Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading, Bill 18, Human Rights Code Act.

In Section A, Douglas Fir Room, I call continued Committee of the Whole, Bill 22.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: Members, can we have a little quiet, please? Thank you.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I just wanted to alert the House that after Bill 22, we will be having committee on Bill 23.

[2:30 p.m.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 18 — HUMAN RIGHTS CODE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

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

Bill 18 seeks to enhance and clarify existing protections for Indigenous people under the code. Currently, the B.C. human rights code implicitly protects individuals based on the prohibitions against discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin and religion. These amendments will add a protected ground of “Indigenous identity” to explicitly recognize this protection against discrimination for Indigenous people.

In addition, Bill 18 will add a definition of “Indigenous,” which was co-developed with Indigenous people and provides clarity that by Indigenous, we mean the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people of Canada.

Indigenous people in British Columbia are currently protected under the existing grounds in the code — namely, race, colour, ancestry, place of origin or religion. However, the proposed amendments make this protection explicit by adding the specific phrase “Indigenous identity” to the prohibited grounds of discrimination listed in the code. If these amendments are approved, British Columbia will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to include Indigenous identity as a protected ground.

This comes to us from a series of recommendations, among which is Ardith Walkem’s report for the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, which found that Indigenous people, although subject to considerable racism in our province, are underrepresented among complainants seeking remedies from the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. It is our hope that these amendments will change that and that people will feel more ready to come forward with their concerns to the tribunal.

We believe this is one way to demonstrate our commitment to ending systemic racism and discrimination against Indigenous people and that we are committed to a society where all people, including and especially Indigenous people, enjoy full and free participation in the economic, social, political and cultural life of the province.

Therefore, we are proposing specific amendments to the code in order to reflect the common law in the code. This will achieve the goal of greater public awareness and help all British Columbians to know that discrimination against Indigenous people is against the law.

I look forward to further discussion on these important amendments.

M. de Jong: I think the first thing I would say in response to the remarks from the Attorney General is that I am not anticipating this to be a particularly contentious debate. My sense is that there is likely to be widespread support for the amendments, one in particular very substantive, in the legislation before us.

It is, though, perhaps, an opportunity to reflect briefly on the continued evolution that this represents, a further step, I would say, along the path in the long journey that is reconciliation, and a journey that I hope the Attorney and the government — and, I think, members of the House — would agree, for which there has been some considerable progress made, although, as we will reflect upon it affecting, I hope, passage of this amendment, recognition that there is much further to go in that journey.

I think about the time that I have been in this assembly, for 28, 29 years. I think about the key moments that I have witnessed. I would say that the negotiation of the first modern treaty in the 1990s, the Nisg̱a’a treaty, represented a seminal moment. It’s interesting, and sometimes difficult, for me to think back on, insofar as — and I’ve said this before — some of the concerns I had about the effect and the impact that first treaty would have happily turned out to be wholly incorrect.

[2:35 p.m.]

I think I can say in a way that, certainly, the Nisg̱a’a and others in the area would endorse, that far from driving people apart, as I feared that agreement might do, it has been a very helpful instrument in bringing people together and creating opportunity.

The progress that that represented, the achievement that that represented, I think — I say with a measure of pride — continued through various administrations.

We tend, I think, sometimes, to forget the days when the term “new relationship” was used by Indigenous peoples, First Nations, the provincial government, and the federal government to describe the tremendous progress that was being made along that pathway to reconciliation, and the evidence that we have of that. At the time, in the early 2000s, the nearly 200 revenue-sharing agreements that were negotiated — perhaps, by today’s standards, lacking, but in their own way and at their own time, historic and precedent-setting, in terms of genuine examples of sharing the proceeds of the resources and the land base with Indigenous peoples and First Nations.

Similarly, resource-sharing agreements that were negotiated at the time. Again, perhaps by today’s standards, it is easy to reflect on those and point out the components that may have been lacking, but at the time, they were justifiably celebrated as representing significant progress along the pathway to reconciliation.

Then ultimately, in the aftermath of that first treaty in ’97, ’98, with the Nisg̱a’a, by the middle part of the 2000s, comprehensive treaty agreements with, fully, six or seven First Nations — Indigenous peoples in Canada, in British Columbia. Again, representative, I think, of the progress and of the changed attitudes and enthusiasm that marked that period of time, which I still think of as the halcyon days of the formation of the new relationship.

Those are significant instruments of agreement, some of them representing hundreds of pages of legal text, and important legal text, for there is obviously importance attached to the legal descriptives and the language that is used. But that was also the time other steps along the pathway to reconciliation occurred. I thought of this, this morning as I walked into the building and came through the rotunda that is just outside the door. Actually, one floor down.

For anyone that has been here for more than, I think, a decade, they will remember that in those days, in the rotunda hung some murals, which had been donated and painted onto the wall in, I believe, the 1930s, although I stand to be corrected. I believe it was the 1930s. Murals that most of us passed by for years and years and thought nothing about, except they were depictions of people and, in several instances, depictions of Indigenous peoples that caused great offence.

At that time, as the conversations evolved and, in many cases, became more candid and reached to a new level of, dare I say, intimacy and candor, it became clear that those images and that imagery were deemed offensive, and that an important step that the province could take was to address that.

[2:40 p.m.]

With the cooperation of members of this chamber on both sides of the House, those steps were taken. Step by step, brick by brick, in the case of these murals, steps have been taken to try and realize progress and move closer to that elusive goal of genuine reconciliation.

The introduction and unanimous passage of legislation dealing with the UN declaration a couple years ago represents, I think, another important moment in the evolution of that relationship and pursuit of reconciliation. It’s something that we’ll discuss here, I expect, momentarily, when we deal with another piece of legislation and steps that the government has chosen to take in the aftermath of the passage of that legislation.

As I think most people in this chamber would agree, we still have much further to go. I think the Attorney, in his remarks…. Well, maybe he didn’t. But I think we should anticipate that when people, if they do look at the bill before us, Bill 18, they may ask this basic question, and that is: is it necessary? Is it necessary to specifically enunciate the grounds against which the discrimination might occur and needs to be prohibited? Indigenous identity….

The code, of course, prohibits discrimination in a wide range of activities — publication; accommodation, service and facility; purchase of property; tenancy; employment advertisements; wages; employment itself; and within unions and other associations.

In those endeavours and activities and areas, it specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or age. Some people might pose the question, given the expansiveness of that list of descriptives: is it necessary to go further and specify Indigenous identity? Isn’t that covered, they might ask, by one of these other enunciated areas?

Well, maybe, and maybe in a strictly legal sense we can make that argument. I’m sure there are able legal minds out there who would capably do so or attempt to do so. But I believe, and I suspect the Attorney believes, that there are sound reasons for supporting the additions set out in section 2 of the bill.

I might summarize that in the following. What are those reasons? Broadly speaking, I would offer two reasons, two rationale. The first, fairly simply, is this. As long as discrimination is being perpetrated against an identifiable group of people and against individuals because they are members of that identifiable group, then including protections for those individuals in that group, specifically, are justified.

We all wish it wasn’t necessary. But I think we all know that in this case it is and that there are still, sadly, examples of discrimination, both individually and institutional, that need to be addressed and for which the inclusion and the passage of this amendment will be relevant and helpful.

[2:45 p.m.]

We got a report earlier this year dealing with the delivery of health care services, In Plain Sight. The aptly titled report which described — it may have been last year; I said this year — racism in the health care system and found that 84 percent of Indigenous people who took part in the investigation reported experiencing discrimination in our health care system. More than one-third of the health care worker respondents responded having witnessed discrimination inflicted upon Indigenous patients or their families and friends.

I don’t know about the rest of the members, but it makes me uncomfortable and sad to consider that in the year 2021 that is still the reality confronting our citizens and our Indigenous citizens in this country and in this province. Yet it remains a reality in that instance and, in that case, I think singularly justifies the step being advanced and proposed by the government in this legislation.

I would say there is perhaps one other reason, if the first is not sufficient, and that is having regard for the history of our land, the history of our country that we are coming to grips with as time passes. Again this year we have borne witness to a graphic example of some of the implications and long-standing repercussions of policies adopted over a century ago but that are very much a fact of our national history and are relevant and — dare I say? — complicate the process of reconciliation because of the impact they’ve had and the emotions that they understandably engender on the part of, particularly, those whose families were so dramatically impacted.

Those two factors alone, I would suggest, are sufficient to justify support for the measure being advanced by the government today. There are, I am certain, others, and I am also certain that there are others in this chamber who may, in a far more profound way than I can, describe personal examples of why this represents a step in the right direction. I will simply say that the opposition is supportive of the initiative. It is not my purpose to needlessly prolong the debate or take time from others who may wish to offer their explanations for the position they adopt with respect to this legislation.

But as I say, I anticipate this to be a debate not characterized by rancour in any way, shape or form. I anticipate that the House will be supportive of the step being advanced by the Attorney General in this legislation.

A. Olsen: I rise to take my place in the second reading debate on Bill 18.

[2:50 p.m.]

As I’m taking a look at the two bills that we have in front of us this afternoon, I have some gratitude for them. I think it’s difficult for someone who grew up on an Indian reserve in this country, in this province to articulate, I guess, what it means, but also the feeling that you have when we’re in 2021 and we’re adding protections from discrimination into our human rights code that have long been needed, perhaps. Well, not perhaps — definitely.

I recognize that there are some protections already in the human rights code. However, we’ve seen, increasingly, those who are doing the investigative work on behalf of our province and doing that work identifying this as a much-needed amendment. I think the latest might have been Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, in the In Plain Sight report. It’s also noted here that Ardith Walpetko We’dalx Walkem recommended the same in Expanding Our Vision: Cultural Equity and Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights to the government to make this change.

You’re certainly not going to get any opposition from me or from my colleague on this change. I think that it does reflect where we’re at in two ways. One, it reflects the fact that we are making these amendments and these changes in our law, and that should be something that we celebrate. The other way that it is a reflection on our society is that we stand here, 160-plus years down the road in this province, and this is the time that we’re doing it.

I think some of the criticisms that I have and that I carry with me of the work that’s done in this House is much more around how that work is applied outside of this House. We can do a lot of the good work in here, but it’s how we take the work that’s done in here and breathe life into it and actually make the changes that are needed in this province.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen the legislative changes…. The passing of the Declaration Act, for example, was something that was celebrated, and certainly the government appreciated the accolades of being the first jurisdiction to enshrine the articles of the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples into the Declaration Act here in British Columbia. Certainly, the steps that were taken to ensure that there were some accountability mechanisms in that legislation went over and above what we saw our federal government do in Ottawa. That should be acknowledged.

However, some of the critical work that is yet to be done now, almost two years to the day after passing that act, is woefully slow in rolling out. I note the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation has been mandated by the Premier to create a secretariat to undertake the work of reconciliation in this province. I know there’s been very, very little said on that, and Indigenous leaders and, certainly, people in this House are very interested in knowing what the timeline is for that piece of work that was supposed to be done by the end of this year.

[2:55 p.m.]

I’m not going to belabour those points any longer. Just to say that we can do good work in the chamber here, but it’s going to require a government and independent offices to take the spirit of that work and breathe life into them.

I know that there are a lot of Indigenous people in this province right now that were feeling very hopeful that the work that was celebrated in here, that the overwhelming back-patting that went on when the Premier and the former Minister of Indigenous Relations walked in to the Assembly of First Nations, willingly accepting the accolades of that important work…. I know that a lot of Indigenous people right now are feeling deflated because the promise of what was to come has been incredibly slow in getting into the communities.

I think that it’s important that we’re making this change. I look forward to supporting it through the committee stage to the final vote. With that, I’ll take my seat.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Kamloops–South Thompson. North Thompson. North, but he’s south of the member. But he’s north.

P. Milobar: Yes. I always have to say, after that gets said: the sunny side of the riding.

It gives me pleasure to rise today to Bill 18, to speak about the amendment to the human rights code. Certainly, I think it’s important to recognize, as we heard the previous speaker say, that protections are in place under the human rights code right now.

But when you’re talking about Indigenous peoples — who have, rightfully so, felt discriminated against because of actions taken against them for as long as B.C. has been around, frankly, and even before — it’s easy to see why amendments like this are important. Not just important to fulfil the language around UNDRIP that this chamber unanimously supported, but making sure that those actions actually are brought out in a tangible way.

When you’re part of a group of people who have felt that discrimination directly for so long, it’s important that, when you go to seek out help and recourse and guidance from government agencies and government tribunals and things of that nature, you feel that you are well represented when you’re looking through whether or not this is where you should be taking your complaint or your issue to try to get issues properly resolved.

When you can look into the Human Rights Act, if you are Indigenous, and actually see, with this amendment, that yes, indeed, Indigenous peoples will be taken seriously at the Human Rights Tribunal, that the actions taken will be dealt with, and they will be on equal footing as anyone else with issues around human rights complaints and violations…. It’s very important that people in those underserved communities and discriminated-against communities feel that they have that representation and that ease of access to government-type agencies.

Of course, we do have a very dark history as a province, as a country, around Indigenous peoples. This is yet another step along the long, long road to reconciliation. That is one fear we’ve heard time and again around UNDRIP from Indigenous leaders, once it was passed unanimously by this House: that government documents come and go, government words have come and gone, but real action is what is needed. So if there’s not the action to back up and start to implement some of the direction within UNDRIP, it becomes very problematic and very concerning for those Indigenous communities out there.

In the case of Kamloops, we have a very proud Indigenous history of trying to advocate and make meaningful change, with all sorts of governments within our Indigenous communities, back to Ottawa or British Columbia — those promises being made, and then promises either not actioned or broken completely. I think back to the signing of the Laurier memorial in Kamloops in 1910, 1911, and then no actual action taken on it. That is a sticking point for the Secwépemc Chiefs to this day, and rightfully so, because it was seen as, just now, yet another government promise with no actual tangible action behind the promise.

[3:00 p.m.]

When we look at Bill 18, we see, although it’s a very short bill, as we know — it’s only the one page; it’s only a couple of clauses — it’s a very important step forward for this chamber to take a step to actually show some tangible change being made as it relates to UNDRIP.

We, frankly, have seen, on many other bills, a lack of consultation with Indigenous nations moving forward, post UNDRIP implementation. So there’s a lot of work still to be done by this government to make sure that the guiding principles of UNDRIP are actually actioned in practice, not just spoken as hollow words in this chamber but actually followed through in a meaningful way.

We look forward to committee stage of this bill. We look forward to getting further understanding and a depth of understanding around what this change truly will mean for Indigenous peoples in our province around the human rights code and to making sure that that broader understanding is shared with the public, much as we saw with, I think, the very well-thought-out, engaging, back-and-forth discussion — clause by clause, in that case; obviously, with this bill, not as many clauses — when UNDRIP was brought forward in the first place.

All too often, I think, in this chamber, the back-and-forth questioning of a bill gets perceived as very political, and everything is politicized. Not every bill is that way. Sometimes it’s just making sure that the public has a broad understanding of what exactly is being passed into legislation, what is moving forward, what the ramifications of that mean and, most importantly, what the government intent and how they are interpreting this change would mean.

Ultimately, moving forward, if there is any type of court action or anything like that…. The courts often will go back to those debates and listen to what the government’s answers were to questions to get a better understanding of what the true intent and direction being set out by the government with any piece of legislation is.

It’s really important for the opposition to be able to take that time in committee stage and to fully canvass, regardless of length of bill, to make sure those important steps are understood. Now, I reference that because, unfortunately, we are now, with four days left in the legislative calendar, dealing with a bill at second reading. It is unfortunate that the legislation was not brought forward earlier.

