The committee met at 8:03 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I'd like to acknowledge that we're meeting today on the legislative precinct, which is located on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Today we are beginning our review of the annual budget submissions of B.C.'s statutory officers. First up is the Office of the Ombudsperson. With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Chalke.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSPERSON

J. Chalke: Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, committee members. It's great to be back in the Douglas Fir Room for the first time in two years. I think while we're all continuing to manage in an online environment, it's certainly encouraging to be with you all again in person.

[8:05 a.m.]

Just to echo the Chair's acknowledgement, I also want to acknowledge that our office, over on Fort Street, as well as this building, is located on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. I acknowledge, with great respect, their stewardship of those lands.

Today with me are Deputy Ombudsperson responsible for public interest disclosure, and our Indigenous services planning

territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. I acknowledge, with great respect, their stewardship of those lands.

Today with me are Deputy Ombudsperson responsible for public interest disclosure and our Indigenous services planning, John Greschner, and the executive director of corporate shared services, Dave Van Swieten. Dave, in particular, has been moping around for the past couple of years, missing being here in person, given that it's a very familiar place for him, having participated in over 40 appearances before this committee in support of four different officers of the Legislature.

I'm pleased to take this opportunity to speak with you today regarding my office's budget submission and service plan for next year. In front of you are the following documents: our 2022-2023 budget submission; a cover memo, summarizing our budget request; financial reporting tables; our service plan for the upcoming three years; our '21 to '26 strategic plan; our Indigenous community services plan, phase 1; and a document that you also saw in June, our 2020-2021 annual report.

Before I turn to the details of the service plan and budget request, I want to update this committee on our activity since I was last before you in late June. In July, we released our new five-year strategic plan. That's in your materials. This was deposited with the Speaker at that time.

The strategic plan sets out our priorities that we're committed to accomplishing and the values that we'll be adhering to while we perform our statutory duties under the Ombudsperson Act and the Public Interest Disclosure Act. You'll see that we've established seven goals and associated objectives. Those seven goals are to deepen our connection with the public; enhance and modernize our services; expand our investigative impact on fairness in public services; help authorities to prevent unfairness before complaints arise; support implementation of whistleblower protections across the broader public sector; advance and support reconciliation through our work with Indigenous peoples; and be an inclusive, supportive and engaged workplace.

I'm solely accountable for the plan, but I want to acknowledge that many public authorities, NGOs, members of the public, as well as our staff, contributed their thoughts and ideas as together, we developed the strategic plan. I look forward to meeting the important goals that were collaboratively and thoughtfully identified.

In August, we released our final update into our 2015 investigation regarding government's regulation of the private post-secondary career training sector. Our initial 2015 report, entitled In the Public Interest: Protecting Students Through Effective Oversight of Private Career Training Institutions, made 36 recommendations focusing on three key areas: the need for vocational students to have more information about their rights, the need to strengthen complaints processes and the need to increase oversight and enforcement of those private training institutions' compliance with regulatory requirements.

Our update three months ago determined that all but two of the 2015 recommendations are now implemented, resulting in important changes, including a legal requirement to provide students with their rights in multiple languages, sight inspections and enhanced complaint processes.

While that report was generally positively commenting on government action, the same cannot be said for our recent report focusing on the experience of a worker who lost part of his hand in a workplace accident. This report, entitled Severed Trust: Enabling Worksafebc to Do the Right Thing When Its Mistakes Hurt Injured Workers, arose from a case where errors made by WorkSafeBC, terminating the benefits of an already injured worker, directly led to a second, more serious injury, resulting in a partial amputation.

After the second accident, WorkSafeBC's review division ruled that it was wrong to have terminated the inured worker's benefits related to the first accident. Given that the benefits termination led to the second accident, we recommended that the worker receive restitution for this error and that legal barriers be removed that prevent WorkSafeBC from compensating other workers who WorkSafeBC acknowledges are impacted by similar errors.

I'm disappointed that these recommendations were not accepted by government, and my office will be continuing to actively follow up on those recommendations to hopefully get these important changes implemented.

[8:10 a.m.]

Turning to our ongoing operations, I'm pleased to report that our case management and management information system replacement project is proceeding well. As you will be aware from the quarterly updates that I provide to the committee, my office is the first of the four offices supported by corporate shared services to be renewing our case management platform. We've been hard at work on this project since early this year. We're on time and on budget at this time and are still anticipating a go-live date later this fiscal year.

as you will be aware from the quarterly updates that I provide to the committee, my office is the first of the four offices supported by corporate shared services to be renewing our case management platform. We've been hard at work on this project since early this year. We're on time and on budget at this time and are still anticipating a go-live date later this fiscal year. I'll be reporting next to this committee on January 15 with our Q3 update.

Given the times we're in, I'll say a little bit about how we're managing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We're continuing to operate in accordance with the pandemic protocols and strategies that I outlined for this committee previously. Our incoming volumes remain high, and, as I mentioned to this committee in June, the profile of those complaints has changed somewhat from recent years, with different issues and concerns for the public arising during the pandemic than existed before March 2020.

Significantly, we continue to see not just high volumes but high degrees of stress and frustration among the public who reach out to us for support. Many are angry. Some are suffering from mental health challenges, others from stress brought on by social isolation. While that's always the case for those of us in the complaints business, it's been more pronounced during the pandemic, and particularly this calendar year.

That often manifests as a greater interest by complainants on more formal processes, such as seeking a full investigation, and a reduced interest in participating in the informal dispute resolutions. My colleague officers of the Legislature have told me that their staff are experiencing the same thing, and it's not just a B.C. phenomenon. Many colleagues across Canada and internationally report similar challenges during the pandemic.

In light of that, I want to acknowledge the outstanding and often very difficult work done by our intake and early resolution team. They're the first point of contact for people who reach out to us for help. Every day, they provide empathetic, compassionate and thoughtful service and support to people who don't know where to turn. We believe in a No Wrong Door approach, and even where someone is complaining about something that we don't have jurisdiction to investigate, we take time to listen and provide helpful referral information. I'm very happy that my office is seen as a safe and reliable place for them to share their concerns and receive help.

The pandemic is in no way static, as you know, and it continues to present new challenges and issues. Our internal pandemic work coordinating committee continues to be active, monitoring pandemic-induced changes and other developments in public administration across the province, identifying areas where our office can strengthen fairness among public bodies as the pandemic continues. We're often able to resolve issues with public bodies related to pandemic-induced changes to public administration promptly and informally.

At the same time, we are finding ways to resume what I would call more normal activities. For example, our staff have resumed their visits to B.C. correctional centres. These in-person visits are critical to help our investigators understand the many issues that arise in custodial settings and to provide extra eyes and ears on the ground in places that critically need strong oversight.

As provincial and local services gradually return to normal — or at least, much nearer to normal — operation, we anticipate that some public services will revert to functioning as they did pre-pandemic, while others may adopt a whole new post-pandemic model. Many public sector leaders have been talking about falling forward, not falling back, when talking about emerging from the pandemic. While such changes may ultimately be positive for the public, significant changes in public services bring challenges to my office and other ombuds across Canada.

With large-scale change comes uncertainty and instability in the delivery of public services that almost inevitably leads to complaints. New and multifaceted aspects of administrative fairness are no doubt around the corner for us.

We continue to make steady progress on reducing the number of files awaiting assignment to one of our investigators. I'm optimistic that over the next few months, we will not only again achieve our desired state of 50 files awaiting assignment but do so with a sustainability plan that will mitigate the risk of any reoccurrence.

Once that's done, we'll be focusing on the other end of the life cycle of an investigation, namely reducing the number of investigations that go on for an extended period of time. There are many reasons why investigations continue for an extended period, and the issue deserves close review. So that work, looking at extended-duration investigations, will commence in the upcoming fiscal year.

This committee may recall that last year, you funded one incremental position for two years for our office, related to the change to motor vehicle accident compensation from tort to the enhanced care model and the resulting potential impact on complaint volumes to us about any or all of ICBC, the new ICBC fairness commissioner and the civil resolution tribunal.

[8:15 a.m.]

We committed to return a report outlining how this change has impacted our office at next year's budget presentation. It's still our intention do so. Meantime, I want to report that inquiries and complaints regarding ICBC, which is our number one public authority by volume, are up from last year. However, few of those complaints are related to the new enhanced care model.

how these changes impact at our office at next year's budget presentation. It's still our intention to do so. Meantime, I want to report that inquiries and complaints regarding ICBC, which is our number one public authority by volume, are up from last year.

However, few of those complaints are related to the new enhanced care model. That's not surprising, as the new model has only been in effect for accidents that occurred on our after May 1. Our experience has been that complaints regarding motor vehicle accidents don't come to us for many moths and often years after the date of the accident. We will continue to monitor this, but assuming current trends hold, I don't anticipate needing to be back here before a year from now on that issue.

With all that as background, we've prepared the budget and service plan that's before you today. Our budget request for 2022-2023 is $11.58 million. This represents a net increase of $770,000, or just under 7 percent.

The increased expenditure is comprised of four elements: (1) increased workload arising from government's decision to expand coverage of the Public Interest Disclosure Act; (2) phase 1 of the Indigenous community services plan; (3) moving from output to outcome performance measurement; (4) inflation and annualization.

I'll take those in turn. First is public interest disclosure. You will recall that when British Columbia's new whistleblowing law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, first came into force in December 2019, it applied to employees and former employees of the provincial government ministries and offices of the Legislature. At that time, government announced that the coverage of the act would be expanded in phases to cover the broader provincial public sector.

This July, the Attorney General announced the detailed schedule and scope of the expansion. The details of that announcement are set out at pages 19 through 22 of our service plan for the upcoming three fiscal years. Some 63 public bodies will be added next fiscal year in two phases, in April and in December. These public bodies range from very small organizations, such as tribunals, with few staff; to medium-size organizations, such as the Royal B.C. Museum; to large organizations, such as ICBC, B.C. Hydro and B.C. Housing.

The work for our office arising from this expansion falls into two categories: implementation support, helping those public bodies get ready; and investigations of disclosures and reprisals once the act applies to them.

First, from within our existing budget, our office will be providing support to assist the 63 new organizations to implement their responsibilities under the act next year. For example, we'll be providing model policies they can adopt. We'll be delivering training sessions, providing resources and sharing our expertise in everything from how to receive a disclosure, if you're a designated officer, to how to conduct an investigation.

But the experience to date in British Columbia and across Canada with whistleblowing legislation is that implementing not just the letter, but also the spirit, of the law is important to ensure that employees trust that the law is an effective way for them to report wrongdoing in their workplace. So we also stress the importance of a welcoming and speak-up culture in each organization that is going to be covered by the act.

I want to reiterate that we're not seeking new funding for that implementation support work. All of that effort by us will be coming from within funding that this committee has previously allocated to our office, and not just for those 63 public bodies coming on stream next year. We'll be doing some of that same work next year, as well, for the health authorities, who will come on stream early in the following fiscal year, 2023-2024. Again, that's all from within our existing envelope.

The funding we're requesting now is to reflect the increased mandatory statutory duties arising from the broadening of the coverage of the act. We have three statutory roles under the act, and the broader the coverage of the act, the more investigatory work we have. We've estimated that the April wave will increase our workload by one investigator, and the December wave by three further investigators. Start dates will be staggered to reflect these two implementation dates, thereby mitigating the costs next fiscal year.

[8:20 a.m.]

Although it's the smaller component, we'll be very carefully monitoring whether the one position early in the year will be sufficient for those 30 additional public bodies coming on stream in the April wave. Most of the April public bodies are small, and while, on the one hand, that means that relatively few public employees are being added, the likelihood is that this small size means that at least some of these public bodies may have less developed administrative policies and internal controls

public bodies coming onstream in the April wave. Most of the April public bodies are small, and while on the one hand that means that relatively few public employees are being added, the likelihood is that this small size means that at least some of these public bodies may have less developed administrative policies and internal controls — things that one might find in government ministries — and, in the absence of those administrative structures, can yield concerns among their employees resulting in disclosures to us.

