Fifth Session, 42nd Parliament (2024)
OFFICIAL REPORT
OF DEBATES
(HANSARD)
Thursday, February 22, 2024
Morning Sitting
Issue No. 379
ISSN 1499-2175
The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.
The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.
CONTENTS
| Routine Business | |
| Orders of the Day | |
Throne Speech Debate (continued) | |
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2024
The House met at 10:04 a.m.
[The Speaker in the chair.]
Routine Business
Prayers and reflections: M. Dykeman.
Tributes
BOB BRAGANZA
H. Yao: Today I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Bob Braganza, who passed away on December 24, 2023. He had been a really great friend when I first got involved in politics. He was a man of gentleness, and he often shared his wisdom in a way that’s not lecture-based but a friendship with caring and kindness. His absence will be much missed.
As a friend and as an individual who had worked with him for a certain part of his life, I do wish his passing will also alleviate some of the pain he had lived with, with his physical illness.
AJIT SINGH BADH
A. Singh: I want to recognize the loss of a community leader, Mr. Ajit Singh Badh, who passed away on January 13 at the age of 87. Many of my colleagues in the House will know him as the CEO and founder of Sher-e-Punjab radio, the first Punjabi-language radio station outside of India and Pakistan, but his contributions to the community encompassed far more than that.
From the time that he immigrated to Canada in the late ’60s, he worked tirelessly and with compassion to make the lives of those around him better. He was a founding member of the first Canadian Sikh Panth magazine, Sikh Samachar, and an integral part of many community initiatives. Mr. Ajit Singh Badh deeply believed in the power of community, family and in being compassionate.
If you ever got the chance to visit his family home — I did — you could witness the deep love and compassion that filled the air in that multigenerational home.
I offer my deepest condolences to the entire Badh family. Mr. Ajit Singh Badh will be dearly missed by all who knew him, and the family’s loss is our collective loss.
Introductions by Members
Hon. H. Bains: Tuesday night after we finished our business here, I went to my room, turned the TV on, and the Canucks game was on. And what did I see? The pride of Surrey, Arshdeep Bains, making his debut for the first Canucks game.
Why is that so important? I mean, the best team in the NHL, and this kid from Surrey is showing that this game can be conquered, as well, by those who haven’t played this game traditionally. I’m talking about the South Asian Punjabi community. Arshdeep is the fourth Punjabi player to make NHL.
The best team in the NHL, his first game…. He did not look out of place at all. There were two times I thought he set up a goal and was going to score a goal, but there was a good goalie on the other side as well.
But I can tell you, Arshdeep, and to your family: thank you for working hard and to the family for supporting this kid to be the best in the NHL one day. He’s challenging those players right now.
Thank you for blazing the trail for all the younger kids from that community to come and follow and fulfil their dreams. So thank you, Arshdeep. Keep up the good work. We are all proud of you.
Hon. P. Alexis: I’m thrilled to introduce 12 community leaders from home. Please join me in welcoming some members of the team from the University of the Fraser Valley’s community health and social innovation hub, which we call CHASI.
The CHASI hub was created to support all aspects of a healthy community. They achieve this goal through collaborative, multisectoral research and community engagement and as a key strategic partner in the region working to identify challenges and opportunities to improve individual and community health.
With us today are Martha Dow, Jeff Mijo-Burch, Chelsea Klassen, Sharon Strauss, Emma Hones, Miranda Erickson, Lynsie Beaulieu, Regan Smith, Carlanna Thompson, Frankie Fowle, Imran Tatla and Susan Mide Kiss.
Please, will the House welcome them today. Thank you.
T. Stone: It gives me a great deal of pleasure on behalf of the Leader of the Official Opposition and the official opposition caucus to welcome to our caucus the interns that have been assigned to us or have chosen us. I’m not sure exactly how that works.
We met them all yesterday, and we’re really fortunate to have five outstanding individuals that are going to add tremendous value to our work and, I think, are going to have a lot of fun in the process. Regardless of the caucus, I think it’s an incredible program and an incredible experience for the interns and for the legislators.
I would ask the House to please join me in welcoming, for our research department, Nina Andrascik, Sage Benet, Amy Topshee. Then we have the following two individuals that are joining our communications team: Lauren Parry and Sloane Zogas.
Welcome to the B.C. United caucus, and I’d ask the House to join me in extending that welcome as well.
Hon. B. Ma: Well, it’s budget day. Happy budget day to everybody.
Every year on budget day, we have people come from all over the province to watch the delivery of the budget. I’m really pleased to be able to welcome into the chambers today — well, not quite the chambers, into the gallery — Miles Bissky and his two sons, Kendrick and Espen, hailing from Hope, British Columbia.
Will the House please join me in making them feel very welcome.
The Speaker: Member for Skeena.
E. Ross: Mr. Speaker, my bad. I didn’t realize that the Mayor of Terrace was joining us yesterday. Sean Butjas, who is a big proponent for the Revenue Benefits Alliance and has been doing so for many years.
I owe you a lunch for mistakenly not introducing you yesterday.
Ron Poole is also here, past administrator for Terrace council as well as Kitimat council, and does an administrative course in Terrace College. He’s invited me a couple of times to actually do speeches. So I’d like to welcome Ron Poole here.
Last but not least, of course, is the mayor from Prince Rupert. A big advocate for his community and is pushing hard for infrastructure dollars and help from both of his governments.
Would the House please welcome these tremendous leaders.
Tributes
GEORGE LAWSON
H. Yao: Again, I would like to express my sincere condolences to the family and friends of George Lawson, who passed away on December 8, 2023. George Lawson has been an incredible individual advocating for individuals who struggle with pain and disabilities.
George Lawson spent most of his life suffering in pain, but instead of letting the pain pull him down, he conferred that energy into determination and strength to advocate for less fortunate individuals who could not speak on their behalf.
I’m asking the chamber to join me to express our sincere condolences to his family and his loved ones.
Introductions by Members
J. Rice: I’d also like to make some introductions today.
The steering committee for the Resource Benefits Alliance, the RBA, is here in the House. I’m proudly wearing my RBA pin. I wanted to make everyone welcome: Mayor Herb Pond, Sean Butjas and Mayor Gladys Atrill from Smithers. So we’ve got Terrace, Smithers and Rupert in the House today.
Please make them feel welcome.
H. Yao: I would like to congratulate Lin Chun for his 90th birthday on January 14. He’s been a lifetime engineer and a professor, and he’s been a huge advocate for the community, culture and especially arts. He has been a huge proponent in promoting strong, respectful dialogue, conversation and connection with cross-cultural communications.
I’d like to ask the House to join me today and wish Lin Chun a happy birthday.
J. Rice: I wanted to make a follow-up introduction: my CA, Joshua McLeod, who comes from Haida Gwaii. His Haida name is Duunee kuun iiwaans, which means Big Brother Whale. Josh often says he’s Big Brother Whale because Big Brother Bear was already taken, hence my mix-up. In Haida culture, when you mess up a name, you give that person some money.
So, Josh, I owe you 50 bucks.
Statements
(Standing Order 25B)
INDIA SHERRET AND SKI
CROSS RACING
ACHIEVEMENTS
T. Shypitka: February 2 was a big day for India Sherret. The 27-year-old ski cross racer from Cranbrook won her first career gold medal for Canada at the FIS Ski Cross World Cup in Italy.
India’s journey to this victory has seen its share of peaks and valleys on and off the hill. Her introduction to skiing came in cross-country, and she did not start alpine racing until she was ten. At 13, she discovered ski cross, and in her first year of ski cross racing, she represented Canada at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games and finished fourth. In 2013, she was the overall NorAm Cup champion for ski cross, and in 2015, she was crowned World Junior Champion.
Despite all the accolades and success, India had been privately struggling with bulimia nervosa, depression and anxiety, which she developed in her teens and kept to herself. She decided to take the 2015 season off and sought treatment for her eating disorder. She returned healthier and happier, physically and mentally. Since then, India has dominated the NorAm circuit and the World Junior Championships, leading to her joining the World Cup team in 2017. She broke through her first World Cup podium in January 2018, when she finished third in Sweden.
In her Olympic debut at Pyeongchang 2018, India was injured when she crashed hard off a jump and was unable to finish. She was quick to rebound the following season and hit the podium in 2019. She continued to deal with her injuries up until this year, but finally appears healthy, with her victory marking a top-ten finish in the last four races of the season.
Following her gold medal win several weeks ago, India said in a press release: “Today is one of those days that makes all the hard work pay off. There have been some crashes, some injuries over the last four years since my last podium, and I’m proud and grateful to be here. I am very grateful to everyone who kept believing in me: my team, my family and friends and my sponsors.”
