Hansard Blues

Legislative Assembly

Draft Report of Debates

The Honourable Raj Chouhan, Speaker

4th Session, 42nd Parliament

Thursday, October

5, 2023

Afternoon Sitting

Draft Transcript — Terms of Use

The House met at 1:02 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Tributes

SELWYN ROMILLY

Hon. N. Sharma: Today I rise to honour the late retired justice Selwyn Romilly, a prominent British

Columbian who died on Friday, September 22, 2023. Justice Romilly made history when

he was appointed at the age of 34 as the first black judge in British Columbia. He

served as a provincial court judge for 21 years and later as a B.C. Supreme Court

justice until he retired in 2015.

He received several awards for his contribution to the legal system, human rights

and the black community in B.C., including: in 2008, he received a distinguished service

award from the Black Law Students Association of Canada, and in 2014, an award for

outstanding contributions to criminal law in B.C. by the Canadian Bar Association,

B.C. branch.

He was a kind and generous soul and a mentor to many. He paved the way for people

of colour who are practising law today, myself included. He had an amazing sense of

humour that anyone who met him will remember fondly. Throughout his career he championed

justice, equality, diversity within the legal profession. His contributions were instrumental

in breaking down barriers and fostering inclusivity, lighting a path for more representation

in our justice system.

It is not an understatement to say his work has helped shape the development of our

legal system, the practice of law in our province and has made improvements in our

judicial and legal education in B.C. For example, several of his judgments have been

summarized in the Weekly Criminal Bulletin , the B.C. Digest of Criminal and Sentence Cases and the Charter of Rights Digest .

He always reminded us to be persistent and courageous in the face of adversity. That

spirit will live on through his legacy in the legal community and beyond. We have

lost a great person, and his passing will leave a big void.

I would like to extend my deepest condolences to his family and friends of retired

judge Justice Selwyn Romilly during this time of loss. He will be sorely missed by

everyone who knew him.

Orders of the Day

Hon. S. Malcolmson: In this chamber, I call continued second reading of Bill 32, Provincial Symbols and

Honours Amendment Act, 2023.

In the Douglas Fir committee room, I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 27, Money

Judgement Enforcement Act.

[1:05 p.m.]

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 32 — PROVINCIAL SYMBOLS AND

HONOURS AMENDMENT ACT, 2023

(continued)

R. Leonard: In resuming my contributions to the debate at second reading of Bill 32, I'd like

to talk about the purpose of an official fossil.

First and foremost, it recognizes that fossils are an important heritage resource,

and it conveys it to the whole, wide world. Why? Fossils have great scientific and

educational value. But there's so much more.

Deb Griffiths's words about its contribution to B.C.'s identity are quite poignant

as a symbol of B.C.'s expansive fossil-storied landscapes and regions. That's the

kind of picture you should have in your mind when you think about fossils.

Looking at the contest. Who knew we were a fossil-rich province, rivalling the well-known

Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta? Here in B.C., we have many places of

fossil discovery, as we've heard this morning, that match the diverse landscape of

B.C. today.

An official fossil contributes to community identity, as well as pride and wellness,

economic development, with the draw of knowledge tourism and the pursuit of scientific

knowledge and education. I'd like to share the story of the elasmosaur to enliven

those values. It's an example of what fossils bring. Thanks again to Deb Griffiths

from the Courtenay and District Museum and Paleontology Centre for much of the information

and helping me to marshal my thoughts.

Mike Trask and his daughter Heather were walking along the Puntledge River on a fossil

expedition and came upon this incredible discovery of the elasmosaur. That's the kind

of thing that everyday people can do. I did it with my kids. It was a real adventure,

finding fossils and taking them down to the museum to see if they had any value.

Mike went on a journey of three very critical steps, steps that would, in Deb's words,

continue to broaden and shape B.C.'s storyline of natural and cultural history.

Firstly, he recorded the site, and he took samples. Then he delivered them to the

Courtenay Museum. Lastly, he firmly expressed a preference for those fossils to remain

in the community where they were discovered.

As has been mentioned by members from the opposite side, there's collaboration with

scientists from across Canada, within communities. It happened immediately with the

elasmosaur because they recognized this important discovery. Later, around the world,

other scientists have been very involved in making more discoveries about this elasmosaur

as they study it further.

I'd like to mention a few notable folks who were instrumental. The late Dr. Rolf Ludvigsen,

who was living on Denman at the time, happily close to the discovery; Dr. Betsy Nicholls,

from the Royal Tyrrell Museum; Dr. Richard Hebda from the Royal B.C. Museum.

I'd also like to recognize the citizen scientists or amateur paleontologists, volunteers

who work along the scientists. That work, that collaboration, led to the formation

of the B.C. Paleontological Alliance. It also meant that there was work with the heritage

branch, first through FLNRORD, and now through Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport.

I'd like to especially acknowledge Elizabeth Dion, who was there all along the way,

and other folks at the fossil management office. That is what led to the public vote

for B.C.'s official fossil. I'd also like to note that our local staff were trained

at the RBCM.

[1:10 p.m.]

Let's go back to science and education. The contributions to science that came from

this discovery have contributed to the growing body of knowledge worldwide. It's contributed

to the growing body of knowledge worldwide.

But I'd also like to talk about education, and the marriage with science, because

it's an inspiration when you go out and find a fossil and you get to be part of that

scientific discovery.

Pat Trask has been the curator and leader in these fossil tours, where kids go out

to the riverbeds and get to do their own little digs. Well, I shouldn't call them

digs. They get to explore the world of paleontology, because what we have are these

concretions, these rocks that they can split open. What Pat says to these kids is:

"When you find something, your eyes are the first eyes to see this creature that was

living millions of years ago, the last time that anybody saw them."

Kids are just in awe of that, and it really inspires them to continue on into different

pursuits, like STEAM. It's also an opportunity to inspire them to choose careers in

paleontology, become educators in paleontology. We have a need to increase those positions,

to keep it alive and to keep it growing.

Within our world, in the Courtenay Museum, they do school tours. Schools come from

all over. They come locally, but they also come from Indigenous schools on the west

coast and up in the north Island. We've had schools coming from as far away as Peace

River, Alberta. It's something that is growing. It's rippling out. The information

is getting out there, and they're eager to come and learn.

Having an official fossil is also an opportunity to promote wellness. These are outdoor

activities that you do with your family, with your friends. It's a learning experience.

They help develop deeper appreciation of a sense of time and place. It's done with

family. It's done with friends. Diverse people gather together. It's an opportunity

for a community to grow.

Around economic development…. We're talking about knowledge tourism. It's married

to education, and that's one of the big advantages of having fossils remain in their

community. At the Courtenay Museum, because of the elasmosaur, just in the fiscal

year from '21-22 to '22-23, donations…. Our museums are free. They are by donation

entry. The donations are up 12.72 percent. Fossil tour revenues over that same time

are increased 41.51 percent. There are more fossil tours on Vancouver Island than

the whole rest of Canada, and they very much overshadow tours in the U.S. and around

the rest of the world by more than tenfold.

I want to acknowledge the support of the Kelowna Museum's curator, Dan Bruce, and

the late Ursula Surtees, who was the executive director there. They really taught

the Courtenay Museum staff to value that regional context by keeping the fossil at

the local museum, and keeping the fossil there led to a huge amount of community support

to showcase the discovery.

[1:15 p.m.]

At the time of the discovery, the paleontology

section was a little house, but I'd

want to call it a shack. It was just a one-room building. It was very old and falling

down. Suddenly you had this amazing, amazing discovery, this marine reptile that was

12 metres long and the first of its kind ever found west of the Rockies.

What happened was we had Community Futures — Mark Crane — help to buy the old post

office across the street and renovate it for the purpose of being able to showcase

the elasmosaur. Rotary clubs got involved. One year was spent fundraising so that

they could create an education area, a gallery in the museum that's used for educational

purposes, right in the midst of where the fossil lives.

They've got grants for exhibitions. They got acknowledgment from all parties that

represented the area provincially, including the late Stan Hagen, who got the provincial

heritage site designation for Mike's discovery. The city got involved to support them.

The late Randy Wiwchar was a great supporter of the museum and all of the comings

and goings of the downtown to make it a really vibrant tourist destination.

It really speaks to the community pride and the opportunities for economic development.

Beyond the scientific collaboration that I talked about earlier, the Courtenay Museum

is working with other communities with fossils, like Tumbler Ridge, and really getting

into the meat of how to grow regional museums when your fossils are kept onsite.

Of course, economically, there are spinoffs for local businesses that can benefit

from that tourism that's coming from all over the world. Families come on those knowledge

tourism tours just to see the elasmosaur. There's merchandising I've seen on the shelves

— toys, books. There's a book about Mike and Heather's discovery. There's art. There's

even coffee, and it's all fossil inspired.

I was, just yesterday, meeting with some of the K'ómoks First Nation who came for

another event. As we were walking the halls, I was saying how Deb Griffiths had been

pondering whether or not some of the mythical creatures that K'ómoks First Nation

have shared with us for many ages were maybe inspired by the elasmosaur, and they

agreed that there's been that talk. We're talking about millions of years, and they

were the first people that may have been able to find the fossils.

Talking about tourism, my dream is that we're going to rival the Jurassic Park film and have an underwater marine reptile adventure film. I think if we get this

passed, I'll see what I can do to have stars made out of some of the MLAs.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out the most pertinent reason for having an official

fossil, and that is that it will support the fossil framework that the minister mentioned

earlier. It draws attention to how fossils are treated as the heritage resource that

they are.

What does that mean? First of all, it's not finders keepers. Fossils are owned by

the Crown. They can't be sold or exported out of B.C. without authorization. Collectors

can, if they find small amounts of common and abundant fossils, as long as they're

not scientifically significant. Vertebrates must be reported to either the local museum,

the Royal B.C. Museum or the B.C. fossil management office.

As I said earlier, no digging. You can't be getting fossils through excavation. It's

only surface collection. So what should you do? You should take a photo, if you can,

mark the location, and be sure to report it. Why is that? It's because you could be

part of valuable information with your discovery, and you don't want to lose it.

[1:20 p.m.]

I'll just conclude now by reminding members that we are a fossil-rich province in

many corners. We have an opportunity to capitalize on building scientific knowledge,

expanding growing communities and community well-being and pride in every corner.

I want to acknowledge the focus and passion of our local paleo citizen scientists

and the driving force of our regional museum people, people like Deb Griffiths. My

fervent hope is that this House will unanimously pass Bill 32 and with the elasmosaur

as B.C.'s official fossil, provide the certain legacy of B.C.'s discoverers of this

unique elasmosaur in their lifetimes.

Thanks to Mike and Heather Trask — Heather has passed away in January — and Mike's

twin, Pat Trask, for all the time that they have given us and all the opportunities

for discovery that await us.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the question is second reading of Bill 32.

Motion approved.

Hon. J. Osborne: I move that Bill 32 be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered

at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 32, Provincial Symbols and Honours Amendment Act, 2023, read a second time and

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

the House after today.

Hon. J. Osborne: I call continued second reading of Bill 31.

BILL 31 — EMERGENCY AND DISASTER

MANAGEMENT ACT

(continued)

E. Ross: Bill 31, the Emergency and Disaster Management Act — for the millions watching at

home, this bill repeals and replaces, basically, the Emergency Program Act. It's quite

the bill. It's 121 pages, 208 sections. It's been quite some time before this bill

has been amended, and it's quite timely given the disasters we've been seeing in B.C.

for the last five years or so and the significance and the scale of those disasters.

