Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued estimates debate for the Office of the Premier.

In Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued estimates debate for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General and, also, for the statutory officers, Votes 1 through 10.

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: OFFICE OF THE PREMIER

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section B); J. Tegart in the chair.

The committee met at 1:09 p.m.

On Vote 11: Office of the Premier, $14,692,000 (continued).

E. Ross: It’s with great pride that I represent Skeena in these estimates of the Premier.

Just opening comments, in terms of what’s happening, what I see happening in the last five years here in B.C. It is quite startling. As a First Nation leader from 2003 to 2017, law and order was a priority for our community. Many First Nations leaders across B.C. shared our views. Not only across B.C. but on our reserves, we wanted more police present, RCMP presence.

[1:10 p.m.]

Now we take a look at what’s happening in terms of law and order, especially…. The respect for the RCMP and the respect for the police have gone dramatically downhill.

My first question to the Premier. Do you, Premier, support the RCMP in their efforts to keep law and order here in B.C.?

Hon. J. Horgan: Yes.

E. Ross: I ask the question because it’s hard to understand where this government stands on law and order, especially when we’re talking about the respect for the RCMP. More often than not the RCMP are political fodder nowadays in terms of what’s happening in our communities as well as out on project sites, and they’re stuck. They’re stuck in the middle. They get blamed for everything, and a lot of it is really out of their control.

In terms of what I’ve been listening to, not only here in estimates, in terms of law and order and crime…. I’ve also been listening to the questions in question period regarding crime in our communities and our streets. For the most part, all I’ve really heard is statistics and nothing really acknowledging some of the complaints that are coming from citizens, whether they be business owners or citizens of Terrace, who are actually the ones that are really suffering the impacts of, say, prolific crime or property damage or even just threats that may or may not lead to physical harm.

For the most part, from what we can understand, there is a four-month study being done by a panel. It will not come to visit Terrace, by the way, to talk to the people of Terrace who actually brought this issue to the provincial spotlight.

To the Premier, after this four-month study is completed, how soon will concrete action be taken against prolific offenders here in B.C.?

Hon. J. Horgan: I thank the member for his question. I know his community very, very well. I’ve visited it many, many times, speaking with current elected representatives as well as citizens from the community.

I do appreciate, very much, the sentiment. We canvassed this just before lunch with the Leader of the Official Opposition. The sentiment in communities is that things are getting worse. The data does not back that up. That doesn’t mean that those sentiments aren’t heartfelt and genuine. That’s why we appointed Doug LePard and Dr. Amanda Butler to give us, in 120 days, recommendations on how we can square this circle about how police reports to Crown counsel have been going down, but sentiment in the community is that crime is going up.

[1:15 p.m.]

We need to figure out why that is. Why are police not bringing these issues forward? Why are Crown counsel not proceeding with prosecutions? These are circles that we’re trying to square, or squares that we’re trying to circle, and we’re going to be needing collaboration with Mayor Leclerc and her team.

I note that the Terrace and District Chamber of Commerce welcomed these initial first steps, and I’m appreciative of that. Most importantly, we need to have collaboration from the community, from elected representatives at the regional and municipal level as well as working with the federal government on those issues that involve the federal government.

The review of the Police Act…. I know that members on the other side worked together collaboratively with government members — a unanimous report that really did get sidetracked about the question of the RCMP contract instead of some of the more important details that were raised in the report, based on the collaboration of members of this House.

We want to make sure that we focus on those issues where we can improve not just the reality in communities but also give communities a sense that these concerns about elevated crime activity are dismissed and discounted as quickly as we can do that. If Dr. Butler and Mr. LePard have recommendations prior to the end of their 120-day term, we expect them to bring those forward, and we’ll act on them as soon as we possibly can.

E. Ross: It’s quite troubling to hear that the government — the Premier or the Attorney General — doesn’t know why Crown counsel is not following through with these charges. Government, at the end of the day, is in charge. If you don’t know now….

I suspect that the government is expecting some type of revelation to come out of the four-month study done by parties external to this government to tell the government what is going on with Crown counsel. I thought if anybody knew what was going on with Crown counsel, it would be the Attorney General or the government, in this respect.

In terms of…. Maybe I didn’t quite phrase my question the right way. Mainly, what I’m looking for is…. After the four-month study of prolific offenders here in B.C., of course, there will be recommendations. There should be recommendations.

I’m not only concerned about what the recommendations are about, but I do understand the processes of government and how long that takes and how bureaucratic that can take, never mind the politics, never mind the virtue-signalling.

Just in terms of process, how long will it take for the government to act on some of these recommendations, knowing that they’re going to have to deal with Crown counsel, especially in light of all the significant reports that have already been done, to date, on the RCMP and policing in B.C.?

Hon. J. Horgan: Police bring reports to Crown, not the other way around. Those reports are down over what they were in 2017. With respect to the area in question, the MLA’s constituency, 74 percent of reports that are received are acted upon.

I appreciate the disconnect. I’m not trying to diminish the concern in the community that’s being raised by the member, but I do think that we have taken tangible steps to address these issues — firstly, by asking everyone in this House to come together as we look, for the first time in half a century, at the Police Act.

We also start to ask ourselves: “Are we adequately funding public safety initiatives and putting the right people in the right place? Do we need more social workers, more psychologists? Are we sending young RCMP recruits fresh from Depot into situations that they’re not equipped to handle?” That involves ensuring that the RCMP and the contract that was entered into by the former government is lived up to.

We have our responsibility as government to make sure that law enforcement have the tools they need to protect people in communities right across the province. So when we receive recommendations from the investigation that’s underway, we will act.

[1:20 p.m.]

This is not an exercise of pushing the ball down the field. This is an exercise to get to the root of the question that the member asked, which is: why are reports not coming forward? When they do, in the case of the Terrace region, 74 percent are approved. Why are they down, when the sentiment in the community is that crime is up? We want answers to those questions just as much as the member does.

The Chair: Just before the member goes forward, I would just remind you to ask your questions through the Chair.

E. Ross: Through the Chair to the Premier, the root of the question is basically on timing. We’ve already got a four-month delay in government acting on anything that’s happening in Terrace. Because of the review that was enacted by the Attorney General, we’ve got to wait four months. Once the review is done, how long can we expect the government to take before some meaningful action is taken on some of the recommendations that would be put forward by this panel?

Hon. J. Horgan: In 2006, the prolific offender management pilot project was proposed. It took two years for the former government to put in place pilots in Kamloops, Nanaimo, Prince George, Surrey, Williams Lake and the capital regional district. Then, four years later, those programs were cut by the former government. That’s a two-year gap between suggestion and implementation, and then four years to dismantle that.

I can assure the member that we will respond much more quickly than that.

E. Ross: When we’re talking about crime, it’s not just in our communities. It’s on lawfully approved projects here in B.C. From 2004 to 2017, we steered LNG proposals in B.C. — 18 of them, at a minimum — and one got through: LNG Canada.

So far, in one section just outside of Houston, all we’ve seen, basically, is law and disorder. Some of those incidents didn’t even get reported as much as we’d like to see, but we did see some of it being reported in the media. Just recently, the Crown did commit to pressing forward with charges on 15 offenders, who will be charged with criminal contempt of court following protests last fall over the CGL.

Can I ask the Premier…? I do know that the last time this injunction was broken…. The B.C. government spent at least $7 million in enforcing an injunction the second time the RCMP had to go in there. To date, how much has the B.C. government spent not only on injunctions but on the protests of the CGL pipeline?

[1:25 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: I’ll remind the member that the former government may well have been stewarding a multitude of projects but had only one approved final investment decision. That was based on interventions — by this government and the federal government, with the proponents — to finalize some of the more sensitive financial issues and questions that had remained elusive to the former government. We were able to secure the largest private sector investment in Canadian history, and I’m very proud of that.

The member will also know that these are divisive issues in the territory immediately adjacent to his territory. These are well-known challenges that go back decades to the Delgamuukw-Gisday’wa decision and all of the consequences that flow from that. It’s with some sensitivity that we’re managing those particular First Nations questions. When it comes to the independent Crown prosecutor, of 27 arrests between September and November, as recently as last week, 15 charges have been laid. I do agree with the member that there are increasing costs to proceed with injunctive relief for investment.

I know that in my own community the Pacheedaht First Nation have said repeatedly to people that are intruding into their territory and disrupting economic activity in their community: “Get lost.” Yet they persist, with some of the most extraordinary so-called civil disobedience initiatives that I know.

I come from dissent. I’m a member of a political party that was founded in the 1930s on dissent. So I have every respect for civil disobedience and lawful protest against initiatives that governments or others would bring forward. But what we’re seeing in the Wet’suwet’en territory is not civil disobedience. It’s lawlessness, which is evidenced by 15 charges.

I would also argue that in Pacheedaht territory, just north of Port Renfrew, in my constituency, the same holds true. I engage with the RCMP regularly on these issues when I’m travelling around the province, and I know how front-line officers and constables feel about being called to enforce injunctions in areas where there is absolute lawlessness and a complete disregard for civil behaviour.

I don’t disagree with the sentiments the member is bringing forward, but I also need to reinforce that if we were living in a community where politicians were directing police, I would have a big, big problem with that. I suspect that the member would, too. Lastly, with respect to the costs, the estimates for Public Safety are just down the hall. You can get those details there.

E. Ross: The question was: apart from the original $7 million that was spent on enforcing the injunction the second time around, the first time this happened, how much has the government spent on the injunction to date? That was the question.

I have no intention of getting into, really, what’s happening on the ground down out there in their protest, because we know what’s happening out there. In fact, the Pre­mier forgot one word: violence. Threats. In a case, they were threatening violence against Aboriginal workers who were on that site that one midnight.

This goes back to the original statement that I asked the Premier to make, on whether or not he believed in law and order. The Premier said yes — a one-word answer: yes. I think everybody in this House would actually answer that until we leave this room. This is what puts the RCMP in a very bad spot.

The disrespect for law and order in this province is getting to scary dimensions, not only for citizens in Vancouver but also for workers out on the pipeline. I already said the police are stuck in this political middle ground. They’ve got no real place to go. They don’t have government support. If they do, it’s vague.

I do understand the LNG story, and the Premier with the NDP…. I do understand you had to oppose LNG. You had to show up to protests. You had to sign those anti-LNG declarations. You had to, because it was politics, and you were the official opposition.

The Chair: I would remind the member to speak through the Chair, please.

[1:30 p.m.]

E. Ross: Through the Chair.

Now you’re government. You keep claiming that you do respect law and order, but in this case, this government is actually playing both sides of the fence. In what’s happening up there, I’m really concerned for the pipeline workers. I’m really concerned for the people in the neighbouring communities. I’m really concerned for the Aboriginals, not only in our communities but also on the pipeline site itself.

On December 3, 2021, one of your members, the MLA for Stikine, who is now the Minister of Municipal Affairs, wrote a letter, to Commissioner Brenda Lucki, criticizing the RCMP actions on that pipeline route. Not once did this member mention that there are provincial processes for oversight, that there are independent bodies to review this type of activity. So I don’t understand the letter in the first place, other than for political points.

In this case here, what is the Premier willing to do to provide law and order and safety, not only for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities but also for safety for our workers on the CGL pipeline, such as at the location of the protest outside of Houston?

Hon. J. Horgan: There is a lot to unpack there.

Firstly, I don’t recall at any time signing any documents that were antagonistic to development of natural resources in British Columbia. We always have had concerns about ensuring that there are some pretty key priorities that are realized — firstly, protecting our air, water and land, which is, I think, a sentiment shared by all members of this House.

We wanted to ensure there was a fair return to the resource that belongs to British Columbians. We wanted to ensure that there were local employment opportunities. Most importantly, we wanted to ensure that Indigenous people and underrepresented populations had access to skills training and other opportunities that flow from the projects that we would see achieved and realized through the various processes we already have in place in British Columbia.

[1:35 p.m.]

I do believe that there is disagreement in this place about the role and function of various components of our approval processes and how decisions are made. That is not confined to one side or the other. There are divisions within our own families, whether it be on this side of the House or on that side of the House, and the member knows that full well.

I don’t believe there’s a lot of value in relitigating those discussions, but I will say that when the RCMP is asked to enforce an injunction — not by the government but by the courts — if there is a need for further resources, the RCMP can and will often ask the government for assistance, and that is always provided. But directing the RCMP, directing interventions, is not the role and function of the Solicitor General, which instead is to ensure that if there are requests for further resources, those resources are made available. That has been the case, not just for this government but for previous governments as well.

With respect to the MLA for Stikine’s correspondence, that was written not as a minister, but on his MLA letterhead. I believe there’s a distinction, and it’s important that we draw this out. There are members on that side of the House that have had the dual responsibility of being members of the executive council, cabinet ministers, as well as ensuring that they’re representing their constituents to the best of their ability, even if they disagree with them. The member will know that.

I know that members on that side understand that there are, oftentimes, petitions that are tabled here that are absolutely diametrically opposed to the individual who’s putting it on the table, but that’s the not the point. The point is to represent and reflect the views of your constituents. With the MLA for Stikine at that time, he wrote the letter at the behest of his constituents insisting upon him doing so. He advised them of other complaint opportunities that they had available to them. They insisted that he take that action. They were blockading his office. They were withholding services from other citizens in the community.

