Raj Chouhan

BC NDP

5/28/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025

Bill 5, Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025, has been read a third time and has passed.

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Hon. Brenda Bailey

BC NDP

5/28/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025

I move third reading of Bill 5.

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Hon. Mike Farnworth

BC NDP

5/28/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025

I call third reading on Bill 5.

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/27/2025

Yes, I appreciate it’s a larger operation and more complex in terms of numbers of people, but ultimately, it’s numbers on a balance sheet. It’s numbers of FTEs. It’s a number of shifting priorities. It’s a number of political decisions. It’s all representative. I used to have this debate with Surrey when we were talking about policing, because the mayor at the time, Dianne Watts, and I were on committees, and she’d say: “But that’s $10 million to Surrey.” And I’d say: “Yeah, and it’s $1 million to us. You’re ten times our size.” It’s the same. It’s all relative. So I appreciate what the minister is saying. I can understand how FTEs work and positions within collective agreements and everything else like that. Shifting gears, because we are nearing our wonderful time together here. DigiBC tax credits. In terms of the budget, I’m just wondering. On page 59, they come up as a $5 million hit, not anything in this year’s. It will be into next year’s. However, the forecast went from, on page 146, $126.1 million last year to $141.3 million this year, so almost a $15 million difference. Then it jumps $10 million, not the $5 million. Now, I can appreciate some of that might be in anticipation of more activity happening and things like that, so I’m not really dwelling on that side of it. The bigger question I have is that increasing the tax break to 25 percent and making it permanent used to be thought to cost $22 million a year. The numbers don’t seem to match up, and I appreciate that might have also been some previous years’ calculations. The question, I guess, really, I have for the minister…. We touched on this briefly in Bill 5, and I thought I would leave the rest till now because it does interplay with more of the other budgetary issues. Again, at a time when money is scarce, we now seem to have a $12.9 billion, not $10.9 billion, deficit. We have industries all over the place screaming for help. I don’t take issue with the advocacy of DigiBC for the digital space lobbying. That’s what they should be doing. That’s what all lobbyists and industry associations do for their industry. But it’s about the only one that saw any change, and the change was to make it permanent, and the change was to go to 17½ to 25 percent, instead of the sunset clause of 17½ percent. Who exactly asked the minister for the permanency and to go to 25 percent?

