Third Session, 41st Parliament

(2018) OFFICIAL REPORT

OF DEBATES

(HANSARD)

Monday, May 14, 2018

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 136

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

CONTENTS

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Introduction and First Reading of Bills

Bill M216 — Business Corporations Amendment Act, 2018

A. Weaver

Bill M217 — Strata Pre-Sale Contract Flipping Tax Act, 2018

A. Wilkinson

Statements (Standing Order 25B)

Farmers markets

B. D’Eith

Whistler Medical Marijuana Corp.

J. Sturdy

Sex industry conference in Victoria

M. Dean

Jo-Ann Wood

R. Sultan

Active transportation

B. Ma

Volunteer firefighter training in Oliver

L. Larson

Ministerial Statements

Response to flooding in Boundary-Similkameen area

Hon. J. Horgan

A. Wilkinson

A. Weaver

Oral Questions

Government record-keeping policies and use of email by Premier’s office staff

J. Johal

Hon. J. Sims

Hon. J. Horgan

T. Redies

Establishment of trade and investment office in Taiwan

A. Weaver

Hon. B. Ralston

Use of private email account by Citizens’ Services Minister

M. Stilwell

Hon. J. Sims

Use of private email by Citizens’ Services Minister and contracts for information

technology services

P. Milobar

Hon. J. Sims

L. Throness

S. Bond

M. de Jong

Petitions

Hon. J. Horgan

Orders of the Day

Government Motions on Notice

Motion 21 — Committee of Supply to sit in three sections

Hon. M. Farnworth

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 26 — Child, Family and Community Service Amendment Act, 2018

Hon. K. Conroy

L. Throness

S. Furstenau

J. Thornthwaite

Hon. K. Conroy

Bill 30 — Cannabis Control and Licensing Act

Hon. M. Farnworth

M. Morris

Report and Third Reading of Bills

Bill 25 — Real Estate Development Marketing Amendment Act, 2018

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 30 — Cannabis Control and Licensing Act (continued)

M. Morris

A. Olsen

D. Barnett

J. Thornthwaite

T. Wat

Report and Third Reading of Bills

Bill 23 — Local Government Statutes (Residential Rental Tenure Zoning) Amendment Act,

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 30 — Cannabis Control and Licensing Act (continued)

G. Kyllo

Hon. M. Farnworth

Bill 31 — Cannabis Distribution Act

Hon. M. Farnworth

M. Morris

A. Olsen

P. Milobar

Hon. D. Eby

Report and Third Reading of Bills

Bill 18 — Local Government Statutes (Housing Needs Reports) Amendment Act, 2018

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Health (continued)

Hon. A. Dix

N. Letnick

M. Stilwell

J. Isaacs

M. de Jong

J. Thornthwaite

J. Rustad

M. Bernier

S. Bond

E. Foster

S. Furstenau

Proceedings in the Birch Room

Committee of the Whole House

Bill 25 — Real Estate Development Marketing Amendment Act, 2018

T. Redies

Hon. C. James

S. Bond

Bill 23 — Local Government Statutes (Residential Rental Tenure Zoning) Amendment Act,

S. Sullivan

Hon. S. Robinson

Bill 18 — Local Government Statutes (Housing Needs Reports) Amendment Act, 2018

S. Sullivan

Hon. S. Robinson

MONDAY, MAY 14, 2018

The House met at 1:35 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Hon. A. Dix: Today we had the opportunity, government members — I believe

opposition members will have this tomorrow — to take

part in a luncheon

hosted by the B.C. Cancer Foundation. I wanted to introduce some of the

people who participated in that today: Sarah Roth, the president and CEO of

the B.C. Cancer Foundation, who’s a constituent of my colleague the member

for Vancouver–Point Grey, and Andrew Sweeney, the board chair of the B.C.

Cancer Foundation, who’s a constituent of my colleague from Vancouver–West

End.

I wanted to introduce a constituent of my colleague from

Vancouver-Hastings, Michael Izen, who spoke about his journey with cancer

in, I think, a remarkable and courageous way. I hope members of the

opposition will get an opportunity to hear this tomorrow. Michael is a

longtime friend of myself and my wife, Renée Sarojini Saklikar. We were very

moved to hear from him today.

I want to wish all three, and all the people from B.C. Cancer and the

B.C. Cancer Foundation, which raises so much money at the foundation but

does such extraordinary work in B.C…. I want to make them welcome here in

the Legislature today.

J. Yap: I have two introductions to make. First of all, returning to observe

proceedings and joining us on the floor is our good friend and the former

MLA for Delta North, Scott Hamilton. Would the House please give Scott a

great welcome.

My second introduction is of a constituent and someone who’s an

important part of my operation in Richmond-Steveston — a member of my

constituency office staff, a constituency assistant. Would the House please

welcome in the gallery today Trevor Merrell.

C. Oakes: Well, first I would like to acknowledge and say happy Mother’s Day to

all the mothers, both in the gallery and watching at home. I hope you all

had a lovely, well-deserved Sunday.

I’m very pleased to have in the House today my family, the Hartley

clan. I have my mom and dad, Jim and Nancy Oakes, from Moose Heights —

that’s for my grandma — which is near Quesnel. Joining my parents are my

mom’s sisters. We have Darlene Rhode from Duncan, Linda Hartley from Duncan,

as well, and Bridget Croy, who’s from Fairview, Alberta.

Lots of political dialogue right now. We’re having a wonderful time.

Would the House please help make the Hartley clan welcome.

J. Rice: I never fully understood why or how authors could give thanks to their

partners, their children, their families, etc., in the openings of their

books until I met my wife, Andrea. I couldn’t do the fulfilling work that I

do without the love and support of her. She’s in the House today. Would the

House please make her feel welcome.

M. Bernier: It’s a privilege today to introduce a constituent of mine, who’s

trekked all the way down from northeast British Columbia — Reg Whiten. He’s

a consulting resource stewardship agrologist planner and educator from

Moberly Lake. A lot of people in this House know where that is.

Over the years, Reg has served in various voluntary advisory roles

with the province. So 35 years in the Peace. He’s also worked with Treaty 8

as a land adviser, executive director of the former Peace River Watershed

Council and is also a watershed steward for the city of Dawson Creek, during

my time there as mayor.

It’s a privilege. Please make Reg welcome down here to

Victoria.

Hon. R. Fleming: There are a couple of people I’d like to introduce in the gallery

today. One is just following up on the Minister of Health’s introduction —

Michael Izen, who’s in the gallery with us today.

I’m wearing the button from his campaign, a very courageous campaign,

working with the B.C. Cancer Foundation, and on his own initiative, to

educate men all over British Columbia and Canada about the dangers of

prostate cancer and also some of the things that men can do to raise

awareness and take care of themselves and work with the medical profession.

Michael has been tireless in that regard. He has been a tireless fundraiser

for the foundation, to help make medical research breakthroughs possible.

I’d ask the House to make him welcome again. It’s great to see

him.

[1:40 p.m.]

The person next to him who is smiling, always smiling, is Jordan

Watters, who is a school district trustee from district 61. She’s a

passionate advocate for public education. She founded a Facebook

organization called Support for B.C. Students, which has 19,000 subscribers;

works tirelessly in our district here in greater Victoria; and has been an

outstanding advocate for kids and high-quality public education. I’d ask the

House to make Jordan most welcome as well.

Hon. C. James: I noticed up in the gallery a former Victoria resident, a longtime

friend and very strong advocate for people with disabilities and people with

mental health issues. Would the House please welcome Richard

Fahl.

L. Krog: I’m delighted today to ask the House to make welcome two groups of

grade 5 students from my constituency. The first is from Forest Park

Elementary, accompanied by their teacher Joseph Smith — 25 grade 5 students

and several adults. The second group is from Frank J. Ney Elementary, Mr.

Lorne Ratzlaff — again, accompanied by four adults. I’d ask the House, for

the record, to make them welcome. Nanaimo is always curious about good

public policy, and they love coming to this place.

Introduction and

First Reading of Bills

BILL M216 — BUSINESS CORPORATIONS

AMENDMENT ACT,

A. Weaver presented a bill intituled Business Corporations Amendment

Act, 2018.

A. Weaver: I move that a bill intituled the Business Corporations Amendment

Act, 2018, of which notice has been given, be introduced and read a

first time now.

This bill amends the Business Corporations Act by adding a new

part 2.3 to the act that would give companies the ability to incorporate

as benefit companies. Doing so would provide these companies with the

legal framework to operate in an environmentally sustainable and

socially responsible way and to pursue public benefits in addition to

pursuing profits.

Benefit corporations differ from community contribution companies

— known as C3 companies — which are hybrid businesses subject to an

asset lock. Benefit companies would be required to meet standards of

transparency and accountability by reporting their work against an

independent, third-party standard. By incorporating as benefit

companies, businesses would achieve clarity and certainty for their

directors and investors about their goals and mandate, thus enabling

them to attract capital investment while staying true to their mission

as they grow.

Companies that pursue a triple bottom line are on the cutting edge

of rethinking the role of business in the 21st century and helping us

tackle our most pressing social and environmental issues. Government

needs to support and encourage business to take on this role, and this

bill is one way to do just this.

Mr. Speaker: The question is first reading of the bill.

Motion approved.

A. Weaver: I move that the bill be placed on the orders of the day for second

reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill M216, Business Corporations Amendment Act, 2018, introduced,

read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second

reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

BILL M217 — STRATA PRE-SALE

CONTRACT FLIPPING TAX ACT,

A. Wilkinson presented a bill intituled Strata Pre-Sale Contract

Flipping Tax Act, 2018.

A. Wilkinson: I move that a bill intituled Strata Pre-Sale Contract Flipping Tax

Act, 2018, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper,

be introduced and now read for the first time.

The purpose of this bill is to address home flipping — that is,

the flipping of presale contracts — and to target actual speculators,

those who are artificially inflating prices in the housing market by

flipping presale paper contracts. If passed, the bill will apply to both

domestic and foreign buyers, placing a provincial capital gains tax on

the proceeds of presale contract flipping.

The act is meant to be clear, tailored, measured and precise so

that it will accomplish the goal of improving affordability. Only those

who purchase a presale home or condo and sell it before completion will

be taxed by this bill. Of course, the goal is to address the housing

crisis that we now face.

This bill takes real action to address affordability and is

designed to entirely replace the speculation tax, which is currently

before the House, which has absolutely nothing to address or control

speculation.

Mr. Speaker: The question is first reading of the bill.

Motion approved.

A. Wilkinson: I move that the bill be placed on the orders of the day for second

reading at the next sitting of the House after today, when the

government sees it fit to proceed.

Bill M217, Strata Pre-Sale Contract Flipping Tax Act, 2018,

introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day

for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

[1:45 p.m.]

Statements

(Standing Order 25B)

FARMERS MARKETS

B. D’Eith: Spring is in the air. The sun is out. And, yes, I’ve even seen

some of the members of the opposition smiling. It’s been amazing.

There’s one right there. You see, it’s contagious. It’s

awesome.

Spring is also the time that farmers markets open up all over

British Columbia. I was very, very pleased recently to participate in

the opening of the Mission City Farmers Market and, along with the

Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, the opening of the Haney Farmers

Market.

I wanted to thank Shelby and Allen in Mission and Eileen, Paul and

Alex in Maple Ridge for being such amazing hosts. The Mission City

Farmers Market has actually been around for 22 years, and the Haney

Farmers Market is entering its 14th season. They count on volunteers’

work year-round to make sure that these amazing community programs stay

open during the harvest season.

