Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued debate on Bill 6, the Commercial Liens Act.

In Committee A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.

Mr. Speaker: The Government House Leader will make a correction.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Bill 11 is the Commercial Liens Act. It’s Bill 6, Budget Measures Implementation Act.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 6 — BUDGET MEASURES
IMPLEMENTATION ACT, 2022

(continued)

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Peace River South.

M. Bernier: Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the afternoon. Welcome to the seat, as we do get into, after that correction, Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act.

It’s an honour to take my seat here and to be able to stand up and speak to this bill. Obviously, there is a lot to talk about — not a lot of positives, unfortunately. But there is a lot to talk about, about this budget — the implementation of this budget, what’s in it and what’s missing in it, and the impacts that it’s going to have on people here in British Columbia.

[1:05 p.m.]

One of the first things to highlight for myself, from what I’m hearing from people, is the fear, under this government, that they have no plan at all to increase revenue. They continue to look at debt borrowing. In fact, under this government, they’ve now increased — doubled, I should add — the debt that we are going to have in the province of British Columbia to almost $125 billion, which this budget highlights, which the province of British Columbia is going to be accruing.

We all know that governments, just like people in their homes — if they can, if they’re fortunate enough in B.C. to get one — borrow money. But what’s missing in this budget, on top of the extreme amount of money they plan to borrow, is any plan at all to be able to pay it back.

Who’s going to be stuck with that? Who’s going to be stuck with this massive provincial debt? It’s going to be my kids, my grandkids — everybody’s in this House. The next generations are going to be forced to figure out a plan because of the spending that this government is doing right now.

Again, I’ve got no problem with borrowing money for needed infrastructure. That is important. It’s important for our society. It’s important for our province to continue to grow. But again, if the government continues to have no plans, that’s where people are saying: “Where’s the end point here? When do we actually have to start building our economy back up? When are we going to start paying this down? What is the plan?”

Right now under this government…. The Minister of Finance herself has even said: “We may not expect balanced budgets back in the province of British Columbia for almost ten years.” It could be almost another ten years. This government, this NDP government, has openly admitted in their financial documents, in the budget, that they have no plans to create revenue in the province of British Columbia to try to get back, any time soon, to a balanced budget.

People around British Columbia, again, will look at that and say: “Here’s a government that, ironically, loves to spend all this money, with no plans of revenue generation, except, it seems, their only ideas about generating revenue are through taxation.” We’re at 24, 25, 26. We lose count of how many new or increased taxes there are under this NDP government. They’ve been in power almost half a decade, and their claim to fame is making us one of the least affordable jurisdictions in North America.

Their claim to fame is taking us from one of the lowest-taxed jurisdictions to one of the highest-taxed jurisdictions in North America and then doubling down on that in this budget — again, with not just borrowing more money but adding more taxes, adding to a situation where we already have hardship for so many people here in British Columbia who are just struggling to get by on a day-to-day basis. What does this government do? Well, nothing to help them. They actually make it worse.

You look at some of the increased taxes that they’re putting in this budget. Some of my colleagues have talked about it, and I find it interesting that members opposite try to defend this. But one of the first ones is around increasing PST in taxes on used vehicles.

They have openly said…. So if my child or if anybody in my riding goes out and finds an old pickup truck that’s got 300,000, 400,000 kilometres on it…. It’s been used as a farm vehicle. It could be completely rusty. It could be, maybe, just barely running, and they say: “Hey, it’s going to be your kid’s first vehicle, so I’ll sell it to you for 300 bucks. You might get a year or two out of it. I’ll sell it to you for 300 bucks. You can learn to drive in this thing.”

According to the NDP, this is now tax evasion. They’re basically being called criminals by this government for getting a deal on a pickup truck, because now government’s going to say, regardless of the shape of that vehicle, regardless….

Interjection.

[1:10 p.m.]

M. Bernier: Well, you can say: “Come on.” I’m just stating the facts here.

I’m stating the facts that a vehicle that a child might get for $300 to learn to drive in, if the book value on that vehicle….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: You can have your chance.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

M. Bernier: The member can have his chance, all he wants, to speak later. He can continue to try to interrupt my speech here. It’s not going to change the fact that what I’m saying is factual.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member, come to order, please.

M. Bernier: I’m actually referencing the NDP members’ comments in this House and what they’ve said, and the other NDP member is now arguing with what the NDP themselves are saying. I find it ironic. The member has lots of chance to stand up, if he wants, to explain why they want to tax younger people.

It says right in the documents, right in the budget, that this is going to negatively affect young people, rural people and people in the middle class who are already struggling. It says that right in the budget. I’m not…. If he wants to talk about facts, maybe he should read his own budget document, because it says it right in there.

It says, right in the budget document, that they are going to a Blue Book, Black Book value, on a used vehicle, regardless of what somebody pays for it. So if my child or anybody else who is struggling right now gets a deal on a vehicle — whether it’s from a family member, a neighbour, a farmer in town who’s going to sell this — it’s now a three….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I tune him out after a while. He never stops talking, Madam Speaker, but most of what he says doesn’t make sense. So I’ll continue on with my speech here.

What’s important is that this government is wanting to call these people tax evaders. That’s actually a quote from the NDP themselves. They say they’re trying to fix a loophole where people of British Columbia are lying. That is the shameful part. That is the part I’d love to see anybody in the NDP stand up and try to defend — why they continue saying that.

Somebody is going to get that used vehicle, regardless of the condition it’s in, and they’ll pay $300 for that vehicle. They’ll pay the tax, which they’re supposed to pay — and they do pay — on the $300. That’s not good enough anymore for this government.

That’s not good enough. I could maybe find that exact same vehicle in pristine shape down south — the same age, model, make, everything — but hey, the book value says it’s actually $4,000. Who cares if this young person who’s struggling got a good deal from the local farmer to buy his old pickup truck for 300 bucks? They’re now going to get taxed for $3,000 or $4,000 or whatever the book value is on that vehicle.

Those are facts. That’s right in the document. I’m not sure what the member is arguing about, because that’s exactly what the government is doing. His own members, members of the NDP, have stood up in this House and acknowledged on the record: “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.” So it’s not just me. It’s about choices, and they’re choosing to increase taxes on people who are struggling right now in British Columbia.

Another one they’re doing…. It seems like a full attack on rural British Columbia, even though nowhere in their throne speech, nowhere in the budget, do they really talk about it, which is unfortunate. Where they strategically continue to go after rural British Columbia, I would argue, is around now having increased taxes for fossil fuel–burning equipment.

This is something that I’ve worked in for 30 years, so this I can speak to with a little bit of knowledge, for sure. An air-source heat pump — we’re not talking about a ground-source heat pump here — works really well in moderate climates. There’s no argument there. But if you’re going to install it anywhere, basically, north of Hope — a place that most of the people on the NDP benches have never gone to, which is probably why they don’t understand what happens out there — guess what. It goes down below minus 10, minus 15 for extended periods of time.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I hear the member for Vernon. I will acknowledge that the member for Vernon obviously lives in the rural part, so she will maybe understand what I’m talking about on this issue. Even in Vernon, it gets cold for extended periods of time. To install a dual-system heat pump, a variable-speed heat pump, which is required in places like Vernon, it’s about $15,000 to $20,000.

[1:15 p.m.]

This member is now telling everybody in her riding that they should be spending $15,000 to $20,000 on a heat pump system. Guess what. No problem. You get a tax break for it if you do it. But if you don’t, you get extra taxes.

I’ve got no problem, and I would have supported this 100 percent if the government came out and said: “We’re going to give tax breaks to try to convert people to a heat pump system, where it’s practical, where it’s affordable and where it works.” I would have supported that 100 percent. I think it’s a good direction to go, but not when you add on to it: “But by the way, if you don’t do as I say, we’re going to tax you more.” That’s where I have a problem.

Somebody who lives in Vernon is also going to have to have a dual system, which means — guess what — that they either have to increase their electrical capacity into the house to heat, or they’re going to have to have a natural gas system. How many people are going to invest in dual systems in their house? Very few. It makes sense financially in a lot of areas, possibly — in the Lower Mainland, if you’re in a small condo, if you’re in a small townhome. In large homes, they don’t work unless you have a dual system. Guess what. The price goes up.

Again, incentivizing is not a problem. Telling people they have to — I have a problem with that. That’s what this government has done as an additional attack on rural British Columbia.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around why they think they know better than almost everybody else who talks about this. Did they consult the actual professionals that do this work? No. The people who install these will even tell you that if it’s under minus 20 on an air system, you need a double system. It will not work for extended periods of time to an efficient level.

By the way, if you install a heat pump system, it in­creases your electrical capacity, and yes, they’re efficient. They can be 200 times more efficient than a normal electric baseboard heating system. Fine and dandy, if you’re willing to spend the capital outlay to put that in, but it also increases your heat bill by around $75 a month on average. So there are costs to this decision.

There’s a reason why most people, whether you want to say it’s the right thing to do or not, have not converted their homes to solar or to micro wind or other things, because the capital outlay does not match the payback for that capital investment.

I looked at a system like this for my house. I would have had to live in that house for 28 more years before I broke even on my investment. How many people are going to do that in rural British Columbia? Most of them don’t live in that house for 28 years, for starters. What are they going to do? They’re going to go to what’s affordable in this time, which is probably, in a lot of cases, a natural gas forced-air heating system with a natural gas hot water tank.

I do find it interesting that this government spent a lot of time, as we did, converting people to high efficiency. In fact, regulations now require high-efficiency natural gas appliances, which are up to 99 percent, 98 percent efficient. We’ve already put policies, regulations in place to incentivize people to move into high-efficiency systems, but I guess that’s not good enough for this government. Now they just want to tax everybody more.

We’re looking at, again, when we look at this budget, aside from increased taxes — back to no revenue generation. To make it even worse, this government continues to put nails in the coffin of the resource sector, whether it’s mining, forestry or oil and gas — industries that we are so proud of that have built this province.

If we walk a short 20 steps outside of this room into the rotunda, there are paintings around this building highlighting the resource sector as being one of the prominent sectors that built this province, that has employed people, that has put food on the table for families.

[1:20 p.m.]

What does this government do? Well, for the most part, nothing. But what they do do is make it even harder for these companies, for these families, for First Nations to prosper and to try to get ahead. I guess if you live in downtown Vancouver where opportunities are different, things might work for a lot of people. If you’re in rural British Columbia, this government continues to attack you.

We’ll have lots of time when we get to estimates on the budget here, where we get to ask specific questions. I just can’t wait to hear from some of the ministers of what their plan is when we’ve seen through the budget that they’re cutting, that we’ve seen through the budget that they don’t care if forestry workers lose their jobs. They don’t seem to care if $3½ billion of capital investment in the oil and gas sector goes to Alberta now instead of British Columbia.

It is going to be interesting to hear from some of these ministers on how they rationalize that when we look at the budget, when the government’s even budgeted for reductions in revenue from a lot of these sectors. That foreshadows, I would guess, the importance to this government of the jobs, of the sectors that actually have helped build communities, sectors that have brought prosperity to First Nations.

We’ve already heard in this House the member for Boundary-Similkameen that said that’s not good enough. We don’t want to see any more development in rural B.C. We don’t want to see any more oil and gas or LNG development in British Columbia, because they’re worried about it hitting the climate targets.

I do, again, find that interesting. We all talk about climate change and climate targets and what we’re trying to do. For a member of this House — and now, today, even a cabinet minister of this House — to double down by saying we don’t want to see any more oil and gas development in this province…. It’s going to be interesting to hear from the minister later what he thinks of that.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I would kindly remind you that we are talking about Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2022, rather than the budget.

M. Bernier: Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the guidance. Of course, the whole point of my commentary is specific around the budget, because if we’re talking about the lack of development and the lack of revenues, you know….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I know I’ve probably hit a nerve here with the Minister of Labour, because we’re seeing fewer and fewer people that want to continue working here. I think it’s also really important — as I’m trying to highlight, Madam Speaker, through the shortfalls in this budget — that this government continues to not have a plan to create revenue and, in fact, attacks the revenue generators here in this province.

I mentioned the fact that people are struggling with affordability. When we talk about the implementation of this budget, I’m still waiting for somebody in the government side to stand up and explain…. Because I can’t find it. They haven’t talked about it, but they’ve continued to promise for half a decade a $400 renters rebate. I don’t see that anywhere in here.

I stand to be corrected. If anybody is willing to stand up and say I’m wrong and they can point to the page where there is a $400 renters rebate, I will quickly apologize and take my seat, if they’re willing to point to that. I don’t see any takers, so I’m assuming it’s not in there. So I guess I’ll keep going.

The other issue is that this government continues to make promises that we look for in this budget. They want to implement what? They’re implementing a document that is just highlighting all of those broken promises. You know, we look right now about the affordability issues. Where is this government really helping tackle affordability?

[1:25 p.m.]

We’ve talked in this House about gas prices going up, and it’s kind of crickets from government about doing anything. When we look at the budget documents themselves, I’m still trying to find in there where they’re going to be meeting their commitments around housing, housing supply, affordable housing.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I would remind you once again that we’re discussing Bill 6, which is mostly around taxation. So if you could keep your comments to the bill on the floor.

M. Bernier: Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. If we’re talking about taxation, obviously, we can talk for a long time, because this government has lots of taxes that they continue to add in there — fuel taxes being one of them. The challenge that we have in this province is where government is not acknowledging the role that they play around the taxes that they continue to implement on this, on the people here in the government.

I’ve heard some of the other members speak in this House from the government’s side, and I’m trying to help the Speaker by staying within the parameters, but of course, when we’re talking about the Budget Measures Implementation Act in Bill 6, it’s really about what brings life to the budget. It’s really about what brings the budget to the floor and what allows government to then go out and implement that budget. So although a lot of it is around taxes, it’s also around what they may or may not be doing within that budget.

On that, I think what I’ll do is that I’ll move to other people that I know have a lot to say on the different topics, and I appreciate the time. Again, one of the challenges we have when we look at this government, this budget and the way they’re implementing this budget is that this is our opportunity to highlight and continually showcase the fact of where all their failings are. Unfortunately, we don’t get enough time to stand in this House where we can discuss all of them.

With that, I want to say that from a rural perspective, I will say, representing the people in my riding, I continue to hear the challenges that they’re facing not only with affordability but with this budget specifically, because it shows nothing that is going to help for the future of the job creators, the families or the next generation in this province.

S. Cadieux: I’m really glad to have an opportunity today to speak to this bill, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. It does have implications for British Columbians. Now, it’s a relatively simple act. Generally, it’s just seen as a companion to the budget. It puts into force the measures that are spoken to in the budget around taxation, primarily.

There are a couple of other things in this act that are not normal and that do require a bit of conversation, because not only is the government, through this bill, adding additional taxes once again after the Premier just recently, as recently as last year, said: “We are not considering any more taxes.” Yet here we are with more taxes once again — and more taxes that affect the people this government professes over and over again to be working for: the middle class.

Taxes on working folks who want to save a couple of dollars and go out and do their best to find a cheap vehicle for themselves or to get their family around. Or perhaps it’s a kid that’s trying to get himself to university on a daily basis. So they go out, and they get the best deal that they can on a used car. And now, members of this government have said: “You’re evading taxes, and we’re going to tax you.” Really? Now, of all times?

[1:30 p.m.]

Budgets are about choices. So is implementing those budgets. It’s about choices.

This government is choosing to raise the salaries of ministers in the cabinet, a $20,000-a-year pay bonus. They’re characterizing that as: “Oh no. We are just doing this because we have to. We have to do this because otherwise, members of this cabinet will be incented to not do what’s right for the people.” Really? If that holdback was to remain on the books, members of this cabinet would rather hold the line, control spending, not do what’s right for the people of British Columbia, not deliver on the promises that they’ve set forth but, instead, hit their arbitrary budget target so that they could get that little bit of salary they’ve held back.