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/27/2025

The question is about trends and assumptions. Most of these areas would have monthly trends and assumptions associated with…. It’s not just the real estate industry that does that. We’re talking about billions of dollars being tracked by government. Businesses submit PST returns regularly. Income taxes and corporate income taxes get filed, get updated. There’s back-and-forth with the federal government. Yes, there’s about a 20-month lag on the final reconciliations that move forward, and that creates some of the swings on corporate and personal income taxes. I fully understand that. The question is about assumptions. The minister is completely offended that I keep saying it’s a $12.9 billion deficit, but she can’t point to anything to discount that. The reason I’m saying that is not to be antagonistic. It’s because the minister has made it very clear that there is a $1.991 billion hole in revenues created because of government policy, not government assumptions, not time lags of income tax, not outside market forces. Government made a decision, apparently, that was in both parties’ campaign promises. It had no modelling done, no assumptions being done by government, despite the minister previously saying, during Bill 5 debate, that that work actually happens during an election with the ministry, behind the scenes, in a non-partisan kind of way. Pretty large election promises being made by both parties. No modelling being done, no work being done ahead of time on how to offset. And the minister now, just as the Premier is, is fond of saying over the last week and a half: “Just trust us.” A month to go in this quarter: “Just trust us. We’ll give you all the information on September 15.” Then, after repeated questions about the most basic thing, like a $3½ million advertising budget, the minister references, on day 2, that maybe there has been a little bit of a cut to advertising, but just not GCPE’s advertising, because that was a completely different STOB area, even though the minister didn’t want to talk about any specific STOB areas that were referenced by her in these budget estimates. We have an evasion of answering whether or not there’s been…. By not answering, and me assuming that means there has been no…. I’m giving the minister the opportunity to say: “Yes, there has been a large shift in our projections on commercial Crown corporation income. We’re seeing that Lotteries is doing much better than we thought. ICBC is doing better than we thought. B.C. Hydro, you name it.” And the only reason it went up was that B.C. Hydro last year was projected to be at zero, break even, and then they found some money. Government transfers last year were projected to be $14.446 billion. According to this budget book, this snapshot in time, it’s $14.189 billion. It has actually dropped. Natural resource revenues last year were projected to be $3.015 billion. According to this budget book, they’re now $2.334 billion for the updated forecast of ’24-25. Again, I’m getting the first number from their budget book from last year. Assumptions, projections. I agree with the minister, they can move, but they’re not moving by much. Where it did move was in personal income tax and corporate income tax, and those numbers do have to wait for the quarterly updates. With a 20-month lag and a slowing down on our economy, they could actually not be the windfall that they’ve been in past years. The $6 billion surplus the government had when the Premier came into office was largely due to close to $10 billion worth of corporate and personal income taxes that they weren’t expecting to find, because as most jurisdictions did through COVID, they underestimated what they were going to get. The impacts weren’t as severe to people. People stayed employed. People still paid income tax, and every jurisdiction underestimated. The lag finally caught up, but that lag is coming on. Now we’re running deficit after deficit, and the minister is greatly offended somehow, that $10.9 billion is dramatically better than $12.9 billion. I’m giving her every opportunity to show me where any revenue sources in the first two months are trending in a significantly more positive way than they were when the snapshot in time of this budget book was created. The minister likes to say, “Well, it’s not a backward-looking document,” but she wants us to talk about a document that was created in February and to not talk about what is going on in the world at the end of May. At the end of February, this book was created; we’re at the end of May. April 1 this government blew a 1.99 net negative hole in their budget. April, May, first two months of the quarter and still no direction from this minister on what’s going to make it up. The minister alludes to a tobacco settlement but can’t provide any certainty to us on how that works. I’ve asked. Maybe I should ask again about that. I’ll come back to that, though. There are no substantive shifts, in the first two months of projections, for commercial Crown corporation net income of $4 billion and no substantive shifts in the modelling for contributions from the federal government, totalling $15.277 billion. We’re working our way up. Let’s go to other revenue: post-secondary education fees, other fees and licences, investment earnings and miscellaneous. Investment earnings, that might be a questionable trend line over the last two months, given all things tariff war. And $12 billion…. Has anything in the area of other revenue, over the first two months of this fiscal, trended in a more positive way than what was originally projected in the budget? I’m not asking for the dollar figure. I’m asking if it’s trending in a significantly better way.

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/27/2025

Well, that’s remarkable. On page 59 of the budget book, we have changes that happened to the Income Tax Act: an increase to Film Incentive B.C., introduce major production tax credit, amend regional and distant location tax credits for animation productions, increase the interactive digital media tax credit to 25 percent and make permanent. Those all together total $53 million. In fact, there’s no actual material impact to taxpayers in this fiscal. It’s actually next year’s fiscal that that $53 million would be an impact, according to the government’s chart on page 59. I say that because, when I asked questions about some of those tax measures on Bill 5, this is what the minister had to say: “There are a couple things I would like to say in regard to this question. One is my civil service associates have advised me that during the interregnum period, it is very common for bureaucrats to work on all of the platform commitments from various parties as they make them, knowing that whoever is elected, there will be a rush to accomplish some of those commitments. “So yes, there’s some work that was occurring even during the interregnum period in a non-partisan, broad kind of way, I would say.” There was apparently work being done in that period — in a non-partisan, broad kind of way — on four or five tax measures that resulted in a grand total of $53 million, and not even until next tax year, on campaign commitments that were only referenced by one of the parties running. I checked. Our campaign didn’t make any of those commitments. Yet, on something that collects almost $3.1 billion of tax revenue…. That was a political hot button federally and provincially that saw the Premier do a 180-degree turn in the space of a couple of months, from saying he would never back down and that if the rest of Canada got rid of carbon tax, the NDP was going to $170 a tonne, to a few months later, in the heat of an election, saying: “Oh no, no, we’ll get rid of it.” Pretty clear the B.C. Conservatives have always wanted it gone. The minister is trying to now tell us that the civil service was doing no non-partisan, broad-kind-of-way work on campaign commitments around carbon tax and the potential implication of removing carbon tax because, you know, there’d be a rush to accomplish some of these commitments. No work was done on $3.046 billion worth of tax revenue that both parties had committed to removing, but there was work done and preplanning done on the impact of $53 million of film and digital tax credits that only one party campaigned on and that actually don’t even hit the financial plan until next year. Is that what we’re honestly supposed to understand is the level of preplanning that was going on within government moving forward?

