Constituency Report is a public service that Shaw TV graciously offers MLAs. This month’s video is provided below.

Judy Fainstein and I once more tried something different. The first segment follows the usual discussion of legislative issues relevant to Oak Bay-Gordon Head and British Columbia in general. In the second segment, I introduce Teresa Hartrick, the constituency assistant in my MLA office. We discuss the type of issues a constituency office deals with as well as the type of work a constituency assistant does.

As always, I’d be interested in your feedback on this constituency report.

Constituency Report

Today at Committee Stage I asked two questions seeking clarification from the Minister of Advanced Education as to the type of fees that are collected by Student Societies and whether or not these are what he had in mind with respect to the new legislation. More details are available in my second reading comments.

The Minister’s answer was quite clear that “From our perspective, what [student societies] do with the funds they collect under [the student society] fee heading is up to them. We have no intention of getting involved in what they do, particularly at the student society level.” This suggests that a way to get around some of the concerns still being raised would be to roll as much a possible into the student society fees.

Below is the exchange I had with the Minister.

Question 1

A. Weaver: I’m just trying to seek clarification from the minister specifically with respect to the University of Victoria and, presumably, other universities as to the type of fees that are collected and whether or not these are what he had in mind.

If you’re a student going to the University of Victoria, you’re required to pay student fees for the UVic Students Society, fees set through earlier referenda; the UVSS renovation fee, set through referendum for the renovations of the student buildings; a UVic athletics fee only for on-campus people, again set through referendum at a time back in history; a UVSS bus pass, also set through referendum; UVSS dental plan and UVSS extended health plan, both of which you are able to opt out — as, I believe, is the case for every university I’ve talked to — if you have other dental plans existing.

Now, what I’m asking here is if these are the type of fees, in light of the information I gave, that the minister believes would be required to be paid anyway by a student who withdrew from the university student society? And I have a small follow-up on one of these after that answer.

Answer

Hon. A. Wilkinson: The member lists a number of fees, and it’s a bit of a sample of the range of fees found at our 25 institutions, the Justice Institute being the one organization that does not have a student society and therefore has no appropriate fees in this category.

The opt-out arrangements for at least two of the fees indicate that of the somewhere between 100 and 200 different fees we are addressing here, that will require consultation with the student societies and the universities and colleges involved to ascertain which ones should be put into which category.

Question 2

A. Weaver: Just a quick follow-up here. The UVic Student Society fee is one that students are required to pay to keep the ongoing governance of the UVic Student Society.

That student society fee subset monies to organizations like the UVSS Food Bank and Free Store, the anti-violence project, the Society for Students with a Disability, the Native Students Union, UVSS Students of Colour Collective and the UVic Pride collective, amongst others.

My specific question here is: if the students are paying one fee, that is the UVic Students Society fee, and the students society makes decisions within that on how those funds are spent, is the minister talking about having them have each and every subset of their overall student fee being approved by the ministry? Or is it just the one fee?

One of the overarching concerns is that micromanagement, at the level of the government, will be to look at each and every decision being made by a student society in a student society fee. Could the minister please provide clarification on that?

Answer

Hon. A. Wilkinson: I hope that the remarks I’m about to make will be reassuring to the student societies and to the members opposite. The anticipation is that there’ll be no change in the structure, content, nature or collection of student society fees through this process. The student societies assess fees, which are widely variable around the province. From our perspective, what they do with the funds they collect under that fee heading is up to them. We have no intention of getting involved in what they do, particularly at the student society level.

I thought we had made this reasonably clear in the conference call on November 2, but if there is any remaining anxiety amongst the student societies and unions or amongst the members opposite, I hope this has succeeded in allaying those fears.

Video of the Exchange

Today we very quickly moved through committee stage of  Bill 37, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, (No. 2), 2015 (what I’ve called the Comma and Spellchecker Act). This bill  simply corrected a few commas, a bracket that shouldn’t have been italicized, and a couple of spelling mistakes. I spoke to this bill earlier at second reading, Today, during committee stage I had but one question. Why are we only checking the spelling of willful in a couple of bills and not all of them?

Below are the text and video of the question together with the Minister’s response.

Video of Exchange

Text of Exchange

A. Weaver: I’ve got one question, and the question is with respect to: why these changes? Why I say that is I recognize the importance of changing the spelling of “willful” and doing it through legislation, as we are here.

