankfully, not there anymore because of the actions of our government. I toured the province.
I heard so many stories, one after another, that really said to me, loud and clear, that there are many different journeys that got people to this place of addiction, and there are many different pathways of hope. That’s why that has really been a guiding theme for our government. People have different journeys. We need to meet them wherever they’re at in that journey and provide support along the continuum.
I remember very well, literally that first week, talking to a former construction worker, a former forestry worker whose journey began with a workplace injury and with pharmaceuticals that were prescribed. There was a lot of concern about overprescribing and overmarketing, the hyper marketing of prescription medications. In some cases, people were cut off, but the pain continued. They turned to street drugs.
For other people, addiction begins with childhood trauma. We know that. That’s why so much of all of the work that we’re doing is trauma-informed. Everyone who works on the front lines of mental health and addictions needs to understand the role of trauma in people’s journeys. It’s why the work that we’re doing in partnership with the First Nations Health Authority is so important. It’s about tackling some of these root causes.
I believe our record speaks for itself on that issue. I’m happy to continue to share more about what our government is doing that indicates how we view these issues, but I do believe the question has been asked and answered about five times now.
J. Thornthwaite: I actually don’t agree. The question has not been answered. It was a simple yes-or-no answer.
Is the minister, when she’s referring…? She just referred to a construction worker that got addicted to opioids because of prescription drugs. Does the minister agree with her Premier that that construction worker got addicted by choice?
Hon. J. Darcy: The Premier has been crystal clear. I have been crystal clear. Our government is crystal clear that addiction is a health issue. It is not a moral issue. It is not a criminal issue. Our record and our actions speak for themselves.
J. Thornthwaite: Okay. I’ll just move on a little bit.
I’d like to share two quotes from my colleagues from today. One is from the MLA for Skeena. He said: “My brother, in looking for relief from extreme back pain from a rare spinal disease, didn’t do it by choice. Everything else had failed. Trade places with him for a day.”
My colleague the MLA for Peace River North said: “I don’t often speak about my brother, who passed away as a result of drug addiction, but comments like this really infuriate me. These comments hurt and fuel the stigma around addiction. To make comments like this, as B.C. faces the worst time in this crisis — sad.”
My question to the minister, then, is: will the minister apologize to my colleagues as well as the 5,000 people that have died from an overdose? Will she apologize for the Premier’s remarks that it is only a choice?
Hon. J. Darcy: I have sat in so many circles with families who have lost loved ones to overdose. They are heartbreaking stories. They are what drive our ministry and what drive me and our government every single day in escalating our response to the overdose crisis.
My heart goes out to the MLAs on all sides of the House whose families have been affected by addiction. There are MLAs sitting in our Legislature who’ve lost family members to overdose. I know their pain. The Premier knows their pain.
I know from personal experience, not my own but in my family. My mother struggled with mental health and addictions her entire adult life. I know about the stigma. I know what stigma means from firsthand experience. When I was a kid growing up in a small town in southwestern Ontario, we weren’t allowed to talk about my mother’s struggles with mental health because it was a source of shame and blame. We weren’t allowed to talk about her struggles with addiction. In fact, it wasn’t even admitted within the family because it was such a source of shame.
When my mother was hospitalized, institutionalized, we had to pretend that she was somewhere else. She was in for “surgery.” It’s just she kept going back, because it’s a chronic, relapsing condition. So believe me, I know about stigma. I know about stigma.
Our government created a designated Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions because of how important, how widespread, we believe these issues are and because we believe they have not received the attention that they deserve and because we need to bring down the walls of stigma surrounding mental health and addictions.
Our government’s actions speak loud and clear to how we see mental health and addictions. Our ministry’s actions speak loud and clear to how we view mental health and addictions. Mental health is not a moral issue. It’s not a criminal issue. It’s a health care issue. That’s how we treat it. All the work our government does makes it very clear we believe it’s a health issue, and we need to be there for people every step of the way through their journey.
J. Thornthwaite: I totally agree that addiction is a health issue, but that’s not what the Premier said. He said it’s a choice.
My question, again, to the minister, on behalf of my colleagues and all of the 5,000 people who have died of addictions. Will you please apologize to those people and those families?
The Chair: Through the Chair, Member.
J. Thornthwaite: Thank you. Through the Chair.
Hon. J. Darcy: Our government has been very clear, and our Premier has been very clear, that addiction is a health issue. It’s not a moral issue. He’s also been very clear that addiction should not be treated as a criminal issue.
I want to read a direct quote from the Premier.
“I want to put the federal government on notice in a very positive way that I will continue to support the call from the national police chiefs last week that we decriminalize personal use of opioids so we take away the criminal stigma and focus on what this really is — a health care crisis. We don’t want people to be criminals. We want them to be patients, and we want them to get well.
