Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading, Bill 23, Mental Health Amendment Act.

In the Douglas Fir Room, Section A, the Committee of Supply estimates, I call continued Ministry of Education and Child Care estimates debate.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 23 — MENTAL HEALTH
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

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

The Mental Health Act provides the authority and sets out the criteria and procedures for the involuntary admission and treatment of patients experiencing serious mental illness. The act also contains protections to ensure that these provisions are applied in an appropriate and lawful manner.

Safeguards for the rights of involuntary patients include rights notification, medical examinations at specified time periods, second medical opinions on proposed treatment and access to review panels and the court. The amendments proposed in this bill will strengthen the protections available to involuntary patients by establishing an independent rights advice service to help ensure that patients are aware of their rights and are supported to exercise these rights if they wish.

This bill will grant the Attorney General the authority to contract with one or more independent service providers to deliver the rights advice service. Specially trained rights advisers will be available to meet with patients to explain what it means to be an involuntarily patient, to provide information…

Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Attorney.

Would members please take their conversations outside. Let’s listen to the Attorney General. Thank you.

Hon. D. Eby: …and answer questions about rights and options available under the Mental Health Act and to refer patients to a lawyer or advocate if a court hearing or review panel hearing is requested by the patient.

These amendments will set out the patient’s right to speak with the rights adviser and specify when they must be informed of this right. The rights advice service will be available to all involuntary patients regardless of age, as well as children and youth under 16 who are admitted by a parent or guardian as voluntary patients. In addition, near relatives will also be notified in writing that the patient has the right to meet with the rights adviser.

The amendments will set out the duties of rights advisers as well as the responsibilities of directors of designated mental health facilities to facilitate access to the rights advice service. Finally, the bill will also grant authority to make regulations respecting the rights advice service, including setting out additional circumstances when the rights advice service must be notified.

The rights advice service is planned to be implemented through a phased approach. In the first phase, rights advice will be provided to involuntary patients on their request. In the second phase, the rights advice service will be automatically notified, and meetings between the involuntary patient and the rights adviser will be proactively set up at key points. However, patients will always have the right to decline the meeting.

[2:40 p.m.]

The automatic notification of the rights advice service is key to ensuring that the service is accessible to all involuntary patients. The specific circumstances of automatic notification will be set out in a future regulation, following additional engagement and consultation with key partners and stakeholders. Future engagements will also address policy considerations with respect to implementation, including the mechanism for public accountability.

The rights advice service has been recommended by the B.C. Ombudsperson and the Representative for Children and Youth, and it is supported by many legal, mental health and professional organizations. The service will also bring B.C. in line with six other Canadian provinces that have independent rights advice services under their mental health legislation.

T. Halford: I want to thank the Attorney General for his comments.

I do believe that this bill can be a step in the right direction. When we talk about the fact that individuals, when they’re experiencing some of the most challenging times of their life, need support, they need advocacy. It is also a step to satisfy both the Ombudsperson and the Representative for Children and Youth, who have called for this.

You know, making sure that people understand what their rights are, no matter what situation they’re facing…. I remember that growing up, I had an aunt who suffered from extreme mental illness, and I actually didn’t meet her for a number of years. She was at Riverview. This was in the early ’80s, and I wonder what support, what advocacy she would have gotten at that time and who would have explained what her rights were and who would have explained what she could try and do.

It’s a challenge when you have some of these people that…. When individuals are faced with these experiences, you wonder where they go after they come out. Is there a home for them? Is there a support network for them? I think that these are some of the things that I know that all of us grapple with in this House, and this affects every constituency. All 87 ridings are facing these challenges.

I think it’s important that when we canvass…. We’ll have a chance to canvass this in the committee stage, on getting clear timelines for when this will happen, what will meet the criteria. But I do think that it is important to make sure that we are giving every British Columbian, especially those that are facing some extreme challenges, the right to understand what their rights are. I look forward to canvassing this with the minister in committee stage.

M. de Jong: When the legislation was tabled a couple days ago, I was thinking back on my time, many decades ago now, as a young lawyer in the late ’80s and very early ’90s. I would, periodically, get a call from officials at Riverview — generally Riverview but occasionally a couple other facilities — and the scenario was always the same. Someone had been detained and was residing at the mental health facility at Riverview under the terms of the Mental Health Act, and the time had come for a review of whether or not that person should continue to be detained.

We used the terms voluntary or involuntary. Generally, the assumption was that people didn’t want to be in that facility and were there because it was determined that they were either a threat to themselves or a threat to society. In many cases, the threat they posed to themselves was through one of neglect, of not being in a position or capable of looking after themselves, of taking the medication that had been prescribed for them on a regular basis to deal with their particular mental health challenges.

[2:45 p.m.]

I would jump in my car in Abbotsford and drive out. At the hearing — it was called a hearing, although that probably makes it sound far more formal than it was — there would be a doctor from Riverview. There would be another doctor or official associated with either the facility itself or the health authority, as it was then configured. Then, if the patient was lucky, they would have a patient’s advocate, and that’s where someone like me would step in.

You’d show up, and you’d have a few minutes to talk to the patient in advance and try to get a sense of what their views on the matter were, what their concerns were, what their preferences were. Then you’d attend this meeting that would take place with the patient, if the patient was capable of attending, and really be a set of eyes and ears and a spokesperson for that patient to determine whether or not what was being sought — the recommendations from the other officials around continued detention — were appropriate for the individual.

I don’t want to suggest that, at least in my experience, these were necessarily adversarial proceedings, because they generally weren’t. But two things became particularly clear to me through those experiences. That is, it would be a very, very difficult exercise for someone — for an individual, whether that person was a child or an adult — who, by definition, is suffering from some mental health complications and challenges, to undertake on their own.

In fact, the mere task of filling out some of the documentation required to initiate a review…. That’s one of the rights a patient has — to initiate reviews, of their own accord, in advance of particular statutorily required reviews. Even that would prove a challenge beyond the capacity of some, not all, people. Engaging with medical professionals who were presenting clinical evidence would be a challenge for any of us, never mind someone who may be heavily medicated, may be sleep-deprived. Having someone that was in a position to be there, ensuring the interests of the individual, of the patient, are being protected and advanced, is very important.

There’s a second component to that that occurred to me at the time. Because of how grateful the officials — the other officials, health-related officials — were to have someone there with the patient, acting on behalf of the patient, it didn’t take me long to figure out that in many instances, those people simply weren’t available. Many, many patients were obliged to undertake this exercise on their own, independently.

If I say, “suffered for it,” I don’t want to overdramatize, because I don’t want to, in any way, impugn the motives or behaviour of the other officials who partook in those exercises. But it’s clear that it would have been — and today it would remain the same — very challenging for a mental health patient in a mental health facility to undertake one of those hearings to ensure that their rights and their options were being fully explored. It would be very difficult for them to do that, in many cases, on their own.

[2:50 p.m.]

The idea that we would be formalizing…. We have, I think, come a long way in the intervening decades in recognizing the pervasiveness of mental health issues. I think that that’s a very good thing — reducing the stigma attached to the public awareness.

The decentralized approach to the presentation of care obviously has changed as well. I think the number of people who find themselves in this position has increased. So formalizing the mechanism by which people in those circumstances have access to an advisor, I think, is a good step. I think that it makes sense. We will, in the course of the committee stage debate, I think, get a better idea from the Attorney how the regulatory powers will be discharged and who the government and he contemplate as being appropriate for the training that’ll be provided to be a rights adviser.

I’ll say, at the outset, that I don’t think that it has to be a lawyer. This is pretty specialized work as it relates to the Mental Health Act. So I don’t think it’ll be the position of the opposition — certainly not mine — that in all cases, it has to be. The fact that the person plays something of an advocacy role does not to my mind suggest that they need to be a lawyer. But the Attorney, I think, will share with the committee — I hope he will — what the government has in mind in that respect.

The fact that it is provided for and that the new part 5 — I think it’s part 5 — of the act will be incorporated into the act, I suppose, gives it a formal dimension that we can all take some comfort in. I’m not sure that the act provides any additional powers that the Crown didn’t possess or doesn’t possess today that would allow for this to occur, but I suppose the fact that it will be enshrined legislatively in a new part 5 of the Mental Health Act will ensure that it is there and very visible and give it the power and force of legislation. That’s a good thing.

I will say this, drawing on some ancient personal history. For a segment of our society that has attracted more positive awareness, but in an area where there is, perhaps, still some lacking attention, according to the report of the Ombudsperson, ensuring that people who find themselves in circumstances that are very challenging and, as I say, by definition, may be experiencing mental health and mental capacity issues that would not position them well to engage in any kind of a bureaucratic exercise….

Ensuring that the state has stepped forward to provide additional support apparatus and support personnel to ensure that their rights are protected and explained to them in the very best way that it can strikes me and, I think, strikes the opposition as a positive step. That’s why the government will enjoy support from the official opposition, at least with respect to this step.

[2:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Malcolmson: I’m honoured to rise in support of this bill.

Broadly, across the sector, British Columbia has been working to build that seamless integrated system of mental health and addictions that people can access when and where they need it, no matter who they are, the size of their pocketbook or where they live. That is the aim that we are building towards, and since 2017, government has been working to patch holes in a fragmented system that was long in the making.

Historic investments in mental health and addictions support across the spectrum of treatment, recovery, and harm reduction has been at the forefront. The historic investments in the 2021 budget, which we continue to implement, help us to move beyond just filling gaps and shift, instead, towards that system redesign that British Columbians deserve.

Introducing, in this year’s budget, a first-of-its-kind complex care housing project, recognizing that there are people who have been alienated from housing supports by virtue of their untreated and their past inability to access mental health and addiction supports, often people living with acquired brain injury, to house 500 people in complex care housing…. Health authority–led is another example of a systems-level change.

Wanting every child to have their best possible start, we are working with multiple partners, multiple ministries, many levels of government, to give every young person their best start. That’s at the forefront of our ten-year plan, Pathway to Hope, for designing that system of mental health and substance use care in British Columbia, recognizing that investments early in a young person’s life can set them up for success and for a life of good mental health and can prevent small problems from turning into big ones.

We are funding life-saving initiatives in crisis supports. The peer-led action teams that were announced just last week, or two weeks ago, in North Van, Victoria and New West are another new way of addressing people in mental health crisis, with peers, instead of having to turn to police in every case. That kind of coordinated response is something that already, on the North Shore, has been proven to generate results, having been in existence just since November.

We are creating funding for early psychosis intervention — again, a systems-level change, where we can attend early. This particularly is focused on young people. That’s 100 new full-time positions in every part of the province. We’re also ensuring that more people can get access to mental health counselling by funding 49 community service organizations across the province. That’s something that we stood up during the early days of COVID, but funding that continues. Already, nearly 25,000 people have been able to access mental health counselling services.

Also working with the First Nations Health Authority, whom we fund, for them to deliver Indigenous-led mental health supports….

Eating disorders funding in every health authority — $6.6 million that we announced about nine months ago — continues to be fanned out. Recognizing the Looking Glass Foundation on Eating Disorders, who is celebrating their 20th anniversary, is also a funding partner with us, one that we are funding already, just in the last couple of months. With the new funding that we’ve given them, they’ve been able to connect 50 more adults and young adults with counselling to overcome eating disorders, a terribly life-threatening mental health challenge which has been exacerbated through the pandemic.

All of these are system-level changes that every week, almost, are being stood up, with our ambition that, year over year, people will see substantial changes in access to supports and services.

Another example. The new Red Fish Healing Centre for Mental Health and Addiction opened on the former Riverview lands last fall, on the lands that we now know as səmiq̓ʷəʔelə — again, state of the art, bringing together concurrent mental health and addictions challenge treatment that has been a difficulty to access in the past, leading the continent in the type of care that’s being delivered to people.

Today’s debate on the independent rights advice service that the Attorney General has introduced in his areas of the Mental Health Act that are the Attorney General’s responsibility is again a very important part of our work on systems change.

[3:00 p.m.]

Involuntary admission under the Mental Health Act can be an extremely challenging time for people that are already in crisis — and challenging, absolutely, for the people that care for those individuals. The new legislation will allow for amendments to the Mental Health Act so that people who are involuntarily admitted under the act will be able to access support from an independent rights advice service. They will help people understand their rights and the options available to them.

Having heard from the Ombudsperson, the Representative for Children and Youth and other independent officers of the Legislature and the province that British Columbia should have had this in place a very long time ago — we’re out of step with the rest of the provinces — it’s another example of systems change to help people be able to better connect with care and for them to be well treated and treated in a dignified way.

Services will start off as virtual, using video conferencing and phone — again, for that equal access across the province. Some in-person services will be available in certain circumstances. We’d like this to be up and running as soon as possible, certainly by early 2023.

The implementation of the rights advice has been guided by many organizations across the province that often give us advice and also guided by advice of the Ombudsperson and the Representative for Children and Youth. It’s available for youth under age 16 admitted as a voluntary patient by a parent or guardian and otherwise available to all adults.

In conclusion, the protection of involuntary patients who are in our province’s mental health institutions — setting out those patients’ rights, allowing them to be able to speak with that independent rights adviser, helping them navigate the system at a most tender time, when the way that our health care system should meet people in crisis is the dignified and appropriate health care response — will be guided by the independent rights adviser, again with the patient ultimately in control of what advice they take on, and in the care of our health care system and all the very dedicated people working on the front line.

We’re grateful to see all of these parts of government and all of the parts of the health care system come together to support families and people in crisis.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the attention and indicate my support for the legislation.

S. Furstenau: I rise to speak to the Mental Health Act amendments that are in front of us today.

This bill has certainly been a long time coming. For a lot of British Columbians, the Mental Health Act is an outdated piece of legislation, originally written in the 1960s and not been substantially updated since 1998.

It’s interesting to listen to the comments and the speeches today. It all sounds quite mild, really, and measured.

I think that we should be considering the experience of people, of British Columbians, who are accessing mental health care, particularly in emergency situations, and what that experience can actually feel like. I don’t think many would use the word “tender.” I think that to describe it as a potentially challenging experience doesn’t quite capture that it may, in fact, and probably often is, be traumatizing.

There are whole generations of British Columbians who have ultimately experienced harm under the Mental Health Act in this province. The act has coercive control. It gives near total authority to hospitals and facilities over people’s health choices, and it perpetuates harmful ster­eotypes about people with mental health illness. The act prioritizes discipline and authority and treats people with mental illness as a failure in self-control.

This certainly demonstrates a historical perspective on mental health, but we are no longer in that place where we recognize that mental health is not something that should come with stigma, that should be treated by authoritarian means. It is a health care issue.

[3:05 p.m.]

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Imagine, Madam Speaker, having one of the worst days of your life, trying to manage a mental health illness, feeling frightened, feeling desperate, seeking emergency psychiatric services in an attempt to feel better.

We’ve all been told there should be no stigma. It’s okay to speak about mental health and well-being, and it’s okay to reach out for help. But you might find yourself in a facility where, instead of that empathy and compassion that you are seeking, you find yourself stripped of autonomy, restrained, confined, having your phone removed, lacking outside connection and with no one to give advice to you.

This is what the amendments are proposed to address. I think it’s really important to consider the data on this — that between 2005 and 2018, involuntary treatment in B.C. for mental health increased by 79 percent. There is a real need to ensure that people’s rights are protected in these circumstances.

The changes that Bill 23 proposes are a step to bring this act into the 21st century. Implementing an independent rights advice service brings British Columbia in line with Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador. We are only just joining other provinces in offering these fundamental rights.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that when you are detained in Canada, you have the right to legal advice. But when someone is involuntarily detained under our provincial Mental Health Act, they are not offered this service 51 percent of the time, according to our Ombudsperson. So a person in severe crisis, experiencing one of the worst days of their life, goes to hospital, whether voluntary or not, to get care, to hopefully feel better. But far too often they can be treated without that dignity and those rights.

Advocates have been calling for an independent legal rights advice service for people detained under the Mental Health Act since the 1990s. In 2017, the Community Legal Assistance Society called for law reform in their report Operating in Darkness: B.C.’s Mental Health Act Detention System.

In 2019, the special rapporteur to the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities criticized B.C.’s Mental Health Act, finding: “Once detained, a person can be forcibly treated without their free and informed consent, including forced medication and electroconvulsive therapy.” The special rapporteur said that the criteria for involuntary treatment was “very broad.”

In 2019, the Ombudsperson found that only 28 percent of involuntary patient admissions in B.C. followed all required procedures. They also found that a number of directors admitted and detained people involuntarily without adequate information and reasons to demonstrate how the patient met the criteria. They also found that for half of the patients, no rights advice form was filled out. Before these amendments, this form was the only way of informing patients of their right to access legal rights advice. From these numbers, only half of patients received that information.

These amendments finally follow through on the Attorney General’s 2019 commitment to see this independent rights advice service be put through. They are critical in building a better, more just system of mental health care. These amendments are a step forward, and I commend the Attorney General and the government for this bill.

Up until these amendments pass, people who are involuntarily detained are not required to receive independent rights advice services. They are technically supposed to receive notice that they have this right, but there’s no legal aid service provided free of charge. The only people who can access legal advice are those who have the wherewithal to ask for a lawyer. That also means having the means to pay for one. As we can see from the Ombudsperson’s report, many patients are never even informed.

These amendments change this legacy by creating the independent rights advice service and making it available to patients. However, there are several key pieces to this service that remain undetermined.

As reported on CBC, this service is only available to those who request it when it first begins in 2023.

[3:10 p.m.]

As I mentioned earlier, the Mental Health Act is known for being coercive. We know that in some facilities, patients can be manipulated into not accessing services, and non-compliance with legislation and regulations has been shown to be common. In half of involuntary detentions, patients were not informed of their legal rights. This, as it stands, is currently a mandatory requirement of the act. How are we to assume that in this broken system, patients will be able to request rights advice when they’re frequently not even informed?

