The House met at 1:32 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Hon. Ravi Parmar: Welcome back to everyone. It’s great to be in the House.

We’ve got some guests here that I’m looking forward to meeting later today. We’ve got someone who’s very well known to the members of this House. The former MLA for Peace River North, Dan Davies, is in the House.

In addition to Dan, we’ve got Dion Livingston of Livingston logging in Fort St. James, also a director of the northern region Private Forest Landowners Association. In addition, we’ve got Joe Berger, who’s the president of Hotsaw Logging as well. Both are members of the Peace River Woodlot Association. I’m looking forward to meeting with them later today.

Would the House please join me in making them feel very welcome.

Hon. Anne Kang: Today, I am delighted to welcome some truly special guests to the House, individuals who are making a positive difference to the lives of children and families across British Columbia. Joining us from KidSport B.C. are Rob Newman, president and CEO; Judy Joseph-Black, chair of the board of directors; Angela; and as well, Allison Mailer, vice president.

Please make them feel very welcome today.

Amelia Boultbee: I would like to acknowledge that my father, Steve Boultbee, is here with us in the gallery today observing. It’s very exciting for him to be here and witness all the great things that are happening in this chamber.

Will the House please join me in making him feel very welcome.

[1:35 p.m.]

Amna Shah: It was a pleasure today for my colleagues and I to meet with the B.C. Chiropractic Association. Now they are joining us here in the gallery. We have Dr. Jabeen Jussa, Dr. Janet Belliveau, Dr. Daniel Skinner, Dr. Ron Norman, Dr. Clark Konczak, Dr. Mike Hadbavny, Liza Kallstrom and Alix Lavertu. The B.C. Chiropractic Association is a voluntary organization that represents B.C.’s chiropractors. It works to advance the profession and raise public awareness.

Would the House join me in making them feel very, very welcome here today.

Tributes

Peter Ford

Darlene Rotchford: I just want to take a moment to recognize that we’re actually missing someone in here today. I want to recognize Peter Ford, who we lost a day shy of his 70th birthday.

Thank you for my colleagues in the opposition who actually came to his celebration of life. He was a constituent of mine, a man well known and cared for by all of us, I know, in this House, as well as a long-term CAF member, especially base chief from Esquimalt.

His wife, I just want to say on regards, thanks everyone very much for all the kind words they sent, the book we sent, and again for the people who showed up.

And to all the staff here, just to let you know we’re also with you. We do know today is a bit trying.

Introductions by Members

Misty Van Popta: In the chamber today is an old friend and neighbour of mine, Alan Coline, here to observe parliamentary procedure as well as show support for my bill reading earlier this morning. Our kids grew up together in the church nursery and school, but a year ago he moved away. Somewhat of a legend in the floral and farming industry, Langley’s loss is Qualicum’s gain.

Will the House please make him welcome.

George Anderson: Today I’d like to welcome Marika Stevenson to the House. She’s a proud British Columbian who demonstrates an unwavering commitment to the values that all British Columbians should aspire to — compassion, kindness and care for your neighbours. With a generous smile and a big heart, Marika possesses what British Columbia needs most right now — hope and excitement for the future. I am proud to have her as one of my constituents and prouder to call her a friend.

Will the House join me in welcoming Marika to the Legislature.

Paul Choi: I’m pleased to welcome Vietnamese delegation accompanied by UVic professor Victor Ramraj, headed by Madame Le Thu Ha, who is a Member of Parliament in Vietnam, the vice-chairwoman of the National Assembly Office and the general secretary of the Vietnam Parliamentary Friendship Organization, along with 15 others, here for a workshop with our legislative office on gender equity, digitization and governance.

If I can ask the whole House to please make them feel very welcome.

Hon. Nina Krieger: Joining us in the gallery today is Denise Lodge, founder of COREY, Coalition of Riders Educating Youth. This is a road safety organization named in honour of her late son, Corey. Ms. Lodge has dedicated herself to educating young drivers and riders on the importance of making safe choices behind the wheel. She is with us for the second reading of Bill 12, which will amend the Motor Vehicle Act to strengthen driver safety and protect lives on our roads.

I ask the House to please join me in welcoming Ms. Lodge.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

Bill 17 — Intimate Images Protection
Statutes Amendment Act, 2025

Hon. Niki Sharma presented a message from Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor: a bill intituled Intimate Images Protection Statutes Amendment Act, 2025.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Intimate Images Protection Statutes Amendment Act. This bill will ensure the act continues to provide a fast, accessible way for those seeking to prevent or stop non-consensual sharing of intimate images. The proposed amendments will provide continued authority for the intimate images protection service and the indirect collection of personal information for the purpose of supporting their clients.

The bill will also provide administrative clarifications that will enhance the effectiveness of the act and remove publishing requirements for damage decisions made by the Civil Resolution Tribunal to protect individual privacy.

[1:40 p.m.]

The bill will also enable the amount of damages that an individual can submit a claim for to the resolution tribunal to be increased up to $75,000.

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

Motion approved.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I move that the bill be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved.

Bill 18 — Sexual Violence
Policy Act

Hon. Jessie Sunner presented a message from Her Honour the Lieutenant Governor: a bill intituled Sexual Violence Policy Act.

Hon. Jessie Sunner: I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.

Today I am pleased to introduce the Sexual Violence Policy Act. This bill will replace the current Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act.

Bill 18 provides public post-secondary institutions with modernized legislation to help address sexual violence in their communities and to ensure that post-secondary institution policies and procedures meet best practices for sexual violence prevention and trauma-informed response.

I am proud to introduce this draft legislation as I believe it is a critical step to increasing safety and expanding our collective efforts to prevent sexual violence at B.C.’s public post-secondary institutions.

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

Motion approved.

Hon. Jessie Sunner: I move that Bill 18 be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved.

Members’ Statements

FireSmart Program and Response
to Mid-Island Wildfire

Stephanie Higginson: I rise on behalf of myself and my colleague from the Mid Island–Pacific Rim riding to extend our gratitude and to bring awareness to B.C.’s FireSmart program.

The Wesley Ridge fire was discovered on July 31. The fire itself was in the Mid Island–Pacific Rim riding, but the responding fire department, the emergency operations centre and the evacuation centre were in Ladysmith-Oceanside.

The fire had an immense impact across the region. It burned through almost 600 hectares, threatening the Meadowood community. Close to 450 homes were on evacuation order, and 330 more were on evacuation alert. It was one of the largest evacuations in Vancouver Island’s history.

The fire came so close to some homes that the siding melted, and in one instance, a ladder that was left on someone’s lawn during the hurried evacuation melted into the ground. Thanks to the combined efforts of the B.C. wildfire service, Dashwood fire hall and over 20 fire services that answered the call for help, not one home was lost in the fire — not one.

There are a few reasons for this, including the world-class rapid response of the B.C. wildfire structure protection and structure defence units. I learned that there is a difference between the structure protection and structure defence units.

Without a doubt, the biggest influencing factor was the preparation taken in the Meadowood area to be fire smart. Starting almost ten years ago, Capt. Willow Bloomquist of the Dashwood volunteer fire department took the lead to support our region to become fire smart. Dashwood fire hall’s leadership and preventative action to bring the FireSmart program to life in the Meadowood community made all the difference in the fire response.

I ask the House to help me and my colleague for Mid Island–Pacific Rim show our deepest gratitude to all those who provided support during the Wesley Ridge fire and to the Dashwood fire department for their proactive leadership on implementing the province’s FireSmart program.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Teresa Wat: I rise today to recognize and celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. This is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture and, indeed, for many East Asian communities across the world. It is a time rooted in history, tradition and profound meaning.

[1:45 p.m.]

The festival is traditionally held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which happens to be today, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. This full moon symbolizes unity, completeness and family reunion. It is a time when families and friends gather to share a meal, to light lanterns and, of course, to enjoy the iconic mooncakes, those sweet, dense pastries often stamped with intricate designs.

Here in Richmond-Bridgeport and across the Lower Mainland, I have been so fortunate to attend multiple celebrations. Witnessing firsthand the vibrancy and richness of these traditions, the spirit of the community, of giving thanks for the harvest and of looking to the future with hope is truly inspiring.

Our Chinese-Canadian community has made invaluable contributions to British Columbia and to Canada as a whole. Their culture, their resilience and civic engagement are part of the very fabric of our riding and of our province. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a beautiful reminder of the deep, enduring cultural heritage they share with us all.

I urge all members of this House to join me in extending our best wishes to all Chinese Canadians in B.C. who are celebrating this special occasion. May the light of the full moon bring peace, prosperity and a joyful reunion to all.

[Cantonese and Mandarin were spoken.]

Island Rail Corridor and
Economic Importance of Rail System

George Anderson: Across British Columbia, existing rail corridors serve as corridors of opportunity, a vision for jobs, prosperity and a province that leads. On Vancouver Island, the shared visioning process for the Island Rail Corridor is asking not what rail once was but what this corridor can mean for our future.

Those opportunities are profound. The Island corridor connects ports in Nanaimo and Port Alberni. The corridor is close to CFB Esquimalt and CFB Comox military bases. Moreover, the corridor presents an opportunity for reconciliation, not as a slogan but in partnership with First Nations at the table as full partners, shaping a future built on respect and trust.

But the Island corridor is only the beginning. Across British Columbia, rail corridors have always unlocked prosperity, from moving minerals out of the Teck smelter in Trail to the potential of carrying Kalesnikoff’s mass timber products to the coast, to unlocking the opportunities at the Port of Prince Rupert, the Sea to Sky corridor and the Fraser Valley.

When our rail corridors are strong, we create opportunity for jobs for welders, carpenters and electricians, the skilled trades that built this province. Keep young people here at home, and provide the hope you can measure in paycheques. For businesses, faster freight and stronger supply chains and confidence for investment. For the environment, lower emissions, fewer trucks on the road and a cleaner province for the next generation.

Our existing rail corridors are not just about tracks on the ground. They are about the direction we choose as a province. Will the next generation inherit limits, congestion and climate crisis, or will they inherit possibility, opportunity and hope? These existing rail corridors allow us to create abundance of opportunity, prosperity and hope.

The Island Rail Corridor and all of our rail corridors serve as a promise of jobs, reconciliation and prosperity. That promise is the future of British Columbia.

Importance of Democracy
and Role of MLAs

David Williams: Democracy is more than a system of government. It is the very foundation of our freedom. At its heart, democracy means that power does not rest with rulers, elites or influencers but with the people themselves. It is the belief that every voice matters, every vote counts, and every citizen carries the right to shape the future of their community and their province.

In our province and in our country, democracy has given generations the ability to live with freedoms that many around the world can only dream of, the freedom to worship, to speak, to gather and to choose those who govern us. Let us never forget that many before us paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend those freedoms.

Too often we speak of democracy as though it is permanent, something we inherited and will always have. It is a living agreement, one that requires constant attention and protection.

[1:50 p.m.]

Free societies rarely collapse in a single day. They erode gradually as power is consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. The Roman Empire did not fall overnight. It unravelled over years.

But democracy is not only about casting a ballot at election time. Democracy depends on citizens who are engaged, who ask tough questions and hold their leaders accountable when they fall short. It is about accountability. Governments must answer to the people. It is about transparency. Decisions must be made in the open, not behind closed doors. And it is about respect, respect for differing opinions and for the rule of law and safeguards that safeguard the majority and the minority.

Democracy is not perfect, but it is resilient. It is not to be taken for granted but the responsibility we must renew each single day. As members of this assembly, we are entrusted with upholding it, not only in the votes we cast but in how we listen, how we serve and how we respect the voices of the people we represent. The true meaning of democracy is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

KidSport B.C.
and Support for Sports Sector

Amshen / Joan Phillip: I rise today to recognize October 5 to 11, 2025, as KidSport B.C. Powered by Sport B.C. Week, a week dedicated to raising awareness of the tremendous work that KidSport B.C. does to help youth throughout the province of British Columbia access the benefits of sports.

The opportunity to participate in sports is a formative part of childhood. Every child deserves the opportunity to know the pride of wearing a jersey, the thrill of scoring a goal and the joy of being part of a team. Unfortunately, financial barriers prevent some families from enrolling their children in organized sports. KidSport B.C. was formed by Sport B.C. in 1993 and provides grants to support youth aged 18 and younger to participate in a sport of their choice.

In the past year, KidSport B.C. supported 10,695 children in 233 communities throughout B.C., distributing more than $3.6 million in grants to cover sport registration fees. More than 40 percent of these grants supported children from underrepresented populations in sports, including Indigenous youth, children with disabilities and newcomers to British Columbia.

In B.C., we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive sports sector, one where people of all ages, genders and abilities can reap the benefits of sports participation and active living. That’s why our government invests $50 million in the sports sector every year.

Thank you very much, Sport B.C.

Cheam Elementary School

Heather Maahs: In 1875, B.C. boasted a burgeoning population of 42,000. That was 150 years ago. Two years earlier, in 1873, Chilliwack was incorporated as the third official township, with a total population not quite reaching 1,500. As one of the oldest municipalities in the province, with only New Westminster and Victoria being older, each resident was given a canoe due to the high probability of flooding.

[1:55 p.m.]

The population of Chilliwack was enough to warrant the need for a school building, and Cheam School was built. The 17 students attending that first year arrived for school on foot, mostly barefoot, on horseback or by sleigh during the winter. The lone teacher of this school earned an annual salary of $400.

On April 26 of this year, this little country school celebrated its 150-year milestone. Cheam School has seen plenty of changes, renovations and improvements over the years. The reminders of days gone by have been uncovered in walls, including a school strap — likely some of my colleagues have had firsthand experience with its purpose — an old handbell and a logbook.

Cheam Elementary School now enrols approximately 250 students, complete with an early French immersion program. It is a popular school with a lovely ambiance and a meaningful culture.

Congratulations to the Cheam Elementary School community, parents, students, staff and administration, from the past and the present.

Oral Questions

Economic Conditions and
Government Policies on
Oil and Gas Project

John Rustad: B.C. is at a crossroads. We have all the potential we could ever want to become the Norway of North America, but instead, we sell our natural gas at an 85 percent discount to the Americans, and Canada sells its oil at a 20 to 30 percent discount to the Americans. So much for elbows up by this Premier. Instead, he has delivered record deficits, people struggling and fleeing B.C., shuttered hospitals and a collapsing economy.

After nine years in government, why does this Premier continue to put ideology ahead of fighting for average, everyday British Columbians?

Hon. David Eby: It’s great to be back, and welcome to all the members of the House.

Well, the member is just wrong. B.C.’s economy is holding strong despite major challenges. I mean, our forest sector…. I just heard of a 10 percent additional tariff, because apparently our lumber is a national security threat to the United States, as if it’s a threat to receive affordable, high-quality building materials that Americans can use to build their homes. That’s what we’re dealing with right now. Russia has lower tariff access to the United States right now compared to Canada.

These are serious and challenging threats, but despite that, British Columbia’s GDP growth since 2017 is second among all provinces, second only to P.E.I. We added 12,000 full-time jobs in 2025 alone.

But I know a lot of people are struggling out there with affordability, with the cost of living. I can assure them that we are working to grow our economy. In fact, B.C. will lead the country, and we’ll ensure we’re delivering high-quality jobs for people in every corner of the province.

We have more than $40 billion in private sector projects. We were 40 percent of the major projects that the federal government identified as being close to shovel-ready and ready to go. We could have filled up that whole list.

The best days are yet to come for British Columbia. We’ve got to support our people. We’ve got to grow jobs. In fact, we’re going to support this entire country.

The Speaker: Leader of the Official Opposition, supplemental.

John Rustad: Well, I guess that’s a new definition of rose-coloured glasses. Take immigration out of it, and our economy grew at just 0.14 percent per year for the last decade, the worst since the Great Depression.

This Premier says he’s got $40 billion…. That is one project, before this government took power. There were hundreds of billions in projects before that.

The Premier says, and I quote him here, that a new pipeline would be “a direct economic threat to the kind of economy he’s trying to build.” He talked about the Americans going after us, and yet he is perfectly willing to see us selling our oil at a 20 to 30 percent discount. He’s perfectly willing to see that natural gas go to the Americans at an 80 percent discount.

Enough of charity to the Americans. This government is broke. We have thousands of workers out on the lawn of this building protesting because they can’t be treated fairly.

[2:00 p.m.]

I’m sorry. This Premier seems to think that economy and revenue can run from ideology and unicorn farts. It doesn’t take that. It takes a lot more.

Instead of doing hand-picked projects by this Premier, this Premier needs to get government out of the way. It needs to get to a place where we stop giving charity to the Americans, and we actually start building wealth for British Columbians.

Will this government stop being a massive obstacle by opposing projects that are coming forward and actually start opening our economy up for the success of all British Columbians?

Hon. David Eby: Well, the member says that people are fleeing the province. Then in the next breath, he says: “Well, if it wasn’t for people moving to British Columbia, there wouldn’t have been growth.” He needs to make up his mind about his facts.

In the same breath as he promotes an imaginary pipeline project from Alberta to our north coast that will seriously compromise real major projects representing tens of billions of dollars that are dependent on the support of coastal First Nations and communities along the line…. As he puts those projects at direct threat in order to ship raw bitumen to China at the expense of B.C. and Canadian taxpayers, well, British Columbia has more than $40 billion in real private sector…

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member. Shhh.

Please continue.

Hon. David Eby: …projects that have proponents and financing and business plans and are making final investment decisions.

It’s an incredibly exciting time for B.C. It’s a challenging time for B.C. residents. We have to deliver these projects. We cannot put them at risk for ideology or posturing. We have to deliver for British Columbians and Canadians because that is what Canadians expect.

We will drive the national economy. We will create the jobs, and we will show that member what British Columbians can do together.

Delta Hospital Emergency Services
and Government Action on
Health Care Issues

Ian Paton: In this Premier’s economy, even essential services are not reliable. That includes emergency rooms. We have seen repeated ER closures in every community across this province. My hospital’s, the Delta Hospital’s ER just closed again for the fourth time this year on Saturday night. An entire city of more than 110,000 people had no access to emergency care last Saturday night.

This isn’t a staffing glitch. This is a public health crisis caused by years of inaction and neglect from this NDP government.

Will this government commit today that ERs across this province stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the question.

What happened on Saturday night in his community is very challenging for the city, for the residents, for the people who depend on emergency services to be there for them when they need it, like people in communities large and small across British Columbia do.

That’s why we first need to thank all those health care staff who are stepping up to fill the vacancies and the gaps in scheduling that we’re experiencing because of a shortage of health care workers.

That’s why we have to continue the actions that we’re taking in the short term, reaching out, from all the turmoil down in the States, to ask U.S. physicians and nurses and nurse practitioners to move to British Columbia to be part of our universal public health care system.

It’s working. We’ve had 1,400 applications, 140 jobs accepted. In the Fraser Health Authority alone, where the Delta general hospital is, we’ve had 154 job applications in two months alone.

But that’s not enough. That’s why we’ve got to train the next generation of doctors.

The member speaks about not taking action. Well, the leader of his party failed to take action, failed to build the new medical school in Surrey when he had the opportunity, something this government is doing and that we’ll continue to do.

