Orders of the Day

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

Budget Debate

(continued)

L. Doerkson: Thank you for the opportunity to finish my speech.

Like in most parts of British Columbia, our businesses have certainly struggled. It does appear that we will probably watch as they struggle through another year or, certainly, at least a summer of restrictions.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

The South Cariboo, parts of it known as the Fishing Highway, has struggled, obviously, but the West Chilcotin, which is a little more off the beaten path, has really seen its challenges. This is an area often that sees very many overseas visitors, particularly guest ranches, guide-outfitters, skiing operations and, of course, lodges.

I wanted to hear so much more about how we might best serve and support our businesses. We have watched many programs roll out over the past year, seemingly programs being introduced as new and, really, appearing to be coming from funding that has already been announced months ago. It needs to be deployed now.

It would appear that of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, only about a third of it has actually been de­ployed. Any of the businesses that I just mentioned are in desperate need of help, and they could have used these dollars months ago. These funds have been approved by everyone in this place and really ought to have been de­ployed a long time ago.

[1:35 p.m.]

I was very hopeful that new funding announcements that we’ve heard about here were actually new. We heard about another $800 million in potential business recovery. But with all due respect, it’s been months for past programs to roll out, and they’re still not deployed.

In my life as a small business person myself, I have ne­ver experienced a more trying time. I sincerely hope and would certainly support most initiatives that would see our businesses get through these extremely challenging times. Desperate pleas have been made by the tourism sector, and in the budget for the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, we see only a $4 million increase in spending. The Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation lists less than $1 million in increased spending.

Along with gyms that have had to close under the pressure of these new orders, I watch with disappointment as we see our restaurants go to very limited hours, some of them trying desperately to create outdoor eating areas, while others try to figure out ways to change their menus to have different selections that may be more relevant for takeout than what they’re accustomed to preparing.

I don’t have to tell you that the layoffs in these businesses throughout our region have been absolutely staggering. Now they face even longer delays in getting back to business. I know that I speak for all of the businesses in the Cariboo-Chilcotin when I say that we were hoping that this government would come through with the funding it continues to promise and that we don’t see a repeat of last year, with failed attempts to help so many deserving businesses.

I’m grateful to all of the communities that have recognized how difficult it has been for some of these small businesses and the residents that have stepped up by en­joying more than an occasional night out. It’s very en­couraging to see the support for all of these businesses at a local level.

One of the focuses of conversation over the past weeks has been with respect to agrifairs, rodeos and exhibitions. It is with great sadness that for a second year in a row, we have lost both our beloved Indoor Rodeo in Williams Lake and the Williams Lake Stampede as well.

Last week the 100 Mile House Car Club announced the cancellation of the annual hot summer nights car show. These events create so much revenue for our region. Of course, without these events happening again this year, it will have an ill effect on very many people. Indeed, this will have a dramatic effect throughout the entire province, with hundreds of events cancelled.

Frankly, I was quite surprised and questioned the anticipated income of our province. The revenues appear in the budget to drop by only $2 billion. I’m pleased if that’s all it is and that’s all it will drop, but it does seem, with all of the lost commerce in this province and of course the lost taxation on that commerce, that that figure may be low. It’s further alarming how the plan shows such a brisk recovery, with our income growing by almost $5 billion in the following year.

It would seem to me that if things return to somewhat normal, we would fill the $2 billion gap. But for us to grow by that much, I fear what may be around the corner with respect to taxation. Certainly we have seen a variety of the many taxes added over the past year. The last thing any of these businesses or, for that matter, the people of British Columbia need as we recover is more tax burden.

With respect to the loss of these events — and it does appear as though we will lose another summer — which will be devastating to so many businesses, like guide-outfitters, stock contractors, guest ranches, they have the add­ed pressure of feeding animals as part of their overhead as well as maintaining, heating and lighting their infrastructure also. In the case of C+ Rodeos, those expenses are more than $100,000 per year. It would be impossible for many family-run operations to be able to pay that kind of expense without work.

This situation is dire, and I have heard nothing in this budget speech that was specific to this kind of funding, even though we’ve had funding in the past, through the animal care initiatives program. It was recognized as an issue in 2020, and funding was created. But in 2021, even with much lobbying, this has not been recognized as an issue, and there have been no funds directly linked to these situations.

I know at least one contractor that will have to make very serious decisions with respect to his herd, the herd that they maintain for the rodeo circuit. I know at least one guide-outfitter that has had to sell all of their stock horses for lack of income from their business. I am very surprised that there has been no focus on funding for businesses like these, because they are unique.

[1:40 p.m.]

I am very surprised and disappointed, because nothing that I have said here in this address should come as a shock. It’s not like these issues have not been anticipated. It’s not like we haven’t discussed all of these things I have mentioned here at length in this place. Not just myself either. Other people have addressed this chamber, discussing the economy, connectivity, floods and roads.

In some cases, problems in my riding have been there and ignored for the past four years. It’s not just this year that issues began on Highway 20, not the first issues we have heard on Dog Creek. I think that the people in my riding are weary and not just from COVID.

I wonder how many times one’s house has to be flooded, thanks to a culvert placed by the province, to actually get the attention of our provincial government, how long before the government realizes that the topography of our region has changed since 2017 and ’18. In the case of Dog Creek Road, this damage has continued for years, and in some cases, these flooding events happened three times last year alone.

When constituents get to the point that they can no longer sell their homes, no longer fix their homes, and in some cases, no longer insure their homes, you can imagine the level of frustration for people that are caught in this situation.

The sad part is that I don’t think it has to be this way at all. It has to be recognized as a problem and fixed by the province, with the help of local governments.

I just want to take a moment to pause to reflect on the losses that so many have endured. I’m referring, of course, to the deaths over the past year from the pandemic, and the losses of life from the opioid crisis. The personal loss and the pain really is immeasurable. For that, I wish to off­er my most sincere condolences to the families that have endured these very sad times.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank so many volunteer groups that have risen to the challenges of these times by continuing to keep food programs rolling, by making sure that our food banks are never empty.

To all of our front-line workers, who never have stopped providing safety or care, in spite of many of them not re­ceiving vaccines. I want to thank the grocers that allow us to resupply often, the shipping companies, the truck drivers that make sure that the supply never stops coming, and to the vets and the vet techs who have never stopped caring for our pets and our livestock.

To our teachers, our school bus drivers…. It is truly amazing what these individuals have done to keep our province moving. I and my family are extremely grateful for that.

M. Dykeman: It is an honour today to rise in the House virtually from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Matsqui, Kwantlen, Katzie and Semiahmoo First Nations.

It’s an honour to speak in response to the budget. It’s a privilege truly to speak favourably of the positive and meaningful impact that this budget will have on my constituents of Langley East.

I’m pleased to see that the budget continues to maintain its focus on the things that matter for the people of British Columbia: protecting the health and safety of British Columbians, supporting people and businesses as we continue to manage the effects of the pandemic, and to undertake the important preparation work that will allow us to be ready to seize the opportunities that recovery will hold.

The pandemic and recovery contingencies included will support those very time-limited COVID-19 measures that will ensure that we’re ready to navigate the changing landscape of the pandemic. Our province has faced many challenges this past year, and we’re still navigating these challenges. This pandemic really has shone a light on inequality. Although the pandemic has affected everyone, the effects have not been felt in an equal way. Some groups have been affected more than others.

The last year really has highlighted the importance of strong health and mental health services. As more and more people receive their vaccinations, with our province sitting at approximately 30 percent vaccinated with their first shot, we can see light at the end of the tunnel. But there is much work to do. There is a lot that needs to be addressed. and this budget really does so.

I’m thrilled to see that Budget 2021 is providing more than $4 billion in funding for health care and mental health to continue to protect people from COVID-19 and expand the services that people rely on. This is so vital.

[1:45 p.m.]

Health care truly is a wise investment. Lowering wait times, supporting seniors and investing in mental health services — areas that suffered from significant underfunding through the years. Building a network of mental health supports for youth through schools, new Foundry centres and integrated child and youth supports in more than 15 school districts makes sense. We need to ensure that there are supports in place for our most vulnerable.

This budget is addressing something that has been systemically underfunded through past governments: im­proving access to and quality of mental health services through British Columbia and providing First Nations health authorities with more funding to deliver mental health and addictions services to Indigenous peoples.

Increasing access on a full spectrum of substance use treatment and recovery services, including much-needed funding for opioid treatment, which we’ve seen, through this pandemic and prior, has been a crisis. It’s one that needs to be addressed, which this budget is working hard to address in a way that makes sense — helping more people get on a path to recovery, with new substance-use treatment and recovery beds.

People who are ready to make that step to go into recovery need access to spaces. It’s a very time-contingent thing. So having those spaces ready to help people move through the challenges of recovery is vital.

Helping more people, through the $7.8 billion in capital investments. I’m very pleased to see this building new, critical health care infrastructure and supporting major construction projects, like new and upgraded hospitals. The Langleys recently benefited from our government’s focus on ensuring that we have a strong health care system.

Myself and my colleague and friend the MLA for Langley announced the substantial completion of the new emergency room at Langley Memorial Hospital. We have also seen the construction of a new hospice and new MRI suite, which directly, positively affects my community and surrounding communities.

In conversations with those that live in my riding, they were so pleased to see that the focus on health care is there. We are one of the fastest-growing communities, and having spaces in hospitals and facilities that can manage complex health needs is essential. Our government has been addressing those, and they’ve been addressing them at a rapid rate. Our community is so grateful for that.

I’m very excited to see such a substantial increase in funding, with $500 million to expand mental health and addiction services. We have seen these areas grow, unfortunately. As our community grows in Langley East, the needs of our community become more complex.

This type of funding will make a meaningful impact on people who are experiencing mental health and addiction challenges, and that’s something that is a wise investment for our entire community. It affects our economy. It affects our social structures. It affects everything. Those are areas, as I’ve said previously, that have been chronically underfunded and that our government is now coming in and addressing in a way that will make a difference in the lives of people.

In terms of schools, I know that my riding, as well as my colleague the MLA for Langley, is very excited to see the construction and opening of the new southwest Yorkson elementary school, which was recently named, by the Langley board of education, Donna Gabriel Robins Elementary.

Donna Gabriel Robins is a member of Kwantlen First Nation and, now, a retired teacher. Donna has been instrumental in leading the Langley school district’s journey of truth and reconciliation, always advocating and ensuring that the students were kept at the centre of all decisions related to their educational journey. So I was very thrilled to see the name choice. It is just wonderful.

This school is currently under construction, slated to open in September 2021. It will provide 555 new spaces for students in grades K to 5. The new school has a total budget of $32.2 million and is designed to meet LEED gold standards. It is scheduled, as mentioned, to open in September and will also feature a neighbourhood learning centre with space for childcare programming.

[1:50 p.m.]

As I said earlier, the Langleys are a rapidly growing area, one of the fastest ones in British Columbia.

As many will know, I started my political journey on the Langley board of education in 2011, before I left my role as chair of the board this past year to serve my community as MLA. What an honour and privilege that was. In each of the three elections in the years in between, the focus, really, never changed: “We need more facilities. We need more schools, more space, to address our rapidly growing communities.” In my time on the board, I was known for literally chasing ministers down hallways to bend their ear about the need for more space.

So to say, I am absolutely ecstatic to see that over the three years of this fiscal plan, approximately $3.5 billion will be invested to maintain, replace or renovate and ex­pand K-to-12 facilities, including continued investments in new school space to accommodate increasing enrolment in growth districts, as well as in a program to seismically upgrade or replace schools. This was just a devastating period of time — watching our communities grow and very little investment in capital for schools.

Seeing this being put on the forefront of the agenda for the government is so important for our students. They need spaces. They need modern spaces to learn. They need spaces that address the needs for the numbers of students that are simply just enrolling.

We are growing our economy. We are bringing more people to British Columbia, but for 15 years there was just no focus on schools and the expansion of schools, or very little. Seeing this, I can say, coming from my education background, it is much needed and much appreciated. People of Langley…. As I mentioned, we’re a growing community. Our parents are thrilled to see investments going into spaces so that our students have places to go to school.

One of the areas I also was really excited to read about in the budget was our key capital investments. Over the three years of this fiscal plan, transportation and capital investments totalling $7.5 billion are allowing our province to maintain a flow of people and goods to support B.C.’s economy — widening ten kilometres of Highway 1 through Langley from 216 Street to 264 Street, which will accommodate high-occupancy vehicles; reconfiguring the 232 Street interchange; looking at new underpasses at Glover Road and the CP Rail crossing; and truck parking for High­ways 1 and 17 for up to 150 commercial trucks and 45 passenger vehicles.

That allows our people of Langley to keep goods and services moving and allows people to spend more time at home, not sitting in traffic. That is something our community is so thrilled to see — that this is moving along and that it’s moving at a pace that will allow my riding, and beyond, to be able to get out of their cars and get home faster, and to get goods and services moving around our riding.

Also, though not directly in my riding, I was ecstatic to see the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge with a new four-lane bridge, which can be expanded to six. It’s going to meet the current seismic and road design standards — the removal of the existing bridge — and provide a safe and reliable crossing for vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, allowing neighbouring ridings to mine, in Surrey and New Westminster, to be able to move people and goods through faster and in a safer way.

Budget 2021 also is building on community infrastructure investments, providing $147 million in new funding over this fiscal plan and supporting further meaningful things like broadband and cellular access in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. This is allowing people to access essential services and work and is making the place safer for everyone.

These investments are vital to communities. Our pro­vince is diverse. There are strong agricultural areas, rural communities and fast-growing urban areas, and seeing this balanced investment is vital for our communities to address the diverse needs within our province.

[1:55 p.m.]

What I think we don’t get a lot of time to talk about is how important capital investments are, also, in the creation of jobs. These capital investments are anticipated to create over 85,000 jobs in this fiscal plan period. These are direct construction jobs, as well as indirect jobs — like off-site employment at suppliers, material manufacturing, food services — and the benefits just ripple out into the broader economy, with additional income being spent right in our communities and supporting recovery. Those types of investments are what is needed during challenging times like this pandemic.

An austerity budget doesn’t help the economy grow. The economy growing, more people being able to go to work, people being able to have money to spend and in­vest back in our communities is vital. Our ridings, both myself and my colleague at Langley, are very, very business-oriented — small businesses, really entrepreneurial, people who have opened businesses that have been significantly affected during this pandemic. The investments, such as our circuit breaker business relief grants, are helping our businesses.

Through the time of this past little while, I’ve been reaching out to businesses and seeing how they feel they’ve been supported throughout the pandemic. Especially for our hospitality industry, it has been a challenge. What I do hear time and time again, though, is how grateful our community is for the very balanced and sensible approach that our government has taken to ensuring that businesses receive the support that they need.

Our restaurants, bars, breweries, wineries really have been hit hard, and the recent public health orders were exceptionally difficult for many. So the 14,000 businesses that have been further impacted by recent restrictions…. Our government has put a $50 million circuit breaker business relief grant in place. I’m grateful to see that our government was able to move so quickly and recognize the needs that our small businesses had during these difficult times. This grant will provide businesses up to $10,000 in one-time funding to help with expenses such as rent, employee wages, maintenance and utilities.

I met recently with a local brewery in my riding. We were talking about how grateful they were for the ability to access funding to help them. They’re a new brewery. They just opened up, so they were facing the challenges of growing and starting a business during a pandemic, and they really have done so much for our community, despite all the challenges. This brewery recently, actually, offered a place for people who were displaced from a fire to come and have a coffee and work. They were talking about those challenges and how vital and important it was for the government to ensure that they had funding and had supports in place.

Our government has been responding to that, providing the ability for businesses to access the funding that they need to continue going and to be as careful and mindful as possible, with the changing landscape, to ensure that the public health orders allow businesses to continue. Our provincial government has worked hard to make life easier with things like patio access — you know, getting patios quickly approved and getting liquor licences to be able to respond and pivot so that they can continue to work. Those were the things that we covered.

Those are the things that we need to continue to focus on: ensuring that we’re being careful, that we keep people and small businesses that are the engine of our economy at the forefront. I believe that our budget does an excellent job of that — being mindful to look at all the different ways the businesses are impacted and respond accordingly. That really was a very important thing to say — that there was a strong focus on the economy.

As I said earlier, this budget is about helping people now and creating the conditions of a strong economic recovery. Part of that is child care, ensuring that we have a focus on child care so that those that need to go to work, both men and women, can access child care in their community.

[2:00 p.m.]