Frankly, we have been waiting for what the legislative docket would look like from this government for quite some time. We will now have seven bills at committee stage at one point this week, in our last four days. We have four bills at second reading like this. That really does start to compress the ability for the opposition and, by extension, the public to get a full and broad and meaningful discussion and understanding of each piece of legislation that has a significant impact on a wide range of people.

This bill, obviously, is targeted directly to Indigenous communities and understandably so. Those questions that need to be asked and answered are nonetheless just as important and critical to get out there. So we look forward to committee stage of this bill. We look forward to hearing from other members, if they have thoughts on this bill at this stage.

We hope, genuinely, that there is enough time, in this week, to properly canvass all pieces of legislation, all four bills at second reading and all seven bills that are, ultimately, going to wind up at committee stage throughout the course of the next four days. Unfortunately, looking at the depth of a lot of these bills, this included — only two clauses but a very meaningful impact to people — I’m not sure that there will be enough time to do justice to the democratic process as it relates to dealing with legislation that’s been delayed for so long, to come forward.

I look forward to the committee stage on this bill.

B. Stewart: It’s a pleasure to rise in this House to speak about, albeit a simple one-page bill, something that has huge ramifications in terms of human rights in this province. It’s part of our duties as elected officials to make certain we’re standing up on behalf of Indigenous communities and are doing that.

I have to say that in my own community, I’ve watched many generations of people within the Westbank First Nation, part of the Syilx community and the traditional Okanagan bands, and how they have made progression and have become not only self-governed, the very first self-governed band in Canada; they’ve become entrepreneurial, and they have grown into a community that is very much a part and becoming more integrated and respected for their history and the past.

[3:05 p.m.]

I know that our country has a dark history when it comes to some of the treatment towards Indigenous peoples. We only found out earlier in this particular year, with the troubling discovery in the Tk’emlúps residential school area as well as many others across the country…. But I think the fact that we are moving ahead, not accepting of that but trying to find a respectful way to make certain that we deal with the injustices that may have been done and not necessarily…. We’re trying to make certain that we move ahead and empower Indigenous peoples.

I know that addressing that legacy involves a long journey of righting historical wrongs and ensuring equality for all who call this land their home. There are many — as we know, 203 First Nations just in British Columbia, many without treaties. It is important that we…. We owe our citizens an equal opportunity to a fair share of the wealth from this country and the provinces. It’s why every government, regardless of political stripe, has had that responsibility to uphold those laws.

I know that in my time in government, we very much worked to empower First Nations with community benefits agreements. I have to say that we did hundreds and hundreds of agreements in my time as both the minister and Member of the Legislative Assembly.

I guess one of the things, as we’ve moved along this continuum of trying to figure out how we do better, the four host First Nations, in 2009…. In your riding, Mr. Speaker, I believe just down off Georgia Street, we had the four host First Nations. It allowed the world to see what we were about as Canadians, in the sense that we were more than just trying to give them some sort of less important role. They were the host First Nations. It was their territories, etc., that we celebrated the Olympics on, and it was a big part of what happened with British Columbia.

I guess, subsequent to that, the government brought in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We brought that together. We universally supported that because of what it meant. It meant that we really needed to put those rights and considerations in front of decisions that we’re making every day here in this House, and has that been considered? I know it’s not perfect. Today there are many different things where consultation…. It’s very difficult to imagine: what does that actually mean?

I think recently we had First Nations, or currently we have amendments to a forests statutes act, and a limited amount of time for those to be properly considered and consulted. Some things could take many years to work out. I realize it’s not a perfect system, but it’s on a continuum of trying to move forward.

This legislation before us today seeks to expand on this legislation of UNDRIP, to further reconciliation by adding Indigenous identity as a protected group in the B.C. human rights code, fulfilling parts of the UNDRIP draft action plan. An obvious question in my mind after just last week, on Monday, having the Métis from British Columbia here in the Legislature and meeting with them…. I think it was celebrating Louis Riel’s birthday.

I think it’s really important that we do consider: are we bringing these other groups along that have a place in this space? I have to say that I was encouraged today because I had a meeting with the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, Kasari Govender. That was a human rights commissioner that was brought in with Bill 50, in November of 2018. I’m encouraged that the commissioner has gone ahead and set up offices in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, Prince George, Smithers.

[3:10 p.m.]

I think that one of the things that we heard in her presentation to the Finance and Government Services Committee today was the breadth of the approach that’s being taken on First Nations and Indigenous issues around human rights — where they haven’t been given that consideration and the attention that they perhaps should have or could have. I do think it’s important that that is happening. It’s happening as we speak. The wording in Bill 18 is very important about that.

I have to say that we can make the legal argument that they’re protected under the human rights legislation or human rights code that’s been in place for a long time in British Columbia. But clearly, the numbers speak to the fact that there do need to be changes in the way the government and people see Indigenous people in British Columbia. That’s one of the reasons why, I believe, the government has brought forward Bill 18.

I think there’s discrimination that we’ve seen visibly, in terms of reports such as In Plain Sight — where we found that a high percentage of Indigenous people who took part in the investigation reported experiencing discrimination in the system. We’ve heard other reports, in health care and other places, where it has been not particularly productive, and it has become a bit of a game, I guess, if you want to call it that.

Despite some of the steps I’ve mentioned, that we’ve moved forward in the past few decades, I think our society is still free from discrimination, as we’ve seen not only with Indigenous but other people that have been accused, in this province, of being of a lesser group. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a South Asian community, the Oriental communities, etc. I think that we really have to look broader. It’s important that we embrace the fact that we do have equity here in this province.

I think one of the things that we know…. We’ve seen it in the numbers, in the jobless numbers, in the fact that there are so many organizations, both private and public, that are desperate for new people. We are going to need more people that are coming from other walks of life. We need First Nations to be able to fill those positions. They’re particularly good at mining. I know that in Smithers, they have a small mining school, which is dominated by local First Nations.

At Okanagan College in the Okanagan, the population of First Nations is around 15 percent. These are way more than the local population. It’s the same at UBC Okanagan. The bottom line is that we need to make it so that there is an invisibility to where people have come from and where they fit in, etc. I think that that’s important.

I know that as elected officials, we commit to building full and equal opportunity and prosperity for everybody in British Columbia. I just want to maybe close with a comment that the Human Rights Commissioner mentioned in her reports today: “To the Indigenous peoples of this place we call B.C.: today we turn our minds to you and your ancestors. You have kept your unceded homelands strong. We are grateful to live and work here.”

I think it goes without saying that it shows her office’s commitment to trying to make these things right. I think, as this work started decades ago and continues to this day, it’s work that we’re all committed to, that we all support and that we all want to take action towards. We have a long journey still to go, and we must continue that journey in good faith together.

J. Tegart: It is a pleasure to get up today and speak to Bill 18. It is a one-page bill but an incredibly important bill. Everyone in this House made a commitment to UNDRIP and passed a bill, with great celebration and great ceremony, in this House. Now it is our job to put those words into action.

[3:15 p.m.]

I think there have been many occasions over the last year where there have been questions as to whether our words are true, whether we have the commitment to put them into action in this House. But as I look at this one-page bill, I think it’s a tiny step on the journey towards where we need to be to recognize First Nations, in a meaningful way, in our province.

As a grandmother of First Nations children, I have great faith in the future. I know that the First Nations people are a patient people. They’ve waited a long time — a long time — to be in this place and to have us recognize how important they are to our province. I want to acknowledge that patience. We sometimes are slow learners, and just this bill today — to recognize, in the Human Rights Act — is so incredibly important as we go on this journey.

I served many, many years as a school board person. We worked very hard to include First Nations culture and First Nations history in the curriculum in schools. We built local education agreements. We did everything in our power to put those words into action, in partnership with our First Nations communities. Yet still today, we’re dealing with bullying, racism, misunderstanding — trying very hard in partnerships, still, to make schools a welcoming place for our First Nations kids, and also to partner with First Nations who have chosen to take their children and put together an education system that meets their needs.

I can remember being very, very concerned that we didn’t see very many First Nations teachers in our schools, and that First Nations children needed to see First Nations teachers, to see that possibility and to see that someone who lived where they lived was a teacher. As I learned the history — the history of education in Canada, the history of First Nations education — my understanding grew.

We have a lot of work to do around the history of residential schools, and the sad discovery that was discovered in Kamloops this summer. It has been said in this chamber that many people think it’s a new discovery, but First Nations people will tell you that it’s not new to them. They knew; they told; they shared. They were traumatized by it. I think that there are times in history when we are so ready to acknowledge and to change. I hope that we are at that time in history. The UN declaration was a great start, but we have a lot of work to do.

We not only have challenges within our education system; I think we have challenges across government. As we continue to commit to right First Nations and to reflect First Nations in our lawmaking, I think we continue to strengthen the words that were spoken into actions. We have children in care. I have over 30 First Nations bands in my riding, and children in care is something we have talked about for all the time I’ve served here. The understanding of the culture of First Nations communities and how First Nations care for their children is so needed as we set up systems.

[3:20 p.m.]

We need to work in partnership, and respectful partnership, on how we reflect the culture in which those children grow up and are loved and are supported. We have lots of work to do in that area.

I think there are a great many people in this province waiting for our actions to reflect our words. We are great talkers. I think everyone in the room will say that. But I can tell you I listen with great interest to the member for Saanich North and the Islands, to the member for Skeena, who have the lived experience. It is so important for all of us to listen and internalize and understand how difficult it is sometimes for people who live in different situations and different cultures to be a part of who we are as a governing body.

I thank those members for being a voice that will never be quiet, that will never be silenced. How important their representation is in this chamber.

We have an obligation, as I said, under the UN declaration. I can tell you I am committed, as a part of the opposition, to ensure we move forward in a meaningful way, that we make the changes that reinforce and build on a commitment that was made in this chamber. It was historic. I was proud to be part of a government that was moving forward in such a meaningful way. But again, thank goodness First Nations people are patient. I expected a little bit quicker reaction, a little bit more action, as we moved forward with the declaration.

I can tell you, as opposition, we are committed to ensuring that government lives by the UN declaration, that government consults in a meaningful way. I think we have all heard of experiences where it has been words but no action. It has been fanfare but no action. It has been celebrations but little action. It is our job as opposition to hold government to account, and I make that commitment to First Nations people in British Columbia.

We have the obligation to represent everybody. But the richness of British Columbia is based on who lives here and how we acknowledge their culture, what they bring to us as a province, and in particular for First Nations people. I have been welcomed in so many communities and been brought to tears so many times as we learned some of the stories and as we participated in some of the celebrations and some of the ceremonies. I have to say that it is with great pleasure that I watch Elders today watch their young dance and celebrate and understand their culture and the strength that that culture brings to them.

It is a pleasure today to see the beginnings of action in regards to our UN declaration and in regards to human rights. As was said by, I do believe, my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands, it’s been a long time coming. But we are here today. I am pleased to be a part of a government that will support this. Thanks to the government for bringing this bill forward.

[3:25 p.m.]

F. Donnelly: I, too, would like to stand in full support of Bill 18, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2021. The government recognizes that Indigenous people face discrimination at disproportionately higher levels. This is due to systemic racism, discrimination and intergenerational trauma Indigenous peoples have experienced and continue to experience. Yet in a recent report put out by the Human Rights Tribunal, Indigenous complaints continue to be underrepresented.

So Bill 18, while it is brief, is very important. It seeks to enhance and clarify existing protections for Indigenous people under the code. Currently under the B.C. rights code, implicitly, it protects individuals based on prohibitions against discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin and religion. These amendments that the Attorney General has introduced will add a protection or protected ground of Indigenous identity to explicitly recognize this protection against the discrimination for Indigenous people.

In addition, Bill 18 will add a definition of “Indigenous” which was co-developed with Indigenous people and provides clarity. By Indigenous, we mean the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people of Canada. I just want to add my support to this important bill.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Attorney General to move second reading of the debate.

Hon. D. Eby: I thank all members who spoke to the bill. I know that there was a discussion that we would each put up a single speaker. Members felt moved to speak, and I’m glad for that. I heard the member from Kamloops suggest that maybe there wasn’t time to discuss this, but I disagree, and I am glad that members found the time to prepare some thoughts and to speak on this. This is an important thing.

The nice thing about it was that there’s lots of…. “I’d like government to move faster; I think government needs to make sure that this is real outside the House” — all things I think we can all agree on. So universal support for this. There’s some degree of pride, I think, we can all take that we’re the first province to directly include Indigenous identity in our human rights code.

We won’t be the last. I agree strongly with the member for Saanich North and the Islands — disturbing that it took this long but necessary for us to do.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 18, Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading of Bill 29, Interpretation Act.

BILL 29 — INTERPRETATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

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

Two years ago this House unanimously passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. In doing so, we reaffirmed our government’s commitment to advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and we committed to take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The Interpretation Amendment Act, 2021, represents an important step forward on these commitments. This bill proposes two key provisions: an affirmation of our constitutional obligations to Indigenous peoples through a non-derogation clause that will apply across the entire statute book and a requirement that provincial laws and regulations be read so as to be consistent with the UN declaration.

[3:30 p.m.]

The first provision responds to long-standing calls from Indigenous peoples, including the First Nations Leadership Council and the Alliance of B.C. Modern Treaty Nations, for a positively framed, universal, non-derogation clause and fulfils a commitment made in the draft action plan under the Declaration Act.

This clause underscores and reiterates our commitment to upholding constitutional principles, and including it in the Interpretation Act will reduce the need for non-derogation clauses to be included in individual statutes. While this clause doesn’t, and really shouldn’t, change the province’s obligations under the constitution — we have to follow the constitution — it does serve as an important reminder of the rights of Indigenous peoples in our province.

Like the Declaration Act was two years ago, the second provision in this act is novel in Canada. It takes another step forward on the alignment of laws by making it explicit that the province’s preferred approach to interpretation of provincial acts and regulations requires consistency with the UN declaration.

This clause must be understood in the context of the Interpretation Act and its role in modern rules of statutory interpretation. The purpose of the Interpretation Act is to provide direction and assistance for the interpretation of laws where their meaning is not clear. As such, the proposed UN declaration clause advances the interpretation of the laws of British Columbia in alignment with the declaration, but does not itself incorporate the rights and principles in the UN declaration into the laws of B.C. directly or give it constitutional status.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

In other words, if a court considers a provincial law to be inconsistent with the UN declaration, this amendment does not allow the court to read in, read down or find that law to be of no force or effect. This is consistent with the limits of the Interpretation Act, but also with the understanding that the substantive work of amending existing laws in our province, or introducing new laws to be consistent with the UN declaration, must be done in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples, in accordance with section 3 of the Declaration Act.

While the UN declaration clause does not provide authority to rewrite legislation, it does provide direction on how to resolve ambiguities in the law. The inclusion of this clause in the Interpretation Act is an important signal, consistent with sections 1(4) and 2(a) of the Declaration Act, which requires consideration of the UN declaration and directs those who interpret provincial acts and regulations to interpretations that are consistent with it. It does this in a manner that is within the limits of the Interpretation Act.

I’m pleased that we are taking this important step of aligning the Interpretation Act with the UN declaration as part of our commitment to the alignment of laws under section 3 of the Declaration Act.

M. de Jong: Another, I think, significant contribution to the statutory body of law, largely for reasons laid out by the Attorney. I was pleased to hear that he spent a little bit of time in his remarks pointing out some of the things that the amendment to the Interpretation Act will accomplish and, also, some of the things that it will not accomplish, because I think accuracy is important on a matter like this, which carries with it both a symbolic significance, which isn’t to be dismissed or diminished, and a substantive significance as well.