These markets are actually a pivotal part of our community. They

allow us to eat local food; to strengthen the local economy and put

money back into our community; to meet the farmers who grow our food; to

discover new products that we might have never tried before; to keep

agricultural jobs active in our community; and, of course, to support

the family farms and food security in British Columbia.

Both of our markets in my riding participate in the farmers market

nutritional food coupon program. The coupon program is supported by the

province of British Columbia and the Provincial Health Services

Authority, along with community sponsors for local farmers markets. The

community partners organizations provide coupons to lower-income

families and seniors. These coupons can be spent to purchase fresh

vegetables, fruit, nuts, eggs, dairy, cut herbs, meat and

cheese.

I’m so proud that our government recently increased the B.C.

farmers market nutrition coupon program so that lower-income residents

across this province can find healthy, locally grown food and have those

types of opportunities.

Let’s all tip our hats to the organizers and volunteers for all of

our farmers markets around B.C. who support our agricultural sector and

help to ensure that we will grow B.C., feed B.C. and buy B.C.

WHISTLER MEDICAL MARIJUANA CORP.

J. Sturdy: Since its earliest days, West Vancouver–Sea to Sky has always

attracted trailblazers, adventurers, entrepreneurs with big visions.

From forestry and transports to tourism and technology, businesses with

leading-edge approaches and a commitment to bring their ideas to

fruition have demonstrated a reputation for best in class.

Take this enterprising environment and introduce progressive

legislative amendments, and you have a formula for a first-of-its-kind

business model. The Whistler Medical Marijuana Corp. was amongst the

first to qualify as a Health Canada licensed producer, and the company

remains the first and only in the country to offer a certified organic

product as certified by the Fraser Valley Organic Producers

Association.

As an organic farmer, I know firsthand the commitment that goes

into producing certified organic production. At Whistler Medical

Marijuana, the process replicates outdoor growing techniques, with

everything that goes into the plants’ production coming from natural

sources. From planting to packaging, each rotation takes approximately

five months to move through the production process.

While Whistler Medical Marijuana’s Whistler facility is size

constrained and limited in its production potential, an expansion into

Pemberton is allowing for an exponential increase in production and a

corresponding increase in well-paid, full-time, year-round jobs.

Whistler Medical Mari­juana is investing tens of millions of dollars in a

new, purpose-built, 65,000-square-foot, high-tech facility in the

Pemberton Industrial Park, which is scheduled to open this summer. It

includes a full research laboratory dedicated to quality control,

genetics and product development. There are plans for a second phase of

the Pemberton expansion, which would increase this production facility

by a further 80,000 square feet.

By leveraging its Pemberton expansion, Whistler Medical Marijuana

will target beyond Canada to emerging international medical cannabis

markets. This is a made-in-B.C. enterprise, one that is homegrown yet

ready for export.

SEX INDUSTRY CONFERENCE IN VICTORIA

M. Dean: It’s my pleasure to rise today to highlight an exciting conference

taking place today and tomorrow here in Victoria to raise awareness and

improve practice for people working in the sex industry. It’s organized

by PEERS, which is an innovative multiservice, grassroots agency that

was established by, with and for sex workers.

[1:50 p.m.]

In partnership, PEERS provides an array of outreach and drop-in

harm reduction and support services, alongside education and employment

training for current and former sex workers, including this

conference.

Co-hosted by Living in Community, day 1 is aimed at community

knowledge-sharing, improving collaboration and networking to support the

health and safety of people in sex work or trade. It’ll be attended by a

diverse group of people representing the sex trade, social and health

services, police, government and organizations from around B.C. and

Alberta that provide services to people in the sex industry.

I’m honoured to be able to join the conference on the second day,

which is for a small group of representatives from sex industry

organizations, police liaisons, health and social services targeting

sexualized violence. The focus will be on knowledge-sharing and

development with regard to bad date and aggressor reporting in the sex

industry. I expect we’ll all learn a lot, and I really look forward to

hearing about how these great services will continue to

improve.

I want to take this moment to thank the organizers and the

volunteers who have worked so hard to make this conference come

together.

JO-ANN WOOD

R. Sultan: If you want to get anything done in West Vancouver, where to cut

down a tree requires

an act of parliament, call on Jo-Ann

Wood.

Jo-Ann started her career as a UBC School of Nursing faculty

member. Moving to West Vancouver, she became a prime mover in a series

of organizations, including the West Vancouver Community Foundation,

modelled after the Vancouver Foundation, funding a long list of

community organizations and important environmental causes; the Lions

Gate Hospital Foundation, which has raised almost $100 million to help

finance a new and much-needed acute care tower; the West Vancouver

municipal library, boasting the highest per-capita readership in Canada

and sponsoring everything from the annual November 11 ceremonies, to

Adopt-A-Fish, where youngsters put young coho salmon back into McDonald

Creek; our hospice and palliative care project on Lions Gate Hospital

campus, so helpful at end of life; the West Vancouver Place for Sport, a

rebuild of the outdoor track and field at West Vancouver

High.

Jo-Ann doesn’t seek recognition, but in recognition of her

volunteer accomplishments, she received the 2017 West Vancouver

Community Award. It was well deserved.

Thank you, Jo-Ann.

ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION

B. Ma: Commuting by walking, cycling, rollerblading, skateboarding,

propelling forward in a manual wheelchair, even skating or skiing if you

live out east — active transportation takes on many forms. Most of us

are capable of using active transportation to get from A to B, to

varying extents.

In doing so, we engage in an activity that offers many personal

benefits. Increased physical activity, of course, reduces the risks of

heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure and more, which is

beneficial for relieving pressure on our health care system. It saves us

money. We all know how expensive car insurance and gas can be these

days. We also get to avoid congestion that we would otherwise be

subjected to if we were riding in our cars.

Our communities also benefit. There are safety benefits. Walking

and cycling more means that there is increased contact between

neighbours, which means communities know and look out for each other.

Fewer cars contribute to calmer and safer neighbourhood streets. When we

have more people choosing to engage in active transportation instead of

getting into their vehicles, we also cut down on greenhouse gas

emissions, air pollutants.

We reduce the need for vehicle-centric development, which is very

land-intensive. Sidewalks and bike lanes take up far less space per

travelling capita than building new vehicle lanes, parking spaces and

interchanges. All of this saves us land we could be using for more green

space, housing or other more productive community amenities. And, of

course, it eases congestion for those who need to use their cars for a

variety of very valid reasons.

[1:55 p.m.]

With all of these benefits, it’s no wonder that so many

municipalities and transportation agencies, like TransLink, are

investing in increased active transportation infrastructure like bike

lanes and sidewalks. Despite the local controversy a new bike lane can

sometimes cause when being proposed, the reality is that safe cycling

and walking infrastructure is enormously important to building strong,

effective communities.

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER

TRAINING IN

OLIVER

L. Larson: Every two years the Oliver fire department hosts the B.C.

firefighters spring training at the Oliver Community Centre. This year

over 300 firefighters, men and women, took

part in the training. They

came from 70 volunteer departments in B.C., three from Alberta and one

from Washington state.

There were more than two dozen training stations set up around the

park, and every firefighter took

part in at least ten of the skills

provided. Each of the members of the Oliver fire department were

responsible for setting up and assisting with the training at most of

the stations. The visiting firefighters are put into small teams with

other firefighters from around the province so that the maximum amount

of knowledge can be acquired by each department and returned to their

communities.

There are several corporate sponsors, the largest of which was

FortisBC, which provided timely training in dealing with an LNG spill or

fire. This year the RCMP bomb squad from Kelowna participated,

demonstrating the latest equipment for the safe disposal of explosive

devices, an unfortunate necessity of our modern world. The swift-water

rescue training was also timely due to the floods and extremely high and

fast-moving waters in our streams and rivers.

This two-day training requires a tremendous amount of volunteers,

many of whom are the Oliver firefighters themselves and their families

and friends. A huge thank-you to Chief Bob Graham and the Oliver fire

department for the tremendous job they do helping to train volunteer

firefighters from all over B.C. and for the work they do every day as

first responders, keeping the people of my community safe. A special

thank-you to all the volunteer fire departments in the

Boundary-Similkameen who are supporting their communities during our

current flood events.

Hon. J. Horgan: I rise to make a ministerial statement.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Ministerial Statements

RESPONSE TO FLOODING IN

BOUNDARY-SIMILKAMEEN

AREA

Hon. J. Horgan: All members of the chamber will be well aware of people right

across British Columbia grappling with the threat of rising floodwaters.

Heavy rain, warmth, unseasonably warm weather and a snowpack that has

been unprecedented mean serious flooding challenges right across British

Columbia.

Nowhere is that more acute than in the constituency of

Boundary-Similkameen, where the member, I know, is working very, very

hard to ensure that everything that can be done is done to protect the

homes and the livelihoods of the people in her community, in Grand Forks

and the entire region.

Thousands of families have been affected. Thousands more are

waiting for the worst. And there is also a threat, Members, of

increasing floodwaters as a result of what will be a continued period of

extremely hot weather to couple with the snowpack that I spoke

of.

I have been in touch with the chair of the regional district. I’ve

been in touch mayor of Grand Forks. The Minister of Public Safety was in

the region over the weekend, and as I said, the member from Boundary is

doing everything that she can. I believe we’re doing all we can as a

government and as a Legislature to speak up and to ensure that those

that are in distress right now know that we have their backs.

That’s why today we announce a recovery assistance plan for the

people of Grand Forks that will allow those who do not have insurance

coverage on their homes, whether they be residents, small businesses,

farmers, local governments or First Nations communities, to be able to

access assistance from the province of British Columbia in the days and

weeks ahead.

I spoke with the Prime Minister on Sunday, and he assured me that

the federal government stands ready to work with communities, to work

with the province and to work with all British Columbians to ensure we

get through this unprecedented flooding season. The Minister of Public

Safety will be in touch with his opposite number in Ottawa to make sure

that there’s a seamless transition should there be a need to bring in

more federal resources.

I wanted to take this opportunity, Hon. Speaker and all members of

the House, to share with you a story I had with the mayor of Grand

Forks. As we all know, when you’re in a difficult, difficult situation,

where people are seeing their livelihoods virtually disappear before

their eyes, and they’re hopeless to manage the force of nature, it’s

that time when resilience shows through and our better angels appear.

The mayor and the community — I know the member will agree with this —

have rallied together in an unprecedented way. Just as we saw in the

fire season last summer, we’re seeing again at the early part of what

will be, perhaps, the worst flooding we’ve seen since 1948.

I want to advise all members that those on this side of the House

and every member can rest assured that the government of British

Columbia will have your backs. The people of British Columbia know that

we’re working hard, all of us, in this place to make sure that they are

safe. Although nature is treating us poorly today, we want to make sure

that government is there for us in the days after, and I want to assure

our members that that’s the case.

[2:00 p.m.]

A. Wilkinson: I thank the Premier for his words about this important topic,

which in British Columbia we hope does not lead to an unprecedented

season of flooding, but the possibility does exist.

I was privileged and glad on Friday to visit the

Okanagan-Similkameen area. I visited the communities of Willowbrook,

where 200 people are subject to flooding in their homes and are being,

essentially, driven off the land; and Okanagan Falls, where there have

been entire street diversions; and in Oliver, where the threat is

imminent and real.

