Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued debate, the throne speech.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

M. Dykeman: Picking up where we left off prior to lunch, it was an honour to share with the House some of the heroes from my riding of Langley East. These stories are even more important as we cross the one-year mark since the start of the pandemic and we’re moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel as we work to put the pandemic behind us.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

People are tired, and they’re feeling disillusioned, and they’re feeling the effects of being disconnected. Seniors, youth, families. We miss our friends. We miss our normalcy of our routine. These stories remind us that we will soon return to this, as we cross towards the end. They also remind us, as we’ve seen through the pandemic, that there is a need for support and investment to ensure that those who have been most affected, often our most vulnerable in our community and in our society, are not left behind.

This is why I was so thrilled to hear during the throne speech that our government is committing to ensuring that we’re continuing to invest in our province and supporting the people of British Columbia in a meaningful way. When you invest in people, families, businesses and communities, that’s what creates a robust community and a robust economy that are strong and able to push forward through challenging times.

Our vaccine rollout has been accelerated, with over one million people in British Columbia having already re­ceived their first vaccine. Thousands more are receiving their vaccine each day. Our government’s top priority has been and remains protecting people’s health and livelihoods. There is a significant amount of work to do.

One thing, though, that made me see how close we were actually getting was the day that they opened the second vaccine clinic in Langley, in my riding. My constituency office is up at the Langley Events Centre. I had to stop by on a weekend to pick up some materials to head here. I was so surprised to see so many cars in the parking lot, because the rec centres quite frankly had been so empty through this pandemic.

It took me a moment to remember that we were going to be adding in a second vaccine clinic. I was so excited to drive in and see so many smiling faces parked there in the parking lot. I spent a little bit of time — socially distanced, of course, with a mask — outside saying hi to people as they came in and went out. What really moved me was how emotional it was for so many people.

They all had stories of how happy they were, how thrilled they were to have received their vaccination and how this was going to change their lives. Many people talked about how excited they were going to be to hug their parents or their grandchildren or meet their grandchildren they hadn’t met before. It’s really hard not to be moved by that, to see so many people’s lives changed.

Each day I have the pleasure not only to be the MLA of Langley East and get to go work in my office with these amazing people that I get to work with every day but also to see people come in and out each day, receiving their vaccinations and often stopping by and waving and thanking our government for working so hard to push out this accelerated vaccine rollout.

Those are the stories that really keep us going, these stories of hope. We have to keep telling them. It is easy, especially on social media, to have such a focus, because we create our reality, if you think about it. We live in a bit of an echo chamber with social media. The more negative that’s there, the more you see.

There really are amazing stories going on every day. Those stories are the stories that we need. We need to make sure that they get put out. We need to change the narrative. We need to ensure that people hear the positive.

[1:40 p.m.]

It’s easy to only see the negative and to just become such a negative place. The stories of hope are ones that allow us to hang on as we move forward. It’s vital that we all work together to come back even stronger.

British Columbia, at the start of this pandemic, was an economic leader and has remained strong through the pandemic despite such a challenging situation. A lot of our economic story right now, despite having challenges — there’s much work to do — is positive.

We have moved forward under the leadership of this government, ensuring that the supports that are in place help support people as we come out of a challenging time. British Columbia is working hard, and that hard work is demonstrated each day in how well our economy is doing. But we do need to support it, because it’s not a guaranteed thing. We must continue to work, although we can see how well positioned we are for a strong economic recovery.

Our government is committed to improving health care, supporting businesses as they grow and hire new employees and making record investments in infrastructure. Our government has remained focused, through the pandemic, on the things that make a difference, investing in people, businesses, communities and health care, providing support for renters and middle-class families and hard-hit small businesses, the backbones of our community.

For so long, we as community members have turned to our small businesses to support and sponsor things like sports programs and clubs. I know, as a 4-H leader, we’re often going to our small businesses to support awards for our 4-H members through scholarships.

It’s time for us, as a community, to ensure that we are supporting those small businesses, with, for instance, our Buy Local program. That’s a great opportunity to go out and ensure that you’re supporting businesses in your community and giving back to them. If we support our small businesses, as we’re moving through this pandemic, our small businesses will remember that and continue to support us, as they did before.

Speaking of that, I wanted to take an opportunity to speak a little bit about the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce under the leadership of the executive director, Colleen Clark, and an incredible board of directors. Our chamber of commerce really has been so supportive of our businesses and such a leader in our community through this pandemic, providing opportunities for our small businesses to receive the information they need to persist and move forward through the pandemic but also come out stronger.

Organizations like the chamber of commerce really are such a vital part of our communities. They do so much, and although they haven’t been able to enjoy gathering together as we usually do, they’ve hosted a series of really fantastic virtual dinners. Recently I, myself, had the opportunity to have a morning coffee with business leaders in our community, through the chamber, and to answer questions that are at the forefront of small businesses.

I’d like to thank the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce for all of the support that they’ve provided. As an MLA, the ability to call on the chamber to get information out in a timely way to small businesses is something that has been so important, and I’d like to thank them for continuing to provide that and for taking such a leadership role through the pandemic.

Our government has remained focused through this pandemic, as I said, on things that make a difference. I’m really proud to be part of a government that has delivered more direct help to people through the pandemic than any other province in Canada.

I grew up in Ontario. I quite often speak to people in Ontario. What I hear on a regular basis is how impressed people in other provinces are with how British Columbia has fared through such difficult times and the support that our government has provided. We really are seen as a leader throughout Canada and a government that has taken a very balanced approach to navigating the challenges that a pandemic has created.

I’m really thrilled to see that the throne speech has identified a continued commitment of targeted investments to ensure that British Columbia’s recovery does not leave people behind. Although we have — and we’ve heard this a few times today — all been affected by the pandemic, that has not been equally felt. Some groups have been much harder hit, unfortunately, by the effects of the pandemic. We need to be mindful, as we create these supports moving through the pandemic, and to ensure that those that are most vulnerable and those that are most likely to be left behind are supported.

Our local communities really have been on the front lines of COVID-19. The pandemic has been such a challenge for local governments.

[1:45 p.m.]

Our government, through the pandemic, has worked really hard to ensure that local governments could con­tinue providing services. We saw this in Langley East with a recent announcement of support for the Langley Centennial Museum, which received a resiliency grant of $58,000, something that really makes a difference for those that work and live in our community.

We also have seen…. I’m thrilled to see that we will be continuing a focus on infrastructure for local commun­ities, which creates economic opportunities and great-paying jobs. We also had the opportunity to see this in Langley East, with a $700,000 funding announcement for a new Indigenous tourism and conference centre called the Salishan Place by the River. These investments keep communities like Langley East moving forward. They’re all the more important during this pandemic.

We’re also, in Langley East, looking forward to other significant investments with SkyTrain and the widening of Highway 1 through Langley and beyond. Langley East is a really interesting place. It is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in British Columbia. We will be benefiting from these new infrastructure investments, for sure.

Speaking of infrastructure investments, I had the op­portunity, along with my colleague and friend the MLA for Langley, Andrew Mercier, to announce the substantial completion of Langley Memorial Hospital’s new emergency room. These are investments that make a significant difference in the lives of people who are living in Langley East. It was a much-needed, long-awaited ex­pansion. Our community and the surrounding communities will benefit from this.

I’d like to quickly, though, acknowledge the important role that the Langley Memorial Hospital Foundation plays in these infrastructure projects. Under the leadership of Heather Scott and the rest of their fantastic board, they really played a major role in seeing this come to fruition.

The hospital foundation board does so much in our community. I know they have not been able to enjoy the usual galas and usual events that they have for fundraising. But our community stepped up once again. Langley is a very generous community, a community that comes together and rallies when things are difficult.

The foundation has worked hard to look for unique ways to raise much-needed funds. I know they’re looking forward to the end of the pandemic so that we can come together once again at some of the fantastic events that they host. They are much missed in our community.

In continuation, talking about community, community is not just the big things — the hospital an­nouncements, the SkyTrain, the freeway. Those are integral parts of our community.

Our government is committed to, and has shown significant support in our community for, things like the Fort Langley Jazz and Arts Festival. That is a community event that really brings young and old alike together, an event that has had to change and pivot during the pandemic and that is working hard to provide music in a meaningful way during such challenging times.

It recently received a resiliency grant for $2,000 from our government and another $5,000 to support the 2021 festival. I know that our community is looking forward to hosting them once again, along with the Fort Gallery, which is looking forward to offering their events, too, and which also received some grants for resiliency funding.

These types of investments really touch the core of a community. These are the peo­ple, the volunteers, that come together to create meaningful experiences for people. You remember, especially as a youth, when you were going on field trips or attending an event around a special holiday. You remember these. Those supports mean a lot to those organizations. I know that our community is grateful for the government’s recognition of that.

Further, talking about community, one community that I know has been disproportionately affected through this pandemic has been our faith community. Our faith community in Langley East is very strong, very generous and very charitable. Early on, when I was elected, I made a commitment to meet with as many faith leaders as I could throughout our community, because I knew that the COV­ID pandemic had really affected the ability for people to gather and to come together, which means so much. I spoke to them about the challenges and the support that they’ve offered us in ensuring that people stay safe.

[1:50 p.m.]

I want to thank the faith community for stepping up and coming forward with solutions while still offering meaningful ways for people in our community to connect. It’s so important, especially when we think about how much hope means right now. The ability for people of faith to come together is so vital. I do want to thank the leaders, who have been so patient and so kind and have been so innovative in providing those supports for people, because our community needs them.

B.C. businesses really have been hit hard by this pandemic. One of the things that our government has been so supportive of is helping our businesses adapt so that they can grow and hire, so that we can come out stronger and more resilient on the other side. Small businesses have had to make so many tough decisions through these times, closing or reducing services in order to protect workers and customers. These are not easy decisions, especially our small businesses who, as I mentioned earlier, are those that often support us through events in our community. So one of the things that I was thrilled about was to see the continuation of support to ensure that our businesses are strong through this.

Our government had to make some important choices early on to support people, like cutting property taxes and prohibiting commercial evictions and forgiving hydro bills, introducing tax incentives for businesses to hire work­ers and make new investments. In the year ahead, I am really excited to see how these supports announced in the throne speech will benefit businesses, which have been hardest hit by this pandemic.

Investing in affordable housing and child care is another important part of our economy, often one that we don’t have a lot of time to talk about when we think about economic constructs. Ensuring that families have affordable child care…. We had a recent announcement in Langley, which was so very exciting of 140 new child care spaces, which was part of the province’s ongoing commitment to increasing child care through the pandemic and beyond.

Also, early childhood educators in Langley received almost $2 million in wage enhancements. These are real, important investments that are measurable and make the lives of families more affordable and easier to navigate al­ready challenging situations — the thoughts of having to find child care while you are an essential worker in the middle of an already stressful pandemic. That’s why these investments matter. I know, as a parent myself, the ability to find child care is so important.

The throne speech identified a series of targeted investments. As I listened, I was excited to see how these will contribute to a stronger British Columbia and a stronger Langley East, as we emerge from these most challenging times, building resiliency as we move out of this — like im­proved health care, fixing the cracks that existed in long-term care; COVID-19 really exposed these — and reducing surgery wait times, building more hospitals and ur­gent primary care and ensuring that life is more affordable, with ICBC rates being cut by 20 percent. As a parent of a new driver, I can’t express how excited I am about that.

Looking at expanding access to $10-a-day child care and supporting businesses with grants and allowing them to pivot and build online stores and look at how they can diversify their business. The B.C. strategic investment fund is going to help promising B.C. firms scale up and keep jobs right here in British Columbia.

Building more inclusive communities. Something that really…. Unfortunately, the pandemic shone a light on how important these investments were. That’s why when our community received nearly $5,000 of funding for the Langley Community Services Society, which will work on improving connections and pathways of communications for those that are marginalized or face cultural barriers…. Or the funding that came out to the Lower Fraser Valley Aboriginal Society for the FAIR project, an organization that does so much to build inclusivity in our community.

These announcements, throughout British Columbia, will make our world a more tolerant and safe place for people. We saw how affected groups are through this pandemic, and it’s something that we really need to focus on as we move forward. I’m thrilled that the throne speech has shone a light on this.

So as we enter this new season, I would also like to highlight our government’s commitment to agriculture and agritech, with the new agri­tech concierge program and several investments and supports for agriculture such as clean tech funding and innovation support and programs like Buy B.C. and Feed B.C.

This is wonderful news for my riding, which has a vib­rant, growing urban core but also has a strong agricultural foundation with approximately 80 percent of Langley township’s land being part of the ALR. The investments provide opportunities for what are primarily family businesses, and most farms are. They are small businesses. They’re family businesses.

[1:55 p.m.]

These investments are wise, as they are moving towards making B.C. more food-secure, and these are welcome in my riding. They also are vital to farms, who, 365 days a year, provide food for us. Support for them is essential for continued growth in our agricultural sector and is a wise investment in our economy.

In conclusion, as I see my time is nearing the end, we have been facing and are continuing to face some of the most challenging times of any recent generation. As peo­ple, families and organizations rally on this final stretch, I would like to thank our first responders, our front-line workers who have been there every day and who have kept our community moving forward, and all of those who have ensured that our community has remained kind and open to serve people when needed.

I’d also like to thank our students, especially our grade 12s, for all you have sacrificed. While doing so, you’ve remained caring and understanding and committed to helping us move forward as we near the end of these most challenging times.

Once again, I’m thrilled to speak today in support of this throne speech and to talk about how it has affected my riding — the government’s work — and how excited our riding is to see these investments as we work to put this pandemic behind us. With that, Mr. Speaker, as I’m nearly at the end of my time, I will take my seat now and thank you for the opportunity to speak today in this House.

G. Kyllo: I rise in the House today to respond to the Speech from the Throne for the second session of the 42nd parliament.

I would like to acknowledge that I’m speaking on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and the Songhees First Nations.

I would like to begin by also acknowledging the in­credible acts of support, resilience and sacrifice by British Columbians throughout this past year and to extend my sincere gratitude to all front-line and essential workers for everything they continue to do and to all of the staff who are doing their part to continue with our vital vaccine rollout.

Every British Columbian has made sacrifices in one way or another to protect our communities, and some have sacrificed more than others. We’ll always remember the lives lost over the past year and the pain of those that have been separated from their loved ones that will persist for years to come.

British Columbians continue to do their part at a tremendous economic and emotional cost to themselves, and they’re looking to government to ensure their sacrifices are not in vain. Government has a responsibility to be a leader and to guide our province through this pandemic and into our economic recovery. British Columbians were eager to see this clarity and leadership in this year’s Speech from the Throne. Instead, they were offered a throne speech devoid of any clear plan to help people recover, a speech that was instead filled with aspirational slogans and empty promises.

Now, let’s remember this is now a second-term government. This is a government that sent British Columbians to the polls in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic because the Premier chose to put his own political self-interest ahead of the health and well-being of British Columbians.

Although this government was given a second term by British Columbians, we are now seeing the unfortunate consequences of that choice. This government’s unnecessary election stalled our province’s pandemic response and recovery. Vital supports and crucial actions were delayed, and after going through all of that, this is the plan that government now has come up with. There’s no mention of support for people and businesses as the third wave of the pandemic continues to crest.

There is no mention of eliminating Surrey portables, no mention of the $400 renters rebate or the promise of 114,000 new homes, commitments that were first made to British Columbians four years ago yet remain unfulfilled. There was no mention of the strata insurance crisis, which continues to devastate people across our province. There was no real plan for the environment or for addressing the 25 percent of emission reductions that are not included in the CleanBC plan.

[2:00 p.m.]

There was no plan for women, no plan for youth. By now, it is well known that women and youth continue to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic, but the only reference to women in yesterday’s speech was a single line acknowledging this troubling reality. Likewise, there was only one throwaway line mentioning youth, but zero substance.

As for the promises that were made, most were not new promises but, rather, unfulfilled promises that have been recycled after four years and two terms of this administration.

This government’s throne speech ran on a message that the finish line is in sight, that it has taken steps to put the pandemic behind us. But this is not the case for millions of British Columbians who continue to struggle every day, for the thousands of small businesses struggling to survive who will likely feel the economic impact of this pandemic for years to come.

We are deep, now, into the third wave of the pandemic. COVID cases continue to surge, a record number of British Columbians are in ICU, thousands of businesses are risking permanent closure and 53 percent of British Columbians are $200 or less away from not being able to make their monthly bills. British Columbians are turning to this government for the support they need to endure the challenges they face, and this government’s continued messaging of “trust us” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The government has proven repeatedly that they cannot deliver on the promises they outline in their throne speeches and, as a government, delivers another set of hollow promises amidst the greatest crisis of recent times. There’s no indication that this is going to change.

There are many examples of yet unmet promises of this government. It is part of the role of the official opposition to highlight the failings of current government, to hold government to account, to identify unintended conse­quences of poorly thought policies and to provide the counternarrative of government that is communicated through GCPE using the tens of millions of dollars of public funds to promote the initiatives of government.

There has been a lot of conversation around the term of affordability and how that affects British Columbians. What we do know is that the average family is struggling more now, under this current administration, than it has ever been.

Increased new taxation — 23 new or increased taxation policies have come through in the last number of years under this current government. I’ll list them for you. It is an extensive list: employer health tax, Victoria gas tax, Vancouver gas tax, Airbnb tax, luxury vehicle tax, tobacco tax, property transfer tax surcharge, foreign buyers’ tax, additional school taxes, speculation tax, photo radar, carbon tax, parking sales tax, development cost charges for TransLink, property taxes, cannabis tax, income tax, corporate tax increases, ICBC unlisted driver premium, B.C. Hydro crisis fund, pre-trip ridesharing fees, personal tax increases and the tax on soft drinks and Netflix.

All of these increased taxes do not help the average British Columbian family with meeting the affordability challenges. These increased taxes have accumulated to the point that it’s increased the average taxation of the average home in British Columbia by $3,000. That’s a significant amount of money that is taken away from a family’s own ability to meet their own financial needs.

An MNP survey has recently stated that 53 percent, over half, of all British Columbians are less than $200 away from insolvency. This is extremely, much more worse than in the United States, where four out of ten individuals are indicating they’re $1,000 away. So just think about that: over half of British Columbians are less than $200 away from insolvency. This government, this administration, spoke about improving affordability for British Columbians. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now, in addition to that, there’s the $300 that has been clawed back in income and disability assistance. This was after months of advocacy that the government is now only giving back $165. This is despite the recommendations of the government’s own basic income panel.

[2:05 p.m.]

There’s been no reference to the $10-a-day child care and the failure to deliver the promised 24,000 new child care spaces. Instead, we understand that only 2,500, less than 1/10, of affordable spaces have actually been opened and are funded and running to date.

There has been an extreme failure to address the opioid crisis, which continues to get worse under this current government. This government has been responsible for this file for four of the last five years since the health emergency was actually identified. One thousand eight hundred British Columbians — mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters. One thousand eight hundred — a doubling of opioid deaths within the last year.

We will hear members opposite and government members blame it all on COVID. Well, COVID seems to be the panacea, the one crisis that we are suffering and challenged with. They look to it for the reason and excuse for all of the failings of our current government. That clearly is not good enough. More needs to be done. In February of 2021, B.C. saw an average of 5½ deaths per day. Again, a doubling of deaths since last year.

For many British Columbians, the past year has been the most challenging and difficult, especially for youth in our province. An ongoing study for the B.C. Children’s Hospital has found that two-thirds of children and youth in B.C. could be suffering from some form of mental health challenge due to the pandemic. That’s a troubling 30 to 35 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels.

In May of 2020, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth confirmed that there were more than 2,500 youth in B.C. on wait-lists — 2,500 children on wait-lists for services. Children and youth trying to get their first visit to obtain clinical or psychiatric mental health services face an average wait time of almost 55 days — nearly two months. That is absolutely unacceptable. Could you imagine showing up at a hospital with your child with a broken leg and being turned away and told: “Come back in 55 days.”

Government is not putting the priority around mental health challenges and supports for our youth as they are for other forms of health care in our province. Things need to change. Fifty percent of all British Columbians will face some form of mental health challenge by the time they reach the age of 40. It is certainly time for this government to show more leadership on this file and do more to decrease the wait times that many children are waiting for that very important first visit with psychiatric services in our province.

One of the other challenges many families are facing on the affordability front is the availability of housing. Now, this government made bold promises to British Columbians back in 2017. They committed to building 114,000 new units of affordable housing in the province over a ten-year period. That’s 11,400 units per year. What is the record of this current government? According to the latest B.C. Housing quarterly progress report, only 3,246 homes have been built by this government in the last four years — 3,246 of a promised 114,000.

We have also seen significant delays with the Pattullo Bridge replacement now being pushed out a further year. No reference to the second Surrey hospital and, of course, the failure to eliminate the Surrey portable challenges.

[2:10 p.m.]

