Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading debate on Bill 10, Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act.

In Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call estimates debate for the Ministry of Labour.

In Section C, the Birch Room, I call the continued estimates debate for the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. When that is finished, then we will also call at this time the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 10 — MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS
STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Hon. J. Osborne: I’m pleased to rise today in the House to speak to this important piece of legislation. When COVID began, it challenged many aspects of local democracy. People couldn’t safely participate in person for important decision-making or voting in by-elections.

The pandemic also presented a number of unexpected financial pressures for local governments. The business of local government had to continue, so a number of extraordinary measures were put in place to support local governments during this difficult time so they could maintain effective, local decision-making and to maintain the financial health of the local government system.

The amendments in this bill acknowledge that a number of these measures need to be continued, not only to provide necessary transition and continuity for some local government matters but also to ensure local governments have the tools they need to deliver services and engage people in the process of government. Some of these measures are currently covered under various ministerial orders that are part of the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, or CRMA.

We’ve listened to local governments and learned what is important to them. Based on these learnings and experiences, the amendments also add new, permanent authorities, where appropriate, to ensure that local governments have the powers they need to effectively govern their communities in any scenario. Further, they also add tools in ministry-specific statutes to allow the ministry to manage a number of local government matters in light of evolving circumstances related to the current pandemic and in the event of any future extraordinary scenario.

The proposed amendments to the Community Charter, Local Government Act and Vancouver Charter will provide new, permanent authorities for local governments to be able to hold electronic meetings, or e-meetings, as well as electronic public hearings, or e-hearings, while maintaining important transparency safeguards. This will provide local governments the ability to offer citizens a mix of in-person, hybrid or virtual meetings to meet a wider range of people’s needs.

We’re hearing that being able to participate in public hearings and meetings electronically is more accessible and equitable for many people who face barriers to attending in person, whether they’re single mothers, people who are caregivers, people without access to transportation or those with limited mobility.

[2:50 p.m.]

Looking back to the beginning in spring 2020, when I was mayor of Tofino, I know firsthand how local governments found it increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to adhere to legislative requirements for regularly scheduled meetings and required public hearings for land use matters to be held in person.

A ministerial order, under the Emergency Program Act, was issued to override legislated limitations and to authorize local governments to be able to hold e-meetings, where in-person gatherings were unsafe or impossible due to the pandemic. The temporary authorities enabling all local governments to hold e-meetings will continue for the foreseeable future, under the ongoing authority of Ministerial Order M192, which is currently part of the COVID-19 Related Measures Act.

Once the circumstances related to the pandemic have eased, these new permanent authorities will be brought into force to enable local governments themselves to choose what mix of in-person, hybrid and virtual meetings meets the needs of their specific community needs. For e-meetings, the proposed amendments continue to safeguard good governance principles, such as public transparency and public participation, by requiring local governments to specify, by bylaw, when e-meetings will be held electronically and how the public can participate in those electronic meetings. Allowing for virtual meetings with appropriate safeguards is an example of how we’ve listened to local governments, and we’re acting on the lessons learned during the pandemic.

We’re also taking this opportunity to include minor amendments in this bill that will also permanently address a number of operational barriers for improvement districts that came to light during the pandemic. Amendments to the Local Government Act will provide improvement districts more flexibility for the timing of their annual general meetings and the terms of office for local trustees. They’ll also remove the requirement for bylaws to have a seal so that bylaws can be sent electronically.

As a result of the pandemic, local governments also faced urgent financial pressures. In response, a number of one-time unique financial measures were put in place to support local governments. These are currently contained in Ministerial Order M159 under CRMA, which will expire July 10.

This bill includes amendments to the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act (No. 4), or MEVA, to move the suite of 2020 COVID-related financial measures and the corresponding repayment obligations into a more permanent legislative framework. This will ensure that the effect of these one-time measures continue as originally intended when they were put in place for 2020 and provide certainty for local governments.

These MEVA amendments will continue the obligations requiring local authorities that borrowed from their reserve funds in 2020 to pay for operational shortfalls to repay the borrowed amount by December 31, 2025; continue the obligation for local authorities to repay revenue-anticipation borrowing incurred in 2020 by December 31, 2021; and continue bylaws made under Ministerial Order No. M159 to postpone the tax sale of properties from fall 2020 to fall 2021.

The pandemic has demonstrated the need to have specific, targeted legislative tools that can be used to quickly respond to urgent and pressing scenarios that pose challenges for the local government system. This bill also adds two new targeted and limited ministerial regulation authorities to the Community Charter to allow the minister to be able to address urgent and unique financial challenges faced by local authorities in special circumstances, such as an emergency scenario or a sudden community crisis that affects financial liquidity.

This legislation also adds a targeted and specific ministerial regulation authority in the Local Government Act in relation to local elections. Over the course of the pandemic, the ministry has been working with local governments to mitigate risks and contribute to safer processes for electors and election officials. Since September 2020, over 30 ministerial orders have been put in place to support COVID-safe local by-elections and assent votes in various communities. The new ministerial regulation authority will provide a more robust and effective means of managing local elections processes in special circumstances.

Finally, this bill will also remove legislated limitations on electors who are permitted to vote by mail ballot in local elections, including by-elections. Amendments to the Local Government Act and the Vancouver Charter will repeal the rules that currently limit mail ballot voting only to persons with a physical disability, illness or injury or to persons who expect to be absent during voting. Removing these limitations will allow voters who are vulnerable, who may be required to self-isolate or quarantine, or do not feel comfortable voting in person to participate in local elections processes.

[2:55 p.m.]

Bill 10 provides an array of amendments that ensure that local governments have the authorities they need to continue to manage through the ongoing and evolving circumstances related to the pandemic and any future extraordinary scenario. The amendments are supported by the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Local Government Management Association, as well as the city of Vancouver. We’ve also been mindful of the requirements of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act as we’ve developed this legislation.

In conclusion, the proposed changes will give local governments more tools and better supports, as well as appropriate permanent authorities, to ensure that they have the powers they need to effectively support their communities in any scenario. The amendments adding new tools to the ministry-specific statutes will ensure that the minister is able to capably respond to various matters, in light of the evolving circumstances related to the current pandemic and in the event of any extraordinary scenario.

With that, hon. Speaker, I want to thank you and all members of the House. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues in the continued debate today on the second reading of this bill.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Minister, before you sit down, would you please move second reading of the bill.

Hon. J. Osborne: I should have started by moving second reading. I move that the bill now be read a second time.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much, Minister.

T. Stone: It gives me pleasure to rise today and speak to Bill 10. I appreciate the comments of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, someone that I’ve known for many years and have tremendous respect for. So I look forward to the really specific questions that we will get to in the committee stage of this bill. But for the purposes of second reading, I think I’ll start here.

It’s always great to see the government taking steps to improve the public’s access to the civic process and to encourage greater participation in that process, whether in municipal elections or local government meetings. It’s indeed a fundamental right of British Columbians and Canadians to exercise their voting rights and to be able to participate in fair and equitable elections and democratic processes at all levels of government.

This bill contains a number of measures. Again, we’ll get into a lot more detail on these in the coming days. It allows municipalities and regional districts to hold virtual and hybrid meetings and public hearings in addition to in-person meetings. That’s a good thing.

It expands eligibility for mail ballot voting in local government elections, making it open to everyone rather than just those individuals who are absent or have an illness, an injury or a disability. That’s good.

The bill provides for greater flexibility with the timing of annual general meetings and trustee terms for improvement districts. It establishes ministerial authority to make regulations for borrowing in emergency situations in elections administration matters and the repayment of debt for revenue-anticipation borrowing by local governments to be delayed for up to a year.

Local governments borrowing from their reserve funds to pay for operating expenses — exceptions or modifi­cations can be made if special circumstances may impact an election, a by-election or a referendum. The bill pro­vides for continuity of extraordinary financial measures and corresponding repayment obligations under COVID-19 Ministerial Order M159, which is set to expire on July 10, 2021.

There are a number of other items, but this is just a snapshot of some of the more pertinent pieces that I think represent a good step forward. We certainly agree, in the official opposition, that municipal governments really deserve to have every tool possible to ensure maximum flexibility to engage through bylaws, hybrid and virtual meetings and proceedings, if they feel it will expand access to the democratic process for their community members.

The COVID-19 pandemic has indeed shown us why these proposed changes are useful and achievable. I will say, from a local perspective in Kamloops…. As the minister mentioned, when she was the mayor…. She was the mayor of Tofino at the time. Everything seems to be a bit of a blur for the last while. She was living it. The minister was living this as an elected mayor in the district of Tofino.

I certainly know the city of Kamloops…. I remember getting the phone call from our mayor, saying: “We have a big problem here. We don’t know how we’re going to continue to function as a local government. We have critical things that need to get done, critical decisions that need to be made.”

[3:00 p.m.]

Yet the legislative and the regulatory framework that is in place today, which never contemplated a pandemic such as the one that we have just been going through…. It really tied the hands of local governments behind their backs and made it very difficult to move with the speed that was often needed, from a bylaw perspective, or to hold meetings, all the while understanding that there is a requirement for public access and media access to a lot of those meetings.

It was important, back in March. I think it was March 26 when the government brought in a number of ministerial orders, including suspending states of local emergency, enabling local government bylaw officers to enforce the provincial health officer’s orders related to business closures and public gatherings and, thirdly, to provide the ability to hold more flexible meetings to expedite decisions.

It was the right thing to do back then. All of us remember well how we really didn’t know…. Certainly in March, we didn’t have any idea what was coming next month, a few months later, let alone tomorrow. It was critically important to be able to move with speed and to move with confidence at the local level.

Some of the amendments outlined in this legislation make permanent the temporary measures established in Ministerial Order M192, which exempts local governments from statutory requirements related to the conduct of meetings and public hearings and the passage of bylaws.

However, in the official opposition, we think it’s important to, very respectfully, remind the government and the minister about the contentiousness of that ministerial order, M192, and the Ombudsman’s report from June 2020 related to it, considering M192 will remain in force until the COVID-19 emergency authorities are lifted. Very, very important to be aware of those concerns that were raised by the Ombudsman at that time.

A little bit of background on the Ombudsman’s report. Again, this was in June of 2020. The Ombudsman, Jay Chalke, released his report entitled Extraordinary Times, Extraordinary Measures: Two Ministerial Orders Made Under the Emergency Program Act In Response To the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The Ombudsman’s report investigated two ministerial orders, M098 and M139, later to be replaced with M192, as I’ve already mentioned. Importantly, the Ombudsman concluded that these orders are contrary to law. They should have been invalid, since they overextended the authority of government.

The Ombudsman’s exact words were this: “The issue we investigated is whether those extra powers include the ability for the minister to suspend or temporarily amend B.C. statutes, and we concluded the minister does not have that authority, even in an emergency.”

Now, the Ombudsman did make a number of recommendations, five recommendations, to government in the report, including introducing legislation as soon as possible to validate the orders and to not make any further orders amending statutes unless the Legislature passes legislation authorizing such orders. Unfortunately, the government’s response, which came in the form of a letter from the Solicitor General….

I should just back up. The Solicitor General did revise Ministerial Order M139 into M192, but his letter in response to the Ombudsman’s report was concerningly dismissive. In his letter of response, the Solicitor General said: “We are of the view that the Ombudsperson Act does not provide jurisdiction for you to conduct an investigation into the ministerial orders in question.” In other words, we don’t recognize your authority here.

[3:05 p.m.]

That’s very, very concerning. These ministerial orders and the resulting Ombudsman’s report are another unfortunate example of this government’s penchant for overextending its authority and dismissing the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that government remains open and transparent and that government’s actions are grounded in law.

With this bill translating many of the measures outlined in these ministerial orders into permanent law, we certainly hope that the minister realizes that to maintain public trust, government must proceed with greater accountability and consideration for B.C.’s laws and democratic processes — again, even in states of emergency.

With that, I appreciate the opportunity to offer comments today on Bill 10, on behalf of my opposition colleagues. As I said earlier, we very much look forward to discussing and debating, section by section, this bill further in committee.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I invite the minister to close the debate on second reading.

Hon. J. Osborne: Thank you to the member opposite for the comments. I look forward to committee stage next.

I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. J. Osborne: Now I move that the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 10, Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading of Bill 11, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2021.

BILL 11 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

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

This bill includes amendments to the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, or CRMA, which was passed in July 2020. CRMA is designed to allow a smooth transition at the end of the state of emergency declared under the Emergency Program Act by avoiding an abrupt end to provisions that respond to and alleviate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CRMA also provides authority for targeted protections from civil liability related to the pandemic to ensure that, where appropriate, fears of civil liability will not unduly discourage activity that promotes the province’s pandemic response and recovery.

Recognizing that the pandemic has continued and evolved, these amendments would extend CRMA’s repeal date from July 10 to December 31, 2021. Amendments would also streamline processes for reporting to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly regarding regulations and ministerial orders made in relation to the pandemic and clarify several cross-references and existing regulation-making powers.

The proposed amendments to the Family Law Act clarify that family violence, as defined in section 1 of the Family Law Act, does not include an intention to harm a family member. As the definition of domestic or sexual violence in subsection 52.5(1) of the Employment Standards Act and the definition of household violence in subsection 45.1(1) of the Residential Tenancy Act are modelled on the definition of family violence in the Family Law Act, amendments to these acts are proposed to mirror the amendment to the Family Law Act.

There is a separate housekeeping amendment to remove the parentheses from six references in the Family Law Act to the Provincial Court (Family) Rules. This aligns with the updated title of the new Provincial Court Family Rules.

This bill also includes an amendment to the Clean Energy Act related to B.C. Hydro’s Burrard thermal facility in Port Moody. This 1960s natural gas–fired electricity generation plant was one of the largest point sources of greenhouse gas emissions until it was decommissioned in 2016.

[3:10 p.m.]

The site provides an ideal opportunity for industrial redevelopment. However, the Clean Energy Act currently prohibits B.C. Hydro from considering opportunities to sell or lease all or a portion of the site because the facility is designated as a heritage asset. This bill would remove Burrard thermal from that list and allow B.C. Hydro to consider proposals for alternative uses of the site. Local First Nations have been consulted on the amendment, and those that have responded are supportive.

In addition to creating benefits for B.C. Hydro’s customers, alternate use of the site could support post-COVID economic recovery, which is why we are introducing this legislative change now.

Amendments to section 26 of the Motor Vehicle Act will enable the Insurance Corp. of B.C., ICBC, to refuse to issue drivers’ licences and vehicle licences for persons who have outstanding fines under the COVID-19 Related Measures Act or the Emergency Program Act. A total of 1,857 COVID-related violation tickets were issued between August 21, 2020 and April 23, 2021. As of April 17, ICBC has processed 1,373 of these tickets, for a total of approximately $956,000 owing to the province. Only 13 percent of this debt, or approximately $120,000, has been paid.

