Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Kahlon: In the main chamber, I call second reading on Bill 17, Police Amendment Act.

In the Douglas Fir Committee Room, I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 9, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act.

In the Birch Committee Room, I call Committee of Supply for the Ministry of Water, Land, Resource Stewardship, followed by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

R. Merrifield: I seek leave to introduce a petition.

Leave granted.

The Speaker: Please proceed.

Petitions

R. Merrifield: I have the honour of presenting a petition signed by 2,510 concerned parents and community members urgently appealing for support in keeping Childhood Connections operational.

Childhood Connections serves as a cornerstone in our community, offering invaluable services that foster early childhood development, support to families in need and provides an inclusive and safe space for all kids. In light of this, we humbly urge you to consider the far-reaching impact of Childhood Connections and take immediate action to secure its future. Our community’s strength lies in its ability to come together to support its most vulnerable members.

Today I stand united with each of these signatories — in fact, mine is one of them — in our plea to preserve this vital service that has touched so many.

The Speaker: Thank you.

R. Merrifield: Thank you for your attention to this matter and for your ongoing dedication to the welfare of all British Columbians.

The Speaker: Thank you, Member.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 17 — POLICE AMENDMENT ACT, 2024

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading of Bill 17 intituled the Police Amendment Act, 2024.

I move that the bill now be read a second time.

It’s my pleasure to rise today to speak about Bill 17, the Police Amendment Act, 2024. The bill amends the Police Act as an initial step towards broader policing and oversight legislative reform and addresses recommendations of the 2019 Special Committee to Review the Police Complaint Process and the 2022 Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act.

[3:45 p.m.]

It is a substantive and complex package with a focus on the themes of municipal police governance, police oversight and tiered policing. The bill is very technical because about 40 percent of the amendments will come into force on royal assent, and 60 percent will come into force by regulation. With respect to the amendments that come into force by regulation, these regulations may occur at different times. As a result, there are sometimes multiple amending clauses that all amend into the same section of the act.

Amendments under the theme of municipal police governance enhance police governance by revisiting the mayor’s role on a police board. Municipal governments will have the ability to determine which council member will represent the council on the police board. This change will allow municipal councils to decide who represents them on their police board. This more flexible approach ensures that decisions are made at the local level and based on the needs and uniqueness of each individual community. This responds to the 2022 special committee recommendation No. 2.

Creating a process for all police board members to elect a chair and vice-chair. These changes will provide stability for the boards and improve police board independence and community representation. Establishing new mandatory training requirements for all police board members and an authority for the director of police services to establish a code of conduct for police board members. This amendment is intended to ensure board members are held to the highest ethical standards in the fulfilment of their duties and to increase public confidence in policing governance. This change responds to the 2022 special committee report.

Clarifying how police budgets are approved. Municipal councils will now be required to notify the ministry if they have not approved the proposed budget by the 15th of May each year. The director of police services will remain the final decision-maker for budget disputes.

This government recognizes the urgency and challenges in some communities around police conduct. This bill will improve public confidence in police oversight by adding additional actions to the definition of misconduct and aligning the types of discriminatory behaviour that are police misconduct with the B.C. human rights code. This responds to 2022 special committee recommendation No. 9.

Establishing a process to ensure that an officer who moves between different police agencies can have disciplinary consequences imposed by their current employer for misconduct that occurred in their previous role. Making municipal police misconduct oversight more efficient by allowing the Police Complaint Commissioner to call a public hearing within six months instead of having to wait until the conclusion of the disciplinary proceeding, which can take years. This responds to 2019 special committee recommendation No. 16.

Allowing the Police Complaint Commissioner to combine related complaints into a single public hearing, increasing the types of complaints that can be resolved informally. This responds to 2022 special committee recommendation No. 9.

Providing the Police Complaint Commissioner with guideline-making authority respecting the investigative and disciplinary process. This responds to 2019 special committee recommendation No. 13.

This bill will provide better outcomes for diverse communities by authorizing the Police Complaint Commissioner to conduct systemic reviews of issues related to police misconduct and complaints. This responds to 2019 special committee recommendation No. 12.

Appoint a broader range of misconduct observers and cultural safety monitors, including members of Indigenous communities. This responds to 2019 special committee recommendation No. 9.

There is currently a gap in the independent oversight of misconduct complaints against detention guards in police lockups. Some of the amendments are designed to close this gap by expanding the mandate of the independent investigations office to include anyone who is working as a lockup guard and requiring that municipalities which are responsible for paying for their own police services only employ lockup guards who are also subject to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner oversight.

[3:50 p.m.]

These amendments respond to 2019 special committee recommendation No. 25 and are supported by the Human Rights Commissioner, the Ombudsperson, the Police Complaint Commissioner and the independent investigations office.

Supporting communities and being responsive to their needs are key parts of this bill. We are doing this by enabling the Solicitor General to delegate to the director of police services the power to reassign municipal constables during an emergency. This is a tool to help government respond faster to our communities in the event of an emergency such as a natural disaster. This responds to the 2019 special committee recommendation No. 25.

Making amendments to the designated policing units and the designated law enforcement units legislative scheme. The authority to create these units was established in the late ’90s, and that is not changing. Our intention on who would be authorized to have a designated unit has not changed. To be clear, we do not support corporate policing.

These amendments solely eliminate the undue difficulty and red tape associated with how designated units are established and amended. This responds to the 2022 special committee recommendation No. 5(c).

Creating a new class of safety officer that can be directly employed by entities such as local governments and First Nations to provide prescribed law enforcement duties. The intention here is not to delegate the responsibility to pro­vide policing services. The responsibility to provide adequate and effective policing remains with government and municipalities over 5,000 persons.

The intention is to provide a new tool that supplements local policing and that gives other levels of government control over their law enforcement needs. For example, First Nations enforcement officers who are recognized under the Police Act as peace officers. The new officer class would be permitted to perform a range of duties to supplement policing and also to fill community service roles.

These amendments respond to the 2022 special committee recommendation No. 5(c).

The bill also addresses other amendments to modernize language in the act, including…. The 96 references to “police force” are being updated to “police service” in the act and across all provincial statutes. The phrase “police service” better reflects the variety of services delivered by police.

Improving the regulatory authority with respect to police uniforms by including the ability to regulate symbols, patches and insignia and allowing for inclusive cultural or religious attire. Removing outdated gendered uniform requirements, like the wearing of hosiery or skirts, is also an improvement.

Modernizing antiquated liability provisions to clarify the government should be named as a defendant, rather than the minister, and that the province or municipality can be jointly liable with police officers in limited circumstances.

Elements of this legislation are similar to existing legislation in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario.

These amendments are part of the first step of policing legislation reform in response to recommendations made by various special committees and reports. They are an interim step. The next work around reform has already begun. It includes comprehensive engagement on further recommendations of the 2022 special committee such as police funding models, training in culture, Indigenous policing and further work in the areas of oversight and governance.

I am pleased to open debate on this important piece of legislation.

M. Morris: I did take some time to go through that particular bill. It is complex, as the minister has suggested.

As such, I’m also asking for his indulgence, on time, to give myself and staff adequate time to go through it in detail and to prepare ourselves for the committee stage. I think the committee stage will be quite lengthy, as well, to go through all these new changes that the minister has inferred.

There are a couple of aspects of the bill. I have looked through it two or three times, and I’ve had to keep going back and forth to reference different changes in the bill itself.

[3:55 p.m.]

One thing I find glaringly absent…. It goes back to my time in the chair as well, as the Solicitor General. When we pop the hood open on a complex bill like the Police Act…. I was hoping to see that there would be some metrics placed around adequate and effective policing — to define that so that local governments, police boards and people in British Columbia know what that entails. I’ll get into that as we move through this exchange.

I want to talk, first, though…. A lot of the bill focuses on additional oversight, going back to the report from 2022. We can always provide better oversight, and we can always do better in just about everything that we do. I’ve been a proponent of that for years.

I also have to say this. There is no other profession in Canada that endures a level of existing oversight that the police profession does right across Canada, and rightly so. When police are engaging with the citizens of Canada, and the police have the ability to revoke somebody’s Charter rights, temporarily perhaps, as they arrest somebody and place them in custody, or deal with them in a number of different ways that police do, there needs to be that high level of oversight for the police officers.

I want to go over some of the oversight provisions that we already have in Canada and in British Columbia here.

Somebody phones 911. They’ve got a complaint, and the complaint is processed through to the police, and the police respond.

There are a number of different responses that the police can make. But the complainant, if they’re not happy with the way the police are responding, can file a complaint with the RCMP Civilian Review Complaints commissioner or the office of the complaints commissioner with the independent municipal police forces in British Columbia. Or they can complain to the B.C. Human Rights Commission. Or ultimately, they could also complain to the B.C. Ombudsperson.

And those individual offices take a lot of time and go through a lot of detail when they’re examining the complaint and the actions of the police office, no matter where that particular complaint was focusing on, whether it’s the 911-taker, whether it’s the quality of the investigation or the response by the police officer themselves.

Internally, though, the oversight that police forces have, and I’ve used those internal oversight mechanisms many times, is a quality assurance process where you identify the high-risk activities that police officers and investigators take to do their job and make sure that they’re in compliance with the laws and policies of the land. That’s done on a routine basis.

There are also supervisors that review those files and make sure that the investigator and the people involved in those files are doing the jobs that they’re supposed to do.

There are also external mechanisms, at this particular point in time, when we have an incident that takes place, and we have the independent investigation office that has to come in and provide that oversight to make sure the police operate in compliance with existing laws and policies and the Charter and those other things. There’s oversight involved with the coroner’s inquiry or inquest or any other tribunal that may be set up to review a particular incident in the public forum. All oversight.

There’s another level of oversight that police forces in British Columbia and Canada also have to satisfy. Every investigation they undertake, or every complaint that might lead to a criminal charge, ends up having the judicial oversight provided by the provincial court. The first is Crown counsel. Crown counsel will go through the file to make sure the work was done properly and that the charge is applicable and the Charter rights have been upheld with the individuals that have been involved in that.

Then it goes to the provincial court, and it’ll go to a trial. And the trial will go over every single detail, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, or whatever that investigation might hold.

[4:00 p.m.]

Then there’s an appeal process. If the individual is not happy with the outcome of that, there’s an appeal process and another level of judicial oversight over that entire matter. Ultimately, of course, it could go to the Supreme Court of Canada, or it could go to the federal court. So there is a number of oversight mechanisms that the police are already subjected to, throughout the work that they conduct on a daily basis.

They never know where an investigation will go, so they have to ensure that they follow the protocols, the policies, the law, the Charter, all those things that guide a police officer in their investigation, to make sure that nothing hampers the outcome of an investigation. It gets to Crown counsel, and Crown counsel approves the charge, or it finally gets to court, and the courts don’t find any problem with the investigation itself. That’s the ultimate goal.

The level of oversight that police officers follow is rigorous. The level of oversight that is provided in all of those entities and all of those levels is constantly upgraded, assessed, new jurisprudence coming in from the various court levels that’s passed on. As a police supervisor, as a police manager, I had to rewrite a lot of the policies internally for our detachments and our investigators to make sure that they were following those updated audits and reviews and jurisprudence.

