Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Kahlon: In the main House, I call continued debate on the budget.

In Committee A, I call continued debate on supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, followed by supplementary estimates for the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Budget Debate

(continued)

M. de Jong: Before the Finance Minister is taken to other duties, I thought I would alert her to my initial remarks, which is to acknowledge the work that she and her staff have done on this, her first budget. It is a challenging task to coordinate the requests and priorities of an agency as diverse as the provincial government has become, to distil that down and present it to be confronted by the questions and the scrutiny that comes from the media.

This is her first opportunity to do that, and there is a tremendous amount of work involved. That’s worth acknowledging. I’ll have other things to say about some of the choices that have been made along the way, but the effort is worth acknowledging. I’m sure that she has other duties that will call her attention.

Having said that, I want to say candidly and up front that the budget troubles me. I am not supportive of the choices and the overall direction laid out in the budget, and I’ll endeavour, over the time available to me, to explain why that is.

In doing so, I’d like to focus on a word that, over the time I’ve been here, has come into considerable usage, perhaps in a slightly different context than I am about to apply it, but I think it’s equally applicable in these circumstances. The word I’m talking about is “sustainable.” As much used as that word is….

It’s usually in the context of environmental public policy. The Forests Minister is here and knows that much of what he is charged with overseeing, as it relates to applying the annual allowable cut, is rooted in the principle of sustainability, the notion that it would be folly to authorize the wholesale harvest of timber in a way that wouldn’t allow or ensure that there is a timber resource available in the future.

That is equally true of other resources. Fishing — we talk about harvest levels because it’s fundamentally understood that if we overharvest, if the harvest is not sustainable, then ultimately, great problems will exist. Ultimately, that resource will disappear. Even in agriculture, the cycle of production, of generating waste, the idea that it needs to be sustainable is something….

I see the former Agriculture Minister, who I presume would not quarrel with the importance of that concept as it relates to the agricultural and agrifood sector in the province.

[2:50 p.m.]

All to say that it’s a concept I think is widely embraced in that context, and if it’s possible to come up with a definition, I would say this. Over the years, I have come to understand sustainability as engagement in an activity in a manner that may continue in perpetuity and doesn’t compromise the ability of others to pursue that activity in the future. I don’t know if that’s a perfect definition, but I hope this notion of sustainability and the perpetual ability to engage in an activity and not compromising the ability of others in the future to engage in that activity is a meaningful and appropriate one.

If that is so, and if that notion of sustainability is equally applicable in the context of financial planning and budgeting, then by that measure, this budget is unsustainable. It is unsustainable in so many different ways that the government is reluctant to or refuses to acknowledge.

I’ll begin. The government has committed to deficit financing, not on a short-term or limited basis. In the absence of any comment to the contrary, one must assume that they have committed to that on an ongoing basis. Over the course of the three years of this fiscal plan, deficits are not expected to reduce below $3 billion ever. In fact, for a couple years, they are over $4 billion.

The government inherited, six years ago, a circumstance: a healthy balance sheet, a strong economy and a taxpayer-supported debt of approximately $42 billion. It took 130 years in British Columbia to accumulate just over $40 billion in taxpayer-supported debt. This fiscal plan anticipates taxpayer-supported debt, by the time it’s complete, of $100 billion. Let me say that again: 130 years to accumulate $40 billion. Over the course of seven years, the province is planning on adding in excess of $60 billion, in that short, limited period of time.

Insofar as the fiscal plan and the budget that is before us represents a blueprint and a window into the direction that the government intends to take not just for this year but for the three years of the fiscal plan and beyond that, I think it’s fair to extrapolate on where this might take us. So let’s look even three years beyond this fiscal plan. I don’t think that’s unfair. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to at least ask the question, based on the direction that is charted in this budget, in this fiscal plan, where we might end up by the year 2029.

Well, here’s what the numbers tell us. We will have an accumulated taxpayer-supported debt of somewhere be­tween $140 billion and $160 billion. We will have a taxpayer-supported debt-to-GDP ratio of 30 percent and taxpayer-supported debt-to-revenue numbers that seem to be increasing on average by 15 percent and that, if that trend continues, will be 190 percent.

[2:55 p.m.]

Now, I was tempted to draw a comparison between those numbers and what occurred in the 1990s, but there’s no point in doing that, because these numbers are way worse. These numbers make that set of fiscal challenges pale by comparison.

I say this not to be needlessly provocative, but if anyone needs to be reminded of the complications and the challenges that resulted from that manner of fiscal planning — or non-planning, if that’s the more appropriate term — then one only needs to look at the fact that the government of that day was reduced to two seats. That’s how difficult the circumstances became and how unable, ultimately, that government was to deal with the challenges that resulted from that manner of fiscal mismanagement.

The challenge is that it could be even worse, because the government has chosen, in this budget, to do something that we haven’t seen since 1996, which is that they have begun to manipulate the numbers. In the aftermath of what famously became the fudge-it budget, a set of safeguards were put in place, one of them being the introduction of the forecast council, the body independent from government that brought its considered opinions and offered its views on what would be happening to the economy in terms of growth projections and that sort of thing.

From that point forward, and certainly starting in 2001, governments were loath to inject themselves and manipulate those numbers. But this budget does just that, because for the first time since then, since that scandal — and it was a scandal — the government has chosen to supplant the forecast council’s advice with numbers of its own and, particularly in the out-years, has substituted its own growth forecasts for those of the forecast council.

The rationale for doing that is fascinating and somewhat ironic. In explaining why the government feels entitled to substitute its economic growth forecast numbers for that of the forecast council, here’s what the government says: “The ministry’s medium-term outlook is slightly higher than the average Economic Forecast Council forecast to account for the anticipated effects of LNG production over that period.”

Well, isn’t that interesting? The government, the group, the party that only a few short years ago ridiculed LNG as a pipedream, said it would never happen, a sizeable percentage of their caucus being opposed to it even today, is now relying upon that very activity to justify overruling a group of experts who say economic growth will not exist, will not take place at the levels this government is predicting.

In the 1990s and in ’96, that was referred to as injecting a little extra optimism into the budget. It proved catastrophic. It proved wrong. Yet today this government has fallen victim to the same temptation to base a set of numbers not on what experts are saying but on what they hope might happen.

[3:00 p.m.]

What do we have to show for all the spending that exists within this budget? Are we getting better value for money in health care, in housing, in capital projects? Well, we just listened in question period to a whole series of issues involving our health care system.

Ongoing challenges: a million families without a family doctor; ambulance waits; quite frankly, the lack of access to basic care in our hospital facilities. Does the government really think that if they asked people on the street about the effect of housing policies, people would tell them: “Oh, yes, you’re doing great. It’s so much better”? Quite the contrary, Mr. Speaker. It’s worse than ever. Capital projects continue to run behind schedule and over budget, where the mantra today is, “Less for more,” as opposed to: “More for less.”

The government says to people, “Ah, but look at this; measure us by the extent of the spending, by the extent of the investment we are making,” yet asks people to ignore the results associated with that spending.

For all of that, I am going to say this. The budget is not, in my view, unsustainable purely because of the overall spending levels, although I think I can make a pretty compelling argument around that. Actually, that challenge, that problem, can be overcome.

The budget is ultimately unsustainable because of what it’s missing, and what it’s missing is a coherent, discernible plan for promoting economic growth. All of the indicators, whether the government wants to admit this or not, contained in its budget are pointed in the wrong direction.

You go to page 84, a nice little graph at page 84 of the budget, table 3.1. You look at what the forecasts are around exports. We are a trading jurisdiction. The export numbers are significantly in decline. You look at the manufacturing numbers. Exports are down 11 percent this year, another 12 percent next year, significant declines in exports. Manufacturing shipments, again, anticipated to be to be in decline going forward.

Retail sales. There’s a nice little graph on page 87 of the budget, “B.C. retail sales.” The government and the Finance Minister will quickly point out: “Ah, but retail sales are still trending on the positive side of the ledger. They’re still going up by 2-point-something percent.” Except, Mr. Speaker, we measure retail sales on the basis of value, and with inflation running at, at least, 6 percent, a 2 percent increase actually represents a drop. It actually means peo­ple are spending less, and they’re spending less because they’re worried, spending less because they’re terrified of what the future holds. The trend lines are in the opposite direction.

Where is the strategy to grow aerospace? Where is the strategy to grow our shipping sector and shipping support sector? Budgets are instruments that can be used to promote positive economic activity and growth.

Yet when you go to this document, this budget, and you go to page 136, you see the international business activity program tax refund has actually been eliminated. Now, that’s a decision that was made earlier. How dare we use the tax system to try and attract people to come and do business here? Now, the irony: it was a tax credit for promoting international business, engage the attention of foreign operators.

[3:05 p.m.]

It’s interesting that while it’s being eliminated, right above it is an indication that the amount of B.C. tax money going to foreign film production is now up to $900 million, almost $1 billion. It’d be interesting to know the justification for why, as I’ve heard so many times from the government benches that using the tax system to attract international investment and business is such a terrible thing, yet almost $1 billion is now being sent to studios in Hollywood.

We can all think of worthwhile ways to spend more taxpayers’ money. I’ve got some ideas of my own as it relates to helping young people gain access to education and training. But to be sustainable, a budget needs to also lay out a plan and a vision that promotes the economic growth that will be required to pay for those ideas.

All of us can pick something out of this budget and hold it up as worthwhile and worthy of support. Opposition has spoken positively about taxpayer support for access to contraception. But with a record $80 billion in spending, you would expect to find at least a couple of things in the budget that you like. But I’m going to say this. A house with a new TV, a new dishwasher and a new couch isn’t going to last very long if the foundation is crumbling. The path we’re on leads to a crumbling foundation.

I will say this again. Surely the individual programs that are referred to in a fiscal plan like this are not the sole measure of a budget that needs to address the immediate and future needs of nearly five million people. Surely it’s also important to ask these questions: how does the budget protect people from future unforeseen calamities? How does the budget create future opportunity? How does it preserve choices for future generations? As I say, how sustainable is the path that the government has chosen, the fiscal path that the government has chosen?

By all of those measures, this budget fails. Yes, budgets are about people, but they should be about all people, including children and grandchildren. Budgets shouldn’t be compromising children’s and grandchildren’s future for short-term political gain.

Someone asked me, I guess a week or two ago, after the budget had been tabled and I was back home: how would you describe the budget? What’s one word you would use to describe the budget? I thought for a mo­ment, and I said: “Selfish.”

It’s a selfish budget, a selfish budget advanced by a government whose members seem to be driven first and foremost by their desire to secure political self-preservation. I understand how easy that is. That temptation is easy to succumb to, because there’s something else the proponents of this budget, I think, understand, and understand very well. They won’t be here to clean up the mess. They won’t be here to clean up the mess that lies at the end of the trail this budget and this approach to fiscal planning is forging.

[3:10 p.m.]

I began by referring to the concept of sustainability, and I think that is where I’ll end my remarks. I’ll try to draw this analogy. The fiscal plan before us, in my view, is the budgetary equivalent of clearcutting the fiscal forest. This budget and the direction it charts will leave future generations with a barren, desolate, lifeless economic landscape that allows for few choices beyond debt repayment and entirely exposes our citizens to the kinds of calamitous events that can be visited upon us in an unpredictable and unstable world.

This budget, because of its unsustainability, in my view, robs choice and opportunity from young people. It will, ultimately, rob choice and opportunity from children. It will, ultimately, rob choice and opportunity from grandchildren. I will not be party to that kind of theft, and for that reason, I will not support this budget.

Deputy Speaker: Member, of course, language alleging illegal activity is not allowed in the chamber unless you’re going to move a motion, so I would ask you to withdraw that last word.

Thank you, Member for Abbotsford West.

M. de Jong: Withdrawn.

D. Routley: It’s my pleasure to rise in support of Budget 2023 and to offer a counter-narrative to what we’ve just heard. In fact, what is happening in B.C. is not a fiscal clearcutting but a silviculture effort aimed at making that forest healthy again, restoring balance and supporting the healthy growth of a diverse and thriving ecology, fiscally and financially, as well as socially, in this province. Those things are interlinked in a way that cannot be separated.

That is one of the fundamental misunderstandings of the previous government’s approach to governing in this province. B.C. is a great place to live. People are certainly facing real challenges in our province, and they are uncertain about the future. What they do know is that they have a government that is standing in the corner with them and ready to fight for their well-being by making strategic and necessary investments in the services of this province that help support a thriving economy.

Those investments include, in housing, $4.2 billion — the biggest three-year investment in B.C. history. These are the areas of concern for British Columbians. All of us on all sides of the House hear from British Columbians, and these are the things we hear about. We hear about housing. That $4.2 billion will go a long way to creating the housing stock that the province lacks.

One of the other primary concerns people have is with health care. In health care, this province is investing $6.4 billion in a variety of ways, from mental health care through to hospitals, research and cancer care.

Another area of concern for all of us in all of our communities, whether they be small or large in this province, is the crisis regarding the mental health and addictions of British Columbians. In that area, we also see an unprecedented investment of $1 billion, addressing the foundational strengths of B.C. that the member previous attempted to refer to.

[3:15 p.m.]

Yes, British Columbians are facing increased costs — just as every citizen of the planet and, certainly, of this country — but this province is not leaving them alone in that challenge. We are investing $4.5 billion in helping families meet the increased costs that they’ve been facing. That includes $3 billion in new tax credits for B.C. families, including the B.C. family benefit, the climate action tax credit and the new income-tested renter’s tax credit. These are elements that will help people weather what is sure to be a downturn, globally, that will affect B.C.

If the government were to follow the path of the previous B.C. Liberal government, none of these investments would be made. In fact, the opposite would be happening. If the B.C. Liberals were guiding the good ship B.C. at this point, we would probably see what we saw in their 16 years in government — cuts to services and tax breaks for the wealthy.

Another area of concern for every British Columbian is public safety and access to justice. We heard about that earlier today. This government is investing $462 million in public safety measures and increased access to justice for British Columbians, particularly vulnerable and struggling British Columbians.

We are also developing a Future Ready plan for our labour force, to deal with a labour shortage and to upskill British Columbia’s labour force. So $480 million will go into that effort to train and upskill British Columbians and to invest, so that when the downturn that is anticipated subsides and we return to a healthier environment, B.C. will be ready to lead again. If we were to follow the example of the B.C. Liberal government of 16 years, those services would be continuing to be cut.

In climate and environment, $1.4 billion is being invested to protect things like watershed restoration.

Yes, the fiscal facts are…. The deficit is anticipated, in ’23-24, to be $4.2 billion but will decline from that point forward, with $3.8 billion anticipated in ’24-25 and $3 billion in ’25-26.

The member for Abbotsford West was concerned about debt. Well, he should feel reassured. We have the strongest economy in Canada and the best credit rating. The debt-to-GDP ratio will remain relatively low compared to other provinces. It is manageable and, contrary to what the previous speaker indicated, sustainable. What is unsustainable would be cuts to services that British Columbians depend on when they need them most.

The public accounts for 2022-2023 will return to order. British Columbians have that faith. B.C. is, as I said, a great place to live.

