British Columbia Hansard — 4 October 2018, p.m., Issue 155 (41st Parliament, 3rd Session)

20181004pm-Hansard-n155

British Columbia — Debates (Hansard)

Third Session, 41st Parliament OFFICIAL REPORT OF DEBATES (HANSARD) Thursday, October 4, 2018 Afternoon Sitting Issue No. 155 THE HONOURABLE DARRYL PLECAS, SPEAKER ISSN 1499-2175

PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Entered Confederation July 20, 1871) LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR Her Honour the Honourable Janet Austin, OBC Third Session, 41st Parliament SPEAKER OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Honourable Darryl Plecas EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Premier and President of the Executive Council ............................................................................................................... Hon. John Horgan Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance............................................................................................................................Hon.

Carole James Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Training..................................................................................................... Hon. Melanie Mark Minister of Agriculture.........................................................................................................................................................Hon. Lana Popham Attorney General.................................................................................................................................................................Hon.

David Eby, QC Minister of Children and Family Development ............................................................................................................ Hon. Katrine Conroy Minister of State for Child Care...................................................................................................................................... Hon. Katrina Chen Minister of Citizens’ Services.................................................................................................................................................... Hon.

Jinny Sims Minister of Education ............................................................................................................................................................ Hon. Rob Fleming Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources ...............................................................................................Hon. Michelle Mungall Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy............................................................................................. Hon.

George Heyman Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development ..............................................Hon. Doug Donaldson Minister of Health .....................................................................................................................................................................Hon. Adrian Dix Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation ......................................................................................................... Hon.

Scott Fraser Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology............................................................................................................................ Hon. Bruce Ralston Minister of State for Trade...............................................................................................................................................Hon. George Chow Minister of Labour ...................................................................................................................................................................Hon.

Harry Bains Minister of Mental Health and Addictions............................................................................................................................ Hon. Judy Darcy Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.................................................................................................................. Hon. Selina Robinson Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General ........................................................................................................... Hon.

Mike Farnworth Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction..............................................................................................Hon. Shane Simpson Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture.....................................................................................................................................Hon. Lisa Beare Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure................................................................................................................ Hon.

Claire Trevena LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Leader of the Official Opposition................................................................................................................................Andrew Wilkinson, QC Leader of the Third Party ....................................................................................................................................................Dr. Andrew Weaver Deputy Speaker................................................................................................................................................................................

Raj Chouhan Assistant Deputy Speaker................................................................................................................................................................... Linda Reid Deputy Chair, Committee of the Whole ................................................................................................................

Spencer Chandra Herbert Clerk of the Legislative Assembly ....................................................................................................................................................Craig James Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees.................................................................................................................................

Kate Ryan-Lloyd Clerk Assistant — Committees and Interparliamentary Relations ..........................................................................................Susan Sourial Sessional Law Clerk...............................................................................................................................................Loredana Catalli-Sonier, QC Sergeant-at-Arms ................................................................................................................................................................................. Gary Lenz

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF MEMBERS Ashton, Dan (BC Liberal) ........................................................................ Penticton Bains, Hon. Harry (NDP)...............................................................Surrey-Newton Barnett, Donna (BC Liberal) ................................................... Cariboo-Chilcotin Beare, Hon. Lisa (NDP).............................................Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows Begg, Garry (NDP) ..................................................................... Surrey-Guildford Bernier, Mike (BC Liberal) .......................................................

Peace River South Bond, Shirley (BC Liberal)......................................... Prince George–Valemount Brar, Jagrup (NDP)..................................................................... Surrey-Fleetwood Cadieux, Stephanie (BC Liberal)....................................................... Surrey South Chandra Herbert, Spencer (NDP) ..................................... Vancouver–West End Chen, Hon. Katrina (NDP).....................................................Burnaby-Lougheed Chouhan, Raj (NDP) ............................................................... Burnaby-Edmonds Chow, Hon.

George (NDP)............................................... Vancouver-Fraserview Clovechok, Doug (BC Liberal) ................................ Columbia River–Revelstoke Coleman, Rich (BC Liberal) ...............................................................Langley East Conroy, Hon. Katrine (NDP)......................................................... Kootenay West Darcy, Hon.

Judy (NDP) ............................................................New Westminster Davies, Dan (BC Liberal) ..........................................................Peace River North de Jong, Michael, QC (BC Liberal) ............................................ Abbotsford West Dean, Mitzi (NDP)...............................................................Esquimalt-Metchosin D’Eith, Bob (NDP) ...............................................................Maple Ridge–Mission Dix, Hon. Adrian (NDP)......................................................Vancouver-Kingsway Donaldson, Hon.

Doug (NDP).....................................................................Stikine Eby, Hon. David, QC (NDP)............................................. Vancouver–Point Grey Elmore, Mable (NDP)....................................................... Vancouver-Kensington Farnworth, Hon. Mike (NDP) ...................................................... Port Coquitlam Fleming, Hon. Rob (NDP) .....................................................Victoria–Swan Lake Foster, Eric (BC Liberal)........................................................... Vernon-Monashee Fraser, Hon.

Scott (NDP) ................................................ Mid Island–Pacific Rim Furstenau, Sonia (BC Green Party) ........................................... Cowichan Valley Gibson, Simon (BC Liberal) ................................................. Abbotsford-Mission Glumac, Rick (NDP)........................................................Port Moody–Coquitlam Heyman, Hon. George (NDP) .............................................. Vancouver-Fairview Horgan, Hon. John (NDP) ...............................................

Langford–Juan de Fuca Hunt, Marvin (BC Liberal) .......................................................Surrey-Cloverdale Isaacs, Joan (BC Liberal) .........................................Coquitlam–Burke Mountain James, Hon. Carole (NDP)...................................................Victoria–Beacon Hill Johal, Jas (BC Liberal)...............................................

Richmond-Queensborough Kahlon, Ravi (NDP)..............................................................................Delta North Kang, Anne (NDP)..................................................................Burnaby–Deer Lake Krog, Leonard Eugene (NDP) ..................................................................Nanaimo Kyllo, Greg (BC Liberal)............................................................................ Shuswap Larson, Linda (BC Liberal) .............................................Boundary-Similkameen Lee, Michael (BC Liberal) ......................................................

Vancouver-Langara Leonard, Ronna-Rae (NDP) ....................................................Courtenay-Comox Letnick, Norm (BC Liberal)............................................Kelowna–Lake Country Ma, Bowinn (NDP) ................................................... North Vancouver–Lonsdale Mark, Hon. Melanie (NDP) ..................................... Vancouver–Mount Pleasant Martin, John (BC Liberal)...................................................................... Chilliwack Milobar, Peter (BC Liberal)....................................

Kamloops–North Thompson Morris, Mike (BC Liberal) ..........................................Prince George–Mackenzie Mungall, Hon. Michelle (NDP).................................................... Nelson-Creston Oakes, Coralee (BC Liberal) ...........................................................Cariboo North Olsen, Adam (BC Green Party)........................... Saanich North and the Islands Paton, Ian (BC Liberal)......................................................................... Delta South Plecas, Hon.

Darryl (Ind.) ..........................................................Abbotsford South Polak, Mary (BC Liberal) ............................................................................ Langley Popham, Hon. Lana (NDP)..............................................................Saanich South Ralston, Hon. Bruce (NDP) .......................................................... Surrey-Whalley Redies, Tracy (BC Liberal) ..................................................... Surrey–White Rock Reid, Linda (BC Liberal) ................................................

Richmond South Centre Rice, Jennifer (NDP) ............................................................................ North Coast Robinson, Hon. Selina (NDP) ....................................... Coquitlam-Maillardville Ross, Ellis (BC Liberal)..................................................................................Skeena Routledge, Janet (NDP) .................................................................. Burnaby North Routley, Doug (NDP) ................................................Nanaimo–North Cowichan Rustad, John (BC Liberal) ..............................................................

Nechako Lakes Shypitka, Tom (BC Liberal) .............................................................Kootenay East Simons, Nicholas (NDP) ........................................Powell River–Sunshine Coast Simpson, Hon. Shane (NDP)................................................ Vancouver-Hastings Sims, Hon.

Jinny (NDP) .............................................................Surrey-Panorama Singh, Rachna (NDP) ........................................................Surrey–Green Timbers Stewart, Ben (BC Liberal) ................................................................Kelowna West Stilwell, Michelle (BC Liberal)..............................................Parksville-Qualicum Stone, Todd (BC Liberal)........................................

Kamloops–South Thompson Sturdy, Jordan (BC Liberal).......................................West Vancouver–Sea to Sky Sullivan, Sam (BC Liberal)...............................................Vancouver–False Creek Sultan, Ralph (BC Liberal) ......................................... West Vancouver–Capilano Tegart, Jackie (BC Liberal) ................................................................ Fraser-Nicola Thomson, Steve (BC Liberal)..................................................... Kelowna-Mission Thornthwaite, Jane (BC Liberal) .............................

North Vancouver–Seymour Throness, Laurie (BC Liberal) ..................................................... Chilliwack-Kent Trevena, Hon. Claire (NDP) .............................................................. North Island Wat, Teresa (BC Liberal) ................................................Richmond North Centre Weaver, Dr. Andrew (BC Green Party) ......................... Oak Bay–Gordon Head Wilkinson, Andrew, QC (BC Liberal) .............................. Vancouver-Quilchena Y ap, John (BC Liberal)..........................................................

Richmond-Steveston LIST OF MEMBERS BY RIDING Abbotsford-Mission ..........................................................................Simon Gibson Abbotsford South ..................................................................... Hon. Darryl Plecas Abbotsford West .................................................................... Michael de Jong, QC Boundary-Similkameen.....................................................................

Linda Larson Burnaby–Deer Lake ...............................................................................Anne Kang Burnaby-Edmonds ..............................................................................Raj Chouhan Burnaby-Lougheed................................................................... Hon. Katrina Chen Burnaby North................................................................................

Janet Routledge Cariboo-Chilcotin ............................................................................Donna Barnett Cariboo North .................................................................................. Coralee Oakes Chilliwack.............................................................................................. John Martin Chilliwack-Kent..............................................................................Laurie Throness Columbia River–Revelstoke........................................................

Doug Clovechok Coquitlam–Burke Mountain................................................................. Joan Isaacs Coquitlam-Maillardville..................................................... Hon. Selina Robinson Courtenay-Comox ................................................................. Ronna-Rae Leonard Cowichan Valley ............................................................................

Sonia Furstenau Delta North ...........................................................................................Ravi Kahlon Delta South.................................................................................................Ian Paton Esquimalt-Metchosin.............................................................................Mitzi Dean Fraser-Nicola........................................................................................