Oversight is…. I support oversight. Everybody needs somebody looking over their shoulder, particularly in the function of a police officer, to make sure that those Charter rights and the citizens’ rights are protected. But we also have to ensure that the police officers’ rights are protected as well. They work in a very complex arena, where they are enforcing these different laws. If something occurs where, perhaps, they may have inadvertently missed something in the Charter or missed a step important in the investigation, then they are also protected by due process and whatnot. It’s complex.

I know this bill also talks about the IIO and the Public Complaints Commission. But for the IIO, in particular, there will be training offered. The bill addresses a number of those areas there. But that’s a very complex issue as well.

There’s a fine line, when they are investigating a situa­tion, when it comes to determining the difference between civil and criminal, between a policy issue versus a criminal issue — a number of factors there. It’s a complex world that these investigators are in, and I applaud this bill in addressing some additional training for IIO officers and identifying, perhaps, who those officers might be.

I want to go back to adequate and effective policing. I think that was a hole that I struggled with when I was trying to determine the adequate level of policing throughout our province and the different detachments that we have. I’m thinking: how does a minister or the director of police services determine what that adequate level and effective level of police service is?

When I see this bill come forward…. Maybe there’s something in the bill that I haven’t looked at yet because of the complexities associated to the bill. But this was an area that I think we needed to clarify to give the director of police services the ability to address that with detachments or municipalities or police boards that probably should be taking some action in order to address those things.

I look at Surrey detachment as an example, because Surrey is front and centre. Looking at the amendments to this act that it addresses, there are some good things in here that needed to be addressed with respect to guards and matrons, the function that they perform; liabilities and issues around municipalities and government; and IIO training. But is the issue around police boards and police entities?

[4:05 p.m.]

Do we have so many rogue boards and communities out there that this was the focus, or this was something that was a higher risk and required more time to look at, rather than to define what adequate and effective policing resources might look like from a metric perspective?

I tried to look at Surrey, just because Surrey has been highlighted now for some time, and the current stats for police resources in British Columbia for 2022. I’m just trying to…. What does Surrey look like today? But there were no stats recorded for Surrey for 2022, and it’s referred to as a community in transition.

I had to go back to 2021 to define those particular stats. Those stats, in 2021, showed Surrey having a criminal caseload of 47 cases per officer. I use that because that’s what I used to use as a detachment commander, and as a district officer as well, in determining my workload for the members of the 42 detachments that I provided oversight to, to make sure that everybody had the resources necessary that I was capable of providing at the end of the day.

So 47 cases per member in Surrey detachment is pretty good, with a crime rate of 65 cases per 100,000 population. I look at places like Prince George municipal detachment, which has a caseload of 120 cases per member and 208 crimes for a crime rate. I look at detachments like Campbell River, with 106 and a crime rate of 128, or Coquitlam municipal, with a caseload of 138 files per member.

When I look at Surrey, and I look at the emphasis and the pressures that have been brought to bear on the municipality of Surrey, I’m just wondering where the impetus was to do this. When I look at provincial detachment areas that we have around the province here as well…. I didn’t highlight them on this.

I look at many of the provincially funded detachments that are the responsibility under the Sol. Gen without a municipal contract or without a police board, with rates as high as 600 or 400 or 250 crimes per member to look at. Most of them are all very serious persons crimes, with serious sexual assaults, assault causing bodily harm and in communities like Kwadacha, which is the north end of Williston Lake, and even further north that are hours away from any kind of a backup unit, or Takla or Vanderhoof even or some of those other communities that are the responsibility of the provincial government that have been overlooked.

There’s nothing in this amendment that gives me any confidence that is going to change in the coming future. To me, that’s a very high risk. When we see our members working hard, trying to investigate 150 crimes a year per police officer, which exceeds Surrey’s 47, that’s a priority. How are we going to address that community and provide the help necessary for those men and women doing the work to make sure that they don’t get burned out, to make sure they have the support that they need, dealing with all the issues that we have to deal with today?

There was nothing in the amendments that gave me any confidence that this particular issue was being addressed. Add to that, in every community that we have, including our First Nations community, the devastating conse­quences on decrim and the number of opiate overdoses that we’re seeing increasing everywhere we go. The impact that that has in our communities on homelessness, on crime…. The police are trying to deal with these issues. It’s like sticking your finger in a dike that’s got a million holes in it. You don’t know which one to stick your finger into.

[4:10 p.m.]

They’re trying to deal with addictions and mental illness with no tools. The default is always to call the police, and the police are trying to deal with it as best they can. Oftentimes these individuals are violent. Oftentimes the individuals are committing criminal offences that…. They’re required to be arrested to prevent the offence from happening or to keep the public safe. Yet, there’s no mention in here on how we’re going to help the police officers in those particular types of circumstances.

Then you add on that the lack of addictions recovery centres provincially and regionally. It doesn’t matter where they are. You add to that the number of individuals that we see in just about every community that are suffering from acquired brain injuries associated with increased overdoses and the number of overdoses that they’ve had. Each time they have an overdose, that brain injury gets worse. The police are left to deal with this because there is no infrastructure in place outside of the major centres, perhaps, and there are not even enough down here to help the police deal with these situations.

This adds to the workload of police officers in every community in B.C. because if they’re arrested, they go before the courts and the courts say: “Okay, well, we will release you on conditions, but you make sure you appear in court.” The individual doesn’t appear in court so the warrants are issued for the individual again, and the police have to go out and arrest him again. He or she is in breach of their bail conditions because they are associating with young children or they are in parks or they are in some place that they’re not supposed to be. It’s taking police resources to address that.

How much of our current police resources that are in­vestigating these 200 crimes per year, each officer, is invested in repetitious crime, in crimes that are going on and on and on because of catch-and-release, because of the inability of a justice system to deal with addictions and mental illness? They’re not designed to deal with them in the first place. There’s no other place for the police to take these individuals for the kind of help that they need.

When I go back to…. In front of my office in Prince George there was an altercation. There was an individual out there. It was very cold out. He’s hollering and screaming at everybody that comes by. He’s got a big blanket around him. My staff called the office and the police showed up very quickly. They’re dealing with this individual, and he pulled out a big iron as a weapon. He threatened the police with his iron. The police remained very calm, and they spoke to him at length, several minutes in minus 20 degree weather. They finally calmed him down, and he handed over the iron club. I think it was a construction bar that we used for pulling nails.

They got in the police car and drove away, and the individual went down the street, hollering and screaming. We talked to the police, and the police said: “What do we do with this individual?” He suffers from mental illness. There is no facility available at the hospital. We don’t have any other facility in Prince George to house this particular person. So we just monitor him. That’s all we can do.

There’s nothing in this bill that addresses how we are going to provide the extra resources to police to deal with these very dangerous kinds of situations we see. Again, this is a complex bill. We’re going to spend a lot of time looking at it at the committee stage. I hope I’m going to find a few nuggets in here to alleviate some of the concerns I have over the lack of resources for policing and the lack of ability to determine how many resources a police office needs, which goes back to that adequate and effective level of policing.

Maybe there’s something in there that we can use to do that. Maybe it’s the intention of this bill to create police boards in provincial policing units or detachments that can provide some oversight and direction and maybe lobby on behalf of police boards or the municipalities to provide extra resources to the minister’s office for estimates coming up and inclusion next year’s budgets.

[4:15 p.m.]

The province is in chaos. Policing is overworked. There’s a number of police officers that are off-duty sick because of either operational stress injuries or physical injuries associated with having to arrest and re-arrest and re-arrest violent individuals, who are violent, quite frankly, probably because of the drugs that they’re taking. Excited delirium comes to mind. I’ve been involved with individuals that were high on drugs and were suffering from what some people call excited delirium.

I think this was a key issue that the minister has missed. You know, do we have rogue municipalities and rogue police boards that require all this attention, without looking at the adequacy and effectiveness of policing? I don’t think so. I’m hoping that politics didn’t play a role in the focus on police boards and the focus on police entities and some of the changes that we see there moving forward.

But we will find that out in the committee stage. I’m sure that there will be a lot of discussion there. Once again, I’m asking for the minister’s indulgence in providing us adequate time for review of this particular bill so that we get through the complexities.

A. Olsen: I’m the designated speaker on behalf of the Third Party on this bill. I stand here to speak to Bill 17, the Police Amendment Act.

On July 8, 2020, the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General formed a Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. British Columbians will remember that the work started and then it was interrupted by a snap election that following September. However, when parliament was reconstituted, we got a new special committee with the same mandate: study policing in British Columbia and make recommendations for police reform.

You may remember the super-heated political tensions around policing at the time. With the unknowns of the COVID-19 lockdowns and George Floyd having just been murdered by the Minneapolis police officer, there were growing calls to defund policing across the United States and Canada. In British Columbia, we had our own stories of police brutality, leading some in our communities to call for the defunding of police forces.

Striking the all-party committee, naming it “Reforming the Police Act” and putting reform at the front, was a choice of our Public Safety Minister. He and our Premier at the time gave the public an opportunity to share their experience, opinions, expertise and advice. He led them to believe by the name of the special committee that reform was both possible and potential.

As a member of that committee, we dedicated countless hours studying the issues for 15 months. Our work was extended past the original deadline. It survived a general election and prorogations. It was the most enjoyable and thorough and inspiring work I have done as a legislator in this place since being elected in 2017. It really is an example of how democracy should work: a diverse group of colleagues committed with a shared goal.

I raise my hands to the Chair, the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan; the Deputy Chair, the member for Peace River North; the members for Surrey-Guildford, Port Moody–Coquitlam, Surrey–White Rock, West Vancouver–Capilano, Victoria–Beacon Hill, Vernon-Monashee and Surrey–Green Timbers; the committee staff — Committee Clerk Karan Riarh, research analyst Katey Stickle, researchers Natalie Beaton, Jenny Byford and Jesse Gordon, administrative assistant Mary Newell and committees assistant Emma Curtis.

I am proud that the participation of the member for Saanich North and the Islands is recorded alongside these people who did this excellent work.

[4:20 p.m.]

Unfortunately, the Public Safety Minister decided the utility of our work was political, to take the heat off the pressure that was building in our society at the time, to turn the temperature down on the growing public outrage by giving people a place to vent.

It turns out that there was no real potential for reform. The Public Safety Minister, it turns out, was not actually engaging in a serious process to reform policing in British Columbia. That was the name of our report, though, Transforming Policing and Community Safety in British Columbia. We wrote to this Legislative Assembly and said: “It has become clear that transformative change is required to achieve a new vision of policing and community safety rooted in decolonization, anti-racism, community and accountability.”

Our committee took our job seriously. We spent hours together on Zoom through the challenging COVID social disruptions. The benefit of Zoom was that it allowed us to cover a lot of ground, both from a policy analysis perspective and also geographically. Zoom made our committee much more accessible for people across the province.

We moved forward together. We paused and reflected together. Then we moved ahead again. We decided to go back and seek more information, and then we decided to move forward together again. We did our job. I’m left no choice but to stand here and state that it is the minister and this government who have let this House and the public down on police reform.

The committee writes: “We received a large volume of thoughtful, powerful and emotional input that prompted difficult and meaningful conversations. We recognize the challenging work performed by police officers and the need to provide them with the tools, structure and support to achieve the vision set out in our report. We extend our sincere gratitude to those who took the time to meet with us and to share their knowledge, experiences and ideas.”