Burdened farmers with red tape and agricultural land restrictions have found it increasingly difficult to build homes on their property, either for extended family members or for those that are helping them in their businesses. I’ve had a number of young farming families come to visit my office over the last four years, absolutely outraged at the challenges that they are seeing under this government’s administration with respect to secondary homes on farming properties.

The list of challenges is ongoing. With respect to COVID recovery and the vaccine rollout, we are now over 13 months since COVID actually arrived at our doorsteps. Thirteen months. I appreciate that, in the early days, there was much to be done, but I would have thought that a competent government would have immediately been turn­ing their minds, 13 months ago, to the work that needs to be done. We knew that vaccine rollouts would happen in British Columbia at some point in time. It’s not something that was a surprise, when the vaccines started arriving from Ottawa.

Thirteen months ago, government knew there would be a challenge with trying to vaccinate British Columbians, over five million of us. Yet it seems, and it certainly is apparent in the lack of performance on the initial rollout, that things were left to the last minute. The bungling of the initial rollout has been well reported in the media. It’s become a great concern to many families that were waiting for that all-important, life-saving vaccination.

Government has been highly criticized for the lack of transparency and accountability in COVID data and reporting, which has left significant gaps in B.C.’s COVID data. The lack of fiscal transparency throughout the pandemic; the lack of fiscal updates; the challenge with the release of the budget, which is now a full two months delayed; and, of course, the challenge we had with Bill 10 last December, where basically government was looking for a blank cheque for $12 billion, referring and relating back to a budget that the Premier’s own words indicated was no longer valid or current under the COVID situation….

The legislation that was lost last fall due to the snap election — again, the unnecessary and risky snap election that took away from nine weeks of legislative time…. If government was truly looking out for the best interests of British Columbians, the last thing you’d be doing is calling a risky election in the middle of a pandemic. I believe that British Columbians should demand more from their elected leaders. The snap election call is the worst of politics.

Now, as we look to the failed business supports, there’s been lots of commentary from government about British Columbia having some of the highest supports for businesses and individuals. It’s interesting. When we’re talking about business supports, British Columbia is not leading Canada in the amount of supports provided for our families, supporting job creators here in our province. When you look at spending supports — these are Stats Canada numbers, recently put out — by governments across Canada: British Columbia, $196 per capita; Alberta, $485; Saskatchewan, $454; Ontario, $507.

The supports that B.C. is providing in direct spending to businesses are over 60 percent lower than that provided in the province of Ontario. The COVID restart program…. It was the Premier, our current Premier, who appointed himself as chair of the Economic Recovery Task Force. For over eight months, they sat dithering, trying to figure out how they are going to actually provide funding supports to businesses. Lo and behold, four days before he called an unnecessary and risky snap election, they announce the COVID restart program.

The Premier told British Columbians that there would be no delays. Well, we know that that is absolutely false. Of the $345 million that was allocated to the small and medium-sized business recovery grant that was approved over a year ago, only $100 million — only $100 million, less than a third — has been distributed so far. Businesses need supports. Businesses are struggling. They’re failing. They’re looking for that lifeline.

[2:15 p.m.]

The funding that was approved by all members of this Legislature, in unprecedented fashion, last March for a $5 billion COVID recovery program — those funds were approved with the intention that government would actually do their part to provide those funds and put them out directly into the hands of individuals and businesses that were struggling.

Here we are, 13 months after the $5 billion COVID re­covery fund was approved by all members of this Legislature. We see only $100 million of a $345 million program actually out the door. Those supports do not help anybody when they are sitting in the government’s bank accounts. Those funds need to flow into the economy. The sooner that those funds can be expedited and put into the hands of those necessary businesses that are struggling to keep the lights on and keep their employees engaged and working…. It just can’t happen fast enough.

As we’ve heard this week, there is no new money for the struggling restaurant industry under these new restrictions, other than reworking the botched business program. The $50 million circuit breaker business relief grant is using old money, money that was already targeted toward businesses. There are no new additional funds. Government’s own failing of getting those necessary supports into the hands of businesses…. That’s where they’ve actually looked to, to try and fix their problem, their challenge with getting those dollars into the hands of businesses. They’re now pulling $50 million away from a program that was previously announced.

There are so many challenges that we have in our prov­ince right now. But one of the most important ones from a business perspective is: what does government do to provide the necessary supports so that businesses can remain competitive in our province?

Rather than provide supports or initiatives to actually enhance the opportunities for business owners in British Columbia, we have seen just a further increase in taxation. The most egregious was government’s failure to meet their own election commitment, which was to eliminate Medical Services Plan premiums, and we know that they did not eliminate them. They simply replaced them with a new employer health tax that put an additional $1.9 billion of new taxation right in the hands of businesses. This is a tax that does not exist in the neighbouring jurisdiction of Alberta.

Corporate taxes have increased under this administration. The corporate tax in B.C. is now 50 percent higher than our neighbouring jurisdiction of Alberta. Fifty percent. Alberta is eight. In British Columbia, it is now 12.

In order for businesses to be able to recover from this economic challenge, largely brought on by COVID, we need to be providing those necessary supports. We need to be supporting business, making sure that they’re going to remain competitive. But that is exactly the opposite direction that this current administration is going — saddling businesses with increasing amounts of additional new taxation and increasing amounts of red tape, taking away from the opportunity for British Columbians to thrive.

We just saw a report out in the newspaper today by Vaughan Palmer. The title is: “By now, the NDP hoped the pandemic would be over. It’s not, but they’re turning that page anyway.”

In the article, Vaughan Palmer notes and highlights the fact that government is looking — and has advanced this in the throne speech — to introducing legislation “to support the operations of InBC Investment Corp.” This is a new strategic fund helping promising B.C. companies “scale up, keeping jobs and investment at home in B.C.” It’s a great program, but it’s a little bit late. The funding for this program was actually approved in this Legislature over 13 months ago — 13 months ago.

I will go on: “InBC was announced last September as one of the planks of the NDP re-election platform.” Well, that’s interesting. I thought we approved the $5 billion COVID recovery program to help British Columbia get through the pandemic. But the NDP conveniently decided to pull $500 million away. Instead of providing those funds to help businesses, to help individuals recover and get through COVID in this province, they squirrelled it away, to only then announce it as part of their snap election platform.

[2:20 p.m.]

It goes on. “The promise included a half a billion dollars in financing drawn from economic recovery funding voted unanimously by the Legislature in March of 2020.” Is this a government that is actually looking out for the best interests of British Columbians, or is this a government that is always looking for that political opportunity?

Funding that was made available to help individuals and struggling businesses — the current government is playing politics with it and holding that money back, making an announcement as part of its election platform plank. Here we are 13 months later, and there are still no signs of the program, no details, new opportunities for making applications. There the money sits.

Now, there are many programs and services that, I think, are in need of highlighting. One specifically is the community benefits program. I’ve been recently appointed as the critic for Labour, and the community benefits program largely cuts out 85 percent of the construction workforce in this province. It comes at a significant cost.

I was very proud in 2015 to announce 2.5 kilometres of four-laning on a project called Illecillewaet, 46 kilometres east of Revelstoke — 2.5 kilometres of four-laning, an initial budget $35 million, a federal contribution $15.5 million and $19.5 million from the province.

Well, I certainly appreciate that 2015 was many years ago. However, this was the first CBA program that was an­nounced by this government on that particular project. The project was scaled down from 2.5 kilometres to just 2.1 kilometres, and it was put out with their new budget, get this, of $62.9 million. It went from $35 million to $62.9 million. There was such a lack of interest in bidding on that project that the final bid number came in at $85.2 million, a $50 million lift. A $35 million project now costing $85.2 million.

That is a 257 percent increase, yet the scope of the project was reduced from 2.5 to 2.1 kilometres. Fifty million dollars. Why? Because this current government chose to only allow workers on these projects if they were members of one of their 19 hand-picked unions.

It’s egregious. Fifty million dollars could employ 1,000 people at $100,000 a year for a six-month contract or 500 jobs could be created, for a full year, at $100,000 a year. But the decisions and choices of this government have squirrelled the money away, certainly not to the benefit of the average British Columbia family.

An increasing number of British Columbians are simply fed up with more than just the empty promises, the bung­ling and the incompetence this government has shown over the past four years. They are fed up with the deception and the lack of transparency and accountability. Rather than take ownership for their inherent failures to British Columbians, this government has blamed everything and everyone but themselves throughout their administration. Even now the fact that we’re debating this throne speech in April, and the fact we are still waiting on a budget that has been delayed for two months, is a testament to the disorganization and the incompetence that this government has shown throughout its pandemic response in its two terms now in government.

What’s worse, the government has used their time in office to slowly strip away many of the checks and balances that keep a government and their finances open and transparent to the public — as we saw in Bill 10, when government wrote themselves a blank cheque for $12 billion, without a budget, without quarterly updates or any updated fiscal picture of the government’s financial position.

Undoubtedly, government ministers and MLAs will stand in this House and attest that these delays and sleight-of-hand fiscal actions were all because of the pandemic. I doubt any of them will acknowledge that the budget, and many of the supports British Columbians are depending on to survive the pandemic, were delayed because of their self-serving and risky election call.

The pandemic has brought some unprecedented challenges, but claiming this government has delayed the fiscal budget for two months because of the pandemic alone is simply untrue. Just like a second-term government blaming the previous government for their inherent failures, these excuses only go so far.

[2:25 p.m.]

There comes a point when British Columbians expect their government to take ownership for their own mistakes and failings. That time is now.

British Columbians have made their position clear, and they are looking for actions, not excuses. British Columbians need a government that will offer them the necessary supports to keep their businesses open, their families safe and their communities thriving. British Columbians need a government that will ensure a safe and efficient rollout of the vaccine, free of the disorganization and the bungling that we have seen in this government’s initial rollout.

Most of all, British Columbians need a government that can actually meet its promises to British Columbians, a government that delivers a clear, concise and attainable plan for our families, businesses and communities that will lead British Columbia out of the pandemic and into a strong economic recovery so that we can build a province that generations to come can be proud to call home.

I really hope government will move away from the secrecy, away from choosing to keep British Columbians in the dark, and move forward with the openness, transparency and accountability the hard-working men and women of British Columbia and their families most definitely are deserving.

B. Bailey: This is my first time responding to a throne speech. I do so recognizing that none of us get here on our own. Being the elected representative of the people of Vancouver–False Creek is an enormous privilege and an honour. I thank first and foremost the voters of my riding for allowing me this right and this duty.

I must also thank a number of others, including my partner, Bijan; my family — my mom, Sam, and Zach and Esme, my kids; and my many friends and cousins who pitched in from all over the province to work on my campaign. I too must thank both my nomination teams and my campaign team. Taking an inexperienced candidate over the finish line is no small task, particularly when running against a prior mayor, leadership candidate and undefeated politician of 27 years: Sam Sullivan.

I just want to take a moment to thank Mr. Sullivan for his long and dedicated service to the people of this wonderful community that we share. While we may differ in our approach to solving the issues our constituents face, Sam’s devotion to his beloved Vancouver is indisputable.

What a riding it is. Vancouver–False Creek is a collection of urban communities, all banded together around the creek itself, which is actually, of course, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean of the Salish Sea. The seawall that encircles the inlet, False Creek, is a ribbon of activity I walk every morning, sharing it with runners, fellow dog walkers, skateboarders, electric scooters, elderly folks with walkers, rollerbladers, wheelchair athletes, cyclists and pretty much literally everything in between. I often count how many languages I hear on my one-hour walk, and this morning it was seven.

The riding includes East Kitsilano, from Arbutus Street to the Kits Point area. This includes Bard on the Beach, the MacMillan Space Centre, the Maritime Museum, the Vancouver Museum, Vanier Park, the Kits Point outdoor swimming pool, Kitsilano Showboat — where you can see folks dancing — and, of course, Kits Beach.

A new development is coming to the area. The Squamish Nation were removed from their historic lands in the early 1900s, and now, about a century later, are planning a cutting-edge development on their traditional territory, on the south side of Burrard Bridge.

The name Sen̓áḵw represents the start of something beautiful, respect for nature, for Indigenous peoples, for healing and for a new path forward. This 10.5 acre, four-million-square-foot property will be home to more than 6,000 rental units. It will also be the largest net-zero carbon residential project in Canada and the largest First Nations eco­nomic development project in Canadian history. It will feature Coast Salish architecture and design, and create numerous jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for the Squamish Nation membership in design, in construction and in operations.

[2:30 p.m.]

The riding also includes Granville Island. Granville Is­land is one of the few remaining industrial sites in the riding, but it’s also, of course, one of the top tourism destinations in the province. Home to more than just wonderful local food, it’s also the home to B.C.’s first microbrewery and many excellent restaurants.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

It’s home to much of our art sector, including the new site of the Arts Umbrella, the B.C. Arts Council, Arts Club Theatre, Boca del Lupo, Carousel Theatre for youth, Ruby Slippers productions, the Fringe Festival, Vancouver Theatre­Sports and more. There are also many, many crafts­people who work on the island, and it’s home to both the Craft Council of B.C. and the Federation of Canadian Artists. When the pandemic caused the closure of theatres, this government stepped up to provide support, through the B.C. Arts Council, as part of StrongerBC.

The community of south False Creek is an amazing com­munity that’s somewhat less well known than its glittery sibling on the north side of the creek. South False Creek is one of Vancouver’s pioneering waterfront communities. It’s a highly livable, walkable, inner-city neighbourhood with a unique mix of land uses, housing types and tenures, transportation options, urban character and amenities.

The city of Vancouver, through its property endowment fund, owns 80 percent of the land in Vancouver’s False Creek South. The rest is owned by other levels of government, the Squamish First Nation, or private owners. When the neighbourhood was first built in the 1970s and ’80s, much of the city-owned land was leased to tenants via a 50- or 60-year ground lease. Most of these leases expire between 2036 and 2046. Considered a model of livability, this community received worldwide recognition in the 1970s for its progressive design, focused really on mixed-income housing and livability. Home to multiple co-ops, including a floating co-op, it also includes a seniors home and affordable housing.

The community was developed as a solution to the flight of middle-class families out of the city and into the suburbs. It proved that densified urban living can be affordable and viable. The community is now at risk, due to long-term leases with the city of Vancouver coming up to expiry, and the debate on the future of the community is ongoing. In my view, we need more mixed-income communities like Vancouver–False Creek, not less.

Olympic Village is a beautiful neighbour to south False Creek. It too contains a successful, oversubscribed co-op amidst highrises. Featuring the beautiful Creekside Community Centre, the BMO stage, many restaurants and a brewery, the once industrial area is a thriving community, although one that is missing an important ingredient to livability — an elementary school. I remain committed to ensure that this community’s needs are met, and that that school will come to fruition on my watch. This government is pushing money out the door to support education and health care priorities of British Columbians.

In addition to the many theatre attractions in Kits Point and Granville Island, the riding is also home to Science World, a world-class science education centre that serves not only those people who attend here in person but, through their educational road shows — which I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of — throughout the province. Numerous sports facilities and teams make their homes in the riding. Rogers Arena and B.C. Place dominate the landscape, and we all look forward to the rejoicing in person as our beloved Canucks and B.C. Lions invite us back to witness their triumphs in person.

Crosstown, part of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside are parts of the riding and are home to some of the most historic communities in Vancouver. The people who came here to B.C. to build infrastructure and businesses made these communities home. The Chinese, Japanese and Black communities have long-held ties and have persevered despite all odds. The societies that fought to preserve these legacies continue their important work, and do so with our support.

Gastown has seen its share of ups and downs over the years. As an aside, my great-great-grandfather and great-great-uncle founded Charles H. Cates and Sons Limited there in 1887, having lost their first business the year prior to the Great Fire.

[2:35 p.m.]

A raucous, rough frontier town, Gastown was home to many saloons, skid row and businesses which stocked the ships coming into harbour. It was home, also, to the post office riot and the hippie riot of 1971. Gastown has long been home to a counterculture. Many years later, it’s now home to a fashion district, multiple eateries and a mixed-income community. The pandemic has hit this area, and much of downtown, hard.

The development of the viaduct and the new St. Paul’s hospital and health campus, while just outside the riding, will serve the residents of Vancouver–False Creek and the province well. Innovations in health care, research and teaching will address the future health needs of patients, families and the community. I’m very proud that this government has driven forward the building and development of this health campus. We’ve also invested in urgent care clinics, one of which is in the riding and which has been a crucial actor in timely COVID-19 testing.

In March of this year, I moved from Kits Point to Yaletown. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be able to live and rent in this beautiful area. I get up each morning and walk my giant, goofy dog along the seawall down to one of the off-leash parks, noting the seals and waterfowl activity along the way.

Yaletown is a complex community with some of the most expensive real estate in Vancouver — and thus, the world — as well as being home to some of the most vulnerable Vancouverites. Within the same block, you can look up at a $20 million condo while also witnessing the suffering that the opioid crisis is inflicting upon many of my neighbours. The whole spectrum of life is present in Yaletown, striving to live side by side.

These challenges are related to many compounding fact­ors, including the homelessness crisis, the opioid crisis and the mental health challenges that people face. The opioid crisis has torn apart this community. The pandemic has brought a disruption in the supply chain of illicit drugs, and the supply chain is dramatically more toxic than it was a year ago.

The crisis is devastating. Hundreds and hundreds have been lost. It’s a national emergency, and B.C. remains the only jurisdiction to create a stand-alone Mental Health and Addictions Ministry. We’re delivering. We’ve created more evidence-based treatment beds, more than 100 new additional beds for adults, and we’ve doubled youth treatment beds. We’ve enabled registered nurses to prescribe addictions treatment medications and advanced pharmaceutical alternatives to separate people from toxic drugs. We’ve invested in ACT teams, including in Vancouver–False Creek, and have created access to low- or no-cost counselling. We’ve added 19 Foundry youth centres and much more, but we know that even this is not enough and that there’s more to do.

I’m a huge fan of the speculation tax. It has brought literally thousands of homes online in British Columbia, many of which are in Vancouver–False Creek. Affordable housing remains a huge issue in the riding, but we’re making headway, and our government’s commitment to creating housing solutions that work for people remains steadfast.

I want to talk about business. Much of the business community driving our province forward is located in this riding. There is a huge range of sectors in the riding. Of course, I want to highlight the tech sector, having worked in software for two decades. There are thousands of tech workers in this riding: engineers, computer scientists, folks doing data analytics, back-end developers, digital artists, project managers, producers, accountants, business people, and so on. Especially during Creative Industries Week, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about some of the incredible creative industry work being done behind these closed doors as you walk through our business district.

Most of us have been to Pacific Centre, usually a shopping hub. But did you know that above Nordstrom’s is Sony Imageworks, creating incredible animated movies, including the 2019 Oscar winner? It also won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, featuring a Black, Spanish-speaking teen protagonist. The renowned video game franchise Gears of War, by Microsoft, is being built here in Yaletown. Next door to that is Animal Logic, building the wildly successful LEGO movies.

[2:40 p.m.]

Throughout the riding, there are hundreds of video game studios, animation houses and visual effects studios, including, notably, LucasArts Industrial Light and Magic, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, right in our own Gastown location.

Really, all of B.C.’s major industries are represented in the riding: mining, forestry, tourism, hospitality, arts and culture, sports, technology and more. It’s all here. This is why I so strongly support this throne speech and the work of this government, because this government does support people in my riding, and it supports businesses. As a small business person myself, this deeply matters to me.

The member for Shuswap, who spoke just before me, may want to read an interesting article written by senior economist Marc Lee, in Policy Note. In comparing B.C. to other provinces, including Alberta and Ontario, he states: “Across the board, B.C. is leading the nation with its economic response to COVID-19. There are still gaps in coverage, which we hope will be addressed in the weeks ahead, but B.C.’s additions to income and housing supports are cushioning the blow of the COVID-19 recession, and numerous smaller measures have been advanced to help specific groups. Other provinces should consider developing a more robust package along the lines of B.C.”

B.C. has provided more business support than any other jurisdiction. This is important to my riding. We created the small and medium business grant, and when the business community told us that it needed a few tweaks, the minister pivoted the program, extended it and was responsive to the needs of our business community.

We heard loud and clear from the tourism sector that they had been particularly impacted, and they, as a result, are entitled to a top-up unique only to that sector. We listened to the business sector and lowered the requirement for the amount of time businesses had to be in operation from three years to 18 months. We changed the program to include providing $2,000 to a qualified professional service provider to help create the recovery plan. When the pandemic caused the closing of restaurants, the minister and his team created a new program to assist 14,000 businesses in one week. In one week.

While there is no doubt the pandemic is causing harm, this harm is being mitigated by a government committed to putting people first, to supporting businesses and communities and ensuring that we will build back stronger by creating the conditions for a strong economic recovery. This matters to the businesses in my riding. Early on, we cut property taxes, prohibited commercial evictions and forgave hydro bills. We introduced tax incentives for businesses to hire workers and make new investments.

We’ve made record investments in infrastructure that will help support a resilient economy by putting people to work and helping businesses get goods to market. We’ve provided support for small and medium-sized businesses, taking into account the needs of specific sectors like the tourism sector and the restaurant industry.

