Orders of the Day

Hon. L. Beare: In this chamber, I call continued second reading, Bill 10.

In the Douglas Fir Room, Section A, I call continued estimates of the Ministry of Education and Child Care, to be followed by the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 10 — LABOUR RELATIONS CODE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

(continued)

M. Lee: Just continuing on from where I left off before the break. I was speaking to what this is about, this bill. Certainly, to recap, we have not seen this government look to the recommendations of the panel.

[1:05 p.m.]

I’ve talked about the protections against unfair labour practices that are there in the Labour Relations Code, the fact that the minister has yet to demonstrate, since the changes that were made to the Labour Relations Code under Bill 30 — with the extension from the three-month period to the six-month period for validity of union certification cards, as well as the reduction in time between the application and the vote — that there have been considerations around any unfair employer interference as a result.

That certainly is something that I know the critic for Labour, the member for Shuswap, as well as other members here, will be questioning the Minister of Labour on as we get to the committee stage.

I was also talking about the political opportunity. I know that other members of the official opposition have talked about that — as to why this government has pushed on to do this in light of the fact that the public opinion is not there, that the support amongst workers is not there and that the Premier, yet, has 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.

He tried to push that through in 2019, but then stopped on that. As I mentioned earlier, we’re talking about the former leader of the Third Party, who wasn’t in favour of that. But also, again, from the panel report point of view, that strong recommendation that the secret ballot be maintained, providing that there were sufficient measures to ensure the exercise of employee choice.

We recognize, certainly, the collective changes here that are being proposed. We’ve seen changes by this government to favour certain unions only representing 15 percent of the workforce, under the community benefits agreements. We’ve seen the largest donations in the political history of B.C., to the United Steelworkers, back in 2017.

I would say that in terms of the community benefits arrangements, not only have they led to an increase in costs, delays and reduced scope for projects on public infrastructure projects; also, there is a concern beyond just that. That is that under the Election Act, there are no third-party spending limits during the pre-campaign period, nor before the pre-campaign period, with a limit of $150,000 during the campaign period.

We know that under related project labour agreements, that requires 32 cents per person per hour to go to unions themselves. Now, these are not just any unions. These are the specific unions that are part of the Allied Infrastructure and Related Construction Council of B.C., the NDP-approved unions that represent and employ less than 15 percent of the construction workforce in B.C.

We know these unions historically have been significant political and financial supporters of the NDP. Under the 2018 Election Act amendments, unions can no longer be financial supporters. Unions certainly can be political supporters, both in third-party advertising efforts and in organization of volunteers. Under the Election Act, third-party sponsors must be registered, so there is some transparency.

I would suggest that the removal of the secret ballot and the delivery by the Premier and this Minister of Labour on that promise to their particular support base is similar to what they’ve done on the community benefits agreement, because community benefits agreements effectively enable public taxpayer funds to be diverted to NDP-favoured unions, which represent less than 15 percent of construction workers in B.C. This amounts to funding of the unions who support the NDP. This is politics and what we’re talking about here.

I talked earlier about the need, coming out of the pandemic, to consider stability and balance in the workforce. That’s why, with the lack of consultation, once again, that this government has demonstrated, that has been articulated by the 23 employer organizations that wrote to the Premier back on April 25…. The member for Shuswap cited that letter into the record.

[1:10 p.m.]

The Leader of the Official Opposition talked about the lack of consultation and what that means to British Columbians, but again, this government is demonstrating that they’re not listening and finding the right balance. This minister is not doing what he was asked to do in his mandate letter from the Premier, which is to go out and consult and listen.

Now, this minister may say: “Well, that’s the reason why we did the panel report.” The panel report certainly, back in 2018, did some consultations, but again, the panel report recommended the secret ballot be maintained.

The panel report also recommended that other protections be done, and that’s what this government did in Bill 30 — again, the extension from three months to six months for union certification cards and the reduction of the period between ten and five days between the time of the application and certification vote. This back-and-forth is not helping the labour stability in British Columbia at a time where we are needing stability coming out of this pandemic.

Of course, we know that the elimination of secret ballots under Bill 10 is not the only concern with this bill. Clause 1 would also allow 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. This section and clause of the bill goes directly against the recommendations of that 2018 expert panel.

It was also the subject matter of an amendment, the only amendment that the official opposition was able to make, with the support of the Third Party, to that Bill 30. The magic number 43. Forty-three members of this House voted to approve that amendment. It was led by the initiatives of the Leader of the Third Party and the member for Shuswap and the former member from Chilliwack, to get that amendment across, which would make annual raids consistent with what is set out in the panel report, and that is on a three-year basis.

Again, this concern has deviated from that. When you look at the panel’s report, it states that “raids are divisive and disruptive to employers, unions and employees. In the public consultation process, there was considerable support from unions and employers for reducing the frequency of the open period for raids to correspond to other Canadian jurisdictions. The annual open period in B.C. is the exception in Canada.”

Why would this government see fit to deviate from what every other Canadian jurisdiction has done? And why would this government see fit to deviate from the unani­mous recommendations of the panel that they appointed?

The panel’s commentary goes on to say: “The development and evolution of a productive bargaining relationship requires time. In the case of a newly certified bargaining unit, the possibility of a raid immediately after certification is problematic. In our view, the frequency of open periods in other Canadian jurisdictions provides a more balanced approach, which recognizes the disrup­tive effects of raids.”

Again, this begs the question as to why this government thinks it knows better than any other jurisdiction in Canada. Why would it deviate from the panel recommendation? We know that even with the B.C. Federation of Labour unions, including B.C. trades unions, they will certainly speak affirmatively about the employees’ right to choose.

Interestingly enough, they have all banded together to create what are known as non-raid pacts. That is to say that if employees are experiencing poor service with one B.C. Fed union and ask another B.C. Fed union to represent them, they will say, “No, work with your own union,” effectively denying an employee’s choice. The only target of this legislation is quite obvious, and that’s the independent unions, the ones that, in fact, do give their members the ability to choose. Again, B.C. Fed unions have donated millions of dollars to this government over the years. Again, this is what’s at stake.

[1:15 p.m.]

This is just political payback. We know that when you take an example…. The members on this side of the House certainly know about the Highway 1 expansion and the impact of the project labour agreements on those projects. If you assume for a moment that work commences one particular summer, this summer, and the workers on this project were to choose to be represented by another union this July, then the effect of this Bill 10 would be that the new union could apply to the labour board to have that agreement terminated, thus ending the agreement between B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc. and the group of the selected unions, some 90 days later.

They are creating, under this Bill 10, uncertainty, instability. We know that we need that stability in the face of these raids. As we look forward to the impact of community benefit agreements…. I talked about the indirect way in which funding goes back to these same unions. We’ve seen, then, in the course of affordability, needing to make more housing supply in this province. The ability to have annual raids on construction sites is only going to undermine that level of work that needs to take place. Government has only made a small fraction of progress on their promised 114,000 housing units.

We’ve seen, under CBAs, that they’ve added as much as $4.8 billion to the costs of public infrastructure projects. As we look at Bill 10, we do not see the basis for these changes. We see the recommendations of the panel, back in 2018, that are not being implemented or adhered to. We’ve seen the debate in this House on Bill 30, and it’s back again now, here in this Bill 10.

I expect that at committee stage, we will be seeing, at length, the kind of demonstration that we will see from this minister and this government to demonstrate what they’re seeing since the changes were made in Bill 30, only over a year and a half ago. We know that unfair labour practices are being dealt with under the Labour Relations Code. We know that there is an ability and a right balance to ensure that that is the case. Secret ballots ensure that there isn’t that level of coercion that could possibly take place.

This is something that, as we look at the opportunities to work forward, we need to find that right balance. We need to maintain that balance. Those 23 organizations — their voice, the level of consultation that they should have had on this bill, have been dismissed. I understand from this government that they’re quite concerned, as we all are, about British Columbians’ rights to work safely, with fair compensation and be treated well on the worksite. But it’s also the employer’s responsibility, and it’s our responsibility to ensure that we have the right legal frameworks for employers and employees, union and non-union, to work together.

When that balance is upset, when it’s undermined, as this government is doing now, for political benefit, either through CBAs, the backdoor funding to these unions, these specific unions, or other mechanisms — the promises that the Premier has made politically to get elected — that doesn’t make for good labour relations. That’s what this code is about.

As these members on the government side continue to throw up noise around worker safety and, in the case of the current member from Chilliwack, U.S. labour laws, which have no application in a Canadian context…. We need to bring this debate back to and root it on the ground. If political parties are unable to deal with good policies, then we should be looking at the recommendations of the panel­.

[1:20 p.m.]

That’s where the balance was achieved. That’s what members of this House did when we amended Bill 30, and that’s what this government has done in adhering to many of those recommendations.

Again, at the committee stage, we look forward to the minister and this government demonstrating the reasons behind the concerns from an unfair labour practice for what’s being proposed under this bill.

In the absence of that, I join my other colleagues on this side of the House to oppose this bill.

D. Ashton: I’m here today to take my place in the second reading of Bill 10.

Before I start, I would just like to thank my peer from Vancouver-Langara. I greatly appreciated the comments and the points that he brought forward. I really do hope, sir, that they do stick with government. I hope that government does listen to some of the points that have been raised not only by the official opposition but, I’m quite sure, by many, many people that have been talking to their respective MLAs both on the government side and from what we are also hearing on our side.

I just want to revert back a little bit. I was incredibly fortunate as a kid with playing in community sports and all that. I started my career — other than picking cherries, which we all did — working in the gas station at the top of Summerland hill. It was convenient. I could walk over from school. I could get a ride home with friends, usually, going down the hill, or my parents could come up and pick me up.

Through a hockey connection — I’m going to call him Coach, because that’s what we all called him — I had heard through the grapevine that Northwood Mills, at the time, which became Weyerhaeuser, hired kids, hired students that could show that they were up to the task of working hard and working in an industrial situation. They’d hire you to do cleanup on Saturdays. Then a bonus was that if you were off for Christmas time or off at Easter time/spring break — we called it semester break at the time — you could also pick up extra shifts.

You’d be bagging lumber or additional cleanup. If you were unfortunate, you got stuck on the green chain, which none of us wanted to do, because those guys were pretty big and burly or at least they knew how to do it compared to us little fellows. It was phenomenal. If I remember correctly, I was earning $1.25 pumping gas and wiping windshields — back in the days when you didn’t do it yourself. You had people there to do it — checking oil, checking tire pressure and everything else.

Lo and behold, I got asked by Coach if I wanted to work. I said: “Absolutely.” I got a job at Weyerhaeuser. I became a member of the first union in my lifetime — international woodworkers association. Great people. Absolutely great people there.

However, when I got hired, the first Saturday I was asked to show up, lo and behold, they were on strike. Here was me, a kid driving my dad’s Volkswagen van. I got to the gates, and there were all these people across it, expressing their discontent, which is part of our democratic system. But I didn’t know why I couldn’t go through those people and go to work for Coach.

After a few coarse words were said to me by a few people while trying to drive around them and get into the yard, a gentleman that knew Coach very well came up and asked me…. He actually knew my parents. He said: “What are you doing?” I told him I was a new hire and that I was going to work. He said: “Well, you’re not going to work today. We’re on strike.” So he says: “Go home.” He says: “I’ll talk to Coach.”

Coach phoned me a couple days later. He said: “Okay, when the strike’s over, you can come back to work.” That was my first indoctrination into unions. It wasn’t a bad one. It was a real pleasant one, to be honest with you. They gave me a phenomenal wage. If I remember correctly, it was over $4.50 an hour — $1.25 pumping gas, and $4.50 doing way more interesting things.

[1:25 p.m.]

It gave me the opportunity to learn, because — sorry, Dad — after work they would take me down to the local establishment in OK Falls. You know, you look a lot older when you’re wearing a hardhat and you’ve got grubby clothes on and everything else. The guys would buy me a cold beer. I was under-age, but they got me in there. So I had a wonderful opportunity. Mark my words, there were lots of things talked about, because I came from a retail family, and that was my first kick at it.

Through my entire life of work, I have been very fortunate to be in a position where I belonged to five unions, and every one of them treated me with an incredible opportunity of wages that were not normal for somebody growing up. It gave me an opportunity to see the other side, when you come from a family owning a business and having your own employees. It gave me a total different perspective on it, and I had nothing but the admiration for it.

So international woodworkers association of America — maybe it was, at the time, IWA. Teamsters. The railroad union — I don’t remember the name. But I worked for CP, first of all, as a section man and then came home, because I’d learned in Lake Louise that a section man spends his whole life in the wintertime shovelling snow off of all of the switches.

By the way, it snowed that much one night in Lake Louise, and the switches weren’t heated. You had to shovel off. Then when you got that all done…. You know the Spiral Tunnels in Lake Louise? We all spent our time in there chipping ice. I thought, “Boy, I am not going to be a mole for a whole winter and be underground.”

I went back home, and I was able and fortunate enough to get on as a brakeman, because I was already in Canadian Pacific railroad. I pulled between Penticton and Spence’s Bridge, and I did the shifting of the cars and everything else in between there, so I was classified as a front-end brakeman.

Interjection.

D. Ashton: Yeah, it was a learning experience, MLA.

Then going back to school and everything else and then being able to be fortunate enough to be hired in a construction job. If I remember correctly — maybe the member can help me — it was 602, Construction Workers’ Union, which did underground work. When I say underground, like water and sewer work. That was phenomenal.

Then my years spent at university. I was fortunate. I worked for a produce warehouse in Penticton, and it was Retail Wholesale Union. That was again….

As a kid, again, I was so fortunate. I never had to take a student loan out. My parents didn’t have to help me go to school, and it was the benefit that I derived being a member of the union that helped me with wages, far exceeding what my friends could earn working in retail or far exceeding what my friends could earn working in the orchards — which we also did on the weekends, because if you own one, you’ve got to work in it.

To make a long story short, I have nothing but respect for the people that are working hard and diligently to make a difference in this incredible province and this incredible country that we all call home.

I was a little bit taken aback, and I’m glad, actually, that I got the opportunity to speak today, because some of my fellow MLAs in here were a little bit chastising to people that maybe didn’t work in a union or maybe didn’t work in labour — that maybe were owners of companies, or maybe managers of companies.

There are exceptions all over in work and in management styles and in ownership styles. I did take exception to it. I didn’t take exception to the individuals. I took exception to how it was presented, and I hope when those individuals left the House and the candour and the rigour that takes place in here sometimes, they are able to leave that at home, because I don’t think it belongs anywhere.

We all have had the opportunity of different lifestyles, and we all come from different sides — no pun intended, different sides — of the tracks, but we’ve all worked hard, and we’ve all worked hard for our families and worked hard for businesses. I think that kind of candour, with all due respect, Madam Speaker, shouldn’t be in here.

I said that 99.999 percent of the time we all get along in here. There are some issues that have flared up, and unfortunately, Bill 10 is one of them. You’ve heard me speak about the opportunities that unions have provided me. But you know what? They also taught me other things.

[1:30 p.m.]