Our second request relates to a project that I'm very grateful this committee has supported over the last two years, namely our development of an Indigenous communities services plan. Two years ago, this committee funded a single Indigenous liaison officer, with the request that we report back in this fall 2021 budget process with the details of the plan. Last year, funding to support consultations was provided. It had been my intention to return with a full plan to this meeting. However, obviously, two substantial and significant events affecting Indigenous communities in British Columbia have hampered our ability to share a fully-formed plan with you.

The pandemic and the tragic findings of numerous graves of children on residential school sites in different parts of the province meant that our engagement plans were respectfully put on pause as Indigenous communities grieve and continue to focus on keeping their communities safe. While consultations have been slower than planned, we have made some progress. As I mentioned to you when we met in June, we did hold nine virtual round table and focus group sessions with over 300 Indigenous community members and service providers between January and March.

In the appendix to the Indigenous communities services plan before you, you will see a report where we set out and shared back with everyone who attended what we heard in those nine sessions. You will see that what Indigenous people are telling us so far is powerful and their message to us is unequivocal. We heard that the colonial way that government operates doesn't work for many Indigenous people and, that as a place where people bring their concerns about those governments, our office needs to break out of that mould as well.

We heard that people living on and off reserve don't know where a place that they can bring complaints. We heard how we need to train our staff to be culturally literate, to deeply understand Indigenous law and culture as we conduct our investigations, and to be trauma-informed. We heard how we need to take time to build their trust and that constructive relationships will have to move at the speed of building that trust.

In addition to the consultations we conducted, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's report In Plain Sight also underscored the importance of the work of the Ombudsperson in combatting racism in B.C.'s health care sector. You'll see in the Indigenous communities services plan document pages five and six the various recommendations from In Plain Sight of particular note to our plan. We need to continue to let Indigenous people know that if they have concerns about how they're treated by the health sector, that we are there to listen and help.

Recognizing the progress to date, but also the consultations that we still need to do, we've moved to a phased approach for our Indigenous community services plan. Phase 1 is before you today and phase 2 will be complete this time next year.

We know to be truly serving the needs of Indigenous people in this province, we need to change. So phase 1 contains four elements. First, a one-year extension for the Indigenous liaison officer position to complete phase 2 of the planned development. Second, a small amount for honoraria for consultations that extend into early 2022-2023. Third, a two-year policy analyst position to identify the needed changes to our investigative approaches and standards for maladministration and to make our office more welcoming, more effective and more worthy of a place for Indigenous people to entrust their complaints about government.

Lastly, five part-time contracted regional liaison navigators who will assist in building connections with our office and Indigenous communities across the province, hold open houses and other information sessions and help Indigenous people bring forward complaints abut public bodies under our jurisdiction and navigate our process. I believe that this last element of direct service will build awareness and trust that the consultations we've held to date have indicated need strengthening.

The incremental funding needed for phase 1 is $201,000, as we've reallocated the existing consultation funding to partially offset the cost of the liaison navigators. The cost of phase 1 will reduce by $153,000 next year and a further $121,000 in 2025.

Next fall we will return with phase 2 of the plan.

[8:25 a.m.]

The third request for funding is again one that this committee will be familiar with, as I've previously raised it. That is the need for us to develop meaningful demonstrations of our value through a reliable and useful descriptions of our impact through outcomes rather than — as we've done in the past — through output performance indicators. This shift from outputs to outcomes is very common among public bodies, but it is particularly difficult for and organization that is trying to make public administration fairer and more reasonable. Simply put: how do we measure our impact on getting governments to be more fair, more reasonable?

the past through output performance indicators. This shift from outputs to outcomes is very common among public bodies, but it's particularly difficult for an organization that is trying to make public administration fairer and more reasonable. Simply put, how do we measure our impact on getting governments to be more fair, more reasonable? How do you measure the absence of unfairness?

We set out our intention to make this shift to outcome measurement in our new strategic plan and flagged, in that plan, that the first step would be to identify some public survey measurements to obtain an understanding of public awareness and confidence in our services. Our strategic plan indicated that we would be posting performance survey questions publicly on our website by the end of September, which we did. They are set out at the bottom of page 14 and the top of page 15 in the service plan and include questions like: "Do people know where to go if they believe they've been treated unfairly by a provincial or local public body?" "Do they think the Office of the Ombudsperson is independent, and would they bring a complaint to us?"

Because these questions are being asked of the general public, we'll be engaging a public opinion firm through our regular procurement process. Next year we'll expand the scope of this surveying to include complainants to the office and then public authorities. We expect to be able to conduct that complainant and public authority surveying through our new case management system, and thus I do not anticipate that there will be any incremental cost to that step. We've estimated the cost of the public surveying to be $60,000 per year, and this will allow us to survey various elements of the public –– for example, young people or new Canadians or those living in rural and remote communities. This will yield more useful and richer information than simply top-line data.

The last element to our budget request is to cover inflation and annualization of prior approvals from last year, where one of the approved positions from last year was for a partial year only.

Finally, if you'll allow me a moment to mention that a week ago Friday was the last day before retirement for one of my senior staff, Bruce Clarke. Bruce was hired when Stephen Owen was the Ombudsman and worked for 31 years on our team, rising to the position of executive director of investigations. He appeared before this committee from time to time, supporting the Ombudsperson of the day, including me. Bruce was a modest, quiet leader who always acted in the highest traditions of our office –– impartial, principled and a strong advocate of investigatory rigour. Thousands of British Columbians received fairer public services because of him. Thank you, Bruce, for your service to the people of the province.

That concludes my remarks. Thank you for your interest and attention. John, Dave and I would be happy to take your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Jay. That's a very full report.

I'll now invite members of the committee to ask questions. I see that Pam has her hand up.

P. Alexis: Thank you. A very thorough report, as Janet indicated. I have a couple of questions. First of all, in the first ask, you already got funding from within to allow for all these new associations that you're going to be responsible for, and so the ask is for something to supplement that budget that you've already got.

I'm concerned that that's a lot of new, smaller but perhaps requiring more because –– with only one investigator. I'm sure you've put a lot of thought into that, but I'm wondering if that's enough, just given that sector and how complex those are and how they're all coming under the same umbrella. If you could just speak to the plans and why one and then three and that kind of thing. That's the first part.

And then the second ask was with respect to the $60,000 in the third part of the ask. That's a permanent $60,000 moving forward, correct?

J. Chalke: I'll answer the second question first. Yes, the $60,000 would equip us to basically be doing an assessment of the public in terms of indicators that are really important to determine whether or not the public think that we're having an impact. Are they aware that they can bring their problems to us? We want to be doing the highest value-added investigations every year, and that only works if people know that they can come to us.

With respect to the first part of your question, the two waves that are coming next year are in April and in December. April –– there are a lot of small organizations, lots of tribunals, agency boards, commissions. Not all really small. The technical safety agency has some 400 employees. The Public Guardian and Trustee has over 300 employees. So, you know, there are some bigger ones but lots of very little ones.

[8:30 a.m.]

They don't total a whole ton of employees, and it's employees who have rights under the act. So that's one of the markers we look at: how many employees are potential disclosures? But we also look at the number of public bodies because, of course, if there's something going wrong in a public body, it may not take a lot of employees to

lots of very little ones. They don't total a whole ton of employees, and it's employees who have rights under the act.

That's one of the markers we look at, are how many employees are potential disclosures, but we also look at the number of public bodies too, because, of course, if there's something going wrong in a public body, it may not take a lot of employees to identify that that's coming forward.

Yes, in my remarks I did express we are concerned about the one — whether that's enough — but I'm confident that we can manage with one. The December wave has the big public authorities — Hydro, ICBC, B.C. Housing, others. Those are big. Lots of employees. Big operating entities. We're back-end loading those incremental staff next year. We would aim to hire them 60 days before the act comes into force, so that they're up and running. That's why they're half-year. They're costed at a half-year basis.

Yes, it is something I'm concerned about, but we basically try to factor lots of thing into…. It's not a simplistic: "There's this many employees, ergo there's this many disclosures." But it is a factor, and so we'll monitor it carefully. I think the reality is that this is the government's plan that the Attorney General announced in July — has, as I said, for example, next year, health authorities coming on board. That's a lot of public employees, and so we'll have time. We'll be back here next year. We'll have time to talk about what that looks like so far, and whether our ask this year has proved to be sufficient.

P. Alexis: Thank you for that. Just given, in your initial comments, regarding the stress level of employees, and what you're seeing, I hope that that's right, because I just worry that we're going to see, sort of, a tsunami of issues. It's just a flag that I raise myself. I'd actually appreciate some feedback as we go, to make sure that we're on the right track.

J. Chalke: Certainly, this whole notion of what have we learned from the pandemic…. I know lots of leaders of public bodies are trying to think about: "Okay, how can we come out this, not just recreate the service we delivered pre-March 2020. What can we do different?" We're happy to give that feedback, and are trying to give that feedback to public bodies to say: "Think about this."

There are obviously positive opportunities. The pandemic has created an environment where bigger change has been possible for public services in the province. That can be a good thing. We're also conscious of the phenomenon that any change can result in people being anxious and contacting us. Trying to balance all of that together.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Jay, for that report. There was an awful lot of content in that short period of time. I feel like a sponge in the rain today.

It's good to hear case management system is on time and on budget. I have questions with regards to…. You used a term like you were disappointed in government with regards to the one case that you were talking about earlier on, with a WorkSafeBC issue that was there. I just wondered if you were able to kind of explain it out a little bit further — if it was the review division, or if was WCAT that didn't do what they were supposed to do.

J. Chalke: Ultimately, at the end of the day, our recommendations were directed to government, because what happened in the course of the individual we call Mr. Schneider was that he was…. It was after his second accident that the review division ruled that his benefits related to the first accident should not have been terminated. Our recommendations were to government, because what happened was that while WorkSafe did make some administrative changes — for example, they put in a second level of review before terminating benefits with respect to someone who had suffered any kind of amputation…. His first accident had resulted in the tips of some of his fingers being severed. It was really the second accident where he lost most of his hand.

They made some administrative changes, and they apologized to Mr. Schneider, but they said they were legally precluded from doing anything other than simply paying the benefits that attached to an injured worker.

[8:35 a.m.]

That they couldn't make any sort of additional restitution to him. That they were legally prevented by the terms of the statute they operated on.

We turned to government and said: "Well, if that's the case, we think that where WorkSafe itself acknowledges that it makes an error, it should be allowed to voluntarily

to an injured worker — that they couldn't make any sort of additional restitution to him, that they were legally prevented by the terms of the statute they operated on. We turned to government and said: "Well, if that's the case, we think that where WorkSafe itself acknowledges that it makes an error, it should be allowed to voluntarily make restitution to a worker in those circumstances."

Not to unravel the statutory immunity provisions that protect WorkSafe from being sued every time they make a decision — those would all stay in place — but where WorkSafe itself acknowledges that it made an error, it should be voluntarily allowed to make things right. That was the nature of our recommendation to government.

We also said that for Mr. Snyder's individual case, he should be compensated. And because WorkSafe says they're legally not allowed to do it, we recommended that government do it. Those were the recommendations. As I said, I'm still hopeful that government will see the light on those.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Mr. Chalke, I just wondered, going forward, with the magnitude of the Public Interest Disclosure Act and the expansion of the work and stuff like that, I guess when you kind of fast-forward, let's say past December of 2022, what do you see the organization looking like, in terms of…? I mean, you're adding people, and stuff like that, but what is it really going to look like?

And I guess, at the end of the day…. I mean, you deal with some cases. You investigate; you report out. But the response from the groups that you're overseeing — is it only spotlighting? Or is it a case that there needs to be more of some sort of level of authority that helps move groups?

I'm not saying that…. I mean, there's probably a good reason why WorkSafe has immunity or limitations in terms of what it can afford. But I guess, just looking ahead, how do you see the organization, and what type of cost to government? What does it look like in two or three years?

J. Chalke: You're sort of anticipating my personal workplan for next year, with that question. We did some reorganization on, if I can call it the Ombudsperson Act side of our organization this year and made some changes, in terms of our organizational structure, to streamline how we work and, I think, work more effectively, going forward.

I am conscious that the public interest disclosure piece is still brand new, and we're still, really, very much in a learning stage right now. I won't get into specifics, but I can tell you that every single case we do, that we investigate, is raising a new issue for us under the act that we have to work through carefully and thoughtfully. John's team and I spend a lot of time talking about those individual issues.