The minister asked his colleagues to step up, and we did. The minister asked police chiefs and their members, “Step up,” and they did. The minister asked survivors, victims and their families and friends to step up, and they did. The minister asked community leaders, mayors, First Nations chiefs, academics and adjacent stakeholder groups to step up, and they did. The minister asked the public to step up, and they stepped up.

We are just a few weeks away from the two-year anni­versary of the date we tabled our 96-page report: April 28, 2022 — the result of thousands of hours, an extraordinary effort that the minister requested.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people, 411 individuals and organizations, contributed. We received 1,432 re­sponses to our survey, and this bill, Bill 17, is how the Public Safety Minister steps up for British Columbians in return. It really is an offence to that process and to all those people. It’s an affront to a democratic institution. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s just fact.

In the meantime, since the tabling of that report, an absolute political fiasco has evolved over the Surrey policing transition. It never would have happened had the Public Safety Minister just followed the plan his special committee had laid out for him. Instead, what was squandered was all the goodwill, the political will, the alignment across all parties in the Legislature and, likely, the confidence of anyone who has followed this issue over the last 24 months.

What we get here, in Bill 17, is a handful of amendments that allow the minister to crawl out of the hole that has been dug with respect to the chairs of the police boards. It’s a version of our recommendation 2(b). He’s relieving himself of the public stress he might face should Surrey mayor Brenda Locke become the chair of the Surrey police board.

[4:25 p.m.]

It makes modest changes to police oversight. However, it is a far cry from our recommendation No. 9. It makes a few other changes.

The ministry media release has the gall to frame Bill 17 as paving the way for police reform. It was clearly written by an all-too-eager issues management–type in the government communications machine, ensuring that the Public Safety Minister is appearing to modernize policing far more aggressively than is actually happening. We are not on a paved road to glory with Bill 17, but barely on a recognizable deer trail.

The media release continues, apparently quoting the minister himself: “By focusing on changes to municipal policing, we are setting the foundation for a modern policing system that is fair, equitable and responsive to all communities.”

I hope this is not actually what the minister said. I hope those are the words of someone who didn’t know there was an all-party special committee and who has not read our consensus, all-party report, because “a modern policing system” will not be achieved by “focusing on…municipal policing.” I don’t even know what that means. It doesn’t make sense.

The committee describes a modern policing system that will take time to develop, maybe a decade, and considers the timeline for the next RCMP contract. It is likely to span multiple parliamentary cycles, perhaps with multiple different governments of diverse political leanings.

We asked the minister, specifically through our recommendations, in how we deliberately structured our report, to not squander the opportunity that our political unity presented him to continue a collaborative, all-party consensus approach to police modernization.

This point must not be overlooked by the public. Our committee reports our consensus. We deliberate until we can present, to the Legislative Assembly, a product that we can all agree on. That is where we arrived on April 28, 2022: consensus, agreement, through a long and arduous process. All of the recommendations in the report are consensus — united political will.

What we recommended to the minister was that he appoint a new all-party special committee charged with supporting the work of reforming the Police Act. We recognized the highly competitive political environment that we work in here in this chamber. We knew that reforming policing needed to maintain the confidence of the public. That was much easier if the public saw their elected officials delivering a good, collaborative, well-informed process.

We knew the value of public participation, of ongoing engagement. We could feel how it led to a strong report with excellent recommendations. We recognized that it was the model that could successfully facilitate the reform of policing culture.

The media release for Bill 17 quotes the minister as saying: “There are ongoing conversations on how to change policing to keep pace with a changing world.” Where? When? With whom?

In the weeks following the tabling of our report, the minister said he was going to consult on how to implement the report. Yet we gave him the process, and learned how it worked successfully, in New Zealand. We needed a similar, depoliticized process, focused not on the politics of police reform but rather the important policy work that needed a united Legislative Assembly in support of the minister and his ministry team. Instead, the minister chose a secretive process, engaging a select group who were likely telling him what he wanted to hear.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

The result? The Surrey policing mess and the diminished public confidence that it has earned. The hesitant and tentative approach, clearly lacking commitment, has created a policy and political disaster.

[4:30 p.m.]

Who here in this House thinks we’re on a good track after watching how the Surrey policing transition has been navigated, what should have been a complex and tricky policy landscape but a relatively simple political situation? The all-party political will was earned by building trust with each other, gathering information collectively and engaging in robust and respectful dialogue, discussion and debate.

In the end, we recommended a new provincial police service. The Surrey police transition could have been the pilot project, a model to be implemented across the province. It is the largest RCMP police detachment in British Columbia, so if we could have done it there, we could have done it everywhere.

Policing leaders in our province, along with many others, recommended we move away from the RCMP, yet the minister decided he knew better. Rather than working to implement our recommendations, frankly, he worked to undermine them. Two years after we tabled our consensus report, we get Bill 17, a disappointingly small number of amendments that in no way reflect the effort that we put in, despite, in his introductory speech, trying to tie them to several recommendations. We are no further ahead.

While the minister was successful in navigating the political turmoil of summer 2020, and he survived calls from his own political supporters for him to defund the police, he deployed what is the equivalent of a smoke­screen, distraction, while retreating to higher ground in that situation. He actually failed us so far on actually bringing in the reforming of the Police Act.

We didn’t hear from the experts and the public that British Columbia needs a minister with only enough political will to work around the edges. The name of our report summarizes what we heard. We need police transformation and increased public safety. Instead of making that a project of all the members of the Legislative Assembly, this minister decided to carry it on his own. He made a decision to carry the work of police transformation on his own.

Not smart public policy. Sure, our approach removes some of the power and control the minister has. However, the minister need not carry the entire burden of transforming the police services alone. He could demonstrate a type of leadership we don’t often see in this House. He could have led a collaborative process that shares the responsibility with all members of this Assembly and, as it turns out, future members of this Assembly.

By excusing members of the opposition parties from the process and burying police modernization in the darkness of his ministry bureaucracy, the minister maintains strict control over the process. However, he also assumes full responsibility for its success and its failures.

As his critic on this important work, I report that so far he is failing British Columbians on delivering police transformation and police reform. For months, he stood in this chamber and has been forced to respond to why public safety is so compromised, to defend his government’s decision while stranger attacks increase in frequency and ferocity, along with a growing perception, and perhaps the reality, that our communities are no longer safe.

If all the political parties were represented on a committee with the mandate to work with government on reforming policing and improving community safety, those questions could be raised in the form of dialogue, discussion and debate in a less-heated political environment than question period. The responsibility could be appropriately spread across the political landscape.

The minister frames Bill 17 as the first steps in police modernization. If that is the case, then, frankly, I am discouraged and disturbed.

On February 9, 2024, Amanda Follett Hosgood report­ed in the Tyee that a working group of Indigenous leaders established to engage First Nations on police reform has been paused. Follett Hosgood was reporting on testimony at a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal inquiry into an RCMP investigation from a decade ago.

[4:35 p.m.]

At the inquiry, Ardys Baker, the public safety bureaucrat charged with responding to the recommendations of our Reforming the Police Act report, noted the Indigenous representatives “asked to pause the working group” and that “the working group members asked for some pretty big commitments from the province.”

What were the Indigenous leaders asking for? Well, clarity on the roles within the group, the mandate of the working group, and “one of the key commitments requested by the B.C. First Nations Justice Council and First Nations Leadership Council is that B.C. follow through on the committee’s recommendation to replace the RCMP with a provincial police force.”

Baker noted that some of the easier policy changes were in the process of being amended, assuming those are represented here in Bill 17. However, the ministry “has concurrently begun the more challenging work of looking at broader legislative reform, something that is expected to take years. It’s hoped the new legislation could be introduced by early 2027.”

Baker continues: “Ideally, the legislation would be im­plemented not too long after that,” concluding that the shift is likely to take multiple parliaments. Baker continues: “We’re doing everything we can to ensure that success, but like everything, it’s dependent on future approvals by cabinet and the political support to do that work. There’s always risk priorities could change.”

I wonder where Baker got that idea. Well, it’s directly lifted from our report. What we have here is the ministry picking and choosing the bits and pieces of our report to defend their actions, while ignoring the parts that ensure success. All of the issues that Baker raised, including the issues of continuity, the issues of political unity, the issues of funding, the issues to ensure that this Legislative Assembly is seized with the job at hand of reforming policing, could have been achieved had the minister taken our recommendation to create an all-party committee to see through the implementation.

Two years later we have a minister who is struggling to maintain confidence in the actions of this ministry, who has Indigenous leaders pausing their work on modernization in policing because the process is opaque and contradicting the direction of the special committee’s report. This is exactly the hazard of the minister setting up the special committee to insulate him from the political heat of 2020. When people participate, when they give good advice and the advice turns into recommendations of a committee, the minister is accountable to the process that he set up.

The Indigenous working group is only demanding that the minister operate in good faith on this matter. It appears the Police Act modernization process led by this Public Safety Minister is in trouble.

Let’s look in more detail at what our special committee recommended. I’ll start with the recommendations 10 and 11. I have already discussed them to some extent, but process matters. The committee made two recommendations directly to this Legislative Assembly.

First, recommendation 10: “Immediately appoint an all-party parliamentary committee to undertake a broad review of the Mental Health Act with a view of modernizing the act and ensuring it aligns with the recommendations in the report.”

Ours was the first all-party committee to recommend a full review of the Mental Health Act. An all-party special committee on health also made the same recommendation a few short months later.

This B.C. NDP government has ignored both of those committee recommendations. Those recommendations didn’t happen because a handful of MLAs are looking to derail a government agenda. Those recommendations happened because dozens of people contributing to our committee hearings told us how outdated the Mental Health Act is and how it is not serving British Columbians and, in some cases, how it is actually a potential threat.

[4:40 p.m.]

Here we are two years later, thousands of people still being hurt by the Mental Health Act and the B.C. NDP government bewildered why it is not getting different results. It is eye-watering on so many levels.

Recommendation No. 11: “Establish an all-party se­lect standing committee on policing and community safety to (a) oversee the implementation of changes recommended in the report; (b) conduct regular reviews of the new community safety and policing act; (c) examine standards, policies and programs related to the provision of policing and public safety in B.C. and report annually on this work; (d) work with key partners to address colonial structures and systemic racism in policing; (e) receive and review annual updates from the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General regarding emergent issues in policing and community safety and the effectiveness of police services in B.C.”

I have already covered this, at length, in this response. However, I just want to reinforce what I’ve already offered, noting the minister leaning on his own wisdom and, instead, opting for his policing and public safety modernization initiative. Briefly described on a single webpage, this modernization initiative is summed up in three phases. Here it is.

Phase 1, essentially Bill 17: “Targeted changes to address some outstanding issues related to municipal police governance and oversight as an initial step towards broader legislative modernization.”

Phase 2: “Broad engagement with Indigenous partners, local government leaders, policing partners and leaders, police oversight agencies, community-based advocacy organizations and government partners on policy that will form the foundation of new policing and police oversight legislation.”

Phase 3: “If the policy is approved by government, legislation will be co-developed with Indigenous peoples and local government leaders, along with plans for implementation.”