One of the things they taught me was the opportunity of how important your vote was to get a union or to maintain a union in a business or in a company or in a situation where you’re working for a large organization like Weyerhaeuser — i.e., Northwood Mills.

I just think the government’s going about this wrong; I really do. Again, I mean no disrespect to the government. I mean no disrespect to the minister. I mean no disrespect to anybody who has a different opinion than me on this, but this is not the way to do it. It is not democratic. Some of my friends here — I think, on both sides of the House — have talked about when they ran for school council to get on to be a school councillor.

Whether you ran for council, like I did, for a school board or for one of your local organizations where you could get elected to an executive position — which meant you worked twice as hard, as we all know, on volunteer stuff — it was all done by secret ballot.

That’s something that we’re so fortunate to have in this country and in this province. We don’t need to look any further than the front pages today of newspapers or magazines that we get — or the cell phones, where we get the instant news of what’s going on in the world. We can see, when democracy is taken away, what happens.

There are reasons — my peers have said this; the government has tried to justify it — for why they’re doing this, but the most important thing about democracy is to be able to vote — to be able to sign something or put an X beside it, to vote without anybody else seeing it.

One of my peers talked about what their parents had said to them about voting, and said, you know: “Who do I vote for?” “Well, you make up your own mind.” My dad did that. He said: “Here’s where we’re going to go. You make up your mind. You go read about it. You go do what’s right, what you think is right. Learn.”

I just really hope that the government…. They’ve brought this forward before. Our peers in the Green Party…. I don’t know why — there seemed to be some sway at that time — it didn’t come forward. It’s now coming forward again, where there’s a majority. I just hope that the government not only listens to us here in opposition, to the Greens in opposition, but I hope they listen to the people that they represent, too — the vast, vast majority of citizens of British Columbia that vote. I hope they take it upon themselves to think this one through.

Nobody likes favouritism. Again, I don’t know what this is about, to be honest with you. I hear all kinds of things. I make up my own mind on it. If it is about favouritism, don’t do it. That’s old-school. That’s not the way that the populace today wants this to work anymore.

We all get branded: “Oh gosh, you’re a politician.” I hate to say this, folks, but the last survey I saw, used-car salesmen — nothing the matter with them; they’re working hard — rank higher than we do in trustworthiness. Hmm. I wish that wasn’t so.

What I really hope is that government will step forward, make a change to this and go back to a system where a person has a free vote, where a person has an unintimidated vote. Whether that intimidation is done by their employer or by their peers that want them to sign something, that want them to vote, they have to remember, and they should remember back to the story that some have told in here.

What I’m saying is that my parents said: “Go learn about this. Go experience this yourself.” You vote, and you see the consequences of signing a piece of paper or putting an X beside something.

What I really think is that the government should step forward. You’ve heard my peers talk about what I have listed here, about why the fundamental changes are taking place — the creations of stopping, through costing, freedom of information. You’ve heard that my peers have talked about how in 30 of the last 38 years a free vote has taken place in British Columbia. You’ve heard my peers talk about where else, in this wonderful country of Canada, free votes take place.

What you’ve also heard, and I’ve heard on numerous occasions, is that the secret ballot is something that the majority of British Columbians want. They want that opportunity to vote.

[1:35 p.m.]

They want that opportunity to select the people that they want to represent them in whatever capacity it is, but they want that opportunity, also, to have it close to their chest. It’s their own personal business as to whom they’re voting for. It’s their own personal business that there shouldn’t be any collusion or intimidation — again I say this — from either side: from the employer or from representatives that want something to go in a direction that maybe the individual is not quite so sure should take place.

What I see happening, unfortunately, is that the government wants to scrap this. For the life of me…. I don’t think so. We heard from my peer from Vancouver-Langara who said there are other opportunities and other ways that the government, through their various bills in this House, can make a difference to the direction they may want to take the province at this point in time. They have that opportunity.

To take away that sanctum, that opportunity of having a democratic vote, from a party whose second word in their official title, New Democratic Party…. That’s what they stand for — their name. Let’s keep it. Let’s keep democracy in place. Let’s not do what happens elsewhere in the world today, unfortunately, in so many locales, where thou shalt not be given the opportunity to express thine own personal opinion, not be given the opportunity to live how we are so fortunate to live here in British Columbia.

Whether you’re working…. Whether you’re working for a company, whether you’re working for a company that is unionized, whether you’re working for yourself, we have these incredible opportunities here. Why does the government want to take this in a different direction?

If there was discussion that had taken place during the lead-up to the majority, if there were promises made, sit down. Let’s talk this through. Let the government talk this through with those individuals and see if we can get it back. Because to be frank, in my opinion and many others’, this will be a black mark on the government, on those that desire it and those that are pushing it.

There’s still time. There’s still time for the government to take a look at what they’re proposing here and come back to some form of compromise, some form of reasonability, not just for them but for the entire populace, not only of British Columbia but of Canada.

I can’t help but wonder if this is the thin edge of the wedge. What else is coming through here? We’ve seen other things…. Not only ourselves in opposition but other individuals — including people that are hired by the province of British Columbia and stamped by us that work independently of us, independent officers — have raised questions about some of the direction. I just don’t think it’s right. I really, really hope that the government will consider….

One of the other aspects about this bill is the opportunity for individuals…. You know, I had mentioned the Teamsters and the Retail Wholesale Union. The produce warehouse that I worked at was…. Originally, I came in underneath the Teamsters, and Retail Wholesale came in and raided. Cut to the chase; they raided it.

I was away at university. When I came back for my summer job, not only did I have a substantial raise increase by going to a different union — the company had to pay more — I was also blacklisted with the Teamsters and told that I could never, ever have a job with the Teamsters again, because the Teamsters that were present in this organization moved over to a new union, and the Teamsters went: “Nada. Not going to happen. You’re not going to work.”

I went: “Well, what do you mean? You mean that if I wanted to work as a truck driver somewhere under a unionized situation where the Teamsters were…?” We were told point-blank: “You ain’t working that way, kid.” All right, well, I didn’t. But there was a raid that took place.

[1:40 p.m.]

Now, did it benefit the people that were working at the produce warehouse? Yes, it did. It made a huge benefit not only in wages but also in the opportunity for a whole bunch of other benefits. But can I tell you what happened? Four years later the company came back and it was called ATO, accumulated time off. All of a sudden, these workers got X amount of days for X amount of work off.

There was one man there, a wonderful man. He’d been there since the creation, when it used to be just Slade’s and then it became Slade and Stewart. If I remember correctly, he had 21 weeks a year off. The owner of the company told us that he had to hire an additional 1-point-so-many people just to cover the ATO for everybody else working there, per employee.

They went back to the union. Again, this is a small, local firm that was unionized. Again, good people. Good union. Please don’t get me wrong. But they went back and said: “We have to compromise on this. We can’t do this anymore.” The union went: “No.” The company said: “Look, we cannot exist this way.” The union said no.

They were probably answering to somebody from somewhere else, because the shop steward was local and everything else. The long story was that before the end of that summer, it was gone. Nineteen employees, not counting us summer employees, when it’s so busy with the tourists and everything coming in, me being a swamper and working on the repack bench back in produce. It was gone. That’s where I think a compromise should have taken place. I’m a lot older now and looking back on it.

I also look now at what’s transpiring here in this House. We have the opportunity to work together. I hear our Premier talking, the Premier of British Columbia talking about wanting to work together. Well, there is an opportunity right now to get some form of compromise with Bill 10 that can make a difference to those that have asked for it to come forward, whatever shape and size it is, and to those that are questioning it. That’s what we, as the official opposition, are doing right now — questioning this.

There’s still time where we could sit down and preserve what I talked about so much at the start of this — that vote, that opportunity of a democratic vote. That opportunity to have a vote to yourself, to not be…. I don’t want to say the words coerced or pressured into it, because it works both ways.

We’ve heard from the government about some organizations that were not good employers, but we’ve also heard about some not-so-good employees that can be manipulative — on both sides, on the ownership side and on the employee side. I think there’s a really good opportunity in here.

To quote the Premier, we should be working together on a lot of these things. I think there’s an opportunity. We could step forward, preserve that right of a vote and make sure that the people of British Columbia, and especially the people of the unions that have been mentioned, and the employees that are represented by the unions…. The unions that my peer from Langara has said have an opportunity of a democratic vote, not maybe a vote that shouldn’t be taking place at the time.

One of the other things that worries me is the opportunity of individuals in some unions, at the direction of whatever, to come in and raid — do what happened to the workers at Slade and Stewart, the 19 workers plus their families, that went from here to here, but then, all of a sudden, it’s not affordable. I don’t think doing that during the peak of construction season…. Don’t forget we’re still in the north. We’re north of the 49th. We get winter here. Things do slow down.

During the peak seasons of employment, the peak seasons of building, union representatives can come in and try and change individuals’ minds about working with another union. I think that needs to be reconsidered also. There’s ample opportunity at all times during the year for them to sit down.

I’m probably not letting the cat out of the bag, but a very good friend of mine and very good friend of our family and a very good friend of the people where I live…. Strong union. Strong union shop. Very strong union shop. Good, good people work there.

[1:45 p.m.]

Great employer. An incredible employer. Sitting with him and discussing it…. My dad died in ’93. Sitting with him, an older gentleman, trying to learn the ways of his wisdom…. Our family had a lot of respect for him, and I have a lot of respect, although the gentleman is gone now.

He told me that the union representatives would come in to discuss the new contract, the three-year contract. He said: “I’m a busy man, but I was always there, along with the people that were picked to be the representatives to the union in my business. We would sit, and I would give them as much time as possible.” Then he would say: “What’s the bottom line?” The union would say: “This, this and this.” He said: “Fine. I agree to this, this and this, and I’ll give you $2 more an hour. I don’t want to see you for three years.” They signed the papers.

There’s a gentleman that took it the other way. He had a great working relationship with the union. He had a great working relationship with his employees. He wanted everybody to be happy. He had the capacity to do it. But he was there making a difference. I can tell you, again from him, that their sick time, their away with leave time and their productivity was through the roof. That’s what happens when you get people wanting to work together instead of this.

I really hope that that kind of stuff goes away. That was the stuff that many of us probably went through in our younger careers and business careers, where there was a lot of confrontation in this province. It seems to have drifted away from that.

We’ve seen that unionization has been decreasing. Some will say it’s because of employers doing this and this and, you know, collusion and everything else. I’ll say that unions, I think, have made a difference to the way an employer thinks. Just like my friend, how he thought, our family friend. They’ve made a difference. They’ve raised the quality of life. They’ve raised the quality of earnings. They have expectations. But they also have to toe the line, because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Everybody has got to contribute, whether you belong to one or not.

I think that from what happened years ago, what we saw, to what’s happening now has changed a lot, and I think it’s changed for the better. I think, personally, that’s probably one of the reasons that there has been a decrease.

For those unions that are looking to say: “Well, if we do this, this and this, we can increase our scope on it….” Maybe look at it a different way. Maybe look at it being a little bit more cooperative, a little bit more consulting, a little bit more working together with that entity. Maybe it’s a pipedream on my behalf, but there are opportunities where you don’t have to start fooling around with people’s democratic right.

I look at you, Madam Chair, with one eye, and my other eye is looking over at the Minister of Labour, and I’m just hoping that the government will make a difference. Bring something forward that is working together for all of us, working together looking after the people of British Columbia, working together so those families can have good jobs, where their parents are working or their kids are working in situations where they’re safe.

This Saturday I’m at a labour event in Penticton, making sure that everybody comes home safe. It’s incredibly important. We all know, coming from municipal government or school boards, that there’s nothing more important than making sure that the people that are working in those organizations come home safe to their families.

I would just ask the government that they reconsider what they’ve proposed here in Bill 10, that they reconsider this not only for those that are asking for this but for the entity, for all of those that work in British Columbia that are not in those specific unions and that want to maintain and must maintain the opportunity of a democratic process, the opportunity to vote for who they wish without any interference from the company or any interference from those that want to utilize their vote for something that is probably not right.

[1:50 p.m.]

Thank you for the opportunity today. I would like to thank everybody in here that spoke about this. It’s an incredibly important issue, not only right now but for the next long time here in British Columbia. Let’s think this one through.

J. Rustad: I rise today to speak to Bill 10. I want to start, when I’m thinking about Bill 10, in particular, that the changes here to the labour codes, to the way that we’ll be able to organize and do things in this province…. I actually want to start recognizing that the first actual unionized effort….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Excuse me. If you’re having a conversation, could you step outside the chamber, please.

J. Rustad: Thank you, Madam Chair. Heckling I don’t mind, but it’s tough to talk over other conversations, as the minister well knows. I’m sure that he will get involved in this conversation as we go on.

I bet you that a fact he doesn’t know in terms of this, which is where I wanted to start, is that actually the first recorded unionized effort in British Columbia was in 1859, 1860, and it was bakers that were organizing way back then. I just found that an interesting thought, because we’re talking about that. It was one of those little things that I didn’t know, so I decided I’d look it up. I was wondering: when did the labour movement start and unionization start in the province?

Obviously, it has a very long history in British Columbia, as it does throughout the world. I think about our labour codes that we have today, the benefits that we have today with so much. The labour movement was huge in delivering on so much of what we have today through the codes.

As a matter of fact, I think, quite frankly, we’ve been so successful in the labour movement in moving forward labour laws and worker protection and all of these sorts of components in the province that we’ve actually seen a fall­off in membership of unionization and of unions in the province. I would suggest that unions perhaps have been a little too successful in terms of whether people want to be part of a union.

Ultimately, this bill has a lot to do with just that. The question is…. Unions have provided such benefits and they’ve created such positive environments for labour throughout British Columbia over time — certainly, since the first union in 1859 — that you wonder: why is membership dropping off? Why is it that we have a very low rate, particularly in the private sector? It is very, very low. People are free to organize. There was a secret ballot. People could vote to be able to do this, but they’re not doing it.

That’s a question that I think the minister needs to answer. Why are people choosing not to be part of a union? It’s not because of a card check. It’s not because it’s difficult. It’s a secret ballot. Anybody can go in. Everybody in this Legislature, everybody in British Columbia, knows what a secret ballot is. You go in. You mark your vote one way or another. Nobody can know which way you vote. That gets filed, and then it gets counted. People have a choice. Choice is a good thing. Choice is a very good thing.

The question is: why are we moving away from a secret ballot when everything else that we do in our society uses that? It’s the foundation of democracy. There’s something wrong when you’re thinking about the fact that we’ve got this movement in the province to move away from unionization. Instead of giving people that free choice, that secret ballot choice, we’re moving to a different system that, quite frankly, is open to influence. I do wonder why that….

In my riding of Nechako Lakes, just like many others, we’ve got a number of unions and, of course, lots of contractors, lots of people that aren’t part of unions. When I grew up, I remember one of the first big summer jobs I had was with a small company that was a unionized workforce in Prince George. Because I was a summer employee, I wasn’t required to join the union as part of that, but I worked on the floor with union workers. You know, it was a good environment. I actually enjoyed that job, although filling up tar pits and sweeping and all that kind of stuff — that’s the kind of job you do when you’re young and you’re looking for summer employment.