ICBC is currently sending unpaid COVID-19 fines to collections after 30 days, instead of the usual 12 months. However, debt collection remains low. Enabling refuse to issue will provide an additional debt collection tool that can be used to ensure that COVID-19 rulebreakers are held accountable by paying their fines.

Minor housekeeping amendments to section 26 of the Motor Vehicle Act will include…. References to repealed statutes will be removed. An omitted cross-reference will be added, and gendered language will be replaced with gender-neutral language.

Finally, this bill also contains a validation and confirmation provision for statute correction regulations, which made minor housekeeping corrections.

M. de Jong: Thanks to the Attorney for the summary here at second reading stage of the provisions contained within Bill 11. As is frequently the case with a bill of this sort and the various statutes that it purports to amend, the House will undoubtedly conduct most of its work in committee stage, posing questions to the Attorney and/or colleagues with responsibilities for some of the statutes that are impacted by these amendments.

For my part, I can say that it is my considered opinion that the House appreciates and understands that, confronted by the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic, the rationale, in principle, at least, for the extension of the application of the COVID-19 Related Measures Act and the provisions that it contains through to the conclusion of the calendar year, which is what is proposed in the bill before us, makes an element of sense.

We will want to pursue with the Attorney specifically the significance of so doing and whether, in the intervening now 11 months, he and the government have anything to report with respect to the application of the provisions of the original Bill 19, COVID-Related Measures Act. Specifically, the Attorney has mentioned the targeted protections from civil liability that were provided by Bill 19.

The House, I think, would benefit from a description and information from the government and the Attorney about the degree to which those protections have been applied, necessary or otherwise utilized. Those are, of course, questions more properly put to the Attorney during the course of the committee stage debate that will follow.

[3:15 p.m.]

Bill 11 contains, as we’ve just heard, some amendments to the Family Law Act and the Residential Tenancy Act, dealing specifically with the definition of “family violence.” The Attorney, I hope, will be in a position, in response to questions at the committee stage, to advise the House of the government’s rationale for including the change and to what degree the absence of intent from the present definition represented a constraint on the ability to afford protections to family members.

Again, these are questions that the Attorney, I’m sure, will be anxious to deal with in committee. We will, performing our function as opposition, want to ensure that there are no unintended consequences when one considers the myriad of unique circumstances that can apply in something as complex as a family relationship or a tenant-landlord relationship.

Having said all of that, of course, the House, I expect, is united in its belief that everything can and should be done to protect people from any displays of family violence, particularly the case with respect to the Family Law Act. We will pose those questions to the Attorney General and look forward to receiving his replies and more detailed descriptions of the amendments contained in Bill 11, sections 4 and 5 — particularly section 4 — to the Family Law Act and, in section 6, to the Residential Tenancy Act.

Again, as we’ve heard, the additional amendments proposed in Bill 11 to the Clean Energy Act and the Motor Vehicle Act, in the interest of time, I will encourage. I know my colleagues with specific opposition responsibilities in those areas will have a few things to say here, at second reading, with respect to the matters that they hope to canvass with the responsible ministers at the time we get to committee stage.

The Attorney has referred to the deletion of Burrard thermal from schedule 1 of the Clean Energy Act, and my colleagues will, in a moment, comment on the potential significance of that and on the nature of the questions that the government should anticipate receiving at committee stage.

Similarly, the use of ICBC as a collection agent with respect to COVID-related fines is something that my colleague from Prince George will have some thoughts on and will express them momentarily and, I know, will pursue with the responsible minister at committee stage.

I don’t think there are any surprises with respect to the course that the debate will take here in second reading, or in committee stage. To facilitate the further, more detailed exchange in committee, the opposition will certainly facilitate the passage of this Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act through second reading and into that committee stage for a more detailed examination.

M. Morris: You know, it has always been a bit of a hassle collecting fines and money owed to the Crown, for a number of different reasons here. One of the things I’ll be exploring with the minister when we get to this particular point under the Motor Vehicle Act is whether or not they’ve explored the use of the private sector in assisting in this regard. In the numbers that the minister spoke about — 13 percent of the total fines that have been issued so far have been collected — it leaves quite a big hole on the side owing.

[3:20 p.m.]

We have a number of organizations in the province — the bailiffs, a number of agencies — that are probably in a pretty good position to do that. Having said that, it’s always good to see government evaluating the systems that we have in place right now and making adjustments to the processes as we move forward with different legislation.

Having spent over 30 years in law enforcement, I know full well the propensity of some members of our population to incur fines and pick which laws they’re going to obey and which ones they’re not going to obey and ignore the consequences of that. The number of fines that are outstanding probably add up substantially every year.

But what we have in this province and in this country is a constitution, and the rule of law prevails. If somebody, any member of society, doesn’t agree with the law that’s been enforced against them, they have a choice: they can pay the fine and pay the penalty that’s related to that, or they can challenge it in court and go through the due process that is laid out in this province and across the country that will allow them to determine whether that law is just. So merely deciding what law they’re going to obey or disobey — there are consequences to that.

I look forward to talking about this a little bit more during the committee stage, asking the minister some questions around the options that we have for collecting fines in this province.

I’ll just momentarily speak about domestic violence. I do appreciate where the minister is coming from in presenting the amendments that this bill outlines. But again, there will be a few questions. I’m sure my colleague that just spoke earlier will probably highlight some of those during the committee stage.

I look forward to popping the hood open on this one and seeing where it leads.

T. Shypitka: Speaking to the part of the bill now, the amendment in Bill 11 pertaining to schedule 1 of the Clean Energy Act, it identifies removing Burrard thermal generating station from the list of B.C. Hydro’s protected heritage assets. The list of 36 B.C. Hydro assets that were placed under protection from being sold through the Clean Energy Act, basically, was to solidify B.C. in retaining its electricity self-sufficiency.

Burrard thermal was built one year before I was born. I’m not going to say what year that was, but it was a long, long time ago. It was a natural-fired power plant, as the Attorney General has stated. At the time, it provided about 9 percent of the province’s energy needs, almost exactly, coincidentally, what the Site C project represents today.

It was placed under heritage protection by the B.C. Liberal government in case it was needed for emergency power generation use. Burrard thermal did provide emergency power until about 2016 to the Lower Mainland. Now it continues to provide voltage support and stability for B.C. Hydro’s transmission and distribution of electricity in the Lower Mainland.

If the asset is to be sold off, it would be good to know a couple things, as this is a public asset paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia. There’ll be some questions in committee stage for sure: the transparency of the sale, to whom it’s sold, conditions and intended use.

What was the level of participation with First Nations and the obligations to consult and accommodate First Nations? What will the proceeds of the sale be used for? What does this mean for electricity self-sufficiency in our province? Does it jeopardize emergency provisions if needed for failing electrical systems?

What happens to the shortfall of grants in lieu of taxes from B.C. Hydro to the city of Port Moody as well as the loss of school taxes on the property, which is remitted back to the province? This will be about $300,000 annually.

I’d like to see this asset repurposed to facilitate a similar role, backing up the grid for emergency power with new cleaner solutions. I believe the power that has replaced Burrard thermal comes from the Mica generation station, well over 700 kilometres away. So there are some issues with that on stability of emergency power use in the province.

[3:25 p.m.]

We’ve seen a lot of things happen around the world: equipment failure, geomagnetic storms can happen and then climate change, of course — firestorms, high winds, ice storms. We’re reminded quickly of what happened in Montreal in 1998. It was one of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history. Close to four million people were out of power for weeks on end. Thirty-five people died. There were thousands injured, and 600,000 people, including seniors, were moved out of their homes to hotels and other shelters that had emergency backup. It was a real shocker for a lot of people. It was devastating. It came at a cost. It was a cost of about $5½ billion in insurance claims and things like that.

We don’t have to go farther than that. Last February, in Texas and throughout the States and even northern Mexico, we had winter storm Uri that swept across. Power outages cost about $195 billion and affected ten million people. It was quite a weather event.

I worry about some of these things, going forward, but these are the things we’ll get into in committee stage. As the member for Prince George–Mackenzie said, we’ll pop the hood off on it, and we’ll take a look at it in a deeper dive.

With that, I have no more comments on this bill.

Deputy Speaker: We’ll take a two-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 3:26 p.m. to 3:27 p.m.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

R. Glumac: Sometimes the smallest change can have the biggest impact. This small amendment to the Clean Energy Act, to remove Burrard thermal from the list of heritage assets, could have far-reaching implications in the fight to combat climate change. This amendment will allow B.C. Hydro to pursue alternative uses for the decommissioned Burrard thermal site. It has been underutilized since being shut down by the B.C. Liberals in 2016.

Burrard thermal operated as a fossil-fuel-burning plant for over 50 years. While running at full capacity, it could generate enough electricity to power 10 percent of the province. I remember hearing stories of the pollution that was produced by that facility, especially in its early years. In its last few years, it was operating strictly as a standby plant, providing emergency power or peaking power for a few days in the winter, when demand was at its highest.

When it was shut down, the city of Port Moody lost an annual $1.3 million tax grant, which was an incredible financial burden for the community. That single facility made up 2 percent — close to 3 percent, actually — of Port Moody’s tax base. This amendment would allow for new opportunities to be considered for those lands. This could not only restore the lost tax revenue for the community, but it also will support providing good-paying jobs in the community and a strong post-COVID recovery.

[3:30 p.m.]

Ever since I was elected in 2017, I could see a brighter future for this facility. I could see how we could move away from the fossil-fuel-based past into a sustainable clean energy future. A year after I was elected, in 2018, we introduced CleanBC in an effort to shift homes, vehicles, industry and business off of fossil fuels towards renewable energy. Because of these efforts, B.C. is becoming a destination for new investment in carbon-reducing technology and lower-carbon products. The world needs new clean technology, and Burrard Thermal lands is a great place to develop that technology.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Already, B.C. is a leader in clean energy innovation. There are companies doing innovative work in many areas, such as renewable energy, energy management, energy efficiency, clean transportation, hydrogen and fuel cells, and improving industrial processes to make industry cleaner and greener.

In fact, there are about 300 clean tech companies in this province, employing over 16,000 people. B.C. is a home to a quarter of the clean tech companies in Canada and always has a large presence on the list of Global Cleantech top 100 companies, which lists the top companies in the world with the most innovative and promising ideas in clean technology.

The clean tech industry generates over $3 trillion of economic activity per year globally. Some of the companies that are doing this work are looking for a place to scale up their operations or create a demonstration project to prove out their technologies. B.C. has the right kind of environment to promote this kind of innovation, and we’re providing historic investments in climate action through CleanBC.

In Budget 2019, we committed $900 million to CleanBC. In 2020, another $420 million was committed. Then, with the introduction of StrongerBC, our economic recovery plan, we committed a further $220 million and, in this budget, another $500 million. That’s a total of over $2.2 billion committed to shifting towards a low-carbon economy.

CleanBC has set the foundation for a strong and sustainable economic recovery and a bright future for all British Columbians. In addition, we’re creating a bold new strategic investment fund called InBC. This $500 million fund will be used to support B.C.-based businesses to drive forward innovation, sustainability and inclusiveness and further the goals of CleanBC.

The time is right. The time is right to find opportunities. The time is right to further the goals of addressing climate change. The time is right to unlock the potential of Burrard Thermal. Already, many companies have been approaching B.C. Hydro to inquire about leasing the lands. This includes everything from hydrogen development to carbon sequestration projects.

I’ve spoken to some of these companies myself in my previous role as Parliamentary Secretary for Technology. I’ve been working closely with the Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation to help bring this amendment forward today. Last year I hosted the Premier in touring through the facility, and the potential was obvious. There is no other site like this in B.C., with its close proximity to high-voltage clean electricity, its water and port access, its industrial zoning and location away from residential areas.

I’m excited to stand today in the House and support this bill. The possibilities that this legislation unlocks are very exciting. I’m a hopeful person, but hope alone doesn’t change the world. I know that the next generation is facing an uncertain future with climate change. I know that we need to take every opportunity that we can to support an economy that moves away from carbon. We need to support innovation to do that. One breakthrough in clean technology could change everything. That breakthrough could happen on the Burrard Thermal lands.

[3:35 p.m.]

G. Lore: I’m very pleased to rise virtually today for what is, hard to believe, my first time speaking to legislation in this House. While life has delayed me a little from being here, I am compelled to stand in support of this legislation.

While the title Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, may do little to grab attention, its content, particularly as it relates to the Family Law Act, directly affects the lives of British Columbians. Amendments to the Family Law Act reflect our belief that there are no conditions under which violence in the family, whether physical, sexual, psychological or emotional, is acceptable.

The changes clarify that when it comes to determining whether behaviour constitutes family violence, it is simply irrelevant whether the person responsible intended to harm their family member. This definition affects protection orders and impacts court decisions that determine what is in the best interests of a child. This means that physical violence directed at a partner is never acceptable, regardless of a perpetrator’s expressed rationale.

These changes mean that emotional or psychological abuse related to a child’s sexual orientation, gender or gender expression is violence, even if the caregiver makes claims of wanting what is best for a child. This is the exact circumstance that led to this change being necessary. This change will ensure protection orders are available and court decisions can protect children if caregivers use violence under the guise of care, discipline or teaching.

When the limited definition was made clear, we acted quickly to incorporate this amendment into the statute. Those at risk of and those targeted for gender-based violence and family violence cannot wait.

Amendments are also proposed to change the definition of domestic or sexual violence in the Employment Standards Act and the definition of household violence in the Residential Tenancy Act. The changes to these definitions will mean that those accessing leave from employment or who are leaving their homes to seek safety will be able to do so.

I’m proud to voice my support for these important changes and thank the Attorney General for his quick action to ensure support for survivors of family violence.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Government House Leader, the Solicitor General, to close debate.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I want to thank members for their thoughtful comments during the second reading debate. I know the Attorney General will look forward to answering questions during committee stage.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call committee stage, Bill 8.

Deputy Speaker: Minister, I believe you need to commit the bill to a Committee of the Whole House for the next sitting after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Sorry. My mistake. So enthusiastic about moving my own bill.

I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 11, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Now I call Bill 8, committee stage.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 8 — PUBLIC SAFETY AND
SOLICITOR GENERAL STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 8; S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.

The committee met at 3:39 p.m.

On clause 1.

M. Morris: I’m only going to have a couple of questions on this particular bill, but they will pertain to all of the clauses in the bill itself.

The Chair: We’ll just be on a recess for a short moment. Thanks, everyone.