What was the point of our reforming the Police Act special committee? What was the point of 15 months’ work if the minister is going to outline his modernization initiative on a single webpage three phases that basically describe a restart of the work that we did? Rhetorically, these three phases hit all the high points. However, in delivery, they miss the key point.

As we wrote in our report: “This report begins with a list of the committee’s recommendations; these recommendations are interconnected and organized to show how they build upon each other, without indicating priority.”

We continue: “Police have been tasked with responding to issues for which they are not the appropriate service provider. This is due, in part, to a lack of alternatives and insufficient health, mental health and social supports. Our report emphasizes the need for coordination and collaboration across police officers, health and mental health professionals and community organizations to ensure the most appropriate first response for the individual concerned, followed by appropriate support.”

We continue: “Members emphasize the need to adopt a collaborative and open process that ensures engagement with municipalities, Indigenous communities, police and other partners.”

The internal, opaque, three-phase process that recently had the Indigenous working group walk away from it in no way reflects what we learned or the approach we advised the Public Safety Minister to take.

Now, to the meat of the recommendations that provide a clear vision, the pathway to reformed police and community safety systems. Balance the minister’s description of his three-phase process with what we offered.

Recommendation No. 1: “Implement a new commun­ity safety and policing act to govern the provision of policing and public safety services based on values of decolonization, anti-racism, community and accountability. This includes ensuring Indigenous peoples and nations and municipal governments, are engaged in the drafting of the legislation.”

[4:45 p.m.]

The language here is specific, and we discussed it at length. Community safety was put ahead of policing be­cause the focus of the public was about increasing confidence in police through a community safety approach. Note collaboration with various governing bodies at the front end of our narrative.

Recommendation No. 2: “Transition to a new B.C. provincial police service that is governed by the new community safety and policing act. This includes (a) establishing a governance model, such as municipal or regional police boards or committees, that is representative the community and provides opportunities for local input on policing and public safety priorities; (b) ensuring municipal council representation on municipal police boards or committees while not allowing the mayor to serve as board chair; (c) amalgamating police services on a regional basis where there are opportunities to address fragmentation, to ensure equitable access to policing and public safety and improve efficiency and effectiveness; (d) ensuring two police of jurisdiction to facilitate the process of transitioning from one service to another.”

The part of this recommendation that gets all the attention is the new provincial police service. We technically already have our own police service in the act; it’s just contracted services to the RCMP. We heard repeatedly that the RCMP was struggling to meet their contractual obligations in their agreement with the province.

A host of issues were raised. First of all, it is unclear whether the federal government will even continue with the RCMP’s community policing program. In other words, we’re waiting for them to make a decision that will impact our policing. Rather than take the special committee’s recommendation to Ottawa and demand an answer as soon as possible, our Public Safety Minister has sat back and waited for Ottawa on their timeline.

As the remaining recommendation outlines, we have significant policing and public safety needs in our prov­ince that are simply not being met by the RCMP. Their chain of command runs past our borders to the nation’s capital. Their training and accountability programs are out of our control. Their inability to recruit is leaving our police detachments understaffed.

Seriously, we have to wonder what the Public Safety Minister is waiting for. The unwillingness to take hold of the report we gave him and truly deliver public safety reform in our province has created problems in Surrey, and it’s creating problems for the Public Safety Minister in other parts of our province as well.

If he said that, over the next decade, we’re transitioning away from the RCMP, and he struck an all-party implementation committee of the Legislature, he turns the current Surrey policing situation into a moot point. Instead of having a fiasco on his hands, the minister could have confidently said to the Surrey mayoral candidates, during the last municipal election: “You’re going to have to find another issue to fight about.”

Instead, we are all left questioning the leadership. He missed a prime opportunity to take control of the narrative. Now we have a mayor running this government around the room and MLAs from Surrey desperately hoping the minister will find the ability to address the situation. It has devolved into an embarrassing mess.

Now, I am glad that the minister, as pointed out in the opening speech, has taken the advice of the special committee to change the language from “police force” to “police service.” This was a part of our report that we talked about quite a bit. It actually is important; it’s not just Orwellian doublespeak. People say: “Well, that was the most minor change that you could make.” It actually is about setting tone and culture.

With respect to the police governance, community representation is key, allowing local council represen­tatives but not politicizing the board by removing the mayor as chair.

By creating regional policing services, it reduces the number of police services and fragmentation. We hope to enhance cohesion, cooperation and coordination across geographic regions, not just for policing but for a myriad of other public services.

It is not that policing organizations are deliberately not cooperating with each other. They do cooperate. However, when we create these artificial lines on a map, there’s an inclination for the administrators of those services to focus exclusively on their territory. Removing the ability for criminals to take advantage of the potential gaps in communication and information-sharing is necessary.

[4:50 p.m.]

Finally, addressing the need to have two police services of jurisdiction may seem more like a granular recommendation than the rest.

However, we learned from the Surrey policing transition that, under the current policy, there can only be one police of jurisdiction. This has the potential to create un­necessary roadblocks and competition.

It’s inexplicable to me that the Public Safety Minister did not make this change months ago. When I look to Bill 17 and see this change still absent…. It’s an indication of how interested the minister is in establishing a new provincial police service.

Recommendation No. 3: “Ensure all Indigenous communities have direct input in their police service structure and governance, including self-administered services which could provide policing to neighbouring non-Indigenous communities.”

Currently Indigenous communities have the option of accepting the provincial police service, the RCMP, or creating and funding their own tribal police service. They cannot apply the policing funds transferred to them from the federal government to contract another police service. For example, if my home community in W̱JOȽEȽP wanted to contract police services from the Central Saanich police service, they could not use the federal transfers to pay for it.

In this era of reconciliation and self-determination, Indigenous leaders should be able to partner with the service that they feel best delivers for their community. We heard instances of strong relationships between the RCMP and First Nations communities. However, we also heard of situations where there is no relationship, where the RCMP barely show up when they’re called upon. The problem is the inconsistency in the service delivered by the RCMP.

There is a perception that Indigenous peoples were leading the defund the police movement, perhaps an assumption that is a result of the RCMP’s role in removing children on behalf of the state and sending them to residential schools, a perception that First Nations leaders and communities didn’t like or want policing.

While there is a challenged relationship between First Nations people and the RCMP, we heard consistently from Indigenous leaders that they wanted policing and public safety services in their community. Most importantly, they wanted a strong relationship with those who were delivering those services. We heard they’d like options. Maybe even establishing their own police service.

We also realized how paternalistic our system currently is. The last line of this recommendation is an acknowledgment that we currently view Indigenous communities as policed communities and do not consider it as a possibility that the Indigenous community could actually provide the policing services to a broader region.

For example, we heard how well respected the Stl’atl’imx tribal police is in their community. Why couldn’t they be contracted by Lillooet, for example, to provide policing services for the broader community?

We heard how the RCMP policy of moving police of­ficers every few years, a design that does not allow strong relationships to develop, has been detrimental to building confidence and trust. I’ve seen the negative impact in my own community when a trusted officer is inexplicably moved. It breaks that trust and limits the ability of the RCMP to effectively police and Indigenous leaders with no support in dealing with the challenging public safety concerns they face.

Recommendation No. 4: “Create and appropriately fund a continuum of response to mental health, addictions and other complex social issues, with a focus on prevention and community-led responses and ensuring an appropriate first response. This includes (a) increasing coordination and integration across police, health, mental health and social services and (b) integrating mental health within 911 calls.”

There’s not enough time and space in this speech to describe the scale and magnitude of this particular recommendation. When you call 911, you’re given three options: police, fire, ambulance. If it’s not a fire or health care, then it falls on the police.

[4:55 p.m.]

More and more, police are relied on by our fragmented social services to deliver a front-line mental health re­sponse. They’re not trained for this work. They’re not supported by the government to do this work. We’ve seen the impact of this, both on people suffering from a mental health issue and the police that are responding to the calls.

We have a patchwork of specialized units where police respond alongside a psychiatric nurse. We also have peer-assisted crisis teams that respond with police in the background in support. But we don’t have a mature, province­wide program that ensures that all our first responders have the support they need to address the evolving needs in our community.

The Public Safety Minister has sat on this recommendation for two years. Meanwhile, every day, 24 and seven, our police services have been dealing with a mental health and addictions crisis that they are not trained or well-equipped for. Shame on this government for not making this a priority. And we wonder why we get the results that we do.

If the Public Safety and Health and Mental Health and Addictions Ministers are all going to fail to deliver a coordinated social service team that is appropriately trained to deal with mental health and addictions, then at least provide resources at the hospital to change the current process.

We have heard that after someone is sectioned under the Mental Health Act, the police officer will bring the person to the hospital and have to sit and wait until they can hand the individual off to a doctor. That can take hours, taking police resources off our streets. It has been recommended that there be a special constable at the hospitals that can take the responsibility for the person so police can go back to doing their job. No action.

As front-line police officers revive people who have been poisoned by the toxic street drugs, as they face people in an absolute mental health crisis on a daily basis, as they bring them to hospital only for those people to be discharged back onto the street almost immediately, we heard how it takes a psychological toll, yet the Public Safety Minister has done nothing about that. No coordination with his colleagues. No improvement in the 911 service to better support the officers answering the call.

This minister has spent two years fighting with the mayor of Surrey rather than leading the transformation that is well-understood that is needed. If there was one area that we could have reformed, that we had broad public support, it’s this one. What a waste of time and effort and resources. But I wouldn’t be so concerned if that’s all that was wasted. The minister’s lack of action is taking a toll on the mental health and well-being of our front-line officers.

There’s no way that being confronted by the futility that they face every single day will not undermine that confidence and trust of the officers in this House, that frustration for the lack of action on good recommendations that will improve a police officer’s workplace that have gone ignored for the past two years will not undermine the confidence that they have in their government. Lord knows that the confidence I once had in this process to deliver the desperate changes that we need to our front-line mental health response evaporated months ago when the government decided to ignore these very clear recommendations.

Recommendation No. 5: “Ensure equitable access to quality policing and public safety services across B.C.” The minister references this as being the core of a couple of the amendments that we see here in Bill 17 that we’re talking about today. However, I fear that the minister has actually taken some liberties with this recommendation, especially by pulling a single piece of the recommendation out.

As I noted earlier, the recommendations we made were delivered to the minister as a package. It was a playbook for police reform. Picking subsections out of these recommendations and saying that we have accomplished something missed the spirit of the report, as the report says itself.

[5:00 p.m.]

“Ensure equitable access to high-quality police and public safety services across B.C. This includes (a) ensuring all policing is responsive to and informed by the community; (b) implementing and enforcing police standards, policies and expectations for service with respect to responding to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis, conducting wellness checks, responding to sexual assault and conducting trauma-informed interviews; (c) adopting a dynamic and flexible approach to policing that provides for different categories of policing and public safety personnel who have clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and functions, such as responding to non-violent incidents and other situations that may not require uniformed police; (d) expand the use of culturally appropriate restorative justice programs throughout B.C., including increased funding for these programs and education for police officers.”

This recommendation is really an extension of the second recommendation that we move away from the RCMP. None of the values that are expressed here can be accomplished as long as the provincial government contracts a majority of the policing services from the RCMP. For the most part, we get what they offer us.