[1:55 p.m.]

I thought the guys there…. It was good. The work envi­ronment was positive. That was my only real experience working in a unionized shop. I wasn’t a union member myself, but I had worked on the floor with the people that were there.

I thought about that at the time, and I thought: “Oh, this is interesting. I wonder why more shops are not unionized?” So I asked my dad at the time. I said, “Why aren’t we seeing more of that stuff?” and he said: “Well, part of that is the big union dues. The question is: what is the return for those things?”

Then he gave an example, not directly in our family, not our immediate family, but in related family. We had a sawmill in Prince George. My related family had a sawmill, Rustad Bros., in Prince George, and it was one of the few sawmills in the province that actually wasn’t unionized. It wasn’t part of the IWA or the Steelworkers or whatever it was at the time.

I asked a question. I said, “Why?” and he said: “Well, when the unions go on strike and the other mills are down, they keep working at the mill.” I thought: “Well that’s interesting, but why would they do that?” He said: “Because as soon as the deal is struck by the union, the company just gives them the same benefits, and they carry on.” So they didn’t have to unionize, because they got the same benefits. They got everything that was…. But I want to recognize, though, that it was the work of the other unions that actually created and drove those changes.

I think outside of that, like I say, there are certainly benefits — big benefits — that do come from unions. But that was a choice that the company…. It was a choice, actually, that the workers made. They could have unionized. They could have organized, but they decided not to, as part of it. It was their right. It was their secret ballot opportunity.

Interjection.

J. Rustad: Well, at the time…. I don’t even know if secret ballot was in place back then, but it was their choice in terms of being able to do that.

Like I say, I do wonder what it is that government is trying do with this. If one was to be a little cynical or perhaps speculate around this, you might think that there’s obviously something else around doing this. I mean, it’s not because of worker safety. It’s not because of improving worker environment, because we’ve got these pretty good laws and standards that are in place. So what is it that’s behind that?

I want to touch on one other thing that my colleague here just mentioned to me, before I get into speculating about just why that may be the case. That is that for the people who are not in a union, there is the employment standards branch that addresses issues that come up. There used to be a two-month waiting time to get an issue addressed. I mean, that’s a long time. That was pretty egregious. Do you know what that is today? I’m told it’s 18 months. So what’s going on with that? Why is that not working the way it is to be able to help workers?

I see the Minister of Labour shaking his head. I’m sure, in his closing comments, he’ll be able to get up and counter that information. But it makes me wonder. What’s going on? Why isn’t government paying attention to that issue? Why aren’t resources there to take care of that problem?

Then I look at things like the community benefits agreement and why community benefits agreements were put in place. These are project labour agreements under a fancy name, which is fine. Government has decided to do that. But when you look at the extra cost associated with getting projects done around that, it’s certainly not for the benefit of a community. It’s certainly not for the benefit of the province or the taxpayers. So who is it to the benefit of?

I talked to one company who had 1,000 employees. They said: “Look, here’s what happens if I bid on one of those projects. If I bid on a project that is a CBA and I’ve got 1,000 people in my workforce and I get that project, those 1,000 people no longer are in my workforce. They have to join into one of the trade unions. I’m allowed to get back about 150 of those, or 15 percent of that workforce. The rest of them will come out of the labour pool to do the work that needs to be done.”

You think: “Okay, well, that can work in terms of that, but here’s the problem. The next time I bid on a project, I don’t have a workforce of 1,000 people anymore. I’ve got a workforce of 150 people, and I’m not guaranteed to be able to get those people. I’m not guaranteed to be able to get the same people — the people that are productive and that had been working together in terms of it.”

[2:00 p.m.]

They say: “Why would I bid on a project to undercut my ability to be able to bid on future work?” So they don’t bid on it.

It’s unfortunate, because you don’t get the competi­tiveness associated with being able to get good value for projects. Like I say, I haven’t got anything against unions, because I know what they have done in terms of the benefits. But I do have a problem when we don’t have a free and open society. I do have a problem when we don’t allow for things like a secret ballot. I’ve got a real problem with that.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

If you were to think about democracy…. Remember, there used to be, way back, many, many centuries ago, people would open up kegs of beer. They’d hand it out. They’d do all kinds of things to try to influence the way people would vote. All of that is now illegal. All of that isn’t allowed to be done in our societies today.

Guess what. It’s now going to be allowed to be done here. You’re going to be allowed to wine and dine somebody and convince them that they should be signing the card. It happens. It’s happened in the past. Of course, it’s allowed to be done. There are no rules that say you can’t do it. You know, they’re just getting together as union members to have a conversation about what’s right and what’s wrong and da-da-da, and: “By the way, make sure you sign your card.”

Heard from the member for Columbia River–Revel­stoke about when he was working in a union, and a fellow came by and said: “Young man, you know which way you’re going to vote on this, right?” These things happen. It’s something that I think is disturbing in terms of the approach that is being taken here.

That gets me back to the thought about why is this being done? What is it that is trying to happen here? And I get that unions want to expand their control on the market. They want to get more people in their union. But if you look at it and you think: “Okay, is that about the workers, or is that about the union? Is that about the revenues that the union is getting, what the union can do in terms of things?” It makes you wonder.

Here’s just a little question for the minister, as well, that he might be able to answer. I don’t know if he has the time in his closing comments to be able to answer it. I do wonder, in terms of unions and the shape of unions, because so many people have been retiring over time. So many people are coming up on retirement.

How do the pension funds look in terms of the defined benefits pensions? What is the shape and how are those things looking, particularly for the private sector unions that have been losing members, not been staying strong and people retiring. It’s an interesting question. I hope the minister has an opportunity to be able to answer that in his closing comments around this bill.

I do think that when you look at that and you look at what government is doing around this, it really isn’t about the workers. When you look at the issues associated with the employment standards branch, when you look at the wage increases that were given where it was a higher wage increase for somebody in the union versus somebody who wasn’t in the union when it was performing similar dues.

When you look at things like community benefits agreements, which, like I say, is just a fancy way of saying a project labour agreement, that’s not about the workers. That’s about the friends. It’s about the people that have been supporting the NDP for decades, and it’s a bit of payback for them. I get, you know, politics is politics. That’s what they’ve decided they might want to do. But I, quite frankly, think that we really should be looking at this bill and looking at it from that perspective of a free and democratic and open society. It’s not healthy, in terms of taking these steps.

For the people in Nechako Lakes, for the people around the province, I really wonder if this is the way government should be acting. How they should be undermining the very core values of democracy, the very core values that political parties like the NDP’s party uses, like our party uses — and for what? As a payback to unions that have been supportive?

[2:05 p.m.]

Like I say, I do wonder. At the end of the day, this government will have to answer to the taxpayer about what they’re doing, because they’re going to use their majority to push this thing through. They’ll use their majority and ignore the comments that have been made in this House.

Was it Zirnhelt, I think, in the 1990s under the NDP government saying: “We’re government; we can do anything we want to do”? Of course, where that ultimately led to was the old NDP getting wiped down to two seats. But that’s for the electorate to decide with regards to what they’re trying to do associated with this.

Another thing that I just want to quickly touch on. Particularly up in the north, we’ve got a very short construction window. When you’re thinking about major projects that need to be done, you really start construction in spring, and you wrap up most of your construction in the fall. Yes, you’ve got some things you can do over the course of the winter, but that is the big construction window that happens, certainly in my riding, and really throughout much of that.

Why is it that the window for allowing for raiding to happen is in the middle of summer, in the middle of that construction season? I don’t quite get that, because that could be very disruptive to projects. That could be very disruptive to companies and, quite frankly, to the workers in terms of projects. That can cause delays and costs. You can lose a year’s construction work just with some of those delays, because you missed some of the windows — the environmental windows or the windows associated with weather.

I’m very disappointed when I see things like that, because, clearly, it doesn’t take into consideration those sort of issues I think there are up where I come from and have the honour to represent in terms of Nechako Lakes.

Like I say, I’ve never been one to get too far into labour law and that side of it, but I do believe strongly in democracy. I believe strongly in this place. I believe strongly in the values that have built our society. I see those being eroded with this bill. I don’t see how this is going to improve things for workers.

I would much rather see the effort being spent on how we’re improving things with the employment standards branch, how we’re making sure that workers are being treated fairly through the issues like that. I’d much rather see a government that is more open, transparent. I’d much rather see a government that honours and supports competitiveness, that honours and supports taxpayers.

One of the first things I did, when I was elected in 2005, was I got a poster. I plaque-mounted that poster, and I put it up on the wall in my office. Every day when I’m working out of my constituent office, I go into my office. I see that poster. That poster says: “Think like a taxpayer.”

At the end of the day, it’s not government money; it’s taxpayers’ money. We’re responsible for how we spend taxpayers’ moneys. We’re responsible to those taxpayers to make sure that that money is spent well, wisely, efficiently, and that we do our best to not have waste, while we try to provide the best services we can for taxpayers.

This doesn’t meet the test of doing that, as well as the other components that I’ve talked about. That’s unfortunate, because I think taxpayers, quite frankly, should be treated better than that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak today.

N. Letnick: I appreciate the opportunity to debate Bill 10.

I believe all of my colleagues have made a strong case in opposition to Bill 10. To summarize, they’ve mentioned, first and foremost, to me, and then to them, the secret ballot system is a fundamental democratic right. Bill 10 seeks to remove that fundamental democratic right.

They’ve also identified that under the current secret ballot system today, there are strict guidelines that protect employees from undue coercion or pressure by employers or union organizers. Therefore, again, Bill 10 is not necessary.

[2:10 p.m.]

Also, union organizers will be unrestricted as to where, when, and how often they can approach workers to get signatures on cards, as the member for Nechako Lakes just articulated a few minutes ago. They’ll even be free to collect signatures in social settings and in the presence of other co-workers.

My colleagues have identified that the NDP’s own 2018 Labour Relations Code Review Panel report recommended keeping the secret ballot, and the NDP ignored that advice and plans to scrap the secret ballot anyway with Bill 10.

If you look at the public, a recent poll showed 79 percent of British Columbians oppose doing away with the secret ballot, and only 9 percent support card checks. Bill 10 ignores this opinion in, I believe, a major step backwards for the province. In addition, for the last 30 of the past 38 years, B.C. has operated under the secret ballot system, and it’s the norm in the country, with other provinces, like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and, in most situations, Ontario, adopting the secret ballot.

Under this government, insider labour agreements are already costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of additional dollars in cost overruns on projects like the Pattullo Bridge replacement and the Kicking Horse Canyon. It’s estimated that NDP-friendly labour agreements could add as much $4.8 billion to the cost of public infrastructure projects.

Lastly, one of the big areas that my colleagues have brought to the debate is that Bill 10 will also allow for union raiding in the construction industry every summer, which will lead to further delays and cost overruns on important residential, commercial and public infrastructure projects. The last thing we need in the middle of an affordable housing crisis is a government policy that raises the cost of housing.

A few of us in the Kelowna area are embarking on an affordable housing project. We’re trying to harness the philanthropy of our community and help first-time homebuyers get into houses. The last thing we need is to have a union raid occurring at the same time that we’re trying to provide affordable housing. Raids will increase the cost of that housing to first-time homebuyers.

With all these negative consequences attached to the implementation of Bill 10, especially the attack on such a fundamental principle as having the right to register our votes in secret without the potential for intimidation or influence, why is the government motivated to proceed? I keep scratching my head. Why is the government attacking the secrecy of a person’s ballot, an integral pillar of our democracy whether we are voting for our elected repre­sentatives or to join a union?

It makes me wonder when they will stop with their agenda of blatantly partisan legislative change. Will they stop at union drives? Or electoral boundary legislation? Or benefit agreements that don’t benefit communities but benefit a few trade unions? Or will they even change the way we elect the Speaker of the House? I wonder if that would have had an impact on the predecessor to the current Speaker. But anyway, I digress.

Bill 10 is another piece of regressive legislation meant to please the government’s friends at the expense of the general public. If you look around the world, if you take a little history lesson, in 1856, Australia created the first modern secret ballot system, with private polling compartments and uniform ballots provided by the government itself. This system was an international hit. Visitors from other countries brought back reports of the “order and quietness” of the Australian elections and the elimination of voting day riots. In the decades that followed, other nations copied the Australian model, and here we are today.

By the early 20th century, secret balloting systems roughly similar to the Australian model were becoming standard for democratic nations. Voting had moved from a community activity, in which observers held voters responsible for their choices, to a private individual choice made with quiet efficiency.

Also, in its article on the “Secret Ballot System: Merits, Demerits, Effects in Democracy” done by sociologygroup.com, they say the open ballot system like that being proposed in Bill 10 “encourages vote-selling or bribery.” This makes the vote biased. Secret ballots let the voter vote without fear and close the option of bribery.

[2:15 p.m.]

Now, on the public side, right here in British Columbia, in an open letter to the Premier on the introduction of Bill 10 and union certification, 23 leading B.C. organizations, on behalf of their collective membership, wrote to express their dismay with changes the government has proposed to the certification provisions of the Labour Relations Code. In the letter, they cite a lack of consultation, policy contrary to the minister’s mandate letter, contrary to recommendations of the NDP-appointed panel on the issue, contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and bad for the economy in a time of great economic risk.

With all this against the proposal to do away with a free and informed democratic process for employees to decide if they want to form a union, I was still left scratching my head, searching for a deeper understanding of the government’s motivation, until I heard the member for Langley.

The member for Langley had an interesting defence of Bill 10. In his argument, he cited the work of Prof. Sarah Slinn An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of the Change from Card-Check to Mandatory Vote Certification. I would like to thank the member for Langley for this insight.

Specifically, and I quote from Hansard, he said: “What Professor Slinn found was that in areas that went to a mandatory vote from single-step certification, successful certifications at labour relations boards dropped by over 21 percent. Conversely, where single-step certification was put into place, successful certifications rose by 21 percent.” There you have it. I no longer need to scratch my head. There is the motivation.

For all the empty rhetoric by members of the government in defence of this indefensible bill, the motivation is clear for me, as it is simple. Government believes: “Where a single-step certification was put into place, successful certifications rose by 21 percent.” The NDP are hoping that B.C. will see similar results of roughly a 21 percent increase in certifications. One couldn’t blame the government members, if they believed this would translate into roughly a 21 percent increase in union members as well for their selected union supporters.

There is where I could finish my remarks on Bill 10. However, the government believes that more union members, which they have always believed support the NDP at the ballot box, is enough of a justification to trump our democratic right to vote without someone watching over our shoulder? I think not. I totally disagree with this incentive.

Even after 13 years in this place, it’s been a privilege. My sense of curiosity is still alive. While also being curious, I requested, and read through, the entire research paper produced by Professor Slinn and brought to my attention by the member for Langley.

I would like to share with the members of this House a few more conclusions offered by the good professor that weren’t offered by the member for Langley. She writes:

“The choice of certification procedure appears to have signifi­cant effects on unionization. This study found that the mandatory vote procedure had a significant negative effect on the probability that a given certification application would succeed. All else being equal, an applicant under mandatory vote had an approximately 21 percent lower likelihood of being certified than an applicant under card check.”