We’ve continued the creation of more affordable housing solutions, and we know that this is a factor for people looking to hire workers. We’re investing in child care, providing solutions to parents who want to stay in the workforce. We’ve supported businesses with grants to help them build online stores, and we’ve announced the $500 million InBC strategic investment fund to help promising B.C. businesses scale and hire in B.C. This is something I’m so excited about.

Our government’s top priority remains protecting peo­ple’s health and livelihoods as we accelerate B.C.’s vaccine rollout. Over a million people have been vaccinated, and thousands more are getting it every day.

Our commitment to the people of this province is the reason that I was elected to represent this spectacular riding. This throne speech sets the agenda going forward, and I’m very proud to support it.

K. Kirkpatrick: It’s my honour to rise in the House today and respond to the Speech from the Throne, meant to lay out the goals and priorities of this government as we move through the spring legislative session and into the future. I’d like to thank the Lieutenant-Governor for her role in our parliament and wish Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth condolences on the loss of her husband, Prince Philip.

[2:45 p.m.]

I am honoured to represent the beautiful riding of West Vancouver, which is located on the traditional territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

This riding stretches across the district of West Vancouver, the district of North Vancouver and a small slice of the city of North Vancouver. Unlike many of the members in this House, I can drive across my entire riding in 15 minutes, which I know makes many of you jealous.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my constituency assistant Tracy Dobell, whose experience and enthusiasm have made my transition into being a new MLA all that much easier, and our new constituency assistant Paula Slavicky, who is also becoming invaluable. Both Paula and Tracy have deep roots in the community that we’re in. They’ve been extraordinary in helping me understand the issues of our constituents and in helping guide those constituents and find solutions to the challenges that they’re facing in these uncertain times.

It goes without saying, but I will say it, that my legislative assistant, Elishia Butler, has been invaluable in helping me navigate life here in the Legislature. Without her and Marissa Olson, I’d be lost wandering the halls.

I’d like to extend my thanks and appreciation to Ralph Sultan, who stood here in this room and represented the people of West Vancouver–Capilano for many years. He did so in a respectful, intelligent manner, respected on both sides of this House, and I am sure he continues to tune in to this channel.

I have had the great fortune of meeting a number of groups in my community since becoming the MLA: Streamkeepers, For Our Kids, the West Vancouver police department board, superintendent of the RCMP detachment for the district of North Vancouver, Kiwanis housing, Firefighters Local 1525 and many more.

Finally, my thanks and appreciation to my family, including my 94-year-old mother, who has now discovered what is actually on Legislature TV and tunes in regularly if there is even the slightest chance of catching a glimpse of her daughter on television, which is then followed with an email critique of my outfit.

Turning to the Speech from the Throne. These are extraordinary times in British Columbia, and we are in crises. We have multiple and overlapping crises: health, mental health and addictions, and an economic crisis that has not been seen for generations. These have all been exacerbated by an unnecessary snap election. But now it is time for a bold and innovative approach to move us forward.

What I heard in this throne speech were more of the same platitudes and promises that we’ve been hearing for the last four years. Where is the vision? Where is the excitement about what the potential of this province and British Columbians can do? Where are the clear commitments and action plan that’s going to come in this next budget? I’ve heard that we are in the same storm, but we are in different boats. Regardless of the boat we are in, we need a lighthouse.

British Columbia has an opportunity to leverage the amazing talent and resources that it has, but we need leadership from this government that can paint a picture of what the future looks like and to guide us there. We need an articulated strategy. I didn’t hear that in the Speech from the Throne. British Columbians need to feel safe, and they can only do that if they know there’s a plan.

Now, I may be the only person that stands up and responds to this speech without focusing on COVID, because it’s bigger than that. We’re at a point where we need to look down the road. We need to look at what’s going to happen next year and the year after that, and it all starts with moving past the excuses of COVID, the challenges of COVID and how we are going to build for our future.

[2:50 p.m.]

The throne speech promised nothing new. It was support for mental health, child care, affordable housing, but these are not new, and clearly, these are issues. These are unfulfilled promises that we’ve heard from this government for the last four years. There was no mention of supports for people and businesses impacted right now by this relentless third wave, which will wreak havoc for months to come.

This is a budget, government says, that will make British Columbia stronger for everyone. If this is the case, why won’t it meet the cries of those 17,000 social services workers who are non-unionized who are asking for fair wages? Why do new child care policies financially cripple providers that are trying to add daycare spaces in British Columbia — these daycare spaces which are exactly what we need to help women and families participate in our economy again?

The throne speech mentions daycare. Government says that it will help even more families get access to affordable, high-quality daycare, and it will increase the number of available $10-a-day daycare spaces. But this is the same thing that this government has been saying for the past three years, and this government is far from transparent in this initiative, requiring those daycare providers participating in $10-a-day daycare to sign non-disclosure statements so that they can’t talk about the program.

Now, this government also promised to have 24,000 daycare spaces by this point in their mandate. By last summer, there were only 3,490 new spaces created by this government.

I think we have to think about the words that we use when we are talking about those spaces. I am using the word “new” spaces. I am not using the word “licensed” spaces. The number of 20,000, which is claimed by this government, is largely not new spaces. They’re a reclassification of existing spaces from being a registered daycare to being a licensed daycare. Therefore, they have created licensed daycare spaces. But moving daycares from registered to licensed, while being a really good thing in improving quality and supporting daycares, is not the same thing as actually creating those spaces, because they already existed.

In comparison, the B.C. Liberals created, between 2005 and 2017, 39,959 new spaces. That’s an average of just over 3,300 spaces per year. At the end of this past March, government signed an additional one-year extension agreement with the providers — these 52 pilot sites piloting the $10-a-day daycare. Now, I have to ask: why are we still piloting something after three years with the same number of pilot sites that we started with? Why is there another one-year extension without our seeing a plan for whether this is working and is going to move forward?

[2:55 p.m.]

Now, $10-a-day daycare was a fundamental and central promise from the NDP and one that families believed in. I am hoping that the reference to $10-a-day daycare spaces means real dollars will be dedicated in the budget to make this a reality and not merely a stopgap waiting for the federal government to step in. Child care in the province of British Columbia is this government’s responsibility.

I’m also hoping that government is looking very closely at the utilization of the $10-a-day daycare and these pilot sites to ensure that those who need it most have access and to ensure that spaces are not going unused. For example, a family who may only need two days a week, part-time daycare — may they take up a full-time space because it’s less expensive for them to pay $10 a day for full-time care than to take a traditional part-time space at a different daycare? Now, is government tracking utilization? This is a concern.

Of concern is also that a report was to be issued, I believe last April, that was to look at the actual success of these daycares to see if it makes sense to extend this into a permanent program. We’re still waiting for that document and waiting to see if this is being successful. How can this government say in this budget that it’s going to commit to growing $10-a-day daycare if it doesn’t have the data to analyze how it’s currently being utilized and if it’s doing what it’s intended to be doing?

I’d hope, also, that based on this data, which I’m only guessing about, we’d be considering looking at a system that is an income-tested model so that we can make sure that we are delivering scarce resources…. As I will demonstrate in a moment, there is not much hope of adding additional capacity and adding additional spaces because of some recent policy changes. So how do we do something that is going to make sure that we’re using our scarce resources and targeting support for low- and middle-income families with dependent children?

Government says that affordable daycare will make life easier and will support a strong economic recovery by helping more parents re-enter the workforce and that it’s going to take steps to recognize and retain early childhood educators, who we all know have been absolutely essential during this pandemic. But under a recent fee cap imposed on child care providers, many of those intending to create new spaces or thinking about potential new spaces, even those who have spaces in development, who have signed leases, who have already begun construction on new facilities…. I know of thousands of these spaces that have now been put on pause.

Now, capping fees sounds like a great idea for parents, and it is. We need to have affordable and accessible daycare. I don’t have an issue with capping fees. I have an issue with how it’s done. It has to be reasonable and take into account the needs of both the parents and the daycare providers.

But this government is going about it in the wrong way. Punishing those who want to add new daycare spaces seems counterintuitive if we want to increase the number of spaces available. This government has somehow determined what they’re calling market rates for daycare in certain geographic areas, but they’re not forthcoming on what the formula is for them to determine what a market rate is.

[3:00 p.m.]

Regardless, using this largely inaccurate rate, they’re telling daycare providers that they can only charge 70 percent of that rate for any new spaces that they are bringing online. This is regardless of whether your daycare is operating out of a basement or is in a brand-new facility, paying commercial market rents and offering enriched programming. Same market rate, according to this government.

None of that’s considered. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like walking on to a car lot, looking at two cars and expecting the fully loaded Kia with the sunroof and the leather and the custom colour…. Why isn’t that the same price as the baseline Kia with no remote-controlled lock? It’s not reality.

On January 14 of this year, the Child Care Professionals of B.C. wrote to the Minister of State for Child Care and said: “The data you collect and the way it is collected does not compare apples to apples. As such, your geographic fee averages or market rates are, at best, misleading and, at worst, nonsensical.”

This is the Child Care Professionals of British Columbia: “We ask you to (1) consult with the child care sector to en­sure the data on fee collection is accurate and (2) create a formula and not use an average — something that calculates current and future fee caps.” They say that they “have already provided the minister of state with suggestions of reasonable formulas and would be happy to discuss further.”

There has been no engagement from that letter. If this budget and this throne speech are committed to child care and committed to helping women get back into the workforce, why hasn’t this government demonstrated a willingness to work with daycare providers to come up with solutions that work for both parents and those daycare providers? Does this government not understand how daycares operate?

Now, British Columbia tops Canada as the most expensive place to live and to rent commercial property. There are many very expensive communities and commercial spaces in British Columbia. It puts a strain on parents, because we have a high cost of living, but it also puts that same pressure and strain on daycare providers.

The average daycare provider in British Columbia has a margin of about 2 percent. Rent and labour are the two biggest expenses. Rather than pushing the cost of daycare down to the providers, why not look at other policy adjustments and be creative? For example, in Ontario, you need 30 square feet per child for capacity in a daycare, and here you need 40. Now, that, obviously, is a cost driver, if you’re looking at the cost of child care in Ontario versus the cost of child care here.

When child care operators are squeezed to cut costs, it reduces their ability to provide tools and supplies to children and to purchase needed equipment. Most concerning, it squeezes the wages of ECE workers. I heard in the Speech from the Throne that there was a commitment to support and retain ECE workers, as they have been invaluable during the pandemic.

The allowable rates now, for most daycare providers, if you’re opening new spaces, are going to be less than the actual cost to provide those spaces. So for every additional new daycare space in British Columbia, a daycare operator will now lose money.

There is no reality where this, actually, is going to create more affordable daycare. What I have witnessed from this government is the poor implementation of flawed programs which are meant to do one thing and which do some­thing completely different.

Children in care. I didn’t see anything about children in care. Even prior to the pandemic, this government knew that children in care were struggling.

[3:05 p.m.]

Without stable family care, some of these young people move 20 times before they age out of care. Can you imagine the mental and physical toll that would take on a young person, who is just forming, who is just learning about who they are and their sense of self?

Now, I would hope that the budget we hear will support the implementation of the recommendations by the Representative for Children and Youth, including supporting a young person in care past age 19 and the automatic enrolment of all young people, across all types of care, in youth agreements, in agreements with young adults, which will carry them through until age 27.

Government takes on the role of parenting when they bring a young person into care, and parenting does not end on that young person’s 19th birthday. We need investment in improving transition planning for youth in care, which should start at least at 14 and carry through and extend until 19. We need to develop mental health, addictions and substance use services and programs specifically for youth in care transitioning to adulthood.

We know that young people with involvement with MCFD have a much more difficult time managing this complex and expensive world. There are increased suicide rates, incidences of incarceration, homelessness, addiction, victimization and more. We need money and programs to break the cycle of destruction in young people’s lives. We need to invest in children in care.

Investing in children in care is letting them know they matter. The more support that we can provide to youth in care, the more support we provide upfront and early, the healthier and more independent they will be as adults. So we are hopeful that in this budget, we will see support for the implementation of the recommendations of the Representative for Children and Youth.

I saw housing in this speech. The government says that it will pursue its goal of a province where everybody has access to safe and affordable housing. This is a noble commitment and one we all fully support. Housing is a human right. We need innovative and new ideas about how we think about housing.

This budget will include investments through 2021 to help thousands of missing middle rental homes to be built throughout the province, but we heard no mention of the previously committed to $400 renters rebate or the promise my colleague referenced of the 114,000 new, affordable homes. While vacancy rates have increased, only due to the pandemic, rents have also continued to increase.

I’d like to remind the House that in 2017, the NDP promised to build 114,000 new rental and co-op homes in ten years. Government said it would “saturate the housing market with new affordable supply.” Well, I don’t think any of us can see that saturation. As of last summer, the provincial government’s own numbers show us that just 2,963 of those 114,000 affordable units have been completed. Government will need to go from creating just under 1,000 units per year to creating just under 16,000 units per year for it to meet that highly touted election promise.

How do we encourage the private sector to build rental accommodation in British Columbia? I will tell you how not to do that, and that would be to introduce a long-term rental freeze unless this government also has the ability to freeze costs. This appears to be the same tactic that is being taken with daycare providers: freezing what they can charge but with no ability to freeze what it costs to provide those services.

[3:10 p.m.]

Will the 2021 budget address the gaps in the previous commitment, or is it now making a new commitment to build housing? Will there be money, as recommended by the Representative for Children and Youth, to add additional, dedicated housing for youth and young adults leaving care? The representative writes that “there is perhaps no greater challenge facing young people transitioning out of care than finding appropriate, affordable and safe housing.”

The speech talks about business. Government says it is proud of its 300 biopharmaceutical, medical device and bioproduct companies, and it should be. But what has this government done to make it attractive for those businesses to want to remain in British Columbia and for money to come into British Columbia for investment? This is not today, because of COVID and the pandemic. This is: how are we building British Columbia for the future and how are we attracting business and investment?

World-class health care, education, and social supports cannot be advanced without the additional resources derived from private sector growth. I worry that this government does not understand that. According to the B.C. Business Council, there are only 700 private companies with 300 or more employees in British Columbia. Small and medium-sized companies make up the greater share of the economy — that means contribution of employment and contribution to GDP — more so than in any other jurisdiction in Canada. These are the kinds of businesses that have fewer resources to be able to survive and recover from an extraordinary economic event that we have seen.

We need to support both those small and medium-sized businesses with innovative and, can I say, easy-to-access resources. But we also have to create an environment that is going to attract larger employers and more investments into our province. To meet both of these, we need progressive tax structures that incentivize growth and attract investment. This government has layered tax after tax since 2017. It has made British Columbia less affordable and more expensive to do business. There have been 23 new and increased taxes. Vancouver is now the second most unaffordable housing market in the world, making it even less attractive for companies to come here, because their employees cannot find housing.

The Speech from the Throne was nothing if not light. At the most critical juncture facing the province in generations, we were given platitudes and promises, many recycled from previously unmet commitments. This is after a two-month delay from the traditional timing of the presentation of a budget. We need a vision. We need a plan.

In crisis, you need leadership that can point the way and help people see what’s on the other side, not simply what we hope will be happening next month. What can be on the other side, if properly planned, is an economically healthy and socially progressive province that can provide safety supports for British Columbians, including safe and affordable food and housing, easily and quickly accessible mental health and addictions support and a vibrant and innovative business community with the resources to provide a growing number of well-paying jobs and a healthy and sustainable environment.

Hon. G. Heyman: It’s my honour to take my place in this debate on government’s Speech from the Throne today, virtually joining you from the traditional territory of the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

It has been an extraordinary 14 months, 14 months during which our government has focused on the needs of people, on the needs of our communities, on the needs of business large and small. On the needs of health care and trying to work with all members from all parties in the House on putting British Columbians first.

[3:15 p.m.]

This is an important Speech from the Throne, just as the budget that is coming up will be critically important. Both of them send messages to groups in our society, to individuals who are struggling, worried about the future, worried about the pandemic that is still with us, hoping against hope that we can all receive our vaccinations, and we can put this pandemic behind us and rebuild and come back stronger, because we all love this province. We love our communities. We have tremendous respect for each other and what we can accomplish together.

Before I talk a little bit about some of the specifics we have in the throne speech and that I’m excited about, I want to take a few minutes to recognize and thank some of the people I work with, as well as some of the groups and individuals in my riding of Vancouver-Fairview that play such an important role every day in building a strong community.

First, I want to thank the face of the Legislature in my constituency, the constituency assistants who respond every day to concerns and issues and problems raised by residents of Vancouver-Fairview. Nadja Komnenic, Nicolas Bragg, Lisa Dekleer and my newest constituency assistant, Mariah Gillis, every day think about how can they help people, how can they get them the information they need to access the health services they need to ensure that they’re up to date and to ensure that whatever problem they’re having, whether it is a day-to-day problem or a problem specific to the pandemic or a problem to do with education or accessing health care or dealing with the needs of their small business, that they can get connected to government programs, that they’re aware of what’s going on and they can get answers to their questions.

Also, I’m privileged, as a member of the executive council, to carry out programs in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. The staff that work with me in the minister’s office — Sarah Shoquist, Alyssa Hrenyk, Kelly Sather and Desmond Pollard — keep things going day to day and support not only me but interface with the public service to ensure that we are doing our job together, collectively, along with the Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment.

It is an honour and a pleasure to do that work and to see how we can focus that work on meeting the concerns and expectations of British Columbians, that they will continue and their children and their grandchildren will continue to thrive in a sustainable economy, one that addresses climate change, one that respects and protects biodiversity in our province, one that builds on our tremendous natural heritage and the rich diversity of species that we have in B.C. We know we have an important trust to protect those interests.

Returning to Vancouver-Fairview and the people that I represent, it’s been critically clear in the last 14 months the important role that people play who provide essential services, people who don’t have the luxury of working from home, people who don’t have the ability to carry out much of their functions via Zoom or Teams or over the Internet, but people who are on the front lines. Health care workers, of course. We all know the important role that health care workers play every day, whether it’s the people who are now administering vaccines, workers in hospitals, doctors, nurses, care aides, people who provide security and food services.

There are also teachers — teachers who have been in schools every day, taking care of children, educating children, ensuring that somehow we address the needs of our children to have social contact, to have an education, to not miss out on one bit more than can be avoided through this pandemic. It must be a tremendously hard and stressful job, and the job that teachers are doing day in and day out to support parents and kids is incredible. I know it is not without fear and stress themselves.

[3:20 p.m.]

Child care workers. Child care workers are also taking care of children, being on the front line, providing critical, essential services.

The people who serve us food or work in the food stores where we go. We try to make our visits less frequent and short. They’re there every day ensuring that we’re stocked, that we’re fed, that the essentials of daily life are there for us. These are people who are concerned about their families and their children and their health.

I know that as we work with the provincial health officer to ensure that we roll out vaccines as soon as they’re available and as quickly and thoughtfully as we can, we are cognizant of those people who are out in the community performing the essential functions — whether it’s fire, whether it’s police, whether it’s first responders, as I’ve said, transit workers and others — who are on the job, in public, exposing them to risks so we can be safer. We know that as soon as we can, we will be giving them the protections that they seek.

I also want to recognize some of the groups in Vancouver-Fairview who keep the community whole. I’m not going to name all of them, but groups like Little Mountain Neighbourhood House that have in the past provided a place for people to come and gather and access programs, to have a meal, for seniors to socialize.

Everybody has had to transform how that happens in a time of pandemic and find new ways to reach out to try to fill that gap and void that is left when people have to stay close at home and people are unable to circulate in the community, when people are missing each other and people who normally don’t have a lot of social contact and rely on places like the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House or the South Granville Seniors Centre or the Riley Park Community Garden. How we can bring people to­gether and fill some of their needs for socialization and community — it is incredibly difficult not just in my riding, of course, but all throughout B.C.

The role that government has played to try to provide support to these non-profits, support to centres, support to communities and support to individuals has been a partnership. The needs of these groups to be able to continue to provide the services that they have provided for years in a new and different way has been brought forward to every MLA in the province, I’m sure. We have done our best to respond and to fill the needs that people see.

Also in Vancouver-Fairview are a range of health services and health agencies. There’s a bit of a health cluster. Not a bit, a large health cluster in Vancouver-Fairview.

In addition to the Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre and the Cancer Foundation, we have the B.C. division of the Canadian Cancer Society, which we are honouring with the daffodils this month. We have the Alzheimer Society. We have many other health delivery organizations as well as health research organizations, all of which are doing their best to hold our communities together, to fill a need during the pandemic, if there are related issues, as well as to ensure that the ongoing issues of health and health care and health re­search that happened before, during and post-pandemic are maintained.

The work these people do every day and the opportunity I’ve had, whether in face-to-face meetings before or more recently in meetings over Zoom to tell me about their work and how government can help them…. I just want to assure people that that is invaluable — not just to me but, I believe, to every MLA — in ensuring that the government is cognizant of what people’s needs are, what the needs are of the organizations that help people on a day-to-day basis and help us move forward through this extremely difficult time.