These diverse and integrated community policing values are far from the service that we get from a federal force. As I said earlier, they can barely deliver the contractual obligations, never mind the dynamic, flexible approach to policing that is the spirit of this recommendation.

Recommendation No. 6: “Create a fair and equitable shared-funding model for policing. This includes (a) consideration of local needs, health and social supports and the geography of a service delivery area; (b) exploring options to phase in or incrementally increase the municipal share of policing costs.”

This recommendation is in recognition that the current funding formula creates budgetary challenges for growing communities. I’m not sure if the Public Safety Minister has spoken with his colleague the Housing Minister, but there are plans for community growth across the province. As communities cross specific population thresholds, the cost of their policing increases. If population growth is the focus of this government, which we’ve heard that it is, the current outdated funding model actually has a limiting effect on that. Seriously, we need to have these ministers talking to one another.

Policing is expensive. It’s a major portion of every community’s overall budget. The fact that we are getting a deal from the RCMP is only because we’ve not sat down and actually done a full accounting of the cost we are paying in cash and the costs we are paying through increased crime and socioeconomic decay, which has led to the faltering housing, health and justice systems.

Our recommendations to deliver an integrated community policing model that deploys the correct resources to address the issue that has been identified has a significant potential to save money, but more importantly, save lives and increase public confidence in public safety.

Recommendation No. 7: “Enhance and standardize initial and ongoing police education and training to reflect key values and competencies in order to shift police culture. This includes (a) ensuring police and public safety services are representative of the diversity of the commun­ities served, including diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality via recruitment; (b) implementing screening and performance evaluation for existing officers and new recruits that reflect desired values and principles, including humility, honesty, empathy and lack of bias and prejudice, to ensure that these individuals are best suited for their current position or for advancement and are a good fit for the community; (c) conducting regular mandatory psychological assessments for all police officers in B.C.; (d) enhancing and standardizing training required for police recruits and implementing mandatory and meaningful, ongoing education with respect to anti-racism, cultural competency and trauma-informed practices; (e) requiring police officers to complete training and education that is based on the historical, cultural, and socioeconomic context of the communities in which they will be serving and is developed and delivered in consultation with those communities; (f) developing benchmarks to measure the efficacy of police training and education with respect to a shift in police culture and conduct.”

[5:05 p.m.]

Again, as the committee’s recommendations are laid out, modernization of policing services is a fully integrated project. Whatever the Public Safety Minister is calling police modernization is not police modernization. It’s the status quo, tinkering around the edges of a system already in place because nobody has the political will to stand up and actually do the work that’s needed to modernize our policing system.

What we articulate in this recommendation should be a source of excitement for everyone who is concerned about public safety. There is a dangerous social trend that’s at the heart of the defund-policing movement. It is the result of some very public, very disturbing incidences of police brutality and an apparent lack of justice for those who were brutalized at the hands of police. It’s the result of systemic racism and prejudice that has been woven into the fabric of police organizations by the people in this chamber.

Our political ancestors are responsible for the historic aspects of this, and we are responsible for not doing something about it.

While I have been particularly hard on the Public Safety Minister, our special committee tabled our report to this Legislative Assembly. Ultimately, the failure of holding the Public Safety Minister accountable for this lack of meaningful and collaborative action on this file lays at our collective feet.

That’s why I have said what I have said publicly. That’s why I stand here with no qualms in calling on him, calling on our Premier, calling on all of us, to seize ourselves of our responsibility.

Police are not bad people. There might be bad people in policing, but police are not bad people. As it currently stands, RCMP training is federally controlled. Their pedagogical approach and the police culture that is taught are controlled by Ottawa. Even if we wanted to create a different policing culture, it’s not possible unless Ottawa agrees for British Columbia to inform the police training process. Why would they do that? It goes against what a national police force actually is. It’s probably why we landed on agreement for a new provincial police service.

Our report and our recommendation are about taking control of the culture of policing and public safety in British Columbia and developing a world-class recruiting and training program requiring, for people to whom we give the most power in our society, the education and the support they need to succeed and make the best decision that they can, every time they’re called upon to make a decision.

We’re really far away from that right now in this prov­ince. We’re not modernizing policing culture in the prov­ince. We’re fiddling. We’re not supporting our front-line officers with world-class psychological support for the absolutely traumatic incidents they respond to on a daily basis. No way.

We are processing those officers, because our detachments are already understaffed. We’re turning them back out onto the street, without the support they need, and forcing them to confront the next traumatic scenario — exhausted, fractured, and perhaps broken.

When I started this process, I had an opinion of police. The red serge to me was a symbol of imperial and colonial oppression, and so on. My opinion changed entirely through this process.

What I learned is that while there are or may be some bad people in policing, it is government, it’s this Legislative Assembly who are not making it a priority to have police recruiting protocols that attract the people best suited to policing — that give them the top-notch training, that provide regular psychological assessments and support, that require police to gain an early understanding of the community and the unique cultures of the communities they’re policing, before they begin policing those communities.

[5:10 p.m.]

It really, really is remarkable how deficient the status quo is in this area.

Number 8: “Require police services to collect and publicly report disaggregated race-based and other demographic data and conduct comprehensive reviews of and amend policies and procedures to address systemic racism in policing.”

This recommendation is simple. Good data informs good policy. Good information is the key to effective po­lice investigations. Believe it or not, it is also the key to evidence-based legislation. Shocking that the Public Safety Minister wouldn’t apply these basic principles of police investigations to police modernization.

Recommendation 9: “Establish a single, independent, civilian-led oversight agency responsible for overseeing conduct, complaints, investigations and disciplinary matters for all police and public safety personnel with powers or authority under the new community safety and policing act. This includes (a) prioritizing the creation of a stand-alone legislation for police oversight; (b) ensuring the oversight agency is reflective of the diverse population and cultures of B.C.; (c) providing navigation and triaging services to assist complainants through the complaints process; (d) implementing a multi-stream approach to processing and offering multiple resolution pathways such as direct conversations, mediation or restorative justice; (e) revising the definition of misconduct to include demeaning and discriminatory conduct, language, jokes, statements, gestures and related behaviours; (f) establish a duty to cooperate with investigations and a duty to report misconduct for all police and public safety personnel with protections for reporting.”

We are making amendments in Bill 17 to police oversight. The fact that aspects of this recommendation have been ignored in Bill 17 is a travesty. These are basic things we can all agree on. Of course we don’t want police to be using demeaning and discriminatory…. Why not add it?

We debated, we discussed, and we dialogued. We agreed that this was something, as an all-party committee, that should be added to it. The fact that it’s not part of this legislation is really frustrating.

I want to repeat here: police aren’t bad people. There could be bad people in policing, but police aren’t bad peo­ple. The public perception that entrenched “all cops are bad” lays at our feet here, as most of this House has sat silent while the pictures, videos and stories are shared of the actions of the RCMP unit known as the community-industry response group, the C-IRG.

Hearing in court of members of that unit picking on the disabilities of neurodiverse people, calling Indigenous people ogres and orcs, senior officers of that unit allegedly sexually assaulting someone who is being arrested, and allowing the Public Safety Minister to not respond to questions that I ask in question period about these issues leaves the public with no choice but to believe that there are no repercussions for bad behaviour.

When the public hears about the police battering people in custody, driving Indigenous people out onto the Prairies and dumping them on the side of the road in the middle of winter; when the public hears about police arresting Indigenous elders and their grandchildren, handcuffing them in public because of a suspected fraudulent status card; when missing and murdered Indigenous women’s cases are described as not suspicious before the police even start the investigation….

[5:15 p.m.]

When the RCMP complaints process is essentially the RCMP investigating themselves and complaints about offi­cers not properly identifying themselves during an arrest take years to resolve, and the correspondence is the most frustrating exchange a citizen can have with a bureaucracy disinterested in fairness and justice…. When all of that and so much more — Myles Gray — is met with no response from government, gee, I wonder why there are citizens in our communities who grow concerned.

When the top cop in the province is seen as a chief apologist for all of that…. When the public fails to recognize that those incidents are but grains of sand in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of calls attended by police in our province…. Those incidents that we hear about, that I mentioned, are but grains of sand in the context of all the calls that police attend in our province, yet they’re the ones that we hear about. We have police leadership and accountability in here.

Bill 17 creates a perception that the Public Safety Minister is improving police accountability. Allowing the Police Complaint Commissioner to start an investigation early and to conduct systemic reviews is great. But the delusional authors of the media release announcing Bill 17 write: “The province has committed to developing and implementing police reform that is responsive to the diverse needs of all communities and fosters increased public trust in policing, particularly for Indigenous and racialized communities.”

That’s a joke, and not funny. How have our government communications become so committed to what amounts to political spin? It’s ridiculous. The media release fails to acknowledge the members of the Indigenous working group that paused their participation in the police modernization project.

The police modernization project process does not fos­ter “public trust in policing.” The public doesn’t even have a sense of what the police modernization process is. What stage is it at? Where is it occurring? How does the public participate? When will it be completed? We’ve got a vague number, 2027. No definition. Pure opacity.

The Public Safety Minister’s police modernization process is so far from the professional, thoughtful, thorough work of this special committee. In comparison, the Public Safety Minister’s police modernization is the Shriners car swerving erratically around the parade route.

British Columbians would be surprised to learn that there are people in our province that have an unlimited designation. They’re people who have sworn the same oath as municipal police and RCMP members swear. They can carry assault rifles. They look like police. They act like po­lice. But they’re subject to none of the police accountability that municipal police and RCMP officers are subject to. These are people who work in the B.C. Conservation Service and also the Legislature’s own protective services.

Do not misconstrue what I’m saying here. I am not suggesting these folks have done anything wrong. But if they do, there is no apparatus in place to ensure that the public get a fair hearing. We learned about this situation in the special committee consultations. The Public Safety Minister knows about this issue. He has known about it for two years and done nothing to resolve it.

[5:20 p.m.]

I will be particularly hyperbolic in making my point here. Currently the Minister of Environment has a heavily armed private army: the B.C. Conservation Service. They lack constabulary independence, meaning if they’re investigating an environmental disaster that the Minister of Environment is uncomfortable with — think maybe, perhaps, Mount Polley as an example, the massive tailings pond disaster that polluted a huge amount of central British Columbia — then the minister has the power to stop or interrupt the investigation. Under our current democratic government, it might not be much of an issue. Under an autocratic regime, having a privately controlled army by government with no independent oversight and no constabulary independence is a huge problem.

The special committee heard how the union, the BCGEU in this case, does not want its members to be subject to any extra oversight other than the disciplinary process with respect to human resource issues. Well, frankly, this is absurd and should not be allowed to persist. It should not have been allowed to persist for the two years we’ve known about it or that it came in front of our committee. We have people legally walking around our communities with assault rifles and with massive magazines full of ammunition and only a union process and the public service agency has oversight and accountability. How has this been allowed to continue? Honestly?

Maybe this B.C. NDP government doesn’t want environmental investigators to be able to actually uncover the truth of the environmental damage the government is allowing to go unchecked. Maybe it’s just incompetence or an oversight. But the situation is not safe for anyone. It’s not safe for the public, because if there is an incident, there is no independent oversight. It’s not safe for the members of these services, because they’re at the whim of a government and their political reputation. It’s not fair for other provincial constables who have sworn the same oath of office and who have the same unrestricted powers but have to face the scrutiny of police complaints and oversight, no matter how lax or ineffective they might be considered.

