Ongoing saga of BC NDP’s botched speculation and vacancy tax rollout
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece expressing my concerns about the botched rollout of the BC NDP’s speculation and vacancy tax.
Since that time we have continued to receive a high volume of feedback, including thousands of emails, many scores of phone calls and numerous in-person visits to our constituency office. Many have expressed frustration about the tax, particularly the difficulty in making contact with government to speak to a live person about the specifics of the tax and its potential exemptions. We have received countless reports that the phone number provided to the public leaves people on hold for hours. This is unacceptable.
In fact, my own staff attempted to phone this number to get clarification about the tax and gave up after being on hold for 90 minutes. This is unacceptable.
The fact is, there are myriad nuances in the various situations affecting the people to which the tax may apply. My office is doing the best we can to help out, but I can tell you that our frustration levels are very high as we believe it is inexcusable for the government to have introduced this new tax measure without ensuring that adequate resources are present to help people navigate through its complexities.
Some of the most frequent concerns regarding the speculation and vacancy tax expressed to my office are listed below:
1. Privacy of Information
- Concern has been expressed about private information that is required to complete the declaration form, including having to provide a Social Insurance Number.
We have been advised that the government requires personal information such as Social Insurance Numbers to confirm that homeowners claiming the personal residence exemption do meet the requirements. In addition, the personal information provides confirmation of how much a person must pay if they do not qualify for an exemption.
2. Security of Information
- Given the recent highly publicized breaches of security experienced at major corporations and governments across the globe, concern has been frequently expressed about security of private information and risk of it being compromised.
We have been advised that the information collected through the government’s eTaxBC application is encrypted upon entry and masked. As a result even government employees cannot access the information without specific authorization.
3. Use of Information
- Concern has been expressed about how personal information will be used by government and for what purpose, now and in the future
We have been advised that the personal information collected under the Act is protected in a manner consistent with the BC Government’s Information Security Policy, Federal Security Standards and provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
4. Access to timely information
- We have been advised of, and experienced directly, excessive wait times on the phone to speak to an agent for clarification of the tax and eligibility for exemption.
The government has provided information on its website regarding the application of the Act and the various categories of exemption available to homeowners. Many of our constituents have found the website lacking in almost every way. The explanations are not clear and there are very few concrete examples to examine.
For instance, in order to claim a Personal Residence exemption the website says a person must be “… a Canadian Citizen or permanent resident of Canada who’s a B.C. resident for income tax purposes …”. If one of the owners had to move for work related purposes the website says the parties could claim for 2 principal residences if both were still in BC. However, the website is silent about situations where the spouse has had to move out of the province or country for work and is therefore no longer a BC resident for income tax purposes. There is a section regarding the situation if a person lived in the property and had to move out of the province. That section says an exemption could be claimed. However, that section directly contradicts the original section which says the applicant has to be BC resident for income tax purposes.
This is just one example of the many problems people are facing. Attempts to resolve issues by phone are stymied by an incomprehensible and contradictory website and the completely inadequate resources the government provided to deal with public inquiries.
And there are two issues we are still struggling to get answers to.
i) Appeal
- What process is in place to appeal the tax
Update: since publication of this blog we have been informed that you can “appeal” by writing to the Ministry or the Minister outlining your situation and requesting an appeal; that will trigger the appeals process.
ii) Cost to taxpayer
- What is the cost to the taxpayer to administer this tax
I will continue to raise the concerns I am hearing with government to ensure that people are able to get the information they need. In particular, I will press government to take action to improve the accessibility and timeliness of information and make sure people can reach speculation and vacancy tax agents on the phone who can answer their question. Thank you for your patience. You are not alone in your frustration.
B.C. Green Caucus calls for public Inquiry into money laundering scandal
Today I rose during Question Period to call on the BC Government to initiate a full scale public inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia. The purpose of such an inquiry is to remove the investigation from partisan influence, protect the public interest and restore public trust. The B.C. Green Caucus does not ask for this lightly. However the financial impact money laundering has had — and that it continues to have — on the province is staggering: the federal Ministry of Finance estimates the problem at least $1 billion annually.
Over the past two weeks, my colleagues Adam Olsen, Sonia Furstenau and I have been using Question Period to explore what government is doing to deal with British Columbia’s money laundering scandal. The responses to our questions suggest that while the government has been doing a good job on a variety of fronts, we should bring the investigation into one, independent public inquiry.
We believe that there is enough evidence now to warrant the provincial government starting down this path, without waiting for more reports. Future reports still outstanding can feed directly into an inquiry. We further believe that the terms of reference for the inquiry must be broad enough to address money laundering, organized crime networks, the real estate market, the opioid crisis, and the links between them.
An independent public inquiry is the best course of action because inquiry commissioners can have the power to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony. Furthermore, it can run parallel to any criminal investigation as was done in Quebéc with the Charbonneau Commission.
We are joined in the call for a public inquiry by the cities of Victoria, Richmond, and Vancouver, more than 76% of British Columbians, Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, the BC Government Service Employees Union, and several petitions signed by thousands of British Columbians.
Below I reproduce the video and text of my question period exchange with the Attorney General. I also append a copy of our media release.
Video of Exchange
Question
A. Weaver: Please let me start by thanking members of opposition and the minister for canvassing such an important issue and having the dialogue that led to some very informative answers that we can take back to our constituency. I thank you for the questioning there.
A recent article from the Vancouver Sun pointed out that the scale of money laundering happening here in British Columbia is still unclear. A report last year from the Paris-based financial action task force indicated that $1 billion a year was laundered through a “massive” underground bank in British Columbia that served Mexican cartels, Asian gangs and Middle Eastern crime groups.
Illegal gambling money, drug money and money derived from extortion was laundered in British Columbia to supply cash to Chinese gamblers. Yet, our government continues to take a reactive approach to money laundering. There is a deficit of public trust in our province, and the people of British Columbia deserve a government that will take a more proactive approach to this issue.
My question to the Attorney General is this: will the minister introduce the public inquiry into money laundering in British Columbia?
Answer
Hon. D. Eby: I thank the member for the question and all members for the tone of the Legislature today. I think it’s great.
In terms of the member’s question about the approach that the government is taking, we were clear from the very beginning about why we have taken the approach of doing reviews into money laundering versus a public inquiry. We can move faster. We can get the information we need, and we can stop the activity that is actually taking place in British Columbia. We saw that in the casino file. We were able to stop the activity of bringing bulk cash into the casinos very quickly as a result of a review. A public inquiry takes longer to get to those kinds of results.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same questions that the member has about who knew what when, what kind of accountable should there be and the kinds of questions that can be answered through a public inquiry. What it does mean is that we need to take action to stop the activity as quickly as we can. The member knows that Dr. German is currently working on questions related to horse racing, luxury cars and real estate. I can tell the member that Dr. German is already uncovering some very disturbing information that’s causing government to take action and enabling us to take quick action. I’m very grateful for Dr. German doing that kind of work for us. But that does not exclude the possibility of a public inquiry.
I thank the member for making his party’s position very clear on this issue and all British Columbians, frankly, who have written to me about this issue to express their interest in a public inquiry as well.
Supplementary Question
A. Weaver: I thank the minister for the answer to the previous question.
While I do appreciate the response I received, the question I’m left with is: how many reports and news stories do we need to be written to convince this government that more resources are required to solve the problem? This government needs to develop solutions, not wait for them to arrive on their doorstep and waiting for other reports to articulate them.
Last week the Attorney General made reference to the fact that one of the top five transnational criminal organizations in the world was getting tax credits from Advantage B.C. A criminal organization getting tax credits in British Columbia to launder money is absolutely unbelievable. It’s an unbelievable allegation. It’s clear that government doesn’t yet understand the scope of this issue and that one or two reports is not enough.
In order to get to the root of this problem, we need an independent approach that can address the broad scope of money laundering in our province.
Previously, the Premier stated that he prefers prosecution over public inquiry. However, transparency watchdogs and lawyers who are experts on transnational crime have called for a public inquiry. That’s the only way to effectively deal with this problem. A public inquiry along the lines of what occurred in the Charbonneau Commission can run in parallel to criminal investigations that may or may not be ongoing.
Again, my question is to the Attorney General: when will the minister institute a public inquiry on the issue of money laundering in our province?
Answer
Hon. D. Eby: A couple of pieces about the member’s question. One is in relation to prosecutions. The member knows that the federal prosecution fell apart. It was expected to go to trial. It didn’t. It was ultimately stayed just before it was going to go to trial. Those materials are being reviewed by provincial prosecutors right now to determine whether or not our independent prosecution service will be bringing charges in relation to those materials. That’s ongoing.
A public inquiry, itself, will not result in criminal charges. It provides accountability. It provides the public with transparency into what took place — who knew what and when. It is a political accountability tool, but it is not a prosecution tool. So just to draw that important distinction. Now, that’s not to say it doesn’t have an important place in the tools of accountability of government. It’s just to say that it has that limitation.
The work that we’re doing right now is not reactive. We’re out there. We have experts on this issue. The Minister of Finance — I mean, she cancelled Advantage B.C., right? That is the program that gave the tax credits to Pacman. I mean, we are taking the steps that are needed. We’re getting the experts to provide advice. We’re actually taking steps — the Ministry of Finance on the beneficial ownership registry, so we actually know who owns property, an important tool for police and for tax authorities. We have Peter German out there, working on important issues so that we can take action in relation to those other areas that I told the member about. We’re taking a lot of action on this.
As I said to the member and as I would say to all British Columbians, that does not mean — and the Premier has been very clear — that we have ruled out a public inquiry on this issue. It just means that we’re taking these steps and these necessary steps first.
Media Release
B.C. Green Caucus Calls for Public Inquiry into Money Laundering Scandal
For immediate release
February 26, 2019
VICTORIA, B.C. –The B.C. Green Caucus calls on its fellow MLAs to stand united in calling for an independent public inquiry into the issue of money laundering, which has strong ties to the province’s housing affordability and opioid crises.
“We are calling for an immediate public inquiry into money laundering in BC so to remove the investigation from partisan influence, protect the public interest and restore public trust,” said MLA Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green party. “The B.C. Green Caucus does not ask for this lightly. However the financial impact money laundering has had- and that it continues to have- on the province is staggering: the federal Ministry of Finance estimates the problem at $1 billion annually.”
The province made international headlines last year when a report by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, a body of G7 member countries fighting money laundering, terrorist financing and threats to the international financial system, was leaked to the press. The report highlighted B.C. money laundering activities, of which the province admitted it was not fully aware.
“An independent public inquiry is appropriate as it can have a broad scope, functioning outside of partisan influences or criminal jurisdictions and extensive enough to include all senior public officials and elected members of the Legislature. Public inquiry investigations can involve interviews and oral testimony, and commissioners can have the power to subpoena witnesses. These investigations get to the heart of the complexity of what exactly happened and how it was allowed to happen.
“Although inquiries are not courts, they often exist alongside criminal investigations-such as the Charbonneau Commission in 2011- supplementing those criminal charges with real, actionable recommendations to identify, reduce and prevent such events from happening again. This is something purely punitive criminal charges do not address.
“The BC Green Caucus is not alone in its call for an independent public inquiry into the issue of money laundering in BC. We are joined by cities of Victoria, Richmond and Vancouver, and more than 76 percent of British Columbians polled last year support an inquiry. The chorus grows daily.
“An inquiry of this nature will take time, but so too did this money laundering scheme with evidence going back at least a decade. And the financial repercussions of a skyrocketing housing market and the devastating impacts the of opioid epidemic on the health and wellbeing of British Columbians will possibly span many years into the future. We owe it to ourselves and our children to investigate the links between money laundering, real estate, drug trafficking, and organized crime.”