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Bill 15 — Infrastructure Projects Act (continued)

It certainly will be something that we will continue to engage with, with those entities, as we learn of the outcomes of this bill and follow up afterwards, should it be passed, to ensure that is occurring, but thank you to the minister for confirming that. I spoke earlier about a bill in Ontario, Bill 5, that has similarities. But it’s not the same purpose as this bill. It’s not in regard to government infrastructure projects. Just in the context of this clause, I’m wondering: has this model of direct ministerial project delivery been used in other provinces or jurisdictions, and if so, were there lessons drawn from those experiences in those other jurisdictions?

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Bill 15 — Infrastructure Projects Act (continued)

I appreciate the comments and the questioning from the House Leader of the Third Party. I think this has been a good line of questioning in relation to using a relevant example in that, obviously, we’ve been talking about modular classrooms or portables, if you will, on a day when we do have school boards and teachers and parents who are out on the lawns of the Legislature. Some of those are from Surrey. I know that their concerns are that we have nearly 400 portables in Surrey, but we are talking about trying to find ways to support school boards’ needs in the short term here. Really, what it boils down to is: do these school boards have the tools that they need now? Does government actually need these powers? That’s something that First Nations have been questioning. That’s what local governments have certainly been questioning. I look at sort of what is going on in the province right now. As I understand, the Premier is in Vancouver today announcing something around natural resource strategies for governments, saying it’s going to be in full partnership with First Nations, whereas we, at this point, have First Nations who aren’t taking government at its word. We’ve had Chief Don Tom from the W̱JOȽEȽP First Nation actually going as far as — these are his words, and I quote — calling the Premier a “snake oil salesman” at this point. I don’t take these concerns as something that I would put on the minister’s shoulders. I actually think that this is a concern with the way that this Premier’s office and this government have handled Bill 15 overall and these concerns that have been brought forward to us. I looked at it in stark contrast with what’s going on in Ontario right now. There was Bill 5 introduced on fast-tracking projects there. The government just today has stated that they’d be willing to pull back the bill to look at it further. The House Leader of the Third Party has made suggestions that perhaps the bill should be pulled back so that more work can be done. I’m wondering if, in the context of clause 3…. We’re talking about category 1 projects and granting the minister these powers. Are these powers that need to be looked at more clearly by First Nations and local governments and businesses and the broader public before we embark on this? I’m wondering at this time, given what Ontario has just done, if the minister will again reconsider moving forward with this clause of the bill and pulling the bill back for further reconsideration.

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/15/2025

Estimates: Ministry of Finance

Thanks to the minister for the opening comments, and thank you to the minister’s staff for being here over the next several days as we delve through the budget. I’ll leave my opening remarks to that. I probably said enough during the budget speech, the Bill 5 speech or committee stage of Bill 5 on some of the background. Just jumping straight in, I’m wondering if the minister, in last year’s fiscal plan…. Of course, these are three-year fiscal plans, so last year’s fiscal plan had a projection for this year of the 2025-26 budget. Did those projections include provisions for the new collective agreements that need to be negotiated this year with the public sector? Were those potential costs factored into the ’25-26 projection in last year’s fiscal plan?