But as I outlined in second reading, the Community Charter, Insurance Premium Tax Act, the Local Government Act, the Logging Tax Act, the Maa-nulth First Nations Final Agreement Act, the Mineral Tax Act, the Motor Fuel Tax Act, the Perpetuity Act — I don’t even know what some of these are — the Personal Property Security Act, the Property Transfer Tax Act, Railway Act, Tobacco Tax Act and on and on also have “wilful” spelt differently.

My question to the minister is this: Why do we selectively correct the spelling of “wilful” in some — the School Act, I reckon, is important — and not in other acts. Surely, in doing this, we would do a global search of how wilful is spelt and change all occurrences of wilful to be consistent across acts so that we’re not introducing more of these spell-checker acts wilfully.

Hon. S. Anton: The spelling of the word wilfully does occur in different acts and it’s spelled differently, as the member has pointed out. I’m glad that he has time to look up these things.

The issue in the Tobacco Tax Act is that it was spelled differently in the same act. The act was under consideration for other reasons, so it was thought an opportune time to correct it so at least the act itself was internally consistent.

Every time there’s a correction, it does require consultation. These mistakes are found, but you still have to go out to the ministry and make sure that they’re good with it and do all the proper dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s, so to speak, typographically. This was an opportune one to do right now. There may be others brought forward in the future, and that will be a matter of discretion as we move forward.

Today in the legislature I rose to speak at second reading on Bill 41, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2015. Bill 41 proposed amendments in four general areas:

1. Advanced Education
2. Children and Family Development
3. Energy and Mines
4. Justice amendments

I generally spoke in favour of the amendments with notable caveats that I will explore further tomorrow at Committee stage. Below are the text and video of my speech.

Text of my Speech

A. Weaver: I rise to speak to Bill 41, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2015. It’s another one of the miscellaneous statutes acts, this one with amendments in four different areas — the first, of course, being Advanced Education amendments that my colleague from Victoria–Swan Lake discussed recently. Part 2 is Children and Family Development amendments; part 3, Energy and Mines amendments, specifically with respect to BCUC; and part 4, Justice amendments.

This bill actually covers a rather large number of bills within the four categories: the Child, Family and Community Service Act; the College and Institute Act; the University Act; the Interjurisdictional Support Orders Act; and the Utilities Commission Act.

The amendments clarify a few definitions and generally expand regulatory and exemption powers for the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council or, in the case of the Utilities Commission Act, the minister assigned in the place of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. This amendment bill seems to follow a pattern of a rather large number of these bills we’ve seen this year where the legislation is made somewhat increasingly vague and left up, often, to the discretion of the appointed minister or regulator.

With respect to the Child, Family and Community Service Act, the amendments are said to enable the expansion of the agreements with young adults program, allowing the Ministry of Children and Family Development to extend the duration of agreements and raise the age limit. Now, this is important. This is an important piece of legislation that is dealing with the transition of youth from the ages of 18 to 19 who often fall between the cracks as they move from being a child to an adult. Being able to allow the…. The amendment will allow and enable agreements to be used for life skills programs, in addition to the current educational, vocational and rehabilitation programs, meaning that children will be able to transition better.

I was speaking this last Saturday with an RCMP officer from the Victoria region, out on the West Shore, who said that the single most common call they get are calls with respect to adolescent mental health issues. Now, part of the problem, of course, is that these adolescents who move into adulthood fall between the cracks after they age out. This legislation allows ministries to actually coordinate — extend the coverage — under Children and Family Development, and it’s a very fine piece of legislation that I’m very proud to support.

On the same note, the changes to the Interjurisdictional Support Orders Act add further amendments that I’m very pleased to support. In particular, the changes will allow for child and spousal support decisions from other provinces and territories and countries to be more efficiently processed. The administrative changes will allow support order decisions from jurisdictions that do not provide court-certified copies of decisions, such those reached by tribunal, to be registered with the B.C. court. In addition, instead of using the court sheriff services to serve applications for support from other jurisdictions, the director of maintenance enforcement will now use a private process server.

Out-of-province support orders are often hard to collect and said to account for about 11 percent of family maintenance enforcement program cases. So again, an important piece of legislation within the broader Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act.

