Second Session, 43rd Parliament

Official Report

of Debates

( Hansard )

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 173

The Honourable Raj Chouhan , Speaker

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

Contents

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Orders of the Day

Second Reading of Bills

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

Mandeep Dhaliwal

Trevor Halford

On the amendment

Trevor Halford

Bruce Banman

Jody Toor

Brennan Day

Korky Neufeld

Sheldon Clare

Rob Botterell

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship (continued)

Hon. Randene Neill

Donegal Wilson

Proceedings in the Birch Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Labour (continued)

Hon. Jennifer Whiteside

Kiel Giddens

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

The House met at 1:31 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Harwinder Sandhu : Once again this year I am standing here proudly to recognize our amazing community

members and friends, Brian Misko and his wife, Corinne, as well as their entire team

from House of Q in Vernon. They are here on the precinct, busy barbecuing for us.

House of Q, as I shared in previous years, started by using mom’s stock pot, I believe,

in 2005. They make award-winning barbecue sauces and spices — one of the most awarded

barbecue sauces and rub companies around, which has won over 200 prizes in 17 years.

Brian and his team will barbecue again today. It’s their 14th year of doing this and

making B.C. Beef Day very special. If you’re more curious to know about them, I highly

encourage you to check houseofq.com.

Would the House please join me to welcome Brian, Corinne and their team — not only

to welcome but also to thank them.

Harman Bhangu : I would also like to welcome Brian, from House of Q, to the House.

A few years ago, way before I got into politics, CFOX, the radio show, used to have

drive-through barbecues. I was always an avid listener of the CFOX show and a huge

fan of Brian. I actually have a lot of his rubs and barbecues at my house. I use them

all the time. He has always put on great events and stuff for the drive-through barbecue,

and it’s great to connect with him and have him actually come to the workplace, finally.

It’s an honour having him here — a good friend, and he’s a great person. He does a

lot for the community.

Would the House make him feel welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. Mike Farnworth : In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 9.

In the Douglas Fir Room, I call Committee of Supply for the estimates of the Ministry

of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.

In

Section C, the Birch Room, I call Ministry of Labour estimates.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 9 — Freedom of Information

and Protection of Privacy

Amendment Act, 2026

(continued)

Deputy Speaker : Thank you, Members. We will continue our debate of Bill 9, Freedom of Information

and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026.

[1:35 p.m.]

Mandeep Dhaliwal : I rise today to speak on Bill 9, as someone who has used the Canadian public system,

as an important…. I now represent the people of Surrey North. I see access to information

as a basic test of how open and accountable government is.

This bill is being presented as an improvement, but it is not. It is a shift of power

away from the public and towards the B.C. NDP government. This bill is not really

about better access to information. It is about more control over who can get information,

when they can get it and how. Once this kind of change happens, it is very hard to

reverse.

Freedom of information is not just a rule or process. It is how the public checks

what the government is doing. If this system becomes weaker, accountability also becomes

weaker.

Let’s look at the facts. In 2024-2025, 7,063 FOI requests were received, and 6,818

requests were completed. This shows that thousands of people are using this system

every year. These requests are not small. They involved about 2.18 million pages of

government records. So this is a large detailing, dealing with a huge amount of information.

Now let’s look at how the system is working. The average time to complete a request

is 65 business days, but the legal standard is 30 business days. So it takes more

than double the expected time. Also, 81 percent of requests can be completed on time.

That means one out of five is late. This shows the system is already under pressure.

Now let’s talk about Bill 9. It may be called a modern update, but the effect is what

matters. It makes delay easier to justify, gives more power to refuse requests, adds

more rules before people can ask, allows a fee in more situations, gives more choice

to government officials. Overall, it makes access harder.

The bill changes “without delay” to “without unreasonable delay.” This means delays

are more acceptable now. People must now give more detailed requests, but what counts

as enough detail is not clearly defined. So government officials can decide more easily

to reject or delay requests. Government can refuse requests if they are called abusive,

repetitive or too broad, but these words are not clearly defined. This gives a lot

of power to reject requests.

The bill also allows a fee, even for the records that are already public. So people

may now have to pay for information that should already be available. In 2024-2025,

3,592 documents were shared publicly, but in earlier years, that number was higher.

Fewer things are being shared automatically. This means the public must now file more

FOI requests to get information.

In 2024-2025, 6,186 privacy breaches were reported, and 5,641 were confirmed. But

only a very small number were reported to the public. This raises concerns about transparency

and data safety.

In 2024-2025, $70,000 was collected in processing fees, and 214 requests had extra

charges. This shows access is becoming more expensive. Bill 9 continues this trend.

[1:40 p.m.]

Other provinces are moving forward — faster access, more open data, fewer barriers.

But British Columbia is moving in the opposite direction — more delays, more rules,

more fees, less access.

Think about a parent. If someone goes wrong in the public system, they want answers.

They file an FOI request. Under this bill, they may be told: “Your request is too

broad. It needs more detail.” It takes too long, or it may be refused. Eventually

many people will stop trying, not because they got answers but because the process

is too hard.

If this bill is about transparency, why make access harder? If it is about efficiency,

why are delays still so long? If it is about openness, why add more features?

I ask the government: will you remove this fee on public records, yes or no?

This bill does improve more administrative parts, but it also makes access harder.

A faster system that gives less information is not better. Good reform should make

timelines enforceable, clearly define refusal rules, reduce fees, improve oversight.

Bill 9 does not do this.

Public trust depends on access to information. When access becomes harder, trust goes

down. Freedom of information is not a burden. It is a key part of government accountability.

For these reasons, I cannot support Bill 9 in its current form.

Trevor Halford : I want to thank my colleague for his remarks on Bill 9 and his comments that went

with it.

Listen. It’s going to be no secret. Obviously, I’m in opposition to Bill 9. I think

that it’s a shortsighted piece of legislation that continues to set us back when it

comes to the importance of freedom of information.

We have been in cases before where this government has completely failed to uphold

the FOI system. In that structure, when you look at what FOI is intended to do, it

is intended to actually give us the ability to seek information that is coming into

government.

I think one of the challenges that we have is that this is a system that has been

basically overrun by political will. When you see things like the fee increases that

have come into effect, the frustration of the system…. In fact, they’re doing that

in different ways to circumvent the reality of actually providing British Columbians

with information that they are, basically, entitled to.

There are certain elements of this bill that I think are incredibly troubling. When

you talk about the proactive release of personal information, yes, 60 percent of requests

are for one’s own records. Streamlining that is fine on paper, but when the government

bundles it with centralized Connected Services B.C., a single gateway, that actually

means the data across the ministries. The minister has the power to dictate the data

standards, and we should all pause and take note of that. I think that that’s massively

important there.

I want to put forward a motion here that’s a hoist motion:

[That the motion for second reading of Bill (No. 9) intituled Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026 , be amended by deleting the word “now” and substituting “six months hence.”]

Do you want to take a brief recess while we distribute?

Deputy Speaker : We will take a brief recess to circulate the motion amongst our members.

The House recessed from 1:45 p.m. to 1:48 p.m.

[Lorne Doerkson in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker : Thank you, Members. We’ll call the chamber back to order where we have the Leader

of the Official Opposition moving that the motion for second reading of Bill 9, intituled

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026, be amended by

deleting the word “now” and substituting “six months hence.”

Thank you very much for the motion, Member. Take it away.

On the amendment.

Trevor Halford : Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that due diligence there.

Listen, I understand that FOI…. I want to just illustrate what FOI has done, over

the last little bit, in what we’ve learned.

We learned through FOI that the Minister of Finance charged the taxpayers $6,000 for

limo rides when she was in Boston. We got that information through FOI. We actually

know that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on gift cards. We actually know

that spending $100,000 per year on a public servant to mail out EV stickers…. That’s

what we got from FOI. We also got from FOI…. We noticed that the Premier’s office

received the invitation to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm ceremony.

That’s why I think we’ve got to get this legislation straight, because it allows us

six months. I believe it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. But the fact

that the Premier stood in this House and said that he just wandered into a ceremony

without actually understanding what was going on.…

[1:50 p.m.]

It was through FOI that we were able to find out that he actually did get an invitation

to his office. They signed off on it. That’s what FOI does.

It’s also through FOI that we know about high-end vehicle leases for well-paid public

servants. We also know through FOI that this government spent $165 per cup on American

health care, and this minister has still failed to educate us on how many of those

health care workers are now coming up to British Columbia because she bought them

a $165 cup of coffee.

Kirk LaPointe — 3,000 FOIs filed — teaches media law at UBC. He says, regarding Bill

9: “strategic legislation to defer, delay and deny the public’s right to know.” I

think it’s a pretty strong quote.

Vaughn Palmer says: “The NDP is quietly moving to weaken the public access provisions.”

Again, when legislation comes before this House, I do often believe that it’s well-intended.

I do understand what they are trying to do, but with doing that, they are actually

weakening a system that they have already decimated. Even in mid-debate, the minister

amended her own bill with, her words, “minor adjustments” for additional clarity.

You don’t amend a bill that’s already ready. Two weeks of debate forced amendments,

so I believe that six months will force a better bill or, even better, no bill at

all.

When you look at the 2022 report, it called for an all-party committee. For four years

it sat on the shelf. Then we know that Bill 9 was drafted behind closed doors. This

is why, I believe, it’s so important that this government take the time to get this

bill right.

The 2020 report was built on consensus. If you look at the total requests, 10,205

down to 7,063 — over a 30 percent drop. General FOIs, 8,347 — now down to 4,691, almost

cut in half. In the government’s own FOIPPA report, the commissioner already blocks

frivolous requests. So the government is already arguing against itself in there.

We have a problem here. Bill 9 has what I would call a transparency problem. No one

term is defined, whether it’s “abusive,” “malicious,” “repetitious,” “unreasonably

interfere with the operations” or “reasonable amount of time.”

Another couple of quotes here, again from our friend Vaughn Palmer: “The bill makes

the officials themselves the judge of what is and is not reasonable.” Again, he says:

“Imagine how that power could be abused to ashcan potentially embarrassing requests.”

Assurances aren’t statutes.

Definitions are.

I think it’s important here that we recognize that, yes, some things come out about

government that are embarrassing. At a time when you have a Finance Minister that

is preaching austerity, that is now implementing additional sales tax on businesses

that have security, I can imagine when freedom-of-information requests come out about

her international travel that have her in a limo for $6,000, that would be embarrassing.

I understand that.

But the public does have a right to know how the ministers, how the Premier, are spending

their money. That’s what freedom of information does. Can you imagine a world where

government can actually say, “No, we’re not going to accept that request. We’re not

going to do it that way”? I think that is a very, very dangerous precedent.

[1:55 p.m.]

I want to talk about some of the things the minister has said directly. She says there’s

no timeline change; the bill changes “without delay” to “without unreasonable delay.”

She says no refusal of legitimate requests; Bill 9 adds four undefined refusal grounds.

She says no new fees; clause 21 adds one to proactive disclosure. So I don’t even

know if the minister has actually read her own bill.

The intention of this hoist motion is pure. This is a government that, when you look

at some of the most important legislation that has come before us, or lack of…. Let’s

take DRIPA for a second. Let’s take the fact that the Premier of this province and

the Attorney General said that doing this legislation was imperative. It was our legal

responsibility to do. It had to be done. He was going to attach confidence to it.

That didn’t happen. Obviously, with the poll results today, we understand why. That’s

fine. But what they said was, “We’re going to delay it. We’re going to delay it six

months,” because in the Premier’s words, they had to do more consultation. What we

didn’t know is that they actually signed into a co-governance.