Let’s consider what would have happened had we not made these investments. For example, one of the measures that this government took was to restrict rent increases to 2 percent. The previous government had changed rent increases to be inflation plus 2 percent. If that had happened, British Columbians would have seen 8 percent increases in their rent this year, rather than 2 percent.

The misguidedness represented in that would have been permanent. Of course, it’s not as though those rents will go down when the economy recovers or when interest rates go down. That would be baked in as permanent inflation in our economy and in the lives of some of the most vulnerable British Columbians. Instead of giving massive tax breaks to wealthy people, this government chooses to invest in the people of British Columbia.

The opposition leader says that he is opposed to investing the surplus this year into services for people, investing in people. He would cut supports like the $1 billion growing communities fund that was recently announced.

[3:20 p.m.]

Every local government elected official that I’ve spoken to is very happy to see this unprecedented investment in their community. Just in the communities that I represent, over $40 million is being invested in a form that allows local government to set its own priorities and to leverage that money to their own best advantage. That’s an unprecedented investment in support for local governments that the B.C. Liberal government never provided.

We are investing in cancer care. The opposition voted against that investment. The opposition leader has promised that he would not make those investments. So, in fact, those services would be cut if our government weren’t in office.

The B.C. affordability credit that provides up to $410 in support for a family with two children would be gone. Can you imagine? At a time when costs are increased, that family would not only have faced perhaps an 8 percent rental increase, which would have averaged somewhere around $2,500 per year per family, but they’d also lose their B.C. affordability credit.

The opposition leader has a record. In 2012, his budget increased costs on people and made aggressive cuts to their services. He hiked MSP premiums at that time. Over the time of their government, they doubled those premiums. We eliminated MSP premiums. That was the largest middle-class tax break in the history of the province. Not only did they hike MSP premiums, but ICBC rates skyrocketed under the former government. At the same time, they raided half a billion dollars in order to balance the budget in 2012.

They cut child care funding at that point. How would families cope right now if child care were cut? A family receiving child care benefits in this province now benefits to the tune of up to $900 per month per child. A young family renting, if the B.C. Liberals were in government, would be paying MSP premiums, would be paying an 8 percent rent increase and would lose their $410 support for their family. That family of two would lose up to about $2,000 per month in child care subsidies.

These are life-changing supports that were provided by this government that would be ripped out from under those families should the B.C. Liberals be controlling the budget.

They froze education funding and ordered universities to cut $70 million from their budget. That’s what they did in 2012. They started the fire sale of public properties. That eventually sold $1 billion in public land, much of it at a fraction of its value, to high-value donors to the B.C. Liberal Party, including the sale of the Surrey Hospital lands. Yes.

This is the record of the previous government and their failure to support B.C. families. Budget 2023 turns that around and continues the effort to pull the plane out of the dive, to climb again and to provide the supports that families need in order to create and provide a thriving economy. Because, contrary to what the previous speaker suggested, it is not any government that provides a thriving economy. It is the people of B.C.

The people of B.C. delivered the Canada-leading economy that we enjoy now. The people of B.C. delivered the fastest recovery from COVID that this country has seen. How? Because they did that through partnership with a government that has their backs and that understands that investing in the people of B.C. is indeed the true foundational strength of our province, to use some of the phrases that the previous speaker, I would suggest, misused.

Yes, all those cuts were made by the previous Finance Minister, Leader of the Opposition, in 2012. But he found something to give out to some. He found resources to introduce a new $42,000 tax break for people buying a second home or a vacation home.

[3:25 p.m.]

That was the priority. That was the priority in 2012 — a $42,000 tax break for people buying a second home.

While this government takes measures to reduce speculation and its effect on inflation, that is the record of the B.C. Liberal government. People couldn’t afford that approach then, and they can’t afford it now. British Columbians are depending on us to provide the support needed.

The Representative for Children and Youth, at the time in 2012, said: “This will hurt people who are poor or vulnerable. There’s been a real abandonment of the families-first agenda. It’s a very harsh and punishing budget.” Those were the words of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate at the time.

We are investing in all of the measures that people depend on and expect us to recognize and to place as priority, similar to their own. That is the job of government, in my opinion. This government is finally doing that.

Just in terms of helping people meet the challenges of inflation, the rising costs of living, this government has rolled out already almost $2.4 billion in supports. That’s since 2022. Three B.C. affordability credits in October, January and April. Higher B.C. family benefit amounts for January, February and March. A $100 credit for people’s power bills. ICBC rebates for drivers — multiple rebates. Enhanced school affordability fund to help parents and kids with back-to-school costs.

Thousands of B.C. families are benefiting from lower child care fees through the affordable child care benefit, the $10-a-day child care B.C. program and the child care fee reduction initiative. These save families up to $900 per child per month.

Those are life-changing savings that not only contribute to the well-being of a family but the well-being of the overall economy. These are families who aren’t taking that support and spending it in a resort somewhere. They’re spending it in their local community, supporting their families. That’s why it’s good for B.C.

Budget 2023 invests $214 million over three years to expand existing school food programs. B.C. will also be the first jurisdiction in Canada to make contraception free to all of its residents, which supports a family’s right to plan and a woman’s right to choose.

Families with children will see a 10 percent increase in the monthly B.C. family benefit, starting in July 2023. For a two-parent family with two children, this amounts to as much as an additional $250 per year to help buy healthy food, pay bills and enroll kids in extracurricular activities. For a single parent with one child, this amounts to an additional $650 per year or almost $12,000 in extra support over 18 years.

A new income-tested renter’s tax credit will be provided. It will provide as much as $400 annually to renters. That starts in 2024. Recognizing the tight rental market that British Columbians face, this government is acting.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

In terms of affordable housing, where we were in 2018, housing prices were being driven up by rampant speculation and years of underinvestment in creating new homes. Homes for B.C.: A 30-Point Plan for Housing Affordability in British Columbia set out the first phase of the province’s actions to address housing affordability with an initial investment of $7 billion over ten years to build new homes — that being the biggest housing investment in B.C. history to date.

The plan also included measures to moderate an overheated housing market, crack down on tax fraud, close loopholes, prevent speculation and provide security for renters and homeowners.

How does that compare to the B.C. Liberal record? Well, the B.C. Liberals opened up the Residential Tenancy Act and opened up renters to renovictions, opened up mobile home park tenants to redevelopment of parks without penalty to the owners. Those were the measures that the previous government took with housing, at a time when the federal government had stopped housing transfers.

[3:30 p.m.]

We are building and unlocking more homes. With the growing population in B.C., we need more homes to address the pressures of the housing and rental market and to have an affordable housing supply for the future. Budget 2023 makes significant investments to help put more shovels in the ground and get more affordable, attainable homes built throughout the province. Almost $1.7 billion in operating and capital funding over the fiscal plan will create thousands of homes through the B.C. Builds and Building B.C. programs, which include targeted investments in the Indigenous housing fund and the community housing fund.

The rapid housing initiative is a federal-provincial cost-share program; $66 million will help people in B.C. who have urgent housing needs. The government is taking action to address homelessness and encampments. As much as $640 million in additional funding over three years for the supportive housing fund will help build and operate more supportive housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

Our government is taking action with a further $169 million over the fiscal plan to create additional new complex care housing units, as well as $97 million in operating funding that will support complex care services such as enhanced health, mental health and substance use services for people who need additional support beyond traditional supportive housing.

I’m proud of the budget and the steps that our government is taking to support families. The member for Abbotsford West indicated that sustainability is an issue that needs to be addressed through budgets. That’s exactly what this government is doing: building sustainable investments in education, housing and child care that, in turn, create the foundations of a sustainable economy. I’m not surprised that the member misunderstood those investments, because their time in government showed that they had failed to grasp the importance of those to the health and well-being of a sustainable economy.

Advancing skills for the jobs of the future. A new grant for short-term skills training will help people get relevant skills and training they need to succeed in good-paying, high-demand jobs.

One of the biggest challenges to businesses throughout the province is the labour shortage, particularly the skilled labour shortage. New funding to assist small and medium-sized businesses in funding and implementing practical solutions to current labour market challenges and to prepare for a changing economy will help them adjust.

We’re creating more opportunities for Indigenous peo­ples, including funding to support Indigenous-led programs, such as the new guardian training program that will be co-developed with Indigenous peoples. We are creating thousands of new training seats for in-demand fields to help build up workforce-ready participants who are able to meet the demands of the future.

We are looking for clean, sustainable economic development. Budget 2023 invests more than $250 million over three years to protect, maintain and care for B.C.’s abun­dant natural resources, including $21 million to partner with First Nations on eight more forest landscape planning tables to protect more old growth while providing greater certainty on where sustainable harvesting can occur.

This is so important. We need to build a new social contract for forestry, and we’re doing that by encouraging Indigenous and community-led planning and participation in forestry, and to value forests for their full spectrum of value.

And $77 million is being invested to speed up natural resource permitting and begin modernizing B.C.’s permitting service delivery model, which will help reduce backlogs and help communities that are forest-dependent reach their goals.

[3:35 p.m.]

Also, $6 million will be invested over three years for a new critical minerals strategy to leverage B.C.’s natural resource advantages and to continue to assess the critical mineral value chain potential; $101 million will be invested in operating and capital funding over the fiscal plan to help preserve and enhance outdoor recreational opportunities in B.C. Parks and outdoor recreation sites and trails; and $49 million in operating and capital funding over three years to maintain and upgrade forest service roads.

These are fundamental investments in our forest econ­omy, fundamental investments in a sustainable B.C. economy and an effort to develop a community-led and Indigenous-led plan for landscape management that will provide certainty to industry and sustainability to the communities of British Columbia.

B.C. has one of the strongest climate plans in North America, and Budget 2023 continues to build on the cornerstones of the CleanBC Roadmap to 2030 to reduce emissions and build a sustainable economy for the future.

Building on the past investments, this budget commits $100 million over the next three years for building active transportation networks, the single largest investment in active transportation in B.C. history. As a cyclist, that was welcome news to me and my friends. Whether people are cyclists like myself or they walk or take transit, this new funding will expand different modes of transportation that work best for various B.C. communities, as they see fit.

Approximately $40 million will move forward B.C.’s transition to a zero-emission economy through the CleanBC go electric commercial vehicle pilot program, and that will help B.C.-based businesses, non-profit organizations and eligible public entities make the switch to zero-emission vehicles, including medium and heavy-duty trucks.

We are also building climate-resilient communities. Budget 2023 includes more than $1.1 billion over the next three years to fight climate change by building more climate-resilient communities. For those communities still affected by climate-related disasters, Budget 2023 makes smart investments to help local communities build back stronger and help people seize the opportunities of a low-carbon future.

That plan includes $750 million committed in Budget 2022 to help communities affected by extreme climate-related disasters, such as wildfires and the November 2021 floods. Through Budget 2023, the province is allocating an additional $300 million in capital funding over the fiscal plan to support the repair or replacement of provincial infrastructure damaged by climate emergencies.

We are investing in B.C. We are investing in the people of B.C. We are investing in training and child care and housing and community safety and transit and transportation and infrastructure. These are the things that are the priorities of British Columbians. I started out by listing those priorities and pointing out how Budget 2023 is directly addressing the priorities of British Columbians. I pointed out housing, health care, mental health and addiction, help with costs — the cost of living, the pressures of inflation — public safety and access to justice.

We heard about the previous government’s record of closing justice centres, of closing courthouses, of cutting off access to justice through legal aid cuts, cutting education, cutting university funding, giving tax breaks to the most wealthy in this province, giving tax breaks to speculators — counterproductive. The very measures that put us in the place that we found ourselves in 2017, with the plane headed to the ground. Well, we pulled up. We levelled, and now we’re climbing along with the people of B.C.

[3:40 p.m.]

They are the ones who deserve the credit for having done this, not the government, not the opposition. The people of B.C. deserve the credit, and they deserve a partner who will stand with them, make the investments necessary to support them and to see their success. That’s what this government does. We understand that healthy, thriving public services are the core foundational elements of a thriving private economy. That’s balance.

British Columbians are comfortable with what they see as a government trying to take a balanced and measured approach to the vexing problems we all face together. None of them are easy problems to solve: education, homelessness, the forestry industry, the ecological challenges we face, climate change.

Everyone who I represent understands that there are no simple solutions, certainly not simple enough that a tax break will solve their problems, certainly not so simple that cuts to services will somehow help them. No, they expect their government to have their back, to make the investments that will support them, to see that only when they thrive will B.C. thrive.

That’s the essential equation that this government works with: that supporting people will result in a thriving British Columbia. We intend to continue supporting them. We hope that as they recognize the difference between these investments and the cuts that they experienced in the 16 years of B.C. Liberal governance, they will understand that this government has their back, that they can build a thriving life in their communities and that we will be there with them every day.

R. Merrifield: After that very impassioned address by my colleague from Nanaimo–North Cowichan and his airport and airplane analogies, I feel like I would characterize this budget as: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. We’re coming in for a crash landing.”

It is always a privilege, though, to rise in this House and to speak on behalf of my amazing riding and all of the residents of Kelowna-Mission. I do want to acknowledge the work that staff did in the Ministry of Finance and the minister’s office to prepare this budget because I understand the tremendous amount of work it takes, and their efforts on behalf of British Columbians are commendable.

Really, this budget is the first chance that we get to see our new Premier in action, the first chance that he gets to put his stamp on the place. He has been measuring the drapes for a while. We’ve had over 100 days of his leadership. As an observer, albeit a partisan, my initial reaction to his 100 days in office was: “Meh.”

What did he really do? Did we get any real action to increase public safety? No. Random attacks on British Columbians continue at an alarming rate. Repeat offenders still roam our streets with impunity, and communities live in fear. Mayors, police and prosecutors are waiting for solutions to put a stop to the catch-and-release system initiated by this Premier while he was the Attorney General — waiting, waiting.

Did we see any real action to address our health care crisis? No. British Columbians are still languishing on long wait-lists, waiting outside walk-in clinics in the cold because they don’t have a family doctor, waiting for cancer treatment — waiting, waiting.

The Premier did come home with some federal money, though, for health care, but nothing more than a drop in a bucket. I don’t even think that deserves a golf clap. Sadly, the money will go down to pay the massive deficit the community scam agreement has caused in the construction of the Cowichan Hospital project, so no real lift from those federal dollars to assist British Columbians or our overworked, stressed and worn-out health care workers.

[3:45 p.m.]

Did the newly minted Premier move quickly to address our opioid crisis, the toxic drug crisis that has taken the lives of almost 2,300 of our fellow British Columbians just in the last year alone, six people a day? He must have worked at lightning speed to open treatment options, to increase capacity to detox, right? No, he didn’t. Those addicted to these drugs are waiting for just a sliver of hope, a lifeline that they could grab onto, because their next hit could be their last. Families are begging the government for options just to save their loved ones. They’re waiting for real results. They’re waiting, waiting.