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/8/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

These bills are always a little tricky, because I do recognize they touch on other ministries and their requests of the minister. But ultimately, the minister, especially with the mandate letter and the economic times they’re in, has been directed to have a pretty tight rein on all ministries and all their directions. I asked that because we have an unknown revenue stream talked about by government that’s supposed to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for TransLink over the next few years. No one knows what that is. We asked whether or not it was road pricing. We were told, pretty emphatically, no. We asked if it was a vehicle levy. That was a much more ambiguous answer from the Premier and the Transportation Minister. Again, recognizing that’s not this minister’s portfolio. However, ultimately, you would think that the Finance Minister would be engaged and involved in things that were going to potentially impact the treasury or take away tax room that the provincial government might otherwise have. And I say that because…. Bear with me. I’ll set the stage on this, so I’ll take a minute. Way back in the olden days, when the Interior and everywhere outside of the TransLink service area was provided access to funding for B.C. Transit from the provincial government, the trade-off was that they would pay 40 percent of capital for their hospitals. TransLink was to be a stand-alone entity funding itself, and the trade-off was that they would be asked for zero dollars for hospital capital. That has completely gone away. Pattullo Bridge used to be a TransLink bridge that was taken over by the government, on a whim by former Premier Horgan and assumed back into government, so the cost of replacing and everything fell away from TransLink. That seems to be forgotten that that $1.5 billion actually should still be on the books for TransLink. But that was absorbed — all the SkyTrain investments, all of that, all the operational dollars that TransLink has asked for over the years. And it’s not a case of begrudging a fast-growing metropolitan area’s transit, but it’s a case of trying to figure out where the heck all the money is going to come from. There’s only so much room for taxation that local property tax owners can absorb. In the case of in the Interior, when we needed to add a hospital…. I know this well. I was the mayor, and I was the hospital board chair, and we had to double our hospital taxes on property taxes. What has happened in some TransLink areas is instead of that money being put onto property taxes, extra parks or extra things were built, which is fine. Each city gets to have their own autonomy and figure that out. But then when there’s not enough money to fund TransLink, it comes back to: could the bank of B.C.? I was going to say “Mom and Dad,” but I’ll go with bank of B.C. Then I thought that’s an old bank as well. There’s only so much room taxpayers, property tax payers, have to absorb, so it has to be a coming together between the provincial government and the TransLink municipalities as to how that gap in funding is going to be made up. It can’t all go on property taxes. I recognize that. That ship has sailed. But it can’t always just be on the backs of the provincial government either. Was there any discussion, given that we’re dealing with these amendments, and the funding crunch is critical? It seems like this is a very light touch, overall, compared to the systemic issues going on within TransLink. And it seems like we should have more amendments right now for the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act, a.k.a. TransLink, to move forward. I’m hearing that there were no provisions negotiated or tried to be negotiated to see if there were any extra revenues to pick up on on-street parking, which again…. Conveniently, all the money goes to the municipalities. Were there any other tax provisions that were either advocated for by TransLink and discarded — that would have shown up in and around these headings in Bill 5 — or advocated for by the province and discounted by TransLink? I’m not sure how the public can reconcile that the only provision in Bill 5 we have for TransLink is taking off-street parking from 24 percent to 29 percent, with the government openly talking about another revenue source that one would presume would need legislation to change because something as simple as changing a tax rate on off-street parking requires that. We don’t sit again till October. It seems that there’s no alternative revenue stream on the horizon. Was there one that has been removed from Bill 5? Or is that just a work-in-progress, and if so, what is that revenue stream?

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Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Good afternoon, Members. I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 5, Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025, back to order. We are on clause 33.

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/8/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Thank you for that, but the programs listed by the minister are not new. Those are existing, yet we still have industries that are non-competitive. That’s the whole premise of why the increase to the digital space in clause 26, according to the minister, is to make them competitive. One could argue, in the current realm, based on what the President has said over the last week, that suddenly digital and film are under threat of tariffs, but that was not in the forefront of people’s minds certainly back when this budget was being created. It was much more traditional industry that would have been at the forefront. In fact, forestry has been under a softwood assault of duties for eight years. So it’s not a perceived threat; it’s very real. In fact, a schedule of increases that was laid out by the Biden-Harris administration is set to take effect very shortly. I can appreciate the minister trying to push over to the tariff angle, but nothing in this Bill 5 would indicate that is the case in terms of trying to shelter and weather industries that would be much more highly exposed to tariffs up until what’s transpired in the last week, which was the first time any of that’s been mentioned. And it’s debatable, given the complexities of film production, as we’ve seen even with this bill, how a tariff would even somehow be levied. So that is an interesting answer. Again, back to the minister on this. I’m truly not trying to belabour the digital space here on this, because they do great things. The minister is absolutely right. A lot of the technology bleeds over to industry. Some of our highest tech areas in the province are mines and forest companies and things of that nature. I totally agree with the sentiment that it’s not just about video games. It’s about a wide range of crossover and laddering of technologies to do things that maybe people hadn’t thought of in the first place, and then it is a net benefit to B.C. I guess, just for clarification, though, this sounds like it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone comes with their own history and expertise to this place in terms of various work experience and life experience, education experience that they’ve had in the past. A lot of the tax breaks we’ve previously dealt with, and this one, are much more in the realm of a space where the minister felt much more comfortable making quick decisions, having more broader knowledge in those areas than some of the others, and has decided that is the first tranche of tax breaks to come. The $5 million difference in this tax break for the digital space…. What has been the modelling, then, done in terms of the overall expectation for growth within the industry and the net benefit to the provincial treasury by providing this $5 million tax break to the digital space?

