Third Session, 42nd Parliament

(2022) OFFICIAL REPORT

OF DEBATES

(HANSARD)

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 171

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

CONTENTS

Orders of the Day

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 6 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2022

(continued)

M. Bernier

S. Cadieux

M. Morris

T. Shypitka

H. Yao

R. Merrifield

G. Kyllo

D. Davies

T. Stone

L. Doerkson

Hon. G. Heyman

Bill 11 — Commercial Liens Act

Hon. S. Robinson

P. Milobar

Hon. S. Robinson

Royal Assent to Bills

Bill 2 — Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 4) Amendment Act,

Bill 3 — Protected Areas of British Columbia Amendment Act, 2022

Bill 4 — Skilled Trades BC Act

Bill 5 — Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2022

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions

(continued)

S. Furstenau

Hon. S. Malcolmson

A. Olsen

S. Bond

T. Halford

THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022

The House met at 1:02 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued debate on Bill 6, the Commercial Liens

Act.

In Committee A, the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued debate on the estimates

of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.

Mr. Speaker: The Government House Leader will make a correction.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Bill 11 is the Commercial Liens Act. It’s Bill 6, Budget Measures

Implementation Act.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 6 — BUDGET MEASURES

IMPLEMENTATION

ACT, 2022

(continued)

Deputy Speaker: Recognizing the member for Peace River South.

M. Bernier: Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the afternoon. Welcome to the seat,

as we do get into, after that correction, Bill 6, the Budget Measures

Implementation Act.

It’s an honour to take my seat here and to be able to stand up and speak

to this bill. Obviously, there is a lot to talk about — not a lot of positives,

unfortunately. But there is a lot to talk about, about this budget — the

implementation of this budget, what’s in it and what’s missing in it, and the

impacts that it’s going to have on people here in British Columbia.

[1:05 p.m.]

One of the first things to highlight for myself, from what I’m hearing

from people, is the fear, under this government, that they have no plan at all

to increase revenue. They continue to look at debt borrowing. In fact, under

this government, they’ve now increased — doubled, I should add — the debt that

we are going to have in the province of British Columbia to almost $125

billion, which this budget highlights, which the province of British Columbia

is going to be accruing.

We all know that governments, just like people in their homes — if they

can, if they’re fortunate enough in B.C. to get one — borrow money. But what’s

missing in this budget, on top of the extreme amount of money they plan to

borrow, is any plan at all to be able to pay it back.

Who’s going to be stuck with that? Who’s going to be stuck with this

massive provincial debt? It’s going to be my kids, my grandkids — everybody’s

in this House. The next generations are going to be forced to figure out a plan

because of the spending that this government is doing right now.

Again, I’ve got no problem with borrowing money for needed

infrastructure. That is important. It’s important for our society. It’s

important for our province to continue to grow. But again, if the government

continues to have no plans, that’s where people are saying: “Where’s the end

point here? When do we actually have to start building our economy back up?

When are we going to start paying this down? What is the plan?”

Right now under this government…. The Minister of Finance herself has

even said: “We may not expect balanced budgets back in the province of British

Columbia for almost ten years.” It could be almost another ten years. This

government, this NDP government, has openly admitted in their financial

documents, in the budget, that they have no plans to create revenue in the

province of British Columbia to try to get back, any time soon, to a balanced

budget.

People around British Columbia, again, will look at that and say:

“Here’s a government that, ironically, loves to spend all this money, with no

plans of revenue generation, except, it seems, their only ideas about

generating revenue are through taxation.” We’re at 24, 25, 26. We lose count of

how many new or increased taxes there are under this NDP government. They’ve

been in power almost half a decade, and their claim to fame is making us one of

the least affordable jurisdictions in North America.

Their claim to fame is taking us from one of the lowest-taxed

jurisdictions to one of the highest-taxed jurisdictions in North America and

then doubling down on that in this budget — again, with not just borrowing more

money but adding more taxes, adding to a situation where we already have

hardship for so many people here in British Columbia who are just struggling to

get by on a day-to-day basis. What does this government do? Well, nothing to

help them. They actually make it worse.

You look at some of the increased taxes that they’re putting in this

budget. Some of my colleagues have talked about it, and I find it interesting

that members opposite try to defend this. But one of the first ones is around

increasing PST in taxes on used vehicles.

They have openly said…. So if my child or if anybody in my riding goes

out and finds an old pickup truck that’s got 300,000, 400,000 kilometres on

it…. It’s been used as a farm vehicle. It could be completely rusty. It could

be, maybe, just barely running, and they say: “Hey, it’s going to be your kid’s

first vehicle, so I’ll sell it to you for 300 bucks. You might get a year or

two out of it. I’ll sell it to you for 300 bucks. You can learn to drive in

this thing.”

According to the NDP, this is now tax evasion. They’re basically being

called criminals by this government for getting a deal on a pickup truck,

because now government’s going to say, regardless of the shape of that vehicle,

regardless….

Interjection.

[1:10 p.m.]

M. Bernier: Well, you can say: “Come on.” I’m just stating the facts

here.

I’m stating the facts that a vehicle that a child might get for $300 to

learn to drive in, if the book value on that vehicle….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: You can have your chance.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

M. Bernier: The member can have his chance, all he wants, to speak later. He can

continue to try to interrupt my speech here. It’s not going to change the fact

that what I’m saying is factual.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member, come to order, please.

M. Bernier: I’m actually referencing the NDP members’ comments in this House and

what they’ve said, and the other NDP member is now arguing with what the NDP

themselves are saying. I find it ironic. The member has lots of chance to stand

up, if he wants, to explain why they want to tax younger people.

It says right in the documents, right in the budget, that this is going

to negatively affect young people, rural people and people in the middle class

who are already struggling. It says that right in the budget. I’m not…. If he

wants to talk about facts, maybe he should read his own budget document,

because it says it right in there.

It says, right in the budget document, that they are going to a Blue

Book, Black Book value, on a used vehicle, regardless of what somebody pays for

it. So if my child or anybody else who is struggling right now gets a deal on a

vehicle — whether it’s from a family member, a neighbour, a farmer in town

who’s going to sell this — it’s now a three….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I tune him out after a while. He never stops talking, Madam Speaker, but

most of what he says doesn’t make sense. So I’ll continue on with my speech

here.

What’s important is that this government is wanting to call these people

tax evaders. That’s actually a quote from the NDP themselves. They say they’re

trying to fix a loophole where people of British Columbia are lying. That is

the shameful part. That is the

part I’d love to see anybody in the NDP stand up

and try to defend — why they continue saying that.

Somebody is going to get that used vehicle, regardless of the condition

it’s in, and they’ll pay $300 for that vehicle. They’ll pay the tax, which

they’re supposed to pay — and they do pay — on the $300. That’s not good enough

anymore for this government.

That’s not good enough. I could maybe find that exact same vehicle in

pristine shape down south — the same age, model, make, everything — but hey,

the book value says it’s actually $4,000. Who cares if this young person who’s

struggling got a good deal from the local farmer to buy his old pickup truck

for 300 bucks? They’re now going to get taxed for $3,000 or $4,000 or whatever

the book value is on that vehicle.

Those are facts. That’s right in the document. I’m not sure what the

member is arguing about, because that’s exactly what the government is doing.

His own members, members of the NDP, have stood up in this House and

acknowledged on the record: “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.” So it’s not just

me. It’s about choices, and they’re choosing to increase taxes on people who

are struggling right now in British Columbia.

Another one they’re doing…. It seems like a full attack on rural British

Columbia, even though nowhere in their throne speech, nowhere in the budget, do

they really talk about it, which is unfortunate. Where they strategically

continue to go after rural British Columbia, I would argue, is around now

having increased taxes for fossil fuel–burning equipment.

This is something that I’ve worked in for 30 years, so this I can speak

to with a little bit of knowledge, for sure. An air-source heat pump — we’re

not talking about a ground-source heat pump here — works really well in

moderate climates. There’s no argument there. But if you’re going to install it

anywhere, basically, north of Hope — a place that most of the people on the NDP

benches have never gone to, which is probably why they don’t understand what

happens out there — guess what. It goes down below minus 10, minus 15 for

extended periods of time.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I hear the member for Vernon. I will acknowledge that the member for

Vernon obviously lives in the rural part, so she will maybe understand what I’m

talking about on this issue. Even in Vernon, it gets cold for extended periods

of time. To install a dual-system heat pump, a variable-speed heat pump, which

is required in places like Vernon, it’s about $15,000 to $20,000.

[1:15 p.m.]

This member is now telling everybody in her riding that they should be

spending $15,000 to $20,000 on a heat pump system. Guess what. No problem. You

get a tax break for it if you do it. But if you don’t, you get extra

taxes.

I’ve got no problem, and I would have supported this 100 percent if the

government came out and said: “We’re going to give tax breaks to try to convert

people to a heat pump system, where it’s practical, where it’s affordable and

where it works.” I would have supported that 100 percent. I think it’s a good

direction to go, but not when you add on to it: “But by the way, if you don’t

do as I say, we’re going to tax you more.” That’s where I have a

problem.

Somebody who lives in Vernon is also going to have to have a dual

system, which means — guess what — that they either have to increase their

electrical capacity into the house to heat, or they’re going to have to have a

natural gas system. How many people are going to invest in dual systems in

their house? Very few. It makes sense financially in a lot of areas, possibly —

in the Lower Mainland, if you’re in a small condo, if you’re in a small

townhome. In large homes, they don’t work unless you have a dual system. Guess

what. The price goes up.

Again, incentivizing is not a problem. Telling people they have to — I

have a problem with that. That’s what this government has done as an additional

attack on rural British Columbia.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around why they think they know better

than almost everybody else who talks about this. Did they consult the actual

professionals that do this work? No. The people who install these will even

tell you that if it’s under minus 20 on an air system, you need a double

system. It will not work for extended periods of time to an efficient

level.

By the way, if you install a heat pump system, it in­creases your

electrical capacity, and yes, they’re efficient. They can be 200 times more

efficient than a normal electric baseboard heating system. Fine and dandy, if

you’re willing to spend the capital outlay to put that in, but it also

increases your heat bill by around $75 a month on average. So there are costs

to this decision.

There’s a reason why most people, whether you want to say it’s the right

thing to do or not, have not converted their homes to solar or to micro wind or

other things, because the capital outlay does not match the payback for that

capital investment.

I looked at a system like this for my house. I would have had to live in

that house for 28 more years before I broke even on my investment. How many

people are going to do that in rural British Columbia? Most of them don’t live

in that house for 28 years, for starters. What are they going to do? They’re

going to go to what’s affordable in this time, which is probably, in a lot of

cases, a natural gas forced-air heating system with a natural gas hot water

tank.

I do find it interesting that this government spent a lot of time, as we

did, converting people to high efficiency. In fact, regulations now require

high-efficiency natural gas appliances, which are up to 99 percent, 98 percent

efficient. We’ve already put policies, regulations in place to incentivize

people to move into high-efficiency systems, but I guess that’s not good enough

for this government. Now they just want to tax everybody more.

We’re looking at, again, when we look at this budget, aside from

increased taxes — back to no revenue generation. To make it even worse, this

government continues to put nails in the coffin of the resource sector, whether

it’s mining, forestry or oil and gas — industries that we are so proud of that

have built this province.

If we walk a short 20 steps outside of this room into the rotunda, there

are paintings around this building highlighting the resource sector as being

one of the prominent sectors that built this province, that has employed

people, that has put food on the table for families.

[1:20 p.m.]

What does this government do? Well, for the most part, nothing. But what

they do do is make it even harder for these companies, for these families, for

First Nations to prosper and to try to get ahead. I guess if you live in

downtown Vancouver where opportunities are different, things might work for a

lot of people. If you’re in rural British Columbia, this government continues

to attack you.

