Transport Committee on Nov. 27th, 2023

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Has it happened in the past? Is this something that has happened that requires a legislative amendment, or is it a looking-ahead, “what if” type of provision? Do you know of any examples in which both the board chair and the vice-chair have been unable to act?

[Sonya Read]

I'm not aware of any specific examples, so it is looking ahead, but we can go back to see if there's anything specific that has happened previously. It was identified as a gap in the context of our review of the legislation.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Is this an issue only because the minister, in proposed section 17, would be given the authority to appoint that chair? If the board were just operating without the minister's having power over the chair, I assume they would vote and simply have an acting chair as a resolution of the board, but because the minister has given himself the authority in proposed section 17, that's not possible.

Is that why this is necessary at all, because the minister would now be appointing the board chair?

[Sonya Read]

I think that would be part of it. Currently it is the board that appoints the chair, under the existing section 17 of the act. If the minister is responsible for appointing the chair, it would be necessary to have a provision to allow the board to appoint a chair on an interim basis to ensure that there is no gap.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I see.

It would be my understanding, and again, I would seek clarification from legislative counsel, that if the entire clause 105 is deleted, what would happen would be the status quo, which is that the board appoints its own chair from amongst its members, who have been appointed by the minister and others. In the event of an incapacity of both the chair and the vice-chair, the board would simply exercise its authority to appoint another chair. This provision, proposed section 17.1, is necessary only if the minister is given the power to appoint the board chair, which we don't think the minister should have.

I understand what Mr. Barsalou-Duval is doing. He wants to put some limits on the minister's power there. I think the best way to limit the minister's power and allow the board to operate at arm's length is simply to delete the entirety of clause 105, which would then take away the minister's power to appoint the board chair. It would also give the board back the power to act in the best interest of the board in the case of the incapacity of both the chair and the vice-chair.

If it's as good as we can get, I think we would support that. However, I think deleting the entire clause achieves the status quo better, giving control of their operations back to the board without the minister's interference in the board chair's selection process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

I'll turn it over to Mr. Bachrach.

He will be followed by Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I had the same question. If we just scrap this clause from the bill, we go back to the status quo, which seemed to be working in terms of chair selection.

That's my first question: Is that indeed the case?

I think that might be the same question that Mr. Strahl was just asking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

For clarification for the legislative clerks, what was the question?

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If we were to vote down this clause, we would go back to the status quo that existed with regard to the selection of a chair, whereby the port authority boards themselves select a chair from within their ranks. If the chair and the vice-chair positions became vacant, they would simply reiterate that process and select another member from their ranks to serve as chair. That seemed to be working.

The challenge I have here is that we didn't hear any testimony that supported this clause in the bill. Perhaps the witnesses could....

We've referenced the ports modernization review before. I'm curious as to whether there were any participants in that review who called for this specific change to empower the minister to appoint the chairs of port authority boards. Certainly, in witness testimony that we heard before the committee, there were several witnesses who said they didn't like this idea, but we didn't hear from any who supported the government's direction on this.

I'm curious as to whether there's been any supporting testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

I'm going to first turn it over to the witnesses to confirm the question you had and whether anybody wants to comment on that.

[Sonya Read]

To clarify, Mr. Chair, the question is regarding proposed section 17.1 being necessary if section 17 is removed. Is that the question?

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's correct. If clause 105 is—

[Sonya Read]

Proposed section 17.1 would not be necessary if section 17 is removed. That is my understanding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay.

Then it was with regard to witness testimony reiterating the importance or the need or being in favour of providing the government with—

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If I could clarify, we heard the witness testimony, so I'm not expecting officials to characterize it. It was more around the ports modernization review and whether this was one of the recommendations coming out of the consultations with stakeholders in that process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Ms. Read.

[Sonya Read]

It was not raised by external stakeholders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I will add one last thing on the same topic.

This amendment is the one the clerk proposed to us in order to achieve our objective, which is to take away the minister's power to appoint chairpersons of the boards of directors.

I will go with what the people around the table want, but, whether we adopt my amendment or the Conservatives' amendment, which simply seeks to strike clause 105 from the bill, including proposed section 17.1, we will achieve exactly the same result. My amendment seeks to delete section 17, and section 17.1 merely formalizes the process that leads to the appointment of an interim chairperson, which would no longer require consultation with the minister, even if the interim chairperson's term exceeded 90 days.

Since we would achieve the same result in either case, I will vote for my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Mr. Strahl is next.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

In the same vein as what I think I heard Mr. Barsalou-Duval say, I would be happy to withdraw CPC-5, knowing that negativing clause 105 would achieve the same result.

Knowing now what we've heard on the kinds of partitions that save one and not the other, deleting the entire clause actually achieves both things, which is to remove the minister's power to select the chair, which we heard again and again was not in the best interest of the port and makes this “Chairperson—absence or incapacity” in proposed section 17.1 unnecessary. That would be upcoming. We would simply, having heard what we heard from the witnesses, believe that the best thing we can do is to delete this clause in its entirety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

I have Ms. Murray.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I just want to introduce the perspective of why having the power to appoint the chair may be considered in the first place, as someone who is a Vancouverite. We have the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, with basically most of the municipalities in greater Vancouver being ones that have some aspect of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.

MP Strahl just said that having the minister appoint the chair is not in the best interest of the port, and I can appreciate that. However, there are communities all interwoven and around the elements of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority that have very strong community perspectives. It may be about conservation of a certain area that the port would like to have as a gravel dump reserve, so it may be about developments that are not in line with the local communities.

My experience—and those I've heard about from other caucus members—is that there's a sense of powerlessness among the municipalities, that the port can overrule and override their interests. If there were some way to.... I mean, we may make a decision as a committee to remove the power to name a chair, but is there a way we can reflect the communities in which the ports are embedded and the fact that the ports, with noise, lights, development, emissions and so on, as well as development of sensitive lands, do affect municipalities that don't necessarily have much of a say in the board?

It's not that this was put in absent of having a rationale to make some improvements for the larger good. It was about addressing an issue that as caucus members—and I won't speak for other ports, but certainly for Port Vancouver Fraser—we've heard about from our municipalities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Ms. Murray.

Go ahead, Mr. Strahl.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

To that point—and again, I know this testimony has happened over time and Ms. Murray has joined us recently, which is great—I think there are other provisions in the bill that members can point to to show an increased community engagement. Some of them, I think, are a little onerous in some situations for some ports, but there are the advisory committees. There are things like that.

Also, just to be clear, the majority of the appointments are made by a minister. If the minister needs to do a better job of appointing people who are more responsive to local needs, that discussion can happen, but the issue we've heard again and again is that in appointing the chair from amongst that group, when the minister appoints the chair, it adds a layer of politicization that is unhelpful and starts to cloud the arm's-length nature of that board. We heard it from every witness who was asked and had a concern about this.

To Ms. Murray's point, ports can be responsive in other ways, but using this to say that the chairperson's being appointed by the minister is somehow going to provide greater accountability to local municipalities.... We didn't hear that.

In fact, we heard testimony to the contrary. I have rarely seen such a unanimous condemnation of a clause. The minister himself said there had been no case in which the board was acting in opposition to the government, but it could happen in the future. I think we definitely need to delete this clause. If there are problems with the community consultation elsewhere, they can be addressed elsewhere, but not in this clause.