I think once we get past those still very early times under the act, I do want to turn my mind to: what does it mean for the organization, going forward? There are precedents in some other jurisdictions that I've been looking at, but it also depends on how much uptake we have under the act, etc., so that's going to be a piece of work for me for next year, to kind of think about organizational design and structure and how that works best, going forward.

In terms of the other aspect of your question, around: are we just spotlighting, or is there something more? Some people think that an Ombudsperson should be entitled to order public bodies to make changes. I'm not of that ilk. Our role is grounded in the notion that it's our responsibility to be able to make recommendations to public bodies for change. That's really where our power comes from.

Steve Owen, when he was the Ombudsman, once said that the real strength of the Ombudsman is the inability to order change. Because coercive powers really…. The easiest thing for governments sometimes is to write a cheque, but what we do is we get governments to change how they think.

[8:40 a.m.]

That comes from doing rigorous investigations. It comes from thoughtful analysis and making principled, practical recommendations about how government can be better. That's really what drives us — that ability to persuade and change governments through the power of our investigations. Sometimes — and the

investigations. It comes from thoughtful analysis and making principled, practical recommendations about how government can be better.

So that's really what drives us: that ability to persuade and change governments through the power of our investigations. Sometimes — and the WorkSafe case is a good example — those recommendations are not received right away in a way that we think they should be. But it also comes to pass that sometimes it just takes some time. Eventually, public authorities…. It's not unknown for public authorities to change their minds some years after we've made a recommendation and actually adopt something that we do.

With all our public reports, we monitor. Particularly where governments say they are going to do something, we monitor and follow up and make sure that that promise to implement a recommendation is actually a real one. I think that that method of working, for us, has really, I think, positively influenced public administration.

The other thing is that the courts have been very positive about our work because we have recommendation-making power. If we had order-making power, we would be moved into a world where the courts would tie us up with lots of rules, if I can put it that way, whereas right now we're able to informally discuss matters with all levels of employees in a public body, get them to talk to us confidentially and privately. There's lots of inherent value. The Supreme Court of Canada has described the importance of our work being informal.

It's really a different thing if you move to a model where you have ombuds making orders as opposed to making recommendations. I'm in the recommendations role. There are definitely people who, when they hear that that's all we do, think: "Oh. Well, that sounds not so powerful." But in our world, it's actually quite different. We believe that changing the way governments think is really a powerful thing.

M. Starchuk: I'm just going to the pie chart that's inside of the document, where you've got all of the numbers that are there. I'm just curious as to space. You've got it listed as 8 percent during the whole work-from-home, two-dimensional, Zoom, Teams — all of that stuff that's there. Is there going to be any impact on your operation and/or budget with regards to space?

J. Chalke: At some point, I'll turn it over to Dave to talk to the details of how we built this chart in terms of our expenditures. But we have not asked for any incremental space for the incremental staff that we're seeking with this submission, because we're still in a pandemic environment. Our staff are still, at this time, teleworking.

We are designing what our post-pandemic return to the office environment is going to look like. I think it's fair to say that it's most likely to adopt a hybrid working model, like lots of organizations are moving to. I've certainly learned during the pandemic that something I was very cautious about before, which was teleworking, is a model that can work well and can be efficient in terms of public expenditure costs for lease space.

We have not asked for any incremental costs to cover any additional staff. That has meant that as we start to think about that hybrid work model…. It's described as Tetris — you know, trying to figure out how you get too many people into not enough offices. We're working hard on that. Certainly, myself and my colleagues at 947 Fort — the other three officers of the Legislature and I, supported by Dave — are looking at how we can work, going forward, particularly when we get to the end of our current lease. What does that look like in the years beyond?

Currently we do have some office space. We are in a lease. Those are those costs — that 8 percent cost. But we're not looking for any increment with respect to that.

Dave?

D. Van Swieten: I think the observation you're making is that the space at 8 percent, that number, will decline a little bit over the next few years. We've not looking to create more, get more space for the staff. As Jay commented, the staff numbers we're requesting now don't include any dollars for additional space.

[8:45 a.m.]

I think, probably in the next four years when our lease expires, there is going to have to be some incremental space for one or more of the offices. But for Jay's submission here, there's nothing included, so that number is lower than it was, from a ratio and percentage point of view, from previous years.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I'm not seeing any more

There's nothing included, so that number is lower than it was, from a ratio and percentage point of view, from previous years.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I'm not seeing any more questions, so with that, Jay, John and Dave, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for taking the time to come and present to us and answer questions.

I guess, just in conclusion, I would comment that what's become apparent, what's really struck me, is how part of your role is to keep a finger on the pulse of the public, and that that pulse has been racing in the last couple of years. That's had an impact on your staff as well. And that a big part of what you do is attending to social cohesion, which is so important.

You've left me thinking about the difference between changing thinking and changing actions. I think that's a very powerful comment that you're making. So thank you for that.

We'll take a recess until nine.

The committee recessed from 8:46 a.m. to 8:58 a.m.

The committee recessed from 8:46 a.m. to 8:58 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I'll reconvene the meeting.

We'll now call on the Police Complaint Commissioner to make a presentation. Then we'll ask you some questions.

OFFICE OF THE
POLICE COMPLAINT COMMISSIONER

C. Pecknold: Thank you, Chair. It's very nice to see everybody in person, rather than virtually.

With me today are deputy commissioner Andrea Spindler and Mr. Van Swieten, who I believe you already know.

I'd like to provide some brief remarks, if you don't mind, regarding the rationale underlying our request. During the last two appearances before you, I described the process we're undertaking relative to our growth. I described it as being somewhat iterative.

As you'll see in our submission, the external matters driving our growth continue to be the subject of some ambiguity and, in some cases, I think we can all acknowledge, some controversy. In addition, external actors such as the city of Surrey police board and the chief constable will be making decisions about recruiting, training, structure and deployment which will influence, to a greater or lesser degree, what resources the OPCC requires and when. These, in many cases, are variables that we're having difficulty forecasting, notwithstanding our direct conversations with the chief constable on his plans.

This poses a challenge, as the statute under which we operate is highly prescriptive and is intended to ensure the municipal police complaint process has a low bar of admissibility. This low-bar access is important. It's meant to support those who are marginalized, without power or, perhaps, suffering from crises in their lives. It is there that this avenue of low-bar accessibility occurs as a counterbalance against the considerable power of the police force.

[9:00 a.m.]

In the case of the pending move towards a municipal police service in Surrey, this also means that the initial deployment in an integrated model — that is, Surrey police officers working side by side with RCMP officers — adds significant complexity to investigations, bringing to bear both our office and, potentially

considerable power of the police force.

In the case of the pending move towards a municipal police service in Surrey, this also means that the initial deployment in an integrated model — that is, Surrey police officers working side by side with RCMP officers — adds significant complexity to investigations, bringing to bear both our office and, potentially, the federal complaints body simultaneously. One example of this complexity is that municipal officers involved in an incident under investigation are compelled to give statements and cooperate with our office and with investigators. RCMP officers are not.

Additionally, there are clear requirements and timelines that must be adhered to under our statute. The committee will recall from past presentations that we, at the OPCC, must have lead time to recruit, train and build staff capacity and generally maintain a planning position well in advance of the anticipated work. This is meant to ensure that the goals of the statute are met in keeping with the public interest imperative of accountable policing here in British Columbia.

I would pause here to thank you for the investments that you provided us thus far. In the context of increasing workloads, complexity and the ongoing challenges brought by the pandemic this past fiscal year, we have been focused on recruiting staff as well as building out our capacity in areas of training, intake, outreach and supervision. For example, in the competition for new analysts positions, what we might classify as our front line, we expanded the recruitment drive much more broadly to enlarge the diversity of the candidate pool. We also implemented a preferred qualification component to the competition focused on experience with trauma, understanding the needs of vulnerable populations and to attract candidates from racialized and Indigenous backgrounds.

Both the deputy commissioner and I viewed as critical to our mandate to bring new and fresh perspectives to oversight and increase our social and cultural competency as an organization. I note this in particular, given the present public dialogue on policing and police accountability. This is reflected in the ongoing work of your colleagues on the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act and the 2019 special committee that looked specifically at our complaints process. They have, in my respectful view, clearly set a path that requires much more than simply adding to the status quo.

The work our office does frequently intersects with complex legal and social policy considerations. This requires us to ensure we support their growth and the development of our people so that we may meet our mandate.

The staff who do our work frequently deal with people who are in crisis in their lives. So the committee will therefore note that within our submission, we are supporting out transformation efforts — efforts that are linked, in our view, clearly but not exclusively to the creation of the Surrey Police Service. In this vein, our need for growth and the funding to support that growth comes from a broader array of influences. What comes to mind is the often-used analogy of trying to remodel the airplane while flying it.

Despite recent growth, we remain a very small office with very limited internal capacity. We have, therefore, been required and will continue to be required to access external services as we move through these efforts in the next few years. For example, we are leveraging a number of government services. We are employing the business and organizational development team at the Public Service Agency to support internal change management. We are employing real property division, Ministry of Citizens' Services, in facilities planning. Also, we are employing the procurement services branch for support related to the development of our initiatives.

All of these services are provided to the independent offices on a fee-for-service basis. Where it makes more sense or it is necessary for reasons of independence, we are utilizing private contractors or using temporary secondments or auxiliary appointments to support flexibility as we build out these core services.

From our annual report, the year-to-date statistics we have provided, you will see that in the past two years, we have witnessed an increase in complaints to our office. You will also note that we are tracking No Wrong Door complaints, which has also added to workload, as intake staff work to assist complainants in reaching the correct jurisdiction.

All of this work is from our existing jurisdictional catch basis and must be processed under the statute and assessed for admissibility. In response to questions, the deputy commissioner can illuminate some of our statistical information.

This is sometimes a laborious and challenging process for staff, especially where barriers to communication understanding must be overcome, usually with the assistance of a support agency. We've been expanding our lists of support agencies and our outreach to them.

[9:05 a.m.]

Low-bar admissibility is one of the hallmarks of the statute under which we operate. As I've noted, part 11 clearly mirrors the need to navigate the various independent actors within the criminal justice system and the complex interplay that results from that. Under this present model of oversight, the police continue to investigate allegations of misconduct against their own officers and

the statute under which we operate. As I've noted, part 11 clearly mirrors the need to navigate the various independent actors within the criminal justice system and the complex interplay that results from that. Under this present model of oversight, the police continue to investigate allegations of misconduct against their own officers, and chiefs of police or their delegates decide whether misconduct has occurred. The OPCC does not decide that. We make no substantive determinations of misconduct.

Our role, the one that statute assigns us, has been described by the B.C. Court or Appeal as performing essentially an executive function, opening and closing doors in the disciplinary process but always with others making the independent decisions about whether misconduct occurred or not. This independence of the various components is structured throughout part 11, including key aspects shielding the commissioner, the police and the adjudicative structure from undue influence or interference. The public policy reasons for this, I think, are apparent.

One key illustrative example is that while I as commissioner appoint retired judges to adjudicate specific matters, when either the statute or the public interest compels me to do so, it's the Associate Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who decides which retired judge or judges I am at liberty to appoint.

Once appointed, the retired judge is wholly independent and arm's-length from our office. They make their own determination within the statute and according to the principles of administrative law. This, in our view, is an important counter balance to the police investigating the police model, which is presently enshrined in the Police Act.

Turning now to the specifics of our request, you will see that it incorporates a request to support independent adjudications in this year, as well as funding for next year. It also includes funding for transformation and growth. It additionally provides for some known inflationary pressures.

In terms of the in-year contingency access, the pandemic and the lengthy court proceedings have brought three public hearings and the associated costs into one fiscal year. Issues with securing venues and delays in proceeding due to public health orders have contributed to the added complexity and cost. Of the two public hearings that remain underway at this time, one was called by me in 2020, and it's the subject of a publication restriction, so there's not much I can say about it. We did provide some links in our presentation, so you can see some of the publicly available information.

The other was called by the former commissioner in 2016, but only got underway again this year, following the decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal in the summer of 2020, reversing a lower court decision that had stayed the hearing. This matter involved a significant use of force, for which one of the officers, who is still a serving police officer, was convicted of assault causing bodily harm after having pled guilty.