Jackie Tegart Kamloops–North Thompson............................................................Peter Milobar Kamloops–South Thompson ................................................................Todd Stone Kelowna–Lake Country....................................................................Norm Letnick Kelowna-Mission.............................................................................

Steve Thomson Kelowna West.........................................................................................Ben Stewart Kootenay East .....................................................................................Tom Shypitka Kootenay West ...................................................................... Hon. Katrine Conroy Langford–Juan de Fuca............................................................. Hon. John Horgan Langley....................................................................................................

Mary Polak Langley East .......................................................................................Rich Coleman Maple Ridge–Mission ............................................................................ Bob D’Eith Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows ..........................................................Hon. Lisa Beare Mid Island–Pacific Rim .............................................................. Hon. Scott Fraser Nanaimo ...............................................................................

Leonard Eugene Krog Nanaimo–North Cowichan.............................................................. Doug Routley Nechako Lakes ...................................................................................... John Rustad Nelson-Creston.................................................................. Hon. Michelle Mungall New Westminster ......................................................................... Hon. Judy Darcy North Coast..........................................................................................

Jennifer Rice North Island ............................................................................ Hon. Claire Trevena North Vancouver–Lonsdale ................................................................. Bowinn Ma North Vancouver–Seymour ......................................................Jane Thornthwaite Oak Bay–Gordon Head ..........................................................Dr.

Andrew Weaver Parksville-Qualicum .....................................................................Michelle Stilwell Peace River North.................................................................................. Dan Davies Peace River South ............................................................................... Mike Bernier Penticton................................................................................................ Dan Ashton Port Coquitlam .................................................................... Hon.

Mike Farnworth Port Moody–Coquitlam .....................................................................Rick Glumac Powell River–Sunshine Coast ..................................................... Nicholas Simons Prince George–Mackenzie ..................................................................Mike Morris Prince George–Valemount.................................................................

Shirley Bond Richmond North Centre ........................................................................Teresa Wat Richmond-Queensborough .......................................................................Jas Johal Richmond South Centre........................................................................ Linda Reid Richmond-Steveston..................................................................................

John Y ap Saanich North and the Islands............................................................Adam Olsen Saanich South............................................................................Hon. Lana Popham Shuswap .................................................................................................... Greg Kyllo Skeena ......................................................................................................... Ellis Ross Stikine ..................................................................................Hon.

Doug Donaldson Surrey-Cloverdale............................................................................... Marvin Hunt Surrey-Fleetwood ...................................................................................Jagrup Brar Surrey–Green Timbers ......................................................................Rachna Singh Surrey-Guildford ....................................................................................Garry Begg Surrey-Newton.............................................................................Hon.

Harry Bains Surrey-Panorama........................................................................... Hon. Jinny Sims Surrey South............................................................................... Stephanie Cadieux Surrey-Whalley........................................................................ Hon. Bruce Ralston Surrey–White Rock ............................................................................. Tracy Redies Vancouver-Fairview ............................................................ Hon.

George Heyman Vancouver–False Creek....................................................................... Sam Sullivan Vancouver-Fraserview .............................................................Hon. George Chow Vancouver-Hastings .............................................................. Hon. Shane Simpson Vancouver-Kensington ..................................................................... Mable Elmore Vancouver-Kingsway ................................................................... Hon.

Adrian Dix Vancouver-Langara .............................................................................. Michael Lee Vancouver–Mount Pleasant ................................................... Hon. Melanie Mark Vancouver–Point Grey...........................................................Hon.

David Eby, QC Vancouver-Quilchena ......................................................Andrew Wilkinson, QC Vancouver–West End....................................................Spencer Chandra Herbert Vernon-Monashee...................................................................................Eric Foster Victoria–Beacon Hill ................................................................ Hon. Carole James Victoria–Swan Lake .................................................................. Hon. Rob Fleming West Vancouver–Capilano .................................................................

Ralph Sultan West Vancouver–Sea to Sky ..............................................................Jordan Sturdy Party Standings: BC Liberal 42; NDP 41; BC Green Party 3; Independent 1

CONTENTS Thursday, October 4, 2018 Afternoon Sitting Page Orders of the Day Committee of the Whole House............................................................................................................................................ 5477 Bill 36 — Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2018(continued) Hon. S. Robinson M. Lee Hon. D.

Eby Report and Third Reading of Bills......................................................................................................................................... 5477 Bill 36 — Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2018 Second Reading of Bills .......................................................................................................................................................... 5478 Bill 39 — Poverty Reduction Strategy Act Hon. S. Simpson M. Hunt R. Glumac L. Throness R. Leonard J. Y ap Hon. M. Mungall S. Furstenau M. Dean S. Gibson R. Singh S. Sullivan J. Brar E. Ross Hon.

J. Sims

THURSDAY , OCTOBER 4, 2018 The House met at 1:31 p.m. [Mr. Speaker in the chair.] Orders of the Day Hon. M. Farnworth:I call committee stage debate on Bill 36, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act. Committee of the Whole House BILL 36 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT (No. 3), 2018 (continued) The House in Committee of the Whole (Section

B) on Bill 36; R. Chouhan in the chair. The committee met at 1:33 p.m. On

section 31(continued). Hon. S. Robinson:Before we get started on this section, I just want to acknowledge that I have some staff here sup- porting me today. I have, behind me, Greg Steves, ADM, and Andrew Pape-Salmon and Tricia Daykin to help with this part of the bill. M. Lee: I wanted to ask the minister…. In terms of the greater inclusion on

section 8(2), we have reference to the “standard set by a provincial, national or international body or any other code or standard making body” itself. If the minister can just walk us through the approach in terms of the expansion of those references and how that will be incor- porated as part of the minister’s powers to make regulations pursuant to this subsection. Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the question from the member opposite. The amendments align the act with the more recent legislation by expressly stating the options avail- able to the minister when adopting materials by reference.

It just makes clear that the minister may adopt codes and standards with any changes that the minister considers necessary. [1:35 p.m.] It’s important because it is sometimes necessary for provinces and territories to vary adopted materials to suit their unique circumstances. We have the ability to vary codes and standards under the Building Act as well — just to make sure that the member understands that. M. Lee:As a follow-on question to that, does the minister foresee any challenges with any conflict between the stand- ards? And in which case, which standards would supersede and be paramount? Hon. S.

Robinson:This actually is not a change of prac- tice; it’s just clarifying authority. M. Lee: Just to clarify that, in terms of: what is the prac- tice, then? Hon. S. Robinson: We adopt the most appropriate codes and standards for the technology in question. For example, it’s the Canadian electrical code, and in order to achieve that, there’s consensus across Canada. Being able to adopt that is all this does. It’s just allowing us to stay updated, as necessary. M.

Lee: In terms of adopting a national standard, as the one that the minister just described, what would be another example where the international standard might come into play in the provincial context? Hon. S. Robinson:Most of the codes and standards adop- ted for use here in British Columbia are developed at the national level. But in some cases, depending on the tech- nology in question, the best code or standard might be one developed by another body or an international organization of standardization. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, around boilers, is such an example.

Sections 31 to 44 inclusive approved. Title approved. Hon. D. Eby: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment. Motion approved. The committee rose at 1:39 p.m. The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair. [1:40 p.m.] Report and Third Reading of Bills BILL 36 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT (No. 3), 2018 Bill 36, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2018, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed. Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading of Bill 39, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. [R. Chouhan in the chair.] 5477

Second Reading of Bills BILL 39 — POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY ACT Hon. S. Simpson:First, I move that the bill now be read a second time. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act will require the devel- opment of a poverty reduction strategy to achieve targets and timelines and to reduce the rate of poverty in British Columbia. This is a historic piece of legislation. I know I spoke in this House for the first time about these issues in 2005. I think it was in 2011 that I first introduced a private member’s bill to legislate a poverty reduction strategy in British Columbia. That wasn’t successful.

I know my colleagues on this side, when we were sitting in opposition, on numerous occasions reintroduced that legislation for a poverty reduction strategy in a number of forms. We know, broadly in the community, that there has been a call for a poverty reduction strategy to be legislated in Brit- ish Columbia and for a plan to be put forward to implement that strategy as we move forward. The call has been for a plan that established targets and timelines that were measurable for how we will reduce poverty and prevent poverty in Brit- ish Columbia.

Today British Columbia has about the second-worst poverty rate in the country. According to the latest statistics available, which is the 2016 market basket measure produced by Stats Canada, there are 557,000 people who are living in poverty in our province, and 99,000 of those are children. So 12 percent of our population. We know that over half that number, or at least about half that number, are working poor. They’re people who have a paycheque coming into the house, and they can’t make ends meet.

We know that if you have a disability, if you are Indigenous or if you are a recent immigrant, you are two to maybe three times more likely to be on that list than if not. And as I said, we have almost 100,000 children living in poverty in our province, and we know that poor kids means poor families. The challenge is: how do we begin to address this? These are alarming statistics. I would imagine and expect that these are alarming statistics for every member of this House. They’re statistics that no member of this House can be happy about.

Legislating a poverty reduction strategy, I believe, helps to get us there. This piece of work that we’re talking about today, this act that we’re talking about today…. [1:45 p.m.] Some people say it’s enabling legislation because it gives us the tools to put a plan in place and to see how that plan will evolve. I consider it, as much or maybe more so, to be com- mitment legislation. It’s legislation that, in very clear terms, makes a commitment for this ministry and for the govern- ment — this government, governments moving forward — to take poverty seriously.

It’s a commitment to embrace the challenge of addressing poverty and addressing poverty in a number of ways — to deal with the questions of affordability, to begin to bring those numbers down but also to look at how we create opportunity for people moving forward, to participate in the economy, to be engaged in the economy. It’s how we develop a strategy of social inclusion that brings more people to the table and for those people who are struggling and who are living poor to be able to fully participate in our society and to not face the alienation that comes with the stigma of poverty.

The numbers are incredibly inordinate. We know the numbers of Indigenous and First Nations people who are liv- ing in poverty. When you have 5 or 6 percent of the popula- tion that’s Indigenous and 35 or 36 percent of your poverty list is First Nations, we’re doing something wrong. So how do we make reconciliation be about helping to address those issues and working with First Nations leadership, with friendship centres and with others to address those issues as we move forward? The other thing that we know is that this has to be a gov- ernment-wide initiative.

If this is an initiative of my ministry, it’s not going to be successful. It has to be an initiative of gov- ernment. As I noted, there are 557,000 people who are liv- ing in poverty. A little bit less than 200,000 of those are cli- ents of my ministry. So that says the majority of people who are struggling with poverty aren’t involved with the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. They’re the working poor. They’re senior citizens. They’re kids, young people who have not been but may very well some day be experiencing a relationship with my ministry. But they’re not today. It’s a large number.