I saw for myself the Sportsmen’s Bowl Road, which used to be a

road but is now a river — the river having jumped its banks and moved

onto the road. This is something that comes as a bit of an eye-opener,

because it’s literally ten metres away from Highway 97 before it flows

under Highway 97, which, as an arterial road, remains open. I also saw

where Shuttleworth Creek jumped its banks and threatened to wipe out an

entire subdivision but was, fortunately, diverted into an agricultural

area. The crews involved managed to divert it back into the creek bed,

but the threat remains very real.

People in the region are pulling together, taking the initiative,

doing things like taking out culverts that are too small and letting the

rivers run through the road and using alternative routes to get to their

homes. It’s a very real thing for people in the communities, and it

keeps them awake every night, because they don’t know what’s going to

happen to their homes.

The regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen has done a very good

job operating the emergency centre that they provide for all of the

necessary services and the evacuation machinery that goes into these

kinds of crises. Of course, they’re doing a very effective job of

managing that, working with the Ministry of Solicitor

General.

There was a minor mixup over the weekend in terms of the Solicitor

General’s visit to the region. He and I have conferred, and it’s been

agreed that the MLA for the region involved, no matter where it is in

British Columbia, will be in close contact with emergency management

B.C. and the minister so that there are no surprises and a concerted

effort by all in this House to make sure that the people of British

Columbia are served. Their primary interest is to take care of their own

needs and for us to be there as legislators to make sure those needs are

being addressed.

I want to thank all the volunteers, thank the first responders,

congratulate the community for rising to the occasion and commend the

Solicitor General for taking on this task and promising to keep us all

in touch as we move toward a happier ending than we foresee at the

moment.

A. Weaver: Like every member in this House, I’ve been following the flood

crisis closely and with a heavy heart. I commend the Premier for

offering disaster recovery assistance today. Every support possible must

be extended to the communities threatened by rising rivers. It’s

heartbreaking to see homes submerged and businesses lost. I hope the

worst is behind us. Sadly and unfortunately, the forecast for the coming

days is not looking so positive.

I’d like to also extend my gratitude to the first responders and

emergency support providers who are helping people evacuate safely and

making sure that nobody is left behind. The National on CBC

last night had footage of firefighters swimming through polluted waters

to reach houses in Grand Forks. Our province could not weather these

emergencies without their bravery and determination, and I offer my

sincere thanks.

It seems cruel and unusual to be facing more devastation after

last year’s floods and fires. The 2017 fire season, as we know all too

well, was the longest in the province’s history. We had a state of

emergency in place for ten weeks, and more than 65,000 residents were

evacuated. The flood response cost more than $73 million, and direct

fire suppression cost more than $568 million.

Incredibly, thanks to the hard work by so many volunteers, there

were no fatalities despite the 1,342 fires. The strength, courage and

resiliency of British Columbians are unmatched and unrivalled. Those

qualities, paired with a world-class team of firefighters and first

responders, are why we made it through last year’s floods and fires

without a single life lost in British Columbia, especially those in

rural areas who have been fighting the front lines of climate change for

so long.

It’s cruel to be facing more flooding after last year’s natural

disaster, but sadly, it’s no longer unusual. And there is so much more

to come as a consequence of global warming. It’s going to get much, much

worse if we, as elected officials, fail to transition to a low-carbon

economy.

I had an elderly gentleman in my office last week from a riding

hit hard by the 2017 fire season. He talked about staying up all night

to watch the fire move across nearby hills, going out to hose down his

house with his son, checking on his neighbours to make sure they were

okay too.

[2:05 p.m.]

He talked about having post-traumatic stress disorder, but also he

talked about having what he called pre-traumatic stress disorder as the

fire season for 2018 approaches. He doesn’t look forward to summer

anymore. He said he’s too worried about fires. The irony and the

illustrative cognitive dissonance is that that afternoon his MLA stood

in this House to speak in support of Kinder Morgan and the LNG

development.

We as elected officials cannot let British Columbians fight

climate change alone. We need to be there when disaster strikes — like

this week in the southern Interior — but we also need to be here with

the will to recognize the link between the laws we pass or protect and

the climate change impacts felt by our constituents. The world has no

time for politicians who show up to help sandbag one day but work to

prevent meaningful climate action the next.

As the B.C. Auditor General wrote….

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Oral Questions

GOVERNMENT RECORD-KEEPING

POLICIES AND USE OF EMAIL BY

PREMIER’S OFFICE STAFF

J. Johal: Last week we learned that the Minister of Citizens’ Services, from

the time she was appointed until at least February, has been brazenly

breaking the rules, rules that she is responsible for. The minister also

shamelessly declared that the complete absence of sent emails by senior

Premier’s office staff was because: “Any transitory emails we expect to

be deleted.”

Can the Minister of Citizens’ Services tell us her definition of

“transitory?”

Hon. J. Sims: Our government is committed to ensuring the rules are followed

carefully and records of decisions are retained appropriately. Our

government and its staff have been directed to manage records

appropriately, including following good record management practices

consistent with the recommendation of the Information and Privacy

Commissioner.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Richmond-Queensborough on a

supplemental.

J. Johal: The minister’s explanation on Thursday didn’t hold water. It

certainly doesn’t today. NDP political operatives are deleting every

email they send based on their own definition of

“transitory.”

I have here a document, right here, prepared by professional civil

servants, with nearly a dozen examples of the kind of non-transitory

records that must be kept. They include things like documents about

policy matter or how a case was managed; information about a decision;

work schedules and assignments; instructions and advice; meeting minutes

and agendas; or any useful information that helps explain the history of

a relationship, decision or a project. It goes on and on.

To the minister, will she instruct NDP political staff to keep all

sent emails, to prevent the ongoing destruction of these

records?

Hon. J. Sims: Let me say again: our government is committed to ensuring the

rules are followed carefully and records of decision are retained

appropriately. Our government and its staff have been directed to manage

records, including following good record management practices consistent

with the recommendation of the Information and Privacy

Commissioner.

We on this side of the House fully recognize the need to keep good

records of government decisions, and we are doing so.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Richmond-Queensborough on a second

supplemental.

J. Johal: Here are the facts. We know all sent emails were deleted by the

Premier’s director of operations, director of liaison and coordination,

director in the deputy minister’s office and his assistant deputy

minister — every single one.

These senior officials are paid a combined half a million dollars

by taxpayers, but apparently, they didn’t produce a single email with

instructions or advice or any emails that contained information about a

decision. NDP political operatives are deciding that every single email

they produce is transitory. That’s what they’re saying. The public

doesn’t buy this.

Will the member reinstate the policy requiring ministers and staff

to retain all sent emails?

Hon. J. Horgan: I can appreciate this question didn’t come from the member for

Kamloops–South Thompson.

[2:10 p.m.]

I think the member, if he went back…. I appreciate he wasn’t here

at the time. But the triple-delete scandal led to the then Premier

hastily putting together a policy that didn’t necessarily make sense

about documenting decisions of government, but it was a way to get out

of a bad political fix. It was not necessarily the best way to manage

records in government.

For those issues that the member raised with respect to my office

staff, that was largely in the early days of their employment within the

government of British Columbia. Steps have been taken since then to

ensure that all members have appropriate document disposal practices in

place. Those records do exist on servers, if the member wants to go

looking for them, and I’m sure he’ll do that.

T. Redies: Four senior officials in the Premier’s office had no records when

a request was made for all sent emails and text messages over a

four-month period.

Did the Premier’s director of operations, who’s paid $125,000 a

year, really not produce any useful information for four

months?

Hon. J. Horgan: Well, the previous government kept all of their information on

Post-it Notes, so it wouldn’t be a surprise that it’s new members of

this place that are taking this line of questioning when it comes to

appropriate document disposal.

The triple-delete scandal opened up an opportunity for all members

of this place and all public servants to have a better understanding of

what appropriate document disposal really meant. That has been ongoing

since we were sworn in, in July, and that will continue to be the case.

We want to ensure that the documents that record the decisions of

government are available to the public in a transparent and open

way.

The transitory documents that the member may be looking for are

also on the server. They’re not triple-deleted. They can be found, if

required. Determinations have been made about whether they were

transitory or relevant to decisions that are made by government, and

that’s the responsibility of the Information and Privacy

Commissioner.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Surrey–White Rock on a supplemental.

T. Redies: Well, it’s interesting that these emails are available, because

when we FOI’d them, they were not readily available.

The Minister of Citizens’ Services

rescinded the directive that ministers and staff retain all sent emails.

Now NDP political operatives decide what is and what is not transitory,

and for staff in the Premier’s office, this means deleting every single

email.

Did the Premier’s director of liaison and coordination, who is

paid $100,000 a year, really not email a single meeting agenda or

meeting minutes for four months?

Hon. J. Horgan: Again, I appreciate that the new members of this place will not

remember the triple-delete scandal as vividly as some of the members on

the front bench of the opposition, but it was a result of that

triple-delete scandal that the Premier of the day cooked up her own

solution to the problem, which was to stop using Post-it Notes and

allegedly keep all of the emails that were being created. The

appropriate thing to do was to take direction from the

freedom-of-information and privacy commissioner, and that’s exactly what

we’re doing.

ESTABLISHMENT OF TRADE AND

INVESTMENT OFFICE IN

TAIWAN

A. Weaver: I must admit that I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone,

listening to the line of questioning coming from the members opposite,

in light of the last three or four years of hearing them defend the

same.

British Columbia is the investment gateway to Canada for nations

of the Pacific Rim, and British Columbia has established representative

offices to help promote trade and investment in a number of these

Pacific Rim nations. Just last fall, for example, the B.C. government

established a new trade and investment office in Seattle which will

focus on trade and investment in the technology sector.

However, one jurisdiction that doesn’t have any representative

office is Taiwan. Taiwan is B.C.’s sixth-largest trading partner, with

bilateral trade volume totalling an estimated $1.87 billion. Alberta

established a trade office in Taiwan in 1988 that has helped to steadily

grow the trade between these two jurisdictions.

My question to Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology is this.

Does the minister recognize the opportunity we have to cement a stronger

trading relationship with Taiwan by establishing a trade and investment

representative office in Taiwan?

[2:15 p.m.]

Hon. B. Ralston: I thank the Leader of the Third Party for his question on this

important topic.

Taiwan is indeed an important trading partner for British

Columbia. Businesses here in British Columbia exported over $700 million

worth of product and services to Taiwan last year, and that value has

been growing steadily since 2012. Fully 43 percent of Canadian exports

to Taiwan originate in British Columbia, and as the Leader of the Third

Party pointed out, Taiwan is British Columbia’s No. 6 destination for

exports. Many people here in British Columbia looking to expand look to

Asia and to Taiwan among those regions in Asia.

This weekend I was pleased to attend the Taiwan Chamber of

Commerce in British Columbia annual gala on Saturday night. A number of

members were there, and I was able to express these feelings of affinity

and gratitude personally.

Certainly, as the Leader of the Third Party has noted, the federal

government has a trade office in Taipei and helps Canadian businesses

expand into Taiwan’s market. Our government continues to seek

opportunities to diversify trade into Asia and to seek reciprocal

investment opportunities here in British Columbia. Indeed, the future

prosperity of British Columbia depends on our ability to do that

effectively.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Third Party on a supplemental.