That’s their decision. Well, it wasn’t my…. I don’t know whose decision it was, but

when it comes to this, this actually makes a lot of sense to me. It makes sense that

we would take the time and really look at this bill.

I can tell you there’s nobody outside of that cabinet and that NDP caucus that is

excited and calling for Bill 9. There’s none. Where is the battle cry for Bill 9?

It’s in the Premier’s office, because they want to stop the embarrassment. It’s in

the Minister of Finance’s office, because she wants to stop the embarrassment. I don’t

blame them, but maybe they should stop doing embarrassing things. That might help.

Let’s take the time and get it right or not do it at all. I think that might work

as well.

Barbara McLintock’s rule, quoted by Palmer: “Don’t go by what the minister says in

the House, and don’t be fooled by the news release. Read the bill itself.” Now, I

have done both, and I can tell you the bill does not match the press release. It’s

another reason why I’ve introduced this hoist motion today.

There are some simple things. In 2019, $2 million was spent fighting 615 opposition

FOIs about ministers’ personal email. In 2021, they added $10 application fees. Right

now government has stopped publishing the Premier’s calendar and no-bid contract lists.

Last update was December 2025.

Now Bill 9. April 2026, a companion bill letting ministers personally hide cabinet

records from judges. That’s in there. One session, two bills — the same pattern. This

is a government that has now become carried away with secrecy.

Kirk LaPointe says: “A document released 18 months late is often indistinguishable

from a document denied.” I think this one is actually really important, his next quote

here. He says: “Transparency is the price of public trust. Bill 9 makes that price

negotiable. Once transparency becomes negotiable, accountability soon follows.” I

think that that quote is bang-on.

Six months isn’t delay. It’s the bare minimum I think this Legislature owes to British

Columbians. I understand that this session has been tough for the government. It has

been embarrassing for the government. I would hope that we’re going to have a fall

session. But at the end of the day, why would we not take the time to get this piece

of legislation right?

If the government has nothing to hide, they should welcome this kind of scrutiny.

A government amending its own bill at second reading? Can you imagine?

[2:00 p.m.]

They’re not amending their own bill at committee stage. They’re doing it in the middle

of second reading. That tells you that this government clearly does not have its act

together when it comes to even drafting their own legislation, or maybe they’re trying

to get support with other members of this House. I don’t know. But I can tell you

what they’re doing is completely undemocratic. It’s an affront on the system, and

this legislation clearly speaks to that.

The fact that the government even stops publishing the Premier’s calendar while writing

new powers to refuse FOI demands scrutiny.

We need to have a bill that British Columbians can trust. I do not believe that this

is it. I believe that this government, this cabinet, this minister and this Premier

need to go back to the drawing board, rework Bill 9 into something that is actually

palatable to British Columbians when it comes to freedom of information. I would expect

that that’s the bare minimum to do. If they can put something as important as DRIPA

on hold for a minimum of six months, I actually don’t know why they could not do this.

With that, I’ll let anyone else that wants to speak to my amendment. I thank you for

the time.

Deputy Speaker : Thank you very much, Member.

This is, of course, a debatable motion, but I hope that comments made this afternoon

will obviously relate to the motion itself. I know that we’ll be back and forth between

the bill and the motion, but you have to demonstrate, of course, that link.

Bruce Banman : It is actually an honour and a privilege to stand here as the designated speaker

for this motion. I believe this is the first time I’ve been a designated speaker to

respond to a motion, so I look forward to that, and I believe that I have up to two

hours upon which to make some points. I’d like to start by explaining the motion in

plain language.

I rise to speak to the amendment for the motion for the second reading of Bill 9.

The amendment, which I have in front of me, says: “Delete the word ‘now’ and substitute

the words ‘six months hence.’”

For those that are watching at home or are unfamiliar or are watching late tonight

and perhaps have insomnia, a hoist motion, as this is called, is one of the oldest

tools in parliamentary tradition. I would explain to people that a hoist motion is

not a motion to actually kill a bill. That’s not its purpose. A hoist motion is a

chance…. Whenever there is legislation that comes on the floor that there have been

problems with — as an example, in this case — a hoist motion is a motion to pause

it, to send it back and get it right.

Already there have been, which I will get into in a few moments, a number of changes

by the minister herself where they’ve realized: “Oops. In our rush to get it here,

there have been a couple of errors already.”

A hoist motion is now, in this case, going to give us six months, which is the bare

minimum. We could have asked for longer, but FOIs are so important and getting freedom-of-information

requests right is so important that this side of the House wants to make sure that….

The minimum amount of time allowed in a hoist to get it right is six months. What

that will do is allow them, over the summertime, as an example, to be able to ponder

this particular motion, look at it carefully, sort out the errors that are in it and

actually get it right. I think that this Legislature owes this to the people we serve.

Now, I was the critic for Citizens’ Services. It was actually my first critic role

when elected back in 2020, and FOIs were one of the things that were hotly debated

then.

[2:05 p.m.]

I think it’s important for the public to understand what’s at stake here. Freedom

of information is a request that people put in to their government, and it allows

them to get access either to the decisions that were made or how that decision came

to be or what’s important when it comes to finding out how government has been acting.

It is that safety net that has been put in there to ensure that government is acting

responsibly. It is that ability to make sure that government is not using funds in

an inappropriate way.

My interim leader just spoke of a few embarrassing things that were brought up from

an FOI. Government’s natural tendency is to say: “No, no, we really don’t want to

have anything embarrassing.” Sometimes it’s an innocent enough thing that has happened,

but it’s embarrassing nonetheless.

Now, I spoke in this House about a very embarrassing incident that happened to me

personally when I was the mayor of Abbotsford, and that side of the House has used

that example many times, used it as an example to try and embarrass me. Well, I’m

not embarrassed by it, because an FOI actually, in this case, exonerated me.

Yeah, if you’ve done something inappropriate, it may not always exonerate you. I am

sure the Minister of Finance absolutely hates hearing about her $6,000 limo ride —

which, she has pointed out, was actually an SUV, but it was a $6,000 bill nonetheless.

In my case, what had happened was that chicken manure had been used to deter a homeless

encampment from coming back. It was FOI’d to death, because there’s nothing more juicy

than that one.

The press and people in the public wanted to make sure that…. I was the mayor, so

they were convinced that I had ordered that to be done, that I knew about it and that

I didn’t put a stop to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. My cell phone

was taken. My computer was taken. Every shred of paper that they could get their hands

on there was taken, because it made international news.

An FOI actually is a double-edged sword. While people were looking to literally tar

and paper me with this — not feather — they found out, at the end of the day, that

I actually did not know about it. Upon further FOI requests, they found out that there

was actually a bunch of intermediate staffers that had gotten together and come up

with this horrific idea to do, to spread chicken manure on a homeless encampment after

it had been cleaned up, because they were frustrated with the cat-and-mouse game.

It was a bad idea. I wore it because I was the mayor. I took responsibility for it

because I was the mayor. In fact, then what I did to ensure that that would never

happen again.… I implemented a committee to deal with the issues of homelessness in

Abbotsford, so that it would never, ever, ever happen again.

My point on this is that an FOI, while embarrassing, actually can prove that government

did no wrongdoing. It’s not always going to embarrass government. It is a healthy

tool that has been put in place to ensure that the press, the public and the opposition

can request an FOI, a freedom-of-information document, get it in a timely manner and

hold government accountable. It is, I believe, one of the foundations of democracy.

[2:10 p.m.]

Now, with regards to this hoist motion that is before this House at this moment, this

debate currently is not about whether the FOI system needs reform. Well, it does.

Everybody agrees, on both sides of the House. That’s, in fact, why this bill is here

and why this amendment is here now. We know that the FOI system is broken. It does

not serve the public as well as it could, and it needs to be addressed.

It’s not about whether the public bodies are facing pressure. Well, clearly, they

do. Public bodies are under enormous pressure. FOIs, quite frankly, when I was the

mayor of Abbotsford, were an absolute pain to deal with. It gobbles up staff time.

They have to find out where the information is. They have to photocopy it. They have

to retract certain things and certain names on it. It does take up time.

You know what else takes up time? An absolute pain in some people’s minds that cities

have to deal with are building inspections. They’re there for a good reason. We want

to make sure they’re safe. We want to make sure that the buildings are done correctly.

The reason that the Information and Privacy Commissioner agrees that reform is needed….

The BCFIPA agrees, and the 2022 all-party committee agreed unanimously. There was

already a committee that dealt with the bill that is in front of this House, and it

came up with recommendations. The debate is not whether or not we need to reform FOIs.

That is clear, and that is why this bill is here. The secret now is that we must ensure

that we get it right. We owe it to the public to get it right. We owe it to democracy

itself, in fact, to get this right.

What this debate is really about, and why we have put this hoist here, is to answer

the question: does this bill weaken the public’s right to know, or does it strengthen

the systems that deliver on that vital democratic right? On that question, the evidence

is overwhelming. Bill 9 is the wrong answer. There have been mistakes that have been

pointed out already, and that is why we are asking for a very legitimate pause to

be able to strengthen it. Six months, the minimum time, because this is of the essence,

is the time this Legislature needs to find the right solutions to this bill.

It is a reasonable request and, I believe, a very much required request, especially

when one considers that in the democratic process, checks and balances are required.

Government without checks and balances is not a healthy thing at all. That is why

we are called His Royal Majesty’s Opposition. We’re not here to stop government. We

are here to oppose bad legislation and suggest ways in which to improve it, to keep

government accountable and to actually come up with better legislation than what has

been placed. This hoist will allow us that time to do this.

Now, part of why we’ve done this is because the minister herself made the case for

the hoist. Let me go over a few reasons as to why.

[2:15 p.m.]

The first thing is that the minister actually amended her own bill in mid-debate.

That is worth repeating. The minister amended her own bill in mid-debate. The Minister

of Citizens’ Services tabled amendments to her own legislation two weeks into the

second reading. That clearly states that there were problems within the bill already.

I didn’t say amendment. I said amendments.

In her words, they were minor adjustments to provide additional clarity. Well, I think

that this hoist will help, in fact, to define what those minor adjustments and that

additional clarity will mean.

I would say part of the reason why the minister has made the argument or the case

for this hoist is…. If a bill is ready for this House, if it is clearly ready, if

it has been well-thought-out, one does not need to amend a bill that is ready. The

bill was not ready. The bill had errors and flaws in it when it was presented on this

floor. You do not need to provide additional clarity on legislation that was clear

when you tabled it.

The minister realized that there were problems in the bill. She said: “We need to

make some minor adjustments. It’s not clear. We’ve made a mistake already.” That is

one area, so the act of tabling those amendments is itself an admission the bill just

was not ready for debate.

That’s okay. It’s okay that the bill was not ready, because this system has in its

place this exact motion, a hoist, to be able to go: “You know what? Hang on a minute.

We’ve messed up. Let’s think about this in a better term. Let’s allow a wholesome

debate on this. Let’s send it to a committee to figure out what else may be wrong

with this bill and go at it so that we can come back with a bill that is before this

House that is ready.”

Deputy Speaker : Member, could I get you to reserve your place in debate and adjourn ours.

Bruce Banman : I take this opportunity to adjourn the debate and reserve my right to continue.

Bruce Banman moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Rohini Arora : Committee of Supply,

Section C, reports resolution and completeness of the Estimates

of the Ministry of Labour and asks leave to sit again.

Leave granted.

Hon. Ravi Parmar : We’ll get back to the fun of my colleague’s speech. In this House, we’ll continue

second reading on Bill 9.