The symbolic significance bears consideration in the piece of legislation that is the blueprint for the Interpretation Act, which is the blueprint for the manner in which legislation is to be interpreted — hence the name, Interpretation Act. Very early in that act, there will be reference to the UN declaration.

When we get to committee, I’m going to ask the Attorney to spend a few moments to make clear the reference to the act — that, is the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act — because my understanding is that that is significant because we are referencing the schedule in that act, which is itself the declaration.

[3:35 p.m.]

Some people might be a little bit confused about the reference to the act as opposed to the declaration itself, but the declaration, of course, exists as a schedule to that earlier piece of legislation.

On the substantive side, and this does get fairly technical in terms of statutory drafting, my impression — I think the Attorney touched on this, but we’ll clarify it a little bit more when we get to the committee stage — is that whilst this becomes a lens through which all legislation needs to be examined and analyzed, considered and interpreted, laws and regulations that are clearly inconsistent or that remain inconsistent with the UN declaration do remain in effect, pursuant to section 2 of the Interpretation Act. That is the provision dealing with contrary intentions.

I think the Attorney was careful to make a point that this is not a constitutional instrument that can be used to strike down laws that are presently on the books and would appear, on their face, to be inconsistent with the UN declaration.

In those cases, the onus will shift to the government or will be there for the government to take the necessary steps to prepare and table, in the case of primary legislation, amendments in this chamber for consideration and passage; or in the case of regulations that are, on the face, clearly inconsistent with the declaration, they will need to effect the changes to those regulations — which, by definition, can happen by order-in-council.

There is much work to be done, and I don’t think the government or the Attorney General would dispute that. This tool for statutory interpretation, whilst helpful for reasons I’ve just alluded to, also highlights the need for that work to proceed quickly to avoid the kind of uncertainty that may plague statutory decision-makers and those to whom the decisions of statutory decision-makers apply.

But having chosen to introduce it in the Legislature, having chosen to unanimously endorse the adoption of the declaration in the way that it did a couple of years ago and the provisions of that legislation, it is a step that I think, again, will enjoy broad support within the chamber.

Again, for the Attorney’s benefit, in the committee stage, we may want to refer back somewhat to some of the discussion that took place around the passage of the earlier legislation, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

I think it is fair to observe that while that was a lengthy debate, it was also a thoughtful one, and some of the scenarios and some of the circumstances to which this changed legislative framework will apply…. It may be worthwhile to consider, following passage of this bill, how those provisions will work together to impact the application and interpretation of statute in British Columbia.

With that, hon. Speaker, I will listen carefully to any other members that seek to participate in the debate.

[3:40 p.m.]

A. Olsen: I appreciate the opportunity to stand and take my place in second reading debate on Bill 29, the Interpretation Amendment Act. This goes back, for me, to when we were debating Bill 4. It’s an indication how long this year has felt, but I think that that was in the spring of this year.

Bill 4 was a firearms act, and there were aspects of that bill that I raised as problematic, largely due to the fact that my father, Carl Olsen, spent a decade of his life defending his treaty-protected rights, of the Douglas treaty, from a Wildlife Act–related arrest that happened. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Now, the instance in this case…. It was a new piece of legislation, and I recognize that one of the remedies of what we faced back in the spring is being solved here, so I appreciate that. In the conversation that I had with the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, who…. At the committee stage of that debate, we had a long exchange — it might have been an hour, an hour and a half — on this point.

The point I was making was that it was my hope that, after going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, we weren’t going to be creating another law in this that would potentially threaten the rights that my father had successfully defended and, frankly, have yet to be fully realized on behalf of the hunters of the Douglas treaty First Nations communities.

The Wildlife Act is proving to be difficult enough. We have another W̱SÁNEĆ hunter, a member, a relative of ours, who is yet again in front of the courts, picked up on a similar hunting charge, even though his rights are protected by the exact same treaty that allowed him to hunt and fish as formerly.

The exchange between the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General and myself was really around an opportunity for me to get a much deeper understanding as to how the new clause in that Bill 4 was going to potentially impact the hunting rights of Douglas treaty First Nations people. At that time, the minister suggested that we would be seeing an amendment to the Interpretation Act, so today I stand with gratitude that here we are with that amendment. It didn’t take years. It took just a few months.

I can understand that the implications of this change need to be looked at. It’s a necessary change. We made a commitment to align all the laws and statutes in this province with the Declaration Act, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. This is an important step in that direction.

I think, you know, when you take a look at some of the acts that we have…. You take the Mines Act, for example. That is a very, very old piece of legislation, and there is no doubt that that legislation is not going to be…. The full amendments that might need to be done to that act are not addressed through here, but certainly, there will be aspects of it that might be.

Having this laid out, and this amendment, will certainly be helpful in that work that we have committed to: ensuring that all of the laws of this Legislature — all the laws that are on the books and that will be on the books — align with the commitments that we made under the Declaration Act and our commitments in section 35 of the Constitution Act nationally.

With that, I’ll take my seat and just thank the government for doing this important work. I look forward to the committee stage and eventually standing with the government in support of this legislation.

HÍSW̱ḴE.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the minister wishes to close the debate.

Hon. D. Eby: I thank the members for their thoughtful comments.

With that, I move second reading.

[3:45 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Always judicious with his words, the Attorney.

Members, we already have the question, I believe. The question is second reading of Bill 29.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 29, Interpretation Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading of Bill 30, Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act.

A. Olsen: If I may ask for a two- to five-minute recess so that my colleague can come in. We need to switch Houses. She’ll be speaking to this bill.

Deputy Speaker: She needs to be here to listen to the minister introducing it?

A. Olsen: Presumably. Two minutes?

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

The House recessed from 3:46 p.m. to 3:48 p.m.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

BILL 30 — ATTORNEY GENERAL STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

Deputy Speaker: Attorney, if you’d like to introduce second reading, please.

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

Hon. Speaker, as you know, British Columbians continue to persevere in their ongoing efforts against COVID-19 and to keep our communities as safe as possible, but the fact is that the pandemic is still not over. There’s a continued need for certain orders and regulations that were made earlier in the pandemic and that are still playing a valuable role for British Columbians in reducing the COVID-19 risk.

These orders and regulations do a range of specific things, such as allowing for remote witnessing of the signing of key legal documents, allowing the courts to specify that certain court proceedings can be conducted remotely and supporting provincial health officer orders that impose conditions on the number of long-term-care facilities staff are permitted to work at, in order to help reduce COVID-19 transmission between facilities.

[3:50 p.m.]

To ensure critically important orders and regulations can continue for the upcoming year, the bill would amend the COVID-19 Related Measures Act to change the sunset or automatic repeal date for that act to December 31, 2022. The bill would also amend the COVID-19 Related Measures Act to add authority to repeal the act by regulation at a date earlier than December 31, 2022.

With these amendments, government is seeking to continue keeping British Columbians safe in the upcoming year while also committing that government will repeal the act in the event there is no further need for the COVID-19 Related Measures Act before its scheduled sunset date. I know I’m not alone in hoping the pandemic will abate and that the act will not be needed for all of 2022, but it is difficult to deny that the act is needed now and for the immediately foreseeable future.

The amendments in this bill also make changes to the Judicial Compensation Act, the JCA. The amendments are procedural in nature, and the changes will streamline the judicial compensation process, leading to a timelier and more efficient process for setting and implementing changes to compensation for the Provincial Court judges and judicial justices.

The independence of the judiciary from government and private actors is a fundamental principle of the Canadian constitution. The judiciary must both be and be seen to be independent. Government emphasizes its respect for and its commitment to the principle of judicial independence both in its substance and its spirit.

The Supreme Court of Canada has affirmed that judicial remuneration must not become the subject of negotiation between the judiciary and government. To that end, in British Columbia, judicial salaries, benefits and allowances are established every three years through a process that incorporates an independent judicial compensation commission. Government and the judiciary make submissions to the commission. The commission, in turn, has a statutory mandate to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly regarding compensation matters after considering the statutory factors set out in the JCA.

The constitutionally required Judicial Compensation Commission, JCC, is a five-person independent body that is currently appointed every three years to make recommendations concerning the remuneration, allowances and benefits of Provincial Court judges and judicial justices for the following three years. This bill proposes to change the JCC cycle from every three to every four years, leading to greater efficiency and conserving the resources of both the judiciary and government, who are required to participate in each commission.

As a result of the changes, future commissions will be appointed every four years and will make recommendations for compensation of Provincial Court judges and judicial justices for each year of the extended four-year cycle. In preparing their reports, future commissions will continue to consider the factors set out in the JCA, including the fiscal position of the government over the extended four-year period.

The bill also proposes a simplified process for government’s response to the commission’s recommendations. At present, the only option to respond to JCC recommendations is through the Legislative Assembly, even where government accepts the recommendations in full. That comprehensive process enables the Legislative Assembly to debate whether to accept JCC recommendations or to reject and substitute different compensations.

The proposed amendments will allow the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to accept JCC recommendations on behalf of the government, through an order-in-council, where all of the JCC’s recommendations are accepted by government. This will simplify and improve the timeliness of accepting and implementing JCC recommendations in those particular circumstances. If, however, government does not accept all of the recommendations through an order-in-council within a set timeline, the JCC report and recommendations will be considered through the existing process of the Legislative Assembly.

Finally, the amendments will defer the appointment and reporting of the next commission for a brief period. Currently the JCA requires that the next commission be appointed on or before March 1, 2022. This bill defers the appointment and the statutory timelines for the commission’s functions for six months, to allow the parties to consider the recent B.C. Court of Appeal decision respecting the 2016 JCC and allow for next steps in the legal process, which will inform and guide the party’s approach to the next JCC.

M. de Jong: With respect to Bill 30, broadly speaking, two areas of relevance. One is the extension of the COVID-19 Related Measures Act. I’m going to say this because I think there may be a few other members of the assembly who will touch upon this as it relates to their particular circumstances closer to home.

[3:55 p.m.]

I don’t think the Attorney and government should anticipate huge pushback with the notion that COVID is still a reality on the landscape and that there are measures for which it is justified to ensure that the statutory authority is extended so that they can continue to exist.

Insofar as the government is seeking that authority to extend beyond the original sunset timeline that would end this calendar year, I think the Attorney, both at second reading and in the committee stage, should anticipate some observations and questions about some of those orders that derive their authority from the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, which the government now purports to extend, and where some of those orders are seen to be causing more difficulties than offering solutions. I think you’ll hear from some of my colleagues on that point. You’ll hear on that point both in second reading and likely at the committee stage.

I’ll turn my attention now to the second group of amendments, which relate to the Judicial Compensation Act, and I’ll say this to the Attorney. The decision to shift to a four-year cycle, as opposed to a three-year cycle, I and the opposition are supportive of. I think the Attorney will recognize that this has turned out to be a fairly lucrative area for litigation over the years, as it relates to recommendations and the response from governments of all political stripe, and the enthusiasm with which those responses have been litigated.

I don’t know this for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one, and possibly two, past recommendations are still wheeling their way through the courts at this point, at various appellate levels. So three to four years — not sure that will eliminate the litigation. It will make it just a little bit less frequent along the way. There is a transition measure associated with that that, again, would seem to be logical and be necessary to effect that transition.

The only thing I take issue with…. I don’t want to leave the impression that I think that the pillars of democracy are about to fall because of it. But the Attorney said something that I thought was important. He, not surprisingly, commented on the importance of the independence of the judiciary and the separation between the three branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial. I know the judiciary frequently doesn’t like being considered a branch of government. Of course, they are, but a very independent one, and focused on the interpretation of laws and statutes. They have a unique role in that regard.

I get the very limited basis upon which the executive council, under these amendments, would be entitled to facilitate implementation of compensation recommendations. It is restricted, under these amendments, to circumstances in which the executive council accepts, in totality, the recommendations from the independent commission.

I also understand that in circumstances in the past, where the report is laid before this chamber…. Somewhat to my surprise, with the help of the Attorney General’s staff, we determined that in 2007, I think, a report came before the assembly, and the government of the day, of which I was a member, accepted the recommendations, did nothing, and the recommendations were implemented.

I think my point is that it was still an act of the legislative branch of government. In that case, the act was to do nothing, but it was still an act of the legislative branch. There are perhaps three people. — or maybe, as it turns out, only one person — in the world that might find that important, but in circumstances where now it would be an order-in-council, it seems to me that that tradition is changing.

[4:00 p.m.]

It would be the executive branch of government that is now setting the compensation, albeit on the strength of a recommendation it removed from an entirely independent panel, but it would be an act of the executive branch. I expect the Attorney has considered that and is comfortable that that is not an egregious overlay of the two or three branches of government. ‘

I find it curious because I’m not sure, at the end of the day, that it accomplishes very much or is necessary in a case where the recommendations have been accepted, and the matter is laid before the assembly. Nothing happens, except that after a period of — whatever it was — two weeks of inaction, they are deemed to take effect, but they are deemed to take effect because of a decision of the legislative branch of government.

This would represent a change, in that regard — not the most heinous act of government I can consider or describe but perhaps a moderately significant one — that changes the dynamic just a little bit.

Those are my comments with respect to second reading on the bill, for the Attorney’s consideration and government’s consideration.

S. Furstenau: Happy to stand up today to speak to Bill 30, Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act.

I’m going to start in reverse order and follow on the comments of the member for Abbotsford West, which seems to be becoming a habit for me in this chamber. He was trying to count how many people might be concerned — he can add me to the list; two — about this notion of the executive branch versus legislative branch and who is effectively receiving the recommendations from the JCC for judicial compensation.

I want to add to what he was just talking about, seeing as it might be a bit inside baseball, but I think the piece that he didn’t mention that I’d like to add is transparency for the public, which is that when something happens in here, the public has much easier access to understanding what happened. If a report is tabled in here, if recommendations are tabled in here, those become part of a public record that is easily accessible for the public. Whereas the executive branch, the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, is a much less clear access for the public.

I think that is an important part of, maybe, what the member from Abbotsford West might be considering as part of his noting of this. But for me, it is that piece of transparency and the role that the Legislature plays in our democracy writ large, which is…. We’re here, on the record debating, tabling reports, receiving, hearing information.

That’s very different from what happens in the executive branch, which is behind closed doors. We see the results of those. We can find out about those decisions later on, but they’re not being debated in the public realm.

I think, and we have said this once or twice before, that transparency really is the backbone of a healthy democracy. So it may seem like not a significant shift, but when it’s added to a group of other changes that move more and more of the work and the business out of this chamber and into the hands of the executive, then I think we should be concerned. I will go back to the beginning of the bill, and then I’ll come back to this at the end in my comments here.

The bill makes changes to two pieces of legislation. I want to speak now to the first piece, which is related to the COVID-19 Related Measures Act.

[4:05 p.m.]

When this act was first introduced in June of 2020, we had only been experiencing a global pandemic for a couple of months at that time. I don’t think we could have imagined what lay ahead. I don’t think we really wanted to imagine. However, I was imagining.

At the time, I rose and spoke to the act. What I said that day is in Hansard, on the record, but I think it bears repeating, given where we are at this moment.

I said that the Minister of Public Safety has talked about how the Emergency Program Act is being rewritten and said that the COVID-19 Related Measures Act is not an indication of where the Emergency Program Act will end up, and “I think it’s important to step back…to talk about the rewriting of the Emergency Program Act.”