He wrote the letter, advising those that were blocking access to his office that he had done so, but again repeating to them that there were other courses that they could follow. I believe that’s an appropriate course of action for a private member to take — not as a member of executive council but as a private member. From time to time, there are issues that emerge in our offices that we disagree with, but it’s our obligation to listen to all of our constituents, wherever they come from, whatever their perspectives are, and then judiciously determine how we can best meet their needs. I believe that’s what was undertaken at that time.

Again, I’ll remind the member that if he wants more details about the budget of the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, he is debating that right now down the hall.

K. Falcon: Look, on this situation where we’ve got chaos in communities, crime out of control, people not feeling safe in their community, 42 percent of calls not even being answered at the VPD because they’re just so overwhelmed…. In light of all of this information that was coming out, we saw on May 4 that the Attorney General stepped forward and said: “Don’t worry. I’m going to be announcing a creative plan.” So you can imagine….

I’ve gotten used to this government. Whenever they get into trouble, they always have an announcement. But part of me hoped that surely, a government in its second term, and an Attorney General that’s been there for over five years, actually might know a thing or two about the issue and probably has been working on it for years, and I can’t wait to hear about the creative plan.

On May 6, much to our collective shock and disappointment, the plan was: “We’re going to do a four-month study.” This is so classic. They don’t know how to execute and get things done. They don’t need to study the issue for another four months. It’s just failed leadership. I looked, and I said: “Well, the way our system works is that the Premier provides mandate letters to ministers. The mandate letters are there to set direction and focus on what the Premier thinks is important for that minister to follow through on.”

I had a look at the mandate letter of the Attorney General. There are 14 points that are itemized there that he wants the Attorney General to focus on, yet absolutely nothing, nothing, about street safety, nothing about random stranger attacks, nothing about the issues that people are dealing with every day. In fact, the only thing that talked about charging was that there is a bullet here that said: “Bring in right-to-charge legislation.” I got hopeful for a moment, I must tell you — just a brief moment.

[1:40 p.m.]

“Bring in right-to-charge legislation that will enable the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in more strata and apartment buildings.” That’s as close as we got to actually charging anyone or having anything in the mandate letter that talked about actually charging people. And we wonder why we’ve got a situation that is out of control. More studies. More talk. More announcements. More disastrous results for the residents of B.C.

I’m going to move into talking about health care, because this is the issue that is seizing the attention of the public in British Columbia. We have a situation in British Columbia that is as dire as I have ever seen it. In fairness, I’ve been a Minister of Health, so I know, as a Minister of Health, that it’s a challenging ministry. You’re always going to have issues. But never have I heard the kind of feedback I hear everywhere I go in this province — from doctors, nurses, front-line workers — that tell me that this situation is literally imploding.

It’s not just me that believes this. I am not being partisan about this. This is a very widely held view amongst the public because they are experiencing how the system is failing them each and every day. We can look right here in the greater Victoria area for no further evidence of that. But this is also been confirmed by the Premier.

I’m going to quote the Premier. On April 26 of this year, in the Vancouver Sun: “Time spent talking about new programs while existing programs are crumbling, I think is wasted time.” and “It’s not just about GP. It’s about nurses, nurse practitioners. It’s right across the board.” This is a crisis. Another one, only two days later, on April 28, on CBC On the Island. Quoting the Premier: “We have a crisis in health care. It’s not just in the primary care setting. It’s acute care, cancer care and a range of other areas.” In short, it’s everything. The entire system is near collapse.

Now, I know that the Premier likes to point fingers. I’m waiting for him to say: “Oh, it was just because the government in your day cut health care.” I’ll put it on the record that when I first got elected in 2001, the health care budget was just under $10 billion. When I left….

In fact, in 2017, when they formed government, it was just over $20 billion. That’s double. The health care budget doubled. I want all the listeners out there to know one thing that I did learn as a Health Minister: if the answer to the health care problems was more money, they would have been solved a long time ago. It is not about more money. If it was about more money, everything would have been solved by now.

The problem is that we have a government that measures their success in how much money they’re throwing into the system, and they’re not measuring what they’re getting out of the system. What we have to do is have a government that has the managerial skill set and background to know that you’ve got to measure outcomes, because that’s how you should be held accountable. Not from what you’re putting in, but what you’re getting out. What we’re getting out right now are the worst results we’ve ever seen in every measurement. We’re failing people. That’s why this is so important.

I want to just simply ask the Premier: at a time when one in five British Columbians cannot access a family doctor, at a time when they then go to a walk-in clinic and they find they’ve got the longest wait times in the country…. Wait times, by the way, have increased 50 percent here at the same time as they’ve improved in the rest of the country. The rest of the country, by the way, was dealing with the same challenges this government had to deal with.

My question to the Premier is: why do we have the worst wait times, the worst connection to doctors, and why are things getting worse here while they’re getting better everywhere else in the country?

[1:45 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: Before I address the last question raised by the Leader of the Opposition, I just want to do some cleanup on some of the public safety issues that were left hanging.

There was reference to a letter from mayors across major urban centres. I want to just read some of the reviews from the mayor of Kelowna, the mayor of Victoria, the mayor of Prince George.

Lyn Hall said:

“The Urban Mayors Caucus, which is 13 of us mayors from across the province, put a proposal of requests to the provincial government. As you know, they’ve acted very quickly on it. They have two very qualified individuals that are going to be doing a review of prolific offenders throughout our province, coming back with recommendations within 120 days. I think it’s going to be, really, a good part of the basis of where individual municipalities can start to work from, and I’m talking about the police agencies that are all there for law enforcement by officers.”

That’s from Prince George.

Mayor Basran said: “We’re encouraged by the quick action by the province on launching this review to identify provincially actionable solutions that will have a meaningful impact for our residents, businesses and our police officers.”

Lastly, Mayor Helps, here in Victoria: “What we’re seeing here today is a government that profoundly cares about our communities. We met with the Attorney General, and he said this was a problem in communities. Our small businesses are struggling to recover from the pandemic. If the pandemic wasn’t difficult enough, we’re also seeing an upswing in a very small number of people causing havoc in our downtowns.”

Just at noon, the Leader of the Opposition said that he supported independent investigations and thought they were a good idea. That was at noon. It’s ten to two, and independent investigations aren’t such a good idea.

With respect to mandate letters, the mandate letter for the Minister of Public Safety, who is participating in his estimates just down the hall, says the following: “Make streets safer from guns and gangs. Increase support for initiatives that are proven to protect and reduce crime.” So the member was looking in the wrong mandate letter when it comes to public safety. I would suggest that if he has more questions in that regard, or his team does, the Minister of Public Safety is just down the hall.

With respect to the challenges in our health care system, I have acknowledged that we have difficulties. But I have also, in the same breath, applauded those public health providers, whether they be care aides, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, doctors, surgeons, Health Sciences Association professionals, for all the work they do to keep people well — myself included.

So 100,000 people moved to British Columbia last year, the largest number of people in over 60 years. That puts a strain on a range of services that are provided by government and also puts a strain on our economy. We always want to see more people coming. That stimulates more activity. But it also costs more for housing, more for education, more for health care, more for child care, and on the list goes.

We have been working on building out our primary care networks. The Minister of Health has talked repeatedly about that over the past number of years. The fundamental challenge we have is a lot of people accessing the system.

[1:50 p.m.]

The member knows. As a former Health Minister, he launched a series of initiatives that did not meet the objective. It did not increase the number of doctors. It did not reduce patients that were not connected to a GP. They were unsuccessful.

We need to build on that. We need to continue to try and find best ways to move forward. I believe we can do that by having more resources that we can distribute equitably from our health authorities. That’s why the Canada health transfer is so important.

That’s why I’m surprised that, as a former Finance Minister and a former Health Minister…. When the federal government diminished the value of the Canada health transfer back when he was on this side of the House, the only voice across the country of all of the provinces, the only voice that applauded the government was the government of British Columbia — not my government but their government.

K. Falcon: Just to clean up the mess of the earlier comments, as the Premier says…. I’m paraphrasing. I’m not sure how he words it — something like that, cleaning up something.

I’d just like to note for the record that in our entire time in government, we certainly didn’t have the mayors of the largest cities in the province sending letters pleading with us to please, please do something about the crisis in criminality that is raging throughout our communities. That’s something that we never had to deal with.

The Premier knows that we have a massive, massive staffing shortage. There are 10,084 fewer workers in hospitals since the NDP formed government in 2017. Those are Statistics Canada’s numbers. The Minister of Health tried to say it was false. The media tweeted out afterwards, just so the members know, that that’s actually accurate.

Interjection.

K. Falcon: I have…. No. I can hear a voice. I can hear a voice, and it’s not the Premier’s voice. It’s the voice of…. I don’t know. It sounds like a Minister of Health who might be a bit sensitive about this.

Through to the Premier, who I’m actually doing the estimates for…. I wish I had time to do the estimates of the Ministry of Health, I can assure you of that, but I do want to note that he likes to point out that they’ve hired 30,000 people. Yeah. They’ve hired 30,000 people, all right, just not in the places where you need them — in the hospital settings, providing the care that British Columbians aren’t getting right now as the system teeters, to use the Premier’s own words. As the system is teetering and imploding upon itself, we don’t have the workers we need.

Will the Premier address the crisis and staff shortages in our health care system delivery in the hospitals now?

Hon. J. Horgan: Just to remind the member…. I know he represents a constituency in Vancouver, but he’ll remember that in 2007, then Mayor Dianne Watts was urging the then B.C. Liberal government to take action for prolific offenders. That led to the pilot programs I referred to earlier that were two years to stand up and then dismantled four years later.

Again in 2013, the very same former mayor, Dianne Watts, who will be familiar to many on that side of the House, was appalled at the increase of violent crime in her community and demanded that the provincial government do something about it. If the member doesn’t recall interactions with the mayor of Surrey, I can’t do much about that, but there they are.

[1:55 p.m.]

With respect to the head count in the health care system, I do know, and I’m confident that the Leader of the Opposition and his team are aware, that Stats Canada has reclassified how they count, and therefore, you’ve jumped on a number that is just not correct. At the same time, the official opposition is saying we keep hiring too many people. There are too many people. They’re also saying: “Why haven’t you hired more?”

Let’s just go through the numbers that are collected by the public service, and I’m sure that, perhaps, the Leader of the Opposition wants to fire all of them, too. This has been collected in the same way, not just for this government but for previous governments, going back for as long as I suspect the public service has been keeping track of how many employees they’re responsible for. The head count in 2018, 184,000; the head count in 2020, 190,000; the head count in 2022, 222,000. That’s an increase of 38,000, a 20 percent increase.

Breaking that down by licensed practical nurses, 17 percent growth in that period. Nurse practitioners, 40 percent growth. Registered nurses, 11 percent. Family physicians, up 357. So after the GP for Me program was well and truly put to one side, we started to see some real progress — 357 family physicians, 5.6 percent growth. Social workers, 374; that’s 22 percent growth. Diagnostic sonographers, 121 added; that’s 21 percent growth.

There is more data I’m happy to share with the member, but despite this growth for health providers and the delivery of health services in British Columbia, we continue to struggle. Coming out of the pandemic, we’ve gone through this as well. We’ve seen absenteeism increase, because we have urged people who are not well to stay away from work. This is something that I thought was a given, that people understood that as we come out of a global pandemic, we do not want to bring COVID-19 into the workplace.

We’ve seen an increase of absenteeism, I think some 14,000 to 18,000 per week on any given day in the health care system. That’s leading to strain. That’s leading to challenges in the delivery of services. I’ve been articulating that publicly.

The Leader of the Opposition just read some quotes from me, acknowledging that we have a challenge, but what’s missing from that acknowledgment is that we are taking practical steps to address these issues. We need to have a reboot and a revisioning of how we deliver these services. That’s why it’s so important that the federal government work not just with British Columbia but premiers and provinces right across the country.

It also requires us to figure out how we are going to meet the needs in our communities. A hundred thousand more people came here last year, and there will be more coming. A $400 million investment in Kamloops just the other day, to stabilize 320 jobs. Microsoft is occupying a 19-storey building in downtown Vancouver. The economy is booming. That means more people will come here.

I appreciate that the Leader of the Opposition is unhappy about the fact that we landed the largest private sector investment in B.C. history. I can understand that he’s unhappy with the fact that the economy continues to grow, and the biggest challenge we have is attracting more workers. The more that come, the better we are in terms of delivering to people in the economy, but the more people that come, the more health care providers we’re going to need — the more teachers, the more child care providers. That’s what we’re building out — a province that keeps everybody employed, keeps everybody focused on moving forward and leaves no one behind.

K. Falcon: Yes, well, the Premier can have his wonderful oratorical moments here, but the fact of the matter is there’s been flat or negative growth in every year for five years in health care workers, while other provinces are seeing growth. That’s the bottom line. I wonder…. The reason could very well be that they have no plan around a health and human resource strategy.

The Premier said: “Sure we do.” So that’s good, because we haven’t seen it. We certainly are waiting for it, because in the NDP 2020 platform, it included the promise of “a comprehensive health care human resources strategy, including credential recognition.”

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

That sounds encouraging. Then, in the spring of ’21, the minister said the government would announce a health human resources plan in the fall of 2021. That sounded good at the time, too. Again, really good at announcements.

[2:00 p.m.]

