The committee met at 1:09 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Before we proceed, I just want to acknowledge that the NDP caucus had an election and elected a new chair, and the new chair is sitting with us — Mr. Jagrup Brar. As a chair under their proceedings, he becomes a member of this committee.

We would like to welcome you, Jagrup. You’re all experienced. You don’t need any briefing.

J. Brar: I’m looking forward to working with you and all members here. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. That’s wonderful.

I also want to say thank you, on behalf of all us, to Bob D’Eith, who served on this committee for one year.

Thanks, Bob.

Approval of Agenda and Minutes

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Approval of the agenda. Any chan­ges to the agenda as circulated?

[1:10 p.m.]

If not, may I have a motion to approve the agenda as circulated? Moved, seconded.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Item No. 2 on your agenda is the approval of the draft minutes of the November 17, 2021, meeting of the committee.

Any changes to the minutes as they were circulated, the minutes of November 17?

Then may I have a motion to approve the minutes as circulated? Moved, seconded.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Okay, then we have item No. 3, update from the Clerk.

Clerk’s Update

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Good afternoon, Members. I know we have a fulsome agenda today. I just have two relatively brief items to mention this afternoon.

First, I will be corresponding shortly with each caucus. It’s that time again for members to sign their annual attendance declarations. Just as a reminder to members, this is a statutory process which is prescribed within our Members’ Remuneration and Pensions Act. It provides that the declarations must be signed between January 1 and 15 in the new year. The filing period will cover the fall sitting period, October 4 through November 25, 2021.

For members who are going to be in Victoria during that time period, our team in the Office of the Clerk is happy to assist in taking declarations in person. There will be an option virtually, as well, over Zoom. We look forward to hearing from each of you. Alternatively, members can also complete declarations with a commissioner for taking affidavits in their local communities. Please do not hesitate to reach out to a team member if you have any questions with respect to that process.

I also wanted to note here, on the record, that I had recently shared news of the decision of our chief human resources officer, Jamie Hanly, to step down from her position. Jamie first joined the Legislative Assembly administration in September of 2020 and was our very first CHRO for the organization. Her extensive background and senior-level experience in human resources leadership assisted the organization greatly with some very important initiatives, many of which we are going to be discussing and continuing today.

Jamie will be continuing with us on a part-time basis until the early new year, and she sends her regrets with respect to the meeting today. She’s unable to attend. She is with a family member. She and her husband are looking forward to relocating very soon.

On behalf of the committee and all Legislative Assembly employees, I wanted to extend my sincere appreciation to Jamie for her contributions over the past 16 months. We have posted the opportunity to refill her position on a permanent basis, and I look forward to keeping the Speaker apprised of our process — and the committee, in due course, as well.

Mr. Speaker: Any comments? All right.

Thank you, Kate.

Okay, let’s move on to item No. 4, the 2022-23 Legislative Assembly vote on budget submissions.

Kate, Hilary and the team, the floor is yours.

Vote 1 Budget 2022-2023

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much again, Mr. Speaker.

Good afternoon. It’s an honour to present our 2022-23 budget submission for the fiscal year ahead. The materials in front of us today are the result of many, many hours of work with respect to the efforts of Hilary Woodward and Mike Burke, joining us this afternoon, as well as the financial services team.

I wanted to acknowledge and thank them for their diligent efforts as well as all of my colleagues throughout assembly departments, who worked diligently to prepare business cases for each new FTE request and each new priority area of investment. I also wanted to thank each member of the Clerk’s leadership group team, who helped to evaluate all of those business cases and reviewed them, carefully assessing each of the investments that are recommended for your consideration today.

This year’s budget-building process has been a very robust one. We had an opportunity to present a budget submission to the subcommittee on finance and audit on December 2. The subcommittee considered and recommended the approval of this budget to your committee.

As that subcommittee meeting was held on an in-camera basis, it provided an opportunity for a discussion with respect to many of the organizational challenges and risks as well as a detailed review of the proposed capital investments — a discussion which does not typically take place on the public record, on a year-to-year basis, during this public LAMC meeting.

[1:15 p.m.]

As much as possible, we aim to protect our commercial interests by not disclosing the value of projected costs of individual capital projects on the public record prior to those procured processes. However, should members this afternoon wish to delve into the value of individual capital projects recommended for consideration today, my colleagues and I certainly welcome that discussion, but we can do so during the in-camera portion of the meeting later today.

We’ll begin with the overview of our presentation. We have an agenda slide. Hilary and I will be tag-teaming much of the material today, and it’s certainly welcome. Andrew will be covering a lot of the IT investments later on, and all colleagues are very welcome to speak to any of the information on the table today.

As noted on the agenda slide, we will open the budget presentation with a review of the current state of the Legislative Assembly, including some of the strengths, challenges, risks and strategic priorities for the organization. We also appreciate hearing from members on these topics, and we will welcome your input at that point in the presentation — or of course, throughout. Next I will provide an overview of the budget process that we undertook this year. Then I will pass the floor over to Hilary for an overview of the operating budget and then more detailed slides to follow.

We have a series of slides highlighting the FTE changes as well as new additions to the Legislative Assembly team which are proposed for the year ahead. Like the rest of our presentations, the FTE positions are presented by budget theme. There are a variety of permanent and auxiliary positions requested as well as a number of reinstatements. These are positions that had been temporarily suspended due to the pandemic during the last fiscal year. We would very much like to continue their services, primarily in the dining room and tour guide program areas.

We’re very much in your hands this afternoon with respect to how you would like to examine the details of this budget submission. We have detailed slides in all of the areas of new investment and the new FTEs as well. I’m also mindful that we will be dealing with some important topics during our in-camera discussion later this afternoon, so it’s very much in your hands as to how much detail you would like us to present and respond to as the presentation unfolds.

Please don’t hesitate to provide us with that feedback. As the presentation unfolds, we will be able to give you a high-level overview of each area of investment as well as those detailed slides, if you wish.

I will begin with some general comments, noting, of course, that this past year has been unprecedented and challenging in many ways for our province, for our parliamentary community, for our members as well as for individual employees of the Legislative Assembly administration. Our challenges include the continuing impact of COVID-19 on the well-being of employees as well as other challenges that we have encountered as we continue an ambitious agenda of administrative reforms, workplace improvements and technological renewal — all important components of the budget submission this afternoon.

The budget submission addresses our immediate needs and builds a foundation for a strong and resilient Legislative Assembly with new investments in member services, supporting a healthy workforce, ensuring an inspired workplace culture, building organizational capacity, modernizing IT infrastructure and assets, enhancing accessibility and charting a course towards the renewal of the legislative precinct as a place of pride for all British Columbians.

In many instances, the proposed investments are not one-time commitments but core areas of focus, which we have been deliberately developing over time and will continue to be the focus of our collective efforts for the years to come.