The committee recessed from 3:39 p.m. to 3:41 p.m.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

M. Morris: I’ll make a couple of general comments that are applicable to clause 1, and I’ve got a couple of questions that will be applicable to clause 1. Depending on the answers, we might be able to get to clause 60 in due haste here.

I’ve gone through the bill with a fine-tooth comb. It pretty much reflects the existing regulations that have to be replaced and, of course, the Vancouver liquor component that’s bringing Vancouver in line with the rest of the province. I do want to ask a question regarding clause 1. Being that the minister is aware that illegal cannabis retail is taking place on First Nations reserves, did the minister consult with First Nations, with respect to the declaration act, regarding all of the clauses under this particular bill?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: I appreciate the question from the member.

As there’s no change to any existing government policy or regulations, there’s no requirement to in fact consult under DRIPA. The regulations stay the same and as they are.

That being said, we did notify all treaty nations, and we did notify the FNLC and their staff. There were no concerns or issues raised with what we were bringing forward.

M. Morris: Just a follow-up to this, then. There are some substantial…. As a previous enforcement officer, I like what I see in the bill on what the police have available to them.

As there are a number of illegal or unlawful cannabis operations, reportedly, on many of our First Nations reserves, and this bill will affect their ability to continue on in those operations in a legal capacity, I’m wondering whether your ministry has touched bases with any of the First Nations that are currently operating outside of this bill to advise them what the consequences would be to continue to operate once these provisions are added to the cannabis act.

Hon. M. Farnworth: The community safety unit is in regular contact with First Nations right across the prov­ince. When First Nations were notified of these changes, they were informed that this legislation now goes from the regulations that were, in essence, there: “This is how the legislation works, and this legislation now makes them permanent.” What’s clear is that what may have been perceived as being temporary is in fact now permanent.

M. Morris: The second question I have, then, other than the ones I may ask in respect to any answers I get here: can the minister confirm that this bill — and, subsequently, the Cannabis Control and Licensing Act — is a law of general application and is enforceable on First Nations reserves?

Hon. M. Farnworth: Yes, it is.

M. Morris: There were no red flags in the development of this particular bill moving forward? There’s no hesitation with respect to enforcement by the community safety unit in enforcing these on First Nations lands across the province?

[3:50 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: That would be correct. We don’t have any red flags around these changes.

M. Morris: Chair, that’s the extent of the questions that I have. You know, it’s a very strong bill. It certainly adds some strength to the Cannabis Control and Licensing Act for the province here. I look forward to the diminishment of illegal cannabis sales on First Nations reserves and throughout the province here.

From clause 1 to clause 60 — I don’t have any issues with it.

The Chair: I will just ask, to be completely fair and to make sure everyone gets a chance…. If there are any other questions between 1 and 60, now’s the time. Otherwise, I’m going to call a vote on those.

Clauses 1 to 61 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move the committee rise, report the bill complete without amendment and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 3:52 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 8 — PUBLIC SAFETY AND
SOLICITOR GENERAL STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Bill 8, Public Safety and Solicitor General Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued second reading debate on Bill 7, Electoral Boundaries Act.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: We’ll just take a short two-minute recess to make sure that all the ducks can be put in order again. Thanks, everyone.

The House recessed from 3:55 p.m. to 3:57 p.m.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 7 — ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES
COMMISSION AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

(continued)

M. Morris: Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be 40 years old next year. When it came out in 1982, I’d already been policing for nearly ten years. I remember the debate, both for and against the changes, wondering what all the fuss was about because I thought we had one of the best charters in the first place.

Over the past 40 years, I’ve taken a keen interest in Charter challenges, of course beginning with criminal law, because that’s what I was immersed in at the time, and listening to the other constitutional challenges that came along. I can confirm that after my 40 years of witnessing the transitional jurisprudence and legislative changes, we do, indeed, have one of the strongest constitutions in the world.

But the floodgates to challenging every law in Canada were opened at that particular time, and I remember that. Just about everything we could think of was being challenged. Thousands of cases during the early decades of the Charter defined our future, all premised upon a single section of the Charter that states that the Charter “is the supreme law of Canada” and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Charter “is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force and effect.”

The laws around electoral boundaries were not spared and fell under the microscope of the courts and the Supreme Court of Canada for clarification and refinement. The courts have determined that in Canada and, of course, in British Columbia, our electoral system is not based upon one person, one vote, but based upon the relative equality of voting power in each electoral district.

In a Supreme Court of Canada case referenced as Dixon, a B.C. case from 1989, the court determined that departure from the ideal of absolute equality may not constitute a breach of section 3 of the Charter so long as the departure can be objectively justified as contributing to better government. Of course, section 3 of the Charter gives every citizen the right to vote.

[4:00 p.m.]

Some have argued that anything other than one person, one vote would be an infringement of that Charter right, but the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that an infringement of a Charter right can be justified if pressing and substantial concerns are met. The court has ruled that the objectives of ensuring that geographical and regional concerns are reflected in electoral boundaries to the end of ensuring better government, they’re valid and meet the pressing and substantial test.

When the Dixon case was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Attorney General for B.C. cited five factors that justified giving greater weight to rural votes. First was special interests of rural residents, such as environment, conservation, transportation and resources, all vital to the survival of British Columbia.

The environment is critical for everything that happens in this province. Of course, conservation, of which I’m a big fan. Transportation — we have thousands of miles of highway. We have 700,000 kilometres of resource roads in rural British Columbia. And, of course, our natural resources. We are a province blessed with a diversity of natural resources that sustain the economic fabric of this province.

The second was difficulties in communicating with electors scattered throughout large areas. Some of us, you know, myself…. It probably takes about three or more hours to drive from one side of my constituency to another. Others have greater distances than that. But in today’s world and today’s time, of course, we have other critical factors of communication. A lot of our communication is web-based. If we don’t have the capacity, in rural British Columbia, to enter into the various websites to access government services, then that’s a hindrance for those particular communities.

The third was the wider range of problems with which rural members are required to deal: our snow storms, getting from point A to point B and spring freshet flooding. A lack of services in many of the areas is paramount.

Of course, that goes into the fourth reason, which was lack of access to medical in rural areas. Northern Health covers 75 percent of the province and is the only health district in British Columbia that does not offer cardiac services to 80 percent of the people. My mother-in-law had a heart attack a number of years ago, and she had to be medevacked down to Vancouver for cardiac services. Then we had to drive down to pick her up and bring her home again. Those are things that people that live in the urban areas of British Columbia don’t really have to consider.

That leads to number five, which is the limited availability of resources and advisers to rural members of the public. The court, at that time, in Dixon, agreed that all those factors related to regional interests or geographical concerns were valid.

As I said, the world has changed since these five factors were recognized over 30 years ago. The 25 percent population deviation recognized in our current legislation was premised on a recommendation made nearly 35 years ago by Judge Fisher, the commissioner who conducted the Royal Commission on Electoral Boundaries for British Columbia in 1988. In my review of Judge Fisher’s reports, I could find no formula or metric involved in making that 25 percent determination. It appeared that it was more arbitrary in nature than anything else.

The population of B.C. has increased substantially over the past 35 years, with much of the growth attributable to people immigrating from other areas of Canada and countries around the world. Most immigrants to our great province move into the 21 municipalities that comprise the Metro Vancouver area.

Metro Vancouver has 51 percent of B.C.’s population but occupies 0.3 percent, one-third of 1 percent, of British Columbia’s land mass. The 13 municipalities within the capital regional district have 9 percent of B.C.’s population while occupying only 0.2 percent, 0.2 of 1 percent, of B.C.’s land mass. In other words, 60 percent of British Columbia’s population inhabits one-half of 1 percent of the land mass of British Columbia. Pretty substantial.

[4:05 p.m.]

Many of the urban populations in these two jurisdictions…. It’s the residence for these newcomers to our province, and they have little to no knowledge of the areas of our province outside of Metro Vancouver and the capital regional district.

I’ll go back. I was out for a meal in Vancouver here, two or three years ago, with a relative. We were being served by this young person — young person to me, anyways. They were probably around late 20s, early 30s. She asked where we were from, and the person I was with said they were from Yaletown. They had a pretty good conversation about the various areas in Vancouver to live.

She asked where I was from, and I told her I was from Prince George. She said: “Where’s Prince George?” I said: “Well, it’s about 500 miles north of Vancouver.” She asked me if there was a road to Prince George. This individual…. We had a nice chit-chat with her. She had been in Vancouver for about eight years, and she had moved in here from Toronto. So there is a lack of understanding of what British Columbia is and how big we are. A lot of people don’t fathom the size of British Columbia.

But as with most people, interests tend to be regional in nature, except instead of hundreds scattered around the province who share regionally focused issues, there are hundreds of thousands located on less than half of 1 percent of our land mass sharing regionally focused issues, most likely issues that are focused within one half of 1 percent of the land mass. When you look at Metro Vancouver with 21 municipalities, several MLAs within that complete area also represent almost similar issues amongst those 21 municipalities.

As our dense urban populations realize greater economies of scale, on a greater scale from the services of those 21 municipalities and the 13 municipalities in Vancouver, a lot of the services that are provided in those regional areas are provided by the municipal governments — many of the bridges, many of the other facilities that we have here and transit. B.C. Transit, as well, provides a lot of the services to those communities. B.C. Transit services like SkyTrain and the Canada Line make it possible for people to get around without even owning a vehicle or having a driver’s licence.

The economies of scale on this 0.5 percent of the land mass that holds 60 percent of our population…. The economies of scale make it possible for entities like cellular service providers, fibre optic and high-speed internet services to provide competitive superior products to what we get in rural British Columbia. The economies of scale relating to professional services like medical specialists, laboratories, engineering, advanced education, counselling and others that are limited or completely absent in many areas of British Columbia….

I’d like to once again reference the Dixon case. It was one of the first cases the Supreme Court of Canada heard that challenged section 3, the guarantee of the right to vote, in British Columbia here. The court recognized and accepted a list of core values that form part of the guaranteed right to vote under section 3.

The first one is the right not to be denied the franchise on the grounds of race, sex, educational qualifications or other unjustifiable criteria; the second, the right to be presented with a choice of candidates or parties; the right to a secret ballot; the right to have one’s vote counted; the right to have one’s vote count for the same as other valid votes cast in a district; the right to sufficient information about public policies to permit an informed decision; the right to be represented by a candidate with at least the plurality of votes in a district; the right to vote in periodic elections; and the right to cast one’s vote in an electoral system which has not been deliberately engineered to favour one political party or another, which is the basis of this bill and the subsequent act.

The court added a tenth core value in the Dixon case: that equality of voting power is fundamental to the Canadian concept of democracy. The equality of voting power.

[4:10 p.m.]

The Supreme Court continued to refine section 3 in another court case in 1991. The reference case is province of Saskatchewan electoral boundaries. The court determined: “The purpose of the right to vote enshrined in section 3 of the Charter is not equality of voting power per se but the right to ‘effective representation.’ The right to vote…comprises many factors, of which equality is but one,” as I related in the ten core values earlier on.

The court in reference stated: “Deviations from absolute voter parity…may be justified on the grounds of practical impossibility or the provision of more effective representation. Factors like geography, community history, community interests and minority representation” need to be considered “to ensure that our legislative assemblies effectively represent the diversity of our social mosaic.”

Although population plays a major role in pursuit of relative equity and voting power, I must comment on this government’s insistence that the protection of northern electoral districts be removed to provide a commission with more independence. The Supreme Court of Canada in Dixon stated: ”The process of adjusting for factors other than population is not capable of precise mathematical definition. People will necessarily disagree on how important a region grouping is to the boundary of this riding, on how significant problems of serving constituents are in that electoral district. It is for the legislatures to make decisions on these matters and not for the courts to substitute their views.”

I have faith in the role of the commission. However, I also want to recognize that the B.C. Liberals recognized the critical importance of regional groupings and geographical importance long ago — something that this government still fails to recognize. Although 60 percent of our provincial population resides on less than half of 1 percent of our land mass, in what many would agree is the most temperate area of our province — the abundance of natural resources around our province is critical in supporting that area.

The only source of natural gas in British Columbia, used for multiple industrial and commercial applications, residential heating, originates in northeast B.C., pumped through thousands of kilometres of pipe, through every existing rural riding and many urban ridings to the most southerly area of our province and into the United States.

There are dozens of maintenance facilities and hundreds of workers located from north to south in this province ensuring the pipeline and compressor stations operate flawlessly to ensure delivery to British Columbia. One only needs to look back a couple of years to see how one single incident in Prince George shut down the supply of natural gas for southern B.C. and the northwest United States for weeks.

Forty percent of British Columbia’s hydroelectricity originates in northeast B.C. and travels through thousands of kilometres of transmission lines, connecting all British Columbia, including Vancouver Island, with 98 percent clean energy — the envy of many jurisdictions worldwide. Thousands of people are employed in all corners of B.C. to ensure power shortages and outages are mitigated and addressed immediately.

North, south, east, west, railways pass through my riding in Prince George, hauling millions of tonnes of metallurgic coal, copper, gold and other minerals and wood products to shipping facilities in Metro Vancouver or other deep-water ports in B.C. These products are critical in providing B.C. residents with the technology and communications necessary in our modern world.

I often think how many folks in British Columbia take for granted the cell phone that’s in their hand, the computer that they operate every day, the electricity that flows into their homes and their businesses, flowing through aluminum lines, the copper that is embedded in our cell phones, the rare earth metals that are embedded in our cell phones that provide the technology to make urban British Columbia — and all of British Columbia, for that matter — operate.

[4:15 p.m.]

Highway 97 runs for over 2,000 kilometres, from the most southern end of our province to the northern boundary with the Yukon, with about 300 kilometres of that highway in my riding. There are thousands of bridges, culverts and overpasses built and maintained by the province, employing thousands of people that are necessary for the safe movement of goods and services across our province.

The essence of what I’m trying to say…. When we look at the population that we have on that half of 1 percent of the land mass of British Columbia…. There are a number of people that have no idea what happens outside of that location.

When you have a number of MLAs all advocating for that new hospital in Surrey or that new hospital in Richmond or new schools and some of these other facilities in some of these other jurisdictions, to the detriment of the very few of us in rural British Columbia who are trying to argue for those same sorely needed resources that we have in the province…. Oftentimes our voices are lost in the din that we hear in this House from time to time.

I’m hoping that the independent commissioner that will be taking on a review of the electoral boundaries across British Columbia is going to be a very learned individual and that the people that will be assisting him or her on that commission will certainly be as well. I hope they look at those regional and geographical differences that we have in British Columbia and make the right decision when it comes to determining those electoral boundaries.