A. Weaver: Thank you to the minister for that constructive and thoughtful

response.

British Columbia presently has offices in Japan, South Korea, Hong

Kong, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and mainland China.

Their establishment represents an important step in diversifying trade

partners and positioning British Columbia to take advantage of new and

emerging markets, which is all the more important, frankly, as B.C.

continues to develop its tech sector.

Developing strong relationships with trading partners in Asia, who

will drive much of the demand for innovation both within and beyond the

clean tech sector in the coming years, will be essential if we are to

firmly establish ourselves as a leader in shipping not just B.C.’s raw

resources but also B.C. technology and ideas to other

jurisdictions.

My question, once again to the Minister of Jobs, Trade and

Technology, is this. When can British Columbia expect this government to

establish a trade office in Taiwan?

Hon. B. Ralston: I share the Leader of the Third Party’s enthusiasm about the

trading opportunities in Asia. We’re certainly looking at where British

Columbia businesses can expand and how we might be able to assist

that.

Taiwan is an important partner for many British Columbia

businesses. As I mentioned, on Saturday, I was able to discuss these

opportunities with many Canadians who have origins in Taiwan. Indeed,

there are members in the Legislature who have strong affinities with

Taiwan.

Those opportunities are there, and we’re committed to diversifying

the economy and our markets, both in terms of attracting investment and

in terms of exporting more of our goods and services to Asia. We’re

building the strength in our economy to help businesses expand and

create good jobs for British Columbians here in British Columbia, not

only in one region but throughout the province, in a way that the

previous government didn’t.

USE OF PRIVATE EMAIL ACCOUNT

BY CITIZENS’ SERVICES

MINISTER

M. Stilwell: Last week the minister said: “When I read articles that were

interesting to me, I forwarded it to my staff. I’ve looked at the

emails. It wasn’t government business except for one email, which was

about the timing of an announcement.” However, in the package of

documents, there were significant redactions, including entire pages

that are censored.

Can the minister explain why, if these are innocuous emails, they

would be censored?

Hon. J. Sims: As I said last week, while I was on my personal device using

records were then moved into the government system, as per policy. I

should not have used my personal email to contact staff, and I’ll be

more diligent in the future.

[2:20 p.m.]

As the member opposite has a record of these emails, they will

know that they are part of the government record.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Parksville-Qualicum on a supplemental.

M. Stilwell: Well, this is what the ministry told us. “Some information has

been withheld” pursuant to

section 13, which is policy advice or

recommendations;

section 15, which is disclosure harmful to law

enforcement; and

section 17, which is disclosure harmful to the

financial or economic interests of a public body. Clearly, the

professional civil servants identified these emails as government

business.

Will the minister admit that she’s made another error and that she

misled the media last week?

Hon. J. Sims: Let me tell you that those records were moved into the government

system, as per the policy. Otherwise, colleagues across the way would

not have received them as an FOI. I should not have used my personal

email to contact staff, and I’ll be more diligent in the future. It is

important that the rules be followed and that best practices are

followed. Our government is committed to ensuring that

happens.

As I said previously, the colleagues across the way would not have

those emails, would not have received that information when they put an

FOI in if they were not part of the government record. They are part of

the government record, and they were there. They were not

deleted.

USE OF PRIVATE EMAIL BY CITIZENS’

SERVICES MINISTER AND

CONTRACTS FOR

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

P. Milobar: Let’s take a closer look at the emails sent and received by the

minister on her personal email on February 16 and 17. They relate to a

multi-million-dollar health IT contract as well as a second

multi-million-dollar government-wide computer services

procurement.

The initial email includes an

article with the headline: “Big IT

Deal Goes Ahead Despite NDP Campaign Pledge.” The rest, however, is

censored because professional civil servants have identified it as

containing “policy advice or recommendations.”

My question is simple. What policy advice did the minister receive

on her personal email related to these multi-million-dollar IT

contracts?

Hon. J. Sims: As I said previously, while on my personal device, using social

media, I came across articles which I forwarded to my staff. I should

not have done that, and I’ll be more diligent in the future. But the

fact is that those emails were available. They were not deleted. Policy

is being followed, because they were transferred onto the government

system, as per policy.

Mr. Speaker: Kamloops–North Thompson on a supplemental.

P. Milobar: Well, the emails have a subject line, and then they’re completely

redacted for the most part. The minister used her private email to

receive and forward correspondence from someone outside of government

related to the multi-million-dollar contracts over which the minister

has direct influence. Whatever they had to say to the minister has been

identified by professional civil servants to be either policy advice or

recommendations.

The minister owes British Columbians an explanation. What was the

secret policy advice?

Hon. J. Sims: As I said previously, emails sent from my personal account were

transferred to the government account, as per policy.

I’m finding it surprising that the opposition is asking about

these things after having gone through the practice of triple delete.

When it came to the Highway of Tears, their staff triple-deleted the

records and then misled. The Information and Privacy Commissioner’s

report found that these practices threaten the integrity of access to

information in British Columbia. They refused to change their “whatever

it takes to win” culture until they were caught.

These emails that were sent from my account were transferred to

the government account.

[2:25 p.m.]

L. Throness: Well, we’ve already determined that an email of February 16 to the

constituency office of the Minister of Citizens’ Services contained

government policy advice or recommendations. Her constituency staff then

emailed the censored policy advice not to the minister’s government

email but to her private email account, as if that was perfectly

routine. In turn, the minister used her private email to forward the

advice to the ministerial office, as if that too was routine.

My question is: why would the minister instruct her staff to

routinely send confidential government policy advice and recommendations

to her private email?

Hon. J. Sims: We are committed, on this side of the House, to ensuring that the

rules are followed carefully and that records of decisions are retained

appropriately, as per the recommendations by B.C.’s Information and

Privacy Commissioner. B.C. government employees, including political

staff, are required to follow the appropriate use policy. This means

employees must use their government email accounts when conducting

government business.

In some cases, due to extenuating circumstances, staff may have

used personal emails. Staff have been directed to take the appropriate

steps to transfer these records to the government email system in

accordance with policies. We are following this policy to ensure that

government information is accessed and stored appropriately, and that is

why my colleagues across the way were able to access those

emails.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Chilliwack-Kent on a supplemental.

L. Throness: A little bit of transparency and disclosure would help here. We

don’t know what was deleted, but we do know the topic. It was a large,

multi-year contract to provide computer services to all health

authorities.

When the minister routinely uses her private email and avoids the

government email, it begs the question why. The minister invites

suspicion on the process by which multi-million-dollar contracts are

awarded. The public — and I’m sure the bidders on those contracts —

would like to know. Who sent the email, and what was the policy advice

the minister refuses to reveal?

Hon. J. Sims: As I said previously, staff have been directed to take the

appropriate steps to transfer any records into the government email

system in accordance with the policy if they should, under extenuating

circumstances, have used a different account.

I want to assure everyone that where personal email was used,

those records have been transferred, and that’s why people across the

way have copies of those emails. They were not triple-deleted or

deleted, as the previous government did.

S. Bond: Let’s help the minister recall that just last week she said that

there was only one email that was at issue and that her practice was to

on February 16 that the minister received on her personal email. We

don’t know who it came from because the name is redacted for privacy

reasons. We also don’t know the contents because that, too, has been

redacted. Why?

Section 13, it says — because of advice or policy

recommendations. But we do know that it relates to an issue around the

multi-million-dollar IT contract and that the content is policy advice

or recommendations.

To the minister, who did the email come from, and what advice was

she given?

Hon. J. Sims: That particular email that came into my private email system was

forwarded to a government email and was sent to my staff and is part of

the government record. Any redaction that takes place there happens

according to the policies we have.

I keep saying: you would not have copies of those records if this

government was into triple-deleting or even deleting. You have the

records because they were not deleted.

[2:30 p.m.]

Mr. Speaker: The member for Prince George–Valemount on a

supplemental.

S. Bond: Well, we should be clear, and so should the minister. She

This is a serious matter. This is policy advice, and that designation is

determined by the professional public service — not me, not members of

the opposition.

The email content is redacted because of policy advice. That

advice came to the minister on her personal email account. That’s not

exactly the account that the minister gave last week.

Let’s ask the minister one more time. If this minister is

interested in clearing the air, will she answer the question: who was

the email from, and what was the policy advice that was

redacted?

Hon. J. Sims: Let me say again that the reason my colleagues across the way have

copies of those emails is because they were part of government records.

Policy was followed in transferring those into government records, and

that’s why they have them.

M. de Jong: The minister seems to want to make light of the fact that fully

seven months into her term as minister, she was in violation of the very

rules she is charged with enforcing. She says it’s no big deal, just

the email of February 16, pertaining to a multi-million-dollar IT

procurement initiative and drawn from the minister’s own personal email

account, has been severed.

It has been severed pursuant to the Freedom of Information and

Privacy Protection Act,

section 13, which says: “The head of a public

body may refuse to disclose to an applicant information that would

reveal advice or recommendations developed by or for a public body or a

minister.” Hardly consistent with the account the minister has been

trying to give these last few days.

The question is not a complicated one, and it goes to the heart of

preserving the integrity of the system the minister is responsible for

enforcing. What was the advice? What was the recommendation that she

received and did not want on her public or her governmental email

pertaining to this multi-million-dollar contract?

Hon. J. Sims: Once again, my colleagues across the way would not have copies of

those emails if they had been deleted or triple-deleted. Emails were put

into government records. They are there, and then the policies for

redaction are followed. Those policies are the same as they were when

that side was sitting in government.

We are committed to ensuring the rules are followed carefully and

records of decision are retained appropriately, as per the

recommendation of B.C.’s Information and Privacy

Commissioner.

I have said it, and I will say again. I never mind apologizing. I

should not have used my personal email. I’ll be more diligent in the

future. I also want to say that those emails were transferred to a

government server, as per policy, and that’s why you have

them.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Abbotsford West on a supplemental.

M. de Jong: The reason the opposition has them is, of course, because there

was email traffic between the minister and an agency and a person

covered by FOI. What we don’t know is what additional traffic, what

additional communications pertaining to this multi-million-dollar

contract might have taken place between the minister and other third

parties via her private account.

Let me ask the minister this, who must surely — and if she isn’t,

presumably some of her colleagues are — be extremely concerned by the

impact this could have on the integrity of the procurement process

itself.

[2:35 p.m.]

Where there have been communications between the minister and

other third parties pertaining to that procurement strategy, has the

minister — having stood in the House now and conceded that she has

behaved improperly — contacted the person in charge of ensuring the

fairness of the procurement? Has she…?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members, we shall hear the fullness of the question.

M. de Jong: Has she alerted the procurement fairness officer to the extent of

the communications and the nature of the communications that took place

between her and some other third party pertaining to this

multi-million-dollar contract?

Hon. J. Sims: I’m actually quite delighted to get up and answer this question

again. You know, we have a….

Interjections.

Hon. J. Sims: Thank you very much. When you ask a question, it’s always a good

idea to listen, right? Let me say this to you. That policy was followed.

The emails you have are part of the government record. Redaction

occurred according to policy. We are committed to making sure government

decisions are recorded and we have good recordkeeping

practices.

[End of question period.]

Petitions

Hon. J. Horgan: I have a petition signed by 153 of my constituents seeking changes to

animal shelter rules in British Columbia. These citizens believe that there

should be more opportunities for animal welfare in British Columbia and not

just those that are available today.

