Yesterday I rose in the BC Legislature to provide a more detailed discussion of my response to Budget 2019. My remarks build upon my initial comments released earlier this week. Below I reproduce in text and video my somewhat extensive remarks in support (with caveats) of Budget 2019.

As you will see in the speech, the government’s 2019 budget provides clear evidence that the B.C. Greens’ participation in this landmark minority government has been a success in advancing our values and policy priorities.

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Video of my Speech

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Text of my speech

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A. Weaver: I will be the designated speaker on this particular topic. It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak in support of Budget 2019.

Before I begin, I’d like to thank my staff down in the B.C. Green caucus office, who spent an enormous amount of time over the last few months putting together our priorities, as well as the staff in the civil service and within the CASA secretariat — through which we often convey informations on which we sometimes — more often than not — get timely responses and feedback on suggestions. So thanks to the staff. We wouldn’t be able to do the good work that we do in this place were it not for the dedicated staff who put in countless hours, including the staff who last night didn’t go home until very late because, as you know, we are a bit small but mighty in the B.C. Green caucus, and I was up second here today. So thank them again for all their hard work.

I’d like to start with a bit of a personal narrative if I may moving into this budget speech to give a sense of the way I got into politics and where we are now. It’s important because it gives us a general sense as to why I’m quite pleased — no, very pleased — with the direction that this budget has taken. I will come to address some of the comments from the critic — the B.C. Liberal critic — that were just made.

Because, frankly, I believe that they need to be addressed as some of their comments were quite outrageous. I question whether the member for Surrey-Whalley has actually spent the good time necessary to get into some of the details of this budget, because some of the statements were simply wrong. That’s not good enough.

An Hon. Member: Surrey–White Rock.

A. Weaver: Surrey–White Rock. What did I…? I do apologize. Surrey–White Rock.

So coming to the personal narrative. As anyone would know, my background was a climate scientist at University of Victoria. I arrived there in 1992. I came to Victoria because of the quality of life we could offer here in British Columbia. We had many possibilities of going to other jurisdictions but, ultimately, I’m from Victoria, my wife’s from Victoria, and we wanted to have children and a family grow up next to our grandparents who are both alive today, both still living in the houses that we were born and grew up in here in this area. That was the critical, important issue for us. We wanted a family. We wanted to grow up in a place that we could call home and in a beautiful place. That is British Columbia.

I’ll come to that again because that is one of our strategic strengths. One of our strategic strengths in British Columbia is that we’re able to attract and retain people from around the world because of the stable democracy that we have — you’d never know it based on question period — but also because of the quality of life we offer and the economic opportunities that are present for people who come here.

We came here in 1992, and I worked as a climate scientist at UVic working on the second, third, fourth, fifth scientific assessments of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — 1995, 2001, 2007 and 2013. Even here when I was sitting here as an MLA, I had to resign as a lead author once the writ was dropped. But even in the lead-up to that, I was working on these international assessments.

We know that over the last 150 years the earth has made a transition from a past — a past when climate used to affect the evolution and dispersal of humans to a present when, in fact, humans are affecting the evolution and change of the climate and the weather that we experience on a daily basis. What we are at risk of losing on this planet…. Frankly, what’s already in the process of we’re losing now is staggering. When scientists…. These are not activists. These are scientists who feel far more comfortable sitting at the lab bench tinkering with their chemicals or their test-tubes. When they’re talking about between 60 and 80 percent of all the world’s species committed to extinction by the end of this century, that should get people to wake up — 60 to 80 percent of the world’s species committed to extinction because of climate change this century. That’s something that we need to wake up to. It’s something that points fundamentally to the issue of intergenerational equity and the question which climate change can be framed into is: do we, the present generation, owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of the environment that we leave behind?

Now, I would suggest most of us believe that we do. We have children. We save for the future. We might have a little nest egg for them. We put money aside in a retirement and education savings plan for them. We put them in education systems to train them for the future. We care about the future of our children in many aspects of our life.

The question I ask to the members here is: do we, the present generation, actually believe we owe anything in terms of the quality of the environment we leave behind? Action now is what is fundamentally required if the answer to that is yes.

We know through a direct analogy, and here it is. Put a pot of water on a stove, and turn the element up to eight. The analogy is direct. The water and the pot are the oceans of the world.

The element going up to eight is increasing levels of greenhouse gases. Well, we know when we put the element up to eight, the water in the pot doesn’t boil right away. We might think that it’s all nice. We have an element of eight. The water is not boiling, and we sit and wait and wait and wait.

Then all of a sudden, we go: “Oh no. It’s too hot. It’s boiling. I have to turn the heat down.” I turn the element down. But guess what. It’s too late. It’s too late because the water has already warmed up and it doesn’t cool right away. That is something known as thermal inertia, and it’s the direct consequence of the fact that the heat capacity of water is five times greater than it is of sand, for example, and it takes a long time for the oceans to equilibrate, particularly as they’re moving, with the incoming radiation imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.

We see things like El Niños and La Niñas. We get Trump tweeting out about winter in Chicago meaning global warming is ending. But we expect that as that heat stored in the ocean shiffles around in the ocean and changes weather patterns on any given week, month, season or even year to year.

But what we also know is the oceans are warming. As they warm, they store heat. That heat is around for a very, very long time — in fact, centuries and millennia. So we know that even if we do no more than keep existing levels of greenhouse gases the same as they are today — do nothing more — that we’ll warm to somewhere between 1.8 and 1.9 degrees as a direct consequence of a permafrost carbon feedback and the fact that we have an equilibration to come to that temperature equilibrium with the knob on the dial set to 8, for example.

We also know that if we suddenly say, “Oh no, we have to reduce greenhouse gases,” we may reduce the gases but the heat in the ocean doesn’t go away right away. It takes time. That is the reason why, if we fundamentally believe in intergenerational equity and we believe that we owe it to future generations to leave behind an environment that, frankly, is habitable like the one we have, we have to act today. Because waiting for tomorrow is too late.

When I see a budget recognize that…. You know that to me, this is a culminating effort as to one of the reasons why I got into politics. I got here for this to happen. The fact that CleanBC was announced on December 5, a date that I will never forget, and that we have $902 million dedicated in this budget, a number I will never forget — not even counting the myriad other measures which have been also announced that don’t actually reflect in that $902 million — you know that I’m pleased. Because finally, we have a government that is actually putting this back on the table as a priority.

I think, frankly, not only today’s generation but future generations will turn around and thank this government, this minority government — and, frankly, the B.C. Greens as well — for the work that we collectively did to get this here. [Applause.]

Thank you to my friend from Vancouver–West End.

I’m just looking for my notes here that I must have, seemed to have, lost. That’s okay. I’ll find some others.

One of the things I wanted to mention is, if we go to Sir David Attenborough, what he recently said in December at the UN was this. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” Some people would say this is alarming.

But what I say to people who suggest that is: what other issue in any other aspect of our society do you see that the experts in the field are the loudest and the most outspoken people? No other issue that I know of, other than climate science. It is the climate scientists who are the ones screaming from the rafters about the importance of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions.

Sure, there are some other NGOs out there doing that as well — and the good work that they do. But if you go to many of the issues in our society, it is not the experts in the field who are invariably shouting out. In this, each and every climate scientist I know who’s practicing and publishing worldwide is concerned.

I have never seen an issue in any aspect of science where there is so much unanimity in support of a direction that needs to happen and so much collective bewilderment as to why our political leaders are unable to grasp, with the challenge ahead, unable to recognize that this challenge is actually the greatest opportunity for economic innovation and growth that we have ever seen.

But we have that being recognized here in B.C., because CleanBC is not a climate plan. It is an economic vision for this province, one that clearly…. Clearly, the member for Surrey–White Rock — it went over her head, because she clearly doesn’t understand that the age of neoliberal economics is gone.

What people are looking for today is not for government to pick winners with their big corporate fans, who are donating — but not anymore in B.C., thanks to this minority government…. What they’re looking for is for governments to send a signal to the broader market but also to ensure that people have the skills and tools and abilities to participate in this new economy.  Because it is people that matter. It is people that fundamentally are the ones that drive economic growth.

It is not the multi-billion-dollar generational sellout embodied in our tax credit system for the oil and gas sector. That is not what builds prosperity. What builds prosperity is innovation, education and focusing on people, which is why I’m very pleased with this budget.

You know, in 2007, I had the honour of being on the climate action team under the then leader, Gordon Campbell, another leader who understood not only the challenge but the opportunity that greenhouse gas reduction was affording British Columbia. It was during that time that B.C. became the first jurisdiction to put a price on carbon, an issue that, frankly, I don’t think the member for Surrey–White Rock yet fully understands — what was done, why it was done, what’s being done and the difference.

It’s actually quite embarrassing to hear the words coming from the critic on topics that, clearly, she has not spent some time looking into. You know, B.C. stood as an example then. It’s true that initially it was revenue-neutral. It’s true that we had legislation in place to force revenue neutrality. But let’s be clear. Revenue-neutral was an afterthought in terms of accounting than it was in terms of actual policy drivers. So it is false to claim that somehow there was a magic revenue neutrality that was occurring because of deliberate choices.

Initially corporate and income taxes were reduced, but after a while, it became difficult. What was happening is we were getting weird tax credits. The hockey stick tax credit — my favourite — the $12 tax credit that people didn’t even know they could claim. Each and every parent could claim a $12 tax credit for a hockey stick if your kid bought a hockey stick. Really? That is B.C. Liberal progressive policies? I don’t think so.

I watched, though, initially as…. When I was on that climate action team — and the leadership by the then government — I watched emissions drop in British Columbia. They dropped as the carbon price began to take place. But then what happens, and so often happens, is people forget why they’re leaders. They lose track as to the reason why they were doing what they’re doing. They get distracted by other issues.

Or, in the case of Mr. Campbell, the HST defeat and subsequent change in leadership led to a complete ripping apart, tearing down and dismantling of any climate legacy he had. Let’s be clear, to the members opposite. Virtually every policy measure brought in by the Campbell government was either disbanded or not increasing anymore. Virtually every one.

So there is no moral high ground, not even a moral low ground, for the members opposite to stand on, on the climate file. So I won’t for one second listen to any of the rhetoric coming from any member opposite on any aspect of greenhouse gas reductions in light of the fact that under their government, they literally dismantled every single policy measure that was brought in by the Campbell government in the space of only a couple of years. So no, there’s no moral high ground, which is, again, why we’re so pleased to actually stand and support this budget here today.

What we do know is…. Let me quote from the Vancouver Province yesterday. This quote is really important in light of today’s shocking revelation. “More than $1 billion dollars a year laundered through a B.C. underground bank servicing Mexican cartels, Asian gangs and Middle Eastern crime groups.” Let me say that again. This is from a Paris-based international organization. This isn’t from the Fraser Institute or IntegrityBC or some local…. This is an international Paris-based organization — reported out that more than $1 billion a year laundered through a B.C. underground bank servicing Mexican cartels, Asian gangs and Middle Eastern crime groups.

Guess what we find out today? We find out that the B.C. Liberals were giving them tax credits to launder money in B.C. Can you believe this? In British Columbia. It could only happen here. The B.C. Liberal government, through Advantage B.C., gave tax credits to money launderers setting up shop here in B.C. For any B.C. Liberal member, let alone a Finance critic, to have the gall to stand up here in this Legislature and suggest that members on this side of the House somehow don’t understand the affordability issue or somehow don’t understand what’s going on with the economics of this province — it’s just mind-boggling.

If ever I have seen a lack of economic oversight or wisdom, it has been in the last four years I was sitting in this Legislature with a government that clearly was out of ideas and had lost touch with the people who elected it. Clearly, the members opposite still don’t realize that they didn’t win the last election. They’re sitting there for at least two years, and based on their performance in the last few question periods and months ahead, they’ll be there for another four years after that because they still lack a vision. They’re angry. They’re bitter. They’re cynical. They’re just all…. Everything everyone else does is wrong, and they don’t offer solutions. That’s not good enough. As a critic, you have a duty and a responsibility, sure, to criticize. But that’s not good enough.

If you don’t like what’s being done, you’ve got to propose what you’d do instead. And I heard absolutely none of that, not a single proposal, not a single thing that the B.C. Liberals would have liked to have seen. Not a single thing that they would have liked to have done. Not a single thing that they think should be done in order to make B.C. prosperous. Why? They had their chance. They had nothing. And now they still have nothing, so they continue to harp on the same tired narrative that if the NDP do something, it must be bad because the NDP did it.

Well, that’s the problem with politics in B.C. That is why the people have lost confidence in a lot of what’s going on here. They’re cynical about the inability of politicians to actually say: “You know what? That’s okay. You did a good job here. We wouldn’t have done it that way, but we did a good job.” That’s what you are hearing from the B.C. Greens. We wouldn’t have done everything in this budget. But we think the Finance Minister has done a good job. In fact, today in question period, I was very impressed with how well she defended her actions, so impressed that I would suggest that she has solidified her commanding role as leader of the financial governings of this party.

You know, the budget provides clear evidence to me that our participation in this landmark minority government has been a success. If ever there was a day that we thought we made a wrong decision back in May of 2017, never more. Without any doubt, the three of us, with the weighty responsibility we had, we had to make a choice. We chose, ultimately, to support a B.C. NDP government because there were more things of shared value. But fundamentally, it was because they had agreed that dealing with climate change is an important issue, and they agreed that dealing with it should not be viewed as a stick. It’s a carrot. It’s an economic opportunity. And while the members opposite quibble about a carbon tax increase, they fail to mention that, okay, the carbon tax is going on. But right now, if you want to go home and convert your natural gas heat pump or your oil burner to a heat pump, there’s now money in the budget to assist this transition. That’s good for innovation.

The cottage industry that was created in British Columbia when the B.C. Liberals, when they used to have a vision, was created through the — what was the program called? The small renovate B.C. program that allowed you to…. I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten the name. This happens when you turn over the age of 50. Some of the names don’t stick. It was a small retrofit program that created a cottage industry, a small industry of small builders putting in niche markets, retrofitting your energy uptake, putting on solar panels — that’s what happened. That was very innovative by the B.C. Liberals. It’s gone, of course, coming back here through a creation of policies that will incentivize this.

This is what does create jobs. It’s not government picking LN — well, bad example — but picking, say, Steelhead LNG and saying: “You’re the winner. We’re going to give you this because you’ve donated to us, so you’re the winning technology.” It doesn’t do that. It says that we’re sending a signal to the market. We’re sending a signal to the market that this is the direction we want to head it. Let the market propose the solutions. That’s good economic policy. It seems to have gone over the head of the critic.

You know, we’ve also…. Power Smart. Thank you to the member for Richmond-Queensborough. Power Smart was the program. I do appreciate that. There’s room for you over on this side of the House, there, sir, if you remember that name. Clearly, you’re under the age of 50, and you have hope for the future. Too bad most of your caucus members have been here for 20 years and nothing’s changed in your party. Maybe you can help rejuvenate some of them as well.

Back to the….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: A good fraction of them are. I look around this room, and I see people who’ve been here a very long time.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Pardon me?

I’m just going to pause for a second, hon. Speaker, if I might, to give my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant a few minutes to make an introduction, if you so give me leave.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. M. Mark: In the precinct is a very good friend. We battled together. We ran in a by-election together. He is a city councillor for Vancouver. He’s representing us fiercely and passionately. He’s been a family friend. He’s a resident in Strathcona. I admire his leadership so much. Thank you for everything that you do, Pete Frey, Green Party city councillor for Vancouver. Would the House please join me in welcoming my good friend.

Debate Continued

A. Weaver: Had I known that my good friend Pete Frey was also sitting up there, I too would’ve introduced him, so I thank the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant for the introduction. I didn’t see Pete up there. I hope to see you later this afternoon if you’ve got some time.

Back to the budget. We’ve had a number of successes in this budget, advancing some of our key values as B.C. Greens and some of our key policy priorities. I’ll try to go into some detail as I get through this. Some of the topics, for example: CleanBC. Education was a major priority for us in the last provincial election.

Professional reliance is something that my colleague, the MLA for Cowichan Valley, has very personal experiences dealing with and has spent a good deal of time working with the Minister of Environment revising that.

We’ve got increasing affordability for students, something that we actually pushed, as well as government — to bring this in in a timely fashion. I’ll come to each of these separately, but that is a really significant advance.

We’ve got investments in youth mental health. The Foundry organizations across B.C. — what a successful model they are, and I’m glad to see funding in that regard.

We’ve got other policies in the confidence and supply agreement, which, you know, has been unique in its ups-and-downs challenges. But, as per the CASA and what we agreed to do, we were consulted on government’s approach to the budget. We were able to put in our submission. Not through…. We were not given, of course, any information as to what’s in the budget, but like other stakeholders we made a submission to government about what were B.C. Green priorities.

Honestly, we valued that opportunity to submit, and we’ve worked quite collaboratively in this regard for quite some time. Frankly, I think it behooves all of us in this room to perhaps do a little more of that.

Recognizing that I get that people are opposition or not, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t actually support good ideas or try to give others credit for some good ideas. It just, it seems like it’s not possible with the members opposite. Maybe if they learned a little humility, a little humility to recognize that it’s okay to praise somebody on the other side, it’d go a long way to rebuilding public support for their particular party.

Let me come into these in some more detail. Obviously and personally, the CleanBC was a particular interest to me. It’s not, of course, something that falls squarely in the purview of the Minister of Environment. It’s not just one ministry. It’s a government-wide approach, CleanBC is. It’s not a climate plan, per se. It’s an economic plan. When people realize it’s an economic plan, they’ll recognize how exciting it is.