The Speaker: Delta South, supplemental.

Ian Paton: The people of Delta and across the province are tired of the excuses, year after year after year, in question period. Seniors are being turned away, and parents are being told to drive hours away for emergency treatment.

[2:05 p.m.]

At UBCM, Delta council requested an urgent meeting with the Minister of Health to discuss ER closures in my community, but the minister refused to meet with them. The same thing happened for multiple mayors and councillors at UBCM last week.

Accountability matters, and this minister is hiding from everybody. If this minister cannot guarantee basic emergency services for British Columbians and is too busy to meet with locally elected representatives, then what does this minister get paid for?

Hon. Josie Osborne: As a former mayor of a small community, I know that there is nothing more important than being able to get face time with a minister to build a relationship…

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member.

Hon. Josie Osborne: …and to have those difficult conversations.

I received over 100 meeting requests for UBCM. Each and every one of those conversations is important, but a person has to prioritize, and I prioritize those communities that are the farthest away, that have the hardest time getting in front of me and being able to talk to me. That’s why I travelled into the Interior and up north to visit as many small communities as I could to hear directly from those community leaders, to hear directly from those front-line physicians and nurses about what was taking place in those communities.

Earlier this summer, I sat down with the Delta mayor and council for almost an hour in their council chambers. I spoke to the mayor this weekend. I’ll be meeting again with the mayor and council this week, as soon as they’re able to find space for me.

I know those conversations are important, and I’m going to continue to prioritize them. But to characterize this as something else is absolutely ridiculous. I am deeply committed to this file. We are going to continue the work to attract, to train, to retain more health care workers, to build up the health care workforce that we need, that we are so proud of in this province, to deliver the health care for people when they need it, where they need it.

Public Service Labour Dispute

Rob Botterell: Public service workers in British Columbia are pushed to the brink. Housing, food costs, inflation, the cost of living keeps climbing, yet it’s a fact that many BCGEU workers make less than the average B.C. worker.

This government is in the history books for all the wrong reasons. They’ve let one of the longest public service strikes drag on for six weeks, and now students can’t access their loans to pay rent. Small businesses are feeling the pinch. The government has the fiscal capacity to act. What’s missing is the will.

I just joined thousands of BCGEU members and supporters on the legislative lawn. What is their question? Why won’t this government meet the BCGEU’s calls?

Hon. David Eby: I thank the member for the question. This is an important issue.

We have two competing priorities here. I want us to make sure that those amazing people who do the hard work for British Columbians every day get a fair deal, get supported so that they can support their families and their communities, so they can do a good job at work.

The other is we’re in tight fiscal times here in British Columbia, not just in British Columbia but across the country, nationally and many places around the world. We’ve got a slowing global economy, low resource prices. People are making careful decisions before investing, whether businesses or individuals.

We’ve got these two things that are in competition. We’ve got be fair to taxpayers, we’ve got to recognize the circumstances we’re in, and we’ve got to be fair to our workers and make sure they’re treated well. We’re ensuring that our offer on the table ensures that workers don’t fall behind, that we’re meeting inflation, that there’s a group of workers that need to, as the member says, be caught up to ensure that they’re earning a reasonable wage for the work that they’re doing.

The work is going to happen at the table with the BCGEU. I hope we can get back to the table and reach a fair agreement for everybody.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Rob Botterell: Halloween is around the corner, and this NDP government is a ghost of its former self. Public service, non-union management jobs have grown much faster than BCGEU jobs over the past decade, and wages have fallen behind the private sector, driving workers away. This happened on your watch.

To note other provinces, Alberta and Ontario, facing the same challenges we do, have met their unions’ demand for fair wages.

What will this government do to retain the public service workers British Columbians rely on every day of the week?

[2:10 p.m.]

Hon. David Eby: The member raised a couple of points that deserve to be addressed.

First of all, the provinces. We had a much more generous agreement with the BCGEU than other provinces did. They’re playing catch-up with their workers with their current agreements. We had an 18 percent increase over the term of the contract, which was better than inflation over the period — a time of record inflation, I will note. When we have the resources and we’re able to do it, we make sure that we’re able to bring our workers along with us.

On the other piece about the size of the public service, I agree. We’ve got to slim down the administration within the public service. We’ve reduced full-time equivalents by more than 800 in just the last few months, and we’re going to continue to do that work to get rid of the administrative costs, whether it’s in the health authority or whether it’s in core government. We’re ensuring that we’re doing that, but we’re not going to impact the front-line services.

We saw that when those guys, the Conservatives, were on this side of the House, and they cut those front-line services that people depended on. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to protect front-line services, and we’re going to make sure that people are looked after.

Universal Ostrich Farms
and Federal Avian Flu Cull

Dallas Brodie: On Friday, I travelled to Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood. I met with Katie Pasitney. For nearly a year, she has fought heroically to save her 500 ostriches from a senseless slaughter. The CFIA knows these birds are healthy, yet instead of testing them, they’ve built a kill pen out of hay bales and have barred Katie from even seeing her own animals.

Now we’ve learned that Spirit, one of her birds, has died in CFIA custody after days of suffering. And the Premier hasn’t lifted a finger.

My question to the Premier is this. Why has he abandoned Katie and her ostriches in their time of need?

Hon. Lana Popham: Thank you very much for the question. I think the member understands, as we do, that avian influenza is a federally regulated disease, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is the lead on investigating and responding to this virus. This is a deadly virus that continues to come into our province in the fall and has continued on until the spring. Right now, this disease is landing on our doorstep. It is something that is deadly to the poultry industry in this province and right across North America.

We are doing our best as a province to find ways to work with farmers, including bringing tables together, because it is now known that this disease crosses over to the dairy sector. We are working with farmers to fund projects as we find the best ways to stave off this virus from our poultry businesses as it approaches right now.

It is really difficult to hear the stories from this farm, this ostrich farm, and we understand how difficult it is for those farmers. We know that all farmers who face a depopulation order in this province are facing a very difficult time for them and their families and their communities. We are doing our best to support farmers as we see this disease pressure come into our province right now.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Dallas Brodie: I appreciate that answer, Minister. But “doing our best”? How are you doing your best? I haven’t seen any letters written. I haven’t seen even a tweet go out. I haven’t seen anything being done in support of Katie Pasitney’s farm.

Has the Premier even visited her and lent an ear to what’s going on up there? They have 227 days virus-free in those birds, and why won’t they test? Why not test them and see if they’re deadly?

You say it’s a deadly virus, this is a deadly issue and could kill other animals. Where’s the proof of that? Why don’t we insist that there be another test done?

Last spring the Premier tried to pass a bill that would have given him the power to override any law in this province, so he’s clearly not afraid to use power when it suits him. But when ordinary British Columbians like Katie Pasitney need him to stand up for their livelihoods, their farms and even for the humane treatment of animals, he’s nowhere to be seen.

The Speaker: Question, Member.

[2:15 p.m.]

Dallas Brodie: With due respect, Mr. Speaker, I hear a lot of latitude given to other members of this House. I have listened to long, rambling preambles to their questions.

The Speaker: Member.

Dallas Brodie: Again to the Premier, why won’t he use his power to help Katie by demanding that Prime Minister Mark Carney save her beautiful birds from this senseless slaughter?

Hon. Lana Popham: I, in fact, did meet with Katie in the spring, and we discussed the situation. I’ve sat with Katie, just like I’ve sat with other farmers across the province.

One farm in particular, in the Fraser Valley, has been depopulated four times as we try and find our way through to a solution with this disease, but the CFIA leads that file.

As a province, we are doing everything we can in our jurisdiction to try and protect our poultry industry, but it’s very, very challenging. I understand what the member is saying about how tragic the situation is. We agree. But the CFIA leads this file on responding to the virus, and what we can do as a province is get behind making sure that our poultry industry is protected.

Government Hiring of Staff

Kiel Giddens: Two million dollars has gone to the Premier’s friends, NDP insiders and consultants. The list includes a joke writer for the Premier, it includes his friend Michael Bryant, and it includes former cabinet minister George Heyman, who is supposed to get the NDP a deal with the BCGEU. Meanwhile, the people delivering critical public services are told to settle for barely keeping up with inflation.

Is this the economy that this Premier wants to build, one that rewards his friends and insiders over the front-line workers who are outside on the Legislature lawn today?

Hon. David Eby: I remember when the Conservatives — they had a different name — were sitting on this side of the House, and they threw out of work thousands of people that were delivering care for British Columbians across the province. That philosophy has not disappeared.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. David Eby: Their priority is not the workers delivering care for people. Their priority is something else entirely.

For us, we’ll stay focused on ensuring that the workers who are delivering that care and support for British Columbians, delivering front-line services, are protected and that we get to a fair deal with them. We’re going to make sure that happens.

The member is asking about a contract speechwriter, an incredibly talented contract speechwriter, that allows me to do the job that I do. I deliver multiple speeches. It’s a necessary thing. When we hire....

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. Members.

Hon. David Eby: When we hire staff, we hire them for their qualifications. I assure you that you will never find anyone hired by me that is an active residential schools denier that promotes racism and hate. What you will find is us hiring people who are qualified, skilled and bring an ability to do the job and get the job done for British Columbians.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member, after the question period, please.

Budget Deficit and
Government Financial Management

Peter Milobar: It sounds like the Premier is admitting that he hired 850 managers under his watch that he’s now gotten rid of with his FTE reduction plan that he just talked about.

This is the problem. Today the Premier decides to continue to deflect, as he always does, back in the Wayback Machine, back to regimes and previous governments, but he doesn’t want to look at the two-year track record of his own premiership, a two-year track record where he arrived with a $6 billion surplus, which is now a record deficit — in fact, a deficit that’s going to continue to climb.

He was warned about the growing public service administration for years, and they ignored it. Now he wants a pat on the back because they’re trying to adjust. And if they can get rid of 850 people without impacting public services, why did they hire them in the first place? What were they doing for the last several years?

[2:20 p.m.]

It’s quite simple. The debt has doubled under this Premier. The debt-servicing cost has doubled under this Premier. No wonder they have no fiscal room to actually get a settlement. They’re paying an extra $2½ billion in interest payments more alone this year than when this Premier took office as the Premier.

But he doesn’t want to talk about his own track record. He wants to talk about 20 years ago. That’s relevant to the 10,000 people that were on the 10,000 people that were on the front lawn today.

It’s really quite simple. The Premier keeps saying that they’re going to bend the curve. Unfortunately, they’re bending it upwards and skyrocketing upwards with deficit and debt, and those costs are ever hampering this government.

When will we see a proper fiscal plan that actually gets the province back on the right track and actually sees some control of spending with this government instead of everything going to his political friends and insiders?

Hon. Brenda Bailey: Thank you to the member opposite for the question. Like the rest of Canada, B.C. is facing significant fiscal headwinds, but we’re taking action. We already have reviewed government expenses and brought down $1.5 billion from the fiscal plan. But that is not enough. We are reviewing. Every ministry is doing the heavy lifting of reviewing every dollar that we spend here in British Columbia.

And yes, we have taken action to freeze public service. In fact, we’ve brought down 850 jobs. This is action we must take in the context of the economic circumstances we find ourselves in, Canada finds itself in, and around the world is the experience.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh. Members.

Hon. Brenda Bailey: But B.C. still remains competitive to the rest of Canada. We have lower GDP-debt ratios than almost the rest of Canada, and we have a plan to bend the curve. Now, we know, on the other side, when they were running during the election, they planned to spend $2 billion more.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. Shhh. Members.

Oil Tanker Policy
and Impact on Jobs

Larry Neufeld: This NDP government supports dredging the Burrard Inlet to accommodate fully loaded oil tankers yet supports retaining a tanker ban policy on the north coast. This makes no sense.

In this Premier’s vision of the economy, is it only NDP friends and insiders who get the jobs, while everyone else needs to leave the province to find work?

Hon. Adrian Dix: It’s our approach that British Columbians should get jobs. That’s why we’ve supported, for example, the policy….

Interjections.

The Speaker: Member. Members.

Hon. Adrian Dix: The Leader of the Opposition, who is yelling out in the first sentence, opposes the North Coast transmission line, which would create thousands of jobs in British Columbia, opposes mining jobs in the northwest, opposes renewable energy projects. All of those projects build British Columbia and build the electricity we need as a province and move us forward.

On LNG, we talk about export, and we talk about who we’re supporting. We have the lowest-emission LNG in the world. There were no projects when the NDP took office. Zero. There are now three under construction and others that are making their own final investment decisions.

In short, what you are seeing on every front is a government that builds the economy for workers, especially for union workers, high-paying jobs everywhere in B.C.

Forest Industry Trade Issues
and Support for Forest Workers

Ward Stamer: Mills and workers across B.C. fear the future. They’re struggling to keep the doors open and food on the table. Every day they wait to find out if they’re going to get a paycheque or a layoff notice.

This minister talks about protecting workers’ paycheques. What about protecting their jobs? Instead of listening to his handpicked advisory council, why doesn’t the minister talk to workers whose lives are actually impacted by the destruction he has brought into the B.C. forest industry?

Hon. Ravi Parmar: The Premier talked about it in one of his answers — the challenges we’re facing in forestry when Donald Trump, last Monday, announced a section 232 investigation.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, please.

Please complete.

[2:25 p.m.]

Hon. Ravi Parmar: Some things don’t change. Here we have an official opposition attacking the government, like they do, but who they should be attacking is Donald Trump. Why do we have an American president who is unfairly treating Canadian lumber as a national security risk? Forty-five percent duties and tariffs that will exist on our softwood lumber sector….

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member. Member.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: What a joke. What a joke from the peanut gallery over there.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: Let’s be very clear. The President of the United States is attacking forestry workers from coast to coast to coast. On this side of the House, we’re going to stand up for those workers. We’re going to stand up for their paycheques. Unlike the members opposite, that would roll over for Donald Trump each and every day.

Food Bank Use and
Government Action on Issues

Á’a:líya Warbus: Throughout today’s question period, we’ve been asking this government about the plan for the economy and about the plan for the massive deficit that we’re staring down right now in British Columbia.

My question has to do with the people that are suffering under these circumstances. We continue to be surprised by the government’s ability to set new records. On this Premier’s watch, local food banks are doing just that. Food Banks B.C. has said it’s “another year of record-breaking demand for B.C.’s hunger relief services,” with Surrey Food Bank just hitting an all-time high. That means people are literally going hungry in this province.

These are not the kind of records that this government should be setting. My question: is it this government’s vision for the economy, one, where people can’t even afford to buy food?

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I appreciate the member’s question. No doubt there are some people that are having tough times in our communities, but we have a clear vision of where we want to go. In fact, I can share with members of this House that we are the envy of the country. We have provinces that wish they had the opportunities and the potential that British Columbia does.

What we’re going to do is what we’re already doing. We’re making smart investments, strategic investments, so that we can not only capture the opportunity of a whole host of private sector projects, unlike some other provinces, actual private sector projects with real investments.

I know that the Leader of the Opposition here hates when he wakes up in the morning and hears good news. He hates when we get final investment decisions in British Columbia.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh. Members. Members. Order.

Please conclude.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: Most people of British Columbia wake up when they hear good news. They hear of investment decisions coming to the province. They see B.C. getting 40 percent of the national projects. They would be happy. Not the Leader of the Opposition. He wakes up and says: “Oh, what am I going to say in question period today?” That is not the mentality that’s going to take us forward.

We’re making investments in our people, and we’re making investments in our economy. We’re going to continue to do that as we go forward.

[End of question period.]

Tabling Documents

The Speaker: Members, I have the honour to table the following reports:

Auditor General annual report, 2024-25; annual report, ’24-25, revised September, 2025; and Beyond the Bottom Line: Navigating the Province of B.C.’s Audited Financial Statements.

Next one, Conflict of Interest Commissioner annual report, 2024.

Elections B.C. annual report, 2024-25, and service plan ’25-26–’27-28; and Report of the Chief Electoral Officer, 43rd Provincial General Election, October 19, 2024, Volume 2, Financing and Expenses.

Emergency and Disaster Management Act report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025.

Human Rights Commissioner, annual report, 2024-25, and service plan 2025-26–2027-28.

Information and Privacy Commissioner, annual report and service plan, 2024-25.

[2:30 p.m.]

Ombudsperson Public Interest Disclosure Act, special report No. 2, Supporting Implementation and Providing Guidance: How the Ombudsperson Assisted Public Bodies to Meet Their Responsibilities Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

Special report No. 3, Awareness and Trust: Insights from Chief Executives and Employees of Public Bodies Covered Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

Special report No. 4, Operational Review: Five Years of Operating Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

Special report No. 5, Proposed Amendments: Lessons from the First Five Years of the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

Registrar of lobbyists, Annual Report and Service Plan, 2024-25; Determination Decision 25-04, the Truck Loggers Association, designated filer: William Brash; Determination Decision 25-06, British Columbia Nurses Union, designated filer: Adriane Gear; and Reconsideration Decision 25-04, Determination Decision 25-04, designated filer: William Brash.

Finally, Representative for Children and Youth, Annual Report 2024/25 and Service Plan 2025/26 to 2027/28.

Point of Order

Dallas Brodie: I have a point of order to raise.

I’m looking at subsections 40(2) and (3) of the standing orders. The first one is: “Disrespectful or offensive language forbidden.” That’s sub (2). “Irrelevance in debate,” that’s sub (3).

Sub (2) says: “No member shall use offensive words against any member of this House.” The Premier has repeatedly referred to me as being racist, denialist and hateful. Am I now allowed to use words like “stupid,” “incompetent,” “financially illiterate” and “anarchist”? How far does this go?

The second one is: “No member shall be irrelevant in debate.” He takes shots at me sideways whenever he can, and I’m not accepting it anymore. It’s unacceptable language in this House. I could call him lots of names, believe me, but I’m not taking this anymore.

Raising questions about public expenditures of money in this province is not against the rules. Anybody who takes public money is open to questioning, and you shouldn’t be questioned about whether you’re racist. If you want no questions, don’t take public money.

I would like a declaration from the Speaker about whether people can call each other names in this House anymore.

Hon. David Eby: I feel like I should be paying the member rent for the amount of space I’m occupying in her head.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Shhh. Please.

Hon. David Eby: In my answer, I was specifically referring to the staff member that was hired by the Leader of the Opposition who was fired recently for being a racist residential school denialist — properly fired, by the way. I congratulate him for taking that appropriate stand. A little late, but he did take it. I support it. You wouldn’t find me hiring people like that.

If the member thought I was talking about her, perhaps that’s her issue.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member, it’s not a debate, please. You have stated your point of order. You heard from the Premier. Just take your seat, please.

Members, just to clarify, when there’s a dispute between the members about certain things, the Chair does not intervene in that, and so far I haven’t seen anything contravening the standing orders that have been stated in the House today.