Our community of Langley East recently benefited from 140 new child care spaces. In fact, it was actually Langley East and Langley, both ridings, that benefited from these child care spaces. Seeing that announcement, as a single mother myself, made me so happy to know that we were having more spaces for our growing community.

In turn, that helps the economy. Having the ability to choose child care close to home for those that would like to work outside the home is really essential. We saw this pandemic, which has disproportionately affected women, was sort of viewed by economists as a pandemic that really had a hard effect. Although on everyone, it did hit harder on some.

Having access to child care and ensuring child care spaces could stay open to service those that needed it, who were keeping our economy going during the pandemic, was vital. Seeing a continued focus on ensuring child care stays at the forefront of this government’s budget is something that I was very excited to see, because that is, once again, a very wise investment in our economy and ensures that we’re supporting people through the pandemic.

I wanted to touch, very quickly, on training. My coll­eague the MLA for Langley, who is also Parliamentary Sec­retary for Skills Training, I know has been working very hard and ensuring that there is training for our students and those who want to re-skill to be able to offer their services and find meaningful, well-paying jobs when they come out through this pandemic. Investing in people with new training and employment opportunities is another wise investment as we’re dealing with this pandemic economy and what it will look like as we come out on the other side.

I was really excited to see a focus on this in the budget. Once again: $96 million over three years for new training spaces to continue to build a workforce that will increase, for instance, the health sector capacity; $17 million to partner with hundreds of Indigenous communities and organizations to expand access to programs through the Indigenous skills training program.

Another example: $6 million to support work-integrat­ed learning placements for nearly 3,000 students in B.C. post-secondary institutions, helping one of the hardest-hit demographics find meaningful employment. And just a last example: $4 million to continue short-term skills-training programs for unemployed or underemployed people to train in high-demand sectors.

It was something that we talked about a lot when I was on school board — the need to invest in trade programs and opportunities for people to gain skills as they come out. You know, my son is looking forward to — he graduates this year; he’s in grade 12 — training to become a heavy-duty mechanic.

He is so excited to come out of grade 12 and know that there’s training in place because of the hard work of people like our minister and our parliamentary secretary, who have put so much into ensuring that people have opportunities to train. That is something that I think is a very wise investment in our economy — ensuring that people have that opportunity.

In conclusion, just to wrap up, it is just wonderful to see a focus on people, families, vulnerable individuals who have suffered so much through this pandemic — ensuring that we have a balanced economic recovery and capital plan, that we have training, that we have education for our youth and those who need to re-skill, community infrastructure.

I believe that throughout this province, this budget will make a meaningful impact on the lives of people as we come through this pandemic in a way that we will ensure that people are supported in all the social ways that we need to support people through these challenging times, focusing on those vulnerable communities, focusing on people’s mental health, focusing on families having options, as well as balancing the need for an economy so that we can continue to grow with British Columbia. We can continue to have opportunities for people to work in meaningful employment. That, in turn, will allow people to reinvest back into their economies.

[2:05 p.m.]

I know that as the MLA for Langley East, I look at this budget and see how my riding can benefit from this and the regions around us. I’m very excited to see how things like agritech will be benefiting my community, which has a fast-growing urban core and a strong agricultural history and economy.

I am excited to see how we will be able to support our youth, those with mental health needs through this pandemic. We are not on the other side of it yet. We still have much work to do, but what I do know is that I feel strongly that this budget is looking with a forward-looking lens to ensure that we’re supporting those, as we move through this. I feel confident it’s been done in a safe and in a very empathetic and forward-looking way.

With that, I’d just like to say that I’m thrilled with this budget. I’m looking forward to seeing these excellent programs and supports roll out over the next little while. We’ll be excited to talk about that in the House at every opportunity. So with that, I will conclude my remarks and take my seat here virtually.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak favourably about this budget in this House today.

M. Morris: As I’ve watched the performance of this government over the last…. We’re in the second term now.

I go back to the credo that they hung their hats on in their campaigns, leading up to the elections, about making life more affordable. All I see, particularly after reading this budget and going through the documents, is that it’s not going to be affordable for decades.

There is such a debt burden that our children and our grandchildren are going to be bearing for decades to come that it’s really not going to be affordable for anybody to pay for the lifestyle that this government wants to put in place over the next fiscal plan that they have here. It’s a huge deficit with no end in sight for a decade. No end in sight for a decade. Ten years. You know, to plan….

I wish I had the ability to just spend money willy-nilly for the next ten years and not have to worry about it. Everybody sitting on that side of the House, on the government side — well, probably a lot of them — will be gone and will be enjoying their pension as the folks that are coming up in the ranks and through the world will be paying the debt off. So $9 billion coming up for this fiscal year — $9 billion — but that’s less than what it was projected to be, at around, I believe, $13 billion.

It’s less because of the rising house prices that we see and the windfall that this government has reaped as a result of the taxes that are paid on these resale transactions. Yet they campaigned continually, right from 2017, on making life more affordable for people. But keeping the price of housing down…. It hasn’t dropped down a bit.

Even in my community of Prince George–Mackenzie, I have young people coming in, phoning my office, wondering what they’re going to do. They can’t save up enough money for a home, even in Prince George, where the average price I think is getting up close to the mid-$400,000 bracket. That’s in the interior of the province.

Moody’s. I just have to read the comment Moody’s made recently about this: “The province’s credit rating could face downward pressure if…direct and indirect debt were to materially exceed our current projections, coinciding with a loss in the financial management of the province.” That was on the 24th of March, 2021. I think that’s a warning flag.

We hear from the credit rating agencies on a routine bas­is. I know that when we were in government, we took a lot of credence in what they had to say. I think that’s a warning shot across the bow, saying: “Guess what. We’re going to have another look in a little bit and just see what that really shows.”

[2:10 p.m.]

Under the cover of COVID, our public sector has blossomed, has ballooned. Just in the last year, the public sector has grown by 60,000 people.

I don’t have a problem with hiring people to deal with our COVID issues — to hire the contact tracers, to hire the resources we need to protect the people of British Columbia — but I believe 60,000 is a significant number of people that have been hired in the last year to add to the public sector that we have already in place in this great province of ours. Ten percent of B.C.’s population works for the provincial government — about 500,000 people. That’s a lot of people.

This has happened while the private sector has still lost 40,000 jobs. I’ll talk about that in a minute here as well.

The other thing that I found interesting in this particular budget document…. It goes back to page 4 of their fiscal plan — notional allocations. You know, we’ve had notional things before, but these are notional allocations for upcoming fiscal years: “Notional allocations of $1.5 billion for ’22-23 and $2 billion for ’23-24.” It says: “For caseload pressures and priority initiatives that may require funding in future budgets.”

Notional. A $2 billion notional amount of money available during an election year in 2024. Now, is it notional that we have got an election coming up in 2024? A person could do a lot of things with $2 billion to shovel out the back of a truck in the few months leading up to an election during that particular year.

I worked in the public sector pretty much my whole life in the RCMP, a senior manager looking after budgets for the province and for my own district. If I went to my boss and said: “Boss, you know, things are kind of humming along here, but I’d like to throw another $500 million into my budget for the next fiscal year and the fiscal year after that because we might need it. Maybe we need to buy a new airplane or a couple of new boats for my district, or maybe I want to add a bunch more manpower to it or build some more infrastructure.” That’s primarily what this is.

To me, this is poor fiscal management when you have to budget $1½ billion in one year and $2 billion in another year for unseen things that might happen in the future. That’s a lot of money. And that’s in addition to all of the forecast allowances and contingency allocations that they’ve already put into the budgets moving forward.

The other obvious gap that I saw looking through the budget…. It’s a ledger sheet that omits the revenue side of that ledger sheet. It doesn’t show where we have the money coming in to pay for all of these notional budgetary items and some of the changes that they want here.

There’s no plan in place to get the private sector going. Like I said, we’ve added 60,000 people to public sector in the last year alone. There’s lots of talk about child care spaces, there’s lots of talk about health care, which is all great as long as it’s not disrupting the private sector operations and jobs that we have in the province as well.

There’s no vision in this document. We’ve got three fiscal years ahead of us with this fiscal plan with no real vision other than to spend money like it’s going out of style. There’s no mention on how this government is going to create an investment climate that will attract people to this province again and attract business investments that will get things up and running.

Now, I’m going to talk about mining shortly, as mining is a big, big issue in my riding. It was 2015. I used to put on the Natural Resources Forum in Prince George. I was talking to a gentleman from the States. His role was to find money for mining investments and getting mining off the ground around the world.

[2:15 p.m.]

He was telling me that British Columbia had one of the best investment climates in Canada when it came to developing mines, back in 2015. We sure don’t have that any more. We’ve got some of the highest tax structures — the carbon tax, the employer health tax. There are a number of taxes there that have taken that title away from us.

There’s no mention on how to address the pending decrease in our forest sector. They talked about reallocating volume. They talked about value-added industry. But we have a lack of fibre right across the province that is going to cause the forest sector to rationalize their operations throughout the province. I think we’re going to see a significant decrease there.

There’s no mention of the value of our resource sector as an economic driver in our recovery in the province. They talk about a green economy — the electrification of vehicles, reducing our use of fossil fuels. But they’re blind to the fact that fossil fuels will continue to play a role in our province for decades to come. This transition is going to take us decades in order to get to become fossil fuel free.

What obviously is missing, as well, is a clear understanding of this symbiotic relationship between a green economy — electrification of our vehicles and our infrastructure — and our current resource sector. We can’t have electric vehicles without our copper mines and our gold mines. We have some of the richest copper and gold deposits in the world right here in our province in the corridor between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast range. We have some magnificent opportunities up there. There’s a little triangle up there they call the Golden Triangle. Copper and gold are generally found in the same areas. We have opportunities there.

We have infrastructure available to be upgraded and modified with the Dease Lake rail extension that can get into that area and connect our beautiful province to Alaska and the southern states and take advantage of the 350 million people that live in the southern U.S.A. that would love to come through British Columbia. I think the residual tourism we would see here would be enormous. But there’s no mention of that.

Our mines will be critical in moving any kind of a green economy forward. The copper in an electric vehicle…. There is anywhere from three to ten times more copper in an electric vehicle than there is in a vehicle with a combustion engine. That’s only the copper. There is also gold in there, and there are other rare minerals that help that. Technology runs on copper and gold and silver and platinum and other rare earth minerals that we have around the province here. There are opportunities for thousands of well-paying jobs in British Columbia in the mining industry.

The other part of this symbiotic relationship between a green economy and our resource sector is oil and gas. We don’t have a petrochemical industry in British Columbia, yet everything that we do in the world operates off of petrochemicals. We have some of the richest liquid natural gas in the world. Just north of us in British Columbia here — my colleagues from Peace River North and Peace River South — in the Montney gas play, some of the richest liquid natural gas in the world is sitting there.

That natural gas contains propane. The derivative, of course, is a fuel for barbecues and for other things. We’ve got a propane export terminal now in Prince Rupert. But also, one of the by-products of propane is polypropylene. That’s the hard plastic that is used in our vehicle manufacturing. Most of the electric cars can operate in an efficient manner today because they are lightweight due to polypropylene and plastics built into that vehicle. The technology sector runs on polypropylene. The cases for our computers, the cases for our medical supplies and a lot of the medical instruments themselves are polypropylene.

[2:20 p.m.]

We have polyethylene. We have millions of kilometres of water pipes servicing all our communities right across this province. The little plastic pipes that are in the ground that bring the water from our reservoirs to every household in the province — polyethylene. Millions of kilometres of those. Then we also have millions of kilometres of bigger pipe that take the wastewater from our communities and from our households into water treatment plants throughout the communities as well.

How could we replace that? Whether we run on a green economy and we reduce our use of fossil fuels in our vehicles and our trucks, we still will see a need for this.

We have those opportunities right here in this province. I was speaking to a proponent in my riding who was talking about building a polyethylene plant in Prince George, employing 1,000 people — one plant. With that polyethylene plant, we could ship products from around the world. We could take those liquids out of the natural gas with a straddle plant, as they call it — extract those liquids out of the gas before it gets shipped or burned in our households, so we’ll be burning cleaner gas. The GHG emissions will be significantly reduced around our province and around the world.

LNG Canada is building the large liquefaction plant in Prince Rupert or Kitimat as we speak. Right through my community, we’ve got a 4-foot-diameter natural gas line that’s going to supply all this gas to LNG Canada. The amount of money that we could make from the liquids in that natural gas before it gets loaded onto those ships and shipped over to Asia — where it will, no doubt, be turned into all these products that I’m talking about — is enormous.

The polypropylene plant, scheduled for Prince George — or I anticipate it for Prince George — will be using the existing Enbridge supply line that supplies all of British Columbia down to the northwest United States. The proponent claimed that he could probably extract $1 million to $2 million worth of liquids out of the existing pipeline and turn it into these value-added products that we can ship.

Then you look at the downstream opportunities from that that we could have in manufacturing. We could put thousands of people to work in this province to increase our tax base — people paying income tax, taxation from the corporations. We would soon dig out of the debt that this province has dug themselves into. Then, of course, we have butane, another by-product of the liquids. Butane is used for synthetic rubber. A lot of our electric bikes have synthetic rubber tires and whatnot on there.

You can’t have a green economy without talking about the petrochemical industry and the resources that we have in the ground. If we look at a petrochemical industry in British Columbia, we will have thousands upon thousands of people employed in that industry alone. It would eclipse the 50,000 people that have lost their jobs in the forest sector over the last ten years.

The other area that I looked at, in going through the budget documents, is policing. Of course, it’s my critic role: Public Safety. I was pleased to see that there is an increase to core policing operations, provincial core policing. That’s a general duty cop that’s working in places like Vanderhoof — that have had caseloads that have been some of the record caseloads in the province — and other communities up there, and our provincial resources are investigating the homicides and the more serious crime that we have located throughout the province.

The rural communities depend upon the RCMP or the provincial police in this community, not only to keep their communities safe from crime, but we have seen significant events over the years with wildfires, interface fires between our communities and our forests. We have seen massive flooding taking place in our communities across the province.

The RCMP play an integral role in evacuations planning. When I was a detachment commander, I had to update my evacuation plans for my community every year. I had to count the number of station wagons and buses and trucks and heavy equipment and who had them and the phone numbers to who had them so that we could call if we had a provincial emergency like that.

There are always new demands being placed on our po­lice resources. We heard the Premier talking about that the other day, where he demanded that the police get out and start stopping people on the road to make sure that they were not travelling unnecessarily, that they were staying within their health district. Of course, that puts added stress and strain on a system that is already overburdened with various things.

[2:25 p.m.]

One of the terrible things that has escalated in recent days and weeks is the gangland killings that we see taking place in the Lower Mainland. Where are the resources going into that? Back when we were in government — I was sitting in the Solicitor General’s chair — we put in an extra $25 million. We created two new gang task forces in the guns and gang area. It was making results.

The problem we don’t recognize, and this government has not recognized, is the fact that with all of the complexities associated with criminal investigations that we have today, the police actually get taken off the road at the end of an investigation, to a large extent. The investigation itself is only the tip of an iceberg. Once that investigation is concluded…. Because of the Jordan decision, once charge approval has been made, they have 18 months to get the individuals through the court system.

Oftentimes, because of the complexities of these investigations, there are thousands of pages of information to obtain: search warrants, judicial authorities for wiretapping, for vehicle tracking, a number of those technical things that they have there. The wiretaps themselves all have to be transcribed and translated, a full disclosure package provided to Crown counsel. Then Crown counsel will go through that material to see whether or not there’s enough material in there for a charge.

To put that whole package together, that team that was doing the investigation, doing the surveillance, doing all of the hard work to get these bad guys off the road…. They are the ones that are tasked with putting that package together. Maybe it’s only half their team, but they are still necessary to do that. It might take Crown counsel months to go through all the files, all the transcriptions and everything else in order to determine whether or not they will lay a charge.

The surveillance teams that are required for these in­vestigations are manpower-heavy because of the requirements that have been placed on the police from the court decisions and from everything else. The manpower re­quirements for this are huge. We just simply…. We. I still talk like I’m a police officer once in a while. The police simply run out of resources at the end of the day. They’re also prohibited from releasing a lot of information on different things. That prevents them from advising the public of what’s going on.

I recall back in 2015, when I was the Solicitor General. When they’re tapping somebody’s phone, and they hear a call come over the phone saying, “There’s a contract out on so and so, and we’re going to kill them,” they have a duty to go and notify that guy and say: “Listen, there’s a contract out on you.” They had to do that something like 250 times back in 2015. I think they’re just as active in that or even more so here in today’s world.

