Orders of the Day

Hon. G. Heyman: I call second reading of Bill 23.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 23 — FORESTS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Hon. K. Conroy: I move that Bill 23, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, be now read a second time.

Our forests have helped define who we are, and our forests have sustained us in so many ways. Our government has a vision for how we care for our forests to better share all the benefits. Our larger vision, as detailed in our intentions paper, will help secure jobs, support healthier forest ecosystems and deliver higher value from our forests.

Old forest policies put in place two decades ago have limited our ability to fight climate change, to protect old growth, and to share the benefits with Indigenous and local communities. That’s why we are taking our next steps to prioritize forest health, create new opportunities for shared decision-making, and give more British Columbians a say on forest planning.

[1:35 p.m.]

The bill proposes amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act that will introduce a new forest landscape plan framework, strengthen the participation of Indigenous nations in forest planning and decision-making and improve government’s response to critical forest management issues in both the short and long terms.

Our government is committed to making the necessary changes to the provincial forest management framework and taking steps to align our forestry legislation with the Declaration Act. Amendments strengthen the role of Indigenous nations in forest planning and decision-making and better enable government-to-government collaboration in forest management.

We have heard from Indigenous nations, from industry, stakeholders and local communities that changes are needed. They are needed to support reconciliation with B.C.’s Indigenous peoples, to increase opportunities for participation and forest planning by stakeholders and local communities, to realize sustainable timber harvest levels in support of B.C.’s economy and to ensure the continued stewardship of B.C.’s public forest resources now and into the future. This bill responds to these concerns.

We developed this bill in consultation with B.C.’s Indigenous nations and with input from a broad range of stakeholders and local communities. My Forest and Range Practices Advisory Council has also been regularly en­gaged in this work and provided important feedback. It’s a multi-stakeholder advisory team established for the purposes of improving the FRPA framework.

The council is chaired by an appointee of the First Nations Leadership Council and by B.C.’s chief forester. Members also include representation from the B.C. Adventure Tourism Coalition, forest industry companies, Organizing for Change, B.C. Cattlemen’s Association, B.C. Federation of Woodlot Associations, B.C. Community Forest Association, the Union of B.C. Municipalities, various academia including the University of British Columbia, the Western Forestry Contractors Association and the United Steelworkers.

There was extensive consultation with PAC on the proposed policy approaches to changes to FRPA, and that has been ongoing since 2018. PAC members have provided continuous feedback, both as a council and as representatives of their respective groups, and are largely supportive of our changes to the bill. I want to thank the PAC members for their input, because it’s been very, very helpful.

We also developed this bill in consultation with Indige­nous nations. The proposed bill will amend the Forest and Range Practices Act to enable the introduction of a new forest landscape planning framework on public lands across B.C., to transition from the current forest stewardship planning regime to the new forest landscape plan framework over time, to provide new opportunities to work government to government with Indigenous nations on forest planning and decision-making, to equip land managers with the appropriate tools to establish resilient forests in the face of increased uncertainty and a changing climate and land base and to enhance road management to protect public safety and the environment.

A key part of our vision is to create new opportunities for shared decision-making between government and First Nations. Amendments will transform forest planning and management by enabling the introduction of a new forest landscape planning framework. Through new ten-year forest landscape plans, we’re moving towards smarter ecosystem-based management of our forests.

These plans will establish clear and measurable objectives for the management of forest resource values over a defined geographic area. Through the development of forest landscape plans, the amendments will create new opportunities for shared decision-making between government and First Nations aligned with government’s commitments to the Declaration Act.

Unlike the forest stewardship planning process, planning under the new framework will be at the landscape level. For example, a forest landscape plan may be established for a timber supply area or a tree farm licence area. Community forests and First Nations woodlot land licences over a certain size are also included. The new framework will enable a consolidated approach to planning and management, where forest resource values are taken into consideration simultaneously.

A forest landscape plan must consider five overarching objectives that support the production and supply of timber; support the protection and conservation of the environment; manage values placed on forest ecosystems by Indigenous peoples; manage the values placed on forest ecosystems by local communities; and prevent, mitigate and adapt to impacts caused by significant disturbances to forests and forest health, including wildfire, insects, disease and drought. All objectives must be considered in the development and establishment of the forest landscape plan.

[1:40 p.m.]

Once the forest landscape plan is in place, forest licen­sees must develop and submit, for approval, a forest operations plan within the plan area. A forest operations plan must be consistent with the established forest landscape plan and be approved by government or decision-makers under a decision-making agreement prior to authorization of harvesting or roadbuilding activities.

Amendments in the bill do not specify deadlines for transitioning to the new forest landscape planning framework. This is to allow for a controlled transition to ensure that all parties who collaborate on the plan are ready and that any potential impacts can be directly managed.

Government has already initiated four forest landscape planning pilot projects in various locations across B.C. that are anticipated to be among the first forest landscape plans to be established. Transition provisions are provided to enable these projects to be established as forest landscape plans if the legislation is passed and comes into force through regulation.

In addition to enabling the introduction of the new for­est landscape planning framework, this bill also addresses other important aspects of the current forest management framework under the Forest and Range Practices Act. Amendments will immediately enhance government’s ability to have management control over forest roads to protect safety and the environment. For example, government may order the timely deactivation of roads or require that significant roadwork be authorized. Road use rules will also apply to forest service roads and forest resource roads to promote safety.

This bill also supports the ability of government to manage and respond to wildfires by creating a new wildfire objective and the ability to establish mandatory forest practices within wildland-urban interface areas to help protect human life, property and reduce the risk of wildfire. Amendments also improve the minister’s authority to ensure timely and effective post-wildfire reforestation by enabling the creation of wildfire reforestation plans and introducing increased flexibility for government to work with Indigenous nations and forest licensees to respond to damage caused by catastrophic events, including wildfire.

Additional amendments will provide land managers with new or expanded tools to help ensure forest management practices reflect the public interest. The bill expands regulation-making authorities requiring practice requirements in specific situations or areas. For example, amendments enable the minister to establish a trail-based recreation area and to prescribe forest practices for its management to promote safety and environmental protection.

Amendments also increase opportunities for public input and transparency. Forest landscape plans will be developed by government and First Nations, with additional opportunities for communities’ and public input. Harvesting plans will be posted publicly, and the chief forester will publicly report on planned outcomes every five years.

Finally, additional amendments enhance compliance and enforcement tools by allowing for the public reporting of fines, convictions or other penalties to serve as a deter­rent, reduce the occurrence of future violations and in­crease transparency and confidence in government’s en­forcement activities. Amendments also introduce 12 new fines and nine increased fines and address issues with the administrative penalties processes.

The proposed amendments will introduce significant changes to the Forest and Range Practices Act consistent with our commitments to reassert the public interest in forest management by introducing new tools to establish resilient forests.

Amendments reinstitute government as the provincial land manager and a leader in forest stewardship that will work in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous nations to establish clear landscape-level direction, mitigate conflict and facilitate local solutions. The change will demonstrate government’s long-term vision for stewardship and economic well-being and its continued commitment to reconciliation and implementing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

We owe it to future generations to manage our forests so forest health and the public good are considered first. These long-overdue legislative changes will enhance public trust in the management of our public forests and move us forward toward genuine reconciliation with First Nations.

J. Rustad: To the minister, thank you for those initial words. This will be an interesting discussion on Bill 23, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act.

[1:45 p.m.]

Government has laid out a lot of high-level plans and a lot of discussion around our forest industry. There are a lot of nice words around the plan. Like I say, when we get into the committee stage on this, there are a lot of details to go into.

In particular, when I first start off and look at this plan…. The minister talks about this being a long-term vision, the government’s long-term vision for forestry. This plan — this act, I should say, to create these plans — appears to be something that’s going to be implemented over eight years or longer. That’s a lot of uncertainty in terms of getting these plans actually developed and on the ground.

I agree with some of the goals and objectives, and we had an opportunity to have a briefing with the chief forester in terms of how this will roll out and the process around it. The minister talked about the engagement that has happened since 2018. The precursor to this was the Premier standing up at COFI and directing companies to engage with First Nations in timber supply areas to come up with these plans, to come up with plans for the landscape and how things would proceed.

Well, that turned out to be a complete flop, unfortunately. There wasn’t a process. There were a couple of those areas where there was some success, but in the majority of the areas, particularly in areas where there were a lot First Nations and a lot of companies, it wasn’t able to achieve the objectives, I think, that the Premier had laid out. So that’s now kind of gone to the wayside. That’s fine. Governments can try things, and sometimes they do fail. It’s being replaced by this.

The process, in my understanding of this, is the chief forester will work in conjunction with First Nations to develop these plans on the landscape. They’re going to be broad plans. There are going to be targets in there around how to manage wildfires and protect communities. There are going to be wildlife considerations. There’s going to be a whole range of things that are going to go into here.

The challenge is that you can sit down with two or three or five or ten or 27 First Nations or more that are in supply areas, and you’re not going to get agreements, because each First Nation has different objectives that they want to try to achieve. In some areas, you’re going to get agreement — those are the low-lying fruit — and that’ll be fine. You’ll be able to, hopefully, move those plans forward faster. But in areas where there isn’t agreement, you’ve got real challenges in terms of developing these plans, and it’s going to be a huge challenge.

There are some dispute mechanisms that are in here, in case you don’t have agreement and that process that goes through. But one of the big things….

I’ll speak on this from the perspective of being a former Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, now called Indigenous Relations.

You might have two First Nations that have similar goals and objectives on the landscape, but they don’t want to recognize each other’s authority over areas on the landscape. Doing so recognizes their claim on the territory versus another First Nations’ claim on the territory, and they don’t want to be able to strengthen somebody else’s claim in case it ever goes to court at one point down the road. I ran into this time and time again. So it becomes very, very challenging to get agreements.

We’re sitting on a process right now on the landscape where we already have a tremendous amount of uncertainty. Companies are not sure what the fibre supply is going to look like. We have got these protests going on, whether it’s old growth or other things going on. Just south of Vanderhoof in my riding, we have got the Saik’uz First Nation standing up and saying they’re not going to accept anybody coming in and doing anything on their territory without their approval.

You’ve got all kinds of these sorts of frictions that are going on, on the landscape that make it very uncertain for companies to be able to invest and for the fibre supply to be able to be assured to be there for mills, for communities and for workers. Yet, in these very areas where we’ve got these frictions, we’re going to be trying to develop this plan that really is going to have to address all of these sorts of frictions first, before you can get to a plan. That’s going to take years. It’s going to take many years to be able to achieve those objectives.

Meanwhile, all this uncertainty and pressure and issues will keep going on, on the landscape, and companies like West Fraser are going to continue to invest south of the border instead of doing the reinvestments that are needed in British Columbia, beyond just doing maintenance work and keeping their mills as up to date as they can.

[1:50 p.m.]

You’re not going to get the boards making those kinds of investments, because this does not address the core problem we have on the landscape, which is uncertainty. It will, if it can achieve those goals eight, ten years from now. But what about the generations of workers that are working today? What about the fact that British Columbia is the highest-cost producer of lumber in North America? As soon as there are any fluctuations or issues in the market, as we saw even this summer, where mills were curtailing production….

Yes, there are influences from weather and fires and stuff, but the reality is companies have no problem deciding to stop production here in British Columbia. They’re making some profits, but they can make better money elsewhere, because we’re not competitive, and we have tremendous uncertainty.

Like I say, the government has talked, many times, about: “We want to increase value instead of volume. We want to do all these wonderful things for our forest sector.” This does nothing to do that, to make that objective. There’s nothing in here that actually is going to improve companies’ desire to invest in value-added, to reinvest in mills to get to better productivity. This doesn’t do anything for that.

While we’re talking about doing this engagement…. It’s like I say: they’re lofty goals, and I applaud the goals, the objectives, of getting together with First Nations, trying to create these plans, dealing with these issues. The reality on the ground is this is going to be very, very challenging work, and it doesn’t resolve the other issues, which are very, very critical for our forest sector today. We’re blessed today because of high lumber prices, which is masking some of the problems we have on the landscape. But like I say, it’s not going to help solve any of these things.

The minister talked about old growth and having “protect old growth” as part of this. There isn’t anything that I’ve seen in this bill that actually talks about that. There is this high-level planning and objectives, but it doesn’t particularly speak of that, so I’m going to be very looking forward to going through committee stage to find out just why the minister thinks this will be a good thing for managing the issue of old growth in British Columbia.

One of the things that the minister did not talk about with this bill, which I actually found quite interesting, was the cost associated with it. There are 203 First Nations in the province, and 165 roughly, more or less, that have a real interest on the forestry side. They’re going to need financial support, capacity-building, to be able to sit down and work through these plans with the chief forester.

The chief forester’s office is going to need significant uplift in terms of the money for the people, or they’re going to have to draw on the resources from other ministries to be able to sit down at these tables and go through these negotiations.

Once again, as the former minister responsible, these negotiations are going to be lengthy. There’s going to be a lot of discussion, a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of money that’s going to have to be put on the table. I would submit that it’s probably going to be in the vicinity of $200,000 minimum per nation, maybe more. So you’re talking about an uplift that’s probably going to need to be a $40 million or $50 million a year commitment for the next decade, to the ministry, to be able to achieve these plans.

It’s certainly not in this budget that we’re currently looking at. There’s nothing set aside in the budget for being able to do any of that work, so that means we’re looking at March of 2022 before the work is even going to be able to start and the money is going to be able to flow and the nations are going to be able to gear up and you’ll start this process of going through and doing that work.

I mean, I recognize this isn’t a supply bill, so this doesn’t speak to this. But when you don’t see the matching funding associated with the bill, it makes me wonder: what was the intention of this bill coming forward, and why was there not funding that was put in place to actually get to work and start doing this? It makes me wonder whether or not this bill is more about looking good, since it’s going to take a decade, in all likelihood, to be able to achieve this across the landscape, as opposed to actually achieving objectives. That’s a little on the disturbing side.

When you also look at this…. The minister spent some time talking about wildfire management. I agree entirely. We’re talking about changing some of the stocking standards, talking about having more mix in the species that are planted, more deciduous, dealing with wildfire, potential wildfire, and corridors protecting communities.

[1:55 p.m.]

Those are great objectives. Those are important pieces that need to be thought about and discussed in terms of implementation on the landscape. There are things that, quite frankly, we do need to go forward, and I do support trying to achieve those kinds of objectives. But the minister also talked about reforestation of places where we have these wildfires and how this will help with reforestation. Well, I’m not quite sure how that works, because this will do nothing except for set objectives at a high level. It won’t actually get to the ground of doing reforestation.

When we’re talking about reforestation, the group that has done the majority of that work in British Columbia on Crown land is called the B.C. Forest Enhancement Society. They’re responsible for getting out there and doing the site prep, cleaning off, trying to capture what value they can from the wood that isn’t under permit, that isn’t going to go to mills, getting the site prepped, getting it planted, doing all that kind of neat stuff on the ground.

It has received zero funding under this government for the last four-plus years. It is out of money. It will be shut down. There has been no money from this government put towards that reforestation. It’s great to have a plan, but if you don’t have the vehicle, and if you don’t have the money committed to actually doing it, out of the two-million-plus hectares that have been burned over the last number of years, other than where companies have gone and logged and a very small amount that the Forest Enhancement Society has been able to deal with, there’s a lot of stuff out there that has not been reforested.

I asked previous ministers about the Forest Enhancement Society and why they aren’t putting any money towards it. They said, oh, they’re looking at…. You know, they might use that vehicle, or they might create a new vehicle. Once again, in this past budget, there was no money for it. There was nothing that was set aside for being able to do that additional work on the ground. So it’s great, once again, to talk about it and have these plans, but actually delivering on the ground is the critical component that needs to be thought about in terms of these plans.

The minister also talked about measurable outcomes that will happen with regards to this bill and this process. I think that’d be great, because what I’ve seen to date from the various initiatives and the various components, whether it’s the coastal revitalization or the work that was being done up on the Interior revitalization, is there were no performance measures. When I asked the previous minister about it, they thought about it and went, well, you know, maybe this and maybe that.

Performance measures are critical to implementing something that is this large and potentially changing to the landscape. Performance measures help to judge whether or not you’re meeting those objectives, whether or not you’re actually being able to achieve the goals that you’ve worked on with First Nations and others.

It’s those performance measures that I very much look forward to talking to the minister about in the committee stage to see just how they’re going to be done. Because this plan, as it sits over top of the landscape, underneath it are still the land and resource management plans, LRMPs. Underneath that are still things like old-growth objectives and wildlife recovery areas, whether it’s winter habitat or these types of things for ungulates, whether it’s caribou…. All of these other plans are underneath this, but you know what? There haven’t been any performance measures of those plans.

We’re looking at all of these things that have gone into place to be able to help wildlife and to be able to achieve these goals, yet we’ve seen a continual declining of wildlife on the landscape. Are these plans working that are underneath? No one knows, because no one has done the performance measures on those other plans.

So here we are now. We’re going to develop this plan that’s over above it, that’s going to take many years to implement, that’s going to rely on all this other information that’s underneath it that has built up, but nobody is measuring whether it’s successful.

What are we actually doing? How are we actually achieving the goals and the objectives that are being talked about here, the goals of putting the environment and people first? How are those objectives measured as part of this, and how does it measure and stack up compared to all the other layers of work and restrictions or other types of objectives that are underneath it?

With regards to those objectives and with regards to those performance measures, I also have the question with regards to First Nations. You’re going to be working hand in hand with First Nations to develop these plans. These plans will be developed, and then it will go out for input and consultation with communities and with people.

[2:00 p.m.]

Well, we’ve seen this show before. It was called the caribou recovery plan in northeast B.C., where the plan was done between the government and the First Nations. Then they went out to the community, and there was an uproar. So 35,000 people signed a petition saying: “Hold on. We want to have input. We want to be part of this.” At the end of the day, there were no changes. So it’s a little bit disingenuous to say that people are coming first with this, when people are down the road after the agreement is already arranged, and maybe there will be a little bit of adjustment. That is not putting people first.

I’m going to be enjoying talking to the minister about just how that will be achieved on the ground for communities and for the workers and the people who are engaged once these plans are developed government to government. It’s not that plans shouldn’t be developed at that level, but the mechanism for bringing people along and being part of it is what is concerning me.

When I look through this…. Like I say, I think the goal, the vision, the idea of trying to create a process of permitting that will be able to flow faster, which will help in terms of some of that uncertainty…. That is the potential of what this could do. But once again, the devil will be in the detail.

With regards to permitting — and it’s one of the objectives of this…. If you’ve got these high-level plans and it’s all signed off on, you should be able to have the permitting flow quite easily because the First Nations have already signed off on the activities and various components that are on the landscape. The unfortunate part is that governments change. First Nations governments change, and the goals and objectives of First Nations may change.

That isn’t a window for being able to change these ten-year plans. That still means that when it comes down to the permitting level, there’s still going to be that full engagement, that full process. So I wonder if there really will be savings when it comes time to the actual time for permitting.

Another piece of this, of course, when I’m talking about the permitting and about how this is all going to go together…. Yes, the companies, once this high-level plan has been developed, are going to then create the next-level plan, which are these forest operational plans, which are basically the old development plans that used to be around back in the ‘90s. I remember. I was involved with actually creating these development plans and working on them.

I think those are good processes for the planning, for the process, going forward. But one thing I would love to see from the ministry…. I’m hoping that when we get into committee stage, I’ll get some answers on this. Has there been any analysis done on what the potential costs or savings are for companies? Since we’re already a high-cost producer here in British Columbia, it’s important to know if we’re doing things that are going to actually increase costs or increase time or whether they’re going to decrease costs or decrease time.

Once again, what are the performance measures we’re going to be able to put up to this? How can we change things if they are not achieving those performance measures, those objectives, that are being laid out? As we go through once again in terms of committee and look through this….

The minister talked a lot about forest roads, and in the bill, there is a tremendous amount of commentary about forest roads. I think the minister’s words, if I’ve got them right, were that the oversight would be immediate, with the goal of looking at deactivation of roads and the process for going through there. I think that’s good.