Motions Without Notice

Hon. Mike Farnworth: By leave, I move that Motion 20, adopted by the House on April 30, 2025, establishing the sessional order for certain proceedings of the House to be undertaken in three sections, be amended by (a) striking the text of section 7 and replacing it as follows: “Section A and Section C consist of ten members, not including the Chair, being five members of the B.C. NDP caucus, three members of the Conservative Party of British Columbia caucus, one member of the B.C. Green Party caucus, and one member of the OneBC caucus”; (b) striking the text of section 8 and replacing it as follows: “The members of Section A be the minister whose estimates are under examination or who is in charge of the bill under consideration and Rohini Arora, the Hon. Ravi Parmar, Janet Routledge, Amna Shah, Steve Kooner, Lawrence Mok, David Williams, Rob Botterell and Tara Armstrong”; and (c) striking the text of section 9 and replacing it as follows: “The members of Section C be the minister whose estimates are under examination or who is in charge of the bill under consideration and the Hon. Adrian Dix, Stephanie Higginson, the Hon. Sheila Malcolmson, Steve Morissette, Heather Maahs, Macklin McCall, Larry Neufeld, Jeremy Valeriote and Dallas Brodie.”

[2:35 p.m.]

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Orders of the Day

Hon. Mike Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading on Bill 9, health care recovery costs act.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 9 — Health Care Costs
Recovery Amendment Act, 2025

Deputy Speaker: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to this session, where we will begin debate this afternoon on Bill 9, Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act, 2025.

Introducing our Minister of Health.

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you so much, Speaker. Nice to see you back in the chair. I hope you had a good summer.

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

I rise today to speak about amendments to the Health Care Costs Recovery Act that were introduced in the spring sitting. Because the legislation in these new amendments is quite technical, I’ll start off by speaking about the initial act and its purpose, and then I’ll move on to the aspects of what we propose be amended.

The province has been recovering health care costs under the Health Care Costs Recovery Act since it was first brought into force, back in 2009. As we all know, government, through the Ministry of Health, incurs costs to provide public health care to people who need it who are Medical Services Plan beneficiaries.

The Health Care Costs Recovery Act gives the province the authority to recoup health care costs when an MSP beneficiary has been injured or killed because of the negligence or wrongful act or omission of a wrongdoer. It’s founded on the principle that government should be reimbursed for the costs incurred due to the negligence of wrongdoers or defendants. It ensures these public health care costs are paid for by the wrongdoer, not by the people of British Columbia.

It’s important to note a couple of things to clarify regarding this particular act. First, the province recovers health care costs from the alleged wrongdoer. It does not take funds that are payable to a beneficiary.

[2:40 p.m.]

Secondly, the act doesn’t apply to motor vehicle accidents where a wrongdoer is insured by ICBC, to opioid- or tobacco-related wrongs or to injuries in the course of work if the beneficiary is entitled to compensation through WorkSafeBC. These are addressed through other legislation — the Opioid Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, and the Workers Compensation Act. This legislation is also distinct from Bill 12 back in 2024.

These amendments to the Health Care Costs Recovery Act are technical and of a housekeeping nature. They’re amendments that will address small gaps in the current legislation that limit the province’s ability to fully recover the costs of health care services in specific situations, so that government and taxpayers aren’t left paying for public health care costs when a wrongdoer was responsible for the MSP beneficiary’s injury or death. They represent minor changes to the existing legislation, and they are being made based on government’s experience with pursuing cost recoveries under the act since 2009.

Addressing these gaps will help further ensure that wrongdoers who are responsible for the injury or death of a beneficiary pay the costs of providing health care to that beneficiary. Again, these are amendments that will help the province better recoup the costs of providing public health care services to MSP beneficiaries who were injured or died due to the negligence or a wrongful act or omission of a wrongdoer.

By addressing the current gaps, it will make it more efficient for government to pursue recovery under the act, which will ultimately help reduce the burden on taxpayers and support the sustainability of our public health care system.

The first amendment. The bill addresses gaps such as an overly broad exception to the act when a beneficiary is injured in the course of their work. At the moment, if any money is paid to an injured worker through WorkSafeBC, the act doesn’t apply. This is because there are other mechanisms to recover health care costs through the Workers Compensation Act.

However, these mechanisms only work if the injured worker pursues a WorkSafeBC claim. In some cases, a worker starts a WorkSafeBC claim but later decides to make a tort claim instead. When this happens, the province can’t recover health care costs under either act. This bill proposes amendments that would narrow the WorkSafeBC exception under the Health Care Costs Recovery Act so that the province can still recover costs in these circumstances.

A second amendment involves extending the time period that a court must accept a health care costs claim being added to a lawsuit. The act requires that a beneficiary include a health services claim in their lawsuit, but this doesn’t always happen. If a health services claim isn’t included at the outset, it can be added within six months, and the court must accept this. After six months, the court has discretion to decide whether or not to allow the health services claim to be added.

At the moment, a court is likely to accept a health services claim being added even after the six-month window has ended, but it’s not fully guaranteed. There is a time-consuming court application that’s required, and this can discourage claimants from following through. This bill will amend the act so that a court must allow a health services claim to be added at any time up until the court renders a judgment in the case.

Thirdly, the bill would create new disclosure obligations for defendants, their legal representatives and insurers. They would have to disclose information about the beneficiary’s injury and health services claim and, if needed, provide information to assist government in recovering health care costs upon request. This will help government to better understand, quantify and recover health care costs.

This bill will also extend these requirements to self-insured companies and mutual-defence organizations. These types of organizations are not currently considered to be insurers, so they don’t have the disclosure obligations of insurers, but they should be held to the same requirements to notify and provide information to government as traditionally insured parties are.

This amendment would require both insurers and uninsured defendants to provide certain records, information or evidence related to a beneficiary’s injuries or health services claim if the minister asks them to do so. These records can currently be requested from the beneficiaries themselves.

The intent is that these documents or information would always be requested from the beneficiary first. However, if for any reason the beneficiary is unable to provide them in a timely manner, these same documents can now be requested from the insurer or uninsured defendant. This will ensure that self-insured and mutual-defence organizations provide notice to the province and the information that’s needed to assist with cost recovery.

[2:45 p.m.]

Fourthly, this bill would amend the act to clarify that liability waivers do not impact government’s ability to recover health care costs. Beneficiaries often sign a liability waiver before participating in activities that have a known risk of injury, which often prevents them from seeking damages for personal injury from the operator.

While a liability waiver is generally a good defence against a tort claim, this is not the case for a health care costs claim. This is because government is not a party to the liability waiver and is not bound by its terms. Because of this misunderstanding, insurers often do not notify government about a claim, and this is leading to missed opportunities for cost recovery. To address this issue, this bill will clarify that liability waivers do not impact government’s ability to recover public health care costs.

Next, the bill will change the deadline for when government can file an action in cases where a third-party defendant is added to the lawsuit. If a defendant believes that another person or organization is partly responsible for the claim being made against them, they can file something that’s called a third-party notice to add that person or organization as a defendant. Sometimes this only happens after the current deadline for government to file an action, so there is no opportunity for recovery of public health care costs.

This bill would amend the act so that government must be notified in a timely manner and has six months from the date it receives notification of a third-party defendant to file an independent action to avoid these types of missed opportunities.

Sixth, the bill will require that subrogated health care cost claims automatically apply to third-party defendants. This means that if a third-party defendant is added to the lawsuit, government would automatically have the right to pursue a health care costs claim against that third-party defendant as part of their lawsuit.

At this time, the province still pursues recovery against third-party defendants, but this is done through independent actions. In other words, the province has to start a new lawsuit rather than pursuing a claim against a third party as part of the existing lawsuit. This is costly and time-consuming, and it can’t always be completed before the required deadlines. This change would assist with cost recovery from third-party wrongdoers.

The final amendment would explicitly allow the collection of prejudgment interest under the act. While the Health Care Costs Recovery Act is silent on this issue, B.C.’s Court Order Interest Act already authorizes the collection of prejudgment interest on financial claims.

The reason prejudgment interest is collected is to compensate a successful claimant for being deprived of the money owed to them between the time the claim arose and the time a judgment is rendered. Clarifying that the collection of prejudgment interest is allowed under the act will assist with the recovery of health care costs.

I’ll close with a few examples. As I think everyone can tell, this legislation is quite technical, but a few real-world examples or situations will help to explain how the amendments could come into effect.

The first example relates to the new amendment around liability waivers. There are instances where a beneficiary has signed a liability waiver before participating in an activity, but during said activity, some form of negligence occurs and injures the person who signed the waiver.

The plaintiff sues because of this, but their claim is at risk of being dismissed because they signed that waiver before participating in the event, thereby waiving their right to sue. Defence counsel could take the position that this waiver also applies to the province’s claim under the act. This scenario would be addressed by clarifying that liability waivers do not impact government’s ability to recover health care costs under the act.

The second example relates to the new amendment regarding WorkSafeBC claims. Let’s say a worker is hurt after tripping on a sidewalk. They file a WorkSafeBC claim, and WorkSafeBC pays for part of their medical treatment. However, the worker decides later to abandon the WorkSafeBC claim and instead sue the municipality.

Since WorkSafeBC paid for some of the initial medical treatment, defence counsel for the municipality takes the position that the Health Care Costs Recovery Act does not apply to the lawsuit, since WorkSafeBC funds have been paid. This scenario would be addressed by tightening the WorkSafeBC exception.

Together, these changes will ensure that the province can more fully recover the public costs of providing health care services to injured beneficiaries, shifting that burden away from everyday people in our province to where it actually belongs: on the wrongdoers whose negligence or wrongful acts or omissions contributed to those injuries.

I look forward to the committee stage debate on the bill.

[2:50 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much to our Minister of Health for beginning our debate today on Bill 9, Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act, 2025.

Anna Kindy: Thank you, Minister of Health. Like you say, the Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act is quite complex. It’s not really a medical thing. It’s almost more of an insurance recovery.

Looking at why we’re doing this, first of all, and potential unintended consequences of bills when they move forward…. In the context where this bill is brought forward, we’re talking about a $40 billion industry. I think in ’23-24, the health care costs recovery collected just over $6 million. I’m not sure if that was a net recovery, if we took into account the cost of actually applying this act. It would be something to clarify, I think, in terms of how much we’re actually collecting and how much it will cost to implement, if we collected so little, as well as if there was a variation from year to year.

Looking at the bill itself, I can see the reasoning behind it. There are many instances where a person that is liable is insured, and why not go after the insurance company for the cost, since we need the money in health care? But looking at that, as well, when we’re going after an insurance company, that also means that the company will have to increase its cost to the consumer, right? Insurance costs go up, and who ultimately pays is the consumer. So is it actually cost saving in terms of our own taxes as a layperson? That would be my thought there.

The other thing, as well, which I find a little bit concerning is the clause regarding the liability of uninsured people. I’m just wondering where the government is thinking that the money will come from if an outfit is uninsured. I can give examples of maybe a small outfit — again, we’re not looking at big corporations — say a tree-planting outfit, where the company isn’t big enough to actually warrant getting insurance, or they’re running without insurance. I was wondering what the liability of the small operator would be in that case.

The other, I think, very concerning thing for myself is the waived liability. That can go from small operator to little operator. Waived liability — for example, if you’ve got a helicopter skiing outfit and you sign the liability — what does it mean? Why even bother getting a waived liability if there’s going to be a recouping of cost?

The other thing that you have to consider in there is…. I’m a bit confused, I think, myself, in terms of the cost to MSP and hospital. The person that’s injured, is it over…? Can you access that for over six months? If a person was injured — let’s say they have a spinal cord injury — and that’s an ongoing medical cost, does that mean that the liable person is liable for the ongoing cost? That can be, we’re talking millions and millions over years and years. That seems, again, that it would increase the cost of insurance dramatically. I’m wondering, again thinking of smaller outfits, how much the cost of insurance would be at that point.

There are many unknowns with this. I think it would be interesting to actually look, again, back as to why we’re doing it. In the context of a truly ballooning bureaucracy in every aspect of government but especially health care, the cost of more lawyers…. Nothing comes for free. Every lawyer is multiple hundreds of dollars per hour. If we’re looking at the recovery in ’23 and ’24, which was $6 million, I’d be very interested to know what the actual legal cost was.

[2:55 p.m.]

We also have to put into that not just the legal costs but the cost of people involved in the paperwork of the whole thing, in terms of accessing the medical records, all the multiple layers of implementing this.

At the end of the line, do we actually end up with enough significant money that it’s worthwhile? I’ll come back again to the…. I think the part that we really need to focus on is the uninsured defendant. Because this, I think, opens it up dramatically to the, again, smaller outfitters.

The other thing that I find a bit concerning is the fact that if the person injured agrees not to sue, the government can come in and waive what the injured person, and even his lawyer, has said and override that decision and go after the moneys for health care. I find that a little bit concerning, the government-knows-best approach here as well.

It comes to a scenario where if you have a very small outfit, let’s say you go…. I’m just taking it out of the blue here. You’re going hunting with a known hunting outfitter, but he’s your buddy. He goes out, and you get injured significantly. The buddy says: “I know it’s your fault, but I am not going to sue you because we’re buddies.” The government can then decide that they can go after his buddy. I find that’s an overreach from government.

Again, we have to look at the small outfitter and the reality of the unintended consequences that can happen.

The other thing that also, to me, is very concerning is the privacy issue. It seems the government, once again, can get records and information without necessarily your consent. From my background, medical records are private. Sometimes, for one reason or another, somebody who is injured does not want the government to access their medical file.

Again, when a government accesses your medical file, you have to remember it’s more than one person that accesses it, right? So it means that a whole level of bureaucracy has the ability to look at your medical file. I find that there’s a big privacy issue.

The other thing, as well, which I find and am going to go back to, this doesn’t seem to be…. I’ll just read here. The government can recover past and future costs whenever and however many times as the minister deems necessary.

I want to apologize to the Minister of Health for saying this comment, but I think, being in politics, the minister doesn’t necessarily have the knowledge. I mean, potentially, every four years we have a different minister. For a minister to decide that they deem it necessary, I think it’s giving too much power to one person to be able to do….

It’s a bit like, I recall, the HPOA Act, the Health Professions and Occupations Act, where the minister can by opinion only change things. I think I read that in that act at least 40 times. I think, again, to me, when I see that, it sort of rings a red bell that one person can suddenly deem something necessary, and it can become a non-ending thing.

I think we also have to think of the stress imposed on the little outfit when there’s no off-ramp. Some injuries can be, like I had mentioned before, lifelong, and if you happen to be uninsured, to have that lifelong stress of being liable for the cost of health care, which we all know is extremely expensive…. It can be millions and millions of dollars over a lifetime if someone is injured severely.

[3:00 p.m.]

I’m just wondering how that uninsured person will deal with that stress. I can see some bad outcomes there — I’ll just put it that way — and again, unintended consequences.

The other unintended consequence is.… Being from a rural area, there are many smaller outfits that work without getting insurance. It’s not something that everybody thinks about, especially if they’ve been running for a few years and they have very few employees, and their employees sometimes can be family members or close friends. Suddenly something happens, and the government can swoop in and go after these little people, I call them. Little people, meaning people that aren’t in big corporations.

So I think this bill, in a sense, has quite a few unintended consequences that I think need to be discussed. I think the minutiae of the cost of implementing it…. Because it can look good on paper. By the time you’re done, what is the net profit to the whole health care system? And is it actually making a difference?

Sometimes we actually think we’re making money, but I would argue if it was $6 million for ’23-24, and we’re talking all of B.C., with the Health Care Costs Recovery Act…. One whole act for an entire province, and that’s all we got. I just was wondering how many hours of time lawyers spent in court.

We have to remember, too, that there’s a cost as well to the other side, right? That cost to the other side indirectly impacts people on the ground, meaning that insurance costs go up, and when you’re planning to do, let’s say, a trip where there is insurance, that trip is going to cost you more because the cost of insurance to the provider is more.

Those are all sort of unintended consequences, and to me, if you bring forward a bill, it has to make sense. There has to be a purpose. I think with this, hopefully the government and the Minister of Health can provide us actual data as to numbers of cases that were…. I’ll go back to ’23-24. So $6 million. The number of people that the government actually went after, insured people, and how much the cost was. How many hours and what the result was in terms of net income to the government.

So overall, I think the intent is good. I think to have health care insurance is good. If you look around the world…. In terms of health care insurance, if you look around OECD countries, they allow multiple insurance providers for health care. People get insurance, and that seems to bring in money, as well, to the government that can’t provide complete access for health care. So it provides a different way of....

I think this bill in a way makes sense that it pushes people, like WCB, for example. WCB is, in a sense, a private insurance for workers. Because workers have private insurance, they can access care more easily than the average Joe.

So the intent, I think, is good, that potentially we get more money coming into the whole health care system. But again, we have to truly look at all the potential unintended consequences.

Looking at it again, just to make sure I don’t miss anything here.

It would be good to know, as well, in terms of the uninsured defendant, before we proceed, maybe, to know how many potential impacted people there would be in British Columbia in that situation.

If this bill passes and becomes an act, some people will not know that it’s actually passed. Not everybody reads a newspaper, and I would probably argue that a lot of those small outfitters would not even be aware that it had passed.

[3:05 p.m.]

They might be taken by surprise, where they had a bad outcome in whatever it can be — a trip, or if they had, like I said, a small tree-planting business — and somebody was injured, and they were not aware that this had passed.

So there has to be some consideration as well, and I think without knowing how many people are actually employed in a situation where there would be impact and uninsured.... Insured isn’t as much of an issue, right? If you’re insured, the insurance company.... Again, there will be an indirect cost to society. Nothing comes for free.

When we say, “We’re going to actually bring money into health care,” well, are we really? Again, if you have to pay more for some of the things you do, you could be paying directly to health care. Or the cost goes up in, let’s say, your recreation, and it funnels back into the coffer.

What I’m trying to say here is: with net revenue, does it actually increase it to the Joe Blow average? I argue that it might not.

That’s sort of the gist of what I’m trying to say here, and I’ll let it be.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much, Member. The Chair will recognize the Leader of the Third Party next.

Jeremy Valeriote: I’ll just start off by saying I’m a big proponent of virtual meetings, some of the avoided travel, emissions and the like. I’m still getting used to virtual attendance to this House. I have to say I don’t really enjoy it; I’m looking forward to being there in person tomorrow. It does seem to encourage brevity. So I’m going to honour that today.

The Third Party caucus supports the B.C. government, on behalf of the taxpayers, recovering the cost of health care services to British Columbians as a result of, as has been discussed, wrongdoers, malpractice or lack of full disclosure.

We see these proposed amendments as intended to plug holes in the legislation that have become apparent since 2009. They’re supported by both myself and my colleague the member for Saanich North and the Islands and the House Leader of the Third Party. To repeat what’s been discussed, they’re adding a definition of “uninsured defendant,” a clarification for waiver of liability and additional requirements for notification and information-sharing.

We understand these changes will also streamline and speed up court proceedings and settlements through greater clarity in the legislation. This is a big benefit, not only to patients and victims but also to the system as a whole and all its associated costs and impacts — one place where we believe streamlining to be a big advantage.

This bill also speaks to one of the core responsibilities of government, which is fairness. It’s something we’ll be discussing all week: the concept and the principle of fairness. It’s part of a suite of measures that collectively make sure that wrongdoing does not damage a person’s life beyond repair. It goes even further by making sure that it isn’t taxpayers who are responsible for these costs but, rather, the negligent party.