There's a lot in this bill that actually brings me back to my previous job as chief

and council of the Haisla Nation. It's not my first time reviewing an emergency plan

in partnership with B.C. In fact, in 2015, my band took it upon ourselves to reach

out to the B.C. government at the time, in 2014-2015, to develop a comprehensive emergency

plan that aligned with B.C.'s plan at the time.

It was quite the job. We had to go over every single chapter, every single section,

every single clause, even to the point where we actually were trying to resolve what

would happen in case of an unmanageable bird flu. Can you imagine that? Bird flu.

It was quite a stressful exercise for our band members as well as our chief and council.

We put a lot of effort into it. We had resources within the provincial government

that we reached out to, and they helped us navigate through the bill. We tried as

much as possible to incorporate what B.C.'s emergency plan could do for us, and vice

versa.

[1:25 p.m.]

By the time we approved our emergency bill, for lack of a better word, we had a binder

that was probably twice the size of the bill we're looking at today. We thought we'd

done a lot of good work. But in our first two instances of emergencies, we found out

quite quickly it wasn't manageable. We hadn't considered that we did not have the

resources to carry out an emergency plan. We didn't have the money to carry out an

emergency plan. And even though the communication system was in place, we'd never

really thought about an incident command centre in relation to Canada and B.C.

We even came to understand exactly what a state of emergency meant. The first time

that we actually came across this was a snowstorm in our village that wiped out the

road, wiped out the power lines, broke electricity lines, and we were basically isolated

for over a week.

I was in Vancouver at the time. I had a heck of a time trying to get from Vancouver

to Terrace and then, from the Terrace airport, trying to get a ride from Terrace to

Kitimat and then trying to find a ride from Kitimat to my village of Kitamaat Village.

And it wasn't necessarily planes, trains and automobiles. It was planes, dirty rental

cars and snowmobiles. And hiking. That's how I got home.

When I got home, the media had taken up a position that they heard from band members

that we were in a state of emergency. And when I got there, I realized we are not

in a state of emergency. We're inconvenienced, yes; we're stressed, yes; we're confused,

yes. But we are not in a state of emergency.

In fact, everything that we had done up to then anticipated the new day and age my

people were living in, because a lot of us didn't have wood stoves anymore, so there

was the issue of heat. And a lot of us had not only just one fridge and one freezer,

but some of us had two freezers to freeze our traditional foods.

The chief and council of the day did have the foresight to actually turn our gymnasium

into an emergency centre. And what we had forgotten was that we had outfitted our

gymnasium with a backup diesel generator that kicked in. As soon as the B.C. Hydro

grid went down, our gymnasium kicked in. That provided heat, it provided electricity

and it even provided Internet.

So piece by piece, we had to put this in place to kind of establish a level of safety

and well-being with our members. By the time I got back, I asked for the binder to

be present, and we started to try to follow the rules.

Basically, the emergency plan talked about regional resources, provincial resources,

national resources. So when I was talking to representatives from B.C. on the phone

line, including B.C. Hydro, and talking with our counterparts in the city of Kitimat,

I asked the question in saying: "How is it that you're supposed to come out and help

us when you can't even help yourself? You're in just as dire a situation as we are."

There is a level of triage that has to happen no matter who you are, what your demographic

is. There has to be a level of triage on behalf of the provincial government, on behalf

of municipal government, on behalf of First Nations, on behalf of the country. There

has to be a triage. You can't go down to every single community and deal with some

of the issues they're trying to deal with because we've got to open up highways. We've

got to re-establish hydro grids. And that could be across different towns, across

different regions.

There weren't really enough resources in our region to cover off every single municipality

and First Nation. It was a realization that, painfully, I found out when I looked

at the last few updates from B.C., in terms of when we could get help, to find out

we were at the bottom of the list. And quite frankly, I would have probably made the

same decision if I was government. You have to open up the airports, the main highways

and the roads that are arteries to critical services like hospitals, ambulances, police.

[1:30 p.m.]

Yes, it is a hardship. But it did go back to the idea of what we had always talked

about as a community, in saying: "We have to be independent. We have to be self-determining."

So we actually pieced together what we already had in place, and we actually got through

it.

Contrary to the popular reports at the time, I did not evacuate my village at first

chance. I did not evacuate them. By the way, I wanted to be proactive, because the

highway was going to be opened up through one lane because B.C. Hydro was trying to

repair the line from Kitimat to my village.

I saw how slow-going it was. With no rules, no policies, no insurance, I ordered my

public works guys to get on their machines and start opening up the road from our

side, and we met them halfway. Once that one lane was opened, I then advised people.

I went door to door and told people: "If you want to get out, you've got a two-hour

window, and then we're going to close it down again because B.C. Hydro has got to

get that line up and running, and we've got to get two lanes going." I did not evacuate

the village.

There were a number of people that wanted to stay because they were having a good

time in our gymnasium, camping out, sleeping on the gym floor. They loved the Internet,

and there was no real place to go anyway. Our region of the province was shut down,

but it taught me a lot about emergency preparedness, being proactive and trying to

align with a provincial emergency plan and a federal emergency plan.

You've got to understand the realities of an emergency situation. Yes, it was distressing

that our band did not have electricity. In fact, a lot of our band members lost their

food storage. That was stressful in itself.

There were a number of our people that were medically compromised, and we didn't know

about that. The only reason we found out is because I ordered my workers and my volunteers

to go door to door and knock on every single door in my community, which has over

250 houses — to actually bang on the door until they found out whether or not somebody

is in there.

We found out that a few people couldn't move because of medical conditions. That created

our database within our community to talk about how we need to know who can't get

out in an emergency situation so that we can bring the resources to them. We also

had to establish on our own, without the B.C. emergency plan, a communication program

that paid for helicopter services to get people out in medical emergencies. We paid

for that out of our own pockets.

Also, if it went any further, we had to establish a way to get groceries into our

community, and any other supplies that we needed. We were starting to work with the

local private sector, namely Rio Tinto Alcan, to say: "I can see your plant right

across from my village. If we can get over there by boat, could we use your dock?

Could we use your equipment, your cars, your trucks, go load up on groceries and come

back to our village?" That's not easy. It's not easy to do that.

There were a number of things that we learned through that situation. At the end of

the day, when I sat back and analyzed it, there were two things I realized. A complicated,

technical emergency plan for a community like mine does not work. It has to be understandable,

and it also has to be achievable.

For a lot of things that you're talking about in emergency plans, you're talking about

levels of government that have the capacity to understand something like this. Some

of it you've got to cross-reference. You've got to cross-reference different sections,

and you've got to understand the roles of different ministry levels to understand

what exactly government is doing in different situations.

It's very hard for a First Nation to do this when they've got so many different things

on their plate. Many chief councillors deal with education, health, public works,

economies, rights and title, court cases. Their plates are already full.

[1:35 p.m.]

I'm looking forward to the plan on how the B.C. government intends to work with First

Nations. With 203 bands in B.C., will it be a one-size-fits-all? Or will there be

recognition of some of the deficiencies that a band might have, like my band had?

Quite frankly, we weren't so bad. We were prepared. We did scrap the emergency plan

that we had developed in alignment with the B.C. plan. We created our own based on

our own capabilities, our own capacity and our own lessons, even to the point where

we started to figure out…. We've got to have, probably, a landing craft for marine

services. We've got to have skidoos.

The way I got home from Kitimat to my village…. The road was closed. I intended to

hike the seven miles in waist-deep snow, but the Kitimat Snowmobile Club volunteered

to take me down there.

That's how I got a firsthand look at the damage, which was quite extensive. Hydro

poles were snapped in half; the poles were hanging over the road. There were trees

all across the road as well.

We got halfway over. There were a number of trees across the highway, and we couldn't

go any further by skidoo. They wanted to turn back, and I said: "Okay, turn back.

I'm going to keep hiking. I'm going to hike down to the shore, and I'm going to walk

along the shore. It's where I grew up. I've hunted; I fish. I know this area. I'm

going to walk back. I've got to get back."

We ended up going back. We found a handsaw, and we cut the trees so that the skidoos

could get through.

I still appreciate the Kitimat Snowmobile Club for their extra effort. In fact, we

brought them into our gymnasium afterwards, and we fed them.

There were so many things that I learned then. I really thought…. If we're going to

do this, especially as a rural community, we've got to develop a plan that looks after

us, first and foremost. It's got to be realistic. Then we can start coordinating with

B.C. — unless I'm wrong, and B.C. is going to take the same approach, where they have

to prioritize what's got to be done in an emergency situation for the benefit of all

British Columbians.

You can't really single out small communities at the outset of an emergency, unless

it's pretty specific like, say, a community is going to get burned down, or it's going

to get flooded out, or in this case, like a snowstorm.

I want to say…. I was probably not a priority, as the Haisla band, but we were lucky

that we had money from LNG development. We had money from the forest agreement that

we signed with the B.C. government at the time, in 2006. We had partnerships with

corporations. So we had the resources to get through that period, but we also had

resources to build a real emergency plan.

Ultimately, there were some things that I took from the B.C. emergency plan and that

I incorporated into our new one, which I kept in. I truly believe that whether you're

in the midst of an emergency or you're trying to evacuate people, the leader has got

to stay in the community regardless. I've done that, whether it be tsunami disasters

or snowstorms. That's something I took from the B.C. government's lead. I knew that

ministers had to be in charge when emergency situations were called.

It was quite the experience. The emergency plan that we put in is still in place today.

My second experience with an emergency plan was a couple of years ago. I was touring

B.C. I was campaigning for a certain initiative. I got invited down to Monte Lake

and Logan Lake. It was quite the experience. I knew there were forest fires happening.

They were ravaging communities. It was destroying buildings and infrastructure, but

I didn't know what to expect.

I had already heard the Solicitor General criticize the number of people that stayed

behind when they were told to evacuate. I'd also heard the Solicitor General criticize

them for putting firefighters' lives in danger.

[1:40 p.m.]

At the time, I agreed, but I did keep an open mind. I did go down there and talk to

them, and I found out that these people were very capable, smart people, very resourceful

people. There were old-timers that had spent a lifetime, either as ranchers or loggers,

fighting fires. They had equipment. When they saw a spot fire, they'd pull out their

excavator. They'd bulldoze, and they would put out the fire.

When I went along the lake, all I saw were private citizens with tanker trucks and

water pumps and hoses running up the mountain. They were relentless in their firefighting

— relentless because they had something to lose. I don't know of anybody in B.C. that

is not proud of their community and would do anything they could to protect their

homes and their communities.

Look at what these citizens are saying specifically, Rob Cote, who lost his house,

by the way — he understood the danger. He understood he couldn't stay and save it

because of the inferno, so he left. He had the sense to leave his house to the fire.

That was heartbreaking. But he stayed behind to help his neighbours.

He invited the then Public Safety Minister to their region to see what they were experiencing.

All these people wanted was a partnership with B.C. That's all they wanted. Representatives

of B.C. fire were in the area. They were already there.

Rob Cote invited the minister and said: "I will pay his ticket. I will pay his meals.

But come and see what we went through as a community." He really felt abandoned, and

they were angry.