We have got probably hundreds of thousands of kilome­tres of road. I don’t even know what the number is that is out there. Many of these roads are abandoned, and they’re not being used. Some are important to be used. Some, of course, are critical in terms of accessing the land base for fighting wildfires and these components.

A lot of these roads are very important for mineral ex­ploration. A lot of these roads are important for tourism, for hunting, for hiking, for accessing the back country.

As we go through the process and look at deactivation, the goal of trying to reduce the number of roads on the landscape…. How are we doing that? What kind of input is being done on each of those roads, on each of those components, for making sure that there is potential mineralization in the area that companies may be interested in, or there are maybe guide-outfitters or hunting access, fishing access, recreational access in certain areas. Where do we start drawing the line for that in terms of those roads?

[2:05 p.m.]

This act doesn’t talk about that, but it’s really a broad plan that is needed on these roads for that access. It has to be done, of course, at the community level. There has been a lot of work that has been done on that in the past, but since this talks specifically about these high-level plans and these plans for deactivation…. For most people, they won’t necessarily be following into that, but for the people who need that access, that are using that access, it’s critical. They are going to want to be able to have input and make sure that the ministry knows about their interests in those areas.

I can tell you that one of the first issues that I ran across when I was first elected as an MLA was access to the back country. There was an area where there was a gate. Some people had keys to go through that gate, way, way in the back country, and some people didn’t. The people that didn’t were absolutely furious that they didn’t have access, but somebody else did. Part of deactivation is limiting people going down these roads.

Are things like gates going to be considered to be used to limit access within an area? Are we just going to be digging tank traps? How are we going to be to warning people about those kind of disruptions in our roads, so that when somebody is bombing down a road in an ATV, they’re not going to suddenly go flying into some ditch, which has happened when you don’t have proper signage, particularly when roads start overgrowing and you get thrust in, and somebody’s got a little trail going through there, and you hit one of these things. That can be very dangerous for people that are out recreating in the back country.

I know people in urban areas may not think about those things, but there are lots of people in the urban areas that do like to go out and access the back country, and to be able to get out and deal with things. One of the things the minister talked about is, like I say, more people engaged and involved in this decision-making and this shared planning. I’m going to be challenging the minister on that in terms of how that is going to happen versus what we’re doing today.

It also talks about improving government response. Okay. We’ve got a process that’s in place that the minister and this government have been working on for almost four years. It’s taken almost four years to get to this place to introduce a rather hefty bill. It takes time to write and do this kind of work. I get that. But then, it’s going to take, potentially, another eight years, or eight to ten years, to implement? To borrow a quote from my colleague from down in the Merritt area, the Fraser-Nicola riding: “If that is the speed of government working, God help us.”

If it’s going to take ten to 12 years to be able to implement these kinds of changes in terms of the work to get to this point and the work to implement it down the road, I’m pretty concerned if that’s what’s considered to be improving government response time on the landscape. There will be lots of questions around how that will work as it goes through that area.

I want to come back to something I touched on before, which was these layers of plans that are underneath this broad plan, in particular, the LRMPs, or the land resource management plans. Government set out a new path to actually update these plans. There are some pilots that are working on some various components, and I do wonder about how these will work hand-in-hand.

I was involved in LRMP work back in the ‘90s, and these plans were very specific, very laid out, had some great objectives, some great components as part of it, and then, of course, the pine beetle came along. All those objectives got wiped out, because the landscape changed. Are we still going to be going forward with this process of updating the LRMPs? Can this high-level plan that is being implemented replace the LRMPs?

[2:10 p.m.]

The LRMP process that went through back in the ‘90s and early 2000s really involved people from all around, whether it was guide-outfitters; whether it was farmers; whether it was recreation groups and environmentalists; and, of course, industry. All these groups came together to create this plan. It was very difficult, because there were so many competing interests.

If these plans are now being updated, which they are, and it’s just going to be a plan between government and First Nations, where did all those other interests disappear to, in terms of that land planning? How is that going to fit in within this process?

The other thing I find interesting, as well, is…. I think the minister talked about the idea of these forest landscape plans, maybe on smaller areas, not just a supply area — something, for example, like a TFL. A tree farm licence, of course, is an area-based tenure where a company has a responsibility for managing that land effectively and sustainably over a rotation, and they have that right to that area to be able to do that.

Suddenly, now there’s going to be plan that comes in over top of that company’s rights and responsibility, asserting control and asserting objectives? I’m not sure how that’s going to work in terms of the objectives and the licence that has been given to an entity, a First Nation or even a company that has a tree farm licence. So that made me kind of stand up and go: “I wonder exactly how this will work and how much thinking has gone through in terms of what sort of implementation for a plan like this would be.”

When you have a tree farm licence and it’s got the objectives and it’s got the volume and it’s set aside for forestry and forestry activities, there are other high-level objectives that go in as part of that. But if this comes in and significantly changes that, that could be a huge game-changer for a company that very much depends on the volume coming off of a tree farm licence for the day-to-day operations. At a time when we have declining annual allowable cuts due to pine beetles and other issues, that’s going to be an important piece to spend some time on and talk about.

The minister also touched on compliance and enforcement and the components that are going to be in this bill for that. It does make me wonder. The minister talked a number of times about basically making sure that there isn’t any wrongdoing or other things. I’m going to be looking forward to having a conversation with the minister about what sorts of things are not being caught today. What sort of compliance and enforcement are not being dealt with today that needed enhancement?

It very well may be that there are things going on, which is good. If there needs to be additional enforcement to make sure that rules are being followed, that’s good. But it makes me wonder: is there a report? Is there some sort of analysis that shows that there hasn’t been compliance? And are there additional tools and stuff that are needed around this? So it will be an interesting conversation as we go through the committee stage.

I’ve just got a few more things I want to be able to touch on, so I will let you know that I’m the designated speaker for this bill. Although I don’t plan to go two hours with this — although I could tell lots of stories about forestry and forest activity — there are a few things that I thought we should hit on.

As this bill is going to be implemented, there is some transition time that is talked about in this bill, between existing plans and this new plan. It makes me wonder: if we’ve got this high-level plan that is now being put in place between government and First Nations, this forest landscape plan, will there be a need to do things like, for example, archeological overview assessments? If that is already being taken into consideration in terms of First Nations interests, is there a need to be able to do that work? If there isn’t, that would be a huge saving in time, money and effort that are needed on the landscape.

How are the permitting and the process on the landscape changed by these plans? Right now if you want to go do any kind of activity on the land base, the first thing you have to do is an archeological overview assessment and look at whatever value is in there. If there is something in there that identifies that there could be a high or a moderate level, then you have to go into the next level of archeological assessment within that area before you can actually start doing stuff.

[2:15 p.m.]

That can take months of time to get a permit just to go out and do that work. Then once you go out and do that work, you can come in. Then you can go and you can start doing the work about planning and applying for other permits, which can also take months. So right now, with the way that the ministry is operating, it can take years to be able to actually get through and get a block prepared.

I have got this documented, in terms of my conflict of interest. I’m a woodlot licence owner. My family, my dad and I, co-own a woodlot licence. For me to get prepared to be able to have another cut on the woodlot, it’s going to take three years — three years of work, of engaging, of doing the plans and the process and everything that is put in place for a woodlot licence. Three years is a tremendous amount of time and work that is needed.

Now, when you start talking about companies that are accessing huge areas of the land base and how much time and cost it takes them to go through to be able to do this planning, is this going to reduce that, or is it going to add to what needs to be done on the landscape, and the process and the time to go and put it in place?

In terms of managing the landscape, I think we, most British Columbians — and I think there is some agreement between the opposition and government — want to see high-level planning put in place, making sure that there’s biodiversity that is being looked at; that there are values on the landscape that are protected; that there is volume available for a healthy, sustainable forest industry; that we take measures to be able to try to improve wildlife and wildlife conditions.

I think there are a lot of things we can agree to that we’d like to see on the landscape. I think we can agree that we’d like to see more secondary manufacturing, utilize more of the fibre. I think there is an agreement that we’d like to see these sorts of things on the landscape, but I’m not sure this achieves that. So I’m very interested in seeing what other legislation will be coming forward from this government on forestry, because this doesn’t touch on a lot of the things that the government has been talking about over time.

I want to come back just to talk for a minute about old growth, because there is a lot of friction right now out on the landscape. I can tell you, as somebody who has actually gone out to Fairy Creek and gone in and talked to the protesters and sat down and talked with the Pacheedaht, there is a huge problem there. It’s not going away anytime soon. This is not going to be able to help achieve the resolution of that particular problem on the landscape.

It’s a much bigger issue because there is so much misinformation out there in the public. People are talking about protecting the last hectare of old growth. There is 3.3 million hectares of old growth that are currently available for potential harvesting that are in what is called the timber-harvesting land base. There is about 11½ million hectares of old growth in B.C.

There is a tremendous amount of misinformation that is out there. Even the old-growth report that is out there talked about there being this repository of accurate and reliable information that needs to be created, this one source, so that we don’t end up with all this misinformation that’s going around.

I’m raising that, in particular, because there is a huge component, particularly for the coastal forest industry, where that particular area is very critical for supporting a forest sector. The forest sector, of course, is producing all these products, from an environmental perspective, that are the best and highest use that we could want to use within our society.

As we go through and look at all this, there needs to be this engagement of people for the information that is actually out there. It’s not about a tree that’s older or a tree that’s younger. It’s about having a working forest land base that can be operated on, that can support sustainable, long-term forestry that can help to meet our objectives.

[2:20 p.m.]

For example, if we aren’t going to be using two-by-fours, what would we build a house from? Are we going to do bricks? Are we going to do concrete and steel? If we’re not going to be using paper, what is the replacement for paper? Maybe you can start looking at hemp or something else for creating that. There’s a synergy of products that are healthy and good for the environment — even during the pandemic — that are critical and coming from our forest sector. Having a healthy forest sector and a renewable, well-managed, sustained forest sector is going to be critical.

British Columbia, quite frankly, around the world is recognized as being one of the leaders in good, sustainable, forest management practices. There are lots of changes, lots of things I think we could be doing to improve what we’re doing there. I’m certainly open to having those conversations. I do wonder, when I look at this, how much of those kinds of things will actually be in these plans?

Like I say, if you sit down and talk to the Pacheedaht about what their objectives are…. If you look at what their plans are, it varies quite differently from what, say, the environmentalists might consider or, for example, what the United Steelworkers might want to do on the landscape. There are going to be some big challenges.

The bill talks about — we touched on this when the government brought in UNDRIP, and we had this conversation — these Indigenous governing bodies and these abilities to be able to enter into these agreements. Well, in the case, for example, of the Pacheedaht, you’ve got the elected chief and council that are on the ground and that are making decisions about management — that, I’m assuming, you’re going to engage.

You’ve got an individual claiming to be…. I don’t know whether he is a Hereditary Chief or not. I don’t know the heritage within that nation. I haven’t had the opportunity to learn that. He has invited protesters on the ground, in conflict with what the elected chief and council want to do. Who is the governing body for that nation? How are you going to reconcile those challenges and issues as you develop a plan on the landscape? We’ve seen that in many areas around the province.

These are all big, big issues that are not addressed in this bill, which was, at a very high level, setting these objectives, with a band playing and flowers and a nice rosy picture. Like I say, it’s good. Those are good objectives, but when you get down to it on the ground, how exactly is that going to work? How exactly are you going to be able to develop that?

More importantly, as nations change, as governments change, their objectives change. How is that able to be implemented and held to for a ten-year period? Is a band council resolution what’s going to be required? Under the Indian Act, I suppose that gives authority for the agreement to be entered into. But if the governing body is not the elected chief and council, how does that work? What happens if there are changes? What happens if there’s suddenly disagreement?

There are dispute mechanisms, in the creation of the agreement, and there is some provision for being able to make some changes. But when you’re talking about an agreement that takes that long to create and to go through in these areas where you’ve got the friction and disagreement, the question is whether or not these can be implemented over that period of time with the changing landscape that we have today, where the struggles are within First Nations as they struggle for economic and real reconciliation.

As I go through once again, looking at the bill, I think we’re going to need a lot of time to go through the committee stage and try to work through some of these components. My hope in having this discussion was really to be able to sort of give notice that there are lots of issues that we’ll need to work through on this plan.

One of the last things I want to touch on…. There was a discussion, when I got a briefing from the chief forester, that there will be expanded authority to change fees related to the use or occupation of public lands. That was a little bit of a “what?” What exactly is the objective here? What are we trying to do as part of this?

[2:25 p.m.]

As I mentioned earlier in my response to this bill, there are already going to be significant costs associated with doing this. Is there an objective to raise fees to pay for this? Is that how this is going to work? I hope not, because there’s a tremendous cost that’s going to come going through this process and that, quite frankly, I don’t think government has really thought about and worked through yet. There is going to be a tremendous cost associated with this. The question will be: where’s that revenue going to come from?

Is it going to be increased stumpage? Is it going to be in­creased fees or access to the landscape? It is going to be all of the above? We already know that the minister is talking about significantly changing the tabular rates for things like community forests, woodlots and these types of structures, which, of course, isn’t being talked about in this bill. It’s all part and parcel to how we’re working on the landscape and how our forest industry is going to be able to be successful in competing in a global environment.

There are big challenges to our landscape in British Columbia. It is truly a beautiful province. There are so many great values that are out there. There are so many things we as a society enjoy — everything from being able to have a working living from the landscape to being able to walk through groves of enormous trees and to be able to appreciate nature and the gravity of what has been there for 1,000 years.

There are lots of things we value in this landscape: wildlife values, fresh water, watersheds to be able to make sure that we can have clean and fresh drinking water that comes from that, all the tourism objectives on the landscape, hunting. All these values we have tried to manage over time and juggle how these work.

It’s probably worth noting, at this point, that we have more land in parks in British Columbia than any other jurisdiction in the world. We’re leading by a long way. We’ve got over 15 percent of our province already protected in parks, far more than any other jurisdiction and far more, quite frankly, than the United Nations has set as a target for nations. It’s something we should be proud of. We’ve got to make sure that they’re being managed. We’ve got lots of issues around that that need to be dealt with, but it’s something to be proud of.

With that, and with all the other objectives on the landscape and all the other constraints and stuff on the landscape, I don’t think it’s too much to ask, as well, that we need to have a sustainable, healthy forest sector as a value, as a society.

Forestry has fed families in this province and helped to build this province for 100 years. The first tenures that were put out in the province were actually, I think, before the province was even a province in Canada. I think it was in the 1840s. After it did become one there and we entered, we brought in stumpage. We started collecting revenue from this, and the forest sector has developed and grown dramatically over that period of time. Technology and innovation have significantly decreased the workforce associated with forestry over the decades, but it’s still vital for our society.

At one point, I think, 10 percent of the people that worked in the province were directly involved with for­estry. It’s now probably 3 or 4 percent. It has decreased over time. As our economy has expanded, forestry has stabilized. That forest sector that we have as a province is also having a real problem right now: attracting young people and new people into the industry. People look at it and say: “What’s the future?” We don’t have a government today that is championing our forest sector. That’s a problem.

If you don’t have a champion in the forest sector, how are you getting the message out there about the good values and sustainability of our forest sector that people would want to come and invest their future in, in long-term employment, in creating a career and in being able to have pride in the value that you’re giving back to our society? It’s a real problem in our forest sector. I think, quite frankly, it should be one of the objectives.

[2:30 p.m.]

Managing on the landscape is one piece of that. But understanding how…. The interaction between communities, the interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, the interaction and perceptions we have around the world and those values that we provide to the environment, to our society, need to be recognized and need to be championed.

My hope is that as we go through this bill, I’ll start to hear the minister talking about being a champion for our forest sector and fighting for those values that have helped to build this province over many, many, many decades.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’ll end my comments. Like I say, I very much look forward to going into the committee stage on this bill. I hope that I’ll be able to get some of the answers that I know I’m certainly looking for and I know many people in this province are. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill.

S. Furstenau: I rise today to speak to Bill 23, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act.

I just finished reading the novel Greenwood, by Michael Christie. Give yourself a gift. Read this beautiful, extra­ordinary book. I’m ready to start reading it again immediately, so rich is the prose, so extraordinary is the story. It’s a novel that entwines family and forests, humans and trees. I’d like to read a passage.

“‘What if a family isn’t a tree at all?’ Jake thinks as they walk in silence. What if it’s more like a forest? A collection of individuals pooling their resources through intertwined roots, sheltering one another from wind and weather and drought, just like Greenwood Island’s trees have done for centuries…. All of our ancestors are all with her, embedded in her cellular structure, if not a part of her family tree, then part of her family forest. And no one knows better than a dendrologist that it’s the forests that matter.”

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

This passage, this whole book, resonated so deeply for me. I moved here to Vancouver Island from Edmonton 31 years ago, after spending every summer growing up either at my grandmother’s house in Campbell River or my Aunt Nöel’s amazing herb farm, Ravenhill, in Saanich. My mother was born in Comox. My grandmother, the youngest daughter of settlers from England, was born on Saturna Island in 1902. My father emigrated here from Germany in 1956, completing his secondary schooling in Sidney.

My parents met in Victoria and were married in St. Matthias Church on Richardson Street. B.C. always felt more like home to me than the flat landscape of Edmonton ever did. I always felt most content near the ocean, with the mountains nearby. But it was only once I started spending time in ancient forests, Carmanah and Walbran, that I realized the pull that giant cedars and ancient Douglas firs have on me.

So much research has taken place on the benefits of be­ing in a forest. A 2017 study published in Environmental Health and Preventative Medicine reviewed six randomized controlled trials that reported time in nature is associ­ated with improved health outcomes. It concluded that these studies support the positive impacts of forest therapy on hypertension, cardiac and pulmonary function, im­mune function, inflammation, oxidative stress, stress, stress hormone, anxiety, depression and emotional response.

I think at the end of every four days we spend in here, we should all go be in a forest. The study recommends more robust trials are warranted to establish clinical guide­lines beyond such advice as I just gave. However, I think we can agree that these benefits make a walk in the woods seem like a rather good idea. But not all forests are the same.

[2:35 p.m.]

Walking in an old-growth forest, with the many species of trees that are hundreds of years old and an understorey that’s been building for millennia, is a very different experience than walking in a single-species plantation. You can actually feel the ground beneath you give way with every step you take, almost like walking on a trampoline, because that forest floor has been created for literally thousands of years.

I recently heard Dr. Suzanne Simard speak about the difference between an old-growth forest and a single-species plantation. In an old-growth forest, the ground be­neath you — packed with fungal mycelium, bacteria, nematodes, mites — adds up to nearly a metre of nitrogen-rich humus that puts to shame any carbon-capturing technologies that humans might ever invent.

Fairy Creek, at 1,200 hectares, absorbs 1,300 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year. That is more carbon absorption than tropical rainforests in the Amazon. While we have announcements of all types of emission reduction policies as part of a climate plan, consider this: seven Fairy Creeks would absorb all of Victoria’s emissions every year — seven Fairy Creeks.

It’s interesting to note that one of the ten actions from over 240 signatories to a letter to the Premier a month ago, including diverse environmental, Indigenous, labour, health, business, local government, academic, youth and faith communities…. In that letter, they called on the B.C. government to respond to climate change like an emergency. There were ten recommendations.

The sixth one is: “Protect and restore nature. Protect 30 percent of terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030; support and invest in Indigenous-led conservation initiatives; restore natural ecosystems to enhance ecosystem functions and services, preserve biodiversity, increase carbon sequestration and improve human and ecosystem resilience to climate impacts.” And finally: “Impose an immediate moratorium on the industrial logging of all old-growth forests, which are critical carbon sinks.”

Let’s consider what, according to Dr. Simard, the implications of logging old growth are when it comes to climate. When you log old growth, you lose 70 to 80 percent of carbon sequestration. Microbial communities go from 100 species to six. This significantly decreases the ability for trees to take up nutrients, which in turn reduces the ability of trees to grow and absorb carbon. Logging an old-growth forest and replanting trees are not equal. The loss of carbon sequestration is not replaced by the planting of new trees, particularly of a single species.

