Contents

The House met at 1:34 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers and reflections: Hon. Sheila Malcolmson.

[1:35 p.m.]

Introductions by Members

Rohini Arora: I would like to welcome some amazing constituents from the most amazing riding in the province, Burnaby East.

Dr. Nicole Gladish is a health policy research scientist at Stanford University. Ms. Wendy Colling is a Burnaby social studies and special education teacher. Ms. Amanda Kurowski is a registered nurse and UBC graduate student in genome sciences and technology. Ms. Megan Carver is a community mental health coordinator and social work student.

Please join me in making them feel very welcome today.

Lorne Doerkson: It gives me great pleasure to introduce a fellow by the name of Murray Wilson today. Murray is a retired professional forester with more than 40 years of experience in managing forests across British Columbia.

Since retiring, he has become a strong advocate for wildfire resilience and proactive forest management. He is the producer of an independent documentary called B.C. Is Burning. This film examines the root causes of B.C.’s escalating wildfire crisis.

I am pleased to invite you all to a screening of this film this evening. Mr. Speaker and myself are hosting this event. We’ll be hearing from our Forests Minister as well, this evening. You are all welcome. I’m told there might be free chicken wings, so please come.

This is a very important film to all members of this House, so please come tonight. It will be my pleasure to join Mr. Speaker in hosting that.

Hon. Jagrup Brar: I am very pleased to welcome today a good friend and a very successful businessperson, Sucha Padda from Surrey. He proudly owns Grand Taj and Grand Empire Banquet Hall in Surrey. His doors are always open to the community to organize community events, to bring community together.

Today is a special day for him and his wife, Harpal Padda, because they are joined by their family members Balwinder Kaur and Manjit Kaur, who are visiting from India. They’re here to experience question period with us.

I would like to ask the House to please make them feel welcome.

John Rustad: It was an honour today to be part of the Métis celebration in the Hall of Honour.

We have a number of the Métis Nation people here today that I’d like to introduce. Minister Paulette Flamond, skills training–post secondary education, is somebody I’ve worked closely with over the years in my time when I was a minister. It was great to see her here today. Minister Debra Fisher, education and child care; and Minister Susie Hooper, environmental protection; as well as staff person Arsalan Anwar.

Would the House please make them all welcome.

Hon. Kelly Greene: Twice a year we have the privilege of welcoming an important guest into our chambers and across British Columbia, that guest being our emergency alert system test, of course. In the case of an emergency, these alerts can provide life-saving information and instructions to the public. It’s one of the ways we help keep people in B.C. safe.

Today at 1:55 p.m., we’ll be testing our emergency alert system. That means people will be receiving an alert on their mobile device, radio and TV. In order to receive the alert, you need to make sure that your settings on your cell phone are not set to do not disturb, that you are connected to an LTE network and that your device is up to date.

Please help me in welcoming our emergency alert test into the chambers today.

[1:40 p.m.]

Trevor Halford: I would like to introduce the Next Generation Foundation. They support people experiencing homelessness in the community of White Rock, and they are with us today.

With us are Parminder Singh Wander, Kuldeep Kaur, Babanpreet Singh, Asi Kaur and Jagmeet Kaur. Both of these wonderful girls actually go to White Rock Elementary and attended that with my daughter, Alexandra. It’s good to see them here today.

I ask that the House please make them welcome.

Hon. Josie Osborne: Joining us today in the gallery is the Heart and Stroke Foundation, who are accompanied by other health-related organizations, and together they make up B.C. rehabilitation and recovery.

It’s a collaborative visiting the Legislature today, meeting with MLAs to discuss improved neurorehabilitation and recovery support and services, a critical part of recovery for individuals who are affected by stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and other neurological conditions.

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

Larry Neufeld: I rise in this place of honour today to correct the record. One of my colleagues from across the way mistakenly mentioned another riding that was the best in the province, and everyone here knows that Peace River South is by far the best riding in the province.

To that end, I would very much like to welcome one of the councillors from the beautiful and amazing town of Tumbler Ridge, Chris Norbury.

Please make him welcome.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: I want to join my colleague the Deputy Speaker in welcoming Murray Wilson to the Legislature and encourage all members from all sides of the House to be able to participate in the viewing of B.C. Is Burning this evening.

I’ve had a chance to watch it twice, and I’m really pleased that Murray invited the B.C. wildfire service, in particular our ADM responsible, for the opportunity to be able to participate in that.

I am really pleased to share with the House that Murray has agreed to serve on my minister’s advisory council, the Forest and Range Practices Advisory Council, to be able to take the lessons he is sharing in that film and bring that to help influence government policy.

Murray, thanks very much for being here and for all that you are doing.

I also want to take the opportunity, as was done earlier this week, to welcome the Invasive Species Council to the precinct here today and, in particular, to give a shout-out to their executive director, someone who is working so very hard and wears a number of hats, Gail Wallin.

In addition, I want to welcome back to the Legislature Steve Thomson, a former Minister of Forests himself, who has been serving as chair of the Invasive Species Council.

Will the House please join me in making all of these guests feel very welcome.

Sheldon Clare: There are 365 days in a year, and one of them is somebody’s birthday every one of those days. I would like to draw to your attention the birthday of one of our staff, Athena Lord-Naswell, up in the gallery there, who worked in the chamber with us last session.

Happy birthday, Athena.

Hon. Brittny Anderson: As everyone in this chamber knows and can agree, some days are hard here. This work can be difficult, but what makes it a lot better is when you have your two aunties visiting you in Victoria.

I would like to introduce to the House my auntie Shelley Thielker and her bestie, Rhoda Reece. Shelley lives with me in Nelson. We grew up together, all my cousins. And Rhoda is in my dear friend’s — who is sitting right beside me, and I can’t remember the name of her constituency right now…. Sunshine Coast. She’s from Texada. We went on a really lovely walk, and it is so wonderful to be having a sleepover with your aunties in Victoria.

Will the House please let both Shelley and Rhoda feel very welcome.

Love you.

Ian Paton: It’s been a good week for me. I’ve got two constituents here again today from Tsawwassen, B.C. They live in a little part of Tsawwassen called Boundary Bay — Andrea O’Leary and her partner, Kalvin Penner.

[1:45 p.m.]

They were part of a fundraiser, which we have many of in Delta — galas, etc. They won the opportunity to come here today, hang out, tour the building with Keith Baldrey, and they’re here in question period. They even had lunch with two celebrities, Vaughn Palmer and Keith Baldrey, today.

Please welcome Andrea and Kalvin.

George Anderson: Every once in a while, you’re sitting at the Empress, and you look over and see a shadow walk by. Then you see another shadow, and you find out that it’s two of your friends from France. And you say: “Wow, what would you like to do on Wednesday but come to the Legislature?”

I would like to point up here. We have Anita and Jean-Claude Tissier who are visiting the Legislature. They’re great friends of mine.

I hope that the entire House would make them feel welcome.

Gavin Dew: I’d like to join the member opposite in welcoming my friend and predecessor, Steve Thomson, to the House.

Anyone who has served in this House for a long time or been in politics and has gotten to know Steve knows that he is truly the model of a Member of the Legislative Assembly. He is a wonderful, humble community servant who, after his service as an MLA, continued to serve our community, including as co-chair of our Memorial Cup bid, and is just a wonderful fellow to work with and someone that I look to for inspiration as I set out in this role.

Harwinder Sandhu: Today I am excited to welcome three special guests in the gallery.

First, Anna Caldwell. She is the South Island HEU regional vice-president. Anna has been with the union for 13 years, and for the past four years, she has served as health care aide in the ICU at Victoria General Hospital. Born and raised in Victoria, now living in Sooke, this is her very first time in the gallery watching question period.

Joining Anna is Bill McMullan, first vice-president of the Hospital Employees Union and dedicated community support worker for 23 years, serving in many roles across HEU. Bill also lives in Victoria.

Last but not the least, with them is my husband, who I rarely get to see but am delighted to see here in the gallery, Baljit Sandhu. He’s also a longtime HEU member and health care worker at Vernon Jubilee Hospital, currently serving as HEU regional vice-president for the Interior.

Would the House please join me to thank my guests for the tremendous work they do to help people and to help our health care system and to make them feel very welcome.

Hon. Nina Krieger: Earlier today I had the opportunity to meet with Tracy Crawford, who is the regional manager of western Canada for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We discussed the incredibly important work that MADD has done over the last 30 years to support victims, combat impaired driving and improve road safety across our province and beyond.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank members of the House for wearing the red ribbon pins to highlight the work of MADD, which is particularly meaningful today as it is the National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind British Columbians, as we enter into the holiday season that we go out to celebrate with family and friends, to join the pledge to never drive impaired, to plan ahead for your rides there and back. Your neighbours and your loved ones are counting on you.

Please join me in thanking MADD and Tracy for all the work that they do.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

Bill M221 — Short-Term Rental
Accommodations Amendment Act, 2025

Gavin Dew presented a bill intituled Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act, 2025.

Gavin Dew: I move that a bill intituled Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read a first time now.

I think I’m setting a record today. The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act is one of the shortest and simplest bills ever presented.

Communities like Kelowna, tourism-driven and seasonal in nature, face a real challenge under the current timelines in the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act. Under the existing rules, a municipality that meets the vacancy rate threshold and submits its opt-out resolution by March 31 must wait until November 1 for the change to take effect. This means an entire summer season lost for local businesses, visitors, seasonal workers and hosts.

[1:50 p.m.]

My bill proposes a simple, commonsense change. Keep the March 31 submission deadline but move the effective opt-out date from November 1 to May 1 of the same year.

In regions like mine, the summer months are the beating heart of the local economy. Festivals, sporting events, wineries, tourism operators and hundreds of small businesses depend on the May-to-September season. Being forced to wait until next November to implement a locally justified opt out means we lose that entire window and opportunity. It’s poor policy, and it fails to respect the housing and economic realities of our communities.

Kelowna has built more homes, met our housing targets and raised our vacancy rate to its highest level in 20 years. Our vacancy rate reached 3.8 percent in 2024 and is currently estimated at over 5 percent.

If this government genuinely believes in made-in-community partnerships with municipalities and not just top-down direction, then this change should be non-controversial. It gives local governments the ability to implement decisions based on real data, real vacancy rates and real seasonal demand without waiting through another entire year.

Given how simple and commonsense this bill is, I hope that it will enjoy unanimous support and a speedy passage through this House.

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

Motion approved.

Gavin Dew: 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 M222 — Short-Term Rental
Accommodations Amendment
Act (No. 2), 2025

Gavin Dew presented a bill intituled Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act (No. 2), 2025.

Gavin Dew: I move that a bill intituled Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act (No.2), 2025, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read a first time now.

In the interest of making it as easy as possible for the government to get to yes on commonsense changes, I have divided my amendments into two separate bills. I will now speak to the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Amendment Act (No. 2).

I’m a big believer in subsidiarity, the idea that issues should be addressed at the lowest possible level, allowing local communities to make decisions for themselves. In other words, we should treat municipalities like grownups.

This bill gives municipalities something they have been asking for: the ability to manage short-term rentals during major events in a way that reflects local realities, not one-size-fits-all dictates from Victoria.

I’m talking about FIFA-level tournaments, world-class concerts like Taylor Swift, large conferences, cultural festivals — the kinds of events that bring thousands of people into a community for a very short time, well beyond the capacity of existing hotels and traditional rental stock.

This amendment creates a municipal event exemption that would let cities temporarily adjust short-term-rental rules during major events that create sudden spikes in accommodation demand. My proposed approach would still be capped at an absolute maximum of 45 days per year.

Municipalities would have to define the event window, pass a resolution and report to the province. Temporary permits issued for that period would still be tracked and regulated but could be faster and cheaper to encourage surge capacity to come on stream.

While there is a broader and potentially more divisive conversation to be had around short-term rental policy, this small change is a constructive and balanced approach designed to make incremental improvements.

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

Motion approved.

Gavin Dew: 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 M223 — Interpretation
Amendment Act (No. 2), 2025

Elenore Sturko presented a bill intituled Interpretation Amendment Act (No. 2), 2025.

Elenore Sturko: I move that a bill intituled Interpretation Amendment Act (No. 2), 2025, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read a first time today.

[1:55 p.m.]

The Interpretation Amendment Act, 2025, aims to repeal section 8.1 of the Interpretation Act. The Interpretation Act is a crucial piece of legislation in British Columbia that outlines how laws should be interpreted and applied. It includes definitions and rules that apply to all statutes and regulations within the province.

In 2021, the act was amended to include section 8.1, which makes it a legal requirement that every act and regulation must be construed….

[Interruption.]

Elenore Sturko: The emergency alert system works, everybody.

The Speaker: Please continue.

Elenore Sturko: Thank you.

Section 8.1 has already contributed to a court decision on Aboriginal title that related to the private property rights of British Columbians in Richmond. While the Interpretation Act was not the only basis on which she reached her decision on Cowichan Tribes v. Canada, Justice Young relied on this to support her conclusion that the Land Title Act does not protect owners from Aboriginal title claims.

Here are her exact words. “I find support for the view that the indefeasibility provisions in the Land Title Act do not apply against Aboriginal title in section 8.1 of the Interpretation Act, which directs that legislation be interpreted in a manner that does not derogate from Aboriginal rights. To construe it otherwise would also be inconsistent with UNDRIP.”

When DRIPA was voted for in this House, I do not believe that British Columbians understood that this government intended to use it to change their way of life or to change the interpretation of statutes that protect their rights. Interpreting all laws and regulations so they must be consistent with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act fundamentally changes the governance of our province and may erode the protection of rights and interests for all British Columbians.

I don’t believe this government received the informed consent of British Columbians to change the governance of this province, and for this reason, I believe Section 8.1 of the Interpretation Act must be repealed.

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

Motion approved.

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

Motion approved.

Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Statute Repeal Act

Jordan Kealy presented a bill intituled Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Statute Repeal Act.

Jordan Kealy: I move that the bill intituled Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Statute Repeal Act, of which notice is being given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read for the first time now.

Mr. Speaker and fellow colleagues, I speak to this bill from the heart and with sincerity. Reconciliation matters, respect matters and partnership matters. But DRIPA, as implemented, is dividing people at a time when we need unity. It is pulling this province apart when we should be building something stronger together.

My brother has four children — two stepchildren who are First Nations and two biological children. All four he loves equally. As his children grow up, two will receive benefits the other two will never qualify for — education supports, job opportunities, extended health coverage, housing programs and hunting and fishing rights.

These children live in the same house, raised by the same parents, but the government will treat them vastly different. How is he supposed to explain to his children why they are treated so very differently? The answer is: he shouldn’t. He loves them. And they are equal and should be treated as such.

Across this province, people feel the ground shifting beneath them. Families, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are trying to plan their lives in a system clouded with uncertainty. Land decisions are inconsistent. Processes are tangled. Ministries are operating under conflicting expectations. Meetings are happening behind closed doors. Transparency is missing, and trust is eroding.

This conclusion is causing real harm. It is straining relationships, slowing essential projects and undermining confidence in government. People are afraid to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or simply not understanding the system that has become too unclear to navigate.

This bill is a call for courage to put clarity above confusion, unity above division and fairness above uncertainty. We need to create a new framework that unites us all together cohesively to look forward and not just backwards.

I end with a quote from George Erasmus, former AFN National Chief: “We cannot live in the past, but the past will continue to live in us if we do not confront it together.”

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

Division has been called.

[2:00 p.m. - 2:10 p.m.]

Members, the question is first reading of the private member’s bill introduced by Peace River North.

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 43
Wilson	Kindy	Milobar
Warbus	Rustad	Banman
Wat	Kooner	Halford
Hartwell	L. Neufeld	Van Popta
Dew	Clare	K. Neufeld
Brodie	Armstrong	Bhangu
Paton	Gasper	Chan
Toor	Hepner	Giddens
Rattée	Davis	McInnis
Bird	McCall	Stamer
Day	Tepper	Mok
Maahs	Kealy	Sturko
Boultbee	Williams	Loewen
Dhaliwal	Doerkson	Luck
	Block
NAYS — 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
Phillip	Lajeunesse	Choi
Rotchford	Elmore	Morissette
Popham	Dix	Sharma
Farnworth	Eby	Bailey
Kahlon	Greene	Whiteside
Boyle	Ma	Yung
Malcolmson	Gibson	Glumac
Arora	Shah	Chow
Dhir	Valeriote	Botterell

Post-Secondary Institutions
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Prohibition Act

Tara Armstrong presented a bill intituled Post-Secondary Institutions Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Prohibition Act.

Tara Armstrong: I move that a bill entitled Post-Secondary Inclusion Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Prohibition Act, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read for a first time now.

Men, get to the back of the line. Whites, Asians and Jews need not apply.

That’s exactly what diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, is. It’s the idea that jobs should be awarded on the basis of race or sex, not merit or qualifications, and that discrimination against certain groups is a good thing. It has completely consumed our universities.

Our bill will rip it from its roots. Here in B.C., Simon Fraser University openly posted for 15 Black-only faculty positions. The Aristotle Foundation found that 98 percent of 500 academic job postings across Canada contained DEI-based discrimination. At UBC, two-thirds of job postings required candidates to show their commitment to left-wing politics, in the name of DEI.

Jobs should go to the most qualified candidate, regardless of sex or race. You want your plane flown by the best pilot and your scalpel wielded by the best surgeon. You care about their skills, not their skin colour.

[2:15 p.m.]

Our bill bans race-based hiring, identity quotas and ideological litmus tests at our tax-funded universities. Any public institution that refuses to comply loses its funding.

Every Canadian should be judged by their merits, not their sex or their skin colour. DEI must d-i-e, and this bill will kill it.

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

Division has been called.

[2:20 p.m. - 2:25 p.m.]

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 41
Wilson	Kindy	Milobar
Warbus	Rustad	Banman
Wat	Kooner	Halford
Hartwell	L. Neufeld	Van Popta
Dew	Clare	K. Neufeld
Brodie	Armstrong	Bhangu
Paton	Gasper	Chan
Toor	Hepner	Giddens
Rattée	Davis	McInnis
Bird	McCall	Stamer
Day	Tepper	Mok
Maahs	Kealy	Williams
Loewen	Dhaliwal	Doerkson
Luck		Block
NAYS — 50
Lore	G. Anderson	Blatherwick
Routledge	Chant	Toporowski
B. Anderson	Neill	Osborne
Brar	Krieger	Davidson
Parmar	Sunner	Beare
Chandra Herbert	Wickens	Kang
Sandhu	Begg	Higginson
Phillip	Lajeunesse	Choi
Rotchford	Elmore	Morissette
Popham	Dix	Sharma
Farnworth	Eby	Bailey
Kahlon	Greene	Whiteside
Boyle	Ma	Yung
Malcolmson	Gibson	Glumac
Arora	Shah	Chow
Dhir	Valeriote	Botterell
Sturko		Boultbee

Members’ Statements

Day of Remembrance for
Road Crash Victims

Amna Shah: On November 19, we observe the National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims. This is a solemn day to honour those who have been killed or injured in often preventable crashes and to stand with the loved ones who are left to cope with sudden and heartbreaking loss.

This year the province of British Columbia has officially proclaimed November 19 as the Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims, reaffirming our shared commitment to road safety and to honouring those whose lives have been tragically cut short.

Speeding, distracted driving and impaired driving remain the leading causes of motor vehicle collisions. Here in British Columbia, from 2019 to 2023, an average of 288 people lost their lives in crashes. Each one of those numbers represents a person, a story, a family and a future that will never be realized.

[2:30 p.m.]

Nearly 20 percent of those fatalities happened in November and December, months where winter conditions and holiday celebrations increase the risks on our roads. Mothers Against Drunk Driving brings awareness to these increased risks every November 1 to January 5, with Project Red Ribbon.

As we head into the holiday season, let’s commit to making safe choices. If you’re going to a gathering, plan ahead for a safe ride home. This could mean assigning a designated driver, taking public transit or calling a taxi, whatever it takes to make sure everyone gets home safely.

There is no celebration that is worth the risk of impaired driving. On this day of remembrance, we honour the lives lost and stand with the families and communities affected, and we appreciate the incredible advocacy of groups like MADD.

Let’s keep working together to make our roads safe for everyone.

International Justice Mission

Bryan Tepper: Good afternoon, friends.

Imagine a little girl promised a job, handed over by her own family, only to be locked in a room and sold night after night. Or a boy in an internet café forced on camera while a stranger thousands of kilometres away pays to watch and direct the abuse in real time. This is modern slavery. It is happening right now with millions of children.

International Justice Mission exists to end this violence. IJM rescues victims, brings the criminals to justice, restores survivors to safety and strength and helps local law enforcement build systems that last.

Today, in partnership with Village Church in my own riding, among many, we in Canada have a chance to fight back. Disturbingly, Canada ranks as the fourth-largest consumer of child sexual exploitation material in the world. That means the demand fuelling this horror is, in part, coming from our own backyard. We cannot look away.

As one example, for 15 years, IJM worked in Kolkata, India, training police, prosecutors and judges. When they started in 2006, the streets were filled with children being sold. Today, because of that work, 101 traffickers, pimps, brothel owners and even customers have been convicted, and those same streets have a 95 percent reduction.

Now IJM is taking everything they’ve learned to Bangladesh, equipping honest police and courts to protect the next generation of boys and girls before they’re ever sold.

This only happens when people like us stand with them. I’m asking you today to become a monthly partner with IJM Canada. Even a small amount every month rescues real children, puts real criminals behind bars and changes entire communities. Will you go to ijm.ca right now and set up a monthly gift?

Together we can make sure no child is for sale. Not on our watch.

Alcoholics Anonymous

George Anderson: There are moments in life when a person looks in the mirror and no longer recognizes the face that is staring back, when hope feels distant, when tomorrow feels too heavy to carry. But there is also a moment when someone decides to reach out and ask for help. Alcoholics Anonymous is there in that moment.

Across British Columbia in church basements and community halls, people gather — no status, no judgment, just courage, just honesty and just the shared belief that life can get better one day at a time. There is no cost to attend, no paperwork to fill out, no conditions to prove you are worthy, because every single person is worthy, every single person deserves a second chance, and every single person deserves to be seen and believed in.

In Nanaimo, from Ladysmith to Lantzville and on Gabriola Island, there are close to 50 groups, a central office that answers the phone 24-7, free brochures, outreach, seminars, all with one purpose — to help people reclaim their lives.

I want us to think for a moment about what actually happens in these rooms. A person stands up and says: “My name is” and “I am an alcoholic.” And the room responds: “We’re glad you’re here.” What a profound act of humanity. What a declaration that nobody — nobody — is defined by their worst day. That is what I saw this summer when I attended as an observer.

[2:35 p.m.]

The sponsors who answer the phone at midnight, volunteers who set out chairs and members who share their most vulnerable truths — they are heroes, quiet heroes, heroes who save families, who restore dignity, who keep people alive.

AA tells us something different from despair. It tells us: “You are not alone.” It tells us: “You matter.” It tells us: “Recovery is possible, and we will walk with you until you believe it to be true.”

To every person on a sobriety journey, whether it’s been ten years or ten minutes: your resolve strengthens our province. Your courage inspires me. Your voice deserves to be celebrated in this chamber.

To everyone involved in Alcoholics Anonymous across British Columbia: thank you for your quiet leadership that saves lives. Your example strengthens our province, and your commitment to one another gives us all hope. Thank you.

Keep going, and we are all cheering for you.

New Directions
English Language School

Jody Toor: It is an honour to celebrate the remarkable work of New Directions English Language School in Langley.

On October 28, something extraordinary took place. More than 700 LINC students filled a local theatre in the morning, afternoon and evening ceremonies to celebrate their graduation. Over 60 countries were represented, all united by a beautiful theme song, “We are Unity.” We are from all around the world.” It was a powerful reminder that our diversity is one of this community’s greatest strengths.

Today New Directions operates 54 classes, from Monday to Saturday, mornings, afternoons and evenings. This is impressive, considering the school began in 1989 with just one classroom, founded by president Yvonne Hopp. Her vision and dedication have built one of the most impactful newcomers programs in our region.

Supported by IRCC, New Directions ensures newcomers have access to high-quality language instructors as they begin their Canadian journey. But these instructors do far more than teach English. They help newcomers settle, integrate and gain confidence to engage fully in Canadian life. Students often share how improved communication has helped them find work, support their children’s education, access community service and prepare for citizenship.

The recent graduation brought together many community partners, each offering congratulations and support. These partnerships show how deeply New Directions is rooted in our city and how valued it truly is.

This work strengthens the priorities I care deeply about: improving health by helping newcomers navigate care, supporting housing stability and providing to our local economy by preparing newcomers to succeed. New Directions is more than a school. It is a bridge to belonging, opportunity and hope.

To the staff, partners, volunteers and students: thank you for everything you do to make our community stronger.

Vancouver Goldeneyes

Stephanie Higginson: I rise in the House today to recognize that November 21 marks an incredible day for hockey and an even better day for women in sport in British Columbia. This Friday night is the inaugural home game of the Vancouver Goldeneyes, British Columbia’s very own team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League. We are so proud to have the first PWHL team in Western Canada.

This is a huge win for professional hockey, not just for women’s hockey but for the entire game, for its fans and for every young girl who dreams of lacing up her skates, hitting the ice and making a living doing the sport that she loves.

The Goldeneyes also bring more opportunities for fans to come and visit Vancouver and beautiful British Columbia. The Goldeneyes are a testament to the skill, to the leadership and the perseverance of women who have pushed boundaries in hockey and beyond to make this dream a reality.

In the past 20 years, the number of girls playing hockey in British Columbia has more than doubled. This incredible achievement is what happens when we invest in opportunity, especially for women. That’s why our government’s work toward gender equity incorporates a more inclusive sport culture in B.C.

[2:40 p.m.]

The Goldeneyes logo is inspired by the fiercely protective common goldeneye, a bird native to Vancouver’s waterways, coastlines and mountain vistas. Drawing inspiration from its speed, strength and precision in flight, the goldeneyes reflect our team’s unbeatable and unified spirit as they soar to new heights.

To the entire Vancouver Goldeneyes team and B.C. players Jenn Gardiner, Hannah Miller, Kimberly Newell, Chanreet Bassi and Nina Jobst-Smith: welcome home.

To all the members of this House: I ask you to join me in recognizing this opportunity for women in sport and cheering on the Goldeneyes as they take on the Seattle Torrent at the Pacific Coliseum this Friday night.

Let’s go, Goldeneyes.

Remembrance Day Ceremonies and
Youth Participation

Harman Bhangu: During the Remembrance Day break week, across Langley-Abbotsford and throughout our province, British Columbians gathered to honour the men and women who gave everything for our country. I had the opportunity to attend several ceremonies, including the No Stone Left Alone event at Aberdeen Cemetery.

Walking through the headstones, reading the biographies placed on the graves, I was reminded that many of these fallen heroes were the same people who built this province, long before they wore the uniform. They worked in our forests, our mills, our mines, our farms, our jobsites. They were the people who literally got British Columbia off the ground, the ones who built the resource industries, the early communities, the foundations of prosperity we enjoy today.

When war called, they answered that call. Some of them never returned. Those who did come home went right back to building the British Columbia we know today.

One of the most powerful moments this year was seeing youth participate in remembrance. At Aberdeen Cemetery, teachers, parents and fifth-grade students from Shortreed Community Elementary School came out as part of No Stone Left Alone. They walked the roads, placed poppies on every veteran’s headstone and took a few moments to learn who these people were and what they sacrificed.

Seeing those young students carefully placing each poppy, acknowledging men and women who lived, worked and raised families and then served their country, is a reminder that remembrance is being passed to the next generation. Events like this teach our youth that the freedoms and privileges we live with today were paid for by the people who built this province with their hands and defended it with their lives.

Their legacy is in our communities, our industries and the opportunities we enjoy today, and now it’s being carried forward by the next generation, who are learning what service truly means.

Lest we forget.

Oral Questions

Oil Tanker Policy and
Pipeline Projects

John Rustad: This Premier has made it very clear that he does not support an oil pipeline from Alberta through to the north coast.

He has also made it very clear that he will not support the lifting of the ban on tankers.

Given that Alberta and the federal government seem to be approaching an agreement to do this, is the Premier prepared to change his position and support a nation-building project?

Hon. Adrian Dix: The oil tanker ban on the coast protects B.C.’s community and B.C.’s economy. The Coastal First Nations have spoken strongly of it. The Premier has. Every member of our caucus supports that oil tanker ban on the north coast.