A. Olsen: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

A. Olsen: I would like to introduce a constituent of beautiful Saanich North and

the Islands, Courtland Sandover-Sly, and two of his colleagues, Jamie Shaw

and Travis Lane, president and directors of the B.C. Independent Cannabis

Association. There’s a little piece of legislation coming in later today,

and it’s caught their attention. I’d like to have the House please make them

feel very welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call Motion 21 on the order paper in my name.

Government Motions on Notice

MOTION 21 — COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

TO SIT IN THREE

SECTIONS

Hon. M. Farnworth: Motion 21 reads:

[Further to the motion adopted on March 1, 2018, that this House

hereby authorizes the Committee of Supply for this session to sit in an

additional third

section designated

Section C which will sit in the

Birch Committee Room as may be appointed from time to time. All rules

and provisions of the motion related to Committee of Supply,

Section A

shall apply to

Section C. The Members of Committee of Supply,

Section C

shall be identical to the composition of Committee of Supply,

Section

A.]

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call second reading on Bill 26, Child, Family

and Community Service Amendment Act. In Committee A, I call continued

debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Health. In

Section C, the

Birch Room, I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 25, Real Estate

Development Marketing Amendment Act, 2018.

M. Polak: Just as a point of clarification, I note that my opposite member

referred to Committee C as Committee of Supply. I seek to understand if

that’s the correct wording.

Hon. M. Farnworth:

Section C is to do the Committee of the Whole.

[2:40 p.m.]

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 26 — CHILD, FAMILY AND

COMMUNITY SERVICE

AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

Hon. K. Conroy: I move that Bill 26 be now read a second time.

For too long, Indigenous children and youth have been

overrepresented in our child welfare system. Indigenous children, like

all children, deserve to grow up in safe, loving homes, connected to

their community and culture. One of the sad realities of our colonial

history is that more than half of the children in government care are

Indigenous. It’s a legacy of colonialism that continues today, and we

are committed to changing that.

Reducing the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the

child welfare system by working with Indigenous communities is a

priority for this government as we move towards meaningful and lasting

reconciliation. My mandate letter from the Premier made it very clear

that this is a top priority for me as a minister. Bill 26 gives us a

practical, meaningful way to do just that.

This government believes that Indigenous children connected to

their community and culture are Indigenous children growing up in a

safe, healthy and loving environment. The proposed changes to the Child,

Family and Community Service Act will give Indigenous communities

greater involvement in child welfare decisions to help keep their

children out of care, safe in their home communities and connected to

their cultures.

For years now, Indigenous communities and leaders have demanded

urgent changes to keep Indigenous children out of care. Shortly after my

taking on the role as the Minister of Children and Family Development,

the leaders of the September 2017 First Nations Leadership gathering

told me I needed to make changes now in how our social workers do their

work. This message was driven home to me at the emergency meeting of

Indigenous child welfare, called by the federal government in

January.

The message was further strengthened in specific recommendations

in Grand Chief Ed John’s report. Grand Chief Ed John’s report was

developed after extensive consultation with First Nations and Indigenous

peoples and called for changes to the legislation that commits

government to work more collaboratively with Indigenous communities

right at the beginning of a child protection concern. While we have been

able to reduce the number of Indigenous children in care by almost 100

over the past year, by focusing on prevention and supporting families in

communities, we need to do more.

For that, we need to change the legislation. We listened to what

communities have been telling us, and we reviewed Grand Chief Ed John’s

report to inform us of what aspects of the legislation we needed to

change, urgently, in order to reduce the number of Indigenous children

coming into care. We also looked to what the United Nations declaration

on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the Truth And Reconciliation

calls to action tell us about the best interests of Indigenous children

and their entitlement to connection with family and

community.

Let me quote from the United Nations declaration on the rights of

Indigenous peoples: “Recognizing in particular the right of Indigenous

families and communities to retain shared responsibility for the

upbringing, training, education and well-being of their children,

consistent with the rights of the child.”

Through this bill and these amendments to our act, government is

responding to the immediate need to share information, engage Indigenous

communities early when a family and child are vulnerable and seek

solutions outside of child protection. These amendments include the

means for ministry social workers to make agreements with the Indigenous

child’s parents and community to allow for greater involvement in

planning for the child; additional ways that social workers, parents and

the Indigenous communities can collaborate proactively to keep a child

safe and prevent them from coming into care.

[2:45 p.m.]

There’s the requirement that social workers give continued notice

of Child, Family and Community Service Act proceedings to an Indigenous

community when it concerns custody of an Indigenous child; the added

right of an Indigenous child in care to learn about the practice of the

child’s Indigenous traditions, customs and language and the importance

of the child belonging to their Indigenous community; the strengthening

of the “best interests of the child” test.

When the courts and social workers are determining the best

interests of an Indigenous child, they will be required to consider the

importance of the child being able to learn about and practise their

traditions, customs and language and to belong to their Indigenous

community.

Finally, the amendments strengthen the guiding principles and

service delivery principles by stating that Indigenous families and

communities share responsibility for the upbringing and well-being of

Indigenous children. Indigenous children are entitled to learn about and

practise their Indigenous traditions, customs and languages and to

belong to their Indigenous community.

The impact of residential schools on Indigenous children, families

and communities should be considered in the planning and delivery of

services to Indigenous children and families. This change to the act’s

service delivery principles is inspired by the calls to action of the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

This government has adopted the UN declaration on the rights of

Indigenous peoples and the calls to action of the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission. There is much more work to be done, in

collaboration with Indigenous communities, to fulfil this commitment.

That process is led by my colleague the Minister of Indigenous Relations

and Reconciliation.

The changes to the act are a significant step forward for children

and families in the province, but we recognize that these are just first

steps. We need to work with our partners — delegated Aboriginal

agencies, the First Nations Leadership Council and individual First

Nations — to bring these amendments to life. That work will include

policy development and practice changes, and we look forward to hearing

from the experience and expertise of First Nations and delegated

Aboriginal agencies to learn from them on how to make these changes work

for First Nations families. It is just one of the many ways we are

listening to and working with Indigenous communities to reform the child

welfare system.

As I have said, it is just a beginning, not an end. I know — we

all know — that the approaches that have been taken up to now have

utterly failed Indigenous children and their families. I’ve demonstrated

my commitment to the transfer of jurisdiction. We are continuing that

work with individual First Nations in discussion to expand this work to

other Indigenous communities, and we have committed to that

transformational change with the First Nations Leadership

Council.

We know that delegated Aboriginal agencies also have decades of

experience to offer as we move towards Indigenous communities exercising

authority and jurisdiction over their children and families. This work

will take time, but my job right now is to reduce the number of

Indigenous children and youth in care. This bill is intended to do just

that.

The ministry has listened to years of concerns and demands by

Indigenous communities for change, and this government is acting on

those concerns. We have listened to the federal cry about an urgent

crisis in Indigenous child welfare across the country. It’s time to

start this change in British Columbia for those children now in care and

those whose families are in crisis. In communities across this province

right now, there are children and families who will benefit from the

changes in this bill. We know this because Indigenous communities have

told us so.

We agree that there is a crisis in Indigenous child welfare. It is

our responsibility to step up and hear what Indigenous communities are

telling us, what Grand Chief Ed John’s report says and what children and

families need and to make those changes now, while we work on the

systemic changes required to fully transform the system that has failed

Indigenous children and families.

I’m looking forward to further discussion on this bill at

committee stage.

L. Throness: Well, it’s a pleasure to also rise to speak to Bill 26, the Child,

Family and Community Service Amendment Act. Before I get into the

substance of the bill and consider some certain particulars of it, I

want to talk about the very big picture. The broader purpose of the bill

is very simple: everybody needs family. Every child, Indigenous or

otherwise, needs and deserves love, belonging and permanency, whether in

their birth family or in another kind of permanent family

situation.

[2:50 p.m.]

This was impressed upon me last week while sitting in the Standing

Committee on Children and Youth as we considered the report, Broken

Promises , which was written a year ago, by the Representative

for Children and Youth, about the tragic case of Alex Gervais, who

committed suicide in 2015 while in government care.

Central to that boy’s life was the absence of family. There were

opportunities for connecting him with his extended family that the

system neglected to follow up on, which would probably have made the

difference in his life. For a while, he was staying with his stepmother.

The police had to literally drag him away from his stepmom, but he

wasn’t allowed to stay.

Every child, including all 7,000 children in government care,

needs what Alex Gervais didn’t get. That’s love and belonging in a

permanent family of their own. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are ill

equipped to provide that.

Governments are a physical mechanism designed to achieve a

spiritual purpose. So there’s something of a mismatch, a disconnect

there. Governments deal with institutions. They’re paper mechanisms.

They have contracts and highly educated people with good salaries and

good intentions who work within guidelines and policies and professional

relationships and reporting hierarchies and caseloads. They have tightly

defined spheres within which they are able to work. They must make

judgment calls. There are limits to their authority before they need

permission from up the ladder, and those permissions take time. There

are different branches of government that abide by different laws and

regulations and policies.

Now, if you don’t have all these things, you can’t run a

government. Don’t get me wrong, but they can’t supply the intimate,

personal, permanent associations that a child really needs to be healthy

in life.

That brings me to this bill which expands the scope of officials

of the Ministry of Children and Family Development to make agreements

with all sorts of agencies, not only parents and relatives but delegated

Aboriginal agencies, First Nations, treaty nations and other yet-to-be

named groups or agencies. To the degree that they are institutions — and

I think that most of them will be institutions — they share that same

difficulty. Whether Indigenous or not, they are government bodies rather

than families.

What really disturbed me about Alex Gervais’s story was that one

of the institutions that failed him was a delegated Aboriginal agency.

In fact, MCFD made an agreement in Alex’s case with a delegated

Aboriginal agency, which, in turn, made a further agreement with a

private care provider to care for Alex. All three levels of oversight

failed him equally in ways that are described in great and sad detail by

the representative’s report.

What I’m saying is this. This bill is not a panacea. Just the fact

that the bill empowers a broadened scope of agreements will not, in

itself, make everything all right. I’m not expecting that handing things

over to Indigenous agencies, rather than MCFD, will suddenly fix all the

problems for the 63 percent of children in government care who are

Indigenous.

To give an analogy, the bill describes a new and broader path to

the goal of love and belonging and permanency, but it doesn’t

necessarily carry that child along that path. Whether that child arrives

at the goal of family or not depends on the quality and capacity and

character and passion and focus of ministry staff and those with whom

they make agreements. God knows there have been enough failures in the

past. There is no guarantee of success in the future. However, we do

think that this bill opens up new possibilities. It is a step in the

right direction, and for that reason, we will support the

bill.

Now, the minister corrected me the other day in estimates, and

rightly so, when I said that adoption and foster care lie at the heart

of what she does. She disagreed with me. She said that building and

strengthening families so that children can stay in the family home is

her most important job, and I have to agree with that.

Our guiding light has to be that goal — the goal of a permanent

family home for every child, a family that will provide the love and

belonging that they need to survive and thrive. On this point, I want to

quote from the Representative for Children and Youth, who appeared

before the standing committee on April 11. Here’s what he

said:

“One institution that we haven’t done a good job of supporting and

building is the family. Families struggle, for all kinds of historic

reasons. We’ve tried to find institutional solutions to that by building

and contracting with churches and building hospitals and hospital wings

and taking children from their families. That hasn’t worked. I think we

can all agree on that. We haven’t succeeded. Building the institution of

the family and supporting the family as an institution — I’m all for

that.”

