Fifth Session, 42nd Parliament

(2024) OFFICIAL REPORT

OF DEBATES

(HANSARD)

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 438

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

CONTENTS

Orders of the Day

Government Motions on Notice

Motion 34 — Extension of sitting hours

Hon. R. Kahlon

T. Stone

Standing Order 81.1

Adoption of government business

schedule

Hon. R. Kahlon

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 26 — Name Amendment Act (No. 2), 2024 (continued)

S. Furstenau

Hon. A. Dix

Bill 27 — Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 5) Amendment Act, 2024

Hon. R. Kahlon

K. Kirkpatrick

S. Furstenau

D. Ashton

P. Milobar

E. Ross

D. Clovechok

R. Merrifield

B. Stewart

M. Bernier

T. Wat

Hon. R. Kahlon

Reporting of Bills

Bill 25 — Haida Nation Recognition Amendment Act, 2024

Standing Order 81.1

Adoption of government business

schedule

Hon. R. Kahlon

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of the Whole House

Bill 25 — Haida Nation Recognition Amendment Act, 2024 (continued)

M. Lee

Hon. M. Rankin

A. Olsen

Proceedings in the Birch Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General (continued)

A. Olsen

Hon. M. Farnworth

Estimates: Legislative Assembly

Estimates: Officers of the Legislature

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2024

The House met at 1:37 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Kahlon: I call Motion 34 on the order paper.

Government Motions on Notice

MOTION 34 — EXTENSION OF SITTING HOURS

Hon. R. Kahlon: I move Motion 34 on the order paper:

[That, notwithstanding Standing Order 2 (1), the adjournment time of

the sitting of the House commencing at 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15,

2024, be modified to 9 p.m.

And further, that this modified time of adjournment extend to the

application of Standing Order 3 and to the

interpretation of the

ordinary time fixed for adjournment of the House in the Sessional Order

adopted by the House on March 4, 2024, enabling certain proceedings of

the House to be undertaken in three sections.]

T. Stone: I wanted to take a brief moment to speak to Motion 34 that is on

the order paper and certainly understand the intent of this particular

motion, which serves to adjust the hours that this place sits by a

couple hours tomorrow night, tomorrow being Wednesday, so instead of

rising at 7 p.m., we would rise at 9 p.m.

I want to say that on behalf of the official opposition, I do

appreciate, when we’re in the last session of the year that there will

be an election coming up, this fall, that there are some unique time

requests from different members, mostly pertaining to retirements, that

have, I think, been well accommodated by both government and the

official opposition. A number of members in both parties won’t be

seeking re-election.

So as not to compromise estimates time — most notably, the

Premier’s estimates time, which is coming up and is set to start

tomorrow and go through Thursday — I certainly understand that one

option to facilitate that would be to add some extra hours onto the

calendar.

I do want to make the point as well…. Not to presuppose what might

be coming next, because it hasn’t been brought forward yet, but I have a

Spidey sense that the Government House Leader may rise to his feet

sooner than later and, recognizing there are only a couple days left in

this legislative sitting, may be asking this chamber to approve some

time allocation in order to complete the remaining business that’s on

the order paper.

[1:40 p.m.]

To the extent that I am not crossing too many lines in commenting

on that here, I just want to say again that the management of this House

is really the primary responsibility of the Government House Leader. I

think we were all surprised — certainly the official opposition was

surprised — that two new pieces of legislation were only introduced in

this House yesterday and are being subject to second reading today. It

would appear to be the government’s intent to have these pieces of

legislation sail through this place and become law.

It’s really unfortunate that two pieces of legislation would be

left to literally the dying days of the session with minimal time to

debate that legislation — or, really, compressed time. I think it does

demonstrate the approach that this government has taken over the years,

which has been a continual erosion of the role that this chamber plays

in debating legislation, having adequate time to do so.

For that to work, there is a good-faith sort of expectation

between the government and the official opposition that the official

opposition will be provided with the scope and scale of the government’s

legislative agenda by a certain point in the legislative session,

usually by about the midpoint. That would give the official opposition

time to adequately determine how to best prioritize the legislation

that’s in front of this chamber.

That is certainly not possible when new legislation is introduced

with a couple days left in the session. That’s deeply regrettable. I

think it, again, reflects a level of disrespect for this place, which is

unfortunate.

Also, I want to note that there is one other piece of legislation

for which there is just no possible way that it is going to be able to

be completed without time allocation. That is Bill 21, the Legal

Professions Act. My understanding is that this chamber is on clause 7 of

a bill that has literally hundreds, over 300, clauses. We’re just in

committee on clause 7 of this bill. There is no way that this bill will

receive the scrutiny that it requires, that it demands.

The second reading speeches, I think, were quite notable, from

members in this chamber, about the attack on the legal profession that

this bill really represents, the erosion of independence of our

judiciary and the legal environment in British Columbia. The pattern

that this demonstrates yet again…. It was health care professionals

through Bill 36 previously. It was engineers before that, and now it’s

lawyers that this government is seeking to strip of their

independence.

It’s an important piece of legislation, and this Bill 21 will not

receive the scrutiny that it’s going to require because the government

will have no choice…. With two days left in the session, only being on

clause 7 of this bill, there is no possibility the government can get

this done without imposing time allocation.

Again, time allocation, for those watching, is effectively…. It’s

otherwise known as the guillotine or closure. It is a tool that the

government has to unilaterally end debate on a piece of legislation, a

stage of the debate and the legislation entirely, by a specific time and

a speci­fic day. That’s what’s coming. That is deeply regrettable

and unfortunate and, I think, reflects a disrespect for the proceedings

of this place.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the time for me to be able to register

those concerns of the official opposition as we move forward in the

final few days of this legislative sitting.

The Speaker: Seeing no further speaker — nobody? — on Motion 34, all those in

favour indicate aye.

Motion approved on division.

[1:45 p.m.]

Standing Order 81.1

ADOPTION OF GOVERNMENT

BUSINESS

SCHEDULE

Hon. R. Kahlon: An agreement with opposition cau­cuses could not be reached,

so I move:

[That, pursuant to Standing Order 81.1 (2):

1. The question on the motion for second reading of Bill (No.

26) intituled Name Amendment Act (No. 2), 2024 , and the

question on any motion in amendment thereto, be put by 3.30 p.m. on

Tuesday, May 14, 2024, without further amendment or debate, and that, if

a division is called, it shall proceed forthwith in accordance with

Standing Order 16 (2).

2. The question on the motion for second reading of Bill (No.

27) intituled Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 5)

Amendment Act, 2024 , and the question on any motion in

amendment thereto, be put by 6.15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, without

further amendment or debate, and that, if a division is called, it shall

proceed forthwith in accordance with Standing Order

16 (2).]

The Speaker: Thank you. This motion is not debatable or amendable.

Motion approved on division.

Hon. R. Kahlon: In this chamber, I call second reading of Bill 26, Name Amendment

Act.

In the Douglas Fir Committee Room, I call Committee of the Whole

for Bill 25, Haida Nation Recognition Amendment Act.

In the Birch Committee Room, I call estimates of the Ministry of

Public Safety and Solicitor General, followed by the estimates of the

Legislative Assembly and officers of the Legislature.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 26 — NAME

AMENDMENT ACT

(N o . 2), 2024

(continued)

Deputy Speaker: The House is resuming debate on Bill 26 at second

reading.

Recognizing the Leader of the Third Party.

S. Furstenau: Thank you, Madam Speaker. My colleague reserved his right to

continue in the debate. How­ever, he is occupied, I’ll swear, at

the moment, so I will rise to speak to Bill 26, the Name Amendment

Act.

This legislation is aiming to close a loophole that is claimed to

have allowed a violent criminal to change his name. I think we can all

agree that public safety is paramount to a well-functioning society. We

fully support the measures to protect the public from violent offenders

who are deemed to be a risk to public safety. We support the addition of

a criminal record check, when name changes are requested, to allow for

the registrar general to determine if a person’s requested name change

poses a risk to the public.

However, we have some concerns about the legislation, the main one

being the ambiguity of a “prescribed offence.” In public statements, the

Minister of Health has listed three offences that would be included in

this legislation. They include murder, sexual assault and sexual assault

against children. Bill 26 includes two specific designations that would

prevent people from changing their names. These are for a “dangerous

offender” or a “long-term offender,” as defined in the Criminal Code of

Canada. These additions make sense to us.

However, the inclusion of prescribed offence in clause 2 lays the

ground for potential unintended consequences. I’m going to pick up on

the comments that were made by the House Leader for the official

opposition, in that how we proceed with debate in here matters. How

legislation is brought forward, is introduced and is debated

matters.

[1:50 p.m.]

This legislation was introduced yesterday, three days before the

end of a parliamentary session, three days be­fore the end of a

parliament. It includes, of course, this…. It’s not specified in the

legislation which offences will be included, as the minister’s public

statements seemed to indicate, but the ability for the

Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to determine what offences will be

included in this legislation and to determine that by

regulation.

We’ve had this conversation many, many times in this chamber, in

the last four years, about the tendency for governments to bring in

legislation that leaves an enormous amount of the defining over to

regulation. That is done behind closed doors by order-in-council. This

approach to legislation means that what the public doesn’t have is

clarity and certainty about what specific offences will be included in

this legislation.

If the public were to go by the minister’s public statements, they

would think it’s really clear. This legislation covers murder, sexual

assault and sexual assault against children.

My concern is that those

definitions have not been included in the

legislation. They’re left till later, after we’re done here with this

debate, after we’re done reviewing this legislation, which is our job.

It’s left to, once again, the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, the

cabinet, to determine not in public, not in view of the public, not in

debate, not in the written legislation, but later. It gives that power,

in perpetuity, to the government to add to their list of prescribed

offences.

While the public might think that they’re in total agreement with

this legislation…. It makes sense. It’s public safety. We want people

who have committed these serious offences — for the public to know who

they are.

I really question why this government has chosen to in­clude

a prescribed offence that will be determined later in regulation. It’s,

unfortunately, just a trend that we’ve seen again and again from this

government, an accelerating trend and one that really undermines the

transparency and trust-building that really has to go into all work of

democracy.

We have a trust issue in a lot of democracies. We have a trust

issue in this country and in this province. It’s a time for every

government to lean into the greatest level of transparency that they

can.

I will be raising this at committee stage. Just to make it clear,

while we support the intent and the purpose of this bill, we do have

real concerns with what’s being left to be done after the debate is

finished.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, Minister of Health.

Hon. A. Dix: I want to express my appreciation to the Leader of the Third

Party, the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Prince

George–Valemount, the member for Prince George–Mackenzie and the member

for Surrey South, who participated in the debate.

There’s some discussion of how the legislation came to be and the

work we’re doing. I heard what the Opposition House Leader said about

the bills coming in when they did. They really reflect what has been,

certainly, my ap­proach. That has been to attempt, on legislation

— sometimes successfully, sometimes less successfully — to work with

everyone.

There’s a certain saying that prominent cases can make bad law.

They can also make good law in the sense that issues arise that come to

your attention, and you’re able to take action against them.

[1:55 p.m.]

In this case, some of the immediacy of the issue was raised at a

hearing of the B.C. Review Board. It led both the Premier and the Leader

of the Opposition to take a position saying that this shouldn’t happen.

People who commit serious offences, in this bill defined as prescribed

offences, shouldn’t be allowed to change their names. There’s a public

safety issue and an issue for the families of those who are their

victims — for the victims themselves, in many cases — and for public

safety.

The Premier directed me, and the Leader of the Opposition

subsequently provided a private member’s bill, to see if we could take

action now to address this issue. I felt we could.