Congratulations, India, on skiing to the top of the podium and making Kootenay East and Canada proud.
EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS AT
CAPILANO
UNIVERSITY
S. Chant: Thank you, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity to address the members of this House and speak to the people of B.C.
Before I begin my remarks, I would like to acknowledge that I am currently working and staying on the lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən, specifically Songhees and Esquimalt People.
North Vancouver–Seymour, my riding where I live and work, is in the territory of the Coast Salish, specifically the səlilwətaɬ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh nations. I’m always grateful to have the opportunity to work and learn with these Indigenous communities.
Last week I had the privilege of visiting Capilano University, at the main campus nestled deep in the heart of North Vancouver–Seymour, with other campuses in North Van Shipyards, Squamish, Sechelt and the Learning Centre in the Líl̓wat territory.
CapU generally has an annual student enrollment of about 11,500, some of whom are attending Discover Employability or Education and Employment Access. These are two certificate courses that are offered to post-secondary students who have self-identified as needing supportive work or education environments as they transition into adulthood. Discover Employability provides coursework around topics such as job search and maintenance, health and safety in the workplace, communication skills, transitions, money and math, and social skills. These skills are then applied in a four-week job placement for work experience in a variety of areas.
I enjoyed hearing about adventures in retail, the sports complex, the child care centre and at the garden nursery. The students had just finished their current placements and were recounting the highs and lows to each other and their instructor. Words of wisdom: “The public is not as scary as I thought to work with.”
Some students will go on to work regularly in their placement organizations, and some will go on to other certificate courses, such as Education and Employment Access. I am truly grateful to Capilano University for ensuring that they offer an accessible post-secondary stream to support students towards employment and further education.
SUPPORT FOR WINE INDUSTRY
N. Letnick: I rise today to address a matter of critical importance to our province: the future of British Columbia’s renowned wine industry.
As we all know, recent adversities have cast a shadow over this vital sector, with severe weather conditions jeopardizing crops and vines, compounded by unwarranted challenges posed by other neighbours, including Alberta.
The B.C. wine industry isn’t just about wine. It’s about livelihoods, communities and a cultural heritage we cherish. It is integral to the countless families and businesses across our province. We cannot overlook the plight of our wine producers who face the grim reality of potential crop loss and significant financial strain.
Following a disastrous cold weather snap in December that has impacted vineyards and may result in the complete loss of the 2024 vintage, many B.C. wine producers are facing the possibility of 100 percent replant, which means minimal or negligible cash flow for several years.
This underscores the urgency of the situation and the need for immediate action. The repercussions extend far beyond the vineyards, affecting tourism, hospitality and the economic well-being of our regions and communities. I need to emphasize the hardest hit is being taken by growers, their families, farmers and workers and to encourage the government to find a way to help them get back on their feet.
In the face of such adversity, it’s imperative that we come together to extend a helping hand to those who need it the most. Establishing an emergency working group, prioritizing VQA certification and fostering collaboration with Ontario are vital measures that merit our urgent attention.
I echo the sentiments expressed by John Skinner of Painted Rock Estate Winery, emphasizing the importance of constructive dialogue in resolving interprovincial trade disputes. Let us all heed a call for cooperation and extend our support to the B.C. wine industry in this time of need.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN
HAIDA GWAII AND PRINCE
RUPERT
J. Rice: I rise today to talk about housing and building more homes for people.
I was recently in Haida Gwaii, where I spent a lot of time in various communities. I spent a particular amount of time in Masset and Old Masset, where I feel like the leadership is just in incredible overdrive high speed on building more houses for their people.
I’ve got to see houses for workers, houses for Elders, houses for people with low income and moderate income, tiny homes for single men. I was completely flabbergasted at the progress they’ve made since my last visit. The same could be said in Daajing Giids and in Skidegate as well.
One thing that I’ve heard, as an MLA locally in Prince Rupert, is that we’ve done a great job of building supportive housing for low-income people. But what about the middle-income people? What about housing for the nurses that we’re trying to attract and the social workers — and we need a sonograph tech, by the way — homes for those people.
That’s why I’m so excited that we’ve just recently launched BC Builds, which is a program to help middle-income people with finding homes, finding affordable renters and making it very convenient and easier for developers to build in our communities with low-interest-rate loans, with land that’s provided by various levels of government.
While I’m here, because my mayor is here, I must shout out to the city of Prince Rupert and all efforts, the multiple bylaws that they’ve put into place to attract builders to our community, which is plagued with Muskeg and bedrock. They’ve done a phenomenal job. Mayor Pond would be the first to say that people are welcome to help us build middle-income homes.
For decades, there’s been little intervention from provincial and federal governments. So this program, BC Builds…. You’re welcome. Come build in Prince Rupert. We’re looking for middle-income homes.
RESILIENT COMMUNITIES
ON SAANICH
PENINSULA
A. Olsen: Today I congratulate the district of Central Saanich on being named the 2024 B.C. Business Magazine’s most resilient community in British Columbia. At the same time, I raise my hands to the town of Sidney for being named the second most resilient community.
Both communities have not only been recognized for their resilience this year, but their top spots on the list have been consistent. Central Saanich was ninth in ’23, eighth in 2022 and ninth in 2020. The town of Sidney was third in 2023, 19th in 2022 and third again in 2021.
The annual nod is based on a variety of factors, including housing growth, unemployment, economic diversity and social and environmental resiliency. My riding of Saanich North and the Islands is well represented on this list.
No doubt I have a soft spot in my heart for Central Saanich. It’s been my home for 48 years, the place Emily and I are raising our children and, as a proud former district councillor, the place I started my career in public service. Beautiful Sidney by the Sea is the home of my constituency office and is the commercial heart of our riding.
A lot of people quite openly diminish the work of local governments in creating a sense of community and ensuring residents have the infrastructure and services they need to flourish. But resilience is not by accident. Resilience is the result of pragmatic, prudent planning, budgeting and decision-making, a tribute to mayors Ryan Windsor and Cliff McNeil-Smith and their current and former colleagues. They’ve managed their communities well over the years.
As the province has significantly changed the landscape, the challenge for our communities will be for our colleagues in local government to adapt, and I’m thrilled the communities on the Saanich Peninsula are working from a position of resilience.
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE WEEK
R. Glumac: I am pleased to rise in the House today to say a few words about Chamber of Commerce Week, which we celebrated last week from February 12 to February 16.
It was just a few days before that that our own local chamber of commerce hosted a lunch with leaders, with all of the Tri-Cities MLAs, and it was a really great opportunity for us to say a few words about the work that the government is doing in strengthening the provincial economy. I had the opportunity to talk a little bit about regional economic development and hear from the local business owners.
This event is just one example of the many things that chambers do. In fact, there are more than 100 local chambers of commerce and boards of trade throughout the province, supporting over 36,000 businesses of all sizes. Events like this help our government create effective policies based on on-the-ground experience and hear about the innovative ideas that local business owners have.
Local chambers and boards also provide opportunities for business growth through training and networking events so that businesses can continue being economically competitive…
[Interruption.]
R. Glumac: …and build long-term sustainable growth in their communities. I’m grateful for the work that our local chamber does in supporting my community of Port Moody–Coquitlam and helping to ensure that businesses that we know and love continue to be successful for many years to come.
The Speaker: I think I heard a phone ringing in the House. All right. Please turn your phones off. And the person, the member who’s identified later — I’ll deal with it.
Oral Questions
HEALTH WORKER VACCINATION POLICY
AND REHIRING OF
STAFF
K. Falcon: This coming Monday B.C. will become the last province in Canada and the only jurisdiction in North America to ban unvaccinated health care workers from their own health care system. While Nova Scotia joins the rest of North America in dropping vaccine mandates, B.C. stubbornly clings to its nonsensical and divisive policy.
B.C. has long been an outlier. Apparently, the science is different in every other jurisdiction in North America. I just want to remind this House that I was the first leader, and B.C. United was the first party, to call for the return of thousands of unvaccinated health care workers back on June 22, 2022, nearly two years ago.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Let’s hear the question, please.
K. Falcon: My question to the Premier is this. Will the Premier finally rehire the health care workers they fired, or will he stubbornly sideline health care professionals while B.C.’s health care system continues its collapse?
Hon. A. Dix: The House will know that the vaccine mandate referred to by the Leader of the Opposition — one that the opposition, by the way, the B.C. United opposition, called for and applauded when it was introduced — is the result of a provincial health order.