With respect to possible agreements, and I understand there’s speculation about that today but no obvious agreements, I’d say this. A pipeline across northern B.C., a bitumen pipeline, has no proponent, no route, no plan. No possibility of take-or-pay contracts would be subsidized publicly by tens of billions of dollars.

Yes, our position is that we should support nation-building projects like the North Coast transmission line that are in the interests of British Columbia. And I would like the hon. Leader of the Opposition, whose own riding would benefit from the North Coast transmission line, to stand up in this House and say he supports it.

The Speaker: Leader of the Official Opposition, supplemental.

John Rustad: If the minister would love to ask a question, we can switch sides anytime you like.

[2:45 p.m.]

When the Trans Mountain pipeline was built, this Premier and this government said they would use every tool in the box to stop that project from moving forward. When that project was moved forward and approved, they created delays and cost overruns to the tune of billions on that project because of their opposition to this, a nation-building project.

Now we are in the same situation. There’s a project coming forward. There are First Nations supporting it. We’re going to see this come forward in an agreement between Alberta and the Prime Minister, with regards to moving oil and a nation-building project.

The question I would have to the Premier is this. Does he plan to use every tool in the box to stymie and cost overrun yet another nation-building project?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, it’s good to see that the British Columbia official opposition doesn’t support nation-building projects in B.C., opposes nation-building projects in B.C…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, order.

Hon. Adrian Dix: …and supports them from other provinces. A project has to exist. It has to exist in time and place.

But I can tell you. You look at British Columbia, and you see four nation-building projects approved by the federal government. I don’t know where the opposition stands. We named 18 major projects; they opposed 12. I think that MLAs in British Columbia…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Hon. Adrian Dix: …should support British Columbia, and certainly, the opposition isn’t doing that.

Emergency Health Care Services
in Tumbler Ridge

Larry Neufeld: After-hours ER closures in Tumbler Ridge nearly killed both the mayor and a councillor on the same night. Both suffered abdominal emergencies, and both ended up requiring emergency surgery.

The mayor was sent to Fort St. John, a two-hour drive away, during an emergency.

Will the minister commit today to restoring after-hours ER services in Tumbler Ridge, or does someone need to die first?

Hon. Josie Osborne: It’s been a really tough time for the people living in Tumbler Ridge to know that emergency services had to be stopped at night and on the weekends. Having a shortage of physicians in the community meant that the stress and the burden placed on those remaining staff people was too much to bear, and Northern Health made a very difficult decision.

But to make sure that people get the help they need when they present at the health centre or when they call 911, they added ambulance resources to the community and to the region, because it’s vitally important that people get the care they need, when they need it…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh.

Hon. Josie Osborne: …where they need it, as quickly as possible.

I know that the community is working closely with Northern Health, and I appreciate the member’s interventions, the conversations that he has had directly with me and with Northern Health, working together with the mayor.

I’ll be meeting with the mayor when he’s down here next week. We’re going to continue to do everything we can to support Northern Health in recruiting more physicians so that we’re able to move towards restoring services in Tumbler Ridge and, in the meantime, do everything possible to make sure people have that care when it’s needed.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Larry Neufeld: Northern Health leadership publicly said that there were too many ER visits and that the ER should be reserved for dire emergencies, those such as shortness of breath or chest pain. Clearly, for Northern Health, an abdominal emergency does not count as dire. Local doctor Charles Helm has publicly called Northern Health’s advice “irresponsible.”

Adding insult to injury, Northern Health told residents that closing the ER after hours was actually good for them because they would supposedly get faster care.

Does the minister agree with Northern Health leadership that ER closures are good for the people of Tumbler Ridge, yes or no?

[2:50 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: I totally disagree with the member’s characterization of this. There are professionals at Northern Health working closely with local medical staff to make the best decisions possible with the resources and the shortages and the strains that they’re facing.

It’s inappropriate to speculate on individual cases and to speculate on what may have happened. What’s vitally important is that Northern Health continues to work closely with the community, that recruitment efforts are ongoing and that, more broadly, British Columbia continues, our government continues, to focus on these recruitment efforts, because we know that the strain being placed on rural ERs is incredibly difficult for local communities to bear.

That’s why we’re taking action to recruit more physicians and nurses from places like the U.S. That’s why we’re speeding up credentialing. It’s why we’re going to continue to build more medical training seats for the nurses and doctors that we need in the years to come. Whether you live in a small town or whether you live in a large urban area, you deserve to have the care that is there for you. And that’s why we’re going to stay focused…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. Josie Osborne: …on this work at hand.

Youth Mental Health Support and
Freedom-of-Information
Report Delivery Policy

Jeremy Valeriote: I rise with a heavy heart today, and I would like to warn the House that the subject of my question is distressing. I am humbled to have been given permission to share this story.

Two years ago, Bowen Island teenager Maya Cassady made a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to receive her medical records. The records pertained to recent hospital visits where she was admitted for treatment of a mental illness.

The FOI request was made without her parents’ knowledge. After receiving her records, Maya went online to look up terms related to her diagnosis. The search results indicated that her illness was untreatable. That information was the last thing found on Maya’s phone. Her mother, Hilary, believes that she interpreted her situation to be hopeless. Maya died by suicide later that day.

My question is to the Minister of Health. Why are vulnerable minors being left to interpret potentially harmful information without support from mental health professionals?

Hon. Josie Osborne: First, to the member, to Maya’s family, what a tragic and heartbreaking circumstance this is. It’s difficult for the House to hear, and I know that it’s difficult for the member to bring this up. The death of any child is absolutely devastating, and I know that our hearts go out to her family, her friends and her community.

I will be pleased to talk with the member more about this particular case. We always want to learn from tragedies like this and do everything we can to prevent them from happening again.

It is also why we have to continue focusing on the supports that youth need so that no youth like Maya feels hopeless about their situation and that they know there is a place to turn to, to reach out for help.

That’s why we’re going to continue our work to create a youth suicide prevention network, a way of assisting clinicians in helping to identify issues, providing supports for youth. We are going to continue our investment into Foundry, providing one-stop shops, places that are safe for youth to come in and seek the supports that they need. Nothing could be more important.

This government is so committed to this work, and I will be very pleased to work with the member following up from this.

Jeremy Valeriote: Thank you to the minister.

With respect, this isn’t just a particular case. Since their daughter’s death, Maya’s parents have become fierce advocates for youth mental health. They are calling for systemic change to ensure Maya’s death is not repeated. They report that FOI requests are common amongst minors hospitalized for mental illness. Other children are at risk. We must ensure that these reports are delivered with the support of mental health professionals.

As my constituency staff have worked with Maya’s parents to advocate for change, they have been directed first to the Ministry of Health, then to the Ministry of Citizens’ Services and then back to the health authority. No ministry seems to want to touch this.

My question is for the Premier. Which one of your ministers will take responsibility to ensure this doesn’t happen again?

Hon. Josie Osborne: I don’t want Maya’s parents to have any challenges reaching out to our government for help. My commitment to the member, regardless of what ministry I represent, is to make sure that Maya’s family has access to the people that they need to talk to, so that we as a government, regardless of which ministry, learn from this tragedy and make the changes so that we can do everything possible to prevent this from happening again.

[2:55 p.m.]

Post-Secondary Student Housing Funding
and Use by International Students

Dallas Brodie: What if I told you that the government has a foreign welfare program where they take money from citizens and give it to non-taxpaying guests.

The B.C. government is spending $2 billion on university student housing, but half of this money, nearly $1 billion, is given away to foreign student housing, students who don’t even call Canada home. This government is prioritizing and spending money on guests instead of our own citizens.

Will the minister act immediately to cut this $1 billion foreign student subsidy and give this money back to British Columbians?

Hon. Jessie Sunner: I am happy to rise for my first time in this House to answer a question in question period. It’s unfortunate that the question has to be riddled in such rhetoric about the diversity of our province and of our post-secondary institutions that truly makes our province so great.

On this side of the House, we know that the diversity of our post-secondary sector is what truly contributes to the growth, the innovation and what is going to lead B.C. to being the engine of Canada. That is what we invest in.

If we want to talk about student housing, I’m happy to do that, because we have invested…. Our government has invested over $2 billion in creating student housing for students across our province so they have access to accessible, affordable student housing that is safe for all students.

We will continue to invest in students, we will continue to invest in our post-secondary sector, and we will not back down from ensuring that all British Columbians have access to relevant, accessible, affordable post-secondary education whenever they want to access it.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Dallas Brodie: Foreign students are meant to be a net benefit to our country. We bring in the best and brightest so that they can enrich our experience, not to subsidize theirs at the expense of B.C. taxpayers.

Meanwhile, our own students can’t find jobs and can’t afford homes. It is a $1 billion betrayal.

My question again. Will the minister act immediately to cut this $1 billion foreign student subsidy and give this money back to British Columbians?

Hon. Jessie Sunner: I am truly perplexed at the line of questioning when we know that international students have funded so much of our post-secondary institutions for so long. They have paid disproportionate amounts of tuition to uphold our post-secondary institutions, and this is something that is…. We are seeing the effects of it from international student cuts at the federal government level, and we are seeing the impact it’s having on our post-secondary sectors.

I am not sure where the member is getting her information, but we know, again, that the diversity within our post-secondary institutions, that the access that we have to post-secondary is the reason that B.C. is a world-class post-secondary sector where people from all around the world are coming to get an education.

We will continue to ensure that B.C. is leading that charge. We will continue to ensure that we are training the best and brightest in our province to ensure that we are that economic engine of B.C., and we will continue to lead B.C. and Canada always.

Complex Care Supportive Housing Model
and Role of Local Governments

Linda Hepner: Local governments are forced to be the backstop for this government’s failings, left to fend for themselves in neighbourhoods they don’t recognize anymore, the latest being Surrey mayor Brenda Locke and council unanimously rejecting the B.C. Housing proposal that would see seniors mix with people that have needs that far exceed the community’s capacity and nowhere near the supports they needed. Hundreds turned out to oppose this proposal.

The evidence is clear. This model attracts dealers and petty criminals. People are seeing and experiencing escalating crimes on a daily basis. More and more cities and mayors are rejecting these proposals in a desperate bid to keep their communities safe.

Will the minister commit today to stop the mix of drug- and alcohol-abuse housing and public disorder tearing apart communities by immediately pivot away from this failing model, yes or no?

[3:00 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: While I disagree with the characterization of the question, I welcome the opportunity to talk about the important work that we’re doing across the spectrum to provide housing and supports to people who need it most.

Actually, I’ll note that the member opposite was supportive of this type of housing during her time as mayor, because in that role, as we do, folks understand that the alternative to encampments, the alternative to people sleeping in streets or doorways, is providing shelter beds, supportive housing beds and the supports that go along with them — mental health supports, addiction and recovery supports.

This allows our most vulnerable neighbours….

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, shhh.

Members. Order.

Please continue.

Hon. Christine Boyle: These types of housing and supports allow our most vulnerable neighbours to come inside and get back on their feet. It improves safety for those individuals and safety for our broader communities. Without these supports, as members across the….

Interjections.

Hon. Christine Boyle: I can wait.

The Speaker: Members.

Members, the minister has the floor.

Please conclude.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Members across the aisle have cut funding to these supports, have opposed shelter and supportive housing.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. Members.

Members, come to order.

Hon. Christine Boyle: You can take all the time you want, folks. It was your question.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Minister.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Without supportive housing, more people remain outside. More people remain in encampments. Those are not safe options for communities.

We will continue to work alongside local governments, alongside community-serving organizations, to bring people inside and support them along their paths to recovery.

Oak Street Bridge Encampment

Teresa Wat: Two years ago a person tragically died in a fire at the Oak Street Bridge encampment, and the situation has become worse since then.

The city of Richmond wrote to the Ministry of Transportation, asking for action, yet this NDP government has failed to take action. Families with newborn children now walk through that area to reach the nearby SkyTrain station, facing needles on the ground and aggressive behaviour on a daily basis.

When will this NDP government finally act to ensure the safety of our citizens, respond to the concerns of the city of Richmond and the concerns of my constituents and provide real — I’m talking about real — support to the homeless individuals under the Oak Street Bridge?

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members. Shhh.

Members.

Hon. Mike Farnworth: I appreciate the question from the member.

I want to assure the member that we take these issues very seriously when it comes to encampments, whether they are on provincial road rights-of-way or in other areas.

We work with communities, and my ministry works with the Ministry of Housing, to find solutions, whether it’s to start to move people on and into the kind of housing that’s required or to get them to supports. We work with communities to identify some of the causes of the situation for that encampment starting.

If it means closing things down, as we are doing at Cole Road in Abbotsford, we will do that. We will take the measures to do just that.

[3:05 p.m.]

At the same time, I must admit that I find it somewhat fascinating that the member stands up and demands action to provide services for people and places where they can get the help and the housing that they need, and just before that, a member of the same party…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Hon. Mike Farnworth: …is saying: “We don’t want this kind of housing…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. Members.

Hon. Mike Farnworth: …in our neighbourhood.” Talk about hypocrisy. They want to have it both ways. You’re either in favour of helping people, as we are, or you’re all over the place, like the opposition.

Funding for Angel Flight
East Kootenay Medical Transport

Scott McInnis: Sadly but not surprisingly, locally elected officials from my riding received a lot of big fat noes from this government this past September at UBCM.

Angel Flight East Kootenay, my constituents’ only free transportation to medical appointments in Kelowna and Vancouver, have their government funding running out very soon. This is an essential service, for those tens of thousands of East Kootenay residents, that is run by volunteers at Angel Flight East Kootenay and generally supported by private donations.

Will the minister commit today to a long-term funding model for those that need care hundreds of kilometres from their home?

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the question and for speaking up for rural residents that deserve the same access to health care as any resident in this province.

That’s why we are working to support communities like those that the member represents, knowing that they face particular barriers and challenges in accessing health services. Having to cross mountain passes, travelling in the winter, the cost and the time is something that rural residents deal with. It’s very real, and it leads to worse health outcomes for people.

That’s why we’ve established the travel assistance program. That’s why we expanded the travel assistance program a couple of years ago. It’s why we are proud to have been able to support services such as the one the member is speaking about.

I’ll be happy to continue talking to him and his residents about the ways we can continue to support that, because nothing could be more important than making sure that rural residents have access to the health care services that they need.

Access to Emergency Services
in Fraser Health Region

Harman Bhangu: I’m really hoping to get more than the usual word salad of a response from this minister.

Families across Fraser Health are facing a crisis. Delta ERs have seen repeated closures, forcing patients into Surrey Memorial where wait times stretch longer than 14 hours. In Abbotsford, it isn’t much better. People are waiting 12 hours just to be seen. Yet the Fraser Health CEO is paid over half a million dollars.

How is it possible with that level of executive compensation that Fraser Health still can’t deliver the most basic level of emergency care for our residents?

Hon. Josie Osborne: I know that long wait times in emergency rooms are incredibly frustrating for people. When you are sick or when someone you love is sick and you need to wait in an emergency room, it creates a lot of anxiety and angst for people.

I want to be clear that we know wait times fluctuate, and it depends on the time of day. But every patient is triaged with the acuteness of what they are facing, and they are seen quickly when the severity of their illness or….

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member. Member.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. The question has been asked. The minister is answering now.

Hon. Josie Osborne: The sickest people are always seen first and fastest, and that is the way that it should be. But we know there’s more work to do.

One of the ways that we can prevent people from having to go to the ER in the first place is to build up our primary care system. That’s why we have taken steps like developing the longitudinal family physician payment model, one that has seen 1,000 new family practitioners come to this province and practise here, attaching hundreds of patients every single day.

It’s why we’ve expanded the scope of practice for pharmacists so that people don’t need to go to a doctor and, if they don’t have one, go to an ER to do simple things like refill a prescription or talk about something like a urinary tract infection.

There’s more work to do. You can bet we’re going to continue doing this, because we know how important it is to build up the health care system here to ensure people have the access to a family practitioner, to a nurse practitioner, to the people that they need to see to get the care that they deserve.

[3:10 p.m.]

Interior Health Authority
Management and Staffing Issues

Gavin Dew: Talk about a functioning health care system. The Ambulance Paramedics say there have been 250 hospital and ER closures across the province this year. Lillooet alone has had 45. Doctors, nurses and patients tell us they’re at their breaking points, and nothing has actually changed.

Even as the CEO of Interior Health left, the CFO stepped in as the interim CEO, then became the permanent CEO, all handpicked by a board chair who is himself the former CEO.

When will the Health Minister recognize the pattern and make an actual regime change to get Interior Health back on track?

Hon. Josie Osborne: First, I want to say that the leadership in Interior Health has my confidence. I know that they are doing everything they can to strengthen the health care system in interior communities.

Despite the fact that the member would have us all think that everything is falling apart…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Members.

Hon. Josie Osborne: …he completely ignores the progress that we’re making. We did not get into this situation overnight. We’re not going to get out of it overnight. We are going to get out of it by determined work.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. Members, order.

Hon. Josie Osborne: We have seen the progress that this government has made, seeing ER disruptions reduced by 25 percent over the same period last year.

The member brings up Lillooet. I want to talk about Lillooet, because Lillooet is a success story. It is true that Lillooet has had emergency room disruptions, but they have not had a disruption since July 28.

Why? It’s because of the leadership that is being shown by the community and by Interior Health. It is by the recruitment successes that they have had with four new practice-ready assessment physicians arriving in Lillooet in 2025, one in March and three in September. They are supporting primary care. They are supporting the emergency room, and that emergency room has not closed since.

That is an example of success. That is the result of hard work, and that is the work that we’re going to continue to do.

Issues in Health Care System and
Salaries of Health Authority Executives

Trevor Halford: Wow. That’s the bar for health care in this province. Absolutely staggering that an emergency room has not closed since July. And that minister takes a victory lap on that? Absolutely pathetic.

The fact is this: 250 hospital closures this year. We’ve had 55 closures in….

Interjection.

Trevor Halford: If you want to stand up and answer a question, go for it.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member has the floor.

Shhh, the member has the floor.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, please.

Please continue.

Trevor Halford: Well, maybe this minister should actually start listening to health care workers, because what they would say is that the progress, which this minister takes victory lap after victory lap for, ain’t working.

The fact is that we’ve seen Delta close time after time. We’ve had 14-hour waits at Surrey Memorial. We had an absolutely tragic story told in this House because somebody couldn’t access medical equipment at the right time. We hear stories about seniors having their health care cut. We hear stories about Angel Flights being cut.

This minister’s disconnect is completely staggering. The fact remains. Health care in this province has gone down, while executive compensation has gone up. If the minister is one day going to listen to health care workers — whether it’s in her caucus, this caucus or anywhere else across this province — she’s going to hear the same thing.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Question, Member?

Trevor Halford: Sorry if this is an inconvenience. I imagine it would be for these guys.

The Speaker: Let’s have the question.

Trevor Halford: The question is this. How can this minister defend compensation this year that exceeds $13 million for executives and health authorities, when the fact is we’ve got health care workers that are saying this minister is failing her job every single day?

[3:15 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: I know this member would like to deny the progress that’s being made in hiring 1,000 new family doctors, in tripling the number of nurse practitioners…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Members.

Hon. Josie Osborne: …and adding 175 new cancer doctors.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. Josie Osborne: Hiring over 900 internationally trained doctors — that is the result of progress, of hard work, of work that we are not going to stop.

I know what they would do if they were given the chance, and that is to make sure that those people that we are hiring into our publicly funded universal health care system would be drawn out into two-tier private medical care. I dare them to say they wouldn’t.

[End of question period.]

Orders of the Day

Hon. Mike Farnworth: In this chamber, I call committee stage on Bill 20, Construction Prompt Payment Act.

In Section A, the Douglas Fir Room, I will be calling Committee of the Whole on Bill 31. I would just like to inform the House that when committee is done and the bill comes back for third reading, it will be a confidence vote.

In the Birch Room, Section C, I call committee stage on Bill 25.

[3:20 p.m.]

The House in Committee, Section B.

The committee met at 3:23 p.m.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 20 — Construction Prompt
Payment Act
(continued)

The Chair: I’ll call the committee to order. We’re continuing on Committee of the Whole for Bill 20, Construction Prompt Payment Act, on clause 41.

On clause 41 (continued).

Misty Van Popta: I just wanted to go into this clause a little bit, because I’m not overly legally technical, to understand why this particular clause is included as part of the bill and not actually put into regulation.

The “minister may” is the piece that kind of caught my eye — “may designate a person as an adjudication authority.”

I was wondering if I could get just a little bit, for public record, of an understanding of why the minister may do this and why it’s actually built into the bill and not used as part of regulations that we would have the adjudication authority created.

[3:25 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: I did answer the “may” question earlier on this provision. But just to repeat, it’s a drafting convention that uses that type of language there.

I think to the question about why here and not regulation, this part is an important pillar of the act. So also having the legal authority to do it, for the minister to designate an adjudication authority, was just considered very essential to put in the legislation.

Misty Van Popta: Will there be consultation done in regards to designating a person as an adjudicator, and if so, who would that consultation be with?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We have committed to, and I’ve spoken about, consulting on the development of phase 2 of this bill, so the regulations and the implementation components of it.

For this one in particular, the process of adjudication authority would be that we would have to search for somebody. So we would put out a job description, put it out into the field and see who is able to and evaluate the criteria of whether or not we feel like they’re able to meet what’s in clause 42.

Misty Van Popta: Is it meant to be a singular person, or is it used…? Is the verbiage here more to create an actual authority body with multiple members in it, or is it just a singular person that is the adjudication authority for this purpose?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I have gone through this clause in quite a lot of detail. One of the questions that I did answer already was the definition of “person.” That means a person under the Interpretation Act.

Misty Van Popta: So prior to the designation, then, will the ministry make the decision public to ensure that it is publicly accepted? What would happen in the case that the industry was not happy with the person or the people or entity that was appointed?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes, there will be a public selection process related to this. We will be, as I mentioned before…. In phase 2, we’ll be in contact, as we were in the development of this, with industry leaders.

Steve Kooner: The Attorney General mentioned earlier something about a job description, a job description being posted somewhere in terms of the adjudication authority. Since a job description was mentioned…. Usually, in job descriptions, there are criteria.

Last time we were here, we talked about: would there be criteria? I think the Attorney General explained that there will be criteria. But today the Attorney General mentioned that there’s going to be a job description. What’s in that job description for the adjudication authority?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think there are many words to describe it. I think it’s selection criteria, job description, and, essentially, also asked and answered because we went over this yesterday in detail about how clause 42 sets out what the criteria would be for evaluation.

[3:30 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Another thing that we did cover last time, but we didn’t get into it in elaboration…. We talked about the definition of “person.” A person can include a corporate entity, as per the Attorney General.

Now, when someone is being selected…. We talked about a corporate entity, but there are also government bodies. There are private organizations. There are not-for-profits. There’s a wide span. And we talked about corporate entities. Has the Attorney General anticipated whether that definition for “person” also incorporates not only corporate entities but not-for-profits as well as some public bodies? What’s the extent of it?

I know we talked about the corporate entity, because when I was getting at individual, I was…. You can have a corporation at that point. But I did not follow up with asking the question. Could it be a not-for-profit? Could it also be a public body that exists right now?

Hon. Niki Sharma: As I think I mentioned yesterday, we’re not predetermined in our selection criteria at this point. This is just the legislative process to clarify what the criteria will be. Once that’s passed, of course, we’re open. We haven’t predetermined anybody’s participation.

Steve Kooner: I know that we’ve discussed criteria. We’ve discussed job description. But we have not gone into details. Maybe the Attorney General doesn’t have that description, doesn’t have that indicia right now. Maybe it’s going to be formulated at a later time.

I would like to know whether it exists right now. If it does not exist right now, how will it be formulated? Will it just be formulated through regulation, or will it be formulated at the cabinet table? How will it be formulated?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I’m going to suggest we get to clause 42 because it’ll become very clear then.

Steve Kooner: Are there any circumstances…? We know that an adjudication body can be appointed. We know that it could be appointed as a result of looking at criteria, a job description. A minister may designate an adjudication body. But what we have not heard is: what if an adjudication body gets chosen?

Is there discretion there to actually revoke for some reason, say, if it turns out that the adjudication authority that’s chosen is not the proper one? You need to kind of revoke that, and you need to appoint a different one. Is there a process for that as well?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Inherent in that, and that’s also part of drafting, is that in the power to designate is also a power to undesignate.

Steve Kooner: So the power to designate is also a power to undesignate? I don’t get it.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just in terms of the principle in the drafting, it’s implicit that if you have the power to give something to somebody, you have it to take away.

Steve Kooner: Has the Attorney General’s department considered consequences of revoking? There may be contractual stipulations once an adjudication authority is chosen. If they’re a corporate body, they may have a contract. If it’s a person, they may say that they weren’t provided enough notice. I would suggest that choosing or designating an adjudication body is easier than revoking a designation, because revoking a designation can actually have consequences.

So is there something in here that also protects against those consequences? I get it that you may…. The Attorney General has explained that through this one provision, this clause that we’re looking at right now, you can also revoke, but is there something there also to protect the government when they do the revocation?

[3:35 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: That’s in clause 44.

Steve Kooner: Would the government commit to annual reporting? I know we’re going to be choosing…. There are certain things that…. I know, in the following clauses, we will see what will be the duties of the adjudication authority. But will there be some sort of reporting mechanism that can assess whether these adjudication bodies are doing a good job, or an adjudication body is doing a good job, and maybe we need to revoke it? Is there a process for that as well?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes. That may be not something with the level of detail that you would put in legislation. How Ontario’s functions is there’s an annual report, and it gives us the ability…. We expect that would be the same, that there would be…. In further provisions, I could show you the regulatory power to do such things.

Clause 41 approved.

On clause 42.

Steve Kooner: Leading up to this clause, we’ve had, in clause 41, a lot of discussion, and a lot of the questions I asked were deferred to following sections, so I’m hoping that some of those answers will be given now that we’re getting further into this adjudication authority. But before we get into it, I want to make sure I’m properly understanding this particular clause.

The clause reads: “Subject to the regulations, an adjudication authority must….” Now, earlier we had some permissive language, and the previous clause, which is clause 41, said the minister “may.” But here we have the obligatory language being put in here that says an adjudication authority “must.”

Is there a reason that we have the “must” in here?

Hon. Niki Sharma: “Must” is very important here because we want to make sure that an adjudication authority will do all of these things, to make it very clear that that’s required of them.

Steve Kooner: It’s been some time since I read this whole bill. Is there something, as we go further…? Say, if the adjudication authority does not do something, as per the suggestion here…. It says the adjudication authority must do it. If it doesn’t do it, how do you make sure there’s compliance?

Hon. Niki Sharma: As I mentioned in the previous clause, the way you would operationalize a designation is through a contract. Of course, the contract would contain terms with expectations, of performance expectations, and/or ways to have compliance for those performance expectations and/or leading up to the determination of that if they’re not living up to it.

Steve Kooner: Leading up to determination — I take that as leading up to a revocation of the designation if certain standards are not met. Just to confirm that, is that what the Attorney General meant?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes, the contract would, of course, have sections in it…. Government does this all the time. They would have provisions in there that talk about how you would revoke.

Steve Kooner: Would disciplinary measures be incremental, or would there just be one? You know: “You don’t meet these conditions, you didn’t do what we told you to do, so you’re out. We’re going to revoke your designation.”

[3:40 p.m.]

Will there be incremental discipline, or will it just be revocation, completed?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just to say that we’re talking about the contents of this clause, not a nonexistent contract, at this point. All I can speak to is the general terms of contracting, which I don’t think is very helpful to this particular clause.

But yeah, you could design contracts in many ways, and government usually has pretty generalized terms when it comes to this about how we measure performance and what consequences of revoking would be.

Steve Kooner: Part of the path to getting this legislation, to bring it forward, was comparisons. One example is Ontario. Ontario’s legislation was reviewed.

We were speaking about contracts. There must be precedence, and there might…. We’re talking about an adjudication authority. This is not a new concept. We have a lot of adjudication authorities for different subject matters. What would it…?

Say if, yes, the Attorney General acknowledged that there could be a contract and there could be incremental discipline, what other examples are there that the Attorney General’s department has looked at that could be applied just prior to revoking the designation?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Of course, contracts between two parties are not public, because there’s information in there that would be kept private for many reasons, so we don’t have access to the contracts that are between other governments and their adjudication authorities.