Housing. Surely he did something meaningful to fix our crisis of housing. Last week I rose in this place to talk about an 81-year-old senior living in their car, waiting for a spot in seniors subsidized housing for two years, now forced to live in their car — in their car — waiting for action from this new Premier, waiting, waiting.

Here we were, Tuesday afternoon, budget day 2023. I was actually naively excited. I was ready to give this new administration the benefit of the doubt that this budget would finally make good on so many promises made by this NDP government, spanning two elections, two terms, six years. This budget would finally deliver the results that so many British Columbians and residents of my riding in Kelowna-Mission have been waiting for. Naive, I know. I really should know better by now. This may be a new Premier, a new Finance Minister, but this is still the same old NDP.

The budget delivered last week sounded very much like the budget delivered in 2022 — lots of promises, lots of spending, high on rhetoric, low on results. In fact, the spending was almost chaotic. As I’ve been listening to others speak about the budget, it literally sounds chaotic. It’s devoid of any connection to meaningful outcomes, and that seems to be the playbook of this government. They aren’t interested in results, in outcomes. When we question them on outcomes and results, all they want to talk about is how much they’re spending.

That isn’t what British Columbians expect. British Columbians want results for their hard-earned tax dollars, because the chaotic spending isn’t the money that this NDP government has. The money is from taxpaying British Columbians. Right now British Columbians don’t have money to spare. Some 44 percent are $200 away from bankruptcy, 28 percent of women are out of money, and 22 percent of the population is….

They aren’t asking a lot. British Columbians want to see a doctor when they’re sick. British Columbians would like a place where they can afford to live or call their own. British Columbians would like to buy groceries and still have enough left over to save for a rainy day. British Columbians would like to be able to find essentials, like cold medication, when they need it. British Columbians would like to walk their streets, not feel afraid, and not face the risk of a random attack.

These are all reasonable requests in a province that is as wealthy as ours is. These are all requests that a competent and attentive government should be able to deliver, but not this government, unfortunately.

[3:50 p.m.]

The silver lining of this budget: free contraception. Government made British Columbians beg for six years for this. So if it was a bit underwhelming, forgive us. The world for British Columbians has changed in the six years that this government has been in power.

Let me read you a quote from a letter written by a constituent of mine.

“My wife and I had a serious discussion this evening about our options to leave British Columbia. It’s gut-wrenching to think of leaving family and friends and selling the two businesses we spent most of our lives building. But what other options do we have?

“Our effective tax rate, after all is said and done, is north of 60 percent. With the sales tax, carbon tax, federal tax, it’s 60 percent of our income.

“My pregnant wife can’t see a doctor when she needs to. When my son is sick, we sit in non-emergency care or walk-ins for hours and hours on end, hoping he doesn’t have RSV or strep, because we can’t get antibiotics.”

I ask you, hon. Speaker. Does this sound like a British Columbian who is getting value for their hard-earned tax dollars?

This budget communicated absolutely nothing but flashy promises and shiny packaging. No path forward towards results for British Columbians.

This budget has revenues going down, while spending is going up. Think about that. Revenues are going down, while spending is going up. Instead of spending on investments into our economy, trying to restart the engine, and into jobs, this budget frivolously tries to hand out measly trinkets of dollars without changing the lives of British Columbians at all.

A text message I received the night after the budget was released, from a senior in my riding who was on the brink of homelessness himself, said: “Do they think we’re stupid?”

British Columbians are not fooled by $33 in a month, paid next year, after taxes are filed, for a renters rebate that was actually promised six years ago. They want a great-paying job, a thriving economy and a government that invests in their futures and in the futures of their kids and their grandkids.

Where were the senior supports in the budget? I couldn’t find them. They, out of everyone in British Columbia, deserve more. They can’t just go out and make more money to cover the costs and the inflation that this NDP government is creating.

Here’s the context for us. Since the NDP took over in 2017, spending has increased by 57 percent. Likewise, the public service has expanded by close to 30 percent. Have services gotten better? No, not even a little.

Interjection.

R. Merrifield: Clapping with a no. That’s really awesome. I would not celebrate the fact that people can’t get a doctor, that people can’t get into a hospital and that people can’t find affordable housing. That is nothing to celebrate.

Let’s look at the reasons that were given in the budget for these expenditures: a growing economy and population. That’s why we need to spend 57 percent more. But over that same period, the economy only grew by 15 percent and the province’s population by six.

Across both of these baselines, then, it’s fair to say that government operations have been extensively widened, without a measurable impact whatsoever. Spending of this nature, if allowed to continue unchecked, represents a challenge to long-term sustainability. Consider this the check.

Let’s talk about how things are going with all of this spending by the NDP. After six years of this NDP government, housing has never been more expensive — the highest cost in North America, the most expensive in all of Canada. Certainly not a badge I would want to wear.

On my way to the airport, I spoke to a constituent in his 70s who is no longer able to make his ends meet. His rent has almost doubled this last year, as his unit was turned into a seasonal rental, sending him to look for another rental in town.

[3:55 p.m.]

He showed me his budget. After I looked through it, I was filled with indignation, knowing that society is asking him to subsist below any minimum-income job.

This is a familiar tale. Young adults are living with parents for longer, as they cannot afford to move out. Most will not be able to even afford housing ownership, as right now it takes an income of $250,000 per year to qualify for an average home in B.C. That’s if they could even save up the down payment, as a recent study found that it would take 22 years to save for a 20 percent down payment currently.

I am so sorry for reducing the emails and the letters and the phone calls that I receive from my constituents to statistics or an argument.

This last week I received an email from someone in my riding who is so desperate. They actually asked if I could help them access MAiD rather than live in poverty. That is where British Columbians are at.

What was the current NDP government’s answer to this crisis that they’ve created? Budget 2023 predicts housing starts to fall over the next three years, which actually means things are going to get worse, not better. The NDP promise of 114,000 homes disappeared completely, with not even a mention in the budget. Still keeping the 13 new taxes and fees that they’ve brought in to skyrocket the costs of housing.

Oh, remember that $400 renters rebate that was promised to British Columbians in two consecutive elections but never delivered? Now it’s a renter’s tax credit. Well, that’s the same as $1 a day for a renter making less than $40,000, while rents have skyrocketed by thousands of dollars per year for every single renter across this province. Sadly, this credit isn’t going to even help.

According to the recent report from CMHC, rents in Kelowna have risen to the fourth-highest in Canada, behind only Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria. Kelowna has a supply problem, with a vacancy rate of just under 1 percent. This new and shiny tax credit won’t even cover half of the increase of rent for one month.

It’s no wonder that we have people sleeping in their cars. It’s no wonder that seniors in Kelowna worry that they might lose their housing and be pushed out into the streets. It’s no wonder that I have constituents begging for MAiD rather than trying to make ends meet. This budget didn’t have hope for any of them.

Let’s talk about those streets in Kelowna, which they would end up on without housing. Well, they aren’t safe anymore. Kelowna RCMP recently presented their annual report to Kelowna city council. In 2021, metro Kelowna reported a crime rate, per 100,000, of 11,112. The national rate was 5,375 per 100,000. Kelowna RCMP isn’t expecting that rate to decline when the new Stats Canada report is released this summer.

In addition to having the highest crime rate among Canadian metropolitan centres, Kelowna had the second-highest crime severity index in the nation. Break and enters, both business and residential, jumped a combined 17 percent, mostly driven by business break-ins, which rose more than 26 percent.

Who is committing all of these break-ins? Well, the report from the Kelowna RCMP says 28 prolific offenders on release were responsible for 483 property offences. The key words are “prolific offenders on release.” Why are these prolific offenders on release? Why, it’s the Premier’s own catch-and-release system that puts these repeat prolific offenders back into our community.

[4:00 p.m.]

The Kelowna RCMP year in review showed that 20 individuals were responsible for more than 3,575 property crimes between 2020 and 2022. The RCMP told Kelowna city council it works out to 60 service calls per person per year. “It means our officers, on average, are arresting all 20 top repeat offenders more than once a week every week for the last two years.”

The prolific offenders right to reoffend is more important than the rights of Kelowna residents and business owners to feel safe. That’s where we are in Kelowna and in B.C. after six years of the NDP government. Many of these prolific offenders and many of those on our streets have underlying mental health issues in addition to hard drugs. What was in the budget to address this problem and the horror that our toxic drug public health crisis is creating?

We gave the NDP great ideas — ideas the Premier actually publicly agreed with. The Leader of the Opposition announced a Better is Possible plan, which would resource mental health care and supports, more residential care, more treatment beds, more complex care and wraparound services. As someone who has long advocated for wraparound supports, I know that this system of care is long overdue.

Wraparound supports are crucial for individuals with mental health challenges, as they provide comprehensive care and services that address their unique needs. This includes access to health care, psychiatry, counselling, occupational and physical therapy, rehabilitation, housing, employment and education, among other things.

Steal the plan. Take it. Use it, because it would only make things better. But instead, Budget ’23 contained band-aids and was in no way a bold, comprehensive plan that would deliver results and outcomes for those suffering with an addiction.

Our Kelowna RCMP had 2,897 calls for service with mental health components, 613 with Mental Health Act apprehensions and 34 calls for service for overdose. Our fire hall in downtown Kelowna has had over 4,500 mental health–related calls. They used to go on a two-year rotation but have had to switch to a one-year rotation, because they are burning out our firefighter responders.

By the numbers, there are 160 beds of complex care today. This government has announced some of these in Kelowna three times, giving us 20 beds announced. Of those 20, only eight are actually activated and funded, but only three are actually open. So out of 160, Kelowna received three, when Kelowna actually helped to pay for the white paper, spearheaded with health authorities and with government agencies, that said that Kelowna requires over 300 beds. So, what? Over the next year, maybe, I should, out of the 190 that’s proposed, expect three more? Six total? Eight total, maybe?

The minister spoke of expanding the Red Fish Healing Centre. There’s nothing in the capital plan for Red Fish expansion. There’s nothing in the capital plan for the 300 beds that Kelowna needs. There is no capital for complex care.

Last year in estimates, I canvassed the Housing Minister, now Premier, for over an hour on where the capital was supposed to come from for communities who desperately needed complex care. There is no capital.

What is getting funded right now out of this funding that is available? More drugs. The government is spending $184 million over three years on the public supply of addictive drugs. Nearly $100 million more than their prolific offender programs, which totalled $87 million. So not on reducing the month-long waiting lists before a person can actually get treatment. No immediate change to eliminate fees for treatment, which was and is a cornerstone for our Better is Possible plan, just more drugs and decriminalization.

[4:05 p.m.]

In 2022, nearly 2,300 people lost their lives in B.C. That’s 87 in Kelowna alone, eight on one weekend.

Clearly, what the B.C. NDP government is doing is not working. The recent decriminalization of drugs without treatment is going to be disastrous. Look no further than to Oregon to see how that’s played out. After decriminalization, their overdose deaths have risen, not lowered. The overdose deaths doubled in the first year of Oregon’s decriminalization.

In my travels to Portugal to investigate the Portugal model of care known as SICAD and meet with Dr. João Goulão, who is the architect of the system…. I went to understand more fully how their success is happening in their treatment and rehabilitation and care for the mentally ill and how it was all achieved. In fairness, Portugal’s SICAD model actually includes decriminalization and safe supply. It’s just not the focus, and it didn’t come before treatment beds were available.

In 2018, SICAD’s Dr. Goulão spoke with the Vancouver Sun about the importance of treating drug use as a public health issue. He noted that decriminalization is not enough and that comprehensive care and support must be in place to help individuals overcome their challenges and live healthy, productive lives.

British Columbians deserve hope. They deserve wholeness. They deserve a program that takes those that are experiencing homelessness and gives them community.

So what about health in Budget ’23? British Columbians deserve the best universal health care. Our health care system is imploding, and not because of the heroic efforts of all of our front-line workers, but because this government has allowed the health authorities and bureaucracies to eat up health care dollars that should be going to produce better outcomes for British Columbians and instead are going to pay for what can only be described as bureaucratic bloat.

One example of this: 64 vice-presidents in B.C.’s health authorities, earning more than $400,000 a year. Health authority admin costs are up by $1.3 billion, double the level it was in 2017 — double. Same old NDP. We’ve seen this before.

When we’ve asked about these increases and ridiculous costs, the Health Minister rattled off a series of useless stats about how much money they’ve thrown at our health care system. But guess what he doesn’t talk about: outcomes, because they’ve never been worse. Wait times for cancer treatment? Worst. I have constituents waiting for life-saving surgeries for months. Cancer is winning.

How about emergency room lines? Worst. Wait times to see a specialist? Worst. Lineups outside walk-in clinics? Worst. Lineups outside urgent and primary care centres this government seems so proud of? Worst. Access to life-saving antibiotics? Worst.

Oh, wait. They’re building a new hospital in Cowichan. But it’s also $850 million over budget, almost $1 billion. That’s where we’re at after six years of this NDP government.

British Columbians want to get back to work, to build, grow and afford a life, to get ahead, to make ends meet. What’s in the budget to help small and medium businesses? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not even talk of growing our economy, supporting businesses to innovate, attract and retain new employees. No. There’s nothing.

While this government is predicting a recessionary decrease in our GDP, they’re predicting our businesses are going to continue to increase wages and pay higher employment health tax. But this EHT has ballooned by over $500 million to $2.7 billion per year without any relief to businesses, such as even lifting the $500,000 threshold for small business payrolls.

How could B.C. increase revenues? Well, this government is saying that they’re bullish on LNG. It’s actually the only saving grace of their entire budget, and they predicted better than their economic forecasters because of these revenues. But the rest of natural resource revenue — that’s all dropping by 33 percent. Instead of cutting the red tape and getting the backlog cleared, well, the NDP had an epiphany.

[4:10 p.m.]

They’re going to hire another 160 government employees to — get this — try to reduce natural resources permits backlogs. Or is it housing permits, or wait, environmental permits, or wait…? Let’s just put them all in one paragraph, and they’ll all read the same. Only an NDP government would think that adding more bureaucrats would actually make things move faster. Truly unbelievable.

The NDP government has ignored rural British Columbians and the natural resource sector, which actually generates the majority of wealth for our province. Oh, but the carbon tax is due to rise $65 a tonne. A news flash. This is going to make everything more expensive. Is it revenue neutral, like it was under a B.C. Liberal government? Nope. The NDP just pour it into their general revenue. Just a tax grab.

What about the B.C. climate action tax credit? Well, they’re going to give about $400 million to people, but it’s not going to be equally distributed. It’s a regressive tax. Those living close to transit in urban centres still get the tax credit even though they don’t actually pay it. But in rural B.C., without access to public transit or other alternatives? Well, they get to pay more and get less.

Where does this end up? In $3.3 billion to service our debt.

My constituents care about the economy and about driving an actual plan for recovery.

My constituents care about mental health and getting treatment facilities for those that need them.

My constituents care about health and getting critical surgeries and cancer treatments done while planning for the future.

My constituents care about having a family physician and about having affordable and accessible child care.

My constituents care about the environment and not choking with smoke from fires or having emissions steadily climb, despite doing their part.

My constituents care about the cost of living and inflation and having a responsible government.