We have, in British Columbia, some key strategic opportunities that will allow us to seize upon the opportunities afforded in a low-carbon economy. As I mentioned earlier, when I came here to British Columbia, it was for the lifestyle. I came to Victoria, the University of Victoria, known for paying the lowest university salaries in the country.

Why? Because they could. Because people would go to UVic, and they knew they could attract people at a lower wage because people got to live in Victoria. Who wouldn’t want to live in Victoria? I guess some of the MLAs who live in other areas, but for most, what a great place to have a family and what a great place to have kids grow up and to go to school.

We know that that’s a key strategic advantage of British Columbia — that we are a destination of choice. Because of that, we can attract and retain the best and brightest from all around the world, in highly mobile sectors, because of the quality of life. We should never forget that.

If you want to retain that strategic advantage, you have to protect that which created the strategic advantage. That is our environment, our access to beautiful outdoors and our lifestyle. That is what we have to protect.

The B.C. Liberal approach has been to have a free-for-all in rural B.C., in terms of economic building here and there, with no overall oversight, ensuring the cumulative effects or the longer-term consequences. So we’re struggling with ungulate declines. We’re struggling with natural habitat loss. We’re struggling with salmon species that are going extinct. We’re struggling with orca populations. We’re struggling with the very things, the very values we had that create the strategic advantage of us over everyone else in the world. You can go anywhere in the world in most professions these days, but we have that strategic strength. We must protect it.

We also have access to boundless renewable energy here in B.C., like no other jurisdiction in the world. I challenge anyone in this place here to find any other jurisdiction that has geothermal, tidal, solar, wind, biomass, small-scale hydro, has every possible source of renewable energy that we could want here. And we have one of the best education systems in the world, if not the best.

You don’t have to believe me. Just go to the PISA international assessments, and you’ll see that, every two years, B.C. ranks right at the top in terms of reading, writing and math, if not the top, in Canada. In fact, people often tout the Finnish school system. In fact, ironically, members opposite, when I first got elected…. So little did they trust their own B.C. public education sector….

This was before the member for Peace River South was minister, so I’m not going to throw him under the bus here. My good friend there is nodding and thanking me for that, I can see.

One of the first things they did was — guess what — send off some young student to Finland to study the Finnish education system to bring back lessons for B.C. Well, the only studying she should have done was gone to the latest PISA assessments and recognized that B.C. beat Finland in all of the metrics and this was an outrageous policy.

If the B.C. Liberals had recognized that we have quality education, they wouldn’t have spent so many years going after teachers, cutting the system and then, down the road, wondering why we’re dealing with some of the social problems we’re dealing with — with naloxone and drug and alcohol addictions and things like that.

When you cut the services that children need at their critical years of development — those are the early K-to-12 years — you cut…. And they were the first go — the child psychologists, the speech pathologists, the in-class help, the class size. The teachers were unable to manage with multiple different classifications of kids. The number of individual education plans a teacher might have — upwards of five, six at some times. Then you wonder why, when we don’t give the children of today — it was actually yesterday — the head start they need to function, to actually take advantage of the opportunity society holds, we end up with a problem down the road.

I can tell you why. It was mean-spirited, and it was shortsighted. While the member for Abbotsford West likes to pretend that somehow he had a magical hand on the budget, I say this to him: what Minister of Finance would let more than a billion dollars go surplus in an election year? I’ll tell you what. It’s a Minister of Finance who has no idea of what’s going on in his Finance Ministry. That’s who will do it. Because, clearly, that was an outrageous budget surplus, and I’m pleased that government here today has stepped in.

In the context of CleanBC, this is not just an investment for today, but this is an investment for the future as well. It’s going to go a long way, but not all the way, to reaching our 40 percent greenhouse gas reductions by 2030, based on 2007 levels. When I say not all the way, it’s because only three-quarters, 75 percent, has been done. Of the $902 million, a significant fraction has been set aside for the promised policy measures that will be developed over the next year or so. We look forward for more announcements in the next budget in 2020.

CleanBC will reduce B.C.’s carbon emissions by 18.9 megatonnes by the year 2030. That’s significant. That’s very significant. Of the $902 million investment, $354 million is in operating funds, and $299 million — that’s almost $300 million — is a contingency for programs currently in development. These are for the next 25 percent released.

And $26 million is in capital investments to help people and businesses reduce their emissions — Power Smart B.C. — and $223 million will increase the climate action tax credit in 2019, 2020 and 2021. This is critical, because this goes back to a slightly different notion. Again, this is more along the lines of a fee-and-dividend approach than it is in terms of revenue neutrality in terms of tax reduction. What the government has chosen to do…. Of course, we supported this as it’s written straight into the CASA. We recognized that for those who are at the lower income, the small increase in carbon tax can actually place a burden on otherwise affordability measures. So the carbon tax refund, which matches with the GST refund that we get, will go up by upwards of $400 for a family of four.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Yeah, so we were just having a lecture earlier on about when you give…. The first responses to budget speeches, hon. Speaker, have a rich tradition of not heckling the person giving the first response, as you know. Then the Liberals berated the B.C. NDP for doing that, and then, of course, as I give the first response as a B.C. Green, I get heckled by the B.C. Liberals. It shows you the hypocrisy out there. “Do as I say, not as I do” is the motto that we seem to see here, emanating from members opposite.

Back to the CleanBC. There are specific measures in there: $107 million are for zero-emission vehicle standards — $107 million. That’s a non-trivial amount of money. That’s for point-of-sale electric vehicle incentives, new charging stations, training and research and active transportation initiatives. That should be added to the notion that we were going to have 100 percent emission-free vehicles by 2040 and 40 percent ZEV-standard by 2030. This is world leading. This is exciting, and industry is responding.

We know that the average British Columbian can save $6,000 for an electric vehicle. Not only are you saving six thousand bucks for an electric vehicle, you’re avoiding the carbon tax forever. As someone who has had an EV for quite a number of years now, I can tell you that the second you drive off that lot, that is the last time that you will ever think twice about ever owning another gas-powered vehicle.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: To the member for Vancouver-Langara, I salute you, because you have a Chevy Bolt. Actually, it’s probably either that or the Hyundai Kona that will be the next car that we get, as well, because it gets a slightly longer range. So kudos to the member for Vancouver-Langara for stepping up with a Chevy Bolt. The Bolt wasn’t around. It was just the Volt when I got my first EV. Terry Lake, who’s no longer here, a member from Kamloops South or North Thompson, had a Chevy Volt. It’s a plug-in hybrid. It’s kind of cheating, but showing leadership, nonetheless. But the member for Vancouver-Langara has clearly stepped it up, as has the Minister of Environment, who has …. I forget what his is. He has an EV.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: No, I have the LEAF. Adam has a LEAF. I forget what he has. It doesn’t matter.  He’s got one, which is what’s important. Why it’s important is it’s showing leadership. It truly is showing leadership. The member for Vancouver-Langara showed leadership. Too bad his leader isn’t showing the same leadership that he showed, but that’s another story for another time and another day.

The CleanBC has $58 million in additional capital funding to make buildings more fuel efficient, more energy efficient. It can provide $14,000 for homeowners to switch to high-efficiency heating equipment and to make building envelope improvements. Think about that. Think about the opportunity people have to switch from an oil furnace, bypassing the gas and going straight to a heating exchanger. If you’ve the duct work in your house, you’re set for a heating exchanger, because the oil furnace and the gas furnace are pumping the air through the same direction and the same places that the heat exchanger will. This is an incentive that people will respond to.

There’s upwards of $2,000 to replace a fossil fuel — oil, propane or natural gas — heating system with an electric air source pump, as I mentioned. A thousand bucks to upgrade windows and doors to be better insulated. This is an interesting one, too, because we seem to think it’s a standard to put double-pane in. Why are we putting double-pane in? Let’s put triple-pane. Why would we do double-pane when triple-pane exists? And you save money. It’s a little more expensive, sure. But the payback is sure.

Eighteen million dollars will be here to work with Indigenous and remote communities to move to cleaner energy sources. This is for moving off diesel and so forth, and $168 million over three years to assist large industry in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to make their operations cleaner. There’s $3 million for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy for implementation and monitoring. That was the money in the budget.

What about greenhouse gases? The zero-emission vehicle standard will reduce emissions by about 2030, while signalling to North America that B.C. is the place for innovation. B.C. is the place for innovation in the transportation sector.

We already have amazing companies, like a Richmond-based company building batteries for ferries. We already have amazing advances here in B.C., but we’re one of the last to adopt the innovation that our innovators actually develop. This CleanBC is saying: “No more. Let’s get back on track.”

We know that the additional electric vehicle incentives and subsidies will cut another 0.3 megatonnes. Low-carbon fuel standard will count for a reduction of about 4.4 megatonnes.

Here’s an interesting fact that people may not know, if they’re riveted to their TV screen: under the ZAP EV program in B.C. — it’s a program that’s funded by oil companies, clearly — you can actually get a free electric charger in your house. It costs zero dollars. Why? Because clearly, as you switch to an electric car, what is happening here is your usage is being tracked, and that counts as a credit against a low-carbon fuel standard. It’s actually beneficial for companies selling gas in B.C. to give you a free EV charger at your home to help you move off gas. I love subsidies like that — polluter pay. Polluter pay, and onwards we go.

The building code improvements will cut half a megatonne; building efficiency energy policies — 1½ megatonnes. Policies for remote and rural communities to switch off diesel and support large industry will reduce 2½ megatonnes.

Methane regulations, coming to play largely with the federal government but some provincial — 0.9 megatonnes. Industrial electrification — 3.5 megatonnes. Carbon capture and storage — I’m a little leery about this one — 2.6 megatonnes. Renewable gas regulations for industry — 0.9 megatonnes. Waste reduction — 0.7 megatonnes. Carbon pricing — five bucks a year, going up next year as well — 1.8 megatonnes.

Altogether, the incremental reductions are about 18.9 megatonnes. But even with that, as I mentioned, we’re only going to get to 75 percent of our 2030 target. Again, it would clearly be a lot easier if we didn’t have to worry about that LNG Canada monkey on our back. Nevertheless, it’s a solid start and provides us with momentum to take us the rest of the way there.

I’ve committed, and my colleagues — Saanich North and the Islands and Cowichan Valley — have committed to work closely with government on the CleanBC plan too. We expect further answers in the coming year to see how we’re going to get to 100 percent.

The announcement made in the budget about CleanBC funding by no means is the end. It is but the beginning. It’s the beginning of a transition that will start in British Columbia. It’s the beginning of an exciting pathway for innovation in our economy. It’s not about government picking winners and losers. It’s about government sending a signal to the broader market about the direction it wants our economy to head.

There is one thing you can count on in British Columbia; it’s the innate potential of British Columbians to innovate and to respond to challenges, because British Columbians like to be leaders. They don’t like to be followers. They want to follow leaders, and they want be to leaders in the new economy. This budget is setting them up for success in that regard.

Coming to the CASA…. Many people often ask us: “What’s CASA all about? What’s in CASA? Why are you doing this or that?” CASA, in this, was a foundational document that framed the kind of conditions by which the minority government is supported by the B.C. Greens.

One of the key priorities — I would suggest the fundamental priority for us in terms of us signing on with the CASA — was that it specifically stated that we would implement climate action strategy to meet our targets. I can safely say that that box is checked three-quarters of the way, 75 percent of the way — still got 25 to do.

In the CASA we talked about there, it specifically mentions that the carbon price will increase by $5 a year. Again, what’s the signal? The signal was leadership.

Mr. Trudeau, federally, is now in a big fight with Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta — with New Brunswick kind of mumbling in the background — about carbon pricing. British Columbia has said: “You know what? Let’s get on with meeting Trudeau’s target, but let’s do it in a manner that creates certainty for business and sends a price signal that’s certain. So business has known for the last two years that it will go up another $5 next year, and it’ll go up another $5 after that.

Business has certainty, and British Columbians got leadership. This was a B.C. Green position that we took into our negotiations. We got that leadership. We got that certainty. Government has delivered. Business is responding.

Honestly, the members opposite, desperate to find anything about anything, are now trying to dredge up carbon tax? Really? Overwhelming support by British Columbians, but what they want is they want to know that they have tools available to them to help them reduce the amount of carbon tax they’re paying. And that is what this budget has delivered through the incentives for transportation and home retrofits.

We also in our CASA talk about the delivery of rebate cheques for British Columbians to ensure they’re better off than under the current carbon tax formula. The rebate cheques — again, you can check that box off — is coming through in this budget, which is a form of a dividend. It’s a lower income amount. It comes in the form of a dividend to low-income British Columbians.

Finally, under CASA, we talk about putting a fugitive price on emissions and, of course, on slash burning. While this is not really within the budget here, there are certainly ongoing discussions about the regulatory framework that Ottawa is bringing into play and how that relates to B.C.

In the question of slash burning, when I come to talk about forest fires, this is one of the things that we need to get our hands on. We’re still not there yet in terms of our discussions with government, but that fuel is wasted fuel. It’s also fuel for forest fires, and at the same time, we’re dealing with certain mills that are struggling for access to fibre. So there is a bit of a triple win here: fewer forest fires, more fibre and getting the stuff out of the forests as well.

As I mentioned, we made a submission — well, many people made submissions to government…. We asked government to show a commitment to CleanBC, and in our submission, we asked specifically that CleanBC be fully funded. We asked for comprehensive and ongoing funding for a clean growth strategy for buildings, transportation and industry. We asked for investment in electric vehicle infrastructure and increased incentives for British Columbia to switch to EVs and other zero-emission vehicles.

We asked for a focus on the modernization of B.C. Hydro to support innovation. I’ll come to that in a second — innovation not just in terms of how we produce electricity, but also how we invest in the future, how we transport and actually use electricity too. I’m pleased to say that the first two of those were actually delivered on. We still have some work to do to convince government with the phase two B.C. Hydro review — we’ve got phase one — that it needs to relook at the mandate of British Columbia Hydro.

I remain troubled by the cancelling of the standing offer program, which has led to a rather large liability that government is incurring in terms of people who’ve invested millions upon millions of dollars to enter or be part of the standing offer program now being told that that program is a wash. There are certainly liabilities that the government has exposed itself to as people seek damages for that.

There’s also — less fiscal, but goodwill — liability with many Indigenous communities in British Columbia who have formed partnerships with private industry to develop independent power projects in their territory that would actually benefit their community, provide stable long-term jobs that are well-paying. Those, too, are being put on hold and cancelled.

We have some work to do in this regard, and my colleagues and I are committed to do that work — to bring the information to government to ensure that they see the wiseness of continuing to move down the path of independent power projects, but doing so in a manner that reflects the current market value of energy. There is no way you would put out a call for power at 35 cents a kilowatt hour in today’s market. However, a call for 8 cents a kilowatt hour or even 7 cents would be met and delivered into by a number of clean projects, whether it be wind, solar or others.

We know that in Alberta, we’re getting wind power coming in at three and a bit cents a kilowatt hour. We know that in places in the U.S., solar is coming in below that. We know that with our slightly complex terrain, we can deliver at below eight cents, but maybe not quite as low as 3½ cents. But we can deliver much cheaper than Site C would. Not only that, it is not your money, not my money, not anybody’s money here that’s put at risk with these projects; it is investor money.

One of the saddest things that happened, and this happened under the former government, was that on Vancouver Island, TimberWest and EDP Renewables, a major multinational wind company, as well as a number of First Nations on Vancouver Island wanted to build a $700 million wind farm capacity here on private land, in partnership with Indigenous communities, funded by private venture cap.

Guess what? That fell through because there was nobody they were allowed to sell power to other than B.C. Hydro, and the previous government made a commitment to build Site C to deliver power that we don’t actually need for sometime in the future. So that’s sad. Hopefully will come a point when we can bring back the Canadian Wind Energy Association to British Columbia, after they summarily packed up their bags and left a number of years ago.

Let’s come back to the support for family caregivers in Budget ’19. One of the things mentioned in the budget is that it raises financial support for Indigenous extended family caregivers such as grandparents or aunties to be equal to the amount received by foster parents. This is good public policy. This is really important public policy. It’s consistent with our CASA commitment. CASA, for those listening, is the confidence and supply agreement, which stated the following: “Enhance and improve child protection services to ensure that all children grow up in safe and nurturing environments.” The minister’s mandate letter actually said this: “To provide better supports to keep Aboriginal children at home and out of care. Make reducing the number of Aboriginal children entering our care system a priority.”

My colleague from Cowichan Valley has a large Indigenous community in her riding. One of the things she reports back is that we sometimes look with disdain upon the 1960s and ’70s and the so-called Sixties Scoop that occurred when children were taken and put in residential schools in a number of jurisdictions. What we fail to recognize is a scoop far bigger than actually happened in the ’60s is ongoing in British Columbia as MCFD social workers apprehend child after child after child in Indigenous communities.

It’s got so bad that in some communities, what has happened…. As a means and ways of getting back at someone you’re having an argument with, one of the tactics is to phone up an MCFD operator and report some child abuse in that person’s home so that MCFD come and scoop up the child. This has got to stop.

We’re very pleased with the direction the government is taking in terms of recognizing that Indigenous communities are the best to serve the needs of their children, and government is providing support in that regard. In our submission to government, we pushed for a funding shift towards initiatives that support families and keep children and their families in their communities together. We also argued for increasing funding for Indigenous extended family caregivers, and we also supported increasing funding to community Indigenous-led programs. So we’re pleased, again, that government in this regard certainly responded.