There you go. Reinforces what the member for Langley said. The professor goes on to say:

“Furthermore, the characteristics of applicants were signifi­cantly different under the two certification regimes, and there were substantial differences in the characteristics of units certified. Foremost among these differences is a distinction between the public and private sectors.

“Even during the card-check period, a larger proportion of both applications and certifications involved employees in the public sector. This difference increased significantly under mandatory voting. Moreover, the regression results demonstrate that, all else being equal, public sector applicants had a substantial advantage over private sector applicants in terms of the likelihood of certifi­cation under mandatory voting.

“Therefore, the mandatory vote system appears to have disproportionately negative impact on certification in the private sector, and it may accelerate the decline in the proportion of the unionized workforce that is in the private sector.”

Now, if you’re not following this language, bear with me. I will summarize in just a minute.

[2:20 p.m.]

“A second key difference between certification experiences under the two regimes,” she goes on to write in her report, “was in the bargaining unit size. There was a large and statistically significant increase in the size of units applied for” under mandatory voting “and in the size of units for which certification was granted.”

This shift toward larger units may be a matter of concern both to policy-makers and unions. Since most job growth in the private sector is in smaller workplaces, this is where potential union members are. If unions focus their efforts on larger, possibly more cost-effective units, this will limit access to collective bargaining for workers in smaller units. Similarly, there was a drastically reduced level of organizing activity for units of part-time workers under the mandatory vote procedure, both in the number of applications and the number of certifications.

She ends and says that, as anticipated, voter turnout was higher under the mandatory vote procedure than it had been under card check, and that in general, higher turnout was associated with a reduced probability of certification success. An unexpected but interesting result was that in each period, a distinct trend in the rate of success was discernable. During the card check period, there was a consistent, significant and sustained decline in probability of certification. Conversely, there was a steady increase in the probability of certification over the course of a mandatory vote period.

Whether there is a card-based or a vote-based proce­dure affects not only the probability of certification but also the types of employees for whom union representation is sought and the types of employees for whom it is likely to be obtained. Changing the procedure can therefore produce substantial changes in the makeup of a unionized workforce.

So there you go. In a nutshell, as I see it, the NDP moti­vation is a hope that by changing the certification process from the free and democratic secret ballot to a simple card check, they will be making it easier for their union organizer friends to certify more small and large private sector organizations and gain more part- and full-time union — potentially NDP-leaning — members. The irony is that by making this change, they may get more certifications, but because of the greater cost involved in recruiting from smaller private sector organizations over larger public sector employee cohorts, they may actually end up with fewer net new members.

I guess only time will tell. Luckily, in two years, we may have a new government in place, which can swing the pendulum back to the centre and restore a worker’s free and democratic right to a secret ballot. As I said, only time will tell. It’s my hope that this policy won’t have the benefit of time and will be cancelled as soon as possible. I will not be supporting this undemocratic Bill 10.

T. Halford: I take my place today to speak in opposition to Bill 10 for a number of reasons, which I’m sure have been outlined in great detail by my colleagues. But I will do so myself.

The idea of Bill 10 and scrapping the right to a secret ballot is something, I know, that’s been discussed under previous NDP administrations and was likely, I’ve heard, a catalyst to friction with the minority government in the past administration. But we’re looking at stripping British Columbians away with a fundamental right to have a secret ballot. It’s shocking to me.

The only time in my life when we do things that aren’t in a secret ballot is on Friday nights when my family and I decide what we’re going to have for dinner on takeout. We sit around the table, and we have that conversation in the open. It sometimes leads to challenges and sometimes tears, but we get there. But when we are talking about the fundamental to vote, to do that without a secret ballot, I think, is a dramatic shift from democracy.

[2:25 p.m.]

I think it’s a very, very dangerous shift. I think the warning signs have been there. We’ve heard the warning signs from various people in the province. We’ve heard the warning signs from supporters of the NDP. We heard their warning signs in 2018. The government’s own expert panel recommended not scrapping the secret ballot. In the 2018 Labour Relations Code Review Panel report: “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.” That was 2018, and here we are today, and this government is about to ram through Bill 10 and strip workers of that protection.

I find it quite disturbing that in this day and age, we would even contemplate such a move. Who does this ultimately benefit? Does it benefit to serve the workers? I don’t think so. Does it benefit to serve this government in terms of their supporters, their donors, their funders, their organizers? I think there’s clear evidence that that likely may be the case.

Economically, I’ll lay out that that does not make a lot of sense. From a standpoint where we are looking at a majority government that has threatened to do this and now is on the brink of doing it, I think we are saddened by the fact that this is an issue that is going to affect every riding in this province.

If you look at a sector, and you take out…. You look at the construction sector, a sector where costs are rising, materials are rising every month. Every single material costs more, and there’s no line of sight on when that’s going to change. In fact, we’re seeing that that’s likely not going to change. We have worker shortages, so labour goes up. For a lot of these smaller, independent contractors, this can be very troubling.

We know those contractors. We know those contractors that have done renovations in our home, that have upgraded restaurants and that have built out community centres. We know that they have come in, and they have done fabulous work. But a lot of them that I hear from are on the brink. They’re trying to meet payroll. They’re trying to keep up with the unaffordability that we currently see in this province. How is that going to help them? How is Bill 10 going to help them? It is not.

I don’t know. At some point, governments change and leaders change. We’ve all seen that on either side of the House. There’s no secret. We will continue to have leadership elections, things like that. My suggestion to the NDP is that if they are that proud of this legislation, if they are that proud of the fact that they are going to strip from British Columbians the confidence of going in there and casting a ballot and doing that in privacy and in secret…. If they are going to take that away, well then, if they ever find themselves in a leadership race, why not do it then?

Can you imagine a leadership race where there was no secret ballot? You go in there, and you go and vote for the new leader of whatever party — maybe it’s the NDP — and your name is attached to the person that you are supporting for leader? Now, some people are very open about who they support for leader. But a lot of members would choose to do that and make that choice independently of having to go out and then publicly defend why they did or did not support a certain individual.

[2:30 p.m.]

I challenge the NDP. If this is the way they want to go down…. If they’re expecting workers in British Columbia to take this burden on, why don’t they ask their own membership to do the same? If there is ever going to be an NDP leadership race, why don’t they do it then? No secret ballot. If you’re going to support candidate X, put your name beside it. We’ll put it online or we’ll share it with that riding so every member of that riding will know who you supported in a leadership race.

That’s kind of where we’re going with Bill 10, when you’re going to strip away that democracy from British Columbians that are working every day to put food on their tables. They’re already stressed about how they’re making those mortgage payments, about how they’re making their rent, how they’re paying their daycare costs, how they’re paying for their counselling services, how they’re getting groceries that week.

Do you think that they need the anxiety when they vote because it’s not something that they are doing in privacy? It’s actually going to be something that they’re going to have to defend to their colleagues, to their employer, to union bosses, to the NDP.

I think that’s absolutely shameful. I think it’s embarrassing. I think when you look at the lack of consultation that this government did on Bill 10, it shows the fact that they know this is something that’s not supported. They know this is something that they cannot stand and be proud of.

That’s the challenge that we have. We’ve continued to see legislation introduced in this House. Some of it is good, and we’ll, hopefully, get to committee stage on Bill 23. That looks like a good piece of legislation that we can unite and support. We’ll go through committee, and we’ll get clarifi­cation on that.

On Bill 10…. We’ve seen previous bills, whether it’s fees related to FOI and things like that. I almost get the sense that there’s a bit of embarrassment. And I understand that embarrassment. I would be embarrassed, too, if I was putting that legislation forward and then I had to get up and give a speech, “Hey, you’ve got to read these following things. Make sure you get them in” — and everything like that. “If you can give us 15 minutes, that would be great.”

I would be embarrassed if that was my job, because you have to go out and defend it. You have to defend it to your constituents and say, “We don’t believe that citizens should have access to their own information. We’re going to charge for that.” Right? “But we don’t believe that members of a union should be able to vote in secret. We’re going to expose them on that.”

I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with that. I think that it’s a lack of accountability. It’s a lack of transparency. But also the fact is that we are now looking at a government that will do anything — anything — to appease the people that put them there. And those people aren’t average British Columbians that are struggling to make their ends meet or provide for their family. If they were, we wouldn’t be talking about Bill 10. We would be talking about how this government finally fulfilled a pro­mise and did a $400 renters rebate.

Who’s calling for this bill besides the Labour Minister and cabinet and the Premier? Who is saying that if this does not happen, there are dire consequences? I haven’t heard that argument. I don’t suspect I will. For 30 of the last 38 years, we’ve had a secret ballot. I haven’t had one constituent ever come into my office and advocate for something different — not one email, not one phone call — until this bill was introduced.

[2:35 p.m.]

Nobody has advocated it when the bill was introduced. They’ve said: “Please help me understand why they would attempt to do something like this.” And I can’t. It’s simple: it’s politics. And there’s a line that in politics, loyalty is sometimes your only currency. There’s a bit of truth in that, in what we’re seeing in Bill 10.

This is using a majority government to do something that British Columbians will be very, very exposed on. I think that that is fundamentally wrong. When we are looking at what British Columbians are getting, look at when we’ve talked about the CBAs. We’re looking at $4.8 billion of additional cost to public infrastructure projects. Isn’t that good enough for you guys in the unions? Do we have to keep going? So we’ll do Bill 10. Then what’s next?

I will not be supporting Bill 10, and I will take my place on that. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

M. de Jong: Well, we’re at that stage in the debate, I think, where you start to sort of ask yourself: “What do I have to add?” We have heard a great deal — admittedly considerably more from the opposition side of the House than from the government side — challenging the merits of the legislation before us. What was it that Elizabeth Taylor’s fifth husband said on their wedding night? “I know what’s expected of me. I’m just not sure how interesting I can make it.” But let me try to add my take on the merits of Bill 10.

As I have listened to the discussion that’s taking place in the House…. I will say, again, there was considerably more from the opposition side of the House than from the government side, but to be fair, a few members of the government did deign to involve themselves. In both cases, I heard a lot about personal experiences. I heard a lot about how people have become acquainted with the exercise of collective bargaining rights — collective bargaining organizations, unions.

For some, it has been their vocation. They have spent a lot of time being involved, and it has been the way that they have, for a large part of their life, made a living. In other cases, it has been as members of union organizations. In some cases, it has been — as we have heard from employers that have been engaged with unions, collective bargaining organizations — for the purpose of negotiating contracts. Everyone’s experience is a little bit different. I think, to be fair, it does influence, to a degree, one’s view of the world.

At the end of relating my experience, I’m going to make an observation that may surprise you, Madam Speaker, and the House. My dad, when he emigrated from Holland after the Second World War, came as part of a plan, an arrangement between the two countries. He had grown up on a farm, and the deal was that you could come to Canada, but you had to work — in his case, on a dairy farm — for a couple of years.

He was qualified to do that, as a young man, because he had grown up on a dairy farm. He did that. He came by boat to Halifax. He came across on the train, got off in Mission, and then worked for two years on a farm in Silverdale.

[2:40 p.m.]

Today he is, sadly, in his 94th year stricken with pretty advanced dementia, but he’s in a very nice home attached to the Mission hospital. It kinds of overlooks that same Silverdale area and our property. I say that parenthetically.

He actually didn’t want to be a dairy farmer for the rest of his life, although he bought a farm. I think that was some kind of penalty he sought to impose on his children, to ensure that they would experience the same love of the land that characterized his early years.

He wanted to become educated in a different area — in his case, the electrical trade. He went to what was then, I think, Vancouver Vocational Institute. He became a certified electrician and, ultimately, an industrial-level electrician and formed his own business.

It was a small business. From time to time, he would hire one or two others. He was very good about trying to bring people into the apprenticeship program, but I don’t want to suggest that he had a very large business. It was mostly him doing the work and my mother doing the books when both of them weren’t helping the kids work on the farm.

He acquired, over the course of his work, I will have to say, a fairly negative attitude towards the union movement. I think it was rooted in the fact that he, as an individual contractor, frequently encountered push-back at jobsites and industrial sites where the workers were certified. Though he generally had a very good relationship with the workers themselves, institutionally there was a tension there when a non-union worker would arrive and he provided a specialized service.

There was a tension there. My dad could be a fairly passionate man about his trade, so at times, he would come home, and we would hear, at the dinner table, his expressions of frustration about the nature of that relationship between the unionized and, in his case, non-unionized workforce.

I have to acknowledge that for a while, I think that probably did exercise an influence on me as a young man. I frequently would work with him on some of these jobsites, passing tools, holding flashlights, running wires, and all the things that one does in that trade. I was lucky, though. My parents were very supportive, and they sent me off to university. I did my undergraduate degree, which was in history. It was there that I began to learn about the fundamental importance of the development of the labour movement.

When I was starting to go to university, in the very early days of the 1980s, labour history had just begun to be…. History to that point, historiography, had tended to concentrate on political histories. Who was the Prime Minister? How did they acquire…? Things like labour history, women’s history and even Aboriginal history were still in the advent in those days.

I was fortunate. I began to learn about the importance and the contribution made by labour organizers and the significant importance associated with that. We’re dating back to the Industrial Revolution in the U.K., how the roots of the labour movement and societal awareness around labour law emerged out of literature — authors like Dickens pointing to some of the fundamental injustices and inequities that were taking place in industrialized England.

[2:45 p.m.]

Out of that was transported, to Canada and North America, an increased awareness. Some heroes, quite frankly, emerged out of the labour movement that, happily, today we honour for the work that they did — sometimes in the face of great opposition — to evolve laws and to import notions of equity, fairness and reasonableness into labour laws.

Here in Canada — in the west, in particular — much of that manifested itself in the resource sector. Here on the Island, the north Island, Madam Chair, you’re very familiar with things like the coal industry — where the labour movement played a crucial role in areas of workers safety, workers rights, reasonable work schedules and those things that we, perhaps, today take for granted but were not so much the case, even a century ago — and in the fish-packing sector, similarly, up and down the coast and in Prince Rupert.

In the forest sector, there’s a long and storied history on the harvesting side on the coast and, in particular, on the manufacturing side, with proud labour organizations like the IWA. I have to say, before the IWA merged with the Steelworkers, in the time that I spent on that side of the House for four years as Forests Minister, I had a chance to work with the IWA and people like Dave Haggard and Darrel Wong, who were very much committed to the well-being of their members and ensuring that the rights and interests of their workers and their members were protected­.

It’s all to say that the evolution and the importance associated with the right of workers to organize and come together collectively is not in doubt. I don’t think it has been challenged — not in any of the speeches that I have heard.

At a certain point…. I have heard, again, the few members on the government side that have participated in the debate pointing with an attached measure of importance to something that took place relatively recently, in the last decade and a half. That was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada to formally recognize as a constitutional right, as part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms under the provisions of the Charter dealing with freedom of association, the right to organize collectively for people, for workers, employees, to come together and organize themselves collectively.