We’ll have lots of time when we get to estimates on the budget here,

where we get to ask specific questions. I just can’t wait to hear from some of

the ministers of what their plan is when we’ve seen through the budget that

they’re cutting, that we’ve seen through the budget that they don’t care if

forestry workers lose their jobs. They don’t seem to care if $3½ billion of

capital investment in the oil and gas sector goes to Alberta now instead of

British Columbia.

It is going to be interesting to hear from some of these ministers on

how they rationalize that when we look at the budget, when the government’s

even budgeted for reductions in revenue from a lot of these sectors. That

foreshadows, I would guess, the importance to this government of the jobs, of

the sectors that actually have helped build communities, sectors that have

brought prosperity to First Nations.

We’ve already heard in this House the member for Boundary-Similkameen

that said that’s not good enough. We don’t want to see any more development in

rural B.C. We don’t want to see any more oil and gas or LNG development in

British Columbia, because they’re worried about it hitting the climate

targets.

I do, again, find that interesting. We all talk about climate change and

climate targets and what we’re trying to do. For a member of this House — and

now, today, even a cabinet minister of this House — to double down by saying we

don’t want to see any more oil and gas development in this province…. It’s

going to be interesting to hear from the minister later what he thinks of

that.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I would kindly remind you that we are talking about Bill 6, the

Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2022, rather than the budget.

M. Bernier: Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the guidance. Of course, the whole point

of my commentary is specific around the budget, because if we’re talking about

the lack of development and the lack of revenues, you know….

Interjection.

M. Bernier: I know I’ve probably hit a nerve here with the Minister of Labour,

because we’re seeing fewer and fewer people that want to continue working here.

I think it’s also really important — as I’m trying to highlight, Madam Speaker,

through the shortfalls in this budget — that this government continues to not

have a plan to create revenue and, in fact, attacks the revenue generators here

in this province.

I mentioned the fact that people are struggling with affordability. When

we talk about the implementation of this budget, I’m still waiting for somebody

in the government side to stand up and explain…. Because I can’t find it. They

haven’t talked about it, but they’ve continued to promise for half a decade a

$400 renters rebate. I don’t see that anywhere in here.

I stand to be corrected. If anybody is willing to stand up and say I’m

wrong and they can point to the page where there is a $400 renters rebate, I

will quickly apologize and take my seat, if they’re willing to point to that. I

don’t see any takers, so I’m assuming it’s not in there. So I guess I’ll keep

going.

The other issue is that this government continues to make promises that

we look for in this budget. They want to implement what? They’re implementing a

document that is just highlighting all of those broken promises. You know, we

look right now about the affordability issues. Where is this government really

helping tackle affordability?

[1:25 p.m.]

We’ve talked in this House about gas prices going up, and it’s kind of

crickets from government about doing anything. When we look at the budget

documents themselves, I’m still trying to find in there where they’re going to

be meeting their commitments around housing, housing supply, affordable

housing.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I would remind you once again that we’re discussing Bill 6,

which is mostly around taxation. So if you could keep your comments to the bill

on the floor.

M. Bernier: Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. If we’re talking about taxation,

obviously, we can talk for a long time, because this government has lots of

taxes that they continue to add in there — fuel taxes being one of them. The

challenge that we have in this province is where government is not

acknowledging the role that they play around the taxes that they continue to

implement on this, on the people here in the government.

I’ve heard some of the other members speak in this House from the

government’s side, and I’m trying to help the Speaker by staying within the

parameters, but of course, when we’re talking about the Budget Measures

Implementation Act in Bill 6, it’s really about what brings life to the budget.

It’s really about what brings the budget to the floor and what allows

government to then go out and implement that budget. So although a lot of it is

around taxes, it’s also around what they may or may not be doing within that

budget.

On that, I think what I’ll do is that I’ll move to other people that I

know have a lot to say on the different topics, and I appreciate the time.

Again, one of the challenges we have when we look at this government, this

budget and the way they’re implementing this budget is that this is our

opportunity to highlight and continually showcase the fact of where all their

failings are. Unfortunately, we don’t get enough time to stand in this House

where we can discuss all of them.

With that, I want to say that from a rural perspective, I will say,

representing the people in my riding, I continue to hear the challenges that

they’re facing not only with affordability but with this budget specifically,

because it shows nothing that is going to help for the future of the job

creators, the families or the next generation in this province.

S. Cadieux: I’m really glad to have an opportunity today to speak to this bill, the

Budget Measures Implementation Act. It does have implications for British

Columbians. Now, it’s a relatively simple act. Generally, it’s just seen as a

companion to the budget. It puts into force the measures that are spoken to in

the budget around taxation, primarily.

There are a couple of other things in this act that are not normal and

that do require a bit of conversation, because not only is the government,

through this bill, adding additional taxes once again after the Premier just

recently, as recently as last year, said: “We are not considering any more

taxes.” Yet here we are with more taxes once again — and more taxes that affect

the people this government professes over and over again to be working for: the

middle class.

Taxes on working folks who want to save a couple of dollars and go out

and do their best to find a cheap vehicle for themselves or to get their family

around. Or perhaps it’s a kid that’s trying to get himself to university on a

daily basis. So they go out, and they get the best deal that they can on a used

car. And now, members of this government have said: “You’re evading taxes, and

we’re going to tax you.” Really? Now, of all times?

[1:30 p.m.]

Budgets are about choices. So is implementing those budgets. It’s about

choices.

This government is choosing to raise the salaries of ministers in the

cabinet, a $20,000-a-year pay bonus. They’re characterizing that as: “Oh no. We

are just doing this because we have to. We have to do this because otherwise,

members of this cabinet will be incented to not do what’s right for the

people.” Really? If that holdback was to remain on the books, members of this

cabinet would rather hold the line, control spending, not do what’s right for

the people of British Columbia, not deliver on the promises that they’ve set

forth but, instead, hit their arbitrary budget target so that they could get

that little bit of salary they’ve held back.

I want to believe that the people that I know who sit in that cabinet

would make the right decision regardless of whether or not it meant they might

see a little less money in their pocket over the year. But no, we are being

told flat out by the Finance Minister that the measures in the Budget

Implementation Act, 2022, include ensuring that all members of cabinet will

receive more money over the next three years. Wow.

They’re doing that — that’s a choice — at the same time as they are not

giving any relief through this act on gas taxes — highest gas taxes in North

America, highest gas prices ever seen. Yes, the price of the gas itself is not

the government’s direct choice. That’s world…. There are all sorts of

implications there with the war raising gas prices everywhere. But we have the

highest gas taxes, and gas taxes are not addressed in this act.

Government is not choosing to give the average British Columbian a break

during this period of time. They’re not putting in a time-limited measure or a

measure that is tied to a certain price of gas whereby, during that time,

they’d hold the line and give people a break. They’re not providing a rebate

through this act for the average person who’s now facing increased costs on

filling up their minivan — $25 per tank in additional costs right now because

of the taxes on the price of gas today.

We’re not seeing a reduction in this act for that or a rebate or any

other measure related to gas taxes for the average person, but they are making

the choice to give themselves more money. They’re doing that, and again, it’s

choice. They’re saying that when it comes to adding taxes on used cars or new

taxes on online marketplaces, they have to do that to stay in line with the

rest of the country. Well, there are other things they’re not doing that the

rest of the country is doing, like equal pay legislation, but there’s no rush

on that.

[1:35 p.m.]

The reason that government is making sure through this act to remove the

holdback provisions on cabinet salaries so they can take home more money as

cabinet ministers is because they have no intention of ever balancing a budget

again. Those holdbacks only happen if the budget is not in balance. Now they’re

trying to argue, as well, that this is necessary because of external forces.

They can’t possibly be responsible for balancing a budget when there are

external forces at play.

You know what? I accept that the budget went into deficit through COVID.

I do. In fact, we asked them to do more. They were in this before, and they

didn’t have a plan to get out. In fact, pre-COVID, this government added $11.4

billion in additional spending — pre-COVID. This year we’ve got a deficit of

$5.5 billion. They don’t plan to meet, so they don’t plan to balance. They plan

to be in deficit by $5.5 billion.

You know what? They could make the choice to reverse some of the

spending in that $11 billion. They have a $5.9 billion cushion there, but

that’s not the choice they’re making. They’re continuing to spend beyond their

means. They have no intention of balancing the budget. Therefore, they have to

include that provision in this act so that their cabinet ministers can take

home their full salaries, because they’re never going to be able to balance the

budget. That’s what this is about.

At a time when people are feeling the strain of everyday life, this

government has not managed, in five years, to meet any of their promises to

people around affordability. Housing in my community is up 43 percent this year

— 43 percent in one year. Rents are up, $3,000 a year. No renters rebate in

this Budget Measures Implementation Act. Food costs are up exponentially, and

they’re only going to go higher with the added fuel costs, because everything

that you buy at the store had to come on a truck. That money has to be

recovered somewhere.

Who does it ultimately fall on? Well, guess what. The taxpayer. There’s

only one taxpayer, but government has a choice. Government can make different

choices.

In this act, they could be implementing rebates on gas. They could be

implementing rebates on any number of things. They could be putting in that

renters rebate. They could be giving a break to the average British Columbian

who is struggling, but they are not. They are only giving a break to the

members of cabinet to the tune of $20,000 each. It says something about the

choices made by a government who says they’re working for the

people.

When we look at the taxes they are adding…. Let’s remember, again, they

said they weren’t going to add any new taxes. They weren’t contemplating any

new taxes. Government actually admits in the budget documents that these taxes

on private used-car sales will affect most low and middle incomes, those more

likely to buy used goods. Page 91 says individuals involved in private vehicle

transactions are more likely to be low to medium income or living in a rural

area.

They have identified that the tax is likely to hurt those who can least

afford it, but they’ve introduced it anyway. So much for making life more

affordable. It’s unbelievable.

[1:40 p.m.]

This legislation does another thing, other than add taxes on those who

can least afford to pay them. It provides for the Minister of Finance to make

decisions without taking them to Treasury Board, without cabinet oversight.

That is an incredibly worrying provision.

As a previous cabinet minister, I went through these processes and sat

on Treasury Board. They exist for a reason. There is process for a reason.

We’re dealing with the people’s money and a budget that has ballooned over the

last five years under this government to $70 billion a year. That’s $70 billion

a year of individual taxpayers’ hard-earned money coming in so that the members

of cabinet — and approved by all of the members of the House, ultimately — can

make decisions on how best to use those dollars to support those individuals

and this province.

That’s a big responsibility, and it shouldn’t be in the hands of one

person. But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, coming from the government that

got the award for being the least transparent government in Canada, the most

secretive government in Canada. It’s just another way they’re going to try to

hold things close, keep them secret and not be accountable. It’s very

concerning.

I look at this Budget Measures Implementation Act and the companion to

the budget, and I look for the things that are promised. I look for: what does

this mean for the people of Surrey that I represent? We already know that the

budget doesn’t do much for the people of Surrey.

It doesn’t bring to life the promises that the government has made to

the people of Surrey. It doesn’t eliminate portables. It doesn’t bring

$10-a-day child care. It doesn’t bring the renters rebate. It doesn’t bring the

second medical school at SFU that was promised. It doesn’t bring the SkyTrain.

It has only $2 million in there for the hospital that is planned to be open on

the same timeline as St. Paul’s, which has been underway for years now. It’s a

little unreasonable, I think, but we shall see.

All I see in this Budget Measures Implementation Act for the people of

Surrey is more taxes, more ways that government is going to take from people

and nothing that’s going to help with affordability. It’s disappointing from a

government that stands, every opportunity they get, and says: “For 16 years….”