My constituents care about the cost of housing and are trying to make ends meet.

My constituents desperately want and need hope. Rather than join the conversation, we have nothing more than lip service.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Saanich North and the Islands.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity to respond to Budget 2023. I will just suggest that my response to this budget will be somewhat different than what we’ve been hearing in the debate so far.

I think it’s interesting to listen as the different perspectives here are being articulated. It’s interesting listening to the analogies that are being used with respect to airplanes and clearcutting and sustainability. It’s, frankly, interesting to hear, from my colleagues the B.C. Liberals about sustainability when, in fact, what has been happening, from an ecological and environmental perspective, is anything but.

I think it’s important that there is consistency. If we’re wanting to achieve fiscal sustainability or economic sustainability, we need to have that actually be a guiding principle throughout our policies for the environment as well.

It’s interesting to hear the use of the word “clearcutting” when, in fact, that’s exactly what has been happening on our landscape. We hear the Premier talking about the fact that our forests are exhausted.

There’s only one reason why the forest lands in a province that has been so blessed with natural resources like the forests that we have — the coastal Douglas fir, the western red cedar and the hemlock…. It is because of our voracious appetite to clearcut them and the reality that, for decades, we’ve not been replacing them with forests. We’ve been replacing them with tree farms — not monoculture, for sure, but certainly not biodiverse, rich ecosystems that reflect anything like the forest that was cut before.

We wonder why our streams are super heated and our relatives, the SĆÁÁNEW̱, the salmon, cannot survive in them anymore. It’s because we’ve basically pulverized them. We’ve removed all of the cover, super heating those creeks and streams and making them hostile environments to salmon.

[4:15 p.m.]

Indeed, just outside this chamber is the rotunda. In that rotunda, there are four paintings, and the four paintings highlight the foundation of the economy of this province: agriculture, mining, forestry and fisheries. Fisheries were exhausted two decades ago, three decades ago in this province. You could see the streams of salmon in the Salish Sea. That’s how thick they were at one point in the history of this province — reduced to a mere trickle in our creeks and streams up and down the coast.

The forest lands of this province, the old growth, the massive timber, the kinds of trees that we see the slice of outside the Douglas Fir Room that are 1,000 years old — those trees have been clearcut off the face of our province, off the landscape.

Indeed, I think that if we’re going to be coming in here and using analogies and wanting to, I guess, bring to life the perspectives that we have about Budget 2023, and we want to use that language, it’s important that it’s consistent, not just in how we view our budget. It’s how we view our relationship to the land and the land base.

For the Indigenous people, the people that I’m proud to descend from, the economy and the relationship to nature were one and the same. We didn’t have the benefit of borrowing. There was no such thing. You only had what was in front of you. You only had what returned that year. There was no way to bank the extra, or not very easily, anyways. There was only what nature provided you.

So the inheritance that we received from those who carried the names that we had before us was the locations in which you could harvest, the locations in which you could extract. You relied on your ancestors to be good stewards of those places, and you were also connected in a way to the future that this place is not connected. This is where I resonate with some of the comments that are being made on both sides of this House. We have not been good stewards of this place historically.

When you look at Budget 2023, and when you look at the kinds of investments that are being debated in the other Houses now, in the supplemental budgets, the question has to be: are we spending this money as good stewards for future generations?

Seven-generations thinking is the connection that you have to the three generations behind you and the connection that you have to the three generations ahead of you. It is a responsibility to live and be in a place, not just now, but a recognition that you have a responsibility to the future generations that are going to come after you. Just as we hold up our ancestors, just as we hold up the people that we came from, the relationship that they had to the land, we need to also remain connected to the people who are going to come after us, to the future generations.

I hear elements of that debate playing out in here over Budget 2023, and I’ve heard it in ’22, ’21, ’20, ’19, ’18 and ’17, the first budget that I was here. I had the opportunity to be here a few budgets before that, when the former government was here, and the decisions that they made about how they were going to invest the wealth that we have been extracting from the landscape at unsustainable rates. We continue in that way, unsustainable extraction of resources, to the point where, actually…. We’re getting to a situation where two of the four paintings in the rotunda.… We may, at LAMC, may need to consider replacing them.

[4:20 p.m.]

Those industries that we relied on as a province, the extractive industries and the economic development…. Indeed, those industries Indigenous people participated in before the first Europeans arrived — engaged in forestry, engaged in fisheries. But they were doing it in a truly sustainable way.

I take a look at Budget 2023 and the opportunity that was presented to take a look at the supplemental budgets, items and estimates that are happening in other rooms — billions of dollars. I was mentioning to a couple of my colleagues when we were at the Pacific Salmon Foundation and the First Nations Fisheries Council meeting the other night that a few years ago, we stood with the federal minister, the former Premier, the member for Langford–Juan de Fuca and myself down at Fisherman’s Wharf and celebrated the $140-something million BCSRIF announcement.

At that point, this was a massive amount of money that was being brought into the province. I think it was $143 million. It was going to be allocated around the province to do good work on watersheds, upgrading weirs and science and innovation when it came to protecting and standing up for the wild Pacific salmon, that iconic species, our provincial fish. And $140 million seemed like an impossibly large amount of money.

Just yesterday I was in the budget estimates for the $1 billion that was being distributed amongst municipal governments. I was putting it into context. The numbers….

I mean, I think even when COVID first was set upon us, and we were in here for that special day where just a handful of us had come to this Legislature to give the government some space, $5 billion was set aside in order for the government to deal with this global pandemic. It was a huge amount of money that was extended to the government in advance of the budget, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Now, here we are talking about $1.45 billion, in fact, for the budget estimates — a windfall.

I should say, in my opinion, something that local governments have been asking for, for more than a decade, is fiscal reform. Not a one-time cash handout. Although, evidenced by all of the pictures that have been taken and posted by government MLAs, there is not a mayor or a counsellor in this province that is going to turn that money away. Because those of us who come from local government know that the fiscal framework that we’ve been operating under has been failing local governments for decades.

The conditional granting systems where this House sets political priorities — frankly, that’s what they boil down to — and then forced communities to then apply for those moneys, even though they might not be the local priorities…. Now, this fund…. It’s a one-time fund. Governments have the opportunity to spend it over five years. For the first time, it’s unfettered from a provincial priority.

But this is not the solution. This is not what the Union of B.C. Municipalities and municipal governments have been asking for. They’ve been asking for sustainable, reliable fiscal reform to give them the ability to generate revenues and to pay for the things that their local priority-setting has suggested are the needs of the communities that they have been elected to represent. My hope is that that money gets spent on those priorities that currently were ineligible for the conditional granting programs.

[4:25 p.m.]

I raised an issue yesterday in question period around a fire hall on Salt Spring, for example. We have set the priorities. We’ve set the policy. We’ve set the regulations. We’ve set the rules that make sense for this house. But that doesn’t mean that they make any sense out there. That just means that we get to grant money when we find some in the couch cushions, and then get the benefit of the photo ops that come with it.

The fire halls where those first responders go and show up to when the call comes in…. In some communities, those fire halls, well, they’re not eligible. I remember when I was in Central Saanich and we were building a fire hall. The B.C. Liberal government of the day — the priority for them was parks. I said, “Well, could we apply for parks, and then take it and put it in the fire hall,” which was the priority of the community at the time. It didn’t mean that parks were not an interest for our government, but it just meant that it was a lesser priority at that time than the fire hall that was absolutely needed. The Fire Underwriters Survey said you need a fire hall. Well, we were on our own.

I’m thankful that the communities in my riding are going to be able to get some of this money from this one-time fund. But I certainly hope that at the end of the distribution of this money that’s now been approved, the provincial government doesn’t feel empowered and emboldened to say: “Well, remember the money that we gave you. Don’t forget the cash that we extended you when we found the money in the couch cushions.” Because the job of fiscal reform is not done for local governments.

As we heard the other day when I asked the question, the process between the UBCM and municipal affairs is still underway. That is a process that started in 2010-2011 with a report to the UBCM. We’ve been talking about it for 12 years, so forgive me if I’m not encouraged that the pace of this fiscal reform is speedy enough for local governments to actually be able to have that sustainable, reliable source of revenue year over year, that then they can make good plans and inform good plans.

I looked at Budget 2023 as an opportunity for a new Premier. Somebody who certainly has been in this place, this chamber, since 2017 and before that, but since 2017 as the Attorney General. Someone who has been very attentive to where we are at in this province. Indeed, I think when the Premier was the Attorney General — I kind of joked with him a little bit in the hallway today — he was here every day, almost, in those sessions debating numbers and numbers of bills.

There is no doubt that our Premier is well aware of the situation that we face sitting around the cabinet table for the last six years. It was a hope that I and my colleague had that he would use this opportunity to create a legacy. With just a few short years left until the next election, that the Premier would take the surplus that they had found and the budget for Budget 2023 and create a legacy, be transformative, be a little bit more like Dave Barrett than the Premier’s predecessor was, do some big things in the final months remaining before the next provincial election.

But unfortunately, what we saw is not a transformative budget. It is more like a fiscal update for 2022. Rather than making systemic change, it’s using tax rebates. It’s using tax credits and rebates — short-term thinking, short-term fixes. But they’re not even really fixes. They’re a way for people to feel like the government is doing something, but the government actually hasn’t changed the underlying problems with the systems that are broken and that are not serving British Columbians well.

[4:30 p.m.]

I think one of the examples of this is the situation when it comes to an increase for people on disability payments, support payments. Yes, the government has increased the shelter rates. Yes, the people who receive the 140-something dollars when it comes to the increase in shelter will be happy for the $140. Nobody is going to say that they are not going to accept that when they are in a situation that they’re in and every dollar counts.

When they are living…. When people on disability and people on social supports are receiving $10,000 less than the poverty line in our province, what the government is offering in this budget is thousands of dollars a month short of what’s needed for people to live in a dignified way, being able to meet the basic poverty line in this province. They have failed to deliver what’s needed. Yes, they’ve given something.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Here we are today in another part of this Legislative Assembly, right now as I speak, talking about the nominal increase in budget for Social Development and Poverty Reduction, rather than talking about how the government has used the surplus that they have found at the end of this year to increase those payments and to support people who rely on those payments day after day, month after month, year after year. That’s not being offered to them.

There was an opportunity, with this budget, for the new Premier to be transformative. I think that this budget, from our view of it, has fallen short of that.

When I take a look at another example of where the government is using short-term thinking instead of long-term thinking, I think of another issue that I’ve raised in the last couple of weeks here: the Island Coastal Economic Trust.

The proposal that has been put in front of this government, back in September of last year, was to turn a sinking fund into a permanent fund, to place, yes, a large sum of money, but to protect it in a permanent fund and then allow the Island and coastal communities, the communities on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast, to be able to draw from the profits that are made from the investment every year and disburse it.

Between $7 million and $12 million every year could have been disbursed to those communities, again on their priorities. Instead, with that fund, the people who are operating that fund have no idea as to whether or not they’re going to be required to shut down this year, because they run out of money, or whether or not they’re going to be supported in the short term, or what their long-term viability looks like.

This is just a missed opportunity, one that frankly shocks me. Other than my colleague from Cow­ichan Valley, all of the other communities that are within this trust area are members from the government side of the House. How it is that this was too complex an investment, yet we see all of these other investments that are being made, scrambled out to the end of this year…. It seems to me like a complete and total missed opportunity.

We could have taken some of the surplus. We could have even actually increased…. They asked for $150 million. The provincial government had the opportunity to increase that amount.

We see the kinds of sums of money that are being invested in certain areas and priorities for this provincial government. I think that so far, anyway — I’m going to remain hopeful — the message to the people that live on Vancouver Island and in those coastal communities is that they are not a priority for this government.

[4:35 p.m.]

Otherwise, we would have seen that fund recapitalized. We would have seen those projects, which have been so important, funded on an annual basis. We would have seen an opportunity for other community members to also invest in that fund and grow it, making it a more impactful and a more powerful community economic development tool.

Unfortunately, they or those communities or the leaders…. I’m not sure what it is — not the priority for this B.C. NDP provincial government. Yet I do remain hopeful that if there is not a long-term solution, there is at least a short-term solution so that, then, the communities that are benefiting from these funds will be able to continue to invest in their local priorities.

Just to comment, very briefly before I take my seat, on some of the narratives that have emerged here, to suggest that this current government is all to fault for the situation that they find themselves in and that the previous government was all to fault for the situation that they left for this government…. I think I just want to suggest that these are false narratives.

We are in the situation that we’re in today because of decades of neo-liberal economic philosophy. This is the result of at least 30 or 35 years — a product of 35 years of decision-making, of deregulation; of allowing our forests, as I started this speech with, to be clearcut. Then for us to be able to frame it as some kind of sustainable, environmental practice, clearcutting, replacing it with a couple of species and then tagging timber value as the only value that matters….

I mean, indeed, the exercise of chasing wolves around the southeast of British Columbia in order to not damage the last remaining caribou is an example of this in the extreme, the reality that we have been harvesting the food source of the caribou to near extinction. It should be no surprise to us that also, then, the caribou are at near extinction. The fact that we’ve been cutting superhighways for wolves across the southeast yet now they’re a problem should be of no surprise.

This is the result of how humans are altering the landscape and of how that economic philosophy that has driven the decisions by multiple governments. It’s not just this government; not just the government for 16 years; not just the government for ten or 11 before that — the government that had three Premiers in ten years; not the government of the decade before that; nor the government with one Premier for multiple decades before that. It is the result of all of those successive governments operating and developing budgets and policies around nature that are unsustainable.

I’m going to end with this. Of all of the criticism that I have with this budget, it was deeply encouraging to be able to stand in a supplemental budget estimates debate yesterday and talk about a $100-million fund that’s going to be created, a permanent fund that is going to be created that can start us on the process for a restoration economy in this province.

Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to change the paintings on the rotunda, the paintings of the forests and the paintings of the fish if, indeed, we can encourage people to invest in that fund alongside this government. If indeed, we can get Budget 2023 and Budget 2024 and ’25 and ’26 to grow that fund, maybe we won’t have to abandon some forestry extraction and some fish extraction, because we’ll have begun the process of restoring the damage that we’ve done to the landscape in this province.

[4:40 p.m.]

Maybe we don’t have to throw our hands in the air and say: “Forestry is over; the forests are exhausted. Find something else to do.” We have got ourselves dangerously close to that situation in this province right now.

When I take a look at the $100 million, I was proudly able to stand and say, “I can support this investment, and I can stand up and encourage people to join in, in the investment in this,” because $10,000, $20,000, $1 million at a time, we can encourage the people who live on the land, who benefit from the land, who have the philosophy, which my ancestors left to me, to say, “We belong to the land,” to begin restoring and investing in those sacred places that have been destroyed in the past.

It’s going to take us to have a different conversation in this place. It’s going to take us to have a different frame around the way we view our budgets and the debate that we have, on both sides of this place that, frankly, isn’t all that productive.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to engaging the ministers, in the time that we’ve been able to work out with our colleagues in the official opposition, to ask however many questions we get in those budget estimates, to learn more about how the ministers are going to be expending the resources that they have been allocated in Budget 2023.