On the next slide, we have an overview of some of the strengths and challenges within our environment. We’ve prepared this slide to provide an overview to help articulate why we have prioritized certain investments in our budget 2022-23 submission.

I hope that members will recognize one of the first strengths noted there is our dedicated and professional workforce. We have a very highly engaged staff. Results of a recent engagement survey affirmed that our overall engagement was very positive, compared to other parts of the public sector. That’s good news for us, because of course, engaged employees exceed expectations and deliver incredible results. We’re very proud of the staff of this institution. They are responsive and supportive of the shifting needs of the organization, and they are key to our success.

[1:20 p.m.]

As noted on the last bullet there, I will also note that we are proud, collectively, of our commitment to public service ethics, values and accountability. Since I became Acting Clerk in November of 2018, these touchstones have become more important for staff throughout the organization, and I’m very proud to share these values with my leadership team and with all employees.

With those strengths also come some areas of challenges. On the right-hand side of the slide — these are areas where we will strive to make improvements. These challenges are also encapsulated within the organizational risk portion of our presentation, and in a few moments, we’ll be covering that.

Some of the challenges that we note are our challenges with ensuring seamless interdepartmental service processes. We recognize that there are some gaps with respect to service expectations and outcomes, and some of that can be illustrated with respect to the establishment, for example, of constituency offices and all of the many contributions that colleagues around the organization make to support constituency office success.

We also recognize the need to undertake processes to better improve our ability to anticipate and deliver on successful service outcomes for members and staff. We have an aging technological and digital infrastructure, which will remain a challenge. And while we have made some good progress, very good progress in the last year, additional improvements are required related to cybersecurity processes, practices and enhancements to our data and infrastructure.

We also recognize we have challenges in some areas with inefficient or underperforming systems and assets, many of which form the basis of some of the external reports in the IT area in the last few years. We have recognized, as well, that these challenges can create potential network vulnerabilities or system or service outages.

The challenges also extend to our physical infrastructure, the aging buildings on our grounds and their related internal components and systems. These also bring accessibility challenges in our heritage environment, which was not built to today’s inclusive standards. We are mindful of ensuring the broad accessibility also to House proceedings as well as to the physical space that we work with in here.

The final two bullets on the slide with respect to challenges are interrelated. Our challenges with planning and project management reduce the likelihood of successful project completion, and our gaps in organizational maturity and capacity are also very much on our minds. Over the past three years, the Legislative Assembly has experienced significant administrative reforms with respect to processes that support improved and effective governance, proper financial controls and oversight within our administrative structure. However, the resourcing has not kept pace with the changing expectations and commitments, which is causing service gaps in some areas.

We continue, as well, to recognize that we’re dealing with the impact of previous underinvestments which have resulted in us not having basic functions within the organization which are more typical in other public sector organizations. One example of that is the strategic planning process, which we recently embarked upon for the very first time over the last year, and we’re looking forward to launching that process fully in the new fiscal year.

Other areas of improvement include our risk management program and the completion of a robust policy framework for Legislative Assembly staff.

On the next slide, we have an overview of some of the elements of the strategic plan, which I just mentioned. These next slides are very future-oriented, providing us with an overview of our first strategic plan to date, our purpose, principles and goals. The plan is an important reflection of changes in our organizational maturity and a shift towards a planning culture.

The initial strategic plan will be, as I said, fully launched in the new fiscal year, and it aligns very much with the resourcing decisions before the committee today. We want to ensure that there’s a clear link between the projects and activities that the organization invests in with the strategic purpose, priorities and goals that we want to attain and are outlined in the plan.

Just to recap our purpose statement, why we exist: we’re here to support the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and its members by providing services and infrastructure vital to an accessible, democratic institution.

Next on the slide, we’ve got our principles. These are the principles that define who we are and what matters to us. They are service excellence, impartiality, openness, integrity and stewardship. These principles very much represent the values and commitments of the Legislative Assembly administration to the members we serve, and they are the foundation upon which we achieve our goals.

[1:25 p.m.]

The next slide describes our strategic goals, which really define, in many ways, the long-term success that we strive to achieve and describe what it means to us to fulfil our organizational purpose. Over the next three years, we will be striving to focus on these three goals.

Organizational excellence. Of course, we strive to be a leader in service excellence in support of members and their staff.

Healthy workplace commitments are central to our success, and we are committed to inspire, empower and support our employees. This goal very much links to the results of our recent employee engagement plan.

Then open access — the balance between accessibility, safety and security. We aim to provide a welcoming, safe and inclusive physical and digital environment to enable everyone to enjoy public access to the assembly, to our proceedings as well as to the precinct grounds.

The next slide outlines some of the initial priorities for the year ahead. You will note this afternoon that there are many similarities between the strategic priorities on this slide and the budget themes in the submission to follow. These strategic priorities were very much in focus when departments were assessing their resourcing requirements for the year ahead: looking at the enhancements to our organizational capacity; investing in a modern, secure and sustainable infrastructure; and promoting engagement, diversity, equity, inclusion and learning.

During the December 2 meeting we explored that in some detail, as well as the organizational risks for the institution.

I’ll just touch briefly on the risks, Hilary, on the next slide. At the December 2 meeting, as I mentioned, the subcommittee…. We had a chance to offer a fairly in-depth look at some of these organizational risks, and I’ll touch briefly on them now.

Our risk management program was also recently assessed externally by MNP, our internal auditors, and they highlighted the importance of integrating these risks in our risk management overall with the strategic and operational priorities. With that view in mind, we have aligned the budget submission with our assessment and management of key risk categories. So while we accept that risks are an essential part of doing business, we also want to ensure that we effectively manage risks to maintain members’ trust as well as public confidence in our institution.

At a high level, some of the risks outlined on the screen include the ability to meet members’ expectations and needs. This risk can be realized by us not having the capacity to deal with members’ needs or by not appropriately considering members’ requirements adequately when designing services or project planning. Our continued efforts to build planning and project management capabilities will help to address this risk by ensuring that member engagement is a standard part of the project delivery process.

The next bullet speaks to the resiliency of the IT infrastructure and digital assets. In the institution over the past year, members of this committee would have regularly heard from Andrew Spence, our chief information officer, CIO, with respect to the many investments that have helped to stabilize our network environment and IT services.

Our IT capacity has been very operationally oriented for many years, which meant that many important investments in our infrastructure and cybersecurity initiatives had been previously deferred. The underinvestment in IT infrastructure had been estimated at millions of dollars over the past ten years.

The network challenges experienced over the past year are well known to members, as well as some of the other challenges that we have with Wi-Fi connectivity, for example, on the precinct grounds. There are many important investments that Andrew will be speaking to in detail later this afternoon.

We’re also conscious, of course, in this area of risk, of risks with respect to business continuity and our ability to be prepared to respond in the event of a disaster. Work is underway to ensure we have a disaster recovery plan for our financial systems this fiscal year, and part of the request for next year is to build out disaster recovery plans for the rest of our critical business systems.