And now for five whole years, we’ve been waiting for affordability. Five whole

years we’ve been waiting for one action on affordability, and we have yet to

see it come.

It’s disappointing that we spend so much time and energy trying to

understand what government means when they say that they’re working for the

people, because this bill makes it pretty darn clear they’re working for

themselves.

M. Morris: I guess government don’t have many people in support of their own

budget. Nobody’s speaking on this bill from that side. I find that

surprising.

[1:45 p.m.]

One of the things I’m going to comment on first is this raise that the

cabinet ministers gave themselves and the Premier, the 40 percent

raise.

Accountability is built into all of the major levels of management in

the private sector, in the public sector. I go back to my days in the RCMP,

where we had a very similar policy in place within the RCMP that the executives

could not claim a certain percentage of their salary unless they came in within

budget. The budget for my district was pretty significant, $50 million or so. I

knew where every nickel went, and if I went over that, then I wouldn’t get that

sum of money, and it was pretty substantial back in the day.

The same thing…. It wasn’t passed on to the 42 detachment commanders I

had within my area of responsibility, but I monitored their individual post

budgets to make sure that they stayed within the guidelines as well, and

sometimes I would have to reach into another pot to try and cover some of the

costs if we had extenuating circumstances. That happens in government. That

happened when we were in government.

As a minister in the previous government, there was holdback. If I

didn’t come within budget, I didn’t get that 10 percent. None of my other

colleagues would either, if we had gone over budget. It was an opportunity,

though, for our minister responsible for finance to look at the other

ministries just to make sure. If somebody was struggling and there was room to

manoeuvre, you could take some of that money and put it another particular area

that was of concern.

This government has fallen into the trap that I’ve seen many other new

managers take. It’s very easy to spend money. You know, you’ve got a

chequebook. You’ve got the authority to sign that cheque, and you go out and

start spending money like, as the old saying goes, drunken sailors. If there’s

no accountability to that, nobody to really hold their feet to the fire to be

accountable for spending those taxpayer dollars, at the end of the day, it puts

this province in a significant deficit position.

I think we’re bordering on doubling the deficit just over the last two

years — and over the last five years, the two terms that this government has

been in place. I find that astounding, and I think the taxpayers in British

Columbia, quite matter of factly, find that astounding as well.

The other thing that I find very problematic is that not only is there

no accountability to the level of spending that they have here, but nobody in

government seems to care about that. We have generations ahead of us now,

generations of British Columbians, the young children that are being born

today, that are in elementary school today, that are going to be faced with

this excessive heavy burden of taxes when they become employable and working

citizens of the community. They will have that forever, and then their children

will also be faced with that — trying to pay down the deficit that this

government is accumulating.

It also takes away the wiggle room for any government coming in. If we

look at 2024 and beyond, any government that comes in is going to have a tough

time trying to figure out what they can do, what discretionary programs they

can bring in that they can afford.

By spending the way this government is right now, over the projected

life of this particular budget here, and increasing the deficit the way we have

right now, it takes away that discretion. It takes away the opportunity to

maintain the public service, the bloated public service that we see today, the

hundred and some thousand more people that have been employed in the public

service since this government took over.

It’s going to have to go back. Whoever comes in is going to have to go

right back and start looking at the core services that government is required

to provide and figure out which ones they’re going to take off the table. Those

will be tough, tough decisions to make down the road.

[1:50 p.m.]

The only one benefiting from this lack of accountability and this

ability to allow government to spend without any accountability at all, of

course, is the Premier. He gets an extra $40,000 out of this, and every single

one of the cabinet ministers get an extra $20,000 out of this.

The rest of British Columbians are seeing a decrease in their paycheques

because of inflation, because of loss of work, because of a number of factors.

I think the people in British Columbia are going to start looking and say:

“There’s something wrong with this picture.” Here we are. The folks that are

looking after us, or supposedly looking after us, are getting pretty well paid.

They’ve just given themselves a little bump here, and I can’t make ends meet

any more because I’m paying so darn much for gas just to get back and forth to

work.

The government talks about making life more affordable for people. Bill

6 — I was looking through this bill, and I couldn’t find a darn thing in this

bill that makes life more affordable for British Columbians. There was nothing

in here that was speaking to the resource sector. The budget mentioned the fact

that we’re going to lose $1 billion in forestry revenue over this cycle. That

natural gas is going to go down by 20-some percent. That mining is going to go

down by 30 percent. But there is absolutely nothing in this bill that speaks to

how they’re going to address that.

I find that amazing — that there is nothing in there that covers off how

they’re going to inject money and support that the petrochemical industry, that

we so sorely need in this province here. The natural gas industry that not only

Canada needs, in a major way, but the world needs British Columbian natural

gas. There is nothing in Bill 6 that related to that.

There are increased costs of putting food on the table, and my

colleagues have said it before. My wife goes to the grocery store. In fact, I

think she goes to just about every store in Prince George. She drives. The cost

of gas goes up. The cost of gas keeps going up. We have the highest gas costs

in North America. We have the highest taxes on gas in North America.

People still have to get back and forth to the grocery store to pick up

the goods that they need. But when they go in and buy those goods — they go in

to buy that loaf of bread or the gallon of milk or the fresh fruit or whatever

they buy — there is an increased cost. Those costs are going up pretty

significantly. Just about every time they go in to buy the groceries, it goes

up. That’s because, for a large part, fuel costs, because these trucks use a

lot of fuel.

I had a posting that a constituent put in here a week or so ago on an

industry that had — I don’t have the figures in front of me, so I’m just going

to go off the top of my head — ten trucks hauling fuel, I think, in a week. Ten

heavy trucks hauling groceries and goods. In a week, I think the fuel bill was

$26,000, but with the added costs of fuel, that bill went up to $36,000, I

believe it was. It was a pretty significant chunk.

Of course, that’s passed on to the everyday consumer. So each one of

those trucks had to make, I think, an extra $12 an hour in order to cover that

increased fuel cost. Of course, those options aren’t there. So is it more

affordable for a family to go and buy groceries these days? No, it’s not. Is it

affordable for people to go and take their son or their daughter to soccer or

dancing or whatever types of extracurricular activities they do? No, because of

the cost of gas and the cost of travelling.

I recall when my boys were young, in school. I was posted in Calgary

during those days, when they were quite small. My wife would take one boy south

of town, and I would take another boy north of town to go to soccer, and we

were 200 kilometres apart, and we were doing that two or three times a week.

That adds up. In today’s world of high gas prices, I can see a lot of young

children being disappointed that they won’t be able to go, because life is no

longer affordable for them to go to these kinds of events.

[1:55 p.m.]

The other affordability part that we spent a lot of time on in this

House — and we see the consequences across this province, across the country,

but in this province — is the cost of housing. There was nothing in this bill

that I could see that addressed the cost of housing, which is a major issue for

us.

The cost of rent. We didn’t see anything…. You know, this government has

promised rent rebates ever since the 2017 election. We haven’t seen a nickel of

that anywhere. Rents have gone up astronomically. We see some rents now where

people are paying $3,500 a month for a two-bedroom apartment — and more. That’s

not more affordable for that particular family. People are looking for cheaper

options, but oftentimes, there are no cheaper options out there for them. It’s

not affordable.

Somebody wants to buy a house. The member, I think, for Chilliwack has

said several times — and I’ve heard it repeated several times — the fact that

he’s the last generation that will be able to afford to buy a house. That’s a

scary thought, that we have a couple of generations now of young people that

feel totally helpless when it comes to: “Am I ever going to have a

house?”

That’s a scary thought. It’s a major investment for anybody, but it’s

significantly higher now. A lot of it has to do…. Kevin Falcon, our new leader,

has talked about it before. There are a number of things that can be done, but

nothing is in this budget to indicate that this government has even got a hint

of what needs to be done in order to start bringing more supply online for

housing.

Used cars. As my kids were growing up and getting established in work,

they were always looking to buy a used car. Everything right from a $500 rust

bucket when they first got their driver’s licence, that good old dad had to

come and inspect and good old dad had to fix and keep fixing and keep fixing

until they could afford the next car, or the next truck.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

We lived up in the Interior of the province. So the next one would be

$1,000, and I would end up having to fix that and drive 40 miles out of town to

haul it home after a fuel pump went on it or something like that.

Used vehicles are a way of life for the younger population. Not too many

of them you see driving new cars. The odd one. But a lot of them drive used

cars. I spent a good part of my life rebuilding cars, most of them were

classics and antiques and collectibles. But there is such a variance in the

used cars that we have out there. You know, one car might be…. It’s got four

tires on it, and it’s got a motor that runs, and all the glass is good in it.

But it’s rusted out. You’ve got to put $1,000 worth of tires on it. You’ve got

to put another $1,000 into brakes. You’ve got to put another $1,000 into the

exhaust system.

To have somebody arbitrarily say that car is worth X number of dollars

because that’s what the market has shown in the past, I think, is a step in the

wrong direction. It penalizes those people that are out there looking for that

deal. Knowing that they’ve got dad in the back to kind of help them, to come

and put new tires on it, or put a new set of brakes on it, or put a new exhaust

system on it, or give that engine a tune-up. With the help of dad, we bring the

vehicle up to the level of value that maybe some of these other vehicles were

worth. So that’s no longer affordable.

Then the other thing that I see a lot of people doing — and I’ve got

family members that do this on a regular basis — is buying and selling used

goods online. I can’t master that. I barely can use my own cell phone. But I’ve

got family members that are very adept in putting something online for sale and

selling it, and buying things online. I see now that this loophole is being

closed. That government now wants to go and establish a tax base for goods that

are sold online. You talk about affordability in today’s world, and that’s one

of the first places you go.

[2:00 p.m.]

If you’re struggling to meet your grocery bill, if you’re struggling to

pay the tax on the used car that you just bought last week, if you’re

struggling to pay your rent, you’re looking for a deal online. Maybe you need a

new toaster oven. Maybe you need something that is a necessity in your house to

help you with your small children, to help with a number of things. Now you’ve

got to pay tax on that. That’s added to it.

This bill just indicates that government is contributing more to the

level of inflation in British Columbia than just about every other facet. I’ve

heard government talk about: “Well, it’s not our fault. We’ve got high gas

prices because we’ve got the issue in the Ukraine. It’s the federal

government’s fault. It’s this person’s fault. It’s that’s person’s

fault.”

I guess I look at it…. It’s a scapegoat, and the government barnyard is

now full of scapegoats. There’s no room for any more. They’re going to have to

come to task with this and figure out how they’re going to be more accountable

for some of the decisions that they make and empty that barnyard

out.

The other part. I did notice in the bill that there was an indication

that PST will be applicable to cigarettes. That’s a concern. One of the things

that I worked on years ago when I was a police officer in the RCMP is smuggled

cigarettes, in eastern Canada. There were a lot of cigarettes coming into

British Columbia. There was a time when I could look across and watch somebody

taking the wrapping off a package of cigarettes, and I would know whether that

package was smuggled or not. I could tell whether the excise tax had been paid

on it. I could tell the market that that particular brand of cigarette was

destined to.

I know there are checks that are done every once in a while, and I know

the Solicitor General will probably get briefings on this, because I used to

get them when I was Solicitor General as well. The companies would go and folks

would go and they would look at the butts that were left around common smoking

areas. By examining them, they could tell how many of the cigarettes were

smuggled and how many were legitimate. On average, we were always looking at 20

to 30 percent of the cigarettes that were smoked around school grounds, in

public parks, on the beaches where you see lots of them in the sand, as being

smuggled.