I look forward to that process — I do every year — to better understand what the underlying philosophy is, about how they’re going to move forward. I’m grateful for this opportunity to say a few comments about Budget 2023. With that, I’ll take my seat.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM.

Hon. B. Ma: Hon. Speaker, it is my honour to be able to rise in this House to take my place in speaking to Budget 2023.

Before I do so, I want to acknowledge a few of the peo­ple without whom I could not be here today. Certainly, I’m referring to some of the staff in my office — Melanie Sanderson, my chief of staff; Nina Karimi, who is my ministerial adviser and who, unfortunately, has just left us to join the Ministry of Housing. So I’m very envious of the Minister of Housing on that.

We have Mack McCorkindale, who is my executive assistant. We have Andrew Barrett, who has just joined us today; as well as Arjin Toor, who will be joining us shortly; and my administrative staff, Arianna Klus and Jasmine Liu.

I also want to note my two amazing constituency assistants, holding down the fort in North Vancouver–Lonsdale so that I can be here in Victoria and do the work of being Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness and also be able to speak in this House. That’s Josh Saville and Michelle in North Vancouver.

They have really taken on an enormous load in my absence. It used to be that I was able to spend a lot more time in my community. Now I’m mostly in Victoria doing ministry work, and they’ve really helped to fill the gap. I’m truly, truly grateful for their efforts.

Of course, where would I be without my family? I won’t name them all, but I’m very, very grateful to all of them. I also want to note happy International Women’s Day, hon. Speaker, and to all of the people in this House.

We’re speaking over to the budget, so I’m happy to speak to the wonderful investments that we’ve made in child care, investing in supporting women fleeing violence, and free birth control for everyone who needs it, as of April 1 throughout the province. That’s in the budget too.

In doing so, I also want to acknowledge all of the incredible women that I get to work with here in these chambers. I’m referring to women on both sides of the House. We’re very fortunate, here on the government side, to be the first government caucus in Canadian history to have more women than men. That’s right; it’s very wonderful, but also there are strong women leaders in the official opposition caucus and the Third Party caucus as well. I’m very grateful to have their voices here.

[4:45 p.m.]

When it comes to Budget 2023, we’re taking action on the issues that matter to people. And when I refer to “people,” I also mean their communities and the issues that they care about — the environment, climate change, and so forth. We, over the last several years, have invested in people.

British Columbians have been through a lot. We’ve had the pandemic, and then we also had atmospheric river events. We’ve had the heat domes. We’ve had some incredibly destructive wildfire seasons, droughts, the opioid crisis. Through all of this, what our government made a very deliberate decision to do was to invest in people.

During the pandemic, when the economy wasn’t doing very well here or elsewhere in the world, whereas other jurisdictions pulled back on public spending to account for the loss of revenue, we charged forward in supporting people when times were tough. We did so on the basis of the idea that when we’re recovering from the pandemic, it is really, truly, our people who will be what helps us through that.

When it comes to economic recovery, it really comes down to the people of British Columbia that will help us rise out of really challenging times. And you know what? Those decisions to invest in people have really paid dividends. As a result, the economy bounced back more quickly than we had originally forecasted, and the revenues that British Columbia as a government were expecting were also substantially greater than we had originally forecasted, resulting in a very substantial surplus.

Looking forward into the future, we recognize that the economic outlook of the years ahead is unlikely to be as rosy as it was over the last year, largely because of a global economic slowdown. We’re seeing the impacts through inflation and otherwise, so we’re now making the decision to use that money today to help people while we have that surplus. Recognizing that it is absolutely important to put some of it towards paying down the debt, we also want to make sure that while we have the surplus, we’re able to invest in some of the deficits in investment that we’ve seen.

I’m not referring to any particular government here, but over long periods of time, we know that communities across the board have an infrastructure deficit that is very, very difficult for those communities on their own to fill. That’s why we were so pleased to be able to provide a $1 billion contribution to communities, municipalities and regional districts across the province.

I know that out in the North Shore, where I live, across the three ridings — North Vancouver–Lonsdale, North Vancouver–Seymour and West Vancouver–Capilano — our communities are receiving nearly $30 million from this $1 billion growing communities fund. I have spoken with the mayors of those municipalities, and they’re incredibly excited for the money, because all three municipalities have lists of infrastructure projects that they want to be able to accomplish, but they need a bit of revenue help to do so.

That money is going to be put to very good use. I won’t speak on the municipalities’ behalf as to where the money will go right now, but I know that we have excellent leadership across all three municipalities that will be making good decisions about where best to invest those dollars.

Speaking to the year-end funding surplus, where that’s going as well, I was really pleased to see the initial $500 million investment in our rental housing protection fund. Through my Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, we were able to put $180 million towards the community emergency preparedness fund, which tops it up. It almost doubles it.

Previously there was about $189 million that was invested in the community emergency preparedness fund. We’re able to add another $180 million this year, which I think was a very important investment, because based on the applications that we were seeing and the rate of funding that we were approving, we would have likely seen that fund dry up this summer otherwise.

[4:50 p.m.]

But the amount of money that we’re putting in now is expected to be disbursed over the next two years, which is actually, from a dollar-per-annual basis, a far larger and more intense injection of funds, into very, very important mitigation projects that communities are leading through­out the province.

These kinds of projects run from everything from diking upgrades to plans for vertical escape infrastructure. That is especially important in areas with…. I know the word. It’s just stuck in my head.

Interjection.

Hon. B. Ma: Tsunamis, thank you. Yes, earthquake-caused waves. Tsunamis. Yes, that’s embarrassing. I swear I do know the word. It just sometimes get stuck in the back of my head.

We also have communities that are doing incredibly important work in upgrading the personal protective equipment for their volunteer and composite fire departments. We have communities doing incredibly important work in terms of evacuation route planning. So that’s what that funding will also be able to support, especially in more rural communities that rely on forest service roads to get their families and people out of danger during an emergency.

Sometimes those forest service roads can be a little bit confusing to navigate. Helping to plan those evacuation routes and put up proper signage and make sure that all community members understand what the evacuation route is, is very important. But it does require a bit of money, especially in smaller communities. Those local governments won’t necessarily have those funds to put towards this work. So we’re enabling them to do this work through the funding put towards the CPF.

Speaking more…. I’ve already been speaking for ten minutes. I just have to comment that when I first became an elected official back in 2017, I found it very difficult to speak for long periods of time. I came from engineering. We were taught to be very succinct and provide very short answers. Now that I’ve been a politician for almost six years, I feel like I can talk for a long, long time about anything to nobody. I guess that’s a skill that I have developed over time. Very grateful to everyone in this House for giving me the opportunity to develop that skill.

That being said, I am incredibly grateful, also, for the opportunity to speak to the budget, because it is incredibly important. Aside from the surplus and where we’re putting that….

Actually, I just want to give a shout-out to a couple more big surplus items, one of which is the $100 million watershed recovery fund. The Parliamentary Secretary for Watershed Restoration and MLA for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain has been doing such incredible work on the issue of watershed recovery and its relationship with salmon and that relationship with our entire natural ecosystem and its relationship to us as people. It’s really drawing those connections, not only at the provincial level but the federal level as well.

I just want to express my deep gratitude for the stalwart stewardship of that work that the member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain has committed himself to over the last many, many years.

The other investment that I would like to give a shout-out to is the $200 million in agriculture and food security. That is an incredible investment. It’s hard to put words on how important our food security is, especially in the context of climate change.

Going over to climate change. The entire reason why my ministry was created by the Premier on December 7…. We’re just past three months old as a ministry, but it was really created in recognition of the growing impacts of extreme weather events as a result of climate change. We know that in the years ahead, we are going to be seeing an increased frequency, scale, scope, duration of extreme weather events like storms, like flooding, like droughts, heat domes, extreme cold events and wildfires.

[4:55 p.m.]

We also have earthquake risks. But that one is one natural hazard that is not related to climate change. I’m grateful for that, but they are already devastating enough as they are. In B.C. Budget 2023, we’re building on the work that my ministry had already done before they were a full ministry, back when they were known as emergency management British Columbia under Public Safety and Solicitor General. EMBC, before they became their own ministry, was already starting to think about how we get ahead of these disasters before they happen.

The organization was really created much more as a response entity, especially given the extraordinary impacts of the natural disasters that we’ve seen in recent years. They’ve also assumed a significant recovery role. In addition to all of that, we know that when dealing with emergencies and managing emergencies, it can’t just be about response and recovery. We have to do what it takes to mitigate the impacts of those emergencies before they happen. We have to be prepared for them as well.

Those are the four pillars of emergency management: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.

This year’s budget includes $567 million in operating and capital funding, over three years, for work relating to climate resiliency, including funding to support active transportation, CleanBC initiatives and emergency management programs like those being developed and expanded through my ministry. It really speaks to the importance of not only being ready for emergencies when they happen but also doing our part to drive down the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change as well.

This funding will help build capacity across British Columbia to support disaster risk assessment, preparedness and mitigation. It allows us to work collaboratively with local governments and First Nations to make communities more resilient and safer in the event of an emergency.

Budget 2023 is a first for our new ministry. It really demonstrates our government’s commitment to increasing support for climate readiness and all aspects of emergency management.

It also includes an additional $85 million to the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness’ base budget to increase emergency management capacity within government across the province, to provide new investments in disaster risk assessment, preparedness and mitigation and, also, to have the foundational capacity to do work when there isn’t an active disaster going on but to prepare for the next disaster.

I’m just looking at my note here. It notes that previously committed, in the previous budget, we are also providing $750 million in operating funding, over the next two years, for ongoing disaster response and recovery activities like debris removal, cleanup, disaster financial assistance. There are so many communities that have been impacted by extreme weather events which are relying on us to support them.

I will say…. What we’ve seen over the last several years is British Columbians are enormously resilient, especially when they come together. We can really overcome so many incredible challenges when communities work with other communities, when local governments work with First Nations, when provincial governments work with local governments and First Nations and the federal government. We really can do what it takes to get through an emergency.

Again, there’s a lot of work that we need to do to ensure that we’re not just working on the fly but that we’re actually really well prepared and, in fact, mitigating the impacts of disasters before they happen.

I’d also like to note that we are putting money back in people’s pockets in this budget. There have been cost-of-living supports that have already been rolled out, like the B.C. affordability credit that came out last October, this January and coming up in April.

There have been higher B.C. family benefit amounts for January, February and March, a $100 credit for people’s power bills, rebates for drivers from ICBC, an enhanced school affordability fund to help parents and kids with back-to-school costs. That one was, I think, really important. I’m grateful to the Minister of Education and the previous Minister of Education, as well, in support of that work.

[5:00 p.m.]

Of course, we’ve been able to make enormously important progress on our ChildCareBC program. I see the former Minister of State for Child Care and am so incredibly grateful for her work over the last many, many years. I know that she has made a very difficult and important decision to focus on…. I mean, this work is really challenging for members of the House and their families in particular, and I know that we have had….

Members make difficult and important choices to prioritize the loved ones in their lives. I just want to acknowledge that while also saying, for a moment, how much I miss having the member for Burnaby-Lougheed in the House. Oh gosh, I’m going to make myself cry. She’s been just…. I made her cry now too. She’s just been an enormously important friend, and I’m so incredibly proud of everything that she has overcome to do the work that she has in this House.

The ChildCareBC program that she has put together over the last few years is literally helping tens of thousands of families and will continue to help tens of thousands of families into the future. I know that we still have more work to do. I know that there is still a lot of work for government to do to deliver what we truly envisioned from our ChildCareBC program — true universality, true access and high-quality care at an affordable price for every family that needs it.

We have more work to do, but I just want to acknowledge that the member for Burnaby-Lougheed has really, really brought us a long, long way and set us on a good path for that. I’m going to have to avoid talking about child care now, in the future, I think, or this is going to happen every time.

Seeing the time, I’m just going to walk through the rest of the high-level pieces, before I break down further here, in Budget 2023 that I know are important for families across the province and also incredibly important to the families in my community as well.

Housing affordability and cost-of-living challenges are really top of mind for people across the province. So I’m incredibly grateful for the $4.2 billion investment in housing that is a part of Budget 2023, the biggest three-year investment in B.C. history.

We already have many projects underway in my community of North Vancouver–Lonsdale, projects that are led by our land-owning partners — the city and the First Nations and not-for-profits who are putting up land to help with the affordability of the units in these projects. We’re providing financial investment into it as well. Very grateful for that work and looking forward for more to come to North Vancouver.

There’s a $6.4 billion investment in health care. I think that you’ll be able to find very few people in British Columbia who will disagree that health care is an enormously important service provided by provinces to their communities. We’ve done a lot to improve access and services to health care, but the system is certainly facing challenges. I’m hopeful that this investment is incredibly important to helping us address….

[5:05 p.m.]

A historic $1 billion investment into mental health and addictions care. Given the amount, given the sheer number of tragic deaths that we see as a result of the opioid crisis every single day, it cannot be overstated, or understated. I think that phrase is sometimes used in both directions. But it is enormously important that we invest in mental health and addiction services, and this $1 billion investment is just so critical.

Of course, $4.5 billion to help people with costs. So $3 billion in new tax credits, like the B.C. family benefit increases, increases to the climate action tax credit and a new income-tested renter’s tax credit. Some investments in public safety and improving access to justice, $462 million for that, and $480 million in a Future Ready plan to address the labour shortage.

I mean, British Columbia is growing so fast, and our economy is doing very well. As a result, we’re also seeing that there are way more jobs than can be filled by the number of people that we have, or rather that the…. Anyway, yes. We’ll leave it at that.

We’re challenged on finding people to fill jobs all over the province, so half a billion dollars towards resolving that challenge: very important. And $1.4 billion investments for climate and the environment.

Going back to my earlier comment about being able to talk for a long, long time on things now, longer than I anticipated. I’ve now been talking for almost 25 minutes. I only got through, like, the first three pages of the notes that I was going to speak about, so maybe I will cut myself off there. Otherwise, I’ll go way over time and take up all the time allotted for other members of the House to speak to the budget.

With that, thank you again for granting me this opportunity to speak to this budget. I am clearly in very strong support of it, hoping that we will see good support for this budget across all parties throughout the House.

T. Stone: I am privileged to rise in the House today to offer some of my comments and observations in reply to Budget 2023. I do so proudly serving the people of Kamloops–South Thompson. It’s very hard to believe some days that this coming May, I will have served in this Legislature for ten years, and I look back at my time in government, my time in opposition, and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. It’s been an exceptional experience and lots more still to do in this place.

A budget is all about priorities. It’s all a reflection of government’s priorities. Again, I’ve served on both sides of this House, so I understand very well all of the work that goes into preparing a budget and putting into words in a budget, and then in numbers and all of the tables, the priorities that a government wants to focus on for the forthcoming fiscal year and, indeed, for a three-year fiscal plan.