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Media contact
Macon McGinley, Press Secretary
250-882-6187, macon.mcginley@leg.bc.ca
Investing in fossil fuel infrastructure misguided, spells end of Southern Resident Killer Whales
Today the National Energy Board released its Reconsideration report for Trans Mountain Expansion Project.The report concludes that:
“report concludes that Project-related marine shipping is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects on the Southern resident killer whale and on Indigenous cultural use associated with the Southern resident killer whale. The NEB also found that greenhouse gas emissions from Project-related marine vessels would likely be significant. While a credible worst-case spill from the Project or a Project-related marine vessel is not likely, if it were to occur the environmental effects would be significant. While these effects weighed heavily in the NEB’s consideration of Project-related marine shipping, the NEB recommends that the Government of Canada find that they can be justified in the circumstances, in light of the considerable benefits of the Project and measures to minimize the effects.“
As noted in the press release reproduced below, this process was about ‘getting to yes’ from the very beginning – it was set up to fail to protect the public interest. The federal approval of this project was always political. The BC Green Caucus continues to strongly believe that this project is not in the interest of British Columbians.
Media Release
Investing in fossil fuel infrastructure misguided, spells end of Southern Resident Killer Whales
For immediate release
February 22, 2019
VICTORIA, B.C. – Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green party, expressed profound disappointment at the National Energy Board’s report released today, which recommended the Federal Government approve the Transmountain Expansion Project.
“This process was about ‘getting to yes’ from the very beginning – it was set up to fail to protect the public interest. The federal approval of this project was always political. The BC Green caucus has been clear that this project is not in the interests of British Columbians.
“B.C. needs to be in control of our own environmental review process, to make sure it is objective and evidence-based. We cannot rely on the Federal government. The province should terminate the equivalency agreement with the Federal government, and conduct our own environmental assessment for this project. We must do all we can to ensure that our environment is protected from the costs of this project.
“Investing in 20th century technologies that are known to contribute to our 21st century challenges is irresponsible and short-sighted. The negative impacts of this project on BC are unacceptable. BC would shoulder massive environmental costs, while gaining little economic benefit. A spill would be devastating to our environment, our coastal economies and our tourism industry.
“BC’s economic future lies in the innovative, creative industries that are leading global economic growth, not the sunset industries of yesterday. The world is transitioning to the low-carbon economy, with or without us. Innovator super-powers like Germany and China are investing heavily in the economic opportunities that arise from this transition.
“The federal government must prioritize growth sectors instead of wasting billions investing in fossil fuel companies that are quickly becoming obsolete.
“The NEB found that there would be significant impacts on BC’s already endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales. Is the federal government ready to justify to Canadians why it is willing to herald the death knell of this iconic species?
The report also found that there would be “significant” greenhouse gas emissions from the expanded marine vessel traffic alone.
“It is unbelievably misguided to build more fossil fuel infrastructure at this critical juncture in our history. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to begin the immediate transition to the low-carbon economy.”
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Media contact
Macon McGinley, Press Secretary
250-882-6187 |macon.mcginley@leg.bc.ca
Introducing a bill to limit MLA terms
Today in the legislature I introduced Bill M202: Election Amendment Act, 2019 designed to limit the number of terms a person could be elected as an MLA. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that those seeking elected office recognize that serving the people of British Columbia should be interpreted as a sense of civic duty, not a career path.
Below I provide the full text and video of my introduction of the Bill.
You’ll see from these that the BC Liberals were heckling me throughout my introduction and the Speaker had to intervene. When First Reading was called, a fair number of BC Liberals shouted “Nay” to proceeding with the bill and so I called for a standing vote. The BC Liberal house leader Mary Polak walked up and down her caucus benches trying to figure out who voted Nay. With the exception of Ralph Sultan, the BC Liberals collectively denied saying “Nay”. They then voted in favour of First Feading in the standing vote (reproduced below).
Ralph Sultan deserves a lot of credit for standing up and following through with his Nay vote. The other BC Liberal MLAs (whose names I will not mention) denied they voted Nay to their house leader and showed that they were nothing more than principle-less sheep unwilling to vote their conviction.
Video of Introduction
Text of Introduction
A. Weaver: I move that a bill intituled the Election Amendment Act, 2019, of which notice has been given in my name, be introduced and read a first time now. I’m pleased to introduce the bill intituled Election Amendment Act, 2019. This bill is designed to set term limits on elected officials in the B.C. Legislature. If enacted, this bill would limit MLAs to 12 years or three terms. In addition, an individual could not be nominated for re-election if they had already served eight years as a Premier.
The introduction of term limits would ensure that those seeking elected office recognize that serving the people of British Columbia should be interpreted as a sense of civic duty, not a career path. The general public have become cynical about politics and career politicians….
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Members, if we may hear the member.
A. Weaver: I thank you, hon. Speaker. It’s remarkably disrespectful during an introduction of a bill to hear the chatter coming from the opposite.
The general public….
Interjections.
Mr. Speaker: Members.
A. Weaver: If ever you needed demonstration that this bill needs to be enacted, it is here today shown before us by the behaviour of the members opposite.
The general public have become cynical about politics and career politicians. Voter turnout is on the decline. By introducing term limits, certain elected officials will be freed up to think about the long-term consequence of their decisions, rather than just their re-election goals. It will ensure a continued rejuvenation of this Legislature.
I feel, frankly, that we’re still fighting the Cold War in this chamber. We’ve got politicians who’ve been here on both sides of the House since the 1990s. When the same players continue their never-ending dance of dysfunction, British Columbians all lose.
Text of Introduction
Mr. Speaker: Members, the question is first reading of the bill put forth by the Leader of the Third Party.
Motion approved on the following division
Response to Budget 2019
Yesterday I rose in the BC Legislature to provide a more detailed discussion of my response to Budget 2019. My remarks build upon my initial comments released earlier this week. Below I reproduce in text and video my somewhat extensive remarks in support (with caveats) of Budget 2019.
As you will see in the speech, the government’s 2019 budget provides clear evidence that the B.C. Greens’ participation in this landmark minority government has been a success in advancing our values and policy priorities.
Video of my Speech
Text of my speech
A. Weaver: I will be the designated speaker on this particular topic. It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak in support of Budget 2019.
Before I begin, I’d like to thank my staff down in the B.C. Green caucus office, who spent an enormous amount of time over the last few months putting together our priorities, as well as the staff in the civil service and within the CASA secretariat — through which we often convey informations on which we sometimes — more often than not — get timely responses and feedback on suggestions. So thanks to the staff. We wouldn’t be able to do the good work that we do in this place were it not for the dedicated staff who put in countless hours, including the staff who last night didn’t go home until very late because, as you know, we are a bit small but mighty in the B.C. Green caucus, and I was up second here today. So thank them again for all their hard work.
I’d like to start with a bit of a personal narrative if I may moving into this budget speech to give a sense of the way I got into politics and where we are now. It’s important because it gives us a general sense as to why I’m quite pleased — no, very pleased — with the direction that this budget has taken. I will come to address some of the comments from the critic — the B.C. Liberal critic — that were just made.
Because, frankly, I believe that they need to be addressed as some of their comments were quite outrageous. I question whether the member for Surrey-Whalley has actually spent the good time necessary to get into some of the details of this budget, because some of the statements were simply wrong. That’s not good enough.
An Hon. Member: Surrey–White Rock.
A. Weaver: Surrey–White Rock. What did I…? I do apologize. Surrey–White Rock.
So coming to the personal narrative. As anyone would know, my background was a climate scientist at University of Victoria. I arrived there in 1992. I came to Victoria because of the quality of life we could offer here in British Columbia. We had many possibilities of going to other jurisdictions but, ultimately, I’m from Victoria, my wife’s from Victoria, and we wanted to have children and a family grow up next to our grandparents who are both alive today, both still living in the houses that we were born and grew up in here in this area. That was the critical, important issue for us. We wanted a family. We wanted to grow up in a place that we could call home and in a beautiful place. That is British Columbia.
I’ll come to that again because that is one of our strategic strengths. One of our strategic strengths in British Columbia is that we’re able to attract and retain people from around the world because of the stable democracy that we have — you’d never know it based on question period — but also because of the quality of life we offer and the economic opportunities that are present for people who come here.
We came here in 1992, and I worked as a climate scientist at UVic working on the second, third, fourth, fifth scientific assessments of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — 1995, 2001, 2007 and 2013. Even here when I was sitting here as an MLA, I had to resign as a lead author once the writ was dropped. But even in the lead-up to that, I was working on these international assessments.
We know that over the last 150 years the earth has made a transition from a past — a past when climate used to affect the evolution and dispersal of humans to a present when, in fact, humans are affecting the evolution and change of the climate and the weather that we experience on a daily basis. What we are at risk of losing on this planet…. Frankly, what’s already in the process of we’re losing now is staggering. When scientists…. These are not activists. These are scientists who feel far more comfortable sitting at the lab bench tinkering with their chemicals or their test-tubes. When they’re talking about between 60 and 80 percent of all the world’s species committed to extinction by the end of this century, that should get people to wake up — 60 to 80 percent of the world’s species committed to extinction because of climate change this century. That’s something that we need to wake up to. It’s something that points fundamentally to the issue of intergenerational equity and the question which climate change can be framed into is: do we, the present generation, owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of the environment that we leave behind?
Now, I would suggest most of us believe that we do. We have children. We save for the future. We might have a little nest egg for them. We put money aside in a retirement and education savings plan for them. We put them in education systems to train them for the future. We care about the future of our children in many aspects of our life.
The question I ask to the members here is: do we, the present generation, actually believe we owe anything in terms of the quality of the environment we leave behind? Action now is what is fundamentally required if the answer to that is yes.
We know through a direct analogy, and here it is. Put a pot of water on a stove, and turn the element up to eight. The analogy is direct. The water and the pot are the oceans of the world.
The element going up to eight is increasing levels of greenhouse gases. Well, we know when we put the element up to eight, the water in the pot doesn’t boil right away. We might think that it’s all nice. We have an element of eight. The water is not boiling, and we sit and wait and wait and wait.
Then all of a sudden, we go: “Oh no. It’s too hot. It’s boiling. I have to turn the heat down.” I turn the element down. But guess what. It’s too late. It’s too late because the water has already warmed up and it doesn’t cool right away. That is something known as thermal inertia, and it’s the direct consequence of the fact that the heat capacity of water is five times greater than it is of sand, for example, and it takes a long time for the oceans to equilibrate, particularly as they’re moving, with the incoming radiation imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
We see things like El Niños and La Niñas. We get Trump tweeting out about winter in Chicago meaning global warming is ending. But we expect that as that heat stored in the ocean shiffles around in the ocean and changes weather patterns on any given week, month, season or even year to year.
But what we also know is the oceans are warming. As they warm, they store heat. That heat is around for a very, very long time — in fact, centuries and millennia. So we know that even if we do no more than keep existing levels of greenhouse gases the same as they are today — do nothing more — that we’ll warm to somewhere between 1.8 and 1.9 degrees as a direct consequence of a permafrost carbon feedback and the fact that we have an equilibration to come to that temperature equilibrium with the knob on the dial set to 8, for example.
We also know that if we suddenly say, “Oh no, we have to reduce greenhouse gases,” we may reduce the gases but the heat in the ocean doesn’t go away right away. It takes time. That is the reason why, if we fundamentally believe in intergenerational equity and we believe that we owe it to future generations to leave behind an environment that, frankly, is habitable like the one we have, we have to act today. Because waiting for tomorrow is too late.
When I see a budget recognize that…. You know that to me, this is a culminating effort as to one of the reasons why I got into politics. I got here for this to happen. The fact that CleanBC was announced on December 5, a date that I will never forget, and that we have $902 million dedicated in this budget, a number I will never forget — not even counting the myriad other measures which have been also announced that don’t actually reflect in that $902 million — you know that I’m pleased. Because finally, we have a government that is actually putting this back on the table as a priority.
I think, frankly, not only today’s generation but future generations will turn around and thank this government, this minority government — and, frankly, the B.C. Greens as well — for the work that we collectively did to get this here. [Applause.]
