Contents

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I have two sets of announcements.

One, I see Manjit and Tarannum up in this gallery today. They’re my CAs. They do incredible work in my community. I hear from people all the time about how fantastic they have been to work with. I’m really lucky to have them part of my team, and they’re here today.

I have a second set of introductions. Right behind them is Dan Davies, former MLA in this chamber, and Mary Mytting is here as well. She is the executive director of Northern Innovation Network. My friend Dan is on the board, and they’re here talking about innovation and opportunities in northern British Columbia.

I’m hoping the House can join me in making both of them very welcome.

Teresa Wat: It is my great pleasure to rise in the House today to introduce some very special guests who have joined us in support of the fourth annual B.C. Buddhist Day.

Joining us in the gallery is my dear friend, Madam Liu, along with distinguished members of the North America Artists Association and the North America Calligraphy and Painting Research Institute. The more-than-100-member delegation this morning all woke up at 4 a.m. to make sure that they could get on the two buses, the coaches, to come here and take the 7 a.m. ferry not to miss the celebration of the fourth annual B.C. Buddhist Culture Day in the Hall of Honour.

[1:35 p.m.]

Thank you for your amazing performances. Through your dedication to art, culture and community, you have made meaningful contributions to promoting cultural diversity and artistic expression across our province. Your presence here today is a reflection of this vibrant multicultural spirit that defines British Columbia. We are so grateful for your continued efforts in bringing communities together through culture and creativity.

Please join me in extending a very warm welcome to Madam Liu and all of the over 100 honoured guests of this delegation.

Hon. Josie Osborne: We have two special guests joining us in the gallery today from the Canadian Mental Health Association, B.C. chapter. Kim Mackenzie is CMHA’s senior director of policy and systems transformation, and Jonny Morris is the CEO. Both of these incredible human beings have spent the entirety of their careers in service of others and, together with their teams, developed groundbreaking programs like community-led crisis response teams, which are changing the way we respond to mental health crises in our communities with a more compassionate and effective approach.

Would the House please join me in making Kim and Jonny most welcome.

Hon. Brittny Anderson: I am delighted to introduce two incredible women behind me. I’ve got Megan Dykeman and Kelli Paddon. They were my colleagues. They did incredible work for their communities as MLAs, and they continue to do incredible work.

I just want the House to re-welcome them and make them feel very welcome.

Elenore Sturko: Yesterday was the BMO Vancouver Marathon. With 25,000 participants from countries all over the world, 9,499 of them did the actual marathon, including my spouse, Melissa. My kids and I got up early in the morning to get behind all the traffic closures to be able to cheer her on. We’re incredibly proud of her.

Will the House join me in congratulating Melissa Sturko and everyone who participated in the Vancouver Marathon.

Hon. Brenda Bailey: Today is a very important day in the geek calendar, Star Wars Day. I thought I’d just take a moment to really give a shout-out to the many hundreds of people that have worked on these properties here in British Columbia, from The Mandalorian to Obi-Wan Kenobi and of course Andor — hundreds of talented British Columbians giving people a world-class experience in entertainment.

Mr. Speaker, may the fourth be with you.

Gavin Dew: I join the Minister of Finance in celebrating May 4, but I would draw attention to the fact that while the government has changed the ministry from Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation to Jobs and Economic Growth, I have kept my critic title — Jobs, Economic Development, Innovation and Artificial Intelligence. That makes me the last Jedi in this House. Let me be clear. They can have my blue lightsabre when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

May the fourth be with you.

Dana Lajeunesse: Today I have two introductions I’d like to make.

One, I recognize the significance of this day, May 4, to all Star Wars fans, but in my family it has a higher level of significance. It’s my mom’s birthday. If she were with us today, she’d be celebrating her 100th birthday. So Mom, may the fourth be with you.

Secondly, I have another. I’ll get it….

The Speaker: Columbia River–Revelstoke.

Scott McInnis: I’ll take a quick second and congratulate the Kimberley Dynamiters on being the ’25-26 Kootenay International Junior Hockey League champions for the year. Kimberley has really been a powerhouse in junior hockey for the last number of years. This is their second championship in the last four.

Would the House please help me congratulate the Dynamiters.

[1:40 p.m.]

The Speaker: Before I recognize other members, Juan de Fuca–Malahat has one more introduction to make.

Dana Lajeunesse: Thank you again, Mr. Speaker.

I’m pleased to introduce Steven Eckert, founder of Vancouver Island Bucket List, a platform that reaches hundreds of thousands of travellers annually and highlights Vancouver Island experiences, small tour operators, artists and local restaurants. Through a strong local voice, his work helps ensure tourism dollars stay in Island communities rather than flowing to global booking platforms.

Steve also previously served as president of the Sooke Region Tourism Association and is joining us today along with his 15-year-old daughter Raine.

Please join me in giving them a warm House welcome.

Hon. Mike Farnworth: While we do our jobs here and when we’re back in our ridings doing our jobs, there are some very important people who work in our offices, and they are our constituency assistants. They do incredible work helping constituents day in, day out. Ours are over here for a couple of days on their annual conference, and many of them are here in the galleries.

Would the House please make them all very welcome.

Stephanie Higginson: It is not often, despite being an MLA on the Island, that I have constituents in the House.

I would like everyone to help me welcome the mayor of Ladysmith, Deena Beeston; Couns. Trish McKay, Duck Paterson and Jeff Virtanen.

I will say that Councillor Paterson has been a councillor in Ladysmith almost as long as I’ve been alive. He deserves an extra round of applause for his time and dedication to the town of Ladysmith.

Good things happen when we work well together, like our recent announcement about a new school for the town of Ladysmith.

Would everybody please help me make them feel very welcome and welcome them if you see them today.

Gavin Dew: It’s a pleasure to welcome to the Legislature the folks from CEFA Early Learning, who I had the opportunity to meet with earlier. My family has a background in child care, so I enjoyed speaking with them. I had a great pleasure meeting with CEO Arno Krug Jr. as well as a team made up of Tatiane Vita, Paul Dean, Jane Kleisinger and owner-operator Karen Chan.

Thank you very much for all you do to provide high-quality child care here in B.C.

Harwinder Sandhu: I am excited and thrilled to introduce my dear friends, my health care family and colleagues, Cerah with a C and Vincent. They are here at the Legislature today. They’re both a power couple. Vincent is a psychiatric nurse at Vernon Jubilee Hospital — also, worked at Kelowna before that — and Cerah is an LPN for more than 11 years. Between Vincent and Cerah, they both have served and helped people in health care for more than two decades, and they’re so close to me.

I get very excited whenever I introduce people from the health care sector because there’s reason. In Vernon Jubilee and in Mills Memorial, Terrace, those were the only families…. They were with me and my family through thick and thin — through tough, difficult times and happy times, so I hold them near and dear to my heart.

Would the House please join my friends to feel very welcomed here.

Hon. Brenda Bailey: I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate a ministerial adviser in this place, Kenton Duncan, for his successful completion of the BMO Marathon. He hit his numbers. He had a great run.

Congratulations, Kenton.

Statements

Christopher Lee

George Anderson: I rise today to recognize an extraordinary young leader in British Columbia, Christopher Lee. As the founder of Helping Hearts Youth Foundation, he has spent four years bringing together student leaders to serve their communities and support local causes. His impact has not gone unnoticed. He’s also a past recipient of the Medal of Good Citizenship.

About a week and a half ago I met with Christopher and gave him a tour of the Legislature. It was clear that he carries himself with the same purpose here as he does in his community. After building this organization from the ground up, he’s now stepped down as the chair, leaving it stronger than how he found it.

If this is what leadership looks like at the age of 18, then the future isn’t ahead of us; it’s already here.

I ask all members to join me in recognizing Christopher Lee.

[1:45 p.m.]

Tributes

Lillian Szpak

Hon. Ravi Parmar: Really difficult news to be able to share with this House. Earlier today…. My friend and colleague, city of Langford councillor for over two decades, Lillian Szpak passed away over the weekend. I’ve known Lillian my entire political career, as a school board trustee and board chair to now being an MLA.

But I think, more importantly, outside of politics, she was a neighbour. My grandmother often went on walks in the morning, and Lillian was one of the friendly neighbourhood folks that would look after her. My grandmother does a 5K walk every morning, in her 90s, attached to oxygen, and we’re so thankful for our neighbourhood for looking after her. Lillian was one of those people.

Lillian is an incredible public servant. She is someone who cared deeply about the city of Langford. She was a Langfordian at its core. I know that this is a very difficult time for her family, for her friends and for the broader Langford community. It is a great loss for the city of Langford.

I want to offer my condolences on behalf of all of us to the city of Langford, to the residents, but most importantly, to her loving husband, Bob, to their family, to her grandchildren during this very difficult time.

Introductions by Members

Rohini Arora: I just want to take a moment to congratulate my baby sister Jasleen. She gave birth to the very handsome Sehej James Singh Arora. He was due on Valentine’s Day, but he was a day late, fashionably, like his brother Jeevan.

Please help me congratulate my sister and Sehej not just to the Legislature but to this world. I’m super excited that we have two very rambunctious babies kicking around at my sister’s place now. I love being an auntie, and I’m so thrilled he’s here.

Hon. Lisa Beare: I want to join the member from Kelowna in welcoming CEFA to the House today. He did beat me to it, so I wish them all the best.

I also have guests from the city of Maple Ridge who are here today. We have the mayor, His Worship Dan Ruimy, here along with intergovernmental, Katerina Anastasiadis, who is here today.

Would the House please make them feel very welcome.

Hon. Jodie Wickens: I met Natasha Wodak 18 years ago. We were both waitresses at the Boathouse in Port Moody. I was busy going back to school and raising my young family. Natasha was busy running and racing.

This past weekend she came in first in the BMO half-marathon with a record of one hour and 12 minutes. She is a hometown hero. I am in awe that I spent a period of time in my life working away waitressing beside her.

Way to go, Natasha. We are so proud of you.

Hon. Josie Osborne: I’ve just learned, hon. Speaker, that you have two very important guests here, and I am very pleased to introduce Praty Awasthi and her mom, Pushpa, who are joining us in the gallery today.

Praty is a wonder who graduated university at 14 and is now in her third year at UBC studying kinesiology and aspiring to be a surgeon. I have no doubt that with her intelligence and drive she certainly will be able to achieve her goals.

Will the House please help me welcome her and her very proud mom amongst the gallery today.

Ward Stamer: I would like to recognize our youth lobby days here at the Legislature. We were fortunate enough to meet with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society group this morning — a great bunch of folks.

One of them has actually got her master’s degree, and honestly, she looks like she just got out of high school. Great, great questions, and it was so fortunate for us to be able to meet with them.

Also, I wanted to mention that the Private Landowners Forest Group is here as well. We know how important it is for our industry to be able to rely on private land as well as public land and woodlots and community forests and everybody else across the province to be able to help sustain this forest industry.

Will the House please give them a warm welcome.

[1:50 p.m.]

Members’ Statements

Mental Health Week

Amna Shah: I rise today to mark the beginning of Mental Health Week, taking place from May 4 to May 10, 2026. This year’s theme, “Come together, Canada,” reminds us that connection is essential to our mental health and well-being. By strengthening relationships and fostering a sense of belonging, we can build healthier communities all across British Columbia.

Our government has made significant investments in mental health and substance use care, investments that are expanding access to timely, community-based supports across the province. Through our leadership and in partnership with organizations like the Canadian Mental Health Association, these investments are making a meaningful difference. Programs such as Bounce Back and CRCL’s community crisis response teams ensure that more families, youth and individuals are receiving support when they need it.

Across British Columbia, we are seeing the impact. Parents are gaining tools to support their children. Health care workers are finding connection and relief, and individuals are accessing treatment and rebuilding their lives with dignity and with hope. These are not small outcomes. These are life-changing and also life-saving, and they are made possible through strong partnerships and sustained public investment.

Mental health care is essential to the well-being of our communities and the strength of our province. Every time one person receives the mental health supports that they need, the benefits ripple outwards, strengthening families, workplaces and communities and reducing strain on health, social and emergency services for everyone.

As we mark Mental Health Week, we reaffirm our government’s commitment to ensuring that everyone in British Columbia can access the care that they need when they need it, and we recognize the shared responsibility we all hold in making that a reality.

Buddhist Culture Day

Teresa Wat: It is my great honour to join the celebration at the B.C. Legislature as we commemorate the fourth Buddhist Culture Day in British Columbia.

I would like to begin by recognizing and thanking the North America Artists Association and the North America Calligraphy and Painting Research Institute for their outstanding leadership in supporting today’s celebration. This marks the first time that community-based organizations have taken on the role of coordinating B.C. Buddhist Culture Day.

This year’s theme, “Expressing Buddhist values through art,” is both inspiring and profound. Through exhibition of Buddhist calligraphy and painting; along with performances such as Guzheng music, singing, dance; as well as Chinese shadow puppetry, a traditional form of folk art, we are able to experience the essence of Buddhist teachings in a vivid and accessible way.

Rooted in principles of compassion, equality and inclusiveness, Buddhism continues to play an important role in shaping our communities. These values are not only spiritual ideals but also guiding principles for building a more harmonious and respectful society.

I am especially proud, as the MLA who first introduced and championed B.C. Buddhist Culture Day in this Legislature, to witness how this initiative has grown and flourished. What began as a vision to recognize the rich contributions of Buddhist culture has now become a meaningful platform that brings together people from all backgrounds in shared understanding and celebration.

Today’s celebration is a beautiful example of how art and culture can bring Buddhist values to life and how these values can resonate far beyond the Buddhist community. As we mark this special occasion, let’s continue to embrace and practise spiritual compassion and unity in our daily lives and work together to build a more peaceful and inclusive British Columbia.

Brain Injury Awareness Month

Dana Lajeunesse: Today I want to raise awareness that next month, June, is Brain Injury Awareness Month. This annual observance serves as a vital opportunity to bring attention to an issue that affects thousands of Canadians, including, of course, families right here in British Columbia.

[1:55 p.m.]

Brain injuries — whether caused by accidents, strokes, sports or other events — can have life-altering consequences that ripple through every aspect of a person’s life. As Parliamentary Secretary for Accessibility, I’m deeply committed to supporting those who live with brain injuries, and their loved ones. The journey toward recovery is often long and complex, requiring not only medical treatment but also access to rehabilitation, community support and a compassionate understanding from all sectors of society.

It is our responsibility as government to ensure that resources are available, policies are inclusive and barriers are removed so that everyone has the chance to thrive and participate fully in their communities.

Brain Injury Awareness Month is not only about education. It’s about action. We must work together to prevent brain injuries by promoting safety in our homes, schools, workplaces and recreational spaces. At the same time, we must amplify the voices of those affected, listen to their stories and advocate for meaningful improvements in care and accessibility. By fostering awareness, we empower individuals, reduce stigma and encourage the development of innovative solutions that can transform lives.

Let us take the month of June as a call to action. Let us recommit ourselves to supporting brain injury survivors, advocating for families and investing in research and community programs. Together we can build a province where accessibility is not only a policy but a shared value, one that ensures dignity, inclusion and hope for all.

Princeton Posse
Junior Hockey Team

Donegal Wilson: I rise today to recognize the incredible playoff run of our Princeton Posse. Over the past few weeks, the excitement has been building. Our community watched with pride as this team fought its way to the Kootenay International Junior A Hockey League finals, then carried our region all the way to game 7 to a double-overtime finish. That’s not just hockey. That is heart, that is resilience, and that is what small communities do best.

On behalf of myself and the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke, I want to extend a congratulations to the Kimberley Dynamiters on a win they truly earned. Over the last few weeks, we’ve enjoyed connecting after every game to cheer our teams on in a little fun. But kidding aside, a game 7 double-overtime finish reflects the determination and the skill of both teams, and it was a series worth watching to the very end.

The Princeton Posse represented Princeton and the entire Boundary-Similkameen region with determination and class right to the final shift. They carried forward a proud hockey tradition in a town where our arena remains a gathering place for our whole community.

Runs like this don’t happen by accident. They happen because of coaches who led, volunteers who organized, billets who opened their homes, families who travel thousands of kilometres and get up early, early hours, donations that help pay the bills and put gas in the bus and fans who packed the arena to believe in their team. But most of all, they happen because of players who chose to represent a small town with big pride.

To the Princeton Posse: thank you. I am proud to stand here today and say that across Boundary-Similkameen, we are all proud of how you represented our region with grit, with heart and with everything that defines small-town British Columbia.

Music Monday
and Music Education

George Chow: Mondays are usually slow, but today is different. Today we celebrate Music Monday, a celebration of the power of music and the role it plays in connecting and strengthening our communities.

Music Monday was created to highlight how music brings people together and how that connection begins in our schools. Throughout British Columbia and across the country, Music Monday is observed in classrooms, school assemblies, group concerts, community bands and choirs with special events that unite students, educators, families and local communities through music.

In our schools, music education offers far more than performance skills. It plays a vital role in the holistic development of children and youth, nurturing creativity, discipline and emotional expression. Through learning an instrument, singing in a choir or engaging in musical composition, students develop skills that extend far beyond the classroom.

[2:00 p.m.]

Studies have shown that music education can improve academic performance and support mental well-being, making it a powerful tool for both personal and educational growth. It provides students with the means to connect with their heritage, explore diverse traditions and express their unique identities. This is why music continues to be core learning in B.C.’s arts education curriculum.

From kindergarten to grade 12, students have the opportunity to learn about music, whether in younger years where students can learn through purposeful play or as they get older and take musical theatre or choir. All students can be artists. B.C.’s curriculum supports the notion that all students, in becoming educated citizens, can develop an artistic mindset in all aspects of their daily life, both during and beyond their school years.

On Music Monday, we celebrate the teachers, students, volunteers and community partners who make music education possible and who ensure that music remains a vibrant part of learning and community life.

Carey Price Hockey Achievements
and Community Contributions

Lorne Doerkson: It appears that our hero will complete his NHL contract with the Montreal Canadiens, closing the book on a remarkable 15-year career. Carey Price gave the Canadiens elite goaltending and a chance to compete every single season. At his best, he was one of the most dominant goaltenders of his generation.

His 2014-2015 season remains one of the greatest ever by any goalie — 44 wins and a sweep of the game’s top honours: the Hart Memorial Trophy, the Vezina Trophy, the William M. Jennings Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award. He has also helped bring gold home for Canada at the end of the 2014 Olympics, the World Cup of Hockey and the IIHF World Junior Championship. His contract ends as the Canadiens’ all-time leader with wins of 361 finishing his career and more than 700 games played.

But for those of us in my riding, his story is about more than just statistics. Carey was raised in Anahim Lake in the heart of the Chilcotin, and to pursue hockey, he travelled hundreds of kilometres to Williams Lake — long winter roads and even a plane on occasion.

Carey is known throughout the Cariboo-Chilcotin as a true gentleman. He’s remained connected and continues to give back in meaningful ways. He’s donated game-worn gear to local auctions and roped in the arena at the Williams Lake Stampede. He’s personally sponsored the indoor rodeo and continues to support youth and community across British Columbia. Those actions speak volumes about the kind of man he is and why so many people in Cariboo-Chilcotin look up to him.

From the frozen ponds in the Chilcotin to the bright lights of Montreal, Carey is absolutely the pride of Cariboo-Chilcotin. While members from Kelowna may like to claim him as their own, those of us in Cariboo-Chilcotin know Carey Price will always have a home right here.

Please help me congratulate No. 31, Carey Price, the Montreal Canadiens goaltender.

Oral Questions

Proposed Changes to DRIPA
and Involvement of U.S. Indigenous
Groups in Court Cases

Trevor Halford: How bad has it gotten under this NDP government’s recent decision to enter into co-governance and failure to address DRIPA? Well, now the Eskay Creek project that has, as the Premier says, potential to bring over 1,000 jobs into northwest B.C. is facing court action. The Premier says that the mine is good for all British Columbians. He, in fact, brags about this project every time he’s standing at a podium.

But here’s the problem. While this government flip-flops on DRIPA, an Alaskan-based tribal organization is using the exact same legislation that this Premier brought in, once in 2019 and then with the Interpretation Act in 2020, to stop the project.

Can the AG confirm that the legislation to address DRIPA will be brought in this fall, yes or no?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We’ve had a chance to canvass this issue quite a bit in this House, about our commitment to working through the issues of the Gitxaała decision, appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada and sitting down to figure out what the fix is going to be to the challenges we face. We are about taking action and understanding what needs to change and working with our partners to arrive at that.

[2:05 p.m.]

The issue of U.S. tribes in Canada — well, we’re a government that came up with the legislative fix here in the House for that. The Minister of Environment recently introduced legislation to support the environmental assessment office’s ability to differentiate, with consultation with First Nations in Canada and tribes in the United States.

This is what we do. We come up with solutions to fix challenges that we’re facing in B.C.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Trevor Halford: She says “taking action.” Well, when this government was ready to take action on what they were proposing regarding DRIPA, they went and hid because it was the Attorney General that tapped the Premier on the shoulder and said: “Whoa, whoa, hold on. We can’t do this. Let’s delay this months and months and enter into a system of co-governance.”

We now know that U.S. tribes have filed an unknown number of legal cases against the province and are now using DRIPA to hold back B.C.’s economy. The Attorney General favours “a durable solution.” Yet all these discussions that now apparently reflect a co-governance model, according to First Nations leadership, are behind closed doors.

Will the province also be negotiating with American tribes over the coming months to find “a durable solution”?

Hon. Niki Sharma: We focus on B.C.-based nations and the work that we have to do with them, and that’s been our commitment throughout.

The issue arose in 2010. In 2010, when we were not in government, there was a case that was started by a member of a U.S. tribe that made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. That was something that was well before our time in government.

What wasn’t well before our time in government was the piece of legislation that we passed in this House that they voted against. That’s legislation brought by the Minister of Environment to make it clear that B.C. First Nations have our attention and our preference when it comes to our processes and that we will uphold the Supreme Court of Canada decision and make it clear that U.S. tribes, although they have rights, are different than B.C. nations. We’re going to continue to do that work.

The Speaker: Member, second supplemental.

Trevor Halford: Both the Premier and the Attorney General…. Let’s focus on what the Premier said for a second. He has said numerous times that there was an extreme urgency to deal with DRIPA this session because of, he said, 20 cases that were currently before the courts. Now, when you ask the Premier — whether outside of this chamber or inside of this chamber — or the Attorney General to name any of those cases, they don’t know. They don’t want to answer.

So a simple question to the Attorney General. Is this one of the cases that the Premier referenced, yes or no?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I’ve been clear in this House that I won’t talk about cases that are before the courts. That’s just the way it is in the public record.

But you know what? I want to talk a little bit about their record. They’re all about slogans and not about solutions.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh.

Hon. Niki Sharma: I’ve said over and over again in this House about the way that they’ve approached what is a very serious issue through fundraising emails. That’s the record that we have about the opposition.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, shhh.

Hon. Niki Sharma: Over and over again, they’ve taken political advantage over what is a very serious issue, by asking people to donate money and fearmongering about what’s happening with court cases in this province.

I could go on about…. I’ve already read some. Caroline Elliott, in an email: “DRIPA, ostensibly passed to promote reconciliation, is being used as a radical land-back agenda, and we’re already seeing the results — homeowners having their property rights threatened.” Guess how much that one’s worth? “Pitch in $10 now to help protect your property rights.”

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. Niki Sharma: This is all we’re getting from that side over there. We’re going to continue to focus on solutions.

Scott McInnis: I’m glad at the responses I’m hearing from the Attorney General because they have nothing to do with what we’re talking about here today.

How bad is this? We’re not asking for litigation strategies or details of the court. We’re asking for the names so we can go into the registry and see how many cases there are. That’s it.

[2:10 p.m.]

The Premier has referenced at least 20 cases which have been amended to reflect the Gitxaała decision. He called this “an existential threat,” and it presents “significant legal liability.”

One of these cases with the Sn̓ʕaýckstx Confederacy, an American tribe, is going to court tomorrow. The government, on top of all that, consented in the beginning to allowing the sn̓ʕaýckstx into this litigation.

To the Attorney General: will the government be defending our sovereignty by arguing against the sn̓ʕaýckstx having UNDRIP and DRIPA rights in B.C., yes or no?

Hon. Niki Sharma: In fact, it’s our government that brought forward legislation that made it very clear that B.C. First Nations are prioritized in our province, and they voted against it.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Hon. Niki Sharma: It’s our government that has been very clear about our priority of working with B.C. First Nations. In fact, using DRIPA, it has locked billions of dollars of investment in this province, including with Eskay Creek.

We’re going to continue to do the work that we know we need to do to lift up this province and solve any issues through our court challenges that we need to with our partners.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Scott McInnis: Another deflection. That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about — nothing.

The Premier knows how serious this is. He has said the changes to DRIPA were “non-negotiable,” and he called them “urgent.” But he agreed to delay any changes to DRIPA at the advice of the Attorney General.

To the Attorney General, again, why is she advocating for a delay that will potentially impact the sovereignty of our province?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I’m confused. If they were so concerned about this issue, why did they vote against the legislation in this House that fixed that issue? Maybe they can explain themselves, because I don’t understand it.

We’re going to continue to work through our durable solution to DRIPA and the challenges we face through the court case, and we’re going to work with our partners to get there.

Regional Transit Services
for Sea to Sky Corridor

Jeremy Valeriote: Last week I asked about Sea to Sky regional transit, the most important issue in West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, and the minister said he agrees with the importance of transit along the Sea to Sky corridor. I can tell you that there are 50,000 residents that are glad he put that on the record.

Even in a fiscal bind, this government added public transit funding to this year’s budget, showing some leadership, to their credit, and reflecting the importance of this service that returns money to the economy roughly 4 to 1 for every dollar invested. Setting aside the contributions of Squamish and Pemberton, the resort municipality of Whistler alone attracts over 3 million annual visitors, generating $1.5 billion in spending, roughly one-quarter of B.C.’s tourism export revenue, $1.4 million per day in tax revenue.

The problem is businesses are looking at setting up in Whistler and saying: “We can’t move forward. All our staff would need their own personal vehicles.” Especially in the hospitality business, this isn’t feasible or practical.

The minister last week said it’s too early to order buses, but after 16 months, he hasn’t even instructed B.C. Transit to start planning for this service he recognizes is important. Local governments and First Nations have taken this as far as they can on their own and have made a number of concessions to get this done.

The Speaker: Question, Member.

Jeremy Valeriote: Given the work on this over the last decade, the few remaining details can be ironed out. In the meantime, will the minister instruct B.C. Transit to plan for this service in their 2027 budget?

Hon. Mike Farnworth: I thank the member for the question. I’ll start off by saying, first off, the government does not instruct B.C. Transit to plan for anything. TransLink is its own independent body. In terms of B.C. Transit, we work with them in terms of what they’re looking at in terms of plans for the coming years, much of which is determined at the local level.

With regards to the Sea to Sky, as I laid out last time I answered the question, a key component that has to be in place is: what is the governance structure going to look like, and how is it going to be funded? That has to be in place before you say: “Oh, let’s go get some buses.”

We’re more than committed to working with local government. We’ve been doing that. I would like to see this advance forward, but that’s the stage it has to go. We’ve had a number of meetings. The member knows what the issues are with the communities in the area. We’ll continue to work on it, but it’s not a question of saying: “Oh, just go order some buses.”

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

[2:15 p.m.]

Jeremy Valeriote: Given this kind of answer, I’m starting to run out of patience. I’m going to continue asking…. This may sound familiar. I’m going to continue asking, and I’m not going to stop.

The minister said there’s still a debate about the funding model, but local governments and First Nations represented by a regional transit committee have been clear since they were turned down by the former minister in 2018, eight long years ago. Motor fuel tax is the only way this works. A property tax increase is not feasible. They’re already spending it on their 52 percent share of local transit service in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton.

This is not a premium service for tourists. This is for workers, people’s quality of life and livelihoods — the workers that keep this resort running.

Given this return on investment, if the minister won’t instruct B.C. Transit, will he at least commit to ending the dithering about a $3 million operating expense and sign an MOU with the local governments and First Nations this summer?

Hon. Mike Farnworth: I appreciate the member’s question. But in terms of the funding mechanism and what has been asked for by the communities along there, they want an 18-cents-a-litre gas tax. What I have said is there needs to be a different model in place, one that recognizes that there are…. We’ve got two models in place, one in Victoria and one in Nanaimo, that would work in terms of the Sea to Sky Highway route.

I said we’re not prepared to put in place an 18-cents-a-litre gas tax. We are willing to look at: are there other models to do that? We’ve agreed to work with the communities to do just that, and we will continue to do that work.

Proposed Changes to DRIPA
and Involvement of U.S. Indigenous
Groups in Court Cases

Claire Rattée: It is becoming clear that DRIPA is now a direct threat to our sovereignty in B.C. It has been weaponized by U.S.-based tribes and puts B.C. projects at risk.

After the Gitxaała decision, the Premier admitted that at least 20 cases against the province have already been amended, and the Minister of Mining and Critical Minerals acknowledged last week that a coalition of Alaskan tribes has filed to challenge the approvals of the Eskay Creek mine, a project that this government has repeatedly pointed to as being a DRIPA success in partnership with the Tāłtān Nation.

Now, I understand we’ve canvassed this already and that the Attorney General has mentioned bringing forward legislation that has been passed in this House that’s going to address this issue. What was interesting is that the Attorney General said, very specifically, that this is to focus their attention and preference on B.C.-based nations but “referring to these Alaska-based tribes, while they have rights.”

So my question to the Attorney General is, did she misspeak, or is she admitting that U.S.-based tribes have rights in British Columbia under DRIPA?

Hon. Niki Sharma: I think the member misunderstands the difference between the constitution and provincial legislation. DRIPA does not confer any rights on anybody outside of this country, but the constitution and section 35 rights are about the decision that I talked about earlier that actually started in 2010, so before our government, that was based on U.S. tribes seeking constitutional rights in this province. That went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, and that is the law of the country.

We have been very clear that our commitment is to work with B.C. First Nations. We passed legislation to make it clear under the environmental assessment process that B.C. First Nations are participatory Indigenous nations as part of that process and that although U.S. tribes, because of the Supreme Court of Canada, have section 35 rights, it’s much different than any rights of our local nations.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Claire Rattée: I didn’t need to be patronized. I understand the difference. That wasn’t my question. My question was whether or not the Attorney General…

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Claire Rattée: …misspoke when she just said that they have rights. I’m trying to understand whether or not we need to be concerned about this continuing.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Claire Rattée: So a very simple question to the Attorney General. If the legislation that the government has passed in this House is to address this issue, can she confirm today that it will address both of these issues that we have already canvassed here today involving Alaska-based, U.S.-based tribes interfering in our court system with projects going on in British Columbia, yes or no?

It’s very simple. Will this prevent this from moving any further forward, or is this still going to be an issue regardless of the legislation that’s been passed?

[2:20 p.m.]

Hon. Niki Sharma: DRIPA does not confer any rights to Indigenous People. It’s the constitution and section 35 that embed rights, and the way that those court cases work their way up, like the Desautel case, to the Supreme Court of Canada is under section 35 of the constitution.

Stakeholder Consultation on
Heritage Conservation Act Amendments

Kiel Giddens: This government’s attempt to update the Heritage Conservation Act needs to be abandoned. Co-government, co-management, co-chaos. Union of B.C. Municipalities, Urban Development Institute, Business Council of B.C. and Independent Contractors and Business Association are just a few of the organizations calling for an abandonment of this train wreck of an agenda.

Does the minister think that all of these stakeholders are wrong?

Hon. Ravi Parmar: It’s been a while since I’ve been back up in the House in question period. Thanks to the member opposite for the question.

The Heritage Conservation Act is a very important piece of legislation for all British Columbians, and throughout the last year, as we’ve been engaging on this with First Nations, with industry, local governments, people of all walks of life, we have heard loud and clear that this archaic piece of legislation is not serving the interests of British Columbians. That’s why we’ve been working hard. We released a technical policy position paper earlier this year. We received countless feedback.

I would note one feedback that we received from the B.C. Business Council that the member may want to note, and I quote: “The shift to a single project-based permit with a modular approach is the most consequential structural change proposed. If implemented well, it would materially reduce time, costs and administrative burden.”

That is good feedback. We’ve got lots more feedback to go through as we review this piece of legislation and the work.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Kiel Giddens: Well, let me give the minister some more feedback.

Over the weekend, UBCM president Cori Ramsay talked about the Heritage Conservation Act at the Southern Interior Local Government Association. She said: “This is not a partnership. This is not good governance.”

This government seems dead set on hiking regulations, dragging out project timelines and adding to the costs of building. If government’s expensive changes to the Heritage Conservation Act are only because of DRIPA, it’s another reason to repeal the act and abandon these changes.

Since every stakeholder appears to be against the HCA, how does the government determine which stakeholders they’ll actually listen to?

Hon. Ravi Parmar: If I heard the member correctly, he talked about repealing the act that currently is in place that’s not serving the interests of British Columbians.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: If he’s referring to the Heritage Conservation Act….

Interjection.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: The mouthy opposition just said that they want to repeal the Heritage Conservation Act. We are focused….

Interjection.

The Speaker: Member, after. Shhh.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: We are focused on getting this right, and that is bringing everyone to the table.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: The Union of B.C. Municipalities….

The Speaker: Members, the Chair is having a hard time listening to the answers. Please, be quiet.

Hon. Ravi Parmar: The Union of B.C. Municipalities, their president, relayed that they wanted us to bring in pilots. We are unable to do that without bringing in legislation. It’s very important that we acknowledge how complicated this piece of legislation is and how on this side of the House, we have $88 billion worth of major projects that we are in favour of, that are going to create thousands of jobs in every community across this province.

What we know is they’re opposed to those jobs. They’re opposed for jobs for British Columbians. They’re opposed for jobs for communities. We’re going to build British Columbia, and we’re going to get this right.