What of the forest floor? The nitrogen-rich and carbon-absorbing humus, nearly 100 centimetres thick in an an­cient forest, is only 33 centimetres in a 100-year-old second-growth forest. Old growth, 100 centimetres; sec­ond growth, a hundred years later, 33 centimetres. Astonishingly, in a third-growth plantation of high-density Douglas fir, the forest floor is now only 4 centimetres — from 100 to 33 to four.

One of the concerns that has long been raised about the current Forest and Range Practices Act is the list of values that determines the management of forests. As it stands now, the range of values is considered, however, only inasmuch as they do not interfere with timber supply. In a time of increasing impacts from climate change, the wildfires, the droughts, the loss of biodiversity and the growing number of endangered species, it seems to me that we’ve got the orientation entirely wrong.

[2:40 p.m.]

We need to manage forests in a way that ensures that we protect biodiversity, protect soil, protect watersheds, protect community values, including recreation and those walks in the woods, and ensures that our forests are climate change–resistant, drought-resistant, fire-resistant and pest-resistant. We need to have forestry policy be truly Indigenous-led, driven by the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years of understanding that comes from a reciprocal and respectful relationship with trees, forests and nature.

Does this legislation achieve this wholesale shift in forestry management, a paradigm shift? No. These amendments mean that Indigenous nations must be consulted and accommodated as much as possible, but the new landscape plans won’t require agreement. The legislation before us today is overdue. We know that. The amendments to the Forest Act and the Forest and Range Practices Act were first floated back in 2019, but it took government two entire years before these amendments have been brought forward.

There are some aspects that I’m pleased to see — for instance, the shift from industry-informed forest stewardship plans to forest landscape plans. Like professional reliance, leaving industry responsible for the public interest is a faulty system that fails to protect the public or the environment. Shifting to landscape plans that are informed by First Nations, local communities and other stakeholders is a good idea. Frankly, it should have been done quite a long time ago.

That said, the transition to these plans will be implemented over eight to ten years. That’s deeply concerning. We’ve identified that the proponent-informed plans are a problem. Why take so long to fix something that is so clearly broken? Why let the ramifications continue to impact communities, First Nations and the environment? We’re in a climate crisis, and forests have been the canaries in the coal mines. They are burning first. It seems that this government is content to let them burn in favour of sticking to the status quo.

In addition to this, the ten-year transition causes uncertainty, as well, for industry. Which TFLs will transition first, and which will not? What will the guidance be in operations on the land base in the decade-long interim? The uncertainty imperils the economic argument for forest value.

I’d also like to touch on the issue of Indigenous consul­tation, which my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands will speak to in greater detail. Namely, I’d like to highlight the fact that the government has patted itself on the back for including the word “consent” in this legislation. But the full statement in the legislation simply says that an Indigenous governing body may provide consent within 60 days. We’ve heard from nations and from the First Nations Forestry Council that they are strapped for capacity.

Replying to forest landscape plans within 60 days, when there are other ongoing crises and a lack of resources, is a major challenge. It is not consent if Indigenous people do not have the same level of power and autonomy as the provincial government. My interpretation is this. The government will gladly take ten years to ease into a necessary standard of planning but will only give Indigenous nations 60 days to provide consent to activity on their territory. That does not sound nearly as laudable as it has been made out to be.

This legislation makes other changes that will, hopefully, improve forestry practices. They include requirements for licensees to develop and submit operations plans for ministerial approval. They put guidelines on the creation of logging roads, guidelines that should have long since been put in place. The chief forester will now be allowed to set stocking standards and target areas for reforestation to address the need for species diversity, wildland buffers and fire management.

Broadly speaking, this is good. We do need to ensure that we are replanting logged areas with diverse species. It will reduce the impacts of wildfire and pest outbreaks and produce healthier ecosystems. Fire buffers are good. They will help communities remain resilient as we see the summers being plagued by wildfires more and more.

[2:45 p.m.]

These are changes I’m glad to see. They are changes that ostensibly will produce healthier forests and communities, but the legislation establishes broad regulation-making authority throughout the bill. Regulations can be a useful tool, but when applied to such a critical issue with such wide reach, there’s a lack of transparency about implementation. There’s a lack of accountability. That has impacts.

Communities rely on forests. Indigenous people rely on forests. Species and businesses rely on forests. On the glo­bal level, the world relies on B.C.’s forests, in particular, as a unique carbon sink and, in some parts of the province, globally rare ecosystems. The forests have such immense value for social, cultural, environmental and economic reasons. Leaving their management up to regulation with no detail or specifics on implementation is more than poor management. It’s becoming a theme. It’s undemocratic.

I began my remarks by speaking about my own connection to forests and their meaning to me as an individual and a member of a community. That might feel disconnected from the technical piece of legislation before us today, but it’s not. Public policy impacts the public. It impacts all of us as individuals.

I have concerns about the impacts of this legislation, concerns that I’ve heard from experts and stakeholders, and concerns for the future of our communities and for­ests. These changes, in my opinion, are overdue, but they also aren’t enough. British Columbia deserves more proactive, bold, progressive forestry management.

I come back to Greenwood, this novel. It begins in 2038, and as the novel proceeds, it goes back to the early 1900s through the stages of a family and then comes back to 2038. In 2038, in this novel, the world has gone through the great withering in which all trees have died. It connects it to the historical experience of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, when vegetation disappeared from so much of the landscape in North America. That loss of vegetation meant that people existed in this dust-filled world.

Greenwood makes us think about the future while reflecting on the past — something I think we should all be doing our very best to do in here as much as possible. It makes us ask the question: what is it that we owe to that future? Will the people in 2038 look back at this time and say in this critical moment, at this critical time, as we’re hearing about COP26, what is it? Our last best chance, collectively and globally, to act on climate change — our last best chance. This is where we’re at.

This isn’t a small historical moment. This, arguably, is one of the most important historical moments for humankind, because we are deciding if we want to take that last best chance. Is it too hard? Is it too much to let go of the status quo at a time when scientists are telling us that if we stick with the status quo, what we will deliver to the future is something harrowing and distressing, along the lines of what Michael Christie describes in his book: a kind of great withering.

We make legislation here in British Columbia, and we think: “Oh well, we are so small, just one province in one country, one big part of this massive global puzzle.” Yet we are in this moment of our last best chance.

[2:50 p.m.]

I would think we would want to do the most ambitious things we could possibly dream of in this moment. We would want to look to 2038 and say: “What’s the best we can do for them and for 2058 and for 2098?” When we speak of the last remaining old growth in British Columbia and we start to debate the numbers and how much is there really and what is old growth and how old are those trees and what does it mean…?

Let’s start with the soil. Let’s start there. Let’s consider the difference between an intact forest and that soil and that miraculous community of those trees and the forest and the understorey and the amazing things that are happening there. Let’s ask ourselves: do we bequeath that to the future? Or is it the second growth or third growth with four centimetres and 6 percent of the life that used to exist there?

These are big questions for us to be asking ourselves. Maybe people think: “Oh well. It’s just one piece of legislation.” But isn’t that what got us here, to this moment of our last best chance on climate? It was just one piece of legislation, one bit of policy, one decision here that kept moving us further away from a future that doesn’t look like the great withering.

One thing that I’m interested in…. I think back to those early experiences in the Carmanah and Walbran when I first spent time hiking and building boardwalks and camping in those extraordinary forests.

At the time, of course, early 1990s, British Columbia was engaged in this very significant conversation, the war of the woods, the whole battle over Clayoquot Sound. So much of that focused on clearcutting and this notion of: “We’re clearcutting these forests.” It’s fascinating to me that 30 years later, we’re not even really talking about clearcutting. It’s like it’s a given in our forestry policy and our forestry management.

When we think about the relationship between the volume of trees and timber that’s extracted from forest lands and the number of jobs attached to that activity, what we have is a graph in which the volume goes up, and the number of jobs goes down.

If we were really serious about ensuring that there’s long-term sustainable jobs for forestry communities in this province, we would start by looking at clearcutting. The mechanized removal of trees can be done with very few people, whereas selective logging, which maintains that forest floor, which maintains that biodiversity has been shown in many places…. I’ll point to Sweden as an example. You can actually, over time, have the same volume of timber, but you don’t take out entire forests. You use more people to do that work, because it’s not one big machine going in and doing it.

The conversation…. If we want to really be talking about balancing sustainable jobs in forestry communities and sustainable forestry, let’s talk about how that forestry happens. That relationship between the volume of timber going up and the number of jobs going down — that should be a concern to every single one of us, because that doesn’t seem like an equation that’s working for anybody.

[2:55 p.m.]

What’s interesting to me is that we are talking about this legislation. We’re talking about these reforms. We’re not talking about reforming the fundamental approach to forestry that has dominated the landscape. Any of us flying back to our communities or spending time on the Finance Committee criss-crossing this province by air can see beyond a sliver of a doubt that clearcutting is the dominant form of forestry in this province.

There are so many things that we could be leaning into right now. We could be achieving a paradigm shift. We could be bequeathing not just forests but forestry management to the future that achieves that sustainability. But what we’ve done here in this legislation, these amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act, is just sort of adjusting around the edges, largely. Yeah, addressing some bigger problems but not a true shift in any way.

I worry about this being an increasingly consistent trend — that while the world is recognizing we’re in our last best chance, here in this building, in the work we’re doing, we’re staying so locked in to a status quo that has gotten us here, unwilling to have a vision for something significantly different.

I will remain optimistic and hopeful. We have to. I look forward to committee stage and asking questions on this bill. But I think it’s incumbent on all of us to really see — and I apologize, Mr. Speaker — the forest for the trees.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. I thought that was coming.

M. Morris: I’ve lived most of my life in the interior of our great province and, most of the time, within the Prince George timber supply area, the largest timber supply area in the province.

In roughly a year and a half, I will be 70. For most of the last 50 years, I’ve trapped, hunted, fished, camped and hiked throughout the interior of the province. Over these 50 years, I’ve witnessed the slow and gradual transformation of our natural forests into what industry terms working forests, or monoconifer plantations. I’ve witnessed the cumulative effects of clearcutting and the impacts of the disappearance of wildlife populations.

I’ve looked at the proposed changes Bill 23 outlines, and I see this as tinkering with forest policy that is outdated and no longer meets the needs of British Columbians. We are quite simply out of harvestable trees unless we don’t care about habitat for wildlife, salmon and genuine biodiversity management.

Biodiversity management has been an interest of mine for decades, but my passion was ignited after Christy Clark appointed me Parliamentary Secretary for Forests and Lands in 2014 to examine wildlife habitat in British Columbia. I was shocked to see the extent of habitat degradation across the province. For the past five years, I’ve been researching how we got to this point. Where did it start?

I began by reading every royal commission report on forestry, commencing with the first royal commission in 1910. I’ve read many of the supporting documents considered by the commissioners. I’ve reviewed numerous scientific papers on forestry, ecology, hydrology and wildlife management. I’ve spoken to ecologists, registered professional foresters, wildlife biologists, hydrologists and industry representatives.

I’ve also taken advantage of a tool accessible to everyone in this House and around the world — Google Earth En­gine Timelapse. It’s a series of land satellite images of British Columbia starting in 1984 through to 2020.

[3:00 p.m.]

In addition, I put more than 10,000 kilometres on my pickup in recent years travelling into the far reaches of the three largest timber supply areas in the province, trying to find the millions of cubic metres of trees supposedly available for harvest.

The question motivating my research was: what gave successive governments the right to transform our pri­mary forests into monoconifer stands? I can sum up my research very succinctly. The slow and often obfuscated transformation to working forests was initiated by adopting an incomplete strategy back in 1945, which subsequently morphed into an ideology taught in our colleges and university forestry programs.

Let me explain. British Columbia was entrusted with the stewardship of our forests when Canada vested ownership to B.C. of all forested lands when we entered Confederation. With few exceptions, up to around 1900, all successive governments deliberately retained Crown ownership by issuing licences and leases over Crown lands to authorize timber extraction.

As British Columbia entered the 20th century, logging activity increase exponentially. Around 1904, licences is­sued to harvest timber rose at an alarming rate from 1,500 to over 15,000, resulting in government appointing the first royal commission into forest policy. The Fulton report, 1910, resulted in the first Forest Act in 1912, the beginning of the provincial forest service and a focus on forest management and protection.

In 1943, the second royal commission on forestry commenced, resulting in the Sloan report, The Forest Resources of British Columbia, 1945. The impetus for this commission was the irregular increase of timber production on private land that had been granted in aid of railway construction on Vancouver Island and a myriad of leases and licences issued prior to 1907 on the south coast. Timber harvesting was largely unplanned, leading to industry concerns for future continuity.

A major concern for industry at the time was that the licensing and lease arrangements were inadequate in pro­viding a dependable source of logs needed to secure investment. For the first half of the 20th century, logging and forestry activities were primarily confined to Vancouver Island and the south coast, with limited logging taking place along transportation corridors into the Interior.

The takeaway from this commission was the origin of the sustainable yield policy. Justice Sloan states, at page 127 in his report:

“A sustained yield policy has, as one objective, the maintenance of forest cover and growth, thus ensuring a perpetual supply of raw materials for forest industries with consequent stability of industrial communities and assurance of permanent payrolls.

“A no less important objective is the perpetuation of the forest cover to assure the continuance of many direct and indirect benefits which flow therefrom, in addition to the mere growing of wood. In my view, however,” he goes on to say, “none of these factors is a necessary or essential ingredient of the definition to be applied to the term ‘sustainable yield.’”

I want to highlight this — that in the finding of sustainable yield, the commission determined the other values on the land were inconsequential to growing and harvesting trees. Thus my earlier reference to an incomplete strategy.

Until the 1960s, forest companies were focused on intermediate utilization, only taking trees considered suitable for making lumber. It was often referred to as select logging, and any tree smaller than a 12-inch diameter at breast height was left standing. The length of time determined to regrow forests after logging during the first half of the 20th century was 120 years in the Interior and 80 years on Vancouver Island and the south coast.

With the expansion of the pulp industry in the mid ’60s, forest companies were required to adopt the close utilization standard to log all the trees on the block, including, for the first time, pine and hemlock, which up until then were regarded more as weed trees. Trees unsuitable for sawlogs were chipped and sent to the nine pulp mills that appeared during this period. As a result of the change, the close utilization existing volume-based licences increased by 30 percent in the Interior and doubled on the coast and Vancouver Island.

[3:05 p.m.]

It wasn’t until the Royal Commission on Forestry in 1975 before values other than trees were mentioned in any meaningful way. Commissioner Pearse wrote, on page 5 of that report: “In short, while forest managers have by no means completed the task begun three decades ago of designing methods of managing the province’s forest for continuous timber yields, the most pressing challenge today is to develop effective means of reconciling industrial forestry with other forest uses and social objectives to realize the full range of potential values.”

What followed, over the next 20 years, was a series of legislative and policy changes that can best be described as voluntary guidelines to support multiple forest use practices.

The public became more and more disenchanted with the impacts to the environment, and the war in the woods escalated. Attempts were made to mesh land use planning with the annual allowable cut determination, but the process became bogged down, and very few determinations were made.

The first timber supply review in B.C. took place in 1992, well over a hundred years after timber harvesting began in the province. Until this took place, protected areas, biodiversity, riparian areas and wildlife habitats were never considered in determining how much forest was harvested, until well into the late 1990s. By this time, ap­proximately 17 million hectares of forest had been harvested with little or no consideration to wildlife, riparian areas or any other values on the land.

As we entered the 1990s, increased environmental concerns over logging practices resulted in the implementation of strict legislation under the forest practices code. While the focus was still on the incomplete strategy of sustainable yield, it now became known as sustainable forest management. The forest practices code was described as the epitome as command-and-control legislation by some critics and was widely criticized for being overly prescriptive, stifling to innovation and exacting high transactional costs on industry.

It was a relatively short-lived legislation, being replaced by the Forest and Range Practices Act, or FRPA, in 2004. Continuing with the sustainable forest management policy direction, from 1990 until 2015, another six million hectares of clearcut logging took place, bringing the total hectares logged in British Columbia over the past 100 years to approximately 20 million hectares.

The total does not include hectares logged under tree farm licences, woodlot licences, community forests or private woodlots. It also does not factor in the four million hectares disturbed by forest fires since 1980 or any of the 700,000 kilometres of resource roads, rights-of-way constructed across the province or the thousands of hectares consumed by several large hydro reservoirs developed throughout the 20th century, or railway rights-of-way or a number of other rights-of-way that we have across of the province.

The timber supply review that commenced in the late 1990s determined the timber harvesting land base in B.C. to be 22 million hectares. Excluding any of the timber harvest land base in remote locations in the northeast and the northwest parts of the province, one can reasonably conclude that most of the timber harvest land base in the rest of the province has been harvested at least once.

I encourage anyone interested to utilize Google Earth Engine Timelapse to see the extent of clearcut logging in British Columbia from 1984 until 2020, simply by typing a B.C. location in at the query box in the top left corner of the Google Earth Engine Timelapse website.

A significant factor overlooked for well over a century was the hydrological changes resulting from forest cover removal. The interception of rain and snow and the evaporation rates and absorption rates of mature timber were never taken into consideration — hundreds of thousands of litres of water absorbed by a mature forest on a daily basis. In 1992, British Columbia adopted a calculation referred to as the equivalent clearcut area, or ECA, to determine the hydrological impacts of clearcut logging practices.

They issued a directive, the B.C. Forests and Lands Extension Note 118, dated January 27, 2017, that stated in a reference to the B.C. Minister of Forests submitted back in 1992 that set ECA thresholds of 20 percent in community watersheds, 25 percent in fishery-sensitive watersheds and 30 percent in all other watersheds. This directive indicates that the equivalent clearcut area of a watershed cannot exceed these amounts without jeopardizing the hydrological integrity of the land base.

[3:10 p.m.]

The Chilako River is just over 100 kilometres long. The watershed, much of it in my riding, has an ECA that was determined in 2011 that exceeded 80 percent. Harvesting still continued.

Chinook salmon counts in that river, as an example, dropped from being in the thousands to single-digit numbers in recent years. Spring freshets have contributed to millions of dollars of damage to property. The Anzac River, another watershed in my riding, is a fishery-sensitive watershed where active logging is continuing while ECA levels have far exceeded 25 percent.

There are numerous watersheds across the province where ECA values have exceeded 50 percent and greater, leading to rapid snow melting and downstream flooding. The lack of forest cover has also decreased transpiration values and increased temperatures on the land, accompanied by the inability of the land, in many cases, to retain moisture. Science indicates that it takes a minimum of 85 years after planting for a forest canopy to start providing a similar level of protection from sun radiation, increased transpiration values and moisture retention on the ground.

Although some reforestation began in the 1930s, British Columbia relied mostly upon natural regeneration until the rapid rise in harvest in the 1950s and ‘60s. By the 1970s, despite ongoing replanting efforts, significant portions of the province were designated as not sufficiently restocked. Federal and provincial programs initiated an aggressive replanting program, planting millions of trees.

Lodgepole pine was a species of choice to plant, because it was a faster-growing tree, reaching a harvestable size only after 60 years. To enhance growth and yield, the pro­vince increased the density of new forests by planting 1,000 to 2,500 trees per hectare, far greater than the average mature forest of between 100 and 300 trees per hectare.

With the primary focus on growth and yield, major changes to biodiversity have taken place at the landscape level. The following paragraph is quoted from a compendium of environmental resource information on the Royal B.C. Museum website. It says:

“It is important to recognize that terms such as ‘reforestation’ and ‘forest renewal’ do not equate to the restoration of a natural forest, with all of their structural and biological attributes. Replanting selected species and harvesting at rotations of 60 years for lodgepole pine and 80 years for other coniferous forests cannot allow the renewal of habitats required by old-growth-dependent species. Nor is it enough time for more slowly dispersing species, such as some plants and fungi and insects, to recolonize a harvested area.

“Once timber has been harvested by clear-cutting, the land replanted and harvested again in currently planned rotations, the natural forest and some of its non-timber values are lost forever. For this reason, modern industrial forestry cannot be considered ‘sustainable’ in the sense of maintaining all the options for future generations, even though timber harvest, per se, is sustainable.”