By the way, I wasn't spared any of that anger either. I thought I was going down there,

basically, to listen to their side of the story, but I got some of the anger as well.

I couldn't blame them for it.

The question was: "Why are we not being considered as part of the firefighting plan

when we have the expertise and the resources? We have the history." I understand liability,

but we can resolve that through training. We can resolve it through a database of

people with equipment, who are listed in a certain area, who can actually help B.C.

They could be the front-line fire spotters and responders, especially if it's just

a spot fire.

There are so many people telling me that a ten-foot-square forest fire…. It started

in grasslands. They put it out, and they were admonished for it. But the people, not

just the Aboriginals but the non-Aboriginals as well, knew more about that area than

anybody else did. They could talk about where the fire was going to spread, where

it was going to go up a mountain because of prevailing winds, where the wind switched

in the afternoon and died down in the evening. I didn't know that.

Local expertise is not just restricted to Aboriginals. If you come to my territory,

and you talk about my fire prevention techniques, I've got none to give you. We're

on the west coast of B.C. We don't get the same kinds of forest fires as down south

of B.C.

We don't have prescribed burns in my culture. Like any other disaster, in the old

days, we just moved away from it. The floodwaters came up; we moved up. The floodwaters

went down; we moved down. Forest fires came around; we just left. So I can't give

you any experience. I don't think any of my band members can give you any of that

experience.

I did learn an incredible amount from the people of Monte Lake and Logan Lake and

Merritt. The people in Merritt went through a flooding situation. When I went there,

I saw all the private sector groups. I saw all the church groups. All mobilizing and

going to Merritt to help them out, to rebuild their lives, bringing in food, clothes.

I saw all of that. The big question was: "Where is B.C.?" I don't know.

Everywhere I went, as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, I took the heat too. I

didn't distinguish this side of the House, that side of the House. I just agreed:

"Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know."

[1:45 p.m.]

As an MLA working in Terrace…. The experience I got from forest fire evacuations was

another angry incident. Tahltan members, from their region up in northern B.C., were

evacuated and came to Terrace. They were told to go to Terrace, B.C., but there was

nothing there waiting for them. They came to my office, very angrily asking why we

weren't prepared for them. I didn't even know that they had been evacuated. I didn't

know that Terrace was a location for them to come to.

We ended up jumping on our phones. We started phoning up all the local leaders, the

gymnasiums and the schools. We phoned up everybody. "Can you house some people?" "Yes,

we can." The networks started working. People started getting into hotels. They started

sleeping in gymnasiums. But we had to answer the questions: "How are we going to feed

them? How are we going to clothe them? Where are they going to be?"

Looking at the Ombudsman's report and seeing the firsthand accounts of what people

went through across B.C., they had the same complaints. I wouldn't say it's timely.

Yeah. Maybe after 20 or 25 years, we do have to reconsider the actions that we take

in terms of emergencies or disasters. But will it work?

What you're talking about is preventative. We're talking about actions to actually

fight fires preventatively, to prevent floods. You can't do anything about the snow.

You can't do anything about that.

Also, in terms of the aftermath, in terms of the care of people…. If you say you're

going to look after them and you develop a program to look after people when they're

evacuated, then you've got to live up to that. That's what people expect. That's what

they've been told.

In the Ombudsman's report, people were quoted.

"People were staying in their cars for days, waiting for ESS to find accommodations."

"After having to register in three different towns and being turned away and our paperwork

forgotten about, we were stuck in a car for almost 20 hours and told to be prepared

to sleep in it."

"As a person with a registered disability that affects mobility, it was very painful

and draining to stand in long lineups and wait for hours to register at an ESS that

has limited seating and no seating for the outside lineups and no parking, which requires

walking a distance." That is heartbreaking.

"My husband had severe dementia and Alzheimer's and did not cope well with all the

changes and uncertainty. He was frail, and it was hard for him to stand in line."

I can identify with that.

"I had to sleep on the floor for a month with a newborn baby because I couldn't afford

to buy a bed to sleep on at a family member's house."

A First Nations' perspective. "Staying in a dorm brought back memories of residential

school, because the doors were locked after 11." Oof.

"One participant described caring for a family member with a badly injured foot, who

was using a walker. She described being denied supports for accommodation because

she had a trailer her family could live in. She told us…." I'm assuming this is an

ESS representative. "A small travel trailer is not equipped to handle a walker."

"I have two children with mental health problems, and it was very difficult for us

to stay in two rooms in a hotel. We are a family of seven. My autistic son needed

more space, but it was not available."

This is quite the issue. I get it. We've got to do better. We do have to do better

in the initial stages and in the middle stages. As I've heard many times before in

this House, it's about people. That can't just be a slogan. We've got endless accounts

of people that were made to feel worse, even though there was a program that was developed

to help ease their suffering.

[1:50 p.m.]

Now, there are resources that have to be directed to this, of course, but it's got

to be resources that are achievable. We've already seen communities like Terrace,

and Kitimat and even Nisg̱a'a, at a moment's notice, open their doors and house people

that need it and feed them.

If that's what the government is thinking about in terms of partnership, then you

can go one step further. Think about the people that know how to deal with emergencies

because they've been doing it for years.

Ranchers. One of the most surprising things I heard from ranchers is that they knew

how to fight fires. But they knew they couldn't evacuate 200 head of cattle. For them

to be told that they should evacuate their cattle…. "How can we? They're eating up

in the summer grasses land up on the mountain. How can we collect them all, bring

them down? Then how do we find semi-trucks to load them on? Then where would we bring

them, and who pays for it?"

These are real issues by real people living out there. What happened to them? They

got criticized. They had already given up on the idea that they would lose their livelihood

by losing all their cattle, but they couldn't stand the idea of losing their farmhouse,

their residential house, the house that their grandmother lived in, the house that

their grandfather built, and they were just told: "You're being reckless."

They weren't reckless. These were good, hard-working people, and they were trying

to save what was most important to them. All they wanted was a partnership with B.C.,

an alliance. "We can work together. We know the region. We have the history. B.C.,

you have the resources. We can do this." If this is the full intention of Bill 31….

By the way, if it is the full intention, we've got to see it. You can't leave the

majority of this up to regulation. That is not fair. If this actually ends up adding

more questions to people, whether it be front-line workers or whether it be farmers,

ranchers or people in our communities, this is not fair.

If it's going to be done, let's make sure it's achievable and it achieves some of

the things that we've seen in the last six years here in B.C., including lessening

the risk to firefighters with new technology that's out there. That's being employed

all around the world, even being supplied by companies here in B.C. But we refuse

to acknowledge them or utilize their services for whatever reason.

R. Russell: It's really my pleasure to stand and speak in support of this bill — Bill 31. This

is something…. We're not allowed to have props in the House. But if I were allowed

to have a prop here, it would be from five, six years ago now, I guess — the napkin.

Not quite a napkin, that….

In the aftermath, or the midst, of a major flood in my own community, my own home,

as well as many adjacent communities, I was tasked with, as we've heard from a number

of other speakers, leading the policy work for response and recovery as the then chair

of the regional district.

The napkin that I would have brought in is the brainstorming that I was doing with

my team to try to identify how we build a recovery team. How do we build a model of

recovery through disaster that makes sense for the local community?

At that point, there was no playbook. There was no guidance. There was no legislative

framework for what that looks like in terms of: how do we navigate this in a way that

makes sense for our community? So the fact that I am here today…. I will read a couple

of sections that I am enormously pleased to see in a bill in front of this House.

[1:55 p.m.]

For example,

section 98, clause 1: "Subject to this section, a local authority may,

by emergency instrument, make a declaration of a local recovery period." That very

simple sentence means an enormous amount for communities that are trying to figure

out how to navigate this.

This piece of legislation enables our communities on the ground to be able to take

actions that help their communities and deliver that support in a meaningful, more

efficient — cost-efficient and human resource–efficient — way and do the things that

we know we need to do for those communities.

Sections like 103, coordination of response and recovery efforts: "For the purpose

of responding to or recovering from an emergency in an area within a local authority's

jurisdiction, the local authority must coordinate actions in the area, or, if another

person is responsible for coordinating particular actions in the area, assist the

other person in coordinating actions in the area, may, for the purposes of paragraph

(a), give directions to members of the local authority's emergency management organization,

and may give advice and assistance to any person."

These are the kinds of sections within this bill that I think are enormously important

to change the landscape of how we navigate disasters in this province. We have been

relying on a very outdated model of emergency management. Many of the challenges,

the frustrations, that, so far, I have heard from the opposition, don't necessarily

pertain to the bill per se. They pertain to how we navigate disasters.

This bill is designed to do exactly that in terms of enabling more of that control

by local communities, making mandates more explicit for who has to do what and supporting

collaboration and cooperation among very different entities on the ground.

These are the sorts of things that are…. From somebody who lived through this and

went through the process of trying to figure out how to build a system that worked,

I recognize that these have an enormous potential impact on the future of our emergency

and disaster management in this province. Indeed, if it were not for this bill….

I will read the explanatory note for the record, because I like it:

"This bill repeals and replaces the Emergency Program Act. The purposes of this bill

are as follows: to account for all four phases of emergency management, which are

mitigation, preparation, response and recovery; to streamline and clarify the powers

and duties of the minister, provincial emergency management organization, ministries,

public sector agencies and local authorities; to facilitate agreements, consultation

and cooperation with Indigenous peoples with respect to emergency management; to clarify

the roles of critical infrastructure owners; to incorporate into legislation lessons

learned in recent years in response to floods, wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic;

and to modernize and improve consistency of language in the legislation."

I would add a final point. which is to reduce the risk of disasters in our province.

That

summary of this legislation, to me, captures the heart of why we are doing this.

Indeed, if it were not for these challenges and the potential for legislation like

this, I would not be in this House today. I came here with a commitment to build better

models for the province for many things. This is certainly one of those pieces of

legislation which I have been waiting for, for a long time.

Well before I came into this place, I was on the consultation end of the table, working

with the provincial government in 2018, 2019 on the flood and wildfire committee,

trying to navigate what this looks like. We've all heard and we've all experienced

many of the challenges that have beset the province. Aside from the pandemic, the

many disastrous wildfires and floods, heat domes and cold spells that we've had in

the last few years…. We have learned a great deal. These are incorporated into the

learning that has informed this document.

[2:00 p.m.]

Even in the recent cabinet shuffle, the Premier's dedication to recognizing the importance

of this, I think, in terms of creating a new Ministry of Emergency Management and

Climate Readiness, is a signal to the fact that we recognize here…. We recognize that

emergency management is not a militaristic operational problem alone. It is a challenge

to reduce the risk of disasters.

It is not simply a challenge to respond well to those disasters. We know those are

challenges. We deal with those looking and working with partners from around the continent

— in the United States, in Canada — as well as around the world. This kind of change,

this kind of shift in terms of sentiment is important to be able to recognize what

it is that we are doing with the work that we need to do for emergency management.

That, again, comes back to that notion of reducing the risk of disasters, which is

a core principle of the Sendai framework that we have heard referenced here a number

of times, which was a commitment that this government, prior to myself being here,

made some years ago. This is now part of the manifestation of what that looks like.

That framework from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is important,

again, in terms of the principles that it provides to guiding the development of pieces

of legislation such as this, and pieces of regulation that, as we have heard over

the last two days, are also important to align. It provides high-level outcomes such

as "the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and

health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of

persons, businesses, communities and countries." That's the outcome.