Then the minister further stated: “Action is being taken, and the full health human resources plan will be available soon.” That was question period on April 27 of this year. Now we understand that their health human resources strategy that the Premier just said is done…. We’ve now heard that they’ve confirmed there will not be a strategy till at least the fall of this year.

Maybe that explains why there’s a critical health care worker shortage in virtually every facility across this province. Frankly, if this makes the Premier uncomfortable and makes the Minister of Health uncomfortable, too bad, because that’s what the public is experiencing every single day: the fact that there’s nobody there. As we heard earlier in question period, hospitals shut down. “Just come back later.”

That is not delivering a service, and it’s because there’s no workers there. The Premier mentioned the Royal Inland Hospital, which we started and is going to be open in a couple of weeks. Well, that’s great — another empty building that the NDP can talk about, because it will be empty. There are critical staff shortages up at Royal Inland Hospital right now.

It’s probably why, when the Minister of Health lurched forward with this plan of urgent and primary care centres — I think they’ve got over two dozen of them now — there’s virtually no one staffing them. More empty buildings, more empty facilities that have nobody in them, where nobody can get proper services.

Will the Premier confirm that he’s going to…? Maybe it would have been wise to have a health human resources strategy before the Minister of Health went out and launched a bunch of urgent and primary care centres that have no people in them.

[2:05 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: The Minister of Health has been engaged with his team to build out our health human resources strategy.

Again, I’ll have to remind the member — he was in the private sector at the time — that we had a pretty rough year in 2021, gripped by a global pandemic; the consequences of climate change being very apparent here in British Columbia, with record heat levels and temperatures across the province; fires; having the community of Merritt evacuated because of fires in the summer, and then evacuated in the fall because of floods.

In the midst of all of that, we had the omicron wave — which, again, sent us into a significantly challenging position with respect to keeping services open in our acute care facilities. That’s why having 330 full-time-equivalents in 27 urgent and primary care centres was so important. Family practitioners were doing more virtual appointments than appointments in person, and as we have come out of the pandemic, there has been a demand, rightly so, by patients, by British Columbians, to see primary care providers. That’s why having the UPCCs with 330 staff in place is so critically important.

The minister is going to be bringing forward the plan in the coming months. It has already been essentially completed, but we want to make sure we’ve got everything in order. The Leader of the Opposition can have some comfort that they’re working aggressively on this. Since 2017, we have opened 60 new residency positions for physicians. That’s about $163 million a year to support the residency training program.

We’ve seen a range of initiatives — 600 actual doctors are now here in B.C., a 10 percent increase, outpacing the population growth during that first period. But we’ve had, again, record in-migration from across Canada and around the world. That’s a good thing. That’s positive for our economy, but it does put strains on our system.

As I’ve said now several times, we’ve had a level of absenteeism as a result of COVID-19, and this is something that the public health officer has encouraged — through order, initially, and then by guidance, most recently: “If you’re not well, you shouldn’t come to work.” That puts a significant strain on the delivery of services. We’re conscious of that. We’re working as hard as we can to relieve those pressures. As we come out of COVID-19, as we see more and more people graduating from the spaces that we’ve created since 2017, we’ll have more staff and resources.

[2:10 p.m.]

The new program for foreign-trained nurses, for example, which was just announced a few weeks ago, will have a significant impact — positively received, I believe, by the official opposition critic at the time. I’ll have to check. Things seem to be different over there these days.

I’m confident that if we continue to put our shoulder to the wheel and focus on the needs of British Columbians, we’ll be able to address these challenges. This is a desirable place to be. Our health care system is struggling, and it’s a result of a global pandemic and some of the most unprecedented seasonal issues, whether they be floods or fires, that British Columbians have ever seen.

K. Falcon: I would just say to the member: welcome to government. There’s always a crisis when you’re in government. We had to deal with global economic meltdowns, SARS, H1N1, forest fires. These kinds of things happen. It doesn’t mean the whole of government comes to a freezing halt and that you don’t do basic work, like having a health and human resources plan, for goodness sakes.

It might have been, at least, sensible that before the Minister of Health lurched out there and started opening up all these urgent and primary care centres, they had actually had a health and human resource plan to think about how they might staff them.

It’s not just me saying this, by the way. I’ll quote Dr. Peter Gladstone: “You could put a UPCC,” which is an urgent and primary care centre, “on every street corner, but they’ll be of less use than a Tim Hortons unless they’ve got doctors in them.” That’s a Victoria cardiologist.

Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh: “Our primary system is at great risk of collapsing.” I can tell you this. Listeners should know this. When I was Health Minister, when we were in government, health care wasn’t perfect. I acknowledge that for sure. But we didn’t have hundreds of doctors protesting out in front of the Legislature, saying to the government, pleading with the government: “The system is failing. It’s not working.” That didn’t happen while we were there.

Here’s the problem with these urgent and primary care centres that the minister is so happy to announce, that are opening up everywhere and sit empty. They are literally empty. They’re often already at capacity first thing in the morning and not taking patients. A lot of good that does for someone trying to come and get care.

Richmond’s primary care facility has been running for three years. It’s supposed to have 32 equivalent physicians. Today it’s got one. In Abbotsford, their UPCC has only half a doctor when there’s supposed to be six. In the North Shore primary care network, there are supposed to be 17.5 full-time-equivalent physicians. There are three. In the South Okanagan Similkameen primary care network, there are seven nurse practitioners but zero doctors out of the six that are supposed to be approved as full-time-equivalent physicians. In the White Rock and South Surrey primary care network, there’s only a third of the doctors that there’s supposed to be.

As Dr. Gladstone put it very well, Premier, you can put these on every corner, but they might as well be Tim Hortons if there’s nobody in them. What’s the Premier going to do to actually fix this, even though they still have yet to come out with a health and human resource plan?

[2:15 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: Again, I appreciate that the Leader of the Opposition was not here through COVID-19, but to compare it to H1N1 and SARS is just not at all possible.

We had to bring in a single-site order because of the contract stripping that the former government did when they came to power, despite saying that they wouldn’t do it. That meant having a health care assistant program that hired some 6,600 people for infection control in our long-term-care facilities. We hired 1,500 contact tracers. These were health care workers that were assisting us with monitoring and tracking the spread of COVID-19. The largest vaccination program in our history was carried out with results that were second to none in the country.

To suggest that we weren’t focused on making sure we had health care workers where we needed them when we needed them is just disingenuous. I appreciate that it is the function of the Leader of the Opposition to create tensions, but when I think of the amount of work that went into getting us all through COVID-19…. It wasn’t just a bump along the road. It wasn’t just part and parcel of being government. Nothing like this has happened before. I appreciate that government’s responsibility is to address issues as they emerge. That’s the whole point.

Circumstances. “Circumstances, my dear boy” is what Macmillan famously said when asked about how he would be remembered. You deal with issues as they come. I appreciate that the Leader of the Opposition fully understands that. But I don’t believe he fully understands or appreciates the consequences of COVID-19 on the delivery of health care services. Going from in-person visits to virtual visits was transformative. The fact that we were able to do that is fantastic, but as we come out of it, it’s a challenge. It’s not about snapping your fingers. You can’t go from “I’m going to just log on and talk to my GP” to “I’m standing in line, waiting to see my GP,” when they, the GPs, are still at home on the computer.

We need to come forward. We have been working with the Doctors of B.C. The deputy of Health has been engaged since the minister and I met with the doctors a few weeks ago — regular meetings to find a way forward that meets the needs of Doctors of B.C. and meets the needs of the patients of British Columbia. We have been aggressively addressing challenges in the health care system over the past two years.

At the same time, we build out a human resource strategy to meet the needs going forward. I inventoried, for the member, the number of people that have been hired, the number of UPCCs. The fact that the member made reference to the Richmond facility — it is fully operational. The numbers that he used were pre-April 25, when we started in earnest to meet the needs of people of Richmond. As we phase it through — this isn’t shocking; this isn’t surprising — we issue press releases.

I remember…. I’m not sure if other members will remember it as vividly as I do, but whenever the former government was in trouble, you could always count on a liquor announcement. It seemed like clockwork. Every time there was a little bit of a bad headline…. I’m even getting a smile from the member for Kamloops–South Thompson. Every time there was a little bit of a challenge, oh, there’s going to be a liquor announcement.

We have been announcing changes and transformation in health care. That’s what British Columbians want. Liquor changes may well have got you to the line in the old days, but today people want services, and we’re delivering on that.

K. Falcon: I honestly don’t remember the liquor announcements. It was probably more along the lines of: “I think I need a drink.” I rather doubt it was….

Interjection.

K. Falcon: Were they liquor announcements?

Interjection.

K. Falcon: Okay. I’ll have to look it up. I was never the minister responsible for liquor. Maybe that’s the issue.

Just going back to the challenge that we’ve got in British Columbia with doctors protesting on the front lawns of the Legislature, one in five British Columbians — almost 1 million of our neighbors and friends — don’t have access to a family doctor. Without that access to a family doctor, they’re required to go to clinics, and they face the longest wait times in the country. Then if they go to the hospitals…. It is not unusual at Vancouver General Hospital to be finding yourself in an eight-, nine-, ten-hour wait trying to seek basic services.

[2:20 p.m.]

Now, when we were in government, I remember, in our very first term, we realized that because the prior government had reduced the number of medical training spaces as a result of their belief that that would save money for the system, the first thing we did — recognizing it takes seven, eight years to train doctors — was more than double the number of first-year medical student training spaces from 128 to 288.

We did that knowing that it was going to take years for those young women and men to get trained up, but it was about planning ahead. That’s what you do in a system; you plan ahead. You make decisions that anticipate the growth in population and the other things that the Premier talks about.

We also recognized…. Because nurses were going to be in demand, we added 4,800 training spaces for nurses to make sure. Again, nurses’ training takes multiple years. They’re highly skilled individuals. You’ve got to plan for that, knowing that you’re going to be facing pressures down the road.

Now, we heard…. The Minister of Health often talks about all these retirees. Apparently, they’ve just discovered that some doctors are older. That information is widely available from day one of a minister assuming an office — to look and see very quickly: “Oh gee. We’ve got a good chunk of the doctors there that could be retiring in the next couple of years, better get on training more doctors.” That would seem like a pretty logical thing to do. But here’s this NDP government, in their second term, not adding a single new training space.

But wait. There was an announcement, of course. There was an announcement on October 13, 2020. The NDP news release promised: “B.C. NDP to Launch Second Medical School at SFU Surrey Campus. Plan Will Mean More Doctors…Trained and Working in B.C.” The release quoted the current Minister of Health saying that the first graduating class could be 2023-2024.

Well, not surprisingly, there are no medical training spaces at SFU Surrey. I wonder if the Premier is going to deal with this broken promise.

[2:25 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: With respect to the commitment we made a little over a year and a half ago to bring a second facility into the Lower Mainland, we have provided planning money to SFU to work on that plan. We’re hopeful that that’ll be coming forward in the fall.

With respect to registered nurses, when we came to government, we were tenth in the country, per capita, for registered nurses per patients. Since then, we have lead the country in the increase in the number of RNs that we’ve brought into play.

With respect to the 60 new annual residency positions, this is critically important not just for docs coming out of medical school but also for internationally trained doctors. We want to make sure that those credentials are recognized here, and one of the key barriers is an inability to get that residency requirement underway. So by reducing those barriers, by creating more spaces, we’re able to bring on those very valued health care professionals that are not able to practise because of where they got their education.

Similarly, we have in this place members whose children have gone to foreign lands to get their MD, and coming back to British Columbia has been elusive. I know that they’re practising medicine in other provinces in Canada. That’s motivation for me, certainly, to ensure that for the kids of British Columbians who go somewhere else to get an education — as I did, and as many others have — that coming back to British Columbia is not an impairment, but in fact, people are welcome.

These are important initiatives that we have been working on. I’m very proud of the work we have done to recruit and retain more health care providers. In every category, we’ve seen an increase. Certainly, a net 900 new family physicians in British Columbia since we got here, and many, many more to bring on.

We have a lot more work to do, but we won’t get it done by yelling at each other. We’ll get it done by collaborating and making sure we’re on the right track together.

K. Falcon: The Premier, the Minister of Health were all employees of the NDP government back in the ’90s. If they check the record, they’ll remember…. I’ve been around long enough that I’m having flashbacks now. They can look and check and remind themselves that they eliminated 1,600 full-time nursing positions back then. Didn’t add one new medical space back then, not one, and actually banned new family doctors from coming into the system, which is why we inherited such a very challenging situation to get out of.

We’ve got seven NDP MLAs in Surrey, two of them are ministers, and I can’t understand why they can’t move something along a promise that was made two years ago to move forward with medical training spaces at SFU Surrey. I looked in the budget — Budget 2021, Budget 2022 — looking for the SFU medical school dollars. Nothing to be found.

That tells me there’s going to be nothing happening in the term of this government. But it’s certainly a disappointment to residents of Surrey. It just ranks up there frankly with….

Interjection.

K. Falcon: I overheard the whispering about a Surrey hospital. Give me a break. I hope we talk about the Surrey hospital — the non-existent Surrey hospital that they’ve been promising for five years now, with no money, no capital dollars in the budget for it, no maternity ward.

Interjections.

K. Falcon: Yeah. I read the budget. It’s two million bucks. You won’t even get drawings out of that. I can tell you.

Interjections.