Commencing in the late 1990s, the most recent mountain pine beetle infestation affected over 18 million hectares, an area five times the size of Vancouver Island, and killed over 50 percent of the volume of harvestable lodgepole pine in the province. Although the pine beetles were initially attracted to mature growth, once these trees were killed, they attacked younger stands, killing thousands of hectares of immature stands planted in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The central Interior areas of the province saw significant increases in the harvest levels to process the dead pine before it deteriorated.

Over the past century, there were also many incidents of spruce beetle outbreaks. One of the most significant in the 1970s occurred in the Bowron River area, near Prince George, affecting over 175,000 hectares — that’s over two-thirds the size of Metro Vancouver — and killing 60 percent of the mature spruce trees in that area. Over five million cubic metres of timber were harvested.

Currently the Omineca region in the central Interior of the province, most or a lot in my riding, has seen nearly a million hectares — that’s four times of size of Metro Vancouver — of mature spruce killed by the spruce beetle since 2015. Over four million hectares of B.C. forests have been consumed by wildfires since the 1990s, many of these fires destroying young plantations. The densities of forest plantations have contributed to the intensity of these fires in many respects.

[3:15 p.m.]

In examining other jurisdictions outside of Canada experiencing increased incidents of wildfires, many identified the increased forest densities as a major contributing factor. San Bernardino County is one such area, taking aggressive steps to thin forests that have increased over time because of forestry practices and lack of controlled burning.

They are also re-establishing Indigenous deciduous growth, broad-leaf trees that may have no commercial value as sawlogs but are invaluable in the mitigation in the spread of wildfire. With the coming into force of FRPA in 2004, forest companies were required to submit forest stewardship plans that addressed specific objectives set by government.

These objectives, contained in the regulations, were to address soils, visual quality, timber, forage, water, fish, wildlife, biodiversity, resource features and cultural heritage resources. The problem, however, was that the regulations also provided an off-ramp whereby the objectives were subordinated by the clause “without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia’s forests.”

Government made the decision in the 1990s that only 1 percent retention of wildlife habitat and 2.3 percent of old-growth forests was necessary for maintenance and preservation of biodiversity — 1 percent. This determination was also recognized in 2013 by the B.C. Auditor General in his report.

Attached to that audit, he states:

“Under the Forest and Range Practices Act, the minister can list endangered, threatened or vulnerable vertebrate and invertebrate species and endangered or threatened plants and plant communities that might be negatively affected by forest or range management on Crown land.

“To date, 85 species and plant communities have been identified. Government’s objective for these species is ‘to conserve sufficient wildlife habitat’ but ‘without unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia’s forests.’ For an example, government limits the amount of area that can be designated as wildlife habitat to 1 percent impact on the provincial land base for forest and range activities. We found no scientific rationale for this policy.”

The year-end status report for 2018, published by the Forest Products Association of British Columbia, claims that forest companies in British Columbia have over 50 million hectares of forest certified as sustainably managed. B.C. has 54 million hectares total of forest cover right across the province. This is an interesting number, considering that B.C. has only 22 million hectares in the timber-harvest land base.

This certification is administered by three certification bodies: the Canadian Standards Association, the Forest Stewardship Council and the sustainable forestry initiative. These reports indicate that SFI alone has certified nearly 30 million hectares. The common thread amongst all three programs is to ensure forest companies are in compliance with all applicable federal, provincial, regional or municipal laws.

One very significant area of law that appears to have been purposefully overlooked or avoided is the disturbance of nests or eggs. Under Canada’s Migratory Birds Convention Act and the applicable regulations, it’s an offence to disturb or destroy a nest or eggs, which specifically in British Columbia is the period between May and August.

There are also similar provisions under the B.C. Wildlife Act. These sections are strictly enforced in the development of mining, oil and gas, hydro, pipeline and associated right-of-way and other construction projects in and around the province but are entirely overlooked in all aspects of forest harvesting.

The paper, published in 2013, entitled An Estimate of Nest Loss in Canada Due to Industrial Forestry Operations, examined the impact on birds from industrial forest harvesting across Canada. The researchers found that data available in British Columbia was extensive and examined B.C. separately from the rest of Canada.

Using the B.C. harvest billing system, they were able to extrapolate the volume harvested during the bird breeding season, and conclusions based on their model determined that over 400,000 nests are lost to logging in B.C. on an annual basis, preventing hundreds of thousands of birds from entering the adult population each year.

During the time birds are nesting and breeding, mammals from mice to moose are also giving birth and raising their young. Nesting and denning sites are lined with grasses, leaves and other plant matter. There are over 65 species of wildlife in B.C. that use tree cavities for denning and nesting purposes. Considering that most tree cavities don’t start developing until a tree is 75 to 100 years old, rotations under this age will eliminate those species from British Columbia forests forever.

[3:20 p.m.]

Forest silviculture practices began spraying glyphosate herbicide in the early 1980s and have sprayed hundreds of thousands of hectares across the province, with nearly a third of that applied in the Prince George timber supply area, eliminating the grasses, leaves, berries and seeds so many mammals depend on for survival. Recent research near Prince George indicates that the moose are starving to death because of a lack of protein in their food supply. Reduced plant protein in the plant species preferred for browsing is believed to be caused by overexposure to sunlight stemming from large clearcuts.

This recent research follows a recent moose collaring project to determine the cause of moose mortality in three locations in the Interior where starvation was found to be a major factor. Ungulate populations — moose, mule deer, caribou, etc. — fur-bearers, birds and fish populations, steelhead and salmon have decreased significantly across the province over the past 20 years.

As noted above, ungulate starvation is a major contributing factor, as are predators, but the overarching factor behind all species decline is the loss of habitat. According to the chief forester, many factors are considered in determining provincial timber harvest levels. Economic considerations and other values on the land supposedly play a significant role. However, the valuation of the other values on the land has never been undertaken.

There was an interesting case where the province was attempting to claim damages to biodiversity from a forest fire, which went to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. The province, in its factum to the court, presented some areas for consideration for evaluating biodiversity. They included the nature of the wildlife plants and other organisms protected by the environment in question; the uniqueness of the ecosystem from a biological perspective; the environmental services provided by the resource, such as water quality and erosion control; the recreational opportunities afforded by the resource; and the subjective or emotional attachment of the public to the damaged or destroyed areas.

Since this court decision, there has been no progress on evaluating these considerations, which, quite frankly, represent but a fraction of the true value of biodiversity. If one were to consider the protein value of all the ungulates, the fish and fowl on the land and the fact that this protein is renewable every year, the extrinsic value of fruits, mushrooms and other edible plants on the landscape — again, with new production on an annual basis — as well as the intrinsic considerations presented to the court, a different vision of our landscape would surely emerge.

I return to the Pearse report from the 1975 Royal Commission on Forest Resources, where Commissioner Pearse stated: “The old-growth timber on which our industry has been built was often of exceptionally high quality, capable of manufacture into products that command premium prices in world markets. As this stock is depleted — and it is appropriate to refer to it as stock, since it is not reproduceable within any meaningful planning horizon — much of the special advantage this province’s timber has enjoyed will be lost.” Perhaps we reached that point several decades ago, where we lost our competitive advantage because we depleted our stock of high-quality old-growth timber.

Did the royal commission in 1945 envision the sustainable yield policy as transforming 22 million hectares of forest into managed forests — or referred to as working forests by industry — focused on yield and growth only, with no considerations for the other values on the land? Did they envision an automated forest industry employing a fraction of the population that it once did?

British Columbia is different than other jurisdictions, geographically, bioclimatically, ecologically and demographically. Another major difference that separates us from most jurisdictions around the world is B.C. has retained Crown ownership of 92 percent of the land base. Had justice Sloan determined in 1945 that the perpetuation of forest cover to ensure the continuance of the many direct and indirect benefits which flow therefrom, in addition to the mere growing of wood, was an essential ingredient in the definition of “sustained yield,” would we be facing the dire consequences that we’re facing today?

Are wall-to-wall manicured tree farms what the Sloan commission had in mind in 1945 or what the successive governments envisioned when implementing and supporting the sustained yield policy? If they did, it’s now clear that this policy no longer fits the biodiversity, watershed, wildlife, fire protection and climate change priorities for the 21st century.

[3:25 p.m.]

Such a policy certainly doesn’t match the marketing brand of “Super, natural British Columbia.” This policy has placed British Columbia in a precarious position where we have limited time left to act to maintain what we have left of some of the most unique biodiversity in North America.

A bold new strategy recognizing the value of an entire forest, not just the trees, is required to sustain our province into the future. Bill 23 doesn’t even come close to addressing these issues.

L. Doerkson: I’ve got brief comments with respect to Bill 23, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act, 2021. I really thank the member prior for the volumes of information. I have a number of concerns. While I support the bill in many areas, I do have a number of concerns that I wanted to highlight.

In my mind, the best building material that we have is wood. It can be renewable if it’s managed properly. I’ve seen this with my own eyes. I’ve seen second growth that has been harvested recently, and I’ve seen it being planted for a third time.

The bill has many suggestions. It certainly makes a number of noble sentiments. However, the important question to me is: how exactly is this going to play out for the people on the ground?

The bill does significantly amend the Forest Act and Forest and Range Practices Act. I want to talk a little bit about some of that history, because the forest policy in this province has moved from the perspective of the forest practices code of the 1990s to the results-based changes our government brought in, in the 2000s to the bill that we have in front of us today, which, in my mind, is layer upon layer of more regulation. That, to me, is concerning.

One of the most important things that I am concerned about is community involvement. In my riding, we had an opportunity to have many people speak to the caribou recovery program years ago — one time. That was allowed in the Gibraltar Room in Williams Lake. I remember a full, packed house of people who took this resource very seriously and wanted to have comment on it. After that meeting, there were no more. Somehow that process went behind closed doors. I’m very, very afraid that our communities need to have a say in this resource, particularly the ones that are surrounded by it.

I give kudos to the minister for including First Nations earlier in the process. I think that that should have hap­pened a long time ago, but our communities have to have equal say. No question about that.

Also, the bill refers…. I guess this is the thing that I’m most passionate about right now and the things that have been talked about a lot in this chamber: wildfires and old growth. Honestly, the bill doesn’t speak to either of those in a very significant way. Now, it does talk about prior to wildfire and it talks about after wildfire. I can assure you that those things are extremely important.

I mean, I certainly don’t have the experience that some of the members have that have spoken to this bill. I am an outdoorsman, and I’ve watched the Cariboo-Chilcotin change over the last number of years.

I can tell you that pre-wildfire, there are pine trees that are lying like matchsticks in our backwoods, in our backcountry, that have not been addressed for a very long time. I can tell you that after wildfire, there are areas in the Cariboo-Chilcotin I’ve seen with my own eyes where, for as far as the eye can see, there are noxious and invasive weeds. Again, we haven’t managed our resource. We haven’t looked after any of that, before or after.

With respect to wildfire, I live — and I’m not sure if anybody else, at this moment, does — in a region in this province where in the middle of June, you start packing your photos and your belongings that are near and dear to you. You have a bag of clothes at the back door filled with necessities, because you might have to leave with no notice and, certainly, at any time.

[3:30 p.m.]

For many people in the Interior, that has become the norm. To me, it is frightening — or certainly alarming — that there’s not more with respect to wildfire in this bill. Certainly, during the committee stage, I, along with others, I’m sure, will have questions about that.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

I also just wanted to mention…. There’s a section of the bill that refers to establishing an offence if a road permit holder fails to deactivate a road, making the person liable to a fine of up to $500,000 or imprisonment up to two years. It would appear they’re taking that one quite seriously.

I have a number of concerns about this. It’s not just about access. The way that these roads are deactivated can oftentimes be dangerous. I definitely want to highlight that. They use — and it may not be familiar to many in this room — something called a tank trap. If it’s not marked…. If there is not an appropriate warning to this, it could honestly end in loss of life. So I want to definitely understand that a little bit further.

Then, of course, there are a few things going back to wildfires and pre-wildfire, post-wildfire. There are some new definitions. I hope this will clear that up, but we do have new definitions like an “area of catastrophic damage,” “forest landscape area,” “forest landscape plan” and “forest operations area.” So all of that is certainly of interest to me.

Finally, I’m curious about stumpage in the bill. Obviously, we’ve had one sort of stumpage system, but I have discussed or asked questions in estimates and in other processes about perhaps considering other types of stumpage. What I mean by that is we have people that use wood for heating purposes. That wood, rather than coming from green trees in this province, could be coming from piles that we routinely burn that is waste wood. In my mind, if that wood is going to go up in smoke, it should be going up in smoke in a wood stove. I think that we could introduce different stumpage rates for that kind of wood.

I do have many questions, and I do look forward to the committee stage. I really had hoped for more with respect, certainly, to wildfires, and I certainly had hoped to see a little bit more about old-growth forests.

I do appreciate the opportunity to speak briefly to this bill today.

A. Olsen: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Forests Statutes Amendment Act. I have a number of comments on this bill.

I want to start my comments today with raising my hands in gratitude and acknowledgment of the speaker two speakers back, the member for Prince George–Mackenzie. Those that were paying attention will know a lot more about the history of forestry in this province. For those that were not, I encourage you to go call the video. I think that it would be a great teaching tool for kids and for adults alike in learning how we got to where we’re at today. A very honest and open approach to informing us in this House and, I think, for all British Columbians. So I thank the member for Prince George–Mackenzie.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the dialogue here in this House would know that I and my colleague, the member for Cowichan Valley, have been talking a lot about forestry and forestry practices in this province. So it has been with anticipation that we see, finally, the amendments to the forest statutes.

It was, I think, two years ago, or maybe even three years ago now, that many of these changes were put in front of us but never brought forward in legislation. So it’s not like many of these changes that we’re seeing in the legislation in front of us right now are new. They were things that the government was considering and then for some reason or another decided to hold off until now to bring these changes.

[3:35 p.m.]

Certainly, the changes around road-building and the regulations and rules around where roads can be built and how they can be built was something that was being considered quite a while ago.

As has been mentioned by the previous speaker, this act replaces forest stewardship plans with ten-year forest landscape plans. It requires the government and the chief forester to engage with and consult with Indigenous nations. It requires industry-developed site-level plans to detail specific harvesting and building activities. They must align with the forest landscape plans that have been put in place. It allows the chief forester to set stocking standards and focus reforestation in high-priority areas. It provides broad regulation-making authority regarding all aspects of the legislation. And for much of what’s in this legislation, it is welcomed. The changes are welcomed.

However, I think, to the points that have been made by previous speakers, the question is: does this legislation go far enough fast enough? As has been mentioned by my colleague and by other members, the fact that this transition that’s being proposed here is going to happen over the next eight to ten years is really an indication of the type of urgency that this government is putting behind this — certainly not to the level that I think British Columbians want and certainly not to the level of urgency that I think is necessary in order to protect these really incredible and important biodiverse forests that are more than just a resource for us to extract.

They are home to many, many — countless — species that British Columbians hold dear. I think one of the comments that I saw made when the government was announcing this was that this was about putting people at the centre of forestry policy. I think that actually what we need is to put the forest at the centre of forestry policy. For so long, people and the values that people extract from forests have been at the centre of the decision-making.

That’s part of the reason why we have got to where we’re at, the bleak picture that the member for Prince George–​Mackenzie painted with respect to basically an unregulated industry that has clearcut most of the timber value off the landscape and replaced very little of it. Unfortunately, that is what the result of having people at the centre of forestry policy is about. What we actually need is a government that is going to put those values of the forest, the biodiversity, at the centre of the decision-making.

I think one of the things that was mentioned in the comments earlier was the clause “without unduly reducing the supply of timber” as being one of the main policies that I think has the decision-makers deciding that entire forests will be clearcut. I take a look at this piece of legislation and note…. I think it’s in section 2.22. We’ll get into that in the committee stage, but it’s that in preparing a forest landscape plan, the chief forester “must consider the following objectives: (a) supporting the production and supply of timber in the forest landscape area.”

As much as has been made about the monumental changes that this government is making in the approach to forests, “without unduly reducing the supply of timber” and “supporting the production and supply of timber in the forest landscape area” is very, very similar language, still having the value of the dead tree at the centre of our decision-making.

I think that it means that as much as is being made of this and the monumental changes that this is going to have eight to ten years from now, the reality at the centre of it is the supply of timber, dead trees. That’s what British Columbia has valued most in the history of this province. It’s dead stuff. Dead fish. Dead trees.

[3:40 p.m.]

I think that what we need to put at the centre of this is living things. You know, one of the things that I’ve talked about often is the W̱SÁNEĆ fishing method, SX̱OLE, the reef net fishery. It’s really based around the number of fish that escape and make it back to their creeks to spawn. Our ancestors knew the value of the renewable resource — those fish that come back.

Our SX̱OLE, our reef nets, were built, manufactured with holes in them. The culture was built around leaving those fish, the first fish at the return of the salmon season, to head upstream ten, 15 days before we would start fishing, meaning a whole pile of life is preserved as it heads back up, so our relatives up the streams could harvest those fish.

One of the biggest changes in world view here in British Columbia 160 years ago was where we placed our value. This government places the value in dead stuff. I think we have seen in the history of our province that a far more renewable and a far better balanced relationship with nature was when we valued living things. I think we can do that, and it wasn’t that the Indigenous nation, my ancestors, didn’t develop resources. We were incredible resource developers. We just had our value set and our world view different than the one that’s here now, a far more resilient and renewable resource when you shift that world view.

I do want to talk about the Indigenous consultation piece to this. I heard the minister earlier talking about Indigenous consultation and how one of the, I think, hallmarks of this piece of legislation is that we’re changing…. The minister is proposing to change the rules that the chief forester must follow in consulting and developing a consultation plan in cooperation with Indigenous peoples.

My colleague the member for Cowichan Valley mentioned this earlier — that while the government is giving themselves eight to ten years to transition from the current situation that we have in our forests to the future of forests in this province…. The same minister that is celebrating this is giving Indigenous nations exactly 60 days to res­pond to requests from the chief forester.

On the one hand, the government is taking eight to ten years, and on the other hand, they’re giving Indigenous nations just a mere two months. Each 60-day period isn’t created equally, of course. For those of us who grew up in Indigenous communities and understand Indigenous communities across the province, we know if that consultation happens in the summertime, as an example, it is a much different time to consult with Indigenous nations than if the consultation was to happen in the fall or the winter or even early spring.

Indeed, if you were to be paying attention to the work of the First Nations Forestry Council, one of the things they said in a letter that they wrote to the Premier back in September, admonishing this government for its flawed engagement process…. The engagement process that was being undertaken by this ministry, this ministry that’s claiming success in Indigenous consultation, was being expedited “during a time of crisis due to wildfires.”

Right in the middle of summer, this government was rushing consultation on the implementation of the intention paper for modernizing forest policy in B.C., rolling out Indigenous consultation right in the busiest time of year — and not only the busiest time of year traditionally but also the busiest time of year due to the fact that many Indigenous nations’ entire territories were on fire.

At the same time, they were expected to engage with this government on modernizing forestry, a process which, I should point out, has been really frustrating, considering the fact that the intention paper and the consultation that this government has been undertaking “does not mention or reflect many actions and priority areas of work outlined in the B.C. First Nations forest strategy. The ministry has ignored the input First Nations provided for over a decade regarding changes needed to inform and guide the implementation of the Declaration Act to reflect our rights, legislate joint decision-making, including the current forest revenue-sharing model.”

[3:45 p.m.]

September 8 this letter was sent in. On October 26, we have the minister standing in this House, claiming success in consultation and that this legislation was drafted in cooperation and consultation with Indigenous nations and Indigenous leadership groups. So, quite clearly, the definition of engagement and consultation for this government is different than the expectations with Indigenous leadership. The groups that have been given the job of negotiating on behalf and working on behalf of Indigenous nations…. This letter was signed by 22 or 25, or something, Indigenous nations that have forestry interests in this province.

As I mentioned, this legislation is going to give 60 days for Indigenous nations to respond to consultation, a letter of engagement sent by the chief forester. “The chief forester must (a) offer to meet with an Indigenous governing body that provides notice of its lack of consent…and attempt to achieve consensus….” The chief forester can appoint a facilitator for dispute resolution. The report of the facilitator does not limit the power of the chief forester in respect of…. So even if the facilitator says, “You know what? We land on the side of the Indigenous nation on this one,” the chief forester can still utilize their power to proceed.