We have 100,000 people on PWD, persons with disabilit- ies, benefits. But there are about 330,000 working-age adults in this province who self-identify as having a disability. Many, many of them are struggling, and many of them who are struggling are not directly involved with my ministry. So it becomes a government-wide initiative.

We know that many — and I’ll speak about this in a minute — of the things that we’ve done since coming to power have been about a focus on addressing this issue and moving forward with aspects of what will be incorporated in the plan — not waiting for the plan but moving and taking action now. We’ll talk about those in a minute. When we look at poverty reduction, many people will look at it and say: “This is a social issue. It’s about dealing with a social justice matter. ” That’s true. This is also very much an economic issue, and it has to be seen as an eco- nomic issue. When I talk to business groups….

I’ve been travelling and talking to local chambers of commerce about how we gen- erate employment opportunities for persons with disabilit- ies and others, and talking to business groups about this, the Business Council, the chamber and others. I talk about 5478 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

the important economic value of addressing poverty, about an initiative that was first put forward, I know, a number of years ago by the Business Council and the chamber, where they talk about shared prosperity. Those two organizations, the B.C. Chamber of Com- merce and the B.C. Business Council, have talked a lot about shared prosperity. It’s an initiative that I very much concur with, and I spoke to their leaders about how we make that work and how we weave that into the work that we’re doing in my ministry. This is a wealthy province.

There are many, many people, lots of people, doing very well, but we know there are 12 per- cent — probably more than 12 percent, but 12 percent iden- tified — in poverty who are facing challenges. How do we share that prosperity? [1:50 p.m.] I know the business leaders in this province, the vast majority of them, are prepared to embrace that and say: “We want to be part of the discussion on how to do that. ” That’s got to be part of the work we do, and that will be part of the success of the plan. It’s about employment. It’s not good enough.

We can meet our targets and timelines that we put in this plan, and we can get the single mom with a child to $28,000 a year in income, which will clear the poverty line, but just.

It’s not good enough to just get them there and say: “Okay, well, we’re done with you now. ” We have to meet the chal- lenge of saying: “How do we give that mom, who has escaped violence with her child, the opportunity to know that she can get the training that she needs?” The door can be open for an employment opportunity, and not so far down the road, she’s not living on $28,000 a year, but she has a good-paying income and a future that she can be excited about for her and her child. That’s about breaking the cycle of poverty. A strategy has to be not about getting just to the measure.

It has to be about how we break that cycle. That’s why, when we set the tar- gets and timelines in this plan — a 50 percent reduction in child poverty in five years, a 25 percent reduction in overall poverty in five years…. We set that challenge there because I know that in terms of breaking the cycle, I am absolutely convinced that we need to focus on young people, on kids, and on creating opportunities for them and their parents to break that cycle in order for them to be able to have those lives that we all want for ourselves and our families and that they want too.

We have to figure out how we get there, as we move forward. The third economic reality of this is a simple equation of net value. If we have people going to work and paying taxes and not needing to rely on government to support them for their basic and fundamental needs, that’s a good thing. We’re always going to have lots of people who are going to need our help. We’re going to have lots of people who are vulnerable. But there are a whole lot of people out there that opportunity is what they need, and if we can create that opportunity, they will be excited to grab it.

Their challenge is how they get to that opportunity, as we move forward. The timing for this…. Maybe just to step back. The reality of this, too, in terms of the work we’re doing and the com- mitment of the government…. This is a piece of work that we as the NDP have been working hard on for a long period of time, but it’s also a piece of work that fit very much into the agreement that brought this government into place, and that is the agreement with the Green caucus. It is the CASA agreement.

If you read that agreement, you’ll know that what we’ve done here, in fact, is part of that agreement, which says that it’s to design and implement a provincewide poverty reduction strategy that includes addressing the real causes of homelessness, including affordable accommodation, sup- port for mental health and addictions and income security. It’s part of that agreement as well, and I’m excited that the Green caucus wanted this in the CASA agreement. It rein- forced the importance of this initiative for me. As we move forward and look at how we address these, we have other obligations to meet.

In the legislation, we speak specifically to an acknowledgment of reconciliation, to the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. As we went through the consultation around poverty that we completed, we talked to about…. In the formal consulta- tion, we had 28 sessions around the province. We talked to about 8,500 people, the majority of whom, about 60 percent, are living poor today.

We also had the opportunity in that conversation to talk to key organizations, including the leadership council, the friendship centres, the Métis Nation, and to talk about how we move forward as part of this plan, not just the poverty reduction strategy and the poverty plan as it will unfold in the coming months but also a track of that that is respect- ful of and focused on the cultural differences and realities for First Nations people. [1:55 p.m.] That becomes particularly important when you look at the inordinate numbers of First Nations who are struggling with poverty and the complex issues that revolve around poverty as compared to the general population.

I’m proud of the work we’ve been able to do with the friendship centres. We’ve worked closely with the friendship centres across the province as well as with other First Nations leadership groups — the friendship centres as ser- vice providers, the leadership groups — involved them in these conversations, but we know there’s more work to do there. The commitment is that work will unfold as we see how, in practical terms, a poverty reduction strategy becomes a piece of reconciliation moving forward. What are the links and the connections we have to make? We will work hard to make that work.

The requirement of the legislation is that we have a plan released before the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2019, and that the plan be updated every five years. The plan will Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5479

commence as of January, formally, for the purposes of the target and timeline. The reason for that, of course, is that there are budget implications to this work and to meeting these targets and timelines. Most appropriately, we will incorporate those into the overall budget discussions for government. Annual reports will be required during this on an annual basis. We will commence next year. The first annual report will come by October 1, 2020, a little more than a year out from that, to allow that.

That’s a report that will talk about the actions that were taken based on the plan, the effect of those actions on people who are living in poverty and what progress has been made on key targets in the legislation and in the plan. In addition to that, the legislation establishes an advisory committee with a number of key groups that must be rep- resented on that committee. That committee will have the opportunity to have commentary in that report and to speak to the work that government has done — to speak to the plan, to speak to the successes of the plan, to speak to the shortcomings of the plan.

Those comments will be inde- pendent comments and will be incorporated so everybody can understand views that are not exclusively those of the government. The targets and timelines are, for many people, the core of this bill. We identified two five-year targets in the plan. The first is for a 25 percent reduction in overall poverty in our province. Based on the current numbers, the 557,000 people, that means 140,000 people being taken out of poverty, using Canada’s official poverty line, now the market basket meas- ure, as was identified in the federal plan that was released recently.

The bill also targets a 50 percent reduction in the rate of poverty for children. In 2016, the latest data we have, 99,000 children under the age of 18 lived in families with incomes under the poverty line. We know that poor kids are poor families. A 50 percent reduction in the poverty rate would move some 50,000 children out of poverty by 2024, the com- pletion of the five-year period. We’re looking here at 140,000 people as the base commit- ment that we have made over the five years. This won’t be an easy target to meet. We have a pretty good sense of how we will get there and how we will achieve this.

It will be mean- ingful for people, and it will be meaningful moving forward. The other issue that will be dealt with in poverty, around this, of course, is around issues of depth of poverty. We haven’t mandated a target for that. It is more complex in some ways. But that is the measure…. The difference between breadth and depth? The breadth of poverty says how many people are below the poverty line. The depth of poverty says how far below that line people are. [2:00 p.m.] In the case of children, we have the worst depth of poverty numbers in the country.

Deep poverty is considered to be at least 50 percent of the way below the poverty line. We have significant challenges around depth of poverty. That is not an easy matter to deal with. The bill requires the government to consider both of those issues: breadth and depth. The amount of people below the line who are living with the challenge of depth — that’s prob- ably our most challenging issue, all in all. The other thing that the bill does is it acknowledges groups of people who are more likely to experience poverty.

We have identified the list of those who face the challenges most explicitly and from what we heard in the consultation process. I’ve already said that Indigenous people, those with disabilities, recent immigrants are the most likely to face that. We also know that rural communities…. It was very insightful to have taken the 28 trips and meetings and con- sultations around the province. It was to ensure, also, that this didn’t become a Metro Vancouver, south Island initiat- ive. We heard about poverty in rural communities.

The challenges are different than in urban areas, and they will require different approaches. What we know about this plan is it isn’t going to be able to be a one-size-fits-all. There are initiatives that we will be able to apply across the board, but the plan is going to need to be nimble enough to be able to get at the realities of different communities that face dif- ferent challenges. The work that’s ongoing now is to refine what that looks like, heading towards the plan in February. As I said before, poverty incomes for people…. The affordability gap is a critical issue, but poverty isn’t only about income.

During the consultations, we heard that from a lot of people who talked about all the factors that make it hard for them to break the cycle of poverty. Whether it’s affordability, employment, supports for children and famil- ies that they don’t have, we heard about how difficult it is. We heard about social alienation. I think back to…. I grew up in the Downtown Eastside in a housing project on welfare with my mom and sister. In my first campaign in 2005, I was knocking on doors in one of the B.C. Housing projects in my constituency, and I ran into three people who were my peers at Raymur housing pro- ject.

One of them was now taking care of their grandkids. This was 70, 80 units, not a big development. I ran into three people that I’ d grown up with who were living there, all still living in poverty. Their kids had been in poverty, their grandkids, probably. They were good people. They weren’t bad people. They were smart people. They could not figure out how to break that cycle. Their kids didn’t break it, and the chances are pretty good that their grandkids won’t break that cycle. So the challenge for us is to figure out: how do we help people to get at that cycle and break that cycle as we move forward?

We heard a lot about social inclusion. We heard about people who felt alienated from what’s going on. We heard about people who said: “I’ d love to be able to go to Starbucks and have coffee with my friends, but I can’t afford a $5 cup of coffee, so I stay home and watch TV . I don’t go out and engage, and my confidence erodes. ” 5480 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

As we move forward, we’re going to take what we learned from that process and from those bigger issues. That means that we need to address the questions of affordability of goods and services and housing. We need to look at the opportunities for people to move out of poverty, and we need to look at the inclusion of people living in poverty in com- munities. The bill addresses the need to do that. I’m hearing that from the advisory forum that I have in place, who are giving me that message as well. I spoke about the advisory committee that gets struck under the auspices of this bill.

That’s a body that will provide a touchstone for me, as the minister, to be able to work to move forward. So we’re heading there. We know that as we move forward to the plan, there will be a lot of work to do. [2:05 p.m.] I want to assure people that we as a government have not waited on the poverty reduction strategy and the poverty plan to take action on this issue. Y ou’ll know that the gov- ernment, since coming to power in 2017, has taken a range of actions that very much are part of a poverty reduction strategy.

