Today in the legislature I rose to speak at second reading to Bill 43: Miscellaneous Statutes (Minor Corrections) Amendment Act, 2018.

This bill corrects a number of very minor errors in legislation that have been found over the years. Such miscellaneous statute amendment bills are considered house keeping bills that contain numerous minor changes to several existing pieces of legislation.

Below are the text and video of my not to be taken too seriously comments on Bill 43.

Text of Speech

A. Weaver: It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak in favour of most aspects of Bill 43, Miscellaneous Statutes (Minor Corrections) Amendment Act, 2018.

Unlike the member for Vancouver-Langara and the Attorney General, I do believe one of the changes is very controversial, and I will come to that at a later point. Perhaps maybe I should…. Well, I’ll come to that at a later point.

This bill, like previous miscellaneous statutes bills, corrects a number of typos and errors. It’s truly remarkable that some of these have been found. I’m amazed at the level of service we have here in British Columbia — for example, the change in Assessment Authority Act, the first section, No. 1, in this bill. What it’s doing in this change…. Somebody caught the change of December 31 and suggested it be changed to December 31 — 31 to 31. I literally couldn’t tell the difference.

I asked my colleague the member for Saanich North and the Islands, and he couldn’t tell the difference. My colleague the member for Cowichan Valley couldn’t tell the difference. The Minister of Health couldn’t tell the difference. So what I had to do was ask the Attorney General. The Attorney General pointed out that he was advised that, in fact, the number 1 was not a number 1 in the first December 31; it was the small case for the letter “l.”

Now, there’s just no way you can tell that. I have no idea, because they are identical, how somebody was able to find that. That person, if that person reports to the Attorney General, needs a pay raise, because this is just unbelievable, the level of accuracy in our legislation.

You know, I think I’m going to pull across right to the very controversial section at this phase, and that is section 21 in this bill. Now, it is controversial at its fundamental level. What section 21(b) says here…. Well, the first part’s not. Section 21 is a change to schedule C. It says, “in the description of Coste Rocks Parks by striking out ‘1 hectares’ and substituting ‘1 hectare'” instead. Now that, I agree, is not controversial. Clearly, “one” is not plural, so it is correct, actually, to have the singular form of hectare.

However, look at the second change, that “BC Hydro Plan plan” should be changed and struck out and replaced with “BC Hydro Plan.”

Now, I remember in the leadership debates, in the lead-up to the last campaign, that there’s a very subtle difference between the word “plan” and the number you use. I remember accusing the B.C. NDP at that time of having a plan to develop a plan to come up with a plan on MSP reform. I asked the now Premier in the leadership debate: “Is what you’re saying that you have a plan to develop a plan to come up with a plan?” He responded: “Yes.”

Here, we’re talking about a B.C. Hydro plan plan. So I’m not so sure that we can so glibly assume that this is a minor correction in light of the fact that maybe we need a plan for a B.C. Hydro plan and maybe we need a plan to come up with that plan to develop a B.C. Hydro plan. I look forward to exploring this at committee stage, and I do ask the Attorney General to bring in senior officials from B.C. Hydro to justify the use of the removal of the word “plan” in its second case there.

We move forward in this. Of course, there are some important changes, like we see in section 2. Heaven forbid we leave “local” un-italicized. That’s been corrected. Thank you. Section number is incorrect. That’s very important.

You know, this is shocking. This one is really shocking. Not as shocking, actually, as the fact that in section 1, the error in having the small case “l” instead of the number 1 has been in place since 1980. For 38 years, we have had December 3″l” — small cased — and not December 31 — 38 years.

Do we have to go back and look at every reference in our history of law here to whether that was invoked and ensure that it was invoked correctly? But no….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Wonderful.

The good news here is the changes are applied retroactively to 1980, so we’re safe.

In terms of another issue that was really troubling to me — it’s troubling to me that this actually happened — under the 16 years of rule by the B.C. Liberals, I would have thought that they’d have recognized the difference between American spelling and Canadian spelling.