People worked very hard, and I think the result is a legislative

act that is a direct response to a real problem that we can solve

together. I want to acknowledge everyone who played a role in that

process, including all of the members who spoke today.

I think there’s often talk between political parties about these

issues. I just want to acknowledge people who have lived through these

questions — in your constituency, hon. Speaker, the people of

Fraser-Nicola — who, when these issues are raised, wherever they’re

raised, suffer a sense of grief and loss and sometimes anger, which one

would expect in such cases. Having been part of families, both on my

side and my wife’s side, who have lost people to violent crime, I can

understand that, although I have to say that doesn’t necessarily give

you more insight, just more understanding of the grief.

There’s a need here, I believe, to act. We’re acting.

I appreciate the comments of the Leader of the Third Party about

issues of regulation. I think this is the right path in this case, for a

couple of reasons. You want to give, in circumstances where the law is

an evolving thing, the ability to take steps and to deal with laws that

can change at the federal level, especially when you’re dealing with the

federal Criminal Code.

Secondly, you want to do a full review to make sure you’re

capturing everything that needs to be captured. That’s the reason why

that’s done. We’ll have an opportunity to debate that.

It’s my general view…. This is something that the member will know

and share. It is reflected in a bill that was mentioned earlier, Bill

36, which was longer because we tried to do less in regulation and more

in the bill. I thought that was important, and I believe it’s part of my

expression, as a minister, of how you bring change through legislation.

You want, in my view, as much as possible, often, to have things in the

bill in the House.

I do think, in this case, this is the right path to take. We’ll

have an opportunity to discuss what that is. There’s, of course, a

number of categories. There’s the prescribed offence and the category of

dangerous offenders, where people are not allowed to change their names

here in this legislation.

The prescribed offences focus on the offences themselves. They’ll

include offences that cause serious harm to others. We think of

homicide. We think of aggravated sexual assault or sexual offences,

really, of any kind in­volving children, I think, and other such

offences which cause serious harm to people.

Those are the categories in the bill. I think they’re the right

categories. I think we can move quickly both to bring the bill into

force and to ensure that we’re responding as a Legislature to all those

who advocate on these issues. There is always a discussion about who’s

involved. Is it the government? Is it the opposition? Is it the Third

Party? Who is initiating these processes?

I think there have been people who have been advocates for those

who’ve suffered loss in crime. There have been advocates for that who

have been notable in B.C. for a long time. I think that we have to pay

tribute to them. They’ve raised these issues.

A series of actions have been taken, both for support for victims

of crime and responses in legislation that see the impact that,

especially, violent crime can have on people. It never ends. It doesn’t

matter if the crime was committed in 1985 or 2008 or whenever it

occurs.

[2:00 p.m.]

I can tell you the grief doesn’t end. That means we have to be

conscious of that and conscious of taking action to ensure that the

community is protected to the maximum possible degree.

I think this legislation makes a small contribution to that. I

appreciate the comments of the opposition members, of two opposition

leaders, in this debate, and I look forward to answering questions at

committee stage.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. A. Dix: I move that the bill be committed to Committee of the Whole House

to be considered at the next sitting of the House after

today.

Bill 26, Name Amendment Act (No. 2), 2024, read a second time and

referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next

sitting of the House after today.

Hon. R. Kahlon: I call, in this main chamber, second reading of Bill 27,

Municipalities Enabling and Validating Amendment Act.

BILL 27 — MUNICIPALITIES ENABLING

AND VALIDATING

(N o . 5)

AMENDMENT ACT,

Hon. R. Kahlon: It’s my pleasure to speak to second reading of Bill 27. I move

that the bill be now read a second time.

I’m here today to talk about the proposed amendments to the

Municipalities Enabling and Validating Amendment Act that deliver on our

government’s commitment to improve housing stability and health and

safety for vulnerable residents in the Vancouver Downtown

Eastside.

Historically, SROs have provided affordable rental homes to

members of the Downtown Eastside community by providing rents geared to

income or at income assistance shelter rates. However, some bad actors

are raising rental rates to as high as $2,000 per month, making them out

of reach to many in the community. This results in homelessness for many

who can no longer afford to live in these buildings.

At the request of the city of Vancouver, the proposed MEVA

amendments would validate the single-room-occupancy vacancy control

bylaws, thereby bringing them back into force. Vacancy control for SRO

buildings will maintain them as affordable housing stock while the

prov­ince continues to revitalize and replace SROs as part of our

Downtown Eastside housing strategy.

Since summer 2022, the province has been working with the city of

Vancouver, Indigenous and other community partners to develop and

implement a coordinated, comprehensive response plan to support people

experiencing homelessness in the Downtown Eastside. We have intensified

our efforts to develop new shelter rate and supportive housing options

in the community. This has included renovation work to maximize

occupancy within existing assets, as well as opening 662 units of new

housing in the Downtown Eastside since August 2022, and we’re expecting

another 588 net new units to open by winter 2025.

I would also like to add that we have been working with housing

advocates in the Downtown Eastside to ensure that people not only have

housing but also have access to supports — working with organizations

like the SRO Collaborative to ensure that they are able to support

residents that are living in SROs in the Downtown Eastside.

All of this is important. It’s a very important community here in

British Columbia. Therefore, this amendment is one of the many actions

our government is taking to protect housing stability and ensure health

and safety for some of the most vulnerable residents within the

Vancouver Downtown Eastside.

K. Kirkpatrick: Thank you to the minister.

Today we’re talking about a piece of legislation brought forward

by government which is meant to validate the city of Vancouver’s bylaws,

which enable them to impose vacancy control on 3,600 — specifically

3,600 — single-room-occupancy units in the city of Vancouver.

Now, I will mirror, parrot a few of the comments from previous

speakers on the previous bill. It’s that despite promising otherwise,

this government has introduced two significant pieces of legislation in

the dying days of the sitting of the House, with only a few months left

to go before an election.

[2:05 p.m.]

It strikes me that this is just not a democratic way of actually

giving the public and giving legislators the opportunity to truly be

able to digest, ask questions and understand what kind of legislation we

are passing in this House on behalf of British Columbians. This follows

a troubling pattern of ramming through legislation in the final days of

sessions, and it really does avoid proper scrutiny.

This is my fourth year here. It’s going to be my last, as I’ve

decided not to run again. But I will tell you that there have been…. I

have found it troubling the way that legislation is passed in this

House. This does, with respect to this bill, because it is included in

those concerns.

I had the opportunity recently, with the Speaker, to meet with

some members of the Scottish Parliament. The Speaker, of course, was

there as well.

One of the questions that I asked — because I was troubled, as

there had been a lot of things going through quickly here: how long does

it generally take to have a piece of legislation go through the Scottish

Parliament? Their parliamentary system is very similar, of course. Ours

is based on the Westminster model.

The woman who was equivalent to the Speaker of the House said to

me: “Well, it’s minimum three months. Sometimes it’s at least a year,

between when the time something is introduced to the time it actually

gets passed.” They are, in essence, all exposure draft bills, so the

public actually has an opportunity to take a look at them.

When I said to this woman, “Well, you know, last week, we

introduced something on a Monday, and it came into practice, in force,

on Friday,” they were dumbfounded. I think that’s problematic with our

system here.

I do think that this government has consistently taken advantage

of the fact that that scrutiny is not baked into our system here and

taken advantage of a significant majority, where on many of the bills —

and I presume this bill as well — MLAs, members on the government side

of the House, don’t even stand up to speak to them because they don’t

have to. They don’t have to justify them. They can just push them

through.

Here we have another bill which, on the surface, might seem fairly

straightforward, but there are some fundamental concerns. It does raise

issues that, some time in the future, might actually be bigger than what

this piece of legislation is. Having the opportunity to talk about those

things and ask about those things is important, but we’ve been told

already today that we have to limit the amount of time that we’re going

to have to speak to this bill. So yeah, this does undermine our

democratic process.

What does this bill do, and why do British Columbians want to know

about this? It effectively enacts vacancy control measures. This limits

rent increases not only during the tenure of a single tenant but also

between tenancies. By validating these bylaws, the government

invalidates the need for…. What the city had done is to go to court in

order to be able to allow them to implement these vacancy controls. They

were told that they couldn’t. The court said: “No, that’s not going to

work.” That’s why government is coming in with this legislation, to

allow that to happen.

I want to talk a little bit…. We’re going to talk a bit about

vacancy controls here, but I want to take this opportunity to talk about

SROs. I’ve brought this up with the minister in estimates, and we’ve had

some conversations about SROs.

SROs are really the housing of last resort for people who are

about to face homelessness, who are on the verge of facing homelessness.

They should be one of the most important options for housing that we can

offer, and they should have true and real support so people can live

there in dignity.

I have, in the past four years and prior to that with some of the

work I did before, gone through a lot of these SROs in the Downtown

Eastside and other places. Buildings are bug-infested, have rodent

infestations, bad plumbing, bathrooms that don’t work, windowless rooms

and are just generally undesirable — and, I’d say, aberrant living

conditions.

[2:10 p.m.]

There’s a lot of research that’s been done about people’s

surroundings and what impact that has on them emotionally, physically,

on their health. If we allow and create a system where people who are

vulnerable have to live in such horrible, horrific surroundings, how are

they ever going to feel good about themselves? Because you look around

that room and you say, “Is this what I deserve? Is this all that I

deserve as a person, as a human?”

That is the message that we are giving to people — and it is the

message that we’re giving to people — that we don’t care about you

enough to make sure that you’ve got plumbing that works. We don’t care

about you enough to make sure you’ve got heating in the winter, that you

don’t have rodents running through your room, that you don’t have bed

bugs.

There are SROs where people have had their windows missing through

the wintertime. And then what happens is that people bring propane tanks

in. They’re trying to fix the windows themselves because they’re not

getting any support, and people die because of this, because we’re

putting them at risk.

Although this is addressing an issue within SROs, there’s a

systemic issue here. We’re addressing an issue so that we can keep

people housed in places that they should never be housed in. And if you

wonder why there are many people in encampments who don’t want to go

into SROs, it is because they are often more dangerous — particularly

for women — than somebody living in a tent with a group of people who

have become their community.

Until we can actually create housing that will lift people up,

will provide services and supports that the most vulnerable need, then

I’m hoping that we’re not going to continue to have conversations and

patchwork legislation dealing with SROs, because we shouldn’t have them.

And there better be a plan. There’s been promises by government that

there’s going to be a plan. We’ve got to do better.

The minister says many, many times…. The minister knows I hold him

in high regard, but I have a very difficult time taking the word that

there are adequate supports in SROs for people. You can’t say that when

you’ve got somebody who is vulnerable, when you’ve got somebody in

active addiction, that the supports, the overnight supports, you’ve got

somebody, a security guard….

Interjection.

K. Kirkpatrick: That is another issue with our conversation. The minister has just

said I’m talking about suppor­tive housing and not SROs. There are

only slight differences at some points, in terms of what those two

things are. But maybe we do need to look at that. If there are SROs, we

do need to have those supports in place.

I heard the minister just moments ago, when he was talking about

this legislation, talking about all of the supports that have been

provided in downtown for people who are living in SROs. Well, if they

are there, there are not enough of them, because we’re seeing that

this…. It’s a very, very difficult thing to see.

Most people in British Columbia have not had that opportunity to

visit an SRO or to visit supportive housing, which I will also say is,

if I can say the term, godawful for most of the places I’ve looked at in

terms of that same thing about making people feel good about themselves

and worthy and supported.