Honestly, is anybody going to care about this situation that has been allowed to persist for the past two years? It’s been brought to the attention of government. Nothing.

You might have sensed from this speech that I have a waning confidence in the work of police reform undertaken by this Public Safety Minister and by this government. I’m frustrated that the committee’s time was wasted, that the public’s time was wasted, that all the participation of thousands of hours was collectively wasted.

I am angry that our special committee was used to, frankly, insulate the government from the growing calls of defunding police during a politically intense time. Just because there are no loud calls now for police reform or defunding the police doesn’t mean the contributions that the public made to our special committee are any less true than they were when they made them. All the things that are outlined in our 11 recommendations plus the sub-recommendations remain as true today as they were when they were raised.

We learned in the process that, in fact, the calls to defund the police are an emotional response to the public’s lack of confidence in the leadership of the top cop, whoever it might be — in this case, our current Public Safety Minister. But there have been other public safety ministers, and there probably will be other public safety ministers in the future. It’s really a nonsensical demand.

[5:25 p.m.]

The evidence of what happened when the former B.C. Liberal government defunded mental health services and programs in this province…. We’ve seen what happened, turning mental illness onto the street and into the realm of police and paramedics. We know defunding the police will have, could have, will likely have terrible consequences.

I think what we learned in the process is we need to re-task, not defund. We need to make sure the appropriately trained, best-equipped social service worker is deployed to address the situation that’s unfolding. That includes making sure 911 services are involved and we have a commun­ity-informed policing culture that provides the response that’s needed: compassionate, empathetic, with humility and honesty at the core.

I’m not going to repeat what I’ve already shared in long form here but in conclusion, I’ll say that as we approach the second anniversary of tabling our report, as we ap­proach the provincial general election…. You know, I never actually…. I’ll just say this. I never thought that I was going to be a critic of Public Safety. I never thought when I got elected that policing was going to be an area of policy that (a) would be interesting to me and that (b) would be put on me as a member of the Legislature. I never considered it. It wasn’t something that I was involved in.

It turns out I actually ended up being quite passionate about it. I don’t have police in my family. I don’t come from a policing family. Like I said earlier in this speech, my family actually has a long history of just kind of tense relationships with policing. But I ended up being the critic of the Public Safety Minister, so I have a job to critique the work that’s being done by the Public Safety Minister and by the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

That’s my job, to speak honestly about what I’m seeing, to speak honestly about the work and the intent behind the work that we have done. When we were called upon to step up, as I said earlier, we did, and we did good work.

It’s unfortunate, but I have to…. As we head into an election and people are looking at how government is doing on certain files, this one is failing. This gets a failing grade. It’s not a partisan thing. Not at all. It’s an as­sessment of what’s happening in police reform, the work that we did, the expectations of the public who participated in the process.

I’ve been active on this file. I’ve taken this job seriously. The analysis here is of the public policy response and the response of the leadership that I have seen within this file and on this ministry. Frankly, what I have seen is a minister that has sacrificed the consensus that his special committee gathered, the political will and alignment, and squandered it.

I look to the police officers and their families, and I say with confident certainty they’ve been let down. I look to the public and say with confident certainty that they’ve been let down.

I look to First Nations leaders and the leaders of other marginalized communities and say with confident certainty: you’ve been let down.

I look to other first responders — 911 agents, fire and paramedic services, front-line health care workers, our nurses and doctors — and I say with confident certainty that they are being let down.

Elections give us an opportunity to evaluate the success or failures of a government, whether they’re able to deliver good public policy — sound, informed, evidence-based public policy. Political parties and their members focus primarily on delivering good public politics. From the failure to deliver police reform and the embarrassment that we’ve seen with the Surrey policing transition, this government has failed on both policy and politics.

[5:30 p.m.]

I’ll finish with this. I have focused a lot of this speech with direct criticism of the minister and the ministry, and I take no pleasure in that. People might think: “Oh, it’s politics.” It’s not. I like the minister. I enjoyed working with him as the Government House Leader. How­ever, on this file, I’m left with no choice but to speak honestly about what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced in the work I’ve done.

When the minister decided to forgo the creation of an all-party police transformation committee, when he deci­ded to fully shoulder the modernization of policing and not build on the consensus that we had established…. This could have been a decade-long project that was diffused across all the political parties of all the political stripes in this province.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

But the Public Safety Minister chose to move it from a project that necessarily needed to be of the entire Legislative Assembly to one that he was going to go at alone. So he receives the grade. He receives the attention on the Surrey policing transition, receives the attention for not following through on the Reforming the Police Act committee recommendations.

Here we are today, two years closer to a looming deadline at the end of the current RCMP policing contract, and we have no greater clarity on the future of policing in British Columbia than at the first meeting of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act.

HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, that closes the debate.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 17, Police Amendment Act, 2024, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. R. Kahlon: I call second reading on Bill 16, Housing Statutes Amendment Act.

Deputy Speaker: Please proceed.

BILL 16 — HOUSING STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2024

Hon. R. Kahlon: I move the bill be now read a second time.

Our government has proposed changes to the Local Government Act, the Vancouver Charter and the Community Charter to give local governments new and enhanced tools to achieve affordable housing in their communities as well as to help protect existing tenants from the impacts of redevelopment.

The legislation introduces new authorities for local governments to secure site-level infrastructure to service new development. These changes support the other actions we are taking to create more homes within reach for the people to address the housing crisis in B.C. In fall of 2023, our government passed a significant suite of legislation that shifts the land use planning framework in B.C. to be more upfront and proactive. These changes will help enable local governments to provide more housing in the right places faster.

As a result of these legislative changes, however, we know that local governments require new tools to continue to deliver affordable housing, tenant protection and key pieces of site-level infrastructure. These things are critical to ensuring that people have access to the homes and amenities that make for complete, livable communities.

The legislation we are proposing today helps address this need by allowing local governments to require these outcomes outside of rezonings. These changes will also help give greater certainty and clarity about requirements for the development industry, including non-profit de­velopers, renters, landlords, as well as the public.

Let me go into a few specifics. Under the proposed changes, our local governments will be able to require new high-density developments to include affordable housing through the adoption of inclusionary zoning bylaws. These bylaws must set out the amount of affordable housing units required, the tenure below market price, how long the units must remain affordable and the density levels needed to offset the costs of building the required affordable housing.

To ensure that we get affordable housing without deterring new housing, local governments will have to do a financial feasibility analysis and consult with homebuilders and other stakeholders. Homebuilders will also be able to meet the inclusionary zoning requirements in other ways, like providing cash in lieu of affordable units or building the affordable housing units on another site.

[5:35 p.m.]

The province will monitor how the tool is implemented to ensure it is working as intended. Regulation-making authorities will provide checks and balances for the prov­ince to set up and ensure communities do not deter building the housing people desperately need. Regulations could define which communities can use the tool or set the maximum number of affordable units that can be required in a development.

We’re also proposing changes with the existing density bonus tool to clarify how it would be used to ensure consistency with inclusionary zoning. Under existing density bonus authorities, homebuilders can choose to build to a higher density in exchange for providing affordable housing or amenities in a new development. The changes we’re proposing today will clarify that homebuilders can meet density bonus requirements by providing cash in lieu of amenities or affordable units or by building affordable housing units on other sites.

They also establish how density bonus and inclusionary zoning work in transit-oriented development areas by setting out that by mid-2025 or a later prescribed date, a local government can only use density bonus authorities to obtain amenities or affordable housing on density that is above the minimal allowable density in transit-oriented areas. Together, these changes will ensure that local governments have a range of tools to obtain affordable housing in their communities.

I’m also proposing changes that will help protect existing tenants from impacts of redevelopment. As we know, those impacts can be significant. At the local level, a number of communities have developed tenant assistance policies to help renters facing displacement. To support these efforts, the proposed amendments provide the municipalities with the explicit authority to develop tenant protection bylaws and require homebuilders to fulfil obligations of these bylaws.

Examples of tenant protections could include financial compensation, assistance in finding a new home or compensation for moving expenses. The new authority will give municipalities the ability to develop tenant protection bylaws that are implemented at the development permit stage. The amendments will also allow municipalities to withhold development permits until owners meet the conditions of those bylaws.

Additionally, municipalities will be able to request in­formation about the effect of proposed redevelopments on tenants, which will give them more data to design tenant protection bylaws and better understand these issues.

The province recognizes that municipalities will have been proactive and have tenant assistance policies already in place that have been negotiated at rezonings. These changes give them clear authority to develop bylaws, pro­vide more certainty for municipalities, homebuilders and tenants. By authorizing local tenant protection bylaws, we are sending the signal that while the new supply is critical, a thoughtful approach should be taken to minimize the impacts on tenants where possible. There is a cost to displacing people.

Lastly, we are providing new authorities for local governments to secure site-level infrastructure to service new development. Specifically, these proposed changes would provide local governments with new works and services authorities, including expanded authorities in three categories.

An increased range of these kinds of works and services that local governments can require in new developments include, for example, street infrastructure or green infrastructure. The authority to require works and services for infill development that do not involve subdivisions, and the authority to require new developments to provide up to an additional five metres of land for wider roadways to accommodate alternative forms of transportation.

This bill will also give governments a new authority to define and require transportation demand measures in new developments. These can include things like charging stations or secure bicycle parking facilities. While the new authorities allow governments to require items that were already being secured through rezonings, the proposed changes also include guardrails to address concerns that new authorities could make development overly costly or infeasible.

These will give us the ability to make sure that the use of authorities does not even unintentionally impact the viability of new developments. They will also let us adjust the types of items that can be required, if needed.

Without these authorities, there’s a risk that local governments will densify without being able to provide in­frastructure, transportation or other benefits that are critical to supporting and protecting new and existing community members. If passed, local governments can begin planning to use these authorities right away. The province will be releasing guidance with best practices to help local governments use these authorities effectively. The changes proposed in this legislation are crucial to the success of larger changes being made to our land use planning system to address the housing crisis, while also creating livable communities.

[5:40 p.m.]

With that, I welcome my colleagues across the way for their comments.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Minister. We have a committee ready to report out, so you’ll have to move adjournment of the debate.

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 9 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2024

Bill 9, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. R. Kahlon: I call continued second reading of Bill 16 in the main House.

In the Douglas Fir Committee Room, we call Committee of the Whole on Bill 3, Budget Measures Implementation Act.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 16 — HOUSING STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2024

(continued)

K. Kirkpatrick: That was getting a bit confusing for me there for a moment.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to stand and speak to Bill 16. It certainly has been a theme of this government this last year to introduce housing legislation. There’s been a lot of it. A lot of it is connected, and it’s a little bit difficult for us to necessarily keep all of the pieces connected and clear. There are some questions that this side will be having on this piece of legislation and how it relates to Bill 44 and some of the other legislation.

As you know though, Mr. Speaker, British Columbia is in the midst of a housing crisis. We’ve been saying over and over decisive action is necessary if we are going to be able to build the housing that British Columbians need. We certainly haven’t seen this government do that yet at this point, although there have been many announcements. But the actual reality is we remain in a housing crisis.