Other matters this year that have been called or concluded relate to, for example, intimate partner violence, deceit and allegations of illegal handcuffing and oppressive conduct. Some of these mattes are the subject of some public reporting; some are not.

The seriousness of much of the misconduct which was referred for adjudication, I think, is somewhat apparent, except for those cases where the officer has an automatic right to a public hearing. In all of these matters, they arise from the decision of a senior police officer to either unsubstantiate the misconduct or impose discipline which was not, in my view, appropriate. Referral to a retired judge is the only mechanism available to us in these cases, under the present Police Act.

In recognition of this, the increased workload and the cost for venues, which will need to be managed in the immediate term, our request, therefore, includes an amount to increase the yearly dedicated envelope for adjudicated expenses, starting next fiscal year. In the longer term, with the examination of potential facilities in the Lower Mainland and other initiatives, there may be opportunities to ameliorate the unpredictability to some degree.

By way of illustration, we'll be exploring an in-house counsel program and supporting training for senior police officers acting as discipline authorities. In fact, we have a cadre of people going over tomorrow, I believe, to do training for the Vancouver police and the Surrey police service. We're also hoping to create a discipline digest to support good decision-making by those senior police officers. We are, as we speak, working with government and consulting with government to support legislative change.

I hasten to add that while I have not called any public hearings this fiscal year, the need to do so is driven by many variables and is ultimately a decision that must be made on a case-by-case basis. It also is a mandatory requirement when an officer is facing dismissal or reduction in rank. They have an automatic right to a public hearing.

[9:10 a.m.]

Very serious matters, including police-involved fatalities and allegations of criminal conduct, remain within our oversight as we speak, any of which may require the employment of a retired judge at some juncture in the future.

A few comments on our transformation of workload

right to a public hearing. Very serious matters, including police-involved fatalities and allegations of criminal conduct, remain within our oversight as we speak, any of which may require the appointment of a retired judge at some juncture in the future.

A few comments on our transformation of workload. The bulk of our budget request before you is related to that growth to which I referred. As noted, the OPCC is facing growth to meet what is, frankly, the most fundamental shift in the policing structure in British Columbia in recent memory. This is at a time when the importance of police oversight is the subject of much discussion, and I think we can all acknowledge that the impacts of the global pandemic seem to continue and reverberate for all of us.

This request is in support of solidifying the programs and structure changes gained from the funding you granted us last year, such as dedicated training and staff development, front-line oversight and intake capacity, as well as supervision and the development of our outreach programs. Next year's funding — in the envelope, which you may determine — will be utilized to continue to support increased admissibility capacity, increased alternative dispute resolution capacity, our multi-year Indigenous accessibility project, as well as more general outreach and communications programs consistent with the 2019 special committee recommendations. The details of our request are outlined within the budget document before you.

Just a few comments on the case tracker system. You will recall that the office is scheduled to start the design stage of our case tracker system in the third quarter of this fiscal year, with the go live planned to occur in the second quarter of the '22-23 fiscal year. This is a minor adjustment to the original timeline, which had us going live in Q4 of this fiscal year.

Processes and systems related to operations are complex, multifaceted and significantly tied to legislation. As a result, additional time to assess capacity and resourcing needs, considering the significant planning and growth that is currently underway, was undertaken. This does not substantially impact the overall funding, but rather shifts the funding from this fiscal to next fiscal.

In terms of facility, this year we engaged both real property division, Ministry of Citizens' Services, and a commercial firm simultaneously to research available properties. The research was predicated upon parameters for office space, based on present and future staff complement, as well as a multi-use space suitable for adjudicative proceedings.

Locations were restricted for ease of access from rapid transit in the corridor between Surrey central and downtown Vancouver, that parameter being in recognition of supporting access for complainants and witnesses, many of whom are from vulnerable communities.

In aggregate, both proposals provided a range of possible properties, with varied requirements for tenant improvements. The range is outlined in the document before you but is generally between $120,000 and $160,000 for one-time costs and $400,000 for annual costs. Of course, more refinement needs to be done. We're going to be doing more work on that, and there is, as a consequence, no request before you with respect to facilities.

In summary, the funding request for fiscal year 2023 is an increase of $1.3 million in operating funding, 200 in additional adjudicative funding and $224,000 in capital funding. Additionally, the OPCC is requesting supplementary contingency access of $600,000 in dedicated adjudicative funding for the current fiscal year.

Before I conclude, just a final word, if you don't mind. I would like to make a few comments about our staff members. Those are the staff that Deputy Spindler and I are supporting with requests, many of whom are working as we speak. Over and above the personal and professional impacts we have all experienced during this pandemic, our front-line staff deal day to day with complainants, police officers and others, all of whom are experiencing the same challenges and stressors as we are.

In some cases, the citizens who seek access to the complaint system are in crisis or are suffering. Our complaint system is complex and difficult to understand. Some are surprised when they complain to our office, and a police officer from the very same department that they're complaining about shows up to do the investigation. All of this requires careful, compassionate and thoughtful work by our personnel. Sometimes — and thankfully, rarely — they are personally attacked or threatened by misguided individuals. We have incidents that have occurred, more so in this past year.

[9:15 a.m.]

This can be hard on them, and as we grow as an organization, it's on my mind to provide the stewardship to their well-being and professional development as they go about doing this very difficult but critically important work.

Those are my comments. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Clayton. I'll now open it up to questions from the committee.

as they go about doing this very difficult but critically important work.

Those are my comments. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Clayton. I'll now open it up for questions from the committee.

M. Starchuk: Clayton, thank you for your presentation. Your closing comments are well taken in a time that everybody is just sick and tired of being sick and tired, for lack of a better term.

I have to ask some specifics. I am happy with the training programs that you're talking about doing so that people can understand and recognize what the differences are and how to treat the people that are there — to get out in front of the bus rather than being underneath the bus. I really appreciate that part of your reporting.

I'm kind of stuck on the issues around Surrey. If the RCMP are not compelled to speak but the municipal police force is compelled, how do you forecast being able to do an investigation where you're going to have two officers wearing different uniforms attending the same incident, but the mechanisms of getting your information out of there are not the same?

C. Pecknold: That's a very good question. We're dealing with that as we speak. There are a lot of integrated units in policing in British Columbia that include RCMP and non-RCMP. The one that comes to mind is the emergency response team in the Lower Mainland, which includes municipal police officers but is essentially an RCMP-led unit. There are others — Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit.

We navigate those on a case-by-case basis, and depending on the factual underpinnings, the evidence of the officers may be available to us. In other cases, we may wish to compel statements, and we can do so with municipal officers, but RCMP officers are not required to do so.

Now, that's not a comment…. They have the right to decide whether or not they give statements in our process. We have no jurisdiction with respect to them. But we have examples of files that involve fatalities, involving the emergency response team. There are both municipal and RCMP officers involved, and there is some difficulty in navigating that evidence, at times, during the investigation. We continue to do so.

I think, generally, as an organization, the RCMP are very cooperative, but individually, we have no legislative hook to require the RCMP officers to give statements.

M. Starchuk: Then, to follow up, what's needed to get that cooperation? I mean, I know that there are certain things that happen — like Surrey borders Delta — and there must be incidents that take place when you go across that imaginary line. I'm just curious as to what needs to be done, because I don't think this is the first time it's going to happen in British Columbia. So just forecasting ahead, what tool would need to be in the toolbox to be able to do your investigations with a really good outcome?

C. Pecknold: Well, I'd always look to legislative change to support that, with the proviso that I'm sure the constitutional lawyers at the Ministry of Attorney General may or may not see it the same way we would perhaps see it, but I guess that's their burden, not ours.

You may recall that Mr. Oppal…. Wally Oppal, when he completed his report in 2012, the missing Indigenous women and girls report, made a recommendation that the RCMP be brought in under the provincial oversight regime. That, to date, has not happened.

Your colleagues at the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act have, I'm pretty confident, heard this issue and are probably thinking about it.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions from the committee?

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Clayton, very much for your presentation. I'm just noting, on the first page of your statutory officer budget submission template, looking for an overall budget lift of, it looks like, about 15 percent…. But on the base salaries side, it's indicating 26 percent.

[9:20 a.m.]

I was just wondering if you could comment on what percentage of that increase is attributable to increased capacity, as far as new hires, and what percentage is associated with just wage increases in general.

C. Pecknold: Could you refer me to what portion it was on.

G. Kyllo: It was on table 1, on your three-year budget plan.

as far as new hires, and what percentage is associated with just wage increases, in general?

C. Pecknold: Could you refer me to what portion it was on?

G. Kyllo: It was on table 1, on your three-year budget plan.

C. Pecknold: Oh, table 1. I'll ask Mr. Van Swieten to give you that information, and then I'll follow up.

D. Van Swieten: Thanks, Clayton. A lot of details went into the complexities of doing Clayton's budget, so it's like my favourite sunrise.

The way I'd describe the increment for the 23 percent comes back to a number of positions last year were only partially funded, because we didn't need them on April 1. There is approximately $152,000 for annualization of salaries. There is $73,000 for wage inflation, which is just over 2 percent, which reflects the increments given to staff in the current fiscal year. There is, for the workload increase, for Surrey as well as existing jurisdictions, $285,000, or 8 percent of that. And for the transformation work that Clayton described, there's $313,000 set aside for that. When you add in a minor reduction for the CTS cost, that comes up with the 23 percent.

C. Pecknold: Thanks. In terms of programs, what we're building out is, for example, the training program that I've just described. This is the first year that we've dedicated a position to providing training, and that's been something that's always been done as a component or portfolio on the side of the desk of most of our managers and the deputy. In fact, the deputy provides direct training to the retired judges when they're newly appointed, which is considerable.

This is the first time that we've actually had a program that's dedicated to training. In addition, we are adding programs related to our admissibility, and we're looking at a different classification of positions. For example, we have analysts who are classified at a certain level who do the day-to-day oversight, but now we're looking at hiring a next level down, less expensive, position as a developmental position to do admissibility analyst work, which is presently being done by what is a band 2 position.

We're looking at hiring programs for the workflow, for the admissibility. It's mostly people related and includes billing out things like, as I say, training. We'd also like to build out a better research capacity to make better use of our data. We have that in line in the plans to do, depending on funding. That would be able to make better use of our case-tracker system, the data in it, to better tell the story of what's going on, to assist organizations — police boards and others — in identifying trends and preventing misconduct, which I think, at the end of the day, is hopefully a goal for all of us.

That's where the funding is dedicated to in terms of programs.

G. Kyllo: Thank you. That first number that you had referenced, Dave — $152,000. What was the definition you provided for that lift?

D. Van Swieten: That was annualization of prior year. For example, in the current fiscal year that we're in now, a number of the positions that Clayton identified in the last budget cycle didn't have them starting until September. So we only needed half of the wage. Going forward, because it's a permanent position, we need the other half of the wage. That's what that amount represents.

G. Kyllo: Okay. Thank you for that.

C. Pecknold: We staggered hiring last year. To be frank, some of our hiring was delayed because, oddly enough, for some positions, we didn't get very many applicants, which was quite surprising to us.

The deputy can speak to it if you're interested, but our analyst competition was very comprehensive and very thorough, and we went much more broadly than traditionally we have. Obviously, we're trying to continue along a trajectory of civilianization. We're looking at what might have been, in the past, non-traditional places. We weren't looking for former police officers, for example.

G. Kyllo: Just one other question, if I may. At the bottom of the page where it has background information, there's a series of numbers there. I'm assuming that might reference a dollar-per-hour figure, but I just wonder if you could expand on what that actually represents.

C. Pecknold: Is this table 1?

[9:25 a.m.]

G. Kyllo: Table 1 — yes. It references 28.17, then increasing to 37.00, which is about a 31 percent increase. I was just looking for a bit of clarity on what, specifically, that was referencing.

then increasing to 37.00, which is about a 31 percent increase. I was just looking for a bit of clarity on what, specifically, that was referencing.