The purpose of that provincial health order was to protect the most vulnerable British Columbians during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an order by the provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, who is a world-leading scientist and, I think, an extraordinary provincial health officer in British Columbia. In fact, I have heard members of the opposition brag that she was hired under a B.C. Liberal government, as deputy provincial health officer, by them because of her outstanding qualities.
We continue to act to protect patients in British Columbia from COVID-19. There are people living, in hospital right now with COVID-19, in the hundreds in British Columbia. Just because the Leader of the Opposition wants to overturn a public health act, which was introduced under a B.C. Liberal government, because of some sort of race to the bottom amongst opposition parties, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to continue to respect the provincial health officer and her orders.
The Speaker: Leader of the Official Opposition, supplemental.
K. Falcon: Well, with that answer, it is no surprise that we have a collapsing health care system here in British Columbia. I have spoken to health care professionals who were terminated, including a nurse who ran the emergency department at Langley Hospital — a hospital, by the way, which is regularly diverting patients because they haven’t got enough nurses to actually look after those patients. We can’t afford to lose these kinds of highly skilled health care professionals at a time when we so desperately need them.
We’ve also heard from nurses like Linda Drew, a fired registered nurse with over 20 years experience, who still is teaching the nursing program at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna. Linda says: “The current mood in health care is one of defeat. We are constantly short-staffed. You have already lost so many of these nurses and health care workers to Alberta and the United States.” This, at a time when we learn that B.C. once again has the longest wait times at walk-in clinics in the entire country. That’s their record.
So when will this Premier finally listen to Linda and listen to every other jurisdiction in North America, bring back these health care workers and help our health care system today?
Hon. A. Dix: The fact is that British Columbia has led Canada in recruiting new nurses and net new nurses while Alberta has lost nurses in the last number of years. I mean, the minister may believe the Canadian Institute for Health Information is an NDP front. The Leader of the Opposition may believe that, but it’s incorrect. The facts are the facts: 99 percent-plus health care workers in British Columbia got vaccinated, because getting vaccinated was good for them and good for patients.
In the last nine months, B.C. has added, net new, more than 700 family doctors — in the last year.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members. Members.
Members. Members.
Hon. A. Dix: The facts are the facts. From 2009 to 2016, not per capita but in actual numbers, in a time of a rising population and an aging population, we lost registered nurses, net in British Columbia, starting in 2009 when the Leader of the Opposition was Minister of Health.
We have led Canada in hiring new nurses because we support our public health care workers. When our provincial health officer makes a decision around vaccines, for example, we don’t start by applauding it and calling for it, and then turning around afterwards because the Conservative Party is advocating and making a different approach. We stick to our position, because we support Dr. Bonnie Henry, and we support health care workers in British Columbia.
GOVERNMENT LANGUAGE GUIDELINES
E. Ross: The NDP government in our province has introduced a new rule. They’re saying calling ourselves “British Columbians” isn’t right because it’s exclusionary.
I couldn’t believe this until I read it on their website. Are you kidding? We’re all Canadians, we’re all British Columbians, and we’ve got bigger problems to solve. We have a housing crisis. We don’t have doctors. We have an affordability problem. Instead of fixing these problems, the NDP is spending time and money trying to control what words British Columbians can and can’t use and creating division. This effort to erase history and foster division is offensive.
My question is to the Premier. What are you guys doing?
Hon. R. Kahlon: The member is correct. There are some serious issues in this province that we need to be taking on, and we discuss them. But spending important time talking about a terminology statement on a website that was designed to just advise staff on how to use terminology when talking to and about British Columbians in Indigenous communities is not the best use of our time.
The Premier yesterday, six times….
Interjections.
The Speaker: Shhh, Members. Members.
Hon. R. Kahlon: The member talks about yesterday. The Premier used “British Columbians” six times in his response in question period yesterday.
There are important issues for us to be dealing with. Let’s talk about housing. Let’s talk about child care. Let’s talk about the important things we want for our communities, but spending time talking about something that is really not an issue at all in anybody’s life right now is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It’s a waste of people’s time.
The Speaker: Member for Skeena, supplemental.
E. Ross: I was a councillor for eight years. I was a chief councillor for six years. I chaired the Aboriginal business development council for the B.C. government. Not once did we talk about the idea that we shouldn’t call ourselves British Columbians. In fact, in all those years, all we talked about was housing, affordability, poverty, as First Nations leaders all across B.C. and Canada do.
This is identity politics again, creating divisions, just like the Land Management Act amendments that they just previously backed off on, pitting natives against non-natives for political purposes.
I agree. We’ve got bigger problems to solve, but controlling what we say, on who we are and where we come from, is not a problem that British Columbians are facing. Whether we’re born here or we moved here, we’re Canadians and British Columbians. There’s no need for this type of language coming from the B.C. NDP government. I have family and friends, native and non-native, and I call them British Columbians, because we are British Columbians.
When will the Premier abandon this stupidity that only drives people apart instead of trying to achieve reconciliation?
Hon. R. Kahlon: Again, I agree with the member that there are a lot of serious issues that British Columbians are dealing with. It’s sad that we’re here in question period talking about this topic.
The Premier yesterday used “British Columbians” six times in his responses. I’ve used “British Columbians” probably five times already in my response. Nobody is giving anybody….
There are no rules being said around what you can say or what you can’t say. Let’s use this time in question period to actually take on the important issues that British Columbians want to talk about.
RCMP COMMUNITY-INDUSTRY RESPONSE
GROUP ACTIONS AND
FUNDING
A. Olsen: Last fall I drew a comparison between the amount of money that the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General has invested in the RCMP’s controversial community-industry response group, the C-IRG, and the implementation of the calls for justice in the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls report.
The minister was furious with this line of questioning, yet transcripts released during court proceedings illustrate perfectly how the RCMP’s C-IRG unit has dehumanized Indigenous people. Much of the language used in the recordings is inappropriate for this House, Mr. Speaker.
Basically, the C-IRG officers were calling Indigenous people ogres and orcs. They made fun of a neurodiverse person and openly described a high-ranking member of that unit sexually assaulting somebody.
Human rights violations, excessive force, illegal tactics, unprofessional behaviour, racism, discrimination. A shame on the RCMP. A shame on this minister. A shame on this House.
To the Minister of Public Safety, is there an ongoing investigation of the alleged sexual assault described by the C-IRG members?
Hon. M. Farnworth: What I can tell the member is that the kinds of comments the member references are absolutely, obviously, and completely unacceptable. I think all members in this House would agree with that.
At the same time, there are processes and protocols in place for complaint procedures and to deal with this kind of thing, some of which are underway — as you acknowledge, a court case.
I can also tell the member that part of the work that has been underway in terms of the reform of the Police Act is to deal with these kinds of things and to extend accountability and oversight on our police forces in this province.
The Speaker: House Leader, Third Party, supplemental.
A. Olsen: I would imagine that when the police forces in this province are made aware of a potential sexual assault…. Perhaps an investigation would be necessary and not the requirement of the person who was involved in that to have to file a complaint. It seems like the conversation between the members of these units was quite open about what was going on there.
The C-IRG has vastly exceeded their projected budget, year over year. In their first year, in 2019-2020, they were budgeted $920,000, yet they spent $10 million. Each year this unit continues to receive funding and then blow past their budgets.
The RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission is currently undertaking a systemic investigation of the C-IRG unit, an investigation that has experienced significant delays because the RCMP is not giving them information.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs have called for the C-IRG to be disbanded due to the ongoing human rights violations and harm to Indigenous communities.
To the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, if the allegations that we heard on tape, the racist and demeaning comments on the record, the picking on neurodiverse people, laughing about an incident that basically amounts to sexual assault…. Does the C-IRG still have the confidence of this minister?
Hon. M. Farnworth: I appreciate the question. As I said a moment ago, we expect police to conduct themselves in line with the standards that are in place for policing. If they are not, then they should be held accountable for that. Again, I’d say that every member of this House agrees with that.
At the same time, the member talks about the budget for the C-IRG. Well, the C-IRG was established to assist those communities that have been dealing with some of the challenges that we’ve been facing in terms of protests and in terms of enforcing court-ordered injunctions in this province. The result of….
The budget is based on the amount that has actually had to have been spent in order for police to be able to do that job. The amount is based on a rolling average over the last three years. It started off, as the member said, at $900,000. What we have seen in some different parts of the province, particularly on some of the LNG pipelines, is a significant amount of resources required in order to deal with some often extremely violent protests.