In taking a look at the measures that are being put in place, certainly, there are more than are there now. I think that if we were going to celebrate anything, let’s celebrate the fact that there is something there, and there wasn’t anything there previously. I guess incrementalism, an incremental step forward, is better than nothing.

In the news release of October 20, last week, it says: “Through the development of forest landscape plans, the amendments will create new opportunities for shared decision-​making between the government and First Nations. This is aligned with the government commitments to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act passed in 2019.”

This is not. The model that has been put in this act is not shared decision-making. It’s the same colonial approach. Just now it’s enshrined in law and not something that the government does on its own accord in order to ensure that Fairy Creek doesn’t happen. Even with the process in the past, Fairy Creek did happen.

The reality of it is that this government is trying to pass off, in its news releases and in all the rhetoric and when the Premier stands up and the minister stands up and the people celebrate it, that this is shared decision-making. It’s not shared decision-making. This is a notification from the government.

In fact, the minister is quoted in a Business in Vancouver article as saying that the government describes it as a framework for “repositioning government as land manager.” That, I think, is a remarkably different approach than one which is a shared decision-making model.

In fact, I think that if I read this to my chief and said, “Look, you know, the government is moving this shared decision-making model ahead, and it is repositioning government as land manager,” there would be confusion as to how that can be the case. How do you have a shared decision-making model where the provincial government is acting as land manager?

Now, it is true that the process that has been in place up until this legislation is that we basically shopped out the work to industry. So maybe we’re bringing it back into government, but certainly, you can’t stand and say that this is a remarkable step forward in shared decision-making when, if you actually read the clauses in this act, it’s not. There is nothing in this act that talks about revenue-sharing. It’s completely void of that.

Basically, what it says is: “Look, that consultation model, which many Indigenous nations have complained about for decades…. We’re going to enshrine that into the law. After passing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, we’re going to enshrine the thing that we didn’t like into this new law.” It says here: “It primarily gives Indigenous voices back to managing the forests on their traditional territory.” It gives Indigenous people and Indigenous leadership the right to comment early on in a process. I guess that could be construed as being “voices back to managing their forests.”

[3:50 p.m.]

However, it’s not a collaborative process. Nowhere in this this legislation does it outline where an Indigenous nation can come forward with their own operational landscape plan, how the interests of the nation can be put together in landscape management planning, how that work is going to be resourced or how it is that the provincial government is working with Indigenous nations within their territory.

In fact, the Premier has stood so often recently and talked about Indigenous rights and title, the titleholders, the owners of the land. That’s not what’s reflected in this legislation that the Premier’s Minister of Forests is bringing forward. That’s convenient language that the Premier can use in order to befuddle and confuse the public. That’s not the framework that this legislation is putting forward. In fact, this legislation is, indeed, doing exactly what the minister says: bringing the control back into the provincial government.

Now, perhaps that’s one step closer for Indigenous nations, but it certainly does not reflect the rhetoric of our Premier. He takes cover with that rhetoric, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that a framework that reflects the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act is one that is collaborative — that allows Indigenous people to take leadership at the front end, to approach the chief.

There is nowhere in this that encourages the chief forester to do anything but bring forward the Crown forestry policy to Indigenous nations. It gives them 60 days in order to respond to it. If they don’t, you want to proceed with caution, but it still puts the power right in the hands of the provincial government.

I think it’s in stark contrast to what we passed when we passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We often refer to it in this place, but it’s not very often that we actually refer to the articles of the declaration to remind the members of government what we passed when we made the commitment to Indigenous nations.

Article 3, the right to self-determination.

Article 4, exercise “their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs.” This would give Indigenous nations the ability to generate their own forestry plans.

Nowhere in this act…. I look forward to talking to the minister about how the actual Declaration Act comes to life, where life is being breathed into that, in this legislation.

Article 8: “States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of and redress for…(b) any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, resources and territories.” Government at the centre of the decision-making around forests. I’m wondering how that applies.

Article 18: “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own Indigenous decision-making institutions.”

What’s being outlined in this is a framework that the government is establishing and not taking into consider­ation the numerous nations in this province and their own decision-making process. I recognize that’s challenging, but that’s the commitment this government made, and that’s the commitment progressive governments in this country are making. It’s a commitment to Indigenous na­tions to sit down and create a process that works for them, based on the fact that the entire lens with which we view the relationship with Indigenous peoples has changed, and rightfully so.

Article 19: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.” This legislation gives the chief forester the ability to proceed, even if there is not the consent, from my reading of it. Again, it’s important that we reflect on what it is that we’ve committed to.

Article 26: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” This government has been using forest and range consultation and revenue-sharing agreements pretty liberally. I think there are 140 of them in this province.

[3:55 p.m.]

Certainly, they have been signed by Indigenous nations. I understand that. However, the fact remains that former members of the government’s caucus have rightfully called these agreements “take it or leave it” agreements. In other words, the framework with which we have been operating is: “We’re going to cut those trees. You can either be with us and get something, or you can be against us and take us to court. By the time that you’re ready to go, the trees will be gone.”

It’s an incredibly difficult and challenging scenario for communities that want to have decision-making and access to resources to be able to work in those parameters — certainly challenging the idea of free, prior and informed consent, considering the fact that, basically, it’s Crown forestry policy. In those agreements, it enshrines Crown forestry policy.

What happens to those agreements when this bill is passed? It’ll be a question that I’m hoping to get an answer for, because so many of the laws and policies that we have in place now are in direct contradiction to the commitments that we’ve made. I think what’s really important to recognize here is that there is a change being made, and the change is a step forward.

However, what’s being proposed in this legislation is still, in my assessment, far, far from what we had committed to when we committed to a different relationship with Indigenous people in this province — a relationship in which Indigenous nations have the ability to determine their own futures — not in 60 days, not when the chief forester has it in their mind to advance a cutblock or to advance a forest licence and gives a nation 60 days to respond. That’s a very, very colonial approach to decision-making. That’s not shared decision-making.

Nowhere does it say where the chief forester must en­gage and work with Indigenous nations that are bringing forward their own management plans over their territories. We’ve seen that. In fact, we heard from the Skwxwú7mesh; we heard from the Kwagiulth. We’ve seen now the Gitanyow create an Indigenous protected area. Where was the province? Talking to their neighbours. That’s where the province was. In the article that was published, the province didn’t show up to the announcement of the Indigenous protected area. Instead, they were meeting with the neighbours. I wonder why they were doing that. That’s a tactic that they’ve always been playing.

You know the Saik’uz have laid out very clearly: “You can’t log in our territory unless you are following these values.” They’ve outlined their values. Where in this legislation is there accommodation for these nations that are standing up and saying that we truly…? The government, the Premier himself and…. In fact, I think it was the Saik’uz who said: “We heard what the Premier said in the press conferences around the conflict that’s happening in Fairy Creek, and we realized that there’s an opportunity for us to stand up.”

He talked about rights and title holders, the owners of the land, sovereignty. That’s what they’ve said: “Look, we are now exercising that.” Where in this legislation, this reformation that’s celebrated — “We’re engaging with Indigenous nations unlike we’ve ever done before” — does it accommodate Indigenous nations that are stepping up to do that? I’m very interested in asking the minister about that.

All in all, I think there is an important update to these laws. I think it is important that we take control and get control over the road construction that’s happening on the landscape. We know that that’s having devastating impact for wildlife. With no regulation of roads, well, you can just imagine what happens on the landscape. Our friend the member for Prince George–Mackenzie talked a lot about that.

[4:00 p.m.]

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to this legislation. I look forward to the debate in committee stage. With that, I’ll take my seat.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM.

S. Chant: Thank you for the opportunity to address the House on Bill 23, the amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act, which will have an impact right across the province.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that I’m currently working and staying on the unceded lands of the Songhees, Esquimalt and Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people and that North Vancouver–Seymour, my riding, where I live, work and learn, is in the territory of the Coast Salish, specifically the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Where I live, in Lynn Valley in North Van, began with huge trees that were targeted for masts and spars on sailing ships because of their immense height and how straight they were. You can still find some of those lovely giants on the mountainside, usually by following marked trails. You can also see stumps, now acting as venerable nurse logs for other trees, bushes and plants. There are trail names like Shinglebolt and notches on the old stumps to remind us of our logging heritage.

Now we also have the Seymour Demonstration Forest, a large tract of land, second and third growth, also with towering trees that were planted before I was born, which was just a little while ago. I’ve taken Brownies, Guides and Pathfinders through the trails so that they can see both the old, the adult and the new trees that make up the backdrop to their homes.

Like all of us, when I think of B.C., I think of forests, mountains, rivers, oceans and wildlife, all of which make up the beauty and majesty of our province. We are fortunate to still have all of these marvellous features to enjoy, as well as to provide employment income and environmental strength.

I, too, have been to logging shows at the PNE, on Grouse, in Squamish. That’s the only exposure that we city folk get to logging practices. However, I’ve also grown up seeing log booms move up and down the coast in the Fra­ser, as well as marvelling at logging trucks full of logs or at capacity with three logs only.

Concentrated stewardship is needed by all of us to keep our forests majestic. Last summer I travelled from Watson Lake down through Dawson Creek and south from there. My heart ached to see the devastation of blackened trees, by the acre — no green, no branches. These were the trees I could see. What I couldn’t see was the toll on wildlife and the toll on the communities that were in the path of wildfire or that had relied on those trees as an economic driver.

Bill 23 is bringing the management of these forests and lands back to those who are most impacted by the deci­sions and actions that are taken: the people of British Columbia. We all want to have our forests well cared for, to ensure stable jobs, garner the most value possible out of forest products and, in the process, increase our battle against climate change. Working together with Indigenous and local communities, this bill addresses the old forestry policies that were put in place over 20 years ago and that left the management of broad areas of B.C. forests to various commercial entities.

This bill provides for smarter ecosystem-based management that takes into account the vast differences that we have throughout the province in landscape, terrain, weather and previous state of the areas involved. The public will be invited to engage in discussion about harvesting plans, which are dramatically different from the current state.

The work that is being done with First Nations rights and title holders provides a strong framework for Bill 23 to move towards prioritizing forest health in our province. As part of that work, an independent panel provided a re­port with recommendations, and a technical advisory panel identified old-growth ecosystems most at risk. The ten-year forest landscape plans are a product of a committed, representative group, who have consulted with stakeholders throughout the province, our Indigenous partners and local communities.

[4:05 p.m.]

It is a thoughtful compilation of input from a whole variety of sources, with the intent of putting the management of those precious B.C. resources, our rangelands and forests, in the hands of those who will steward them with all of our interests at heart. It speaks to preservation, fighting climate change, supporting economic growth and keeping B.C. beautiful.

I’m very happy to support Bill 23 and the work that our Forests Minister is doing towards changing the forestry practices in British Columbia to bring them in line with our current state.

R. Glumac: I rise in the House today to speak to the amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act in Bill 23.

I want to start by saying a little bit — I’ve heard a lot, as an MLA — about protection of old-growth forests. I very much sympathize with the people that have spoken to me about this, and I know almost everyone here in the House cares about the protection of old-growth forests. This legislation we’re bringing in today is a very important step in that journey of protecting old-growth forests.

I wanted to step back for a little bit, go back in time a little bit. I represent a riding that doesn’t have old growth in it now, but I come from Port Alberni, on the Island. I grew up very much in an economy that was dependent on the forestry sector. I spent a lot of time, as a young kid, with my dad in the forests around Port Alberni. We spent a lot of time in old-growth forests, and I developed a very strong appreciation for the old-growth ecosystems in our province.

Fast-forward a few years to the early 2000s. I wanted to chat a little bit about….

Yes, Mr. Speaker?

Deputy Speaker: Could the members please go outside if you have a long conversation? Thank you.

Sorry to interrupt you.

R. Glumac: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, there was some chatter on this side of the House.

I wanted to go back to the early 2000s, when the Forest and Range Practices Act was brought into place. It was brought to the House and passed. I think it’s a very important context for us to look at what happened when that legislation was brought in. What changed, and what are we needing to fix here today? That context, I think, is very important.

So 20 years ago, back in 2002, we had a shiny new B.C. Liberal government. What they did, in introducing this legislation, was start systematically dismantling regulations governing the forestry industry. Nearly half of all regulations governing the forestry industry were removed. The philosophy, I believe, was to get government out of the way and let the forestry companies do whatever they’d like to do.

In 2002, the B.C. Liberal government brought in the For­est and Range Practices Act. In doing so, they shifted oversight of forests, public lands, from government to industry. Oversight of forests was shifted to the companies that were actually cutting down the forests. Logging plans that needed to be approved at a site level or at the cutblock level were eliminated. Those plans were no longer needed, according to the B.C. Liberal government at that time.

That took away a key tool that the government had to protect critical habitat in this province. Think about that for a moment. How would it be possible to judge whether the forests were even being properly managed if we didn’t have any plans at the site level?

[4:10 p.m.]

Instead the industry was governed by certain default standards, but they could opt out of those standards. They could opt out and create alternatives. Precautionary assessments were also eliminated. If you understand what this means…. Precautionary assessments, when you’re talking about logging in valleys…. A lot of the valleys were already logged, so forestry companies were looking at logging on steeper slopes. The steeper slopes obviously were subject to landslides and things like that. So there were assessments being done to assess the risk of that, and those were being eliminated.

If there was a landslide, it would be harder to find the forestry companies liable, because the rules to limit the definition of damage to the environment were changed to be damage that was “fundamentally and adversely altering an ecosystem.” If it was not fundamentally adversely damaging to an ecosystem, then there was no liability. That’s what that legislation did back in 2002.

Even if there was a landslide, if there were adverse ef­fects, there were defences added into the act to protect forestry companies even if they broke the law. The Forest Practices Board at the time stated that this undermined the intent and effectiveness of administrative penalties, but that’s what that legislation did. On top of all of that, there were major cutbacks to the Ministry of Forest’s staffs and budgets in order to take away public control of forest industry operations on public lands.

When the B.C. Liberal government made these changes, what they did was make it harder to protect certain environmental values, like the value of watersheds, the value of fish habitat, the value of water quality, the value of protecting wildlife habitat and the value of protecting species at risk.

These values could only be protected if the government took specific action and jumped through a whole variety of procedural roadblocks and hoops. The regulation stated these actions to protect these values could not be taken unless they “maintained or enhanced an economically valuable supply of commercial timber” or allowed logging companies to be “vigorous, efficient and world competitive.”

I’m not aware of any other time in the history of this province of any government creating so many restrictions on itself to protect the environment. The B.C. Liberal government was so worried that someone within government would try to protect the environment that they made it procedurally difficult to do that. They took away the ability to reject forest plans, and they made those plans more vague. They took away the ability to ask forest companies to produce information to support those vague plans. If the public had a concern, what could they do? Nothing.

In fact, the legislation made it so that if a member of the public raised a concern and if the government took action and jumped through all those procedural hoops…. Even if they did that and they established some objectives for logging operations, those objectives wouldn’t apply unless they were introduced four months before a stewardship plan was submitted, so it wouldn’t even affect the logging. It seemed like the public didn’t matter. Oversight didn’t matter. Environmental values didn’t matter.

[4:15 p.m.]

West Coast Environmental Law in 2004 stated: “The Forest and Range Practices Act and regulations bring in a new era of forestry deregulation that places an unprecedented degree of control over public resources in the hands of forest companies. There are inadequate checks and balances in the regulations. The impact of these changes, esp­ecially when coupled with major cutbacks to Ministry of Forests staff and budgets, is to reduce public control over forest industry operations on public land.”

At the time that the legislation was introduced in 2002, the Carrier-Sekani Council wrote to Premier Gordon Campbell and the Minister of Forests and said: “Proposals to streamline and limit mandatory planning requirements and forest stewardship plans and site-level plans will disable First Nations from adequately assessing which cultural values or rights may be affected. This change will, therefore, increase the potential for infringement of Aboriginal rights and title.”

The legislation that we’re introducing here today is a big step in correcting the mistakes we inherited from the past. Let’s keep in mind that after all these changes were made, giving so much control to the forestry companies, 30,000 jobs were lost in the forestry sector. This legislation was a failure, and we need to acknowledge that. We need to acknowledge that it took a B.C. government to start fixing these problems.

What we’re doing today is we’re building a new vision for how we care for our forests. Our vision is to help se­cure jobs, support healthier forest ecosystems and deliver higher value from our forests. With this legislation, we’re bringing back the forest landscape plans so that we can do smarter ecosystem-based management of our forests. With this legislation, we’re providing people with more information about the plans for forests. We’re creating more opportunities for public engagement on harvesting plans.

This is not just the beginning. We’re well on the way to addressing these issues in the past, and we’re going to be introducing more changes in the weeks to come. I look forward to being able to speak to that in the House as well.

With that, I stand in support of Bill 23.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the motion is second reading on Bill 23, Forests Statutes Amend­ment Act, 2021.

Motion approved.

Hon. R. Fleming: I move that the bill be referred to Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 23, Forests 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. R. Fleming: I ask for a ten-minute recess. We will resume debate on Bill 25.

Deputy Speaker: Is five minutes enough? Okay. We’ll recess for five minutes. Thank you.

The House recessed from 4:18 p.m. to 4:23 p.m.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

BILL 25 — EDUCATION STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Hon. J. Whiteside: I move that the bill be read a second time now.

This legislation amends the First Nations Education Act, the Teachers Act and the Criminal Records Review Act to support the exercise of First Nations jurisdiction over education in British Columbia.

A number of negotiating First Nations are currently fin­alizing individual agreements with the federal government to exercise jurisdiction over education on their First Na­tion land in British Columbia. The negotiating First Nations will become participating First Nations once these agreements are brought into effect.

The legislation we are considering today has been co-developed with the First Nations Education Steering Committee, which is acting under the direction of the negotiating First Nations. The purpose of the legislation is to enable the province to provide operational support to participating First Nations’ own teacher certification and regulation processes under their jurisdiction.

[4:25 p.m.]

These processes will be determined by the First Nations Education Authority, a collective body made up of individuals appointed by participating First Nations established under federal enabling legislation.

The amendments to the First Nations Education Act, the Teachers Act and the Criminal Records Review Act will authorize the Minister of Education to do the following things.

To assist with investigations in support of the First Nations Education Authority teacher certification and regulation processes. To include First Nations Education Authority certified teachers on the public online registry and employer’s list established under the Teachers Act. To provide non-binding advice at the request of the First Nations Education Authority with respect to issues that arise in the First Nations Education Authority’s certification of teaching certificate applicants and regulation of First Nations Education Authority certified teachers. To provide assistance with respect to criminal record checks for First Nations Education Authority teaching certificate applicants and First Nations Education Authority certified teachers.

In addition, the legislation will change the composition of the British Columbia Teachers Council, which is the provincial body responsible for setting teacher evaluation programs and approval standards for approving teacher education programs, and establishing certification, conduct and competence standards for provincial teaching certificate holders. These changes will ensure representation by the First Nations Education Authority on the council.

First Nations in British Columbia have been working to advance jurisdiction over education for more than 20 years. While teacher certification and regulation is only one component of jurisdiction, it is a key element of this work.

Supporting First Nations jurisdiction over First Nations education, including greater control over teacher certification and regulation, will lead to improved educational outcomes for First Nations students and will support the hiring of more teachers in First Nations schools who reflect standards and qualities determined by the First Nations themselves. It will strengthen the broader B.C. education system and support the economic and social sustainability of First Nations in British Columbia.

We know that education can and must play a key role in creating a future of equity and justice for all. We have committed, through our work together under the B.C. Tripartite Education Agreement and the Declaration Act, to focus on how we assess, understand and address equity gaps that exist for Indigenous students and understand the scope of racism and discrimination in education. Changing this legislation means First Nations students will learn from teachers who better understand the culture, history, life skills that are important learnings for Indigenous students.