Burnaby Hospital Expansion
Project and Cancer Care Centre

Misty Van Popta: On Friday, the Premier confirmed that the Burnaby phase 2 redevelopment construction contract has been cancelled. However, the Minister of Infrastructure continues to tell the residents of Burnaby that their hospital, in fact, isn’t cancelled. But a hospital with no construction, no contract, no timeline is no hospital at all.

Burnaby’s mayor, Mike Hurley, said: “I’m absolutely devastated and, frankly, horrified by this decision.”

Why is this government incapable of taking responsibility for anything? Just admit that this project is cancelled and back on the shelf.

[2:25 p.m.]

Hon. Bowinn Ma: We have been transparent and forthright from the beginning, since we released Budget 2026, that the Burnaby Hospital project has had to have its timeline reassessed because of cost overruns.

However, we recognize how important phase 2 of the Burnaby Hospital project is to the community and the region as a whole. It will continue on, recognizing that there were some contracts that were cancelled because of the changes in timeline, making them currently not required. There is still work happening with Fraser Health Authority to get that project ready to go, and we’re committed to delivering it.

The Speaker: Member, supplemental.

Misty Van Popta: Well, if you’ve always been upfront, does that mean that “re-paced” has always meant “cancelled”? Residents of Burnaby don’t want to hear that it won’t go ahead as scheduled. They want to know when they will have a hospital.

The Burnaby Hospital and Community Foundation CEO said: “We had gone through the approval process. The community stepped up and raised over $55 million for our redevelopment. It is time for the government to do what they promised and finish building Burnaby Hospital.”

This government has mismanaged the economy and their finances so badly that the residents of Burnaby are left with half a hospital. If this project isn’t cancelled, when will it start? Give us a date today.

Hon. Bowinn Ma: The project is not cancelled. The only people saying that it is cancelled are the members of the opposition.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, shhh.

Members, come to order, please.

Hon. Bowinn Ma: We’ve been clear that there is work to do with the Fraser Health Authority to get this project back on track, to reduce costs so that it can be delivered sustainably for taxpayers and for the residents of Burnaby.

Long-Term-Care Facility in Delta

Ian Paton: This government claims that these seven long-term-care projects are just re-paced. In Delta, this was an approved project. This isn’t a pause. This is an actual betrayal. Delta Mayor George Harvie said: “Instead of just taking a pause, they’ve killed the project. They can use whatever words they want. They have killed this project. It has been cancelled.”

Seniors and families in this province don’t see a pause. They see fewer beds and longer waits. This is not just a south Delta hospital; this is a hospital for all Delta residents. Will the Jobs Minister from North Delta stand up and tell the people of Delta why he has gone silent after such a grand ribbon cutting and project approval three years ago?

Interjection.

The Speaker: Shhh.

Hon. Bowinn Ma: This is an incredibly important project for the community of Delta. I appreciate the member opposite advocating for it, as he should, and we agree that it needs to go forward. This project is not cancelled. It is being reassessed under different timelines, given cost escalations and the need for us to do the work that it will take to drive down the cost per bed so that it can proceed for the people of Delta.

I want to take a moment, as well, to express my gratitude to the Delta Hospital and Community Health Foundation. They are also reassuring their donors that this project is moving forward, despite a temporary pause. They said: “As timelines are reassessed, this essential project for Delta seniors continues to move forward, with strong community support.”

That is exactly what is happening. We will do the work that it will take to deliver the project.

The Speaker: Member has a supplemental.

Ian Paton: Well, to the date almost three years ago exactly, we stood on the lawn of the Delta Hospital. The former Minister of Health was there and the media, the cameras and the reporters. The Jobs Minister was there and celebrated the grand opening of our new long-term extension for Delta Hospital.

Do you remember that? Do you remember that, Minister?

The Speaker: Member. Member, through the Chair. No direct questions.

[2:30 p.m.]

Ian Paton: Anyway, the people of Delta were so excited. We were going to go from an old 1970s 92-bed long-term-care facility to a beautiful, new 200-bed care facility in Delta.

Once again, I will ask, to the Minister of Infrastructure: is this project actually cancelled? What is happening to Turner Construction, which have been told to pick up their tools, move out their bulldozers, take out their excavators? When will this project finally get back on track?

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: I want to thank the member for the question. He has asked it multiple times.

My colleague has shared the answer, which is that people understand that when prices and quotes are coming back so high, we need to make sure that those costs are brought down so that we can build more housing for seniors.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, members.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: But my friend across the way there seems to forget all of his contradictions. Every time there’s an investment in South Delta, whether that’s affordable housing that opens up or a new park that’s opened up, he’s in the front row, cutting the ribbon.

But when he’s in the House over here, he has voted against every single one of those measures. He voted against the funding for KinVillage seniors housing, both projects.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Shhh, Members.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: He was there with the golden shovel. He was there, ready to shovel the dirt and get in the photos. There was a project for a covered lacrosse box. He was there.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members.

Hon. Ravi Kahlon: Oh, it gets better. We had an event at the brewery. Hundreds and thousands of people come in every single day. We provided funding. He voted against that but he had no problem going on the stage.

We continue to make historic investments in Delta — historic investments — and I welcome my friend across the way to cut ribbons and be there with his shovel anytime he likes.

Long-Term-Care Projects

Brennan Day: I’m glad the minister of ribbon cutting could get up and address his constituents, because we haven’t heard a peep from him as a long-term-care facility in his riding was shelved. It’s the first time the minister has spoken about that in this House or about that subject — absolutely shameful from this government. Delta is just one of six projects in this province that have been shelved. Was the minister that passionate before this budget dropped and left seniors in the dust?

Dan Levitt, the seniors advocate, said: “There’s a cascading effect of not building long-term care. It goes to the hospitals, emergency rooms, hospital beds. It impacts on doctors’ offices, on ambulances and, ultimately, on family members.” Seven long-term-care projects were promised. Now they’ve all been cancelled.

To the Minister of Infrastructure and the MLA: when will you stop hiding behind bureaucratic spin and let us know when these cancelled projects will be completed for seniors in B.C.?

The Speaker: Members, all questions and comments through the Chair.

Hon. Bowinn Ma: The seniors advocate is exactly right. We need to be able to deliver new and expanded long-term-care facilities and seats at the scale that is required in communities, a scale that has not been and is not possible when we’re paying upwards of $1.8 million per bed. Taxpayers expect more from their investments, and we need to deliver more.

That’s why I’m very grateful to Dan Levitt, the seniors advocate, for his support and his work with our ministry to find ways, actually, to deliver those long-term-care beds for lower cost and at a greater scale.

[End of question period.]

Kiel Giddens: I rise on a point of order.

The Speaker: State it.

Point of Order

Kiel Giddens: During the course of question period, I clearly was talking about repealing DRIPA. The Minister of Forests said that my remarks said that I was for repealing the Heritage Conservation Act, and I would ask that he would withdraw, because he was deliberately misrepresenting my remarks.

The Speaker: Members, certain comments are made through the debate while answering questions. If that’s the case, then it will not be considered as a point of order, but let me get further clarification on that.

[2:35 p.m.]

Hon. Ravi Parmar: For the member opposite, I’ll gladly review the transcript.

The Speaker: Thank you, Members. We’ll take it under advisement, and we’ll see the transcript.

Petitions

Scott McInnis: I rise to present a petition on behalf of nearly 1,000 residents of Revelstoke who would like to have the boat launch at Martha Creek opened year-round.

Orders of the Day

Hon. Mike Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading on Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.

In Section A, Douglas Fir Room, I call continued Committee of Supply for the estimates of the Ministry of Labour.

In Section C, the Birch Room, I call Committee of Supply, Ministry of Health.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 9 — Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy
Amendment Act, 2026
(continued)

Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much, Members. I will ask you to take your conversations into the hallway so we can continue our business.

Today we’re going to contemplate Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026.

Ward Stamer: I rise today to speak to Bill 9, legislation that reaches into one of the most fundamental principles of our democracy: the public’s right to know. At its core, this debate is not about process. It’s not about administrative efficiency. It’s about accountability. It’s about trust, and it’s about whether the people of British Columbia can have confidence in what is done in their name that can be seen, understood and questioned.

Everything that we do in this Legislature is grounded in a principle that defines democratic governance. It is on the record. Our debates are in public, and our votes are recorded. Our words are scrutinized, and rightfully so, because we are accountable to the people.

Now, there are times when matters must be handled in camera — sensitive legal issues, negotiations and personal privacy — but those instances are limited, structured and justified. They are the exception, not the rule, and that distinction matters because it reinforces a simple idea that transparency is the default, not secrecy.

Bill 9 risks shifting that balance — not dramatically and not all at once but incrementally, quietly, through more discretion, more control, more barriers. And in doing so, it risks normalizing a system where access to information becomes more difficult, more delayed and less meaningful.

The context in which this bill is being introduced matters. We’re no longer operating in a world where government is the primary gatekeeper of information.

Today information is everywhere. People are constantly connected, constantly consuming information, constantly evaluating that information, and increasingly, they’re turning to social media to fill those gaps in understanding, not necessarily because they prefer it but because they feel they have to. When official information is slow, incomplete or unclear, people will look elsewhere.

[2:40 p.m.]

That’s where the danger lies, because social media does not distinguish between fact and opinion. It amplifies both equally, and when there’s a vacuum of reliable information, it does not stay empty. It gets filled with speculation and interpretation and, obviously, sometimes with misinformation. The best defence against misinformation is not restriction; it’s transparency. Clear, accessible, factual information is what people can trust.

British Columbians are not disengaged. They are more engaged than ever. They are asking questions. They’re demanding answers. They are expecting transparency. Members of the public want to know what decisions are being made, why they’re being made, how they’re being made, who is responsible and what the impact will be. That’s not a burden. That is democracy working exactly the way it was intended to.

There are always many questions when we have bills like this that come up before the House. What are people actually looking for when we’re looking for freedom of information? They’re not looking for spin. They’re not looking for messaging. They’re not looking for carefully crafted narratives. They’re asking for something much simpler — the truth.

How many times now, when we see publications by the government…? Instead of seeing clear facts and figures, we’ve always got this spin. We’ve got: “It’s going to be simpler. It’s going to be able to achieve all these wonderful things.” Instead of being very specific on how we’re supposed to even be able to achieve these things, all we seem to be getting is more and more spin.

We ask the tough questions, and we’ve asked in this Legislature about particular items that should be very easily obtained with freedom of information. Ten years ago it was a no-brainer, but now for some reason it’s a big secret. Why is that? At the end of the day, that is why we’re here — to be accountable and to be transparent to the people of British Columbia.

Most people just want plain and clear answers. They want to be understood. They don’t want to be persuaded. They want transparency and not interpretation. In today’s environment, delivering just the facts is the most important responsibility our government has.

One of the most concerning trends that we are seeing is the increasing politicization in that government information. Communications that should be informed are being framed. They’re being positioned. They’re being packaged to highlight the positives; to minimize the negatives; and, again, to shape the perception. Instead of being able to offer examples, it’s now put in this pretty, cute, little box for people to be able to easily digest. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the facts and figures are there.

It’s the way that this is being perceived. It’s the way that it’s being produced. It’s the way it’s being sold to the public, and I would offer that it is not being transparent. When that happens, trust suffers because people begin to question not just what they’re hearing but what they’re not hearing. Once the doubt sets in, it’s very difficult to reverse that. It’s very difficult to change the public’s perception on what the government is even trying to achieve.

Now, let’s look at the current state of the freedom-of-information system in this province, because before we even consider Bill 9, we must acknowledge the reality people are already experiencing — freedom-of-information requests returning documents with extensive redactions.

It sounds like something south of the 49th parallel, with what’s going on down there where they passed a bill to be able to actually see the information and all they see is a bunch of blank sheets with black written all over it — pages where key information has been blocked out, context has been removed and then the meaning in the whole text has been lost.

[2:45 p.m.]

Freedom-of-information requests that normally would take weeks are now taking months and even longer. Then, of course, sometimes when the information is actually released, it doesn’t matter because now it’s either gone to the next level or it’s gone to another court hearing. Now all that information that was pertinent at that time is no longer pertinent. Maybe if we would have seen that information in a timely fashion, not only would it have been able to inform that decision, but it might have been the right decision.

Also, at the same time, we lose the ability to make somebody accountable because of that lack of information. Then there’s a growing perception in the system, which is supposed to be designed to manage information, not just release it….

We’re also seeing an increased reliance on NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, in matters of public interest. Every time we turn around now, all we hear about are NDAs. Why? On one hand, we hear that the government is being open and transparent with the public at large, and then every other opportunity we look at, there has to be a non-disclosure agreement. Why is that? Why is it that we have taken everything that used to be in the political arena…? Now everything is done behind closed doors.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Non-disclosure agreements have a role. Being in municipal government, I totally understand what that means. But expanding those uses raises some serious concerns because they prevent that information from ever reaching the public.

Many times when we have non-disclosure agreements, it’s in the process of legal liability and workers. But in most cases, that information does get released to the public. But we’re seeing, time and time again, that information never sees the light of day, and that is not what that was designed for in the first place.

The NDAs also limit the transparency before it even begins, and they restrict that accountability in ways that are difficult to challenge. Public business should not be shielded behind private agreements, yet that is a growing reality.

Again, redactions are necessary, but only in certain cases — privacy, security, obviously, legal protections. But when they are overused, they undermine the system, because a document that reveals nothing has nothing to do with transparency. It’s just an appearance. Believe me. People know the difference.

Another concern is the lack of clarity within the bureaucratic decision-making. People are not just asking for the documents. They’re asking for the understanding. How was that decision made? What was the background behind that decision? What were the factors that were considered in making that decision? Who, ultimately, is responsible in making that decision? Too often, the answers are unclear. That creates frustration, and it creates that distance between government and the people we are here to serve.

Now we’re introducing Bill 9 into that environment of disinformation and lack of trust when it comes to government. This environment is already being influenced and characterized by redactions, delays, NDAs — non-disclosure agreements, we just mentioned — which perceive politicization that should not be in our government documentation, and very limited clarity when it comes to the specifics on that documentation.

Instead of addressing these concerns, this bill risks adding to them. It seems to give more discretion to bureaucrats, more control, more limitation. Obviously, we’re moving in the wrong direction.

I’d like to talk about one fundamental issue that’s important to all of us in this chamber — trust, clarity, consistency. If people can access information in a timely fashion, they can understand it. They can rely on it. That way, trust grows in not only our democratic system but what we’re actually trying to achieve for our public.

[2:50 p.m.]

But when that access is restricted, when that clarity is lacking and when that information feels managed, trust obviously declines. Once that trust declines, it’s very difficult to rebuild.

People don’t want spin. They want straight answers. They want to feel that they’re involved in the process, not just being sidelined, not just being told what to do. Nobody likes being told what to do. But in so many cases, that’s exactly what’s happening. And when we try to get to the bottom of things, we’ve usually found that it’s a solid wall in front of us with almost no way of determining exactly how that decision was made, who made that decision and why we’re even having this conversation in the first place.

The biggest thing…. Transparency isn’t about optics. It’s about being honest in our system. In a world of noise, facts should be very clear, not hidden.

Another one. When the public asks for truth, they deserve more than a process. They deserve answers. That’s why we’re here. If we thought this was a clear bill, if we thought that this was something that we can improve on, our Freedom of Information Act, opportunities to streamline the process and make it easier for people to get that freedom of information, this side of the House would be all for it. But this is exactly what it doesn’t do. It puts the brakes on freedom of information.

There is a better path, and this path strengthens transparency instead of weakening it. We could commit to de-politicizing our communication; making it very straightforward in the literature that we put out; not trying to put a spin on it every time, trying to convince people that it’s good when it’s really not.

We could limit the NDAs in public matters, get back to the basics on that and not just keep on relying on NDAs so that negotiations, particularly negotiations in the public interest, are consistently and constantly being behind closed doors. I think we owe it to the public to bring it out in the open so it can be openly discussed and debated.

We can ensure that our FOI responses are timely and meaningful and not make excuses on why we can’t provide the information in the first place or have it so heavily redacted it doesn’t have any meaning when you do finally realize that you actually receive it.

We can also increase proactive disclosure. At the beginning, we could front-load and say: “Okay. These are the concerns that we have. These are the things that we want to talk about. These are the things that we’ve identified that we should probably put under a non-disclosure agreement.” Then we can have that conversation, not let somebody arbitrarily decide whether we should or shouldn’t be doing it. We should have clear guidelines on how that occurs.

Possibly that would limit the amount of freedom-of-information requests that we are receiving, because I think that’s part of it. It’s because we’ve complicated our non-disclosure agreement process so badly that when people really want to get to the bottom of things, it’s almost impossible for them to do it or feel that they’re part of the process, because of the increased use of non-disclosure agreements.

This isn’t about changing the rules, because the rules are already in place. It just seems that we keep complicating things more and more, when we really should be looking at opportunities to simplify it. It’s about changing that approach. We should be embracing those types of changes.

Again, I’m quite sure that when we get the opportunity, get to committee, there will be opportunities for us to be able to bring forth amendments. I’m hoping that both sides will be able to look at these amendments, because that’s the time when we can make improvements to the bill, not just slap it on the table and say: “Yep, this is great. Let’s pass it and move on.”

I’m quite sure that we’re going to hear, after my speech and everyone else’s speech, that there are going to be fundamental problems and challenges in this legislation. That’s where, when we get to the second reading and get to committee, we’ll get that opportunity to be able to discuss that. Or if the wish of the House is to kill it, then that will be up to the House to decide, when we get to that point.

[2:55 p.m.]

In closing, we were elected to serve the public, to represent them, to be accountable to them, and everything we do here is on the record. That’s not optional. That’s just the job. And that standard must extend beyond this chamber. We are living in a time where information is everywhere, but trust is not. People are searching for answers. They’re demanding transparency, and they’re asking for something very simple. “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

Bill 9 does not meet that moment. It risks making access significantly harder. It risks increasing skepticism in our openness and transparency in government, and it risks eroding that trust even further.

We should be doing the opposite. As I mentioned earlier, we should be opening up the access. We should be streamlining the process, like we did in the past. We shouldn’t be putting barriers to having opportunities on information that should be readily available.

We shouldn’t have to be hiding any of this information. We should be able to provide clarity, reducing those barriers so we can access that information in a timely fashion.

We should be removing the politics from that public information, and we should be strengthening that trust, because when people trust their access to that information, they trust their government. And when they trust their government, democracy is stronger.

For those reasons, I cannot support Bill 9 in its present form.

Lawrence Mok: It is a privilege to rise today to speak to Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026. At its core, this legislation asks us to confront a fundamental tension in modern governance — how we as British Columbians balance efficiency with accountability and innovation with privacy.

For decades, British Columbia’s access-to-information framework has rested on a simple yet powerful principle, and that is that government information belongs, ultimately, to the public, except in clearly justified circumstances.

Bill 9 does not abandon that principle, but it undeniably reshapes it. As Thomas Jefferson once said: “Information is the currency of democracy.” If that is true — and I believe it is — then any change to how information is accessed or withheld is not just merely technical. It is also constitutional in spirit. It affects not just how government operates but how it is held to account.

As we examine Bill 9 clause by clause, we must do so not only with an eye to administrative convenience but also with a deeper question in mind. What kind of relationship do we want between citizens and their government in this digital age that we live in?

Let us begin with clause 1, which amends section 3. This clause removes access rights under FIPPA, the acronym for Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, for records that are required to be produced as part of legal proceedings, even if those records are only broadly categorized.

On the surface, this may seem reasonable. After all, litigation processes already include disclosure mechanisms. There is a legitimate argument that parallel FOI requests could duplicate effort, increase cost or interfere with court processes.

Let us be clear about the consequence. This amendment creates a new exclusion category, not just a procedural refinement but a substantive limitation on access rights. It means that certain records, once tied to a proceeding, are no longer accessible through FOI at all.

I can understand that the benefit here is efficiency. However, the risk is opacity. Legal proceedings do not always guarantee the same breadth of public access as FOI laws. In some cases, they may be narrower, slower or subject to strategic withholding.

[3:00 p.m.]

So while this clause may streamline government operations, it may also create a gap in transparency — particularly for journalists, watchdogs or public interest researchers who are not parties to the proceeding.

Moving on to clause 2, which amends section 5. This change shifts the standard for a valid request. It now requires that in the opinion of the head of the public body, the request contains sufficient detail to locate the records in a reasonable time.

There is a practical logic here. Government institutions handle thousands of requests every day, and vague or overly broad submissions can be burdensome. But this clause does something subtle yet significant. It introduces a subjective threshold. The decision is no longer purely objective. It rests within the institution itself.

That raises a real concern. What one official considers reasonable detail, another may not. And for applicants, especially ordinary citizens without legal or technical expertise, this may create uncertainty or even discourage participation. Yes, this provision may reduce administrative strain, but it also risks tilting the balance of power toward the gatekeeper.

Moving to clause 3, and clause 3 is perhaps one of the most consequential changes in tone. The requirement to respond without delay is now replaced with “without unreasonable delay.” At first glance, this may seem like minor wording, but I can assure you it is not minor wording. “Without delay” is a clear directive. “Without unreasonable delay” introduces interpretation. What is unreasonable delay? Does it mean 30 days, 60 days or 90 days?

This change provides flexibility to public bodies dealing with complex or high-volume requests. That is a legitimate administrative need. But from the applicant’s perspective, it weakens a firm guarantee. In effect, it shifts the system from a duty-driven model to a justification-driven one. The burden subtly moves from the government to explain delay to the applicant to challenge it.

Clauses 4, 5 and 6 refine procedural elements. They clarify what constitutes a valid request, allow extensions with applicant consent and remove lack of detail as a reason for extending timelines.

I agree that there are genuine positives here. Allowing consent-based extensions introduces flexibility and collaboration between applicants and public bodies. Removing lack of detail as a reason for extension may encourage earlier clarification rather than prolonged delay. But again, the pattern persists — greater discretion for institutions coupled with less rigid timelines.

We now arrive at clause 7, which introduces section 16.1. This provision allows public bodies to refuse disclosure of communications from judicial officers regarding policies, programs or legislation.

There is a defensible rationale. Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our system, and informal communications between judges and government could raise concerns if disclosed. However, this clause creates a new and broad exemption. It does not merely protect judicial decisions that are already well established but extends to communications about policy and legislation.

This raises several important questions. Where is the line drawn between legitimate confidentiality and the public’s right to understand how laws are shaped? Could this provision shield discussions that ought to be subject to scrutiny? This is a clause that, while grounded in principle, must be approached with great caution.

[3:05 p.m.]

Clauses 8 through 12 and, especially, clause 20 introduce perhaps the most transformative element of the bill, the concept of a connected services provider. This is, in essence, a framework for integrated digital government. Under these provisions, designated entities can build centralized platforms, share personal information across public bodies, identify eligibility for services and deliver programs more seamlessly.

Let us acknowledge the promise here. This could mean fewer forms, faster service delivery and a more citizen-centred experience. Imagine a system where applying for one benefit automatically assesses eligibility for others. That is not trivial. It is meaningful progress.

But the same system also raises profound concerns. This is large-scale data sharing authorized across institutions, potentially involving third-party service providers.

The minister is granted significant authority to direct what data is shared, how it is shared and under what conditions. The Privacy Commissioner is notified and may review but is not always required to approve. So we must ask the important question here. Are the safeguards proportionate to the scale of the system?

Centralization increases efficiency, but it also amplifies risks — like the risk of data breaches; the risk of misuse; the risk of function creep, where data collected for one purpose is used for another. This is not an argument against modernization. It is an argument for robust oversight to match technological ambition.

Clause 13 amends section 43. It expands the grounds for disregarding requests to include those deemed abusive or malicious, repetitious or excessively broad. That is a clear benefit. Public bodies should not be overwhelmed by bad-faith requests that consume disproportionate resources.

But the challenge lies in definition and application. What constitutes abusive? What is excessively broad? These terms are so inherently subjective. Without careful oversight, there is a risk that legitimate, persistent or investigative requests, particularly from journalists, could be swept into these categories. The line between efficiency and suppression is thin, and this clause walks that thin line.

Clauses 12 and 14 allow the Privacy Commissioner to share information with counterparts in other jurisdictions and enter into information-sharing agreements. This reflects a modern reality. Privacy issues often cross borders. It is in many ways a positive development, enabling coordination, consistency and shared experience and expertise. But again, it introduces complexity. Information that was once confined within a single jurisdiction may now move beyond it. Safeguards must ensure that this does not dilute protections.

Clause 15 allows the Privacy Commissioner to extend review timelines beyond 90 days. This acknowledges operational realities. Complex cases take time, but from the applicant’s perspective, it may mean longer waits for resolution, particularly in contentious cases. Justice delayed, as the saying goes, can be justice denied.

Clauses 21 and 22 allow public bodies and ministries to proactively release categories of records without requiring formal requests. This is in many ways one of the more positive elements of the bill. Proactive disclosure reduces barriers, increases transparency and aligns with best practices in open government.

[3:10 p.m.]

But even here, there is nuance. Public bodies may charge fees for access to these records, and the decision of what to release remains within their control. So while this may seem like a step forward, in my view, it is not a substitute for a robust FOI system.

In conclusion, when we step back from the clause-by-clause analysis, a clear pattern starts to emerge. This bill modernizes service delivery, increases administrative flexibility and enables digital integration. But it also narrows access rights, expands government discretion and introduces new privacy risks. Yes, it does not dismantle FIPPA, but it certainly rebalances it. The centre of gravity has shifted from strict accountability toward operational efficiency, from rigid timelines toward flexible interpretation and from siloed data toward integrated systems.

The question is not whether these changes are entirely good or bad. They are neither. The question is whether the balance is right. Do the efficiencies gained justify the risk introduced? Are the safeguards strong enough to maintain public trust? Will British Columbians feel more empowered, or do they feel more distant from the institutions that serve them?

These are not abstract concerns. They go to the heart of democratic governance because access to information is not merely a procedural right. It is the means by which citizens hold power to account. Privacy is not merely a technical issue. It is the foundation of personal autonomy in the digital world that we live in.

If we are to move forward with legislation of this scope, we must do so with caution and vigilance. We must ensure that discretion does not become arbitrariness, efficiency does not come at the cost of transparency and innovation does not outpace accountability, because once public trust is eroded, it is not easily restored.

Let us therefore approach Bill 9 not as a routine update but as a defining moment in how we govern information, privacy and power in this province. Let us ensure that whatever reforms we adopt, they leave our institutions not only more efficient but more accountable, more transparent and more worthy of the public’s confidence.

I rest my case.

Á’a:líya Warbus: I rise today to speak to Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026. Access-to-information legislation is not legislation that we can simply let pass us by. We need to apply a very critical and detailed scrutiny lens, and I believe that this legislation calls for just that. Upon examination of this legislation, it is not simple technical housekeeping as it purports itself to be. It is definitely not administrative modernization alone, and it is not something that should ever be approached casually.

Our constituents and stakeholders rely on us to bring forward their concerns and to fight for transparency to its fullest extent. Freedom-of-information laws form one of the very foundations of government accountability in this province. These laws are one of the primary ways that British Columbians can understand how decisions are made, how resources are allocated and how government exercises authority on their behalf. These laws provide the venue for citizens to ask questions and for journalists to investigate.

[3:15 p.m.]

B.C. laws should allow researchers to evaluate policy. These laws allow elected officials in this House and beyond to do our work on behalf of the people we represent. Regardless of where you may sit, that access is critical to keeping government to account.

When access to information works well, it strengthens trust between government and the public. We know throughout history that people have differed, and will, in their position on government policy. But where the rubber hits the road is ensuring that the commitments, processes and public funds are accessible and transparent to the public for scrutiny. When the process or access becomes slower, more narrow, more discretionary or more expensive, this can weaken trust.

This is why legislation affecting access to information must be examined carefully. That is what we are here to do today. This bill makes a number of changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Some of these changes are presented as administrative improvements. Others are framed as modernization measures intended to improve service delivery across government.

However, when we look closely at several of the provisions contained in Bill 9, we see a pattern emerging — a pattern that raises real concerns about whether access to information in British Columbia is becoming more accessible or less accessible.

That is a fine line that we have to walk. That is a fine line that this government, and any government that we’re going to support on changes to legislation, must ensure is fair — fair to the public, transparency for the public, because they deserve to know how those tax dollars will be used and which programs they’re going to be allocated towards.

Let’s dig into this a little bit. This legislation introduces new discretion for public bodies to refuse requests, weakens reasonable expectations around response timelines, expands categories under which requests may be disregarded and introduces the possibility of fees for records that were previously available without charge.

Taken together, these changes call for all members to take notice and for proper debate in this House to ensue. Access to information is not simply about records. It is about accountability, and it is about the public’s right to understand the decisions that directly affect their lives.

I’d like to share a quote that states: “There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny. They should be setting the example of transparency.” This is from a person who worked in the highest levels of government and stood up to protect citizens when it was called upon him to do so.

This brings me to a pivot to the next point I’d like to make in the debate. For that, we need to consider Bill 9 in context. Access-to-information legislation does not operate in isolation. It reflects the direction a government chooses to take when it comes to transparency and accountability.

Unfortunately, British Columbians have already seen a number of decisions in recent years that have made it more difficult, not easier, to obtain information from their government. Instead of focusing first on reducing response times, instead of addressing the backlogs and instead of improving service standards for applicants, what we have seen is the introduction of filing fees for access-to-information requests. What we have seen, however, is that response timelines continue to grow longer.

If this fee is meant to deter or establish a threshold for how serious a request for information may be to any one individual, I will tell you right now that what it actually does is burden those who are sincere in their requests to jump another administrative hoop to access information that is their right to access in the first place. I’m not sure how any government in good conscience can now put a price on rights.

[3:20 p.m.]

Not only that, but we have seen applicants waiting, in some cases, months beyond statutory deadlines to receive information they’re legally entitled to access. That puts their own right to defend themselves, many times, under legal stress.

In fact, between 2022 and 2023, applicants were waiting an average of an additional 192 business days beyond expected timelines to receive responses. That is not a small administrative delay. That’s a structural barrier to transparency. When we think about 192 days, we are talking about just under a year in which someone may be waiting for information that is critical to them, moving forward.

When a bill is introduced that changes how requests may be rejected, changes how timelines are interpreted and introduces the possibility of new fees for records that were previously accessible without charge, it is reasonable for British Columbians to ask whether access to information is being strengthened or restricted.

The purpose of access-to-information legislation should always be clear. It should make government more open. It should make information easier to obtain. It should reinforce the principle that public institutions are accountable to the people they serve. Instead, several provisions in Bill 9 move in the opposite direction. Rather than addressing delays, the bill weakens expectations around response timelines.

I understand that the government has put on the order papers several amendments, which, I can only imagine, speak to the pressures and the debates that we’ve had in this House toward that legislation so far. Although it is comforting that the government may be listening to opposition on things that could have been improved on the first draft of this legislation, I still see and believe that there are wordings left in the legislation that make it highly problematic.

Now, looking at reinforcement on the principle that public institutions are accountable to the people that they serve, again, several provisions in Bill 9 do not give us confidence that that is what we see in front of us today.

Rather than improving access to proactively available records, it introduces the possibility that British Columbians may now have to pay to obtain them. Taken together, these changes represent a shift that deserves careful attention from this House as we consider the implications of this legislation.

One of the more concerning changes in the legislation appears, at first glance, to be small. I spoke about this in the fact that we see the government respond to fierce opposition to very specific words in the original drafting of this legislation that change a duty to respond “without delay” to a duty to respond “without unreasonable delay.” The amendments that have been tabled by this government are to strike that clause altogether.

Again, I can only assume that it is because when we interpret the words on the page, they are convinced, just as we are, that those kinds of interpretations, left in the hands of a government, for citizens to access information, can be very dangerous grounds to walk on.

Again, although I am pleased to see that the government has taken that into consideration and has struck out any change of language to that very important wording and that very important clause, I still have concerns about wording that is left in the legislation that assumes that we can trust the discretion of a government who is going to be scrutinized by the public.

It says right here, “responding to the request would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body,” striking out the words “the government of British Columbia,” replaced with “ministry of the minister responsible for this act.”

[3:25 p.m.]

Again, what we see here are words that attempt to have flexibility for a government to decide if something is unreasonably interfering with the work of that ministry. There is nothing here that tells us what that looks like in practice.

Why this change would need to come forward is actually what we’re debating today and what we are highlighting — that a government making those decisions on their own behalf for information that citizens are trying to get from them makes no sense, and it peels away really, really important layers of transparency. In fact, the opposite is actually true. I think it adds more fog to the glass.

British Columbians rely on access to information when they’re trying to understand the decisions that affect their communities; their livelihoods; and, in many cases, their safety. They rely on it when they’re trying to understand why infrastructure projects are delayed, why services are reduced, why permits take longer than expected or why commitments that were made publicly do not appear to be reflected in government action.

Access to information is most valuable when it is timely. Delayed transparency is often indistinguishable from denied transparency. We know that because we’ve seen in other instances, when information is requested and it takes so long for that information to come forward, that now the issue has already moved past the point where anything can be done about it.

That point has to be laboured here today. Access that is timely, access that is transparent, access that is not going to create more barriers for anyone that is requesting information is critical for any government to operate.

If the government’s objective is to improve the performance of the access-to-information system, then the focus should be on reducing wait times and improving compliance with existing timelines, not weakening the language that defines those timelines in the first place. This change may appear technical, but in practice, it actually risks normalizing delays in a system that is already struggling to deliver information to British Columbians when they need it most.

I’d also like to take a moment to share some real examples of when constituents or any person that is affected by government choices can tend to suffer under the delays in an FOI process.

I have a constituent who has been very concerned about the real dangers in the Columbia River Valley. Because of some government work that had happened in and around the drainage, in and around changing some of the landscapes and clearing some of the backlogs of literal logjams in the river that were making the river rise to a really dangerous level, this constituent went ahead and did the hard work of attempting to access records from the government on exactly what the costs were, what the delivery timelines were.

Were there to be specific language around if they didn’t complete the job to the satisfaction of the residents in the area who have now, out of pocket and out of their own time, gotten together to fix what was not put back properly in the first place….