In terms of PharmaCare funding, Budget 2019 states that roughly 240,000 B.C. families’ prescription medication will become more affordable this January because of the $105 million added into the Fair PharmaCare program. Under CASA, the commitment that we agreed, we agreed to develop a proposal to implement an essential drugs program designed to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and ensure that the cost of drugs is not a barrier to health management.

You know, after discussing the opportunity to develop a universal essential drugs program with the Minister of Health, we agreed that targeted funding for low-income British Columbians who could not afford their prescriptions was actually a positive short-term policy that advanced the overall goal of our CASA commitment. If the federal government showed a willingness to engage in the essential drugs program discussion over the next year, we’d be keen to revisit our CASA commitment. But in the short-term, we’re pleased, and we put a tick box again. Thank you, government, for the actions in this very important area. In our B.C. Green 2017 platform, we specifically stated that we would develop an essential drugs program to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

Let’s go to education. For us, this was our single biggest priority in the 2017 education platform. We recognized that if a society wants to lead in the 21st century, education must be its number one priority. We must equip the next generation of youth-cum-adults in our society with the tools and skills that they have to excel as innovators in the new economy.

We’re pleased again with what budget 2019 does — $550 million investment over three years for public education, which includes $58 million for a classroom enhancement fund, mandated, of course, by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision. And there’s $31 million for independent schools. But a total of $423 million is now allocated annually, and that’s over 4,000 teachers, 700 special ed teachers, 160 teacher psychologists and counsellors hired, or will be hired, since 2017.

This is actually exactly what needs to be done. We need to ensure that children in development years, the key years of development, have the tools and skills and services available to them to actually allow them to succeed. We should no longer have a society where the lottery of birth determines your future direction in that society.

You know, I’ve heard tell that many people want independent school funding to be cut and argue to put that into public schools. But I like government’s approach here. This is something that we advocate for. You don’t improve public education by going to war with the independent schools. You improve public education by making it the envy of one and all so that there’s no need for independent schools to actually be there to attract people outside of the public education system.

This is how many jurisdictions operate. Many northern European operations, many European jurisdictions, have a system that puts in place a priority of education as their number one priority.

You know, it makes me distraught when I see society as a whole, fed by the anger and the rhetoric of the previous B.C. Liberal administration, turn against teachers and believe that somehow teachers are a problem. No. Teachers go into teaching by and large because they want to serve the next generation. They want to inspire youth, and they take satisfaction from actually seeing people learn. They take satisfaction by seeing a child, struggling coming into their class, leaving their class a little bit better equipped to deal with the challenges they face ahead.

The best thing that can happen to any teacher is to have that child return to you ten, 15 years later and say: “You know what? I remember that class. You may not remember me, but that has improved my life.” That is why teachers go into teaching. They don’t go into teaching to become millionaire stockbrokers. They go in because they value the importance of education. When we start to turn public attitude against teachers, we’re at the very base of our society.

There’s a reason why one of the most esteemed professions in most northern European countries is the teacher. The people recognize, as part of who they are, that education is the foundation of any successful society. Why is it that the happy index across the world invariably puts the top nations as the northern European nations? Because citizens get the services they need when they need it. They graduate. There is a more equitable society, and it’s not one designed solely for the 1 percent, who would thrive no matter what. And in many cases, they’re in the 1 percent only because mommy or daddy left them some money, and they were born that way — the so-called lottery of birth.

In our CASA commitment, we agreed to fast-track enhancement to K-to-12 education, funding to restore faith in public schools after a decade and a half of governments that shortchanged, in fact, a generation of students. We talked about priorities for funding include early intervention in health start programs, as well as reviewing the funding model for the K-to-12 system, with a view to ensuring equitable access for students.

While we wouldn’t have done everything the way the B.C. NDP have done it, we recognize that that’s their prerogative. They’re government; we’re not. We’re a minority part of this minority government. We are there supporting their general direction, providing input when we can on various things.

We support the government’s approach to increasing funding for public education. It’s not as much as we would have done. We had committed over $4 billion over four years of new funding for public education. It’s a question of priorities. That, for us, was our top priority. As outlined in our platform, we would have invested more money, sure, but we’ll continue to push this as a priority for government, because we need to do all we can to support the children and youth as they prepare themselves for the future. We look forward to working with government to deliver more education funding in the 2½ years ahead.

Coming to the elimination of student loans. Now, both the B.C. NDP and the B.C. Greens campaigned on eliminating interest on student loans. As of February 19, interest will no longer accrue for students with loans.

You know, previously the interest was charged on prime rates. The cost of this program is $31 million each fiscal year with a one-time write-down of $225 million in this year.

But let’s put this in context. The average undergraduate in B.C. borrows about $11,200. That’s not really fair, because there are a lot of students who borrow nothing, some of whom win the lottery of birth. And there are a lot who borrow an awful lot more. When you graduate with a $50,000 debt from your undergraduate degree, initially you’re stepping off into society hampered with this ball and chain on your back foot for decades as you try to pay that back. Again, what sort of civil society are we if the lottery of birth lets you win no debt in public education and you can succeed. And the other lottery of birth means that you’re stuck with $50,000 of debt when you graduate. But not only that, you’re paying what? Prime 3 percent. Let’s say 3½ percent. So what’s that — $1,700 bucks a year in interest alone before you even get to that $50,000 bucks.

You know, eliminating the interest on the provincial portion will save the average borrower, the average one…. It says $2,300 over the ten-year repayment period. I would suggest it’s actually more than that for the people who actually have the debts, because most people who have debt have larger debt than that.

In our confidence and supply agreement, we state the following: “We recognize that education is about lifelong learning and make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable.” Tick.

We also agreed to implement an agreed-upon approach to improving access and reducing the costs of post-secondary education for students. Two aspects of this have been delivered. First is free tuition for children aging out of care. We had a different approach. We would have given them basic income for children aging out of care until they hit the age of 24. Government chose to give them free post-secondary education. Similar goals and values — you see how this confidence and supply agreement works. Similar goals and values and different approaches. But we recognize the responsibility we have, as three of us. We support that it is government’s prerogative to make these final decisions, but we’re able to contribute to the narrative and discussion about why these decisions should be made in the first place, and this is another example.

To our submission that we made, we followed CASA. We pushed for a strategy to make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable and to reduce the debt burden on post-secondary grad students. Eliminating the interest on student loans is an important step to reducing tuition burden. But wouldn’t it be remarkable, wouldn’t it be amazing if, again, we looked to jurisdictions like Denmark, like Norway, like Sweden, like Finland, like Germany and other European nations that actually recognize that post-secondary education is a right. We don’t want ability to access funds to be a barrier to success in our society.

Again, the B.C. Liberal approach is if you win the lottery of life or you happen to have a corporate friend who can donate you a ton of money to let you, in essence, subsequently win it, you move forward. But if you don’t win the lottery of birth, you’re just out of luck here. You’re just out of luck, and you’re left to fend for yourself.

Here what we’re seeing is a move toward — perhaps not as far as we would have liked to go — recognition that education is important and a right, and it should be accessible to all. So we’re very pleased with the elimination of the interest.

But there’s much more room that can be made here for increasing affordability of post-secondary education, moving forward. We still don’t have in place — yet we need desperately — a needs-based grant, opening up more access to students. We’ve now eliminated debt of the interest. Fine. But we need to have in place a needs-based approach to allow students from low income — those who didn’t win the lottery of birth — to actually be able to attend and afford post-secondary education. At the same time, I personally think the compassionate thing to do is take a look at our loan forgiveness program and determine to the extent that we can actually move a little further in that, make more of the loan a non-repayable loan and less of it as a repayable loan.

Lifelong learning doesn’t stop at K to 12. It doesn’t stop at graduating undergrad. It’s a lifelong journey from the day you’re born to the day you die. And we believe that British Columbians, in a changing economy, need to have access to the services, whether it be education or support services, that will allow them to compete in this changing world. Accessible, affordable education is front and centre in that.

Let’s go to the child care program because, again, this is another shared priority. Government has said here, specifically, that it will continue with the investment it has made in last year’s budget — something like the tune of more than $1.3 billion is going to be invested in child care. There’s a fee reduction program for parents of children in licensed care of up to $350 per month. That’s $4,200 a year, and 52,000 child care spaces now in place.

The affordable child care benefit, which is available to all families in B.C. earning up to $111,000, can save them up to $15,000 per year per child, and $237 million over three years is being allocated to support the creation of 22,000 new licensed child care spaces.

What’s important here and what we know is that the single biggest barrier right now is accessibility of child care spaces. There are two reasons for it: (1) is an inability to actually attract and retain ECEs into the profession and (2) is accessible space that’s actually affordable to rent or have a daycare facility in because of the cost of housing.

The fact that government is creating 22,000 new licensed child care spaces and the fact that government is investing in the training of ECEs is a very important, fundamental step to actually move this forward. Unfortunately, the government….

The budget here doesn’t feature growth in funding after next year. It means that we might be stalling out after allocating a third of the necessary overall investment, but we’ll come back to this next year. Again, government is slowly moving down this path. There are many people who have been able to access the reduced fee of child care services that are singing the praises. There are what? There’ll be 52,000 such spaces. They’re very happy. But there is more to go, and it’s good to see government moving in this direction.

Our confidence and supply agreement stated specifically that we would invest in child care and early childhood education to improve quality, expand spaces, increase affordability and ensure child care is accessible for all families with a focus on early childhood education.

Again, we have a two-thirds box there. That’s well done, again, to government delivering on the CASA commitment, and it’s a key priority to British Columbians. When we made our submission to government, we specifically asked for substantially more funding to be allocated to implementing the child care program in future fiscal years. We wanted government to view this as an investment that needs to be scaled up to reach a target of universal — or at least universal in the context if you can’t afford early childhood education. We’re not there on the universality. We’re not there on even a means-based amount, but the path has been set to get there in a timely fashion. These things don’t happen overnight, and we’re pleased to see the direction government is going in this regard.

Quality, of course, is essential. We need to prepare all children for healthy, rewarding lives and educate them in a thoughtful way so that they are equipped to tackle the challenge associated with many aspects of the society that they grow and develop into.

Coming to Budget 2019 and investments in youth mental health, another key priority vision for us. We supported, in our submission, the establishment of a youth mental health strategy, complementary to but distinct from the development of a broader mental health and addictions strategy. We recognized in our submission that there are unique challenges that youth face, particularly youth as they get into the teenage years into adulthood that we need to address.

One of the key things that we’re very excited to see and one of the things that when I served on the finance committee, and I’m pretty sure they made submissions this year, was government recognizing the good work — no, the exceptional work — that the foundry centres that are emerging across British Columbia have done. We have one in Victoria. I believe the first started in Abbotsford. Kelowna has one. There are a number across British Columbia. We find in Budget 2019 a $74 million investment to improve access to mental health care for children and youth. That’s more foundry centres for 12 to 24-year-olds to bring the integrated youth mental health and addiction services under one roof.

There are also more programs, including in schools for parents and families to support kids, in particularly, in their early years of development. There’s more specialized family care and day treatment for young people that meets their needs.

I heard mention in the throne speech, and I have yet to actually see how it would come out. But it was a point that resonated with me.

Sorry, not the throne speech. The budget speech. Of all the words I heard in the budget speech, the one thing that I remember that resonates with me was the concern about children going to school without food in their belly. How can we, as a society, expect our next generation to learn, to become prepared, if they’re struggling to make it through the day because they haven’t had breakfast and they didn’t get packed a lunch? To see that…

A modern society, one that cares about its weakest, is one that takes care of such people and children. To know that government is taking steps in that regard is very reassuring.

Again, our CASA commitment had words to the effect that we had a shared value about the importance of dealing with mental health and addiction, particularly with youth. Again, we can do a three-quarter box tick on this one and thank government for their attention to this.

The child opportunity benefit in Budget 2019 — this is interesting. It’s interesting for a couple of things. First, let me outline it. The budget introduces the child opportunity benefit, replacing and expanding the existing early childhood tax benefit. The existing benefit ends at six years old, whereas the new benefit takes you all the way to 18. The maximum benefit is 1,600 bucks for one child, 2,600 for two, and 3,400 for three children. These maximum benefits are more than double the maximum benefits under the old tax benefit.

The benefit is reduced by 4 percent for net family incomes above $25,000, so there is a some reduction there. But one of the ways you could look at…. Well, let me finish it. The benefit is phased out for a family income over 80,000 bucks — phased out by 4 percent for over $80,000. A family with one child — a benefit will be fully phased out at $97,500. And a family with two children will have the benefit fully phased out $114,500.

An initial comment here. It would be nice if all these phase-out numbers, whether it be the child benefit or whether it be various exemptions…. If they used the same number…. The access-to-child-care-space one is a different number from the child care benefit. I would see there’s some prudence to actually make these all come together.

It’s a little odd it doesn’t come into force until October 2020. But with that said, some of these things take time to implement and set out. Again, we have a year to set it in. You could argue: why didn’t we put it in next year’s budget? Again, this is not too uncommon to see these kinds of measures come in a year down the road.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Pardon me?

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Ah, so it’s because of the federal government as well. I appreciate that. So the federal government commitment kicks in, in 2020 as well, which is….

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Yeah, so we’ve done that — appreciate the comments there. We’ll update according.

The cost is $375 million over a fiscal plan — $125,000 in 2021 and $250,000 in the year after. It will be delivered monthly along with the federal Canada child benefit, as was just brought to my attention. It’s welcome, and it’ll be providing health and well-being for B.C. families.

B.C. now is the second-only such province in Canada to do something like this, Quebec being the other. It’s important, as it actually is dealing with what is an embarrassing issue for B.C., which is the issue of child poverty. We invariably year after year rank at or near the bottom in terms of rates of child poverty in British Columbia.

Again, we’re very excited about this. We should not be a province where one in five children grow up in poverty, despite the fact that we have the strongest economy in the province. This comes back to the words I heard from the B.C. Liberal finance critic. — her somewhat outrageous views about spending, spending, spending.

You know, we have the strongest economy in the country. We have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Yet we have the highest, or second-highest, child poverty rate. We have some of the worst income inequality and affordability issues.

This suggests to me…. When I listened in opposition, government would say budget speech after budget speech: “We’ll deal with the $50 increase in a housing allowance, or we’ll deal with welfare rates, or we’ll deal with social services when the economy is better and we make more money.” They’ve been saying that for 16 blooming years, and they’ve kept cutting them.

The reality is when the Minister of Finance past had a $1 billion — no, not $100 million, a $1 billion surplus…. Talk about reckless fiscal management, in an election year, no less.

You wouldn’t plan this in your worst management nightmare — $1 billion surplus in an election year. Why? Because they couldn’t manage the books, and they had no idea what was going on in the out-of-control real estate sector. And the former Liberal critic has the audacity to criticize government for a reduction in property transfer taxes. My goodness. My statement to government is: good on you.

We’re one of only, I believe, two provinces, maybe three, that actually have property transfer tax, brought in by Bill Vander Zalm. It’s a regressive form of taxation. The tax is something you want people to do, which is actually buy and sell homes, to move up and down as they get older and then get really old, as they age into bigger houses and then down to smaller condominiums. We want them to do that.

Government has recognized that this was unsustainable, and they’ve moved revenue sources away from the B.C. Liberal revenue source of property transfer taxes obtained through nefarious activity. We find out today, in question period, that in B.C. you get a tax credit. If you want to come and money launder in B.C., the B.C. Liberals will give you a tax credit to do it. Heaven forbid. Unbelievable that we find that out today in question period.

Coming back to what we believed in our submission…. We argued that children need the strongest possible support early in life. We are a party that believes in intergenerational equity. We’re a party that believes in prevention, a party that believes in investing when people need it, so that you’re not paying reactively down the road, when they’re using social services. You try to avoid the need for them to get there down the road.

We believe that children should not be living in a province like ours in poverty. It’s just wrong. It’s wrong at such a fundamental level. We call ourselves a civilized society, a modern society, yet we have 20 percent, one in five children, in this province living in poverty. That’s B.C. Liberal economics at its finest, representing their 1 percent donors and ignoring the 95 percent of this province who struggle to make ends meet day in, day out.

Budget 2019 also addresses environmental stewardship, but one of the submissions that we made, that we would suggest has not been given the attention we hoped for, which is a challenge for us moving forward to continue to advocate for this…. This is with respect to the issue of environmental stewardship.

The funding for habitat and species protection in the budget is, frankly, underwhelming. We know that wildlife is facing increasing threats. There are endangered species that are…. We’re still waiting for that legislation. We understand it’s in the works. Some species, like the steelhead — this is the Kamloops steelhead area — or the caribou stocks in some areas, are not going to make it another year. So there is a problem here, and some of our province’s cultural identity is close to becoming extirpated in some areas and extinct in others.

We believe that we have a significant responsibility for environmental stewardship for future generations. As I’ve argued, the beauty of our natural environment is one of our strategic strengths. If we want to use it to capitalize on economic opportunities moving forward, we need to protect and preserve it today. Otherwise, it won’t be an attraction.

Look at hunting in B.C. British Columbia has been known for some of the best hunting in the world. The B.C. Liberal approach has been to let free-range development happen willy-nilly, with no assessment of cumulative impacts.

We have glyphosate spraying on freshly cut pine forests in the Interior, killing off the deciduous undergrowth. Then, like deer in the headlights, we stand back and say: “Oh, why is our moose population declining? Why are our forest fires getting so big?” We ignore the fact that we haven’t actually looked at some of our timber practices. We haven’t looked at the fact that we need the aspen and birch to grow, not only as a food source for ungulates but also as fire prevention, fire retardants, to stop the spread of fires through monoculture stands.