With this legislative change, we recommit to be active participants in reconciliation and in the global effort to end systemic racism. We are proud of our efforts to support Indigenous students and to provide a deeper understanding of Indigenous culture and contributions for all students. I’d like to note as well that there is, in fact, now a professional standard that requires teachers to commit to truth, reconciliation and healing.

The ninth standard adopted by the Teachers Council reads:

“Educators must respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada, and the impact of the past on the present and the future. Educators will contribute toward truth, reconciliation and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories and culture of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

“Educators critically examine their own biases, attitudes, beliefs, values and practices to facilitate change. Educators value and respect the languages, heritages, cultures and ways of knowing and being of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.

[4:30 p.m.]

“Educators understand the power of focusing on connectedness and relationships to one’s self, family, community and the natural world. Educators integrate First Nations, Inuit and Métis world views and perspectives into learning environments.”

We have also, in fact, designated a non-instructional day for teachers to focus on Indigenous student achievement and Indigenous cultures and world views. We are also committed to moving to full course offerings in Indigenous languages.

In British Columbia, we are leading the way, as the only jurisdiction in Canada with a tripartite agreement that supports an equitable education for First Nations students, no matter where they live, yet we acknowledge that there is much more work to do. We are prepared to work together with First Nations and Indigenous educators to do that critically important work. These legislative changes are another important step in those efforts.

Just before I close, I do want to take a moment for some personal reflection on an experience I had this summer that relates to this topic and had quite an impact on me. That was an opportunity I had to spend some time on northern Vancouver Island in and around Port Hardy.

In my search for the northernmost school on Vancouver Island, I had a chance to stop by many schools. But the northern school, I believe, is on the reserve of the Gwa’sala-Nakwaxda’xw. Those are two First Nations who were removed from their traditional territory in the ’60s and moved to the reserve they currently occupy. I had a chance to visit the school that is a school run by the First Nation. It is a school that is wholly dedicated to the students who attend it from the community, who are primarily Indigenous students.

It is a school that is rooted in a trauma-informed ap­proach to education, and you can see that reflected everywhere, in the physical environment as well as in how and what is taught. You see a great respect for the way in which that educational program is acknowledging and integrating intergenerational trauma into the work that they do with the children who receive an education there. It is, indeed, a model. There is so much for us to learn from the work that is being done by schools that are operated by First Nations.

I look forward to…. This is an important step in this journey that we are on, and it is, indeed, a real honour to be bringing this legislation forward. I very much look forward to our discussion and debate.

J. Tegart: Thank you to the minister. It is an honour to stand and speak on the bill before us. I know it is the minister’s first bill. Although I have been here a great many years, it’s my first bill also, because I’ve served as a caucus chair rather than a critic or in the executive council. So we’re learning together.

As a member of the opposition, I’m proud to carry out my role as Education critic and engage with the minister opposite over education legislation such as this. But it is certainly an honour whenever we get to stand in this House and speak on goals shared by all members of this House and all British Columbians. All members of this House and all British Columbians want to see our province make every effort to advance and forward reconciliation. We all know how important education is. Education is often the key to our community.

[4:35 p.m.]

I know that despite all of the trauma and the experience that First Nations communities and peoples have had in our education system, they speak so highly of the importance of the education system. So I’m pleased to be a part of a group of legislators who are looking at how to bring words to life, looking at how we can make it meaningful without being intrusive, looking at how we can hope to move along the journey of healing. I do believe this bill will help us.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

As a former school trustee and MLA for a riding that is home to more than 30 First Nations bands, I recognize the incredible value that First Nations put on building education and community supports within their jurisdictions that will allow them to provide and continue the practices that meet their educational and cultural needs.

To ensure this, our First Nations not only need to have access to the appropriate government supports and institutions, should they choose to use them, but also should have the tools that will let them train, recruit, screen and hire teachers and support staff to ensure they have the experience and cultural understanding to support First Nations students in their communities.

With these proposed amendments to the First Nations Education Act, the Teachers Act and the Criminal Rec­ords Review Act, First Nations will now have the option to use the operational capacity of the ministry, when requested, in the areas of criminal record checks and teacher regulation.

British Columbians will also be pleased to see that the province is following the direction of the First Nations Steering Committee and our Indigenous leaders when enacting this legislation, because the path to healing and reconciliation can and must be led by our Indigenous leaders. The changes to the B.C. Teachers Council to expand representation by the First Nations Education Authority will help ensure our First Nations continue to have a voice at the table.

When the colonial educational institutions of our residential schools are responsible for so much of the trauma and heartbreak that still persists in this province and country and did so much to eradicate the culture and identity of our Indigenous people, it is imperative that our current education system makes every effort to right these horrific wrongs. We must offer our First Nations the educational supports they need to preserve their culture while forwarding their children’s learning. It is paramount for healing as a nation.

While my colleagues and I in the official opposition are certainly supportive of the changes proposed in this legislation and are glad to see that the province is following the direction of the First Nations steering committee and the Indigenous leaders, it is important to remind ourselves, in this discussion and future discussions, that we must always ensure the province itself also takes a proactive approach to maintaining a clear and open dialogue with our First Nations educators and communities and ensure that we are actively forwarding reconciliation at all times. First Nations should not always have to reach out to government to initiate action.

I am just so pleased to hear the minister talk about visiting First Nations schools, because I have had the opportunity to do that in my riding also, and to see how far we’ve come in the last 25 to 30 years. I was very proud to be part of a school district 30 years ago that signed a ten-year local education agreement with a First Nations band.

[4:40 p.m.]

We have come a long way, and thank goodness for that. When I look at the joy in the children’s eyes and the smiles and the absolute pride as they share their culture, we may have a long way to go, but we have also come a long way.

I know that many years ago we talked and talked about: how do we encourage First Nations teachers to become active in public schools and in First Nations schools? I know that we’ve come a long way on that path also. My hope is that the work being done through the ministry at this time is going to help us take a look at some of the gaps in the system and also encourage more and more work and activity and results from the work that’s being done through the ministry in partnership with First Nations.

Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be looking at this legislation today. It is a pleasure to be part of this. We are looking forward to debating the sections and conditions of this bill with the minister opposite in committee.

Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to the importance of Bill 25, which builds on significant work that the minister and the opposition critic who spoke just now have mentioned. This is literally decades in the making.

Some of the content of this bill speaks to obligations the province and Canada have made under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, which we can all recall zeroed in very specifically on the education system and its role in disempowering and, in the words of the commission, committing cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples in B.C. through what was called — I will use this misnomer — the education system of the day. And they look forward, of course, in that commission process, to what education should look like in the decades and centuries ahead.

There were some very specific calls to action in the TRC report, specifically actions No. 62 to 65 that talked about undoing the legacy of damage and the intent to, really, culturally annihilate Indigenous customs and culture and language through the residential school system and how that can be recovered. How going from a colonial system of education policy that has done untold damage in our country and continues, to this day, to inflict trauma on Indigenous communities — how we can reverse that and use the liberating power and potential and the economic empowerment, social and cultural empowerment of the education system.

For those practitioners in our school system, that is generally what motivates everybody to get involved in the teaching profession or in a supportive role or an administrative role in the school system.

I think that Bill 25 builds on those calls to action, res­pects the work of the commission and the dialogue that has been going on nationally with the Assembly of First Nations, with various leadership groups of First Nations in British Columbia and with the First Nations Education Association and the First Nations Education Steering Committee in British Columbia, which has just celebrated over three decades of work, since the very early part of the 1990s, to get to the point where we are today.

Of course, there are many achievements and accomplishments that deserve recognition — perhaps members will add those in from their own local constituencies, in the school districts they’re most familiar with — and that speak very well to efforts to support Indigenous students, to support Indigenous content, to educate every British Columbian student on cultural competencies and knowledge and awareness of Indigenous traditions, Indigenous science, literature and other subject matter in our school system.

[4:45 p.m.]

What has been missing or slow to change, while we have adapted things like curriculum, while we have worked with committees — as the member for Fraser-Nicola referenced — on local education agreements, LEAs, with communities around the province, which have been very successful and obligate school districts to work in good faith and develop excellent relationships with Indigenous communities that used to, in the past, exist side by side with very little interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities….

While we can celebrate all of those things, what has been somewhat slow to change — and I think we can all agree to this — even though our government has endeavoured recently, with specific training dollars and working with the faculties of education at our five universities in B.C. that issue education degrees, is the goal of making the front of the classroom resemble the classroom itself — in other words, recruiting Indigenous teachers to our school system.

I think we are all aware — from our own lives and from the stories that we hear from our constituents, either students today or students of past years — that teachers are role models. They have an incredible amount of influence, positive influence, on young people’s lives.

Students relate to teaching professionals that inspire them and have knowledge, and maybe even some direct correlation between their own lived experience and what they teach and what they represent, each and every day, as an adult presence in the school system. We can all think of incredible teachers who have made a difference in our lives.

There is considerable diversity in the teaching workforce in British Columbia that we can be proud of. To the best of my knowledge, about 10 percent of students in B.C. — about 55,000 of the 550,000 school students in the province — identify as Indigenous, and the representation in the teaching workforce is somewhere around 3 or 4 percent. So we’ve got a lot of work to do.

We’ve got to continue to — and I know the Minister of Education will do this — build on investments that we have made in recent years. We’ve got to continue to work with the First Nations Leadership Council, individual elected band councils and Indigenous leaders that are respected around this province, to encourage people to go into the teaching profession that have that skill set, that act as role models in their own communities.

I know, from friends of mine who serve in Indigenous governments, that they’ve done an excellent job in encouraging people to go to business school, to go to law school, to get treaty negotiating skills and, in social services, to become social workers to create the ability to have more and more autonomous service provision and to empower their governance over their people. Education is within that set of aspirations and actions that are beyond emerging, that are beginning to mature, in the province of British Columbia.

As I’ve said, there is more that needs to be done. I think this is a huge step, identified in Bill 25, to have a teacher certification method that will help, for example, with our efforts to create language revitalization programs for First Nations kids in districts right around the province.

There are some inspiring examples of newly created or recently created Indigenous language immersion programs. I think of the Haida school system that has created that. They are building that out in the younger grades, K to 3, and it will be a full K-to-12 curriculum. We have other examples of that occurring, and we certainly have, I think, about 23 or 25 second-language programs certified that are Indigenous languages.

To be successful in recovering Indigenous languages that are at risk of extinction…. This, again, goes back to the TRC, which deliberated very long and hard in its report on how we can recover Indigenous languages. To be successful in this endeavour, we are going to have to have those qualified, fluent speakers — and there are fewer and fewer of them, unfortunately, in many dif­ferent nations within the Indigenous communities in our province — have an ability to be compensated and involved in the school system.

[4:50 p.m.]

We’ve got Indigenous language experts right now working in our school system who do not have a bachelor of education. They work by what is called a letter of permission in the school system, LOPs, or they may work as educational assistants. They are fully capable of being specialist teachers because of their specialized knowledge of Indigenous languages.

This is a way to create a pathway to the teaching profession, a certification method, for fully qualified professional teachers who come from Indigenous communities that wish to teach in Indigenous communities or be part of the school district school system and work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids in the area in which they have specialist expertise.

That has, I know, been a product of tremendous discussion with all of the stakeholders, as I hesitate to call them, and rights holders within the education system: the College of Teachers, representatives of the B.C. Teachers Federation. I’ve mentioned FNESC, in terms of rights holder organizations. The First Nations School Association, in terms of their responsibility and jurisdiction with on-reserve education, which is federally funded. All of these have been part of a discussion that has been in the background and that may have been missed by some members in the House to develop this legislation.

I want to salute all the people who have patiently devel­oped an intelligent strategy to get us to the point where we are today, where we have a new stream of teachers. It’s timely as well, because we have been talking, in some parts of the province, about recruitment and retention challenges in general, for teachers. School districts have created their own incentivized programs. They have been at teaching job fairs out of province. They have even looked internationally for teachers to come here and have a pathway to teaching, through work permits and even the immigration system.

I’ve been a part of that myself, in a former role as a member of cabinet, and it’s difficult. It’s a problem that has demographic challenges to it for the workforce. It has challenges because of record levels of investment in the school system. It’s a problem born of good news, if you will, with the lowest class sizes that we’ve had in generations.

That requires more teachers. To have more teachers teaching a smaller number of kids requires a larger workforce, and certainly, that has been expanded by — I’ve lost count — I think 4,000 or 5,000 new, additional classroom teachers that have been added in just a few short years in British Columbia.

As I’ve mentioned, we have worked directly, as a government, with the university system. Often there is a bit of a silo between deans of education, who do not report to the Minister of Education — they report to the Minister of Advanced Education and their institutions, more specifically — and the K-to-12 system as it exists on the ground.

This certification method is going to pay extraordinary dividends in fulfilling the calls to action, which our government is sincere about. It’s also going to bring some individuals into the school system who are exactly what kids and principals and vice-principals are desperate to have: inspiring individuals with unique talents to teach, who may be mid-career, who are simply — they live in a rural area, have other work commitments or have costs to raise a family that they have to consider — unable to drop everything and formally be part of an education program in a city.

Now, we can work on some of that professional development through online technology, and we are. We can structure flexible degree programs for those sorts of things that can be done in a modified semester system. But we should count the lived experience and specific knowledge that are held by teachers who can become licensed under this new method to recognize an Indigenous teaching certificate.

[4:55 p.m.]

Prior to now, with the support of this House and with this bill becoming law, that has not been possible, except in temporary ways, using temporary ministerial powers that expire and have to be renewed. To complete the earlier point I began on, this is a way not only to renew but to expand our teaching workforce, to recruit and retain excellent individuals who will serve cohorts of students today and in the future, for decades. I believe this is probably one of the most profound things we can do to create equity between the educational experiences and outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

I think everybody in this House is aware that in some parts of the province, there is a rather large gap between the graduation rates at grade 12 for Indigenous students and for non-Indigenous students. I should say there are some exceptions, in communities like — I don’t see the member here, but he should be proud — Sea to Sky school district, for example, where I believe the Indigenous graduation rate is on par or has exceeded non-Indigenous students.

There are some districts in the province that have exceptional Indigenous student outcomes, but it is still the situation that there is at least a 20 percent and sometimes a 30 percent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous achievement. I believe, again, to go back to an earlier point, that having those Indigenous role models teaching Indigenous kids in the classroom is a way to make sure that Indigenous students in equal numbers, or better, are crossing that stage every year, getting their graduation certificates and opening up a world of post-secondary opportunities that our government is providing.

I see the Minister of Advanced Education nodding here. She knows those opportunities because those institutions report to her and are trying to recruit students there, and they need to have a grade 12 equivalency, in most cases, to access some of those exciting opportunities that are part of our workforce opportunities today and into the future.

I would also say that I think Bill 25 is going to help give additional weight to the aspirations of Indigenous communities to have specialist teachers with the kind of knowledge that is now, in fact, written into the K-to-12 curri­culum. We have a lot of teachers who do not come from Indigenous backgrounds and who have spent considerable amounts of time, using the resources of the district and the province, in their own professional development with their peers, learning from one another how to become subject experts, if you will, on Indigenous knowledge and things like Indigenous science, mythology and literature and Indigenous culture.

They are doing the real work around reconciliation, which is between human beings living in communities together, to build relationships with Chiefs and Elders and to bring those people into the classroom, into the school communities. But they often lack having colleagues and peers in the school system who are not studying to be competent in that but were born into that culture and environment. They have not been shut out from the school system, but they have not had an equivalent pathway into the teaching profession that recognizes that experience.

I think Bill 25 has been a long time in coming. It also fulfils commitments we’ve made with the federal government and the First Nations Education Steering Committee, formally, in the B.C. Tripartite Education Agreement, which is something the province of B.C. can be very proud of. It’s the first agreement of its kind, amongst all provinces and territories, which enshrines the principle of equitable funding for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

[5:00 p.m.]

We can remember stories from a few years ago of ap­palling conditions in school districts in Canada’s largest province, where it emerged that, in some cases, the full-time-equivalent funding for an Indigenous student on reserve was half that of a non-Indigenous student — $5,000 compared to $10,000. I’m using rough, rounded-off numbers. But that is not the case in British Columbia. The per-student funding rate that is set by the province is absolutely and 100 percent matched by the federal government in our on-reserve school system.

We’re the only province, as I mentioned, and territory that has an agreement of this kind. We signed it after a long negotiation with the federal government, working with FNESC carefully and closely, and that is something that all members of the House can be proud of and is a template for every province and territory to aspire to. Our success should beget more success right across the country. To that, I would argue that the path we are forging here with Bill 25 on a method of certifying Indigenous teachers will hopefully be imitated by other provinces in our Confederation.

I think our leadership on reconciliation in the class­room, our work on an expanded and inclusive curriculum that confronts many difficult and dark chapters in our nation’s history but also incorporates very exciting Indigenous knowledge into all subject matter in the curriculum at all age and grade levels in the school system is another area where B.C. has been a leader.

I think, on the teaching certificate methodology and the oversight and the agreements that will flow from Bill 25 about how to structure and administer this new initiative, we will undoubtedly be copied again. That is very positive news as well.

I want to address that if there’s any caution about the veracity and the oversight that the school system will pro­vide on making sure that competent, qualified individuals will only be admitted into the teaching profession, that is exactly what is at the core of Bill 25 before us. All of the appropriate checks into people’s backgrounds are contemplated in this legislation. They will be overseen by the appropriate bodies, the B.C. Teachers Council, to ensure that that is the case.

I would finally just say that in terms of the landscape of Indigenous education around B.C., we have 60 school districts. No two of them are really alike, although they share many similarities. There are some school districts that have over half of their students from Indigenous backgrounds and some with a much smaller percentage. Some school districts have done an extraordinary job at embracing reconciliation into their strategic plans, into the vision and values of their school district.

Many of the organizations, both professional and para­professional, that support the education system have also been on the reconciliation journey, been in active dialogue with their partners in the community, with Indigenous rights holders to get better at what we need to be better at, which is ensuring that B.C. does not rest on its laurels as having some of the world’s best educational outcomes, but that we look within the inequities that have been part of our school system — still are, still persist — and have a historical legacy as to why this is a recurrence that has tragic outcomes.

This is a bill that allows to us address something whose time has more than arrived in terms of addressing that gap that I spoke of earlier about Indigenous people not having a proper place in the teaching profession.

[5:05 p.m.]

This, I hope, will allow us to take a quantum leap into attracting and retaining those from Indigenous backgrounds into the most noble of professions, the teaching profession, to do good in the lives of young British Columbians and to do well by our communities in terms of giving young students the hope and optimism and the confidence to do well in school, to enjoy their learning.

That’s the most important thing that leads to successful outcomes in individuals’ lives. If they love to learn, they are on a pathway to lead very successful adult lives and can make untold contributions to our communities and to our societies. I think, having worked with the First Nations Education Steering Committee, accountability is very important to Indigenous rights holders in the education system, understandably so, given our country’s history and our province’s history in this regard.

Tough questions are often asked of the school system. We measure, in primary and middle-learning years, literacy and numeracy and other competencies. We expect parents and classroom administrators, principals and vice-principals and teachers and educational assistants to be able to look at those individual results, to see where somebody is struggling and to show improvement when we measure that again a few years later.

There are people in this House — both sides, I should say — that have worked on reforming the curriculum in British Columbia to reflect the different methods of learning that allow young learners to thrive, to succeed. We have gone from a curriculum that was really about teaching a large body of facts to focusing on the things that are most important in the 21st century, which are critical thinking, communication skills and various competencies, which are exactly what we should be providing as a school system in terms of the kinds of British Columbians we want to graduate — the educated citizens.

That should be the goal of every student who comes into our school system at kindergarten, in the 13 years of their lives they will spend learning in the public education or the First Nations school system, in those on-reserve communities.

There are lots of people to thank. I am sure the Minister of Education will get an opportunity to do that, if she has closing remarks or when members opposite have questions during the committee stage of this bill. I think there is credit due, because there have been some heroic leaders who have helped us to get to this point.

The Minister of Education introduced a couple of them the other day. Tyrone McNeil and Debbie Jeffrey were here in the House for first reading. We have a debt of gratitude to them and to all of the committees that literally involve hundreds of people giving long, long volunteer hours, that have worked on not just this project but on a whole number of milestones that have been achieved and other outstanding business that the school system is undertaking in its effort to always continue to be better at what it does, day in and day out.