Here we have in the Clean Energy Act — an act brought in by the previous government — the use of the word “fueling” with a single “l,” instead of a double “l.” It’s unacceptable for a representative of Her Majesty the Queen to be using single l’s in the word “fuelling” and “fuelled.”

What’s next? Is “travelled” going to have one “l”? Is “modelling” going to have one “l”?

Interjections.

A. Weaver: What’s happening to our English language here in this Legislature today? I sympathize with the members opposite who are saying, “Shame, shame,” to this.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Even the Liberals have two l’s, as pointed out by the member for Penticton, who’s really not supposed to heckle from the back when he’s not sitting in his chair, but I liked it. Thank you for that.

Moving forward, we have a couple of changes here, where “an” was inadvertently written, and “a” has replaced “an” to correct it. I totally appreciate that. There  is, actually…. I’m surprised we haven’t spawned a delegation from the province of Quebec. I’m concerned that we haven’t actually seen the francophone society of British Columbia up in arms about section 7 where the accent ague was left off économie. Instead of saying économie, it’s “economie.” What are we saying to our French British Columbians when we are so lackadaisical that we don’t take care of the application of the accents? It’s just outrageous, shocking, but I’m glad that it’s being fixed.

There are a few more examples, where “an” was changed to “a” — very important. We’ve got a typo here — a typo that I make myself sometimes. In section 12, we see the International Commercial Arbitration Act has an important spelling mistake. They spelled “usable” as u-s-e-a-b-l-e  — a classic error — and it should be u-s-a-b-l-e. Anyone who plays Scrabble will  know that that’s a no-no, trying to get rid of your extra “e,” no less.

We have others, in terms of the Local Government Statutes (Housing Needs Reports) Amendment Act, we’ve got a missing “R” there. The “S.B.C.” was supposed to be “R.S.B.C.” Who knows what they were referring to with “S.B.C.”?

We’ve got some renumbering of sections in section 14, a small addition in section 15. We’ve added the word “provisions” in section 16. It says here: “one or more of this Act.” Who wrote that? Who wrote this Mortgage Brokers Act so that it just said: “one or more of this Act”? What does that mean? Thank heavens we now know what it means. It’s actually “one or more provisions of this act” — a critical, critical addition that ensures that we actually are accurately dealing with this.

I’m really pleased to see the Parental Liability Act was updated. Heaven forbid we didn’t italicize the letter “y” in front of “young offenders.” That clearly has misled British Columbians. There’s another in the Water Act that wasn’t italicized. There are many of these.

Another one that, frankly, I think is quite shocking — I believe this is from the dark era of the 1990s. In the Resort Municipality of Whistler Act, there’s an incorrect use of the word “which” instead of “that.” Thank goodness that the people who review legislation have caught the more appropriate use of the word “that” instead of “which.” I am glad to see that that is changed here.

Most of these are pretty pale. Again, coming back to the egregious error by the B.C. Liberals with respect to the two l’s, even in 2004, they were making that mistake, where they started talking in the Wildfire Act of “fuelling” with a single “l” instead of a double “l,” and “fuelled” with a single “l” instead of a double “l.”

With the changes, I’m sure that grammaticists from north to south and east to west, not only in British Columbia but across our beautiful nation, subjects who revere the monarchy will recognize that these changes are actually at the essence of what it means to be Canadian.

With that, I do thank the minister for bringing them forward. I’m particularly grateful that some of these are brought forward retroactive to the year 1980, two retroactive to the dark ages of the 1990s and 1997 and one to 2016.

The only thing I feel sorry for in this debate is that I don’t get to listen to the comments and the remarks from the member for Nanaimo, who went and got himself elected yesterday and now appears not to be coming back to this Legislature.

I do thank the minister for bringing this forward. With all seriousness, this is important work that our legislative team does. It’s important to have bills that are factual and correct. Obviously, I support this. I commend the work that’s done to find that, particularly…. A pay raise for the person that found the “l” instead of the “1.” That one was a toughie.

Video of Speech