Again, this is what we would have hoped to see more of. We believe that we need to have substantial funding for habitat restoration and protection, including the investment of moneys into private land acquisition in particularly vulnerable and biodiverse ecosystems.

It is not okay for government to willy-nilly give out timber lot licences in some of the last bastions of old growth on Vancouver Island, where biodiversity is richest yet is close to extirpation.

This is not okay, because these are Crown resources. They are owned by all of us. They are not owned by a multinational for the benefit of their shareholders so that they can cut what they can and ship it off in the form of raw logs.

We believe that we need better protection and stewardship of our natural environment, and we’ll continue to advocate for that moving on. Protecting endangered habitat is more effective, both for outcomes and costs, than intervening on a species-by-species level after the fact.

We know, for example, that as climate change becomes more severe, biodiversity and old growth ecosystems will be vital to the health and resilience of this province. Moreover, habitat protection, through land acquisition, is an effective interim measure that can be taken to protect species at risk while legislation is being prepared.

We believe that environmental stewardship is an area that was lacking in this budget, and for salmon specifically, we continue to urge government to immediately protect and restore habitat and coordinate a provincial responsibility for fish. One of the biggest problems with salmon habitat is what’s been going on in the streams and rivers across British Columbia. That is low-hanging fruit that we can actually get at through small policy changes.

Coming to wildfires in Budget 2019, Budget 2018 included a $72 million investment to support wildfire resilience and recovery efforts in communities. Budget 2019 provides an additional $111 million over three years to strengthen B.C.’s efforts to prevent and respond to wildfires and $13 million for forest restoration in areas damaged by disease and wildfires.

The Liberal critic, who’s completely out of touch, in my view, with what’s going on in this budget, suggested that somehow this is money that’s used to suppress fire, to fight fires. This isn’t money to fight fires. This is money used to ensure that, actually, forests are resilient to fires. This means dealing with things like glyphosate spraying. This means like dealing with underbrush. It means like getting slash off the cut field. These are policy changes.

Wildfires, you can always fight wildfires, because government has access to funds when it needs them to respond to disaster at government’s will. Again, this funding is additional funding, which we’re pleased to see.

We actually would have done more, and our submission suggested that we should do more. We spent $560 million fighting fires in 2017. By last August, the province had already spent close to $274 million in direct firefighting costs, more than four times the budget of $63 million.

We also know that climate change threatens every aspect of life in this province and that government must recognize this threat and allocate the appropriate resources to address these foreseeable and unavoidable natural disasters.

We advocated, for example, for: increase investment in wildfire prevention and mitigation; emphasize forest resiliency through improved landscape management, with the goal of reducing wildfire size, speed and destruction; and prioritize the funding for the following recommendations in addressing the new normal.

When I say the…. Addressing the New Normal: 21st Century Disaster Management in British Columbia is a report that was recently issued. In these recommendations, we saw some that we thought were critical priorities that we argue should be funded.

Number 31 in that report: collaborate with First Nations to integrate traditional ecological knowledge with western science to ensure risk modelling is built upon greater understanding of the land base, values and practices of First Nations.

We argued that No. 67 needed to be funded. “Create mechanisms to encourage fire prevention activities such as thinning, biomass utilization, targeted grazing, alternate species and densities.”

Number 102 recommendation: “Develop and apply post-fire planting strategies for dry forests that enhance resilience … rather than optimize timber production.”

This is critical. You think that you’re…. Again, this is so typical of a short-term focus that has been put in place by years of that type of thinking from B.C. Liberals. Always think about the immediate short-term neoliberal win.

No. What we should be thinking about is planting for resiliency so that we can actually harvest trees, rather than planting with the idea that if we only plant one species, they’re all going to grow fast, and then we’ll cut them down. Well that doesn’t work. When a forest fire comes in, it clears them all out. Having resiliency as a focus as opposed to optimization of hypothetical timber production is critical.

We also believe funding should be prioritized for the following approach from the Megafires in B.C. report. Number 4, which was “forest restoration and adaptive forest management,” increasing the ecosystem resilience to enable recovery following wildfires. “Adaptation must include restoration and management informed by science and traditional ecological knowledge.”

It’s consistent with…. We’ve heard some positive stuff coming from the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resources Operations and Rural Development that he hopes to start looking into forestry. But I come back to this is one of our bellwether industries, one of our foundational industries, one of the industries that made B.C. great — not again, just made it great in the first place. Forestry is an industry that we need to pay a little more attention to.

In the issue of professional reliance and environmental assessment, my colleague from Cowichan Valley had a very personal experience with the flawed nature of the old professional reliance model and environmental assessment approach. Just ask her about Shawnigan Lake. I’d suggest you do that over at least three beers, because you won’t be getting an answer in 15 minutes. She will go over in gory detail the problems that this past process had buried within it.

We’re excited to see both the passing of the professional reliance reform legislation and the revised environmental assessment plan, both of which were B.C. Green–led initiatives in the fall. We’re pleased to see 2019 funds making changes to the EA process and the professional reliance model as well. There is funding for $9 million over three years for implementing the revitalized Environmental Assessment Act, which will focus on enhancing public confidence and participation in the process.

This is the key. Again, the B.C. Liberals seem to have forgotten this. The key to advancing resource projects in British Columbia is to ensure the public trusts the process by which the project is approved. It cannot continue with the old way of doing things.

I’ll illustrate that with what I think is a beautiful example. The old way of doing things is government sidles up…. In fact, it’s still new in the B.C. Liberal mind, because they still haven’t learned that they didn’t win the last election, and they have to change the way they are, or they’ll never get back in this side of the House. The old way of doing things is government sidles up to corporate friend, and corporate friend says: “Hey, I like what’s going on here. What do you think about this idea?” Government says: “That’s great.”

A few donations later and government ends up marketing that this is a great project, and industry says: “Oh, we’ve got government support. Let’s now go into town and market the solution.” So they go into town, and they hire some expensive PR people to actually engage, so-called consult or engage, the town. Each and every time what happens is you divide town. Fifty percent hate the project; 50 percent love it. You pit citizen against citizen, ensuring nothing will happen. Then you go to the local Indigenous communities, and you find one that may support it and one that doesn’t, and you pit one against the other.

Well, I can tell you, this is the B.C. Liberal, the old, way of doing things in B.C. It’s guaranteed to ensure nothing ever gets done.

You don’t ask me. Go and ask the members from the Loops here, and ask them about the Ajax mine — a beautiful example of how not to do something. Again, not to disparage the company. They actually went so far as to provide funding to allow an independent environmental assessment and an independent assessment by the Kamloops Nation. Kudos to the company for actually doing that.

Where the problem was lay in the government’s approach to supporting the company at the wrong time and not letting the company do the good work it needs to do to build something from the bottom up. They wasted a lot of time that they didn’t need to waste if they’d got a sense of the pulse of the community on day one, not after the fact.

Let’s take two examples of how this works: Jumbo Glacier Lake and Glacier Destinations. Jumbo Glacier — in classic B.C. Liberal way, the developer comes up with MLAs. They sit around. “Hey, great idea. Let’s go market it.” The developer gets some little act passed here to allow them to be a municipality that actually has a mayor and council that get funds. They never sat. There are no houses. There’s not even a concrete pad anymore. That at least was there.

That was the way. Of course, it’s mired in courts. Nothing’s going to happen. Indigenous communities were pitted against another, town against town. Typical nothing happens.

Glacier Destinations went to the same architect. The Indigneous Simpcw Nation and the Valemount community together approached the architect and said: “We want this.” The architect said: “Okay, we’ll do this.” They did it. Then — boom, boom, boom — it went through approval process, and guess what the delay was? The delay was government. The delay was government that couldn’t get their act together to actually approve this in time.

The delay was also government in requiring them to build a bloody four-way highway to get people from the airport to the Glacier destination, when they wanted to have a gondola. But government, in its wise ways, knew best as to what the people of Valemount and the Simpcw Nation needed. You need a four-lane highway, not a gondola, not mirroring after the Swiss resorts that they wanted to mirror after. Because government knew best and the B.C. Liberal way.

Maybe they should have made a few more donations. That might have got them the gondola, but they didn’t.

Government was the problem, not the solution in this regard. Fortunately, it looks like it’s moving forward, but this was an example of bottom-up management. That is why we need an environmental assessment process that allows people to build support from the bottom up, to trust that government has their interests front and centre when decisions are made, not the interests of the donors to the political party du jour. That happened to be, for the last 16 years — oh, I shouldn’t say that, because I’m sick and tired of “the last 16 years” — prior to this, a government that had lost touch with the people of British Columbia.

You know, the office of superintendent of professional governance will be established through a nearly $2 million investment over three years. The office will provide for a centralized statutory authority for professional governments oversight to ensure consistent and best practices are applied to the work of the natural resource professionals. All I can say is: “Thank you, member for Cowichan Valley.” I should have said the name, but this was an initiative that she spearheaded and that she drove and that she worked tirelessly on.

We’re so pleased to see government listen and respond, because, ultimately, when you work on shared values, and you work in a spirit of collaboration and consultation, and you work in a spirit of actually wanting to advance good public policy that puts people ahead of vested interest, you can get a lot done. You can get an awful lot done.

Members opposite could get a lot done if they learnt a little bit from that. If they learnt a little bit that this isn’t all a big game here, that actually, there are real people that are affected by our decisions. It behooves them, instead of playing the game day in, day out, to actually provide solutions, advice, areas that we can actually collectively work on, but that’s a foreign notion. I understand.

You know, we would have done things slightly differently, of course. We would have liked to see a restoration of the former commissioner for the environment and sustainability or creation of a natural resource practices board under the Auditor General Act. These are directions that the B.C. Greens, in a majority government, would have gone — for the rationale, of course, that it fulfils, within the well-regarded Haddock report recommendation 31…. That is a cost-efficient way to augment oversight capacity. We believe that that would have been a best way to proceed, and we’re hoping to move in that direction.

We also believe that base funding needs to be restored to ministry staffing levels by about 40 compliance and enforcement staff per year over the next four years, about 160 total. The reason why is directly addressed by recommendation number 34, which said, in the Haddock report, that the offset costs associated with professional reliance failures…. For example, a conservative estimate has put the taxpayer liability amount of remediation at approximately $40 million. We know that investment in prevention saves a bunch of money in reaction down the road.

Again, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s the same, whether it be environmental assessments or environmental oversight, as it is with eating an apple every day to save getting diabetes down the road or something. I don’t know whether that’s a good example. Keep the doctor away.

Now, to the economic agenda. Again, the members opposite…. I could have written their speaking notes, honestly, on a napkin over a beer in five minutes. Jobs. Again, members opposite don’t even understand how jobs work. It’s not about jobs. People don’t want jobs. They want careers. They want to know that they can actually work in a profession that they trained for, for an extended period of time. This isn’t about building a bridge and then laying everyone off afterwards. It’s about sustained economic activity.

While we may have housing construction down a little bit, to think that the norm was the ridiculous out-of-control money-laundered-fuelled speculation in building luxury condos that sat vacant, to think that that is somehow good economics, to think that somehow is leading to a resilient, sustainable economy. Is there any wonder that the former Minister of Finance had a billion dollar surplus? They had no idea what they were doing. They were just making it up as they were going along, and money was laundering in. They saw the revenue coming in from the gaming revenue and the start to build programs based on shaky gaming revenue and property transfer that’s being flipped through these multi-million-dollar homes that nobody is living in. It’s good economics stewardship.

What the members opposite missed in their response to the throne speech was that CleanBC was not an environmental plan. It’s an economic vision, one that they seemed to have missed for the last four years that I was in office. And despite that, if you speak to leaders in the tech field, they’ll attest to the fact that the tech industry in B.C. has thrived — and the words that they use are — “despite the B.C. Liberals.”

Because they had to struggle uphill in an environment that was set, a culture of “it’s pay to play” B.C.” — and small entrepreneurs don’t have a lot to pay to play — one in which the regulatory environment for tech entrepreneurs was top-heavy, and one in which the only signal government was giving was one that if you want to do business in B.C., somehow it has got to link into LNG somewhere.

It was so much so that government interference was going down into the education system, at post-secondary institutions and in K to 12. In fact, they actually used the words, I kid you not, that they wanted to re-engineer the education system. How Orwellian can you get? That is what we had to deal with moving forward, and that is why I’m excited by this CleanBC economic vision for British Columbia.

Again, British Columbia will never compete with jurisdictions that just dig dirt out of the ground, because they don’t internalize the same social and environmental externalities that we do and care about. It costs more to dig up dirt in B.C. versus, say, in Namibia. It costs more because the land is more valuable. We pay better wages. We value our environment at a level that…. At least the people value the environment. And it’s sometimes a little more costly.

So how do we compete? Well, we could follow the model of the B.C. Liberals, which is give-away-the-resource and race-to-the-bottom economics. Or we can say: “No. The way we compete is through innovation.” We compete by being smarter, more efficient and cleaner. We compete by capitalising on our strategic advantages, those being, as I mentioned, boundless access to renewable energy; an educated, highly skilled workforce; and the natural beauty that allows us to attract and retain the best and brightest from around the world.

But again, in order to capitalize on these strategic strengths, you have to protect them. You have to protect our access to renewable energy. You have to protect our natural beauty. And you have to protect, nurture and support the people of this province to ensure that we continue to provide an educated workforce moving forward.

At the core of the opportunity embodied in CleanBC is the harnessing of innovation that supports new ideas and the creation of new technologies that improve the life of British Columbians. Because British Columbians, if there’s one thing I can tell you, are innovators and problem-solvers, and we have some of the best and brightest here of anywhere in the world — because they want to live in this beautiful province.

Now, government has made huge strides to bring resources to the table in CleanBC. It’s made huge strides by adopting that — coupled with Innovate B.C., the emerging economy task force. The focus on things now is for the government getting at the table for the digital supercluster. We’re starting to see programs federally start to streamline a little more closely with programs provincially, thanks to the good work by Alan Winter, our innovation commissioner. I’ll address that more.

While government has made huge steps, the next step is to make a similar commitment to innovation policy in the province. So innovation, ultimately, is where our future economic opportunities will come from. We know that this government has some important key steps with $50 million bucks going into enhanced high-speed Internet activity in rural areas. I can’t underestimate how important this is.

An example that I gave a couple of years ago, when I was standing on the other side as a lonely independent MLA — elected as Green, but status independent — was the issue of Prince George. Prince George is a bustling northern community. It is a hub for northern expertise. It has got a world-class university. But unfortunately, it does not have broadband redundancy. It has two high-speed lines in, both owned by Telus.

Now good on Telus for putting in those lines. But no multinational is going to move to Prince George and set up shop there if they’re beholden to Telus for their broadband. It’s just a crazy business model. You want built-in redundancy.

A $6 million investment to connect Prince George to Chetwynd with broadband would bring in the redundancy that Prince George needed to allow it to attract the likes of Google, to allow it to attract the likes of the BMWs of this world, to allow it to attract the New Age industries that require, as a fundamental aspect of doing business, access to broadband.

The previous government thought that highways meant nothing more than… We even heard it in the critics today. “We need to pave the Trans-Canada Highway.” The much-tired former Minister of Finance is coming up spouting the rhetoric line of: “We need more highways.” Well, let’s talk a little bit about highways.

I recognize that politicians who’ve been in this place for 20-odd years are stuck and have run out of ideas, and that’s all they can think about. But in the new economy, highways…. When you ask people under the age of 40 what they think about highways, they think about information highways. They think about access to information at high speed.

We know that the speed of light is not a barrier to access to information. What is a barrier is access to broadband and, in particular for bigger companies, there is redundancy. So if we want Prince George to have the investments by Google, by perhaps Telus or others, why would Google want to go to Prince George now? It wouldn’t. But why is it they built a factory, a big data storage centre, in Corvallis? Because they could.

Google is a company that wants to brand itself as a clean, new economy company. They wanted to have access to clean, renewable power. Oregon can give them that. B.C. could as well. They want access to the world through high-speed Internet. Oregon can give them that. B.C. could not give them that in Prince George.

What B.C. had that no other jurisdiction could match was, actually, a colder climate. We know the single biggest cost in data distribution centres is cooling. If you had a data distribution centre in Prince George, you would save on cooling costs substantively. And you wouldn’t have to worry about the speed of light, because it’s threetimesten⁸metres per second. That’s pretty fast; not a barrier for information travelling on earth, frankly.

Again, years of banging my head against the wall, trying to get government to recognize the importance of investment in broadband, particularly for rural hub zones like Prince George — nothing. But here we see an investment coming in, $50 million to enhance high-speed Internet access in rural areas. That is perhaps the single most important investment this government has made in this budget for innovation distributed across our budget. Kudos to the government for this.

There’s also $5 million in annual funding for an expansion of the technology training program. There’s funding to support the expansion of tech spaces at post-secondary institutions and, of course, CleanBC and its focus on harnessing new, innovative technologies and finding solutions that will allow us to increase efficiency and decrease emissions.

You know, we can look to examples of how we compete by bringing our technologies together with our resource sector. There is no reason why Kamloops and Prince George are not major centres of innovation in resource technology coupled together with our traditional sectors. These should be hubs, North American and worldwide hubs, for that, because people can afford to live in Prince George and Kamloops. It’s cooler there. You can store data there cheaper. Give them broadband, and you can access the world.

We also have resources there. You can’t make resources move to tech, but you can have tech move to resources. Why is it that Canadian forestry companies buy our technologies from Finland, buy our software from Finland, from Sweden, from Norway? Why aren’t we developing it here, because we can and we should.

