Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued second reading debate, Bill 4.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 4 — SKILLED TRADES BC ACT

(continued)

J. Brar: Once again, I’m really pleased to stand up in this House today to support Bill 4, Skilled Trades BC Act, introduced by our government in this House last week.

This new legislation will establish a made-in-B.C. system to support and train apprentices and modernize the Crown agency responsible for trades training. The act lays the foundation to address labour shortages and support and to recognize the critical work that skilled tradespeople do in British Columbia.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Last week we introduced the labour market outlook, which forecasts job openings over the next ten years. B.C. continued to lead Canada’s economic recovery, with 100,000 jobs added in 2021. B.C.’s economy is strong, and forecasts show that it will continue to grow. In the next decade, we are expecting a wide range of job openings in various occupations. Almost 80 percent of these openings will require some form of post-secondary education.

In the trades alone, we expect 85,000 job openings, with more workers retiring than entering trade occupations. There are so many opportunities for meaningful work in B.C. trades. People are critical to B.C.’s economic growth, especially during the COVID-19 recovery. These are peo­ple building our homes, our bridges, our hospitals and our schools. Tradespeople fix our cars, keep our lights on and our water flowing, and they deserve better.

We want tradespeople to count on having good, family-supporting, steady work by ensuring that they have the certified skills they need to be first in line for these job openings. That’s why this government is taking strong steps to modernize B.C.’s trades-training system and to set a new vision for the future.

[1:10 p.m.]

We have a real opportunity to create a lasting legacy for our trades-training system that puts workers first. We build a strong, more sustainable and inclusive economy and respond to the challenges of COVID-19 recovery. This vision begins with the new legislation and a new, focused Crown agency.

The Skilled Trades BC Act will lay the foundation to support and recognize the critical role skilled tradespeople play in our communities and economy by establishing skilled-trades certification for ten initial trades. This will require people to register as apprentices or to be a certified journeyperson. It is shocking that in 2003, the requirement for B.C. skilled-trades certification was eliminated by the B.C. Liberals, making B.C. the only province without this requirement. That was their plan, and that is not our plan.

B.C. is the only province without mandatory skilled-trades certification requirements. That means that there are thousands of uncertified workers practising a trade with no formal recognition of their skills and knowledge levels. These workers are often paid less and have lower rates of employment stability and mobility, making it harder to support their families. This is particularly true for those in underrepresented or equity-seeking groups.

With so many experienced trade workers expected to retire, we need to make sure that there are enough qualified journeypersons to train the future trades workforce and keep our economy strong. Skilled-trades certification will do that by making sure workers are credentialed at the highest possible skill level, earn the best possible wages and are more resilient in an evolving economy, breaking down the barriers that keep underrepresented and equity-seeking groups from accessing good-paying jobs, shifting the conversation so trades are recognized as the critical, prestigious and valued career that they are in our society, to attract young people.

This government is finally bringing our province back in line with the rest of Canada. The skills of thousands of British Columbian tradesworkers will now be recognized and valued as much as teachers, nurses and other certified professionals. The Skilled Trades BC Act will replace the outdated Industry Training Authority Act and continue the Crown agency’s responsibility for apprenticeship training, which will be renamed from the Industry Training Authority to SkilledTradesBC.

This renewed vision of SkilledTradesBC reflects the expanded responsibilities to oversee skilled-trades certification. The act will also introduce a journeyperson-to-apprentices ratio to ensure that apprentices have access to supervision from a qualified journeyperson. This act will establish a fair and transparent compliance model to ensure that requirements are applied consistently and that employers know that they are working on a level playing field.

These legislative changes will ensure that B.C. has one of the best trade-training systems in the country. It will do that by investing in additional apprenticeship advisers to provide hands-on guidance to apprentices, employers and sponsors by investing $5 million.

[1:15 p.m.]

This is so more trades workers can start an apprenticeship or upgrade their skills at a recognized post-secondary institution, by ensuring that apprentices and trades students have the most up-to-date facilities in which to train, by providing opportunities for over 7,500 high school students to discover, explore, train and work in trades, and by increasing the successful participation of women, Indigenous people and underrepresented groups in the trades.

Since 2018, our government has invested nearly $85 million to help build new, or upgrade existing, trade cen­tres and over $17 million in industry-standard training equipment, with more investment to come. Now is the time to ensure that the trades workforce has the knowledge and skills to embrace innovation and diversity, while staying resilient in the face of rapid change so that they can reap the benefits of the changing economy. This legislation gives tradesworkers the recognition they deserve. These are good-paying, stable jobs that support families and communities.

I have been listening to the members of the official opposition with interest. One of the concerns they have raised, time and again, is of red tape. Now, red tape, of course, is different than red seal. Red seal is a certification for a tradesperson for a better future, and red tape is a bad thing.

I want to mention here, so that members knows about this: the members of the official opposition, when they were on this side, introduced a new rule in B.C., and the rule was that if you want to build your own house, you need to pass a test and have a certification to build your own house. On the other hand, for the people who actually build houses, the tradespeople, many of them don’t need any certification.

Just to be clear. If you want to build your own house, you need a certification. You have to go through a lengthy test. But the people who are actually going to build the house don’t need certification. That is red tape. That is clearly red tape for people who want to build their own house.

I just want to say that this new legislation, the Skilled Trades BC Act, makes skilled-trades certification a re­quirement. It provides support and resources to skilled tradespeople for better training to ensure that workers are credentialed at the highest possible skill level. This is the purpose of this bill. When we call someone to our house to repair something, we want to make sure that the tradesperson is certified and has the highest possible skill level, because we believe that certification means a better skill set and better service.

We are now debating this bill. The difference between us, the members of the government side, and them, the members of the official opposition, on this important bill is as follows.

First, B.C. is the only province without a mandatory skilled-trades certification requirement. We want to make it a requirement that tradespeople be certified at the high­est possible skill level. That is our proposal in this bill. The B.C. Liberals, on the other side, eliminated the requirement of skilled-trades certification in 2003, and they want no skilled-trades certification moving forward. That’s the difference.

Two, we are breaking barriers that keep underrepresented and equity-seeking groups from accessing good-paying trade jobs. The B.C. Liberals don’t support breaking down those barriers that open opportunities to underrepresented groups.

[1:20 p.m.]

Three, we are shifting the dialogue so that trades are recognized as the important, prestigious and valued careers that they are in our society — to attract young people. The B.C. Liberals are not interested in this shift, and they don’t want to support skilled trades as a valued career in our society to attract young people.

People are the best judge. People are listening. People are listening to both sides. Of course, people will judge about this. So people will judge: do you want a skilled trade–certified worker fixing things in your house, or do you want a non-certified person? That’s the debate, people, going on here.

I am very proud to support this bill moving forward, because this is the future of this province. This is the future of the young people of this province, and this is a good thing for the people of British Columbia, so I’m proud to support this bill.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, does the minister wish to close debate?

Hon. A. Kang: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the members’ comments on this important piece of legislation and enjoyed hearing from all members across the House.

Firstly, I appreciate that members of the House are interested in the costs associated with the legislation. However, I would like to remind the members that we are not able to give details until after the budget is released next week. I look forward to discussing this topic more during the estimates debates.

I am encouraged to hear that we all share a commitment to getting British Columbians the skills they need to be first in line for the jobs in our growing economy, to ensuring we’re keeping our workers and members of the public safe and increasing opportunities for women and Indigenous people to participate in high-paying trades careers.

However, it does concern me that the members opposite are not interested in ensuring that our tradesworkers are paid equal to their value. Evidence shows that workers who have received training and hold certification have access to higher-paying jobs.

I would also like to remind the members that 80 percent of apprentice training is completed on the job, under the close supervision of a qualified journeyperson. Don’t we want our tradesworkers to be paid better wages and receive on-the-job training from a qualified supervisor instead of being left on their own to train by themselves? I know that we all do.

That’s why this legislation is putting apprentices and tradesworkers at the centre and moving our trades-training system into the future. This legislation will bring us in line with other jurisdictions and ensure our tradesworkers are recognized for their skills and their achievements.

As outlined in the what-we-heard reports, available online, we spent the summer hearing directly from the groups representing industries and workers, apprentices, women, Indigenous peoples and young people. We repeatedly heard that workers and employers both stand to benefit from the introduction of skilled trades certification and a highly skilled trades workforce.

We also heard that access to training is imperative to completing certification, and we agree. That is why just last Friday we announced an addition of a $5 million investment so that more trades students can start an apprenticeship or update their skills at training institutions close to home in every region of the province.

Since 2018, we have invested nearly $85 million to en­sure our trades students are learning with the most up-to-date and relevant equipment and facilities. Just today, this morning, we announced an additional $136.6 million investment to build a new state-of-the-art trades and technology complex at BCIT. The complex will be a hub for skills training and include four new buildings, benefiting more than 12,000 full- and part-time students per year in more than 20 trades and technology programs.

[1:25 p.m.]

Having the right skills gained through quality training and certification ensures our tradesworkers will earn higher wages, the public will have confidence in high-quality service delivery, and employers will benefit from a workforce credentialed at the highest possible skill level to meet the future demands of a strong, inclusive and sustainable economy.

With that, I look forward to the committee phase of the bill, and I move second reading.

Motion approved on division.

Hon. A. Kang: I move that Bill 4 be referred to a Committee of the Whole to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 4, Skilled Trades BC Act, 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. H. Bains: I call Bill 5, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022, for second reading.

BILL 5 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

Hon. H. Bains: I move that Bill 5 be read a second time now.

As the Minister of Labour, my commitment always has been — and the commitment of this government — that the health and safety of workers in British Columbia, and support for injured workers and their families, be my number one priority. My goal is to ensure that the workplaces in British Columbia are the safest in the country.

That’s why it is critical that every worker who goes to work in the morning return home safe and healthy. I do not just mean injury in a physical manner. I’m also talking about safe from exposure to hazardous and dangerous materials at their workplaces, exposures that may lead, over time, to serious illness and death.

This is the situation that Bill 5, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022, addresses. These amendments provide important and direct actions to safeguard workers and, in many circumstances, homeowners and the general public against the dangers of exposure to asbestos and asbestos-containing materials. In short, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022, is about actions to im­prove workers’ health and safety.

Although the use and installation of asbestos-containing materials in residential and commercial buildings has been banned in Canada since 1990, asbestos continues to be the number one worker killer in B.C. Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral composed of flexible fibres that are resistant to heat, electricity and corrosion. Asbestos was widely used in construction as an effective insulator, and it can be added to cloth, paper, cement, plastic and other materials to make them stronger.

When asbestos dust is inhaled or ingested, the fibres can become permanently trapped in the body. Over decades, trapped asbestos fibres can cause inflammation and scarring and, at their worst, can cause cancer and other health conditions. The carcinogenic quality of the minerals is what makes asbestos so dangerous.

Asbestos-related illnesses are the leading cause of work-related deaths in the province. Workers and contractors performing asbestos abatement work continue to be at risk for future illness and death because some contractors do not take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of their workers. This is the case many years after the product was banned, as buildings get renovated and demolished and the fibres get disturbed.

[1:30 p.m.]

To put things in perspective, asbestos-related deaths accounted for 38 percent of all occupational disease and traumatic workplace fatalities from 2017 to 2021, a total of 280 deaths out of 741 workplace fatalities. Think about this: 280 out of a total of 741 deaths that the WCB handled in the last five years came from the exposure of asbestos that happened years ago.

Then, year by year, I will give you a little breakdown: 70 out of 158 work-related deaths were due to asbestos-related illness in 2017, 46 out of 131 work-related deaths in 2018, 60 out of 140 work-related deaths in 2019, 51 out of 151 work-related deaths in 2020 and 53 out of 161 work-related deaths in 2021. These fatalities are heavily concentrated in the general construction sector and in occupations directly engaged in the asbestos abatement process.

These are truly disturbing numbers, numbers that re­flect directly on the lives of those workers and their coworkers, families and loved ones. Such tragedies are completely unacceptable and must be addressed. Asbestos remains present in products and buildings manufactured or built before 1990, including drywall, floor tiles, insulation, fireproofing material and automotive brake linings. Anyone undertaking renovation, demolition or repair work when such products are present runs the risk of exposure to hazardous asbestos fibres.

For buildings built before 1990, the key to protecting everyone’s health and safety is to undertake proper asbestos abatement work, which involves identifying asbestos-containing materials and having them safely removed and disposed of prior to renovating or demolishing the building. Asbestos abatement work may be performed by the building owner and its employees or by contractors who are in the business of carrying out asbestos abatement work for clients. In all cases, it is critical the work be performed safely and properly, not only to protect the health and safety of who perform the work directly, but also to protect others who may work, live or simply be near where asbestos is located.

As I indicated, it is completely unacceptable that the workers and contractors performing asbestos abatement work continue to be at risk for future illness and deaths. This is especially true in 2022, when there is full knowledge and documentation of the dangers of asbestos exposure. The diseases and fatalities that asbestos exposure cause are not up for debate. It is fact, not speculation. This government is making it clear that it will no longer tolerate non-compliant and unsafe behaviour in the asbestos abatement industry that puts the health and safety of workers at risk.

It is important to note that like other industry sectors in British Columbia, many owners, employers, contractors and other participants in the asbestos abatement industry value their workers and their workplace safety. They recognize the hazards of material they are handling and follow all the rules and regulations to ensure workers and others are protected from asbestos dust and fibre. This involves purchasing the appropriate abatement and safety equipment and using it properly, thoroughly training and educating their workers on the hazards of asbestos and the necessary safety procedures.

I would like to take the opportunity to extend my thanks and gratitude to those responsible asbestos abatement contractors who have taken all the actions required of them to protect their workers and public. I recognize that this work can be very challenging, difficult and precise, and I applaud all those who undertake this work properly and safely.

[1:35 p.m.]

I also want to acknowledge the work that WorkSafeBC has done, from inspections to enforcement, to create very creative advertising campaigns to raise the awareness of the dangers of asbestos, including public and homeowners. However, serious problems exist with a significant number of non-compliant contractors in B.C.’s asbestos abatement industry.

Despite WorkSafeBC asbestos regulations, education programs and enforcement actions, WorkSafeBC fre­quently uncovers very high levels of non-compliance with the regulations, unsafe practices that put workers and the public at risk, and obstinate and endangering attitudes.

Problems encountered include contractors allowing workers to perform renovations and demolition work without ensuring that proper asbestos surveys and testing are undertaken; not making workers aware of the dangers or not training them to do asbestos abatement work safely; permitting workers to disturb or remove asbestos material without personal protective equipment or other required safety precautions and equipment being in place; endangering people living in the immediate area of the project through unsafe procedures; and illegally or improperly packaging or containing the asbestos material for transport and dumping.

Contractors and employers who deliberately flout WorkSafeBC regulations and orders for safe asbestos abatement are primarily driven by a negligent workplace culture that associates non-compliance with financial gain. Much of the asbestos abatement work is precarious in nature, and it is often performed by workers who are marginalized by reason of age, culture or race and are, therefore, susceptible to abuse and endangerment by their employer.

A direct result of this negative workplace culture is to discount workplace hazards and to cut corners and put people at risk. The money that these contractors save by not taking the appropriate safety measures allows them to undercut those contractors that take workplace health and safety seriously.

Two things: to protect the workers’ health and safety — no doubt — and also to support those contractors that take workplace health and safety seriously who are being undercut by these fly-by-night contractors who do not care about workers’ health and safety. Currently, there’s no way for building owners and homeowners to know who the reputable and safe contractors are.

In summary, in too many cases, the highly hazardous nature of asbestos is not properly taken into account in carrying out asbestos abatement work, thereby placing workers and members of the general public at risk. Bill 5 correctly acts to address this critical workers’ health and safety issue.

The proposed legislation will amend the Workers Compensation Act to protect the health and safety of workers and others from the hazards of asbestos. Specifically, Bill 5 establishes a new requirement that employers who are asbestos abatement contractors be licensed to operate in British Columbia. Second, it provides the authority to WorkSafeBC to create a mandatory safety training program for workers and contractors who perform asbestos abatement work.

These changes are necessary to address the systemic non-compliance and inadequate safety training in the asbestos abatement industry. When combined with WorkSafeBC’s existing regulations and education and enforcement programs, the proposed licensing and safety training requirement will support a regulatory framework that is better aligned to the highly hazardous nature of asbestos abatement work and will help ensure that the work is performed safely and in accordance with the law.

It is also my hope that over time, serious illness and death can be significantly reduced or eliminated, creating safer workplaces and a culture and commitment to the safe handling of asbestos.

As background to this legislation, since 2017, a cross-ministry asbestos working group has been working to identify, review and report on outstanding risks that asbestos poses for people in the environment and to propose strategies and initiatives to address those risks.

[1:40 p.m.]

The working group issued a report in 2018 that contained 16 recommendations. A pivotal recommendation flowing from the report was the recommendation to establish the licensing and training requirement. Key findings of the working group concerning asbestos exposure and workers include that some employers were failing to take basic precautions to keep their workers safe, that workers lacked basic awareness about the risks and lacked access to training about these risks and how to keep themselves safe, and that workplace cultures within the industry underestimate the risk associated with asbestos.

The licensing and training requirement contained in Bill 5 will play a key role in addressing some of those broader issues involving asbestos. As work towards implementing this legislation proceeds, members of the public will also see development of these other measures and the benefits that will flow from them. The licensing provision under Bill 5 provides that an asbestos abatement contractor must not carry out asbestos abatement work unless they hold a licence issued by WorkSafeBC.

Following the bringing into force of this legislation, the asbestos abatement contractor will be required to acquire and hold a licence to carry out asbestos abatement work in B.C. Unlicensed contractors will be prohibited from performing asbestos abatement work in this province, and that will include contractors who lose their licence to perform this work for failing to comply with the law. Bill 5 establishes a requirement that WorkSafeBC create a public registry of licensed contractors. This will support the legislation’s objective by letting the public know which asbestos abatement contractors are in good standing when deciding which contractor to engage.

Bill 5 also promotes safe practice by self-employed asbestos abatement operators, who are independent operators that carry out asbestos abatement work as a business. As many British Columbians may have seen in media reports over the past few years, there have been instances in which WorkSafeBC found itself engaged in a constant game of cat and mouse with some wilful, non-compliant asbestos abatement contractors.

In these instances, after WorkSafeBC shuts down the current asbestos abatement company, a non-compliant contractor can reopen the next day under a new name. This licensing requirement will enable WorkSafeBC to refuse a licence to those with a history of non-compliance, including those who try to get a licence under a new business name.