Throughout this bill, we see language like a director “must make reasonable efforts” and a director must give notice “as soon as reasonably practical.” In a system known for non-compliance, this kind of watered-down language will allow for people and facilities to continue to break rules. Without a robust monitoring or disciplinary process, the flexible language permits facilities to make excuses. I intend to explore these issues with the Attorney General at committee stage.

Another issue, and the minister spoke to this in her comments, is that the service will be provided virtually. She did indicate some in-person services in certain circumstances will be available, but when we think about the environment within many facilities around this province and people not being able to keep their cellphones, I wonder how the virtual service will be provided.

I also wonder about people who may not speak English as a first language, people with disabilities, people with fears of technology or difficulty using it — how they’re going to be supported and have their rights met in this kind of scenario.

The other concern around virtual services is that they don’t provide the kind of connection for patients, and because of that, patients will be limited in the scope of service that they are getting. By making the services virtual, the government is, in my mind, undermining the critical resource right off the bat.

Another issue with the provision of virtual services is equipment. I’ll be interested to hear about what details will be in place for that. How will the appointments be resourced, for example? The bill does not fully explain how the facilities will be providing equipment or how they expect the facility to pay for that equipment.

Finally, the question is how the government will be financing the service, generally. On paper, it’s a very positive step, but there needs to be clarity on how well resourced the service will actually be.

These amendments are important progress. The government may say that mental health and mental illness are important, but in year 5 of their government, they have only made incremental changes in the way that the province treats those with mental illness.

I’ll just point to some comments that were made in the chamber, I think last week or a week or two ago in question period, when issues around crime in community were being raised by the official opposition. The Attorney General, in several of his answers, spoke about people with mental health and addictions. At the time, it really struck me that this is an example of exactly the kind of stigmatization of mental health and addictions that we have, which we have not yet overcome.

When we hear language like that, when we hear a kind of generalization linking mental health and addictions to criminal behaviour, it reinforces that stigma. It reinforces that challenge that people will have for seeking help when they need it, for being open and upfront about any struggles they’re having with mental health, because to this day, in rooms like this, it can still be linked and connected to criminality.

Mental health care in our province clearly deserves an enormous amount of attention. It is a growing crisis. Our Mental Health Act is outdated, and it should be among this government’s top priorities to update.

[3:15 p.m.]

In the recent report from the all-party Committee on Reforming the Police Act, one of its recommendations was to strike an all-party committee for review of the Mental Health Act and to make recommendations for its modernization, which is clearly long overdue.

I applaud the changes proposed in this bill, and at the same time, I push government to see the Mental Health Act in its entirety and recognize the need for an overhaul and modernization of the act.

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

Hon. D. Eby: Yes, thank you, hon. Chair.

I appreciate hearing from the Third Party and from the official opposition on this and to hear their support for the bill. It sounds like we’ll have an interesting committee stage, and I look forward to that. I appreciate members outlining their intended areas of questioning. It assists me and staff in being complete in our answers.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 23, Mental Health Amendment Act, 2022, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Eby: I call Bill 24, the Anti-Racism Data Act, second reading.

BILL 24 — ANTI-RACISM DATA ACT

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

I’m very pleased to have this important piece of legislation read a second time. For far too long, Indigenous people and racialized communities have experienced systemic racism when accessing public services and programs. While we know systemic racism exists, a lack of demographic data has kept us from fully understanding just how pervasive and persistent these systemic barriers are, let along addressing them. The province is committed to advancing racial equity. This legislation will pave the way to identifying and eliminating systemic racism across the public sector.

We see the careful and consistent collection of data as a tool to help identify inequities and to spur action. This legislation is also about the meaningful collaboration with Indigenous peoples and racialized communities every step of the way. In that engagement, we have heard Indigenous peoples and other racialized communities asking the province to improve the collection and use of demographic data about ethnic origin, ancestry and race. We also heard the importance of taking an intersectional approach to identifying and eliminating systemic racism.

We have heard words of caution about the importance of doing this work with care, sensitivity and in collaboration. We have heard the need to do this work in a culturally safe and trauma-informed way and to deeply consider ways that information can harm communities. These are harms we must prevent.

This bill was not developed by the province alone. This engagement has happened with Indigenous partners and community stakeholders in developing this bill itself. Engagement will continue as the legislation is implemented over the months and years to come. This bill includes requirements for ongoing involvement from communities, so that important tools, instruments and guidelines used to support data collection and use can be developed together.

Early engagement began last spring, with the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives, the member for Surrey–Green Timbers, holding leader-to-leader engagements. It continued over the summer and fall, with close to 70 community organizations holding their own engagements. Public engagement was also held online from September 2021 until January 2022.

Additionally, to align the legislation with the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous partners were consulted and cooperated with, as required in section 3 of the Declaration Act.

We also worked with the Human Rights Commissioner on development of the legislation. The B.C. Human Rights Commissioner’s report Disaggregated Demographic Data Collection in British Columbia: The Grandmother Perspec­tive has been foundational to the development of this legislation. The commissioner’s perspective helped shape this bill that is before you today.

We also consulted the Information and Privacy Commissioner, who supports the bill’s provisions that ensure the transparent collection of data as well as the development of standards to ensure the proper protection of personal information.

We have heard that Indigenous people and racialized communities want to be involved in what information is collected about them and how it is collected, used and shared, which is why we have built this bill to be enabling. It recognizes that there is a lot more work to do with Indigenous peoples and racialized communities. This is one step of many.

On data initiatives related to Indigenous peoples, the legislation provides pathways for consultation and cooperation. This process is about the agency and choice of Indigenous people to determine how they want to engage on data initiatives with the province.

[3:20 p.m.]

It also provides Indigenous people with an opportunity to express consent or a lack of consent regarding data initiatives. This process was developed with Indigenous partners, and I’m grateful for their valuable contributions to this bill.

The intention with this legislation is to do no harm and not to interfere in Indigenous peoples’ right to data self-governance. We see this legislation as an important step in getting there. We have heard from communities that they want to be involved throughout the data life cycle from collection through to use.

They want to help set priorities for public sector research. To address this, the legislation provides for the establishment of a committee to advise and collaborate with the director of statistics, who is the statutory officer responsible for much of the implementation of the legislation. The committee will be remunerated for their time and expertise.

We know that Indigenous people in racialized communities are concerned that data will be used in a way that is harmful to them, that it will be used to further stigma­tize and discriminate. The legislation requires the director of statistics to consider cultural safety and the potential for community harm at all stages of the work and to take steps to mitigate and minimize any potential harm.

You will notice these concepts woven throughout the legislation to ensure that the real risks of racism, prejudice, stereotyping, bias and stigmatization that can occur in working with data are identified, mitigated and prevented. Importantly, the legislation ensures that disclosure of personal information for the purposes of this legislation is voluntary, and public bodies must not withhold services from someone who does not wish to provide their information.

We hear that public bodies do not always think they have a clear authority to collect personal information to identify and eliminate systemic racism and promote racial equity. Furthermore, they’re uncertain how to collect and use that information in a culturally safe and trauma-informed way.

This legislation establishes a clear purpose to collect personal information and provides for data standards to be established with Indigenous people in racialized communities to ensure consistency of that information. The legislation also enables the creation of data directives that will set out how data will be collected, used and disclosed.

It’s important to note that some specifics are not detailed in the proposed legislation. Instead, the legislation sets the requirement for collaboration and consultation in developing these details with Indigenous people in racialized communities. If there is a concern that the legislation is not being implemented properly in a public body, there is an ability to appoint an examiner to review the public body’s program and provide a report back, which will be made public.

If an imminent or ongoing risk of community harm is reported, the public body can be ordered to take action to mitigate and minimize this risk. Building trust, transparency and accountability are underlying themes throughout the legislation.

The director of statistics is required to publish research priorities for government every two years. Those priorities will be established with Indigenous people and the committee. Additionally, the director of statistics is required to release statistics or other information annually. Every six years an independent person will be appointed to review the functioning of the legislation. The report will be made public and tabled in the Legislature.

Finally, the whistleblower provision in the legislation protects people from reprisal if they report in good faith and with reasonable belief that the act is being contravened.

I’d like to take this opportunity again to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism and the entire team in the public service for their important work on this bill. I look forward to further discussion on this important piece of legislation.

T. Wat: It is my honour to take my place in this afternoon’s bill debate, both in my position as the opposition critic for multiculturalism and as a proud British Columbian of Chinese heritage.

We are all blessed to live in a province that is built on cultural diversity. Our diversity is part of our shared identity, one that unites us as British Columbians. Regardless of who you are, where you were born, or how you personally identify, if you call B.C. home, you are a British Columbian and should be entitled to the same freedom, security, rights, opportunities and levels of acceptance that all British Columbians are entitled to.

As many of you know, I share a similar story to many in this House and countless families across our great province. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and didn’t find my way to B.C. until early adulthood. But I consider B.C. my home, and I will always consider myself a British Columbian.

[3:25 p.m.]

Today we as a province are taking another stride toward our shared vision of creating a more equal, accepting and welcoming B.C. for all.

While today is cause for celebration, we must all acknowledge the difficult reality that has led to this legislation. While we have taken important steps since our province’s founding to better promote and embrace our multiculturalism and diversity, this idea is not a lived reality for all British Columbians. Even today, people continue to face barriers and challenges because of their race, their culture and their background, whether they are First Peoples, new immigrants to this country, or have been a member of one of B.C.’s minority communities for generations.

Every day British Columbians experience incidents of racism intended to make them feel less valued and less welcome. Over the past few years, we have come to recognize the many ugly forms racism can take in our society. Every day British Columbians from cultural minorities experience incidents of personal racism through insults, threats, assaults, vandalism and other forms of hate crimes.

The Vancouver police department reported a 700 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver in 2020. According to B’nai Brith Canada, anti-Semitic inci­dents in B.C. increased to 110 in 2021. Nationally violent incidents rose from nine to 75, an increase of 700 percent. British Columbians have also become acutely aware of the systemic racism towards Indigenous people and cultural minorities that takes place in our education, health care, social services, the justice system, and countless public and private institutions across our province.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s report In Plain Sight identifies shocking instances of systemic racism towards Indigenous people in our health care system. Indigenous people also make up a disproportionate number of the British Columbians in care and in custody in our prison system. We cannot forget the shock and devastation our province and the world felt at the discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of residential schools across Canada; institutions designed to strip Indigenous people of their culture, heritage and personal identity.

The groundbreaking report from the Human Rights Commissioner The Grandmother Perspective sheds a dark light on the lived reality of far too many BIPOC communities in B.C., a reality that includes ongoing socioeconomic and basic human rights challenges. The personal and systemic racism that continues to exist in B.C. goes against the very foundation of what our province and our country stand for. It is the responsibility of every member of this House, and all British Columbians, to stand up against racism and intolerance in our province, no matter what form it takes.

This is not an easy journey. It is one that will take years, decades, and even generations to reconcile our historical wrongs. But this is a journey that we must all take together, in close consultation and collaboration with Indigenous leaders and communities as well as all minority groups. We must have every voice at the table. Every voice must be heard and valued in our decisions as a province.

[3:30 p.m.]

For years now, there has been a growing call for the province to bring forward the tools that will help us identify the gaps in our system and eliminate the systemic racism that still persists in our public bodies and institutions. Today’s legislation is a milestone in more ways than one. Not only will it help bring some of these vital tools to our province, but it is some of the first legislation that has been created under the principles of UNDRIP, in close consultation with Indigenous partners and the many voices of our BIPOC communities.

I’m hoping that this will set the precedent for all future legislation that will carry on this legacy. We must ensure that the actions outlined within this bill are carried out with the utmost respect and consideration of our Indigenous and multicultural communities and help reduce racial prejudices, eliminate racism and forward reconciliation in our province through consultation and cooperation with all those affected.

While we all wholeheartedly support the principles of this legislation and the actions it lays out, as the official opposition, we will uphold our duty to ask the crucial questions and raise the concerns that British Columbians may have over its contents. As outlined by this government, the legislation tabled before us is intended to serve as a step to dismantle systemic racism and discrimination faced by Indigenous, Black and people of colour in B.C.

We must also acknowledge the gravity of the actions we are undertaking here. Although it is for the purpose of identifying and eliminating racism and building a better, more inclusive B.C. for everyone, we must also recognize that this legislation will vastly expand the scope of data and personal information that government will have a right to gather, link, store and disclose. Not to mention, we are talking about race-based data. Although I have no doubt that this data collection will be used for only the best and most ethical purposes, we must also recognize the generational trauma associated with the collection of race-based data.

In our province’s history, similar actions associated with a person’s race have been conducted to promote, not reduce, racial prejudices. Asian and South Asian Canadians have not forgotten the generational trauma that came from the Chinese head tax, the Japanese internment camps and the Komagata Maru incident — all of which were provincially sanctioned actions that identified and targeted British Columbians for their race.

We must ensure that this legislation and the data initiative that will follow are carried out with the utmost cultural sensitivity for the communities that will be impacted and involved so we ensure that these actions bring comfort and hope for the future, not concern over memories of the past.

[3:35 p.m.]

This initiative will not be undertaken only by the current administration but by future administrations. The appropriate checks, balances and regulatory frameworks must be in place to ensure that the principles and thoroughness of this important work are never lost.

We also recognize and thank the public bodies and wide array of B.C. communities that have already been involved in reviewing and providing input on the checks, balances and framework found in the bill before us today, including the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the thousands of BIPOC leaders and community advocates who have provided their input.

I think it is important that we also discuss the tone of this legislation. With the principles of UNDRIP, forwarding reconciliation and eliminating racism, at its core, this legislation is bringing in terms and terminology that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been widely used in legislation and jurisprudence up until this point. There are terms in this bill that are going to be key tenets of the initiatives that will come from it. For example, “individuals who are racialized” is a key term in this bill.

The director of statistics will be required to consult with these individuals, and the majority of the anti-racism committee will need to be made up of individuals who are racialized, and so on and so forth. With terms like this being such crucial elements of the legislation, I think it is important that we establish the proper definitions of these terms if we are to cement them into law. For while the definition may seem clear and obvious to us in principle, there can be no room for misinterpretation or misappropriation, regardless of the situation.

I expect the committee to be represented by individuals from all racialized communities. But the way this legislation is written out, I fear that the requirements of the bill could be met without all the proper voices being present at the table. Similarly, there are examples that could arise where public bodies meet all the consultation requirements outlined in this bill and still don’t engage in the appropriate level of consultation British Columbians expect.

This bill is a milestone, and it is setting a whole new set of frameworks that have not been, largely, cemented in Canadian legislation up to this point. We have to be conscious of these things, especially when we are heading into largely uncharted waters.

While this bill is intended to serve as a crucial stepping stone on a years-long undertaking by our province to identify and eliminate racism in our private and public institutions, it is important that we also recognize the work that has already been undertaken by both private and public bodies, and individuals as well.

We know the provincial government worked directly with Indigenous leadership organizations, including the First Nations Leadership Council, the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres and Métis Nation of British Columbia to ensure that this legislation upholds Indigenous people’s right to data self-governance. We know that countless individuals and organizations representing BIPOC communities have actively engaged with the government and promoted race-based data collection prior to the tabling of this legislation.

[3:40 p.m.]

We have already cited many of the reports tabled by many public bodies and private organizations who have already collected and reported much of the data that has identified racial inequality and gaps in our current system, so we must raise the important questions. What steps is the government about to take that it could not prior to the tabling of this bill? Will additional legislation be tabled to further expand the scope of government’s data-collecting abilities?

These are all questions we must take into consideration, questions that our members will undoubtedly press further during committee stage of this bill.

All of this aside, I would like to conclude by taking a moment to recognize the years of important work and consultation that went into this legislation. We would like to thank the minister and his staff as well as the parliamentary secretary for the work that they have done to heed British Columbians’ calls for action and take the first steps our people want to see their government take.

British Columbians come from all cultures, backgrounds and walks of life, but we all share the same fear, sadness and anger towards the sentiments of racism that still exist in our province and our country. I am tired of fearing for the safety and future of my family and friends because of how they look, where they come from, how they speak or what their last name is.

I think I speak for everyone here and for all British Columbians when I say that today is about hope — hope for our future and hope that we all have a voice at the table and that we can move forward together to recognize our historical wrongs, heal our generational wounds, identify and eliminate a systemic racism that still persists and truly build a better province for all.

A. Olsen: It’s an honour to be able to stand here today and to speak to Bill 24, the Anti-Racism Data Act.

I would like to just reflect for a moment on the comments that have just been shared with this chamber from our colleague from Richmond North Centre and, specifi­cally, I think, the comment with respect to understanding and recognizing the diversity of this province and that the strength of this province is actually built on that diversity and the experiences that people have and bring to our society and to our province.

I think that it’s also important to acknowledge the fear, as the member clearly identified, that many families have for their children and for their family members, who have witnessed and felt and experienced, actually, mistreatment because of who they are and where they come from and the language they speak and the culture that they have.

I, too, want to elevate the message from the member for Richmond North Centre that this bill does reflect hope, hope that with recognizing systemic racism and that this institution was built to advantage certain people and to disadvantage others — to recognize that, to not view it as an existential threat but to understand what that means — it’s then that we can start to unpack it and start to build this institution of government to represent all British Columbians, no matter their background, no matter their language, no matter their culture.

[3:45 p.m.]

It’s with that that I want to raise my hands to the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives, who’s sitting right behind me right now and who I’ve had the honour of spending many, many hours with on…. I think it’s a number of committees. We’ve spent many hours on committee with each other.

There should be no question to the level of importance that the parliamentary secretary puts to the collection of disaggregated data and the role that racism plays in our society and being a true warrior in combatting racism. When committee work gets distracted by the other things, we can always count on the parliamentary secretary to bring us back to the points that need to be reminded often — that not everybody sees the world this way and not everybody has that experience. Here, there is an opportunity to reflect on the diversity.

Just very few brief comments about the quality of the consultation. I think every minister wants to stand up and say that the bill they’re tabling before the House has undergone the most extensive consultation. We hear ministers build up the amount of consultation that happens.