You can say, “Well, it was these guys that did it.” You know, it’s

today that we’re dealing with, and we’re dealing with a housing crisis

and vulnerable people. This is worse than it’s ever been. We have to

deal with what’s happening today, not what happened 16 years ago —

what’s hap­pening today, and how are we going to resolve it and

make it better.

Okay. We are talking…. With this legislation, as well, I’m very

mindful we are talking about the city’s poorest and most vulnerable

people. Many of these buildings are over 100 years old, tiny

100-square-foot rooms, shared bathrooms, shared kitchens and frequent

deaths within these SROs.

[2:15 p.m.]

There is research that shows us that poor-quality housing is

associated with stress, anxiety, depression and emotional and

behavioural problems. And if you’ve got young people…. I mean, academic

performance, their ability to go to school…. Even harsh lighting, sounds

and those kinds of things can lead to anxiety.

You’ve got a lot of vulnerable people in SROs that already have

PTSD. They’ve gone through very traumatic events in their life, or their

lives themselves have been very traumatic, so the condition of these

SROs actually can contribute to being re-traumatized, to anxiety, to

agitation. There’s a whole number of things that…. When we talk about

SROs, we have to really think of the big picture in terms of: what are

we doing with SROs as part of our system?

I mentioned to the minister in estimates a concern that’s been

raised with me, and I hadn’t been mindful of it. It’s that, when you

have people who are so vulnerable…. And, often, mental health issues,

addiction issues, lack of access to computers, sometimes an inability to

fill out an application…. They are really at a disadvantage when they go

to the residential tenancy branch. The inability for residents in SROs

to actually have advocacy groups that can help them with the residential

tenancy branch, I think, is something that should be looked

at.

I know there’s a number of supportive housing providers who have

actually asked for SROs, supportive housing, to be removed from the RTA.

I know there are strong feelings on both sides of that argument. But the

way the system is right now, residents in SROs are very vulnerable to

what we’re talking about here, which is evictions and raised rents. It’s

very difficult for them to actually come and deal with the

RTA.

Let’s talk about what vacancy control is. I just want to be really

mindful again. I know that we’re dealing with vulnerable people here,

and this is a specific situation that is going to deal with, I believe,

3,600 very specific units. Vacancy control is a concern in terms of

whether this is a slippery slope or not. I will say that we agree that

this is something that’s important, what we’re talking about in this

bill today. But we have to be mindful this isn’t the first of government

coming in and allowing vacancy control in a number of different kinds of

buildings and a number of different kinds of communities.

I know my colleague the Leader of the Third Party and I agree on

many things. I suspect we disagree on this one issue. But vacancy

controls and the ability not to raise rents between tenancies…. There’s

a lot of research out there that shows that it’s actually bad for the

housing market. It has….

Especially people with secondary suites will remove their rental

suites. Particularly when you’re in a time of high inflation where costs

for those building owners and the secondary landlords are also

increasing, it can be very challenging. So we really have to look at

that as not being a solution to the housing crisis and be very mindful

that this is focused very, very specifically, in a unique situation, in

the city of Vancouver in SROs that are downtown.

The core issue here is the unaffordability and the lack of housing

supply across the spectrum of housing. The NDP, as we know, has only

opened 16 percent of the 114,000 units that they promised in the 2017

provincial election. I don’t even hear them speak about those units

anymore. I think that’s fallen off the back burner, and now it’s being

replaced with a bunch of bright, glossy other housing

programs.

Again, a concern that vacancy control would further deter the

creation of affordable housing units…. Studies have shown that it could

actually leave to the cancellation of tens of thousands of proposed

housing projects, which would damage affordability. I do know…. I’ve

spoken to developers who actually had their financial backer pull out of

a project, even with the rent controls. So we just have to be mindful

when we start to manipulate the market, and I don’t think government has

been.

[2:20 p.m.]

This government has been particularly good at looking at the

bigger picture in terms of, “If you do this, five other things are going

to be impacted.” We have seen that with Bill 44.

Some of the challenges that municipalities are having right now is

that the intent of the legislation was good, but the way that it was

implemented and how municipalities are struggling with this right now….

It’s a piece of legislation that wasn’t well-researched enough to

realize that it could actually have impacts that would be worse than the

problem that was trying to be resolved.

We need to be very mindful of that and also remember that the

NDP’s own task force agreed that vacancy control was not going to be an

effective way to help this housing crisis and focus on affordability for

renters. It is time for the NDP to provide real solutions to rising

unaffordability, prioritize an increase in supply, help it to be less

expensive and faster to actually get housing to the market.

Eighteen months ago we heard our Premier make bold promises to

clean up the Downtown Eastside when there was the displacement of those

who were living in the Downtown Eastside, the tent cities. The Premier

said he was going to appoint a czar — I think that was the reference —

for the area and was going to phase out SROs. Here we are 18 months

later, and we haven’t seen those SROs phased out. I haven’t seen a lot

of work done at all in order to be able to strategize how we’re going to

be able to do that. So unsurprisingly, none of these promises have been

fulfilled.

Today there remains chaos and disorder on the streets. It’s worse

than ever, and it is exacerbated by seven years under this NDP

government’s leadership. There is certainly a point for greater

provincial interventions in these SROs and a need for investment to

convert this stock to safe and secure housing.

The Balmoral and the Regent, I think, are good ex­amples.

They were expropriated by the city in concert with the province. We are

four years later, and they are both shuttered and empty. If we really

are going to be focusing on how we make things better, starting

something and then being held up by the province and having these two

buildings shuttered and empty four years after the announcement that

this was going to be done is just another example of the failure on this

provincial government.

Now, while this legislation applies to limited vacancy control, it

is ultimately a half-measure, and we do have to fix all of these other

issues that we’ve got. The Premier needs to answer for his broken

promises and provide British Columbians with a firm date for the phase

out of SROs and for the solution for that kind of supported phase of

housing that people need. It’s not an option between an SRO or

homelessness. We’ve got to be able to do better for people.

B.C. Housing. There have been so many issues in the last four

years, just since I’ve been here, that are really unfortunate. Dealing

with SROs, and even a lot of the supportive housing, really does feel

like it’s warehousing people because we’re not sure what to do with

them. That is not a strategy. Warehousing people is not a

strategy.

The personal accounts from tenants and the tragic outcomes

witnessed are a stark reminder of this government’s inability to provide

effective leadership in housing. Placing people in unsafe conditions

without proper supports, lacking accountability and transparency is

simply unacceptable.

I was speaking to a friend who is a housing provider in the

Downtown Eastside just recently, and she was telling me about how unsafe

women are. Women have always been more vulnerable than men in the

Downtown Eastside — or anywhere, really. But the assaults against women,

the assaults in the SROs, the assaults in the supportive housing, she

said, are just devastating. That has been increasing, and women have

never been less safe in that surrounding. That just is another example

of how SROs and our current model for supportive housing is just failing

people. It does really trouble me.

[2:25 p.m.]

As we debate the bill, we do have to consider its implications on

our most vulnerable in the housing market. We know that one of the

challenges that’s happening right now is that the owners of the SROs are

increasing the rents between vacancies to a point that is in excess of

the welfare rates that recipients actually have available to them. So it

is actually opening a door to homelessness, with the inability for

people to be able to pay rent in these SROs.

B.C. United is committed to genuine reforms to ensure safety,

support and sustainability in housing. We will scrutinize this bill

carefully to make sure that…. Although many things on the surface look

like they’re one thing, once you start to ask questions, and you have

the opportunity to dive a bit deeper…. We want to make sure that this

legislation is what’s in the best interest of the city of Vancouver, of

the residents that it’s going to impact and of all British Columbians,

moving forward.

I thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak.

Deputy Speaker: I’m going to recognize the member for Vancouver-Kensington, as I

see her guests leaving.

M. Elmore: Yeah, I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Elmore: I’ve got members from John Oliver Secon­dary School here, from

the music program. They were here. The concert band, the choir and the jazz

band gave a performance on the front steps. Really awesome.

I want to recognize their music teacher, C.J. Kumar; Justin Lau, their

teacher candidate; Ethan Tong; Debbie Klassen; vision teacher Judy Sandhu;

Soreya Utokaparch; and Michelle McNaughton. They’re going to be performing

here in Victoria at Hillcrest Elementary School and also UVic.

I ask everyone to please give them a warm welcome.

Debate Continued

S. Furstenau: I’m standing up to speak to the bill that we are debating right

now, the Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 5) Amendment Act,

2024. This act has been opened quite a few times.

Deputy Speaker: I’m wondering if I could ask you to adjourn debate so that the

committee can report out.

S. Furstenau: I will move to adjourn debate and reserve my right to carry

on.

S. Furstenau moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Committee of Supply (Section C), having reported resolution, was

granted leave to sit again.

Hon. R. Kahlon: In the main chamber, we call Bill 27, Municipalities Enabling

and Validating Amendment Act.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 27 — MUNICIPALITIES ENABLING

AND

VALIDATING (N o . 5)

AMENDMENT ACT,

(continued)

S. Furstenau: I am so delighted to stand up again to speak to this bill. We’re

debating a bill that was introduced yesterday, the Municipalities

Enabling and Validating (No. 5) Amendment Act, which really is a bill

that is designed to validate the city of Vancouver’s bylaws to protect

the residents of 3,600 units in SROs, in Vancouver — to apply a form of

vacancy control so that the amount of rent being charged is not

increasing significantly between residents.

[2:30 p.m.]

I appreciate the member for West Vancouver–Capi­lano’s

comments, and I think it’s really important to start with the context of

the role that single-room occupancy housing has played, particularly in

Vancouver, for a very long time.

I think when we trace back the history of this province, the need

for these single-room-occupancy housing units connects in a large way to

the history of this province as a kind of resource extraction company

town — that people have had to live in different places for temporary

times while they get work in whatever company town they are working

in.

The expectation that people wouldn’t be permanently living there

was because…. The expectation was that the companies would come in,

following the boom-and-bust model of economics that has so dominated

this province. They would come in, they would do their extracting, take

their wealth and they would go. Then the people that were doing the work

for them would also go.

SROs in Vancouver have now become associated with the images of

deep poverty and despair of the Downtown Eastside and described as, I’ve

heard a couple times today, housing of last resort for very low-income

residents.

Let’s be clear. When we talk about very low-income residents,

we’re generally talking about people who are existing on social support

of some kind or another, including disability supports. We’ve talked at

length in this chamber about the absolute inadequate supports that exist

for people with disabilities — that in this province and in this

country, people with disabilities are highly likely to be living in

poverty, to not having their basic needs met. Privately run SROs have

recently become increasingly unaffordable to those on income

assistance.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

I think there’s also some context to be considering here. The

owners of these SROs would know that if they hike the rent up beyond

what is even imaginable for people who are on very limited and very low

incomes, people aren’t going to come and live in these SROs. They’ll be

empty.

This is part of the problem that we’re facing, that there’s a

drive to move people out of housing so that housing can be removed

itself and turned into much more expensive forms of housing. We have

seen this growing, slow-moving emergency that is resulting in the

absolute tragedy of homelessness in this province.

This legislation has been introduced in order to en­sure

that where people are living now in these places, these housing units of

last resort, that at the very least, their rent can’t be raised so much

that they can no longer afford to live there.

But the issue isn’t limited to the Downtown Eastside. We are

seeing people being forced out of housing over and over again everywhere

in this province.

Advocates and experts have been clear, and increasingly loud, that

unless this government builds and saves housing that low-income people

can truly afford and that is housing that provides dignity…. To do this,

implementing provincewide vacancy control is an important step.

Be­cause if we don’t, we will continue to see the pattern that

we’re seeing right now, which is a growing number of people slipping

into homelessness.