WorkSafeBC can also suspend or cancel a licence when a contractor acts unsafely or illegally, curtailing the right of the person to carry out asbestos abatement work in B.C. The intent of the licensing program is to permit WorkSafeBC to remove non-compliant contractors from the industry quickly, when necessary, in comparison to the time it may currently take courts to issue an injunction currently.

With the licensing requirement provided for in this bill, British Columbia will be unique among Canadian jurisdictions, given that no other Canadian jurisdiction has taken this step to ensure safe abatement of asbestos-containing materials.

The second key component of Bill 5 provides WorkSafeBC with the legislative authority to approve safety training developed by others or by WorkSafeBC and to approve certificates for individuals who successfully complete the safety training. One of the most effective ways to combat the hazards of asbestos is to be trained on the hazards of this dangerous material and on how to perform asbestos abatement work safely.

With the changes in Bill 5, WorkSafeBC will oversee the development of a certified training program for workers, employers and independent operators who perform asbestos abatement work in British Columbia. This will support the health and safety of these individuals and save lives, following the passage of this legislation and others.

[1:45 p.m.]

After WorkSafeBC has undertaken the work to establish an asbestos safety training and certification regime, it will be a condition of the licence that the licensed contractor may not employ a worker other than a certified worker for the purpose of carrying out asbestos abatement work.

Once this important legislation receives royal assent, WorkSafeBC will begin work immediately to develop the necessary regulations, policies and programs to implement the licensing and training requirements. This includes consulting with impacted groups for their input, including workers, employers, contractors and trainers.

WorkSafeBC will require the time that is necessary to design and develop a successful program but will do it as quickly as possible, to have these important programs in place as early as later this year, to protect workers and others. The Ministry of Labour will also continue to engage with industry and other impacted ministries on the broader action plan in light of new licensing and certification requirements.

I would also like to take this opportunity to inform the House that government undertook substantial consultation with those who have an interest in safe asbestos abatement work, including representatives of employers, workers, businesses, housing management and local governments. The feedback and input government received through all the consultation and public engagement proved very valuable and insightful. There was very strong support from stakeholder groups and almost all survey respondents for both the licensing of asbestos abatement contractors and the certification and training requirement.

Our government is committed to taking the action necessary to improve the occupational health and safety of workers in British Columbia. Bill 5 is vitally important to safeguard the health of workers and to work toward eliminating asbestos-related illness and deaths in British Columbia. It will also help to keep homeowners and the general public safe.

As I have stated before in this House and in my other duties as Minister of Labour, workplace safety is everyone’s responsibility. It is the responsibility of employers, supervisors, workers, government, all of the members of the Legislative Assembly and WorkSafeBC. I ask all members of this Legislative Assembly to join with me and this government and support these important legislative initiatives.

I cannot emphasize enough that the dangers of asbestos are a fact. We know it is the number one killer of workers in workplaces. We know that there are many workers out there who do not realize the real dangers of asbestos when they are handling asbestos abatement work. We know there are so many good operators who take care of their workers and care about their health and safety. They take all precautions and follow the regulations. But there are a few, I must say, unfortunately…. We’ve seen it in the last few years in the media.

WCB, under the current tools that they have, will go after those bad characters and shut them down today, but they’ll reopen their company tomorrow under a different name. With the changes we are proposing under Bill 5, the requirement of a licence to be an asbestos abatement contractor will go a long way in removing those difficulties the WCB has. More importantly, having workers go through mandatory training, knowing the risks of asbestos, knowing that this substance will kill you if you’re not protecting yourself, over time will save lives.

I urge all of you to support these initiatives. I do look forward to debate on this bill.

Deputy Speaker: Member for Kamloops–North Thompson.

P. Milobar: Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome. It’s my first time to welcome you to your new role, and I’m looking forward to it.

[1:50 p.m.]

I’m happy to rise to speak to Bill 5. In fact, most of what I was going to say — the dates and the timelines and the data — aligns with what the minister had to say. That’s a good thing, but it’s also an unfortunate thing. I’m going to point out a few things with this bill revolving around a lot of the information that the minister said. I don’t dispute the information that he said. As I say, I came to the same conclusions.

I think it’s important to look at the timelines, because as we’ve seen all too often, over the last five years with the government, there are the good words that get said, but there’s a lack of timely action, of moving forward quickly, of actioning things of critical import. That is, I guess, unless you’re signing off on a decision note around FOI fees, and then that can move at lightning speed.

When it comes to workers’ health and safety, by the minister’s own acknowledgment, the cross-ministry working group, which was actually started by the now Leader of the Opposition when she was the minister in charge back in 2017, provided their feedback to this government in 2018, four years ago. As the minister rightly points out, every day matters with asbestos exposure.

Now, over those four years…. I’m not going to suggest that those almost 40 percent of all workplace deaths that are attributed to asbestos would have been stopped, be­cause as the minister also rightly points out, it’s a long-term exposure and takes years to manifest itself. But we have four years’ worth of workers that have been exposed to asbestos by those bad-actor operators that the minister talked about.

Those people have now been exposed for four years longer than they needed to be because of the delay of bringing forward the recommendations that were presented to this government in 2018. Those families, those workers — I think rightly so — should be asking themselves why a government that purports to worry that much about workplace safety would take four years to bring forward what’s in place in other provinces.

Now, all provinces needed to start to react in around 2016 when the federal government made their indications around asbestos and its use known. That’s why 2018 was a target date, because of what was happening federally. There are training programs in place in other provinces. In fact, that’s what this is modelled on.

Why that took four years…. Four years of workers being unwittingly exposed to asbestos is not acceptable. There should have been more of an emphasis, more priority placed on this by this minister to move this forward with all speed possible.

Now, I recognize and I fully acknowledge the registry piece of this bill, the registry piece that the actual contracting company will need to register and be easier to track so they can’t flip and alternate companies…. That doesn’t exist. So that’s a good addition. That might have taken a little bit more time. But we should have been protecting and training the workers for that four years in the meantime. They, at least, would have been protected.

Yes, we would have still had bad-actor contractors out there, flipping their company names, but the workers themselves would have been certified and trained properly. They would have known what they were looking for on the worksite to be able to operate safely to prevent future death, future medical issues, future harm. Asbestos exposure leads to very, very serious — as we’ve heard, death — but painful as well…. It’s very hard on families to watch a loved one have to struggle and go through that.

Although I don’t take issue with this coming forward, and we will be supporting the legislation, we’re not doing our jobs if we don’t point out that there seems to be a lack of prioritization within government when it comes to things that are truly life and death — and where the prioritization is of moving things forward to this chamber to get implemented and enacted.

[1:55 p.m.]

You don’t have to look very far for further delay — to realize that WCB actually needs to now create the training programs, which will take 90 days, 120 days, sometime into the future after this bill is passed.

One has to wonder, when a government holds a 2-to-1 vote advantage in this chamber on a piece of legislation that was initiated by this side of the House back when we were still in government, why the uncertainty to instruct WCB to actually be working on the training program and the regulations — to have everything in place when this passes on royal assent and be in effect immediately — hasn’t been done. Surely the minister is confident enough that 40 of his members aren’t going to suddenly vote against this piece of legislation out of the blue and WCB’s work would have been for naught.

So we’re sitting at four years of added exposure, and we have untold months to wait until any of the training programs, any of the requirements that are in this, will actually be developed. That’s certainly the message that we got loud and clear when we got a briefing on this bill after it was introduced yesterday. I’m going to have a lot of questions about that at committee stage, because, as I say, we do support this bill. We do have a lot of questions though.

I think the government actually has a lot to answer for. Not so much to any of us in opposition, but through us to all those people that worked four years extra in asbestos abatement without these trainings and regulations in place. I think their families are going to want to know why this wasn’t brought forward to the House after the cross-ministry working committee brought forward the recommendations in 2018.

Now, in 2022, the clock is still ticking and WCB still has a lot of work to do after this, because they were not instructed by this minister to get that work done simultaneously with this bill coming forward, in advance of this bill coming forward — just another piece of legislation by this government that says: “Trust us. We’ll show you what everything looks like after it’s passed.”

It wouldn’t have changed us voting for it, but it would have sped up and made those workplaces safer for workers that much faster. Is it going to be five years? We’ve seen how long it takes them to roll out some programs. Is it going to be six years before it’s in full implementation? We don’t know.

That’s simply an abdication of responsibility by this minister, this Premier and this government to actually have their actions match their words about WorkSafe safety and worker safety. We have four years worth of workers that could have been better protected had this government actually actioned things in a timely fashion.

I know it sounds like I’m being a bit of a smart aleck when I compare it with the FOI bill, but I’m not. That’s the sad, very serious reality of what this government prioritizes. The speed that they could move to cut off access for the public to gain information of government documents, trying to shut out the Premier’s office from information requests, being evasive at best — the most charitable I could say — about a fee structure and decision notes….

With the speed that they’re able to move on that and put a priority on that to move, I think all those workers that have been exposed for 4½ years deserve a straight answer from this Premier and this government on why that was deemed to be a much higher priority for this government to action than their health and safety at the workplace for 4½ years worth of exposure to a known carcinogen. It’s shameful. It shouldn’t have happened.

They sat on a report for four years. Very skilled governmental workers that know how to draft legislation — I highly doubt it took them 4½ years to figure out how to turn the recommendations into the language we see in front of us on a bill, considering the larger framework, by the minister’s own statements, already exists within WCB.

[2:00 p.m.]

This is adding another layer of how WCB enforces and works on workplace safety. That wouldn’t have taken them 4½ years. You know how I know it certainly wouldn’t have taken 4½ years? If this Premier, if this minister had gone to the drafters and said, “This is a priority. It needs to be in front of the House next legislative session,” when they got those first reports in 2018 and the recommendations, it would have happened.

As we’ve seen on FOI, arguably a more junior ministry than Labour, man, they can move fast when they want to. They even overrode statutory committees that were supposed to be doing their work and ignored it. They ignored everybody to make sure that work was prioritized and moved forward with lightning speed.

What did the workers that are going to be protected by this bill get? They got 4½ years of dithering, literally with their health on the line — not some documents that may or may not actually even get released. So it is a serious matter.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

It’s a serious, I think, look into how this government truly does prioritize and figure out what they are actually going to put their time and effort into. It certainly doesn’t align with their words. Those are turning out to be very hollow words.

It will be interesting to see when somebody — an un­fortunate circumstance for a worker — gets diagnosed from asbestos exposure over the next few years. We know it will happen, because we know it takes time to build. The minister has acknowledged that. I wonder what they and their human resources lawyer are going to think of the government that sat around for 4½ years on a report instead of making sure they were properly protected in the workplace.

Sitting on this recommendation for 4½ years means we have 4½ more years’ worth of large numbers of deaths in the workplace attributed to asbestos. That number won’t start to come down until the goals of this bill are actually enacted, the training has actually happened, the work spaces are actually safer, and the abatement is being done properly and safely. Then you’ll only see those numbers drop, years from now, because all the previous years’ worth of workers that were working under unsafe conditions are still needing to work their way, unfortunately, through the system. It’s a shame.

Across this government, we’re seeing a lack of prioritization and urgency when it comes to people’s lives — literally. Over six people a day and climbing, on average, sadly, on opioid deaths. Still no apparent urgency and action on that file. Lots of great words and rhetoric. That’s been five years of inaction. Almost as much time as inaction on this, a different subset of people that are literally dying and getting extremely ill because of government inaction and lack of prioritization.

But boy, if you want to ask to access some government documents, they’re going to move lightning-fast to shut that down. Wouldn’t want you to see what’s going on within government. Wouldn’t want you to actually have any information on how government even makes a decision or arrives at making a decision. Move lightning-fast for that.

We’ll have nice, flowery words on matters of life and death for people, but no tangible action. Haven’t seen any tangible improvement in ambulance response times. That’s putting people’s lives at risk on a daily basis. Lots of great words.

[2:05 p.m.]

We will have a lot of questions at committee stage on this bill to try to get a better understanding of why exactly the minister, the Premier and his government didn’t seem to want to prioritize the importance of those workers over the last 4½ years to get proper training and proper protections in their workplace, why we couldn’t replicate what was going on in other provinces faster than 4½ years, or why it took 4½ years to implement recommendations from a cross-ministry committee that started under one party’s government and continued on with the current government’s guidance.

If ever there was a time to likely signal that this was not going to be heavily opposed in this chamber, I would suggest that’s the type of thing that would be there. It’s cross-ministry, but it was also cross-party, if you look at the timelines of when the recommendations were being developed and brought forward.

So I have a hard time understanding why this minister took 4½ years to sit on the sidelines while people kept getting exposed to asbestos. I have a hard time understanding how this government has watched the death count on opioids go from 4½ to five, to 5½ to six, to now over six people a day, each and every single day in British Columbia.

It’s bad enough that we have 210 people that died, in those 4½ years, from asbestos exposure as this bill was percolating away, somewhere in the background, with government. It certainly wasn’t a priority to bring forward. We’ve sat a lot of sessions in this chamber.

There seems to be an inordinate amount of time spent talking about a throne speech. I’m not going to say “debating a throne speech,” because that’s not really what it is. Legislatively, we call it debating a throne speech. Really what it is, is the government standing up, patting themselves on the back and talking about random things in their riding to fill time, to kill time, to say that we were actually here working for a full day.

Guess what we’re going to jump to later today, unless we’re done second reading debate on this bill: the throne speech that we started back in this chamber last week. This is the end of week 2. I guess we can see where the prioritization of legislation and of things of import to people’s lives is with this government.

It probably explains why it has taken 4½ years, with countless workers being exposed, especially during a hot real estate market — where there has been a lot of demolition, a lot of renovation going on, of older buildings that would be filled with asbestos. That’s what the market has been like for the last 4½ years — everyone running flat out, everyone in a hurry for deadlines, everyone scrambling, everyone with a labour shortage.

I’m willing to bet that the minister knows exactly what happens in that scenario. Corners get cut. Deadlines need to be made. A blind eye gets turned to safety infractions: “Just go ahead and do it. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine. Just go outside and cough a bit; you’ll be all right. Here, use this flimsy little mask. Don’t worry about it.” That’s the backdrop of these 4½ years that this minister sat around and didn’t get this legislation in front of this chamber in time.

The minister can shake his head at me all he wants, but he knows it to be true, because in his own words, he acknowledged it. In his own words, introducing this bill, asbestos is a fine particle that gets into the air. It gets into your lungs. It takes years after exposure, and repeated exposures, to start to manifest itself. That’s what this minister was acknowledging. Passing this today is not going to help those people that have been exposed for the 4½ years that this bill didn’t get brought forward to the House; it simply isn’t, based on the minister’s own words.

If the minister knows it now to be true — I know he’s got a long history, and I have no doubt, if you look at his background and his history, about workers’ rights and workers’ safety — surely, he had to know, in 2018, that those were the facts around asbestos. I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t, I find it amazing that a party that is so tightly connected with labour wouldn’t have somebody in their ranks that would know that.

[2:10 p.m.]

I don’t say “connected with labour” in a bad way, because they advocate on behalf of the safety of workers. We all go to Days of Mourning. We all speak at them; we all acknowledge them. There’s no way that those people representing, especially, organized labour who are continually, and rightfully so, advocating for workplace safety wouldn’t have been wondering why the minister is taking 4½ years to protect people on the worksite. But that’s what we have.

We will dig into the timelines a little bit more when we get to committee stage. We will certainly have some questions around timelines on the WCB work that still needs to be done to actually get implementation of this — what speed that will have, what priority that will have — and what extra resources the government will make available to WorkSafe so that they can get the job done quickly, so that we don’t have to be here at year 5½ wondering why we still don’t have proper protections for workers with asbestos when we all knew from 2016 onwards very clearly what needed to be done.

I look forward to committee stage on this bill. I look forward to the government trying to explain their lack of prioritization when it comes to literally life-and-death issues on a wide range of files.

Perhaps we can find out a little bit more as to why the prioritization of hiding information from the public seems to be front and centre and the number one priority of this government, versus making sure everyday, hard-working citizens are properly protected in their workplace.

Hon. B. Ma: It is my honour to be able to rise today to speak in support of Bill 5, intituled Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022. Can I begin my remarks by thanking the Minister of Labour for making this work a priority and making sure that this actually got through. There have been so many improvements to the Workers Compensation Act, to worker safety, to the Employment Standards Act, that make life better for workers here in this province. It has been a long, long time since we have had a champion like the Minister of Labour for working people.

Before I became an MLA, as people may know, I worked as a professional engineer managing projects as an onerous projects engineer out of the Vancouver Airport Authority. In my role now as Minister of State for Infrastructure, I get the honour of working with the hon. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure to deliver a lot of transportation projects. The vast majority of them are more like horizontal construction projects, although this bill does have some relevance there as well, because I’ll note that asbestos was used in asphalt between the 1960s and 1980s.

Now, working on horizontal construction has been just really rad, I have to say. But back when I was working at the Vancouver Airport Authority, the kinds of projects I was primarily involved in were vertical construction. I was primarily involved in terminal expansion and redevelopment projects.

I have to say that the pandemic has changed a lot of things for airports around the world. I really need to acknowledge that. I think of all of the people who have spent so much of their lives working and supporting their families through work at these airports, and I know that it’s a very difficult time for them.

When I joined them many years ago, though, well before the pandemic, it really was an engineer’s dream job to work there. You had runway rehabilitation programs that could employ you for a lifetime, ridiculously cool conveyor belt systems that move baggage along underneath the airports. You had another baggage systems under the airport building to stretch from YVR all the way down to downtown and back again.

Of course, it was all jumbled up and…. Well, not jumbled. It was very coordinated and organized down there — I have to say a huge pain in the ass to install and take apart, but very cool. Also, you had very complex….

Deputy Speaker: The appropriate term might be “pain in the butt,” Member.

Hon. B. Ma: Pain in the butt. I retract my former comment. Pain in the butt. You also had very complex building expansion and redevelopment projects as well.

[2:15 p.m.]

Now, the other thing that the YVR airport terminal had a lot of, especially when you were talking about the older buildings, was asbestos, which also meant that when you were impacting those areas, you needed to do a lot of asbestos abatement.

I remember the safety training that we got when I first started working there as a young engineer in training. I remember that the safety trainer came up, was presenting in front of a whole bunch of us, and he said: “Asbestos is an amazing material. It has fireproofing properties; it is something to behold; it makes materials strong and long-lasting.” He pauses. He says: “It’s also the leading cause of workplace deaths in B.C.”