Thank you to my friend from Vancouver–West End.
I’m just looking for my notes here that I must have, seemed to have, lost. That’s okay. I’ll find some others.
One of the things I wanted to mention is, if we go to Sir David Attenborough, what he recently said in December at the UN was this. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” Some people would say this is alarming.
But what I say to people who suggest that is: what other issue in any other aspect of our society do you see that the experts in the field are the loudest and the most outspoken people? No other issue that I know of, other than climate science. It is the climate scientists who are the ones screaming from the rafters about the importance of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions.
Sure, there are some other NGOs out there doing that as well — and the good work that they do. But if you go to many of the issues in our society, it is not the experts in the field who are invariably shouting out. In this, each and every climate scientist I know who’s practicing and publishing worldwide is concerned.
I have never seen an issue in any aspect of science where there is so much unanimity in support of a direction that needs to happen and so much collective bewilderment as to why our political leaders are unable to grasp, with the challenge ahead, unable to recognize that this challenge is actually the greatest opportunity for economic innovation and growth that we have ever seen.
But we have that being recognized here in B.C., because CleanBC is not a climate plan. It is an economic vision for this province, one that clearly…. Clearly, the member for Surrey–White Rock — it went over her head, because she clearly doesn’t understand that the age of neoliberal economics is gone.
What people are looking for today is not for government to pick winners with their big corporate fans, who are donating — but not anymore in B.C., thanks to this minority government…. What they’re looking for is for governments to send a signal to the broader market but also to ensure that people have the skills and tools and abilities to participate in this new economy. Because it is people that matter. It is people that fundamentally are the ones that drive economic growth.
It is not the multi-billion-dollar generational sellout embodied in our tax credit system for the oil and gas sector. That is not what builds prosperity. What builds prosperity is innovation, education and focusing on people, which is why I’m very pleased with this budget.
You know, in 2007, I had the honour of being on the climate action team under the then leader, Gordon Campbell, another leader who understood not only the challenge but the opportunity that greenhouse gas reduction was affording British Columbia. It was during that time that B.C. became the first jurisdiction to put a price on carbon, an issue that, frankly, I don’t think the member for Surrey–White Rock yet fully understands — what was done, why it was done, what’s being done and the difference.
It’s actually quite embarrassing to hear the words coming from the critic on topics that, clearly, she has not spent some time looking into. You know, B.C. stood as an example then. It’s true that initially it was revenue-neutral. It’s true that we had legislation in place to force revenue neutrality. But let’s be clear. Revenue-neutral was an afterthought in terms of accounting than it was in terms of actual policy drivers. So it is false to claim that somehow there was a magic revenue neutrality that was occurring because of deliberate choices.
Initially corporate and income taxes were reduced, but after a while, it became difficult. What was happening is we were getting weird tax credits. The hockey stick tax credit — my favourite — the $12 tax credit that people didn’t even know they could claim. Each and every parent could claim a $12 tax credit for a hockey stick if your kid bought a hockey stick. Really? That is B.C. Liberal progressive policies? I don’t think so.
I watched, though, initially as…. When I was on that climate action team — and the leadership by the then government — I watched emissions drop in British Columbia. They dropped as the carbon price began to take place. But then what happens, and so often happens, is people forget why they’re leaders. They lose track as to the reason why they were doing what they’re doing. They get distracted by other issues.
Or, in the case of Mr. Campbell, the HST defeat and subsequent change in leadership led to a complete ripping apart, tearing down and dismantling of any climate legacy he had. Let’s be clear, to the members opposite. Virtually every policy measure brought in by the Campbell government was either disbanded or not increasing anymore. Virtually every one.
So there is no moral high ground, not even a moral low ground, for the members opposite to stand on, on the climate file. So I won’t for one second listen to any of the rhetoric coming from any member opposite on any aspect of greenhouse gas reductions in light of the fact that under their government, they literally dismantled every single policy measure that was brought in by the Campbell government in the space of only a couple of years. So no, there’s no moral high ground, which is, again, why we’re so pleased to actually stand and support this budget here today.
What we do know is…. Let me quote from the Vancouver Province yesterday. This quote is really important in light of today’s shocking revelation. “More than $1 billion dollars a year laundered through a B.C. underground bank servicing Mexican cartels, Asian gangs and Middle Eastern crime groups.” Let me say that again. This is from a Paris-based international organization. This isn’t from the Fraser Institute or IntegrityBC or some local…. This is an international Paris-based organization — reported out that more than $1 billion a year laundered through a B.C. underground bank servicing Mexican cartels, Asian gangs and Middle Eastern crime groups.
Guess what we find out today? We find out that the B.C. Liberals were giving them tax credits to launder money in B.C. Can you believe this? In British Columbia. It could only happen here. The B.C. Liberal government, through Advantage B.C., gave tax credits to money launderers setting up shop here in B.C. For any B.C. Liberal member, let alone a Finance critic, to have the gall to stand up here in this Legislature and suggest that members on this side of the House somehow don’t understand the affordability issue or somehow don’t understand what’s going on with the economics of this province — it’s just mind-boggling.
If ever I have seen a lack of economic oversight or wisdom, it has been in the last four years I was sitting in this Legislature with a government that clearly was out of ideas and had lost touch with the people who elected it. Clearly, the members opposite still don’t realize that they didn’t win the last election. They’re sitting there for at least two years, and based on their performance in the last few question periods and months ahead, they’ll be there for another four years after that because they still lack a vision. They’re angry. They’re bitter. They’re cynical. They’re just all…. Everything everyone else does is wrong, and they don’t offer solutions. That’s not good enough. As a critic, you have a duty and a responsibility, sure, to criticize. But that’s not good enough.
If you don’t like what’s being done, you’ve got to propose what you’d do instead. And I heard absolutely none of that, not a single proposal, not a single thing that the B.C. Liberals would have liked to have seen. Not a single thing that they would have liked to have done. Not a single thing that they think should be done in order to make B.C. prosperous. Why? They had their chance. They had nothing. And now they still have nothing, so they continue to harp on the same tired narrative that if the NDP do something, it must be bad because the NDP did it.
Well, that’s the problem with politics in B.C. That is why the people have lost confidence in a lot of what’s going on here. They’re cynical about the inability of politicians to actually say: “You know what? That’s okay. You did a good job here. We wouldn’t have done it that way, but we did a good job.” That’s what you are hearing from the B.C. Greens. We wouldn’t have done everything in this budget. But we think the Finance Minister has done a good job. In fact, today in question period, I was very impressed with how well she defended her actions, so impressed that I would suggest that she has solidified her commanding role as leader of the financial governings of this party.
You know, the budget provides clear evidence to me that our participation in this landmark minority government has been a success. If ever there was a day that we thought we made a wrong decision back in May of 2017, never more. Without any doubt, the three of us, with the weighty responsibility we had, we had to make a choice. We chose, ultimately, to support a B.C. NDP government because there were more things of shared value. But fundamentally, it was because they had agreed that dealing with climate change is an important issue, and they agreed that dealing with it should not be viewed as a stick. It’s a carrot. It’s an economic opportunity. And while the members opposite quibble about a carbon tax increase, they fail to mention that, okay, the carbon tax is going on. But right now, if you want to go home and convert your natural gas heat pump or your oil burner to a heat pump, there’s now money in the budget to assist this transition. That’s good for innovation.
The cottage industry that was created in British Columbia when the B.C. Liberals, when they used to have a vision, was created through the — what was the program called? The small renovate B.C. program that allowed you to…. I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten the name. This happens when you turn over the age of 50. Some of the names don’t stick. It was a small retrofit program that created a cottage industry, a small industry of small builders putting in niche markets, retrofitting your energy uptake, putting on solar panels — that’s what happened. That was very innovative by the B.C. Liberals. It’s gone, of course, coming back here through a creation of policies that will incentivize this.
This is what does create jobs. It’s not government picking LN — well, bad example — but picking, say, Steelhead LNG and saying: “You’re the winner. We’re going to give you this because you’ve donated to us, so you’re the winning technology.” It doesn’t do that. It says that we’re sending a signal to the market. We’re sending a signal to the market that this is the direction we want to head it. Let the market propose the solutions. That’s good economic policy. It seems to have gone over the head of the critic.
You know, we’ve also…. Power Smart. Thank you to the member for Richmond-Queensborough. Power Smart was the program. I do appreciate that. There’s room for you over on this side of the House, there, sir, if you remember that name. Clearly, you’re under the age of 50, and you have hope for the future. Too bad most of your caucus members have been here for 20 years and nothing’s changed in your party. Maybe you can help rejuvenate some of them as well.
Back to the….
Interjection.
A. Weaver: A good fraction of them are. I look around this room, and I see people who’ve been here a very long time.
Interjection.
A. Weaver: Pardon me?
I’m just going to pause for a second, hon. Speaker, if I might, to give my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant a few minutes to make an introduction, if you so give me leave.
Leave granted.
Introductions by Members
Hon. M. Mark: In the precinct is a very good friend. We battled together. We ran in a by-election together. He is a city councillor for Vancouver. He’s representing us fiercely and passionately. He’s been a family friend. He’s a resident in Strathcona. I admire his leadership so much. Thank you for everything that you do, Pete Frey, Green Party city councillor for Vancouver. Would the House please join me in welcoming my good friend.
Debate Continued
A. Weaver: Had I known that my good friend Pete Frey was also sitting up there, I too would’ve introduced him, so I thank the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant for the introduction. I didn’t see Pete up there. I hope to see you later this afternoon if you’ve got some time.
Back to the budget. We’ve had a number of successes in this budget, advancing some of our key values as B.C. Greens and some of our key policy priorities. I’ll try to go into some detail as I get through this. Some of the topics, for example: CleanBC. Education was a major priority for us in the last provincial election.
Professional reliance is something that my colleague, the MLA for Cowichan Valley, has very personal experiences dealing with and has spent a good deal of time working with the Minister of Environment revising that.
We’ve got increasing affordability for students, something that we actually pushed, as well as government — to bring this in in a timely fashion. I’ll come to each of these separately, but that is a really significant advance.
We’ve got investments in youth mental health. The Foundry organizations across B.C. — what a successful model they are, and I’m glad to see funding in that regard.
We’ve got other policies in the confidence and supply agreement, which, you know, has been unique in its ups-and-downs challenges. But, as per the CASA and what we agreed to do, we were consulted on government’s approach to the budget. We were able to put in our submission. Not through…. We were not given, of course, any information as to what’s in the budget, but like other stakeholders we made a submission to government about what were B.C. Green priorities.
Honestly, we valued that opportunity to submit, and we’ve worked quite collaboratively in this regard for quite some time. Frankly, I think it behooves all of us in this room to perhaps do a little more of that.
Recognizing that I get that people are opposition or not, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t actually support good ideas or try to give others credit for some good ideas. It just, it seems like it’s not possible with the members opposite. Maybe if they learned a little humility, a little humility to recognize that it’s okay to praise somebody on the other side, it’d go a long way to rebuilding public support for their particular party.
Let me come into these in some more detail. Obviously and personally, the CleanBC was a particular interest to me. It’s not, of course, something that falls squarely in the purview of the Minister of Environment. It’s not just one ministry. It’s a government-wide approach, CleanBC is. It’s not a climate plan, per se. It’s an economic plan. When people realize it’s an economic plan, they’ll recognize how exciting it is.
We have, in British Columbia, some key strategic opportunities that will allow us to seize upon the opportunities afforded in a low-carbon economy. As I mentioned earlier, when I came here to British Columbia, it was for the lifestyle. I came to Victoria, the University of Victoria, known for paying the lowest university salaries in the country.
Why? Because they could. Because people would go to UVic, and they knew they could attract people at a lower wage because people got to live in Victoria. Who wouldn’t want to live in Victoria? I guess some of the MLAs who live in other areas, but for most, what a great place to have a family and what a great place to have kids grow up and to go to school.