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 9 — Freedom of Information

and Protection of Privacy

Amendment Act, 2026

(continued)

On the amendment (continued).

Bruce Banman : On this rare occasion, I will agree with the minister that actually debating bills

in this House is fun. It may be a perverse kind of fun, but it is fun nonetheless.

Democracy itself is fun. While flawed, it’s the best system we have come up with thus

far. I do appreciate the minister’s kind words.

Now, getting back to this hoist, I had said earlier, just a minute before the interruption,

that the minister herself had actually made the case for why this bill was not ready.

She had introduced an amendment to it already.

The first case she made was that there were minor adjustments and additional clarity,

and because of that, the bill was not right. The act of tabling those amendments in

itself was an admission the bill was not ready in its best form to be in front of

this House, which is why this side of the House has asked for six months to go over

this.

The second admission is that she thanked, in her statement, MLAs who engaged in good

faith on improving the legislation. Well, that, too, is an admission that this bill

was not ready and it was flawed.

[2:20 p.m.]

The legislation as drafted, as presented to this House, needs improving. The minister

basically said it herself. So I believe that we should take the minister on her word,

take the minister on her actions and say: “You know what? Six months is required,

as is in hoist, to take a careful look at this bill to ensure that it is proper, clear

and well-thought-out before it’s placed on the floor of this House.”

What this bill needs is input from members willing to actually read the bill and identify

not only the problems that have been agreed to by the minister herself…. But there

are others. Let’s go through it and make sure it’s right. Again, I talk about…. This

is freedom of information. It is one of the cornerstones of holding government accountable.

This is not a bill that can be easily changed later. It is vital. I will go through

in some detail as to why that is vital.

One of the things, especially on a bill when it comes to things like freedom of information,

is that wholesome, meaningful consultation is required. If two weeks of debate forced

amendments — only two weeks — imagine what six months may do to improve it. And those

amendments actually improve the bill. What could six months of wholesome, intentful

debate…?

Now, what could we do with six months of debate? Well, we could have six months of

public hearings if we wanted to. We could listen to those that actually pay for this

building as to what they want to see when it comes to FOI requests. They would be

able to hear government’s side of the story as to what the problems are and come up

with suggestions on what would actually improve what they think freedom of information

should be.

I remember back in the day, as I said, when I was the critic for Citizens’ Services

when FOIs came up, that some First Nations also had issues with the then new FOI rules

that were being put in place. They felt that sometimes even in their own negotiations,

they wanted to know what decisions were made behind closed doors that they didn’t

have privy to, so that they had better understanding of what was going on and what

government’s intentions were.

Six months of engagement with the BCFIPA, journalists, academics…. I know that we

just had the University of British Columbia that was here just the other day, yesterday.

What about the journalistic schools that go on? I know that journalistic students

are learning to do FOIs. This government put in a fee for FOIs. We want to make it

easier for our young minds and our students to be able to learn how this system works,

and an FOI is a much-needed part of doing that.

We also have the legal community. There are sometimes legal reasons why you would

want to have easy, timely access to a freedom-of-information request.

First Nations are also, as I’ve mentioned….

Then there are municipalities. Municipalities also have a valid reason for wanting

a freedom-of-information request to make sure that government is, in fact, doing what

they promised they would do in meetings or not or spending appropriate moneys in a

community. They want to make sure that they have the ability to do that freedom of

information.

Six months gives time to implement the 2022 all-party committee recommendations that

have been sitting on the shelf for four years.

[2:25 p.m.]

There’s another big problem. Why in god’s name did we bother to implement an all-party

committee to come up with ideas if we’re just going to take all that stuff, put it

on a shelf and not bother to read it? What was the point?

Maybe, just maybe, if we take a look at that report, we’ll find areas in this particular

motion that’s in front of the House and go: “Oh yeah. What were we thinking? It was

right here. Here’s the answer to our problems. We should have just read this. Well,

we forgot because it was done…. Well, we knew best.” Or whatever the reason may be.

Maybe I’m totally wrong.

Why go to all the trouble to have an all-party committee to come up with ideas for

something as important as an FOI if you’re not going to bother to read it? It’s insulting.

It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. It is a waste of members’ time. It is a waste of

staff’s time. If you’re going to ask them to do this, have the decency to implement

those recommendations.

This six months will give us a chance to go through there and read what the recommendations

were and whether they’re actually in this legislation. Maybe some of them, many of

them, are. But maybe a few of the important points were left out — either unintentionally

or, worse, on purpose. That is this side of the House’s job, to make sure that something

was not omitted to make government’s job easy.

Democracy ain’t easy. It shouldn’t be. It needs, what we like to say…. The scrutiny

of sunlight sterilizes it. What that means is to open it up to public visualization

and debate so that you make sure that what you’re getting are good laws that benefit

everyone, not just government. If this just benefits government, that is a very dangerous,

slippery slope. It never turns out well for the public who are paying for it.

It is government’s natural tendency to try and make things difficult because, as $6,000

limo rides have pointed out, it can be embarrassing. As chicken manure can point out,

it can be embarrassing. I don’t care if someone’s embarrassed. The public has a right

to know how their money was spent. It has a right to know how legislation was drafted

and the thought process that went behind it.

It is not a recommendation. It should be a diehard right and a dead-hard rule of any

legislation that gets put on the floor of this House. That is this side of the House’s

job.

The hoist, getting back to that, will give six months to address the upstream records

management problems that Jason Woywada, the executive director of the B.C. Freedom

of Information and Privacy Association, has identified as the real cause of FOI delays.

Now, this government has been complaining, and this bill is in part because FOI delays

are a huge problem. Well, maybe the executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information

and Privacy Association has the right answer. Maybe he has got the key that we need,

and this six months will give us a chance to wholesomely look at his recommendations

and implement them if they’re good ones.

We have six months to engage the people who actually use the FOI system every day

— journalists, cities, lawyers, First Nations, academics and general citizens who

are self-appointed watchdogs. We dismiss them as being problems. They’re not problems.

They’re actually helping keep government accountable, which is every single taxpayer’s

right.

[2:30 p.m.]

At the end of the day, we are accountable to them. I believe we should be answerable

to them, and I believe that something as important as an FOI should not just be rammed

through this House because government finds it convenient. We’re not here to make

it convenient. We’re here to make it just and right, and these six months will allow

this to take place.

I actually think it should be longer than six months to get it right. But in essence,

I think we can get a much, much better bill by having wholesome, well-intended, non-partisan

debate, because one day soon, if you take a look at the polls, we’re going to be on

that side of the House, and the current government, who will become opposition, will

be complaining about the very things that they put in place and that the next government

actually can take advantage of.

It’s about levelling the playing field. This isn’t about trying to make government

look bad. It’s about levelling the playing field and coming up with justifiable legislation.

The minister’s press release versus the bill — well, they don’t quite line up. Let

me go over why.

The minister also accused opposition MLAs of making false claims about the bill. She

said the bill does not change FOI response timelines, does not allow refusal of legitimate

requests and does not introduce new fees. Well, we’re going to boil that one down

a little bit in a few minutes. Every one of those claims is contradicted by the text

of the bill on the floor — every one. Let me go over a few.

The bill changes “without delay.” Now, that’s important. When you’re doing an FOI

— if you’re a lawyer, as an example, and you are trying to defend your client — “without

delay” is important. We already have complaints that the court system gets dragged

out for way too long, and there could be some guidelines or some deadlines that you

have to have your argument ready for the courts by, a certain timeline.

They’ve changed that “without delay,” which expresses the urgency of a freedom-of-information

request, to “without unreasonable delay.” Well, that is a change to timelines. The

minister has contradicted herself, whether she intended to or not. The reality of

it is that if you change “without delay” — that means post-haste: “You know what?

We’ve got an FOI. Get on it” — to “without unreasonable delay….”

Well, okay, what’s unreasonable? “I’ve got a haircut. I’ve got my nails that I’ve

got to go in and get done for my manicure. It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m supposed

to be meeting some friends, so I’ll get to it on Monday. I’ve got a pile of other

stuff to do.” What does “unreasonable” mean? Unreasonable to whom? What’s unreasonable

to me may be very unreasonable to someone else.

The minister herself has stated that there were false claims, when, in fact, there

was a change to the timeline. The bill expands the grounds for disregarding requests

to four….

Deputy Speaker : Member, just a general reminder that we’re not debating the bill. We’re debating

the motion.

Bruce Banman : No, Mr. Speaker, we’re not. This is why, within that, having the hoist to be able

to identify these things is important. I want to thank you for reminding me of that.

Within this hoist, we’ll be able to say the bill expands grounds for disregarding

requests to four new undefined categories. That is an expansion of the refusal authority.

In the hoist time frame of six months, we’ll be able to actually go down, in depth,

into what these are and figure out whether or not they are, in fact, reasonable or

whether they should be modified.

[2:35 p.m.]

Rather than waste this House’s time, the time that we have left in this session, by

going through this, amendment after amendment, the hoist will allow a non-partisan

committee to go through that.

Now, clause 21 authorizes a fee on proactive disclosures that currently require none.

That’s a new fee. The minister.… What she said in her press release versus what’s

in the text doesn’t jibe, and I believe that the hoist will help us figure out whether

the minister misspoke.

When you’re in front of a press release, and the cameras are there, I get it. You

can misspeak. I’ve done it myself. I’ve probably misspoken a couple of words here

already in this debate, because standing up here, talking about things, often you

get a nuance wrong or you say words in an incorrect manner and what you thought you

said is not actually what you said.

The hoist will allow us to boil down and find out whether that was the minister’s

true intention or not. Based on the text, there’s clearly a problem with what she

said versus what was written.

The press release does not match the legislation she has tabled. Six months will give

this House time to reconcile the differences. We are being asked to vote on a bill

while the minister tells us via a press release that the things in the statute don’t

really say….

I think it is reasonable to go into the hoist, take this six-month pause to sort that

out. The minister can sit there and explain for herself what she meant and figure

out how to reconcile the differences between what she said versus what was written.

That’s fair and reasonable.

Now, the other thing is that during the hoist, we’ll be able to go through why the

work has already been done, as I mentioned, yet ignored. Again, I said to you, it’s

disingenuous to have this House form a committee to come up with a solution to a problem

and then to totally disregard the problem.

Now, I don’t know if she totally disregarded the problem, but the hoist, the six months,

will allow us to get to the bottom of that and take a look at it and figure out whether,

in fact, there were some errors in the haste to get the bill forward, because government

is in a panic sometimes to get a bill on the floor. “What are we going to talk about?

What are we going to get? What are we going to pass? What are we going to do? We brought

everybody over here. What are…?”

It’ll give that calm moment to be able to go: “You know what? Did we actually look

at the 2022 all-party special committee that undertook a comprehensive FOIPPA review?

Let’s take a breath and in a non-combative way, which is how committees work.

I know we have people in the gallery here. They watch question period, and they think

it’s combative all the time. It’s not in a committee. Much of the time, actually,

committee members have lunch together, and we sit and actually talk about what good

legislation is. Generally, we come to what’s called a meeting of the minds and you

end up with better legislation. That’s exactly what this hoist will do.

Members from every recognized party in this House heard from stakeholders all across

the province. They had dozens of submissions from journalists, advocates, public bodies,

everyday British Columbians, some of my faves. They produced a report with dozens

of recommendations to modernize this system.

It is a problem. We’ve already admitted that it’s a problem. Now, hoist will give

us the opportunity to review those submissions, review those modernizations. It’ll

also maybe answer why the heck this thing sat on a shelf for four years.

Again, I go back to: why ask people to do stuff if you’re not going to pay attention

to what it is they did? It’s a waste of everybody’s time. It isn’t cheap to run committees.