This amendment clarifies the rights and responsibilities of both defendants and beneficiaries, reducing the risk of legal challenge and helping everyone understand what they’re entitled to and what their responsibilities are. We applaud the amendments to make clear requirements around notification and information-sharing, and we look forward to getting into the details in committee stage debate.

Susie Chant: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 9, the Health Care Costs Recovery Act today, a bill which continues to support our government’s efforts to ensure every dollar spent lands where it should. Conversely, if monies should be returned to the government, they need to be able to be effectively collected.

Before I start speaking on Bill 9, I’d like to begin by acknowledging that I am speaking on the lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, the Songhees and the Esquimalt. As well, I acknowledge the səlilwətaɬ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations, on whose unceded land my riding and home of North Vancouver–Seymour are found. As always, I am grateful for the stewardship of land, water and air that these and other nations continue to practise.

[3:10 p.m.]

This bill is being put forward in order to support a greater recovery of health care costs generated through the actions of wrongdoers — wrongdoers who have acted in such a way as to result in others needing to access our public health care system. These costs should be shouldered by those who create the injury or illness, not by the provincial taxpayer.

In 2009, the Health Care Costs Recovery Act was brought into being. The act allowed government to recover the costs of health care services provided to the Medical Services Plan, known as MSP, beneficiaries that were injured or who have died due to the negligence of a wrongdoer…. The changes being brought forward now will ensure that the government can collect a greater range of those costs, relieving the taxpayers of that burden.

Overall, the initial iteration of the act was successful, with annual recoveries that varied. As you heard, in the ’23-24 year, about $6.6 million was recouped, monies which are beneficial to the people of B.C., in spite of what was said across the aisle, because, to me, $6 million can be used in a lot of places. At the moment, though, recovering health care costs to the fullest extent possible remains outstanding, related to some aspects of the act of 2009.

The current health care recovery act aims to address those areas in a number of ways — first off, through narrowing the circumstances in which the act does not apply, specifically, as an example, because the beneficiary was injured in the course of their work.

Again, you heard the example that was spoken about earlier, where you have a worker who damages themselves while they’re at work, carries on with a WorkSafe claim but then goes on to claim something against the area where they were damaged — in this case, the municipality.

At that point, the worker then goes on to public pay health care. Of course, the defence counsel for the municipality would take the position that the Health Care Cost Recovery Act of 2009 does not apply to that lawsuit, as the WorkSafeBC funds have already been paid out. However, MSP services have been utilized for either ongoing care and/or rehab past the extension of the WorkSafe claim.

Let me tell you about care and rehab. I’ve seen people who have wounds that have not healed. The nurses are in there every third day for an hour at a time — the person is at home — getting care. Sometimes those wounds get infected, and they need home-based IV. That is a lot of time and a lot of money on the part of the health care system that is not covered off if their WorkSafe claim has been expired.

Additionally, for rehabilitation, people do a lot of work to achieve rehabilitation. Sometimes that’s with the public purse, with our occupational therapists going in and making assessments of what equipment is necessary, with our physiotherapists going in and setting out a plan or an action that people can follow to achieve a better level of health.

In this instance, the WorkSafeBC exemption is being tightened to ensure that the costs of the worker’s health care are recuperated, that the monies that are put into those nurses, to those clinical staff, to the planning, to that work, come back to the government from the further claim that the worker makes to the municipality.

Another component included in this bill is to lengthen the window of time during which a claim can be amended to include a health services claim. An example of this would be….

For instance, you’ve got a situation where a health authority is being sued for something. And I can tell you, having been a team leader in a health care environment, people are angry a lot of the time, and their answer to being angry is to sue. They sue the nurses, they sue the doctors, and they sue the hospital because they don’t have the result that they want, that they felt should happen. Sometimes those suits are very, very legitimate, and other times, maybe not so much.

However, what happens in this case is that sometimes the plaintiff adds another person to that suit. In this case, for instance, if somebody was suing because they got a diagnosis very late on, a very late diagnosis, and they sue everybody in the chain that they feel they should have got that diagnosis from….

[3:15 p.m.]

Later down the line, they go: “Oh, wait a minute. I didn’t talk about this clinician.” It might be a doctor. It might be a nurse. It might be a specialist of some kind. And they add that to the claim. In the current state, this gets missed, and any collections that are made from that claim are not refunded to the province.

What we’re doing at this point is to make sure, first of all, that defendants are required to notify the province when a third-party defendant is added to the lawsuit. That allows the province to become aware of this as soon as it happens. This organization would now be captured in the definition of insurer, would be required to notify the province of the potential claim and, if needed, provide information and assistance to the province in recovering health care costs.

This allows for those costs to be recognized, to be part of the whole decision-making of the courts and for those costs to be recovered. The deadline for the province to file legal action against the doctor or whoever would now be six months from when the province receives notice of the third-party claim, so there is no longer a risk of the province finding out about the claim once a deadline has been passed. So again, that allows a tightening up of the Health Care Costs Recovery Act to allow moneys to come in even when time has gone by.

What this does is expand the disclosure obligations for defendants and their insurers. It also defines very clearly who counts as an insurer under the act to ensure that self-insured and mutual defence organizations must provide notice to the province and information that is needed to ensure cost recovery.

The other part of this is clarifying liability waivers. We’ve all signed them. I went hot air ballooning about three weeks ago, which I probably shouldn’t have been doing. But never mind. I went up, came down. There were 40 other balloons. It was beautiful. It was like being in a jigsaw puzzle. Sorry. I digress.

I did my bit, read the waiver, went, you know: “La, la, la.” I signed everything. The reality is if that hot air balloon goes down because of negligence, because of something that wasn’t done, I still have the capacity to sue. When that happens, people don’t realize it a lot of the time. The waivers are waved about, and this protects the company or whatever.

If there is negligence involved, there still needs to be some response. So this clarifies the effect of liability waivers. Now, we sign liability waivers all the time. When we go skiing, you know, we sign something. It’s all that small printing on your ski pass. Do you see those lines and lines and lines of small printing? Those are a liability a lot of the time. It tells you what they won’t cover, like when you ski out of bounds.

The other thing is that the province needs to now be notified when a third-party defendant is added to the legal proceedings. It automatically includes health care cost claims against the third-party defendant when this happens so that those claims are included when that defendant is added, not that they are discarded because, “Oh, well, WCB was involved originally,” or for some other reason.

The limitation periods will be extended to ensure that the province has time to begin legal proceedings after being informed of a claim, and prejudgment interest can be collected from defendants. Well, again, if it goes a long time, things to think about.

As you would be aware, the Health Care Costs Recovery Act does not apply to motor vehicle accidents where a wrongdoer is insured by ICBC, to opioid or tobacco-related wrongs or to injuries in the course of the work if the beneficiary is entitled to compensation through WorkSafeBC, because these situations are addressed through other legislation.

So how does it help the people in British Columbia? Well, let’s think about that. It helps people in B.C. to avoid costs due to the negligence and wilful acts or omissions on the part of others. So when somebody does something wrong, and it results in somebody being hurt or damaged or getting ill or dying, there is somewhere to go. Wrongdoers will be held accountable.

[3:20 p.m.]

It will help reduce costs in our health care system writ large. The amendments also put the burden of paying for these health care costs on the wrongdoer instead of on the taxpayers, basically ensuring that those who commit the wrongdoing and not the taxpayers pay for health care costs for the impacted individuals.

There were a variety of the ministries involved in discussing this and making sure that it was tight. That included the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, as well as Finance, Labour, WorkSafeBC, B.C. Financial Services, and the courts were also consulted in the creation of this.

Who will be affected by these changes? They’re pretty much going to affect third-party defendants who are added to legal proceedings under the act; uninsured defendants, to speak to the opposition’s concern; insurers for defendants under the act; and legal counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants involved in legal proceedings under the act.

To speak to my colleague across the aisle’s concerns, everybody has got to know. Everybody has got to know about these changes, has to pay attention to these changes and include them in their planning.

Self-insured organizations will also be affected, organizations that are insured by a subsidiary or a partner. Or mutual defence organizations will also be affected to the extent that they will insure wrongdoers in legal proceedings under the act as they will now be considered insurers for the purpose of the act.

These amendments are intended to address gaps in the current legislation as opposed to creating major additional obligations for insurance companies. The increased administrative burden for insurers is expected to be relatively minor as it will only impact a small number of claims, mostly relating to waiver issues and to notice requirements.

Overall, this act should prove beneficial in terms of making sure that health care costs, which we know are significant, in the state where they are brought on by wrongdoing, are able to be collected and are considered as things go through the courts.

Thank you very much for allowing me this opportunity.

Brennan Day: It’s great to see everybody back after the summer. I hope everybody is well rested. I think it’s going to be a fairly exciting fall.

I rise to speak to Bill 9, the Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act, 2025. While this bill looks very technical on the page, it does adjust some serious definitions, adds notices and lines up powers. But laws don’t always land on paper. They land on people. They land on families at the kitchen table and on small businesses trying to make payroll.

My goal today is simple: lay out what this bill is trying to do, ask the practical questions it raises for the uninsured individuals and small operators that this bill now affects and underline why this needs a thorough, good-faith debate in committee so that we make sure we get this right.

At a high level, the principle is easy to support. When a publicly funded health care system pays for care after a negligent act, taxpayers should be made whole. I agree with that. I don’t think anybody in this room disagrees. The question is not the principle. The question here is the machinery. Are we building a system that collects fairly, proportionately and in a way that people can actually navigate, or are we setting up traps and timelines that will push ordinary people into a process they don’t understand and can’t afford?

So what actually changes here? First, the bill seems to create a new category, the uninsured defendant. That’s any person who has been served with a claim and doesn’t have insurance responding to that particular allegation. Once you’re in that bucket, a hard 60-day clock starts. Within 60 days of being served, you need to notify the Minister of Health that you’ve been sued. There’s a form to fill out. Miss the deadline and the government can go to court to order compliance and seek costs. The same enforcement tools that apply to insurers now apply under this act to uninsured individuals.

This is a very new definition. What prompted it? We know this government is struggling with balancing budgets, and I’m very, very curious to know what the actual impact on our budget will be by adding substantial new regulations and probably growing the bureaucracy.

[3:25 p.m.]

Second, the bill changes the choreography of a lawsuit. If you bring in a third party, say, a landlord, a contractor, or another responsible actor, you have to notify the province within 21 days of filing that third-party claim. That notice automatically engages a health care cost claim against the third party. This will change the strategy, timeline and settlement on these on these claims.

Third, the bill frames the government’s right as subrogation. That sounds like lawyer talk, but it matters who gets paid first, how releases are worded, and what happens if a plaintiff has signed something thinking that that would close the door, such as a settlement outside the courts.

Fourth, the amendment window expands. The old six-month cap to amend pleadings to add health care claims are gone. Courts can allow late amendments even well into the life of a file. That can be useful as injuries evolve, as they tend to, as the member opposite noted. It also increases leverage later in the case.

Fifth, timelines and dollars move. The bill enables prejudgment interest on the health care portion and ties limitation triggers to the new notices. That changes the math inside settlement rooms quite dramatically.

That’s the frame. Let’s throw some siding on it to make this understandable, because for many people this will not feel like a tidy system. This is going to feel like a bit of a gauntlet.

If someone in our province is served with a claim in a slip and fall, a recreational accident, a product matter or an assault where no policy responds, they’re suddenly on a 60-day clock. They must produce records and information on tight timelines and cooperate with people assisting the province in recovering health care costs. If they file a third-party claim, they have 21 days to notify the province. If they miss any step, government can seek court order and costs.

In a law office, those steps are routine. For a self-represented person or a two-person small business, this may be overwhelming. Let me ground this in a tragedy close to home. In my riding, just recently, a bicyclist collided with a pedestrian, an NIC student who was walking home after his shift. The impact was catastrophic. He spent days in intensive care and later died of his injuries. The community grieved, and his family is still grieving. It’s difficult to even speak about this in the chamber because beyond the legal frameworks, there was a young life cut short.

What impact will this have in cases like this? Will we all be expected to carry full-liability walking-around insurance just to leave the house? Will we need to consider insuring bicyclists in cases of liability? What impact is this going to have on small business insurance premiums trying to protect against those questions?

Why do we raise this? Because it forces very practical questions this bill will have to answer: in an incident like that, who has coverage and who doesn’t? A cyclist may or may not carry any personal liability insurance. Most do not. A pedestrian typically doesn’t have a policy that covers somebody else’s negligence.

If coverage is uncertain, the person alleged to have caused the harm becomes an uninsured defendant under this bill. The 60-day clock starts. Does that person even know a clock has started? How would they? If they don’t know, how can they fix it after the fact? Should there be a grace period where there’s no prejudice? Could we make a dead-simple online form that takes five minutes on the phone to fill out, with a plain-language explainer: “If you’ve been served with a claim and don’t have insurance, start here”? If we want compliance, are we making it easy enough to comply?

What happens next? Government will ask for records. How broad is that meant to be? Are we talking about a tight list tied to health care costs, medical invoices, treatment dates, provider details, or does this sprawl into general medical history, employment files, social media screenshots and anything adjacent? Where do we draw the line so requests are proportionate to what’s actually in dispute?

Could every request come with plain-language guidance about privilege, about what not to send, and a one-page extension form? If a person sends too much, what protects their privacy? If they send too little, do we jump straight to court, or do we allow a quick do-over with guidance? I think we all know it’s extremely difficult and it takes considerable time to get information from the health authorities, and that’s something that needs to be considered within these timelines.

Think about a small business. A café owner gets sued for a slip at the doorway. The insurer is still investigating an exclusion, so coverage is unclear. For now, that owner is considered uninsured. They’re making coffee at 6 a.m., doing payroll at 10 p.m., and in between, they need to read legal letters, calculate deadlines and upload records.

Are we structuring timelines so a two-person shop isn’t set up to fail? Could we let them batch responses on a schedule that fits their actual reality? If they hire a lawyer for an hour to make sure they get this right, will that be reimbursed promptly, or will they have to wait for months?

[3:30 p.m.]

The bill says reasonable and necessary costs can be reimbursed. Reasonable to whom? Necessary in what sense? What does that mean for a small operator who simply needs one hour of legal advice?

How about a dog owner out for a walk with their beloved dog on Crown land? A child, uninvited, reaches out to pet the dog and gets a bite that needs stitches. Both parties decide not to sue, but does this now open it up for the government to go after the dog to recover those medical costs?

These are all things that we need to discuss to make sure that it is very clear who will be affected. There are many such cases where individuals decide not to pursue a remedy through the courts — maybe your neighbour, family or friend.

Do these changes turn the government into a vexatious litigant in cases, to try and drum up the amounts being recovered? Is there a cost cap on government? Is it $100 or $100,000? Or will they chase every single dollar, in the hope that the cost to recover is outweighed by the amount recovered, and damn the bureaucracy that that may create?

Back to the NIC tragedy. Imagine the families on both sides — one family grieving a loss no one should have to bear, and another family suddenly at the centre of a legal process they do not understand.

If a third-party claim is filed, perhaps against a property owner, maintenance contractor or another actor, does that automatically bring a health care claim against the third party into play? This needs to be made clear. Could we provide a simple checklist so people don’t miss the trigger? Could the province commit to a service standard so that once it is in the loop, the file doesn’t stall for months? We know that the courts are significantly backed up.

Settlements raise even more questions. If parties settle but don’t clearly set out the portion that is for publicly funded health care, interest might be claimed from the date of the accident. Is that what we want? Would it be better to let parties request a quick estimate of the health care costs from the province and then start interest from the day that the estimate is provided or from when it is unreasonably withheld after proper notice?

Would that approach encourage cleaner paperwork and fewer fights after the fact? Could that be written into this statute so that everybody knows the rules before they sit down to settle?

And do we think that 60 days is realistic? The amendment window has been lengthened by removing the old six-month cap. That flexibility can help government capture legitimate claims that surface late, but is there a point where flexibility becomes moving goalposts for defendants trying to budget, keep a business afloat or plan a household? Should courts be asked to weigh prejudice and timing more explicitly when late amendments are sought? Is there a way to guide that discretion so that parties know what to expect?

Coverage disputes happen all the time. While coverage is being sorted out, the individual carries the duties. If coverage is later confirmed under a personal policy, a reciprocal or a captive, how quickly do duties and reimbursements shift to the insurer? Can we make that handoff automatic once coverage is acknowledged? Could we require the province to update its demand letters to the party within a set number of days so that individuals or small businesses aren’t left carrying a file that no longer belongs to them?

The bill also sits alongside other regimes. So what is the interface with the Workers Compensation Act? It matters at the edges. Do we risk duplication through this act or conflicting duties? Can we spell out a clean handoff so that people aren’t bounced around between the systems? Anybody that has had the experience of navigating WorkSafeBC understands that it’s not the easiest department to deal with.

I want to talk money. This actually matters in this case, because it seems, at least at face value, that this is about buffering the coffers and reducing the government’s burden. We’re told that the program recovered about $6.6 million last year — certainly not a small sum of money. That’s real money, and it should certainly go back into care, but revenue is not profit.

What did it cost to recover that $6.6 million under the current system? What does the government project that it will change to — not gross but net? How much bureaucracy will be created for every additional dollar that is recovered under this new system? Are we actually making money at $6.6 million? Or are we simply employing lawyers in back rooms to sort through the details?

We would need to see a three-year trend line for gross and net so that we’d know whether we’re building an efficient machine or just a busy one. This government certainly seems to build extremely busy machines, but efficiency, certainly, does not seem to be its strong suit.

[3:35 p.m.]

Enforcement raises fairness questions. When has it the right to go to court for an order — only after clear non-response and a second chance, or the day after a deadline is missed? Should the act require a warning letter before court, especially for self-represented people? Would that cut down on unnecessary applications and costs on both sides?

For fairness and efficiency, should we consider limited-scope duty counsel? Even a 30-minute appointment to review a request and draft a response could prevent significant mistakes, protect privacy and save considerable court time, which is in short supply these days. Could we fund a small panel for this purpose? Would that panel pay for itself by reducing needless litigation?

I’ll go into transparency. Would an annual report help? The number of insured notices, number of third-party notices, number of enforcement applications, average time to resolution, amounts recovered and costs to recover, indemnities paid and how often requests were narrowed for proportionality — if we published these figures, could we tune the system with evidence rather than anecdotes? Could we commit to bringing those numbers back to this House each year?

Transparency should be top of mind when we’re talking about a system that is being built to promote efficiency and cost recovery. Building a system for systems’ sake is certainly in nobody’s interest.

Let me return to the example from my community, because it exposes the human side of this law. In that collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian, the immediate response was certainly heroic. The costs to the system were significant. The costs to the family are beyond calculation.

If negligence is found, the public should be repaid for care, but how do we do that without turning one grieving family into a case management office? What does that cooperation look like for somebody who is working two jobs, doesn’t have a lawyer and is still processing trauma? Could the province adopt a help-first approach?

Could we write proportionality directly into the statute so that the scope of requests must fit with the issues and the dollars that are at stake? Could we state, in black and white, that privileged materials are off-limits and that privacy is not an afterthought?