I want to believe that the people that I know who sit in that cabinet would make the right decision regardless of whether or not it meant they might see a little less money in their pocket over the year. But no, we are being told flat out by the Finance Minister that the measures in the Budget Implementation Act, 2022, include ensuring that all members of cabinet will receive more money over the next three years. Wow.

They’re doing that — that’s a choice — at the same time as they are not giving any relief through this act on gas taxes — highest gas taxes in North America, highest gas prices ever seen. Yes, the price of the gas itself is not the government’s direct choice. That’s world…. There are all sorts of implications there with the war raising gas prices everywhere. But we have the highest gas taxes, and gas taxes are not addressed in this act.

Government is not choosing to give the average British Columbian a break during this period of time. They’re not putting in a time-limited measure or a measure that is tied to a certain price of gas whereby, during that time, they’d hold the line and give people a break. They’re not providing a rebate through this act for the average person who’s now facing increased costs on filling up their minivan — $25 per tank in additional costs right now because of the taxes on the price of gas today.

We’re not seeing a reduction in this act for that or a rebate or any other measure related to gas taxes for the average person, but they are making the choice to give themselves more money. They’re doing that, and again, it’s choice. They’re saying that when it comes to adding taxes on used cars or new taxes on online marketplaces, they have to do that to stay in line with the rest of the country. Well, there are other things they’re not doing that the rest of the country is doing, like equal pay legislation, but there’s no rush on that.

[1:35 p.m.]

The reason that government is making sure through this act to remove the holdback provisions on cabinet salaries so they can take home more money as cabinet ministers is because they have no intention of ever balancing a budget again. Those holdbacks only happen if the budget is not in balance. Now they’re trying to argue, as well, that this is necessary because of external forces. They can’t possibly be responsible for balancing a budget when there are external forces at play.

You know what? I accept that the budget went into deficit through COVID. I do. In fact, we asked them to do more. They were in this before, and they didn’t have a plan to get out. In fact, pre-COVID, this government added $11.4 billion in additional spending — pre-COVID. This year we’ve got a deficit of $5.5 billion. They don’t plan to meet, so they don’t plan to balance. They plan to be in deficit by $5.5 billion.

You know what? They could make the choice to reverse some of the spending in that $11 billion. They have a $5.9 billion cushion there, but that’s not the choice they’re making. They’re continuing to spend beyond their means. They have no intention of balancing the budget. Therefore, they have to include that provision in this act so that their cabinet ministers can take home their full salaries, because they’re never going to be able to balance the budget. That’s what this is about.

At a time when people are feeling the strain of everyday life, this government has not managed, in five years, to meet any of their promises to people around affordability. Housing in my community is up 43 percent this year — 43 percent in one year. Rents are up, $3,000 a year. No renters rebate in this Budget Measures Implementation Act. Food costs are up exponentially, and they’re only going to go higher with the added fuel costs, because everything that you buy at the store had to come on a truck. That money has to be recovered somewhere.

Who does it ultimately fall on? Well, guess what. The taxpayer. There’s only one taxpayer, but government has a choice. Government can make different choices.

In this act, they could be implementing rebates on gas. They could be implementing rebates on any number of things. They could be putting in that renters rebate. They could be giving a break to the average British Columbian who is struggling, but they are not. They are only giving a break to the members of cabinet to the tune of $20,000 each. It says something about the choices made by a government who says they’re working for the people.

When we look at the taxes they are adding…. Let’s remember, again, they said they weren’t going to add any new taxes. They weren’t contemplating any new taxes. Government actually admits in the budget documents that these taxes on private used-car sales will affect most low and middle incomes, those more likely to buy used goods. Page 91 says individuals involved in private vehicle transactions are more likely to be low to medium income or living in a rural area.

They have identified that the tax is likely to hurt those who can least afford it, but they’ve introduced it anyway. So much for making life more affordable. It’s unbelievable.

[1:40 p.m.]

This legislation does another thing, other than add taxes on those who can least afford to pay them. It provides for the Minister of Finance to make decisions without taking them to Treasury Board, without cabinet oversight. That is an incredibly worrying provision.

As a previous cabinet minister, I went through these processes and sat on Treasury Board. They exist for a reason. There is process for a reason. We’re dealing with the people’s money and a budget that has ballooned over the last five years under this government to $70 billion a year. That’s $70 billion a year of individual taxpayers’ hard-earned money coming in so that the members of cabinet — and approved by all of the members of the House, ultimately — can make decisions on how best to use those dollars to support those individuals and this province.

That’s a big responsibility, and it shouldn’t be in the hands of one person. But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, coming from the government that got the award for being the least transparent government in Canada, the most secretive government in Canada. It’s just another way they’re going to try to hold things close, keep them secret and not be accountable. It’s very concerning.

I look at this Budget Measures Implementation Act and the companion to the budget, and I look for the things that are promised. I look for: what does this mean for the people of Surrey that I represent? We already know that the budget doesn’t do much for the people of Surrey.

It doesn’t bring to life the promises that the government has made to the people of Surrey. It doesn’t eliminate portables. It doesn’t bring $10-a-day child care. It doesn’t bring the renters rebate. It doesn’t bring the second medical school at SFU that was promised. It doesn’t bring the SkyTrain. It has only $2 million in there for the hospital that is planned to be open on the same timeline as St. Paul’s, which has been underway for years now. It’s a little unreasonable, I think, but we shall see.

All I see in this Budget Measures Implementation Act for the people of Surrey is more taxes, more ways that government is going to take from people and nothing that’s going to help with affordability. It’s disappointing from a government that stands, every opportunity they get, and says: “For 16 years….” And now for five whole years, we’ve been waiting for affordability. Five whole years we’ve been waiting for one action on affordability, and we have yet to see it come.

It’s disappointing that we spend so much time and energy trying to understand what government means when they say that they’re working for the people, because this bill makes it pretty darn clear they’re working for themselves.

M. Morris: I guess government don’t have many people in support of their own budget. Nobody’s speaking on this bill from that side. I find that surprising.

[1:45 p.m.]

One of the things I’m going to comment on first is this raise that the cabinet ministers gave themselves and the Premier, the 40 percent raise.

Accountability is built into all of the major levels of management in the private sector, in the public sector. I go back to my days in the RCMP, where we had a very similar policy in place within the RCMP that the executives could not claim a certain percentage of their salary unless they came in within budget. The budget for my district was pretty significant, $50 million or so. I knew where every nickel went, and if I went over that, then I wouldn’t get that sum of money, and it was pretty substantial back in the day.

The same thing…. It wasn’t passed on to the 42 detachment commanders I had within my area of responsibility, but I monitored their individual post budgets to make sure that they stayed within the guidelines as well, and sometimes I would have to reach into another pot to try and cover some of the costs if we had extenuating circumstances. That happens in government. That happened when we were in government.

As a minister in the previous government, there was holdback. If I didn’t come within budget, I didn’t get that 10 percent. None of my other colleagues would either, if we had gone over budget. It was an opportunity, though, for our minister responsible for finance to look at the other ministries just to make sure. If somebody was struggling and there was room to manoeuvre, you could take some of that money and put it another particular area that was of concern.

This government has fallen into the trap that I’ve seen many other new managers take. It’s very easy to spend money. You know, you’ve got a chequebook. You’ve got the authority to sign that cheque, and you go out and start spending money like, as the old saying goes, drunken sailors. If there’s no accountability to that, nobody to really hold their feet to the fire to be accountable for spending those taxpayer dollars, at the end of the day, it puts this province in a significant deficit position.

I think we’re bordering on doubling the deficit just over the last two years — and over the last five years, the two terms that this government has been in place. I find that astounding, and I think the taxpayers in British Columbia, quite matter of factly, find that astounding as well.

The other thing that I find very problematic is that not only is there no accountability to the level of spending that they have here, but nobody in government seems to care about that. We have generations ahead of us now, generations of British Columbians, the young children that are being born today, that are in elementary school today, that are going to be faced with this excessive heavy burden of taxes when they become employable and working citizens of the community. They will have that forever, and then their children will also be faced with that — trying to pay down the deficit that this government is accumulating.

It also takes away the wiggle room for any government coming in. If we look at 2024 and beyond, any government that comes in is going to have a tough time trying to figure out what they can do, what discretionary programs they can bring in that they can afford.

By spending the way this government is right now, over the projected life of this particular budget here, and increasing the deficit the way we have right now, it takes away that discretion. It takes away the opportunity to maintain the public service, the bloated public service that we see today, the hundred and some thousand more people that have been employed in the public service since this government took over.

It’s going to have to go back. Whoever comes in is going to have to go right back and start looking at the core services that government is required to provide and figure out which ones they’re going to take off the table. Those will be tough, tough decisions to make down the road.

[1:50 p.m.]

The only one benefiting from this lack of accountability and this ability to allow government to spend without any accountability at all, of course, is the Premier. He gets an extra $40,000 out of this, and every single one of the cabinet ministers get an extra $20,000 out of this.

The rest of British Columbians are seeing a decrease in their paycheques because of inflation, because of loss of work, because of a number of factors. I think the people in British Columbia are going to start looking and say: “There’s something wrong with this picture.” Here we are. The folks that are looking after us, or supposedly looking after us, are getting pretty well paid. They’ve just given themselves a little bump here, and I can’t make ends meet any more because I’m paying so darn much for gas just to get back and forth to work.

The government talks about making life more affordable for people. Bill 6 — I was looking through this bill, and I couldn’t find a darn thing in this bill that makes life more affordable for British Columbians. There was nothing in here that was speaking to the resource sector. The budget mentioned the fact that we’re going to lose $1 billion in forestry revenue over this cycle. That natural gas is going to go down by 20-some percent. That mining is going to go down by 30 percent. But there is absolutely nothing in this bill that speaks to how they’re going to address that.

I find that amazing — that there is nothing in there that covers off how they’re going to inject money and support that the petrochemical industry, that we so sorely need in this province here. The natural gas industry that not only Canada needs, in a major way, but the world needs British Columbian natural gas. There is nothing in Bill 6 that related to that.

There are increased costs of putting food on the table, and my colleagues have said it before. My wife goes to the grocery store. In fact, I think she goes to just about every store in Prince George. She drives. The cost of gas goes up. The cost of gas keeps going up. We have the highest gas costs in North America. We have the highest taxes on gas in North America.

People still have to get back and forth to the grocery store to pick up the goods that they need. But when they go in and buy those goods — they go in to buy that loaf of bread or the gallon of milk or the fresh fruit or whatever they buy — there is an increased cost. Those costs are going up pretty significantly. Just about every time they go in to buy the groceries, it goes up. That’s because, for a large part, fuel costs, because these trucks use a lot of fuel.

I had a posting that a constituent put in here a week or so ago on an industry that had — I don’t have the figures in front of me, so I’m just going to go off the top of my head — ten trucks hauling fuel, I think, in a week. Ten heavy trucks hauling groceries and goods. In a week, I think the fuel bill was $26,000, but with the added costs of fuel, that bill went up to $36,000, I believe it was. It was a pretty significant chunk.

Of course, that’s passed on to the everyday consumer. So each one of those trucks had to make, I think, an extra $12 an hour in order to cover that increased fuel cost. Of course, those options aren’t there. So is it more affordable for a family to go and buy groceries these days? No, it’s not. Is it affordable for people to go and take their son or their daughter to soccer or dancing or whatever types of extracurricular activities they do? No, because of the cost of gas and the cost of travelling.

I recall when my boys were young, in school. I was posted in Calgary during those days, when they were quite small. My wife would take one boy south of town, and I would take another boy north of town to go to soccer, and we were 200 kilometres apart, and we were doing that two or three times a week. That adds up. In today’s world of high gas prices, I can see a lot of young children being disappointed that they won’t be able to go, because life is no longer affordable for them to go to these kinds of events.

[1:55 p.m.]

The other affordability part that we spent a lot of time on in this House — and we see the consequences across this province, across the country, but in this province — is the cost of housing. There was nothing in this bill that I could see that addressed the cost of housing, which is a major issue for us.

The cost of rent. We didn’t see anything…. You know, this government has promised rent rebates ever since the 2017 election. We haven’t seen a nickel of that anywhere. Rents have gone up astronomically. We see some rents now where people are paying $3,500 a month for a two-bedroom apartment — and more. That’s not more affordable for that particular family. People are looking for cheaper options, but oftentimes, there are no cheaper options out there for them. It’s not affordable.

Somebody wants to buy a house. The member, I think, for Chilliwack has said several times — and I’ve heard it repeated several times — the fact that he’s the last generation that will be able to afford to buy a house. That’s a scary thought, that we have a couple of generations now of young people that feel totally helpless when it comes to: “Am I ever going to have a house?”

That’s a scary thought. It’s a major investment for anybody, but it’s significantly higher now. A lot of it has to do…. Kevin Falcon, our new leader, has talked about it before. There are a number of things that can be done, but nothing is in this budget to indicate that this government has even got a hint of what needs to be done in order to start bringing more supply online for housing.

Used cars. As my kids were growing up and getting established in work, they were always looking to buy a used car. Everything right from a $500 rust bucket when they first got their driver’s licence, that good old dad had to come and inspect and good old dad had to fix and keep fixing and keep fixing until they could afford the next car, or the next truck.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

We lived up in the Interior of the province. So the next one would be $1,000, and I would end up having to fix that and drive 40 miles out of town to haul it home after a fuel pump went on it or something like that.

Used vehicles are a way of life for the younger population. Not too many of them you see driving new cars. The odd one. But a lot of them drive used cars. I spent a good part of my life rebuilding cars, most of them were classics and antiques and collectibles. But there is such a variance in the used cars that we have out there. You know, one car might be…. It’s got four tires on it, and it’s got a motor that runs, and all the glass is good in it. But it’s rusted out. You’ve got to put $1,000 worth of tires on it. You’ve got to put another $1,000 into brakes. You’ve got to put another $1,000 into the exhaust system.

To have somebody arbitrarily say that car is worth X number of dollars because that’s what the market has shown in the past, I think, is a step in the wrong direction. It penalizes those people that are out there looking for that deal. Knowing that they’ve got dad in the back to kind of help them, to come and put new tires on it, or put a new set of brakes on it, or put a new exhaust system on it, or give that engine a tune-up. With the help of dad, we bring the vehicle up to the level of value that maybe some of these other vehicles were worth. So that’s no longer affordable.

Then the other thing that I see a lot of people doing — and I’ve got family members that do this on a regular basis — is buying and selling used goods online. I can’t master that. I barely can use my own cell phone. But I’ve got family members that are very adept in putting something online for sale and selling it, and buying things online. I see now that this loophole is being closed. That government now wants to go and establish a tax base for goods that are sold online. You talk about affordability in today’s world, and that’s one of the first places you go.

[2:00 p.m.]

If you’re struggling to meet your grocery bill, if you’re struggling to pay the tax on the used car that you just bought last week, if you’re struggling to pay your rent, you’re looking for a deal online. Maybe you need a new toaster oven. Maybe you need something that is a necessity in your house to help you with your small children, to help with a number of things. Now you’ve got to pay tax on that. That’s added to it.

This bill just indicates that government is contributing more to the level of inflation in British Columbia than just about every other facet. I’ve heard government talk about: “Well, it’s not our fault. We’ve got high gas prices because we’ve got the issue in the Ukraine. It’s the federal government’s fault. It’s this person’s fault. It’s that’s person’s fault.”

I guess I look at it…. It’s a scapegoat, and the government barnyard is now full of scapegoats. There’s no room for any more. They’re going to have to come to task with this and figure out how they’re going to be more accountable for some of the decisions that they make and empty that barnyard out.

The other part. I did notice in the bill that there was an indication that PST will be applicable to cigarettes. That’s a concern. One of the things that I worked on years ago when I was a police officer in the RCMP is smuggled cigarettes, in eastern Canada. There were a lot of cigarettes coming into British Columbia. There was a time when I could look across and watch somebody taking the wrapping off a package of cigarettes, and I would know whether that package was smuggled or not. I could tell whether the excise tax had been paid on it. I could tell the market that that particular brand of cigarette was destined to.