C. Pecknold: On my chart, it probably represents our total FTEs.

G. Kyllo: So 28.17 FTEs.

C. Pecknold: Yeah. When I counted up our FTEs yesterday, I came up with that number.

We have, for example, part-time FTEs, auxiliary positions that are 0.5 or 0.6 or as-needed positions. For example, some of our investigations are highly complex and involve needing some unique skill sets, frankly. So we sometimes rely on auxiliary appointments, and they may expand or contract. But generally, that about represents our FTE count at present.

G. Kyllo: Okay, great. That actually does make sense, because a 31 percent increase in FTEs, and yet you're looking for, approximately, an increase of about 26 percent, I think, in total wages and benefits. Perfect.

J. Routledge (Chair): Are there other questions?

M. Starchuk: As a person that was a former trainer, I'm kind of surprised it was working off the edge of somebody's desk that's there. I am very happy that there is now somebody that is dedicated to take on that task that's there.

And maybe just for my own information, what kind of programs are going to be developed and delivered? What kind of a time frame would those be in?

C. Pecknold: I'll let the deputy commissioner take that one, if you don't mind.

A. Spindler: Thanks for your question.

In terms of the training programs that are being developed internally, within our organization, it's focusing in on developing not only the initial training for investigative analysists joining our office who are coming from non–law enforcement backgrounds; it's focusing in on the legislation — which is what we have to ensure that police who are investigating complaints are adhering to — then also in relation to understanding of police operations and police tactics and things of that nature.

Then there is also training around building on the skills of an analyst when they first join the office to get them prepared to oversee a relatively run-of-the-mill type of complaint to more complex complaints involving a number of complex legal issues, a number of complex administrative type issues. So it's building on advance training. You have your initial set of training with the analyst, and then they'll progress after a year or two into some more of that more complex training to kind of build on those foundational skill that they'll learn.

In addition to that training is also building out training for professional standards investigators and for discipline authorities, as well, and retired judges. Because part 11 has often been described as very dense, complex and confusing by the courts, we are looking to develop this training to deliver to professional standards investigators and discipline authorities who are working under this legislation, to give them that guidance and that training. Then they're able to do their jobs accordingly to the legislation.

So those are the areas of the training that really focus in on the mandate of our office and what it is that we're doing in terms of the oversight responsibilities.

Then in addition to that is also building out professional development for each of the staff members within our organization. Also looking at — which is in line with the special committee recommendations — building out training and experiences for our staff to engage with people with different lived experiences, to engaging with Indigenous communities. Also focusing in and putting together a training plan and a program that includes training around Indigenous cultural competency and awareness, focusing in on mental health, first aid.

For example, right now, our staff are going through a course called Mental Health First Aid through the Mental Health Commission of Canada, because so many of our staff, particularly our front-line staff, are having to navigate very complicated conversations with individuals with complex mental health issues. It's giving them the tools to be able to have those conversations and to navigate some of those issues accordingly.

[9:30 a.m.]

It's building out that side of the training, as well, to ensure that we have a very cohesive and balanced training program within our organization and then to also deliver that training to our other stakeholders in relation to who's doing the police investigations or who's

some of those issues accordingly.

It's building out that side of the training, as well, to ensure that we have a very cohesive and balanced training program within our organization and then to also deliver that training to our other stakeholders in relation to who's doing the police investigations or who's deciding on misconduct. Then we can really improve those investigations, and we can better the quality of decisions that are being made.

C. Pecknold: I would add that the ministry is putting together a training program for police boards. We've agreed to support them and to be part of that training. We have limited involvement with police boards — their service and policy complaints or making recommendations. We're also going to support improving the governance, for example, through that training.

M. Starchuk: It feels like it's something that's long overdue and very welcome now.

Do you anticipate — maybe to the FTE point of view — that this is a growing part of your office so that you're able to…? As municipalities change over from RCMP to a municipal force…. With the expansion of that, do you see this training person that's there expanding to two people or three people?

C. Pecknold: I think the short answer would be…. Yes, it depends. Obviously, it depends on funding and priorities.

I will say…. I think if you look back over our annual reports, the constant theme — I believe, in my tenure, I've been saying — is the importance of prevention and the importance of governance. From my perspective, training, whether it's for police officers themselves, when they go through their training, or whether it's our office supporting good training…. To me, it pays dividends. It pays dividends, I think, in helping, perhaps, pull back the curtain a little bit on the complexity of the system that we're dealing with. It, perhaps, gives better results for people.

We would like to expand our ADR, for example, our alternative dispute resolution. There'd be a big training component attached to that.

We see, going forward, training being a very significant, ongoing part of the transformation that is underway.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I just want to go back to this table 1, which my colleague Greg Kyllo was asking about.

There's an additional $600,000 for professional services. I know the adjudication is one of these things that's a variable, depending on how many retired judges that you have to hire. Can you just explain where that additional money comes in?

Then I have a second question.

C. Pecknold: I think that $600,000 is the in-year, this year request.

Is that where it is?

Interjection.

C. Pecknold: Yeah.

I can expand on the professional services request, which I think is in there as well, if you'd like.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Yeah. I'd like to know what it is. Is it a variable? That's what I'm really looking at.

C. Pecknold: Well, the $600,000 is the in-year request for adjudicative funding, which is a variable, certainly.

There is money in there for further professional services. For example, the deputy commissioner right now is ramping up an Indigenous accessibility project that is multi-year. We're working with the procurement services branch to do an RFP for that program. We anticipate that there will be costs over a couple of fiscal years.

I do not anticipate, frankly…. This might come back to haunt me, but I don't anticipate that level of professional services being required all through the future years. I see this as a ramp-up period, where we're going to require external professional services while we build up the organization — for example, by bringing in the Public Service Agency with our transformation efforts. That's a fee-for-service, but that's not going to continue every year.

We've loaded some money in for next fiscal year to support these ongoing transformation efforts. The $600,000 you're referring to, I believe, is the adjudicative funding request.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): The next question after that, looking at…. I don't have it in front of me. I recall, when we met with you in the springtime, the increases in what that was attributable to, the operating budget of, let's say, $4 million to what it's at, approved at $5.4 million, up to $6 million, up to $6.9 million for next year.

[9:35 a.m.]

How is it that you see it tapering off in the next couple of years? I guess my thought is…. I didn't see that trend line in your budgets in the past. Obviously, there are factors like Surrey. It wasn't on the radar probably three years ago quite the same way as it is today.

What do you…? I guess what I'm kind of wondering about

tapering off in the next couple of years. I guess my thought is that I didn't see that trend line in your budgets in the past. Obviously, there are factors like Surrey. It wasn't on the radar, probably, three years ago quite the same way as it is today.

I guess what I'm kind of wondering about is: is that where you see it settling — at this kind of number of about $6.7 million — and being able to maintain the office with the full integration of the Surrey police force?

C. Pecknold: If you don't mind, I'll give the deputy an opportunity to talk about our stats of what's going on outside of Surrey right now, because our stats are, surprisingly, increasing.

However, I thought about this question that might arise. At first, I thought that I should refer to it as a bell curve, but I don't think that's correct. I think what we're going to see is an initial investment, because we want to build out these programs. Then what we'll see is just incremental requests, depending on our workload, depending on the metrics that we can verify, year over year.

I don't anticipate this trend line to stay the way it's trending right now. As you may recall, last year we had an ask. We pulled it back a little bit. This year we looked at what we were looking to build out, and we took a fairly sharp pen to it and decided: "This is what we need to build out the programs."

After that, we're just really talking about adding what might be base resources. For example, our core front line are our analyst positions. So as our metrics go up, which we can define clearly, then we would see our cadre of analysts need to increase year over year, depending on the metrics. Then if you add so many analysts, then of course, you have to have supervisory capacity.

I expect that we're seeing this fiscal year and, potentially, next fiscal year as somewhat big transformation efforts, if next fiscal year we come back and request facilities in the Lower Mainland. But that's going to be based on a business case. To me, that's the biggest chunk of conversation next time: the questions around facilities.

I'm trying not to hold myself, MLA Stewart. I'm anticipating we're doing a front-end load and a front-end buildout, but I don't anticipate the trend line to continue like this beyond fiscal years, except for the question of facilities.

B. Stewart: So am I to read into that? The fact is that the budget forecast, really…. Although there's buildup or buildout cost to accommodate this police force that's not fully yet even operational, the costs that we're looking at today are a function of the complaint process coming to your office with the other forces that are private: Victoria, Vancouver, Mission, all of those ones. That's where there's an increased pressure, just because of the existing resources, and it will only get larger.

C. Pecknold: Well, it'll only get larger with Surrey adding to the catch basin. But within our existing catch basin, it's increasing. Actually, do you want to expand on that bit?

A. Spindler: In looking at our statistics over the past couple of years, we have noted a significant increase in the number of our registered complaints — so complaints coming in from the public. That has definitely increased. Last year was the highest number of complaints that we've received from the public in, really, a ten-year trend. In terms of the rationale why, there's greater discourse and awareness and questioning policing and police interactions. We're starting to see that occur through complaints being filed with this office.

Also, in terms of looking at the total number of investigations, we're also seeing an increase in our number of investigations as well. We saw a 35 percent increase in our investigations, so that requires added resources in terms of analysts being assigned to oversee those investigations. Then that increase also trickles over to the potential need for adjudicative review as well.

So in just looking at the first six months of this year, we're already seeing a 25 percent increase from last year in terms of the complaints received from the public. We're already trending to see this year exceed last year in terms of complaints that we've received from the public.

[9:40 a.m.]

In terms of being able to respond adequately to the public and to the complaints that are being filed, we need to ensure that we are being resourced effectively to meet those demands. That's just with our existing catch basin. That's not factoring in the city of Surrey at all.

C. Pecknold: The only other thing I would add is that, for example, decisions that are made by existing police departments on how they structure can impact it as well. The Transit Police are examining

to meet those demands, and that's just with our existing catch basin. So that's not factoring in the city of Surrey at all.

C. Pecknold: The only other thing that I would add is, for example, decisions that are made by existing police departments on how they structure it can impact it as well. The transit police are examining a community safety officer program right now, as we speak. We don't know how many of those officers they will hire, how they'll deploy them. They would be special municipal constables, which do fall within our jurisdiction.

If police agencies add a new program that includes officers or special municipal constables, then that adds to our workload. Of course, the government makes the decision to provide us with responsibility to oversee, for example, special provincial constables, well, then, we'd be having a whole other conversation.

P. Alexis: I just wanted to have a little bit more conversation about one of the comments you made in your opening remarks about the number of incidents we're seeing where police officers are being attacked or that there are incidents of violence against police officers.

Who is tracking that, and what's happening to those? If you could just elaborate a little bit on that for me.

C. Pecknold: We don't track incidents…. Well, we track incidents that are reported called reportable injuries, and there's a definition for reportable injuries. Those are up this year, as I recall.

Those aren't…. Sorry. Go ahead.

A. Spindler: In terms of the reportable injuries that we see, we have seen an increase in those. We have about a 7 percent increase in terms of the total number of injuries, where a person, a member of the public, has been injured by a police officer, and they go to the hospital for treatment. So we have seen an increase in the total number of reportable injuries compared to the previous year. That's what the commissioner was referring to.

But in general terms, these are members of the public who are injured by police.

C. Pecknold: But we don't presently have the capacity — or probably not the mandate at this point — to analyze whether those are the result of aggression against police officers or the result of other things. That's what the investigation will determine. We do know — I think I'm correct in saying — our dog bites are down. But other types of reportable injuries have gone up.

As I talked about earlier, depending, again, on our ability to develop programs, we would like to dig down into some of those stats, so that we can inform police boards and say: "Look, this is what we're seeing. Why don't you look at your data and see what makes sense?" It could be a training issue. It could be a policy question. It could be any number of things.

There is a dialogue out there about a seemingly increase in aggressive incidents. It would be interesting to know whether this increase in reportable injuries in any way correlates to that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I'm not seeing…. One more question, Greg.

G. Kyllo: I'm just interested more with respect to crime. Is there any correlation between increasing unemployment rates and increasing amounts of crime? Is that something that you have any experience, or can you share any information on that?

C. Pecknold: Well, as Police Complaint Commissioner, I probably don't have a lot of skin in that game in that sense. As you may know, I was the ADM of policing in the province for eight years. Crime rates are so difficult to extrapolate and correlate to behaviours. My deputy here is a master's of criminology. She could probably do better than I can on that.