The goal is to: "Prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk through the implementation

of integrated and inclusive economic, structural, legal, social, health, cultural,

educational, environmental, technological, political and institutional measures that

prevent and reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to disaster, increase preparedness

for response and recovery and thus strengthen resilience."

The guiding principles — there are many. I will read four that I think are particularly

relevant to this piece of legislation.

"Empowerment of local authorities and communities through resources, incentives and

decision-making responsibilities as appropriate." Much to the previous speaker, the

member for Skeena, talking about the challenges of navigating this for a nation, for

a community, and determining how to incorporate more of that local input into the

process….

Guiding principles such as "decision-making to be inclusive and risk-informed while

using a multi-hazard approach." It's the kind of request we've heard over and over

again from the emergency management community — to adopt a more holistic, multi-hazard

approach to how we navigate disasters.

Principles such as "coherence of disaster risk reduction and sustainable development

policies, plans, practices and mechanisms across different sectors."

And finally, "Build back better" for preventing the creation of and reducing existing

disaster risk.

These are the elements of a piece of legislation like this that are particularly important,

again, to how we navigate forward in a world where we know the frequency and intensities

of these disasters is increasing and is causing more and more damage.

One of those principles that we have heard referred to — again, that those clauses

that I read reference — is recognizing that, as opposed to the historic model of being

heavily, heavily focused on response….

[2:05 p.m.]

It's a shift to recognizing that if our intention, if our goals are, as I just described,

to reduce the risk of disasters for all of us, then it means we need to shift that

mindset and embrace the notions of recovery and preparedness and mitigation on the

same footing as we navigate response. So as somebody had said yesterday, this, for

example, will help allow us to be "spending at the right end of the problem," in my

mind.

We know, from many different studies, the fact that investing a dollar now on some

of the prevention and mitigation and doing a good job of what our communities know

they need will save us $7 to $10 in the future. So this is not just an exercise in

spending more; it is also an exercise in saving a great deal more in terms of economic

returns, economic damages that we avoid, as well as the social and environmental damages.

As some of you know, 2023 appears to be the most expensive insured event in B.C. history.

So if we can get ahead a little bit and be able to reduce some of those impacts —

be able to secure and save more homes, for example — we can actually save money in

the process.

Again, I read out a couple of sections of the bill earlier. Those are examples, to

me, of how that recognition of response and recovery, and expanding powers for all

levels of government between response and recovery, matters. That notion that we are

able to provide to communities, provide to nations, more authority to engage actively

in those spaces will do us all good in the long run.

One of the factors that was mentioned earlier by a couple of opposition speakers,

as well, is the challenges in terms of response, especially when it comes to coordination

among different entities that are navigating that process together.

Explicit in this legislation — even though we haven't heard that referenced much from

the opposition; the bill itself — are the structures that are needed for us to be

able to create collectives of different response organizations, to be able to create

information-sharing pathways that make sense for different agencies, to be able to

create the structures and the frameworks for effective collaboration to respond effectively

for the people that we are trying to serve.

Those kinds of collaborative and cooperative elements in a piece of legislation —

from my experience, at least — are difficult to frame when the goal is to create flexibility,

to create an agile framework that can support very different frameworks in very different

contexts across the province in terms of who has capacity, who has knowledge to deliver

on those. So those kinds of opportunities mean that we will, again, be in a place

where we have a more effective framework for managing disasters.

Section 22, for example: "The minister may, by order, require 2 or more local authorities…to

establish a multijurisdictional emergency management organization…or a local authority…to

join a multijurisdictional emergency management organization." These kinds of opportunities

to be able to say: "We need to collaborate if we expect to do this well." And that

kind of regional emergency management planning…. For those of us that have lived in

that space, we are painfully aware sometimes of the importance of that.

I have the opportunity to work with the community, the village of Lytton, for example,

on their recovery. The challenges of jurisdictional boundaries around the village,

for example, and the supports that are available within that line versus outside of

that line are something we heard almost immediately in terms of how we navigate what

this recovery looks like from a village perspective versus an electoral area perspective.

[2:10 p.m.]

Similarly, after the atmospheric river events a couple of years ago, communities like

Princeton spooled up their emergency management teams very effectively. Communities

that were outside of that municipal boundary were supported by the good faith of that

community and their emergency management organization but were under different jurisdictional

control and administration. That causes issues. It causes challenges in being able

to deliver effective supports at an economy of scale that makes sense and makes sure

that where you live does not impact the quality of service that you can receive. So

I'm very pleased to see elements such as that collaboration and cooperation in a broad

sense woven throughout this legislation.

My colleague the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin yesterday, I think, had a lot of good

to say about this bill. One of his comments, which I appreciate and find somewhat

intriguing, is that he said British Columbians are owed this legislation. I'm not

sure I would choose quite the same words, but I certainly recognize that we are in

desperate need of this legislation. As that member spoke to, it has taken us a long

time to get to this point.

We have had a number of challenges provincially, which I would say: it's not that

they have slowed down the creation of the legislation. They have taught us a great

deal more about how to make sure this piece of legislation will be effective at delivering

what we need it to deliver.

I'll shift gears a little bit for those of us that engage actively with local government.

We had our UBCM meetings. We had the opportunity to connect with local governments

from across this province a couple of weeks ago. One of those conversations which

I had the opportunity to have, which I appreciated…. Well, a number of those conversations

were about this potential legislation, about this bill.

One of the comments, one of the questions that I heard upon somebody commenting to

me about the notion or the concern around provincial government downloading — which

I take offence to, given I came from local government and was actively lobbying to

see legislation like this. Recognizing another part of that Sendai framework, we know

that emergency management is a shared responsibility.

It is a shared responsibility from the individuals, from homeowners, from individual

residents, through local community organizations, through local governments. It is

a shared responsibility among regional organizations, provincial governments, federal

government and nations. It is a reality; we have to work together in order to make

this work.

We know it's going to be harder. It is going to be harder. It is going to be more

work for all of us. The question that this councillor from Lake Country, I believe

it was, asked me is: what more is the province doing? We're asking clearly for local

governments to be able to deliver regional planning, for example. We're asking local

governments to engage with their Indigenous territory. We are asking a lot, and the

question was: what is government doing?

Well, we're doing the same. The obligations on all levels from changes that would

be brought about by a piece of legislation like this mean that there will be more

work for us. There will be more work for us because we don't want to see the challenges

that we've had in terms of effective response, recovery, preparedness, and mitigation

for disasters.

This is part of the work where we've heard, I would say, from the opposition a lot

of comments around the regulation, around not so much the legislation but: what about

the regulation? Is there too much of the direction here that is relying on regulation?

[2:15 p.m.]

Well, also, much of what we've heard, again, as the member for Skeena mentioned just

now, was we need flexibility. We need to be able to do this in a way that works well

in local communities. We need to do that where the provincial government is supporting

those communities doing what they need to do without overly restrictive legislation

forcing us into places that make it difficult for us to accomplish what we want to

accomplish.

The idea that the regulation here and the engagement on that regulation is open….

Much of that regulation is already open. A number of the pieces that have been mentioned

in terms of ESS and DFA regulation will be open until the end of the year to be able

to give people the opportunity to feed back on how we make sure that system works

well and how we make sure that regulation can be agile enough and flexible enough

to support the local models that we want to see supported.

I agree with much of what the commentary has been from the Opposition. I would disagree

with the challenge that more of that ought to be encapsulated in legislation as opposed

to regulation. I think that is an opportunity that is provided to us.

I scribbled down a quote from FEMA, which is the U.S. federal emergency management

organization, from about 12 years ago when I was listening earlier here to a comment

about local input into effective emergency management. That quote, which I like, is

"recognition that government at all levels cannot manage disasters alone means that

communities need the opportunity to draw on their full potential to operate effectively.

Empowering local action requires allowing members of communities to lead — not follow

— in identifying priorities, organizing support, implementing programs, and evaluating

outcomes."

This has been a challenge, historically, with our legislation. This bill would enable

us to do a better job of just that — collaboration among organizations, among individuals,

and support for local input and communities to lead in identifying their priorities,

in organizing their support, implementing their programs and evaluating their outcomes.

With that, I will acknowledge…. Again, as I said when I opened, I am here because

of emergency management. If it were not for that, I would not be in this place. The

work that we did on the ground for our community — again, we've heard other members

speak to their own experiences — is most certainly not an individual effort.

At the risk of inevitably forgetting some names, I would like to acknowledge the people

that were part of the group that I tapped. Some of these were the people that I tapped

to be able to say: "We had a flood. We were active in response. We knew how to do

response well. We did not know what recovery looked like. We got approvals from the

province at that point to spend a great deal of money on developing a plan."

My board approved that plan. We were about to go forward with what would have been

a very large ticket item to be able to navigate, and something didn't feel right.

I and some colleagues went back to the drawing board and said this is not going to

lead us back to that principle of the Sendai framework that I mentioned in terms of

building back better for preventing the creation of or reducing existing disaster

risk. It wasn't going to do that for us.

[2:20 p.m.]

At that point, I went out into community and met with the leaders of different parts

of our community. I met with leaders in the social services side of things, leaders

in economic development and community development, and leaders in environmental management

and our watershed authority, which was what it was called at that time, and sat down

with them.

I asked them. I said: "Are you interested in helping lead this process? We do not

know what it's going to look like. I do not know how we're going to pay you. We do

not have any terms of reference. I do know that it's going to take a long, long time.

I do know that it's going to be very hard. I do know that you are going to put your

own social capital in your home on the line to deliver effective recovery, and it

may or may not work, and we may fail."

A lot of those people stepped forward to say, yes, that they would do that. They did

so, frankly, unpaid for quite a while, because we had no structure to support recovery.

We had no legislative framework for us to actually deliver this thing that we knew

we needed to deliver.

So my hands up to them for what they did. I will run through the names, and again,

I just wrote them down, so I will apologize in advance for whomever I have forgotten.

In no particular order: Graham Watt, Darren Pratt, Jennifer Wetmore, Jess Mace, Mike

Tollis, Mark Andison, Chris Marsh, Paul Edmonds, Gina Burroughs, Dan Derby, David

Reid. I think that's all of them.

Those are the people that really worked through this with me and put a lot on the

line for their community. This legislation will make their work in the future much,

much easier.

With that, thank you very much. Just before I close, it's my dad's birthday. I miss

him.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Leader of the Third Party.

S. Furstenau: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Nice to see you in the chair.

I just want to follow on the comments from my colleague, who really, I think, put

into a clear perspective that at the essence of it, emergency management, emergency

preparedness, emergency responses are a human endeavour. It is humans, it is people,

who are facing these emergencies, but it's also people who rise to the challenge of

emergencies over and over again in communities.

I've reflected on this for a long time, decades really, about what short emergencies

bring out in us, and they bring out the best. I mean, when there's a fire in a community,

when there is a flood or a disaster, you see the outpouring of generosity and support

and care and kindness. It is extraordinary, and it speaks, I fully believe, to who

we are as humans. We are connected to each other. We are connected to the world around

us, and we will act in that way, given the opportunity, almost, of showing that true

self of who we are.

[2:25 p.m.]

Long emergencies are a lot tougher. Long emergencies erode that basic drive that we

have, because they are relentless, and they keep coming. We are in a long emergency,

and this last summer should convince us of that, if nothing else: the worst wildfire

season in Canadian history, the most amount of hectares burned, the devastation to

communities across B.C.