We have to let that sink in. Asbestos is the number one killer of workers in British Columbia today. It causes cancer, a very rare and aggressive cancer called mesothelioma. It is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure. Gets into the lungs, accumulates in the body with every exposure, and we don’t know how to reverse the damage that it causes.

Now, I was very fortunate because working out of YVR, their safety program was extraordinarily stringent. We didn’t take hazardous materials lightly. When your project involves demolishing the oldest part of the main terminal, you better believe that there were a lot of hazardous materials to deal with. There was asbestos in the gypsumboard, lead in the paint on the tiles and a lot of rodent droppings, which you also had to deal with as a hazardous material.

I remember that there was this room that I needed to demolish. Because it was quite an old room, the floors had been redone many, many times. So under the carpet, there were ceramic tiles. Under the ceramic tiles, there were linoleum tiles. Under the linoleum tiles, was the concrete deck. The ceramic tiles tested for lead. The linoleum tiles tested for asbestos, and the carpet dust was probably made up of rodent droppings, quite frankly. The whole building was like this.

Systematically, off we had to go through this whole building that we were about to demolish, testing, setting up containments, sending in trained abatement contractors, doing air quality testing, monitoring the work, bagging, tagging, making sure everything was properly disposed of and that everyone was safe.

Fortunately for us, there were a lot of highly-skilled abatement contractors and abatement consultants out there who would work with us. We had contractors who would suit up, step into sealed bubbles that no one else would be allowed to do without a full hazmat suit before they were done.

We had consultants who would come in and act as third-party monitors for the work. They would take a look at the rooms. They would identify materials that needed testing, make sure that it was done properly. I have to really give them credit. The consultant that I had the privilege of working with was RJ and Associates Environmental Consulting, led by Richard Connelly and Andrew Marshall, who now leads the company. They were absolute pros, absolutely uncompromising on the value of high safe work practices.

If we broke into a material that we hadn’t tested and that we hadn’t set up abatement containments for, they would shut us down, and that was the right thing to do. But it also meant that we were extremely incentivized to get everything done right the first time. You know what? That is what it takes to do abatement right, to keep workers safe and to ensure that you’re not exposing people outside, members of the public, to asbestos as well.

Now, as the Minister of Labour has already discussed, sadly, not everyone does abatement right. Sadly, not everyone even knows that asbestos has to be treated with such care. That kind of culture of complacency and non-compliance in many parts of the industry has been killing people.

At long last, we are bringing in a licensing requirement for asbestos abatement contractors, something that will save lives and reward and recognize those contractors who are already doing things right. And this will protect them from being undercut by companies that aren’t doing things right.

[2:20 p.m.]

We’re bringing in a requirement that asbestos abatement workers and others will have to complete mandatory asbestos safety training so that they fully understand why they must do things properly. Being educated means that you know when you’re at risk. When something needs to get sent for testing, or when you experience that shortness of breath and wheezing and crackling of the lungs that indicates that you may have been exposed to asbestos.

Now, inevitably…. I’m actually very grateful that the official opposition did not ask this. I’m so grateful that we are likely to have support from all sides of the House. But inevitably someone out there is going to ask: “Doesn’t it cost more to do asbestos abatement properly?”

Let me tell you this: right now people are paying for this with their lives. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends continue to die today because ten, 15, 20 years ago they worked on a project or multiple projects and had no idea that their employer should have been hiring a proper abatement contractor to make the site safe for them before they went in.

I think of all of the men and women that I had worked with on these construction sites — hundreds and hundreds of them at a time, in some cases. I think of their families, people with…. I remember — I think of their children — Craig with his two young girls, whom he took so much pride in, how he was so excited or so looking forward to walking them down the aisles in ten, 15 years. I think about Don, with his wife who’s pregnant, and the children that he wants to have in his family, and of Debbie, with her children.

I imagine them in ten, 15, 20 years.

Gosh. I didn’t think that I would do this.

There are…. Excuse me.

There are a lot of workers out there who have had their lives cut short by this.

This is so embarrassing.

Dozens and dozens of workers — we lose them every year, because of something that happened decades ago, which they never would have been able to know about.

I think it will mean a lot to everybody who works in the construction industry and everyone with family members in the industry to know that they have a government out there that cares about them. It’s not just government; they have legislators throughout the province, on both sides of the House, who have said: “Enough is enough. We’re putting an end to this. Your safety matters, and your life is worth so much more than we could ever put a value on.”

I’m going to stop there.

R. Merrifield: Thank you so much for your words, Minister. That was very beautiful.

I do rise today to speak in support of this bill today. As one from the construction industry, I do recognize how vital this is.

I love that we’ve had two female legislators from opposite sides of the House stand up and both speak of their construction experience in the last couple of minutes. I also celebrate that fact — that it’s the females involved in construction that are the ones that are speaking positively to this. I, too, am going to tell my asbestos story. I’m probably a little bit older than the member before me, and mine does come in the private sector.

[2:25 p.m.]

I still remember getting the phone call that some of our construction trades had discovered asbestos. We needed to get it tested. I remember having the huddle outside of the construction site. It was a renovation. It was an old building. We had taken it apart. It wasn’t part of our budget. It wasn’t part of our contingency. I remember, as a young business owner, in that moment, trying to decide how I was going to choose, and to choose correctly.

We all put on our hazmat suits. It was quite laborious to put them on. We walked into the site. We tried to ascertain exactly where things were at. We got in testers to test what was in the air, to test what was on the ground, to test what was in the walls and in the ceiling.

I still remember that gut-punch when I realized that my workers had been in that atmosphere — in that space — working for the last four months: “What does it mean? What are the implications? How do we actually deal with this?” I echo the feeling of devastation, knowing that some of our workers had been put at risk.

Yes, there are the cowboys and cowgirls out there who just say, “Plow forward; it doesn’t matter,” during that time frame. But I didn’t. I stopped the site. I pulled everyone out as soon as we knew what was going on. We brought in professionals. We did look for someone who was licensed. We did look for someone who knew how to deal with asbestos properly. We did do everything right — to our own detriment, at our own cost — because it was the right thing to do, and because on a construction site, safety is number one.

Throughout the last 25 years of my tenure as a construction owner, we became core certified. We made sure that our safety protocols were second to none. Why? It’s because, every single day, trades and construction workers risk their lives to build what we see. Nowhere has been as devastated, even in this last year, as my community, when safety or shortcuts are made.

I will say that my speed of action was immediate. When I knew that people were at risk, I responded immediately. We worked 24 hours a day until we had a safety plan in place and everyone abided by it.

I have a quote that I’ve posted on my Facebook many times. It says: “Characterize people by their actions, and you will never be fooled by their words.” Talk is cheap; action is everything. When I hear words like “safety” and “priority,” I think “action,” and I think “immediacy.” Everyone should feel safe in their workplace, whether it’s on a construction site 17 floors in the air or sitting in a building, but that is not the case over the course of the last five years of this NDP government.

Asbestos is undoubtedly one of greatest risks of our workplaces, our homes and our communities. According to WorkSafeBC, 608 of the 1,448 work-related death claims between 2011 and 2020 were related to asbestos. That’s 42 percent.

Since 2000, asbestos has been the cause of more than 50 percent of all work-related occupational-disease deaths. That’s atrocious. That’s “Sound the alarm bell” time. As the dangers of asbestos have become known over the years, governments and industry — and others like me, running my own, very small at the time, construction company — have taken those steps to protect people, to protect them from exposure to asbestos and to contain its impact on the environment.

[2:30 p.m.]

This legislation that’s before us right now is the result of initiatives undertaken by working groups and industry leaders — oh, wait — as well as the previous government. You guys had five years — five years.

Now, recognizing that the focus group, or the initiatives that we were undertaking, date back to 2017, with the cross-ministry working group to engage with the federal government’s December 2016 announcement to ban asbestos and asbestos-containing products…. But the working group submitted the report to the current government in 2018, and it took four years before we actually have a bill — four years.

This is a government that has been identified with a lack of action. The Sumas floods. Well, we have three reports dating back to 2017, 2018 and 2020, all of which were sounding the alarm bell that a flood could be devastating to that area. We’ve got long-term-care reports during the pandemic that were literally left on the minister’s desk rather than being responded to.

Instead of getting this bill — oh, I don’t know — anytime in the last four years, even last fall, we’re debating the throne speech still?

I love that we’re actually going to see action in this area. I love that we’re going to see asbestos abatement contractors licensed by WorkSafeBC. I love that we’re going to see employers, workers and contractors who perform asbestos abatement…. They’re going to be certified. I love that.

It’s just too late. Why is this government taking so long? I quote from our former government’s Minister of Jobs, Tourism, Skills and Training and Minister Responsible for Labour in 2017.

“The government of British Columbia supports Canada moving towards a national ban on asbestos by 2018, and we want to make sure we are doing all that we can to protect British Columbians and our environment from asbestos hazards. This working group will look at this issue from a cross-government perspective to ensure our number one priority is protecting British Columbians from the dangers of asbestos and will engage with important partners as the work progresses.”

Well, we didn’t get the opportunity to do that. But this government has just stood up, with the last two speakers, and said that safety is their priority. And it took four years more? That’s unacceptable. So I celebrate this legislation finally coming through, because it will undoubtedly save lives.

Why did I choose the reports that I did — the long-term-care report or the Sumas Prairie flooding report? Because they also cost lives. Inaction costs lives. My caution here and my urging here is to try to get WorkSafeBC to get those licensing and safety training programs in place as soon as possible.

I don’t understand why they weren’t actually queried on this before, why they’re not gunned up and ready to go, because they should be. Why, with a majority government, could WorkSafeBC not be ready? I don’t understand.

[2:35 p.m.]

The only thing I can think of is that we’ve actually be­come okay with letting government take whatever time it wants to, to get things done, and that’s simply unacceptable.

Like the minister before me, I don’t want everyone to have to feel that gut punch, wondering if lives are at risk. We should behave as such, and we should get legislation in place to protect people. We should activate.

My biggest question right now is: when are the practices actually going to change of handling asbestos? After this bill is given royal assent? Or when WorkSafeBC finally has the time or the regulations, the capacity, to put it in place?

Every day for the last 25 years, I’ve gone to work and I have made safety a priority, the number one priority. We have some of the lowest WorkSafeBC rates because of our safety protocols, because safety was our number one priority. But we did it through action, not through talk.

So yes, I support this legislation and the work that it builds, from this government but also from our previous government. But I sure wish it was tabled sooner. And I sure wish we could have implemented these actions before more lives were lost. I think that if there’s a big caution here, it’s that working together, we can accomplish much better things.

I look forward to debating this bill further in committee stage, and I look forward to supporting this bill in this House.

R. Russell: I rise today to speak in favour of Bill 5, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act.

Our goal here, genuinely, is to support worker and workplace health and safety. The diseases that are caused by asbestos, as the minister said, are not up for debate. As the minister also noted, asbestos is the number one cause of workplace death in B.C. The dangers are, indeed, fact. But they’re also difficult to see. Those tiny fibres deliver a delayed and painful death that is dramatically disconnected in time from the exposure.

I will tell my own asbestos story. When my partner, Christine, and I started farming, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were fast learners, I hope. My teacher in that process, who had probably six decades of farming experience under his belt, was a neighbour and a friend. Werner was strong and sharp. Even well past what anyone would reasonably expect the retirement age to be, he was up before dawn and working his farm and regularly helping me to figure out how to farm all day long.

He was the one I called when our baler would break down, for example, which is essentially a giant sewing machine on wheels. He would be the one to come and help me figure out how to get it back operational. If one of our ewes was sick, he was the one I would call. He and his wife were also the ones that showed us how to convert a buffalo meat chopper and a 1950s wringer washing machine into a convenient apple cider production system.

He was a healthy character, and then a few years ago Werner got a cough he couldn’t kick. In the months that followed, he got weaker and weaker, and of course, eventually he was diagnosed with mesothelioma. As he got weaker and weaker, I took on the task of trying to navigate the legal morass that he was in, documenting that it was a workplace exposure that he had been exposed to decades earlier, literally surrounded by asbestos that had brought this strong and sharp friend to his bed.

Again, as the minister made clear, the dangers are fact. Werner was killed by asbestos exposure that took place working in oil and gas construction decades and decades previously. When he was there, surrounded by asbestos panels, I don’t think he would have had any idea that it would be what killed him in the end. His workplace was not safe nor healthy.

[2:40 p.m.]

As the minister spoke to, in the abatement industry, non-compliance is not acceptable. Again, abatement in­dustry non-compliance is not acceptable because the consequences can become apparent so many, many years in the future after exposure, decades and decades and decades. Even making the connection back to asbestos is challenging at times, given that dramatic delay.

When impacts are disconnected from causes, when those feedbacks between action and reaction are slow and murky, incentives for bad actors increase — much like climate change, where we have a duty to act now to be sure we’re not eroding future value on behalf of current short-term wins. Our goal here, again, is to support worker and workplace health and safety now and into the future.

I would close by echoing the gratitude of the minister for the good work that is being done by the asbestos abatement industry players that do good work. They do good work, and from what we heard, they will be happy about these changes to make sure we’re all making good choices into the future.

L. Doerkson: I just want to take a couple of moments to speak to Bill 5, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act. I don’t have a lot to say. I think basically what you’re seeing from the opposition here is an agreement.

I think what’s been largely conveyed from us this afternoon is that this is about alarm bells — alarm bells that have gone off with respect to asbestos and other things in this province, and the response time has been extremely slow. We’ve seen things like heat domes and, certainly, flooding in the Sumas Prairie that we knew about, that we did have advance warning for.

With asbestos, this is not something new. I mean, for years we’ve dealt with this. What we’ve heard from the women in construction in the Legislature today here, which is fantastic to hear…. I’m so glad to see women standing up to talk to this bill.

I have my own personal experience with this. It’s suspected that I’ve lost family members to asbestos. Myself, in home renovations and in a glass business — I’m not certain if I’ve been exposed. Again, we’ve had that moment when you run a saw into a wall or into something and think: “Oh, my gosh. What have we come across here?”

I agree with the member prior who mentioned that we don’t know fully who has been exposed. But what we do know is that four or five years ago this bill, or the contents of some of this bill, was brought forward to this House. It’s taken this long to bring this bill forward to this House for a reading.

Furthermore, I’m very concerned…. I mean, when you think about the numbers and the loss…. The minister himself talked about 280. I’m not sure what the reference was there. But when you think of the loss…. According to WorkSafeBC, 608 of 1,448 work-related death claims between 2011 and 2020 were related to asbestos, nearly 42 percent of all those claims. That is just a staggering number.

For us to know that there was something that we could have done about this four or five years ago and for us to take this long to draft a bill that is, I think, probably eight or nine pages — it’s not massive — is concerning to me. I think it’s concerning for the opposition.

Now, we don’t want to hold this bill up. We want to debate it, and we want to, obviously, have some questions at committee stage. I think they’re going to be important questions. But the biggest question is: why do we wait when we have an opportunity, in this case, to save lives? All of those people, for that time, that have been exposed or could have been exposed…. There could have been a death that we may have been able to stop because of legislation that could have been introduced years ago, honestly.

For everybody that is watching in the chamber, we are debating, obviously, Bill 5 with respect to asbestos. I just can’t explain enough that we do think everybody should be safe in the workplace.

[2:45 p.m.]

In fact, it sounds like many of the members in this building have actually had something to do with asbestos or potentially have had life-altering sorts of situations in their businesses or their personal lives. We are happy to see it come forth, but we want to point out that it should have come forth a long time ago.

Mr. Speaker, that’s all I really have to say. Thank you very much for a few moments.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Recognizing the member for Vancouver–False Creek.

B. Bailey: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I apologize, for almost jumping the line there, to my colleague across the way.

It’s an honour to rise today in the House to speak to Bill 5, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022.

Asbestos has the, unfortunately, well-earned name of the silent killer. Breathing in asbestos fibres can cause cancer and other diseases such as asbestosis, which is a scarring of the lungs. It makes it very difficult to breathe. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the lining of the chest or abdominal cavity. It’s a relatively rare but extremely aggressive cancer with a negative prognosis. One year after diagnosis 40 percent of patients survive. Of course, also, lung cancer, which is exacerbated if the person also is a smoker.

It’s silent because, of course, exposure can happen, and most often does, without the person knowing that they’ve been exposed. There are a few reasons for this, one being historic. We know so much more now than we used to in regards to the risk of exposure to asbestos. For many, many years, we handled it improperly and unsafely. Many folks who worked in heavy-duty trades or construction, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, were exposed to asbestos before we understood the risks.

There’s one of those people in my family: my Uncle Wayne, who’s a long-haul truck driver. Wayne drove a truck for many decades, mostly stainless steel insulated tankers moving British Columbia milk across our country.

Of course, brake liners contain asbestos. The more wheels you have, the more brake liners you have. Most of these trucks are 16-wheelers. In the brake assemblies of industrial-sized commercial vehicles such as the trucks I’m describing and tractor-trailers, they take two brake shoes and four brake linings for each brake drum. Imagine being a mechanic who works on these brake liners and changes 40,000 or 50,000 of them in their lifetime.

Wayne was diagnosed with asbestosis in his 40s. A healthy, strong, fit man, a wicked guitar player, his symptoms were absolutely life-altering. His situation, unfortunately, was common. Textbook symptoms arose, starting with a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough, a chest tightening or chest pain, lots of weight loss, a loss of appetite, a dry, crackling sound in his lungs while breathing and wider than usual toes and fingertips, which is called clubbing. All of this accompanied with very low energy.

Imagine being in your 40s and losing your income, your energy, your health and for reasons you didn’t even know about. Wayne has been unable to work since his diagnosis, now more than two decades ago. This situation is not the specific situation this bill is addressing, but these are the types of experiences people who are exposed to asbestos, unfortunately, can experience.

The new standards introduced in this bill, under the Workers Compensation Act, will require asbestos abatement contractors to be licensed to operate in British Columbia and will require workers and employers who perform this work to complete mandatory safety training and certification.

A few quick facts in regards to asbestos. It’s actually a naturally occurring fibrous material that was used as an ingredient in a variety of building construction materials prior to 1990. It’s often found in construction materials — drywall, building insulation — and as I’ve mentioned, car and truck brake pads and the natural environment. It becomes hazardous, as we know, when it’s disturbed and releases dust or fibres into the air where they can be inhaled or ingested.

While other provinces have taken steps to improve the safe handling of asbestos, B.C. will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to implement a licensing requirement. That’s something for all of us to be proud of.

[2:50 p.m.]

In 2021, asbestos exposure was a contributing factor in 53 of 161 workplace deaths. Many cases originate from workplace exposures to asbestos 20, 30 or more years ago, when it was still being widely used in construction.