“I know the federal government agrees with me on that. Now is the time to focus on that issue, and I’m very excited about taking the lead with the national police chiefs organization and other community leaders across B.C. and, indeed, across the country in making sure that we can collaborate on that issue as well as we have collaborated on COVID-19.”
J. Thornthwaite: I’ll ask just one more time. It is clear that the minister has said that this is a health issue. But that’s not what the Premier said today when he was talking in his press release. He said it was a choice.
One more time to the minister, through the Chair. Can you possibly apologize for the Premier saying that it’s a choice?
The Chair: While the minister confers, just to be clear to all members, saying “through the Chair” and then “you” is not the same thing as through the Chair. “Through the Chair” means you’re asking me a question. The minister responds and responds to me as Chair.
Again, we’re three years into this now. I hope members would focus on answering and asking questions through the Chair in the appropriate form, as they’ve been instructed many times. Thank you.
Hon. J. Darcy: Thank you, hon. Chair.
I don’t know how many more times the member opposite wants me to repeat this, but let me repeat it very clearly. The Premier’s position — my position, the government’s position — is that addiction is a health issue. It’s not a moral issue. It shouldn’t be treated as a criminal issue.
Our actions speak very loud and clear. We are working right across the spectrum in building a better system for mental health and addictions and in working across the continuum of care on things from treatment and recovery to harm reduction to access to safe prescription medications and a major focus on prevention. I think our actions make it very clear that this is a health issue, and that’s how our government is treating it.
J. Thornthwaite: I will just make one final statement on this particular issue — that, perhaps, the minister could reflect on the 175 people that died in the month of June and, perhaps, see how their families felt when they heard the Premier say that their deaths were a choice.
Moving on, I have got my colleague from Abbotsford-Mission who is ready to ask a question or two.
S. Gibson: Good to be here. Minister, thank you for this opportunity. I want to thank my colleague the member for North Vancouver–Seymour for allowing me to ask a few questions tonight.
I’ve taken quite an interest in this file. I guess one of the areas that I would like to emphasize and, perhaps, ask the minister about is prevention. My understanding is that only about 20 percent of people that become addicted are able to become completely clean. The phrase, I think, to use is “to clean.” We spend a lot of time and money, as we should, on trying to get people off addictions. However, there seems to be — to me, at least, as I look as an outsider, perhaps — very little money spent on prevention.
I was reading about a program in California, the DARE program, which you’ll be familiar with, I know, because it wasn’t successful. It had uniformed police officers going into elementary school classrooms in the Los Angeles area, scaring the students, they thought, and discouraging them from entering into the world of drugs. But it actually encouraged them, because it created their interest.
My introductory question is: what are we doing about prevention, discouraging people from making those kinds of decisions and going in that kind of direction? That is my question.
Hon. J. Darcy: Thank you to the member for Abbotsford-Mission for the question. Your question is very near and dear to my heart.
The member, I’m sure, will know that in A Pathway To Hope, which we published a year ago…. I referenced in my opening remarks that we said very clearly in that, and we’ve said very clearly since our ministry was created, that the cornerstone of the work that we’re doing is starting early, starting with our children, starting with our youth and focusing on prevention and on early intervention. So a significant amount of our efforts have been focused exactly there, where the member believes they need to be focused.
I am aware of programs that take an approach of trying to scare kids. I’m also aware that that’s not generally the best approach. Presenting kids with the facts, having role models speak to them, integrating it into curriculum — all of those are really important parts of creating more openness about talking about mental health issues and about prevention, as far as kids turning to substance use.
In A Pathway to Hope and in the actions of our government since then, I think you’ve seen a number of the key actions that we’ve already taken. In schools, for instance, the Ministry of Education has taken a number of important steps to support prevention and awareness related to opioid overdoses, including training for school personnel on substance use. Flexibility in the curriculum — we think it’s really important that we start integrating these issues into curriculum at an early age.
Obviously, it looks different at different ages. But there has been — for as long as I can remember and as long as you can remember, I’m sure, Member — physical education that’s taught in schools. Well, now mental health and substance use issues are being integrated into that curriculum, because they’re all part of health care.
It’s interesting. I heard this lovely story about a year ago when I was at a fundraiser for a mental health organization. I was sitting at a table opposite a couple of major donors to this particular organization that provides mental health services. They had just heard me say something about integrating mental health and substance use into the curriculum.
They leaned over when I came back to my chair, and they said, “You know, our son who is six years old came home from school the day before….” And as parents, when our kids are small, we often say: “What happened in school today?” Right? Or we try to engage them in conversation.
Their son actually talked about what he’d learned in school that day, which was that if your arm hurts, you talk about how your arm hurts or your arm is sore or your foot is sore or you injured yourself. Well, he learned that it’s also important if your heart is kind of hurting, you know? If you’re feeling pretty sad, it’s important to talk about that too. So that says something about what a six-year-old learned in grade 1.