People following the news conferences and photo

op­portunities in the province could be forgiven for thinking that

there are thousands of new units being opened every month. I noted the

minister’s comments; he said there are 662 new and 588 net new by

[2:35 p.m.]

“Net new” is a little worrying signal to me because that means

there may be a huge number of new units, but how many have we lost in

the meantime? I’ll get to that.

This government tends to announce the same affordable homes

several times over at different media events, but it’s far less common

to hold a press conference to announce how many affordable homes have

been lost. Between 2016 and 2021, B.C. lost nearly 100,000 rental units

that were priced below $1,000 a month — 100,000 in five years. For every

new affordable rental home built in B.C., four are lost to investors,

conversions, demolition and rent increases.

Metro Vancouver’s housing data book for December 2023 provides a

snapshot of current housing stock, construction and housing needs. It

shows some distressing signs for the future of affordable housing in

Metro Vancouver. Homelessness is up 33 percent since 2020 and 122

percent since 2005, even as more supportive housing is being

built.

B.C. Housing’s wait-list grew 27 percent since 2022 in the region,

in Vancouver. The number of local households on the wait-list for social

housing has grown by 74 percent in Coquitlam. Rent has more than doubled

since 2002, including a 30 percent jump in median rental rates in the

last five years. The city of Vancouver can’t afford to lose any more

affordable housing units. I would argue that nowhere in B.C. can afford

to lose any more affordable housing units. They do need to do more to

protect existing stock.

One such example is temporary modular housing. There are 144 units

of nice modular homes that are boarded up and over 700 temporary modular

housing units whose leases will expire in coming years. People across

the city are at risk of being homeless if permanent sites aren’t found.

What is the province doing to protect this valuable housing stock and

ensure that more residents are not forced into homelessness?

The minister has stated that his ministry is working to fix up SRO

units that are not adequate and to upgrade or tear down and rebuild SRO

stock. The tri-level SRO revitalization strategy aims to address this,

yet it’s not clear if the three levels of government will actually

provide the funds necessary to do this work, if the resulting housing

will be affordable to low-income Downtown Eastside residents and where

those displaced from SROs will go while projects are under

construction.

Protecting SROs is important, yes, but the province could do much

more to protect other vulnerable members of our communities. The

province could take measures to lower rents, reduce the number of

renovictions and free up affordable housing across the province by

bringing in provincewide vacancy control. The province could also look

to expanding projects like we have in Duncan, the Village site, built

working with the community that will be housed.

The consequences of housing unaffordability and homelessness are

dire. People who are unhoused have about half the life expectancy of

people who are housed. I think we have to ask ourselves: is that the

outcome this province wants for people who are unhoused?

Poverty is the biggest cause of homelessness and could be

significantly reduced if social assistance rates were in­creased

and vacancy control was implemented. Average rents for vacant bachelor

apartments in Vancouver are over $2,000 a month, yet social assistance

and disability rates for a single person provide only $500 a month for

shelter.

About 30 percent of seniors in B.C. are on the guaranteed income

supplement. That means they have an income below $26,000 a year, with no

way to increase their income. For seniors who’ve been living for decades

in the same apartment, an eviction is devastating, because the new

market rates and competition to find a new place make it almost

impossible to find affordable housing. As a result, more and more

seniors are living in vehicles and tents.

[2:40 p.m.]

Just yesterday tenant advocates once again called for the province

to take steps to address the rising number of no-fault evictions as an

elderly couple in their sixties with health issues faces eviction from

their Surrey apartment.

Data from UBC’s housing research unit shows that B.C. had the

highest rate of no-fault evictions in the country, at 85.4 percent

between 2016 and 2021, the highest rate of no-fault evictions in the

country. The national average was 64.7 percent.

Landlords’ own use of the property was the second most common

reason given in the report for evictions, at 23.5 percent. “These kinds

of evictions are what’s driving the eviction crisis,” stated residential

tenancy branch legal advocate Robert Patterson.

More than a third of B.C. residents rent, and over half of

Vancouver’s population rents. Without vacancy control, we risk losing up

to 6,000 affordable housing units in Vancouver every year. According to

a 2021 city of Vancouver report, vacancy controls had no discernible

impacts in Vancouver on disinvestment and deterioration of the rental

stock.

When asked about vacancy control in question period earlier this

session, the Minister of Housing stated: “We exactly are listening to

the experts. What the experts have told us is when you’re in an

environment where you have a limited housing supply and you’re seeing an

increase in population coming to your community, putting a vacancy

control by unit into place will limit the new supply coming into the

market.”

The B.C. General Employees Union released a report recently

stating that vacancy control is an effective tool for addressing the

extreme housing unaffordability crisis that B.C. renters face. The

report examined vacancy control policies in B.C., Ontario, Manitoba and

P.E.I. from the 1970s onward and found no evidence that tying rents to

units had significant negative impacts on new rental housing

supply.

A recent poll by the B.C. General Employees Union found that half

of renters and homeowners are spending more than 30 percent of their

income on shelter. This number is up 11 percent from 2022, a rising tide

that’s stratifying communities by wealth. Twenty-seven percent of

renters say they were forced to move out of their areas in the past five

years because they could not afford to stay, and only 17 percent of

renters say they could afford rent for a comparable home in their

community if they had to end their current tenancy today.

In response, BCGEU reiterated their call for province­wide

vacancy control. The recent BCGEU poll found that 61 percent of people

in British Columbia support the policy of vacancy control. The minister

continues to point to the B.C. housing task force as a reason not to

implement provincewide vacancy control, yet the task force has not

studied the issue since its 2018 report — a time, I think we can all

agree, that was a very different time than the one we are in

today.

The average asking price for a vacant greater Victoria rental was

$39 more than that of an occupied unit in 2014. By 2020, that gap had

grown to $356, almost a tenfold increase. It’s clear that government’s

current approach of addressing the housing crisis by building more

rental housing is not enough. The price of rent continues to soar in

Victoria and Vancouver, despite record amounts of new

rentals.

I applaud the minister’s efforts to protect some residents in SROs

in Vancouver from renovictions and unfair rent increases. That’s a step

in the right direction, and ultimately an admission that vacancy control

works and has a role to play. The government could do the right thing to

protect all vulnerable communities across British Columbia. They could

implement provincewide vacancy control.

D. Ashton: It gives me great pleasure to stand up to speak to Bill 27, a bill

that none of us was anticipating would come in this quickly.

[2:45 p.m.]

One part of me says that I understand why it’s come forward and

why it’s been put to members of the House at this point in time, but the

other part of me says that this seems to be a rather expedient way to

get this in, especially with the short number of days that are left in

the session. I would have thought that the city of Vancouver threw out

what you’re asking, and the province would have taken a look at this and

tried to get this in a little bit earlier for us to really take a hard

look at this.

One of the issues previous, from my two peers that have been

talking before me about this, is what not only the tenants are facing;

but also, I want to touch a little bit on the landlords. Please, these

are my thoughts at this point in time.

I want to give you an analogy, where I’m renting here in Victoria,

about the individual that owns the property. The government has specific

terms of increases that are allowed. I just look at the costs that he is

continually facing, with taxes going up, with all the utility costs

going up, with issues around the stratas and what government is

requiring now for stratas to do, what his costs are in a particular

building for general upkeep and everything else and the challenges that

are being faced by owners.

We all have to realize that if people are not making a living by

having these rentals, they themselves are going to start to question it.

We want these people to be…. They don’t need to be successful, but they

need to be able to cover their costs, which seem to be continually

rising every which way they turn. I can only think of some of the issues

that they face.

As a kid growing up, single room occupancies…. I worked in Calgary

when I was a lot younger and left school. It was a boarding house, and

that was the name that I grew up with. I’m assuming that that’s one of

the things that falls underneath this. Costs these days are going

through the roof. I really think that we have to be a bit careful in

this.

Again, these are my opinions, but I grew up in a family where my

dad had a thundering velvet hand. You paid attention. He gave you the

opportunity of a direction, with some rules and some boundaries put into

it. I think, personally, that when we start dabbling into controls, and

controls over what a person can charge for an entity that is providing a

roof over somebody’s head, we still have to think far enough into the

future that there has to be some form of cost recovery.

If the owners of these particular units are not able to recover

their expenses, the days will be limited, going into the future, as the

previous speaker has said, where there will be changes coming forward,

where there will be changes to the location. Something else will be

built, or it will be locked up.

I really think that there is an opportunity for where we could get

together. I say “we.” We’re part of the Legislature, the governing part

of British Columbia. But the government, specifically, instead of coming

in with what I think is a little bit more of a heavy-handed approach to

ensure that costs to the tenants are going to be held within a fair and

equitable part for them…. We also have to think about what is going to

be transpiring with the owners.

I mean, there is not only this legislation that’s being brought in

with only 2½ days left, but there’s another piece.

[2:50 p.m.]

I really think this requires some deliberate and investigative

debate on how we can help to ensure that those who are challenged are

going to continue to have not only a roof over their head but also an

opportunity to have a place that they call home and to ensure that we

work collectively to do everything possible to ensure that these

individuals have a place that is safe, have a place that is comfortable,

have a place that will give them an opportunity of time and also to

ensure that the owners of the property are compensated in some form of

fair and equitable way.

I really have a bit of trouble with how this legislation has come

forward. It just seems to be whether or not we are able to give this the

proper scrutiny and the rigorous debate that should be encouraged for

any bill that comes through here. I know that things are progressing and

getting tighter and tighter here before…. I mean, an opportunity, maybe,

is that the government has to take a look at some of these important

bills that they’ve brought forward, and we actually take a look at

extending the session. I’m not talking about evenings. I’m talking about

stepping forward and going back to the time frames that existed before,

where we were here to ensure, at those points in time, that everything

got done.

I’m not really sure how effective these control measures are going

to be. They really are going to be between the tenants and the owners of

the building. There’s a validation, as we all know, that is going to

have to take place. It’s my understanding that at some point in time

there was a strike-down by the courts of Vancouver’s bylaws, and now

Vancouver has tentatively come to the government. By changing the

legislation on this, it would make that opportunity more effective in

Vancouver.

This problem I don’t think just exists in Vancouver. I think this

is a challenge, especially as we turn the corner on the economy. Let’s

mark my words. We’re all seeing it. It’s actually happening. It’s been a

long run for a lot of people in a strong economy, with governments

printing money and everything else, but they’re running out of options

these days.

There are going to be challenges, probably more and more coming

forward, that are going to have to have some real deliberation and some

real thoughts put in process, because those challenges are going to

affect everybody in this province.

I really think that vacancy control, in my opinion, is a real

short-term fix that is going to affect the overall rental market. There

is a lack of supply. We know that. I’ve heard in discussion in this

wonderful chamber about the number of people that are coming to British

Columbia.

We know that housing costs are incredibly expensive these days, to

build rooms not only for personal residences but for apartments,

condominiums, townhouses. Whether we’re building facilities for those

that are living on a fixed income that we can hopefully get them into….

The costs of construction these days are exorbitant. But also, as we

know, government has done their best to try to facilitate with

municipalities to ensure that the rules and the regulations that they

have can be adopted to be put in place to facilitate the quicker

expansion of residences.

But there’s still a cost. There’s still a cost to the

municipalities, and there’s a cost to the owners-developers of these

particular properties. In my opinion, coming from retail, this is one of

the things that you want to do. If you can control the costs — get the

costs down — hopefully…. When I say this, it’s kind of like the Wal-Mart

situation, where you have the mass to go forward, the super number of

stores, the ability to dictate to your suppliers costing on that. We

have an opportunity ourselves to take a look at this with municipalities

and help them along and try to get more and more

construction.