Our expectation is that those engaged in law enforcement are obeying the laws and the standards in the province of British Columbia and Canada and, at the same time, recognize that they have an important job to do in enforcing sometimes court-ordered injunctions to ensure that legal, lawful activity is allowed to take place in our province.
GOVERNMENT LANGUAGE GUIDELINES
B. Banman: The first record of my family in the province of British Columbia goes back to the year of 1862. My great-great-grandfather, John Morton, was one of the first pioneers in the area known today as Vancouver.
Like many Canadian immigrants, he came here to British Columbia to earn a better living, to create a future for his family and to help build a community in this great province. I’m proud to call myself a British Columbian, and I’m proud to call myself a Canadian.
This province and this country have been built, have been a beacon of hope to so many in an often divided and turbulent world. People from all backgrounds and all parts of the world come here to escape violence, persecution and crippling poverty. They come here because B.C. is, bar none, the best place in the world.
I find it deeply troubling that under this B.C. NDP, the B.C. government website would describe the term “British Columbians” as one that excludes some people, not just Indigenous but also people who have come to Canada and British Columbia.
I believe we are British Columbians in this province, no matter where you come from, how you worship or who you love.
My question to the Premier: do you believe that we are all British Columbians?
Hon. R. Kahlon: There are a lot of serious issues in this province. People are struggling to find housing. People are wanting to ensure that we’re talking about how we strengthen our public health care system, how we are continuing to find ways to create employment opportunities, good-paying jobs for families. Here we are talking about an issue that I don’t think most people are really focused on.
I’m a proud British Columbian. My colleagues are proud about being British Columbians. I’m proud to be a Canadian, a representative of this country at the national level, international level in sport. I’m proud of the national anthem.
But are we really going to use our time here, right now, talking about this topic? The Premier yesterday referred to….
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members. Members.
Minister, continue.
Hon. R. Kahlon: The Premier referred to British Columbians six times. I’ve referred to British Columbians six times. People can continue to refer to themselves in whichever way they like.
But let’s talk about important issues that British Columbians want us to talk about, because most people will be watching this right now and will be wondering: “Why are they not talking about the issues that matter to us in our lives?” That’s what we’re going to continue to focus on, on our side of the House.
The Speaker: Member for Abbotsford South, supplemental.
B. Banman: This NDP government is relentlessly focused on dividing British Columbians.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members, the member has the floor.
B. Banman: In fact, this NDP government says on a government website the term “British Columbians” excludes “newcomers and refugees.”
This minister can try and dismiss that all he wants and make light of that all he wants. I believe that newcomers and refugees are British Columbians, just like everyone else who calls our great province home and has a desire to belong here and live here.
My question to the Premier: will you apologize here and now to British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples, newcomers and refugees for claiming that they are not British Columbians?
Hon. R. Kahlon: That’s just nonsense. I’ve said it already. I don’t understand what world the opposition is living in right now. People are struggling with many things in their lives, and we’re here talking about this.
I’m a proud British Columbian. You’re a proud British Columbian. Let’s continue to do the work that British Columbians sent us here to do.
SHORT-TERM RENTAL STRATA PROPERTY
AND TOURISM
ACCOMMODATION
A. Walker: I, too, would like to talk about a definition on a provincial website, but a very different one, and that is related to short-term rentals.
Parksville is a unique community that depends on our tourism industry, and the short-term rental rules are still very unclear to many property owners in Parksville proper. I have communicated with the ministry staff on this through my office. I’ve even given the minister a heads-up.
I have two specific properties I’m hoping for some clarity on, as are the countless owners who own these units. Oceanside Village Resort and Sunrise Ridge are two strata hotels in our community. They have strata bylaws that require that they follow zoning, and that zoning does not allow for long-term stays. One of these properties has a non-mandatory rental pool. These, to all intents and purposes, are hotels. The guests would not know the difference.
The question to the minister, which has been asked for months now from people in my community. Will Oceanside Village Resorts and Sunrise Ridge be exempted from the new strata rules?
Hon. R. Kahlon: I thank the member for sharing, a few minutes ago, with my staff the question that he was going to ask.
I think it’s important to note — I think the member knows this — that his community has a 1.2 percent vacancy rate. People are struggling to find housing, not only in his community but in communities throughout British Columbia. We need to ensure that this housing remains available to British Columbians, so people can have a home. Then we can also attract the important workforce that we need, I know, in that community, the member’s community — attracting health care workers, etc.
Now, I also appreciate the member acknowledging that my staff have been working closely with him. As the emails come forward from different stakeholders, we are trying our fastest to provide every single one unique answers to their unique questions, just as of yesterday.
I can share with the member that strata hotel accommodations that operate like a hotel or motel can continue to do so. There are some unique situations with some of the strata hotels, in the way they’re structured, and the member knows we’re engaging with them right now on a path forward.
The Speaker: Member, supplemental.
A. Walker: The challenge is these people are not getting answers. These people have mortgage payments on these properties, and they don’t know what the rules are, because the staff they’re contacting in the minister’s office don’t know what the rules are. It’s incredibly frustrating to not have clarity. As the deadline approaches, it’s having tremendous impact on our tourism industry. I hope that at some point, before these rules come into force, these property owners will have the answers that they’re seeking.
I guess my follow-up question is to the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. The city of Parkville has 946 hotel rooms. That includes these strata units that we’ve talked about — Oceanside Village Resort, Beach Acres, Ocean Trails, Ocean Sands and Sunrise Ridge; and 289 units, out of our 900, are captured, potentially, by these new rules.
If we lose a third of our hotel accommodation going into summer this year in a tourism-dependent community, what is that ministry doing to ensure that our community is not negatively impacted?
Hon. R. Kahlon: Again, I appreciate the member’s question. I’ve already shared with him multiple times — I appreciate that he wants it on the record — that we are right now working with these strata hotels to ensure, if they’re operating like a hotel or motel…
Interjections.
The Speaker: Shhh.
Hon. R. Kahlon: …that they’ll continue to be able to do so. That’s a commitment I made to the….
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members.
The minister will continue.
Hon. R. Kahlon: The Official Opposition Leader used his question on a topic that most British Columbians are not even thinking about. He’s criticizing the member for asking a question that actually relates to something that is important to his community. I’d appreciate a serious question today in question period from the member across the way.
Again, my commitment to the member, as well as to the operators of these strata hotel accommodations, is that we’re going to continue to work with them on a path forward.
CROWN LAND LEGISLATION
AND CONSULTATION
PROCESS
M. Lee: The NDP government’s secretive handling of the Land Act amendments has fuelled division and a crisis of trust. First, they launched the so-called consultation without any public notice. Next, they declared that legislation would be drafted even before the end of the public comment period.
When the public caught wind, the NDP government’s response was to hastily and secretly alter the online engagement document, changing the rules of the game in secret. Who launches a consultation without informing the public? Who drafts amendments in secret, then quietly replaces the engagement document to suit their narrative? It’s this Premier’s NDP government; that’s who.
How can the Premier expect British Columbians, including Indigenous peoples, to have any trust in this government when every step they have taken has undermined transparency and accountability?
Hon. N. Cullen: Thank you for the question. A couple of important things. When talking about the ability to engage British Columbians on such an important issue as this, we have said from the beginning that we’ll take the time necessary to get it right, which is exactly what we’re doing.
The opposition leader scoffs, but I’ll read him some quotes from people that he might be interested in, because he’s clearly not interested in hearing. Well, I’ll read both sides of this conversation.
From the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers: “CAPP and its members express appreciation for the dedicated efforts of the ministry in fostering dialogue with all parties, including the business community in recent weeks. We remain steadfast in our partnering with Treaty 8 Nations, where our operations are located.”
From the Association for Mineral Exploration: “AME supports the government’s commitment to the implementation of DRIPA. We thank the minister for listening and engaging with AME’s current members.”
Let me read the other part of this conversation. From First Nations Leadership Council, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip: “We’re absolutely disgusted that the opposition leaders of the B.C. United and B.C. Conservatives leveraged the proposed Land Act amendments as a shameless opportunity for partisan political gain.”
From Chief Terry Teegee….
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members.
Hon. N. Cullen: I’m not sure if the opposition leader understands the gravity of the conversation that we’re attempting to have and that the divisive….
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members. Members.
Members, please. Members, order.
The minister will continue.
Hon. N. Cullen: Regional Chief Terry Teegee said: “B.C. First Nations have fought relentlessly for recognition of our basic human rights” and “the commitment to shared decision-making.” I’ll end here.