I will bet you that by raising the PST or putting the PST on cigarettes,

we’re going to see an increase in black market cigarettes in British Columbia.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see that ratio now going up to 35 or 45

percent. There’s organized crime involved in that as well. That’s one

thing.

You talk about raising taxes. You talk about money coming in to pay for

government coffers, other than private industry. Those are the kinds of things

that you have to deal with. It’s no different than, again, consumer loans,

payday loans. This government came in and raised the rates on that back when

they first came in, in 2017. That was one thing I was very wary of when I was

the Solicitor General, because I didn’t want to raise that rate so high that it

increased the black market for payday loans, people that would charge these

astronomical rates. People could not scrape by from one payday to the next, and

sometimes they were paying their entire paycheque just on interest

alone.

There’s nothing in this bill that gives anybody any comfort in

affordability. I’ve seen all kinds of posts from British Columbians, and I’ve

talked to different folks in my riding back in Prince George–Mackenzie that are

alarmed. They are barely scraping through right now. They don’t see a future in

rural British Columbia because there’s nothing that supports the resource

sector.

Like I mentioned earlier, they see $1 billion going down the tube from

forestry over the next year or two. It’s not like we can grow a tree and

recover our forest sector tomorrow. It takes 100 years to grow a marketable

tree in the interior of British Columbia. But we do have all kinds of

opportunities in oil and gas. There’s nothing in here that showed any kind of

incentive for a petrochemical industry to get started in British

Columbia.

[2:05 p.m.]

The government speaks, and they do talk about it in here, about

incentives for electric vehicles. But in order to make electric vehicles, it

needs a lot of plastic. It needs a lot of copper. It needs a lot of the

minerals that we have in the ground in British Columbia. There’s nothing in

this bill that supports extracting those minerals out of the ground.

There’s nothing in this bill that supports a polyurethane industry or a

polypropylene industry that supplies the plastic for these cars — for the Tesla

cars, for the electric vehicles that we have. In order to keep them light

enough to operate, we need plastic. We can’t get around that. There is no other

material available that will allow us to do that.

Eighty percent of the fuselage or 50 percent of the fuselage — I think

it’s as high as 80 in some airplanes — is polymers made out of the liquids that

we get out of the natural gas and out of the ground. I have Mount Milligan in

my riding, a copper-gold complex employing 450 people. Copper is one of the

main ingredients in our electric vehicles.

We’ve got an incentive to make electric vehicles more affordable, which

is good. But we also need the other components to make that happen at the end

of the day. If we don’t have that, where are we going to get it

from?

We’re going to be putting people to work in other countries and other

jurisdictions around the world, and we’re going to be ignoring the plight of

British Columbians. They won’t have that work. Mining and oil and gas are going

to be significant in moving ahead to make sure that we have jobs for British

Columbians and that we also have the material to provide that

electrification.

I think there are 20,000 metal towers holding up our power transmission

lines in British Columbia. We have 18,000 kilometres of power transmission

lines made of aluminum that will provide the electrification so that we have

more electric cars on the ground here in British Columbia. If we don’t have

that, if there is nobody up there to maintain them and to sustain them, then we

won’t have that. You can get all the tax-free vehicles that you want in the

Lower Mainland and other places in British Columbia, but if you don’t have the

power to generate them, then, of course, you won’t have that at the end of the

day.

This is a budget, and the bill that goes with this is going in the wrong

direction. It has reduced and eliminated the oversight and the accountability

for cabinet, for the ministers to spend within their means. It has given the

Minister of Finance these powers to go out and spend money.

I think what it is…. When you look at the billions of dollars in

contingency that the budget had in there, I think government needed a

mechanism. If you have to keep coming back to Treasury Board all the time and

saying, “I need $500 million here; I need $200 million here; I need $600

million over here,” when you’re trying to spend the billions and billions of

dollars that this government has set aside in contingencies, it gets to be kind

of a drag after a while.

Why not give that authority to the Finance Minister so she can rubber

stamp it and stick it out? There’s no accountability to it. There’s no

transparency to it. They just go ahead and do that. That’s not making life more

affordable. That is making life very secretive and very elusive.

British Columbians are going to be filled with so much despair over the

coming years because we are so far in debt that our great-grandchildren, my

great-great-grandchildren, are going to be paying for the follies of this

government and the money that they’re going to be spending over the next few

years.

I don’t support this unaffordable budget. I don’t support this bill.

There are a number of things in this bill that are just missing the point all

together. British Columbians are going to be in for a belt-tightening time over

the next little while. [Applause.]

Deputy Speaker: Member for Kootenay East. Good applause for yourself, Member.

T. Shypitka: I wasn’t clapping for myself. I was clapping for the previous

speaker.

Deputy Speaker: Very good, very good.

T. Shypitka: I clapped for the previous speaker, who sits on this side of the aisle,

and wondered why there was not somebody from the other side of the aisle that

went before the previous speaker. Probably it’s because this bill brings a lot

of questions into play. A lot of that is based on affordability, as this bill

lines out numerous measures that will be implemented with Bill 6 that address

affordability directly.

[2:10 p.m.]

The members before me on this side of the floor have made pretty loud

and clear what those concerns are. It’s not so much even what’s in the bill,

but what’s left out of the bill, as well, that could be assisting British

Columbians in their greatest time of need. This is a place where we’ve gone in

this province, and no fault of anyone’s, we’ve gone after crisis after crisis.

We’ve got a deadly opioid crisis that is going on. We’ve had wildfire crises.

We get that. Now we’re looking at a global crisis with the invasion of the

Ukraine and what that’s doing to our affordability as well.

This is a time where government can step up. This is a time when

government can actually introduce a bill, such as Bill 6, and implement

measures through the budget to assist British Columbians and to make life

better and more affordable and take a little bit of the strain and

stress.

We have heard statistics that British Columbians are about $200 away

from insolvency. They’re teetering on the edge. Some, unfortunately, have

already gone over the edge. We know, right now in British Columbia, through

statistics, that we are at a tipping point. We need to step in, and we need to

help. Unfortunately, what I read in this bill and the implementations that are

going to be enacted because of this bill, doesn’t address those everyday

British Columbians.

There are some goods things in here. I will give credit where credit is

due. Expand exemption for hazardous or damaged residential property

temporarily. That’s a good one. Some of the folks in Lytton, obviously, the

devastation that they’ve gone through…. Merritt. You know, the list is long —

what we’ve seen. Some of these budgetary implications that we’re going to be

putting in are going to help those people a lot, so I don’t want to say this is

all doom and gloom here. But it fails to really recognize the main issue in

British Columbia, which is affordability and something this government has

proclaimed as champions of.

It was election promises in 2017. It was another election promise in

2020, yet we’re seeing the highest prices in all sectors of our economy.

Whether it’s housing, whether it’s gas prices, whether it’s food, it is getting

ratcheted up. Like I said, we have external pressures that are making that part

of the equation, but British Columbia is standing alone — highest gas prices in

North America, highest housing prices in North America. This is exclusive to

B.C.

When I look at the budget, Bill 6, I look at lost opportunity. We’ll go

through some of them right now. Like I said, we see some of the exemptions.

Expand hydrogen exemption. Okay. I see there is a few CleanBC-type action plans

here that are going to further incentivize the CleanBC plan and getting us

transitioned off of fossil fuels and do our part to reduce global greenhouse

gas emissions. I get that. Introduce exemption for heat pumps. Okay. That’s

another step in the right direction, I would think. Nobody is going to argue

that.

Then government, through the same bill, attacks those that aren’t in

that position to take advantage of heat pumps, for example.

The member for Peace River South explained it brilliantly. He’s one of

these guys, that hands-on guy that does retrofitting for homes and restoration

projects, so he gets it. I fully understood what he was talking about, that

this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for all of British Columbia.

Certainly, when you look at the Lower Mainland with the temperatures

that they have — very rarely fluctuate over maybe minus 5, minus 6, minus 7.

When you get to minus 10, it’s really something else. But where I live in the

Kootenays, that’s kind of a brisk winter day. It’s not bad. We can deal with

that. Minus 10 is okay, but we do get down to minus 20, minus 25, minus 30,

minus 35.

[2:15 p.m.]

I’ve even seen it go down to minus 40 in my territory. That’s probably

almost balmy for the member from Peace River South.

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: Yeah, it’s a spring day there.

It’s great to incentivize and bring exemptions on PST to heat pumps.

That’s great. That gets part of the process going, but it’s not practical. It’s

really not practical for people in rural British Columbia where I live, and the

member for Peace River South and member for Shuswap, some of the rural places.

It’s just not practical. That’s okay. We missed it. But what this bill does is

it doubles down and then charges more, increases the tax, increases tax rate on

fossil-fuel-heating equipment. That’s right in the implementations, the tax

measures here,

part 2.

If you can’t facilitate, if it doesn’t make practical sense, you’re

getting penalized for that. You’re getting penalized because you live in a part

of British Columbia that doesn’t facilitate the plan that government wants you

to go towards. That’s just not right. That’s not right for people that are

struggling and $200 away from insolvency. That could be a year’s worth of PST,

to knock them over the edge, really.

The member for Peace River South said that it’s about $15,000 to $20,000

for a variable heat pump. What is it, the air…? I don’t even know the terms,

but it’s a certain variable heat pump that you would need, in our region, that

would cost $15,000 to $20,000. Then you would actually also have to have the

backup when that variable heat pump wasn’t working properly, at very low

temperatures. You’d have to have natural gas or electricity.

Some people in rural B.C., in Columbia River–Revelstoke, they don’t even

have natural gas. They have to rely on electric heat, which is fine. Something

the government could think about is the elimination of the two-tiered system on

hydro. Why doesn’t government use something like that? Why don’t they bring

those things into play to help British Columbians out? How do you have a

two-tiered system on hydro when that’s your only heating source, hydro

electricity. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There are opportunities lost, and it would be great if government would

actually do the extra legwork to ask professionals across the province —

heating specialists, people in other communities other than the Lower Mainland

— how this is going to affect people. They obviously haven’t done it, because

they would’ve heard loud and clear that it does not make any sense.

Remove exemption for tobacco. Okay. I’ve never smoked. I’m not a smoker,

but I know a lot of people that do. My mom and dad, they’re probably watching

right now. They both smoke, unfortunately. They came from a time where the

health risks weren’t really well known, and it’s an addiction. I think it’s all

safe to say that.

They still like to have a dart here and there, but they’re going to be

taxed, and they’re seniors. I know a lot of seniors that still smoke tobacco.

Once again, it’s hitting hard on those people that really are on fixed budgets,

fixed incomes. They’re just going to be paying more.

Adjust the purchase price of private vehicle sales for tax purposes.

This is a tax that the government will be putting in place, a PST tax, on used

car sales, private sales, across the province. Once again, hitting those people

that really can’t afford it. This is low-income, mid-income people.

It would be great…. I’d love to buy a new…. I’ve never owned a new

vehicle in my life, to tell you the honest truth. I have not. I don’t know if

that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve never owned a new vehicle. I know

the depreciation as soon as it comes off the lot. It goes down 15, 20 percent

the minute you drive it outside the parking lot, so I’ve never been into that.

I also know that the operative word in used car sales is the word “used.” It’s

used. They’re not always used the same way.

[2:20 p.m.]

I think it was, maybe, the member for Prince George–​Mackenzie who

summed it up pretty good. You don’t know what you’re getting, and you have to

do all the homework. You have to check to see what this used car is going to be

like.

Everybody’s lived it. Everybody’s been there. You see it in an ad in the

paper, so you go and you say: “Okay, well, it’s not exactly what I want. It’s

not really the colour I want.” Even at a used car sales lot…. You can go to the

used car sales lot and talk to the used car salesman. It’s not exactly what you

want, but the bottom line is always going to be the price. What can I get for

this vehicle?