I take a look at some of the rules and regulations that the

current government has brought into place. I’m fortunate. Yes, I own my

own home. Yes, it’s on the lot. Yes, it’s in an area where there’s sewer

— questionable whether other utilities are on it. But according to the

government now, I could put four accommodation units on that particular

property.

[2:55 p.m.]

Well, this doesn’t fit into the neighbourhood, not in the sense of

people accepting it. It’s difficult with the transportation routes. It’s

difficult with the utilities that are there, whether it’s electrical,

water and/or sewer. Also, it’s the transportation issues for those that

maybe don’t have a car.

When I look at the vacancy controls that are trying to be brought

in, I really think there is a flag on the field for how this is being

brought forward at this time of the legislative session. I have to

question, also, why it was being brought forward. I do have a note here

that vacancy control was also rejected by the current government’s

rental housing task force. Now they have another party that is asking

for it, and now it’s before the House.

I say this. I know that there are the best intentions of all in

this incredible place, the Legislature and the place where we work, to

try and do things that are different, to try and move forward, to try

and make changes, but I really think some of these things need a lot

more thought than what’s going into it.

Yes, I only see the side of it when the legislation comes forward

to us. But for those that have put this legislation together, for those

that have requested this legislation be put forward on it, I think we

need some real secondary thought on this and to really think this

through. Is this the right direction, or is this a band-aid on something

that needs a heck of a lot more than just a band-aid?

I would really like to see, when government asks the people to

believe them that we are going to do this, that you step forward. The

proof is in the pudding. I’ve been around here for 11 years and had the

experience of being on both sides of the House. I always want to see

that we, as elected officials, when we say we’re going to do something,

we do something.

I understand and I’m prepared to accept that there are challenges

that have been brought forward, but if we say that we’re going to build

X amount of housing in British Columbia or we’re going to work with

others to build the housing, then we actually accomplish

that.

When we do facilitate the expansion of housing units, we want to

put it in the appropriate areas. We want to look after the people that

are in there to the best of our ability. We want to provide them with

easy access whether they have a vehicle or not. We want to make sure

that transit routes are available. But when these things don’t happen,

then we find ourselves being stuck back into some very quick and, maybe,

not so thought-through situations.

Again, I come from a family that had business through­out

the southern part of British Columbia. I have had the opportunity to be

part of a business that was in the Lower Mainland, in retail. I know

from my experiences of seeing the challenges that face residential

tenancies in the Lower Mainland…. It’s like our home. We only have so

much room to work with. We have to densify. Densification brings in a

whole bunch of other issues. But we have to really think this through:

how we’re trying to make these changes and why we’re trying to make

these changes.

Unfortunately, when there are issues that arrive on the

government’s lap through unfortunate circumstances and/or, I’m going to

say, mismanagement on it, we have to address that collectively. Not only

government, but we here in this Legislature have to ensure that it

doesn’t happen again.

Those that are responsible for that have to be held

ac­countable. It’s not just government that has to be held

accountable. It’s the people down below that are not exercising the

proper autonomy on what they’ve been asked to do by government — well,

they need to be held accountable. I really think there have been some

real failures in regards to the operation of some of the buildings that

we are discussing here today. I don’t want to see anybody stuck in an

unsafe situation.

[3:00 p.m.]

I don’t want to see anybody stuck where there is a lack of

supports or accountability or transparency on how business is being

conducted to actually house people, and have them have the ability to

get out of a situation that probably isn’t safe and get them into a

place where they have a bed and have the ability for food preparation, a

kitchen, and have a proper washroom and have the security in

it.

We need to ensure that that is transpiring, and I don’t think

that’s happening here. I think there’s a real push in here to say:

“Okay. Well, this is what we need here. We need to hold these costs down

here.” But again, it relates back to: if this isn’t going to happen and

be accountable on both sides, there are going to be changes and,

unfortunately, the people that own some of these entities are going to

have to take a look at being brought some changes forward.

Again, there are situations that have incurred over the last

couple of years where entities have been bought by government and/or

entities outside, and being now managed by those and/or overlooked at by

the government, that are probably not appropriate for people to actually

be living in. They may be a hotel room with an entity of a washroom but

no place to cook their meals, all things that have to be

considered.

I just want to see that we, collectively in this House, ensure

that when we make these decisions, we make these decisions that are the

best for the people that we’re trying to look after. That’s what we have

to do. Whether or not that’s happening on a continual basis…. I’m going

to say it hasn’t happened.

Some people say it’s a stopgap solution. Really, we need more

comprehensive and effective housing reform. I think we all know that.

But how do we get that? Well, to be frank, I don’t think we get that at

2½ days before the session ends. We can do this properly, to take a look

at what is actually being proposed by an entity — i.e., Vancouver — that

has lost their chance, it appears to me, in a court, and now is all of a

sudden turning to another entity to start changing rules and regulations

provincially that will allow them to do the enforcement.

The vulnerable populations in this province — there isn’t anyone

here that wants to not see them be able to get ahead in their lives, to

be able to change their lives, to be able to make a difference not only

to themselves but to their families and to ensure that as they are

there, maybe as a single mom or a single dad or a family as we know it,

but challenged by the costs on a continual basis…. We need somehow to be

able to support them to ensure that safety, to show that there is some

sustainability for them, some form of a future where they can look

ahead, not a temporary fix.

As we know, some of the root problems in this province, especially

in the Lower Mainland and some of our bigger cities, municipalities —

I’ll speak to one that I represent, Penticton — is to ensure that we

have housing for these individuals. Because it does make a difference on

a continual basis. It makes a difference where that safety is there. It

keeps them off the street. It keeps them from getting into mischief, in

a lot of ways.

I really think that we should maybe sit back on this a little tiny

bit, try and work with the city of Vancouver, try and work with other

municipalities that I’m sure are going to be faced with the same issues,

or hearing about the same issues, from those that are providing

accommodation in the respective municipalities and/or townships in this

province. But to just come in….

As I said, I don’t think this is a thundering-velvet-hand bill. I

think this is a bill that is probably going to have some repercussions

in the future that we haven’t had the opportunity to think through. And

I would just ask that the Minister of Housing today — that he maybe

think this one through a little bit more than just to have to bring this

one in.

I’m only hearing one side of the story at this point in time, but

as we know, we’ve all heard accounts by some of the tenants. We’ve seen

some of the issues that have occurred and some of the tragic

outcomes.

[3:05 p.m.]

I can’t help but think back to just recently, in my mind, that

terrible fire from a short-term-residency occupation in Vancouver — I

think it was on Hastings; I can’t remember — in the downtown core, by

the waterfront. I think there were two lives lost in it. Those people

needed the opportunity to be able to live somewhere, but they needed to

be able to live somewhere where they were looked after properly and the

building was kept in proper maintenance and order.

Again, it’s a cause and effect. By capping everything, landlords

unfortunately sometimes choose to start cutting back. Sometimes they

can’t afford not to be able to cut back.

We need to ensure that these people are looked after. I don’t want

to see this problem get worse. I think we’re on a bit of a slippery

slope here that it is going to get worse by bringing in this bill and

allowing the city of Vancouver to address something that they couldn’t

address through a court challenge. They’ve asked the province to address

it through a bill.

It’s going to revert back. There are going to be issues caused by

it, and there are going to be consequences. I’ve always said that

choices have consequences. We are going to be making a choice in this

House today or tomorrow or the next day at the latest. There may be

consequences, and consequences that we have not thought

through.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank you for the opportunity. Again, I want

to thank everybody in this House for having a hard look at this. But

let’s not rush into this. Let’s make sure we look at this properly, we

examine this totally, and we are sure we are heading in the right

direction, because this involves people’s lives, their livelihood and,

as important, their opportunity for the future. I think that’s what

British Columbia really needs.

P. Milobar: I rise to speak to Bill 27.

There’s a very concerning pattern with this government that seems

to actually be accelerating. Not only are they accelerating how fast

they want to pass legislation now after it’s been introduced in this

chamber, but it’s an accelerating pace over these last couple of years,

particularly under this new Premier’s watch, of controlling everything

out of the Premier’s office, rushing things through, not wanting proper

debate and discussion on bills.

We had the Attorney General yesterday and the Minister of

Indigenous Relations the day before repeatedly referring to how long we

were taking on their bills, to the hour, to the minute. The Indigenous

Relations Minister was eight hours and 22 minutes, was what he said when

we were starting debate again on committee stage of reviewing the Haida

agreement, a very important piece of legislation that deserves full

scrutiny. Yet it seemed to be an inconvenience to the minister that the

opposition was daring to invest a few hours of debate.

No wonder the government pushes these bills off to the very end,

because they don’t actually want that debate to happen. Yesterday we

heard the same thing on Bill 21, with the Attorney General talking about

eight hours of debate and we were still only into a couple of clauses on

Bill 21 with 310 more clauses to go, with only a couple of days of

debate left.

We saw that on Bill 36 with the Health Professions Act, where we

had almost 400 clauses of that bill not canvassed, not discussed, not

questioned, a refusal by the government to relook at that, to at least

allow for a venue for those questions to be asked, even though the bill

had already been passed and made into law. No willingness to have any

oversight on that.

We had one occasion where we had two forestry bills, at the end of

a session, being debated at the same time, in two different chambers,

one at second reading, one at committee stage. The Forests Minister of

the time couldn’t have possibly been in two rooms at once, and time

allocation got brought in on both bills. They both got wrapped up

without proper debate or discussion on two very meaty bills around the

forest industry. And we see the mess the forest industry is in right now

under this government’s watch.

You can see why there’s an importance in trying to understand what

the pieces of legislation being brought in do or don’t contain and how

they are going to affect the forest industry, moving forward. But those

two bills never actually had any proper scrutiny either. They’ve been

law for a couple of years, and now we have mills closing, saying we’re

the most expensive, bureaucratic jurisdiction in North America for

forestry.

[3:10 p.m.]

That’s the attitude this government has on all their bills at this

point. Bill 26 was just introduced yesterday, has already had second

reading and, in fact, the government said debate shall stop by 3:30

today. It wrapped up anyways, through its natural course. Bill 27 —

we’ve already been told we’ll be done with this bill at 6:15

tonight.

Why that’s egregious is that 87 of us were elected to come to this

chamber and speak on any piece of legislation we choose to speak on. It

shouldn’t be up to the government to decide how many members feel a

piece of legislation is important enough for that member to speak to it,

or not, and how long that member should speak to it, or not.

I understand and accept that the Government House Leader and the

government Whip may be able to tell their members on the government side

that they are or aren’t speaking to a piece of legislation. But the

arrogance of this government to, repeatedly now, by both their actual

words, in terms of noting to the minute how long a certain bill has been

debated or not, and by their actions on how late into a legislative

session they’re willing to continue to introduce

legislation….

Legislation, by the way…. There was no heads-up that this was

coming — none.

It just speaks to an arrogance of: “How dare the opposition want

to speak to a bill? In fact, we’ll tell them how long they’re allowed to

speak to a bill. We’re government. We know best. We’ll tell them they’re

only allowed a couple of hours on a bill, and that should be good

enough. That should be good enough for the constituents in various areas

of the province. We don’t need to explain the ramifications of a bill

that might spill over outside of Vancouver area” — in this case, because

that’s a very specific bill to Vancouver.

There’s no need, in the government’s mind, for duly elected

members of this Legislature to actually do their job. Because it’s an

inconvenience to the government.