It’s the $6.6 billion investment in housing over the next ten years that includes $734 million to fund safe and secure places for women and children who are fleeing violence and abuse and almost $300 million to build the 2,000 modular units that are fully subscribed now to ease the pressures on homelessness, which include 24-7 support services. And 2,500 new supportive homes for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness were also announced.

In addition: closing the renoviction and lease loopholes through the residential tenancy branch and providing new protections for renters moving forward, as well as enhancing both SAFER and the rental assistance program to allow those people who are in the private market but struggling with the affordability of rent to be able to get by. A critical piece: the first new, significant social program in British Columbia in a couple of decades, the child care pro- gram — a $1 billion investment in the child care program to ensure that people can afford child care.

We know, from all aspects, that one of the keys to our success is giving people, particularly single moms with kids, the opportunity to go and get training, to go to work. That means being able to afford child care. This child care initiative is very broad. One of the most exciting pieces for me is that families earning less than $45,000 a year will be able to receive free child care.

We have invested in children and families: $23 million of additional and ongoing funding and supports for women and children fleeing violence; $26 million to expand legal aid services, including Indigenous and family law; as well, $10 million for new family dispute resolution; $30 million for agreements with young adults who are aging out of care — to support that; and, of course, the 50 percent — next year to be 100 percent — cut in MSP premiums to ease the pressures there. We’ve also invested money in PharmaCare, in reducing ferry rates — and certainly for seniors.

Of course, for those people who travel back and forth across the Port Mann and the Golden Ears, they’re saving upwards of $1,500 a year on the elimination of tolls. In my ministry, we invested over a three-year period about $750 million to provide the $100 increase in rates, to increase earning exemptions and to put a transportation supplement in place for persons with disabilities.

And we’ve invested $100 million in eliminating tuition for adult basic education and English language learning, for providing tuition support for former youth in care, for reducing interest rates on student loans and for an additional invest- ment in Indigenous skills training. I’m very excited that after all of these years, we’re able to get this piece of legislation before the House. I’ll be even more excited when we get this piece of legislation passed. But it’s only the beginning to get this done. This is about us being able to enact this, to bring it forward.

And as I said, it is not my ministry’s initiative; it’s our government’s initiative. It’s working with the federal government, it’s working with Indigenous government, it’s working with community, it’s working with business and, together, reducing the levels of inequality and of poverty in this province and giving more hope and opportunity for those 557,000 people who are looking to have their lives affected and changed. Hon. Speaker, I look forward to hearing the debate on this bill in the House. I look forward to the discussion.

I’m very hopeful that we’re going to have strong support on all sides of the House for this bill. I’m hoping we’re going to have strong support and the strong commitment and endorsement that we need to take action moving forward. [2:10 p.m.] Then let’s get on with the job. I’m excited about it. I know the Premier and our government are excited about it. We know it’s not easy. We go into this with our eyes open, but we are committed to making the changes to make people’s lives better in real ways and to give them hope that they have not felt for a long, long time. M.

Hunt:I rise today, of course, to speak to Bill 39, which is the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act that is before us. I’m certain that each and every one of us in this House shares the same goal, and that is making sure that we help people get out of poverty. Where we find disagreements in this House is how we reach that shared goal. On this side of the House, we believe that growing the economy and ensuring that job creation projects get built are the way to do that. Our record on this speaks for itself — our jobs plan, our technology strategy, our skills-for-train- ing blueprint.

The minister even raised the issue of our single parent initiative, where we were helping single parents, tak- ing care of their tuition fees, their child care needs and trans- portation needs so that they could get the education so they could get the jobs and absolutely break the cycles of poverty. We delivered nation-leading job growth in our province on our watch. The child poverty rate, in fact, declined 53 per- Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5481

cent from 2006 to 2013, and the total poverty declined by 24 percent. Our efforts to get an LNG industry off the ground to con- nect people to jobs across the north and in every part of this province were all a part of this. I’m pleased to see that the government has embraced this vision and the potential for major investments to change lives. I congratulate them for taking it across the finish line for the benefit of so many people and, ultimately, our province. I want to encourage the government to keep embracing this type of approach and to get more projects from planning to construction.

We should not make any mistake about this. Jobs are an individual’s best and most life-changing path out of poverty. When it comes to the legislation today, I am simply left wondering why it took so long. Since the members opposite formed government, British Columbians have been told that a poverty reduction plan was in the works. It was coming. Well, first of all, it was the spring of 2018. Then oops, it fell back to the fall of 2018.

Here’s what the minister himself said back in July: “In discussions with members of my advisory forum, there was a strong consensus to include targets and timelines in the legislation that would hold government accountable. ” I agreed, though it did mean that the legislation would take a little longer to complete. Well, here we are in the fall, and the long-promised legis- lation has landed.

It turns out — well, actually the minister referred to it a little bit in his opening remarks — that what is before us is almost identical to the private member’s bill that was tabled by the government when they were in opposition 19 months ago. It has taken 19 months since the then opposition tabled the private members bill, which was M225, the Poverty Reduction and Economic Inclusion Act. It included, in sec- tion 2…. I’ll just read that for you.

It says: “The purpose of this act is to increase equality and economic inclusion in British Columbia by requiring the development and imple- mentation of a strategy that includes specific and legislated targets and timelines in order to reduce the breadth and depth of poverty. ” The minister refers back to him introducing a bill in 2009. I don’t have that before me. I just went back to the latest one that was 19 months ago. It says specifically “the need for spe- cific legislated targets and timelines. ” So how was that part of the delay? That was part of their initiative to begin with.

In that time, what has been added? Well, what has been the result of this delay is, in fact, setting a firm deadline for the actual plan to be released. Of course, that makes sense because back when it was introduced as a private mem- ber’s bill, there were no timelines involved. They didn’t know when anyone would act. Now we have the timeline, March 31, 2019. [2:15 p.m.] In fact, the minister talks about the consultation program that went on. When I attended the meeting that he held in Surrey, I thought it was a consultation for the plan, not for

an act to create a plan nine months or five months later. Well, actually, now it’s almost a year later. The real change has been less than 50 words — that there is going to be, in general, for the total poverty, a 25 percent reduction and a 50 percent reduction in five years. Well, that’s not rocket science. We can look at the other poverty reduction plans across this nation, and we can see that that’s the ballpark of what they’ve all been working on and working towards. Certainly, that’s what we accomplished back in the period 2006 to 2013. So I wish that we had had a chance to debate this back in the spring.

And I wish that we had seen it in black and white so that we could reach the goals that we all share, that we all want to get to. Let’s be honest with ourselves. We want to get to it as quickly as possible. Months have slipped away, and the chance of improving lives has as well. What’s so surprising is how the government’s actions on this file…. They said it’s the very heart of their approach to people in this province. So instead of a plan, instead of action, well, we get a delayed and, actually, rewarmed legislation from 19 months ago.

Y et instead of concrete action and a concrete strategy, again, we’re now dealing with developing a program, developing a plan. Or should I say it’s a proposal to come up with a strategy to develop a blueprint to come up with a plan.

Actually, it was interesting, because when the government was on this side and the critic of the day was speaking to the then minister involved, her comment was: “Just sign the paper. ” Well, I think she has discovered what it’s actually like being on the other side of the House, because she signed a paper saying there’ d be no 3 percent hydro increase, and in fact, we have more than that. It is a challenge being on the government’s side. It is a process. Then we read on. Of course, the minister has said that we want this to make the government accountable. I find it interesting.

What motivation is here to hold the government to account? If we look at the third-to-last

section of the legis- lation, it says: “Section 5 of the Offence Act does not apply to this Act or the regulations. ” In other words, there is no pen- alty for contravening this act. When we look back at the B.C. Liberal government when they took power in early 2000, they were committed to balanced budgets. What they did was they passed a law that said that for the ministers involved, 10 percent of their salary will be withheld, and if they don’t meet the balanced budget legislation for their ministry, they lose 10 percent of their income. But there’s no incentive here.

There’s no incentive for the minister or his following ministers. And I have absolutely no question about the intents of this minister. I absolutely want to make that very clear. But there is no incentive here. This can actually just be ignored. It can just be written off, and ultimately, what’s it worth? Holding the government to account will simply be the continued job of the opposition, and the government doesn’t have to listen to a thing. As a matter of fact, if we look at subsection 3(4) as 5482 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

we’re going through this legislation…. I’ll read this page to you.

Section 2(1) says: “The minister must…. ” And 2(2) says: “The minister must…. ” So 3(1) says: “The strategy must…. ” And 3(2): “The strategy must…. ” It goes on with the word “must. ” Must, must — all requirements of what must be in this plan, except when we come to (4). It says: “The minister must review the targets set in subsection (1) before December 31, 2023 and, after doing so” — he or she — “may lay a report before the Legislative Assembly respecting future targets for the reduction of poverty. ” Why is this all of a sudden “may”?

Actually, I’m giving the minister a heads-up of what I’m most likely going to bring up as we go clause by clause through this. Why “may”? Why isn’t it a “must”? [2:20 p.m.] Why aren’t we asking and demanding of whoever the minister is that day, when they review it, that they continue this on — that they continue the program on instead of being like we’ve unfortunately seen in some provinces, where this just collects dust on a shelf? I know that’s not the intent of this. I know that’s not where we’re wanting to go, but unfor- tunately, sometimes those sorts of things happen. Then we have also in this legislation….

In 3(2), it talks about how the strategy “must include initiatives, ” and it says that they are “opportunities for persons living in poverty to move out of poverty. ” Again, my question is simple: how are we going to do that? Are we going to do that…? As the minister said, this is not he alone and his ministry alone that’s doing it. This is completely across government. But is it going to be through something like a jobs plan, like we did when we were in government? Or are we going to go the way of Newfoundland and simply send cash? I don’t know. I’m concerned where this is going. Then we have this

part in the act that also comments about the commitment to Indigenous peoples. Y es, as the minister talked about, we talk about reconciliation. We talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations declarations. But you know, these are simply commitments to nice-sounding words. What’s the commit- ment to real action? Now, fortunately, we do have the LNG project that’s hap- pening up north. But my question is: where are the employ- ment and training opportunities in traditional territories for Indigenous peoples?

Why isn’t that kind of thing here in this enabling so that we actually see that coming forward in the strategy. Now, it may; it may not. We don’t know at this time, and we won’t know until March of next year when we see that. But it certainly was a part of this caucus’s intent when we were in government to make sure that LNG and the whole pipeline and everything with it was going to be a part of bringing economic development and economic opportunit- ies for Indigenous peoples here in the midst of this province.