We also need to consider small businesses, as liability waivers have certainly been brought up here. What will be the impact to insurance on small businesses, which will be passed along to consumers that certainly cannot afford increases? Think about a local gym, rink, pub or café that might get pulled into a third-party claim after an incident in a shared space. Some of these businesses already run on razor-thin margins. If they get a government request for records with a two-week deadline during their busy season, what then?

Could we allow batching, reasonable schedules and published service standards on the government side, too? If the province expects records in 30 days, could we commit the same on the other side? People need to know if they will be made whole before they spend money that they just simply do not have.

Another practical question is on settlements. If we want clean settlements with clear allocations for health care costs, could we provide a template clause or a standard form request to the province for a quick estimate? Could we say that the interest on the health care portion starts when the estimate is provided or when it is unreasonably withheld after proper notice? That encourages timely, fair allocations, reduces disputes and saves court time.

On the amendment window, now that courts can allow late additions of health care claims, should we give judges factors to consider — length of delay, reasons for delay, prejudice to the other side, impact on trial dates? All of that clarity would help both sides plan, reduce ambushes and speed up the process.

Coverage limbo needs a clean fix. If an insurer, reciprocal or captive, later accepts coverage, could the duties and reimbursement shift automatically as of the date of acceptance, with the province required to redirect correspondence within a fixed number of days? That would certainly protect individuals who acted in good faith while the grownups figured out who was actually at risk.

Here’s where I land. The principle of Bill 9 is certainly sound. The taxpayers should be repaid when the public system pays for harm caused by private negligence. The execution is what we have to get right. I propose we take this bill to committee with an open mind and a practical list.

I will ask, first, why did the government pick now for this change? It certainly seems driven by financing rather than efficiency. Could we build in a real grace period around the 60 days’ notice, accepting substantial compliance up to 90 days when there is no prejudice, with a simple online form that actually works? Could we require plain-language guidance with every request, including a one-page extension form and clear explanation of privilege and privacy? There are many other issues that will need to get sorted out at the committee stage.

[3:40 p.m.]

People in Courtenay and Comox expect two things. They expect us to recover public dollars when private negligence imposes costs on the system. They also expect us to do it in a way that is clear, proportionate and humane.

The family of that NIC student deserves a system that honours their loss and recovers public costs without subjecting the family to an unavoidable bureaucratic ordeal. The small business owner on 5th Street deserves a process they can actually follow while they keep their doors open.

Bill 9 strengthens recovery. Done right, it could protect the public purse while respecting due process. Done without guardrails, it can pile risk and cost on the people least equipped to carry them.

I’m ready to send this to committee with a clear invitation. Let’s hammer in the guardrails, answer the honest questions and design a system that collects what is owed without grinding down the people that can least afford it. If we want compliance, let’s design for it. If we want fairness, let’s write it in. If we want trust, let’s earn it through clear rules, practical support and public reporting. Let’s make sure we’re protecting the little guys from the potential abuses of these changes.

We want to increase tax dollars recovered, but we have to make sure that the juice is worth the squeeze and not merely an employment exercise for legal professionals. That’s how we protect taxpayers and keep faith with our constituents. That’s how we honour both sides of the ledger, dollars and dignity, and how we make sure that a law that looks tidy on paper actually works in the lives of British Columbians.

I am very much looking forward to a thorough investigation at the committee stage so that we can ensure we are protecting the public purse as well as the little guys from what I see to be serious, unintended consequences for individuals and small businesses.

Deputy Speaker: I know it’s the first day here, but just a reminder to all members that we shouldn’t be consuming any kind of food in the House or online.

Stephanie Higginson: I rise to speak in support of Bill 9, the health care recovery act, which is quite technical in nature, I will say. I agree with the statements so far. The current act was implemented in 2009, and it’s clear through experience that it is time for an update for this act. The act has largely been successful, and as we’ve heard, recoveries year to year vary, but this past year it was around $6.6 million that was recovered.

But some aspects of the current act prevent the government from recovering health care costs to the fullest extent, and it’s time for us to make sure that we can address those gaps. These amendments will allow the government to recover the costs of health care services of those who have been injured due to negligence. This means shifting the burden from the taxpayer to the wrongdoer. This bill also allows us to lengthen the window that a claim can be amended, and it also expands the disclosure obligations for defendants and insurers.

The one part of this bill that really speaks to me, that I’m going to focus on when I talk today, and I won’t talk for very long, I promise, is to clarify the effect of liability waivers. Folks in this room, some of you may or may not know — I talk about it a lot because I’m a proud mom — that I’m a sports mom. My child is a high-performance athlete who plays a collision sport.

As a parent, I accept the risk of that sport. My child accepts the risk of that sport. As a parent, I do everything I can to protect my child from the risks of those sports. Financially, we are paying for the best equipment, the most up-to-date safety equipment, and making sure that he goes out onto that lacrosse box or out onto the field safe and protected. We do our part. Sometimes this sport actually takes us to other countries, where the cost of health care recovery can be even greater.

[3:45 p.m.]

In doing our part, I expect that everybody involved is doing their part. But too often I have seen young athletes critically injured with life-altering injuries and parents unable to recover the cost despite doing their part, because people hide behind liability waivers. Not only do they hide behind the liability waivers; they use those liability waivers as a reason not to do their part.

This act allows us to put the responsibility and the burden on people who are putting on these activities that may be detrimental and may be harmful and to make sure that they can’t hide behind a complicated liability waiver and that they are doing their part to protect people.

Wilful omissions are often a result of people hiding behind a liability waiver, and this act allows us to address that. In doing so, we’ll have, actually, I think, the unintended consequence of creating an even more safe environment, because people will know that they can no longer hide behind a liability waiver.

I have heard a lot of concerns from the members opposite, and I think that some of them are valid concerns. I think that’s exactly what the committee stage is meant to do. It’s meant for us to take the broad act, hammer out the concerns and make sure that we create something that is representative of British Columbians and the concerns that people have.

I think some of the concerns we’ve heard speak more about how the members opposite would govern rather than the validity of these amendments, but that’s for committee stage.

My hope is that we will be able to move the health care recovery act to the committee stage to ensure the smooth enactment of long overdue amendments so that we can take the cost of these wilful omissions off of the taxpayer and put them on the people who should be responsible for them.

Deputy Speaker: For those of you joining us, we are debating Bill 9 this afternoon. We will now call on the member for Abbotsford South.

Bruce Banman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you for that splattering of applause from across the aisle. I appreciate it very much. That was heartfelt.

Hon. Adrian Dix: I was trying to start the wave.

Bruce Banman: Thank you for trying to start a wave. There were a whole bunch of waves, actually, on the front lawns. I hope you saw a few of them.

It is always an honour to speak in this House. It’s a privilege, and it’s one that I don’t take lightly.

I think the goal of this House should be to improve a bill. As the member that just spoke rightfully said, there were some points that were made on this side of the House, and I agree that she also made some points as well. This is, after all, the taxpayers’ dollar.

I was a health care practitioner. I was a chiropractor. It always used to drive me nuts when people said, “How many free visits do I get?” or: “Health care is free.” It’s far from free. Let’s go over a couple of statistics on that. Of the 34 advanced economies in the world, currently Canada ranks, I believe, No. 6 or No. 8, but let’s just go with the top 10 for cost per capita.

It’s refreshing to see the NDP, for a change, actually talk about the taxpayer and the burden that the taxpayer has on their back. There is only one wallet — it doesn’t matter what level of government — and that is each individual taxpayer. So I applaud them for what appears to be an about-face, where they’re actually considering the burden upon the taxpayer for a change.

I hope that this is a trend that continues, and I suspect it is because this side of the House has been relentless at pointing out that often they forget about the actual taxpayer.

Now, as I said, I had a health care practice. I find some things that are interesting. The devil is always in the details of what we want to do here.

[3:50 p.m.]

This side of the House, unless there is a monumental change in opinion, plans on pushing this forward to committee stage so that we can actually ask some hard questions and perhaps put some amendments on the floor that I hope this government, if they’re truly concerned about the taxpayer, will take into consideration.

That’s how this House is supposed to work. Sadly, far too often it does not, which is why people at home take a look at question period and go: “Why do you guys yell and scream at one another?” Why it is what it is…. It’s because when we get to actual committee stages, far too often the government says: “Hey, we got enough votes. We can pass whatever we want. We don’t have to listen to the other side.”

That’s not how it’s supposed to be. That is not working on behalf of the taxpayers. We were elected on this side of the House by taxpayers as well to represent their concerns.

I’m going to tell this House a story. I think on this side of the House you would agree that in certain circumstances, if someone has created an injury or there is a third-party health pair, such as….

I used to deal with a fair amount of motor vehicle accidents, and it was always a challenge whenever it was an insurer from out of province or across the line, or even for that matter from a different country. I never had that one, other than the United States. I never actually had that personal one. Mine were either out of province or from across the line.

I know that for the government it was difficult at times to be able to recoup some of the costs, and we need to be able to recoup those costs. I think I fully agree. This is why we buy insurance. Because when there is a problem, the third-party insurance company should actually reimburse the system for looking after…. Because that’s what the insurance is actually for.

I also, as an MLA, have an interesting story that I’d like to share with this House. A young mother, an immigrant that came to Canada, moved here to have a better life. When her son came over…. Without getting into the details or too deep into the weeds, her son had an infection when he arrived that required hospitalization. Now there is a buffer zone of when you actually qualify for the Medical Services Plan, which the taxpayers are all paying for. There’s this period upon which you’re actually not covered. You’re supposed to be covered by a third party.

Well, what the third-party insurer, the travel insurance, or I believe even the country insurance…. I’m trying to remember all the details. They denied it and said: “No, that was a pre-existing condition before you came here, so we’re not paying.” And then MSP also said: “No, no, you’re stuck without the probationary period or the waiting period, so we’re not going to cover it either.”

This mother was devastated. She was looking at tens of thousands of dollars in health care costs that the government now wanted back. Rightfully so, according to some. But when we started to peel back the layers, there was no way that this young man knew that he had an infection when he got here that was going to require hospitalization. They came to my office, asking for my help: “Is there anything we can do? Because this will bankrupt me. I’ll never be able to get over this. My life in Canada is ruined for something that really was not anyone’s fault.”

Now I will give the system credit that they actually ended up siding with the new immigrants. It was the humane thing to do. It was the right thing to do. This was not done on purpose. It could have happened to anyone.

[3:55 p.m.]

So when we go through committee stage, I think everyone here and at home, for the most part, would say: “You know what? Somebody coming here to start a new life should not be saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of medical expense for their child, when they really didn’t have any idea that they had an infection.” They were in that stage where nobody knew. They get here and now, all of a sudden, boom, it did require hospitalization. That’s not the system I think that Canadians believe in, that that particular individual should have to come up with those costs.

I think as we go through this, we need to ensure that this does not become brutal, heartless, rule-abiding, that there is enough of a buffer zone within it to be able to look at the humanitarian side in a case like that.

Some of my colleagues mentioned…. You know, I wonder whether or not the insurance companies are doing this right now. Part of what we need to look at is if I go on a rafting trip or helijet skiing or I go horseback riding or many of the things that tourists want to come and do here, especially as we now find that we tour our own backyards and start to experience things that perhaps we’d never do…. Will we inadvertently put an unfair burden on some of these businesses, and they end up having to close their doors and go bankrupt? It just doesn’t…. They cannot afford the insurance premiums moving forward, because health care costs are expensive.

As I said, when it comes to the 34 advanced economies of the world, we’re way up here at No. 10 for cost per capita. Our health care is far from free. It costs a lot of money to go into a hospital. It costs a lot of money to have a broken leg repaired or the rehab that’s required.

We’ve also heard about either electric scooters or some of these new e-bikes that are capable of 50 kilometres an hour or faster. What are we going to do in those particular cases? Does this now mean that an individual that is not required to have insurance by the government at this particular point in time is all of a sudden now personally on the hook for any damages that they may have caused?

I’ll tell you what. When you get an 80-year-old woman or man stepping out to cross the street who did not hear something coming at 50 kilometres an hour and being hit by someone that weighs in excess of 200 pounds, with a helmet on, it can be life-changing.

So as we move forward, I think that part of what I would hope that this government would do is to take a look at…. As I like to say, the devils are always in the details. Are we going to inadvertently put sporting teams out of business because they cannot afford the liability insurance that’s now going to be put upon many of these sports groups, as an example? Maybe the answer is no, we’ve already got that covered. But from what I see, it may not be.

The other interesting thing that I find is this demand from government. If they ask you for records, you’ve got to supply them in 30 days. If only FOIs could be done within 30 days. So it’s a case of do as we demand, not as we do. You know what? If you’re going to ask people to comply within a very stringent time frame, get your own act together first. How dare government demand something that they can’t do themselves for something as simple as a freedom-of-information request? They are months behind is my understanding, and you’ve got to pay for them.

[4:00 p.m.]

But that aside, how are we going to set up the judicial board of who gets to decide what? What’s the appeal process that’s going to be there? Had that woman that came to my office seeking help been stuck with….

Actually, there is no appeal process to speak of. Someone decided that: “Yep, you know what? I think we’ll give them this one.” But were there any rules or regulations with regards to that or was it just that somebody arbitrarily decided: “Yeah, you know, this is a little too…. This is not what it’s for. This is a little harsh”?

I think we need to work out as to what the rules actually are, because perhaps that particular individual is more willing to be heartfelt than others. Some of them are more hard-nosed and know it’s all about the dollar. I notice that $6.6 million has been tossed around. What’s not talked about is what did it actually cost to collect the $6.6 million.

We already have the fastest-ballooning bureaucracy that we have ever seen. It’s so big, in fact, that the government is saying now they’ve got to hack 500 jobs. A minimum 500 management positions, I believe, is what I heard they’ve got to get rid of. They’ve got to start trimming it down. This side of the House warned them about the ballooning bureaucracy many, many times.

So is this just now going to create another act? Yeah, we’ve got $6.6 million, but it cost us $10 million to collect it. I have a family member that is in the collection business, deals with millions of dollars in credit and how to collect it. There are times where…. What are the rules that are going to be put in place to say: “You know what? We’re never going to see a dime of this. There’s no point running after it. We’re just going to waste money trying to collect it”?

We’re actually going to hurt the taxpayer, not help the taxpayer. Oftentimes government does not look at the bottom line in that way. They look at it as “a rule is a rule, and come hell or high water, we’re going to get what we get because that’s the rule.” It’s not often, far too not often, the opposite, which is: “We’re not worried about the bottom line because the rule says we’ve got to go collect it.” So we’ll spend more money than it’s worth to collect bad debt.

What rules are going to be put in place as to how big the bureaucracy is going to be? Are there going to be any safeguards whatsoever so that we actually…? You know, if the goal is to save the taxpayer money, and this side of the House wholeheartedly agrees with that, are we actually going to have a system that does save the taxpayer money? Is it just creating more jobs that end up costing the taxpayers more because the system balloons and balloons and balloons?

In our health care authorities, what I’m hearing is that the front lines are already not getting enough resources because the machine is too big. The administration side has become too large. I think if you take a look at those in management and the health care authorities of British Columbia versus Alberta, it would be an example of…. We have some very, very high-paid executives and far more numbers than British Columbia has versus Alberta.

Now I see the former Health Minister shaking his head at me. So perhaps the information I’ve gotten on that is incorrect, but I don’t think it is. But part of these things when we go through these bills is to figure out exactly whether or not this is actually going to do what the overall goal was. The overall goal is to try and save the taxpayers money by recovering said funds.

[4:05 p.m.]

On the whole, as I said, this side of the House agrees with that 100 percent. But where are the safeguards so that those savings won’t just be eaten up by an overly large, cumbersome bureaucracy? Are we going to turn it out to third-party collectors, for instance? By the way, you cost immediately 50 cents on the dollar whenever you do that, because that’s how those companies make their living — by collecting 50 percent of whatever they take in.

What are we going to do for uninsured people? As I said, there are companies now that have high-risk things. Like, in my backyard, just across the river, is a racetrack. Now, everybody knows, when they get in their car and roar around a track, in spite of the protection that you have in a vehicle, that you could end up in a horrific accident.

I give you…. Recently, Greg Moore was mentioned in the news because someone took his helmet from the Sports Hall of Fame and thankfully that helmet was returned. I had the privilege of watching Greg race around a racetrack. But is the very racetrack now going to be held liable? Is the driver of the other car going to be held liable, even though every single race driver knows it is a high, high risk?

I have, as another example…. I’ve done it myself. I raised money for charity jumping out of a perfectly good plane, parachuting. There were some people hoping my chute wouldn’t open, maybe. I don’t know. But there’s a risk that it may not.

So are we now going to make the insurance premiums so high, because of this, that that sport — which attracts people from all over the world, by the way — is now going to be shut down? Have we looked at, for instance, the PNE and the rides there, the fairs that come around all the time that have midways?

There’s so much in this that I think we need to boil down. I look forward to some honest debate about this in the committee stage and, more importantly, some honest answers. And sometimes I hope that what I hear is: “You know what, Member? We hadn’t considered that particular point, and we’re going to flesh that one out. We’re going to actually see if there’s some meat on that bone so we can make this a better piece of legislation.”

Far too often, that side of the House has come up with some idea. They’ve just ram-rodded it through the House because they can. I believe it’s actually disingenuous to the taxpayers who put us and elect us in this House to actually, once in a while, put our nonsense aside and do what’s best on behalf of the taxpayer.

What you will hear from this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, is some debate, provided it passes to committee stage — I said I’m pretty sure it will — and we will have some ways to actually make this legislation do what it originally intended to do, which is to recover money and save the taxpayers dollars and, at the same time, not put businesses out of business because the risk becomes so high that they can no longer afford the chance that something may happen inadvertently.

With that, I want to thank this House once again for allowing me to speak to this bill and allowing me to share a few words. Let’s just hope that common sense on this one prevails, because as I’ve said far too often, people dig their heels in, in this House, for ideology rather than doing what’s right by the taxpayer. But I think there’s lots of common ground on this particular legislation, that we can actually make it better for everybody and serve its intended goal, which is to save the taxpayer money.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much, Member.

I just want to welcome everybody that’s up in the gallery, but particularly our youth that are here this afternoon, because they are definitely engaged.

[4:10 p.m.]

So thank you very much for being with us here today to debate Bill 9, Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act, 2025.

We’ll now recognize our Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions.

Hon. Adrian Dix: I rise, of course, in support of the Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act. As a member of the Legislature and a member of the Legislature on both sides of the House, interestingly, I participated in the debate on this bill when it was brought in in 2009.

I think, perhaps, the opposition Whip is unaware of the bill which was brought in in 2009. It was brought in to mirror legislation that had been put in place in Manitoba in 1992, in Saskatchewan in 1995 and came into this House in 2009. It’s been in operation for 16 years. This amendment act was tabled in April.

I just say, with the greatest respect, to give a speech where none of the examples were relevant to the legislation is an extraordinary thing — with six months’ notice. But that’s what occurred here.

The bill, in 2009, was brought in by the then Minister of Health. The member’s old party, the B.C. Liberal Party, brought it in in 2009 to deal with specific circumstances. One, to bring us up to date with what other jurisdictions were doing. Two, to do something that we all want to do — to ensure that when someone is responsible that they’re held accountable for that.