[3:25 p.m.]

There are no easy answers. Every week brings a new problem. Every week brings a new challenge, particularly now as we’re seeing cases rise and the need for all of us to be as vigilant as ever, if not a bit more vigilant, to ensure that we provide time for the vaccines to take hold and bring us to the point where we have a form of collective community immunity. Now is the time when we need to really focus and pay attention. We need to work with our neighbours and friends and communities to support the actions that will keep us all collectively safe.

Throughout this pandemic, there are many organizations, whether they are arts organizations, cultural organizations, community organizations or other, that have faced significant challenges. Our government has tried, since the first early days of the pandemic, to ensure that organizations that were vulnerable because they were always on the edge of not having quite enough funding to carry out their mandate….

We all know that arts organizations struggle. They’re never blessed with more than enough funding. What we can do is ensure that they’re able to maintain the services that they provide, that they can maintain a cultural community, that they can keep artists together and, as many of them have done, find new ways to provide people virtual experiences and provide artists a way of carrying out their profession and keeping our communities together.

Let me just name a couple of organizations, both arts and cultural in Vancouver-Fairview, that we have been able to support. I know they are grateful, but we are grateful to them for their work. Coastal Jazz, which is also known as the organization that sponsors the Vancouver jazz festival, is responsible for so much enjoyment of so many Vancouverites and British Columbians for so many years.

The music that has traditionally come to Vancouver to be heard by so many, often in free venues, is just incredible. The Vancouver International Jazz Festival is known as one of the premier jazz festivals in North America. Their office is in my constituency, and they received the B.C. Arts Council resilience supplement, which topped up their operating budget in the face of uncertainty. It allowed their team to transition to online programming, providing virtual concerts and multimedia presentations.

I have had the pleasure of viewing a number of them, and as I and others sit in our living rooms, instead of in parks or clubs, we are able to reconnect with the tremendous creativity of musicians who are lifting our spirits every day and ensuring that creativity and culture live on. Coastal Jazz is shifting their strategy for a jazz festival to keep their focus on small, local artists and new ways to connect with audiences.

Creative B.C., which is responsible for so many of the creative arts and promotion of their work in B.C., has offices in my ministry. They’ve benefited from the actions of two ministers for arts and culture, who have expanded Amplify B.C. funding, a commitment of three years, and supported career development for B.C.’s creative industry and music industry participants.

That is part of B.C.’s $10 billion COVID-19 response. That includes Stronger B.C., which is B.C.’s economic recovery plan to protect people’s health and livelihoods, as well as supporting businesses and community. It includes furthering innovation programming to find new ways to adapt to the challenges that COVID-19 has brought the arts community, as well as further supporting our BIPOC music community.

There are too many small businesses, as well as food establishments and craft breweries, in Vancouver-Fairview to list them, but we have a high concentration of small, local award-winning breweries that have been facing many challenges over the last year. They have welcomed the circuit breaker business grants we have provided as a form of fast relief to the COVID-19 restrictions, as a way of keeping going, staying viable and staying strong.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

They’re also grateful for the changes to patio restrictions during the circuit breaker, which allowed non-food prim­ary locations to continue to use the patios. Some of the larger local group brewers are also grateful to be designated as part of the food manufacturing industry.

[3:30 p.m.]

There is a Japanese community volunteers association called Tonari Gumi. They’ve adapted their food programs for Japanese seniors in the community by transitioning their in-house bento box lunch service to a Meals on Wheels program that weekly delivers food and care to seniors. They’ve been offering information and referrals to seniors, and they help support families with young children through programming and a variety of activities, including income tax clinics, pension support and help accessing provincial and federal services. They also maintain a multigenerational community garden at Jonathan Rogers Park, where members host workshops on how to cook with and care for various Japanese vegetables.

The BIPOC Creative Association, or BIPOCCA, supports BIPOC artists and creatives who need access to space, equipment, networking with people and a host of other resources in order to thrive. They fill a gap as an umbrella organization, hoping to provide Black, Indigenous and people of colour with opportunities for connection and mentorship, as well as physically and psychologically safe places for their work to flourish. I was pleased to present this organization, quite recently, with a grant through B.C.’s Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism initiatives funding.

Another group in Vancouver-Fairview I was able to support through the Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism initiatives funding was the 5X Press and Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration Society. They have a major presence online, especially through interactive social issues dialogues on Instagram. It’s the de facto access point for many BIPOC creatives, because mainstream media can be stigmatizing and tokenizing, in their view. 5X Festival has reached more than 30,000 participants in 2020. We were pleased to be able to offer them support and encouragement, as well as financial assistance. I learned a lot from my Zoom meeting with them, as well as learning how important this contribution to their work was to them.

Finally, another group that received a grant through this program is PEDAL Power. Their intent is to use the funding to provide a series of workshops as a first step towards building equity and eliminating racism within the local cycling industry.

There are so many groups, organizations and businesses in Vancouver-Fairview that it’s an honour to represent. But what I’ve learned in the last 14 months is how critically important a speedy response from government has been, with programs and advice and supports, whether it’s relief from evictions — for commercial tenants, as well as residential tenants — whether it’s support and relief on certain taxes, whether it’s subsidies for wages and payroll or whether it’s the most recent circuit breaker COVID relief grants. This is keeping businesses alive and giving them hope. The role of my community office, as well as many others, is to do our best to provide assistance and information to people, so they can see the end and they can find a way to stay whole and keep together.

Let me turn to some of the issues that I’m so pleased to be responsible for in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and that are being highlighted in the throne speech and that we will continue to work on and that are contained in my mandate letter.

As part of our StrongerBC COVID recovery program, we took a focus on debris, both plastic and fishing net debris, all up and down our coast. It has been an issue that was raised with us by many groups, up and down the coast, for many years. As part of our StrongerBC recovery program, we initiated the clean coast, clean waters program. We worked with the Small Ship Tour Operators Association, as well as Indigenous Nations, and provided employment last summer and fall to 111 employees of the Small Ship Tour Operators As­sociation and 69 Indigenous people from up and down the coast.

[3:35 p.m.]

We covered about 540 kilometres of coastline. We gath­ered over 127 metric tonnes of plastic debris. A very, very significant amount of it was fishing debris. We look forward to being able to continue that program in the months to come.

We had $27 million and 70 projects as part of StrongerBC devoted to a watershed and habitat restoration program throughout the province. Again, these were projects identified by the Watersheds B.C. coalition and that were delivered in partnership, in many, many cases, with Indigenous Nations and Indigenous workers. We were able to focus on habitat restoration, particularly fish habitat; natural carbon sinks and wetlands; working on habitat to ensure that we were prepared for the impacts of climate change, things like flood management, in the future. There’s much more work to be done.

This is a critical example, as is the clean coast and clean waters program, of taking the opportunity presented by the need to recover our economy to address long-standing issues that are important today in our communities for environmental integrity, for habitat, for biodiversity as well as climate adaptation. That will be critically important in the future.

We also note a commitment in the throne speech to ensuring we build out the rapid public transit that British Columbia will need in the future, whether it’s extending the SkyTrain all the way to Langley through the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project or continuing to work on the Broadway subway and examining the future of, ultimately, a goal of extending the Broadway subway in some form all the way out to UBC.

These are important issues. They’re important issues for carbon emission reduction. They’re important issues for ensuring that we marry public transit to the provision of housing and housing density, whether it is out to Langley or along the routes to UBC, as well as connecting the research community at UBC with the research community in Vancouver-Fairview and elsewhere.

These are the things that build our economy. These are the things that make life better, more convenient and more affordable for people. These are the things that reduce congestion and link public transit with the housing needs of people in British Columbia.

It’s critically important that we continue to invest in these programs, and our commitment as a government is that we will do just that. We won’t hem and haw. We won’t hold back on commitments. We won’t require people to have divisive referendums that delay the inevitable, because the inevitable is that we have to ensure people, goods and services in B.C. aren’t bound up by congestion and that our economy isn’t suffering annual losses, in the excess of $1 billion a few years ago, because we weren’t dealing with congestion and because we weren’t providing affordable, accessible public transit that looked to the future and is built for the future today.

It’s also critically important that we look at what is happening with British Columbians in terms of our desire to be outside, to be outside with our close family, with our household. People are rediscovering B.C. parks. That was so obvious last year when we saw more visitors to B.C. parks than we had ever, ever seen before. People have asked us to focus on improving parks, improving access to parks, on building more trails and building more campsites. We have been doing that for the last three years. We had some youth employment programs last summer and fall that were a part of our StrongerBC recovery. We will be doing more of that in the years to come.

Just today we announced an investment in youth em­ployment in B.C. Parks and the B.C. conservation officer service, as well as in our clean coast, clean waters initiative. These are providing economic recovery support to people today. But it’s also preparing young people with skills and interests and experience in jobs they may wish to choose for the future.

[3:40 p.m.]

I think part of the Premier’s announcement was a young person who was part of the youth employment program in B.C. Parks last year who now has been hired into a policy analyst position in B.C. Parks. We are investing not only in the development of parks but in the development of people who will keep our parks system and our natural spaces whole and healthy for the future.

I also want to spend a few minutes to talk about our climate plan, CleanBC, and our clean, sustainable, diversified economy plan. We’re continuing to work on that plan. The throne speech mentioned that we were able to set sectoral targets — the first jurisdiction in Canada to do that. We did that to hold government accountable so that every British Columbian can see what we’re doing on the road to meeting our targets that have been set for 2025, 2030 and 2040.

The Climate Change Accountability Act that we introduced requires annual reporting, prospective explanation of what we intend to do in the three-year plan going forward to reduce emissions and build a healthy, diversified, low-carbon economy, and then reporting on how well we did in meeting the goals we set for ourselves.

Sectoral targets are part of holding us accountable, as are the many projects that we have in place to reduce emissions: to make low-carbon transportation, whether it’s electric vehicles or public transit, affordable and accessible for British Columbians; to reduce energy use and substitute low- or zero-carbon energy in in-home heating and commercial-building and public-building energy use across British Columbia; as well as to work with our industries to continue to be a model of low-carbon economic development, not just in North America but the world; and to ensure that through our CleanBC program for industry, we’re turning the carbon tax back to the best performers in the world, who exist in British Columbia, as well as supporting project proposals that come forward to reduce emissions, whether it’s in mining, pulp and paper, cement or elsewhere.

There is a growing demand worldwide for low-carbon commodities and products, and in British Columbia, we’re working hard to work with business to ensure that they remain competitive while they transform their emissions profile and are able to provide that while we meet our portion of emission-reduction commitments as part of Canada, for a worldwide effort to meet the crisis of climate change.

Let me close by just talking briefly about an excellent experience I had a couple of days ago. I was asked by a number of students from the Maillard Middle School in Coquitlam for a meeting. They formed a group called Single-Use Plastic Elimination Reinforcement Team, or SUPER.

Their goal is to show leadership on reduction of use of single-use plastics in their communities. They’ve made presentations to both the Port Moody and the Coquitlam councils, I believe. In our meeting, they read to me a very strong presentation on what they expected from the provincial government in terms of enabling local communities to control and ban single-use plastics as well as do a better job of recycling. We had a great conversation for about half an hour.

I told them about our plans that we laid out in the CleanBC plastic action plan. I talked to them about the bylaws that we’ve approved for municipalities and the regulation we plan to bring in to allow municipalities to pass their own, as well as our plans for phasing out single-use plastics as outlined in my mandate letter. They asked what they could do to show leadership, and the only answer I could give them was: “You’re already doing it. You’re showing tremendous leadership.” They inspired me. I’m sure they’re inspiring their teachers and parents and the other local politicians with whom they meet.

That seems to me a good note on which to end. I’m happy to take my place, and I’m happy to support this throne speech and the efforts of our government.

[3:45 p.m.]

M. Morris: Before I get into the depth of some issues of the throne speech, I’d just like to thank all of the front-line workers that we have in all the communities in British Columbia. I’ve got sons and daughters-in-law that work in child care, front-line policing, emergency services. They’re out there every day, along with all the other communities that we have throughout British Columbia here.

They put in countless hours of overtime dealing with people of unknown health conditions, helping them in every way that they can. They put in countless hours of overtime trying to keep up with the demands that they have within the communities. They sacrifice times with their families in order to provide that level of service that we have in British Columbia.

Oftentimes they’ve been in contact with symptomatic people with COVID, and they’ve had to isolate away from their families and away from their loved ones in order to ensure that they were clear and safe enough to go home. My heartfelt thanks to all the public and private sector workers who have gone above and beyond over the last year and a bit to provide their communities with a service that is going to keep them safe into the future.

Here we are today. We’re at the beginning of the second term of government for your government, for the NDP. This is the third throne speech that we’ve heard. COVID is well into its second year, and now I hear we’re in the third phase of COVID, which has some significant consequences.

We’ve had 1,000 more tragic folks pass away since the snap election was called. Again, I’m just going to highlight that a little bit — an unnecessary snap election that was called for whatever reason, self-serving reasons perhaps. It was an election that, in the view of many, didn’t put people first, as has been the mantra of this government now for quite some time.

I’m just wondering whether the time would have been better spent — and I think many people have said it — providing the services that the people have needed throughout this pandemic, to ensure that they weren’t facing the financial crises that we see so many of them facing here today. The Premier had said that he needed a majority government to have a clear path forward. Well, he had that before the election actually started as well.

Nothing that has been stated in this throne speech really hasn’t been stated previously, in the first and second throne speeches. A lot of rhetoric has been tossed back and forth, many platitudes that were there.

Generally speaking, a leader is a visionary. A leader is one who projects forward into the future and tells the people of British Columbia how he’s going to make life better year by year into the future. This one is very opaque. It doesn’t provide that clear path forward at all.

We have a burgeoning public sector, tens of thousands more public sector workers in British Columbia, providing a service. During the pandemic, of course, it’s a necessary thing that we need within our health care system and all the support structures that we have in government. But again, it’s burgeoning. It’s costing government a lot of money. We have lost probably 40,000 or 50,000 private sector employees across the province here that provide valuable tax revenue for the province.

It talks about infrastructure spending, moving forward, that is compromised by the community benefit agreements that we have. We heard from one of my colleagues earlier, speaking about the community benefit agreement in his riding. We see others where we’re seeing costs double over what the earlier cost projections had been. Contracts have been probably 25 or 30 percent on average more than they would have been without this community benefit agreement. Is it really a benefit to the communities when we’re seeing three projects being built for the cost of four, I guess?

[3:50 p.m.]

One of the great absences that I noticed in the throne speech was a plan for economic recovery, a robust plan for economic recovery. We are in the most significant economic crisis that any government in British Columbia has seen for decades, for generations. There’s no indication on how we’re going to get out of this once COVID is over.

B.C. is not competitive nationally or internationally. The tax structure that has been brought to bear by this government has caused a lot of industry, a lot of companies, to look elsewhere. A lot of people are looking at where they can invest in jurisdictions other than here in British Columbia. As we move forward, unless there are some significant changes to that tax structure, I think we’re going to see more industry moving to other jurisdictions in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I’m wondering: how does government…? There’s no plan. Maybe we’ll see something in the budget coming up in a week or so. There’s nothing to indicate how government plans on paying back this $13 billion or $14 billion deficit that we have and how we’re going to recover from that. The Premier, in the throne speech, talks about how we’re going to go back to a balanced budget. No, I’ll reword that. He talks about going back to a balanced budget, but he doesn’t talk about how he’s going to go back to a balanced budget. That’s concerning for many of us.

I remember speaking to a gentleman here a few years ago, in Prince George, at the resource forum. We were talking about the resource sector and mining, in particular. He was telling me that at that time British Columbia had one of the best investment climates in the world, internationally, for mining.

That’s a tough business to get into. It takes a long time to go through all the processes. Anybody that invests in mining, in the first place, has got a pretty strong constitution to stick with that kind of a program. I was hoping that we would see a little bit more about the resource sector in the budget, and there was nothing. There was a little mention of forestry, and I’ll get to that shortly.

When we look at the needs of British Columbia…. We talk about increasing our transit in the Lower Mainland and some of the infrastructure projects that we have there. We talk about electrification and clean energy in British Columbia. We don’t talk about one of the most substantial pieces of that puzzle, and that’s mining.

We have some of the most robust gold and copper deposits in the world sitting here in British Columbia, in the trench between the Coast range and the Rocky Mountains, heading up from central British Columbia, up into the northwest of British Columbia. There’s a golden triangle up there — they call it the golden triangle — that has an abundance of copper and gold and other minerals. We have an abundance of rare earth mineral deposits within the central interior of British Columbia and throughout British Columbia that are used extensively in our high-tech world that we’re in today. How are we going to get those out of the ground?

We talk about clean energy. When you talk about electric vehicles and bringing in programs to add more electric vehicles to the fleet across British Columbia, those come with tonnes and tonnes of additional copper and other minerals in order to provide that electric-driven structure. Without copper, we don’t get the electrification that we need. Without aluminum, we don’t have the power transmissions from the Site C dam, which is being built currently right now and which is going to provide power to the rest of the province to fulfil some of these electrification needs — those thousands of kilometres of aluminum wire, supported by thousands of steel structures that we have.

How do we get those steel structures? Well, those steel structures are manufactured by companies that use metallurgical coal. The metallurgical coal that we mine in Tumbler Ridge and throughout the province here is another necessary ingredient in our electrification program that we have here in British Columbia and, perhaps, ultimately, clean energy.

[3:55 p.m.]

We also can’t talk about clean energy and the modern technology without talking about our petrochemical industry. When we look at reducing the weight of vehicles to allow for more efficient electrical propulsion…. When we look at the modern aircraft that we have right across the world today, we see the fuselage of a modern jetliner is 50 percent polymers, and those polymers come from oil and gas. Those polymers come from the Montney play in British Columbia, the Dawson Creek–Fort St. John area of the province that has some of the richest natural gas liquids in the world.

Out of those liquids are the products that we use every day in society. The plastic shields that we have here in this House are made from the liquids from the natural gas that we have. The pipes that deliver our water to every household in British Columbia are made from the plastics that we produce from the liquids in the natural gas.

We don’t have a petrochemical industry in British Columbia to date, yet we have some of the richest and longest-lasting supplies in British Columbia — that wasn’t mentioned in the throne speech — to provide these new modern conveniences that we will be showcasing in British Columbia, in the Lower Mainland. When you look at the new transit projects that are slated for the greater Vancouver area, the railcars themselves, a lot of the technology will be using polymers in order to construct those devices. We have our agricultural sector in British Columbia that will use the fertilizer derived from the petrochemical industry, the tonnes of fertilizer that we use on our fields every day to ensure a safe food supply in British Columbia.

There was a brief mention of electrification and clean energy, but there was nothing to do with mining, which I think is an integral part of how we’re going to support all these other factors throughout British Columbia. Good-paying jobs, thousands of good-paying jobs, depending on how quickly we can get some of these mines opened up in British Columbia…. Good tax-paying jobs will provide revenue to the province to help bail out the $13 billion or $14 billion deficit that we’re in right now.

With the petrochemical side of the house…. Again, the proponent talking about building a liquids extraction plant in Prince George. It is going to employ several hundred people. Just out of one line — an existing natural gas line, the Enbridge line — he predicts that they can pull out $2 million of product a day in liquids that will provide feedstock for all the products that I’ve been talking about. That’s just one small natural gas line in British Columbia.

We have the Coastal GasLink project right now that’s putting in a four-foot-diameter pipe going to LNG Canada to ship liquefied natural gas over to Asia. If we take those liquids out, we are providing Asia with clean-burning liquid natural gas, and we can use those by-products here in British Columbia to provide a secondary industry and downstream industrial opportunities in manufacturing in order to enhance the economy of British Columbia. We’re going to be helping to clean up, reducing the GHG emissions in Asia and other countries that buy our natural gas, because we’ve taken those products out of the natural gas before it gets there.

There are a number of things that can be done that I hope government will consider integrating in their clean energy program to make sure that those kinds of things take place in the future.

I mentioned forestry. There was a brief mention of forestry in the throne speech, talking about the reallocation of volume or licences and talking about going from volume-based to value-added products in the future. They talk about reallocation to First Nations groups.

[4:00 p.m.]

The problem that we have…. We’ve been working on a sustainable yield strategy on forestry in British Columbia for 75 years. In my view, it has been an incomplete strategy, focused more on fibre than on the total value of a forest. We have an issue with the fact that in 2017, in many timber supply areas across the province around that period of time, there was reduction in the annual allowable cut by the provincial chief forester. But government has stalled in implementing those cuts, those reductions.

In Prince George, for an example, I think we went down from roughly about 3½ million or 4 million cubic metres of wood per year. So that allocation, or that reduction, has never taken place up until this period of time. That has had an impact on the mid-term timber supply and the availability of fibre to redistribute to First Nations or communities or other organizations.