We know that that’s a key strategic advantage of British Columbia — that we are a destination of choice. Because of that, we can attract and retain the best and brightest from all around the world, in highly mobile sectors, because of the quality of life. We should never forget that.
If you want to retain that strategic advantage, you have to protect that which created the strategic advantage. That is our environment, our access to beautiful outdoors and our lifestyle. That is what we have to protect.
The B.C. Liberal approach has been to have a free-for-all in rural B.C., in terms of economic building here and there, with no overall oversight, ensuring the cumulative effects or the longer-term consequences. So we’re struggling with ungulate declines. We’re struggling with natural habitat loss. We’re struggling with salmon species that are going extinct. We’re struggling with orca populations. We’re struggling with the very things, the very values we had that create the strategic advantage of us over everyone else in the world. You can go anywhere in the world in most professions these days, but we have that strategic strength. We must protect it.
We also have access to boundless renewable energy here in B.C., like no other jurisdiction in the world. I challenge anyone in this place here to find any other jurisdiction that has geothermal, tidal, solar, wind, biomass, small-scale hydro, has every possible source of renewable energy that we could want here. And we have one of the best education systems in the world, if not the best.
You don’t have to believe me. Just go to the PISA international assessments, and you’ll see that, every two years, B.C. ranks right at the top in terms of reading, writing and math, if not the top, in Canada. In fact, people often tout the Finnish school system. In fact, ironically, members opposite, when I first got elected…. So little did they trust their own B.C. public education sector….
This was before the member for Peace River South was minister, so I’m not going to throw him under the bus here. My good friend there is nodding and thanking me for that, I can see.
One of the first things they did was — guess what — send off some young student to Finland to study the Finnish education system to bring back lessons for B.C. Well, the only studying she should have done was gone to the latest PISA assessments and recognized that B.C. beat Finland in all of the metrics and this was an outrageous policy.
If the B.C. Liberals had recognized that we have quality education, they wouldn’t have spent so many years going after teachers, cutting the system and then, down the road, wondering why we’re dealing with some of the social problems we’re dealing with — with naloxone and drug and alcohol addictions and things like that.
When you cut the services that children need at their critical years of development — those are the early K-to-12 years — you cut…. And they were the first go — the child psychologists, the speech pathologists, the in-class help, the class size. The teachers were unable to manage with multiple different classifications of kids. The number of individual education plans a teacher might have — upwards of five, six at some times. Then you wonder why, when we don’t give the children of today — it was actually yesterday — the head start they need to function, to actually take advantage of the opportunity society holds, we end up with a problem down the road.
I can tell you why. It was mean-spirited, and it was shortsighted. While the member for Abbotsford West likes to pretend that somehow he had a magical hand on the budget, I say this to him: what Minister of Finance would let more than a billion dollars go surplus in an election year? I’ll tell you what. It’s a Minister of Finance who has no idea of what’s going on in his Finance Ministry. That’s who will do it. Because, clearly, that was an outrageous budget surplus, and I’m pleased that government here today has stepped in.
In the context of CleanBC, this is not just an investment for today, but this is an investment for the future as well. It’s going to go a long way, but not all the way, to reaching our 40 percent greenhouse gas reductions by 2030, based on 2007 levels. When I say not all the way, it’s because only three-quarters, 75 percent, has been done. Of the $902 million, a significant fraction has been set aside for the promised policy measures that will be developed over the next year or so. We look forward for more announcements in the next budget in 2020.
CleanBC will reduce B.C.’s carbon emissions by 18.9 megatonnes by the year 2030. That’s significant. That’s very significant. Of the $902 million investment, $354 million is in operating funds, and $299 million — that’s almost $300 million — is a contingency for programs currently in development. These are for the next 25 percent released.
And $26 million is in capital investments to help people and businesses reduce their emissions — Power Smart B.C. — and $223 million will increase the climate action tax credit in 2019, 2020 and 2021. This is critical, because this goes back to a slightly different notion. Again, this is more along the lines of a fee-and-dividend approach than it is in terms of revenue neutrality in terms of tax reduction. What the government has chosen to do…. Of course, we supported this as it’s written straight into the CASA. We recognized that for those who are at the lower income, the small increase in carbon tax can actually place a burden on otherwise affordability measures. So the carbon tax refund, which matches with the GST refund that we get, will go up by upwards of $400 for a family of four.
Interjections.
A. Weaver: Yeah, so we were just having a lecture earlier on about when you give…. The first responses to budget speeches, hon. Speaker, have a rich tradition of not heckling the person giving the first response, as you know. Then the Liberals berated the B.C. NDP for doing that, and then, of course, as I give the first response as a B.C. Green, I get heckled by the B.C. Liberals. It shows you the hypocrisy out there. “Do as I say, not as I do” is the motto that we seem to see here, emanating from members opposite.
Back to the CleanBC. There are specific measures in there: $107 million are for zero-emission vehicle standards — $107 million. That’s a non-trivial amount of money. That’s for point-of-sale electric vehicle incentives, new charging stations, training and research and active transportation initiatives. That should be added to the notion that we were going to have 100 percent emission-free vehicles by 2040 and 40 percent ZEV-standard by 2030. This is world leading. This is exciting, and industry is responding.
We know that the average British Columbian can save $6,000 for an electric vehicle. Not only are you saving six thousand bucks for an electric vehicle, you’re avoiding the carbon tax forever. As someone who has had an EV for quite a number of years now, I can tell you that the second you drive off that lot, that is the last time that you will ever think twice about ever owning another gas-powered vehicle.
Interjection.
A. Weaver: To the member for Vancouver-Langara, I salute you, because you have a Chevy Bolt. Actually, it’s probably either that or the Hyundai Kona that will be the next car that we get, as well, because it gets a slightly longer range. So kudos to the member for Vancouver-Langara for stepping up with a Chevy Bolt. The Bolt wasn’t around. It was just the Volt when I got my first EV. Terry Lake, who’s no longer here, a member from Kamloops South or North Thompson, had a Chevy Volt. It’s a plug-in hybrid. It’s kind of cheating, but showing leadership, nonetheless. But the member for Vancouver-Langara has clearly stepped it up, as has the Minister of Environment, who has …. I forget what his is. He has an EV.
Interjection.
A. Weaver: No, I have the LEAF. Adam has a LEAF. I forget what he has. It doesn’t matter. He’s got one, which is what’s important. Why it’s important is it’s showing leadership. It truly is showing leadership. The member for Vancouver-Langara showed leadership. Too bad his leader isn’t showing the same leadership that he showed, but that’s another story for another time and another day.
The CleanBC has $58 million in additional capital funding to make buildings more fuel efficient, more energy efficient. It can provide $14,000 for homeowners to switch to high-efficiency heating equipment and to make building envelope improvements. Think about that. Think about the opportunity people have to switch from an oil furnace, bypassing the gas and going straight to a heating exchanger. If you’ve the duct work in your house, you’re set for a heating exchanger, because the oil furnace and the gas furnace are pumping the air through the same direction and the same places that the heat exchanger will. This is an incentive that people will respond to.
There’s upwards of $2,000 to replace a fossil fuel — oil, propane or natural gas — heating system with an electric air source pump, as I mentioned. A thousand bucks to upgrade windows and doors to be better insulated. This is an interesting one, too, because we seem to think it’s a standard to put double-pane in. Why are we putting double-pane in? Let’s put triple-pane. Why would we do double-pane when triple-pane exists? And you save money. It’s a little more expensive, sure. But the payback is sure.
Eighteen million dollars will be here to work with Indigenous and remote communities to move to cleaner energy sources. This is for moving off diesel and so forth, and $168 million over three years to assist large industry in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to make their operations cleaner. There’s $3 million for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy for implementation and monitoring. That was the money in the budget.
What about greenhouse gases? The zero-emission vehicle standard will reduce emissions by about 2030, while signalling to North America that B.C. is the place for innovation. B.C. is the place for innovation in the transportation sector.
We already have amazing companies, like a Richmond-based company building batteries for ferries. We already have amazing advances here in B.C., but we’re one of the last to adopt the innovation that our innovators actually develop. This CleanBC is saying: “No more. Let’s get back on track.”
We know that the additional electric vehicle incentives and subsidies will cut another 0.3 megatonnes. Low-carbon fuel standard will count for a reduction of about 4.4 megatonnes.
Here’s an interesting fact that people may not know, if they’re riveted to their TV screen: under the ZAP EV program in B.C. — it’s a program that’s funded by oil companies, clearly — you can actually get a free electric charger in your house. It costs zero dollars. Why? Because clearly, as you switch to an electric car, what is happening here is your usage is being tracked, and that counts as a credit against a low-carbon fuel standard. It’s actually beneficial for companies selling gas in B.C. to give you a free EV charger at your home to help you move off gas. I love subsidies like that — polluter pay. Polluter pay, and onwards we go.
The building code improvements will cut half a megatonne; building efficiency energy policies — 1½ megatonnes. Policies for remote and rural communities to switch off diesel and support large industry will reduce 2½ megatonnes.
Methane regulations, coming to play largely with the federal government but some provincial — 0.9 megatonnes. Industrial electrification — 3.5 megatonnes. Carbon capture and storage — I’m a little leery about this one — 2.6 megatonnes. Renewable gas regulations for industry — 0.9 megatonnes. Waste reduction — 0.7 megatonnes. Carbon pricing — five bucks a year, going up next year as well — 1.8 megatonnes.
Altogether, the incremental reductions are about 18.9 megatonnes. But even with that, as I mentioned, we’re only going to get to 75 percent of our 2030 target. Again, it would clearly be a lot easier if we didn’t have to worry about that LNG Canada monkey on our back. Nevertheless, it’s a solid start and provides us with momentum to take us the rest of the way there.
I’ve committed, and my colleagues — Saanich North and the Islands and Cowichan Valley — have committed to work closely with government on the CleanBC plan too. We expect further answers in the coming year to see how we’re going to get to 100 percent.
The announcement made in the budget about CleanBC funding by no means is the end. It is but the beginning. It’s the beginning of a transition that will start in British Columbia. It’s the beginning of an exciting pathway for innovation in our economy. It’s not about government picking winners and losers. It’s about government sending a signal to the broader market about the direction it wants our economy to head.
There is one thing you can count on in British Columbia; it’s the innate potential of British Columbians to innovate and to respond to challenges, because British Columbians like to be leaders. They don’t like to be followers. They want to follow leaders, and they want be to leaders in the new economy. This budget is setting them up for success in that regard.
Coming to the CASA…. Many people often ask us: “What’s CASA all about? What’s in CASA? Why are you doing this or that?” CASA, in this, was a foundational document that framed the kind of conditions by which the minority government is supported by the B.C. Greens.
One of the key priorities — I would suggest the fundamental priority for us in terms of us signing on with the CASA — was that it specifically stated that we would implement climate action strategy to meet our targets. I can safely say that that box is checked three-quarters of the way, 75 percent of the way — still got 25 to do.
In the CASA we talked about there, it specifically mentions that the carbon price will increase by $5 a year. Again, what’s the signal? The signal was leadership.
Mr. Trudeau, federally, is now in a big fight with Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta — with New Brunswick kind of mumbling in the background — about carbon pricing. British Columbia has said: “You know what? Let’s get on with meeting Trudeau’s target, but let’s do it in a manner that creates certainty for business and sends a price signal that’s certain. So business has known for the last two years that it will go up another $5 next year, and it’ll go up another $5 after that.
Business has certainty, and British Columbians got leadership. This was a B.C. Green position that we took into our negotiations. We got that leadership. We got that certainty. Government has delivered. Business is responding.
Honestly, the members opposite, desperate to find anything about anything, are now trying to dredge up carbon tax? Really? Overwhelming support by British Columbians, but what they want is they want to know that they have tools available to them to help them reduce the amount of carbon tax they’re paying. And that is what this budget has delivered through the incentives for transportation and home retrofits.