Then we move to the Utilities Commission Act changes. Now, the member for Vancouver-Kingsway — I believe it was Vancouver-Kingsway — gave a very eloquent and fine analysis of the changes to the Utilities Commission Act, in particular how it affects BCUC. The changes include…. They’re being told to implement recommendations from the BCUC — British Columbia Utilities Commission — Core Review Task Force. That task force was initiated by government in 2014 in responses to concerns raised by customer groups and utilities about BCUC’s capacity to deliver clear and timely decisions.

The proposed legislative amendments are said to increase the BCUC’s effectiveness and efficiency and reduce the cost of regulation for ratepayers, who pay for BCUC in their utility raise. It all sounds fine at face value, but in terms of the implementation, what’s being proposed is that the amendments really seem to focus on increasing power and exemption abilities of the minister.

Now, while some ratepayer groups consulted during the core review are said to support these changes, it’s a disturbing trend that we’re seeing more and more often within this government’s legislation: to put more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer and ask British Columbians to trust us. As we saw earlier today, there are times when “trust us” simply is not good enough.

The final component of this Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act is with respect to changes to the College and Institute Act and the University Act. As I mentioned, my colleague from Vancouver–Swan Lake did a fine job outlining some of the…

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Did I say Vancouver–Swan Lake?

 With humble apologies to the member from Victoria-Quilchena, the member for Victoria–Swan Lake outlined some of the issues that some university student groups have felt concern on. The amendments here to both the University Act and the College and Institute Act make adjustments to how fees are collected, or can be collected, from people who leave student societies. The Minister of Advanced Education says he will consult with student societies to determine which program or service fees should be protected under legislation.

I understand why this legislation was brought in. With the recent passage of the Societies Act, we were left with a rather concerning gap in legislation, which led to questions as to what would happen to the fees if students pulled out of the student societies. I recognize that the minister, in consultation with a variety of student groups, put forward the amendments that we see before us today in both the order papers as well as in the original act.

There has been some concern that too much power will be granted to the minister to determine what is or is not considered a fee. It’s something that…. Rather than pass judgment on it at this particular junction, I will ask for some specific examples during committee stage, to get on record a certain number of these examples to see whether or not this is what the minister believes to be considered as student fees or student charges.

As the member for Victoria–Swan Lake…. The UVic Students Society has been quite vocal about their concerns with this specific piece of legislation. They knew that changes regarding fees levied against those who leave the student society were coming. They were concerned. They did not expect the format that the government used to bring these changes in to be the one we see today. In fairness to the minister who brought in the changes, it’s not clear to me, in the time frame that the minister had, that it was able to, under the same umbrella, bring all potential types and qualifiers and identify all those that would be viewed to be student fees now. The minister has committed to engaging student groups in the future to discuss this.

Nevertheless, it has left an element of uncertainty. When there’s uncertainty, there’s concern, because student groups — not only the University of Victoria and others — believe that they are being asked to trust us once again.

I will say that the student group at the University of British Columbia seemed to be more supportive of the changes as put in, although they, too, note the irony of almost a catch-22 being in place. I don’t think it’s fair, but a catch-22 is in place, where they say that the Societies Act seems to imply, quite logically, that only members of a society can cast votes on society business.

Yet there is an administrative problem, because students who resign their membership must continue to pay student fees. The bill specifies that these students must also continue to have voting rights. That seems to be in conflict with the Societies Act. But, as I will outline, there are ways around this, which brings me to a comment. I’m concerned that, in fact…. Ironically, in light of the amount of time we’ve spent during this session discussing red-tape reduction, it seems to me that one of the consequences of this amendment is a rather substantive increase in red tape to be applied to student organizations in British Columbia.

The bill separates the fees that students face into multiple, regulation-dependent categories, which may operate in different ways. There are a number of issues that I can think of that need to be addressed in the committee stage, as I mentioned, that I’ll cover later. But first, this bill creates the so-called red tape for student societies that I alluded to earlier as follows.

Previously, a simple annual vote took place. Annually, students would vote. That vote took place to elect a student board and was used to pass any new funding. The student board would be elected. New funding would be approved or not approved by a referendum, and it would be done with all students who are members of the student union or society voting.

However, the bill appears to morph this process into a far more convoluted red-tape process. I should have worn some red tape over my suit here today. Student societies must now account for a new category of students who will cast ballots on funding referendums and not on the student election.