We have vast areas of this province that are very difficult for us to service. My riding is a mixture of urban and rural, of course, with the city of Prince George being the largest centre in the interior of British Columbia. I have the community of Mackenzie a couple of hours north, which has a tremendous amount of issues with high-speed Internet access, particularly in these times of COVID, when a lot of government services have gone to online services rather than in person.

Education is another factor. They struggle with getting a lot of the services to supply to Mackenzie, to Bear Lake and to some of the other smaller communities that we have here.

Those are the things that really need to be taken into consideration. The voices of the many, the 60 percent of the population that resides on 0.5 percent of the land mass in British Columbia, make a lot of noise and for good reason. That’s where most of the people move to. But we can’t exclude the rest of the province as we go through here.

Mr. Speaker, I’m looking forward to further discussion on this. I’m looking forward to an effective commission looking into the electoral boundaries in British Columbia.

B. Stewart: It gives me great pleasure to rise on this particular bill and the topic it represents because it is important.

I think about the diversity, as the member previously, from Prince George–Mackenzie, has just described. That is only a small snapshot of the vast regions and ridings. As he said, Prince George is the most populous in the northern half of the province, yet it represents a huge amount of area. One of the things, when he’s speaking….

I think about the diversity and the range of different things that are happening in our province. I’ve had the good fortune to live in a few other places besides where I currently live. Most people don’t know that I resided in Kitimat for a period of time back in the ’70s. I got to know areas that I had no idea…. I drove to places up Highway 37, up to Dease Lake, Stewart and, of course, the infamous Hyder.

More importantly, having travelled as a member of government as well as an opposition member…. I know we look forward to the Committee on Finance and Government Services talking to people this year about their specific needs. I think that one of the things I have done is travel extensively up into the northeast, up to Fort Nelson, up to Dawson Creek, just the differences geographically and what’s going on there. I think that if there was less representation in some of those areas….

[4:20 p.m.]

It is a concern to many of the people that are trying to do things to have people that actually can come to Victoria here, in the Legislature, and talk knowledgably about things that are going on in that area. These areas are vast already.

I see the member for North Coast is online here. Her territory is another area. We used to get out of Kitimat and go to Prince Rupert, thinking it was kind of like the capital of the north, and maybe it was. Anyway, I have to say that I respect the fact that having been on Haida Gwaii and up to the coast, the territory that I used to have to cover as a representative for the company I worked for went all the way down to Bella Bella, Klemtu and many of the other communities on the coast, really only accessible by boat or by floatplane.

You can’t underestimate what it takes…. Of course, in those days there were less floatplanes and things like that around, but I have to say that it’s one of the things that I think we cannot underestimate. When I travel in my riding, it’s not very rural, although it takes me over an hour to drive from one end…. My riding starts at the north end of Lake Okanagan up next to the Okanagan Indian Band’s boundary and all the way back down into West Kelowna, where Westbank First Nation and the city of West Kelowna are, but it also stretches into Kelowna almost out to Orchard Park on the west side of Highway 97, and it’s very populous.

You know what? We’re a busy office. We have two staff that work very hard to make certain that they’re dealing with constituent issues. There are many of them. I know that many of the members that are in urban settings probably have a similar situation, but there are places, I’m sure, in urban British Columbia where the boundaries are so close together. I’m thinking, if I lived in downtown Vancouver or on the west side…. Where are the boundaries, etc.? You kind of need to know the geography, etc.

Maybe it’s a little easier in the situation I’m in, but there are people that are living in places like Smithers, Houston and Burns Lake, as the member from Nechako Lakes talked about. I’ve driven through his riding, and it takes a long time. Then going into New Hazelton, Hazelton, all of the way up to some of the other areas where other members that are in this House represent, it’s a vast territory. That’s just the highway system.

What about the other off areas, especially in the areas like north of Terrace, where there’s a fair amount of mineral development? I know that we have quite a bit going on in those areas — all the power to those people — but if you’re trying to develop something in those areas, that takes a lot of consultation, a lot of understanding of what it’s going to be like. How is the ore going to be mined? How is the security of the new goldmines up there? How are they going to ensure they can actually get the product to the marketplace in a form that it’s not hijacked or whatever else? People don’t appreciate that.

I look at the success when we put in the northwest transmission line to help bring electrification — hydroelectric power — to parts of the province. We haven’t even scratched the surface on some of that. I know that many of these places…. I remember independent power production in Atlin, of all places. It’s a small community that was running on diesel-operated electrical power.

Without somebody that actually knew that area, knowing why it was important, etc., we might not have known the First Nations that were dependent on that and how we could change run-of-the-river power into something that would give them a supply of clean energy, rather than having to truck diesel all the way up into these places. Now, I can’t say that I’ve personally visited Atlin, but I’ve been all the way up to Dawson City, and I’ve driven way into Alaska. I have to tell you that there are vast resources up there.

More importantly, we have to have people that know something about the area and the impacts on that. It can’t be just kind of somebody down in the most populous part of the province who has never even travelled north of…. I’m sure that many have travelled outside of the Fraser Valley, but I think of the fact that most will not have travelled to some of those places like Fort Nelson and Dease Lake and places that I’ve had the opportunity to visit. So I think it’s important.

[4:25 p.m.]

I know that probably the cornerstone, or the pieces in this legislation that probably could easily be overlooked, is the fact that these rural areas in the northeast, the northwest, the Kootenays and maybe even in other places in between — you know, Fraser-Nicola…. I’ve been with the member for Fraser-Nicola and travelled to every point in her riding, and it took me a day of driving just to go over to Lytton and then up to Lillooet and then back up to Cache Creek. It’s a lot, and there’s a lot going on there, and you need to understand the communities.

These communities are relatively small, but they’re no less important. The fact is the idea that somebody from Lillooet would have to maybe go to Kamloops, or they’d be tagged onto somebody maybe in Williams Lake, etc.…. It’s not particularly well known, I’m sure, as it isn’t to me, to know all about those communities, other than I had the good fortune of going through and doing all those communities when we had the Olympic Torch Relay. I know the member for Fraser-Nicola in the day and I travelled together celebrating that excitement.

But the more important thing about it is we did some things during the Olympics, not only the torch relay but a lot of live sites. The reason we did that was because we needed to bring British Columbia together. A lot of people asked us at the time why we would put the Olympics in Vancouver or Whistler or whatever. It was about them discovering British Columbia.

We’re talking about it on the TV right now. We’re talking about travel in British Columbia as the pandemic starts to allow people the opportunity to travel. But there is so much to discover. The bottom line is there are a lot of people that I know that are relocating into my riding because they’ve decided: “Hey, I can do things differently. I can live in a place, given the Internet that is lacking in many places.” I do commend the government and the federal government for making it a priority, but we need to do more.

We need to make certain that people can make a living and live in places that are remote and do a lot. But the reality is that it does help to make certain that we don’t think of the fact that people won’t be able to find affordable housing in these communities. They certainly are not finding it in the Lower Mainland. I mean, in Vancouver, the average cost of a house is near $1 million. It completely precludes an entire generation or two. As the member from Chilliwack, I think, said, his generation may be the last to own a house.

I only worry about the fact that there are generations that could lose that ability. We need to give them the tools to be able to move to maybe Grand Forks or north into the Cariboo and discover what’s going on in Cariboo North and things like that. But it is a vast amount of territory. We need to have a reasonable way to bring those ideas and solutions to the Legislature.

I think population is important, and I know in my particular riding, it’s one of the most populous ridings in the province. I don’t begrudge the fact that we’ve got more. Maybe we should take on more in urban areas. The percentage rule that has been talked about, the 25 percent variance, etc…. I think that we’re not using enough of that in urban areas, and I think that we need to make certain that we are reasonable about geographic differences in many of the rural ridings of this province. Geographic differences don’t just mean along Highway 97 or the corridor that heads up into the north part of the province.

I really want to make certain that this is done with a reasonable degree of transparency, where the people that are living in those areas feel that their input is valued. The fact is that a reduction for perhaps maybe some mathematical formula — does that make sense? Is that really the way that this province is operated?

We’ve built railways to the north. We’ve opened up natural gas supplies in the northeast. We’ve opened up minerals and forest products all across the province, creating value in terms of British Columbia. Having been on the other side of the Pacific Ocean looking at what we have to offer to other nations that we do trade with…. We are a trading province. We’re a trading nation. That is important.

[4:30 p.m.]

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

I know that this government has decided to operate trade differently than when I had the opportunity to be involved. But I can say that the reality is that their voices, the importance of doing deals, whether it’s First Nations…. I can remember dealing with the Lax Kw’alaams, who had a project that was linked in with TransCanada gas in terms of LNG and being able to tie into supply that they were bringing up north. They were actively looking, and they needed help. It’s not a huge community, but they came. They got the same attention and support as any other community. It happened to be a massive British Columbia company that was selling forest products over there.

This was a First Nation that came to our offices in Beijing, and we helped them open up. They needed representation. That’s one of the things that has happened, in my opinion, with the representation in Asia. We thought: “Well, we could do it cheaper and easier, or we could just hive that off and give it to the federal government.” That’s not the way it works. Over time, the rule of diminishing returns takes it into account. It’s important that people in British Columbia not feel forgotten or left behind. That’s one of the things.

As we have heard today, on this day where there’s a tragedy — where, I guess, the evidence has come forward on what happened in Kamloops with the residential school — I think it’s important that we make certain we don’t lose sight of the fact that many of these communities in these rural and remote areas need to make certain that they have somebody there that’s questioning why things are going on: “Why is the government doing this? Why are they allowing this to happen?”

I think one of the things…. I look forward to healthy and respectful debate, and I say “respectful” because I think that with the commissioners — the chief justice, the Chief Electoral Officer and the third person yet to be named — the bottom line is this: how will they view these areas? I suspect that if they were experienced in travelling the province, in seeing the differences in what these communities are built like….

I had that opportunity during the mid-term timber supply committee back in, I believe, 2012. We travelled to 30, 40 small communities that need a say at the table here — Dunster, Valemount, McBride, Quesnel. Not that Quesnel is small, but there are many communities counting on not being left behind in the economy. The economy is not across the water, over in the Lower Mainland. A part of it is: the universities. But we need to continue to invest in these areas to bring them the opportunity. As the member for Prince George–Mackenzie said: in the Northern Health Authority, there are no cardiac services in their area.

I know that in Kelowna we’re working on a stroke clinic — more than that, a centre of excellence — at the Kelowna General Hospital. We should aspire to that for people that are in the north. They already have vast differences. Medevac or not, that doesn’t help when time is of the essence. We need to make certain that we continue to remind people in the lower part of this province that we need to have services there. It costs more money to deliver services there because there’s less population to spread it across.

The province in the north would not be where it is today if we hadn’t invested in UNBC; come up with a way of distributing some of the wealth that was occurring from the oil and gas industry into Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Fort Nelson; or had other opportunities to make communities better, whether it’s Williams Lake, Quesnel, Smithers, Houston, Burns Lake.

We rebuilt in those communities, like after the Burns Lake fire. We really need to make certain that they’re not just a footnote, like communities that were part of the overall gold rush, in the sense that they were there and then they disappeared, etc. I think we need to ensure that there is adequate representation. That’s one of the things that I’m really wanting to make certain of, and I will be there to make certain that we raise the questions. I’ll be doing the same thing in my constituency to make certain that the people that are represented in Kelowna West don’t forget about the other parts of the province.

[4:35 p.m.]

They may have come from there, or they know there are many things we’re benefiting from, from the things that they bring to the province. For those resources that I talked about, whether it’s in First Nation communities on the coast and inland or natural gas, etc., those tax revenues are significant. They matter to everybody in the urban areas. We need to make certain that we’re doing our job and that we continue to invest in their interests and the fabric of those communities. That’s not going to happen if we take away from those areas and say: “Well, you don’t really have enough population.”

In Houston, I believe, Canfor has got one of these huge sawmills. It’s called a supermill. The amount that it processes…. I don’t know the numbers of millions of cubic metres of logs they process, but they do it with a couple of hundred people. I’ve been told that that mill would have been ten times that size had it not been for technology and advancements that were, maybe, developed at the coast. There needs to be an understanding that to grow the population, we need to make certain we create opportunities.

Value-add is a good example. Outside of Burns Lake, we looked at all sorts of value-add in the forest sector. I know this government has spoken to that. I know that First Nations want to be a part of that — it’s important — but we need to make certain that we continue to find opportunities. It’s very difficult…. If everybody has to travel to the major centres to come and explain or sell whatever opportunities that exist in their particular ridings, I think it diminishes the ability of the province to grow, prosper and develop the north. There’s all sort of unforeseen potential there.

I know that with rare earth minerals, which are in demand and something that we’re going to continue to need as long as we embrace clean power, etc., some of those have yet to be extracted from British Columbia. There’s something that we have an opportunity on, but it takes, usually, communities that are remote. It usually takes First Nations that are a part of these communities to help operate and develop these sites, because they’re often in these areas. It’s not necessarily townsites that get developed. It’s people who are out there in rural and remote areas who will help develop that.

I really want to make certain that the government takes its time and is thoughtful about the fact that they’ve taken the protection off the table. Secondly, when I look around this chamber…. I know that when I first got elected, there were less seats than there are now. I know that the talk now is to go up from 87 to 93. I have no idea. If we continue along this pathway, what do we do with the chamber when it becomes too full and crowded? The reality is that I’m not certain that I would say it’s not uncrowded at the present time, having sat on these benches for quite a number of years.

I look forward to the government being thoughtful, especially about First Nation communities that are obviously underrepresented, in many cases. They’re the ones that need this, and I know that many of the people that want to move there and start a family need representation as well. There are communities that ebb and flow with the economy. I know that Fort Nelson has gone through unbelievably challenging times with the price and the changes in oil and gas, but I do think that those types of communities require having representation.

I’ll finish on one note here. I was in Fort Nelson back in 2009 — maybe 2010. I was in Fort Nelson, and they’d had an ice skating rink that was part of their rec complex. It was the only facility that that community had. Fort Nelson, in my recollection, was around just under 3,000 people. It was going gangbusters. This particular arena had been built by the local people that first settled there, and maybe it hadn’t been engineered properly. Regardless, it collapsed, and they were having to dismantle. I was there on the day that they were knocking it down.

I remember meeting with the mayor of the municipality of the Northern Rockies, and he told me about what this meant to the community. This was their single and sole facility. They’re six or seven hours north of Fort St. John, so it’s not like you can run back to Fort St. John and have an event, public meetings, etc. This was important.

[4:40 p.m.]