What I can tell you is the clause right now clearly sets out what the expectations would be for that, and I expect that would be built into the contract.

Steve Kooner: All right. Going further: “subject to the regulations, an adjudication authority must (a) develop….” Can the Attorney General shed some light on the word “develop”? What do they have to develop?

Is that just the commonsense or literal meaning? You’ve just got to create something, or is there a legal connotation to that that actually has a deeper meaning, that somebody has to really do something?

Maybe the Attorney General can elaborate.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Ordinary meaning of the word “develop.”

For guidance’s sake, for anybody listening, any word that is contained in this one clause, like “develop,” or any other subsequent subclauses that we see, if the first letter is not capitalized, it means it’s not a defined term. The only time you would define a term is if you want it to have a specific meaning for the statute. Most of the words in here are not defined terms, and they’re just the ordinary meaning.

Steve Kooner: Just for the public record, because there are a lot of people viewing what we’re talking about today and a lot of them may not be lawyers, the Attorney General just explained that if the first letter of a word is capitalized, there may be a specific meaning. It might be defined in a statute somewhere. If there is no capital, regardless whether it’s at the beginning of the phrase or in the middle of the phrase, that will be taken as a literal meaning. It doesn’t matter where the location is of that particular word.

Is that accurate?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just to clarify…. My mistake. The convention has changed on always the capitalization.

What you’ll look for is the definitions section of the act, which is at the front. If a word is defined, it’ll be listed alphabetically in the definitions section or in the Interpretation Act.

Those are the two guiding sections of a statute related to whether a word is defined or not. Then if not, it would be the ordinary meaning.

Steve Kooner: Subclause (a) says: “develop and oversee programs for training of adjudicators.” What types of programs? Could that be more elaborated? Maybe a descriptive thing because we are dealing with a subject matter here, and we’re talking about construction disputes. What types of programs? What would they look like?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Thanks for the question.

The programs that seem to come out of that, with overseeing programs…. From the Ontario model, it looks like it’s for any prospective adjudicators, and they have people that could apply from the construction industry, engineers. It makes sense that they might be interested. Then they oversee and have set up training programs for individuals so they can take on the role of an adjudicator.

They also have CPD credits. If you are in their roster — their version of it, but I expect it would be something that would be applicable here — then you have continuing professional development courses that you take.

Steve Kooner: There was a little bit of confusion in my mind about what the Attorney General was trying to explain. Is that continuing education within the program, or would they be going outside to get the continuing education?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I can give you the example of what’s happened in Ontario, but it won’t necessarily be the same thing that happens up here. Through our designation of adjudication authority, it says “must,” so we would require that they oversee programs.

I’m told that the similar authority in Ontario has programs itself that are about certification and ongoing professional development. But, I mean, you could see a scenario where the adjudication authority that is selected has assured the ministry and the minister that they are going to oversee programs, so they have a contracted agency that will deliver them. I think it kind of depends that way, if you know what I mean.

[3:50 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Why it was a little bit confusing…. I know that there are professionals, and they are under certain governing bodies. Sometimes they go outside their bodies to actually get educational training, but the body gives them credits for it.

As I was saying, sometimes there are professions, and they have a governing body, and that governing body gives the individuals within their organization credits. But at times, the people that are within that governing body, the members, go outside to take courses and training. I think the Attorney General is just highlighting that you could go outside, perhaps, to get educational programs.

Would the adjudication authority…? With different bodies, they sometimes give you credits. Would this be a credit-based system?

I know that if you’re a lawyer, you will go get some credits from your governing body. If you’re an accountant, I think the process is fairly similar. There are these educational standards because you want to comply with provincial legislation and make sure that there’s a certain competency level. So will there be a requirement to also give credits? Does it have to be a certain amount of training?

I know that you’ve got to develop, got to create those programs, and you’ve got to oversee those programs. But what’s stopping an organization from saying: “Hey, we’ll just teach somebody for a half an hour. We developed that program, we created it, and then we oversaw it. We saw people learning in that half an hour. It’s done. We met that requirement”?

Will there be something to say that, no, the educational aspect…. There’s further criteria for that. It has to be a certain number of hours long. It has to cover certain aspects of what adjudicators or decision-makers are going to be doing. Where’s that aspect?

I understand that this is an enabling thing. It’s more than an enabling thing. It’s an obligatory thing that adjudication authorities have to do. They have to create that program, or they’ve got to contract it. But what goes in it? What’s the standard? What’s going to be in that program? How much do you have to teach?

That’s the next question.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Okay, so there are two things at play here. This is the requirement of the adjudication authority. With respect to training, it’s (a), which is the one we’re talking about. They oversee programs for training of adjudicators.

We have regulatory-making power, which we’ll get to, that has the ability for us to set out what the requirements are for an adjudicator, like ten years’ experience in the construction industry. The Ontario model has a regulation that says “completed the required educational training of the adjudication authority.” Those are one of the requirements you can put in regulation.

If you’re an adjudicator that sits on the roster of this adjudication authority, then you will have this obligation to have kept up your training requirements. We won’t set out as prescriptively as we would expect the adjudication authority to do the work of doing, like setting up exactly what the training is, what you would learn and the types of things. But we would set out the standards, I guess, or what we would expect of them to do.

I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: Now the committee will be in adjournment for a few moments.

The committee rose at 3:54 p.m.

The House resumed at 3:55 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Mable Elmore: The committee on Bill 20 reports progress and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Larry Neufeld: I seek leave to present a petition.

The Speaker: Proceed.

Leave granted.

Petitions

Larry Neufeld: Thanks to my colleagues for granting this.

[The bells were rung.]

The Speaker: Proceed.

Larry Neufeld: I’m humbled today to present a petition from the beautiful community of Tumbler Ridge, population 2,200. This petition is signed by 1,854 citizens of that community. I’m humbled because of the resilience and the amazing tenacity of the individuals that call that beautiful place home.

The petition reads that the community of Tumbler Ridge has recently been affected by the reduction of emergency room hours, removing access to emergency care after 7 p.m. on weekdays and closing services on weekends.

This reduction in ER service poses significant risks to the health and safety of residents, workers and visitors, particularly given Tumbler Ridge’s remote location and distance to the nearest emergency facilities. Timely access to emergency medical services is critical for saving lives and ensuring equitable health care for all British Columbians, regardless of where they live.

The petition reads: “Your petitioners respectfully request that the honourable House urge the government to ensure that 24-7 emergency room services are restored and maintained at the Tumbler Ridge health care, providing continuous emergency care to the residents of Tumbler Ridge and surrounding areas.”

Hon. Brittny Anderson: I call resumption of committee stage debate on Bill 20, Construction Prompt Payment Act.

The House in Committee, Section B.

The committee met at 3:58 p.m.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 20 — Construction Prompt
Payment Act
(continued)

The Chair: I call the committee back to order on Bill 20, Committee of the Whole, Construction Prompt Payment Act, continuing on clause 42.

On clause 42 (continued).

Steve Kooner: The Attorney General was just explaining the educational requirements that the adjudication authority has to implement and explained that it’s the responsibility of the adjudication authority to come up with what type of program and how it’s going to look. But there is going to be a certain aspect that’s going to be prescribed in the regulations on what minimum standards there are going to be.

Just a question in regards to those standards. How do you determine those standards? Where do you get those standards? Are you just going to take them from what Ontario has adopted and then put that in the regulation? Is the government going to be consulting with stakeholders, or has the government already consulted, from the consulting that the government’s already done on this bill?

Does the government already know what the results of that consultation were, and they already know what they’re going to put in the regulations for basic standards for these educational programs and training sessions that the adjudication authorities are going to put on?

[4:00 p.m.]

Going to those regulations that were just mentioned by the Attorney General, what minimum standards…? And how are we going to get to those standards? Are we just going to adopt them from a precedent, or are we going to have to adopt them from scratch?

Hon. Niki Sharma: In terms of how we would establish regulation for setting the standards, I’m happy to talk about that when we get to that clause.

For the adjudication authority, it’s important for that authority to be separate from government, because the body and the adjudicators have to have, naturally, the respect of the industry. They have to have the ability to be able to write decisions that are respected and hold that ability to play the important role in this program.

We would expect and make sure of that standard of training, that the adjudication authority was able to oversee those programs and keep that standard up to that level.

Steve Kooner: I get that the government wants to give some deference to the adjudication authority to implement these programs and training, but I also note that the Attorney General mentioned that there’s going to be regulations coming up with it for minimum standards. What are the minimum standards? I know there’s going to be some deference made, but there’s still going to be something put in the regulation for minimum standards, so what are those minimum standards?

I know we’re going to get into regulations and see how they’re going to work and the authority for the regulations and all that. That’s going to come later on in this bill. But right now we’re talking about the adjudication authority, and we’re talking about its duties. We’re talking about it developing and overseeing programs. We know that they’re going to create some standards, but the government is also going to expect some minimum standards.

Where are those minimum standards going to come from? Do we have a precedent for them already? What are those minimum standards right now, if we know about them?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This process, I think, is best described when we get to the regulatory power that triggers it. I think the member’s question is rooted in what will be — not what the adjudication authority will be required to do but, instead, what the adjudicator standards will be, which are kind of two separate things.

When we get to the section on adjudication standards, I can explain how we’re going to be making sure there is at least a minimum standard that’s high enough to make sure that we have good people that have good qualifications for adjudicators.

[4:05 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Moving forward to the next subclause here, 42(b), “qualify persons.” How is it expected that the adjudication authority will qualify persons?

Hon. Niki Sharma: That would just be like a certification. In Ontario, after you’ve met the prescribed requirements, under that regime you get a certificate that says you are able to do what’s required of you under it.

Steve Kooner: Did I hear the Attorney General accurately when the Attorney General said it would be prescribed?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This was what I was talking about that comes up later, which is what the prescribed requirements are for the adjudicator.

Steve Kooner: Okay.

Let’s just move further into this phrase. It says: “qualify persons who meet the prescribed requirements as adjudicators.” Here, when the Attorney General is speaking of prescribed requirements, the Attorney General is referring to regulations. Is that accurate?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes.

Steve Kooner: In addition to regulations, could it also apply to certain industry standards that are policies that are already in place? Could that be a prescribed requirement too, or would it just specifically be in regulation?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Again, the prescribed requirements is a further-down clause. Although it is included in this clause, it really is better explained back there.

I’ll just say that we will be doing consultations with the relevant sectors and industry leaders like we have before, so I don’t want to prejudge what would be contained in there. Just to say that it’s important that the qualifications, like I mentioned, of these adjudicators are at a standard that brings confidence to the system.

Steve Kooner: In terms of the qualifications here, because now we’re choosing quasi judges, informal judges, decision-makers, who would…? We just heard that there’s going to be some further consultation in regards to the regulations. We’ve heard there’s been consultation already for this bill. When we were talking about the previous clauses in terms of judicial review, we were told about memorandums of understanding with the judiciary and following through with that. We were also told about consultation that was had with different law firms.

All that consultation was done, but now the Attorney General has mentioned that there is going to be further consultation in regards to the regulations that we are now talking about. Who will those further regulations be with? Will it just be with the legal profession, lawyers or judiciary? Who would that consultation be with?

Hon. Niki Sharma: As we have done before, in the development of this act, we’ve been working very closely with industry. As I mentioned before, it’s really important that this is a tool that industry adopts and uses for its effectiveness to be there. It would obviously be all the industry that we already consulted with. I think we had an extensive conversation at clause 1 about who they were, so it would be that.

We would want some form of consistency amongst provinces, another thing that we mentioned. So that’s a principle of it, that we can look at other models and other jurisdictions to see what was successful there.

[4:10 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: When we heard about the consultation that happened with the judicial review section, and it’s also a legal section of the bill, we were told that there was a list of law firms that were consulted.

I noted that most of those law firms were of a larger size that were mentioned when the list was being provided. Now, with these types of disputes, a lot of smaller firms actually act for a lot of these contractors that have these small disputes. A lot of the time, they don’t go to the big law firms. They don’t go to the mid-sized law firms. They go to, you know, sole practitioners, or they go to maybe small outfits of lawyers, like maybe two or three lawyers or smaller law firms.

That’s the lot of the practices there right now. I know that the prompt payment regulatory framework is going to take it away from lawyers, so you don’t have to get lawyers. But we just heard that there’s going to be further consultation, similar to what has already happened.

Will there be an effort made to also go beyond that list of law firms that was provided? I think about ten law firms were provided. There are a lot of smaller law firms that actually do this type of litigation right now. Yes, the bigger law firms get involved, but most of their clientele is the bigger corporate entities. They handle the companies.

But what about the small guys? Those are the guys that are having problems right now. I understand ten law firms were consulted, but they were of a larger size. I think it makes sense if you had some law firms that actually help a lot of these smaller contractors that will now be utilizing this particular prompt payment regulatory framework.

Will the Attorney General’s department be expanding…? Noting that, yeah, a lot of the smaller contractors that have the issues right now are dealing with smaller firms, will the Attorney General’s department make an effort to consult with smaller law firms as well?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just sticking to the clause, this is about the adjudication authority. We were talking about consultation related to the establishment of the adjudication authority and prescribed requirements, which is further down. I invite the member to go back to the discussion we had at the beginning that was about our overall consultation related to that and the bar.

In this specific part, it’s important that the consultation is focused on the relevance to the industry so that we know we’re establishing a system that is going to be used by the industry.

Our consultation at this part of the clause that we’re talking about will be focused on engaging with the industry and maybe arbitration authorities and looking at other models and how they are set up in other provinces. It’ll likely help inform the level or the standard that’s required for an adjudicator and how that’s working, which is what we’re talking about.

Steve Kooner: We were just discussing clause 42(a), as well, in terms of the programs and training. In regards to this, these programs and these training manuals that might be produced, will they be made public?

I think it serves a crucial purpose if you make the manuals public so you can scrutinize those and there’s some level of scrutiny to determine that those policies are actually good policies. Whereas if they’re completely hidden, nobody really knows anything about it, and it’s just the adjudication authority saying that they seem to be of standard.

Will there be a requirement to actually make these manuals and training programs public?

Hon. Niki Sharma: The way we expect this to work is that…. I mentioned earlier that this is a self-funded process, and it’s no cost to government. The way that it is working in other provinces is that if you would like to be an adjudicator under the adjudication authority, there’s a public side of the information that’s related to how to do that — the steps and the requirements and, probably, things like that.

If you want to get certified, there’s likely a fee for that service, so a fee for that educational service provided, and that will help with the kind of cost recovery. But for the individual taking it, it will unlock the ability to be an adjudicator and to be paid for those services under the process.

Steve Kooner: Madam Chair, can I ask for a five-minute recess?

The Chair: Certainly. We’ll have a five-minute break.

The committee recessed from 4:15 p.m. to 4:24 p.m.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

The Chair: I’ll call the committee back into session. We are continuing Committee of the Whole on Bill 20, Construction Prompt Payment Act, continuing on clause 42.

Steve Kooner: We’re just on clause 42. We’re discussing subject-to regulations and “adjudication authority must.”

[4:25 p.m.]

We were talking about subclause (a). We were talking about programs, training manuals and all that. I asked if these manuals are going to be made public.

I think the Attorney General was then trying to explain that a lot of deference is going to be given, and there are standards that you have to meet and all that. But I don’t know if I got the answer whether there’s going to be a place where the public can just go and view these manuals.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think we left off when I was talking about how this is run as a cost recovery process. So the adjudication authority will establish something, likely it’s proprietary at that point; they’ve established their own training program or certification program. It would be a fee to be paid for an adjudicator to go forward and do that course, as it would unlock a professional opportunity.

I would probably say the contents of the actual lessons or scope wouldn’t be publicly available because they are probably part of the proprietary nature of what would be their certification course.

Steve Kooner: So in that answer, I heard “would probably be available,” meaning…. What I take that as is we don’t really know yet. And they may be available, probably, but they may also not be available. Will the government take action to make sure they are available?

The action that can be taken maybe we can discuss in the regulation section, but because we’re talking about this particular clause right now that has to deal with manuals, I think it’s important to discuss it at this stage. Otherwise, we’re leaving everything at a later stage. We’re on the subject matter right now.

I don’t mind doing that for some of the stuff that I’m asking for, but if we save everything, we might miss something, so it’s important to kind of talk about it as we go.

The Attorney General said that these manuals, these training exercises would probably be available. So will the government ensure that they are made public?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just to be clear, this is in the realm of speculation because we don’t at this point have an adjudication authority. We don’t understand how to model a self-funded agency.

What I’m assuming is that part of being a self-funded agency, meaning there’s no money from government flowing in to support this — it just all supports itself — is that there would be some kind of a fee for access to the training that would be there. If the training was free and public and available to everybody, then that might take away from the ability of the authority to be self-funded and to fund their operations for the industry.

So that’s why I just am speculating at this point about the contents of the training programs, whether the manuals would be publicly available or not, because that would be a determining factor of how to sustain the authority as a self-funded agency. It would be the guiding principle.

Steve Kooner: So just moving further in this clause, subsection (c): “establish and maintain a publicly available registry of adjudicators.” What does the Attorney General’s ministry mean by that?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Exactly, I think, what it says is that we would require…. There are no legal meanings or any other meanings hidden in that. We would just require the adjudication authority to maintain a publicly available registry of adjudicators. So once somebody’s certified as an adjudicator, there’s a registry that’s publicly available.

[4:30 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: With this registry, what type of registry would it be? Would it be a remote online registry, or will there be an office in, maybe, Vancouver somewhere, or will it be an office throughout the province where you could do paper filings? What would it look like?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think we can just all expect that it will be an online registry.

Steve Kooner: Would this work similar to the CRT, the Civil Resolution Tribunal? You can do a lot of filings online. You don’t have to go to a physical location. Would it work similar to that, this adjudication authority?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We did cover this already in clause 27, that the conduct of how the hearings are is up to the adjudicator. Yes, it could be online. It could be in person. It could maybe just be a paper adjudication.

Steve Kooner: Will there be certain standards when the adjudication authority has certain results, statistics of how those results went? A lot of times when you go to different arbitration forums or informal tribunal settings, they sometimes have surveys and stuff like that to kind of determine how the process is all working out. That allows for the provincial government to actually oversee it to see if they can make a better system as a part of the Attorney General’s department.

So will there be some sort of publishing of — I know we talked about annual reports — some type of statistics, like how these cases are operating, how many wins or losses, what’s the experience of these people going through the adjudication authority?

Hon. Niki Sharma: The likely model that we would follow is the Ontario one, where the annual report has statistics that talk about sectors or the range of amounts or values that are decided upon and different aspects of the adjudication process so we can monitor how well it’s going.

[4:35 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: What would be the manner that those statistics would be reported in? Would they be made public, or where would they be located if they are public? Where would an individual go to actually see those statistics? Would those just be available to the government, and then you have to do a FOI to the government to get the results?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I know I have been answering broader questions, but I think at this stage I just want to make sure that we’re sticking to the clause before us. There is a clause later on that talks about the regulatory powers to do what the member suggests, but I think the subclause he’s asking about right now is to establish and maintain a publicly available registry of adjudicators.

Steve Kooner: In subclause 42(d), it states: “establish a process for suspending or removing adjudicators from the registry and addressing complaints about adjudicators.” Essentially, my read of this is that there’s the adjudication authority, and then there’ll be the decision-makers, the members of the adjudication authority within the adjudication authority. At certain times, some of these decision-makers might have to be suspended or removed from the registry after addressing complaints about adjudicators.

What’s the logic behind this? That’s my first question.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just an important part of the authority that we want the adjudication authority to have, which is that they must be able to suspend or remove adjudicators, because you need to be able to have a roster of adjudicators that is there and ready and qualified to do the work.

Steve Kooner: Then what sorts of standards would they be applying to, say, suspend or remove these adjudicators?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This one is also linked with the regulatory-making power because I think, as we mentioned, we’d have the power to say, “Here are the minimal standards that we expect of the adjudicator,” like ten years experience in this, no criminal record — things like that.

Then the next level would be asking the adjudication authority to establish a code of conduct so they can have an ongoing role of oversight and expectations for the adjudicators that are in their roster, and then they would judge them against that. They would receive complaints, and then if there was a reason to remove or suspend them, they would have the ability to do that.

[4:40 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Thank you for that. That was informative, but I do have some follow-up questions to that answer.

The Attorney General mentioned that there would be certain specific standards, and then after those specific standards, there would be a code of conduct that, essentially, the adjudication authority would actually create. That would be the basis for determining how an adjudicator can be suspended or removed. I get that point.

But the Attorney General did mention two indicia of what would…. Like minimum ground, no criminal record. There was a list, two or three. Can I get the full list? What would be the full list put to the adjudication authority as a minimum standard?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes, I didn’t mean to say that there was a list that we have. I was giving examples based on what’s in Ontario’s regulatory requirements. They say, I think, in theirs, it’s ten years’ experience in the construction industry and some of those things they have, but we don’t have our own list at this stage.

I think it would be important to, like I said, show consistency across other jurisdictions, find what’s working, and also understand from the industry and our local B.C. context what we would set as a minimal standard. So I’m not going to prejudge the discussions or consultations there. I was just giving examples of what’s in Ontario’s.

Steve Kooner: Just to go further, because the Attorney General doesn’t want to prejudge the indicia…. It’s important to know how we’re going to get to the indicia. What I heard right now was that what would be reviewed, in Ontario’s example…. Ontario seems to be a precedent. A precedent would be reviewed from another jurisdiction, and then in addition to that, stakeholders will be consulted to determine.

Are those the only two areas that are going to be consulted to come up with the minimum standards? Am I missing something, other than the stakeholders and the other jurisdiction, to decide what the minimum standards are going to be?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I believe that I answered this question, because we talked about the prescribed requirements under (b), and I talked about the consultation that we would have, so it’s the same for this whole clause.

Steve Kooner: Why I’m going through…. When I receive the answers, and I do have follow-up questions to those answers, that may be because I’m still unsure, because each subclause talks about a different subject.

In this particular one, it talks about suspending and removing. When you’re talking about suspending and removing, it could be quasi criminal. So although it’s part of the same clause, it involves something separate. For example, when you’re determining why you don’t want somebody with a criminal record to do that, you may consult with the industry stakeholders that are the usual ones, but a particular clause that involves a quasi-judicial disciplinary procedure may involve something further. Sometimes there might be a reason why you can’t have a criminal record and all that.

The Attorney General mentioned…. I know we’ve gone through some of these other previous clauses, and we’ve talked about consultation, but I think this is a very important section. With any sort of regulatory body, there’s usually one big section given to disciplinary proceedings. That’s usually a pretty big part of a regulatory body.

That’s why I’m asking a little bit more in terms of this, because we’re talking about suspending and talking about removing. Right now we don’t know what the indicia are going to be. We don’t even know what the code of conduct is going to be.

[4:45 p.m.]

These people are going to be dealing with the everyday life decisions or problems of people that are in the construction industry, many of which are small businesses, and they have a tough time collecting payment. So when I’m asking a specific question about this….

A lot of people do complain. They’re like: “I’m not happy with my judge,” or “I’m not happy with my arbitrator,” or “I feel that that person was biased,” or “I feel that that person had inappropriate conduct.” Although it may seem like it’s just another clause, it is actually different, because when you look at regulatory bodies, they have a specific section that deals with discipline, suspension and all that kind of stuff.

Then, also, because we’re talking about decision-making, we’re talking about construction prompt payment, and we want to make…. A lot of people do complain about their adjudicators. That eventually sometimes leads to issues with suspension and leads to issues with removing adjudicators because they’re not properly carrying out their duties. So it’s important.

I just want to…. I asked this question just right now — that there’s going to be specific stakeholders. But are there going to be any different stakeholders? This is a very significant thing. It implies, not to say, if you’re going to consult a lawyer, you can consult a lawyer, but you might want to consult a lot of different other organizations as well.

So is there anything specifically different the Attorney General’s department is going to be doing on this one? Because this is actually a very, very important section.

Even employment contracts have the long section about discipline and all that kind of stuff. Then there’s a long process of how to discipline somebody, and even professional bodies do. It’s a very important section, so that’s why I wanted to spend a little bit of extra time here and just ask for a further explanation.

I know that industry people will be consulted. Maybe the judiciary might be consulted, too, through a memorandum of understanding. Then the standard will come in through regulations. I get all that. Will there be anything more? Because we are dealing with everyday decisions that are going to affect a lot of people.

I know I’m asking the question, but I don’t feel that I got the right answer, and I feel that this is such an important subclause that it really requires some attention here.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think we may disagree on this, but I described a very broad outreach of consultation. I talked about the bar. I talked about industry. I talked about other arbitration entities engaging with other models, other jurisdictions, and that we would do the same kind of engagement that we’ve done to get to this stage.

I just would direct the member to the subject, to the regulations component of 42, which I think is pretty key, because it allows us, through that process, to set up the kind of fair process or make sure that a fair process is going to happen under the adjudication authority.

Steve Kooner: Under the adjudication authority, when you have the adjudicators and you’re thinking about disciplining them and all that, would these adjudicators be considered employees of the adjudication authority? What’s the situation?

Hon. Niki Sharma: No. They’re on a roster, but there’s not an employment relationship.

Steve Kooner: So it’s contractual?

[4:50 p.m.]

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think you can look at it more like a certification process from the adjudication authority. The adjudication authority certifies adjudicators, puts them on the roster. The parties look at the roster. They decide who they want to adjudicate.

If they can’t decide on their own, the adjudication authority can decide who the adjudicator is, but then they take on that adjudication that way.

So it’s the parties that are engaging more in the selection of the adjudicator. The authority is there to make sure that that roster of adjudicators plays an administrative role in the process.

The Chair: Richmond-Queensborough on clause 42.

Steve Kooner: Going further on this subclause, it says: “establish a process for suspending or removing adjudicators from the registry and addressing complaints about adjudicators.”

When you’re faced with complaints, then what becomes relevant is having procedural fairness and making sure you have an opportunity to be heard. If you’re not happy with what recourse or what action is taken against you, you have an opportunity to appeal that.

We’re talking about addressing complaints of adjudicators and them being suspended and removed. What would be the framework of that? If a decision is made, what recourse can they have?

Hon. Niki Sharma: How we expect this to show up would be in the code of conduct that I talked about earlier. It’s very clear what the procedural fairness is, offered to the adjudicator, if there has been a complaint made.

[4:55 p.m.]

In the selection of the adjudication authority, which is the process that we’re talking about, the reason it’s a “must” is because it’s very important that there’s a way of addressing complaints about adjudicators. We do have an accompanying regulatory power to ensure that we think that they’re meeting the standards of procedural fairness or those kind of things.

Steve Kooner: Okay, that explains the procedural process for the adjudicators, but what about the parties that are using these adjudicators? What if they have some grievances? What recourse can they get? Say they submit a complaint pursuant to subclause (d). The complaint is there. It gets dealt with, and nothing happens. The person is told: “It’s being dealt with, but we’re not going to do anything about it.”

Is there a way that this complaint can be escalated to the government? Where do they appeal if they’re not happy with how this complaint was addressed?

Hon. Niki Sharma: No, the government would not get involved. This is very important — that this is independent. Our tool as government is to make sure that whoever we select as adjudication authority to oversee the process is living up to the standards that we would expect of them.

If, in the instance that the member describes, we see that the adjudication authority is not doing things like properly addressing complaints, which is one of the requirements, then we would have a few tools. One of the tools is to choose another adjudication authority to administer this program.

Also, we have a regulatory authority if we feel that we need to put stronger regulations in place to address processes that we think are necessary.

Steve Kooner: I understand that there’s a process, but the process that the Attorney General just explained seems like it’s pretty long, and it’s going to require time. If you want to put something in a regulation, that will take you some time. If you want to just change the adjudication authority, that will take some time. What about in the meantime, if somebody makes a complaint and they feel that it’s gone unanswered?

Sometimes, just to give a commonsense example, if somebody has a complaint against a business, they’ll complain to that store and tell them: “Look, I had this experience. Can you do something about it?” If they don’t do anything about it…. They may be a part of the Better Business Bureau, so the person who complained will go escalate it and say: “This business never addressed my complaint.”

There are other avenues too. Say if there’s a professional firm, a complaint would probably be made to the management of that firm. If they weren’t happy with that, they’ll probably go to the regulatory body with the complaint.

Here, when a complaint is happening, rather than this bigger, long-term, foreseeable thing — that you can change the whole structure through regulations, and you can change the adjudication authority — what about a more instant response to that complaint? How do you deal with it?