We have tremendous examples of what the education system should look like in the year 2021 around our pro­vince. We have a lots of areas where we’re striving to do better. People learn from one another. That will be no different for those who receive an Indigenous teaching certificate under this new system, this new innovation, as it has been under the other methods to get a teaching certificate. I think that is exciting for British Columbia.

While the bill looks fairly simple and is few in terms of its clauses about…. It’s not a long bill, but it will be an impactful bill in terms of changing lives and getting the kinds of people that we want to be in front of the classroom, inspiring young minds and creating the kinds of graduates that British Columbia wants to have and empowering Indigenous communities for the social and economic development that they aspire to in the 21st century, that they were shut out of in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill. I look forward to other comments.

[5:10 p.m.]

J. Sims: It’s my pleasure today to rise and speak in support of Bill 25, Education Statutes Amendment Act, 2021. As we know, this particular piece of legislation will amend the First Nations Education Act, the Teachers Act and the Criminal Records Review Act.

In this House, we debate many issues, and since I’ve been an elected MLA serving in this House, it’s been a pleasure to take part in a number of debates. I know how proud I felt to be part of a government that acted on truth and reconciliation and actually took concrete steps and passed legislation so that we could have not just lip service but actually move down the road of truth and reconciliation.

I remember, at that time, not just one but many people saying that this is a process. This is a beginning of a journey. It is a different journey, a new journey for us, but it is one that is really necessary if we are going to move forward to build a truly just and inclusive Canada that recognizes all Canadians and especially recognizes and works with First Nations communities as our equal partners as we move forward. That’s what this legislation is about. It is about another step on that journey that I just talked about.

In recent months, the reality of colonialism and the reality of the damage it has done to our First Nations communities, which is ongoing, has been painful and has been lived in households right across Canada. I would say around the world. But specifically, it’s been a pain that’s been revisited and relived by many in the First Nations community. Everybody knows that I am talking about the unmarked graves at the residential schools and how horrific all of that was.

I can still remember when my great-granddaughter, lit­tle Alliya, came to the House and saw all those shoes on the front steps of the Legislature. Her one question was: “Where are the children?” It was very painful at that time, painful for me even to remember. If it’s painful for me as a mother and a grandmother to remember, how much more pain must there be in the hearts of those who lived those experiences, who live today with the outcome and the impacts of the residential schools?

I am very hopeful that having seen that pain and that processing that went on, not only in our personal lives but our professional lives and in our institutions, has given us time to reflect that we need to accelerate our journey down the road. Our journey of truth and reconciliation needs to be accelerated. Every one of us felt that at that moment, but it’s really good to hear in the House now. It just hasn’t mattered which side of the House that speakers have spoken on. Everybody is in agreement that we need to move forward, and this is a step forward.

When I was a teacher, I used to say that…. I heard the ex–Minister of Education say today that teaching is the noblest of professions. I’ve been a teacher all my life except for when I’ve done this, and I can say that teaching is one of the most satisfying professions I can ever imagine. It is a profession that does frustrate you at times, but at the same time, you know that you’re working with young kids who are the future of our country.

[5:15 p.m.]

When you look at kids — and specifically, I want to talk about First Nations kids today — it has been a huge, huge challenge for them in our public schools. It took a very long time — a very, very long time — to start seeing First Nations teachers in our schools. I believe that our institutions, whether it’s the hallowed halls here, whether it is our bureaucracy…. All levels of government, all our institutions, public and private, need to reflect the diversity of our population.

I can remember, way back in 1977…. For some of you sitting in this room, it may not be a memory because you were not born at that time, and for some of you, it may not be. But back in 1977, when I came to British Columbia, my first teaching assignment was at Woodlands Secondary School in Nanaimo. It was only for a semester to cover for a teacher who had gone to France to do French immersion. When she came back, of course, the job was no longer going to be there, and I applied for a job at Ladysmith Secondary School, and I taught there.

It was at Woodlands that I came across my first, First Nations students, in my social studies and in my English classes. At that time, I realized how much of a deficit there was in the diversity of our teaching profession, because despite having quite a large First Nations student population, there were not the teachers that were teaching them then.

It is very important for our kids to see themselves in the teaching profession and in other professions, so I am really pleased to say that now we do have a growing number of First Nations teachers teaching in our schools. Once again, I want to say this. Sometimes we think that because we’ve hired a First Nations teacher, they can only really teach First Nations students. What I want to see is First Nations teachers teaching all subjects, right across the field, and teaching all students.

I can tell you that when I first got hired in my very first teaching job…. I won’t name the year now, because then some of my colleagues will go: “Really?” Back in England, I was hired to teach senior English. I was going to be teaching literature. I was going to be teaching O- and A-level English.

When I got to the school, this deputy headmaster — that’s what they were called — said to me: “Why are you here?” And I said: “I’m the new teacher.” First, he didn’t believe me, because I suppose I didn’t look old enough to be a teacher at that time. But when I convinced him that I was, that I had been hired, he took me way out into the far, far distant corner of a very high, high school in England, on the outskirts of Bradford.

I’m telling him the name of the person that I have to meet, and he’s not listening to me. He takes me all the way out there and introduces me to my department head. The department head says: “I don’t know who she is. I haven’t hired her.” In those days, department heads had a critical say. So he said to me: “Were you hired to teach English as a second language?” I said: “No. I was hired to teach English.”

The redness on that deputy headmaster’s face when he realized…. Just because he looked at the colour of my skin, he automatically took me to the room that taught ESL — very painful at that time. I laughed at the time, actually, because I thought it was hilarious. But later on, I had time to reflect on it and thought that that was a sad comment.

[5:20 p.m.]

Moving on, we do have a growing number of First Nations teachers in our public schools, and they are teaching across the field, which is great to see. They’re teaching at elementary, and they’re teaching at secondary. Do we need to train and hire a lot more? Absolutely. A huge shout-out to our post-secondary institutions that, in partnership with our First Nations Leadership Council and the First Nations Education Steering Committee, have done an amazing job of getting these young and not-so-young people ready for the teaching profession.

This particular piece of legislation here today is a step forward. It makes me very, very proud, because I’m trying to think of all the early trail-blazers I worked with. As I was listening to the previous speaker, I was trying to remember some of their names. I know the insecurities, the conversations we had and the fears that were held by them. The people I’m going to mention are the people who came forward in leadership roles during a very, very tough time and worked at the B.C. Teachers Federation.

By the way, I’m so proud of the work the B.C. Teachers Federation has done in the area of First Nations and Aboriginal education. We were the first, I would say, teacher organization to set up a whole department devoted to First Nations education and also developing resources. Then, when the Truth and Reconciliation hearings were going on, we participated fully in those.

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure to work with almost every one of these people I’m going to mention — and how much they were able to teach me.

Frank Conibear, who came in and taught me a lot about different perspectives and different ways of looking at things that I had not thought of — from the First Nations’ perspective.

Merle Williams, a teacher from Surrey, who came forward and opened her mouth and said: “We need to be doing more. We need to be doing more, and I’m willing to play a leadership role in that.”

Marjorie Dumont, an amazing teacher and a mentor for me. She was so centred in who she was, in her First Nations heritage and, at the same time, so devoted to taking those kids forward in their learning.

Christine Stewart, who today is the director for the professional development and social issues division at the BCTF, another trailblazer who has laid the groundwork.

Gail Stromquist, Starleigh Grass, just to mention a few.

I actually have pages and pages of them. I won’t read those into the record, but they all know who they are, and they know how much they impacted my life and my growth as a professional but also my growth as a human being. We all think we understand another person’s perspective because we read and we watch on social media, but until we sit with people and hear their pain and hear their stories, it is hard for us to truly, truly understand.

When I look at the legislation that’s here today, it is moving forward. As you know, there are 129 First Nations schools in B.C. that are under the authority of the First Nations and funded by Indigenous Services Canada. Currently there are 13 First Nations in bilateral negotiations with the federal government.

All those will carry on. These schools will still be under that jurisdiction. But what is going to be amazing now is there is going to be a new authority. That new authority will now participate in the council that was created by the previous government for teachers as a regulatory body. They will have a voice there.

[5:25 p.m.]

The fact that they’re going to have a seat at that table is very, very significant as we move forward in recognizing and working together with First Nations, because if you don’t have a seat at the table where the regulations are set or where certification is granted, then really, you’re not a fulsome player in all of this. So that is going to happen.

Some people may say: “Are you not lessening the re­quirements?” I would say no. What you’re doing is giving the authority to the First Nations to determine for themselves, under this umbrella, where they will have a seat at the regulation table. The Criminal Records Review Act is being amended. All of those things will happen. The safety of students is always first.

What FNESC has been talking about for a long time…. This started long before I became elected. I can remember going to FNESC meetings when I was at the B.C. Teachers Federation. I think that if some of those people were sitting in this room today, there would be tears in their eyes, because this is what they were advocating for 20 years ago. But it was like a long-distant dream. Once again, thanks to the minister and thanks to our government, we are moving forward, not just paying lip service to truth and reconciliation. We are actually taking steps to make sure that we do respect and that it is shared.

It is not us laying something on — our rules with our western lands that we have developed. We’re not imposing them. We are opening the door. In that opening of the door, we are saying to FNESC and to the First Nations leadership: “These are your schools. You will have a say in teacher certification. You will have a say in the kind of prep you want for your teachers.”

It’s going to be very different. Why wouldn’t it be different? Every classroom is different, by the way. Every classroom I taught, even at the same school, was totally different. Every kid has different needs. There was a time I was teaching social studies, and I had four consecutive classes. Even though it was the same grade and the same subject, I can tell you the four lessons during the day were never, ever the same.

In this case, it’s going to be even more so. I just am so looking forward to the richness of that experience, as the First Nations leaders and First Nations begin to determine for themselves what the focus is going to be.

At this point, I am also very, very proud of the work that our government started when we started to support the recovery of and the passing on of the First Nation languages. One of the things I have learned is that the preservation of a language is critical to the preservation of a culture — absolutely interconnected. I say this to people who’ve come here from all cultures. But for the First Nations, they’ve had generations where they didn’t have access to that culture. We had fewer and fewer people who were familiar with the languages.

So lots of language recovery, using technologies that could go to seniors instead of having seniors travel, and lots of young people have now absorbed that language. Now it is time for those languages to be passed on and to be shared. With that comes a lot of pride with a lot of ownership.

I was born in India. Many of you have heard me say that before. I left at the age of nine. I grew up speaking Punjabi at home. I got to England — there wasn’t another Punjabi speaker in my class, back in ’62 — and learned English. Then I learned French. My Punjabi became a little bit more rustic and fell into the background. Then, because I still had it in there, it came forward.

[5:30 p.m.]

Let me tell you there are some words and phrases that are in your mother tongue that are so difficult to express in other languages. I always think of that when I think of our First Nations communities that lost their languages and are trying to reclaim them, because it’s not just about the reclaiming of the language, it’s the reclaiming of their culture that comes with that language.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

The word “mother,” you know, is not that different in the different languages: mother, mater, mère, maa, mata. It all sounds the same. But you know something, Mr. Speaker? Even today, when I’m in that really hurt place which all of us tend to get to sometimes, it’s my first-language word for mother that comes into my mind. It encompasses so much. That’s just one little word.

I’m proud of the work we did in this, but I’m also proud of the fact that this legislation is going to have our First Nations take a look to see: what is the priority in each nation? What do they want to focus on? How are they going to develop the language? What skill sets are they looking for in their teachers?

Of course, they’re like every other parent. They’re going to want teachers who are qualified, and these teachers are going to be qualified. But the word “qualified” can be quite different depending on circumstances, even in our regular schools. I know in Surrey, at one time, for example, when they couldn’t find a Punjabi teacher, when Punjabi was offered in the schools, they were looking for people to be teaching it with a letter of permission. We’ve got that happening in our schools right now. Not just for that; Japanese is another factor. So it is a process that has already existed.

This isn’t people working with a letter of permission, be­cause when you’re working with a letter of permission, it somehow implies that you’re less than a teacher. This is actually saying to our First Nations leadership, our First Nations, that they will now have this right in law. They will have the right in the regulatory process. They will have a right in the education part of their process and talking about and being at the table with the other education partners as a new education authority that exists.

Right now we have…. The private schools are there. The public school sector is there. And of course, now we will have our First Nations Education Authority there as well. That is very, very exciting, and I would say a big, big step, even though it looks very tiny on paper when you think of the size of the legislation.

Here I want to read into the record a quote from Tyrone McNeil. He’s the president of the First Nations Education Steering Committee. This is what he has to say: “We appreciate the opportunity to work with the province of B.C. on this groundbreaking initiative. Supporting First Nations in certifying and regulating teachers in their own schools is fundamental to their exercise of jurisdiction.”

That says it all. “Fundamental to their exercise of jurisdiction.” Is that not what this is all about? Absolutely.

Then you’ve got another quote here from Hugh Braker. He’s of the Tseshaht First Nation, one of the negotiators who worked on this. He says this: “The B.C. First Nations education jurisdiction initiative, including our ability to certify and regulate teachers who we know are the right fit for our schools and our students, is a true reflection of First Nations control of First Nations education, which we have been advancing for decades.”

[5:35 p.m.]

I’m going to repeat the words again: “who we know are the right fit for our schools and our students” and “is a true reflection of First Nations control of our First Nations education.”

Every one of us in this House should feel very, very proud of this piece of legislation — that this is happening. It should have happened a long time ago, but the fact is that it’s happening, and I want to celebrate this moment. I know I’m getting to the end of time, so I do have a few other things I did want to talk about in education.

We heard the minister speak earlier that this has been a result of tripartite negotiations, and I’m absolutely proud of the work our government has done on this. I want to talk for a few minutes about the words “equity” and “equal.” Often we hear people talking about equality. I’m going to relate it to my own kids. I have two kids. I love them equally, but sometimes the treatment they get is equitable, because sometimes one needs more of something that the other one doesn’t need.

For me, equitable education is what we need to be looking at when we’re looking at our diverse communities and when we’re looking at our First Nations education. It’s not about giving everybody the same. Every child is not the same. The needs of every group are not the same. This is where the word “equitable” comes in. I have become a great believer in the words “equity” and “equitable” rather than “equality” and “equal,” which are given.

We are all equal, we can say, yet in many ways, we are not. Some of us are born with certain types of privilege which gives us access, and other people do not have that privilege and access. That’s why we need equity over equality. That makes me very, very happy.

I want to finish off with a story of an amazing young woman I taught when she was in grade 9, first. She was in my social studies class, and later on, the First Nations students were all assigned one counsellor, who had an amazing background in that area, and I was a counsellor for some of the other students.

She came to see me. She sat in my office, and I said to her: “Just tell me why you’re here, but you do know that your counsellor is next door.” We had lists. She said: “I know.” But she said: “Mrs. Sims, can I just talk to you?” And I said: “Of course you can. Any student can go and see any counsellor, but I just have this responsibility to tell you that your counsellor is next door.” She said: “No. I specifically came to see you.”

We dealt with it, and then about two or three months later, I said to her: “What made you walk in through my door, come to my door?” There were five counsellors at the school. She said to me: “I felt I could talk to you because you look the most like me, and maybe you would understand the problems I have been having.”

The problems she was having were no different than the problems I was hearing from other students. Her problems were poverty at home. Her problems were not getting enough heat at night and feeling cold at night. Her problems were coming to school and falling asleep and being yelled at for falling asleep, but she couldn’t sleep at night because the blanket got taken by her older brother. She was left without a blanket, and you can’t sleep when you are cold.

[5:40 p.m.]

What she said that day made me realize we need diversity in our teaching population. What this legislation makes me realize is the importance of giving those im­pacted the power to make decisions that are going to impact them.

M. Dykeman: I can’t express how excited I am to rise to speak today in favour of the Education Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, Bill 25.

Although I was born in 1977 — I haven’t had as much time in the system as my friend and colleague who spoke prior — I had been involved in education for about half of that journey, as First Nations in this province have been working to advance jurisdiction over education for more than 20 years. So to stand here today as an MLA coming from a background of school board, like the critic who spoke about how we have a long way to go but that we have come a long way, is such an honour, because it really is true.

Watching the evolution and the partnership and the work that have taken place over these ten years that I’ve been involved really has been nothing short of amazing. I’m thrilled to be able to stand in the House to talk about how this looks in Langley, where I’m the MLA for Langley East, and what it was like watching it over my time as trustee.

Although I could probably talk for hours and hours and hours, I will spare everybody that and be as brief as possible so others can have an opportunity to speak also. I know how passionate our caucus — and the entire House, actually — is about this, because true, lasting reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is at the heart of everything that we do.

Education, I believe, is a great equalizer in society. It helps us overcome so many things — poverty and all of the other challenges that come with that. So it makes sense that education must be central. It must play a key role in reconciliation. To read about how these legislative changes amend the First Nations Education Act, the Teachers Act, the Criminal Records Review Act and how they’ve been developed in collaboration with the FNESC, the First Nations Education Steering Committee…. I am simply thrilled.

FNESC, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, was actually founded in 1992 at the First Nations education conference at the Vancouver Friendship Cen­tre. Their role and their focus have been on advancing quality education for all First Nation learners. At each of the BCSTA conferences I attended, FNESC was there, and representatives were there, and we had passionate people from our board who had the privilege of sitting with FNESC.

Actually, a former trustee, Cecelia Reekie, who is Cecil Paul’s daughter, was a representative when I first started on school board and has remained an advocate and served as a ya:y̓əstəl rep. We have a committee in Langley called the ya:y̓əstəl. ya:y̓əstəl translates to “one heart, one mind.” When I first served as trustee, they were the group that came together.

My school district sits on the traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui and Semiahmoo territories. We’d come together and work and help develop our very first Aboriginal enhancement agreement. If memory serves me correctly, we were one of the very first to ever have one in Langley.

The group that works together has always had a trustee representative. Our current representative is trustee Susan Perreault, who is so passionate about this area and Métis heritage. Prior to that, we had trustee Rosemary Wallace, who has one of the kindest hearts. And interestingly, my CA…. Her mom, way back when she served as a trustee, was one of the first ones, Diane Pona. She really worked hard to advance reconciliation probably many, many years ago — well over ten but more like 15 or 20.

[5:45 p.m.]

In our district, the minister and I had the privilege very recently to tour Donna Gabriel Robins Elementary, our new school, which really embodies the board of education, under the leadership of trustee and chair Rod Ross and all the other trustees who serve there. They are so dedicated to reconciliation. It was named after Donna Gabriel Robins, who is so…. She really embodies First Nations education — committed to language revitalization, working with people, advancing reconciliation. Just one of the most wonderful educators we have in our district.

Seeing these changes over time, the work that FNESC has done — schools, language being revitalized, those incremental, important steps that are so vital to advancing reconciliation taking place. And now this piece of legislation coming forward really starts to sort of show the whole picture.

I remember starting as a trustee. We would have these conversations, and FNESC would come and talk about steps that we, as trustees, should take and how we can advance truth and reconciliation. It’s always hard to imagine what that will look like as you start to make progress. Seeing all of these changes come really gives an incredible amount of hope and excitement for what this will mean for our students.

I don’t have this last two years’ numbers, but in 2019, Langley school district had 125 Aboriginal graduates. I remember the very first graduation ceremony where our Aboriginal education department was working to sort of figure out what it means to ensure that Aboriginal heritage is weaved through. I remember the Aboriginal graduation ceremony, which takes place also with the sort of traditional ceremonies, and watching the incredible amount of pride of those students coming forward, because the heritage was also woven in.

If we think about ourselves, our identity, there are so many pieces that make up who we are. Seeing our education system recognizing that, recognizing the whole child — that concept of one heart and one mind, bringing everything to the table — is so important for education. We have an Aboriginal advisory committee, as I mentioned. They work as a team to create strength-based, personalized, student-centred learning that respects Aboriginal history, culture, values and nurtures a sense of belonging for the success of all Aboriginal students.