In addition to the historical and practical importance that we should attach to the work of the labour movement and the evolution of labour law in this country, there’s now the fact that there is constitutional recognition and, I think, a further sign of just how important, for our society and our country, those rights are.

None of that is in issue, and none of that, quite frankly, despite much of what we have heard from the members of the government side that have spoken, is what Bill 10 purports to deal with. It’s not the “what.”

[2:50 p.m.]

The what, in this case, is the right for workers to come together, if they so choose, and collectivize — to form a trade union or join a trade union — for the purpose of advancing their contractual rights and protecting their interests under the contract, vis-à-vis their employer.

That’s the what. But that’s not what Bill 10 is about, and I don’t think there’s any disagreement in this House about the importance of ensuring that that is maintained, protected and even celebrated. Bill 10 is about the how. How do people do that? How do they make the decision to exercise what is now a constitutional right and what has always been a fundamentally important right?

If this House is correct…. I have heard this from both sides. If we are correct in pointing to the importance of the constitutional recognition for the right of workers to organize collectively, then surely it follows that there is equal importance to be attached to how they do that. The same importance and the same constitutional principles that give rise to the protection of the right to form oneself into a union or collective bargaining unit should apply to how that is done.

That, I would suggest, is where the fundamental division exists between the members of the NDP government and the opposition, because I — and, I think, we — believe that precisely because this is such a fundamental right, there should be some fundamental protections for how that right is exercised.

I believe, perhaps unwittingly, that the government, by virtue of Bill 10, is diminishing the significance of that constitutional right by suggesting that there is a lesser process that can give rise to the exercise of that right. Because surely we would agree that the ultimate expression of our democratic rights and democratic freedoms is the ability to exercise a vote, and to do so without disclosing the nature of the choice we make.

Therein lies the fundamental point of departure, because what I hear and what we have heard members of the government say is — notwithstanding the fact that this is a fundamentally important, constitutional right — well, it can be exercised in a far less structured way and in a manner that far less guarantees what most of us, what most reasonable-thinking people would say is in accordance with fundamental principles of democracy. That is the secret ballot, because the choice is such an important one. This choice about whether to organize collectively is in and of itself important.

Workplaces have changed dramatically for much of the time labour law was evolving. Large workplaces, the manufacturing facilities employing upwards of 1,000-plus people — we don’t see those kinds of workplaces anymore. They tend to be smaller. That is the product, I suspect, of technology and productivity. It makes, I think, the skills that the workers bring to bear that much more valuable, but the shapes those workplaces take are different.

[2:55 p.m.]

I don’t know if that’s partly why we have seen unionized membership in the private sector decline at the rate we have, especially vis-à-vis the public sector. I do wonder to what extent that phenomenon is part and parcel of the calculation that the government has made in introducing this measure, which is widely unpopular, whether they want to admit it or not, and difficult for people to understand.

There is the question of whether or not a worker wishes, in the case of an original certification process, to assign their rights to a collective organization. It doesn’t happen for free. For some collective bargaining units, I think the union dues are upwards of $3,000 or $4,000 a year, depending on your income. That is a significant investment. For many, it is viewed as a worthwhile investment. But it’s a choice, and it’s a personal choice.

Perhaps that’s the essence of the frustration that we in the opposition and many others outside of this chamber are feeling. It is a personal choice. It’s a personal choice about whether to come together and collectivize and assign rights that you have, as an employee, to a larger organization, but it is originally a personal choice. Under what circumstances should we be entitled to exercise that personal choice? We would say anonymously or free from having to disclose the nature of the choice.

The government says otherwise, by virtue of Bill 10. It says: “No. That very personal choice is one that we believe you should make publicly for all to see.” We have a problem with that. We think that diminishes the right of the individual, and we think that actually diminishes the significance of the constitutional protection for collective bargaining rights that now exists in this country.

The labour movement is a competitive place. There are people better equipped than me in this House that know the reality behind that. The notion that one organization can come to another workplace and entice members of one collective bargaining, one union to leave that organization and join another…. I don’t think anyone argues that workers having the original and personal choice about whether to collectivize shouldn’t maintain the choice about who should represent them.

There’s a lot that goes into that decision. I mean, it starts with the amount of dues. What is the quality of the repre­sentation? What is the performance of the bargaining representatives of a particular union at the negotiating table? What’s their track record in terms of the benefits they’ve secured during contract talks? What’s their track record in terms of defending the rights of workers in grievance proceedings? We haven’t talked a lot about that.

[3:00 p.m.]

This is not just an important role at contract time. Every day there is a role to play in terms of defending the rights of workers vis-à-vis that contract and other labour law requirements. What is the record of a particular union in that regard? That is an assessment that an individual needs to make when confronted by a choice about whether or not to stay with the union they’re with or to move to another bargaining organization.

And we have seen that. We have seen some very, very bitter battles in the last number of years. Nurses and the HEU. That was, if I recall correctly, in one instance, a pretty divisive battle. But the choice was made on the strength of votes being cast privately, in a secret ballot. The result was what it was.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Post Bill 10, the comfort that those people will have to make that choice and to do so anonymously, secretly, will no longer exist. We don’t think that’s right. We think that is problematic.

I’ve listened carefully, over the course of the days of debate, and as many of my colleagues in the opposition have asked, perhaps rhetorically: “What is the rationale for this change? What is the imperative?” Of all the things we are confronted by in this pandemic-laden society, with a second health crisis relating to opioid overdose deaths that are reaching staggering numbers and imposing misery on family after family, what is it? What arguments have the government members, the few that have spoken, brought to bear to make a persuasive case for why this change to what we would all characterize, reasonably, as a fundamental right is justified? I haven’t heard the argument.

At some point, the House is going to divide, and we’re going to have a vote. I expect, at the end of that vote, we will hear applause from the government members. I’m not sure what they’ll be applauding. It may well be the first time a government applauds the elimination of a fundamental democratic right like the right to exercise a choice in a secret ballot. But that’s what is going to happen at some point, at the conclusion of this debate.

I predict that along with several other measures that we have seen over the course of the last few months from this government, the arrogance that has given rise to the introduction of this legislation, the arrogance that will characterize the applause that we will hear when the final vote is taken, is ultimately going to mark the demise of this government. People will see this for what it is, and that is an unreasonable and unnecessary alteration and elimination of some fundamental rights that have served our society and served workers and organized labour well over the last number of years.

[3:05 p.m.]

The government has not made a persuasive case for why this bill should be supported. Quite frankly, I don’t think they’ve tried very hard. I think they have concluded that this is one of those matters that, as a few of my colleagues have said, requires them to hold their noses to pay a poli­tical debt and push or ram through this chamber on the strength of the majority that they command.

That may be sufficient tactically for the purpose of moving the bill through the stages of debate. It is hardly sufficient, in my view, morally for the change that Bill 10 represents, a change that is summarized in but two pages of legislation. The labour code is hundreds of pages, a reminder and a lesson to us all that it takes but one or two pages of printed text and a majority in this chamber to fundamentally alter laws and rights that most of us would take for granted.

I think it’s wrong. I think it’s misguided. I think our society will be ill-served. I am opposed.

K. Kirkpatrick: I am not going to say I’m happy to be speaking to Bill 10. I wish we didn’t have to be speaking to Bill 10. I feel we’ve been here before, and I don’t understand why we’re back here again.

First, I would like to thank labour unions for their contributions to Canadian society. I’ve worked in unionized environments. I’ve had a good relationship with CUPE staff. I believe we have to respect the union process, respect collective agreements. Any worker who feels that they want to be part of a union, employers should not get in the way, and we have to respect that.

We also have to respect those workers who determine they don’t want to be part of a union. There are many workers in British Columbia who have chosen not to be part of a union. That’s their right as well. I see this government not working for the people of British Columbia but working for a select group of unions in British Columbia.

I’d like to tell you a little story about why I chose to run to become an MLA. I was working for a non-profit organization doing fabulous work across British Columbia. These are social workers, youth support workers, an amazing, amazing group of people who do this work because they love the work.

What happened, which got me quite upset, is that this government, in looking at how they were contracting with these non-profit organizations who were delivering services, decided that even though these contracts were identical and these social workers were providing the exact same programs, those organizations with unions should be paid more than those who were not unionized, for doing the exact same work.

This is something that…. The non-profits looked at each other, those who were not unionized, and they said: “Well, we’ve never been unionized.” Some of them were 90 years old. Sometimes people come to organizations to work there because they’re not unionized. So they viewed this, and I certainly viewed this, something called low-wage redress, as coercion from government to unionize.

[3:10 p.m.]

I’ve heard members on the other side of the House say the need for this legislation and the need to remove the secret ballot is because there was coercion from employers that would keep employees from feeling that they could vote to certify. But I have seen the exact opposite with this government. They have created a discriminatory funding mechanism for non-profit organizations.

This has opened the door for intimidation of those employees who do not want to unionize by BCGEU, by CUPE, by other unions in British Columbia, who sent letters to these non-unionized employers that said, in a very threatening way: “We’re going to give you the opportunity to voluntarily certify. And if you don’t voluntarily certify, we’re going to launch an aggressive certification campaign with your employees.” If that is not coercion between government and unions to force people to unionize, I don’t know what is.

We went back to government. We asked and explained the concerns and the challenges that this was going to have. It went nowhere. Government’s response to us: “Why don’t you just unionize?”

I know that the member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale said to an executive director of a large non-profit on the North Shore, who was not unionized…. When that executive director came and said, “This is going to be a problem for us. We’re going to have lay people off. We’re not going to be able to deal with this,” the answer was: “Well, why don’t you just unionize?”

These people didn’t want to be unionized. So what’s happening….

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: The member for West Vancouver–​Capilano has the floor.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

K. Kirkpatrick: This organization is now left in a position where they have got counsellors, paraprofessionals, who are earning $12 an hour less than the paraprofessionals under these government contracts, where they should be paid the same under these contracts for doing the identical work.

I take offence to the idea that we need to lose the secret ballot so that people are not intimidated or not coerced into joining a union. In fact, right now, this low-wage redress…. What has happened is that you’ve got a group of non-profit employers, and not just non-profit employers but individual employees, individual workers. These are the people who are being told that they need to unionize. They have gone to the Labour Relations Board and taken government to the Labour Relations Board to say: “This is not fair. This is absolutely not fair.”

These employees are doing the identical work under identical contracts for this government. It was simply a way to manipulate the system to force these poor non-profit employers to unionize. The threat…. “If you don’t voluntarily certify, we’re going to launch these aggressive campaigns.” Why should these employers be forced to make a decision on behalf of their employees to force them to unionize?

[3:15 p.m.]

I want to go back to the beginning here and just say that I respect unions. I have worked with them. My grandfather was a union activist in the glass-blowers union in Scotland. My grandfather, when they moved here, was a union activist.

I respect the work they do. I understand that there are workplaces where unionization is important, is extremely important. I believe in the collective bargaining process. I believe in the spirit of labour relations. This is not me standing up here saying unions are bad. What I’m saying is people need to have choice.

If there are concerns that government has about the way that employees are being treated, if there are safety issues, if there are other issues, that’s what we need to deal with. We’ve already got organizations in British Columbia that look out for the safety of employees and employment standards that look out for the treatment of employees. Do we need to beef some of those things up so that we’ve got additional protections? Maybe so.

I’ll tell you. Some of these employers and these non-profits…. The irony of what’s going to happen here is that if they unionize, they would have to red-circle some salaries because they were already being paid more in some of the positions than they would be under the contract. They would have to reduce their benefits because they already had good benefits. They would have to reduce the number of sick days that they were being paid for. They already had pensions. It removes flexibility, and it increases the cost of operations to these non-profits significantly.

I’m not talking about wages; I’m talking about the mechanisms that you need for labour relations in these organizations. They are then going to be fundraising, not to pay for the delivery of direct services in the social services sector. They are going to be fundraising in order to pay for these additional labour relations staff and the processes and the lack of flexibility in some of the programming.

Where I started here was: why was I upset, and why did I decide to run as an MLA? Well, I tried to talk to government. There was no listening there. There was a round table that was put together that was to help these non-profits who were non-unionized to try and get some wage equity, but that didn’t amount to actual wage equity. There was a…. What was it called, now? Was it retention and recruitment? It was an amount of money that was provided to them that was a small fraction of what government was paying on these other contracts.

There were two Andrews that were working in this House at that point. I went and talked to the first Andrew, and he said: “Well, I don’t support them getting rid of the secret ballot, and I think it’s appalling how they have dealt with this wage differential through this low-wage redress.”

I went to the other Andrew, and I said the same thing. He said: “This is completely wrong. It’s completely unfair. By the way, where do you live, and would you like to run as an MLA?” I said: “Well, if that’s the only way that we can be heard and talk about these things, then absolutely yes.” So this is related to the issue that we’re having today, because the irony to me here is that this government works for unions and not for workers in the province of British Columbia, and I have seen that firsthand.

For 30 of the last 38 years, the secret ballot has existed in this province and has helped to protect the privacy, the independence and the democratic right of every worker to vote either for or against union representation without coercion, intimidation or harassment. What are we trying to fix? What is it that we are trying to fix? I don’t understand this.

The secret ballot is the norm in most provinces and territories in Canada. It’s strongly favoured by the majority of B.C. workers. There was just a survey. We saw overwhelmingly that the majority of workers in British Columbia want the secret ballot.

[3:20 p.m.]

Why is it that this government doesn’t listen to recommendations from committees of professionals who have come together to really dig down and to look at what’s in the best policy interest of British Columbians?

Recommendations of the 2018 Labour Relations Code Review Panel 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.”

What is the problem that we’re trying to resolve with this? If you’ve got the Labour Relations Code Review Panel saying, “Don’t make this change,” then why are we making this change? I haven’t heard anyone on the other side of the House give compelling reasons why this is necessary, and it takes away a fundamental democratic right that we have to secret ballots. It takes away a fundamental right that we have for secret ballots, and it’s really alarming that this government thinks that’s okay. It’s okay if it works for them; it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work for other people.

The changes outlined in this bill are going to open workers up to pressure campaigns where they could be coerced or pressured into joining unions against their will. That is exactly the reaction that many of us had when we received a letter that said: “We are going to launch an aggressive certification campaign in your organization.” The next sentence should have been: “Even though people in your organization have not expressed any interest in being part of a union — even though employees like working here.” It’s an employer of choice, but that doesn’t matter.

Unions are not that much different than business organizations. Certification in organizations that do not have employees actively asking for this is business development. That’s what’s happening. It’s just business development. We want to sell more. It’s not any different than growing an organization, any other kind of organization.

The Premier himself made it no secret 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. But back in ’19, when he tried to push through labour code amendments that would have taken away the secret ballot, he could not garner the support of this House. But now that there’s not the need to discuss and debate and get collective agreement on things, now is the time that this is being pushed through.