The Minister of Public Safety has pointed out that the Emergency Program Act is an old act based on the War Measures Act, “because we are in a time in history where we are actually going to see increasing numbers of emergencies, not just earthquakes…which we have no control over. But…increasing numbers of emergencies because of our actions as humans on this planet.”

This is what I said on June 24, 2020. Again:

“We’ve seen historic fire seasons in British Columbia, several in the last number of years. We are seeing flooding events that are unprecedented. We know that these disasters are very much related to climate change and the impacts of climate change.

“Right now we are in the midst of a global pandemic, COVID-19, which is yet another zoonotic disease that has emerged in our global community, along with SARS and MERS and Ebola, all of which are zoonotic diseases — diseases which have transferred from animals to humans. The epidemiologists have been, for many years, identifying that we’ve indeed created the conditions that make these diseases more prevalent….

“So of course we need to be looking at our Emergency Program Act here in British Columbia, and we have to constantly be asking ourselves: how do we balance our capacity to deal with emergencies with our absolute commitment to ensuring that our institutions and democracy are in no way eroded in the course of these emergencies and our responses to them?”

That’s the end of my quote from June of 2020.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I am paying attention, and I think that that is what we all need to be doing. It is a little surprising to read that, but in the moment we’re in, with the floods and potentially yet another weather event on our doorstep, and we are still seeing the impacts of COVID now. I do agree that it’s necessary that we extend the deadline for an expiry on the COVID-19 Related Measures Act. We are in overlapping emergencies, and they are interconnected. It’s something to say — that this government has even itself indicated that it’s been too busy reacting to emergencies to actually table the new Emergency Program Act that we need.

In relation to the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, I think that what we have to recognize is we keep extending these statutes and these abilities to respond to these emergencies in an ongoing way, but it is going to be more and more essential that we are moving out of a reactive and into a proactive role.

The piece — again, I’ve spoken to this — about the amendments to extend the cycle within the Judicial Compensation Commissions and make recommendations on how justices and judges should be remunerated. It’s not a huge change. But the thing, again, that does concern me is that the reports of the Judicial Compensation Commissions will no longer have to be tabled in the Legislature.

As I said earlier in my comments, once tabled here, they are publicly accessible. They are seen by the public and recognized…. There is a process for the democratically elected assembly to have in this, as opposed to the executive branch of government having the ability to move forward with this without bringing that into the Legislature.

I look forward to the committee stage of this, although we are doing a lot of bills right now. We’ll see how that goes. My colleague and I are bouncing from House to House at the moment.

[4:10 p.m.]

But overall, I think that this bill brings to mind and should bring to all of our minds the need to continue to prioritize transparency as well as proactive work on our legislative agenda here so that we can, ideally, get out of the reactive mode that we have found ourselves in many times in this province in the last year and a half.

M. Morris: British Columbia is going through difficult times and has gone through difficult times now for a couple of years with COVID, and now we’re faced with other challenges. But looking at the northern region, the Northern Health area in my riding and extending north, the impact that not only the devastation that we’ve seen in the last few days in the Lower Mainland particularly, but the impacts that it’s had on the supply chains affecting businesses throughout Prince George and through­out the province is hitting businesses very hard that are already hurting.

What we’ve been faced with in the North is the circuit breaker grants…. All the aids that businesses were receiving up until recent months in the province here are not forthcoming any more, and this is affecting businesses significantly. I’m speaking more to the COVID-19 portion of this particular bill.

Northern Health has just extended, indefinitely, some fairly prominent restrictions on activities throughout Northern Health. It’s affected the businesses right across the North to a significant degree, more so than probably in other areas of the province. But it’s also affected a number of other things across the North here. My office has received quite a few inquiries, quite a few complaints, from constituents — I know they’re echoed throughout northern British Columbia — from businesses, from organizations like the performing arts.

We have Theatre NorthWest in Prince George that put on some fabulous plays and events that are restricted to 50 people or less. They can’t make a go of it with that, and they’ve already endured a couple of years of COVID-19 and the restrictions placed on them.

When we see sporting events that are allowed to take place with no masks and everybody enjoying the event and we don’t see equal considerations for events like theatre, like the performing arts with the Prince George Symphony, where people have the opportunity to mask up and attend these events, yet there’s no mention in this particular bill or there’s no intention of government to provide any further assistance to these kinds of functions, to the performing arts.

I think government needs to take a close look at the damage that is happening in northern British Columbia as a result of these very restrictive measures by Northern Health that have been extended indefinitely. They should be addressed either under the COVID-19 statutes or some other measures that need to be implemented here before we lose a lot of these fine organizations that we have, not only in Prince George but I’m sure throughout the Northern Health region of the province here, and provide some assistance to our businesses that are suffering immensely from these restrictions and suffering the added damage that has been caused by the supply chain issues throughout the province here.

Even though the COVID-19 Related Measures Act has an end date here, that end date is coming sooner than later to businesses across northern British Columbia. I don’t think that a lot of them will be able to function much beyond perhaps Christmas of this year, let alone Christmas of next year. Government needs to consider that. They need to look at the performing arts. They need to look at businesses. They need to look at everything they can do under the COVID-19 Related Measures Act to provide some assistance for the folks that are out there.

M. Bernier: I, too, would like just a few moments to continue on with a similar train of thought as my colleague from Prince George–Mackenzie before me.

[4:15 p.m.]

For the Attorney, I’m letting him know I’m speaking to the COVID-19 Related Measures Act portion of this bill and, really, the impact that it’s having and the discrepancies, I guess, that I just want to highlight.

Let me back it up for a moment to say that we all — all parties in this House — understand and understood the pressure that the people of British Columbia were under, and businesses, and the fact that government needed to step up and try to have supports. This is why, when we came to this House for almost $8 billion worth of financial supports through different programs, it passed unanimously. It was not a party issue, a political issue. This was about working together during the start and the process, as COVID was unfolding in the province, to make sure that supports were there for struggling families, struggling employers.

As my colleague mentioned, though, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel for many people in the province. We’re all thankful for that. It would be nice if that light was a bit brighter and was a lot closer. I don’t think anybody in this House knows exactly when we’ll be at the end.

We are now having discussions about what the next steps are. To have extensions put in around the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, we need to be sensitive to the fact that that now is giving false hope, because government has not followed up with the supports. It’s one thing to say that we’re going to have the measures act in place, because we all understand that we’re not quite through this yet, but it’s another thing to follow it up by saying: “And this is what we’re going to do to help you.” That piece is missing.

The Premier has said, even when we talked about the Northern Health aspects, the circuit breaker for Northern Health, that businesses and people would still have opportunities to access programs. He’s quoted as saying that. The problem and the reality is that there are actually no programs out there. There was no continuation for programs.

In fact, the circuit breaker grant closed June 4. The small and medium-sized business grant closed July 2. The launch online grant ended September 30. So right now there are no grants or supports out there directed to help people who are struggling.

Here’s one of the biggest challenges. Northern Health, under the circuit breaker announcement, and as of, I believe, yesterday or the day before, just followed through to say that it is going to continue. We thought there was going to be an end date for the circuit breaker for the North. Our vaccine rates, thankfully, have gone up. We’re not quite to where the provincial average is, but we are seeing increases. We’re over 70 percent, I think now, in the Peace region collectively, which is where we were all asked to try to get to when this started. We’re there.

One of the biggest challenges we’re faced with, with the circuit breaker extension that Northern Health, through the guidance and advice…. Obviously, this comes from the province. It’s not Northern Health directly. This does not have an end date. So there is no light. It’s just a long tunnel. Nobody knows how we’re going to get through this. Because of that, it has put huge hardship, huge stress and negative impacts on the people in my region.

Let me say that businesses…. Let’s talk about the restaurant sector first. The restaurant sector understands. They are doing what they can to not only follow the rules but to try to help us all collectively get through this.

[4:20 p.m.]

In doing so, we’re hearing stories of restaurants in my riding — I know my other colleague to the north of me is going to speak as well and will have very similar stories — that have lost anywhere between 70 and 80 percent of their revenue, their bottom line, and are now being told that there is no end in sight but also no supports from government.

We need to do better. This is not just employers. These are the people that work in these facilities. We need to remember what these small businesses do. It’s not just employ people. It’s not just provide services. But they’re also the same groups that our not-for-profits tap on the shoulder when they need help. When the hockey team is looking for sponsorship or when the Cancer Society is doing a run in the region, who do they go to? And who are the people who usually step up? It’s our small businesses, and a lot of those are our restaurants.

The spinoff effect and the negative impact to small communities are huge. None of them are asking for a free ride, but they’re asking for government to recognize that they need help. Earlier this year, and last fall, when we saw the impacts it was having on a provincial level, when we brought in a circuit breaker at a provincial level, we collectively said: “Yes, we need help.” Why would that be any different now?

It maybe is not affecting a lot of the government MLAs anymore in their ridings, but it’s affecting 60 percent of the province. Now, there are regional differences in different parts of Northern Health. I’ll say that. But Northern Health covers 60 percent of the province, and there are direct impacts through the circuit breaker at different levels throughout Northern Health. My colleague from Prince George–Mackenzie said that we need to recognize the long-term effects. Definitely. But in the short-term, if we do not have supports and we do not recognize this, I fear that some of these businesses are not going to make Christmas.

In a small community like Chetwynd or Tumbler Ridge that only has two or three restaurants, if they lose one of two restaurants, they might never come back. That is a huge, massive hole for a small community. Not to downplay where we’re standing right now, but if Victoria were unfortunate enough to lose one or two restaurants, I’ll bet you most the people in this House couldn’t even point to where they are. A small community does. That is the lifeline, in a lot of ways, for a small community.

What we’re asking for is the recognition that if we’re going to have no end date, which is already hard for certainty for our businesses, there has to be at least be some hope. So if we’re going to be extending the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, where are we having that discussion around the supports? I look to the Attorney sitting at the cabinet table, who has this bill on the floor, and the Minister of Jobs to understand, when they’re at the cabinet table, that they need to also be recognizing that there are impacts to the rest of the province as well.

I know that the Minister of Jobs was quoted as saying: “Look, we want to have supports there, and we’re going to make sure that we have supports there.” I just haven’t seen them yet. So I implore and I ask, again, the government. This is not something where we can be burying our head in the sand. We cannot be taking our time. Every day that goes by is another day that we have a chance of the unfortunate situation of losing a business, losing an employer, which affects communities and affects families.

So again, if we are going to extend, I understand the reason for doing that. Not everybody is happy about it. Not everybody will understand it. But in this House, we understand that we’re not through this yet, and we need to collectively find a path.

[4:25 p.m.]

But I am asking this government that they need to do better. They need to have supports. I do not want to see an employer leave my community. I do not want to see families not be able to put food on their table at Christmas because they just lost their job as a restaurant shut down. So there is an opportunity for this government to step up, to do better, to not wait until the budget. This needs to be dealt with now, and we need help for the people in northern British Columbia.

K. Greene: I’m pleased to speak to this today. This bill extends COVID measures. As we all know, we’re still in COVID. We’re in here with masks on for a reason. I know British Columbians are tired. I know that it has been an incredibly difficult year. We’re adding layers with the most recent crisis, with the atmospheric river. We never could have contemplated the layers of emergency that we are having to deal with. British Columbians are doing a fantastic job.

This bill is going to extend the COVID measures to make life easier for British Columbians. They’re going to be able to continue to have virtual court proceedings so that they can access those critical services that they need virtually. They’ll be able to have remote witnessing of important documents. Again, this is a service that is so important for British Columbians to be able to continue to stay safe and be able to easily access resources in this incredibly difficult time.

I’d also like to say how important it is that we extend these COVID measures, because they provide a lot of support for the public health officer and public health. It’s so important, even as we’re dealing with these layers of crises, that we stay on course for protecting British Columbians, for making life easier for them and supporting them in getting the services that they need in their communities.

We never would have contemplated that we would be here a year ago when we were in COVID. The place that we’re at right now, I think we can really say, is a testament to British Columbians and how much they see the value in getting vaccinated, the value in following public health measures like masks, washing your hands, staying home when you’re sick. Having the COVID measures extended by one year ensures that British Columbians can continue to easily follow those measures and that British Columbia’s government is being responsive to that need to have that service uninterrupted.

I’m very pleased to support this bill. I think British Columbians are going to be happy that they aren’t dealing with yet another change during this difficult time and that they can continue to be responsive to the pandemic and look after their community in every way that they need.

D. Davies: It gives me pleasure to talk just for a moment on Bill 30, the Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2021. I want to thank the member and recognize the member for Richmond-Steveston for her comments.

A couple of things ring out. We are doing this to help people. I don’t doubt that extending these COVID measures, as the bill states, is certainly out to do that, but we are not all in the same situation in the province of British Columbia. As we’ve seen, myself and the member for Peace River South get on an airplane, or if we can drive, maybe sometimes we drive down. But we leave our regions, which are in a different state right now, as are other regions.

Northern Health and certain areas of the Interior are under different health orders than the rest of the province. In many cases, things are almost back to normal in the Lower Mainland, in Victoria. I’m going to try and point out a few of those things, because I think it’s important for government to understand the challenges that we are facing in these areas that have these additional circuit breaker measures.

It’s hard to believe March 18, 2020, was when we went into a provincial state of emergency. I don’t think anybody would have thought at that time that we would be sitting here 20, almost 21, months later, still debating and now looking at extending the measures to December 31, 2022.

[4:30 p.m.]

I’m sure many people that are just listening to this or are going to maybe read about this in the news…. Many people are going to feel dismayed and scared about what this brings for them and their businesses, their livelihoods and their families.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Roughly this time last year we were going into the second wave. Things slowly improved. We thought they were getting better. Restrictions then were at the height. They were for the whole province. We were all in it together, all of us equally facing the same COVID restrictions.

As I opened up, following Richmond-Steveston and her comments, we are doing this for the province. When we were all in this together, as a province, there were supports for businesses — well, the businesses that qualified and could go through the framework to get these grants. But there were grants in place that every single community across our province could apply for and get the support for to get them through.

Now that we’re looking at a little bit of a disparity between our different regions across the province, we’re not seeing that. It’s fine and dandy for the government to say we’re going to extend the COVID legislation, the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, but we need to be looking at how this covers across the entire the province to the communities that need it the most and the supports that they need to support their businesses.

As you can imagine, just recently…. Both of my colleagues that spoke before me talked about the new extended circuit breaker measures that have been brought in across Northern Health. There was an end date. The end date was a few days ago. You can imagine — to residents, to businesses, to the not-for-profit sector and others — when they were deemed to carry on indefinitely….

I’m sure I can speak on behalf of my colleagues that live in these areas. The phones lit up. I had multiple — and I’m still getting them today — phone calls, emails, people going into my office and being very curt with our constituency staff about how this is unfair. A lot of these are business owners that have been barely holding on for the past 21 months almost, barely holding on. Now they get: “Well, we’re going to continue this indefinitely.”

I think my colleague from Peace River South mentioned the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, we’re just in the tunnel. There is no light at the end. We’re just travelling down this tunnel with no end in sight. Businesses are rightfully nervous and scared. They’re scared, again, because the grants which….

I mean, the Premier previously said that they’d be there to support businesses. The minister stated similar things. But the grants aren’t there any more. The grants are not there to support the businesses. We’ve talked about the circuit breaker grant, the business recovery grant, the launch online grant. Those are all ended.

We need a plan to support. We need a regionalized look at how we can support these businesses that are in the impacted regions across the province. I’ve had businesses reach out to me, and I’ve quoted them a few times in this place.