The Chair: Members. Members, one member has the floor.

Please proceed.

K. Falcon: Thank you, Chair.

Since they’ve raised it, we also found out in estimates that the Minister of Health is not even going to have a maternity ward at this new hospital. Imagine that. The fastest-growing city almost in the country, and they’re not going to have a maternity ward.

In fact, the minister actually tried to shut down the maternity ward at Peace Arch Hospital — the maternity ward where my daughter Rose was born. Only in the face of a huge backlash did he back off this ill-thought-out plan to shut down the maternity ward at Peace Arch Hospital.

Now what they’re doing…. Although it’s technically open, they’re diverting people, young mothers about to have their babies, off to Langley most of the time anyhow. Then they’re going to open up, apparently, sixth year of the promise, this hospital, supposedly, in Surrey — this second hospital — with $2 million in the budget that we’re never going to see anything get started on that in the term of the government either.

I guess, Premier, look, in the midst of an unbelievable crisis….

The Chair: If I might remind the member. Just to be clear, if we refer to other people by their titles or their names, the only time that is, is me. I know the member has been away from the House for a while, but I don’t want to have to keep interrupting.

[2:30 p.m.]

If we could just…. The Chair is the person the member names. If he wants to refer to the Premier or anyone else, it would be “the Premier” or “the Minister for so-and-so,” just to be clear. It’s important we follow the rules of this House. Thank you.

K. Falcon: So to be clear, “the Premier” as opposed to “Premier.” Okay. I’ll try and remember the word “the.”

Will the Premier, through the Chair, deal with the fact that we have an enormous shortage of doctors — that they were well aware, and must have been for years, that we had a number of doctors retiring? Will he accelerate this long-promised medical campus at SFU Surrey?

Hon. J. Horgan: As I said with respect to the earlier question a few moments ago with respect to the new medical training facility in Surrey, that work is underway. There will be more to say about that down the road.

I have to go back to the new Surrey hospital, because it is the single largest health care contribution in B.C. history from the provincial government, $1.66 billion — which included, of course, securing land. Why did we have to secure land, Members? Why is that? Let me just read to other members of the committee what the then Finance Minister had to say about the need for a Surrey hospital — in the fastest-growing community in the whole province, I just heard from the other side, and I agree with that.

This was what we heard in the budget speech in 2012, just a decade ago: “The province owns a 15-acre site in Surrey just off Highway 10. We were holding on to it in the event a new Surrey Memorial Hospital was needed. With almost $600 million in expansion at the Surrey Memorial Hospital now underway at its current location, the land is surplus.”

Now, I want to pause there for a moment, because I don’t know too many people in the development community that think that holding land in British Columbia is a bad economic bargain. We hear them talk about the high cost of housing, and I agree with that, but why is that, hon. Members? Why is that? Because of the high cost of land. But the development community Finance Minister of the day said: “Rather than letting it sit there costing taxpayers money, we intend to sell it to let the private sector use it to generate new economic activity.”

[2:35 p.m.]

Far-thinking governments in the past secured land for public purposes, which governments do all the time, hon. Members. For those who have just arrived since 2020, oftentimes governments look at the portfolio of challenges ahead — do we need more schools, hospitals, rights of way to build out our infrastructure, to move people around? — and governments make purchases, not for the moment but for the long term. It’s only shortsighted governments that would say: “Let’s not hold on to land in British Columbia. Let’s sell it.”

Here we are now, ten years later, having to buy land to build a second hospital, which will have the fourth cancer clinic in the Lower Mainland, in Fraser Health. This is critically important. We will have the largest population in the Lower Mainland in Surrey by 2041. We need to build out. We need to provide more services, and we need a second hospital — $1.66 billion. It’s in the budget. It’s going to be built, despite the best efforts of those on that side of the House — by giving away the land to those who support them instead of investing in the people of British Columbia.

K. Falcon: I would just remind the Premier, and I’m glad he referenced it, of the fact that we did do an almost $600 million expansion of the Surrey Memorial Hospital, and we did open up the Surrey Jim Pattison Outpatient Centre. That’s actually something that got done that people get the benefit of. It wasn’t just an announcement. It was actually getting stuff done.

Once again, I am forced to listen to the Premier make an announcement, as they’ve done repeatedly. The Premier says they will have a $1.6 billion hospital. However, as a former Finance Minister, when you look in the budget, what you will see is $2 million — 2 million bucks. I can tell you that that doesn’t even get you the design drawings that you’re going to need for this $1.6 billion hospital they keep promising.

As for the lands at 152 and No. 10, those were ten kilometres away from the existing hospital. They were surplus because Fraser Health didn’t want to build a hospital at a site where they’ve got poor transit connections that’s only less than ten kilometres away from their existing facility. That’s why it was surplus.

The bottom line is this. In the fastest-growing community in the province, and one of the fastest in the country…. You would think that if they’re going to promise something more than a glorified urgent care centre, it would have a maternity ward, in the fastest-growing community that births the most babies. That would seem pretty sensible.

Why on earth, in the fastest-growing community, is there no maternity ward in this planned hospital? To the Premier, why was he trying to shut down the maternity ward at Peace Arch Hospital, which we invested millions of dollars to improve and which wants to be used daily by residents, but they can’t because they’re being diverted to Langley? Why is that?

Hon. J. Horgan: Obviously, Surrey Memorial Hospital and Peace Arch Hospital have maternity wards, and if there’s a need for more maternity capacity, there will be space at the new hospital.

I refer the former Finance Minister to page 76 of the 2022 budget, where he will see that the second Surrey hospital is going to be in the range of $1.66 billion, page 76. Member, maybe you can get the kids from the basement to pull that up.

K. Falcon: We’ve just seen a demonstration of exactly what’s wrong with this government. When under pressure, they just make announcements. I think we heard another one here. Now it seems to be that the Premier is saying: “Well, maybe it will have a maternity ward.” That’s fascinating to me — that decisions are made apparently in the midst of heated questioning. I am fascinated by that.

The bottom line is simply this. It is simply this — that they talk about wanting to do things. They make announcements, whether it’s training spaces, whether it’s new hospitals — nothing to be shown for it. You could drive back and forth through Surrey. The seven NDP MLAs should be able to tell you this. You see nothing happening — nothing. That’s the real record of this government.

I now want to talk about hospitals. I wish I had more time to spend on that, frankly. This is the challenge, as I watch the Chair….

Sorry, Chair. No, the Premier, I think, wants to say something. I want to give him that respect.

[2:40 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: Well, thank you to the Leader of the Opposition. I’m just concerned that the opposition doesn’t have a copy of the 2022 budget. I’d like to table page 76, which I’ve highlighted for ease of viewing. New Surrey hospital and cancer centre, $1.66 billion.

K. Falcon: We’ve heard about the announcements and the promises, Premier. The issue I look for is money in the actual capital budget.

Interjection.

K. Falcon: No, it’s not right there.

Interjections.

The Chair: Members. Members, one person has the floor at a time.

Please continue.

K. Falcon: That’s probably why the applause was so tepid on that side of the House.

I’d now like to talk about the crisis in our hospital settings — total and utter chaos in every part of this province. Inside hospitals like Royal Inland in Kamloops, Kelowna General, Nanaimo Regional, East Kootenay Hospital in Cranbrook, we’ve got…. Just to actually make this even more real, I could rattle off virtually every hospital in the province. It’s all the same.

I got a text last night from a gentleman whose father had a stroke in Salmon Arm. Salmon Arm hospital — not enough staff. They shipped him up to Royal Inland Hospital. I’m happy to share this with the Premier, if he’d like to see it. He described it as a horror show where they were stuck in the hallways. He said he was talking to doctors who weren’t even from B.C. They’re contract doctors that apparently government is having to fly in now — at great considerable expense; you can be certain of that. Nurses were stressed. Patients up and down the corridor. He actually sent me photographs of the patients receiving care in the corridors.

This is the reality of what’s happening in our hospitals to a stroke patient, for goodness sakes. It’s terrifying for the individual, and certainly doubly terrifying for the families.

Hallways to the emergency departments are full of beds, and the backlog of patients waiting for beds can be upwards of 40 patients at any given time. Emergency departments are routinely closing due to staff shortages. They just shut right down — no emergency department. You show up, and there will be no emergency department available, like in Clearwater; or the hospital in Merritt, in the Nicola Valley; the Port McNeill district hospital.

Even in the Lower Mainland, where you would think, okay, with all of the big hospitals and all the nurses and doctors, surely to goodness, you’re going to get quick service there, parents trying to get their child emergency service at Children’s Hospital are experiencing waits of up to nine hours.

To the Premier, what is the Premier doing to address this crisis in our emergency departments today?

[2:45 p.m.]

The Chair: Thank you, Members. In conferring with the Clerk’s staff, I just wanted to be clear that, of course, the tabling of documents is appropriate when it comes to the general House, but when we’re in committee, it’s not the practice of the House to have documents tabled here for public consumption. If the Premier did want to provide a document to the Leader of the Opposition or anyone for information, the best way to do that in committee is through the Legislature staff here, and they can provide that over.

I’ll send that back over here, and then we’ll continue with the answer.

Hon. J. Horgan: Thank you, hon. Chair. Thank you for the reminder on the rules of the committee. I appreciate that.

During COVID, we’ve seen people absent from workplaces in every sector of the economy, but in health care, it’s particularly important. All of us — every single member in this House, those in the gallery, those watching at home — lift their hands in gratitude to the health care providers who put themselves at risk throughout COVID to provide care to vulnerable populations, whether they be in acute care, whether they be in long-term care or other health care settings.

This year there is 25 percent more absenteeism than there was in the first year as a result of COVID-19. I’ve touched upon this several times, and the reason I’ve done so is because of the profound impact it’s having on the delivery of services. I said in earlier responses that 14,000 to 18,000 sick days have been accounted for over the past number of weeks, but last week alone 15,000 people called in sick. That’s about double what would be on a normal day in a normal circumstance in parts of the province, wherever you may come from.

Despite having significant absenteeism, there were more surgeries done in the last three weeks than at any time in our history, so services are being delivered. Challenging as it may be, we are still finding positive outcomes from our health care system. That is a full credit to those in our acute care system who stand at the ready to assist people as they appear, regardless of where they come from.

[2:50 p.m.]

The challenge for health authorities, particularly in smaller communities, is…. If you have 30 percent of your ten-person complement of staff at your emergency room call in sick, that puts a tremendous strain on the remaining providers and, in some instances, makes it impossible for them to deliver services. That’s why there have been diversions.

It’s not the first time in our history that there have been diversions. This has happened in the 2010s. It happened in the 2000s. It happened in the 1990s. A province as diverse and dynamic as British Columbia, with small populations in some parts of the province and large populations in others, has to manage resources to meet the needs of people, going forward.

Rather than list the corridor medicine that took place, the Tim Hortons that was opened up to be a triage centre at Royal Columbian Hospital during the watch of the members on the other side, I’ll leave it to say that I hope that we can have a genuine discussion about the challenges that our health care providers are facing with them at front of mind as well as the patients that they serve. The back-and-forth here during committee will do little to assist those people.

The facts of the matter are that more people are calling in sick at the request of the public health officer than we’ve seen since the pandemic began, and that’s putting a strain on the delivery of services.

K. Falcon: Well, I would acknowledge to the Premier that he’s correct. There are individualized examples of this happening in every government, probably, going back decades — no question about that.

The issue is that this isn’t just an isolated incident, as shocking as those may be when they happen. This is a regular occurrence. This is happening daily. It’s not something that is so irregular that it actually captures the attention and, rightly, receives the criticism and attention it deserves when it happens. And it happened while we were in government — I acknowledge that — but not to the scale and the extent that it’s happening now.

I would just remind the Premier that COVID affected more than just British Columbia. Other provinces were also affected, but none of them have anywhere near the level of crisis that we’re experiencing in our health care system. I would argue that’s because unlike us, who have had flat or negative growth every year for five years in health care workers, they’ve been seeing growth in health care workers. So they’ve got more people to be able to manage the challenges they face.

I’d like to just give an example in Williams Lake, at the Cariboo Memorial Hospital: ten-hour waits in their emergency rooms. They’ve got a 60 percent staffing level. They’re operating at 175 percent of capacity, so they’re well over 100 percent of capacity. They have a situation where, as we heard earlier today, a 14-year-old from Williams Lake could not get an ambulance after going into cardiac arrest. Why? Because the ambulances were so backed up at the hospital with patients that were unable to go into the hospital because it’s already 175 percent over capacity.

Premier, what do you have to say to the residents of Williams Lake on the situation at Cariboo Memorial Hospital?

[2:55 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: First of all, I want to acknowledge and thank the Leader of the Opposition for acknowledging that this is a phenomenon that has been with British Columbia for some time. I have some data just to reinforce the point that throughout all health authorities in 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, acute care facilities were all over capacity — all of them across the province, with the exception of the Provincial Health Authority, which does not have acute care facilities that I’m aware of. So that’s that.

I hope that we’re agreeing that the consequences of COVID and absenteeism have put an additional strain on a system that has already come through two years where health care providers were asked, in many cases, to work double shifts on a consistent basis. They’re exhausted. British Columbians are exhausted. We want to get through this. We want to get back to something reassembling normal.