Also, I find it somewhat concerning that in the midst of the legislation, back when we’re talking about the general- ities of the initiatives, we talk about initiatives to increase the affordability of goods, services and housing for people living in poverty and other low-income British Columbians. But when we come to 5(2) and dealing with the actual scope of the legislation, somehow affordability of goods and ser- vices is missing. It gets buried under something. I don’t know where for sure. Housing is certainly there as one of the listed ones, but where is the issue of affordability? Where are these things?

I simply don’t know. I simply can’t see them. Of course, my hope is that the minister will quickly get to the plan, a plan of real substance, a plan of real action, and we don’t have more nice words being spoken and more delays. Really, let’s get on with it. R. Glumac:I’m very happy today to debate the legislation, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. I’ d like to speak a little bit about what got us here today. What does poverty mean to you? We’ve all seen it in dif- ferent forms. Maybe you know someone that’s living in poverty. Maybe you yourself have been living in poverty.

We live in a province that’s so abundant with resources and riches that it does not seem possible that we see so much poverty in this province today. Poverty takes on many forms. It’s the people that are in line in the food bank, and those lineups are getting longer and longer every year. Poverty is families that have to leave the heat off in the winter because they have to make a choice between their heating costs and saving money for rent or food. Poverty is an individual…. I’ve heard this story talking to a grocery store owner in my constituency who has run his grocery store for years and years.

More and more often he sees people come in with a limited amount of money, $5 or $10. They go down the aisles, and they make every penny count and get as much food as they possibly can for a limited amount of money. [2:25 p.m.] Poverty is a family living paycheque to paycheque, seem- ingly doing fine, but one little unexpected event that comes into their lives and they will not have the rent for the next month, and they may be out on the street. Poverty comes in many forms.

Generally, it’s defined as the lack of sufficient income to provide for basic necessit- ies of life, consistent with the norms of society in which one lives. The Conference Board of Canada uses low-income meas- ures to assess how people fare compared to the general pop- ulation, and they define the poverty line as 50 percent of the national median income. In B.C., there are now 557,000 people living below the poverty line, and 99,000 of them are children. This is the second-worst poverty rate in Canada.

Under the previous government, we saw this divide between the rich and the poor grow larger and larger because the rich were very well served for 16 years by the previous government. The top 2 percent were well taken care of. If you had the corporate money to donate, then you had Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5483

the ear of the previous government, while the voices of those people living in poverty were not heard. Now we have a new government, and what are we doing to address poverty? Over the last year, thousands of people have moved into new affordable homes. We’re rolling out the most ambitious child care plan in B.C. history, which will make child care more accessible and affordable for B.C. families. We’re raising the minimum wage that has been left stag- nant for far too long. We’re cutting MSP premiums in half, and we’re eliminating them next year.

This makes a big dif- ference for people that are scraping to get by month to month. But it’s not enough. B.C. is, as we know, the last province in Canada to not have a poverty reduction strategy. Now, with this legislation, we will be getting a poverty reduction strategy, and finally the voices of the poorest people in our society that have been ignored for 16 years will be heard. The legislation that we’re debating today is the foundation of this, the foundation of B.C. ’s first poverty reduction strategy, which will be released in early 2019.

It sets out the targets and the timelines, defines the scope of the strategy and ensures that the government will be held responsible — not just this government, but future governments. These tar- gets and accountability will be in law and will ensure that poverty reduction will continue to be a priority. Over the next five years, we will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent and the child poverty rate by 50 percent — and it’s about time.

Some in the opposition have criticized us for taking so long, which I find to be incredibly ridiculous, considering they had 16 years to come up with the poverty reduction strategy. And here we are. We’re going to be bring- ing it forward. This strategy is informed directly from the people living in poverty today across the province. The reason it’s taken us a year to get to where we are here is that we had to take the time to sit down with the people that are living in poverty across this province and hear directly from them, because they haven’t been heard for so long.

Between November 2017 and March 2018 we held meet- ings in 28 communities, talking directly to people about poverty. In each of these meetings, there were two questions asked. One question was: what are the issues facing you and people living in poverty right now? The second question was: what would address these issues and help you and people out of poverty?

Given that the voices of people in poverty have been unheard for so long, I would like to take some time to go through and share the issues that were raised and the challenges that were identified through this public input opportunity. [2:30 p.m.] There are many different areas that were touched upon. The biggest one, of course, was housing. Everyone knows the lack of affordable housing. Housing is one of the biggest costs that families face in British Columbia. It makes up a significant proportion of the household income.

In many cases, rents were so high that people had to make choices and rely more and more on things like food banks and other services just to make ends meet. The rental market over the last many years has continued to get tighter and tighter, with more and more competition for fewer and fewer units. Finding a place to rent became more and more challenging.

If you had any kind of issue that you had as an individual in the past — if you had a break in your rental history, if you didn’t have a strong reference from a landlord, if your credit check wasn’t strong — then you were at the bottom of the pile, and sometimes you couldn’t find a place to rent. This kind of discrimination was happening in many different areas. Even people that were receiving income assistance were facing discrimination when landlords were making a choice between who to rent to, or people with disability benefits. [L.

Reid in the chair.] There are prejudices out there, identified through this public engagement, against certain races or ethnicities. Pre- judices against families with children or pets. These were the challenges that were faced by people that were living with low income, trying to find a place to rent in today’s rent- al market. There were even bidding wars for renting places. Sometimes landlords would take cash payments as deposits. If you were lucky enough to have a place to live, and if you lived in a place for a long time, you also faced challenges with economic evictions.

With market rates rising, rental rates rising, landlords would often want to introduce steep rental increases in order to capture that high rent. Either that or they would not make investments that were needed to improve the quality of housing. There were many stories shared about people living in homes that were full of mould and bedbugs and lacked heat, or not providing access to simple amenities like a laundry room. Other times tenants were faced with renovictions and demovictions. It was identified very clearly that there is a need for more affordable rental housing, social housing and emergency shelters.

Part of the other challenge that was faced by renters and tenants was the pressure from landlords. There was an uneven power…. There is an uneven power dynamic between landlords and tenants. Many people complained about landlords operating outside of the Residential Ten- ancy Act. It was difficult if not impossible to get access to any kind of legal recourse in situations where they were forced out of their homes or faced challenges getting their damage deposit back.

Sometimes when government increased income assist- ance, this resulted in a corresponding increase in rents, so that the only people that benefitted from the change were the landlords themselves. Another issue that we face, which we see every day, espe- 5484 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

cially in urban areas around the province — in Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna and many other areas — is homeless- ness. One of the challenges when you’re homeless is trying to not be homeless. Even if you want to get into a situation where you could have a stable home, it’s very difficult to find appropriate housing. [2:35 p.m.] A lot of times the housing that was available was sub- standard, poor quality. Sometimes people were faced with living in shared living arrangements, sometimes over- crowded, living in illegal suites. Also, the shelter services were inadequate.

At these last- resort kind of services, people are coming in and having concerns around their own personal safety, having concerns around security for their possessions. A lot of times people living with homelessness, everything they own is with them, and they have to leave it in these shelters, and they’re worried about losing these things. Many times these shelters are not open during the day. So what do you do during the day? It’s raining outside, and you’re forced to stay out and wait for a shelter to open, to come back. This leads to more issues of loneliness and isol- ation.

There are challenges raised around receiving adequate health care, especially among the working poor and seniors on fixed income and seniors quite often facing challenges with increasing health care costs as they age. There were con- cerns raised about insufficient services for dental work or eyeglasses or coverage for some medications. Again, we get into this cycle where sometimes…. Y ou need to address things. Y ou need to have glasses in order to get a job. Y ou need to get certain dental work done, and you need to present yourself well in order to apply for a job.

These were challenges that were raised and faced by people living in poverty today, as well as a need for stronger mental health and addictions-related services. There were big gaps raised in that area. Another issue raised in these public input sessions was around food security, not just access to food but access to nutritious food. As we know, nutritious food costs more. It’s harder to get than unhealthy food. It’s easy to get food….

When talking about the situation with somebody coming into a grocery store with $5, are they going to spend that extra little bit of money to get the nutritious food or spend it on just getting more food? Quite often, it’s just the need to have more. There were issues raised around children — as we say, 99,000 children living in poverty — going to bed or to school hungry. In some cases, some parents are keeping their kids out of school because they’re worried that teachers would recognize that the children aren’t eating adequately and that they would take that and raise it with authorities.

Then people, families, would be concerned about losing their chil- dren. Food banks were widely appreciated, but again, there’s a limited supply of nutritious food there as well. Another issue raised was around ministry services, and many, many challenges were raised around trying to find somebody in the ministry that can help them understand what different types of supports are available or help with completing documentation or paperwork. Sometimes when questions came up, people would have to go back two or three times just to help get the issue resolved.

In some cases, the challenges that people are facing are traumatic. To go back over and over to retell the story of what happened to them that got them into this situation, or whatever they needed to share in order to have their ques- tions answered, was, in itself, reliving the trauma and made it very difficult. [2:40 p.m.] There were challenges raised around flexibility and lack of flexibility around the application rules and the funding avail- able. Sometimes there were strict limits on certain things, and if you just fall over that limit, then you don’t have the services or the funding that you may need.

Many changes were identified as being needed around earnings exemption policies, provision of education support and current asset limits. It was also raised that families, in some ways, were penalized, in that funding levels for families were less than funding levels for individuals. It was also raised that there were technical challenges around using on-line services or the phone line. Many times people don’t have a computer, and if they have a computer, they don’t necessarily have good access to the Internet. Some don’t even have a phone line.

If you do have a phone line, it was identified many times, you could be on hold for half an hour to an hour, just waiting. Seniors would have these challenges as well, especially with technology and the Internet. There were concerns raised around how sometimes these websites were not designed in a way to make it simple to navigate. Apart from ministry services, there were concerns around community- based services, those services mainly geared toward crisis response rather than preventative strategies, and concerns around the fact that these services quite often are not avail- able in the areas where people live.

It was raised that there was a need for more stable funding for non-profit and community services and a need for coordination among these services — a kind of one-window access. Y ou’ d go to one place and get information about where you could go for your specific needs. Concerns were raised around transportation. It’s expens- ive to own a vehicle. If you want to have a job, sometimes you need a vehicle. Of course, with insurance rates and cost of gasoline and everything else, that’s quite expensive. So people quite often have to rely on public transit.