I think it should be said again, and I know a number of my colleagues have said this already in their comments to Budget 2023, that it’s an important backdrop to the budget to remind people that this government has been in power for six years. This is a two-term government. It is often interesting, sometimes humorous, to hear the government describe situations and refer to the former government or the last government, when in fact, this group of people that currently form the government of British Columbia have been in power for two terms.

I think the best way to characterize the six years, two terms that this government has been in power is to characterize, when you look at it from an accomplishments perspective, a lot of lofty promises that have been made, a lot of lofty rhetoric that continues to be espoused but, frankly, terrible results, terrible outcomes for British Columbians by almost every single indicator.

We have the worst housing crisis in B.C.’s history. We have the highest rents in Canada.

[5:10 p.m.]

We have the worst health care outcomes that this prov­ince has ever seen.

We have the worst mental health and addictions crisis. When we look at the overdose numbers and the trajectory of overdoses in this province over the six years this government has been in power, it has been getting worse and worse.

We have a cost-of-living crisis in British Columbia with life never being more unaffordable by virtually every indicator. I mentioned housing, the amount that it costs to put gas in your truck, the amount that it costs to put food on your table.

These cost-of-living pressures are forcing families, forcing British Columbians to make decisions, in many cases, about whether they can afford to pay their rent or afford to provide some fresh vegetables or some healthy meal options for their kids. The affordability crisis is impacting everyone. It impacts seniors in all kinds of ways. It impacts families.

Everyone is looking to save. Everyone, at many different income levels in this province, is looking for opportunities to save. Personally, I was thinking I should head off to Bed Bath and Beyond and find myself a toaster that’s on clearance.

Then I remembered that — as outlined by my good friend and colleague from Kamloops–North Thompson, as he characterized this NDP budget — all of us would be getting a free toaster. So I think I’ll spare myself that trip wandering through Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a toaster. In all seriousness, life is tough for people. It’s tough.

Violent offenders, prolific offenders committing vicious random assaults, again, are at levels that we have never seen in British Columbia, four random attacks every single day in Vancouver alone.

Results for people are what matter the most, not how loud your self-congratulation is, the pat on the back that you give yourself or how often you use the words “historic,” “record” or “unprecedented.” We hear those words from this government all the time. We hear in this chamber, in question period and in debates, ministers getting up, almost shifting into robot mode and talking about this parallel universe that does not reflect what British Columbians are actually experiencing.

It’s results for people that matter the most. It’s not how much money you spent. We have seen a massive increase in spending under this government. Now, as my colleague from Kamloops–North Thompson outlined in his response to the budget — he is our Finance critic and very capable at that — most of this increase in spending, which the NDP has presided over, has been for wage packages for existing public service employees, which is fair enough. Everyone deserves a good wage, a good family income, certainly, including public sector workers.

The issue is this. There has been this huge expenditure, largely in the public sector, which, by the way, this government has grown by about 128,000 positions since taking power in 2017, a 128,000-person increase in the size of the public sector, a little more than double the rate of growth of private sector employment in this province.

That represents a 33 percent increase in the size of government, a 33 percent increase in the cost of government, yet I don’t ever have anyone in my constituency say to me: “I think that things have gotten 33 percent better. I feel like my life is getting better. I feel like I can actually afford more today than I could six years ago. I feel that health care is there for me when I need it. I feel that my community is safe.”

Nobody says that. Yet that’s the reality of this government’s record: a huge focus on spending, spending with terrible results, terrible outcomes for British Columbians.

[5:15 p.m.]

We’ve been spending time in supplementary estimates for the past week or so. We sat here in this Legislature for the first four weeks of the legislative session with a very thin legislative agenda — we’ve commented, I think, a fair amount on that, so I won’t dredge that back up again — only to then have this government come forward with about $3 billion worth of supplementary estimates. It’s reflecting a pace of expenditure that’s faster than the ability of this government to seek approvals to spend the money in the first place.

We made it very clear that we’re not going to have anything to do with this. We don’t have confidence in these last-minute budget measures, which really reflect “on-the-back-of-napkin” calculations that have been brought forward by minister after minister as part of the supplementary budget estimates process. We have no confidence in the NDP’s budgeting practices. We have no confidence in their numbers. We have no confidence in their budgets and the overall estimates.

There are even ministers that have said that the numbers in the budget shouldn’t be trusted. We had the Minister of Housing, the Government House Leader, actually point out that the housing projections, the numbers in their own budget around housing, do not reflect reality. How are you supposed to trust any of the numbers in a budget, when you have members of cabinet who actually don’t appear to be willing to defend the numbers and go so far as to actually say the numbers don’t reflect reality?

In the supplementary estimates with respect to B.C. Ferries — when pressed repeatedly as to, “Did B.C. Ferries actually formally request half a billion dollars for priorities?” — we finally got to a place of: “No, it doesn’t appear that this corporation actually asked for this money.” The minister couldn’t give us any details on how the money is going to be deployed to achieve the policy objective of suppressing fare pressures at B.C. Ferries.

In the supplementary estimates on Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, again, there are millions of dollars that are to be expended on supporting a range of priorities of a number of bands, a number of First Nations in this province.

Fair enough. When asked, “Did the minister, did this government, reach out to all bands in the province?” the minister couldn’t answer. When asked, “How did you arrive at these specific numbers?” the minister couldn’t answer, no details.

The Ministry of Agriculture is looking for $111 million approval in this place just yesterday. The minister could not answer basic questions about her request for approval on $111 million that supposedly would be pushed out to two agencies. Initially, the minister couldn’t indicate, or wouldn’t indicate — I’m not sure which it was — which agencies would get this money.

When asked, “How much money would each agency get? What is the breakdown?” the minister couldn’t answer that. When asked, “How will the money actually be de­ployed by these agencies, and for what specific purposes? What do the criteria look like? How is that going to…?” the minister could not answer any of those questions.

Municipal Affairs. The Premier made a great big announcement about $1 billion in grants, but when the Minister of Municipal Affairs was pressed on what the criteria for this are, she couldn’t answer. When the minister was pressed on, “Are there restrictions? Is there an ability for government to claw back the funds if they’re not deployed, as per the intentions of this program?” the minister couldn’t answer.

When asked, “Are there any limitations around ex­penditures having to be operational or capital? Can there be both, or a mixture? Is it up to the local government?” we actually got one answer from the Premier. His answer changed the next day. Then we get a totally different answer from the minister in these supplementary estimates. I’m going to probably suggest that we’re going to have to go with the Premier on this one, but there was no unanimity of answer, between the minister and the Premier, on a $1 billion grant program.

[5:20 p.m.]

The people of British Columbia are entitled to basic information about how their money is being spent, who is getting it and in what amounts, and we have not been getting fulsome, detailed answers on any of those questions. As a result, as I’ve said, we have no confidence whatsoever in the calculations that went into these spending requests — this $3 billion of shovelling money off the back of a truck without being able to answer basic questions that the public, that the taxpayers, that the people of this province who are funding these initiatives expect and deserve.

This massive amount of spending, again, is against the backdrop of terrible results. Following a $5 billion surplus last year, the NDP are projecting a deficit this year of $4.2 billion and deficits that will total about $11 billion over the next three years. Taxpayer-supported debt will reach $100 billion. That’s a doubling of total provincial debt in six years under the NDP.

Let’s just stop and think about that for a moment. It took 146 years of multiple governments — Conservative, Liberal, Social Credit, NDP, Social Credit, B.C. Liberal, now NDP again — to accumulate about $50 billion of debt in this province. This government, in six years, has doubled that to $100 billion, and debt-servicing costs are up $1.5 billion per year.

The most alarming aspect of this budget is that there’s no talk about how the government intends to actually grow the economy, how the government is going to generate net new revenues from expanded business activity in this province. There’s no private sector jobs plan. There is no plan detailed in this budget that speaks to the challenges of small business. I mean, we hear all the words. Members opposite are great at talking about how the small business is the backbone of the economy. Small business, small business, small business. Their record is terrible when it comes to small business.

Small business tax revenue is actually anticipated to decline by 20 percent in 2023. That reflects a shrinkage of small businesses in this province — a shrinkage of the small business sector. There’s no relief on employer health tax. That’s anticipated to rise to $3 billion in revenue by 2025. WorkSafeBC revenue for employer paid premiums has gone up from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion in the span of three years. That’s a 19 percent increase. Payroll costs have increased by 24 percent since 2018 for small businesses with ten employees in this province. That’s under the NDP.

There’s been the move to five paid sick days. There are more statutory holidays. There’s no relief whatsoever for small businesses who have been hit with massive costs related to vandalism and social disorder in downtown cores. We’ve seen a huge increase in all of that social disorder and vandalism. Huge increase in costs have to be borne by small business. No relief. No consideration whatsoever of relief for small businesses dealing with that.

But it doesn’t just end there. There’s hardly a mention of British Columbia’s natural resource sector in this budget. We all hear the stories. We all get the emails. We all have the meetings and do the calls with people engaged in forestry and mining and oil and gas. We all know about the massive backlog in permits. The delays on project approvals. Contractors that literally are flapping in the wind, waiting to find out if a project that they’ve been on — if they’re actually going to be able to work on it.

What does this budget do? What does this NDP do? Instead of cutting red tape to accelerate the permitting process and get decisions done so that people can get to work in the woods so they can extract fibre for their mills, like the mill in Merritt, so it doesn’t go down…. Not because there’s no fibre in that case, but because they can’t access the damn fibre because the government won’t issue the permits in a timely fashion.

[5:25 p.m.]

But instead of cutting that red tape, the NDP are planning to hire 160 more bureaucrats — 160 more employees who are going to focus on these backlogs.

This budget provides for a projection of a decline in natural resource revenues of 33 percent — 33 percent. Again, like small businesses, this government clearly has in mind that they’re going to manage the decline of the natural resource sector. There’s no plan to ensure that it remains vibrant, that it continues to grow and that it continues to be a significant employer that puts food on the table for B.C.’s families and communities all over this province.

The NDP are intent on managing the decline of forestry, the decline of mining and the decline of our natural resource sector. I would ask the government members to share their thoughts in answer to this question: when Trans Mountain is built and done, when that project is finished; when CGL is done; when LNG Canada’s phase 1 is done; when Site C is done; what are the next big, major projects that are coming in behind them? What are they? There are none.

Indigenous-backed LNG projects, like Cedar LNG, can’t even get an approval out of this government. There are no major industrial projects, no major projects that are coming in behind the ones that were all started under the former government. God willing, the NDP didn’t kill them. I’m sure they looked hard at Site C, LNG and whatnot. They didn’t kill the ones that were underway, but they sure as heck haven’t expedited approvals, or even facilitated approvals, on a reasonable basis.

Where are the tens of thousands of people that work in mining, the tens of thousands of people that are working on pipelines right now, the tens of thousands of people that are working on construction projects related to LNG? Where are these people all going to go? Where are the jobs for them in the future?

We’ve heard comments from different members of the NDP about how those are the jobs of the past. You know, we’re all going to be baristas at coffee shops in small towns of central and northern British Columbia. We’re all going to be engaged as travel agents or in tourism operations and things, because for that proud man or woman who has been engaged as a logging contractor, as a third-generation forestry employee or contractor, that’s the job of the past. That’s not a job of British Columbia’s future. That’s how the NDP thinks about the natural resource sector.

Where is the Premier’s bold action on housing? It sure as heck isn’t in this document. The NDP promised that supply would be a huge focus. This budget actually predicts housing starts to fall over the next three years, to go down. This budget predicts that B.C. Housing’s net new projects are going to decline year over year for the next three years. How is that going to solve the housing challenges we have?

We have the highest housing prices in North America. You need to earn $268,000 a year to afford a mortgage on an average home in Vancouver. We have the highest rents in Canada. If you live in Vancouver, you need to be earning $23,350 more this year than last year to afford a home. Vancouver is the most expensive city in all of Canada for renters, $2,730 per month for a one-bedroom. That’s up 24 percent in one year.

I could go on and on with these numbers. It’s terrible. It’s the same in Victoria. It’s the same in Maple Ridge. It’s the same in Prince George and in Kamloops. Rents have skyrocketed under this government. The cost of housing has skyrocketed under this government. I guess if the government wants to use words like “historic” and “unprecedented,” they could certainly use those words in terms of the cost of housing and the cost of rents in this province.

[5:30 p.m.]

We hear in this budget that the government’s much-vaunted 30-point housing plan had 13 new taxes in it, a whole range of other actions. It’s going to be refreshed. British Columbians are joyous that this government, after six years, is going to refresh the housing strategy, because everything they’ve done up to this point has worked so swimmingly well.

Crime and disorder in our communities is getting worse and worse. Everyone here knows it. The members who represent Surrey, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Prince George and every community in this House know that crime is way worse in our downtown cores. It’s gotten way worse in the last six years.

Let’s talk about health care for a few moments. One in five British Columbians has no doctor. One million people are waiting for surgeries. The worst delays for diagnostics that this province has ever seen. A massive increase in the number of walk-in clinics and the longest wait times in the country to get in to see one. That’s if you have walk-in clinics. We don’t have any walk-in clinics in Kamloops.

Ambulance delays, unprecedented. Let’s use that word. We’ll borrow that word from the NDP vocabulary. And 5,500 nursing vacancies. We’ve got terrible, terrible cancer care outcomes, some of the worst in the country. We profile them all the time in this chamber.

While I mention that, let’s talk about the Kamloops cancer centre promise. The people of Kamloops are done. They’re sick of it. They’re sick and tired of NDP governments promising a cancer centre in Kamloops and then reneging on it after the election is over.

The former Premier went up to Kamloops in 2020 during the election campaign. He stood at a podium with his local candidates. He promised the people of Kamloops and the region that the Kamloops hospital serves that there would be a full-fledged cancer centre up and operating, open, with patients in it before the next provincial election, which is in 2024.

We just found out literally a couple of weeks ago that the early stage planning, the concept planning, has been approved. But even that, this government expects the local health authority, and local taxpayers as a result, to have to kick in some of the costs for a concept plan, which is not the way this has ever worked. It’s not the way this is supposed to work there.

There sure as heck isn’t going to be a cancer centre accepting cancer patients in Kamloops, I would argue, in the next 18 months. They haven’t even identified a site. The former Premier actually said on radio to the people of Kamloops that it had actually gone to Treasury Board. It’s outrageous.

If I may, in the limited time that I have left…. In Kamloops, frankly, one in five having no doctor, which is the provincial average, is dreamy compared to what a Kamloops resident has to endure. In Kamloops, two in five don’t have a family doctor. That’s 53,000 people with no family doctor. We have no walk-in clinics.

The urgent primary care centre, which this government made a huge deal about…. If you don’t practically win the lottery…. You have a better chance of winning the meat draw at the legion than actually winning the lottery to actually get a time to see a doctor. If you don’t get a time when that clinic opens in the morning — like, 8:30 or 9 o’clock — you’re not going to see a doctor that day. Go into the ER. Go and clog up the ER.

We have an ER, which is overflowing every single day. We have, as we’ve profiled in this place recently, a massive crisis with obstetrics. If you can imagine this: the government was forewarned. The NDP were forewarned of an impending crisis with accessing prenatal care in Kamloops a year ago. The family doctors, obstetricians and midwives highlighted for this government that there was a big problem brewing.