The Minister of Health brought it in. Of course, the main bill had dozens of clauses, it was debated at length, and it was supported unanimously in the House. I was the opposition Health critic at the time, and it was supported. We had, of course, questions at committee stage. But if you look at the comments from myself and the member for Surrey-Whalley, they were directly relevant to the legislation and took the legislation that had been introduced seriously.

Has the Health Care Costs Recovery Act worked? Just think back. One of the things that inspired British Columbia to act was a case called Hoy v. Medtronic, where the province sought reimbursement in that case for the hospital costs expended to remove or replace defective pacemaker leads.

The legislation was needed, according to the former member for Shuswap, then Minister of Health, Mr. Abbott, to address circumstances like that, to ensure that the taxpayer and the province would have access, especially in cases of class actions and others, to repayment where such responsibility was elsewhere. And who would disagree with that?

I’ve been listening to this debate for a while. For the last 16 years this bill has been in place, I haven’t heard…. We talk about the potential risks. It has an established record — 16 years of established record. Many of the questions that have been put forward are about the bill itself, which has been in place for 16 years. I don’t know what it is about 16 years. I’ve said it before. No issues have been raised.

What’s happening here is what happens frequently with legislation. Over time, improvements are required to make the legislation succeed as to its original intent. That was the intent of the Minister of Health in bringing forward this legislation — to ensure that the government would, in fact, be able to recover health care costs on behalf of the people of B.C. to the fullest extent possible.

That’s what the changes do. Take the original bill, which the opposition seems unsure about, but it’s been in place for 16 years…. It was put in place not by an NDP government but by a B.C. Liberal government. It’s been in place for 16 years, and no one has raised, to my knowledge in this Legislature, issues about its functioning over those 16 years.

It’s making minor amendments here to ensure that the people of B.C. get full access to appropriate recoveries and that people are held accountable, under very specific circumstances, for what they do.

[4:15 p.m.]

Now, it is the case that the legislation parallels changes that were made by the NDP government in the late ’90s to hold tobacco companies responsible. Though that effort, which was sustained, by the way…. It started under an NDP government — I had some small role in that — continued for 16 years under a B.C. Liberal government and then has resulted in, we hope and we believe, significant benefits to people in our province.

Sometimes it takes a long time to bring justice, and in that case, justice at least to an extent. I’m sure people who have suffered loss due to the impact of tobacco would feel that for their family, for their person, for their loved one, maybe justice hasn’t been served, but some justice has been served in the recovery. Then the same thing with respect to opioids, and there are other possible responsibilities. Those aren’t this legislation. Those parallel the principle put forward in the legislation.

I think what the Minister of Health is doing here is something that we should continue to do on all legislation. In 2009, when the legislation was drafted to deal with some very specific circumstances and dealt with parallel to it…. We now have years of experience in the actual application of the legislation, which has worked very well for the people of B.C.

The feeling is that it could work better, and that’s the legislation before the House. How do we take this piece of legislation, unanimously supported by both sides of the House — brought in by, if you will, a right-wing or a centre-right government, whatever it is — and continues to do to the maximum what it’s supposed to do…?

Of course, everyone has…. It’s important to ask questions about the specifics. The minister has gone through those in detail. I don’t intend to repeat what she said, but the specifics of the way the legislation applied have been actually proven in fact and in law and have led to significant recoveries and also significant justice for our system.

People may say: “Oh, $6.6 million isn’t a lot.” It’s been 15 years, and it’s not the same every year, but the recoveries have been significant. And that is money that has been allowed and goes back to pay for the public health services that we all, I think, believe passionately in, at least I do, every day.

What I’d suggest to the opposition is that in this case there are ideal circumstances. We have a bill that’s been in place for 16 years. Issues have not been raised before, not by this opposition and not by previous oppositions. There are lots of issues out there. But it’s working well. It wasn’t brought in by this government. It’s a shared ownership. Just like in the tobacco case, the B.C. Liberal government and Health ministers like Colin Hansen and George Abbott and others made improvements and supported what we did in that case.

In this case, we’re taking something that formed from the other side of the House when we were over there — in fact, I spoke to the original bill — and we’re making it better now. Yes, there are questions to ask at committee stage, but to raise the kinds of questions about the bill which are not relevant and with examples that have absolutely nothing to do with the bill, to cause concerns that this may raise taxes, raise responsibility, raise insurance rates…. We know that’s not the case. It’s been around for 16 years. Nobody here raised these issues before.

I believe passionately in the role of opposition, in the role of members of the Legislature to ask questions. You can look at the record. I asked a few as an opposition member, more than a few, including on the legislation in question, which had, I think, 80 clauses or something like that. It was a significant piece of legislative intent. We had interventions at second reading by myself and the former member for Surrey-Whalley, Bruce Ralston, which were right to point, on the relevance of the legislation.

[4:20 p.m.]

I don’t think every bill is an opportunity to stoke public fears. I don’t think every bill needs to be subject to that debate. We should have a debate. It’s the law. People have to live with that law. We should have a debate.

But in this case, those efforts, to my mind, are not helpful in the sense that there was lots of time to prepare, six months, and we have speeches like the one we just heard — completely irrelevant to the legislation in front of us and seemingly not knowing that this wasn’t new legislation at all. It’s an amendment act, which it is.

I think what we’re doing here and what the Minister of Health is doing here is exactly appropriate. Of course, issues of responsibility and of liability are complicated. We see this in complicated debates in our world about the responsibility for people and their acts in times of war. We see it in our justice system. We see it everywhere. How do we hold people accountable?

This legislation holds people accountable, and I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a shared value. I think that’s something we can all support. What this legislation intends is that the work that we’ve done together over time is made better.

So I strongly encourage members on all sides of the House to support this legislation at second reading and, in fact, to of course have a debate at committee stage but not to ascribe motives where none exist, not to suggest that this is a conspiracy on the part of the government when it was another government that brought it in and it’s been in place for 16 years. That doesn’t help anybody.

What helps is that we make legislation better, that we work well as legislators, that we support legislation regardless of where it comes from when we believe in it, and we disagree with facts and substance when we don’t. I encourage members to support this legislation with that in mind.

Scott McInnis: I just want to open with a couple of remarks. It’s an honour to be back here for this fall session. It never gets lost on me as a small-town guy to be speaking in this beautiful chamber. I’d like to welcome back my fellow members from all opposition caucuses as well as the government.

And nice to see you again, Mr. Speaker, of course, in the chair.

I know we also have two members who are battling very serious illnesses, and I just want to wish them all the best. I really hope both those members are back here in the House where they belong as soon as possible.

I was disappointed to hear the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions somewhat insinuating that debate on this bill is not necessary and that we should just trust the government with this. The amendments that are proposed here…. We’re thinking of possible challenges that could arise from such amendments. I don’t think it’s appropriate that the minister kind of disregards some of those, because we’re trying to think of the whole picture here when we’re looking at amendments to legislation, which is extremely important.

I’ve really appreciated this debate today, actually. I’ve heard some good points from government, also from our opposition caucus, and I do look forward to the committee stage of this bill where we can dive deeper into these proposed amendments and ask some more detailed questions therein.

I’m coming today with the lens not only of the critic for tourism and resort municipalities but as somebody who lives and experiences adventure tourism in my life. Adventure tourism is a really unbelievable opportunity for the individuals and visitors not only in Columbia River–Revelstoke but I’m going to say the entire East Kootenay as a whole. It brings in tremendous tax revenue for the government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

[4:25 p.m.]

Whether it’s paragliding, guided fly-fishing trips, guided rafting trips, heli-skiing, ATV tours, these are inherently very dangerous activities, in a sense. I’m going to talk about a couple of those specifically.

From a 30,000-foot view here, I do want to debate and, of course, question in committee stage some of the potential high-level challenges I see with regard, potentially, to liability waivers. In the adventure tourism business, liability waivers are obviously very important, but there have also been lots of instances of them not being, in cases, really worth the paper that they’re written on. That can be a serious concern.

We recognize and respect the government’s intent to recover public health care costs, obviously, for the benefit of all taxpayers, but we want to focus specifically, in my opinion. We want to target in on the challenges with liability waivers and the viability of those liability waivers as we move forward.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

I’m going to take a moment here just to describe a couple of these specific adventure tourism industries that are big business where I come from, and for the people that I’m here to represent.

Heli-skiing, which directly and indirectly brings in about $175 million a year into the province, is one of the most iconic but high-risk adventure offerings that we have here in British Columbia. Obviously, guests are flying in helicopters at elevations sometimes exceeding 2,500 metres to ski that beautiful, untouched powder that, if you have the experience to do that, is so unique.

The logistics around this are very complex, the terrain is extremely unpredictable, and the safety standards can be uncompromising at times. Before a single guest boards a helicopter, they sign a comprehensive waiver and do a series of training initiatives, which takes, at times, several hours. This waiver outlines the avalanche risk, the weather variabilities, terrain hazards and the limitations of the rescue operations, at times. It’s not just a formality; it’s a contract based on trust.

Specifically, with clause 2, I look forward to debating the minister about this at committee stage, just in more detail, for clarity reasons, more than anything. It seems that, potentially, clause 2 would upset that trust a little bit. By stating that a waiver of liability does not affect the government’s right to recover health care costs, the bill potentially exposes heli-ski operators to financial liability, even when no negligence has occurred.

This is a very, very complex industry. If a guest suffers a broken leg or, heaven forbid, much worse, despite being briefed, equipped and guided, the operator may still be pursued for the cost of that injury. Heli-skiing operators already face astronomical insurance premiums, seasonal constraints and weather-related cancellations.

All of these unintended consequences around the industry are ever-present threats to this industry. If we add a potentially unpredictable legal exposure — again, I look forward to talking to the minister about this in more detail — this will potentially steer operators into looking at a very different business model or to abandon the business altogether.

A second one that I’m very familiar with is guide-outfitters. Obviously, this brings in tremendous revenue for the province. It’s a really unique experience for those that get to hike up into the high alpine, looking for goats and sheep specifically. It’s a very rewarding and challenging experience, but it’s very dangerous as well.

The folks that operate these businesses — I know many of them very well, personally — are not just guides. They’re stewards of the land, they’re educators, and they’re huge proponents of proper safety guidelines. Obviously, they operate in very remote terrain, where medical evacuation can take hours at best and where clients could be exposed to wildlife, terrain and weather-related risks.

[4:30 p.m.]

Guide-outfitters, just like the heli-ski operators, do rely heavily on liability waivers. They’re tailored to specific risks within the guide-outfitting industry and also to each expedition, as the guide-outfitting industry is very unique from one to the next.

There’s an intensive orientation process, as well, which clients are taken through. They protect the guide from liability in cases where a client, despite being warned, chooses to take a risky shot, cross a river, climb a bridge, etc. Potentially, Bill 9 challenges that protection.

Clause 6. If a guide is named in a legal proceeding and seeks a contribution from another party, say, a subcontractor or a transport provider — this is just my view from a 30,000-foot level here — the government could subrogate the guide’s right to recover those costs. This means the guide may be liable not only for their own actions but for the actions of others that are operating their business within theirs, even when the waiver is signed and no fault was found.

This is a recipe for litigation, which is obviously time-consuming, stressful and extremely expensive. It would also potentially discourage collaboration, increase insurance costs and force guides to limit their scope of services. Overall, I want to bring to light some of these challenges related to the very, very complex and ever-changing nature of civil liability that occurs with some of these high-risk activities.

Beyond that, Bill 9 introduces a labyrinth of compliance obligations. Clause 4.1 requires parties filing third-party notices to notify the government within 21 days. Clauses 10 and 11 mandate the provision of prescribed records and cooperation with government agents.

For heli-skiing operators specifically, which I’ll go back to, and guide-outfitters, this could be a logistical nightmare, to be honest with you. These businesses are run by very, very small teams, in most cases with limited administrative capacity. Often family members, husbands or wives of these operators, do the books. They operate in seasonal windows, in remote areas and with minimal connectivity.

So the shrinking of that time constraint, I think, is something that we need to discuss, because these are, as I said, very seasonally intense operations. Often guide-outfitters are out for weeks and weeks at a time, and they can’t necessarily stop what they’re doing to provide these reports.

Clause 21 offers indemnification for expenses incurred in compliance but only subject to regulation. I just want to go through the clarity on what qualifies here, as we get into committee stage, on how reimbursements will be processed or whether small operators would be prioritized. I want to look at some of those risks there as well.

Adventure tourism is primarily operated in rural communities. It’s the lifeblood — I don’t want to underestimate this — of many rural communities here in British Columbia, whether it’s lodges outside of Golden or guide-outfitting operations in the South Country. Whatever it may be, these are local economies we’re talking about, right? So the employment in hospitality and conservation partnerships is obviously really important and wide-reaching here.

We may want to look at some amendments to this legislation as we move forward, or these communities could suffer unintended consequences, in my opinion — the biggest risk being that operators could scale back if they just feel like their exposure to risk is too great.

We have to dig into the piece a little bit here, about these liability waivers, as we move through the process. The sad thing would be that operators would potentially look at jurisdictions which have more clarity around some of the regulation and legislation.

[4:35 p.m.]

Liability waivers have served as a legally recognized tool for managing risk in high-adventure activities. Participants voluntarily sign these waivers, as we’ve talked about, acknowledging the inherent risks involved and agreeing not to hold operators liable for injuries that may occur in the absence of negligence. But we’re talking about very, very complex industries here, and these liability waivers are not always as bulletproof as they seem to be.

We need to address this. They’re not loopholes; they’re a contract. They reflect informed consent and personal responsibility. I think members on this side of the House would agree with that. But at times, if these waivers are considered ineffective for the purpose of government cost recovery, Bill 9 introduces potentially challenging precedents here.

It tells the operator: “If you follow the safety protocols, your participants signed the waiver and no negligence occurred, you may still be pursued for the cost of that person’s medical treatment.” We need clear frameworks and guidelines if we’re going to move forward with the proposed amendments to this legislation.

Again, looking at the adventure tourism industry, these operators already face significant legal exposure. As I did mention, their insurance costs are sky-high. They train their staff rigorously, invest in top-of-the-line safety equipment, follow industry best practices, etc., but they also rely on the certainty that liability waivers provide.

So we have to make sure that we get this right. Without them, every incident, no matter how unforeseeable or unavoidable, becomes a potential lawsuit, and we can’t live in a society where the risk of doing an activity and potential liability around that outweigh the opportunities for those activities.

Clause 6 looks at introducing rights for the government. If a defendant in a legal proceeding seeks contribution or indemnity from a third party, the government is subrogated to that entitlement. In other words, even if an operator is not directly liable, potentially, they may still be drawn into complex litigation because they are part of a chain of claims. I think that’s something we need to look at.

The challenge is that we don’t want to get into a litigation minefield here with these amendments. I think that’s why digging deeper into this in committee stage is so critical. We cannot have these often small to medium-sized operators spending more of their generally razor-thin budgets on legal counsel, on insurance and on the administrative compliance that’s required here.

These small businesses just simply can’t absorb this. The majority of adventure tourism operators in British Columbia are small businesses. They’re family-run, so like I said, they’re already operating on tight margins, and we don’t want to erode that even further, potentially, with increased litigation.

Clause 1 of the bill expands the definition of “insurer” to include not only traditional insurance companies but also self-insured organizations, mutual defence groups and prescribed classes. This again could have consequences. By broadening the scope of who’s considered an insurer, the bill subjects a wider range of entities to the obligations of disclosure, cooperation and cost recovery.

This includes small operators who may be self-insured or part of an informal mutual aid agreement. These businesses will now be treated as insurers under the law, with all attendant responsibilities and liabilities. Again, I just think there are some legitimate questions to ask here as we move forward.

Clauses 10 and 11 further require beneficiaries and their representatives to provide prescribed records and information to the minister. I know my colleague has already talked about the sacred nature, really, of your medical records. I think that’s extremely important to keep in mind here.

[4:40 p.m.]

Clause 9 imposes similar duties on uninsured defendants. These provisions create a complex web of compliance obligations that could potentially overwhelm some of these small operators.

The importance of the tourism industry is not just an economic engine here. It’s part of our identity as British Columbians, and it’s a cultural asset in my opinion.

Millions of visitors every year come to our remote corners of the province for these wonderful experiences. It generates, as I said, throughout the province, billions of dollars a year in revenue and, more importantly, supports thousands of often very-high-paying jobs in rural and remote communities. So we just want to make sure that when we’re debating the finer points of this bill that….

You know, I agree with the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions. We want to make sure that we work together to get this right. This is very important, especially in regions like mine.

We’re not here as opposition to reject the principle of health care cost recovery. That’s not my intention, certainly, here debating this bill today. We understand the government’s desire to ensure that public funds are collected and used responsibly. But there could be some polishing to do around the edges of these amendments, no doubt.

We’re going to recommend a few things around protections for operators — exempting, like I mentioned, some smaller operators from certain notification and disclosure requirements that they’re simply not able to do with the capacity that they have. I think just reasonable things that we can debate further.

I think the idea here is to preserve the integrity of the Health Care Costs Recovery Act — I believe that is what we are trying to do here — while protecting the viability of adventure tourism, which is really, like I said, part of our identity here in British Columbia.

I want to say again that I look forward to working collaboratively with the members in government, specifically the Minister of Health, on zeroing in on some of these targeted areas for these amendments, just to make sure that we’re thinking about everybody in the province here on both sides of the coin.

This is a complicated piece of legislation in these amendments, although I believe the spirit of them is in the right direction. We just want to make sure that we have those discussions in an open and transparent way.

I look forward to that, Madam Speaker, and I really want to thank you for the opportunity today.

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

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to all the members who spoke to today’s bill. As has been mentioned by many, we all look forward to getting into the committee stage of the bill to be able to debate and clarify some of the finer points. I appreciate the concerns raised and the perspectives that were shared and really look forward to that committee stage debate.

So with that, I move second reading.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the question is second reading of Bill 9, Health Care Costs Recovery Amendment Act, 2025.

Motion approved.

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

Motion approved.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I call second reading of Bill 10.

Bill 10 — Attorney General
Statutes Amendment Act, 2025

Hon. Niki Sharma: I move that the bill now be read a second time.

This bill amends a number of statutes. The amendments to the Judicial Compensation Act will statutorily implement the 2022 Judicial Compensation Commission’s recommendation regarding the non-judicial pension provisions in the act.

[4:45 p.m.]

This recommendation was made after a joint submission by the province and the Provincial Court Judges Association and means that provincial court judges who were public servants prior to being appointed to the bench receive the same benefit for their non-judicial service as other public service pension plan members. By operation of the act, the non-judicial pension realignment was already implemented in a practical sense following the completion of the judicial compensation process in 2023.

Next, this bill will amend the Libel and Slander Act to update the description of the document by which a legal action for libel is commenced under the act. This will address a misalignment between the current Supreme Court civil rules and the act.

Amendments to the Land Title Act will address registration requirements for transmission of a deceased person’s land where there is an administrator appointed by the court under the Wills, Estates and Succession Act. Such court appointments are made when there are ongoing proceedings about the validity of a will or in other special circumstances and enable the minister to protect the estate’s value.