It’s disrespectful to disregard taxpayers’ money if you’re not going to use the work

that they went to do. There’s a reason why that committee was struck.

The contrast with Bill 9 in the hoist will also be able to go. The 2022 report, cross-partisan

consensus and public consultation was an open process, as opposed to what’s going

on right now.

[2:40 p.m.]

By doing a hoist, it will allow this to be open again, because Bill 9 was drafted

behind closed doors without any consensus. It was all one side. Actually, worse than

that, it was in a silo within the minister’s office. I don’t even know if there was

cross-ministry consultation done on this. The hoist will allow us to find out whether

that question had been answered.

Bill 9, in many cases, goes in the opposite direction of what the committee recommended.

The hoist will allow the minister to sit there in the hot seat and explain herself

as to why…. There may be valid reasons. Why is it the committee recommended this and

you put that in there? Explain to me — my favourite thing — like I’m a six-year-old

why we didn’t do what the committee recommended. Why is it that the minister decided

to go in a totally different direction? The hoist will allow us to do that. I think

that that is worthy.

The other thing it will do is allow the architect, the MLA for Saanich North and the

Islands, from the Green Party….

Now, for those that don’t know, the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands is actually

a lawyer. I listened to him speak not that long ago. It was epic, and he spoke on

this very thing. He led the drafting of the original 1992 FOI law under Premier Mike

Harcourt’s NDP government at the time. He was a staffer. Maybe the architect of FOI

laws might have a thing or two to say, and maybe we should get him on the hoist as

well, because I believe his comments could be very, very valuable.

I know that I was taken away when I sat down. As a matter of fact, I stood up and

applauded. It was that good. His rationale and his reasons for why the committee had

come to that, why an FOI law was put in place to begin with was, I found, not only

from a history perspective, interesting, but the rationale behind it was also extraordinarily

wise.

The hoist will give us a chance to revisit that and perhaps have a second sober thought,

as we like to say, as to whether or not we have this Bill 9 going in the right direction

or whether it has totally missed the mark.

Now, that bill…. I will remind this House and these members that I was not there at

the time. I don’t think…. Maybe one of the members…. I don’t know if anyone was here.

Well, I guess maybe on the other side, there might have been a couple. That bill was

passed unanimously through this House, and it was lauded as the best in North America.

It was the best that had ever been passed in North America. It was the gold standard.

The MLA from Saanich North’s recommendation today, the MLA who built the gold standard,

the best in North America…. His recommendation today: withdraw Bill 9 or, at a minimum,

the sections that reduce openness and implement the 2022 recommendations.

The hoist will allow us to say, “What the heck went wrong?” where the very architect

— the grandfather, so to speak — of the best legislation in North America when it

comes to FOIs has now said: “Nah, nah, nah. This thing is garbage. It needs to be

changed. There are serious flaws and problems with it.”

I know I want to hear why, and I think the public has a right to hear why, and the

hoist will give us that opportunity.

It’s not a partisan demand. The architect of B.C.’s original FOI law is asking the

government to actually do what government is supposed to do — its homework.

[2:45 p.m.]

He’s asking, rightfully so as opposition, for government to get it right, for government

to take accountability. We often say right now that we live in a time when people

refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Well, here’s an opportunity for government

to set the stage, take responsibility for their actions, pass this hoist and get this

right. It’s not a sign of weakness to say that you got it wrong. It’s actually a sign

of strength. It’s a sign of courage. It’s a sign of just.

This hoist will allow government to do that very thing and say: “You know what? Our

best of intentions somehow got off the track of what was originally intended, and

we want to put it right.” The public deserves the best. The public deserves the gold

standard to continue, which this House actually put in place.

Six months would let this House honour that work. It would honour the ability to implement

the 2022 recommendations this Legislature has already endorsed. What could be more

noble than that? That’s what a hoist can do. It will allow this House to build on

consensus and not just bulldoze through it.

Right now, at a time when government distrust is at an all-time high, this government

could actually restore some of that trust by saying: “You know, the opposition has

a point. Let’s get it right, let’s honour what was done in the past, and let’s pass

some of the best legislation we possibly can.”

We don’t want to bulldoze through this. Government has that opportunity in this hoist

to say: “We don’t want to bulldoze through it. We know that this is important. We

were stressed out with a problem because staff were complaining that FOIs were gobbling

up all this time, and we weren’t able to meet our guidelines. There are problems within

it that we don’t know how to fix, and we were just trying to get something on the

floor to try and fix it.”

The hoist will give us the time to get it right and pay respect to the gold standard

of North America, which was implemented by this very House. Let’s continue that good

work. That’s what a hoist will do. It will help restore the law’s original intent.

The intent is that people have a right to how governments may make decisions. They

have a right to know how their money is being spent. They have a right to hold government

accountable, and they have a right to know.

When this House passed the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands’ law in 1992, every

party voted yes. Every party.

Deputy Speaker : Member, I’m going to just interrupt you for a moment.

Janet Routledge : I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker : Carry on, Member.

Introductions by Members

Janet Routledge : I am thrilled to see a class from Capitol Hill Elementary School in Burnaby North

here with us. They’ve come in, in the middle of a debate.

We’re debating freedom of information. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you’re here long

enough that we have an opportunity to have a discussion about what you heard and what

you saw. Again, welcome.

Heather Maahs : I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker : Carry on, Member.

Heather Maahs : I would like to thank and welcome the grade 10 students from Timothy Christian School.

Nineteen of them are in the House today.

I would just like the House to make them welcome.

[2:50 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker : Welcome to everyone in our gallery today.

Debate Continued

Bruce Banman : I, too, would like to welcome those from Burnaby North, I think the member said,

and from Timothy Christian School. I’m a Chilliwack boy myself. I remember going on

a few events with those from that school, although they would be our rivals, I believe,

on some sporting events. Nonetheless, I welcome them.

What we are debating here is what’s called a hoist. For those of you that are all

around and up in there, a hoist motion is a motion to take a bill that is on the floor

and basically put a pause on it because this side of the House and, actually, the

minister — you missed that part — herself, who put it on there, have come up with

a few amendments, so the bill is not perfect or anywhere close to it.

What we are doing is discussing a hoist, a six-month pause to actually go over the

details of this bill so that both sides of the House can improve on it and get the

public, who actually pay for this building, the best that they can get. It’s a little

on the boring side at times, because you’re going to hear me talk a lot.

I am what’s called the designated speaker, and the designated speaker gets up to two

hours to debate a hoist,

whereas for most motions that come on the floor, you get

up to 30 minutes. Just so you know, the reason why I’m going to be talking for as

long as I have is that, lucky me, I drew the short straw, and I get to bore this House

for two hours, if I so wish.

I do thank the Speaker for his indulgence on having listened through this. For the

most part, hopefully I don’t bore you so bad that you nod off, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try

and keep it a little lively.

As I was saying. When this House passed the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands’

law in 1992, here is the amazing thing. Every party voted yes. Every party. It’s a

rare thing, as we know, to not have a contrary vote in this House. Every party said

yes. That is the standard, and that is a very high bar indeed.

This hoist will allow us to continue with the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands’

good work, keep this as the best in North America, as the gold standard. That should

be the goal of all legislation, to become the gold standard of not just here but across

jurisdictions, into other provinces and even other countries. That FOI bill did exactly

that. It was considered to be the best.

Here’s the next part. I want to talk a little bit about why the government’s central

justification for Bill 9 requires the hoist. Currently this is what the government

said — that the public bodies are absolutely overwhelmed by freedom-of-information

volume.

Now, I can tell you, having been in the city, that when FOIs became popular, yeah,

it almost created a separate department, because somebody has got to go through cell

phones or laws or calendars. I remember Premier Harcourt saying: “What? Do you want

to go through my…? Do you want to see what games I play on my laptop?” I remember

that. It is an annoyance and a cause of work for staff, and this is government’s point

— that larger, more complex, far more resource-intensive requests are now coming in.

They also would say that they are struggling under the administrative pressure and

that this is the cause for Bill 9 that it rests on. What we’re going to do in a few

minutes is test some of those things.

The first thing I would say is that I find it ironic that, in a time when we have

seen the largest growth in the public sector ever, they can’t figure out how to get

FOIs out the door faster. There are a few things that hoist could discuss to actually

help with that problem.

[2:55 p.m.]

The numbers from the government’s own FOIPPA…. It’s interesting. We had to do an information,

you know, FOIPPA…. We had to get it from the annual report that the total access requests

received were 10,205 in 2020-2021. That dropped to 7,063 in ’24-25. While government

staff went up by 30 percent, the overall requests dropped by 30 percent. So the hoist

will allow us to say: “Well, wait a minute. You’re saying there are more, yet that’s

not what the numbers are telling us. The numbers are saying it’s less.”

The general FOI requests alone were 8,347. That dropped to 4,691. That means that

number was basically cut in half. They’re saying that due to the uptick in demand,

they need more time, when the numbers are saying: “Well, wait a minute. That’s a 50

percent reduction.” The hoist will allow wholesome discussion on that, because there

could be extenuating circumstances as to why the overall work level went up.

These are the government’s own numbers, in the government’s own report, signed by

the very minister that has brought this bill onto the floor. So it’s the same minister

that said: “Hey, it’s taking us more time. We’re doing less numbers and less work”

— it would look like a 30 percent drop or 50 percent, in half — “yet we need to do

something because we’re overwhelmed.”

I would say, at the very least, on that, that that should be reason enough alone to

justify this hoist bill, to get it into committee and actually boil it down. It is

too complex to be able to debate it on the floor in its current state.

Now, the commissioner already has the power to debate the increase in work.

Section

43 of the existing act already lets the Information and Privacy Commissioner authorize

public bodies to disregard frivolous, vexatious or unreasonably broad requests. That

power exists today, and it has been used today.

Maybe the power…. The hoist will say, “Well, are you actually using this, or do you

just get a request in, and you just blindly do it? Are you really…? You’ve got a tool

here. Are you actually using the tool that was put in place?” That’s fair. Maybe they

are. Maybe they’re not. That’s why we want to go to a hoist.

There is no evidence being put forward in front of this House that the existing power

is insufficient. I have a tendency to agree that I think that the commissioner already

has enough leeway to say: “No, that is way too broad. No, send it back and narrow

it down. No, this is frivolous.” There’s already power within the commissioner now,

and I think the minister should explain to the commission why those rules, if they

have or have not been used…. If they have been used, why they need to be improved

upon.

You want to also now go anticipate the counter — pages, not requests. The government

will say, and we’ve heard them, that pages processed grew from 1.64 million in 2021

to 2.18 million in 2025. The average general request grew from 146 pages to 508 pages.

Okay. But the hoist will allow us to go: “Well, what difference does it make?” The

photocopier is working harder to produce them. If it’s a file in an email, the number

of pages could be insignificant.

Yes, the volume of requests has grown, and that is in fact real. The hoist will allow

the committee to look at it and say: “That’s a record management problem and not a

transparency problem.” Maybe there’s a way to fix that, especially in our new modern

technology with AI. AI is capable of doing all kinds of wonderful things that did

not exist even six months ago, probably when this bill was even looked at to come

forward.

[3:00 p.m.]

That’s another thing for the hoist, to be able to ask that question.

The diagnosis from the experts. The executive director of BCFIPA says: “Access delays

are often a symptom of recordkeeping failures. You cannot fix systemic information

just because your system sucks doesn’t mean that the public doesn’t have a right to

have timely access to it already. It’s not the public that’s the problem; it’s you

and your system. What are you going to do to fix it? The hoist will allow us to ask

questions like that.