My constituent has come up against barrier after barrier, trying to find answers from this government. What he’s really trying to do is to help his community, to make sure that government has very specific budgets and timelines that are adhered to and if there was a mistake of some sort, that my constituent would be able to find grounds to have them come back and finish the work properly.

This also has to do with some of the emergency management in and around that area — very likely to flood. It could be very dangerous for these residents that live in that area.

So if this process…. If he was to be seen as “unreasonable” by the government’s definition, to be hindering work, who makes that decision? How do they make that decision, and in what way?

[3:30 p.m.]

I know for a fact that many constituents, in order to get the help that they need or to flag issues, require that information to be readily available to them, and that information comes via the freedom of information and protection act.

I’d like to pivot now to another significant change in the bill. This happens at the very beginning of the access-to-information process before a request is processed, before records are searched and before disclosure is considered.

Clause 2 of the bill changes the requirement governing how access requests are evaluated by public bodies. It provides that a request must, in the opinion of the head of the public body, contain enough detail to allow an experienced employee, using reasonable effort and within reasonable amounts of time, to identify the record being sought.

Again, in this part of the legislation, understanding that government has now circled back and taken another look at clause 2 and the wording, I would like to highlight that a proposed amendment is to actually take out that the request must, “in the opinion of the head of public body….” That is a government-triggered amendment to the legislation as it was written.

We understand that those may or could come at a later time and would be debated in committee stage. But I have to highlight that change here because left in the rest of the clause are “reasonable effort” and “reasonable amount of time.” Again, we have these definitions that are left, and we don’t know what reasonable means in terms of effort.

Look, somebody’s effort to reasonably run a 100-metre dash could vary very much, person to person. We all have different skills and different skill sets and different understandings and different perspectives and different points of view on anything that we do, especially if it’s going to be subjective. I feel that subjective language leaves us to want and desire and to need exact. Or else, do not touch legislation, and leave it as it is.

If we’re going to be putting on “a reasonable amount of time” and bake it right into the legislation, then in terms of the opposition to this, we reasonably need to add question to that and what that definition means and who gets to decide that definition.

Going back, then, to some more significant changes that we do see, I do want to highlight that we talked about constituents, talked about journalists, and we talked about other people that may need to seek clarity on something from the government. That includes local governments as well. That includes researchers that need to evaluate programs. The purpose of access-to-information legislation is not to test whether applicants can perfectly describe internal government record structures. It is to ensure that government information remains accessible to the people it serves.

When legislation increases discretion at the front end of the process, it actually increases the risk that requests will be filtered out before transparency begins. I really would like to highlight those words that say “reasonable,” but we don’t have any definition of what that means. “Reasonable” can be a very subjective way to take a look at any request.

Other changes that we see within the legislation that is before us, on the surface, may seem to make sense. No one would argue that a system should be misused. No one would suggest that public bodies should be required to respond to requests that are clearly intended to disrupt operations rather than obtain information. But legislation is not judged by how it sounds in principle. It is judged by how it operates in practice.

The concern here is that none of these new categories are defined in the act. There’s no definition of what constitutes abusive behaviour. There’s no definition of what constitutes a malicious request. There’s no definition of what level of effort would qualify as interfering with the operations of government. Instead, these determinations become matters of interpretation. And as I said, subjective points of view can differ person to person to person.

[3:35 p.m.]

When interpretation expands, discretion expands with it. Access-to-information legislation is supposed to create clarity for applicants. It’s supposed to establish predictable expectations, and it is supposed to ensure that the right to request information is not dependent on how a request is perceived by the institution receiving it.

When new categories are introduced without clear definitions, the risk is that applicants begin to wonder whether their request will be answered or set aside based on some of the definitions that I’ve highlighted here — words, I should say, that I’ve highlighted here that do not have definitions attached to them.

This matters not only for individual applicants. It matters for journalists. It matters for researchers. It matters for local governments seeking information from the province. And it matters for members of this Legislature attempting to understand how decisions are being made, many times on behalf of the constituents that we serve. Access-to-information systems work best when they encourage participation, when people feel confident asking questions, when they believe their request will be considered fairly and consistently with clear guidelines.

Expanding the circumstances under which requests may be disregarded sends the opposite signal to the public. This introduces uncertainty. It introduces hesitation, and it risks discouraging the very participation that access-to-information legislation was designed to support. A right that can be set aside without clear criteria is no longer a strong right. It becomes a conditional one. That’s why this change deserves careful examination as this bill proceeds through the House.

Another provision in Bill 9 that deserves the careful attention from the House is the introduction of the fees for the records. I canvassed this briefly in my introduction to the debate, but I would like to get into some more detail around this.

Records are already available to the public without the need to file formal access-to-information requests. But now we see the possibility of fees. Clause 21 allows the head of a public body to require a person to pay a fee for a copy of a record that falls within a category of records identified as available without a request under the act. That change may appear technical. But in practice, it actually represents a significant shift in how British Columbians access information that government has already determined can be made publicly available.

Proactive disclosure exists for a reason. It exists because certain records are considered appropriate for release without requiring individuals to navigate the formal access-to-information process. It exists because transparency should not always require an application, and it exists because government should make information easier, not harder, for the public to obtain.

Introducing these fees at this stage moves us in the complete opposite direction. It creates a new barrier where one did not previously exist. It introduces uncertainty about what information will remain accessible without cost attached. This risks discouraging applicants from seeking records that government has already determined should be available to them.

Access-to-information legislation should not create paywalls around public records, especially not around records that have already been identified as appropriate for release. British Columbians should not have to wonder whether information that is described as publicly available will now carry a fee that is attached to it.

This concern is particularly important right now when we consider the broader discretion of access-to-information policy in recent years. We have already seen the introduction of filing fees for access requests. Now we are seeing the possibility of fees being applied to records that previously did not require a request at all. So these are more barriers. These are not doorways.

Taken together, these changes raise a very reasonable question. Are we making access to information easier for British Columbians or more expensive? Transparency should not depend on someone’s ability to pay. Proactive disclosure should remain exactly what it says it is — proactive. Because once barriers begin to appear around information that was previously available without cost, the public’s confidence in the openness of government begins to erode.

[3:40 p.m.]

That is not a direction this House should accept without careful scrutiny.

Another area of Bill 9 that deserves very careful consideration is the introduction of a new framework allowing the minister to designate what is described as a connected services provider. Under clause 20, the minister may designate a public body to establish and maintain an online platform that facilitates access to services across multiple public bodies and enables the sharing of personal information between them. This is a significant structural change. The intent appears to be the creation of a centralized platform capable of identifying services for which individuals may be eligible and coordinating access to those services across government programs.

On its face, improving coordination between public bodies is a reasonable objective, one that I would support. British Columbians benefit when services are easier to access and when government systems communicate effectively with one another.

However, what this provision also does is expand the authority for personal information to be shared between public bodies under ministerial discretion. The legislation allows the minister to issue directions respecting the type and quantity of personal information that may be shared, the format in which it’s shared and the circumstances under which particular categories of information may or may not be shared. That is a very broad authority.

I think many people, average citizens even, would consider this to be a breach of personal autonomy and privacy. When we talk about information and records having to do with someone’s health or changes that they’ve made and that at a minister’s discretion can be unilaterally moved over to a different ministry, these questions become very, very important.

The debate and the scrutiny that is required to highlight this for anyone that is considering this legislation and what the changes and the implications of it may mean…. Again, I go back to…. We have to ask if we’re really looking at efficiencies that become a broad authority for government.

It enables decisions about how personal information moves across these government systems, as I said. For this to be made through direction rather than clearly defined statutory limits….

When legislation creates new mechanisms for sharing personal information across institutions, the safeguards must be equally clear. British Columbians should understand what information may be shared. They should understand under what conditions it may be shared, and they should understand how decisions about those categories are made.

Sheldon Clare: I want to begin my opposition to Bill 9 with a simple principle. There is a social contract that exists that is the essence of legitimacy of government. In a democracy, information produced by government does not belong to government. It belongs to the public.

The people of British Columbia pay for government. They fund the decisions that are made in ministries. They fund the infrastructure projects that are built. They fund the policy work that shapes our province. Because they pay for it, they have a right. They have a right — not a privilege; a right — to know how those decisions are made.

That is why freedom-of-information laws exist. They are not a bureaucratic inconvenience. They are one of the most important accountability tools available to citizens. These tools allow journalists to investigate. They allow citizens to hold government accountable. They allow opposition members in this House to examine decisions that affect communities throughout British Columbia.

[3:45 p.m.]

That is why legislation that weakens freedom of information should concern every member of this chamber. Unfortunately, Bill 9 challenges that social contract. It moves us in the wrong direction. Transparency is the foundation of accountability, and freedom-of-information laws exist for a reason. They exist because governments control vast amounts of information — information about spending, information about decision-making, information about communications between ministers and bureaucrats. They contain information about projects that affect communities across this province.

Without access to that information, accountability becomes impossible. And without accountability, public trust erodes. Transparency builds trust; secrecy destroys it. It breaks down that social contract, and that is really the fundamental issue before us today, because Bill 9 lowers the standard for transparency.

One of the most troubling changes in this bill is the replacement of the duty to respond to requests “without delay” with the much weaker standard of “without reasonable delay.” Now, on the surface, that might seem like a small wording change. But as I’ve been told over many years, words matter. Words matter. Grammar matters. All of it matters, and it’s particularly important in legislation.

Freedom-of-information requests in British Columbia already take far too long. Applicants routinely wait months, sometimes years. In fact, statistical data shows that in recent years, applicants waited an average of 192 additional business days beyond the legislated timeline to receive responses. That’s more than nine months. We all know that nine months is a pretty long time, and a lot of things can happen in nine months. That’s nine months beyond the deadline that already exists in law.

Instead of strengthening the requirement to respond promptly, the government is weakening it. Instead of fixing the problem, they are lowering the standard. That is not improving transparency. That is merely redefining delay.

I have some experience with the current system. As a sitting MLA representing the area where the Quesnel Bridge is located, I submitted a freedom-of-information request last year seeking documents related to that bridge. It was not an unusual request. There’s nothing malicious about it. There’s nothing abusive, nothing frivolous. It was merely an attempt by this member as a Member of the Legislative Assembly to understand decisions surrounding a piece of infrastructure affecting not merely the community I represent but the entire province.

Yet what happened next speaks volumes about the state of the system in British Columbia. The request disappeared. It went into the abyss of requests. Months passed, then more months, requests for extensions of time. Eventually, a full year later, the response finally surfaced. But when it did, it came with a hefty bill attached. After waiting for about a year for information about a project in my own riding, I was told that if I wanted the documents, I had to first pay the bill.

Think about that for a moment. An elected Member of the Legislative Assembly trying to obtain information about a public infrastructure project in their community has to wait a year and then has to pay for the privilege of seeing it.

Now, this raises an obvious question. If a member of this assembly has to have this kind of difficulty to get information, how difficult is it already for ordinary citizens? How difficult is it for journalists or for researchers? As an academic, I submitted other freedom-of-information act requests, and I had that request blocked. They didn’t want to give me the information.

[3:50 p.m.]

I thought to myself: “Okay.” I look at this bill. This bill actually talks about that, and it would make that kind of blocking even more easy to do. That is not okay.

How easy would this be for community advocates trying to understand decisions that affect their lives? And that experience that I’ve had…. Those experiences, I should say, raise even more troubling questions when we consider the legislation before us today.

If my requests were to be resubmitted under the provisions of Bill 9, would they even be processed? Would they be simply dismissed out of hand? Could somebody claim that the requests lacked enough detail? Could someone say that it’s going to take too long to locate the records? Could it be argued that responding would interfere with the operations of government? Well, these are precisely the kinds of new powers this bill introduces, and that is why this legislation is so concerning.

Freedom of information is already slow. It is already expensive. It already requires persistence. But Bill 9 risks making it easier for government to delay requests, reject requests or simply discourage someone from making a request altogether. That represents a breakdown of that social contract. Accountability disappears, for it expands the grounds to reject requests.

It doesn’t just expand them in a little way. It dramatically expands them. You can disregard requests as being abusive, malicious, excessively broad or something that would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government of British Columbia.

Let us pause for a moment on that. Interfere with the operations of government. Wow. That’s an incredibly broad concept. Responding to any request requires staff time. Searching records requires effort. Reviewing documents requires resources. By that definition, almost any request could be said to interfere with operations.

What makes this change particularly concerning is that the language now refers to interference with the operations of the government of British Columbia as a whole, rather than the operations of a specific public body. That dramatically widens the scope. When legislation creates vague categories like that, it inevitably raises the question of how broadly they might be interpreted. This gives the government a tremendous amount of power over requests.

Another change in this bill gives the head of a public body the authority to determine whether a request contains “enough detail.” It also allows them to determine whether records can be located within “a reasonable amount of time.” Again, those phrases are not defined. What qualifies as enough detail? What qualifies as reasonable time? Those determinations will now be made by the very institutions being asked to release the information.

Well, that doesn’t make any sense. It makes that body of government both the judge and the gatekeeper of access to information. That is precisely the concern raised by people advocating for transparency.

Now, another problem here is that there were a number of expert recommendations made. It’s puzzling to me that it ignores many of the recommendations made in the 2022 special legislative committee report titled FIPPA for the Future. That committee produced 34 recommendations to improve and modernize the freedom-of-information system.

Among those recommendations were creating a duty to document, requiring government to properly record decisions and extending freedom-of-information rules to the administrative functions of the Legislative Assembly.

[3:55 p.m.]

Those reforms would have strengthened transparency. Yet where do we see them in this bill? Well, we don’t see them in this bill. Instead of strengthening accountability, Bill 9 focuses on administrative convenience.

There are a lot of people talking about this bill. Folks advocating for transparency have been incredibly clear about their concerns. The Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has warned that this legislation fails to address the real problems in the system. Their executive director, Jason Woywada, put it plainly. “Access delays are often a symptom of recordkeeping failures. You cannot fix systemic information management problems by weakening public access rights.” That statement goes to the heart of the issue.

The solution to delays is not to weaken access. The solution is to improve recordkeeping and provide adequate resources to process requests.

Deputy Speaker: Member, apology to interrupt you.

I’m going to recognize the Minister of State for Local Governments and Rural Communities.

Hon. Brittny Anderson: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker: Carry on.

Introductions by Members

Hon. Brittny Anderson: Today in the House, we have Canada’s International School, TFS, from Toronto. They are a French immersion school from primary to high school.

We welcome you to our Legislature. We hope that you learn a lot. Bienvenue.

Will the House please make them feel very welcome.

Deputy Speaker: Welcome to beautiful B.C. Welcome to everyone.

Member for Prince George–North Cariboo, apologies for the interruption.

Debate Continued

Sheldon Clare: Merci, Monsieur le Président. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Bienvenue.

Freedom-of-information laws are not obstacles. They are safeguards. They ensure that government decisions can be examined. They ensure that taxpayers can understand how their money is spent. They ensure that communities are able to ask questions about projects that affect their future. This is the social contract between the people and their government. It is the essence of government legitimacy.

My own experience with the Quesnel River Bridge FOI request demonstrates how difficult that process can already be. It was lengthy, it was expensive, and it required persistence simply to obtain information that belongs to the people who paid for it, our taxpaying public. Bill 9 risks making that process considerably more difficult.

The broader question before us today is simple. Do we want a government that is easier to scrutinize, or do we want one that is harder to scrutinize? Do we want a system that encourages transparency, or do we want a system that discourages requests for information?

Freedom of information should never depend on how convenient a request is for government. It should depend on the public’s right to know.

What we have is a lowering of the bar for transparency. We have a weakening of the duty to respond. We have this expansion of grounds for rejecting requests — requests which are perfectly reasonable — and we are also failing to implement key recommendations which would have strengthened accountability.

Transparency needs to move forward, not backward, and for those reasons, this caucus, this Conservative caucus, cannot support this legislation. In a democracy, the public’s right to know should never come second to government convenience.

When we’re looking at some of the other criticisms that have been out there regarding this particular legislation, there are a number. “Without unreasonable delay” — that’s not okay. I’ve mentioned this already.

[4:00 p.m.]

Granting the heads of public bodies the authority to decide in their opinion about detail and reasonable amount of time…. Well, why don’t they just write the request themselves and reject it themselves then?

“Abusive,” “malicious,” all of those terms — this used to be the focus on public bodies, not on people’s requests. There are potentially sweeping implications for them to be able to take this action.

Expanding ministerial powers through overcentralizing data sharing through a new “connected services provider” is simply not okay.

Now, those recommendations were serious recommendations that were made by the committee. I think we can also look back at some of the history about the Freedom of Information Act law. The member for Saanich North and the Islands played a significant role. He led drafting that original law way, way back in ancient history, in 1992.

I read what that member wrote at that time, and I thought to myself: “You know, there was quite a mind applied to this.” He stated: “Piece by piece, the system has been dismantled, and Bill 9 continues that trend. It degrades freedom of information under the guise of administrative convenience, making the government both judge and juror over what the public can access.”

He’s looking back at all of the things he put together in writing this, and he knows what the intent was. I think this House knows what the intent was. It was about holding government accountable.

If you’re not going to hold government accountable, what exactly has happened to that social contract? It has been destroyed. It breaks down the trust, and it is not in any sense of it okay. The public deserves answers without delay, not whenever government decides that it’s reasonable.

This bill is lowering the bar for transparency, and when governments delay information, accountability disappears. So what we have here is Bill 9 making it easier for governments to say no instead of providing the transparency and willingness to show the people how their money has been spent in their governance.

I shudder to think of what would happen to those in the press gallery…. And the larger press has been labelled disruptive just because they’re doing their jobs. I’ve already seen this on the streets of many big cities where you’ve had journalists be challenged by politicians just because they asked a question. That’s not okay. Oversight should not depend on whether or not the government finds a request something that is inconvenient, tough to answer or simply difficult.

Furthermore, the paperwork you have to submit on this…. Does it have to be perfect? Are we demanding that people submit absolutely — i’s, dotted, t’s, crossed — perfect paperwork, fitting a box that serves the interests of bureaucracy rather than the interests of the people? I shudder to think of what this means for access to information generally. If the government truly wanted to have transparency in their freedom-of-information access, this bill would not look like what it does.

I believe that this bill is intended to fix headaches for politicians and ministers. It is not there to assist the public’s right to know. The government here is making it easier to share your data and harder to get access to theirs. Transparency is something that is collapsing, and data collection is expanding.

[4:05 p.m.]

We’ve really got to look at that social contract, because when we have that social contract in place — which is very old, and it goes back to the essence of giving up your freedoms to be governed — it’s completely wrong-handed to start clawing that back and saying to the people: “You must do as we tell you. You are our serfs. You are our little plebes. We decide what you need to know. We decide what we are going to share, and you don’t even need to bother asking, because the answer is going to be no.”

I’ve experienced this “no” already. There are all kinds of ways to say no that exist in the current legislation. This — well, you might as well not even bother, because that’s already the predetermined answer, because you’re difficult. You’re malicious. You’re going to interfere with the operations of government. Okay, well, that’s how it’s going to be, is it?

What do you think people have happen in their minds when they don’t have that social contract in place anymore? Well, I will tell you. Law and order begins to break down. If people can’t trust their government, they won’t trust their government. And they won’t trust their government on a range of things.

All of a sudden, basic laws will become the subject of disrespect, because they do not understand where that social contract that made that law came from. If they can’t accept that social contract as being in force and valid, then what do our laws actually mean? Bill 9 strikes to the essence and the centre of the social contract of trust between people and government. It destroys that social contract.

This is one of the scariest things I, as a historian, have ever seen in modern times. How is it that we can take our social contract between the governed and the government and just rip it up and say: “You know what? We’re going to make it more and more difficult for you to understand how we come to the decisions we’re making. We’re going to make it more difficult for those with the time and effort and persistence to come to understand how decisions are made. We are not going to make it easy.”

Well, this isn’t about fixing headaches of bureaucrats. This is the essence of what matters in getting access to information and making sure that people know and understand that their tax dollars are being spent responsibly, in a system where they give the permission of those they elect to make decisions on their behalf.

When all of us in this House were elected, we became part of that social contract. That is what the essence of our job is. We make law. Since we make law, that being the main thing we do, we have a responsibility to inform the people who put us here as to how that came about.

If they have questions about that, they definitely deserve answers, and we should not be trying to conceal or hide or bury or make it difficult for the people of British Columbia to find the answers that they want, need and deserve — to know about how the sausage and politics got made.

As we know, politics can be a messy business. It can involve compromise. It can involve negotiation. It can involve deals, but the people need to know that those deals are not just in the back rooms and that they are there for them to observe, see and understand.

We’ve been on committees, many of us, in this House. We’ve had people make submissions to these committees. Some of these submissions are very thoughtful. Some of them are based on information that’s incorrect or incomplete. We do our very best to make sure that we respond, but when people want to know why we came to the conclusion we did on a particular matter, they should be able to make a submission and find out.

It’s not unreasonable to know what the tax dollars that they have contributed to governance are going towards, in making sure of what people like myself, my colleagues on this side of the House and my colleagues on the other side of the House are doing.

[4:10 p.m.]

Why are we doing what we’re doing? We’re here to make laws. Are those laws necessary? Sure. If they’re not, we have an argument about that. That’s why we’re having an argument about Bill 9.

I think that Bill 9 represents a fundamental threat to the social contract, and for that reason, I cannot see supporting it. The way this has ignored those recommendations, the way that this has gone right at the heart of access to information and providing that freedom of information for people is fundamentally an attack on everything that is that relationship between the people and its government.

In conclusion, I will not be supporting Bill 9. I believe Bill 9 is an attempt to break the social contract. I’m sure it’s not overt. I hope it’s not overt. It’s obvious, but it is also insidious. We should never be giving up the people’s right to know just because it’s inconvenient for the government to provide the information that government doesn’t want out there.

I look at the bridge. You know, that bridge has got some issues, and that freedom-of-information package that I eventually received was nearly 1,000 pages. But it wasn’t hard to pick up a 1,000-page series of reports, chuck them in a machine, scan them and send them. That’s not a year.

A bill like this that makes it even more difficult to do that is not helpful to transparency. It’s not helpful to me to do my job. It’s not helpful for anyone else in this House to do their job. And it certainly isn’t helpful to the people of British Columbia who deserve to know what we’re doing here, how we’re doing it and why.

Harman Bhangu: I’m here today to speak to Bill 9. I want to walk through it in a way that people outside this building would actually understand it, because at the end of the day, this is not about legal wording. This is about whether regular people in British Columbia can still get straight answers from their own government.

I’ll say this right off the bat. When you go through this bill clause by clause, this is not about improving access. It’s about controlling access. People might not read the legislation front to back, but they will feel it when they try and get answers and are hit with a wall.

Before I got here, I worked in trucking, construction, paving, building the projects that we need — up at four or five in the morning, long days, real pressure, real accountability. And in that world, things are simple. If someone asks you a question, you answer it. If something goes wrong, you deal with it. And if you’re late, you don’t argue about what late means. You fix it. That’s how real life works.

But what I see in this bill is the exact opposite — more grey area, more wiggle room, more ways to delay, more ways to say no. And that matters, because freedom of information is one of the only tools people have to actually see what government is doing behind closed doors. Journalists rely on it. Citizens rely on it. We rely on it here to hold the government accountable. So when the rules around that start changing, we need to pay attention.

Let’s start with clauses 2 and 26. This bill says that an FOI request has to be detailed enough so the record can be found in a reasonable amount of time.

Nobody is arguing against clarity. Of course, requests should be clear. But here’s the issue. What is a reasonable amount of time? It’s not defined, so who decides this — the person asking the questions or the government that might not want to go digging? Now the head of the public body gets to decide whether your request is detailed enough.

[4:15 p.m.]

Before, that opinion didn’t carry that kind of weight. Now it does. That’s a gate. That’s someone deciding whether your questions even get through the door. Once you start putting gates in place, fewer people get through. That’s how it works.

Now let’s move to clause 3. This one matters. We go from “without delay” to “without unreasonable delay.” That might sound small, but it’s not, because “without delay” is clear. It means get moving. “Without unreasonable delay” opens the door. What’s reasonable? A week, a month, three months, six months, a year? Now it becomes a debate, and when it becomes a debate, it becomes delay. People are already waiting too long. Instead of tightening timelines, this bill loosens them. That’s backwards.

Clause 5 and clause 6 keep going in the same direction. Instead of working with people to fix a request if it’s not perfect, we move towards rejecting it. Think about that. Instead of helping someone get the information they’re asking for, we’re building a system that makes it easier to say no. That’s not service. That’s avoidance.

Now, clauses 13 and 28, this is where it really starts to matter. These clauses expand the ability to disregard requests if they’re considered frivolous, vexatious, too broad or if they interfere with government operations. Now, I understand the idea. No one wants the system abused. But here’s the problem. None of those terms are clearly defined.

What’s too broad? If someone is asking big questions about spending, is it too broad? If a journalist digs deep, is that interference? If someone keeps asking questions because they’re not getting answers, is that vexatious? Without clear definitions, those words get stretched, and when they get stretched, legitimate questions get pushed aside. That is the concern.

Clause 7 deals with judicial communications tied to policy. Now, I understand protecting sensitive conversations, but again, where is the line? When lines aren’t clear, they move, and when they move, the public sees less.

Clauses 8 through 12 expand on how personal information can be collected and shared — more data, more sharing, more systems. I get it. Services are changing. But here is the reality. Every time you expand that, you increase risk. People want to know where their information is going, who’s accessing it and what happens if something goes wrong. Trust doesn’t come from saying: “Don’t worry about it.” Trust comes from clear rules and strong safeguards.

Clause 15 removes the 90-day limit on reviews, so now it can take longer — again, longer timelines, more flexibility for the government, less certainty for the people, same pattern.

Clause 20 brings this idea of a centralized system. Now, maybe that’s about efficiency, but I’ve seen centralized systems before. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they just make things harder to access and easier to control. So the question is simple: is this about helping people or managing the flow of information?

Clauses 21 to 22 say some records can be made available without an FOI request. That sounds positive, but then there are fees attached. Now we have to ask: are we opening access or putting a price on it? Access to your own government should not depend on your wallet.

I’ll just make one quick point here. We’ve already seen proactive disclosure tools paused, and it’s still unclear when they’re coming back online. When access tools are being taken offline on one hand and more discretion is being added on the other, people are going to connect those dots.

[4:20 p.m.]

Clause 19 removes early notification around privacy impact assessment. This one also matters, because catching problems early is how you avoid bigger problems later. Why remove that step? What is there to hide? Why remove an early check that protects people?

When I step back and look at this bill as a whole, here’s what I see: more discretion from the government, more delay, more grey areas, more ways to just say no. At the same time, I don’t see anything that clearly makes the system faster or clearer or easier to use. That is the issue. That is not just policy. This is power. FOIs are how people keep government honest. It’s how stories come out. It’s how decisions get questioned.

When you make that harder, you shift that balance. People back home aren’t asking for perfection. They’re asking for straight answers. They’re asking for transparency. They’re asking for a system that works. They’re asking for a government that doesn’t hide behind wording and process when simple questions get asked. Right now this bill moves us in the wrong direction — more control, less clarity, more delays, less accountability.

I’ll say this. If this bill is really about improving the system, then show people it’s going to make responses faster. Show people it is going to make access easier. Show people it strengthens accountability, because right now that’s not clear.

What’s clear is the government gets more room to decide, more room to delay, more room to refuse. That is not what people expect. That is not how trust is built, and that is not how accountability works.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

The question is simple. Are we making it easier for people to get answers or easier for the government to avoid them? Because that’s what it’s coming down to.

I just want to share a little bit about how open information has been a benefit for me as an opposition MLA. I have been able to go and track calendars, briefing notes, meetings and search them, and you can go back even further.

Even when I came into this Legislature…. I was elected October 19 of 2024. There was an issue happening with the ferry strike at Kootenay Bay in Balfour. I was actually able to, after a couple months being elected and in here…. When that situation arose, I was able to go back and look at what ministers, what meetings were happening. I knew there was actually a real situation happening there.

I actually could get on the ground, go out there, visit those areas and get that information. It was very important that that information was accessible. You can also go on there and see who ministers have met in the previous weeks, months, after the 60-to-90-day delay when it actually gets posted on open information.

You can actually go back and research it a bit and figure out who these ministers were meeting with. It can tell you what bills might come on the floor, what might happen in certain projects, certain situations, and that is very key as an opposition MLA. You need to have access to these means, because that is how we do our work. When this is restricted, it causes more delay in our work.

The work that I have is important to British Columbians who have elected me to represent them, keep the government to account. This is where the grey area hits in. This is where the roadblocks hit. This actually restricts the work as an opposition MLA. It slows you down on figuring out what’s important in your file, what information you need to dig up in certain projects, certain fields that you are actually researching.

When I came in here, this was a huge tool for me to get in and hit the ground running. I was able to research transportation projects. Being the Transportation critic, I could go in there and figure out if there’s a project that’s coming up in the future. I was able to see if the minister has met with people who are part of that project.

It lets the opposition actually have an insight into what the government is doing. Now that is being taken away or delayed. What else is it? Maybe we would uncover some more limo rides for ministers. Maybe that is the fear on the other side. Maybe it’s to hide….

[4:25 p.m.]

Who knows? The World Cup is coming around. There are going to be tickets handed out. This would be a way that we could figure out that. But now it is being taken away on this side of the aisle. It makes me beg….

I’ve been making a lot of…. I’m very active on my social media. I actually have posted the calendar notes. I have posted the briefing notes. At times I feel like this bill is to restrict me personally in the work that I am doing to hold the government to account. Maybe that is the fear on the other side.

This is a real issue. This is something that…. British Columbians, a lot of my friends, when I came into this place, said: “Hey, how are you going to hold the government to account?” This was one of the main tools. This was a very important tool. I have actually gone out and helped explain to my constituents where I get my information from, because I think being transparent to British Columbians is a huge reason why a lot of the people on this side of the aisle actually stepped up, put their name on a ballot and wanted to be in this place.

Now all that’s been taken away by this government that’s afraid of their incompetence, the things that they want to hide from us as the opposition, which is really concerning to me. You can look at a lot of issues, like the Highway 1 project. You can go in there and figure out who the ministers are meeting, what’s going to happen in the next phase of that job. This is very important information.

Even on the SkyTrain stuff, I’ve been able to go on there and see who they’re meeting so I know the progress of it. I know what phase they’ll be entering. Are they talking to people from phase 2 to phase 3? How is that all connected? You can figure this stuff out by looking at the calendar.

Now there’s a pause on a lot of it, and I wonder why that pause happened. Was it because of my colleague from Abbotsford-Mission, who did an amazing job in estimates? The next thing you know, the next day, it’s shut down. That raises serious concerns on this side of the aisle, because we’re here to represent the people of our ridings, British Columbians, and now we’re not being able to do that fully.

Every step of the way, where we’re trying to make progress and get more efficient, actually hold this government to account on some of the stuff that they’re trying to push through, this creates a serious roadblock on this side.

That is something that we really need to think about when bills are being put in place through this Legislature. How does it help everyone? How does it help the people at home who are wondering why they can’t put food on the table? They already feel this is the most secretive government. Then when situations like this arise, when bills like this get put on the floor, their thoughts and feelings feel confirmed. They are afraid of what’s going on.

This really, really…. At the deep of this bill, I am really just blown away that we are actually dealing with a government that wants to hide what they’re doing from British Columbians and the opposition. It is gravely disturbing.

We have known the Finance Minister taking limo rides — $6,000. Now I want to know: was there more? Putting a pause on it, closing this, would actually restrict us from gaining that information.

With World Cup around the corner, who knows what kind of frivolous spending is going to be done by the other side. We’ve seen it time and time again, tax dollars wasted over and over. This access was a way for us to do our work, figure out…. Maybe if there’s a delay, so be it. At least the truth would come to light at some point.

That is the key here. We want to keep this place accountable. We want bills that pass through this House to be vetted and debated and actually have good purpose for British Columbians. I don’t see that with this bill. All I see is another roadblock, more bureaucracy, more red tape, when British Columbians are already facing enough of this. I have calls from constituents non-stop, asking: “What’s going on with Bill 9?” What is going on?

We’ve had this project right in the middle of our backyard, Highway 1, forever. We want to find out information. Do they even have a proper crossing on 264? How is that going to work? How are the lanes going to work? You can actually try and access some of that information through this process, and now that’s being taken away as well.

There are a lot of situations here, like FOIs that you can put on certain projects. My colleague talked about the bridge in Quesnel. I’ve been there. I’ve visited that bridge. I’m surprised it’s even in operation. That FOI came back, and it showed numerous things that are not up to date, up to par. Even with the Taylor Bridge, there were FOIs that came in there.

[4:30 p.m.]

There have been numerous FOIs that have come out that have shown there have been situations, issues with what’s going on, and there is no accountability. When you get rid of this process, you’re pretty much giving them a free cheque to do whatever you want.

That is not what British Columbians want. It’s not what my constituents want. They want accountability. They want transparency, especially out of the most secretive government that they’ve seen to date in British Columbia. I think these are legitimate concerns that people have.

I can go on and on, and there’s more here. The situation here is that British Columbians are sick and tired of things being hidden from them, then having to go jump through hoops. Life is already busy, as it is. People have kids they need to drop off at school, pick them up, go do their jobs, take them to sports and everything. And now when they’re trying to figure out, maybe, something that might be in someone’s line of work, what government is doing, you go on there, and there are more delays, more delays.

This doesn’t help a lot of British Columbians. And in a lot of the situations here that I have seen the reasoning for, I don’t buy it. I know if they were on this side of the aisle, they’d be screaming and yelling from the rooftops, saying: “This is a way to hide what the Conservatives are doing.” We’ve heard it time and time again from the other side.

This raises serious concerns, and that’s why I’m here to speak on this. It’s to actually bring some accountability for British Columbians and my constituents, who are deeply, deeply troubled. I was just at an event on Friday, and I had six people come up to me and ask me what is going on with Bill 9. To us, this seems a lot of parallel to what the federal government is doing, restricting things on social media and other aspects, so it is a big concern.