With respect to the Cariboo issues, we have — and it was to much applause — announced, after a decade or so of discussion, that we were going to build the hospital in Williams Lake, which will provide more capacity and ensure that services can be provided to the people in that region.

Lastly, of course, I want to talk about…. Just a few weeks ago, the Canadian Medical Association talked about the critical family physician shortage, not in British Columbia, but across Canada. This is a national phenomenon. That is why I have been spending so much of my energy not criticizing the federal government, not pointing fingers at the federal government but urging the federal government to join with the provinces, who deliver these important services to the citizens of Canada, and bring in appropriate funding levels so that we can meet these challenges. We can overbuild capacity so that we don’t have circumstances like we’re seeing in some of our smaller communities. When a handful of staff are not available, it sends tremors throughout the community.

We need to address those issues. I acknowledge that. I acknowledge the work of the opposition to bring those issues forward. But the challenge is not unique to British Columbia. I believe it’s a direct result of the ravages of COVID-19 on our institutions, on our delivery of services and on, of course, the ability of all of us to collaborate and work together.

I am grateful that we had a turning of the page, I believe, in the debate we’re having today, when we’re all acknowledging that these challenges didn’t arrive yesterday, and they won’t be fixed tomorrow unless we roll up our sleeves and work together on meeting the challenges that we see in every health authority. They were there in 2012. They’re there in 2022. Let’s ensure together that they’re not there in 2025.

K. Falcon: I would love to do that, except that the challenges today are at an epic scale, worse than they have every been. That is the concern. As the Premier correctly pointed out, the system is teetering. Our concern is that the system is about to implode.

This isn’t just my opinion. I don’t just think this stuff up on my own. This is what we’re hearing from nurses and doctors who come to us directly with their concerns. They’ve got gag orders in place, but they still let us know, individually, that this is a real crisis that they’re very, very concerned about.

While a new hospital in Williams Lake will always be a good thing, and I will certainly applaud and support that, if it’s an empty hospital that’s not delivering the services because it has no staff in order to look after situations like that 14-year-old, it’s not going to do much good for folks.

I’d like to talk for a second, Premier…. A quick question on the Elkford emergency room. It has been closed since September. That’s getting close to a year. I just want to know: is the government going to permanently leave it closed, or is there any effort to actually open that emergency room that’s been closed for almost one year?

Hon. J. Horgan: As officials get out the note on that issue, I would ask if the committee could recess briefly for whatever it’s called. What kind of break is it?

The Chair: We’ll call it a biology break. How’s that?

We’ll take a short recess. Thank you. This committee is now in recess.

The committee recessed from 3 p.m. to 3:11 p.m.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Hon. J. Horgan: With respect to the Elkford Health Centre, it has been challenging, as the member knows. I know that the member for Kootenay East has raised that issue with the Minister of Health, as well, as recently as today in the Legislature. It’s recruitment and retention. It is a challenge. We’ve talked about shortages in every sector of the economy.

In the Elk Valley, of course, there’s Sparwood, there’s Fernie, and then there’s Elkford. So in order to stabilize, the health authority isn’t focusing on Sparwood and Fernie. As we continue to try and encourage RNs and others to get into the pool for Elkford, that remains a challenge. We’re going to continue to do what we can for recruitment.

There is no intention for permanent closure. The intention is to continue to encourage health care providers to take advantage of what is a very desirable lifestyle in the Elk Valley. It’s a beautiful part of British Columbia that has access to services within that corridor from, as I say, Fernie and then through to Sparwood. That’s the state of play at the moment.

I can give some more details on the FTE counts and the various providers that we’re seeking. It seems to be, particularly, a nursing issue at this moment, but not exclusively.

K. Falcon: Premier, I think what I’ll share with you is just….

The Chair: I’ll just have to stop the member there.

K. Falcon: The Premier.

The Chair: Just to make it clear. Maybe this helps. This is how they teach it at youth parliament. Just look at me. Talk to me. I’m the one you’re talking to. That’ll be, maybe, an easier way to understand it, because it is kind of odd to talk in the third person. I understand that fully. But those are the rules that we follow here. Thank you.

K. Falcon: No, I know. Standing Order 36, I think, also suggests that we keep the flow going, as I’m sure the Chair is aware.

The Chair: I am. If the rules are followed, there will be no interruption from me.

K. Falcon: Thank you for that input, Chair.

Premier, there have been a number of hospital emergency department closures, and I’ve got…. This is only a snapshot. This is just since January of 2021. The Premier would be interested to know that it runs into pages, but I think it is symptomatic of the challenge we face. As we canvassed earlier, every government will face challenges here and there. But what we are seeing is such a series of challenges that it is almost a daily occurrence in many of these hospitals.

In Interior Health, we’ve got Ashcroft with repeated emergency room closures. Barriere, same thing. Blue River, closed right through the Christmas season of 2021, from December 20 to 31. Clearwater, virtually every month — closures during the day, overnight.

[3:15 p.m.]

Elkford. Well, we know about Elkford, and we’ve canvassed that. Grand Forks, Kamloops, Keremeos — hours reduced. Lillooet, in-patient services suspended from January 18 to March 14, 2022. That’s almost an entire quarter. Merritt, emergency department closed multiple times, just this year alone. April. May. January. Through Christmas. In Northern Health, there are just so many, I couldn’t even start to list them. Chetwynd. We talked about that a little bit.

The common theme here, regardless of which health authority…. Same thing on the Island, all over the Island. We’ve just got this continual challenge of…. As I say, it’s only a snapshot, but this is a considerable challenge that we’re facing.

I think, Premier, what I’d like to do is turn over to my colleagues from Kamloops to ask specific questions that sort of highlight what is in the seven pages of closures, just since January of 2021, with respect to the Royal Inland Hospital.

T. Stone: I very much appreciate the opportunity to just insert myself very briefly in this exchange here today.

I want to ask a question of the Premier with respect to Royal Inland Hospital. I know that he knows it’s a dire situation. I think he has said as such. I know that the Minister of Health has acknowledged that it’s a dire situation. In fact, the Minister of Health has said repeatedly in recent days and weeks that the city of Kamloops and the hospital in our community, Royal Inland, has been one of the hardest hit, if not the hardest hit, over the last two to three years. So I think that we can all agree on that reality, that high-level reality.

The people of Kamloops…. This is a city of 100,000-​plus. It serves a much larger area. It’s the second-largest trauma hospital in British Columbia and the largest in Interior Health. It’s one of the two tertiary hospitals in the Interior Health Authority. The systemic issues, the challenges that are facing health care workers — and through the health care workers, the public that this hospital serves — are massive. People are frustrated that there doesn’t appear to be an urgent plan to address what’s actually happening in the hospitals.

I want to walk through, really quickly here, some of the highlights — or lowlights, depending on one’s perspective. The Royal Inland is characterized these days, and it has been for quite some time, with massive staff shortages across most units and most wards on most hours of most days of the week. It’s just routine now. It’s just common now.

The recent long weekend, the May long weekend, over the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the emergency room at Royal Inland was operating at between 40 percent and 50 percent staffing. The ICU, on those same dates of the long weekend, was operating at between 58 percent and 66 percent staffing. Contract nurses and contract doctors and other health care professionals from other parts of British Columbia — and indeed, from across the country, we understand — were brought in. Many are still there, at great cost. We still have significant staffing shortages in these various departments.

There are 20,000 unfilled shift hours in the ER and the ICU departments combined over the next two months. Now, a normal or ideal nurse-to-patient ratio would be 1 to 4 or maybe 1 to 5.

[3:20 p.m.]

These incredible nurses today — and they are doing exceptional work under extraordinarily difficult circumstances — are managing to do that with nurse-to-patient ratios of 1 to 8, 1 to 10 and, in some cases, more than that. That’s not sustainable.

The emergency room is, obviously, overflowing every day of the week. When the Clearwater hospital has its ER closed, and the Ashcroft Hospital has its ER closed, albeit temporarily, the pressure gets diverted to Kamloops.

We have huge issues with home care, reductions in service levels — which has meant that patients have to go to the ER in many cases. The urgent and primary care centre is not seeing nearly the number of patients that it was intended to see. People go to the ER, because they have no choice. In Kamloops, we have no walk-in clinics left — zero.

All of this has created a situation in the ER which is absolutely untenable. We’ve had the permanent closure of the coronary care unit. That has reduced the number of critical care beds in our hospital by four. We have witnessed, recently, temporary closures of the pediatrics ward. We had a mother and a newborn child have to be diverted to Kelowna.

Those health care professionals, again…. They’re making those judgment calls in those moments — with the health of those patients in mind; no question — but they’re being put into extraordinarily difficult, challenging situations. They shouldn’t have to be making that kind of a decision — certainly, not on as regular a basis as they’re being asked to.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

There has been a significant reduction, over a number of years, in the number of surgeries that are performed at Royal Inland Hospital, and in fact, a correlating increase in the number of surgeries that are performed by Kamloops surgeons on Kamloops patients in Kelowna General Hospital, because those surgeons can’t get OR hours for their Kamloops patients at Royal Inland Hospital, increasingly. This is a tertiary hospital in a fairly large urban city in the Interior of the province. Increasingly, patients in Kamloops have to go to Salmon Arm for diagnostics, because there’s not enough staff in the diagnostics department.

Lastly, the wait time now in Kamloops for a long-term-care bed is over a year, which means there are dozens of patients that are in acute care beds in Royal Inland Hospital because there’s nowhere else for those people to go. When you look at the massive overcapacity situation at Royal Inland Hospital — the massive staff shortage across the board, as I’ve described it — it’s an extraordinarily dire situation.

For years now, the health care workers, the nurses, the doctors, the technicians and all of the support staff — everyone that works in and outside of that building that are critical to the successful provision of the health care that people need — have been begging government for a plan. First and foremost, as related to staffing — it’s a short-term, mid-term and long-term retention and recruitment strategy.

They need Interior Health senior management to come and spend more time in Kamloops and have more people in Kamloops, listening, sitting down with nurses, with doctors and with health care professionals to help to map out the strategies that are going to work. They need to see timelines on all of this.

Even after the member for Kamloops–North Thompson and I held a press conference to highlight these issues, almost nine months ago in Kamloops — and then we did another press conference last week to highlight these same issues, only they are much worse nine months later — there is still no sense within the community as to what the plan is.

Nurses are telling us, in large numbers, that they’re going to walk, like many of their colleagues have. Doctors are throwing their arms up in the air. At the end of the day, patients are the ones that are left without the care that they need.

[3:25 p.m.]

I appreciate the patience here for me to just sort of lay out for the Premier, hopefully in a thoughtful way, just how dire the situation is. We’re not talking about needing 1½ or 2½ FTEs in one department. This is a really, really significant and dire situation.

I believe, my colleague from Kamloops–North Thompson believes, and the people of Kamloops believe that it really is the Premier who now needs to step in and direct the Health Minister to accelerate a plan that will focus on those short-term, mid-term and long-term actions to address the critical health care situation in Royal Inland Hospital.

Will the Premier commit to ensuring that that happens and that that happens as soon as possible?

Hon. J. Horgan: I want to thank both members from Kamloops for the way with which they’ve brought these issues forward today in this debate. They both know that they have access to the Minister of Health, whenever needed, to raise these issues.

[3:30 p.m.]

I think that it was a very thoughtful presentation that highlighted the challenges that Interior Health has faced, particularly at Royal Inland, the major regional acute care facility for the communities that the member articulated — numerous — whether it be Ashcroft, Barriere, Blue River, Clearwater and on. These are real challenges that are being faced — not just as a result of COVID and absenteeism, which we’ve touched upon. I know the members understand that, and that is part of the challenge.

I think of the good people of Kamloops and the health care providers who have opened up their homes and their communities, season upon season upon season, for what seems like forever, through fires, through floods. It is the centre. People come. They get care. They get welcomed. They get housed. They get fed. And then they hopefully move back to their communities. I think of Merritt, which I’ve touched upon — twice in six months, people moving down the street to Kamloops for care and help and support. So I want to thank the people of Kamloops and the health care providers and both of the MLAs for the pressures that they’ve faced in their community as a result of all of those issues that are beyond control.

What is in our control is putting in place a plan, and we’ve been working on that. We’ve already heard…. I think the member articulated the short-term plan quite effectively. Interior Health has been bringing in doctors, bringing in nurses to try and fill these gaps from across the province and, indeed, across the country. That’s the short-term solution, as we go forward.

The immediate term, of course, is ensuring that we’re providing more training spaces. Right at Thompson Rivers, we’re seeing more nurses coming out, more seats there than ever before — ten additional seats just this past September, 15 more coming next January. And 200 nurses have been hired since 2021, and 41 of those are student nurses.

All of these pieces of data are helpful to know that there is hope going forward, but the recruitment and retention issues are the long-term challenge. What the Ministry of Health is doing with Interior Health is putting in place a team that’ll work directly — and I’m sure the members are aware of this — with the community, with health care providers to find a way to recruit and retain more providers that can use the facilities at the acute care centre at Royal Inland to meet the needs of not just Kamloops but the adjoining area.

These issues will take time. But ultimately, again, it’s a matter of ensuring that we’re focused on the problems. That means talking to nurses, talking to health care providers, hearing what they’re saying. The minister and I met with the Doctors of B.C. on the primary care fronts, which doesn’t translate into acute care directly, but it does indirectly.