What we need is a government to recognize that sustainable economies are ones that are grounded in the strategic strengths of your jurisdiction, and I’ve already articulated what those are.

In our CASA commitment, we had a major piece of our 2017 platform embedded within CASA. That was discussed earlier. We had the innovation commissioner. We had representatives who help our technology sector compete nationally and internationally through the innovation commissioner. We’ve got the emerging economy task force.

One of the things I hope government over the next little while starts to contemplate with the emerging economy task force is getting them to stand back and to reflect about perhaps a new way of looking about our taxation system. Let’s call it a tax shift.

Presently we have a very weird kind of tax system, one that’s kludged together over many years of adding pieces on top of pieces. It’s quite regressive in many aspects, less regressive in other aspects. There are ways to get the emerging economy task force to actually think about: what is a tax regime in British Columbia — big picture thinking — that actually recognizes that as we move forward in the new economy, it will be more towards a gig economy. We recognize that more and more people will have more and more jobs over the course of their lives. Their careers may be in the same area, but they might have to relocate a little more.

We know that these are changes down the road. We know that the disparity between those who have and those who don’t have is increasing. We also have countless examples in human history as where that ends up. I can tell you, very simply, each and every example of where income disparity grows has led to one solution, which is a revolution and the collapse of that society. Frankly, I don’t think we want to have that here in B.C., so let’s get a handle on this sooner than later, which is exactly what government is doing.

We, in our submission, obviously supported this. We had tons of things to submit in this area in terms of efficiency and cost internalization policy suggestions. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with government in the coming years to establish this agenda.

Let’s go to an analysis that I think is important here that is often not done, and it goes back to my previous statement about perhaps we can get the emerging economy task force to stand back and take a look at our taxation system here and what we’re doing.

Let’s take a generational analysis to this budget. What do I mean by that? We know, for example, that this budget has not been looked at through the lens of an intergenerational-generational analysis. We know that less than 20 percent of the new investments in the 2019 budget go to people under the age of 45, a group that represents more than half the population. So less than 20 percent of the budget targets more than half of the population, and that half of the population is largely the population paying taxes, working. Many of the older population have retired. And it is a population that is under 45 and represents over half. Only 20 percent of your money goes there.

The vast majority of the funding — a billion dollars or so, not well articulated in press releases — goes to education through the Ministry of Health. You know, I don’t have a problem with health funding. I think, obviously, we need to relook at the way we deliver health. But one of the things that I would suggest is continuing to throw more money at the system without standing back and reflecting on the system is not a healthy way forward.

I do appreciate some of the work done by the Minister of Health, who’s looking for a more kind of community-based approach to have health care centres. That might need new money, as we transition to that, as you start to do slow changes. But this wasn’t well articulated in the overall press release and budget documents, that so much money was going to continued funding of health care.

Health, of course, doesn’t start with medical care. We tend to put all of our money into reactionary measures, as opposed to proactive health promotion. My favourite example of this, it’s a tragic example, is the issue of harm reduction in terms of naloxone treatment and overdoses. We had, under the Liberals — Minister Lake deserves a lot of credit — a very effective program of harm reduction introduced in B.C. when the number of deaths from opioid related diseases went through the roof. However, we didn’t stand back and say: “Why are these people taking drugs in the first place, and what is their pathway to recover?”

We all know people…. I have a cousin who’s a firefighter who resuscitated the same person multiple times in a day. It actually leads to real problems for those first responders who are feeling a sense of hopelessness as they are dealing with these people who have fallen through the cracks in our society. There’s no prevention strategy and no pathway to recovery. So what we see in this budget which, again, is something that I think deserves some praise, is steps towards dealing with the mental health and addictions at the youth and early childhood ages, which is important. Also, critically so, is the investment in the K to 12 system, particularly in the support that children in their critical years of development. We think that you actually should view that through a lens of prevention, a health care view of prevention, and the pathway to recovery still has some work to be done.

In conclusion, you can tell from my general tone here that while there are obviously challenges and opportunities ahead, we believe that this budget has some pretty incredibly important measures in the short term, as well as setting the stage for some of the longer-term successes. CleanBC, government is not shirking away from its responsibility here. It’s funding CleanBC. It sees it as an economic vision, as opposed to a purely environmental vision. It’s one that’s got support, broad support, from NGOs outside of government.

But the work doesn’t stop with the introduction of CleanBC. The work will require us to continue to maintain vigilance to ensure that we remain on track to recognize that this is an economic vision.

It requires vigilance to ensure that the support mechanisms are there, that the messaging is clear, that when you’re building schools that are being funded through this budget, you’re seeing this through the lens of CleanBC.

You don’t build a school today to save a million dollars today that you could save in three years through a little bit more spending to ensure that you have operating cost reductions on the long term. A little bit of investment today, viewed through the lens of CleanBC, leads to prevention, leads to long-term cost savings and is actually exciting for innovation because everybody wants to be new and innovative, and they want to get behind the kinds of opportunities that you see in CleanBC.

We wish there was, of course, some more generational analysis for that. We continue to advocate for that. We would suggest that moving forward, we’ll continue to look at this through the lens of generational funding.

I know that youth don’t vote, but we are elected to represent everybody, and it really behooves us to start focusing a little more on that generation of people who actually have to live the consequences of the decisions we made, most of which we don’t actually have to live the consequences of. It’s kind of a good position to be in and why so many politicians think more about re-election than they do about the policy that’ll be in place for a generation to come, because the next election is all many care about.

What matters is history and how you’re judged in history as somebody who set the stage, moving forward, for the next generation. It’s like you can ask any teacher. Their success is not judged by what they do in the classroom. Their success is judged by the success of their students, and they take recognition and reward, personal reward, by seeing their students succeed. It should be the same for every one of us in this room.

We succeed judged not by our tasks we do today but by what we leave behind for the next generation of people in British Columbia. On that regard, I think government is moving in the right direction. As the world changes, we’re ensuring that our economy is changing, and our government is adapting to these changes. We’re seeing government making the right investments and moving in the right direction. And frankly, I’m entirely encouraged by the spirit of hope and collaboration in which CleanBC was put together.

I’m looking forward to working in this regard to ensure that it is successful, that the economy responds, diversifies and positions British Columbia as leaders in the new economy, the economy of tomorrow. Others around the world will look at us and say: “Look at B.C. We want to emulate them. They have the best education system in the world. They’ve got it all. They’ve got the best environment in the world. They’ve got the best education system in the world, and they have opportunities for everyone, whether you win the lottery of birth by being born into a wealthy family or whether you happen to have not been born into such a family.”

With that, hon. Speaker, I thank you so much, and I look forward to further deliberations on this budget.

Over the course of this week, Bill 45 – 2018: Budget Measures Implementation (Speculation and Vacancy Tax) was being debated during committee stage. During this stage, the BC Green amendments were all approved.

Those who have been following this file will know that I have spent an enormous amount of time on it over the last year. When this tax was first introduced in the February budget it was, in my view, poorly thought through and seemed to be an overly blunt instrument that did not effectively target its key overarching goal of dealing with speculation, affordability and vacancy rates. As I noted in March,

“The Speculation Tax … need[s] the introduction of legislation prior to [it] taking effect. Such legislation is expected in the fall. Fortunately we have time to pressure government to fix the problems embedded in their poorly thought out approach to deal with speculation.”

The bill that was ultimately introduced in October was certainly tempered from that which was originally offered through the first intention paper released by the government earlier this year. Many of the concerns we brought to government had been addressed. While it is still not the approach I would have taken, our amendments improved the bill further and will mitigate many of the key issues I had identified.

During committee stage I rose to ask questions and speak to amendments far too many times to reproduce all the Hansard records. However, I took the opportunity to raise a few specific, yet illustrative examples that were brought to my attention from the myriad emails we received and responded to. Below I reproduce the video and text of my exchange with the Minister on these specific examples.

What’s important is that if you have specific questions as to whether or not the speculation and vacancy tax applies to a property you may own, please note that details information is available at gov.bc.ca/speculationtax. Alternatively, you can email: spectaxinfo@gov.bc.ca or phone 1-833-554-2323.

The bill eventually passed on Thursday.

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Videos of Exchanges

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Video 1	Video 2
Video 3	Video 4
Video 5	Video 6

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Text of Exchanges

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Example 1 (Video 1): Belcarra – only accessible by air or water

A. Weaver: I enjoy this line of questioning. I think it’s very important to get clarification on the intent of the legislation before us. I have three questions on the definition of “specified area” in this section.

The first is with respect to item (l) in specified area. It refers there…. It just says: “…an island, if any, within an area referred to in paragraphs (a) to (j), if the island is usually accessible only by air or water throughout a calendar year.”

The first question is: why was the term island used there as opposed to a general area within these (a) to (j) that are generally accessible only by air or water? I’ll come to a specific example. Within the broader area, there may be, in fact, regions that are only accessible by air or water, even though they lie within the areas covered in (a) to (i).

Hon. C. James: As the member knows, the exclusion, when we looked at how to refine the geographic areas and looked at, as I mentioned in our discussion yesterday, the issue of how you make sure that most vacation homes are excluded…. We took a look at a number of different options, and one of them was to look at refining the geographic area.

That’s why we’ve said that we exclude islands that aren’t accessible, or that only are accessible by air and water — to be able to address those areas that, again, are difficult for commuting and, therefore, in most cases, are not people who are commuting and buying second homes. They’re mainly vacation homes, which is why we’ve listed it under (l) in that way.

A. Weaver: I very much appreciate the answer and the intent of actually including islands.

Why I raised it is that I heard from a resident of Belcarra, which, as the minister will know, is a lovely piece of the Lower Mainland across from Deep Cove. This person actually owns a property in Belcarra that is not accessible by road and is only accessible by air or water.

It seems that the intent of the legislation was to actually ensure that we’re dealing with urban areas where there are issues of commuting and issues of a rental market that’s being at ease here. Clearly, I would have thought the intent of this legislation would not have been to include somebody with a home in Belcarra that is not accessible by road and only accessible by air or water.

My question to the minister is: to what extent does a person who lives in the region — in one of these designated, prescribed areas — have an ability to actually get government to recognize that the spirit and intent of this legislation probably wasn’t meant to apply to an area which is only accessible by air and water but happens to be in one of these geographical regions?

Is there a mechanism that this person, recognizing the spirit of the minister’s previous statement, could go forward to actually determine whether or not this really is appropriate and they were meant to be covered under the government’s intentions?

Hon. C. James: We did specifically look at Belcarra. Part of the logic was, again, looking at the commuting distance. In fact, the commuting distance from Belcarra…. It’s a very short commute to downtown Vancouver. In fact, it’s a shorter commute from others that go from the Fraser Valley or from other distances — North Vancouver, for example. Five minutes away.

It is a municipality though, and I think this is important. As the member asked: what opportunities are there for discussion around these issues? Belcarra, in fact, is a municipality. I met with the Belcarra folks at UBCM. They will have the opportunity, in an informal setting anytime, but in a very formal setting, as the member knows, with the amendment coming forward, to have an opportunity to be able to argue either the strength or weakness of having the municipality included.

The Chair: Noting the time, we’ll take one more question.

A. Weaver: On this topic. I have one more question after this. I don’t know whether….

The Chair: Of course. As long as the minister can address the questions, we’ll do them.

A. Weaver: It’s just to follow up on that further, very briefly.

I’m not talking about the entire region of Belcarra. But within the broader section of Belcarra, there are parts of Belcarra — properties that happen to have cabins on them — that are only accessible by water or air. Therein lies the issue here.

It may be that the municipality itself meets the intent that the minister sought of a commutable distance. However, it’s not a commutable distance for some aspects of this municipality that extend into areas that are actually not an island but are only accessible by air or water.

Again, my question for a specific individual within this broader municipality: is there a mechanism for that individual to seek an exemption, as per my earlier remarks?

Hon. C. James: Thank you for the question, again. I think we did, in fact, look at the commuting time from some of the areas that were only accessible by boat — five to eight minutes to get to the Lower Mainland — so there are commuting pieces there. There aren’t opportunities other than, obviously, coming forward and raising the issue.

There aren’t opportunities built into the legislation, but I expect that people will have the opportunity to argue that changes should be made, if changes are going to be the made to the tax, including the mayor, who, I’m sure, will represent all the members of the municipality.

Example 2 (Video 1): Mudge Island and Nanaimo

A. Weaver: My final question is very brief. It’s from another concerned couple who approached me. I’m just giving a sampling of them because they illustrate the variety of concerns out there. I believe I know the answer, but I’d like to get confirmation from the minister.

The couple lives on Mudge Island in the Nanaimo regional district. They’re concerned that the tax could afford them and that it could kill the property values on Mudge Island. Can the minister confirm — they live in their home full-time on Mudge Island — that Mudge Island is not included in the regions that are prescribed under the specified areas?

Hon. C. James: I think the first piece that the member raised is primary residence. If it’s a primary residence and they live there full-time, then they aren’t captured. It isn’t captured. It’s only second or third homes. But Mudge Island is not captured by the speculation tax as well.

Noting the time, hon. Chair, I move that we rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

Example 3 (Video 2): Owned by couple in different countries

A. Weaver: I wasn’t planning to step up here and ask this question, but I’m very pleased the member for Prince George–Valemount did address this specific issue that I was going to raise under section 8.

I’d just like to ask a follow-up on this. I have the same letter, and we’ve been in communication with the same person. A good example that highlights some of the complexity of the application of this legislation — this particular case. The partnership is a partnership where one of the…. They’re not formally married. They’re living separately. One lives in a jurisdiction other than Canada. That person owns 20 percent ownership in the property that is the condo that is owned by the other partner.

So my question to this: given the fact that this couple are not formally married, if the person living in the foreign jurisdiction were able to rent back to her partner here in Canada, would that exempt her from the speculation tax? Yes or no?

They are not married, according to the court of law in Canada. The one person owns 20 percent of the property that the other person lives in full-time. She’s a 20 percent equity owner in the property. They are not married. That 20 percent equity owner lives in a foreign country.

If they rent that 20 percent share of the property to the partner — who they’re partners with but not legally married — would that exempt them, yes or no?

Hon. C. James: I think the first piece that I want to state is I’m not going to give tax information, as the Minister of Finance, specifically to an individual case. I think that’s really important.

I think individuals…. We are working on exactly the same letter that the member has and that the member from Prince George has as well. We are working through those pieces. There are so many unknowns around where the taxes are paid by the individuals. We don’t know that information. It wouldn’t be right for us to be asking that information, unless they were asking for tax information.

We’re quite happy to look at the situation. There may be a number of pieces that fit, but I don’t want to, as I said, jump on something where I don’t have all the information. But we have committed to making sure that we get the information for them.

Example 4 (Video 3): Extending over two lots

A. Weaver: I have a specific example I wish to offer the minister to seek some clarification. It’s a real-world example.

Let’s suppose that there is a person who happens to have a property that’s very old and lives in the riding of Oak Bay–Gordon Head. That property is a small house on a lot, but it’s actually two lots. One lot has the house; the other has an orchard that’s been in place in perpetuity. For the purpose of speculation tax, this might be considered as two properties. However, it’s only one property. It’s always been one property, and it will remain one property.

The question is: is the extra lot to be viewed, in this category here, as part of a whole property or not? Is there a means and ways that this person would be exempted by the administrator, and how would they be exempted by the administrator in this situation?

Hon. C. James: That would be an example where the individual could take it to the administrator and have it examined. I think the key around rules relating to the property is that the residential property — so if it’s the additional parcel, as the member describes — is used for the residence or for purposes ancillary to or in conjunction with the residence.

So as I said, I wouldn’t give the advice. That’s the job of the administrator. But that would be an example where they could take something to the administrator.

Example 5 (Video 3): Extending across two specified areas

A. Weaver: Thank you. That’s very helpful. I have a final question, and it’s relevant to the riding that I represent and part of the municipality that the minister represents.

There are properties in the capital region district where the actual property spans two municipalities. This is quite common along Foul Bay Road, in Oak Bay, where there are many houses that have part of the house in Oak Bay and part in Victoria. I suspect, without going through all of this, that there may exist properties in the province of British Columbia that actually span a jurisdiction that’s in and a jurisdiction that’s out. How would those be treated, if they do exist? And would the administrator automatically treat them in the in or out district?

Hon. C. James: We had a little bit of this discussion earlier. We found one property in the province, in the areas for the speculation tax, that spans inside and outside.

If a portion is inside, then they will be taxed — or subject to the speculation tax. I shouldn’t say they’ll be taxed, because they may have an exemption for other reasons. But it’ll be included as part of the speculation tax.

A. Weaver: Would the component of the property that’s subject to the speculation tax be the percentage of the lot that’s in the property or the total lot? Why I ask that? Let’s suppose there’s a 12-acre parcel of which 100 square metres is in taxation and the rest is not. Would they be collectively subject to the taxation? Again, these are not examples that I know of, but I know of them in Oak Bay–Victoria, as I’m sure the minister does. But there may be some that we’ll find out about.

Hon. C. James: Again, we found one property that fits that example. It will be the case that if a portion of the property is in, the entire property is subject to the speculation tax. But again, we think that this will be a very rare example. We found one. I don’t expect that there will be other examples.

Example 6 (Video 4): Couple – one in Kelowna, the other in Vancouver

A. Weaver: I have three personal stories I’d like to read and see if I can get the minister’s response. The first concerns a UBC professor I have been in touch with who has, most recently, been teaching at the Okanagan campus in Kelowna. They’ve had a home there since 2013, but they have a condo in Vancouver. His wife is teaching at the Okanagan campus, but he’s now teaching at UBC. They’re both UBC professors, but UBC has two campuses, one in the Okanagan and one at UBC in Vancouver. So he teaches in Vancouver; she teaches in the Okanagan.