Now, I know there are some amendments coming that we’ll debate in the next stage. We’ll see how things are going to roll out, and we’ll have some discussion around it.

But the thing is that British Columbians are looking for transparency in a time where it seems to be nonexistent. That’s why I feel this bill has been brought in to hide what the government is doing. It has been brought in to mitigate the work the opposition has been doing.

We have been doing great work on this side of the aisle. Right now the reason why we were able to do a lot of that work is by looking up the details of what’s happened. Who are these ministers meeting? What are their briefing notes? What are they actually doing? Now we can go in…. Right now we have accessibility, but in the future, if we don’t, this is going to hinder the work that the opposition MLAs are here to do.

That is why I will not support this bill. I cannot support this bill, and a lot of issues continue to arise. Every time one of these amendments gets put in that they say they will do, you can’t take it at face value here, because we just do not get how this government wants to continuously hide things from British Columbians, hide things from us on the opposition.

I know there was a word said, “Hey, that never happened — limo rides,” but let’s be clear. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has pulled the FOIs. They have made this public knowledge, and we know it was a fact. We know it happened, but what are we going to do in the future to try and mitigate these situations? That is the question at hand here.

In final, I cannot support this bill that would restrict the opposition. It would make it harder for British Columbians to access information. That is just not a bill that I can actually support in this House. I came into this House to bring transparency, to change the way politics has been done, to talk to constituents, educate them on bills, let them know what is coming down the pipeline in this chamber.

I’ve seen it time and time again. Before I was a politician, I always wondered how decisions were made here. Are British Columbians even consulted? This bill clearly shows you they are not being consulted. They are being left in the dust. They are being left to wonder what’s going on, what their government is doing.

Pretty soon they’ll be wondering what their opposition is doing, because the opposition won’t have the information to access everything that the government is doing so we can actually hold them to account. That is why I cannot support this bill, and I’m really against this bill.

[4:35 p.m.]

I honestly, at times, feel like this bill was brought in place to restrict the work that I’ve been doing. Like I’ve said before on my social medias, I have brought in threads. I’ve posted threads. I’ve put in all the work.

The reason why I do that work is because I truly believe British Columbians deserve to know what’s going on. When there are certain people being brought in the House and they’re being introduced and then later on, a few weeks later, we see bills being tabled, it’s a great concern.

That is why, once again — I will say it time and time again for the record — I cannot support this bill. I will not support this bill. This bill should never have been put in place by the government.

Peter Milobar: I’m happy to take my place in the debate. Although my colleague before me may have been not clear on whether he was opposed to this bill or not, I certainly am. Yes, that’s a little Zoom humour, because he was most definitely very clear in his opposition, as I have been as well.

The reality of this bill is that we’ve seen this with this government, repeatedly. I’m going to take a little bit of the time to go back down memory lane, when it comes to FOI with this government. It was not that long ago that a minister spent days defending changes to the FOI Act, defending changes to making it where you have to pay a fee to file an FOI. There was a lot of concern legitimately raised at that point.

There was a lot of concern around what that fee would be. And the answer, for days, was: “We don’t know what the fee will be, because we still have to consult. So we’re not sure if it’ll be $5. We’re not sure if it’ll be $10. We’re not sure if it’ll be $20, but there will be a fee, and we’re going to consult.” Day after day, to question after question that was asked about this, that was the deflection. It was an admirable performance by the minister at the time, I must say, in terms of being able to stick to a speaking point.

It may have felt good in the moment, inside the chamber, for that minister to continue down that path. It certainly didn’t play well out in the general public. It didn’t play well in the media. And it certainly didn’t play well when we discovered that within a few minutes of the bill being passed, an order in council was signed in the hallway of the Legislature, setting the fee at $10. Apparently, those multiple days on end of questions but no answers during committee stage qualified as consultation and checking in to see with stakeholders what the fee should be.

That is, fundamentally, the core problem with this government. They repeatedly hide and evade information. Now, if this were a government that actually — I don’t know — even answered questions in question period directly, maybe people wouldn’t be as concerned about Bill 9 and changes to FOI to make it even harder to access government information.

Maybe if ministers, when they were asked direct questions in budget estimates or in committee stages of bills — very straightforward, sometimes actually routine procedural questions about a piece of legislation — answered up front and it didn’t take five different questions to get a very basic answer out of them, perhaps people wouldn’t be as worried.

I can think back to one time. It was when LNG was being brought forward. I was the Environment critic at the time, and then-Minister Heyman.… There was very simple language in the bill, and it was about setting the emission standards for LNG moving forward. It very clearly had, basically, boilerplate language in it that said that the minister, through orders in council, could set emission levels for LNG projects.

All I simply asked was: does that mean that to set the LNG emission profile, that would not have to come back to the Legislature? That just could be done over summertime by an order in council signature?

The minister repeatedly answered: “Well, I don’t have lawyers here. I can’t answer legal questions about this bill.” That was a ridiculous question in the first place, because every piece of legislation is a legal document. But it was because, frankly, the minister didn’t want to be seen to be responsible as the one setting LNG emissions.

[4:40 p.m.]

Obviously, as the former head of Sierra Club, he was probably not thrilled that he was going to have to be the signatory, not only to the massive tax breaks that were given to LNG Canada but also to developing and signing off on what the emission profile for LNG was going to be.

Now, I raise all that because it just demonstrates a repeated and continuing erosion of access to basic information. The minister eventually acknowledged that, yes, indeed, that’s exactly what that language means. We all know it. We see it in every piece of legislation. We don’t need lawyers to tell us that’s what it actually means, but that was the first four or five answers from the minister. Around and around we had to dance to try to get an upfront answer.

So if you’re a member of the public or if you’re a member of the media…. Imagine how frustrating it must be for them to try to get a straight answer out of members of government. That’s why we have FOI in the first place. We have FOI because if government chooses to not be proactive with their disclosure, if government chooses to pick and choose when they want information to come out, if they want to try to redact, if they want to try to otherwise hide what is going on in government, it is critically important.

I can think back to budget estimates last year when I was asking questions about online gaming and lobbying efforts that were happening, and the minister insisted that there hadn’t been meetings. In a follow-up question, I was able to provide an actual date that a senior bureaucrat met with online gaming. And then the minister had to say: “Oh yeah, actually, we did have some meetings.”

Had I not had that document and that understanding of those calendars, the follow-up question wouldn’t have been asked. We would have simply taken the first question at face value, which was a question that later turned out — literally, by “later,” the next question or two — to not be entirely accurate and not paint an accurate picture of something as fundamentally important as the expansion of online gaming or not and the regulatory framework that would look like for online gaming in British Columbia.

To the average person at home, you might think: “Well, what’s the big deal around that?” Well, there are pros and cons with gaming, and there are pros and cons with online gaming especially, in terms of addiction, in terms of gambling problems and issues that come forward in that way. I think those are fair questions to ask. Where exactly industry is headed, where government is headed for any potential expansion or not on something that can be as addictive as online gaming, understanding what those timelines are, understanding who’s lobbying and what they’re lobbying for — all of that is critically important.

But if you had a government that was proactively releasing information, proactively talking about things and not always making you jump through hoops trying to get the most basic information, you might have a little less heartburn or apprehension about Bill 9. But that’s not the case. Sadly, we have a government that has routinely been acknowledged as the most secretive government in Canada.

We have a government, even on something as simple and basic as a $6,600 limo bill…. The minister…. No, she was not the Minister of Finance at the time, but she was a minister. She was in Boston, and there were car charges for $6,600. Yet this government wants to try to pretend it didn’t happen. And members of the opposition will hoot and howl and say that it’s not true, that it didn’t happen. Well, then why was it claimed?

Using the excuse, “Well, it was a town car; it wasn’t a limo,” doesn’t really matter to the taxpayer. The taxpayer wants to know why $6,600 was spent on that limo ride for the weekend instead of a few Ubers to get around. No one begrudges that staff and ministers have to travel and have to get around and be transported around large cities. That makes perfect sense. A $6,600 limo ride to accomplish that does seem a tad excessive.

There’s been a wide range of other FOIs on these types of issues. When you look at the state we’re in right now and issues around DRIPA, meetings that would be happening around DRIPA, I think the public…. More daylight is much better than less. You know, this is why the government that keeps taking steps on Bill 9, especially in the backdrop of all that’s unfolding right now and ever-tanking popularity numbers by a Premier and his government, makes one second-guess and ponder.

[4:45 p.m.]

Just what exactly are they afraid is going to be discovered through FOI that they’re scrambling to try to get new laws in place before those FOI filings get filed? I think it’s a legitimate concern.

I tend not to be known as one that’s a big conspiracy theorist or that goes over the top with distrust, but I actually do have concerns that the timing of this legislation, given all the other issues going on in British Columbia right now and all the serious nature of things, is being brought forward at a time where we can’t see a tangible benefit for it other than restricting the public’s, the media’s and the opposition’s access to information.

When we’re looking at the past practice of this government, when we’re looking at past pieces of legislation, when we’re looking at actions taken — again, not just on travel but on decisions that this government has made, things like briefing notes or estimates binders, a wide range of issues — a lot of times what happens is that when you pull on the thread, you get a bit of a path.

So you start heading down one way, and then you say: “Oh, hang on. Now, with that piece of information, I never imagined that would have been the answer. So I guess we’d better start looking over here as well now.” That’s the critical importance of FOI.

Sometimes we’re fortunate enough that we stumble upon that when we’re in budget estimates. So we have a piece of an FOI document or we have a series of questions, and the answer comes back different than we were expecting. That actually engages a whole series of FOIs that might happen, because what we assumed was happening in government is, in fact, not what’s happening.

An example I’ll use on this is that a few years ago, when I was questioning around the budget, the government made a big deal that there was $70 million for reconciliation efforts put into the budget. Now, I was asked on budget day to point out something good in the budget. I said: “Oh, that sounds like it’s a good thing if there’s more capacity for municipalities and nations to work together to actually move projects forward quickly and get things accomplished.”

Then you fast-forward to budget estimates, and I thought I would ask a few questions of the Minister of Indigenous Relations. I said: “Well, how did we come to that dollar figure?” Frankly, I was going to be a bit of a smart aleck with a couple of those questions, because the minister, before he became part of government, between being an MP — he was Minister Rankin at the time — and a minister in an election, had resigned as an MP.

His placeholder work, granted to him by the NDP, was to be a highly paid First Nations consultant. Nathan Cullen had the same deal. It was a very convenient work transition for both of those gentlemen to be able to resign as an MP, wait to run to become an MLA and actually get very highly lucrative consulting contracts to work with the government and First Nations.

I was going to basically do a calculation of how much they were getting paid per hour back in their consultant days and figure out how many hours of consulting this $70 million was going to accomplish. What surprised me was actually the answer. The answer was: “Well, this is what we’ve historically always spent.”

At that, I instantly switched gears and said: “Well, this is supposed to be new money. This is supposed to be expanded money. What do you mean that this is what has always been spent?” It turns out that all it was, was that instead of taking it out of contingencies every year, government just decided to make it a permanent line item. Fine, except don’t start marketing it as “new, expanded, never been done before, enhanced and going to provide extra” — all that type of language that was used.

Why it matters is because, in this case, we were able to get to an answer during budget estimates. However, with these changes to FOI, had we wanted to follow up with an FOI based on those lines of questioning to see exactly how they got to a historic average of $70 million of reconciliation spending in any given year, this Bill 9 would have made that next to impossible, after budget estimates are over, for the opposition to follow up, fact-check, verify and dig deeper into some of the answers the ministers give.

[4:50 p.m.]

Now, let’s remember we have limited time in budget estimates to actually fully question, especially when ministers start to be evasive with their answers. It starts to chew up the clock. They sometimes turn around and take ten minutes to chit-chat with staff. You can hear them in the smaller committee rooms. They’re quite literally talking about holiday plans and weekend plans and things to kill a clock. Then they turn around, and they give you a non-answer and hope that you’ll move on to a different subject because they know that we’re up against a clock.

They do that quite frequently, frankly, and it gets worse the farther we go into a session and the more desperate a government becomes with reduced polling numbers. So I fully expect, as we continue on with budget estimates, that will probably continue.

The key to it, though, is that as opposition, that means if we don’t get through all of our material or we get answers that we wanted more follow-up on but we don’t have the time in that current moment to follow up, we would actually access and leverage an FOI to try to actually get that information or see, again, if the minister is being forthright with the public about what’s truly going on behind the scenes.

Now, Bill 9…. When I heard that the government was bringing in a bill around FOI reform and changes, I was actually hoping they would’ve learned from the last go-around and actually been bringing in changes to improve FOI access, not make it even harder and make it, essentially, nonexistent. It’s a way to, basically, have something on the books that says you have freedom of information but that, in fact, it doesn’t actually exist.

Now, when I was the mayor of Kamloops, I got FOI’d a lot, as did council, as a matter of practice for media and others. In fact, our disclosure and our turnaround and our expectation of providing and redacting was much more open and transparent than what the provincial government operates under.

Interestingly enough, it’s rules the provincial government forces upon municipalities to operate that way. I don’t have an issue with that. When I say “forces upon,” I say that because the provincial government ultimately sets the rules and the laws that municipalities operate under.

In this case, though, every time this government, in particular, has a chance to make their own rules, it’s always “rules for thee and not for me.” That is where we’re at again with these FOI changes in Bill 9.

We have a government that is desperate to hide what they’re actually doing, a government that does not want the public to know who they’re meeting with and when and about what, a government that certainly doesn’t want to provide any clarity or line of sight as to what is going on, on the DRIPA file, who they are meeting with, what the timeline is.

Again, it’s not just DRIPA. This impacts all sorts of other areas. We’ve heard from the member from Kelowna and myself, who’ve met with distillers regularly who have had many promises and many meetings with the government and timelines broken and not met.

Without the ability of FOI’ing and calendar access and understanding just how serious the government is or isn’t taking a file, it makes having those types of conversations with people that are being impacted by government rules, regulations and tax policies very, very difficult — to understand what exactly the government is truly doing to move an issue forward and what issues they’re just simply deciding to go through the motions on and not actually ever intending to take meaningful or serious action for any type of industry that is critically needed.

When you look at the mess that forestry is right now in the complete shambles and the complete…. Well, it sounded like today the Premier just gave up. He apparently doesn’t know how to work with Ottawa. He doesn’t know how to negotiate with Ottawa. He doesn’t know how to get a benefit for British Columbians out of Ottawa. He, essentially, shrugged and said that, well, there’s nothing more he can do. He doesn’t know what else he can do to try to get Ottawa’s attention on softwood.

Well, here’s the tip. Maybe the government shouldn’t have walked away, letting a maritime province, for a lot of years, be the head of the softwood table on behalf of all of the provinces. Just one little suggestion as a sidebar there.

[4:55 p.m.]

But when you look at the mess that forestry is in, when you look at the concerns that unions are bringing forward, when you look at the concerns that industry is bringing forward, I think having more daylight, again, on issues around forestry without having to go through the hoops of even further-restricted FOI documents would provide better peace of mind and certainty — if the government is truly intending on trying to action or get results that they keep saying they’re trying to do. But the results are not matching the actions.

When we hear, in 2021-2022, that the government is going to create 30,000 jobs in forestry while they’re projecting $1 billion in revenue drop and now we’re at $1.3 billion in revenue drop in that time frame, yearly, and we have 15,000 job losses, not 30,000 job gains, FOI would be a very helpful tool to have to find more certainty around what decisions the government was rejecting while they were watching the forest sector completely implode upon itself.

It’s not just the FOIs that we rely upon on what decisions were made. It’s the FOIs around what advice was being given or what suggestions were being provided that are critically important, as well, to get a better sense of where the government actually is on any given file, how serious they actually are on trying to solve the issues of our time and how performative they’re trying to be.

If you look at the challenges in health care and the wait times, be it surgical wait times, be it diagnostic wait times, be it cancer treatment wait times — all of those types of situations…. Again, when was the minister briefed? How frequently does the minister get briefed? What action did the minister take from those briefings? Did the minister even care to pay any attention or enact anything that is being suggested to try to change the system for the better? All of that gets discovered by freedom of information.

I think it’s safe to say, if you’re watching me speak right now at home, you probably watch the odd question period, and you would know none of those questions will ever get answered in question period. We’ll ask. We’ll keep doing our job as an opposition, but let’s not be under any illusions that this government routinely takes the question and then answers on something completely off topic.

If I tried doing that on this bill debate around Bill 9, the Chair, rightfully so, would interrupt me and tell me: “Member, you need to be speaking to the bill.” In question period, it seems that this government, in an effort to hide and distract away, not only completely avoids the question; they’re talking about something completely unrelated to what was even being asked. That’s why we need FOI. It used to be you could reasonably get some direction and answers out of a government in question period, but those days have long since passed.

When I see the provisions in Bill 9, when I see the government’s excuses, frankly, for why they say they need Bill 9, the government’s want, constantly, to try to hide information, try to make things more difficult, not be willing to get back to media to answer their legitimate questions that they might have….

It’s interesting how quickly a minister’s office will decide they actually can make comment if they find out that the opposition has already made comment on a news story. Well, if they’re being that difficult just to get a 15-second sound clip, imagine how difficult they’re being to opposition and other people that are looking for information when we start asking for information on any given file.

A good example would be the speculation and vacancy tax, where the ministry had their own audit done. At least that was released, but it didn’t have to be. We could have actually found ourselves in a situation where, again, we’re struggling and looking for that information.

Really, I guess at its core…. What’s the expression about “fool me once”? You know, we pushed back hard the last time they brought in FOI changes, and the government insisted that they were still going to forge through and do them. It simply wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t good enough. They managed to do it.

Now we’ve already seen the Premier back down multiple times on legislation. He’s done it with DRIPA. He’s had contorted conditions on all sorts of legislation in this place over the last couple of years.

A bill like this — one would hope the government actually sees the writing on the wall. They can actually…. They don’t seem to care or want to understand why this is such an offensive piece of legislation. They must think that it is nothing more than political theatre by the opposition.

[5:00 p.m.]

But I can assure the government members that this is not political theatre on our part. It’s the government that tries to do more performative actions across the board on a regular basis than actual tangible deliverables for the public.

The fact that their biggest priority with all the major crises facing us seems to be Bill 9, an FOI restriction act where it actually makes it much harder for the public, opposition and media to gain access to government information, government decision-making, government thought process…. That is their underlying, signature piece of legislation, it seems, in this session.

I mean, we did deal with a weighty miscellaneous stats bill last week, so they had that going for them, I guess. But that’s simply not something that works well.

I thank you for the time on this bill, and I look forward to further debate.

Reann Gasper: I consider it an honour and a responsibility for my role in this House to speak to Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026.

I want to take a moment to begin with a word that sits at the centre of this legislation: freedom. It is a word used often in this assembly, sometimes so often we stop hearing its weight. But freedom in the context of information is not procedural language. It is not administrative language. It is democratic language.

Freedom of information is one of the tools the public uses to examine power. It is how decisions are tested. It is how conduct is scrutinized. It is how trust is preserved. Without it, government operates in shadow. With it, government operates in light. That distinction matters, because democracy is not only what happens during an election. It is what happens between elections. It is whether people can ask hard questions and get answers. It is whether decisions affecting lives can be examined. It is whether power can be held accountable in real time.

Freedom of information is not a convenience. It is not a privilege. It is a democratic safeguard. Question period is a democratic tool. Independent officers of this Legislature are democratic tools. Free press is a democratic tool. The courts, a democratic tool. Take away access to information and every other democratic tool begins to weaken.

Let us be honest about what that means. When government can call scrutiny interference, accountability is already weakened. When asking questions can be labelled abusive, oversight is no longer protected. It is managed. And once accountability is managed by government instead of exercised by the public, freedom has narrowed. Accountability cannot be treated as an interference.

Freedom of information does not exist because government can always be trusted to volunteer what the public needs to know. If that were true, this system would not need to exist at all. Freedom of information exists for the moments when trust breaks, when answers do not come easily, when decisions are unclear, when people have reason to test what they are being told. That is its purpose. It is not designed for convenience. It is designed for scrutiny.

Scrutiny is often uncomfortable. It can be repetitive. It can be broad. It can be persistent. But those things do not make scrutiny abusive. Very often, they are what accountability looks like. Some of the most important public questions begin as inconvenient questions. Some begin as questions government would prefer were never asked. But that has never been the test. The test is whether the public has the right to ask them.

[5:05 p.m.]

Under this bill, that line becomes blurred. When “abusive” is undefined, who decides? When “repetitive” becomes grounds to disregard a request, how many times can a citizen seek answers before persistence is treated as misconduct? When a request can be rejected because it may interfere with operations, who determines whether accountability has become inconvenient?

These are not technical questions. They are power questions. Because vague standards do not restrain power; they enlarge it. The legislation should be judged not only by how it operates under a reasonable government but by how it could be used under an unreasonable one. This is the discipline of good law-making, because law outlives government, powers outlive ministers and precedence outlives intention. If we create authorities today that can be stretched tomorrow, we should not pretend risk does not exist simply because government says it will use those powers responsibly.

Responsible governments do not ask to be trusted more. They build systems where trust is tested. So we must ask a very clear question. Does this bill strengthen that democratic safeguard or weaken it? Does it bring people closer to the truth or place more distance between them?

When we look honestly at what is proposed, the answer is clear. The bill does not strengthen freedom of information; it constrains it. It allows government to label requests as abusive, malicious or repetitive without clear definitions. It expands the ability to reject requests said to interfere with operations. It introduces fees where information was previously free. That means fewer people may access information, more barriers stand in the way and more discretion sits with government.

It reshapes the balance, it shifts decision-making power, it softens duties, and it centralizes control. That is not a small thing. That is a shift in power. I want to say it plainly that this bill is not a solution. It is an escalation. It takes a system people already struggle with and gives government more power to limit access and not expand it.

Here’s what people should see clearly. First, government can delay. Then it can deny. Then it can charge you for asking. Delay, deny, charge. That is not expanded access; that is managed access. People already struggle to access information. They already face delays. They already receive incomplete answers. So the expectation would be reform that makes access easier, clearer, faster.

That is not what this bill delivers, and nowhere is that clearer than the change from “responding without delay” to “responding without reasonable delay.” Words matter. “Without delay” means “act.” “Without reasonable delay” means “explain the delay.” One creates duty, and the other one creates excuses. This is not a small change. It lowers the standard.

People already believe that the system is too slow, and that is not to be disputed. So what should reform do? Raise standards, tighten duties, improve response. But unfortunately, the bill does the opposite. It takes a firm duty and softens it. It takes access problems and introduces fees. It takes concerns and adds undefined refusal grounds. This is not correcting failure. It is adjusting the standard downward to fit the failure.

[5:10 p.m.]

Lowering the standard is one of the oldest ways institutions protect themselves without fixing themselves. If response times are poor, redefine delay. If requests are difficult, redefine the requester. If scrutiny is uncomfortable, redefine scrutiny as interference.

This is not modernization. It does not fix the problem. It changes the rule around the problem. Government should answer plainly: why is the answer to delays not stronger timelines? Why is the answer to burden not better administration? Why is the answer to frustration more discretion for the system causing the frustration? Those are serious questions.

People do not lose trust because government admits that a system struggles. People lose trust when government changes the rules in ways that appear to protect the system from scrutiny. Clarity is missing because vague language replaces clear rules. Discretion replaces consistency, and interpretation replaces certainty — words like “abusive,” “malicious,” “repetitive” and “excessively broad,” not defined in law, yet carrying consequence.

A broad request is not abuse. Repeated requests are not malicious. Persistence is not misconduct. Sometimes persistence is what accountability looks like.

My simple question is: why? If the goal was truly to fix the system, why broaden the ways to say no? If delays are already the problem, why weaken the duty to respond without delay? If access is already difficult, why add fees?

I reserve my place in the debate and move adjournment of the debate.

Reann Gasper moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Sunita Dhir: Committee of Supply, Section C, reports resolution and completion of the estimates of the Ministry of Health and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Hon. Spencer Chandra Herbert: I’d like to call resumed debate for Bill 9.

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 9 — Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy
Amendment Act, 2026
(continued)

Reann Gasper: I want to go back and just…. I’m reminded, as I’m talking about these words, of words like “abusive,” “malicious,” “repetitive” and “excessively broad.”

Of course, in our line of work, we hear many stories and take many meetings with our constituents and residents of British Columbia. It’s very disturbing that as I’m reading this and considering Bill 9, this is being lived out right now by some of the parents in the autism community. They have petitioned the minister continually as they, as is their right, ask questions and get clarity. These are the types of things that are happening in real time.

Interjection.

Reann Gasper: I know this is not answering in question period.

I’ll let the minister reach out to the parents that are advocating for her to actually listen to them and not block them, because….

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: The member has the floor.

Continue, Member.

[5:15 p.m.]

Reann Gasper: It’s unfortunate, because in a period of time where we have freedom of speech and the right to ask questions and to gain clarity, the very language that this bill is carrying — words like “abusive,” “malicious,” “repetitive” and “excessively broad” — really puts the public in a very difficult spot when they have real-life questions to ask. As we’re considering that bill, I think we need to look at that, because we all have a right to freedom of speech.

If delays are already the problem, why weaken the duty to respond without delay? If access is already difficult, why add fees? If discretion is already broad, why make it broader? Those are not mechanisms of reform. Those are the mechanisms of control, and it does not serve the people.

Now, in my role as critic for Children and Family Development, I see what happens when access to information is not clear nor timely and not complete. I hear from parents trying to understand why decisions were made about their children. I hear from youth who have grown up in care trying to piece together their own stories. I hear from caregivers advocating for children who cannot yet advocate for themselves.

What they are asking for is not complicated. They are asking for answers. They are asking for clarity. They are asking for truth. For many of them, an FOI request is not optional. It is the only pathway they have. For some families, this is not paperwork. This is how they find out what happened to their child. Governments should be very careful about making that harder. And a parent looking for answers should never be treated like a problem to manage.

I want this House to consider who is least protected when access becomes harder. It is often not the institution. It is often the family already struggling, the foster parent, the parent trying to understand apprehension, the young adult aging out of care to reconstruct their history. These are often the people with fewer resources, fewer advocates, less capacity to absorb delay. So when government introduces cost barriers, delays flexibility and broadens refusal grounds, those burdens do not fall equally. They fall hardest where capacity is already weakest. That is a consequence.

In child welfare, delay is not neutral. Delay can mean missed intervention. Delay can mean prolonged harm. Delay can mean answers arrive after decisions can no longer be changed. That is why access to information cannot be treated as administrative housekeeping. When consequences can be human, we should be strengthening that safeguard, not loosening it.

A mother reaches out after her child has been removed from care. She is not looking to fight blindly. She’s trying to understand. She submits a request. She waits. Documents arrive incomplete. She follows up. She narrows the request. She asks again. Under this bill, that persistence can be labelled “repetitive,” and once that label is applied, her request can be dismissed. So what happens? A mother seeking truth is told to stop asking. That is not transparency; that is control.

The consequences are that there are moments when access to information is not simply important; it is urgent, sometimes life-determining. A family loses a loved one after systems fail. They seek records, timelines, decisions, warnings. They wait. Information comes incomplete. They follow up. Delay continues. They are left not knowing whether the system failed, because the path to truth was never clear. When information comes too late to challenge a decision, the damage may already be done.

[5:20 p.m.]

Information delayed can become accountability denied. I am watching this happen in real time with the autism community.

What we’re talking about here today is not hard to wrap our heads around: public accountability. That is human. What do people expect? If they ask a question, they should receive an answer. They expect clarity. They expect access. They expect accountability. That alone is not difficult to comprehend. That is the base standard of what is expected of all of us in public office.

Clarity, transparency, accountability, integrity — words that shouldn’t be regarded as inconvenient or as a hindrance, words that outside of this government’s leadership and outside of this bill are commonplace expectations of good leadership. That’s not what is before us today.

We are not talking about matters of good leadership. We are not talking about the mutual benefits we will all experience if this proposed legislation is passed. There are no mutual benefits to be shared. The balance of power lies in favour of this government, which is redefining the rules and the terms of engagement for public accountability.

What does this bill introduce? Undefined terms, subjective interpretation, more discretion, more denial. People expect clarity, but they’re getting ambiguity. People expect access, but they’re getting barriers. People expect accountability, but they’re getting control.

I want to talk about the cost, because this bill introduces the ability to charge for information that was previously free. We need to be very clear what that means. Access to truth can depend on the ability to pay. That means transparency is no longer equal. The right to know should not depend on the size of someone’s wallet. Transparency should not operate on a user-pay model.

I want to spend a moment on fees, because this should concern every member. The right to know should not operate like a toll road. Once access depends on what people can pay, transparency is no longer equal. Some can pursue answers, and some may decide they can’t afford to.

That creates a two-tier relationship to public information. Those with means can press further. Those without may stop asking. Even the possibility of fees may cause some people to stop before they file a request. Sometimes a barrier does not need to be used often to have effect. It only needs to exist. And that should trouble us.

Now step back, and look at the pattern. More discretion, more delay, more denial. At the same time, less access, less clarity, less accountability. That gives government more room to decide and the public less certainty.

Legislation should empower people, make systems clearer, bring people close to truth. This bill does the opposite. It makes the system more vague, more distant, more controlled, and that is why it must be challenged. Freedom of information is not just process; it is a democratic safeguard. And when we weaken it, we weaken the public’s ability to hold government accountable. We weaken the ability to trust the truth. We weaken the ability of truth to surface. We weaken trust, and once trust is broken, it is not easily rebuilt.

Let me leave government with a simple test. If this bill strengthens accountability, then answer this. How does softer language on delay strengthen accountability? How do broader refusal powers strengthen accountability? How do fees strengthen accountability? How does allowing persistence to be characterized as abuse strengthen accountability? It does not. These measures make administration easier. They may make scrutiny easier to manage, but those are not the same as strengthening freedom of information.

[5:25 p.m.]

The bill asks the public to trust that broader discretion, softened duties and more barriers will somehow produce more openness. This is not persuasive. The government should not ask this House to accept a contradiction simply because it is written in legislative language.

We must be clear. This bill replaces duty with discretion. It replaces access with barriers. It replaces transparency with permission. If people need permission to scrutinize power, something has gone very wrong.

This bill takes the free out of freedom of information. It replaces…. I already said that part.

There’s another concern that this House should not pass over lightly.

It’s a little distracting having members from the other side congregate and talk while you’re speaking.

Deputy Speaker: Continue, Member.

Reann Gasper: This bill does not only affect individuals seeking personal records. It affects journalists, researchers, watchdogs, opposition members — the very people who often surface information the public would otherwise never see. Let’s be honest. Many of the things governments later admit need fixing were first raised by people asking difficult questions — questions some considered inconvenient, questions some may have considered too broad, questions that came again and again until answers came.

I’m living this right now as I listen to the autism community talk about the questions that are not being considered and the decisions that are being made that will affect their family and their children.

Accountability is rarely tidy. It is often persistent, and that is why language in this bill around repetitive requests and interference should concern members beyond this debate.

Deputy Speaker: Member, excuse me. I’d just like to recognize the Minister for Environment and Parks.

Hon. Laanas / Tamara Davidson: I just wanted to remind all members that they’re not supposed to talk about people that are in the room.

[5:30 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Just a reminder to members to be mindful of the debate that’s underway.

Reann Gasper: That is why language in this bill around repetitive requests and interference should concern members beyond this debate. Those words may not only affect one request. They can affect patterns of scrutiny.

A journalist following a public issue may need multiple requests. A researcher may refine a request repeatedly as new facts emerge. An opposition member may pursue the same matter over time because earlier answers were incomplete. Is that abuse, or is that oversight? hat matters, because if persistence begins to be treated as a problem, then the people most likely to expose systematic failures may face barriers precisely because they are doing their job.

History teaches us something important. Systems rarely reform because they are left unexamined. They reform because someone kept asking, someone persisted and someone refused to accept a partial answer. This House should be very cautious about the legislation that creates even the appearance that persistence itself can be turned into grounds for refusal.

There’s another accountability question. What happens when powers granted for extraordinary cases begin to migrate into ordinary use? Good government does not build legislation around how to manage people asking hard questions. They build systems that can withstand difficult questions. There’s a difference. One protects administration. The other protects democracy.

Finally, I want to return to something simple. Freedom of information works only if the public believes asking is worth it. Is it worth the time? Is it worth the effort? Is it worth the process? If people begin to believe requests may be delayed, denied or priced beyond reach, some will stop asking before they even begin. When people stop asking, accountability does not grow quieter because everything is working. It grows quieter because people have lost confidence they will be heard.

This is not healthy democracy. This House should not be lowering confidence in a system already under strain. They should be rebuilding it. That is why I cannot support a bill that expands discretion while weakening duty. This is why I cannot support a bill that asks the public to trust that the barriers will somehow produce openness. This is why I believe this House should reject Bill 9.

Sharon Hartwell: I’m pleased to rise in this House to speak to Bill 9, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026.

At the outset, I wanted to say this plainly. Access to information is not a courtesy that government extends when it’s convenient. It is not a favour. It’s not a privilege reserved for those who know how to navigate bureaucracy, hire experts or wait months on end while their request disappears into the machinery of government.

Access to information is a democratic right. It’s one of the few practical tools ordinary people have to hold government accountable between elections. That is why Bill 9 matters. And that is why the government’s framing of this bill is so difficult to accept.

We are told that this legislation is about efficiency. We are told it’s about modernization. We are told it’s about improving the experience of British Columbians engaging with government. Those are fine words. They sound polished. They sound reassuring. But when one looks past the talking points and reads the actual text of the bill, a different picture emerges.

What this bill really does, in several important respects, is make it easier for government to delay, easier for government to reject and easier for government to charge people for access to information that should, by all reason and principle, remain accessible. That is not transparency. That is not modernization. And it’s, certainly, not accountability.

[5:35 p.m.]