All of those components in the short term, medium term and long term are the actions of the government to date. The member asked for my personal intervention. He has that every day. I’ve made this clear to him. I will do my level best to support the team on this side to make sure that voices in communities that are not represented at my table are getting into my ears.

Again, I want to thank the member for the helpful and constructive comments that he made in laying out what is a dire situation. To the Leader of the Opposition, I acknowledge that. We recognize it. That’s cold comfort for those providers that are looking at two and three double shifts in a row because of absenteeism — not the fault of their colleagues but a direct result of the continued ravages of COVID-19.

Having said all of that, the people of Kamloops have an expectation that we can do better. I want to work with both members on that side of the House to ensure that we do, do better.

P. Milobar: I thank the Premier for that. But I think, frankly, that’ll be a bit of cold comfort at this stage. Part of the reality is that Kamloops is a tertiary hospital. It’s supposed to be a tertiary hospital. We don’t want to see any erosion of the Kelowna tertiary hospital, because that just makes the problem worse around IHA as well.

The facts and the data that we provided at our press event a week ago very clearly show there has been an erosion of funding, year over year, from 2017, when this Minister of Health took over, till now, compared to Kelowna. We simply want it to be operating like the tertiary hospital it’s supposed to be operated as, as demonstrated by the Kelowna model.

[3:35 p.m.]

I just want to touch on very quickly, with the Premier here — recognizing time is short — that in the October of 2020 election, the Premier made it very clear in Kamloops that we would have a cancer centre built and operating within his mandate, his current mandate, by October of 2024. Then he went on Radio NL and said it was at Treasury Board. We then discovered that’s not actually accurate, because you’d need to have a business case to go to Treasury Board, and there’s, in fact, no business case. The Premier reluctantly acknowledged that.

Now here we are, two years post-election almost, and we find out it’s now backwards at the preliminary planning stage. And when pressed for answers, we’ve had the Premier duck local media to the point where the Premier’s press staff…. The Premier might not be aware of this, but they would say to local media: “Well, the Premier was in town for a fire press conference during the evacuations. You had your chance to ask about the cancer centre at those.”

Those are the answers we’re getting from the Premier’s communications when we’re trying to get answers about his commitment to the people of Kamloops. People want to know what the exact timeline is for a cancer centre, not an evasive “It’s in a ten-year plan,” not an evasive “It might happen some time.” The minister, last week, said “year” in an answer and had to correct it an hour later and say that he meant to say “years.”

This has been a mess from the get-go for two years. The people of Kamloops simply want to know: is the Premier going to make good on his commitment? Part of the problem at Royal Inland is parking. We have a solution instantly for the Premier. There is a space of land that IHA already owns, slated for a parkade, separate from the hospital, which is what you need for those types of cancer centres. Put it on top of the parkade and get building. Solve the parking problem, actually follow through on a commitment.

So what is the actual timeline? We know, based on the museum project, that business cases go to Treasury Board and then there are actual timelines. What is the timeline for the Premier’s promised, committed cancer centre for Kamloops, where are the dollars in the budget, and when can people see any meaningful type of work happening in Kamloops?

[3:40 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: With respect to the parking issue, I just consulted with the Minister of Health. He’s happy to sit down with you today or at your convenience to talk about that component. I know the member was trying to marry the two items to accelerate activity, and I appreciate that. I’ll leave it to the Minister of Health to talk about the parking piece. That would be an opportunity to bring forward the suggestion that was just proffered by the member opposite.

I am very pleased to say that Kamloops will be one of the centres that will have a lung cancer screening facility in town. This is transformative. It’s not happened in B.C. before — in fact, in Canada. That’s a starting point. The concept plan is still underway. I regret that it hasn’t moved faster. We’re not talking about, in this case, a hospital or a museum. We’re talking about ensuring that services that are available to the people of Kamloops are available in the town that they live in. Building it out is not as massive as it sounds.

I’m confident that the concept plan is near completion. The business plan follows quickly after that. If there is a way that the member and the Minister of Health can find a solution to accelerate that, I’m sure…. I would certainly welcome that. I’m confident he would as well.

K. Falcon: Premier, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about the heatwave that we went through last year.

As a reminder to folks that might be watching, you’ll recall that we had a so-called heat dome last year that resulted in a staggering number of deaths in British Columbia. Over 600 people died as a result of this heatwave.

Now, it’s important to understand…. When you see a staggering number like that, you think: “Oh my goodness. How could it have gotten to such a point?” Well, the reality was that the ambulance system literally collapsed. It resulted in a shocking number of avoidable deaths, mostly of frail elderly that were making thousands of phone calls that were not being answered at a time when they needed help.

I want to be clear. The first responders were heartbroken about this. They were heartbroken that the system utterly collapsed when it was most needed. They are not to blame at all.

I will also further say…. It’s one thing, in this House, when we talk about incompetence on capital projects, whether it’s doubling the budget at Site C or the museum project or what have you. As troubling as that is as a taxpayer, when you’re dealing with the kind of incompetence that can result in hundreds of people unnecessarily losing their lives, that becomes a source of real concern.

I want to point out that next door in Washington state, there were 100 deaths. In Oregon state, there were 96. Now, even adjusting for population, that would mean that in Washington state, there was one death per 100,000 population. In Oregon, there were two per 100,000 population. Here in British Columbia, we had 12 per 100,000 population. In other words, to put it in everyday language, we had 12 times the number of deaths than they did next door in Washington state and six times the number of deaths than they did in Oregon.

So what happened? Well, once again, we saw the Minister of Health come out and make an announcement. The announcement was that they were going to hire all these people and fix the paramedic and ambulance system, and everything was going to be better.

[3:45 p.m.]

Here we are. It’s almost a year later. And what does the head of the Ambulance Paramedics have to say? “Since last summer, it” — the announcement — “has not translated, because we’re no better off today than we were then.”

Now, as we say so often in this place, I think we’re starting to understand…. There seems to be confusion on the other side of the House that an announcement means action. It doesn’t. It’s just an announcement. Leadership is about executing on announcements so that you get the results and you get the improvements.

As we now come into another summer with nothing being different, as the head of the paramedics says…. I’m very concerned, Premier, that if we have another heatwave, we’re going to see another disproportionate number of deaths in British Columbia well beyond what we saw in neighbouring states.

Does the Premier share my concern, especially in light of the fact that his comment at the time, unfortunately, was: “Fatalities are a part of life”? Actually, they’re not. A lot of frail elderly lost their lives unnecessarily as a result of a collapsed ambulance paramedics system, with poor first responders doing everything they possibly could but the system collapsing around them.

Does the Premier share my concern that this summer we’re heading into exactly the same situation with nothing changed, as the head of the paramedics said? And what’s he going to do if we hit another heatwave, God forbid?

[3:50 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: I thank the member for his question and reminder of how absolutely devastated British Columbians were by record heat, temperatures. Again, I apologize for referring to the Chair, but her constituency particularly, as all members know, was hit extremely hard by extraordinary weather.

The system was overwhelmed, without any doubt. The coroner is reviewing all of the aspects of the heat dome, and we expect that report to be tabled shortly. We have taken, though, significant steps since July of 2021. We appointed Jim Chu, a respected former public servant and business person in Vancouver, to chair the board of the B.C. emergency health services, as well as a new chief ambulance officer, appointed in January of this year.

Eighty-five new full-time paramedic positions were established in November. An additional 40 positions were added in Budget 2022, and 42 net new dispatchers have been hired. So 22 new ambulances in nine service areas: Coquitlam, Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, Langley, Abbotsford, Kamloops and two in Prince George. The remaining 13, of course, will be in service, we’re expecting, before the end of 2022. We converted 22 rural ambulance stations to 24-7 Alpha stations. These communities now have 24-7 coverage where they did not before.

It’s not completely accurate to that say no actions have been taken. In fact, quite a few actions have been taken. Despite that, the heatwave of last year was profound. The minister who sits here normally, the Solicitor General, is in estimates right now. He is working on how we will better utilize the alert systems, the intervention broadcast systems that we have. He is going to have more to say about that in the days ahead as we prepare for the summer before us.

Again, as we start June with very, very low temperatures, a spring that has been below normal, with a snowpack that is still very, very high, we’re concerned in government. Emergency preparedness B.C. and the forecast centre are concerned that if we do get a heatwave similar to what we had in 2021, the rapid thaw of the snowpack will lead to freshet floods that will remind us of the atmospheric river of the fall. So we’re managing all of those issues with emergency preparedness.

We’re awaiting the results of the findings of the coroner’s report. We’re continuing to build out our paramedic service, which was, in some instances, a part-time undertaking. Difficult to recruit and retain paramedics when the on-call salary was two bucks an hour. I know that in my constituency, the paramedics that were posted in Port Renfrew — very little activity. Always wanted to be in Sooke, where there was more activity, and then, of course, into the West Shore, where there is even more activity.

The challenges of managing the system have been addressed, we believe, by making new investments, bringing on more people, making them full-time and making the profession one that we can recruit and retain more individuals to, so that if we have events similar to the horrific events of last summer, we’ll be in a better position to address those.

K. Falcon: I’ve been around long enough to know…. What I look for is results. What I care about is what results we are actually getting on the ground. The Premier talks about how they’re managing the system. I would argue that it’s actually mismanaging the system. I say that not based on my own opinion but on the opinion of the people that are actually in the system, that are on the front lines of the system.

The Premier knows that earlier this month, it was confirmed by the head of the Paramedic Association that 42 percent of ambulances were not staffed across the Lower Mainland, with similar numbers right across the province. We had a situation on May 28. I want the viewers to really think about this for a moment. On May 28, there was literally one ambulance in Prince George in an area that had to cover….

[3:55 p.m.]

There were none in Vanderhoof. There were none in McBride. There were no ambulances in Bear Lake, Quesnel or Hixon.

That is an area that is larger than Vancouver Island. I want the folks on Vancouver Island to imagine for a second, if they would, if there was only one ambulance for the entire Island, because that was the situation in northern British Columbia on May 28. This is the situation that we face right now.

It’s why I am so concerned about the fact that as we head into another summer, we are literally at a point where we are just going to have to get on our knees and pray that there is not another heatwave, because if there is, based on what we’re hearing from the people that work on the front lines, it hasn’t changed at all. That means we’ve got more frail elderly that are going to be put at risk unnecessarily.

I would remind the Premier that 600 people lost their lives here. That was 12 times more than lost their lives in Washington state, right next door. They also had a heatwave, by the way. It’s the same heat dome. Same with Oregon. But we had six times more deaths than they did in Oregon.

I’m very concerned that we are walking right into another situation where we’re unprepared. The system has not responded. We’ve got almost half of ambulances that are not even staffed. We’ve got one for the entire north of the province, in an area larger than Vancouver Island. That’s what we are facing today as we go into the summer.

Again, does the Premier at least share my concern that we’re unprepared at this point, given what I’ve just shared with the Premier, based on front-line knowledge from workers?

[4:00 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: Again, I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing these issues forward, as he has. It is a concern of mine, as it is with him. Whenever you have extraordinary circumstances that we’ve not experienced before, you have to question: “Are we prepared for it to happen again?”

In my engagements with the federal government, with the Minister of Public Safety, as well as federal representatives responding to the atmospheric river and the consequences for our highway infrastructure into the Interior, as well as, obviously, the devastation in the Fraser Valley….

What I’ve come away from all of that with — and the member will appreciate this — is that despite the best efforts, as he rightly says, of front-line workers, sometimes we are overwhelmed by extraordinary circumstances. We have had our full measure of those circumstances. I did outline some of the changes that we have made, as a result. Again, if there are any more recommendations coming from the coroner, we’ll respond to those rapidly.

We have increased the ambulance budget by 31 percent since we came to government. That’s a massive increase. When we came to government, 33 percent of ambulance paramedics were casuals. We’re up to, now, removing that and having a full-time capacity of, I think, 56 percent. That’s significant. Despite that, there are going to be those days when people feel like they’re the only game in town.

The member made reference to May 28 and only one ride being available in Prince George. That question was raised in question period, I believe, yesterday. Staff have gone back. They contacted emergency services and are advised that there were, indeed, six ambulances available on May 28. So the information that we’re getting from those on the ground is that it was six, not one.

I know that’s not the intent of the question. It wasn’t about duelling numbers; it was about what happens in circumstances where we don’t have enough resources on the ground. This is a theme that we’ve been touching on throughout these estimates, and quite frankly, it’s a challenge that we have faced collectively for the past couple of years with extraordinary events.

I don’t want to diminish the Leader of the Opposition’s sentiment that government should be ready for all circumstances. We should. That’s the expectation that the public has of us. I understand that. But in the real world — which we’ve referred to a couple of times from both sides today in the debate, or over the last couple days — sometimes the reality is that not all of us are firing on the same cylinder.

During the heat dome, cooling centres were closed at night. Of course, as British Columbians — a relatively northern climate, different from those to the south, not a lot of air conditioning, not a lot of expectation that as the evening arrives it’s going to get hotter — that’s not something we’re accustomed to.

Municipal officials doing the best that they could. I’m not being critical here. I’m just saying that without any practical experience with 35- to 40-degree temperatures, the thought of having cooling centres open into the evening was not something that they contemplated. Well, we’re going to be doing that now. Learning from previous disasters is what emergency preparedness is all about. The minister who is currently in debate in the chamber down the hall is talking about these very issues right now.