This strikes me as odd — that you’ll have various groups of students voting on various things, in light of the fact that student turnout at the best of times is not as high as it could be. They already suffer from limited turnout in many universities around the province, let alone making this much more complicated and having different categories of students being able to vote for something or against something.

Secondly, the bill confers, I would argue, unnecessary powers to the minister to decide which fees apply in which ways. Now again, I recognize that this probably was left as a matter of regulation in light of the timeliness of trying to get something passed this session so that student groups collecting fees from students who secede from the union or society that represents them would be in place sooner than later. I recognize that.

However, there are questions that we can explore at committee stage, and they’ll follow along these lines. In general, there’s an issue with the increased reliance on regulation to set policy. However, in that case, there should be a simple remedy. Consult with student unions about the specific fees they levy and draft the legislation accordingly.

Again, we are told that the regulations will come in place through consultation with the student groups. Again, as I’ve argued earlier and pointed out, some of these student groups more so than others feel that they’re being asked to trust the government. Depending on the various student groups, some will trust them more than others.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: The minister, of course, is suggesting that we should all trust government. Well, as I mentioned earlier, trusting government in many cases is simply not good enough. We don’t have to reiterate the example we heard today during question period and the resolution I brought forward for emergency debate on the Shawnigan Lake situation.

The change, as I mentioned, also appears to allow the government to decide which fees are appropriate. That, again, could potentially limit the union’s or society’s ability to challenge government decisions it doesn’t support.

Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that the university of somewhere in B.C. decides to form…. Through referendum, the students decide that they want to put a group there, a union. Their union, through the fees, have decided a club is going to be formed. It’s going to be the “We have to get the Liberals out in 2017” club.

Now, that’s a fee that has been approved by referendum, and students then…. Maybe one or two in the university who don’t agree with that pull out of the student society. The decision as to whether or not that fee that was elected democratically…. Whether or not the students who pull out can actually take their payment of the fees with them is left up to the minister to decide.

Clearly, there is a potential conflict there. There’s a potential question as to whether or not the minister will or will not support. I gave a rather crass example. But we could actually move a little closer to where it’s not so clear.  Obviously, all of British Columbia has sincere trust in the present Minister of Advanced Education to do absolutely no wrong at any time. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that there were a minister who ideologically did not believe that men could be with other men and marry other men, and that therefore that minister…. I’m sure there are many of them in this government who feel that way strongly. Perhaps they are in a position of decision-making.

They, then, could decide: “You know what? These fees are not allowable.” Hence the concern of some student groups over others. Now, as I pointed out, this clearly would not happen in British Columbia with the esteemed leadership of the Minister of Advanced Education, also representing Vancouver-Quilchena. But there may be other ministers, at some point in the future, who will be less trustworthy.

Finally, I will say that much of this I’m going to try to deal with in committee stage, by providing specific examples of specific clubs that do exist already in some universities, and see whether or not the fees to these clubs were the types of fees that the minister was thinking are allowable to actually be passed on as a direct cost back to the students union if the students pull out of the union or the society that represented them.

With that, I thank you for your time.

Video of my Speech

Today in the legislature we proceeded to second reading of Bill 40 – Natural Gas Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2015. Bill 40 introduces a number amendments being made within the jurisdiction of the Minister of Natural Gas Development and Responsible for Housing. I am supporting this important piece of legislation for reasons that I outline in my speech below.

First, this legislation enables the Oil and Gas Commission to develop and regulate any potential carbon capture and storage initiatives in BC. As I noted in my speech, in my view this is critical for future atmospheric carbon dioxide removal. And British Columbia is the home of the world’s first pilot project to test the viability of technology for use in commercial scale carbon scrubbing. This exciting project is the brainchild of Canadian researcher David Keith, now a professor at Harvard University, and is being developed a Calgary-based company Carbon Engineering.

The second aspect of this bill concerns important changes changes to the Residential Tenancy Act and the Strata Property Act. They allow tenants to break a fixed-term tenancy agreement with one month’s notice to escape family violence or if a tenant moves to a long-term care facility. Electronic repayments of a tenant’s damage deposit is now also allowed.

The Strata Property Act changes allow an 80% instead of a 100% vote to wind down and subsequently disband a strata. I discuss this more in the speech below.