One of our local coffee shops right downtown, a very popular coffee shop, has been expanding over the last number of years and never had to lay off anybody. They’ve now had to do a couple of layoffs and are now looking at doing a few more. They’re now questioning the viability of even keeping the shop open. Unfortunately, that’s all too common across the North and in all of our communities.

[4:35 p.m.]

Hearing the news now, whether we’re talking about Bill 30, even just how the messaging around it is or the indefinite extensions of the circuit breaker measures…. What little bit of wind was in people’s sails to get them over the next hump…. The motivation to keep them going has been taken out.

I’ve talked about businesses that myself and Peace River South and probably my colleague from the Kootenays…. We have businesses that do have ownership in other provinces. They’re not going to stick around, because there are no supports there. We talk a lot about the businesses, and it’s been mentioned how businesses are the foundation, especially in small communities. I’ve worked in the not-for-profit sector my entire life, for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t matter what the organization was, when we needed support, we went out to businesses and asked them for support, and they were there.

They were always there. I think that’s more…. I’ve been in non-profit groups while I went to university down in Vancouver. It is very different between a large centre and the smaller centres. These businesses that are right now looking at shutting down because there are no supports are not only going to be putting people out of work, threatening the livelihoods of families and the community organizations that rely on them. I think these are going to be an absolute insult to all of our communities if we cannot keep them afloat.

But it’s not just that. Prince George–Mackenzie talked about his theatre. I know that in Fort St. John, the North Peace Cultural Centre is not making enough revenue to even pay their staff and to keep the lights on because they’re so restricted to the amount of people that they can have in the seats in the theatre.

We’re coming into Christmas very soon, a time when we rely on organizations, different food banks, women’s resource centres in our communities. In Fort St. John, we have a professional firefighters charity that gives so much back to our community, to the marginalized population, to the people that need it the most — the people that need clothing or they don’t have enough money to buy gifts for their children.

These organizations, which usually have big fund­raisers…. They sell out these big banquet rooms in hotels and raise thousands of dollars to give back to these communities. They don’t know when this is going to end. They haven’t been able to have these events now for a year and a half.

The long reaches of this are huge. It’s impacting people right down to our most marginalized, and up. I just worry, as the government moves forward with this bill…. And again, I know the intention is for safety. We also need to be thinking about the supports that need to be there as we move through this. The whole province. The cookie-cutter approach isn’t going to work, because different parts of the province are in different levels of restrictions.

I’m happy to say that the city of Fort St. John has almost 80 percent first-shot vaccinated. The whole region is around 70 percent. I mean, we are getting where we need to be, but until we get there, or until the government sees where we’re at, we need to make sure that we are supporting our businesses, supporting our groups, our not-for-profits and supporting our communities that have supported all of us.

That’s my ask for government as we move forward with this. They need to be supporting local businesses, supporting the people that give so much to our communities.

Hon. R. Kahlon: It’s my pleasure to rise today to support the bill that’s being debated. There are a couple of important measures that we know have impacted, certainly, my community. I’ll also take an opportunity to reply to some of my colleagues across the way on some of their concerns.

[4:40 p.m.]

One of the biggest things that has made a huge im­pact…. When we look back and look at things that worked to save lives, I think the single-site order played a critically important role in ensuring that we didn’t have workers visit one site and then maybe were sick and then visited another site and another site because of the precarious nature of the employment.

I know that my mom was one of those workers. Of course, at the time that she did that work, she was fortunate. She was a member of the HEU. The employment was full-time employment at one venue, one facility. Of course, when the bill was brought into this House that took away much of her rights and her colleagues’ rights, I know she left that sector. But many of her co-workers at the time started working in employment situations where they were visiting multiple sites and being paid a lot less.

We know, the pandemic has taught us, that that order in itself, that one change, helped save lives. I think that when we look back at the impact important decisions made in order to save lives, that one will be a critically important one.

I know my colleagues across the way have been talking about other impacts and other important decisions that are being made to save lives. I think they know, both my colleagues know, that these decisions were made because vaccination rates were low and case counts were high. We were losing lives. People were getting sick. So just as we look at the single-site order and how that was important to save people’s lives, I think the decisions being made by provincial health — in the North, in particular — have been made with that intention.

I think both the members that spoke earlier understand that. They are, I assume, in agreement with taking measures to save the lives of people in their communities.

I think it’s also important to highlight that we have provided the highest per-capita support for people and businesses. I have highlighted to the members across the way that we provided close to $20 million in direct supports for businesses in their region. Those are small grants, up to $45,000, directly going into the pockets of businesses.

Now, the member notes that there are some restrictions — certainly not a circuit breaker right now. There are some restrictions that have been put in place in the North. What’s impacting the business community right now is that liquor can’t be served past 10 p.m. Businesses can continue to operate, but they can’t serve liquor past…. Gatherings are limited to five people and then limits on venues to 50 people. Businesses can continue to operate.

That’s not even mentioning the whole host of other measures that are in place, which have been put in place for the pandemic, to support our businesses. Things they were advocating for, for a long time, as my learned colleagues across the way know, requests that they were making for a long time to ensure that businesses can be on a better financial footing.

For example, liquor pricing. For many, many years, close to a decade, the restaurant sector, in particular, was asking for changes to how we do liquor pricing. The change to reduce liquor pricing has been saving them up to 20 percent on liquor pricing — huge. In normal times, this would be a massive celebration. But during the pandemic, I appreciate that it’s been hard for many to celebrate that, considering the other pressures that have been put in place.

We’re proud of the supports. In fact, I would say that because we have the highest per-capita supports in place, because we were able to provide direct supports for businesses and communities…. That is a reason why we’re still in a relatively better position than all the other provinces in the country.

As we go forward in the coming years — the recovery is going to take coming years — and as we make these investments, I certainly hope my colleagues across the way will say: “Yes, we support the additional investments. We support the dollars being spent.”

I certainly hope we don’t hear what I think we’ll hear, which is: “Government is spending. Government is spending. Why are they spending it?” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t come in this House and advocate that we spend more money to support people and businesses and communities and, the next day, come out and say: “The government is spending. They’re not paying attention to how money is being spent.”

I think we can all agree that the dollars that are being invested are being invested and spent in communities to drive economic growth, to ensure that people have employment, to ensure that our businesses survive. They are doing well right now — not all. Some are facing some challenges, but the challenges, again….

[4:45 p.m.]

The order that’s affecting businesses is that liquor can’t be served past ten. They can still serve people food. They just can’t serve alcohol. Some venues can have a limit of 50 people.

I certainly hope now — and I’m knocking on wood — as we’re starting to see, slowly, the case counts go down, that soon we’ll be able to see those businesses be able to operate again in a safe manner so that not only can we save lives, but we can also ensure that people have their livelihoods taken care of.

I’m proud to support this bill. I thank my colleagues across the way for raising concerns on behalf of their constituents.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I call on the Attorney General to close debate.

Hon. D. Eby: Thank you very much, hon. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister of Jobs for his remarks clarifying the supports for business, as that became an issue in debate that members wanted to go over. I appreciate him sharing that information with the House.

Thank you to the member for Richmond-Steveston for speaking as well.

I also am very appreciative of the members from the north of the province sharing some of the concerns that I think we all have about local businesses in our communities and the impact that COVID has had on them.

One of the members said: “Maybe when you have got more restaurants and more businesses in your community, you don’t notice when they don’t survive.” I know, certainly for myself and for many members in this place…. We know those businesses. We know those business owners. The impacts of the COVID-related public health measures to keep people safe have been profound. We know what they’re struggling with. I’m very proud of the level of support that the Minister of Jobs and the Premier have led on this.

I thank all members for their comments.

Just a clarification on a couple of pieces. One is…. Those public health orders are not squarely related to the bill in front of the House. These are measures that need to be extended. So any member…. Hopefully, in committee stage, we can canvass what some of those orders are — that strata councils can meet remotely, that affidavits can be sworn remotely, those kinds of things.

The second piece is in relation to comments from the leader of the Green Party and the member for Abbotsford West. “Concerns” may be too strong a word but, certainly, questions about transparency and accountability related to changes to the act. Just in quick response, the report still needs to be tabled in the Legislature. Just as it is now, under the proposed changes…. The member for Abbotsford West rightly noted that a way a government can take action and accept the recommendations in the report is to table the report and then take no further steps, which, by default…. Government then accepts the recommendations.

The leader of the Green Party raised concerns about transparency and accountability. This is a very nuanced difference. It’s tabled, no action is taken, and the recommendations are then accepted. The proposed amendment is that it would be tabled by OIC, or in advance, before it is tabled by OIC, government accepts the recommendations. So arguably, I would say — and we can canvass this in committee — it is more public when you accept the recommendations by OIC than when you table it and take no further action.

One of the really important pieces of this legislation, I think, is…. We do our best in this place to not politicize judicial compensation related issues. I do take the member’s concerns very seriously. We’ll canvass it during committee stage and arrange briefings in advance for the members so that they can have a full background on why this change is being suggested. If it’s their feeling that that reduces an act of the Legislature, as the member for Abbotsford West noted — that it rises to a level of concern that we should be considering amendments — I’m open to that discussion.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 30, Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2021, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call continued Committee of the Whole, Bill 20, Access to Services (COVID-19) Act.

Hon. Speaker. I just need a couple minutes for staff to come in to support me.

Deputy Speaker: We’ll take a five-minute recess, everyone. The House is in recess.

The House recessed at 4:49 p.m.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 20 — ACCESS TO SERVICES
(COVID-19) ACT

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 20; S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.

The committee met at 4:51 p.m.

The Chair: I’d like to call this committee into session. We are here on Bill 20, and I believe we are on clause 4. Let’s get into it…. That motion has been approved.

Member for Abbotsford West on clause 5.

On clause 5 (continued).

M. de Jong: Just this, with respect to clause 5: it contemplates the government seeking injunctive relief. I presume that is against an individual, against a group or in favour of a facility, if the Attorney understands my distinction.

Hon. D. Eby: I’m joined again by Katie Armitage, legal counsel, justice services branch, and Karrie Wolfe, legal counsel, legal services branch.

The answer to the member’s question is yes.

M. de Jong: My understanding is the construct of this is designed, between clause 4 and clause 5, to avoid a situation where the Crown finds itself in a position where it is seeking to take action but constrained by the lack of injunctive relief. By that, I mean this: clause 4 contemplates pre-emptive action; clause 5 contemplates preventative action. Or I suppose preventative action could occur in a circumstance where there is already a disruption. But the two sections combined are designed to avoid a circumstance where no action can be taken until a court application has been made.

Hon. D. Eby: There are, to the member’s question…. Essentially, there’s no requirement for an injunction for these provisions to take effect. Police have that ticketing authority when someone is acting in the required way within the defined perimeter.

However, this injunction power has two aspects. One is an anticipatory injunction. That is, someone is clearly indicating that they are planning to go to block the entrance of a hospital or go into their local school and confront the principal or whatever it is that they have in mind to make their point. An injunction could be sought. We don’t have to wait for the person to go and do that.

[4:55 p.m.]

The second is that there may be circumstances where, for some reason, it’s thought particularly that there needs to be the additional step of an injunction sought to address behaviour outside a designated facility, in addition to the ticketing authority of the police. So that is what this injunction power is for.

Clause 5 approved.

On clause 6.

M. de Jong: Right. So we actually canvassed a lot of this in our earlier discussion as it relates to, particularly, sub 6(3) and the regulatory authority. To be fair, the Attorney heard some expression of interest at times, some concern. But we did go through the fairly subjective elements of the test that is to be applied here.

Maybe I’ll just take this final crack at trying to elicit from the Attorney a description of how the tests included here would be applied. Or would they be applied at all? Let’s take an example that many members of this chamber encountered either on Thursday or perhaps on Sunday, where highway infrastructure was interfered with. Now, I actually don’t know what the specific purpose of the protest was. As the Attorney has said, that actually isn’t particularly relevant to the determination of whether or not the provisions would be applied.

But in the case of transportation infrastructure — in that case, it was a highway — we’ve talked about mass transit facilities like a SkyTrain or a West Coast Express. Can the Attorney walk us through and share, to the extent he can — recognizing that he’s not going to make a final determination about a hypothetical situation in this chamber — offer his thoughts on the degree to which, in those cases, those kinds of examples, the test being set out here would be satisfied?

Hon. D. Eby: The member will note that highways are not one of the predefined facilities because they are currently covered under the Highways Act and the Motor Vehicle Act regarding blocking of highways and roads, the prohibition on that, as well as the Criminal Code of Canada regarding highway blocking. So we weren’t seeking to duplicate existing authorities.

Maybe it would be helpful for me to give the member some of the characteristics that staff were reflecting on, on some of the members’ — the member for Abbotsford West as well as some of the Green Party — questions of where would this likely be used. The characteristics that government would look to would likely include that there’s a vulnerable population affected by the blockade, that they have no alternative access to an equivalent service and that it’s taking place in a location that’s not historically considered a venue for the expression of views, like a hospital emergency room entrance or a public school.

These are the some of the characteristics. I hope that assists the member in his example.

M. de Jong: To the Attorney, he began his answer by pointing out correctly that these, the examples I gave, would not be included in the statutorily defined sites, and that is true. It was for that reason I gave the examples, because what we are talking about here is the exercise of a regulatory power to expand the application of the act.

[5:00 p.m.]

I think I have the point and will only, I guess, seek the confirmation from the Attorney that there is a subjective element to the test that provides for the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council fairly broad but defined considerations and prevail upon him that assurance that those broad but defined powers would be exercised with caution and discretion.

Hon. D. Eby: Subclause 6(3) speaks to putting a goalpost on the exercise of discretion by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

Clause 6 approved.

On clause 7.

M. de Jong: Only to ask the Attorney to repeat something he did say, but it is of such fundamental importance, I think, to the act, the creation of the power, and the support that the Attorney and the government are receiving for this. That is to confirm, with respect to clause 7, that there is no mechanism by which this can be extended, short of reintroducing legislation in this House.

Hon. D. Eby: I confirm the same.

Clauses 7 and 8 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:03 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[5:05 p.m.]

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 20 — ACCESS TO SERVICES
(COVID-19) ACT

Bill 20, Access to Services (COVID-19) Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

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

The House recessed from 5:07 p.m. to 5:09 p.m.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading, Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 28 — FOREST AMENDMENT ACT, 2021

(continued)

C. Oakes: I am very pleased to rise to the second reading of Bill 28 today, the Forest Amendment Act, 2021.

I need to first start with some opening remarks and express, on behalf of my constituents of Cariboo North — and, in fact, all British Columbians — how deeply alarming it is that this NDP government has felt the political need to be so reckless and to be taking such significant risks that will impact so many people in this province, not just now but especially in the months and the years ahead.

[5:10 p.m.]

People who right now, as we speak, are in their homes. Or perhaps they are in emergency support services, trying to think about what that rebuild will look like. People who have been so impacted, in communities like Lytton and Monte Lake, who have sat and contemplated how they are going to rebuild their homes, their barns, everything that, for generations, their families have built on their properties. They are struggling. They are concerned.

Having come from a forest-dependent community, I understand deeply the cumulative impacts of disrupting the supply chain when it comes to wood products, what it will mean for people that are struggling across British Columbia, both today and into the future. The cumulative effects from bills such as 28 and other significant policy changes in the forest sector will have catastrophic impacts on the housing and building sector and will cause incredible hardships to so many people who will need to physically rebuild their lives.

Imagine the potential of this piece of legislation in conjunction with policy changes during this legislative session that could result in, perhaps, losing as many as 18 sawmills and the cascading impact down the integrated forest supply chain. Imagine you are one of the many people waiting for housing supply in the province of British Columbia.