The Leader of the Official Opposition recently said in an interview, just on February 13, that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act was “an aspirational document.” It’s not an aspirational document; it’s the law. It’s the law that requires.…
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members. Members.
The minister will conclude.
Hon. N. Cullen: It’s the law that allows us to work together on a path of shared decision-making — which, up until a few weeks ago, was the official opposition’s policy. I’ll quote that: “Consent-driven, shared decision-making.”
That is the work that we will actually continue to do. It is the work that we need to do together, in a respectful way, listening to each other in a meaningful dialogue. That is exactly what this government will continue to do.
CONSULTATION PROCESSES FOR
CROWN LAND LEGISLATION AND
WATERSHED SECURITY STRATEGY
T. Stone: Well, today we’re actually seeing more uncertainty on our land base than ever before. That’s happening under this Premier and the NDP. The result of all of this NDP uncertainty is that permits are increasingly delayed. Many just aren’t happening at all. Timelines are getting longer and longer. Major investment decisions are actually either pulling out of B.C., or they’re not coming here in the first place.
The NDP’s shoddy engagement process, as we’ve seen with their Land Act amendments, are fuelling distrust and division and creating massive uncertainty for all British Columbians. Sadly, it’s not only Joffre Lakes, Pender Harbour and these Land Act amendments that are examples of this. It turns out that the NDP are doing exactly the same thing with their Watershed Security Strategy Intentions Paper, a process that continues their pattern of sidelining the public, this time involving control over water management.
On page 10 of the intentions paper, strategic theme 2.1 reveals plans to extend veto-like authority in water decisions: “Identifying options and expectations for joint and/or consent-based decision-making in statutory decisions.” This is exactly the same path that the NDP have us careening down with their ill-advised Land Act amendments.
My question to the Premier is this. As the Premier did yesterday, with the Land Act amendments, will he stand in the House today and halt this divisive watershed security strategy, ensuring that when it comes to all public land and water management decisions, there is no veto provided to anyone, and that all British Columbians will be involved in these critical decisions?
Hon. N. Cullen: Watershed security, in the time of unprecedented wildfires and unprecedented droughts across our province, including in my friend’s region, requires our ability to work together, as we’ve been doing in Nicola Valley, Koksilah, and our hope is across regions, where we bring people together to talk about water scarcity and better planning with the agricultural community, who have stepped up in significant ways.
This is work that we need to do together, particularly with First Nations partners. On the watershed security strategy, we have funded significant amounts and worked with good partners like the Real Estate Foundation of B.C.
You see what the opposition is trying to do here, and it’s unfortunate. At a time when we are most needing to work together, they’re suggesting notions that do not exist, such as the incident where the member talked about a veto, which is not in the watershed security strategy. It is not in the acts that we brought forward, and it has been described again and again by the First Nations Leadership Council and others as fearmongering.
That is unhelpful, it is unnecessary, and it divides people. As they continue to call for people to come together, they do the exact opposite across the way. That is not a path that we will walk.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Members. Members.
Hon. N. Cullen: We will work on these important issues like drought and wildfire and watershed security, which I would have thought this House would have been able to come together and work together on.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order, Members.
Members, we are almost done.
Hon. N. Cullen: We’re dedicated to this work. It’s important work. It’s the work of reconciliation, and we’ll continue to do that work together. I look forward to it.
[End of question period.]
Orders of the Day
Hon. R. Kahlon: I call continued response to the throne speech in the main chamber.
[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]
Throne Speech Debate
(continued)
Deputy Speaker: All right, Members. We are going to resume the response to the Speech from the Throne.
N. Simons: It’s an honour and a privilege to stand and respond to the Speech from the Throne. As my colleague from Cowichan said yesterday, it’s always an honour to speak on a Speech from the Throne. It’s probably my last. I shouldn’t say my last, so as not to create rumours. But it’s my last opportunity to speak on a throne speech.
I reflect back on the first throne speech I heard in this chamber. It was the first year of 12 in opposition, and we heard about the five great goals for the golden decade.
At that point, I realized that sometimes throne speeches are designed to create a particular image about what the plans are for the province. Sometimes it’s heavy on the rhetoric, and sometimes it’s flowery language and almost seems like it’s a bit of an advertisement.
What I particularly like, in contrast, is the throne speech we heard this week in the House, which was replete with commitments to improve the lives of people in this province with concrete steps to be outlined in further detail, probably later today in the budget.
It spoke to the needs of all British Columbians, what is important to them, what is on their minds, what has caused them concern and where they feel government could continue to make investments and appropriate regulatory and legislative changes.
To contrast that, 19 years ago we heard about the five great goals for the golden decade. Some of the promises were attempted to achieve, with various levels of success. I think that the throne speech of today is one that really, truly reflects the real needs of British Columbians and is focused on practical solutions to the challenges that we and other places in the world are facing, including global inflation, the challenges with the poison drug supply, issues around inadequate housing.
Those are issues that other jurisdictions, not just across North America but other countries, have had to deal with, had to face and had to take on. I think British Columbia is well positioned to pursue these important goals.
Despite it being my last opportunity to speak to a throne speech, it’s a throne speech that gives me a lot of confidence for the future. It stands the province in good stead, as it is truly one that is focused on people, is focused on communities and what people in communities that we represent have asked us to focus on.
The solutions that are being proposed and the ideas that are being put forward in the throne speech relate to a number of different areas. Among them, of course, is the need for more homes, the need for more places for people to live.
We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who are without a home. We’ve seen considerable effort and considerable success in building homes and in finding homes that have already been built but have been empty.
I think the continued progress in this area is exactly what British Columbians expect their government to do. It may not be as flashy as saying “great golden goals,” but it’s practical, and it’s necessary, and it’s fundamental to a society where we choose to look after one another, where we choose to bring people together and not divide them, where we choose to look after those without a voice, those who are not politically engaged and those who are. We are focused on ensuring that we create the infrastructure in our communities that will serve not just our communities today but communities in the future.
I think the desire for all British Columbians is to live a life where people can achieve their fullest potential and where they see that their neighbours are empowered to do the same — neighbours who may not come from the same community, may come from other countries. Maybe they are people of different descent, but truly, our interest is in ensuring that we all can live a life that is fulfilling.
So that means that we need to have a strong system of supports.
We’ve seen what happens when they don’t exist. Sitting in opposition for 12 years, we saw, we felt, and we heard the concerns of individuals in our communities. We saw the protections for labour laws weakened. We saw child labour being reintroduced in this province, with the weakest protections for young people. We saw a minimum wage that stagnated. We saw earning power lost. We saw the increase in destitution.
During those 12 years, we planned for turning things around. We’ve come a long way towards making our society more fair and more just. Issues related to poverty are important to British Columbians. That’s why our government said it’s not enough to just say that we’re concerned about poverty; we would do something about it.
It might be old history for some, but we instituted a poverty reduction strategy with goals, with timelines. Those timelines were achieved. They continue to be updated, and our goals change as they get updated.
We have work to do. It’s not the flashy, publicity-attracting subject, but it’s important for our communities. When we address poverty in our communities, we have an impact on the child welfare system, on the justice system, and we create better conditions for people to live a life that they can be happy about.
We’ve seen issues around crime conflated with homelessness, a troubling trend that we’ve seen from some political sides. It’s important to remember that we’ve taken very important steps towards addressing the mental health and addictions crisis that exists not just here but in other jurisdictions, as well, by dedicating and identifying specific actions that need to be taken.
Harm reduction does save lives and, having experience in the sector, I also know that it’s important that we continue to invest in the treatment side. So 25 years ago, 30 years ago, we were already talking about the need for treatment beds. It was difficult, often, to find places for young people if they needed to go in to deal with a particular issue. We’re taking big steps towards addressing that.
There was a period of time in our province where investments in social programs dried up, and we fell behind. We fell behind not just as a society, but those individuals lost out who didn’t have an opportunity to engage in social programs that now exist. Those programs were not available to them. So I’m very pleased that this week’s throne speech, setting out the priorities for our government, includes ensuring that we help people in all circumstances.
This afternoon’s budget will go into detail about how our government is making those appropriate adjustments to programs, investments in housing, and we’ll get some clarity in that area. I’m just pleased that this is part of our ongoing progress towards making our society more fair.
It is troubling, of course…. It would be difficult not to mention the importance of community cohesion when we do see division in our society, division in our community, political division, sometimes promoted by the very people who are expected and elected to create good public policy that serves everyone. Unfortunately, we have people elected who believe that making statements that are without nuance, without thought and that have negative result, benefits them, and it’s troubling to see.