The other impact in the interior of the province — and we’ve seen it throughout the province with the pine beetle — is the spruce beetle. The spruce beetle has devastated much of my riding, killed over a million cubic metres of spruce. It doesn’t have the shelf life that pine has. A lot of it won’t be salvaged before it is unusable. That’s had an impact.

I have Mackenzie in my riding, which has been totally devastated by the shutdowns in the community. I think there might be one mill working. There may be two mills working right now. A remanufacturing plant is part of that. But it’s due to the long distances that fibre has to be hauled. It’s due to the spruce beetle killing a lot of the spruce — the mid-term timber supply. But it’s also related to overharvesting of fibre that has been in close proximity to Mackenzie.

Mackenzie was developed back in 1968, when the W.A.C. Bennett dam was built, and the Williston reservoir. It’s been thriving as a forest community ever since that period of time but is now suffering the consequences. I haven’t seen any help from government with respect to that. I know there were some efforts by the Premier to get a coalition of licensees working collectively together a year or two ago and, of course, that hasn’t borne any fruit since that particular time at all.

We’ve also seen…. One thing that I find concerning with the reduction of the AAC in 2017…. Licensees are still cutting to the pre-2017 levels. The Anzac River is in my riding. It’s a fishery-sensitive watershed that has seen exponential harvesting over the last four years and large clearcuts, and it has had an impact on the fisheries in that area. I know it’s been an issue that has been raised to me as the MLA for the area, but provincially as well.

There is a formula that government has used for a number of years. It’s a hydrological tool that they use to evaluate the hydrological state of a particular drainage. For many, many years, that tool has indicated that if it’s a community watershed, 20 percent of what they call an equivalent clearcut area is appropriate for that area. If it’s a fishery-sensitive area, perhaps 25 percent is applicable. Other areas are 30 percent.

There are watersheds across the province. There are several watersheds in my riding and drainages where the equivalent clearcut area is reaching 80 percent or more, and it’s had a devastating effect on fisheries. Again, when government looks at this, I hope there is going to be some relief for the communities that are going to be severely impacted by these types of things and that there are measures and there is help that will be made available for them. They’re very vague in how that was addressed.

The other area that I found interesting — just a short mention; I know there is a committee dealing with it — was the review of an outdated Police Act. The Police Act in British Columbia has been updated many, many times over the past number of years. It’s not outdated. The Police Act, in my professional opinion, is adequate for the model of policing that we have in British Columbia today.

[4:05 p.m.]

The only issue I take with the Police Act today is the fact that section 2 says that municipalities must provide an adequate level of policing, but there are no metrics to really tell what that is. But is it the Police Act that really needs to be looked at, or is it the model of policing and public safety in British Columbia that needs to be looked at here?

When you look at the fact that the criminal part of policing accounts for about 30 percent of any police department’s file load, 70 percent are social justice issues. So should we be looking at how we address those social justice issues that are so impacted by mental illness, by addictions, by crimes of survival rather than purposefully committed crimes?

The police in British Columbia last year responded to about 650,000 emergency 911 calls and a little more, just under 700,000, non-emergency 911 calls. So we’re looking at 1.3 million, 1.4 million calls for service by the police. So the police attend. They do their investigation. They recommend charges, or they don’t recommend charges. They provide a report to Crown counsel, and that’s primarily the end of the police involvement in it. If Crown counsel approves the charge, it goes to court. If the courts find an individual guilty, then the individual is incarcerated or receives a sentence from the court. Yet, for some reason, the police seem to be targeted as the persons responsible for the overrepresentation of various groups in our corrections system.

What we do need to do and what the throne speech never addressed is the fact that…. How do we reduce the number of 911 calls? How do we keep a lot of those calls from happening in the first place?

We look at the opioid issues that we have. I do take exception to wording in the throne speech where they talked about the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and all the good work that they’ve done since…. You know: “It was leading in Canada.” I can’t see that. I haven’t seen…. There has been no reduction in the deaths. In fact, they have escalated significantly right across the board. Nothing has been done to curb the opioid deaths in British Columbia. That will take a concentrated focus. It’s going to take a multifaceted approach to ensure that all of those issues are addressed.

They talk about…. There was mention of it — on decriminalization of small amounts of drugs. When you look at the statistical data, I think there were 300-and-some people charged with opiate-related drugs in 2019, 300 and some out of 20,000 drug files that were in British Columbia, a very insignificant amount. There are drugs that are seized. The police forces all through British Columbia seize small quantities of drugs off street individuals, off different people that are being found in possession, without charging them. I wonder how many times those seizures have prevented an overdose death. How many times have police seized a small quantity of opioids and prevented a death by somebody taking that particular drug?

So they’re doing their job, and they’re doing it under extreme circumstances. They don’t get a lot of support from the public on this matter. I think that’s wrong. I think the police do an admirable job in trying to do their best with the tools that they have in dealing with the opioid crisis.

I’ve seen it written where people feel that by decriminalizing the small amount of drugs…. It’s the stigma that’s attached to the criminal part that prevents people from coming forward. I haven’t seen the study. I haven’t seen anything working in that regard, but I have heard and have spoken to addicts who are more concerned about people finding out that they’re an addict rather than that they might be a criminal if they’re caught with it. But the fact that they could be deemed to be an addict is something that they really wrestle with in the long term.

[4:10 p.m.]

I think that whole focus needs to be looked at, moving forward, to ensure we’re not stepping on the toes of enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. Criminals know the restrictions that police operate under. If they know that if you have a gram or two or three, or what­ever the limit might be on small amounts of opiates or heroin or cocaine, they will ensure that’s all they have got in their possession at the time they go and deliver the drug to somebody. Or they will have somebody run that amount to somebody so that they won’t be charged with trafficking.

By bringing in steps like this, it is really going to hinder the overall operations of police in the long term in trying to provide that effective level of enforcement on the street. What we need more is a treatment centre. We need folks that are suffering from addictions to be availed of a treatment centre as soon as possible in the process. That has been a pretty significant failure on behalf of this government in the first term and into the second term here, to ensure that there are adequate treatment centres right across the province for folks that are suffering from the addictions side of things, in addition to the mental illness that is sometimes exacerbated by adding addictions to that mental illness.

There are a number of things that should be done by this government that…. If you’re talking about infrastructure, where are the treatment centres? Where are the staff that are going to be manning those types of treatment centres, moving forward here, in a very timely fashion? This is a crisis that needs to be dealt with, that needs people to be placed into treatment centres as soon as possible, not down the road — not to pontificate these things ad nauseam. There should be treatment centres built today that were started back in the first term that this government was there.

Again, there are a number of other things I could have spoken to on this particular topic, but I’ll leave that for the future time that we have later on, perhaps during the budget speech. Again, there was no path forward in this budget that I could see. It was opaque. There was a bunch of platitudes. There was a lot of rhetoric in there. There is nothing that we could substantially look at and have faith that we have a solid vision, moving forward, in this province that is going to help those issues like addictions and mental illness, like our resource sector and some of those other things that we need to resurrect our economy and come back in a very robust and dynamic way.

Hon. N. Cullen: It’s with great pleasure…. I’m joining this conversation from the beautiful community of Smithers, British Columbia, on Wet’suwet’en Gidimt’en territory in northwestern B.C, and incredibly proud as always to be representing the stunning and incredibly large constituency of Stikine in the Legislature.

I know all hon. members in the House will be familiar with our electoral maps and this particular part of the world that I seek to represent each and every day. But for those watching, Stikine is the largest provincial riding in our province and goes from the beautiful gem of Atlin, British Columbia, tucked up against the borders of Yukon and Alaska in the northwest of our province, all the way down the highway through Tahltan territory into Gitxsan territory and Wet’suwet’en territory, where I live with my family. It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to reach out to, speak on behalf of and engage with people across this beautiful and vast riding.

Now, today we are talking about the very recent Speech from the Throne, and I’ve heard a number of members from the opposition criticizing it for its lack of detail. For those unfamiliar with how parliament works and for how government sets out its agenda, the Speech from the Throne is the vision, the document that guides government over this period of time, the next while. The specifics — the plan, the funding, the programs, the initiatives — all come with the budget, which is also coming quite soon.

[4:15 p.m.]

The story that our government is telling, the story we are grappling with, has been in the face of what has been an unprecedented pandemic, not just for British Columbia but of course for the entire world. The challenges that lie within the struggle that we’ve had over the last year or more have been far too numerous in a short speech to outline.

Yet I think our experience here in Stikine has been instructive. We are a rural, remote part of the world, yet some of the challenges that we have faced over this past time, the economic, the social, environmental stresses that have come along with it, I think are emblematic of challenges faced by people all across British Columbia, whether they be living in downtown Vancouver or living more rurally and remotely, like we do.

There are a couple of broad areas that we can talk about today. The pandemic and our government’s response to that — our efforts through the CDC and Dr. Henry’s good work and the Health Minister’s support. Also the economy and what the impacts have been in this unprecedented time of the health and safety measures that government has taken. We’ve accommodated, adapted and tried in our very best ways to be nimble, which was exemplified just last week in taking health measures to protect society, because we can’t have a healthy economy without healthy people. As this pandemic has changed, it has forced us also, as a government and as a people, to change.

I want to talk about the investments we’ve made in Stikine because oftentimes the expression “no hope beyond Hope” has been too often true in the past. Yet when I asked my team recently to pull together all of the investments, all of the efforts that we have made in our particular corner of the world, it’s too long a list for me to go through in just half an hour, which is a good problem to have.

I also want to talk about the social impacts, what has been happening for us at the community level and how the throne speech and the coming budget try to deal with some of those strains. We have a number of significant programs. What COVID has exposed…. As pressure is put upon a system, it exposes where the cracks are, exposes where the weaknesses are. I suppose, as a people, as a community, as a province and as a government, we can, under that pressure, either come together more as a people or divide further apart.

There are those that are seeking to, I suppose in a nefarious way, use this opportunity to divide one from the other, neighbour to neighbour, community to community, party to party. I suppose this is somewhat dated now, but one of the more encouraging things that we saw in British Columbia at the start of this pandemic was the willingness of the opposition parties to join with the government in many efforts of passing economic measures, of agreeing to defer to and support the Centre for Disease Control and Dr. Henry and her initiatives.

We’ve been seeing, generally speaking, a weakening of that together effort. I understand, and I mean this sincerely, the opposition in all legislatures has an incredibly important role to play holding government to account, asking the tough questions. Of course, they have their own partisan interests for themselves to one day form government. Yet that line…. There is a line there that can be crossed, and pandemics and this crisis have shown us when the opposition can play a constructive role and when, over time, that seems to have worn on some of my colleagues across the aisle. They’re now slipping into the more unhelpful, traditional role of sniping for its own sake, of creating anxiety and fears in their criticisms that are sometimes unwarranted.

I think, for the communities that I represent, the mental and social impacts of what this pandemic has exposed call upon all of us to be of our best natures, to be supporting people in giving as truthful information as we can, being critical when necessary and providing solutions when we are also able to do so.

We’ve just recently passed one million doses of vaccine that have been administered to British Columbians. This is an incredible effort. Of course, although the delivery has been shaky at times, we have to thank our federal partners for being able to deliver those vaccines from a number of different suppliers.

We also have to take, again, the moment to thank the front-line service workers, those that are administering those vaccines, running those clinics, oftentimes in rural and remote places, not in their home communities, travelling great distances, staying away from home and trying to make sure that people are as safe as possible when receiving their vaccines.

[4:20 p.m.]

As the vaccine numbers have been increasing, of course so too have the variants. This is such an incredibly challenging thing for our public health officials, for us as a government and, I would argue, for us as a province. If it had just been the original COVID-19 disease in its original form, many of the experts have told us, much of that has come under control.

The variants that have shown up in British Columbia have certainly challenged and stressed a system that was already challenged and stressed, and people are adapting. This falls into a context — the previous speaker from the opposition did mention this in passing — that we are in fact dealing with two pandemics. It cannot be overstated that we as a province have had an opioid crisis of people succumbing, through their addictions, to a poisoned drug supply that has killed hundreds and hundreds of British Columbians — more, in fact, than COVID itself has.

We were, as a government, when we first formed government in 2017, bending that curve down. We were dealing with the root causes of that pandemic. The shutting of the borders, the increasing toxicity of the drug supply and the challenges, within our health care system, of dealing with two pandemics simultaneously have, unfortunately, bent that curve back up. We are dealing with it, and I hope and expect that we will deal with it in the budget that members and the public will see, in very short order.

Now, we’ve also had to adapt in the way that our long-term-care facilities and that nurses, doctors and the entire health care system have operated. Their diligence and commi­tment as health care providers have been nothing short of incredible.

We’ve all said this. There is no partisan interest in this at all, I should think. Yet it was so important and so fortuitous that when we formed government four years ago, one of our initiatives was to build the public health care system back up, to strengthen it — not because we were anticipating a pandemic but because we knew it was the right thing to do. The public health care system, particularly on nursing and on cleaning in our hospitals and in long-term-care facilities, had been depleted over time, for the sake of pursuing other initiatives, by previous governments — particularly, large tax cuts to the very wealthy and well connected.

Now, it was fortuitous because in the broader sense…. I’ll talk about this a little bit more later on, when we talk about the social safety net. It’s an ephemeral idea, but boy, do you notice when it’s there, or when it’s not there? Our government — being a social democratic one — believes that one of the key reasons that we even have government and that we have public service is to be able to help those when they are in need.

I can remember a street nurse that I spent some time working with a number of years ago in Prince George, who worked in some of the most difficult circumstances. He had an expression that he said once in passing. I hope I can get his words accurately. He said: “We do for, when we must. We do with, when we can. The rest of the time, we get out of the way and cheer.”

I had to ask him, because he said it very quickly. I said: “What does that mean?” He said:

“Well, there are circumstances when we, as a society, we as a community simply must do for somebody. They’re in a circumstance, in a space in their lives where they’re unable to lift themselves up, and we lean in, and we do that. We do that through government services. We do that as charity. We do that as neighbours. We do that in the faith community, where we simply need to lift somebody up and get them back on their feet, and we do that.

“There are many circumstances, more circumstances, where we work alongside somebody. We help them out of addictions. We make sure they can get into some suitable housing. We help them get the education that is stopping them from improving their lives, and we pass that through the generations.

“And there are times, many times, when we’ve just got to get out of the way, when somebody is recovering and doing better, and just simply encourage them to keep going.”

I always kept that experience and that moment with me, because that is somebody who was dealing with people in a broad range of circumstances, mental health and addictions and all the complexity that comes with that, and had for himself a mantra — an understanding of when to intervene and how — that obviously worked very well for him, because he was one of the most lauded and particularly strong people in that community, dealing with so many difficult circumstances.

I also want to make mention of this because early on, then with a little delay and then again recently, I reached out to the faith community in the Bulkley Valley here, which I represent. This has been a particularly stressful time for those in that community as well. I know that just as we are — as elected people who like to gather with others to talk, exchange and have dialogue — the faith community has been incredibly stressed. I saw, within their tension, the desire to come back together in the various faith communities right across British Columbia, and the inability to do so, for good safety reasons.

[4:25 p.m.]

The spiritual and mental health of their constituents was something that has been top of mind forever since. I want to say to those that have struggled with this that we see your struggle, and we understand, and we are looking in all ways possible to be able to safely return back to those gatherings, because we know how important that is for so many British Columbians.

Now I want to talk briefly, I suppose — well, not too briefly — about the economy, because this was one of the reasons that I ran in the first place: to have a vibrant, di­verse and strong economy. I listened to the words in the speech from the Minister of Environment, who shepherded in a $1 billion CleanBC program, to not just talk but to act on that transitioning economy.

It’s what so many of us have looked for, prayed for and worked for over the many years of supporting the alternatives, the clean tech, and inspiring those industries from sometimes very traditional sectors of our economy — say, in the forestry and mining sectors: to be able to not only improve their performance when it comes to pollutants, general pollution and greenhouse gases but also to diversify the economy, so that we are not putting all of our eggs in the proverbial basket.

For too long, British Columbia has seen governments that were so focused on one industry or a couple of hand-picked industries and only doing it the way it was always done — not innovating, not investing, not taking those risks alongside the private sector to make sure that our industries had multiple legs to stand on, not simply one.

Coming from rural British Columbia, I have seen the boom-and-bust economy, and both ends of it are actually quite terrible. Of course, you prefer the booms over the busts, but even in the booms, housing prices go quickly out of control, as we’ve seen in too many communities. You can’t get people to work for you, because there are just too many jobs and not enough workers.

Then the cycle inevitably ends. The anxiety, even in the boom times, can be felt by those in the business and the larger community. Then the bust comes. People leave their houses. Houses go underwater, as they’re called, of less value than the person paid for it originally.

We need to stabilize that economy to have the diversity, to have the range of different experiences and opportunities for people coming through, so that we are not reliant on a price that is set on the New York Stock Exchange or the mercantile exchanges but is something where we have various opportunities. If one sector takes a downturn, we have other things to rely upon.

Now, StrongerBC is part of that program as well, of course. In some places like Prince George, I’ve seen recent reports where we have had more jobs come back than pre-pandemic — 108 percent of the jobs that existed in Prince George now exist — and a general upturn. Particularly for those living in the city and who might not have been noticing, much of that upturn, and the stabilization of our economy through this pandemic, has happened in the natural resource sector.

A friend of mine mentioned mining earlier on. Well I represent one of the going concerns in mining, the Tahltan country north of where I live — where, I think, last year somewhere around $250 million was poured into that large region with a small population, investing in initiatives to bring about mining.

We have seen initiatives like the recent agreement, between the Tahltan, British Columbia and Canada, to set aside a place — a conservation interest that had a mining claim on it in a very sacred and important place for the Tahltan — to defer that out to protect it and, instead, to support a mining initiative further down the road, which would be much more appropriate and better placed. With the private sector and government, we are working with an Indigenous government to make something very good happen.

We’ve also seen, on the forestry side, our government investing more and more in diversification. We hear it time and again from the previous Forests Minister, Doug Donaldson, and from the current Forests Minister, talking about the need to promote value over volume. For far too long, governments — certainly, this is true of the previous government — just simply thought more volume was the answer to every question that you had. Whether there was a softwood lumber dispute or whether prices were high or prices were low: volume, volume, volume.

Well, we know that on the land base now there is increasing complexity, there is increasing pressures on decision-making, and there is increasing interest from the public from all walks of life as to what goes on in our forests. One of the solutions is to make sure, in the forestry industry itself, that the good actors are supported, that we have the diversification, that we are not torching 30 percent out in the slash piles of our province, contributing to GHG emissions and poorer air quality for the communities nearby, but also — in my view and, I think, the view of many — devaluing what this resource is and what it can be.

We can look to the Scandinavian and other examples, around the world, of communities and governments who have, over time, valued the resource more, have said that it means more than just simply doing it the same way and only focusing on one or two outlets for that industry. With the biofuels and the new innovation industries, some of them have been around for quite a while. Our government is keenly aware.

[4:30 p.m.]

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

I should mention this just in some passing. One of the mandates that I have from the Premier is to look at the way government organizes itself when it comes to resources and decision-making and permitting. We know there are a number of challenges, and we know that FLNRORD, as it’s called right now — Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development — is under a great deal of strain in the ability to meet the expectations of the public, of industry.

With the increasing complexity, as our government has passed the declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples into law unanimously through this House, that layer of consultation, that complexity — and I use the word in a positive sense — means that the traditional way of organizing ourselves, of making decisions, of coming together as communities has to also adapt. I can recall that in the mid-’90s, late ’90s, we had a very vigorous community land use planning model that was put in place by an NDP government. That said: “Let’s solve the conversations. Let’s have the argument and the debate over land use in our province at the community level with community interests in place before the controversy, the project, before the initiatives are announced.”

The previous Liberal government fundamentally strip­ped away that way of thinking, thinking in their own way that the so-called cutting red tape, as if community dialogue and community buy-in was somehow an un­wanted thing…. But regardless, cutting away all of that, and then issuing guarantees on permitting without the consultation, without the community buy-in, without the social licence, and paying only passing mind to rights and title, usually fighting rights and title in court — the previous government did, over and over again — would create more certainty for investors. In fact, it created the opposite in many cases, because projects were permitted but achieved no social licence in getting there.

Well, what do communities do when they’re not being heard? Well, they do what anybody does when they’re not heard. They resist, and they find other ways to have their voices heard. Oftentimes, that led to conflict.

We know in Stikine, the place I represent, that coming together as communities, understanding the rights and obligations that we have as a government to First Nations people, is the only path forward. There just simply isn’t another way. There’s no going back to those bad old days of the ’50s and ’60s where government just fired up the bulldozer and did as it would. We have far too many examples, up and down our region and across British Columbia, where the colonial nature of governments was to override rights and title obligations that had been struck under treaties and agreements with First Nations over many decades.

We were able, in a number of key areas, to make investments that required us to get along with our municipal partners, who are another order of government; First Nations government; and the federal government. I’ll give you just two examples that I think would be important to British Columbians and show what working together can actually do.