[5:35 p.m.]

Well, recently one of two midwife clinics has announced their closure in Kamloops. As concerningly, the largest obstetrics clinic — the largest clinic that focuses on assisting with pre-natal and post-natal care, and so forth…. The Thompson Region Family Obstetrics Clinic, which delivers 60 percent of all the babies born in Kamloops on a monthly basis, is not accepting any more expectant moms with due dates after July 31, because they don’t have locum coverage. They don’t have enough coverage.

The member from Kamloops–North Thompson and I have been inundated with emails. Desperate pleas from expectant moms and Kamloops. In fact, we’ve had some that have said they’ve actually got a for sale sign in their yard now.

I got an email last week from a woman who is a nurse at Royal Inland. Ironic. Her husband is a professional engineer, also in high demand, and they’re leaving Kamloops because they can’t get health care there. They’re about to have their first child. They want to welcome their first child into their family. They can’t access health care. They can’t get a family doctor, and she can’t have the reasonable assurance that she’s going to be able to get the prenatal care that she needs.

It is appalling. This is 2023 in British Columbia. This is absolutely appalling.

All of these challenges in health care we profile, it seems almost every day, and we get the same congratulatory patting on the back of all the things that the government is doing and all the things that the minister is doing. None of it is working. The outcomes are terrible. The outcomes are getting worse and worse.

I don’t know what to say to expectant moms like I just mentioned, who say: “Do I seriously have to leave Kamloops because I can’t reasonably assure myself of having the care that I need to welcome a child into the world?” That is the state that we are in, in health care.

There is so much more that I could talk about. I don’t have the time to do it today. But I just want to say: the government has got to get back to basics here, and they’ve got to go to build out a budget that focuses on growing an economy, growing revenues. That’s how you ensure that you have the resources so we can invest in the services that people need.

That is not a hallmark of this budget. That is completely absent from this budget, and that’s why I will not be supporting it. I have no confidence in this budget and no confidence in this government.

Hon. J. Brar: I’m really pleased to stand up in this House today to speak in favour of Budget 2023.

I would like to start by acknowledging the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, and to thank them for sharing these lands in peace and friendship.

I will come back to the budget debate in a couple of minutes. First, my sincere thanks to the people of Surrey-Fleetwood for the rare opportunity to serve them as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of this beautiful province, and for putting their faith in me.

My special thanks to my staff members, Prab Sandhu, Priyanka Mehta and Gurjeevan Sidhu, at my Surrey-Fleetwood constituency office and Ryan Chew in my Victoria office. They are exceptional people, beautiful people and doing an excellent job serving the people of British Columbia and helping me in delivering my duty as MLA and as the Minister of State for Trade.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to the love of my life, my friend, my adviser and my beautiful wife, Rajwant Brar, and to my daughter, Noor, and my son, Fateh, for their love and unconditional support to me during my political journey in the service of people of this beautiful province.

Coming back to the budget. Just before me, the member from Kamloops–South Thompson has made quite interesting comments. I’ve seen…. I’ve been here for a long time. For 16 years, they were in power. I see fearmongering, time and again, when they talk about the NDP.

[5:40 p.m.]

I still remember them saying, during those 16 years, that if the NDP come into power, they won’t be able to run the economy, that people will leave the province. That’s what they were saying for 16 years. The reality is completely opposite.

Let me tell you. We have a strong, sustainable economy right now in the province of British Columbia. We have the second-lowest unemployment rate, which is 4.4 percent. Last year we created 63,000 jobs in the province of British Columbia, and 107,000 people came to this prov­ince from other provinces and other countries because we have jobs in this province. More people are coming this year because we have jobs in this province. We are best positioned, at this point in time, to go through the tough times ahead of us.

This budget, of course, has a priority. It is a priority for us, and of course there are differences between the opposition and us. Budget 2023 takes action on the issues that matter most to the people. This budget invests in improving health and mental health care, creating more affordable housing, growing a clean economy and delivering more help to people, to help people with the cost of living, especially for families and British Columbians most affected by global inflation.

B.C. is a great place to live, but people are facing real challenges, not only from global inflation and the pandemic but from ongoing and systemic challenges. This year’s budget helps protect people who can’t afford today’s high prices and takes action on the issues people care about, like finding affordable housing, accessing health care.

Alongside Budget 2023, the province is putting this year’s surplus to work for people now and for the long term through a $2.7 billion investment in people, communities and organizations throughout B.C. The investments include $1 billion through the growing communities fund, which will help local governments enhance community infrastructure and amenities. This includes roughly over $80 million to Surrey, the fastest-growing city of the prov­ince — the opposition leader opposes that funding as well — and $150 million for the B.C. Cancer Foundation to support the newly released B.C. cancer action plan.

The budget is all about priorities, as said by the member who spoke before me, and I agree with it. The opposition leader says he opposes investing the surplus to help people. He would cut, he says, investments like the $1 billion growing communities fund, and that includes, as I said before, $80 million to the people of Surrey. The opposition leader would cut investments in cancer care. The opposition leader would cut the B.C. affordability credit that provides up to $410 in support of a family with two children.

The opposition leader, in the 2012 budget, increased costs on people and made aggressive cuts to services. He hiked MSP premiums and ICBC rates while raiding half a billion dollars from ICBC. He cut child care funding. He froze education funding and underfunded K-to-12 schools by $100 million. He froze advanced education funding and ordered universities to cut $70 million from their budgets.

He started the fire sale that eventually sold $1 billion in public land. That included Surrey hospital land, because of which we couldn’t build the hospital on time. By the way, they announced the Surrey hospital three times during their 16 years — that they were going to build it — but finally, they actually sold the land for the second hospital.

We are building this new hospital. The construction is going to start this year.

[5:45 p.m.]

When he was making all the cuts, he found the re­sources to introduce a new $42,000 tax break for people buying a second home or a vacation property. People couldn’t afford that approach then, and they can’t afford it now.

B.C. is a great place to live, but people are facing real challenges. Some say B.C. should respond to a global downturn by pulling back on our support for people and making them pay out of pocket for services like health care and education. That is the wrong approach at the wrong time. Budget 2023 makes smart investments in the things that matter most to help build a strong, more secure B.C. for everyone, not just those at the top.

Budget 2023 invests in getting people into homes they can afford. New pressures in B.C.’s housing and rental market have made it even more difficult for people and families, so this budget invests in getting people into homes they can afford and lays the groundwork for a refreshed housing plan. We are investing $4.2 billion, the largest three-year investment in B.C.’s history ever. This budget provides funding for a new, refreshed housing plan, which will be released later this spring.

We’re also building thousands of new homes through Building B.C., including the Indigenous housing fund and the community housing fund. We are working to build more homes near future transit development projects, and we are also building new student housing spaces, especially in high-demand areas in the Lower Mainland, southern Vancouver Island and Thompson-Okanagan.

This budget also provides support to renters. The rent­er’s tax credit will put up to $400 a year back in people’s pockets with a new renter’s tax credit. More than one-third of all British Columbians rent their homes. The credit will benefit people with low and moderate incomes, including people who receive income and disability assistance. We expect 80 percent of renting households will receive the tax credit, including people who receive income and disability assistance or support from the rental assistance program or Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters.

This budget also provides help to people with the cost of living. Global inflation has brought new challenges for people across the globe, including the province of British Columbia. We see that every day. The budget launches new and expanded measures to help people with their expenses and new investments to build a strong, more secure future for everyone.

People will receive more through the climate action tax credit. Last year a two-parent family that received the full amount would have received $500 through the climate action tax credit. As of July, the same family will receive almost $900 per year, which will be $400 more than last year. A single person that received the full $193.50 credit amount last year will now receive $447 per year.

We have also doubled student loan maximums, which means that individual students will now get $220 per week, up from $110. Students with dependants will receive $280 per week, up from $140.

Student loan payments. People with student loans do not need to make payments while they make less than $40,000. For people who make more than $40,000, payments will be 10 percent of their income rather than 20 percent, as used to be the case.

[5:50 p.m.]

Shelter rates have also been increased by $125, starting in July. Higher earnings exemption limits increased by $100 per month for income assistance and increased by $1,200 per year for disability assistance.

The B.C. family benefit has also been increased. Families with children will see a 10 percent increase to their monthly B.C. family benefit, starting in July 2023. At the same time, single parents will receive as much as a $500 annual top-up to help make ends meet, starting July 2023.

This budget also makes investments to make the public safe. Everyone deserves to feel safe and secure in their communities. We are taking action to keep British Columbians safe. We are creating new and expanded enforcement and intervention services to keep people safe and communities safe. Budget 2023 helps fund our safer communities action plan, including hiring more RCMP officers and support staff in communities throughout British Columbia, two new enforcement programs to help reduce repeat offending, funding for continued consultation to inform new policing and police oversight legislation.

Budget 2023 also supports the implementation of decriminalization and reduced stigma. We are supporting community safety through our investments in treatment and mobile mental health response teams.

Budget 2023 is good for the people of Surrey. The city of Surrey remains the fastest-growing community in the province, as we know. We welcome, roughly, about 1,400 people every month, and that remains the highest growth in any city in the province and probably in the country.

The city continues to receive funding for major infrastructure projects. I know the member who spoke before me was asking: “What are the major projects?” I’m going to talk about the major projects only in one city, and that is the city of Surrey. The old government completely failed to provide funding for the projects I’m going to list, just in a few seconds, for the people of Surrey. That’s why I’m saying this budget is very good for the people of Surrey and for the city of Surrey.

The old government failed to build the Pattullo Bridge, the very unsafe Pattullo Bridge, and they were there for 16 years. We are building that Pattullo Bridge. Its construction is now underway, and it’s going to finish probably in the near future.

They also refused, the old government, to build the Surrey to Langley SkyTrain, which is a project worth $3.2 billion. They actually conducted a referendum to refuse that funding. They were there for 16 years, and they never listened to the people of Surrey. We are building that project. The Surrey to Langley SkyTrain, we are going to build, and the funding is already committed for that project.

They also failed to make any commitment and build any new schools for the city of Surrey. Just for the record, during their last term, 2013-2017, they built only one school — only one school in the city of Surrey. We already have built or have under construction more than 13,000 new seats, which is equivalent to almost more than 15 elementary schools, and we are going to build more moving forward.

[5:55 p.m.]

They also refused to build a new hospital, a second new hospital, for the city of Surrey. In fact, then Premier Gordon Campbell…. I remember. He actually made the announcement three times during the elections — they were going to build a second hospital for the people of Surrey — standing at the same location that was sold later on by the hon. Leader of the Opposition now, who was the Minister of Finance at that time. They sold that land, which was actually bought to build a new hospital.

We are building that hospital. Also, the construction is likely to start this summer.

They also failed to build a new medical school in Surrey.

They talk about Surrey every day. I know that Surrey, to them, is very important politically but not otherwise. Politically it is important but not otherwise.

We are building that medical school in the city of Surrey after 40 years, maybe even more than that. We are going to build the medical school, for the younger generation of the city, so that the kids of the people of Surrey can also become doctors.

When they were in power, they forced the people of Surrey to pay tolls. The costs of the tolls, at that time, were…. If you were a single individual and you were working on the other side, it would cost you maybe about $1,800 per year. If you were a small business person driving a truck, it would cost you $5,000. If you were a small business, it would cost you $50,000 because you had more trucks.

They forced the people of Surrey to pay tolls for many, many years. We eliminated those tolls, saving thousands of dollars for the people of Surrey.

I have a friend who runs a trucking company. He told me just a few days ago, actually…. Our Premier was there. During that meeting, he stood up, and he told the Premier that he saves $50,000 because of the tolls. He also told the Premier that he saves $50,000 because of ICBC improvements.

The member who spoke before me, the member for Kam­loops–South Thompson, was questioning the business plan. I don’t want to go on, but people know about his ICBC business plan and how it was difficult to fix. Finally, it was fixed by the Premier now and the AG earlier.

We also eliminated the MSP, saving thousands of dollars for the people of Surrey.

These are the real actions we have taken during the last six years, which they failed to take during the 16 years when they were in power.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Hon. Speaker, I would like to say, in the concluding comments…. I hear the comments by the opposition with full interest, but they seem to be completely confused about the budget. One day they will say to you that we need to spend more. The very next day they will come back, and they will say: “You need to spend less.”

When it comes to numbers, I still remember…. I don’t remember the year exactly, but there was a year when they said the deficit would be $495 million, not a penny more. That was before the election. After the election, actually, the deficit was over $2 billion. That was under them.

I fully support the budget presented by the government, because the budget invests in people. This time we need to make investments in people, and we need to support people.

[6:00 p.m.]

N. Simons: Well, it’s a real honour and privilege to be able to speak on this budget. I don’t know what number of budget it is for me, but I’ve been here for over 17 years. I’ve seen debates on budgets, and I kind of know how the narrative goes. I’m not surprised by anything anyone said about the budget. I think it’s an excellent identification not just of the priorities of our government but of the priorities of the people of the province.

Let me just start by acknowledging that we are on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. In recognizing that, I’d also like to acknowledge the area that I represent, which is the territory of the Tla’amin and the shíshálh, the skwxwú7mesh, the Klahoose, Homalco and other nations that are part of this 40,000-plus square kilometres of the Sunshine Coast.

I’m happy to represent communities known as Gibsons, Sechelt, Powell River, Madeira Park, Lund. I’m going to miss a few, and you don’t want to leave anybody out. It’s an honour and a privilege to have represented this area. It’s a pleasure to be able to continue to do that with the benefit of government programs and services that will really do a lot to help communities that I represent.

I’d like to also acknowledge my constituency assistants, Amy Clarke and Rob Hill, for their exemplary work. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Slim Milkie, my partner of 21 years, whose interest in politics has always matched mine. He’s an excellent adviser, whose advice I take sometimes. [Applause.] Thank you to my colleagues. They all know him. He’s a well-known person around this place.

I’m pleased to be able to speak about a budget that tackles some of the big challenges that we as a jurisdiction — and in fact, many other jurisdictions around this country and around the world — are facing, not only as we come through this part of the global pandemic, but we see global inflation as well, the challenges of a poisonous drug supply, the ongoing challenges related to it.

I think we are positioned in a place where we can continue to take important measures, necessary measures to combat the challenges or the struggles that community members and people across all jurisdictions are facing. Here in British Columbia, we are focused on making sure that people are healthy, that people have the resources they need to live a good life, that our economy is working well, that our health care system is working well and that we address the numerous challenges that we face.

Having been here when we’ve seen budgets announcing serious cuts, and the resulting impacts of those cuts to social and educational programs, I think we’re lucky to be in a good place right now in terms of the strong economy. We’re, I think, appropriately contemplating not just the needs of today but the needs of the future.

When it comes to housing, our investments in housing are substantial and larger than they have been before. Our investments in education and in health care, in supporting those who live with low income, I think, are strong and important investments.

[6:05 p.m.]

[The bells were rung.]