I know there are checks that are done every once in a while, and I know the Solicitor General will probably get briefings on this, because I used to get them when I was Solicitor General as well. The companies would go and folks would go and they would look at the butts that were left around common smoking areas. By examining them, they could tell how many of the cigarettes were smuggled and how many were legitimate. On average, we were always looking at 20 to 30 percent of the cigarettes that were smoked around school grounds, in public parks, on the beaches where you see lots of them in the sand, as being smuggled.

I will bet you that by raising the PST or putting the PST on cigarettes, we’re going to see an increase in black market cigarettes in British Columbia. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see that ratio now going up to 35 or 45 percent. There’s organized crime involved in that as well. That’s one thing.

You talk about raising taxes. You talk about money coming in to pay for government coffers, other than private industry. Those are the kinds of things that you have to deal with. It’s no different than, again, consumer loans, payday loans. This government came in and raised the rates on that back when they first came in, in 2017. That was one thing I was very wary of when I was the Solicitor General, because I didn’t want to raise that rate so high that it increased the black market for payday loans, people that would charge these astronomical rates. People could not scrape by from one payday to the next, and sometimes they were paying their entire paycheque just on interest alone.

There’s nothing in this bill that gives anybody any comfort in affordability. I’ve seen all kinds of posts from British Columbians, and I’ve talked to different folks in my riding back in Prince George–Mackenzie that are alarmed. They are barely scraping through right now. They don’t see a future in rural British Columbia because there’s nothing that supports the resource sector.

Like I mentioned earlier, they see $1 billion going down the tube from forestry over the next year or two. It’s not like we can grow a tree and recover our forest sector tomorrow. It takes 100 years to grow a marketable tree in the interior of British Columbia. But we do have all kinds of opportunities in oil and gas. There’s nothing in here that showed any kind of incentive for a petrochemical industry to get started in British Columbia.

[2:05 p.m.]

The government speaks, and they do talk about it in here, about incentives for electric vehicles. But in order to make electric vehicles, it needs a lot of plastic. It needs a lot of copper. It needs a lot of the minerals that we have in the ground in British Columbia. There’s nothing in this bill that supports extracting those minerals out of the ground.

There’s nothing in this bill that supports a polyurethane industry or a polypropylene industry that supplies the plastic for these cars — for the Tesla cars, for the electric vehicles that we have. In order to keep them light enough to operate, we need plastic. We can’t get around that. There is no other material available that will allow us to do that.

Eighty percent of the fuselage or 50 percent of the fuselage — I think it’s as high as 80 in some airplanes — is polymers made out of the liquids that we get out of the natural gas and out of the ground. I have Mount Milligan in my riding, a copper-gold complex employing 450 people. Copper is one of the main ingredients in our electric vehicles.

We’ve got an incentive to make electric vehicles more affordable, which is good. But we also need the other components to make that happen at the end of the day. If we don’t have that, where are we going to get it from?

We’re going to be putting people to work in other countries and other jurisdictions around the world, and we’re going to be ignoring the plight of British Columbians. They won’t have that work. Mining and oil and gas are going to be significant in moving ahead to make sure that we have jobs for British Columbians and that we also have the material to provide that electrification.

I think there are 20,000 metal towers holding up our power transmission lines in British Columbia. We have 18,000 kilometres of power transmission lines made of aluminum that will provide the electrification so that we have more electric cars on the ground here in British Columbia. If we don’t have that, if there is nobody up there to maintain them and to sustain them, then we won’t have that. You can get all the tax-free vehicles that you want in the Lower Mainland and other places in British Columbia, but if you don’t have the power to generate them, then, of course, you won’t have that at the end of the day.

This is a budget, and the bill that goes with this is going in the wrong direction. It has reduced and eliminated the oversight and the accountability for cabinet, for the ministers to spend within their means. It has given the Minister of Finance these powers to go out and spend money.

I think what it is…. When you look at the billions of dollars in contingency that the budget had in there, I think government needed a mechanism. If you have to keep coming back to Treasury Board all the time and saying, “I need $500 million here; I need $200 million here; I need $600 million over here,” when you’re trying to spend the billions and billions of dollars that this government has set aside in contingencies, it gets to be kind of a drag after a while.

Why not give that authority to the Finance Minister so she can rubber stamp it and stick it out? There’s no accountability to it. There’s no transparency to it. They just go ahead and do that. That’s not making life more affordable. That is making life very secretive and very elusive.

British Columbians are going to be filled with so much despair over the coming years because we are so far in debt that our great-grandchildren, my great-great-grandchildren, are going to be paying for the follies of this government and the money that they’re going to be spending over the next few years.

I don’t support this unaffordable budget. I don’t support this bill. There are a number of things in this bill that are just missing the point all together. British Columbians are going to be in for a belt-tightening time over the next little while. [Applause.]

Deputy Speaker: Member for Kootenay East. Good applause for yourself, Member.

T. Shypitka: I wasn’t clapping for myself. I was clapping for the previous speaker.

Deputy Speaker: Very good, very good.

T. Shypitka: I clapped for the previous speaker, who sits on this side of the aisle, and wondered why there was not somebody from the other side of the aisle that went before the previous speaker. Probably it’s because this bill brings a lot of questions into play. A lot of that is based on affordability, as this bill lines out numerous measures that will be implemented with Bill 6 that address affordability directly.

[2:10 p.m.]

The members before me on this side of the floor have made pretty loud and clear what those concerns are. It’s not so much even what’s in the bill, but what’s left out of the bill, as well, that could be assisting British Columbians in their greatest time of need. This is a place where we’ve gone in this province, and no fault of anyone’s, we’ve gone after crisis after crisis. We’ve got a deadly opioid crisis that is going on. We’ve had wildfire crises. We get that. Now we’re looking at a global crisis with the invasion of the Ukraine and what that’s doing to our affordability as well.

This is a time where government can step up. This is a time when government can actually introduce a bill, such as Bill 6, and implement measures through the budget to assist British Columbians and to make life better and more affordable and take a little bit of the strain and stress.

We have heard statistics that British Columbians are about $200 away from insolvency. They’re teetering on the edge. Some, unfortunately, have already gone over the edge. We know, right now in British Columbia, through statistics, that we are at a tipping point. We need to step in, and we need to help. Unfortunately, what I read in this bill and the implementations that are going to be enacted because of this bill, doesn’t address those everyday British Columbians.

There are some goods things in here. I will give credit where credit is due. Expand exemption for hazardous or damaged residential property temporarily. That’s a good one. Some of the folks in Lytton, obviously, the devastation that they’ve gone through…. Merritt. You know, the list is long — what we’ve seen. Some of these budgetary implications that we’re going to be putting in are going to help those people a lot, so I don’t want to say this is all doom and gloom here. But it fails to really recognize the main issue in British Columbia, which is affordability and something this government has proclaimed as champions of.

It was election promises in 2017. It was another election promise in 2020, yet we’re seeing the highest prices in all sectors of our economy. Whether it’s housing, whether it’s gas prices, whether it’s food, it is getting ratcheted up. Like I said, we have external pressures that are making that part of the equation, but British Columbia is standing alone — highest gas prices in North America, highest housing prices in North America. This is exclusive to B.C.

When I look at the budget, Bill 6, I look at lost opportunity. We’ll go through some of them right now. Like I said, we see some of the exemptions. Expand hydrogen exemption. Okay. I see there is a few CleanBC-type action plans here that are going to further incentivize the CleanBC plan and getting us transitioned off of fossil fuels and do our part to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. I get that. Introduce exemption for heat pumps. Okay. That’s another step in the right direction, I would think. Nobody is going to argue that.

Then government, through the same bill, attacks those that aren’t in that position to take advantage of heat pumps, for example.

The member for Peace River South explained it brilliantly. He’s one of these guys, that hands-on guy that does retrofitting for homes and restoration projects, so he gets it. I fully understood what he was talking about, that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for all of British Columbia.

Certainly, when you look at the Lower Mainland with the temperatures that they have — very rarely fluctuate over maybe minus 5, minus 6, minus 7. When you get to minus 10, it’s really something else. But where I live in the Kootenays, that’s kind of a brisk winter day. It’s not bad. We can deal with that. Minus 10 is okay, but we do get down to minus 20, minus 25, minus 30, minus 35.

[2:15 p.m.]

I’ve even seen it go down to minus 40 in my territory. That’s probably almost balmy for the member from Peace River South.

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: Yeah, it’s a spring day there.

It’s great to incentivize and bring exemptions on PST to heat pumps. That’s great. That gets part of the process going, but it’s not practical. It’s really not practical for people in rural British Columbia where I live, and the member for Peace River South and member for Shuswap, some of the rural places. It’s just not practical. That’s okay. We missed it. But what this bill does is it doubles down and then charges more, increases the tax, increases tax rate on fossil-fuel-heating equipment. That’s right in the implementations, the tax measures here, part 2.

If you can’t facilitate, if it doesn’t make practical sense, you’re getting penalized for that. You’re getting penalized because you live in a part of British Columbia that doesn’t facilitate the plan that government wants you to go towards. That’s just not right. That’s not right for people that are struggling and $200 away from insolvency. That could be a year’s worth of PST, to knock them over the edge, really.

The member for Peace River South said that it’s about $15,000 to $20,000 for a variable heat pump. What is it, the air…? I don’t even know the terms, but it’s a certain variable heat pump that you would need, in our region, that would cost $15,000 to $20,000. Then you would actually also have to have the backup when that variable heat pump wasn’t working properly, at very low temperatures. You’d have to have natural gas or electricity.

Some people in rural B.C., in Columbia River–Revelstoke, they don’t even have natural gas. They have to rely on electric heat, which is fine. Something the government could think about is the elimination of the two-tiered system on hydro. Why doesn’t government use something like that? Why don’t they bring those things into play to help British Columbians out? How do you have a two-tiered system on hydro when that’s your only heating source, hydro electricity. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There are opportunities lost, and it would be great if government would actually do the extra legwork to ask professionals across the province — heating specialists, people in other communities other than the Lower Mainland — how this is going to affect people. They obviously haven’t done it, because they would’ve heard loud and clear that it does not make any sense.

Remove exemption for tobacco. Okay. I’ve never smoked. I’m not a smoker, but I know a lot of people that do. My mom and dad, they’re probably watching right now. They both smoke, unfortunately. They came from a time where the health risks weren’t really well known, and it’s an addiction. I think it’s all safe to say that.

They still like to have a dart here and there, but they’re going to be taxed, and they’re seniors. I know a lot of seniors that still smoke tobacco. Once again, it’s hitting hard on those people that really are on fixed budgets, fixed incomes. They’re just going to be paying more.

Adjust the purchase price of private vehicle sales for tax purposes. This is a tax that the government will be putting in place, a PST tax, on used car sales, private sales, across the province. Once again, hitting those people that really can’t afford it. This is low-income, mid-income people.

It would be great…. I’d love to buy a new…. I’ve never owned a new vehicle in my life, to tell you the honest truth. I have not. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve never owned a new vehicle. I know the depreciation as soon as it comes off the lot. It goes down 15, 20 percent the minute you drive it outside the parking lot, so I’ve never been into that. I also know that the operative word in used car sales is the word “used.” It’s used. They’re not always used the same way.

[2:20 p.m.]

I think it was, maybe, the member for Prince George–​Mackenzie who summed it up pretty good. You don’t know what you’re getting, and you have to do all the homework. You have to check to see what this used car is going to be like.

Everybody’s lived it. Everybody’s been there. You see it in an ad in the paper, so you go and you say: “Okay, well, it’s not exactly what I want. It’s not really the colour I want.” Even at a used car sales lot…. You can go to the used car sales lot and talk to the used car salesman. It’s not exactly what you want, but the bottom line is always going to be the price. What can I get for this vehicle?

You barter. You go back and forth. Due to the used car salesman’s supply that he has versus what the buyer wants as far as the demand side goes…. How badly does he want it? If you really need a car tomorrow, you’re probably going to pay a high price. If you don’t really need it and you’ve got other choices, you can barter. Guess what. That becomes the market price. Whatever you decide on becomes the market price.

This bill says that no matter what the supply and de­mand are and no matter what the condition of the vehicle is, you will have to pay the tax on the difference between what you paid for it and what the Black Book price states. I can’t see that being a logical step.

We know that some people — my dad, for example…. My first car was a 1968 GTO convertible. A cool car. Me and my dad drove to Calgary. I’ll never forget it, my first car. I was 16, probably, at the time. We looked all over. We looked at a Mustang convertible, actually, at that time. I think we had about $1,200 to spend, and this guy wanted $1,400 or $1,500 for it. I wish I could go back in time and get that car again, but I can’t, unfortunately.

We ended up going to this one showroom, and there it was, this GTO convertible, bright orange. The members on the other side might like that type of car. I did. I’m okay to say that. It was a great car, a really cool colour orange. It was awesome. We had to barter, and we had to bargain for it. We found out there were some mechanical issues wrong with it. My dad was a mechanic, or he was mechanically inclined. He’s a carpenter by trade, actually. He was able to fix it. We worked together on it, and we fixed the car.

Somebody else that bought that same car, knowing that there were some mechanical issues wrong with it, would have to budget and factor that in: “Okay, I’m going to have to spend another $1,500 to get the engine fixed. The tires, the rubber on the car is worn out. I’m going to have to buy some new tires.” You factor that in. That comes above and beyond what the cost of the vehicle is. Those aren’t recognized when you look at a Black Book value on a car.

I’d be interested to see if you’d actually get a rebate if you paid too much. I don’t know. Is there anything in the bill that says that? I’m not too sure. Everybody’s heard about the lemon. You buy a lemon, right? You buy a car that just conks out on you tomorrow. Would you get a rebate?

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: Yeah, you don’t even get a thank-you card.

What is the old Latin phrase? Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. That applies. But it’s not recognized in this bill. Every car — every used car, which is the operative word — is treated exactly the same. Whether you get a lemon or a good deal, it doesn’t matter to this government. They just want their cash, and they want it now. That’s just plain wrong.

Introduce “tax collection, remittance and reporting obligations for marketplace facilitators.” Well, that’s just a big, long, fancy word for saying that if you go to a garage sale, buck up for the government. You bought those used pots and pans because your family needs a new saucepan, and you can’t go buy the one downtown because it’s maybe too expensive. “So we’ll go to a garage sale. We’re feeling the pinch, here, in the affordability of this province right now.” Well, guess what. You’re going to have to report that, and you’re going to have to pay.

[2:25 p.m.]

Once again, it just seems to be hitting all the wrong people in the wrong places. That place is the pocketbook. This is just tax after tax after tax. This government feels no shame in doing that — the government that championed, in their election speeches: “We will take on affordability in this province. We will be the champions in that.”

I don’t know. The member for Peace River South was at a loss for words for it as well. I’m not too sure if it’s 27 taxes now, 25. You know, it’s pretty bad when the opposition tries to hold government to account and can’t keep up with the amount of taxes. I mean, bad on us, I guess, but bad on government for making us work so hard and get the abacus out every other day to figure out how many taxes we’ve got. It’s really mind-boggling.

“Set provincial rural area property tax rates.” I’m not too sure exactly on this one here, but our property tax rates in rural B.C., just like the Lower Mainland, have skyrocketed. Whether that’s Crown land tenures or rural area, fee simple acreages, it’s just out of hand, and there’s no measure to limit that tax rate during these times. You could put a tax measure in, limiting the tax increase during this time.

This affects agriculture. We’ve got ranchers right now that are just getting by, and they’re having all kinds of land access issues right now. With bills that I see coming up…. Perhaps we’ll see, with Bill 14, what it materializes to be. But we’re seeing increased restriction on land use, yet the property that they lease from the government just keeps going up. What they can do on that land is going down, and the price they pay for that land is going up. It gets to the point where it’s unsustainable.