There were issues raised, in many areas of the province, around that — the lack of availability, cost of public transit, access and frequency. Sometimes, even in urban areas, you could not get public transit to where you live. Sometimes you can’t get public transit to where the jobs are. Then, the ser- vices change, also, on the weekend. If you’re working on the weekend, you may not be able to take public transit at that Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5485

time. Concerns were also raised for people living with disab- ilities and the challenges they have in accessing public transit and handyDART services. One other issue raised is around the criminalization of poverty. Many times people that are forced into homeless- ness get into regular conflicts with police or security person- nel. Their belongings can be taken from them; their basic rights can be ignored. Sometimes — in the winter, for example — people may choose to commit a crime just so that they could have a warm place to sleep.

Then that record follows them around for the rest of their lives, making it difficult to get a job in the future and making it difficult, if not impossible, even to find a place to live in the housing market, as was dis- cussed earlier. Those were some of the things that were raised — also issues around education and access to education, challenges around upgrading your skills, applying for different training programs and finding information about the types of oppor- tunities available for education. Sometimes for the education that you’re looking for, you may need to move out of the community to find it.

There was an interest in subsidized or free post-secondary education for people in need. There was an interest in student loan relief. It’ d make a big difference in people’s lives. [2:45 p.m.] I grew up in Port Alberni at a time where everyone had a job. My dad worked in the forestry industry. I remember my street, where I grew up, full of kids. Everyone had nicely cut lawns. It was a nice community to live in. Port Alberni today is one of the communities most facing poverty in the province. While I understand that it’s very important to have a strong economy, that is not the only answer.

Y ou cannot abdicate your responsibility as a government and just say, “The economy needs to be strong; it will take care of everything else, ” because that’s ignoring the voices of the poor. That’s not what this government is going to do. We’re going to grow a strong economy, and we’re going to put in a poverty reduction strategy. Together those things will raise people out of poverty. We’re not going to ignore one over the other. We’re going to do both, because we’re here to listen to all people in the province, not just the top 2 percent.

We’re going to do that with listening to people across this province, listening to the concerns that are being raised. As we go along and as we put this plan into place, as we grow sectors of our economy, our ears are always going to be open. We’re always going to have our people across this province talking to each other. We’re going to make sure that we’re going in the right direction, because the days of just the top- down listening to the top 2 percent…. Those days are over. We’re in a new era here with a new government, and I hope we have the opportunity to do that for a long time. Deputy Speaker:Hon.

Members, the member for Parks- ville-Qualicum seeks leave to make an introduction. Leave granted. Introductions by Members M. Stilwell:Earlier in the House, while the minister was speaking, we had a grade 4 class from False Bay Elementary School on Lasqueti Island here with their teacher Ms. Anna Dodds. I wanted to make them feel welcome, and I didn’t have that opportunity. I’m putting it on the record today so I can send them the video that we, truly, here in the House wanted to make them feel welcome. I hope the House will do that for them. Debate Continued L.

Throness:It’s a pleasure to rise in the House and speak about poverty and, especially, about the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, which is Bill 39. I want to say, by way of introduction, that in my former life, I was sort of an academic, a historian. I studied a lot of the 1700s, and I saw what government offered at that time. It was a nasty and brutal way to live. I can tell you there was almost no bureaucracy. There were almost no government programs. There was something called the poor rate, which was introduced in about 1555.

It was for what was called the decayed householder, and it was just a pittance of a rate that would keep them, basically, from death’s door. So to have a government like we have today is an achieve- ment that is unparalleled in human history. When you think of our budget, think of health care — $20 billion a year. It is dedicated only to those who are in need. If you do not need health care, you have no access to health care. But as soon as you need health care, you get it. I would say that 70 percent of our province’s budget is dedicated toward those in need.

And that, I think, is an enormous achievement in our west- ern culture. That has never been equalled anywhere in the world anywhere in history. We’re already doing pretty good. I would point out that the NDP have gone on about poverty reduction since 2005. That’s 13 long years. I would point out that there was no poverty reduction strategy while they were in govern- ment. It was only when they didn’t have to implement it that they had the idea. In fact, B.C. was a have-not province in the ’90s while the NDP were in charge. There was no poverty reduction strategy for the province.

When we compared to all of the provinces in Canada, we were a poor province. But the NDP had no plan to get us out of poverty, provincially. We were receiving social assistance from other provinces. Well, I guess it’s no surprise, then, that there would have been no poverty reduction plan for children or for adults at that time. They only began to talk about it when things began to get better under the B.C. Liberals. 5486 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

[2:50 p.m.] In 2013 — and in 2009, I think — in the NDP election platforms, a poverty reduction platform was promised, and now, finally, ten years later, we have a piece of legislation before us. What we do not have is any tangible idea of what a strategy might be. We have a framework. It has some gen- eralities in it. We have a mandate. We have a piece of legislation saying: “Minister, you ought to put together a plan. ” But the minister already had that in his mandate letter a year ago on July 18, 2017. I want to quote from it.

It says to the minister: “Design and implement a provincewide strategy of legislated targets and timelines. ” That was 14 months ago. Six months ago, in March, the member for Vancouver- Kensington came to our city of Chilliwack, and she held a consultation session on poverty reduction and on the plan. I attended. I participated. I sat around a table with oth- ers, as did my colleague from the riding of Chilliwack. We made contributions to the discussion, but there appears to have been nothing that came from these discussions. The consultations were done six months ago, but we still don’t have a plan.

After 13 years and two election platforms, after 13 years of insistently and urgently demanding a poverty reduction strategy, after listening to question after question in this House in question period about a requirement for a strategy, right now, 14 months after the government takes power, we have legislation — oh, by the way — that gives the minister another six months to come up with a plan, until March 31, which will be then 21 months after the election, nearly two years. We don’t have a strategy today. We don’t have a plan.

We have a mandate for a plan — a second mandate for a plan, even though the minister was given a mandate earlier. It can’t be all that urgent if the government takes its sweet time, nearly two years, to develop any concrete ideas about how to reduce poverty. It makes me think, in my suspicious mind, that perhaps this is more of a political talking point than a real plan. We will be looking carefully to see what comes of it. I want to talk about a fundamental difference between the NDP and the B.C. Liberals, because I think there’s a basic difference in perspective between our two parties.

Our party thinks less about poverty reduction and more about wealth creation and economic development. The phrase “poverty reduction” sort of suggests that we accept poverty as a fact of life. We’re just going to reduce its harm by putting a few more of taxpayers’ dollars into people’s pockets. It sort of, to my mind, parallels in a very broad sense the debate about drugs and addiction in B.C. The NDP emphas- ize harm reduction, that we should accept people’s addiction and just help addicts live positive lives, which is what the Ministry of Health officials told me in standing committee.

This entails, for instance, spending $100 million a year on methadone rather than spending it on treatment to help people get out of addiction. It maintains people on their addiction. I would rather that we lift people out of addiction entirely, help them break free from the addiction to live pos- itive and successful lives. In the same way, I would rather not accept poverty at all. I would rather that we lift people out of poverty entirely, help them break free from poverty to live positive and suc- cessful lives.

Now, the emphasis on poverty reduction, to my mind, is more on government programs, government cheques to people — like raising welfare and disability rates and offering other programs to low-income people. I don’t oppose many of these, but it maintains people on low incomes. It doesn’t actually help them escape low incomes for the rest of their lives. I would rather take the approach that we don’t accept poverty, that we beat poverty by economic development and by employment. The member for Port Moody–Coquitlam was just talking about child poverty.

I want to remind him that between 2003 and 2014 — and I’m using, here, a graph produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which is much relied on by the present government — using the market- based measure, which is laid out in this legislation as being the mandated measure by which we measure poverty, child poverty declined by 43 percent. Now, why was that? That took into account the recession. There was a recession beginning in 2008, and yes, we went through that recession, but still, between ’03 and ’14, it declined by 43 percent. That’s because of economic develop- ment.

It’s called prudence by a government that pushed for- ward with economic development. [2:55 p.m.] That, I think, is why we in the government did not have a poverty reduction plan. Our poverty reduction plan was our jobs plan. It was the wide array of economic develop- ment initiatives that we undertook, like LNG, which is the very best antidote to poverty. I would point out here that the NDP inherited LNG from us. Would LNG have ever gotten off the ground? Would it ever have even occurred to the NDP to try to begin thinking about LNG? Probably not. But they inherited that from us.

That’s one of the many programs that we began to help our economy that reduced child poverty between 2003 and 2014 by 43 percent. I would point out that the government, after more than a year in power, after a full budget, doesn’t have a plan for that either. No plan for provincewide economic development, no plan to create jobs across the province other than, say, an innovation commissioner, which is a good idea. We probably get good advice from the innovation commissioner.

But that should be one element of a multisectoral, aggressive plan with targets and timelines, just like this legislation has, like we had in our jobs plan, to create jobs and develop our eco- nomy to lift people out of poverty. We have a classic difference between us — the NDP con- centrating on government action and we on this side looking Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5487

to the market, to personal initiative in order not just to reduce poverty but to lift people out of poverty permanently. Now, I want to go on to talk about the legislation. I have eight points that I want to make about the legislation before us today. First of all, the legislation is a tall order for the minister, but I want to congratulate him for biting off a big chunk. It’s not an easy task that has been set before him, and I appreci- ate that there are at least concrete targets for him to hit — 50 percent in poverty generally and 25 percent for children. Interjection. L. Throness:Perhaps I got that backwards.

He has to get 170,000 people out of poverty, which was defined by the market-based basket measure in 2015 as just under $20,000 a year. I imagine now it would be probably $22,000, $23,000. What kind of idea could we conjure up that might help us achieve getting 170,000 people out of poverty over five years? Well, I would point out that even the minimum wage, which right now is $12.65 an hour…. Y ou will earn, if you’re working full time, more than $2,000 a month. That’s 24,000-and-some dollars per year, which is more than the market-based measure of poverty.

It’s much more than double what you can receive on social assistance. Certainly, the government could not afford to hand out social assistance payments of $2,000 a month, but a full- time, steady, minimum-wage job would lift a person out of poverty immediately and permanently. But the average wage in B.C. is not $12.65. The average wage in B.C. is $27 an hour. Probably the job that you would get would not be minimum wage. It would be well over min- imum wage. It would lift a person well out of poverty if we could just get that person a job.

So if we could just find jobs for 170,000 people in five years, then we will achieve the tar- get of the minister, and I would encourage him to do that. As I always say, the government can only ever afford to help people subsist. They can never make people middle- class. People need to enter into the broad stream of the eco- nomy in order to enter the middle class. I met with a constituent long ago who complained to me. He said: “I only make $1,400 a month on my government stuff. I can’t travel. I can’t go anywhere.