The other concern I have here is that the government has mentioned that they’re looking at putting pressure on the federal government to decriminalize small amounts of drugs. I have been searching. I have looked everywhere for some kind of a study or scientific reason for that recommendation to be made. The argument behind that is it’s because of the stigma attached to the criminality involved by that possession.

I’ve never heard that. I’ve dealt with a lot of drug cases over the years. I think the stigma is more to the fact that the individual doesn’t want it to be found out that he or she might be an addict. I think that’s the stigma that nobody wants. They don’t want to be known as an addict.

Small amounts of drugs. I’ve heard some organizations in this province criticize the police forces for seizing small amounts of drugs. But it doesn’t take a big amount of drug to kill somebody with an overdose if you don’t know what is in that particular drug. I wonder how many of these small drug seizures have prevented somebody from overdosing over the last five years. How many overdose deaths have been prevented by police? I know the RCMP…. I was talking to them the other day. I think they’ve administered close to 700 injections of naloxone in the last couple of years in this province, saving lives.

There are a number of issues with policing. The Surrey police transition is another one that I didn’t see anything in the budget for. This is going to have significant impacts on our province, on the Justice Institute. Surrey has a police force of about 850 men and women in today’s model, probably more by the time this new transition takes place.

[2:30 p.m.]

How many will convert to the Surrey police department depends on a number of things. Number one, the independent police forces in British Columbia make, on average, about 25 to 30 percent more than an RCMP officer. So there will be a lot of officers around the province that will look at this as an opportunity to get a 25 percent wage bump.

How are we going to fill those other vacancies in the province? That’s going to put pressure on every detachment in the province. It’s going to put pressure on our municipal detachments in the province. It’s going to put pressure on the Justice Institute. How many spaces do we allot for training purposes in the Justice Institute? How many green recruits are we going to have to train, in comparison to who is coming in?

We see these positions vacating the RCMP jurisdiction for Surrey PD. How is that going to impact our integrated homicide team? How is that going to impact our Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, which does the guns and gang work? How is that going to affect our full-time ERT, emergency response team, resources that we have throughout the Lower Mainland here?

There are a number of things, which I see, that could be impacted by this, and there’s not much mention of that.

The other thing…. I see I’ve only got about five minutes left, but I do want to talk a little bit about ICBC, which is also another area under my critic role.

We heard about the dumpster fire. We heard about all these different things and that now ICBC is in the black. But it was a shell game by the previous minister responsible. When the books were signed over to this government in 2017, ICBC was about $250 million in the hole. Recent documents that I’ve reviewed indicate that from 2017 until 2020, they incurred about $3½ billion in added costs because of accidents. There were a number of things there.

They took just over $3 billion out of their equity fund to pay that off. They have depleted their equity fund down to the point where it’s about 50 percent less than what is normally required by law for private insurance companies. You’re supposed to have enough equity in there to cover off those issues. They’re back in the black, but their equity fund is down about $3 billion. It puts them further at risk because of that.

They talk about the changes that are coming — the 20 percent savings that will be taking place here for everybody as of the first of May, when they go to this no-fault insurance process. They don’t talk about the fact that when they came into government in 2017 and until this year, they raised rates 40 percent. So now they’re graciously giving 20 percent back, but you’re still paying 20 percent more than you were back in 2016.

It’s a shell game. They’ve been moving money around. The previous minister was very good at partisan politics and pointing the finger at the previous government. I think the dumpster fire was probably caused by the spontaneous combustion of the political rhetoric that was spewing out of that office.

There’s one last thing that I want to touch on. There’s a capital plan in there. They talk about health care across the province here. No mention of a hospital for Prince George. It’s the largest health authority in the province. No cardiac services in the health authority area. We have to ship everybody down south.

What I find fantastic about this is…. Back in the 1990 NDP regime, they said: “We are going to build a new hospital in Prince George.” They put a budget together, and they started construction just before they left government in 2000. They cut the construction budget. We went from a 400 bed regional hospital down to a 200 bed regional hospital. It is now one of the main training centres for the northern medical program, yet we still have a 200 bed hospital.

We have operating theatre rooms that are 1950s vintage and that are too small for today’s operating equipment. It’s caused a lot of concern for the doctors, for the staff, for everybody that’s up there. This government is well aware of the deficiencies in that particular area, yet they do nothing.

We can look at this term in government with no help for Northern Health when it comes to our hospital facilities, which are, by the way, working beyond maximum with relation to ICU patients and other people with COVID.

[2:35 p.m.]

I want to say to our nurses, our doctors and our staff in Northern Health, right across the Northern Health re­gion: thank you so much for all the hard work that you do and the extra effort you put in. I know the stress that you guys are under up there. We feel it for you, and we’ll do our best to try and make sure that we alleviate that in whatever way we can.

With that, I will take my seat.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Chilliwack.

D. Coulter: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s, once again, a great pleasure and honour to be able to speak in front of you on behalf of my constituents here in Chilliwack.

I’d first like to begin by acknowledging that I’m speaking to you today from the traditional and unceded territory of the Stó:lō people — in particular, that of the Pilalt and Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribes.

I’d really like to take a moment here to thank the Minister of Finance and her team. She and her team have come up with an exceptionally thoughtful budget that is going to help us get through and recover from this pandemic.

There are all sorts of hard-working folks on the front lines of this pandemic — doctors, nurses, teachers, folks in the service industry. This is really tough on them, and I’d like to take a moment, definitely, to thank each and every one of them. Even though we can see hope on the horizon right now, we are a way off.

During the pandemic, many people and families have experienced the stress of unexpected job loss, and not everyone has been affected in the same way. We often hear sometimes we’re all in the same storm but not the same boat.

Budget 2021 includes new investments to support peo­ple by improving child care, making life more affordable, reducing poverty, advancing reconciliation and investing in the services that folks rely on. The budget continues to protect the mental health and the health and safety of all British Columbians and expands the services people rely on, with $4 billion in health care funding over the next three years, including funding to continue to deliver COVID-19–related health services and COVID-19 health supports to keep people safe.

While more people are being vaccinated each day, government continues working hard to keep people safe, and the budget allocates $900 million in 2021 and 2022 to support the province’s continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, this includes funding for the provincial vaccination program so that every British Columbian can receive their COVID-19 vaccine.

I just received mine. I got a shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine. As they changed the age requirements on Monday, I was able to get a vaccine on Tuesday. I’m so very grateful for that. I alluded last time that I would be able to register last Friday. I was able to register last Friday. Then, luckily, the AstraZeneca age was lowered, and I was able to get a shot of that. I’m very thankful for that.

Definitely I encourage everyone in this House, if you are 40-plus, to go out and get that vaccine. The best vaccine is the vaccine that you are first offered.

Testing and contact tracing will also be in the budget, as well as expanded flu immunization, increased capacity at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, and the rural and remote collaborative framework to improve access to health services for rural, remote and Indigenous communities. Also included in the budget will be ongoing supports to ensure the safety of long-term care and assisted-living facilities, including screening staff and providing additional personal protective equipment to help keep seniors safe.

[2:40 p.m.]

As you can see here, this budget definitely includes the kind of investment, the kind of spending we need to get through the pandemic and keep people healthy and safe during it. This is only one part of the budget speech that I see a lot of hope in and that I must commend the Finance Minister and her team for being so thoughtful about. So I fully support this budget.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I would like to maybe talk about child care. It’s a huge investment, so important for families and will help people get back to work. It can’t be said enough how great our child care program is, and it’s in the budget. So far, over 35,000 B.C. families now have access to low-cost child care through historic investments over the last four years. Budget 2021 more than doubles the number of $10-a-day child care spaces, which means 75 more child care centres and the thousands of families who rely on them will benefit from the program.

We will continue to create new spaces every year, and more families will have access to child care on school grounds with the expansion of the seamless day pilot program. The current early childhood educator wage enhancement will be doubled to $4 an hour, benefitting approximately 11,000 early childhood educators. And 2,000 more families will have access to programs that improve inclusion and day-to-day activities for children with support needs. Also, $20 million will provide additional health and safety grants to child care providers to ensure centres remain safe through increased cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment or space improvements.

Families in the Fraser Valley will now have access to almost 400 new licensed child care spaces as part of the province’s ongoing commitment to increasing access to child care through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. These new child care spaces will be a wonderful resource for families, as the Fraser Valley’s population continues to grow.

We know having accessible and affordable child care is a top priority for British Columbians, and that’s why it’s important that we’re seeing new spaces open up in communities across the province. The Childcare B.C. new spaces fund is supporting six projects that will create a total of 380 new licensed child care spaces in the Fraser Valley — in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission and Maple Ridge. These spaces are part of the fastest creation of child care spaces in B.C.’s history, and we’re making a milestone here.

These are just going to be wonderful for my community. I’m so happy that of the 380 new spaces, 138 will be here in Chilliwack. Since July 2018, more than 20,000 new licensed child care spaces have been funded in British Columbia, 422 right here in Chilliwack. Throughout the province, the Childcare B.C. plan has helped parents save up to $1,600 a month per child through the affordable child care benefit and child care fee reduction initiative. As a result of these investments, parents in the Fraser Valley have saved nearly $60 million on child care — $60 million. That’s amazing.

Early childhood educators in these communities have received over $3.2 million in wage enhancements. With B.C.’s combined affordability initiatives, more than 36,000 children have received child care for $10 a day or less since the beginning of the Childcare B.C. plan.

[2:45 p.m.]

Maybe I’d like to stop here. Child care is such a wonderful thing, and it’s such a great thing that we’re doing for families, yet I hear the opposition get up and complain about it during question period. They wonder why we talk about their 16 years of mismanagement of our province. They talk about a fudge-it budget. I myself think that their budgets are fudge-it budgets, where they did things such as loot ICBC to balance their budgets.

Instead of asking questions about great things like affordable child care, affordable rental housing and social assistance rates, they should be asking questions…. They shouldn’t be asking questions about what they didn’t do and then complaining about why we are doing them. They should ask questions about what they did.

Instead of maybe asking about affordable rental housing and having the AG dunk on you in question period, perhaps you should ask a question like: “Why aren’t you selling public assets off for pennies on the dollar?” That would be a question that would be more with their brand. Or instead of asking questions about social insurance rates, which weren’t raised for ten years under a B.C. Liberal government yet have been raised by $325 since the B.C. NDP took over…. Instead of asking questions about that and having the Premier skate circles around you in question period, perhaps you should ask, “Why aren’t you looting ICBC?” or a question such as that.

They can take my advice or leave it, but I’ll just put it there. That’s why when we are asked about things that we are doing that they didn’t do, they’re going to hear about why we are doing them and how they didn’t do them.

I’d like to talk about the B.C. recovery benefit. It’s helped approximately 2.5 million British Columbians with more than $1.2 billion to date, while stimulating local economies. When folks — working people or poor people — get money, they spend it in their local communities. So it really is economic stimulus for local communities. The benefit provides a one-time tax-free payment of up to $1,000 for eligible families and single parents and up to $500 for eligible individuals. I don’t think I’m telling anyone anything new here. Budget 2021 includes $100 million to continue to fund the B.C. recovery benefit.

I can tell you that for my constituents, the B.C. recovery benefit has meant a lot. I have one constituent, who’s a senior and is on a fixed income of about $13,000 a year, and $500, to this man, was life-changing around Christmas and was so important and so impactful. That’s the power of a B.C. NDP government. It makes positive material changes in folks’ lives.

I would like to turn here and talk about education briefly. As the members of the House know, I used to be a school trustee. I’ve said it before, but under the B.C. Liberal government, we didn’t get much investment in education, especially here in Chilliwack. We had our budgets cut back, but even more important is that we didn’t get any capital projects or capital spending in Chilliwack.

We ballooned our portable population. We know kids learn better when they’re in a brick-and-mortar school and not out in a portable. Worse than that, portables are something that we shouldn’t strive for. School districts have to purchase portables and pay for their upkeep out of their operating capital.

[2:50 p.m.]

Instead of building capital projects and building class­room spaces in Chilliwack, the B.C. Liberal government was downloading its costs onto the backs of the kids in Chilliwack. That’s what it was doing. There’s a whole generation of kids who were robbed of everything that they deserve in education.

I will just speak about a couple of the capital projects that are in Budget 2021. Our government has made it a top priority to address urgent enrolment needs for schools throughout B.C., and the expansion of capital projects in Chilliwack will move students out of portables and into modern new learning spaces while helping them get the most of their education. We’re proud to see multiple school projects currently under construction in Chilliwack. I can’t wait to visit students and staff in their new learning spaces, once it’s safe to do so, myself.

We are getting a ten-classroom addition to Vedder Elementary School in our community, which will provide over 240 new student spaces. This is an $11.8 million investment from the provincial government to education in Chilliwack. We are going to get an addition to a secondary school, which will provide 450 new student spaces. That’s a $23.9 million project — very exciting and entirely in the provincial budget.

I remember the B.C. Liberal government had a rule where if you wanted a capital project built, for them to okay it, you had to pony up money out of your operating capital — once again, stealing from the per-student funding, basically…

Mr. Speaker: Member.

D. Coulter: …forcing us to use our operating capital.

Mr. Speaker: Member, be careful with your language, please, with your words.

D. Coulter: Okay. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

In the previous budget, Chilliwack was also funded for an integrated arts and technology school. It’s going to be called Imagine High. That’s a $15.4 million provincial in­vestment. We’ve got a new elementary school that’s already in construction — Stitó:s elementary-middle school. That’s a $48.6 million provincial investment.

Another thing I’m really excited about is the widening of Highway 1. While it doesn’t reach all the way out to Chilliwack, it will benefit my constituents greatly. It will eventually come past the Watkins Road exit, which is almost to Chilliwack, but that will ease traffic congestion from that point into the city. Many of my constituents will undoubtedly benefit from that and be able to make it to and from work quicker. Folks will have a lot more time to spend with their families and stuff.

What’s great about these large infrastructure projects — not the school capital projects but the large infrastructure projects, like highway widening or other large infrastructure projects like that — is that they’ll be built under community benefit agreements. Community benefit agreements are terrific.

Nearly 20 percent of our construction workers are currently 55 or over, and only 12 percent are under the age of 25. Women only represent 14 percent of the total workforce and only 6 percent of the on-site employment, while Indigenous peoples represent just 8 percent of total em­ployment.

[2:55 p.m.]

Community benefits agreements look to change that dynamic. They will help youth. They will help Indigenous people. They will help women all find meaningful employment in the construction industry. It will help to train the new generation of workers. It increases apprenticeship opportunities, with a target of 25 percent participation rate on community benefit agreements. That is so good for young people who want to get into the building trades and make that their life and make that their living.

So many people who work in the building trades go from job to job to job, and they don’t always have apprenticeships on these jobs. That’s why the workforce is aging in the construction industry. Increasing apprenticeship opportunities will provide a more achievable path to red seal trade certifications for apprentices and achieve a more stable and more equitable labour relations environment. I’m pretty excited about community benefits agreements, as well as very excited about the widening of the highway.

What I would like to talk about here for a second as well, which has a great impact on my constituents here in Chilliwack, is mental health and addictions, and the investments that this budget is going to mean for my constituents. We have quite a bit of mental health and addiction issues here in Chilliwack. We have folks using drugs on the street often.

We recently had a spate of overdoses. We had 15 in under an hour. It was because someone was mixing benzoids into the opioids. People thought they were getting opiates, and they were getting benzoids instead. Narcan does not work on that type of overdose. Those people, unfortunately, lost their lives, and it was tragic.

When we’re talking about mental health, this budget…. So $97 million to build a network of mental health supports for youth, through increased mental health funding for schools; new Foundry centres that provide young people health and wellness resources in their community; and integrated child and youth support teams for 15 more school districts. That’s quite exciting stuff.

Also, there will be $61 million in funding over three years, to improve access and quality of mental health services, including expanding eating disorder care and better access to suicide prevention services, and early psychosis intervention. And $14 million for the First Nations Health Authority to deliver mental health and addiction services to Indigenous peoples.

Substance use and overdose. There will be a substance use and overdose emergency response, which will have $330 million over the fiscal plan to provide a full spectrum of substance use treatment and recovery services, including $152 million for opioid treatment. And 195 new substance use treatment and recovery beds in communities throughout the province, to help more people on a path to recovery. That's really exciting stuff for the constituents of Chilliwack and really, the constituents around the province.