He was teaching in the Okanagan. He was hit by the city of Vancouver’s empty homes tax last year and has since moved his primary residence to Vancouver as part of it. So now his primary residence is Vancouver to avoid the Vancouver vacancy tax, and his wife is still teaching at UBC Okanagan. His wife spends much of her time at UBC Okanagan.

My question to the minister is this. Can you confirm that this couple would be exempt because of the commuter marriage exemption that we’re discussing, when this fellow’s wife spends a good deal of time in Kelowna for work purposes?

Hon. C. James: Again, I’ll always put the caveat around: based on the information that’s here…. I certainly encourage people to make sure they phone the tax department and talk to the tax department to get the specifics. But on the information that the member has provided, yes, it appears that if one is working in the other place and one residence is the principal residence of the spouse, yes, they would qualify.

Example 7 (Video 4): Couple – live in North Saanich, work & rent in Vancouver

A. Weaver: Thank you. That’s very helpful.

This one’s a little more complex. And that was my understanding as well. I do appreciate hearing the confirmation, subject to the caveats, of course. They’re, of course, subject to caveats.

Another example is…. This one is very interesting. A couple that I know have been in touch with me. They own a house in North Saanich, which is in the covered regions of the capital regional district. They live in the house on weekends. That’s the only house they own. It is in North Saanich. However, they both work in Vancouver, and they rent a property in Vancouver during the week, although they live in North Saanich. This is relatively common these days in Victoria, where people cannot afford to actually own in Vancouver, so they live in the North Saanich area. They take the ferry on Monday to Vancouver. They work there, and they come back on the weekends. They plan to live permanently there, in North Saanich.

My question is: are they eligible for an exemption in this regard?

Hon. C. James: Again, based on the information provided, it would appear that they would be subject to the tax because it wouldn’t be their principal residence. The home in North Saanich would not be their principal residence. It’s not where they’re spending most of their time, so it does appear that they would be subject to the tax.

But I want to make sure that I’m clear on the caveat that everybody has some additional information, and when people talk to the tax department, they often provide further information that a person wasn’t sharing with an individual when they were talking to them. I would encourage people to make sure that they phone, for those kinds of examples, to make sure that they get the information from the tax department.

Example 8 (Video 4): Live in Surrey, work in Vancouver

A. Weaver: I very much appreciate that. I’m not trying to trap the minister at all. I’m trying to get some clarification and some advice that we can actually provide to these people who are rightfully concerned. Members of the opposition have been doing exactly the same thing. We do understand, of course, that the minister cannot provide tax advice.

It’s a bit odd asking questions in this marriage section, but people have asked us how marriage relates to this. This is a complex tax bill, and where people fit in with their individual cases is quite difficult.

The final example here is another woman. Again, she’s not covered under the commuter marriage, I don’t think. However, it’s odd, so maybe we could get kind of a general sense of the minister’s thinking on this issue.

This is an example of a woman who lives with her ailing mother in a family home in Surrey. So she lives in Surrey, her mother is ailing, and she lives there with her. But the woman actually works in Vancouver. She doesn’t want to take the tunnel, along with the member for Surrey–White Rock, so she has a condo in Vancouver, where she works during the week.

She owns the condo, and she also lives in the family home that she owns with her mother in Surrey. They’re clearly not married, but there clearly is a kind of commuter relationship there.

I’m wondering whether she could be exempt if she rented the family home to her mother? Is there a temporary exemption for something like that? I don’t know how this plays out.

Hon. C. James: With the caveat — I think that’s really important to state. If the individual works in Vancouver and has the Vancouver condo as her principal residence, for example, then her mother would be considered a non-arm’s-length tenant. She doesn’t have to rent; she can live in the house. She would not be paying the speculation tax. But again, lots of caveats around that to make sure it’s based on the principal residence — how much time she’s spending between the two places as well.

A. Weaver: Again, I don’t want to ask the minister to give tax or advice on buying or selling property, but I do think it’s important that we have this discussion and make it available to people so as to hear the kind of thinking of where things are going. The reason why I say this is that this particular person, also the condo that I mentioned in downtown Vancouver, is subject to a strata with a no-rental clause in it. So it gets even more complex there.

Unfortunately, this woman is selling her condo in downtown Vancouver. What I would like to get confirmed is that in fact there is place an exemption for 2018 and 2019 for any strata unit that has a no-rental clause in place. So rash decisions about putting a condo on for sale, when the condo is in a strata unit that has a no-rental clause, are not being forced by this legislation.

Hon. C. James: The member is correct. There is a two-year exemption for condos and stratas that have a requirement that you cannot rent the place out.

A. Weaver: I just want to thank the minister — this is very, very helpful — and the opposition for asking these questions. These are important issues, and having these answers on record is going to be very helpful.

Example 9 (Video 5): Strata accommodation properties & Oak Bay Beach Hotel

A. Weaver: On section 27, we’re talking here about strata accommodation properties. I’m wondering if the minister could please give the members here an idea, an estimate, of what type of properties these are, with some examples?

Hon. C. James: Strata accommodation properties that are classed as residential under the Assessment Act would be strata accommodation property short-term rentals, hotels, strata hotel accommodation that has been classed as class 1 or partially class 1 or partially class 6.

These hotels, a number of years ago, were given favourable property tax treatment, for example, to encourage the construction of these short-term occupancy time-shares, hotels.

I guess a way of describing it would be a cross between a strata complex and a hotel — that’s kind of a description — made up of individual strata lots that are pooled together for the purpose of being rented. That’s, I think, kind of the best description I could give.

A. Weaver: I can give some examples, then. Oak Bay Beach Hotel, for example, is a hotel in my riding that has a long history as a hotel, but it’s actually strata units that are rented out through a property rental agreement, and the zoning actually precludes any other use.

There are others in the minister’s own riding. Some are zoned tourist commercial. There are others in the province of British Columbia. In the tourist commercial zoning, for example, which some are zoned as, you actually have restrictions put on by your municipality, and those restrictions actually limit the ability for you to rent more than six months. So I agree. I think we’re on the same page as to what units are there.

My question, then. I understand that there’s no problem for the next two years — well, through 2019, because 2018 is exempt, as well, for these properties. My concern is: what is government’s intent for afterwards?

These properties are significant economic drivers in the region. Oak Bay Beach Hotel, for example, is one of the single biggest suppliers of property tax to the municipality of Oak Bay. They have very little commercial property in the riding, as well as in other jurisdictions. I’m sure there are, in my friend’s riding in Kelowna, tourism commercial properties that have similar zoning, as well.

Hon. C. James: The member, I’m sure, knows this, but the commercial portion is already not classed as residential, so therefore isn’t covered anyway because it’s often class 6 property.

I think the further review around how we deal with these properties is really the time that we gave, in this act, for two years. It gives an opportunity for discussions with the municipalities, with the property owners, etc., to find a long-term solution. This gives us the opportunity to have those kinds of conversations.

Example 10 (Video 6): Medical Exemption in Nanaimo

A. Weaver: With respect to section 33, I have a personal story I’d like to relate to the minister. I’m not asking for tax advice. I’m recommending people go to the information that the minister provided yesterday on the record, and that will be here. But I’ll just give a sense of the intent, because this is an illustrative example.

This is an example of a couple who recently bought a second home in Nanaimo. They live on a small island nearby with their daughter, and they spend several days a week at the Nanaimo property. They bought it so they could be closer to the hospital. They’re elderly.

The property is worth less than $400,000. It’s a $300,000 property. They don’t want to rent it out, because they’re elderly, they’re concerned about medical issues, and they want to go there if they have to be there for medical reasons. Right now, they only have to be there on and off, but they might have to be there at any time for a more extended period of time.

I’m just asking if the minister could please confirm to me that the couple is not covered by the medical exemption, yet they are covered by the fact that the property is $300,000, which is under the $400,000 exemption.

The idea here is that while they have bought a property to go every now and again, it’s still not being used full-time. They’re not needing it full-time. But because it is

The idea here is that while they have bought a property to go to every now and again, it’s still not being used full-time. They’re not needing it full-time, but because it is under $400,000, they are exempt.

I’m wondering if the minister, without providing tax advice, could confirm that the general spirit of this would be that they would have an exemption because it’s under $400,000, but they’re not eligible for the medical exemption.

Hon. C. James: I appreciate that I must have said it often enough. Based on the information that the member provided — recognizing that the individual should make sure they get tax information from the taxes people — yes, if it’s less than $400,000 there, that will cover it, and they will not pay the speculation tax. As the member says, from the information he has given, they wouldn’t appear to be covered under the illness, but they would be covered under the $400,000.

Today in the legislature we debated at second reading Bill 45 – 2018: Budget Measures Implementation (Speculation and Vacancy Tax) Act.

Earlier in the day the Finance Minister and I held a joint press conference (see press release reproduced below). In this press conference we provided details concerning the agreement that we had reached in order to assure that the bill passed. In particular, government has agreed to support three BC Green amendments:

• The first amendment requires that mayors from affected municipalities be part of an annual review process with the Minister of Finance;
• The second amendment requires that revenue raised by the tax will be used for housing initiatives within the region it came from;
• The third amendment equalizes rates for Canadians and British Columbians – it brings the rate for Canadians down to 0.5%.

As I note in my second reading speech (reproduced below), these amendments, combined with the modifications government has already implemented in its tabled legislation, are such that the BC Green Caucus will now support the bill.

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Text of Speech

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A. Weaver: Please let me start by acknowledging the remarks, and thoughtful remarks they were, from the member for Kelowna West. I hope to be addressing some of the concerns he raised in the process of him outlining some of the issues from his particular riding and some of the concerns he received which were similar to some that I received. I also want to acknowledge the talk from the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast who also brought some important information to this debate.

In this debate, I’ll say to start, I’m the designated speaker on this issue. I’m not going to be too long, but I will probably go just beyond the half-hour mark. I’m going to outline my comments in a number of ways, in a format that starts with a broad introduction to what I would argue is a crisis here in terms of affordability in British Columbia. I’ll follow that up with a little bit of a discussion about how the speculation tax was rolled out.

I think my comments will jibe with some of the comments made by the member for Kelowna West in particular. I’ll highlight some statements made in the messaging early on and some of the subsequent changes that occurred leading up to the actual legislation being introduced. Then I’ll move, in my address, to discuss some of the concerns I’ve raised consistently, such as treating Canadians equally, as well as the concerns I’ve had with respect to meaningful consultation with local governments.

And some of the concerns I’ve had with the ability of some strata, for example, or some districts that have no rental, secondary suite or tourist commercial zoning, so you can’t actually, even if you wanted to, rent out your unit because of existing laws, legislation or bylaws. Then I’ll talk a little bit about some of the land under development issue, an issue that I spent a good deal of time on, as the member from Kelowna West raised, specifically with respect to the uncertainty that this created in the development sector. Some of the other issues I raised were the impacts on British Columbians who, frankly, aren’t speculators. I’ll go through a number of personal stories. I’ll then move towards the whole issue of reaching this agreement with respect to amendments that I’ll be putting forward with government, and trying to address how those came about, to provide a public record of the process.

Then finally, I’ll conclude with what I believe is critical: the need for ongoing monitoring of what’s being implemented, to ensure that we are not, as legislators, overly interfering in the market but rather that we ensure the purpose of this tax. This, fundamentally, is to recognize that leaving homes vacant in a market with zero vacancies creates a social externality that should be internalized, somehow, to those leaving the properties vacant, until such time as vacancy rates improve.

To the introduction of the housing crisis: without any doubt in my mind, there are a number of communities where affordability has reached crisis proportions. Those are, predominantly, the urban centres in our province — in particular, the regions of Victoria and Kelowna — Vancouver is the poster child of this issue — and Nanaimo. This is a crisis facing an entire generation of millennials, who literally cannot find a place to rent, who literally cannot afford a place to purchase, who are struggling to actually live anywhere near where they can work.

We’re seeing a generation starting to move away. We just had the community move into Oak Bay — the tent community, just yesterday, of homeless people in Victoria who cannot get a place to live. This is an issue that’s moving around the province. We’ve got, in talking to business, a crisis in terms of attracting and retaining highly skilled workers. If you talk to those in the tech sector, the single biggest issue for the tech sector is the attraction and retention of highly skilled workers. They cannot pay the salaries that other jurisdictions are paying, yet the cost of living has gone through the roof.

This isn’t a problem in parts of British Columbia. There’s no doubt that for some parts of British Columbia, this isn’t an issue, but certainly, in some of our urban issues, affordability has reached crisis levels. We know the offshore money that has been flowing into our market — both in terms of speculation as well as through some nefarious activities that the Attorney General has been looking at — needs to be dealt with, but I’ve always argued that in doing so, in trying to treat the issue of foreign capital coming into British Columbia, we need to be sure that we protect Canadians and British Columbians.

Now the government’s approach was to introduce something called a speculation tax, initially. It’s now changed, and I’m actually pleased with the change of the name. I think it’s far more appropriate. It’s now called the speculation and vacancy tax. The vacancy component is critical, because the speculation component, in my view, largely applies to the offshore money.

We wouldn’t have done this. I’ve already pointed out that the approach of our party would have been to bring in place a New Zealand–style approach — to actually say: “You know what? If you want to own property in our nation or in our jurisdiction, you must be paying taxes here.” This is what New Zealand does, this is what Australia has done, and this is what many European countries do.

The idea here, of course, is that we are not living in a free market for investment in real estate and land. You and I cannot buy a home in New Zealand. We cannot buy a home in Denmark. We cannot buy a home on the coast of Mexico. We cannot buy a home in Australia. The idea here, of course, is that these other jurisdictions have recognized that when there are small local population centres and seven billion people in the world, the influence of external capital on small domestic markets can be profound. This happened in British Columbia.

Our approach was to be different from what was the government’s approach. We wanted to initiate that ban on foreign purchase. When I say “foreign,” it doesn’t matter what passport you own. It means where you’re living and paying taxes.

Now, we’re not government. There are three B.C. Green MLAs in this Legislature that got elected by 17 percent of the popular vote in British Columbia. We recognize that in not forming government, we are not able to actually initiate a ban, New Zealand–style, on foreign capital flow.

But we’ve certainly supported, and I have certainly supported all the way through, government’s efforts to deal with some of the aspects of foreign money coming in, whether it be through dealing with money laundering, whether it be through the foreign buyer tax and, more importantly, dealing with the issue of satellite families.

Now, satellite families are defined in this legislation, and we’ll be exploring that further at committee stage…. These are families where you might have one person in the family working elsewhere, paying all their taxes elsewhere, living in, say, Point Grey or Oak Bay or Vancouver-Quilchena, living in a $5 million home and declaring taxable income of $20, accessing our health care system, accessing our social services, accessing our education system but paying taxes in other jurisdictions which are not declared here in British Columbia.

To me, this so-called satellite family is actually…. Again, the cost of them actually being part of our society and living in these homes is not being internalized. The taxes are paid elsewhere, but the benefits are collected here. The government’s approach here — I wholeheartedly, and I have done so since day one…. This is dealing with the so-called satellite family.

Over the months, I’ve pointed out numerous concerns to government. This decision we came to today to introduce three amendments was not something that was taken lightly. I saw this legislation for the first time when it was introduced…. It’s likely…. It’s been such a blur with these, like burning the midnight oil. It could have been yesterday or the day before now. It’s just been one big, long blur, in terms of negotiation.

But when it was first introduced, I saw this, and I was pleased with some of the additions. One of these critical additions was identified by the member from West Kelowna. As the member from West Kelowna pointed out, when government first introduced this speculation tax, I would argue the details had not been thought through.

One of those critical details was: what about development of land? What about, if you have accumulated some land and you’re going to build townhouses and condos to sell to British Columbians, to Canadians, and, in doing so, you’re waiting for permits, you’re waiting to actually ensure that you get construction built? It takes a few years. That’s not speculation.

I’m absolutely thrilled — after meeting with the UDI, developers in Vancouver and Kelowna and all across B.C., bringing these concerns directly to government — the government listened and the government has actually included in here exemption, during the development of land, of a speculation tax. That was critical.

I suspect some, but not all, of the correspondence that the member from West Kelowna had — with respect to uncertainty and construction on hold — is a direct consequence of the uncertainty. We have now seen certainty.

I agree with the member from West Kelowna. It would’ve been awfully nice if, when the tax was first implemented or announced back in March, the certainty had been given to the market. Because I, like the member from West Kelowna, believe that market uncertainty is not a good thing, because you have projects going on hold. You have projects potentially walking. You have people then speculating on the uncertainty. So I completely agree there. But I am pleased that this has been dealt with.

Not all the concerns have been dealt with. Not everything has been addressed. I spent, after seeing this, a bill come out — and I’ll come to some of the things that have been addressed — many, many hours. My staff spent many, many hours trying to actually get to the a fundamental position where we could actually support the overarching structure of this bill, recognizing that there’s still work that needs to be done. I’ll also identify some of those things, and there is time to fix some of these things.

In my view, good government works when people work together. I recognize that it’s a much more difficult position for official opposition, and I recognized that when this government now was in opposition. It’s more difficult for official opposition to actually constructively work with government because of the setup we have in our legislative structure.