I’ve just got to sit here. ” He had a packet of cigarettes, of course, in his pock- et, but he couldn’t live the lifestyle that he did when he was working. He felt that the government ought to offer him a middle-class standard. But that’s really impossible for the government to do on a broad basis. The only option for us to lift people out of poverty to the degree that the minister wants to — and I commend him for wanting to do that — is to increase the economy. Unfor- tunately, there is nothing in this legislation mandating that the government develop a plan for employment and train- ing.

That would do a lot to lift people out of poverty. The third thing I want to say is that the legislation man- dates the reduction of child poverty by 25 percent in the next three years. That’s 30,000 children. It’s a lot of children. But children are a casualty of parental poverty. Children don’t become poor by their own actions. They don’t earn anything. [3:00 p.m.] The answer to immediately lift a child out of poverty is to get dad or mom a good-paying job. There is no jobs plan in this bill, nor is a jobs plan mandated in this bill.

Given the record of the NDP , I’m a bit suspicious as to whether there will be one. But the minister said some good things, so I’m thinking good thoughts. I have hopeful thoughts for the future that there will be a jobs plan in this strategy. We will be watching closely for it and demanding it of the gov- ernment. Four, there’s nothing in the bill before us about affordabil- ity for the taxpayer. How much will the plan cost? This plan is a vessel into which you can pour massive increases in gov- ernment spending.

I say that because the government has named all the aggrieved groups who will come to this legis- lation with high expectations. It has given them the green light to make demands. There’s a total of 13 groups who will now consider themselves official group victims of poverty, and they will throw upon the government the responsibility to get them out of poverty. The next thing I have a problem with is that there is no focus on government help for those who cannot work. Now, I understand that some people cannot work. I have people come into my office.

I had a couple come in who are prob- ably 75 years old, in ill health, and they would have been on the street that night if they did not get their welfare cheque. We pulled out all the stops to get them their welfare cheque that night so that they could go home to their bed. These people are precarious. They can no longer work. They’re in ill health. They’re elderly. The poverty reduction plan should focus on these people instead of people who are of able body and sound mind and able to work. I think the plan is not focused.

I certainly hope, when the government brings forth its details that will flesh out what the legislation has before us today, that there will be a focus on those who are in ill health, who are elderly and who are unable to work. My next problem with this legislation is that the govern- ment has developed a major talk shop in this legislation. Just about everybody is included on a great big advisory com- mittee with nine categories of person on it.

They’re going to travel around the province every calendar year at taxpayers’ expense, and I expect that instead of action, we’re going to get a lot of talk and a lot of new demands year after year. In fact, I think this group will rival the Standing Com- mittee on Finance, which does its pre-budget consultations every year. I expect that this new committee will travel around in the fall before the budget, and it will gather all kinds of political support for new programs and new spend- ing and new escalating demands on the taxpayer.

In other words, we’re building in an institutional, structural momen- tum for higher and more government spending. Do you think that any one of those people on this new committee will ask for less spending by government? I don’t 5488 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

think so. There is one business person mandated to be on that committee. And since the minister is appointing every- body on the committee, I’m sure he will find a friendly busi- ness person, a pliable business person, to join in on the chor- us of requests of government that will be coming from this committee. The seventh problem? We have yet to see the cost of the plan. I suppose that the cost of the plan will be in the budget next February. It will be very interesting to see if the govern- ment will be able to balance the budget after the minister in charge of Poverty Reduction gets through with his plan.

The next thing is very interesting. I would observe that the government has given the minister five years to accomplish the goals of poverty reduction. But that five-year period will not begin next March when his plan begins and then contin- ue completely under the NDP watch. No, that period began two years ago. It began in 2016. In fact, B.C. ’s economy has been growing under the B.C. Liberals and getting better since 2016. Under the previous government, in fact, poverty was being reduced already, for a year before the government took power. This government is still enjoying the halo effect from what the B.C.

Liberals did in the last year. Five balanced budgets and a healthy surplus has got to reduce poverty. They inherited LNG. They inher- ited a strong growing economy from us. In other words, two of the five years of the minister’s man- date have already passed and will be attributed to the good economic management and growth provided under a B.C. Liberal government. [3:05 p.m.] Of course, the NDP , in three years, is going to claim it all for themselves, I have no doubt. The NDP doesn’t want to travel under its own record. It will have to rely on the good economic record of the B.C. Liberals.

In conclusion, I want to quote from the minister’s man- date letter from last year, because there’s a good item in there. It’s something I want to offer the minister. It says: “Brit- ish Columbians expect our government to work together to advance the public good. That means seeking out, fostering and advancing good ideas regardless of which side of the House they come from. ” I have a great idea for the minister, and that idea is to cre- ate a jobs plan.

Create a plan for economic development for the whole province, to offer training to low-income British Columbians so they can break free from government assist- ance, so they can join the ranks of the middle class and per- manently escape from poverty. That’s the best thing the min- ister could do for people of low-income B.C., and I would recommend that idea from this side to him and to his gov- ernment. R. Leonard:I’m trying to reconcile the member opposite’s portrayal of a robust B.C. over 16 years of a Liberal govern- ment, because it really doesn’t jive with the experience of people in my community.

I’m happy to report that after 16 years, the new government that came in July of 2017 began a program of making life more affordable for British Columbi- ans. I think that we’re headed in the right direction. I’m very proud to be able to speak about the proposed very-first-in-B.C. poverty reduction strategy for British Columbia. We’ve taken so many steps to make life more affordable for British Columbians, but we really need to bring together a poverty reduction strategy so that we can actually make real progress. We’ve introduced legislation that sets bold poverty reduc- tion targets.

The targets are about raising children and their families and others out of poverty. The notion of trickle- down economics has most assuredly not worked. Serving the top 2 percent for so many years, the income gap grew and grew under the previous government. It’s been a path of not only stagnating wages but policy that even turned wages back. My children don’t forget the six bucks an hour as a training wage that lasted for years. A path of a government which ignored the growing affordability challenges of the people of British Columbia, which underfunded social programs and cut services….

All of these things led B.C., a prosperous province, to have the second-worst poverty rate in Canada, with statistics from 2016 showing 557,000 people living in poverty — 99,000 of them being children. In my constituency, the use of the food bank grew, as did the use of our Sonshine Lunch Club. It’s our community’s soup kitchen. I remember the day a few years ago when vis- iting St. George’s United Church in downtown Courtenay, where the soup kitchen operates. Volunteers cooking the lunch reported an alarming rise in the number of children and youth getting one of their daily meals there.

So many dropped in just to make their food allowances stretch through from cheque to cheque. I was once told that you have to pay attention to an issue constantly to keep it top of mind for everyone if you want to see change. And change is needed. So many children are experiencing poverty. We know children who live in poverty don’t do as well in life because it hurts their health, hurts their educational outcomes, and they are so often trapped in the poverty cycle. In my constituency, the Comox Valley Community Foundation has produced an annual report calledVital Signs.

In fact, the 2018 report was just launched the day before yesterday. It identifies trends in a wide range of areas critical to quality of life. [3:10 p.m.] I love how Norm Carruthers, the Vital Signs chair, and Jody Macdonald, the executive director of the Comox Valley Community Foundation, portray the opportunities afforded by theVital Signs report: “Vital Signs pushes our community to ask, ‘What?’ and then, ‘So what?’ and finally: ‘Now what?’” It is the foundation for action, and a poverty reduction strategy takes the “Now what?” question to a place to achieve real results.

The Comox Valley early years collaborative uses the early development instrument as a population health measure- Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5489

ment for children’s vulnerabilities as they enter and go through school. Their report is included inVital Signs. There are four scales that are examined — physical health and well- being, social competence, emotional maturity, and language and cognitive development. It is distressing to learn that each of the measures is increasing and that 40 percent of the Comox Valley children are vulnerable on one or more of the scales. Our children in the Comox Valley who are entering kindergarten are consistently measuring higher vulnerabil- ities than anywhere else on Vancouver Island and, indeed, across B.C.

The collaborative wants to change that trend. Now, I know that at one time…. I’m not sure where it sits today, but three of the elementary schools in my community were amongst the most challenged in the province, and it is no accident that these schools serve many families living in poverty. A poverty reduction strategy will help the collaborative reach their goal of reducing children’s vulnerabilities to 25 percent from 40 percent today. TheVital Signs report also identifies that the income gap for women is increasing.

In just five years between 2010 and 2015, the difference in incomes between men and women in the Comox Valley increased by over $3,500. That’s defin- itely the wrong direction. And where median family incomes are near $80,000, in lone-parent families, most of which are headed by women, it’s a mere $42,000, nearly half the take- home pay of families with two parents. Of course, averages belie the realities of the many who fall below the abysmal average — those without full-time work, those working minimum wage jobs.

A living wage in the Comox Valley has been calculated at $16.59 an hour in 2018, yet many people work part-time, minimum-wage jobs. A poverty reduction strategy will help make change in people’s lives. We can also look at one of the most critical pieces of the affordability puzzle: housing. In the Comox Valley, 45.4 per- cent are paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent, and 20 percent are paying more than 50 percent. That doesn’t leave much for food, health, entertainment, trans- portation and all the other things that families need. B.C.

Housing’s wait-list in the Comox Valley grew from 42 units in 2013 to 147 this year. That’s a 250 percent increase. That’s people waiting a long time for a home. I also want to talk about those without a home at all. The leading cause of homelessness is poverty. My community has undertaken a number of point-in-time counts over the past few years. In 2016, it was very surprising and distressing to learn from the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homeless- ness survey that there were more women than men who did not have a home. This year 117 homeless were surveyed, an increase of 13 percent in the count over 2016.

This year still a large number, 45 percent, are female; 32 percent identified as Indigenous; 29 percent were seniors, aged 55 and older; and 6 percent were youth. The absolute count included nine Comox Valley children living without a safe, secure place to sleep at night. Imagine how hard that is for those children. Imagine how hard it is for their classmates whose life circumstances cannot fathom the challenges of their friends who, by accident of birth, suf- fer so greatly. [3:15 p.m.] One 45-year-old woman in my community reported in the report,Vital Signs, how she became homeless and had to give up her child.

We’ve certainly heard about other such stories in the Comox Valley — children who are impacted in life-altering ways by circumstances not of their own making, and they are not included in the homeless count. Over the years, many people have lost their lives on the street in my constituency. Most were relatively young, only in their early 50s. Y et more and more seniors are finding themselves homeless after a lifetime of keeping body and soul together — in the blink of an eye, in dire circumstances, underpaid or without jobs or pensions, often driven into homelessness by physical and/or mental health issues.

I was told once that if you didn’t have a drinking problem before you became homeless, you probably got one pretty quick. So there are challenges that continue to grow when you’re homeless. Here we are, finally about to embark on a strategy that will maintain our eye on the prize, making lives better for British Columbia’s most vulnerable, not only raising people out of poverty but also raising all of us up as we live with shared prosperity. We all pay a price for ignoring the suffering of others.