If you take a look at the notes that I’ve been given and take a look at the quality and the depth of the consultation on this, I want to just say that I think this is truly a model on how community engagement can inform legislation and how important it is that the government reflects and the legislation reflects the wishes and the wants of the community.

When you have over 70 community-based conversations and dialogues that are happening, 10,000 people participating in those dialogues, surveys with nearly 3,000 respondents, 1,300 suggestions and two gatherings with 100 Métis people participating, it highlights that this bill is starting in a good place here, at first and second reading. We’re in a good place, because it has been informed.

As I look through the bill, I would say that there’s only one section, which I’ll highlight in a few minutes, that troubles me. It’s not specific to this bill. It’s how the government in general handles certain aspects of the relationship with Indigenous people. So other than that, I’m quite happy to be very supportive of this legislation. I wouldn’t actually say “other than that.” I just want to make a note that I think there are some things that need to change.

Co-developing this legislation, as has been pointed out, is an important commitment that’s been made under the Declaration Act, to be working more collaboratively with Indigenous people. But this was not just Indigenous people that were collaborated with. It’s all the BIPOC community that has been engaging in this.

This legislation stipulates the support for cultural safety and consideration of community harm. It’s legislation that expressly states, over and over again, that the goal is to identify and eliminate systemic racism and advance racial equity. As I said, this legislation should be held up as a successful, deeply engaged, deeply informed piece of work that should be celebrated for that.

In some ways, I see this as intersectionality in action. It’s not just going to add diversity and stir. It retains the aspect of power-sharing in the process of drafting the legislation, spreading it out and letting people inform the legislation that’s going to govern them and their data.

I hope to see this process of including advocacy groups and First Nations from the outset, taking their feedback seriously and co-developing rather than checking off the consultation box, which we’ve seen so often here historically. This legislation provides another way of doing things.

[3:50 p.m.]

I recognize that not all legislation can or will benefit from such deep and thorough consultation or engagement. Sometimes government needs to move much quicker than that. I understand that legislation is developed in a variety of different ways. However, I think that the pace of government is sufficiently moderate enough that we could do much more and a much deeper engagement.

I think one of the challenges that we’ve seen in our society is that the engagement pieces have become more of a box-ticking exercise and more separation of people to be able to answer individual questions, less community gatherings so the community can hear what is being said and engage with each other and debate with each other about various aspects of it.

Hopefully, as we begin to open up from the last few years of the pandemic, we start to recognize that there’s real strength in getting people together and listening. Having the community be able to engage with each other, as well, is really important. It helps inform government in the development of the legislation.

When legislation is written without the consultation, then I think what we see is that it kind of ends up in here, or even before it gets to this stage, lagging down and slowing down because the members of the opposition have to ask those questions that may not have been answered in the engagement and the consultation process. So having that work done at the forefront, having the event like we had earlier this week, where community leaders can come here and say, “Yeah, we can endorse this work; we can get behind this work,” is an important and powerful message that’s sent.

As Dr. June Francis said on Monday…. The announ­cement that was made on Monday is not a one-and-done situation. In order for this legislation to be successful, there needs to be the resources there to back it up. In fact, we know, as I said earlier, that systemic racism, institutionalized racism is all through this institution of government. The initiative established by this legislation must be properly funded and supported in order for it to be successful.

The legislation before us today sets out that public bodies may collect personal information for the purpose of identifying and eliminating systemic racism and advancing racial equity. It provides parameters for how this information should be collected, and it clarifies that the choice to disclose or not disclose information will never impact on the delivery of a benefit or of a service provided by this institution.

In other words, if you choose to not provide your personal information, your race, to a health care provider, you’ll not be denied health care services as an example. It also highlights that the information can only be used for the express intent of identifying and eliminating systemic racism and advancing racial equity.

In developing a proposed data standard — a standard by which the information must be collected, stored and safeguarded — clause 9 establishes that “the director must support the culturally safe collection, use and disclosure of personal information.” This is important. It builds in protections. It acknowledges that there are cultural differences around how personal information is stored.

I’ll just say that as I was reading through the various responses from Indigenous, Black and people of colour, the BIPOC community…. There is a hesitation that needs to be acknowledged in this from members of those communities.

I think about this from the experience of my family, a Coast Salish family from the W̱SÁNEĆ territory. Oftentimes, the data that was collected about us wasn’t used to help us. It was used for the opposite purposes of that. It was used to marginalize and to harm, in some cases, our family members.

[3:55 p.m.]

The collaborative spirit of this needed to be there from the outset. There is a great deal of concern that is legitimate from members of the community who have not experienced, I would say, the best side of what data could be — helping improve services — but have seen how data can be used against people.

Also important, as is said here, the report explains that — and this is the First Nations Engagement Report: “Data has been used against Indigenous peoples to depict them as disorganized and inferior.”

What that does is highlight the fact that data and the information can be used to paint a picture to the benefit of whoever it is that has that data. So it’s very important that we are careful with it and that we make sure that what we are doing here is building more confidence and trust and being more open and transparent as we possibly can.

The point that I want to raise here about section 6 is the point that I’ve raised in previous legislation. It’s a point that I raised in the Forest Amendment Act of last fall — the 30-day notification. Now, I understand that the provincial government needs to notify Indigenous nations that they’re doing something. So you have to provide a notification. However, the 30-day notification process is problematic because, as we experience in First Nations communi­ties across the province, it sometimes it takes longer than 30 days to process the letters and the requests.

When an Indigenous nation of any size is receiving these notifications from a provincial government of this size, of this density, the number of agencies and ministries all seeking…. Not only that, but the number of civil society groups that now have embraced reconciliation and said: “We want to do that too. We want to be a part of that as well.”

My office has become kind of this collection zone of civil society groups that want to know how to engage the local Indigenous nations. Everybody wants to do it. Everybody wants to ask a question. “How do you pronounce this?” or “How do you show honour and respect to the territory that we’re in?”

Indigenous nations are being flooded with these requests. Some of them are fairly frivolous or, you know, just local relationship-building exercises that require resources to be able to accommodate. In the same token, I get groups coming back to me and saying: “We want to do a territorial acknowledgement. We reached out, and we never heard anything. They must not care.”

I say: “Well, don’t assume that they don’t care. Just assume that your request was one of hundreds, maybe several hundred requests that they’re trying to negotiate through and putting those requests on a hierarchy.” How to do a territorial welcome might not be as high up on the list of the hierarchy as the burial cairns that have been disrupted or the property development that is happening next to the res.

There is this recognition that the 30-day notification process…. Again, we often use the language of capacity in here. I hear so often: “Well, the First Nation doesn’t have the capacity to do this.” I think that in many cases, there is the capacity. There are just not the resources to be able to be able to deliver on the dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of requests that come in.

When you put a 30-day time stamp on this, a clock starts as soon as the letter has been sent in the mail. You’ve got four or five days that Canada Post uses to delivers that. You’re now down to 26 to 24 days. Time’s ticking. There’s maybe a lack of understanding as to whether or not weekends are involved in that. Maybe you burn another eight days in that.

You realize that actually, a 30-day notification time is really hardly any time at all for an administrative body to administer anything. So this 30-day notification process is something that I think unfairly puts a time limit.

[4:00 p.m.]

If we are to truly be engaging in self-determination, then I think that we need to, as a governing body, look at that 30-day notification process and be honest that it’s probably putting an unfair amount of pressure, an undue amount of pressure on an Indigenous governing entity.

With that, I think I’ve probably said enough on it. I raised significant concerns about it back last fall under the Forest Act amendments.

One final piece I’ll add to this is that when we craft legislation that puts in place the requirement to do this engagement, the requirement to do the notification and the consultation and then, at the end of it, we’re not recognizing the fact that the Declaration Act agrees and affirms free, prior and informed consent…. Not just free, prior and informed but, also, there’s a consent piece to this. When we give the ability for the Crown to ignore that consent has not been given, then we are not actually embracing free, prior and informed consent. We’re only embracing free, prior and informed. That’s not what’s in the Declaration Act.

That’s a stumbling block for me. As long as the government, any government, continues to use and to frame sections around this in the legislation, I’ll continue to stand up and raise questions about it. I’m certain that Indigenous leaders will be raising their level of concern, whatever that might be. It might be different than mine, but that is certainly something that catches my attention every time I see it.

Combatting systemic racism is commendable and necessary in our society. We have a society… Actually, in B.C., we have racism and colonialism that are intertwined in a unique, very special way here. I don’t use “special” in…. Where the colonial language or the aspects of the colonial government continue to exist, I’ll continue to raise it.

Overall, it’s been critical that we are collecting data and understanding the picture and what we’re looking at and the challenges that we face as a society. It’s really important that we collect this data to help better inform our public policy and to ensure that it’s both as nuanced as it needs to be and equitable.

I’m grateful to the parliamentary secretary. I’m grateful to the minister, the Attorney General. I’m grateful to all of the people who took time to participate in this so that we can actually stand in this Legislature today and say, with some level of certainty, that there has been a good amount of consultation done.

I raise my hands to all those involved.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM.

R. Singh: Madam Speaker, I’ve spoken on a number of bills, but I can’t tell you how much pleasure and how honoured I am to be standing here today and speaking on Bill 24.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the Attorney General for introducing the bill and, also, my colleagues the member for Saanich North and the Islands for his kind words and his commitment to end racism and the member for Richmond North Centre, who spoke before me, for her words as well.

I think my colleagues have already talked about it. We live in a beautiful province. We call it “Beautiful British Columbia,” and we take a lot of pride in our diversity, in our multiculturalism, in how many people come here and make British Columbia their home. Also, a reality that we face every day is that so many people are left behind in this beautiful province. That is, when they’re accessing the services, they don’t get the same experience, the same treatment that they so deserve. This is what we have been hearing from the community advo­cates for a number of years.

[4:05 p.m.]

I really want to raise my hands to all before me, to all the advocates who have been fighting for this, fighting racism, fighting for the equal and just society. We stand on their shoulders today. On May 2, when this bill was introduced, I know a lot was said about it being a historical moment in British Columbia history. That would not have happened without the advocacy of so many who have come before me. So a big, huge thank-you to all of them.

Also, we know that there is a need to recognize where those systemic inequities are. As Dr. June Francis, who was present here on May 2, talked about, we cannot work on things that we don’t know. We know that systemic racism is everywhere — the colonial structures that we deal with. Just not knowing where it is…. If you don’t see something, how to work on it?

For years, we have heard the stories. We have heard how people feel discriminated, how people feel left behind, but we did not know. It was just so hidden. A lot of times we heard from the government and officials…. “If we don’t see anything, there is nothing in front of us to work on.”

This bill, I think, is the first step towards that. Recognize those inequities. Make them public. Bring them to light. I think that is extremely important.

As a government, I think it is our moral and ethical responsibility to tackle racism and, first of all, to say that there is systemic racism. There is racism that people face every day, experience every day. Then it is about the responsibility to work on those inequities. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives, I feel so honoured to have been given this mandate to look at these inequities and to bring in these legislations.

I really want to take a moment to talk about the process that we undertook. My colleagues before me have talked a lot about, yes, the importance but also the transparent process that needs to take place. In the last 15 months, I can say that a lot of work has gone into it.

This is a bill that is impacting the Indigenous communities, the Black communities, the racialized communities and the average British Columbian. Those people are on the forefront, but this is a bill that is going to impact all of us. No matter what our colour, what our ethnicity, how we look, it is going to benefit all of us. That’s what I feel so proud about. That gives me so much joy and so much passion when I talk about it.

When we started on this process, it was extremely important for us that the people who were impacted…. The member for Saanich North and the Islands has said it very well.

Historically, when data was collected, it further margi­nalized those people. It further stigmatized those people. They were not in the centre of that collection. They were not consulted. That data was taken. Then it was used in a way…. They did not know how it would be imparted out, how it would go out in the public. That’s why, when we took on this work, it was important to talk to those people, talk to those stakeholders in the Indigenous communities, in the Black community and the racialized communities.

We started our process in April and May of 2021 with three consultations with the stakeholders. I had the opportunity to take part in a number of engagements with them. Also, too, there was a need to build trust. What I found was that that trust was broken. For far too long, they were telling their stories, they were talking about the inequities, but not much was done about it. That’s why building that trust….

Presenting to the First Nation leadership gatherings…. I was so honoured to be a part of those sessions. One message that we heard in those meetings, in those pre-consultations, was the need to ground the legislation in a distinction-based and government-to-government approach with Indigenous peoples. This legislation is designed to reflect those distinctions and to respect Indigenous data sovereignty.

[4:10 p.m.]

In the different presentations that we took on with the First Nation leaders, we also came to know…. What we kept reiterating was the importance of aligning our consultations and the legislation with the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. So that formed the framework.

I know we have talked about the report that came out a few years ago, In Plain Sight by Dr. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. That report basically formed the framework of this legislation. That report told us where those inequities are. Also, it was important for us to know about the inequities not just coming in one sector. We know there are inequi­ties in all different parts of the government, and that’s why I’m so thankful for that report, because that formed the framework for this legislation.

I think the most extensive consultation process has taken place for this legislation, and that was important. There was a need for this whole process to be as transparent as possible, to let these people, all these communities, lead the work, and also to make it transparent and build that trust that was broken for so many years.

One thing that we heard in the pre-consultations was that the communities did not want the government to come and do these consultations for them. That, I think, was a very, very important factor. A lot of times we’d just go. We’d do the consultations, and then we’d bring back the reports. They said they want to lead these consultations.

I think the first time in the history of British Columbia, in the consultations that we did, the communities were at the forefront. They were leading these consultations. They were going into their communities and talking about these issues, because nobody knows about their communities as well as they do. We don’t know the problems and the bad years that the communities faced as they do, so it was very important to keep them at the forefront and for them to lead these consultations.

More than 13,000 people took part in these consultations. It was in the form of a survey, the first time we had an online survey that was available in more than 14 languages. We did not want anybody to be left behind. We recognized the 14 important languages that are spoken.

As we have talked about — the diverse British Columbia — people make British Columbia. They come from different parts of the world. For most of them, English is not their first language. They don’t feel comfortable in that language. So we did not want people to be left behind.

This survey was translated in more than 14 languages, which is one of the first of its kind in history. The uptake for that survey was immense, because we were breaking those barriers for people to participate in that.

Also, the in-person consultations that happened with the community organizations…. There was a separate set of consultations that happened with the Indigenous communities and also Métis Nation B.C. They led their own consultations.

One thing that came up over and over again, and what my colleague and member from Saanich North has also talked about, is the potential for community harm. This is the concept which is central to the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner’s The Grandmother Perspective report. We heard about this concern that communities should not be further harmed. Yes, the need for this data — no question about it, because we want to hear those inequities and then also start our concrete action plan to fill in those barriers. But also, what needs to be done to reduce that community harm….

Every minute when we were working on this legislation, the staff — all the community partners — were talking about how we can mitigate the factors that can do the community harm. As I said, we heard about this concern, and we have built in protective mechanisms throughout the legislation to address it.

[4:15 p.m.]

Another thing that the Human Rights Commissioner really guided us to and really wanted us to focus on was the intersectionality. Our identity is important, but our identity is not just about race. This legislation is called anti-racism data legislation, but there are other social factors that make up our identity — those factors that can be oppressive factors, that can create barriers while we are accessing services.

Those factors can be, yes, your race, your religion, what kind of head covering you are wearing. For example, my father wears a turban, and my ministerial adviser, who worked very, very closely on this legislation, wears a hijab. The experiences can be completely different for those people, so recognizing those differences and those intersectional factors is very important.

Along with that, other intersectional factors like your gender identity, your ability, the languages that you speak — all those intersectional factors…. Bringing them into this legislation was extremely important. I’m so proud that we have been able to have that. They’re all referenced within this legislation so that people are not identified by just one thing that we usually identify with but also the multiple factors that are part of their identity.

The consultations. I talked about the community harm, and we have put mayors in this legislation to reduce, to mitigate, those harms. Also, they wanted to be the key partners. We have talked about it. Even the night we were introducing the legislation, we talked about how this is the first time that we have the First Nations partners who co-developed this legislation.

This process does not finish just after the introduction of the legislation. I think the real work now starts, because this has taken us a lot of time. It has taken a lot of hard work for us to reach this juncture. But much more work — how this legislation will be implemented, how all these community partners, whether those are Indigenous, Black or racialized…. As they have been our partners in the framework of the legislation, they are going to be key partners as we implement the legislation.

I can say that it gives me so much pride that a lot of things that they have said are in the legislation. Having somebody overlooking this legislation was very important.

We have talked a number of times about the community harm. Setting up a committee, an anti-racism data committee, I think is very key to this legislation, a committee that will look into this legislation, that will look at whatever information….

I know my colleagues, the members who have talked before me, have talked about the privacy and the data. It is their personal information. How that personal information is collected, how that personal information is stored, how that personal information is analyzed is extremely important. That’s why having that committee overlooking, throughout the whole process, is very, very important.

I’m really proud that we will be…. After this legislation gets passed in this Legislature, there will be the formation of the anti-racism data committee.

Also, one messaging that came throughout our consultations that we heard was that people are not comfortable giving out this information repeatedly. They don’t want, over and over, this information to be taken. First of all, a lot of these communities have already given this information. It creates trauma for them a lot of time. They want good mayors. They really want good policy work to happen. They also recognize the importance of giving out this information.

What they told us and what is embedded in this legislation is that this information won’t be collected at the front lines. It is not somebody who has to go somewhere, and then suddenly they have to give all this information over and over again. For example, in a hospital setting or whether they are registering their child at a school, they don’t have to give this information. This information would be collected in a population survey that would be conducted by B.C. Stats, and I think that is extremely important for these communities.

[4:20 p.m.]

We really want to keep on hearing those communities, as they have been key partners. They will be key partners along the way. They will tell us what the key areas are. What are the core government areas they would like us to focus this information on? Once this population survey is done, once that information is collected, we would really like to hear from the communities. Guide us — tell the government what the key areas are.