There are all sorts of complex interplays between violent crime rates, non-violent crime rates, property crime rates. It would really be helpful to understand, for our purposes, if…. For example, reportable injuries. What are they related to? Are they related to a higher incidence of street-involved incidents? Are they related to people suffering from mental health and addiction who are coming in conflict with the laws? How is that resulting in an injury that's sustained as a result of a police officer?

In that sense, if there's a correlation between the rise of, for example, street crime to those reportable injuries, we're very interested in understanding that.

[9:45 a.m.]

That's a non-academic answer. The master's of criminology could probably do much better at that than I could. Do you want to add?

A. Spindler: I don't think so. I think we're good.

C. Pecknold: I'm just

For example, street crime to those reportable injuries — we're very interested in understanding that. That's a non-academic answer. The masters of criminology could probably do much better at that than I could.

Do you want to add?

A. Spindler: I don't think so. I think we're good.

C. Pecknold: I'm just a lawyer. I've just got a law degree.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Well, with that, I'd like to thank you, Clayton, Andrea and Dave, for giving us such in-depth insight into your work, your role, the complexity of it and the challenges you're facing. I think you've made it very clear that you're expected to plan and budget under circumstances that are ever evolving, not just because of Surrey but, as you mentioned, because of the increased attention with regard to police oversight.

I guess, finally, I'd just like to thank you for the compassion that you've shown for the many vulnerable people who are making the complaints, for the officers who are the subject of complaints and for your staff. So thank you again, on behalf of all of us.

We'll now take a recess until 10 a.m.

The committee recessed at 9:46 a.m.

The committee recessed from 9:46 a.m. to 10 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next item on the agenda is to hear a presentation on Elections B.C.

Anton, over to you for your presentation, followed by questions.

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Good morning, Madam Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Thank you for the invitation to meet with you such that we can present our budget requirements for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

I'd like to begin with a sincere acknowledgement that this meeting is taking place on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. We acknowledge with gratitude and with respect their stewardship of the lands that we are on.

I would also like to reflect briefly on the recent marking of Remembrance Day on November 11. As a former serving naval officer, this day has special meaning for me. As Chief Electoral Officer, I deeply respect the service and sacrifice given freely by Canadian veterans who fought for our freedom and the democratic values that we hold dear.

Joining me this morning is Charles Porter, on my right, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer of electoral finance and operations, and Tanya Ackinclose, director of finance and administration. Following my opening comments, Tanya and Charles will highlight the details of our operating, capital and event budget requirements, as well as the funding necessary to provide annual allowances to eligible political parties.

I'm always pleased to provide an update on the activities and the highlights of my office at our annual meetings. It's a great opportunity to share with members of this committee — and, through you, the entire Legislative Assembly and citizens of British Columbia — how we use public funds to serve the democratic process in our province.

I'm particularly pleased that we've been able to resume meetings in person. Although virtual meeting tools like Zoom have given us the ability to meet remotely during the pandemic, it's good to be able to regain the interpersonal connections that are so important to our work.

We provided our budget document and associated spreadsheets to you last week. In those documents, we review, amongst other things, our mission and organizational values. Our mission is to serve democracy in British Columbia, and we do this by administering elections fairly, impartially and through delivering modern and accessible and trusted electoral services that are designed with British Columbians at the centre.

Two of our core values are accountability and transparency. This meeting provides us with an opportunity to bring those elements together and put forward the budget requirements that are needed to achieve our mission in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner.

Before summarizing the numbers that comprise our budget request, I'll make a few brief remarks on our work this current year and our key priorities for 2022-23. Following these comments, Tanya and Charles will provide additional detail. Tanya will speak to the ongoing operating and capital budget requests, while Charles will address our event and public funding requirements.

Elections B.C. has six ongoing strategic priorities: deliver events, modernize electoral services, improve accessibility and inclusivity, build organizational capacity and protect electoral integrity. These priorities provide an effective framework from which to describe our work — both retrospectively, looking past this current year, and into the future.

[10:05 a.m.]

Under event delivery, in 2021-22, we completed close-out activities from the 2020 provincial general election. We oversaw campaign finance and election advertising requirements for over 20 local by-elections and referenda and are in the process of administering two initiative petitions.

Supporting this priority

we completed close-out activities from the 2020 provincial general election. We oversaw campaign finance and election advertising requirements for over 20 local by-elections and referenda and are in the process of administering two initiative petitions.

Supporting this priority, we continued implementing legislative changes to local election law brought about by the Local Elections Statues Amendment Act, 2021, and have begun training local election participants on these new rules.

Looking ahead, our primary event focus in 2022-23 will be administering campaign finance on election advertising rules for the October 15, 2022, general local elections. In addition to new rules for third-party advertisers and elector organizations, there are typically over 3,500 candidates across all local jurisdictions who must file campaign financing reports. Moreover, for the first time, local elector organizations will be required to register with my office and file annual financial reports in a similar fashion to provincial political parties.

Our electoral service modernization projects were also a key priority in 2021-22, requiring intense effort from all staff. We continued developing electronic voting book software and integrated paper ballot tabulators into redesign voting and counting processes.

Looking ahead to the end of this fiscal year, we will complete end-to-end simulations and make any modifications necessary based on lessons learned. Next fiscal year, we'll look to operationalize these new systems and processes so they will be ready for future elections. We will also be able to provide demonstrations of the technology-enabled voting place to legislators and to political parties.

Modernization projects also include our ongoing development of the candidate nominations application system or, as we call it internally, CNAS. This system will enable prospective candidates to file their nomination package online. It will also allow them to use e-signatures to appoint their agents and e-payments for the nomination fee. We plan to have this system complete early in fiscal year 2022-23.

Improving accessibility and inclusivity of electoral processes is also a core commitment for Elections B.C. Despite the pandemic, we continued with our outreach and education programs this past year, with a focus on youth, people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, new Canadians and people living homeless. These groups face higher barriers to their participation in our democratic processes, which require ongoing work and focus. Our implementation of the Accessible B.C. Act will further our efforts in this area.

Supporting accessibility to voter registration, this past year has also seen a broader implementation of the list of future voters. Because the Election Amendment Act, 2019, gave us expanding access to voter data held by the Ministry of Citizens' Services, we will be able to reach out to over 110,000 eligible B.C. youth in the new year, confirming their registration on that list.

Establishing the list of future voters in legislation also allows us, now, to exchange information with Elections Canada on possible future voters. With our first data exchange following the recent federal election, we anticipate being able to add over 8,600 future voters to our list from this source.

I must emphasize that having the list of future voters is an essential tool, as it automatically enables us to transfer youth from this list to the permanent register when they become eligible. Automatic registration of new voters enables us to contact them with important information on how and when to vote in provincial elections. Research has proven that registered voters participate at higher rates than non –registered voters do, and the list of future voters should materially help participation rates for this historically underrepresented group.

Our fourth strategic priority is building organizational capacity. This has also seen focused effort to date in 2021-22 and will continue for the remainder of this fiscal year and next.

[10:10 a.m.]

This year, we embarked on a comprehensive organizational review of a number of program areas, including electoral operations, voter services, campaign finance and information technology. The outcome was a reorganization of some areas and a firm realization that to effectively support voting modernization, the ongoing increased reliance on technology and information systems

operations, voter services, campaign finance and information technology.

The outcome was a reorganization of some areas, and a firm realization that to effectively support voting modernization, the ongoing increased reliance on technology and information systems that enable robust election management, and to enhance our ability to maintain campaign finance compliant, a reinvestment in these areas is necessary. You will note when I provide the budget summary that this outcome is reflected in a modest 2 percent increase in our core funding request.

Last, we remain committed to actively addressing existing and new challenges to democracy, to voter trust and institutions, and electoral integrity that are posed by cyberthreats in the digital communications environment. These threats includes deliberate disinformation, non-transparent advertising, and other, coordinated, inauthentic behaviour. My May 2020 report, entitled Digital Communications, Disinformation and Democracy: Recommendations for Legislative Change, remains in front of the Legislature, and I continue to encourage legislators to continue the substance and implications of that report.

Now to the numbers. Our core services ongoing operating budget request for 2022-23 is $12,016,000. As mentioned, this is a 2 percent increase, or $243,000, from what was presented to the committee in 2021-22. Tanya will shortly provide more information on the detail of this request.

Technology is critical for many aspects of electoral administration, and is a key enabler of our strategic priorities. Our capital budget request for 2022-23 is $650,000. This will primarily provide funding for two capital projects: the development of a secure mobile application through which district electoral officers can complete planning activities, and enhancements to the online voter registration system, to better integrate it with Elections B.C.'s resources and services. Tanya will also speak to more detail to our proposed capital budget.

In terms of event-related funding, we'll require event funds for fiscal year 2022-23 comprised of $2,580,000 to administer the campaign financing and election advertising rules for the 2022 general local elections, $360,000 to operationalize voting modern processes as mandated by the Election Amendment Act, 2019, and $212,000 to support the recruitment of district electoral officers and deputies, as required by section 18 of the Election Act.

The last component of our 2022-23 budget proposal are funds necessary to administer public funding requirements in our legislation. We'll require $1,624,000 to make the July 2022 annual allowance payments to eligible political parties. In addition, if Bill 27, the Election Amendment Act, 2021, which is currently before the House, receives royal assent, we'll require an additional $1,624,000 to fund the January 2023 annual allowance payment. Thus, if Bill 27 receives royal assent, we will need a total of $3,248,000 in fiscal year 2022-23 for this purpose.

Charles will provide more detail on our event funding and the annual allowance payment requirements as part of his comments. Again, thank you for the opportunity to meet with the committee. I will now turn the presentation over to Tanya for her comments.

T. Ackinclose: Thank you, Anton. Good morning, committee members. It is a pleasure to appear in person before this committee to provide you with details on the numbers you see in the budget proposal document. I will focus on our core services, operating and capital budgets, as well as the specifics of table 1 through 4.

Our ongoing core services operating budget request is broken down by business line on page 13 of our proposal. This table lists expenses that support all business areas and you can find additional notes for each expense line on the following page that provide details about the nature of these expenses. As noted earlier by Anton, the request of $12,016,000 for ongoing core services represents an increase of $243,000 compared to what was required for fiscal '22-'23 during our last budget submission, which this committee recommended for Elections B.C.

[10:15 a.m.]

Usually, the expense lines that make up Elections B.C.'s core services budget look very similar year over year

represents an increase of $243,000 compared to what was required for fiscal '22-23 during our last budget submission, which this committee recommended for Elections B.C.

Usually the expense lines that make up Elections B.C.'s core services budget look very similar year over year. For this budget, however, there are some changes that stem from a recently completed organizational review.

A key outcome of this review was the strategic decision to bring IT business analysis, infrastructure services and some development capacity back in-house. These critical functions had previously been outsourced and, over the last business cycle, had contributed to ongoing resourcing and quality-control issues. These issues represented a real risk to key event systems and our ability to effectively to support election technology infrastructure.

Insourcing these IT roles resulted in seven new FTE positions, which represent the majority of the increase in the salaries and benefits. You will note, however, that this increase has been largely offset by a corresponding reduction in the corporate information systems line.

The salaries and benefits expense line also assumes a 2 percent wage increase will continue for schedule A staff, who are entitled to the same increases as BCGEU members.

Moving to the corporate information systems expense line, the reduction in the budget does not 100 percent account for the increased IT staff, as it also includes some necessary cost increases to upgrade licences to key desktop tools and to deploy improved collaboration tools like MS Teams.

The political entity reporting business line has been reduced to reflect a reduction in budget for legal services to better align with actuals spent over the last few years. There was also a transfer of the audit fees budget to other business lines.

Other changes to the business line budgets are modest and reflect minor fluctuations between the separate line items as we adjust to changing circumstances and projects each year.

As mentioned earlier, Charles will address the event expenses and funding required to provide annual allowances to eligible political parties. Therefore, I'm going to move on to page 15.

This page illustrates a pie chart that illustrates our core services operating budget request for the next fiscal and shows that Elections B.C. is highly dependent on people. Once salaries, rent and IT are covered, we have very little flexibility in other areas.