Probably the most egregious piece of Bill 27…. This is where the

arrogance has just gotten taken to a whole new level with this

government. Usually it’s bad enough that we have bills that are all left

to regulation — regulation we don’t see at the time of

debate.

I remember debating a housing bill, and the Minister of Housing

said he couldn’t share the regulations with the House because they

weren’t developed yet. About a week later, a 57-page document of

regulations was presented publicly. But apparently when we were debating

that bill, they weren’t ready to be released. They couldn’t be talked

about. They were still under development — 57 pages, and that was only

the first document. I believe there was another 200 pages that came out

about a few days later.

That’s not even the worst example. FOI legislation…. When we asked

about the simple factor on how much the cost was going to be assigned to

file an FOI request, the minister spent days dodging that question. “Oh,

it will be developed with consultation. We need to go and consult. We

need to find out what the best price will be.” Twenty minutes after that

bill became law, the order-in-council to set the fee at $10 was signed

in the corridor.

That’s the arrogance that this government continues to show with

their legislation. Why it is taken to a whole new level on Bill 27…. As

I say, most commencement clauses in a bill are…. They take commencement

by way of regulation and order-in-council — which, under this

government’s watch, seems to happen really fast a lot of times, but it’s

not unusual wording — or royal assent, when the Lieutenant-Governor

comes in and nods her head when the bills get read out, as is the

process, and they become law. We’ll see the Lieutenant-Governor do that

on Thursday again.

I want to read, for the public, the commencement. Now, this is

only a four-clause bill. Clause 4, commencement: “This Act comes into

force on the day after the date it receives First Reading in the

Legislative Assembly.” This bill received first reading yesterday. This

bill is already law.

[3:15 p.m.]

Talk about arrogance of a government. Yes, they have a majority.

Yes, they’re going to pass whatever they want in this place. They don’t

even want to have any debate anymore. It doesn’t really matter what

questions the opposition might have on behalf of people when it comes to

Bill 27.

This act comes into force on the day after the date it receives

first reading in the Legislative Assembly. It’s already law. It doesn’t

need the Lieutenant-Governor to show up on Thursday. It doesn’t need to

wait for any orders-in-council to be signed off in the hallway a few

minutes after we close off committee stage and third reading. It’s law

before we even started to debate it on the floor of this chamber

today.

The government wonders why the public starts to think that they’re

being pretty arrogant with how they conduct business in this chamber,

how they feel it’s their right to just pick and choose how long

opposition deals with a bill or not. Well, they’ve already decided on

Bill 27. Frankly, most of this is now just performative. It has been

rendered performative strictly because of clause 4, on the commencement

date.

The government is not willing, by virtue of that commencement, to

entertain any amendments — not even go through the motions of having

opposition be able to present some concepts or ideas by way of an

amendment in Bill 27 to make the legislation better, because government

knows best. That’s the mantra this NDP government has been employing for

the last seven years, and they have just taken it to new

levels.

Government knows best. Well, 18 months ago, the Premier said he

knew best, and he said he was going to clean up the Downtown Eastside,

and he was going to clean up the SRO problem. It’s actually gotten

worse. Apparently, the Premier didn’t know best how to clean up

SROs.

Instead, we get dropped a piece of legislation with no warning in

the final days of a legislative sitting that has already been deemed to

be law as of today, and we haven’t actually finished second reading. But

we know — the government has told us — that we have to be done second

reading in three hours, literally. It’s now 3:16. This has to be closed

off at 6:15.

For those watching at home, if I were standing up right now, one

minute ago the Chair would’ve had no choice but to cut me off and force

the vote, even though I still have 19 minutes, even, on my speaking

time. That’s what will happen three hours from now — well, three hours

less a minute and a half.

Eighteen months ago the Premier comes in, in his new role, and

promises results people will be able to touch, feel and see and promises

he’s going to clean up the Downtown Eastside, and he appoints a czar for

the area to phase out SROs. Now, this wasn’t a Premier coming in that

didn’t understand the complexities of the Downtown Eastside. Our Premier

has done a lot of work down there, long before he was a politician. I

acknowledge that. So he does understand the area.

He was also an Attorney General for 5½ years for B.C. before he

became the Premier. He was also Housing Minister right before he became

the Premier, for a couple of years. Surely, when he makes promises he’s

going to clean up SROs, he knew what he was promising. But instead of

doing the job that he told the public he was going to do and making

those SROs safer for people that live in them or giving them better

options to live in, they’ve had to introduce, at the last minute, a

piece of legislation that is already law, as I stand, that will override

the courts.

It’s interesting. They have no problem overriding the courts when

it comes to housing in Vancouver. They did it once before on a different

chunk of property.

They sure don’t want to try to change anything when it comes to

catch and release and dangerous criminals out on our streets and the

chaos that’s being created. No attempts then to try to actually bring

meaningful change to people in their neighbourhoods across this

province.

[3:20 p.m.]

Then they don’t want to interfere with the courts. They don’t want

to interfere with the system. They can’t do this, they can’t do that,

but when it comes to trying to basically shield themselves from their

failures on the housing file, they will interfere with the

courts.

They’ll not interfere with the courts when it comes to crime and

community safety, but they’ll interfere with the courts when it comes to

housing, to hide the government’s own failure that in 2017, it promised

114,000 units built by 2027, in ten years.

It would have gone a long way to solving the SRO problem, getting

people out of those run-down SROs. Lots are without windows, as in no

actual opening to the outside whatsoever, and others are without

windows, with just open air flowing through, even through the middle of

winter. If they had stuck to actually delivering a result for once, we

wouldn’t be needing this bill right now. Instead, after only building

around 7,000 units in the first seven years, they’ve abandoned the

114,000. You don’t even hear them talk about it.

In 2017, when they came in, they were talking about their 30-point

action plan for housing. They don’t talk about that anymore either. It

has failed. The Premier has failed on SROs — full stop. It was his

promise, his commitment, based on his background — not just as a Housing

Minister, not just as an Attorney General but also as an advocate for

the Downtown Eastside for years, when he made that promise and that

commitment 18 months ago. He failed — period.

This means we have 3,600 SROs that are not exactly great living

conditions for most people. It doesn’t help people, who are already

struggling with mental health and addictions issues, to live in those

conditions. It would be a grind on anybody’s mental health to live in

those conditions, let alone if you’re already facing

challenges.

The government’s solution with this bill is to cap the rents but

not to address the repair, maintenance and condition of the housing. You

have old housing stock that’s already run down and beat to all heck,

with this bill, which will lead to even further deterioration of

people’s living conditions. That’s the extent of cleaning up the SRO

problem that this Premier can deliver — after 18 months of promises that

he will clean it up.

M. Elmore: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker: Please proceed.

Introductions by Members

M. Elmore: We’ve got, here in the House, some very special guests. If you were in

the front of the Legislature at noon, you would have heard a great

performance by a local band, the John Oliver music program. They delivered a

terrific performance on the front steps. They’ve got their concert band,

their jazz band and the choir, for the first time since I’ve been here, to

really have a great performance.

They’re here with their teacher C.J. Kumar; teacher candidate Justin

Lau; Ethan Tong, also a teacher candidate; Debbie Klassen; vision teacher

Judy Sandhu; Soreya Uto­kaparch; and regrets from Michelle McNaughton.

They’re going to be performing here for a few days at Hillcrest Elementary

School, at UVic. I just please ask everybody to give them a very warm

welcome.

They’re also active in Lapu-Lapu Day — a lot of folks participating in

that. John Oliver is an awesome school.

Welcome to the precinct. Everybody please give them a warm

welcome.

I’ve got another special friend here too, Sean Saweko, who also is

very active. He’s in the Legislature for a tour, very active for Lapu-Lapu

Day.

A very warm welcome to him.

I ask everybody to please give him a warm welcome.

[3:25 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Welcome to the guests.

Debate Continued

P. Milobar: As I was saying, the problem with 27…. I understand why the city

of Vancouver is seeking this. What we haven’t heard from this government

— other than 18 months ago, with a commitment by the Premier that he was

going to clean up SROs on the Downtown Eastside — is any tangible action

from the government to do anything to make people’s living conditions

better in those SROs.

That’s the core issue, and the core failure by this Premier and

this government, when it comes to housing — all talk, no action, no

deliverables. So 3,600 units. You would think — on the heels of the

tragic Winters Hotel fire where lives were lost and those SRO units

gone, this government would have finally taken some action. What action

did they take?

They finally audited Atira and found massive problems with Atira

and their handling of SROs. Then we hear nothing until Bill 27, no

meaningful action taken by this government whatsoever to improve

people’s living conditions in those SROs. Their answer now is to say to

those people living in those 3,600 units: “We’re going to make sure that

the landlord doesn’t change the rent significantly between tenants.”

That is understandable, but we’re not, at the same time, announcing any

plan to make those buildings safer, more habitable, less pest- and

rodent-infested.

In fact, we’re going to make sure that because of those rent

freezes, the landlord, in the case of privately held SROs, won’t

actually be able to do that repair and maintenance. Admittedly, they

haven’t done a great job of it to this point, but I haven’t seen the

government use any legislative tools to try to change the laws to force

that to happen.

What we have is Bill 27, which will commit those 3,600 units,

SROs, to effectively stay the same as they are — in fact, get worse.

This is not a bill that comes with any type of actioning by this

government to overlay the intent, of making sure the rents don’t change

between tenants, with a program and a plan to make sure that those same

SROs are habitable and safe for people to live in.

If the government is going to use their legislative ability to do

one-half of the equation, they should do the other half of the equation,

but they’re not. Some of the oldest housing stock, the smallest housing

stock and the most run-down housing stock that Vancouver has is what’s

actually affected by Bill 27.

Now, 18 months after the Premier promised improvements, we see no

improvements. We see a rushed piece of legislation to circumvent the

courts, which is already law, as we speak. It’s questionable if it will

have the desired effect. It’s questionable based on those factors that I

talked about.

[3:30 p.m.]

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

I get that it can be a sensitive way to talk about it, but at the

end of the day, even if it’s your own personal house, there’s an

economic factor to housing. There just is. Repair and maintenance of

housing, regardless of its type, is real. Landlords — be it for-profit

or non-profit landlords, for that matter — have a duty to keep their

properties habitable and safe. But there is a cost to that. There’s no

magical way for a non-profit or a for-profit landlord to replace a

leaking roof without it costing them money.

If the government’s intention is to make sure that there’s rent

control in Bill 27, which is understandable for those on the lowest end

of our economic spectrum in B.C., it’s incumbent on the government to,

at the same time, say, “But we’re also going to make sure you’re living

in a safe place. We’ve got a program to work with the landlord to make

sure that the buildings are actually habitable, the fire systems are

actually working properly,” unlike what we saw in the Winters Hotel

tragedy. No lessons learned from the government on that.

They’re a government great for saying that they’re looking out for

those that are disadvantaged, but they don’t actually action that. If

you dare point out the obvious to them, well, you must be against the

poor, or you must be this, or you must be that. No, it’s an actual, very

simple, basic, literally economic equation when it comes to housing.

Plumbing does not fix itself.

It’s kind of like that movie The Money Pit . Tom Hanks and

Shelley Long move into the old house. They phone the plumber, and the

plumber gives them a price over the phone. They say: “Well, how do you

know it’s $40,000? You haven’t even come to the house yet.” The plumber

says: “I gave a price two years ago. Nothing’s been done. Do you think

the pipes got better with age?”

Does the government think that run-down SROs that have

questionable wiring, questionable plumbing, leaking roofs, windows that

are problematic, some that don’t have doors that lock properly…. Do they

think that that is all going to just magically cure itself if they

freeze the rents? If it’s not happening right now, under the existing

rent system…. Yes, landlords need to be brought to heel, but I don’t see

anything in 27 that does that. I don’t see a government program making

that happen. I saw a Premier promising it 18 months ago and zero action

on it. That’s what I’ve seen.