You barter. You go back and forth. Due to the used car salesman’s supply

that he has versus what the buyer wants as far as the demand side goes…. How

badly does he want it? If you really need a car tomorrow, you’re probably going

to pay a high price. If you don’t really need it and you’ve got other choices,

you can barter. Guess what. That becomes the market price. Whatever you decide

on becomes the market price.

This bill says that no matter what the supply and de­mand are and

no matter what the condition of the vehicle is, you will have to pay the tax on

the difference between what you paid for it and what the Black Book price

states. I can’t see that being a logical step.

We know that some people — my dad, for example…. My first car was a 1968

GTO convertible. A cool car. Me and my dad drove to Calgary. I’ll never forget

it, my first car. I was 16, probably, at the time. We looked all over. We

looked at a Mustang convertible, actually, at that time. I think we had about

$1,200 to spend, and this guy wanted $1,400 or $1,500 for it. I wish I could go

back in time and get that car again, but I can’t, unfortunately.

We ended up going to this one showroom, and there it was, this GTO

convertible, bright orange. The members on the other side might like that type

of car. I did. I’m okay to say that. It was a great car, a really cool colour

orange. It was awesome. We had to barter, and we had to bargain for it. We

found out there were some mechanical issues wrong with it. My dad was a

mechanic, or he was mechanically inclined. He’s a carpenter by trade, actually.

He was able to fix it. We worked together on it, and we fixed the

car.

Somebody else that bought that same car, knowing that there were some

mechanical issues wrong with it, would have to budget and factor that in:

“Okay, I’m going to have to spend another $1,500 to get the engine fixed. The

tires, the rubber on the car is worn out. I’m going to have to buy some new

tires.” You factor that in. That comes above and beyond what the cost of the

vehicle is. Those aren’t recognized when you look at a Black Book value on a

car.

I’d be interested to see if you’d actually get a rebate if you paid too

much. I don’t know. Is there anything in the bill that says that? I’m not too

sure. Everybody’s heard about the lemon. You buy a lemon, right? You buy a car

that just conks out on you tomorrow. Would you get a rebate?

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: Yeah, you don’t even get a thank-you card.

What is the old Latin phrase? Caveat emptor. Let the buyer

beware. That applies. But it’s not recognized in this bill. Every car — every

used car, which is the operative word — is treated exactly the same. Whether

you get a lemon or a good deal, it doesn’t matter to this government. They just

want their cash, and they want it now. That’s just plain wrong.

Introduce “tax collection, remittance and reporting obligations for

marketplace facilitators.” Well, that’s just a big, long, fancy word for saying

that if you go to a garage sale, buck up for the government. You bought those

used pots and pans because your family needs a new saucepan, and you can’t go

buy the one downtown because it’s maybe too expensive. “So we’ll go to a garage

sale. We’re feeling the pinch, here, in the affordability of this province

right now.” Well, guess what. You’re going to have to report that, and you’re

going to have to pay.

[2:25 p.m.]

Once again, it just seems to be hitting all the wrong people in the

wrong places. That place is the pocketbook. This is just tax after tax after

tax. This government feels no shame in doing that — the government that

championed, in their election speeches: “We will take on affordability in this

province. We will be the champions in that.”

I don’t know. The member for Peace River South was at a loss for words

for it as well. I’m not too sure if it’s 27 taxes now, 25. You know, it’s

pretty bad when the opposition tries to hold government to account and can’t

keep up with the amount of taxes. I mean, bad on us, I guess, but bad on

government for making us work so hard and get the abacus out every other day to

figure out how many taxes we’ve got. It’s really mind-boggling.

“Set provincial rural area property tax rates.” I’m not too sure exactly

on this one here, but our property tax rates in rural B.C., just like the Lower

Mainland, have skyrocketed. Whether that’s Crown land tenures or rural area,

fee simple acreages, it’s just out of hand, and there’s no measure to limit

that tax rate during these times. You could put a tax measure in, limiting the

tax increase during this time.

This affects agriculture. We’ve got ranchers right now that are just

getting by, and they’re having all kinds of land access issues right now. With

bills that I see coming up…. Perhaps we’ll see, with Bill 14, what it

materializes to be. But we’re seeing increased restriction on land use, yet the

property that they lease from the government just keeps going up. What they can

do on that land is going down, and the price they pay for that land is going

up. It gets to the point where it’s unsustainable.

Deputy Speaker: If I might draw the member back to Bill 6.

T. Shypitka: Yeah.

Part 2 of the tax measures bill has set provincial rural area

property tax rates. It’s in there. It was implemented. Its effective date was

actually January 1 of this year. I’m not sure if I’m out of context on that,

Mr. Speaker — maybe you can correct me — but I’m talking about rural area

property tax rates right now. It’s in the bill.

On behalf of a lot of recreational owners that have recreational tenures

for recreational opportunities…. People have campsites and things like that.

Those rates go up, so it’s affecting us in the recreation area. It’s affecting

us with our agriculture, as I said — grazing, all of those tenure holders. It’s

just making life more affordable…. Our industry is suffering, as well, from

it.

We could also have lots of other things in this bill that would help

British Columbians. There’s a lot of stuff in here. Extend training tax

credits. Yeah, that’s good. Extend shipbuilding and ship repair industry tax

credits. Okay, there’s a little industry there. That’s for sure.

What about some of the other industries that these tax measures could

affect? Mining, for example, would be a great start. We’ve got all kinds of

folks that could benefit from some tax measure help. Geoscience B.C., I would

say, would be one of those. Any kind of geological…. B.C. geological survey

could be helped out a little bit here, but we don’t see any of that.

Like I said, there are some good things here with Bill 6. It does

identify some of the more obvious things that a tax measures bill would see,

like I said. The exemption for houses or damaged residential property is a good

one. That’s really good.

Thankfully for those folks in Merritt, they’re going to see some sort of

tax relief on removing the damaged residential property items — you know,

during the last fire. It was devastating for those folks, so any help is good

there.

[2:30 p.m.]

Everything else that I see here in this bill just does the opposite to

what we need right now. We need some help. People need help. They’re on the

edge. When you just layer three taxes, for fossil fuel, natural gas…. That is

what people have….

Not everybody is going to be able to afford, in rural B.C., a $15,000 to

$20,000 fix on their heating to put in a heat pump. They’re just not going to

do it. Now, it’s good that you incentivize those that can, the ones that are

rich enough that can and live in a temperate area that it makes practical

sense. It’s good to incentivize those types of things. Yeah, I give full credit

there. But then to go on the other side and say, “But if you don’t play along,

we’re going to tax you on your natural gas use,” is just not fair, plain and

simple.

With that, I really can’t support this, even though there’s some good

stuff in here. I think the government needs to take a really good look at how

they implement these and who they affect.

The private vehicle sales, the PST that’s being required now…. That’s in

their own report. It’s right in the budget document, actually. It said that

this will negatively impact low- and middle-class individuals and families. The

government knows — it doesn’t take rocket science to figure it out — that those

who buy used vehicles, such as myself, are on a budget, a tight budget. Not

everybody can go out and buy a brand-new vehicle. This tax measure will

negatively impact individuals and families that are low and middle class

financially.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I’ll take my place and sit down, and I’ll let

the next member speak. [Applause.]

Deputy Speaker: You did get more than one applause.

Recognizing the member for Richmond South Centre.

H. Yao: I do want to apologize for that. I learned my lesson from the member for

Kootenay East. I need to stand up faster than that last time. How’d he beat me

to it?

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about Bill 6, which I fully

support. I think that we all, as MLAs for British Columbia, understood the

challenging years we’ve experienced since 2020. Our government, which is fully

responsible to British Columbia and fully dedicated to investing in British

Columbians, realized the need to really carry British Columbia through a

challenging time, from a pandemic, from an opiate crisis to dealing with the

wildfires and the floods.

This continues — various crises hitting us from 2020 all the way till

now. As some of the previous members even mentioned, the Ukrainian and Russian

military conflict is causing our gas prices to become more and more

unaffordable. That’s why the B.C. government is here to continue coming up with

various plans, not just to think about today and tomorrow, but we’re thinking

about how to utilize our budget to ensure that we can actually invest for

tomorrow, for years ahead.

I would like to start talking about investment and why our government

needs to be able to look at a way to say that for the next few years, we must

be able to accept the deficit we have to create, in order to invest in various

parts of our budget to strengthen our economy as we recover. I think many

people will understand very clearly and very simply that in 2022, we are coming

out as the strongest economy in Canada, with one of the lowest unemployment

rates. But this economic success is very fragile. It takes time to further

invest and nurture as we move forward.

That’s the reason why I’m so glad that our B.C. government placed

greater emphasis on health care, child care, Internet for rural and remote

communities, and housing. We will continue looking at various ways to ensure

that we build the proper infrastructure. That way, we don’t allow years of past

neglect, putting us unable to handle something similar to the pandemic that we

experienced in 2020….

I would like to begin talking about affordable, accessible, quality

child care and how that investment of today will strengthen our economy of

tomorrow.

Deputy Speaker: If I might, Member. Just to remind you, we are speaking to Bill 6, the

Budget Measures Implementation Act. The budget itself was already discussed. So

if we can try and keep reference to this document. Thank you.

[2:35 p.m.]

H. Yao: My apologies. I accept the corrections.

Can I end my speech here? It’s obvious that I’m preparing for something

completely different.

Deputy Speaker: It’s not a problem. Just to be clear, I don’t want to fetter people’s

ability to speak.

H. Yao: I fully respect your guidance here. I appreciate that.

Deputy Speaker: I just want to make sure that we’re speaking to the Budget Measures

Implementation Act, which is primarily taxes, not completely — and, of course,

what happens out of that tax money. Thank you. Please proceed if you’d like, or

if you’re finished….

H. Yao: No, thank you.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Member for Kelowna-Mission.

R. Merrifield: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate having the time.

Housing affordability. The cost of groceries. Finding a doctor. Price of

gas. Health of business. That’s what people are talking about right now. That

is what is consuming people in their conversations in their communities. So

allow me to start my conversation about Bill 6 with a little bit of a

story.

It was September of 2008. I remember the day, because it was like the

sky fell. Panic overtook the entire housing and finance industries with the

crash of 2008. I remember calling the emergency meeting with my executive at

the time. We had just over 200 employees, and I didn’t know how to make payroll

that Friday.

Deputy Speaker: I’m sorry, Member. I just recognized that I have a member asking for

leave to make an introduction. He’s been trying to get my attention, and I’ve

not been giving him the attention he deserves. My apologies. Sorry.

With leave, of course, the member for Chilliwack seeks leave to make an

introduction, I believe.

D. Coulter: Yeah. I’m sorry for interrupting my colleague. I was mashing the

little button here, trying to get the Speaker’s attention in between

speeches here.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I would like to seek leave to make an

introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

D. Coulter: One of our members in this chamber has a birthday today, and it really

flew under the radar and tried to escape. I’d just like to wish them a happy

birthday.

The member for Parksville-Qualicum is 38 years old today. The member is

one of the most accessible MLAs, I know, to his constituents, and I’m sure they

really appreciate it. I enjoy speaking with the member and his perspectives on

things.

I’d just like to wish him a happy 38th birthday.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member. And yes, happy birthday. In future, if we can try to

make those just during the introductions so we don’t interrupt our fellow members,

that would be appreciated.

Sorry, Member. Please proceed, Member for Kelowna-Mission.

Debate Continued

R. Merrifield: That’s all right. Thank you. And happy birthday.

As I was saying, it was 2008. The financial markets had stopped. We had

been put on notice by all of our financial institutions that draws would be

withheld, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay 208 people.