N. Simons: I know we’re not voting on my speech so far. I’ll wait till the bells have finished, but clearly, supplementary estimates in the other chamber are going to a division vote, if you all at home can hear that. Four bells.

Let me just talk about a few of the specifics that I think are highlights of the budget. There are many highlights, but there are a few particular items that stand out to me and that address some of the issues which I hear not just in my constituency but which we hear raised as issues for the province.

I’ll start with the common refrain around this place — that we need to ensure that our justice system is appropriately resourced so that people can feel safe and secure in their communities. I’m not speaking necessarily about street disorder or the challenges that we face when there are the combined issues around addictions. I’m not trying to conflate.

The rural communities in this province have long needed support for their police, for the RCMP. The ability to tell communities in my constituency that funding is going to be made available to ensure the appropriate complement of police officers can be hired and kept in our communities, I think, is reassuring to community members.

Small communities, I think, generally have a unique and different relationship with law enforcement than maybe some of the urban centers have, but it’s one where they’re community members there. They participate in all of the events of our communities. It’s important that their complement be appropriate for the size of the community. Hiring more RCMP officers throughout British Columbia is going to benefit many rural communities and the residents of those rural communities.

There are other issues around bail reform that have resulted in some unexpected consequences and that have resulted in some offenders repeat offending. That has always been a concern of law enforcement — of communities, in fact: the recidivism. We hear many stories about the importance of ensuring that we have programs in place to address repeat offenders. That’s something that Public Safety and Solicitor General has been focused on addressing within the jurisdiction of the province.

I’m pleased that the police review committee made recommendations that are now going to be discussed in further detail, with new funding and new initiatives, to ensure that we have appropriate policing, that the sector is supported and that communities are supported. Access to justice is a fundamental part of our democratic process, one that we take seriously. When we saw cuts in previous budgets under the previous government, we decried those cuts.

Of course, we are reversing those by not just investing in legal aid, but we are investing in creating new justice councils — the First Nations Justice Council and Indigenous justice centres — to ensure that people have access to culturally safe legal help for people who need it.

Minor things that aren’t discussed when we talk about budget include such initiatives as virtual bail hearings. They require funding. They are beneficial to those who are facing challenges in the criminal justice system, as they can remain in their home community and receive the supports they need. We’re also ensuring that the Human Rights Tribunal and Community Legal Assistance Society are funded appropriately.

One area that I raised with the previous government when I was in opposition was the need for better funding for the independent investigations office, the independent office that oversees action of police. I’m pleased to see a $2 million increase to their budget, which will allow them to become robust in their investigations of alleged misconduct or potential circumstances where outside oversight is required.

[6:10 p.m.]

I represent the Sunshine Coast, where there was a very sad case of a young man, a resident, who died at the hands of the Vancouver police department and whose family continues to wait for some justice in that circumstance. Unfortunately, the independent investigations office was not at the capacity needed to ensure that the investigation took place in a timely manner, in addition to some reticence on the part of the officer who was being investigated to participate fully in that process. That process ended, and further delays occurred.

The importance of having independent oversight, not just of the police but in other areas as well…. I remember being here when oversight of the child welfare system was eliminated. The child advocate, the children’s commissioner and the advocate for children and youth were all eliminated by the previous government, in the name of fiscal responsibility, while, at the same time, giving tax breaks to the wealthiest in this province. I didn’t see that as a fair or a thoughtful way of addressing the needs of our community.

The restoration of oversight of the child welfare system was something that the opposition was successful in convincing the government at the time to do. That was the first time that the Representative for Children and Youth was hired. The position was created, and the person was hired.

I’m talking about oversight and the need for oversight — particularly, the need for oversight when the people served by a particular organization or agency may be vulnerable or without a voice.

I’m pleased to see an increase to the independent investigations office. I hope that other policy and regulatory changes will continue to buttress their capacity to ensure that, as British Columbians, we can have the confidence that we need to have in law enforcement. It is a fundamental part of our democratic process. They are part of our community. They must reflect the values of our community. So I’m pleased about that.

The housing investments from our government, from the province, from the people of B.C.… This is a reflection of the priorities of British Columbians, I believe. This is the importance of ensuring that we get homes for people that they can afford. This is an area of public policy that was, unfortunately, I believe, neglected for many years. This was not solely the fault of any particular government. This is something that we got away from and that we need to get back to.

We are digging ourselves out of a hole. We’re investing the appropriate amount of funds to ensure that we can continue to build the housing stock and address some issues around affordability. We did the largest three-year investment in housing in B.C. history — $4.2 billion. That is going to continue to provide results that are going to have an important and a positive impact on the quality of life of British Columbians.

We’ve invested significantly in Indigenous housing. I’m pleased to say that we were the first government to enter into agreements to build housing on what we refer to as on reserve. We’re working to build more homes near transit development projects. These all make sense. It’s good public policy to be thoughtful about where homes are being built and who they will be available to.

New student spaces in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Thompson-Okanagan. When you compare the investments we’ve made into student housing versus…. Well, nothing, really. We’re doing a lot, and they weren’t doing anything.

To the students of the province, to the future students of the province, who are taking post-secondary courses….

[6:15 p.m.]

I’m glad that we’re thinking about the future. We’re thinking about their future. They may not know who was involved. When the day comes when they bring their suitcases up to their new dorm there, they’re going to, perhaps, not know that it was us that did it, but that’s not what public policy is about. It’s about doing what’s right for now and for the future.

The new income-tested renter’s tax credit can put money in people’s pockets. I think it’s appropriate that it’s income-tested. It’s just another one of our steps that we’ve made towards trying to address some of the negative impacts of global inflation. We can’t reverse inflation single-handedly, but we can try to give some tools to people to help them overcome some of those challenges brought by higher costs. That, I believe, is something that’s fundamentally important.

Addressing homelessness and encampments. This is an issue…. It’s a difficult issue, and it’s not one that has simple solutions. The multiple solutions that we have put in place have, obviously, served the people who are living in those supportive housing spaces.

I wonder. Where would those people be living had we not built them? I have 120 supportive housing apartments on the Sunshine Coast that were not there before.

The challenges that people have as they go through life…. I think having a safe place to live, with a roof over their head and a warm bed, allows people to think about how their life is and how they want it to go. I think that’s a fundamentally important part of this, the whole issue about providing homes, housing first.

We’ve expanded the rental assistance program. We’re creating more complex care spaces for people who need more than traditional supportive housing. We are also investing in and continuing to support temporary leased spaces.

When the opposition talks about, “Well, where are the results?” the results are…. When you see the face of somebody who has a place to live, that’s a result. When you see that their family is happy their auntie has got a place to live, there’s a result. These are important results to our community. They’re important to build the social fibre in our communities. I’m so pleased that our government has taken that and has made that a priority on behalf of British Columbians.

Helping people with costs is another theme of this budget. This budget includes measures such as tax credits, the B.C. family benefit, the climate action tax credit and the new income-tested renter’s tax credit, which I mentioned earlier.

Increasing school food programs. As a former social worker, I can say, without any doubt, and everybody knows, that youngsters that go to school…. Children and youth who go to school hungry have a bigger challenge achieving their educational goals. Obviously, food is part of the answer to that. So is a nurturing school. So is a nurturing community.

For a child to know that their community cares about them and cares if they’re hungry or not, I think, serves to further create social cohesion in our communities. It’s not just the funds, and it’s not just the food. It’s the knowledge, among the children, that their community cares for them.

We’ve increased student loan maximums, and we’ve reduced the amount people have had to pay at certain phases in their life. People with student loans don’t need to make payments while they earn less than $40,000 a year. For people who make more than $40,000, payments will be 10 percent of their income rather than 20 percent of their income.

If you ask any student who receives student loans, they will know that this is an important result. This is an important investment. This is something that students…. If the opposition took the opportunity to speak to students, they would know that this is an important investment with immediate results.

[6:20 p.m.]

Income and disability assistance rates have gone up for the first time, for shelter rates anyway, in a long time. They’re going up by $125 starting in July. This continues our government’s increases to social and disability assistance. The shelter rate has remained stuck at $375 a month, and clearly that wasn’t a reflection of market rates.

At the same time…. We increased support rates many times, and, in fact, a record amount in the last budget. That went to every recipient of social assistance and disability assistance. We’ve also increased the earning exemption limit by $100 a month for people on income assistance. Since it’s calculated annually for people on disability assistance, it increases by $1,200 per year for people receiving disability benefits.

The B.C. family benefit. Families with children will see a 10 percent increase in the monthly B.C. family benefit, starting in July. At the same time, single parents will receive as much as $500 annual top-up to make ends meet. These are important investments. The results of these investments will be significant. They will be important to every family in receipt of those benefits as they struggle with higher food costs, higher fuel costs and the cost of commodities that are beyond the control of any subnational government.

In the world of health and mental health care, we’ve made significant investments. The amounts, while significant, don’t tell the story. They include funding for a new cancer care strategy; a health workforce strategy that will ensure that we can recruit, train and support thousands of new staff; a new family doctor care model. These are all important investments.

You know, when I hear the opposition members talk about this idea that we’re putting money out there without thought, we have put a lot of thought into the needs of British Columbians. My first 12 years in opposition, and subsequently, I’ve thought about what it is that the people of the province need. They need support. They need to know that their social programs and their health services are as robust as they can be.

With all the challenges that we’ve faced in British Columbia, we’ve done a remarkable job of keeping our heads above water, doing what we could during the worst of the COVID pandemic. We were as successful as any jurisdiction could be in terms of keeping people safe and keeping people healthy. I’m happy.

One item that is particularly satisfying is for the people of coastal and island communities. And I tell my friend from Saanich North and the Islands that it should be Saanich North and some islands, because my riding is Sunshine Coast. It should include islands. We have islands on the Sunshine Coast, and we’re served by ferries.

I just remember sitting in opposition, seeing the price of ferry fare going up and up and up. I think ferry fares to Texada Island, over nine years, went up 105 percent. We’ve seen the costs being borne by residents of our community when we’re travelling for medical appointments, visiting family, getting the necessities of life.

We had to pay exorbitant fees, and we saw those fees going up every single year. The proposed increases that we could have expected on the Sunshine Coast over the next three years would have been about 10 percent per year. I was pleased to see that our province has understood the challenge that would have on our residents, on businesses. They have said that we will ensure that fare increases are kept low so that communities won’t suffer. For years and years…. Yes, $500 million to ensure that we can keep ferry fares manageable. Issues around ferries have been a constant in my political career.

[6:25 p.m.]

When it’s not ferries, it’s issues around water. I was pleased to see our investment in the watershed strategy. That will ensure that we protect our drinking water sources wherever they are and that we ensure that the natural assets associated with those watersheds are protected from being harmed, whether it’s by industrial or recreational activity.

Water is an essential part of life, and our foresight in addressing this is necessary. A lot of people would say we should have done this earlier. Well, this is the time when we’re getting right down to it. We’re going to have important discussions community to community, Indigenous community to other communities. We’ll ensure that our watersheds are protected for future generations to ensure that the flora and fauna and humans have what they need from those resources.

Overall, I think this is a highly supportable budget. It’s one that addresses, checks off, many of the important boxes that British Columbians have high on their priority list. If you applaud for five more minutes, I can fill five more minutes.

Interjections.

N. Simons: Clearly, my eloquent words are resonating in the ears of my colleagues, and they’re enthralled. So let me find another topic to talk about.

You know, I have to say I must have seen I don’t know how many budgets. Is it 17 budgets since I was elected? Something like that. There might have been a minibudget thrown up, and maybe there was…. Or thrown out. A little bit of Freudian slip. There might have been budgets that were presented with very little likelihood of passing when governments changed. But this is one….

We’ve seen a massive investment in food security. It’s another issue that I think is on the minds of people around our province — children accessing food, food banks being able to repurpose or reuse or ensure that we don’t waste as much food as we do in our society. They’ve got refrigeration. They’ve got distribution programs. Many, many food hubs have hired people to ensure that. We heard a member from the opposition today talk about the importance of gleaning food, ensuring that we can repurpose it and make it into consumable and healthy products.

Food security is part of a cooperative effort between the Social Development Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture. It’s an important area of public policy.

I didn’t talk too much about the fiscal facts, but we see a decline in our deficit from 2023 to ’24 year over year until ’25-26. Our debt-to-GDP remains low compared to other provinces. It’s in a sustainable area. We have a surplus right now.

Supplemental estimates are being debated. I’m hoping that they all pass so that we do get a stabilization of ferry fare rates and that we get the investments in cancer treatment and cancer care that our government has promised and put forward, so we can continue to serve British Columbians well.

There’s one area that I’m glad that I didn’t sit down yet, and that’s the area of free contraception for all British Columbians. It’s always good to see when we can be a leader, looking at other jurisdictions, especially in areas of public and health policy. It’s not just a cost saving for families, it’s access to their needs regardless of their income. I think that communities that we run across…. We’ve seen people make decisions between what they can afford to purchase and what they can’t afford to purchase. Contraception isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity for those who choose to use it.

Our government’s statement is not just a statement about an economic saving for people but actually a social policy statement that in British Columbia, we support the right of people to make decisions around their body. We do so in an encouraging way. We have social programs and policies in place to ensure that families have access to what they need.

[6:30 p.m.]

I think that’s everything about this budget. We’re putting forward important policies, programs, services and funding to meet the needs of people in this province.

I just thought of something I really wanted to say, but it’ll take about 15 minutes. I might have to get leave from the House.

With that, thank you for this opportunity. I’m happy to support the budget.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Minister of Finance to close debate.

Hon. K. Conroy: I want to thank everyone for their comments on the budget during the budget debate — some interesting comments, some expected, in both positive and other ways. I want to comment to the member for Abbotsford West that I appreciated his comments until he started going the other way, but I did appreciate his comments.

I believe that most people in the chamber recognize that this budget continues the good work of my predecessors, Carole James and the Minister for Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.

We’ve had a number of comments from people as we have gone out since tabling the budget. I do have to say, the most frequent comments we got from everybody, no matter what your political stripes or where you live in the province, was on the free contraception.

I got a comment from a dad who looked at me and went: “Four. I have four daughters. Thank you, thank you.” And, actually, from a woman in her late forties who thanked me because, she said: “I still need birth control, and thank you so much.” She said: “This isn’t just for young people. It’s for people in the late forties as well, and other older ages.” So it reminds us of how important initiatives like that are.

I think that people understand that we’re continuing to invest in people, which is exactly what was started in 2017. We’re continuing to invest in people right across this province, whether you’re urban or rural, and people of all ages. We will continue to do that, because we know that we can invest in people while ensuring we have a strong, sustainable economy.

Actually, we have one of the best economies in Canada. I think everyone in the province can be proud of that and know that we’re heading in the right direction.

With that, I move, seconded by the hon. Premier of British Columbia, that the Speaker do now leave the chair for the House to go into Committee of Supply.

Deputy Speaker: Division has been called.

[6:35 p.m. - 6:40 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Members, the question is the Speaker do now leave the chair for the House to go into Committee of Supply.

[6:45 p.m.]

Motion approved on the following division:

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

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:47 p.m.