[5:00 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think it’s important to remember that this is a party-led process. The parties are in control of their decisions, and one of their decisions may be that they’re not going to use this process to resolve their dispute.

You put a complaint forward to an adjudicator. First of all, we would have…. I already talked about the way we would hold the adjudication authority to that standard of meeting complaints, but I think the hypothetical put before us is: what happens if they’re not?

The parties are drivers to this whole process. They can choose whether or not they stay or they don’t in this or they use this avenue for their complaint.

Steve Kooner: Going further along in this clause, 42(e): “appoint adjudicators under section 23 [selection of adjudicator].” Just explain what the logic was of putting in this specific subclause. What was the logic behind this?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This is the power to do what I was talking about earlier, which is that if the parties can decide on an adjudicator on the roster, great. But section 23 talks about the ability of the adjudication authority to appoint an adjudicator, if necessary.

Steve Kooner: Just going a little bit further into subclause (f): “provide administrative support to adjudicators.” Now, this is important.

Again, I’ll start with just asking: can I just get an explanation of this subclause?

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: Any kind of body like this would need to provide administrative support to their adjudicators. We see that in a lot of tribunals.

Usually, that admin support is giving the backdrop to exchange documents, for example, to facilitate, maybe, any conduct steps of the adjudication that the adjudicators decided to do, or when they issue a determination, having some kind of admin support to proofread it or issue it to the parties. It’s that kind of background stuff to support the adjudicator.

Steve Kooner: So will this administrative support be working for the actual adjudicators or for the adjudication authority?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes, the admin support would be coming from the team of the adjudication authority.

Steve Kooner: Now, sometimes you may have a workforce that’s unionized, and sometimes they may be just non-unionized. What happens, say, if you’ve got this administrative staff that’s operating the adjudication and is really acting as a big support for hearing all these cases, and all of a sudden a strike happens? What do you do then?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Of course, people have the right to strike, and that’s part of our labour rights in the province.

The adjudication authority, under the contract or however they’re designated, would have the responsibility to oversee all of these actions no matter what the state of the labour situation in their organization.

Steve Kooner: But are there any guidelines from the province on how to do that? There may be a lot of cases, and the whole purpose of…. The reason why I’m asking this is because the purpose of this legislation is prompt payment. Where dealing with prompt payment, we also have to be foreseeing situations where you may not be able to get prompt payment.

If there’s a strike, what happens to those people? Do they just wait until the strike is over? Is there a plan? What is the plan?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We would not issue guidelines for such a thing. Our responsibility is…. The adjudication authority has the responsibility to deliver the service once we’ve given them that authority.

Steve Kooner: The next one I have here is subclause (g), “perform any prescribed duties.” If the Attorney General can just elaborate on that subclause, please.

Hon. Niki Sharma: This is a clause that allows us to add regulation to this. If there is anything we need to add to this list by regulation, it gives us that ability.

Steve Kooner: Since we are dealing with the duties of the adjudication authority here, there are many different things that the adjudication authority may be required to do pursuant to clause 42.

I think I suddenly brought up FOI earlier, but when I brought it up, I was referring to the government. Would an adjudication authority be subject to FOI requests?

[5:10 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: I just want to root it in the purpose of this.

The intention of this is not to have a government body deliver prompt payment for British Columbians with all the obligations that we rightly put on government, including FOI and all those things. The goal of this is to have a self-funded, industry-led process that is away from government and just gets carried on by the parties picking it up to resolve their disputes.

When you look at it that way, the answer to that is: it wouldn’t have the same obligations, like FOI and that, on government. It would be a party-led decision.

You would imagine that the industry that goes to ask for these disputes to be resolved would have a lot of information that would be subject to their commercial interests that they want resolved through the adjudication. So in order for this to work, it very much has to be industry-led and separate from government.

Steve Kooner: Is there a maximum caseload that will be prescribed per adjudicator that the authority must enforce?

Hon. Niki Sharma: The idea is not to put those types of limits on it. So if you imagine how it’s going to work, the parties will decide on the adjudicator and ask the adjudicator on the roster: “Will you take on this issue?” Then it’s up to the adjudicator if they say: “Yes or no, I’ll take it on.”

I think where you might come up against problems would be if that adjudicator is not meeting whatever timelines, that they’re very much held to because it’s a prompt payment regime, for their determinations and moving the case along.

Steve Kooner: How will the adjudication authority prevent parties from adjudicator shopping? What if everybody just wants one adjudicator? There’s a system. There are all these adjudicators. We want to make sure, in order to get prompt payment, that the whole system is working.

To a certain degree, people can do adjudicator shopping, but if it happens too much, then that will really bog down the system. Then you may not see prompt payment. Is there a process to protect against that?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This is straying from this clause and this particular subsection about prescribed duties. I just would note that, Chair. But I’ll answer and then hope that we get more specific after.

The way it would work is two parties would have to agree on an adjudicator. They would go towards a roster, and they would jointly agree on who they want and then approach them on it. If they’re unable to agree, the adjudication authority appoints the adjudicator, so that mitigates against the risk that the member raises.

[5:15 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Just going back to (g) here, does the Attorney General have any ideas about what these prescribed duties will be? Is there any list at this current time?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think, it just is really giving us that flexibility that you often see in legislation to be able to do regulations that add to the responsibilities of the adjudication authority if needed.

Steve Kooner: A little bit earlier we talked about the complaint process. We talked about the procedures. What I learned from that was, essentially, that it’s going to be left up to the adjudication authority to come up with the process. And if there are problems with it, then those can be dealt with through regulations or by just changing the adjudication authority.

What I did not ask was…. I learned about the process, how it’s going to work and what can be done to deal with it. But what I didn’t ask was timeline.

If there’s a complaint that comes, will there be something in the prescribed regulation that says that if a complaint comes, yes, you will deal with it, and you will have the expertise to deal with it; you will deal with it, but you will also deal with it in a timely manner? The whole purpose of this legislation is prompt payment, so we want to make sure everything is timely.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think we have to remember the balance between what you put in legislation and what you might put in regulation.

So the question about the timelines…. First of all, we would expect that the code of conduct that we talked about previously would outline the timelines along with the process. It’s usually a pretty standard part of describing a process. We talked about how it would likely describe a process for suspending or moving our complaints. Then on top of that, if we don’t see what we would think should be there, we have this additional ability through regulation to do that.

The Chair: Shall clause 42 pass?

Division has been called.

[5:20 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.]

Clause 42 approved unanimously on a division. [See Votes and Proceedings.]

On clause 43.

Steve Kooner: We are talking about administrative fees.

Can I get a recess, please? I’m requesting a recess.

The Chair: Members, a recess has been requested. We will take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 5:31 p.m. to 5:34 p.m.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Members. We’ll call this House back to order where we are working on clause 43.

[5:35 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: In clause 43, we’re getting into administrative fees. We’ve spent some time talking about fees, mostly from the Attorney General’s side. The Attorney General has explained that this is a cost-neutral platform. It’s not going to cost the government anything. It’s all going to be funded by the parties.

We had a little bit of a discussion earlier that the people that are going to get involved are going to be paying some fees. I guess now we’ve made it to this section, this clause. It deals with administrative fees.

The first subclause, 43(1), reads: “Subject to the regulations, an adjudication authority may establish fees in relation to the administration of adjudication under this Act, including without limitation.”

The first thing I want to make sure is that we understand the drafting of this particular clause. “Subject to regulations” — I get that. “Adjudication authority” — we’ve spent some time on that. And it says “may establish fees.”

Once again, I thought this whole system was going to be funded by the parties that go to the dispute. Why do we put in the language “may”? Do we not want to make sure that the government’s not going to be paying anything to this adjudication authority to operate it?

There’s permissive language, “may.” Perhaps the Attorney General can enlighten us on this.

Hon. Niki Sharma: The “may” is here for a good reason. You may establish fees, but if we put “must” in there, then it would be more restrictive in the sense where the adjudication authority may not decide, for certain types of appointments or one of the other things, to establish fees. We wanted to make sure that there was the power but also the flexibility.

Steve Kooner: Then this provision goes a little bit further. It says: “may establish fees in relation to the administration of adjudication under this Act, including, without limitation, fees in relation to training or qualification of adjudicators.”

What are some examples of fees in relation to training or qualification of adjudicators?

[5:40 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: This is a really important provision. I’m going to spend a little bit of time explaining the structure, because I think it’s going to be important to the question. The reason that everything in 43 is subject to regulations is because the purpose is to have a very low-barrier process that doesn’t penalize somebody that can’t access it, who doesn’t have as much money to do it. So the regulatory-making power is pretty key here.

We can, as a government, watch the fees and step in if we feel like they are overly burdensome or not doing what we think it should do. That’s an important aspect of the regulatory-making power.

The clause that the member is asking about, the first one, is in relation to adjudicators. We mentioned that adjudicators, and that’ll come later on…. The adjudication authority. One of their primary roles is to make sure that adjudicators on their roster have the qualifications that they need, and that means a certification process. This would be a fee in relation to whatever that certification or training process to get on the roster would be.

Steve Kooner: Okay, so that explains that subclause, but what about subclause (b), fees for appointments under section 23 [selection of adjudicator]? Maybe the Attorney General can enlighten us on that subclause.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Okay, so this is a fee with respect to the situation that’s set out in section 23, where the parties can’t agree on an adjudicator, and then the adjudication authority appoints. They may set out a fee for appointments under that section.

I’ll note it’s permissive, but it’s not required. And I think, in Ontario, with the settlement provision, they have not set out a fee for appointments under section 23.

Steve Kooner: So subclause (c): “fees for the purposes of section 24 (1) (a) [adjudication fees]. Can we get an elaboration on that?

[5:45 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: That particular subsection is related to the cost of adjudication, so that’s the part that’s paid for by parties. And it’s one where the fee schedule — or the way that the roster of adjudicators and what they charge, hourly or flat fee — is going to be really important to the parties.

Steve Kooner: I’m going to subclause (2) of this. It talks about: “In establishing a fee under subsection (1), an adjudication authority may specify an amount or a method for determining an amount.” Could we get elaboration on that?

Hon. Niki Sharma: It just gives the flexibility to say an amount, so an hourly rate or something, or a method, which is a flat rate — the flexibility of how you may pay.

Steve Kooner: And in regards to subclause (3), “a fee under subsection (1) must be paid to the adjudication authority.” Now, this one has obligatory language here: must be paid to the adjudication authority. I guess the first point I’ll ask is: why not permissive language here?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Because it’s a fee to be paid, it’s “must,” making it clear to all involved that it’s a requirement to be paid.

Steve Kooner: Thank you for that answer.

Just like a complete elaboration on this clause, what was the thinking behind this clause?

Hon. Niki Sharma: This clause was about administration fees, and I think I mentioned earlier the fact that this would be a self-funded authority, with also the purpose, as I mentioned at the beginning, of making sure that the fees can be…. Well, they will be much cheaper than going to court, but that we could make sure that…. We’re watching to make sure that there are fees that are accessible to parties and that we have that regulatory-making power to step in if needed.

Steve Kooner: This clause is all about administration fees and fees that the parties will have to pay. In regards to this, the Attorney General touched on it a little bit. You want to make sure the fees are affordable, because this is all about prompt payment and making sure they have ease of access to the system, but it’s not costing the parties that much money.

The Attorney General mentioned that there are regulations. Everything is subject to the regulations so the government can get involved to see if the fees are unfair and, if they are, to put some guidelines in place.

[5:50 p.m.]

My question here…. When establishing a fee, adjudication authority may specify an amount or a method for determining an amount. Is there going to be any sort of internal procedure in deciding what a fair fee is?

I know there might be regulations coming out, but I was told earlier that the regulations in regards to this particular clause are that they can change the fee, or they can put better guidelines. Rather than wait until then to have further regulations, what about when this process actually starts? Will there be something in place for the adjudication authority to say that this is the amount they should be charging, that this is what’s fair?

Hon. Niki Sharma: It’s going to be a pretty key part of the process in the phase 2 implementation. If we imagine, when we put out there to the world that we are looking for an adjudication authority, we want them to meet all these requirements, and we want them to be self-funded…. The component of being self-funded is how much in fees they are charging.

We are interested in that discussion of…. Selecting that person would be to ensure that their fees are low enough to meet the access-to-justice expectations that we would have. We would look at similar jurisdictions that are running this kind of program and what they are charging.

Then, probably, there would be a way to judge whether or not we feel like the applications we’re getting in are meeting that standard. It’s a pretty integral part of the whole process about the fees section. We don’t have to set a regulation. It could be done just through those discussions with the authority and whoever we select, the adjudication authority. But we can do that if we need to.

Steve Kooner: My understanding is that the level of scrutiny that will come from the government is at two stages.

One is in the initial stage, when, if you will, tenders will come in for getting the job of adjudication authority. At that time, the potential adjudication authority will explain: “This is how we’re going to operate. This is probably our template for our fees. This is how much we’re going to charge people.” That’s one way. Then the government will get an opportunity to decide whether they want to go with that potential adjudication authority or with some other one. So that’s one way to control the fees.

The other aspect is that if the fees have not been controlled, the government can go through regulations to actually decide. At that point, a standard would be to compare what’s happening in other jurisdictions.

Is my understanding correct?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yeah. I think that’s a fair summary.

[5:55 p.m.]

Steve Kooner: Is there any other method to scrutinize or to make sure there’s no abuse of power when it comes to these fees that are going to be charged? I get that there’s regulation, but regulation takes some time. How can it be ensured that the adjudication authority does not abuse its power when it is determining fees?

There might be other fees that are not mentioned, or there might be increases that the adjudication authority does. They may initially…. In the plan to get the agreement to actually be the adjudication authority, they may propose certain fees, but once they’re the actual adjudication authority, they may say that they want to increase the fees. What if an increase happens and it’s excessive? Is there another mechanism other than going to regulation?

To change regulation is a little bit of a process. First the government would have to find out that this is going on. Once that happens, then there would have to be some sort of process from the government to change a regulation. In the meantime, this adjudication authority may have seen, I don’t know, hundreds of cases that have come through, and the fee may have been charged because that’s more of an instant process versus the government regulation process.

So is there any other mechanism to deal with the increases? We’ve talked about the set rate, what’s going to be the set rate, but another process to deal with increases to the fees.

Hon. Niki Sharma: There is a range of things that we would be able to do. We anticipate right now that there would just be one adjudication authority, but let’s say, in the instance that there’s….

First of all, you could end the contract with that entity if it’s really problematic. That was one avenue we talked about. Or you could designate multiple adjudication authorities. One of the pressures on that adjudication authority is also that if they set the price too high, nobody will use them. They want to be competitive in a marketplace for dispute resolution. That’s another lever that’s just naturally in that.

We have more than just regulation that we could use.

Steve Kooner: In order to be competitive…. But there’s only one adjudication authority, correct? Who do they have to be competitive with? They’re already operating, and it’s not like there are a few different adjudication authorities. They already got that contract. They’re operating. So how does that help them self-regulate?

Hon. Niki Sharma: There is the ability to designate more than one adjudication authority if needed. Like I said, I don’t think we anticipate that, but I think we’re speculating on worst-case hypotheticals — if everything is going badly, what tools we might have. I was just giving an example of what could happen.

Steve Kooner: Sometimes what we see is, when there are affordability issues or there are low-income entities that come forward, there’s some sort of exemption on certain fees. That’s a common theme that you see throughout the industry. Sometimes some fees get waived.

We’re dealing with prompt payment. We’re dealing with making the process easier, more efficient and less costly. Is there a mechanism here to do a little bit extra for people that are struggling?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Just to say that it says “may” in there, so it gives that flexibility in terms of when fees are charged and when fees aren’t.

Also, there’s an ability through setting a fee schedule, and I think they’ve done this in other jurisdictions, to make sure that it’s clear what the cheapest level of service is, so we can have a threshold that’s the most affordable for people. Many mechanisms to get at that.

With that, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: This committee stands adjourned.

The committee rose at 6:00 p.m.

The House resumed at 6:03 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Lorne Doerkson: Committee for Bill 20 reports progress and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Reporting of Bills

Bill 31 — Energy Statutes
Amendment Act, 2025

Steve Morissette: Section A reports Bill 31 complete without amendment.

The Speaker: When shall the bill be read a third time?

Hon. Mike Farnworth: Now.

Third Reading of Bills

Bill 31 — Energy Statutes
Amendment Act, 2025

The Speaker: Members, the question is third reading of Bill 31, intituled Energy Statutes Amendment Act, 2025.

Division has been called.

[6:05 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.]

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 46
Lore	G. Anderson	Blatherwick
Routledge	Chant	Toporowski
B. Anderson	Neill	Osborne
Brar	Krieger	Davidson
Parmar	Sunner	Beare
Chandra Herbert	Wickens	Kang
Sandhu	Begg	Higginson
Phillip	Lajeunesse	Choi
Rotchford	Elmore	Morissette
Popham	Dix	Sharma
Farnworth	Eby	Bailey
Kahlon	Greene	Whiteside
Boyle	Ma	Yung
Malcolmson	Gibson	Glumac
Arora	Shah	Chow
	Dhir
NAYS — 46
Wilson	Kindy	Milobar
Warbus	Rustad	Banman
Wat	Kooner	Halford
Hartwell	L. Neufeld	Van Popta
Dew	Clare	K. Neufeld
Valeriote	Botterell	Brodie
Armstrong	Bhangu	Paton
Gasper	Chan	Toor
Hepner	Giddens	Rattée
Davis	McInnis	Bird
McCall	Stamer	Day
Tepper	Mok	Chapman
Maahs	Kealy	Sturko
Boultbee	Williams	Loewen
Dhaliwal	Doerkson	Luck
	Block

The Speaker: Hon. Members, there being an equal number of votes for and against, the Chair must make a casting vote. Given that Bill 31 passed earlier stages of consideration with majority support, the Chair votes in favour of the motion for third reading of the bill.

Bill 31 has been read a third time and has passed.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Section C reports progress on Bill 25 and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Hon. Mike Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued debate, committee stage on Bill 20.

In the Douglas Fir Room, Section A, I call continued committee stage on Bill 25.

[6:20 p.m.]

The House in Committee, Section B.

The committee met at 6:22 p.m.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 20 — Construction Prompt
Payment Act
(continued)

The Chair: All right, Members, we’ll call this House back to order, where we are considering Bill 20, the Construction Prompt Payment Act, and we will hear from Richmond-Queensborough.

On clause 43 (continued).

Steve Kooner: We were discussing administrative fees in clause 43 here. We had just gone through the subclauses, and we were talking about fairness of fees. An explanation was provided.

The fee section is very important, because, like I was stating earlier, we have to make sure that the fees are affordable. Affordability is really important, because the whole purpose behind this legislation was to have prompt payment, to make sure contractors are able to collect payment and for them to be able to do that in an efficient manner. Until this time, we had access to the courts and then maybe the Civil Resolution Tribunal, if the amount was very small.

One of the major impediments for the court process was the fees. So that’s why this is a very important clause that we’re looking at. We’ve discussed a little bit about how you get to the fees. We’ve discussed if the fees are increased and they’re specifically very onerous.

Just before the break, we talked about: what if some people can’t afford the fees? There could be some type of solution for those people that can’t afford it as well, as the Attorney General was explaining before the break.

[6:25 p.m.]

So I just have some more questions related to this fees section. Will the ministry set any caps for any fee amounts through regulation? Will there be a cap?

I know we’ve discussed the process and all that, and there’s nothing onerous, and then, also, exemptions, but most of the discussion has been around, generally, what can be done to make sure these fees are fair. We didn’t discuss hard caps in terms of fees, set rates. We were told a little bit about how these adjudication authorities have to be competitive because there might be some competition. We have not heard whether there will be some hard, fixed, capped fees, and it’s important to know that because the whole intent behind this legislation is efficiency and also affordability.

So will there be some hard, fixed fees, as well, that are presented by the government through the regulations?

Hon. Niki Sharma: The way the system is set up in other jurisdictions is that they have a difference between a flat fee, which is essentially a capped amount that the parties could agree to, and that flat fee would be for the adjudication, or they have an hourly rate model, which could be another thing that the parties agree to.

They also have fees dependent on complexity, because this system might have a range of adjudications up to multi-million-dollar ones or thousands-of-dollar ones, so you would have a range depending on complexity as well.

Steve Kooner: Another formula, since you sometimes see…. There may be set fees. There might be fixed fees. There might be increasing fees. There are all different types of fees. There’s a thing called retroactive fees as well. Sometimes somebody engages a process and then perhaps, maybe…. I don’t know if it’s possible.

Is it possible for this adjudication authority to say: “Well, the case is running through the process, but now we’re increasing the fees and they’re going to be applied retroactively”? Is that possible, and what are those circumstances, if it’s possible?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We can’t foresee that ever coming up in this type of system because the parties would agree right at the beginning what their fee structure would be. So that would be, in a sense, locked in, in that discussion or that adjudication. Plus there are pretty strict timelines, so things have to move through the process very quickly.

Steve Kooner: We did talk about increases to fees, but whenever we have increases to fees, it’s important for the public to know those fees have gone up. Will there be an opportunity to have public notice?

[The bells were rung.]

The Chair: Let me just pause for a moment, Member.

Thank you very much.

Steve Kooner: So the question was, because we were talking about increases and the public needs to have notice if the fees get increased, is there a mechanism? Will the government be prescribing in their regulations that whenever there’s an increase to fees, there should be some sort of public notice provided?

[6:30 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: Every time there’s a regulation made it’s obviously public, so that would be publicly published and available, and also the adjudication authority would have their fees online.

Steve Kooner: We’re discussing fees, and I’m just thinking about the situations I’ve seen fees charged. We’ve talked about retroactive fees. We’ve talked about increasing fees. We’ve talked about fixed fees. There’s also percentage fees. Sometimes, in the legal profession, there’s a percentage fee. That’s what…. Now we’re kind of talking about a quasi-legal form.

Does the Attorney General’s department foresee any percentage fees being applied from this clause?

Hon. Niki Sharma: It is broad enough to include a range of ways. The way you know that is subsection (2), where it says that the adjudication authority may specify an amount or a method of determining an amount. With that flexibility, you could see scenarios, particularly when it comes to adjudication fees, where there’s maybe a percentage of the payment owed or some other regime that’s put in place.

Steve Kooner: Another situation I thought of when we’re looking at fees…. There might be an incentive to get certain cases through the door. Maybe in a specific industry, it might be that there’s a very important project that’s happening. Maybe there’s an excavation that’s coming to B.C. or something. So it makes sense to get certain projects to get all the payment issues dealt with in a certain industry.

We talked about the fee being lowered when there are low-income parties. Would this also allow…? Would the government put in an incentive that when there are high-priority industries involved…? You want to see their cases come in. Will there be some fee incentives for that type of situation?

[6:35 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: The way this is operating in other jurisdictions…. The one thing that’s for sure is it’s much cheaper than taking a claim to any kind of court system.

I guess, the other balancing act that we have is that the adjudication authority is self-funded, so they would have to have an ability to sustain themselves and their staff to enable to do this. Those are the factors that would go into making sure, plus the regulatory ability, that we’ve set it at the lowest barrier possible for people that need it.

Steve Kooner: Another type of fee that you hear about often is called a referral fee. Now, there might be some people sending in…. They want to share a bit of the fee that’s created by this adjudication authority. I don’t know if that’s ethical. Is there something to prevent that, or is that permissive as well?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I don’t think there is a scenario there we could think of where a referral fee would be at play. I don’t think that’s part of the fee structure that these organizations walk right under.

Steve Kooner: We have a form here, the adjudication authority, and then we have the individual adjudicators or decision-makers. Eventually the decision-makers are going to be on a roster, and they’re going to want to get paid. But then they might be able to bring parties to the adjudication authority. They may say: “Well, look, we’ll bring a party to get the dispute done. Can we get a cut out of whatever administration fees that you have as well?” That could be a hypothetical example.

Would this situation allow for something like that to happen? If it does allow, I see some issues with it. People are just bringing decisions. There could be potential conflict issues related to that. I’m just wondering if the Attorney General’s department turned their minds to that.

Hon. Niki Sharma: As we talked over the scenario provided by the member, we couldn’t think of how that would be anything except for a breach of a code of conduct. If the adjudicator who’s meant to act impartially for the parties that they represent goes to the adjudication body and says, “Give me a cut because I brought this dispute to you,” that’s different than the scheduled fee structure and the arrangement. That’s pretty clear out there.

[6:40 p.m.]

As we were talking through that, Katie looked at the rules for the code of conduct in the Ontario model, and it specifically says in there that you can’t charge. You can’t do such a thing as the member described. So I think that would be definitely outside of anything that we’ve established.

Steve Kooner: In terms of that referenced code of conduct, would this government encourage for that type of code of conduct to be adopted here in B.C., with the adjudication authority?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Yes. There are a couple of ways that we would be able to do that.

One is through the regulatory powers in 49, where it actually explicitly says they have to “establish a code of conduct for adjudicators.”

If, in some scenario, they decide that their code of conduct doesn’t include the type of behaviour that the member is describing, about a referral fee, then we would have the regulatory power to step in.

Steve Kooner: Another situation. When I’m thinking about fees, I think about the court registry. If you go to a court registry, they’ll say to you: “We’ll only take payment by debit card or cheque.”

Then, when you want to use a credit card, that’s not an option. But when you have businesses that need an affordable option of a forum, maybe they don’t have the cash on hand for debit or a cheque, and they may need some credit. I don’t believe the court registry takes a credit card.

Will there be something in this mechanism, in this adjudication forum, where fees can be paid and the method of payment could be an actual credit card, rather than somebody stipulating: “Well, if you don’t have the cash, we’re not going to file anything for you.”

Hon. Niki Sharma: The section is broad enough to say that the authority may specify an amount or method for determining an amount.

Steve Kooner: I think there’s one other option in terms of fees. We’ve talked about retroactive fees, increasing fees, initial fees and referral fees, and we’ve just talked about how to pay those fees. Another fee situation could be…. We talked about reducing fees, but what we have not talked about is completely getting rid of fees.

Now, if the adjudication authority is profitable, is making money, and they decide that they just want to not charge fees for certain individuals, would that be acceptable, or will the province regulate that? The issue I see with that is that if some people are getting charged fees and some are not, it could be a fairness issue. If the Attorney General can enlighten us on that.

Hon. Niki Sharma: The clause is drafted very broadly. So for all the possibilities that I think the member describes — about the adjudication authority deciding, “Hey, we don’t need to do a fee for this anymore” — it’s all possible. I guess the way that that would play out likely would be: first of all, is there a regulation that they have to abide by?

[6:45 p.m.]

Then the second part of that is: if not, they have to be viable. They’re self-funded. They have to be viable. So that would be a consideration as well.

Steve Kooner: In a previous clause, we talked about annual reporting — that being done. But we’re on the financial section of this particular bill. We’re talking about fees.

Sometimes you’ve got to do accounting. I know, in certain professions, the professional body usually asks: “Okay, how much came in the accounts?” They want to see if there’s any sort of financial mismanagement and stuff like that that’s happening.

Going to this particular clause, will there be any requirement on the adjudication authority to have some precise reporting on the financial situation in terms of all these fees that are being collected?

Hon. Niki Sharma: Asked and answered.

Steve Kooner: Another situation is, say, if the Attorney General’s department doesn’t like how the adjudication authority is operating. It’s time for the adjudication authority to go, and it’s time to get a new one. But then there are some funds sitting within the adjudication authority from the fees, and these fees have to do with active cases.

What’s going to happen when you’re dealing with a private entity, a corporate body that is holding those funds? Did the government actually think about that situation? What happens to those fees that people have paid when they have ongoing cases and the government has to revoke the designation of the adjudication authority?

The Chair: Attorney General.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Thank you, Chair. I’ve been answering pretty broadly, but I just would take your guidance. I think, first of all, we answered this question under 42, and this is beyond the scope of that section.

I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: This committee stands adjourned.

The committee rose at 6:47 p.m.

The House resumed at 6:48 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Lorne Doerkson: Committee for Bill 20 reports progress and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Section A reports progress on Bill 25 and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Hon. Ravi Parmar moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:49 p.m.

Proceedings in the
Douglas Fir Room

The House in Committee, Section A.

The committee met at 3:25 p.m.

[Debra Toporowski / Qwulti’stunaat in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 31 — Energy Statutes
Amendment Act, 2025
(continued)

The Chair: Good afternoon. I call the Committee of the Whole on Bill 31 to order.