When Greyhound pulled out of British Columbia — particularly the northwest, where I represent — there was a great concern, particularly on Highway 16, infamously referred to as the Highway of Tears for all the many, many, many missing and murdered, particularly Indigenous, women and girls over the years. I’ve walked this highway with those families over far too long. When Greyhound pulled out, we knew the risk factor was going to go up.

For those at the lower socioeconomic end of things, the ability to get out of their communities, to go to doctors’ appointments, to just simply leave town, meant that they had to take more and more precarious forms of transportation. We said we needed to come together as a community to do that. The current Member of Parliament, Taylor Bachrach, was instrumental in this, as were all the mayors up and down the highway and the provincial and federal governments in stepping in. Just recently, we announced re-funding for the B.C. Bus to keep people safe, to allow people who don’t have the means to have their own vehicle to not have to take precarious and dangerous transportation.

Just recently my colleague from the North Coast, MLA Rice, was able to join with various ministers and an­nounce, successfully, cell phone service all along the highway that will be put in with our partners in Shaw. This is going from Prince George all the way to Prince Rupert. Folks that don’t know will have to get out their maps. But I know that colleagues know just how long that stretch of highway is. We know, beyond the benefits of having cell phone service in 2021 for business and just for our daily way of life, the essential service that has come with being connected. As a safety measure alone, we know how critically important this is to provide assurance and insurance for those who are getting into a car with someone they hope is a friend. It turns out they’re no longer feeling safe. They are able to stay in contact with the outside world.

[4:35 p.m.]

Hopefully, and I know all colleagues share this sentiment, we will no longer refer to Highway 16 as the Highway of Tears because young women and girls, particularly young Indigenous women and girls, are kept safe by all of us in all of our efforts to make sure that these unbelievably heart-wrenching stories are no longer just taken as the way it is, as they were for so many years.

I wanted to — I know time is precious to us all — talk about an upcoming announcement and an event that has been well publicized in a very northern part of our province, Lower Post in the Kaska Daylu Dena, who, for many years…. This will be shocking for members to realize. The band office, the community office that people went to go to work in to administer the community — a very small, very remote community, tucked up against the Yukon border — was the same building in which the residential school had been for many, many years.

I know the Premier has visited this community. He himself, along with the former MLA for the region, Doug Donaldson, were incredibly moved by the determination and the courage of this community to say: “This is not acceptable anymore.” Walking into this building, a building that was the scene of so much horror, so much vio­lence, where government, in generation after generation, perpetrated what many would call an attempted genocide, wiping out a people through the most horrific forms of child abuse and cultural abuse imaginable…. That shouldn’t be the place where you go to work. That should no longer be acceptable.

We, along with our federal counterparts and the great courage of that local leadership, are stepping up this week to finally remedy that so that community no longer has to look at that building, go to work in that building, as a constant and horrific reminder of how bad things were for so long.

As I said at the beginning, my staff put together a list of all of the funding, all of the opportunities that our government has worked with local leadership to bring to Stikine, because in the midst of a pandemic, there are governments we’ve seen of a different political orientation, across this country and around the world, who have seen a pandemic as an opportunity to not invest — to pull back, in fact, from being involved our communities. We saw a different opportunity.

We’ve seen our airports, right across the region, from Dease Lake and Atlin all the way through to Smithers, as a vital connection point. We have invested millions of dollars into those places, into recreation. The little perimeter trail that runs around our community…. The most utilized piece of recreational infrastructure this community has — more than the hockey rink and the curling rink and the pool — is the trail.

We know, through the pandemic, that these places, the outside places in particular, have been incredibly important to our mental and physical well-being. I heard a comment from someone further south — recently, in a consultation — that talked about our overly loved trails, our overly loved wilderness areas, and that our government has invested more and needs to invest more in that critical infrastructure, because we’ve come to appreciate what it is, in our local communities, to have this infrastructure in place.

We put more than half a million dollars into Wetzin’kwa Community Forest. I’ll admit my bias right now. I’m a huge fan of community forests. I think we don’t have enough of them, and I hope we have more and larger ones. From Fraser Lake to Smithers to communities all across this province, I’ve seen what a community forest that is shepherded and guided by local community values can put back into our community along with enhanced forestry stewardship and the ability to hand something down, sometimes and oftentimes better than we found it.

Dze L K’ant Friendship Society — we put $50,000 into that for mental health and addictions. My colleague, the minister of that portfolio, has been incredible in her dedication and her compassion in dealing with mental health and addictions throughout our province, making more and more opportunities, beds for young people dealing with those same challenges, permanently available so that we could have the opportunities and give people the opportunity to heal, to deal with the challenges that they have. I’m actually renting my constituency office in the friendship centre. No connection to the funding whatsoever, of course — it’s all unfettered.

Also, we’re finishing off building a school. It’s just about a block from here — the Walnut Park school, where my kids attend. Again, the funding decision was announced before my kids attended there. I’m very excited for what’s going to happen there.

The Dease Lake Airport. South Hazelton — we brought in almost $1 million to help South Hazelton be connected. In Telkwa and in Stewart, in Atlin, Tahltan territory, Lower Post, Gitxsan, Witset, there have been funding announcements and supports for people who, in many cases, have worked for years, trying to get the attention of government to say: “This investment makes sense. This helps our community be stronger.”

[4:40 p.m.]

Again, the pandemic has put pressure on all sorts of things and exposed all sorts of weaknesses and has also…. I would say this broadly. There have been those that seek to protest, that want to challenge the mask orders, that want to challenge the veracity of vaccines, that want to say that this is unfair, in the treatment of what’s been going on in B.C.

No government has ever claimed to be perfect, and nor do we. Yet I have seen the vast majority of British Columbians of all political persuasions and partisan orientations more often come together than pull apart. This might not have even been a conscious decision. But as we sit in this critical moment, more than one million vaccines coming now into our province, our government is laying out our vision through this throne speech and, next week, through the specifics in the budget implementation and how we’re going to go through this, that we can further the efforts we’ve made to build B.C. back stronger.

To see this unprecedented pandemic…. We’ve had to pivot and change and adapt things that we didn’t think were adaptable. I didn’t actually think a legislature could be held virtually. I didn’t think it would work, and I do prefer meeting in person, as I know many of my colleagues do. But finding ways to adapt everything in our society, the way we educate our children, the way we think about our health care, the importance of long-term care and building that program up to take care of our elders in a better way…. So many things have been known and understood. Here is an opportunity for a government like ours, that does not lack for ambition….

We see this rare opportunity. We know how rare the opportunity is to be able to do good for people, to lower their ICBC rates, to make sure that they don’t get evicted in the middle of a pandemic, to help out small and medium businesses to a higher level per capita than any government across this country, including those more conservative governments that portray themselves as business-friendly.

Lo and behold, it was a social democrat government here in B.C. that’s often criticized for not listening to business enough that was able to step up and help out small businesses that have been suffering. While nearly 100 percent of the pre-pandemic jobs have returned in terms of overall numbers, we still know there’s a lot of work to do, because that hasn’t been even and equal across the board.

We know our restaurants have suffered. We know that, particularly, tourism has suffered. That’s why the Jobs Minister, who I know has a speech coming up and who I look forward to hearing from, has been able to pivot programs, bring initiatives forward. That’s why you hear from the B.C. chamber, from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and others who will validate what this government is doing.

I know for some of my Liberal colleagues across the way, this is hard to hear, because they’ve tried to portray parties and governments in a certain way. But let’s remember the initial moments of this pandemic, those first moments when we gathered together as legislators, as leaders across this province, and said: “There are some things that are just more important than partisan politics in a moment.”

In that moment, people came together, and in this moment, this throne speech outlaid the vision for this government to continue to invest in things like early learning and affordable child care and a greener, cleaner economy and a more diversified resource sector and a better health care system for all, to hold us all up so that when we come out of this crisis, when we come out of this challenging time, we will, in fact, look around and find ourselves more unified and stronger as a province.

Deputy Speaker: I just want to remind the minister and all members that we don’t use current MLA’s proper names in our speeches.

L. Doerkson: Mr. Speaker, I’m proud and certainly happy to bring greetings from the Cariboo-Chilcotin to, of course, yourself and the rest of this House.

I would like to start today by offering my greatest thanks to our constituency assistants. Both Jenny Huffman and Bev Marks have done incredible work in our riding over the last number of months. I would also like to thank Hannah Levett, who is here as my legislative assistant, who of course helps us to get the message from the Cariboo to many offices here in Victoria.

If ever there was a speech that British Columbians would have listened to and waited for, it would have been the 2021 Speech from the Throne. With the budget for the upcoming year well delayed to later this month, with so many disastrous rollouts of recovery benefits, British Columbians have been waiting with eager anticipation to hear what this two-term government will have in store for the coming year.

It goes without saying that we’ve endured an extremely difficult past year. I think that the people of this province were holding on for a much more significant announcement than what we’ve heard here in this government’s throne speech.

[4:45 p.m.]

Over the past year, British Columbians have faced quarantine, lockdowns, separation from our friends, family and loved ones. Our seniors have been separated from us also, and over the past year, they have paid the ultimate price of isolation and loneliness.

Our business community has endured one of the most difficult times on record. They’ve struggled through these same lockdowns. They’ve reinvented the way that they do business, and they’ve repeatedly added protections for their staff and their patrons at a cost of millions upon millions of dollars for the business sector.

Businesses like restaurants, gyms, tourism operations, guide-outfitters and many more have not only paid the price financially, but the large majority of these businesses have also had to respond to massive change in public health orders with little or no warning at all. I mean by that that in some cases…. Particularly, restaurants have had less than 24-hours notice, and still, they respond and follow the orders and reinvent themselves.

I can tell you of at least one restaurant in my riding — and I know there are more — that were really counting on the Easter weekend so much, so much so that they had ordered thousands of dollars of food. This food, in the case of this restaurant, was not the kind of food that you might take home and reheat. These were specialty cuts and seafood. They had hired extra staff and really felt as though the end of the tunnel was near — but no.

This throne speech was very important to all of these people, and all of them, I feel, had hoped for more. We’ve heard the empty promises. We’ve seen with our own eyes programs introduced over the past year, and we’ve seen these programs fail or at the very least not work half as well as they’ve been sold to the good people of this province.

A promise of $500 made during the election to be received by most British Columbians by Christmas of 2020 has still not been completed. To me, it is shocking that our office is still dealing with people that have not received these funds long after applying. It’s April, and some are still waiting after four months.

A $300 million fund was established to help businesses of this province as part of a rare, unanimous deci­sion by everyone in this place to agree to support this. Then the program completely stalled. Only about a third of these funds have actually made it to the end-user, which were the businesses of this province, as so many of these businesses have absolutely been crushed by public health orders.

Then there was another announcement about a circuit breaker grant. Most businesses stuck in this mess were, I’m sure, excited to find out that help was once again on the way, or at least certainly the ones that I’ve been working with. Sadly, these funds were simply renamed under an old program. This wasn’t helpful for these businesses that have already applied and are now at the brink. They needed new funding. They needed new help. After all, these are new orders.

I can assure you that these businesses were hopeful for real answers in this throne speech. These events have affected all British Columbians, but here in the riding that I represent, the beautiful Cariboo-Chilcotin, there has been added pressure of fires that have ravished our forests in 2017, followed by more fire in 2018. What has followed these devastating fires has been devastating floods through­out the entire riding. This is another reason that this throne speech was so important and the reason that so many of us in this riding were so eager to hear the outcome of this speech this week.

So many of the residents that have been affected by these events have sought the help of the province through different programs, and many of them have been denied financial assistance that they’ve asked for. What’s worse is that some of these requests have actually come from local governments in my riding. The problems are really too large for them to deal with themselves.

[4:50 p.m.]

I have a perfect example of this with respect to a landslide in the area of Williams Lake known as Frizzi Road. The province helped our city after a major landslide in this area last year. It broke city main sewer lines that ran through this beautiful valley. I will say that we were grateful, at the time, for that help for this very first major slide.

At the time, our city warned of potentially more damage and predicted that we would see more landslides in this area. The city had requested the help of the province to curtail the damage of these future slides, but they were denied. I heard nothing in this throne speech that would indicate that help might be on the way.

The problem is that over the past three weeks, we’ve had two more slides in that area, which has affected multiple businesses in the area, along with, of course, the river valley itself. Furthermore, there is a mobile home park very near this slide area. When I say near, I mean peoples’ homes are within feet of these areas. The railroad tracks are now within 100 feet of this slide area. This last slide, a week or so ago, has damaged infrastructure, including a storm sewer and more. These requests for help have been denied.

As I said, I know that the residents of this province have all struggled. I also know that so many regions have had similarly difficult situations. We had all hoped for more.

As the Rural Development critic, I had hoped to hear so much more in this speech about our rural roads, which are currently being ignored by our government. There are areas in rural B.C. where the roads are currently devastated and crumbling. There are roads in rural B.C. where we have lost them entirely. They are gone due to flooding or landslides, and in some cases, they’ve been left for the past four years with no resolve.

We have a bridge on the way to the Canim-Hendrix Road where the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has reduced the speed to 20 kilometres per hour, and it’s still unsafe because of the broken and destroyed surface. Our infrastructure of culverts, roads and bridges is crumbling in some areas, and this throne speech has not significantly addressed any of this.

It might surprise you to know that I have discussed a culvert in a location on Dog Creek Road that has absolutely wreaked havoc on the people of this area. It is currently flooding at least a half a dozen homes, and it continues to literally rip a home in two. The residents of this home have had to vacate because it is no longer safe to live there.

This watercourse has destroyed Dog Creek Road and Highway 20 repeatedly for the past four years. It has also caused significant damage below this area and has been ignored by this government, even with multiple requests from our local government. A city councillor asked me if they needed to close Dog Creek Road and cut off the residents to make a point to our provincial government. I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures.

All of this is very concerning to millions of people in this province. These messages that have been conveyed from our constituents to this government seem to be ignored. I know that on several occasions, I’ve been told that a minister or ministry would meet with me and/or my constituents, and of course, these meetings don’t seem to happen. Believe me. I would give credit if it were due.

Our local offices are staffed by extremely hard-working, devoted people who have given everything that they have to help, everything that they have to solve the problems in the riding. They’ve also reported that their hands have been tied due to a lack of funds. To me, it is unclear if we simply don’t have the funds for the people of rural British Columbia or if these departments are stuck in a position of having to wait for funds due to the delay in the budget being presented.

[4:55 p.m.]

Every day in my riding, I advocate for people that are stuck in the cracks of a very complex system. While this government usually takes time to lay blame at our feet and could often be quoted as saying that “for 16 years they failed to acknowledge….” For the last two terms, soon to be half a decade, that they have had the wheel….

It is I who am shocked to hear that a government would, after an entire term in office, ignore the fact that many of the problems our residents deal with on a day-to-day basis are getting worse. Rather than solve these problems, they choose to blame previous governments. By the way, this is during a time that they have had very much support from this opposition.

I truly believe, in these particularly challenging times, British Columbians expected firm answers and good solutions to our very significant issues. I think that…. Strike that. I know that many of my constituents expected clear direction and a clear understanding of what the future holds. I know this because the people of the Cariboo-Chilcotin are not shy about conveying their thoughts to their MLA.

They no longer want to hear about 16 years. They want to know what our government is going to do for the coming year. They want to know why our government won’t accept responsibility for the past term. They want to know how we will save lives with respect to the opioid crisis, which is impacting people in significant numbers in rural British Columbia. It’s happening with very few resources for rural communities to fight it. In this speech, they wanted to hear how we would make real progress on poverty and homelessness.

The time for the blame game is over. This second-term government, a majority government, is firmly at the helm of this ship, and our residents expected more. The people wanted more answers with respect to the solutions to save businesses and to slow business closures, clear answers, good benefit programs, not rehashed programs that will take years to get to the people that really need this the most. Years. It’s not an understatement.

That is what seems shocking, but it is a fact that so many of these programs that have been offered up by this government are not complete. They’re not getting to the people that they need to, not helping, even though in many cases they’ve been supported by everyone in this House. More hope was anticipated as to how we may create new jobs and new projects in this province, and there was no clear direction that I could see.

I honestly get a sense from the people in my riding, the residents of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, that some of them can’t wait much longer, particularly the businesses of our area. As I pointed out earlier, there are still residents waiting for their $500 recovery benefit, which was promised in the election of the late fall of 2020.

The results and damage of COVID have been significant and quite obvious. The results of these delays, for such greatly needed relief and funding, to both individuals and businesses are alarming. Also more difficult to understand is the damage that has been done due to these delays. But I can assure you, Mr. Speaker. The damage is massive.

The programs that have been announced in the past and, as I’ve said before, approved by everyone here have to move faster. These programs must deploy immediately. The pandemic has raged on for so long in our province, and many are, quite frankly, desperate. It is the understatement of the year to say that these people need help now. In fact, they needed it six months ago or a year ago. Sadly, for some, no amount of help will do good now. For some, it’s simply too late. That is why so many had looked to this speech this week for answers.

I think we were all pretty eager, all hoping for clear directions and solutions, but those did not come. I get a sense from so many people that they are truly losing hope. I mean truly. This, at a time when we should be looking forward to an end to this. This, at a time when we should be close to being able to put some of this behind us. But things do not appear to look like that to me. In fact, things appear to be getting worse daily.

The throne speech spoke of a vaccination rollout, with some big numbers being accomplished by June. I, for one, am extremely hopeful for this also.

[5:00 p.m.]

I’ve been very active in providing information in my riding with respect to the schedule, with respect to the progress, and must say these goals are admirable. Honestly, the rollout for vaccines in the Cariboo-Chilcotin has been anything but smooth, in the 100 Mile House area particularly.

Again, I will give accolades to the men and women working locally to get this job done. Without question, they’ve been working very hard, night and day, to accomplish this. But as I said, it has been very challenging in my riding. Phone operators have been confused as to locations for our vaccination clinics. We’ve had large numbers of our seniors sent out of town — in some cases, 2½ hours away to Kamloops — to be vaccinated. This is, of course, at a time when road conditions have not been the best, as we have winter still trying to hold on in our region.

The throne speech, as I said, was suggesting some pretty big success with respect to vaccines being deployed by the end of June. I hope that’s the case, because people are wary. They’re absolutely wary.

We’ve had a very strong lobby for the sport of rodeo throughout this province, very strong. It’s been the talk of this House many times over the past month or so. We’ve heard nothing in this speech that would give hope, not only to the organizers of rodeo events but nothing for any other outdoor events either — nothing for agrifairs, harvest fairs, car shows, etc., even though we’ve heard that the largest vaccine rollout in history in this province is not only well underway and going well but would see us through having most British Columbians vaccinated by the end of June with their first shot.

We’ve heard nothing in this speech about new funding opportunities for businesses like C+ Rodeos of 150 Mile House that are sure to be on the verge of insolvency. Their cost of feeding these animals for what will be a second year of not having these events will simply be too much for them to continue.

We’ve tried to encourage meetings with different ministers with respect to these issues, but at this point, we’ve been unsuccessful. We had hoped to be able to present ideas and suggestions as to how these events may be held safely and carefully, but as I said, we’ve not been able to connect with the ministers to discuss this. These requests are coming at a time that we see our neighbours in Alberta returning to these outdoor sports, of course not with the massive crowds that you would expect in times past, but in a responsible, well-thought-out manner.

It’s not just contractors like this one that are at risk of losing significantly. I’ve also discussed, in the past, the loss of high school rodeo circuits. These youth athletes compete for scholarships, and without this sport happening throughout the summer and late fall, they have no chance to compete and win the right to this post-secondary education.

As I said, so many people were waiting to hear the results of this throne speech, and so many people had hope for big things for the coming year. But none of that was present here. I know that in the case of so many businesses, they needed new funding. C+ Rodeos received help last summer, a year ago. It helped them to get through to this spring, but those programs are over. Those programs ended for many businesses, and some of these businesses were able to qualify but qualified under old funding models that had been approved by this House months ago. There wasn’t anything significant with respect to new funding.

Make no mistake about it: these businesses have been holding on, trying to make it, and we must applaud them. Most people are prepared to survive without in­come for three to six months. But some of these businesses will have to hold on for two years, and that is a daunting task, to say the least.

I know I have focused much on C+ Rodeos and rodeos in general, but as I mentioned before, so many industries are in harm’s way. Tourism operators throughout this province have struggled, asking for additional funds and only receiving a small percentage of that ask.

They continue to ask, in my riding, for help, particularly in the Chilcotin, where many of the clientele come from overseas. Many of these tourism operators have had no business, and none have had great business. Again, these businesses need help, and it does appear that they will be struggling through a second difficult summer. Some of them simply won’t make it alone.

[5:05 p.m.]

It’s not just businesses in our community that I worry about. There were no significant answers with respect to crime in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. There has been much of it over the past years and, certainly, a lot of it over the past year. Just last month, we had more than $100,000 worth of damage to postal boxes in our riding, as thieves attempted to steal shipments from online retailers. Even if there was nothing to steal in these boxes in the 100 Mile House area, they still caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage.