We are going to be using the emergency alert system with respect to extreme heat. This is something that we’ve worked with municipalities on, to ensure that we get this right. The challenge with the emergency alert system is that if you use it too often and the circumstances don’t warrant it, the public tunes it out. So there is a fine balance when municipal officials give the thumbs-up that we need to inform the entire community of a challenge. That’s when EMBC springs into action. That’s when these emergency alerts are most effective.

A good example of that would be Mayor Braun from Abbotsford. When he was asked by EMBC, “Should we use the emergency alert, the amber alert?” he said for some areas, yes, and for other areas, no. That is, again, collaboration between orders of government to try and ensure that we’re doing everything that we can to protect citizens.

[4:05 p.m.]

We have learned a great deal from the heat dome. We have learned a great deal from the atmospheric river. What we have learned is that we need to make more investments.

On the water side, we need to ensure that diking systems all the way from the mouth of the river to the headwaters are in the best shape they possibly can be. We now have a commitment from the federal government to work on that.

When it comes to extreme heat, again, I just have to say that on June 2, with 15-degree weather, we lose sight and start to forget about what we experienced last summer. But it will be vividly etched in the minds of those who lost loved ones. It’ll be vividly etched in the minds of those front-line workers who couldn’t do enough to save people.

With that, I would suggest to the member that we will be as prepared as we can be. The cooling centre issue is one that we are working on with municipalities. I think that’s a good step forward in collaboration with different orders of government.

K. Falcon: Well, I’m going to move on from that subject, but I do have to note that an alert system…. If we’re not going to use it when 600 people have lost their lives as a result of a heat dome, and, frankly, we’re not going to use it with some of the worst flooding in the history of the province….

I had a farmer telling me, from Abbotsford, that they could hear the sirens next door over in Washington state warning their people about the flooding that was taking place, and him saying, “There’s got to be something happening here, because I can hear the sirens next door.” That’s small comfort, cold comfort to people, frankly.

I’d like to talk about autism now. This is an issue that is very close to my heart, and I’m sure the Premier’s too, because I know that he must know parents that have children with autism. Autism is a medical condition that is on a spectrum, so it’s very individual in terms of how autism is with each particular child. One of the lessons we learned, and one of the reasons we brought in individualized funding, is because we recognized that every child is unique.

It’s very particular to this particular health condition that every child is unique. Therefore, the individualized funding was so critical to parents who know their kids best, who know their children best, that they can get the services that meet the needs of their specific child.

I can tell you, Premier. The parents are so upset and so furious about a very top-down, callous announcement that was made to end direct autism funding by 2025. The minister who is responsible for this file only took the time to meet with parents after the announcement making these sweeping changes was actually made. It’s shocking that such a dramatic change takes away from the well-established supports and the relationships that these autistic children have made with the very specialized instructors that they work with to help them deal with their autism.

Those relationships take years to build. Switching someone out can be a very traumatic event for children with autism. So that’s why these parents are horrified at this change and want the Premier to know, from me — because I’ve heard from so many of them, hundreds and hundreds — that they’re scared for their future.

Premier, you need to know this. I want to be clear — Chair, through to the Premier — that I don’t hold the Premier personally responsible for this, because I know what it’s like…. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Premier — I’ve been a deputy Premier — but I know you’ve got a lot of things on your desk, you’ve got a lot of things to deal with, and you can’t possibly be aware of everything that’s going on. So I want to say that.

I want the Premier to know that the minister who is responsible for this is seriously mishandling this file. I’m bringing this to his attention on the basis that I know that the Premier is a caring person and that he, once being made aware of this, will, I think, understand the urgency with which I plead with the Premier. Despite the pressure that parents and service providers have been making to try and bring awareness to the government, they’re being ignored.

[4:10 p.m.]

I do want to say to the Premier, and I really mean this, that it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. This is an issue where I think the Premier could emerge and really be a hero here, because they want to move to a new hub system, and while the hub system will work for some neurodiverse children, it is not going to work for parents with autistic children. Each of these children really does have very unique needs.

I’d like to ask the Premier: will he join me…. I want to make this a bipartisan thing. Will the Premier join me and meet with the parents of autistic children, who can explain firsthand to both of us just how devastating this decision will be, before the government goes down this path and makes what will be, I promise, a huge mistake for the parents of autistic children? Will the Premier do that — join me, meet with the parents of autistic children, and hear them out? Then he can go back and decide whether his minister is making the right decision. I will clear my schedule to make myself available to do that.

[4:15 p.m.]

Hon. J. Horgan: I thank the member for bringing these issues forward today.

I do know many families with children with special needs, developmental disabilities or Down syndrome, as well as children on the spectrum. There is a range, as we all know, of families that are struggling for diagnosis, struggling for services. I appreciate that this has been a difficult issue for many families, and I am aware of it. I appreciate the member giving me latitude, but no latitude is required. This is an issue that I’m aware of from time in opposition as well as in the Premier’s office.

We have issued an RFP. There will be a contract let by October for pilots so that we can test out the hub model. The member will know, and his caucus particularly will know, that service delivery in rural and remote areas is more challenging than it is in urban centres. We want to try and find the best mix. The pilots will be three in the northwest, with one in Kelowna, to ensure that we test out the hub model to see if it’s effective.

The reason there’s such a long runway on this…. And the member has talked today and since his return to the House about speeding things up, accelerating processes. In many instances, I agree with him. In this instance, I think he would agree with me on stretching this out to better understand the consequences, to make sure that if there are unintended consequences for families and for children, we’re aware of it well before the implementation date of 2025.

Although I know the minister and her team are reaching out and consulting broadly, this is a process that will be going on for the next three years. During that time, we’re hopeful that we can ensure that we’re finding any of the challenges. We will be on top of any of the challenges that the member has articulated, and we will be able to adjust.

For those families out there that are struggling with getting a diagnosis and those that are not able to have access to the individualized funding model, this transformation is welcome. It is, as the member will know, always challenging to make sure that you strike the right balance. Why we’ve given the long runway is to ensure that we have every opportunity for decision-makers in government, policy-makers and communities to understand what the best way forward is for kids, whatever their challenges may be.

I’m confident that the flat rate of funding, regardless of however we go forward, is not serving all families across the province. We need to find a better way to ensure that we’re capturing more kids to make sure we can lift them up and celebrate their uniqueness. I know the member would agree with that, and I appreciate his commitment to collaboration between him and me and the families of British Columbia, and I’ll certainly take that under advisement.

K. Falcon: Well, thank you, Premier. I’m glad to hear that the Premier is aware of it.

Premier, with respect, experimenting with the system causes an enormous amount of anxiety and stress on the parents who are seeing the very clear benefits that their children are receiving as a result of the current system that offers individualized funding. Just so the Premier knows, his own minister has made it very clear that the government is exiting individualized funding and moving to a hub system model.

Now, just so the Premier knows, the hub model is a model the Ontario Conservative government adopted, and it resulted in skyrocketing waiting times. It is not a good system to follow. I also need the Premier to really understand that this decision was made with a total lack of any meaningful consultation with the parents of autistic children at all.

I just want to read to the Premier. According to the B.C. Autism Advocacy: “The most commonly submitted response from our survey about how parents and service providers felt about the information being given was ‘traumatizing,’ and the most commonly referred-to word regarding your small table discussions was ‘gaslighting.’”

[4:20 p.m.]

The First Nations Leadership Council agrees. The First Nations Leadership Council said, in a letter to the minister and to the Premier…. They wrote: “Inviting us now to town halls, after you have made your unilateral decision, demonstrates how disastrously off course your approach is.”

Again, to the Premier, while I appreciate that he says he will take my recommendation under advisement, it is honestly made in the spirit of us collectively getting to the right decision here. I’m very concerned that you’re not hearing the entire story, Premier. I have heard it. I have spent over 20 years working with parents in the autistic community. I can tell you that the happiest day in their life was when they got individualized funding. I have seen the children firsthand, from when they were little kids to now grown up. I have seen the improvements firsthand.

I am pleading with this Premier. Please. I’ll clear my schedule. Let’s make the time to meet with those parents of autistic children, so you can hear just how disastrously off-course this decision is, how there was a complete lack of any meaningful consultation, and how hurt and how much anxiety they feel, especially when they hear that we’re going to proceed with, as the Premier describes it, this experiment.

[4:25 p.m.]

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Hon. J. Horgan: Again, I thank the member for raising this issue today in my estimates. I know that this has been an issue that has been well canvassed. But when we hear of anxieties, we want to ensure that we’re reducing those anxieties wherever possible.

I want to correct the record. If the member heard “experiment,” that certainly wasn’t my intention. Pilots are designed to find best practices, going forward. I didn’t mean that as you may have heard it. I don’t believe I said experiment.

We’re bringing forward pilots so that we can have a runway to assess whether moving to a needs-based system, which has been recommended by the Representative for Children and Youth and was also discussed by the standing committee in this place, is a useful way forward. That’s what led us to look at this. We need to ensure that we’re capturing as many kids as we possibly can. Diagnosis is critical, but those kids that go undiagnosed with FASD and other challenges are falling through the cracks, and we want to make sure we’re capturing that.

As a result, between 2019 and 2021, we had engagements with 1,500 families, 17 reps from family and service organizations as well as an Indigenous advisory committee and, this past fall, public information sessions — three with families in information centres across the province, 1,667 attendees, as well as four service provider sessions, totalling 1,411 participants, as well as continuing public engagement.

The reason that the long horizon was put in place was so that we could better ensure that we were capturing those kids that are currently, because of a lack of a diagnosis…. These are challenges because of the number of service providers available to meet the challenges in modern families.

We believe that this is the best way forward. That’s why we brought it into play. That’s why we’ve listened to the Representative for Children and Youth and the select standing committee of this House.

[4:30 p.m.]

K. Falcon: Well, Premier, it’s important you know. You just listed off a whole bunch of consultations….

I hope that the Premier understands that none of those conversations were telling the parents that they were introducing a hub model and stripping away individualized funding. There was no discussion about that at all. I would hope the minister responsible is not misleading the Premier into believing that any consultations actually were telling parents that there was going to be a hub model system, as they have in Ontario, and that they were going to be stripping away individualized funding.

It’s important the Premier not…. I just want the Premier to understand. He should not be forging ahead with a system that’s going to reduce one-on-one support. The request for proposal that the Premier referenced for the NDP’s hub pilot project locations, which they now are calling family connection centres, explicitly states that the NDP are moving away from one-on-one supports, hence the anxiety that people are feeling. It’s the classic sort of divergence between a “government knows best” approach or a “parent knows best” approach. I would argue a parent knows best, in this particular case, what is in the best interest of their autistic children.

I want to read a letter that I received from an individual, David Carlson, who wrote us to say: “I live in South Surrey with my husband, Colin, and our seven-year-old autistic daughter, Becca, whom we adopted through foster care. I’m begging you to stop this attack on our family. By all means, add supports for families who don’t yet have the help they need, but don’t take from families like ours who are struggling so much as it is just to keep our heads above water.”

Will the Premier do the right thing and just agree that he’s going to stop the clawback of autism funding for parents of autistic children?

Hon. J. Horgan: Well, firstly, we are not moving away from one-on-one supports. We’re moving away from individualized funding. That, again, is a direct result of all of those families that cannot currently access care because they don’t have a diagnosis.

Absolutely, if families are best served by one-on-one care, that’s what they should be receiving, but there is a host of other families that are being shut out because of the program as it currently exists. Again, the long runway is to ensure that we’re assessing the progress that we’re making to ensure that we’re capturing the greatest number of people for the services that they desperately need.

I have, and the member has, and other members in this House would have access to friends and family members who have these challenges, and I can appreciate that without due care, we want to ensure that we’re talking people through these things. That’s why a three-year runway. That’s why we’ve set it up the way we have — significant consultation at the front end and continued consultation as we implement the programs.

K. Falcon: Well, through the Chair to the Premier, the RFP is clear that you’re moving away from a one-on-one system to a group model system. They could not have been more clear with the parents of autistic children that that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Is the Premier not aware that they’re moving away from one-on-one individualized funding, which allows parents to make the decision in the interests of their specific child?

Hon. J. Horgan: Service is available under the new model that will include outreach and in-home services, satellite offices, virtual options as well as one-on-one support. I don’t know how more clear we can be. We want to expand. We’re taking advice from the Children and Youth Representative as well as the standing committee of this place. We want to make sure that all families in British Columbia get the support that they need for their kids.

K. Falcon: I’ll make one last plea to the Premier.

Premier, you are listening to bureaucracy that has never liked the individualized funding model because it allows parents to have the decision-making about what’s in the best interests of their children. You are going down the wrong path. They did this in Ontario. We saw the results with skyrocketing wait times.

[4:35 p.m.]

It’s a “government knows best” approach that isn’t going to work with parents who already have 20 years’ experience with an individualized funding model that has done remarkable things for their children. And you’ve done it without any consultation…

The Chair: Member. Member.

K. Falcon: …to those parents.

I want to say again to the Premier that parents are upset about this for a reason. You’re not listening. The minister that you have in charge of this file has not done any meaningful consultation…

The Chair: Member, there are rules in this House.

K. Falcon: …since the minister made the announcement.

With the greatest respect, Chair, would you allow us to have a discussion here? You’ve been interrupting repeatedly, the only one that does.