[3:00 p.m.]

We obviously have a crisis here. Many people are calling it the other, or second, health crisis that we’re having in our province, as well as the pandemic. Resources and investments in this area have been needed for…. Our government has been making them and continues to make them.

This budget is focused on supporting people through the pandemic and after — to support people through the pandemic and to help insure people don’t fall further be­hind as B.C. moves towards recovery. The budget includes supports and services to make B.C. more affordable for everyone, creating a more affordable B.C. for everyone. We are going to come out of this pandemic and recovery work stronger and more inclusive and make a more affordable and more equitable British Columbia.

Another exciting thing coming out of this budget: free public transportation for children 12 and under. Over 340,000 children 12 and under, around the province, will be able to ride public transportation for free in time for classes this September. The government is investing $26 million here, including $50 million from the federal-provincial restart agreement, to help families get around more affordably. Families in the TransLink service area alone will save up to $672 a year for each child that uses a monthly pass. That’s amazing. That’s great stuff, and this budget delivers that.

I talked a little bit about education capital funding, but we’re going to support education in other ways. The pandemic has been especially hard on B.C.’s youth, teachers and support staff, and the budget continues to make in­vestments in B.C.’s education system to improve access to mental health supports in schools and to develop a framework to address racism and reconciliation so that the next generation can continue to develop with the safety and support they need to thrive.

The budget invests $1.2 billion in operating funding, over the fiscal plan, to support the growing number of students in B.C.’s K-to-12 system and to support wage in­creases negotiated under the sustainable services negotiating mandate. Of course, I spoke about the capital investments before, but there are going to be $3.5 billion in capital investments in education, over the fiscal plan. It’s exciting.

I spoke briefly about affordable housing. We have built 26,000 new homes or that are underway. This is exciting. This is all going to be affordable housing.

I’m just going to maybe start a bit of a conclusion there. This budget is forward-looking. It’s inspirational; it’s very thoughtful. I thank the minister and her team. They have done a great job here. This budget is going to help us to get through this pandemic healthy and safe and to come out the other side a stronger province. I urge all my colleagues to support this budget.

A. Olsen: I am pleased today to stand and speak to Budget 2021.

In the first few lines of the budget speech, the Minister of Finance offers the lens that the B.C. NDP government wishes British Columbians to view their effort through: “They’ve got our backs.” We should not be surprised, as this rhetoric has been framing everything that this government has been saying for the past four years. Even while they’ve been talking consistently about “making life more affordable,” they have yet to show the courage to take the decisive and even unpopular actions to tackle systemic issues like inequality and affordability. The same goes for Budget 2021.

[3:05 p.m.]

Even as we welcome investments sprinkled across different program areas in this government, what is lacking is the ambition to set British Columbia up for a strong future. This is especially clear in how the B.C. NDP is tackling inequality and climate change.

In Budget 2021, the B.C. NDP offer little in the way of a unified sense of what they are trying to achieve — a common agenda or a purpose. At the beginning of the pandemic, people expressed their hope that their government would take the opportunity to transform the economy, through bold vision and audacious policy proposals. However, while the B.C. NDP say they have our backs, they deliver a throne speech and a budget that takes a buckshot approach at spending billions of dollars while not clearly articulating the outcomes that they’re trying to achieve.

Do the B.C. NDP have our backs? Let’s explore that. In Budget 2021, there is approximately $110 million invested in British Columbia’s reconciliation effort this fiscal year. As I’ve previously noted, I appreciate the investments the government has made in housing for Indigenous people, both on reserve and off. I have been thrilled with the spending in earlier budget cycles on Indigenous language revitalization. However, I feel I must return to a common theme for me, and that is the disappointment I feel when parsing the signals from the noise.

For the past few years, I have consistently highlighted an important signal that the B.C. NDP could send to Indigenous people about their commitment to decolonization and reconciliation. The remains of our ancestors lie in basements of museums around the world. Along with our sacred items of cultural importance, they stand for a time when it was acceptable to raid the graves of Indigenous people.

The administrative work to repatriate our ancestors and items of cultural significance is expensive, time-consuming and traumatic. Just as the government found a key action of reconciliation was to awaken our sleeping languages, so too is the importance of the repatriation effort that need not take decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be better spent on other programs that the money was actually designated for.

I will say it again, and I will continue to say it until this government puts in place a meaningful program that doesn’t rely entirely on Indigenous Nations but can support those Indigenous Nations in these efforts. This would be excellent work for the Royal B.C. Museum as they try to mend their relationships with Indigenous people in British Columbia.

The B.C. NDP detailed several programs they are supporting this year: anti-racism initiatives in health care, skills training, increased administrative capacity in the provincial government to support the execution of the reconciliation and other agreements, child care, housing, tourism and environmental efforts. The largest expense is $60 million which will provide “dedicated funding that supports Indigenous participation in land and resource activities…negotiations and engagement on legislation, policy and programs.” There is no doubt that this money is necessary, especially considering the B.C. NDP government remains committed to the 19th and 20th century extractive economy.

What the B.C. NDP are going to wrap their heads around is that prosperity for Indigenous people must be more than being yoked to the priorities of the provincial government, which are focused on the destruction of ecosystems. We need to create the space for Indigenous people to bring their own initiatives for economic development and prosperity to the table. For instance, a Narwhal article this week featured a Gitanyow project to set up an Indigenous protected area and, specifically, the response from our provincial government: “Well, industry doesn’t want to hear it.”

Well, I raise my hands up to the provincial government for the important contribution in a variety of useful programs that will help Indigenous people. They will prove that they “have our back” when their promises of self-determination are allowed to influence the discussion and outcomes at the table and when Indigenous people no longer have to plead to have the remains of our ancestors returned to the rightful place in our homelands. Until the latter happens, there will continue to be significant disturbance in our territories.

[3:10 p.m.]

I have mixed feelings about the B.C. NDP’S approach to housing in this 2021 budget. On one hand, they announce a $2 billion announcement to increase the lending capacity of the successful HousingHub program. The Minister of Finance claims this novel financing program will lend the capital for the construction of 9,000 new housing units for middle-income families over the next three to five years. This is a good program. I know many organizations and non-profits in Saanich North and the Islands are looking to this program to support the construction of affordable housing in our communities, mostly on the southern Gulf Islands, where housing is desperately needed.

However, despite this program on housing affordability, I don't believe the B.C. NDP has our back. In fact, this B.C. NDP government is shying away from taking meaningful action on housing by trying to build our way out of a housing crisis, and the B.C. NDP is not going to succeed at making housing any more affordable for British Columbians than the B.C. Liberals before them by taking the same approach of that former government.

In the 2018 budget, the B.C. NDP minority government set out what looked like it could be a promising path to begin tackling housing affordability with the 30-point housing plan, including some demand-side measures. However, since that time, the market has continued to escalate, and it has become clear that earlier measures are not making much difference. Yet we see no willingness to update these measures and take new actions to actually cool the market. Instead, it seems this government is content to watch as housing stretches further and further out of reach for British Columbians, particularly lower- and middle-income families and young people.

The truth is that this Finance Minister, like every Finance Minister since Bill Vander Zalm and probably before that, is too reliant on the revenue generated by real estate transactions to take any significant action to cool the super-heated real estate market. Housing prices are out of control, not just in the greater Victoria area, not just in the Lower Mainland, but in communities right across our province. However, housing supplies substantial revenues to the provincial coffers.

No doubt, measures to cool the housing market would be controversial, but what we need is a courageous Premier and Finance Minister who will speak honestly and directly to British Columbians about the necessity of those measures. Until the provincial government diversifies the sources of revenue into the treasury, we are going to, unfortunately, resemble that dog that relentlessly chases its own tail, only to never catch it and to stop briefly to celebrate that yes, we are still chasing our tail.

In addition, for anyone who is planning a construction project right now, they must have a serious look at the cost of building materials. Even as the B.C. NDP pumps billions of dollars into financing programs to en­courage the construction of new homes, the cost of lumber has exploded 300, 400 percent. As a result, marginal projects are now unsustainable. In-stream projects are blowing through their contingencies and are likely to go over budget.

The truth is that the HousingHub program we celebrate has been exhausted for months. Applicants have been waiting for this government’s decision on whether the Treasury Board was going to re-up on the program or move on. While this government dragged its heels month after month, projects that could have been up and out of the ground while the cost of building materials was still reasonable now have to be prudently reconsidered. As my colleague pointed out in her budget res­ponse, the situation is having a disproportionate impact on low- to moderate-income British Columbians and young people who had the dream of home ownership and are now having to reconsider.

[3:15 p.m.]

The Ministry of Health budget continues to grow, now well over $20 billion and counting. Certainly, this past year our health system has been tested. COVID-19 has exhausted our front-line health care workers. I raise my hands up to them as they continue to face what seems like an endless battle with a vicious pandemic.

A Vancouver Sun article from yesterday noted that 60 percent of nurses in British Columbia are showing signs of “emotional distress leading up to early signs of PTSD.” The head of the Nurses Union, Christine Sorensen, was unequivocal. The platitudes from the politicians are not enough. Hearing the Health Minister refer to the number of beds that are available does not reflect the current reality facing nurses in our health care system. As Sorensen said of nurses in B.C.: “They have done a remarkable job over the last year and have not been given enough credit. They feel incredibly undervalued by the employer and government.”

I have fundamental questions of this government about the decision-making process that chose to ignore the experts warning of an impending third wave that now has our health care system bursting at its seams, but that will come in the inquiry later.

There are welcome investments into health care in this budget: $585 million to train more health care support workers, $495 million over three years to increase diagnostic imaging and $45 million over three years to ad­dress the systemic Indigenous racism. I’m pleased to see the $253 million in the budget on team-based and urgent primary care. The specific mention of supplying British Columbians “faster access to doctors and nurse practitioners” should not be overlooked.

If I were to ask the 14,000 residents of the Saanich Peninsula who are without a family doctor if they felt that the B.C. NDP government have their backs, what do you think that they would say? If I asked them if they think a bigger walk-in clinic, when what they want is a relationship with primary care practitioners, was a sign that their government has their backs, what do you think that they’d say? What I need to see is how this quarter-billion dollars is going to be spent. Will it be on more urgent care clinics or primary care networks?

My constituents want a family doctor or a team of primary care practitioners to build a meaningful relationship with. It is still to be seen, after four years of promising team-based primary care homes and networks attaching British Columbians to longitudinal care, if the B.C. NDP government is actually going to deliver on the promise they made in 2017.

Five years ago public health officials declared an emergency due to drug overdoses. This tragic situation did not just happen overnight. The mental health crisis in British Columbia had been growing for years before. But since they declared the emergency, more than 7,000 British Columbians have perished to illicit drug poisonings. In Budget 2021, $500 million will be invested in youth-focused care, First Nations mental health and addictions, early psychosis intervention, eating disorder care, substance use treatment and recovery and opioid treatment services. There is no doubt in my mind that these cash injections into the mental health support network will help a great deal.

These investments have been a long time in coming. Over the five years, there has been so much grief and sadness. So it is in this context that I must note that the B.C. NDP continues to be reluctant in their reactive and painstakingly slow approach. This government launched the Pathway to Hope plan in June 2019. Finally, in Budget 2021, we see the first large investment in the plan.

[3:20 p.m.]

This government remains in response mode. For mon­ths, the B.C. Green caucus has been asking government to cover psychiatric services for mild-to-moderate mental health concerns in our existing health care model. There is no recognition that mental health is part of the overall health of our bodies. The mind is indeed part of the body. Unfortunately, that basic reality continues to be ignored.

To prove that this government has our backs, they need to be proactive. More importantly, British Columbians de­serve preventative mental health services. To get the correct treatment and therapy, we need to see the correct professional. It’s unlikely that our family doctor can offer much more for us than a prescription. Currently only British Columbians who can afford to get the help that they need get it.

None of this, of course, is good enough. It is when the B.C. NDP change their philosophical approach to mental health care that they will truly show that they indeed have our backs.

A robust public education system will always be a priority for the B.C. Green caucus. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve heard a great deal of fear, stress and tension coming from those working in our public education system. Many British Columbians are questioning whether this B.C. NDP government has had the backs of educators, administrators, support workers and students.

The provincial government supplied a one-time a­mount, a cash injection, to fund the extra costs in PPE, hand sanitizers and other materials to follow public health requirements. That money hasn't been extended in Budget 2021. From the perspective of this document, it looks as if the B.C. NDP are taking the approach that by September 2021, this pandemic will be all completely behind us.

In the lead-up to this budget, we’ve heard from school districts from across the province that they’re facing significant budgetary challenges. The $438 million investment in public education brings our total contribution to the ministry to $7.1 billion in operational funding. That’s the second-largest sum of any ministry. These funds will be enough to cover the increases to teacher and support staff contracts only. However, this falls far short of what is needed.

I’ve heard from many of my constituents that their children are not receiving the educational support that they need. I’ve heard that administrators are often asked to de­cide which students get extra help and which students are to go without. I’ve heard stories about delays in getting assessments for our children, so there are many students that may need extra help who are not even given a consideration.

This is simply not good enough. As a parent with children in our public education system, I do not feel like these actions are of a government that has my back, the backs of my child’s educators or of our children.

Child care has been a policy priority for the B.C. NDP government since the 2017 election. Experts, parents and advocates have been clear that child care is a key factor in affordability for families in British Columbia. During the fall election, the Premier committed to $250 million per year for child care. After he made this promise, advocates came to us to tell the B.C. Greens — quite apologetically — that our commitments fell well short of these new expectations that the Premier had set.

Premier Horgan delivered a juicy election promise. But when called on to deliver it….

Mr. Speaker: Member, no names.

A. Olsen: The Premier. Sorry. Thank you.

It is this B.C. NDP government that has fallen well short of their own expectations, and $250 million over three years is a fraction of the money they promised to invest in this ministry. Even the provincial government’s own bud­get documents needed to remind the reader of the 2018 investments, likely to distract from the underwhelming commitment this fiscal year.

[3:25 p.m.]

I’m thankful that, finally, the B.C. NDP government is going to move child care into the public education system, where it belongs. For the B.C. NDP to truly have the backs of families, there needs to be affordable, high-quality early childhood education systems as well as before- and after-school care available for our children. While the $4-an-hour wage increase is welcome, I’m sure that if the B.C. NDP is to have the backs of our early childhood educators, they are going to have to do much better than $23 per hour.

I’ve heard the B.C. NDP members stand in this chamber and talk about their climate action and their commitment to our environment. Just this morning the member for Nelson-Creston delivered a two-minute statement about the desperate need to transition from fossil fuels. I believe she meant it. However, what she and all other members of the B.C. NDP caucus, who care about addressing climate action…. What are they doing to force our Premier to stop subsidizing fracking and the gas liquefaction industry?

As the Pembina Institute said in their response to the 2021 budget, the government’s plans equal “small steps” for climate action. I’m with the member for Nelson-Creston. But what is needed is for the B.C. NDP to reflect the sense of urgency that I heard in her voice this morning.

I’m happy to see Budget 2021 follow through on the commitment to create a $500 million strategic investment fund for British Columbia. We’ve been calling for a fund like this for years. We see other important investments, commitments like the $130 million for clean transportation, including investments in rebates and zero-emission vehicles and active transportation and the PST exemption on e-bikes. However, I stand to deliver this speech in this chamber on Earth Day. I must recognize that this budget is striving only for a greener economy, tinkering around the edges and missing the opportunity that was there to be taken.

We have been encouraging the B.C. NDP to lay out a comprehensive vision for a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. We want them to embrace the vision of their member for Nelson-Creston, to match the desperation in her voice by using our competitive advantages to be leaders, not followers. Instead, this B.C. NDP government does not have the focus or the ambition that’s necessary, lacking the political will to match what other jurisdictions are doing or, better yet, to get ahead of them.

When I think about the frame of this speech, a government that claims to have our backs, in the short term, the B.C. NDP has offered us some trinkets and blankets. But over the long term, they continue to try to be all things to everybody and shy away from tackling systemic issues with systemic solutions. The B.C. NDP’s own throne speech from last week said: “Too often, economic growth in our province has come at the expense of the environment. That must change.” But we’re not seeing anything in this budget to make that change.