The 2022 committee that was struck, the all-party committee that was struck, identified

upstream records management as the actual real fix. Let me go over that again, because

it’s important. The all-party committee that was struck to deal with this very problem

identified the upstream records management as the real fix.

The hoist would allow meaningful discussion: “Well, what did you do to fix the upstream

problems? Here’s your bottleneck. What did you actually implement? Did you do a single

darn thing?”

It’s way too easy to restrict freedom of information, which is a public right, and

we’ve gone over that. Just because you haven’t been able to sort out your problem,

doesn’t mean that you should then further restrict the public’s access to this information,

that they already paid for and have a right to, in a timely manner. Your inability

to fix the upstream problem is not everybody else’s problem. Go fix your own problem,

basically. This hoist will allow that discussion.

Maybe the minister needs to direct their staff to actually fix the problem, which

is upstream management. It’s a fair question. It’s fair to ponder that. It’s fair

to ask for a hoist to be able to figure out, in-depth: “Look. You’ve said that there’s

a problem. You’ve got these backlogs. You can’t get the information out the front

door in a timely manner. Is the problem really you?”

Clearly, based on the number of requests, it ain’t the public and the opposition and

everybody else. The requests are way down, yet you still can’t get the job done. Maybe

it’s your system. Maybe you need to fix the system. Maybe what we should be looking

at is how to fix and improve the system versus denying access and making it more difficult

for people to get the information they paid for and have a right to look at.

A hoist will allow that discussion to happen. Six months would actually, potentially,

let this Legislature implement the fix, and there would be no need for this legislation

in the first place. Maybe that’s the simple fix. Wouldn’t that be nice? Quite often

the most simple explanation is generally the solution.

Bill 9 doesn’t address records management. It addresses the public’s right to ask.

Never in a democratic process does it work out well when you make it more difficult

for the public, the press, the opposition, First Nations, students, lawyers and municipalities

to get freedom of information. It does not work out well for democracy, it does not

work out well for the citizens, and it does not work out well in the long term for

government itself. Why would you fix anything if you put in laws that say you don’t

have to?

[3:05 p.m.]

Our goal is to be better. Our goal is to go back to the MLA for Saanich North and

the Islands’ gold-standard best in North America. We owe it to that member, who is

an MLA of this House now, to continue to do his great work and improve upon his legislation,

not make it worse. That should be the goal of this House.

That hoist will allow us to be able to look at that and say: “You know what? Here

it was all along. This is the issue. This can fix it.” There is no need to make it

more difficult, because really…. I go back to one day….

Again, if you take a look at the polls, we’re up by ten points. If the election were

called today, it’s saying that there would be a massive Conservative victory.

Deputy Speaker : Member, can we get back to the motion that we are debating?

Bruce Banman : I can, Mr. Speaker, when the reason that the hoist is important is because, fair

turnaround, this government will be yelling and screaming that we are delaying and

dragging our feet and unnecessarily blocking their right to information and the public’s

right to information. I use that example with intent, because governments change all

the time. That’s why this hoist will allow for better legislation. What the hoist

will implement is actually a non-partisan approach.

As I said earlier, I was the mayor of the fifth-largest city of British Columbia.

Freedom of information was just starting, and they were horrendous to deal with from

a staff perspective. But you want to make sure that the public has a right to those.

In my case, it exonerated me, as I mentioned. In some cases, it doesn’t.

It becomes imperative on this House that, during this hoist, we come up with the best

legislation that we can to serve the citizens of this fine province. That should be

the goal of every piece of legislation we do. This hoist is going to give us that

chance to take a breath and come up with legislation that not only will work….

As the minister admitted herself, there were already a couple of problems. That is

why she did the amendments. So it was already flawed. In the haste to get it here,

it was already flawed. The hoist will allow us to go through that.

Now, the other thing in this that the hoist will allow us to do is actually go through

some rather disturbing words that are in this legislation. The hoist…. Let me go over

those words. They’re undefined words, and words matter.

My wife tells me that all the time. Words, language matters. Intent matters.

The undefined words are…. The bill expands the grounds for discharging FOI requests.

What that means to those that are watching from the public is that government has

said: “You know what? We’re having trouble with this, so we need to come up with reasons

to say no to a request. No. Sorry. You can’t have it.”

Well, I don’t like that idea, and most of the public and the press don’t like it either.

Like I said, the hoist will allow us to go back to the commissioner and find out whether

or not that tool is enough. Let’s listen to what the commissioner has to say. But

here are the words: “We can now deny or disregard.” That’s even worse. I’m just going

to disregard you. It’s horrible language.

Anyway, they can disregard FOI requests for “abusive….” Well, what does that mean?

I came in and I threatened somebody? You didn’t like the tone in my email? What does

it mean? It’s just a word. It’s pretty broad.

I mean, we could go look it up in the dictionary and find out what the definition

of abusive is. They didn’t even bother to put that in there. They just tossed a word

in there, “abusive.” “I didn’t like the way you looked at me.” Is that abusive? “I

didn’t like your tone.” “Well, it was an email.” “Well, I know, but I read something

into the email that I just didn’t care for — the tone.” What does abusive mean?

[3:10 p.m.]

“Malicious.” Okay. Well, what do you mean by malicious? Give me a definition. You

can’t just toss a word into something as important as FOIs and not have a definition

with it.

What the hoist will allow us to do is say: “Okay. Please give me examples of abusiveness,

of maliciousness. Can you please come up with a definition?” I think if you’re going

to put a bill on this table, it should come with

definitions of what those words mean.

Don’t think I assume what you’re doing. We all know that old saying about assuming,

and I won’t bother to get into it because I’ll probably get out of here, have to retract

my language as being unparliamentary. But we’ve all heard what happens when you break

down the word assume. Don’t assume that people understand what you mean.

Then there’s “repetitious.” Okay. “Well, you asked twice.” “What?” “Well, you’ve asked

for the same thing twice.” Is that repetitious? Is three times repetitious, four,

five, six, 106, 4.257 million? What’s considered repetitious?

This is the basics 101. It should have been in this bill. This is why this bill is

full of problems.

The hoist will allow us to go through and reasonably say, and I think the minister

has an obligation to say, please define for what repetitious is. Give examples — clear,

concise examples — and the committee will be able to go back and forth and come up

with what everybody can agree is a reasonable explanation and definition for these

words. If you don’t, you have a risk and, I would dare say, a very real risk.

The other one was “unreasonably interfere with the operations” of the government of

British Columbia. Again, there’s a bunch of word salad. Gee, we’re holding you accountable.

“Well, that’s a little unreasonable, don’t you think? I don’t want them to know I

had a $6,000 limo bill. I don’t like this. It’s going to make me look bad. That’s

just plain unreasonable.” Well, too bad. Too bad.

This is why we all take this on. We know that it is a reasonable expectation that

someone from the public is going to hold us accountable. To “unreasonably interfere

with the operations” of the government of British Columbia — please tell me what that

means. I guess if an FOI stops a major project of some kind, just in the mere asking

of the FOI, that could be considered unreasonable. But come on.

I think the hoist will give us the ability to define these words.

Deputy Speaker : Excuse me, Member.

Hon. Spencer Chandra Herbert : I appreciate the member’s arguments. It was just really to be clear that this is

really about the need for six months. It’s not about debating the bill itself.

Deputy Speaker : Thank you for your input on that, Member.

Bruce Banman : I always appreciate when the minister stands up to help make me better. I will endeavour

to make his life easy and not unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government

of British Columbia, whatever the heck that means.

This is what the hoist will do. The very reason why the minister stood up is a clear,

concise example of why

definitions matter and why this hoist is required. Had this

bill been put forward in a proper way, the minister would not have needed to stand

up. We would not be having this debate right now.

It’s actually a bit of a black eye for government to have put stuff in here that misses

the basics of a decent bill. That’s why we have got to go to the extreme of a hoist

to actually fix the hodgepodge that’s put in front of this House. It’s, quite frankly,

an embarrassment.

I digress.

[3:15 p.m.]

A hoist will actually help come up with decent

definitions so that everybody knows

and can stand on solid ground of “no, your request and the very nature of it was abusive.

Let me explain to you why it was abusive, because — oh, that’s right — I have a definition

right here of what ‘abusive’ is. I have a definition of what ‘malicious’ is.” The

hoist will allow us to do that.

The hoist will give us a number, of whether it’s repetitious or not. It will do that.

Within that definition, during the hoist, opposition asks a lot of things. Are we

now going to say, “Well, opposition, you’ve asked ten FOIs. You can never ask any

more, because that’s now repetitious,” or “I’m sorry, CBC, but your reporter has asked

13. That now has gone surpassing…”? Is it that one particular item? Is it in government

as a whole?

We shouldn’t really be talking about this and really shouldn’t be talking about a

hoist at all, had government actually implemented the recommendations from the 2022

committee and actually done their job properly. That’s why we are talking about a

hoist.

I get that it makes the minister uncomfortable, but had government thought through

this legislation that’s before us, I would not be taking up two hours of this House’s

time talking about why a hoist is required in the first place. Not a single one of

these terms is defined in the bill. That is a massive oversight and, I would dare

say, almost negligence of duty.

A hoist is definitely required, just to deal with these

definitions alone. On that

particular thing alone, this House should unanimously agree that a hoist is required

to clean that up.

The new sufficiency test adds even more vague language. I’d like to say that those

few things were enough. But wait. There’s more. “In the opinion of the head of the

public body.…”

Well, you know what they say about opinions. Again, I will refrain from saying it

in this House, because it’d be unparliamentary language, but I really don’t care what

someone’s opinion is. Is it a legal opinion? Is it an opinion because they had a bad

day at the office? What does that mean? Is it just that it’s “in my opinion, I don’t

want to do it, because it’s going to make us look bad”? A hoist will help clear that

up.

“A reasonable amount of time.” Well, there’s an absolute treasure trove on that one.

“A reasonable amount of time.” You know, it’s reasonable that it could take 400 years

to get your FOI request. What the heck is “reasonable”?

What’s reasonable to you is not reasonable to me. What’s reasonable to me may not

be reasonable to a reporter or a lawyer, as I’ve said in previous…. Or to a family

that’s trying to figure out why the heck it is their loved one committed suicide,

and they didn’t get a phone call saying they were being released, because they had

mental issues.

A reasonable amount of time — that has got to be the most vague, nonsense piece of

garbage I have ever seen, and it is meaningless. You want to talk about “abusive.”

That could be very abusive, depending on who it is that defines what “reasonable”

is. I think the reasonable thing to do would be to put this to the hoist, so that

we can figure out what the heck that means.

“Reasonable effort.” Well, there’s another good one. “I did my best.” “Well, your

best ain’t good enough, because, quite frankly, you don’t know the job, you’re no

good at the job, and somebody who actually can do the job needs to replace you. I

don’t care if you thought it was a reasonable effort. It wasn’t good enough.” We have

courts that decide these kinds of things all the time — “a reasonable effort.”

but what does it actually mean? The hoist will actually help define what the intent

of that was.

[3:20 p.m.]

Maybe it’s a good intent, but it is ripe for abuse. It is ripe for an escape plan

on all of these, and that’s why a hoist is needed.

The problem with all of these is that the head of the public body becomes the judge

of what is now deemed reasonable. Now, I’ve dealt with people in power before, and

they can become very unreasonable because nobody can question what they do and they’re

not held accountable. We’re not talking about an MLA that every four years you get

a chance to reasonably figure whether they’ve done a good job and say: “I don’t like

that one anymore. Let’s have somebody else, please.”