Freedom-of-information legislation exists because government records do not belong to the government of the day in any moral sense. Those records are created using public dollars by public bodies in the course of public administration. Ministers may sit on those benches for a few years, staff may rotate in and out, governments may rise and fall but the records themselves arise from the exercise of public power. They belong fundamentally to the people. That is why this matters so much.

When a resident wants to know how a decision was made, when a journalist wants to investigate waste, when a researcher wants to understand government process, when a municipality wants answers, when a family wants records tied to an issue affecting their lives, they should not be met with more obstacles. They should not be met with more discretion in the hands of the very institutions they are trying to scrutinize. They should not be priced out of information. They should not be treated as a burden simply for asking questions. But that is the direction Bill 9 takes us.

Let us begin with one of the clearest examples of the bill. That’s clause 3. Clause 3 changes the obligation on a public body to respond to an access request without delay and replaces it with a duty to respond without unreasonable delay. Now, on first hearing, some may say that’s only a small wording change, but members of this House know full well that legislation wording is never casual. Words are chosen carefully because words create standards, and standards shape behaviour.

“Without delay” is a firm expectation. It is clear. It tells the public body that time matters. It tells the applicant that the law recognizes urgency. It tells everyone involved that records should not simply sit idle because government is busy, disorganized or politically uncomfortable with disclosure.

“Without unreasonable delay” is softer. It’s more elastic. It leaves far more room for justification, more room for interpretation, more room for excuses. What is unreasonable to the applicant may appear entirely reasonable to an office already accustomed to backlog. What is unreasonable to the public may appear acceptable to a government that has grown comfortable with delay.

That is the problem. British Columbians are already frustrated by slow response times in the FOI system. They are already dealing with a process that can feel distant, drawn out and opaque.

The answer to that problem is not to lower the legal standard owed to them. The answer is to improve performance. The answer is to ensure proper staffing, clear procedures and a culture that treats disclosure as the rule, not the exception. Government should be working to speed up the system, not legislate the slowdown into more acceptable language.

Then we come to clause 2, which is also deeply concerning. Clause 2 changes section 5 so that an FOI request must, in the opinion of the head of the public body, provide enough detail to enable an experienced employee, with reasonable effort in a reasonable amount of time, to identify the record sought.

Again, that wording matters. “In the opinion of the head of the public body,” “reasonable effort,” “reasonable amount of time” — who defines those things? Who decides when the request is detailed enough? Who decides when the amount of time spent searching is too much? Who decides whether the request is sufficiently precise, especially when the applicant may not know exactly what records exist in the first place?

This House should remember that many people file FOI requests precisely because they do not already have a full picture. They’re seeking clarity. They’re trying to identify what happened, who said what, what records exist, what advice was given, what emails or briefing materials are on file. They’re not always in a position to provide a perfectly narrow or tailored request on the first attempt, nor should they be expected to know the internal filing systems, terminology or administrative practices of every ministry, agency and public body in the province.

That is why the law should lean toward helping the applicant, not screening them out. But this bill leans the other way. It shifts more discretion towards the institution. It makes the opinion of the public body’s head more central. It introduces vague standards that can easily become barriers. It increases the chances that a request can be pushed back, narrowed, delayed or treated as defective before the applicant has even had a fair chance to obtain the records.

[5:40 p.m.]

What will this mean in practice? It’ll mean more frustration for people who are already trying to navigate an intimidating process. It’ll mean more correspondence back and forth over wording instead of substance. It will mean more opportunities for delay. And when people see that happening over and over again, their confidence in the system deteriorates.

A freedom-of-information regime only works if people believe it is real. It only works if they believe that when they ask a legitimate question, they will receive fair treatment and a lawful disclosure. Once people begin to suspect that every ambiguity in the law will be read in favour of government convenience, then the right still exists on paper but becomes weaker in practice.

That is why clause 13 is so significant. Clause 13 expands the grounds upon which the commissioner may authorize a public body to disregard a request. It adds the behaviour of the applicant being abusive or malicious and broadens the language concerning requests that would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or the government of British Columbia. It also refers to requests that are repetitive, systematic or excessively broad.

Now, let us be careful here. No one is arguing that truly bad-faith conduct should be tolerated. No system can function properly if it is deliberately weaponized against public servants or used as a means of harassment. There must be safeguards against genuine abuse. But safeguards must be clear, narrow and carefully constrained.

This clause is not that. Instead, it introduces broad language without meaningful definition in the bill itself. Once again, that should concern every member of this House, because vague terms can become elastic terms, and elastic terms are very often used to the advantage of those already holding power.

What is abusive? What is malicious? Does that mean a request that is angry in tone? A request filed after months of government silence? A request by someone who has asked too many uncomfortable questions? A request by a journalist following a story government wishes to go away?

And what about unreasonable interference with operations of government? That is a particularly troubling phrase. Would a broad request into the Premier’s office be said to interfere with operations? Would multiple requests into major procurement decisions be deemed systematic? Would opposition researchers, journalists, advocacy organizations or municipal leaders be told their efforts amount to a burden on government rather than an exercise in democratic oversight?

These are not far-fetched questions. They are the obvious questions that arise when legislation uses broad language and leaves the boundaries unclear. If the government wanted merely to target truly vexatious conduct, it would have drafted narrow, well-defined provisions. Instead, it has chosen language that opens the door much wider. That is the concern. And British Columbians are right to be concerned when a government that already struggles with transparency seeks broader authority to disregard requests.

Accountability is often inconvenient. That is simply the nature of accountability. It takes time to answer questions. It takes effort to gather records. It requires a willingness to endure scrutiny. But inconvenience to government is not the same thing as abuse by the applicant.

The right to ask hard questions is not an administrative flaw. It is one of the essential features of a functioning democracy. If government finds public scrutiny burdensome, the answer is not to weaken access rights. The answer is to govern in a way that can withstand scrutiny.

I also want to speak to clause 21, because it represents one of the clearest examples of this government taking something that should be easier and making it harder. Clause 21 allows the head of a public body to require a person who asks for a copy of a record that is otherwise available under protective disclosure to pay a fee.

That is astonishing. These are records that government itself says should be available without a formal access request. That is the whole point of proactive disclosure. It’s supposed to mean less friction, fewer obstacles, more openness and easier public access. It’s supposed to reduce the need for formal FOI filings by making records accessible up front.

But under this bill, government can now say: “Yes, the record is available, but you may have to pay for it.” That is not proactive disclosure in any meaningful public sense. That is restricted access dressed up in a modern language.

Let us be honest about who feels these kinds of changes most. It’s not the large institution with in-house counsel, not the ministry with taxpayer-funded staff, not the government with all the records and all the procedural leverage.

[5:45 p.m.]

It is the ordinary person. It is the local journalist on a tight budget. It is the resident trying to get information about a matter affecting their family or community. It’s the volunteer group. It’s the student researcher. It is the taxpayer who already paid once for the creation of the record and is now being asked to pay again to receive it.

The government may say these fees are modest, but a barrier does not have to be enormous to be effective. Sometimes all it takes is one more step, one more charge, one more discouragement and people walk away. That is especially true in a system that is already slow and already difficult for many people to navigate.

I would remind this House that that is not happening in a vacuum. British Columbians have seen this government move before in ways that reduce access to information rather than expand it. So when this bill arrives with new fees, broader refusal grounds and weaker timing language, people notice the pattern. They notice that “free” is generally being taken out of “freedom of information.”

This government speaks often about trust. It speaks often about service delivery. It speaks often about people-centred systems. Those are nice phrases, but trust is not built through slogans. It is built through conduct. It is built when government answers questions instead of dodging them. It is built when disclosure is timely, instead of delayed. It is built when access is broad, instead of narrow. It is built when rights are strengthened, instead of qualified away. On that test, Bill 9 does not meet that standard.

There’s another feature of this bill that deserves careful examination. That is the growing use of information-sharing powers and centralized service mechanisms without sufficient public explanation. Clause 12 permits the commissioner to exchange information and enter into information-sharing agreements with commissioners in other jurisdictions. What jurisdictions?

Clause 20 establishes what is called a “connected services provider” and authorizes the minister to designate a public body for that role, with powers relating to online platforms, data sharing between public bodies, identifying services for which a person may be eligible and other services the minister considers appropriate.

Now, no one in this chamber is opposed to technology being used wisely. No one is opposed to making public services easier to navigate. If a resident can access multiple services through one platform, that may be beneficial. If systems can be modernized responsibly, that may be beneficial. If duplication can be reduced while privacy is preserved, that may be also beneficial.

Legislation must be judged not by aspiration alone but by powers it grants. What powers are being granted here? The minister may designate a connected services provider. The minister may direct what type and quantity of personal information is shared. The minister may direct formats of sharing. The minister may determine sources of data. The minister may issue different directions for different classes of persons, public bodies or categories of personal information. Those are substantial powers.

When government centralizes information flows and expands the movement of personal information across institutions, the public deserves detailed safeguards, clear limits and confidence that privacy rights are not being eroded under the banner of convenience. British Columbians live in an age of data breaches, cyberthreats, identity theft and increasing concern over who holds their personal information. They are asked for more information than ever before to access basic services. They are told to trust systems they often cannot see and cannot inspect.

Against that backdrop, government should proceed with humility and caution. Instead, Bill 9 gives broad enabling authority first and leaves many practical questions unanswered. How long is data retained? Who has access? What auditing mechanisms will exist? How will consent be managed? How will errors be corrected when multiple systems rely on shared data? What happens when a mistake in one database is replicated across several agencies? How are vulnerable people protected from bureaucratic harm caused by incorrect information?

These are not technical afterthoughts. They are central questions of public trust. If government wishes to expand such powers, it should welcome rigorous scrutiny rather than expect automatic confidence.

Clause 15 also merits attention. It permits the commissioner to extend the timeline for a review, beyond the current 90-day requirement, by specifying a later date and notifying relevant parties. Again, government may say this is practical administration. Perhaps, in some circumstances, flexibility is needed, but let us consider the broader pattern of this bill.

[5:50 p.m.]

The duty to respond becomes softer. Requests become easier to challenge for lack of detail. Grounds to disregard become broader. Fees may be charged for certain available records. Review times become more open-ended.

At some point, these cannot be dismissed as isolated housekeeping measures. They point in one direction — away from timely public access and toward administrative convenience for the state. This is what concerns so many people when they look at this legislation.

Accountability often dies not through dramatic scandal but through routine delay. A request is unanswered. An extension is granted. A clarification is requested. Another review is pending. Another deadline moves. Months pass. The news cycle moves on. The issue fades when records finally released no longer carry the same public value.

Anyone who has observed access-to-information systems across Canada knows this pattern. Delay itself can become a form of denial. Information released too late may satisfy a legal check box while defeating the purpose of public scrutiny. That is why timing matters so deeply. That is why weakening timing language matters. It is why open-ended extensions matter. It is why a government serious about transparency would focus first on response capacity rather than on new refusal mechanisms.

I also wish to address the philosophical question at the centre of this debate. Who does government work for? That may sound simple, but legislation like Bill 9 tests whether this House still answers it properly. If government works for itself, then public requests are interruptions. They are annoyances. They interfere with operations. They consume time better spent elsewhere. They must be managed, filtered, narrowed, discouraged and sometimes priced.

But if government works for the public, then requests are legitimate acts of democratic participation. They are how citizens supervise institutions larger than themselves. They are how journalists investigate. They are how opposition members test claims. They are how communities seek fairness. They are how truth is often assembled from paper trails.

I know which view I hold, and I believe most British Columbians know which view they hold as well. They know instinctively that asking government questions should not feel like trespassing. They know instinctively that public records should not be treated as private possessions. They know instinctively that transparency delayed is transparency diminished.

There is another issue that cannot be ignored, and that is trust. Trust in institutions has declined across much of the democratic world. People feel that discussions are made far from them, explained poorly and shielded away from scrutiny. Whether one agrees with every sentiment expressed publicly or not, that broader erosion of trust is very real.

When trust is fragile, government should respond by opening windows, not drawing curtains. They should disclose more, not less. They should simplify access, not complicate it. They should narrow discretion, not broaden it. They should make it easier for citizens to see how decisions are made. Instead, Bill 9 risks sending the opposite message: “Trust us more while we show you less.” That is not a wise message for any government to send.

I do not doubt that some officials involved in drafting this legislation believe portions of it are sensible. I do not doubt there are genuine administrative frustrations inside ministries dealing with large volumes of requests. I do not doubt that systems need updating.

But inconvenience inside government cannot be the primary lens through which public rights are viewed. Rights are often inconvenient. Elections are inconvenient. Question period is inconvenient. Independent audits are inconvenient. Judicial review is inconvenient. Freedom of information is inconvenient. Yet we maintain all of these because free societies require institutions to answer to the people, not merely to themselves. That is the balance government seems to forget.

If government truly wished to improve the FOI system, there are many constructive paths available. Increase staffing and access offices. Set enforceable service standards. Publish more contracts, reports, calendars and briefing materials proactively. Reduce unnecessary redactions. Create plain-language portals for applicants. Improve communication with requesters. Invest in records management so searches are faster. Strengthen penalties for deliberate obstruction. Report publicly on ministry performance.

[5:55 p.m.]

Those reforms would deserve support. Those reforms would align with the language of efficiency and transparency. But this bill, instead, spends too much effort empowering the institution rather than empowering the citizen. That is why we oppose it.

I wish to speak directly to public servants who may hear this debate. This criticism is not aimed at the many hard-working professionals across government who process requests, manage records and try to serve the public under difficult conditions. Many of them do excellent work with limited resources and under heavy pressure. They often inherit systems and workloads not of their making.

Our concern is with the policy direction set by government. When front-line staff are overburdened, the solution is support. When systems are outdated, the solution is investment. When demand rises, the solution is capacity. The solution should not be fewer rights for the public.

Future governments of every stripe should pay attention. Powers created for one administration are inherited by the next. Precedents accepted today become tomorrow’s tools. That is why opposition to measures like these should not be viewed narrowly or temporarily.

This House should legislate with constitutional maturity. Members should not ask merely: “Will my side benefit from this now?” They should ask: “Would I accept this power in the hands of my opponents later?” That test often clarifies matters quickly. If members opposite would object to these provisions under a different government, then they should reconsider supporting them under this one.

Democracy depends not only on voting day but on the thousands of ordinary acts by which citizens remain informed between elections — a parent asking for records, a reporter following expenses, a researcher tracing policy development, a community group seeking environmental data, an opposition caucus testing government claims. These are not hostile acts. They are signs of a healthy society. They are evidence that people still care enough to ask. Government should meet that care with respect, not resistance.

Bill 9 does not do enough of that. Instead, it normalizes a mindset that public inquiry is a burden to be managed. It treats access, too often, as a problem rather than a principle. It moves the dial, however politely, towards less openness. Those incremental moves matter.

I return to where I began. Access to information is not a favour. It is not a public relations option. It is not something government may celebrate in speeches while constraining in statute. It is a democratic safeguard. It is one of the few tools that equalizes the relationship between the citizen and the state. Without it, power grows darker. With it, power remains answerable.

For those reasons, I cannot support Bill 9 in its present form. I urge government to withdraw the restrictive provisions, remove the fee barriers, tighten the vague refusal clauses, restore stronger timelines and return to this House with legislation that genuinely advances openness while protecting privacy. British Columbians deserve a government confident enough to be examined, mature enough to be questioned and honest enough to know that transparency is not a threat. It is the price of public power.

Brent Chapman: Bill 9 is a quiet but devastating assault on British Columbia’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. While they call it streamlining, it is nothing less than a rollback of the very transparency that British Columbians have fought for decades to protect.

Let us speak plainly about where this leaves us on the world stage. The authoritative global right to information rating, the international gold standard measuring legal strength of access-to-information laws, ranks countries out of 150 points. Top of the world is Afghanistan at 139, Mexico at 136 and Serbia at 135. These jurisdictions have built regimes with minimal exceptions, swift timelines, ironclad appeals and genuine proactive disclosure.

Canada’s federal law sits at a mediocre 93 points, 53rd place. British Columbia’s FOIPPA has long been among the strongest in Canada, a provincial leader that kept us competitive internationally.

[6:00 p.m.]

Bill 9 changes all that. It would replace the duty to respond without delay with the vague….

Deputy Speaker: Member. Member for Surrey South, sorry to interrupt you. I know you’ve just got underway. It’s six o’clock, and we’re about to undertake our votes. We have division votes.

Noting the hour, I ask you to reserve your place and move adjournment of the debate.

Brent Chapman: Noting the hour, I reserve my time and move to close debate.

Brent Chapman moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Reporting of Bills

Bill M217 — Dashboard Cameras
in Commercial Vehicles Act
(continued)

The Speaker: Member for Strathcona, would you please turn your camera on?

Members, earlier today during private members’ time, a division was requested that Bill M217, Dashboard Cameras in Commercial Vehicles Act be concurred in at report stage. Pursuant to that standing order, we are taking the division vote now.

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

Private Members’ Motions

Motion M205 — Mandatory Orientation
Course for MLAs
(continued)

On the amendment (continued).

The Speaker: All right, Members. Now the next voting is going to take place. I ask all the members to stay in the room. If the House has the desire, we can waive the time.

Members, we are reaching out to the member for Vancouver-Strathcona to see if we can reset her video. Just give us a few minutes.

Members, now that we have done all the calculations, is the House willing to waive the time?

Leave granted.

[6:15 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.]

The Speaker: Members, the question is the amendment to Motion M205, moved by the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

Amendment approved on the following division:

YEAS — 46
Lore	Blatherwick	Dhir
Routledge	Chant	Toporowski
B. Anderson	Neill	Osborne
Brar	Krieger	Davidson
Parmar	Sunner	Beare
Greene	Wickens	Kang
Begg	Arora	Higginson
Sandhu	Lajeunesse	Choi
Rotchford	Elmore	Phillip
Popham	Dix	Sharma
Farnworth	Eby	Bailey
Kahlon	Chandra Herbert	Whiteside
Boyle	Ma	Yung
Malcolmson	Gibson	Glumac
Shah	G. Anderson	Chow
	Morissette
NAYS — 45
Loewen	Kindy	Milobar
Warbus	Halford	Rattée
Wat	Kooner	Banman
Hartwell	L. Neufeld	Van Popta
Dew	Clare	K. Neufeld
Wilson	Valeriote	Botterell
McInnis	Paton	Day
Bhangu	Toor	Hepner
Giddens	Dhaliwal	McCall
Maahs	Block	Stamer
Gasper	Mok	Davis
Chan	Boultbee	Sturko
Brodie	Armstrong	Kealy
Williams	Chapman	Bird
Doerkson	Luck	Tepper

Point of Order
(continued)

Hon. Ravi Parmar: Mr. Speaker, in relation to the point raised by the MLA for Prince George–Mackenzie, having reviewed the transcript, I withdraw my remarks.

The Speaker: Thank you, Minister. That resolves the issue.

Debate Continued

Debra Toporowski / Qwulti’stunaat: Committee of Supply, Section A, reports progress on the estimates of Ministry of Labour and asks leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mike Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:24 p.m.

Proceedings in the
Douglas Fir Room

The House in Committee, Section A.

The committee met at 2:43 p.m.

[Jennifer Blatherwick in the chair.]

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Labour
(continued)

The Chair: Good afternoon, Members. I call the Committee of Supply, Section A, to order. We are meeting today to continue the consideration of the budget estimates of the Ministry of Labour.

On Vote 39: ministry operations, $23,672,000 (continued).

Kiel Giddens: Just to recall our conversation on Thursday afternoon, we were last talking about protections for temporary foreign workers. The last question that I asked was about proactive inspections planned to prevent exploitation of temporary foreign workers, particularly in agriculture, construction and food services. I just want to pick up on that conversation.

[2:45 p.m.]

If the minister will recall what we had been discussing…. I’ll actually just quote, just to jog everyone’s memory. The minister said: “What I can say about agriculture is that, of course, we have very long-standing programs in agriculture. The employment standards branch has teams that specifically go to and work with employers in that sector.”

With agriculture, I’m wondering if the minister could give a little bit more detail on how many inspections occurred in the agriculture sector specifically.

Then the minister went on to say later: “With respect to the other sectors the member identified, if we take construction, for example, that is an area where we, to some degree, would rely on other stakeholders and partners to flag issues.”

With the same question for those other sectors, are there proactive inspections, and if so, how many? From our last discussion, it sounded more like it was relying on other third-party complaints. But if there are inspections, it would be good just to understand what that would look like from the employment standards branch.

[2:50 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Perhaps before I take the member’s question, I might just take a moment to read into the record an answer on vacancies in the ministry that the member was asking about when we were last in session. I can report that there are no vacancies in the employment standards branch or the policy and legislation team. There are 11 vacancies in the workers advisers office and two vacancies in the employers advisers office, and those are currently under recruitment.

With respect to the question on inspections in the agriculture sector, the ESB agriculture compliance team for the calendar year of 2025 made 20 farmsite inspections, 16 vehicle inspections. There were three determinations resulting in three contraventions, and there were ten total payroll audits conducted.

Kiel Giddens: I appreciate the minister’s update on vacancies. I might ask a couple of questions about the EAO and WAO in a little bit, but it’s really good to know that the employment standards branch has no vacancies, and that’s what we were talking about currently.

Thanks to the minister for the updates on those inspections. It sounds like there is tracking going on. Further to those details just provided, I’m wondering if the ministry tracks repeat offenders under the act and if the minister could just update the House on the range of penalties as well as if there are gross numbers of penalties over the last year with a cumulative dollar amount, for example, under these inspections that have taken place.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: In 2025, there were 1,780 penalties issued on corporate determinations by the branch for a dollar value of $934,000.

[2:55 p.m.]

The scale, with respect to the penalty, starts at $500. If there’s a subsequent contravention of that section within three years, there’s another penalty that goes up to $2,500 and then to $10,000. That’s the range.

The name of employers and the administrative penalty are published on the employment standards branch website, so that information is readily available.

Kiel Giddens: I think important to note…. I think there’ll be a lot of attention, likely over the next while, just given the public discussion, discourse on the program. So it’s good to know that the employment standards branch is certainly paying attention with that sheer number of penalties issued.

I’m going to move on from temporary foreign workers to another topic. This is another topic of a lot of public discussion, certainly over the past several years. It appears also in the minister’s mandate letter as well. That’s gig worker protections.

As the minister knows, those protections came into force in September of 2024. I’m wondering. Given we’re a couple years into this now, what early evidence does the ministry have that ride-hail and delivery workers are actually earning the promised minimum pay from the employment standards changes that happened there?

[3:00 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Just to review the way that the regulations for ride-hail drivers work, the minimum wage for ride-hail drivers is set at 120 percent of the general minimum wage. Currently that is at $21.43. Beyond that, there is a 45-cent-per-kilometre top-up to account for transportation expenses incurred by the workers.

There is a process that the employer goes through to reconcile the hours of engaged time every two weeks to ensure that the minimum wage has been paid and that the 45 cents has been paid on top.

At the moment, of course, as you’re aware, we are engaged in consultations both with drivers and with the companies with respect to how the regulations are functioning. We also currently have a number of…. There are a number of complaints before the branch that the branch is dealing with regarding various aspects of the regulations.

Kiel Giddens: Hopefully, within the course of the consultations, learning a little bit more evidence about how the effectiveness is working….

I’m wondering if the minister could confirm whether enforcement actions have been taken against platform companies since these new rules came into effect, and if not, why?

[3:05 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I just wanted to start…. I think we probably all have a shared concern around ensuring that workers who are in this emerging sector, whose work lives are mediated by a form of technology that we hadn’t anticipated a few short years ago…. It poses some extraordinary challenges, I would say.

I don’t think that pre-COVID we necessarily would have had a sense of the degree to which this part, at least, of the “gig economy” would have taken off. We’ve seen a dramatic increase in services like ride-hailing; Instacart services; grocery shopping; obviously, food delivery services.

It’s the experience of people working in this sector that prompted us to take action and develop regulations to try to put some guardrails around how these enormously profitable companies are operating in our communities and how they are engaging with individuals who are, in fact, doing work for them, although the “them” is essentially an app on their smartphone.

The way in which the algorithm determines allocation of work, trip distance, surge pricing…. All of these issues are currently the subject of consideration with respect to how those conditions impact the workers who are doing the work.

It is, I will say, unlike anything else we have dealt with. There is, for example, no way to really apply a principle of seniority in terms of how work gets allocated because the algorithms work in very opaque ways.

I would just say that the structure of this emerging part of our economy poses lots of challenges for workers and, of course, for our structures. We are actively engaged in trying to work through how we can best develop regulations that support the people who are doing this work that people find very important. People want to be able to ride-hail and have restaurant meals delivered to their door and have groceries delivered to their door.

With all of that said, we’ve seen one…. As I’ve said, we have a number of cases currently before the employment standards branch that are under active investigation. We have a consultation process underway with the sector right now, and we’ve seen one penalty issued in 2026 so far to Maplebear, an Instacart company, having to do with the process by which they disengaged or, I would say, terminated an employee. Even the language is different.

These companies deactivate someone from the app, which is, in essence, a form of discipline or termination. But we are working to develop appropriate mechanisms to support workers through that process, because it’s not the typical way in which employers and employees work through those processes.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to the minister. Just to understand, this is a very complex area to regulate and understand. It is changing with the speed of technology in a way that we haven’t seen previously. The algorithms, I understand, would be very difficult.

So the answer…. It sounds like one penalty in 2026. Does that mean one penalty that has ever happened so far? Maybe if the minister could answer that.

[3:10 p.m.]

Then maybe just a follow-up to the discussion. Obviously, this has been one of the priorities for the ministry, yet the service plan doesn’t contain any performance measures or KPIs and no timeline related to how the implementation of all this is occurring.

I’m wondering why there isn’t anything in the service plan that links to gig workers specifically. Does the ministry have any internal measures of success or goals that aren’t currently reported publicly at this time?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: What I would say is that the service plan provides very high-level direction overall about the efficacy of the branch and our goals, as you know, with respect to timelines to resolve complaints generally. I’d say that the mandate letter is more direct. It sets a more specific direction with respect to ensuring that our labour laws are modern, that we are doing what we can to keep up with the speed of technology and how that is impacting the world of work.

It’s been just over 18 months since the regulations came in — a little early to determine what the real key performance indicators are that we should be looking for. What we know is that there have been a number of complaints to the branch from workers in this sector that have been withdrawn; a number where, in fact, there has been a voluntary resolution; some that have been closed; and a large number that are just in process.

I would expect that over the course of this year, both through the consultation that we’re engaged in and the outcome of investigations and determinations, the board will have a much better sense of what we need to do to both refine the regulations and to be looking at identifying targets that we can communicate to the industry and to the workers so that we have for the workers, certainly, a clearer picture of what their conditions are going to be.

[3:15 p.m.]

Kiel Giddens: Maybe just further confirmation. The first part to the question was the follow-up from before. I just wanted to confirm that there has only been the one penalty in 2026. Does that include 2025 as well?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Yes, it does. One in 2026.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for the clarification. Something that in the future, I think…. Hopefully the consultation will help to form KPIs in this area so that the ministry can look at effectiveness, certainly, and continuous improvement in this area.

With that, the consultation did close on, I believe, March 31. Wondering if those results of the consultation…. Once they’re compiled and finalized, will they be released, and is that something that can be a public document as well?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Yes, of course. As was the case with the previous consultation, the ministry is in the process of producing a what-we-heard report. That report will be available publicly, and we will canvass for further consultation on that report as we determine what sort of changes to the regulations may be necessary.

Of course, we are always talking with people who are working in this area and talking with the companies about how we can work to continuously improve the conditions in this sector.

Kiel Giddens: Appreciate the response and look forward to learning more about that consultation as well.

I’m going to move to another topic, still within employment standards. As the minister will recall, there is an alternative wage standard for live-in home support workers. One thing that we know is that live-in care is an option — I would argue an essential option — allowing many seniors to remain at home while reducing pressures on hospitals and long-term care.

Obviously, we have a real challenge in long-term care that has been canvassed quite a bit in the Health estimates last week as well. Backlog is growing. The seniors advocate has been really quite concerned about that. We have to find ways to open more long-term-care beds in this province, and we also have to support those who are receiving care at home as well. We want those receiving care at home to have that as an affordable option, but we want fair pay for, I believe, those who are working in that sector.

The minister may recall, or very likely recall, a 2016 tribunal decision that required family-funded live-in workers to be paid hourly, with overtime after eight hours, eliminating the flat daily rate that once made care somewhat more accessible. At the same time, publicly funded providers still use an alternative model, creating what I would consider a double standard in that sector.

I’m wondering if the minister can explain why the government continues to maintain two different compensation frameworks for the same occupation — one for government-funded home support workers and another for family-funded providers.

[3:20 p.m. - 3:25 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: There is a myriad of different circumstances under which individuals need care and need to have some form of 24-hour care or live-in support. These programs have developed with many sort of historical antecedents, whether it is the process by which some families may recruit international labour to come through the live-in caregiver program…. In that circumstance, care providers may live in; they might live out.

There are, as the member has referenced, government-supported home support worker programs funded. There are night attendants. There are a number of different forms of this kind of work.

In terms of the specific exclusion in the act around government-supported, government-funded programs, there, again, would be a range of those different programs and a range of different employees. Some of those employees may well be members of unions, for example, and have other perquisites. Really, these issues have developed sort of historically, and it really depends on what the particular circumstances of the care environment is.

Kiel Giddens: Yeah, certainly, there is a range of different needs. I mean, my mom actually did some work in home care for children — very different kind of setup. In this case, we’re talking about seniors home care, and obviously, the government programs are needed, but I think a range of options for the different needs of seniors on the continuum of care are needed.

I think the concern overall would be that the current regulatory structure could potentially be driving families towards informal or unregulated marketplaces for live-in care — under the table and that type of thing. I think that is concerning, potentially, for seniors’ safety but also the protection of those workers, of course, as well.

I’m wondering what the ministry is doing to ensure that those workers are protected, that that’s not happening. I think that the alternative wage model may be an area that perhaps should be considered to ensure that this is not driving to the unregulated marketplace in this case. I’m wondering if the minister can explain what safeguards are in place or if this is something that has been considered.

[3:30 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Again, just to restate, these provisions and the breadth of these different circumstances, the work of the branch and the work of government have been to try to find a balance between ensuring that we have appropriate conditions of work for the workers who are working in the sector as well as addressing the needs of the individuals who are being cared for.

The mechanisms for dealing with unregulated labour…. I would say that if the member or any other member or any other individual or party has information or a concern, I would implore them to contact our ministry, to contact the branch, to report that so we can work to understand what’s happening in a situation and ensure that we have a path forward for the worker.

There is a provision, of course, for third-party complaints to come forward. That mechanism is used by worker advocate groups such as the Migrant Workers Centre or the Federation of Labour, who have brought cases forward. There have been cases that have gone through the process and gone to the tribunal and reviewed evidence in particular situations and then arrived at an outcome. This is a case in which we absolutely rely on third-party advocates out in the community to help with advocating for those individuals and bringing forward concerns.

Kiel Giddens: Absolutely, I do think that MLAs, through casework, should be bringing these issues forward when they hear about them. I think, overall, making sure that there’s not a drive towards an unregulated marketplace is something…. Making sure that there’s not an unintended policy failure in this area is something that is needed.

I think there is still a risk between how the publicly funded providers have their wage standard compared to the family-funded providers. A lot of these would be private sector businesses as well. Making sure that they’re not losing out and their members who are regulated are doing things properly, that they’re not losing out to an unregulated marketplace in some way….

I think there is a different need for the government-funded…. Certainly, they have a…. They’re government funded for a reason, but families still deserve the choice for their loved ones, to ensure that they have an ability to get a level of care for seniors when the government supports may not be necessarily available.

Government supports are…. For example, there’s the Better at Home program through United Way, but there are also other programs that families might want to choose for their loved ones. This was the subject of a topic that was…. When I was reading through the expert panel from the Labour Relations Code, they did, as I read, recommend updating the Employment Standards Act standards for domestic workers.

[3:35 p.m.]

I know we talked about the program for foreign workers, but for domestic workers specifically, I’m wondering if the ministry would consider convening a dedicated advisory council to develop a modern alternative minimum wage standard for live-in home support that ensures fair compensation while also preserving access to regulated care.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I think one thing we can all certainly agree on is the critical importance of work in the caring economy, knowing that our loved ones are properly cared for, whether it’s an elder or a child or a loved one with a developmental disability. We want to know that our loved one is in the right environment, receiving the care that they need.

I would just say that if the member or anyone else has any evidence with respect to a drive towards unregulated care, as the member has described it, I would be very interested to receive that evidence and those cases so that we can do the appropriate work through our ministry and through the employment standards branch to investigate and ensure that we are not seeing exploitation of individuals who are engaged in this really important work.

As the member noted, the labour code review panel received submissions from groups who were interested in this topic. They made a recommendation. Their report has gone out for consultation. It’s with the ministry right now. We’re looking at those recommendations, and we’ll have more to say on that in the coming months.

Kiel Giddens: I think, certainly, we’ll look to follow up on this topic after estimates, but I appreciate the response from the minister.

I’m going to turn away from employment standards and maybe continue some discussion on the labour code but still stay on the subject of seniors care. As you know, B.C. has long prided itself on free and fair collective bargaining. Obviously, workers and employers across the province negotiate agreements in good faith with the understanding that those agreements will be honoured.

[3:40 p.m.]

One of the things that government announced recently…. The Ministry of Health announced a decision to effectively override independently bargained collective agreements in the seniors care sector. A lot of those are being pushed into the centralized framework through membership with the Health Employees Association of B.C. These are already unionized workplaces. They have their collective agreements in place, and they are now being mandated into HEABC-negotiated collective agreements.

I think there are some public interest questions in this regard. I think when it comes to respect for collective bargaining rights, the autonomy of workers and the long-term cost implications for taxpayers, this is something we should have a bit of a discussion about.

In the Ministry of Health estimates last week, there was some discussion of this as well, but the Minister of Labour is responsible for protecting fair employment standards and upholding the integrity of the bargaining process. Then, of course, in the mandate for the minister, there’s also a task of maintaining affordability for British Columbians.