The B.C. NDP has failed to outline or fund a paradigm shift in the forestry sector, as they promised. The budget for the Ministry of Forests is set to decline over the next few years. Every time the Premier has promised to implement all the recommendations of his own old growth strategic review panel and promised wholesale changes to land use and landscape management. How­ever, his government has invested nothing to deliver in a transitional way from old-growth logging. Without proper funding to implement the recommendations of the old growth panel report, this government’s promises on old growth are meaningless.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

As I stated clearly in my response to the throne speech, benefits agreements with Indigenous people are specific to certain resource extraction activities. They are not broad economic development tools. To protect old growth, the B.C. NDP need to step up with a fund for conservation financing to compensate for the lack of revenue that was promised in those benefits agreements that will not be realized if those forests are not to be cut. There is no fund­ing for that in this budget. There is no funding for Indigenous-led protected areas or to support communities through transition.

[3:30 p.m.]

Here we are again with a government that believes you can change the status quo by doing the same thing over and over and over again, while standing up, members in this House, to talk about the change that they dream of.

As I said at the beginning of this response to Budget 2021, the B.C. NDP have offered little in the way of a unified sense of what they are trying to achieve, a common vision, agenda, or purpose. They have failed to take the opportunity to transform the economy through bold vision and audacious policy proposals. The B.C. NDP claim to have our backs, yet their throne speech and budget spend billions of dollars while not clearly articulating the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

With that, I’ll take my seat and thank you for the opportunity to speak to Budget 2021.

Hon. N. Cullen: I hope I’m coming through okay. I’m some hundreds of kilometres away from you and the Leg­islature, but with the powers of our technology today, so much that once was thought impossible is now possible. Legislators gathering from around B.C. and in our capital, across Canada — able to talk to one another about issues that matter.

I am speaking to you today from Wet’suwet’en territory, specifically Gidimt’en territory, where I have the honour and privilege of being able to live with my family and represent the much larger area of Stikine, the largest riding in British Columbia and, I would argue, the most beautiful, although I’m sure my friend from the north coast and some other places may argue differently. I think, at least, we have a good conversation about who represents the most beautiful place in our Legislature.

It is an honour and privilege to stand here today and address Budget 2021, in which our government — as all budgets do, our government in this document, in this plan — outlines our values, what we believe to be important, setting out to British Columbians what our priorities are and what our plan is for the coming year.

It’s been said once, but it bears repeating: these are more than challenging times for all of us, including for our government — for our ability to address the problems and challenges not just of today, but also to seek out the opportunities that British Columbians recently elected us to office to do.

It does bear mentioning that, of course, this is the first time in B.C. history that a New Democrat Premier was re-elected to office. I think, in large measure, it was this government’s ability in the last session, in the last sitting of the House, to be able to manage through incredibly uncertain times — challenging times for all of us — but also to see and take advantage of those opportunities that are so important for us as a province and in our individual communities. I think Budget 2021, in its broad strokes and its specific efforts, continues that legacy forward for British Columbians.

We’ve had to be careful. We’ve had to be nimble and change to the adapting times. I think the Finance Minister deserves an enormous amount of credit, and, of course, all of her officials and the many, many British Columbians who gave their input into this budget cycle, into the document that we have before us, and to outline what their priorities are.

Too often, in previous governments under the Liberals and whatnot, this was a very insulated process, in which the very wealthy and the well connected were always given access to the Finance Minister — to the Premier’s office — where their list of demands were always front and centre in the government’s thinking, and also came front and centre in the government’s spending initiatives through various budgets.

I can recall those dark days here in the northwest when Liberal budgets would come down, and entire swaths of our community would be cut out, not just deep cuts to civil servants, which, in the end, turned out to be a “cutting off your nose to spite your face” exercise, as resource development couldn’t happen, as consultations were abrupted, because we just didn’t have the staff. Those who are not wealthy and well-connected, those working-class British Columbians, those on the lower end of the economic scale just couldn’t get the attention of the then government, and we see the contrast and the difference here today.

[3:35 p.m.]

In a number of places, we can see a very stark contrast, as the Cullen commission that is going on right now in British Columbia — no relation — where that inquiry is going on into money laundering in British Columbia, where current sitting members of the Liberal caucus, former cabinet ministers, the former Premier herself, Christy Clark, have had to testify under oath about the practices of their government in office, by their actions and inactions when it came to something so devastating to our communities and economy as money laundering for some of the most nefarious drug cartels and crime syndicates in the world who were pushing through casinos and pushing through the housing market, particularly in the Lower Mainland, where a government, at the very best, had turned a blind eye and, at the very worst, had enabled and participated in something more nefarious.

Now, one of the most important things for any of us to do as elected people is to work our best each and every day to represent the people who sent us to work. In Stikine, being such a large and remote part of the province in some instances, it is often felt that we don’t have our voices heard. When I look through this budget, I find item after item, program after program, where the needs of small communities, the needs of rural and remote communities, of Indigenous communities are heard time and time again.

This is through the efforts of those communities, of those advocates who say: “Working people matter. Rural British Columbia matters, and we just need a partner in Victoria in the provincial government who can work with us to take on the challenges that we have, which we can enumerate, and also seize those opportunities.”

I want to take a small step away from the issues specifically of the budget to make note of, as has been done by other speakers, the ongoing and heroic work of our front-line workers. Those in the health care system, the nurses, the doctors, the long-term-care aides who are able, each and every day, to get up in challenging circumstances and go to work and do all they can to keep our communities safe — this budget responds to them. Our government responds to you and hears you and knows what the stresses have been.

We have watched the efforts of the CDC and of the Northern Health to be able to get vaccines out into our communities. They have the staffing and the resources that have been allocated in previous budgets, and continue to be allocated in this one, to make sure that when we have vaccine supply — that is, of course, controlled by Ottawa and the suppliers that they’ve lined up — that vaccine moves to the most vulnerable communities first. That has immediate and important effects.

Of course, it’s been in the news just recently…. The community of Prince Rupert, which my friend from the North Coast represents, had some incredibly difficult times. There were outbreaks that, despite the best effort of local officials and the community abroad, were very difficult and challenging to contain. The decision was made by our health authorities and by Dr. Bonnie Henry’s office to go in and vaccinate in an all-of-community approach.

The results have been incredible. These results matter not only, of course, for the people of Prince Rupert and Port Edward and the communities surrounding those two centres, but, I would argue, for the entire province. When we see the vaccination rates go up in Prince Rupert and we see the hospitalization rate drop consistently, we know that they work.

For those having concerns or doubts, it is fine to do some research. The Internet can be a dangerous place for that type of research. Find reliable sources. Do the research yourself. Understand that the risks of COVID-19 and the variants that we now see are so much greater than the infinitesimally small risks that have been identified through some of these vaccines. If offered a vaccine, go and get it. It keeps you safe, your family safe. Eventually, it will be the path out of this difficult time that we’ve been in for more than a year now.

To the people in Prince Rupert, to the people in Port Ed and Haida Gwaii and all of those coastal communities, thank you for showing up. For all the volunteers that made that community-wide vaccination possible, thank you for your efforts. What you did is an example, not just to each other, but to the larger population here in British Columbia of what is possible, what that light at the end of the tunnel actually looks like, and that hope is coming. I look forward to being able to visit my many friends on the north coast when it is safe to do so once again.

Now, Stikine, the place I represent, part of the northwest of British Columbia here…. Being far away, we also have seen times of great uncertainty. We’ve seen the ups and downs because we are predominantly a resource-based economy. Markets fluctuate that have little to do with us, if anything, but affect us greatly.

[3:40 p.m.]

One of the things that we look for, when the provincial government and the federal governments make their budgets known, is: is there any way to provide more of the stability, more of the ability to plan long term, of building up our communities?

Towards the end of the speech, perhaps if I have time, I’ll enumerate all the different investments we have made, from Old Massett in the far northwest edge of our pro­vince and country all the way to Fort St. [audio interrupted] George and up into the northeast. Places I would also note that oftentimes are not represented by members of the sitting government.

Our government has decided, for good reason, that those investments still matter. Not only did we do affordable housing in Prince Rupert; we also did it in Kitimat. Not only are we building hospitals in Surrey and Richmond and other places; we’re building them in Terrace and Fort St. James. And that matters. When British Columbians elect their government, they want a government that works for all British Columbians.

I am one who firmly believes that the moment the election is decided, the moment voters have made their determination, it is incumbent upon the government of the day to do our best to put aside the partisanship and the partisan interests of specific places and times and opportunities and seek the projects and identify the investments that are best for the province as a whole. I think investments like those schools and those hospitals and those affordable housing places across B.C. — across northern B.C., in particular — do us all well.

I also very much appreciate the caution and precaution in this budget — to look at making sure that there’s money set aside, contingency funds. If things that we can’t predict — who could have predicted what we’ve been in for the last year? — come forward, we have some room to manoeuvre. We have budget available to us to be able to go into, without any great shock or surprise, and draw from to make sure that the supports for communities, businesses and families are there to go forward.

Now let’s get into the specific topics. I think that’s where things really start to light up for British Columbians in terms of what they can expect — the investments that are being made in this budget document, in this budget plan.

Taking infrastructure alone, this is the backbone, the skeletal system, of our economy and our society: the roads and the bridges and the new infrastructure, like the high-speed Internet and cell service that we’re putting in. A little north of $26 billion over the next few years, which translates directly to 85,000 jobs, 85,000 family-supporting jobs for people to go out and build British Columbia back up stronger.

Not only does this budget take us through this crisis, but it looks to the recovery. It looks to what’s next in the investments. That takes me over to the small and medium-sized business community, particularly the tourism sector, the restaurant sector.

We can say — and it’s true — that more than 100 percent of pre-pandemic job levels have returned to British Columbia. Let me say that again, because this is important. British Columbia, when you look across all the provinces in Canada, has had the best economic recovery of anybody. That has to be seen, in large part, to the supports that we’ve given, which have also been the best per capita for any province in Canada during this entire time.

This is about values and priorities. We’ve seen the recovery, but it hasn’t been equal across the board. Of course, the tourism sector has been hit hard. So we have put in money, significant contributions, which was called for by the tourism industry, to make sure that the promotion is there, that the infrastructure is there. When people are able to return, people are able to safely travel again, our tourism sector will be there, and it will be strong.

For the restaurants, we know that the circuit breaker announced recently, the new health orders that came down from Dr. Henry’s office to make sure that people are kept safe…. A healthy society leads to a healthy economy. For those that say it’s one or the other, it’s consistently baffled me. We know the circuit breaker funding is there for restaurants to make sure that they can keep adapting.

I’ve been meeting with restaurants virtually, standing on the street two metres apart with our masks, and talking about how things are going. Some have really, really struggled with this, how to adapt their businesses on the fly. Others have been able to thrive and grow new ventures and new avenues and new ways of doing things. I’m thinking of a number of the entrepreneurial small businesses here in Smithers and Hazelton that have done so well.

Health care, the primary reason for much of our conversation. I’m looking at my friend from North Vancouver and all that she’s done over the many years. Our investment of $4 billion into health care and $500 million into mental health…. It has been said by many, and my friend from Saanich North and the Islands talked about this. We’ve said sometimes a dual crisis…. That’s often referred to the opioid crisis, which has been devastating to so many communities and families. We’ve put money into that — $500 million to make sure that we’re doing more.

[3:45 p.m.]

We were bending that curve down. We were reducing the number of deaths. When COVID hit, you could see the curve come back up — the lethal supply, the challenge of being able to get at people and have access to them to help them through the crisis that they were going through.

We’ve seen this third challenge, a broad challenge that has faced us these last number of years, with respect to mental health, this year in particular. When we go into isolation — out of an abundance of caution and because that’s what the science tells us, that we need to not mingle with people — we also know that there’s a knock-on effect, that people struggle more with mental health needs. It’s often been a part of the health care system not properly acknowledged by governments.

We can see the physical form. We can talk about making sure that if somebody injures themself or feels physically sick…. We need to have a public health care system. It was the NDP, of course, who launched that initiative first, in Saskatchewan under Tommy Douglas, and then pushed for it federally and arrived with a mostly funded public health care system.

We know that. The mental health component has been difficult to talk about. It is so encouraging that we see pol­itical leaders, sports figures, celebrities, leadership from across the board in the faith community and the Indigenous community being able to at least begin to talk about mental health struggles more. Then we see government supports start to realize the importance of it. We see it here in this budget, which is so incredibly encouraging.

Often in the past, budgets have seen things like child care as an afterthought, rather than a central plank, as an important piece. I can remember the credit unions of British Columbia some years ago really challenging the business community more broadly when health care was seen as a social issue, not an economic one. We’ve seen, through our government, the 35,000 spaces and the doubling, importantly, on this.

We’ve often undervalued early childhood educators — in their wages, in their training programs. This budget seeks to correct that, bringing the early childhood education workers’ wage up to $25 an hour. I know — I’ve had many Zoom calls, talking individually and collectively with child care groups across the northwest — that this was a huge barrier to attracting new people in.

We don’t have enough workers. We don’t have enough spaces. Well, you start to see how this is being addressed — the creation of more spaces, the creation of the $4 top-up per hour per worker — to make sure that that’s a living wage, that we can attract people into that industry and into that worklife.

Now, the B.C. recovery benefit grant. We can look at the numbers — 2½ million British Columbians, some billions of dollars that have gone directly into the pockets of British Columbians. Again, it shows where our priorities are. I can imagine…. I don’t have to imagine it. I can look across the country at conservative governments, one after another — I think the B.C. Liberals would find themselves in that category — not really concerning themselves overly with working people, people that are looking paycheque to paycheque. Suddenly a pandemic is upon them, and all of that uncertainty, all of that risk and worry increases greatly.

Our government came forward with that contribution to make sure people understood that we were going to be there, that we understood the stresses and that as we built back the economy, made those jobs available once again…. When the free flow of people and goods became the norm rather than the exception, we would be there.

The recovery grant was there as well as all of those pocketbook issues: more affordable child care, reducing ICBC rates, making sure people weren’t evicted out of their homes, rent freezes for businesses, tax changes, the bulk policy of buying alcohol sales for restaurants. All of these things affect people’s bottom lines, the immediate concerns.

Getting rid of MSP premiums, the single largest tax cut for working people in this province’s history. I have yet to hear a B.C. Liberal, or anyone, address that issue. They’ve always gone on about tax cuts, but they’ve often been for the most wealthy and well connected, which is really unfortunate.

Young people. So 5,000 future leaders identified and put in this budget and funded to allow 5,000 young British Columbians to enter various workplaces, with funding, to be able to do the cleanups, to be able to do the helping out at the community level.

I’m just trying to imagine these 5,000 young people that are going to be hired and deployed across this province. How will this affect the trajectory of their lives? What will they be able to do — the jobs, the participation in society? Will they be able to…? That’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives and benefit us all. It’s exciting to think about, because there’s so much that we need. We need young people to be able to participate but not always in a volunteer capacity. They’ve got bills too, and this is one of the funds that we’ve put forward to help people out.

[3:50 p.m.]

On the environment, an enormous contribution, an upping of CleanBC. This is what helps people with retrofits. This is what helps green our economy. This is what allows those innovators and entrepreneurs to get better at producing goods and services in a more environmental way.

We see the negotiations happening in the world right now, almost a positive bidding war, looking at who can do what reductions — the new administration in the United States, new commitments from Canada, commitments from our government to reduce our climate change im­pacts. Well, a lot of that is going to have to happen through innovative ways. Taking the tax off e-bikes. We know what the interest is like. Good luck trying to buy one of those vehicles right now. To get your hands on an e-bike is more than a little challenging right now.

We need to bring in that manufacturing capacity, the ability to produce on our own. If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, we as a country, we as a province need to up our manufacturing game. We need to go back to being a society that makes things. Being always reliant on the global supply chain when it comes to things like PPE and other important things in life…. Maybe relying on all those carriers across the world wasn’t the most brilliant idea. Relying on vaccine production in other countries also maybe was not such a brilliant idea that the federal government took on.

Fifteen million dollars for shoreline cleanup. I know British Columbia doesn’t think of itself as a maritime province per se, and fair enough. We’ve got a lot of big territory on the inside. But a great deal of our population huddles right up against the coast, which is also understandable — very beautiful, very powerful. For too long, it was just left as a global trash can. I know the efforts on the north coast, central coast and all the way down through the south have collected tonnes and tonnes of waste, one of our most successful programs. Well, we’re reinvesting back into that.

Also, $27 million to enhance watersheds. Now, this goes all across the province. We know a watershed strategy, which the Ministry of Environment is tasked with, is going to be able to bring strategy and security to our watersheds to make sure that they are sustainable, the resource development that’s happening within them.