Whether you are a renter, you’re a homeowner, you’re single, a senior or a young person, the reality really is stark here in British Columbia. The cost of housing is at an all-time high. Far too many people in this province are burdened by the relentless rise in living costs. It’s not just housing; it’s everything. It’s food. It’s everything that we have to go out and purchase to survive as a person and as a family. But housing is the backbone of that. If we don’t have safe and affordable housing, we have so many other issues in our community.

I was speaking to friends of mine recently who work with women in counselling and counsel women who are often leaving difficult situations in their homes. One of the biggest challenges they have is not only the affordability but actually finding some place where they’re going to feel safe in the community, and they often end up having to stay in a scenario that’s not safe for themselves or safe for their children.

This dream of home ownership is really fading fast in this province, especially for our young people, who in­creasingly view affordable home ownership in British Columbia not as a goal anymore but almost as a fantasy. We saw that recently with interprovincial migration, how many of our young people we’re losing to other provinces in Canada. When asked about why they’re leaving here: housing and the unaffordability of housing and the fact that there’s nothing to look forward to in terms of actually being able to have that home ownership that so many other Canadians enjoy.

[5:45 p.m.]

B.C. United wants to change that by giving that vision back to British Columbians that home ownership is possi­ble. We need to look for housing legislation, as a whole, that is going to be able to provide that opportunity.

You may not know, Mr. Speaker, but a staggering 74 percent of British Columbians who don’t currently own a home have abandoned the hope of home ownership. It really is a clear indictment of this current NDP government’s housing approach, a blend of nice words, half measures, reannouncements and burdensome bureaucracy that fails to address many of these core issues.

The hurdles that the bureaucracy puts up not only delay the delivery of much-needed housing, This also ensures that the high costs are ultimately shouldered by those who are purchasing or those who are renting. If we’re truly committed to making housing more affordable, it is imperative that we look to legislation and policy that will dismantle these barriers.

What does this bill do? As the minister said, it proposes amendments to the Community Charter which are going to introduce tenant protection bylaws within the charter. This will compel developers to offer compensation or support to displaced tenants. This includes rights of first refusal and financial compensation.

This is exactly what we’ve been saying, as opposition, and what we’re committed to in terms of making sure that the displacement of tenants is not something that leads people to homelessness, to not being able to afford or find somewhere else to be able to live. That’s got to be….

A significant part of how we’re planning communities, really, is to make sure that we are looking after the people that we’ve got in existing homes so that if there is redevelopment happening…. We work to make sure that we have got some place for those people to land, in affordable and appropriate housing, while development is continuing to add density.

It’s a real struggle. I was just looking at the Broadway corridor and what’s happening there.

We want to densify as quickly as we can. Certainly, we saw that with this government, with Bill 44 increasing density, and increasing it quickly, to help to not just keep up with our growing population but to make up for the deficit that we’ve got in housing right now.

When we start to take down current housing to make way for higher density housing, it’s really difficult. It’s complex. There is a whole number of different moving pieces that have to happen at the same time. So really making sure that we’ve got supports in place for tenants so that they’re not displaced and that they are fairly compensated and that they are fairly treated and that there’s an appropriate amount of time for them to be able to be supported and land somewhere else is very, very important.

Under this legislation, also…. It grants local governments the power to impose site-specific works and service requirements focusing on climate resilience and greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts. It’s important, when we’re looking at climate change awareness and looking at how we’re building our buildings….

We are fighting two battles here in British Columbia. One battle in British Columbia…. One, a much greater battle, is the conflict sometimes between affordability in housing, making sure we have affordable housing, and making sure we’re also building housing in a way that protects and sometimes even may enhance our climate. Looking at the way that we are responsibly bringing down buildings and putting up buildings. It’s very, very important.

We also have to be mindful when we are adding additional costs for green resiliency in housing. There is a price to be paid for that. Sometimes the pressure is really on what that affordable housing is going to…. Is it going to be affordable? There are reports that show a move even to step 5 could increase the cost of a home by up to $48,000.

[5:50 p.m.]

I was speaking to a non-profit recently that was going through their community housing fund application. There have been a lot of changes to the requirements in those applications over the last few rounds. What I heard is that, just off the top, it looks like there’s going to be an additional 20 percent cost to actually providing that affordable housing from the new step-code requirements.

I want to be clear. B.C. United and me as Housing critic are committed to making sure that we are building efficient buildings, that we are building them to the highest standards possible, but we have to temper that with the fact that every time we increase a requirement, we are making it less affordable for that housing to be built. So what can we do, and what other things can we do to maybe try and offset some of that?

I heard from someone last week with concerns about the North — the Highest Efficiency Equipment Standards regulation. There are some real unintended consequences with that particular program that could be devastating for some homeowners. This is just an example of…. When we’re looking at those commitments to building green, they need to be regional sometimes. What works here in the Lower Mainland doesn’t necessarily work in other parts of British Columbia.

In this scenario, for the Highest Efficiency Equipment Standards, the grants and subsidies being offered are nowhere big enough to deal with cold climate equipment. Apparently, that is at least twice as expensive as the equipment that can be used safely in the Lower Mainland.

The equipment itself can be expensive, but on top of that, their furnace ducting is most likely not going to be big enough. A lot of these houses would have to be upgraded from an existing 60-amp service to 200 amp, adding thousands more dollars. Any grants or incentives require the homeowner to pay for this up front, and then several months later, hopefully they get to be reimbursed for that.

These programs are good. It’s just an example of why government needs to have a regional lens on the requirements that we’ve got. If you look at heat pumps, if you look at natural gas, we really do have different needs in different communities in British Columbia, and they can’t be treated all the same way.

This legislation also enables density benefits bylaws based on current zoning laws, regardless of the minimum densities set out in Bill 47, and mandates the inclusion of affordable and special needs housing in new developments. This is all good. I was surprised that this wasn’t integrated somehow into Bill 44 in some of our previous legislation. It wasn’t defined in the original municipal targets that were put in place.

Just a couple things I’ll say on designating or dictating the percentages here on that housing. First off, you’ve got a little bit of confusion, because municipalities have already started doing work on the rezoning requirements that they had to have completed by this summer. It would be nice to have kind of had all of these things at the same time. Those municipalities are already scrambling to get all the zoning bylaws in line with the handbook from Bills 44, 46 and 47.

It is good to allow more flexibility, but I just want to talk for a moment about the continuum of housing. Most other provinces actually track their mobility rate. The mobility rate isn’t to see how many times people move from one apartment to another apartment. The mobility rate tells us if we have a healthy number of units available across the housing spectrum.

You want to create enough housing inventory so that you have affordable housing and then you have market housing. And I mean affordable rental to market rental. If there isn’t that continuum, you kind of clog up the system at the affordable side, and it’s not possible for people to move along and make that space for new people to come into that affordable zone.

[5:55 p.m.]

This is good. We should be looking at our mobility rate and tracking that, but it is a good commitment to be able…. Particularly on the special needs housing, we know that is a challenge. We hear from families that it’s a challenge to find housing for themselves if they have a mobility issue, for their children if they have a special need, if there are other determinants on a special kind of housing that we just simply don’t have in our stock right now.

Additionally, this lays out requirements for transportation demand management features in new projects such as electric vehicle charging and secure parking for bicycles and scooters. I must have misheard the minister. I thought he said that included outdoor furniture, but I wasn’t sure if that was part of one of the amenities.

This is important. If there is a commitment from this government and a commitment from British Columbians that we’re going to adopt more healthy transportation lifestyles and we’re going to be riding our bikes more and we’re going to be using our electric vehicles, it does follow that we have to make sure that we’ve got the supports in place to be able to make those changes.

We also have to make sure, for the density that we are creating and the density which has been intended under previous legislation here, that we have the infrastructure in place and that the requirement to provide that infrastructure, if it’s being pushed on to the development community or the non-profits or whoever is creating that housing, again doesn’t become an impediment for the ability to actually build and so that it’s not actually adding to the cost of building.

B.C. United believes in robust tenant protections, especially during redevelopment. However, we really need to make a commitment, and will make a commitment, to streamline the creation of housing, which is equally as important so that we get more housing built. In the committee stage, we’ll be looking at this legislation. We want to make sure it’s not going to lead to an increase in red tape and costs, which we know are already barriers to the construction of new housing projects.

Moreover, we’ll be looking into the additional impediments to the secondary rental market to make sure we’re not doing anything that’s going to hinder the advancement of rental development. B.C. United knows that collaboration with homebuilders is essential to find a balance that protects tenants without impeding development.

Further, we hold significant concerns regarding the bill’s provisions that could empower municipalities to ban natural gas as a heating resource. Even in the district of North Vancouver, where I’ve lived for quite a while….

A couple of years ago we had a cold snap. I mean, cold in North Vancouver is very different than a cold snap in Quesnel or Prince George, but it was pretty cold. We lost our power for a couple of days. During that period of time, the only heat that we had in the house — and I have my senior mother living with us — was our gas fireplace. It really kind of opened up my mind to the fact that we have insecurity in electricity, and to not have that backup sometimes is concerning. That’s just something on the North Shore, but I certainly have heard the same kinds of things from my colleagues who live in colder climates.

So energy reliability is still an issue. I know this is of particular concern. The high efficiency standards that I was describing earlier was an example of something that happens in colder climates here in British Columbia. So we do need to look at things from a regional perspective.

We need to look long term, as well, at what those alternatives are that are, if I can say, coming down the pipe, literally. If we look at things like renewable natural gas, which in other parts of the world is actually being used to heat housing and decarbonize the transportation sector…. So we don’t want to be shortsighted if we’re looking at a plan to move completely away from natural gas in some communities.

We won’t forget that the NDP is planning provincial CleanBC standards to eliminate natural gas home heating.

All signs point to this section of the bill being a gateway to more bans on natural gas for home heating, and we’re just not ready yet here in British Columbia. Such decisions should not be made in isolation. They should be made in consideration with local governments.

[6:00 p.m.]

We are committed. The official opposition is committed to a thorough examination of this bill, ensuring that it aligns with all of the goals to create more affordable housing and that it doesn’t serve as a channel for unnecessary restrictions and an impediment to those people who want to build, participate and purchase in the secondary home market.

The NDP’s current handling of the housing crisis has really been characterized by bureaucracy and inefficiency. It really calls for a drastic change. B.C. United is ready to lead, with practical and impactful solutions that cut through the red tape, making affordable housing a real, reachable goal for British Columbians.

I thank you very much for your time.

A. Olsen: I am the designated speaker, in case it takes longer than 30 minutes. I have to apologize to the member for Peace River South, who has had to sit through my last speech.

Interjections.

A. Olsen: Yeah, I know. I articulated it. That’s right.

I rise to speak to Bill 16, the Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2024. I think it’s important to open this response by just acknowledging that, once again, what we have is, frankly, fragmented housing policy, delivered in a couple of bills here.

We’ve got three housing bills in front of us, two of which have a lot to do with rental housing and housing affordability. Again, they’re broken into multiple conversations. As was mentioned by my colleague in the official opposition, we’ve seen this from the fall. It has actually made a coherent discussion about housing to be very, very difficult — to fully understand the scale, scope and breadth of the changes and how they might impact our communities — whereas, with a coherent housing policy that is brought forward with all the pieces there, we’d have a much better conversation.