Consider whose lives have been devastated by fires and floods. Pause and reflect on the materials that will be needed to rebuild people’s lives, to rebuild their livelihoods, to rebuild their communities, the wood products that are going to be necessary to put us on economic recovery and to have any hope of rebuilding the lives of so many people who’ve been impacted.

Consider what happens when the forest sector has literally been blown up through legislative and policy changes due to not well thought-through policy changes and their impacts on people’s lives.

As one of the most forest-dependent communities not just in this province but one of the most integrated forest communities in North America, I think it’s critical to speak on behalf of my constituents in Cariboo North. It is critically important for this government to understand the impact of their policy changes and this legislative bill before the House on people, families, communities, the tremendous impact that these changes will have on the fibre supply chain and the domestic wood production that takes place in communities such as mine.

For the government to understand…. The changes they are making through these bills, such as 28, and other forest-related policy changes will have a significant disruption on the integrated wood production model and result in uncertainty that will have an enormous impact not just on people that work directly in this sector but on the entire province of British Columbia — specifically, people that are physically going to need to rebuild their homes, to renovate or people hoping one day to have a home of their own.

[5:15 p.m.]

Housing affordability through…. This bill and others will see costs driven significantly up and make it far more difficult for it to be affordable for people in British Columbia.

As one of the most integrated wood product manufacturing communities in North America, I first want to acknowledge the workers in this sector. I am not sure what the NDP government means when they say that they have workers’ backs when, in reality, if one looks at this piece of legislation, it puts workers’ jobs at risk — workers in my community, many workers who have spent generations proudly working in the manufacturing wood sector, who have invested in our communities, workers who are coaches in our hockey teams and coaches in our other sporting and arts groups, and people that have committed so much, have sacrificed so much, to build not just our community but communities right across British Columbia.

The NDP minister has risen in this House and acknowledged that jobs will be lost. The list of supports that the minister mentioned — and she said that more are coming — include things such as the bridging to retirement program. But this, again, just demonstrates how out of touch this government is. This government does not understand what has been happening in our communities and exactly the types of supports that communities like Cariboo North need.

Our communities have been impacted in the past. One looks at the demographic of our workers in our forest sector today. This government’s policy is going to have enormous impact on our young workers. Think of that young sawmill worker in our community with a new mortgage, maybe a new family, maybe having just invested for the first time in a recreational vehicle. They’re excited about their futures. They’re excited about the investments that they’ve made. They were hopeful that when the NDP government said, “We have workers’ backs,” the NDP government actually meant it.

Now, I want to you think about that young family and think about what their thoughts are. “Okay, well, the government has acknowledged that they’re bringing forward legislation and policies that are going to put workers out of work. I’m going to lose my job. But hey, the government has come forward and said, ‘Look, I’ve got a bridging program to retirement for you.’ Well, I’m 30 years old. I’ve just bought a sled. I’ve just bought my first home. I have a young family. A bridging program to retirement isn’t going to deliver what I need today.”

So on behalf of those constituents in my communities, on behalf of young people across this province, on behalf of young manufacturers and skilled workers, they want to know, with legislation that is going to completely disrupt their lives, exactly what kinds of supports are going to be available and made for them.

How about that 30-year-old who just purchased a half-million-dollar logging truck? When I grew up and we went to work on dad or mom day, I headed out with my brother in my dad’s logging truck, and we headed out to the bush. That was our career day. And wow, to spend that time with my dad out in the bush — how lucky was I? How lucky am I to come from a community that understands and has such an extraordinary opportunity to live in incredible communities that we’re so proud to represent here?

So consider that 30-year-old who has just purchased a half-million-dollar logging truck. Or how about that small business operator working in the bush, who has just purchased a butt-n-top or processor for $1 million. Stop and think about that. A young person invested their entire life’s savings and thoughts of their future into a $1 million piece of equipment.

Now think for a moment about what those payments look like. Consider the monthly payments on a piece of equipment for $1 million. I know that many of you have car payments, and you know what those look like. So now consider what it means for that young family to try and come up with payments, month to month, on a $1 million piece of equipment.

[5:20 p.m.]

Now add on to that the fact that a fuel bill for a piece of this equipment could be as much as $12,000 a month. You know what? These payments do not go away because this government puts forward legislation, changes, policies, and says: “Hey, we’ve got your back. It’s going to take a couple of years for us to figure it out, but we’ve got your back.”

What does that young person do, who now has to figure out for the next two years how they’re going to make the payments on these new pieces of equipment that they’ve just purchased? They’ve still got to pay their fuel bill. They’ve still got to somehow make a living in our community. Still have to pay their mortgage. They still have to pay all of those other fees.

They just cannot afford it when this government says: “Well, it will take us a couple of years, but I think we’ll be working on a path forward. We’ve got your back, and we’ll be there to support you.” Are they going to pay for the equipment payments for the next two years for the logging truck driver, for the button top processor? You tell me.

When the government says that they understand the impacts it will have on contractors and small business in this province, does that mean that they’re going to pick up the payments? Does that mean that it’s not just about a bridge-to-retirement program, that it actually recognizes that the changes they’re making to policy and legislation are going to impact young people?

In the past, we’ve had programs that have done the bridging. For the most part, if you look at the demographic working in our industry, it’s young people. Please, if you’re making these types of significant legislative changes, and you say that you understand, please come forward with programs that are actually going to help to pay and support these families that have invested everything — everything — into their small business, everything into making sure that they could go out and work and support their families.

A $1 million piece of equipment waiting two years for policies to kind of figure their way through a process…. People can’t hold on that long. They expect that when the government says: “We have your back….” I know, as the representative for Cariboo North, that I’ll make sure I hold this government to that.

Now let us look for a moment at the value-added sector. I am a fierce defender of the value-added sector, and I always have been. One thing I understand, coming from a community that’s so integrated in wood production and the fibre supply chain, is that you cannot have value-added in all of these incredible, innovative technologies and small businesses that have developed in our region if you do not have an integrated wood supply.

What happens to that value-added sector when you lose 18 sawmills? What happens to the pellet sector? What happens to the MDF sector? What happens to the plywood sector? All are critically important to rebuilding this province after the catastrophe of fires and floods that we’ve seen in this province.

Like I said, I’ve seen remarkable innovations both in my riding and throughout British Columbia. I am proud of the work that these companies have done to invest in innovative technologies that will help support climate action around the globe. I recently met with Drax, a pellet provider that has purchased some pellet companies in my region. It’s fascinating to understand the utilization of the pellets for energy production in countries like Japan and the United Kingdom, and understanding how pellets are an important piece of climate action that’s being taken.

I’m not sure where the government imagines value-added producers such as the pellet sector, district energy systems, or even pulp, for that matter…. I do not understand, with the legislation and the policies that this government has brought forward….

[5:25 p.m.]

How, do you imagine, if you lose 18 sawmills, are you going to access the fibre and the chips to ensure that you have a vibrant value-added sector that’s built on the innovations and the idea of a fully integrated wood products business model? In this new government model, if one does not have all these sawmills or plywood plants that are producing the wood products necessary to build a healthy housing stock in British Columbia, what is their policy — completely move to chipping of whole green logs? You think that that’s the solution to the challenges that we’re facing on the ground in our communities?

Please know, we understand, in our communities, that change needs to happen. Part of that change that we’ve seen in our communities is looking at how we integrate a wood products model, how we look at fully utilizing fibre in our communities, how we invest in silviculture, how we grow the trees — SilvaGro nursery is in my community — and the incredible work that all of these people are doing to make sure that we have a sustainable resource, now and into the future.

This government likes to talk about supporting the value-added sector. But these policies have the potential to completely disrupt the business model that has helped build British Columbia for decades.

What happened to wood first? What happened to all of the innovation with building out of wood in British Columbia? I recall that the Premier stood at the Council of Forest Industries just a short time ago and talked about building buildings such as the RBCM museum of wood. He proudly stood in the room and talked about the importance of investing and building with wood products right here in British Columbia.

I agree with the importance of building with wood. I was proud, when I was in local government, working collaboratively with the wood-first sector to make sure that people and British Columbian policies and legislation understood the value of investing and ensuring that we are developing innovative products right here in British Columbia.

You know what? I also know that we have the best workers who work in the forest sector, who have put their hearts and souls into the types of innovation that we’ve seen in our communities. I’ve seen the development of new types of wood forms. I know that MLAs on all sides of the House have toured different manufacturing facilities.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

What is it? Is it just rhetoric, where you say that you support wood-first products, you support all of these incredible innovations, you support the workers, you support all of these things going on, but hey, we’re going to change the policies. We’re going to put legislation here before the House that’s going to completely disrupt the business model, that’s going to completely disrupt the value supply chain, that’s going to completely disrupt everything that we’ve built to understand and know about the development of wood products here in this province.

So what happens when we say: let’s build with wood first? I want each of you to think about your home, and look around. Imagine for a moment, all of a sudden, we start having challenges in this province where we can’t find plywood. We can’t find 2-by-4s. We can’t find the necessary products to build the housing stock that we need, now and into the future. We don’t have the renovation products that are necessary to help rebuild the lives of so many people who’ve been impacted by fires and floods.

Start thinking about these policies and the fact of putting a two-year pause on the life of an important sector and what it will mean for all British Columbians. I want you to pause and reflect upon that.

I also want you to consider this. These pieces of legislation brought forward that will disrupt our forest sector are also presenting significant changes in our forest service road network that we in rural British Columbia count on every single day — forest service roads that so many British Columbians count on for range access; for placer access; for emergency egress from catastrophic events like wildfires, floods, collapsing roads.

[5:30 p.m.]

What about recreation and tourism? You want to absolutely disrupt everything on the land base. Again, to have legislation that will have such significant impact on so many British Columbians tabled at the last minute in this Legislature, not providing us adequate time to debate and understand the substantial consequences, is a great disservice with long-lasting consequences to the people in my riding and the people of British Columbia — to all those people who are impacted right now, to all of those people who are counting on every single member of this House who stand up and say: “We’ve got your backs.”

Whether it’s a worker who is counting on us to stand up for them or whether it’s for somebody who’s been impacted by wildfires or floods, you are hoping there is going to be government and support to rebuild your lives, to rebuild your homes, to rebuild your barns, to rebuild your communities.

To have a piece of legislation that is so consequential, that is going to have such devastating impacts on the lives of so many British Columbians, tabled at the last minute — I say shame on this government. British Columbians deserve better. This piece of legislation is going to have significant impacts on the people of Cariboo North, the people of British Columbia. Shame on you for tabling a piece of legislation at such a late hour without adequate time for debate.

R. Russell: Thank you to the member opposite for her comments. I appreciate that. I particularly appreciate…. She made a comment about the fact that this will have an enormous impact on young workers. That is something that I would agree with, but I think that we would differ in our opinion on what that impact might be.

I think that we have made it clear that we have a comprehensive vision on how to change our forest sector for the better of our communities and, really, how to change our forest sector so that it works well for our communities. We’ve seen, over the last 20 years, a dramatic loss of employment in this sector. So we know, our communities know, that the old policy was not working well for our communities. It was not supporting our Indigenous communities. It was not supporting our rural, small towns in British Columbia. We were on a path that was not sustainable.

So absolutely, these changes are, in effect, to help support our young workers so that they have a vision in the future of a sustainable forest sector and a community that actually helps provide jobs in a sustainable way. That’s part of the core of the whole vision in terms of this suite of changes and this particular set of changes.

Part of that vision is, for example, to figure out ways to promote and attract new entrants into the sector, figure out ways to mobilize creative minds in the forest sector to bring more innovative creative jobs into our communities. These changes, in this Forest Act amendment, are in place in order to do exactly that.

Again, counter to, perhaps, the previous member’s comments, I do have the confidence in rural British Columbians that they do have the creativity. They do have the resilience to be able to think more broadly about what their future looks like and to be able to redefine what rural British Columbia is, because it is not what it was 30 years ago. We have seen that model is not working for us.

We’ve been in a situation where we’ve had vague compensation rules that end up, frankly, being a problem for all of us. It doesn’t matter where you sit in that system; it does none of us any good. So clarification in this new legislation to help make sure that it’s clear what those compensation rules are for lost timber-harvesting rights is an important step in the right direction.

Likewise, we talk about the impacts on people. And 100 percent — that’s what these changes are in place for. We want to change our forest sector. We’ve seen this, over and over again. Communities have been asking for it, over and over again — to say: “We want a forest sector that works well for rural communities.” These changes are part of that package of changes to help make that happen.

[5:35 p.m.]

We talk about cumulative impacts, and cumulative impacts beyond just financial, looking at the nature of our communities and what the forest sector provides for our communities. Again I would say we do care about cumulative impacts. That’s what we’re looking at — and cumulative impacts on a scale that’s beyond just an election cycle, but on a scale that works well for our communities, going forward.

Again, I would say, we’ve heard, over and over again, that local communities are asking for changes in how we manage our forests. This is part of that process to help move in that direction.

I would say that part of the challenges in this system is…. The member opposite had said shame on us for something. My challenge is that I think that in large part, this is fearmongering. It is creating concern in an industry that is already concerned about its future.

Here we have a suite of changes that are in place to help us out in the future and help the industry survive in a more long-term perspective. I would say that is what this is about. I think it’s important for us to recognize the nature of these rural communities that need support from us and not for us to propagate misinformation in our communities.

Finally, I would wrap up, I guess, by saying that one of the comments that the member opposite had raised that I certainly agree with is…. She had said: “Please ensure that our programs actually help our rural communities.” This is a great example, where I look forward to the work ahead in terms of figuring out how we make that work well for our rural communities.

I know the various ministries involved — Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation; municipalities; and certainly, Forests, Lands, Natural Resource and Rural Development…. This is central to the discussions right now: how do we make sure those programs that are in rural communities actually work well for rural communities?

So I look forward to moving forward and working with the member opposite who has the file for Rural Development. I look forward to exploring how we make sure these programs actually do work well for rural communities.

We’ve seen, in the past, that some things work well and some things don’t. We have to make sure we get this right, to help support our rural communities and re-envision what rural B.C. looks like in the future. Not looking at what rural B.C. looked like 30 years ago, but what does it look like ten or 20 years from now? How do we best get the supports into the hands of those communities that know best what they need and help get them there?

T. Shypitka: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 28, Forest Amendment Act, 2021.

Before I start, I just wanted to quickly give a quick shout-out to some of the folks that have been working really hard in Kootenay East over the last several days and last week, actually, since the flooding happened about a week ago.

It was a huge, concerted effort. The Ministry of Transportation locally was huge. They responded right away. Our regional district, the RDEK, with all their directors and coordination efforts — chair Rob Gay, area A director Mike Sosnowski and our communications officer Loree Duczek — put the message out there, got people mobilized to where they should be.

Our local earthmoving companies and communities helping communities and neighbours helping neighbours — it was, like I said, a concerted effort. I just really wanted to hone in on that and give some thanks for those folks that made a bad situation not as quite as bad as it could’ve been. We’ve lost bridges. We lost roadways. Numerous businesses and residents were upended during this event. Yeah, not as bad as my friend here to the left of me, but still troubling all the same. The province is really, I think, doing a great job trying to support one another, and I just wanted to recognize that.

Bill 28, Forest Amendment Act, is a piece of legislation that’s in front of us right now that has got us a lot scared. A lot of us are worried. The member for Boundary-Similkameen talks about fearmongering. I’ll get to that in a second with numerous quotes, not just from this side of the floor. Industries across the province are fearful of what this bill represents.