That’s the thing. School isn’t just about class and your grades and what you learn in that textbook. It’s about the whole picture. So when talking about this legislation, talking about Bill 25, this is another piece that will empower our students to be able to move forward, empower our communities to be whole and is another important step towards reconciliation. It’s the whole picture.

That’s why I was so thrilled to be able to stand up today and speak in support of this. Even though I could go on, probably, for another two hours, I won’t, because I know that there are other passionate people here too.

With that, I will take my seat.

Hon. M. Rankin: It’s such an honour to speak on such an important bill and to follow so many other passionate speakers who have delved into this short but critically important piece of legislation before the House.

I want to speak to this bill from my perspective as Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. Before I get into the specifics, I’d like to put some context forward, so we can understand the enormity of what this bill seeks to accomplish.

First of all, I want to congratulate the Minister of Education for her leadership in bringing forth such a vital bill, for reasons I shall describe in a moment. I want to start by talking about how this fits within the calls to action by the Sinclair commission, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Then I would like to talk about how it fits within the scheme of the Declaration Act, passed unanimously in this place. Then, finally, I’d like to delve into a few of the specifics to try to underscore just how significant this move is.

[5:50 p.m.]

Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair famously brought forth 94 calls to action in his Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, the first of which were, of course, dealing with the critical issue of children in care. That was, I think, fitting that he started with that.

Numbers 6 through 12 of those 94 calls to action were all about what we’re here to talk about now — education and the gaps that face Indigenous learners in this province and in this country. I’d like to touch on just two. The first call to action that’s relevant to this debate is No. 7. It calls on the federal government “to develop with Aboriginal groups a joint strategy to eliminate educational and employment gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians” — gaps that we know are all too obvious.

Number 10: “We call on the federal government to draft new Aboriginal education legislation with the full participation and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples.” The new legislation would include a commitment to sufficient funding.

This bill was co-developed with First Nation educational leaders, a group in British Columbia called the First Na­tions Education Steering Committee. Co-developed — which, of course, is at the heart of what this government committed and this House committed to when it famously passed, unanimously, the Declaration Act. Section 3 of that act calls for the alignment of laws. It calls for co-development of legislation, which, of course, is what this government is committed to be doing over the years to come.

How are we doing that? Well, we are bringing forward an action plan. That action plan will engage every single ministry of this government and other agencies as well.

A draft action plan with 79 action plan items was introduced, but of course, with the pandemics — I say plural pandemics, sadly, the COVID and the overdose pandemics — facing this province as well as the wildfires and, of course, the findings at the residential schools. We extended the time for Indigenous peoples to plug into this work and to provide their thoughts on these 79 action items to see if we’ve gone the right direction or if more work needs to be done. In other words, this, too, is an exercise in co-development just as Bill 25 before us is.

There were four themes in the action plan, one of which addresses the social, cultural and economic well-being of Indigenous peoples. That is what this bill is all about. This bill calls on…. We have a specific action item that you can connect quite directly to this bill. Action plan item 1.9 calls on the Minister of Education and the First Nations Education Steering Committee to co-develop legislation that requires local education agreements with First Nations where a First Nation wants one. That requires the application of the provincial local education agreement at the request of a First Nation.

This bill works in tandem with First Nations but also is a great example of cooperative federalism in our country. Why? Because this bill works with the federal statute called the First Nation jurisdiction over education in British Columbia act. Quite a mouthful. A federal statute that contemplates the kind of stuff we are doing in this House to deal with the education issue for those First Nations who wish to.

You’ll recall I wrote that for those First Nations who want such authority, such jurisdiction, we’re providing jurisdiction that never existed before for First Nations as autonomous self-governing organizations to decide how their children will be educated and to take up that jurisdiction in partnership with British Columbia and with the Ministry of Education.

Let me explain why I say that. The very first section of Bill 25 is critical in its wording. It says this: “If requested by the First Nations Education Authority, the province will assist the First Nations Education Authority in certifi­cation and regulation of teachers.” Note the wording: “If requested by the First Nations Education Authority….” Then the minister will assist in regulation and certification. First Nations are in the driver’s seat. That is a function of self-government. That is the function of a First Nation taking on jurisdiction over the fate of their children.

[5:55 p.m.]

Working in tandem with the federal government, working in tandem with First Nations — that is the spirit, if not the essence, of this Declaration Act that this House unanimously passed. This bill is about accountability. This bill is about making sure that the teachers who serve in First Nation schools are teachers who are certified the same way as teachers are certified in British Columbia, that there is a council — in this case, a teachers council — with authority, ultimately, that there are investigations that may be conducted at the request of the First Nations Education Steering Committee, to make sure that the teachers are competent and there is nothing that is called conduct unbecoming of a teacher.

All of that is to be taken into account with those teachers the same as it’s taken into account with our teachers. In other words, the standards will be as high. The First Nations parents who are contemplating sending their children to these schools can have confidence in the people teaching their children, but they will be done at the instance of First Nations people, not just those in the regular school system, if I can call it that.

How does the bill work? Well, there is a coordination agreement that is created between the Ministry of Education and the First Nations Education Authority. Then there is an ability to find out — if requested, as I said, for the minister to assist — in the investigation of conduct of an individual teacher, to see if he or she meets the criteria to be issued under what’s called a First Nations Education Authority teaching certificate. They can assist in the investigation to make sure the conduct or competence of a First Nations Education Authority certified teacher is up to snuff.

They will also assist with criminal records review to make sure that there are no issues of that sort involved in a particular teacher. It could be, in the interest of transparency and accountability…. Teachers that have a First Nation education certificate will also be listed in the online registry, so parents can find out if there are any discipline issues, if they are qualified, just as they can do with teachers certified under the council at the moment in British Columbia. There are powers to compel witnesses and require disclosure should there be the need for an investigation.

There is jurisdiction, there is cooperation, there is coordination and there is accountability. That is the theme of this act. We should be proud that we have created, if this bill is enacted, the ability for First Nations schools to take down this authority if they wish. How many are there? So far there are only 13 First Nations in bilateral negotiations with the federal government, but there are some 129 First Nations schools in this province.

One can expect, as this rolls out, that there will be more and more First Nations who choose to have control over education of their children, to ensure that they’re confident in their self-identity, that they have the traditional values, languages and cultures that they wish to perpetuate in the future in their children and to prepare their children, of course, for contemporary society as well.

We’re the first province to do this. I’m proud of the fact that this government is introducing legislation to do just that. What could be more important than education in closing the gaps that Mr. Justice Sinclair talked about in his Truth and Reconciliation Commission report? Nothing. Nothing is more important, and that is why he featured it so prominently in his report.

In closing, Bill 25 is a superb example of co-developing legislation with a First Nation — in this case, an education steering committee. This bill aligns with section 3 of the Declaration Act. It ensures that our laws align with the spirit of the declaration itself and with the truth and reconciliation commitment. Ultimately, I say that this bill aligns with the spirit of true reconciliation.

I congratulate the Minister of Education for bringing forward such a short but extremely important example of reconciliation.

[6:00 p.m.]

E. Ross: I had to get up and speak to Bill 25, the Education Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, which, amongst other things, actually promotes the ability of the province to come onto reserve and certify teachers on reserve.

That’s quite the complicated question. On reserve, as we know, the province, in most cases, is not welcome. It’s federal jurisdiction. You have to be invited specifically to come onto reserve to implement anything provincial. In this case here, I never really had any issue with the objective of certifying teachers on reserve. In fact, many schools across Canada could use the certification that we’re talking about in this House.

The issue I take, though, is that there’s some misunderstanding that chiefs and councils don’t already have this authority. They could pass a bylaw. They could pass their own law right now, with or without the Indian Act. With or without Bill 25, they can do this. That power and authority already exists.

In listening to the speakers from that side of the House, there was lots of mention about UNDRIP, consultation. There was a lot of mention of local education agreements and how somehow that will empower First Nations to implement local education agreements at the council level. Councils already have that power and authority to do so right now. That’s the relationship that councils have with local school districts.

I’m not sure if this is intentional, but is there that level of ignorance from that side of the House in terms of how a council operates and what their powers and authorities are? In most cases, a lot of band councils now are disregarding the Indian Act and just empowering themselves in terms of what’s happening on the reserve, and the federal government can’t do or say anything about it. This empowerment that you’re talking about has been in action in B.C. for the last ten years, at least, in all sectors, not just education.

The local education agreement can be strengthened, I agree. If this bill, Bill 25, actually mentions that and actually enables both sides of the table to actually enact really strong local education with the First Nation and the local school district, more power to the First Nations. Good. It’s a long time coming. But I don’t understand the issue of the certification of teachers on reserve when First Nation councils already have that authority. They can do it with­out the province. They can do it without Bill 25.

In terms of the consultation we talked about…. This is an old theme I’ve talked about. This government has actually contradicted and breached its own law that it passed in this House in terms of UNDRIP, Bill 41, which they like to talk about in terms of reconciliation. The bill, that UNDRIP promised by the NDP government, said they would consult the leaders and the rights and title holders of B.C.

We haven’t seen one example of that yet. All we hear is how this government has consulted advocacy groups that do not represent the opinions of British Columbia’s First Nations communities — the leadership council or administrative bodies that do not represent the communities of First Nations. Rights and title holders are actually the community members, so it only stands to reason that the rights and title holders that you should be negotiating with are those leaders that are selected by their communities to represent them.

[6:05 p.m.]

Not once have I heard any legislation come through this House that actually recites the consultation that was done with 203 First Nations. It sounds to me like Bill 25 failed to deliver that as well. You’re breaking your own law.

I just heard some of the comments from the Indigenous Minister talking about economic well-being in terms of Bill 25. There is a bullet in terms of economic well-being. It’s part of the overall fabric. I believe that. But there is an order to that.

I was part of an education training program when I first started council in 2003 that we put full effort into. But our people got discouraged when they finished the training and found out there was absolutely no job available, because there was no economy in our region. They got discouraged.

Let me educate that side of the House in terms of what First Nations think in terms of economic well-being. The only reason they’re doing it is to get their people to a bet­ter place, on their own terms, with no government help, with no council help. But also, there is a selfish reason. They want people to stay in their communities. They want people that live off reserve all across Canada to come home and live on reserve, close to their families and communities. They can’t do that if there is no job.

It’s very unsettling for me to sit here and listen to these grand speeches talking about how Bill 25 is going to save the Aboriginals and is the actual answer to reconciliation and the truth and reconciliation report when there is very little knowledge on that side of the House in terms of what it’s really like to be an Aboriginal living on reserve or, for that matter, an Aboriginal living off reserve in Vancouver, Prince George or elsewhere across Canada.

This is not a bad bill, but I think it’s a redundant bill in terms of what can happen at the council level already. If you really want to talk about the economic well-being of First Nations, go back to Hansard and read what you said about LNG development in B.C. That was economic well-being of First Nations.

A little bit of a news flash for you, it was not the B.C. Liberals that brought LNG to B.C. It was my band. We started researching and participating in environmental assessments for LNG in 2004 for a project that turned into the Chevron KLNG project. That was economic well-being, and it included everything that I’ve heard in this Legislature, including what we’re talking about right now in Bill 25.

It was just one component of our solution for the future of our people — and not just our people. It was for every First Nation from Prince George to Kitamaat Village, in­cluding a couple of First Nations on the west coast of British Columbia, namely Gitxaała and Gitga’at, who signed agreements with the government as well as the companies that wanted to build an LNG project.

This is not going to achieve economic well-being, in the way that I’m hearing these speeches, to certify teachers on reserve, an authority that is already within the powers of elected chiefs and councils.

So what is going to happen with First Nations’ economic well-being? This will, most likely, cover one specific issue with First Nations issues when you’re talking about education on reserve, the certification of teachers. But the way I’m hearing it, it’s almost like the government wants to have a parade around it, on all these grand speeches.

[6:10 p.m.]

If you want to talk about economic well-being, including Bill 25, and how that is going to affect the future of First Nations, you have got to have a fulsome discussion about it. It’s got to include everything. It’s got to include everything. It’s got to include the full support of this House in regards to the $55 billion LNG project that Nisg̱a’a is currently proposing. That will include education. Some are below that. It will include what we’re talking about right here in terms of certification of teachers on reserve.

If you really want to talk education on First Nations reserves, let’s talk about how far First Nations have evolved in terms of education overall. Let’s talk about the private post-sec institutes that a few First Nations have actually purchased with their own money but do not get funded by the provincial government. They get certain programs funded, but they don’t get funding like 50 percent of other private institutions.

Kitimat Valley Institute. There is a good, educational is­sue we should talk about. If that comes up, maybe in an amendment, maybe the government will consider funding private post-sec institutions for First Nations that serve the greater community. That would be a great amendment.

Kitimat Valley Institute was bought in partnership with Rio Tinto Alcan and the Haisla Nation Council. But the policy was to serve anybody that wanted to come in from all over B.C., native and non-native alike, so they could participate in the industrial development in Kitimat, including the Rio Tinto aluminum smelter project that was happening and including the multi-billion-dollar projects under LNG that were actually proposed in Kitimat.

We were successful in getting LNG across the finish line for this purpose, including education, but we failed in the 17 other major development projects in B.C. They all left town. That was economic well-being not only for First Nations but for British Columbians. It was a revenue base for this government. It was an economy. That’s all gone. Now we’re struggling to see what we can do in terms of a major project next.

This does speak to your bill, especially when I hear your speeches about how the certification of teachers on reserve is actually this glorious initiative that nobody ever thought of before and how: “We’re implementing UNDRIP.” You’re not. Keep this in perspective. Keep this in context.

There has been a lot of work being done ever since 2004, especially around reconciliation. Reconciliation has been happening in B.C. since 2004, regardless of what you think, because I was on the other side of that table actually helping implement it. Reconciliation did include education. I did agree with that. But more importantly, it had an economic component to it that actually resolves a lot of the issues that we like to talk about, the social issues of Aboriginals.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I look forward to more speeches, but I do ask the government to keep it in perspective. It is not the silver bullet that you proclaim it to be.

[6:15 p.m.]

A. Olsen: I rise to take my position in the debate here at second reading of the Education Statutes Amendment Act. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill, and thank you to the government for bringing it forward.

It’s incredible, really, to see how many speakers have been able to stand up to this bill, when, previously, it seemed like there were no speakers from the government side anywhere to be found on previous bills that we were amending.

I just want to, I think, put a marker down here that in the conversations that I’ve been able to have since this bill has come before us, that this is important work to be done in order to facilitate Indigenous educators to be recognized, should their nations wish to engage in this process.

I have the benefit of having a child that goes to a school that — I’m not sure if it’s necessarily part of this conversation — certainly is a school on reserve. She benefits from a wonderful education. In many respects, it’s a land-based education. It’s a culturally centred education that she’s in. I know that the members of this House have heard a number of times about the ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱ Tribal School in W̱SÁNEĆ. My daughter is in grade 4, and she’s in the SENĆOŦEN immersion program.

I imagine that part of the reason why this has been an important piece of legislative work to move forward is recognizing that there are people in our schools that are definitely credible and certifiable educators who, under the current structure, might not be able to be recognized as educators but deliver that very culturally important aspect to education that, frankly, I wish that all students in British Columbia were able to get.

The locally, culturally centred education that Ella is getting is something I’m actually quite envious of, frankly. It almost is like, once I’m done in this place, I want to return back to school there and learn some of the things that she’s getting the benefit of the first time that she’s going through education.

I just want to raise my hands up to the minister for bringing this work forward. It’s important work. It’s work that I know and see has been led by First Nations education groups in the province.

As in my discussions this afternoon, it’s always important to acknowledge the fact that there are many challenging jurisdictional areas when it comes to the Crown-Indigenous relationship in this province. I’m certain that the minister is cognizant of those, and I’m certain that the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation is probably even more cognizant of the wide variety of jurisdictions that we have to navigate.

The Crown government in the discussions needs to be well aware of the fact that much of what Crown governments have done over the decades has been only to mud­dle and confuse the situation, which is making the work that we have now much, much more difficult.

With that, I just want to rise and say that I look forward to asking questions of the minister, should they come up in the committee stage, and to raise my hands and say that the quality education that is happening in our Indigenous communities across the province needs to be encouraged — the diversity of that education and the perspectives that I’ve talked about in here. The world views that I’ve talked about — that I talked about earlier, in fact, on the Forests Statutes Amendment Act, in talking about the conflicting world view that this Crown government holds close to its heart and that the Indigenous community that I grew up in holds close to its heart. That there needs to be….

Part of the reconciliation process is going to be bringing those world views together, hopefully in an effort to ensure that those Indigenous world views and the world views of the diversity of this province — the linguistic diversity of this province — can be fully realized in our education system without just a colonial education approach being the only thing that is acceptable here in British Columbia. Certainly, we know that shouldn’t be the case, and I think that this is a step forward to achieving that.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM. Thank you.

[6:20 p.m.]

H. Yao: Before I start, I do actually want to specifically say for this time that I acknowledge that my riding, Richmond South Centre, is located on the unceded and traditional territory of the Musqueam, Kwantlen, Tsawwassen and Coast Salish people. I thank them for allowing us to live, work, play and learn on their traditional territory.

To start, first of all, I want to acknowledge the fact that I have very minimal if not zero understanding of what the Indigenous community went through during the residential school era and the challenges they were facing. When I read Bill 25, I would say I’m very enthusiastic and also reassured that we’re making major strides toward reconciliation and our effort to help Indigenous communities really working together for the right to self-determination.

One reason why, when I was looking at this bill, talking about different rights and different individuals in regard to education certification programs, review of criminal records…. We were talking about different kinds of acts of involvement. I think that one thing that truly hits me the hardest is to understand…. We often, including myself, grew up in a westernized education system. I often feel like my community is also absent or almost invisible in many of the education opportunities.

I think an interesting thing was that my first ESL teacher, Ms. Chen, from McRoberts, was actually Chinese Can­adian, and being able to see someone who was familiar almost provided some level of reassurance.

I think as we move forward as a community, we have to understand that reconciliation is taking on…. A lot of things need to be done. But I want to thank our Minister of Education for really making major strides to really help the community to work together to acknowledge the importance of self-determination and respecting different cultures.

I would like to echo some of the comments my colleagues mentioned earlier. They are different comments made by different languages. It’s almost impossible to translate from one language to another. Language itself isn’t just simply a language; it’s a reflection of a culture. It’s a manifestation, I should say, of a culture. In a Chinese term, we often say 辛苦了, xing ku le. I can tell you right now that I cannot find anybody who can capture its connotation appropriately in the language of English.

I also want to say another Chinese term. Education is a nation’s lifelong investment. I can see right now, with our government continuously viewing Indigenous communities as government-to-government conversations, we are here to step up, to reset. Let us work together. Let us be an ally, but we want to place you in a leadership role.

Often, I know, we hear from different members in the House talking about being a leader as taking charge. But sometimes a real leader is somebody who knows when to step away and allow everyone else to rise up around them. I would like to call those facilitative leaders. How can we facilitate collaboration, cooperation and work together continuously for the benefit of everybody? A true leader truly understands when to actually make ourselves small so someone else can step up and shine.

We’re talking about 215 bodies found at a residential school, and we’re talking about different, continuous tragedy being discovered across our nation of Canada. We come from a very bloody and unfortunate history of Canada. I’m just saddened to be part of this country but at the same time also proud that we continue making major strides to correct and reconcile our previous mistakes. This is the first step of many, many other steps as we move forward.

We look at different culture groups, different commun­ity members. We have to understand that every culture manifests itself in a different way. They celebrate their lives in a different way. There are different traditional practices, and there are different cultural practices. For example, being Chinese Canadian, we have the lunar festival, which is unique in the Asia area. We talk about the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is definitely something we talk about when it comes to regarding the Harvest Festival, because it focuses around the agriculture component of our culture.

When we’re talking about education and giving Indigenous communities and the First Nations Education Steering Committee the right to certify teachers, we’re really asking them: “What can we do to step back to allow you to rise up and take what is an unnecessary colonial or westernized education and to really ask you to take a leadership role?” We know we made mistakes, and we are looking for reconciliation and moving forward appropriately.

I acknowledge the time right now. I would like to re­serve my spot for the next speech.

H. Yao moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. N. Simons moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.