We’re also working through constituency office network replacement projects to help manage power or network outages and continue to work throughout the province on those sites. More details on that will be covered later in the discussion today.

[1:30 p.m.]

The third risk here addresses the resiliency of the assembly’s physical infrastructure and assets, so the physical infrastructure — again, our heritage buildings, including their plumbing, electrical, drainage systems, HVAC, surge control systems, connectivity and the heritage nature of the buildings themselves, which we strive to maintain as modern work and meeting spaces. There are many risks that are on our mind in that element, as well as the next bullet, which covers our people, culture and workplace.

The Legislative Assembly strives to be a model employer with an inspired workforce. While people are key to our organizational success, if we do not support a healthy work environment and culture, we risk missing out on that key opportunity to be successful.

We recognize that the pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on all organizations and employees. The pressure and uncertainty caused by changing personal or workplace pressure is not unique to our organization. Our risks in this area include not being successful in sustaining a diverse and sufficient workforce to attract skilled employees with the right competencies or to meet current or future needs.

Finally, there is a risk that the assembly is not properly equipped with adequate organizational capacity to achieve the results expected of us. Organizational capacity is always proportionate to organization risks. These investments in this category will help us better serve the institution and its members by building that important core capacity in critical areas to maintain a healthy and productive work culture and better position us as we undertake service renewal initiatives in the year ahead.

With that, that concludes an overview of the current state. I’d certainly welcome any questions or comments from members on any of those observations. We always welcome your feedback on the framework that we undertake and our thinking and planning with respect to anticipating your needs.

I’m happy to take any questions from members at this point, or we can proceed with the budget submission overview.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions or comments? No.

Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Okay, I certainly will. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The next slide outlines the process that we have undertaken with respect to building the budget for submission this afternoon. We have outlined, as I mentioned before, a linkage with the Legislative Assembly’s strategic plan that was very much in the minds of all of the departmental colleagues who considered their responsibilities, risks and opportunities for the year ahead.

Our subcommittee members provided input at the front end of the budget process. We came to the subcommittee on finance and audit in September and also checked some key assumptions and reviewed elements of our budget planning with members at that time. We’re also very grateful for representatives of each of the three caucuses to engage with us and to reflect on the strategic plan as well as the budget assumptions, recognizing any key needs that they had brought forward. Those meetings took place in November.

This year we also introduced a base budget allocation for each assembly department, as well as ensured that the business case submission requirements were thoroughly tied, as I mentioned, to the strategic plan as well as to other risk areas for the organization.

The next slide is an overview noting that the budget is aligned with the strategic goals related to organizational excellence and enhancing the overall member experience. Hilary will begin her detailed review of the budget momentarily.

I just wanted to note that regardless of where within the Vote 1 budget a dollar is invested, each of these investments is intended to better support Members of the Legislative Assembly. We very much recognize the centrality of the work that you do to the purpose, overall, of the administration. Regardless of where the investments to follow are located, be they operating or capital, they’re very much positioned to help us be successful in meeting your needs and also addressing the long-term needs of the institution.

On the next slide, we have an overview of the six budget themes which anchor the presentation this afternoon. As I mentioned earlier, these are not one-time areas of focus but core areas that we will be deliberately focusing on to further develop over time. They will be the focus of our efforts in forward-looking investments for many years to come.

The budget submission addresses our immediate challenges and builds a foundation for a Legislative Assembly with new capacity organizationally, a stronger IT infrastructure, important capital projects and a path towards the renewal of the precinct. It’s an ambitious agenda, but it continues one that we have been on for the past few years, focused on workplace improvements, administra­tive reforms and renewal.

[1:35 p.m.]

With that, I will look to Hilary to speak to the operating budget in more detail, and then I will pick up the presen­tation, in a few slides from now.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions for Kate before we move to Hilary’s presentation? None.

H. Woodward: Thank you, Kate, for the introduction. I’m going to begin now with an overview of the budget ’22-23 operating budget.

The first slide before you is the budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. The proposed ’22-23 budget provides for total operating expenses of $92 million, an increase of $5.9 million, or 6.9 percent, as compared to the prior fiscal year. The bar chart on the screen essentially shows you the budget amounts over the past five years. The red line that transitions into yellow illustrates the actual and forecasted expenditures for each of those fiscal years.

The Vote 1 budget itself is comprised of four main categories of expense, those being members services, caucus support services, the independent respectful workplace office and legislative support services. As noted on this slide, the budget composition or percentage allocation for each of these categories of expense does remain relatively unchanged from prior years, with members services and caucus support services comprising approximately 51 percent of the budget and legislative support services comprising the remaining 48 percent.

I will now walk through each of these expense categories in more detail, beginning with members services.

The budget request for members services is $44 million. That’s an increase of $3.6 million, or 8.8 percent, as compared to the prior fiscal year. Members services include several categories of expense, including members indemnities and allowances, members constituency office support, funding to support parliamentary committees operations, an interparliamentary relations budget to enable professional development opportunities for members, and the legislative internship program.

I’ll now move to the primary drivers of the $3.6 million increase. The slide before you provides you a variance analysis for members services. The primary drivers of the $3.6 million increase in members services are as follows.

I will begin with inflation-based impacts. Inflation impacts affect member compensation, the capital city living allowance and constituency office allowances. Member compensation increases are set, per legislation, based on a year-over-year change in the annual B.C. CPI as at December 31. For budget purposes, we have estimated this increase to be 4 percent. We will know the actual amount in mid- to late January 2022, once the information is released by B.C. Stats. The actual amount will be what will be incorporated into members compensation.

The next area is the capital city living allowance, and this is with the exception of grandfathered amounts. The constituency office allowance also increased by the same B.C. CPI percentage amount, as directed by LAMC. The total incremental impact to the budget for these inflationary adjustments is $1.1 million.

The next item is the constituency office network refresh. This was previously mentioned. This project was initiated in ’21-22 and will continue into the next fiscal year at an incremental cost of $910,000. This project will be discussed in further detail later in the presentation.

The next category of expense is COVID-19-related reinstatements. As Kate mentioned, the ’21-22 budget was temporarily reduced to account for expected reductions in member travel- and accommodation-related expenses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both of these categories of expense were reduced from historical levels by 20 percent. These amounts have been restored in the fiscal ’22-23 budget, and that’s an incremental cost of $840,000.

[1:40 p.m.]

The next category of expense is leases and tenant improvements. Following the 2020 provincial general election, members renegotiated existing constituency office leases or entered into new leases. The cost of constituency office leases, together with constituency office–related tenant improvements, has resulted in an increase of $800,000.

The final category is other savings. This includes operational savings and the removal of one-time costs related to the 2020 provincial general election. The total of those savings was a net reduction of $24,000.

Are there any questions on members services?

Okay. We’ll move on to the next category of expense, caucus support services. Again, this is a year-over-year change. The budget request for caucus support services is $8.5 million, an increase of $288,000, or 3.5 percent, as compared to the prior fiscal year.