As a small third party, we have a duty and a responsibility to British Columbians to be responsible with the so-called power, the so-called influence, that we have. That duty and responsibility is to ensure that we listen and communicate our concerns and do what we can, through collaboration and compromise, to come to a situation, to come to development of good legislation, to policy that we think tempers some of what was introduced and reflects some of the concerns, but not all, that allows us to support the policy moving forward — with the recognition that this is not what we would have done. This is not what we have done.

What happened with the speculation tax and the budget rollout? Again, the member for Kelowna West articulated this quite well. When it was first announced, nobody knew the details. I didn’t know the details. The member for Kelowna West didn’t know the details. In fact, government suggested to the media — the Premier suggested — that British Columbians were fully exempt from the tax. I thought they were fully exempt from the tax. In fact, my constituency office sent out an email assuring my constituents and those who contacted me that British Columbians were exempt from the tax, based on the information I received directly from listening to the Premier.

Well, you can imagine I was a little bit surprised when I read Vaughn Palmer’s article pointing out that I was sending out incorrect information. He was right, and I acknowledged he was right. He was right in that an information bulletin had been put out that was inconsistent with the messaging and the language that had been said by government. This is not good for certainty.

This was, quite frankly, from my perspective, somewhat embarrassing. I don’t like to send out wrong information. We did our best to correct it, to do that, and, at that point, realized that we were going to have to spend a lot of time on this file.

We started pushing government to fix some things. We recognized that the issue of the housing crisis is not a rural issue. It is largely an urban issue. So in the act, you’ll see that, for example, we pushed to get some of these islands out. There were islands in the Nanaimo regional district — which was excluded — that had no electricity and no power and no rental market which were included because of what was done in the metrics to determine it. They were used, basically, over broad, regional districts, instead of over urban areas.

What we were able to do was to get government to focus this initially on the urban areas, where there is more of a problem. Some areas, like Saltspring Island, do have rental issues. However, it’s a very complex issue there, as well, and ongoing work with the rental task force, I understand. My good colleague here from Saanich North and the Islands will be discussing that, I’m sure, when he speaks to this bill. There are issues that still need to be worked out.

In March, government announced a few changes that it had made. These included reducing the rates for British Columbians and Canadians,  and ensuring, in particular, that the tax didn’t apply to rural and vacation areas. One of the issues, again…. This was very relevant to the member for Chilliwack-Kent. Cultus Lake, in the initial version, was included. I think Harrison Hot Springs may have been included as well.

Again, these we pointed out. We directly took the emails from your constituents — I’m sure you probably did as well — do not pass go, to government, saying: “How does it make sense for Cultus Lake, which is not an urban centre, for Harrison Hot Springs, to actually be included in a speculation tax, when their markets are quite different from, say, South Surrey or Tsawwassen or Burnaby or Nanaimo or Victoria?”

So government did remove much of the rural aspects and focused on the urban. That was signalled out in March.

Even since then, I pointed out that I’m struggling, because the speculation tax was first introduced in the budget. I’ve heard scores and scores of stories of individual cases, over the last eight months or so, of people who’s asked: “Am I included? Am I not included? Am I here? Am I not there? What does this mean?”

This took a lot of work, honestly. It took a lot of work to try to put together a detailed understanding of the complexity of this issue, of the complexity of what government was trying to accomplish with the introduction of a tax that essentially says that we want to create an internalization of that externality associated with leaving vacant property in areas that have low vacancy rates.

Many of these examples were brought forward. Many, many meetings were had. But the issue, of course, was that we didn’t know to what extent government was listening. We didn’t know to what extent government was listening until this bill was actually introduced, sometime in the last 72 hours, which have been a complete blur to me based on the fact that…. When was it?

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Tuesday. Thank you. This was introduced on Tuesday.

When this came out, I was, as I mentioned, glad to see that government had listened — in many, but not all, examples. For example, there were exemptions for people who obviously should not be hit, where being hit with the tax would cause significant financial hardship. Some of the specific cases I raised to government were included.

For example, people that own a second home in a city because they need medical treatment. There are people in British Columbia who have to go and own a home in a particular area because they’re required for medical reasons to come and report periodically to that area. They have been exempted.

People who have secondary suites. For example, if you are in the community of Kelowna West and you live in Alberta and use your home in the summer but you have a secondary suite on your property, that secondary suite would grant exemption for the entire property. This isn’t without its own problems. For example, in the district of Oak Bay, where I am from, or where I represent, rather, the district does not allow secondary suites. So there are some issues there that we still need to canvass.

Government listened in terms of examples brought forward about couples who own two homes. One home is where one spouse works; one home is where the other spouse works. They don’t work in the same city, but they’re still together. It seemed outrageous to penalize married or partners who happen to come together and formally, you know, take vows and commit to marriage — to penalize them because they had two properties, one of which was being used by one spouse and one by the other. Government listened.

The issue of strata properties, areas zoned as commercial, where you can’t rent out places. Again, government listened. Lands that are vacant or under development. Again, government listened. I’m pleased that the UDI, whom I met with numerous times on this file…. Ann McMullin recently said that when they saw the legislation, they were pleased that government committed today that they will exempt lands under development from this tax. So the UDI is actually pleased. This is a very, very important exemption, because we cannot address affordability if we start passing on a speculation tax to purchasers of condos and townhouses which were actually being built for affordability purposes. It’s a good government lesson there.

There are still issues to deal with. Let me go through a few personal stories first, because I think it’s important to get a sense of some of the issues that I’m going to canvass more extensively in committee stage. Committee stage, as is known in this House, is critical for us to get interpretation of this legislation for broader application. There are some real subtleties as to how this tax will be introduced that government obviously has yet to capture.

In a briefing we had on the introduction of the tax plus some hours in72…. Again, it’s been a blur. I was asking some of the issues directly in the briefing. It’s clear that government has attempted a commonsense approach not to harm people who are not speculating. However, there are going to be examples that have yet to be dealt with. I can think of one example that needs to be discussed where, for no reason other than you’ve actually got a house that’s old, your house happens to be built on two city lots. In terms of the registration of your city lots, you have one house, but there are two lots. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay a spec tax because 100 years ago the lot zoning was the way it was. So there are some oddities there where we have to look out.

I don’t know to what extent there are other jurisdictions out there where boundaries of actual lots span multiple zones. For example, there are houses in Oak Bay that have some of their property in Oak Bay and part of the property in Victoria. Now, to what extent does that exist in the province of British Columbia on the edges of the areas covered? I’m sure there are properties in Nanaimo, in the CRD, in Kelowna West and elsewhere where most of the property is in the contained area but some of it isn’t.

These are issues that government may have not yet thought through and that hopefully will be canvassed during committee stage to get some clarification.

I’ve had people who own a house, a strata building that doesn’t allow rentals, contact me. I’ve had people who’ve invested in Victoria, in places that are zoned tourist commercial — specifically designed for short-term rentals. The zoning actually requires short-term rentals and doesn’t allow long-term rentals.

Again, this was partly dealt with in this legislation, essentially by saying that in the affected years 2018 and 2019, these areas — tourist commercial–type zoning or stratas with no rental clause — are not going to be subject. I still have issues there with respect to secondary suites in municipalities that don’t allow secondary suites officially to be zoned. Can you officially declare a secondary suite when, officially, you’re not allowed to have one? There are issues there that I hope to canvass.

I’m hoping that my good friend from the riding of Vancouver–West End and also my good friend from the riding of Saanich North and the Islands will be thinking about the issue of stratas and actually whether or not we in British Columbia are getting close to getting to where Ontario already is. In Ontario, you cannot actually have a no-rental clause, a long-term rental clause in a strata. Stratas are empowered with the power of eviction. That’s important. You can say — and it has been tested in court — no short-term rentals. But you cannot own property and put a no-rental clause on it.

I’m hoping that this committee takes a good, hard look at that because it is an issue. It’s an important issue. If you’re going to apply a speculation tax on somebody because they’re not renting it out but the strata has said you can’t rent it out, there are two components here that are important. One, there’s a real investment opportunity here for British Columbia, if we’re able to invest in new construction in strata units that allow rentals, there’s the ability to attract capital to our province to create new investment. But secondly, there’s a lot of stock in the market that potentially could be sold, if people are friends of this speculation tax, and that would otherwise not be sold and would be rented out. So it’s win-win-win, if we start to think about this in greater detail.

One of the other issues I’ve had e-mails on is…. There have been issues with respect to transition of home ownership. I’ve had couples who own two homes, in the midst of trying to sell one and move to another. One example was a constituent that had a house in Surrey, moving to Saanich. Actually, the housing crisis in our area is largely associated with people saying: “I can cash in, in the Metro Vancouver region and get a lot more over here and live well thereafter.”

This particular family had a house in Surrey and one in Saanich. They wanted to move, both areas subject to a spec tax. They were concerned that in trying to sell their home, they would be subject to a spec tax on one of their homes. Well, in fact, here we have that transition clause, which I think is important to canvass further in committee stage but which does address this particular issue.

I’ve had similar ones with a couple coming from Kelowna, moving to Victoria. Again, same thing. We seem to get a lot of people coming to Victoria to retire, and they’ve lived in other parts of B.C. They’re really worried about selling a home in one place and buying it in another. That transition amount is actually critical there, and we’re seeing that legislation brought forward in what we were shown on Tuesday.

A couple of people have told me similar stories, from the Kootenays, buying in Victoria to retire here. They recently bought. They’re worried that they’ll be hit by a speculation tax. Their child is actually living in the home now, but they’re worried that they’ll be subject to this. There are issues here with respect to whether or not that arms-length or non-arms-length allowance of the son living in the house while he might be attending the University of Victoria, for example, while they’re planning to return, was considered speculation or not.

It turns out, again, people like this have some coverage as per the legislation. Again, we have to canvass this further in committee stage.

One of the most profound issues brought to me was Canadians saying that this is not fair. “I am being taxed at a different rate living in Ontario, compared to living in B.C. Why is it that the rate is 1 percent for me in Ontario to one-half a percent for me in B.C.?” This one really struck it hard. I’m a Canadian first, I’m a British Columbian second, and third, I am actually a person from the riding of Oak Bay–Gordon Head. We are all Canadians, and to me and our party it’s critical that we treat Canadians equally.

One of the issues here that really took midnight oil being burned was working with government to ensure that they recognized that the tax rate for British Columbians and Canadians — making that difference was simply not acceptable.

This, again, will not deal with all of the issues raised by the member for Kelowna West, but I can say that when it goes 1 percent to one-half a percent, that actually affects a lot of decision-making for people that I know who have homes in West Kelowna but may live in Alberta and spend four months of the year there. The one-half a percent makes a significant difference in terms of the amount that one would pay. It’s not perfect. It’s not what we would do, but it’s significantly less than what would otherwise be.

One could argue, as government does, that what it’s doing is while it’s still encouraging development through this exemption of land under development, at the same time, it’s saying: “You know what? There’s an external social cost to developing property that is vacant that needs to be internalized by those who leave the property vacant.”

That external cost now is not differentiated between the rate…. It’s not differentiated between British Columbians and other Canadians. That is one of the amendments, which I’m working on now with legislative drafters, that we’ve kindly been given access to through this government to ensure it’s brought forward at committee stage for this bill.

I agreed with these Canadians that they pay taxes. They may not have paid taxes in B.C., but they pay taxes in Canada. I have a problem with the way the taxation system is in Canada, and we can come to this more in question period. I’m sure we will. Right now we know that a lot of people retire in British Columbia. Part of the reason why we have an affordability crisis is that we are the destination of choice in Canada for retirement.

If you look at the amount of money spent as a function of age in the health care system, it’s also really clear that you spend more as people get closer and closer to the end of their life. The older they are, the more they cost the health care system. We also know that the demographic of places like Vancouver Island and B.C. as a whole is older than other jurisdictions in Canada. So people are paying taxes in other jurisdictions and accessing our health care system here, but our Canada health transfer does not recognize age. It is not weighted by age.

Our Canada health transfer shorts British Columbia to the tune of $200 million to $300 million. Based on a simple calculation, we should be getting age-weighted cost transfers, not per-person cost. Had we been getting $200 million to $300 million more in health care transfers under the Canada Health Act, we’d have $200 million to $300 million more we could put directly into health care.

It means $200 million to $300 million more not coming out of other budgets and going into health care. It means we could have been spending $200 million to $300 million more in affordability and housing every single year. This needs to be dealt with, and this is something we will continue to push on in the years ahead.

I’ve had lots of people contact me. I have a good deal of sympathy for the member for Kelowna West. I’ve had a good deal of his constituents contact me as well. I understand some of the issues that are there, and it’s put us in a very difficult position. We’ve done many, many hours of trying to ensure that we reflect the values that we’ve been trying to instill, that Canadians are treated equally. I’ll come back to that the mayors are consulted, as well as that money stays in the local community.

Examples have been given. There are two professors in the family. They’re not hurting financially. One professor works at UBC, one professor works at UBC Okanagan, and they have two places. They were both initially living in one place, and the other would have been treated as spec tax. They were getting very confused. Now we have a recognition that with married couples there’s an exemption for them.

Again, I had a very compelling email just today from a woman whose family home is in Surrey. Yet this woman was a teacher who worked in downtown Vancouver. This family home in Surrey had her elderly mother staying in it. She didn’t want to sell it. Clearly, it was in her name. But she had a condo in Vancouver because she couldn’t fathom that commute every day to teach in the elementary schools or the school system in Vancouver. So she stayed in a condo during the workweek and lived with her mother in her home on the weekends and during the summer. The question is: would she be covered under a spec tax?

I’m virtually certain, based on the exemptions that have been put here based on government listening to the numerous feedbacks that have been given to it, that they will not be covered. They are exempt. Again, I’ll explore that story in detail during committee stage.

I could go on and on with other stories. But I think you’ve got the point that in fact, there are many examples — secondary suites — that can’t be listened to, that have to be dealt with and so on, so forth. The stories are endless. Again, I’m sure other members opposite will provide more stories. I believe the member for Chilliwack-Kent may be speaking very shortly. I’m sure he has similar stories to offer as well.

The concerns I’ve had coming back to this issue that have not been addressed in this bill as of now, I have highlighted on an ongoing basis over the past eight months. Honestly, this bill does not deal with flipping. It still doesn’t deal with somebody who buys a home, leaves it vacant for nine months, flips it out — they’ll have to pay a capital gain — buys another home and flips it out.

We’re not dealing with flipping here. So we’re going to continue to actually do what we can to ensure that this aspect of speculation is actually looked at. We’re collecting data now on British Columbia in terms of the presale of condos offshore.

Again, we’re not dealing with some of the aspects of presale flipping as well. There is some that can occur. I know that members opposite, the Leader of the Official Opposition, introduced a private member’s bill that would require the flipping of a presales condo. If you actually did that, that you would have to report 50 percent of the actual profit as income.

That, with respect to the Leader of the Opposition, isn’t going to do anyone any good because, essentially, that bill says: “If you’re going to break the law, you shouldn’t,” because you already have to declare 100 percent of that flipping income as a capital gain.

So this isn’t dealing with the actual issue. We need to have realistic solutions. That is the difficult position we’ve been put in as a small, three-member caucus working in between two large parties, one which is government and one which is not. We see our role as working to ensure that government policy is better, at the same time as doing what we can to continue to move forward this issue to deal with some of the real aspects of speculation.

Government has taken some steps with respect to hidden ownership to get at trust, beneficial and corporate ownership. We, frankly, don’t think they’ve done it as aggressively as it should be done. We know that government has taken steps to actually deal with potential money from nefarious activity entering real estate. We don’t think they’ve done it fast enough. We have been pushing for more progressive action on no rental clauses with, of course, a provision that the power of eviction be granted to strata.

Government, we think, also needs to ensure that people know that they’re dealing with a common sense approach in this legislation. We haven’t given up on this.

In the briefing that I had yesterday, plus some hours the last little while, one of the questions we asked is: what is the intention? You’ve made these changes. Why these ones, and not these ones? The information I got, which we hope to explore further in committee stage, was that government is trying to take a common sense approach to ensure that most things most people who are just regular people are not captured by this speculation and vacancy tax.

But it’s really targeting the overall goal of affordability, which is when you leave homes vacant for no other reason, you’re creating an externality of social cost that is going to be partially internalized.

We know one of the things that does exist here is in the legislation, there is an appeals process. But again, appeals processes that aren’t publicly brought forward, aren’t communicated, aren’t demonstrated, will not be known about. So we’re pushing to ensure that the public understands that they may have certain criteria that government hasn’t actually realized exists.

The one I just gave an example of is a property that may straddle two regions. I’m sure there are some, because there are properties in Oak Bay where half the house is in Oak Bay and the other half is in Victoria. Go figure that one. But they exist. There must be properties on the boundaries of some of these urban areas that have similar issues.

There must be a mechanism that people know that they can bring these issues forward and get a response in a timely fashion, subject to the commonsense kind of approach of ensuring that regular people are not being hurt.

With that said, after reading this bill, after going through many months…. This has been not just one or two meetings. It has been months. I’m sure, again, the member from West Kelowna, as somebody who’s quite passionate on this file, has also spent many, many hours on this file. After many, many hours, seeing this legislation…. In my view, in our view as a caucus, it still needed to go further. It still needed to go further in three more ways.

Over the past number of months, inspired by those myriad stories in my in-box and the many conversations with people in industry, with homeowners, mayors of affected areas, I’ve consistently raised concerns with government’s proposed approach to the speculation tax.

In particular, I say it again, I had these three critical areas. The first is that need for local governments to have a more significant role in determining what happens in their communities. The second is the fact that Canadians should not be paying higher rates than British Columbians. The third is the need to limit the unfair impacts on Canadian homeowners who are not speculators.