We also in our CASA talk about the delivery of rebate cheques for British Columbians to ensure they’re better off than under the current carbon tax formula. The rebate cheques — again, you can check that box off — is coming through in this budget, which is a form of a dividend. It’s a lower income amount. It comes in the form of a dividend to low-income British Columbians.
Finally, under CASA, we talk about putting a fugitive price on emissions and, of course, on slash burning. While this is not really within the budget here, there are certainly ongoing discussions about the regulatory framework that Ottawa is bringing into play and how that relates to B.C.
In the question of slash burning, when I come to talk about forest fires, this is one of the things that we need to get our hands on. We’re still not there yet in terms of our discussions with government, but that fuel is wasted fuel. It’s also fuel for forest fires, and at the same time, we’re dealing with certain mills that are struggling for access to fibre. So there is a bit of a triple win here: fewer forest fires, more fibre and getting the stuff out of the forests as well.
As I mentioned, we made a submission — well, many people made submissions to government…. We asked government to show a commitment to CleanBC, and in our submission, we asked specifically that CleanBC be fully funded. We asked for comprehensive and ongoing funding for a clean growth strategy for buildings, transportation and industry. We asked for investment in electric vehicle infrastructure and increased incentives for British Columbia to switch to EVs and other zero-emission vehicles.
We asked for a focus on the modernization of B.C. Hydro to support innovation. I’ll come to that in a second — innovation not just in terms of how we produce electricity, but also how we invest in the future, how we transport and actually use electricity too. I’m pleased to say that the first two of those were actually delivered on. We still have some work to do to convince government with the phase two B.C. Hydro review — we’ve got phase one — that it needs to relook at the mandate of British Columbia Hydro.
I remain troubled by the cancelling of the standing offer program, which has led to a rather large liability that government is incurring in terms of people who’ve invested millions upon millions of dollars to enter or be part of the standing offer program now being told that that program is a wash. There are certainly liabilities that the government has exposed itself to as people seek damages for that.
There’s also — less fiscal, but goodwill — liability with many Indigenous communities in British Columbia who have formed partnerships with private industry to develop independent power projects in their territory that would actually benefit their community, provide stable long-term jobs that are well-paying. Those, too, are being put on hold and cancelled.
We have some work to do in this regard, and my colleagues and I are committed to do that work — to bring the information to government to ensure that they see the wiseness of continuing to move down the path of independent power projects, but doing so in a manner that reflects the current market value of energy. There is no way you would put out a call for power at 35 cents a kilowatt hour in today’s market. However, a call for 8 cents a kilowatt hour or even 7 cents would be met and delivered into by a number of clean projects, whether it be wind, solar or others.
We know that in Alberta, we’re getting wind power coming in at three and a bit cents a kilowatt hour. We know that in places in the U.S., solar is coming in below that. We know that with our slightly complex terrain, we can deliver at below eight cents, but maybe not quite as low as 3½ cents. But we can deliver much cheaper than Site C would. Not only that, it is not your money, not my money, not anybody’s money here that’s put at risk with these projects; it is investor money.
One of the saddest things that happened, and this happened under the former government, was that on Vancouver Island, TimberWest and EDP Renewables, a major multinational wind company, as well as a number of First Nations on Vancouver Island wanted to build a $700 million wind farm capacity here on private land, in partnership with Indigenous communities, funded by private venture cap.
Guess what? That fell through because there was nobody they were allowed to sell power to other than B.C. Hydro, and the previous government made a commitment to build Site C to deliver power that we don’t actually need for sometime in the future. So that’s sad. Hopefully will come a point when we can bring back the Canadian Wind Energy Association to British Columbia, after they summarily packed up their bags and left a number of years ago.
Let’s come back to the support for family caregivers in Budget ’19. One of the things mentioned in the budget is that it raises financial support for Indigenous extended family caregivers such as grandparents or aunties to be equal to the amount received by foster parents. This is good public policy. This is really important public policy. It’s consistent with our CASA commitment. CASA, for those listening, is the confidence and supply agreement, which stated the following: “Enhance and improve child protection services to ensure that all children grow up in safe and nurturing environments.” The minister’s mandate letter actually said this: “To provide better supports to keep Aboriginal children at home and out of care. Make reducing the number of Aboriginal children entering our care system a priority.”
My colleague from Cowichan Valley has a large Indigenous community in her riding. One of the things she reports back is that we sometimes look with disdain upon the 1960s and ’70s and the so-called Sixties Scoop that occurred when children were taken and put in residential schools in a number of jurisdictions. What we fail to recognize is a scoop far bigger than actually happened in the ’60s is ongoing in British Columbia as MCFD social workers apprehend child after child after child in Indigenous communities.
It’s got so bad that in some communities, what has happened…. As a means and ways of getting back at someone you’re having an argument with, one of the tactics is to phone up an MCFD operator and report some child abuse in that person’s home so that MCFD come and scoop up the child. This has got to stop.
We’re very pleased with the direction the government is taking in terms of recognizing that Indigenous communities are the best to serve the needs of their children, and government is providing support in that regard. In our submission to government, we pushed for a funding shift towards initiatives that support families and keep children and their families in their communities together. We also argued for increasing funding for Indigenous extended family caregivers, and we also supported increasing funding to community Indigenous-led programs. So we’re pleased, again, that government in this regard certainly responded.
In terms of PharmaCare funding, Budget 2019 states that roughly 240,000 B.C. families’ prescription medication will become more affordable this January because of the $105 million added into the Fair PharmaCare program. Under CASA, the commitment that we agreed, we agreed to develop a proposal to implement an essential drugs program designed to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and ensure that the cost of drugs is not a barrier to health management.
You know, after discussing the opportunity to develop a universal essential drugs program with the Minister of Health, we agreed that targeted funding for low-income British Columbians who could not afford their prescriptions was actually a positive short-term policy that advanced the overall goal of our CASA commitment. If the federal government showed a willingness to engage in the essential drugs program discussion over the next year, we’d be keen to revisit our CASA commitment. But in the short-term, we’re pleased, and we put a tick box again. Thank you, government, for the actions in this very important area. In our B.C. Green 2017 platform, we specifically stated that we would develop an essential drugs program to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Let’s go to education. For us, this was our single biggest priority in the 2017 education platform. We recognized that if a society wants to lead in the 21st century, education must be its number one priority. We must equip the next generation of youth-cum-adults in our society with the tools and skills that they have to excel as innovators in the new economy.
We’re pleased again with what budget 2019 does — $550 million investment over three years for public education, which includes $58 million for a classroom enhancement fund, mandated, of course, by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision. And there’s $31 million for independent schools. But a total of $423 million is now allocated annually, and that’s over 4,000 teachers, 700 special ed teachers, 160 teacher psychologists and counsellors hired, or will be hired, since 2017.
This is actually exactly what needs to be done. We need to ensure that children in development years, the key years of development, have the tools and skills and services available to them to actually allow them to succeed. We should no longer have a society where the lottery of birth determines your future direction in that society.
You know, I’ve heard tell that many people want independent school funding to be cut and argue to put that into public schools. But I like government’s approach here. This is something that we advocate for. You don’t improve public education by going to war with the independent schools. You improve public education by making it the envy of one and all so that there’s no need for independent schools to actually be there to attract people outside of the public education system.
This is how many jurisdictions operate. Many northern European operations, many European jurisdictions, have a system that puts in place a priority of education as their number one priority.
You know, it makes me distraught when I see society as a whole, fed by the anger and the rhetoric of the previous B.C. Liberal administration, turn against teachers and believe that somehow teachers are a problem. No. Teachers go into teaching by and large because they want to serve the next generation. They want to inspire youth, and they take satisfaction from actually seeing people learn. They take satisfaction by seeing a child, struggling coming into their class, leaving their class a little bit better equipped to deal with the challenges they face ahead.
The best thing that can happen to any teacher is to have that child return to you ten, 15 years later and say: “You know what? I remember that class. You may not remember me, but that has improved my life.” That is why teachers go into teaching. They don’t go into teaching to become millionaire stockbrokers. They go in because they value the importance of education. When we start to turn public attitude against teachers, we’re at the very base of our society.
There’s a reason why one of the most esteemed professions in most northern European countries is the teacher. The people recognize, as part of who they are, that education is the foundation of any successful society. Why is it that the happy index across the world invariably puts the top nations as the northern European nations? Because citizens get the services they need when they need it. They graduate. There is a more equitable society, and it’s not one designed solely for the 1 percent, who would thrive no matter what. And in many cases, they’re in the 1 percent only because mommy or daddy left them some money, and they were born that way — the so-called lottery of birth.
In our CASA commitment, we agreed to fast-track enhancement to K-to-12 education, funding to restore faith in public schools after a decade and a half of governments that shortchanged, in fact, a generation of students. We talked about priorities for funding include early intervention in health start programs, as well as reviewing the funding model for the K-to-12 system, with a view to ensuring equitable access for students.
While we wouldn’t have done everything the way the B.C. NDP have done it, we recognize that that’s their prerogative. They’re government; we’re not. We’re a minority part of this minority government. We are there supporting their general direction, providing input when we can on various things.
We support the government’s approach to increasing funding for public education. It’s not as much as we would have done. We had committed over $4 billion over four years of new funding for public education. It’s a question of priorities. That, for us, was our top priority. As outlined in our platform, we would have invested more money, sure, but we’ll continue to push this as a priority for government, because we need to do all we can to support the children and youth as they prepare themselves for the future. We look forward to working with government to deliver more education funding in the 2½ years ahead.
Coming to the elimination of student loans. Now, both the B.C. NDP and the B.C. Greens campaigned on eliminating interest on student loans. As of February 19, interest will no longer accrue for students with loans.
You know, previously the interest was charged on prime rates. The cost of this program is $31 million each fiscal year with a one-time write-down of $225 million in this year.
But let’s put this in context. The average undergraduate in B.C. borrows about $11,200. That’s not really fair, because there are a lot of students who borrow nothing, some of whom win the lottery of birth. And there are a lot who borrow an awful lot more. When you graduate with a $50,000 debt from your undergraduate degree, initially you’re stepping off into society hampered with this ball and chain on your back foot for decades as you try to pay that back. Again, what sort of civil society are we if the lottery of birth lets you win no debt in public education and you can succeed. And the other lottery of birth means that you’re stuck with $50,000 of debt when you graduate. But not only that, you’re paying what? Prime 3 percent. Let’s say 3½ percent. So what’s that — $1,700 bucks a year in interest alone before you even get to that $50,000 bucks.
You know, eliminating the interest on the provincial portion will save the average borrower, the average one…. It says $2,300 over the ten-year repayment period. I would suggest it’s actually more than that for the people who actually have the debts, because most people who have debt have larger debt than that.
In our confidence and supply agreement, we state the following: “We recognize that education is about lifelong learning and make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable.” Tick.
We also agreed to implement an agreed-upon approach to improving access and reducing the costs of post-secondary education for students. Two aspects of this have been delivered. First is free tuition for children aging out of care. We had a different approach. We would have given them basic income for children aging out of care until they hit the age of 24. Government chose to give them free post-secondary education. Similar goals and values — you see how this confidence and supply agreement works. Similar goals and values and different approaches. But we recognize the responsibility we have, as three of us. We support that it is government’s prerogative to make these final decisions, but we’re able to contribute to the narrative and discussion about why these decisions should be made in the first place, and this is another example.
To our submission that we made, we followed CASA. We pushed for a strategy to make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable and to reduce the debt burden on post-secondary grad students. Eliminating the interest on student loans is an important step to reducing tuition burden. But wouldn’t it be remarkable, wouldn’t it be amazing if, again, we looked to jurisdictions like Denmark, like Norway, like Sweden, like Finland, like Germany and other European nations that actually recognize that post-secondary education is a right. We don’t want ability to access funds to be a barrier to success in our society.