This could be someone that is put in a position that becomes very, very unreasonable,

because: “You know what? It is unreasonable that I’ve got to put up with all these

FOIs. I don’t like them. They are a pain. I just don’t want to have to deal with them.

So I am going to find every single reason I can not to do the job that the public

demands of me. I find it unreasonable.”

I think it’s reasonable to put this to a hoist to figure out what all of this nonsense

means. It is ripe for abuse. That is not reasonable. That is totally unreasonable,

and it deserves scrutiny and better definition.

The response timeline is now weakened. The current law responds “without delay.” We

now go “without unreasonable delay.” The hoist needs to clean that up, define what

that means. Officials themselves get to decide what’s unreasonable or not. Wow, what

could go wrong with that, eh? Some faceless bureaucrat can decide whether it’s reasonable

or unreasonable with no repercussion, necessarily, because we’ve heard time and time

again where ministers will say: “Hey, I can’t interfere with staff. It’s not my job.

I can’t. The legislation says I can’t.”

I think it is reasonable to assume that during the hoist, we will be able to figure

out what is meant by these

definitions, whether or not they’re actually reasonable

even being placed on the floor. This is why undefined terms matter.

Let me tell you what. If you don’t…. Okay, I get that the other side of the House

goes: “Oh yeah, it’s MLA Banman just trying to be obstructive, just wasting two hours

of our time. We really don’t care what his opinion says. The MLA for Abbotsford South….”

Deputy Speaker : Member, I ask you not to use any names.

Bruce Banman : I’m not allowed to use my own name either, right?

Deputy Speaker : I would prefer you didn’t.

Bruce Banman : Okay, I talk to myself all the time, but I guess I shouldn’t name myself all the

time either.

Anyway: “The MLA for Abbotsford South is just getting up here pontificating. I really

don’t care what his reasonable definition is or opinion.”

Let’s talk about what some of the experts have said, shall we? Would you like to hear

what the experts have said?

Interjection.

Bruce Banman : Yeah, let me tell you. Thank you for that.

Why a hoist matters. Vaughn Palmer from the Vancouver Sun , legislative columnist — he sits over there all the time in question period — says:

“The bill makes the officials themselves the judge of what is and is not reasonable.”

Okay, if you don’t like what I have to say about it, how about somebody that has covered

this House for many, many years? This is why a hoist…. He’s basically saying there

are problems with this bill, and he is building the case as to why we need to put

it to a hoist.

Palmer’s warning is: “Imagine how that power could be abused to ashcan potentially

embarrassing requests at the time of a supposed fiscal restraint.”

I will say that my experience with staff when I was the mayor was that staff didn’t

want to embarrass the public figures, because they took it personal, as if it was

a personal lack of duty, and they would intentionally or, most of the time, unintentionally

err on the side of caution because they didn’t want to embarrass their boss.

[3:25 p.m.]

A hoist needs to sort these

definitions out to take that bias away from a non-elected

official. Without

definitions, every disputed application becomes a fight before the

commissioner.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

This is why the hoist is important. We need to figure out what these

definitions mean,

because as I was saying earlier,

definitions matter, and the hoist will help sort

this out. That six months will help sort these out.

Welcome to the chair, Madam Speaker. We were just going over why the hoist is required

in this case and why we have put it forward to the floor. We were talking about

definitions

of words or the lack thereof. There are many…. Would you like me to go over the words

for you, Madam Speaker? I know you were away. Shall I just continue?

Deputy Speaker : I’ll try and pick up. Thank you, Member.

Bruce Banman : I’ll just continue.

Without these

definitions, the applicants for an FOI now face a constantly moving

target based on whatever official it is they go to, whether they’re having a good

day, a bad day or what one official deems to be reasonable and another not. It’s not

like there’s going to be a TV replay to find out whether or not the official actually

called the right call or not. The only replay we have in this House is to actually

lock down what these

definitions mean so that there is no doubt as to whether an application

is used.

We don’t ever want to have a public official having to be a referee, except in extreme

cases. The way the hoist will do…. It will help improve the

definitions of the words

that I’ve mentioned and the terms that I’ve mentioned, and it will make it much clearer

and therefore apply a way that the original intent, which is the gold standard, which

was written by the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands…. It was deemed to be the

gold standard, the best in North America, the original FOI law. It will actually improve

upon it, not weaken it.

Without

definitions, the commissioner reviews against exactly what? On what grounds?

On what basis? I can tell you that if I was the commissioner, I would not be very

happy with this, because I would be under review myself every time I said no. Government

has set the commissioner up for failure, has set this entire bill up for failure because

they have not bothered to define what words mean.

I find it incredibly ironic coming from the side of the House that talks about how

words mean things all the time and that words matter. That’s the irony of this.

A hoist…. Six months will help us define these words, come up with scenarios for these

words and actually improve the bill. It’s a simple, I believe, reasonable request.

If the standard is whatever the official thinks, there’s nothing to review against

it. So where’s the playbook? How do I know whether the commissioner is just trying

to protect his boss, having a bad day, doesn’t like me because I’m a reporter that

puts in a lot of requests or doesn’t like the opposition or may have a bias that’s

undescribed?

We need to define these words clearly so there’s certainty. They need to be done in

public, not in the minister’s closed doors, and the committee that this hoist will

allow will get us to that exact point, where it will be done in an unbiased, all-party

atmosphere.

Here’s the risk. I talked about this prior to you coming here, Madam Speaker. One

day this side of the House will be on that side of the House and form government.

So just play with me for a second on that, Madam Speaker.

What stops a future government from declaring that an FOI into the Premier’s office

unreasonably interferes with operations? Right now if I don’t like the sound of the

request, I get to make the call. I don’t like that person’s eye colour. I don’t like….

They were abusive with their tone of their email.

Deputy Speaker : Just a minute, Member.

[3:30 p.m.]

Hon. Kelly Greene : I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. Kelly Greene : My husband is on the precinct right now. For some strange reason, he is not super

enthused to be in the chamber at this very moment. But I just wanted to say, if you

see him around, please say hi. Make him welcome.

It’s really amazing to be able to be supported by such an incredible human being.

I never thought that I would ever be this lucky in my life. He is kind and strong

and is the reason I can breathe. Please make him welcome when you see him.

Debate Continued

Bruce Banman : I’ll try not to take that personally, because I know he would have been riveted with

this debate, I’m sure. Why he would not want to sit and look at the charming…? Never

mind, I won’t have…. I’ll let it go, but thank you very much.

What stops a future government from declaring that an FOI into the Premier’s office

unreasonably interferes with operations? Here’s how a hoist is going to help with

some of these. What stops a deputy minister from declaring that a journalist’s pattern

of requests is repetitious? What stops a public body from declaring that an advocate’s

persistence is abusive? Or the tone of their email, whatever that means?

“I didn’t like your tone.” “You read a tone in there that wasn’t implied.” “How do

you know what’s in my head and what I was thinking?” “You’ve read in there something

because you’re defensive, potentially.” The bill’s text does not stop any of these

scenarios.

Six months of a hoist — what that would allow the House to do is calmly and clearly

define each term. It’s going to set objective tests. They’ll be able to have a scenario

where there is actually a way of not only having a subjective test but maybe a way

to appeal a decision. Same as I was mentioning, in a hockey game where you get to

have a replay, a video replay…. It will build in safeguards for both sides. It will

limit discretion to what is genuinely necessary.

Right now this bill writes a blank cheque. It is way too ripe for abuse, not only

for current government but for future governments. Six months will allow us to make

this bill better and to keep it the gold standard of North America, the best FOI request

in North America, which is what it was, originally done.

I have a few more minutes left. I’d like to go through some of the clauses on this

and why a hoist is important to these clauses.

Clause 21, what it actually does…. Well, it allows public bodies to charge a fee for

records made available without an FOI request. Well, wait a minute. Now we’re asking

people to pay for what they’ve already paid for. It’s the public’s information. The

records the government has already decided should be public can now get a fee.

Well, proactive disclosure is supposed to reduce FOI volume. Why a hoist is important

is so we can discuss why it was felt necessary in clause 21 to now charge a fee to

reduce requests when we have shown by government’s own records that requests are actually

dropping, in some cases 30 to 50 percent. The whole point is to make information freely

available without the request.

Let’s, in the six months, discuss why this has become a problem and even necessary.

It turns the proactive disclosure stream — worse than that — into a paid service.

As I mentioned, the public has already paid for the information. What is the point

of proactively disclosing it if you’re going to charge people for it in the end anyway?

I think during that six months, these are questions that should be answered versus

on the floor.

[3:35 p.m.]

The minister’s denial versus the actual bill. In the hoist, we’ll be able to talk.

The minister can explain why she says the bill does not introduce any new fees, but

when you look at clause 21, it explicitly authorizes a fee.

The hoist will allow the minister to explain whether she misspoke or, worse, maybe

was misleading. I think, and I hope, she misspoke in the heat of the moment, but the

bill itself is in direct opposition to the words that the minister used.

The hoist will also be able to explain in detail and talk about who actually gets

hurt with these new, sweeping changes. Will it affect a journalist’s job to routinely

check up on government spending?

If I was the Minister of Finance, I’m not so sure I’d be happy that they found a $6,000

SUV-limo bill. I would want to restrict that, too, because it’s embarrassing. But

the public has a right to know. The minister will probably get over it anyway. Two

weeks in politics is a long time. They’ll soon forget. But journalists have a right

to check up on our spending. So do others.

Researchers tracking program outcomes. I think that those researchers have a right

to know whether or not, for instance, things such as cancer outcomes are improving

or not. If they have to do an FOI request for this, we will need to know, and the

hoist will allow us to see, whether or not researchers that are doing necessary work

will inadvertently get caught in a meat grinder of a trap of this, and it ends up

costing a bunch of money, and unable to do their jobs.

Citizens asking how their tax dollars were spent. It’s annoying, but it’s their right.

It’s beyond their right. Personally, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a citizen

to say: “You know, you charged me this much tax. Where did my money go? Are you really

spending my money wisely?” Sometimes both sides get pointed out where things can be

done better. The hoist will help us go through some of these, whether or not that

impairs citizens to do that.

Indigenous governments tracking treaty implementation — 100 percent legit. I don’t

think we want to hurt them. The hoist will allow us to make sure that we don’t.

Foster children seeking their own care records. Again, do we really want to stand

in the way? We want to make sure we get that right.

Employees seeking their own personnel files. I think we also have a right to be able

to know whether or not those people will get hurt.

Deputy Speaker : Member, excuse me, just for a minute.

Amelia Boultbee : I stand on a point of order. I have one point of order with two points.

I would reiterate what my friend, the member across the aisle, has said, which is

that the member, respectfully, continuously is debating the merits of the bill, which

is actually what I thought committee was for. In addition, there are some factual

inaccuracies in there, such as that there is no cost associated with proactive disclosure.

I fear that in getting into the merits of the bill without being in committee, where

these corrections can take place, that’s a problem.

We’re also not hearing a lot about why we need a delay of six months.

My last point is just that, for my clarity, the parliamentary practice book says that

it’s currently held that the adoption of a six-months hoist or the negativing of a

motion on second reading of a bill is fatal, as no future day is appointed for consideration

of the bill at that stage, and the introduction of a new bill in substantially the

same terms is out of order.

So just a clarification with my point of order. If there is a hoist motion successfully,

is it actually a delay or is the bill over?

[3:40 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker : To answer your question, yes, a hoist motion is fatal.

Just a reminder to the member to speak to the hoist motion explicitly. Notice there

has been a wide degree of latitude.