On top of that, droughts. Farmers not being able to water their crops. Tens of thousands

of fish dying in rivers because they're too dry and too warm. We are in the midst

of an ever-evolving and ever-increasing long emergency.

One of the things I make a point of saying to my children is that this isn't normal.

Don't accept this as normal. I really reject this idea of any kind of new normal,

as if we just accept that things are going to be like this now — that our summers

are going to be smoke-filled, and our fish are going to die, and our rivers are going

to run dry, and then we're going to have floods in the aftermath of that. I cannot

accept that we just say to our children and our grandchildren that this is a new normal.

How terrible of us to say that. It's not normal. It's not what the summers were like

when we were young. We used to take road trips all over B.C. We never had to drive

away from a wildfire, which I have now had to do twice on our family road trips. We've

never had to consider not being able to go because of evacuation orders or because

of ongoing disasters.

I think it's really important for us to locate ourselves in the time and the moment

we're in, as we talk about Bill 31, the environmental management act. We see climate

disasters becoming more frequent and more severe, and we hear that this is only the

beginning. Each year might be the best year that we have for the future. I think it's

really important, again, to humanize this — the fear, the terror, the uncertainty

that people experience.

People being forced to evacuate their homes, to leave their communities — the trauma,

the loss of livelihood, the impacts to mental health, the loss of photographs, family

mementos. It's impossible to even consider the cost of those losses, the impacts of

disaster to farmers, to tourism, to forestry workers, to our health.

I appreciated the minister's second reading speech and how she recognized the impacts

of disasters and the toll that a changing climate has on communities, mostly rural

communities and First Nations. It's clear we can't afford to continue with the status

quo when it comes to emergency management in this province.

We can recognize the huge need for an updated approach to emergency and disaster management

and the continuous record-breaking weather events we've experienced in recent years:

the heat dome, the atmospheric river, wildfires and the loss of towns like Lytton

and in this summer, communities in West Kelowna.

As meteorologist Armel Castellan warned us at UBCM: "This is a mild version of what

we can expect in the future." That's why I'm supportive of Bill 31. We're long past due for modernized emergency

management legislation, as the last piece of legislation was updated in 1993.

I commend this government's commitment to co-develop this legislation with First Nations.

I am interested to see how the province will recognize Indigenous governing bodies

as outlined in this legislation. We've seen their inability to recognize the authority

of hereditary leadership in Wet'suwet'en territories, for example.

[2:30 p.m.]

From what I understand, the legislation requires local governments to seek agreements

with Indigenous governing bodies and the province to seek the same agreements. Will

First Nations be compensated for this work? How is this House supposed to have confidence

that the government will properly support and compensate First Nations and local governments

for all the work they are now required to do?

I think we need to discuss and understand the implications of such a serious ask.

Climate change crises have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous communities. Indigenous

people across B.C. are about four times more likely to experience an evacuation than

non-Indigenous people, and Indigenous people living on reserves across Canada are

18 times more likely to be displaced, according to the federal government.

Rural and remote communities disproportionately experience social, economic, cultural

and health impacts from climate change, compared with urban centres, according to

a report by the federal government. The government recognizes that this legislation

will have a major impact on local governments and First Nations, yet it is unclear

how they will be impacted, and I have serious concerns and questions about this.

There have been a lot of reports and recommendations when it comes to emergency preparedness

and emergency management in this province. This government's track record on learning

from previous natural disasters and emergencies hasn't been great. I truly hope this

government has heeded the calls of the Abbott-Chapman report, the Firestorm 2003 report and other reports, including the 2014 atmospheric river report. The government

failed to act on recommendations from the 2003 fires to reduce risks in places where

wildlands border cities.

I look forward to committee stage to better understand how Bill 31 provides the supports

necessary to do this important work. From what I understand the funds and investments

for this work will come from the budget, not this legislation or the regulations.

George Abbott and Maureen Chapman wrote: "It is imperative that we move to a multi-year

multi-pronged approach to community safety, one that involves concerted, proactive

investment before emergencies happen. The experience of 2017 demonstrated the consequences

of ignoring the growing gap between spending in the areas of response versus planning,

preparedness, prevention and mitigation." The $1 billion price tag so far for fighting

fires this summer is an example of that.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

"If we are to limit the vulnerability of our homes, our properties and our communities

to such extreme weather events and the new normal" — that's not my quote; that's Maureen

Chapman's — "the time to reinvest is now."

George Abbott and Maureen Chapman were interviewed last month about this year's wildfire

season.

Maureen Chapman shared: "It's absolutely devastating. I'd thought, working on that

report in 2018, that more would have been done to have prevented it being so bad this

year. I mean, it's just unprecedented, and I'm very frustrated."

George Abbott stated: "Just putting out the fires and getting through to September

and October when they all go out and we forget about them is not good enough anymore.

I think we need to be thinking about addressing risks of fire and flood in all seasons

of the year."

The Ombudsperson's recent report also raises flags for me. This week B.C. Ombudsperson

Jay Chalke released a report on the 2021 wildfire season that found that the province's

emergency support programs were inadequately funded, difficult to access and poorly

communicated.

I can imagine, Madam Speaker, that this very much rings true for you and your experiences

in your communities.

Given how many reports and expert feedback the province has received over the years,

these findings are worrying.

[2:35 p.m.]

How can the House be confident that Bill 31 meaningfully addresses these shortfalls?

At committee stage, it will be important to better understand how provincial communication

and alerts during emergencies have been improved and what the plan is for continual

improvement in this long emergency that we are in.

Experts know what needs to be done. Survivors of climate disasters know what needs

to be done. We need to stop planting monocultures. We need to stop clearcut logging

above watersheds. But will these much-needed changes help to reduce the risk? We have

siloed and fragmented so many of our systems, and we are seeing the impacts of this.

The drought right now in the Cowichan Valley has resulted in thousands, possibly tens

of thousands, of fish dying in the river this year. Pumps have been running over the

weir in Lake Cowichan to keep the river on life support. At 38 days, those pumps have

to be turned off, at which point, if we haven't had rain, the life support for that

river is off.

We also have to talk about the whole watershed, the fact that the watershed can't

contain the water when it does fall. Yes, we need a higher weir in Lake Cowichan.

We also need a watershed that can do its job. Nature can do a job better than any

human engineering can, but we have taken away that capacity of nature to do the job

it needs to do.

If we are not talking about clearcut logging and the impacts of that when it comes

to flooding and when it comes to drought, then we are not talking about the reality

of the emergency that we are in.

It seems that this government doesn't want to talk about the holistic thinking that's

really needed to protect communities from disasters, including stopping developing

more fossil fuel infrastructure. How much will the province be investing? How is this

determined? How will this investment be distributed? How will forestry practices be

changed? From what I understand, this is absent from this bill.

We have to stop pretending that things aren't connected. We have to stop thinking

we can solve one thing at a time.

Communities are at the centre of the disaster response. "Every single person that

could helped someone," recalls Michele Feist, who escaped a burning Lytton.

The province needs to empower and support local communities, First Nations, the people

who are on the ground in their communities and most impacted by these disasters and

emergencies. How does this bill achieve this? How are we funding this? In this era

of increasing polarization and division, is the minister confident that Bill 31 will

bring communities closer together, or is there a chance that it will further divide

communities?

I've thought a lot about emergency preparedness and the way that we often approach

it in a pretty technocratic way. We put in legislation and policies and alert systems,

but we don't recognize — and this is what I started my comments about — that in emergencies

what we need are people. People need to have the capacity, the empowerment, the understanding,

the knowledge, the access to information, the ability to communicate quickly amongst

each other. People need to be at the heart and the core of emergency preparedness.

There are communities that are doing this. They're creating neighbourhoods that are

deeply connected, with what I would call neighbourhood captains.

[2:40 p.m.]

The Philippines has brought in an entire neighbourhood captains program, realizing

that when an emergency hits, the people you need the very most aren't people in a

call centre in a city or in a government building somewhere or even in a government

building in your location. The people you need the very most when an emergency hits

are your neighbours. That's what we need to focus on.

How are we using resources and imagining emergency preparedness as something that

is building and strengthening social fabric in every neighbourhood in B.C., in every

community in B.C.? That's connecting neighborhoods across communities. That's recognizing

we have to make this a human endeavour — not a technocratic one, a human one — because

in emergencies, like in the atmospheric river, it was humans, it was people, who came

out, filled sandbags and rose to that moment.

In this forever emergency, if we're building neighborhoods that are deeply socially

resilient, connected, where we know who our neighbourhood captain is when disaster

strikes, where that neighbourhood captain is going to be communicating with their

30 households and making sure that everybody has all the most pertinent information

as quickly as possible, then now we're starting to make emergency preparedness into

something that creates a deep resilience in our communities.

I don't know if this legislation has a lot of humans in it. I think in governments

we kind of work around that, but that is the essence of what we have to build in this

long emergency. It's that deep connection.

I understand that there's much contained within Bill 31 that addresses the overlap

between local governments, Indigenous governing bodies and other actors. How does

Bill 31 address this overlap within the province? How will the Ministries of Forests;

Energy, Mines; Water, Land and Resource Stewardship work together efficiently and

effectively?

Time and time again, we see jurisdictional confusion between ministries, agencies

and regulators. I think we have to ask the question of how we can be confident that

Bill 31 moves to remedy the fragmentation and silos that are ever-present across government

ministries and that have proved to do serious harm.

Finally, I'm just going talk about slow rollouts. In this forever emergency that we're

in, disasters are coming more frequently. They are more serious and intense, and they

are not slow; they're fast. We know that it's going to take years to see change on

the ground. The minister acknowledged that how the legislation will play out on the

ground won't be answered in debate and that it will come through the development of

regulations, policies and partnerships.

The Minister of Emergency Management noted: "There will be a lot of work that has

to be done through the development of regulations and policies and interpreting how

this legislation actually plays out on the ground in our communities." Engagement

sessions are still open on the regulations until December 31.

I guess my question would be: how can members of this House be assured that this bill

is as comprehensive and thorough as possible? It's clear that climate emergencies

will only get worse in the coming years, and we need to be setting our children and

grandchildren up with effective policies but also, again, with resilient, connected

neighbourhoods and communities to meet these challenges. That will be something I'll

be looking forward to canvassing — or my colleague, one of us — in the committee stage

of this bill.

With that, I thank you.

[2:45 p.m.]

Deputy Speaker: The member for North Coast.

J. Rice: I appreciate your acknowledging me to speak and allowing me a few minutes here to

speak on this important piece of legislation, the Emergency and Disaster Management

Act. This is something that I'm really passionate about, as you know, Madam Speaker,

in your role as MLA. We have historically worked together, dealing with many emergencies

and catastrophic events throughout British Columbia.

In my previous role as Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Preparedness, which I

held between 2017 and early this year, I learned a tremendous amount. Some of the

things that I was sort of gobsmacked about was the fact that when we saw imminent

danger happening — a flood coming, for example — our own legislation in government,

which we know hasn't been updated since the 1990s, prevented us from actually mitigating

any of this imminent danger from occurring. Our own rules forbade us to do so.