This budget is calculated each year using a formula approved by LAMC in accordance with policy 7520 and policy 7525. The formula itself determines the total budget for each caucus.

For fiscal ’22-23, each caucus will receive approximately $98,000 per private member and $51,000 for each member who is part of the executive council. In addition, the Leader of the Official Opposition receives an allocation to fund a party leader’s office. The budget is based on the average of ministers’ office budgets included in ministerial budgets in the provincial estimates. The average budget increased by $107,000, in comparison to the prior fiscal year.

The office of the Leader of the Third Party receives an amount equal to 50 percent of that received by the office of the Leader of the Official Opposition. This budget increased by $53,000, as compared to the prior year.

This following slide provides a breakdown of the budget for each of the three caucuses, breaking it between the member calculation and the leaders’ offices.

Are there any questions on caucus support services?

Okay. Seeing none, I’ll turn it back over to Kate, and she will speak to the independent respectful workplace office.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Hilary.

Members will see from this slide that there is no proposed change to the resourcing to continue the work of the independent respectful workplace office. Responsibilities of the independent office include processes related to training and education, and those efforts have taken place this fall. The office is also responsible for communi­cation, awareness of the policy, mediation, informal resolution and, if required, any costs related to formal external investigation of complaints.

The budget for this year is recommended to continue at the present level as sufficient for the purposes of the office, and no change is recommended.

H. Woodward: We’ll move on now to legislative support services. Again, this is a year-over-year change.

The budget request for legislative support services is $39 million. That’s an increase of $2 million, or 5.5 percent, as compared to the prior fiscal year. Legislative support services consists of the Office of the Speaker, the Office of the Clerk, the Office of the Clerk of Committees, legislative operations, the Sergeant-at-Arms, Hansard Services and the Legislative Library. Table 1, which was distributed earlier in your packages, does provide a more detailed breakdown of all departments included in legislative support services.

The primary drivers of the $2 million increase in legislative support services are noted on the slide in front of you. I will go through a number of these categories. One thing to note: as we’ll be going into further detail on the FTE requests and the strategic priority investments in the next two sections of this presentation, I will limit my initial overview to the remaining five categories on this slide, the first one being amortization impacts.

Amortization is expected to increase by $1.3 million, as compared to the prior year budget. The assembly’s capital assets are purchased using its capital appropriation. The cost of these assets is then recorded as an operating expense, which is known as amortization, evenly over the life of the asset’s estimated useful life.

[1:45 p.m.]

When the Legislative Assembly makes large capital purchases, it also needs to estimate and budget for those ongoing operating costs. The estimated increase of the $1.3 million that you see before you is primarily due to recent large IT capital asset purchases initiated in ’21-22 and anticipated purchases based on the capital budget requests in ’22-23, which we’ll address later in this presentation.

The next category of expense is the COVID-19 reinstatements. Similar to members services, department travel budgets and training requests for ’21-22 were temporarily reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These amounts have been added back for ’22-23, for a total cost of $100,000.

I just want to note this amount does not address the add-back of the temporary reductions in FTEs, as the Clerk previously mentioned. We will address those under the FTE request section of this presentation.

The next category is the compensation review contingency. In the fiscal ’21-22 budget, there was a $500,000 contingency for a compensation review of assembly staff against market comparable data. That review is now complete, and as this funding is no longer required, we have reduced the budget by the $500,000.

Similarly, as previously mentioned in the presentation, in fiscal ’21-22, the Legislative Assembly introduced, for the first time, a 2 percent vacancy discount. The vacancy discount was introduced as a budgetary savings strategy to target hiring lag and temporarily unfilled vacancies.

We have found that the vacancy discount has proven to be a useful budgetary tool, and it’s been continued into budget ’22-23 at an increased value of 5 percent. The $800,000 savings that’s noted on the slide before you reflects the incremental 3 percent difference between the two vacancy discount rates. I also wanted to note that the vacancy discount is limited to those assembly departments with salaries and benefits.

The last category of savings is operational savings and the removal of one-time costs, this for a total savings of $1.6 million. This category of expense savings includes one-time costs not expected to continue into budget ’22-23 and year-over-year operational savings identified during the budget review. The majority of the ’21-22 one-time costs removed were in information technology, as these projects are either complete or nearing completion this fiscal year.

I will also note that the savings realized through the removal of one-time costs, in many cases, have been partially offset by new strategic priority initiatives planned for budget ’22-23, which we’ll be addressing later in this presentation.

Are there any questions on legislative support services?

Mr. Speaker: Anyone?

H. Woodward: Okay. Great. Thank you.

I’ll now turn it back to the Clerk, who will walk members through the next section of the presentation.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Hilary.

The slides to follow focus on some of the changes to the FTE complement within the Legislative Assembly administration for the year ahead. This includes both reinstated positions as well as new requests.

On the slide here, the next slide, we have a bit more detail about the linkages with the themes of the budget. What we have tried to do in this slide and some of the subsequent slides is identify where and how new positions align with some of the required areas of investment. In some cases, a position may not neatly fall simply into one of these thematic areas. For example, the newly proposed director of precinct services can address gaps in both organizational capacity as well as the need to modernize our physical infrastructure. But at a glance, you’ll see the balance of thematic needs with that slide.

This detailed slide provides us with a bit more of the background with respect to each of the new requests, including costs and whether these are permanent or auxiliary positions. I’ll note that there are 14 new permanent FTE requests noted on this slide. I’ll also highlight that eight of those FTEs are undertaking functions that are completely new to our organization. There are detailed slides to follow that provide us with a bit more context on each of those changes.

For awareness of members, some of the positions that we’ve never yet filled before at the assembly include an adviser to help with the strategic planning process; a communications officer; a manager of systems and architecture within the IT branch; an information privacy analyst with respect to privacy impact assessments, in terms of managing data carefully and appropriately; our precinct services director; and a diversity, equity and inclusion adviser. Many of these positions, which we might find in other organizations, are here for the first time for your consideration.

[1:50 p.m.]

The remaining six permanent FTEs requested and noted on this slide are building critical capacity to ensure that we have the ability to meet our professional obligations, service demands and organizational functions at a level that would be reasonably expected.

With these investments, we also address challenges whereby those in positions of senior leadership will have a better opportunity to focus on strong leadership strategy oversight, execution and the bigger picture to effectively meet the needs of the members and the organization by establishing capacity in more junior roles to support core operational functions across the Legislative Assembly administration.

We do have detailed slides on each of those requests to follow, but at a glance, this is a high-level overview of some of those new roles that are proposed for the fiscal year ahead.

On the next slide, we have details outlining the reinstatements and changes since the last year. Some members of this committee will recall that a new legal counsel position was approved earlier this fiscal year. We’ve also brought forward, in the submission today, 4.2 FTE positions, which were temporarily discontinued during the previous fiscal year. They include servers and a cook position in the Parliamentary Dining Room and 2.7 FTEs for summer guides and a Parliamentary Player position within our tour team in the parliamentary education office.