Every throne speech since I’ve been here has called for civil discussion in this place. It’s achieved in certain parts of this institution, but obviously not everywhere.
I hope that British Columbians see government as responding to their needs, not creating division, not dramatizing the bad or understating the good, understating the bad and overstating the good. We have work to do.
We are prepared to continue working on the important issues for British Columbians. This throne speech reflects the priorities of our government, which I believe reflect the priorities of British Columbians.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak in favour of the throne speech.
A. Walker: It is a privilege to join with my colleagues here and respond to the address from the throne on behalf of the people of Parksville-Qualicum.
As I was listening to the throne speech, I was reflecting on an experience I had at a Family Day skate that my office hosted. I know that every MLA office does what they can to create community events on these important statutory holidays. We hosted a free family skate and had close to 200 people show up, people as young as babies in strollers, wrapped and being pushed around the ice by their loving parents, and people as old as octogenarians, who, to be honest, were better skaters than I was.
The story that I want to reflect on was having met a family that had just arrived here from Cuba on vacation. They have a six-month travel visa. To hear someone from a land who has not been able to travel to other countries describe our province really casts a new lens on what it means to live in British Columbia. They described a place of utmost natural beauty. That’s something that we all reflect on in this place from time to time, claiming that our constituency is the best of all the others. It’s something that we often take for granted.
We wander through the forests and see these magnificent trees along the rugged coastlines of my constituency, the lakes and the rivers. That was something that this family reflected on. It was how beautiful the land was but also how beautiful the people are, how kind and giving and thoughtful and caring the people of our community are. That’s something that I wanted to reflect on.
The thing that really stuck with me is that this family, in many ways, is a mirror image of my own. The mother was the same age as my wife, the father was the same age as me, and they have one daughter that was sort of the average age of my two daughters. It’s just by sheer luck that they grew up in Cuba and I grew up here.
What they reflected on that was most impactful for them was that when they first showed up at the home that they were going to stay in for the next six months, they went into the pantry of this home, and the mother cried.
The idea that we have such wealth in a regular house, in a modest home in a regular neighbourhood. To have that much food was something that she had just never expected — that that’s the way that people lived. I have no idea what her first experience at Costco or at a Walmart Supercentre is going to be. But she really lightened me to the fact that we should be far more grateful for the fact that we live in this beautiful province.
It is not by accident that this province is as great as it is. It is because of people like people in this room, 87 MLAs that bring their stories and their experiences to this place, with a vision to always improve life for our communities and to make things better. It’s building on the shoulders of the people before us, the giants before us, leaders in our community.
I’ll recognize the MLA that held the seat before me. She worked hard in this place. All MLAs work hard in this place. I think we need to get away from the partisanship and pointing fingers at each other and really recognize that we’re all here to do our very best to make life better for people in our communities.
That doesn’t just end at generations. In my community, we have something like 8,000 or 10,000 years of Indigenous history of stewardship of the land. We often reflect on that, but to take a step back and to really think about what that means to spend not just generations but dozens or even hundreds of generations to look after this place, to leave it in a better place for the future, is where I want to start.
I want to start that way because I see an opportunity through this throne speech. I saw lots of references to the challenges that British Columbians face, but I did not see, and I hope to hear from future responses, an appetite to collaborate to solve these problems.
We are in a housing crisis. Everyone recognizes this. In question period just recently, we were talking about this, short-term rentals versus long-term tenancy. Yet we have a Leader of the Opposition from the B.C. United who spent the better part of his career in the private sector, building homes for people, presenting ideas, and I don’t know if this rent-to-own thing is a good idea or a bad idea, for a vision of what could be for housing to solve problems.
You watch the response from all sides of this House. We spend more time pointing fingers at each other than working towards solutions to the issues that really impact us all most. We need to get more homes built, and that’s going to happen by working together, all 87 MLAs bringing ideas, bringing their vision, bringing their perspective and really working towards that solution.
The throne speech didn’t mention that our K-to-12 system is in crisis, but for many, many students and parents, it is. We look to Surrey, and we see the number of portables that are growing every day — maybe not every day, but they’re certainly not diminishing.
I went to school in a portable. It was not exactly a great experience. The teacher was great. The students did the best they could, but when it was cold outside, it was cold in that portable, and you knew when summer break was coming because there was no air conditioning in that portable. But it was more than that. It was the distractions of the noise outside. It was the fact that this place wasn’t built to be a classroom.
I want to reflect on the fact that we have MLAs in this place that were former educators. The leader of the Green Party was a former educator, spent a portion of her career teaching high school. We need to work together to find solutions.
When we talk about individualized learning plans, I don’t know how many parents I’ve talked to that struggle to get a diagnosis, whether it’s ADHD or dyslexia. That, they feel, should be the first step to getting their students the care they need in school. Then they have to go to their teacher and to the principal and vice-principal and advocate for an individualized learning plan. Once they have this, they breathe a sigh of relief, because often they’ve spent years getting to this point only to be told by their teacher or an administrator: “We don’t have the resources to support your child.”
You know, when you start that journey of trying to make sure that your child is able to get the best possible outcome from the school experience, when you spend years trying to get that individualized learning plan, it’s not like your child is put in a freezer and put on hold and this all gets worked out. They continue to struggle, and that has lifelong impacts for those students.
We have real challenges in our K-to-12 system, and I think that we need to do better at listening to all members of this House to try to find solutions to these problems.
I don’t want to only highlight the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Third Party. Let’s talk about the forestry sector. We have seen a crisis in our forestry sector for longer than I’ve been alive. The way that we managed our forests, especially in the ’40s and ’50s when we started to see mechanization in the forests — chainsaws, industrial clearcut logging — it turned the landscape into a moonscape. There weren’t efforts to protect habitat. There weren’t even efforts to replant.
So that led to significant challenges not that long ago with the mountain pine beetle. You look at a map of the devastation caused by the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia, and if you didn’t know the geography of this province, you wouldn’t be out of line to expect that that was the delineation of a country. You know, the land base that was impacted by the mountain pine beetle was absolutely massive.
Then more recently, in 2017 and 2018 and last year, the forest fires that we all experienced…. We lost forest fire fighters. These are people who went into the woods, into the back country, to protect our landscape and our property, and they never came home. We had hundreds of homes lost to these forest fires, and we had tens of thousands of square kilometres, again, of beautiful landscape turned into a moonscape.
I raise this to point out the fact that the leader of the B.C. Conservatives, the Third Party, spent 20 years in the forest sector.
We all have opportunities to bring ideas and perspectives to this place that can help contribute to the solutions for these crises that we face here in this province. We need to work together if we’re going to get through this.
I was recently at the UBCM housing conference, which was, really, in all intents and purposes, an emergency conference to address some of the changes coming this May and this June to the way that homes are built in our province. I was joined there with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Minister of Housing, the members for Saanich North and the Islands and West Vancouver–Capilano.
There were dozens of mayors and hundreds of councillors sharing their concerns and their perspectives. Their biggest concern was that they felt they weren’t heard in the processes that led up to the legislative changes last fall — massive changes to the way that housing is approved in our province.
There was one comment made by a speaker that really stuck with me. He described that in the 1970s, we had seven people in the workforce for every one person that has retired. If demographic trends continue, we could see ourselves in a province where we have three people in the workforce for every one person retired.
When I think about that, I think of several challenges that that could lead to. First, and most obvious to me, is: that is our tax base. When somebody is working, they’re paying income tax. They’re contributing financially to the services that we all rely on. When that tax base is cut dramatically, the debt service payments and the expenditures made by previous governments become a lot more real when there are fewer people paying those taxes.
But for most people living their day-to-day lives, the way they’re going to see this is what we’re seeing today. You go to get some plumbing done in your house, and the plumber says: “We’re booked up for six weeks. We’ll get you when we can.” You go to get services done, whether it’s drafting a will or going to a doctor’s office, and they don’t have enough staff to be able to serve you. But they’re doing their darndest to get through this.
We need to learn to do a lot more with a lot less. It’s not a catchy slogan. I don’t anticipate to see it on any election signs come October. But it is a practical reality that we need to deal with here in this place, and we’re going to do that only if we work together.
I think of the retirees in my community, a much older population. It’s really the future that our communities will be looking towards. It is a tremendous struggle when you’re in your 60s, your 70s, your 80s, 90s, living alone and trying to get care, whether that’s help mowing your lawn or whether that’s home support. When there’s not enough staff to look after people, they can deteriorate really quickly.
We need to find ways that we can, in this place — through policy, through the budget that’s going to be coming up later today — deliver a lot more for British Columbians with a lot less.