Some key areas have already emerged. We have already talked about the health care. Education is coming up over and over again. Justice system, housing. But we really want to keep communities at the front and centre of making this decision. What are the areas they really, really want us to focus on?

Also, one thing that I really want to reinforce is that we are not introducing this legislation, are not collecting this data, for the sake of data — because data has been collected; already, governments have a lot of data about the communities — but collecting this data to bring out the concrete changes, positive changes, that the communities have been waiting for, for years.

This is something…. As I said in the very beginning, communities have been advocating for this kind of legislation for a number of years. They have a lot of hope. We could see that hope on May 2, just before the Attorney General introduced this legislation — the hope that we saw around us. I really hope that we stay up to their hopes, right — the belief that they have put in us, the trust they have put in us and the hope they have from this legislation.

They achieved that, and that is not just by data collection. Data will tell us about the inequities, no question about it. But once the report comes out — and we are hoping for that data standards report to come out within the next year, in 2023 — I think that is another opportunity for the communities to take a look at that report and tell us.

I have used this word a lot of times. Governments don’t use this word, but I use this word, and I want to use it again. To make us accountable, to make governments accountable, to do the work, much-needed work — that is what they have been hoping for, what they have been asking for and what they deserve.

That is what this legislation is about. It is about them. It is for keeping them front and centre, and it is for their benefit. They have been left behind for far too long. It’s high time that we bring them into the centre of our legislation, into the centre of all the policy work that we do. That’s why it gives me so much pride, so much joy, to be talking about this legislation and the hope and the positivity that this legislation is going to bring in so many lives, so many people, who had so many hopes.

I see — I always call him brother, as well, so I’ll call him again, brother — the member for Delta North, who started this work before me. I really want to acknowledge his contributions also and the pride that I see on his face and the joy on his face. He has been advocating for this work also.

To all members of this chamber who have been strong advocates, who have brought the voices of their communities to this Legislature: this legislation is for all of us who are sitting here. It is for all British Columbians, and it is a positive first step towards creating an anti-racist British Columbia.

M. Lee: I would just like to first acknowledge the work of the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism and my colleague across the way, who she recognized as well — who is enthusiastically trying to join this debate — the member for Delta North.

[4:25 p.m.]

I certainly want to acknowledge, as well, the significant work that’s been done to bring this bill forward to this Legislative Assembly — the level of consultation and involvement that the parliamentary secretary has been involved in and shepherding along. It is an important piece of legislation, one that, certainly, I join my colleague, the member from Richmond North, in supporting.

Certainly, in terms of the importance of expanding the ability of public bodies to collect personal information for the purpose of identifying and eliminating systemic racism and advancing racial equity…. That is the primary purpose of this legislation, to be done on a voluntary basis and certainly not done in a way that that would limit an individual’s right to receive benefits or services from our government. Certainly, that is not the intention as well.

As we have noted through the course of this debate at second reading, we continue to see the need for this tool for public bodies to collect this level of information, which is personal to an individual’s identity, whether you are a racialized individual or someone who is an Indigenous person in this province.

We all encounter, and we continue to encounter, levels of prejudice and discrimination and sometimes violence in this province. We will have continued days to recognize, for example, Indigenous women and girls who have been murdered in history, whether it’s on the Highway of Tears or in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. But we see, of course, the importance in terms of this pandemic, which has revealed the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on racialized members of our province — and the importance of data collection.

The reference to the report In Plain Sight…. It’s a significant report. It’s a significant body of work that went through a lot of data to demonstrate the impact of discrimination and racism in our health care sector in relation to Indigenous peoples. We’ve seen, as well, reports by this government in terms of A Path Forward: Priorities and Early Strategies for B.C., which also referred to the importance of introducing legislation that would help reduce systemic discrimination and pave the way for race-based data collection, which is essential to modernizing sectors like policing, health care and education.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

The parliamentary secretary also referred to the work by the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. I certainly would note that as we proceed with consideration of this bill, there is a recognition, as well, by the Human Rights Commissioner of our province. There was a statement made relating to immediately targeted opportunities — that when we talk about In Plain Sight, when we talk about the work that has been done by other public bodies in this province, clearly, there is a recognition that public bodies need to do better.

There are recommendations that are set out in many of these reports as to how to proceed with that — that we should not be caught up with too much of a focus on research that could potentially stall actions that can save lives in communities, where communities have already identified their clear and present dangers and solutions. That is the wording from the report from the Human Rights Commissioner.

As was acknowledged by the member for Saanich North and the Islands, there is a history, of course, and a recognition that in the past, there were uses of data and information of this nature that has been used in this country in a way that is prejudicial and oppressive to members of the LGBTQ2S+ community in the ’50s and the ’60s. Japanese British Columbians were also identified and forcibly removed from their properties during the internment in the Second World War.

[4:30 p.m.]

Myself, of Chinese descent, I certainly appreciate the history of our country, in a different form of systemic racism, in terms of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Chinese head tax. I worked on that, personally, as a university student, to seek redress for that.

This sort of race-based data collection does have some risks involved. I do appreciate that the bill itself is very mindful of that.

We know and understand the important principle behind the bill. That is to enable this sort of collection of data, which will be helpful to public bodies to deal with any elements of systemic racism or discrimination in terms of how British Columbians are being treated or dealt with. We also know that there are appropriate protections, which we will consider at the committee stage, in terms of the nature of the bill.

There are risks involved when you’re looking at this sort of collection of data. Again, the Human Rights Commissioner did note that, and also the parliamentary secretary, in terms of repeated requests for information from individuals, when there is a potential misrepresentation of the data that’s been provided. Perhaps there can be a use that might be undermining community initiatives by data that is shared here. He even says: conducting research that has no relevance to community members.

I do appreciate that the purpose and the reason for the level of involvement, both in the consultation to bring this bill forward and then the bill itself, to call for some advisory committee which is representative of some sort of members who are of racialized communities, Indigenous persons, individuals who have anti-racism expertise, individuals who have data expertise…. One committee cannot do it all. It’s only an 11-member committee, but I appreciate that there is, for example, that element as well as other elements for Indigenous peoples.

Let me come back to a statement that was made by the member for Saanich North and the Islands. I caught part of it. What I took from his comment was a concern as to free, prior and informed consent.

We know that under UNDRIP, article 19: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

I think the point that was made by the member for Saanich North and the Islands is…. There’s been free and prior information about this bill. Has there been consent?

I think this is an important consideration as we go through. I do know, as the critic for Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation…. My understanding from the briefings that I have been given the opportunity to receive…. This legislation certainly is a first example of the co-development approach that is being taken with First Nations leadership in our province to ensure that legislation that is brought forward is done in a manner which is not only consistent with the articles of UNDRIP but is also done in a way that is culturally appropriate and appropriate to the interests and the concerns of Indigenous leaders and First Nations.

I think the consent part is, perhaps, something that is ongoing. In this bill, we have mechanisms around consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples as to the data standard as well as a recognition that, in terms of the data directive, there would also be that level of involvement. So there is ongoing involvement and, arguably, consent to how this bill will be implemented.

[4:35 p.m.]

It’s the understanding of the terms in the bill that we will be looking to explore at committee stage. Certainly, in terms of elements around what it means to ensure that there is culturally safe collection, use and disclosure of personal information, that it’s done in a way that, in terms of recognition of community harm, in terms of Indigenous communities, and also understanding what values and variables will be applied to determining the data framework that is being employed under this bill….

I also recognize that in looking at the importance of the trust relationship that is embedded in the Human Rights Commissioner’s report, The Grandmother Perspective, that trust relationship is, first and foremost, very important. As you are sharing your personal data with government, a public body, you need to have that trust relationship.

The mechanism that is being put forward by this government in this bill is something that we will want to explore at committee stage in terms of having the level of certainty and clarity to ensure that there are appropriate protections as to the collection and the use of this data. I noted some of the risks that have been noted by others and will certainly want to ensure that this bill has the appropriate protections for all British Columbians.

There is some language in this bill that I think bears some reflection. I mentioned a few terms as to what needs clarity. There’s language which is unusual language for legislation that we will explore at the committee stage. The use of the word “told,” I think, is fairly informal language. So we see examples of wording in this bill that is fairly loose in construction. We’ll want to explore what that is.

Certainly, we see, as we’ve seen in other pieces of legislation coming forward to this Legislative Assembly, a significant reliance on regulation. We see that under section 6 of the bill. We’ll want to explore what that is and how that will proceed in terms of getting a good understanding as to the level of authority that is being provided and not defined in this bill.

Certainly, the parliamentary secretary mentioned the importance of the distinctions-based approach. That is an important principle that’s in the DRIPA Action Plan and a recognition that Indigenous communities will have the opportunity to consider how this data tool would be utilized and how it might affect their individual community.

I know that we’ve seen statistics in this province that demonstrate that Indigenous peoples in British Columbia face perpetual disparity in outcomes. For example, the completion rate in B.C.’s public school system was 90 percent in 2020-2021, but that number falls to 72 percent among Indigenous learners. This is a particularly signifi­cant drop from the average and identifies how our school system does not equally provide the same opportunity for Indigenous students.

Further, despite making up only 6 percent of B.C.’s population, Indigenous people represent 45 percent of children in care and 35 percent of adults in custody. This is another concerning aspect in terms of how Indigenous peoples are dealt with, either in incarceration or in the province’s care. This demonstrates, of course….

We do have statistics. We have statistics that demonstrate the areas that government needs to focus on. These areas, of course, are also highlighted in the DRIPA Action Plan and, for example, have been highlighted in the Attorney General’s mandate letter from the Premier for the last five years. That is to reduce the percentage of incarcerated Indigenous peoples.

[4:40 p.m.]

We know that public bodies, under section 26 and 27 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, do have the opportunity to implement programs that demonstrate diversity and inclusivity, as do private sector organizations under the same act, and that the opportunity is to ensure this level of data collection is being put to good use.

This legislation is being brought forward, presumably as a precursor to what we’re going to see from this government, which is the framework. I know that, in this House, I have spoken to the importance…. My personal hope is that as we look at framework around anti-racism and discrimination, with the level of anti-Semitism, for example, we’ve seen — anti-Semitic attacks, vandalism, threats, incidents, including in my riding of Vancouver-Langara — that British Columbia will follow the lead of the federal government and adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. This is an example of the level of moving forward that I would like to see from this government.

Data is important, no doubt. But there are instruments, and there are further frameworks that have been adopted in other parts of the world and in this country that I believe B.C. needs to follow. We see that in the aspect…. As I mentioned and have spoken to recently on the Holocaust Memorial Day, we’ve seen such an increase, an 110 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in B.C. in 2021. Violent incidents have risen nationally by 700 percent.

Of course, through the pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of anti-Asian sentiment. We’ve seen the Vancouver police department report a more than 700 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in Vancouver in 2020.

We know there have been other community organizations, including in the Chinese-Canadian community, that have helped and assisted to ensure that there are increased levels of reporting, because we know that so much of discriminatory and hate incidents go underreported. This is a matter that all members in this House have noted in the past, in various speeches. We know that there are other mechanisms to ensure that that doesn’t continue, with the good work of the Vancouver police department, supported by other community organizations.

As we look at the particular action item in the DRIPA action plan, section 3.14, it states that we need to “advance the collection and use of disaggregated demographic data, guided by a distinctions-based approach to Indigenous data sovereignty and self-determination, including supporting the establishment of a First Nations–governed and mandated regional data governance centre in alignment with the First Nations data governance strategy.” This is a responsibility of the Minister of Citizens’ Services.

Certainly, with this bill coming forward, as led by the Attorney General and the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism, at the committee stage, we will want to have the opportunity to further review how this particular bill will meet that requirement under the DRIPA action plan.

It’s a five-year action plan; I understand. But in terms of understanding how the distinction-based approach will be utilized to Indigenous data sovereignty and self-determination…. These are significant concepts and principles that are spelled out in the DRIPA action plan. We’ll want to have a better understanding as to how this bill gets us further towards implementation of that particular action.

With that, I look forward to the committee review of this bill, participating in that, and getting further clarity to ensure that there are the appropriate protections around the use and collection of people’s personal information, including those who are Indigenous peoples, for our province.

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. L. Beare: I am very pleased to stand today and speak to and support Bill 24.

I really want, first off, to begin by expressing my extreme proudness in support of the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives, the member for Surrey–Green Timbers. She’s done such amazing work to bring this legislation forward, and she was the right person at the right time to guide this effort. I can’t imagine a better person to bring this forward. I want to commend her and the Attorney General on the work they have done together.

I also actually want to take a moment and reflect back a bit, because back in 2017 when we formed government, we were fortunate to have, then, a Parliamentary Secretary for Sport and Multiculturalism, who happens to be sitting beside me as well, the member for Delta North. The work this member did to head up the formation of a new program to respond to the concerns of the community about incidents of hate and racism resulted in a new program here in B.C. called Resilience B.C.

Part of this work was convening round tables around the province to hear and better understand what Indigenous and Black and racialized people were experiencing in our province. It’s his amazing work in 2017 and 2018 that started and launched this. This is work that’s been going on for a long time in our government, and I’m just so happy that we’re here now to be having this conversation.

Congratulations to everyone who’s worked on this.

I do want to also acknowledge the courage and the determination of the people who participated in those engagements, who did call on our government to do better, because we listened. Through a great deal of collaboration then and through additional consultation and an amazing amount of work done now, we have reached this critical point together where our government is introducing legislation that will change the course of how we deliver services.

It’s a fundamental shift in the way government is going to serve British Columbians and provide the public sector with the tools that they need to deliver better programs and better services. This bill recognizes every person’s right to equitable, safe access to programs and the supports they need to succeed, and this legislation will enable us to better use the data that we already have and collect new data when it’s necessary.

More importantly, it’s going to help to ensure that the use of our data helps rather than harms racialized communities and Indigenous peoples. For too long, Indigenous, Black and racialized people have been negatively affected not just by systemic racism and racism in society but through our government programs, through our services. As a government, we need to do better, and that’s what we are doing. We know this legislation alone won’t end racism, but it is a critical step forward.

Now, I’ve had the honour to work closely with the fabulous Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initia­tives and the Attorney General on how government can safely collect and use data to identify and combat the systemic racism in our communities. In doing so, we’ve heard that this data is essential to build better programs for people in this province, but we also heard how communities must be part of the process if we want to build and maintain that trust.

Under the act, the province will work with Indigenous peoples and racialized communities to introduce ways to safely collect demographic information such as ethnic origin, ancestry, race, age and gender identity. In fact, this legislation is unique in Canada in the fact that it’s been co-developed with Indigenous partners and with extensive consultation with racialized communities.

We’re going to use the data to help to identify gaps in programs and services so that government can better meet the needs of people in this province. Importantly, the collection of this data will align with the goals that are outlined in DRIPA by taking a distinctions-based approach to data collection that’s in line with Indigenous peoples’ right to self-governance.

The act is going to require government to release statis­tics to support identifying and eliminating systemic racism that will result in advancing racial equality. This is a critical mechanism that ensures openness and transparency. Communities will know the results and will be able to have conversations and hold government accountable.

[4:50 p.m.]

We know that collecting demographic data is sensitive, and it must be done with great care. As the Minister of Citizens’ Services, I am committed to ensuring that people’s data is collected and stored with maximum protections in place so that people will have the confidence that their personal information will be safe.

This act also provides protections against community harms, which are crucial to building trust and advancing equity. The legislation will give communities and Indigenous peoples information they need for self-advocacy and for decision-making, moving forward. It will do this through the transparent release of information and through community involvement in setting research priorities. Data standards, data directives, research priorities — these are all going to be public. Special reports from the examiner and reports when the act itself is reviewed will also be made public.

What this legislation does is ensure we have the necessary information we need to do that identification of systemic racism and inequalities and to ensure that the work is done with Indigenous peoples and racialized communi­ties. While other jurisdictions have the authorities to collect this information, what we’ve done here is to ensure that we have both the authority and the trust to undertake this work.

I wholeheartedly support this legislation because it represents things that British Columbians want: safe and thoughtful use of demographic data to address systemic racism and to build a better, more inclusive province for everyone. This work is about honouring the contributions of British Columbians from all walks of life, learning from each other, celebrating our differences and making sure that our programs here in government and our services that we offer are making a positive difference in people’s lives.

We have more work to do to fight racism in our communities. This legislation is a good start, and I want to thank the member for bringing it forward.

Hon. R. Kahlon: It is a special day to be able to stand in the House and speak to this legislation.

I, too, want to start with some thank-yous. Of course, I want to thank the Minister of Citizens’ Services. I want to thank the Attorney General. In particular, I want to thank my little sister the member for Surrey–Green Timbers.

I’ll have a lot more to say about her amazing work in my comments as I move on. But I want to start by just saying that I want to acknowledge the struggles she has personally gone through to get a seat in this place. It would be too easy for many people to become successful in something and then forget those that are coming behind. She makes it a priority for herself to ensure that she uses the power she has to give other people power and give them opportuni­ties that she is so fortunate to have.

That work and that desire to make her community and B.C. a better place is reflected in this important piece of work that we’re debating today. I just want to say thank you. I want to say how incredibly proud I am of her for all of the work she has done.

I also do want to acknowledge…. I look in the chamber, and I see the members from all sides who have been passionate about this work. I see the member from Kootenay. When I was having debates or discussions, round tables, on racism, I remember he showed up.

I see my colleague from Vancouver who has been fighting the fight for creating a more equitable society, and I want to recognize her.

I want to recognize the thousands of people, the activists, who have actually made this happen. They are the ones who create the public space for us to be able to act. They are the ones who demand actions. They are the ones who have made the case publicly for why this is needed.

I was reflecting with many of them when they were here. Many of them are critics of government. It’s very hard for them to stand beside us to say positive things, but even they had to reflect at the moment and say: “This is a day we can celebrate, and we’ll be back tomorrow for something else.” I think that’s still an important thing that we should all recognize in this process.

[4:55 p.m.]