Bruce Banman : Thank you very much for the direction, Madam Speaker.

To reiterate, in the hoist, we’ll be able to answer some of the ambiguity of the

definitions

or lack thereof. The hoist will give time for this House to actually improve upon

this bill and make sure that this bill sticks to the standard that was originally

set back in, I think it was, 1992. The hoist will be able to answer such questions

as: who will this bill unintentionally hurt if passed as-is without any changes?

The other thing that I think is important that will allow this bill is whether or

not there is a pattern of secrecy that is either intentionally or unintentionally

put forward. What the hoist will allow the debate and the discussion of is whether

or not this document stands alone or is part of a multi-year pattern.

In 2019, $2 million was spent fighting 615 opposition FOIs, as an example. That will

be able to be talked about in the hoist. The opposition filed FOIs about ministers

and staffers using personal email for government business. The then FOI minister,

Jinny Sims of Citizens’ Services, had been caught doing exactly that. Will this bill

now, as it stands, create a hindrance for anyone to be able to make sure that inappropriateness

was not being put in place, whether intentional or unintentional?

The government deployed taxpayer-funded lawyers back in the day to fight the requests

and argue that they were vexatious or frivolous. Back in the day, and this does relate

to the hoist, they argued the opposition committed a privacy breach by using publicly

available email addresses. The adjudicator, Lisa Siew, Office of the Information and

Privacy Commissioner, ruled against the government on every count, and that cost the

taxpayers $12 million.

We want to avoid a case like that, and the hoist will allow us to have wholesome discussions

such as this and figure out whether or not there are any unintended consequences that

could actually put government in harm’s way in the future, to make sure that the bill

actually does the intention.

Again, I go back to the intention of this bill. Government is saying they were unable

to be able to process the FOIs in a reasonable time. The committee that was formed

in 2022 said that the problem was upstream. This hoist will allow, whether or not

that particular bottleneck had been addressed or not…. It’s not addressed, and it

cannot be found in this bill.

This bill may or may not be necessary in its current form. Perhaps government needs

to just fix the bottleneck. That will then get rid of much of the undefined language

that’s in this bill and be able to change the bill.

Again, I go back to the taxpayers. This is probably one of the most important things

that taxpayers have in front of them, because they have a right to the knowledge that

they’ve paid for.

Rob Shaw’s verdict at the time of the one I mentioned in 2019: “The government deployed

a series of time-honoured countermeasures — delay, obfuscation, stonewall — and eventually

deployed the lawyers to try and slow down.”

We don’t ever want to get back to that point, which is why we modified the bills to

begin with. Part of the hoist motion will be to make sure that, once again, we are

not inadvertently or intentionally trying to put things in place so that we can obfuscate,

stonewall and deploy lawyers to try and offset people from getting to the truth that

they actually have a right to.

[3:45 p.m.]

The default principle of the law, that public documents are public, was in the case,

and the onus is on government.

There have been some issues which I think the hoist will allow us to discuss in their

totality. There was a $10 user fee implemented. The late Premier John Horgan’s NDP

government introduced the $10 non-refutable application fees on every FOI. Why it

needs to be in the hoist is that it is part of the overall discussion of what is intended

by the legislation. It was opposed by the independent Information and Privacy Commissioner,

Indigenous governments, journalists and a coalition of civil society organizations.

Yet the government did it anyway, and there is a problem with how the government did

it, which was not known at the time. This hoist will again be able to talk about the

bill in its totality because it is tied to other freedom of information. What happened

is that, inadvertently, that $10 fee magically became $280. How that happened is that

the government realized that, technically, each ministry is a separate public body

underneath the act, and, therefore, 28 ministries equal 28 separate $10 fees. The

whole-government fee for a simple request can now be $280 to apply.

There are processing fees on top of that. So the cost of asking government, as an

example, how much they spent on catered lunches is now $280, plus processing fees.

This needs to be discussed in the hoist as, again: what is the intent of Bill 9? Have

we now put in place monetary restrictions which are beyond the pale of reasonable,

and should they be addressed and brought into Bill 9 to actually fix them?

The commissioner’s verdict on the 28-minister practice, which was Michael Harvey,

Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia…. Can government do this?

Yes. Should government do it? I’d argue that what they should do is take a close look

at how they respond, find a way to respond that sends a message to the public about

transparency. I think that that’s important to be able to include in the hoist. Remember,

the hoist is to actually improve the legislation that’s in front of this House.

The part that you were not here for, Madam Speaker, was that the minister has already

set the case that the bill in front of us is imperfect, because within two weeks,

she brought forward amendments of her own. She set the stage for a hoist because she

has admitted that the bill is flawed, so we are reasonable to ask that a committee….

In addition to that, the 2022 commission that was put in place…. That report was shelved

for four years, and we do not know whether it was even looked at before Bill 9 was

brought in place, because many of the things in Bill 9 contradict what the recommendations

of the committee were. There needs to be an explanation, which could happen within

that six months in consultation with others and in a wholesome, all-party discussion

to come up with whether or not this is actually reasonable, intentional or overlooked.

This is the foundation of transparency in government. This is why we have put a hoist

on the table. This is why we are debating, perhaps in broad terms at times, why this

hoist is required, because you cannot separate this particular bill without talking

about the bills that came before it that set the foundation and the precedent that

is in this bill.

The problem now is that we have an Indigenous corporation that is going to be paid

$280 for a request if it goes across 28 ministries, and that seems to be the norm.

Getting more forward, the freshest piece of evidence is….

[3:50 p.m.]

Bob Mackin, the journalist and publicist of theBreaker.news, reported in April 2026

that the Eby government has stopped publishing the Premier’s calendar and a no-bid

contracts list. The last update to that was December 2025. Five months of the Premier’s

calendar are missing. Five months of no-bid contracts are missing, and Mackin’s headline

is: “David Eby’s NDP: Carried Away with Secrecy.” This is happening right now while

we debate.

Deputy Speaker : Member, just a reminder. We don’t use names.

Bruce Banman : Thank you, Madam Speaker. I digress. I was reading a quote. So thank you.

The NDP government got carried away with secrecy. This is right now, while we debate

Bill 9. Why we think that a hoist is more than reasonable is to include discussions

such as this to make sure that this particular bill, flawed — admittedly, by the minister

— is inadvertently setting up another stage where.… Did we overlook something in the

haste to get it here?

There is only one good method to fix this, and that’s to have a hoist which has an

all-committee report. Why we’ve said a minimum of six months, which is the minimum….

In February 2026, Bill 9 itself, tabled by the minister, expands government’s discretion

to delay, disregard, refuse FOI requests. That goes counterintuitive to why we have

an FOI in the first place. A hoist will help separate, sort out and discuss how we

actually either open up freedom-of-information requests to the public by proactively

disclosing them, which is not really that transparent in this bill, or, if it is overlooked,

come up with ways not to overlook it.

In April ’26, the companion bill, amendments to the Judicial Review Procedure Act,

allows ministers to personally certify which cabinet records are off-limits to courts.

In one session, there were two bills and two entirely different patterns. I think

that that also can be discussed during this six-month hoist to figure it out.

Then a non-partisan voice, albeit from the press…. Rob Shaw, who has covered 17 years

of B.C. politics, says it’s broken, borderline useless and now monstrously expensive,

and the blame for all of that lies solely at the feet of the NDP government.

The hoist could help address some of these very issues that Rob Shaw brings up so

that we’d actually have journalism that works again and some unintended consequences

that were perhaps put in and could be included in this bill…. It will allow the all-party

committee over the next six months to consult, review, come up with

definitions and

make sure there aren’t any unforeseen consequences.

If you want to listen to some of the cross-partisan coalition, we have the member

for Saanich North and the Islands, who drafted, as I said, the original 1992 law,

which is a North American gold standard. Why a hoist is necessary….

Deputy Speaker : Just a minute, Member.

Hon. Spencer Chandra Herbert : I know speaking for two hours is challenging, but the member has used the same anecdotes

and the same quotes a number of times now. It is getting a little repetitive. I wonder

if he might have some new material to bring to the argument for why six months is

appropriate.

Deputy Speaker : Thank you.

Just a reminder to the member to introduce new arguments to the motion. If you don’t

have any further, you’re welcome to take your seat for the next speaker.

Bruce Banman : I do thank you for your direction again, Madam Speaker, and I always look forward

to when the minister stands up to point something out.

Let me talk about Mike Larsen, then-president of the B.C. Freedom of Information and

Privacy Association. He states: “The bill contains really bad stuff.” One more good

reason to have a hoist.

Jason Woywada, from the executive directorate of the BCFIPA, says: “You cannot fix

systemic information management problems by weakening public access rights.” Another

reason why we need to take it to the hoist. The BCFIPA news release: “The bill weakens

access rights at a time when government has failed to meaningfully implement its own

recordkeeping law.”

[3:55 p.m.]

Journalists who do this for a living, which are new, and why we need to talk about

this over the next six months…. Vaughn Palmer, who has been here for over 40 years:

“The NDP is quietly moving to weaken the public access provisions.” That’s damning.

It is interesting that we find out whether or not there is any truth to that, and

that will be discussed in the hoist. I do believe…. I’m going to read this out here.

That was just handed to me, and it says:

“Although a hoist motion could be fatal to the bill as a result of prorogation or

dissolution, as the member has brought forth in her point of order in this case, the

six months in this case falls within what this House considers to be one complete

session before prorogation.

“Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that within that six months, the bill is

withdrawn to improve the language that opposition finds problematic on the principle,

which is not typical to debate in committee stage. We also know that, typically, opposition

amendments are not accepted by government, so we have no hope of having the other

egregious pieces of this legislation to be fixed in committee.

“We must debate and canvass these larger, fundamental principles in second reading

debate via the hoist in order to highlight exactly why it cannot be saved in a committee

via any amendments that we see put forth by government and, therefore, actually needs

to be revamped, even if they need to redraft and bring forward a brand-new form of

legislation.”

In the time that I have left, Bob Mackin, from theBreaker.news, basically has stated:

“A government carried away with secrecy.” Rob Shaw, from CHEK News , has stated: “The system is broken, borderline useless and now monstrously expensive.”

And a North Shore News editorial: “A stain on the Premier’s record.”

As I’ve mentioned, the hoist will allow us, in a more wholesome way, to be able to

discuss the ramifications of what others are saying, be they government or not, and

actually help get better legislation in front of this House.

The historical record on Barbara McLintock’s rule, the late Barbara McLintock, legendary

legislative reporter for the Province newspaper, quoted by Palmer: “Don’t go by what the minister says in the House, and

don’t be fooled by the news release. Read the bill itself.” Well, we have read the

bill, and the bill does not match the minister’s press release and talking points.

For that reason alone, it should go to a hoist and be debated over the next six months.

Also, more than 10,000 British Columbians have signed the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

petition calling on the government to abandon Bill 9. There is public support to take

and improve the bill through hoist as well. That was a petition that was delivered

to this Legislature.

Then consensus on this. Conservative MLAs, Green MLAs, civil society advocates, journalists

who have covered this Legislature for decades and tens of thousands of British Columbians

agree that this bill needs to be improved. The minister herself has admitted that

the bill is flawed, with her amendments that were put on the floor.

They are all saying the same thing: Bill 9 is not ready as written — every single

one, including the minister. Six months is the bare minimum that the people we actually

serve and have vowed to serve are owed to improve this bill so it actually fits the

needs of modern society and meets the needs and demands that the aforementioned groups

have been talking about. The hoist is the most effective way to do that.

[4:00 p.m.]