I’m all for that too. I am all for

that.

[2:55 p.m.]

While I think it’s a good thing that we’re expanding the scope of

agreements with different nations and agencies and entities and parties

named in the bill, all of our efforts will be wasted — they will fail —

if we don’t, in the end, strengthen families and provide children with

permanent families where they are loved and where they belong. It’s as

simple as that. That, I think, is the government’s spiritual mandate,

and I think it’s a very difficult one.

That being said, let’s move on to consider the context of the bill

before us. In the wake of some stories like Alex’s story, Grand Chief Ed

John was given six months in 2015 by the former government to come up

with solutions to the vast overrepresentation of Indigenous children in

the care of government. Grand Chief John delivered his report in

November 2016, and it was greeted positively by the B.C. Liberal

government.

In fact, a year ago, here’s what the 2017 B.C. Liberal platform

said about improvements for Indigenous peoples: “Recognized as a key

priority, the government asked Grand Chief Ed John to do a comprehensive

review of this area, and his report has provided guidance on the path

forward. The government has already started implementing 40 of his 85

recommendations.”

The bill before us today, Bill 26, builds on the strong foundation

laid by our own government in fulfilment of Chief Ed John’s

recommendations — most noticeably, recommendation 41, which says

this:

“The province consider the following amendments to the CFCSA in

order to provide improved permanency plan­ning for Indigenous children

and youth — strengthening of

section 7 of the CFCSA to include mandatory

permanency planning for all children in care, including provisions to

ensure that for Indigenous children, permanency plans are jointly

developed by each child’s family and community, including elders,

cultural leaders, elected leaders and matriarchs, and including a

provision requiring independent review of permanency plans on an annual

basis.”

This is the context of the bill. It’s a response to the Ed John

report. I would point out that the bill attempts to provide a response

to about nine of the recommendations in Chief John’s report.

The bill provides broad authority for the director to make

agreements with a wide spectrum of interested parties in support of a

child in care: parents, relatives, delegated Aboriginal agencies,

prescribed First Nations and treaty First Nations. This is a change in

mindset by the government. The government is reaching out to other

partners in an attempt to stem the tide of Indigenous children in

care.

Here I have to pause to comment on what the Representative for

Children and Youth said in committee a couple of weeks ago when he

appeared there. He said that he was not in any way consulted by the

government about this legislation. I’m astonished by that. He literally

wrote the book on Alex Gervais. The former representative wrote many

other reports like them. The NDP, at that time, used those reports to

rail against the government. I find it unimaginable that the NDP would

now keep the representative completely in the dark about the

legislation.

I’m not talking about revealing any legislative secrets. I’m just

saying that they should have at least asked him what he would like to

see. But that was not done. It speaks to the arrogance of this young

government, as if they have all the answers. They don’t need advice from

anyone. Well, I think they’ll find out, over time, that they’re

wrong.

Allow me to continue. Indigenous children are 17 times more likely

to be taken into care than a non-Indigenous child. The government is

going to extraordinary lengths in this legislation to reach out to the

Aboriginal community because special measures need to be taken where

there are special needs. This special situation of need warrants a

change in the government’s mindset.

Let me give you a few more statistics. Children are taken into

government care when they’re unsafe in the family home. Aboriginal

children are heavily overrepresented in government care. As of March 31,

2017, where we find the latest statistics, there were 6,950 children in

government care, and 63 percent of them are Indigenous children, even

though just 5 percent of B.C. residents are Indigenous.

To narrow this down even further, there are 79,000 Indigenous

children under 18 in B.C. Six percent of all Indigenous children in B.C.

are, therefore, in the care of government. It was because of this

situation that we, when we were in government, mandated, funded and

supported the Ed John report. This bill, as I said, responds to nine

more recommendations of his report.

Of the Aboriginal children in care, 75 percent of them are in

foster homes, and 25 percent are in contracted care. I would remind the

House that contracted care is five times more expensive than foster

care, and it does not provide the love and warmth of a family home. The

report on Alex Gervais tells us that contracted care can, at times, even

harm a child. That’s why finding safe and loving care for Indigenous

children in their own communities will be better for them, as well as

saving the taxpayer money.

I will also point out that this bill will be less useful without

strong delegated Aboriginal agencies around the province.

[3:00 p.m.]

The Representative for Children and Youth has stated that a lack

of assistance to delegated Aboriginal agencies actually contributes to

the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care, because of

several reasons that he pointed out, among them high caseloads,

short-term contracts, not accounting for the unique needs of rural and

remote communities, long investigation times and a paternalistic

attitude on the part of MCFD staff. The government needs to resolve

these issues in order to make Bill 26 effective.

While this bill focuses on children and their plans for care, we

have to remember that it comes about because of problems with parents.

The children are not the problems; they’re the victims. They are unsafe

in Indigenous homes at a higher rate than non-Indigenous homes. Those

children really do need protection.

While we, the B.C. Liberals, were in government, we established

the overall direction of strengthening families so that every child can

be safe in the family home. The minister has to work hard to strengthen

Indigenous families in their communities. The representative has

indicated that if the communities were better resourced, they might be

able to make a difference in this overrepresentation simply by

strengthening families.

The other thing the representative said that was of interest to me

is that the bill provides that the director — and by that we mean a

responsible official in the MCFD — may make agreements rather than shall

make agreements. He felt that the bill does not go far

enough.

I might question that idea and point out that while, in most

cases, agreements will obviously be made, which is why we’re passing

this legislation, an agreement with another party should not yet be

required. This is because the government is responsible for those

children. The government is the guardian while they are in care. If

there is no entity that the government feels quite satisfied has the

capacity and ability and energy to carry out the terms of the agreement,

no agreement should be made.

This is an abundance of caution on the part of government, and

given what has happened in the past, this caution is justified. Now, at

some point in the future, as capacities develop, this may change. This

bill takes a step toward that, and it acknowledges that capacity is

developing, but it may take more time.

As I have already pointed out, the Representative for Children and

Youth has acknowledged that designated Aboriginal agencies lack

capacity, and they are among the best prepared. So the government has

work to do to strengthen agencies before it can give more care

away.

Another issue addressed in the bill is that of sharing private

information. For the purposes of community involvement in Indigenous

care, the bill provides for the sharing of personal information with

parties, such as Indigenous groups. We support this, as an aspect of the

best interest of the child, as long as the conditions of the information

agreements are robust.

Now I want to move on to talk about new guiding principles in the

bill, of which there are three. The first is this: that Indigenous

families and Indigenous communities share responsibility for the

upbringing and the well-being of Indigenous children. Now, that’s fine

with me. I think we can support that. But we have to remember that we

are amending

an act that applies to all British Columbians, not just

First Nations.

I wonder if there are any other ethnic communities that have a

tradition of collective responsibility for the well-being of their

children that might also be overrepresented among children in government

care. For example, I’ve heard that there are ethnic daycares in B.C.,

and that seems to me to be the kind of community care concept. It seems

only fair to me that every ethnicity that would want to be treated in

this way should have that privilege. So I’ll be asking in committee

whether any other ethnicity with a tradition of community care is

overrepresented and perhaps should be named in the bill as

well.

The second guiding principle is as follows: the director will have

to consider the impact of residential schools as they plan and deliver

services to Indigenous children and families. Now, I have no problem

with this one either, but I would like to know more specifics from the

government. How might that consideration impact a child welfare case in

concrete terms?

I would point out that this principle doesn’t impact any children

directly, because the last residential school was closed, in

Saskatchewan, in 1996, and in B.C., in 1984, in Mission. So no child

under 18 today has ever attended a residential school. This guiding

principle will apply only to parents and grandparents and indirectly to

children and grandkids.

I’m wondering what kind of consideration would be given to

parents. What kind of different allowance or decisions would be made

that would take residential schools into account? I’ll be seeking more

information at committee stage about this.

The third principle is this: the director must now consider the

importance of the child being able to learn about and practise the

child’s Indigenous traditions, customs and language and the importance

of the child belonging to the child’s Indigenous community.

[3:05 p.m.]

I won’t have any questions about this one, nor the related right

contained in the bill. That is the right to receive guidance,

encouragement and support to learn about and practise their Indigenous

traditions, customs and languages and belong to their Indigenous

communities.

In a broad sense, these principles and rights are all about

connecting Indigenous children to their culture and heritage, to kinship

and wider social circles within their communities as a protective

measure. So we think this is a healthy development, as long as it works,

and we’ll be watching closely to see that it does.

On a lesser point, the bill makes a number of changes with respect

to nomenclature of First Nations people. Specifically, the bill seems to

me to remove the word “Aboriginal” throughout, even though the word is

replete through other B.C. laws as well as federal laws and even in the

Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So I’ll want to ask in committee why

we’re removing the word “Aboriginal” from the act altogether, as if it’s

an incorrect term, although it is used even in our constitution. I’ll

want to ask about the legal ramifications of changing that

word.

Now I want to move on to five main things in the other content of

the bill. The existing act allows for voluntary agreements with the

director, Ministry of Children and Family Development. This bill

provides for a broader span of voluntary agreements so that others can

participate in planning for children — a parent, a child’s kin and

others — and youth agreements, with the appropriate legal entities

representing Indigenous communities.

Agreements will have to describe the party’s role. They can

withdraw from it without termination of the agreement. My comment to

that would be that the bill anticipates that some parties may withdraw

from the agreement. It suggests that the government anticipates that not

all parties to a voluntary agreement will be reliable. This means that

if a party withdraws, the government will need to remain the constant

responsible party in the care of the child. The government must not wash

its hands of Indigenous children just because it has an agreement. It

needs to remain there in support of the child.

The second thing is that directors must — and I would point out

that they must; this is not an option — complete a child protection

report upon taking a child into care. By this bill, if the report

concerns an Indigenous child, the director will be required to determine

whether to refer the report to a First Nation, the

Nisg̱a’a Nation or a treaty First

Nation in situations where the child resides on the nation’s land. It

will only be sent if the nation has entered into an agreement to take on

this responsibility and has been prescribed in a regulation approved by

cabinet.

I would point out here that such a referral will absolve the

director of further action, which I think means that the child will no

longer be in government care, and I’ll want to clarify that in

committee. If that is the case, then the order-in-council designation

process and the agreement itself and the party with whom we will make

agreements will have to be as robust as the government.

I want to emphasize this point. Unless the government is convinced

that a party to an agreement is as responsible as the government and can

do at least as good a job as MCFD, then it shouldn’t be designated by

cabinet as an alternate to government care. I will be asking what steps,

in terms of an accreditation process, the government will be taking to

assure this as it makes regulations attached to the act.

The fourth thing. Under this bill, the director will be able to

withdraw from a hearing related to the removal of a child if a parent

makes an agreement with the Indigenous legal entity representing the

child that the director considers is adequate to protect the child. This

will be true even if the agreement is with a government agency outside

B.C.

This power to withdraw is important. It will provide an incentive

to make agreements, and that’s a good thing. But it will also require

that both the entity and the agreement are strong. The government needs

to establish criteria in regulations ahead of time for such entities and

agreements.

Next, parents and Indigenous communities are being added to

receive notice concerning the hearing of all extensions of temporary

custody orders. When notice of the hearing is received, the person

served will be entitled to be a party at the hearing and to notice of a

hearing if they appear at the commencement of a hearing. I think this is

an important legal right for parents in Indigenous communities. Parents

and other interested parties need to be heard when the government wants

to continue to keep a child out of the family home. This is a big

deal.