I want to share the words of how folks are seeing this legislation out in the world outside of this building. This is a quote from Al Johnson, who is the head of prevention services at WorkSafeBC. Al says: “We support efforts to keep workers safe from the dangerous asbestos by adding further layers of protection and assurance. That’s why we were pleased to participate in the cross-ministry asbestos working group and view the new standards for licensing and safety training as a positive step forward.”

Another quote. This from Don Whyte, who is an industry advocate and former executive director of the Hazardous Materials Association. “Many buildings in B.C. were constructed during the peak use of asbestos-containing building products. These buildings are now at an age where renovation or demolition is required. The potential for exposure to asbestos in the construction industry has never been higher. I am very pleased to see a competency requirement for those who handle this hazardous material.”

The last quote that I’ll share with you today is from Neil Munro, who is a business manager of the B.C. Insulators union. “Licensing asbestos abatement contractors is an important step towards ending the death toll of workers exposed to this terrible carcinogen. As the first such licensing in Canada, it will serve as a model for other provinces to follow.”

I want to just raise my voice to the many who have congratulated the Minister of Labour on bringing forward this really important legislation. I’m proud to support it.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. Of course, just as a general reminder, but also to the member, the use of electronic devices like a laptop or an iPad when speaking is not common in this House because it’s not allowed. So just a general reminder. But thank you to the member.

Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Minister of Labour to close debate.

Hon. H. Bains: I do want to take this time to seriously thank all of the members who took part in the debate, because they all understand the importance of having the piece of legislation that is before us, how important it is about the workers who happen to be our brothers, our sisters, our sons, our daughters, our parents, grandparents, partners. Many of them have lost their lives over the years to exposures that they were exposed a number of years ago, decades ago, not knowing that one day, this substance was going to kill them. My sympathies to the families, to them, to the colleagues — all of them.

At the same time, I want to thank a number of people who worked hard in advocating for the changes that we are debating right now. Don Whyte, who was the head of the association of insulators. Lee Loftus, who was the representative of the workers of the insulation union. Neil Munro today. I say thank you to all of you and many others who participated in cross-ministry discussions to bring this piece of legislation together.

Members opposite talk about the delay and the time it took. I take that seriously. If we could have brought it in two, three, four, five, ten years ago, it would have been preferred. But a lot of work went into it, and it involves a number of different ministries. They all came together.

My hope is that WorkSafeBC is working, as the pieces of legislation are being developed, to put together training programs, to put together licensing programs. My hope is that before too long, all of those will be in place, and the workers who will be handling asbestos in the future will be fully trained and know the full dangers of asbestos when they’re dealing with it.

[2:55 p.m.]

British Columbians will also know that when someone is in their home dealing with asbestos — removing, patching, repairing — the work that is being conducted in their home is done safely to keep them and their families safe and their neighbourhood safe. I think that the workers knowing the dangers through the training is the key.

And the bad actors that we had, the cat-and-mouse game that went on for too long…. The WCB, at times, had to go to court to get injunctions. That’s a lengthy, really legalistic process. In the meantime, those bad actors continued to be operating under different names. So I hope that with the support that I see here in this House, from all sides of the House, we will put that in our past, put that in behind. We are sending a clear message to those bad actors: “No more. It will not be acceptable in this province for you to play with the lives of the workers that you employ.”

Saying that, I say I now move second reading of Bill 5.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 5, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022, 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. L. Beare: I call continued debate on the throne speech.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

T. Shypitka: I’ll just quickly wrap up. I’ve only got about a minute left.

I wanted to just say that I want to plead with government to listen to peaceful and lawful protest. We’ve seen how things have gotten out of hand in Ottawa, and we have seen, by contrast, these protests here in B.C. in regard to the COVID pandemic.

What I can tell you, with the protests that I’ve personally witnessed here in B.C., are great Canadians of all demographics, race and culture that are only looking for supportive data and timelines to justify government decision-making surrounding our current COVID mandates. Of course, there are those that spew hate and violence, and I definitely don’t condone any of that.

But we can no longer be okay with Canadians against Canadians. We all need to come together, and we’ll start with listening and understanding. Government needs to listen, bring in and recognize these strong Canadians.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the Minister of State for Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development — something like that. Really important — it’s a lot of letters, yes.

Hon. N. Cullen: There is change afoot, Mr. Speaker, so you don’t have to get too wedded to the name forever and ever.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. This is a reply to the Speech from the Throne. For many British Columbians, many Canadians, this part of our legislative tradition is a bit of an unusual one, in which a representative of the Queen — a Lieutenant Governor in our case, a Governor General in the case of Canada — reads a speech that she did not create. She does it with great effect, but it is, in fact, a speech from the government, setting forward how we’re doing and where we’re going.

The American equivalent is the State of the Union, I suppose. Unfortunately, Canadians are often more familiar with American procedure than our own, but that’s okay. As a son of Irish immigrants, I wrestle with some of our traditions, and this, sometimes, is one of them.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Specific to what our government has been up to and is about to be up to, we, of course, know the sequence of events. We saw the speech last week outlaying the broad and general narrative of what concerns our government, which, I think, are issues that concern British Columbians broadly — things like the various crises that we’ve had to deal with collectively as a people; the government’s response to them; and the protests that my colleague, just across the way, just referred to, that are ongoing in our nation’s capital and, until very recently, at a number of our nation’s borders with the U.S. and in many of our communities.

[3:00 p.m.]

I know my community I live in, Smithers, has had pretty consistent Saturday afternoon drives around town, up and down the highway, honking horns, and other things. In this context, representing Stikine has been, I think, an important experience that I would like to share with other British Columbians.

In small towns, we don’t have the luxury of just being in a bubble with only like-minded people. This is the great advantage of small-town life. By the nature of our smallness, we get to interact with people of different political persuasions, different faiths, different backgrounds and different questions and orientations to any particular problem.

Normally, even in moments of strong disagreement, we are able to find common ground, treat each other, generally, with great respect and dignity, even when the conflicts have been high. I have to say, this past couple of years, with increasing intensity, that that has become even more challenging, with, as my friend from the B.C. Liberals talked about, elements within some of the protest movements expressing some of the most hateful notions humanity has ever come up with.

I have had my sign in my office damaged more than a number of times with swastikas and Stars of David and other hateful acts, even after I’ve talked to the organizers and said: “I’m of Jewish descent. This is particularly troubling and offensive to me.” I’m told how we are living in 1934 Nazi Germany. I repeat to them that that allegory and insinuation is unbelievably offensive, demonstrably incorrect in every way that you can imagine. Yet, unfortunately, within some — not the majority but enough to worry me and some others — it continues. There has been provocation from one federal leader, in particular, that has gone with the rest.

I’m off topic, and I’d like to get back to the topic, which is the throne speech. It’s context, and I think sometimes context matters.

For us in Stikine, looking at the throne speech, we are able to see a number of things that are very important to the people I represent.

Stikine, for those that doesn’t know, is the largest constituency in British Columbia, in our provincial system. It’s beautiful and stunning. For members and people that have not had the opportunity to spend time up in the northwest, the riding goes all the way from outside of Telkwa, through the Bulkley Valley, the Hazeltons, up through Stewart, another gorgeous part of our country, and all the way up the highway to Alaska and the Yukon border.

It’s unbelievably rich in culture, in history, in resources, with some of the most ancient and formidable First Nations anywhere in the world, all the way from the Taku River Tlingit, the Kaska, down through Tahltan. Some Tsimshian from time to time gets in, Wet’suwet’en and Carrier Sekani sometimes coming in on the edge.

Much of what we look forward to in the next year…. We are in the midst of this rolling series of challenges and crises. I think that it’s a good test of a person, certainly any organization and, obviously, a government as to how we respond to those crises.

I would argue to all members that the response, broadly, from British Columbians to an unprecedented global pandemic, preceded by and then followed by incredibly devastating forest fires, heat domes, floods of unprecedented magnitude…. Our innate ability to come together to find common cause, in the midst of struggle and strife and tensions and political divisions, is always remarkable to me. That is as much true in rural B.C. as it is anywhere, perhaps more so at times, and certainly in Stikine, the place that I represent.

The Jobs Minister was out just today, with the Premier, laying out our economic strategy, which follows nicely in that we’ve had the throne speech, which I’ll talk about. We’ve now had our economic strategy, understanding that B.C. has got a very good problem. We’re a very popular place to come to. We’re a place that’s seen of great opportunity and have been for a long time, and increasingly so, where our forecasters look ahead and project that we’ll need upwards of hundreds of thousands of new jobs to be filled, in some cases by people we don’t have here yet, which again speaks to the need.

[3:05 p.m.]

I think the terms and understanding of the role of immigration to this province have been shifting. I think there have been times where there has been a knee-jerk reaction to the other, to people from away. We have had policies that have been starkly racist in this province and in this country. We’ve seen some evolution of that, but we remain with many challenges of properly welcoming people to British Columbia. We’ve seen enormous challenges.

We saw the inflation numbers out today. While lower than the Canadian average and lower than in many parts of the U.S., inflation is a significant problem for British Columbians. The cost of very essential things has gone up. Now, it is a well-known thing that in politics governments take credit for things that they had little influence over, and they get blamed for things, from time to time, that they have little influence over. Yet we all must wrestle…. The throne speech speaks to this, of the challenge of affordability.

We have made moves, obviously, as a government, to try to keep things as affordable as possible with the things that we do control. The largest middle-income tax cut in British Columbia history was done by an NDP government in the last term, which was to cancel the MSP premiums. That mattered to families.

I actually got a notice from MSP the other day that my address might have been wrong. It was one digit off, and I should phone. My wife said: “Get on that. You’ve got to phone those guys, because you might owe them money. If you’ve got the wrong address, it will pile up, and it will be terrible.” I phoned them, and we corrected the address. I said: “I just forgot. Are there any arrears? Is there an account that I’m owing?” She was so delightful. She said: “Oh. No, no. We’ve done away with those.”

I previously, coming out of university, ended up accruing a debt to MSP as I was paying off significant student loans, trying to make my way through the world, running a small business and getting to my MSP premiums last. After a year of that, it got real expensive quick. This is a lived reality for many British Columbians — that that’s suddenly just not there. We’ve decided to understand and address that through our taxation, collectively.

We’ve also, of course, completely overhauled ICBC. The previous government could not refuse the temptation of turning that institution into an ATM that they could just keep withdrawing from, withdrawing from, and not be, I think, honest with British Columbians that that withdrawal was coming from their pocketbooks, that the insurance corporation was overcharging — in some cases, we think intentionally — to elevate profits, which were then just flowing back into general revenue for whatever the government of the day happened to want. It’s not a good way to run anything.

My friends across the way talk about being the pro-business party. They know how to understand things. That’s not a good way to run any business, where you knowingly overcharge your customers in order to create political slush funds to use for other things that you’re not accountable for. We fixed that, and that matters. That saves British Columbian drivers hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year, every year from now on.

We, of course, created the child opportunity fund — $1,600 for a child, another $1,000 for the second — which, again, puts money back into the pockets of working British Columbians to be able to handle and manage the costs of raising children. I’ve got twins. I know these costs very well. It matters when you are thinking about trying to get them into a swim class, when you’re thinking about…. Are the winter boots going to make it another year, or should we try to get another pair? All of these things matter.

On housing — adding tens of thousands of units, trying to create the push on supply, while also looking after the speculators who have been torquing our markets, initially, probably, mostly in the Lower Mainland. You know, you throw a big rock in a pond. It ripples out. We have seen it all through the Fraser Valley, up north and through Vancouver Island — that speculation and treating homes like investments rather than a place to live, over time, has compounded to the point where livability in our major city, and many of our communities, has become very, very difficult for people.

While it may be exciting for the approximately north of 50 percent of British Columbians who do own their home to watch their valuation come through, we see a lot of cases — and I hope members have talked to people in their communities — of the so-called house rich, cash poor. Their home has become worth a lot more.

This has definitely been a problem in Vancouver and the surrounding districts for a while. The taxation rate just on the municipal taxes, even if their home is paid for, becomes so high that their affordability of staying there, in a neighbourhood that they love and have probably lived in for quite some time, becomes impossible.

[3:10 p.m.]

We have added 18,000 affordable housing units. We’re adding a bunch more, really struggling at times in working with municipalities and their permitting process. That’s something that we have to work diligently for, as members know, especially those that have spent time sitting on town or city councils. NIMBYism is a powerful force in the world. People might like an idea in the abstract, until it comes one neighbourhood over, and suddenly they have opinions, whether it be on SkyTrain or a mixed affordable housing unit. Of course, those histrionics are often driven up by misconceptions, and we’ve got a lot of work to do on that, because we have such need.

Now, on the reconciliation front, I just came from a phone call with a global mining company that operates in the northwest — cut one of their first entrances into the Americas, as they like to call us. In talking about their project and their prospect, I said: “You know, our government is really pushing for new reconciliation agreements with First Nations that allow for co-management, co-jurisdiction, a sharing of authority on the territories.”

There were some, when we were arguing through the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples in this place, and also in the national capital, that said that this was a bad idea, maybe, that it would create uncertainty, that it would shy away from investment and that it might even be bad for First Nations. Some argued that, and some still do.

I said: “What are your reflections?” They said: “Well, our certainty is extraordinary. Our relationship is incredibly strong. Our partnership is essential to our ability to do business, our partnership between ourselves and the First Nations” — in this case, it was the Tahltan — “and our partnership between the province and us.”

The more we can do on capacity, on building up the ability to respond to the many requests that are banging on the door of many First Nations, particularly in the northwest…. I know a number of nations who struggle just with the ability to respond to all the potentials and opportunities that are coming their way. It’s something that we’ve invested in and need to invest in more.

I think there are some partnerships available — the throne speech speaks a bit to this — between the private sector and the public, with respect to encouraging more of the revenue stream through First Nations, which we’ve done through the Lottery Corp.

Of course, many billions of dollars, over the next 25 or 30 years, are going directly to First Nations to build up own-source revenue and capacity as well as the commercial agreements that nations are signing, with the backing and the authority of the Crown in this case, as we refer to it, to say that a co-jurisdictional environment exists, a co-management, a co-decision-making environment. “Here is how it’s going to work. Here are the legal documents. Here are the precedents. Here’s how these agreements will be durable in court and in other places.” This is the certainty. This is the present, and I think that increasingly, it will be our future.

Now, I mentioned the significant challenges that we face as a province, the challenges that were put upon this government. I think there’s an old citation from a British parliamentarian that said: “If there’s one thing that you could have changed in your time in office, what would it be?” His reply was: “Circumstances, dear boy.” It’s the notion that you can plan, and the universe laughs. We do our best, and we adapt when the crisis is put upon us.

I’ve noticed the tenor in debate. There have been some inferences in talking about Fort McMurray, a community I’ve visited a number of times — I have friends and family that live there — and the fire that swept through that community and burned down a fairly significant part in the housing section. Not so much in the core of the municipality. At the time, there were people — this is going back just a few years now — that very much wanted to debate the impacts of climate change. “Is our weather changing? Is the intensity of our fire system changing?” People wanted to be careful and respectful of the tragedy that people in Fort McMurray had gone through, to not make the connection to the impacts of climate change.

I have noticed the difference, at least in the public discourse here in this place, in the Legislature, and in Ottawa. When looking at these climate-impacted events over these last few years that we’ve had, these incredibly devastating forest fire seasons, costing the treasury millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars, the fear of loss of life and the loss of massive amounts of our forests, the heat dome effect and the hundreds of British Columbians who lost their lives in that devastating event, the floods, the fire that ravaged and destroyed an entire town in Lytton, B.C., we’re no longer debating the question of what we need to do.

[3:15 p.m.]

The realities are upon us. They’re not going to get easier to deal with. They’re not going to get necessarily better in any kind of way. There’s a need for resiliency to be built into all of our infrastructure, into our planning, into our government thinking, and to reduce the impact that we’re having on the planet, thereby reducing the threat that is now borne upon us in our communities.

There’s much jargon — there often is — in politics about building back better. We’ve noticed in some of our interactions…. This is a real challenge. Say we seek to partner with the federal government in a building-back program to rebuild some infrastructure. The current policies on the books don’t allow us. We’d have to build back to the standard of whatever the infrastructure was before the devastating event — the flood or the fire.

But if building back that infrastructure puts it as vulnerable as it was before the disaster, it makes no sense to anybody, right? You make yourselves just as vulnerable. These are the conversations we need to have with our federal partners, our municipalities and First Nations governance — to say we all need to adapt in our way of thinking and our way of building and our way of creating economy.

There’s much hopefulness in this. We have, through very difficult times, learned these hard lessons of what it is when the weather changes on you, when something that you’ve known for a long time looks this way.

If folks remember far up north, in Telegraph Creek, when that community was hit by fires…. I sat at a lunchroom table with one of the firefighters. He was a man of great experience. He had been fighting fires for near-on four decades. He’s exhausted. He’s just come off another shift, trying to just protect this remote community of Telegraph Creek — very exposed, very vulnerable, right close to the fire. The escape is the river.

I said, “How are you doing?” which is a tough question for someone going through what he was going through. He said: “I’m fine.” I said: “Well, what are you seeing?” He said:

“It’s different. The fires are acting in a way that is different. What we used to see was this. If you had a stand that was dominated by this species, the fire would come up to it, and it would slow down. So we would know we’d have time to work around it. We would know that a trench would have this impact on a firebreak because we’ve done it over and over again.

“There are a lot of fires in the north — it’s part of the actual natural process — but not of this intensity, so our firebreaks don’t work. The fires are going deeper. They’re going hotter. We don’t have precipitation in the soil, so we don’t have that absorption of the heat. We don’t have the plans to deal with this. We have not learned how to deal with this kind of fire.”

This person — I had no idea what his politics were. I don’t think he was particularly interested. He wasn’t advocating a particular view of the world. He was just telling me how it was for him in dealing with this particular fire. He had a lot of friends around the province and in Australia and other places that have seen similar events, and he says this is not unique. This is what’s happening. We can’t debate this anymore. This is what it is.

I think building back means that you build your resiliency. The pandemic certainly exposed for us — and it speaks to this in the throne speech — where our vulnerabilities and weaknesses were as a people, that those on the lowest income margins were very vulnerable, very exposed, very near to being tossed from their homes, very near to losing their jobs.

When the pandemic first hit, we took a number of steps that I think were intelligent, in the sense of saying we have to protect people. We’ve always been a people-focused government. We’ve got to think about people first. So when the initial lockdowns….