Obviously, the curriculum is more sophisticated as you go through K to 12. In secondary school, of course, it’s much more in depth than that. But we absolutely believe that prevention and early intervention need to start in the school system.
Foundrys, you know about. Foundrys are really a backbone of the work that we’re doing on prevention and early intervention. I know that the member is very familiar, I’m sure he is, with the Foundry youth centre in Abbotsford, which, I think, has the largest array of partnerships of any Foundry, at least they did at the time I visited them when they did the official opening. At that point, there were 35 organizations that had come together to really try and create that seamless system of care for youth, ages 12 to 24. I’m sure their number of partners has expanded since then.
Those are just a couple of the things we’re doing in the area of prevention. But I absolutely agree with the member that we need to start with our kids.
S. Gibson: I often wonder why my friend in high school, very similar to myself, became addicted and then subsequently committed suicide. One of my best friends in Abbotsford some years ago, a very successful businessman, had five children, became addicted to cocaine and then subsequently committed suicide.
I wonder what these people and, perhaps, the 175 that we’re lamenting, the tragedy that we’ve experienced just recently…. I’m wondering what they have in common and if we can diagnose some way to be able to plan some kind of a program to allow people to make decisions that are wise early on in their life. I’m afraid if we don’t do that, Minister, I think we’re going to be spending a lot of money unnecessarily at the end of the process rather than at the beginning. So my question would be: what can we do to avoid that?
I’ll share this with you briefly. I know time is limited here.
I had the privilege of teaching business ethics at the university here locally. I reminded the students of a story. If you go to a party and somebody offers you a drug, you have to make a decision. Do I stay and use the drug, do I stay and not use the drug, or do I leave? Most of my students, I don’t think, had ever thought about that decision. These are university students beginning their academic life.
I worry about students like that and the ones that you talked about. Really, there’s no plan or no program that will allow students, young people, to make intelligent decisions that will avoid them getting into addictive behaviour.
Hon. J. Darcy: The member is right. We do need to start early, and we are starting early. That’s precisely to try to achieve the goal that the member talked about, which is to avoid people getting on that trajectory. So we absolutely believe we need to start in the early years. We need to start, as I indicated, in elementary school. We’re already doing that.
That means encouraging kids to talk about it, working in partnership with some really, really important partners, like the Vancouver Canucks or the B.C. Lions, the B.C. Lions who went to schools to talk about mental health and substance use. They’re role models, right? So kids pay attention to them. They don’t do it in a scary way. They do it in a way to raise awareness and sometimes to share their own stories, which is also really important.
We want to encourage kids, as I said, to be open about it. We want to encourage kids to seek help. We want to give our educators the tools to be able to recognize the signs of kids who are struggling with mental health issues or addictions so that they can play a role in being supportive. That’s exactly why we are beginning to build robust child and youth mental health teams in our school districts, beginning in Maple Ridge–Mission and in Comox but expanding from there.
These are teams that involve mental health professionals. They involve mental health workers, substance use workers, Indigenous support workers, educators, robust teams to work in partnership with schools, with school administrators, with teachers, to do exactly what I’m talking about. To start early, to catch problems when they’re small, before they become big and before they end up…. They can end up really affecting that person’s life, the whole direction of their life.
I do want to take the opportunity, though, to say…. It’s important, I think, for all of us to understand that many of the people who are dying of overdose have been struggling with addiction, some for a long period of time. Other people are doing what we would call experimenting. You talked about the kids. You talked about your students, your post-secondary education students who may be experimenting and trying to make that tough choice. “Do I stay and use, or do I leave?”
We have, as a government, been working really hard. I’ve done public service announcements. We’re going to be doing more of them and working with our partners to do public service announcements to get the message out. No drugs on the street are safe. It is a poisoned drug supply. It can result in an overdose whether you are using for the first time or whether you have been using over a protracted period of time.
We need to get that message out. We need to get the message out that there are alternatives, that there are supports available, that there are apps available that can help to save people’s lives, that people should not use alone. But first, start with that very, very clear message. All drugs on the street are poisoned. All of them can kill you.
It would be an enormous help if the opposition carried that message as well. We have public service announcements. I would really request the members’ help to amplify that message across the province.
The Chair: Sorry, member for Abbotsford-Mission. I see your critic, North Vancouver–Seymour, has asked to take the questions, so I’ll turn it over to her, if that’s okay.
S. Gibson: I just want to say thank you for this opportunity. Thank you to the member for North Vancouver–Seymour for allowing me to ask questions today. Thanks again.
J. Thornthwaite: I just wanted to make sure that we got my other colleague, from Cariboo-Chilcotin, in here. She’s got a question as well.