I can remember coming back and talking to my colleagues here. We were able to, at that particular time, give Fort Nelson one of the single largest community grants, under the community gaming grants, to help them build that facility and get back up. It’s important. If I hadn’t been up there, we might have heard…. The member from Fort St. John north or north Peace River might have known about it, but the reality is that I brought back that reality that I’d been there and that I could support the member for Peace River North in making certain that people knew the value of making an investment in that community.

It’s not too dissimilar in Hazelton, when they were doing…. They had Hockeyville. I was up there with the mayor and talking about Hockeyville, and I’m thinking: “My goodness, why would Hockeyville be so important out here?” Well, it’s important because of the sense of community. Hockeyville, of course, is not in one of our ridings, but I have to tell you that I respectfully understand that, and I am glad that they have a new arena and look forward to many good projects still coming forward for people that live in rural British Columbia.

We’re not going to give up and trade off their representation, even though Bill 7 suggests that we might do that. I look forward to committee stage on this bill. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak.

Deputy Speaker: Member for Skeena, I’d just like to join with the Speaker today and express how deeply regretful the news from this weekend was and how heavy our hearts are.

Please join the debate.

E. Ross: I appreciate that. It’s been a tough week, considering the discovery in Kamloops. It’s affecting First Nations from all over B.C., in 203 communities. Quite interestingly — before I get into the debate on Bill 7, of course — it’s actually affecting the next generation, which is surprising.

My generation was doing what we could to learn about what had happened in residential schools and trying to relay that information to the next generation. It was hard, but this has actually brought it to their consciousness. I think time is going to tell where this ends up in terms of the province and the country dealing with that sad stain on our history. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to speak to Bill 7, a piece of legislation that will have profound implications for the future of how British Columbians are represented in this province. For those of you at home, following every second election, the Electoral Boundaries Commission is appointed to examine the current electoral boundaries and make alterations as needed to keep up with the ever-changing demographics of this province, especially when we’re known as an attractive province to come live, work and play. That has actually resulted in a number of different equations that we haven’t been able to answer yet, including rising house prices.

While the appointing of this commission is routine, the changes proposed in this legislation are not routine, especially in today’s day and age. Really, what we’re talking about here, almost as a side issue, is the removal of protections that have been put in place to ensure that rural British Columbians are represented in our Legislature.

I understand why we’ve got to change the boundaries in terms of representation. But specifically what we’re talking about is to remove statutory protections to three regions: Cariboo-Thompson, Columbia-Kootenay and the north. The north is such a general description of what we’re talking about, what I’ve heard in this House — north of Hope.

B.C. is an incredibly huge province, and diverse, very diverse. I’ve heard that a number of times. Very diverse. But ultimately, you know, what I think we’re really getting at on this side of the House…. I’ve read some of the transcripts from past debates regarding this topic. I think what we’re talking about, really, is quality of representation. We’re talking about quality of representation in terms of the urban representation as well as rural.

[4:45 p.m.]

We’ve got to find that balance, because representation, in terms of democracy…. I mean, that’s a fundamental aspect of democracy, representation. I do understand the main point of the changes, actually changing the boundaries, but representation seems to be the ultimate topic of what we’re debating here today.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard about this process before, but I do know what it’s like to fight for true representation, and I do take a lot of my experience from what I did in a previous life as chief councillor of the Haisla Nation Council as well as a councillor for eight years with the council. It’s quite interesting, in terms of what we’re talking about here. Back when we were talking about this under the umbrella of democracy, we were talking about representation as well, but we were talking about it in opposite terms.

That’s how I came to understand the principles of democracy and a vote and representation. Under the Indian Act…. If you want to live by the Indian Act, by the word, then basically all you’re dealing with is everything on reserve. But if you’re a progressive First Nation, like my band, the Indian Act is an artificial boundary itself. The rules there are so archaic and so out of date, they don’t even matter. Nobody cares. So when we started talking about representation, the one issue that popped out at us was, okay, the funding agreement that comes to us is restricted only to those band members on reserve.

We couldn’t really do much about band members living off reserve, and band funding agreements are so restrictive. They only give you enough to kind of just actually cover off your operations. That’s all they do. If you come out with a surplus because of good management, you get punished. They take away money the next year, or they penalize you. They claw back money, as they call it. If you don’t do a good job of managing those Indian Act funding dollars, if they come out in a deficit, they punish you. Yeah, you get punished if you do good, and you get punished if you do bad.

What our band did was segregate that, leave it over there. “Let’s move into the world of economic development” and bring in revenues that we can use to service all our band members, no matter where they live in B.C. — or Canada, for that matter. So it was the opposite fight. Our council was fighting for those revenues so that we could actually represent the off-reserve members without the burden of the Indian Act. We understood back then, just by consultation, what our band members were going through in the urban setting. We understood it mainly because we went down there to give them updates on what we were doing, and we’d get the feedback in terms of what they were thinking.

Until we could come up with a plan for housing on reserve, they were dealing with affordability issues, access issues. They were dealing with housing. I just find it kind of ironic that now I’m here trying to talk about the opposite, in terms of rural representation versus urban representation. That was quite lucky that we actually won that battle. We did bring in considerable revenues, and we continued to work in terms of that representation.

It was all based on a court case called Corbiere, if you want to look it up. We predicted that ultimately, where it was going, we would have to look after off-reserve members anyway, in terms of elections and representation. We embraced that, because we thought it was a way to get past Indian Act rules where an off-reserve member had the same rights to services and benefits that were afforded to people on reserve. We won that battle, we brought in revenues, and we’re ever changing our programs to include all band members on our band list, no matter where they live. Most of them live in urban settings. There’s a huge population in Vancouver.

[4:50 p.m.]

It’s quite interesting. There’s a huge lack of understanding in terms of how people get represented. I get it all the time, not only from First Nations but from non–First Nations. The number of people that came up to me during the last federal election and that wished me luck was incredible. Here we are talking about changing the boundaries of electoral ridings, but I’m not quite sure if people truly understand the nature of how they’re represented in the first place, given the confusion around federal elections and representation versus provincial elections.

That’s what I try to do. It was part of what I did as chief and council. I tried to explain the nature of the Indian Act, the nature of rights and title, the nature of treaty negotiations and the nature of the constitution and to give updates on everything I was doing, whether or not I was succeeding or failing at what I had actually promised. It was part of my idea of transparency and accountability. That’s what I continue to try to do as an MLA. I try to do updates as impartially as I can, not only to describe the issues coming out of the Legislature but also why and how.

Anybody coming in as a rookie to this place is going to have a really steep learning curve in terms of what we’re doing here, in terms of the debate, in terms of committee stage, in terms of estimates. It takes a while. I mean, even just to figure out where the bathroom is going to be or where the Birch Room is takes a while.

Imagine trying to go back and explain all this process to a person who doesn’t follow politics and who doesn’t follow governance and explain to them: “By the way, your riding might disappear. It might get enveloped into a bigger riding.” In the north, where the ridings are so big anyway and include many different communities, that might be hard to comprehend.

I do see the need. I do see the need for the boundary changes, especially when we’re talking about the growing population of B.C. The way B.C. is advertised…. It’s a good place to live. Canada is a great place to live. Democracy, freedom, the quality of life, the outdoors, the opportunities, when they come back. It’s a great place to live.

I’ve read some of these reports where they say that we’re 170th down on the quality of life and the best place to live. That doesn’t change the fact that — what? — 50,000 people are coming to B.C. every year. There’s a reason they’re coming. For the most part, I guess it’s generally accepted that when these people are coming to B.C., they’re actually stopping in the Lower Mainland, whether it be Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond. It’s just a well-known place. It’s a landmark.

There are more people starting to understand. Once they get to Vancouver, they start to explore the rest of this vast province. They see other places of attraction. They start to look in different places. They come to understand how big B.C. is.

I had lunch down here in the Legislature just a little while ago, just today, not because I was hungry but because I celebrated the idea that I could sit with a colleague and have lunch in the Legislature cafeteria. There were two people sitting at the table next to us. They were actually looking at houses. They were coming from California, and they were coming up to Victoria to look for a house, for a place to live, a retired couple. This is the attraction.

I understand why we have to change the boundaries. It’s understandable when we’re talking about the representation of urban ridings versus rural. But I do have a question. When we’re talking about representation in an urban riding, will more representation over a smaller geographical area equal, one, quality representation? Two, will it answer some of the questions around housing affordability or even affordability in general?

[4:55 p.m.]

I know there are not many people that can answer that right now. Right now I have a tough enough time representing Skeena. I mean, Skeena is…. I know the area quite well. I also know how hard it is to get across the riding of Skeena at the best of times. Skeena is actually, at a minimum, 32,000 people. They’re in different populations in Kitimat, Kitimaat Village, Terrace, Nisg̱a’a, Kitsumkalum and Kitselas. They are living in approximately 23,500 square kilometres.

When I’m going out there and trying to drive to these areas from my village, in Kitimaat Village, to the farthest extent, which is actually Gingolx, we’re going to hit a lot of different areas along the way. We’re going to hit a lot of bed-and-breakfasts. We’re going to hit a lot of different tourism sites. And we’ve got to drive. I mean, if I did a straight run, it would probably take me 4½, 5½ hours just to get from one end to the other. That’s with no stops.

If it’s wintertime, it takes even longer — if you’re lucky, if you make it, if the roads don’t get shut down, which happens a lot. If the roads are so treacherous, the Ministry of Transportation comes in and shuts them down. Or if you’re unlucky, you get stuck on the highway in the middle of a blizzard, coming home from the Prince Rupert All-Native. You’re the lead car coming out, and there are 100 cars behind you, but you can’t go any faster than 30 kilometres an hour. Nobody wants to pass you on the road from Rupert to Terrace because it’s a whiteout.

If we’re talking about changing the boundaries to actually make them larger, then does this mean that a constituent maybe has to drive from Tahltan, in the north, down to Terrace to visit their MLA, especially an elder that doesn’t have access to Internet? It’s a valid question.

Right now we already see the difficulties. In one particular instance, I can see and have heard of the difficulties of representing North Coast. That’s a tough riding. Not only do they have to represent Rupert, but they also have to take a plane or a boat to visit their riding, meaning Bella Bella, Haida Gwaii, Klemtu, Hartley Bay. That is a tough riding just in terms of transportation.

But in the worst of times, when you’re talking about a place like Wright Sound outside of Hartley Bay…. If you don’t know Wright Sound and Gil Island, that’s the place where the ferry went down a few years ago, and the Hartley Bay people came out and actually saved the people on board. That is a really bad chunk of water — very bad. The north wind that hits that is…. I don’t want to say treacherous. I just think it’s dangerous.

As a taxi boat operator on two occasions trying to come out of that area, going against the waves, two things happened. I thought I wasn’t going to make it. On number two, I wanted to quit. Really bad areas. And even ferries going through there have a tough time crossing Milbanke Sound.

I’ve heard a lot about the diversity and the geography of B.C., but we haven’t talked about what it means to be living in a coastal area where an MLA might have to travel out to talk to constituents, or even worse, the constituent has to come in to a town to actually get an issue addressed.

It does come down to the quality of representation. I do understand we’re getting more connected. But we haven’t really resolved those connectivity issues today. We haven’t resolved them yet. Even if we do, the most my mother could do, rest her soul, was participate on Facebook. That’s all she could do. She couldn’t go online and type out a census form. Not that she needed ICBC renewal or anything like that, but she couldn’t do stuff like that. Most of the time, when we knew there was something official, we had to bring a hard copy to her to get her through something, or we had to sit and type out stuff on the Internet for her, on the computer.

[5:00 p.m.]

It will come down to the quality of representation, in my view. It’s an issue that I haven’t really seen talked about in depth and in the debates I’ve heard here. I think this is why the Electoral Boundaries Commission itself had said that effective representation is not simply anchored to the equality of population. I think it’s an important point.

The 2015 report says: “Factors like geography, community history, community interests and minority representation” should be taken into account when deciding how to draw electoral boundaries. I can’t agree more. We’re going to get bigger, and the issues are going to become more diverse.

Even when you come down to the urban settings…. It strikes me that I can walk into a riding like Richmond, get a good understanding of what the people are talking about in terms of the issues they’re facing and think: “Okay. These are the issues urban people are facing.” Then, when I go to Surrey, I get a completely different story. There’s even diversity within our urban ridings. They’re not all alike.

I never knew, in an urban setting, that parking for semis or tractor-trailers was an issue in Surrey. I didn’t know that. They don’t know where to park their trucks. They’re not allowed to park on the streets. They’re not allowed to park on farms. So they’re asking: “Where do we park our trucks?” Trucking is one of the fundamental operations that keeps B.C. going, and they’re asking. That was the first time I ever heard that.

It’s not just the diversity of rural ridings we’re talking about. There’s a tremendous amount of diversity in our urban ridings that we have to take into account.

I also see a number of diversity issues in terms of Vancouver Island. You go to Campbell River. A beautiful place. One of the biggest issues I saw there was the complaint that the cruise ship industry hadn’t taken off there. How do we address it? They built the infrastructure, but the cruise ships weren’t stopping. They were counting on that to actually bolster up their economy.

You go to southern Vancouver Island, on the other hand. We’re seeing in the news that they’ve got a completely different outlook in terms of what’s important to them. You just have to read the news on that. The diversity, in terms of all the factors that we’ve talked about, is what makes B.C. a great place to live. Just in Skeena….

We haven’t really talked much about the representation of First Nations, who are just starting to understand the world around them and where they can be involved. I find myself explaining, more often than not, the nature of provincial representation. But I can’t go into the Kitselas First Nation and say: “Well, your issues are very similar to Kitsumkalum because you just live 15 minutes down the road.” I can’t do it.

Even though they both come from the Tsimshian nation themselves, they’re very different. They’re diverse. They’re part of what you call the Tsimshian Nation, which includes Kitsumkalum, Kitselas, Lax Kw’alaams, Gitxaała, Kitasoo but not Bella Bella, Waglisla — not Waglisla. Each one of them…. Even though they’re under this banner of the Tsimshian Nation, they’re all very different, very diverse.

I can tell you that the dreams of economic development, in terms of exporting LNG, for some First Nations up in the north coast…. You won’t find that in Kitasoo. In fact, if anything, Kitasoo is very proud of their fish farm that they’ve been operating there for the last — what? — 20 years. They’re very proud of the cannery that they’ve actually built in their community.

[5:05 p.m.]

That is one of their priorities: to keep their fish farm alive. But you can’t relate that to every First Nation along the north coast. Even inland, you can’t relate to that, because we’re all different.

I do understand that this is going to be, hopefully, an impartial process. I do hope that the clauses that we have spoken to today, to ensure that the boundary selection is done in an open and transparent manner…. I do understand that that’s what we’re going to strive for.