On clause 2 (continued).

David Williams: Good afternoon to everybody here. I’m glad to get back looking at clause 2 of this bill. To start with, I have a few questions I’d like to cover.

Going back, on clause 2, to subsection 2(3)(a), this is for application for existing and future customers. If the minister does not intend to prohibit the sale of electricity to existing customers or pre-existing projects, can the minister please explain why subsection (3)(a) is drafted so broadly that it also applies to both existing and future projects?

Hon. Adrian Dix: It applies to projects existing in the queue as well as future projects.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister for the answer.

If it pertains to some projects that are in the queue, would the minister please explain some of the projects that are in the queue? If you are going to use these powers to affect any existing powers, would you entertain an amendment restricting some of the powers to some of the new or pre-existing?

Hon. Adrian Dix: In these areas — remember, we’re talking about limited areas in section 2 — they’ll go into the process.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

We’ll move on to clause 2(3)(b). This has more to do with duplication and rate setting. Can the minister explain why the government requires the authority to enforce rates under subsection 3(b)(i) to (iv) when the B.C. Utilities Commission already sets just and reasonable rates for industrial customers?

Hon. Adrian Dix: I’m happy to answer this question for the third or fourth time. If, in fact, in the process, one of the conditions looked at is price and return to the people of the province, return to B.C. Hydro, that’s the ability to set rates. As we’ve established and said, maybe more than a dozen times, the B.C. Utilities Commission doesn’t set rates.

David Williams: Can the minister please explain why the government is giving itself the power to set rates while simultaneously giving itself the authority to require and allow BCUC to set rates?

Hon. Adrian Dix: I just answered this question. We’re setting up an allocation framework that we’ve detailed now extensively in the House. On this specific question, we’ve answered a number of times.

[3:30 p.m.]

Government, of course, on occasion does have the power to set rates, and it did through most of the previous government’s last half. But set that aside, and BCUC doesn’t set rates. It reviews rate applications by B.C. Hydro.

When you’re establishing an allocation framework that includes the issue of return to B.C. Hydro and return to the people of the province, that allocation framework, which we’re setting up through regulation here and establishing in this bill, requires that. And it will be B.C. Hydro that manages that process, as we’ve said a number of times in this debate.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

I thank you for the clarification, and I apologize for any duplication of any questions. Just want to get to the bottom of and to clarify some of the facts.

Maybe the minister can tell me why the government just didn’t simply direct B.C. Hydro to establish new rate classes or tariffs instead of centralizing rate-setting power within the cabinet.

Also, second to that question, when we’re going to be setting rates and there’s going to be an allocation and there’s going to be different rate-setting, is there going to be any consultation prior, and will they be publicized?

Hon. Adrian Dix: The purpose of this section is to set up an allocation framework in the areas of artificial intelligence data centres and hydrogen for export. There will be an opportunity in a transparent manner based on criteria, yes, set up after consultation — with industry; with First Nations; with many others; indeed, with the opposition, as I committed to yesterday — in terms of what those criteria are.

The allocation framework will be set up in a transparent way, and a competition will be held by B.C. Hydro. Part of that competition is this issue of rates. I think, since we’ve gone through this, and the Green Party, the member for Peace River South and the member have gone through this before, I’ll just say that that is what’s happening in this case.

So this isn’t the creation of new rate classes, as he suggests. Quite the contrary. It’s a process and an allocation framework that allows companies and people who wish in those areas to access B.C.’s inexpensive clean electricity to have that opportunity and to make their best bids in the interests of the people of B.C. I look forward to the member’s contribution to what those criteria should be.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister. That leads me right into the next question.

Does the government intend on charging or rationing electricity customers at higher rates, one rate class over another, than other industrial customers?

Hon. Adrian Dix: What this allocation framework does is assure that those industries and those projects that have the greatest return to British Columbia, in terms of jobs, in terms of wealth, in terms of royalty, will continue to have access to electricity and not make the choice of simply leaving it open to rapidly scaling industries like other jurisdictions have.

This provision protects ratepayers, which the government continues and certainly has demonstrated in its record, and I think the member would agree with this; 12 percent below the rate of inflation since 2017 in hydro rate increases is consistently done.

With respect to the generation of electricity, this is a question responded to a number of times from the opposition. To make it clear, they’re not in favour of transmission in terms of the North Coast transmission line. You require transmission of electricity to deliver it to customers. They’re not in favour of generation. We’ve put forward calls for power that the opposition has opposed.

All of that said, B.C. Hydro, as demonstrated in detail in the integrated resource plan, is continuing to build for what is a very exciting period in B.C. life, where demand for electricity will grow because the economy will grow. We need, as B.C. Hydro always has, to be there for the B.C. economy to ensure that people have access to electricity, to create jobs, wealth and, of course, to heat their homes and to enjoy all the benefits of having a public utility.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister. We definitely agree that we want to see the economy grow, and we certainly do believe we want to see as many customers get the power that they need. We do not want to restrict any kind of power or any kind of ability to get that power. We certainly want this economy to grow in this province.

My question to the minister is: will the government delegate rate-setting for rationed customers to B.C. Hydro? If so, what oversight will the BCUC provide?

Hon. Adrian Dix: All of that is not what the section does, as we’ve established over time. The opposition may disagree with the section, but it really has nothing to do with that particular analysis.

[3:35 p.m.]

As I’ve said more than a dozen times — happy to say it a 13th — BCUC doesn’t set rates, and under this government, as opposed to the previous government, rates have gone down against the rate of inflation, which I think the member would agree is a good thing.

Our concern with rates is clearly demonstrated by the section we’re discussing, which is to ensure that we pace growth in rapidly scalable industries so that we are able to insulate ratepayers and ensure that when we make choices about the clean electricity B.C. has in those rapidly scalable industries, we make choices in the public interest.

I’m certainly interested in the member’s view of the public interest on that point, but the question and what’s implied by the question is simply not correct.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

My understanding is that the last rate by B.C. Hydro was actually overridden by cabinet and wasn’t currently set by the BCUC. We want to make sure, going down the road, that whoever is in charge of setting the rates, whether it be B.C. Hydro or BCUC, there’s actually input from groups, including the public, so that rates reflect the costs and that the ratepayer is actually getting a good return for their money.

We do applaud the fact that rates have been kept low, but the fact is that was overridden by order in council as far as my understanding was.

My question to the minister is going back to subsection 3(d) and 3(e). Under subsection 3(d), can the minister outline what rules or procedures a public utility must follow to select which customers are eligible to receive electricity service for a listed purpose?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Yesterday the member for Peace River South put forward an amendment to this very provision, which asked for the input of the opposition. While the amendment didn’t succeed, I’ve certainly agreed to hearing and having them involved in that process to set criteria. Other members have put forward other amendments on this section.

This is the section of the bill where we set criteria under the allocation framework, criteria such as return to the province, data sovereignty, jobs, and so on. This is the subject of this section of the bill, as the member knows. That’s the role, and we certainly will be involving everyone in setting that role. Then it will be B.C. Hydro’s responsibility, based on those criteria, to run a competition for access to that power. That’s what this section is about.

David Williams: I thank the minister. I just wanted to get clarity because we certainly want to make sure that allocation is based on merit. We want to make sure that basic main requirements will benefit this province the best or most needed.

Going to subsection 3(e), can the minister explain what “competitive process” will look like under subsection 3(e) (i)?

Hon. Adrian Dix: As we’ve discussed on a number of occasions here, this is the allocation process. The criteria would be set by regulation, and it would be B.C. Hydro’s responsibility to run what’s effectively a competition for requests for B.C. Hydro’s clean power in these sectors, artificial intelligence and data centres in particular.

That is the process that’s being set up here, and the allocation decisions will be made by B.C. Hydro in the way that they do in many competitions, including recent calls for power that we’ve discussed in this committee a number of times.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

Can the minister guarantee that his instructions to B.C. Hydro will make sure that the criteria are public knowledge?

Hon. Adrian Dix: The criteria will be public knowledge. The regulations will be published. Then there will be an open request for proposals.

[3:40 p.m.]

There will be an intake period for requests for proposals. Projects will submit proposals. Those will be evaluated. B.C. Hydro will determine the electricity allocation for the projects, and successful projects will then formally enter into the interconnection queue. That’s the full process.

David Williams: I thank the minister. I can skip my next question because that had to do with criteria.

Will the public, the Legislature or affected industries be able to review these criteria before they’re enacted?

Hon. Adrian Dix: In the development of these regulations — I’ve laid out, I would say probably at least 20 times, what I expect those criteria to be — there’ll be, of course, a consultation process involving groups before the criteria are set. Then they’ll be made public. Then there’ll be an open process where that’s laid out for all people who want to seek access for power.

That process will be done as request-for-proposal processes are done. Typically at B.C. Hydro, that’s under the support of an ethics adviser. B.C. Hydro will determine — based on the criteria and based on, of course, most importantly, the proposals — the allocation of power.

Donegal Wilson: You’d mentioned the interconnection queue. It twigged something for me. I’m wondering. Will the cabinet commit to continuing to publish an annual industrial demand queue report?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, obviously, we don’t publish the queue of companies, because that would be confidential information for those companies. But what we do is publish — we’ve just done that in the last couple weeks — the integrated resources plan, which lays out in detail both B.C. Hydro’s demand forecasts and generation plans for the period. All that’s available in public in hundreds of pages, and it’s currently under review by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

Donegal Wilson: Would the companies that were either curtailed or managed through this bill be included in…? Would we know that those companies have demand that we’re not serving? Would that be included in that report?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Yeah, there would be…. We’re talking about a process, an allocation framework process, that I’ve described on a number of occasions here in this House, in this committee. At the end of that process, what happens, typically, is that successful proponents are contacted, and unsuccessful ones are as well. They have the opportunity, typically, to meet with B.C. Hydro on request for proposals.

Information, not detailed information…. We wouldn’t be publishing the names of unsuccessful companies, obviously, in those processes. But that process would be very public. There would be a report on the allocation process done by B.C. Hydro that would be publicly available — the criteria publicly available, the processes publicly available.

Obviously, the bids aren’t publicly available in the sense that companies that take part in such processes are often competitors with other companies, and they would want that information to be confidential. But they certainly, should they not succeed, would have occasion as unsuccessful participants — say, in the call for power — to discuss that with B.C. Hydro.

Donegal Wilson: I appreciate the background and the minister’s knowledge, for sure.

While we can’t say who they are, would we be tracking specifically what sectors and how much load we are theoretically waiting for power to serve?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Yeah, there’s detailed information about that in the integrated resources plan, in particular for the northwest, which is of interest to the other clause in the bill which we’ve passed in this House.

There is detailed information on that, including information on industrial demand by industry. So we know that there were literally thousands of megawatts of demand from cryptocurrency. We satisfied 140 before the ban came in. The argument was that we should have that power for industries that contribute more to communities, such as those in the member’s riding. That’s why that decision was taken and was supported without opposition in the Legislature at that time.

[3:45 p.m.]

We do have that information equally on data centres. We know that approximately 1,400 megawatts of demand is available. That doesn’t mean they’re at the point of making contracts or anything else, but information has been sought around that, for example. A lot of that information is in the IRP, and of course it will be affected by this process.

Basically, we’re making decisions to ensure the existing access for a whole range of industries supported by massive new generation in our province, on the one hand. On the other hand, there’s quite a bit of power. Think about it. We think 150 megawatts, and people have a hard time envisioning that. That’s 30 megawatts bigger than the biggest industrial load now in the whole province, which is Highland Valley Copper.

So 150 a year, or 450 megawatts over three years, is a lot of power, for example, for artificial intelligence, and we’re saying that we should do that. B.C. Hydro should do that, and they should do that in a way that supports the public interest, which is what this section is about.

Sheldon Clare: In this bill, has consideration been made, in the ownership agreements, with regard to protection of critical infrastructure? Has there been any effort made to ensure that critical infrastructure is examined and carefully prepared for protection?

There are a lot of threats to critical infrastructure. In terms of an emergency, in case of disruptions of power or in case of a limited disruption, has there been any thought to looking at critical infrastructure protection in this particular bill?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, I’m not sure if the member is asking about the North Coast transmission line, which is the subject of section 1, which has been passed by the committee, or the allocation framework, which is very different, in section 2. We’ve had an extensive discussion, with respect to the North Coast transmission line, on this very question.

B.C. Hydro will operate the North Coast transmission line. Obviously, it does an excellent job, around our province, of dealing with the transmission system, and it has for a long time. When problems emerge, it addresses those, as I think people will appreciate, with real determination and speed. The outstanding teams at B.C. Hydro do that.

[George Anderson in the chair.]

I think the member is probably asking about the North Coast transmission line. The building of the transmission line on the allocation framework has really not anything to do with what he’s asking.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

My question to the minister is on subsection (3)(f) of clause 2. Why does the government need the ability to authorize a public utility to recover the costs it incurs, or the revenue it expects to lose, as a result of a regulation under this section?

Hon. Adrian Dix: This was answered a couple of times yesterday. I’m happy to answer it again. If money is provided by those in the queue who ultimately don’t succeed, then it’s recoverable by B.C. Hydro.

David Williams: I thank the minister for having to repeat himself so many times. I appreciate his indulgence.

My question to the minister: are existing residential, commercial or industrial customers at risk of paying the costs of government’s rationing decisions?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Quite the contrary, I would say.

What we’re doing is establishing the appropriate amount and allocations for particular industries. It’s not a small amount, as I’ve noted — 450 megawatts for AI over the next three years, which would be a significant amount; 150 megawatts for data centres. We’ve assessed that we can have an excellent competition that prioritizes B.C.’s priorities in that area.

It’s the idea that that is unfettered that is causing massive rate increases all over North America. That is the reason why other jurisdictions — such as Utah, Pennsylvania, New York, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba — have acted in the same area, in order to protect ratepayers from rapidly scalable demand, which then would go on the rate base.

[3:50 p.m.]

Having learned from all those experiences…. The 22 percent increase that people in New Jersey are facing now as a result of data centres, which itself increases costs on all the other industries in that state…. When you see that level of increase, as well as on individuals, at a very difficult time, that’s the purpose of this legislation.

The government and B.C. Hydro have done, I think, a very good job, since 2017, of ensuring that rates stay low: 12 percent under the rate of inflation, the third-lowest rates in North America, really, tied with the two other publicly held hydro systems. We’ll continue to do so.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

The one thing we agree on is that we have very good rates in this province, and we’re debating this bill here today because we want to make sure that, in the future, rates in British Columbia still are the most competitive in North America or the world. That is good for residential customers, but it’s also good for industry.

My question to the minister: can the minister describe what types of costs might be incurred or what kinds of revenues might be lost, and which customer classes would be expected to pay?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, it’s the same question on the same section. The answer is the same, which is that these are customers in the queue who might have spent money to be in the queue and that B.C. Hydro was able to recover that forgone revenue.

Jeremy Valeriote: I would like to table an amendment, please.

[CLAUSE 2, in proposed section 21.1 (3) (e), by deleting the text shown as struck out and adding the underlined text as shown:

(e) without limiting paragraph (d),

(i) requiring a public utility to conduct a competitive process to select which persons are eligible to receive electricity service for a listed purpose and determine the charges to be paid in relation to that service, and

(ii) establishing directing a public utility to establish criteria or rules for conducting the competitive process that are consistent with paragraph (d); .]

On the amendment.

Jeremy Valeriote: If this bill passes as is, under clause (d), the Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations to establish “procedures or rules by which a public utility must select which persons are eligible to receive electricity service for a listed purpose.” We’ve already attempted an amendment on that. It was defeated.

Moving down to paragraph (e), “requiring a public utility to conduct a competitive process,” the minister has talked about B.C. Hydro running a process to select who will receive electricity service. Subsection (ii) also would have cabinet reach right into the competitive process, directing the “criteria or rules for conducting the competitive process.” I would suggest this is too far.

I’ve submitted an amendment that changes that to “directing a public utility to establish criteria or rules for conducting the competitive process” that are consistent with the earlier procedures or rules that the cabinet would set.

It seems reasonable that they would use that, but the public utility should conduct that competitive process with some independence, without having cabinet dictate what rules it uses for the process.

I’ll leave that with the Chair.

The Chair: We will take a short recess and come back in five minutes.

The committee recessed from 3:53 p.m. to 3:59 p.m.

[George Anderson in the chair.]

The Chair: Members, calling Committee of the Whole on Bill 31 back to order.

Having reviewed the amendment, it’s deemed to be in order, so we’ll allow for debate on the amendment. The member has already spoken.

Minister, if you’d like to respond, please go ahead.

[4:00 p.m.]

Hon. Adrian Dix: I think the member and I have had an exchange about the B.C. Utilities Commission and whether it should be setting economic policy. I made the distinction about their role and the government’s role in that respect.

Here the member is essentially putting economic policy in the hands of B.C. Hydro and its executives and its board. While in the case of its board it would be appointed by me, removing that authority from a process where the cabinet takes responsibility, publishes regulations and then goes forward seems to be a better process than having B.C. Hydro itself determine criteria or rules for conducting the competitive process. This is more transparent.

B.C. Hydro’s role is, then, to implement that agenda and to have a fair competition based on the criteria rules set forth by, in that case, the cabinet after consultation. The consultation will take place on those criteria that the member will be aware of.

So I don’t support the amendment for, really, the same reason as the previous one. It has a similar effect. I don’t know what the member’s view would be on reflection, but I don’t think simply diverting that responsibility for economic policy and for setting the criteria to B.C. Hydro would be the right approach. It might be, depending on how you view the responsibility. I’m certainly the minister responsible for B.C. Hydro for that.

I think the appropriate place here, based on the legislation, would be a cabinet process setting the criteria and then B.C. Hydro running the competition, not B.C. Hydro setting the criteria and rules and then running the competition.

That’s why I disagree with the member. I understand the case he’s putting forward, but I disagree with it, and I think the approach in the bill itself is a better approach than what he’s suggesting.

The Chair: Seeing no further questions on the amendment, shall the amendment pass?

Division has been called.

[4:05 p.m. - 4:10 p.m.]

Before putting the question, I remind all members that only members of Section A or their duly appointed substitutes are authorized to vote.

The question is on the amendment moved by the Leader of the Third Party.

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 4
L. Neufeld	Valeriote	Mok
	Williams
NAYS — 5
Brar	Chandra Herbert	Lajeunesse
Dix		Shah

The Chair: The amendment is defeated.

David Williams: My question to the minister after our little short delay there is regarding subsection (4)(b). Under subsection (4)(b), can the minister please explain why the government is allowing B.C. Hydro to regulate itself through an order in council?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Hydro isn’t governing itself. It delegates to B.C. Hydro, based on the criteria, the question of who would be selected and who would not be selected in the allocation competition that would occur.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

Going back to subsection (4)(b), is granting a regulated monopoly the ability to regulate its own activities through a cabinet order considered normal regulatory practice? That’s a mouthful.

The Chair: I would just remind members that there is no eating in the committee room.

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, cabinet is giving the authority publicly and clearly in a regulation, and then B.C. Hydro is acting on it. It’s not regulating itself.

[4:15 p.m.]

B.C. Hydro, just as an example — the call for power. There’s a call for power in B.C. Criteria and rules were set for that call for power, and then B.C. Hydro managed that. That would be the case for many or most government agencies in the way that activities take place.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister.

Going on to subsection (4)(c). Under subsection 4(c), what procedures does the government anticipate establishing via order in council? I know it’s hypothetical.

Hon. Adrian Dix: The selection process.

David Williams: Thank you for the speedy answer. Will these procedures be made public, and again, will stakeholders be consulted?

Hon. Adrian Dix: We had this discussion yesterday, and, indeed, the opposition moved a number of amendments on this question. The answer is that in the development of the criteria and the rules, I’ve laid out what I expect generally those rules to be, the kind of criteria that you’d expect — data sovereignty, value to B.C. Hydro, etc. That will all be publicly done.

Then the process will be a public process. It would have to be for people to participate in. The rules will be clearly set out. The process will be clearly set out, as it frequently is in B.C. Hydro processes such as the call for power.

David Williams: I just wanted to clarify that through every step of the procedure there would be clarity to the public.

This bill does not address technological unknowns. For example, AI data centres may dramatically reduce the usage of electricity that they may require in the future, or there may be other technologies that are more advanced that require less electricity or less demand on the system.

Can the minister please explain what steps or processes would be required to adjust allocations if demand declines or technologies dramatically change?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, as it would be clear to the member, if the industry would become more efficient, you’d get more successful participants at the existing level.

Kiel Giddens: I haven’t been engaged in discussion on Bill 31 in this committee stage yet, but I’m happy to join the discussion. It relates to my own riding as well. That’s why I’m choosing to rise today to speak to it.

Overall, clause 2, we’re talking about allocation — allocation for different purposes, allocation by cabinet for power in this province.

I’ll use an example from the community of Mackenzie in my riding. The Canfor pulp mill was closed a few years ago, unfortunately, impacting hundreds of jobs in the community. Large-scale infrastructure not being there has been a socioeconomic harm. Since that time there, obviously, was a surplus of power that was in the community of Mackenzie. Because of that, it wasn’t being used.

B.C. Hydro…. At the time, there were options available. There was a cryptocurrency operation that set up. Iris Energy has built a bitcoin mine in Mackenzie. Other proponents have looked at the community as well because of that surplus power.

There was a surplus power up to a certain point that Iris needed. Then there was a second surplus that was still not allocated yet. B.C. Hydro actually took that away from the community of Mackenzie and allocated it elsewhere. Part of that, of course, is there’s a system impact study process.

As we’re talking about this bill overall, part of the rationale that the government, I believe, is trying to use is that the system impact study process is broken. It’s not working as it was intended. The queue doesn’t work anymore, that system, for the industrial proponents that want to access the power in B.C. Hydro’s system.

[4:20 p.m.]

With that, we have LNG projects, mining projects and the Port of Prince Rupert that are looking at it potentially as an option to get onto B.C. Hydro’s grid. But what they also need to look at is the fact that communities need to be involved in those discussions on allocation.

In Mackenzie’s example, B.C. Hydro took allocation away from their community at their discretion, but there was no discussion with Mackenzie whatsoever. When they’re looking at brownfield renewal for that site, redevelopment potential for that site, at that former Canfor pulp site…. They’ve now lost that opportunity to offer power to that industrial customer unless they can figure out a way to navigate the system impact study process.

I guess my question to the minister is: with this new model, how are communities actually going to be consulted about the allocation of power, in a community like Mackenzie?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Certainly, communities will be participating in the process of setting criteria. What we’re talking about is an allocation framework for AI; for data centres; and potentially for hydrogen for export, although that would likely not be launched immediately because the possibility for that isn’t there at the moment.

The criteria would be set out, and certainly, community impacts and community issues would be part of that, in addition to jobs and data sovereignty and the other criteria set in the process. B.C. Hydro would run the process for the allocation of power for AI and for data centres and potentially for hydrogen for export. There would be successful proponents based on the criteria. B.C. Hydro would run that process, as they do, for example, call-for-power processes.

In that case, the call-for-power process is an indication of that, where rules are set and then B.C. Hydro runs the process. In the case of the most recent successful call for power, you saw successful projects, for example, in the Prince George area and also in the northwest, in the northeast, in the Nicola Valley, in the Kelowna area and Vancouver Island.

Obviously, one of the advantages of that process and the decision to make it and the criteria in that case, maximum of 200, means there were multiple projects selected, and not just all of the new generation concentrated in one community benefited from that.

I think the result of the call for power, both on price and on the distribution of those projects throughout the province, was very successful. So that would be part of it. Certainly, local governments will be invited to be part of the engagement process around the regulations.

Kiel Giddens: I recognize that, certainly, the calls for power have happened throughout the region. There’s still firm power being needed, but we’ll leave that aside. I’ll get back to in a moment the AI and cryptocurrency piece. I just want to have a follow-up question on the community consultation side of things.

Mackenzie, with this allocation through the current problem that we have with Hydro’s process, losing that industrial power for the former Canfor site…. What that has done is that, actually, Canfor just this year was able to be…. Based on selling the site and not actually occupying it, they’re no longer required to pay their full industrial tax to the community. That’s a $1 million hit to a small, small community’s annual budget. So when we’re talking about power allocation, we’re actually talking about municipal and local government, regional district budgeting, as well, in this case.

My question is really: how are regional districts and local governments going to be consulted when cabinet makes allocation decisions that affect local government budgets, their bottom line for their taxpayers?

[4:25 p.m.]

I think local governments are going to want to know. This example in Mackenzie has hurt the community, and they’re scrambling right now.

There’s a company right now that has purchased the Canfor site, as I’ve just said, BMI Group. They’re a redevelopment firm from Ontario. But their problem is that right now they’re trying to figure out how to get access to power on the site so they can incentivize economic development on a brownfield site in a community that is desperate for economic development.

My question is: when we’re looking at cabinet being able to allocate power, how are communities actually going to be involved in that discussion when this is so centralized in Victoria?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, a version of this question has been answered a number of times, let’s say, in this debate. Cabinet isn’t picking the winners or losers. What’s being set is the criteria. Then B.C. Hydro will run a competition based on those criteria, as it did, for example, in a different process for the call for power — overseen in those significant processes, always, by an ethics adviser.

Cabinet is not allocating the power. We’re determining, essentially, the important criteria that B.C. Hydro will use in assessing that. That will include, as always, as they would in a call for power, as you would understand, a price to the ratepayer, which is an important consideration.

Other considerations…. In the case of the call for power, there was a minimum First Nations participation of 25 percent, and that was met in all the cases, and that was a requirement in that process. Cabinet will be doing it and consulting on those things, but cabinet won’t be allocating the power or choosing the winners and losers.

This has been a discussion we’ve had with a number of members. I’m happy to have it, maybe more briefly, with the member, given that. But that’s the process envisaged here for this.

For other industries, of course, it continues to be the existing allocation framework, which is first come, first served — such as, for example, forestry. We want to ensure…. Part of the reason we’re building the northwest transmission line and building out all these generation, transmission and distribution investments is to ensure that, for example, mines, forestry, ports, LNG and others have access to B.C. clean power. That’s why you’re seeing this major generation change and interest and expansion of generation.

The member will know — we’ve had, again, this discussion a number of times in the debate; I’m happy to have it again, if briefly — that there has been relatively flat demand back to about 2007 from B.C. Hydro. Partly that’s because of the success of some conservation initiatives.

Partly, as was discussed yesterday and we discussed at some length, it’s the impact of reduction, really starting in the 2000s, in the forest industry. You can see that in the effects of closures on communities and families. You can also see it in how power is used in the province, and Mackenzie is an example of that.

That’s how this allocation framework, which is limited to these areas, will happen. Communities will have an opportunity to advise the government on what the criteria are. Economic importance and, obviously, data sovereignty, I think we’d all agree, would be important for B.C. But jobs and communities and other circumstances would also be important.

Kiel Giddens: There has been a long…. In the course of the past several days, there has been a disagreement on the cabinet’s role in this and the interpretation we’re seeing. Obviously, we would say that cabinet is being given too much power to be able to allocate here in this case, and arbitrary decision-making is not something that we want to see. We want it based on fair-market principles.

I appreciate that the minister referenced the importance of data sovereignty. I have really no qualms about the idea of limiting the cryptocurrency allocation at this time. I think that is fair because of the shortage of power we have in this province at the moment. But on the data sovereignty side, obviously, there are existing proponents, and some of them have been discussed, I think, already.

[4:30 p.m.]

Iris Energy has operations both in Prince George and Mackenzie actually. In Prince George, they have AI data processing. In Mackenzie, they had intentions to expand to that, and they actually already have power allocated for that, to expand into that. It’s in their near-term plans.

I’m wondering how those existing data centre operations that have….

[The bells were rung.]

I’ll just wait a moment.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

There are existing data centres. Iris Energy in Prince George and in Mackenzie. We have, in Canal Flats, other operations. What discussion has the ministry had in terms of consultation with those existing operations and their near-term plans about where they fit into the allocation that will be provided to data processing overall?

Hon. Adrian Dix: As an example to the member, we have an active example of how such allocation takes place with the crypto question. There are about 140 megawatts of crypto mining, essentially, that are currently in the B.C. Hydro load. When the decision was made not to say no to further ones, we continue to provide that service to those companies. So if there are companies that have existing operations that are electrified in B.C., electricity in B.C., they’ll be unaffected. They’re our base customers.