D. Barnett: Thank you to my colleague for this opportunity.
My question is to the minister. I live in rural British Columbia. Rural British Columbia is no different than an urban centre. We just have a few less people.
Minister, what increase in mental health counsellors has there been in the Cariboo-Chilcotin since you became Minister of Mental Health? We really and truly have very few. I have people in my office seeking help, and the help is in inadequate. So I am asking you: how many new mental health counsellors have been put in the Cariboo-Chilcotin in the last two years?
The Chair: Thank you, Member. I feel I must mention again to the member, and to the minister as well, again, please, through the Chair, as opposed to direct questioning of the minister or direct response to the member, according to our standing orders. Thank you.
Hon. J. Darcy: Thank you to the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin for her question.
We certainly appreciate that historically, access to mental health and addictions services have been very limited in rural and remote communities and that we need to be working across the province on improving access to those services. We have been working on that. We have a ways to go, no question, but we have definitely been working on it.
One of the things that’s important to know is that last fall we issued grants to 29 community agencies across British Columbia that offer no-cost or low-cost counselling. We really believe that counselling should not just be available no matter where you live — access to addictions and mental health support in all parts of the province — but that it also shouldn’t depend on the size of your bank account.
Too often when it comes to things like counselling and other forms of mental health and addictions care, historically, it has. That’s not going to change overnight, but we certainly want to move away from that direction.
As soon as COVID-19 hit, we gave grants to not just the original 29 organizations that we had funded but to another 20 organizations that provide mental health and addiction counselling so that they could stand their services up virtually. I think we’ve seen, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for virtual services across the board, including for mental health care and counselling, and how they really have the potential to expand access significantly.
One of the organizations that got one of those grants in order to stand up virtual counselling was the CMHA in Cariboo-Chilcotin, so you might want to check in with him about that.
Also, when we were talking about prevention, I should have mentioned that every school district in the province has received grants in order to improve mental health programming in the schools. I can certainly go back and get more information from health authorities about any new programs or services through health authorities.
I’m sure that the member knows, and I’m sure she’s as excited as I am, that one of the new Foundry youth centres is coming to Williams Lake. That is going to make an enormous difference, I know, for young people in the region, especially ages 12 to 24, where some of that work around prevention is so important. We’re having a one-stop shop, where you can walk in the door, or walk in the door virtually, in order to get the support you need. That is so critically important.
D. Barnett: Thank you to the minister. I’ll leave it at that, but I would just like to say yes, it’s exciting we’ve got the Foundry. I’ve been working with these people for seven years. It takes a long time to put the program together, and it’s exciting.
Thank you to the minister. I have other questions, but I will put them in writing.
The Chair: Thank you, Members. We have time for one quick question, but noting the hour, I’ll just turn it over to the member for Cariboo North.
Of course, Minister, if we can’t answer it today, we can come back for an answer post-estimates — tomorrow, I guess.
C. Oakes: I certainly understand if the minister decides to provide a response in writing.
I’m doing a follow-up on a letter that was sent to the minister on March 20 from a very tireless advocate for mental health and addiction support in our community, as well as a tireless supporter of individuals who are vulnerable in our community. That’s Maureen Trotter.
She wrote to the minister to inform the government of the dire state of the social safety network in our community — that we have been suffering from huge gaps in services which have been resulting in many individuals and families falling through the cracks. This has meant significant increased suffering and death in our communities and has desperately impacted families in my community.
The community of Quesnel has seen a drastic reduction in the availability of mental health and addition clinicians. Not only has the number of physicians been reduced; Quesnel is having a difficult time retaining and recruiting qualified professionals.
When people come forward and ask for supports, they face wait-lists of up to five months. One-to-one support is lacking. And while there is an option of entering a group-type support program, this is an inadequate response to people who have extensive histories of trauma who are living in crisis. Many are high risk, complex individuals who have been deemed inappropriate for group services, which leaves them with limited or no options.
To the minister, I guess this is a plea to review the letter that Maureen did send to the minister and if there’s some response that we could provide to Maureen and many people in my community who are working tirelessly on behalf of trying to look at ways to improve mental health and addiction services.
The final is we desperately need a detox centre in our community, if there’s any response on how we go about getting a detox centre in our community, which is dramatically needed.
Chair, would you like me to note the hour or pass that over to the minister?
The Chair: We have a motion to move. Unless the minister wants to answer the question right away, which she can, we will have the motion coming up.
We’ll be moving completion of the earlier estimates and then, I assume, given there are more questions, progress on this estimate.
Hon. J. Darcy: I’m not in a position to respond today, but we will certainly look for that letter right away so that we are in a position to respond.
I move that the committee rise, report resolutions and completion of the estimates of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and report progress of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.
Motion approved.
The Chair: Thanks, Members. I wish you the best for your evenings ahead.
This committee is now adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 6:31 p.m.