Again, the B.C. Liberal approach is if you win the lottery of life or you happen to have a corporate friend who can donate you a ton of money to let you, in essence, subsequently win it, you move forward. But if you don’t win the lottery of birth, you’re just out of luck here. You’re just out of luck, and you’re left to fend for yourself.
Here what we’re seeing is a move toward — perhaps not as far as we would have liked to go — recognition that education is important and a right, and it should be accessible to all. So we’re very pleased with the elimination of the interest.
But there’s much more room that can be made here for increasing affordability of post-secondary education, moving forward. We still don’t have in place — yet we need desperately — a needs-based grant, opening up more access to students. We’ve now eliminated debt of the interest. Fine. But we need to have in place a needs-based approach to allow students from low income — those who didn’t win the lottery of birth — to actually be able to attend and afford post-secondary education. At the same time, I personally think the compassionate thing to do is take a look at our loan forgiveness program and determine to the extent that we can actually move a little further in that, make more of the loan a non-repayable loan and less of it as a repayable loan.
Lifelong learning doesn’t stop at K to 12. It doesn’t stop at graduating undergrad. It’s a lifelong journey from the day you’re born to the day you die. And we believe that British Columbians, in a changing economy, need to have access to the services, whether it be education or support services, that will allow them to compete in this changing world. Accessible, affordable education is front and centre in that.
Let’s go to the child care program because, again, this is another shared priority. Government has said here, specifically, that it will continue with the investment it has made in last year’s budget — something like the tune of more than $1.3 billion is going to be invested in child care. There’s a fee reduction program for parents of children in licensed care of up to $350 per month. That’s $4,200 a year, and 52,000 child care spaces now in place.
The affordable child care benefit, which is available to all families in B.C. earning up to $111,000, can save them up to $15,000 per year per child, and $237 million over three years is being allocated to support the creation of 22,000 new licensed child care spaces.
What’s important here and what we know is that the single biggest barrier right now is accessibility of child care spaces. There are two reasons for it: (1) is an inability to actually attract and retain ECEs into the profession and (2) is accessible space that’s actually affordable to rent or have a daycare facility in because of the cost of housing.
The fact that government is creating 22,000 new licensed child care spaces and the fact that government is investing in the training of ECEs is a very important, fundamental step to actually move this forward. Unfortunately, the government….
The budget here doesn’t feature growth in funding after next year. It means that we might be stalling out after allocating a third of the necessary overall investment, but we’ll come back to this next year. Again, government is slowly moving down this path. There are many people who have been able to access the reduced fee of child care services that are singing the praises. There are what? There’ll be 52,000 such spaces. They’re very happy. But there is more to go, and it’s good to see government moving in this direction.
Our confidence and supply agreement stated specifically that we would invest in child care and early childhood education to improve quality, expand spaces, increase affordability and ensure child care is accessible for all families with a focus on early childhood education.
Again, we have a two-thirds box there. That’s well done, again, to government delivering on the CASA commitment, and it’s a key priority to British Columbians. When we made our submission to government, we specifically asked for substantially more funding to be allocated to implementing the child care program in future fiscal years. We wanted government to view this as an investment that needs to be scaled up to reach a target of universal — or at least universal in the context if you can’t afford early childhood education. We’re not there on the universality. We’re not there on even a means-based amount, but the path has been set to get there in a timely fashion. These things don’t happen overnight, and we’re pleased to see the direction government is going in this regard.
Quality, of course, is essential. We need to prepare all children for healthy, rewarding lives and educate them in a thoughtful way so that they are equipped to tackle the challenge associated with many aspects of the society that they grow and develop into.
Coming to Budget 2019 and investments in youth mental health, another key priority vision for us. We supported, in our submission, the establishment of a youth mental health strategy, complementary to but distinct from the development of a broader mental health and addictions strategy. We recognized in our submission that there are unique challenges that youth face, particularly youth as they get into the teenage years into adulthood that we need to address.
One of the key things that we’re very excited to see and one of the things that when I served on the finance committee, and I’m pretty sure they made submissions this year, was government recognizing the good work — no, the exceptional work — that the foundry centres that are emerging across British Columbia have done. We have one in Victoria. I believe the first started in Abbotsford. Kelowna has one. There are a number across British Columbia. We find in Budget 2019 a $74 million investment to improve access to mental health care for children and youth. That’s more foundry centres for 12 to 24-year-olds to bring the integrated youth mental health and addiction services under one roof.
There are also more programs, including in schools for parents and families to support kids, in particularly, in their early years of development. There’s more specialized family care and day treatment for young people that meets their needs.
I heard mention in the throne speech, and I have yet to actually see how it would come out. But it was a point that resonated with me.
Sorry, not the throne speech. The budget speech. Of all the words I heard in the budget speech, the one thing that I remember that resonates with me was the concern about children going to school without food in their belly. How can we, as a society, expect our next generation to learn, to become prepared, if they’re struggling to make it through the day because they haven’t had breakfast and they didn’t get packed a lunch? To see that…
A modern society, one that cares about its weakest, is one that takes care of such people and children. To know that government is taking steps in that regard is very reassuring.
Again, our CASA commitment had words to the effect that we had a shared value about the importance of dealing with mental health and addiction, particularly with youth. Again, we can do a three-quarter box tick on this one and thank government for their attention to this.
The child opportunity benefit in Budget 2019 — this is interesting. It’s interesting for a couple of things. First, let me outline it. The budget introduces the child opportunity benefit, replacing and expanding the existing early childhood tax benefit. The existing benefit ends at six years old, whereas the new benefit takes you all the way to 18. The maximum benefit is 1,600 bucks for one child, 2,600 for two, and 3,400 for three children. These maximum benefits are more than double the maximum benefits under the old tax benefit.
The benefit is reduced by 4 percent for net family incomes above $25,000, so there is a some reduction there. But one of the ways you could look at…. Well, let me finish it. The benefit is phased out for a family income over 80,000 bucks — phased out by 4 percent for over $80,000. A family with one child — a benefit will be fully phased out at $97,500. And a family with two children will have the benefit fully phased out $114,500.
An initial comment here. It would be nice if all these phase-out numbers, whether it be the child benefit or whether it be various exemptions…. If they used the same number…. The access-to-child-care-space one is a different number from the child care benefit. I would see there’s some prudence to actually make these all come together.
It’s a little odd it doesn’t come into force until October 2020. But with that said, some of these things take time to implement and set out. Again, we have a year to set it in. You could argue: why didn’t we put it in next year’s budget? Again, this is not too uncommon to see these kinds of measures come in a year down the road.
Interjections.
A. Weaver: Pardon me?
Interjections.
A. Weaver: Ah, so it’s because of the federal government as well. I appreciate that. So the federal government commitment kicks in, in 2020 as well, which is….
Interjections.
A. Weaver: Yeah, so we’ve done that — appreciate the comments there. We’ll update according.
The cost is $375 million over a fiscal plan — $125,000 in 2021 and $250,000 in the year after. It will be delivered monthly along with the federal Canada child benefit, as was just brought to my attention. It’s welcome, and it’ll be providing health and well-being for B.C. families.
B.C. now is the second-only such province in Canada to do something like this, Quebec being the other. It’s important, as it actually is dealing with what is an embarrassing issue for B.C., which is the issue of child poverty. We invariably year after year rank at or near the bottom in terms of rates of child poverty in British Columbia.
Again, we’re very excited about this. We should not be a province where one in five children grow up in poverty, despite the fact that we have the strongest economy in the province. This comes back to the words I heard from the B.C. Liberal finance critic. — her somewhat outrageous views about spending, spending, spending.
You know, we have the strongest economy in the country. We have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Yet we have the highest, or second-highest, child poverty rate. We have some of the worst income inequality and affordability issues.
This suggests to me…. When I listened in opposition, government would say budget speech after budget speech: “We’ll deal with the $50 increase in a housing allowance, or we’ll deal with welfare rates, or we’ll deal with social services when the economy is better and we make more money.” They’ve been saying that for 16 blooming years, and they’ve kept cutting them.
The reality is when the Minister of Finance past had a $1 billion — no, not $100 million, a $1 billion surplus…. Talk about reckless fiscal management, in an election year, no less.
You wouldn’t plan this in your worst management nightmare — $1 billion surplus in an election year. Why? Because they couldn’t manage the books, and they had no idea what was going on in the out-of-control real estate sector. And the former Liberal critic has the audacity to criticize government for a reduction in property transfer taxes. My goodness. My statement to government is: good on you.
We’re one of only, I believe, two provinces, maybe three, that actually have property transfer tax, brought in by Bill Vander Zalm. It’s a regressive form of taxation. The tax is something you want people to do, which is actually buy and sell homes, to move up and down as they get older and then get really old, as they age into bigger houses and then down to smaller condominiums. We want them to do that.
Government has recognized that this was unsustainable, and they’ve moved revenue sources away from the B.C. Liberal revenue source of property transfer taxes obtained through nefarious activity. We find out today, in question period, that in B.C. you get a tax credit. If you want to come and money launder in B.C., the B.C. Liberals will give you a tax credit to do it. Heaven forbid. Unbelievable that we find that out today in question period.
Coming back to what we believed in our submission…. We argued that children need the strongest possible support early in life. We are a party that believes in intergenerational equity. We’re a party that believes in prevention, a party that believes in investing when people need it, so that you’re not paying reactively down the road, when they’re using social services. You try to avoid the need for them to get there down the road.
We believe that children should not be living in a province like ours in poverty. It’s just wrong. It’s wrong at such a fundamental level. We call ourselves a civilized society, a modern society, yet we have 20 percent, one in five children, in this province living in poverty. That’s B.C. Liberal economics at its finest, representing their 1 percent donors and ignoring the 95 percent of this province who struggle to make ends meet day in, day out.
Budget 2019 also addresses environmental stewardship, but one of the submissions that we made, that we would suggest has not been given the attention we hoped for, which is a challenge for us moving forward to continue to advocate for this…. This is with respect to the issue of environmental stewardship.
The funding for habitat and species protection in the budget is, frankly, underwhelming. We know that wildlife is facing increasing threats. There are endangered species that are…. We’re still waiting for that legislation. We understand it’s in the works. Some species, like the steelhead — this is the Kamloops steelhead area — or the caribou stocks in some areas, are not going to make it another year. So there is a problem here, and some of our province’s cultural identity is close to becoming extirpated in some areas and extinct in others.
We believe that we have a significant responsibility for environmental stewardship for future generations. As I’ve argued, the beauty of our natural environment is one of our strategic strengths. If we want to use it to capitalize on economic opportunities moving forward, we need to protect and preserve it today. Otherwise, it won’t be an attraction.
Look at hunting in B.C. British Columbia has been known for some of the best hunting in the world. The B.C. Liberal approach has been to let free-range development happen willy-nilly, with no assessment of cumulative impacts.
We have glyphosate spraying on freshly cut pine forests in the Interior, killing off the deciduous undergrowth. Then, like deer in the headlights, we stand back and say: “Oh, why is our moose population declining? Why are our forest fires getting so big?” We ignore the fact that we haven’t actually looked at some of our timber practices. We haven’t looked at the fact that we need the aspen and birch to grow, not only as a food source for ungulates but also as fire prevention, fire retardants, to stop the spread of fires through monoculture stands.
Again, this is what we would have hoped to see more of. We believe that we need to have substantial funding for habitat restoration and protection, including the investment of moneys into private land acquisition in particularly vulnerable and biodiverse ecosystems.
It is not okay for government to willy-nilly give out timber lot licences in some of the last bastions of old growth on Vancouver Island, where biodiversity is richest yet is close to extirpation.
This is not okay, because these are Crown resources. They are owned by all of us. They are not owned by a multinational for the benefit of their shareholders so that they can cut what they can and ship it off in the form of raw logs.