We’re not kicking people off, and we didn’t when we shut off…. We shut off the opportunity for crypto mining for all the reasons that were discussed in the Legislature and were supported, I think, by all parties. That’s an example.

So we make the distinction. If you’re in the queue, you’d be participating in the allocation framework. But if you’re a customer, such as, for example, that 140 megawatts of crypto mining, and you got in, you’re a customer in good standing and you have access to that, you continue to have access to that.

Kiel Giddens: I appreciate the response from the minister. On that 140 megawatts, obviously there’s going to be significant competition in the near term to make sure that there are people trying to access that.

I’m wondering, from a risk standpoint, what the province has looked at in terms of the data sovereignty side of things, what this means for British Columbia and Canadian data sovereignty. What federal engagement and discussions have happened on data sovereignty that relate to this bill that need to be part of that equation?

We’re obviously in a tariff war. We’re in a very challenging situation with our neighbours to the south, and data sovereignty could be used as a threat against Canada. It’s clear that that could happen.

We want to make sure that we’re protecting British Columbians and indeed Canadians through what we’re doing, if we’re limiting our ability to store Canadian data on AI processing in our jurisdiction. I’m just wondering what federal discussions have been a part of this.

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, two sets of things I’d say to the member.

First of all, the amount of power we’re talking about, 600 megawatts of power allocated in the first three years for AI and for data centres, is a significant amount of power, as the member would agree. The largest load right now is about 120, 130 at Highland Valley Copper, for example, the largest load of any kind in the province, although we were seeing in the crypto proposals a massive scaling of that power demand in the past.

[4:35 p.m.]

I just note that if you’re talking about that level of new power, there is significant opportunity. What we’re saying is with that opportunity, the priority should go to Canadian and B.C. companies. I think people agree with that in a general sense. That would be a criteria, that they address issues such as data sovereignty, jobs, community issues, and so on, and, of course, return to the ratepayer. All of those would be considerations and the kind of criteria that would be set up in the competition. That would serve to benefit projects that, obviously, are sustaining data sovereignty.

The issue isn’t so much the trade war in the case of data sovereignty but the application. In countries such as France, we’re seeing that, the application of American rules to data held by American companies in other jurisdictions. I won’t name some of the companies. The member could imagine what some of them are who are major companies in this world. That’s why it’s important to support data sovereignty.

There’s a broader question of AI, of course, and its application and its participation in the economy and the research and the companies involved. Not all of that is around data centres or even large consumers of electricity. Obviously, there’s a much broader economy that’s part of our efforts.

The Minister of Jobs is engaged with the new Minister for Artificial Intelligence federally, who’s very involved in these questions, Mr. Solomon. And yes, he is leading some of those discussions about how the jurisdictions deal with these issues. I’ve spoken to Mr. Solomon as well, but the lead is the minister responsible for Jobs.

Kiel Giddens: Just to be clear, did the minister and the minister responsible for artificial intelligence speak to the federal minister responsible for artificial intelligence on Bill 31 specifically? Was that something?

With that, my broader question wasn’t, I don’t think, answered in the last response. What federal feedback and what federal consultation actually happened on Bill 31?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, this issue of electricity allocation for every jurisdiction in North America, as between governments, is a significant issue. You’ve seen the impact, for example, in American jurisdictions, of large increases related in rates for the rate base for residential and commercial and industrial customers, based on the rapidly scaling data industry.

This is an issue I’ve personally discussed with the minister. When I was referring to the minister responsible for artificial intelligence, I was referring to Mr. Solomon, who’s the federal minister, with, obviously, the Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in B.C. and the Minister of Jobs. They have the lead here in B.C. in those discussions, so they understand very well the issues with respect to electricity, and obviously, federal officials have been briefed about this bill.

Kiel Giddens: I appreciate the response from the minister, but I still don’t think that answered my question. Was the federal government consulted on Bill 31, including Mr. Solomon?

Hon. Adrian Dix: I discussed the issue of electricity allocation with Mr. Solomon in the summer, as have the appropriate ministers.

Kiel Giddens: Obviously, those discussions, as we’re having nation-building conversations right now across Canada and data sovereignty being one of them…. I would be interested to learn whether the federal government finds the limiting of data storage and processing here in B.C….

Is that a risk to federal strategies and federal aspirations when it comes to, whether it’s AI goals…? We’ve heard the Prime Minister talk significantly about it. We’ve heard Minister Solomon talk about the same. My question is really: what was Minister Solomon’s response to that?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Mr. Solomon, of course, can speak for himself.

I would say that a process that establishes criteria that includes data sovereignty, includes supporting and building out Canadian industry and jobs, includes these priorities, which are our joint priorities — not just our joint priorities but the priorities, I’m sure, of all provinces.

[4:40 p.m.]

They would view that as the right approach, which is not to have a first-come, first-served system where you might have a data centre with, hypothetically, a few security guard jobs around that are permanent. You’d want to…. And that’s sometimes the case. We’ve seen this in other jurisdictions where we’ve seen rapidly scaling data centres.

I think our approach of assigning a significant allocation of power in the first three years…. Six hundred megawatts is a lot of power. I think everybody would agree with that. That’s five Highland Valley Coppers, which is our largest current load. It is a significant allocation of power. And then having those priorities and criteria be the way in which access to that power is selected, I think, is consistent with good practice and consistent with the policies not just of Canadian provinces and other states….

The difference between ourselves and other provinces is…. In Quebec, it’s the cabinet that decides on projects above five megawatts. The cabinet does. The minister of energy does. And as interesting as that might be for ministers of energy, I don’t think that’s the right approach. I think the right approach is to set the economic policy and to have the utility, which does this very well, establish a competition based on public goals and priorities.

David Williams: My question is to the minister. This goes back to allocation.

We know that the transmission line is going to be following the CleanBC agenda. We’ve already determined that we also purchase electricity through Powerex. So hypothetically, there’s going to be a demand for power up in the northwest, and the fact is that we could be buying power from Powerex as well.

Through the transmission line, we could allocate power from the wind turbines or from wherever. At the same time, we could be buying power elsewhere, because there’s going to be a shortfall in the province.

Is there any guarantee that we’re not going to be allocating power from other jurisdictions to put through that transmission line?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, we dealt with, really, those same questions in our extensive two-day debate on section 1, to which the member’s question applies.

The purpose of section 1 is to facilitate the construction of the North Coast transmission line and, specifically, the partnerships with First Nations involved in that line. We had that discussion. As the member will remember, he voted against that section and disagrees with that. That’s what we do in this House. We debate, and we vote. So that’s fair enough.

But I think the North Coast transmission line gives opportunity to dozens of projects that need electricity in the northwest, potentially, which will bring great wealth to the province. We’ve had this debate before, and we’ll have the debate about the North Coast transmission line again.

With respect to electricity in the province, really none of the question relates to section 2. But I’d just say generally, as I’ve said to him on a number of occasions before, that over the last 15 years, eight times we’ve exported more power than we’ve imported, and seven times we’ve imported more power than we’ve exported.

Because of Powerex and its extraordinary role in the system, B.C.’s power, the ones that we export, are vastly more valuable than that which we import because of the value of our hydro system, which we owe to multiple generations before who built those dams that are so valuable to us. It allows us to store power and use it when it is most valuable. This gives B.C. a huge advantage in developing and bringing on other forms of electricity. So we’re going to continue to do that.

Do we need more power? Yes. We have now two successive calls for power. We have Site C, which is a 24 percent increase in generation, and multiple other projects which, of course, I’ve listed out on multiple occasions during our extensive debate on section 1.

David Williams: Thank you to the minister. With all due respect to the minister, I do believe it does pertain to clause 2, because it has to do with allocation.

So you can guarantee that…. There is, hypothetically, demand for power in the northwest, so you have the ability to allocate power to a certain industry or a certain entity up there that needs power. But on the same token, we don’t have enough power through that transmission line.

Technically, you could buy power through Powerex, say, for instance, to the Kootenays, and they could be paying a rate in the Kootenays which could be quite different than what’s going through that transmission line if you allocate the power. Or are you guaranteeing that there will be absolutely no possibility of that happening?

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. Adrian Dix: Section 2 deals with the establishment of an allocation framework. It limits that framework to AI — and obviously, crypto is involved because there’s a ban that’s been established now for a couple of years, sustained in the courts — and to data centres and, potentially, hydrogen for export. It enables that, although we don’t see that allocation required now. So it’s not the fact that you can use the word “allocation” to describe other subjects that make them relevant to this section.

I’ll just say to the member, lightly, in any event, B.C. Hydro, as I think is laid out in a number of questions he’s asked about these questions of export and import of power, is engaged…. It has just tabled with the B.C. Utilities Commission its integrated resource plan, which has hundreds of pages and is under review by the BCUC. Both B.C. Hydro and BCUC are playing their specific roles in that process.

Part of that, of course, is a special scenario for the north coast itself, which is laid out in detail. That IRP, of course, which is not the subject of this legislation, considers future industrial growth. It lays out the scenario forecast for that growth, and it justifies, I think, for all to see, the building of the North Coast transmission line and the calls for power we’ve put in place.

The calls for power in ’24 and ’25 — this question has been asked before — will add 10,000 gigawatt hours a year of electricity. Site C is now online, adding 1,100 megawatts of capacity. Revelstoke’s sixth unit is under environmental review, and we’re moving forward with that project.

Energy efficiency programs, which are so important and have been so important in effectively avoiding power generation through conservation…. B.C. is world-renowned for those programs, saving 2,000 gigawatts of electricity, enough for 200,000 homes. The upgrade to G.M. Shrum, etc.

We’ve answered this question before. The member is asking a question about the generation of power, and that’s the generation of power in B.C. Again, none of that has anything to do with the specifics of section 2, but I’m always happy to attempt to answer the member’s questions.

David Williams: I thank the minister.

Thank you for your continued answering of questions that are, per se, a little out of the range. I do appreciate it.

This goes back to a little bit of questioning yesterday regarding…. We’ve established that the North Coast transmission line is an integrated system. We also established the fact that there’s allocation for certain industries over other industries, and there certainly wouldn’t be any power being generated through fossil fuels, because we want to make sure that we have low carbon emissions.

With that saying, is there a guarantee that there’ll be no coal-fired or fossil-fuel-generated electricity passing through that electricity line, since we buy power from other jurisdictions?

Hon. Adrian Dix: This issue has, of course, been discussed by the committee earlier and pertains entirely to section 1 of the bill, which passed on a division between the government and the opposition.

I understand that the member disagrees with the North Coast transmission line and the transmission of electricity to the north coast and the northwest of the province, although, apparently, he supports the Interior–Lower Mainland line, which took power from the North to Vancouver. That’s an interesting dichotomy, but again, it’s not really relevant to this section.

I would say that in B.C., we have something called the Clean Energy Act, which is, you’ll see in all these questions, fully detailed in the IRP. The Clean Energy Act, which was passed not by the current administration but by Mr. Campbell’s administration, governs some of these questions.

B.C. Hydro does have access to some peaking facilities in gas. As you know, the previous administration essentially set about to shut down Burrard thermal, which provided some support to the system. The member will remember that.

We believe that with the price coming down for clean electricity…. It’s clearly indicated in the calls for power that we’re producing with Site C, with the calls for power and with the call for expression of interest. These saw responses from more than 100 participants for 19 gigawatt hours of power, clean electricity in our province. That included things that are currently slightly outside the Clean Energy Act, because we wanted to hear all of the options, including the potential for hydroelectric dams, that were otherwise excluded, to at least be considered in that discussion.

[4:50 p.m.]

There’s massive opportunity in B.C. The North Coast transmission line will reflect that huge opportunity.

And of course it’s a difference. I’m not going to get back into the debate — we had a full debate yesterday — about the member’s and other members of the opposition’s proposal for small nuclear reactors on the north coast. I’d just say that that’s another option but not one that I support. And it’s, obviously, one that’s contrary to Mr. Campbell’s Clean Energy Act.

Peter Milobar: Just a couple of questions for the minister. It’s really around trying to get an idea of where cabinet and Hydro’s decision-making thought process around regulations that would circumvent the BCUC with clause 2 would land in regards to data centres, AI, crypto and things like that.

Recognizing that it’s much more North Coast–focused currently, once cabinet and Hydro start to make decisions of that sort, there would start to be reasonable expectations in other parts of the province that are a bit energy constrained as to decision-making. I’ll give a little bit of background just so the minister understands where I’m coming from on this.

In Kamloops’s case, we have redundant fibre with rail lines, one of the only places west of Winnipeg that does. So data centres are coveted in that area. We had a smaller one in one area of town. We had another one get built up by the university. We had Telus come in and do their big data centre. I was on city council at the time on that, and that data centre, for as large as it is, is only 20 percent of what the full buildout is for Telus. So there are four other modules, each one of that same size.

We now have an AI hub coming in with the university and Shaw, right across the street from it. There’s quite a cluster already, but there’s massive, massive potential for growth, literally all zoned, all ready to go. All Telus would need is customers, if they wanted, and they could expand. It’s been that way for quite some time.

Hydro put a brand-new substation in, right next door essentially, in that same area, as power demands for the city were growing. At that time, the Ajax mine proposal was being discussed. Residents got all nervous thinking that was a substation for that, which it wasn’t. We lobbied very hard with Hydro to get extra capacity into the city, because we were getting to plug in another toaster oven and then we’d have a blackout. That’s a bit of that backdrop there.

Now, at the same time, as you go up the North Thompson, we have other mines that are being proposed up along the Yellowhead and a massive power shortage in that area. I recognize they’re not interconnected fully, but it’s the same geographic area, and the minister referenced Highland Valley Copper, which is the same geographic area as well. All that being said, it starts to constrain potential growth, potential industrial uses but also residential growth.

We have a situation where we have one builder that wanted to put another 2,500 housing units in very close to that same substation, and Hydro is unwilling to easily access, depending on who you talk to. I’ve talked with Hydro, and they walk you through the numbers and say: “We’ve got lots of capacity.” You talk to the developer after they’ve talked with Hydro, and they get told: “No, there’s no capacity for that type of development.” So a bit of mixed messaging.

I’m not asking the minister to solve that today. I’m just using it for a backdrop to understand why people and business and industry around the province will be looking very intently as to how cabinet starts to interpret the powers that clause 2 would provide them to circumvent the BCUC and start to allocate or not provide power to some of those uses.

Again, I use the data centre in Kamloops as a good example because it’s only at 20 percent capacity. It’s been that way probably for a decade. It’s very easy to either still have power allocated and not used for housing or eventually, if decision-making is to start shifting that mindset from Hydro and the cabinet, to start using up some of that capacity and then suddenly have Telus say: “Actually, we want to expand. Where’s our power that we thought we had?”

It is a complicated mix, but given that this is a new template that will be in place for new development in an area that doesn’t have those overlapping issues at the same rate of growth and historic growth, I guess, and demands that we would see in Kamloops’s case….

[4:55 p.m.]

Is the government’s intention on the prioritization of clause 2 decision-making, regulation-making power that priority is 100 percent given to pretty much everything but AI and data and crypto? Or is it that it’s got to fit within that first envelope of power that the minister was talking about, and anything over and above that is dead and done?

I think the other parts of the province, as we get more and more energy-constrained…. These are big investment decisions across the province. Obviously, the government is talking about trying to expedite mine permitting and forestry and other mills or a value-added wood, all high-volume energy consumers.

Especially if the government is trying to get those types of industries to switch away from gas-fired machinery and kilns and things of that nature to electric, it adds even more draw in a way that might not have been previously thought of. Most of the capacity in these areas where mills have shut down over the last while has been taken up already, in one form or another.

I guess I’m just trying to get a better understanding because I’ve had people in my area ask about this and I didn’t have a good answer for them. I thought that I should come ask the minister directly what the government’s intentions are in terms of moving forward for the rest of the province once they start to override the BCUC on a regulatory basis around these types of potential end-users of the electricity.

Is that the intention, to kind of spread that out provincewide, or not?

Precedence is a funny thing in the government world. When someone really wants something, they tend to start to point to decisions government has made, especially if it’s the same sitting government that’s being asked that.

Hon. Adrian Dix: I welcome the member to the debate. Obviously, these issues have been intently canvassed, but I’m happy to canvass with him again because he brings the experience of his community to them.

I just want to correct the member. There’s no overriding of the BCUC. There’s just none. The allocation of power is a B.C. Hydro decision. It has been, and it continues to be. We continue to maintain that.

The purpose of this section is for AI and for data centres, which are rapidly scalable industries which could effectively move very quickly. That’s why we did it with crypto, for example. The member will remember. He was a member in the House during the debate over the crypto ban.

We did that because there’s an industry where you can see 2,000 or 3,000 megawatts of demand on a first-come, first-served system, effectively with very little in the way of ultimate jobs or opportunity, which would also create less opportunity for other industries.

In terms of these changes, the current system applies with this major buildout of new energy and capacity to all other industries. We are pacing AI and data centres at 200 megawatts a year. Again, a very significant amount of power. If you were looking at the first three years of that, that would be 600 megawatts, which is no small thing — five Highland Valley Coppers.

The reason we do that is the experience everywhere. It’s not just this jurisdiction that’s doing it. It’s jurisdictions across the United States and Canada that are making those decisions. In Quebec, it’s as the member was suggesting. The minister and the cabinet have authority of all decisions over five megawatts.

Well, that’s not the approach we’ve taken. Cabinet will be setting criteria based on consultation, but the general approach has been laid out in our discussion here in the Legislature.

Then B.C. Hydro will be setting up a process for allocation decisions and doing it just as it does calls for power, where the process is set up. Obviously, price is important in those, but also First Nations participation in the most recent calls for power. And then the decisions are made in that process with an ethics adviser.

I find out, essentially, the day or the day before the announcement what the successful proponents are and, therefore, the announcement of those proposals.

I think there’s a great deal of opportunity. He speaks of Telus. I think the important reason you want to give priority…. I’m not going to talk about particular projects or anything else, obviously. That will be for the independent process to work through.

[5:00 p.m.]

But you want to ensure that businesses centred in B.C. and Canada, projects that affect the data sovereignty of Canada, projects that create jobs, have priority in those processes and not someone who comes in and requires a lot of power for very little local benefit.

That’s why we have an allocation framework. We’ve set that out. We’ve agreed, in our discussions with his colleagues, and we’ll certainly be hearing from them as well, on the criteria and the criteria in that process. That’s where we’re taking it forward.

We have a very ambitious plan for generation. We’re building up more transmission, in particular to the north coast — that’s section 1, not this section — and, I think, real opportunity.

For the first time in quite a long time, I’ve seen a growth in energy demand in the province and the load. It’s up to B.C. Hydro, in many respects, to meet that load — not just B.C. Hydro but Fortis, in some cases, and others.

That’s what we’re doing, and that’s all detailed for the member in the integrated resource plan.

Peter Milobar: I appreciate the minister and his patience with me.

I want to be clear. I am not a big fan of freeing up tons of power for crypto mining. I’ve said that publicly before. I agree. It’s only a few jobs, and they’re very much jobs tied specifically to crypto mining, essentially.

Data centres and AI get a little bit more nuanced in terms of the jobs. Once again, I agree, in the case of the Kamloops data centre, there are not a lot of jobs on the ground — certainly a lot of construction jobs when they first fire it up and get it built, a big footprint, and all of that. But afterwards, the on-site techs are making sure the servers are running, and the security is a lot of automation nowadays as well.

It’s not so much about that, but health care doesn’t run without data centres. Universities don’t run without data centres. Mines and others, frankly, are heavy on information technology. The large legal firms now, the large accounting firms in downtown Vancouver, you name it — the packets of information that are flowing and the storage needs those centres provide to the overall workforce in B.C., I think the minister would agree, are significant.

There’s not a direct correlation sometimes on those technologies as there might be with the crypto technology. I just want to say I agree with the minister, if he’s agreeing with that, as well, in terms of the jobs. I guess that’s what leads in, though, in terms of the concerns, coming from a part of the world where we’re seeing new regulations coming in.

We already have fairly significant infrastructure around data centres, and I’m trying to get that better understanding of the prioritization and what view the cabinet would be taking as regulations come forward in terms of that economic good that things like AI and data centres would actually provide.

Will all of those other types of factors be coming into play, or is it strictly: “Well, once it’s built, there are a few security jobs, and there are a few of this, so we’re not really worried”?

Is there a way for outside industry, outside users to convey back to the cabinet? Is there going to be a process around that so that there’s a broader understanding of why that call for a data centre actually has a far larger provincial economic impact than the physical data centre itself?

If we’re talking trade-offs, sometimes that’s critical. If there’s further expansion we could be seeing in the digital arts space and things of that nature but they need that capacity, especially with data sovereignty concerns; especially, as the minister would be very well versed as the former Minister of Health, data-handling concerns of information being stored in the States versus in Canada — especially nowadays even more so than under the Patriot Act, one would probably think, as scary as that might sound.

It just seems that the better understanding, I think, we have, moving forward, with this, assuming it passes tonight…. You never know. If not, I guess, we’re having an election on the weekend.

Interjection.

Peter Milobar: Yeah. Well, you know, we’ve both had snap elections, so it’s just like old school.

Really, in all seriousness, that’s where I’m just trying to get a better understanding so that when people in my community are asking these types of questions, are starting…. This is a bit of a fundamental change, in terms of how the government is going to start looking at dispersing out the power and that decision-making.

[5:05 p.m.]

I think people, rightly, in the rest of the province, are trying to figure out just what the heck this means to them long term, in terms of moving forward. If we could get a bit better….

If I could get a bit better idea. If it’s already been asked, I do apologize. I was tied up in some other chambers over the multiple days you’ve been dealing with this.

Just around that decision-making, again, in clause 2, that will look at data centres and AI, is it taking that broader economic-impact view of it? They are a little unique in the service that they do wind up providing on that economic-impact lens versus….

A mine is pretty easy to tell what economic impact the mine directly is going to do, with direct and indirect jobs. A pulp mill is very clear to understand. A data centre is much more nuanced in terms of that customer base, whether or not it’s even in B.C., customers that are going to be providing or needing that provision of services, and just what that actually means to the overall economy.

Hon. Adrian Dix: Thanks to the member for his question. These are important questions. These are important questions and ones that jurisdictions, really, across North America have been addressing in different ways.

The obligation to serve was taken away from Utah utilities over 100 megawatts, for example, which is a significant thing, in that case because they were seeing such pressure from this sector, rapidly scalable.

Different than a mine, I think it’s fair to say. We want to make sure…. Obviously, a lot of the North Coast transmission line and also what we want to do in the member’s region…. There are significant possibilities elsewhere in the Interior for mining. We want to make sure that those jobs and those developments which will bring, especially with clean electricity, a huge reduction in GHGs, which is important on the one hand, and also jobs and royalties and resources to the province over the period of time — a long lead-up into them sometimes, for them to start. Then mines that are there for 30, 40, 50 years.

The data centre and AI centre industries, where there is massive building right now in the United States and in jurisdictions, are different than that. We want to make sure, therefore, that as we’re allocating power — other jurisdictions, such as Manitoba, Quebec and Alberta, are doing different things — we would set aside a very significant amount of power.

Then the cabinet’s role is not to dictate the winners and losers but to say exactly what the member says. I’d be very interested in his contribution to it and what he thinks should be the priority. What I’ve said generally is, absolutely, jobs and economic contribution, which, as he knows, and I think he just described it, can be direct and indirect, especially when you’re talking about attracting people to TRU or some question such as that — direct and indirect.

Obviously, value to B.C. Hydro and to the ratepayer. We see that allowance in the legislation. Issues of data sovereignty, issues of the important companies that have been here a long time that are building out their companies — it would be important for those companies, it seems to me, to continue to have access to electricity in this area more so than someone coming from outside who just wants to set up a data centre because we offer, say, inexpensive electricity.

I would hope he would agree with me. The reason we have this section is that it shouldn’t be first come, first served but that we set out those criteria on that basis. We’ll see what happens. We won’t be directing the competition, so we won’t know exactly what happens.

The criteria…. Kamloops is certainly a community ideally suited to do well in those kinds of competitions because of existing infrastructure, because of the involvement of companies such as Telus, not just Telus but Bell and others in the region, in economic development there.

Other regions, such as Prince George, the member who asked the previous questions, are obviously very well suited to that as well and already are participants in this. We have data centres in B.C. now.

The final thing I’d say is that all of AI and all of its evolution and development is not about electricity. There’s a huge part of it that is not and does not require a lot of electricity, and B.C. companies are leaders in that area. I know the member will be aware of that from the work that he does.

So that’s the approach. We set out the criteria together. B.C. Hydro runs the competition based on those criteria. It’s the criteria I think the member is talking about — which is really the value to British Columbia, as described in these different elements, that allows us to do that, as opposed to having a system in such a rapidly scalable set of industries that’s based on first come, first served.

[5:10 p.m.]

Peter Milobar: I know the minister fully understands this, but we’re talking about transmission lines and generation, which, obviously, span hundreds and literally thousands of kilometres, in some cases, in B.C.

We’re talking about data centres that don’t have to be next to their user, obviously. They’re all about where the fibre is located. They need access to water, and they need access to power. The customer is somewhat irrelevant. As long as there’s fibre heading off to those areas, they can get the data packs off that they need back and forth.

Obviously, over the years, fibre has expanded greatly in the province in terms of smaller communities and things like that. But the impact of whether that data centre then ultimately gets to operate or not, even though it may be far afield, can still have a very serious ramification, say, to downtown Vancouver, where you could have the client wanting access.

I’ll use digital arts as an example just because I think it’s easy for everyone to conceptualize. They use large volumes of data to do the graphics and everything else they do. But they also consume a heck of a lot of power as well, even though they’re not a mine and nowhere near Highland Valley. I agree it’s quite the tour, if anyone hasn’t gone there. Anytime you drive there, you’re always hearing the power lines buzzing, and you know you’re close. But I digress.

Back to the digital arts side of it. There’s only so much electricity out there for them to keep expanding and things of that nature. But we’re faced with, right now, an ever-moving…. Again, with the minister’s indulgence, you’ll get to where I’m meandering around to here in a minute. There’s only, as we keep hearing and discussing, a finite amount of power, despite the power calls and the timelines that those are going to come on and everything else.

I prefer to view what happens in the province as an energy grid more so than an electrical grid and a gas grid, for lack of a better term, because both are used for power and for energy. So when Vancouver has a cold snap, two-thirds of the energy consumed is actually natural gas, not electricity. You can’t keep up. The electrical grid would not handle it.

When we have situations where municipalities…. Now, we’re asking questions about cabinet being able to make power allocation decisions. That’s one thing, because the government and Hydro are one and the same, frankly. But mayors aren’t.

Mayors and councils that make decisions around banning natural gas usage in a municipality can and may be fundamentally changing, whether Hydro or the minister likes it or not, where some of the power allocation in this province on those transmission lines is going to have to flow just to meet the power and the energy needs — and I say “energy,” not just electrical needs — of certain regions of the province because they, essentially, overrode the cabinet and Hydro, BCUC, everybody, by just making a local bylaw saying “no more natural gas.”

It’s like if they said, “There’s no more electricity allowed in our city,” that everything has to be run on natural gas and electricity. I think the minister might have something to say about that.

The concern I’ve been having for a while here is that as we have…. I know how power-constrained Kamloops was when we were asking Hydro for several years, lobbying quite aggressively, to get that extra new substation in. I know Kelowna, at the same time, was incredibly starved for electricity. They seem to be growing now, so I’m assuming that got addressed somewhat. I know the North Thompson is starved for power and that’s holding back a lot of growth in that area.

There are areas in this province that have been biding their time, waiting for that energy to be made available to them, sitting back and watching municipalities in other jurisdictions being able to, essentially, super-inflate how much electrical demand is needed because they’re banning natural gas, which is an energy source.

Now, I have no problem if the province, over time, in conjunction with B.C. Hydro and Fortis, in an orderly and logical fashion, actually implements the weaning off of natural gas and reduction of natural gas.

[5:15 p.m.]

It should be, actually, provincial control of the energy needs of British Columbia, not municipality by municipality, mayor by mayor, randomly deciding whether or not, in this term for four years, they’re going to ban something. Then four years later, a new mayor and council come in, they change their mind, and then we’re whipsawing back and forth.