In Williams Lake, the city council has reached out to the province with a demand for a public inquiry into crime, specifically with respect to prolific offenders. This initiative has been supported by all levels of government, including MLAs, MPs and regional representatives. These individuals have reached out to the government and have received no response.

The local RCMP have become so frustrated that they have now released press releases regarding one individual that has been charged more than 100 times and is still freed after committing another crime. Frustration levels with respect to these situations are running at all-time highs, and there was nothing in the throne speech with respect to crime in our riding.

I was glad to hear the comments regarding connectivity, although it’s not the first time that we’ve heard these promises. Not only is this imperative for the riding of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, but in my role as critic for Rural Development, this has been identified as a number one issue for rural British Columbia.

As I said, I was pleased to hear that, again, we’ve been promised better connectivity, and I certainly, along with all of my colleagues, do intend to hold our government to account in this province. No longer can we expect our emergency services in the Chilcotin to communicate with ham radios. I know it seems shocking, but this is, in fact, the way that our paramedics and search and rescue communicate when they are called to a situation in the Chilcotin. No longer can we expect people to try and function with dial-up or satellite. They can no longer operate efficiently or, for that matter, safely.

In the end, so many people were hopeful for great things from this speech — not just businesses but seniors, young families and people stuck in financial situations that are well beyond their control. I had hoped for more. I think we all did.

In closing, I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the women and men who have played a large role in helping us to manoeuvre through this challenging time. During these outbreaks in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, we had as many as 14 health care workers sick at one time in Cariboo Memorial Hospital. They contracted the virus through their work, of course, in our hospital, and we were all very, very grateful that all of those front-line workers had a full recovery. It was declared an outbreak of its own in our community. We are also very grateful to those men and women who came from all over the province to fill those spots during this very trying time of need.

I’m thankful, as are all of our residents, for other front-line workers that played such key roles during some very challenging events — during lockdowns, etc. — that have created shortages of supplies and difficulties in access. Our grocers, our cashiers, our pharmacists and other staff continued every day to allow us to come into their space and to purchase much-needed food and medical supplies. Our veterinarians and our vet techs have never closed and have continued to care for our pets and livestock through these challenging times as well.

Our volunteers, our search and rescue and our fire de­partments have never taken a break. Thank you to all of the people in our distribution system that have continued to keep those supplies coming. To those volunteer groups and individuals who have reinvented themselves over and over to continue doing the great work that our communities benefit from, thank you. Thank you to our farmers and our ranchers who keep the food coming in these challenging times. I am personally so grateful for all of these people, but certainly so many, many more.

Thank you very much to all of you, thank you to this House and to you, Mr. Speaker, for the honour to speak here today.

[5:10 p.m.]

Hon. R. Kahlon: I am happy to speak to this throne speech, one that I’m very proud to speak in favour of. This is my first opportunity to speak after being re-elected as the member for Delta North. Again, at the beginning, I want to thank the many constituents in my riding who have given me the privilege and honour to represent them here today, and of course my family and friends and many supporters who worked tirelessly to give me the opportunity to represent Delta North again and the honour of taking on a greater portfolio within the government.

The speech started off reflecting on how hard times have been for people in B.C. The throne speech reflected on many people who we’ve lost and reflected on how people have lost loved ones along the way. We were one of them, in our family. We lost my dad. It was very difficult. It was on the day of the election, and I had spoken to him the night before. He was in good condition, good health. He had just played soccer with his friends. He was asking me if I had heard if there was going to be an election. We talked for a little while.

We got a sudden phone call that he was having some chest pains. He refused to go to the hospital because he was a stubborn person, and my mom called me and said: “Can you please talk to him, because he won’t go.” Anyways, long story short — we did end up calling the ambulance, and that was the last time we spoke with him.

For families that are mourning loved ones during this time — and I know my colleague from Surrey-Panorama also lost her mom during the pandemic — it’s particularly challenging not being able to grieve the way you would like to grieve, not having the family support structure that you normally would have to be able to be there, not having your father’s loved ones and siblings to be able to join you. It was particularly hard, and I think those families that the throne speech talked about who are mourning lost loved ones, whether it was directly from COVID or not, will have to do their mourning when we get past COVID. So my heart goes out to all of those that have had to go through similar situations.

Of course, I mentioned my colleague from Surrey-Panorama who had to go through a similar situation. It’s very hard, and my heart goes out to them. I appreciate that the throne speech commented on that pain that many people are feeling.

The throne speech also reflected on many people we lost. I think I could spend a half an hour talking about all of them, but I just want to highlight Charan Gill, who was a tirelessly strong advocate for working people, immigrating to Canada and, from day one, fighting for workers that worked in agriculture, helping form the first union for fighting for workers in the agriculture sector. He formed the Progressive Intercultural Society so that he could build a seniors centre for seniors and then build housing for seniors — and just his life commitment to social justice and making life better for others.

If you ever had the opportunity to talk with him, he rarely talked about himself. He, in fact, never would talk about his accomplishments. He always talked about other people and why he was fighting for other people. Again, I appreciate the throne speech mentioning him. My heart goes out to his family. I know that when the new Guru Nanak Diversity Village is built to accommodate more housing for seniors, we’ll also have a moment to reflect on him and his commitment to British Columbia and, in particular, to our seniors. We’ll be able to celebrate his life at that time.

[5:15 p.m.]

The throne speech also reflected on the other pandemic that’s going parallel to this time, in particular the loss of lives from the overdose crisis. I’ve had the opportunity — very challenging — to talk to family members who have lost a loved one due to overdose. I had the opportunity to talk to a person who had just lost a son during the election — virtually. The hardest conversation I’ve ever had in my life, hearing about their young son who had a future ahead of him and struggled with mental health issues. Just to hear how fast and how suddenly things turned and not having their child there with them…. It was the hardest thing I’ve had to do as an MLA.

But I know that there are many other people that have lost their lives, particularly in this tough year, isolated away from other people. I really appreciated the parallel health emergency and the throne speech talking about that.

Also, I think it’s important to recognize all the health care workers, the doctors, the nurses and the folks cleaning up at hospitals. I was really proud at 7 p.m. every night to bang on the pots and pans with my neighbours. Although we don’t to that anymore, I think we’re all still thinking about those people that are on the front lines helping save people during this very challenging time. I appreciated the recognition there.

Of course, the throne speech talked and framed out where we were pre-pandemic. Certainly, it’s easy to forget, because it feels like a lifetime ago that we’ve been in this situation, but prior to the COVID pandemic, B.C. was an economic leader. In this province, we had a lot to be proud of.

We were leading the country, the fastest in rising wages. Workers and people were seeing more money in their pockets. Unemployment was at one of the lowest in Canada. For two years, we had balanced budgets. We had a triple-A credit rating. We were building affordable housing for people, helping them while they were going through some of the most challenging times, and investing, of course, in child care. I was fortunate to see a lot of child care spaces open up in my community.

We were also able to see…. A lot of families were reaching out to me, because they were seeing direct savings from some of the programs that we had implemented in our communities.

The throne speech talked about infrastructure, and I think it’s important for me to mention some of the things that my community has benefited from in the infrastructure announcements. Of course, the throne speech talked about the George Massey crossing and again emphasized that it’s a priority. We met our timelines for having the business plan done by the end of last year. I know the Minister of Transportation is having active conversations with our federal counterparts who had committed, during the last election, to help with a financial contribution to this critical piece of infrastructure.

I’m grateful to the mayor and council of my community. I’m grateful to the mayor of Richmond and White Rock who I’ve had opportunities to speak to about the importance of this critically important infrastructure project for my community and for our community collectively and for the region.

We also had the opportunity to announce historic funding right during the pandemic, unfortunately, for a state-of-the-art track facility in North Delta. The throne speech talked about infrastructure. It talks about, obviously, roads and other types of infrastructure, but there’s other social infrastructure that is critically important.

This track is a game-changer for my community. Too often people in my community would share with me that they felt like our community just didn’t get the things that they deserved. We had a clay track where, when it rained, everybody would get muddied up. People didn’t have a place…. Both athletes didn’t have a place to train, to compete, and also folks who just wanted to get out and exercise with their families didn’t have a place.

When I first moved to North Delta in 2004, I was training to compete, and I had ambitious goals to make it to the 2008 Olympics. I was running on that clay track. It was raining, and I twisted my ankle. I remember taking my shoes off and thinking to myself: “How the heck am I ever going to make it if I have to go through this?” I was so down and out. I still remember that moment. So when this track was announced and the minister of infrastructure announced the funding, I couldn’t help but think maybe that moment wasn’t there for me, but it will be there for other young people in my community.

[5:20 p.m.]

It’s more than that. It’s an opportunity for people in my community to have a place to gather, a place where there are lights at nighttime for people to walk in a safe way, away from roads, to gather with their friends and family. Many of our elders can get together with covered picnic tables to play cards if they choose to, to walk, to have exercises. There are some brand-new washrooms coming to that. Also, it’s going to become a state-of-the-art facility for future athletes, whether that’s people directly from my community or from within the region. It will become a hub for the entire community.

I’m so proud of that infrastructure announcement, for all levels of government to partner. We saw the city step up. We saw the school board step up and ensure that the land was available and was transferred over to the city. The city stepped up with money. The federal government came in at one-third. We came in at one-third. The community is just so looking forward to this facility being opened up and available for the community, certainly, I hope, in the coming weeks. I had a chance to drive by, and it looks almost complete. The last stages of completion, of course, can’t come soon enough.

Of course, there are other infrastructure pieces that are talked about in the budget. One of the things that wasn’t directly mentioned — obviously, infrastructure was mentioned — was playgrounds. The Ministry of Education funds a playground every year in every school district in the province, and that playground right now is what’s saving a lot of communities.

I think of when the pandemic started and when schools were closed in March and April and a lot of young people couldn’t go to school and were losing that social interaction — and that challenge and that pressure on mental health that it put on young kids. My son, in particular, really struggled. I think that anyone in this House that has either children or grandchildren will know that as elected officials, your children have a higher responsibility than the average child. Where sometimes kids maybe will gather at a park to play, our kids don’t have that opportunity the same way because, of course, people have higher expectations of us and our families, and they have impacts of that.

The mental health impact of the pandemic on kids in particular has been a challenge. I’ve had several messages from families to say: “You know that new playground that you guys built and funded in our community? It’s packed. My kid is there all the time, and it’s saved us.” That social infrastructure that we think of as maybe not as important as the larger infrastructure is critically important for our communities. I’m so grateful for the new playgrounds that we have in our community that were mentioned in the throne speech.

The throne speech also mentioned a few things around the challenge that we’re seeing in this pandemic with racism. I was fortunate. When I first got elected, the Premier gave me the responsibility to travel the province, when we could travel, to hear from communities about how we could bring back a human rights commission. It was a phenomenal experience. Very difficult to go into rooms to hear from people about some of the most traumatic experiences that they’ve faced and some of the traumatic experiences they’ve faced through generations — the intergenerational trauma that communities have faced. The opportunities that we have with the human rights commission to be an independent body to help be a social audit for us as a society….

From that day on, in the work that I had been assigned by the Premier to do on racism, we could feel that something was happening. Of course, people linked it to an American President who made it safer and more public that you could say things that perhaps you couldn’t say before, made it safer for people to be more outward with their acts of hate and intolerance. He’s gone now, but the racism is still in our communities. The instances are still happening. You can’t paint it on one person. We have a responsibility. It’s easy for us to look at jurisdictions elsewhere and say: “Look, it’s happening over there.” It’s much harder for us to turn back and reflect on where we are now and acknowledge that we have work to do.

[5:25 p.m.]

When I see the incidences of racism, of hate towards people of Asian descent, it makes my blood boil. I know that all members of this House find it deeply offensive. Again, I’m grateful that it was mentioned here.

Prior to the pandemic, I had worked with folks within the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture to create a brand-new program. Of course, the former minister and I were able to launch the new program, which puts seed funding in communities so that communities can organize so that we can address racism at the heart, at the root, of the problem. It’s easy to say we’re going to announce a provincial program, but if the communities aren’t organizing and bringing people together and mobilizing on the grassroots level, we will not be able to address it.

Of course, we’re going to need education. Education is critical. I know the Black community has been working closely with the Minister of Education to address racism towards the Black community, which is distinctly different, and they feel racism distinctly different than other people of colour.

I am privileged. I can speak English fairly well. I don’t have an accent, I don’t have a beard, and I don’t have a turban. Those things give me a huge advantage over many of my colleagues who have to face different levels of intolerance and hate in their communities.

But that being said, the way through that is through education. It’s through community activism. It’s working at the grassroots level. It’s working with our university partners, our business community, with our not-for-profits, having them all at the table and saying: “Let’s work collectively and acknowledge where we have to do better but also how we can do better as a community.” So I appreciated the comments in the throne speech regarding that.

The throne speech also talked about where we go forward. There’s a line in the throne speech in particular that I really appreciated, and I’ve used it multiple times, which is: “We’re all in the same storm, but we’re in different boats.” I think that’s critically important for us to acknowledge — that not only are we all facing and feeling the pandemic differently, but businesses are feeling it all differently as well.

I think of, when we have the conversation about who has been greatly impacted by the pandemic, how we saw in March and April when schools and child care facilities were closed, a significant drop in employment, in particular with women greatly outnumbering the loss in jobs for men. I think that, rightfully, people could argue that that’s sexism, and that’s a broader discussion in society that we need to have.

But it’s critically linked to important decisions that were made at the time to close schools for safety reasons, but since then, we’ve started to see that gap start to close. But this is why we made critical investments in child care. This is why I’m so proud of the investments that we have been making, I’m so proud of the work of the Minister of State for Child Care on the work she’s doing around child care. I agree it’s a social issue, but this pandemic has shown us that it’s actually an economic issue. The more investments we make, the more spaces we create, the more opportunities we create for the economy, the more opportunities we create for women to enter the workforce.

Of course, we know that Black communities and new immigrant communities have disproportionately been impacted — as job losses, lost work hours, lost wages. As well, businesses that are owned by Black and Indigenous and newcomers to this country have faced the impact disproportionately. I’m proud, again…. In the throne speech, it talks about the supports and how some of our supports are tailored to those communities. I’ll go through some of those momentarily.

The throne speech talked about our lens on economic recovery, and we know innovation is going to drive economic recovery for us as a province, not looking at just what next year looks like but where, in ten years and 20 years, the economy will go. Innovation is going to be critically important.

We have seen huge innovations during the pandemic in government, outside of government, in society, and I’ll touch on some of those things momentarily. We know that whatever the economic recovery looks like must be sustainable. We must have a focus on climate change as we look at what that recovery looks like. That will help drive innovation, will help drive the economy, and we’re well-positioned on that. I look forward to talking more about that.

[5:30 p.m.]

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Of course, our economic recovery must be inclusive. That means focusing on reconciliation with Indigenous people, which I’m proud that our government has put particular attention and focus on, but it also means addressing the inequalities in our society. That happens through multiple measures like child care, housing, investing in our care economy and our social infrastructure, investing in our health care system. I’m so proud of the work the Minister of Health is doing. It’s obviously spoken through the throne speech in multiple stages.

I want to talk a little bit about the innovation focus. It’s something that our ministry is particularly focused on. We know the economy is changing. We know that consumer buying habits have changed dramatically in this pandemic. Things that we thought would happen seven, ten, maybe even 12 years from now are happening in one year, and that pace is not about to slow down.

When we look at where our small businesses need to be, the conversation I’ve been having over and over with them is they know this change is coming so fast, and they need support to make that change. That’s why the two programs that I’m particularly proud of are the digital bootcamp program, and the other one is launch online.

The digital bootcamp is a huge success. I have spoken with so many businesses that went through that. Some of them have completely changed their business models, have completely changed the business that they’re even in. We had a trampoline operator in the Interior who took the course thinking that they would build a website and help market their company, but now they’re actually in the business of creating online marketing for other businesses from this one phenomenal experience in the digital bootcamp.

Launch online has been a huge success. Of course, we had dollars associated with that program to see businesses, up to $7,500, so that they can both get their online presence and set up their marketing campaign to buy images, to buy subscriptions, whatever they may need, up to 75 percent. The program had such a high uptake, we’ve increased it to over $40 million for businesses. What we did was put 30 percent of the fund dedicated to rural communities, and in particular to Black and Indigenous communities. We did that because we didn’t want the dollars to be swallowed up by just Metro Vancouver and the greater Victoria region. We wanted to ensure that all communities would see the benefit, and we are.

Close to 40 percent of all of those dollars is going to rural communities, going to Indigenous communities and going to Black community businesses. When we know this change is coming, it’s important for us to ensure that all our communities get a chance to participate in that change and see themselves reflected in that change. Those dollars are going a long way. Just in comparison, Ontario had a similar program, which was also $40 million, and they have three times the population. We’re well positioned, with the equivalent dollars, to help our businesses in that transition.

Another focus of ours in the innovation sector — the time is flying by, so I’ll talk a little bit faster — is agritech. Agritech has huge opportunities for us to help support our farmers currently, to help their productivity, to support them with technology so that their farms can become more efficient in how they operate. They can become more sustainable, using less water, using less electricity. The opportunities are huge.

We had an agritech grant, which was mentioned in the throne speech, and it was a huge success. I was hopeful that maybe 30 companies may apply for the dollars. We had over 100 companies apply for the grants, a huge uptake. I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to talk to companies from all over the world who want to invest in British Columbia because we have some of the most innovative farming communities here in B.C. already, adopting the top technologies.

We have wonderful land opportunities for companies to invest. We have cheap, clean energy, which is a huge bonus for them, especially those companies that want to grow indoors, vertically, like CubicFarm in Langley, for example. Of course, huge investments made by Telus. Many people don’t know, but Telus has 1,500 employees that are working in the agritech space right now. It’s phenomenal, and this sector is going to grow. We’re going to put particular focus on that.

Of course, life sciences is a great opportunity for us. Some of the solutions to the greatest challenges of COVID are being solved here in British Columbia. We have the fastest-growing life sciences sector in the country. Of course, there will be more to come.

[5:35 p.m.]

I had a chance to talk to the CEO of AbCellera, who’s helping us on plans for how we can move forward in a good way. Of course, stem cell, precision nanotech systems…. We have Starfish Medical. The list could go on, but I’ll move on, in the interest of time.

Part of the innovation economy is ensuring that we close that digital divide. We have seen for years that the budget for expanding Internet connections was around $10 million a year. When we formed government, we moved it to $50 million a year, and just last year, the budget for that was $100 million a year. That was the base $50 million plus the money from StrongerBC that was a top-up, a significant increase in dollars so that we can ensure that rural communities get access, because it’s a human right now.

Everything is going online — services like court systems, like health care — and we need to ensure that communities have that Internet connection so they can also diversify their economies. Many communities that I have spoken to see opportunities with young families wanting to move to rural communities — more affordable, a better lifestyle for many, enjoying the outdoors. This is an important opportunity now, with more and more people wanting to move and can work remotely.

I met with a tech company recently that has 68 employees. Forty-eight employees of their 68 are now living outside of Metro Vancouver, when they were all in Metro Vancouver at the time of the pandemic. Phenomenal change. Many are moving to the Island. A couple moved, I believe, to Clearwater. I think the future for us, and something that we’ll have to see, is how the nature of work changes and what that means to where people want to live as they go forward.

The sustainability piece will also be critically important for us. I know that our Minister of Climate Change Strategy is working closely with my ministry and other ministries on what that next stage can look like for CleanBC. Already we have one of the boldest plans in North America, but we can do better, because we have to continue to be leaders.

As the new Biden administration has come in, I’ve had some conversations with the U.S. Ambassador about what that may mean for British Columbia. The U.S. wants to be more active in the climate change debate, and we have the climate change solutions here in British Columbia that can help them reach their goals.

Also, the changes that we’ve brought in position our companies in a better position in the U.S. now to put our products into that market. It helps position B.C. as what we already are, as a producer of clean products. Our supply chains are clean because of our hydro grid. We see huge opportunities not only in the U.S. but all over the world, and that’s some work we’ll be doing.

Of course, the recovery needs to be inclusive, and it needs to ensure everyone is participating in that. When we make investments in housing, when we make investments in health care, when we make investments in child care, when we make investments in advanced education, those things are not social issues. Those are helping drive the economy. I think what the COVID pandemic has taught us is that we can’t separate those. All those things are one.

The investments in social infrastructure are investments in the economy, and the investments in the economy are investments in taking care of our people, and they go hand in hand. That is going to be a critical part of our economic recovery. It’s tying that together so that we move together in a good way.

When I meet with chambers across the province, they talk about mental health. They talk about addiction. This is not the traditional conversation that you perhaps would hear at the chamber, but the business community is understanding that this is all linked. They’re advocating for child care. Tech companies are saying to me: “Well, if we have more child care, we’re able to get more women in the workforce, which will make us more productive, which will make our companies stronger and better positioned to be global players.” That’s amazing. I’m really proud of those conversations.