Deputy Speaker: If I might draw the member back to Bill 6.

T. Shypitka: Yeah. Part 2 of the tax measures bill has set provincial rural area property tax rates. It’s in there. It was implemented. Its effective date was actually January 1 of this year. I’m not sure if I’m out of context on that, Mr. Speaker — maybe you can correct me — but I’m talking about rural area property tax rates right now. It’s in the bill.

On behalf of a lot of recreational owners that have recreational tenures for recreational opportunities…. People have campsites and things like that. Those rates go up, so it’s affecting us in the recreation area. It’s affecting us with our agriculture, as I said — grazing, all of those tenure holders. It’s just making life more affordable…. Our industry is suffering, as well, from it.

We could also have lots of other things in this bill that would help British Columbians. There’s a lot of stuff in here. Extend training tax credits. Yeah, that’s good. Extend shipbuilding and ship repair industry tax credits. Okay, there’s a little industry there. That’s for sure.

What about some of the other industries that these tax measures could affect? Mining, for example, would be a great start. We’ve got all kinds of folks that could benefit from some tax measure help. Geoscience B.C., I would say, would be one of those. Any kind of geological…. B.C. geological survey could be helped out a little bit here, but we don’t see any of that.

Like I said, there are some good things here with Bill 6. It does identify some of the more obvious things that a tax measures bill would see, like I said. The exemption for houses or damaged residential property is a good one. That’s really good.

Thankfully for those folks in Merritt, they’re going to see some sort of tax relief on removing the damaged residential property items — you know, during the last fire. It was devastating for those folks, so any help is good there.

[2:30 p.m.]

Everything else that I see here in this bill just does the opposite to what we need right now. We need some help. People need help. They’re on the edge. When you just layer three taxes, for fossil fuel, natural gas…. That is what people have….

Not everybody is going to be able to afford, in rural B.C., a $15,000 to $20,000 fix on their heating to put in a heat pump. They’re just not going to do it. Now, it’s good that you incentivize those that can, the ones that are rich enough that can and live in a temperate area that it makes practical sense. It’s good to incentivize those types of things. Yeah, I give full credit there. But then to go on the other side and say, “But if you don’t play along, we’re going to tax you on your natural gas use,” is just not fair, plain and simple.

With that, I really can’t support this, even though there’s some good stuff in here. I think the government needs to take a really good look at how they implement these and who they affect.

The private vehicle sales, the PST that’s being required now…. That’s in their own report. It’s right in the budget document, actually. It said that this will negatively impact low- and middle-class individuals and families. The government knows — it doesn’t take rocket science to figure it out — that those who buy used vehicles, such as myself, are on a budget, a tight budget. Not everybody can go out and buy a brand-new vehicle. This tax measure will negatively impact individuals and families that are low and middle class financially.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’ll take my place and sit down, and I’ll let the next member speak. [Applause.]

Deputy Speaker: You did get more than one applause.

Recognizing the member for Richmond South Centre.

H. Yao: I do want to apologize for that. I learned my lesson from the member for Kootenay East. I need to stand up faster than that last time. How’d he beat me to it?

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about Bill 6, which I fully support. I think that we all, as MLAs for British Columbia, understood the challenging years we’ve experienced since 2020. Our government, which is fully responsible to British Columbia and fully dedicated to investing in British Columbians, realized the need to really carry British Columbia through a challenging time, from a pandemic, from an opiate crisis to dealing with the wildfires and the floods.

This continues — various crises hitting us from 2020 all the way till now. As some of the previous members even mentioned, the Ukrainian and Russian military conflict is causing our gas prices to become more and more unaffordable. That’s why the B.C. government is here to continue coming up with various plans, not just to think about today and tomorrow, but we’re thinking about how to utilize our budget to ensure that we can actually invest for tomorrow, for years ahead.

I would like to start talking about investment and why our government needs to be able to look at a way to say that for the next few years, we must be able to accept the deficit we have to create, in order to invest in various parts of our budget to strengthen our economy as we recover. I think many people will understand very clearly and very simply that in 2022, we are coming out as the strongest economy in Canada, with one of the lowest unemployment rates. But this economic success is very fragile. It takes time to further invest and nurture as we move forward.

That’s the reason why I’m so glad that our B.C. government placed greater emphasis on health care, child care, Internet for rural and remote communities, and housing. We will continue looking at various ways to ensure that we build the proper infrastructure. That way, we don’t allow years of past neglect, putting us unable to handle something similar to the pandemic that we experienced in 2020….

I would like to begin talking about affordable, accessible, quality child care and how that investment of today will strengthen our economy of tomorrow.

Deputy Speaker: If I might, Member. Just to remind you, we are speaking to Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. The budget itself was already discussed. So if we can try and keep reference to this document. Thank you.

[2:35 p.m.]

H. Yao: My apologies. I accept the corrections.

Can I end my speech here? It’s obvious that I’m preparing for something completely different.

Deputy Speaker: It’s not a problem. Just to be clear, I don’t want to fetter people’s ability to speak.

H. Yao: I fully respect your guidance here. I appreciate that.

Deputy Speaker: I just want to make sure that we’re speaking to the Budget Measures Implementation Act, which is primarily taxes, not completely — and, of course, what happens out of that tax money. Thank you. Please proceed if you’d like, or if you’re finished….

H. Yao: No, thank you.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Member for Kelowna-Mission.

R. Merrifield: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate having the time.

Housing affordability. The cost of groceries. Finding a doctor. Price of gas. Health of business. That’s what people are talking about right now. That is what is consuming people in their conversations in their communities. So allow me to start my conversation about Bill 6 with a little bit of a story.

It was September of 2008. I remember the day, because it was like the sky fell. Panic overtook the entire housing and finance industries with the crash of 2008. I remember calling the emergency meeting with my executive at the time. We had just over 200 employees, and I didn’t know how to make payroll that Friday.

Deputy Speaker: I’m sorry, Member. I just recognized that I have a member asking for leave to make an introduction. He’s been trying to get my attention, and I’ve not been giving him the attention he deserves. My apologies. Sorry.

With leave, of course, the member for Chilliwack seeks leave to make an introduction, I believe.

D. Coulter: Yeah. I’m sorry for interrupting my colleague. I was mashing the little button here, trying to get the Speaker’s attention in between speeches here.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

D. Coulter: One of our members in this chamber has a birthday today, and it really flew under the radar and tried to escape. I’d just like to wish them a happy birthday.

The member for Parksville-Qualicum is 38 years old today. The member is one of the most accessible MLAs, I know, to his constituents, and I’m sure they really appreciate it. I enjoy speaking with the member and his perspectives on things.

I’d just like to wish him a happy 38th birthday.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. And yes, happy birthday. In future, if we can try to make those just during the introductions so we don’t interrupt our fellow members, that would be appreciated.

Sorry, Member. Please proceed, Member for Kelowna-Mission.

Debate Continued

R. Merrifield: That’s all right. Thank you. And happy birthday.

As I was saying, it was 2008. The financial markets had stopped. We had been put on notice by all of our financial institutions that draws would be withheld, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay 208 people.

I called together our executives, and we discussed what we were going to do. I asked that no one get laid off, that all of their jobs be protected, that we would shrink through attrition, and I cut my salary to zero. I didn’t know how I was going to make my mortgage payment. I didn’t know how I was going to pay for groceries, but I also knew that that was the responsibility of an executive in a company.

Why do I tell this story? Well, it’s because in B.C. today, we’re almost in a similar situation. Yes, we’re almost through COVID, and we had exciting news today to celebrate our successes together. While most people are employed, they are not making ends meet and are falling behind because of the escalating prices. They can’t find a house. They have to choose between housing and groceries. Food programs at schools have seen an increase of 40 percent usage.

[2:40 p.m.]

Nearly half of British Columbians are $200 away from insolvency. That is far worse than our neighbours to the south in the U.S.

I’m really glad to have this opportunity today to speak on the bill before the House — one that has serious ramifications to affordability in British Columbia. Why? Well, because the discussion and the debate around Bill 6 is the meeting of the executives. It is bringing together the decision-makers around the financial aspects that are going to have a direct impact on the lives and the wealth of British Columbians. This bill is very telling in what that side of the House cares about.

Bill 6, as its full name implies, implements key measures outlined in Budget 2022 and, most notably, brings into force the new tax measures that this government decided to levy on British Columbians. It’s an important bill for government, not just because it’s the legislative companion to the budget but because it demonstrates the priorities.

In 2008, my priority was around making sure that people could pay their mortgages, making sure that people had enough money to pay their gas, making sure that they could keep food on the table.

Well, what do my constituents in Kelowna want their government to focus on? In Kelowna, yes, we want to get back to normal. But people are full of fear. They’re full of angst — not about what wearing a mask looks like or having a vaccine passport anymore but about what our economy is going to become and if we have reserves if it becomes World War III.

My constituents care about the economy — about driving an actual plan for recovery. My constituents care about mental health and getting treatment facilities for those that need it. My constituents care about their health, getting critical surgeries for cancer treatment done while planning for the future. My constituents care about having a family physician. They care about having affordable and accessible child care. They care about the environment and not choking with smoke. All of this….

Deputy Speaker: Member. My request, as I’ve made to other members and as the Assistant Deputy Speaker has, is to make sure that it’s clear — the connection between your remarks and Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. If we could get that a little closer to the bill, that would be great. Thank you.

R. Merrifield: Thanks so much, Mr. Speaker.

My constituents care about the cost of living, their taxes, inflation and having a responsible government. They care about hope. The NDP government isn’t planning to have margin. We can tell a lot what they plan to have by what they’ve decided to do in this legislation, because not only are they introducing or increasing a large swath of taxes in the middle of an affordability crisis, but they’re also giving themselves a $20,000 pay bonus for all their ministers.

Yes, this is the legislation that demonstrates that the NDP care so little about the affordability problems that people are facing right now, they’re giving themselves a raise while doing nothing to try and make gas, groceries or housing more affordable. As I’d said earlier, nearly half of British Columbians are now $200 or less away from insolvency. The U.S. has four out of ten that are $1,000 away from insolvency. I don’t like being worse than the U.S.

The latest figures from Statistics Canada show inflation surpassed 5 percent in January. The last time we saw this happen was September 1991. As I’ve stated before, now is not the time to be raising costs for British Columbians or spending taxpayer money on a salary bump for cabinet.

So yeah, the technical explanation of what the NDP are doing is repealing the collective 10 percent salary holdback provision. But really, in essence, it’s rewarding a minister without having to do the work. They’re giving themselves a pay hike, but they’re also freeing themselves from the work or the responsibility of avoiding a deficit.

[2:45 p.m.]

The minister has said that it’s because refusing to increase cabinet’s pay when the province is in deficit “sends the wrong message” to ministers. That’s laughable. It is a shameful excuse for government to line their own pockets while the province struggles and the people in the province struggle to buy groceries in the face of rising costs.

This legislation is not just a slap in the face to people because it allows government to increase their pay while doing little to improve affordability, but it actually makes life less affordable. Two of these taxes are going to target goods and vehicles, while the other hurts incomes and rural communities that rely on natural gas furnaces.

Budget 2022 introduces these three significant tax in­creases, through this bill, that hurt affordability: increasing the tax rate on home heating equipment, increasing the effective tax on used or private vehicles and adding a new tax on online marketplaces — wow, online marketplaces — that process payments electronically for used goods.

I can tell you that when my budget was tight and I had little kids, I went to used marketplaces all the time to buy my kids’ clothes. I very rarely have ever bought a brand-new vehicle. I try and get a great deal for my vehicles. I know that the tighter the budget, the more you rely on those mechanisms to actually get money back into your pocket. But this government wants to take that.

Sure, I’m all for reducing the PST on used EVs, electric vehicles, but let’s take a look at what those are. I don’t know — Audi Q4 Sportback e-trons. Well, the market rate is $67,000. A tax break from it — what does that actually equate to? Maybe a used one you could get at $40,000 but only if it’s actually the price as determined by — I don’t know — a third-party appraiser, which I’m going to just run out and get.

This makes no sense. You are basically giving back $2,000, $3,000 on a used vehicle, when the actual amount on a brand-new one is double that. So you’re rewarding, in greater measure, those wealthier that are able to afford a brand-new vehicle than those that are not, further penalizing them.

I’m not telling this government anything that they don’t already know, because they actually said it in their budget document. It says, on page 91: “Individuals involved in private vehicle transactions are more likely to be low to medium income, living in a rural area.”

These taxes are actually going to predominantly affect the cost of living for those that are the most desperate in trying to make ends meet and are most likely to buy used goods in order to do it. The tax is most likely to hurt those that can’t afford it. So much for trying to help those with the cost of living.

The used-car tax has the potential to add hundreds in costs on private vehicle sales. In fact, this government anticipates it being millions of dollars added to the bottom line, taking money from low- to middle-income earners. This means that the government is prioritizing punishing people for working hard and trying to find a deal.

[2:50 p.m.]

As those members across the aisle — specifically, the member for Vancouver–False Creek…. She even negatively characterized it as: “Frankly, it’s tax evasion.”

This bill does some other good things. It does. It does a few. Increasing tobacco taxes — sure. Extending a number of tax credits that the government has previously put in place — great.

I would say that the most positive of Bill 6 is that it creates a few tax exemptions for those that have been really impacted by the 2021 floods. I think that’s a reasonable step. But the concerning aspect is that they’re actually going to reward ministers with a pay increase.

At the beginning of the pandemic — before I was elected, when we were first put into lockdown — I called together all of my executives on a Zoom call, because that’s the way that we could meet. We had a discussion about what we were going to do.

We didn’t know what would happen to our industry. We didn’t know what would happen to our income. We knew how much we had in reserve and how long it would take to burn through that. We didn’t know how the financial markets would respond. But we rewarded each of our executives for doing a good job, for staying on budget, for making sure that they were within their target numbers.

In fact, I think that you’d be hard pressed to find many outside of these walls that would consider rewarding ministers or executives for not doing their job. For not running within a budget. However, what most people would not see further in this, unless they dug just a little bit further, is that in this piece of legislation, the Finance Minister is actually further reducing transparency with government decisions.

In addition to giving raises to all of the ministers, she actually is reducing transparency around government decisions and bypassing Treasury Board. The whole process — removing a key check and balance measure on this government’s spending.

I don’t even know why I’m surprised, because this is the NDP government that won a national award for secrecy. But it’s incredibly concerning.

Rather than joining the conversation that’s happening outside of these walls about the cost of living, this bill adds taxation to those that are least able to afford it. Rather than join the conversation about economic recovery, mental health or our environment, this bill actually sidesteps it and taxes those that don’t have any other options, like those in the North, those in rural communities, where natural gas is the only solution for their heating needs.

Rather than join the conversation around health care or child care, this bill’s conversation is about secrecy. This bill’s conversation is about taxing those that work hard to get a good deal on a car. Those that don’t have enough money to go to a retail outlet or a mall and buy something off the hanger and have to buy used.

This bill proves that this government isn’t prioritizing the needs of British Columbians. This bill proves that this government is prioritizing the needs of wealthy individuals that can afford an electric vehicle and not those that have no other option other than natural gas to heat their home.

[2:55 p.m.]

This NDP government isn’t listening. It isn’t listening to the conversations that are happening outside of the walls of this institution. Instead of having ministers that are committed to the task, they’re committing to overspending. Committing to debt, rather than recovery. They’re spending on giving themselves raises, rather than dealing with the cost of living.

They are furthering the divide between the haves and the have-nots by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and punishing the lower socioeconomic people — housing, groceries, health, gas, business, child care. That’s what people care about, not a minister’s raise.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad that they all found it so funny.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Shuswap.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the member for Shuswap has the floor.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy to stand today and speak to Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. It always gives me a great deal of pride to stand in this House on the behalf of the hard-working men and women of Shuswap, who I represent.