If the government are willing to take the steps that they have in clause 2 here — which is to start, by way of cabinet, to decide allocations — why have they not taken those same steps when it comes to the overall energy within British Columbia? Yes, crypto and all those others consume a lot of electricity, but so do large cities. But large cities also need a lot of natural gas to augment it, for heat and for other things when there’s a cold snap especially.

I’m just trying to understand why it’s good enough for something new like the North Coast transmission line to say, “No, we need to take control of this as a cabinet and make sure that we are allocating properly the limited power resources we have for maximum benefit,” but if you’re in the Lower Mainland, community by community can put a thumb in the middle of those allocation plans, recognizing generation is not happening, for the most part, in the Lower Mainland.

Still, we have other communities that are desperately looking for power for expansion, for housing growth. And they run that very real risk of being leapfrogged because Hydro is going to have to prioritize getting more capacity into areas that they maybe hadn’t planned on out of necessity but they now have to because a mayor and a council have suddenly made that necessity happen, versus the natural growth of a city and the natural growth of the Hydro grid that had been planned ten years earlier.

I hope that makes sense to the minister. In my weird head, it makes sense to me how I phrased it, but maybe not to everyone.

That’s really the crux. When I read clause 2, I’m like, okay, so the cabinet is willing to step in and start — the minister doesn’t like “picking winners and losers” — figuring out highest and best use allocations, we’ll say then, from a limited pool of transmission capacity that will be. But there’s a limited pool everywhere of transmission capacity, and we do have that very real impact. When two-thirds of the energy consumed in a cold snap is not hydro-generated power, there’s an energy gap if natural gas is banned.

I’m just wondering how this will play out long term in the minister’s mind. If we’re doing it for one area of the province, are we not taking that same lens? Again, precedent-setting. And if so, then why are we allowing municipalities to, essentially, start to dictate the overall energy grid at the expense of one energy source over the other?

[The bells were rung.]

The Chair: We’ll call a recess until after the division vote.

The committee recessed from 5:18 p.m. to 5:35 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

The Chair: Okay, we’ll call to order and resume discussion on Bill 31, clause 2.

Hon. Adrian Dix: We just finished hearing my friend from Kamloops give a presentation where he got some thoughts he has on certain municipalities on the record. As a long-standing member of the opposition prior to becoming government minister, I truly appreciated that performance and that effort.

I want to acknowledge that and say — this may be tangential, but it’s substantive to what he said — that increasingly, we’re working together with other utilities, Pacific Northern Gas, Fortis and B.C. Hydro, working together, looking at all of the assumptions and forming their IRPs. What we’re starting to see…. As all sides present their IRPs to the B.C. Utilities Commission, we’re seeing the benefits of that work that is being done together for a community such as Kamloops, and I think the member spoke eloquently about his concern for Kamloops.

I think the clarity brought by these rules in this process is much better than a process where you have rapidly scaling demand and choices made not in the public interest but rather on more random considerations. I think this is the right approach. It particularly benefits communities like Kamloops, but others in B.C.

So the kind of concern the member has for different utilities and different forms of energy is obviously a concern for all of the utilities of the province and something they’re working closely on together.

Rob Botterell: I wanted to follow up on the earlier question of my colleague and understand…. This may, once again, have been covered earlier, but just so I can fully understand: how is climate change factored into the establishment of criteria?

Hon. Adrian Dix: Well, I think it’s reflected, first of all, in the existence of an allocation framework in this area, ensuring that B.C.’s clean electricity, low-cost electricity is used in the best possible way for the people of B.C. So it’s fundamentally a climate change initiative.

As we set out the criteria, there will be, potentially, climate change–related considerations, such as some AI centres being able to reuse heat and reuse energy effectively, making them more efficient and contributors as well to the grid. So that would be one of the considerations, and probably one suggested by the hon. member and his colleagues. Certainly, I’ll be reaching out to members of the opposition to hear what they think are priorities as well.

That would be, potentially, one of the considerations we’d let out, and then it would be, obviously, assessed by B.C. Hydro as they go through the allocation process competition.

Rob Botterell: As a follow-up question, there are going to be a variety of factors or criteria that are established through a consultation process, whether it relates to job creation or climate change or impact, for example, of data centres on water usage, and so on.

[5:40 p.m.]

How will the decision be made about the respective weighting of those factors in a final allocation decision?

Hon. Adrian Dix: That would be part of the consultation, the regulations — how you would weight them.

I’ll just give the member an example that’s parallel in the call for power. The First Nations consideration in the call for power is different than the, say, price considerations or other considerations. What we said was that all of the successful proponents would have to have minimum 25 percent to 51 percent First Nations ownership.

In this case, that’s obviously a very different weighting. It’s essentially 100 percent weighting. All of the participants would have to meet that criteria. Whereas price is obviously important, all of this would be a different consideration.

That would be part of the discussion around the regulations, and then B.C. Hydro would manage the process and, if you will, choose those that get power allocated and those that don’t.

The Chair: Shall clause 2 pass?

Division has been called.

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

Before putting the question, I remind all members that only the members of Section A or their duly appointed substitutes are authorized to vote.

Clause 2 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 5
Popham	Dix	Yung
Gibson		Shah
NAYS — 4
L. Neufeld	Valeriote	Mok
	Williams

Clauses 3 to 5 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. Adrian Dix: With appreciation to the opposition critics — the member for Salmon Arm–Shuswap, the member for Peace River South — and all members who participated in the debate, the Leader of the Third Party, I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The Chair: This committee stands adjourned.

The committee rose at 5:54 p.m.

The House in Committee, Section A.

The committee met at 6:24 p.m.

[Jennifer Blatherwick in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 25 — Housing and Municipal
Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025
(continued)

The Chair: Good evening, folks. I call the Committee of the Whole on Bill 25, Housing and Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025.

Shall clause 4 pass?

Oh, I’m sorry.

On clause 4 (continued).

Linda Hepner: I said I had asked the last question upstairs. We were….

My apologies, Madam Chair.

The Chair: I misunderstood. There is still a remaining question.

Member, please proceed.

[6:25 p.m.]

Linda Hepner: I was responding to the minister’s response to the last question, which was: “We have no intention of doing regulations for some time.” That is not yet defined….

My question is: why would we be rushing through legislation in the absence of knowing we’re now going to do work on the regulations to advance the legislation?

Hon. Christine Boyle: We aren’t rushing anything. It’s standard practice for legislation to provide regulation-making authority to ensure policy objectives are achieved and that knowledge gained during implementation and monitoring can be addressed.

Linda Hepner: When we’re asking questions around what the regulations would say, the response has been: “We’ll consult. We haven’t determined. It’s going to be some way down the road.”

But when we’re inquiring about how far down the road, the answer is that there is no rush to put in the regulations. So I’m confused around why we’re rushing to do the legislation.

What happened with Bill 44 is very indicative of what I fully expect will happen with Bill 25. At Bill 44, the response was, “No regulations for some time,” and within days we had 56 pages of regulations.

So if we intend on putting regulations in once the bill allows that to happen, what is the timeline for consultation before those regulations get initiated?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I will just start by saying the member’s characterization of regulations after Bill 44 is not correct.

The intent of this legislation, as I have said many times, is about consistent application of the small-scale, multi-unit housing policy. Where there has been a difference in interpretation of the regulations, we’ll work with local governments to ensure consistent application.

If there were regulations down the road, they would be based on the site standards and adapted to specific site conditions, as we have canvassed many times already around road space or snow removal or hazards, etc.

The Chair: Seeing no further questions, shall clause 4 pass?

Division has been called.

[6:30 p.m.]

Seeing that we have members here, do we have agreement to waive the time?

Leave granted.

The Chair: Hearing no opposition, the question is on clause 4.

[6:35 p.m.]

Clause 4 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 6
Popham	Boyle	Yung
Gibson	Shah	Botterell
NAYS — 3
Mok	Williams	Luck

Clause 5 approved.

The Chair: Thank you. It’s getting really close to Christmas, I can tell.

On clause 6.

Tony Luck: You know, there’s not any problem at all in having a little jocularity around here. It’s tough enough we’re doing our jobs as it is, so if we can smile a little bit, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Clause 6. Why was section 784 repealed?

Hon. Christine Boyle: This is a housekeeping amendment. It simply repeals a spent transitional provision that had no meaning anymore.

Clause 6 approved.

On clause 7.

Tony Luck: Can the minister please explain how compliance will be measured with this clause?

Hon. Christine Boyle: The local government must give the minister written notice as soon as practical after the local government adopting the zoning bylaw necessary to comply.

Clause 7 approved.

On clause 8.

Tony Luck: Just a couple of questions around clause 8 we have here.

Can we please get some clarity around why the dates in this particular section were moved to 2026? It might be consistent with other ones, but let’s go to this one here.

Hon. Christine Boyle: This clause amends dates to align with new compliance and extension application requirements, substituting 2026 for where it currently states 2024. It’s simply a necessary amendment to ensure functionality of this section due to other changes in the bill.

Tony Luck: How many municipalities have sought extensions under the 2023 framework?

[6:40 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. There were 18 approved extensions.

Tony Luck: Will municipalities that already sought extensions be required to complete them again or ask for extensions again, or have they completed those under the extension that they were already given?

Hon. Christine Boyle: They would not need to reapply. If they’ve already got an extension, it would stand.

Interjections.

The Chair: Yes, we do have to vote on clause 8. Just confirming you have no more questions on clause 8.

Linda Hepner: I have no more questions.

Clause 8 approved.

On clause 9.

Linda Hepner: Can the minister confirm that this new clause only applies to future cabinet regulations made under section 481.3 and not to the base zoning obligations already set out in this statute?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes, I can confirm that.

Linda Hepner: What information does the minister require in an application for an extension?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. When the original small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation was introduced, extensions were available for areas where infrastructure was being upgraded; upgrades were required to avoid risks to health, public safety or the environment; or for extraordinary circumstances.

Similar to the original small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation, the proposed legislative changes will provide an opportunity for local governments to request an extension to comply with the new unit-level density requirements using the same criteria, and extensions would be granted to no later than December 31, 2030.

Linda Hepner: Just to clarify, same criteria as Bill 44 extensions? Okay.

Why must applications be submitted 30 days before the compliance date?

Hon. Christine Boyle: So that the minister has time to consider before the deadline.

Linda Hepner: That’s what I thought you’d say, but I needed a drink of water.

What is classified as an extraordinary circumstance under subsections (2)(b) and (3)?

Hon. Christine Boyle: A local government could apply with what they may consider to be an extraordinary circumstance, and then we would engage with them on that.

I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:45 p.m.

Proceedings in the
Birch Room

The House in Committee, Section C.

The committee met at 3:24 p.m.

[Darlene Rotchford in the chair.]

Committee of the Whole

Bill 25 — Housing and Municipal
Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025

The Chair: Good afternoon, Members. I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 25 to order.

On clause 1.

[3:25 p.m.]

Tony Luck: Really grateful to be here this afternoon. This Bill 25 is near and dear to my heart, being a former councillor, a former realtor, and all those kinds of things. It’s really important to be looking at that whole housing issue. Housing has been a real issue in the province — well, across Canada — for quite some time now, so it’s good to be able to address some of the issues around the housing thing.

I know the government is doing its best to try to make that work within the province and try and get housing starts up, even though all the data right now are showing a slowdown and some issues around there, vacancies up in some areas, a few things like that. I know they probably want to take credit for that, but I’m going to promptly suggest that maybe it’s a little bit more about the economy, the way things are running right at the moment anyway.

What our goal is here is not necessarily to find a way to defeat this bill or anything like that. We certainly have to be…. Well, we’d like to be able to work with the government as we move forward here, so we’re going to need some really fundamental changes and that.

We’ve spoken to a lot of people, mayors and councillors. There’s a huge frustration out there about the way this is being implemented and coming forth. It would be really nice if we could propose some amendments and have a look at this and maybe make some changes that would really make sense and not kind of….

A lot of the mayors and councillors we’ve spoken to, from UBCM and that, feel like they’re being pushed aside. That’s not the kind of working relationship we want in the province. We’d really like to be able to work together on this, because we’re all in this together.

It’s the cities that really provide the zoning and all the things that are needed to bring some really solid housing benefits to the province. One of the things they’re a little frustrated about is this one-size-fits-all kind of thing. What happens in Vancouver certainly doesn’t happen in a little town like mine, in Merritt, and those kinds of things.

It’s a real challenge for some of the communities out there that are struggling to try to catch up. Funding isn’t equal. Vancouver has a lot more money than smaller towns, even Kelowna and some of these. So for them to try to get together and do some of the things that are being asked here, it’s very, very challenging.

I’m sure we’ll probably be talking about infrastructure and processes as we go through this debate and the committee, moving forward here. It would be nice if we could come out of here and maybe find some really good solutions to make sure the housing….

That’s what we want here. We want housing. We want affordable housing, as we move forward. A lot of the data that I’ve looked at has really not shown that what we’re doing is making housing affordable in British Columbia.

There are a couple of issues, and we’ll talk about that as we move forward. Even though the government is trying to do its best effort, it just doesn’t seem to be coming to fruition. We’ll see if we can investigate and see if we’ll find ways.

The first question we have here in clause 1 is about restricted zones and manufacturing zones and things like that. We want to just try to get some clarity around that.

Great question off the dot. What was the rationale for the minister to add “manufactured home zone” to this section?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. I want to clarify we haven’t added them. Manufactured homes are excluded from small-scale, multi-unit housing because they’re not well suited to be converted to accommodate additional dwelling units.

Tony Luck: Does the “manufactured home zone” definition exempt only formal trailer parks, or will it include other modular or prefabricated developments on freehold land?

Hon. Christine Boyle: The answer is just that it’s based on municipal zoning and the zone in land use.

[3:30 p.m.]

Tony Luck: That’s an interesting answer, because from what we’re seeing in the bill, you’re going to override all that municipal zoning and the bylaws and everything. That’s the intent we’re seeing in this bill, so that’s an interesting answer to that question — I think, anyway. I could be wrong.

Can the minister explain the decision to change what is constituted as a restricted zone, and how many communities across B.C. are targeted for upzoning and where?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

Review of small-scale, multi-unit housing implementation and engagement with the development sector has highlighted that while overall adoption rates are high, barriers to the development of small-scale, multi-unit housing still exist in some communities, including inconsistent implementation of where this type of housing is permitted.

Many local governments have done an exceptional job of enabling this type of housing. However, a small number of local governments took a narrow approach and didn’t fully implement the legislation as intended, leaving barriers to the delivery of small-scale, multi-unit housing in their communities. The proposed changes address this by removing those barriers to create consistent conditions across the province for small-scale, multi-unit housing to be built.

Tony Luck: Who did the ministry consult for changing these definitions in this particular clause?

Hon. Christine Boyle: The Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs undertook engagement with 40 local governments as well as UBCM staff on the overall implementation of small-scale, multi-unit housing from March to May of 2025. This engagement served as the basis for further policy analysis and engagement.

Following this, one-on-one discussions were held with local governments who were identified as most likely to be impacted by the proposed changes.

Tony Luck: Forty local governments? That’s interesting, because every time we turn around and ask local governments, one of the biggest complaints out there is they haven’t done enough consultation with local governments.

Could you give me three or four local governments that you contacted that you got responses from?

[3:35 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. We consulted with a range of local governments, urban and suburban and more rural, as well as UBCM, and UBCM staff were in attendance at local government round tables, to ensure that we were hearing about, as the member mentioned earlier, the range of different situations and contexts in which these rules would apply.

Tony Luck: Thank you for that answer, because that was my next question: was UBCM consulted?

The next question is…. The minister stated that only a small portion of communities will be affected by these changes. Can the minister provide exactly how many will be affected by some of these pretty major changes?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. The vast majority of local governments have already implemented the small-scale, multi-unit housing regulations.

We will, as the legislation comes into effect, work with the remaining local governments on implementation. That will include some analysis of where changes are needed and where that work, in collaboration with those local governments, is still needed.

Tony Luck: This is something to get the last holdouts, what I’m understanding from this clause, and that kind of thing: “If you guys aren’t, we’re going to get you to start complying here as quickly as we can, and we’re changing some of the rules around that then.” So that’s good.

This kind of anticipates my next question. Why was June 30, 2026, chosen as the compliance deadline to adopt zoning bylaws? And how does the minister expect all municipalities to amend their zoning bylaws in this short time frame?

[3:40 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: This will only affect a handful of local governments. Through our conversations, the understanding is they won’t be significant changes. It won’t take a long period of time. So this amount of time aligns with what the adoption time for the earlier legislation was.

We will continue to work with municipalities. The same rules apply where if there are significant infrastructure deficits, extensions could be available. The timeline was set based on all of that.

Tony Luck: So the date could possibly be changed again as we move forward, I guess. Is that right? Is this a drop-dead date that if you don’t comply, then we’re going to come out with a big stick on you? Is that kind of what we’re looking at here?

They’ll be looking at being very fluid with the date because, obviously, they missed the first date, second date. Can we anticipate a third date if there’s no compliance?

Hon. Christine Boyle: It’s not that some municipalities missed the deadline but that they interpreted the rules differently than intended. So this is intended to provide clarity to get to that consistency, and the expectation is that they will be able to do that work either by the deadline or request an extension.

Tony Luck: A lot of these communities…. I imagine there are a lot of the smaller communities that are out there…. Vancouver and some of the big, larger communities probably have fallen into line and everything like that. So it’s probably a lot of the smaller ones which are struggling to meet their infrastructure deficits and fund just regular day-to-day operations.

Is there anything in this bill or is there any hope that some of these communities can see this government providing some kind of funding to the communities that are struggling to be able to find the funds to be able to do some of these changes that are being demanded of them?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. The province provided funding in January 2024. We distributed $51 million in funding to support local governments in the planning and policy work to implement the suite of housing initiatives. Many local governments haven’t yet fully spent the funding, and they will be allowed to put the funding towards work to support meeting the requirements of Bill 25.

Tony Luck: One of the challenges we have coming out of this bill and some of the things, of course, is the loss of autonomy for local governments and everything.

Does the minister believe that the autonomy of local governments is going to be diminished by allowing cabinet to make regulations respecting the siting size, the mansion’s location and all that kind of thing to do with development and building and all that kind of housing, and required to be permitted under this section?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

I think it’s helpful to clarify that the intent of the original legislation, as well as these amendments, is not taking away local decision-making. We are responding to concerns from stakeholders and communities that inconsistent implementation of small-scale, multi-unit housing is stopping housing from being built. These changes will remove those barriers to unlock much-needed neighbourhood-friendly housing.

Local governments still have the planning authority and many tools that can be used to help shape their community, but when it comes to housing, it’s critical that every local government does their part.

Tony Luck: I understand that. When I was on council in Merritt, I said we had to do our part in providing housing, as well, but certainly not a dictate from Victoria and that top-down effect there. We did that within our own community and had to work on topping up and doing what we needed to, to bring housing.

This is certainly not, I think, what a lot of municipalities…. That’s what we’re hearing out there as well. A lot of municipalities are hearing that we’ve lost complete control.

Can the minister confirm that this effectively transfers local design control, lot coverage and massing decisions from the municipalities to the cabinet, or does it not?

Hon. Christine Boyle: This isn’t about centralizing power in the province. When families are being priced out, when workers can’t afford to live near their jobs and when housing approvals stall for years, the province has a duty to act. These changes are about setting a clear, fair foundation so that every municipality contributes to the solution. It’s about making sure that we can get this type of neighbourhood-friendly housing built in every community in B.C.

Tony Luck: One of the challenges we have with that statement is Merritt is not the same as Vancouver. Valemount is not the same as Burnaby. That’s one of the challenges we have with this particular bill. It’s one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter, and everybody must do the same thing all over, not recognizing geographical areas, the climate and all those kind of things.

We’ll talk about climate action when we get to parking and that as well. But these cookie-cutter bylaws and everything…. This clause that we’re bringing in here seems to be giving some angst to municipalities because: “How are you treating us like Vancouver?” or “How are you treating us like this?” We don’t have the sales. We don’t have the people wanting to move to our communities a lot of time, so a lot of things have changed.

What are the consequences that you see for local governments that fail to meet the June 30, 2026, deadline? Will the minister impose zoning directly, or will cabinet enact blanket regulations overriding councils?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I appreciate the opportunity to clarify that the rules for small-scale, multi-unit housing differ between urban and rural contexts. Smaller communities outside of urban containment boundaries, most often with less than 5,000 people, only have to allow a secondary suite or accessory dwelling like a carriage house. Communities within the regional urban containment boundaries or that have a population over 5,000 must allow three to six units, depending on lot size and location, because we see greater housing need in these communities.

While each community in the province is unique, recently completed housing needs reports underlined that they’re all struggling to respond to their housing needs and provide for their residents in that way.

[3:50 p.m.]

Tony Luck: You mentioned earlier, in the answer before this, that you were talking about, that it’s been stalled for years and years. Have you got some examples of that other than…? In Vancouver, we know that’s happening. They’re chronic for doing that. Victoria has had some struggles around some of the….

What about the outlying areas, the smaller communities? Are there some other examples where it has been stalled for years, some of the zoning and changing bylaws and that?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. Yes, we certainly hear stories from communities around the province struggling to see housing approved and delivered in those communities. Again, I’ll clarify that smaller communities outside of urban containment boundaries don’t have the same rules applying to them, as I said in that earlier question.

Tony Luck: How does the minister reconcile this centralization of zoning power with the government’s stated commitment to local decision-making and community planning? You may have answered that a little bit there. We just want a little bit more understanding of that, because it really sounds, in the cities….

I mean, they wouldn’t be pushing back on some of this. You wouldn’t have a couple of mayors throwing their hands up and saying: “I’m not even running next year because I’m so tired of the top-down downloading from the provincial government.”

Can you just talk to that a little bit more, about how you can reconcile the centralizations versus…? That’s not what it feels like out there.

Hon. Christine Boyle: I do think I already answered this, but I can again clarify that the intent of the legislation isn’t taking away local decision-making. We’re responding to concerns from stakeholders and communities that inconsistent implementation of small-scale, multi-unit housing is stopping housing from being built.

Local governments still have planning authority and many tools that can be used to help shape their communities, and when it comes to housing, it’s critical that every local government is doing their part.

Tony Luck: Thank you for that.

The minister mentioned that “98 percent of communities that the small-scale, multi-unit regulations apply to have passed the small-scale, multi-unit regulations already.”

Can the minister please provide a list of all the communities who have already passed these regulations? We could take that in writing at a later time. Would that be available so we’d have an idea of how many have, or is there a percentage of how many have passed and how many have not?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question, and yes, we’re happy to provide that list. I’ll just note that that list is a self-evaluation from local governments.

We do know, through conversation and early analysis, that there are some local governments, as I said earlier, whose interpretation of the regulation was different than intended, and those are follow-up conversations that we need to have. There may be local governments that self-report that they have met the rules, but there is still some follow-up work to do. Again, we can work to provide that list.

[3:55 p.m.]

Tony Luck: Just one last question. As part of consultations, did the minister discuss with municipalities or have staff review any opportunities to expand certain urban boundaries that could increase housing while maintaining livability?

Hon. Christine Boyle: That wasn’t part of this work. There is a process for expanding through urban growth strategies. That wasn’t part of the consultation that the ministry engaged in on this legislation.

The Chair: Shall clause 1 pass?

Division has been called.

[4:00 p.m.]

We’re asking if you’re willing to waive the time.

Leave granted.

The Chair: Before putting the question, I remind all members that only the members of Section C or their duly appointed substitutes are authorized to vote.

The question is on clause 1.

Clause 1 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 6
Routledge	Davidson	Kang
Choi	Boyle	Botterell
NAYS — 3
McCall	Maahs	Luck

[4:05 p.m.]

On clause 2.

Linda Hepner: I’m happy to be here this afternoon talking about this bill where we do have some considerable concern. I’m hoping we can get some clarification.

Can the minister confirm that section 481.6 now gives cabinet the ability to decide, entirely by regulation and without further legislative debate, where the new housing rules apply and where they do not?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. Glad to get to be having this discussion with both members.

As answered in a previous question, the small-scale, multi-unit housing regulation doesn’t apply in places like rural communities and communities outside of urban containment zones.

Linda Hepner: Why is cabinet being given such broad discretion to create exemptions from the very housing rules that the Legislature is being asked to pass today?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. It is standard practice for legislation to provide regulation-making authority to ensure policy outcomes and objectives are achieved. This is nothing new.

Linda Hepner: On what grounds could cabinet exempt, then, a municipality, a neighbourhood or a specific lot from the small-scale housing obligations in 481.3?

[4:10 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. This is an existing provision that allows us to respond to specific circumstances in municipalities, such as a particularly steep slope or other hazards.

The Chair: Member for Fraser, Serpentine River. Oh, my apologies. Correction, Surrey–Serpentine River.

Linda Hepner: Thank you. I have some steep slopes on that Serpentine River, so thank you for that.

I’m going to ask another question around the cabinet power on this particular clause. Could cabinet use this clause to carve out politically sensitive ridings, like a river riding, or a high-value neighbourhood from density requirements while forcing other communities to comply?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The short answer is no. The intent of the legislation is consistent application, and where exemptions would be in place, there would be clear criteria such as, as I referenced, steep slopes or hazards.

Linda Hepner: Those would be in the regulations.

How would you know what those exemptions are going to be?

Hon. Christine Boyle: This would give us the authority to create criteria through regulation that would be clearly communicated with local governments and the public in a transparent way.

Linda Hepner: How has the ministry accounted for geographic areas where compliance would jeopardize infrastructure such as water supply, such as wells and well capacity?

I’m just going to add to that. How has this legislation allowed for evacuation routes, wildfire or flood areas, as well, in terms of those? Have they been actually considered within the legislation, or is it your intention to further define them with mapping at some later point, through regulation?

[4:15 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

This legislation, by design, is supporting housing to go where we already have density. When the original small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation was introduced, extensions were available for areas where infrastructure was being upgraded, where upgrades were required to avoid risks to health, public safety or the environment or for extraordinary circumstances.

Linda Hepner: Now I am going to need clarification. If it’s already legislated because it’s in areas where there is already density and already infrastructure, what is the point of overriding local government and official community plans that currently exist, where they expect that and have already identified where the best places are for those very same densities?

I need some clarity around that from the minister.

Hon. Christine Boyle: As members know, in fall 2023, our government introduced Bill 44 to fix outdated zoning rules and enable more small-scale, multi-unit homes to be built faster, such as row homes and duplexes, triplexes on single-family lots.

This fall the legislation before us now is simply bringing in minor legislative changes to strengthen the implementation of building small-scale, multi-unit homes and to ensure consistency throughout the province.

This will help ensure municipalities are drafting bylaws in alignment with the intention of the legislation and to address barriers to the types of homes that allow people who make our communities strong, nurses and teachers and tradespeople, to put down roots and get into the housing market and build a good life in our communities.

Linda Hepner: I hear that we’re trying to provide housing for those with very middle-income needs, and that is commendable. What I’m trying to get at is: why the heavy hand in this legislation?

You’ve suggested that Bill 44 needed some tweaking, and what I’m hearing from the minister is that this is the tweaking to Bill 44 so that we can better solidify those communities in our province that are not either adhering as quickly as you’d like or as much as you’d like to the densification.

Is that the response I was getting from the minister?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes, these changes will support even stronger implementation of small-scale, multi-unit housing by addressing barriers that are deterring building this type of housing — again, a difference in interpretation of the rules.

[4:20 p.m.]

So these changes clarify and expand where small-scale, multi-unit housing can be built across B.C. and will create greater consistency in application of those regulations.

Linda Hepner: It is the fault of local government that they haven’t actually done that, or you do not believe that they will do that of their own accord, so the legislation is necessary?

Hon. Christine Boyle: There’s just been inconsistent implementation, and this bill clarifies the intent.

Linda Hepner: Does the minister fear that some municipalities will feel as if they are being treated unequally if denied exemptions?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

The criteria for exemptions will be clear and clearly communicated so as to avoid any concerns about inconsistency.

Linda Hepner: Have any municipalities that you’ve been consulting vigorously with expressed any concerns over cabinet having the authority to determine, by regulation, the location of the housing units in their community?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question. We take all perspectives into account as we’re doing this work and balance that with what we know is the need for more housing options in communities all across the province for families, for tradespeople, for downsizing seniors and more. We know that need is clear, and that is, of course, an important piece of the conversation, alongside the perspectives we hear from local governments.

Linda Hepner: I appreciate the answer, but I don’t think it really responded to my question of if municipalities expressed concern over the cabinet having this authority.