Maybe just to get into what has gone on here with regards to the decision, does the minister believe that fairly negotiated collective agreements between employers and unions should be respected by government, and is the Ministry of Labour concerned with this decision by the Health Ministry?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: As much as I know sometimes the members opposite don’t appreciate a trip down memory lane, it is, in fact, what we need to do in this case, because I think it’s critical to understand how it is that we came to be in a situation where our long-term-care sector became so fragmented that, in fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health was severely at risk. I can just go back a little ways to how our residential long-term-care system evolved.

It was not always the case that long-term care or that kind of residential care, 24-hour nursing care, for seniors was really considered even part of our health care system. That was built over, really, decades. Workers who unionized in this sector in the ’70s — I’m thinking of some of the really big pushes in the ’70s, in the ’80s — did so because they understood the profound connection between their conditions of work and the conditions of care that seniors received.

Whether at that time it was in denominational facilities, not-for-profits, family-run homes…. This was a time when you had extended care units attached to hospitals that provided a higher level of care, but you had many, many, for the most part, privately operated homes.

Over the course of decades, workers came together and advocated for a system of long-term care. Government in the ’80s responded to that with some coordination of that sector through the Ministry of Health.

In the 1990s, there was a series of processes that occurred in our health care system and across our public sector. There were a number of commissions. There was a royal commission on health. There were a number of arbitration decisions that looked at how we could build a better health care system and how we could properly integrate long-term care into that system.

Over the course of the decades leading up to the 1990s, there had been massive efforts at unionization in this sector, and there had been the evolution of what was called the sort of “mini-master collective agreement.” It was called the mini-master because it sat next to the facility subsector collective agreement, which was the collective agreement for hospital-based workers.

This mini-master was…. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into the creation of these standards for care workers. Many strikes. A very long strike at Windermere Care Centre, where in fact there were wages paid in the ’70s based on race. This was a sector in which there was profound discrimination against women, against racialized workers, and it was only the union that was able to turn the tide on that.

By the 1990s, there was one master collective agreement that represented the vast majority of long-term-care workers in the province. Still, that collective agreement paid a structural 5 percent lower wage for work in long-term care than equivalent work that was done in acute care because caring for seniors was considered to be a lesser job.

That was changed, and eventually those terms and conditions were brought together. As we went into the aughts, there was one collective agreement, one standard that covered care workers working in our acute care sector and working in long-term care.

[3:50 p.m.]

What that provided, frankly, was a high degree of clinical oversight on the part of the health care system into what was happening in long-term care. It provided for an easier transition for seniors through their health care journey, particularly those who maybe started out in intermediate care, with less acute needs, and then as they aged or as their condition became more acute, they worked their way up through those levels. Maybe they wound up in extended care, which were units attached to hospitals, which provided a higher level of direct nursing care for people who had a higher level of acuity.

After 2002, there was no more intermediate care. There was no more extended care. All of those different levels of care were collapsed into something called complex care, and we lost the nuances and distinctions that, in fact, are very important for seniors as they age, who, as I think the member will agree and understand, are very frail.

The other thing that happened at that time was that the government of the day brought in a bill called Bill 29. It was a bill with the explicit intent of privatizing the vast majority of our health care system. That bill set up the stage for the fragmentation and privatization of our long-term-care system.

Under that bill, 10,000 primarily women workers and many racialized workers were fired from health authorities — outright fired — and that work was contracted out to global, multinational corporations. Those wages were cut in half, those pensions were eliminated, and the benefits gone.

Some of those workers were hired back under those vastly reduced conditions, and many were not. It was a very, very dark day for working people in this province, and it signalled many years of darkness. It was profoundly harmful — profoundly harmful — to the workers and their families and their communities, and it was harmful to our health care system and to people who rely on our health care system for care.

On the long-term-care side of things, ironically, Windermere was one of the very first where that incredibly powerful battle had been fought by a largely racialized care force.

These are people — largely care aides, we’re talking about — who do some of the hardest work in our health care system. Care aides are the only voice that many of our seniors have when they don’t have a family anymore, when they don’t have loved ones who come to see them. That caring connection between a care aide and a senior who is living in long-term care is profound, and for many seniors, that is the last meaningful connection they will have in their life.

The government of the day had such profound disregard for those workers and for seniors that they broke that relationship across this province. So Windermere, under the new provisions in Bill 29, contracted out. They fired all of their care staff. That happened repeatedly across the entire province. Eventually, where we had one collective agreement — one standard set of terms and conditions for workers, a coherent system in place — we wound up with incredible fragmentation.

Now, you still had a number of health authority–owned and –operated long-term-care sites who were under the master collective agreement and some operators who chose not to contract out. But you had a whole bunch of other sites, operators who fired their workers and contracted out. Not only that but the government of the day allowed for the development of subcontracting.

[3:55 p.m.]

So a whole new predatory business model emerged in our care sector for seniors, where operators could get a contract with a health authority to provide beds and then they could, in fact, not provide the care themselves. They could subcontract that to another company, and another company would actually come in and provide the care. You can imagine the distance between the health authority, who is responsible for the care of the community, and the subcontractor in terms of the clinical oversight or lack thereof.

This was repeated across the province. We wound up with over a hundred collective agreements having to be individually negotiated. Now, if that is not an exercise in inappropriate red tape and public tax dollars going to support a business model, as it was described and promoted, in long-term care that benefited operators, that drove wages down, that had the precise intent of degrading the work, the important work of taking care of our seniors….

What our government has done…. We have restored pensions to workers. We have restored wages to workers. We have restored decent conditions to workers. Through this decision that we have made to repatriate this work to a single….

The Chair: Thank you.

Ian Paton: As official opposition, we only get so many hours to ask questions in estimates. It used to be great lengthy hours. Now it’s down to three, four, five hours.

My colleague has asked a question, a simple question. He would like to get to some more questions, but we’re listening to a 20-minute monologue on something that really doesn’t have much to do with the question he asked.

The Chair: Just to be clear, the minister is allowed 15 minutes for every response. We don’t normally take that level of time, but that is what is included.

However, I would ask the minister to…. I will recognize the minister again and if the minister can conclude.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Thank you, Chair.

Just to get to the point at which we saw the fruit of this labour over the course of a generation, when COVID hit Lynn Valley Care Centre, there was the operator, Lynn Valley Care Centre; the nurses who were employed by the care centre; the contractor who employed the care aides; the contractor who employed the support staff. You can imagine, in those circumstances, the challenges of being able to have appropriate clinical oversight, to have appropriate coordination of a very important part of our health care system with that degree of fragmentation.

That is why our government at that time negotiated provisions to protect both workers and seniors in long-term care during the pandemic. That has led to, under the auspices of the public health order, a decision to, in fact, re-establish what was a more coherent, higher-quality, more appropriate labour relations environment for care workers in this province.

I think we are proud that workers who have been deprived of pensions for a generation are going to have pensions, that they’re going to have decent wages and they’re going to have benefits and that our health system will have appropriate clinical oversight.

We will be able to actually coordinate occupational health and safety measures for the occupation that is the most highly injured in the entire province. We will have a line of sight we had 25 years ago and haven’t had since. We’re very proud of that work.

Kiel Giddens: I certainly appreciate the minister’s passion for this sector in particular. I understand that it’s an area that she worked in personally as well. The history and all that background is a matter of public history, public record. But a lot of this happened 25 years ago, as we’ve said.

[4:00 p.m.]

A government at that day made decisions at the time I was in high school still. We’re talking about today though. There have been nearly ten years under this government. My question was around the integrity of the collective bargaining process.

The sector that we’re talking about, the long-term-care sector…. Yes, there are different types of businesses — large, some quite small actually. Some are independent. Some are co-ops. Some are non-profits. There is a range of sectors, of different types of entities, certainly. But a lot of these are also areas where people are choosing to send their families to a non-profit or to a sector.

All of them that I am talking about are unionized workplaces already, so they have pensions in place and they have benefits that have been fairly negotiated at the bargaining table. My question was around the fact that in this case, the government is overriding independently bargained collective agreements.

I’m going to just read into the record section 48 of the labour code. It says: “A collective agreement is binding on a trade union that has entered into it or on whose behalf a council of trade unions has entered into it and every employee of an employer who has entered into it and who is inclined in or is affected by an agreement and an employer who has entered into it and on whose behalf an employer’s organization authorized by that employer has entered into it.”

My question is around the integrity of collective bargaining in this province when we are overriding agreements that were bound by the code. This is something that is quite serious, I think. At a time government is making decisions on…. There have been a lot of government labour negotiations that have happened, whether it was in the fall with the BCGEU…. And PEA has gone through it.

The nurses are taking a strike vote, and they’re very concerned that their government is trying to cut their benefits, despite their injury claims being up 25 percent. These are serious conversations about the integrity of the collective bargaining process that I am asking about in this.

I’m wondering what precedent this sets for other unionized workplaces where the B.C. government may disagree with the terms of a locally negotiated collective agreement. None of the workers who are actually involved, who are all bound by this agreement, were consulted on this. Yes, the union was consulted, the HEU was consulted, but the workers never had a chance to have a say. They voted on and ratified a collective agreement.

In this case, the employers, who are bound by this collective agreement, also had no consultation in this process. I’m also told that even the health authorities had no idea either, so this is something that has been done behind closed doors.

I’m wondering, if we’re going to uphold the integrity of collective bargaining, what precedent this sets for other unionized workplaces in B.C.

[4:05 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I can’t tell you how grateful I am to hear the member express such concern and high regard for the integrity of collective bargaining. That sentiment, certainly, did not exist for much of the previous government’s time, certainly not during the origins of how we found ourselves in the current situation that we are in and that we are actively working to repair. But I can assure the member that collective bargaining will continue for these workers.

I can assure the member that the employers in this sector will, in fact, be better supported. They will not have to struggle to individually spend time and resources to bargain individual collective agreements. We will return to what was a more coherent approach, an approach that was built up over decades, that resulted in better outcomes, certainly, when I look at the situation that we are in with respect to occupational health and safety, for example, for the most highly injured workforce in the province.

There will be a greater ability to support operators in that sector. That is the objective of the work our government has done. We know that it is so important for care workers to have access to appropriate standards, appropriate wages, decent benefits and pensions.

We are talking about thousands of women, primarily, many racialized, who were deprived of the basic dignity of a dignified retirement because their pensions were robbed from them. We are returning those benefits because we understand that it is critical that the seniors in this province receive the highest level of care and that continuity of care is so important.

In fact, during COVID, that is why the provincial health officer brought in a single-site order saying that care aides could only work in one site, because of the risk of care aides who had to work at multiple sites in order to cobble together one wage.

We don’t think that it’s appropriate that we carry on with a system that has been found to be disadvantageous, completely exploitative and predatory of workers — poor outcomes for seniors. We will ensure that collective bargaining, of course, continues for these workers. These employers will be supported. I think we should have no concerns for the integrity of the collective bargaining process in our province.

The Chair: I will call a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 4:08 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

[Jennifer Blatherwick in the chair.]

The Chair: Good afternoon again, Members. Bringing us back from recess.

Kiel Giddens: I just have to point out…. There were some comments made about affiliate care providers to the effect that many are predatory and don’t provide proper care. But I do have to say that these are incredibly hard-working folks, many hard-working care aides and many owners, including non-profits, as well, that are part of this sector that deliver essential care. I do think that they had duly negotiated collective agreements in place as well.

It’s a matter of fact that many are stating now that they are at risk of closing because of this decision, and no one talked to them about it. They’re not predatory for their workers. In fact, they’re trying to keep their workers employed and support seniors in communities across this province, especially small communities across this province.

I just have to say that it was disappointing to hear that sector painted in that light. I sat right at the table next to the minister’s table at the B.C. Care Awards. This is a sector we’re talking about where they’re doing incredible work, and they’re celebrating workers at those awards. So I do have to say that was disappointing, and I’m concerned about what this means overall for the integrity of our collective bargaining process. I think it’s something that we may have to continue to look into in the future.

But in the interest of time, I’m going to move topics.

I know that the Labour Relations Board resourcing is handled by the Attorney General’s ministry, but there are a lot of both labour groups and employer groups who are concerned about backlogs at the Labour Relations Board. I’m wondering if the Ministry of Labour has provided any advice, recommendations or data to the Attorney General’s ministry about backlogs at the LRB.

[4:20 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Not to belabour our previous discussion. I just do want to be clear, though, that I have great regard and respect, having advocated for seniors care for most of my career, for operators who run our long-term-care system; for, of course, the people who work in it; and for the seniors who receive care in it.

My mother was in long-term care at the end of her life.

I want to be very clear that my comments with respect to what was predatory and exploitative about the way in which government acted was about the intentions of the government of the day and about the actions of the government of the day. I look for every opportunity I can find in my community with advocates to lift up and celebrate the very important care work that is done by everyone in that sector.

With respect to the Labour Relations Board and resourcing in the Labour Relations Board, the member correctly notes that the Attorney General is responsible for resourcing decisions of the board. I can advise the member, though, that as we are aware, there was a buildup of work at the board. There have been some investments made. The board has brought on additional appointees and made some temporary appointments under section 6 of the Administrative Tribunals Act to help address those issues. It’s my understanding that the timelines have come back within a more targeted parameter.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to the minister for the response.

Maybe just further to the labour code, the minister referenced already the fact that the consultation work had been undertaken and that work is now with the ministry. I know, as well, that the labour code review is part of the minister’s mandate letter. Of course, that includes providing stable labour relations and supporting the exercise of collective bargaining rights.

I think it’s fair to say that there is a lot of interest in that review. I will certainly acknowledge that this topic is one of a lot of tense pressure at times — hence, our conversation that we’ve been having. I fully appreciate that.

I want to see a balanced labour code and balanced labour policy for the benefit of both workers and employers. I think that’s going to lead to the best outcomes. We also need to have it balanced so that it actually provides the economy and the jobs and opportunities for people in this province. There’s a lot at stake with this.

I’m wondering if there’s a timeline for further action by the ministry, including potential legislative amendments to the labour code.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I think, as the member has been following along with this process, the panel’s report was received just before the 2024 election. In the course of 2025, we put that report out for consultation with the sector. We’ve received lots of advice back from a wide range of people. That advice is currently under consideration, and we will be making decisions in the, I’d say, short to medium term about what the next steps are with respect to the recommendations in the code review.

Kiel Giddens: Earlier on, last week in our discussions, I mentioned the fact that there has been relatively weak private sector job growth when compared to other provinces within Canada. In fact, we’re the lowest private sector job growth among all provinces. Now there are certain economists who are saying we’re currently in a technical recession.

[4:25 p.m.]

The minister will also recall that nearly all business groups who responded to the labour code review noted that past government changes to the labour code have had a negative overall economic effect, and they’ve called for more of a return to some balance in the code from what changes have happened.

In February and March, B.C. lost 40,000 jobs. This is significant, and it’s something that we have to be looking at.

I think this is a risky time for the government to…. In a time when we have global pressures like tariffs and we have fuel price swings and things of that nature, it may be a risky time for government to further be making changes that could also impact both the competitiveness of business and opportunities for workers.

I’m wondering if the government will commit to pausing and to no further changes to the code in the next year to allow things to stabilize in our economy.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I find it a bit perplexing to understand, given the earlier concerns that the member expressed for the gig worker part of our economy…. We have this rapidly growing form of work that is mediated by technology that we are working to put sort of a regulatory framework around and understand the implications of how quickly that technology is moving.

I appreciate the discussion with respect to the current economic circumstances that we are in, but I would say that I think we have to take the whole into consideration as we determine how we will be moving forward. What I can assure the member is that we will be moving forward, as we have done at every step of the way, in consultation with all of the parties who are impacted.

Kiel Giddens: Just in the interest of time, I’m going to move ahead here.

The minister brought up earlier the vacancies at the employers advisers office. I believe there were 11. The employers advisers office, for anyone watching, of course, provides advice and advocacy to employers navigating the workers compensation system. Before we turn to WorkSafe, I thought we would just touch on this, given that it’s within the Ministry of Labour.

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

The service plan shows the number of educational outreach sessions is declining. There were 316 in ’24-25, dropping a little bit to a forecast of 300 in ’25-26, with future targets set only at maintain or approve. So there are less of these information sessions, and we also have a bit of a higher number of vacancies within the employers advisers office.

Maybe two questions here. Has the minister directed any additional resources to the employers advisers office? And why does this office seemingly look like it’s shrinking its presence at a time when employers may actually need it more because of the changes to complexity of claims, like psychological claims, for example?

[4:30 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: With respect to the employers advisers office and the work that employers advisers do, those sessions that the member is pointing to are, essentially, demand-driven, and the office will provide as many sessions as employers ask for. If there is a demand for more than the 300 that has been set as the forecast, then those sessions would certainly be provided for employers. That number is just simply based on what the demand was, what the experience is with respect to the demand.

The FTE count has remained the same. We have two vacancies in that area that are currently being recruited. There’s no intention to underservice or to not provide those services. In fact, we think it’s really important and would encourage employers to come to the employers advisers office to get any support that they may need through the claims process.

Kiel Giddens: I’m going to turn to WorkSafe questions now. I’m just wondering if maybe I could give a couple minutes just for staff to switch out. I appreciate all the support for the answers today. I appreciate the folks from WorkSafe being here as well.

Maybe to start off, I just wanted to ask how many employers were registered with WorkSafe last year and how many workers were covered in total. What is the minister’s current assessment of the claims backlog at WorkSafe at this time?

[4:35 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: The number of employers currently registered with WorkSafe is 289,000. The number of workers covered is 2.7 million. Those numbers are for 2025, and there isn’t a claims backlog.

Kiel Giddens: In my opening remarks, I did reference the fact that building a safe workplace culture is absolutely critical, I think, in British Columbia. It’s been something that has helped to make great strides in many sectors. I look at how far along the construction sector has come from decades ago, and they’re making great strides.

I’m seeing that in other sectors as well, and part of it is that safety culture. I think it’s something we need to continue as a province. WorkSafe does have a significant role overall and a mandate for that, in fact, to support the entire province when it comes to workplace safety.

Can the minister describe the total budget that WorkSafe spends on prevention in 2025 and compare it with the previous year?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Again, I think there’s a high degree of accord that health and safety and a culture of health and safety in workplaces lead to higher productivity, certainly. We know that the safer the better for people who are working, particularly in high-risk industries.

The member spoke about some of the work that has been done to improve safety in the construction sector. The member will know, of course, we’ve had discussions about the imperative to improve the operation of cranes, for example, and to have a more robust regulatory framework around crane safety.

We can all remember the situation with fatalities in the forestry industry in the ’90s and the incredible work that was done to turn the tide in that regard. We know that when we have all of the parties sitting down and working together, we can build safer workplaces, and that’s better for everyone.

[4:40 p.m.]

WorkSafe had spent $157 million on prevention services in 2025, compared to $148 million in 2024, and of course, that work is critical to the operation of WorkSafe and critical to support workers and employers across all of the sectors of our economy.

Kiel Giddens: Certainly, a lot of accord in this area, and I think that prevention piece is something we’ll as a province want to continue looking at.

The minister mentioned the challenges the forest sector had in the ’90s and into the 2000s and the great strides that were made there. When I was at UBC, I worked for a professor in the department of forest resource management. It was actually research on the fatalities that were happening in the sector at the time and trying to work with the Forest Safety Council and other stakeholders on better conditions in that area.

Since the minister brought up the crane safety…. It’s such an important topic, I think, that I’d like to just get to that right off the bat here.

Obviously, this has been an area of much tension that the government has focused on. I think the industry has also been focused on it significantly. Of course, a tragedy that seven workers died in crane-related incidents in the past five years.

As we go into this new regime, how will the government ensure the new licensing and permitting program is implemented quickly and effectively enough to prevent further fatalities, especially in addressing the current gap, where many parties responsible for cranes are not required to be licensed or certified?

I think we want, certainly, to get to a much better place than where we’re at right now.

[4:45 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I want to start by acknowledging the unspeakable tragedies that have occurred in our province with respect to fatalities associated with the operation of cranes. There are, of course, the five workers who died in Kelowna — I know we all walk the path of grief with the families and the community impacted by that incident — the death of Yuridia Flores on the Oakridge site and then another worker killed in Victoria.

Those incidents are stark reminders that so much rests and so much is at stake on ensuring that we have robust regulation of high-risk activities, particularly in the construction sector.

The work of understanding the contributing factors and the results of WorkSafe’s own investigation into those incidents immediately after those incidents led to the establishment of safer provisions, a notice of project requirement that requires operators who are putting up cranes on sites to notify WorkSafe that the cranes are being put up.

There was a significant consultation that occurred. WorkSafe brought together 150 stakeholders in the crane sector shortly after, in 2024, in order to identify gaps in safety.

That work led to a crane safety strategy that led to a number of elements, including increasing workforce training and skills, strengthening operator certification, updating and aligning occupational health and safety regulations, enhancing inspection, expanding inspection capacity and expertise. In fact, WorkSafe now has a 17-member provincial crane inspection team that has in-depth experience and training when it comes to crane and rigging safety requirements.

We’ve seen an increase in inspections; an increase in orders; and also an increase in not just stop-use orders but, importantly, stop-work orders when inspectors are out in the field and see unsafe situations.

Certainly, it was apparent that there was more to do, so at my instruction, the sector pulled together a crane safety table to provide advice on ongoing gaps, and one of their primary recommendations was that we need a licensing and permitting regime in the province.

What that will do is ensure that operators who own cranes or lease cranes or who are bringing cranes onto worksites will be required to have that equipment and have their own operations licensed. The permitting piece of that is to articulate very clearly what particular activities can be done on a particular worksite by a particular individual.

[4:50 p.m.]

The third leg of that stool is ensuring that workers are supported and have the proper skills and education to perform that work, and that will be done by ensuring that that work is a certified trade. My colleague in Post-Secondary is looking after that piece of it.

With respect to the plan moving forward, we have had parties from industry, from unions, Technical Safety B.C., WorkSafe, the crane safety association all working together over the course of the last year and a bit to develop a crane safety framework. The development of that framework informed the decision to move forward with a licensing and permitting regime. There will be more coming out of that, out of their discussion.

In terms of the actual process, once we introduce the legislation and hopefully have it passed in the fall, I’m anticipating that…. Of course, there will be ongoing consultation with the sector, but folks have spent quite a bit of time together on this. So I’m expecting that we will be able to move through that process reasonably quickly.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for that response. I think it’s helpful to get an update on that, the Crane Safety Table and their work. That licensing and permitting regime, I think, is very important. The stories that I’ve heard from around the province…. Just this one stuck out with me, on the Pattullo — workers telling me that it was almost like a Frankenstein crane of different components. Obviously, that licensing and permitting is critical, I think, to make sure we’re not having that.

Thank you to the minister for mentioning rigging as well — of course, the inspections and all that. Rigging is one of the high-risk parts of crane safety as well, so I appreciate that. Certainly, this is one where I think we can find lots of ways to work together just to support safety of construction sites and these workers.

I appreciate that the minister did attend the memorials in Kelowna when that happened as well, and I think they happened in Oakridge previously. Yeah, obviously, I joined the member for Kelowna Centre and the minister — and just my sadness for the workers in Victoria and Oakridge. In Kelowna, it was Cailen Vilness, Jared Zook, brothers Eric Stemmer and Patrick Stemmer and then Brad Zawislak, who was working at an adjacent building as well.

This was the dismantling of a crane as well, so I think the provisions on dismantling and those procedures are an important part of all this. I know members of the community in Kelowna are thinking about this incident as they see other cranes around a growing community like that. Obviously, they want to see that their family members are going to come home safe.

I know that members of the community filed an FOI for the incident investigation report. The FOI explicitly asked for it to be released under section 25, the public interest override, because they said that knowing the technical cause of the collapse is critical for the safety of every other construction site in B.C.

I know that WorkSafe had to officially deny their request. A lot of this is because of the RCMP investigation that was going on, but the investigation is, effectively, complete. It was submitted to the Crown, as I understand.

This still hasn’t been fully released to the public. I think it would give a lot of public confidence. I’m wondering if the minister will commit to working with both WorkSafe and the RCMP to have the investigation report released at the earliest possible opportunity.

[4:55 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I can appreciate how…. Of course, I’ve been to Kelowna. The member has been to Kelowna. We’ve had a chance to talk with families and the community. I understand and have deep, deep compassion for the situation that the families are in.

With respect to the recommendation of the RCMP for charges, that decision is with the independent prosecution service. In order to ensure that the release of the WorkSafe report doesn’t jeopardize the charge assessment, a decision was made to not release the report until the Crown has made a decision about charges.

I do want to really assure the families and the community though. As I’ve said, the learnings that were gathered from WorkSafe’s investigation of that site have been incorporated into the approach of WorkSafe to crane safety. It informed the gathering of 150 stakeholders to provide advice to identify gaps.

As I mentioned, there is the notice of project requirement now. There is a much more robust inspection regime. We have seen a significant increase in stop-work orders and the ongoing work of a 17-member crane safety team. Those learnings have been incorporated into the work, and we’ll take further steps to improve on that.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to the minister for the response. We’ll continue to stay in touch on this topic, certainly, and I know the public will be interested in following along. Certainly, the folks in Kelowna…. We’ll make sure to remain in contact with those families, as well, so that as soon as it is released, they have the available information to give them, hopefully a little bit more knowledge and peace of mind that it’s not in vain.

I’m going to move to a different topic. Workplace violence is a recognized occupational health and safety hazard under B.C. law. Enforcing these protections is an important responsibility. It’s under the purview of WorkSafe and this ministry as well.

All of us as MLAs, and many government members, meet with nurses regularly and hear about the harrowing stories that we’re hearing in our hospitals. According to some of their last reports, 50 percent of nurses reported experiencing violence at least once a month, 81 percent face verbal or emotional abuse monthly, and 93 percent report working short-staffed at least once a month.

A lot of this has been a campaign from the Nurses Union. They brought forward this information. We met with the Nurses Union last fall when they were here in Victoria as well. They first launched this campaign back in 2017, and from the stories we hear now, it’s actually worse than it was back in 2017. I think this is a systemic workplace failure, that we’re having a challenge here.

[5:00 p.m.]

It’s completely unacceptable that people are going to work with the risks and the sheer amount of violence that these workers…. Not just nurses, of course. There are other hospital staff that are also facing these issues. But nurses certainly have been vocal speaking out about it.

Nearly a decade after the government promised a violence prevention framework, nurses are still being assaulted on the job. So if half of nurses are experiencing physical violence every month, how can we confidently say that B.C.’s workplace safety system is working? And does the ministry acknowledge that this reflects a systemic workplace safety failure?

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Just to situate the situation for health care broadly and for nurses in particular, I want to note that overall in health care, which is certainly a high-risk area…. It’s been a high-risk area for as long as I’ve been doing work in the health care sector. It is not a particularly different scenario than other jurisdictions, because we know that care workers are at a particular risk, given the nature of the work, the nature of the tasks that they are engaged in. It is why it is so critical that we have a robust approach to prevention and to education.

Violence is certainly not part of the job, and I can’t state that emphatically enough. It’s not part of a job for nurses or for care aides or for any health care worker or for any worker in any other sector. It is an issue that employers in every sector, particularly in health care, take very seriously.

For acts of violence generally and claims related to acts of violence, we have seen numerically the trend line moving up a bit over the last few years, bearing in mind that we’ve also seen a significant increase in the health care workforce, including in those occupations that are engaged in providing direct care, which are the occupations that are most at risk.

In 2024, there were 3,662 claims accepted that were related to acts of violence or force, and that was a 3 percent increase over 2023.

The member asked specifically about nurses. When it comes to nurses, I would note that in terms of the leading cause of injury for nurses…. For nurse claims between 2020 and 2024, there were 10,228 injury claims for registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses. The leading cause of injury: overexertion at 30 percent; exposure to substances, toxic substances, including COVID, 25 percent; acts of violence, 17 percent; falls on the same level, 6.2 percent.

[5:10 p.m.]

Of course, the member understands that we have a bit of a…. We’ve got the COVID period, in which we saw a dramatic temporary increase in WorkSafe claims, which have now levelled off to a more typical rate for health care.

WorkSafe has a team of 35 prevention officers who are dedicated to health care. Health care, as I mentioned, is a high-risk sector. There is a high-risk strategy in place for health care. There are a number of organizations and ways in which the employer and the unions and WorkSafe come together to implement programs and strategies to improve the situation.

We have SafeCare B.C. in the long-term-care sector. We have SWITCH, which is a provincial occupational health and safety organization that also supports this work. We have seen, over the last few years, a significant increase in the number of inspections, the number of orders and warning letters come out of the work with the health care sector.

I would say that there is no question there is more work to be done to ensure that this work is safe. One of the elements of the current regulatory discussion underway at WorkSafe regarding psychological health and safety is specifically looking at the way in which harassment, bullying and violence influence…. It’s how those behaviours can influence outcomes and to look at how an approach can be incorporated into the psychological health and safety regulation that is coming to help improve outcomes with respect to violence in health care.

Kiel Giddens: Obviously, this is a very tough subject, I think, because we all know health care workers in our lives. We care deeply about them, and I know the minister does deeply as well. We need to get to a place where hospitals, health care settings are safe workplaces again.

So 50 percent of nurses are reporting experiencing physical violence at least once a month. Then we’re not even talking about the psychological injury rate, as well, on top of that when you bring violence into the workplace.

I recall hearing a story from nurses. This was a couple of weeks ago. In Burns Lake last month, there was an overnight shift in the hospital. There was actually an RCMP officer who was stabbed in the hospital. It happened while the RCMP member was bringing someone who needed attention to the emerg. The RCMP officer was stabbed, and then additional RCMP officers didn’t get there for another 17 minutes. That was just the reality. They had to get to the other side of town.

Well, the scary thing was that there was only one nurse on shift at that time. It just happened to be, because they weren’t meeting their ratio. So this nurse was by herself while this happened with another care aide that was there as well.

This is scary for people in these situations. This wasn’t reported in the media whatsoever. This was something that just happened, and it can be forgotten about.

The wild part about this story is that there was no follow-up by anyone in the health authority, any situational follow-up afterwards. There was no post-incident interview that happened. There were no discussions from a safety perspective. There was no audit of what happened. That should have been immediately done by Northern Health in that case.

I think this is a very serious example of what nurses are trying to say. Obviously, minimum nurse-to-patient ratios have been a part of what they’re arguing, because of that strength in numbers for safety.

[5:15 p.m.]

In a community like Burns Lake, there are no relational security officers either, so there’s no support there. Then the effectiveness of the relational security officer program is also limited by the fact that they have limited tools at their disposal to be able to act as well. So there are some serious gaps.

I want to think that these 35 prevention officers are dedicated to health care, can make an impact, but it’s concerning when I hear stories like this. We all likely hear those from our communities.

How many proactive inspections, compliance orders or penalties has WorkSafe issued to health authorities, specifically related to violence prevention, in the past two years?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I will just say that that sounds like a really, really terrible experience and a very scary experience that the staff on that unit went through. Examples like that are precisely why the intention of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation…. The law, in fact, in the province requires that employers conduct risk assessments, that they communicate those risks, that they work to reduce violence in the workplace.

Our Occupational Health and Safety Regulation sets out the processes and procedures for ensuring that incidents are, in fact, investigated. There’s a requirement in the law that occupational health and safety incidents are investigated by the local joint occupational health and safety committee.

That ought to have happened, certainly, in this case and in any other case, because the purpose of that exercise is for the parties to learn from the circumstances, to identify the gaps and to work to ensure that those incidents don’t, in fact, occur again.

I can tell the member that with respect to the work of WorkSafe with health care employers, in 2025, that resulted in 778 inspection reports, 35 consultation reports, 339 orders — which I will note is not quite a doubling but significantly up from 138 in 2020-21 — and six warning letters sent.

[5:20 p.m.]

I would encourage the member to canvass questions with respect to nurse-patient ratios and staffing issues with the Minister of Health, which are properly dealt with under that ministry.

Kiel Giddens: I appreciate the detailed numbers that the minister provided. Yeah, certainly a jump in the number of orders. Good to hear that the inspection reports are happening. But they’re not happening across, perhaps…. I mean, health authorities have different capacity levels and abilities. The stories I tend to hear are, obviously, from Northern Health because I’m an MLA from northern B.C.

As the minister referenced, the occupational health and safety violence is a workplace health and safety hazard. When government’s website talks about this, it also talks about the fact that supervisors have to ensure that the risk of violence in the workplace is assessed on an annual basis and that control measures are in place. As well, that includes employee training and education. These post-incident investigations and reports are absolutely critical to that.

Shockingly enough…. I actually talked about this incident in Burns Lake. I have also heard from health care workers in Tumbler Ridge, specifically, that have said there were actually no post-incident interviews with workers who were on shift there. I’m not saying that’s all workers there, but ones that I had heard from had not had any post-incident interview or anything with their employer. I think that is, obviously, just another example.

I’m requesting if the minister can request an audit of this process that health authorities, including Northern Health, are going to ensure that these incident reports are actually happening in a timely manner. It should happen right away post-incident so that you can get the exact information.

Is that something that WorkSafe can direct the health authorities to confirm, that that is happening at the supervisory level? Can the minister order that?

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Can I just clarify the member’s comment? I just want to make sure I understood correctly. The member is suggesting that they have heard from health care workers in Tumbler Ridge that post the school shooting, there was no follow-up with respect to the impact of that on the health care workers who responded to that? I just want to be sure I’m very clear about what I’m canvassing.

Kiel Giddens: It is correct that I’ve heard from specific nurses who were on shift who had no specific follow-up from their supervisors or requests for any incident investigation.

[5:25 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: With regard to the response to the horrific attack in Tumbler Ridge, of course, EMCR led the overall response, which did include coordination with WorkSafe. It involved, as you have heard from my colleague the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Education and a deployment of mental health workers to support the community.