As we proceed through the operating details to follow, we’ll have an opportunity, should members wish, to delve into the details of each of those new requests.

Hilary, may I ask you to take us through an overview of the variants on the operating budget? Some of these details have already been captured, I think, in your earlier remarks on some of these areas of variance.

H. Woodward: Thank you, Kate.

As noted, the first six bars on the bar chart tie back into the budget themes that we referred to earlier. For each of those, we’ve allocated the funding assigned to those budget themes. Then we will work through each of those as we go through this section of the presentation. As Kate mentioned, the latter categories — the inflationary impacts, amortization, COVID-19 reinstatements, caucus support services, the vacancy discount and the operational savings — I have previously addressed separately through either member services or legislative support.

What this slide does, essentially, is show you the full $5.9 million. If I refer back to the original ask, the overall year-over-year increase for Vote 1 is $5.9 million. We wanted to present this to the committee based on the themed approach that we were referring to earlier. This is just a snapshot of the incremental year-over-year change by category.

Then what we will do is walk through the first six categories in more detail, with supporting information in support of new funding requests.

We’ll start with improving member services and supports.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): All right. Back to me. Thank you, Hilary.

With respect to this area, budgetary investment, we intend here to strengthen our professional workforce and build additional capacity targeted at improving members services. Through continual improvement of our existing services and new strategic investments, we aim to achieve organizational excellence, that strategic goal, with a more unified, innovative and seamless delivery of services, resources and advice.

A number of staffing positions fall within this category here. As noted on the slides that follow, I’ll make reference to a new safety investigative officer within the Sergeant-at-Arms department; the conversion of contracted service desk analysts to provide IT support, both on a permanent and auxiliary basis; as well as the addition of a seasonal auxiliary team to support a new food services outlet in the kiosk on the east side of the precinct grounds.

Some of the new programs that are highlighted in this category of investment include the member security program and a continuation of a client relationship assessment project, which is very much aimed at helping us identify performance measures for service delivery to members, driving our improvement of services.

[1:55 p.m.]

There are a number of other significant investments here related to IT renewal, which Andrew will be speaking to later today, and important opportunities to expand learning and development for the organization, including constituency office staff. We heard of that need from members during our caucus engagement meetings in November, so we want to ensure that constituency office staff are also able to benefit from the learning and development investments in the year ahead.

The next slide, I’ll note, is an overview of the member safety and security program. It’s one FTE as well as other additional investments to build capacity in this area.

Later in today’s meeting, we’ll have an opportunity to hear from our new Sergeant-at-Arms, Ray Robitaille, who will give an overview of departmental work that he is leading and some transitions in his area, and recruitment that he would like to share with you and to answer any questions that you might have. This program area is very much about providing a single point of coordinated support for members, so more of a seamless service point for members’ concerns in this area, as well as other important technological investments to enhance data analysis and identification of opportunities to strengthen our program service delivery in this area.

Our next key priority investment is a slide on constituency office network refresh. I’ll ask my colleague Andrew Spence to speak to this slide.

A. Spence: Thanks, Kate.

Good afternoon, Members. This key priority investment, summarized on slide 29, finishes the constituency office network refresh project initiated this year and is connected to two of the risks Kate presented earlier related to member services and the resiliency of our IT infrastructure. Through this project, which is expected to be a third of the way complete this fiscal, we’ll address network instability, enable better utilization of modern tools, improve security and our ability to monitor and manage the technology from a performance perspective, all while factoring in business continuity considerations.

With all the challenges over the past year, we recognize the need to strengthen business continuity considerations and ensure business interruptions are minimized.

Expect the technology to last the six to seven years, through the next election cycle, with all major hardware able to be redeployed and reused as needed.

Unless there are any questions, Hilary will talk to the next topic.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? Nope.

Back to you, Hilary.

H. Woodward: The next slide, as Kate mentioned, is for what we’re referring to as a grab-and-go. It’s what was formerly in the kiosk just by the east annex. Some members of this committee will remember that we had done a temporary parliamentary pop-up shop during COVID. That enabled some continued employment for some of both our dining room staff and our parliamentary gift shop staff during the building closure.

That was found to be quite successful and well received, so we went to the subcommittee on administration and operations regarding relaunching in a bit of a different format, more focused on the dining room services for a temporary coffee shop–like, if I can put it that way, offering. So an extension of the dining room.

Based on the discussion at the subcommittee level, we are putting that proposal forward. The total cost for staffing or for the program itself is $80,000. The offset — we’re anticipating recoveries of $30,000. We’re being quite conservative because we were only basing it on a five-month venture previously. Once we launch this, we’d be looking at a review of the operations, following its first year. It is intended to be seasonal, so it would run, typically, from February through to August using auxiliary staff.

Are there any questions?

Mr. Speaker: No.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): The next slide, focusing on building organizational capacity and maturity, supports our goal to strengthen our professional workforce and build additional capacity, again targeted at improving member service outcomes and fulfilling our commitments as outlined in the strategic plan.

[2:00 p.m.]

A series of staffing considerations are aligned in this budgetary area. I’ll begin with the first one, with respect to a new legal counsel position. This has been previously approved by the committee, and we have a new colleague already planning to join us and looking forward to providing additional legal supports to the institution and to members in the month ahead. This is a position that had been previously approved by the committee — the legal counsel position.

We’ll go to the communications officer position now. It’s a new permanent FTE proposed to perform communications functions within our organization. The planned areas of responsibility include internal communications for major organizational initiatives as well as providing support with external communications, including management of the social media accounts, preparation of media statements and engagement with any members of the media with queries pertaining to the organization.

These functions are currently very ably carried primarily by the Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services, our colleague Artour, sometimes with assistance from myself. We very much hope to have a colleague performing this role to ensure that we are better aligned at meeting expectations, with prompt communications internally and externally.

If there are any questions on that position, we’d be happy to take them, or we can move through the list.

Mr. Speaker: Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Okay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Next we have a proposal for a new FTE, a strategic planning adviser position, to ensure that we can fulfil our commitments arising from the implementation of our new strategic plan. We look forward to providing organization-wide support to departments with their development of related operational and business plans stemming from the strategic plan and ensuring that we can support an organization-wide process linking to performance in the years ahead.

This is a process that we hope to be inclusive of staff input on a regular basis as well as feedback from our governance bodies in order to ensure that it aligns with expectations and that we have meaningful reporting on those outcomes. We’re looking forward to ensuring that that business process is well established with the strategic planning adviser.

Next we have a legislative documents officer. This funding is for a proposed new permanent FTE to provide continuity of service and proper succession planning within this most important position within the Office of the Clerk. A very small team now performs a vital function with respect to supporting operations of the House.