Text of Second Reading Speech

A. Weaver: It gives me great pleasure to stand and rise in support of Bill 40, the Natural Gas Development Statutes Amendment Act, which, as has been mentioned already by several members both in opposition and in government, is really an amalgamation of two bills that reflect the two separate mandates of the minister involved in housing and natural gas.

Now, I will say off the bat that I do appreciate the introduction of the carbon-capture-and-storage-enabling legislation, as well as the amendments to the Strata Property Act and the Residential Tenancy Act, as I do believe they are fine pieces of legislation. But there is…. Again, the devil will be in the details, and I will explore that further in committee stage of the debate.

I would also like to thank, at the onset here, the ministry staff for providing us — my office and, in collaboration and at the same time, the member for Delta South’s office and her staff — with a very fine briefing that allowed us to ask many questions to gain insight as to the intentions of this legislation.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, I do recognize the importance of carbon-capture-and-storage-enabling legislation. My concern with this is not so much that enabling legislation is being introduced, but it’s being introduced under the purview of the Oil and Gas Commission. Let me please explain why I would do that.

There are two aspects to carbon capture and storage. There are the aspects with respect to capture and storage from what’s called geological carbon. That’s carbon that’s contained in our fossil fuels — the combustion of coal and the combustion of natural gas produce carbon dioxide. And that carbon dioxide, it’s been thought…. It has in some jurisdictions been stored underground. B.C. has a rich history of capture and storage in the sour gas component of the natural gas industry, so there is some expertise here in British Columbia already in terms of underground gas storage.

However, the second aspect of carbon capture and storage is capturing and storing not fossil carbon but present-day carbon in the atmosphere. We have, in Canada, a company that has developed under the intellectual leadership and scientific analyses and studies of David Keith, now at Harvard University, formerly at the University of Calgary. This company called Carbon Engineering has actually built its very first test site in Squamish, B.C., to capture and sequester carbon that’s already in the atmosphere.

Now, this is an example of innovation in British Columbia that I haven’t heard anything about from the opposite side. This is an example of innovation in carbon capture technology that actually is what we do need to go down sooner rather than later — that is, drawing down carbon from the atmosphere that’s already there, because the climate change in store as we equilibrate to existing levels of greenhouse gases will be profound.

So this technology, embedded within the company Carbon Engineering and situated in Squamish now with their first test facility, is fascinating in that what it does is it brings in air from the atmosphere. It then takes that air and mixes it so that you get out of that a liquid product that then reacts with solid products to create calcium carbonate. The carbon dioxide is now stored in this so-called wet phase in these little pellets. These pellets are then heated, and the pellets can then be recycled to create more calcium carbonate. In that heating process, you produce a stream of pure carbon dioxide. Now that carbon dioxide, which is a pure stream, originated in the atmosphere and can be stored in carbon capture and storage.

I believe that this government should be putting this legislation not in oil and gas but in the Environment Ministry. We have no hope of any realistic LNG coming to B.C. anytime soon. I’ve been saying that for over three years now, and I’m still waiting to eat my words as the Minister of Natural Gas said I will be doing. I notice he’s not listening right now. But I would love to be in a position of eating my words. I’m still not eating them.

Let me quote from a news release that was issued yesterday on Bloomberg — a news story from the Goldman Sachs group, which says the following: “A wave of new supply from Australia to the U.S. is deepening a glut of the fuel, raising the risk of losses for exporters and prompting some buyers to look at breaking contracts with suppliers.” Those are existing contracts.

Goldman Sachs is not a fly-by-night organization. Goldman Sachs has forecast a 13 percent drop in LNG prices in 2017 and a further 23 percent drop by 2018. And the U.S. starts shipping LNG in January of 2016.

We have no hope, yet this government is pursuing carbon capture in the oil and gas sector and is missing out critical opportunities in the innovative carbon capture sector with a Canadian company, a Calgary company, whose first test plant anywhere in the world where this is being done is in Squamish, B.C.

Do we hear anything about that? No, we hear about this fantasy of LNG, on and on. That is why it is deeply troubling that this will actually be contained within the Oil and Gas Commission because, frankly, carbon capture and storage is more than about oil and gas. It’s a grand environmental issue and should, I would argue, be based in that.

The spot price in Japan, the much-touted, soon-to-become market for all of B.C.’s gas, is $6.13 in 2016, compared to $7.49. Goldman Sachs has projected a $5.19 spot price for landed LNG in Japan in 2017 and — get this — a $4.75 spot price in Japan for 2018.