What would the six months accomplish? Let’s get to that, as I close. It would withdraw

the provisions of Bill 9 that reduce openness. Transparency is a beautiful thing in

democracy.

It would implement the dozens of recommendations of the 2022 all-party special committee.

The hoist would end the 28-ministry $280 practice through legislation or regulation.

We never intended to harm journalistic students and put in there an impossible fee

that they can’t afford.

It would properly resource the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

It would invest in upstream records management reform, which we have noted and I have

stated is pointed out as the real cause of delays as per the BCFIPA.

It would expand proactive disclosure, not discretionary withholding. It would probably,

most importantly of all, define the words this bill leaves dangerously undefined.

I think it is unconscionable that a bill came on the floor of this House that did

not have

definitions to it when they are pivotal in changing what’s required in an

FOI. It’s fundamental.

It would restore free general interest and FOI access for journalists, researchers

and Indigenous governments. The six months would allow this House to hold proper public

hearings to hear from the people who actually use the system, such as journalists

and those that I’ve mentioned, and engage the Office of the Information and Privacy

Commissioner formally, on the record.

It would consult First Nations, municipalities, journalists, the legal community,

the academy, and it would produce legislation built on consensus, not legislation

crafted secretly behind closed doors. That’s pivotal.

The six months of the hoist would allow the government to match the level of consultation

that produced the original 1992 act, the act that is held in North America as the

gold standard. It would honour the work of the 2022 all-party committee. It’s disrespectful

to ask a committee to work and then just toss their work on a shelf and not consult

it.

It would bring forward a bill this House could pass with the same unanimity that passed

the original bill. That’s what we want. We want to be able to have something that

is unanimously passed by every single member in this House, to uphold the great standard

that was put in place on the floor in 1992. That’s what we should be holding ourselves

to.

What the hoist is it’s a pause. It’s not a kill. The bill may come back in a different

form, but it’s not really a kill. It’s a process motion. It’s not a partisan one.

It’s a request for time backed by the architect of the original law, the BCFIPA, the

journalists who cover the beat and the 10,000 British Columbians who signed a petition.

Here’s what the government has already conceded and why a hoist is required. By tabling

its own amendments mid-debate, the government has admitted Bill 9 was not, in fact,

ready. By accusing the opposition of false claims in the same breath as amending the

bill, the government has admitted the bill needs clarification. The hoist will do

that. By stopping the publication of the Premier’s calendar and no-bid contracts while

asking for new powers to refuse FOIs, the government has shown its hands, and it needs

to stop.

What the opposition is asking for is six months to let this legislation do its job.

Six months to honour the work of the 2022 committee. Six months to define the undefined

that’s in there clearly. Six months to listen with intent to British Columbians. Six

months to come back with a bill this House can pass with confidence, that all members

in this House can get behind and that British Columbians can trust in a time when

people do not trust government.

A government with nothing to hide welcomes scrutiny. If this government rams this

through, what are they trying to hide? It sends a message, whether they intend to

or not, to the public to further distrust.

[4:05 p.m.]

A government amending its own bill before its second reading needs scrutiny. It was

rushed. It was done in haste. A government that stops publishing the Premier’s own

calendar, while writing new powers to refuse FOIs, demands further scrutiny. It’s

a red flag. Six months is not really a delay, not in the overall scheme of things.

It is the bare minimum this Legislature owes the people that we vowed to serve.

I am encouraging this House to send it back. Send it back. Do the work, the hard work.

We’re ready to work. Come back with a bill that British Columbians can trust and be

proud of. Come back with another gold standard, of the best in the land, of FOIs,

like the original bill of 1992. Honour that bill. Honour that tradition. Honour scrutiny

and transparency.

I urge every member in this House — government, opposition, Greens, independents —

to support this hoist so that we can get it right and do for the citizens of this

fine nation and this fine province what they deserve, which is to be proud of a bill

on something as important as freedom of information.

We owe it to them, we deserve it to them, and they’ve paid for us to do this work.

We’re ready to do this work. Let’s all get behind this hoist and get the best legislation

we possibly can when it comes to something like an FOI.

Thank you for the time to speak on this. It has been a privilege and honour, and I

look forward to the passing of this hoist.

Deputy Speaker : I’ll remind the House that a hoist amendment is a dilatory motion. If passed, it

would have the effect of killing the bill, as it would be removed from the order paper.

Jody Toor : It’s always an honour to be able to get up in this House and debate different bills.

I just want to thank the member for Abbotsford South for doing an amazing job and

for speaking for two hours. I also want to thank my colleague from Surrey–White Rock

for bringing in this hoist motion earlier today.

Today I want to take this time to talk a bit more on the hoist motion that has been

brought forward for amendment to second reading on the Freedom of Information and

Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2026 — that the motion for second reading of

Bill 9 be amended by deleting the word “now” and substituting “six months hence.”

At first glance, this amendment may appear moderate. It does not reject the bill,

nor does it attempt to halt the legislative process altogether. It does not deny debate,

nor does it prevent this House from alternating or making any kinds of decisions.

What it asks for is something far more measured and, I would argue, far more reasonable.

It asks for time — time to reflect, time to listen and time to ensure that what we

pass in this chamber is worthy of the principles it is meant to uphold.

This is not a procedural delay. This is not an obstruction. This is a necessary pause

— a pause rooted in responsibility, a pause grounded in respect for the people of

British Columbia and a pause that reflects the seriousness of what is at stake.

Bill 9 is not simple. It’s not another piece of bill moving through the routine processes

of this House. It is not administrative housekeeping, nor is it a minor technical

adjustment that can be addressed without deeper consideration. It speaks directly

to the relationship between government and the public. It shapes how information is

accessed, how decisions are scrutinized and how accountability is exercised in practice.

In that sense, it is not just about process; it is about principle.

As I said earlier in my debate, freedom of information does not belong to government.

It belongs to the citizens it seeks to serve here in B.C. That principle is not new.

It is rooted in the very foundation of democracy itself — the idea that government

is accountable to the people; that authority is not owned but is entrusted; and that

those who govern do so on behalf of the public, not above them.

[4:10 p.m.]

Access to information is one of the clearest expressions of that principle. It is

how citizens see decisions being made, not simply after the fact but in the way that

allows them to understand the reasoning behind those decisions. It is how they understand

how the public resources are made and used. It is how they hold institutions to account.

Yet I cannot count the number of times I hear from people in my community of Langley-Willowbrook

who say: “My voice doesn’t matter.” That’s why this motion is important. They feel

decisions are made without them. They feel the system moves forward whether they are

heard or not.

That is why this moment matters. Pausing now, choosing to take that time to listen,

to reflect and to get this right, sends a different message. It signals that their

voices do matter, that their concerns are not an afterthought, that this House is

willing to hear them before moving forward.

Without access, accountability weakens. Without accountability, trust erodes. Without

trust, democracy itself begins to fracture. When we change access-to-information laws,

even in the small ways, we are not simply adjusting process. We are reshaping the

relationship between government and the public. We are redefining how power is seen;

how it is questioned; and, ultimately, how it is held to account.

Why do six months matter? The question before us is simple. Why six months? Why not

proceed now? The answer is equally simple. It’s because we are not ready.

This is not a partisan statement. It is an observation, grounded, and the government’s

own actions prove that. The minister has already brought forward amendments to this

bill during the course of this debate. That alone tells us something very important.

It tells us that the bill originally introduced was not completely, thoroughly thought

through. It tells us that the concerns raised in this House and across this province

were very valid and require a response. It tells us that even now, the government

is still adjusting its approach.

If this bill were as clear, as precise and as well understood as the minister suggests,

we would not be seeing amendments mid-debate. So the question becomes: if the government

recognizes the need for change, is it unwilling to recognize the need for time?

Amendments do not solve the problem. Let us be very clear on that. The amendments

that have been brought forward do not address the core concerns with this bill. They

move language. They adjust structure. They do not resolve the underlining issues.

Clause 2 still leaves critical decisions in the hands of the head of the public body

without clear definition. Clause 3, even with proposed removal, highlights confusion

in the drafting itself. Clause 13 continues to expand the ability to deny requests

using terms that remain undefined: “abusive,” “malicious,” “unreasonable,” “broad,”

“interference.” None of these have any sort of definition within the bill.

These are not minor wording issues. These are powerful, optional tools, and when those

tools are not clearly defined, they create uncertainty. Uncertainty in access to information

does not benefit the public. It benefits the institution holding that information,

and that is the NDP government right now.

Let us not pretend that these amendments fix the problem. They do not. They reinforce

the need for pause, and that is why we brought in this hoist motion today for an extension

for six months for revision.

[4:15 p.m.]

Here are examples of how these terms, if left undefined or loosely written, can be

translated in ways that can cause real harm. “Abusive” could be understood as a requester

who files multiple requests or follow-ups. A journalist asking repeated questions

on the same issue or a citizen seeking clarification after incomplete answers could

be labelled as abusive simply for being persistent.

The risk there? Legitimate scrutiny gets discouraged, and people are penalized for

holding the government to account.

“Malicious” could be translated as intent rather than behaviour. A request that is

politically inconvenient, critical by government or tied to an investigation could

be framed as malicious, even when it is entirely legitimate. The risk there? Motive

becomes a tool to deny access, allowing subjective judgment to override a citizen’s

right to know and get the information they need.

“Unreasonable” and “broad” could be understood based on the capacity of the public

body rather than the nature of the request. A request covering a wide time frame or

multiple departments could be rejected, not because it lacks merit but because it

requires effort. The risk there? Complex or systematic issues become harder to investigate,

especially when they require a broader scope to understand fully.

“Interference” could be interpreted as anything that creates pressure, workload or

inconvenience. A request that exposes internal decision-making, requires coordination

or arrives during a busy period could be seen as interfering with operations. We know

how things get busy in this House, but that could be referred to as interfering with

regular operations. The risk there? The threshold for refusal becomes tied to operational

comfort rather than public interest.

Why does all this matter? When these terms are not clearly defined in this bill, decisions

shift from objective standards to subjective understanding. Power rests within the

institution holding the information, which is this government. Citizens are left uncertain

about their rights. Transparency becomes inconsistency.

In practice, this creates a chilling effect. People stop asking. Journalists narrow

their scope. Organizations hesitate to pursue accountability, and over time, access

to information does not disappear outright. It simply becomes harder, slower and more

uncertain. That is how trust erodes.

We do not have to guess what good reform looks like. We already have a roadmap. In

2022, the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of

Privacy Act brought forward a comprehensive report — a report grounded in consultation,

a report built on evidence, a report focused on strengthening transparency and accountability.

Yet here we are, debating this bill that does not fully reflect that work, that does

not uphold anything that was reported in that 2022 special committee review.

A six-month extension would allow this House to properly align Bill 9 with those recommendations,

ensuring that the changes we make are consistent with the evidence and the consultation

that has already taken place during that 2022 special committee report — not selectively,

not partially, but meaningfully. Modernization should not be rushed. It should be

right. We’re already seeing, with those amendments brought forward by the minister,

that things are not right with this bill.

Modernization is very important, but it must be done carefully. It must be done in

a way that strengthens the system rather than introducing new uncertainties.

We need to listen to British Columbians. This debate is not happening in isolation.

Thousands of British Columbians have expressed concerns about this bill. A few weeks

ago I tabled a petition with over 10,000 signatures from B.C. citizens. Their concerns

came from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They got these signatures within a week

before I tabled them. We need to listen to those stakeholders, we need to listen to

those citizens, and we need to understand their concerns regarding this bill.

[4:20 p.m.]

Journalists, advocacy organizations, Indigenous communities, legal experts and everyday

citizens are confused. Thousands of British Columbians