I want to quote Miles Corak, a professor of economics at the City University of New Y ork and economist-in-resid- ence at Employment and Social Development Canada dur- ing 2017. I’m quoting from an op-ed in theGlobe and Mail from late August, where he was commenting on the federal government’s new poverty reduction strategy. He suggested that budgets, programs and money spent are “not good enough. ” He went on further to say that a poverty reduction strategy needs to be a set of priorities that reflect our concerns with measurable targets so we can plot a path to somewhere better.

As he said, answering the question: “ Are we there yet?” It makes “the connection between actions and results. ” We will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent and lift half of the children living in poverty into a place of hope and aspiration within the next five years. I am proud to sup- port the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act before us today, and I hope I’ve helped convince everyone. J. Y ap:It’s my honour to participate in this second reading debate on this bill, Bill 39, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act.

This bill is one which, of course, was a key commitment of the new government, one that they talked about for many years when they were in opposition, when the NDP was in opposition. As has been mentioned, they introduced bills while they were in opposition, private members’ bills, to pro- mote a poverty reduction strategy. In the last election cam- paign, this was one of their key commitments — to intro- 5490 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

duce a poverty reduction strategy. So here we are, in October of this year, debating this bill which is meant to move this strategy along. Before I get into the substance of my comments, I do want to first of all acknowledge some of the comments that col- leagues have shared. It was mentioned that this is something that anyone who aspires to public life, to be an elected offi- cial, aspires to — to make things better and to want to get to a place where things are better for our citizens. This is a goal that we share, whether you’re on the left side of the political spectrum, in the centre or on the right.

We all want to see lives improve, the lives of our citizens, of British Columbians. [3:20 p.m.] I guess the question is: how do we get there? How do we measure the results, and what are the strategies that we deploy? I want to recognize that, yes, there are citizens in our province that do face challenges and, frankly, struggle. I want to give a shout-out to those that dedicate their time, their energy, their lives to helping fellow citizens. I have constituents, as do you, Madame Speaker, in our community of Richmond who dedicate their time and their lives and their energy to help those that are less fortunate.

I want to give a shout-out to those members of groups such as the St. Alban’s community, St. Alban’s Anglican Church, and Gilmore Park United Church and the Salvation Army, who collectively and individually work hard, day in, day out, to support those in the community who are less fortu- nate, who are living in poverty, who need supports. Wheth- er it’s through shelter, whether it’s through providing a reg- ular community meal, whether it’s through helping connect people to services, there are people in our communities that dedicate themselves to this, and I commend them.

Of course, this is something which a government, any government, wants to focus on, to help those that are in need. I was touched when I heard my colleague from Chilli- wack talk about his recent experience with a couple that were in desperate straits, who truly needed help. That’s where gov- ernment can really make a difference to help those that really need help and are simply not able to on their own.

As has been said, one of the philosophical differences between the current government and our side is the fact that we simply have to recognize that the best path to prosperity, the best path to lifting people up from poverty, is a job. That is, has been and will continue to be the focus of members of my caucus.

When we were in government, Madame Speaker, as I know you recall, we had a number of successive years of suc- cess with our B.C. jobs plan that, through the four-year peri- od when it was implemented, created over 250,000 jobs for the province of British Columbia and made our economy, B.C. ’s economy, one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in Canada several years in a row. That is something that we’re proud of, and that is some- thing that the new government last year inherited — a strong economy, a job-creating economy.

Unfortunately, as we have already heard, a commitment to a jobs plan, to growing the economy, to growing the private sector economy, is lacking from this new government. We hear a lot of commitments to spending, to putting more resources into programs — and some are needed programs; I’m not denying that — but it’s basically more spending and higher taxes, and we don’t see a credible jobs plan. I know this week we celebrated the conclusion of one major investment in the LNG sector.

Our former Premier, Christy Clark, was the initiator, and members on this side worked hard for a number of years to bring it to a point where we had the final investment decision that will create 10,000 jobs during the construction and almost 1,000 ongo- ing permanent jobs when the project is completed — a $40 billion investment that will make a difference to communit- ies all around the province, especially in the north, and that is the single largest investment, private sector investment, not just in British Columbia’s history but in Canada’s history. That didn’t just happen.

That happened because of a focus and because of a dedication to creating an economic climate that would draw investment, creating a jobs plans. We’re proud of that jobs plan, which helped lift so many people up the economic ladder, including people who were in poverty, and helped lift them out of poverty. That’s what is lacking in this strategy. [3:25 p.m.] I do want to touch on this, that this is really a…. This act is titled Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, but in fact, it doesn’t create the poverty strategy.

It does set out the requirements of what will go into this strategy, this reduc- tion strategy, and that there will need to be consultation and a committee that will advise the minister. It sets out the diversity required to go into this committee that will provide the input to the minister. This sets out a timeline that gives the minister till the spring of next year, till March 31, 2019, to bring in the strategy, to bring in the plan.

That would be almost two years, 21 months, since this government came in wanting to hit the ground running, wanting to bring in all their great ideas, including a poverty reduction strategy. That’s not what this bill that’s before us is going to do today. It’s going to give the minister more time to kick the can down the road to the spring of next year before we actu- ally see the strategy. Now that, I am sure, will be a bit of a disappointment to those that have wanted to work with this government and to start to see some things happen.

Y es, the government has already started to make some changes that I imagine are part of the poverty reduction strategy. But as we have heard, this is not the strategy. This is a plan to have a strategy by the spring of next year. There are no specifics. There is an aspirational commit- ment. There is a commitment that’s set out that poverty will be reduced by 25 percent over this period of time, by 2024, and that child poverty will be reduced by 50 percent over this period. So that’s in there. But the level of poverty, as we’ve heard, has already been on a reducing track.

We heard, as my Thursday, October 4, 2018 British Columbia Debates 5491

colleague indicated, that during the last full year of the pre- vious government, our government, poverty actually was on a reducing track. That was the result of a focus on job cre- ation, on a strong economy, on creating a strong investment climate that would lead to more jobs to lift people up. That is something that the new government inherited last year. As I said, we don’t see any indication of a jobs plan. We see a plan to do lots of consultation, to do lots of reviews, but sadly, no dedication to growing our economy.

In fact, we have seen that since this government started, last July, the number of private sector jobs in British Columbia has been on a declining trend. Almost 40,000 jobs have been lost since the NDP formed government in July of last year. That is a troubling trend; that is a troubling trend. We, on this side, believe, again, in the power of a strong economy that will lift everyone up, that will increase wages for all British Columbians and that would be the key to the development of our great province, where everyone has an opportunity. Y es, it is important.

We believe that we have to have free enterprise with a human face. I know you believe that, Madame Speaker. That includes looking after those that truly need help by creating an economy that creates jobs, private sector jobs, good jobs that will help individuals, neighbour- hoods and communities all around our province.

Sadly, this is not something that we’re seeing from this government and certainly not something that is touched on by this poverty reduction strategy that the minister, I’m sure, has worked hard to get to this point but is lacking. [3:30 p.m.] As we move forward with discussion, debate, on this bill, as we get into committee stage, I’m sure there will be an opportunity for all of us to drill down to the actual sections of this bill and to have the opportunity to ques- tion the minister on how this proposal will actually, in a sustainable way over the coming years, grow our eco- nomy and create private sector jobs that will truly sustain a real poverty reduction plan for the province of British Columbia.

I look forward to that. Hon. M. Mungall:I really wanted to speak to this piece of legislation. I am personally very ecstatic that it has finally been introduced by a government here in this House. I spent several years across the floor in opposition introducing a poverty reduction plan — five times, no less. Each and every time members who are now in opposition, when they were in government, refused to bring it to the floor for debate, much less pass this into legislation. They could have intro- duced their own bill, but they chose not to. [R.

Chouhan in the chair.] So when I hear members opposite use words like: “This bill just kicks the issue down the road. It just kicks the can down the road…. ” What are they talking about? I spent eight years on the other side, in opposition, watching them. They didn’t even kick a can down the road. They just ignored it altogether. They just pretended that poverty didn’t really exist here in British Columbia, maybe because they were busy working for the top 2 percent of income earners. They gave a tax break to those people.

But when it came to supporting some of the most vulner- able people in our community — people living in poverty, people who are struggling — they ignored them year after year. We got a little bit of movement from them when we brought forward the issue of the child support clawback, and they recognized that, yes, that clawback was wrong. We saw $17 million go back into the hands of children who deserved to see their child support from their non-custodial parent. That was a little bit of give, but mostly what they did, from people living in poverty, was take.

The bus pass clawback is a case in point, where they gave with one hand and took with the other. A raise to rates, the first that was seen in so long, and then they took it away with the other hand in that very same budget. When I hear members opposite, from the B.C. Liberal caucus, talk about kicking the can down the road, I have to say that they didn’t even identify a can to kick, much less care about this issue, much less introduce legislation, much less actually take action, making life more affordable for Brit- ish Columbians and making sure that people are being lif- ted out of poverty.

What we’re talking about with this plan is lifting 25 percent of people who are currently in poverty and 50 percent of children who are currently in poverty, out of poverty. That’s what we’re talking about here. When British Columbia has some of the worst poverty rates in the country that happened under the B.C. Liberal watch, we’re coming in with solutions to the problem that they created. I keep hearing the mumblings and the heckles coming from the opposition benches that it’s all about jobs and you need to have a jobs plan.

Well, I’m very proud of something that happened this week — the largest private sector investment deal in British Columbian history, in Canadian history. So $40 billion of investment is coming to the north of this province. [3:35 p.m.] Coming from a background of advocating for people liv- ing in poverty and finding ways to get out of poverty, wheth- er I was the coordinator at the Nelson Food Cupboard, the community coordinator for the Nelson Committee on Homelessness, the community coordinator for the Habondia microlending circle or as a Nelson city councillor or as the MLA for Nelson-Creston….

When I talked to community after community, to First Nations leaders throughout the north on what a liquefied natural gas plant meant for them, what LNG Canada was working on and what they were working on with them, it was clear the leadership from First Nations communities and non-Indigenous communities — that what they saw as opportunities for pathways out of poverty for them was an opportunity for their communities, an opportunity for this province and an opportunity for this country. 5492 British Columbia Debates Thursday, October 4, 2018

Document details

Collection	British Columbia — Debates (Hansard)
Citation	20181004pm-Hansard-n155
Type	hansard
Volume / chapter	20181004pm Hansard n155
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	8f8eeeb1ef62295f49a7e3bbb99b6b0b84c19007

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