Amendments are also proposed to the Members’ Remuneration and Pensions Act to suspend salary increases for Members of the Legislative Assembly for the fiscal year 2025 to ‘26. The Legislative Assembly Management Committee decided in March 2025 to withhold the statutory increase to members’ salaries that was scheduled to come into effect on April 1, 2025. The proposed amendment gives statutory effect to the decision of this committee.

This bill also proposes amendments to the Police Act to support the operations of the independent investigations office. The IIO is a civilian-led police oversight agency responsible for conducting investigations into incidents of death or serious harm involving police officers and special provincial constables in British Columbia.

The IIO is under the leadership of the chief civilian director. The proposed amendments will provide that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may appoint an acting chief civilian director of the IIO and authorize the appointment of a deputy chief civilian director to whom the chief civilian director could delegate their powers and duties.

Also, a housekeeping amendment to the Small Claims Act will improve statutory clarity by removing an outdated reference to a repealed provision of the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act.

Finally, amendments to the Wills, Estates and Succession Act will add first-home savings accounts to the definition of “benefits plan.” This will allow people to designate a beneficiary for their first-home savings account and ensure the beneficiary can access it in the same way they can access other plans like tax-free saving accounts or registered retirement saving plans.

I thank the members of this House, and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues on second reading.

Steve Kooner: It’s a pleasure to be back for the fall session. I rise today on behalf of the official opposition and the Conservative caucus of British Columbia as Attorney General critic to respond to Bill 10, the Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2025.

At first glance, this bill is described as a housekeeping measure. For the most part, it appears to be true, appears to be a housekeeping bill. It proposes a series of small targeted amendments across several statutes, as we just heard from the Attorney General. These changes are generally administrative — updating terminology, correcting cross-references and aligning provincial law with a federal program or modern legal practice.

We fully support the principle of keeping our laws clear, current and consistent. A legal system that relies on outdated or inconsistent language quickly becomes confusing, not just for lawyers but for ordinary British Columbians who rely on these laws every day.

Clear statutes mean fewer disputes, smoother administration and better confidence in government decision-making. However, even technical or routine changes deserve scrutiny. Housekeeping bills can sometimes introduce unintended consequences.

If those working on the front lines — such as judges, lawyers, notaries, police, court staff — haven’t been consulted, what may seem like a minor drafting update on paper can have ripple effects in practice. So while this bill may be largely administrative, it’s still our job to ensure that these amendments are both necessary and responsible and that the Attorney General’s Ministry has done the appropriate consultation.

[4:50 p.m.]

With that in mind, I now turn to each of the acts being amended by Bill 10.

The first set of changes is to the Judicial Compensation Act, which governs the salaries, benefits and pensions of our judges. This bill adjusts the way pensionable service is calculated for judges who have prior non-judicial service before joining the bench. In simple terms, it modernizes how those years of service are recognized when determining retirement benefits.

While this may sound purely administrative, pension changes always carry fiscal implications. Even small, formal adjustments can affect the province’s long-term pension obligations. For that reason, it’s important to know whether an actuarial analysis was completed before this change was proposed and whether the judiciary was fully consulted.

Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our democracy, and that independence is supported in part through fair, transparent and properly funded compensation. If this amendment brings consistency and fairness, that’s positive. But it’s equally important to ensure that the taxpayers understand the cost and that the process has been transparent.

It’s also important to mention that when we had the estimates debate around the Attorney General’s budget on the justice system, I had some reservations. I had some concerns in regards to whether the justice system was being properly funded. I felt that there needed to be more resources and more funding towards the justice system, especially considering population growth and inflation.

I felt that the numbers in terms of the increase to the justice system budget were not good enough. It’s an important point that here we’re looking at judiciary compensation in terms of pensions. This is a direct contribution to the justice system.

Next, the amendments affect the Land Title Act, which governs how land ownership and transfers are recorded in British Columbia, something that affects virtually every homeowner and property owner in this province. This update clarifies documentation requirements for property transfers upon death, aligning them with modern probate and estate administration processes.

The change makes sense in principle. The way estates are handled today is much more digitized and streamlined than when many of these laws were first written.

However, any change in this area has a direct impact on lawyers, notaries and estate professionals who are responsible for filing these documents and advising families. It’s crucial that these professionals were consulted. Without that engagement, even a small procedural change could cause confusion, delays and added costs for families trying to settle an estate, particularly older estates that involve complex titles or multiple heirs.

Modernization should make things simpler and faster, not create new red tape for grieving families trying to complete a straightforward property transfer. It’s important to note that we don’t want to cause grieving families any unnecessary stress with administrative obstacles.

Next, Bill 10 also deals with the Libel and Slander Act. The Libel and Slander Act governs defamation law in British Columbia. It balances between protecting one’s reputation and also protecting the freedom of expression.

Here, the amendment is modest. It replaces the outdated phrase “issue of the writ” with the “filing of a notice of civil claim.” That aligns that statute with our current Supreme Court civil rules, as the Attorney General stated earlier, and modernizes terminology that dates back to a time before electronic filing even existed.

In my practice, while practising civil litigation, I practised in an era when we didn’t do that many electronic filings into an era in which you had to learn electronic filings and how to do them. I understand there’s a lot of different procedure that gets involved, and a lot of things change in terms of practice when you do involve technology. So revisiting how documentation gets registered is a good exercise at this stage.

[4:55 p.m.]

On the surface, this particular change in regards to the Libel and Slander Act is a small housekeeping fix, but it’s part of a much larger issue. B.C.’s defamation laws haven’t been comprehensively reviewed in decades, even though the landscape of communication has changed completely.

We now live in an era of social media, viral posts and online reputational harm. If the government truly wants to modernize this particular law in regards to defamation, there is an opportunity here to go further, to engage with legal scholars, journalists and digital rights advocates on a broader review of defamation law in the 21st century.

We are currently dealing with a digital world of today where we have a lot of sharing that goes online. People have Facebook groups. They have social media groups where they share online community posts. We have online reviews of businesses and services. It’s happening at a rapid pace. And with that, the defamation law comes into place. This would have been an ample opportunity to actually address defamation law and how we could make improvements to it, moving forward, in a more thorough manner.

While this particular change in regards to amending the Libel and Slander Act is a minor update, it raises the broader question of whether our statutes are keeping pace with how people actually communicate today.

Bill 10 also amends the Members’ Remuneration and Pensions Act. The Attorney General just touched on this. It seems to be pretty self-explanatory. The Members’ Remuneration and Pensions Act governs MLA salaries and benefits, and the amendment freezes MLA salaries for the 2025 fiscal year. The amendment seems to be pretty self-explanatory.

Next, Bill 10 amends the Police Act. In this amendment to the Police Act, there is a new deputy chief civilian director position that is established at the independent investigations office, the IIO. This is a civilian-led agency that investigates incidents involving police that result in death or serious harm.

The IIO plays a vital role in maintaining public confidence in policing and accountability. Adding a deputy director could strengthen leadership capacity and ensure operational continuity when the chief civilian director is unavailable.

However, several questions arise. What qualifications will this new deputy be required to have? Will they be appointed through an independent, merit-based process? What is the budgetary impact of this new management role? Will there be any additional staffing required to staff this particular position?

We’d also like to know whether police organizations, oversight experts and the IIO itself were consulted on this amendment. The goal of oversight is to enhance accountability, not add unnecessary bureaucracy. If this new role helps investigations proceed faster and strengthens public trust, that’s a positive outcome, but it’s essential to confirm that this change achieves those goals.

Bill 10 goes further to amend the Small Claims Act, and there’s just another minor change here. The Small Claims Act governs lower-value civil disputes, the kinds of cases many British Columbians encounter when trying to recover money or resolve contractual disagreements.

[5:00 p.m.]

This amendment removes an obsolete cross-reference to a repealed section in another law. It’s a very minor change, but these small corrections are important. Outdated references can confuse judges, clerks or self-represented litigants trying to interpret their rights.

By keeping the Small Claims Act internally consistent, the government ensures that the small claims court remains accessible, straightforward and user-friendly, especially for people without legal representation. It’s a small fix, but a meaningful one, for the people who rely on this part of our justice system most directly.

Last but not least, this bill, Bill 10, amends the Wills, Estates and Succession Act. The Wills, Estates and Succession Act governs how estates are distributed when someone passes away. This amendment adds the first home savings account, FHSA, to the list of benefit plans that can pass directly to beneficiaries outside of probate. The FHSA is a new federal program that allows first-time homebuyers to save for a down payment with tax advantages similar to an RRSP or a TFSA.

This amendment ensures that those accounts are treated the same way upon death, allowing a smoother transfer to beneficiaries and avoiding unnecessary probate costs. It’s a timely and practical update that reflects changes in federal financial policy.

Still, because estate planning affects so many families, the government should confirm whether estate lawyers and financial institutions were consulted in the process of making this amendment. Public understanding of how new savings vehicles interact with estate law is essential to prevent unintended consequences for families down the line.

In conclusion, Bill 10 is, in large part, a housekeeping bill. The Conservative caucus supports the general intent of keeping our laws modern and internally consistent. But the common thread through all of these changes is consultation. It’s not enough for legislation to be technically correct. It must also be practically sound.

The people who work within these systems every day must have a voice in shaping the laws that guide them. British Columbians expect laws that are clear, modern and fair. But they also expect their government to listen, to consult, to anticipate the real-world impacts of even small legislative tweaks and to be transparent about the rationale behind each change.

We will support Bill 10 at second reading because maintaining clarity in our laws is always worth supporting. But at the committee stage, we will be asking detailed questions about the consultation process. Who was consulted, what feedback was received, and how was it incorporated? That is the accountability British Columbians deserve.

Donegal Wilson: I rise today to speak to Bill 10, the Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, as it relates to my critic role in Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. What we’re discussing here today is what we would call a housekeeping bill, a review of a technical piece of legislation with changes that are intended to align, clarify and modernize existing statutes.

These kinds of bills rarely make the headlines, but they are essential to the smooth and effective operation of our province. They ensure that our laws keep pace with evolving practice, technological change and the realities faced by those who administer and rely on them every day.

I want to begin by recognizing the tremendous amount of work that goes into preparing even what appear to be the smallest legislative amendments. This bill touches on several acts, including the Judicial Compensation Act, the Land Title Act, the Police Act and the Members’ Remuneration and Pensions Act, among others. Behind every clause are hours of legal review, cross-referencing and consultation among staff, council and administrators.

[5:05 p.m.]

In particular, I want to acknowledge the public servants in the Ministry of the Attorney General who undertook this painstaking review of these acts to bring forward these clarifications and technical corrections. This kind of work rarely gets headlines but is absolutely essential to the integrity of the legislative framework we operate under. These staff comb through laws line by line, cross-referencing provisions that may not have been touched in decades, ensuring consistency between statutes, regulation and practice.

The preparation of Bill 10 is detailed, highly technical work that demands both legal precision and practical understanding of how our laws function on the ground. Often the public will never know their names or see the impact of their diligence. But the reliability of our laws, our courts and the confidence that British Columbians have in their government’s administration, our justice, depends on it. In many ways, these individuals are the quiet stewards of legislative stability in our province, and they deserve our sincere thanks.

However, as legislators, it is our duty to remember that even small changes can have a large and unintended consequence. When we modify sections that touch something as foundational as the Land Title Act, for example, we are adjusting the rules that underpin property ownership, inheritance and the transfer of land in British Columbia.

These are not abstract matters. They are the framework through which families settle estates, small businesses secure loans and local governments plan for growth. A minor adjustment to the language around probate or to the documents required for registration may seem technical, but on the ground, it can mean real delays, added costs and unexpected hardship for people who are simply trying to carry out their legal or financial affairs.

In rural regions like mine, where access to legal professionals, notaries and land title offices can already involve long drives or limited hours of service, even a small procedural change can create barriers that urban British Columbians may never encounter. Imagine having a notary in your community only one day a week or perhaps no service at all. This is the reality in my riding of Boundary-Similkameen.

It’s a reminder that precision in law-making isn’t just about getting the words right. It’s about ensuring that those words work for everyone, in every corner of the province, and apply equally, even in rural areas like mine. That is why attention to detail matters so deeply and why each clause in this so-called housekeeping bill deserves careful scrutiny. Our goal should always be to make the law clearer, not more complicated, and ensure that modernization truly makes the system more efficient and accessible for the people that rely on it the most.

While the amendments to Bill 10 are described as housekeeping, we must ensure that in tidying up this language, we don’t accidentally sweep away important procedural safeguards or create new uncertainties for lawyers, registrars or the public who rely on these systems. That’s why consultation is so important, and I’ll echo my colleague, especially on technical bills like this.

For the proposed changes to the Land Act, I would assume that the legal profession, land title professionals and estate administrators would be the first to spot where a small drafting change could create unintended consequences. Their practical, hands-on experience helps ensure that changes meant to modernize do not inadvertently complicate or delay transactions, especially in rural or remote communities where access to legal services and land title offices is already challenging.

In that sense, housekeeping bills are a test of our diligence and due process. They are an opportunity to ensure that modernization is done thoughtfully, that each amendment has been properly vetted and that all affected stakeholders have been consulted.

At committee stage, I look forward to exploring these details with the minister, particularly around the Land Title Act amendments, which consolidate several historical provisions. While these changes appear minor and administrative, we now know that even the smallest mismatch between statute, regulation and practice can lead to delays, confusion and unnecessary costs for the public.

Housekeeping bills may not draw crowds, but they remind us that legislative precision matters. They show the importance of vigilance, of making sure every word, every cross-reference and every effective date line up. So while Bill 10 may be routine, it deserves the same careful scrutiny we would give to any major piece of legislation.

I want to close by once again acknowledging the staff who keep these statutes up to date and to thank them for their diligence and professionalism.

[5:10 p.m.]

I look forward to the committee stage of this bill, where we will have the opportunity to verify that appropriate consultation has taken place and that these changes achieve their intended purpose without unintended consequences.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I call the Attorney General to close debate.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I thank the members of the House, and I look forward to the Committee of the Whole debate. With that, I move second reading.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the question is second reading of Bill 10, intituled Attorney General Statutes Amendment Act, 2025.

Motion approved.

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

Motion approved.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I call second reading of Bill 12, Motor Vehicles Act.

Bill 12 — Motor Vehicle
Amendment Act, 2025

Hon. Nina Krieger: I move the bill now be read for a second time.

It is my pleasure and honour to rise today to speak about Bill 12, the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2025.

The proposed amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act support this government’s commitment to make roads safer by improving accessibility and modifying two driver licensing programs: first, the graduated licensing program, known as GLP; second, the motorcyclist licensing program, known as MLP.

B.C.’s population has grown, putting more drivers on the road and increasing demand on the licensing process, and these programs have not significantly changed in the last 17 and 26 years, respectively. The GLP is a multi-stage driver licensing system designed to reduce the exposure of new, inexperienced drivers to higher-risk situations and is a cornerstone of road safety in B.C. The graduated approach is a proven and common way to reduce crashes for new drivers.

We are hearing about increasing barriers to accessing a driver’s licence, especially for Indigenous people, immigrants and people living in rural and remote areas. For some, a driver’s licence is critical to obtain a job or access education or other essential services. In rural and remote communities, having a driver’s licence can be an essential part of daily life.

The proposed changes are designed to improve accessibility and to support new drivers moving through the system in an efficient way while not compromising road safety. The proposed changes will align B.C. with evidence-based programs from across Canada, as well as internationally.

We are looking at two major changes to the existing GLP. The first major change is to remove the exit road test and replace it with an extended period of restrictions and enhanced driver record monitoring. B.C., Ontario and New Zealand are the only jurisdictions that currently require an exit road test to obtain a full-privilege licence. New Zealand has indicated that it expects to remove the exit test by July 2026.

The proposed extended 12-month restriction period will keep new drivers who have completed the novice section of the GLP in a modified yet regulated environment while they transition to a full-privilege licence. This change will extend the period of zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol and driving suspensions and reinforce a safe driving behaviour.

The evidence shows that driving experience and having an offence-free driving record over time is a reliable predictor of future driving habits. The longer restriction period ensures drivers have gained more experience behind the wheel before moving to a full, unrestricted licence.

The second major change is to introduce a streamlined GLP for mature drivers aged 25 and older. Crash risk is closely linked to age. While all new drivers start with a higher crash risk due to inexperience, ICBC insurance data indicates that new drivers aged 25 years and older have an initial crash risk that is 20 percent lower than drivers aged 16 to 24.

[5:15 p.m.]

Given the lower crash risk for drivers aged 25 and above, reducing the duration of the learner and novice periods for mature drivers will help support this age group, who are often juggling employment and family responsibilities. It also creates a streamlined pathway for Indigenous communities and new immigrants, who may face multiple barriers to obtaining a driver’s licence.

The bill will also reduce the age of parental consent to access a licence to 18, which aligns with the age of consent for getting automobile insurance and is consistent with most other jurisdictions in Canada. We have heard that requiring parental consent at age 19 is a barrier to accessing a licence for Indigenous communities and youth in care.

I will speak to another important element of Bill 12, the safety of new and inexperienced motorcyclists, which is a long outstanding concern for this government. The motorcyclist licensing program, or MLP, has had few changes since it was introduced in 1998. The road safety landscape has changed significantly. We have more licensed drivers on the road, larger vehicles, higher traffic counts and more complex road infrastructure. With the proposed changes in Bill 12, we are addressing the higher number of crashes, injuries and fatalities involving motorcyclists.

The proposed changes recognize that safely riding a motorcycle is a skill set distinct from driving a passenger vehicle and that motorcycle riders are largely unprotected in the event of a crash. Motorcycle riders sustain more severe injuries and are more than three times as likely to be injured or killed in a crash in B.C. compared to those in passenger vehicles. Sixty-five percent of motorcycle riders in crashes are injured or killed, and 34 percent of motorcycle crashes are single-vehicle crashes.

Under the current licensing program, 95 percent of individuals wanting to get a motorcycle licence can do so in 30 days. It is difficult to learn these distinct riding skills in 30 days alone. The proposed MLP changes will give riders more time to build the skills to ride safely and to support safer outcomes for new motorcyclists on our roads.

The proposed amendments are based on best practices and address long-standing requests from safety advocates and industry partners for a more robust motorcycle licensing program. The changes are intended to provide better safeguards for individuals learning to ride and those who are new motorcyclists on the road.

In this bill, we are proposing key changes to keep new riders safe. We want to ensure that newer motorcycle riders gain experience on their bikes while reducing their exposure to higher-risk situations. We’ll also be requiring additional protective gear for new riders and their passengers beyond a helmet. Our intent is to provide greater protection to the rider and passenger in the event of a crash.

Equally important is to instil safe riding actions that develop into habitual behaviour of wearing protective gear. We have been in discussions with industry and other partners to define what the guidelines should be for protective gear to have the greatest impact on rider safety. This could include requirements for gloves, jackets, footwear and protective eyewear.