If there is one thing that I would leave with this House and the members of the House, it’s that quality of representation matters, whether it’s in an urban riding or a rural setting. We’ve also got to talk about accessibility in the worst of times, in the worst of weather, on some of the worst highways during in the wintertime that I’ve ever seen, apart from what I’ve experienced down south as well.

This is what makes B.C. great, in my opinion. The principles of democracy and representation go hand in hand, and we can’t lose sight of that. B.C. has got a great future if we do it right. We’ve got to do it together. We’ve got to succeed together.

L. Doerkson: I, too, wanted to take just a moment to acknowledge the horrendous findings in Kamloops and to offer up my condolences and hopes for healing there. I also wanted to thank the First Nations of the Cariboo-Chilcotin for inviting me to share a moment of healing on Friday night, to speak and to share songs, particularly the Williams Lake First Nation for hosting the event on their traditional lands.

As always, it is a pleasure to rise virtually today in this House to debate another bill. That bill, of course, today is Bill 7.

I wanted to start by recognizing the hard work by all MLAs in this House with respect to the work done every day to represent all of our ridings. I’m aware of the hours that many of us keep, as I have, on many occasions, received and sent emails and texts at all hours of the night and even the wee hours of the morning. I’m aware that we all start early with meetings and finish, many times, very late at night, and I applaud that effort.

That’s not an urban issue, and that’s certainly not a rural issue. That effort is put forward by any passionate member of this House, no matter the location of the MLA.

I also wanted to note, right at the start, that I’m not opposed to increasing the number of seats in this province, particularly in fast-growing places like the Lower Mainland or in other areas.

Somehow the message the government is hearing from us seems to be one of complaining that we’re working too hard and that rural MLAs seem to work harder. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I can absolutely respect the fact that our MLAs work very hard, and what they lack in those urban areas in geography, they certainly make up for in the number of constituents.

I don’t aim at all to suggest that I work harder than a member located in any rural centre. I only aim to explain that our ridings do present significant challenges, also, and that any commission that reviews these borders must consider those challenges.

Like many of our urban MLAs, I am a well-known member of my community for my volunteer work and other things. I’m also known to be approachable and accessible, as you all are. But what happens to that contact if you were to shift my seat from the centre of my riding to one of the larger centres of Prince George or Kamloops or, for that matter, just make one ginormous riding? That is what some of these geographically larger ridings are trying to convey to this House and, of course, the hard-working people of the commission.

I can appreciate the challenges of the larger ridings representing many people. Just as my riding can be too large geographically, so can any riding in terms of the number of constituents. I was surprised last week to hear that the bill had conjured up, in the early stages of debate, personal attacks on MLAs here trying only to represent their constituents.

[5:10 p.m.]

Of all the bills that we must get right for all of the people of this province, it is this one. I hope that the commission and other members can appreciate that there are challenges with respect to the number of constituents but will hopefully note the significant challenges with respect to geography as well.

As I said, it’s a pleasure to be able to express my thoughts on this bill as well as the opportunity to share the thoughts of some of my constituents. It is shocking when this topic comes up, and I do know that it does come up from time to time. It does create a genuine sense of concern and fear, for sure, in my riding. I’m certain that that’s not unique to my riding alone.

In fact, when this bill was announced, there were immediately calls to my offices in 100 Mile House and Williams Lake. Without question, that is the fastest response to a bill presented in this House since I’ve been here. The possibility of the loss of local representation always creates that fear. I’m sure it’s a standard response from so many ridings.

You see, Mr. Speaker, it’s always a matter of fair representation for these folks. When we discuss things like fair representation…. I’ll try to demonstrate just how important it is that constituents have the opportunity to know their representative and to express their feelings on any subject before this House or before the government and, further, that those feelings that they have conveyed will make it to this place so that everyone here hears them.

From my own experience over the past months, I know how hard that can be at times. I know the effort that it takes to share those messages with everyone here. I and others have spoken to what are very serious concerns in some of the ridings, particularly with respect to flooding and wildfires. As serious as those messages are, let’s face it. Sometimes it takes a few mentions to be heard.

My constituents have come to expect this. They’ve come to expect that their message is heard no matter the effort on my part. The fear, of course, with respect to any increase in the physical size of our riding…. It will create a need for them to travel more. It will create more effort on their part to convey their thoughts. They fear that it will take more effort, period, to be heard.

I’d like to discuss for a moment the size of some of the rural ridings, particularly mine. I’ll attempt to paint a picture for you and this House of the gargantuan physical size of the Cariboo-Chilcotin. It really should come as no surprise that the size of these ridings is geographically staggering. Some of the ridings take the better part of a day and two tanks of gas to cross. That is on a dry summer day. Let’s not forget, in the north, they’re not all dry summer days. Very often we have the challenge of travelling through snowstorms and slippery sections of roads in very cold temperatures.

In the Cariboo-Chilcotin, it can be a challenge to go between two offices and keep regular schedules, yet we do. We do out of a desire to serve the people of this riding, out of a commitment for what we do, out of a desire to stay connected to our communities, out of a desire to represent.

The constituents and taxpayers of these ridings, from a track record of exemplary service provided over the past years by hard-working MLAs from all corners, have become very used to and expect this service from their representative in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. They’ve come to expect that they come to know personally their MLA. They’ve come to expect frequent and regular visits from their MLA into their communities and would expect to be able to convey their thoughts, through their MLA, to this place here in Victoria.

I urge the committee to consider the thoughts of our constituents and respect the fact that any larger ridings will cause serious issues with respect to those connections currently in place. The ridings are massive now.

As I mentioned before, the subject of riding boundary reform obviously comes up from time to time. When it does come up in this riding, the response of the constituents of the riding is generally fear. I can’t help but believe that the fear is felt by all people, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum. The reason for this fear or frustration is that we do live, typically, in very vast ridings.

As I’ve said, these people are owed fair representation. People have chosen to live in these rural areas. Many have chosen to live there for work reasons or, perhaps, for more affordable housing than other jurisdictions. These folks feel as though they’re being penalized for that choice in some cases.

Many of these people work in fields that create very much tax revenue and royalties and stumpage, wealth for all of the people of British Columbia to enjoy — fields like mining, logging, gas, oil, even growing food like fresh fruit, veggies, meat and dairy. In fact, it’s the very nature of many of these businesses that creates the vast expanses to our ridings, which, in turn, creates sparsely laid out communities.

[5:15 p.m.]

These people have chosen to live, in many cases, with limited amenities and are happy to do so and not complain, for the most part. But these people — and I know this firsthand — do expect access to their representatives. People from all places on the political spectrum absolutely expect their voices to be heard in Victoria. When this conversation comes up, they feel as though that is an attempt to possibly stifle those voices.

Many decisions made in this place have a very serious effect on so many people and those that desire to be heard. The debate on these issues before this House is very important to the residents, no matter how many hours up a forest service road they live. In the furthest reaches of my riding, they already have to travel three or four hours one way to get to the closest MLA for a meeting. Surely the members of this House would not expect them to travel another three or more hours to meet with an MLA. Let’s not forget that some of these areas do not have Internet, or they have bad service, so even a Zoom is out of the question.

The ridings cannot be larger for proper representation. That’s been noted by past commissions. I’ve viewed maps that suggested following similar maps to federal rural boundaries, and for many reasons, that will not work in these ridings. Unlike MPs…. And let me be clear. It’s not my intention to insult our hard-working MPs, but the ground they must cover is simply too large. It is a staggering size in their ridings.

In the Cariboo region, the MLAs are part of these communities. We are known firsthand. We live in the ridings. We belong to the chamber, our service groups and volunteer in our communities. Above all, we’re accessible and very often known very well because of the community connections. But more than anything, we know what the issues are in our communities and are able to react in times of trouble or emergencies.

I can prove that point by explaining that I drove out to the Chilcotin last week to observe road conditions myself so that I could have real-time information to bring back to this place. That drive was a six-hour round trip, and I started from Williams Lake. We can’t expect our constituents to have to make 14-hour round trips to larger centres and expect them to absorb the cost of lodging, fuel and meals just to have a meeting with their representative.

It should be noted that the six-hour round trip that I just spoke about to inspect highway conditions…. For a representative coming from Kamloops or Prince or somewhere else, that could be up to 12 to 14 hours. How often would that be possible for a member to travel that far to gather this information? How often would they be expected to reach out to these communities?

Another thing to note is that I didn’t, in that trip, leave the beaten path of Highway 20. There are so many more hours of ground to cover in this riding. To increase the riding by any geographical size would be a gargantuan mistake.

If you were to get into a car in Deka Lake and drive to Anahim, it would take you almost six hours. You could actually get to Vancouver faster. The riding is very large geographically. I have two offices, one in Williams Lake, one in 100 Mile House. We’ve committed to meet in 100 Mile as often as possible, which, as I said before, is no small feat, particularly in the winter.

Another consideration is growth. While it may not be keeping pace with the fastest-growing cities in Vancouver, it should be noted that we have had large amounts of growth over the past couple of years, as evidenced by many new developments throughout the region. I believe this growth will continue, and it’ll even be larger after COVID restrictions are lessened and service providers and our government provide the proper connectivity to our rural areas. I believe we will experience growth like never before.

The residents here want their provincial representative to be accessible and able to be reached at a time of need, and honestly, they won’t settle for less. Furthermore, it’s not just the geography of the ridings that will be a huge challenge for MLAs from larger ridings to traverse. What happens to the large base of constituents after you add an additional 10,000 to 40,000 to those larger ridings? I really fear that the people of my riding will not be served properly.

[5:20 p.m.]

If you add all of those residents to another riding, you will end up with double trouble. Now you’ll have geographically unmanageable ridings along with too many people to represent. How could they properly be represented with their representative as many as seven hours away, with really only one effective way to get to this part of the riding?

I believe in fair representation. I’m not opposed to adding more ridings in the Lower Mainland, but I do firmly believe that there has to be more thought given to these electoral borders than just simply numbers. Many ridings have had to deal with the worst forest fires we’ve ever endured in this province. Some jurisdictions have endured the worst flooding in 100 years. It should be known just how busy our offices have been, serving the people of the riding through these trying times but also through this time of COVID.

On many occasions I have been called by groups and ministries, Interior Health, to communicate messages with respect to immunization clinics, with respect to COVID-19 cluster declarations, with respect to detours for flooding or road damage. I don’t think that I’m exaggerating the value placed on an engaged member of the Legislative Assembly.

The communities that I serve have come to expect a late-night video message of breaking news in the riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin. I want to just stress the point that there is a need for communication — and the reverse also, as I suggested. I have brought messages back from different ministries to this riding. I have been the conduit to allow my constituents the opportunities to be in contact with ministers and ministries here in Victoria. The road certainly runs both ways, of course.

Our offices in 100 Mile and Williams Lake are truly engaged, and we do our part — Bev Marks, the constituency assistant in 100 Mile House and Jenny Huffman in Williams Lake — to communicate the messages from the Cariboo-Chilcotin to Victoria where we work with our team member Hannah Levett here to be sure that the messages from the Cariboo-Chilcotin are received and delivered. We advocate every day for our constituents that are stuck in the cracks of a very complicated system that we built. The MLAs in rural B.C. have a daunting task to serve these very vast areas and work hard to be sure that this communication is flowing freely. This point can’t be downplayed.

Members on both sides of this House have defended these rural ridings and their geographical size in the past. In the last commission, we actually added two ridings in the Lower Mainland, and it was, at that time, noted by members in this place that the geography was challenging in many of the rural ridings — ridings that represent remote communities along with Indigenous communities that are very difficult to access. This was acknowledged by the previous commission. It was noted that the two ridings had to be added in the Lower Mainland but that these ridings in rural B.C. would be preserved to offer rural British Columbians an opportunity to be fairly represented.

I suppose the question to the commission and the acting government is a simple one, and that is: “What has changed?” Population counts in many parts of rural B.C. and the rest of this province are growing. Almost every one of the ridings is feeling some growth. That can’t be ignored either. The growth, as I suggested earlier, may not be keeping up with some of the urban ridings, but rural B.C. is growing.

One last thing that I wanted to discuss is the representation that you have witnessed in Cariboo-Chilcotin, along with Cariboo North, to represent our ridings in this place and to different ministries with respect to roads. We can do that well. Again, as I pointed out before, we can do that because we live here and we know what the road at Morrison Meadow should look like. We know how to explain these problems, and we can respond by taking an afternoon drive to see with our own eyes what is happening and report back to this House.

Surely you can appreciate the noise that these two ridings have made here with respect to roads in Victoria so that our constituents could be heard. I think our residents and taxpayers will lose that representation if we’re to break these ridings up and give these voters to larger centres. Any suggestion of actually doing this will be met with frustration in these ridings. It is wrong to give the people of B.C. less of anything, but it is particularly wrong to give them less representation.

T. Shypitka: I take honour to respond in the second reading debate on Bill 7, the Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act. I speak from the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa First Nation, and the hard-working and fun-loving people of Kootenay East.

What we have here in front of us is Bill 7, a piece of legislation that could have a profound implication for the future of how British Columbians are represented in our province.

[5:25 p.m.]

Our democracy is being challenged, I believe, with the removal of some of the protected areas that were put in by a commission not too long ago.

Now, we know that following every two elections, the Electoral Boundaries Commission is appointed to examine the current electoral boundaries and make alterations as needed to keep up with the changing demographics of the province. I don’t think anybody on either side of the House debates that there is a need for this. Absolutely, our province is indeed getting larger, and there are a lot of urban centres that are growing a lot more disproportionately than rural ridings. So I don’t think anybody has a problem with expanding ridings per se down in the Lower Mainland.

What we oppose is the restriction or the elimination of protected areas that has been put forward by this bill. While the appointing of the commission is routine, the changes proposed in the legislation before us are not, as it seeks to remove protections that have been put in place to ensure that rural British Columbians are represented in our Legislature.

That should be the first red flag. These protected areas, as I’ve said, have been agreed upon by non-partisan commissions. This government sees fit to remove those findings from those commissions and to challenge the fact that diversity in British Columbia is no greater than the amount of people in a riding.

What I mean by that is…. I think the member before me mentioned that nobody’s questioning the hard work that all MLAs do. It’s a tough job. But when we look at representation across the province and we look at some of the smaller ridings in the province that have large urban populations, say the West End, for example, a couple thousand people could mean moving those boundaries a couple city blocks. What we’re seeing with this bill is to remove those protections, and that could be moving those boundaries a couple hundred miles, which is really hard to fathom when our ridings are as large as they are, some of them the size of small European countries.