The new and more complex impacts that are happening, particularly in rural B.C., are getting more and more attention, more and more interest from people who would maybe traditionally not have seen themselves interested in living the rural life. We know that’s going up. We know that the impacts and the sustainability, the carrying capacity of our watersheds need to be better understood and better managed, because it is something so precious to us. We continue to invest back in that.

Of course, the contribution to one of our absolute gems, the B.C. Parks system, the trail system. We know that British Columbians love this. We know that people, when they can travel from all over the world, admire and hold us up for this. That’s why we’re investing more money into B.C. Parks.

A question on reconciliation. Not only are we doing investments in housing on reserve, which traditionally the B.C. government, under previous governments, would never touch. Our government, somewhat and understandably impatient with the progress coming from Ottawa sometimes, simply decided we need to go in and work with our partners in those First Nations communities and build housing. We’ve done that, and we’re doing more.

On the legal and justice side, more investments. On the Aboriginal head start program, more investments to make sure that kids get a fair shot at a good start in life.

On reconciliation. This is where the rubber hits the road for many First Nations in British Columbia, particularly those in the more rural parts of B.C. when the negotiations happen — that when we are meeting as a nation to nation, government-to-government negotiations, we have the support there to make sure that the capacity is on the other side of the table. The science and the negotiating capacity is there so that when First Nations engage with the Crown, they have what they need to make sure they get the best deal possible. We put a further $60 million into that, which is outstanding.

One of the things that came to me from First Nations leaders right across the northwest is around skills development — a further $16 million identified in skills development for Aboriginal people to make sure that they can participate in society. I’m thinking of the Tahltan right now, who have been able to build up, after decades of colonial rule and destruction of the traditional governance system, a robust and incredible diversity within their own governance.

President Chad Day, Vice-President Kenneth Edzerza and others deserve an enormous amount of credit for that, and the Tahltan people. There is now virtually zero unemployment in the Tahltan Nation. There are virtually zero kids in government care.

We have seen what it looks like when we can build wild­life strategies together, when we can take the nation as a whole, meet them as a government to a government and begin to negotiate. I think there are great things ahead.

[3:55 p.m.]

If I could for a moment, Mr. Speaker, divert from the specifics of this budget to an event that the Premier, the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation and I were able to attend just recently in Lower Post — virtually, of course — which is in the northern very edge of British Columbia, up against the Yukon border.

For decades, the Daylu Dena Council was forced, when going to work at their community centre where their governance office was, to walk into the same building that had been the residential school for that community — not just for that community but for Tahltan, Taka River and the Kaska Dena people. For decades, the abuse and the horror and the torture that went on in that building was the same building that the federal government, for years, insisted they use as their place of governance. Can any of us possibly imagine what that is?

Historically we came together. We encouraged Ottawa in, but through the push of the Daylu Dena, we were able to finally realize the benefits and say: “We’re building you a new community centre. We’re building you a place where your people can come together. We are knocking down that building. We are taking it out of your community.” That symbol of horror, of true colonial despotism and an attempt to wipe out a people at its very core, will be removed forever.

Sometimes people say, you know, politics can be one thing or it can be another. It’s easy to be jaded. It’s easy to be cynical. Well, you couldn’t have been cynical that day, listening to the Elders of the community step up and talk about what that was like and, as importantly, talk about what this symbol of this new building was going to be, and the hopefulness.

Now, think about all of the efforts that this budget will make in terms of reconciliation across British Columbia So happy to see the term sheet just recently signed off by British Columbia, a contribution to the Office of the Wet’suwet’en to encourage reconciliation and reconciliation within the Wet’suwet’en, because we know colonial governments, since colonialism started, have tried to break people apart. The bringing together of the Wet’suwet’en elected and hereditary will allow us to see a better and brighter day for all people.

I look forward to working with my Wet’suwet’en friends. To a particular Elder, and he knows who he is, and I think he might be watching today and is seeing some recovery in his life, I wish him well. I know he’ll be back and stronger than ever, and I look forward to sharing some coffee in the future.

Income assistance. We boosted the rates 53 percent to the seniors supplement, which hasn’t changed since 1987. We jumped dramatically.

Nine thousand housing house units, already 26,000 built, 9,000 more. Think of the families that have the kind of security of a good roof over their heads, of being able to send the kids off to school every day and the kids knowing they’re coming back to a safe home. What that can mean for a young person’s life, the trajectory of their life and so much more.

It’s just impressive to watch what a government can do if it has the priorities and the values that reflect best the people of this province, that take the brightest ideas, the best ideas and push them forward and push them up to the highest offices in the land — the Premier’s office, the Finance Minister’s office — that we can advocate for….

Here are a couple last examples in the time I have remaining. Through the connecting British Columbia program, the infamous Highway of Tears, which is just a couple hundred metres from where I stand right now, the highway that we have walked on, that I have walked on with so many families in tragedy and sorrow because so many young women and girls have gone missing, predominantly Indigenous women and girls….

One of the things that we have known for years is that these huge gaps in cell service on this highway between Prince Rupert and Prince George are one of the things that have added to the insecurity, to the threat and to the risk. We are going to cover that highway entirely, with support from the federal government and Rogers, to be able to make sure that along that stretch of road, the phone is going to work. Those predators will not be covered by the darkness of having no cell service, and we’re going to connect those communities together and at last.

Money for the local ice rink here in Smithers means so much. Half a million dollars for one of the local trails, and $9 million into Dease Lake to allow for an airport enhancement so that they can safely do medical evacuations from one of the most remote parts of our province. Almost half a million dollars into the Atlin Historical Society to build up and nurture their historical park, and $35 million into a local school at Walnut Park, a new build.

[4:00 p.m.]

And $22 million into Coast Mountain College for dorms, $13 million more for a library, $450 million for the Terrace hospital, $160 million for the hospital in Fort St. James in the Nak’azdli territory and highways all across the land, making this province a better place.

Can we do more? Of course we can. Will we do better? Yes, absolutely. To my colleagues across the aisle, it’s fine to hold government to account and proper, in the role, to criticize but also to acknowledge what’s being done here.

So many people are going to rely on the efforts we are making in this budget to make their lives safer, to give them a better sense of hope, to get us through this crisis that we’ve been in for so long and to come out better for it, more unified, stronger, with a more diverse and cleaner economy, lifting each other up, making sure we don’t leave people behind simply because they don’t have access to the corridors of power.

This is what this budget represents — that hope and that promise for the future. I support it wholly. I encourage my colleagues to do the same, and I look forward to the rest of the debate.

D. Davies: I understand that I’ve got about 15 minutes before I’ll be pleasantly interrupted on my remarks today. Thank you very much.

First of all, I must start off with a happy Earth Day to everyone as well as a happy anniversary to my wife. I’m not sure if we picked this day to be our anniversary on purpose 15 years ago, but nonetheless, happy anniversary.

Today I am honoured to rise and give my remarks on this chilling budget, to join my colleagues on these remarks — a budget that seems to have no light at the end of the tunnel, no optimism at a time when British Columbians desire optimism. They need to see a plan for what things look like on the other side of this pandemic, which is coming. It is clear, though, that this government does not have a secure plan for the future of British Columbians in this budget.

Before I begin my remarks in detail, I’d like to, first of all, again thank my constituents for giving me the honour to represent them in this chamber. In the face of this 2021 budget, and I guess kind of contrary to the Minister of State for Lands and Natural Resource Operations, there is very little in here for rural British Columbians. Because of that, I take my responsibility even more seriously as an MLA that represents a rural part of British Columbia. As their representative, I will take whatever actions I can and need to make our province stronger and brighter for the communities of North Peace and brighter for all British Columbians.

I also want to thank my wife, Erin, my children, Hana and Noel, from whom I get my motivation and inspiration. My children really are my guiding light, and I’m sure others in this room share that as well. I do this for you. I do this for future generations so that they might have a brighter future with hope and prosperity.

I want to thank my staff and my Fort St. John and Fort Nelson constituency assistants — Tamara, Kim, Wendy and Julie. I also want to thank my local staff here in Victoria — Wendy, David and Sam — for the incredible work that they all do to make this job much easier than it could be, or much easier than it should be or will be.

Before I move on to the rest of my remarks, I also do want to take just a second to recognize and sincerely thank all of the first responders across British Columbia, across this nation, the front-line workers that have given so much for the past 18-some-odd months, really above and beyond what anybody could ever have imagined before.

I have stated in this place a number of times before that I represent a riding that is very unique. I am very proud to represent the communities that make up Peace River North, with a land mass of 161,000 square kilometres. It’s roughly the size of a few small European countries. It’s the second-largest riding, though. I think Skeena is the other larger riding, if I’m correct.

[4:05 p.m.]

I was born and raised in Fort St. John, the largest community in North Peace. I am very lucky to call it home, and it calls home a number of industries — oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, mining and tourism. These industries provide well-paying, family-supporting jobs and careers to hard-working British Columbians and are an integral way of our northern life.

That is why this budget is so troubling. I feel the future of British Columbia…. Its place was the envy of Canada, one of the strongest economies and in fact probably the strongest province. I think that that is continuing to be threatened here. It certainly shows it, by the throne speech, which we heard a couple of weeks ago, and the budget this week.

It seems that this government’s plan is to keep making promises, while doing nothing to ensure that these promises actually come to fruition. For the most part, I think they’re just nice sound bites. They’ve worked, I guess, in elections: “Hey, we’ll give a $400 rental rebate. Hey, look. We’re going to eliminate the portables in Surrey. Look at us deliver $10-a-day daycare.” Well, that’s hogwash. These are just sound bites. At best, the government has nibbled around the edges of some of these issues. In four years, very little has been done on many of these, and those were just some of the promises.

Combined with the declining resource revenues, with no real job creation incentives in this budget, other than public sector jobs, there is nothing in this budget to attract investment to British Columbia — investment which, pre-pandemic, we’d started to see leave this province, due to bad policies from the government side. In fact, as we’ve seen, we’ve had the opposite of this. My colleagues have mentioned this a number of times, and I’m sure it will come up again: 23 new or increased NDP taxes. This means trouble for British Columbians. This means trouble for people up in the northeast.

The throne speech, as I mentioned, gave me little reason to be optimistic this year. I had hoped that this year would be different, in light of the pandemic and of people’s absolute desire to see a plan forward. But a dream, I guess. There was very little plan in the throne speech. That was backed up by a poor budget. What was supposed to outline the government’s vision for the province did have very little vision and has given very little hope for businesses as well as people.

I’ll look at a few areas of this budget particularly lacking in the eyes of people in northeastern B.C., the area I and my colleague from Peace River South represent. Energy, infrastructure and agriculture are lacking in this budget. The indifference that this government has shown to these areas that are the lifeblood not only to the residents of Peace River North but, in reality, the province as a whole…. The North Peace has a heavily diversified economy with incredible potential, not only for the residents that I represent but for all of us here in the province.

Despite this unbelievably steep price tag of a budget, with massive deficits for nearly a decade, the budget has nothing, as I mentioned, on job creation; nothing on growing our economy; nothing, really, for the people. I’ve heard members opposite talk about the 12-and-under bus passes. I mean, that will work well for our larger urban areas, but how is that going to roll off in smaller communities where there is no public transit? Most of the pro­vince does not have public transit.

[4:10 p.m.]

I’ve talked about this massive deficit. I want to be clear. We understand that there are deficits. We get that. We are in unprecedented times. We have heard this over and over and over, and we understand that. We know that there’s going to be a deficit budget.

What are we getting for it? That’s the issue. What do businesses get for it? What do non-profits get out of this budget? Even school boards have taken a hit in this budget.

Before I move on…. Again, I have done this before, but I think it’s important. There are new members, many new members in this House, so I want to refresh the importance of the contributions of Peace River North to British Columbia and the economy. While we are typically associated with the oil and gas industry, which is no doubt very important to many of the families that I represent, we also have a very strong forest sector, which has started to see improvements here recently again.

We have the largest agricultural region in the province of British Columbia. Our 1,800 farms produce over $100 million annually, including 90 percent of B.C.’s grain and 95 percent of B.C.’s canola. We’re also the biggest producer of livestock, being home to the largest bison herds in the province, as well as llamas, alpacas and wild boars. I really focus on agriculture because I was quite surprised that there didn’t seem to be much in the budget on agricultural issues.

One other example. This has been brought up in this House over the past little while. It’s a complicated issue. Many farmers in my area in the northeast own small welding or pipefitting shops on their property. Often they have to work in the natural resource sector to get by. It’s a matter of necessity.

In Fort St. John specifically — if you go further north, it’s more — we have winter for six or seven or more months of the year. In fact, we still have snow right now in Fort St. John. In fact, it snowed yesterday. That’s what I’m going home to.

Cookie-cutter approaches, cookie-cutter policies, don’t fit our whole province. We brought this forward before, about the zoning practices in the ALR, which have made it difficult and a challenge for families even to continue operating their farm businesses. Unfortunately, the lack of relief that’s in this budget for farmers, businesses, the resource sector — people, for that matter — makes me think that the government is not taking the livelihoods of the residents of Peace River North or British Columbians seriously.

We just have to look at the business recovery grant program, $340 million, that was approved a year ago. The majority of it had to be carried over to now because they could not get that out the door. It’s getting too late for many businesses in the province of British Columbia. There were so many roadblocks put up on this funding that businesses could not apply. In fact, I’m dealing with two just since I’ve been here this week that have reached out to say that they cannot apply. I’ll be reaching out to the minister’s office.

Small businesses are the backbone of British Columbia, and they are struggling. Many we have seen and we have heard…. In probably all of our ridings, we’ve heard businesses that have shut down. I worry that many more will not be able to hold on.

Mr. Speaker is giving me the wink that it’s time to move on.

I know the government is getting shellacked here today over its budget spending. I know it would love to change the channel, but I feel this is interrupting the people of Peace River North.

I will comply with the recommendation, and I will move to adjourn debate, reserving my place.

D. Davies moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. H. Bains: I call committee debate on Bill 3.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 3 — EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole on Bill 3; N. Letnick in the chair.

The committee met at 4:15 p.m.

On clause 1 (continued).

The Chair: Minister of Labour, do you wish to say something? No.

G. Kyllo: As we continue to ask questions of the Minister of Labour with respect to Bill 3, when we rose yesterday, or just before rising, I had canvassed the question of the minister with respect to who makes the determination, as far as the amount of time. Under this particular bill, employees are entitled to up to a maximum of three hours per vaccination in order for paid leave.

The minister had provided an answer indicating that it’s up to the employee and the employer to make that determination, which leaves lots of ambiguity, I think, for the employer.

Could the minister just provide any additional clarity? Is there any requirement of employees, under this legislation, to employ best efforts to reduce the amount of time that it may take to obtain a vaccination? Is there any requirement that they take advantage of the most closely situated vaccination centre, or is it totally up to the employees to make their own determination where and when they choose to become vaccinated?

The Chair: The committee will recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:17 p.m. to 4:25 p.m.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

Hon. H. Bains: We talked about this question and canvassed this yesterday. I think it depends on the circumstance.

I would use this example. If the clinic is across the street from the factory, the foundry or wherever they work, and the employee insists, “I need three hours,” obviously, there would be a dispute. In most cases — I would say 99 percent of the cases — the employer and the employee will agree. It takes this long to travel from here to there and back, and there is some time that it takes inside the clinic. They keep you there, I believe, about ten or 15 minutes to observe you before they let you go. All that time is considered. That’s how they will make the decision.

Now, if there’s a dispute, the employer will decide how much they want to pay them, up to three hours. If the employee disagrees that it took them longer and they’re entitled to longer…. As long as they can justify it, they can file a complaint with the employment standards. They would be in a position to make a decision, listening to the facts.

In my view, most employers and employees can work this out. Employers know that they need to get their em­ployees vaccinated. Employees know that they can’t abuse it, because the consequences will be there.

G. Kyllo: I’m not sure if that’s going to provide a lot of clarity for employers.

Under the current legislation, the provision is for up to a maximum of three hours. In the instance, as the minister indicated, if the vaccination clinic is a few short blocks away, if the employee chooses or determines that they are entitled to three hours, this legislation actually allows for that. Would the only opportunity to challenge that be for the employer to have to approach the labour standards branch to get a ruling with respect to the dispute with their employee?

Can the minister just provide clarity? Is it up to the employer to make the determination as far as what an appropriate amount of time for leave is? Or in the case of a dispute, is the employer forced, then — for the administrative cost in time, stress and duration — to actually take this up with the Labour Relations Board for a formal ruling on this? If the minister could provide a bit more clarity with respect to that.