We launched an economic plan a few months ago, StrongerBC, and one of the key pillars of the economic plan was having inclusive growth in the province. What does that mean? What does inclusive growth mean? You know, when we talk about the pandemic and the impacts, we talk about the impacts that are being faced in our economy, in our society. Too often what we see are broad numbers and broad data. We assume that everybody is captured in that.

When we look at the pandemic and the saying that we’ve heard all too often — which is that we’re all in the same storm, but we’re all in different boats — I think it’s reflective of everything in our society. The way we report information, the way we collect information and then how we act on it cannot be done unless we have that detailed information.

There’s a saying of “What gets tracked gets done.” So that is why this work is so critically important. This is not something that is over there on the side. This is not a nice thing to do. This is not a social thing that sometimes lefties talk about. This is core to the economy. This is core to improving everything in our society. That’s why this is important. This is not just social; this is economic. And I wanted to make sure I started my comments by acknowl­edging that.

Getting here has been interesting. The Minister of Citizens’ Services sang some praises to me, but I want to put it right back to her, because as her parliamentary secretary at the time, her message to me was “You put your head down and make it happen,” and gave me a lot of space to be able to have these difficult conversations and bring some difficult things back. I’m just so grateful for that opportunity to have worked with her on this.

It’s important for us to acknowledge the pieces that we’ve been doing since we formed government. This is not just one thing that’s happened.

I’ll start with bringing back the Human Rights Commission. I’m not going to go into us coming in, bringing it in, then us losing government and then it being stripped away and the game that happens back and forth. But I will say that the process of bringing back the Human Rights Commissioner was really eye-opening. At the time, we were looking at: how do we have these conversations that are different than the way they normally happen? I was really proud of the process that we used in that engagement.

I was fortunate to travel through the province. As a new MLA, I wasn’t really ready for the conversation. I felt that I was ready because, you know, I’ve got some lived experiences, and I had a sense of what I thought was right. But as I travelled through the province and got into rooms, I realized I had a lot of learning to do. I had a lot of growing to do. That’s, I think, important for all of us to recognize — that the learning doesn’t end.

It’s a conversation I have with my colleagues who are not from BIPOC communities, which is: “Don’t be afraid to be part of this conversation. Get yourself in there.” Yes, we all are going to make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean we should be afraid of getting into that conversation.

During the human rights consultations, we heard from people in the Cariboo, where they were saying: “Well, you know, I’m Indigenous, and this is what happened to me when I went to access health care services.” Those stories were there. I heard from…. In fact, one of the first meetings I had, which was eye-opening for me, was where we had 12 Indigenous Elders. In the conversation, the first question was: “So you’re here to talk to us about our human rights?”

I realized after that first minute, that first conversation, that the next hour and a half was going to be a very challenging conversation. But it was insightful. It was important for us to hear that conversation because we were able to re-establish a Human Rights Commission, the only independent Human Rights Commission in all of North America. Collectively, every member of this House was able to bring that in.

We heard from Indigenous communities that if you wanted this body to truly represent us, they can’t be reporting to the Attorney General. They cannot be reporting to the Crown. The purse strings need to be taken away from those in power who might not like the answer.

It fills me with pride when I hear the member for Vancouver-Langara and the member for Surrey–Green Timbers and others talk about the Human Rights Commissioner and her reflections on this work. That is core to our institutions now.

[5:00 p.m.]

My hope is that governments in the future, regardless of political stripe, will realize that this should not ever be taken away from us. We need that independent social audit of society. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Yes, we will hear things in reports that will make us cringe, but it’s vitally important that we hear that important feedback. So I’m really proud of that. I wanted to say that that’s an instrumental piece.

Of course, I’m going to talk about UNDRIP. It is foundational to what we’re doing, and I will go into that if I have time, but I know that time is moving fast on me. The Minister of Citizens’ Services also mentioned the anti-racism conversations we are having throughout the province, and I want to recognize members from all sides that joined those conversations. In that, what we were trying to do was take the learnings from the engagement we did with the Human Rights Commission and improve it, make it better.

It was powerful. Powerful to go into communities and bring people together from all walks of life and have these conversations, but what we learned really quickly was two important lessons. Every conversation started the same way. “We have a wonderful community. We have good people. We take care of each other.” Everybody always wanted to start that way.

What we found in the conversations was those that have been facing the brunt of racism always felt like it was difficult for them to talk about racism, because right away, they didn’t want to be seen as the one saying something negative about their community, in particular in those communities that are smaller, because everybody knows everybody.

So often we would hear a conversation, and then, when the meeting would end, we’d have another conversation. Those that have faced racism, whether it’s seen or whether it’s systemic, would come and talk about it with me after. So that was an important lesson: that how you do this conversation, or how you have this conversation to get at the nuts and bolts…. It has to be done differently.

The other important piece that we heard in the conversations was that too often in those spaces, people from the Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities would have the pressure to have to relive their trauma so others could actually feel what they had felt. That’s unfair. That was an important lesson that we learned through that process.

What we also learned, which was really positive, and I’m so grateful for the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism to have launched the Anti-racism Network, was that in order to address racism — some people see it as just incidents, but systemic racism, stuff that doesn’t get seen but we know is there — is by building strength in the grass roots and by strengthening communities.

We cannot solve this by having legislation passed. It’s going to be communities. It’s going to be strengthening communities. That was the work that the parliamentary secretary launched and which was an important next step to get us here.

Before I talk about the pieces, I do want to say that this is a fundamental shift. This is a fundamental shift, moving away from what we see as multiculturalism to really getting into talking about anti-racism work.

It was too easy for elected officials from all stripes to go to a samosa party, to put on a turban at an event, to just go to a Bollywood event or a dance event and feel like that was it. It’s important. Arts and culture are important. But the hard work is this work here. This is the hard work. So this is a fundamental shift into some really, really difficult conversations that are too easy not to do, but very difficult to take on. So I wanted to commend my colleague for taking this on.

Now, I will say that this legislation…. What makes me really proud of this legislation, and the reason why I talked about the human rights consultation and the anti-racism consultation, is the fact that the parliamentary secretary, in this case, and the Attorney General took the learnings of that process and flipped it around.

This is a model of how engagement should happen for everything as we go forward. Take power from government, give it to communities and say: “You have your conversations. You tell us what needs to happen.” Empowering communities to have their own conversation, creating their own spaces for that conversation — that is just as powerful as the data and the legislation that’s coming in front of us.

[5:05 p.m.]

To co-develop it with Indigenous communities…. It’s the only legislation of its kind to be co-developed with Indigenous partners. That is powerful. That’s, I think, a reflection on how we’ve been learning in this journey and taking those learnings and putting them in place.

Now, some may wonder why this is important. I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s a fair question. I mean, if you have a personal experience, a lived experience, you might think: “Hey, I don’t think that there’s racism. People get along fairly well.” But we know it exists.

I have to say that even as a minister for the provincial government, I still, when I cross the border, feel fear deep inside me. Why? It’s because haven’t gone to the airport without getting a random search in a long time. In fact, I did, for the first time, as a minister because I had this green passport that said I was a government official, and they let me through. I remember calling my partner and saying: “You won’t believe what just happened. No questions.”

When you go through these experiences all the time, when you get randomly pulled over by police officers, inherently you think there’s something wrong with you, and you feel like you have to do something. So these are part of our system.

I have people come in from my community and from other communities that say: “Why is it that bylaw officers overwhelmingly show up at South Asian households?” Why is it that racialized communities feel like they’re being pulled over by police? Now, this is, right now, you could say, feelings, because we don’t have data. We have lived experience, but we don’t have the data.

As Dr. Francis put it yesterday…. It’s just burned into my mind — that this is about shining light into dark spaces. This is about shining light into dark spaces. This is about getting to those places, getting the data so that we can actually make the change that we need to make. I’ve highlighted the value of the process, and I’m just very impressed with the process. I’m impressed with the co-development process of it, and I’m excited about what the potential outcomes will be.

I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that this is going to be easy. There’s going to be…. When this data comes out and we start collecting it, and there are going to be reports, it’s going to be uncomfortable. We’re going to hear things. We’re going to get reports about things that we’ve always known are there, but now the data proves it. Then it’ll be our responsibility to take that action and fix those things. But you can’t do that unless you have the data. You can’t do that unless you’ve got the systems in place to capture that.

All of the members have talked about protection of the data and how we use the data, and I think that is fundamentally important. If we look at, let’s say, the history of Canada, we’ve had race identity data that we’ve used. We have seen around the world where it gets misused. Whether it was the fact that when a lot of Black settlers came from Oklahoma and other parts of the U.S. in the early 1900s and started farming in parts of Alberta…. That was used by the government at the time to change laws. They wouldn’t allow them to come anymore because they wanted to protect the country as they saw it should be, which was more European-based.

We saw that with Ukrainians in World War I, where it was used to put further restrictions on their movements. We saw that with the Japanese community, with the internment camps. I remember, with the human rights consultations, hearing from the Jewish community, who said: “Hey, listen, we think it’s important, but we fear it being used for wrong reasons, because we have seen that in history.” Not to mention Indigenous communities, who are talking about it themselves, saying: “Hey, we want to have a say over our data.”

I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the protections that are being put into place to allow communities to have a say in who uses it for what purpose, because it would be too easy for an institute to use data to harm communities — reharm communities. I think that protection is vitally important, and I wanted to acknowledge that important step that’s been built into this.

[5:10 p.m.]

Fundamentally, it’s about: “Nothing about us without us.” So this allows for communities to have a say about things that impact them. This is about empowering communities. I’m really proud of that.

Just to say that for the economy, this is going to be vitally important for us. This kind of data is going to help inform us, to ensure that people are getting good employment opportunities, that they’re getting a real chance to partici­pate in the economy, in the growth. Too often when the economy is growing, we say, “Hey, everything’s good,” but we don’t look at who is actually benefiting from that growth and who is being left behind from that growth.

We’ll be able to monitor labour mobility to see if people that are getting opportunities are still moving themselves up that ladder or if they’re stalled in specific places.

I think this is going to give us huge opportunities. I appreciate it’s going to take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. But I think I’ll end with this one comment, which is that I don’t think anyone should be under the impression that this, right here, is ending racism. This is an important step. It’s going to shine a light on challenges, and we have, collectively, to do more work to move that along.

I want to thank the parliamentary secretary again. I want to thank all my colleagues in this House who’ve been fighting the fight for this for a long, long, long time. It’s an important and historic moment.

As the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism said, this is a start. We have a lot of work to do.

Hon. N. Simons: I just want to take this opportunity to reflect on this historic day, in fact, and just be part of a number of voices who have spoken about their gratitude for the work that’s been done to achieve this. That gratitude has been directed and is deservedly directed at the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism, the member for Surrey–Green Timbers; the Minister of Citizens’ Services as well; the Attorney General; and the work that my friend from Delta has done on this subject.

I just think that this is an incredibly good reflection of the priorities of our government and of the people of the province. We are all interested in ensuring that we do what we can, not to just eliminate incidents of racism but the systemic racism that exists in our institutions.

It’s sometimes very difficult for us to acknowledge that systemic racism if our perspectives have never been close to understanding how that manifests itself. So I’m just grateful for the fact that this is not just a good reflection of important social goals, but it is good public policy. We will establish a way in which we can assess the information that we get from the communities to understand where needs need to be focused.

As the member prior to me speaking said, this will not eliminate racism, but to acknowledge and to understand its breadth and depth is a very important step in ensuring that we do everything we can to eliminate racism.

I believe very strongly in the importance of bringing communities together in all the different arenas that exist in our public space, in the arts and in the culture and in the sport. I hope that while we do this important work to quantify the prevalence of systemic racism, we also encourage communities’ togetherness, fellowship and cooperation in all ways. I know that these go hand in hand.

Our history demonstrates, and our apologies years later confirm, that in fact our systems have racist elements within them, not specifically about individuals but about the way that people are put through processes. I have worked in racialized communities and have seen firsthand the impact that that has on individuals.

Systemic racism can have very, very personal and specific impacts on individuals. I’m grateful for the work that’s been done to ensure the Indigenous voice, the importance of the Indigenous voices and other racialized communi­ties, in the establishment of this work and in the process of achieving the goals that we set for ourselves.

[5:15 p.m.]

I just want to acknowledge the hard work of my colleagues. I’m grateful for the support that I’ve heard from other sides of the House.

I do think that when we understand the importance of measuring, of collecting the data, and doing so in a very careful way, that we will…. We are all interested in the goals that that will achieve for us. The hard work is welcome work. When we’re all together, it makes it easier. So we’ll work together.

Again, acknowledging the passion and the commitment and the hard work of my colleague from Surrey–Green Timbers. I look forward to seeing the support of the whole House in the passage of this legislation.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the question is second reading of Bill 24, the Anti-Racism Data Act.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 24, Anti-Racism Data 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. R. Kahlon: I call continued second reading of Bill 10, Labour Relations Code Amendment Act.

BILL 10 — LABOUR RELATIONS CODE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

(continued)

T. Shypitka: I have the great honour in rising here today in continued debate on Bill 10, the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022. I’ve been listening to the debate off and on here for the last couple of days and trying to decipher how government is actually winning the debate on this one.

Full stop, this bill is politically motivated. I’ll explain why in my debate here. But let’s first maybe speak on the more obvious parts of this bill and just to the fundamental core of what we’re speaking about here with Bill 10.

It’s my opinion, and many others’…. I’ll describe a little bit later in debate whose other opinions this pertains to. It’s a large majority of the population; I’ll give you a hint there. But the secrecy of a person’s ballot is what is at stake here, and it’s an integral pillar of our democracy. We’ve heard many members on this side of the House and even members on the other side of the House say the same thing.

Whether we’re voting for elected officials — every single person in this room has gone through the process — or whether our elected representatives to join a union, intimidation and harassment are great allies for those with financial and political gain. That’s part of why we oppose this bill so much. This bill is an attempt to strip workers of their right to vote for their representation without intimidation or harassment. This bill is not about whether unions are supported but those in opposition, whether it’s the Greens or the B.C. Liberals.

We all support unions. I can tell you firsthand my own experiences with unions. I was a member of the Rock and Tunnel Workers Union back when I was about 17 or 18 years old. I worked at a mine up in Sparwood, just a labourer. It was a great job. Early hours didn’t give me much time for play. I mean, I was up…. Basically I had to leave from Cranbrook at 5 a.m. and get to work by about seven. We’d put in full 12-hour shifts, and I wouldn’t get home till late at night, nine o’clock. Just enough time to get a couple hours of shut-eye, and then back at it again.

It’s a hard life — some of the people. The unions have done a great job in supporting workers, bringing better conditions to workers, certainly addressing pay disparities. But it’s not just one or the other. There’s a good harmony between unionized work, organized labour, and those entities, corporations, employers that are not unionized.

I’ve had my share of both. I was a business owner pretty much my entire working life. I have employed, I would say, in the thousands of people. At one time, I had a workforce of about 80 or 90 people.

[5:20 p.m.]

I’ve owned several businesses, everything from bars, nightclubs, pubs, catering businesses — those kinds of things. Never was there a call to unionize, and never was there a need for me to prevent that from happening.

As an employer, I treated my employees, I think, pretty well. I was always flexible on their work schedules if something happened. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times, as an employer, I’d get the phone call that something had happened. They couldn’t make it to work, whether their car wouldn’t start or, unfortunately, maybe somebody passed away in their family, or they were sick.

I think as a responsible employer, you recognize those ups and downs as far as your employees are concerned. You realize that they have lives outside of your business, even though some business owners, and deservedly so, think that the whole world revolves around their business. It’s interesting being a business owner. There are no guarantees.

I really want to drive home how important it is to get the message across, I think, in this debate that this isn’t about union versus non-union. I think that I can speak for everybody on this side of the House. We understand the value of unionized and organized labour.

I wanted to talk a little bit, if I can just shoot off to the side a little bit, on the importance of unionized work — that pertains to my file as a critic for Energy and Mines and where I live in Kootenay East — not just unionized but also those corporations that are non-unionized. I happen to live in a pretty industrialized area of the province. There are many people in my riding, and myself personally, that have known people that have, unfortunately, died in mining accidents, and we’ve come a long way. We’ve come a long way in 135 years.

What is kind of striking is that yesterday — I was hoping that I was going to get up yesterday, because it would have been fitting for this debate — was 135 years to the day that the collier Number One Mine in Nanaimo had a horrific event happen. I believe that it was the second-worst mining disaster in Canadian history. It happened where 150 miners died due to an improperly placed explosive in that mine. That’s as much as they can gather.

So 150 people died 135 years ago in Nanaimo, and unfortunately, or tragically I guess, not all of them died due to just the explosion. A lot of them died due to asphyx­iation, poisonous gases. Without getting too graphic, many burned to death.

I’m highlighting this because it’s important to know how far we’ve come. Many of those workers, it was discovered, wrote their last farewell messages in the coal dust on their work shovels — tragic, tragic events. So if you were on Milton Street yesterday, at 1151 Milton Street, you would have seen a recognition for those workers that died.

I think it’s suiting to bring this up now too. We just had a National Day of Mourning here last Thursday, on April 28, for people that have died in the workplace. It’s really important to recognize.

Another anniversary is coming up on May 22, and this is in my riding. It was in 1902, an underground mining explosion once again, in Coal Creek. This was collier mines 2 and 3 in Fernie. My great-uncle actually worked in that mine. He didn’t die, but many did — 128 men. Some of them weren’t even men. Some of them were teenagers. There was an account of one person who was a 13-year-old boy who died. There was quite a story about that one. It shook the whole town, obviously, as it did in Nanaimo.

[5:25 p.m.]

Then the other one, which was the largest mining disaster in Canadian history, happened on June 19, 1914. That’s just a stone’s throw from where I live. It’s not in B.C. It’s in the Crowsnest Pass, which is just basically 20 minutes from Sparwood. That was 195 people who passed away from another explosion.