Pages 16 to 24 of the budget proposal include the spreadsheets, tables 1 to 4, created by the committee staff for our use. Table 1 on page 16 is the three-year budget plan by STOB. This table shows the current fiscal year, '21-22, compared to our request for next fiscal year. This table includes both our core services and the event budgets and illustrates how widely the total budget varies from fiscal to fiscal, as we move through different events.

The total proposed budget of $16.792 million for '22-23 includes the $12.016 million mentioned earlier for core services plus $3.152 million for events and $1.624 million in annual allowances to political parties.

As Anton mentioned, the annual allowance amount will double if Bill 27 receives royal assent, and we have illustrated this by adding a second table 1 to our proposal on page 18.

The planned budget for the two out-years, fiscals '23-24 and '24-25, do not include any event funding. When we create our budget for electoral events, each budget is developed from the ground up, based on the specific plans for an event that are finalized during the fiscal year prior to scheduled events.

Funding for scheduled events occurring in the next fiscal year are requested as part of our annual budget proposal, while funding for unscheduled events are requested as and when required.

Table 2, on page 20, shows the budget versus actuals for fiscal '20-21. The large variance here is due to administering the 2020 provincial general election, which was called early, on September 21, 2020. Therefore, our approved budget for 2021, in table 2, did not include the full amount to administer the election, and funding for this was drawn from Elections B.C.'s statutory appropriation.

Table 3 on page 22 shows the actual expenditures for the last five fiscal years. You will notice that the total operating appropriation is equal to the total operating expenses. This is because the total operating appropriation is the amount reported in the public accounts, whereas in the other tables, the total reflects the approved budget.

[10:20 a.m.]

This is a consequence of the funding process. Funding for unscheduled events such as by-elections, is from a special appropriation recommended by this committee and approved by the Minister of Finance. At the end of the fiscal year, the Minister of Finance actually allocates Elections B.C. the exact amount necessary up to the maximum of that approval.

the funding process. Funding for unscheduled events such as by-elections is from a special appropriation recommended by this committee and approved by the Minister of Finance. At the end of the fiscal year, the Minister of Finance actually allocates Elections B.C. the exact amount necessary up to the maximum of that approval. The budget reflected in the public accounts equals exactly the amount that was spent on those events.

Finally, table 4 on page 24 is the capital spending plan. Our capital request for '22-23 is $650,000. This is all related to information technology, as we do not plan to purchase any new furniture or equipment or incur capital tenant improvements to our office or warehouse. When we came to the committee in February of this year for our '21-22 budget submission, we had originally requested $700,000 for fiscal '22-23. When the general election was called early, we reset our capital plans and, as such, have slightly reduced our capital request for '22-23 to $650,000.

As Anton mentioned, the capital projects include improved technology solutions for district electoral officers and improved services for voters. The general election readiness planning assignment system will be designed and developed to build a tool that is efficient, mobile and secure for DEOs to collect information and prepare budgets leading up to an event and for headquarters staff to provide oversight and guidance more efficiently.

We've also developed a vision for the next-generation suite of tools and services provided to voters. This vision includes a secure portal, providing voters with self-serve access to their profiles, the ability to request new online services such as text reminders of voting opportunities, or digital where-to-vote cards. It also enables Elections B.C. to integrate service requests with our back-end systems.

The implementation of this vision is planned to take place over the next few years. In '22-23, we will focus on projects that will improve current and future services provided to voters both between and during electoral events. These projects include enhancements to our online voter registration system, the Elections B.C. website, the financial reporting and political contributions system as well as expanding the services available through our current client portal to allow for secure upload of financial reports.

Thank you for your attention. Charles will now address the event-related and annual allowance funding requirements.

C. Porter: Thank you, Tanya. Good morning, committee members. I'm Charles Porter, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for electoral finance and operations. As Anton and Tanya mentioned, my remarks will focus on Elections B.C.'s event-related funding requirements for '22-23.

Before discussing the funding request details, I would like to provide a brief overview of activities this year. Currently in our business cycle, we are in the middle of the two-year period between the October 2020 provincial general election and the October 2022 general local elections. There are three years to go before the next scheduled provincial general election in October 2024. As such, we are closing out the last provincial general election, preparing for the 2022 general local elections, completing strategic projects in preparation for the next general election and delivering on-demand events.

Much of this work has been performed remotely, as Elections B.C. continues to follow provincial public health direction and guidance. We are also considering our future transition from current pandemic working arrangements and how we might take advantage of our learnings to date.

As a part of our general election close-out activities, this summer we released the report on the 42nd provincial general election. As we have said before, the unscheduled 2020 general election, delivered during a pandemic, was very challenging. The report outlines our delivery of the election, how voters chose to vote and includes relevant data. We documented the pandemic-related challenges and actions taken for posterity, in case somebody else has to deliver a similar event in the future.

From an operational perspective, the 42nd provincial general election was noteworthy in that we saw a continuing trend of voters taking advantage of voting opportunities provided to them. This included a continuing trend of many voters using in-person advance voting.

[10:25 a.m.]

A focus of the report was also the enormous increase in vote-by-mail. Just under 600,000 voters voted by mail, compared to only 6,517 in the previous general election. While we believe this increase was driven largely by the pandemic and our communications around the opportunity, there's likely to be a future increased demand for voting by mail in B.C. for voter convenience and other reasons. We will continue to survey voters on their future needs and review best practices in other jurisdictions.

As we conclude our work related to the last election, we will carry forward key

a future increased demand for voting by mail in B.C. for voter convenience and other reasons. We will continue to survey voters on their future needs and review best practices in other jurisdictions.

As we conclude our work related to the last election, we will carry forward key learnings into future events. One operational focus will be increasing outreach to Indigenous and other communities in the lead-up to the next election.

We're also looking to the future, including at the implementation of new legislation supporting voting modernization, the changing needs of voters and the need to actively manage election integrity in the shifting security environment we find ourselves in. We are taking steps to ensure that Elections B.C. has the capacity, organizational structure, work practices and systems in place to deliver our mandate successfully in the future.

As an outcome of our internal program reviews, we are in the process of implementing changes to our electoral finance program. The program has been reorganized to increase our capacity to shift resources between competing provincial and local electoral finance needs. We've also created increased capacity for data analysis and a permanent audit program which will conduct both random and targeted audits in the regulated community to ensure compliance.

Where identified improvements to electoral processes require a legislative change…. These will be captured in the Chief Electoral Officer's forthcoming legislative recommendations report. This report will proceed through consultation with the Election Advisory Committee before being tabled with the Speaker.

Other ongoing general election close-out work includes reviewing financial reports from candidates, political parties, constituency associations and third-party advertising sponsors. Our team has completed the review, at this point in time, of about three-quarters of the 449 reports received by our office.

After the 42nd provincial general election, we resumed our voting modernization project, which had been suspended as we delivered that event. This is a collection of strategic projects to operationalize changes related to the Election Amendment Act, 2019. As noted, our preparations include running event simulations starting this month. The simulations will allow us to determine any areas for improvement to our new processes and systems.

Work also continues on our electronic candidate nominations application system, which will offer candidates and parties a web-based alternative to the existing paper-based approach to nominations.

As for on-demand events, we have been administering two initiative petitions. The first was a proposal to change voting opportunities in provincial elections and was returned on Monday, November 8 without meeting the requirements of the legislation to proceed further.

The second initiative petition, which is due in our office today, is an initiative to conduct a Surrey policing binding referendum. We understand that the proponent made no attempt to collect signatures in most of the 87 electoral districts in the province for this petition. As a result, if that is true, then this initiative petition also will not meet the requirements of the Recall and Initiative Act.

Given recent and past experience with this particular legislation, we may consider publishing a future report to the Legislative Assembly on the Recall and Initiative Act recommending legislative improvements.

Now I will turn to a discussion of our '22-23 event-related budget request. As you will note from the budget proposal, Elections B.C. is including an event-related operating budget request of $3.152 million for '22-23. This includes funding to administer campaign financing and advertising rules for the October 2022 local general elections, for costs to operationalize the changes mandated by the Election Amendment Act, 2019, and for the recruitment of district electoral officers and their deputies in the lead-up to the next provincial general election scheduled for 2024.

Additionally, we require $1.624 million to fund the July 2022 instalment of the annual allowances for political parties. As you're aware, an all-party committee reviewed the existing legislation and recommended that these payments continue into the future.

[10:30 a.m.]

Bill 27, the Election Amendment Act, 2021, was introduced in the House, establishing ongoing allowances, and did pass third reading. If this bill receives royal assent, as our submission indicates on page 18, we will require funding to fund the January 2023 party payments.

Next I will speak to the local general elections scheduled for October 2022. As background, Elections B.C. manages

royal assent, as our submission indicates on page 18, we will require funding to fund the January 2023 party payments.

Next, I will speak to the general local election schedule for October 2022. As background, Elections B.C. manages all of the campaign financing, advertising and disclosure rules at the local government level. Our work is conducted under the authority of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, known as LECFA. We also support local elections by providing extracts of the provincial voters list to local governments upon request.

In order to deliver on our mandate during the next fiscal year, we are requesting $2.58 million, of which $1.855 million will cover the cost of the staff to ensure that the regulated participants in the general local elections comply with legislation.

Preparatory work for the general local elections 2022 began this past summer, including implementing changes resulting from the Local Elections Statutes Amendment Act, 2021. This will be the first general local election with ongoing elector organization registration requirements, sponsorship contribution limits and a 60-day pre-campaign period.

Beyond temporary staffing costs, most of the funding request is for education and outreach activities to ensure registration and awareness of these legislated requirements, included information sessions and media outreach.

On the provincial side of operations, the cost to operationalize the changes mandated by the Election Amendment Act, 2019, for fiscal 2022-23 is $360,000. This includes funding for systems maintenance. It's also necessary to develop, test and finalize election official training, voting and counting procedures materials to ensure readiness for the next election.

Finally, the cost to recruit district electoral officers and their deputies for the next provincial general election in fiscal 2022-23 is $212,000. With the next provincial election scheduled in October 2024, we are requesting this funding earlier in the election cycle than in the past due to the fixed election date changing from spring to fall. We also anticipate the need to bring field officials on earlier due to the significant training and testing requirements associated with voting modernization under the Election Amendment Act, 2019.

This concludes my comments. Thank you, committee.

A. Boegman: Madam Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair, this does conclude our formal presentation to the committee. Before we move into discussion, I would like to take note that Elections B.C.'s 2022-23 budget presentation does not include any funds to support the recently established B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission. Although Elections B.C. is providing a secretariat to the commission, we can do so using existing resources and assets.

This model, which was also used by the 2015 commission, proved to be both effective and efficient, saving considerable funds that had previously earmarked for dedicated administrative staff and a separate office and meeting facilities for the commission. The budget for the Boundaries Commission is submitted to Treasury Board directly by the Ministry of Attorney General and will be included in the estimates.

We're now happy to respond to any questions that members may have regarding Elections B.C.'s budget presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Anton. I'll now ask the committee for their questions and comments.

G. Lore: Thank you for the presentation. As someone who ran locally and then provincially and has spent years studying political science, I have a lot of appreciation and gratitude for the work that you do.

I have a couple questions. I'm just trying to decide where to start here. Some questions around how you might plan to measure success of a couple of the things you identified — increase accessibility and inclusivity of the process, the modernization elements, the lists of future voters for automatic registration. I take your point and I agree that the research is pretty clear on what this means for opting in and participating in the process, but I wonder if Elections B.C. has plans for looking at how these investments and the work on this front pan out here in our province.

[10:35 a.m.]

A. Boegman: I'm happy to respond to that question.

Charles, if you have any additional points to bring forward, I'll turn it over to you when I finish.

I think measuring success is something that

the investments and the work on this front pan out here in our province.

A. Boegman: Sure. I'm happy to respond to that question, and Charles, if you have any additional points to bring forward, I'll turn it over to you when I finish.

I think measuring success is something that obviously is important. In our annual report, we have established a performance measurement structure and framework that we use when we look at the different activities that my office completes. Increasing accessibility is one of those where, typically, the types of success measures are outcomes-based or activities-based, so you look at the number of presentations that have been given. Our ability to continue on with the outreach during the pandemic, as I mentioned in my opening comments, was something that we had a particular focus on.