However, as soon as the s-h-i-t hit the fan, we would deploy every resource possible,

regardless of what the financial implications were. It really taught me that, wow,

we're really focusing on the one pillar of emergency management, and there are four:

mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. I also learned, speaking of floods,

the catastrophic floods that impacted Grand Forks and area through 2017 and '18, that

we really didn't have a lot of supports or even levers within our own legislation

or regulations to actually help a community recover after a catastrophe had occurred.

This legislation, I think, is really forward-thinking and progressive. I recognize

that apparently, the type of legislation being put forth here is unprecedented in

Canada. It's a 200-page document…. We're now focusing on the future, we're focusing

on the four pillars of emergency management, and it's not just about responding. I

think this is fantastic news.

I hear from members opposite, "What took so long," etc., but I just want to tell a

story. When I was appointed parliamentary secretary in 2017…. I think we were sworn

in on a Tuesday. On Wednesday I was given the binder that you need to learn your portfolio,

and then I was told: "You and the Premier, the Forests Minister and the Public Safety

Minister –– you're all going to wildfire communities on Thursday."

I had read the first page of that binder, trying to take it all in and learn what

I had to learn about this portfolio, and then the summer was so incredibly busy. In

2017, it was the worst wildfire season on record. I spent a lot of time in communities

–– rural, mostly –– and learning on the ground, firsthand, the impacts of these major

fires that we were experiencing.

I think it was not until late fall where I actually read the rest of the binder. It

was a good thing that I learned this way on the ground, because government documents

are so full of acronyms, and I wouldn't have ever understood that binder had I not

been on the ground being with people throughout the province.

The last briefing that I had requested –– I put it off to the last because I said:

"This is never going to happen; this the zombie apocalypse stuff" –– was the briefing

on pandemics. I don't think I got the pandemic briefing before it hit. Nonetheless,

we'd had these types of incidents that have really made us rethink.

Then going right into COVID, the legislation, amongst a whole whack of legislation,

was all put on hold as we dealt with this pandemic and, of course, the other types

of disasters that we'd experienced, like fires, floods and atmospheric rivers, etc.

[2:50 p.m.]

I am sorry that it's taken so long. I don't know if I want to even say sorry because

I don't want to own that. But I actually understand why it's delayed. Most importantly,

I think, because we experienced these disasters and new things like a pandemic, it

has further enhanced this legislation. It is the knowledge…. The lessons learned have

really contributed to making this more robust in what it needs to be.

This week, when this was introduced, I think, is a really good, celebratory time.

The fact that the new ministry includes the words "climate change," I think, is realistic

for today's day and age. Where before, we had the EPA, the Emergency Program Act,

we didn't include that. We didn't talk about forward thinking. We didn't talk about

preparedness.

My kudos to the public service that has worked on this legislation over the last few

years. They've done a phenomenal job. They've worked really hard. I want to just say

that they did this off the sides of their desks during all kinds of incidents. You

can plan and have your…. You can set your agenda, your goals for the year, but then

when something terrible happens, your future planning gets put to the side because

you are dealing with imminent danger.

The fact that we have been able to get through this, the fact that we actually have

a much more robust ministry to do both…. We need to do both simultaneously. We absolutely

need to respond, but we also need to do the future planning. That's what's happening

for the first time ever, as far as I know, in this province in regards to emergencies.

Kudos to us for actually getting there, but particularly I want to say kudos to the

public service. I got to work with so many phenomenal people since 2017 — working

hard, really passionate, really caring. I got to work with people who were deployed

from other ministries — from Housing, from Social Development, from Tourism — who

took a type of secondment to actually help us deal with emergencies.

I'm standing here today to say that I'm just really proud to support this legislation.

I can't wait to vote on it. I know that many people in the communities, whether it's

local governments, individual citizens, the firefighters I spoke to, wildfire and

even our local firefighters in communities, emergency management personnel, the CAOs

that became emergency operation centre incident commanders…. I've talked to so many

of them over the years, and they were really excited and looking forward to having

modernized legislation.

I didn't fully understand that when I was first appointed to the role. It sounded

so boring and policy-wonkish. But then my experience throughout the years has really

taught me how critical this is, how important it is for us to modernize. I'm really

happy to stand up here and say this is great news. I can't wait to support the bill.

T. Shypitka: Thank you to the House for this piece of legislation, this act, this bill that's in

front of us right now, the Emergency and Disaster Management Act, because it's needed,

and I mean that sincerely.

First of all, I just want to…. A couple of quick thanks before I get into this. I

want to thank the riding of Kootenay East. I know that every MLA will share it with

their own associated ridings, but I just want to say thanks to the riding of Kootenay

East for a couple of things. For one, just the resilience they showed this year during

the fire season. We had a couple that hit home pretty hard, impacted a lot of folks,

took some structures — thankfully, no loss of life — but really up-ended how we live

and play in the Kootenays. We all have some stories.

I want to thank also, firstly, the Ktunaxa Nation, that is part of Kootenay East,

and the community of ʔaq̓am, which is the community that resides close to Cranbrook,

just outside of Cranbrook. They were impacted pretty severely. They were the ones

that lost some structures.

[2:55 p.m.]

The folks, the resiliency of THE Ktunaxa Nation and ʔaq̓am community have to be commended

for their efforts. Also, with the coordination that they brought to the regional district,

to other fire agencies, B.C. Wildfire Service and other agencies to get that communication,

the coordination that is needed for good recovery and good resilience. So hats off

to Ktunaxa First Nation and ʔaq̓am community.

And Joe Pierre — he's an old friend of mine. He's the Chief of ʔaq̓am, and he runs

a pretty good show at the ʔaq̓am community, so thanks to Joe and his crew.

Thanks to the firefighters, all the other agencies — emergency management B.C., wildfire

service of B.C.

I also want to just give a quick thanks to the Minister of Emergency Preparedness

and Climate Change, who did reach out. The phone call means a lot. And I know she

did the best in her capacity to make that communication. You know, it doesn't always

solve the problem, but it does rest you assured that somebody is at least watching

and actually cares. So I want to give her some credit. "Always give credit where credit

is due," my mom always used to tell me, so we'll do that here right now.

This bill, Bill 31, Emergency Disaster and Management Act, as I said, is a long time

coming. It's a bill that repeals and replaces the Emergency Program Act, which hasn't

been updated for quite some time. I believe the act came in 1993, so it'd be 30 years

this year. We've seen a lot of changes, I would dare say, in the last 30 years on

climate change, on how our forest practices are and how they've related, perhaps,

to some of the devastation we've seen. We heard the Leader of the Third Party, the

Green Party, talk about monocultures and forest practices, and I think that definitely

needs to be examined, for sure.

I'm happy to see this update — this modernization, I guess you'd call it — of this

bill come forward, and I'm looking forward to committee stage to really dive deep

into what it actually means and to get inside to the actual skeletal being of this

bill.

I also want to say that there's also a positive with

part 3. It's a new inclusion

into the act that we didn't see before, and they're agreements with Indigenous governing

bodies. That's a welcome addition. It respects, obviously, self-determination through

the use of Indigenous governing bodies as defined in DRIPA and the United Nations

declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

It's good because First Nations have a lot to say. They've been managers of this land

base for quite some time, and they've got a thing or two on knowledge and culture

that can bring a lot to the conversation on how we do things better. I'll get to that

a little bit later on.

There are a few concerns. We'll get into the committee stage on how this will impact

local governing bodies on reporting what that impact would be financially on them.

Will they need some assistance in doing that? What would the capacity buildout be

to support them, to ensure that this act is as effective as it possibly can be? So

we'll be watching on that.

I mentioned compensation. But the other thing….

I think it was the member for Boundary-Similkameen who said something a little while

ago — that he's been waiting a long time. I think the quote was "waiting for this

for a long time." And quite honestly, we all have. We've all been waiting a long time.

Back in 2017, I believe, B.C. United had a rollout of some legislation. I think it

was 400-and-some-odd clauses long. It was quite detailed, and it was exactly what

we're talking about right now. That was in 2017.

We want to do it right. There's no question about it. And we've had consultation.

We've done a lot of things already. But it seems like we're really kicking this down

the road a little farther than it should have gone. And 2017 was quite some time ago,

but there's been a lot of devastation since then.

[3:00 p.m.]

Let's maybe take a quick look at what we've seen in the last six years.

In 2017, we had 1,353 fires, which burned 1.2 million hectares, and $649 million in

costs to fight those fires.

In 2018, there were 2,117 fires, which burned 1.3 million hectares, at a cost of $615

million.

In 2019, it went down a little bit, thankfully, but still 825 fires at a cost of 21,000

hectares burned and $182 million.

Now, 2020 saw 670 fires and 14,000 hectares burned at $193 million in cost.

In 2021, unfortunately, 1,647 fires and 869,000 hectares burned at a cost of $718

million.

In 2022, once again, another record. So 1,801 fires and 135,000 hectares burned at

a cost of $411 million.

Of course, this year, unfortunately, the granddaddy of them all, 2,217 fires and 2.5

million hectares burned at a cost of $770 million. That is growing and projected to

be close to $1 billion this year. So $966 million, I believe, is the fact. I'm seeing

some nods.

If you add it all up, that's, since 2017, 10.6 million hectares burned. That's 106,000

square kilometres at a cost of $3.5 billion. That's just in firefighting costs. That's

not the tens of billions that it will cost government in other factors, replacement

and….

Two years ago we saw the fire in Lytton. A whole town completely wiped off the map.

Unfortunately, no resolution for that town. People are not back in their homes.

You can see the severe impact that wildfires and floods have and how important the

minister's file is on emergency management preparedness. Just to put it into a scale

of things…. When I say 10.6 million hectares, or 106,000 square kilometres, people

don't realize what that actually is in the scale of British Columbia.

British Columbia is about a million hectares big. So 106,000 square kilometres — I

looked it up. The East and West Kootenays are 86,000 square kilometres, and the Okanagan

is just slightly more than 20,000 square kilometres. Coincidentally enough, the fires

that we've seen in the last seven years would have entirely wiped out the East and

West Kootenays and the Okanagan. Almost exactly. That's a pretty large chunk of the

land base.

For those people on the Lower Mainland, what that would mean is…. The fires in the

last six years would have wiped out the Lower Mainland 20 times over.

Would legislation in 2017 have prevented these fires? No, not entirely. I still think

the statistics…. Roughly, in the last ten years, about 60 percent of fires are caused

by lightning; 40 percent are human-caused. That does go back and forth, over the 50

percent line, from year to year. On a ten-year average, I believe it's 60 percent,

59 point something, for lightning and 40 percent for human-caused.

That said, those lightning strikes, those remote strikes for wildfires, can be managed.

They can be proactively managed with our fire practices. We talked about traditional

knowledge. Prescribed burns. I'm a big fan. I'm a big advocate for wildlife habitat

and ecosystem restoration and prescribed burning. It's traditional knowledge that

First Nations have had for thousands and thousands of years.

It does many things. I wrote a bunch of them down. I'll see if I can find them. There

are more than I actually thought.

[3:05 p.m.]

It does many things. Obviously, it manages the buildup of biofuel, the fuel that's

on the ground. In our efforts to prevent forest fires over the last 100 years, some

of the monocultures and some of our forest managing practices, what we've done is….

We've created a tinder box of sorts.

Our fuel loads in the back country are two to three feet high in some cases. When

those fires do happen…. We're going to see more and more of them from lightning strikes

or other means. Those fires burn very hot and very deep, not like they would have

hundreds of years ago, when we would let fires just run wild. Of course, with urbanization,

we can't. We don't have those strategies anymore. We have to look after the communities

that are close by.