I called together our executives, and we discussed what we were going to

do. I asked that no one get laid off, that all of their jobs be protected, that

we would shrink through attrition, and I cut my salary to zero. I didn’t know

how I was going to make my mortgage payment. I didn’t know how I was going to

pay for groceries, but I also knew that that was the responsibility of an

executive in a company.

Why do I tell this story? Well, it’s because in B.C. today, we’re almost

in a similar situation. Yes, we’re almost through COVID, and we had exciting

news today to celebrate our successes together. While most people are employed,

they are not making ends meet and are falling behind because of the escalating

prices. They can’t find a house. They have to choose between housing and

groceries. Food programs at schools have seen an increase of 40 percent

usage.

[2:40 p.m.]

Nearly half of British Columbians are $200 away from insolvency. That is

far worse than our neighbours to the south in the U.S.

I’m really glad to have this opportunity today to speak on the bill

before the House — one that has serious ramifications to affordability in

British Columbia. Why? Well, because the discussion and the debate around Bill

6 is the meeting of the executives. It is bringing together the decision-makers

around the financial aspects that are going to have a direct impact on the

lives and the wealth of British Columbians. This bill is very telling in what

that side of the House cares about.

Bill 6, as its full name implies, implements key measures outlined in

Budget 2022 and, most notably, brings into force the new tax measures that this

government decided to levy on British Columbians. It’s an important bill for

government, not just because it’s the legislative companion to the budget but

because it demonstrates the priorities.

In 2008, my priority was around making sure that people could pay their

mortgages, making sure that people had enough money to pay their gas, making

sure that they could keep food on the table.

Well, what do my constituents in Kelowna want their government to focus

on? In Kelowna, yes, we want to get back to normal. But people are full of

fear. They’re full of angst — not about what wearing a mask looks like or

having a vaccine passport anymore but about what our economy is going to become

and if we have reserves if it becomes World War III.

My constituents care about the economy — about driving an actual plan

for recovery. My constituents care about mental health and getting treatment

facilities for those that need it. My constituents care about their health,

getting critical surgeries for cancer treatment done while planning for the

future. My constituents care about having a family physician. They care about

having affordable and accessible child care. They care about the environment

and not choking with smoke. All of this….

Deputy Speaker: Member. My request, as I’ve made to other members and as the Assistant

Deputy Speaker has, is to make sure that it’s clear — the connection between

your remarks and Bill 6, the Budget Measures Implementation Act. If we could

get that a little closer to the bill, that would be great. Thank

you.

R. Merrifield: Thanks so much, Mr. Speaker.

My constituents care about the cost of living, their taxes, inflation

and having a responsible government. They care about hope. The NDP government

isn’t planning to have margin. We can tell a lot what they plan to have by what

they’ve decided to do in this legislation, because not only are they

introducing or increasing a large swath of taxes in the middle of an

affordability crisis, but they’re also giving themselves a $20,000 pay bonus

for all their ministers.

Yes, this is the legislation that demonstrates that the NDP care so

little about the affordability problems that people are facing right now,

they’re giving themselves a raise while doing nothing to try and make gas,

groceries or housing more affordable. As I’d said earlier, nearly half of

British Columbians are now $200 or less away from insolvency. The U.S. has four

out of ten that are $1,000 away from insolvency. I don’t like being worse than

the U.S.

The latest figures from Statistics Canada show inflation surpassed 5

percent in January. The last time we saw this happen was September 1991. As

I’ve stated before, now is not the time to be raising costs for British

Columbians or spending taxpayer money on a salary bump for cabinet.

So yeah, the technical explanation of what the NDP are doing is

repealing the collective 10 percent salary holdback provision. But really, in

essence, it’s rewarding a minister without having to do the work. They’re

giving themselves a pay hike, but they’re also freeing themselves from the work

or the responsibility of avoiding a deficit.

[2:45 p.m.]

The minister has said that it’s because refusing to increase cabinet’s

pay when the province is in deficit “sends the wrong message” to ministers.

That’s laughable. It is a shameful excuse for government to line their own

pockets while the province struggles and the people in the province struggle to

buy groceries in the face of rising costs.

This legislation is not just a slap in the face to people because it

allows government to increase their pay while doing little to improve

affordability, but it actually makes life less affordable. Two of these taxes

are going to target goods and vehicles, while the other hurts incomes and rural

communities that rely on natural gas furnaces.

Budget 2022 introduces these three significant tax in­creases,

through this bill, that hurt affordability: increasing the tax rate on home

heating equipment, increasing the effective tax on used or private vehicles and

adding a new tax on online marketplaces — wow, online marketplaces — that

process payments electronically for used goods.

I can tell you that when my budget was tight and I had little kids, I

went to used marketplaces all the time to buy my kids’ clothes. I very rarely

have ever bought a brand-new vehicle. I try and get a great deal for my

vehicles. I know that the tighter the budget, the more you rely on those

mechanisms to actually get money back into your pocket. But this government

wants to take that.

Sure, I’m all for reducing the PST on used EVs, electric vehicles, but

let’s take a look at what those are. I don’t know — Audi Q4 Sportback e-trons.

Well, the market rate is $67,000. A tax break from it — what does that actually

equate to? Maybe a used one you could get at $40,000 but only if it’s actually

the price as determined by — I don’t know — a third-party appraiser, which I’m

going to just run out and get.

This makes no sense. You are basically giving back $2,000, $3,000 on a

used vehicle, when the actual amount on a brand-new one is double that. So

you’re rewarding, in greater measure, those wealthier that are able to afford a

brand-new vehicle than those that are not, further penalizing them.

I’m not telling this government anything that they don’t already know,

because they actually said it in their budget document. It says, on page 91:

“Individuals involved in private vehicle transactions are more likely to be low

to medium income, living in a rural area.”

These taxes are actually going to predominantly affect the cost of

living for those that are the most desperate in trying to make ends meet and

are most likely to buy used goods in order to do it. The tax is most likely to

hurt those that can’t afford it. So much for trying to help those with the cost

of living.

The used-car tax has the potential to add hundreds in costs on private

vehicle sales. In fact, this government anticipates it being millions of

dollars added to the bottom line, taking money from low- to middle-income

earners. This means that the government is prioritizing punishing people for

working hard and trying to find a deal.

[2:50 p.m.]

As those members across the aisle — specifically, the member for

Vancouver–False Creek…. She even negatively characterized it as: “Frankly, it’s

tax evasion.”

This bill does some other good things. It does. It does a few.

Increasing tobacco taxes — sure. Extending a number of tax credits that the

government has previously put in place — great.

I would say that the most positive of Bill 6 is that it creates a few

tax exemptions for those that have been really impacted by the 2021 floods. I

think that’s a reasonable step. But the concerning aspect is that they’re

actually going to reward ministers with a pay increase.

At the beginning of the pandemic — before I was elected, when we were

first put into lockdown — I called together all of my executives on a Zoom

call, because that’s the way that we could meet. We had a discussion about what

we were going to do.

We didn’t know what would happen to our industry. We didn’t know what

would happen to our income. We knew how much we had in reserve and how long it

would take to burn through that. We didn’t know how the financial markets would

respond. But we rewarded each of our executives for doing a good job, for

staying on budget, for making sure that they were within their target

numbers.

In fact, I think that you’d be hard pressed to find many outside of

these walls that would consider rewarding ministers or executives for not doing

their job. For not running within a budget. However, what most people would not

see further in this, unless they dug just a little bit further, is that in this

piece of legislation, the Finance Minister is actually further reducing

transparency with government decisions.

In addition to giving raises to all of the ministers, she actually is

reducing transparency around government decisions and bypassing Treasury Board.

The whole process — removing a key check and balance measure on this

government’s spending.

I don’t even know why I’m surprised, because this is the NDP government

that won a national award for secrecy. But it’s incredibly

concerning.

Rather than joining the conversation that’s happening outside of these

walls about the cost of living, this bill adds taxation to those that are least

able to afford it. Rather than join the conversation about economic recovery,

mental health or our environment, this bill actually sidesteps it and taxes

those that don’t have any other options, like those in the North, those in

rural communities, where natural gas is the only solution for their heating

needs.

Rather than join the conversation around health care or child care, this

bill’s conversation is about secrecy. This bill’s conversation is about taxing

those that work hard to get a good deal on a car. Those that don’t have enough

money to go to a retail outlet or a mall and buy something off the hanger and

have to buy used.

This bill proves that this government isn’t prioritizing the needs of

British Columbians. This bill proves that this government is prioritizing the

needs of wealthy individuals that can afford an electric vehicle and not those

that have no other option other than natural gas to heat their home.

[2:55 p.m.]

This NDP government isn’t listening. It isn’t listening to the

conversations that are happening outside of the walls of this institution.

Instead of having ministers that are committed to the task, they’re committing

to overspending. Committing to debt, rather than recovery. They’re spending on

giving themselves raises, rather than dealing with the cost of

living.

They are furthering the divide between the haves and the have-nots by

giving tax breaks to the wealthy and punishing the lower socioeconomic people —

housing, groceries, health, gas, business, child care. That’s what people care

about, not a minister’s raise.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad that they all found it so

funny.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Shuswap.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the member for Shuswap has the floor.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy to stand today and speak to Bill 6, the Budget Measures

Implementation Act. It always gives me a great deal of pride to stand in this

House on the behalf of the hard-working men and women of Shuswap, who I

represent.

This particular bill is incredibly troubling. Out of touch, certainly,

comes to mind when I think of this government and where their priorities are.

As has been referenced by some of my colleagues who spoke earlier, this

particular bill sets out a significant pay increase, both for the Premier and

for the members of his cabinet, at a time when families are struggling across

British Columbia, with a significant number of families being less than $200

away from insolvency, record high grocery prices, record high housing prices,

record high fuel prices.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

How does this government respond? Where are their priorities? A $40,000

pay increase for the Premier and a $20,000 pay increase for his friends in

cabinet. Wow. Offensive beyond belief. A $40,000 pay raise just for the Premier

alone and $20,000 for his cabinet members at a time that everybody else is

struggling, trying to make ends meet.

This government ran on a platform of affordability. But nothing has

become more affordable when it comes to taxation in British Columbia, since

this government came to power — 21 new or increased taxes with very little

support for hard-working men and women that are struggling to put food on the

table, pay for escalating prices for fuel and home heating fuel.

Now, there are three specific pieces of this bill that have been

referenced by my colleagues, about the significant increase. One has to do with

increase for home heating oil. Well, for members that live maybe outside of the

604 area code, in Shuswap — the little community of Sicamous that I live in,

for example — we have no natural gas. There’s only propane or electricity,

which is incredibly expensive.

I was born and raised in northern B.C., a great little town called

Taylor, just south of Fort St. John, on the Peace River. If you live in a

northern climate, heating your home with a heat pump does not work. At minus

25, the value afforded a heat pump, as far as efficiencies, does not

exist.

If you happen to live in a northern climate, it’s not your choice that

you’re going to have a high heating bill, but your only real option is wood or

natural gas. For those residents living in northern B.C., they’re going to see

an increase in the cost for heating their homes. Meanwhile, those of us that

are privileged to maybe live in a little bit warmer climate in the southern

part of the province, we’re going to be provided a significant tax incentive to

maybe convert our homes to a heat pump.

[3:00 p.m.]

What message does that send to British Columbians that live in the

remote and rural parts of our province, the areas of the province where natural

resources are extracted for the benefit of the rest of us in British

Columbia.

You know, it’s interesting. There seems to be a real disconnect, I

think, with what happens on the land base, when you get into a large metro or

urban centre. There just seems to be this acceptance that beef comes from the

grocery store, natural gas just magically appears through a pipe in the ground,

and electricity just magically appears from an overhead wire. But the men and

women that work in the northern parts of our province to provide the beef and

the natural gas and the electricity that is of benefit to all of the other

residents of British Columbia — what message does this budget send to them? It

matters not.