The two members of this team, currently a journals clerk and house documents manager, also carry other important functions. It’s proposed that the interparliamentary relations work will also be a responsibility of this new position. We look forward to enhancing our procedural adaptations, as well, with the additional capacity provided herein.

An auxiliary policy analyst is also proposed for the year ahead. The assembly administration is still very much in a policy renewal phase. The work of this temporary position would be to complete some of the policy commitments that we had embarked upon but not yet fulfilled in the current year ahead.

We would also very much like to propose a formal adaptation of the members’ policy suite. We currently have a “Members’ guide to policy and resources” website, but it often lacks the clarity a formal policy manual would provide. That is one of the governance proposal reforms that is currently before the subcommittee on administration and operations, and we very much look forward to better supporting members with policy development in that sphere as well.

Next, then, we go back to Hilary with the procurement position.

H. Woodward: Great. Thank you, Kate.

This funding will provide….

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Oh, sorry. Jagrup has a question, I think.

J. Brar: I have a question about all these new positions. Do we have the space for them?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): This is a question that is very much on our minds as well. So thank you for raising that.

We’re currently undertaking a space inventory of all of the assembly administration spaces. We have a number of colleagues who are currently working on a hybrid basis — occasionally here within the precinct and working remotely as well. So we are looking to consolidate where we can and to move to providing a more modern work environment for those who are working remotely.

[2:05 p.m.]

You’re quite correct. We’ve already anticipated some changes in terms of areas within the assembly that support our work, and the traditional desk space that is occupied on an individual employee basis is likely to be refined in the year ahead.

Mr. Speaker: Anyone else?

M. Babchuk: I just have a question regarding procedure here. This has gone through, already, the subcommittee and whatnot. That’s correct, right?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): That’s correct. One change was made to a proposed expenditure by the subcommittee. But you’re quite correct, Michele. The presentation today very much aligns with that which the subcommittee has considered.

M. Babchuk: I’m wondering, moving forward. I know we’re halfway through now, so it’s probably moot. I’m just not convinced that moving forward, in this process, if we have to go through each and every FTE…. If somebody’s got a question on one, I certainly think that’s appropriate. I don’t know that…. I trust my colleagues who have already done all the work.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Of course. Yeah, thank you — absolutely.

I might propose…. We can land on the thematic slides, if members wish. But if there are questions on any particular FTE investments or program areas, we’re very much welcoming questions from committee members for you to ensure that you feel confident in the scale of this budget and that the proposed changes align with your expectations.

S. Furstenau: While we have access to this, and the subcommittee has reviewed it, I think the benefit of this process is largely for the public, who can hear the justification and understand what these proposed budgetary changes are and for us to have the opportunity to put questions on the record. I do appreciate the lengthiness of it, as it is a part of transparency and accountability.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes. I’ll also note that we will…. Once the committee has had a chance to consider and amend or approve the budget as presented today, there are motions to approve the estimates and for the Speaker to transmit them to the Minister of Finance on behalf of the committee.

Compared to many other public sector organizations, this is a conversation that typically doesn’t occur on the public record. Treasury Board will receive ministry submissions, and it will only be with the presentation of the provincial budget that that we have that level of discussion and disclosure.

My colleagues and I appreciate the dedication from all committee members today. I know it is a very lengthy process, but we certainly welcome your questions and the accountability that they bring.

H. Woodward: I’ll proceed.

The next position was a team lead, procurement services. We did have a consultant review our procurement processes, and the recommendation is to move on a gradual basis to centralize procurement. This position would help champion the operationalization of the centralized procurement project. We already have one procurement person, together with this position, and one transfer will complete that team.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Hilary.

The next thematic slide is an overview of investments supporting a healthy people and culture work environment. Our organization…. We know we want to have an organization where employees, colleagues, are inspired to contribute, innovate and collaborate using diverse skills and perspectives to deliver excellent services. The investments in this theme very much align with our strategic goal of sustaining a healthy workplace and being a model employer in the province.

The two slides that follow highlight two new investment areas. First, the slide here is an investment with respect to the establishment and implementation of our first learning and development strategy across the organization.

This also, as I mentioned earlier, will enable us to reach out to constituency office staff, with respect to their learning and development, to enable them to also benefit from centralized support for learning and development. These programs will be a key component of employee success, engagement and retention; leadership development; and succession planning.

[2:10 p.m.]

The next slide is a proposed addition of a new FTE on a permanent basis: a new diversity, equity and inclusion adviser to support the development and implementation of a DEI strategy, which is so important for our organization and others to ensure that diversity is embedded within our organizational culture. Other related outcomes with respect to this initiative will enable us to ensure that we can identify, address and prevent any bias within recruitment or other work processes and to work towards promoting a culture of inclusion, accessibility and respect throughout the organization.

Are there any questions on those areas of investment? Okay. We’ll continue, then, with the next slide, on modernizing and securing our IT infrastructure and digital assets. With these investments, we’re striving to provide a secure and robust physical and digital environment through new IT infrastructure investments and by building out our capacity to meet assembly service levels. There are a number of important staffing considerations and areas of program investment that I believe my colleague Andrew will now speak to.

A. Spence: Thanks, Kate.

Starting with the service, on slide 41, a top priority for us, we require a combination of resources and technology to ensure that we can meet the expectations for our members and all our stakeholder groups. For our service desk support, we’ve been relying on a combination of external contractors to augment existing staff. Bringing on a combination of permanent and temporary staff can not only lower some cost in this area but also ensure that the training and knowledge gets retained within the organization.

Building this internal capacity combined with replacing our service desk system are two key pillars in our strategy to both improve our direct and indirect services for our members.

Next, the precinct Wi-Fi project shows up both as a key priority investment here and, as well, within our capital budget, on slide 71. Aligned with that age infrastructure risk, the Wi-Fi technology at the precinct is near end of life. We’ve added some hardware to help improve the Wi-Fi coverage for the fall sitting, but funding for the next fiscal will replace and optimize the placement of all the end-of-life access points around the precinct and develop a plan to replace the hardware that controls the Wi-Fi network for the following year.

Kate spoke earlier, in our risk discussion, on the impacts and gaps within business continuity and disaster recovery practices. To date, we’ve focused on a number of back-up processes and recovery procedures linked to our IT road map driver. So we’ll work towards having our first deliverable in place for disaster recovery this Q4, and the funding, presented on slide 43 here, will help and secure external support to help build plans for other critical systems and processes.

Next, one strength Kate highlighted earlier, at the outset of the presentation, was the responsiveness of the organization. At the outset of the pandemic, the organization responded quickly and enabled Microsoft Teams to enable ongoing collaboration and communication for a hybrid workforce. This responsiveness had an opportunity cost of some gaps in areas such as governance and user experience. So the funding request, on slide 44, helps not only improve the overall implementation but also develop our strategy for dealing with some end-of-life technology that supports the administration’s shared file network.