We believe that we need better protection and stewardship of our natural environment, and we’ll continue to advocate for that moving on. Protecting endangered habitat is more effective, both for outcomes and costs, than intervening on a species-by-species level after the fact.
We know, for example, that as climate change becomes more severe, biodiversity and old growth ecosystems will be vital to the health and resilience of this province. Moreover, habitat protection, through land acquisition, is an effective interim measure that can be taken to protect species at risk while legislation is being prepared.
We believe that environmental stewardship is an area that was lacking in this budget, and for salmon specifically, we continue to urge government to immediately protect and restore habitat and coordinate a provincial responsibility for fish. One of the biggest problems with salmon habitat is what’s been going on in the streams and rivers across British Columbia. That is low-hanging fruit that we can actually get at through small policy changes.
Coming to wildfires in Budget 2019, Budget 2018 included a $72 million investment to support wildfire resilience and recovery efforts in communities. Budget 2019 provides an additional $111 million over three years to strengthen B.C.’s efforts to prevent and respond to wildfires and $13 million for forest restoration in areas damaged by disease and wildfires.
The Liberal critic, who’s completely out of touch, in my view, with what’s going on in this budget, suggested that somehow this is money that’s used to suppress fire, to fight fires. This isn’t money to fight fires. This is money used to ensure that, actually, forests are resilient to fires. This means dealing with things like glyphosate spraying. This means like dealing with underbrush. It means like getting slash off the cut field. These are policy changes.
Wildfires, you can always fight wildfires, because government has access to funds when it needs them to respond to disaster at government’s will. Again, this funding is additional funding, which we’re pleased to see.
We actually would have done more, and our submission suggested that we should do more. We spent $560 million fighting fires in 2017. By last August, the province had already spent close to $274 million in direct firefighting costs, more than four times the budget of $63 million.
We also know that climate change threatens every aspect of life in this province and that government must recognize this threat and allocate the appropriate resources to address these foreseeable and unavoidable natural disasters.
We advocated, for example, for: increase investment in wildfire prevention and mitigation; emphasize forest resiliency through improved landscape management, with the goal of reducing wildfire size, speed and destruction; and prioritize the funding for the following recommendations in addressing the new normal.
When I say the…. Addressing the New Normal: 21st Century Disaster Management in British Columbia is a report that was recently issued. In these recommendations, we saw some that we thought were critical priorities that we argue should be funded.
Number 31 in that report: collaborate with First Nations to integrate traditional ecological knowledge with western science to ensure risk modelling is built upon greater understanding of the land base, values and practices of First Nations.
We argued that No. 67 needed to be funded. “Create mechanisms to encourage fire prevention activities such as thinning, biomass utilization, targeted grazing, alternate species and densities.”
Number 102 recommendation: “Develop and apply post-fire planting strategies for dry forests that enhance resilience … rather than optimize timber production.”
This is critical. You think that you’re…. Again, this is so typical of a short-term focus that has been put in place by years of that type of thinking from B.C. Liberals. Always think about the immediate short-term neoliberal win.
No. What we should be thinking about is planting for resiliency so that we can actually harvest trees, rather than planting with the idea that if we only plant one species, they’re all going to grow fast, and then we’ll cut them down. Well that doesn’t work. When a forest fire comes in, it clears them all out. Having resiliency as a focus as opposed to optimization of hypothetical timber production is critical.
We also believe funding should be prioritized for the following approach from the Megafires in B.C. report. Number 4, which was “forest restoration and adaptive forest management,” increasing the ecosystem resilience to enable recovery following wildfires. “Adaptation must include restoration and management informed by science and traditional ecological knowledge.”
It’s consistent with…. We’ve heard some positive stuff coming from the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resources Operations and Rural Development that he hopes to start looking into forestry. But I come back to this is one of our bellwether industries, one of our foundational industries, one of the industries that made B.C. great — not again, just made it great in the first place. Forestry is an industry that we need to pay a little more attention to.
In the issue of professional reliance and environmental assessment, my colleague from Cowichan Valley had a very personal experience with the flawed nature of the old professional reliance model and environmental assessment approach. Just ask her about Shawnigan Lake. I’d suggest you do that over at least three beers, because you won’t be getting an answer in 15 minutes. She will go over in gory detail the problems that this past process had buried within it.
We’re excited to see both the passing of the professional reliance reform legislation and the revised environmental assessment plan, both of which were B.C. Green–led initiatives in the fall. We’re pleased to see 2019 funds making changes to the EA process and the professional reliance model as well. There is funding for $9 million over three years for implementing the revitalized Environmental Assessment Act, which will focus on enhancing public confidence and participation in the process.
This is the key. Again, the B.C. Liberals seem to have forgotten this. The key to advancing resource projects in British Columbia is to ensure the public trusts the process by which the project is approved. It cannot continue with the old way of doing things.
I’ll illustrate that with what I think is a beautiful example. The old way of doing things is government sidles up…. In fact, it’s still new in the B.C. Liberal mind, because they still haven’t learned that they didn’t win the last election, and they have to change the way they are, or they’ll never get back in this side of the House. The old way of doing things is government sidles up to corporate friend, and corporate friend says: “Hey, I like what’s going on here. What do you think about this idea?” Government says: “That’s great.”
A few donations later and government ends up marketing that this is a great project, and industry says: “Oh, we’ve got government support. Let’s now go into town and market the solution.” So they go into town, and they hire some expensive PR people to actually engage, so-called consult or engage, the town. Each and every time what happens is you divide town. Fifty percent hate the project; 50 percent love it. You pit citizen against citizen, ensuring nothing will happen. Then you go to the local Indigenous communities, and you find one that may support it and one that doesn’t, and you pit one against the other.
Well, I can tell you, this is the B.C. Liberal, the old, way of doing things in B.C. It’s guaranteed to ensure nothing ever gets done.
You don’t ask me. Go and ask the members from the Loops here, and ask them about the Ajax mine — a beautiful example of how not to do something. Again, not to disparage the company. They actually went so far as to provide funding to allow an independent environmental assessment and an independent assessment by the Kamloops Nation. Kudos to the company for actually doing that.
Where the problem was lay in the government’s approach to supporting the company at the wrong time and not letting the company do the good work it needs to do to build something from the bottom up. They wasted a lot of time that they didn’t need to waste if they’d got a sense of the pulse of the community on day one, not after the fact.
Let’s take two examples of how this works: Jumbo Glacier Lake and Glacier Destinations. Jumbo Glacier — in classic B.C. Liberal way, the developer comes up with MLAs. They sit around. “Hey, great idea. Let’s go market it.” The developer gets some little act passed here to allow them to be a municipality that actually has a mayor and council that get funds. They never sat. There are no houses. There’s not even a concrete pad anymore. That at least was there.
That was the way. Of course, it’s mired in courts. Nothing’s going to happen. Indigenous communities were pitted against another, town against town. Typical nothing happens.
Glacier Destinations went to the same architect. The Indigneous Simpcw Nation and the Valemount community together approached the architect and said: “We want this.” The architect said: “Okay, we’ll do this.” They did it. Then — boom, boom, boom — it went through approval process, and guess what the delay was? The delay was government. The delay was government that couldn’t get their act together to actually approve this in time.
The delay was also government in requiring them to build a bloody four-way highway to get people from the airport to the Glacier destination, when they wanted to have a gondola. But government, in its wise ways, knew best as to what the people of Valemount and the Simpcw Nation needed. You need a four-lane highway, not a gondola, not mirroring after the Swiss resorts that they wanted to mirror after. Because government knew best and the B.C. Liberal way.
Maybe they should have made a few more donations. That might have got them the gondola, but they didn’t.
Government was the problem, not the solution in this regard. Fortunately, it looks like it’s moving forward, but this was an example of bottom-up management. That is why we need an environmental assessment process that allows people to build support from the bottom up, to trust that government has their interests front and centre when decisions are made, not the interests of the donors to the political party du jour. That happened to be, for the last 16 years — oh, I shouldn’t say that, because I’m sick and tired of “the last 16 years” — prior to this, a government that had lost touch with the people of British Columbia.
You know, the office of superintendent of professional governance will be established through a nearly $2 million investment over three years. The office will provide for a centralized statutory authority for professional governments oversight to ensure consistent and best practices are applied to the work of the natural resource professionals. All I can say is: “Thank you, member for Cowichan Valley.” I should have said the name, but this was an initiative that she spearheaded and that she drove and that she worked tirelessly on.
We’re so pleased to see government listen and respond, because, ultimately, when you work on shared values, and you work in a spirit of collaboration and consultation, and you work in a spirit of actually wanting to advance good public policy that puts people ahead of vested interest, you can get a lot done. You can get an awful lot done.
Members opposite could get a lot done if they learnt a little bit from that. If they learnt a little bit that this isn’t all a big game here, that actually, there are real people that are affected by our decisions. It behooves them, instead of playing the game day in, day out, to actually provide solutions, advice, areas that we can actually collectively work on, but that’s a foreign notion. I understand.
You know, we would have done things slightly differently, of course. We would have liked to see a restoration of the former commissioner for the environment and sustainability or creation of a natural resource practices board under the Auditor General Act. These are directions that the B.C. Greens, in a majority government, would have gone — for the rationale, of course, that it fulfils, within the well-regarded Haddock report recommendation 31…. That is a cost-efficient way to augment oversight capacity. We believe that that would have been a best way to proceed, and we’re hoping to move in that direction.
We also believe that base funding needs to be restored to ministry staffing levels by about 40 compliance and enforcement staff per year over the next four years, about 160 total. The reason why is directly addressed by recommendation number 34, which said, in the Haddock report, that the offset costs associated with professional reliance failures…. For example, a conservative estimate has put the taxpayer liability amount of remediation at approximately $40 million. We know that investment in prevention saves a bunch of money in reaction down the road.
Again, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s the same, whether it be environmental assessments or environmental oversight, as it is with eating an apple every day to save getting diabetes down the road or something. I don’t know whether that’s a good example. Keep the doctor away.
Now, to the economic agenda. Again, the members opposite…. I could have written their speaking notes, honestly, on a napkin over a beer in five minutes. Jobs. Again, members opposite don’t even understand how jobs work. It’s not about jobs. People don’t want jobs. They want careers. They want to know that they can actually work in a profession that they trained for, for an extended period of time. This isn’t about building a bridge and then laying everyone off afterwards. It’s about sustained economic activity.
While we may have housing construction down a little bit, to think that the norm was the ridiculous out-of-control money-laundered-fuelled speculation in building luxury condos that sat vacant, to think that that is somehow good economics, to think that somehow is leading to a resilient, sustainable economy. Is there any wonder that the former Minister of Finance had a billion dollar surplus? They had no idea what they were doing. They were just making it up as they were going along, and money was laundering in. They saw the revenue coming in from the gaming revenue and the start to build programs based on shaky gaming revenue and property transfer that’s being flipped through these multi-million-dollar homes that nobody is living in. It’s good economics stewardship.
What the members opposite missed in their response to the throne speech was that CleanBC was not an environmental plan. It’s an economic vision, one that they seemed to have missed for the last four years that I was in office. And despite that, if you speak to leaders in the tech field, they’ll attest to the fact that the tech industry in B.C. has thrived — and the words that they use are — “despite the B.C. Liberals.”
Because they had to struggle uphill in an environment that was set, a culture of “it’s pay to play” B.C.” — and small entrepreneurs don’t have a lot to pay to play — one in which the regulatory environment for tech entrepreneurs was top-heavy, and one in which the only signal government was giving was one that if you want to do business in B.C., somehow it has got to link into LNG somewhere.
It was so much so that government interference was going down into the education system, at post-secondary institutions and in K to 12. In fact, they actually used the words, I kid you not, that they wanted to re-engineer the education system. How Orwellian can you get? That is what we had to deal with moving forward, and that is why I’m excited by this CleanBC economic vision for British Columbia.