This particular bill is incredibly troubling. Out of touch, certainly, comes to mind when I think of this government and where their priorities are. As has been referenced by some of my colleagues who spoke earlier, this particular bill sets out a significant pay increase, both for the Premier and for the members of his cabinet, at a time when families are struggling across British Columbia, with a significant number of families being less than $200 away from insolvency, record high grocery prices, record high housing prices, record high fuel prices.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

How does this government respond? Where are their priorities? A $40,000 pay increase for the Premier and a $20,000 pay increase for his friends in cabinet. Wow. Offensive beyond belief. A $40,000 pay raise just for the Premier alone and $20,000 for his cabinet members at a time that everybody else is struggling, trying to make ends meet.

This government ran on a platform of affordability. But nothing has become more affordable when it comes to taxation in British Columbia, since this government came to power — 21 new or increased taxes with very little support for hard-working men and women that are struggling to put food on the table, pay for escalating prices for fuel and home heating fuel.

Now, there are three specific pieces of this bill that have been referenced by my colleagues, about the significant increase. One has to do with increase for home heating oil. Well, for members that live maybe outside of the 604 area code, in Shuswap — the little community of Sicamous that I live in, for example — we have no natural gas. There’s only propane or electricity, which is incredibly expensive.

I was born and raised in northern B.C., a great little town called Taylor, just south of Fort St. John, on the Peace River. If you live in a northern climate, heating your home with a heat pump does not work. At minus 25, the value afforded a heat pump, as far as efficiencies, does not exist.

If you happen to live in a northern climate, it’s not your choice that you’re going to have a high heating bill, but your only real option is wood or natural gas. For those residents living in northern B.C., they’re going to see an increase in the cost for heating their homes. Meanwhile, those of us that are privileged to maybe live in a little bit warmer climate in the southern part of the province, we’re going to be provided a significant tax incentive to maybe convert our homes to a heat pump.

[3:00 p.m.]

What message does that send to British Columbians that live in the remote and rural parts of our province, the areas of the province where natural resources are extracted for the benefit of the rest of us in British Columbia.

You know, it’s interesting. There seems to be a real disconnect, I think, with what happens on the land base, when you get into a large metro or urban centre. There just seems to be this acceptance that beef comes from the grocery store, natural gas just magically appears through a pipe in the ground, and electricity just magically appears from an overhead wire. But the men and women that work in the northern parts of our province to provide the beef and the natural gas and the electricity that is of benefit to all of the other residents of British Columbia — what message does this budget send to them? It matters not.

It’s interesting when you talk about the reduction in provincial sales tax that’s now going to be afforded individuals that are buying an electric vehicle. I have no issue with encouraging folks around the province to convert to electric vehicles, but it’s largely not a solution for somebody living in Fort Nelson. Yet just from this particular bill, Bill 6, for somebody buying an electric vehicle, they’re going to save upwards of $2,000 in provincial sales tax.

If you are blessed with living in Vancouver, even though you have transit at your doorstep, you’re going to be provided the extra value, the reduced cost of $2,000, in order to support you in buying an electric car. But that opportunity does not exist in the same manner. It is not effective or practical for somebody in Fort Nelson who doesn’t even have transit at their doorstep.

Government has choices. We all appreciate that. Unfortunately, what I’m seeing is a real disrespect for folks that are outside of metro B.C. and a government that, instead, is going to increase their own wages. As I mentioned earlier, $40,000 for the Premier. A $40,000 pay hike for him, a $20,000 pay hike for all of his cabinet ministers. Yet who’s going to pay the price?

We see increased taxation. When you get your natural gas bill for heating your home, there’s more in carbon tax now than the actual cost of the actual gas. The carbon tax is now higher than the actual cost of gas used to heat your home — an additional billion dollars of additional revenue coming into government just from the carbon tax alone.

What do motorists expect on April 1? Another 1.1-cent-per-litre increase on account of the carbon tax. The government talks about trying to blame the high cost of fuel…. They try and blame it on the war in Ukraine. That certainly has had an impact, but long before the war in Ukraine, B.C. had the highest gas prices in North America and the highest gas taxes in North America, and that still exists today.

Guess what government did to choke down the supply and add additional costs. For fuel that was going to be brought in by truck from our neighbouring province of Alberta, they added an additional 25-cent-per-litre surcharge. Now, those large fuel tankers that we see on our highways carry about 44,000 litres of fuel. So just to provide this in perspective, the NDP government has added an extra $11,000 in taxation — $11,000 in increased taxation — just on that one fuel truck. Well, if you’re living in the interior of the province, do you think that that might have had an impact on the cost of gas at the pumps? Absolutely.

[3:05 p.m.]

Government is making decisions to line their own pockets at the expense of hard-working men and women around the province. When asked on what opportunities might be available for government to provide assistance — nothing. We’ve heard nothing from this government. That is offensive.

One of my colleagues, earlier, had mentioned that this current budget is going to actually double the debt load of the province under the term of this government to $125 billion. I appreciate that we are now debating Bill 6 with respect to taxation, but $125 billion in debt is going to have to be paid for by our children and our grandchildren and the future generations. I am concerned of the level of debt being taken on by this government and who is going to pay for it.

We’ve been blessed with very low interest rates. I can certainly remember, in the early ’80s, interest rates over 20 percent. Most homeowners today would be insolvent and unable to make their own mortgage payments if we saw a mortgage rate increase of only 3 percent. Any debt that’s taken on by governments will be an additional obligation of future generations.

Another area of Bill 6 actually relates to reduced transparency. The latest example of this government’s track record on secrecy, this particular piece of legislation gives the Finance Minister the power to make financial deci­sions that bypass the Treasury Board process, removing a key check on government’s spending power.

Now, I was privileged from 2013 to 2017 to sit on Treasury Board. It was a very important process. It provided the necessary checks and balance to ensure that ministers that were coming and looking for additional revenue had to have a clear business case outlining the need and the requirement for additional funding. But this government has decided we can just bypass that entire process. It’s not only just disappointing; it’s also extremely worrying. But it’s not a surprise for this current NDP government, which won a national award for secrecy.

Look, I appreciate there’s important business that needs to be undertaken by government. But it is imperative that government provide access to information and share with the general public the reasons, the rationale on why they’re deciding to choose to move in a certain direction.

We’re not getting that from this government. They doubled down with their freedom-of-information and privacy-protection policies to further restrict access to information. This is just yet another effort of this government to reduce transparency with Bill 6, allowing the Minister of Finance to bypass the very necessary process of the Treasury Board.

Government’s largest single source of revenue is personal income tax. We have about 5.4 million people in the province. About 53 percent of British Columbians are working at any given time. You would think that government would actually take heed and pay a bit of attention to the businesses that actually provide those family-supporting jobs. But we haven’t seen that.

From tax measures, all we have seen under this current government — increases in the corporate tax. The corporate tax rate in B.C. now is a full 50 percent higher than our neighbouring province of Alberta. Alberta, it is 8; B.C., it is 12.

Government also chose to…. Rather than eliminate the MSP premium, which they had claimed to have done, they replaced it, putting the full cost burden, about $1.9 billion a year, right on the backs of B.C. businesses.

We’ve seen significant minimum-wage rate increases, which I actually support. But all of these things just add to the cost burden of businesses, and as much as it is important to provide supports for workers, we also can’t disrespect and ignore the businesses that are struggling out there.

[3:10 p.m.]

I saw a report recently that the average business in B.C. took in over $125,000 of debt just trying to keep their doors open during COVID. That certainly is not government’s fault. I think this government actually did a good job of reducing the number of restrictions and shutdowns and allowing industry, largely, to operate. But businesses are really struggling right now.

With this Budget Implementation Act, I see zero supports for the business community. At some point in time, those businesses will make the decision, unfortunately, to have to close their doors, because they can just not make it any longer.

It’s increasingly troubling to see the disrespect of this current government and their lack of focus on affordability. The other piece that’s quite interesting is that if you’re going to buy a $60,000 or $70,000 Tesla, no problem. We’ll give you a couple thousand dollar tax break.

If you’re a young worker looking at buying a $2,000 or $3,000 automobile, and you don’t have a choice because there’s no transit in rural B.C…. Your only ability to get to and from work is to actually buy a car. You happen to be able to negotiate a great deal, maybe from an uncle or the neighbour across the street, and he gives you a smoking deal on an old pickup truck. I know that my colleague from Peace River South actually spoke about the old beat-up pickup truck that you might have bought for 300 bucks. Well, no. Government’s now decided that we’re going to have a look at the black book.

It doesn’t matter what deal you negotiated. If the black book value on that vehicle is 2,000 bucks, you’re going to have to pay PST on that full 2,000 bucks. We can give a $2,000 tax credit to somebody who is wealthy enough and able to afford an electric vehicle. But for that young worker that is just entering the workforce and has no choice…. No public transit’s available, and his only choice of getting to and from work is to buy a vehicle. The members opposite refer to that individual that might get a good deal as a tax cheat or refer to the fact that he’s only paying $300 for that vehicle as tax evasion. How out of touch can you get? Seriously.

Then we look at the increased taxes for online marketplace. If you can afford to go and buy new products, you’re paying PST. Fair enough. But if you want to go buy something used because you’re struggling…. You can’t afford that new set of pots and pans or you can’t afford a brand-new pair of hockey skates for your kid and you decide to go to the online marketplace. You know what? This government wants to take their pound of flesh from you as well, and you’re going to have to pay PST. How out of touch is this government?

They ran on a platform of affordability. Nothing has gotten more affordable under the term of this government. Housing’s up. Gas is up. Taxation’s certainly up, especially from a business perspective. What is more affordable?

Absolute failure. They’ve doubled down by now, saying that if you want to buy a used pair of hockey skates for your kid online, you’ve got to pay PST on that as well? Absolutely offensive. There’s no way that I’ll be supporting this bill. With that, I will take my seat.

D. Davies: I rise today — I guess, virtually — to speak to Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. Maybe I’m having trouble saying it just because of how disappointed I am in what I see in this piece of legislation. I will start with…. And maybe the members across the way can take note of this and have these conversations with people in their ridings.

Over the last little while, I’ve been meeting with peo­ple, meeting with stakeholders and visiting the coffee shops, and the message is very clear. People can barely make ends meet.

[3:15 p.m.]

Our not-for-profit organizations, the fabric of our communities, are unable to make ends meet and unsure of how they’re going to be able to carry on. So I encourage the members across the way to maybe go out and to talk to those folks in their communities and understand how difficult it actually is right now to make ends meet.

When we saw the budget come out, I was certainly disappointed in it. Of course, now we see Bill 6 here. There is no relief for these people and these organizations. Bill 6 is anything but affordable. It’s taxing our way into affordability, which is impossible to do.

Most people, and this has been talked about a lot, are $200 away from being completely broke. Insolvent. We’ve seen this before this budget came out and before our most recent increase in gasoline and our fuels. People were $200 away. It’s only getting worse, and people were looking to this government for support. They were looking to this government for hope so that they might see a way out of this, they might see their dollars go a little further. But that isn’t the case in the budget or in Bill 6.

It’s really unfortunate. One of the things that would have been nice to see in this…. There are some tax breaks, and I’ll get into those here momentarily, talking about the heat pumps or on electric cars. But there was nothing…. The government has seen this coming for a couple of few weeks now, but something that should have really been in this budget was some relief for the rising cost of fuel that we’ve seen. Twenty-five cents a litre is within this provincial government’s control.

We’ve seen our neighbours in Alberta look at some tax relief. Why was that not in Bill 6 as some tax relief? The trickle-down effect of the cost of fuel that this will impact is going to impact the cost of groceries.

I’m here in Fort St. John. Everything comes in by truck up here. Our food, our products that we use to do — well, you name it — everything. There isn’t hardly anything that we purchase in the store that hasn’t come on truck or, to much, much lesser case, by rail. But even still, those costs are going to be dramatically increased as we see the cost of fuel skyrocketing across the province. This is not just in the Lower Mainland. We’re $2 a litre in Fort St. John, and it’s even more than that when you go north into Fort Nelson.

My colleague from Shuswap a moment ago mentioned the cost of natural gas. Now this is natural gas, of course, to heat the home. If you can see behind me here…. I mean, we’re a long ways away from being able to turn our furnace off. In fact, I just received my natural gas bill. I guess it was about two weeks ago. Almost $800 for two months of natural gas.

Now the thing is: I have no other choice to heat my home. As we see, the incredible amount of taxes, including carbon tax, which my honourable colleague there mentioned, is more than the cost of natural gas itself. It’s not even close. The taxes on my natural gas bill — and I wish I had it in front of me, but I don’t — are quadruple the actual cost of just the gas itself.

When I look here, in Fort St. John, pretty much the entire month of December, nearly four weeks, we were sitting at minus 40 degrees. That was before the wind chill, so that’s the still temperature. I use a forced air furnace to heat my house. I understand the heat pumps that government has brought forward a tax break for, but heat pumps will not work in cold climates, and of course, we have cold climates as soon as you leave the Lower Mainland.

[3:20 p.m.]

These are big challenges. When we see a government looking at making policy…. I call them cookie-cutter policies, along the lines of: “This works great in Vancouver; this works great in Victoria.” Many of these things do not work in the rest of British Columbia, and this is one of those. I’m getting to my point now. Increasing taxes on furnaces, increasing taxes on hot water tanks directly penalizes people that live in rural B.C., people that live in the remote parts of British Columbia. It’s just like not giving relief on the gasoline taxes. It’s like giving a tax break on an electric car.

The world is a little bit different up here in the north. We do rely on vehicles that have internal combustion engines, pickups that work out in industry, that are working out in the forest industry, pickups that are working out in the natural gas industry so that people across this province, including in Vancouver, can turn their furnace on when it gets a little bit cold and know that there’s going to be natural gas flowing into their furnace or into their boilers so that they too can stay warm.

The folks that work up here in this part of the world require an internal combustion engine, because in 40-​below weather, when those hard-working folks are out in the field, working…. You’re not turning your vehicle off at minus 40. When you’re working outside, you are working outside for about ten minutes, and now you’re sitting in your vehicle to warm up for about ten or 15 minutes. You do that on a ten- or a 12-hour shift.

When we start to look at the government, in Bill 6, giving a tax credit on an electric car…. I don’t oppose the tax credit on electric cars, but it doesn’t work across the province. When I see the gas taxes increasing on people that require their vehicles just to continue to bring you what everybody in the province of British Columbia needs, I do have a challenge for that. Coming from a northern community, a rural community, I feel, again, it is an attack on us, an attack on our way of life, and it is not fair. When you tax me now because I need to….

This is a personal one for me. My furnace in my house is old, and I’m just in the market of looking for a new natural gas furnace. Well, you are now singling out myself and many others that live in these colder climates, because I have to heat my house with natural gas. I have now no choice but to pay this additional tax because of legislators that are making these rules out of Victoria or that live in Vancouver. These are not fair, and they do anything but make things affordable for British Columbians that rely on and require these items.

Speaking of affordability…. I’ve just talked about one of the new taxes that are being implemented on natural gas items. Hot water tanks. I didn’t even talk about hot water tanks. There are concerns, of course, about farmers up in the Interior and their uses of natural gas. We’ll obviously find out more about that later.

Another thing that attacks that middle-income earner, low-income earner — we’ve heard my colleagues already speak about this — is taxing people on getting a deal on a car. I’ve only ever owned one new car in my life. Maybe I’m cheap. Maybe not. Maybe I like to look for a deal. Well, actually, I do. I enjoy looking for deals. I enjoy going through the newspaper when I need a vehicle and trying to find a deal out there.

[3:25 p.m.]

When I get that deal, and it is a deal…. I’m a fairly handy person. I can do a lot of repairs myself, and I’ll look for vehicles that I can maybe redo the brakes or redo the rear seals or have to do something with the engine. But now to have the ability for the government to say, “No deals for you; we’re going to tax you on the Black Book price for that vehicle, what we think the market value is,” is completely preposterous.