That came from a condition known as blackdamp, which is an asphyxiant. It’s a condition, I guess, you get in mine shafts and in deep underground mining where oxygen leaves the air supply. It’s replaced by other forms of poisonous gases — methane, carbon monoxide, those types of things — and it becomes explosive and vola­tile. That’s what happened at that mine in Crowsnest Pass. Blackdamp happened, and 195 people succumbed and died.

That was right around the time people started carrying canaries into coal mines — literally. That’s where the metaphor comes from: a canary in a coal mine, identifying something serious or something that could go wrong. It’s not even that long ago, actually — it was about 1986 — when the last canaries were removed from coal mines in Britain. There was a work order or some sort of legislation that removed canaries from coal mines in replacement of carbon monoxide–sensor equipment, things like that. We’ve come a long way in 100 years, 135 years in the case of Nanaimo. I’m happy to say that unions played a big part in that.

Not all accidents happen by explosion. There are also accidents that happen by landslides, floods, mine cage malfunctions, rockslides. In another situation, just outside the town of Frank, I believe it was about 1903, literally a whole mountain collapsed and devastated the whole city of Frank. Some account that to the mining operations that were happening in Turtle Mountain at the time. It wiped out 90 percent of the community.

We’ve got a history of WorkSafe issues in B.C. I just wanted to thank you for letting me go in that direction. It’s not speaking to the bill directly, but I think it’s important to recognize that members on this side of the House care about worker safety and realize the value that unions have. You know, when the member from Chilliwack mentioned or suggested that we didn’t care, it really hit me hard. I watched that on screen. Knowing people personally that died in mining accidents, I was actually a little appalled, a little upset. So I just wanted to clear the air on that one.

I also heard arguments in here — union versus non-union — that unions provide better pay, better benefits, better work conditions, and it’s just simply not the truth. Where I live, four of the largest mines in B.C. are in Sparwood. These are the metallurgical coal mines, the metal-making, steel-making coal mines that we have. If we want to move to a cleaner and greener economy, if we want to have electric vehicles and wind turbines and solar panels, we need metallurgical coal. So we’re proud of that.

Three of those mines are unionized, and one of those mines isn’t, and the disparity between pay and benefits is zero. It’s nil. I think that speaks to what I was speaking about earlier: the good synergy between unionized and non-unionized. When they go through these mines, when they go through collective bargaining agreements, the pay may increase, benefits may change. The non-unionized mine will follow suit, and also vice versa.

Like I alluded to earlier, employers know the value of a good worker. Especially today with the labour shortage that we have right now, workers come at a premium, and that’s great. If we can get the wages to reflect that, I’m all for it.

The bottom line, I guess, is that there are pros and cons to both union and non-union structures, but that’s not what’s being debated here. Bill 10 — this is where the politics comes in, I believe anyway; it’s my opinion — seeks to eliminate the secret ballot. Now, the first question I have for government or anybody on the other side of the House is: why now?

Why is this being put to legislation right now? Why are these changes happening now? Who is asking for it? What groups are asking for this change?

[5:30 p.m.]

I can tell you, for one…. Let’s narrow it down. I know who hasn’t been asking for it. I know government’s own expert panel hasn’t been asking for it. On August 31, 2018, a report was released entitled Recommendations for Amendments to the Labour Relations Code that suggested several changes to the code but did not include the elimination of the secret ballot, saying: “It is the most consistent with our democratic norms, protects the fundamental right of freedom of association and choice.”

Recommendation No. 5 in that report said: “The secret ballot vote be retained providing there are sufficient measures to ensure the exercise of employee choice is fully protected and fully remediated in the event of unlawful interference.” I agree with that recommendation, and I suggest if there is going to be….

There’s going to be tinkering either way, but if there’s evidence to prove that there is an unbalanced amount of — I don’t know what you call it — manipulation, I guess, of the system to force those that would want to unionize not to unionize, then I’d like to hear it. I think that would be wrong.

I’ll tell you another group that wasn’t. It’s not from the Minister of Labour, as well, if he’s sitting in the room. He said on March 19 that he was going to follow the advice of the recommendations.

It’s not from the political partners, the Greens, that shared a power-sharing agreement back in 2017, because on May 1, the Premier announced his intention to scrap the secret ballot. This is back before the report. At the time, the confidence and supply agreement partners, the Greens, said they would not support the removal of the secret ballot, so it’s not coming from the Green Party that these changes should be happening.

The government actually at that time tried to push through labour code amendments that would have taken away the secret ballot in the spring of 2019. They tried it two years later. However, the NDP, the government, again backed down, as the Greens signalled that they would not be supportive of this measure.

You can see it in the House through debate. We’ve seen members of the Green Party voice their concern over this bill. It’s not because this bill is coming about because of the status quo or the historical acceptable norm. What that’s been over the last 38 years is that a secret ballot has been in place for a large majority of that time, 30 of the 38 years.

The political norm across Canada is supported not only in B.C. but Alberta; Saskatchewan; Manitoba; Nova Scotia, I believe; Newfoundland; and I think some parts of Ontario. So it is the status quo; it’s not coming from other jurisdictions doing it. Most importantly, it’s not coming from the people of British Columbia. Recent polling suggests that about 80 percent of British Columbians support the secret ballot and only 9 percent support the card check.

I’ve always had a problem with the term “secret ballot.” It almost seems sinister, you know, when you keep something secret. Like the most secret government in Canada — it’s almost sinister. I would like to refer to it as a private ballot or a privacy ballot. That, to me, suggests that you’re doing something for your own privacy, something that only you should be available to.

So who is in favour? I just talked about who wasn’t in favour and a whole list of people here, including the people of British Columbia. Well, during the NDP’s last convention, it was signalled that there was an intention to eliminate the secret ballot by passing a resolution. It was to “call on the provincial government to amend the B.C. labour code to a single-step certification process where 50 percent plus one of workers in the proposed bargaining unit signing union cards shall constitute the threshold for unionization.”

The resolution…. The ones that wanted it were spoken to by executives of the NDP; MoveUP, which is a union; the New Westminster and District Labour Council; and the B.C. Building Trades. So you could argue maybe a bit of a conflict of interest there.

[5:35 p.m.]

According to StatsCan, the percentage of B.C. workers represented by a union fell from 35.1 percent in 2001 to a low of 29.1 percent in 2017 and 2018. As of 2021, the rate sits about 30 percent — so self-preservation, possibly, on the part of some of these people that passed the resolution at the NDP convention.

Statistically in B.C., about 85 percent of construction workers do not belong to an NDP-aligned building trades union, which is another amazing statistic.

This bill attempts to support those donors of this government. We all know. There’s no secret there. I think the largest donation in B.C. history came from a union and went to the NDP. So essentially, it’s a favour payoff.

I don’t really know why the association of unionized workers would even follow the NDP, to tell you the honest truth. When we look at some of the projects that are predominantly unionized, labour projects such as Trans Mountain, LNG Canada, mining — a lot of unionized workers there. With this government using every tool in the toolbox to shut down these large projects, you’ve got to wonder where the association is. So maybe this is gathering those folks back up again and saying: “Jeez, sorry about some of our policies and practices. Come back. We’re okay again.” One could argue that.

As I said, there was an expert panel struck in 2018. Their own expert panel recommended the government keep the secret ballot for union certification in 2018, which raises the question of who these changes really benefit. Furthermore, allowing for yearly union raids — that’s another part. It’s clause 1, I believe, in the bill.

That will add costs and delays to projects. We know that. We’ve seen that already. We’ve seen recent studies suggest about $4.8 billion in cost overruns from these collective or from these community benefits agreements — $4.8 billion. I can’t even fathom what that would do to a riding like mine and how much it would help.

The Pattullo Bridge, a $100 million overrun. Not only is it over cost, but the scope has been lessened. I think it went from an eight-lane bridge to an eight-lane bridge, not really accommodating for any expansion, or is it four-lane? I don’t know. I don’t live in the Lower Mainland.

Highway 1 near Chase — that was an overrun of about $61 million. Kicking Horse Canyon, the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke over there will be shocked to hear, is about $151 million overrun. Cowichan Hospital is about 23 percent over cost, even though government contests that it’s only about 7 percent. Even 7 percent on a project like that is big dollars, but 23 percent is where most reports land.

In short, nobody has really asked for this bill, other than those that financially benefit or power benefit. These collective changes only benefit NDP-aligned unions and insiders and not everyday British Columbians or the 70 percent of workers who have chosen not to join.

As I think I mentioned, clause 1 allows for union raiding in the construction industry between the months of July and August of every year, as opposed to every three years, as was previously allowed. For those that don’t know, union raiding is a practice of outside unions trying to take over the membership of an existing union.

Instead of that happening every three years in the two months, it’s going to happen every year. What’s that going to do to up-end progress and operations in a construction site or any other project? It’s going to add cost. It’s going to up-end families perhaps. People just can’t get to work. The shovels aren’t in the ground.

There are lots of things wrong with this bill. We’ll be looking to committee stage, for sure. Like I said, clause 1 identifies union raiding. Clause 3 clarifies the power of the board to determine an appropriate bargaining unit and if a worker is a member in good standing. That’s a concern.

[5:40 p.m.]

Clause 4 adds section 23 to the Labour Relations Code, which allows for union certification if at least 55 percent of employees sign a union card. Clause 5 allows for a union certification vote to occur only if between 45 percent and 55 percent of employees sign a union card. Clause 6 allows for a representation vote to be made at the request of a union even before the board determines an appropriate bargaining unit. Additionally, voting may occur while parties are giving evidence and making submissions — once again, back to the intimidation part of everything.

Another part of clause 6 is that provided 45 percent of employees sign a union card, the board may treat a vote as legitimate even if held before the determination of an appropriate bargaining unit. So there are many things of concern.

We’ll be looking forward to committee stage on this. With that, I thank you for giving me the time to speak to Bill 10.

D. Clovechok: I’m, as always, very proud to stand in this House to take my place in the second reading of Bill 10 and even more proud to represent the hard-working and freedom-loving people of Columbia River–Revelstoke, back home. I know that a few of them are watching today.

I’m going to reflect some of the words that my colleague had to say. I have several concerns about this bill as well. Let me start by saying that the narrative from the other side that has been building over the last week or so is to make this debate centre around the safety of workers and an imbalance of power. It just doesn’t resonate with me.

I think if this bill were about the work that unions do and the representation they provide for their members, this debate would have been over a long time ago, because — as my colleague just said — there’s no one on this side of the House that debates the effectiveness of unions and how they represent people. For me, this bill really represents retail politics, I think, at its very worst.

In my younger life — as many, like my colleague, also reflected — I was a member of a union — several unions. I found that as a younger man — I’ll talk a little bit more about some of those experiences later on — it represented my interests very well. As a young worker, I wasn’t really aware of all the things that went on and the push-pull between worker and employer.

I’ve also worked for private sector companies that didn’t have unionized workers. I guess I can honestly say that I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly on both sides. I’m going to refer to some of that a little later on as well. I’ve got to say that honestly, to me, this bill is a direct affront on the people’s freedom that is guaranteed by the constitution of Canada. It’s really, really nothing that I think is more than just a political ploy.

With that said, I think it’s important that I recognize — I truly believe this — that organizing around a common interest, which is workplace rights and freedoms and workplace safety, is a fundamental part of democracy. It has to happen.

I really wish that this government would take into account that they should no more try to take away the rights of the individual to collectively bargain than they should take away the rights to a secret ballot. Secret ballots are one of the fundamental premises of democracy and a democratic right of the individual, yet here we have Bill 10 in front of us — which, for me, strips away these freedoms.

For me, it’s hard to imagine that here we are in 2022 in British Columbia. We again look down that which is almost a tyrannical gun barrel of this NDP majority government, with their plan to take away the secret ballot and the rights of British Columbians and the rights of workers.

That doesn’t sit well with me. They know that they’re doing this, and they know that for the past few decades, the secret ballot for union certification votes has been law in British Columbia, which ensures that neither employers nor unions coerce or intimidate — those are a couple of really important words — when they’re deciding whether to join a union.

[5:45 p.m.]

I can remember, as a young guy, I was driving a flusher truck for the city of Calgary. I was on a night shift, and I was going to university. I had been on the job for probably about three weeks or four weeks. I was pretty proud of the fact that I’d got this big truck to drive, and it was pretty cool.

I was in the lunchroom, and there was this union voting thing coming up, which I didn’t really understand. I admit that. I was young, and who pays attention, right? I had this group of guys come up to me, in the lunchroom, who were full-time employees. I remember one guy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget him. He had arms bigger than my legs.

They said: “Hey, college boy. This is the way you’ve got to vote on this.” I, to this day, am not easily intimidated, but I was then. I said: “Oh, sure. Of course, that’s the way I’m going to vote.” I didn’t vote that way, but they never knew that I didn’t vote that way, because of the secret ballot. That’s the experience that I’ve had with it. Then again, I also had some great experiences with those same workers in the workplace. I did feel a little intimidated, and there was a bit of a movement, of course, in my vote.

If you look at it, overall, in this province, I think votes have been supervised by a neutral party — the Labour Relations Board. If an employer interferes in that process, unions automatically certify it, which is a strong protection against company intimidation. I think that’s a key word as well.

I think if you look at the overall experience that I’ve seen and the folks that I’ve talked to, especially in my riding — like the previous speaker, I’ve got unionized workers; I’ve got non-unionized workers — at the end of this long-standing democratic process, both workers and employers — and the union — know what the true desire of the worker is. They don’t know who voted for that way, but they do get that sense of what that is.

When I hear the government’s interpretation of protecting workers and their interpretation in this bill, I think it means that it makes it easier for unions to certify, and it’s not ensuring that employees don’t feel intimidated by that certification process. That’s how I see this. I think the secrecy of a person’s ballot, again, is an integral pillar of our democracy, whether we’re voting for our elected representatives or to join a union.

It’s been said in this House already. Each and every one of us — including you, Mr. Speaker — is here today because we had people vote us in, through a secret ballot process. It’s part of what people expect. It’s part of the democracy that we’ve all grown up with, learned about and live by, within those rules and regulations.

I kind of feel bad for some of the members, especially the new ones, across the aisle, because through the secret ballot process they, too, were elected. I think — when you have bills like this that really take away the rights and the freedoms of people — that through that same secret ballot, those members may not be here again. People don’t like having their freedoms and those choices taken away from them.

One of the things I also saw during my time in a union is that the organization’s efforts are sensitive. They’re sometimes hostile processes that can not only pit employer against employee, but employee against employee. That’s not right. That’s why it’s so important to maintain the confidentiality in the process. It’s unfortunately human nature. People hold grudges; they do. That can happen if you don’t vote in some way. I reflect back to that one vote that I did with the guy that had arms bigger than my legs. He wouldn’t have been happy if he had known that I had voted the way that I did.

I think one of the problems is that currently, from what I understand, the secret ballot is required if the 45 percent threshold is met. The problem is: with the plan change and the card signups themselves, again, it’s not confidential. It’s the confidentiality, I think, that’s the key there. There is no assurance that an employee’s vote is kept confidential if the 55 percent mark is reached at the card stage. That’s a problem. That is a significant problem.

I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been here for a while now. I kind of get how it all works. I’ve seen how this government truly has coveted this change in rules since it was a minority party in the coalition with the Greens. They pushed this bill, or something similar to it, and it was withdrawn because the green tail wouldn’t wag that orange dog.

[5:50 p.m.]

That was defeated and taken away — not defeated but certainly taken away. There was widespread opposition that really reflected that public opinion, in polling, doesn’t want this bill. As my colleague said just before me, I think this begs the question: why Bill 10? Was there a hue and cry from the masses that said: “We need this. We want this”? Was there a demand in change of the voting process from the workers themselves, who actually are going to be subject to this process? Well, the answer is no, there wasn’t. No, there was not.

It seems a little bit strange to me that when we’re coming out of a pandemic and this bill is introduced, the timing of it seems to be odd. It seems to be off a little bit. The reason I think that it’s off a little bit…. Affordability in this province has never been worse. Some of that is caused by the pandemic, no question about it. We’re still getting through it, and so on and so forth.

What I would think that this government would want to do…. Instead of trying to bolster and build on a bill that nobody really has asked for or wants, they should be focusing on affordability, like high gas prices, the soaring cost of housing, the lack of rental properties, the million people that don’t have a doctor, the crumbling medical system that we hear daily from nurses and even doctors, who are paying their wrath, and — God help us all — the record deaths for mental health and addictions. And the list goes on.

These should be the priorities, in my mind’s eye, of any government right now — not a bill like Bill 10. Yet here we are, defending freedoms of people and their rights. It just doesn’t, again, resonate with me.

I think that this bill is a bit of a sham. Those are hard words, but it’s the latest move from this government, I think, that tramples on people’s rights. It’s hollow legislation to me, in the sense that the legislation doesn’t define what it’s actually going to do. It’s left up to regulation. That’s a tendency that this government seems to have. They pass the bill, and then they do everything else through regulation, which is out of sight and mind of everybody else in this House, out of sight and mind of the opposition members, out of sight and mind of the public.

That’s a problem. I think what that shows is a blatant disregard for the fundamental rights of people, as it continues to strip away the measures that promote greater transparency and accountability. That’s what government needs to be — transparent and accountable. That’s not happening here, again, yet again.

It’s not just my thoughts. I read a quote here by Chris Gardner, the president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association: “In a shocking move ripped from the 1970s big labour playbook, the provincial government is now rolling out a card-check system that is notoriously open to manipulation and abuse. Using the blunt force of their majority government, the B.C. NDP will strip away the best protection from intimidation granted workers in the workplace — the secret ballot.”

For 30 of the last 38 years, the secret ballot has existed in this province and has successfully helped protect the privacy, the independence and the democratic rights of every worker to vote either for or against union representation without coercion, again, without intimidation or harassment. The secret ballot is the norm pretty much across this country — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and most industries in Ontario.

What this bill will do is make British Columbia an outlier, comparatively, to the rest of our country. That’s not acceptable to me. The secret ballot, if you poll workers, is strongly favoured by the majority of workers.

[5:55 p.m.]