WorkSafe itself has two specialized mental health units with experts in trauma-informed practice who were also deployed to Tumbler Ridge. There has been a significant effort with respect to ensuring that the WorkSafe claims that arise from that incident are dealt with in a trauma-informed way, in a seamless way, a way in which the workers impacted are supported and cared for at every step along the way. If there have been gaps, then certainly, I want to hear about them and WorkSafe wants to hear about them.

If there is particular follow-up with respect to what the member has heard did or did not happen, just specifically with respect to the health care environment, that is something that I would be very willing to have further discussion about offline and see how we can follow up on that.

[5:30 p.m.]

Kiel Giddens: It’s, certainly, unprecedented but important that we do learn from that. We’ll look forward to learning from the coroner’s investigation and, potentially, a public inquiry, if needed. But certainly, all of us appreciate the support that different agencies have provided, including WorkSafe, to that particular incident.

I hate to even bring up these topics, but it is something that is a matter of public discourse and discussion that we have to talk about when it comes to safety. I just want to, in following up on that…. Especially in northern B.C., in many schools I’ve talked to, teachers have made comments that it could have been one of them, and they don’t feel adequately prepared for that situation.

It was traumatic for folks in Tumbler Ridge, but in a community like Mackenzie…. Those are kids, at that school, who play hockey with kids in Tumbler Ridge. They have relationships. Teachers — same thing. They know students and teachers, and they have those relationships across the communities.

Other communities in northern B.C., as well, were behind in the level of EAs in classrooms. It’s just generally a challenging position, in rural schools in particular. Across the board, there’s more work to do, and those are issues to canvass with the Minister of Education, I realize.

Certainly, I want to make sure that we’re proactive in safety in our schools as well. So I’m wondering if the minister could provide an update on the proactive measures that WorkSafe is undertaking to ensure safety in our education system for teachers and other workers in a school setting. And then, how many WCB claims were filed by teachers in 2025, and how did it compare to the previous year?

[5:35 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: With regard to measures taken in the K-to-12 sector, WorkSafeBC has a K-to-12 advisory committee and works with members of the education sector to talk about those preventative measures, the education and support for staff in the sector that are required to ensure that, again, the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation is being met. The Occupational Health and Safety Regulation requires that employers conduct risk assessments. It requires that those assessments involve the joint occupational health and safety committee.

It is a requirement that the employers have a policy and that the whole infrastructure around occupational health and safety is responsive to these concerns, particularly after such a devastating incident as was experienced in Tumbler Ridge.

With respect to the numbers of inspection reports and the activity in that sector, I can tell the member that in 2025, there were 83 inspection reports, four consultation reports, 11 orders, one warning letter. Overall, in 2024, there were 3,365 claims.

Now, that’s for all staff in the K-to-12 sector. We don’t have the breakdown between teachers and EAs at our fingertips, but I know I’ve just seen it recently for EAs, and I can advise the member that it is higher for EAs than it is for teachers. We will track down those numbers and provide them.

Kiel Giddens: Appreciate the breakdown from the minister and for willingness to share that information. I know that’s been a bit of a heavy topic to get into, so I just want to take a breath and relax a bit for a second.

Obviously, we all care about the K-to-12 system, the safety of children as well as the people who educate our kids. I can’t say I’ve spoken…. I know the minister, as past Minister of Education, has a lot of experience in that sector. I’ve got more learnings from just being a parent but also an MLA in school district 57, talking to the school district and with teachers in my riding in particular. I think it’s important we have a focus on safety for everyone.

I’m going to turn it to just more of a 50,000-foot view on the system as a whole now, as opposed to some of these specific areas that we’ve been talking about. Overall, for WorkSafe, I’m wondering if the minister could provide the average claim duration for 2025 and compare that to the previous year.

[5:40 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Member, I will just…. I do have the answer to the question with respect to the number of claims for the K-to-12 sector, so maybe I’ll just read those in now. Because of the way WorkSafe categorizes, we have the elementary and kindergarten teachers separate from the secondary school teachers.

For 2025, elementary and kindergarten teachers had 97 claims. That’s down slightly from 100 in 2024. Secondary school teachers had 31 claims in 2025, down by one from 32 in 2024. And elementary and secondary school assistants had 444 in 2025, up from 374 in 2024.

With respect to claim duration, in 2025, claim duration was 75.9 days compared to 76 days in 2024.

Kiel Giddens: Sorry. Could the minister repeat that again? I didn’t write it down.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: Claim duration in 2024 was 76 days, and in 2025, 75.9 days. That’s the average claim duration.

Kiel Giddens: Thanks to the minister for repeating that. I apologize for that.

Looks like, obviously, that’s stable year over year there. Just wondering, maybe to go into a little bit about Bill 41…. It created new legal duties to cooperate and accommodate to speed up return-to-work outcomes.

I know that WorkSafe increased staffing and built new units to support this work. I know that, obviously, we don’t want people to return if they’re unable to due to their injuries, but I think returning to work is something that needs to be encouraged, and WorkSafe seems to really agree.

It’s noted on WorkSafeBC’s website. There’s a page about return to work saying: “Returning to work is good medicine.” Then it goes on to say: “Returning to work, when it is safe to do so, while recovering has many benefits. It helps an injured worker’s mental health and physical well-being. It also helps to protect their income, employment benefits, social contacts, routines and job security.”

[5:45 p.m.]

I’m just looking at…. Obviously, we want…. I think the plan with Bill 41 was to have the claim duration come down. So what is the current state of that duration really saying about the reforms and how they’re working? Can the minister comment on what’s going on in that case?

[5:50 p.m.]

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I want to just take a moment to maybe clarify a little bit about the intentions around Bill 41. I know the member will recall that in the early 2000s, not to spend too much time going back in history, there were a number of changes made to the Workers Compensation Act that had significant impacts on workers in terms of reducing their access to WCB, in terms of reducing the amount of their benefits.

Really, Bill 41 was in response to understanding that in order to have appropriate processes where we have both safe workplaces and appropriate supports for workers and appropriate return-to-work provisions…. That was really our intention with Bill 41.

What we did with that legislation was return to indexing of benefits. We eliminated the penalty that injured workers were subject to by their benefits being assessed at 2 percent lower than CPI. We brought in compensation for non-traumatic hearing loss. We introduced a whole process around addressing claims suppression within the health and safety space.

We brought in provisions for independent medical examinations in the appeal process. We brought in interest on delayed benefit payments. We brought in a fair practices commissioner. Importantly, we brought in the duty to cooperate and the duty to maintain employment so that workers would not be left to the side when they experienced an injury at work.

I can tell you that the experience of workers on the ground has been significant. Just canvassing the folks in the construction sector who, suffering significant injuries that may well have driven them completely out of that sector prior to us bringing in these stronger protections, have been supported through a rehab process and are now still working.

For example, I have one testimonial from Jesse Fletcher, who is a concrete pump operator, been working in construction for 28 years. In 2023, he was working on Site C. He was operating a concrete pour. There was a rogue gust of wind that caused an accident and threw him 25 feet off a ledge. He suffered a concussion and multiple injuries to his lung, hip, lower back and severe injury to his shoulder. As a result of these injuries, he was unable to go back to his old job because of the demands of that job.

He was very worried about what he was going to do for work. He says:

“The only jobs available to me now were minimum wage. I wasn’t going to be able to support my family on minimum wage. We would have to sell our house. I was very worried about the effect on our marriage and on my mental health. Fortunately, WorkSafeBC agreed to retrain me. I’m currently retraining to be a mobile crane operator, which is classified as light work.

“My goal is to complete my apprenticeship and get my full licence in two years, though it may take three. My hope is if everything goes according to plan, this will bring me back close to my pre-injury earnings, and I will be able to stay in the trades until I retire.”

Likewise, from Phil, who, in fact, had a very difficult experience as a result of a workplace injury and wound up homeless for a period of time, had successive injuries, and says his greatest fear….

[5:55 p.m.]

“I was going to end up homeless again. But to my surprise, this time things were different.”

This was his second injury.

“The vocational rehab person asked for my input. They supported the plan that I wanted to do. They supported retraining to become a social service worker professional through CDI College. I graduated last year and recently obtained a job as an Aboriginal housing support worker to help get people off the streets and find housing. While I’m in a lot of pain for my injuries, it’s important work, and I can see myself being successful in this role over the long term.”

I think that these are just two stories of thousands of stories from across the province about how important it is that we support workers in the most dignified way possible, how we work to support their retraining, retain their skill base in the industries that they’ve been attached to and that we needed legislative change in order to ensure that we could do that. It has been a significant benefit to workers — the work that we have done to improve services and supports through WorkSafe.

The team that is responsible at WorkSafe for the return-to-work consultation process, the folks who really implement the return-to-work process, work very collaboratively with both the worker and the employer to find the best solution. We are seeing that team increase the number of employer consultations in this area, more than tripling those employer consultations over the last couple of years. We’re seeing many return-to-work inquiries from the parties, folks reaching out and asking WorkSafe for support.

The work that WorkSafe is engaged in, that the team is engaged in, to make sure that we are bringing this information to employers, to workers…. We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of workshops being provided for employers, for supervisors, for return-to-work coordinators.

This is work that I would say is still in somewhat early days, but we are determined. The member is quite right. It is absolutely true. The sooner we can get a worker back to work safely, the better for everyone. Of course, there needs to be an appropriate return-to-work plan in place. It needs to be safe. It needs to be supported. But we can really shift the dial on outcomes when it comes to disability management when we’re supporting the parties in this area.

Kiel Giddens: I think it is for the stories the minister outlined, like Mr. Fletcher or Phil, precisely why we need to protect the integrity of the system. They’re doing everything exactly right. They’re trying to, obviously, find a healthy way back to the workplace and in a safe way of doing so.

So it is very important that we have a system that is going to be there for them when they need it. No one should not get help when they are injured at work, certainly. I think we have to support those who have those injuries.

I think last year we spent quite a bit of time talking about the historical context of WorkSafe, so we don’t need to get into that. I think we canvassed that at length. But we also talked about where the system health is of the accident fund, and a lot of that was in context of the lack of a rebate policy.

Ontario has legislated rebates, and we talked about Manitoba giving tariff-related rebates last year. ICBC, another no-fault insurance model, also has given rebates.

[6:00 p.m.]

But following WorkSafe’s performance and understanding they’re trying to dig into their financial statements, I think there are some questions that we’ll get into tomorrow morning about the organization’s ability to keep the accident fund intact without significant increases in employer premiums.

In 2019, the funded ratio for WorkSafe was at 153 percent, so 23 points above the 130 percent policy floor. Really, these represent billions in employer premium reserves built over decades.

With that, we’ll probably wrap up today, and we’ll allow the minister to adjourn.

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside: I move the committee rise and report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: This committee stands adjourned.

The committee rose at 6:01 p.m.

Proceedings in the
Birch Room

The House in Committee, Section C.

The committee met at 2:43 p.m.

[Rohini Arora in the chair.]

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Health
(continued)

The Chair: Good afternoon, Members. I call Committee of Supply, Section C, to order. We are meeting today to continue the consideration of budget estimates of the Ministry of Health.

On Vote 32: ministry operations, $35,968,875,000 (continued).

Jeremy Valeriote: Thanks to the minister and her staff for their time on Thursday and today. I think I have until three o’clock. Obviously, we have limited time to ask questions in this process, and I have to say I wasn’t anticipating receiving such thorough answers. I’m hoping that I can read my remaining questions into the record now and ask for a written answer.

I thought this might have been stretching the rules a bit, but I went and reviewed, and last year we left six questions with the ministry. They conscientiously replied to us in September, which is pretty fast, given the summer break. I’m hoping I can do that. I will save the best two questions for last and, hopefully, some of that remaining time to answer those.

The subject, involuntary treatment. How much money is being spent on involuntary treatment in the Surrey Pretrial Centre in the 2026-27 financial year?

[2:45 p.m.]

Next topic, the Mental Health Act review. Can the minister confirm that the proposed review of the Mental Health Act will include expert lived and living experience and the wider public, both in the development of the terms of reference for the review and in the review itself? How and when will this review be undertaken?

On community health centres, which we worked on jointly last year, non-profits like community health centres operate using a variety of funders and funding streams, which is challenging. What is government’s plan to support programs that go beyond primary care and relate to services supporting the social determinants of health? These programs are preventative and keep patients out of the more expensive acute and emergency care systems.

Next question. What is the role of primary care networks in supporting access to care in rural communities? Aren’t they responsible for integrated regional health planning along with the health authorities to ensure coordination of care and increased access? How much money has been invested in PCNs to date, and how are outcomes being measured? Will the province create a dedicated annual community health centre budget line separate from general primary care funding?

The last question on community health centres till the end is: will communities be able to initiate community health centre proposals directly, or will expansion remain controlled through health authority and ministry processes?

Thank you for indulging me in this long monologue.

On patient attachment, this year’s Ministry of Health service plan states that 77 percent of British Columbians are attached to a primary care provider, increasing from the 75.2 percent last year. What portion of this is doctors and what is nurse practitioners? Is there any difference in the classification of care that can be provided between these two primary care providers?

Next question. The three-year target for attachment to a primary care provider is a change of only 3 percent, to a total of 80 percent of British Columbians by 2029. Is there a particular reason why the targeted increase is only 1 percent per year?

What are the primary contributors keeping this government from attaching more than 80 percent of British Columbians to a primary care provider? Does this government have an estimate on the number of British Columbians who they claimed are “not seeking attachment to a primary care provider” so we can properly gauge the number of British Columbians who still need to be attached?

Finally, how is the Ministry of Health working to implement the primary care review that the ministry worked collaboratively with the Third Party on last year?

On the travel assistance program, does the province consider travel and accommodation costs to be a part of reasonable access to public health services when those services are centralized outside a patient’s home community? What is the current budget for medical travel assistance, and how much is allocated to rural and remote residents?

How many patients receive help with accommodation, not just transportation? What medical conditions or treatments qualify for accommodation support and which do not?

What is the average out-of-pocket cost for a rural patient who must travel for cancer care, transplant assessment, renal care, high-risk pregnancy care, surgery imaging or specialist follow-up? Does the ministry track delayed, missed or abandoned care because patients cannot afford travel, accommodation, meals, parking or time away from work?

What detail exists on the travel assistance program, including direct travel costs, the impact on primary care resources and an assessment of whether modernization could result in cost savings? If yes, is the minister able to share that data?

Are there any reviews of the travel assistance program underway or planned? How is the minister looking to modernize this program to meet the needs of the many British Columbians that use it?

Now I will ask about shingles vaccines, because we love vaccines in the Third Party. Recent return-on-investment analysis found that every dollar invested in a shingles vaccination program for adults aged 50 and older in British Columbia yields an estimated $1.71 in returns. Does the ministry’s data support this analysis? What evaluations exist on the shingles vaccine as a cost-saving measure in long-term planning or budget development?

Second-to-last question. How does the ministry undertake cost-benefit analysis for vaccines, and why isn’t this information widely shared with the public? How does the government justify restricting access to vaccines when they are shown to save both money and resources for our overstretched health care system?

This one came from my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands — it’s quite interesting — about tobacco sales in pharmacies. In the past, British Columbia has been on the forefront of lawsuits aimed to fight the tobacco industry, whose products are estimated to kill thousands of British Columbians per year. However, British Columbia is now the only province to not ban the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies. London Drugs, one of the largest drugstore chains in B.C. by revenue, remains adamant on selling tobacco products.

Does the minister plan to address this and enact a regulatory change to prevent tobacco sales in pharmacies? If not, what does the minister see as a benefit of allowing pharmacies to sell tobacco products?

[2:50 p.m.]

Last topic before I finish up — Botox for TMJ and migraines. Temporomandibular joint disorder, TMJ, is a condition when the disc that separates the lower jaw from your skull slips out of position and causes problems, including the dislocation of the temporomandibular joint. Botox injections are sometimes an effective and painless way to alleviate tension in the temporomandibular joint, reducing jaw pain, headaches and suffering.

Is the minister aware of the lack of pain management options to treat TMJ symptoms, and is the government willing to cover the medical costs of Botox treatments as an effective pain management strategy?

That is the end of a lengthy reading of questions under the record. Now I’ll ask the last two, which are combined, and look forward to the minister’s answer with my last few minutes.

We were quite pleased to work on community health centres and primary care review with the minister in 2025. My questions are: what is the progress on the $15 million committed to support new and existing community health centres that was in our cooperation agreement? What are the targets for opening new publicly funded community health centres in 2026?

[2:55 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the Leader of the Third Party for the 18 or 19 questions. I will address the last one here in a moment, but I do want to actually take an opportunity just to knock off a couple of the questions, because I can point the member back to Hansard where some of them were answered.

First of all, his first question was around: what is the budget in ’26-27 for involuntary treatment at the Surrey Pretrial Centre? It’s just shy of $11.5 million.

With respect to the Mental Health Act review, I would refer back to Hansard and my conversation with the member for Skeena last week.

With respect to the patient attachment system and the service plan targets of 77 percent rising to 80 percent in the coming years, I would refer him to a very lengthy answer that I provided to the member for North Island in Hansard last Wednesday, I believe it was.

Then I will skip ahead to the community health centre question. I really appreciate this. I have to say I actually really enjoyed the work that I had the privilege of doing with the members of the Green Party before they decided not to continue that work.

I just want to take a moment for everyone, and for the record, to talk a little bit about what that commitment was around the community health centre sector and this very unique place that community health centres have in our primary care system, with particular focus on populations that are more vulnerable or underserved or have certain barriers to accessing primary care.

Community health centres are typically community-led, non-profit-led, with deep involvement of many different partners in their governance as well as in their operations and doing everything they can as primary care teams to provide the right supports for patients who need it at the right time. They do absolutely phenomenal work. Some of them have a very long history in British Columbia and have really been able to scrape together the resources to do that. Others are newer and have had the benefit of more government funding programs, for example, as they’ve stood up.

But one thing we know and we talked at length with members from the Green Party about was the strong voice we’ve heard from community health centres about the need to really stabilize the sector and to ensure that community health centres around British Columbia have the opportunity to learn from each other and have the opportunity to strengthen the delivery of what they do.

We did a fairly thorough review of community health centres and engaged with a lot of different partners there. Thanks again to the Green Party for bringing forward a number of voices as part of that engagement. Ministry officials engaged deeply with the sector and came back with perspectives and recommendations from the sector itself.

It is our intention…. We had a commitment in the CARGA around $15 million to be invested in the community health centres, and we will be meeting that commitment. I’m not going to pre-empt the announcement that we will make, but just to say that I look forward to being able to talk more about the investments that we’ll continue to make in the community health centre sector.

I think that’s that. Thank you to the Leader of the Third Party for his questions and participation.

Elenore Sturko: Before I do my half an hour, I just want to say thank you to the ministry staff, to the Minister of Health and also to say thank you to the health care workers all across the province — the health care professionals and people who are working alongside them.

As my colleague from the Green Party was speaking, I actually was thinking back to 2019 and 2020 when I was a police officer. The trend of banging pots started in the evening to signal support. I can remember we had gone out on our deck. My twins were only six years old at the time, and my daughter said: “Mom, what’s that panning sound?” She meant because she heard pans being struck. She was so innocent.

[3:00 p.m.]

It was such a time where we all felt so much distress over COVID. We didn’t know what was going to happen, and health care workers were there for us. That was a simple gesture to say thank you, but that gratitude that I felt then, I feel today. I want health care workers, especially nurses, who are negotiating their contract, to know how grateful I am. I look forward to finding ways that we can help improve the services that they’re delivering here in the province.

With that, I’m going to ask a question or two here about the Surrey Hospital tower project. This is a quote, made by the Premier, in a Fraser Health news release.

It says: “Surrey’s quickly growing population needs health care to grow with it. People need to know health care is accessible, not after a long wait or a long drive to another community. World-class health care should be available right here in Surrey. Today I’m announcing that a new acute care tower is on the way for Surrey Memorial Hospital, to help meet local needs by adding more hospital beds and more services south of the Fraser.”

The new tower was expected to add acute and specialized care capacity to Surrey Memorial Hospital, such as medical, surgical, pediatric, perinatal, women’s health, mental health and stroke care. The project said that during the next 15 to 18 months, the project would have proceeded to the business planning phase. That news release was dated Monday, March 11, 2024, 10:15 a.m., which was more than 24 months ago.

Since then, there has been nothing. No lines in the budget. We don’t have a business case. The last update about the project on the Fraser Health website in 2026 said, again, that during the next 15 to 18 months the project will proceed to the business planning phase.

I recognize, especially because I see her, that the Minister of Health may, in fact, say: “Oh, well, this is a question for Infrastructure.” However, the minister is well aware that we have overcrowding, particularly in maternity. Mata Tripta was built to have one family per unit. We now have people doubling up. It’s very crowded. Pediatrics — they’re actually sending many, many patients to Children’s. It’s the busiest pediatric in western Canada.

Why has this been delayed? What is the actual timeline for both the business case and the horizon for getting our tower built? Can the minister please talk about what is going to mitigate…? If it takes ten years to get this tower built, which it probably will now, how are we going to deal with the overcrowding in our pediatrics, maternity and other services if we don’t have that tower?

[3:05 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: I just want the member to note that I didn’t take 29 minutes to stand up again. All joking aside, though, I appreciate the question raised by the member, and I’ll try to give a pretty short answer so that she has an opportunity to ask a couple more.

First of all, and I know it’ll be frustrating, I am going to direct the member to Infrastructure for specific questions around timeline and business planning, concept planning on the Surrey tower. It simply isn’t in the purview of the Ministry of Health anymore to be able to…. So I can’t authoritatively speak about that, nor should I.

However, I do want to address the underlying issues that the strain in hospitals from running over capacity, from pressures, particularly in maternity and obstetrics, as the member has raised…. And she’s no stranger to the fact that we have seen maternity service disruptions in the Lower Mainland. We know that Surrey Memorial does an absolutely phenomenal job in their maternity department, with limited space, in being able to help as many people as possible deliver their babies there.

Seeing reliable, predictable, stable maternity service is absolutely essential in our health care system because babies happen. You cannot stop when somebody is going to give birth. Knowing this and knowing that we have faced particular workforce shortages that have caused a lot of strain in the system, work is afoot, in the Fraser Health Authority area specifically, around looking at regional models of care that will help to stabilize these services.

This is really important. I think no longer are we in a situation where we can take just a site-by-site look at how services are provided, be it from physicians, nurses and others who assist with this. Taking a regional approach is something that’s absolutely essential.

At the same time, to address the workforce shortages, the expansion of seats — not only medical seats but also for nurses, for midwives — has been one strategy to increase the number of people who are available to provide this service. Establishing a perinatal and newborn health hub as a one-stop shop or portal for resources. Undertaking capital improvements — I’m not speaking about Surrey Memorial specifically, but at sites in the Lower Mainland and also across British Columbia, where that’s absolutely essential for maternity services.

I won’t go too far into it, but I also will say with respect to crowding in hospitals…. I canvassed this a lot with members last week, so I will point the member to Hansard there for some of that discussion about other strategies to help alleviate some of the strain and pressure on, in particular, Surrey Memorial.

Undertaking programs like hospital at home for those people who are eligible and can be safely cared for at home using technological supports, to provide that care with specific in-person visits and also, as I said, through technology.

As well, alleviating pressure from emergency rooms — we know that Surrey Memorial is the busiest emergency room in all of British Columbia — by building out UPCCs and other primary care access points so that people don’t have to go into the emergency room. The upward pressure into the hospital, combined with the discharge pressure or delays in discharge for patients, is part of the issue where we see these kinds of occupancy levels or crowding taking place.

[3:10 p.m.]

I hope that helps the member somewhat, and I look forward to her next question.

Elenore Sturko: I thank the minister for the response.

I’ll just point back to, I guess to respond to the minister’s response, when the Premier made this announcement for the Surrey Memorial tower in March of 2024. He said health care should be available right here in Surrey. He said that health care shouldn’t be accessible after a long wait or a long drive to another community.

What I hear in the minister’s response is that because of the failures of the current system that we have, we would be moving to some type of regional model, regional hub to deal with our shortage.

There have been a number of diversions. Peace Arch was on several different weeks of diversion this year. Diversions, I know, come from Langley to Surrey Memorial. Mission has diversions. Even in the Interior, they have a huge shortage of maternity care and obstetrics.

Maybe the minister can clarify. How does this government square the circle on having the Premier stand up in front of Surrey residents to say that we shouldn’t have to drive to another community or that British Columbians shouldn’t have to leave their home to get maternity care to deliver their baby? What it sounds like to me is that this ministry now, this government, is moving to a regional model because of their own failure.

Hon. Josie Osborne: First of all, in response, I just want to be clear. When I talk about a regional model, I talk about looking at the way, particularly, that physicians are able to provide services.

I would agree with the member’s assertion that people want to be able to deliver their babies as close to home as possible. But we know that patient safety has to come first. That’s why when there are gaps in service that cannot be filled by locums, despite all the best efforts of the health authority, there are decisions that are made to put a maternity ward or maternity service on temporary diversion, with proactive disclosure and communication with all expectant parents so that they understand they may need to deliver their baby in another place.

In the Lower Mainland, we are fortunate in the sense that there are a number of places to deliver babies that are relatively close to each other. But I do say that carefully because I’m aware that maternity service disruptions in smaller communities in other parts of British Columbia would result in very, very challenging circumstances for people who may need to travel hours. Already we have the experience of more centralization of maternity services that has really impacted rural communities.

It’s our job as the Ministry of Health to balance our approaches and our investments to try to create as equitable a situation for British Columbians when delivering their children and using maternity services — again, always with patient safety the top priority, so making sure mom and babe are safe.

Now to the point of Surrey again and Fraser Health Authority. I had a good discussion during estimates last week around the population needs-based funding model that we use to fund health authorities. There is, I think, a bit of a misconception out there that it is strictly a population…. It’s per capita. People say this a lot: “Well, there’s more per capita here or less per capita there.” It is not strictly a per-capita funding model.

It is a model that looks at population demographics like age and sex. It looks at health status. It looks at the social determinants of health. It looks at unmet need, particularly in underserved or more vulnerable populations. It definitely accounts for rurality, and it looks at the way people travel between health authorities. It’s not just a simple border where people inside Fraser Health stay inside Fraser Health to get their care, but people actually travel back and forth.

It’s important that that model be as equitable as possible so that each health authority has access to the funding that they need to operate the services that they need. We work very closely with the Ministry of Infrastructure to align those capital investments with the operational funding that’s required to deliver those services.

[3:15 p.m.]

That population needs-based funding model is undergoing an update — or a modernization, if you will — right now. That will, in the years to come, result in more equitable distribution of funding dollars and make sure that British Columbians are able to access care in an equitable way — be it from Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health, side by side; or Northern Health versus Island Health, for example. We’re going to continue to do that work.

I take the member’s points. You know, you look at the strain in the health care system across Canada. B.C.’s acute care centres and hospitals are no different than many other places in Canada, where there are challenges to keep up and stay up with infrastructure investments, with the investments that are required for diagnostic machinery like MRIs and CTs.

We have made incredible investments over the last nine years as a government, a lot of that playing catch-up, and there’s more work to do. There’s no doubt about it. Again, I just want to close on the fact that patient safety is always going to come first.

Elenore Sturko: Thanks to the minister for the response.

I’m going to move on and ask a couple of questions about involuntary care — most specifically, a little bit about Surrey Pretrial and then, if I still have time, a little bit about fulfilling some of the gaps identified in the ’24-25 B.C. Review Board annual report.

During a press conference to announce the ten designated mental health beds in Surrey Pretrial, Dr. Vigo mentioned that one of the reasons behind having these designated beds in Pretrial was that people with apparent or diagnosed mental illness in correctional facilities were being kept in segregation without being treated under the Mental Health Act. He said this was happening because there was a wait, often several weeks, to get these individuals into forensic psychiatric hospitals because of a shortage of beds.

I’d also add to that that we know that in October of 2025, the Supreme Court of British Columbia approved a settlement between the government and individuals in a class action lawsuit who were placed in confinement or segregation for 15 days. Many of these patients or prisoners were placed in segregation without treatment while suffering from a mental illness.

My question to the minister. We know there are now ten designated beds at Surrey Pretrial. Can the minister tell me what’s happening in other regions of the province when a prisoner is brought in suffering from an apparent mental illness where there are no designated beds available in corrections?

[3:20 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the question. Around the work at Surrey Pretrial…. First of all, just to say that the ten beds at Surrey Pretrial that are designated mental health treatment beds in living unit X, or LUX…. It has proven already, in its first year of operation, to be a very successful program.

The Provincial Health Services Authority and B.C. Corrections have been carefully evaluating and monitoring the activities and the outcomes for inmates or for patients who are there at LUX and have shown, over this time, that access to care has improved.

For example, the proportion of people who are waiting for treatment following double certification has…. The access to care has improved. The waiting time has dropped.

There’s been a reduction in incidents that require intervention within these units — requiring correctional staff intervention, for example. Clients are reporting positive outcomes — improvements in insight or judgment, eating, sleeping, overall mood and demeanour, improved awareness of their mental health condition.

Individuals are receiving involuntary treatment with minimal use of force. Use of force is rarely required amongst those being treated under the Mental Health Act involuntarily, with most individuals receiving treatment compliantly, 89 percent; successful but non-compliant interactions, uncommon at 7 percent; and failed treatment attempts, rare at 4 percent. Staff feelings of safety improved and positive results.

Now, as the member was talking about, for those individuals in other centres who require this kind of care, there are transfers that happen down to Surrey Pretrial. For example, from Oliver, North Fraser, Victoria or Nanaimo regional correctional centres, transfers have occurred.

Dr. Vigo has recommended and continues to provide advice on expanding these services into other centres. That is actively being looked at. While I can’t confirm any locations specifically today, I wanted to assure the member that that work is happening.

Elenore Sturko: Thank you for the answer. I appreciate that there are transfers.

The minister mentioned in that answer that there is still a wait but the wait is reduced. My question. And I have very limited time. If the minister could please limit her answer to answering the specific question. Are there still patients being held in segregation with apparent mental illnesses who are waiting for care, who must wait in segregation with mental illness?

Hon. Josie Osborne: We don’t have that information. It would have to be accessed from the PSSG Ministry.

Elenore Sturko: I will have to read some questions into the record, but I think we might have time for one more question.

I would just say that I appreciate the work that is being done, particularly between Health and Corrections. I think it is a good model. We need to have, even beyond mental health and other types of health care, better integration into our correctional system, so we can end the cycle of criminal entanglements for people with, particularly, mental health, addictions issues and other health care issues.

[3:25 p.m.]

I do have a concern that maybe we’re not acting fast enough. We’re about to settle $60 million in a lawsuit for keeping people with mental illnesses segregated. Waiting in segregation and self-harming…. It is a practice that we’ve carried out for far too long in British Columbia. I know it didn’t originate with this government, so I do appreciate the work that’s been done.

But I think often the severe mental illnesses of people, particularly those who are violent, get overlooked. I mean, there are not a lot of people that want to stick up for people that the rest of society…. They feel they’re evil. They’re bad. They’re getting a lot of negative attention. I’m hoping that this government doesn’t lose its focus on standing up and providing those services for people who are very marginalized — and often marginalized because of their behaviours.

I was really concerned by the ’23-24 Review Board report and even more concerned, obviously, when the ’24-25 Review Board of British Columbia report came out. These next questions I’ll read out. I really have mostly just a priority question. The British Columbia Review Board annual report, fiscal year April 2024 to March ’25, contained a very stark warning from the chair of the board.

In the chair’s message, she said: “You may recall I reported last year on the dwindling number of resources available to treat and house mentally disordered forensic patients in British Columbia. The situation has since worsened. B.C. has inadequate supply of forensic psychiatric hospital beds, no residential substance use treatment beds for forensic-hospital-based patients and a dearth of adequately staffed and supported residences available to accommodate those patients who no longer require hospital care but require close oversight and supportive services.”

I’ll read the next questions together. I really want to know how many beds…. The answer can’t be only the Alouette, because it’s not going to do it. The answer can’t be ten pretrial beds. I really want to know how we are going to make sure that we have enough forensic psychiatric beds.

The questions I’ll read in. Can the minister tell me how many forensic beds in the province need to open to address the concerns raised by the board chair? Can the minister please answer how many forensic hospital bed patients are currently waiting to access residential substance use programs?

Does the province have an estimated number of residential treatment beds that are needed to address the concerns raised by the chair of the review board with respect to access to substance use treatment for forensic-hospital-based patients?

Are the 18 new residential placements at the Alouette Correctional facility for people receiving care from the forensic system? What are the criteria for patients or residents who are living at the Alouette Correctional facility 18 residential placements?

Can the minister report on how many more accommodations like those at Alouette will be built within the next two years? Will this number address the concerns raised by the review board that the province lacks adequately staffed and supported residences available for patients who no longer require hospital care?

Can the minister please explain how capacity issues at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital are going to be addressed in the forensic system in the 2026 budget?

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the questions, and noting the comprehensiveness on them all, I will take them all on notice as she’s provided them and will provide her with a written response. Really appreciate it.

[3:30 p.m.]

Elenore Sturko: These are questions about the shingles vaccine.

What data does the ministry have on the impact of shingles and postherpetic neuralgia on seniors’ independence, including links to increased use of home care or entry into long-term care?

What is the ministry’s estimate of the annual cost to the health care system of treating shingles and its complications, including hospitalizations, physician visits and drug costs?

Has the ministry assessed shingles vaccination as a cost-saving measure in its long-term planning? What conclusion did it reach, including any projected reductions in hospital, emergency and primary care?

Finally, there is consistent support for shingles vaccination coverage from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization; the B.C. seniors advocate; geriatric division leads across the regional health authorities; and organizations, including CARP, CanAge, Immunize.io and the B.C. Care Providers Association.

How is this ministry weighing the consensus in its decision-making? What additional evidence is it waiting for before acting?

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the questions, similar to the leader of the Green Party’s, around shingles. We’ll provide an answer.

Jordan Kealy: Thank you very much to the ministry and the staff for being able to allow this questioning.