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/8/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Again, I don’t take issue with trying to make industry and tech competitive with the rest of Canada, let alone North America. There are finite dollars available. We’ve heard government’s want and desire to make sure that film and production are competitive, that the digital space is competitive. As Bill 5 was being assembled and decisions were being made as to whether or not to remove the sunset clause and increase the tax credit to digital media, was there any comparison to any other industries? I think of forestry in particular. I know when I’ve talked with representatives in there, even at the $5 million cost that this tax credit is slated for as an increase, they’ve indicated that they have $5 million programs that would have greatly enhanced their industry, and the list goes on and on. There is a wide range of industries that would say the exact same thing back that the minister just laid out in terms of rates and tax credits and competitiveness on a wide range of provinces versus them and the rest of the country. Were any of those comparisons looked at when decisions were being made in relation to creating the tax credit increase for digital media as opposed to other industries that have been making the same requests through the same channels for as many years, if not longer?

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/8/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

I guess what I’m wondering…. There are several tax credits we’ve already discussed and more to come, and I’m trying to get the lay of the land for how best groups and industry have been making their case to government, in terms of tax credits that they’re seeking. There are a lot of industries out there that don’t see themselves reflected in this budget or in Bill 5, and they’re curious. They’ve asked me, in my conversations with them since Bill 5 was tabled, as to: “What’s our best course of action?” So that’s really the spirit and the intent of some of these questions in terms of trying to figure this out. Was it presentations to the Finance Committee that drove this change to 25 percent? Was it just individual conversations with people in the sector? Was it formal lobbying by government relations people? What was the discussion that led to the decision point to go from 17½ percent to 25 percent? What was that information request input into the minister and the ministry that led to these specific changes?

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Peter Milobar

BC Liberals

5/8/2025

Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Major productions. When I read through the definition, it’s that the expenditure for production is greater than $200 million. Obviously, that’s pretty self-explanatory in terms of what the government is hoping to drive. I don’t dispute with the minister, to be clear, that the film industry is important to B.C. I’m not asking these questions because I think that the film industry should be ignored. We’re trying to quantify and understand the effectiveness of some tax decisions made by the government overall in regard to not just the film industry but all industry within British Columbia as we move through Bill 5. In terms of the major production definition and the $200 million, what is the expectation, with this change and adding in this definition, that the tax changes being provided for under this definition are meaningful enough that it would tip the scales for a decision to be made to locate a movie shoot or a production of over a $200 million spend into British Columbia?

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Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Good afternoon, Members. I shall call Committee of the Whole on Bill 5, clause 6, to order.

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Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025

Section C reports Bill 5 complete with amendment.

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Hon. Mike Farnworth

BC NDP

5/8/2025

Bill 14 — Renewable Energy Projects (Streamlined Permitting) Act (continued)

In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 14. In the Douglas Fir Room, I call continued estimates debate for the Ministry of Labour and, when they complete, for the Ministry of Children and Family Development. In the Birch Room, Section C, I call committee stage on Bill 5.

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Bill 5 — Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025 (continued)

Good morning, Members. I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 5, Budget Measures Implementation Act, 2025, to order.

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Section C reports progress on Bill 5 and requests leave to sit again.

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