It’s interesting when you talk about the reduction in provincial sales

tax that’s now going to be afforded individuals that are buying an electric

vehicle. I have no issue with encouraging folks around the province to convert

to electric vehicles, but it’s largely not a solution for somebody living in

Fort Nelson. Yet just from this particular bill, Bill 6, for somebody buying an

electric vehicle, they’re going to save upwards of $2,000 in provincial sales

tax.

If you are blessed with living in Vancouver, even though you have

transit at your doorstep, you’re going to be provided the extra value, the

reduced cost of $2,000, in order to support you in buying an electric car. But

that opportunity does not exist in the same manner. It is not effective or

practical for somebody in Fort Nelson who doesn’t even have transit at their

doorstep.

Government has choices. We all appreciate that. Unfortunately, what I’m

seeing is a real disrespect for folks that are outside of metro B.C. and a

government that, instead, is going to increase their own wages. As I mentioned

earlier, $40,000 for the Premier. A $40,000 pay hike for him, a $20,000 pay

hike for all of his cabinet ministers. Yet who’s going to pay the

price?

We see increased taxation. When you get your natural gas bill for

heating your home, there’s more in carbon tax now than the actual cost of the

actual gas. The carbon tax is now higher than the actual cost of gas used to

heat your home — an additional billion dollars of additional revenue coming

into government just from the carbon tax alone.

What do motorists expect on April 1? Another 1.1-cent-per-litre increase

on account of the carbon tax. The government talks about trying to blame the

high cost of fuel…. They try and blame it on the war in Ukraine. That certainly

has had an impact, but long before the war in Ukraine, B.C. had the highest gas

prices in North America and the highest gas taxes in North America, and that

still exists today.

Guess what government did to choke down the supply and add additional

costs. For fuel that was going to be brought in by truck from our neighbouring

province of Alberta, they added an additional 25-cent-per-litre surcharge. Now,

those large fuel tankers that we see on our highways carry about 44,000 litres

of fuel. So just to provide this in perspective, the NDP government has added

an extra $11,000 in taxation — $11,000 in increased taxation — just on that one

fuel truck. Well, if you’re living in the interior of the province, do you

think that that might have had an impact on the cost of gas at the pumps?

Absolutely.

[3:05 p.m.]

Government is making decisions to line their own pockets at the expense

of hard-working men and women around the province. When asked on what

opportunities might be available for government to provide assistance —

nothing. We’ve heard nothing from this government. That is

offensive.

One of my colleagues, earlier, had mentioned that this current budget is

going to actually double the debt load of the province under the term of this

government to $125 billion. I appreciate that we are now debating Bill 6 with

respect to taxation, but $125 billion in debt is going to have to be paid for

by our children and our grandchildren and the future generations. I am

concerned of the level of debt being taken on by this government and who is

going to pay for it.

We’ve been blessed with very low interest rates. I can certainly

remember, in the early ’80s, interest rates over 20 percent. Most homeowners

today would be insolvent and unable to make their own mortgage payments if we

saw a mortgage rate increase of only 3 percent. Any debt that’s taken on by

governments will be an additional obligation of future generations.

Another area of Bill 6 actually relates to reduced transparency. The

latest example of this government’s track record on secrecy, this particular

piece of legislation gives the Finance Minister the power to make financial

deci­sions that bypass the Treasury Board process, removing a key check

on government’s spending power.

Now, I was privileged from 2013 to 2017 to sit on Treasury Board. It was

a very important process. It provided the necessary checks and balance to

ensure that ministers that were coming and looking for additional revenue had

to have a clear business case outlining the need and the requirement for

additional funding. But this government has decided we can just bypass that

entire process. It’s not only just disappointing; it’s also extremely worrying.

But it’s not a surprise for this current NDP government, which won a national

award for secrecy.

Look, I appreciate there’s important business that needs to be

undertaken by government. But it is imperative that government provide access

to information and share with the general public the reasons, the rationale on

why they’re deciding to choose to move in a certain direction.

We’re not getting that from this government. They doubled down with

their freedom-of-information and privacy-protection policies to further

restrict access to information. This is just yet another effort of this

government to reduce transparency with Bill 6, allowing the Minister of Finance

to bypass the very necessary process of the Treasury Board.

Government’s largest single source of revenue is personal income tax. We

have about 5.4 million people in the province. About 53 percent of British

Columbians are working at any given time. You would think that government would

actually take heed and pay a bit of attention to the businesses that actually

provide those family-supporting jobs. But we haven’t seen that.

From tax measures, all we have seen under this current government —

increases in the corporate tax. The corporate tax rate in B.C. now is a full 50

percent higher than our neighbouring province of Alberta. Alberta, it is 8;

B.C., it is 12.

Government also chose to…. Rather than eliminate the MSP premium, which

they had claimed to have done, they replaced it, putting the full cost burden,

about $1.9 billion a year, right on the backs of B.C. businesses.

We’ve seen significant minimum-wage rate increases, which I actually

support. But all of these things just add to the cost burden of businesses, and

as much as it is important to provide supports for workers, we also can’t

disrespect and ignore the businesses that are struggling out there.

[3:10 p.m.]

I saw a report recently that the average business in B.C. took in over

$125,000 of debt just trying to keep their doors open during COVID. That

certainly is not government’s fault. I think this government actually did a

good job of reducing the number of restrictions and shutdowns and allowing

industry, largely, to operate. But businesses are really struggling right

now.

With this Budget Implementation Act, I see zero supports for the

business community. At some point in time, those businesses will make the

decision, unfortunately, to have to close their doors, because they can just

not make it any longer.

It’s increasingly troubling to see the disrespect of this current

government and their lack of focus on affordability. The other piece that’s

quite interesting is that if you’re going to buy a $60,000 or $70,000 Tesla, no

problem. We’ll give you a couple thousand dollar tax break.

If you’re a young worker looking at buying a $2,000 or $3,000

automobile, and you don’t have a choice because there’s no transit in rural

B.C…. Your only ability to get to and from work is to actually buy a car. You

happen to be able to negotiate a great deal, maybe from an uncle or the

neighbour across the street, and he gives you a smoking deal on an old pickup

truck. I know that my colleague from Peace River South actually spoke about the

old beat-up pickup truck that you might have bought for 300 bucks. Well, no.

Government’s now decided that we’re going to have a look at the black

book.

It doesn’t matter what deal you negotiated. If the black book value on

that vehicle is 2,000 bucks, you’re going to have to pay PST on that full 2,000

bucks. We can give a $2,000 tax credit to somebody who is wealthy enough and

able to afford an electric vehicle. But for that young worker that is just

entering the workforce and has no choice…. No public transit’s available, and

his only choice of getting to and from work is to buy a vehicle. The members

opposite refer to that individual that might get a good deal as a tax cheat or

refer to the fact that he’s only paying $300 for that vehicle as tax evasion.

How out of touch can you get? Seriously.

Then we look at the increased taxes for online marketplace. If you can

afford to go and buy new products, you’re paying PST. Fair enough. But if you

want to go buy something used because you’re struggling…. You can’t afford that

new set of pots and pans or you can’t afford a brand-new pair of hockey skates

for your kid and you decide to go to the online marketplace. You know what?

This government wants to take their pound of flesh from you as well, and you’re

going to have to pay PST. How out of touch is this government?

They ran on a platform of affordability. Nothing has gotten more

affordable under the term of this government. Housing’s up. Gas is up.

Taxation’s certainly up, especially from a business perspective. What is more

affordable?

Absolute failure. They’ve doubled down by now, saying that if you want

to buy a used pair of hockey skates for your kid online, you’ve got to pay PST

on that as well? Absolutely offensive. There’s no way that I’ll be supporting

this bill. With that, I will take my seat.

D. Davies: I rise today — I guess, virtually — to speak to Bill 6, the Budget

Measures Implementation Act. Maybe I’m having trouble saying it just because of

how disappointed I am in what I see in this piece of legislation. I will start

with…. And maybe the members across the way can take note of this and have

these conversations with people in their ridings.

Over the last little while, I’ve been meeting with peo­ple,

meeting with stakeholders and visiting the coffee shops, and the message is

very clear. People can barely make ends meet.

[3:15 p.m.]

Our not-for-profit organizations, the fabric of our communities, are

unable to make ends meet and unsure of how they’re going to be able to carry

on. So I encourage the members across the way to maybe go out and to talk to

those folks in their communities and understand how difficult it actually is

right now to make ends meet.

When we saw the budget come out, I was certainly disappointed in it. Of

course, now we see Bill 6 here. There is no relief for these people and these

organizations. Bill 6 is anything but affordable. It’s taxing our way into

affordability, which is impossible to do.

Most people, and this has been talked about a lot, are $200 away from

being completely broke. Insolvent. We’ve seen this before this budget came out

and before our most recent increase in gasoline and our fuels. People were $200

away. It’s only getting worse, and people were looking to this government for

support. They were looking to this government for hope so that they might see a

way out of this, they might see their dollars go a little further. But that

isn’t the case in the budget or in Bill 6.

It’s really unfortunate. One of the things that would have been nice to

see in this…. There are some tax breaks, and I’ll get into those here

momentarily, talking about the heat pumps or on electric cars. But there was

nothing…. The government has seen this coming for a couple of few weeks now,

but something that should have really been in this budget was some relief for

the rising cost of fuel that we’ve seen. Twenty-five cents a litre is within

this provincial government’s control.

We’ve seen our neighbours in Alberta look at some tax relief. Why was

that not in Bill 6 as some tax relief? The trickle-down effect of the cost of

fuel that this will impact is going to impact the cost of groceries.

I’m here in Fort St. John. Everything comes in by truck up here. Our

food, our products that we use to do — well, you name it — everything. There

isn’t hardly anything that we purchase in the store that hasn’t come on truck

or, to much, much lesser case, by rail. But even still, those costs are going

to be dramatically increased as we see the cost of fuel skyrocketing across the

province. This is not just in the Lower Mainland. We’re $2 a litre in Fort St.

John, and it’s even more than that when you go north into Fort

Nelson.

My colleague from Shuswap a moment ago mentioned the cost of natural

gas. Now this is natural gas, of course, to heat the home. If you can see

behind me here…. I mean, we’re a long ways away from being able to turn our

furnace off. In fact, I just received my natural gas bill. I guess it was about

two weeks ago. Almost $800 for two months of natural gas.

Now the thing is: I have no other choice to heat my home. As we see, the

incredible amount of taxes, including carbon tax, which my honourable colleague

there mentioned, is more than the cost of natural gas itself. It’s not even

close. The taxes on my natural gas bill — and I wish I had it in front of me,

but I don’t — are quadruple the actual cost of just the gas itself.

When I look here, in Fort St. John, pretty much the entire month of

December, nearly four weeks, we were sitting at minus 40 degrees. That was

before the wind chill, so that’s the still temperature. I use a forced air

furnace to heat my house. I understand the heat pumps that government has

brought forward a tax break for, but heat pumps will not work in cold climates,

and of course, we have cold climates as soon as you leave the Lower

Mainland.

[3:20 p.m.]

These are big challenges. When we see a government looking at making

policy…. I call them cookie-cutter policies, along the lines of: “This works

great in Vancouver; this works great in Victoria.” Many of these things do not

work in the rest of British Columbia, and this is one of those. I’m getting to

my point now. Increasing taxes on furnaces, increasing taxes on hot water tanks

directly penalizes people that live in rural B.C., people that live in the

remote parts of British Columbia. It’s just like not giving relief on the

gasoline taxes. It’s like giving a tax break on an electric car.