Next, over the past six months, we have seen the benefits of more planning in our project execution, and we’re ensuring that we’re engaging stakeholders throughout the process. While this has been one of the principles that I’ve brought to the team, we have relied on a lot of external resources to make this happen and, slide 45, help us transition these duties internally. This funding ask will enable some prioritized support to continue at less than 20 percent intensity from this year in areas such as project management solution, architecture and business readiness.

Next, similar to the ask for service desk technicians, we need to start building more internal capacity in some key areas, one being the area of systems and architecture summarized on slide 46. Later in the presentation, we introduce a capital project to redevelop our website, which, like most of the underlying infrastructure here, is approaching end of life.

[2:15 p.m.]

We’ve identified a project lead with a lot of expertise to drive the business aspects of the website. While this role, described here, not only leads the technical aspects of the key project but also leads and architects our ongoing web development efforts to link all our information and data together. Enabling all our data to be better integrated will not only enable services to be better integrated but will be improving member experience by leveraging our data to support our performance and drive continual improvement.

Next, the second area of expertise needed is around cybersecurity, as outlined on slide 47, to lead the ongoing program development and risk management. Comparable public sector organizations have two to three staff dedicated in this area, and we anticipate balancing both strategic and operational needs through this internal capacity.

Lastly, as we evolve and become more of a digital organization, information privacy, information management and the overarching theme of information governance become more important. Slide 48 outlines our response to this need, building capacity to address the growing need to understand our privacy impacts and of leveraging more online tools, enabling the digital information office to focus more on advancing our information governance program through information classification and management initiatives.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much. Back to me, then, for the next thematic slide on enhancing digital and physical access­ibility.

An accessibility review will be underway this fiscal year to ensure that the Legislative Assembly recognizes the limitations in our physical environment around the precinct. We are going to use the results of that comprehensive review to inform capital improvements in the fiscal year ahead, as well as planning towards renewal of the precinct on a long-term planning basis.

On the digital front, the need for digital accessibility to the Legislative Assembly has never been more apparent than in what we have all lived through during the pandemic. Our external website is a critical and important forum for all British Columbians, from wherever they might be in the province, to access information and understand the day-to-day operations of the assembly. We recognize that our website needs to provide access but also to do so in a manner that is accessible to all British Columbians.

A key objective of the work that we need to do is to replace our external website to ensure that leading practices for accessibility are incorporated into the foundational design. Andrew will now provide a bit more detail on some of the digital accessibility investments in the year ahead.

A. Spence: Thanks, Kate.

Aligned with the accessibility goal, priority investments are planned to make the Legislative Assembly’s services, products and information more accessible. Slide 50 describes a pilot to integrate sign language services into our broadcast regularly, instead of upon request or for special annual broadcast events. Based upon the outcomes of this pilot, we can design ongoing services that better achieve our goal.

Then lastly, on slide 51, related to the website project foreshadowed earlier, ensuring that key staff are dedicated to the project and not only consumed by regular day-to-day operations is really necessary to enable a successful project. We need to get our project lead set up for success. We’ve recommended inclusion of a temporary publishing systems analyst to take over the standard business duties temporarily to compensate for the domino effect of dedicating other staff to leading the business components of this key organizational project.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? No.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thanks, Andrew.

The next slide highlights a number of investments with respect to maintaining, modernizing and securing our physical infrastructure. These investments to follow are all geared towards renewing our capacity, both in staffing and in critical capital investments, to ensure safe, secure and inclusive access to the assembly precinct buildings and grounds.

I mentioned, before, the aging heritage infrastructure within this building — and very much an operational focus in past years, with staff focused more, in some instances, on ensuring the maintenance of parliamentary operations and keeping the lights on, literally. Just as with areas of IT investment, we have an opportunity, with the staffing investments proposed here, as well as new and ongoing programs, to make improvements in these areas.

I’ll look to Hilary now to speak to an important role to help us secure success in this area in the year ahead.

[2:20 p.m.]

H. Woodward: Great. Thank you, Kate. I’ll be brief.

This is a new director position, entitled director of precinct services. What this will do is create an umbrella and bring legislative facilities services and capital planning back together. Some members will recall that that used to be one department. The new position is going to provide the leadership, oversight and direction for major capital projects and ongoing facilities maintenance, going forward, and will drive a lot of the initiatives that you’ll see when we reach the capital budget section.

In addition, the other position being proposed is a building mechanical maintenance worker. Again, this is to support daily maintenance and service operations. There haven’t been any increases in legislative facilities services, with respect to positions, since 2011. However, the workload has steadily increased. In addition, with the increased projects being undertaken by capital planning…. Once they are complete, the maintenance of those projects is undertaken by facilities services.

This position will provide that extra support to that department to deal with daily maintenance and service operations and, as Kate also notes, just the condition of the buildings. We typically continue to require additional support in this area.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions?

Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): This brings us to sort of a natural point in the presentation, again, to check in with members. The remaining slides address the capital investments for the year ahead. We’ve now completed the operating investments. The remaining slides focus on our capital infrastructure program for the year ahead. They include a number of seismic safety and accessibility investments, as well as a security enhancement program for the perimeter of the grounds.

I’ll ask Hilary now to lead us through the overview of our capital budget request as well as some of those specific initiatives — and Andrew as well.

H. Woodward: Thank you, Kate.

Again, we’ll be following a similar format to what was used for the operating budget walk-through. We’re beginning, of course, with the high-level overview of the past fiscal year Vote 1 capital budgets and the actual forecasted spend against those budgets.

The capital budget request for ’22-23 is $9.4 million. That’s an increase of $3.2 million, or 51 percent, over the prior year. The next slide provides a breakdown of the capital budget request by program area. The first one I will address is the major capital program, which is made up of three subprograms. The major capital program represents over 60 percent of the total capital request, followed by IT, infrastructure and minor capital programs, at approximately 14 percent each, and contingencies making up the remainder, at 11 percent.

The major capital program budget request for the fiscal year ’22-23 is $5.85 million. This amount represents an increase of $2.4 million over the prior fiscal year. As mentioned, the major capital program includes three subcategories or subprograms. The first subprogram is major capital infrastructure. This category includes projects focused on building infrastructure improvements and upgrades, including mechanical, plumbing and engineering. This category also includes work towards precinct redevelopment, such as the armoury concept plan.

The second subcategory — seismic upgrade, life safety and accessibility program — includes those projects targeted at prioritized seismic upgrades and life safety work, as directed by the Legislative Assembly seismic action plan, and ongoing projects to improve accessibility both within the precinct buildings and the precinct grounds.

The third subprogram, the security enhancement program, includes projects to improve security and safety on the precinct grounds.

As the projects identified under the major capital program are multi-year projects spanning several fiscal years, some projects will reach completion or construction phase in 2022-23 while others will be in the design phase.