You hire expert panels. I hate using that word “expert,” because it says that they know everything, so it’s a tough word. But the government’s own expert panel that they hired — it would be interesting to see what cost that was — recommended not scrapping the secret ballot. That recommendation…. We’ve heard this before in this House already. The 2018 Labour Relations Code Review Panel report cited: “The secret ballot vote be retained providing there are sufficient measures to ensure the exercise of employee choice is fully protected and fully remediated in the event of unlawful interference.”

I’ve heard members on the other side argue that that’s the reason why it needs to happen — that there aren’t sufficient measures associated with this. But they haven’t proved it. They haven’t provided any evidence that would suggest that. Again, no listening to those recommendations — the government has ignored it.

What about public consultation? You would think that something that affects workers and employers like this…. There were no public consultations with job creators, entrepreneurs, industry or business associations. Nobody received a call. No consultation, which has become, again, a hallmark pattern of, unfortunately, this government.

For me, it’s incredibly alarming that the NDP government thinks it’s okay to take away something so important and be so casual about it. “Oh, not a big deal. No worries.” Some would call that arrogance.

The legislative changes outlined in this bill will open workers up to pressure campaigns where they could be coerced or pressured into joining unions against their will. Why on earth would the NDP want to scrap the secret ballot when the majority of British Columbians support it? The Premier himself made it no secret that he intended to scrap the secret ballot for union certifi­cation and transition to card checks as soon as he had the opportunity to do so. You ask that big question: why? Well, it’s easy — his union pals, his 19 union cronies, as one of my colleagues called it.

Back in 2019, they tried to push this labour through again, through code amendments that would have taken away the secret ballot. They could not garner the support, again, from the Greens, so they dropped it. But here we are with a majority now pushing through, that somebody — the majority of people in British Columbia, anyways — have chosen not to join a union. That’s about 70 percent of those people.

There are about 19 select unions that have traditionally held strong financial and political support of the NDP. Yet we’ve seen the numbers of these union members shrink over the past 20 years.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

I do want to highlight, as my colleague before me did, that let’s not forget: when you talk about big money, the NDP received the largest donation in political history from the United Steelworkers in 2017, $672,576 — big money. Those are the folks that this bill is going to be pandering to.

As of 2021, the current rate of unionization amongst B.C. workers sits at about 30 percent, while an overwhelming number, 85 percent of construction workers, do not belong to an NDP-aligned trade union. I want to read you another quote here from Chris Gardner about that.

“Of B.C.’s nearly 250,000 construction workers, more than 85 percent of them are not members of traditional building trade unions. The percentage of unionized workers has been slipping for decades as workers embrace the opportunity for more flexible work arrangements and reject the rules and bureaucracy of a more confrontational approach to the workplace.”

He goes on to say:

“As we hopefully put COVID-19 behind us, one of the most important lessons we have learned about today’s modern economy during the pandemic is that workers want greater choice and fairness. And because of the worst shortage of people our economy has ever experienced in generations, the opportunities for workers are endless, and wages and benefits have never been better, and they are going higher.

[6:00 p.m.]

“Killing the secret ballot is out of step with the new reality. The B.C. NDP government talks a big game about an open democratic workplace on the one hand, yet on the other hand, they are taking the secret ballot away from the worker. Someone in Victoria did not get the memo that unionization is a workers’ choice and not something dictated by government, unions or employers.”

Nineteen select unions are driving this.

Then there’s the thing about union raiding. I find that very interesting. I, too, as has the past speaker, have been an employer as well. I never had anyone come to me looking to unionize, and we thought we treated our employees with respect and became more like a big family. We were very successful in doing what we did, and we never had any problem.

This union raiding…. It’s not just about the elimination of the secret ballot component of this bill that will have consequences for British Columbians. Clause 1 in this legislation will allow raiding, union raiding, to take place in the construction industry between the months of July and August of every year, as opposed to every three years, as was previously allowed.

It’s obviously no coincidence that the practice will now be allowed to take place annually during the busiest construction period of the year, which is in the summer. Once again, this decision goes directly against the recommendations of this government’s own 2018 panel.

While government claims that this is simply to appease workers who may be unhappy with their current union, the union raiding clause will undoubtedly serve as another tool for this government and their labour insiders to pressure more workers and create chaos and uncertainty on jobsites. It’s going to happen. There’s no question about it, and it threatens to create instability and disruption in the construction industry.

If you look at some of the impacts that this legislation will have…. Just around housing, for example, only a small fraction of the 114,000 housing units have even come close to being created. My colleague also talked about the community benefits agreement, which, again, favours the handpicked 19 unions. They’re already driving the cost of public infrastructure projects by hundreds of millions of dollars. Those are taxpayers’ dollars. They’re not government dollars. Those are taxpayer dollars.

The CBA…. It’s estimated about $4.8 billion more to the cost of public infrastructure projects. Where I live, in Columbia River–Revelstoke, there’s the expansion of the Trans-Canada Highway, thank goodness. It is, unfortunately, closed right now and rerouting, which is another issue. But about $151 million extra — $151 million. Can you imagine how many houses $151 million could possibly build? That’s a lot of houses, a lot of affordable housing for folks who don’t have it right now.

The CBA requirements to have employees join only the Premier’s handpicked unions for major construction projects are all part of the NDP’s plan to increase the unionization of the construction sector when the construction sector doesn’t want to be unionized.

Cowichan Lake hospital — CBA agreements there. The December 28 Infrastructure B.C. report assessed that the CBA agreement will increase construction, reserve and contingency costs by $174.3 million. That’s 24 percent for this project alone. There are countless other examples of where these CBA agreements apply.

Again, when our province is facing a housing crisis, affordability crisis, they’re going to drive up the costs yet again. I guess, for me, what we have before us is a bill that’s not being tabled to better serve the workers in British Columbia. This isn’t about workers. It’s about appeasing union pals, the vast majority who choose not to be part of the union but rather to serve the interests of this government along with the political backers and insiders. That’s just fundamentally wrong.

It’s a bill that can worsen the housing and affordability crisis we already find ourselves in at a time when British Columbians are already finding it next to impossible to own their own home and live within their means. People are hundreds of dollars away from insolvency, and we’re talking about Bill 10.

[6:05 p.m.]

For most of us, this bill serves as this government’s latest step, I believe, to erode democracy, expand government control and power — and when you talk about government control and power, you’re talking about tyranny — and remove government accountability.

The most secretive government in Canada, as labeled by the media, is again being secretive, non-transparent and eroding democracy right in front of our eyes. I think it’s incredibly hypocritical for this most secretive government in the country to remove people’s rights to a secret ballot. It’s almost as if the NDP expects full transparency from everyone but themselves.

As my colleague said, we have many concerns with this bill, and we’re going to look forward to the committee stage of this bill.

I want to end by saying that I started this speech by talking about freedom. Freedom is being challenged by this bill. Workers’ freedoms. The freedoms of British Columbians. What’s next? What’s next that’s going to be legislated? You can’t take away some freedoms and keep the others.

I want to end with some thoughts, again…. I think that this bill is an affront on freedom. I obviously won’t support it. I want to leave you with this to think about, a quote from President Ronald Reagan.

“Freedom is indivisible. There is no ‘s’ on the end of it. You can erode freedom, diminish it, but you cannot divide it and choose to keep some freedoms while giving up on others.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.”

Today we stand here fighting for freedom of workers and their right to choose a secret ballot.

I. Paton: I rise today to speak to Bill 10, the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022.

I was compelled to speak to this particular piece of legislation because it is deeply troubling to me. It’s troubling for the fact that…. Over the years, I’ve belonged to so many clubs, so many societies, so many institutes. I’ve been on boards. I’ve been on sporting teams. I’ve never once had one of these institutions or boards or societies that I belong to that didn’t have a secret ballot as part of dealing with the people we deal with to elect to different levels of government within these groups that I’ve belonged to.

It would impact what I believe is an integral pillar of our democracy — the secret ballot. Whether it is voting for your elected representative or voting for things like unionization, the secret ballot helps keep the process democratic. But through this bill, the government wants to do away with its unionization votes. And I have to say I just don’t understand this government’s insistence on trampling on people’s rights. We’re seeing many examples of it, and it’s really becoming a pattern that we’re seeing here.

You think back to Bill 22, and this government’s drive to put up barriers to people’s right to information, charging a fee for people to access information that they deserve, or the many examples of legislation they’ve brought forward. Very light bills that contain very few details, only because they want to make changes in regulation at a later date, with no opportunity for debate in this House or for public consultation. This is shameful.

This government continues to strip away measures that promote greater transparency and accountability. In this case, they are intent on scrapping the secret ballot, which has existed for 30 of the last 38 years, helping to protect the privacy, independence and democratic right of every worker to vote either for or against union representation and to do so without coercion, intimidation or harassment. It’s something that is strongly favoured by the majority of B.C. workers, and it’s something that this government’s own expert panel recommended not doing away with.

[6:10 p.m.]

The conclusion by the Labour Relations Code Review Panel in August of 2018 was that “the secret ballot vote…is the most consistent with our democratic norms, protects the fundamental right of freedom of association and choice and is preferred.” It’s also the norm in most of the country, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and most industries in Ontario. Considering all of this, what is this government’s motive to get rid of it anyway?

Over the years, the Premier has made it no secret that he planned to do this at the next available opportunity. Many of the major unions which have been his strong political and financial supporters have seen their memberships slowly drop over the last couple of decades. Let’s not forget who received the largest donation, of $672,576, in B.C.’s political history from the United Steelworkers union before the 2017 election. I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t our party. It was the NDP.

Because these unions have been pressuring government to bring in a way to recruit members more efficiently, Bill 10 will ensure union organizers won’t face restrictions as to where, when and how often they can approach workers and pressure them to support unionization. They could even collect signatures in social settings and in the presence of other coworkers.

What’s more, Bill 10 will also allow union raiding in the construction industry every summer, meaning unions can entice workers to switch unions in the middle of the busiest part of the construction season. This is another move that goes against the recommendations of the government’s own 2018 expert panel. While the government will say that this is simply to appease workers who may be unhappy with their current union, it’s really another tool for this government and its labour insiders to pressure more workers and create instability and uncertainty on job sites.

I should also point out that British Columbians currently find themselves in the midst of an ongoing housing and affordability crisis. The changes brought about by this bill could also drive costs up and further delay vital commercial, residential and infrastructure projects. That’s the last thing our province needs right now.

We’ve already seen how this government’s policies have driven up costs. Let’s look at the community benefit agreement, or CBAs, which would add as much as $4.8 billion to the cost of public infrastructure projects in this province. The December 28 infrastructure B.C. report assessed the CBA arrangement will increase construction, reserve and contingency costs by $174 million, or 24 percent, for the recently announced Cowichan Lake hospital alone.

There are a number of other examples of the negative impacts of CBAs for taxpayers. There are construction projects along the Trans-Canada Highway that are going down in scale but significantly up in cost. The CBAs requirement to have employees join only the Premier’s hand-picked unions for major construction projects is all part of this government’s plan to increase the unionization of the construction sector.

While this government will claim these moves are intended to better serve workers in B.C., we know that they’re actually intended to benefit this government and its political friends. It will expand government control, and “at what cost to British Columbians?” I ask. Our citizens will see further erosion of democracy and the continued stripping away of government accountability. The secret ballot is a fundamental right, and it’s incredibly disappointing to see this government take that right away from people.

It’s not something that the majority of workers want or asked for. We know that a recent poll indicated that 79 percent of the British Columbians opposed doing away with the secret ballot and only 9 percent support card checks. This government cannot ignore popular opinion. Doing so, and moving forward with this legislation, continues a major step backwards for our province.

It’s particularly galling because this same government which wants to get rid of the right to a secret ballot for workers has a reputation of being the most secretive government in this country. The Code of Silence Award was handed to the government by the Canadian Association of Journalists. It’s hardly an honour worth bragging about. According to the association, the B.C. government was selected as the winner “for its efforts to materially harm the public’s right to information through new legislation. On October 18, 2021,” the Premier of this government introduced Bill 22, an act “to amend B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.”

The most secretive government in Canada thinks it’s okay to take away workers’ right to privacy when it comes to voting for unionization. It certainly sounds like there is one set of rules for the government and another set of rules for everyone else.

[6:15 p.m.]

This government expects full transparency from these workers, who are being stripped of their right to privacy, but gives itself a pass on being fully transparent with the public. I say that this government has not been fully transparent about Bill 10, and it’s not just me saying that.

A collection of business groups actually joined forces to write a letter to the Premier outlining their concerns. Those groups include the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the Surrey Board of Trade and the Business Council of B.C., among many others.

The first paragraph of their joint letter reads: “On behalf of 23 organizations and our collective membership, we write to express our dismay with the changes your government has proposed to the certification provisions of the Labour Relations Code. These changes will have economic repercussions across the province as business works to recover from the impacts of COVID-19. They will also needlessly destabilize the labour relations balance in British Columbia.”

They go on to note how, once again, this government has failed to properly consult with stakeholders and those who will be affected by the changes. They say: “Regrettably, this is not the first time that members of the business community have expressed frustration about how the consultations are conducted on employment legislation. It is now a pattern that is extremely concerning, especially given your instructions in the minister’s mandate letter to consult widely in advance of making changes to workplace legislation.”

It’s a fair point. That was a commitment by the Premier himself, laid out in a mandate letter to the minister, that has seemingly been forgotten about or ignored. Does that surprise anyone here? Probably not. This government doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to consultation.

They surprised parents of children with autism and other support needs with the removal of individualized funding, with plans to replace it with a hub model instead. They triggered massive panic and outrage for those families because they didn’t properly consult with them ahead of their proposed changes. Families who have gone to great lengths to seek out and choose care providers and specialists are now having their worlds turned upside down all because of this government-knows-best attitude.

Here’s another example, since I’m the opposition critic for Agriculture. Remember a few years ago when the government failed to undertake the appropriate amount of consultation the industry deserved with regard to controversial Bill 15 and Bill 52, the bills that stripped farmers of their rights and gave the government more control over agricultural land and the livelihood of those who work on it?

I remember it very clearly, because I still hear about it today — the needless chaos and frustration people felt when the government forged ahead with these bills without talking to farmers and landowners in this province. The government even had to backtrack and ease some of the restrictions on secondary homes and suites on the ALR, because it thought it knew best and was certainly proved wrong.

Today once again, we see groups caught off guard by the government’s decisions, in this case with regard to this piece of legislation before us. It’s disappointing. To move forward with significant changes without the appropriate consultation effort is just wrong.

The joint industry letter to the Premier also says: “The secret ballot is a fundamental component of our democratic system and a standard that should apply in workplaces, just as it does in other facets of public life. Workers in British Columbia have a right to join a union, and our organizations believe in and respect the collective bargaining process. Workers also have the right to make a decision in a manner that is free from influence. The secret ballot is essential to protecting that right.”

Again, some excellent points made by the representa­tives of the 23 organizations.

The parties conclude their letter by saying: “At a time when the government is seeking to create a more inclusive economy, implementing changes as proposed in Bill 10 will foster divisiveness within the workplace at a time when we all need to be focusing on recovery and growing our economy for the benefit of all British Columbians. We call on the government to withdraw Bill 10 and to undertake proper consultations with stakeholders.”

Certainly sounds like good advice to me.

[6:20 p.m.]

Meanwhile, another organization is calling for the same thing. The Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters have also gone public, calling for the government to withdraw this bill. Andrew Wynn-Williams, divisional vice-presi­dent for CME B.C., says: “A secret ballot vote confirms a worker’s real opinion about joining a union. If they have all felt intimidated either deliberately or even through unconscious peer pressure into making the decision, then the secret ballot is where they can feel safe expressing their true opinion.”

Mr. Wynn-Williams goes on to say: “Our society has long recognized that a secret ballot is fundamental to any democratic process. Removing it undermines the freedom to make your own decision without feeling like someone is looking over your shoulder and judging that decision.”

There you have it. Multiple organizations, two dozen in total, just in the examples I’ve given that want this bill scrapped.

This government seems to have done things in the wrong order once again. It needs to talk to people, listen to people, carefully consider their input before making decisions and moving forward with legislation that directly impacts them. Instead, we continue to see this government insist on ramming through legislation without those types of discussions and without the proper sharing of information — without the opportunity for people to be heard.

No wonder people get so angry. Over and over again, they are caught off guard by this government’s decisions and the potential impact they could have on them. This government seems intent on making decisions behind closed doors and blocking people’s rights to information about those decisions. Putting up the barriers that don’t need to be there has become a pattern, and it’s wrong.

I look at the list of different uses of secret ballots even by the national NDP party with the NDP constitution in mind. I start by seeing No. 1: “The leader shall be elected by secret ballot.” It goes on to talk about other elected positions within the NDP party. The party president shall be elected by secret ballot; the treasurer; the regional representatives of the party executive; a northern caucus representative of the party executive; the chairs of the participation of women committee; the New Democratic Youth of Canada; the racial justice and equity committee; the Aboriginal commission; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender committee; the persons living with disabilities committee; and the federal caucus representative. Those are all part of their secret ballot for voting.

Other secret ballot applications. We see it every day in our walks of life. Political parties. Internal positions such as president. Candidates during contested nominations. Party leaders. Municipally we see the mayor, the city council, the school boards, the park boards. These are all elected by secret ballot.

In daily life, we see, like I mentioned earlier, student councils, councils at universities, strata councils, elected directors under the Societies Act. Even our caucus chairs within our caucuses here in Victoria are elected by secret ballots. The 4-H clubs I belonged to were secret ballots. The class presidents that I belonged to in high school were all secret ballots. It’s everywhere in our walks of life.

In a bid to help employers feel heard on this issue, I went out and I spoke to some of them about this legislation and how they feel about it.

I’ll share what I heard from one employer in particular, because I think the members opposite need to hear it. This individual is from Delta, from my riding. The Delta business community has asked…. They’ve asked to remain anonymous, and I’ll respect this person’s right to privacy. Here’s what they had to say about this bill.