As of 2021, the current rate of unionization among workers in B.C. sits at around 30 percent, while an overwhelming number — 85 percent of construction workers — don’t belong to a government- or NDP-aligned trades union. But now that this government is in a majority position, they’re in a position to pay off their political backers and insiders, and that’s what this is coming down to. That’s what this is. This government is working for unions, and it’s not working for workers in British Columbia.

It’s not enough that there’s going to be an elimination of the secret ballot. Clause 1 in this legislation allows union raiding to take place in the construction industry between the months of July and August every year, which is the busiest time you can probably have in the construction sector. And it’s every year, as opposed to every three years.

[3:25 p.m.]

What is the problem that is trying to be fixed here? What is the compelling reason for this change? I’d like somebody on the other side of the House to stand up and say: “Why is that a really good idea?” I haven’t heard that.

It’s no coincidence that this practice will now be allowed to take place during the busiest construction time of the year. And this is a government that wants to reduce the cost of housing? So they are going to do that by dragging out the length of time it takes to construct housing and to construct infrastructure projects. How is this helping anything? It’s not solving a problem; it’s adding more problems­.

Again, it goes directly against the recommendations of this government’s own 2018 expert panel. While government claims that this is simply to appease workers who may be unhappy with their current union, this union-raiding clause will undoubtedly serve as another tool for this government and their labour insiders to pressure more workers, and it will create chaos. It will create complete chaos. This move threatens to create instability and disruption and will actually add, due to these delays, additional costs.

We’ve already seen negative impacts that result from this kind of action. This government has delivered only a small fraction of their promised 114,000 housing units. The community benefits agreements — that’s the second piece. The combination of the low-wage redress and the CBAs is why I’m standing here speaking to you today.

The CBAs handpick favoured insider unions. It’s abso­lutely driving up the costs of infrastructure projects in B.C. already, by hundreds of millions of dollars, and reducing their scope. It’s estimated that CBAs could add as much as $4.8 billion more of taxpayer dollars to the cost of public infrastructure projects. The CBAs’ requirement to have employees join only the Premier’s handpicked unions for major construction projects is all part of the NDP’s plan to increase the unionization of the construction sector.

It is really difficult to speak to this. Obviously, this is not legislation that I can support. I appreciate the opportunity to share my frustration and to give some context into my experience and how this seems to be backwards in terms of who is potentially coercing who and where the intimidation is. I don’t understand why this government has brought this forward. Well, I do understand why this government has brought this forward, but I’m very disappointed that they have brought it forward.

I would like to thank you for the time, Madam Speaker, and have a seat.

Question of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)

Hon. B. Ma: I rise to reserve my right to raise a matter of personal privilege regarding comments made by the member for West Vancouver–Capilano.

T. Shypitka: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

T. Shypitka: In the gallery today, we have a very special guest. We have Cathy Peters. Cathy Peters raises awareness about the issue of human and sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual trafficking, which is for the purpose of prostitution. She speaks and presents to politicians, police and the public.

[3:30 p.m.]

She’s been at it for 45 years, and she’s a super-strong advocate for what she stands for and for what a lot of people stand for. I’d like to welcome her. I think it’s very appropriate today, being on Red Dress Day and the recognition of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Would the House please welcome Cathy Peters.

Deputy Speaker: Welcome.

Debate Continued

T. Stone: I appreciate taking my place here in second reading on Bill 10, the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022.

Like I think virtually every speaker on both sides of the House that has weighed in on this debate to this point, I, too, will start off by acknowledging the place that unions have played in my family and the importance that I think the union movement has represented for our province, for our country and, most importantly, for workers.

I grew up in a household of railroaders and firefighters. The Locomotive Engineers union and the Fire Fighters union were very prevalent in my house, growing up. I was exposed to unions, to the work that unions do and to the importance of unions’ place in our society — and in workplaces, in particular — at a young age and through my upbringing. I have tremendous respect for the role that unions play. I have tremendous respect for the collective bargaining process.

I have tremendous respect for the rights and the gains that have been achieved by unions on behalf of workers. I also have a tremendous respect for the right of workers to choose for themselves whether they wish to associate or not, affiliate or not, join or not, a union. I think that’s a fundamental right that British Columbian workers have.

It is a right, a democratic right, that I believe is being seriously eroded in this legislation, which largely deals with two key areas that I will touch on in my remarks: the removal of the current secret ballot provisions for a certification to take place in a workplace, and secondly, the provisions relating to union raiding and worksites — equally problematic, in my view.

I will say, as well, that I have listened carefully to a number of the presentations made by members of the government. I have not found the case that they have made to be convincing. I have not found the case that they have made to really drive home what that overriding rationale is for taking away a worker’s right to a secret ballot.

I have heard many members in government talk about safety. With at least some of the members in government that have spoken to Bill 10, there seems to be some confusion as to what Bill 10 really is all about.

We’ve heard many members talk about how important it is to enhance safety practices and focus on workplace standards, and so forth. That is not what Bill 10 addresses; that is not what is in Bill 10. I would add that all members of the House — of all three parties, I think — support safe workplaces. Everyone wants workers to work in workplaces that place, first and foremost, at the centre of the workplace, the safety of the people who work there. But that is not at all what this bill addresses.

[3:35 p.m.]

That was, I think, some confusion. Well, the really generous way to view those comments would be to say there was some confusion. I think they may have perhaps, in some cases, been scrambling to try to come up with some rationalization — albeit completely misaligned with the actual contents of the bill — around why they would be supporting a piece of legislation which really is all about stripping away the democratic rights of workers in the workplace here in B.C. That’s the important point here. Bill 10 strips workers of their right to a secret ballot to deter­mine union representation.

If 55 percent of union cards are signed, there’s an automatic certification that takes place. The present rules provide for a 55 percent requirement to sign a union card. If that happens, then it kicks it to a secret ballot, where that decision can be confirmed by the workers, free of any coercion or any pressure, in the confines of a ballot booth, with just them and a pencil and a piece of paper, where they say yes or no to a certification. No one but themselves knows how they end up voting in that process.

That two-step process today has been carefully crafted over the years and has served labour relations and, I would argue, workplaces in British Columbia. It has served the province well for the better part of the last 40 years. The secrecy of a person’s ballot — we’ve heard it many times here in this debate — is a critical pillar of our democracy. It’s not just applicable in a workplace setting. We elect every member in this House through a secret ballot.

We don’t do it the way it was done in the 1800s, where there were still places in the world where people would gather in taverns or pubs and other public spaces and there would be shows of hands — do you support this party or that party? — and all of the intimidation and harassment that would take place.

We don’t do it that way when we elect our MLAs. We don’t do it out in the open when we elect our Members of Parliament. We fundamentally allow for those elected officials to be elected through a secret ballot. We elect our mayors and our councillors through a secret ballot. We elect school boards through a secret ballot — and candi­dates for political office.

I think of my own road or path to elected office as a member of this place. It started by signing up a bunch of members in a nomination process — kind of the equivalent of a card check system — followed by having to get those members out to actually vote at a nomination meeting. The nomination meeting was conducted through a secret ballot. In the election of a caucus chair — I believe that the NDP caucus does it the same way — we certainly elect our caucus chair through a secret ballot.

Heck, I was even talking to one of my daughters, who’s in high school, at the beginning of this high school year. You think way back to high school councils and whatnot. They do those votes through a secret ballot. So it is very strange, totally unnecessary and contrary to the rights of workers to not continue to afford workers with the right to a secret ballot so that they can choose for themselves as to whether they want to affiliate or unaffiliate, or they want to certify or not certify.

There may be very good reasons to vote yes in a certification process, and we’ve seen that, obviously, happen. There may be very compelling reasons that a particular union makes to a workplace related to safety or other aspects of working conditions, or compensation or the nature of the work. There may be very good reasons for a worker to choose to affiliate with a union, but likewise, there may be very good reasons for a worker to choose not to want to join a union.

[3:40 p.m.]

There are employers out there that perhaps could do a better job at how workers are compensated or could improve working conditions. I mean, this is a constant state of progress. It’s a constant state of work that’s required. But there are a lot of employers out there, too, that pay darn well, that have to provide their employees with tremendous working conditions.

In talking with a number of businesses in my riding, in Kamloops–South Thompson, in many cases the wage rate that’s paid is higher than what the union wage rate would be, or the pension entitlements are higher than what comparable pension entitlements are with similar employers down the street that have a union in place.

There are compelling reasons to affiliate; there are compelling reasons not to affiliate. The point is that it should be left up to the worker to decide, in the secrecy of a ballot booth. Much as we elect all kind of elected officials, as I just rattled off, it’s up to that worker to decide what works for him or her.

Regrettably, this bill continues a pattern that we’ve seen from this government, where the trampling on people’s rights or the erosion of rights in this province has really been taking place consistently over the last five years. We’ve seen the tabling of significant pieces of legislation that have very little, if any, content within them but that leave completely up to regulation the actual bringing to life of that legislation.

It was only the other day that there was a piece of legislation that implements a cooling-off period in real estate transactions, and there was no detail in the bill. All the details that pertain to that policy are left to regulation, which is determined by cabinet in the cabinet room — which is not an open and transparent process and which is not transparent to British Columbians.

We’ve seen significant changes from this government, contrary to what they’ve campaigned on in two previous elections.

We’ve seen significant changes to freedom-of-information legislation in this province. We’ve seen the imposition, for the first time ever, of fees to access — for the public to actually have to pay to access what is, essentially, the public’s information. We’ve seen that the scope of what is applicable to freedom-of-information legislation has actually shrunk. The amount of proactive disclosure — in areas where there really needs to be proactive disclosure and there certainly is no compelling reason not to proactively disclose — just isn’t happening.

Or we could talk about CBAs, the so-called community benefits agreements, which are a hallmark of this government. It’s something that, I know, members in government are very proud of, but they’ve imposed union-only requirements on major construction projects across the province.

Through that process, they’ve forced workers to join one of the NDP’s 19 approved unions in order to work on those projects. They’ve said to companies, through this community benefits agreement or union-only requirement, that if a company wants to work on a project and they have an open-shop workforce, they have to, essentially, lay off their workers. The workers have to go and be hired by Infrastructure Benefits, a Crown corporation. The workers then affiliate with or sign on with one of the unions. The company then has to hire the same employees back, but now they’re members of a union.

All that that has served to do is inflate the cost of those construction projects. It’s inflated the costs. It’s drawn out the timelines that it takes to actually build these major projects, and it has been highly, highly, discriminatory to workers — forcing workers to join unions when they may not want to join unions. That’s a backdoor attempt.

[3:45 p.m.]

I guess the best you can say about this removal of the secret ballot: at least the government is being bold and being brazen and upfront about their intentions here to get rid of the secret ballot, and really, to drive more membership to the NDP’s approved unions — which, by the way, over the years have funnelled a heck of a lot of money into the NDP.

The CBA process was a backdoor unionization effort requiring people, against their will — basically saying you have to make a choice between putting food on your table or not. The difference being if you don’t join a union, you can’t work on this project. That’s essentially what has happened with these CBAs.

The government continues to show a blatant disregard for people’s fundamental rights. We see it here with the secret ballot. I mentioned the requirement for a secret ballot for certification has been around for quite some time. I should also point out that it’s quite interesting that — and the cynic in me will come out on this as well — the government is going to do away, through this legislation, with the rights of a worker to have a secret ballot about whether or not they want to join a union.

Guess what. They’ve kept the provision for a secret ballot in order to decertify, if you decide you don’t want to be part of a union, a provision which has been on the books for the same amount of time as the provision that a secret ballot is required in order to join a union. So it suits the government to have a secret ballot to allow workers, in the privacy of a ballot booth, to make a decision around decertifying and not being unionized, but it doesn’t suit the government’s purpose to afford that worker the same right, which would be to have a secret ballot to choose to join a union or not. How convenient for the NDP government.

Then I’d point out, because we’ve heard a bit from members opposite about meddling in a certification process that apparently takes place…. Listening to the members opposite, it takes place often in workplace certification drives. The current rules are very, very clear that if employers meddle in the certification processes, then certification is basically automatic. It basically happens, right? The Labour Relations Board — they make it happen.

A secret ballot is not something that’s foreign to the rest of the country. It exists in most of the country, many other provinces.

Fundamentally, the secret ballot…. Well, let me back up. When I was thinking about the balance that exists today…. When you really look at this piece of legislation, as we in the opposition do with every piece of legislation the government brings forward, the first question you ask is: what is the problem that this legislation is trying to solve, or what is the new initiative that this piece of legislation is trying to drive?

I think about what’s the problem we’re trying to solve. It’s hard to come up with. There hasn’t been mass labour strife in workplaces across the province. People have had the right and ability to certify and not certify with this dual process of signing cards, to a certain level, first; and if that level is met, then going to a secret ballot; and if there’s a confirmation of 55 percent in the secret ballot, then the certification will happen.

My point is that there’s been, generally speaking, labour stability for a good number of years. There’s been a balance that has been struck that has been characteristic of most workplaces in British Columbia for a lot of years. So what’s the problem that the government is trying to solve here? What’s the issue that would drive the need to do this? It certainly isn’t because workers out there are banging the drums saying that they wanted this to happen. It’s not because British Columbians writ large are out there saying that they want this to happen.

To this point — prior to this legislation, prior to the CBA requirements — only about 30 percent of British Columbia’s workforce is unionized. And 85 percent of the construction sector is open-shop. They’re not unionized. When we consider….

[3:50 p.m.]

Is the reason the government’s doing this is because British Columbians, again, have been beating the drum and urging government to do it? Well, recent public opinion surveys have indicated that 79 percent agree that a secret ballot vote should be required when forming or removing a union from a workplace. So 79 percent agree with the status quo — with maintaining a secret ballot. Only 9 percent disagree. I would point out that 78 percent of people who say that they support the NDP also agree that the secret ballot should remain.

Again, if it’s not self-serving and if it’s not an effort on the part of government to serve their own interests…. That is, I think, obviously what it is. What else could it be? It’s none of these other things. It’s not because workers are demanding that it happen. It’s not because we have all this labour strife in our workplaces. It’s not because British Columbians want it to happen.

The balance that we have, the balance that exists in labour relations in the province right now — are there needed refinements to that balance over time? Are there needed refinements to employment standards over time? Are there needed refinements to ensure that workers’ rights are enhanced and protected? Is there an evolution that needs to continue to take place? Absolutely. But that’s why you have a Labour Relations Board. That’s why you have a pretty extensive framework of labour relations and employment standards in this province.

I think that the general balance that we see in our workplaces and the relative quiet that there has been for many years on this…. This, I would say, artificial sense of urgency that the government seems to have underpinning their desire to move forward with removing the secret ballot flies in the face of why the secret ballot has actually resulted in such a set of balanced conditions in most workplaces these days. The secret ballot ensures that both unions and employers can express their views to employees. Employee workers can consider the arguments or the compelling cases that both unions and employers want to make.

There are strict guidelines that ensure no coercion. I mentioned that a moment ago. There are rules in place that prevent employers from employing any coercion. Of course, each employee gets to register his or her choice in the privacy of that ballot box. So that freedom-of-expression piece — being able to make that decision for yourself as a worker, free of any intimidation and any coercion — is critically important with the current system of a secret ballot.