Here’s my concern. A lot of young people take mechanics in school. They go out of their way to try and find that vehicle that is…. Maybe the engine’s blown or the transmission’s blown. They’re going to get that vehicle at a substantially lower cost than market value, because they are going to put in that extra money, and they’re going to make the repairs on that vehicle to make that vehicle drivable. They do it to save money for themselves, as well as do it as a project.

Now the government is telling that young person, who’s…. Maybe it’s his first vehicle or her first vehicle, and she wants to make this project. She’s now going to be taxed on it as a market-value vehicle. The government does say you can get a third-party to evaluate that, at the cost of…. I’m not sure what the cost of a third-party evaluator would be. I’m guessing in the area of a couple hundred bucks.

Again, this is a tax on the middle- and low-income earners. The people that need that extra money. The people that are less than $200 away from being flat broke. Again, it’s another attack on people that need that money in their pocket to get by. Or the money, maybe, to go to tuition. Or the difference between: “Do we have some fresh fruit this week for our family?” These tax measures, as laid out in Bill 6, are attacking those people. This government talks about affordability. It’s laughable, when we see all of these different pieces comes into play that actually are completely opposite of affordable.

I’ve said numerous times, in different talks over the last few years, that every single year we are seeing new taxes. New taxes. I’m not even sure what we’re up to right now. We’re approaching 30 new taxes since this government has taken over in 2017 — 30 new taxes. It’s absolutely scary. From a government that is talking affordability…. Well, I go back to my line I said earlier. They’re trying to tax their way into affordability, and that does not work. It is unrealistic, and it’s hurting the average British Columbian.

Speaking of the average British Columbian, we have certainly seen this over the past couple of years with COVID: the increased use of Internet to make purchases, online markets. Like I say, over the last two years, this has been an area that has obviously bloomed, which has made people the ability to stay home and do some shopping on their computer. Obviously, the government felt really bad they were missing out on some tax revenue, because they’re going to be taxing that now.

Again, for the most part — I don’t want to pigeonhole everyone into this, but predominantly, I would say — middle- to low-income earners are the ones out there online trying to get the deals, and now they’re being taxed on this.

The poor person that wants to go out and buy a used car, that lives up here and may need a new hot water tank or a new furnace, which, I guess, they can’t buy online because…. How is that going to work? Are they going to be double-taxed on buying a furnace online as well? You have got to pay the marketplace tax as well as the…? It’s just layers upon layers of tax. Layers upon layers of attacking the middle- and low-income earners across this province.

We haven’t even talked about — again, I know that we’re on Bill 6 right now, but it’s tied to this — the level of debt that this province is taking on. Obviously, the government is struggling right now to make revenue, and we’ve seen….

[3:30 p.m.]

Let’s be honest. This government is chasing the resource sector out of this province, whether it’s oil and gas…. We are seeing companies moving to our neighbouring jurisdictions, down to Texas. We’re seeing forest companies closing, leaving, looking elsewhere and investing heavily in other areas. The mining industry.

Obviously, this government is being challenged right now with finding the revenue that they need to do their little projects. And the raises. I guess they need the extra money to deal with the cabinet ministers’ $20,000 raise and the Premier’s $40,000 raise. I guess they need all this money. With the strong majority that they do have in this House, I guess they’re just going to ram these taxes through to help pay for all these little things. Crank the debt up to $125 billion. Our deficit is projected at $5 billion. When is it going to stop?

Affordability. This is a government that has talked about affordability since they were elected. The promises made in the 2017 election. The promises made in the 2020 election about affordability. People were hopeful that the budget that was introduced a couple of weeks ago, now in Bill 6…. They were hopeful that they might see some relief. But it’s anything but relief. It’s another gut punch. It’s another hand reaching deeper into the pocket, and people cannot afford it. Again, we see people are less than $200 away from being completely broke, insolvent.

Another piece that I can tie in as well with some of these tax breaks for electric cars, taxing those who are getting a deal on a used vehicle. Most of my friends up here…. A lot of the people that I know are buying the used cars. I know it’s to promote people using public transit.

Again, I go back to what I talked about earlier. These cookie-cutter approaches that are…. You know, they work wonderful. If I lived in Downtown Vancouver, I probably would not have a car. The transit system in Vancouver is really good. I use it when I go down there. Whether it’s the bus or SkyTrain or whatever, I do use that.

In Fort Nelson, there is no transit. In Fort St. John, the transit is limited. My colleague from Peace River South spoke earlier. Limited transit in his communities. Peace River South and Peace River North are very similar geographically.

Our industries. We share industries. We see this attack on people that drive a vehicle that burns fossil fuels, but we don’t have the choice. I mentioned that earlier on. We need these vehicles to work in the different sectors that provide for the rest of the province. Even our agriculture sector. These costs that are going through the roof right now are going to trickle down into every single thing that we purchase. Everything.

I’m not sure if government sees that or not, because from what I see in Bill 6, the government doesn’t see the impact of these tax increases and how they’re going to impact everything. Because at the end of the day, there is one taxpayer, and that’s every British Columbian. All of these taxes and increases — not only in Bill 6 but over the past three, four years — are all stretching everybody to the end. It really scares me where we are going.

I would like to say government does recognize this. They even, specifically…. I believe my colleagues have mentioned this already, on page 91. It even says, “Individuals involved in private vehicle transactions are more likely to be low to medium income” and living in rural areas.

Well, talk about disrespectful. Here they even have that these tax increases are going to impact the medium- and low-income families, as well as people that live in rural communities. But “who cares” is what this government is saying. “Who cares? We’re going to go forward with it anyways.”

[3:35 p.m.]

That’s exactly what this NDP government has done. They’ve ignored their own comments in their own bud­get documents that say these taxes are going to impact low- and medium-income families and people that live in rural parts of B.C. “Well, to heck with all of you then. We’re going to carry on and do it anyways.” That’s what I read out of that.

Myself, living in a rural community and standing up for the folks of Peace River North, it’s completely unacceptable that there is this attack on rural B.C., especially our medium- and low-income families.

Following on the footsteps…. I know I’ve mentioned this, but I might as well mention it again. The pats on the back around the budget, the pats on the back around: “Oh, we’re doing all this. We need a $20,000 raise.” You can’t get any more tone deaf than that.

Even if you dig a little bit further in some of these documents and they are thick. I do encourage British Columbians. They are available. You can come to my constituency or go to any constituency office. We have copies of the documents. We’re more than willing to get it to you. It’s online. Look at some of this language that this government is putting out there around their budget. It’s even beyond just taxing people to death. It’s about how they’re doing it and the transparency. We’ve talked about transparency over the last number of years — that this government is anything but transparent.

I know this was mentioned earlier, but I didn’t even know that there was an award around secrecy, being the most secret government in Canada. I didn’t know that award existed until just recently, when the NDP government in the province of British Columbia received it. This award wasn’t just something thrown out there. I mean, this is…. I’m getting really excited here.

This award is awarded by media outlets in Canada, and our government is being recognized as the most secret government — in British Columbia. We’ve seen this over and over again. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking up here on the consultation around caribou or working with the snowmobile association or whatever.

The Finance Minister, in Bill 6, is also reducing transparency around the budget. A big project used to come forward and would have to go through Treasury Board. There was a process for the Finance Minister if she wanted to spend some, but no longer.

This government has now delegated the Finance Minister to make decisions all by herself and bypass the Treasury Board. How is that transparent? At the same time, again, taking away the accountability for ministers to work within their budgets…. That’s kind of where that $20,000 bonus comes from. Ministers are no longer held accountable to stay within budget. “Here’s 20 grand anyways. Good job on whatever.” Again, out of touch.

I mean, just picture this conversation with someone. Go down to the A&W and have a coffee with the hard-working folks sitting around chatting about affordability and that they can’t afford to fuel up their vehicle. Their furnace is broken now. They can’t afford to get a new furnace. They can’t afford to buy fresh groceries from the store. You look to the government and say: “You’re here to help, and we need you to lead.” You see all of this stuff coming, and all you hear is: “Well, we can’t really do that. We are just going to tax, tax, tax and pat ourselves on the back and give ourselves a $20,000 raise.”

[3:40 p.m.]

People are angry. People are angry around the province. Everybody that I speak to is upset with what is happening right now in this government and the direction that this government is going around their so-called affordability.

This government is anything but affordable. We’ve seen it over the past few years. It doesn’t matter what…. I mean, talk is cheap, and we’ve seen that. We have not seen any real deliverables that have helped people. It doesn’t matter — the housing promises. It doesn’t matter — the $10 daycare promises, the rental rebate promises.

All of these taxes and such laid out here in Bill 6 are devastating to most British Columbians. We need to be looking out for them.

As COVID is finishing up, this was a great opportunity. Bill 6, the budget implementation, the budget itself, the throne speech were opportunities for this government to chart a path forward that would instil hope, that would instil confidence, that would make people in British Columbia say: “Hey, our government is looking out for us. Our government is here to make things affordable, to bring the economy back in line, to look after our vulnerable populations, to do all of these things.” But they’re not. They’re doing everything opposite, in my mind. So as we move forward….

I see my time’s already up, and I’ve hardly touched half of the stuff I wanted to talk about.

When I talk passionately about this…. I talk passionately about these costs that are going to be incurred not only by the residents that live in my riding of Peace River North. I do feel many of these taxes are going to unfairly treat folks in my riding and other rural ridings. It really angers me.

Also, when I look at the debt that we’ve taken on, the deficits we’re looking at, the taxation that’s coming, I think about my own kids and what kind of a future they have. I hope they stay in the province of British Columbia, but I worry that as they become adults, greener pastures might not be in this beautiful place we call British Columbia, because our present government is making it near impossible to live in this province.

With that, hon. Speaker, I do thank you very much for this time that I’ve had today. I cannot support this. Just talking to the people in my riding, this is not good for us. This is not good for British Columbians. With that, thank you very much for the time, and I will pass it over to my colleagues.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Kamloops–South Thompson.

T. Stone: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I think this is actually the first time I’ve been in the chamber where you’ve been sitting up in the big chair. Congratulations, again, on your appointment.

I am pleased to rise and to take my place in second reading debate on Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2022. You know, this is an important bill. It’s a bill that we see every year. It’s essentially a companion piece of legislation that comes along with the annual budget that the government of the day brings to this House. Concurrent with debating this Budget Measures Implementation Act, we are in other chambers in this Legislature. We are going through budget estimates for the different ministries. Again, it all relates back to the provincial budget that was introduced in this House a number of weeks ago.

The Budget Measures Implementation Act, each year, is essentially a summary. It’s inclusive of all of the tax changes and related changes that are announced in the provincial budget but can only be brought to life and implemented through legislation. Hence, we have Bill 6 here today.

[3:45 p.m.]

It’s a document that is really the technical side of implementation of the government’s priorities, as detailed in the budget. When government decides to increase a tax or decrease a tax, implement a tax credit, eliminate a credit, and so forth — make changes to certain legislated protocols that relate to financial transparency and the like — typically, those measures are found in this bill, as I said, on an annual basis.

The interesting thing about this particular bill is that the very first set of priorities, the very first priority that the government included in this bill — literally in the first three sections of the bill — deal with, quite astoundingly, the government of the day, this NDP government, making a conscious choice, again as a priority, to provide the Premier with a $40,000 pay increase over the next four years and to provide the members of the executive council, the members of the cabinet, with a $20,000 pay increase over the next four years. That’s the very first three sections in this particular bill.

I’m going to talk about affordability. I’m going to talk about what should have been in the bill that’s not and what’s in the bill that shouldn’t be here, in my view and in the view of many of my constituents. But I wanted to set the context for the affordability challenges that British Columbians are facing, the very real issues that people are facing trying to make ends meet in this province, whether it’s in relation to housing costs, rent costs, gasoline costs, grocery costs, heating one’s home, and on and on the list goes.

It’s getting exceedingly difficult for people to make ends meet, especially if you’re in the lower and middle incomes in British Columbia. Again, it is against that backdrop that this government set, as their number one priority in this Budget Measures Implementation Act, the provision of significant wage increases, or compensation increases, to the Premier and the executive council.

I find that to be deeply, deeply frustrating. I find that to be, frankly, irresponsible. I find it to be out of touch with the realities, as I’ve just expressed them, that so many British Columbians are facing as they struggle to make those difficult decisions as to whether they can put an extra ten or twenty bucks into their minivan or whether they’re going to buy some more nutritious food for their kids. That government would decide that now, of all times, is a good time to give themselves a wage increase defies logic. It’s, frankly, I think, reflective of a government that no longer is really in touch with ordinary British Columbians.

Now, the reality of what British Columbians are facing — again, as I said a moment ago — can be, from an affordability perspective, illustrated in a number of different ways. I mean, we can look at a range of statistics that are measured on an ongoing basis by financial institutions and economists and the federal government through Statistics Canada and other agencies, and so forth. If we do that, we know that nearly half of all British Columbians are $200 away from not being able to pay their bills. Let that sink in for a moment: half of all British Columbians being $200 away from not being able to meet their financial obligations.

[3:50 p.m.]

We could talk about how the latest figures from StatsCan indicate that inflation surpassed the 5 percent mark in January of this year. We haven’t seen inflationary pressures like this since 1991. It’s impacting everything that people need to live and to work and to raise their kids.

We can look at the fact that British Columbia has experienced not one, not three, not five but seven consecutive months of elevated inflation, over 3 percent, largely reflected in rising costs for housing, gasoline and groceries. Or we can talk about the reality that behind all of these statistics are real people.

We can talk about the young mom, a mother of two, a single mother, who reached out to me the other day with a plea. Her plea was that she was not sure she was going to be able to continue to feed her kids the nutritional meals that she had been feeding them, that she wants to feed them and that she knows is good for them. She’s not sure, she says, that she will be able to continue to send them to school with a full lunchbox.

She’s not sure she can continue to meet these gasoline costs, to drop the youngest child off at child care, which isn’t across the street, isn’t down the street. It is a good ten-minute drive from where she lives. Transit is not an option for her, based on the times that she needs to drop off and pick up kids. Behind every one of these statistics, as I said, is a real person, a real mom or dad, a real family that’s struggling to get by.

When you look a little deeper at what’s happening out there, it’s an affordability challenge. Look at the realities of the gas prices that have been going up and up and up. To be staring at…. What is it? It’s hard to keep track every single day, but $2.10 or $2.17 or $2.09 — whatever it is in the Lower Mainland. We look at a buck-80 to a buck-85 — in some cases, I think, pushing a buck-90 in my hometown of Kamloops. These are levels of cost that are unprecedented.

The story inside the story is important as well. We hear it often, as we have urged this government to do something about gas prices, to provide some relief for British Columbians from these increasing gas costs. The government has refused. The government, through their excuses, fobs off responsibility for this by saying: “Well, we can’t provide relief at the pumps, because that would just be tax base that would be taken up by the big oil companies, the gasoline companies.”

To this, even today in question period, we actually proposed an option, an idea, a solution. It has nothing to do with actually reducing the provincial taxes at the pumps but would rather, through the climate action tax credit…. It’s a mechanism, a tool that was actually established, created by Kevin Falcon when he was last in government, a B.C. Liberal government, and used to provide a rebate back to British Columbians on the revenues that government was collecting from the carbon tax.

We know that this government is raking in record levels of carbon taxes, record levels of fuel taxes. We know that one of the very first steps that this government took when it came to office was to eliminate the revenue neutrality of the carbon tax.

[3:55 p.m.]

I want to be really clear here. The revenue neutrality of the carbon tax was a very important principle, for which British Columbia received international recognition. We were certainly the first jurisdiction in North America to bring forward a carbon tax, a price on carbon. The innovation was wrapped around that carbon tax by bringing it in, in a revenue-neutral manner. For every dollar of carbon tax you collect, you provide offsetting tax decreases in other areas. You tax more of what you want less, and you reduce taxes on the things that you want more of.