I wish I was the designated speaker. I could talk for a couple of hours about this. I haven’t even gotten to the second page of my notes. But I’ll just start ending there and just say that I’m very proud of this throne speech.

I’m really proud of everybody in this chamber. I know that during question period, we see kind of the theatre of this place, but I know that away from the theatre, everybody here is doing the best they can for their communities. We’re all in it for the right reasons. We are going to get through this pandemic together. When we do, we will have a big celebration, and then we’ll go back to our corners and do the work that our people elected us to do.

With that, I am proud to support this throne speech, and I look forward to the budget, and I look forward to hearing my colleagues share their thoughts.

[5:40 p.m.]

B. Banman: I’d like to thank all British Columbians for their efforts during the past year of this incredibly trying time and for their future sacrifices in the months ahead of us as the vaccine continues to roll out.

I’d also be remiss if, on this day — coming from Abbotsford South, which has a very proud population from Punjab — I was not to wish them all a happy Vaisakhi. I know that this year is not like past years. I know that people are hurting. They want to get together. It is spring. It’s a time of work. It’s a time of gathering. Yet, this year, Vaisakhi will not be as it has been in the past. As was mentioned before, I very much look forward to celebrating next year when this is behind us.

I want to thank all of the people of Abbotsford who have pulled together as a community to protect our region — to pitch in where they needed to, to stay home when they needed to, to look after the elders if they had them living around them. Abbotsford, I’m proud to say, and Aldergrove are some of the most giving communities in all of Canada, as a matter of fact, and they have done that.

Sadly, we must acknowledge the troubling loss created by this pandemic. To date, there have been 1,513 British Columbians who have tragically lost their lives to this disease. It pains me to say that we’re not finished with that yet. Our work is not yet done. We need a safe and efficient vaccine rollout, and we need to continue to prioritize front-line workers, even those who may be 20 to 39 years of age.

I need to stop here for a minute, Mr. Speaker. I was very much deeply troubled by the words that I heard from this government with regard to those that are 29 to 39 years of age. By far, they are on the front lines. They have been servers in restaurants. They have been receptionists. They have been working where there is direct contact with people. That’s the nature of the jobs that 20- to 39-year-olds hold.

Many of them have put their lives on hold. I remember being that age; six months is an eternity. As you get older, you wonder: “What the heck happened to the last six months? It seemed like just yesterday.”

I want them to know that I believe in them, that I support them, and I do not think they’re blowing it, any worse than the rest of us are. I’m proud of the work that they’re doing. I’m particularly proud of my grandchildren, who fall in that age category, who have put their lives on hold as they try to get their education in university. One of them wants to be a marine biologist and cannot travel to fulfil her next portion of that. I know that she has cried many nights because she feels helpless and stuck, and her life is on hold as a result of this pandemic. Many of us feel that way.

I want to thank educators and essential workers. I want to thank our police, our fire, our first responders and those who protect our borders, the CBSA.

British Columbians continue to do their part at a tremendous economic cost to themselves, and they deserve appropriate economic support from this government. This government has a responsibility to be leaders and to guide our province through this pandemic and into economic recovery.

[5:45 p.m.]

By delaying that vital relief — failing to implement the necessary policies to protect and support B.C. families, communities and businesses; and taking actions that serve their own self-interest, such as holding an election in the middle of a pandemic, before the well-being of British Columbians — this government, I am sorry to say, has failed our province and the people that they have all been elected to serve.

Under this government, ICBC premiums have continued to skyrocket out of control. This government is promising reduced premiums and rebates, but their record speaks for itself. Under this government, the average prem­iums have gone from $1,550 to $1,900.

The current rebate model negatively impacts young people disproportionately. I remember, as a teenager, way back when, when the NDP brought in the idea of ICBC, that one of the pillars was to protect the youth from skyrocketing insurance premiums because they should not be penalized for an accident they may never have. This government has turned its back on that pillar, on its own idea. But no less, this government is patting themselves on the back, yet some people are receiving rebates of $1. The NDP have tied themselves to a 46-year-old state-run monopoly that’s broke. It just doesn’t work anymore, and it needs a serious overhaul.

Commuters are spending hundreds of dollars on gas, and they are still waiting for the Premier to deliver on the gas price relief he promised almost two years ago. That relief will actually help minimum-wage earners who have to commute the most.

Government has also forgotten to mention the cost overruns they’re subjecting taxpayers to in their public infrastructure projects. The government wants to replace an already overrun capacity four-lane Pattullo Bridge with, wait for it, another four-lane bridge. Four lanes for four lanes. It boggles my understanding as to how anyone could think that that’s an appropriate improvement. Government will allow at least 100 million extra dollars going into the pockets of the Premier’s union friends and insiders now that this project has been put on delay for another year, and delays mean increased costs.

British Columbians living south of the Fraser need a safe, new replacement for the Massey Tunnel. It is now going to be another ten years of being stuck in one of the largest traffic bottleneck boondoggles in B.C. in their commute, all because the work that was already done was not good enough. I was at the helm of a municipal government and inherited some of the previous work that had been approved. It just does not make any sense to the taxpayers to turn your back on all that work when it was ready to go.

Yet somehow, this government insists that the Massey replacement continues to be a priority. I wonder if this government actually knows what the definition of “a priority” means. It’s laughable and an insult to those who do understand what a priority means.

Infrastructure has always been one of the driving forces of our economy. It creates thousands of jobs, it promotes urban and rural development, and it promotes immigration to British Columbia. It meets the needs of our growing population and demographics. There is no doubt that investment in infrastructure will be one of the driving forces of our post-pandemic economic recovery.

[5:50 p.m.]

My concern is whether this is the right administration for the job to get things done. This government’s claim of record investments in infrastructure in their Speech from the Throne has only increased my concerns. This government has failed the province’s infrastructure and blatantly ignored the detailed plans from the previous administrations, good money already spent.

Nowhere is this failure more blatant, more apparent, than on the promised Highway 1 expansion throughout the Fraser Valley. Under the B.C. Liberals, plans came from joint consultation with federal, provincial and municipal levels of government, as well as local stakeholders and First Nation groups. Everyone got together. Everyone was on the same page. Everyone agreed it needed to be widened.

There are now more families that are moving into the region and rely on Highway 1 to commute to and from the Fraser Valley. It has turned this mainstay of transportation into a commuting nightmare. I have in front of me that in the throne speech, we are a gateway to Asia and major ports to North America. Highway 1 is one of the ways that we get goods to the rest of Canada. All that time costs money and adds frustration and expense to goods that are being imported or exported through this region.

Commuters have had to battle bumper-to-bumper traff­ic and lengthy travel times along Highway 1 for years. This means that British Columbians are losing valuable time with their families while being forced to sit idling, frustrated in their vehicles. It’s creating unnecessary pollution along one of the most congested roadways in the Lower Mainland.

The previous B.C. Liberal government put plans in motion to address this problem years ago. I ought to know. I was the mayor of Abbotsford at the time. We pledged to widen Highway 1 in the valley to six lanes between Langley and Abbotsford as part of its provincial transportation plan in B.C. on the Move. It was supposed to be widened all the way to Whatcom Road in Abbotsford.

Frustratingly, the pattern repeated itself when this new administration took over. Just as they did with the Massey crossing, they put this on hold and cancelled it. They abandoned this plan. Now here we are, four years later, and there has been virtually zero progress on this vital piece of infrastructure. There have been a few trees that have been taken down, but I have yet to see any machinery moving any dirt.

Yes, this government has unveiled its own plan, but under the current timeline, the highway expansion is not due to be completed until 2025. As it stands, the current expansion is set to end — and this is what really gets me — half a kilometre short of the Langley exit at the interchange of 264 Street. Half a kilometre short. It should be going half a kilometre past, at the minimum. It’s a key component to the original plan to ease congestion.

An ICBA report notes that in its current state, the 264 Street exit is the fifth most likely place in the Lower Mainland to get into an accident. Yet we’re not going to address it. We’re going to stop half a kilometre short. I hope this government will actually fulfil their commitments to the people of the Fraser Valley and deliver on Highway 1 ex­pansion, which has been ignored for far too long.

[5:55 p.m.]

Under two terms of this government, we’re beginning to see a worrying trend of stripping away government transparency and accountability. Bill 10 was an example, where the NDP recycled many of the fudge-it budget tactics we saw in the 1990s.

I believe that transparency is vital to democracy, vital to good governance. Yet this government seems to be doing everything that it can to keep that information away from not only the opposition…. From what I hear, it’s increasingly difficult to get an FOI, be it the press or an individual as well.

Government wrote themselves a blank cheque for $12 billion without first presenting a budget, a quarterly report, an up-to-date picture of the government’s financial position or any indication of how they intend to spend such an incredible sum of money — $12 billion.

This government has also shown this trend on how it handles simple acts of transparency, such as FOI requests. For more than three years, this government has been embroiled in a legal battle to deny access to a simple list of files on the Premier’s computer that should be accessible through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It was rather simple. A screenshot would have done it. I would say to you that my grandchild in elementary school probably knows how to do a screenshot.

Government lawyers’ attempts to block the information were overruled by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Even after the ruling, this government continued to obstruct access to the records and billed the opposition caucus for 90 hours of labour, totalling $2,700.

I have the throne speech in front of me, and as was mentioned, there are some interesting things within the throne speech. Young people have missed out on work opportunities and vital connections. That was mentioned in the throne speech. It is true and 100 percent accurate. They are frustrated and they need some help.

Unfortunately for this government, what they’ve done is they’ve said: “Trust me. Trust us. We can get this done. Trust us.” The time, I believe, for “trust me” has long since past. The time for blaming it on the other guy has long since passed. This government is now in its second term. This government is the one that decided, during a pandemic, that they wanted to hold an election so that they could put politics behind them.

During the throne speech I think British Columbians were looking for a plan, and they were expecting one in the throne speech. Sadly, I don’t know that that happened. From my recollection, this plan appears to just have…. It’s an old plan that had the dust blown off it, with a couple of little tidbits added. It really wasn’t that much new.

There’s no mention of support for people and businesses today, as the third wave of this pandemic continues to crest. The promises of child care and mental health are not new. They just were promises that never got around to being fulfilled in the last few years. What’s missing is a plan for people to help recover from this pandemic.

[6:00 p.m.]

British Columbians were looking for hope. COVID cases continue to surge, and 53 percent of British Columbians are approximately $200 away from being unable to pay their bills. Even those in the United States are better off than we are. People of this province wanted a clear framework on how we were going to get through this, and what we got was an old, reworked throne speech with the dust blown off, and we got a few aspirational slogans.

What was missing, in my opinion and the opinion of others…. There was no mention of Surrey portables. It was the $400 renters rebate or the promise of 114,000 new affordable homes. There was definitely no mention of strata insurance rates. That’s a crisis, and it continues to devastate people across this province. It will continue to get worse, because I can tell you that in Abbotsford, strata is, by far, the type of housing that’s being built.

There’s no real plan for the environment — it was mentioned — or addressing the missing 25 percent of emission reductions not included in the CleanBC plan.

The only time that youth are mentioned, other than what was mentioned previously, is that young people have missed out on work opportunity and vital social connections. And you know, I think it’s important to talk about youth and mental health. I feel for the youth right now. They’re missing out on badly needed social interactions. They are at the end of their rope, many of them. It’s touched my family, because every year my granddaughter remembers one of her very dear friends who took her life.

We need to help those with mental health issues, those that are struggling through this. Yet I’m told it’s a 55-day wait before you can get an appointment with someone to help you with those issues. That’s an eternity for some of our youth. It’s too long. It will, I think, for many of them…. The help won’t be there when they need it. We need to work on that.

We have all been affected by this pandemic. But by far, other than those in long-term-care homes who paid the ultimate price, small businesses are being hurt by this pandemic. When I was the mayor, it was not lost on me that small businesses are the backbone of the economy. The numbers range, but they are by far the major economic driver of any community. One dollar spent in a small business, I was told — I believe it was at a chamber of commerce meeting — has the impact of six times what would happen if you spent it in a big-box store, for instance. I’ve got nothing against big-box stores, but I know that small businesses are the backbone of this economy.

[6:05 p.m.]

There was little in this budget for small businesses. We’ve had a program of bungling getting grants to small businesses. They’ve had to work hard to protect their clients. They’ve had to work hard to protect their workers at a huge expense and toll, not to mention they don’t know whether they’re going to be able to hang on. There are a few businesses that are already gone in my town. I’m sure there are small businesses that are gone in other towns.

Then when it comes to…. This government talked about increasing broadband and cell phones. I agree wholeheartedly. There is going to be a change where people are going to realize, as was mentioned, that employers will now be able to have people work from home, and they will be moving to every corner of this province to find affordable housing and find a lifestyle that suits them.

This government pats itself on the back that they plan to add hundreds of kilometres of cell coverage on B.C. highways, when thousands are needed. Internet broadband, now more than ever, is of huge concern to rural communities. It’s of huge concern, and it does not seem to be on the front burner at all.

We have to help those that want to move into more remote communities. They’re looking for affordable housing and have realized that they can do their job from anywhere. I fear that if we do not provide it here in British Columbia, they’ll move to other provinces — farther away from families, farther away from loved ones — just simply because we don’t have the broadband and the cell phone coverage that is needed and necessary.

I take a look in this throne speech, and it says that small businesses are vital to our local economies and communities, yet it seems to me they’ve been left out, that the door has been closed for many of them — for those in tourism, for those of them that are in other industries, in the restaurant business. I know that we are in tough times, but to give people a few hours notice when they have thousands and thousands of dollars of food in coolers that is just going to go to waste…. I think that we can do better.

I take a look that we are going to look at our forest practices. I welcome that, but I wonder whether or not there’s going to be any true consultation done to the Forest and Range Practices Act to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We can’t…. You know, I hope that they get more notice than some of the restaurants got that they had to close their doors in a moment’s notice.

When I look at this throne speech, it says a lot of nice things. But there’s an awful lot that’s missing as well. I think we can do much better than what I find in this throne speech. What’s in there doesn’t bother me near as much as what I don’t see in there.

As opposition, it is our job to point out to the government areas of shortcomings that we see. I hope that this government…. As the previous speaker said: “We’re all in this together.” And now, during a pandemic, more than ever, I believe that this government truly wants to help British Columbians. That’s why all of us get into politics. It’s to do what we think is best by the people that elected us.

I look forward to, hopefully, having some influence on some of the policy that goes through, and I hope that there truly is, as was mentioned by the previous speaker, a desire to collaborate, a desire to do right by those that elected us and got us here.

I want to thank everyone for their time. I want to thank you for allowing me to share a few of my views with regards to this budget — what’s there and what’s missing. I look forward to not only seeing the No. 1 freeway widened all the way to Chilliwack within the very near future but finding a way for rapid transit to get up through the valley. The world doesn’t stop in Langley; it keeps on going. There’s a whole beautiful province that continues up that beautiful valley.

Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.

[6:10 p.m.]

S. Chant: I would like to open by thanking the Lieutenant-Governor for her articulate, thoughtful and comprehensive outline of the many things that are important to the people of this province. She reminds all of us that we have ongoing work to do toward a British Columbia that is resilient, inclusive and strong, with a safe and secure home, job and environment for everyone.

I would like to also acknowledge that when I’m at the Legislature, I work on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people, now known as the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations.

I would also like to acknowledge the Métis chartered community of Greater Victoria.

When I am in my riding, I work and learn on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh. Many of my conversations with constituents have alluded to the collaborative work that is being done, particularly in the areas of environmental stewardship.

In addition, I would like to acknowledge the cultural celebrations of our communities across the province and thank everyone for celebrating safely, at home, in these hard times. Happy Vaisakhi, and Ramadan Mubarak.

Again, I want to thank my constituents and businesses in my riding for their continued support and putting their trust in me to represent and advocate on their behalf. Of course, thank you to Eli Mallin and Michael Charrois, my hard-working constituent assistants who have redefined working from home and have ensured that I’m accessible and knowledgable about the issues that are important to those I have had the honour to meet.

I also want to thank my husband, Rick, and my two daughters, Lindsey and Nicole, both of whom are voting age, and the rest of my family for their ongoing support. And the last bit, thanks to Kala, Rachel and Arian, who are our interns and helped me put this response together.

COVID has ruled our lives for the last year, year and a half, ever since we got those first signals out of China that something was terribly wrong and we started noticing things changing. It hit home for me on March 17 of last year, St. Patrick’s Day. However, I normally celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by going to the Welsh Men’s concert. They do the Celtic festival. They have a marvelous festival in one of our downtown cathedrals.

It was cancelled. They never cancel. The Welsh Men never cancel anything. However, it was cancelled. Adding insult to injury, my gym closed — excuse me? And then the library closed, and all of a sudden it was very, very real. Our community was being impacted, and all around us, our communities were all being impacted. Slowly and surely, it spread out.

For a while there we felt comfortable and calm that other parts of B.C. were okay. They weren’t subjected to the things that were coming into other areas. However, that dissolved fairly quickly. In my area, Lynn Valley Care Centre was ground zero. That’s where we had the first COVID in a facility. That’s where we had the first deaths. That’s where we had to learn very, very quickly: what do we do to reduce the transmission as much as possible with our most vulnerable people?

And we did learn. We figured out that we had to support our front-line workers to not work in multiple facilities. In order to do that, we had to equalize their pay so they didn’t have to work three jobs in order to be able to support their families. We had to look at getting rapid response teams established that could go out to facilities when an exposure was acknowledged and found — so that there was a team of people who knew what to do, right away, and knew what supplies they needed and knew and could teach.

I don’t know how many times as a nurse at Lions Gate Hospital I was taught how to don my PPE and take my PPE off again so that it was safe for me and safe for everybody else. Still, even though we all had those lessons and we all put our PPE on, we still had people getting sick. We still had front-line workers, nurses, doctors that were exposed and became sick.

[6:15 p.m.]

We had families that were separated from their elders. All of a sudden the care facility said: “Nope. Nobody is coming in.” There were people that were used to going in every morning and every lunchtime and every supper to feed their mother or feed their spouse. How was that going to happen? Everybody knew there were shortages of care providers. How was all this work going to happen? Well, it happened. That care continued to happen, but the families were devastated.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

We had kids at home because school was closed. I can tell you something. Had school been closed when my children were small, they may not have made it to graduation, because we, as a family, can’t all be under the same roof for extended periods of time. I feel like other families have the same issues. Having the kids at home, for some parents, made it so they couldn’t work at home. They were trying to home-school their kids. They were trying to make sure their kids got activities, only with them, because their sports were gone. It was really, really difficult.

However, slowly but surely, plans came into place. We started to figure out how to try to manage various parts of this. Money began to flow. Orders came out. Guidelines came down, and we started to move forward. We started to manage the pandemic. We went through the first wave. We went through the second wave. Now we’re in the third wave, and we are managing. There are many, many things to do, but we continue to manage, in a lot of ways.

We find we still have people that are going out and getting groceries for their neighbours because their neighbours can’t get out. We had Halloween last year with all sorts of marvelous devices to deliver candy that was safe and COVID-free. We’ve still got people doing ingenious things to make sure that safety is maintained. We have drive-through graduations, drive-through retirements, birthdays, toy drives, so that people can continue to celebrate and continue to feel like part of the community. However, they do it in a way that is safe for themselves and others.

I, like many others, thank the front-line health care workers and the front-line workers of many sorts. We have our dentists, who have kept doing what they do in spite of the fact that they are right in the face of their patients. They have figured out how to make it safe for themselves and their patients. They are at high, high risk. We have all sorts of other people that are exposed over and over to many people — our grocery providers, our restaurateurs. All these people have worked out plans to keep themselves safe and to keep our communities going in a whole variety of ways. To them, I say thank you.

To our front-line health care workers, oh my goodness, yes. The work that has been done and continues to be done…. What many people don’t necessarily understand is that all those front-line workers were busy before COVID struck. They were busy doing many things to care for the health of our communities, and now, not only are they doing the health of our communities, but they are contact tracing. They are testing. They are giving vaccinations. They are providing care to people who are sick in a way we’ve never seen before. COVID does different things to people. We’re still learning how to manage the effects of COVID and the after-effects of COVID. Those people on the front lines in the health care system are doing that work day in and day out.

I also say thank you to those who stand in the leadership roles, who are gathering information, looking at data, looking at the science, contacting and speaking to their colleagues around the world, and helping to make those hard, hard decisions about what to do to support our province.

[6:20 p.m.]

Again, I refer to the things that we’ve heard — that, relative to so many places, our province is doing well. We can always do better, yes. However, relative to many places that are dealing with COVID, we are doing well.

I say thank you to Dr. Henry and Minister Dix for their unwavering commitment to the people of British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker: Member — not using their real names in the speech.

S. Chant: I reserve my place to continue the debate at next sitting, and I move adjournment of the debate.

S. Chant moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:21 p.m.