I want to say that, quite often, I, as a critic, receive letters

from around B.C. They are long letters, and they are anguished. Parents

may be temporarily unfit, for whatever reason, to take care of their

kids, and their children do need protection, but that doesn’t mean that

the parent doesn’t love their children and that their children don’t

still love their parents. They need to be included in the

process.

[3:10 p.m.]

Finally, the director will be able to make agreements for planning

for children and service agreements with First Nations or a legal entity

representing another Indigenous community. It could include assessments

and investigations of children and families, making plans of care,

independence and placement decisions.

This bill also empowers the director to enter into agreements with

delegated Aboriginal agencies concerning the care of children. This

really is a broad power, really replacing the functions of government

with functions of First Nations or legal entities. I want to underscore

that the process of accreditation and oversight must be strong, and, as

before, while capacities in First Nations communities grow, this should

remain an option, with the understanding that it will be the normal role

of practice anyway.

To sum up, I have two main concerns about the bill, and I want to

assured that the government is not surrendering its responsibility for a

child to another party, particularly in a voluntary agreement, while the

child is in the government’s care. We say this because the bill

anticipates allowing a party to withdraw from an agreement without the

agreement itself being affected. Not all parties may be equally

reliable. It is the government’s responsibility to be the constant party

in the agreement to ensure the child’s continued safety and

well-being.

The case of Alex Gervais, a Métis youth who committed suicide in

2015 while in the care of MCFD, which delegated responsibility to a

delegated Aboriginal agency, which in turn hired a private care

provider, proves that this bill is not a panacea. It is possible for all

three levels of care to fail.

The quality of provider, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous, is

of first importance. But insofar as this bill empowers government

officials to find permanent placements for children where they can

experience love and belonging within their Indigenous context, that is a

good thing. We think that the measures here offer a better path toward

that goal for Indigenous children, although there is much work to be

done.

My final concern is very broad. This bill focuses on plans and

supports for children in care, but the real problem lies in the family

home, which is why the ministry has been attempting, for good reason, to

strengthen families.

The principle of strengthening families as a preventative measure

was established by the B.C. Liberal government as the result of

skyrocketing numbers of children in care during the 1990s. The removal

of a child from a home is not the fault of a child. The child is the

victim of an unsafe family situation. While the legislation before us

understandably focuses on the custody of the child because the

government becomes the child’s guardian while the child is in care, the

need for change lies in the parents.

The bill does offer an incentive of assistance and support to a

parent who signs an agreement with a director, but the clause could

perhaps be stronger. Perhaps give the director and parties that he or

she engages to place conditions upon the parents that would have to be

met in order to regain custody…. I’ll be asking about this in committee,

but I understand that because of situations that are experienced in

immediate families, the bill empowers ministry staff to entrust children

to a wider circle of Indigenous agencies and family connections, not

just in a child’s birth family. We all sincerely hope that this will

reduce their overrepresentation of children in care. On that we can all

agree.

With that, I will look forward to committee stage, where we will

be able to examine each

section of the bill in greater

detail.

S. Furstenau: Yesterday we celebrated Mother’s Day. It’s one of my favourite

days of the year. There’s always breakfast. There are cards and homemade

gifts. There are hugs and kisses. I always feel the deep happiness and

sense of all being right with the world, the slowing down of time as I

savour the moments of warmth and connection with my family.

Mother’s Day isn’t just all about mothers. It’s about the bond,

the love that connects us as mothers to our children, who are for us

precious and valuable beyond measure. It’s a day for society to

recognize the intrinsic and valuable role that mothers play in raising

future generations. There’s no love like the love I have for my

children. It is boundless. It is ferocious. It is unrelenting. I can

imagine nothing worse than being separated from them.

Over the course of this last year since the election, since

opening our constituency office, I have become increasingly aware that

we are failing, in this province and in this country, to honour mothers,

to honour the elemental relationship between mothers and their

children.

[3:15 p.m.]

Let us begin in the hospitals. Imagine, within hours of giving

birth, one of the most transformative experiences a woman can go

through…. Imagine, within hours of holding your infant son or daughter

for the first time, having a social worker come into your hospital room

to inform you that your infant is going to be removed from you. It’s

2018 in Canada, and government employees are removing infants from their

mothers in hospitals.

Often these are first-time mothers who have yet to reveal to

society and to themselves how capable they are at being a mother of a

child. A Huu-ay-aht mother whose infant was removed from her with no

clear, specific cause fought back in the B.C. Supreme Court and, with

the help of her lawyer and her community, was reunited with her

infant.

In Cowichan, a group of women, including a midwife and a parent

advocate, rallied around and supported a mom who had been informed that

her infant was to be removed at the hospital. These moms were with their

infants this Mother’s Day, but they will also have something that no

mother should have to live with — the fear of losing their children to a

government agency.

As one mother whose children have never been apprehended

explained: “I have raised my children in fear — fear that I will be

judged for what they are wearing, what’s in their lunch, how I speak to

them in public. That fear is in my cells. It has affected who I am as a

mother, and it has affected my children.”

Why does this mother feel this fear? Because she’s Indigenous. As

an Indigenous mother, she has every reason to be fearful. Fewer than 10

percent of children in B.C. are Indigenous, but they make up nearly 65

percent of children in government care, which means, statistically, that

this mother is right to be afraid.

I can’t imagine. I can’t begin to fathom how this would affect my

day-to-day experience — to be so deeply afraid of losing my children to

a government agency. As mothers, we are subject to other people’s

judgments all the time. But for most of us, these judgments do not

translate into the very real possibility that our children could be

taken from us.

What are the outcomes for the children in care? These outcomes,

sadly, reinforce our fears and worries. An

article by Katie Hyslop in

the Tyee last week reinforces exactly why federal Indigenous

Services Minister Jane Philpott has said that we have a humanitarian

crisis in Canada.

In B.C., children in care are more likely to spend time in jail in

their lives than they are to graduate from high school. Across Canada,

60 percent of homeless youth have been in the foster care

system.

Continuing from Hyslop’s article, according to Shelly Johnson,

assistant professor of education at Thompson Rivers University and a

former child welfare social worker: “Governments haven’t just known

about this crisis for four decades. They created and perpetuated a

system that keeps Indigenous kids in government care.”

Johnson continues: “The whole system was established to maintain

control over Indigenous people. When you have Indigenous children in

your care and custody, you have all the power over that family.” All the

power.

As Hyslop points out in her article, in his 1982 report on the

adoption of First Nations and Métis children outside the country,

Assistant Chief Justice Kimelman said that the child welfare system was

an act of cultural genocide. He explained that from inside the system,

it’s difficult to see the macro-level impacts, but the cumulative

effects of each decision resulted in catastrophe.

Kimelman wrote: “Every social worker, every administrator and

every agency or region viewed the situation from a narrow perspective

and saw each individual case as an exception, as a case involving

extenuating circumstances.”

I see that in my riding. I raise issues, heartbreaking examples,

of how the application of this act is failing families. I am met with

justifications and excuses. I hear from parents over and over that they

have been told: “You will never see your children again.” Or: “If you

don’t comply, your children will be taken.” I see it when MCFD staff,

from front-line social workers to ministry staff, justify each action,

each apprehension, each time that the systemic issues play out over and

over again.

[3:20 p.m.]

Each case, they think, is justified. Yet there is, at the same

time, the acknowledgement that there are systemic issues. MCFD needs to

work very hard and very diligently to reconcile this conflict, this

contradiction. If, indeed, there is systemic paternalism and systemic

discrimination, and the minister acknowledges this in her comments, then

each and every action needs to be assessed.

This is one of the truth and reconciliation calls to action — that

the federal, provincial, territorial and Aboriginal governments monitor

and assess neglect investigations. I urge the minister to take this call

seriously. Without accountability becoming embedded in the practice, the

systemic issues will continue, and parents and families will continue to

be traumatized, terrified and desperate for help and support.

One of the most heart-wrenching stories I heard was from a victim

support person with the RCMP. She worked with a mom whose infant had

been apprehended. She helped the mom get through the entire list of

requirements that MCFD had given her. The mom and the victim support

worker both thought that if these requirements were fulfilled, the child

would be returned. But after the significant effort on the part of the

mom, she was told that there would now be new requirements. It broke

that mother. She had worked hard in good faith to do what she had been

told would be necessary to be reunited with her child, and then she was

denied that fundamental right to be the mother to her own

infant.

Are children actually safer or better off in care? A few,

certainly, but the statistics and reports tell a chilling tale. There is

no lack of researching and reporting on the many issues, challenges and

failures of B.C.’s child welfare system.

Since the release of the Ted Hughes report in 2006, the

Representative for Children and Youth has released dozens and dozens of

reports, reviews and statements with recommendations to address the

ongoing failures within the child welfare system, and what is the

current reality? Still today, each month the representative’s office

receives 200 reports on critical injuries and deaths. Of these 200, 85

per month are related to child welfare services. That’s 1,000

service-related reports of critical injury or death reviewed by the

representative’s office each year that are specifically related to

service delivery.

What are the top three reported issues? Sexual abuse, drug

overdose and suicide attempts. In the last three months, according to

the Representative for Children and Youth, there have been roughly 80

reports of suicide attempts. This is a catastrophe.

It’s been ten months since the new government was sworn in, and

what has changed? In my constituency office, we hear from parents in

despair whose children were removed not because of their inability to

parent but because of the lack of support, usually related to poverty.

For example, a woman is abused by her partner. The police and social

workers are called to an incident at the home. The abuser is removed

from the home as a precaution. The children are also removed and

separated from their mother. The children’s first trauma is the act of

violence to the mother. The second trauma is being separated from the

mother, the person whose comfort they need and for whom they can also be

comforting.

We underestimate the value of this connection and that the comfort

is not from parent to child only; that shared comfort is necessary for

the family to feel grounded in love, which helps them overcome

trauma.

What we have witnessed in our work with local families is a

discrepancy between what the legislation says and what actions are

taken. More worrying still is that we hear ministry management saying

that their message to ministry staff is to be creative in finding

solutions that will keep Indigenous children out of care. That message

is taking a long time to reach staff on the ground because it’s still,

ten months into this new government’s term, a daily fight for each of

these families to receive the support they need to keep their children

at home.

[3:25 p.m.]

The question I ask myself is this. If the directive from the top

of the ministry is to do everything possible to keep Indigenous families

together and in their communities, why can’t we see the evidence of this

at our constituency level? What are the consequences for staff members

who are not following management direction?

I’m not the only one asking this question. In his comments to the

Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, the Representative for

Children and Youth said that there is recognition within the ministry

that the priority should be to support families, but that he just

doesn’t see “the implementation of this in practice.”

Indeed,

section 2 of the Child, Family and Community Services Act,

as it stands right now, which outlines the guiding principles of the

legislation that currently governs the Ministry of Children and

Families, states that “a family is the preferred environment for the

care and upbringing of children and the responsibility for the

protection of children rests primarily with the parents” and “if, with

available support services, a family can provide a safe and nurturing

environment for a child, support services should be

provided.”

But what do we see in our constituency office week after week?

Parents desperate for help and support from us as they try to navigate a

system that is not living up to these guiding principles.