Mine’s not so big, comparatively speaking, as some of the other ones. Mine’s only about maybe four hours from tip to tip on a good summer day. But those things change a lot when we get different weather patterns coming in. I’ll speak to that in a little bit.

Specifically, this bill seeks to remove statutory protections to three regions. That’s the Cariboo-Thompson; the Columbia-Kootenay, which is part of my riding; and the north. My riding, as I said, is in the Columbia-Kootenay riding, and I share that with four other people — Columbia River–Revelstoke, Kootenay East, Nelson-Creston and Kootenay West. So four large ridings with four completely different demographics, geographies, First Nation communities, and all have their own specific, unique issues.

These regions have been protected because while they have a lower population than the densely populated Lower Mainland, they are vast geographic regions full of diverse people who deserve to be fairly represented in Victoria. I’ll come to some examples a little later on.

The purpose of the Electoral Boundaries Commission is to make sure that the political boundaries in this province are drawn in such a way as to provide every British Columbian with effective representation. It’s not necessarily the amount of people in the riding. It also takes into consideration the size, the geographical size, the accessibility of people to communicate and to share ideas with their prov­incial representative.

This is something we’re in favour of, something that this side of the House has always advocated for. I believe, quite honestly, there are many members on the other side that can see the rationale behind this as well, because not all rural ridings are with the opposition government right now. There are many that are in government right now. So they understand. They understand. They may not speak to it, but I’m very positive that those rural MLAs totally understand the unique geographical challenges that these large ridings provide us.

[5:30 p.m.]

B.C. is a vast province with varied geography and terrain, diverse people, groups and communities and very different needs. We have the most beautiful jurisdiction anywhere in the world. We have everything here, quite honestly. We’ve got oceans, rainforests, deserts, some of the greatest fresh water lakes. We’ve got, where I live, the Rocky Mountains and many other mountain passes throughout the province.

We’ve got the great prairies up north in the Peace region and the people to match it — cultures, nationalities, different races. We’ve got everything here going for us right now. But those diversities have to be represented in an equitable fashion, and that’s what we’re trying to get at here with this bill that’s in front of us.

This bill also acknowledges and leaves space for the fact that the needs of Prince Rupert, for example…. I’ve never been to Prince Rupert before, but my uncle has lived there. He said it rained quite a bit, which is quite a contrast from my corner of the province in the south country where it’s very dry. That just speaks to some of the diversities we have in the province.

I’ve never been to places like Atlin, for example. I think the member for Kelowna West mentioned he’d never been there either, right at the tip top of the northern part of our province. It’s amazing how sometimes people think that Prince George is in the north, yet it’s relatively in the middle of the province, but we don’t see it that way because we’re so vast and so diverse.

In my riding, for example, there are very common interests and complaints that surround all of us. I think it would be common in all of the other rural ridings that are close to me, such as access to health care, wildlife management, senior and assisted living care. They’re fairly synonymous with a lot of the other ridings. But there are also uniquenesses in there.

For example, for health care, we have a regional hospital here in Cranbrook. There’s also another regional hospital in the West Kootenays. When I was on the regional district board, I fought very hard — I was on the hospital board as well — to bring an MRI machine, diagnostic machine, here to Cranbrook, the regional hospital here, as opposed to the other option, which was in the West Kootenays.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Eventually, we got the MRI here, first, which was a great relief to everybody here in the East Kootenays. I think the rationale was because we were so geographically challenged to the rest of the province for services. West Kootenays is a little closer to Kelowna and the Lower Mainland and that kind of thing.

So the decisions were made on our diversity. That would be a challenge. That would be a challenge if I was to represent an expanded Kootenay East that went into the West Kootenays. It would be tough for me to argue one way or the other, because somebody would be left out.

Highway maintenance — that’s another thing that’s really important to us in rural B.C. In my riding of Kootenay East, we have a highways contractor. If I go to Columbia River–Revelstoke, it’s a different highways contractor. If I go to Kootenay West, it’s a different highways contractor. It would be tough to argue or to represent my constituents equitably if I was in favour of one contractor or the other or certain standards on one side or the other. These contracts, also, have different expiration dates, so it would be a challenge for sure.

Our Southeast fire centre, for example. That’s another difference that we have between us and urban B.C. Our Southeast fire centre is centred in the West Kootenays; however, out here in the East Kootenays, we have totally different weather patterns. Totally different. In my riding alone, we have up to seven different weather patterns that contribute to dangerous driving conditions in the winter, fall or spring as well as devastating fire conditions in the summer.

[5:35 p.m.]

In Kootenay West or Nelson-Creston, it’s a total different ecosystem over there. You have a lot of deciduous trees, a lot of rainfall, as compared to in my riding, it’s bone dry in the south country, in places like Newgate or Grasmere. Once again, the challenges would be magnified if my riding was to get any larger. People would feel, and the constituents would feel, disconnected to their MLA for proper representation, because I would be trying to be all things to all people, and it would be really tough to rally for them.

My geographical location, here in the southeast corner of the province, is also challenging. I have Kootenay Pass to the west of me. Some people call it the Salmo-Creston and some call it the Creston-Salmo — depends on what side of the mountain you live on.

It’s a very high-elevation mountain pass that’s closed quite often during the winter during avalanche control or natural avalanche conditions that happen quite often. A very challenging piece of highway that I really only go over if it’s an absolute emergency. Many accidents on that highway. The weather conditions can change within a minute. You could have clear, no snow, and then within a minute, it’s coming down in buckets and icy conditions instantly. So very challenging. To traverse across that or expect my constituents to traverse across that mountain pass wouldn’t be fair for them at all.

That’s to the west of me. To the south of my riding is the United States. We sit right on the U.S. border. So not much room to go there, but, of course, we have all kinds of issues on getting back and forth, especially with COVID right now and international travel.

I’ve got guide outfitters that are…. I’ve been trying to rally for them as best I can to find some solution or some kind of support, I guess, from government to assist in their operations. They’ve seen absolutely no business — zero. Zero clientele in the last two seasons, because 95 percent of their clientele exclusively comes from the United States or other international travel. That’s a barrier, for sure.

To the east of my riding is the Alberta border. Once again, that’s very unique to the people that live this close to Alberta because our access to health care is so important. We rely on access to health care in Alberta. Under a Canadian universal health care system, we need that access. It’s in our rights to have access to health care. Boundaries should not impede that access. That’s really unique to me and our constituents.

If my boundaries were to expand, that uniqueness would get watered down. It wouldn’t be such a major concern as the folks in Nelson, perhaps, or Trail that have easier access to Kelowna or the Lower Mainland. Once again, it’s very important for me to be focused on these direct needs in this region of B.C. Like I said, it’s not a small riding. It’s four hours from coast to coast in my area. It’s a great riding, but to get any larger would really water down my effectiveness on what is really important to this area right now.

To the north of me, I have Rogers Pass and a whole new valley system, which is the Columbia Valley, which brings a whole host of new issues, all told. My riding is in a very central…. It’s in a real niche part of the province and to expand it any more would really do a disservice to my constituents.

Additionally, we must consider that a large percentage of First Nations communities in B.C. are located in the regions that are set to have statutory protections removed. Around 30 percent of First Nations in British Columbia live in the north and the Cariboo-Thompson region, some in incredibly remote locations. We need to ensure that they also have equal access to the representation they are entitled to under the law.

It’s not just about my riding; it’s the whole collective of ridings throughout the province. They all have their unique challenges, without a doubt.

[5:40 p.m.]

There is no doubt the urban ridings have their unique challenges, as well, but I think one could successfully argue that the smaller the area, the less diversified on the issues we’ll become. I could be wrong, and I’d like to hear members on the other side argue that point, but I think once geographical areas widen, that’s when you really get into different issues for different people.

In light of this, we need to maintain a system that makes sure that communities with such varying needs can be effectively represented in our Legislature. Of course, we also need to ensure that regions with growing populations are properly represented. We know that the cities of Surrey and Vancouver, and those in the Fraser Valley, for example, have seen significant growth in recent years. Electoral boundaries need to be adjusted to accommodate this growth. This will mean adding new ridings in some of these rapidly growing regions. I alluded to this a little earlier, saying we on this side of the floor have no problem with that. We understand there is a major population growth in urban B.C.

I may also suggest that we will see a flight to rural ridings. We’re already seeing it now. Our affordability is starting to increase quite dramatically over the last couple of years as more and more people find their way to, perhaps, a simpler lifestyle, I guess. I don’t know.

I have lived in urban centres. I’ve lived in Richmond and Burnaby. I’ve lived in Nanaimo. I’ve lived in Kelowna. I understand the urban issues, and I guess it’s just how you’re bred. I just love the fresh air out here and the easy living that rural ridings represent. I would argue that the farther out you go geographically, the more issues you’ll have in a diversified way with different people and different locations, geographically speaking.

In my riding…. I’ll just go through a little tour of it. If you go to the far north of the riding, if you go up Highway 43, you’ll hit the town of Elkford. It’s a great little spot. I know the mayor there quite well, Dean McKerracher. I’ll mention his name. Great guy. I’ve known him for a long time. I used to curl against him a long time ago, back in the old days. He’s got a great council. We communicate quite a bit. It’s a great town. They’re actually having their 50th anniversary this year. So here’s a little credit and a high five to the town of Elkford, who are celebrating 50 years of incorporation.

If you head south down Highway 43, you’ll come into the town of Sparwood, which is another nerve centre of Kootenay East. It is our economic hub, I guess you would call it, in the fact that it has four of the five biggest mines in British Columbia. Sparwood, the workers there — 4,000 directly employed by Teck Coal. They represent a large portion of our economic stability in the Kootenays — and in British Columbia, I might add.

I think Teck Coal alone provides well over $600 million in direct expenses to Vancouver, where a lot of the legal and engineering and all that type of stuff is located, headquartered, down in Vancouver. So we put out a lot of bucks towards the Lower Mainland for the small population that we have. You know, 38,000 is the voting population here. For that 38,000, we provide a lot of bang for our buck. I would like to see what the statistics are per capita on revenues going in, but I think we do our fair share out here.

I think those workers in Sparwood need to be represented and that their industry needs to be represented. As the opposition critic for Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, I take the role very seriously because I know how important it is to the economy and to the livelihoods of people in Sparwood and throughout Kootenay East. I think there are over 500 employees just in Cranbrook alone, and just that radiates right out through my riding.

[5:45 p.m.]

From there, we go down the highway to Fernie, which is our tourism hub. It is a beautiful, beautiful place. Fernie is like the Aspen, Colorado of B.C., I guess you’d call it. It’s a gorgeous town with great skiing, recreation, whitewater rafting in the summer, fishing, hiking, skiing, mountain biking, you name it. Fernie has got it all going on. That in itself…. If you look at the industrialized town of Sparwood, and then you match that with the tourism side of Fernie, you couldn’t get any more diversified right there.

Then you swing down a little bit more south to Jaffray. I don’t want to forget towns like Hosmer, but Jaffray is also one of those communities that’s along the highway there. Then you can swing down even farther south, and you can go into communities like Baynes Lake, Grasmere, Newgate, right down to the U.S. border.

You can recreate along Koocanusa reservoir, which is an issue for debate on another day on the Columbia River treaty, which I’m going to try to advocate more for. From there, you go into Cranbrook, which is the most populous city in Kootenay East. That’s where I was born. That’s where I’m from. To the west of that, you go to places like Moyie, Lumberton — very unique locations as well.

There’s a lot of diversity in my riding, a lot of issues. I deal with all the chambers of commerce, and every time I have a conversation with them, it’s always something different. I communicate with the city councils, and once again — very unique issues every time I drop in with those folks. To be any bigger, I really believe, would be a disservice, and that’s why these areas have been protected. That’s why the commission has seen it fit to keep these places protected so that representation isn’t dictated by population alone.

I also want to give a little shout-out to my constituent assistants that handle all this stuff: Heather Smith, who is going to be leaving me at the end of this month. Sorry, at the end of June. It’s May 31 today. But at the end of June she’s going to be leaving. I just want to say to her that she’s been able to handle all of these people every day with a smile on her face. She doesn’t care what political stripe you come from. She assists anyone and everyone.

Christy Wheeldon, my other part-time assistant, has been absolutely fantastic. The two of them have been quite the dynamic duo. Super, super lucky to have them. But the bitterness of Heather leaving, and Christy leaving, actually….

I’ve been able to bring on a new constituent assistant, Jonah Gowans, who some may know from the Legislature, as he worked in the Legislature as a legislative assistant for a couple of years. So he’s found his way. He’s from Powell River. He understands rural issues, but he sees the differences between Powell River and Kootenay East, that’s for sure. So I’m very lucky to have him.

At the end of the day, the ability for MLAs to connect with constituents is vital to an effective democracy. As such, neither the number of constituents nor the size of electoral district should serve as a barrier to British Columbians having access to the representation they need and are entitled to. We need to protect the trust between elected officials and electors, not dilute it, as this legislation seeks to do.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’ll turn it over to my other colleagues. I will not be supporting this bill.

B. Banman: It is indeed an honour and a privilege to get up and speak on Bill 7. I’d like to start by saying that in some ways, I believe, this is probably one of the most important bills that’s going to come before this House. The reason I say that is because it has the foundation of democracy, really, at the heart of it. Now, as we all know, every two election cycles, a commission is appointed to review electoral boundaries, and that’s a good thing. It takes into consideration such things as population.

[5:50 p.m.]

Here in the Lower Mainland, it’s pretty straightforward, really. We take a look at the population, and we try to get what would be considered equitable and equal. I have heard an awful lot of talk of one vote in one riding should have the same value as a vote in another riding. On the face of it, that argument appears, at first glance, to hold water. However, there are some other factors to be considered with that.

I’m reminded of that cartoon that we’ve all seen, where there are three individuals standing in front of a fence trying to watch a game, and they’re all standing on a box. Well, one of the characters is similar to myself, a little bit vertically challenged. Even though he is standing on a box, the fence is up here and that individual cannot see the game. There is another one, a medium-sized person, standing on the box, and the fence comes to here. They can see the game just fine. Then there’s the tall individual that also has a box, and is standing on it, and the fence comes to about his waist.

They all have a box of the same size. It’s equal. But it’s not equitable. Democracy needs to be equitable. The second portion of that cartoon is you see where the tall man has given his box to the vertically challenged man like myself. Then everyone and all of them can see the game. It is equitable.

Sometimes in democracy…. There are many examples where that exact principle has been taken into account. As was mentioned by several of my colleagues, this side of the House does not have an issue whatsoever with the Lower Mainland rearranging some of the boundaries based on one vote — one is the same as others. Here in the Lower Mainland, where approximately 50 percent of the population of the province lives, it’s really not…. It’s fair.