In housing, we need to figure out how to get more homes built for less money. We have 660,000 renters in this province, and a lot of them are loathing the idea that at some point, they will be evicted from their homes, and they will have nowhere to go. It’s an experience that I hear through my office on a regular basis, but it’s an experience that we all talk about around the kitchen table.
Good friends of ours that have been renting for years find themselves with an eviction notice and absolutely no way to pay for their future lodging. I see on Facebook that there is a post in my community about new rentals built. A 600-square-foot unit, beautiful unit, right downtown. You could walk to everything you need. Not luxury, modest. A 600-square-foot, one-bedroom unit is $2,100 a month. You want an 800-square-foot unit with two bedrooms? That’s $2,900 a month. That’s a lot of money, and for a lot of people on fixed incomes in our community, it is completely unattainable.
So I applaud this government with the $2 billion dedicated to BC Builds, similar to the housing hub that was launched before, and leveraging that with the federal government with another investment of $2 billion. That’s going to have a huge impact on people. But when the target is 4,000 homes, 4,000 new rental units, if they are all to be rental units…. When you’re talking about close to one million people that are renting, that’s not going to provide relief to the average British Columbian.
It will help. I’m by no means diminishing the efforts or the impacts, but we need to do a lot more with a lot less. We have seen the challenges with building housing in communities. It’s not just based on having the labour or the cost of materials. But the basic infrastructure to get homes built in our communities is beyond the reach of local governments.
The tax base is stretched so thin that when we look at rapidly expanding the number of homes in our communities…. Local governments are pleading for help with infrastructure. In my community, the wastewater pollution control centre — I think it’s $120 million to upgrade that facility. That’s not so that we can continue to see the rapid growth in our communities. That’s just to maintain compliance with federal rules.
If we are going to see the type of development that we need to bring housing costs down, we need to work together. We need to work with local governments to bring the cost of the infrastructure down so that we can see these homes built. That also is going to mean that we need to change the way the homes themselves are built.
I was pleased to see, in the throne speech, a reference to the strawberry box homes of the Second World War. These are cute, compact, efficient homes. Many of them still exist, and many of them were built in a quasi-factory environment, showing up to the worksite in modular pieces.
That was an innovation, but it had a consequence with the way that land use planning works in our province. It was the federal government solving a problem for veterans. They had learned, from the First World War, how not to do things. They built whole new communities that were built around single-family homes. It was expensive to maintain the infrastructure and impossible to provide public transit, in any meaningful way, but it was a way to bring the costs down.
When I hear in the throne speech the reference to factory-built homes, that inspires me. That is what the throne speech is supposed to do: to cast a vision for the future of our province. That one little line there has me inspired.
I’m hoping that we’re going to see some focus on factory-built homes, not single-family homes but multi-family homes — find ways to not only reduce costs but also reduce waste so that we can get more homes built for less money. That’s going to come, to a certain extent, with some leadership that’s going to be needed, with whole new communities.
We haven’t seen, in this province, new communities built in a long time. We talk about how hundreds of thousands of people come to this province every year, and that’s why things are so difficult. Well, at a certain point, we need to, as a province, recognize that we’re not going to get to where we need to go by relying on local governments to upzone here and fill in these little armpit properties there.
We’re going to have to build whole new communities — communities that are built around a vision for what we want this province to be: walkable communities, efficient communities, communities with enough natural space that people don’t feel like they’re living in a concrete jungle, and communities that have been planned in advance with the health care and the education facilities so that, as these communities grow, we don’t see students in portables.
We have a real opportunity here. The province owns 95 percent of our land base. We have First Nations that are looking to diversify into other economic opportunities. We should work together, not just as MLAs in this chamber but as leaders in our community, to deliver a huge number of housing units, to bring the price down and to get people into the homes they deserve.
We, in our community, have seen far too many people coming through our constituency office — predominantly seniors, predominantly living alone — that show up with an eviction notice. I’ve shared these stories many, many times with the Speaker here. It is a tragic thing when you have a 75-year-old woman, living alone, who has to live in her car until B.C. Housing can find her a home in another community.
Our office has now had to buy bus tickets, but also tickets to our local swimming pool so that these people can have a shower, a safe place that they can clean themselves up. It’s not the role that a constituency office is supposed to play, but it’s the role that we find ourselves, more and more, playing.
It’s frustrating because a lot of these seniors who live alone have pets. Now they’re being told: “Well, we have a home for you, but you have to leave your community. You have to leave your doctor, you have to leave your social connections, and you have to leave your pet.” That is not the solution that people deserve, especially in their later years. We need to figure out how to get more done with less. That is a theme that I want to continue on through here.
Next is health care. I want to give huge kudos to the Minister of Health. More than 700 new family doctors, I hear, in this province. — That’s great, but that is not just one announcement. That is work that has been done over seven years — by the Ministry of Health, by their staff and by this government — to get more doctors trained, to get international medical graduates’ credentials recognized and to build out a primary care system that people deserve.
It’s no surprise, to the Minister of Health, that we have some real challenges. We have more doctors per capita here in British Columbia than any other province, except for Nova Scotia. We have more doctors per capita now, today, than we did a generation ago, yet we still have a reported one million people in this province without a family doctor. That’s a real struggle.
We need to learn to do more with less. That is going to mean less reliance on walk-in clinics — that episodic care that we are currently seeing massive wait times for in this province — and getting into more team-based, longitudinal care. I see this again and again through my office: someone who is able to get a test to find out that they have cancer. They get a phone call from the B.C. Cancer Agency saying, “Who’s your primary care practitioner? This is serious. You need to have a real conversation,” only to have somebody say: “Well, I don’t have a family doctor.”
I mean, these are awful conversations to have with people, and we need to find ways to do more with less. We need to have a team-based environment where doctors have that nurse practitioner or the registered nurse in their clinic. To give credit to Island Health and the ministry, there is funding for that, and we’re seeing an expansion of that, but we need to move a lot more quickly.
We have a tremendous number of doctors in my community, as well as in others across this province, that are, if not years, months away from retirement. In Parksville-Qualicum — I don’t mean the constituency; I mean the communities of Parksville and Qualicum Beach, less than 50,000 people — we have, now, 12,000 people on a wait-list, looking for a family doctor. That’s not 12,000 people that are unattached. That’s 12,000 people who have taken the time to say: “Hey, I need help.” They are seeing wait times of three years right now.
That’s not good enough for people in our community. I will give credit to the Minister of Health for great progress, but there’s more we need to do. That needs to happen by doing more with less. We need more team-based practices that move us away from this idea that a walk-in clinic is how care should be delivered in this province.
I see there’s also an opportunity for more direct, democratic processes in our local health delivery. We have primary care networks, a tremendous initiative. The idea that a network will connect the health authority, the division and the local stakeholders together to deliver primary care is a great initiative.
In my community, they came up with a service plan in 2018. The reality is very different now than it was in 2018, and they are uncertain as to whether they can even work outside of that service plan to deliver the results in their community. We have a local division of family practice that’s doing an incredible job. We have doctors coming into our community wanting to set up practice here or, rather, to join a team-based environment, but there are no team-based environments to come to. So they continue to move to other communities.
We need to add some accountability and some transparency to this process. Our school boards, our school trustees, manage the budget for our local school district. They have public meetings. Why is it that we cannot have a framework where, whether it’s like the school board or like our library boards, there is some transparency to the processes that are taking place, where there’s an opportunity for advocates?
I met with a woman recently who had been either the chief medical health officer or the CEO of a health authority in Prince Edward Island. She wants to help. Our communities are full of people that are brimming with ideas, but there is nowhere for them to go to contribute to fix some of these crises that we see. That is something that we need to deal with together. We need to work together to find solutions to these challenges that face our province.
In forestry, we keep hearing about a slogan that we need to get more value with less fibre or more dollars out of every tree. That’s a slogan I certainly can agree with. We need to do more with this incredible resource that we have in this province.
Back to the conversation about factory-built homes, we heard from the federal Housing Minister that there are companies that want to set up, that want to build purpose-built apartment buildings through a factory-like setting. These are large factories, but they don’t have the business certainty that they’re going to be able to operate for two, five, ten years. So those investments are not taking place.
I’ve got to imagine that if we lived in a province where we connected that forest land base to local mills, to local factories, with long-range planning to build homes for people, we would see that inspirational work that needs to take place, that efficiency of a factory-based setup.
The idea of having a factory that builds homes means that your labour costs go down dramatically. You have the skilled people, at the right place, at the right time, to get these homes built, but you also have virtually no waste.