Every one of these parents wants to parent their children. Every

one of them wants to know what it will take to get their children back.

Every one of them is asking for more access to their children, which is

sometimes as little as one hour per week. Every one of them has had a

stack of paperwork with evidence of a process that many of us in this

chamber would find impossible to navigate. Every one of them has had

detailed knowledge of the Provincial Court and MCFD systems. Every one

of them has said to us that they want to make sure that this doesn’t

happen to somebody else.

As desperate as they are to be reunited with their own children —

and, I would argue, as a result of the trauma of separation — they are

selflessly motivated to make changes to the system to protect others

from having to undergo the same.

Let’s begin with the fundamental assumption that parents have the

right and the ability to raise their children. My question is: why can’t

parents point to

section 2 of the act today and expect support from this

system? If their children are in care and the government is paying a

foster parent or a group home to support that child, why can’t these

parents expect that support?

When two out of three children in care in B.C. are Indigenous, we

are a long way as a province from righting the legacy of assimilation

policies, residential schools and the forced removal of children that is

so sadly woven into the fabric of our nation’s history.

We talk about reconciliation, but what does it really look like?

Reconciliation means putting forward legislation that includes the

United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the

Truth and Reconciliation calls to action. This legislation does

not.

Reconciliation means empowering ministry staff at all levels to

fund programs and provide supports that focus on family preservation, as

per

section 2 of the act, and putting consequences in place when this

does not happen. Reconciliation means giving the mother the benefit of

the doubt, rather than subjecting her to a paternalistic, colonial

process that erases her voice and her agency in the decisions that

affect her the most. Reconciliation means providing social workers with

a deep understanding of cultural practices and how they impact

decision-making for parents.

I imagine a different future for families in B.C. It’s one where,

if the Ministry of Children and Family Development knocks on your door,

you open it up and gladly let them in — gratefully, willingly — because

you know that they are there to provide you with the support that you

need.

We have seen examples of the outcomes of programs like this in our

province. Take the ’Namgis Nation in Alert Bay. If children there are in

need of protection, they remain in contact with the biological parent or

parents, who stay in the child’s life while they are supported in their

journey to becoming healthier parents. As one social worker said in a

recent news article: “It’s like two canoes side by side on the journey

together.”

Social worker and director of Alert Bay’s ’Namgis Community

Services Wendy White said: “Our role is to provide resources,

information, referrals and support, but we are not the ones guiding the

decision-making for the child.” Instead, it’s the family.

[3:30 p.m.]

I visited Alert Bay twice this year, and both times I stood in awe

of the teenagers and youth who were advocating for the end of fish farms

in our province. These are empowered young Indigenous people whose

energy is focused on making the world a better place.

Yet so many of this province’s youth who have spent their

childhoods in the foster care system and have no family canoe alongside

them are focused on survival. Being in survival mode means that people

cannot work to their full potential. How many children in our province

are not reaching their full potential?

The cases that come to my constituency office are the latest in a

long, tragic history of government intervention in Indigenous families.

The overwhelming numbers of Indigenous children in our welfare system,

both as a country and a province, are the result of a historical legacy

that continues to this day. As settlers moved into what is now known as

British Columbia, they attempted to assimilate the vibrant Indigenous

cultures and nations who were already here.

But they didn’t just take the physical land itself. They targeted

the children. Agents of the government would enter the communities and

homes of Indigenous peoples and take their children from them, as is so

tragically represented in Kent Monkman’s The Scream and Richard

Wagamese’s Indian Horse .

The government tried to justify these practices. Marks of cultural

difference were perceived as child abuse. Government workers saw

birthmarks common in some Indigenous communities and deemed them

bruises. Homes that looked different from your average European home

were unfit. Religious, linguistic and ceremonial practices were called

“savage” and in need of “civilization.” In this way, the apprehension of

Indigenous children was justified and normalized in government

policies.

The stolen children were placed in residential schools across the

country. There were five of these schools on Vancouver Island and 18 in

British Columbia. In the care of religious and educational officials,

these children were forbidden to speak their own languages or maintain

their religious and cultural practices. Often they were purposely placed

in residential schools far away from their traditional homes.

The scale of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse was

monumental. Many children died. Some were forcibly sterilized. These

schools operated for over 100 years, and the last one only closed in

1996. In the middle of the 20th century, adoption was seen as another

tool for assimilation. Again, this was grounded in the justification

that government was acting in the best interests of Indigenous

children.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

By this time, there were already multiple generations of

residential school survivors. Therefore, intergenerational trauma was

widespread. Children’s homes and communities were impacted by the

far-reaching repercussions of residential schools. They were also often

growing up in rural, underserved communities with low socioeconomic

status.

Rather than addressing the root of the problem or providing

Indigenous families with the resources to heal and support their

children, social workers were instructed to remove the children. They

were removed not only from their families and communities but also from

the region, the province and, sometimes, the country.

From this arose the infamous Sixties Scoop, as thousands of

children were apprehended and placed in the homes of non-Indigenous

families. Some of the adoptive families were abusive or had internalized

racist ideas. Some were located in completely different regions of

Canada or even in other countries, especially the United States, which

created jurisdictional nightmares for children and parents seeking

reunification.

Sometimes children were simply lost. Once apprehended, government

agencies would not often give the parents any information regarding

where or with whom their children were. Between 1951 and 1991,

Indigenous and Inuit children were taken into care and placed with

non-Indigenous parents, where they were not raised in accordance with

their cultural traditions nor taught their traditional

language.

Take the case of Lillian Semaganis, for instance. In 1973, she

opened the newspaper and found the faces of her two young daughters

being advertised for adoption. She had not been notified that they were

even facing adoption. When they were adopted, it would be decades before

she found one of them.

[3:35 p.m.]

The fate of the other, a little girl named Cleo, only came to

light after Lillian’s death. Cleo had been adopted out to a white family

in New Jersey, far from her home in Little Pine, Saskatchewan. She had

wanted nothing more than to go home to Little Pine to find her mother

and her siblings, but she was not permitted to. Cleo’s family only

discovered her fate this spring, 45 years later, in an investigation by

CBC News.

The Sixties Scoop lawsuits claim cites the loss of cultural

identity, psychological, emotional and physical abuse of those

apprehended. The claim includes $750 million for the survivors, $50

million for an Indigenous healing foundation and $75 million for legal

fees. I wonder how much the millennial scoop will cost future

governments.

Nico Trocmé is the director of McGill University school of social

work and principal researcher for the Canadian incidence study of

reported child abuse and neglect, a national database that collects

information on the characteristics of kids and families who come to

child welfare’s attention. As reported in today’s Tyee ,

according to Trocmé, the main reason cited for taking Indigenous

children away from their family and into government care is neglect. And

neglect is another way, according to Trocmé, to describe

poverty.

He says: “I’ve certainly never seen any evidence from any of the

research to indicate that there is something endemic to First Nations

families that would explain a higher rate of placement. It has much more

to do with the high rates of poverty and the difficult social and

economic circumstances they’re living in.” Yet the Canadian Human Rights

Tribunal has ruled that the government has been systematically

discriminating against 163,000 First Nations children by refusing to

fund services for them at the same rates as non–First Nations

children.

At the same time, children across Canada are apprehended from

Indigenous families at an astonishing rate. Children are apprehended

because their families can’t afford adequate housing, food and clothing

for their families and are being put into homes where foster parents are

given funds to provide for the children. Today women are having their

babies taken away from them hours after birth in hospitals across this

province, including the hospital a short drive from here in the Cowichan

Valley.

Young parents are afraid to access government services because

they worry that government policies will result in the apprehension of

their children. Once a child is apprehended, reunification is an uphill

battle. It can be hard to even find information about where the child is

or how they are doing. To avoid “emotional and physical harm, sometimes

Indigenous parents are not even allowed to attend hearings regarding

their child’s placement.”

There is an urgency to act. Every day that a mother is separated

from her child is excruciating. As one expert put it: “We are not

impounding cars.” But that responsibility to act urgently cannot

overshadow Indigenous authority. We need to do the hard work urgently.

We need to meet with every nation in the province urgently. We need to

learn from people in the system urgently. And we need to follow First

Nation direction urgently.

We cannot misuse that urgency as the right to blunder ahead with

the latest iteration of government telling First Nations families how

they ought to exist. Authority implies consent, something else that has

been systematically denied to Indigenous peoples. Indigenous parents did

not consent to their children being placed in residential schools or

adopted by non-Indigenous families.

Indigenous peoples have also been denied consent over their own

bodies, as demonstrated by the prolific sexual abuse in residential

schools and the ongoing cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women

across this country. They are still being denied consent in terms of

energy development and land use in their communities, as demonstrated by

Trudeau’s assertion that the pipeline will go through.

The very, very least we could do — and this is far too little and

far too late — is give Indigenous peoples true consent and authority

over the welfare of their children. In the words of one Cowichan elder:

“Why do Aboriginal people need to prove to the white people that we can

raise our own kids?” That brings me to the proposed legislation, Bill

26, the Child, Family and Community Service Amendment Act.

[3:40 p.m.]

To start, I have significant concerns about how this was rolled

out. The consultation was far from acceptable. Were the people who this

will impact involved in its creation? Do we fully understand how it will

play out in communities? Was this drafted and then given to a few First

Nations, a few days to read it, and then proceeded despite their

concerns? From what has been communicated to me, that is what has

happened.

When asked about the legislation being tabled, the First Nations

summit of nations and tribal councils in B.C. said that the proposed

changes were prepared unilaterally. In a Discourse Media

article by

Brielle Morgan, the First Nations summit raises the concerns that the

bill’s proposed amendments “do not go far enough in addressing the

principles of the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action and the

Indigenous peoples inherent right to self-determination and

self-government.”

The summit wrote: “The amendments do not lay the foundation for

the more significant shift required to change the child welfare

conditions where the overrepresentation of First Nations children in

care remains the most serious issue. The summit says it hopes that the

government will realize that more profound improvements are

needed.”

Why, for example, aren’t we seeing a clear commitment, in line

with the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action, to monitor and assess

neglect investigations, to provide adequate resources, to enable

Indigenous communities and child welfare organizations to keep

Indigenous families together, to ensure that social workers and others

who conduct child welfare investigations are properly educated and

trained about the history and impacts of residential school.

Deputy Speaker: Member, you are the designated speaker?

S. Furstenau: I am. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, the

office that has produced over 70 reports on child welfare in B.C., was

consulted after the legislation was drawn up and given 24 hours to

respond to the proposed changes — 24 hours. “It was a fait accompli,”

the representative said. The delegated Aboriginal agencies, the agencies

providing the services to Indigenous families across this province were

not asked for input.

As quoted in a CBC interview, Mary Teegee, chair of the delegated

Aboriginal agencies provincial forum expressed her concerns. “As a

partner working with the province and also with the federal government,

we were not consulted. There are a lot of issues and concerns, and we

haven’t had the time to digest what those are.” Teegee also pointed out

in another interview: “We get our mandate from chiefs, so we’re

representing about 121 chiefs in child and family services, as per the

band council resolutions, so by not talking to us, you’re missing that

whole segment. We are the ones who provide the actual services in

communities.”

Again, the urgency of a crisis should not be misused as a licence

to skip the hard work that needs to be done in this province. This bill

may be an improvement on the abysmal status quo, but it is built within

the existing, problematic MCFD framework and far from

self-determination. We will not change the course of history if we

conti