The world is a little bit different up here in the north. We do rely on

vehicles that have internal combustion engines, pickups that work out in

industry, that are working out in the forest industry, pickups that are working

out in the natural gas industry so that people across this province, including

in Vancouver, can turn their furnace on when it gets a little bit cold and know

that there’s going to be natural gas flowing into their furnace or into their

boilers so that they too can stay warm.

The folks that work up here in this part of the world require an

internal combustion engine, because in 40-​below weather, when those

hard-working folks are out in the field, working…. You’re not turning your

vehicle off at minus 40. When you’re working outside, you are working outside

for about ten minutes, and now you’re sitting in your vehicle to warm up for

about ten or 15 minutes. You do that on a ten- or a 12-hour shift.

When we start to look at the government, in Bill 6, giving a tax credit

on an electric car…. I don’t oppose the tax credit on electric cars, but it

doesn’t work across the province. When I see the gas taxes increasing on people

that require their vehicles just to continue to bring you what everybody in the

province of British Columbia needs, I do have a challenge for that. Coming from

a northern community, a rural community, I feel, again, it is an attack on us,

an attack on our way of life, and it is not fair. When you tax me now because I

need to….

This is a personal one for me. My furnace in my house is old, and I’m

just in the market of looking for a new natural gas furnace. Well, you are now

singling out myself and many others that live in these colder climates, because

I have to heat my house with natural gas. I have now no choice but to pay this

additional tax because of legislators that are making these rules out of

Victoria or that live in Vancouver. These are not fair, and they do anything

but make things affordable for British Columbians that rely on and require

these items.

Speaking of affordability…. I’ve just talked about one of the new taxes

that are being implemented on natural gas items. Hot water tanks. I didn’t even

talk about hot water tanks. There are concerns, of course, about farmers up in

the Interior and their uses of natural gas. We’ll obviously find out more about

that later.

Another thing that attacks that middle-income earner, low-income earner

— we’ve heard my colleagues already speak about this — is taxing people on

getting a deal on a car. I’ve only ever owned one new car in my life. Maybe I’m

cheap. Maybe not. Maybe I like to look for a deal. Well, actually, I do. I

enjoy looking for deals. I enjoy going through the newspaper when I need a

vehicle and trying to find a deal out there.

[3:25 p.m.]

When I get that deal, and it is a deal…. I’m a fairly handy person. I

can do a lot of repairs myself, and I’ll look for vehicles that I can maybe

redo the brakes or redo the rear seals or have to do something with the engine.

But now to have the ability for the government to say, “No deals for you; we’re

going to tax you on the Black Book price for that vehicle, what we think the

market value is,” is completely preposterous.

Here’s my concern. A lot of young people take mechanics in school. They

go out of their way to try and find that vehicle that is…. Maybe the engine’s

blown or the transmission’s blown. They’re going to get that vehicle at a

substantially lower cost than market value, because they are going to put in

that extra money, and they’re going to make the repairs on that vehicle to make

that vehicle drivable. They do it to save money for themselves, as well as do

it as a project.

Now the government is telling that young person, who’s…. Maybe it’s his

first vehicle or her first vehicle, and she wants to make this project. She’s

now going to be taxed on it as a market-value vehicle. The government does say

you can get a third-party to evaluate that, at the cost of…. I’m not sure what

the cost of a third-party evaluator would be. I’m guessing in the area of a

couple hundred bucks.

Again, this is a tax on the middle- and low-income earners. The people

that need that extra money. The people that are less than $200 away from being

flat broke. Again, it’s another attack on people that need that money in their

pocket to get by. Or the money, maybe, to go to tuition. Or the difference

between: “Do we have some fresh fruit this week for our family?” These tax

measures, as laid out in Bill 6, are attacking those people. This government

talks about affordability. It’s laughable, when we see all of these different

pieces comes into play that actually are completely opposite of

affordable.

I’ve said numerous times, in different talks over the last few years,

that every single year we are seeing new taxes. New taxes. I’m not even sure

what we’re up to right now. We’re approaching 30 new taxes since this

government has taken over in 2017 — 30 new taxes. It’s absolutely scary. From a

government that is talking affordability…. Well, I go back to my line I said

earlier. They’re trying to tax their way into affordability, and that does not

work. It is unrealistic, and it’s hurting the average British

Columbian.

Speaking of the average British Columbian, we have certainly seen this

over the past couple of years with COVID: the increased use of Internet to make

purchases, online markets. Like I say, over the last two years, this has been

an area that has obviously bloomed, which has made people the ability to stay

home and do some shopping on their computer. Obviously, the government felt

really bad they were missing out on some tax revenue, because they’re going to

be taxing that now.

Again, for the most part — I don’t want to pigeonhole everyone into

this, but predominantly, I would say — middle- to low-income earners are the

ones out there online trying to get the deals, and now they’re being taxed on

this.

The poor person that wants to go out and buy a used car, that lives up

here and may need a new hot water tank or a new furnace, which, I guess, they

can’t buy online because…. How is that going to work? Are they going to be

double-taxed on buying a furnace online as well? You have got to pay the

marketplace tax as well as the…? It’s just layers upon layers of tax. Layers

upon layers of attacking the middle- and low-income earners across this

province.

We haven’t even talked about — again, I know that we’re on Bill 6 right

now, but it’s tied to this — the level of debt that this province is taking on.

Obviously, the government is struggling right now to make revenue, and we’ve

seen….

[3:30 p.m.]

Let’s be honest. This government is chasing the resource sector out of

this province, whether it’s oil and gas…. We are seeing companies moving to our

neighbouring jurisdictions, down to Texas. We’re seeing forest companies

closing, leaving, looking elsewhere and investing heavily in other areas. The

mining industry.

Obviously, this government is being challenged right now with finding

the revenue that they need to do their little projects. And the raises. I guess

they need the extra money to deal with the cabinet ministers’ $20,000 raise and

the Premier’s $40,000 raise. I guess they need all this money. With the strong

majority that they do have in this House, I guess they’re just going to ram

these taxes through to help pay for all these little things. Crank the debt up

to $125 billion. Our deficit is projected at $5 billion. When is it going to

stop?

Affordability. This is a government that has talked about affordability

since they were elected. The promises made in the 2017 election. The promises

made in the 2020 election about affordability. People were hopeful that the

budget that was introduced a couple of weeks ago, now in Bill 6…. They were

hopeful that they might see some relief. But it’s anything but relief. It’s

another gut punch. It’s another hand reaching deeper into the pocket, and

people cannot afford it. Again, we see people are less than $200 away from

being completely broke, insolvent.

Another piece that I can tie in as well with some of these tax breaks

for electric cars, taxing those who are getting a deal on a used vehicle. Most

of my friends up here…. A lot of the people that I know are buying the used

cars. I know it’s to promote people using public transit.

Again, I go back to what I talked about earlier. These cookie-cutter

approaches that are…. You know, they work wonderful. If I lived in Downtown

Vancouver, I probably would not have a car. The transit system in Vancouver is

really good. I use it when I go down there. Whether it’s the bus or SkyTrain or

whatever, I do use that.

In Fort Nelson, there is no transit. In Fort St. John, the transit is

limited. My colleague from Peace River South spoke earlier. Limited transit in

his communities. Peace River South and Peace River North are very similar

geographically.

Our industries. We share industries. We see this attack on people that

drive a vehicle that burns fossil fuels, but we don’t have the choice. I

mentioned that earlier on. We need these vehicles to work in the different

sectors that provide for the rest of the province. Even our agriculture sector.

These costs that are going through the roof right now are going to trickle down

into every single thing that we purchase. Everything.

I’m not sure if government sees that or not, because from what I see in

Bill 6, the government doesn’t see the impact of these tax increases and how

they’re going to impact everything. Because at the end of the day, there is one

taxpayer, and that’s every British Columbian. All of these taxes and increases

— not only in Bill 6 but over the past three, four years — are all stretching

everybody to the end. It really scares me where we are going.

I would like to say government does recognize this. They even,

specifically…. I believe my colleagues have mentioned this already, on page 91.

It even says, “Individuals involved in private vehicle transactions are more

likely to be low to medium income” and living in rural areas.

Well, talk about disrespectful. Here they even have that these tax

increases are going to impact the medium- and low-income families, as well as

people that live in rural communities. But “who cares” is what this government

is saying. “Who cares? We’re going to go forward with it anyways.”

[3:35 p.m.]

That’s exactly what this NDP government has done. They’ve ignored their

own comments in their own bud­get documents that say these taxes are

going to impact low- and medium-income families and people that live in rural

parts of B.C. “Well, to heck with all of you then. We’re going to carry on and

do it anyways.” That’s what I read out of that.

Myself, living in a rural community and standing up for the folks of

Peace River North, it’s completely unacceptable that there is this attack on

rural B.C., especially our medium- and low-income families.

Following on the footsteps…. I know I’ve mentioned this, but I might as

well mention it again. The pats on the back around the budget, the pats on the

back around: “Oh, we’re doing all this. We need a $20,000 raise.” You can’t get

any more tone deaf than that.

Even if you dig a little bit further in some of these documents and they

are thick. I do encourage British Columbians. They are available. You can come

to my constituency or go to any constituency office. We have copies of the

documents. We’re more than willing to get it to you. It’s online. Look at some

of this language that this government is putting out there around their budget.

It’s even beyond just taxing people to death. It’s about how they’re doing it

and the transparency. We’ve talked about transparency over the last number of

years — that this government is anything but transparent.

I know this was mentioned earlier, but I didn’t even know that there was

an award around secrecy, being the most secret government in Canada. I didn’t

know that award existed until just recently, when the NDP government in the

province of British Columbia received it. This award wasn’t just something

thrown out there. I mean, this is…. I’m getting really excited here.

This award is awarded by media outlets in Canada, and our government is

being recognized as the most secret government — in British Columbia. We’ve

seen this over and over again. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking up here on

the consultation around caribou or working with the snowmobile association or

whatever.

The Finance Minister, in Bill 6, is also reducing transparency around

the budget. A big project used to come forward and would have to go through

Treasury Board. There was a process for the Finance Minister if she wanted to

spend some, but no longer.

This government has now delegated the Finance Minister to make decisions

all by herself and bypass the Treasury Board. How is that transparent? At the

same time, again, taking away the accountability for ministers to work within

their budgets…. That’s kind of where that $20,000 bonus comes from. Ministers

are no longer held accountable to stay within budget. “Here’s 20 grand anyways.

Good job on whatever.” Again, out of touch.

I mean, just picture this conversation with someone. Go down to the

A&W and have a coffee with the hard-working folks sitting around chatting

about affordability and that they can’t afford to fuel up their vehicle. Their

furnace is broken now. They can’t afford to get a new furnace. They can’t

afford to buy fresh groceries from the store. You look to the government and

say: “You’re here to help, and we need you to lead.” You see all of this stuff

coming, and all you hear is: “Well, we can’t really do that. We are just going

to tax, tax, tax and pat ourselves on the back and give ourselves a $20,000

raise.”

[3:40 p.m.]

People are angry. People are angry around the province. Everybody that I

speak to is upset with what is happening right now in this government and the

direction that this government is going around their so-called

affordability.

This government is anything but affordable. We’ve seen it over the past

few years. It doesn’t matter what…. I mean, talk is cheap, and we’ve seen that.

We have not seen any real deliverables that have helped people. It doesn’t

matter — the housing promises. It doesn’t matter — the $10 daycare promises,

the rental rebate promises.

All of these taxes and such laid out here in Bill 6 are devastating to

most British Columbians. We need to be looking out for them.

As COVID is finishing up, this was a great