There are several examples, even in Canada, where we have votes…. Especially in the north federally, for instance, if we look at the far north, they have what we’d consider…. If you used that rule of “one vote equals one vote,” they have far, far greater vote, yet it’s done for a reason. It’s done to be equitable and fair.

I’ve heard some of my colleagues talk about that. One of the things I’d like to mention is…. As many of you know, I come from Abbotsford. Abbotsford geographically is the largest city in British Columbia. It’s very, very diverse. We’re considered to be the city in the country. We consider ourselves to be both urban and rural. I can tell you that the needs of rural are vastly different than those of us who live in the city centre in the urban part of Abbotsford.

The needs of agriculture and what is required by agriculture, and the needs of those that live in some of the sensitive habitat areas on Sumas Mountain, are much, much different than those of us who live along the major corridor.

That’s just Abbotsford, which, compared to some of these ridings that you’re talking about, is incredibly small by comparison.

[5:55 p.m.]

What you’ve heard this side of the House say is that there needs to be that balance. There was good reason why the regions of the Cariboo, Thompson, Columbia, Kootenay and the north have slightly different considerations to get that equality.

To put this into perspective, I think…. I’ve actually had the privilege to either work in or travel much of this great province. It’s majestic. It’s amazing. It’s worth noting that from the top of the province, up near Watson Lake, all the way to the bottom of the province, it takes longer to drive and is farther in distance than it takes to drive from Vancouver all the way to the U.S.A.-Mexican border. I think we forget how vast it is.

When it comes to fairness, I would remind those…. I want to take a trip through Vancouver. We have East Vancouver. We have the west end of Vancouver. We have Kitsilano. We have all these different regions in Vancouver that have totally different needs, and they have MLAs to represent those needs. But 11 MLAs deal with one mayor, one council. That means that the mayor of Vancouver has 11 times the political influence as a region with one city and one MLA.

In Abbotsford, we have three MLAs. Now, I cross the border, where mine is partly the township of Langley as well.

You’ve heard my colleague just ahead of me rattle off a bunch of names of different councils, of different mayors. They have nowhere near the same influence that the mayor of Vancouver could potentially have, where he or she can pick up the phone and talk to 11 different MLAs to plead their case. That is not equitable. Up in the north, there may be 30 communities that speak with one MLA, that have the geographical size, as has been mentioned, of some European countries.

In addition to that, I think, especially today of all days, we need to be incredibly sensitive about who it is that lives in some of these regions. There are First Nations that compose much of some of these regions in the north. Have they been properly consulted? Are we going to add to that urban-versus-rural divide? Are we going to create more problems by failing to protect these areas as historically has been done?

They don’t have access to cell phone coverage. This government recently made a great announcement that there’s going to be cell phone coverage along the one highway because of tragedies that happened on that particular highway.

Many communities don’t have cell phone coverage at all. I have family that live in various regions of this province, some of which have dial-up, if they’re lucky enough to have an Internet connection at all. Right now we are going to put these ridings at an incredible disadvantage politically if we alter these protected regions.

[6:00 p.m.]

It’s not about one vote. It’s not about equal. It’s about doing what is right democratically to ensure that regions have an equal say. We have 203 First Nations in British Columbia. Have we talked to them? Have we considered some of these changes with them? Have we done our due diligence to make sure that they feel as if their voices are going to be heard? Or will they feel as if they’re being pushed, that their needs and their wants are being pushed to the side?

As you’ve heard my colleagues say, we have no problem with the Lower Mainland and parts of Vancouver Island redistributing and taking a re-look at it. It’s part of what needs to be done. What is concerning is that the protected regions that have been protected for very, very strong cases are now going to be put on the so-called chopping block. Some of these regions take ten hours to drive through if the weather is good.

I have had the privilege of driving from the top of the province to the bottom. I’ve had the privilege of driving throughout the province to the east, through both of the major passes, and I have had the privilege of driving to places like Smithers. I worked in Fort Nelson for a time. I’ve seen some of the great expanses of the Peace River area. I have my concerns with this particular portion in here. It was the one portion that has been changed.

I go to Bill 7. I’m going to read this, because I think it’s important. The current act and Bill 7 both state that in fixing the boundaries of electoral districts, the commission must be governed by the principle that “representation by population be achieved….” However, amongst other factors that the commission must also recognize in that process, Bill 7 removes that the commission recognize “…the legacy of our history and the need to balance the community interests of the people of British Columbia” in fixing those boundaries. Bill 7 removes that.

In addition, the current act states that the commission is “permitted to exceed the 25% deviation principle where it considers that very special circumstances exist.” That was done to ensure that these areas…. If something as closely knit together as Vancouver can have drastically different needs from riding to riding…. I want you to think now, if you are one of those representatives within that riding, that we’re now going to change that because someone decides, on the opposite end, that having 11 MLAs to one mayor is drastically unfair and that it should be one. There would be outrage, and justifiably so, because each area of Vancouver itself and the Lower Mainland….

I know that in my city alone, there are drastically different needs depending on where you happen to be standing in that particular moment, based on the neighbourhoods that you’re in. The needs of the Sumas Prairie are much different than the needs of those that live in the skyscrapers around Mill Lake, where I’m from. Yes, it may come as a surprise to some of you from Vancouver that there are a couple of skyscrapers in Abbotsford. We’re densifying like everyone else. The needs of these regions…. There are multiple needs within regions themselves that are drastically different.

[6:05 p.m.]

This bill, to remove the protection of those, is not fair; nor is it equitable. At the end of the day, I believe we have a duty to make sure that every region of this province has an equal say at representation here in Victoria. I worry. What you’re hearing my colleagues say…. I’m from the Lower Mainland, so for me, it will probably make my riding a little smaller, odds are. But for the other ridings, to make other ridings drastically larger, I think misses what we actually stand for and what we should represent here in Victoria.

This province is one of the most unique geographically in all of Canada. Anyone who’s driven it knows. You seem to go around a corner and magically, the topography changes. The vegetation changes. The types of animals that we encounter change.

I think for the Lower Mainland, it’s sometimes difficult to understand, for instance, why an electric vehicle is not really the best choice up north. The reason for that would be, as I…. When we had our cold snap down here, we found out how limited a range that would be. There are no charging stations along much of this, but unless you’ve lived through it, you would not understand it. You’d have to actually drive one to find out.

The other thing that’s equitable, it’s interesting to note, and I think it’s only fair to note, is that much of the wealth that this province attributes itself to and has garnered from the vast resources that we have…. We are still a province of resources. Vancouver is the headquarters, generally, for many of these corporations that extract the wealth from the Interior. Then there are jobs that are put in the Lower Mainland that are directly related to the wealth that is extracted from this great province. They will then lose their say, or a portion of their say, if we reduce the size of these ridings and reduce the representation in these ridings in the interior, as was mentioned. That’s not fair; nor is it equitable.

It can’t just all be about the Lower Mainland. We can’t drastically change political representation just because it fits us and we think that one vote should be the same in the Lower Mainland as it should be in the farthest northern parts of the province that are sparsely populated. It covers hundreds and hundreds of square miles, if not thousands of square miles. The needs in certain regions are drastically different than they are here in the Lower Mainland. We need to take that into account.

We need to understand, I believe, that while we’re doing this, while we’re looking at this, the issue that you’re seeing this side of the House talk about is to ensure that the voices of some of these more sparsely populated regions actually have the ability to be heard. Ask yourself: is it fair that some cities have as many as 11 representatives versus sharing one representative between 20 or 30 different cities or municipalities or districts?

[6:10 p.m.]

We can all admit that there is an urban-rural divide in British Columbia. There are those in the north, in the Interior, that feel as if…. I got to experience this when I was the mayor of Abbotsford and the mayors would hold their own meetings. I sat down with some of my mayors, and we would talk about the differences and the things that they had to go through versus those of us in the Lower Mainland. We even, at the UBCM, divided up into large cities and small cities. The needs are different. The complexities that a large city goes through are entirely different from what a smaller, rural city goes through. That’s just one example. So we need to balance that.

I think that the risk of removing the protection of these areas…. To me, the risk far exceeds just leaving them as they are. They were protected for a reason, and well-thought-out rationale went into why they should be protected. I believe that it should stay that way. I believe that it was there for a very good reason. And I think that the ability to connect with your constituents is important — and the ability for constituents to connect with their MLAs.

For us here in the Lower Mainland, it’s not a big deal. I’ll just grab my phone, and I’ll just send an email to my MLA. That doesn’t happen where my mother happens to live. It’s handwriting. It’s a letter. It’s snail mail. She gets delivery once a week, and she’s lucky. There are regions in this province that not only don’t have cell phone coverage; they don’t have emails or Internet. And they may not get mail delivery for weeks, let alone once a week. Some of the challenges that some of these remote communities go through are like night and day compared to here in the Lower Mainland.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I believe that if we reduce their ability to access their MLAs, which is their right, there will be problems — that we will be doing the exact opposite of what democracy should be doing, which is having fair and equitable representation. I think that especially from this side of the House, in looking at the other side of the House, the other side of the House talks about being equitable all the time. Yet when it comes to this particular case, I think it needs a sober second thought.

As you’ve heard, our side of the House is more than okay with realigning boundaries in the Lower Mainland and parts of the more densely populated areas. You’re only hearing this side of the House speak up about the rural areas. I don’t come from one of the rural areas, even though we call ourselves the city in the country. I’m in the Lower Mainland. For me to go see a doctor…. I can go see a whole bunch of MLAs within an hour’s drive. It’s not an issue at all.

[6:15 p.m.]

It’s just unjust, actually, to take that representation away from our interior and northern communities, where a ten-hour commute could potentially become a 20-hour commute, and that’s when the roads are good. Think about that. I can drive through my riding in a half-hour, provided the No. 1’s not clogged up. But that’s a different story. I can travel. And I’ve got one of the larger ridings in the Lower Mainland, geographically.

To continue to take this protection away from these ridings, I think, is unjust, and I think it will weaken the democracy in this province, because it will weaken the representation that many of these ridings have earned and relied upon. I think we’re looking at it in a very egocentric way. We’re looking at one vote equalling one vote. There are many, many examples, not just in British Columbia but in Canada and also even in the United States, where they have figured out that being equitable is not always the same as equal.

I would encourage this House — I would encourage the members on the other side — to ensure that those ridings are protected. Let’s increase our numbers. That’s fine. Let’s increase the amount of MLAs. That’s fine. However that’s going to look and pan out inside the Legislature, that’s all right. That’s fair. But to reduce the ridings and increase the travel time and limit the ability of northern and Interior constituents to be able to have reasonable access to their MLAs…. When one considers they can’t just pick up a phone, necessarily, when you don’t have Internet, when you do not have a cell phone, the differences are like night and day.

That’s why you’re hearing my colleagues speak up. They want to ensure that their constituents have just as strong a voice as a riding that’s only a few blocks big. It’s fair, it’s just, and it’s equitable to leave these ridings as they are. When you combine the fact that there are 203 First Nations that I don’t believe have been consulted properly with this yet, I just think it’s a mistake to go down this road. I think it’s a mistake to reduce the representation. It’s undemocratic, in my mind.

I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the ability to speak to this. I’m pleading with my colleagues on the other side to listen, to absorb and to try and put yourself in the place of some of these more northern and less populated ridings. I want you to imagine trying to drive 20 hours in 40-below weather to go have a meeting with your MLA, and your car breaks down. Imagine that. Imagine equal versus equitable. I think we all want to be equitable.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Delta South.

I. Paton: Thank you, hon. Speaker. Noting the hour, would you like me to continue?

Mr. Speaker: The member can speak for a couple of minutes and then, noting the hour, ask for adjournment of debate.

I. Paton: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

I rise today to speak to Bill 7, the Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act, because I believe wholeheartedly that every British Columbian deserves to have proper representation in this House. A fundamental pillar of democracy is representation, especially throughout all parts of this province of ours.

In my critic role as the critic for Agriculture, I have travelled to so many corners of this huge province of British Columbia. It’s interesting. When I was given the opportunity to become the Agriculture critic for our party, I thought: “Well, this really makes sense.”

[6:20 p.m.]

As a farmer myself, having grown up and still living on the family farm in Delta that I was born and raised on, I thought: “Well, I know a lot about agriculture. I certainly know about the dairy industry. I know about raising livestock. I know about potatoes, about planting corn, harvesting corn, harvesting potatoes — all the things that are sort of common to the Fraser Valley. I kind of understand the cranberry industry and the things that we do in the Fraser Valley.”

Then as I started to travel around this province in the last 3½ years as the critic for Agriculture, I just realized how vast this province is and how people are different. They even wear different clothes in different parts of the province. We don’t wear Wrangler jeans and Roper boots and cowboy hats down here in Langley and Delta and in the big cities of Vancouver or Victoria. It’s a vastly different province, and I realized just how different things are from an agricultural perspective.

I thought: “Well, I know lots about agriculture.” But then suddenly you arrive in the Okanagan. You go: “Wow, what a huge industry it is, the tree fruit industry.” People are up there busting their butts to be in the orchard business and converting from orchards to the grape industry. There are cherries. There are apples. There are peaches. People suffering in that industry. People doing rather well in the wine industry up in the Okanagan Valley.

Then we move on to the Kootenays, and we have some wonderful dairy farms in the Kootenays. We have cattle ranching in the Kootenays. We have tree fruits in the Kootenays as well. Then you keep moving around the province to the Cariboo-Chilcotin, which is a huge ranching and beef cattle part of British Columbia where people are making a living raising beef cattle.

Then you move to the northern part of B.C., to the Peace country, and you realize, wow, what an incredibly vast area we have in our province — hugely vast. When you put together Peace River South and the riding of Peace River North and you look at the canola and the wheat and the grass seed and the hay and the different crops that are grown up there, it’s really quite incredible how diverse this province is, with agriculture alone.

Then we go to Vancouver Island, and we look at salmon farming and aquaculture, which is part of our agricultural mandate as well.

There is so much more to the Agriculture critic role than just what I knew about in the Fraser Valley. I want to get into my travels throughout this province and just how big this province is and how diverse the communities are and the needs of people.

Whether you’re a farmer or a businessman in the Kootenays or in Fort St. John or in Dawson Creek or wherever you happen to be, it’s so important to have the ability to travel and connect with your MLA, to discuss issues that are so common for us in Delta, where somebody can jump in their car, and within 20 minutes, they can be at my office to discuss important MLA issues. But this is different in other parts of the province.

I would like to continue my conversation about this at a later point.

Noting the hour, I would reserve my opportunity and move adjournment of this debate.

I. Paton moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

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

Hon. M. Rankin moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:24 p.m.