However, I would say these bills are designed, in their communications exercise, to protect renters and produce inclusionary zoning. From a public relations perspective, I think there are a couple of boxes that have been ticked here.

However, when you dig into what these bills actually are, I think what’s emerging is a bleak picture and some threats that need to be talked about in this House, and what the potential impacts could be. Without a serious attempt to build housing affordability, there is a desperate reality that comes from the housing policy this government has introduced, when there’s almost certainly a mass displacement of renters coming in our future.

We’ve spoken with many people who are right now living in a home that they can afford. That is only the case because they’ve been in that home for some time. As we’ve seen, the costs of housing far outpace the local socioeconomic realities of most communities. People are terrified of their potential displacement from those homes that they can afford.

We’ve spoken to people who are working professionals — engineers, teachers, nurses, people who make a good salary — people who look at the cost of housing around them and realize that if they were ever displaced from their current home, they’d not be able to afford the market, either as a potential homeowner or as a renter. Additionally, they fear being displaced not only from a home they can afford but also from a school where their children’s friends are, from a commute that is manageable, from friends and, perhaps, family in the nearby neighbourhood.

These bills in front of us don’t recognize any of those concerns that the people we talk to feel. What we see with the inclusionary zoning bill is public policy that is void of the reality that people are part of the communities they live in. It neglects the reality that people are valuable members of the social fabric in those communities. Displacement comes at a high personal, emotional and psychological cost. Also, when people leave communities, it’s felt across the community: friendships are broken, social isolation is created and people lose their sense of belonging.

[6:05 p.m.]

The more transitory people are — or feel they need to be, as the result of housing instability — the less they are willing to entrench themselves and start caring about the community they’re living in, the less they contribute to the community garden and the local council, the parent advisory council, and so on. The less sense of belonging people feel, the weaker our communities are.

Our government wants to leave people with the sense that the housing policy they have advanced over the past six months is designed to address these issues. They want people to feel that all these announcements they’ve been making must be stabilizing the housing market. Their premise is that if they just create more housing supply, it will end up creating more housing affordability. To achieve that, they’ve passed laws that unilaterally require local governments to densify single-family zones and increase density on higher-frequency transit lines.

What they’ve not factored into this, to the extent that is needed, is the mass displacement that could likely occur as people — primarily, renters living in homes with rents they can actually afford — will be displaced as their aging building is replaced by newly built units of housing. What’s not acknowledged is that the only affordable units of housing that exist in our housing ecosystem are the ones that are transforming, the affordable units that currently exist.

If you look at the pro formas of redevelopments, you’ll most certainly see the cost of land, cost of construction, profit of the developer, and the current market rate. Truly affordable housing is being replaced by far less affordable market housing, all on a premise that simply building more means a less expensive product. That might be the case if we built them all at once and flooded the market. As we know from experience, this overly simplistic view of supply-and-demand theory doesn’t apply to the housing market quite so simply as some would like us to believe. It’s more complex than that.

What is closer to the reality is that there is a financial interest for developers to hold built units empty, advertised at a higher market price, until they can get the price that they believe they deserve. Or they just don’t build the new density until the market returns the profit that they believe they should earn.

These initiatives are good feelings the Housing Minister has predicated on a political response to the housing affordability crisis, and it begins to fall apart. We have not seen a coherent policy response to the housing affordability crisis, not a collective response, at least not for those who need our government to act desperately, urgently: renters and people with special housing needs.

Consider, as I will in this speech, that dark days are ahead for a lot of people in this province. While the minister advanced housing and land use policy last fall for market housing that required local governments to act and comply, when it comes to adding density for affordable and special needs housing, the minister has suddenly reverted back to the approach that existed in this place before: that a government may create a bylaw to create inclusionary zoning.

Why does this minister require local governments to build more market housing and suggest that they may build affordable and special needs housing?

The inclusionary housing policy doesn’t at all address the economic laddering that occurs when you require for-profit private sector developers to subsidize affordable housing on the backs of their market units. In their pro formas, it just advances the too-good-to-be-true illusion that suddenly we can turn an industry geared for profit­ability into our affordable housing developers. It hasn’t happened. That has been the experiment for the last 30 years. It hasn’t happened, at least not to the extent that people desperately need it to.

When you begin to apply this situation across multiple buildings being redeveloped in a neighbourhood, the price point between the first building and the last building has dramatically increased, as has the cost of the so-called affordable housing that this scheme produces.

[6:10 p.m.]

It’s not that we throw out the entire model of inclusionary zoning. It’s that we need to be honest about the conditions that it creates. It’s likely to produce a percentage of more affordable housing that we need. But it is not the solution to the housing affordability crisis this minister is going to profile it as. Like I said, I feel there are dark days ahead, especially for people who are renters and people who have special needs for housing.

When you look at the rules for supporting the people who are displaced by the redevelopment of affordable housing into market housing, there’s a reality that the measures are going to be entirely inadequate and potentially cause dramatic disruptions in our communities. These measures that allow for communities to leave it up to the developer to determine how and where they accommodate the displaced tenants simply are not good enough.

When we supercharged the market housing approach after the Second World War, we balanced it with a non-market social housing program that created the counterweight to the market housing. It kept the market prices in check.

For the past 30 years, we abandoned the non-market social housing programs and turned it over to the pri­vate sector development industry, who built profitable housing. Since then, there’s been this rapidly expanding inequality gap, to the point that, now, there are those working professionals that I discussed earlier, people who traditionally represented the middle class…. Those people are terrified.

I know the Housing Minister will point to a few other initiatives: inclusionary zoning, protecting renters from bad-faith evictions — BC Builds, for example — as his response to the reality I’m framing. I, again, need to note the scale and scope are out of context. While he forces local governments to approve new market housing at a scale like we’ve never witnessed before, the policy moves for non-market social housing counterweights pale in comparison.

Arguably, we needed the province to intervene with the greatest force on the non-market social housing side, while increasing density where it was most greatly needed: for the market housing supply. There is a real threat that the market housing will be built when the profit can be made, and the market will continue to increase while the non-market housing slowly progresses.

I wanted to stand here and just celebrate. When it comes to the housing file, we need something to celebrate in this province. So let’s celebrate. These policy changes for renters and people who need affordable and special needs housing are not nothing. These amendments are better than if the government took no action. But it is not the action that’s needed to protect renters from a predatory rental market, nor do these changes go to the extent that they are as useful as they could be.

I feel like it’s one of those bad days of fishing. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced too many of those in my fishing career — one or two that remind me. The car ride home, talking about how we didn’t land any fish, but at least we got some bites. We got action, just not the action we needed to fill the freezer for a long winter.

When you look at the changes to the housing legislation that have been tabled so far in this session and the fall session of 2023, there is a bleak landscape emerging: a long winter, especially for the more than 1.5 million renters in this province. These changes are not nothing, but they are a small concession compared to what is and what’s coming from the market.

This bill represents modest steps to protecting renters from bad-faith evictions. However, the proposed changes do not address situations where the landlord claims they need to evict a tenant in order to move a caretaker into a unit. It has been an increasingly common tactic in multi-unit buildings, since other types of evictions have become more regulated, limiting the automatic rent increases for tenants that add a child to their family.

[6:15 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: I believe the member might be speaking about a different bill.

A. Olsen: I’m speaking about the housing policy that’s been tabled….

The Speaker: I think the residential tenancy bill is not on the floor. We’ve got the Housing Statutes Amendment Act currently.

A. Olsen: I appreciate that. Yeah, there are a couple of pieces of housing legislation that are involved with renters, and I’m bringing them together. So I appreciate that.

Limiting the automatic rent increases for tenants that add a child to their family. Requiring notices for evictions for personal use to be filed through a government website to encourage an educational experience. Extending the time frame of notice and occupancy for landlords. Evicting tenants for personal use and increasing the tenant dispute window. Like I said, these steps that have been brought forward this session are not nothing.

The way the RTB is set up largely places the burden of enforcing tenants’ rights on the tenant by requiring them to file a dispute if their landlord is not obeying the law or acting in good faith. Requiring landlords to apply for permission to evict with proof ahead of time is a step in the right direction. But without some proactive enforcement to ensure that there are penalties for landlords who try to circumvent new regulations, this leaves those most at risk behind.

The Vancouver Tenants Union wrote on this:

“It’s often the most vulnerable long-term tenants — those with language barriers, seniors, people on fixed income — who are evicted for financial gain. Pursuing an RTB dispute requires a lot of time and energy, not to mention English reading and writing skills, plus understanding of basic legal terms in the RTB itself. But most importantly, you need to know that you have to file a dispute in the first place. We constantly hear of tenants getting a text or a call from their landlords saying, ‘You have to leave,’ and they don’t know it’s not a valid eviction until it’s too late.”

Ultimately, the Vancouver Tenants Union says that one of the most powerful things the government could do to protect tenants is to bring in vacancy control. “The bad-faith evictions that the province has been chipping away at for the past few years are largely attempts by landlords to exploit the rent control loophole, where they can kick out a tenant and raise the rent however much they want for the next tenant. Vacancy control would remove the profit incentive for bad-faith evictions at the source.”

[The Speaker in the chair.]

However, in the context of the rental market, the changes in these bills that we have in front of us this session are really the least that could be done. British Columbia is the least affordable place to rent, with the highest rate of bad-faith evictions, slightly above 10 percent, twice the national average. In Victoria, for example, we see rent increases between tenancies jump 40 percent.

These trends frame a desperate situation that calls for urgent action. To highlight that reality, my colleague and I demanded stronger rent controls between tendencies. The Housing Minister sidestepped and excused his unwillingness to meet the challenge where it is at.

The housing market is out of touch with local salaries and entirely disconnected from the economic and social reality. As landlords scramble to get their rental units to meet the market rate, renters scramble to find second, third and fourth jobs to be able to afford the market rate. Federal finance minister Chrystia Freeland was rightly mocked for suggesting recently that a 330, 350 square foot house for nearly $2,000 — I think $1,600 a month — was an example of government meeting housing affordability.

The suite of housing policy changes introduced since last fall are probably enough for this government to convince voters they’re taking action on the housing crisis. But it’s like an unfinished puzzle on the table. They have fragmented the housing policy changes into a dozen tiny little pieces. It looks colourful and impressive. However, we’ve yet to put the puzzle together. We have no idea if all the pieces on the table are from the same puzzle and whether they fit together to create a coherent picture.

[6:20 p.m.]

Perhaps the changes to the market housing policy and community planning and development are enough in the short term to convince British Columbians to give this government another four years. However, that will be an increasingly challenging time for British Columbians, for millions of British Columbians, as the full scope of the housing policy changes really begin to materialize for them. We will see that these changes were not enough to address a housing crisis but rather to ensure the profitability of the private sector development industry.

This government has been legislating and regulating economic advice that demonstrates a lack of compassion and empathy for renters and people who do not own property. As I have witnessed personally, they are quick to judge people who cannot afford to buy property, and it appears they believe these people are to blame for the economic situation and the generation that they were born into.

Noting the hour, I reserve my place and move adjournment.

A. Olsen moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

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

Hon. R. Kahlon moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The Speaker: This House stands adjourned until ten tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 6:21 p.m.