There was a study, actually, done by the Rocky Mountain Trench Society in my area

probably 20 years ago now. What they found was a tree about 600 years old. When they

examined the tree rings, they could decipher how many fire events happened in that

600 years. The average fire was anywhere from seven to 15 years. It would run through.

Because there was a replenishment, a regrowth, a removal of the fuel on the floor,

these fires would burn very quickly and very fast. They would scar the trees, but

they would never kill the trees.

The prescribed burning, with First Nations, removes that buildup of biofuel. It also

manages regeneration. So new foliage would grow. It manages pests and infestations.

It opens and maintains trails and pathways. This is all a First Nation rationale for

why they did their own cultural burning. It created grazing land for prey and, eventually,

for horses. They would do the grazing for horses. This burning would help with that.

It would rejuvenate forage. They found that when new forage would be grown after a

fire, next spring and the years after that, the plant life would have a higher protein

and mineral content, which would be healthier for prey. So for elk, moose, deer. Of

course, that extra protein and mineralization would also provide better milk from

cows to their calves and would create more prey for them, in turn, to hunt.

They would clear land for agricultural use and also stimulate productivity for berries,

stimulate the growth of medicinal plants, produce materials for basketry. It would

produce the materials they would need to make baskets and other things like that and

also create fuel breaks around camps and villages.

That's what we're seeing right now with some of our fire mitigation efforts across

the province. I know in our community of Cranbrook…. Our council and our regional

district have done an excellent job at fire mitigation by doing some of these prescribed

burns around our community, thinning the forests and providing that fire break for

the next eventuality.

The FireSmart program has been really well received. I want to thank the government

for initiating FireSmart and making sure we've got the resources for those communities

to prevent fire in their areas.

I'll look to the minister for, maybe, a nod. Maybe she knows. I believe the community

of Grasmere is one of the first communities in the province to be totally, 100 percent,

fire smart. Maybe not. Maybe she knows. I don't know. That's what was reported to

me, and I was really happy. Whether the first or not, I guess, is a sidebar, but I

was really proud of the community in the efforts they took.

The Triangle Women's Institute was a big driver of that. It's a great institution

they have down there in Grasmere. They took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and

they got their community fire smart.

[3:10 p.m.]

That's reducing any kinds of fuel sources, whether it's making sure there are no empty

gas cans around your homes, making sure you're cleaning up your backyards, making

sure there's not lots of dead growth there and maybe thinning some trees here and

there. It's a great program, and everybody should be commended on seeing that program

extended and more supported. We need more communities around the province to take

part.

I should say Newgate as well. Newgate was part of that. Baynes Lake. I don't want

to forget any communities now; I'll get in trouble. If you've ever been to the Kootenays,

and if you ever want to have a good time, you go to Baynes Lake for their breakfasts

and their muffins. The folks in Baynes Lake put on a pretty good spread, so I don't

want to jeopardize that.

But we did have a plan. We did have a plan in 2017, as I said. For whatever reason,

we are here where we are today and talking about legislation. But we're also looking

at more consultation. And then, of course, there will be a five-year review. That

might be a little long. We'll have to examine that in committee stage, on the review

process — if five years is a good target. Maybe we should be a little bit…. Maybe

take the data in a little quicker so that we can adjust.

We know, as I've just recited here not too long ago, what can happen in five years.

Five years is an eternity when you are in a bit of a crisis, as we're seeing right

now. So it could be money well spent to make sure that we have the resources and data

and information so we can do that review a little quicker.

But as I said, we did have a plan. We're here where we are today. I'm happy to say

B.C. United did put out a wildfire reform. They did come out with a couple of key

points that I thought were really good. The first one is to create a modern, full-time

firefighting service. This will be accomplished with a significant investment in more

front-line personnel, a much larger provincial fleet of aircraft and cutting-edge

fire suppression systems and technology.

If I can expand on that a little bit. I know, in 2018, we had some pretty severe fires

in the Cranbrook–Elk Valley area. The community of Moyie was impacted quite a bit.

I believe it was the Lumberton fire or the Sunrise fire. Anyways, it was devastating,

and it basically evacuated the whole community of Moyie.

At the one end of Moyie Lake, there's an RV park there that houses well over 300 people.

They were evacuated. The thing was, in that little community, in the summertime, there

was an ex–fire chief from Alberta along with three or four other acting firefighters

that were there. They also secured a fire pump truck just for emergencies.

They were well trained in emergency management, and they wanted to save their community.

Embers were flying, as you can imagine. RVs are parked fairly close together. There

was a real threat that that whole community could have gone up in a instant puff of

smoke.

Unfortunately, like we saw in West Kelowna this year, the orders were: "If you leave,

you can't come back." Now, I can understand. You have to get some policing on this

because everybody is a armchair quarterback, so to speak, sometimes. But these folks

were clearly not.

At that time, I said: "Well, there should be some kind of a process that proactively

registers…." I believe there's one now, but it's very unclear on how it's activated.

What I'm getting at is the professionals. It's not just retired fire chiefs and firemen.

We've got a whole industry that's waiting out there right now.

The mining code says that any mining operation, for example, has to have proper suppression,

proper emergency preparedness, skills training, and they have to be there ready to

fight a fire. Logging, forestry, has the same kind of thing. So these folks are available

resources that could have boots on the ground when fire strikes and there wasn't….

[3:15 p.m.]

I think it was in 2018 as well. There was a fire up in the Columbia Valley, right

next to a mine site. They had all the fire suppression equipment there, but they were

to leave immediately. They could have helped. Maybe we should be clearer on how we

can pre-register these resources. Make sure they're qualified, make sure they're trained.

But these folks are right there when the fire happens. They're literally miles away.

They could be there in a second.

I have to say, in the Grasmere area, we're right along the U.S. border. It's literally

a five- or ten-minute drive. I can't tell you how many times there's been fire in

Canada, just north of the U.S. border, where the U.S. fire service is there way faster

than the Canadian side. I'm not knocking any of the Canadian resources. I'm just wondering

if we can coordinate that as well. It looks like it's already there.

I'll do a little piece for my dad, because he used to say: "We used to have watch

towers, and you'd have somebody sitting on a watch tower." Some of those watch towers

I hike to now, and they're just beautiful vistas, but it was effective. So part of

this create "a modern, full-time firefighting service" identifies that in fleets of

aircraft, cutting-edge fire suppression systems and technology. They're here. They're

ready. So let's implement that.

The second piece is: "Use B.C. contractors early and broadly." I think that's kind

of what I spoke to. B.C. contractors possess local knowledge and offer the best opportunity

for the fastest suppression response possible. In the off-season, we will develop

an exhaustive inventory of all qualified and available contractors in B.C. — so that

includes industry, whoever it is — and eliminate unnecessary red tape barriers to

the rapid deployment without compromising safety.

I think that's what we're going to be getting to in this bill. If not, we'll be asking

for it, perhaps, in committee stage.

Number 3: trust, engage and support First Nations and local knowledge. We will train

and supply local volunteer fire response teams by ensuring they have the supplies

and water resources cached in rural and remote areas to enhance initial response times.

We will also address issues relating to liability insurance, certifications and standardized

training for these teams.

Once again, local knowledge, First Nations — their part, in

section 3, and this is

absolutely critical. We need to use that information, need to use that knowledge.

Number 4: aggressively adapt forestry management practices. This is, perhaps, probably

one of the more complicated issues that we have, but we will ensure a much greater

emphasis on removing forest fuel via selective harvesting of timber, whether damaged

by beetle infestations or previous fires via expedited approvals, regulatory changes

and financial incentives.

Once again, a little bit easier said than done. We have to look out for our import

duty tax and our competitive…. How we harvest our timber — that it's in accordance

with the United States, on the import duty tax and things like that. But it definitely

is something we need to address.

I'm going to give, also, a shout-out I forgot at the beginning. Well, actually, first

of all, I'll go to some recommendations. That was part of the Select Standing Committee

on Finance and Government, Services, and I'll go to some of the recommendations. I

thought I had it marked. There it is.

So the Comox regional district expressed concern that government's approach of providing

emergency management funding to local governments through grants restricts their capacity

to plan for disaster response and consult with Indigenous partners. The regional district

of East Kootenay — that's where I'm from — discussed the increased need for emergency

management due to floods and fires. Both regional districts recommend increasing emergency

management funding for local governments.

I think one of those recommendations…. I think it's recommendation No. 138 out of

166 recommendations. Recommendation 138 says: "Provide $6.75 million in base funding

to regional districts for emergency management."

[3:20 p.m.]

Now, I hope, through all these conversations, and through the Minister of Finance,

we can get there. All these regional districts…. I think there are — help me out —

22, 26 regional districts in the province.

Has anybody got…? Come on. The Chair of the committee is here.

I can't remember, but I think there are, say, roughly 24 regional districts. This

is money well spent that bolsters the resources that they need in order to coordinate

response times and coordinate emergency responses in their areas. I was really happy

that the committee put that recommendation forward. We heard from a lot, and I think

that one was super important.

I'll speak a little bit to the member for Delta South. "The B.C. Dairy Association

emphasized that prioritizing flood mitigation infrastructure investment is necessary

for the stability of the agricultural industry. Also related to flooding, the Emergency

Planning Secretariat expressed concern that some of the recovery work after the 2021

flood is repeating the same mistakes that were made initially, such as putting dikes

back in their original positions. The organization recommended providing funding to

support subregional and regional floodplain tables and for First Nation participation."

So food security, obviously, is super important. When we get to emergency response,

a lot of that emergency response is getting food to people that have been cut off

from food supplies.

We have a real opportunity in British Columbia to coordinate with those local food

providers, get that food out so that people that are off cut from supply chains when

we see floods wipe out highways and bridges and stuff like that — that that food gets

in. I'm sure the member for Delta South will maybe speak to that a little bit later,

as he is the expert.

I just wanted to point out…. I've only got a minute left.

Once again, David Wilks…. He's the mayor of Sparwood. This is what he said when I

asked: "Have you got anything to say about emergency preparedness?" They had the Ladner

Creek fire, which is right on his doorstep, and the whole town of Sparwood was on

edge for weeks.

"We need to improve communications in the first 24 hours of the fire. I was flying

on the seat of my pants, as I couldn't get any accurate information. I know it's tough,

but you have a community that's watching a fire on their doorsteps. We really need

an aggressive forest management plan. We need to be proactive rather than reactive.

We have so much timber that could be harvested in a responsible manner before it burns.

"As I said to the press this summer, we can either have a responsible forest management

plan, or we can let Mother Nature take care of it."

I think that sums it up pretty good, and I think that's what I was getting at with

prescribed burns. A lot of people feel uncomfortable. A lot of people say: "Well,

it's putting pollutants up in the air." For sure. But what's the result if you don't

manage it properly? You have catastrophic wildfires that take out communities, that

add to the GHG emissions if you want to look at it that way. But more importantly,

it threatens people and their lives.

With that, I'll take my place. I've got 12 seconds left.

M. Starchuk: Before I provide my remarks, I just want to take the time to reflect on the six people….

Their lives were tragically taken during this last wildfire season.