We brought in hundreds of millions of dollars of tax reductions in personal income taxes, targeted not at the wealthiest elites, as the government tries to suggest, but at lower and middle incomes. That’s fact. That’s in the carbon tax report that was attached to every single budget through those years. We brought in significant tax reductions to the small business tax to offset the carbon tax increase. We brought in a whole bunch of tax credits like the seniors home-renovation tax credit and a range of others, again recognizing that it was important to offset the increased carbon taxes with lower taxes in other areas.

One of the things our former government did was to bring forward this carbon tax rebate. The tool still exists; the mechanism is still there. The Finance Minister wouldn’t need to bring in new legislation or bring in a new amendment to some piece of legislation. The Finance Minister, as a matter of priority, could determine that that mechanism makes sense. Take some of the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — at least over $1 billion — of additional gas taxes, carbon and fuel taxes that are being collected right now, and give some of that back to British Columbians. Do it through this rebate mechanism.

That’s a very sensible approach. That wouldn’t create tax space that the oil and gas companies would then rush into and take advantage of. Rather, it would say: “We’re going to recognize as a fundamental principle that we, government” — they, government — “are on the receiving end of historic levels of gas tax revenues. In light of the pain that people are feeling at the pumps, we’re going to give some of that record levels of revenue back to British Columbians.” The government mocks that idea. The government laughed at that idea.

The government tried to misrepresent the intentions of that idea. The government tries to misrepresent how the revenue-neutral carbon tax actually worked. The government seems to, even today, have gone so far as to…. The Minister of Energy and Mines accused me — and the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, who was also up today in question period — that we don’t support the carbon tax. We’re members of the party that brought the darn thing in. We’re members of the party that actually brought in the revenue-neutral carbon tax.

If the members opposite really wanted to look in the mirror, maybe if they looked close enough, they would remember a slogan called “Axe the Tax.” I see some nodding heads. It was a catchy slogan, actually. It made for a good bumper sticker: “Axe the Tax.” That was the NDP’s campaign slogan in an election campaign when the NDP campaigned, under then leader Carole James, against the revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Don’t sit here today and misrepresent the facts of what the revenue-neutral carbon tax was — how it worked, how it provided relief to British Columbians in the form of tax reductions, rebates and credits in a whole wide range of areas, not targeted at the wealthy and the corporate elites, as the members opposite like to suggest but, rather, targeted at providing much-needed and well-deserved relief for lower- and middle-income British Columbians.

[4:00 p.m.]

That’s all we’re asking for today. That’s all that British Columbians are asking for today. That was what the Premier was supportive of, consistently, over the last 4½ years, the entire time that he’s been the Premier of British Columbia. We’ve cited quote after quote in this House of the Premier talking about how he’s going to embrace everything. He’s going to utilize every tool in the toolbox. “Everything’s on the table,” he said, when it comes to providing relief for British Columbians, when it comes to rising gas prices.

All we have is a website, which is essentially just a replication of the gasbuddy.com website. We didn’t need to spend taxpayers’ money on coming out with a B.C.-government version of this website. Then the government said: “Well, we have fuel-transparency legislation to keep those big, bad oil and gas companies honest.” Right. That’s worked really well. The teeth in that legislation are really holding the prices down and making life affordable for British Columbians when it comes to fuel costs.

Housing affordability. We hear about housing all the time. As previous speakers have indicated, rightfully so, this government has campaigned — not in one election but the last two elections — on making housing more affordable, delivering affordable housing for British Columbians. It was their signature commitment in 2017, and they doubled down on it in the 2020 election.

We’re sitting here looking at the highest rents in the history of British Columbia under this government, in the past 4½ years. We’re staring at the highest housing prices, the highest assessed values of property in the history of British Columbia under this government. We’re looking at about 5,000 units of affordable housing that are actually built and open on a 114,000-unit commitment, part of their ten-year affordable housing plan.

Well, we’re five years into it, halfway, and 5,000 units, plus or minus a few hundred, are actually open, actually have human beings in them. I’m venturing to guess it ain’t going to happen, the 114,000 over the next five years.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

It talked about the impact of rising food costs as well. When you look at the costs of fuel, the costs of food, the costs of housing, all of this is adding so much pain, so much stress, so much anxiety to families all across British Columbia. Again, it almost defies logic, certainly common sense, that against that backdrop of all of that pain that people are feeling, all of that stress and anxiety, as I say….

We’re all hearing from these families. We’re all hearing from taxi drivers who can’t keep up with the fuel costs. We’re hearing from courier and trucking companies. We’re hearing from parents that aren’t sure that they can keep their kid in a regional soccer league because they can’t afford to drive from Kamloops to Kelowna twice a week due to the high fuel costs.

We’re hearing from all kinds of people in rural B.C. I hate to break it to our urban colleagues in both parties, but the typical family in rural B.C. drives a heck of a lot more than folks in densely populated urban centres. It’s a reality. It’s a reality of life if you live in Horsefly, if you live out in Westwold in my riding. You’re going to do a heck of a lot more driving. Bus service and transit and these other options that supposedly the government says people should be embracing more….

I’m sure the people in the great city of Williams Lake will embrace electric cars. Well, they may be more so electric trucks when and if Tesla actually comes out with one and the F-150 electric truck that needs to go through a few more iterations. But you can’t power your electric vehicles if you don’t have charging stations in rural B.C. How does that work?

[4:05 p.m.]

You’ve got all this pain. You’ve got all this worry that’s piling up on people’s shoulders because of all of the rising costs. The government’s not willing to step in on any of these areas, particularly gas prices. As I said, we try, in the spirit of what the Premier often says: “Can’t we all just get along better in this place? Can’t we be a little bit more collaborative, and can’t we work together a little bit more?”

Today we offered a viable solution to the gasoline price challenge that people are facing, and it was mocked and laughed at. Not much collaboration in that. Against all of that backdrop, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, again, established as its first priority — the first few sections — to provide the cabinet with a pay increase. We’ve heard from a few members of government that have said: “No, this isn’t a pay increase. No, no, no, no.”

I’ve got news for you. When the government brings legislation into this chamber, as they have done through Bill 6, and part of that legislation deals with technical, legal changes that, as a net result, at the end of the day, increase the compensation of the Premier and cabinet — the Premier to the tune of $40,000 and cabinet to $20,000 each over four years — that’s a pay increase. That’s an increase in compensation.

Any rationally thinking person out there, which I would say most British Columbians would be…. Anyone out there that’s struggling to get by with their family would say: “Well, your salary was here. Your total comp was here, and after you made some clever changes in legislation, now your total compensation is going to up to here. Oh, but that’s not an increase in pay.” You’re darned right that’s an increase in pay.

The government is doing this by the changes that I’ve talked about that are detailed in the first few sections of Bill 6. They’re doing this by freeing themselves from the cabinet responsibility of ensuring that the province is not in deficit. I mean, the 10 percent pay increase that cabinet and the Premier are all going to get, they’re going to get because there will no longer be a requirement for the fiscal discipline, the fiscal lens, and the fiscal accountability that have been on the books as requirements in this province dating back to the last time that the NDP were in power.

It was actually the NDP that brought this measure in. It was further refined by the Gordon Campbell B.C. Liberal government. But here we are today with this NDP government making these legislative changes and saying: “No, no, no, we don’t place any value anymore on sound fiscal management. We’re not going to require cabinet to deliver a balanced budget in this province,” presumably ever again, because there is no plan to get to balance. “We’re not going to do that. We’re going to rip that provision, that accountability measure, out of legislation. And oh yeah, I know that that means that the cabinet and the Premier will get a nice big pay increase.”

I really, truly cannot believe that against the backdrop, especially, of the affordability challenges that people are facing, this government is planning on a pay increase.

I hear some laughs across the way.

Interjection.

T. Stone: They should get up and speak to it.

Interjection.

T. Stone: I don’t know if the mouthy member at the end there wants to get up and defend these pay increases. A $40,000 pay increase for the Premier….

Deputy Speaker: Members, let’s just…. It’s Thursday. We’ll get through the rest of this afternoon. Let’s be kind to each other. Thank you.

T. Stone: I only have four minutes left. I’d be happy to sit down and have the member…. I’ll even sit here and listen to him. I’d listen to his whole speech. I’d be thrilled to hear what his rationalization is — what his defence is — for a $40,000 pay increase for the Premier and a $20,000 pay increase for cabinet through the changes in this legislation, because this is disconnected from the real world. This is completely disconnected from the real world.

[4:10 p.m.]

Now, the reality, as I said, is that this government is setting, as a matter of priority, pay increases for their cabinet. British Columbians are struggling — all the inflationary pressures that I’ve talked about.

The final piece that I want to mention that is part of this whole mix, again, which just doesn’t seem to make sense — it doesn’t fit — is…. The government, also, in addition to their pay increases, has decided that this is a good time to impose some new tax increases, which are provided for in Bill 6.

What are those tax increases? Well, the government is going to increase the PST on used car sales. What do you do when you’re trying to scrape enough money together to make ends meet? You’re one of those families that’s $200 away from insolvency or not being able to pay your bills. You’ve got a couple kids. You look everywhere to try and figure out how you can make ends meet.

Well, you need transportation. Venture to guess that a lot of British Columbians would take that opportunity to go and buy a used vehicle, not a brand-new vehicle, but get a good quality used vehicle and save some money. Well, British Columbians will still be able to do that, but government has decided that, essentially, people who do that need to pay more tax on that transaction. Again, while we’re in an affordability crisis.

How about this new tax on online marketplaces? The marketplaces that process payments electronically are marketplaces that predominantly sell used goods. Again, when you are scraping your money together to look after your family, you look for used cars and you try to get the best deal you can. You go to online marketplaces, and you try to get great deals there so you can stretch your money as far as possible. The government has decided to impose a new tax on those online marketplaces.

The increased tax on home heating equipment using a fuel like natural gas — which is very, very common and, in many cases, the only option that folks have in rural and northern British Columbia — has no place in this. It should not be here. It represents a government that doesn’t understand what life is like in rural British Columbia.

Increasing the tax on home heating equipment using natural gas, increasing the effective tax on used and private car sales and adding a new tax on online marketplaces — so making life less affordable for people while they’re barely struggling by, with rising housing costs, rising rents, rising gas costs, rising grocery costs — all the while deciding to give yourself, the Premier, a $40,000 pay increase over four years and cabinet a $20,000 pay increase over four years, represents a government that’s completely out of touch.

I will not be voting in favour of Bill 6.

L. Doerkson: It’s a delight to offer my thoughts on Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. We’ve heard much, obviously, from this side of the room that, certainly, we’ll be voting against this. Of course, I will be too.

I did want to point out one good thing that I thought fell a little bit short, to be honest. It did create a few tax exemptions for properties damaged in the 2021 floods. Certainly, I thought that was certainly helpful. But it fell short to help the folks that lost their homes and properties with respect to wildfire.

I probably have a larger concern as to the timing of what we’re about to see come into law in this province. I just want to talk a little bit about that. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about affordability. We’ve talked about the rising cost, and I’ll speak to that as well. I know that, certainly, it’s impacting my home. It’s impacting the home of probably everyone in here and, certainly, my children as well.

[4:15 p.m.]

Just a few specific notes with regard to nearly half of British Columbians who are now $200 or less away from insolvency. To me, it is frightening that that many people in this province are in that tough of a situation financially. The latest figures from Statistics Canada show that inflation has surpassed 5 percent in January. Now, I actually think that that may increase in the future. I mean, we’re hearing that it will. The last time that we saw that number, though, was in 1991. So this is a significant issue that we’re dealing with. I don’t think that that’s a new revelation at all.

B.C. has experienced, of course, seven straight months of elevated inflation, over 3 percent. The rising cost of housing, gasoline and groceries are all part of that problem. It is a trying time for many people. This bill, Bill 6, will see a number of new taxes come into play. I just, frankly, fear that this is a bad time.

I mean, this bill will also introduce raises in this House to cabinet members and the Premier. We’ve heard about that repeatedly. I can’t stress this enough. I think that the people of British Columbia need to know that we’ll see $20,000 raises for cabinet ministers and $40,000 for the Premier. I can appreciate that’s over the coming years, but it’s still significant in a time when people are really finding themselves pretty close to the edge financially.

I know that gas prices…. I was told today that there was a sign that was viewed in the Kamloops area that was $2.30 for diesel. It’s unbelievable how much that has risen and how difficult it is for people to even just keep up with the pace of what is going on, and to add more taxes to the mix really concerns me.

I want to talk a little bit about the taxes that are being introduced. The first one with respect to used cars…. I happen to know something about the sale of used cars. I want to speak to this a little bit. I said in my budget speech…. I certainly don’t want to give any ideas here today. But what concerns me about this tax is that it’s really a tax that will be determined by…. Well, we’re not even certain who’s going to determine what the value of the car will be.

As I’ve said before, I know something about pricing a used car from my past history, and it’s difficult at best. I haven’t been able to get clarity or hear clarity around who will determine the value of that. Will it be Black Book or Kelley Book? What will determine the price? Who will be responsible for doing that?

For British Columbians and for anybody that is not aware of what this tax represents, it represents a moment where I agree to buy a car for a price that is less than the value determined by the government. Again, somehow we have to determine how that price will be set. That price less the purchase price, to me, is air. You’re going to actually suggest that we should pay tax on that.

I see the Speaker kind of looking with a question in his mind. So let me be a little more clear. If I buy a car for $10,000 and that car, for instance, black books at $15,000, you’re going to pay the $10,000 but you’re going to pay tax on the $15,000. That just does not make sense to me. I mean, what does that lead to? We see discount sales every Boxing Day, and certainly, fantastic retailers in Cariboo-Chilcotin will take an opportunity to sell a big screen TV for 50 percent off.

[4:20 p.m.]

I mean, will we see a time when we could be paying tax on the other 50 percent that we didn’t pay for? That is very concerning to me. It’s not just TVs and stereos. I mean, other items are discounted all the time. But in this case, my biggest fear is: who will determine the price of that car that you should be paying tax on? Again, it could link to so many other items in our province, in our day-to-day business.

I want to talk a little bit about heat pumps. The reason I want to talk about heat pumps is…. I think my colleague from Peace River North referred to a bill that was $400 or $500. I think his was actually $800, if I’m not mistaken. I can assure that you my bills for natural gas in December and January were significant. I am going to hazard a guess that they were around $650 or $700, if I recall. The suggestion that heat pumps may be great…. Well, I can tell you, from what research I’ve done in the last little while, I am told that they will simply not work effectively in my area.

Now, I’m not an expert. I’ve heard you can upgrade to a better heat pump. I’m sure you can. But the fact is that natural gas is the service in most of rural British Columbia, and certainly in my area. To suggest that a furnace that could be replaced in my home for probably $5,000 or $6,000…. I might have to step up to a $15,000 or $20,000 investment for a new heating system in my home. I don’t even know what that means. I’ve been told that there are issues with room on your electrical panel and everything else.

Like I said, it’s not a simple situation; it’s a complex situation. And for those items in our province to be taxed at a higher rate just seems offensive to me. I mean, in rural British Columbia, this is our heating source. It’s my understanding that that tax increasing from 7 to 12 percent won’t just be on a replacement furnace, of course. That tax will occur on hot water tanks. It’ll occur on, perhaps, repairs, etc. That is a common item in our ledger, a repair to the furnace or those types of things. Certainly, we replaced our hot water tank last year. Again, we would have paid that extra percentage.

I just want to take a minute there, because these are not my words, and I want to introduce these words. The budget document itself says that this will be impacting low- and medium-wage earners, families, in rural B.C. Those are not my words. Those are the words of the government. I guess that in my role of critic for Rural Development, it concerns me that anything could come forward to this House to be voted on that would refer to impacting, in a negative way, the people of rural B.C.