Being able to fully adopt the provisions of the Accessible British Columbia Act is another area where we're looking to improve how we approach this group by establishing an accessibility committee, by working with that committee to identify areas where there are currently more administrative barriers and how we can reduce those.

I think modernization — the efforts that we're putting forward in modernization…. Typically we tend to do surveys with voters. We survey them on their experiences. We survey them on whether their expectations are met. Although it's still a paper environment, we do have forms available in every voting place where we look to solicit feedback from voters who wish to talk to us about the process.

One thing we're planning on doing for the first election that is held under modernization rules, whether that is a by-election at some point or whether it's the October 2024 provincial election, is to have exit surveys. There's going to be such a fundamental change between the past way that elections have been administered using primarily paper-based processes to the use of the technology.

Again, we do and pre- and post-event surveys. We work with a consortium for democratic study that's run out of the University of Western Ontario, and there are a number of electoral jurisdictions that participate in this consortium.

The list of future voters. It's perhaps much easier to measure success in this simply by looking at numbers. I did talk to some of the numbers that we are anticipating. We are doing a mailout to over 110,000 eligible future voters in the new year, as well as being able to add 8,600 just from our data exchange. Obviously, a significant increase from the numbers that we currently have on the list. But as those numbers increase, we'll then be able to track the participation rates of those voters as they transition onto the permanent list.

There's a phrase that we use at Elections B.C. It's a common Japanese phrase for continuous improvement: Kaizen. But we're always trying to look at the ways that we do things and how we can improve them in the future.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. A question regarding the application for petition that is due today. How is that reported out?

C. Porter: Once we've received that, we will issue a press release if it matches our expectations in that it's a failed attempt at a successful petition, because they didn't meet the requirements of the legislation. It will be a public statement to that effect, and there will be no further steps taken by Elections B.C. to validate any of the signatures or do any other work on it.

M. Starchuk: When you were talking…. You had briefly talked about a 60-day campaign period when you were talking about local elections. Can you define what that 60-day period is?

C. Porter: There will be a 60-day campaign period that's, for the first time, for local elections established by the recent legislative amendments. That brings with it campaign finance rules during that period of time. There's essentially more regulation for the regulated community that's captured by the LECFA rules — for any local election in the province.

A. Boegman: That period is actually a 60-day pre-campaign period. So before the call of the election, there is a 60-day period in which activities are regulated.

[10:40 a.m.]

M. Starchuk: The last one. I know it comes up from time to time with regards to ads, especially when you've got some municipalities, some constituencies that are near border towns, and there are ads and rules that come from Washington state. Is there anything that's been addressed or going to be addressed with regards to those dates and times in which sometimes people are making ads five minutes up until the voting times?

some constituencies that are near border towns, and there are ads and rules that come from Washington state. Is there anything that's been addressed or is going to be addressed with regard to those dates and times in which, sometimes, people are making ads five minutes up until the voting times?

A. Boegman: This is something that we have seen in provincial elections as well as in local elections. We have a dedicated investigations team that does what they can to reach out to the providers to tell them that what they are doing is contrary to Canadian law.

The challenge, of course, is that if it's a foreign institution or foreign organization that is doing this organization, they, of course, are not subject to our law, unless there's an ability to get them through international treaties.

One of the things that we are looking at doing, and we did put in our recommendation for legislative change that I tabled in May 2020, was to put penalties to service providers, particularly Internet service providers, who provide services in this space, enabling Elections B.C. to have immediate takedown requirements of advertising that is non-compliant. Should that take place in the online forum, and should those recommendations be considered more fully by legislators and be adopted at some point in the future, then that would give us additional teeth in terms of our enforcement ability.

G. Lore: Another question on a pretty specific line item. I see there is no increase associated with voter education. Just wondering if you could speak to that, particularly in the context of a hopeful increase in the number of first-time voters with the changes of information and access, as you've identified, and the possible change of boundaries or riding names that may require more education or information to voters.

A. Boegman: I can speak to some of that. Tanya, if you have further detail around the breakdown of funds between the voter education budget as well as the voter registration budget….

For list maintenance, there are some moneys that are put in that, that would, for example, support the mail-outs that we're doing to the voters that would be eligible to be on the list of future voters.

Part of that question is that there's just funding in different parts of our budget for different things. Part of that is also a recognition that there's been a change in where people get information. The budget, which I think was originally developed a number of years ago, and which was based primarily in print media…. Of course, now, a lot of that is getting transferred to digital media in order to more effectively communicate where those demographics are receiving their information.

In essence, we are getting a lot more value for the dollar. We're able to do more things on the public education side with fewer dollars because of the change in where information is consumed. We work with our ad agency to fully understand the demographics around that and where we can best spend money.

Another part of that question. You mentioned about the changes in electoral boundaries. When the commission gets to the point where they've made a recommendation for changes to the boundaries, that will get reflected in two reports, both an initial report and final report. The final report, of course, will be considered by legislators, discussed and debated, and anticipated that it will be brought into effect.

At that time, the change…. Elections B.C. will turn from being a secretariat providing administrative support to the commission to implementing those changes into our electoral systems and in the geography and the maps. At that time, when we're going to be coming forward to the committee, we will include funding for the implementation of the boundaries and any adjustments to boundaries that may arise from the work of the commission. That would include funding around communications of those.

J. Routledge (Chair): Grace, you have a follow-up?

[10:45 a.m.]

G. Lore: One more question, if that's okay.

I'm just curious if you can speak at all to work with other Canadian jurisdictions on the modernization question and whether that results in some knowledge-sharing or cost savings or whether there's enough of a need for a B.C.-specific approach — that there are limited opportunities there?

That's the question. I'll maybe just add to that

jurisdictions on the modernization question and whether that results in some knowledge-sharing or cost savings or whether there's enough of a need for a B.C.-specific approach that there are limited opportunities there. That's the question.

I'll maybe just add to that that it's interesting watching the federal election, also, happen in a pandemic and some of the different choices around things like mail-in and how that works. So I appreciate there are different approaches, just wondering about opportunities for cost savings or knowledge-sharing, etc.

A. Boegman: Certainly, I can speak to this as well.

Charles, if you have any further comments, please don't hesitate.

We do an extensive amount of engagement with other electoral jurisdictions across Canada. In fact, I'm leaving on Wednesday to head towards Quebec City where we're having the annual meeting of Chief Electoral Officers, which is, I think, our first in-person meeting in over two years.

In the area of modernization, we have done extensive consultation, in particular with Elections Ontario. What was in our report in 2018 was largely modelled on what they implemented for the first time in their 2018 election. We learned a significant amount about how to approach that, the pitfalls, which I think has been reflected in our approach and has resulted in savings, in terms of how we've designed our model and put our model in place.

We're also…. We went through a competitive process, of course, to select the vendor that is developing the electronic voting book software, but they are a vendor who also worked with Elections Ontario. So there was an ability to leverage development work that had been done in other jurisdictions for the benefit of the system here in British Columbia.

There are some limitations on what we can share, of course, because the legislation is different in each province. B.C. has the most accessible electoral legislation in Canada. They're the best and most widest range of options for voters to vote, from when the election is called until the close of voting on voting day. So some of the nuances of that mean that the system that we're putting place here in B.C. is a made-in-B.C. solution to meet the needs of our legislation to meet the needs of our voters.

Just as an example of that, the other systems, on voting day, which will be final voting day, under the new legislation, voters can only vote at their assigned voting place, whereas in British Columbia, you can vote at any voting place in the province on voting day. You can vote at any district electoral office in the province on voting day. You can submit your vote-by-mail package up to the close of voting on voting day if you drop it off in person or at a district office. So things like that are new design and, obviously, need to be done specifically based on the needs of B.C.

C. Porter: Yeah, I would just add that we do share a lot of information with the other jurisdictions, including Elections Ontario, as Anton mentioned, and we've talked extensively with Elections New Brunswick, as well, which has a voting modernization model. But as Anton said, there are very unique aspects to our existing legislation and B.C. has some other unique physical aspects — mountainous province, very large — which effect communications aspects of voting modernization.

So it's a partially made-in-B.C. solution using the ideas borrowed from other places that are applicable and the technology, which has been developed elsewhere, but being customized and modified to meet our requirements and our voters' requirements. There's enough new there that we are going to run very, very extensive simulations to test everything. We don't want to be running our first experiment during a general election and find out we got something wrong.

We do know, from the experience in both Elections New Brunswick and Elections Ontario, that they did have hiccups with the implementation. They've been very good to share what worked and didn't work for them, and we're taking advantage of their learnings.

A. Boegman: I think I would just add to that, also, that the sharing, of course, goes both ways. So while we learn from other jurisdictions, we also provide the benefit of our experience to other jurisdictions. In one particular area, we're working right now with Elections Saskatchewan. They're interested in our assisted telephone voting model to provide services to voters who cannot vote independently by other means.

[10:50 a.m.]

That was, in fact, a very low-cost option that I heard about through discussion with the Australian electoral commissioner and then we brought to British Columbia, first in 2017, as a pilot, and then more fully in our 2020 election, where it was instrumental in allowing us to close that gap between voters who, for reasons outside of their control, were unable to go to a voting place during advanced voting or if they were quarantining because of the pandemic, or something like that, which, again, was unique to British Columbia.

So there's a sharing that goes

election, where it was instrumental in allowing us to close that gap between voters who, for reasons outside of their control, were unable to go to a voting place during advance voting, or if they were quarantined because of the pandemic or something like that, which, again, was unique to British Columbia. So there's a sharing that goes both ways.

J. Routledge (Chair): Are there other questions?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): With the increase in the mail-in ballots that you had in this particular time, and I realize it was unprecedented conditions…. It was over a 90 to 100 percent increase in terms of the response. What tests are being done to ensure that that system is not abused, in terms of the numbers being significant?

A. Boegman: We have multiple integrity checks, obviously, with our vote-by-mail processes. We've used them in a number of singular vote-by-mail referenda in British Columbia. You know, 2002 I believe was the first one, and in 2011 there was a plebiscite in Metro Vancouver in 2015, as well as the 2018 referendum on electoral reform.

Typically, each one of those mail-in ballots needs to be requested by an individual voter, and we validate information when it comes in on the request, so it's not something where a bot could send in a bunch of requests. We run checks to make sure: are there three or four or more? How many voting packages? Are they all going to the same location? In some cases, it's because that is a valid location, and there's more than one registered voter at that address. We do have checks that go on amongst the data to make sure that the request (1) is coming in from a correctly registered voter and (2) is going to a correctly registered voter.

On the inbound side, of course, when the envelopes come in, we do a lot of screening before any of those ballots are counted. We first screen the envelope to make sure it's completed and in compliance with the legislation. The legislation includes shared secrets and things like that to make sure that that voter completed the package and passed it on to us.

We also screen to make sure that that voter has not voted by any other means, including requesting a second vote-by-mail package or showing up and voting at an in-person opportunity. Any that fail any of the screening requirements are set aside and not counted. So there are a number of integrity checks that we have in place.

We are looking, as Charles had mentioned, particularly at vote by mail and the significant increase in vote by mail in the recent election, and we'll likely have a few recommendations in regards to vote by mail in our upcoming recommendations for legislative change following that election.

Charles, I don't know if I missed any of the integrity checks.

C. Porter: I would actually just add…. It's not an integrity check issue, but we also do investigate or follow up with any complaints that we might receive. We do received complaints of multiple packages going to an address, those sorts of things. We follow up with 100 percent of them.

We have not found any track record at all of any pattern of abuse of the system in this province. In fact, across the country, it's not really an issue. Widely practised, of course, in Canada for many, many years — voting by mail. As Anton said, we've had a lot of experience now, so we have a great deal of confidence in our system.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Seeing none, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you all — Anton, Charles and Tanya — for what is obviously your enthusiasm and creativity for upholding democracy in British Columbia and for being seen to uphold democracy in British Columbia, under what, for the last couple of years, have been unprecedented times — and learning from that, learning the lessons from that so that you can continue to make voting accessible and relevant to people. Thank you, again.

We will now recess for about ten minutes.

The committee recessed from 10:54 a.m. to 11:11 a.m.

The committee recessed from 10:54 a.m. to 11:11 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I'll call the committee back to order and entertain a motion to move in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera at 11:11 a.m.