I’m not eating my words yet. I’m still waiting for the Minister of Natural Gas to show me that…. He says to himself: “You will.” No, I don’t think so — not any time soon. Maybe in the mid-2020s, but by that time, of course, there’ll be nobody accountable left in this government, because there will be a new government at that time.

As I said, I do support the carbon capture legislation that’s being brought here. We do need enabling legislation for carbon capture, just not the carbon capture this government is dreaming about. It’s about the innovation potential that we could have for innovative Canadian technology and building upon that sector.

This bill also contains important legislation changes which will protect employees within the Oil and Gas Commission from potential legal problems, providing, of course, that they make decisions in good faith, as I’m sure we would all expect our governing agencies and bodies to do and have faith and confidence that they will.

The second aspect of this bill is with respect to the rental tenancy act and the Strata Act. Now, as someone who presently lives in a bare land strata and someone who’s had a property in another strata, I recognize the difficulty in getting 100 percent agreement in a strata. Sometimes the owners of the strata don’t even live in the country where the strata is. It’s very, very difficult.

It takes just one person out of 100 to be difficult, and nothing will happen. So I recognize the importance of actually moving to a slightly lower threshold in the wind-up resolution for a strata — you know, 80 percent, 90 percent, 85 percent. I don’t know where the numbers come from. We’ll explore that a bit further in the committee stage. But I do agree and commend the minister for seeing this problem here.

One of the other things that I think needs to be discussed further in committee stage will be a potential effect, an effect that may not have been thought through, on affordability in areas such as Victoria, Vancouver and some parts of the Okanagan as strata owners recognize the value in their property.

Say you have an aging demographic who own an older building and there’s 80 percent of them who see the value in their property and say: “Maybe we should sell this so that a developer can turn this four-storey building into a 20-storey building. Look at the wealth and the prosperity that we will have.” But maybe there are a few other people out there who don’t actually have the ability to find another place. So there is some concern about people being displaced, as there might be an incentive here…. In fact, I would argue this is an incentive for certain strata to think about winding up, tearing down, selling and building anew.

Now, I recognize that that would build new supply, new rentals perhaps, new ownership and supply, and that’s a good thing, but supply does not come on stream overnight. There’s a delay as these are built, so there has to be some careful management of that, I would believe.

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not bare land stratas across the province will start seeing this as an opportunity as well. Many builders are able to build bare land stratas  where the local municipal bylaws don’t actually have to have the same level of rigour in terms of their application — widths of streets, areas for sidewalks, etc. — and there may be some pressure from bare land stratas in the months ahead to actually come off that. I don’t know how that will be handled.

In terms of the rental tenancy, again, I support the additions that have been done. I think it’s critical, in fact, to allow those who are, for example, fleeing a violent relationship and those who become very ill all of a sudden and can no longer be in their residence a means and a way, through consultation and approval by some authority — which we’ll explore further in regulations, I’m sure; we’ll see further what that means in regulations — to break a lease without having to be burdened with subsequent bills from landlords who, in many cases — particularly in Victoria, where we have a 0.6 percent vacancy rate — could, in fact, rent it and, frankly, would rent it to another person.

Finally, on the electronic payments, again, it’s incredibly important to bring this up to the 21st century. A lot of rental transactions are done through electronic payments, both in terms of receiving rent and in terms of removing damage deposits, but there is a slight caution here with the electronic payments, as the member for Delta South pointed out.

If you make an electronic payment, some people will think that they’ve made an electronic payment and it’s done. But until the recipient actually receives it and deposits it into a bank account, there is no receipt or transaction. Now, not everybody in our society has a bank account. If a landlord sends an electronic transaction, the landlord may think that the electronic transaction has been sent within…. I forget the number of days. It may be 28. It may be slightly more or less.

If that transaction is not received and deposited into an account, that transaction is deemed null and void, so there would be questions with respect to whether or not the landlord, in good faith, tried to transfer the deposit or whether they did not. This is particularly problematic with landlords who may not live in the same jurisdiction as the house that is being rented, where electronic transfers are quite common.

With that said, with the caveats aside, I do support this legislation. I look forward to exploring it further in committee stage, and I thank the Speaker and the members for their time.

Video of Second Reading Speech