Many of our constituents have forgotten what a lockdown looks like, by the way. I get emails on the regular, saying: “Stop the lockdown.” I say: “Well, there are restrictions, of course. There are things that we can’t do as easily. But you have forgotten.” It’s only been a couple of years, I realize. But it was about two years ago when we locked down.

In fact, if you look around the world, this jurisdiction, in British Columbia, has been one of the least locked-down jurisdictions in terms of restrictions on mobility and movement, because that was one of our three principles: to allow people as much freedom as was safely possible and the economy to continue in ways that it could, to protect our health care system from being overrun.

We all saw the images coming out of Italy. We saw the images coming out of New York City. We saw the images of what happens when the numbers get too high. And we were to protect people: do what we could, bring in the measures that keep us safe. We still have a number of those measures in place, because as we’ve said too many times, we might be done with the virus, but it’s not yet quite done with us. It doesn’t care. It simply doesn’t. It’s a virus. It has no concern for our feelings, our exhaustion, our political orientation. It lives to spread. That’s what it does. You can argue with a virus all day, and you’ll lose in the end.

[3:20 p.m.]

In taking this on and coming to this stage that we’re at, we saw the recent announcements by Dr. Bonnie Henry and the Health Minister and the Premier, moving in a steady, wise fashion, which can be nerve-racking to some. We have to acknowledge that. We definitely, I think, as MLAs, hear from constituents that are really upset with restrictions. There is a large number of people that you don’t get to hear from, but you do when some of those restrictions come free, and they’re anxious.

I think there’s good counsel from our good doctor to say let’s be kind to one another and understand that we’ll be dealing with people who do not feel safe even talking outside without a mask or whatever changes happen, being in a restaurant without seating limits. That remains something that we should be conscientious of with one another. But in those three principles — protecting our health care system, not allowing it to be overrun, protecting people….

Our mortality rate was one of the lowest in the developed world. Our equivalency to other provinces, even in Canada…. We would have lost 2,000 more British Columbians if we had an equivalent mortality rate per 100,000 people. That’s 2,000 more lives — moms, dads, uncles, brothers.

Not perfect, and at no point did we claim perfection, but the best economic recovery of any province. We have the strongest economy of any of the provinces right now. We were able to defend and protect and invest in our health care system. It had been underfunded in some significant ways. We will continue, and the throne speech speaks to that.

We were able to understand that having a high vaccin­ation rate, which we have, amongst the highest…. Not without great effort by the health minister and the public health office to continue to this day to ask people to get their shots, because we know they’re safe and effective. At various points, the vaccines have played various roles. We still see, on the effect on hospitalization, that the rate of hospitalization of those that are unvaccinated is orders of magnitude higher than those who have received their shot, especially their booster shot. A little over half of British Columbians have got their booster shot. There’s some work to do.

I know people can somewhat feel complacent that maybe omicron isn’t as bad, but anyone just has to look up the health reports and see that British Columbians are continuing to die. I would suggest they’re unacceptable, because one is too many.

We’ve been tested, and it’s good to be tested. It’s good when the opposition tests the government. It’s good when people, our constituents, push and test the policies we bring forward, because we don’t look for perfect. We look for good and constant improvement, constant ways to understand how to do things better.

I’ll speak to this, because it was mentioned in the throne speech. It was some personal work of mine, as colleagues will know. We spent a great, significant amount of time — an unprecedented amount of time — talking with First Nations governance, rights and title holders, the leadership council, just about every industry group, many municipalities, tourism operators and local businesses about the potential reorganization of our largest natural resource ministry, which is Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. That is not just a mouthful in terms of ministry names. I think it wins the award for the longest ministry name in B.C. history.

It was a ministry that had been put together about 11 years ago or so, just at the tail-end of the tenure of former Premier Campbell. As colleagues across the way would know much better than me, that Premier was a bit of a policy wonk, self-admitted, and he liked to tinker and adjust and change.

One of his pet peeves had been, “Let’s smoosh them all together. Let’s make a mega-ministry, a one-stop-shop,” which, on principle, I can understand, because for indus­try or First Nations government, maybe there’s some convenience and maybe some ability to break down the natural silos that happen within government. Colleagues have all experienced this. One ministry not talking effectively to another.

One person from industry, a senior natural resource executive, said in one of our consultations: “Well, you promised to break down the silos, but what ended up actually happening is you had the silos and you threw a tarp over top. It looked like one ministry, but we still ran into those challenges.” So the Premier asked me some time ago to go out and propose ways of specifically dealing with land and marine use planning, which is an incredibly important thing when thinking about the future, which is what the throne speech does.

What does the future look like? Well, what you do on the land, how you make decisions — are those decisions durable? Are they good for people? Are they good for the planet? Are they good for jobs?

[3:25 p.m.]

The previous government had walked away a bit from some of the significant land use planning exercises, seeing them as not effective. I’d say that there was a cost to pay in that, because a failure to plan is a plan to fail. We plan everything. We ought to. We ought to think about it.

In those consultations, the largest, most significant part of those was with the rights and title holders of the province. We asked a very broad question without much bias in terms of the outcome, which was: what’s working, what’s not, and what would you change if you were running things?

It led to some incredibly important and rich conversations, which we’ll see, in some time, in the creation of a new ministry guided and focused on that — to be the engagement point for nations, for community members, for industry, for local government when talking about what we want the future to look like, with a heavy emphasis, as you can tell from my comments, towards respecting the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, which this Legislature passed unanimously.

It’s one thing to pass a bill; it’s another thing to bring it into effect. In this part of our dialogue, normally the Crown, the province, if it were coming up with a new ministry, would do what it has always done. Some folks would sit here in Victoria in a room, and they would quabble and quabble, and they would come up with a ministry. It would be announced. There’s the name. Move people around, and off you go.

We said you don’t talk about doing different; you have to walk it and be different. In opening up the process, in working in deeper partnership with nations, with industry partners, with local government to say: what is on the ground working for you right now, what isn’t, and what do we need to change? I think…. Well, I don’t think. I know I’m very proud of the work that we did. My deputy minister, Lori Halls, was exceptional. We did nearly 100 hours of Zoom calls, three hours at a stretch to allow conversation. It was a bit unusual for a minister to hang out in that way, and I thought that just made sense. It was good.

I think the process and the results that will come out will be facing challenges, because anyone who has ever been involved in making decisions on the land, in the maritime region, knows that you run into challenges — jurisdictional challenges, competing interests, desires, hopes for the future that all manifest in the decisions that we make around the land. That’s natural.

What hasn’t been helpful is to not have those forums, those places where people can come together. And what has not been helpful is to engage with the rights and title holders after the decision has been made and say: “What do you think?” We all know this in our lives. When people are included in a decision, the level of ownership and acceptance, even if you don’t get all that you want — that’s life; you don’t get all that you want — the ownership level, the commitment to seeing something through is much higher, if we include people.

I will end there to say that in the throne speech, I see the feedback we’ve had from British Columbians around affordability, around the climate, around protecting our health care system, around making sure that there are child care spaces and more housing and more opportunities, because this is a place of incredible opportunities.

The challenges we face are significant. Some of them, due to some popularity and people wanting to live here, are challenges a lot of provinces would love to have. It’s a challenge that we’re up for, and I think it’s something that we do best when we do it together.

E. Ross: It’s my honour to get up and respond to the throne speech. I’ve been listening to the speeches here in regard to the issues that are facing British Columbia here in the past year. Over the past three years at least, I’ve been warning this House not to play politics with Aboriginal issues. That warning has gone unheeded.

I knew going in, long before I came to this place, that UNDRIP was not really relevant to what we were actually achieving in British Columbia from 2004 to 2017. We had advanced so far beyond that. It all started in 1982 with section 35 of the constitution and the jurisprudence that actually followed it. We were so far advanced, but I gave the benefit of the doubt to the passing of UNDRIP, the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous people. But looking at the clauses, I could see right then that it was impossible to achieve.

[3:30 p.m.]

This NDP government has proved over and over and over already, in every piece of legislation that has passed through this House, that they don’t intend to fulfil the promises made in UNDRIP, aligning every single law in B.C. with the rights and title interests. We haven’t seen it. We haven’t seen any piece of legislation being consulted, meaningfully consulted, with First Nations across B.C., with the rightful title holders which are 203 First Nation communities in British Columbia. We haven’t seen it. It’s a broken promise.

What I do hear, especially in terms of the previous speaker from the NDP government, is how you’re trying to rewrite history, like everything that happened from 2004 to 2017 didn’t happen. That is so insulting. That is so condescending that somehow this is a new discussion about reconciliation or a new discussion about jurisdiction. You are 15 years behind the times. You’re actually back in the days when promises were made to First Nations and then broken intentionally.

You’re talking about jurisdiction. Have you ever heard of the First Nations commercial investor development agreement? Has anybody ever heard of that? This was an agreement — a Canadian agreement, by the way — a tripartite agreement that was signed by B.C., Canada and my First Nation. There were two First Nations that were involved in it over 15 years ago. One was Squamish. We were the first to sign it, and what did it say? We gave permission to the provincial government to come onto reserve land to enforce both B.C. and federal regulations and laws on reserve land — first time it had ever happened. That was groundbreaking. That was jurisdiction.

Somehow it is brand-new to B.C. that land use planning has been brought to B.C. I was part of land use planning agreements way back in 2004. All the time that the NDP government was opposing LNG, we were doing real work with the federal government and the B.C. government to achieve true reconciliation.

What did we get from the NDP government, who were then-opposition at the time? They were fearmongering the public. They were saying that if LNG was approved, Victoria will be under water. They signed anti-LNG declarations in northwest B.C. I even talked to a couple of those NDPers that signed those anti declarations and said: “Could you come to Kitimat and actually see what we’re doing?” Never saw them again for two years.

Somehow all that work from 2004 to 2017 has been wiped away. You only have to look on the B.C. government website to see all the agreements that were signed between B.C. and First Nations to see how much work was done. You will see protocol agreements. You will see environmental stewardship agreements, forest and range agreements, land planning agreements. You’ll see all of this. This is why I keep getting up and telling this House not to play politics.

Now it’s taken a different step in a different direction. It’s become insulting. It’s become patronizing and condescending, to the point now where this NDP government is actually taking a page out of the Indian Act and telling First Nations: “We’ve already made up your mind for you in terms of legislation and policies. We’re not going to consult you. We’ll consult advocacy groups. We’re going to break our own promise in terms of the UNDRIP bill.”

That is incredibly insulting, not only to myself and my council — my elected Chief and council, by the way, elected Chief and council that did all the work — but to all those First Nations leaders that preceded me. That’s quite shameful. So I’ll say it again: don’t play politics with First Nations issues, one of the most disadvantaged people that finally got a break and started to see a light at the end of the tunnel, starting in 2004 and ended in 2017.

Anyway, I digress. I’ll get back to my speech.

[3:35 p.m.]

For the last two years, we have been going through a worldwide crisis in terms of COVID. It’s really broken apart our society. It’s broken us apart in terms of our family and friends. It’s broken apart our communities. Human beings are social beings. The idea of human beings being social is a large part of our success, no matter where you come from, and that’s been taken away. We’re going to have to rebuild society. Yes, the economy is going to recover naturally. As restrictions get lifted, the economy will recover naturally. But society is going to need fixing, specifically the mental health of British Columbians.

I’m part of the conversation, as well, in terms of the divisive nature of what British Columbians are going through, and I haven’t taken a side. I’ve heard the people who got vaccinated condemning those that didn’t get vaccinated, even though there were exemptions — condemning them, calling them anti-vaxxers. I heard the Premier actually blame millennials for it, never mind that he called a snap election in the middle of a pandemic, and even his own NDP leader condemned it and called it selfish when the federal government did the same thing.

I’ve seen those people who didn’t take the vaccination actually call those that took the vaccination sheep. I think we as leaders…. Our job is to be the middle ground, try to find a way to unite those two sides, just like everything else. Don’t take sides.

Yes, we want everybody to be vaccinated, especially when we’re talking on a worldwide scale. Otherwise, we just get more variants. But at some point, we’re going to have to learn to live with this. That’s what all of the experts say. We’ve got to live with it.

When does it become endemic, though? When does it? Where are those benchmarks? Where are those milestones? The frustration you’re seeing has been pent up for two years, because people have been doing as they were told, but they couldn’t see the end goal line. They couldn’t see it. At the very least, they couldn’t see the facts or the science that were behind it. That’s all you needed to do. That goes back to being a transparent and accountable government.

Think about this. There are people celebrating a simple activity like dancing. Did anybody ever foresee this — that people would be out there and celebrating the fact that they could dance? That is how deeply impacted our society has become, especially for millennials. I didn’t blame millennials for the COVID, not like the Premier did. Every one of us was young at one point — every one of us. It wasn’t one specific group to blame.

But young people…. Everybody should remember what it was like to be young, how you’re full of life, how you’re rebellious, how you want to go out there and enjoy new activities, new experiences. The millennials were limited. They couldn’t do it. They didn’t get to enjoy the same activities we experienced when we were young.

I was just going to call ourselves millennials. I’m no millennial.

Interjection.

E. Ross: I’m a Gen X-er. Are you a millennial? Okay. Like the member for Surrey–White Rock. I’m a Gen X-er.

But millennials had to put their life on hold for two years. Whether you’re talking about dancing, graduations, new jobs, they had to put their lives on hold. I think the millennials, apart from the families and the communities, suffered the most. At a certain stage in their life, when they’re still developing and still just getting ready to go out in the big world, they were told: “No, you can’t go out there.”

[3:40 p.m.]

In terms of the reconciliation, real reconciliation was working on the ground from 2004, mainly because the Haida court case came down in the courts of B.C. and Canada. That’s where you got the Great Bear Rainforest. That’s how that came to be. I was part of that negotiation.

But what I want the Legislature to understand — and maybe the people of British Columbia — is that the Great Bear Rainforest wasn’t just the protection of land. It protected a large amount of land, yes. But it was also a working forest. Logging was continued. It still is continued today. That is the balance of economic development and the environment.

That was work that was done with the previous B.C. Liberal government and First Nations. Now we’re starting to see 25 mayors from Vancouver Island that wrote a letter to the B.C. NDP government saying: “Look, we need this offset, the economic impact of logging deferrals in B.C., because First Nations need support in the transition because the environmental protection does not have an economic component to it.” The letter just came out today.

Just about everybody understands the importance of the economy, but in today’s day and age, First Nations understand it because they got their first introduction to it in a meaningful manner in 2004. Sadly, those First Nations are now back to square one with a vague, general document called UNDRIP that is not being implemented as promised in this House.

Where did that come from? Reconciliation is actually first mentioned in the court cases, and I heard many tributes to Delgamuukw. I’m sure many people in this House have read Delgamuukw, the court case, Chief Earl Muldon. I’m sure many of you have read it. But have you read all the other court cases that came after that, that further defined the rights and title, that actually led to the success of First Nations — and British Columbia, for that matter — from 2004 to 2017? You would not have had LNG without Delgamuukw, Haida, Mikisew Cree, Gladstone and any other number of the 200 court cases that define rights and title in B.C., including the ones where First Nations lost.

Rights and title case law isn’t just about defining the rights of First Nations interests. Rights and title case law actually defines the power of the Crown, the duty of the Crown, the honour of the Crown. As the judges have said, the Crown has a duty to address rights and title, but they also have a duty to address the greater society as well, the society of a whole as B.C.

Well, guess what. First Nations are now a larger part of that society as well, because over 50 percent of First Nations live off reserve in the urban centres. That’s why it’s so sad that we’ve gone back 20 years in terms of UNDRIP, the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, actually ignoring all the progress that we’ve made in B.C.

Before I get to the flooding and the forest fires, I want to acknowledge Pritpal Singh Sekhon. During the floods, I actually went out to Merritt and Abbotsford and Mission. I was talking to people on the ground, and it was heartbreaking. I looked at Merritt. Literally, trailers were floating around their streets. They were digging mounds of dirt out of their basements and yards and putting it out on the roadway. They were packing out all their fridges and all their appliances and all their furniture, and they were putting them on the streets.

Pritpal Singh Sekhon was actually one of the spokespersons for all the Indo-Canadian temples and community that organized a volunteer program to get food and supplies to all those victims of the floods and the torrential downpour — all those temples. I actually went out to the Langley Airport at the time and saw all the volunteers that were compiling all this food and all these goods. Then they were dumping it into small little private planes.

[3:45 p.m.]

B.C. owes a debt of gratitude to the gurdwaras, the temples and the Indo-Canadian community for doing this. I think somebody should get the Order of B.C. You can start with Pritpal Singh Sekhon. Give him a call and ask him.

They did not get the attention they deserved, those pilots — tiny little planes to mid-sized planes. They were just packing them full of goods and services, and they were flying them out. Even the next day, when I went over to Mission, I was watching the planes over top of me go back and forth. An incredible initiative. The private people and the private sector.

I learned a lot about the minority community that day. I was incredibly impressed. I was incredibly inspired, incredibly humbled. Here was the Indo-Canadian community saying: “Look, we’re here. We’ve always been here. But we want to be a bigger part of B.C. society.” They didn’t want thanks. They didn’t want attention. But I think in this case, they deserve it.

It brings me back to the actual emergency itself. If you were like myself, prior to this, a couple of years ago…. It actually scared the heck out of me when my alert came up on my phone as a test, the emergency test. I got a bunch of messages and emails saying: “What was that?” Oh, they’re just testing your cell phone emergency plan. A test ensures that it works for the day that you actually need it.

Where was this test? Where was this warning when we actually needed it? There was no warning of the torrential rainfall. When the highways were getting flooded, there was no warning. There was nothing, so the people who lost their lives on the highway…. They have the same questions. Why weren’t we warned? I don’t know.

In fact, when I was sitting in a small airport, waiting for a small airplane to take me out to Kelowna, I was talking to one of the managers of the airline. They said they were part of the emergency plan. All the B.C. government had to do was initiate the emergency plan. A state of emergency, and the private sector would have been mobilized. But they needed three days advance, because their planes had to land in lakes, rivers, runway strips. So they had to go out there and pre-check for danger.

There is an emergency plan in B.C. I know it. I used it as a basis going forward when I was chief councillor of Haisla. Why wasn’t it initiated?

The other emergency we had was forest fires. Initially, when I heard the B.C. NDP talking about how reckless the people were in Monte Lake and Logan Lake for staying behind, I actually agreed with the NDP government. You shouldn’t put yourself in danger. You should let the people responsible for putting out fires come in, which would be the NDP government.