Hon. H. Bains: I think the way it works is that employers still make the management decisions. If the employee decided that the employee needs three hours and insists that there are three hours required and then the employer, doing his or her calculations — “No, I calculated all this; you needed only two hours” — decided to pay them only two hours, then the employee can file a complaint with employment standards for their determination.

The employer is still in charge to run the operation, so the employer will be making those decisions, knowing fully well that the employee has the right to file a complaint with employment standards if it is a non-union place. If it’s a unionized place, then they could file a grievance, and it would be decided through the grievance procedure.

G. Kyllo: Thank you to the minister for that clarity.

If the minister could, maybe, just share with this House: was there any consideration for including language that employees would undertake best efforts or other measures to try and schedule their vaccinations without having an impact on their work schedule, or even consideration to best efforts when it comes to their efforts in order to re­duce the implications, or impact on employers, on access­ing paid leave under this piece of legislation?

[4:30 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: No, there’s no such language in the legislation. I provided the answer. I think that’s the answer.

G. Kyllo: Just a bit of follow-up. If the minister could just clarify. In the case of an employee that has sought paid leave under Bill 3 — if their determination is that they’re entitled to three hours, and the employer makes the determination that it’s only two — if I understand the minister correctly, the employer has the ability of, obviously, renumerating his employee for the number of hours that they deem appropriate.

If the employee, then, is in dispute of that, they have the opportunity of going to the employment standards branch for private sector employees and lodging a complaint. Then there would be the administrative burden placed on the Labour Relations Board to then reach out, back to the employer, for some form of dispute resolution.

If the minister could just clarify that that is the mechanism that this bill provides for whenever there’s a discrepancy or a misunderstanding between the employee and the employer with respect to the time duration that they apply for under this bill.

Hon. H. Bains: That’s correct. I think if there’s no collective agreement, then the employment standards is the place for employer and employees to deal with their disputes. If there’s a collective agreement, then the provisions of the collective agreement will apply.

[4:35 p.m.]

G. Kyllo: Thank you to the minister for that additional clarification.

One additional point. This was a point that was actually raised by my friend and colleague, the member for Penticton. He indicated, in a conversation with a business owner, that in the case of an employee looking for even an hour of leave, potentially, in order to go in and make access to the paid leave under the provisions of this bill…. If they were to call in a replacement worker to cover that shift for that even one-hour period, under the current employment standards requirements, any paid employee that is called in is entitled to four hours of pay.

Not to belabour the point, but I think it is important to get this on the record — that in the instance where an employee is only even seeking an hour of paid leave under this particular bill, there would be the one hour, obviously, that they’re away from their work, that they’d be entitled to, but the employer also would be saddled with a minimum call-out of four hours’ pay for that other worker to come in and actually cover the shift. The financial burden being placed on businesses, potentially, could be far in excess of the sheer cost of just satisfying the paid leave that workers are entitled to under this legislation.

I want to thank the member for Penticton for bringing this to my attention. I think that it is very important to put on the public record the fact that the paid leave that workers would be entitled to under this legislation is not the only cost that employers would bear, in many instances, when workers are choosing to actually get vaccinated during a work schedule.

As an additional question to the minister, if the minister could just provide some clarity: does Bill 3 impact businesses that are located on federal lands? This is specifically in relationship to our seaports, our airports and our rail lines that, I understand, are under federal jurisdiction and under federal labour laws. If the minister can just clarify whether this bill actually has force and effect over federal lands as well as provincial lands in B.C.

Hon. H. Bains: No.

G. Kyllo: I’m actually surprised by that answer. So the legislation that’s contemplated here…. For federal employees or any workers that are working in our ports, airports and…. I’m assuming that that would also include any small businesses that might be located, for example, within the airport terminal — that the provisions under this bill would not apply to any workers working in a private business operating from, for example, YVR airport over in Vancouver.

Hon. H. Bains: That’s correct. It does not apply to federally regulated employees.

G. Kyllo: The minister just indicated that it doesn’t im­pact federal employees. There are many private sector employees, though, that do have employment at our airports, as an example. Just as a matter of further clarity, em­ployees that are employed in the private sector that might be working at a restaurant located on federal lands, like YVR airport, as an example — would this bill impact them or not?

[4:40 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: I think the answer I gave you is the correct one. The federally regulated employees are not cover­ed. There is a distinction between where the employment standard applies, to which employees, and where the federal labour laws apply. So there is that distinction. We don’t need to go through the list here today, but that is already established.

G. Kyllo: The clarity, I think, that I am seeking is that the minister refers to federal employees. In my estimation, federal employees are those individuals that are employed by the federal government. I don’t know that it is always the case that any employee working on lands that are under federal jurisdiction are all necessarily employed by the federal government.

Just as a clarity, if there’s an individual that is working at YVR airport, whether they’re waiting on tables or whether they’re doing janitorial service, are they entitled to the leave under the provisions of this bill? Yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: Look, we’re not creating anything new here.

The Employment Standards Act applies to British Columbian employers. All employers know whether they fall under the B.C. Employment Standards Act or they fall un­der federal labour laws. They all know that already, because they deal with the labour laws every day. They deal with employees every day. It’s not necessarily where you’re located. It is whether you fall under federal regulations or you fall under provincial regulations.

Banks, for example, right? They are located here in B.C., but they are federally regulated. Airlines, interprovincial trucking, transportation, water, air — there are a number. Those are, I’m advised, already designated under the BNA Act — who are the federally regulated employers.

We’re not creating anything new. Wherever the Employment Standards Act applies here to those employees, that’s where this one would impact.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Minister, for that additional clarity.

One further question, if the minister is able to share with this House. Will Bill 3 have application over federal reserve lands in British Columbia?

Hon. H. Bains: The answer is no. They are federally regulated.

[4:45 p.m.]

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you very much.

Just one other point of clarification for any private business that might be located on federal reserve lands. If the minister could also provide some clarity on whether they would be impacted — so any worker that might be working for a private business that might be located or situated on First Nations reserve lands and whether they would be entitled to the provisions set out in Bill 3.

Hon. H. Bains: I think I've made it very clear. All em­ployers know whether they fall under federal regulations or they fall under provincial. On federal reserve lands, small businesses operating there, they already know. So there’s nothing being changed in jurisdiction here. In the jurisdiction that is provincial, it will apply. In jurisdictions that are federal, it does not apply there.

G. Kyllo: As a follow-up to that, I can certainly appreciate that there is a distinguishment between federal laws and the provincial laws. What I’m trying to get some clarity on is a privately held B.C. business that might be leasing a facility located on federal reserve lands, First Nations reserve lands, if their employees that are working there will be entitled under the provisions of Bill 3. I’m just looking for a yes or no answer to that.

Hon. H. Bains: Again, like I said, with the risk of making a mistake of a different scenario…. There are thousands of different scenarios out there. Every employer knows whether they are federally regulated or they are provincially regulated right now.

The scenario that the member has laid out here…. There could be different situations that apply before you could actually give that answer. You need to have all of the information before you could actually make a determination.

There usually is a dispute between whether they are federally regulated or they are provincially regulated. Those disputes are ongoing. But we’re not dealing with the jurisdictional issues here. Jurisdictions are already decided. They are already determined. Those who are provincially regulated, Bill 3 applies. Those that are federally regulated, Bill 3 does not apply. That should be a sufficient answer.

If an employer has any questions, they could reach out to my office, reach out to employment standards, and they could get that clarification.

G. Kyllo: I’m not trying to be difficult at all. I just know that, even in my own riding of Shuswap, there will be many questions that will be arising with this particular piece of legislation. It’s certainly not clear to me at this point.

Maybe I will rephrase my question. Is there any situation or instance, if the minister could provide some clarity, where there could be a privately held business operating on First Nations reserve land where their employees would be entitled to the provisions under Bill 3?

[4:50 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Again, the answer could be yes, and the answer could be no. It depends on the situation. If they have any doubt, they should reach out to find out whether they fall under federal or provincial.

G. Kyllo: What I heard from the minister is that there is the opportunity. There is the potential for businesses located on First Nations reserve lands, whereby their employees that would be, I guess, working under the provincial labour relations laws would be entitled to paid leave under this particular bill that’s before the House.

Now, as a follow-up to that, I’m just going to ask if the minister is able to provide clarity on whether he feels that the fact that this bill will have force and effect potentially over workers that are working on First Nations reserve lands — if, indeed, First Nations were broadly consulted with respect to this piece of legislation.

Hon. H. Bains: I thought we canvassed the consultation process in its entirety yesterday, but I don’t mind answering the question again.

Who did we consult with when it came to Indigenous people? We consulted several Indigenous partners. We received comments that were fully considered during the development of Bill 3. Given the urgency of the COVID-​19 health crisis and the vaccination rollout, consultations were expedited and focused.

We specifically met with the representative from the First Nations Health Authority, which our government has engaged with on other COVID-19 measures.

I presented the issue of paid COVID-19 vaccination leave to the B.C. COVID-19 Industry Engagement Table, as I mentioned the other day, on March 29, which in­cludes leaders and senior representatives from the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the First Nations Major Projects Coalition.

We led a consultation process with urban and rural Indigenous representatives from the Minister’s Advisory Council on Indigenous Women and the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres to obtain the variety of perspectives which helped us to draft the legislation that we have presented today.

G. Kyllo: Well, with all due respect, if I just think of my riding of Shuswap, there are five First Nations communities. I believe there are 204 in total in the province of B.C.

My understanding, in some brief conversations, is that communities — Splatsin First Nation, Neskonlith First Nation, Okanagan Indian Band, Adams Lake Indian Band, Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band…. None of these First Nations communities were actually consulted with respect to this piece of legislation and, to the contrary, weren’t even aware of this piece of legislation.

This government made a lot of comment with respect to the UNDRIP legislation and DRIPA, which was put before this House. There were some pretty significant commitments undertaken and committed to by this government. Yet when it comes to this particular piece of legislation, I certainly don’t believe that consultation has been satisfied. It certainly wouldn’t, in my estimation, satisfy local First Nations communities within my riding of Shuswap. I’ve only listed five of the 204.

Just a bit of a follow-up. Maybe the minister can provide a bit more clarity to this House and to those that may be watching from home with respect to the level and, I guess, the respect that was shown to First Nations with respect to the amount of consultation that was undertaken, with respect to a piece of legislation that will have force and effect over employees that may be working within First Na­tions reserve lands across British Columbia.

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: I already answered that question.

G. Kyllo: That’s disappointing. In any event, we will move on.

If the minister can just provide some clarity with res­pect to the calculation that was identified for determining the actual rate of pay that will be assessed for the maximum of three hours of paid leave per vaccination. If the minister can provide some clarity on how the ministry arrived at the calculation that was determined and is set out in Bill 3.

Hon. H. Bains: We used the same system that is already established in a number of different scenarios for how to calculate daily pay — in the employment standard that is already established.

For example, the formula — this one — is modelled on the formula used to determine paid domestic or sexual violence leave, which falls under section 52.5(1) of the Employment Standards Act, which is based on an average day’s pay over a 30-day period.

The second situation would be the calculation to pro­vide compensation for paid leave, which is based on an employee’s hourly wage without overtime. This is consistent with the approach currently used under the Employment Standards Act for calculating statutory holiday pay and paid domestic or sexual violence leave, as I said.

G. Kyllo: As a follow-up, if the minister could just provide some clarity with respect to…. Would there be any differentiation of the benefit, whether it is for a full-time or a part-time employee?

Hon. H. Bains: The only difference could be — it could be from employee to employee — the average hourly wage determined over the 30-day period. For part-time, it could be the same hourly wage if they are working the same number of hours in the previous 30 days as the full-time worker.

It’s based on what their average hourly wage comes to, using that formula that I mentioned, over the previous 30 days.

G. Kyllo: This relates to the provisions for eligibility of leave. I’ve got a number of questions here, just seeking a bit of clarification.

If the minister can provide some clarity on what constitutes proof of eligibility for accessing paid leave under Bill 3.

[5:00 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: I think there are a number of different ways it can be done. If you book online, you get a little email or text, and you could show that. I’m advised that sometimes you’d do it on the phone. When you go and you come back, you’re given a card once you are vaccinated. That is sufficient proof. Those are some of the examples that I could use.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Minister, for providing that clarity.

Now, in the instance where an employee is making an application or having a conversation with their employer, saying, “Look, I’ve got a vaccine appointment,” if they have made the appointment by the phone, there is actually no proof or verification that they would have available to them to share with their employer. I’m just wondering, in that instance, if the minister can maybe provide some clarity on how the employee would be otherwise able to verify, to the employer, their request for leave.

Hon. H. Bains: I’m advised that regardless of how you book your appointment, you are given some paperwork, some text or email: “This is your appointment. Here it is, at this particular time.” That is sufficient. Then, in the event they don’t have that there when they go and get vaccinated, they’re given a card that shows they were vaccinated. So that’s enough.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Minister, for that clarity.

Now, can the minister share with this House…? In the instance where an employee schedules an appointment for their vaccination, confirms that leave with their employer and undertakes to go and have their vaccination shot, should there be issues or challenges where, for some reasons or another — ones that I certainly can’t identify now — the shot is not available to be administered, would workers still be able to access paid leave under this bill, or is it only if they actually get the vaccine shot?

Hon. H. Bains: There could be all kinds of hypothetical situations. We’re not going to get into hypothetical situations. The bill is very clear. If the employee has an appointment and needs to take time off work to go get vaccinated, they’re allowed to take up to three hours with pay. That’s what the bill is.

If there are certain scenarios…. What happens if there is an accident on the road? What happens if a bridge falls? I mean, we could be here for the next two years to talk about those scenarios, and we’re not going to get into that. I think I gave my answer. That should sufficiently satisfy the member. The situation is this: if you have a vaccination appointment, the employer can ask for sufficient, reasonable proof. I’ve given the scenario of how that can be achieved, and I think that should be sufficient.

[5:05 p.m.]

G. Kyllo: If the minister can just maybe provide some clarity, then. My understanding, by that answer, is that an employee that schedules an appointment and provides verification of that appointment to their employer is entitled to pay, under the provisions of this bill, regardless of whether they get the vaccine shot or not. If the minister could just provide some clarity. Did I understand him correctly?

Hon. H. Bains: I gave the answer to that question.

G. Kyllo: I’m just thinking. An employee, acting in good faith, schedules an appointment, gets leave from their employer and, under the provisions of this bill, is entitled to three hours of pay. My expectation as an employer would certainly be that I would be more than happy — and I think most employers would be happy — to provide paid leave for my employee if they’re indeed actually getting the vaccination shot.

The lack of clarity leads me to believe that an employee could actually apply for the three hours of paid leave under the provisions of this bill simply by just scheduling an appointment and not actually following through with that appointment. Two days later or a week later, they could schedule yet another appointment and still, under the provisions of this bill, be entitled to three hours of paid leave. This could go on ad nauseam. There’s nothing in this bill that protects the employer from abuse.

Now, I appreciate that the large majority of employees across this great province would not undertake that. But this bill leaves a gaping loophole where disgruntled employees could take advantage of the provisions in this bill. If their only requirement is to provide notification to their employer that they’ve scheduled an appointment, and they decide to book an appointment five or six or ten or 15 times, they could actually access three hours of paid leave that many times under this bill. That’s egregious.

I’m hoping that the minister might be able to provide a little bit of additional clarity to employers that potentially could be at significant expense by employees who may choose to take advantage of the provisions of this act.

Hon. H. Bains: Look, there are, every year, about 5,000 to 6,000 complaints that go to the employment standards branch.

Interjection.

The Chair: Through the Chair, please.

Hon. H. Bains: The situation is that there is an act. There are regulations, and there always are disputes — what the employer thinks they mean, what the employee thinks they mean. The courts and the labour board and the tribunals are scheduled full time to deal with these issues on a daily basis out there.

That’s what happens in a democracy. Laws are passed. Then they are administered, and then there are disputes. Then there is a process to deal with them. That’s exactly what would happen here. We’re passing the law, and then if there is a dispute, there is a process, the employment standards branch.

To answer the specific question that you’re asking, the intent of the bill here is that if you are scheduled to go get vaccinated, you will be given leave. If you don’t get a vaccination — for some reason, you come back without it — you perhaps will not be entitled to the time. But that can be challenged, because you can’t deal with every scenario in legislation.