If the government is serious about fiscal responsibility in the time of deficits and federal cuts to health transfers, it should start cutting costs at the top — excessive executives and vice-presidents — before touching essential front-line services and seniors care. Our seniors paid into the system their entire working lives. They deserve dignity in their later years, not to be shafted by poor budgeting and delayed projects while the system fails to plan for an aging population.

That’s not even mentioning the average British Columbian who can’t find a family doctor or patients dying on specialized wait-lists, which has been shown by FOIs in my region.

People shouldn’t be occupying acute care hospital beds, because there are no long-term-care spots, or waiting at home — or worse, at places like the Salvation Army. Cut the administrative bloat and redirect those dollars to the Peace Villa expansion, more long-term-care beds and front-line staff.

Northern Health has seen its system worsen under current leadership, despite high executive compensation. Budget 2026 needs to demonstrate real value for taxpayers, not just high totals on paper.

Why did the president and CEO of Northern Health receive a raise of $100,000, bringing total compensation over $450,000 in recent disclosure, while key performance metrics in Northern Health — access, wait times and outcomes — have not improved and, in many cases, have deteriorated?

[3:35 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: Welcome to the member. Good to see you here, part of estimates.

I just want to start off with the…. I think the approach the member is taking in his question here is around value for money in our health care system and ensuring that every dollar we spend is being maximized for patient care and that we’re seeing the outcomes that we want to see and that we expect to see and that, frankly, British Columbians deserve. I share the member’s concern that we should do everything possible to do that.

At the same time, we need the dedicated professionals — we need to attract them to work here in British Columbia to be part of our health care system — who are aware of the resources that we put into our system and ensuring that we get every bit of value out of that.

The member cited some salary increase figures. I just want to point out that the CEO of Northern Health started partway into the fiscal ’23-24, so a straight comparison of remuneration from ’24-25 over ’23-24 is going to artificially inflate what might look like a rise when, indeed, it was a full year being compared to a partial year.

At the same time, as the member knows, we have undertaken a big exercise in government looking at cost management and, further to that, looking to the health authorities and undertaking an intensive and comprehensive administrative review to make sure that we are avoiding as much duplication, redundancies and wasted dollars and to redirect them to the front line because we know that’s where they are particularly needed.

By doing that, we can ensure that we are building out the physicians and nurses and all the health care workers that we need; that we’re putting the investments into the facilities, the surgical suites, the clinics that British Columbians need to access care; and that we’re keeping pace with technological improvements, equipment upgrades — increasing the number of diagnostic machines, for example, so that British Columbians can have access to those.

I think it’s worth pointing out that there is a metric called the corporate services expense ratio that is measured by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. They look at all provinces and territories across the country, and British Columbia is the second-lowest of all jurisdictions in Canada, with a corporate services expense ratio of 3.5 percent in fiscal ’22-23 compared to the Canadian average of 4.4 percent.

[3:40 p.m.]

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a responsibility to continue to look and to find those administrative savings, and that’s what we’ve done. Over the past year, there are 1,100 senior positions that have been left vacant or unfilled for an annual cost savings estimated at $60 million.

Further to that, before even the results of the health authority review began to come in, the health authorities undertook cost management exercises and found another $200 million in annual savings. With the health authority review making a recommendation to take certain services like IMIT, legal, HR and other services and centralize them into shared services organization, that’s exactly what’s happened.

On April 1, the B.C. Health Shared Services organization was stood up to do just that, and over the coming months, units will be moving out of regional health authorities into a centralized system. The estimated savings are in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, although I don’t have a precise estimate to provide the member with today.

We’re going to continue to do that work, identifying where those bottlenecks are, where those redundancies are, where there is inefficient funding that could be better used to optimize service delivery. We’ll be able to talk more explicitly about this work in the coming months, but this, certainly, has been part of the mandate letter that the Premier gave me and the job that I have before me, together with the rest of government.

I do want to just take a moment, though, to talk about Northern Health Authority, where the member lives and where his constituents live. We know that people who are living in smaller and more remote and rural communities face bigger barriers to accessing care than people living in other parts of the province. That’s why, the member will know, so many dollars have gone into new facilities, like Dawson Creek Hospital; in Fort St. James, the Nats’oojeh Hospital; and Terrace. People living in rural and remote communities deserve the same standard of equipment and services that people living in the Lower Mainland do.

That’s why the funding allocation to Northern Health continues to reflect the particular needs of that population and why we will continue, as I’ve canvassed with a few different members during estimates, the population needs-based funding model. That takes into account things like rurality, things like social determinants of health that place northern residents at a more vulnerable place in being able to access health care, partly because of the distance, partly because of the social conditions under which they live — their access to housing, food, other things that determine how healthy a person can be and what their health span and lifespan will be.

I think we have a lot to be proud of in British Columbia’s health system, our public universal health care system. It provides excellent care to people and that…. Of course, there are places where we need to continue to make improvements. One of those areas, for example, of course, is in primary care, where we have been attaching more and more patients, where we are producing and recruiting more and more doctors and nurse practitioners to ensure that people get access to the care they need.

Jordan Kealy: It’s interesting that you mentioned redundancies because Northern Health has one president and, I believe, nine vice-presidents, and they all range between $280,000 up to, I think, $480,000 for the president now.

Can the minister explain why Northern Health maintains so many executives and vice-presidents when reports and organizational charts show a significant layer of high-paid administration? What specific justification exists for multiple vice-presidents and executives at salaries exceeding $300,000 plus when those roles could be consolidated, and how much money could be saved through the consolidation? Would the minister commit to redirecting any savings directly to front-line staffing or critical capital projects, like Peace Villa?

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: In answering this, I want to just go back to 2001 when the regional health authorities were first established. Prior to that, as the member might know or remember, there were actually 52 distinct health authorities across B.C.

Work was undertaken to consolidate into the five regional health authorities and the Provincial Health Services Authority. Of course, each one has its own administrative structure. No comprehensive review of the health authorities had taken place over the 20-odd years they’d been in existence. That is exactly why we undertook this work.

The health authority review has identified those redundancies, that duplication, the administrative overspend that…. Like I said already, 1,100 positions in senior executive across the health authorities and the ministry have been identified and eliminated or left unfilled or left vacant.

Each health authority has its CEO. It has a set of vice-presidents that undertake different parts of the work. But altogether, I want the member to understand that the number of VPs in our system has actually reduced. We had 85; we are now at 76 FTEs.

At the same time, there are areas of the system that we know need targeted intervention and focused supports. And specifically speaking to Indigenous health, the need to continue the work to eliminate anti-Indigenous racism in our health care system, to be able to support Indigenous people in the particular barriers to care that they face, has enabled the creation of vice-presidents for Indigenous health across the health system.

This is a very positive development, in my view. But at the same time, as I just pointed out, the number of VPs actually has been reduced, and some have been collapsed.

[3:50 p.m.]

As well, speaking about the role of the B.C. Health Shared Services organization and bringing together these units and removing the redundancies, we will see further job losses in this. I want to speak about that sensitively because these are people’s livelihoods. These are people’s positions. At the same time, I think everybody does understand that it is government’s responsibility to take a very focused look at the way we’re spending our dollars.

I absolutely can commit to the member that every single dollar that is saved in administrative expenses is going to be applied to the front line. That is to help us accommodate our growing population, our aging population.

The member has spoken about the long-term-care centre in his riding a couple of times now. Being able to provide the physicians and the nurses for that long-term-care centre in addition to the other facilities in his riding and across B.C.’s north is a big focus of the system right now.

I also just want to point out that salaries are not set by the health authorities themselves. Salaries at health authorities are set in accordance with guidelines that are determined by PSEC and follow that framework across government.

It is important that British Columbia be competitive with these types of positions because we are seeing opportunities for people to live in any province in Canada to fill these positions, and we want to be able to attract the very best here.

The Chair: We’re going to take a break, a brief recess until 4:04, so just be back by 4:04.

The committee recessed from 3:51 p.m. to 4:04 p.m.

[Rohini Arora in the chair.]

The Chair: Okay, I call this committee back to order. We are debating estimates for the Ministry of Health.

[4:05 p.m.]

Jordan Kealy: Across all the health authorities, how has the ratio of administrative executive positions to front-line clinical staff changed in recent years, and what steps is the ministry taking to reduce overhead and improve efficiency before asking taxpayers for more money?

Hon. Josie Osborne: I’m going to refer back to what I was talking about before around the corporate services expense ratio, which is a particular metric that is used to capture administration as a proportion of the global budget of a health authority.

I also want to point out that there are many positions within health authorities that have multiple roles, so a person can provide front-line clinical services and also have a supervisory role, for example. It makes it very difficult to tease out exactly how much is spent on administrative services versus front-line delivery.

There are some gross estimates that one can provide, but I think it’s important to be very clear on the metric that’s being measured, which is why I return to the CSER, the corporate services expense ratio. As I reported, globally in ’22-23, our CSER here in B.C. was 3.5 percent, compared to a Canadian average of 4.4.

This has actually stayed quite flat, quite stable over the years — the data I have here goes back to 2018-2019 — despite the fact that our population is growing and aging, that health issues are more complex, that technology is changing and that wages and other factors in the system are also changing over time.

I would note that health authorities are required to comply with government reporting standards. The member can easily go back into health authority budgets and will be able to find the administrative expenditures on their financial statements that include a wide range of overhead expenses. That’s administration, human resources, financial services, capital planning, communications, information management and information technology.

I do want to pause here for a moment because IMIT is an extremely important part of the health sector and is changing very rapidly over time. Being able, through electronic medical records and clinical information systems, to share records easily across the system…. If you are diagnosed with cancer in Nanaimo but you have to access treatment in Vancouver or if you’re diagnosed with cancer in Fort St. John and access care in Vancouver, those records are able to be easily shared and transferred.

[4:10 p.m.]

The expenses that health authorities incur around IMIT are growing, and that is, in part, because of the increasing role of information management and the need for cybersecurity, for communication networks, and those things also do require administrative support.

Again, just coming back to what I have canvassed with several members here in estimates around the need to have a constant eye on administrative expenses and the work that the health authority review has done, I just want to point out this is the first comprehensive review of health authorities that has ever been undertaken.

It is because it is so important to make sure that every dollar that goes into our health care system is being spent as efficiently and carefully as possible to deliver that front-line care. Whether it’s in the acute care system once somebody gets sick and needs treatment or before somebody ever enters a hospital, that access to primary care is so important, being a gateway into specialists and into the acute care system here in B.C.

We will continue to invest in the physicians and the nurses, the primary care clinics, the community health centres, expanding scopes of practice for other professionals so that people can see a person who is trained to deal with their specific issue but doesn’t necessarily need to incur the higher-cost person — for example, a physician — working in a team-based primary care environment.

Again, I agree with the member in the assertion that we need to make sure that we spend these dollars as carefully as possible. We have to acknowledge the fact that our population is growing and aging. We have to acknowledge the fact that pharmaceuticals cost more, that diagnostic equipment costs more, and we have to make these decisions very carefully in balancing those investments and expenditures in different parts of the province so that we are doing the very best we can to ensure equitable access for people.

I do think this is particularly important for this member, being from the North, where, again, people experience greater barriers to care and have a harder time accessing it.

Jordan Kealy: I find it interesting when you say “equitable access” because you’re very right when it comes to my region. It’s such a difficult scenario when we face ER diversions on a regular basis. When you look at Fort Nelson, that’s a five-hour drive to Fort St. John. If you look at Hudson’s Hope, if it’s shut down, it’s an hour-and-15-minute drive to Fort St. John. If Fort St. John is closed with its ER, then you’re driving an hour to Dawson Creek. If Dawson Creek is shut down, you’re driving five hours to Prince George.

We had it three years ago where every single one of those ERs were all closed at one time, and people were having to look at driving all the way to Prince George to actually get care. So when you say equitable, it’s very difficult sometimes to actually see that happen.

My question to you. I had a scenario where an expecting mother phoned me, and she said: “I just got a text. I’m going into labour, and the maternity ward in Fort St. John is closed. I got a text, and now I have to drive to Dawson Creek, which is an hour away.”

Why is it that expecting mothers are getting a text saying that the maternity ward is closed? And in how many situations is the maternity ward being closed without actually being noted on a public website ahead of time for scenarios where it’s critical that mothers need to know ahead of time when they’re expecting, especially if it’s in an area like Fort Nelson where it’s five hours away?

[4:15 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for the question. There were a couple of topics canvassed there, about maternity service disruption as well as emergency department service disruption. Both are very serious issues, and we take them very seriously.

We know that at a time of workforce challenge such as we have been experiencing, not just in B.C. but across Canada, it has been very challenging, particularly where staffing is relatively thin on the ground. Sometimes it just takes one person being sick that results in an emergency department not being able to offer the services that it needs to.

That’s why, in those cases where the gap cannot be filled with a locum or a travelling nurse — for example, if it’s a nursing shortage — Northern Health or any other health authority in that situation has some very difficult decisions to make.

Those notices, when emergency departments do have to be on diversion, do go out publicly. We’ve seen some changes in the Interior Health Authority where more notice is given than previously because people travelling longer distances need to know in order to…. They may change where they are going to access care. If the member has any specific experiences or suggestions with regard to that, then I am, absolutely, all ears.

At the same time, the work has to continue to recruit and retain physicians and nurses and others in the very sites that he speaks of, to do everything we can to stabilize emergency department services. I know just how critical that is, how important that is for people who live in these small communities.

When it comes to maternity services that are offered both at Dawson Creek Hospital and at Fort St. John…. Again, with the need to continue to build the number of family practice providers, family physicians who also offer maternity services for low-risk deliveries and the need for other staff that support birthing, it has been very challenging. There have been situations where families, expecting mothers and parents, are proactively contacted by the care provider or the health authority so that they understand what is taking place.

Now, as to the method of that communication, I can’t speak to a patient’s preferences or what has been set up. Clearly, when you’re intending or planning to have a baby in one place and you find out that for a 24-hour period, let’s say — I’m just using that as an example — you wouldn’t be able to go there, but here is where you are going to need to go….

Don’t forget, of course, that the planning and preparation in advance that’s done with the B.C. emergency health services, should there be the need to engage paramedics in patient transfer, is an important part of that. It speaks to why we have to stay focused on stabilizing these services, particularly in rural communities, where the distances are much greater.

That comes back to all the work that is being done to expand medical school seats; to expand nursing seats; to expand midwifery seats; to recruit into the States and other countries more physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and allied health professionals to come and live and practise here in British Columbia. The American recruitment campaign has been, in my perspective, very successful, with 581 job offers already accepted, many of which are in the Northern Health Authority. These are positive things.

Coming back full circle to what I started off by explaining, sometimes it just takes one person who is absent or gets sick and is not able to have that shift filled that can make all the difference. The converse is true. It might be the addition of one more person to a member of a team that will make all the difference in being able to help stabilize.

Beyond that, having the buffer and moving towards minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, for example…. We are seeing the evidence of that already, where services are more stable, workplace conditions are more favourable, nurses are reporting very positive impacts of reaching those minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. That work is underway in both Fort St. John and Dawson Creek as well.

Jordan Kealy: I’ll change it up. I’ll switch over to the HPOA.

[4:25 p.m.]

The Health Professions and Occupations Act represents a fundamental restructuring of how health professions are governed in British Columbia. This has been a multi-year process, from legislation to transition to implementation, that has required significant changes across the system — consolidating colleges, building new oversight structures, expanding administrative functions and shifting governance authority.

Despite the scale of this change, there has never been a clear, consolidated account of what this restructuring has cost and what it will cost on an ongoing basis. Those costs are spread across ministries, agencies and health authorities, making them difficult to track and nearly impossible for the public to understand. At a time when health spending is increasing by billions, that lack of transparency matters.

Can you provide a clear, consolidated total, across all years and ministries, of what the HPOA restructuring has cost to date?

[Sunita Dhir in the chair.]

Hon. Josie Osborne: For the very reasons that the member has just outlined, it’s not possible within a couple of minutes to come up with an estimate of the costs. As the member mentions, it spans years as well as different departments of the Ministry of Health, and it touches onto the regulatory colleges themselves.

I will give the member some of the funding information that I do have, however, and that is that the Ministry of Health, back in 2023-2024, provided the B.C. Health Regulators society with $4.5 million to support the work that regulatory colleges needed to do in order to prepare to implement the HPOA.

[4:30 p.m.]

The oversight office that’s been established has a budget of $3.65 million per year, and that was for the ’25-26 fiscal year as it was being stood up. The Ministry of Health has committed to providing approximately $7 million annually once that oversight office is fully staffed and it’s fully operational.

The Oversight Office did open on April 1. Their role is to achieve greater public confidence in B.C.’s regulation of health professionals and greater protection of the people who are seeking health services here in B.C.

All six of the regulatory colleges are, as the member knows, up and running. They have fully appointed boards who were selected based on recommendations from the Oversight Office following a merit-based process. Eighty percent of the previous board members have transitioned into roles under the new process and the board is well underway.

Just going back to the establishment of the HPOA altogether, the member will…. I know it’s been covered in the news extensively. It’s been covered in the House as well, around the purpose of the Health Professions and Occupations Act to better protect the public, to maintain that public interest and promote a very accountable and transparent health system.

The modernization of the former health professionals act needed to happen for various reasons, including expressions of concern and complaints from the public, from health professionals themselves and the serious need to address anti-Indigenous racism in the health system and ensure that regulatory colleges understood what their responsibilities were and are when it comes to regulating health professionals.

It further — I think this will interest the member — right in the act itself, directs the colleges to ensure that its administrative processes are not overly burdensome or creating obstacles for people to become registered or credentialed here in British Columbia. So eliminating some of the cost and inefficiencies with the system to ensure that as doctors or nurses graduate school and undertake their licensing or transition from another jurisdiction into our health care system, they can do that as quickly as possible.

The legal mandate of the colleges themselves has not changed. The legal mandate of the colleges has always been to protect the public, but the new act helps to strengthen that.

I’ll leave it there. The member might have more questions about it.

Jordan Kealy: With the current health budget, what portion of ongoing spending is now dedicated to administrating and maintaining the HPOA framework?

Hon. Josie Osborne: I think I just answered that the annual expenses that are budgeted for are in the order of $7 million for the Oversight Office.

Jordan Kealy: At a time when British Columbians are struggling to access basic care, how does the government justify a major system restructuring without clearly demonstrating the total cost of ongoing expense and/or the measurable benefit to patient care?

Hon. Josie Osborne: I want to point out that the Health Professions Act was brought into force in 1996. It’s been 30 years since the act was reviewed and that work was undertaken to modernize the act.

[4:35 p.m.]

Again, I want to come back to the primary purpose of the act, and that is to protect the public interest. When you are seeking health care in British Columbia from a regulated professional, you need to have trust and confidence in the system. You need to know that the doctor you are seeing, for example, has the skills, the competency, the experience to be able to practise medicine here in British Columbia.

I would argue not only do patients want to know that, but the health professionals themselves also want to know that. Protecting patient safety, protecting the profession and the integrity of that profession are incredibly important.

When the Health Professions Act was established and brought into force in 1996, there were similar conversations going on in the public at the time about: what is the purpose of this, why do we need to do this, and is this really needed? I would say, absolutely, it is.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the Health Professions and Occupations Act, why that work was undertaken. I take the member’s point. He’s going to ask questions about how much lots of things cost, and some things are immeasurable. One of those things is patient safety. Being able to protect that and ensure that we have a regulatory system that is fair and balanced but puts the patient’s safety at the top of the list of priorities is absolutely essential.

Back in 2018, when this work seriously came underway, the then Minister of Health appointed Harry Cayton, who is a leading international expert in the field of professional regulation, to undertake an inquiry into concerns that had been expressed about the College of Dental Surgeons’ governance and operations. That included a review of the Health Professions Act at the time and the model of health profession regulation that we have here in B.C.

The inquiry that was launched into the performance of that college was released to the public. It identified several problems with the regulatory framework. That included the role of elections in the composition of college boards; a misunderstanding of board roles and responsibilities, leading to professional advocacy versus sole focus on patient safety; and a lack of transparency in the complaint system.

In response to the Cayton report, the minister established a cross-party committee. That steering committee on the modernization of the health profession regulation led to a consultation paper that was released publicly and received an intense amount of feedback. From there, final recommendations were put forward to improve the model of health profession regulation, leading to the act that we see today.

Again, I want to come back to…. One of the reasons, the needs to modernize the act was also to acknowledge and incorporate work to combat anti-Indigenous racism in the health care system and the need for ensuring that board members were not potentially in conflict by virtue of being elected by their peers and instead appointed through a transparent, competency-based, skills-based process, for which the policies are established.

I would encourage the member, if he hasn’t already, to go to the Oversight Office website where many, many of the policies that have been developed are all published there, and you can see those. They are clear, and they are transparent.

It is maybe a matter of a difference of opinion in the value of that work and why the ministry would take taxpayer dollars, as the member talked about, and invest it into this. But I would say, for a 30-year-overdue review of an act to bring in a modern regulatory framework — which helps protect patient safety, helps to maintain the integrity of the profession, enables the establishment of new regulatory professional categories or colleges in time, as is needed — is part of what British Columbians would expect to see in our health care system so that they know that they are safe when they are seeking care from regulated professionals.

[4:40 p.m.]

Jordan Kealy: To the minister: I asked some financial questions about the HPOA, and you gave me an extensive history of previous acts as well.

I’m curious. When it came to the enactment with April 1, if you look at the previous year, how many of the health professionals licensed themselves? When it came to April 1, how many chose not to renew their licences?

Hon. Josie Osborne: First, I’ll point to the annual reports that all regulatory colleges need to make, in which they report the number of registrants they have. Their licensing renewal cycles are not all equal, so it’s a bit challenging to compare year on year.

With the amalgamation into six regulatory colleges, though, I will point out that that is going to make for more streamlined and effective reporting that is easier for people to access. It has reduced a lot of the administration. We’ve been talking about administrative bloat in estimates here, for example, so greatly reducing the bureaucracy and administration that’s involved there is a positive step.

I will also point out that the number of registrants in colleges is rising year on year. That is, in part, because more health professionals are graduating and becoming credentialed here in B.C. We are recruiting professionals who are moving into British Columbia.

There will always be registrants who do not renew, but that could be for various reasons. It might be deciding to leave British Columbia because you’ve moved to Alberta or Ontario with your family. It might be because you’ve retired. It might be for other reasons. That’s not something that, to the best of my understanding, is tracked.

What I also want to add to this, though, is that we are working very hard to make British Columbia an attractive place to come and deliver health care and to practise medicine. When, again, I look at the recruitment campaign into the U.S., we are seeing the positive results of that.

I have had American physicians who have accepted job offers and moved here, to British Columbia, tell me that they value the Health Professions and Occupations Act because they value having an external regulatory college that is not a state-based system and that they agree that this is an effective way to put patient safety first.

[4:45 p.m.]

So we can disagree, myself and the member, on that, but I would say again that the cost of public trust is not something I am willing to sacrifice or see sacrificed. That’s why I believe in the work that has been done to modernize regulation in the health professions.

Just as with any new act that has been brought into force, there’s a time of adjustment. There’s a time of change. There has been a lot of discussion in the public discourse around this. There has been misinformation. I would dare say in some cases there has been misinformation and disinformation.

What is so important to continue to focus on is that the Oversight Office has a set of responsibilities it needs to undertake. It has just begun those as of April 1. Again, there is a time, a period of adjustment, and we will continue to monitor that and to make changes — for example, as we already have committed to do when it comes to traditional Chinese medicine and some of the regulatory adjustments or amendments that need to be made there. That is the ongoing work of implementing the new act and will continue.

Jordan Kealy: Well, I wasn’t really asking about misinformation or disinformation. I just wanted to get facts — facts about financials, facts about who we have in the system, where we’re bringing them in from. It’s good to hear that we’re getting them from the U.S. or if we’re getting them from other countries.

Knowing the data on this is something that’s very important because right now in the North…. It has been, for the past ten years, where we’re always one person down. We’re always getting a new version. It just seems like it’s over and over. We’re being told that the solution is going to come, but it’s the same thing over and over. That’s why I want to know the facts. I want to know these numbers. Where can you find these numbers?

I have ten minutes left here, and then I’m going to be giving 15 minutes to my colleague here. So if it’s all right, I’m just going to ask some questions to be able to put on notice here to get answered in time.

Budget 2026 removed or deferred clear identification and timelines for the Peace Villa expansion replacement in Fort St. John. Despite prior commitments and local partnerships, exactly what funding was removed from this project in 2026-2027, and which other project or line items were they redirected to?

The next question. Given that the existing Peace Villa is currently full and with a wait-list exceeding 70 people, including seniors occupying hospital beds on our second floor, how many net new publicly funded long-term-care beds will actually open across B.C. in 2026-2027? How many, if any, are specifically allocated to northern communities like Peace River North?

My next question. With provincial long-term-care wait times averaging around 277 to 290 days and higher in some regions, what measured reduction in wait times does Budget 2026 project for 2026-2027 and beyond? Which specific line items deliver those reductions?

Budget 2026 claims significant new health investments, including $2.8 billion over three years, yet core access metrics, family doctors, specialists, wait-lists and LTC placements are worsening, and people continue to die while waiting. How does the ministry measure and demonstrate value for money in health spending, and why haven’t outcomes improved proportionally with the billions added?

The Chair: Member, do you want the minister to answer these questions first?

Jordan Kealy: Just to put it on notice, please.

The Chair: Okay.

Jordan Kealy: Of the $733 million over five years from the aging with dignity agreement, how much has flowed to actual long-term care, capital expansion and new bed infrastructure versus operating costs, wage top-ups and offsetting existing provincial obligations? What percentage has reached northern and rural B.C. versus urban centres?

[4:50 p.m.]

Was the Peace Villa project expansion considered or eligible for aging with dignity funding? If northern seniors’ infrastructure needs were excluded or deprioritized, why?

How many net new long-term-care beds have actually been added provincewide under the aging with dignity framework to date, and how many does that compare to seniors’ population growth and the ballooning wait-list, which has roughly tripled in recent years?

I’ll throw one more question at the minister, and that would be great. I want to thank you very much for your time and answers as well.

With the federal government just announcing the federal transfers being cut, and I believe it was $11 billion, how is that going to affect your provincial ministry, and what are you going to do to…? How is that deficit of funds going to affect our current health care system and where? And is it going to affect rural areas harder than urban?

Anna Kindy: For efficiency of time, I’ll just be reading the questions out and having them answer when….

I’m going to be starting out with the Canada Medical Assistance in Dying. MAiD was introduced in 2016 and expanded in 2021. It operates under two legal pathways: track 1, where you have a terminal illness and natural death is reasonably foreseeable; and track 2 for persons with chronic disabilities or illnesses whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.

A government document obtained through FOI entitled “MAiD oversight unit 2023 MAiD reporting issues and completion errors detailed report” details infractions by medical practitioners or pharmacists that required follow-up. There was a staggering 2,833 in a year where there were 2,767 deaths. The MAiD oversight unit is overseen by a bureaucrat named Sara Bergen, whose biography states that she also heads the overall administration of MAiD in British Columbia.

Given the high rates of error being found by the MAiD oversight unit, what funding is in this budget? Does the minister have to install a public impartial review board similar to the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee, which is independent, multidisciplinary and an expert body established by the office of the chief coroner?

Second question. The Ontario coroner’s model produces a review report. Will B.C. commit to public annual reporting, not just of MAiD volume but of compliance concerns, referrals, track 2 trends and recommendations for system improvements?

Third question. There have been many reports of patients who are not dying being offered MAiD as part of a course of possible treatment. In March of this year, the news media carried the story of an 84-year-old named Miriam Lancaster, who reported that a doctor at Vancouver General Hospital offered her MAiD when she presented in ER with severe back pain but was not dying or facing death, only seeking treatment for her back.

Does this minister think it proper for such offers of MAiD to be issued when not asked for by the patient? And are there any directives or formal policy to ensure that MAiD is not raised prematurely or inappropriately, especially in view of the fiscal pressures that we have in our system and the bed crunch?

The question is that 26-year-old Kiano Vafaeian struggled with vision loss from diabetes, and depression. He was denied assisted death in Ontario, doctor shopped until he found a willing provider and died of MAiD in B.C. A grieving Toronto-area mother is pushing for answers after stating: “A doctor took my son.”

This controversial case is not the first to garner international media attention. What safeguard is this minister putting in our MAiD system to protect the vulnerable population that can access MAiD more easily than treatment, including counselling, disability supports, community services and even palliative care? And were those services available and accessible to patients?

[4:55 p.m.]

I also want to add a little bit to the HPOA as well. Just to put in context that when the Doctors of B.C. had a webinar, they stated that there was not a crisis in the regulatory bodies. The Cayton report was a review of dental colleges, so it’s disingenuous to use the dental college for all colleges.

Last year in the 2025 estimates, I asked a question as to what the evidence is that it was or is beneficial to health and — I’ll repeat — safety to abolish a democratic governance and impose governance by political appointees not required by law to be competent or accountable. The minister did not have any evidence, so I’m asking the same question again. Just to say that saying that it makes a patient safer does not make it so. What is the evidence?

What the minister did say was that one of the stated goals of the HPOA was to depoliticize the disciplinary process. At a recent webinar hosted by Doctors of B.C., a Doctors of B.C. representative stated that a major concern is the potential that this bill will politicize discipline in all aspects of health care.

The HPOA establishes the independent Health Professions and Occupations Regulatory Oversight Office. Sherri Young is the superintendent appointed by the Minister of Health to lead this office. All health college boards will now be appointed by the Minister of Health. All members of the independent discipline tribunal will all be appointed by the director of discipline, Benson Cowan, who himself is appointed. The HPOA also removes access to a judicial review of appeal process, and all appointees have statutory immunity.

Can you explain how this bill makes health care regulation less political and their associated office independent, especially in view that this budget eliminated the Merit Commissioner position, which provided independent oversight into merit-based hiring?

I think the previous member asked the costs of…. Since the college will be organized and run by government appointees, what is the plan in funding these new colleges? For example, who will be paying for the college board? How much will be the members versus the ministry as well as the superintendent and her office and the director of discipline and his office — the budget of the director of discipline and his office meaning the budget of the entire office — and the budget of the disciplinary tribunal?

That question was also asked of: how many health care workers have retired early or left the province since the implementation of the HPOA? There was an article in the Globe and Mail stating that.

There’s also a question about…. The quality assessor can read client files without their consent. This violates a core ethical commitment to confidentiality. We can look at psychologists especially. There’s a fear that loss of privacy will deter clients from entering or fully engaging in therapy, and that has to be thought about with what is happening.

The other question I have, as well, regarding last year’s estimate was the CMAP program, or the community managed alcohol program. Thank you for the responses to the number of programs running in the province. I think it was 11, if I recall. I was trying to find the email, and for some reason, I couldn’t track it down.

The managed alcohol program is when alcohol is brought to the community, and the GNN Nation north of my riding has this program. I’m asking because on the ground, what I’m hearing is that the alcohol is being diverted. It’s not being monitored, and there are people from the GNN Nation themselves that are concerned with the program.

I want to ask: what is the evidence of harm or benefit of the program, and how is it being tracked since it started? Tracking would mean people on the program, how many ER visits, how many hospital visits, how many seizures — documented seizures — history of liver failure, worsening liver failure, overdose and death. I think there needs to be, I would imagine, some tracking of data with the CMAP program.

[5:00 p.m.]

This is just a side question, and I went faster than I thought. I could have more questions, but we’ll stick to this one. We mentioned about PET scans, and I did mention about how many PET scans are performed every year and how many PET scans are performed, as well, for non-cancer indications.

Part of the reason is that some of the non-cancer indications are actually less costly than other investigations that could be used. B.C. has fewer PET scans per person than provinces like Quebec, and they also use PET more broadly for additional diseases as well. I’m just wondering what the government’s plan is to improve the situation in terms of providing PET scans for cancer but also non-cancer.

That’s it. Thank you very much for your time, Minister. I very much appreciate your time on that.

Interjection.

The Chair: Recognizing the member.

Anna Kindy: Yeah. Sorry about that.

It’s just a program that makes sense to me and maybe would save money. People that have kidney failure and will undergo dialysis have a very high five-year mortality rate. I think dialysis costs approximately $100,000 a year. It’s the Kidney Foundation, the B.C. donate now living kidney donor prioritization program, which I think, to me, makes sense. The proposal would allow donors to designate a loved one for future priority access to transplant.

Evidence from the United States suggests that this type of approach can increase living donation and reduce wait times for all patients and has seen very limited use of the priority provision.

I’m just wondering. Can the minister outline whether the ministry is currently reviewing this proposal and where it sits within a decision-making process, especially in view of, basically, the mortality rate of dialysis plus the cost-saving measures and increasing the number of living donors?

The Chair: Members, before recognizing the minister, I would call upon all members to exercise discretion when referring to the names of public servants who are not public figures.

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank you to the member for all of the questions, which…. We will review Hansard and have taken careful notes.

On the last question about the donate now program that’s been proposed by the Kidney Foundation, I wanted to confirm that we are working with the Provincial Health Services Authority to undertake the internal analysis around this, working closely with the Kidney Foundation and an external expert who is helping with that work as well. We’ll look forward to having more to say in the future.

[5:05 p.m.]

With that, we’ll take the other questions as read.

Brennan Day: I would just like to present this motion for the remaining questions that I had from the estimates, to take it on notice to the ministry. I’ll give that to you now.

The Chair: Seeing no further questions, I ask the minister if they would like to make any closing remarks.

Hon. Josie Osborne: I would like to thank members opposite for the discussion and the debate and the questions we’ve had over the past five days and just express a lot of gratitude for all of the staff who have been supporting me here throughout estimates, as well as the many people behind the scenes that we don’t actually get to see in the room.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Minister, and to all members. Seeing no further questions, I will now call the vote.

Vote 32: ministry operations, $35,968,875,000 — approved.

The Chair: I ask the minister to move the motion.

Hon. Josie Osborne: I move that the committee rise and report resolution and completion of the Ministry of Health and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The Chair: The committee now stands adjourned.

The committee rose at 5:07 p.m.