Well, I got invited down to Monte Lake to hear their side of the story. So instead of going to Kamloops that day, I went out to Monte Lake, and I was shocked. The citizens were abandoned. They were even threatened if they went out to fight fires. These were people who were trying to protect their homes, their ranches, their farms. They got no help from the B.C. government.

So what did they do? They collected all their equipment — their water tanks, their shovels, their axes — and they went out and put out fires. Quite effectively, I might add. These old timers, the old-time loggers, actually grew up in an era where they had to go fight fires because it was mandatory. These ranchers knew how to put out fires using their equipment. Even mothers contributed, mothers that refused to leave because nobody else was coming to help them. Every fire they put out…. They would just put it out, and then they’d move on to the next one.

[3:50 p.m.]

These weren’t reckless people. These were decent, hard-working, honest people that had no help. I’ll tell you how hypocritical this is. They were called reckless, but the pipeline workers for Trans Mountain did the exact same thing and not a word of criticism was levelled at them.

That night, when I went to a restaurant to have a meeting, there were a couple of people that travelled for hours to come and meet me. They showed me the technology that the B.C. government is not using. There is technology being employed all around the world right now that not only protects communities, houses and people, but it protects firefighters. We don’t have to put firefighters in the face of danger anymore. Why are we not looking at this? Why are we condemning people that actually knew how to fight fires back in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s? Why did we just desert them? Why did we just leave them?

The one guy I talked to said he was on his way home, stopped to look at the fire alongside the road, phoned it in as a lawful citizen and then went home to get his bulldozer. He came out and started to put it out. He was told that if he continued to put it out, he was going to get charged. So what did he do? He thumbed his nose at the government and said: “I’m going to put it out. I’m going to protect my ranch.”

I talked to ranchers that gave me some of the most horrible stories on why their cows had to die, had to be put down. I mean, some of the suggestions were: “Well, why don’t you just put your cows on a truck and ship them out?” Where are they going to get the trucks? There are cows that are actually wandering all over a mountainside. How are you going to get them down when there’s a forest fire up there? And if you can muster enough trucks to put 1,000 head of cattle onto trucks, where are you going to bring them? None of this made sense.

If you went out and talked to these community people — these ranchers, these farmers, these natives — you would see that they have a plan. They have local knowledge. They have local resources. They’re not being utilized. What’s the result? Lytton gets wiped off the face of the map.

In Monte Lake, I could see a 20-foot buffer around a house from a person who just went out with a hose to protect the fire. It completely surrounded his house, but he stayed. I saw water tanks lined up along Monte Lake, all private, with hoses running all over the road. These people should be commended. People have the knowledge and the history to fight fires.

In terms of what’s happening in our economy…. You know what? Forestry is going away. Logging deferrals. No real plan to offset what’s going to happen. Vancouver Island is going to get hit doubly hard, because not only will their mills get shut down, and the 18,000 forestry workers be put out of work, but also, fish farms are being forced out. Places like Campbell River — forestry on its way out. Fish farms are on their way out, including First Nations that depend on fish farms and forestry, which is quite sad.

It’s going to hit them another way as well. The cost of living is going to go up. It’s not intuitive. When you’re talking about the fish farm industry, you’re actually talking about: what do they do with the offal, which is the guts? Everything that you don’t eat in a fish gets shipped down to the Lower Mainland and gets used for agricultural feed and fertilizer. When that supply gets cut off, the farmers’ costs go up. There’s not enough supply.

On top of that, that truck is now going to go up to Campbell River with goods and services and groceries, but it’s going to come back empty. Those extra trucking costs get added on to the cost of living for the people up in northern Vancouver Island.

There’s more. As fish farms get pushed out, even from places like Kitasoo, Klemtu, which has had a fish farm for the last — what? — 40 years…. They’re going to get pushed out of the north coast. I know those people. They’re friends and family. That’s the only thing they have going for them in their community. That’s what got them off welfare. They’re going to get pushed out.

[3:55 p.m.]

As you take fish farms away from B.C., you’re taking away a protein food source for the world. Where is the pressure going to end up? It’s going to end up on wild salmon.

The only reason I bring this up is because I understand it’s a federal jurisdiction, but the B.C. government controls the tenure. It was in this House a few years ago when we understood that this B.C. NDP government was putting pressure on the tenure of fish farms in north Vancouver Island. They got the ball rolling. Then they backed off when they knew the federal government was going to finish them off for them.

We’re not building an economy here. We’re not building communities here in B.C. anymore. We’re taking them apart, one by one. We’re putting 18,000 forestry workers out of work. Those 18,000 forestry workers represent 18,000 families. As you put pressure on a fish farm to close down, you’re putting pressure on all those workers that work out there but also in the manufacturing facilities down in Surrey. You’re going to put them out of work. It’s going to affect all of B.C.

Affordability is going to go up, not only because of all the job losses but also because the local communities up there are going to lose that tax base. Vancouver Island is not going to have a bright future for a while.

But have you considered this? In your opposition to fish farms, have you ever considered that fish farms can actually save wild salmon? Specifically steelhead. It’s been brought up many times in this House. Steelhead is on the verge of extinction in many of our rivers across B.C. Have you ever considered that the technology that the fish farms have in north Vancouver Island can actually be easily transferred to save wild salmon? And it could be affordable.

The same way that they raise salmon for sale all across the world to feed the world need for protein, they can do the same thing for wild salmon. We’re not thinking outside of the box here, because we’re just doing things for the sake of politics. It’s just for the sake of getting elected. Whatever the common narrative is at the time, that’s all we’re doing — the lowest common denominator.

When you’re talking about the survival of communities, when you’re talking about a person’s life, I think leaders…. That’s the difference between a leader and a politician. A leader thinks about what’s best for people and the community. A politician just wants to get elected. They can sacrifice 18,000 forestry workers. They can sacrifice fish farms. They can sacrifice food security.

This is not the way to build a province. We were on a good track from 2004 to 2017, whether you’re talking about an economy, building up our communities, reconciliation. Now we’re starting all over again. The people that actually pay for this are the people of British Columbia, specifically my kids, my grandkids, my great-grandkids. If we don’t get off this path, it’s all of our descendants that have got to pay for this.

J. Routledge: It is truly an honour to rise in this chamber and speak in support of the Speech from the Throne.

I acknowledge that I’m doing so from the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

It has become part of our custom to acknowledge the First People on whose land we gather. It’s more than protocol. It’s more than a ritualistic gesture. Every time I make the land acknowledgment, I reflect on what it means to be conducting our business on land that was taken. I reflect on how much the rituals that frame our work here and the symbols of power that surround us here are meant to be signals of dominance, of the enduring impact of colonialism.

[4:00 p.m.]

The irony that I am debating the Speech from the Throne is not lost on me. I am proud to be part of a government that is determined not to let us forget the injustices of the past and the injustices that have been perpetrated on others in our name. I’m proud that we have passed legislation that embeds reconciliation in everything we do.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

We knew it wouldn’t be easy. We knew we would en­counter complications we couldn’t begin to anticipate. We knew that, in this age of instant gratification, it would be hard for some to accept why we didn’t just go ahead and exert our power to make what seemed to be the right decision. Many would have applauded us for it. I’m proud to be part of a government that chose to do what was right rather than what might have been politically expedient. Sometimes doing what is right takes longer.

Ours is a government that is committed to a better future for every British Columbian. Generations of British Columbians have witnessed band-aid fixes to social and economic inequities that are systemic in nature. Band-aids might look impressive, but they do little to stop a hemorrhage.

I still have a supply of Barbie and Spider-Man band-aids in my medicine cabinet from when my grandchildren were toddlers. Sometimes they liked to decorate themselves with them. It made them feel better.

They’re teenagers now, and they take a more holistic approach to their health. They know that they have to pay attention to what they eat, get enough sleep and exercise their bodies. They know that their bodies are machines with integrated parts. They know the difference between symptoms and causes. They know that building stronger muscles, straightening their teeth and combating teenage acne takes time and discipline. There are no magic wands.

Our government knows that the same is true of fixing the inequities and insecurities embedded in our socioeconomic system. We won’t be stampeded into putting band-aids on the surface of deeper systemic problems.

In the spirit of reconciliation, I also want to acknowledge that I live and my constituency is located on the unceded traditional territory of hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking people — specifically, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the People of the Inlet — who, according to the archaeological evidence and their own oral history, have been stewards of their traditional territory for thousands of years.

Before contact with Europeans, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation was about 10,000 members strong. It was a distinct Coast Salish nation. Its territory included the Burrard Inlet and the waters draining into it. Prior to European contact, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation was a land of plenty, with abun­dant fish and game to sustain themselves and their First Nations neighbours with whom they partnered through marriage and protocol. These are the words of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.

Their ancestors’ survival depended on cycles of hunting, harvesting and preserving foods and on trades with their neighbours. Their people lived by a seasonal round, a complex cycle of food gathering and spiritual and cultural activities that formed the heart of their culture.

“In winter, community members congregated in large villages located in sheltered bays. Shed-roofed houses of up to several hundred feet in length were divided into individual family apartments. They subsisted largely on stored dried foods, gathered and processed throughout the rest of the year. Winter activities included wood carving, weaving blankets of mountain goat wool and participating in spiritual ceremonies.

[4:05 p.m.]

“In late spring, families would disperse to set up camps,” including in what is now Burnaby North, “on virtually every beach and protected cove in Tsleil-Waututh territory. People transported planks from the winter houses by canoe to construct smaller summer structures. From these base camps, they made excursions to hunt, fish and gather food as resources became seasonably available. Some foods were consumed immediately; others were processed and stored for winter.

“In mid-July or early August, most of the Tsleil-Waututh and other Coast Salish groups travelled to the Fraser River to catch and dry the most favoured type of salmon: sockeye. During this time, people would visit, exchange news of relatives and form alliances. They also harvested and dried large volumes of berries during the summer.

“After the Fraser River run finished in the fall, Tsleil-Waututh families would congregate in camps on the Indian, Capilano, Seymour and other rivers to fish for pink and chum salmon. Most of the catch was dried for winter use or trade. By December, families returned to their winter villages with the provisions collected throughout the year, and the cycle began again.”

This was an ancient, complex and sophisticated society, and it was devastated by contact with Europeans. The ma­jority of the population was decimated by disease, primarily smallpox. Residential schools, cultural suppression, the reserve system and colonialism further fractured the economic base and social cohesiveness.

The Tsleil-Waututh remind us that they never ceded or relinquished their responsibility for this territory, but they also remind us that its resources have been exploited and damaged through industrialization and urbanization. They remind us that their nation holds Aboriginal title over what is now a highly urbanized area, which they share with many private and public interests.

Their land claim, under the treaty process, is complex for this reason. Yet they continue to be guided by their birthright and sense of obligation, as Tsleil-Waututh peo­ple, to care for the lands and waters of their territory to ensure that future generations can thrive here, a birthright that has compelled the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to establish a Sacred Trust initiative.

Their Sacred Trust is mandated to stop the proposed Trans Mountain expansion. They have fought it in the courts, on the land and on the water, and they have the support of many settlers who live on my side of the inlet in Burnaby North, many of whom have chosen to serve jail time rather than get out of the way of such an ill-advised, out-of-date, massive fossil fuel project.

I am proud to say that as a newly elected MLA, I was invited to join the Tsleil-Waututh on their Mother’s Day paddle. In an armada of huge, oceangoing canoes, we paddled across the inlet to the Westridge terminal to express our opposition to the expansion of the TMX pipeline. I will remember that experience as a highlight of being an MLA.

I hope the Tsleil-Waututh are successful in stopping the TMX pipeline. When they win, we all win. The planet is depending on them.

I’d like to thank my constituency office staff for their professionalism, compassion and commitment to uniting our community. It has been a difficult couple of years. They are front-line workers. The volume of calls and emails has increased dramatically. The problems and questions constituents have brought to my office have become more complex and intense. There is more at stake for them. Mine is a very engaged electorate. My staff has gone above and beyond to assist them and involve them. Perisa Chan has been instrumental in building relationships with Burnaby North’s very large Chinese-speaking community.

[4:10 p.m.]

This year my office hosted a virtual lunar new year celebration online. It was largely volunteer-driven by constit­uents. Constituents from a wide range of Asian cultures shared their New Year traditions and fond memories, and we shared some good laughs.

I was honoured to be invited, virtually, into some homes to see how they’d decorated for lunar new year and what the decorations symbolized. Everyone was pretty intrigued by one participant’s demonstration of her pseudo-firecrackers — totally safe, but loud enough to scare away the monster.

Perisa also takes the lead on outreach, and as soon as the weather permits, we will be back out in the parks with our mobile constituency office, canvassing in person and by phone and finding other creative ways to engage constituents.

Nyiri Karakas, who thought she was joining us last fall in a part-time capacity, found herself immediately stepping into the full-time position. I thank her for her willingness to pivot in an emergency and for her commitment to serve constituents efficiently and conscientiously. She is relentless in the pursuit of information and answers that constituents request.

Kyle Kattler is the newest and the youngest member of our team. He has deep roots in Burnaby North and lived experiences that should create strong bonds with younger members of our community. I look forward to having a more ambitious plan for engaging students and being guided in a concrete, tangible way by their articulated hopes and fears. They are our future.

I would also like to thank my family. They are my inspiration, my anchor, my reality check, and a source of joy that keeps me going. I miss them dearly while I’m in Victoria, and I can’t wait to get home to hear all about their adventures, dramas and triumphs.

As you may know, we now live in a multigenerational household. This is how we are coping with the housing crisis. My husband and I live on one floor, our son and his family live on another, and we share a laundry room, workspace, TV room and supposedly the garage.

We know that we are extremely lucky and privileged to be in a position to transform our home in this way. And we know that it is not a solution that would work for most at this time. But I’m confident that our government is working every day to find and support creative solutions to the lack of affordable housing, and we will be successful.

I also want to thank my community. The people of Burnaby North came together early in the pandemic to take care of each other. It was confusing in the beginning — when to wear a mask, where to wear a mask, how to wear a mask, what surfaces should be sanitized and how often. People made mistakes until they got into the rhythm of living in a pandemic.

For the most part, people in my community have been very tolerant of each other. I remember feeling a bit anxious early in the pandemic about the number of people who were going about their business without masks. Then it seemed almost overnight that I saw everyone, every age, wearing masks on Hastings Street in Burnaby Heights, waiting to cross the street, lining up to shop in our delis, bakeries and greengrocers, and at ATMs, or just walking down the crowded street.

I have heard anecdotal stories of people policing each other’s behaviour perhaps a bit too enthusiastically and intrusively. But for the most part, I saw people being very patient with each other.

On the other hand, the increased instances of racial hostility, particularly to women of Asian descent, have been very disturbing. I heard stories of Asian women being called names on buses, publicly humiliated, people refusing to sit beside them. I heard stories of Asian women being swarmed on SkyTrain platforms. As one constituent told me, what hurt her the most was the silence and the apparent complicity of other passengers.

Some members of my community decided to do something about that. We gathered at my community office and made signs that said: “I won’t mind my business when I see racism. Anti-racism is everybody’s business.” Or “See something; say something.” Or “Be more than a bystander. Stand with Asians; stop racism.”

[4:15 p.m.]

We walked over to the Brentwood SkyTrain station at rush hour and held up our signs, where commuters were coming and going through the turnstiles. We did this every Friday afternoon. The response from the travelling public was very positive. We encountered a few curious questions, but no hostility.

There are so many other ways that people of Burnaby North have stepped up to take care of each other. We have consistently had one of the highest vaccination rates. First, the vaccine clinic at what is now called the Christine Sinclair Centre, and then the drive-through vaccination centre at BCIT, both located in Burnaby North, moved people through so efficiently and with such professionalism. So many of my constituents were vaccinated and/or tested at these locations. They were impressed and reassured by their experience.

I also want to give a shout out to the Burnaby primary care network. I remember being invited to a Zoom meeting early in the pandemic. It became a regular weekly meeting of frontline service providing organizations like Burnaby Family Life, the North Burnaby Neighbourhood House, Burnaby Division of Family Practice, Progressive Housing, Burnaby Community Services, Mosaic, Burnaby community schools.

They came together weekly to identify potentially vulnerable sectors of our community: the homeless, seniors living alone, new immigrants, renters, women facing dom­estic violence, people who had lost their incomes or were otherwise living on the edge. We began meeting regularly to explore and implement solutions and supports. The Burnaby Division of Family Practice played a leadership role. I remember asking them: what is the Burnaby prim­ary care network, and where does it fit into these meetings that we’re having every week?

The answer was: this is the Burnaby primary care network. The Burnaby primary care network is the community. It is a model that is unique to Burnaby and one that other communities hope to emulate.

I want to thank the Burnaby firefighters and North Burnaby Neighbourhood House for mobilizing such a massive scale to make sure every family had enough nutritious food to get through the crisis. My husband and I were so moved by this outpouring of the community stepping up to help each other that we began making regular deliveries on behalf of the food hub. I want to give a special shout-out to a health care worker who, after a 16-hour shift, stood in line at Costco for more than an hour so she could buy food to donate to the Burnaby food hub.

The willingness and capacity for citizens to take care of each other is a hallmark of civilization. Some hearing me say this might be thinking: “But I thought it was the role of government. I thought it was your job to take care of us. I thought you were opposed to previous government’s hands off, let the market decide, survival of the fittest approach to governing.”

I think the role of government is to provide a socioeconomic framework — an infrastructure within which people and families can make the decisions that will allow them to thrive and feel mutually connected and safe with their neighbours. I think the role of government is to create an environment within which members of society don’t feel they must compete with each other for limited resources in order to just survive. I think the role of government is to create an environment that promotes social solidarity.

This throne speech lays the groundwork for a future in British Columbia in which everyone can be confident they will thrive, knowing they will do so because everyone else is thriving too. Some members have sneered at this throne speech. They’ve called it empty rhetoric that lacks detail. But with due respect, I disagree.

[4:20 p.m.]

This throne speech does what throne speeches are designed to do. It spells out the direction our government intends to take, and yes, it does represent a course correction. It corrects the dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest direction that the people of British Columbia have been taking for generations. So let’s take another look at the throne speech with that perspective in mind.

The throne speech highlights government’s plan to support people, whether they are rebuilding after fires and floods or simply getting through this difficult wave of COVID-19. Keeping people healthy and safe through the rest of the pandemic and building a people-centred recovery will continue to be top priorities for the government. B.C. has one of the highest vaccination rates in North America and the strongest economic recovery in Canada, with more people working today than when the pandemic hit. That’s why our focus has been and will continue to be on investing to help make life better for people.