I mentioned a moment ago that British Columbians aren’t really calling for this. They don’t support it, and 79 percent say that they want to keep the current system. Workers aren’t demanding that this happen. There is rela­tive stability and balance in our workplaces these days.

I’d be remiss if not also highlighting that the government’s own expert panel that they put in place back in 2018 actually recommended not to scrap the secret ballot. They recommended not to do it. In fact, the recommendation of the 2018 Labour Relations Code Review Panel 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.” Yet the government decided to press forward.

[3:55 p.m.]

The other issue in this piece of legislation, the other critical item that bears addressing quickly, is this issue of union raiding. It’s not just the elimination of the secret ballot in this bill that will have consequences. The legislation in clause 1 provides for union raiding to take place in the construction industry between the months of July and August of every year, as opposed to the current provision in legislation, which is every three years. Let me say that again. The current practice is that there cannot be any union raiding on a construction site except between July and August every three years. This legislation, if it passes, will replace that three-year time frame with every single year.

Now, why is that important? Well, it’s important because where union raiding takes place, it can often be highly controversial. It can often be highly chaotic. It can often be disruptive. All of this results in cost escalations on projects and delays in projects, none of which is good for the taxpayer, if these are publicly funded projects.

When we think about the scope of major infrastructure that needs to be built in this province — whether it’s rapid transit lines in the Lower Mainland or Trans-Canada four-laning projects up in my neck of the woods, whether it’s any number of other major transportation projects, the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge in the Lower Mainland — cost escalation in the range of 5 to 10 to 12 percent is completely and totally unnecessary and avoidable. That’s happening through the CBAs that have been imposed.

Let’s now layer on top of that further disruption and further time delays and further cost escalations, which are highly likely to take place as a result of allowing for union raiding every single summer as opposed to every three years. It’s not a good idea.

I guess it bears mentioning that the massive, massive supply of housing that is needed in this province…. Both sides of the House, I think, are finding we’re all talking about housing supply as a critical component of meeting the housing affordability challenge in the years ahead. Imposing additional costs and additional timelines and additional delays, allowing for union raiding on construction worksites…. All of this is counterproductive in our pursuit of ramping up housing supply as quickly as possible. So I would urge the government, from that perspec­tive as well, to reconsider this provision of Bill 10.

In conclusion, I don’t believe, having spoken to a lot of folks back home, a lot of folks in the construction business and other sectors, listening to the debate in this chamber…. I’m really sitting back and looking at the current landscape, the state of workplaces. Who’s calling for this? What’s the urgent need, the call to action? Where’s it coming from on this?

When I take all of that into account, I think this is a bad move. I think it’s a bad decision to take away the democratic right of workers, through the secret ballot process, to join a union or not. I think it’s a bad policy, as well, to allow union raids on construction sites every single year as opposed to every three years.

I don’t believe that the government, in any of the speeches that have been delivered, has made a compelling case as to why any of this is needed. I also believe that the net effect of the changes that are proposed in this piece of legislation will tilt that balance in our workplaces — tilt a balance, certainly, that has worked for the better part of the last four decades but a balance that is not in the best interests of workers, first and foremost, in the province of British Columbia.

[4:00 p.m.]

We have many concerns with this piece of legislation. We will, obviously, be canvassing it thoroughly with the Minister of Labour in the committee stage of this bill’s life in this place.

I can say, unequivocally, that the official opposition stands opposed to this piece of legislation, and we will be voting no, moving forward.

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

Hon. H. Bains: I am really pleased to talk at the closing of the second reading of Bill 10. I want to thank all members. Almost everyone participated in this debate, and I want to thank them all.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

I wish that there was more substantive debate on this bill, debate that would be based on facts or ideology, if that’s where both sides are separating. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker — welcome — I heard from the opposition benches a lot of rhetoric, very little substance, and I’m disappointed.

There were some members on the opposition side who made some good arguments, good points, historical aspects. They talked about the benefits of unions, their personal experiences, how unions benefited them personally and also as a society and how we all benefited from the work of the unions.

I will not get into the rhetorical part of their debates, because it doesn’t warrant any comment. But I will say that there were a couple of areas that they concentrated on, they talked about, and that is that we are not listening to our own panel that we appointed in 2018. That was one point that they made. I’ll go back to the panel’s report to deal with that.

Then, second, they tried to pretend somehow that they are on the side of the workers, that somehow the workers’ democratic right to exercise their constitutional right to association somehow is being compromised here. I will go back to the panel report again on that. I was hoping that they had read…. When they were referring to the panel, very selectively picking up a sentence here and a sentence there, I was hoping that they would read the whole section of the argument that they were trying to make, to educate or at least to advise those who are watching the debate at home.

I think everyone agrees that there is a lot of rhetoric in this chamber when the speeches are made, but I think that we also have a duty to a content of the speeches that is based on facts. For those who are watching, I would go back to the panel report, when they argue that somehow we did not follow the panel’s recommendations and somehow that we are with Bill 10 taking the workers’ democratic right to association away by going to single-step certification.

I’ll start here. This report was prepared on August 31, 2018, by an expert panel. This is where they went, page 11: “A secret ballot process gives rise to two main concerns, the potential for delay and unlawful employer interference. Under a secret ballot system, employers have more opportunity and incentive to engage in unlawful union avoidance. Longer time frames for certification votes or lax compliance negatively impacts the success rate for certification­.”

They went on to say: “While secret ballot votes are integral to our democratic political system, we recognize that certification votes occur in a very different circumstance than political votes.”

[4:05 p.m.]

I want to just to stop here for a second. This is the panel after going around the province, doing the consultation, and then they’re coming back with this report. “Certification votes occur in a context of the power imbalance between employer and workers in the workplace. The employers control the operation of the business, have the right to fire employees and can curtail or close the business.”

I just want to pause. This is what they have said. It’s important for those who are watching, that somehow the secret ballot voting right is as similar to a political voting right as it is during the certification.

Here’s what the panel has said. These are the experts. They refer to it time and again. “Unlike political votes, section 7 of the code limits unions’ ability to communicate with workers during working time. Employers, on the other hand, have an unrestricted ability to do so throughout the workday. Political candidates have a voters list, while in the certification context, unions have limited information to determine the bargaining unit constituency.”

This is important. If we had a debate based on the facts, based on content and based on the panel’s recommendations in the report, and then the panel went on to say: “The integrity of the secret ballot vote as a real measure of employee choice depends on code provisions that effectively limit and fully remediate unlawful interference. It is contradictory and unreasonable to assert that a secret ballot vote is the most democratic and preferred mechanism for the expression of employee choice, while at the same time permitting conduct that undermines the integrity of the secret ballot votes.”

This is important for those who are watching the debate right now. Many of the members, with good intentions, read out what they were given. But I mentioned earlier that some members were generally trying to take a position on this, because they don’t want to make it easier for workers to join unions. Fair enough. That’s the position that you’re taking.

This is what the panel…. But don’t refer to the panel — that the panel somehow did not support Bill 10. The panel went on to say: “The panel is acutely aware that the secret ballot vote can only be an effective mechanism for employee choice if the code deters and prevents the employer from engaging in unfair labour practices and provides meaningful consequences for such practices.”

I hope the members of the opposition are paying attention. Maybe they can go back and do their own reading.

Then they go on to say this, and this is important. “The exercise of employee choice through certification vote must be protected by shortening the time frame for votes.”

Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Minister.

Could we draw conversations to a…?

Minister, just hold on a second. Okay, you can’t hear me anyways.

Minister, I was just asking members to bring their conversations to a close so I could hear you. But you’ve raised your voice so that you could speak over them. You couldn’t hear me, thus proving my point.

If members could please keep their conversations to a minimum, we can listen to the Minister of Labour. I’d appreciate it.

Hon. H. Bains: I appreciate it, Mr. Speaker.

I will read it again: “The exercise of employee choice through certification votes must be protected by shortening the time frame for votes, ensuring the expeditious and efficient processing of certification application and unfair labour practice complaints, together with expansion of the board’s remedial authority.”

This is important. When they say that we are not somehow following our own panel’s recommendation, this is the key. We made those changes — the recommendations of shortening the time between the application and the secret ballot vote, from ten days to five days, and a remedial authority given to the board to deal with when there’s an unfair labour practice.

[4:10 p.m.]

They went on to say this: “If these enhanced measures are not effective, then there will be a compelling argument for a card-check system.” None of them read that into the record, for very convenient reasons, I would say.

I just want to say that at the end of the day, what we are doing through Bill 10 is upholding citizens’ right to association. That is enshrined in the Canadian constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is not about employers, although they would be concerned, and it is not about unions, although, yes, they would be saying one way or the other.

It is about citizens of this country. It is about upholding their right to association. I said this in my opening remarks. The right to free speech — if somebody was impeding that, everyone would be lighting their hair on fire. But impeding workers’ right to association and throwing roadblocks somehow is okay to the opposition. Not to us. Not to this side. Not to this government.

Therefore, with that, I now move second reading of Bill 10.

Deputy Speaker: The question is second reading of Bill 10.

Division has been called.

[4:15 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.]

Second reading of Bill 10 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 44
Alexis	Anderson	Bailey
Bains	Beare	Begg
Brar	Chant	Conroy
Dean	D’Eith	Dix
Donnelly	Dykeman	Eby
Elmore	Farnworth	Fleming
Glumac	Heyman	Horgan
Kahlon	Kang	Leonard
Ma	Olsen	Osborne
Paddon	Popham	Ralston
Rankin	Rice	Robinson
Routledge	Routley	Sandhu
Sharma	Simons	Sims
A. Singh	Starchuk	Walker
Whiteside		Yao
NAYS — 20
Ashton	Banman	Bernier
Clovechok	de Jong	Halford
Kirkpatrick	Kyllo	Lee
Letnick	Milobar	Morris
Paton	Ross	Rustad
Shypitka	Stewart	Stone
Tegart		Wat

[4:25 p.m.]

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

Bill 10, Labour Relations Code 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. M. Farnworth: I call committee stage of Bill 23, Attorney General’s Mental Health Amendment Act.

Deputy Speaker: We’ll take a short recess to let the appropriate parties get into their places.

The House recessed at 4:26 p.m.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 23 — MENTAL HEALTH
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 23; S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.

The committee met at 4:30 p.m.

On clause 1.

T. Halford: Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this at committee. I was grateful that I had the opportunity to speak to it in second reading. We’ll canvass questions during this.

I think this piece of legislation is, in fact, quite a good one. It is something that we’ve heard be called for from many organizations. I think that overall, if we can find a way — and there’s some common ground here — to support those that are struggling through probably some of the most significant times of their lives, that is the work that we are here to do.

I have questions on clause 1. On clause 1, the rights adviser, can the minister provide a list of skills, knowledge, professional accreditation that rights advisers will need to have? What I’m looking for in that is maybe skill sets, legal background, cultural sensitivity training, things like that.

Hon. D. Eby: Thank you to my critic.

I am joined by Wendy Jackson, executive director, legal access policy division, justice services branch; Shannon Gibson, senior policy analyst, legal access policy division, justice services branch; and Sharna Kraitberg, legal counsel, legal services branch. I thank them in advance for their assistance, which starts with this first answer.

The vision is that the rights advice will primarily be provided by non-lawyers. It’s not that there is exclusion of lawyers, just that there’s an expectation that the successful proponent responding to the RFP will probably have non-lawyer advocates. In other provinces, it’s a similar model. In New Brunswick and Alberta, many rights advisers have a social work background, and there is opportunity to refer to a lawyer or advocate if a mental health review board hearing or court hearing is needed.

The background of the rights advisers is generally likely to be people with backgrounds in health services, social services or community mental health and experience working with people with serious mental health issues. And we’ll be looking in the proposals that we receive to ensure that there are rights advisers from diverse backgrounds — so different cultural backgrounds, Indigenous backgrounds, lived experience, speak different languages, gender diverse, diverse abilities — just so that people have some comfort and that there’s a diversity of people to draw from, from the rights adviser pool.

In terms of training, once a successful proponent is selected to deliver this, we expect to be developing a standard training curriculum with that proponent. The goal of that is to have consistent service across the province so that no matter who the service is received from, it will be the same in terms of the standards that are hit. It will include topics like cultural safety and trauma-informed approaches.

There may be additional specialized training or qualifications for certain categories of rights advisers — for example, children and youth, or patients with developmental disabilities — just making sure that the rights advisers have the capacity for the special needs of those groups.

[4:35 p.m.]

Finally, the mandatory training is going to include, in addition to cultural safety and trauma-informed approa­ches, intercultural competency, anti-racism and decolonization, and intergenerational trauma training so that they are delivering appropriate services and culturally sensitive services.

T. Halford: Thank you to the Attorney for that answer.

Do we know, for the rights advisers, how many languages…? The minister did reference languages, but do we have a list of those languages that will be available when this is launched?

Hon. D. Eby: The Provincial Health Authority has something called the provincial language service, which delivers, to the best of our recollection, somewhere over 200 different languages of real-time interpretation. That service will be used by the rights advisers in order to be able to communicate with the person who has requested the service. So it will be an existing provincial service that’s already delivering translation services in many, many languages.

T. Halford: The Attorney indicated that while lawyers would not be excluded from being a rights adviser, not everybody would be a lawyer. Maybe the majority would not be a lawyer.

I’m wondering. If you are giving advice on an individual’s rights, would…? If that advice led to maybe an unsafe situation or the advice was not in line with the training that was received or if the advice was maybe deemed culturally inappropriate or if there was trauma through the conversation with the rights adviser, maybe due a lack of training or just a misunderstanding of the training, is that rights adviser or the organization liable for the advice that they are providing?

Hon. D. Eby: The member asked a really important and interesting question about liability. The team is just having a look at that right now. I can advise the member that in terms of a complaints process, our expectation is that the successful proponent or proponents to our call for proposals will be required to establish an internal formal complaints process if the conduct of a rights adviser doesn’t meet expectations.

[4:40 p.m.]

We’re currently doing policy work on an external reviewer of that complaints process to make sure that there’s accountability not just within the organization but also outside. For example, under the Ombudsperson Act, government can designate this service as one overseen by the Ombudsperson. I understand that there is some interest from the Ombudsperson’s office in that kind of approach. We’re doing the work on that right now.

In terms of liability, just noting the amount of time we have this afternoon on this currently, maybe if the member wants to keep asking questions, then we can come back to that issue of liability as staff work on that.

T. Halford: That is completely fine.

Just on the complaint process, then, is the minister able — I know that it’s still being fleshed out — to loosely kind of walk us through it? If an individual had a complaint with their rights adviser, with the mechanics, and the minister sees fit for that person to either withdraw or to seek a new rights adviser, how is that structure laid out or contemplated?

Hon. D. Eby: We do expect an ability for a patient to request a new adviser if they’re not finding their expec­tations met by their current adviser. In addition, in the internal process, we would expect to see standards of conduct for advisers within the organization, as well as managerial oversight and an investigative capacity to review complaints. Typically, when there’s an external process and an internal process, the external process requires that the internal process be exhausted first before going to that next level. That will likely be a characteristic of this as well.