It’s not just that we drive extra distances. It’s that we’re dealing with much colder climates. I can assure you that when I arrive here in Victoria in the middle of December and it’s 30 below in Williams Lake, it’s pretty refreshing to step outside in a light jacket at 1 or minus 1. But the whole time we’re here, that furnace is keeping that house warm, and it’s extremely expensive to continue to heat those homes in rural B.C.

I want to talk a little bit about the online marketplace. We’ve talked a lot about this in this House. I can appreciate some of the comments that I’ve heard from the other side. Certainly, what I want to convey to you is that my frustration around this item is that, again, I worry where it goes to.

[4:25 p.m.]

Now, I can appreciate that the tax will be on platforms that currently have the ability to convey funds back and forth, but I also know that Facebook is trying to figure out a way of moving their business model forward so that they can do that as well. I just can’t begin to even imagine where that could go or what that could mean for people that use those platforms to sell used items.

Of course, where does it go from there? Do we see taxes at garage sales and flea markets and those types of things in that used market that, again, so many people rely on to purchase items? I mean, I certainly do. I’ve sold items on Facebook Marketplace, and I’ve certainly purchased items on Facebook Marketplace.

I’m very concerned just overall with the timing of any of this. Over the last years, we’ve seen a number of taxes introduced in this House. Again, with what is happening in our world today, with us fighting not only the rising costs of rent and homes…. We speak passionately about how much a house costs now in the Lower Mainland. That is not unique to just the Lower Mainland. The pricing of homes is staggering now in rural British Columbia as well.

I just can’t help but think that this is the wrong time for any of these taxes. I want to speak a little bit to that as far as timing is concerned, Mr. Speaker, if you’ll allow me to talk a little bit about the economic situation in my area, specifically, but rural B.C. This really speaks to everything that I’m talking about and the timing.

Yesterday we talked about how the jobs stat numbers have rebounded and recovered in the Cariboo. I was pleased to hear that, honestly, but I do know that we are on the eve of very significant change in the forestry economy in this province, and I don’t think that’s a secret. Many people might not even argue that. The point is it is significant, and people are extremely concerned.

In my community in Williams Lake, we have six forestry-type milling operations that are right within the boundaries of the city. We have a major mill in the South Cariboo and 100 Mile with West Fraser and another mill out in the West Chilcotin. As I’ve said before, the people in my area are very concerned about what the very near future looks like.

I guess to introduce more taxes, more burden on the people of British Columbia or Cariboo-Chilcotin…. I’m very fearful that we could have done this at another time or we could have looked at this at another time. I can’t stress enough the fact that when I talk about those changes in forestry, they really are around the corner. We’ve seen a cut in the AAC in the Okanagan, in Vernon.

Deputy Speaker: If I might remind the member, we’re on Bill 6, of course.

L. Doerkson: Absolutely. I thank you for your direction.

I guess I was really trying to explain just how serious things are for people, Mr. Speaker. I can appreciate that we’re here to talk about Bill 6. I just don’t want it to fall on deaf ears that the economy is changing out there. The economy is changing, in fact, because of some of Bill 6. When we see higher gas prices and we see tax on used cars, heat pumps, etc., this is going to change or have an effect on the economy in British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I do thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I guess I’ll leave it at that today.

[4:30 p.m.]

I haven’t heard many of the members this afternoon speak to this bill from the opposite side. I really had hoped to hear a few of those members take an opportunity at convincing me or convincing British Columbians that this is a good bill, that it is the time to increase taxes on used cars, that it is the time to penalize people that have natural gas furnaces, hot water tanks, that it is the time to start adding taxes to used online marketplaces and, further to that, convince myself and other British Columbians that it’s the time to see large pay increases to the cabinet ministers and the Premier of this province. I really hope that somebody will take an opportunity right now to stand up and convince me of that.

On that note, Mr. Speaker, I’ll take my seat and thank you for the opportunity to share a few comments on Bill 6.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the question is second reading of Bill 6.

Second reading of Bill 6 approved on division.

Hon. G. Heyman: I move that the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 6, Budget Measures Implementation 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. B. Ma: I’m bringing up second reading on Bill 11, Commercial Liens Act. Given that the minister is not in the House right now, perhaps we could enter into a five-minute recess.

Deputy Speaker: That sounds like a wonderful idea. We are now in recess. Thank you.

The House recessed from 4:32 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

BILL 11 — COMMERCIAL LIENS ACT

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that Bill 11 be read a second time now.

The Commercial Liens Act is a comprehensive reform of British Columbia law for liens that secure payment for commercial services, for repairing, storing and transporting goods. The rationale behind this area of law is to recognize services that improve or maintain the value of another person’s property by giving the service provider a lien on the property to secure payment if the person doesn’t pay for the services.

This reform is intended to protect lien holders from easily losing their liens by reducing the uncertainty of the current law, while giving fair and effective rights and remedies to all parties with interests in the goods that are subject to the lien. The current law in this area is fragmented and inconsistent. Service providers who are entitled to use liens can often lose them because it’s difficult to keep track of the requirements.

With one exception, these liens require possession of the goods, which results in additional storage costs for unpaid services. While the Repairers Lien Act allows garage keepers to give up possession of repaired vehicles if they register the lien in the personal property registry, they lose the lien if they don’t register within 21 days or if they don’t already have a signed invoice acknowledging the debt. Warehousers lose their liens on goods stored without the owner’s authorization if they don’t notify the owner within two months.

The bill provides one set of rules to make it easier for service providers to keep liens to secure payment and for their customers to protect their rights. A lien for services is created as soon as the services begin. Possession of the goods is not required. This change makes the law fairer to those who repair major equipment that cannot be moved from the premises.

Lien holders have an enforceable lien if they keep possession of the goods or if they obtain a signed document that either authorizes the services provided or acknowledges the obligation to pay for the services. This allows lien holders to give goods back to the customer, who may need them to earn income or to keep a business operating.

Anyone who signs an acknowledgment for payment still has a clear right to dispute the amount owing. The bill continues the priority given to these liens for securing payment for services that improve the value of goods, subject to exceptions such as for buying and leasing consumer goods.

Lien holders can protect the priority of their liens against other interests in the same goods by keeping possession of the goods or by registering the lien in the personal property registry. This electronic public registry contains notices of legal claims under the Personal Property Security Act and other statutes, including the Forestry Service Providers Protection Act and the Repairers Lien Act.

Familiar and well-established enforcement procedures based on the Personal Property Security Act give lien holders commercial flexibility in recovering the amount secured by the lien. The goods may be sold, leased or kept by the lien holder after meeting procedural requirements that protect the rights of owners and secured creditors. For example, anyone who receives notice that goods are to be sold can offer to pay out the lien in exchange for the goods.

This bill consolidates lien law by replacing three acts and abolishing common-law liens for repairers and common carriers. The Repairers Lien Act, the Warehouse Lien Act and the Livestock Lien Act will be repealed. Anyone who has a lien under one of those acts will continue have a lien under the Commercial Liens Act.

To complete the consolidation of this area of lien law, the bill repeals two obsolete Victorian statutes: the Woodworker Lien Act and the Tugboat Worker Lien Act. Staff with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development have confirmed that these statutes are no longer used. Effective protection for workers and forestry contractors now exists through liens provided under the Employment Standards Act and the Forestry Service Providers Protection Act.

This reform supports the goal of having consistent law across Canada to reduce the burden of having to follow different rules in each province. The bill adopts the model Uniform Liens Act, prepared by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada, which has been responsible for a number of important law reform initiatives, including the Personal Property Security Act. Adoption of the model Uniform Liens Act was recommended by the British Columbia Law Institute and is supported by the British Columbia branch of the Canadian Bar Association.

This legislation does not apply to all liens on goods for services. Forestry service providers who have a lien under the Forestry Service Providers Protection Act will continue to use the enforcement processes and compensation fund under that act, which are designed specifically for the contracted forestry sector operating under Forest Act licences.

[4:40 p.m.]

Liens on real property under the Builders Lien Act are not in the scope of the bill.

In developing this legislation, we have been mindful of the requirements of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. We’ve done an assessment of this legislation as it relates to aligning with the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The commitment to align laws with the UN declaration will not affect every provincial law. While many provincial laws relate to the rights set out in the UN declaration, other laws don’t have a unique or specific effect on Indigenous rights. Changing the law of liens, as proposed by this bill, does not uniquely affect Indigenous rights described in the UN declaration.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will support a strong, sustainable economy that works for everyone by helping B.C. businesses get paid for the important services they provide to people in British Columbia who need their goods repaired, stored or transported, while protecting people’s rights to those goods. The bill will achieve this by implementing an efficient, modern framework that supports the continued harmonization of commercial law with other provinces and territories.

P. Milobar: It gives me pleasure to rise to Bill 11, the Commercial Liens Act.

As I read through the budget and, I must say, as I look at the budget…. I’m just seeing if I can get you to cut me off. All day we’ve been correcting people on what bill we should be talking about.

Deputy Speaker: I was ready.

P. Milobar: For those at home that didn’t see earlier.

In all seriousness, it does give me pleasure to rise to the Commercial Liens Act. As the minister just laid out, it appears to be a piece of legislation that should streamline and modernize the ability for people to make sure that proper payment for work they have provided, services they have provided to people, will be able to be secured against the property that they’ve done that work on.

Certainly, that does seem to be the primary purpose of this act. It’s around modernization of the system of liens. When you think of how long some of these processes have been in place and the technologies, the type of equipment that would have been envisioned, the processes, the banking charges and the ability to secure loans against equipment compared to what can happen nowadays with multiple different finance companies and things of that nature…. Modernizing and having an act that reflects those complexities to make it easier for people to understand and easier for people to file makes a lot of sense.

Certainly, the hope — I think we’ve heard — is this will get streamlined across the country, and other provinces will come on board as well. So as people have become, with more movement…. As work may move from province to province, or you may seek out services in one province or another, you know what the rules are, moving forward. That clarity is always good, both for the repair person or the person providing that service but also for the person seeking it out. So they know what the ramifications are if they’re not good on their payments of their bills.

The categories are important when you think of it. The Livestock Lien Act certainly would have a lot of implication in the parts of the province that myself and my friend from Williams Lake next to me here are from. The Repairers Lien Act and the modernization of that, of course, across the province would be relevant. The Warehouse Lien Act and the Woodworker Lien Act, as well, both around the province, will have some implications.

Then one that’s a little bit more localized. Again, much like the livestock. Not to suggest there is not livestock on the Island or in southern B.C., but there are certainly not tugboats in Kamloops, so I think that’s safe to say. But the Tugboat Worker Lien Act is still, obviously, a very important part of the coastal lifestyle. You know, those tugboats are an integral part, when you think of the servicing and the provisions and the movements of goods in general and the coastal waterways.

I will say that, growing up, I was positive, out on Shu­swap Lake, there was a tugboat that would help move booms of logs around when they were in the lake. So there’s the occasional one in the Interior, but those are very purpose-driven and not anywhere near as plentiful as you would see on the coastal areas.

Certainly, these are all important aspects to make sure are modernized, are streamlined and that are moving forward. It is important, though, that we recognize that this bill does not include the Builders Lien Act. That’s important for a couple of reasons. Again, that would have provincial ramifications. There is also a concern…. I do know we’ve heard, certainly — and I’m sure members of government have heard — from people within that realm that there does need to be a modernization of the Builders Lien Act as well. So hopefully, in the near future, we will see that modernization come forward as well.

[4:45 p.m.]

There are varying views of it from both the builder side and the contractor side, as well as the ultimate homebuilder or building owner side of the equation. So it will definitely be a complicated piece to try to modernize and hit that sweet spot. But that is something that, moving forward, we definitely will still need to see.

Ultimately, we are recognizing, and I think this bill is trying to recognize, that people have a right and should have every expectation to get fairly compensated for the work and the efforts that they put in on behalf of their client and their customer. They should have that feeling of security that if they are working on equipment, if they are working on providing some transportation and things of that nature, there will be payment at the end for their work and their efforts.

A lot of times there’s an outlay that happens ahead of time as people are doing that work. They are front-loading and paying, and they obviously would need to be reimbursed in a timely fashion to pay their suppliers for those parts and for those things that they acquire to help with the repairs or provide that provision of service for people. That’s really at its core. The faster those things can move along and the more seamless this lien act can make things, the more certainty there is throughout the whole supply chain, moving down the line. I think that’s a very important part about the continuity piece.

We’ll have a lot of questions in committee stage on this bill, as it’s probably more technical than what we would have heard in the previous bills debate. But that’s understandable, and that’s why we have committee stage in this place. It’s to make sure that on bills like this, we can get a clear understanding for the public so they understand exactly what the intention of the bill is, how it will be implemented, how it will impact them positively or negatively and how they can move forward and have some certainty within their workplace around the lien act and how that will actually impact them both as a provisioner of service as well as the person acquiring the service.

I look forward to committee stage on this bill. I have one last little bit of wordplay. It does seems that the lien act is being made lean, and that’s a good thing, Mr. Speaker.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. Lean cuisine. Anyway. I’m getting hungry for dinner.

Apologies. Recognizing the Minister of Finance to close second reading.

Hon. S. Robinson: From tugboats to lean cuisine. I see it now, hon. Speaker.

I want to thank the member for his comments and for recognizing just how important this is in terms of making things work smoother for both customers and businesses and for modernizing. I was quite surprised to learn about Victorian acts that are still in existence and are still used and applied in this modern era when, in fact, we have statutes that aren’t very modern and that create barriers.

Again, I want to express gratitude, as well, to staff who have been working for a very long time — a number of years — on this.

I do look forward to the committee stage, when the member and I will be going through line by line. I believe there are some 70- or 80-odd sections of this big binder that I have sitting on my desk. I look forward to that. I know it will be very interesting.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: 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 11, Commercial Liens 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. G. Heyman: I call second reading of Wildlife Amendment Act, 2022.

P. Milobar: Our understanding was we were likely wrapping up right now for the Lieutenant-Governor, and our critic is not here yet. If we could have a short recess to get our critic in here, and then, if there’s still time, I guess we’ll proceed. Otherwise, I guess the LG may supersede things.

[4:50 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: I’m happily ceding the floor to the hon. Speaker, who isn’t here in the House at this time. I think the LG will be arriving around five o’clock, so we do have a little bit of time. I will invite the Speaker to the chair. It’s his chair.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

P. Milobar: I know this bill has the potential for whole different areas in terms of questions and confirmations. I know our critic was working on getting a briefing. I don’t believe they’ve even had their briefing yet, but either way, I think they would like to be in the room as the debate starts. I was just simply asking for a recess so that we could get our critic here, much like when we have to wait for a change over to find the minister.

Mr. Speaker: That’s fine. The House will be in recess for ten minutes.

The House recessed from 4:51 p.m. to 4:57 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

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

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor is in the precinct. Please remain seated while we wait for her arrival.

[5:00 p.m. - 5:10 p.m.]

Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor requested to attend the House, was admitted to the chamber and took her seat on the throne.

Royal Assent to Bills

Clerk of the Legislative Assembly:

Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 4) Amendment Act, 2022

Protected Areas of British Columbia Amendment Act, 2022

Skilled Trades BC Act

Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022

In Her Majesty’s name, Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor doth assent to these acts.

Hon. J. Austin (Lieutenant-Governor): Thank you very much.

ÍY SȻÁĆEL NE SĆÁLEĆE.

It is indeed good to see you. It’s been a short month, it feels like, since I was last here.

I will say happy International Women’s Day to everyone. We had a wonderful celebration here yesterday, and I so appreciated the opportunity to join you and to celebrate with all of you.

I am looking forward to welcoming all of you to Government House, hopefully, on March 29, for an evening of comradery and collegiality and an opportunity for me to, in a more meaningful way, perhaps, express my appreciation to all of you for all of your truly splendid work.

Thank you all so much. I’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

HÍSW̱ḴE.

Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor retired from the chamber.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move that after this five weeks, the House do now adjourn.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. on March 28.

Be safe. Enjoy your two weeks in constituency.

The House adjourned at 5:14 p.m.