In the year ahead, government will continue to improve health care, fight climate change, help communities prepare for extreme weather, make everyday life more affordable and train people for the jobs of the future. More B.C. families will have access to affordable housing and child care, as we are doubling the number of $10-a-day spaces, cutting child care fees for many families in half and increasing the supply of homes for middle-class families. Regular and reliable increases to minimum wage will build on actions to bring down the costs of living, like eliminating MSP premiums and reducing ICBC rates by an average of almost $500 a year.

Our government knows we can’t cut our way to a better future. Building a stronger B.C. is not about pulling back; it’s about moving us forward together. We have been through a lot together, and no doubt there will be more challenges ahead. But if we look out for each other, we have shown we can overcome anything that gets thrown our way.

I’m excited about what British Columbians can do together in the coming years to secure a safe, healthy, comfortable future for everyone. We are fortunate to have a government at this historic time that has a vision of a just and equal society and the wherewithal to make it happen.

L. Doerkson: It’s indeed a privilege to speak to the 2022 throne speech. I do want to start, first off, by bringing my greetings from Cariboo-Chilcotin — as you know, the most beautiful riding, of course, in British Columbia.

I want to express my thanks also to staff. Jenny Huffman in Williams Lake and Bev Marks in 100 Mile House are unbelievable at what they do. Certainly, the task that has been before both of them in the riding has been daunting for the last year, as it has been throughout British Columbia. I am grateful for their commitment to the people of Cariboo-Chilcotin and, certainly, for the help that they offer me every single day. I also want to remind people in Cariboo-Chilcotin just how well they’re looked after.

There is also part of a team here in Victoria, as well, made up of Hannah Levett, Kevin Dixon and Abigail Uher. Again, these are devoted, committed people that work every day to represent and help me to represent Cariboo-Chilcotin, so I’m extremely grateful to them as well.

As much as I looked forward to the happy thoughts of another throne speech, I have to say that — and we have heard, obviously, multiple sides to this speech — I have an alarmingly different take on what is happening on the ground and what appears to be being ignored, in some cases, by this government.

[4:25 p.m.]

It has been suggested in the throne speech that brighter days are ahead. As far as a forecast is concerned, that’s all I really heard. I, just like all British Columbians, hope that’s the case, because I can tell you that the sense I get at the ground level from, certainly, residents in Cariboo-Chilcotin is that they’re at their wits’ end. I don’t think that they are different than many British Columbians. They are frustrated.

We have seen our constituents and, certainly, people in my riding and the province and even the country, of course, divided on issues — angry, sad, very emotional. All of those have been conveyed to me on a daily basis. When I heard the throne speech talk about things of the past year and hopefully point to something in the future, I really didn’t get much of a message beyond: “There are better days ahead.”

We’re living in a time where we find ourselves waiting for operations in our health care system longer. We’ve heard contrary to that repeatedly in this House, but I can assure you that we have advocated for many people who are stuck in a health care system that, in many ways, is struggling — certainly, for the people in Cariboo-Chilcotin. We’ve had serious warnings over the past year with respect to the potential for our health care system not to be able to serve in a situation of serious emergency.

Now, that has been in Cariboo-Chilcotin. It’s also been, of course, throughout rural B.C., where we’ve actually seen hospitals closed at times. Many shortages and these closures have created a massive struggle for residents in rural B.C.

We’re living in a time of fear with respect to our forest industry. While we’ve been told that bills like 23 and 28, along with old-growth deferrals, are a pathway to a better future, the government must concede that people have a right to be concerned and worried.

I’ve painted a picture before in this House of what my community looks like. I’d like to just briefly paint that picture again. In Williams Lake, there are six mill-type operations within the district boundaries, within the city limits of our community. In the South Cariboo and 100 Mile House, there is a large mill. In the West Chilcotin, there is a large mill. You would be extremely hard-pressed to walk through any part of Cariboo-Chilcotin and speak to people that are not worried about what’s going on with respect to our forests, and they have a different take on the throne speech.

I’ve written regarding the unintended consequences of some of the deferrals and the damage that’s been done to log home producers in my riding. Again, I don’t think this is unique to Cariboo-Chilcotin. The damage has been caused because of the way old-growth deferrals were introduced to this province. The fact is it has tightened up the market. We’ve talked and the minister has talked a lot about the value-added sector, how it could improve and how we can grow that sector. But in this case, this unintended consequence has really hurt these businesses.

One of those businesses has been in operation for almost four decades. He has told me, in no uncertain terms, that this is the most frightened he has ever been in his business life. It is because he has orders to build homes next year — or this year, I suppose — but cannot get the logs, because the industry has tightened up, and because industry will not share those logs with these builders.

It would be hard to deny the woodlot owners who I have met with repeatedly. Again, I’ve conveyed my thoughts to the ministry with respect to what is happening in regard to their businesses, their operations. It’s been suggested to me on multiple occasions, from the woodlot federation: “If you want to see how to manage forests in this province, then you should take a look at the forests that our members manage.”

[4:30 p.m.]

I have seen some of those forests. They are incredible. They’re sustainable. They have a different outlook. Again, it’s an unintended consequence of what legislation from this place can have on the residents of this province.

I can’t stress it enough, the suggestion that you could walk through Cariboo-Chilcotin talking to people that are affected in some way. It’s going to be almost impossible to find people that aren’t. But I also have mentioned the connection to the cities and to the Lower Mainland and, in a recent speech, read out many, many operators that could be affected in the Lower Mainland as well.

There has been suggestion of transition, and we’ve seen the transition happen in the past. It’s worked moderately, no question about it. But the way these bills and the way the old-growth deferrals have been presented, it could catch a lot of people in the lurch. What I mean by that is that it’s one thing to transition someone at 50 or 60 years old to a new career or to a pension, but it’s completely another when you want to transition someone that’s 40 or 50 and that may be on the hook for millions of dollars of debt because they’re working in this industry with very serious investments.

That is happening. It’s not just happening in Cariboo-Chilcotin. It’s happening throughout our province. People are afraid. They definitely are looking for those brighter days ahead.

Businesses have struggled through what has been an unbelievably difficult time, orders which have been extremely difficult on tourism, restaurants and, of course, the last severe closure of gyms, dance studios, yoga studios. The funding has fallen short. For most of these businesses, the last two years have been an absolute struggle, with complete closure at the end of December being a near-death experience for them, with funding models that don’t cover costs, let alone the income for the owners. Their outlook on this throne speech also has been quite different than the government’s.

I question the funding models that have come over the past year. If there’s anything that I could ask for or hope for, it’s that if we continue along this path, these funding models make sense to businesses — that they make sense and they’re accessible. We spoke the other day with respect to the gym funding, 99 employees to qualify for the top of that funding model, which was $10,000. Honestly, the $10,000 would maybe keep some of the operators in Cariboo-Chilcotin alive. The problem is they couldn’t qualify for most of it. These were businesses that were closed completely.

I’m not questioning the fact that they should have been closed or they shouldn’t have been closed. But I am suggesting that if the government is going to legislate or, through a public health order, close these businesses, they have to help.

The speech reminded us of the removal of medical premiums. Now, that’s certainly not forward-looking, and it didn’t happen in the last year. I hate to say it, but those medical premiums didn’t simply just vanish. They came back as a tax on business. It’s not fair to say that they just disappeared. One way or the other, people of British Columbia are funding this medicare system.

We spoke about paid sick days for employees. Again, something I’m not opposed to. But the throne speech did not acknowledge the added pressure that this has placed on businesses. This seems to be a reoccurring theme over the last couple of years. I’m not questioning the fact that we have five days of sick time, but what I am questioning is the timing — during a pandemic. When we tried or attempted to fund other things, why would we put this added pressure on businesses that have done their level best to try to reinvent themselves and to live and operate within the public health orders that have been bestowed upon them?

[4:35 p.m.]

I had hoped for a vision, but words are just that. I don’t hear words outlining clearly or explaining what the future will hold, other than simply brighter days ahead.

It would be wrong to not mention our climate and new definitions. Heat domes and atmospheric rivers and terms like “flash freeze” have people in British Columbia — in fact, all parts of rural and urban B.C. — afraid to look at weather reports. CleanBC was mentioned. I know exactly what CleanBC is, but it was mentioned, and we have watched helplessly in this province as a freighter was stuck in the shores of Vancouver. We have a company called Heritage Bricks that has teamed up with LEGO to make your own freighter stuck on our shore. It’s obscene that this has been allowed to continue.

We watched right here as blocks away…. We watched helplessly as another container ship burned for days in a Victoria harbour. It dumped dozens of containers overboard, leaving a horrendous mess. It was volunteers that cleaned that up as well.

We’ve watched helplessly as wildfire has consumed our landscape, as floods and mudslides have ripped our prov­ince apart and heat domes ended life for so many of our residents. In all of these cases, residents and volunteers have kicked into overdrive. We’ve heard, on multiple occasions, about these volunteers that have done an incredible job of helping one another.

All too often, we’re finding ourselves, in Cariboo-Chilcotin now, having to pack our bags in late spring and leave them at our back door until fall. We have seen so many horrendous events that have resulted in serious human loss, with damage to infrastructure and loss of precious resources. Massive loss in our forests, hundreds of thousands of hectares — millions, perhaps, over the last decade — that have been consumed by wildfire. Many people, businesses and ranches struggle to be funded and helped by this government.

We argue and debate that in this place, but I can prove and show examples of people and businesses that are continuing to struggle. I met with a rancher last weekend that still has not received even an answer from a ministry. His ranch was consumed by fire, much of it, in late summer. We have been working with the ministry to get a decent response for this rancher. Forget about the money. We’re having a difficult time getting a letter back, or a response.

We have to do better here. We really must. This rancher has been trying to mend miles of fence, plant fields and make up for loss of cattle. While the government speaks of great days ahead in the throne speech, we’re advocating for them to fix their own fences on Crown land, to seed the Crown range that has been burnt and consumed by fire, because it is a massive issue. Again, it’s been discussed in this House. We have to do this work.

I applaud the work of firefighters, pilots and support staff, but we were outgunned last year, and we’ve been outgunned before. We have to see better results. We must provide better results to the people of British Columbia to protect our very valuable resource that is our land and forest, and certainly the private property.

We continue to see staggering losses in Lytton and Monte Lake ignored or, at the very least, put away somewhere where it’s not to be discussed, even while these residents are pleading. We have heard the MLA for Fraser-Nicola plead in this House, beg for help for these residents. We’ve heard presentations from groups that want to rebuild Lytton as one of the first FireSmart communities in Canada. I think that that is an incredible opportunity to set the bar for rebuilding a town like Lytton.

[4:40 p.m.]

We’ve even heard from insurers in this country. We’ve heard them pleading with the government to get moving. Why? It’s because insurance policies expire. Many of them may expire within two years. Well, we’re seven months into it now. What’s worse is that the value of those homes that has been protected…. They’re losing the value because of increasing costs, as we’ve talked about, again, much in this House. Brighter days for Lytton and places like Monte Lake would be hoped for, for certain.

An exciting throne speech with an abundance of great things to come, but what about the residents of the Sumas Prairie? Many have lost so much and are still waiting for help. Merritt — another community also waiting for help. After months, they still need help. A community like Merritt has dealt with fire, flooding and having it all frozen in place. The challenges there are unbelievable.

It’s a government that appears as though they will re­move choice, service and funding for families that struggle with the complexities of raising autistic children. I’ve had an opportunity to visit Blue Sky Autism Centre, in Lone Butte, on two or three occasions. It’s unbelievable — the commitment that they have to families and children — but in rural B.C., you must know that people travel for hours now to get that service. A place like Anahim Lake, in the West Chilcotin, is three or four hours west of Williams Lake, which would normally be a service centre.

If these hubs are to move to a place like Kamloops or Prince George, can you just imagine the challenge that a family dealing with a child with autistic needs will be faced with? Think about how many of those children will simply go without, how many of those families will go without. We have to rethink. We have to stop and rethink what we’re doing with things that are like hub models, in many cases, certainly with respect to autism and the funding that is currently being reconsidered in this House.

I don’t want to leave out the opioid crisis. It’s a serious situation, and often it’s discussed in this place and discussed with respect to larger cities like Vancouver. The fact is that this a very serious situation in rural B.C. In rural B.C., and certainly in Cariboo-Chilcotin, we have very little resources to deal with the challenges that these folks face.

We need a better commitment with respect to the roads in Cariboo-Chilcotin and with respect to the roads in rural B.C. We have spoken on many occasions, and it’s hard for me to believe that this has not been discussed in a greater detail in throne speeches, in budget speeches. The simple fact is that I’m not the only MLA that has faced these challenges. In Cariboo-Chilcotin and in other areas…. I know that the MLA for Cariboo North has spoken quite passionately with respect to roads that are impassable in areas.

Last year we advocated to have a road from Tatla West fixed that had 100 kilometres — 100 kilometres — of frost heaves. It took the entire summer to get to a point where we could actually have that fixed, and it was a temporary fix.

We have to do better with our roads. Those roads are part of connectivity, and I want to talk a little bit about connectivity. The fact is that those roads connect us to everything that we’ve talked about in the throne speech, whether it be hubs or whether it be our larger centres. Connectivity has not been committed to in a great way by this government, and when I speak of connectivity, I want to talk about the fact that in the West Chilcotin, our emergency services are still using ham radios.

[4:45 p.m.]

Now, I would love to hear how many people in this place represent ridings that are having ambulances and fire people still communicating with ham radios. I know that it is a few, and to me, that’s shocking. We have to commit, particularly in a time when the government has moved many services online and are considering moving more, with respect to health care and other things. We have to provide connectivity for rural British Columbia, and certainly, I am here to ask for that for Cariboo-Chilcotin.

I want to touch a little bit on wildlife management, because, to me, there is a lot of confusion about wildlife management in this province, just like there is with what’s happening on the landscape. I think, as I said in the first part of my speech, that there is a disconnect from here to what is actually happening on the ground.

When we talked about wildfires a few weeks or months back, I had asked for seeding and different things in the Crown range. I know that there are areas where that simply has not happened, and I know that there are areas in the South Cariboo where you can look as far as the eye can see and see nothing but noxious weeds, invasive weeds. These weeds now are everywhere through the Cariboo-Chilcotin. It’s unbelievable. I know that, again, this is happening in other areas.

We have to do much better at understanding what is happening on our landscape with respect to the lands and forests but also our wildlife. The member for Kootenay East spoke quite passionately about this the other day, and I thank him for that, because again, these are numbers that we don’t seem to understand fully. We have to understand them better in the future.

I just want to take a quick moment to also thank front-line workers. I think front-line workers are a pretty wide range of people, as we’ve found, coming through COVID-19. I want to thank the front-line workers that are obvious — our nurses, doctors, all of those folks — but I also want to thank the cashiers that have continued to serve us, even when I’ve witnessed, myself, rude behaviour, aggressive behaviour. I want to thank the cashiers that have borne the brunt of frustration and anger.

I want to thank the small businesses, particularly of Cariboo-Chilcotin, because I know so many of them have worked so incredibly hard to reinvent themselves and continue to provide services. Whether those be restaurants, shops — it doesn’t matter — they have worked unbelievably hard, in light of the public health orders, to continue to serve.

I want to thank the delivery personnel that continue to bring us goods every single day. I want to thank firefighters, search and rescue teams and other emergency groups that continue to protect us as well. I want to thank the churches, another incredible volunteer group. When we had challenges finding cool places for people to stay in Cariboo-Chilcotin, they stepped up, got water, turned on the air-conditioning and allowed people to come in and cool down.

I want to thank the community groups that tried so hard, also, to reinvent themselves — parades and different events that have really tried to create community pride during this incredibly difficult time. People like Donna Barnett, in 100 Mile, who absolutely was committed to having a Christmas parade and figured ways to do it with the permission of the public health office and with the support of many local people.

There’s no question that I am a grateful resident of this province, and I consider myself lucky to live in Cariboo-Chilcotin, but I must say, I really feel like we could do so much better in the throne speech. I have big hope for the budget coming up next week. I definitely look forward to hearing about all of the topics that I have placed as dear to my heart, but I certainly think that we could do a little bit better.

[4:50 p.m.]

B. Bailey: Thank you to the member opposite for his comments on the throne speech, one of which I simply must take issue with. While I’m sure his riding is lovely, I happen to represent Vancouver–False Creek, which is the most beautiful riding in the province without question. So that must be corrected.

Interjections.

B. Bailey: And the heckling begins.

It’s a true honour to rise in the House today to speak in response to the throne speech. There are a number of areas in the throne speech that are of particular relevance to the riding I represent, Vancouver–False Creek, which I’m both privileged and honoured to represent here in the House. In no particular order, they are tying the minimum wage to inflation, recognizing our shared history, child care and, of course, housing.

In the throne speech, we announced that we will be, in the future, linking rises in minimum wage to the rate of inflation. This is an important issue in my riding because we have more restaurants per capita than in any other riding in British Columbia. I also have many constituents who are restaurant owners and many constituents who work in restaurants, so it’s important to explore this change and look at what it means.

Currently the minimum wage is set at $15.20 per hour for both the general minimum wage and the liquor server minimum wage. In fact, the liquor server minimum wage has been eliminated. It was previously at $13.95. We know this lower wage disproportionately affected women in the province.

I’d like to share with you the words of one of my constituents named Jody, who said the following. “It made a difference knowing that the government actually listens and cares about workers. People don’t know that if you don’t tip your server, it actually takes money out of their pockets. Increasing the minimum wage across the board made me feel better about going to work. It affirmed my place in society and that my work actually matters. It’s definitely a step in the right direction.” Jody is her real name, but we use it with permission.

I want to talk a little bit about this perceived conflict that raising the minimum wage is bad for business, that somehow raising the minimum wage will lead to price inflation and, so, drive inflation, while at the same time we’re tying the minimum wage to inflation, creating a risky circle.

While the arguments for what’s referred to as wage-push inflation exist…. I spent a lot of time reading about this. It was really interesting to read both sides of this debate and the economists who comment on it. In the end, the empirical evidence to back the arguments that wage-push inflation will result aren’t very strong. Historically, minimum wage increases have only had a very weak association with inflationary pressures on prices in the economy.

An example is from 2016 research from the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. It found that using monthly price series, the pass-through effect is entirely concentrated on the month that the minimum wage change goes into effect, and much smaller than what the canonical literature has found. Their research exam­ined the effect of prices on minimum wage increase in various states in the U.S. from 1978 to 2015 — longitudinal research. It was intended to explore the magnitude of the pass-through effect and to add to the discussion about how different policies may shape the effect that minimum wage increases have on prices.