Again, British Columbia will never compete with jurisdictions that just dig dirt out of the ground, because they don’t internalize the same social and environmental externalities that we do and care about. It costs more to dig up dirt in B.C. versus, say, in Namibia. It costs more because the land is more valuable. We pay better wages. We value our environment at a level that…. At least the people value the environment. And it’s sometimes a little more costly.
So how do we compete? Well, we could follow the model of the B.C. Liberals, which is give-away-the-resource and race-to-the-bottom economics. Or we can say: “No. The way we compete is through innovation.” We compete by being smarter, more efficient and cleaner. We compete by capitalising on our strategic advantages, those being, as I mentioned, boundless access to renewable energy; an educated, highly skilled workforce; and the natural beauty that allows us to attract and retain the best and brightest from around the world.
But again, in order to capitalize on these strategic strengths, you have to protect them. You have to protect our access to renewable energy. You have to protect our natural beauty. And you have to protect, nurture and support the people of this province to ensure that we continue to provide an educated workforce moving forward.
At the core of the opportunity embodied in CleanBC is the harnessing of innovation that supports new ideas and the creation of new technologies that improve the life of British Columbians. Because British Columbians, if there’s one thing I can tell you, are innovators and problem-solvers, and we have some of the best and brightest here of anywhere in the world — because they want to live in this beautiful province.
Now, government has made huge strides to bring resources to the table in CleanBC. It’s made huge strides by adopting that — coupled with Innovate B.C., the emerging economy task force. The focus on things now is for the government getting at the table for the digital supercluster. We’re starting to see programs federally start to streamline a little more closely with programs provincially, thanks to the good work by Alan Winter, our innovation commissioner. I’ll address that more.
While government has made huge steps, the next step is to make a similar commitment to innovation policy in the province. So innovation, ultimately, is where our future economic opportunities will come from. We know that this government has some important key steps with $50 million bucks going into enhanced high-speed Internet activity in rural areas. I can’t underestimate how important this is.
An example that I gave a couple of years ago, when I was standing on the other side as a lonely independent MLA — elected as Green, but status independent — was the issue of Prince George. Prince George is a bustling northern community. It is a hub for northern expertise. It has got a world-class university. But unfortunately, it does not have broadband redundancy. It has two high-speed lines in, both owned by Telus.
Now good on Telus for putting in those lines. But no multinational is going to move to Prince George and set up shop there if they’re beholden to Telus for their broadband. It’s just a crazy business model. You want built-in redundancy.
A $6 million investment to connect Prince George to Chetwynd with broadband would bring in the redundancy that Prince George needed to allow it to attract the likes of Google, to allow it to attract the likes of the BMWs of this world, to allow it to attract the New Age industries that require, as a fundamental aspect of doing business, access to broadband.
The previous government thought that highways meant nothing more than… We even heard it in the critics today. “We need to pave the Trans-Canada Highway.” The much-tired former Minister of Finance is coming up spouting the rhetoric line of: “We need more highways.” Well, let’s talk a little bit about highways.
I recognize that politicians who’ve been in this place for 20-odd years are stuck and have run out of ideas, and that’s all they can think about. But in the new economy, highways…. When you ask people under the age of 40 what they think about highways, they think about information highways. They think about access to information at high speed.
We know that the speed of light is not a barrier to access to information. What is a barrier is access to broadband and, in particular for bigger companies, there is redundancy. So if we want Prince George to have the investments by Google, by perhaps Telus or others, why would Google want to go to Prince George now? It wouldn’t. But why is it they built a factory, a big data storage centre, in Corvallis? Because they could.
Google is a company that wants to brand itself as a clean, new economy company. They wanted to have access to clean, renewable power. Oregon can give them that. B.C. could as well. They want access to the world through high-speed Internet. Oregon can give them that. B.C. could not give them that in Prince George.
What B.C. had that no other jurisdiction could match was, actually, a colder climate. We know the single biggest cost in data distribution centres is cooling. If you had a data distribution centre in Prince George, you would save on cooling costs substantively. And you wouldn’t have to worry about the speed of light, because it’s threetimesten8metres per second. That’s pretty fast; not a barrier for information travelling on earth, frankly.
Again, years of banging my head against the wall, trying to get government to recognize the importance of investment in broadband, particularly for rural hub zones like Prince George — nothing. But here we see an investment coming in, $50 million to enhance high-speed Internet access in rural areas. That is perhaps the single most important investment this government has made in this budget for innovation distributed across our budget. Kudos to the government for this.
There’s also $5 million in annual funding for an expansion of the technology training program. There’s funding to support the expansion of tech spaces at post-secondary institutions and, of course, CleanBC and its focus on harnessing new, innovative technologies and finding solutions that will allow us to increase efficiency and decrease emissions.
You know, we can look to examples of how we compete by bringing our technologies together with our resource sector. There is no reason why Kamloops and Prince George are not major centres of innovation in resource technology coupled together with our traditional sectors. These should be hubs, North American and worldwide hubs, for that, because people can afford to live in Prince George and Kamloops. It’s cooler there. You can store data there cheaper. Give them broadband, and you can access the world.
We also have resources there. You can’t make resources move to tech, but you can have tech move to resources. Why is it that Canadian forestry companies buy our technologies from Finland, buy our software from Finland, from Sweden, from Norway? Why aren’t we developing it here, because we can and we should.
What we need is a government to recognize that sustainable economies are ones that are grounded in the strategic strengths of your jurisdiction, and I’ve already articulated what those are.
In our CASA commitment, we had a major piece of our 2017 platform embedded within CASA. That was discussed earlier. We had the innovation commissioner. We had representatives who help our technology sector compete nationally and internationally through the innovation commissioner. We’ve got the emerging economy task force.
One of the things I hope government over the next little while starts to contemplate with the emerging economy task force is getting them to stand back and to reflect about perhaps a new way of looking about our taxation system. Let’s call it a tax shift.
Presently we have a very weird kind of tax system, one that’s kludged together over many years of adding pieces on top of pieces. It’s quite regressive in many aspects, less regressive in other aspects. There are ways to get the emerging economy task force to actually think about: what is a tax regime in British Columbia — big picture thinking — that actually recognizes that as we move forward in the new economy, it will be more towards a gig economy. We recognize that more and more people will have more and more jobs over the course of their lives. Their careers may be in the same area, but they might have to relocate a little more.
We know that these are changes down the road. We know that the disparity between those who have and those who don’t have is increasing. We also have countless examples in human history as where that ends up. I can tell you, very simply, each and every example of where income disparity grows has led to one solution, which is a revolution and the collapse of that society. Frankly, I don’t think we want to have that here in B.C., so let’s get a handle on this sooner than later, which is exactly what government is doing.
We, in our submission, obviously supported this. We had tons of things to submit in this area in terms of efficiency and cost internalization policy suggestions. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with government in the coming years to establish this agenda.
Let’s go to an analysis that I think is important here that is often not done, and it goes back to my previous statement about perhaps we can get the emerging economy task force to stand back and take a look at our taxation system here and what we’re doing.
Let’s take a generational analysis to this budget. What do I mean by that? We know, for example, that this budget has not been looked at through the lens of an intergenerational-generational analysis. We know that less than 20 percent of the new investments in the 2019 budget go to people under the age of 45, a group that represents more than half the population. So less than 20 percent of the budget targets more than half of the population, and that half of the population is largely the population paying taxes, working. Many of the older population have retired. And it is a population that is under 45 and represents over half. Only 20 percent of your money goes there.
The vast majority of the funding — a billion dollars or so, not well articulated in press releases — goes to education through the Ministry of Health. You know, I don’t have a problem with health funding. I think, obviously, we need to relook at the way we deliver health. But one of the things that I would suggest is continuing to throw more money at the system without standing back and reflecting on the system is not a healthy way forward.
I do appreciate some of the work done by the Minister of Health, who’s looking for a more kind of community-based approach to have health care centres. That might need new money, as we transition to that, as you start to do slow changes. But this wasn’t well articulated in the overall press release and budget documents, that so much money was going to continued funding of health care.
Health, of course, doesn’t start with medical care. We tend to put all of our money into reactionary measures, as opposed to proactive health promotion. My favourite example of this, it’s a tragic example, is the issue of harm reduction in terms of naloxone treatment and overdoses. We had, under the Liberals — Minister Lake deserves a lot of credit — a very effective program of harm reduction introduced in B.C. when the number of deaths from opioid related diseases went through the roof. However, we didn’t stand back and say: “Why are these people taking drugs in the first place, and what is their pathway to recover?”
We all know people…. I have a cousin who’s a firefighter who resuscitated the same person multiple times in a day. It actually leads to real problems for those first responders who are feeling a sense of hopelessness as they are dealing with these people who have fallen through the cracks in our society. There’s no prevention strategy and no pathway to recovery. So what we see in this budget which, again, is something that I think deserves some praise, is steps towards dealing with the mental health and addictions at the youth and early childhood ages, which is important. Also, critically so, is the investment in the K to 12 system, particularly in the support that children in their critical years of development. We think that you actually should view that through a lens of prevention, a health care view of prevention, and the pathway to recovery still has some work to be done.
In conclusion, you can tell from my general tone here that while there are obviously challenges and opportunities ahead, we believe that this budget has some pretty incredibly important measures in the short term, as well as setting the stage for some of the longer-term successes. CleanBC, government is not shirking away from its responsibility here. It’s funding CleanBC. It sees it as an economic vision, as opposed to a purely environmental vision. It’s one that’s got support, broad support, from NGOs outside of government.
But the work doesn’t stop with the introduction of CleanBC. The work will require us to continue to maintain vigilance to ensure that we remain on track to recognize that this is an economic vision.
It requires vigilance to ensure that the support mechanisms are there, that the messaging is clear, that when you’re building schools that are being funded through this budget, you’re seeing this through the lens of CleanBC.
You don’t build a school today to save a million dollars today that you could save in three years through a little bit more spending to ensure that you have operating cost reductions on the long term. A little bit of investment today, viewed through the lens of CleanBC, leads to prevention, leads to long-term cost savings and is actually exciting for innovation because everybody wants to be new and innovative, and they want to get behind the kinds of opportunities that you see in CleanBC.
We wish there was, of course, some more generational analysis for that. We continue to advocate for that. We would suggest that moving forward, we’ll continue to look at this through the lens of generational funding.
I know that youth don’t vote, but we are elected to represent everybody, and it really behooves us to start focusing a little more on that generation of people who actually have to live the consequences of the decisions we made, most of which we don’t actually have to live the consequences of. It’s kind of a good position to be in and why so many politicians think more about re-election than they do about the policy that’ll be in place for a generation to come, because the next election is all many care about.
What matters is history and how you’re judged in history as somebody who set the stage, moving forward, for the next generation. It’s like you can ask any teacher. Their success is not judged by what they do in the classroom. Their success is judged by the success of their students, and they take recognition and reward, personal reward, by seeing their students succeed. It should be the same for every one of us in this room.
We succeed judged not by our tasks we do today but by what we leave behind for the next generation of people in British Columbia. On that regard, I think government is moving in the right direction. As the world changes, we’re ensuring that our economy is changing, and our government is adapting to these changes. We’re seeing government making the right investments and moving in the right direction. And frankly, I’m entirely encouraged by the spirit of hope and collaboration in which CleanBC was put together.
I’m looking forward to working in this regard to ensure that it is successful, that the economy responds, diversifies and positions British Columbia as leaders in the new economy, the economy of tomorrow. Others around the world will look at us and say: “Look at B.C. We want to emulate them. They have the best education system in the world. They’ve got it all. They’ve got the best environment in the world. They’ve got the best education system in the world, and they have opportunities for everyone, whether you win the lottery of birth by being born into a wealthy family or whether you happen to have not been born into such a family.”
With that, hon. Speaker, I thank you so much, and I look forward to further deliberations on this budget.
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