“As a business owner of a manufacturing company in Tilbury Industrial Park in Delta, I am strongly opposed to Bill 10, the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, that will strip away the secret ballot from workers looking to unionize.

“I believe that every group, including labour, have the right to express their opinions, but each individual has the right to choose without coercion, without peer pressure, without being blackballed in the workforce. We need to protect all workers’ rights, and the right to choose by secret ballot is a right that must remain in our labour code.

“In my SME manufacturing business, we had one union activist who was loud and intimidating. Most of the other workers were not willing to speak up against this person’s opinions because of fear of backlash in the workplace.

[6:25 p.m.]

“The company did an anonymous survey to see what the feeling of the group was regarding unionization, and the overwhelming majority were not in favour, yet none were willing to speak up publicly against this very intimidating person.

“Workplace culture is critical in this tough labour market. We spend a lot of time and money creating a great culture. Do not put in legislation that jeopardizes our culture and eliminates a basic human right — the right to choose.

“Please do not strip away secret ballots. Would the Legislature like to give up on secret ballots for the provincial election? Why do it in this workplace?”

End quote, from my business friend in Delta.

I’d like to thank this individual in my community for candidly sharing their opinion, their fear about the potential implications this legislation will have on their workplace and on its workers. I know this person is not alone in that fear. I suspect there will be many employers and many workers that members will be hearing from, as word gets out about this bill, who will hold the same concerns.

It’s my hope that the government will come to its senses and scrap this undemocratic legislation. Instead, it should continue to allow B.C. workers to keep their rights of privacy and choice in unionization. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s what workers deserve in this province.

Thank you for your time, hon. Speaker.

B. Stewart: It’s an honour to rise on Bill 10 today to talk about some of the things that my colleagues probably…. I’ve heard them talk a lot about some of their experiences in being involved in environments that are organized labour and the fact of how they valued certain things.

I can’t help but think about my friend from Columbia River–Revelstoke who talked about being intimidated as a student and being encouraged to support a particular line of thinking.

I think the member for Delta South just explained in the exact way the sense that the fact is that the secrecy, the sacrosanct importance of having secret ballots when it comes to the whole idea of making decisions in public, whether it’s deciding whether you vote for a certain individual in council, or an MLA or an MP. There’s no question that we’re….

I’m confused by this. I’m somebody that has never been a member of a union, not that I’ve ever been even approached. I have lots of employees. I know it’s one of the things that we’ve always tried to maintain — a degree of sensibility and making certain that we try do better than what we think the average is, making certain that people want to continue and continue to contribute to what we’re doing in our community and in our business.

I guess I’m confused by the fact that why it is that the government, after having a review panel that essentially dismissed this and said that they didn’t support the idea of a change…. But we also have public sentiment that says that 79 percent of British Columbians agree that a secret ballot vote should be required for unionizing a workplace.

I think that that goes back to the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke, in terms of the fact that he was being asked to do something, and he wanted to make his own decision. If there was a benefit to something that was being done for the workers, etc., by the card-check system, then I think it would have been in place. Of course, we’ve already heard the fact that in the last 38 years, 30 of those years have been through a secret ballot.

Many of the provinces in Canada have similar certification systems. I think that probably if there was a problem….

I go to the mandate letter of the minister back when he was first appointed as the minister. The Premier, in that mandate letter, made it clear that he wanted to make certain that British Columbia was competitive, that it had labour standards that were in sync with the rest of Canada and other provinces. I have no doubt that that’s probably what’s most important — what we should be aspiring to and what we should be trying to do here in terms of Bill 10. But I don’t think that’s the case.

[6:30 p.m.]

We have the majority of the population opposed to this. I haven’t heard anybody on the other side, although I have listened to some of the colleagues that I’ve worked with for many years here come up with reasons why this is important to them. Why is it so important?

I hear everything from employers that are maybe not as forthright, or maybe they’re bad employers, and I don’t support that. I think that there should be a way to make certain that the labour laws are evenly distributed, and they’re applied to everybody, whether they’re the best or the worst. The bottom line is that’s what we try to do with the labour code.

I don’t think that Bill 10 gets us to a better place than that. I think the fact that…. There was a commitment by the government, prior to the election, to certain groups of unions that they would do certain things. They’ve introduced the fact that there was going to be a community benefit agreement.

I read from some work that was done as this was coming into play about a secret ballot from the British Columbia Road Builders.

“On July 18, 2017, Premier Horgan presented a mandate letter to the Minister of Labour, Harry Bains, which, among other things, directed that he ensure British Columbians have the same rights and protections enjoyed by other Canadians by reviewing the Labour Relations Code to ensure workplaces support a growing and sustainable economy with fair laws for workers and businesses.”

I just mentioned that. I don’t think there is anything that these people are against in that.

“The British Columbia Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association is a non-profit membership organization representing approximately 260 businesses that are involved in asphalt, concrete manufacturing, grading, paving, utility construction, road and bridge-building and maintenance blasting and the supply of related goods and services to these industries.

“The construction sector in our membership build the infrastructure needed to make the economy competitive. The maintenance sector members maintain the critical transportation links in the province. Many provide road and bridge maintenance services on a contractual basis to the Ministry of Transportation. The service and supply members provide goods and services to the road building and heavy construction industry.

“Members of the B.C. Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association are also members of the Canadian Construction Association.”

They go on to talk about changes, the current labour code changes that were enacted. The last major changes were in 1992, which goes back to almost 40 years ago. “Labour relations in British Columbia have become more stable and predictable in those years prior to that revision, which has been punctuated by labour unrest and disruption of the economy.”

I can remember that growing up. I think it was about 1982 or ’84, and we were in the throes of a recession. We had like 100,000 people marching on parliament here. It was a very difficult time. It wasn’t an easy time for unionized or non-unionized people. It did require that there needed to be an equilibrium and a balance. I remember television coverage of Jack Munro, the head of the IWA, coming to the Premier and achieving a form of labour peace in the province that had not been achieved previously and trying to find the pathway so that people could work together.

Even in my role as the representative in Asia for trade, I know that the then Premier Christy Clark brought dozens of union leaders along with her to help promote LNG in British Columbia and the development of it. Through the jobs plan done by the current leader of the opposition, when she was Minister of Jobs, we created a plan that was inclusive. We needed everybody to do these projects. My goodness, we’ve only seen one of those projects proceed. We know that there are other opportunities provided that we can provide certainty and stability in terms of what it is that we’re trying to provide here. That’s the opportunity for everybody that’s working.

My goodness. The demand for labour on not just that one project that’s going ahead but the Coastal GasLink, Trans Mountain Pipe Line, Site C…. What if we had four or five of those other LNG projects? There would not be enough people in the province to build all of those. We desperately needed people from all of the unions that would help construct that.

[6:35 p.m.]

I have to say that it was good going into Beijing and many of the other markets, into Tokyo, to talk about it. The fact is that people like Tom Sigurdson and others from the B.C. Building Trades union…. He’s no longer there. He’s retired. The bottom line is that Tom and I and many others sat across the table talking to people where we wanted to export our goods and services, and that they were clearly…. We working together to help build an economy.

The economy has continued to grow. We’ve been very fortunate. I know the Minister of Jobs is sitting there, and he’s watching that marker of the graphs going up. Let’s hope it stays that way. If we do get an opportunity to have more LNG development, I can tell you all the reasons why LNG is good for planet Earth. Because of the fact of having lived 3½ years in Beijing, I can tell you that the air quality would be dramatically improved by LNG, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

We’re here to talk about Bill 10. The B.C. Road Builders go on to say:

“As is apparent from the background discussion above, it is our view that the labour code is functioning well. Collective bargaining disputes are being resolved without significant disruption to the economy, and the principle of democratic employee choice regarding trade union representation is respected and reflected well in the current provisions.

“Consequently, we submit that in large measure, the code should be left unchanged. There are several provisions or changes that likely fall on a wish list for some. We will address our views regarding why the review panel should not be tempted to feel the need to make change for the sake of change with respect to those issues. We have also proposed other modest revisions to the code.”

They’re listed in here. I want to go just to one of the items here about the requirements of Section 24 of the labour code:

“Requirement for a secret vote. As is the case in any process that produces winners and losers, it is imperative that the process not only be fair but that it is seen to be fair. If that is not the case, the loser will have reason to reject the validity of the outcome as a real reflection of reality and may look for ways to resist the outcome. This is true in spades when it comes to the certification of a group of employers.

“Many employers find it difficult to believe or accept that their employees have chosen to exercise their right” under the existing code “to be represented by a trade union. The current process, which requires a vote of the affected employees, has the positive effect of eliminating any doubt from a skeptical employer’s mind that the employees’ true wish is to have trade union representation. There is nothing more sobering to a doubtful employer than the ringing endorsement of a trade union, through a free and secret ballot vote. Employers faced with such an outcome have little option than to move forward and engage in collective bargaining.”

Those are just some of the comments from the B.C. Road Builders Association.

I think that probably I just want to touch on…. You know, I had a chance to look at the B.C. community benefits agreement online, which shows kind of what’s happening with the different trades. I think when I reflect on when the community benefits agreement was coming into this House, the whole notion of the community benefits agreement was that we were going to train people. We were going to get the people that were underrepresented in communities — First Nations, women, maybe disabled people.

The idea was that it was going to be an overwhelming benefit to these communities. I have no doubt that they’re working, but the fact is that this particular approach is essentially taking groups — in this particular case, the B.C. Building Trades — and having them be represented by a Crown agency where everybody applies, and they have to go through that.

Now, having some of the major road construction companies in my riding, I know I talked to them about the current 366-page document that’s there to tell them exactly how they should be dealing with what the rules are around the community benefits agreement.

[6:40 p.m.]

I do think that one of the things that the new Crown corporation, B.C. Infrastructure Benefits, is essentially a state-run organization that is employing people. I guess there’s no secret ballot to become that. You’re forced, if you want to work on those projects, to have to be a member. Of course, the employers have to be members as well.

I know that in talking to one of the roadbuilding contractors, they did have significant trouble having people that were in dangerous situations. Rock scaling — up 30 metres with an excavator. Pulling rocks down. Having somebody that may have never worked for them, although might be qualified, based on the application process through the B.C. Infrastructure Benefits online application…. They may be not particularly the safest operator or somebody that they know that they can trust.

Anyway, I do go back to the fact that this movement towards the idea that the government — the state — can monopolize labour by doing these things and helping move towards them. I’m a bit concerned, because I think when the community benefits agreement was being discussed initially, the whole idea was that we were going to increase apprenticeships. I haven’t seen that number lately. Maybe the minister can give us an update on that soon, because we know that there’s a labour shortage.

We know there are issues around apprentices in many different walks of life, and we actually do need that. I guess my observation is that moving to a secret ballot doesn’t necessarily improve the outcome of people getting apprenticeships or opportunities.

I know that when the government made its agreement with the Green Party to work together, one of the conditions was that they would not support the idea of labour code amendments that are being proposed today. It’s interesting that the government, back on April 30, 2019 — the minister standing there…. It says that the B.C. NDP keeps a secret ballot for union certifications.

Well, I guess if it was good enough for the Greens and the NDP to line up together, why would it be necessary today? What is imperative? What’s driving this, other than are there, perhaps, maybe outstanding obligations, promises, election promises? I don’t know. To be honest, we’ve already seen what the B.C. Infrastructure Benefits…. There are four projects currently in the province: the Pattullo Bridge; the widening of the Trans Canada Highway up through Rogers Pass; we have the Cowichan Hospital, which the member for Delta South mentioned, just in terms of some of the additional costs, etc.; and one other project that escapes my mind right at the present time.

I do think that one of the things we’re trying to do is make certain that we’re growing the capacity of what the labour supply is in the province. I don’t think that the secret ballot is going to change that or improve that one iota. So I go back to this release just from two years ago by the minister. I do have to wonder why it is that we would change in that short period of time. What’s the U-turn? What’s the reason?

Certainly, under the report to Minister Bains that came out on August 31, 2018…. The recommendation wasn’t to proceed or consider those changes. So I don’t know what compelling evidence, other than some of the stories that we’ve heard on the opposite side of the House here from the government members…. What is it that they’re hoping to try to achieve? What’s going to make British Columbia a better place to work, live, raise a family, get your trade, get your apprenticeship, etc.?

I have a feeling that it reeks of going back in time, where there’s a select group within a group that is telling the lower group they’re intimidated because of this card check type of system. Why would we want that? Is that the way it works in the government side of the House? There’s a factor of people that have an opportunity to intimidate one another because they…. I don’t think they have a card check on the other side of the House, but anyway….

[6:45 p.m.]

I do think that the question that we’re really asking is: where are the Premier and the Minister of Labour going on this? I mean, they’ve got a lot of labour changes they’ve made. I think that what I recollect is that in the last term of the government, when Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark, Dan Miller, Ujjal Dosanjh were the Premiers here, we had all sorts of interference in labour trying to…. If it wasn’t a unionized job, it was mandated that labour had to be paid an equivalency rate, which drove the costs up.

That was acceptable to infrastructure, but it didn’t necessarily lead to the outcomes of more unionization or whatever. That ebbs and flows based on things like the community benefits agreement, where you have to join if you want to do that type of work. I do worry about where that’s going to land in terms of the percentage. I don’t know what the target is.

I think that the secret ballot is still something that is sacrosanct when it comes to elections all around the world. I looked up the whole notion of the secret ballot. They call it the Australian ballot — where it came from. Of course, what was the reason? It’s been around for a long time. The whole idea of it is that it’s something that is fundamental to democracies, and I’m assuming we’re still a democracy. We haven’t decided to trade ourselves in on some other type of system.

I hope that we can find our way to getting to where we could arrive at a place where Bill 10 could be deferred and not necessarily go ahead. I don’t think that I should be supporting this, and I don’t think that British Columbians are looking to support that.

With that, I will take my place and listen to other speakers on this particular bill.

S. Furstenau: Glad to have an opportunity to stand up and speak to Bill 10, the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act.

I think I’m going to spoil the ending for you, Madam Speaker. This bill is going to pass. It’s going to pass because it will be unanimously supported by the government caucus, which has 57 MLAs. That’s 65.5 percent of the seats in this chamber.

The reason I start here is because there has been a lot of talk in the last few days on this bill that comes back to democracy. We just heard it from the member for Kelowna West. He ended by talking about democracy and the important role of a secret ballot in democracy. But we’ve also heard it from the government side.

The Minister of Labour said that the “right that is enshrined in Canadian constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for all Canadians, our right to association” and that Bill 10 will help anyone from impeding that right so that “we can uphold Canadians’ rights to association without interference.” Honestly, I’m surprised we haven’t gotten national media attention for this bill, because apparently the entire foundation of Canadian democracy rests on whether this bill passes or not.

I think that one of the problems we have here…. If you take a historical assessment of this debate, it bounces back and forth and back and forth across this chamber, depending on who’s sitting on that side of the House. One of the reasons why we were pleased with an independent expert panel giving direction was the hope that it would end this pendulum swing that has come to characterize this and many other debates in this chamber, this one in particular.

That pendulum swing is one of the problems with majority governments and majoritarian governments, which they almost always are — false majority governments. It creates uncertainty. It creates a sense that: “Okay, here we are. The pendulum has swung this way for now, and then we can anticipate that when the sides switch, the pendulum is going to swing back.” So we’re in this constant state of: where are things going to land?

[6:50 p.m.]

I would argue that that is actually not very good for democracy. It’s not very good for a sense of continuity and certainty and predictability in our democracies and how we operate.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I’ve been enjoying the fervent and passionate speeches about democracy and how much that matters, and I will acknowledge that in the time since the last amendments came in, the world has indeed changed. There have been some pretty significant shifts. Let’s think about some of those.

In Canada, since the COVID pandemic began, we got 15 new billionaires — 15 new ones — and existing billionaires increased their wealth by $111 billion. Meanwhile, by the end of 2021, 5½ million Canadian workers had lost their jobs.

Inequality is setting records. Currently inequality is at a scope greater than inequality was in France prior to the 18th-century revolution. I used to teach this in my history classes. Of all the conditions that create political, social and economic turmoil in a society, inequality is the one that we should be most concerned about, because it’s the one that contributes to the most upset and, unfortunately, leads to authoritarian governments. Canada’s 87 richest families hold more wealth than the bottom 12 million Canadians combined. We have an inequality problem.

I’m aware that the clock is ticking, and I have very little time, Mr. Speaker, but allow me a few more minutes, because the point that I want to make is that governments have a really significant and really serious responsibility to ensure that the rights of workers and the rights of citizens are protected.

The case that I would make is that governments cannot leave that entirely in the hands of unions. Unions play a really important role, and unions have played a really important role in securing really essential, really critical rights for workers.

Governments also have a really critical and really essential role to play, in that it should be all workers. That’s what governments have the ability to do. Set the conditions for what it means to be a worker in this province. Ensure that there is equity in those conditions. Ensure that the conditions that people are working in are safe, whether they’re in a union or not. We can’t leave that entirely in the hands of others. We have to ensure that the work we do in here extends protections to all workers, to everybody.

I would argue that there is a lot of work to be done on that front, and I will point to, for example, the Patterson report. The Patterson report identified critical changes that need to be made in B.C. to ensure that there is safety for all workers in this province.

I would like to see a level of commitment from this government to ensure that whether you’re in a union job or not, this government and all governments in B.C. are going to ensure that everything is done to ensure that you are getting home safely at night — you’re having dinner with your family and they’re not having bad news delivered because the conditions for work were not safe for you.

I will close up my comments to say…. While I’d had a lot more prepared to say, the crux of it is that we do not solve all of the issues for people who work in this province with this pendulum swing on this particular aspect of labour relations in B.C. This has become a pretty dominant political football that gets tossed back and forth in this Legislature from successive government to successive government.

[6:55 p.m.]

It doesn’t need to be politicized. What we should all be committed to, all of us as representatives, is ensuring equitable treatment, safety and care for all workers in B.C.

S. Furstenau moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:56 p.m.