I had the — maybe "privilege" is not the correct word — opportunity to be in Barriere

as a structural firefighter in 2003. I often say that as a structural firefighter,

I would much rather be in a 60-year-old wood-frame apartment building with half a

tank of air on my back than ever go back to a forest fire — ever.

I have never been more scared in my entire life than those days spent in Strawberry

Hill outside of Barriere. It's also nice to be able to say that not one of those homes

perished during my watch. I'm pretty proud of that fact that's there.

[3:25 p.m.]

I also want to take the time to thank the member for Kootenay East, as the Deputy

Chair on Finance, and pointing out those things that were there. They were important

for the Finance Committee to hear. Not putting words into his mouth, but it was a

no-brainer to put it as recommendations in that report that was there.

I want to address a couple of things that are inside of here, but, more importantly,

to start off with thanks to the minister responsible for enduring this last summer

in more than one way. I cannot imagine, in any way, shape or form, having to roll

over in your sleep, pick up a phone and continue on while I was pregnant.

Thank you very much, Minister, for the effort that you've put forward.

I also want to make sure that it's clear, after my experiences in 2003…. The Filmon

report came out, and it identified some very critical things that were there. It wasn't

until 2018 that another report came out to talk about those things. Rather than talk

about the delays and what took place…. I'm happy to say that we have a FireSmart program,

which is in the province, as a result of that. It just took a little while to get

to where we are.

The other thing I want to mention is having that experience of being in the forest

when a fire is candling and it is running. It doesn't matter what kind of fire suppression

that you have. You will not stop Mother Nature.

We've heard innuendos and guesses. I mean, Howie Meeker made a career of second-guessing

whether or not the puck should have been passed or shot, for an entire lifetime.

I will never doubt the fact that what our people were doing in the forests were the

best things that they could do at that time. We can be second-guessing. We can be

Monday morning quarterbacks. I have complete and total faith that those people that

face that danger and that peril on a typical day did the best things that were for

all of us.

We've heard about fuel management. It is a real thing. When we take a look at the

FireSmart program…. I always think about Logan Lake and how they survived the fires

from a couple of years ago. That is a classic example of fuel mitigation, if you will,

where they took the time to peel back the forest, to remove the duff from the forest

floor, to make that area that's there….

It's not like other areas of the province where you can turn on a sprinkler and just

walk away. Some of these areas are on well water. You turn on a sprinkler and walk

away, and the sprinkler is stopped in an hour. We have to take all of those things

into consideration.

The thing I want to talk about the most is this task force. We've heard it from subject-matter

experts for quite some time. When I take a look at it…. They're talking about preparedness.

They're talking about mitigation. They're talking about response and recovery. I think

those are the key pillars when we think about what this task force can do.

I have a personal story that I want to share. One of those people that's on the task

force is the executive director for FNESS, who's Wayne Schnitzler. Wayne is a person

that I've known for a very long time. I can't really give you the amount of years

because that will be suggestive as to what my age is.

Wayne and I started off as volunteer firefighters in the city of Surrey. He left —

he was smarter than I was — to get out of there and to go to West Kelowna to become

the fire chief. Now he's the executive director for FNESS. Wayne has seen the opportunities

that are there for the nations to protect their reserves and to protect their lands

with their own people that are there.

We often see firefighters coming from other parts of the globe and other parts of

the country to help protect some of our stands of forest. We all know that those First

Nations that come from that area know their land the best, and they have the biggest

amount of interest that's invested into it. I'm not saying that a person that comes

from Australia doesn't care as much as that person that's there. But the person that's

standing there with that training….

That is training that FNESS has given to the First Nations people themselves, provided

them with the expertise and the tools that are there so that they can actually make

a stand when they know it's appropriate to do so. Not only do they make a stand in

the sense of when a fire appears, but they've been given the skills, knowledge and

ability to mitigate what's on their properties — to clear the duff from the edges,

to remove some of the forested areas that are there, to do the things that they need

to do to prepare themselves for when and if that takes place.

[3:30 p.m.]

We heard that the majority of the fire strikes start from lightning. We can't control

that part of it, but what we can control is the part about how we can prevent and

the part about how we can protect at the same time.

I want to make sure that it's really clear that this task force includes all the people

that are the subject-matter experts on the field as well as in the office.

Wayne will probably crucify me for saying this — and the minister may as well — but

in his words: "We have enough engineers. We need people that have command-strength,

foot-strength powers." We need the person that operates our EOCs to understand the

incident command system, so that we are protecting those very people that are in the

forest and that are protecting us. I'm glad to say that when you take a look at the

list of people that are being invited to the table, I'm very impressed with those

people that have the structural and wildland firefighting techniques.

The last thing I want to leave you with is the issues around ESS that have been addressed

inside of here as well. They have an onerous job. They are dealing with people on

the worst day of their lives. They are dealing with people that want an answer an

hour before they got there. I know that Amazon tells me on a regular basis that I

need to buy something before I buy it, but this is something that is completely different.

The people that are working at the ESS have been there for, in some cases, a very

long time. The switch to technology, as I will admit to — you know, removing this

piece of paper — is not the easiest thing to do. To remove all of the paper and move

itself over to an electronic format sometimes is not what's inside of somebody's comfort

zone. Let's never forget that the comfort zone of these people…. They're volunteers,

they're well-trained volunteers, and they're there for all the right reasons.

I can't express in the biggest words, other than what I've said today — and I'll make

it brief — that I am so happy that there is a task force that's assigned inside of

here. So many times we've heard, inside of the House, you know, that this is going

to happen, and we need to have this happen, or whatever it is, but I think we're predisposing

what may need to happen.

Let's let the subject-matter experts get in that room. Let's let them tell their stories

of what has taken place over the last number of years. Let's tell the success stories,

let's talk about the failures, and let's talk about how to improve this. But it's

only going to happen when this moves itself forward.

I love the time frame that's inside of it. I don't believe anything ever happens too

quickly, but in this case here, I think it's going to bring solitude, peace and quiet

to those people that are on the front lines and that are serving us in the world of

wildfire, flood and other mitigation efforts.

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Peace River North.

D. Davies: Hon. Speaker, I thought the member was going to go a few more minutes. He kind of

caught me off guard there a little bit.

First of all, I stand here with the great pleasure of representing the folks of Peace

River North. Obviously, in Peace River North and throughout the Peace region, we've

seen our fair share of disasters — of course, the fires.

I believe we kind of started off early in the year. I think it was in the first week

of May that we had our first two big forest fires. Those were the Red Creek and the

Stoddart Creek forest fires that started, which are just a very short distance out

of Fort St. John — in fact, triggering an evacuation alert for the city of Fort St.

John and area.

It is certainly close to home, literally and figuratively, when we're talking about

Bill 31 and the Emergency Disaster Management Act, which is a fairly good-sized bill.

I will talk a lot more over the next few minutes about the legislation.

Like others who have gone before me, I do want to take the time to thank the many

people…. I think my colleague from Kootenay East talked about his residence and the

resiliency, and I certainly think that we could probably lay that over a lot of people.

[3:35 p.m.]

I know there are folks of Fort St. John or of the region that have been evacuated.

This has happened not once, not twice but three or four times over the years that

people have been facing these challenges. Or just the general worry of when…. It was

really interesting this summer when the city was put on alert. There's a level of

anxiety that hits every single person, and you can feel it. You can actually feel

that anxiety that runs through a community. That's on an alert. I've never myself

been on an order before, but I can only imagine the stress that that must cause people

when they're certainly facing an order, and again, to a little lesser extent, the

alert.

The resiliency, I think, is definitely something that I also do want to address. I

recognize the folks of my region, the Peace region, and throughout the province. To

all the firefighters, whether they're working for B.C. Wildfire, contracted to B.C.

Wildfire…. Gratitude to the countries that supply firefighters to British Columbia,

to the municipalities and regional districts that so freely send a truck and a crew

across the province to help residents or fellow British Columbians, wherever that

might be.

Mayors and councillors, regional district people that are under an incredible amount

of stress when they're signing off on these orders –– they're signing off on working

late hours. Deciding: are we putting our community on alert? Are we putting our community

onto an order? Making sure that their ESSs are all up and operating. So the incredible

level of stress that it puts on our local governments as well. I would certainly be

remiss if we didn't give pause to — as, again, that has been mentioned numerous times

— the six firefighters that perished this summer.

As has been mentioned, this bill replaces the Emergency Program Act, which I believe

any significant changes…. I think it was 1993 when it was done.

I'm sorry. I do need to add…. I see the minister here. I know we're not supposed to

call out people in the chamber, but I do want to thank the minister, who did reach

out a number of times. As a constituent MLA, obviously we have people calling, people

engaging us. We have people concerned, whether they're landowners or people that own

companies that are in the area. It does value a lot when the minister checks in. Even

just to check in: "How are things going?" What's important for me — and I got to thank

my CAs, who are also kind of that front line and receiving those phone calls — when

we can actually say we are in touch, and we're trying to work. Not everything is going

to go perfect, and we know that, but that connection is certainly appreciated. So

thank you for that.

I was just looking at where we're at today. Here we are, the early first week of October,

and there's a news story on our local news station that the Donnie Creek fire, which

is the biggest fire in British Columbia, is moving now towards 700,000 hectares that

are burned. A significant area is still, today, burning out of control. I don't think

out of control…. The Stoddart Creek fire is still burning, and they're expecting those

fires to burn until next summer. They will burn right through the winter. The incredible

impact that these fires have on, obviously, the landscape and the environment….

People down here in the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island, throughout British Columbia

are feeling the effects of these disasters, whether it be the smoke in the air and

the challenges that we have with the environment around us or when we're looking at

floods and the impact that they have on food chain, supply, transportation and all

those challenges that we face.

[3:40 p.m.]

It is important to recognize that disasters look different across the province. I

was talking to my colleague here from Delta South. Not a lot of disasters in Delta

South. But Kootenay East –– we've got fires in Kootenay East. In fact, I was visiting

my colleague's riding here this summer, and elk…. It's a disaster. You know, 100,000

elk are devastating crops and impacting ranchers so negatively. Then you move up into

the Interior. You've got the flooding, and you've got the forest fires. So disasters

do look a lot different, and many of us face these disasters every year.

One of my first disasters that I had was early on in my…. I think it was 2018. We

had the Old Fort slide, a community that's right on the edge of Fort St. John, down

in the Peace River Valley. The valley slid and cut off that small community. There

was no transportation in or out. They couldn't get food. People were trapped down

there. The only way that they were getting it out was either helicopter or using river

boats. Again, that was really close to home. I think the Old Fort is approximately

seven kilometres from Fort St. John.

These disasters look different across the province, but I think this bill needs to

be looking at: how do we manage these better? I think this is something that…. My

colleague before me spoke and talked…. Nothing happens fast. Nothing's going to happen

in a hurry. But, my goodness, we need to get on this, because this has been talked

about. You know, this isn't a new idea. This isn't a new concept.

The previous government, the B.C. Liberal government, was talking about this. Early

on in the mandate of the present government, it's been talking about this. There have

been reports. There have been challenges, and we are still now just getting to where

a piece of legislation is hitting the table which has implementation timelines two

years out. I don't think that's quick enough. That's two more years of disasters where

people are still going to be wondering how we're moving on.

In many cases, this legislation leaves a lot open to regulation, to decisions that

are going to be made around the cabinet table –– basically, a lot of enabling pieces

in this legislation, which I don't thi