Again, these have come through the myriad stories, the hard work…. I thank the constituents, the other British Columbians, the member for Kelowna West and all of those people who emailed from across Canada for their input on this.

I do regret…. I agree, again, with the member from West Kelowna that the uncertainty that has been created has not been helpful, has not been helpful for the investment in Kelowna, has not been helpful for investment in the capital regional district.

However, I think today we have certainty. We have certainty in the legislation in terms of the land being developed. We have certainty in terms of our support for this legislation, subject to government’s supporting the three amendments we’re going bring forward. And we have certainty in allowing us to move forward.

Let me come to the three amendments, and I’ll speak to each of these in detail, that I’ll be bringing forward.

The first amendment requires mayors from affected municipalities be part of an annual review process with the Minister of Finance. Now, at cynical first look, you might think that that amendment is just saying: “The minister has to meet with mayors.” That is not the intent of the amendment. The amendment will be far more thorough than that.

I’ve publicly said I would’ve preferred to have a local government opt out automatically. We would’ve done that. That would’ve been our approach. We brought that into conversations. I recognize that that would’ve given the mayors and communities a clear channel to making a case, based on evidence, as the member from West Kelowna has done with the commissioned report that they have from West Kelowna. That evidence would’ve been able to show how tax applied to their communities. We would’ve then allowed them to opt out.

What we’ve done instead is say: “Okay, government, you say you know best. We understand where you’re coming from. We have the same shared value. But we critically believe that you need to ensure that you have metrics — affordability metrics, rental vacancy metrics — that you actually put together in a meeting with mayors every year to ensure that the ongoing application of the speculation tax is done through consultation — with data, with evidence, with mayors annually.”

It’s not just about a meeting. It’s also about the metrics that must be brought and argued at a meeting, and we’re grateful that we’ve got the full support of the minister on that. That comes from a case where no such other than informal meetings were going to occur, and that was the position of government, to our position where we wanted a full opt-out. That was where we ended up.

Now, why the role for local government is critically important — and why the annual review process must ensure government is looking at community impacts and considering whether vacancy and affordability metrics within affected communities warrant removal of the tax — is that communities know best what is in their best interest.

I recognize now is an odd time for this discussion, in light of the civic elections occurring in two days. But once the dust settles from those civic elections, it’s critical that mayors and new councils or incumbents actually have informed discussions with government, informed by metrics that are relevant to their communities.

The second amendment put forward here is a requirement and a recognition that we did not want this to become a tax grab, basically a central government tax grab for broad, undefined housing affordability issues. We felt that if you’re going to go and have money raised in a community — in the community of Nanaimo, Kelowna or West Kelowna — that that money needs to stay in that community. That money should not flow back to revenue of government coffers.

In fact, that money — the reason and the justification for this tax — is in essence an internalization of that social externality caused by the preponderance of vacant properties. It’s important that you use that revenue in a neutral fashion to actually offset and deal with the affordability issue.

We’re pleased to come to an agreement on that issue, and while there was broad recognition in this legislation that it will go to broad affordability measures, here it’s very specifically, in the amendment that we’ll be bringing forward, going to direct affordability issues in the communities from which the money arose.

The final amendment that’s being worked through right now will be to equalize the rates that Canadians and British Columbians pay. It’s saying that if you’re a British Columbian or an other Canadian, you’re Canadian first. You’re all paying the ½ percent.

Again, this is an important issue of fairness, from my perspective. Punishing Canadians in a differential way like that didn’t seem to be fair. Again, we know that this will meet…. In some of the exchanges I’ve had with people across Canada, people don’t mind recognizing that there is an externality there that they can internalize with this small extra, additional tax. They recognize that. They recognize they’re not paying provincial taxes here, perhaps, and they don’t mind paying a little bit more. I’ve got examples where people have said that.

However, they do mind egregiously being charged twice the rate as British Columbians, because they ultimately are Canadians first. We agreed with them.

Government did not want to move on this. This took a lot of work. This amendment is actually being supported by government, but it’s not without government, essentially, having to compromise on the intent of this, because government came into this very much trying to differentiate between those who live and pay taxes in B.C. and those that live and come to B.C. We felt it was important to treat Canadians the same.

Again, coming back to it, this bill is not how I would’ve approached the issue. It’s not how the B.C. Green caucus would approach the issue. But with the amendments that we’re bringing forward and the work done that has been done by government to limit the impacts of this tax on Canadians who are not speculating, I feel, at this stage, subject to the approval of those amendments, I’ll be supporting this legislation.

There are still key elements, such as implementing the tax on satellite families and foreign owners who do not pay income tax in B.C., that I’ve always believed are critical to support. In fact, the government, I don’t believe, has gone far enough. We need to crack down on foreign money flowing into our real estate market, pushing housing far beyond the reach of ordinary Canadians.

There are 4½ million people in British Columbia. There are 7 billion in the world. There’s an awful lot of capital out there looking to park itself as an investment in this province in real estate solely for the purpose of speculation. Here, in our caucus, we think that that actually needs to be clamped down on even more than is being done.

The components of the tax that deals with foreigners and satellite families — always supported that. We believe that this will have a significant impact, as articulated in the bill, in terms of dealing with this issue. With that said, one of the key aspects of this legislation is that we need to have ongoing, continual, rigorous monitoring of what is going on in the housing market.

My worry is…. We all know the issue of supply and demand. Right now, we know that there is not a lot of supply in the rental market. In fact, there is very little supply in the rental market. We have begun to see increasing supply in some of these urban areas in the market for sale. We’ve started to see a softening of demand in some of these areas, not so much the low end, but at the high end of the market — softening of demand. The very careful step in monitoring that needs to be done as we move forward is to ensure that in a time of reduced demand, we don’t suddenly initiate a massive influx of supply, because that can lead to market instability.

What I mean by that is we’ve got to ensure that the communication to those people who are being exempted here, communications to those people about the importance of an appeal process, the importance about a process to ensure that situations that may not have been thought through can still be addressed. People who are in no-rental clauses — the communication to them that there are two years, and government has two years to get to the bottom of this. For people who are in tourist commercial zoning, who recognize that there are still two years to come, to play, before government has to fix this. This needs to be communicated so we don’t see people rushing to sell properties out of lack of knowledge of what this legislation is actually doing.

At a time of decreasing demand and slightly increasing supply, if you put in a bunch of supply, it’s troubling. So I’m pleased in the discussions and the technical briefing we had with respect to this bill that government is committed to doing this ongoing monitoring, and the ministry staff are committed to doing this ongoing monitoring. I, too, will be watching the market closely and how this tax affects the market closely in the months ahead.

My hope is that the amendments will give us some tools to ensure that local governments have a clear role in a review process on an annual basis, to ensure that we’re having evidence flow into the decision-making going forward, to ensure that uncertainty is removed from, actually, this decision-making process, to ensure that we actually can move back towards a situation where developers in Kelowna, Victoria, Metro Vancouver and Nanaimo have confidence that they won’t be hit with escalating costs to produce, knowing that they’ll end up producing supply that will not be actually ever purchased because the cost will be too much.

It’s critical that we monitor vacancy rates. It’s absolutely crucial in these meetings that happen with mayors annually that vacancy rates are monitored, because if we move to suddenly the removal of no-rental clauses, and we see, for example, the sudden construction of thousands of units on a university campus for students, we might see an increase in rental rates, an increase in rental rates such that you can’t rent your property. So it would seem unduly punitive if you’re paying a tax for not being able to rent a property because there is no demand for it.

Again, the critical aspect of this is monitoring in an ongoing fashion. The enabling legislation does allow for timely order-in-council responses to this, which again is important and something that we felt was important to communicate.

It’s critical that while we seek to improve affordability for British Columbians, we take the steps we should do. We ensure that in doing so we take steps that do so responsibly and avoid a significant market downturn.

With that, I’ll say…. While again coming back to the overall summary of this, this is not something we would have done. I will give government credit for listening in many areas we brought to government. I think we get a little bit closer with these three amendments.

I recognize it’s not exactly what we would have done. I recognize that members from the opposition may have gone farther, but I think, at this juncture, this bill, as amended, will be something that the B.C. Green caucus will support, and we’ll be watching carefully as we move forward.

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Video of Speech

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Media Release

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The Government of British Columbia and the B.C. Green Party caucus have come to an agreement to ensure support of the Speculation and Vacancy Tax Act, a key piece in the government’s plan for housing affordability in B.C.

“We are in the midst of a housing crisis and we need to act. Once the legislation is amended, the Green caucus has committed its support in passing the bill so that we can tackle out-of-province speculation in B.C.’s housing market and help turn empty properties into homes for people,” said Carole James, Minister of Finance. “When we formed government, we made a commitment to put people above politics and work collaboratively with the Green caucus. Both sides are showing compromise in order to put housing solutions for British Columbians first.”

“While this is still not the approach I would have taken, these amendments will improve the bill and will mitigate many of the key issues I have identified,” said Andrew Weaver, Leader of the Green caucus. “The housing crisis is British Columbians’ number one concern and our caucus is committed to working with government to address the role that speculation has played. One of my key issues with this tax is that it was a blunt instrument applied to communities with unique circumstances. My amendments to include local governments in an annual meeting to review the tax and to dedicate any funds raised from this tax to affordable housing in their communities, strike a far better balance.”

The decision on how to collectively move forward on this legislation was reached by following processes laid out in the Confidence and Supply Agreement. It will result in the Green caucus introducing a series of three amendments to the bill, which government will support in the legislature.

The first amendment will create an annual meeting between the Minister of Finance and mayors in the affected areas to review the tax and relevant performance measures. This is an important way of ensuring the tax remains focused on the communities facing the greatest affordability challenges.

The second amendment will further target revenues raised by the tax, with all funds being directed to affordable housing projects in the impacted regions: Nanaimo-Lantzville, the Capital Regional District, Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and Kelowna-West Kelowna. This will ensure residents of those areas will be able to see the benefits of the tax in their own communities.

The third amendment will permanently set the tax rate for Canadian citizens and permanent residents who reside outside of British Columbia, and who are not satellite families, at 0.5%.

“While we strongly support the intent of the first two amendments, we are of the view that the third amendment lessens protections against out-of-province speculative investment,” said James. “We believe it is fair to ask those who do not pay income tax in B.C. to pay their fair share, but in the spirit of compromise we will support this amendment.”

“Another key concern of mine was that Canadians should be treated equally. We are one country and even if they don’t pay income tax in B.C., Canadians pay federal taxes that benefit our communities,” said Weaver. “The third amendment was an area of compromise and I am pleased that it will lessen the impact for Canadian homeowners, while keeping other critical provisions of the bill intact.”

 

Over the last week, I have been following the news that Ontario has decided to cancel its basic income pilot, only one year into what was supposed to be a 3-year project.

I am saddened by the decision made by the government of Ontario, for a number of reasons.

I was, of course, looking forward to learning from Ontario’s pilot project, which would have provided a wealth of evidence about the effects of basic income. Ontario was leading the country in assessing the impacts of this policy, and their project was being watched around the world. They were tracking changes in employment, health, education, food security and housing, as well as community-level effects in Lindsay, with independent assessment by university researchers.

Before Ontario, the last pilot in Canada took place in Dauphin, Manitoba, over 40 years ago. This pilot illustrated some very promising results: in just 3 years, hospital visits were reduced by 8.5%.
Researchers attributed this marked decrease to lower levels of stress in low income families, which resulted in lower rates of alcohol and drug use, lower levels of domestic abuse, fewer car accidents, and lower levels of hospitalization for mental health issues.

In deciding to cancel the pilot, Ontario, and our whole country, has lost a significant opportunity to learn about the effects of basic income and to be on the leading edge of exploring this policy.

But what has struck me the most in the last week since the news of cancellation are the individual stories coming out of Ontario, from those enrolled in the pilot, whose lives are deeply affected by this decision.

So many stories have highlighted how people’s lives changed once they began receiving basic income. These stories have highlighted, too, the substantial human cost to cancelling this pilot part way through, when thousands of people had made plans and decisions on what they thought was stable ground.

Some participants in the pilot decided to attend college for the first time, or returned to school, to pick up the skills needed for meaningful employment or to start a new career. Others began living independently, or found secure accommodation for the first time. For some, it was the newfound ability to afford healthy food and other small things to improve the quality of their lives, and the lives of their children. Others used the income to pay down long-standing debts.

Many spoke about the reduced stress they felt, the ability to plan into the future instead of worrying only about the day-to-day, and a feeling of greater independence and dignity.

Many participants in the program were working, but still couldn’t afford the necessities of life and make ends meet.

One individual who was part of the pilot wrote to me highlighting the impact that basic income had on him and his family. Despite both working, he and his wife had amassed a significant amount of debt, which they struggled to pay off as they tried to provide for their children. The program, he said, was allowing them to pay down their debt and do more with their children. Most importantly, he said, he could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel to better days, for him and his children.

In his words, “this program … gave people that really needed hope a lot of hope for a brighter future.”

These individual stories speak to the promise I believe basic income holds – as a better way to support people as they navigate the economic challenges of the 21st century. Recent years have seen disproportionate increases in part-time and contract work. Wages have stagnated while the cost of living in our cities has spiralled out of control. Meanwhile, studies estimate that half of Canadian jobs could be impacted by automation in the next decade alone. We proposed exploring basic income in B.C. because we believe that government needs to have a plan for the changes on the horizon.

The experiences of people in Ontario has made me see even more strongly the need to do serious work exploring this policy. I have previously written a four part series (Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV) outlining why I think basic income is an idea that we need to explore in BC. Establishing a pilot project formed a key aspect of the Income Security component of our BC Green 2017 election platform.

We’re forging ahead in BC with our expert committee, an expert panel comprising three distinguished researcher that launched last month and is studying how basic income could work in BC. This committee is the first step towards fulfilling a government commitment under CASA to pilot basic income in BC.  I am hopeful that the committee’s work will provide the evidence that governments need to decide how to proceed – not only here in BC, but across Canada.

In this time of change, as we grapple with the challenges we face today and on the horizon, policymakers have a responsibility to plan for the future, and to make decisions that will give their citizens the best possible chance to pursue their dreams and to achieve success. In a country as wealthy and as compassionate as ours, that’s the goal our leaders should be working towards.

Back in 2016, I published a series of four blog posts exploring the notion of Basic Income.

In the first I provided an overview of the concept, the issues that we are facing today in BC, and the potential implications of a basic income policy. This was followed by a second post that examined the state of poverty in BC, including the social assistance programs available and how they can fail to help those most in need. It also explored how basic income could help to alleviate poverty in our province. The third post outlined the shift we are experiencing as a population away from long-term, full-time work with benefits, toward short-term, part-time, and contract-based work.

The series culminated in a final post that provided recommendations and a commitment to British Columbians. That commitment was that a BC Green government would introduce pilot projects that explored the costs and benefits of basic income. And so the promised establishment of such pilot projects formed a key aspect of the Income Security component of our BC Green 2017 election platform.

The Confidence and Supply Agreement that we signed with the BC NDP noted the following in Section 4a:

a. Design and implement a province-wide poverty reduction strategy that includes addressing the real causes of homelessness, including affordable accommodation, support for mental health and addictions and income security.

The BC Government yesterday announced its first step towards fulfilling this commitment. With dedicated funding in the last budget, an expert panel comprising three distinguished researchers has been established to lead a B.C.-focused exploration of basic income.

In the government press release I note:

“Amidst trends like automation, part-time and contract work, the nature of our economy and the jobs within it are rapidly shifting. There is strong evidence that basic income can provide greater income security, while saving costs in other areas. We proposed exploring how basic income could work in B.C., because government should have a plan for the changes on the horizon. The panelists are highly qualified, knowledgeable and creative thinkers. I am excited to work with them on this innovative project.“

Below is the release the BC Green caucus issued in response to the government’s announcement.

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Media Release

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Weaver welcomes basic income expert committee
For immediate release
July 3, 2018

VICTORIA, B.C. – Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, says that the government’s newly convened Basic Income Expert Panel is a significant step forward for the province’s 21st century economic strategy. The committee was announced at a press conference today in Vancouver and is related to the B.C. Greens’ Confidence and Supply Agreement with the B.C. NDP.

“At this moment, on the verge of fundamental economic change and with the old
model of work already faltering for so many, we have an opportunity to create policy that sets
the stage for a better future for British Columbians,” said Weaver.

Weaver has advocated for exploring basic income in B.C. since 2016. In the 2017 election, the B.C. Greens campaigned to conduct a basic income pilot and implement basic income for youth transitioning out of care. The expert committee members are David Green, Vancouver School of Economics at UBC; Jonathan Rhys Kesselman, School of Public Policy at SFU; and Lindsay Tedds, School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

“Recent years have seen disproportionate increases in part-time and contract work. Wages have stagnated while the cost of living in our cities has spiralled out of control. Meanwhile, studies estimate that half of Canadian jobs could be impacted by automation in the next decade alone. We proposed exploring basic income in B.C. because we believe that government needs to have a plan for the changes on the horizon.

“When people are secure, they are more likely to feel confident starting a new business or returning to school. Investing in British Columbians’ success is the best way we can ensure a thriving local economy for generations to come. Further, research shows that basic income can provide income security while reducing the costs of other supports. For instance, when basic income was introduced in Dauphin, Manitoba, hospital visits declined by 8.5%.

“The committee members are all highly qualified researchers and creative thinkers. I am delighted they will be exploring this innovative policy idea for government so that we can best position our province to succeed in a changing world.”

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Media contact
Jillian Oliver, Press Secretary
+1 778-650-0597 | jillian.oliver@leg.bc.ca