I say this a lot. When I walk through the Legislature, grand building that it is, I see lots of great architecture. When you go into the upper rotunda, you can see emblazoned on the walls the four main industries that brought British Columbia together that were economic drivers to help build this great place that we call British Columbia. Obviously, fishing is one of those. Agriculture. Mining is critical and, of course, forestry.

[5:40 p.m.]

Actually, even the lower rotunda…. If you go to the lower rotunda, you can look through that big circle in the sky there. Depending on what position you are in, in the lower rotunda, you can see the highlights of each and every one of those different industries I just mentioned.

Forestry is a big part of who we are here in B.C. This bill, this act that’s in front of us right now, is going to challenge some of that, and it’s got us a lot concerned — communities right across. You heard the member just moments ago talk about how it’s going to affect people in her riding. Mine is no different. Forestry is a big part of Kootenay East.

My grandfather actually owned the first sawmill in Cranbrook. I remember, actually as a kid, being kind of mesmerized by his thumb, which was cut off because of forestry. He was helping one of his comrades, a new guy that was on the green chain, trying to help him use the saw. When he saw that friend of his whose hand was really precariously close to the blade, he jumped to get his hand out of the way and took his own thumb. Those were situations that happened fairly often in that industry. It was hard-working people. It was laborious, under really challenging conditions a lot of the time. It’s how our province was built.

The Galloway mill that’s very close to Cranbrook was another great example. It has been there for probably 100 years, almost — 80 years anyway. As a matter of fact, coincidentally, the sawmill that my grandfather had in the ’40s sold a piece of equipment to that Galloway mill, which was still there up until a couple of years ago. I say “was” because that mill is no longer there.

I remember, in 2017, the Premier actually making a special trip up to Cranbrook, riding in and going straight up to Galloway, saying he was going to be the champion for sawmills across the province. He was going to address the softwood lumber issues internationally on taxes, putting B.C. at a better advantage than we are at right now. We’re at an incredible disadvantage. We’re one of the highest-cost producers in North America.

Needless to say, the Premier’s promises were unfulfilled, as that mill is now, sadly, shut down. The 28 employees that were there are gone. When you look at a town like Galloway…. Probably not many members here really know where that is. It’s only a community of a couple hundred people, so that’s huge. It’s a major part of their workforce.

Skookumchuck Pulp Mill is another one. It’s not in my riding. It’s in Columbia River–Revelstoke. It’s a pulp and paper plant that has a co-gen facility on it that takes biomass, takes timber, takes scraps, peelings — post peelings and such — off the floor of the forest, the forest floor. It takes that wood and turns it into electricity that runs the plant, keeps them self-sufficient. It also turns that energy back into the electrical grid. That actually is the Canadian northwest and the U.S. northwest grid. The post peelings — the amount of GHG emissions that this saves is equivalent to about 18,000 vehicles off the roadways every year, so it’s really critical.

Since the EPA agreements, the contracts, were challenged, this mill is finding itself less sustainable. This act, this Bill 28, is going to challenge that even further by reducing timber and fibre to these mills.

We’ve got great stewards. Teck Coal. They’re a mining company, but they purchased, in 2008, 7,000 hectares in a region in my area that’s protected from forestry. So there is a collaboration.

When you look at the rotunda, the upper and lower rotunda, you see these great visuals of the different mining sectors and the agricultural sectors up on the wall. There’s also our logo, our Latin logo, “Splendor sine occasu.” I guess, in interpretation, it means splendor without diminishment or magnificence without ruin. I think that’s what we’re trying to accomplish here in B.C.

[5:45 p.m.]

Nobody here argues that we need to amend bills and legislation from time to time. If we did, we’d all be out of a job, for one. But these are things that we need to address. I understand, possibly, what government would like to see, but we’re saying this is a little too soon, a little too fast. We’re getting this rammed through.

It’s an 80-page bill that’s getting put through in the last week here. There’s been no socioeconomic cost analysis that’s been addressed to this. We haven’t identified any of that stuff. And we’re saying that when you impact that many people…. I’ll get into the special purpose zones and all that stuff that this bill addresses, but when you start tinkering with that at such an accelerated rate without proper socioeconomic analysis, it impacts a lot of people.

Our forest industry is our largest exporter in B.C. — millions of dollars a year. Billions, in fact. I’ll see if I’ve got some stats. I’ve got some right here, actually. Number one export sector in B.C. — $11.5 billion of B.C.’s total exports came from forest products in 2020. And 87 percent of B.C. lumber was destined for international markets in 2020. It’s a big part of our export market, but it’s also part of our “stay at home in B.C.” products such as engineered wood.

We heard some members on the other side actually talk about some of these unique value-added. Actually, it was a member from this side that talked about value-added products across the province, some of them in Nelson-Creston. I’ve been to that riding, and I’ve seen some of these facilities that are value-added facilities that utilize unique timber dimensions for export to places like Japan. Biomass — I talked about that. It’s huge, and it’s going to impact a lot of people. These are unintended consequences I don’t think the government has really identified. I think it’s this process that we’re going through right now that’s going to highlight some of those unintended consequences.

I’m encouraged to see some of the members on the other side get up and talk to this bill. It’s a complex bill. Up until now, we’ve seen one. Now we’ve seen two. I’m expecting we’re going to see a few more, hopefully. I think that’s important — that we hear from both sides to express how we feel and how these unintended consequences could affect everyday British Columbians here.

I’ll get into the special purpose zones and what that means to B.C. and what it means to some of the people. I’ll talk about, actually, the fearmongering part that the member for Boundary-Similkameen talked to a little bit earlier, citing, essentially, that it’s members on this side of the House that are inciting fearmongering — that there’s nothing to see here, that this is a great thing for all of British Columbia.

Let’s hear from some of those people in the industry and see what they think of what this bill means to them. We’ll talk to Susan Yurkovich. She’s the president and CEO of the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. She says:

“While we are still digesting the details, our initial analysis indicates that these deferrals would result in the closure of between 14 and 20 sawmills in B.C., along with two pulp mills and an undetermined number of value-added manufacturing facilities. This represents approximately 18,000 good, family-supporting jobs lost, along with over $400 million in lost revenues to government each year, revenues that help pay for health care, education and other services British Columbians can count on.”

I’d like to echo that. These are the revenues that are generated to pay for the social services that we all need and that we all expect. Whether it’s health care, education, any of those good things that we need — mental health and addiction. I mean, the list is long, and we’ve got a lot of expenses in British Columbia that we need to take care of. We’re in a deficit position right now. This is going to take away $400 million a year, is what the estimate is from the president and CEO of the B.C. Council of Forest Industries.

Here’s another one from the B.C. Council of Forest Industries.

[5:50 p.m.]

“It’s particularly troubling that these deferrals come on the heels of a pandemic that has challenged us all and where the forest industry has been a bright light. We kept people working safely and continued to deliver more than $4 billion in revenues to government over the last year, which has helped put our province in a financial position better than most. Now the key industry that has and…continues to contribute to our resilience is being devastated.”

I mean, there is a whole bunch of them here. I’ve got probably 15, everything from the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade to Interior Logging Association. Teal-Jones Indigenous partnership director Conrad Browne said…. Well, let’s listen to Conrad Browne. He’s Teal-Jones’ Indigenous partnership director. He says: “It’s going to be significant. Some numbers as high as $400 million lost to the province in revenue. Every British Columbian needs to be aware that this is not a small change.”

That’s what I’m saying. This needs to be examined a little bit more. This needs a socioeconomic analysis done on it before we ramrod this down through the last week of the Legislature. It’s suiting for how important and how much this impacts people across the province.

The special purpose areas. We really don’t know much about them, how big they are, where they’ll be, what the compensation will really look like — if somebody can clarify what that looks like, I’d love to hear it — and where they’ll be and how big they will be. Some could argue that this could possibly be a politicized agenda.

There is a big issue right now at Fairy Creek, as we all know. Instead of government making the hard decisions, why not just assign special purpose areas to First Nations or local communities so they can deal with it? Some could say that’s reconciliation. Some could say it’s passing the buck. I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of the negotiating process. But government needs to stand a little taller than what they are doing right now.

This bill, I think, hits to the heart of this being a politicized piece of legislation. There is so much that I know some of my colleagues are going to want to talk about here. But it really just does go to the essence that…. I go back to “Splendor sine occasu,” the Latin motto for British Columbia. “Splendour without diminishment” or “magnificence without ruin.” It’s a balancing act. We have to be keenly aware of the changes that we’re going through as a province at all times.

This province has been hit with some of the most devastating disasters we’ve seen. We’ve seen the floods. We’ve seen the fires. We’ve seen heat domes. We always pull together. We always try to strike that balance, and that’s what I think those people before us, 150 years ago, recognized with “magnificence without ruin.” We’ve been doing it for 150 years. We want to continue doing that. We can’t make knee-jerk reactions or politicize pieces of legislation to do that. We have to get together. We have to have debate inside this Legislature.

I think that’s the point I’m going to try to make with this bill. We’ll see what happens at committee stage. We’ll see if we can get some answers on that. With that, I’ll take my seat and pass it off to the member on the other side of the floor.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the Minister for Lands and Natural…. Sorry, Minister of State for Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Hon. N. Cullen: Thank you for the promotion, Mr. Speaker, but I’ll stay just where I am for now, quite happily.

Thanks to my hon. colleague across the way for the encouragement and invitation to speak to this. It’s a piece of legislation and part of a suite of bills and efforts this government is making with respect to forestry, which hang together. I would offer that Bill 28, in front of us today, is very much connected to another bill that’s taking place in the other chamber, as we’re debating this right now.

Along with the intentions paper, efforts around ancient and old-growth deferrals that this government has made are meant to describe a much brighter future — a different future, certainly, than forestry has, at the time, seen in the past, and for forest-dependent or forest-friendly communities, as one mayor described to me the other day.

[5:55 p.m.]

It’s not necessarily forestry-dependent, because many of our communities in the North, where I represent in Stikine, have done a great deal of effort over the last number of years and generations to diversify what happens, because we know economic models, particularly those that are resource-dependent, that place all of their eggs in one basket, are much more precarious.

The ability of the community to absorb price shocks, all the different challenges that we see to the resource sector over many generations, is much better when you have a number of legs for your economic stool to rest upon. A lot of the communities I represent — Hazelton, Smithers, Telkwa, further up north to the Yukon border and Alaska border — have done their level best to continue to diversify what it is that they do.

Now, this bill speaks to an environment, the forestry environment to forests in general, that has increased in complexity over, certainly, the last number of years and also increased with respect to the fibre supply. I would hope there would be no disagreement in this House with respect to the impacts that have been happening to our forests, especially over the last two decades, I would say, perhaps starting with the pine beetle epidemic, which ruined millions upon millions of hectares of forests.

Some saw that as some of the early onset and effects of climate change that we just weren’t experiencing — the very, very cold winters or at least parts of a cold winter that would normally, through a natural cycle, eliminate the pine beetle, because it can’t survive below a certain temperature. We just haven’t been seeing those winters, broadly speaking, over the last number of years, and we’ve seen the devastating effects of the red forests as far as the eye can see.

We’ve also seen broader impacts of climate change with respect to forest fires. We saw the devastating fires in Telegraph Creek just a few years ago. I can remember, in particular, talking to one of the very courageous forest fire fighters working that fire who’d been doing it for more than 35 years. He said that the fires were behaving in way that he had not seen before.

The older members of the community were talking about fires, which are a natural part of many of our ecosystems, that were behaving in ways that we had not seen before — greater intensity, moving through stands which previously would have acted as a buffer, jumping rivers that they’d never jumped before and just that intensity of the heat that we, of course, experienced so tragically this past summer. Again, this has been adding to these year-after-year, record-setting forest fires in our province.

We’ve also seen the need and the cry — and I don’t think this necessarily falls along partisan lines, although some have tried to suggest this — from many communities to say that there is a need to protect ancient and the most at-risk old growth in our province. But as a legacy piece that we, as legislators here in this Legislature…. We make decisions today, but of course, many of the decisions that we make impact generations to come.

So this Bill 28 allows us to do a number of things and puts a number of important tools in the toolbox to address some of these constraints that are happening to our community.

I think a principle and philosophical underpinning of this legislation, as I was reading through the bill — and it is a very technical bill that, as we move through clause by clause, I know members of the opposition and perhaps some from this side as well will want to have some answers to questions — is to reposition the province as the land manager. That almost bears repeating, and I’ll repeat it: to reposition the province as the land manager.

Now, one would say: is the province not right now the land manager? Have we not always been? That is actually not the case. In many cases, we’ve seen in past governments that when they’ve set up the tenure process for forestry companies to go out and harvest wood, the province has abdicated, has moved back from its role as the land manager trying to understand the greater impact and the sustainability of what it is that we’re doing on the land base.

We saw under the previous government a number of moves that were meant to be friendly, as the government described them at the time, to the forestry industry, removing impediments around their decision-making, removing local communities from having impacts through land use planning processes — LRMPs, as they were sometimes called. There were other names for them in parts of the province, where we allowed local community interest groups — be they recreational groups, other economic participants — to have some say on what was happening within the landscape, again not just for today but for many generations to come.

We saw this with the benefits group that worked within the Bulkley Valley some years ago. It allowed many stakeholders, many groups, to participate. It was in the ’90s.

[6:00 p.m.]

You’ll probably appreciate that our understanding of First Nations rights and title was not even remotely fully evolved yet, so many First Nations did not participate in those LRMPs. That is understandable and something we’re looking to change in this legislation.

Positioning the province as the land manager…. Re­positioning us back, under this legislation, gives all of us, collectively, as British Columbians — not just this Legislature — and future governments a position that we should never have lost, I would argue, which is to understand the fundamental role that we have in representing the public when it comes to what we would hopefully all argue is the public good, the public asset, which is the resources of this province.

Now, coupling that — this is a tool that’s clearly been put in this toolbox — is the ability of the government to enter into agreements and land use discussions with the rights and title holders across the province when it comes to the forests, to be able to engage with First Nations and know that, as the land manager, we can enter into comanagement arrangements. We can enter into co-decision-making arrangements.

We have already begun to do so, but it is always encumbered by the way that the Forest Act is currently constructed. The devolution of powers away from government, over previous Liberal governments, made it very difficult for us to enter into what anybody would see as a full and proper arrangement with First Nations people.

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, this bill allows us to do a number of things that are required to achieve what I would hope would be shared and common goals across British Columbia when it comes to the forestry sector.

I come from a community in Smithers, in Wet’suwet’en territory, that is very much implicated and involved in the forestry sector. We have two operating mills, and we have many, many smaller companies that rely, in different ways, on the forestry sector.

There’s a philosophy in our government, from the very beginning…. Previous Minister Doug Donaldson talked about moving from volume to value. In the past, a solution to lower prices, a solution to a trade war, a solution to different challenges being faced was to go out and acquire and have more volume move through our mills. We saw a great deal of mechanization and a number of other factors contribute to the loss of about 30,000 millworker jobs in this province.

I’ve heard the Liberal opposition talk, I think, in somewhat fearmongering tones — to be fair, not the previous speaker but the one before — about the potential impacts of a bill which she admitted she didn’t fully understand, but she knew what the impacts would be. I thought that was passing strange, bit of a logical twist. She doesn’t fully understand the bill, doesn’t know what the impacts will be, but they’ll be terrible. Well, that’s not coherent, necessarily.

In understanding what happened in the past, with a government that saw itself as friendly to the forestry industry and, all the while, lost 30,000 jobs…. That’s 30,000 families that are affected. It’s many, many communities.