I would presume that during your consultation processes…. I’m not sure how broad they were, and maybe we’ll get to that after. But right now have any municipalities expressed concern over cabinet being the decision-maker, by regulation, for the location of houses in their communities?

Hon. Christine Boyle: The power for cabinet to make regulations is already in place, and that’s not new in this legislation.

Tony Luck: Just one question I have on this thing. If Bill 44 was introduced and passed to do all these housing changes, how do you know you have this bill right?

[4:25 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: This is clarifying legislation based on conversations. We continue to listen, to hear from stakeholders and to make improvements. I think that’s an important process.

Many local governments have, as I’ve said, done an exceptional job of enabling this type of housing. However, a small number of local governments took a narrower approach or a different interpretation of the legislation than intended, leaving barriers to building small-scale, multi-unit housing in their communities. The proposed changes address that.

Tony Luck: Yes, I can understand that. They were very hesitant to do this because they wanted to know, “What the heck is this bill doing to us, forcing us to do things? Victoria doesn’t know what’s happening in our little communities,” and things like that. We’ve taken a little bit of a heavier hand on here. Bill 44 was all written to do that.

It doesn’t sound like you did a real consultation. I’m hoping you had a much more thoroughgoing conversation, discussion and collaboration with the municipalities to make sure that you get this bill right. It looks like it’s a band-aid for a bill that you passed previously.

Has there been a lot more thorough conversation and consultation on this one?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I’ve already responded to the question about consultation, but I’ll just say that this bill is responding to feedback. It’s not unusual for first legislation to have small changes that respond to feedback around implementation. That’s what we’re engaged in now.

Sharon Hartwell: Listening to the dialogue and going through some of the information, Minister, I don’t see anything in there dealing with consultation with communities on floodplains.

For some of the communities, now that we’re seeing climate changes in the areas, is there any concern on anything that might be rezoned, if you’re going over official community plans or designating small development or any development in some areas, that has been discussed or looked into for floodplains?

I know at home, although you say that small communities aren’t affected, there are other communities in the area that, given the pattern of weather changes, may be affected by those land bases. I’m not sure the communities have been fully engaged in those conversations. Like my colleague said, on the ground, the communities clearly understand where those best things are.

[Jennifer Blatherwick in the chair.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thank you for the important question.

These changes won’t impact the existing tools that local governments have to manage growth in hazardous areas, such as development permits.

[4:30 p.m.]

Land that is subject to hazardous conditions, including flood zones, where additional residential density would significantly increase the threat or risk, is exempt from the small-scale, multi-unit requirements if the risks can’t be practically mitigated and the local government has obtained a report from a professional engineer or geoscientist which certifies that these conditions exist.

The Chair: Seeing no further questions, shall clause 2 pass?

Division has been called.

[4:35 p.m.]

Hello, folks. Can I have the consent of the committee to waive time? Are we good?

Leave granted.

The Chair: Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much. I get to ring the bell now.

Before putting the question, I remind all members that only members of Section C or their duly appointed substitutes are authorized to vote.

The question is on clause 2.

Clause 2 approved on the following division:

YEAS — 6
Routledge	Kahlon	Whiteside
Boyle	Malcolmson	Botterell
NAYS — 3
L. Neufeld	McCall	Maahs

On clause 3.

[4:40 p.m.]

Linda Hepner: We have one question on clause 3.

What was the purpose of repealing subsections 525(1.1) and (1.2)? Some clarity around that.

Hon. Christine Boyle: One question and a simple answer.

It repeals these subsections and adds them to 525.2 so that all of the small-scale, multi-unit housing requirements related to off-street parking are in one section.

Rob Botterell: I just want to compliment the minister on a great answer to the question.

The Chair: That is collaboration. We appreciate your collegiality. Excellent.

Clause 3 approved.

On clause 4.

Tony Luck: I’d like to start off here. This is a really interesting one because this is all about parking — municipalities and cities and minimums and maximums of parking and everything. This is going to be really interesting for some of the questions and some of the answers we’re going to see here.

Anyway, what specific problems, statements backed by data, does this section solve in relation to small-scale, multifamily housing feasibility and parking minimums? If there is any data or anything that you’ve done, any studies around municipalities, and you take a cross-section, whatever, could we have that analysis tabled by the minister?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

Many local governments require that a minimum amount of parking be included in a development, as an example. Many local governments have a “one parking stall per unit” rule. However, if on-site parking requirements are set too high, it can make small-scale, multi-unit housing expensive and difficult to build, due to the amount of space to accommodate these parking stalls.

We know there are, of course, differing situational contexts on this, and the intent is only to ensure that parking requirements aren’t set artificially high as a barrier intended to prevent the housing at all.

I know there has been some fear or speculation about the intention here, but we certainly understand the need for parking. This is market housing, and the intention is that the need dictate the amount of parking rather than that minimum parking be set artificially high to prevent the housing from being built at all.

[4:45 p.m.]

Tony Luck: I think that’s why we’re here today, getting clarity on there, because this is one of the more important clauses, I think, in the bill itself. It’s around parking. We’ve had a lot of feedback, a lot of questions asked about that, especially for smaller communities with weather conditions and things like that.

Let’s move through that so we can get some really good clarity around that. We can kind of understand, somewhat, the intent, but we’ll have you clarify.

What data…? Will we be able to get some data? Did you do some research around that? Did you do an impact analysis, and will that be available and be tabled? In any communities? A cross-section of communities? Five communities? No communities? It’d be interesting to see what data there was on that and see how that’s going to affect communities.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

Monitoring has shown that on-site parking requirements often have the greatest influence on the viability of small-scale, multi-unit housing, because typical residential lots are generally not large enough to accommodate multiple units where multiple parking spaces are required for each unit.

Communities that have taken steps to ensure development viability, including by reducing parking requirements, are starting to see strong uptake of small-scale, multi-unit housing, including Kelowna, Victoria, Burnaby and Saanich.

The province will continue monitoring small-scale, multi-unit housing implementation to determine if off-street parking requirements are deterring development and how the approach is working out.

Tony Luck: What data will determine how cabinet will determine an upper limit for off-street parking or loading spaces that will be permitted under section 481.3? Have you got some kind of criteria or formula for that, or basically, are we just eliminating off-street parking?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The small-scale, multi-unit housing manual includes recommended parking standards.

Tony Luck: You did mention that there will be monitoring and everything.

How is that monitoring going to be working, and how will that work after the fact? Is it going to be before the fact? Are you going to be monitoring small-scale units around the province now and see how that works moving forward? Are you going to do that after the fact, after the horse is out of the barn kind of thing? Are you going to do the monitoring after? What does that look like, and how will that affect ongoing legislation moving forward?

[4:50 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

At this time, no requirements on parking rules are being proposed. If a parking regulation is brought in, a cap would be set on how many off-street parking spaces a local government can require in small-scale, multi-unit housing developments.

That doesn’t mean that developers wouldn’t be able to build it. Again, this is market housing. It simply means that local governments wouldn’t be able to require parking above the cap. Developers would still be free to build as much parking as the market demands and the municipality will allow, but the municipality wouldn’t be able to set a cap in that way.

Tony Luck: That’s really interesting. Who’s going to monitor that to make sure that cities aren’t sneaking in more parking or doing other things like that? Who’s going to monitor that in Valemount or a small community like that? How do you know that they’re going to do minimum or maximum parking in those communities? How will that affect things moving forward as well?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks again for the question.

We regularly receive feedback from communities, from local councils and from homebuilders, and that feedback would form our ongoing work with local governments and our monitoring.

I also want to be clear. As I’ve said a number of times, communities under 5,000…. These rules don’t apply in Valemount.

Interjection.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes, but there have been many…. I will keep clarifying because there have been many communities named where these rules don’t apply, and I think it’s really important that we focus on where they do apply.

Rob Botterell: The one thing I’m curious about is: in that process of assessing off-street parking upper limits, would you be taking into account the needs and capacity of renters and/or proximity to transit?

One of the things that I raised in my second reading speech was the need to actually create affordable housing. I’m actually interested in what the factors are that would relate to setting the upper limit at a fairly low level.

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The short answer is absolutely. Proximity to transit, walkability — all of these are important factors and, as the member rightly identifies in his question, can make a big difference in terms of affordability of housing, specifically, and of life, overall.

I’ll just add that the small-scale, multi-unit housing provincial policy manual includes guidelines for local governments to consider. We worked with a team of planners and architects and engineers and relied on an advisory group of local government planners to work on all of these exact questions, and the member identifies an important one.

Tony Luck: Did you go into a neighbourhood and consult, like in Downtown Eastside or Vancouver or one of the smaller communities, and ask them how they’re going to feel about increasing the density on residential lots and then all the parking will be on the street? Did you consult in some of the neighbourhoods that are going to have to deal with some of these issues?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I just want to correct, for the record, that all of the parking won’t be on the street. This is about getting the right fit of housing for the location and the need. As I previously said, we worked with a team of planners and architects and engineers as well as local communities and community planners to get the site conditions right and confirm that it will work in communities.

Tony Luck: Just to get clarity around that, do we understand, then, from it that the minister can confirm that municipalities are prohibited or not from requiring any off-street parking or loading spaces for the residents? Residential use for a housing unit required to be permitted under section 481.3(5)….

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

Again, I’m happy to clarify. Under Bill 44, local governments can’t require parking minimums where the six-storey requirement applies near frequent transit stops. Again, to clarify, that doesn’t mean it can’t be built but only that it can’t be set as a minimum regulation by the local government. The market would determine and developers and homebuilders would determine whether they wanted to build it.

Under Bill 25, the province has the authority to set regulations to cap excessive off-street parking requirements in the future, if needed, but there are not specific plans at this point to do so, and doing so would be in consultation around a specific, large area of feedback and concern that we were hearing.

[5:00 p.m.]

Tony Luck: You may have answered this a little bit through that answer then. My next question is going to be: by prohibiting municipalities from requiring off-street parking for residential small-scale, multi-unit homes, as we’ve been discussing here, is the government signalling its intention to eventually remove parking requirements from larger multifamily or apartment projects altogether?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question. The answer is no.

Tony Luck: Does the minister acknowledge that most municipalities outside Metro Van lack viable transit options that would offset the loss of any on-site parking? That would be a challenge in a lot of communities.

Hon. Christine Boyle: We consulted with a range of local governments to whom these regulations apply, and absolutely, as stated earlier, availability and access to public transit is a relevant factor.

Tony Luck: How will this parking removal affect on-street congestion — I think I alluded to that a little bit earlier there — especially in older neighbourhoods with narrow road allowances?

Hon. Christine Boyle: If parking regulations were to be brought in, in the future, it would take into account, as I’ve said, unique local conditions, including the availability of transit or snow removal considerations and specifics like referenced by the member in the question.

Tony Luck: Has the ministry undertaken any parking impact assessments, particularly for suburban and rural communities with limited transit services? Are these studies public? Are they available, and can we ask for them to be part of the record?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I will again clarify that these rules don’t apply in rural communities. This is just a regulation authority. If a regulation were to be brought in, it would include further analysis such as referenced.

Tony Luck: So you’re mentioning…. You’re saying that you haven’t really done any studies, so there’s nothing for public consumption? We won’t be able to have anything to study, to see at least if you’ve done some work around some parking studies or anything like that? You’re just throwing darts?

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: We are not just throwing darts. We have done extensive consultation and, as I’ve said a number of times now, worked closely with planners and architects and communities. It is widely understood that excessive parking regulations impact both the cost and viability of badly needed housing. That work continues to inform the approach that we’re taking.

Tony Luck: Yeah, no question about that. They do cost. As a realtor, I’ve worked with developers before. We know that the cost of parking can sometimes be exorbitant, especially if you’re going underground and things like that. But you can always build above.

It’s just like in many shopping centres. They build the parking underneath and put the building above. So you don’t have to eliminate parking. You can move it below a building. Somebody might want to come along and put a six-unit on a residential lot and build it high enough so that he can get four, five, six or maybe ten cars under his property.

This goes to my next…. The minister mentioned that parking spaces are determined by the local need and by the market. What happens if a disagreement, between the minister and municipality, arises over the number of required off-street parking spaces that are required?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The market would determine. This simply says that local governments can’t have excessive parking requirements that are a barrier to the viability of this badly needed housing.

Tony Luck: Once again, who decides that? Will the market decide that, or will the ministry decide that?

Hon. Christine Boyle: The ministry has decided that local governments can’t set excessive regulations that act as a barrier, and the market will decide the amount of housing needed — well, that, and the amount of parking needed.

Tony Luck: I’m not quite sure where we’re going with that.

Anyway, does the minister believe that families should not own vehicles? By prohibiting the requirement for off-street parking, is that part of where we’re going here: elimination of vehicles in major cities and urban cores?

Hon. Christine Boyle: No. The answer is no.

Tony Luck: Well, especially if we move to EVs. We don’t want to get vehicles if we go to all EVs. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

This seems as if it’s contributing to a government attack on vehicles. Was this clause designed to at least reduce the number of vehicles in here?

Boy, when you get to off-street parking in smaller communities and everything, it’s going to discourage people from owning multiple vehicles — two vehicles, like a lot of people do. When you get into urban homes, they want to have, maybe, two. You know, the husband has one; the wife has one; the kids have one, or whatever.

A lot of us are feeling that this is an attack on the vehicles. Is that true or not?

Hon. Christine Boyle: It is not. This change would not limit people’s choice to own or drive cars. It allows the province to prevent excessive local government parking regulations that are a barrier to badly needed housing. As I have said, if people have cars and want homes with parking, developers will continue to build that.

This is what we see, but we want to let the market decide how much parking is required and not have excessive minimum requirements that make it hard or impossible to build new housing. In communities that have reduced parking requirements, we’re starting to see strong uptake of small-scale, multi-unit housing, especially in Kelowna, Victoria and Saanich.

Tony Luck: Does the minister acknowledge that eliminating parking minimums…? I know we talked about this, the markets. I haven’t decided if the market is going to determine parking spots or if the ministry is going to. I know there are arguments, probably, both ways on that.

Have we looked at the thought that maybe this is going to disproportionately affect working families, tradespeople or even seniors or disabled people that need the automobile, that need the thing? If we eliminate how many….

As we analyze somebody’s parking…. If somebody comes home and drives in front of their place, the neighbour says: “Well, you took my parking space. Now I’ve got to park three blocks away.” Those kinds of things will get challenging if the market can’t decide. I’m not concerned for allowing the market to decide how much parking space because you’ve put some minimums in there.

[5:10 p.m.]

Have we done the analysis around that, on how this is going to affect some people — especially, like I said, working families and tradespeople that need these extra vehicles?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Respectfully, I feel like I’ve answered this question numerous times now, so I’m unclear what the confusion is. The minister isn’t setting this regulation. We are simply ensuring that local governments aren’t setting excessive requirements as a barrier to building this housing, and then letting the market decide.

The market will continue to provide parking because people want and need it, including for the reasons stated. But again, I’m unclear why the same question keeps getting asked or alluded to. The minister is not setting this. We’re simply preventing excessive parking requirements from being set as a barrier to badly needed housing being built.

Tony Luck: So let’s get some clarity on that.

I need some clarity, Madam Chair. We have a motion that we would like to bring forward. A motion, amendment…. A motion, sorry. Yeah. This is my first kick at the can, so I’m just learning the process and everything.

The Chair: Sorry. You need to move your motion first.

Tony Luck: Okay, I’ll move the motion first.

I, Tony Luck, move in Committee of the Whole on Bill 25, intituled Housing and Municipal Affairs Statute Amendment Act, 2025, to amend as follows:

[CLAUSE 4, in proposed section 525.2 (2) (a), by adding the underlined text as shown:

(a) setting an upper limit on the number of off-street parking spaces, that is not less than two parking spaces per housing unit, or loading spaces that the council of a municipality may require;]

The Chair: The amendment is procedurally admissible, so if the member would like to speak to the motion.

On the amendment.

Tony Luck: Sorry around the confusion about asking about this minimum, maximum, no parking spaces, some parking spaces. I think we want to bring some clarity to that, because we realize how important it is to be able to have people with off-street parking.

We just think somewhere down the road this is going to turn into a real ugly show, with so many people trying to park off-street. Cars are not disappearing, and when we start putting four, five, six units on a residential lot, 60 by 120, space gets used up pretty quick and everything.

I think what we want to make sure is that we do have some kind of minimum amount of parking on site to help alleviate the issues around off-site parking. We’re going to get some of these smaller communities that have, like I said, narrow streets and that. There’s going to be a bit of a challenge here. That’s why we’re bringing this motion forward.

The Chair: Would the minister like to respond to the amendment?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes. Can we take a moment to confirm?

The Chair: Absolutely.

[5:15 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: What the member has suggested goes over and above what is recommended in the small-scale, multi-unit policy manual, so I don’t support it.

The small-scale, multi-unit housing provincial policy manual recommends setting parking requirements at no more than one space per unit for two to four units, where lots have some access to transit. The policy manual recommends setting parking requirements at no more than 0.5 spaces per units of three to four units.

I will again reiterate that these are not setting maximums. The market can and will decide the appropriate number of parking spaces that make these homes viable and workable and appealing for potential customers.

But specific to the amendment, we’ll not be supporting for those reasons.

Interjection.

The Chair: We will now have a vote. I was waiting to see if you wanted to speak again.

Linda Hepner: I’d like some clarity from the minister on the comment around how you’re not setting maximums. Did I hear that correctly?

[The bells were rung.]

The Chair: The bells have been calling us to the chamber, so we will recess until the vote has completed there, and we will return.

The committee recessed from 5:18 p.m. to 5:35 p.m.

[Jennifer Blatherwick in the chair.]

The Chair: All right. We will now return from recess.

Hon. Christine Boyle: I’m happy to just provide a clarification, because I do think the way that I worded that was confusing. We’re all dancing around minimums and maximums, so let’s do that dance together.

The proposed changes will give the province the ability to create regulations for off-street parking requirements, if needed in the future. Again, at this time, no requirements on parking rules are being proposed.

If a parking regulation is brought in, a cap would be set on how many off-street parking spaces a local government can require in small-scale, multi-unit housing developments, not how many can be built but how many can be required.

Interjection.

The Chair: Member for Fraser…. I only have one job, okay?

Tony Luck: I kind of only have one too, and I blow it too many times. I appreciate the work that you do with us rookies. That’s really good.

Let’s see if we got that clarified. You’re absolutely right, I think, Minister, that the market will decide how many they want over and above the zero. What we don’t want is the municipality coming in and putting a minimum amount. Our motion or amendment is requiring that we have a minimum of two parking spots per lot, because if the market has its way, it will not provide any parking spots.

We know what the market is like. If they can get rid of parking, because we know in the past that parking can be expensive, they will.

But you’re right, Minister, that it’ll be up to them to see what the market is like, what the market can take. If then, somebody wants to buy a place with no parking spots, well, that’s up to them and everything like that.

So I think we have clarity on that now, do we not?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Just to say that it has not been our experience that the market will build zero parking spaces. There is interest and demand in parking alongside housing in many places, based on the context, and parking is being built based on that need.

Amendment negatived on division.

Scott McInnis: I thank the minister for another chance to ask some questions, as well as the staff.

I wanted to get some clarity from a smaller resort-community perspective on some of this. I apologize to the minister and the staff. I was not in the room for the first portion of this committee debate, so I hope there’s not too much that’s repeated here.

My first question I have…. The population standard for this is 5,000 and above. I’m just curious. Will this legislation come into effect…? Let’s look at clause 3 specifically. Is it retroactive today for those populations of 5,000, or will that be something that is looked at for communities that would eventually reach the population of 5,000? I’m thinking of a community like Golden, in my riding, that’s about 4,500 people.

If the minister could just clarify that.

The Chair: Sorry, Member, could I clarify. Are you speaking about clause 3 or clause 4?

Scott McInnis: Excuse me. Clause 4. Pardon me, Madam Chair. It’s been a long day.

[5:40 p.m.]

So yes, just looking at that 5,000 population threshold. Does this legislation then come into effect once communities that are growing reach that threshold, or is it sort of in place for communities that are at that population today?

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for an interesting question. Glad to have you here.

The legislation does apply to communities over 5,000, as stated. When a community hits that level, we would be in communication with them to work together on implementation of these rules including — obviously, not the deadline as set now — a workable timeline in partnership with that community.

Scott McInnis: That helps clarify that for me. Thank you.

Could I just get an idea, and even a rough number is fine here, about…? I’m just wondering how many rural communities outside of the Lower Mainland — so east of the Fraser Valley and, let’s say, north of Kamloops — were directly consulted about clause 4 relating to the off-street parking issues.

The connection I’m trying to make here is many of these communities, referring back to my debate speech for the second reading, do receive quite a lot of snow in the wintertime. I’m just wondering how many of those communities were directly engaged outside of the Lower Mainland.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The member, as stated, is new in here, so I’ll just reiterate what I have now said many times, which is that the rules don’t apply in rural communities.

To the snowfall question, we recognize, of course, that there are many places in the province where cars and vehicles are essential for daily life, including in areas with high snowfall. If we were to bring in regulations, we would work with communities with varying needs, including for issues such as snowfall, to ensure that the requirements make sense in that community and around the province. The legislation ensures that we can exempt and vary the requirements as appropriate — for example, in less urban areas or to accommodate snow removal or snow conditions.

[5:45 p.m.]

Scott McInnis: Were Kimberley or Revelstoke consulted on this legislation in general, but specifically clause 4 with regard to the off-street parking?

Hon. Christine Boyle: It’s a bit of a repeat from a previous answer, but we consulted with local governments of a range of sizes and spread around different regions of the province, and Revelstoke was one of those local governments, as well as broader engagement through UBCM.

Scott McInnis: Could the minister, for me, indicate any opposition that was provided by the city of Revelstoke to clause 4 specifically around some of these parking challenges?

Hon. Christine Boyle: I gave a similar answer earlier but will repeat for the member. We received a range of really valuable feedback and have balanced that with what we know is required in terms of parking and viability of development to ensure that badly needed housing gets built.

Scott McInnis: Thank you to the minister for that.

Just to confirm that Kimberley was not directly consulted on this specific clause of the legislation.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes. Kimberley wasn’t one of the specific communities engaged. UBCM, more broadly, was involved in the engagement, though.

Linda Hepner: Can you just clarify. When you say UBCM was consulted, was it the executive of UBCM, or did they send out something to their members?

I’m just having difficulty understanding the level of consultation. As a former mayor, and as a former executive on UBCM, I know that oftentimes the executive takes a look but the membership of the communities is not included. I’m just wondering if you can clarify, within the consultation process, what that actually looked like.

[5:50 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: I’ll leave it to UBCM to speak to their process and representation, but we recognize UBCM as an important consultation body that consults with and provides feedback as a partner in this work. We continue to engage with them as well as, as I’ve stated, one-on-one conversations with many local governments whose feedback is valuable.

All of that is part of a balanced approach that we take in putting together legislation.

Linda Hepner: UBCM is opposed to this legislation.

Hon. Christine Boyle: I will take that as a question.

UBCM provided a range of feedback that was valuable in shaping the direction of the legislation, again, in balance with what we know from communities and homebuilders is needed to get badly needed housing built.

Linda Hepner: Can the minister identify what some of those changes would have been, having consulted with UBCM?

Hon. Christine Boyle: We received a wide range of feedback from UBCM, as well as other local governments and experts, and all of it informed the balanced approach that we have taken on this matter.

Linda Hepner: I don’t mean to be insistent, but I’m trying to get a sense of, within local governments, what you’ve heard and what you have done within the legislation to make any changes, because what we’re hearing from our consultations is that it isn’t working for local government. So I’d like to know if, in fact, you’ve made any changes to the legislation based on the feedback you’ve gotten.

Hon. Christine Boyle: We have shaped the legislation based on all of the feedback that we’ve got.

More than 97 percent of local governments have now adopted this small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation. This is a good indication that local governments understand the need for these types of housing and are not only complying but understand and support the necessary changes to build more homes in their community.

Linda Hepner: Thank you. That’s a useful percentage. I appreciate that.

Can you tell me what kind of analysis, if any, was done to determine road capacity within urban settings, and how did you assess the viability of the mandates within those communities? I think what I’m getting at here is if we don’t have off-site parking and we are obliged to have street parking, has there been any analysis of road capacities within the urban centres specifically? Not perhaps rural.

[5:55 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Again, I’ll just reaffirm that we’re not currently bringing forward any regulations. But if we do bring forward regulations, we would consult local governments and stakeholders to ensure that those made sense in different communities, tailored to the scale or location of housing, including considerations, as I’ve said, like snow removal, street size and capacity, etc.

Linda Hepner: Actually, then, the answer may be relatively the same. I was interested in whether or not the ministry has reached out to any experts on assessing how multiplexes will be able to individually have the space required on roads for garbage removal. I know it sounds silly, but if you have a multiplex and you have three cans each, you now have on the road 12 cans for garbage. If you’ve also got parking, that would be really unworkable within an urban setting.

I just wondered if you’ve done any assessment on that in suggesting that multiplexes on single-family lots make sense, especially if they’re side by side or even kitty-corner, and now you’ve got 24 cans.

Hon. Christine Boyle: Yes. Again, we worked with a team of planners and architects and engineers, as well as an advisory group of local government planners, to get the site conditions right, including consideration of all of these relevant and important urban questions.

Bill 25 allows the province to establish exemptions from the requirements, which could include for snow removal, for waste collection, etc. Those local conditions were part of the larger work that was undertaken and also, were regulations to be implemented — which, again, we aren’t planning for right now — would be taken into account.

Tony Luck: I think we just have maybe one more question for this section here. It’s been a pretty lengthy questioning on things.

I have in my hand here one of many, many articles and papers that are written that densification is not making housing more affordable. So here we are. We have things like this bill coming out to densify, densify, densify.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m for densification when it’s done correctly. But in every report that I can see with the prices and everything like that, densification is a…. There’s a mindset out there that thinks if we densify, everything is going to get cheaper. It is not. Affordability continues to go up and all that. Some of these requirements, around these parking issues and that, have not helped the situation at all.

If the end goal of all this is to get more affordable housing…. Is it just to provide more housing? I think we want to have more housing and more affordable housing. I think that’s the ultimate outcome of all this.

Has this ministry done any analysis about the proposals that they’re making around driving down the price of housing? Bill 44 came out, some of the other bills and all this have come out, and it hasn’t driven affordability down. So have we done any analysis around this?

Like I say, this is one of many reports that are questioning the densification of our cities.

The Chair: I’m sorry, Member. Could you help the Chair understand how that’s relevant to clause 4?

Tony Luck: Well, it’s around the parking issue and the densification, and that’s how it’s relevant. Am I drawing a longbow here?

The Chair: Mm-hmm.

Tony Luck: Okay. Let me read the question. Will construction costs be lowered by not requiring off-street parking? If so, will that translate into lower sales prices and rent? Have you done the analysis around that?

[6:00 p.m.]

Hon. Christine Boyle: Thanks for the question.

The legislation, as the member is aware, is part of a suite of efforts the province is undertaking to increase housing affordability for British Columbians by increasing housing supply overall and providing housing alternatives to single-family homes that are no longer attainable for many.

Our economic analysis, undertaken by leading experts in 2023 and available publicly, modelled a suite of zoning reforms similar to the small-scale, multi-unit housing and transit-oriented area requirements.

Of course, while modelling can’t account for unforeseen circumstances and the changing nature of real estate markets, the analysis indicated that small-scale, multi-unit housing requirements combined with the transit-oriented area requirements could lead to an additional 300,000 net new homes in B.C. over the next ten years. Consistent with experience elsewhere, this new supply is anticipated to help reduce housing prices over time.

Because he is here, I would just like to quote my colleague the Minister of Jobs, who stated in 2023, related to previous legislation: “The nature of fourplexes makes homes more affordable than a single-family home. That’s why we’re bringing this forward, because when a single-family home is built on a single-family lot, it’s unattainable for many people.”

Linda Hepner: What consultation process will occur before cabinet issues regulations?

You mentioned that they’re down the road, some distance down the road. I’m interested in both. What are you thinking in terms of timing, and what consultation process will occur for regulations?

Hon. Christine Boyle: As I’ve stated, there are no regulations proposed at this time. If we were to move forward with regulations, it would be after a range of consultation with local governments, with homebuilders and the development sector and with First Nations.

I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: We stand adjourned.

The committee rose at 6:04 p.m.