That’s why we have the employment standards branch to deal with these issues. I think, like the member said, 99.9 percent of employers and employees will work this thing out. No matter how much clarification we give here, there’s always going to be that one or two or few who would find a way to fight with each other. Then there is a process to deal with it. So my question…. I have been trying to be as clear as I can that if there is an appointment made to go get vaccination, then you would be entitled to time without loss of pay.

[5:10 p.m.]

The employer has the right to ask for sufficient and reasonable proof. Then that is required. For example, if there is an appointment — that proof of appointment — you are entitled to time off. Then the employer can, if they believe that maybe the employee hasn’t followed through, ask for proof of the vaccination.

Those things are going to happen. But there is always going to be dispute, no matter how much clarification you could give here.

The Chair: Just a reminder to maintain order in the committee. Please indicate all your questions through the Chair, whether you’re on the mike or not on the mike, for both the member and the minister.

G. Kyllo: The purpose of the creation of bills which will be put into law is to provide clarity. The minister yesterday in his remarks talked about how the bill provides flexibility. Bills and laws should not provide flexibility. There needs to be certainty.

The majority of employers across this province understand the necessity and the need, and would be more than happy, I think, to assist in ensuring that British Columbians get vaccinated. Get vaccinated. That is the portion that is most important.

Providing paid leave for somebody to schedule an appointment is of no benefit. Not a benefit to society, not a benefit to the province, our country, and certainly not a benefit to the employer. The provision for accessing paid leave under this bill should be specifically limited to the actual vaccination shot itself, not to the scheduling. It is the lack of clarity of this bill that I think is going to cause lots of concern.

The minister referenced the 5,000 or 6,000 complaints that the employment standards branch might deal with on an annualized basis. This bill is going to add to that. I would hesitate to guess how many disgruntled employees, if they were aware of the opportunity to actually take advantage of this particular legislation, would do so.

Through you, Mr. Chair, with all due respect, to the minister, will the minister give consideration to providing further clarity in this bill and providing the paid-leave provision to be conditional upon employees getting vaccinated and remove the reference to the scheduling of the vaccination appointment?

Hon. H. Bains: If the member could read clause 1 of 52.13, it's very clear: “An employee who requests leave under this section is entitled to paid leave for the period described in subsection (2) to be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

G. Kyllo: In the instance of an employee that schedules a vaccine appointment, arrives at the pharmacy…. The pharmacy is out of vaccines that particular day, and he re­turns back to his employer without the vaccination shot. Is that employee entitled to paid leave, under the provisions of this bill? Yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: I have read the language. It’s very clear. I have answered every which way that I could. I have been very clear.

G. Kyllo: With all due respect, I asked a very simple yes-or-no question, a question that sets out a scenario that in all likelihood will happen thousands of times across our province. I certainly would appreciate an answer. I think that British Columbians are deserving of an answer.

[5:15 p.m.]

In the instance where an employee schedules an ap­pointment for their vaccination, arrives at the vaccination clinic and a vaccine is not available, is that employee entitled to paid leave under the provisions of Bill 3? Yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: I have already answered that question.

G. Kyllo: I believe that the purpose of this House is to provide clarity to questions that are being asked. It’s my understanding that the minister is actually compelled to answer questions that are being put to the minister from a member of the official opposition. So with all due respect, I would like to ask that question again.

In the instance, as I have set out, where an employee schedules a vaccination appointment, arrives at the vaccination clinic and for whatever reason, is unable to be­come vaccinated that particular day, is that employee entitled to the three hours maximum paid provision under this bill, yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: I’ve already answered that question.

The Chair: Member for Shuswap, do you have another question?

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The minister, with all due respect, has not answered the question. We can stay here all day, till six o’clock, if the minister chooses.

It is a very simple question. This is a question employers will want to know. Referring to language and the ambiguity of the language in this bill is not providing that clarity. I again ask the question. If the minister could please provide a response. This is the third time now that I’ve asked a very simple, straightforward question. This is a government that has talked about transparency and being open and working with members of the opposition. This is a very specific question.

Again through you, with all due respect, to the minister, could I please get an answer, yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: I have already answered the question. The language is very clear. All they have to do is follow the language.

The Chair: Member for Shuswap, you might want to approach the question in a different way or a different line of questioning.

G. Kyllo: Well, Mr. Speaker, this is extremely disappointing. We have a minister of the government of British Columbia that has put forward legislation that puts a significant financial impact on to the backs of B.C. businesses, to the tune of $200 million to $300 million a year, annually. Yet the minister will not answer, or is refusing to answer, the most basic of questions.

There are many examples of instances where an employee would schedule an appointment for vaccination and not actually be able to receive their vaccination. I believe that it is incumbent upon the minister to provide the clarity.

In the instance where an employee schedules a vaccination appointment and is unable to receive their vaccination, through fault or no fault of their own, is that employee entitled to paid leave under the provisions of Bill 3?

The Chair: Do you have another question, Member for Shuswap?

G. Kyllo: Mr. Chair, through you to the minister. I think that what we’re seeing here is a minister that is unwilling to actually provide clarity. The entire purpose of the process that we’re undertaking right now is for members of the official opposition to ask for and seek clarity. Unfortunately, I’m not receiving that clarity. British Columbians are not receiving that clarity.

[5:20 p.m.]

Just a few short days ago I was talking to a friend who has a poultry processing facility. He’s really challenged right now. He’s been working triple-time to try and meet the needs of British Columbians in providing food services.

He was sharing with me how, for an employee to look at taking a couple hours off in the middle of a day — to take him away from a chicken processing line — it is near impossible to backfill that position. Even if he was able to backfill that position, that backfilled position would cost him four hours of pay.

Now, he’s shared with me that his average pay rate is $24 an hour. With all of the different additional wage costs that are associated with that — CPP, holiday pay, all of the other source deductions — it’s about $30 an hour. So for that one vaccine appointment, this particular employer indicated that he would be expensing $120 to backfill the position for an individual to go and get vaccinated.

On top of the $120, he now will have to pay, under the provisions of this particular bill, up to three hours of pay. That’s another $90. So now it’s $210. This particular employer, in the instance of trying to satisfy and assist with an employee actually taking three hours of paid leave to become vaccinated, has now cost that employer $210.

Should that employee become vaccinated, that is a cost that I believe the employer would feel was justified. But to have the potential for an expense of $210 with no benefit in the case or instance where an employee is not able to obtain their shot is offensive. There’s no provision for a maximum number of times per year that they can access the provisions of this bill.

Let’s just think about that for a second. We have a $210 cost attached to each and every time an employee has the ability of accessing the provisions of this bill by simply scheduling an appointment. If that was to occur five, ten times, there’s nothing in this bill that provides the necessary protection for the employer from abuse.

With all due respect, I believe that the solution would be, instead of having the access to the provisions of the paid leave under this bill, to move it from simply making or scheduling an appointment to provide the provision where employees are able to access the paid leave provision upon becoming vaccinated. If that’s two doses a year or potentially three — if that’s what’s going to happen with the potential for booster shots — that would provide the clarity. But right now there’s a potential for downloading cost burden onto the backs of employers with no benefit, and certainly no benefit to British Columbians.

This bill is botched. It just speaks to the incompetency. We know this bill was rushed through. The minister just yesterday clarified for this House that the first date of consultation was on the 29th of March — the 29th of March. He tabled the bill on Monday. Three weeks to do consultation across our province with employers, with First Nations. Three weeks to draft legislation. This has been rushed through. It has not been well thought out. This bill has not been discussed with business individuals around the province that are going to be impacted by the provisions of this bill.

Will the minister take the necessary time to pull this bill, to give it a rethink, to provide the clarity I think British Columbians and business owners in this province deserve?

Hon. H. Bains: All I hear is a political speech. I don’t know whether they’re going to support this bill or not, but I can tell you that we on this side of the House believe that every worker should have the opportunity to go get vaccinated. That is the answer to overcoming the pandemic. That is what employers need. That’s what we need in order to get the economy going again.

[5:25 p.m.]

They’re speaking from both sides of their mouth at the same time, time and again. The member used the same language that is in the bill, yet he doesn’t believe in that.

He talked about “provided that they are vaccinated.” That’s exactly what the language is in the bill. If he took the time to read clause 1, that’s exactly what it says. But he just wants to go on a political tirade, and I’ve seen it day in and day after in this House. They just can’t make up their mind where they stand on any given issue. They’re scrambling.

The language is very clear. I read it to him, and I will read it again: “An employee who requests leave under this section is entitled to paid leave for the period described in subsection (2) to be vaccinated against COVID-19.” How more clear can you be?

I’m not the adjudicator of every complaint that is going to come and be filed before the employment…. Nor should I be. The language is clear. All he has to do is read it. He repeats the language time and again but still doesn’t believe what he is reading himself. The language is clear. I have answered time and again. I can be as clear as possible because the language is so clear.

If there’s a dispute, disputes are handled out there with the employment standards branch. If an employee believes they weren’t given enough time, or they weren’t paid because they weren’t vaccinated, then they have a complaint to file. If an employer feels that they shouldn’t be paying that employee in that particular situation, they will not pay that employee. Then the employee has the right to file a complaint.

Those disputes are handled there, not in this House, not by the minister and not by any member of this House. We have a system for that to be handled.

I can be as clear as possible, but if you want to go on and on and on and come up with all kinds of hypothetical questions, we could sit here and listen and go on and on. But that’s not the best use of this House. There are so many important things to do here.

The language is clear. I have given the answer. He just doesn’t want exactly in his language…. Maybe he should write me the language, the way I should say yes or no. I’m not going to do that.

G. Kyllo: I’m looking, and I think British Columbians are looking, for precise language and clarity. I set forth an example of a situation or a scenario that will happen and I would be willing to estimate is happening even today across our province. Acting in good faith, an employee schedules an appointment, and the vaccine is not available. They are turned away.

Under the provisions of this bill, is it only the proof or verification of a scheduled appointment? Does that in itself entitle the employee to paid leave under this bill? Or is there also the subsequent requirement that the employee actually becomes vaccinated? That is very different.

The language is ambiguous, the way I read it. It could be interpreted multiple ways. I don’t think we want to provide increased disputes between employees and employers and challenge the employment standards branch with a slew of additional new complaints.

We have the opportunity in this House, today, to pro­vide clarity. If the minister can provide that clarity with respect to a yes or no answer, that will be on the record. Even in future considerations of providing the employment standards branch the opportunity to say no, that question was specifically asked in the Legislature. The minister provided clarity to this House and to British Columbians with respect to the application of paid leave provisions under this bill.

Again to the minister, is the entitlement for paid leave under Bill 3 conditional upon the employee getting their vaccination shot? Yes or no?

[5:30 p.m.]

The Chair: Member for Shuswap, the minister has in­dicated his answer. Please move on.

G. Kyllo: It’s unfortunate, but the minister has not taken the opportunity to provide the clarity.

Interjection.

The Chair: Through the Chair, please.

G. Kyllo: The minister is indicating to me, off speaker, that the language is clear, that the provisions of paid leave under this bill do require that the employee becomes vaccinated.

If he would be kind enough to just share that with the House, I certainly would be satisfied, and I think that employers and British Columbians would be satisfied. I think that that would justify the provisions of this bill, but the language does not provide that clarity. That is certainly of concern to me — as, I think, to many British Columbians.

Now, with respect to proof or verification of the vaccination, the minister has shared with us that, as an example, the employee could go and get their shot. They’d get their vaccine card. It is my understanding — I think the minister has shared this with the House — that the proof, or verification, to the employer would be by showing their vaccination card.

Can the minister just clarify and confirm that an em­ployer would be fully within their right to require the provision of a vaccination card from their employee before an employee would be entitled to the paid leave under the provisions of Bill 3?

Hon. H. Bains: If the member would care to go into the Employment Standards Act, this type of language exists all over the place: “reasonably sufficient proof” for a variety of different situations where employees are entitled to different benefits. It works. If there is a dispute, there is the em­ployment standards branch to go to.

I think that in the scenario that the member has laid out, it could be one of the proofs. It could satisfy an employer that there is an appointment email or text shown. That may be sufficient to one employer. Another employer may say: “No, I want to see that you actually got it. Show me a card.” That could be another request. So there are different situations.

It, again, depends on the employer-employee relationship — how much they trust each other. Most of them do. Most of them will not have any of those kinds of disputes. “Reasonably sufficient proof” is already established — what that actually means, what the employer’s rights are under those, what the employee’s rights are under those. I think we could depend on that, because it is nothing new. It is already being practised and already being exercised, and people understand that.

G. Kyllo: I will have a series of follow-up questions, but we certainly are not going to get through to the end of Bill 3 yet today. Just being mindful of the time, I’m noting the hour, which is now 5:30 p.m.

The Chair: Member for Shuswap, we are supposed to adjourn at six, unless you’ve been given instructions.

G. Kyllo: Could we take a two-minute recess? I’d request a two-minute recess.

Interjections.

The Chair: We’ll have order in the House.

Please, Minister, we’ll take a two-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 5:34 p.m. to 5:38 p.m.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

G. Kyllo: Just before that slight recess…. My apologies to the House. I was informed that we would actually be rising at 5:30 today, but apparently, that has been changed or altered. So I will carry on with the questioning with respect to Bill 3.

Now, just before we broke, I was canvassing the minister, just with respect to what the employer is actually entitled to request of the employee, as far as verification of them receiving their vaccination shot. The minister indicated that the provision, by the employee, of their vaccination card may provide that proof, but it’s not limited to that.

If the minister can provide some clarity. In the instance where an employee returns from their vaccination ap­pointment and feels that just the provision of the notification that they had an appointment…. If, in the employee’s mind, they feel that is sufficient, and the employee chooses to not provide their vaccination card, as proof of their shot, to their employer — and if the employer should choose, under that situation, to not provide financial remuneration for their employee for those three hours, or whatever number of hours those are — would the employment standards branch see that as being acceptable? Or would the employer be offside by not providing payment under that situation?

[5:40 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: As I said before, I don’t think we, the legislators, should be involved in adjudicating every dispute out there. The language here is that the employer is entitled to…. It says here may ask an employee for “reasonably sufficient proof that that employee is entitled” to be paid leave to receive COVID-19….

Now if there is a dispute, again, I think there is a standard that has been already established out there, because this language exists in so many different places. So I think employer-employee…. A phone call to the employment standards will probably get that clarification very clearly, where they stand on that particular situation.

G. Kyllo: If I understand the minister correctly, the minister is not able to provide that clarification. But the bill has the ambiguity whereby the final determination would actually be placed in the hands of the employment standards branch…?

It seems odd. A bill that’s being put before this House should provide, with specificity and the clarity…. Under which case, if an employer asks his employee for proof of their vaccination and the employee says no, I would hope that the employer would be well within their rights, then, to choose not to renumerate the employee.

The minister has indicated that, somehow, turning this over to the employee standards branch is the appropriate manner by which any disputes would be undertaken. There is an opportunity today in this House, in this chamber, to provide that clarity.

To the minister, one more time: can the minister confirm that, in the instance where an employer requests verification of a vaccination card from an employee, and if the employee chooses not to share that with the employer…? Is the employee entitled to paid leave under the provisions of this act, yes or no?

Hon. H. Bains: I’ve already answered that question. The employer is entitled to ask for reasonably sufficient proof. Now, what that proof is, is between employer and employee. If the employer is satisfied with a reason given, then that ends the story right there. If there is a dispute — which may happen in, maybe, 0.1 percent of the time — then that’s where the employment standards is.

I may want to advise the member here there are languages in collective agreements and employment standards, in the labour code. They have a language in there. For example, in collective agreements, you may not be terminated or disciplined without just cause. There is a library full of what just cause is. The minister didn’t decide what that just cause was. It is determined through the regulatory process.

Reasonably sufficient proof is already established out there, through the employment standards branch. They deal with this on a daily basis, and if there is a dispute, they’re very, very able to deal with those issues. They get phone calls every day from employers to get the clarification on issues like this.

That’s why the employment standards branch is there. That’s the purpose. Language can be here…. You can put all kinds of language, and as soon as it’s put together, two people will not agree with it outside of this House. There will be a dispute.

We tried to put it as clearly as possible. Language is what language is. Then there is a system in place in order to administer it. That’s the employment standards branch. That’s my answer, and hopefully, that will satisfy the member.

I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:44 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The Committee of the Whole, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. L. Beare moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until ten o’clock Monday morning.

The House adjourned at 5:45 p.m.