This we share with the opposition, when talking about the value of having the workers’ backs, but it falls a little bit below credibility when coming from members of the government who were on this side when 30,000 jobs were lost in communities which I now represent and represented previously. There wasn’t the transition and the compen­sation and the move towards a more diversified forestry industry so that our eggs were not all in one basket, a volume basket. Always push out more volume. Mechanization and other things, of course, contributed.

We want our industry to be competitive. What we know helps with competitiveness is diversification, value-added, the ability to do more sometimes with less. We’ve seen our European competitors, year after year, cut less wood, create more jobs and more revenue for government and support more families with it.

Sometimes in the B.C. forestry sector…. In B.C. forestry communities, they say: “Ah, why can’t we be more like country X?” Often Scandinavia, for various reasons — having social democrats run their countries and some of their state-level governments, looking at the public asset of what this is. This is publicly owned, not private.

We do this here. This is an important thing. I’d be surprised if anyone opposes this. Tenure holders, those that we have granted a public licence for someone to go and harvest wood, must report on their inventory. That’s new. It’s shocking to me that that didn’t exist prior. Tenure holders don’t own it. They’ve been granted a licence to go and harvest wood. They didn’t have to tell the public what the inventories actually were.

[6:05 p.m.]

When one moves, under the old act that we are trying to reform, to try to share benefits better with local communities, community forests with Indigenous communities, the tenure compensation, the amount that we’d have to pay to those companies, was often an unknown, because they held the books on what their forest inventory was like.

This is staggering to me. We’ve also cleaned up how compensation, broadly, works. Various governments have had to compensate tenure holders, whether they were creating some protected areas or looking to have a joint agreement with First Nations or local communities, and tenure was required to make those agreements happen.

How we compensated those tenure holders, those companies, depended vastly on where you were and who the tenure holder was. That’s not good. It’s not good for the public purse, not good for tenure holders, and it’s certainly not good for the public. We’ve also known that in talking to tenure holders, our ability to have a fair and lasting conversation with them about that notion of sharing has been very difficult because of the very heavy concentration of a few companies in this province. That concentration has grown over time.

As we did our recent review, we went across, talking about how the ministry, FLNRORD itself, was doing. We met with large and small companies. We met with First Nations, we met with ENGOs, and we met with mayors and chambers of commerce from many of the communities that I see represented across the way. One of the most consistent things we heard, particularly from those small and medium businesses, those ones that are looking to diversify, to fill those market niches and grow their businesses, is that there is a great challenge in our ability to get them fibre.

We’d say: “Well, you’re in a community surrounded by trees.” There is all sorts of forestry activity going on, and it would be with one or two of what we call the majors, and the ability of the smaller companies to gain access to that fibre for products that we see that often had a much higher employment rate to them, per unit cut, per the amount of forest that you had to harvest…. They couldn’t get at the timber.

We created B.C. Timber Sales to enable some of this, yet it still remains a consistent problem. I would challenge any of my colleagues from the Liberals who come from forestry communities to suggest that that isn’t a problem that exists within their communities — that barrier to creating more jobs, more diversified jobs. Consistently, we heard from different forestry profiles — coast, northern, Interior and others — that this was a challenge. So that concentration of tenure is a challenge. It blocks new entrants or those that have just managed to get their foot in the door from expanding.

They have market. They have a product. They have something that they can sell both here in B.C. and around the world, because we’re good at innovating once given the opportunity. But we have a structure in place right now and an act in place right now that was never designed for that. It was never designed for that reality — the reality of the pressures upon the forest that I talked about earlier, be it climate change, fires, beetles and all that we face. I would also suggest greater interest from other folks in our forestry area — that more and more people are interested in what happens with our forests, and rightly so.

In this, we’ve talked about increasing local control. Forgive me, but this is a bias that I’ll never really apologize for. My belief is that people that live in the area have, often, the best insights into how their forests could be managed and certainly have a lot more invested than folks living in the capital here in Victoria, or in Ottawa.

So leaning into their advice, but not just leaning in…. Granting, through changes in legislation…. To increase public participation, openness and transparency about the decisions that are being made seems to me like a good thing, like a good idea.

I also know that in many of our communities that do have community forest licences — I don’t know if that applies for you, Mr. Speaker, but I know for many, many of us it does — we’ve seen the benefits of what local control actually looks like in that one model of those forests, community forests that are able to do many, many things that wouldn’t necessarily occur to a multinational nature, because they do different things. But the people who are deeply and generationally connected to the community make different choices around sustainability, because they need it to sustain. We want it to sustain not just ourselves but who comes next.

This is the world that we live in. The social contract that may have existed in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s between some companies and those local communities…. Well, those companies have expanded their interests with large investments in other places around the world. It looks slightly different. It’s not just within the forestry sector. We’ve seen this in lots of natural resource sectors.

[6:10 p.m.]

When you’re dealing with a family-owned business…. I was talking to one just the other day, a very significant company in B.C., family-owned. One of the leaders of that company said to me: “We don’t think in quarters. We think in generations. We don’t think of hitting the next quarterly report to shareholders who live all over the world. We think of the next generation that we have to answer to, because we are a third-, fourth-generation forestry company, and that’s just how we’re built.”

We were talking about this bill, and they were leaning in and saying: “We can work with this. We understand this. We understand a bit. We have questions as, of course, any change requires. But we understand. If we can think about this generationally, if we can think about what it is to really have a sustainable forestry industry, fully, then it looks a lot like the tools that we have here: more diverse, more competitive and more able to respond to the increased pressures on our forest, so that we can look to the next generation and say: ‘We understand the need to change what we’re doing.’”

I understand — and I heard this from members of the Liberals — the fear of change. I totally understand, right? When we look at something as fundamental to B.C. as the forestry sector and we are suggesting important and real changes to how that operates, with the values that I’ve talked about underpinning what it is that we are doing…. Because the reality is upon us — right? — that if you had an allegedly pro-forestry government doing everything it could for some of those companies that I talked about and lost 30,000 jobs while in office, we know that what we’re doing isn’t working for those communities. Change is required. Change is upon us.

We can’t ignore climate change. We can’t ignore the pine beetle. We can’t ignore these things that are in front of us and affecting what it is that’s happening — that the profile has changed. It is okay to consider change, especially if change is described with values that, I believe, represent those same communities that are looking to innovate.

And this is what I noticed: that the entrepreneurial spirit within our forestry communities is incredible but not often unleashed. Because people come in. They’ve got ideas. They’ve maybe worked in the industry a bit. They’ve worked in mills, or they’re coming out of school. They’ve got this new idea for something to do with wood — not burn it in a slash pile if it doesn’t meet a certain standard. For folks who have never driven through areas that are going through a major slash burn, it’s like Armageddon.

Our European competitors look at us and say that we’re crazy, by the way. Because I’ve toured European officials, elected officials and forestry companies, around the northwest, and they look at a beehive burner — remember those? I think we must still have a few around. And they say: “What is that?” And we say: “Well, once the mill has got its 2-by-4 out, the waste goes over here, and then it gets burned up in our valley.” The Bulkley Valley contributed to massive problems with people’s respiratory illnesses, because we have a low-hanging valley that suppresses that smoke.

They’d say: “Ah, there’s your problem. You see it as waste. You see those chips and that sawdust as waste, whereas we see the value in the full tree, top to bottom, and it must be because of your abundance.” I can remember one European official said: “You have the curse of abundance. You have so much of it that you don’t value it. You get to call that ‘waste,’ and that ‘waste,’ and that ‘waste,’ and only value this part right there or that tree right there, as opposed to the entire forest for what it’s worth.”

I’m proud of our replanting initiatives, and I hope all members and people watching would also encourage this. We just tipped over…. Since forming government, one billion trees replanted in our province. This is a good thing. I would point, for a moment, to the planting industry — the silviculture industry — which is mostly made up of small- and medium-sized businesses, often family-owned businesses, that have, through two planting seasons of a pandemic…. They were one of the first industries out of the gate, if people remember, when the restrictions first came down — when we started to see COVID come into our communities.

One of the very first industries we had to adapt with on the fly — and Dr. Bonnie Henry was incredibly helpful in this — was how to bring 5,000 tree planters into small and rural British Columbia towns all over the province, as we didn’t have a vaccine. We didn’t know our ability or how to circumvent this and what the rules needed to be. We got through the entire season without a case of COVID — I think that’s incredible — while planting north of 300 million trees for our province.

Because there were moments in that debate, when that was going on, that we wouldn’t be able to plant a single tree, because of COVID, and because of our ability to have camps safely happen, not have people get sick within the camp and then also not transmit COVID to communities, where we knew — and we’ve seen this too often, unfortunately — our small and rural medical system would be overrun quickly, if that were to have happened.

[6:15 p.m.]

I think that the leadership shown by the silviculture industry has to be noted. They’ve continued, through yet another year and a planting season, with those restrictions in place, to come out the other end.

Now, it’s important, and I’ll perhaps finish on this last point, with respect to reconciliation. There was very significant consultation done on this piece of legislation not only with the First Nations Leadership Council and some of the groups that represent, broadly, First Nations interests in B.C., as importantly with rights and title holders, First Nations that are involved in the forestry industry currently, or are seeking to, as to whether these tools work and how we can modify them.

That will be iterative. In that sense, it will be ongoing — that we see the legislation come forward. We hear and, hopefully, pass it. We see its implementation. In those conversations with First Nations governance around this province, again, some who are in forestry….

I just spoke with a First Nations leader not 30 minutes ago, asking about the bill and with ideas. “We’re already doing a bunch of this,” he told me. “We’re already doing a number of these things with respect to sustainability of our forests. We have agreements with B.C., but we’ve been up against it here, here and here on the small companies that we’ve started up because we can’t get to fibre. We can’t make these changes. Will this bill allow it?”

That’s the leadership I look to. That’s the hope I look to, frankly. We look to a number of these communities. There are some on the other side, I think, by not really embracing or being open to the changes that we need, that many have argued for many years that we need, that are, in a sense, saying that the status quo is what we should rely upon, when the status quo in many of our communities has been hurting desperately.

I can remember at various points…. I’m looking at my friend from the north. We had an incredibly tragic mill explosion. The ability to go, for a new employer to come in and build a new mill and secure a tenure…. Well, he, I believe, was forestry minister at the time. It was incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult. Grabbing a bit here, and grabbing a bit there. Aspects of this bill would have greatly helped that effort, actually.

Aspects of this bill look to pool tenures when we’re reallocating, when we’re making negotiations happen and making them real. To pool it, rather than to have to go and compensate, again, with no clear rules as to how to compensate the tenure holder. It puts enormous liability on to the province as to what it actually costs to get that mill that was in Burns Lake up and running. That was a challenge.

We worked together. I was federal. He was provincial. We did everything we could, but it was not a straight line. It was incredibly difficult because, again, the role of the province as the land manager had been abdicated. Then we had to go around, cap in hand, to various tenure holders and see if we could pull this off — by the way, pulling this off for a community that so desperately needed that mill to be reconstructed, to be built by a new owner.

So those compensation rules matter. Looking at value over volume matters to the communities that I represent. If we can diversify what it is that we do with our forests, it will only make us stronger and make our forests more sustainable, because we’re not wedded to just one model of forestry. We talk about innovation on both sides of the House. There are the tools in here that will greatly increase the chances of those entrepreneurs to be able to innovate and get their products to market.

I’m familiar with the role of opposition. I understand the need to present contrast to whatever it is the government is doing at the time. I would only ask my colleagues…. It’s a complex bill, agreed? It’s got a lot in it. It’s got a lot of important things in it. The openness to think differently about how it is that we do forestry in this province, I think, is important. Otherwise, we are simply suggesting that past practice will work for future events. Past practice lost us 30,000 jobs for a whole bunch of different reasons, but the forestry act wasn’t helpful. I can guarantee members that.

Trying to innovate out when forestry companies were looking to reconcile and diminish down their workforce due to all sorts of different pressures, the forestry act was not an aid. It was an encumbrance in many aspects that are we trying to fix in this bill — the creation of special purpose areas and other tools that allow the government to make important innovations happen with respect to the tenure and tenure rights holders who have them right now.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

So I hope, in the opposition doing its important job of pointing out where they see flaws, that they come with suggestions. That when saying this could be difficult here, here and here, they have real-world examples and proofs of that. But we know that the innovation that forestry-dependent communities have been asking for, that those entrepreneurs have been seeking, are incredibly important.

[6:20 p.m.]

We should enable them. We shouldn’t get in their way. We should try to lend them a hand. I believe that in this Bill 28, we have an opportunity to do that, to continue the conversation, continuously improve and be courageous in what it is that we’re doing, and not simply turn our eyes away and say that it’ll all be fine if we lift no hand. That’s not the case.

Too many families, too many communities have paid the price for governments unwilling to innovate, for governments that only saw one side of the ledger and thought that volume was always going to be the answer. It isn’t. We need value. We need value. We need value.

L. Doerkson: Mr. Speaker, is it all right if I say a few words, rather than noting…?

Mr. Speaker: Say a few words, and then….

L. Doerkson: Would your preference be, Mr. Speaker, that I note the hour now?

Interjection.

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Thanks for clarifying that.

I would like to just take a few minutes of time to send my thoughts and prayers, of course, and certainly wishes for strength to many of the people involved in the flooding that is happening throughout our province, places like Merritt, Princeton and Abbotsford, just to name a few.

I also, with the will of the Speaker, would like to thank some very large companies that, during the wildfires in our communities, did a great deal of work to try to mitigate those fires, to try to help protect our communities and certainly to protect our resource, companies like West Fraser, Tolko, Tŝideldel — large companies, First Nations companies that helped to protect us. Why I digress there is that I really feel that Bill 28 could certainly harm those companies that are called into action very often in our forests to help us during flooding and fire, etc.

I’m going to jump around a little bit, from my role as an MLA from Cariboo-Chilcotin, of course, and also touch on some of the rural situations, with respect to my role as critic for rural British Columbia. I wanted to start first by addressing some of the comments that have been made here today with respect to fearmongering. I think that’s a serious allegation.

I want to paint a little bit of a picture of my community and how it’s situated. In Williams Lake, within the district boundaries, we have six mills within the community. We have a very large mill in 100 Mile, and I’m fearful of its future. We have a large mill in the West Chilcotin, and of course, we have a number of smaller mills scattered throughout the region. So just talking about Cariboo-Chilcotin, we have a goodly amount of people that are very fearful of what this bill may do to them and what the outcome may be.

I see members nodding on the other side that they’re in agreement with that. I find it hard to believe that the residents of British Columbia that are in this forest industry…. I’ll touch on how it affects the city as well, but I find it hard to believe that people throughout the province are not extremely afraid of what the turnout could be.

I am glad to see some of the members opposite standing up. I think we’ve heard from four now, including the minister, and I am glad to see that. My fear is…. As much as I might be able to appreciate some of your points, surely you could appreciate the fact that a bill introduced at this late stage, with limited time left in this House, is concerning. We have another House that is currently working at committee stage, and people wanted to protest this bill. People wanted to come here and have their words heard.

Because of weather, because of other things, that has been, obviously, moved to a later date. But while we’re sitting here, I’ve received two emails from concerned young people in my community. It’s hard for me to believe that we don’t have any more than around three days to debate this bill, to talk about this bill.

These bills, as was noted earlier by my colleagues across the way, are complex, so tomorrow I would like to try to introduce a few more thoughts on Bill 28.

Noting the hour, I wish to reserve my right to continue with my remarks and do now adjourn the debate.

L. Doerkson moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.