Again, a government that likes to talk but not actually deliver on

any of the programs they put out there. In fact, they seem to think the

bigger the price tag, the more effective a program is they’ve announced.

They never want to actually talk about the deliverable or lack thereof.

Housing is a great example, but you can go down the list. Health care.

It’s in shambles. Oh, but they put more money in it. It must be getting

better. Well, it’s not.

Affordability’s in the tank. It must be getting better, but it’s

not. Government will say it’s a global inflationary problem. They’re

absolutely right. There’s global inflation. Yet B.C. is one of the worst

in Canada, if not North America, when it comes to lack of affordability.

It’s always interesting when a government wants to use comparables from

other jurisdictions and doesn’t want to use comparables. When­ever

it’s a negative, they somehow skate past it, and it becomes a global

issue, not just a Canadian issue.

Worst results in cancer care in Canada now, to the point we have

to send people to a private U.S. hospital in Bellingham for cancer care.

This government will skate past that and say: “Don’t look there. It’s

really not that bad, people.”

[3:35 p.m.]

In this case, you have 3,600 people living in SROs that are being

left to fend for themselves, between them and their landlord, in already

run-down living conditions. When this bill is done being debated…. It’s

already law, I guess, which is always an interesting wrinkle. It has

said: “Your landlord will have, for the few and little repairs they’ve

been doing, even less money to do repairs in your building now. We have

no plan or program to backstop to make sure that those repairs actually

happen. We have no meaningful replacement program in place.”

This is a government who bought a building in my riding for three

times over assessed value that was supposed to have people living in it

last September, 42 units that have been sitting empty for two years

because of a fire. They haven’t even been able to renovate the building

to get the people back in to actually start living in those

units.

It’ll be, maybe, sometime next year, because as it was sitting

empty through the winter, they let the pipes all freeze and cause even

further damage in it. So 60-year-old housing stock that they paid almost

$350,000 a unit for now is going to need extensive repairs just to get

people living in that building again.

They can’t even deliver that program, and for the last 18 months,

the Premier has failed to deliver anything of meaningful consequence to

SRO occupants. Yet the government says they are succeeding with housing.

They simply aren’t. They have failed miserably.

Again, this is a Premier that was the Housing Minister, with a

Premier’s office that likes to control everything to levels we have

never seen before. The lack of action on his own promises from 18 months

ago is shocking, and they’re leaving people behind. They’re leaving

people, those 3,600 people that live in those SROs, behind.

The temporary relief those people will understandably feel by

knowing that their rents won’t get jacked up if they move out and

someone else moves in will soon be offset by the realization that

repairs aren’t going to keep happening, what few repairs were

happening.

I really wish that the government had taken their time to address

that side of the SRO problem, because the Premier told us 18 months ago

he had a plan, and he was going to fix it. You could feel it. You could

touch it. It would be better.

That’s the problem we have with Bill 27. It simply doesn’t cut it.

It won’t provide real relief for those 3,600 people in terms of their

living conditions. It will provide some economic relief for them, but

the government could have found ways to provide economic relief for

them, as well, without overriding the courts, kind of like walking and

chewing gum at the same time, and actually make sure that those SROs

were in a condition any one of those members would have wanted to

actually, potentially, live in, if circumstances

necessitated.

Should be a good rule of thumb if you’re the government. Would you

be willing to live in an SRO? If not, maybe you should actually bring

the standard of that SRO up. That, right there, speaks

volumes.

We’re going to keep doing our job as an opposition, even if it

offends the government that we have the temerity to actually speak to

bills and ask questions about their legislation. Unfortunately, the

government is going to continue doing what they do best, which is invoke

closure and shut down debate on bill after bill after bill.

E. Ross: I’m pretty sure that this is going to be my last debate, I think,

and it’s going to be Bill 27, a municipalities enabling bill.

[3:40 p.m.]

In terms of the speech I gave today, my farewell speech, I talked

about this institution and its processes and how I truly admire it. I

respect it. It’s what I expected out of a professional institution

that’s trying to uphold the principles of democracy.

When I was trying to bring the Haisla Nation Council into a period

of wealth and progress, I studied governance models all around the

world. The one I concluded was the best one was the B.C. Legislature,

not only because of the processes I read about, but also because the

staff and the administration were separate from the politics, to a

certain extent. I still believe it’s a good model. The Westminster model

is a good model, in terms of checks and balances, of how a government

can govern.

Mind you, there is something I’ve got to say about it in terms of

the model being good. It is only good in terms of how you utilize it. As

MLAs, we all have a duty to our constituencies, which are 87 across B.C.

Individually…. I know there are parties in this House. I think there are

four officially recognized parties. But that comes secondary. Our first

duty is to the people who elected us to come in here and do a job,

whether it’s government or whether it’s the official opposition, like

what we’re doing here as the official opposition.

It’s a tough job. It’s a really tough job. Nobody can say that

they’re 100 percent clear on all the bills that have passed through this

place in the last seven years. Nobody can say that. I’m very familiar

with a lot of the bills that come through in terms of issues. But there

are a lot of bills that I rely on for my colleagues to fill in the

blanks. When we’re in here debating Bill 27, for example, I really rely

on people that were landlords, that were mayors and on councils that

worked for an administration for a municipality or even RCMP officers. I

really rely on that.

When we’re doing these debates, the debates are important, whether

we’re in estimates or we’re in first reading, second reading, committee

stage. They’re important. I know the general public has no idea what I’m

talking about. But if there’s ever a place to learn the details of a

bill and how it’s going to affect average people, this is definitely the

process.

For example, it’s not Bill 27 per se, but it is Bill 17, the

Police Amendment Act 2024. I’ve got a binder here. It’s full of bills

that us, as the official opposition, have to review. We’ve got to send

it down to our staff, get some summaries out of it. We’ve got to send it

to our critics, get them to summarize it for us. What comes out is a

good, logical, well-thought-out argument in terms of what is right and

what is wrong with these bills.

Bill 17, the Police Amendment Act, is 177 sections and 64 pages.

The average person walking off the street is not going to understand

this, let alone care. Unless you’re in Surrey, where it’s very relevant,

where if it continues to go down the road it’s going right now in terms

of the political path, taxes are going to have to be increased for the

people of Surrey. That’s what comes out of what we’re doing, right here,

right now, in terms of Bill 27.

We all have a chance, right now, to speak to it, at least for a

half an hour. Every MLA in this place has a right to speak to it, 87

MLAs, and then we go to the real work in terms of breaking down every

single clause and every single word in each section, if we get to that

point.

[3:45 p.m.]

We’ve seen this before in terms of the debate or estimates, or

anything else for that matter that comes through this House, being shut

down prematurely when we haven’t really done the work as MLAs, or even

as the official opposition, to go through a bill to the fullest

extent.

We saw Bill 36 a couple of years ago, the Health Professions Act.

The member for Prince George–Valemount…. I think she got halfway through

it, and the government shut down debate — called closure. I understand

why it was…. I mean, time ran out. You have a certain time period that’s

set, in terms of how long we come down here in Victoria to debate bills

in the spring and the fall.

But it’s supposed to be managed in a way that the substance of the

work can get done, so that we as official opposition can actually try

and attempt to make sure the government is as open and transparent as

possible. We can’t do that if debate is shut down. The main reason for

shutting down debate is because the most important bills, the most

complicated bills, the biggest bills, are left until near the end of the

session. Then time becomes crunched.

Just recently, just this past week, two more bills were put in

this House. We can’t even get through the bills that were originally

proposed. We’re not going to get through them. I heard the complaints

from the Indigenous Relations Minister talking about how much time has

been spent on Indigenous issues — Aboriginal issues — and, really,

talking in the context of Haida recognition, that eight hours at a

minimum seems excessive.

Aboriginal rights and title have been in the courts for the last

40 years. There have been court cases won and lost to define what

Aboriginal rights and title is and isn’t. It’s in the Constitution of

Canada. We’re one of the only countries around the world that recognizes

that Aboriginal rights and title do indeed exist in Canada. The

constitution doesn’t define it, but the case law did.

In my mind, eight hours isn’t enough. Ten hours isn’t enough. If

we wanted to get through it, the Haida recognition bill should have been

brought in at the beginning of the session, so we wouldn’t have to rush

it. The member for Vancouver-Langara, the Indigenous Relations critic

for the B.C. United, who’s a lawyer, is trying to do his job in an open,

transparent manner but really can’t get answers.

I was in those estimates, both for Indigenous estimates as well as

the Haida recognition act, and I’m not too clear on where we’re going to

end up. That’s how important this work is. So just to shut down debate,

whether it’s intentional or non-intentional, because of the lack of

time…. That’s a time management problem. That’s a priority

problem.

All of these issues are important. I agree, and every single MLA

is going to get up and talk about why they think a certain bill is

important and takes precedence over another bill. In today’s day and

age, health is important. I don’t believe the Health Professions Act,

Bill 36, should have gotten shut down. I think eight hours for

Indigenous estimates or the Haida recognition act…. Eight hours isn’t

even enough.

In terms of what we’re talking about here, Bill 27…. When we have

a housing crisis in B.C. and we have a substance abuse issue in B.C.,

why are we only just at second reading? We’ve still got committee stage

to go. And this place is going to shut down in two days — two days’

time.

[3:50 p.m.]

There are already questions of whether or not this is the right

bill, regardless of the promises that were made. The political promise

by this NDP government was that they were going to build 114,000 units,

which they failed at.

Now, Bill 27 is going to be talking about, amongst other things,

helping clean up the Downtown Eastside, which was promised 18 months

ago. And it’s not just the Downtown Eastside. The Downtown Eastside is

symbolic of what’s happening in Prince George and in Terrace.

We’ve talked about the housing issue, since I’ve been here, as a

crisis, from 2017 to today. Really, all we have gotten are political

promises with no real substance behind them. It is a pattern. I agree

with our colleagues. If this was such a big issue, why wasn’t this

brought in at the beginning of this session? If it’s such a good model,

we should be able to duplicate this in Prince George and

Terrace.

We’ve also talked about how housing is just one component of the

issues that we see facing our most vulnerable people in B.C., especially

low income. Just providing a roof over somebody’s head in the Downtown

Eastside is not going to fix what’s happening in the Downtown Eastside.

It’s not going to fix what’s happening in Prince George. It’s not going

to fix what’s happening in Terrace.

There has to be a robust system to deal with all the different

aspects of what goes on in our streets. It’s not just a roof over their

head. If that was the case, we would have solved this a long time

ago.

Five years ago, when we started to see the low-income housing pop

up across different parts of the province, including Terrace…. Not long

after the low-income housing was built in Terrace, I was told that the

activities, in terms of the people that have substance abuse issues,

were still happening. Yes, they were not allowed to do it indoors in

their new-found accommodations. They were still doing it in the streets

and the alleys of the downtown core of Terrace. They were also doing it

in the trails up behind the low-income housing.

I walked through it, like I have done many times. I have walked

through the rail tracks, from the Walmart to downtown. I have walked

along the river where all the encampments were and still are when the

warm season hits us. I found out. Yes, the activities are still

happening. There were no services provided to help those people that

were in the low-income housing. Shelter isn’t the only

problem.

A couple of years ago I was…. I think I’ve mentioned this to the

House. If you hadn’t known, I ran for the leader of the B.C. Liberals at

the time.

No? Nobody is aware of that. Okay.