The Chair: If you would like to challenge the Chair, you can do so. The rules of the House are the rules. I use the same rules for all members of this House. No member is above the rules of this House.

K. Falcon: Premier, you just need to understand that the path you’re going down is going to have disastrous results. The Premier is going down a path that is going to have disastrous results for parents of autistic children. Take the opportunity to pause and at least listen to the parents of autistic children.

Again, I will clear my calendar. I will make myself available so we can have a joint meeting. Do it in a bipartisan way. Listen directly, not to your bureaucrats, not to the minister responsible, but directly to parents who are going to be affected by the decision that you’re about to make.

The Chair: Standing Order 36 is to protect all members of this House. I use it for every member. It is not appropriate to challenge the Chair in this way. It disrespects the rules of the House, and it disrespects the people of this House.

Members, we’re nearly finished the session today. Let’s get through. Let’s respect each other’s needs, and let’s respect the rules of this place.

Hon. J. Horgan: Again, I don’t doubt for a second the passion of the Leader of the Opposition on this question. I’m guided by the work of a bipartisan standing committee of this House, with members from all three parties, that came back with recommendations. One-on-one engagement with children with autism is not off the table.

What is happening is that we’re trying to set in place a model that will capture families that do not have a diagnosis but are still struggling with challenges for their children. That’s the objective. By having three years to engage on this, it’s the best way to come up with the solutions that are needed in different circumstances, wherever people might live. We all know that in a large urban centre, accessing services is a lot easier than it is in rural and remote communities.

Finding the best way to ensure that government is distributing the resources that people need to keep their kids moving forward through challenging circumstances, whether it be brain injury, developmental disabilities, Down Syndrome or autism…. That’s the objective.

I have every confidence that the minister responsible, who has spent her professional career working on these issues before being elected to this House, will not shy away from listening and engaging and improving services wherever she has the opportunity.

[4:40 p.m.]

K. Falcon: I’ve spent many years in government and many years in the private sector. While I have tremendous respect for the public service — I think they do an exceptional job — I don’t listen to everything they say, because often they get it wrong. They’re human beings, just like the rest of us.

I do know, from watching parents with autistic children over the last two decades…. I have seen, firsthand, the results. It’s not just me, some self-professed expert. It is the hundreds of parents across this province that are pleading with the government not to go forward with this ill-advised decision. To be clear, the select standing committee that the Premier referenced did not say to move to a hub system.

Now, it’s one thing to say you care, but it’s another thing to say that you care by showing you’re taking action that is going to get results. I think, as we are getting near the end of our discussion here on Premier’s estimates, that you will see…. Once again, I’m finding that this chasm between the rhetoric and the actual results is getting bigger and larger every time. I’m concerned that we have the situation that the Premier is out of touch with the needs of British Columbians today.

With a skyrocketing cost of living, housing that has never been more expensive, fuel prices and gas prices the highest in North America, a health care crisis that is spilling right across every part of this province, I still believe, as we’ve gone through all of these discussions, that the cruellest of all was to cut individualized autism funding from parents of autistic children. It’s causing incredible stress for families. Frankly, I just think it is such an ill-informed, cruel decision that I’m begging the Premier and government to revisit where they’re going.

I just don’t know how the Premier, as we canvassed yesterday…. When they’re awarding themselves undeserved raises in the tens of thousands of dollars and building a billion-dollar vanity museum project that nobody wants, at the same time they can be stripping funding away from parents of autistic children. It’s the wrong set of priorities, Premier.

The question. Premier, take the opportunity of the offer that I’ve made to sit down, on a non-partisan basis, where both of us can listen to those parents — two hours maximum of your time — and understand the challenges, the worries, the concern and how upset they are at a unilateral decision being made without any consultation and how that’s going to negatively impact their children. Will the Premier commit to two hours of his time, anytime when it’s most convenient, whether it’s here or the Lower Mainland? We will do whatever it takes to ensure that those parents at least can say that somebody listened to them before this disastrous decision gets implemented.

Hon. J. Horgan: Well, to the Leader of the Opposition, listening is what we’ve been doing since 2019.

I inventoried the number of engagements that took place then. I have inventoried the number of engagements that took place in the fall of this year. The select standing committee of this House, with members from all three political parties, reviewed this situation. The children and youth advocate brought forward suggestions and recommendations.

Our objective here is not to take away one-on-one care. It’s to ensure that we can expand funding to make sure that those who haven’t got the benefit of a diagnosis can get the services that they need — not just those with autism, but those with brain injury, those with Down syndrome, those with other developmental disabilities. Families need support, wherever they may be. We believe the hub model can achieve that without diminishing the importance of one-on-one individualized care.

K. Falcon: My final question to the Premier, to wrap up our estimates today.

[4:45 p.m.]

Given the health care crisis, given the fact that we’ve got a spiralling crime rate in every community in this province, given the fact that there remain literally hundreds of unanswered questions around the vanity museum project that nobody wants and nobody asked for, given the challenges that British Columbians are facing in terms of affordability — paying the highest rents in the country, having the highest fuel taxes and the highest rate of fuel costs anywhere in North America — and given the fact that we’ve got the highest house prices in North America, will the Premier commit today to hold a fall session so that we can canvass these many issues that are affecting British Columbians from one end of the province to the other?

Hon. J. Horgan: I can appreciate why the Leader of the Official Opposition would want to get an answer to that question. When he was on this side of the House, there were no fall sessions.

Since he was away, what we’ve done is instituted a calendar that has a spring sitting where we debate the budget estimates and have rousing discussions about a range of issues here during Premier’s estimates — when my budget was raised, I think, for a minute and a half at the start. We will be having a session in the fall. It’s in the legislative calendar, and I’m quite happy to meet that commitment, because we were going to do it anyway, even if he hadn’t asked for it.

The other issue I want to raise as we wrap up is the notion that somehow a nine-page document that was put on a website three or four years ago is the foundation of the official opposition saying that a 1,600-page document that goes into detail about the importance of protecting and preserving seven million collective artifacts that belong to all British Columbians, our collective history, is somehow a vanity project. That they ignored it for ten years does not make it something that just wants to be done on this side of the House. There are British Columbians all over this great province that want to protect that sacred institution across the way.

Interjections.

The Chair: Members. Members.

Hon. J. Horgan: If the members on that side of the House want to make a political football out of our collective heritage, then so be it.

“Welcome back,” I say, hon. Chair, as we wrap up the estimates.

I’ve got my piece of paper.

The Chair: I will put the question.

Hon. J. Horgan: Before I take my seat again, I want to welcome my buddy back here. I hope he enjoys the fall session. I know I’m looking forward to it.

The Chair: Premier, of course, it’s through the Chair.

The question is Vote 11.

Vote 11: Office of the Premier, $14,692,000 — approved.

Hon. J. Horgan: I move that the committee rise, report resolution and completion and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 4:47 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

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

[4:50 p.m.]

Point of Order

S. Furstenau: I rise on a point of order. During question period this morning, the Government House Leader used unparliamentary language.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Member. It’s customary to raise the question earlier, but I will take it under advisement. Thank you so much.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call for the consideration of the reports of resolutions from the Committee of Supply.

Supply Motions

REPORTS OF RESOLUTIONS FROM
COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

Hon. S. Robinson: I move:

[That the reports of resolutions from the Committees of Supply on March 8, 9, 29, April 4, 6, 7, 27, May 3, 5, 9, 17, 18, 19, 31, and June 1 and 2 be now received, taken as read and agreed to.]

Motion approved.

FUNDS GRANTED FOR PUBLIC SERVICE

Hon. S. Robinson: I move:

[That there be granted to Her Majesty, from and out of the consolidated revenue fund, the sum of 61 billion, 245 million, 194 thousand dollars towards defraying the charges and expenses of the public service of the province for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. This sum includes that authorized to be paid under section 1 of the Supply Act (No. 1), 2022.]

Motion approved.

FUNDS GRANTED FOR CAPITAL
EXPENDITURES, LOANS, INVESTMENTS
AND OTHER FINANCING REQUIREMENTS

Hon. S. Robinson: I move:

[That there be granted to Her Majesty, from and out of the consolidated revenue fund, the sum of 1 billion, 303 million, 697 thousand dollars towards defraying the disbursements for capital expenditures, loans, investments and other financing requirements of the province for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. This sum includes that authorized to be paid under section 2 of the Supply Act (No. 1), 2022.]

Motion approved.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

BILL 25 — SUPPLY ACT, 2022–2023

Hon. S. Robinson presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a bill intituled Supply Act, 2022–2023.

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that Bill 25 be introduced and read a first time now.

This supply bill is introduced to authorize funding for the operation of government programs for the ’22-23 fiscal year. The House has already received, taken as read and agreed to the reports of resolutions from the Committees of Supply after consideration of the main estimates. In addition, the House has resolved that there be granted from and out of the consolidated revenue fund the necessary funds towards defraying the charges, expenses and disbursements of the public service of the province for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.

It is the intention of the government to proceed with all stages of the supply bill this day.

Mr. Speaker: Members, the question is the first reading of the bill.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I would ask you to remain seated while we are going to circulate the bill.

[4:55 p.m.]

Members, in keeping with the practice of this House, the final supply bill will be permitted to advance through all stages in one sitting.

Bill 25, Supply Act, 2022–2023, introduced, read a first time and ordered to proceed to second reading forthwith.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 25 — SUPPLY ACT, 2022–2023

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that Bill 25 be read a second time now.

Motion approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that Bill 25 be committed to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration forthwith.

Bill 25, Supply Act, 2022–2023, read a second time and ordered to proceed to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration forthwith.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 25 — SUPPLY ACT, 2022–2023

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 25; S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.

The committee met at 4:57 p.m.

Clauses 1 to 3 inclusive approved.

Schedules 1 and 2 approved.

Preamble approved.

Title approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: I move that the committee rise and report Bill 25 complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 4:57 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 25 — SUPPLY ACT, 2022–2023

Bill 25, Supply Act, 2022–2023, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, His Honour the Administrator is in the precinct. Please remain seated while we await his arrival.

His Honour the Administrator requested to attend the House, was admitted to the chamber and took his place in the chair.

[5:00 p.m. - 5:05 p.m.]

Royal Assent to Bills

Clerk of the Legislative Assembly:

Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2022

Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022

Property Law Amendment Act, 2022

Passenger Transportation Amendment Act, 2022

Wildlife Amendment Act, 2022

Low Carbon Fuels Act

Transportation Amendment Act, 2022

Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2022

Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2022

Professional Governance Amendment Act, 2022

School Amendment Act, 2022

Mental Health Amendment Act, 2022

Anti-Racism Data Act

Sea to Sky University Amendment Act, 2022

In Her Majesty’s name, His Honour the Administrator doth assent to these acts.

Supply Act, 2022–2023

In Her Majesty’s name, His Honour the Administrator doth thank Her Majesty’s loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence and assents to this act.

Hon. C. Hinkson (Administrator): I want to congratulate all the members of the Legislature for another successful, no doubt hard-working, session.

His Honour the Administrator retired from the chamber.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Personal Statements

APOLOGY FOR COMMENTS
MADE IN THE HOUSE

Hon. M. Farnworth: Before I move the motion, I note that the Leader of the Third Party rose on a point of order and said that I used unparliamentary language earlier in the day. If I did, I would unreservedly apologize.

[5:10 p.m.]

I move that the House, at its rising, do stand adjourned until it appears to the satisfaction of the Speaker, after consultation with the government, that the public interest requires that the House shall meet or until the Speaker may be advised by the government that it is desired to prorogue the third session of the 42nd parliament of the province of British Columbia. The Speaker shall give notice to all members that he is so satisfied or has been so advised, and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and, as the case may be, transact its business as if it had been duly adjourned to that time and date.

Two, that by agreement of the Speaker and the House Leaders of each recognized caucus, the location of sittings and means of conducting sittings of this House may be altered, if required, due to a emergency situation or public health measures and that such agreement constitute the authorization of the House to proceed in the manner agreed to. The Speaker shall give notice to all members of the agreement and shall table it for it to be printed in the Votes and Proceedings of the House at the next sitting.

Three, that in the event of the Speaker being unable to act owing to illness or other cause, the Deputy Speaker shall act in his stead for the purpose of this order. In the event of the Deputy Speaker being unable to act owing to illness or other cause, the Deputy Chair of the Committee of the Whole shall act in his stead for the purpose of this order. And in the event of the Deputy Chair of the Committee of the Whole being unable to act owing to illness or other cause, another member designated collectively by the House Leaders of each recognized caucus shall act in her stead for the purpose of this order.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Prior to moving the adjournment motion, two things. One, make sure that you clean out your desks. Our hard-working staff should not have to clean up your mess. With that, let’s all give a round of applause to the incredible staff who work and make this place run.

With that, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Everybody have safe travels, and we’ll see you in the fall.

Mr. Speaker: Members, before we take a vote on that, I take it, given that the Government House Leader has now withdrawn his comments earlier that he made about the Leader of the Third Party, the Chair considers that issue is now resolved, yes? Thank you.

All right, now on the motion to adjourn.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Members, have a wonderful summer. I hope you have a safe summer and enjoy yourselves. I want to say thank you for behaving in the House and listening to the Chair. You can have all the ice cream you want now. Thank you. Take care.

The House adjourned at 5:12 p.m.