I wanted to also note that there are no new projects planned for the fiscal year 2022. They are essentially moving into different phases. They were in design in the current year and will move into construction. As noted, with a number moving to construction or construction-ready stage in fiscal ’22-23, those include the fire exit safety upgrade, the perimeter and lower-level window security project and the library repointing project.

[2:25 p.m.]

I’d like to point out to the committee that construction costs do represent the most expensive phase of any of the projects. We do anticipate ongoing inflationary and possible supply shortages, given current world events. At an estimated budget of $4.3 million, these three projects themselves represent almost 75 percent of the total major capital program request of $5.85 million.

The next slides, 60 through 69, provide additional details on each of the ’22-23 projects in the program area. I’m thinking, in the sense of time and some of the comments, if people had any specific questions on any of these projects, I’d be happy to answer them.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? No.

Continue.

H. Woodward: Okay. So we will move on now to modernizing and securing IT infrastructure and digital assets.

The capital funding request done in this area is a total request of $1.3 million. On slide 69, the proposed projects are listed. You can also see, from the pie chart to the left of the screen, the differentiation between life-cycle replacement and new systems and specialized equipment.

I’ll now turn it over to Andrew, our CIO, to speak to any questions you may have on the projects identified.

A. Spence: Thanks, Hilary.

I’d just say that about three-quarters of the program is focused on the life-cycle replacement investments, many of which we’ve already introduced within the modernizing and security of IT infrastructure and digital assets theme. The only project that I’ll bring your attention to is the redevelopment of our website, on slide 72. Subject to funding approval, internal planning and stakeholder engagement will commence in Q4. We’ve already started down the path on governance and objective setting there.

Slides 73 and 74 just provide funding to implement the standardized and predictable technology life-cycle replacement programs.

I’m happy to answer any questions you may have on any of these capital projects.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None.

H. Woodward: Moving on to slide 75, this is the minor capital program. It represents approximately 14 percent of the total capital budget. It includes the purchase of computer hardware, software, office furniture and equipment and specialized equipment for both new investments and life-cycle replacements at the Legislative Assembly.

There are 37 minor capital requests, spanning a total of six departments. In addition, the caucus capital funding is formula-driven and also included in the minor capital program. The pie chart to the left on the screen identifies the departments, including caucus, and the allocation by cost. The total cost for the minor capital requests for ’22-23 is $1.4 million, which is approximately $400,000 higher than the prior fiscal year.

Mr. Speaker: No questions?

Continue.

H. Woodward: Then the final area for the capital budget is the capital contingency budget request for fiscal year ’22-23. The request is for $1 million. That’s $500,000 higher than the prior fiscal year. This budget provides for unplanned or unanticipated capital requests that may arise throughout the fiscal year.

Historically, the Legislative Assembly has held a $500,000 capital contingency reserve in its annual budget. The additional $500,000 requested for the upcoming fiscal year is to support continued work on the enterprise resource planning initiative, which is reviewing the reliability and sustainability of key business processes and supports in the areas of finance, payroll and human resources, and to look at options for consideration and implementation in the upcoming year.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions?

S. Furstenau: Not specifically to the capital but overall, particularly on the operational. When we look at the new FTEs, almost all of which are permanent, is there a mechanism that we could have as we go into the budget process next year to get some reporting out on whether the goals and outcomes have been achieved that were anticipated with the creation of these new positions? Even just a reflection after a year?

[2:30 p.m.]

These are a lot of new positions. I recognize there are enormous stresses, pressures and demands on all of these departments and a lot that’s needing to be done. But I think it would be really helpful for us, as a committee, to have that reporting out, especially after such a significant increase in full-time positions.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much for that question. We would be pleased to provide the committee with a regular reporting out. A lot of the goals that we’ve outlined today, as we’ve mentioned, will be a long-term focus for us, so we will be working towards improvement in terms of our effectiveness and impact in the years ahead.

In alignment with the strategic planning process that we’ve outlined, we anticipate returning to the committee with confirmation, now, of the specific actions and plans for the fiscal year ahead. We’d be very happy to receive your feedback on some of the goals for the year ahead as well as the measures and targets that we will bring forward.

H. Woodward: The next slide is on implementation challenges. With any budget request, and tying with the earlier comment, it is important to identify potential implementation challenges that could impact on the planned delivery of our strategic priorities, activities and investments, as outlined in this budget request.

This particular slide does address some of the more notable possible implementation challenges that we’ve identified with respect to the upcoming budget, together with our proposed mitigation plan to reduce those risks.

As you can see, we have four categories. The first in the possible challenges: underspend. The Legislative Assembly does have a history of underspend, aside from this current fiscal year. We will be mitigating that by ensuring that we’re doing enhanced monthly monitoring of departmental projections to ensure that all departments are staying on track with their budget allocations.

Again, the budget strategy tool of the vacancy discount, the application of an increased vacancy discount…. With the increased addition of the FTEs, we’ve also increased that from 2 percent to 5 percent.

Capacity. Again, the current job market is very tight and could lead to some recruitment and retention challenges. Again, some of that will be addressed through the vacancy discount, to deal with hiring lag. Also, we want to ensure that we have a detailed recruitment plan and rollout so we are efficient in our hiring and attracting employees to this organization through our healthy workplace initiatives.

The next category we have identified is inflationary impacts and exchange rates. Inflation exchange rates are unpredictable and can directly impact budget estimates. When we build our budgets, particularly on the capital construction side, we do include cost estimate buffers and contingencies. We also will look to flexibility in timing purchases, where feasible, or having project substitution. That would, of course, come back to this committee, should we proceed with that.

Then, finally, other unknown factors — unpredictable changes in project scope or schedule due to uncontrollable factors such as supply chain, vendor availability. We also have some limited windows in terms of when we can do, particularly, construction work. Again, our mitigation factors are ensuring that we have flexibility in our project schedules, and project substitution, where feasible.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Hilary. Thank you, Andrew.

Any questions on the presentation?

All right. Thank you so much for a very thorough and detailed presentation.

Okay. If there is no more further discussion or questions, may I have the first motion outlined in the recommendation from the subcommittee, please?

Somebody should read the motion.

G. Begg: I will. I move:

[That the estimates of expenditure for fiscal year 2022-23 for the Legislative Assembly for Vote 1 be approved, as presented.]

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: The second motion, please.

M. Babchuk: I move:

[That the Speaker transmit the estimates of expenditure for fiscal year 2022-23 for the Legislative Assembly for Vote 1, as presented, to the Minister of Finance on behalf of the Committee.]

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Now we have taken care of both motions.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, that’s perfect, sir.

Personnel and Security Matters

Mr. Speaker: Okay. So now we have to discuss a few other security items and personnel items. May I have a motion to proceed in camera to consider personnel and security matters, please?

It has been moved, seconded.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 2:35 p.m. to 3:57 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: All right. We are now in public session.

Is there any other business that we need to deal with?

If not, a motion to adjourn.

It has been moved and has been seconded.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:57 p.m.