Additionally, we are introducing new restrictions to reduce rider risk, such as no electronic devices in the first stage of learning to ride. It also means that motorcycle learners will have the same electronic device restrictions as motor vehicle learners. Distraction, we know, is the top contributing factor for motorcyclists in crashes. The proposed changes in Bill 12 ensure that the new rider is focused on developing their motorcycle handling skills while limiting distractions.

Bill 12 also contains some housekeeping changes to the Motor Vehicle Act that are unrelated to the proposed graduated licensing program changes. These housekeeping changes were identified during the drafting of this bill.

[5:20 p.m.]

In conclusion, the proposed amendments to the GLP and the MLP are intended to improve road safety for all road users in the province. The amendments will also help improve accessibility for individuals who disproportionately experience difficulties in obtaining a driver’s licence.

Macklin McCall: I rise today to speak on Bill 12, the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2025. This is a bill that we on the opposition approach with great caution, because any change to how British Columbians learn to drive, how they are tested and how they are ultimately licensed is no small administrative matter. It is a matter of public safety and of life and death on our roads.

Driving in British Columbia is a privilege that must be taken seriously. It’s one of the first major responsibilities young people take on, a milestone of independence but also of risk. Every year, thousands of families in our province are changed forever by traffic collisions. Those moments begin in a heartbeat — a misjudged turn, a missed yield, a glance at a phone — and end with police at a doorstep delivering unthinkable news.

As a former police officer, I have lived those moments. If you’ll allow me, Madam Speaker, I want to share one story that has stayed with me all of my life. It’s not an easy one to tell, but it is why I will always take road safety policy in B.C. seriously.

I was 22 years old when I was handed a police file that would stay with me for the rest of my life. It was a next-of-kin notification, a duty every officer dreads but is required to perform. A young woman, 17 years old, had been tragically killed in a collision on a provincial highway. It was my responsibility to deliver the news to her family.

As I pulled up to the residence, I saw a man walking down the driveway, taking the bins out, heading toward the curb. He spotted me as I stepped out of my marked cruiser in uniform. His face lit up with a warm smile. I had to look him in the eyes, my expression serious. “Sir,” I said, “I have something very important I have to tell you. Can we go talk inside?”

The moment the words left my mouth, everything changed. His face dropped. The happiness vanished in an instant, replaced by shock, fear and preparing for grief. In that moment, I think he knew exactly why I was there.

We went inside. The rest of his family wasn’t home. With professionalism, I delivered the tragic news: his 17-year-old daughter had died that day in a car accident. I explained the details of the collision as best I could and provided him with the contact information for the coroner.

There are no words that can truly comfort a parent in that moment. All police can do is be present, respectful and human. This moment changed me. It was, and still is, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my policing career. I delivered the worst news a parent could ever receive, and it left a permanent mark on me, one that I carried every year I wore the uniform.

I have attended numerous vehicle collisions, many of them fatal, throughout my career. In some of the worst collisions I have been to, driver inexperience was a contributing factor in the collision.

This is why this bill matters so much. Behind every number in an ICBC report, behind every statistic we debate, there is a family like that one whose entire world was destroyed in a moment by inexperience, misjudgment or a mistake that could have been prevented by better training and testing.

British Columbia’s graduated licensing program, GLP, was introduced in 1998, strengthened in 2003 and designed with a clear purpose to reduce the high crash rates among new drivers by gradually introducing them to the privileges and responsibilities of driving. It was not created out of bureaucratic habit or political expedience. It was based on evidence.

Before the GLP was introduced, about one in five new drivers in British Columbia was involved in a crash within their first two years on the road. The program worked. It was effective because it combined testing, education and time-based experience. It recognized that driving is a complex skill developed through patience and supervision.

It was strengthened to extend the learner stage from six months to a full year and the novice stage from 18 months to 24. Those changes were not arbitrary. They were driven by data, by coroner recommendations and by stakeholder consultation.

[5:25 p.m.]

It was defended by experts who understood that removing key components would undo its success. In a 2018 letter from the president and CEO of ICBC to the chief coroner of British Columbia, he wrote: “Graduated licensing is effective in reducing risk for younger teens and learner drivers.” It was a simple but powerful statement of fact. Graduated licensing works because it requires both time and proof — time to gain experience and proof of competence through testing.

Bill 12 would remove the requirement for the second class 5 road test, the final assessment that a novice driver must pass to obtain a full driver’s licence. Instead of a 12-month period with restrictions, drivers would simply graduate automatically if they have no infractions on record.

That may sound efficient, but it strikes at the heart of why the system worked. Testing is not a formality; it is an accountability checkpoint. It is the moment where a professional examiner confirms that a driver has the skills to safely merge on a highway, anticipate hazards and make split-second decisions in real traffic conditions.

Under this bill, that final confirmation disappears, and that should worry every British Columbian who has ever shared the road with a novice driver.

ICBC’s own data tells the bigger story. Drivers who complete the graduated licensing program are between 9 and 13 percent less likely to be at fault in a crash. They are 4 percent less likely to receive a violation during their first year as a novice driver, and they enjoy a 19 percent higher pass rate when they finally attempt their full class 5 road test. Those numbers are not marginal differences. They represent thousands of collisions avoided, thousands of lives spared from injury or death.

At the same time, ICBC records show that over 20,000 people fail their class 5 road tests every year in British Columbia. That is out of roughly 60,000 to 80,000 tests conducted annually.

If we remove that test entirely, tens of thousands of people who are not yet ready to drive independently will be granted fully unrestricted licences. This is the real-world impact of this change.

The government says this change will make licensing simpler and more accessible, reduce backlogs for road tests and bring B.C. into line with other completely different jurisdictions like Alberta and Australia. These are NDP talking points we have heard before, but they do not answer the fundamental question: what evidence shows that removing a final competency test will maintain or improve road safety?

We know that British Columbia currently has a six- to seven-month wait time to book a road test. We know that ICBC has been under pressure to clear that backlog. So one has to ask whether this policy is truly about safety or about convenience and capacity management.

If the government’s goal is to reduce backlogs, the solution should be to invest in testing capacity, hire more examiners, open more centres, create mobile testing units and expand hours of operation. It should not be to eliminate a test altogether.

The other pillar of graduated licensing is education. ICBC research shows that driver education can reduce crash rates up to 13 percent. But here in British Columbia, only 4 percent of new drivers take any formal training course. That number is staggering when you compare it with 40 to 60 percent in other provinces that offer insurance incentives for training.

That means the vast majority of new drivers in B.C. learn to drive from friends or family, often well-meaning but not always up to date on modern defensive driving techniques. If we remove testing requirements without dramatically expanding education, we are inviting trouble.

Other provinces and countries have paired simpler testing with mandatory education requirements. Here we seem to be removing both.

[The bells were rung.]

Deputy Speaker: Disregard that.

Macklin McCall: Okay. Where was I? I’ll start over.

Here we seem to be removing both. That is not modernization. That is creating dangers for British Columbia motorists under the guise of efficiency. Let us also remember that road safety is not only about drivers. It is about cyclists, pedestrians and other legitimate road users. ICBC and the B.C. injury research centre have reported that 80 percent of cyclist collisions occur at intersections, often because a driver failed to yield or was distracted.

[5:30 p.m.]

Driver-training schools teach new drivers to anticipate and protect cyclists and pedestrians. But if we remove testing and do not require education, we will produce a generation of drivers who have never been formally taught how to share the roads safely. That should alarm everyone present in this chamber.

Another demonstration of this discussion is the licensing of newcomers. British Columbia welcomes tens of thousands of newcomers every year, many of whom come from countries where driving standards, testing rigour and traffic culture differ dramatically from our own. In some regions, traffic fatality rates are many times higher than in Canada and driver etiquette is vastly different.

We owe it to British Columbians to ensure that every driver is fully prepared to safely operate a vehicle on our roads. That is how we keep trust and confidence in our licensing system. Now more than ever, with growing diversity on our roads, we should be strengthening testing and education, not weakening them.

Bill 12 also gives government new powers to prescribe different amounts of driving experience for different classes of persons. That language is deeply vague. Who are these classes of persons? By what criteria will they be defined? Will there be different rules for different regions, ages or backgrounds? What safeguards exist against arbitrary rule changes?

This bill does not tell us. It simply empowers the Lieutenant Governor in Council and ICBC to determine those classes and conditions later by regulation. That means fundamental elements of public safety could be altered behind closed doors with no requirement for consultation, public notice or even debate in this assembly.

We have seen a pattern of this in recent months. Legislation that quietly transfers oversight from the Legislature to the cabinet regulation. It might be efficient, but democracy was never made to be efficient. It was meant to be accountable and is meant to serve the people of this province.

When a regulation affects who is allowed to drive a two-ton vehicle down a public road, the people of British Columbia deserve a say, and members of this place must take it seriously. I call on the government to present the empirical and ethical evidence to back this bill.

Additionally, there is also the matter of fairness. A young driver from Terrace, Fort St. John or Cranbrook may face completely different conditions than someone in the Lower Mainland. Access to driving schools, practice areas and even testing facilities is already unequal. The risk is that these regulatory changes could deepen that inequality. For a family in rural B.C. where the car is not a luxury but a necessity, this change could either lower standards to rush people through or create confusion about new criteria. In either case, road safety is compromised.

What disappoints me most about Bill 12 is that it could have been an opportunity to make our roads safer. The government could have used this moment to expand access to certified driver training, especially in rural and northern regions. It could have offered insurance rebates, education credits or partnerships with school districts to integrate defensive driving into secondary curricula.

Instead, what we have before us is a bill that removes a proven safeguard and replaces it with little more than the hope that a 12-month waiting period and an absence of tickets will somehow guarantee competence. The absence of a traffic ticket is not the same as the presence of skill. A driver can go a year without a ticket simply because no one happened to be there when they made a mistake. Testing, by contrast, is deliberate. It’s designed to expose gaps in knowledge and judgment before those gaps lead to tragedy.

We’ve heard the government point to Alberta and parts of Australia as examples where second tests have been removed. But where is the data showing that collisions have fallen in those places? Has insurance gone down? Have fatalities decreased among new drivers?

In Alberta, early indications since their change in 2023 show that crash and violation rates among newly licensed drivers have remained flat, not improved, even as testing capacity freed up. So if the metric is convenience, maybe Alberta has succeeded, but if the metric is safety, the jury is still out. We should not be copying policies whose results are still uncertain, especially when the cost of being wrong is counted in human lives.

The government has also said that Bill 12 will improve accessibility and streamline the process. What it has not said is how the new fines, fees and penalties collected under these expanded powers will be used. There is no statutory requirement that they be invested in road safety, in driver education or in expanding test capacity.

[5:35 p.m.]

If the government truly believes these changes are about improving safety, it should commit to writing that every additional dollar collected under Bill 12 will go back into training and education and enforcement. Anything less will confirm that this is about administrative convenience and revenue, not public safety.

There is a real human cost to complacency. I go back to the father on the driveway and the moment his smile disappeared. That moment lives with me. Behind every accident statistic, there’s a family just like this. When we as legislators make changes that lower the threshold of preparedness for new drivers, we have to ask ourselves whether we are increasing the likelihood that another parent will one day receive that same visit.

I have been to too many crash scenes to ignore what inexperience can do: the young driver who overcorrects on a curve, the novice who misjudges the gap in an intersection, the one who doesn’t check a blind spot because they truly never learned. Those are not abstract concepts; they are recurring realities on our roads every day. Driver inexperience, or the lack of it, is often the difference between a close call and a funeral. ICBC’s data continues to prove that the graduated licensing program saves lives. It has reduced crash involvement among young drivers by double-digit percentages since its inception.

The president and CEO of ICBC himself stated plainly in his 2018 letter to the chief coroner: “Graduated licensing is effective in reducing risks for younger teens and learner drivers.” When the corporation responsible for public auto insurance, injury claims and road safety tells you the system works, the burden is on government to prove why dismantling part of it will somehow make us safer. So far, no such proof has been presented.

As legislators, our first duty is not to make things faster. It is to make them safer. It is to maintain the trust of British Columbians who expect that when someone earns a licence to operate a vehicle, that licence actually means something. If we dilute the meaning of a full licence, we also dilute that trust. The public must have confidence that every other driver sharing the road with them has been tested, not merely presumed competent.

Modernization must never become a synonym for shortcuts. If government truly wants to modernize, then let’s modernize it the right way. Expand digital driver education tools accessible anywhere in the province. Increase the number of licensed instructors and examiners. Ensure full comprehension of B.C. road signs and laws for newcomers. Partner with municipalities and schools to teach safe cycling and pedestrian awareness. Those are forms of modernization that improve safety. Bill 12, as written, removes the second test and gives the minister broad powers to make future changes with minimal insight.

There are many unanswered questions that this House must press the government to clarify during committee stage. What evidence demonstrates that removing the second class 5 test will not increase collisions, serious injuries or fatalities? How will the minister ensure that unsafe drivers who accumulate no recorded infractions but develop poor habits are caught before they cause harm? How many drivers have failed the second test in the past five years, and what happens to that safety net once it’s gone? What incentives will be introduced to raise driver training participation from 4 percent toward the 40- to 60-percent range that we see elsewhere in Canada?

What consultation occurred with police, with ICBC examiners, with road safety researchers or with driver training schools before this bill was introduced? And finally, will government commit to publishing annual data on novice driver crash rates after these changes take effect? Without clear, transparent answers to those questions, this bill cannot credibly claim to protect public safety.

We also have to think beyond the driver’s seat. Our cities and towns are seeing more cyclists, e-bike users and pedestrians, more than ever before. Eighty percent of cyclist crashes happen at intersections, and often it is the drivers’ lack of training and awareness that causes this. When I talk to parents who encourage their teenagers to bike to school or seniors who walk to the store, they tell me their greatest fear isn’t crime. It’s careless drivers.

The next generation of motorists must be better trained, not less. If the government wants to build safer communities, it starts not with new rules for cyclists but with better education for drivers. Public safety policy must be evidence-based. When the data tells us that the graduated licensing program works, reducing crash rates up to 13 percent and violation rates by 4 percent, the responsible course of action is to strengthen it, not dismantle it.

[5:40 p.m.]

When the data tells us that 20,000 drivers fail the final test each year, that is not a sign of bureaucratic failure. It’s a sign that the system is catching unsafe drivers before they hurt somebody. Those failures are not inconveniences. They are lives potentially saved. To remove that safety check is to gamble with public safety based on assumptions, not evidence.

Every one of us in this chamber has had constituents write or call after a tragedy, a family broken, a friend lost, a community in mourning. The first question is always the same. How could this happen?

We will never eliminate all risks on the road, but we have an obligation not to increase them needlessly. So I say to the government: if your goal is modernization, we will work with you. If your goal is to make testing more accessible, we will support investment in infrastructure. But if your plan is to make the system faster at any cost, then we must prioritize the safety of British Columbians.

Let us proceed carefully, with evidence, consultation and accountability. Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. That principle applies equally to the state. When government changes the rules of the road, it is responsible for the consequences. If we remove tests and collisions rise, no one in this House should be able to say: “We didn’t see it coming.”

We will therefore not oppose Bill 12 at this stage, but we will hold the government to the highest standard in committee. We will press for mandatory reporting, for reinvestment of revenues into safety, for defined oversight of ICBC’s new powers and for measurable outcomes. Anything less would betray the families whose loved ones never made it home.

I will never forget that driveway. Every rule we change here has a human consequence — someone out there on a highway at midnight, at an intersection on a rainy afternoon, or a crosswalk where a parent and child are walking home.

Regarding Bill 12, let us move forward with humility, with prudence and with respect for the lives this legislation will affect. If we are to change the way British Columbians earn their drivers’ licences, let it be for one reason only — to make them and everyone around them safer. This is the standard the people of this province expect, and it is the standard that, as His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, we will always defend.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I move adjournment of the debate.

Deputy Speaker: Division has been called.

[5:45 p.m. - 5:50 p.m.]

All right, we have a division to adjourn debate for second reading of the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act.

Now, just to be clear to everybody, any member who wishes to continue debate discussion for second reading of the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act is welcome to do so in the future. Just to be clear about that.

We have everybody online. It appears that the Minister of Children and Family Development is not inside so won’t be eligible to vote at this time. So that’s that requirement.

Now we will proceed with the vote on adjournment of debate for second reading of the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2025.

[5:55 p.m.]

Now, everybody who’s present has an obligation to vote.

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 2
Valeriote		Botterell
NAYS — 47
Lore	G. Anderson	Blatherwick
Routledge	Chant	Toporowski
B. Anderson	Neill	Osborne
Brar	Krieger	Davidson
Parmar	Sunner	Beare
Chandra Herbert	Kang	Sandhu
Begg	Higginson	Lajeunesse
Choi	Rotchford	Popham
Dix	Sharma	Farnworth
Eby	Bailey	Kahlon
Greene	Whiteside	Boyle
Ma	Yung	Malcolmson
Gibson	Glumac	Arora
Shah	Chow	Dhir
Morissette	Brodie	Armstrong
Kealy		Sturko

Jordan Kealy: Can I bring forward a point of order, please?

Deputy Speaker: Proceed.

Jordan Kealy: I’m just wondering that a member brought forward the motion to adjourn and bring forward the vote. I just want to get clarification. I now see that the vote has changed from what his original stance was.

Deputy Speaker: There’s no point of order. A member may vote for or against their motion.

All right. The motion to adjourn has been defeated, so we will continue second reading debate. However, noting the hour, we have a deferred division vote from private members’ time, so we will proceed with our deferred division at six o’clock.

[6:00 p.m.]

Okay. All right. Paying attention to procedure, everyone, the initial motion to adjourn was defeated, so we are continuing debate.

Now, I do require a motion to adjourn to proceed to our deferred division.

Hon. Mike Farnworth moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved on division.

Deputy Speaker: Noting the hour, we are going to proceed to our deferred division.

Hon Chan: Can I ask a question? What are we voting on right now? Because there are so many motions that have been asked. What is the question right now? What are we voting on currently?

Deputy Speaker: Member, we are now, at 6 o’clock, at our deferred division earlier from private members’ time on Motion 38. We are about to have our deferred division vote.

[6:05 p.m. - 6:10 p.m.]

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Private Members’ Motions

The Speaker: Members, as we have mentioned earlier, there was a deferred motion to have the vote at six o’clock today. The motion is No. 38, and it reads that “this House condemns the intolerant views of the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA), including its harmful discrimination against transgender people, its belief that homosexuality is ‘immoral’ and its explicit policy goal of restricting abortion access in British Columbia.”

[6:15 p.m.]

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 48
Lore	G. Anderson	Blatherwick
Routledge	Chant	Toporowski
B. Anderson	Neill	Osborne
Brar	Krieger	Davidson
Parmar	Sunner	Beare
Chandra Herbert	Wickens	Kang
Sandhu	Begg	Higginson
Lajeunesse	Choi	Rotchford
Elmore	Popham	Dix
Sharma	Farnworth	Eby
Bailey	Kahlon	Greene
Whiteside	Boyle	Ma
Yung	Malcolmson	Gibson
Glumac	Arora	Shah
Chow	Dhir	Morissette
Valeriote	Botterell	Sturko
NAYS — 3
Brodie	Armstrong	Kealy

Hon. Mike Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:16 p.m.