Anyway, I was toured on the Downtown Eastside. I’ve done it many

times before on my own, when I was a councillor for the Haisla Nation. I

was chief councillor for the Haisla Nation Council. I didn’t tour it per

se, but I went and walked around down there. I know a lot of those

people. They’re my friends and family.

There are a few people I know on the streets of Prince George, and

I definitely know a lot of the people on the streets of Terrace. It

wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to go down there and talk to people

and find out what was going on long before I became an MLA.

I was being toured around by a representative of the RCMP, and

they were telling me about how the measures that were put in place

actually weren’t even working. I went to Strathcona Park. I went to

Oppenheimer Park. I went to all those different areas that were key

areas in terms of what was happening on our streets.

[3:55 p.m.]

I was shown low-income housing, brand-new, brand-spanking-new.

From the outside, I was pretty impressed. But then they showed me, along

the street, a block away, all the RVs that were parked.

All the RVs were housing families who did not want to move into

low-income housing. The families were not suffering from substance

abuse. They were just down on their luck. They didn’t want to move into

low-income housing, because that’s where the drugs were. That’s where

the drug dealers were. There was still violence happening there. These

families had children. This is happening in Terrace, too, by the way. I

get the same complaint.

It’s not just a simple issue of putting a roof over somebody’s

head. It’s not going to be solved with Bill 27. It’s good dressing on

the outside to say that a promise made 18 months ago will be enacted by

Bill 27. But that’s not the case.

As many people have talked about already, being a landlord in

today’s day and age is expensive. The landlords in Terrace, especially,

come to my office and say…. Once they get rid of the issues, once their

issues are resolved, in terms of the occupancy of their buildings,

they’re getting out of the landlord business. They can’t afford it.

There’s a lot of maintenance, not only with wear and tear but also with

holes in the walls. It’s a delicate balance between tenants and

landlords.

What’s happening in the Downtown Eastside, with Bill 27…. It

hasn’t really been addressed in terms of how safe these SROs are in the

first place. We’ve had buildings burn down, people losing lives in the

SROs in the Downtown Eastside. There’s no mention of this.

Landlords will be expected to bear the cost of Bill 27. How are

they supposed to do it when they are already stretched for maintenance

costs?

I think we’d all like to see more fire protection, more fire

warning, more fire extinguishers, up-to-date fire extinguishers in these

SROs. Bill 27 is not going to talk about it. It’s not going to resolve

it.

I do have a bit of experience in terms of being a landlord, in a

roundabout way. We had the same problem in terms of maintenance

costs.

Under the Indian Act, First Nations get a certain amount of money

to provide housing for those on social assistance. It’s called social

housing. The problem for us, even though it was a pretty good model…. I

thought it was a pretty good model.

We agreed that the rent for these houses would go into a pot, and

then that pot would pay for the maintenance and the repairs of all these

houses. In theory, that works, except the tenant has to pay the rent

bill, which they weren’t.

When I got into council in 2003, our housing deficit, in terms of

social housing, was $400,000. We don’t have the luxury of the B.C.

government in terms of a deficit or accounts payable like that. When our

tenants didn’t pay their rent bill, the band council had to pay it, and

it wasn’t voluntary.

[4:00 p.m.]

The people in Ottawa, the bureaucrat in Ottawa, would just take

away the yearly payment that was due and subtract it from our funding

agreement. So we’d look at our new funding agreement each year, and we’d

find out that we were actually missing a lot of money. We were told:

“Well, because your housing bill needs paying.” And we couldn’t recover

it because we did not have the political will to kick people out of

their house. We didn’t have it.

We came up with all kinds of measures to get that money back, but

we couldn’t. And the result was that we had less money for other

programs in our village. It’s not like the provincial government. It can

still keep operating with deficit. But sooner or later, somebody’s going

to have to pay off that debt. It’s going to contribute to inflation.

It’s going to contribute to the next generation trying to figure out how

to pay off that debt. But First Nations did not have that

luxury.

That’s why it was good that LNG came along, and we had our own

resources where we could start building our own apartments and even

buying apartments in the city of Kitimat. But the cooperation with the

B.C. government to provide housing on reserve was actually welcomed,

because it wasn’t on the same terms as the Indian Act. And it was

welcomed. I welcomed it. It was less stringent than dealing with Ottawa.

It was better dealing with Victoria.

The first ones to do that were actually the B.C. Liberals under

Christy Clark, Rich Coleman with Lax Kw’ala­ams. Under their

announcement of affordable housing, $500 million…. I think Lax Kw’alaams

was the first one to participate in that. They got $4½ million for

affordable housing on the reserve. The first time it had ever been done,

a provincial government going on to reserve and saying, “Yes, we’re

going to help you with housing.”

It helped, because it took a lot of the Lax Kw’alaams people out

of the housing market, out of Prince Rupert and elsewhere, and brought

them onto reserve and brought their people home. We did the same thing

in Kitimat.

But in terms of Bill 27, it’s not quite the same thing. I think

you’ve got to address some of the larger issues that are facing those

people down in the Downtown Eastside. It’s not just a roof over their

heads. The Winters Hotel that burned down, killing two occupants — this

is going to keep happening if we don’t address the condition of these

SROs.

I, for one, would love to see some supports going in to help those

SROs to kind of bring them up to standards, the minimum standards to at

least ensure some level of safety until we can figure out, for the long

term, a solution.

Why I’m saying that is because this topic is relevant to a lot of

communities around B.C. In Terrace, I was notified a couple of years ago

about Coachman Apartments. I had no idea that the Coachman Apartments,

up in the bench in Terrace, had such big issues. It was low income, but

it was privately owned. The owner lived in Miami. Nobody had even heard

of this guy. He never even showed up, never did any maintenance, did

nothing. Then we found out he passed away.

The people living up there were basically living in mould. I was

asked by the mayor to go up there and take a look and take a walk

through it, and I was pretty shocked because the outside didn’t show,

really, what the inside looked like.

I know what mould looks like. Every First Nation leader will tell

you what mould smells like and looks like. We had a mould crisis back in

the mid-2000s on reserves all across Canada, which I was a part of as

well, trying to address that. But when we walked through the building,

there was….

[4:05 p.m.]

Whoever the last tenant was in some room got evicted, which was

surprising, because a lot of those people didn’t pay their rent anyway.

But before they left, they turned a tap on in a sink — flooded two

floors. Electricity didn’t work. Doors were kicked in, garbage all over

the place.

There was a retired woman who had just lost her husband who locked

herself in her apartment every day. There were people living in there,

some of whom I knew, who were living with mental issues. They were

living there. It took a lot of work to get them out.

We actually brought it here. The Housing Minister basically found

and bought a motel along the highway and housed more than half those

people. I thought the issue was done. I thought it was over.

Just this past winter I was told there were still people living

there, so I went back. There was no electricity, but they have running

water. There are still people living there. Can’t get them out. I even

talked to a few of them and told them that they can come with us, and we

can call government, and we can find a way. “We can find accommodations,

but you can’t keep living here. This is dangerous.” Nope. Couldn’t

remove them — some because they had mental health issues, but some

because they didn’t feel safe in low-income housing. They felt safer in

this condemned building.

I asked, and I recommended, that government use all its powers —

every tool in the toolbox, as they say — to expropriate these lands,

because the owner is deceased. Expropriate the property. Invest $20

million in it. Turn it over to B.C. Housing, and build truly safe

low-income housing.

By the way, if you guys don’t know, I was government as well. I

was government for 18 days. I was Housing Minister. One of the things

that…. One of the files that I reviewed was the policy that was

implemented under Rich Coleman.

I actually went to visit one of these buildings that he helped

build down here in Victoria, and I liked the model. It was a

desegregated model. It was a partnership with the private sector,

basically saying: “Look, we can cooperate. We can partner on this

property. We can partner on building housing, but you’ve got to

desegregate it. You have to have low-income, middle-income and

high-income earners in the same building.” I thought that was a great

model. I’m not a fan of segregated housing. I don’t think people should

be just put in a certain

section by themselves based on their wealth or

lack of wealth or because of their issues.

I’ve seen this kind of housing before. I’ve heard about it in

places like Kamloops and Kelowna. We’ve got it in Terrace. So I thought

the model of desegregated housing was actually a really good model. It

made best use of provincial government assets and provincial government

money, and I don’t think Rich Coleman gets enough credit for

that.

I think we should bring it back, especially for those families and

those people with disabilities that don’t have substance abuse issues

that are living in RVs in our parking lots, on our streets and even in

the parking lot of my colleague from Surrey — Surrey South or North or

whatever it is. He’s got a woman that parks in his parking spot outside

his MLA offices, because she’s afraid of low-income housing. She feels

safe in the MLA’s parking spot in Surrey.

It has been an honour to represent Skeena in talking to Bill 27,

and I will now take my seat.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

D. Clovechok: Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Always nice to see

you.

Today it gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise in this House

to speak to Bill 27. It’s a bill, as we examine, as a piece of

legislation that was brought forward yesterday by the current NDP

government, that basically validates the city of Vancouver’s bylaws,

which imposed vacancy control on about 3,600 specific SROs.

[4:10 p.m.]

When you look at these SROs…. I have had an opportunity to have a

tour. I would challenge any of the members across if they would spend a

night in one of those SROs on the east side, if they would venture to

try to do that. I’m thinking that’s not the case. I don’t think it would

happen. Yet we expect these other people to stay in this squalor, which

basically is poverty and despair. They are slums, yet they propose this

legislation to keep that in place.

To a large extent, this is kind of pathological for this

government. They promise otherwise, but here they’ve introduced this

legislation with mere days left in the session. And again yesterday.

It’s a pattern. It’s a deliberate pattern that this government has had

on many, many bills. It’s a deliberate tactic, I think, to undermine the

democratic process and prevent thorough examination of potential impacts

on the consequences of these legislative measures.

Now, when we stand up here and debate bills, it’s an important

process of the democratic process. But this isn’t a debate. This is a

monologue, because none of the people on the other side have the courage

to stand and speak to this bill, their own bill that they introduced

yesterday. Otherwise, they would be on their feet, one after us, every

time. They don’t have the courage to speak to it. That’s a shame because

you’re dealing with people’s lives. You’re dealing with people’s

lives.

Overall, what does this bill mean? What does it do? It effectively

enacts the vacancy control measure that limits rent increases not only

during the tenure of a single tenant but also between tenants. Control.

They don’t like to hear about it, but it’s socialistic control. The more

you control, the more freedom goes.

By validating these bylaws, the government invalidates the need

for a court case that had been previously struck down with similar

measures implemented by the city of Vancouver. So what does that say?

Court rules it out of order, and this government comes along and decides

they are no better than the courts. Well, I guarantee you, as many other

issues before the courts today are, this will be challenged, and the

people of British Columbia will pay for this in court, with that

challenge. And this government knows that.

I think that it’s a perfect example of where government expands

their focus of control, liberty contracts. The more and more that I’ve

seen in the seven years that I’ve been here, this government removes the

liberties of people by doing such things as introducing these bills at

the last minute.

Vacancy control is a short-term fix. What I have seen and am

critical of this government for is that this is going to cause long-term

damage to the rental market. They don’t have a plan. It’s always the

short-term fixes.

The core issue of the housing crisis is the lack of housing supply

across a spectrum of housing. They don’t get that. The NDP has opened….

I chuckle about this. I remember back in 2017, when the election was

going on and my counterpart who was running for the NDP expounded that

they were going to build 114,000 new properties. That was attractive to

people. I thought, geez, that’s pretty good. Got to give you

credit.

Well, 16 percent of that has been built, and some of t