You, as a factory, work with the sawmills. The wood that gets delivered is exactly what you need, to the spec you need. You’re not working out in the wet. You’re not going to have spoilage or wastage or that type of a challenge because you’re working in a controlled environment.
But we will not see, to the scale that we need, these types of companies set up if there’s not more certainty. More certainty with fibre, more certainty with the regulatory process, more certainty with the building code process and, fundamentally, more certainty that these units could be built. There are tremendous opportunities through the investments, through B.C. Housing, to make sure that these types of infrastructure developments take place in our province, and we do that together. We should be doing that together.
Even more than just getting more fibre per hectare of land, we need to manage those forests in a more sustainable way. We heard calls from many people across this province about the idea of a chief ecologist, someone who is there to represent not just the sustainability of the harvest, but the sustainability of these watersheds. That needs to be a part of this conversation.
We need to do more with less. I have all sorts of notes here that…. I see I have five minutes left, so maybe I will speed things along.
Last will be just on agriculture. We need to get more food from the land that we have, or many times, less land. I applaud this government’s initiatives with agritech. It’s great to see some of these companies popping up on the Lower Mainland. But in my neck of the woods, we have a tremendous potential with agricultural land that’s in the agricultural land reserve. But the policies aren’t in place to incentivize farming on that land.
We need to find ways together to get that land under till, under cultivation, so that we on Vancouver Island are substantially less reliant on imported food. It is something we have talked about for generations in this place, and frankly, we haven’t seen action on it.
The food hubs that exist in my community and elsewhere across the province are great initiatives. Local food processing, a co-op model where people can come together. That is fantastic. But if we can get more soil under till, we will see the cost of food come down. We will see more local food production. That is a future that I think all British Columbians can get behind.
I was going to share the story about how I got the scar on my leg from this deer, but I see I don’t have time for that.
There are ways that we can work together to prevent unintended consequences. At the recent housing conference at UBCM, we heard from the mayor of Richmond and we heard from the mayors of Burnaby and Coquitlam about the unintended consequences of the housing statutes that came through last fall. They have expressed their concern that they are actually seeing less housing development right now because of the uncertainty that this has created.
They are seeing concerns that…. They have already shown leadership to create the zones for higher-density housing in excess of the four units per single-family lot that we are going to see in my community. But they excluded certain single-family neighbourhoods because it didn’t make sense because of the infrastructure required, because of the public transportation that will never be available there, and because of the environmental impact that that would have on their communities.
They shared the unintended consequences that they are now having to live with and to deal with. Each of those mayors has said they’re going to do what they can to work with the government to make sure that they’re meeting their obligations. But they’re going to do that by working faster than they’d like. They’re going to do that by cutting corners. They have expressed that it’s going to come at a significant toll to their community.
I raise this because we have had the opportunity, through these debates, to listen to the opposition, who have raised these concerns in this House. We should do everything we can to prevent those unintended consequences.
In my last two minutes, I just want to reference and contrast the throne speech from this session from that from last session. Last session, it was about tangible metrics and tangible actions to solve tangible problems, whereas this year, we are seeing a recognition of the crises that we face across this province, but we are not seeing those tangible actions that we are hoping to see.
In the past, in 2023, it was about public safety, mental health, future-proofing infrastructure and tackling affordability with clear policy objectives.
One stark example to me is that, in 2023, in the throne speech, we saw clear actions for old-growth forests. Yet in this throne speech, it wasn’t mentioned at all.
It’s easy, in this place, to forget what’s been said before. It’s easy in this place to ignore the history of the past. I encourage all members to listen to the throne speech from 2017. It was an interesting time for government. It was an interesting time for staff in this place.
To hear the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill, in her response, talk about how, with the change of government, and this was in 2017, their government would address the housing crisis…. Their government would ensure that everyone had a family doctor. Their government was going to be the right government to address the opiate crisis.
We don’t listen enough to what has been said in this place in the past. The fact is that we keep hearing the same thing again and again, yet people in our communities are seeing their quality of life go backwards. They’re seeing that there is so much opportunity to do better. So I want to thank all the members who have spoken before me, and I want to thank the members who will follow with me in this.
This throne speech should be about working together, collaborating, doing everything we can to make life better for the people in our communities. I think we have a tremendous opportunity to do that as one.
T. Halford: It’s always a great privilege and opportunity to stand and speak in this House at any opportunity, much less a throne speech.
I woke up this morning with the news that in my community of White Rock, there had been a shooting this morning. We’ll talk about how that ties into the throne speech. Four people shot. Police are saying that they believe it to be targeted.
The peninsula is an area that I’ve lived my entire 40 years. It’s a place that my wife Holly and I are proud to call home and raise our three children. It’s changed a lot, in some very good ways. But it’s changed a lot, in some very concerning ways.
In the throne speech that we heard a few days back, for my community of Surrey–White Rock, I don’t think those concerns have been alleviated in any way. We talk about some of the main core issues that we have. It’s affordability. It’s health care. It’s education. It’s law and order. Those were briefly touched upon in the throne speech. But in terms of concrete solutions that people can count on, that people can trust….
I think they view it as a lot of empty rhetoric that they’ve seen for seven years now, a lot of overpromises and underdelivering from this current government.
We talk about the fact that in my community, and I’m very proud of this, we have a very high number of seniors that live there. I always reflect on the fact that people tell me that the community of White Rock is home to $2 million, $5 million, $10 million houses, and yeah, we have some of those. I’m not living in one of them, but we have them. But we also have people that are just hanging on when it comes to what they’re renting. In the last month, I’ve had two devastating experiences with that.
We had a snowstorm. We were able to keep our offices open, and I thank my constituency assistants Roxanne Black and Jacob for making sure that we were able to do that.
It was probably minus 5 at the time, and we had a knock on the door from a lady. She’s in her mid-80s, and she can’t communicate. She can’t communicate over email, and she definitely cannot communicate over phone, but she came in. She was shaken up, and she was distraught. The only way that we could communicate with her was handwritten notes.
I came out, and I wrote a note. I said: “How can we help?” She was freezing cold, and she wrote me back and said: “I have no heat. I have no heat. Nobody in my building has heat.” I asked how long this had been going on for, and it had been going on for about 96 hours.
We immediately went with her to her building, which is about a block and a half from my office. We walked in there. It was like walking into a cooler at Safeway. It was like walking into a dairy cooler.
One senior opened their door. They were heating their apartment with their oven. That’s how they were heating their apartment — with their oven.
The other one…. Her mom came down specifically, from Edmonton, to help. Her mom had just been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. She was using a little portable heater that her daughter knew she was keeping under her bed. Okay. Under her bed.
When you look at situations like that and the fact that these people were so scared…. The landlord told them: “If you don’t like it, then maybe you should find another place to live.” Now, that person had been there for 40 years. For 40 years, they had lived there.
When we talk about…. The fact is that person knows that if they go anywhere else, they can’t afford their groceries. They can’t afford their transit. They can’t afford to get their grandchild a gift for Christmas or for their birthday. Those are the decisions that seniors in my community are making right now, and they’re gut-wrenching.
The other issue we had, a week ago, is…. We’ve been dealing with it for three weeks now — another area in South Surrey. They saw the story about the apartment complex in White Rock. The other place, in South Surrey…. No heat for two years. No hot water for a month.
I went there as soon as I heard about it. There was one lady, and she had burn marks on her arm. I asked: “How did you get your burn marks?” She goes: “I got those burn marks because it’s the only way I can bathe myself. I boil water. That’s how I clean myself, and I’ve scalded myself on my arms.”
Another lady said: “I’m embarrassed to go into work because I can’t have a shower.”
They’re scared. They’re scared to say anything, because they don’t know if there is another place for them to go in the community that they’ve grown up in, the community that they’ve lived in, the community that they work in.
[The Speaker in the chair.]
To be honest, I don’t want them to go anywhere, because that is their community. They deserve to be there. It doesn’t matter what their T4 says or their income level says. It does not matter the kind of car they drive. They deserve to be a part of that community, and I’m proud that they are a part of that community.
I want to ensure that they remain a part of that community. I will fight every day to make sure that happens, but we all have to do that. I guarantee you that I am not the only riding that is dealing with this in this moment, where people are scared because they’re going without the basic necessities of something like heat and hot water.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve my place for continued debate, and I adjourn the debate.
T. Halford moved adjournment of debate.
Motion approved.
Hon. N. Sharma moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1 p.m. today.
The House adjourned at 11:54 a.m.