T. Halford: Thank you to the Attorney.

If there was maybe a family member — or it could be a guardian, somebody with a close relationship to the person — would they be able to access that same complaint process if they felt that they were getting maybe inappropriate or wrong advice?

Hon. D. Eby: There are, obviously, medical privacy issues involved. Typically, you would expect to see that the patient has agreed that their information could be shared. In order to file a complaint and then receive feedback back about that complaint, consent would have to be obtained from the patient, assuming that that person didn’t already have some sort of legal authority to speak on behalf of the patient, like power of attorney.

The further component of this that I’ll draw to the member’s attention is that there is an element of this where a parent or another responsible person could attend the rights advice process with the patient. This is especially the case for young people. So if they witnessed something during that process, as a support person attending on behalf of the patient, they could definitely make that complaint as well.

T. Halford: I think that’s it. So the Attorney is going to clarify the…. When we’re talking about the legal liability, we can come back to that, perhaps on Monday? Okay.

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: There is a section of the Mental Health Act, section 16, that provides liability protection, but it provides it to the hospital employees. It would not apply to rights advisers. Typically in these scenarios, the agreement between the contractor and the government would include an indemnity provision if that was part of the agreement. That provides that liability coverage, which means that the province then assumes responsibility for that. Any agreement like that would require the approval of the Ministry of Finance.

T. Halford: I’ll say this before I…. I appreciate the Attorney General’s patience on this question, because I do not have a legal background. I mean that with sincere respect. I’m asking a question that I’m learning on.

Would that mean if a patient or an advocate was going to…? If information was given and they’re going to challenge that legally, is the Attorney saying that the province would ultimately be responsible for that at the end? Would they be the ones liable? It didn’t sound from that answer that it would be the adviser or the organization that the adviser serves.

Hon. D. Eby: I can’t commit to this, but typically, indemnity agreements include elements like…. If the rights adviser or the service or both were sued by a patient for negligence in providing advice — that the patient relied on the advice, that they were injured or had damage caused to them as a result of relying on that advice, and they sue the rights advice service as well as the individual adviser — an indemnity agreement could include covering the legal expenses for the defence for the service and the adviser as well as the damages that any court potentially could award.

I’ll just say again, on the record, that those agreements have not been negotiated with any potential service provider yet, so any element like that would have to be approved by the Ministry of Finance.

T. Halford: I thank the Attorney for that answer.

Just probably the last question. Would the legal bills of the person detained be covered by the province, or would they be on their own for that?

Hon. D. Eby: This would depend on the agreement struck between the province and the service provider and any indemnity provisions that were agreed to. It is possible, and we do have agreements where the cost of the lawyer, the cost of the administration of the legal defence, is covered as well as the cost of damages for some service providers. It’s certainly possible to do that. But that is speculative. These agreements have not been struck.

We don’t have our marching orders from the Ministry of Finance on this yet because the bill hasn’t even been passed, but the agreements could include those provisions. Provisions like that are not unusual in service provision contracts with the government of B.C.

T. Halford: Thank you to the Attorney.

Probably the final question on this. Would that be different per organization? Would it be a different policy depending on the organization, or would it be a blanket policy under this legislation?

Hon. D. Eby: Indemnity for being sued is not part of this legislation. The legislation enables the Attorney General to identify a service provider and to, through regulation, appoint that service provider. That kicks off a process where a contract is negotiated with the service provider that could include indemnity provisions, but that’s not part of the legislation. That would be an individual negotiation with either the provider or providers, if there is more than one.

There might be one contract for all providers. There might be separate contracts for different providers. Those decisions have not been made yet, and it will depend on what we get back from the request for proposals.

Clause 1 approved.

On clause 2.

T. Halford: Just on clause 2, a general question. Can the minister outline the impact or provide an example of what the change is intended to do?

[4:50 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: Under the Mental Health Act, there’s an existing regulation-making section under section 43. Those regulations relate to the administration of the act generally. This bill creates a new regulation-making authority under section 55. So now there are two different regulation-making authorities in the bill. We have to distinguish between the two for the purposes of section 6 of the act.

Section 6 of the act relates to service. Previously it said: “this Act and its regulations.” The new regulation-making authority that we’re bringing in doesn’t relate to section 6. So with section 6, it has to be clear that it relates to the old regulation-making authority that was already there, not the new one that we’re adding.

That’s why it says: “this Act and the regulations made under section 43.” Section 43 is the old section. It doesn’t have anything to do with the new section, which is section 55. Because there are two sections now as a result of this bill, we have to be really clear about: this relates to the old regulation-making section; this relates to the new regulation-making section. That’s what this section is intended to do.

Clause 2 approved.

On clause 3.

T. Halford: On clause 3, a bit of déjà vu. I’m going to ask a similar question. Can the minister outline the impact or provide an example of what this change is intended to do?

Hon. D. Eby: This section is the exact same thing. This section relates to liability for certain actions. The member will remember our discussion about liability and that the section 16 protection is for hospital employees and health care workers under the act. This new set of regulations we’re bringing in about mental health advisers is not affected by this section 16.

Again, we have to be clear in that section. When it mentions regulations, that’s the regulations under the old regulation-making power in the Mental Health Act, not the new regulation-making power that we’re establishing under section 55. It does the same thing as the previous section, just for a different part of the bill.

Clause 3 approved.

On clause 4.

T. Halford: Thank you to the Attorney for that answer.

The form of notice can be oral or in writing. Then, how will it actually be recorded in terms of that?

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: There are three forms under the Mental Health Act that give notifications to different groups of people of the rights of a patient and what the process is that that patient is involved in. Form 13 is a form that’s used for notification of a patient directly. There is infor­mation that has to be read out loud to the patient, and that information is in bold on the form.

It says things like: “I’m here to tell you about your legal rights under the Mental Health Act as an involuntary patient. I will read to you a summary of these rights. You can ask me questions at any time. I will give you a copy of this form, which contains information for you to read.”

It goes through the right to know the name and location of the facility; to know why they’re there; to contact a lawyer; to be examined regularly by a medical doctor to see if they still need to be an involuntary patient; to apply to the review panel for a hearing; to apply to a court; to appeal, to the court, the doctor’s decision; to request a second medical opinion.

The form itself is a fillable PDF. It has space for the patient’s signature as well as space for the name of the person who provided the information. That form is read to a patient. A copy is given to the patient. Regardless of whether the patient signs it, a copy is kept by the director or the director’s designate.

Form 14 is very similar, but it is for a person under the age of 16 who is admitted by a parent or guardian. Again, the prelude is the same. The rights that are listed are read out to the patient — the right to know the name of the facility, why they’re there, to contact a lawyer, to be examined regularly by a doctor, to see whether they should still be involuntarily admitted to the facility, to apply for a review and all of these other things. It’s just a slightly different form than the adult one.

Then form 16 is a notification of a near relative. So where a near relative is identified, they can be notified that a patient was admitted. That form is significantly different. It’s a form that does include some rights information, but it’s not read out loud to the near relative.

It includes the duration of how long the patient is likely to be involuntarily detained, the process around a renewal certificate, information about the review panel hearing process and the right to apply to court. Also, it has room for the director’s signature or the director’s delegate’s signature and name, so that the near relative can contact the hospital.

All of these forms, kept on file by the facility, are provided to the individual in question — 13, 14 or 16, depending. These forms are all going to be updated following the passage of this bill if it does pass as it is. It will be updated to include the role of the rights adviser and the right of an individual to talk to a rights adviser under the Mental Health Act.

A. Olsen: Just following up on this question. As I understand it, the director must ask the patient if they desire to be in contact with the rights adviser. What if that person is incapacitated or otherwise determined to be unfit in judgment? Can the near relative contact…? Do they have the same rights as the rights adviser on their behalf?

[5:00 p.m.]

Sorry, I just want to make sure that I got this clear. So if a patient is incapacitated or otherwise determined unfit, does the near relative have the same rights as the person who’s being treated?

Hon. D. Eby: If the individual is not able to communicate their wish or that they don’t wish to receive rights advice, there is a policy requirement within the Mental Health Act standards that requires staff of the facility to try every 12 hours to offer rights advice to the individual. For near relatives, under the current Mental Health Act, near relatives can request both a second opinion or a mental health review board hearing already. These amendments don’t change that.

Our expectation is that there will be multiple opportunities for rights advice once this service is established. They won’t only be on admission. Many people, on admission, are not in a state where they’re able to interact with a rights adviser or request that support but quickly stabilize and are able to do that. Our expectation is that that check-in will be happening regularly.

The second piece about near relatives and rights advice is that there are near relatives who are substitute decision-makers for individuals, especially if they have been admitted before and they’ve set up these kinds of structures or designated decision-makers, in which case they would be able to participate in that rights advice on behalf of the patient.

A. Olsen: There is a requirement within the act.

What measures of accountability are there to ensure that the staff of the facility are undertaking it? We’ve heard of situations where perhaps not all of the requirements are being met in certain facilities. So what assurances are there, and what requirements are there within the act, for the accountability?

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: There are a number of pieces that we’re putting in place to do our best to ensure that people are getting the information that they need and are able to access the service. First of all, the first phase of implemen­tation will involve, to some degree, some trust that people are being advised about the opportunity to contact a rights adviser. Then that person will have to take the steps to contact the rights advice service.

As we get staff trained up and get the service up and running, and once we get the system built, the second phase will introduce automatic notification of the rights advice service that someone has been admitted. Then the rights advice service will be proactively contacting the patient, rather than the reverse. That will address the issue, we believe.

In the interim, and in phase 2 as well, there will also be an evaluation plan. That plan is currently under development. There will be tracking of, for example, the number of patients requesting the rights advice service, the response times to those requests, as well as qualitative evaluations based on surveys and interviews with people who have received rights advice, rights advice service staff themselves and designated facility staff, to make sure the system is working the way it was intended to.

We expect that there will be a role for the rights advice service to educate designated facility staff about the role of the adviser and patient rights, to make sure that that work is happening as intended. I can also advise the member that in response to the Ombudsperson’s recommen­dations from the report about the failures of the system to notify patients of their rights and to facilitate these opportunities, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions have been leading a range of work to improve auditing and compliance with requirements under the act. That work will continue as well.

T. Halford: Sorry if this is repetitive. It’s just for my own clarification. If a patient is under the age of 19 and they have it explained that they can have a rights adviser, if they decline that, will their guardian or a relative be advised that they can have a rights adviser?

Hon. D. Eby: These rights are the rights of the patient to access the rights service. If the patient says, “No, I don’t want that,” then that is the patient’s decision. Near relative rights under the act otherwise are not affected — the rights about second opinions and the Mental Health Review Board, that kind of stuff. They’re going to get form 16, which will describe these processes. If a patient says, no, they don’t want it, then that will be determinative.

T. Halford: Thank you to the Attorney for the answer.

My question was specifically on youth under the age. If it was a 15-year-old, depending on what their capacity is, if they had said no or refused a rights adviser, would their guardian or relative be notified that they have access to a rights adviser, and could that person actually meet with a rights adviser to determine what their rights were, if that was a mom or a dad or somebody that had guardianship? Would they be able to access, or would they be able to override what that youth had determined if they declined a rights adviser?

[5:10 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: Independent of the age of the patient, this is a patient’s rights advice service, so we anticipate that on the near relative form, as well as on the form where a young person is admitted by a parent or guardian, those forms will be edited to include information about the rights advice service, what the rights are of the individual to access it and so on. They’ll be notified that this is a service that’s available to the patient, but it’s not a parent or a support person rights advice service. It’s for the patient. So if the patient says no, then that’s the conclusion of it.

However, staff think that it’s quite likely that these rights advice services will produce materials for support people, parents, friends — to educate them about the process about what’s happening, because they will probably get requests, as the member is also anticipating. So it may be an effective way of doing legal education and supporting those individuals, but the near relatives will also get that form 16 with that information that this service is available to the patient.

T. Halford: Just to clarify, if there was an individual the age of 15, let’s say, and that person was being held under the act, and it was very clear to either a physician or anybody else that this person was not able to make decisions for themselves, was not even able to maybe even communicate, given their state…. They may not even be able to understand or define what a rights adviser is. They may not even know what law enforcement is at that point or what the doctor’s role is.

Would the Attorney’s opinion then be that if there was a parent or a guardian who had responsibility for that youth, they’re able to get, maybe, written material or something like that — I’m sure that can be clarified — but they’re not able to actually make that decision and say: “I need to know what” — say, John Smith would be the patient — “their rights are; I need to know.” I think maybe what I heard — maybe it was incorrect — is that they can’t make that decision based on that. It has to be the individual that is under the care that has to make that.

I guess what I’m asking is that…. Quite often individuals that are held — I think my friend was asking this a few moments ago — can be, at times, in such a state where they may not even know where they are physically, right? They may not even be able to tell what location they’re in. There could be a range of issues in order to make decisions, but the parent or the guardian wouldn’t be able to make that.

Maybe I will just make it simpler. If I had a 15-year-old child and that child was being held under the act, for the right reasons, and somebody said to my child, “Okay, do you want a rights adviser to explain what your rights are?” my child would not be able to answer that question, would not understand that question. As the parent, would I be able to make that determination that I want access to that rights adviser? Would I be able to advocate for that? Or is that solely at the discretion of my child, who is 15 and being held?

Hon. D. Eby: In that situation, in terms of this law that’s in front of the House, the right to the rights adviser service — the right to say yes or no to it, the right of government to establish this service, and so on — is all predi­cated on the patient, whether they want the service or not. If they’re not able to, if they’re not in a place where they can ask for it, then there will be regular check-ins under the policy standards of the Mental Health Act to ensure that when they are ready, that service will still be there for them to access it.

[5:15 p.m.]

It is extremely likely that the organizations that are most likely to put forward proposals to our request for proposals to deliver this service have expertise in mental health law, have expertise in delivering supports to parents and families and friends and, in addition to delivering the core service, will also produce materials and resources for people outside of this law that’s in front of us. That is unlikely to be a requirement of the RFP process. It’s not part of this law. But they tend to do those things.

There are organizations like Community Legal Assistance service and the B.C. Schizophrenia association and others like that who we hope will be bringing forward proposals to deliver these kinds of services. And because they have experience in that, in delivering these services…. There are others as well. The hope is that they’re able to leverage government support for these services into providing support to families and so on, as they do with other streams of government funding.

This law that’s in front of us, these provisions, talk about a rights advice service for patients. It’s the patient’s right, including the patient’s right to say no. If the patient is not able to communicate and doesn’t know where they are and so on, unless the person is a designated decision-maker or a substitute decision-maker or has some other legal authority in that regard, then it’s the patient’s decision.

The Chair: We’ve got time for one more question, and then we’ll note the hour, if that’s appropriate. Or we can do that now.

Hon. D. Eby: Noting the hour, I move the committee now rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:17 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

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

Hon. D. Eby moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. Monday, May 9.

The House adjourned at 5:18 p.m.