Their first main finding was that wage-price elasticities are notably lower than reported in previous work. We find that prices grow by 0.36 percent — less than half a percent — for every 10 percent increase of the minimum wage. Moreover, increases in prices following minimum wage hikes generally have occurred only in the month following the minimum wage hike and not in the months before or the months after.

Based on their research, they also make the claim that a small minimum wage hike between 5 and 15 percent does not lead to higher prices. On the other hand, large minimum wage hikes have a clear positive effect on output prices, which can ripple through to higher consumer prices.

So the bottom line: is raising the minimum wage a good idea for the economy? It depends on what sources you consult. While some claim that raising the minimum wage to an excessively high rate would exert inflation pressures on the economy, research shows that keeping it in pace with inflation has very minimal effect. But it sure has an effect for those who make minimum wage, the most vulnerable in our society.

[4:55 p.m.]

I also want to speak about shared history. This one is really…. It’s been on my mind so much lately. I recently did some research into Hogan’s Alley. Then, when I started researching for this on shared history, I couldn’t help but notice the commonality that many of the folks who helped build this province, their communities have been decimated either intentionally or by fire. It’s a really common experience. It has happened all across North America. It’s really, I think, a story of vulnerable communities being valued less than other communities. It’s simply tragic.

I know, for myself, growing up in Nanaimo, jeez, I didn’t know anything about our Chinese history. I really didn’t. There is such rich Chinese history. There were incredible contributions by Chinese Canadians in every aspect in that town’s history, from coal mining — which, of course, it was based on — to fisheries to forestry to general commerce. I mean, just contribution after contribution, none of which I, as a white settler, was aware of.

I did know there had been a fire. I did know that many lives were lost. I remember hearing that in the first fire where Chinese lives were lost, they didn’t even know people’s names to inform people back in China. They only had their reference numbers. I mean, this is appalling.

From my perspective as a white settler, especially as someone growing up in a small town, when you don’t have a lot of money to travel, you don’t have the same opportunity to have intercultural experiences and learn more about other cultures. It’s so important that there is somewhere where you can do that.

I think this was taken from us as white settlers when the Nanaimo’s Chinatown burned to the ground in 1960 and was never rebuilt, and folks were scattered or left the community all together. More importantly, from the perspective of the Chinese community, it must have been devastating. It destroyed the community. There are stories like this throughout British Columbia from settlers from all parts of the world.

How wonderful is it that the work is afoot to create a place of permanence where we’re able to go and learn, celebrate and appreciate one of the key and integral cultures that created modern B.C. — the Chinese community. The Chinese-Canadian museum will recognize our shared history. The Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture announced $27.5 million to buy the historic Wing Sang building in Vancouver’s Chinatown to become the future home of the Chinese-Canadian museum.

This move will help to revitalize Vancouver’s Chinatown and celebrate our ethnic diversity. This will be Canada’s first Chinese museum, and there are free opportunities to learn about history and the places where it happened.

The Chinese museum will be a testament to the Chinese-Canadian experience, contributions and heritage by telling stories through the diverse voice of Chinese Canadians. The Chinese-Canadian museum will reflect the vibrant communities that emerged over the many decades as Chinese Canadians have settled in British Columbia. The museum will show the vast cultural festivals, the cultural traditions, that our Chinese-Canadian neighbours, friends and families practise, and help deepen the understanding and caring that we have for each other.

This understanding and caring has never been more in demand. The rise in anti-Asian racism during COVID-19 is unacceptable and offensive to all British Columbians. We must come together to counter it. Knowledge and education are powerful tools in the battle against prejudice and ones that we can all adopt and act on.

I’d also like to speak about the importance of child care. Like so many places across our beautiful province, my riding of Vancouver–False Creek is full of growing families. Unlike when the B.C. Liberal government was in power and destroyed the sector of early childhood development, our government has invested nearly $15 million in ECE support just in my riding, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars invested across British Columbia.

From the cost savings of growing families to newly licensed child care spaces to early childhood educators receiving wage increases, there’s light on the horizon to re-establish a thriving early childhood education industry.

[5:00 p.m.]

However, we’re not out of the woods yet, due to COVID-19 and rising inflation. Parents have talked to me about the rising cost of food making it difficult for families to survive and thrive in the riding — and of course, the cost of housing. Families in my riding have saved, through fee reductions and benefits, $6,456,397. Total early childhood educators getting a raise through our wage enhancement program: $525,625 going to 31 ECEs. These are very significant numbers.

Provincially, we’ve invested a historic $2 billion in child care in our first three years of the Childcare B.C. plan. With Budget 2021, we’re investing an additional $233 million over three years that will help families throughout our province, bringing the total investment in child care, since 2018, to $2.3 billion. The total amount that parents have saved through fee reductions and benefits: over $688 million. The total number of funded spaces: nearly 26,000, which is the fastest space creation in B.C.’s history.

The total number of early childhood educators getting a raise through our wage enhancement, which is over $62 million — it’s going to 13,000 ECEs. The total number of bursaries for students pursuing a career in child care: over $16 million, or 8,000 bursaries. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we invested more than $320 million to support over 4,500 child care centres.

I must speak on housing. As we talked about in a motion earlier this week, there are few files in government that point to the differences in political philosophy be­tween the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. NDP than housing. I argue that a free enterprise perspective, which allows the market to sort things out, in fact has failed dramatically and is, really, largely responsible for the difficulty we’re in today. Trickle-down economics simply doesn’t work.

A free market without intervention got us here, but it’s not the whole story. I’m referring to an interesting podcast that I enjoyed, by Jill Atley, providing background and context. When we think of buying and renting as separate activities from each other, we actually aren’t thinking about housing correctly, in my view and in her view. There’s actually a very strong relationship between them, of course. They’re interconnected. They’re part of the same housing ecosystem.

Federal incentives for purpose-built housing were cancelled in the early 1980s, and the feds withdrew from affordable housing in 1993. We simply were not building purpose-built rentals in this province for far too long. We relied, for a bit, on the secondary market, which looked like people renting out suites and garages. But once the cost of entry to buying a house rose so dramatically, there was more and more demand for rentals, because working people were being priced out of home ownership, staying in rentals longer and adding serious stress, then, on the rental market.

All of the homes that should have been built over the decade and a half of free market Liberal governance and weren’t…. All those middle-class folks were getting priced out of ownership and staying in rental longer and longer and were now competing with those of moderate and low income for rental stock. Those of low and moderate income are pushed more and more into precarious housing, and for some, they’re getting pushed out of the housing system entirely. Think of it as a ladder. Those with the least money are getting pushed down the steps, one at a time, until they’re finally pushed off the lower rung.

People are spending larger portions of their income on rent, having to forgo other basic necessities each month and becoming that much closer to homelessness. Add to this mix a loss of existing lower-cost rentals in the market, due to a rise in institutional investment, and investors looking for higher returns on their investments, leading to huge escalations in rents, chasing higher-income renters through renovictions and leaving the lower-income folks in an even more precarious state. There are additional factors, such as a squeeze on supply happening, sometimes because an investor class benefits from a really tight rental market.

Of course, B.C. is a very desirable place to live. As we all know, folks from other parts of Canada and other parts of the world migrate here, creating pressure. While it’s good for our economy, and we welcome people, we also do know it does add to the pressure.

[5:05 p.m.]

As you can see, the problem isn’t one thing. It’s a tumultuous storm of factors, and government intervention is needed more than ever before.

The pandemic has been a shock to our housing markets here in British Columbia. Thankfully, we began to bring some stability to these markets when we took office, or else the impacts would’ve been far worse.

In the year ahead, we’re going to work with local governments to speed up approvals and seek new tools to curb speculation, moving more underutilized units into the market. This session our Finance Minister will be introducing a cooling-off period and is looking at other measures to reduce the pressure on people wanting to buy a home. However, this is in complete contrast to what the opposition wants to do. The newly appointed B.C. Liberal leader, Kevin Falcon, has said that he will cancel the speculation tax and turn 18,000 homes back into empty condos.

For my riding of Vancouver–False Creek, it can’t be underestimated how important that rental stock is — where, of 61,000 people in the riding, 56 percent are ren­ters. Many of those 18,000 condos are in my riding, in fact. Our riding is made up of 96 percent apartments or condos, and only 4 percent of homes have doorbells. We’re a community of condo towers, and it’s not unusual for a 500-square-foot condo to cost $1 million. Even well-paid professionals can’t enter the housing market as a purchase, so renting is so necessary.

Unlike Falcon’s desire to get rid of the spec tax, we’re in fact going to see new tools to curb speculation, moving more underutilized units into the market. We must remember that homes are for people, not speculators.

But in talking about the speculation tax, don’t just take my word for it. On February 15, the Vancouver Sun published an article entitled “‘Astonishing’ Drop of Number of Empty Homes Not Occupied by ‘Usual’ Residents in Metro Vancouver” — according to census. In this article, Andy Yan of Simon Fraser University points out that the number of houses sitting empty over the last five years has declined. That’s from census data. It dropped by 10 percent from 2016 to 2021.

It’s really interesting when you contrast this to Toronto, which he does in the article. In Toronto, you’re not seeing that drop. There was a time when Vancouver’s housing market was, in fact, more difficult to enter than Toronto’s, but that has shifted now. Vancouver is behind Toronto. That’s very likely due to the speculation tax that the opposition would like to axe.

Last week 130 more units have been announced in my riding, Vancouver–False Creek, and we have ten times more housing underway right now than the old government when they left government — nearly 32,000 new, affordable homes complete or underway. We’re continuing those investments, and we’re going take the next steps to work with local government to speed up approvals. So let me remind you: Kevin Falcon would get rid of the tax that has been so important for my riding. That is simply a move in the wrong direction.

Speaking of British Columbians not having access to rental stocks reminds me of Josie’s story. She’s a constituent in Vancouver–False Creek who’s a new resident in Olympic Village. She works in HR, in a tech start-up in Gastown. Over the past year, she sent out more than 100 applications for rent and only had nine places that got back to her — 9 percent. Like many of our constituents, she’s a single woman, a person of colour, and she feels that that made it even more challenging for her to secure a rental.

Just two days ago, after more than a year of searching and being turned down for rental after rental, she found a place in Olympic Village. However, like many single people in our province, it’s very hard to afford $2,000-a-month rent. I hear stories like this every day, which speaks volumes to the unaffordability of the housing market and the rental market — not only in Vancouver, I’m sure, but throughout the province.

I would also like to speak to the challenge of permitting new housing developments. The speed at which developments can occur is a huge issue in our province. In many cases, it takes years for a new development to be permitted, approved and constructed, from shovels in the ground to keys in the door. The red tape and bureaucracy are no small undertaking. Local governments know they have work to do to speed up this process. In the year ahead, we’re going to be working with local governments on approval speedup and much-needed housing builds, as quickly as possible.

[5:10 p.m.]

We’ve already made legislative changes that will make this process faster, but there’s much more to do. The ministers responsible are exploring every single option to make sure we’re doing everything we can to get people the housing they need.

All British Columbians deserve a place to call home and to have a roof over their head. As a government, we can and will do better to make this a reality. British Columbians, folks in Vancouver–False Creek, deserve to have a home. That’s what we’re working on, both demand side and supply side, to make this a reality.

Housing, child care, increased cultural understanding and respect and tying the minimum wage to the rate of inflation are areas that I’ve highlighted in my response to the throne, because I think they’re so significant. The impact will be so positive for the people of Vancouver–False Creek, who I’m deeply honoured to represent in this House.

R. Merrifield: When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time on my family’s farm up in northern Alberta. One of my favourite people in the world was my stepgrandfather. I’d walk into the house when I was ten, 11, 12, and I would use his full name, much to his chagrin, because I would call out: “Delmar Eugene.”

My grandfather was an amazing man. He would take me to rodeos. We would sit in the stands, and he would know every single horse by name, as well as the cowboy or cowgirl who rode them. He almost knew everyone in the entire stadium by name.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Now, my granddad was a farmer, but his true love was horses. As we would go through those rodeo grounds, he would tell me about who the real cowboys and -girls were and who the posers were.

One day — I was probably about 13 or 14 — I asked him: “How can you tell?” He explained: “You see that one over there, wearing a shirt that still has a crease with brand-new jeans and a shiny belt buckle? His hat looks new. Well, he’s a pretender. He’s got all the right gear but none of the work or action of a cowboy.”

“Then over there, that one, well, his boots are worn in, calluses on his hands, dirt ground into his jeans that won’t ever come out, with a shirt that’s been washed 100 times. Now, that’s a cowboy. He knows the work that it takes to break a horse and the job of a ranch.”

He taught me how to tell when something was real or fake, to not be wooed by words but to look at the effects of work, to look at the results. Well, let me tell you, this throne speech was creased, brand-new and super shiny, but it doesn’t have the work done. It isn’t activated. It isn’t making a difference in the lives of British Columbians. This throne speech is a lot about talk but not about action. As we know, talk is cheap; action is everything.

What isn’t this throne speech about? It’s not about the climate. We don’t need more platitudes and promises and plans. The stakes are too high. What’s happened between last year’s throne speech and this one? Well, the government’s lack of action and preparedness for impending climate disasters destroyed livelihoods and cost lives. Heat dome deaths, deaths in fire, deaths in the floods — deaths.

We have a plan, but we need action. This is not just about ideology. This is about reality, a reality that needs to be managed, a reality that is costing the lives of British Columbians. Not only do we need to lessen our carbon footprint; we also need to plan for climate emergencies.

[5:15 p.m.]

There have been unanswered reports on the Sumas floodplain and how flooding needs to be mitigated. Rather than helping with implementation, this NDP government has done nothing. It’s ended up costing hundreds of thousands of animals’ lives, threatened food security, disrupted our supply chains and will take farmers and residents decades to recover from — all this while costing double or triple what those mitigation plans might have cost had they been enacted.

Where was this NDP government during the heat dome? Why did nearly 600 British Columbians lose their lives in that heatwave, when in Portland there were only 16 deaths? Why were there large announcements in the jurisdictions and warnings in Washington and Oregon and California? And here? Well, here we were doing a victory lap. We were a little giddy. I’m sorry, but I’m not content to say that “fatalities are a part of life.” There should have been planning, risk mitigation, emergency readiness and preparedness, alarms and alerts sent out to everyone’s phones.

You know what my 85-year-old in-laws have? Cell phones. You know what they also do? They live alone. You know what they also don’t have? Air conditioning. They could have been alerted, and they were not. Instead, this NDP government sat on its heels and did victory laps.

Now, if we had an ambulance service that could actually serve all of our communities in B.C., well then maybe we could have gotten to them in time. But we didn’t because we don’t have capacity.

Let’s talk about the fires. In my riding, you could hardly breathe at times this summer. Does this have an effect on the quality of our life and health? Absolutely — not to mention tourism, wildlife, infrastructure, emergency measures — oh, wait — and our GDP. So let’s talk about the cost of these fires. Yes, there’s the indirect cost that I just spoke of, but there’s also a direct cost.

In February 2021, the B.C. budget allocated $136 million for firefighting expenditures. As of the first quarterly update, that estimated cost has risen to $881 million. This is a new record, topping the $615 million spent in 2018 and the $649 million spent in 2017.

As Marc Lee from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives notes: “Budgeting an amount that is only one-third the real costs in recent years is a budgetary form of climate change denial — a belief that an extreme wildfire season only happens rarely, rather than being a new normal for the province.”

Let’s talk about the greenhouse gases emitted from a fire. Now, we don’t have the numbers for 2021 yet, but let’s talk about 2018, because it was 200 million tonnes of CO₂. In comparison, B.C.’s official greenhouse gas tally for the same year was 68 million tonnes. That’s right. Our forest fire season, which is not calculated in our total, was actually three times what all of B.C. emissions amount to. That’s three times the emissions from powering our homes, our vehicles, our industries.

And then came the floods. As if the trauma from the pandemic, the heat dome and the fires was not enough, the floods — well, they tipped us over the edge. Loss of life, massive loss of infrastructure and a complete disruption to the supply chain, panic, empty shelves, families separated, businesses destroyed, homes destroyed, reserves wiped out, cities shut down, people evacuated again, people running from their homes and for their lives.

[5:20 p.m.]

For anyone who has, like my colleague who spoke just before me…. If you’ve ever packed your bag to run from your home and away from a fire before, you understand how disruptive that is. It’s not a minor inconvenience. You are running for your life.

So how effective is our climate action plan? Well, this provincial government was completely flatfooted when it came to emergency preparedness. Yes, our emissions are going up every single year this NDP government has been in power, but so have our emergencies. So to the countless British Columbians who want to see real climate action to protect our environment and our province’s future, well, all we’ve seen is cheap talk and little definitive action. A shiny belt buckle, but no real cowboy in sight.

Now let’s talk about child care, because this throne speech did mention child care. These aren’t real spaces. You don’t just take an existing space, register and license it, and then count it a new space. That’s not a new space. It’s not a new creation, so the number of 26,000 is nothing more than a shiny belt buckle. The real number, as evidenced in estimates, is 6,300 in 4½ years. That is 1,575 on average a year. The B.C. Liberals, in our last two years in power, built more in the city of Surrey than that number.

We haven’t seen these spaces materialize. My riding is net negative child care spaces since this NDP government came into power. My child care providers are desperate for a plan that works. But you know who is also desperate? My constituents. My constituents who cannot find child care. My constituents that have been on wait-lists for five years in 12 different child care providers. Perhaps in Vancouver–False Creek, they’re getting new child care spaces, but not in Kelowna.

We are predicting job opportunities, and we see job openings, but families can’t take advantage of them. They can’t unless there is accessible and affordable child care. We’ve heard the hollow promises of this NDP government on how they’re going to get those new spaces opened, but I don’t know how they’re going to do that while trying to close down the private spaces. Because even in Quebec, who is a great example for us of how they’ve done public daycare, they rely on the private sector. Talk is cheap. Shifting numbers is a shell game. Action is everything.

Then there’s the cost of living. Cost of living has sky­rocketed. Food is more expensive. Homes are more expensive. Life is more expensive. How is this government doing on its plan for housing? Well, housing costs in this province have never been more expensive than they are today in recorded history. This government brags about reducing the cost of MSP for people and families, but it’s less than half of the increase that they’ve endured in rent in one calendar year in British Columbia. Boast all you want about plans, but they’re not having an effect on the prices of housing.

Noting the hour, I’d like to reserve my opportunity to come back and speak to the House. I’d also like to move for adjournment of the debate.

R. Merrifield moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. J. Osborne moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. Tuesday, February 22.

The House adjourned at 5:25 p.m.