 And thank you for joining us today. A reminder to media on the line, please press star one to enter the queue, you will be limited to one question and one follow-up. With that, I will hand it over to Minister of Finance, Selina Robinson. Thank you very much and good morning everyone. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we here are on the territory of the Lekwungen peoples, the Songhees, and Esquimalt nations. Last week, I joined my colleagues to talk more about building back better from recent climate-related disasters and actions that we are taking to make sure that people and communities throughout British Columbia are protected from future events. Today, we are here to talk about our commitment to fight climate change. Three years ago, our government introduced CleanBC, the most progressive climate plan in North America. Budget 2022 builds on the $2.3 billion in funding allocated for CleanBC to date and invest even more in the fight against climate change. Now, some perhaps would have chosen to roll back investments given everything we have all seen through this pandemic, but we are making a clear choice, a choice to strengthen our investments and build back better. These investments are about all of us, connecting our health and our well-being with the health and well-being of our environment. In budget 2022, we are accelerating actions to help meet the province's greenhouse gas emissions targets. And with these actions, continue, continue to build a strong, sustainable economy. The opportunities are tremendous. And even in the face of climate-related disasters that we have been through recently, these are exciting opportunities. And with that, I would like to invite Minister George Heyman, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy to join us with more details. Thank you very much, Minister Robinson. And I want to acknowledge with gratitude that I'm joining you today from the traditional territory of the Laquungen speaking peoples, the Esquimalt, and Songhees First Nations. Every British Columbian who went through the events of the last 12 months, whether it was the heat dome, the wildfires, the flooding, the unpredictable weather events, knows that British Columbia has joined those jurisdictions around the world that are on the front line of the climate crisis and are feeling the impacts in very profound ways. That's why today it's such a pleasure and it's also so important to announce that British Columbia once again is making record investments through budget 2022 and our Clean BC climate action program to both fight climate change, to prepare for climate change, to fight climate change, to fight climate change, to fight climate change, to fight climate change, to prepare British Columbians and our communities for the impacts of climate change and to build a cleaner, stronger economy for everyone. Today's release of a new UN climate report simply underscores the challenges ahead of everyone around the globe. Challenges we know we have to meet. In particular, I was struck by the comments that we not only needed to fight climate change and adapt to it, but we needed to understand the professional impact that climate change is having today on the mental health of our citizens and in particular of young people who are living with uncertainty. We need to invest in security, in livability, and in a sustainable future. That's why Clean BC I think is showing a way forward and offering real solutions. Not just talk, but real solutions to the climate change. We need to make sure that we have a sustainable future. But real solutions backed up by significant budgetary investments to reduce emissions across our communities, across where we live, and across our transportation systems. We need to continue to have one of the strongest plans, climate plans, if not the strongest climate plan in North America. And of course, our programs have received international recognition. One of the programs I will speak about later that supports our industry to decarbonize was recognized in Glasgow as an award-winning most creative climate solution program. The plan in our road map to 2030 accelerates many of the actions we already had underway and it expands the number of them. And we will continue to do that. We will continue to look at the opportunities for making our programs better, for moving up timelines as we have for instance in zero-emission vehicles in order to continue to reduce emissions. And to do that, we are investing $1.2 billion in new funding across all sectors building on the $2.3 billion that have already been budgeted in the past to implement our clean BC programs. That includes investments in transportation, in new technologies and particularly to support communities around British Columbia. We are launching a new local government climate action program that is designed to help communities fight climate change, reduce their emissions and make their communities both healthier and stronger right across BC. We designed the program with input from representatives on the climate solutions council from both urban and interior municipalities as well as from the Union of BC municipalities. And I know in a moment Minister Cullen will talk about this program in more detail. But in addition to that program, budget 2022 also means hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments will spur clean technology, innovation and jobs in British Columbia to the clean BC program for industry. The budget will support people as they make the switch that they have said overwhelmingly they want to make to clean transportation to electric vehicles. There is record funding for more rebates to make this switch more affordable. Nearly $250 million through our low carbon fuel standard credits. We have already seen people in the area respond in record numbers. We have the highest uptake of zero emission vehicles per capita across North America. And three years ago when we set our target for 2025 we didn't expect that we would blow past that target in 2021. We are already at 13% when our target was 10 and that led us to update our target to ensure that we will achieve 90% zero emission vehicles for all new car sales by 2030 and 100% by 2035. We are also making a range of other clean options more affordable through tax supports. We are removing the provincial sales tax on electric vehicle sales of used electric vehicles. And we are doing the same for the purchase of new heat pumps. And we will continue to support low and moderate income people with $120 million added to carbon tax relief through the climate action tax credit for low and moderate income people. One of the hallmarks of our clean BC plan and our fight against climate change is to ensure that the plan remains focused on people that we are building opportunities for people in a new clean economy and addressing their fears for the future and their concerns about affordability today. We are working with indigenous communities. This budget also invests in the indigenous forest bioeconomy program. Let me give you one example. A little over a decade ago I was a guest of the get-go people in Hartley Bay and they were celebrating around that period of time transferring off diesel generated electricity to small local hydro that they had built. Today in this remote community with leadership from Krista who is on the screen behind me who has served as the health director for the get-go nations health department for four years the entire community 52 homes have electric heat pumps installed. They were installed with support from the clean BC indigenous community and they have a heat pump program and not only are there electricity bills going down as they will for everyone who adopts heat pumps they also double as air conditioners to ensure that we can live in safety and comfort if we experience future events like last summer's heat dome. This is what kept people safe in Hartley Bay during last summer's heat wave and it's just one example of the kind of supports we are offering to the indigenous people through clean BC as we address the climate crisis moving forward. There are many more road map actions that need to be implemented in a short time period. I continue to work with staff and the climate action secretariat to review our programs to improve them, ensure they are effective and ensure they are cost efficient for British Columbians. All of this requires all of us working together to make sure that the climate action secretariat does across all sectors. I would now like to pass it over to Minister Nathan Cullen to talk about our efforts to support and work with local governments and communities as we implement clean BC. Thank you, Minister Heyman. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Good morning, everyone. My name is Nathan Cullen. I'm the MLA from Stakeen. I would also like to acknowledge that I'm so thrilled to be here for this event. This is my first media event as the new Minister of Municipal Affairs and what an excellent subject to be talking about fighting the climate crisis with such incredible partners and ministers of environment and finance. From wildfires to extreme heat to flooding and mudslides, this place we call home has never been at greater risk from the effects of climate change. The communities were hit with multiple devastating weather events. Local governments were on the front lines providing critical services to people where they needed them most. Local governments have always been there for British Columbians when it comes to driving action for climate change. That's why our government is going to be there for them. 187 local governments signed on to the climate action charter and today we are investing in cleaner energy, sustainable infrastructure and reducing pollution. We are all inspired by the leadership local governments have shown in protecting people and communities from climate change and the steps they continue to take. Like the city of Kamloops who is looking to reduce emissions by 80% while also increasing their resilience to the impacts of climate change or like the town of Golden who is committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2050. My communities across the northwest we have seen communities like Smithers and terrorists and Haida Gwai take on huge efforts in their infrastructure and their programming to make sure they are playing their part. I know that many local governments have big ambitions to fight climate change and the province is here to support those goals and to in fact amplify their work as our local partners. Because we know that the only way we will reach our climate goals is if we work together. We have heard the call from local governments for a flexible predictable funding program to help them achieve their climate goals in budget 2022 delivers on those calls. $76 million over three years for local governments to plan and implement projects that support CleanBC Roadmap the climate preparedness and adaptation strategy and their local climate action objectives. This program was developed with input from the Climate Solutions Council including representatives from rural and urban regions of the province and the UBCM and we are grateful for their help. My colleague Minister Hamid and I look forward to sharing more details about the program in coming weeks but this is just one more example of the actions we are taking to support local governments as they face climate change objectives of tomorrow. We have revitalized the Green Community and we have made a partnership between the UBC municipalities and the province to support the progress local governments have made towards reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and creating more complete, compact and energy efficient communities. Through this committee ministry and local government staff are working together on a climate program that will provide communities with supports to make better land use decisions. We will also have more to say about this in the coming months. This past year has been incredibly challenging for many British Columbians and local leaders have been on the front lines of keeping people and communities safe from extreme weather and natural disaster. It's clear that many of these communities still need financial support to wholly recover from the impacts and we know it's critical that infrastructure is built back to a more resilient standard. My colleagues and I across government continue to work with all orders of government to support recovery and respond to the financial needs of communities as they work to rebuild public infrastructure that people rely on. I'll be sharing more of this as well in the future. I'd now like to turn the attention over to our friend from Kamloops, Councillor Arjun Singh, to say a few words. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Cullen. I also want to acknowledge that I'm coming to you today. I'm a senior traditional ancestral equipment territory in the city of Kamloops. I'm a councillor in Kamloops and also a director of Latham's Nicola Regional District. I should probably take this opportunity to welcome Minister Cullen to a really important job in provincial government. I've got big footsteps to fill with Minister Osborn and before Minister Robinson in the role. Welcome, Minister Cullen, forward to many opportunities discussed with you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Cullen. Thank you, Minister Osborn. I did have a good chance to talk this morning with our UBCM President. I'm a life member of UBCM and past President of UBCM, but our current President, Lory Ann Ruhnberg from Cornell. And the UBCM is also very excited by this and they'll be talking more about that as the days and weeks go by for sure. None of this climate work is particularly easy, but it's a massive opportunity to work together across governments, across political parties, a whole society approach. And I would note that I think there's an increasing ambition on the part of local governments across the province to really lean into this work as it was obviously at the province and at the federal level. With Kalmloops, we did this last year actually on the hottest day in recorded history. In Kalmloops, the city council in Kalmloops unanimously approved a climate action plan that is very ambitious that actually does try and meet the goals set out in Paris and do our part to meet those goals locally in our community. And we are looking at things that are all around the community, looking at things around transportation and electric vehicles, just bicycles, walking, active transportation and that way, looking at our land use patterns, looking at building retrofits and new buildings and trying to meet all the step-code goals that we all have and also retrofitting existing building stock is going to be a big opportunity and a big challenge. So very obviously this money that our provincial colleagues have made available is going to be extremely useful I think to us. Obviously it's not more designed, but I think the actual idea that's three times the amount of what the old funding was is very exciting for Kalmloops and for our region. And one of the things that I've always said to myself is that plans are one thing. You have to start investing in those plans and putting them in budgets within the city of Kalmloops and across the government, across BC, we're all going through our budgeting and we're all going to be eventually in the city of Kalmloops looking at putting a budget line in for climate, which we've never done before. So it's a pretty exciting time to be working with our provincial colleagues, our federal colleagues to make sure that we're all meeting this moment and coming from a region of the province that has been devastated by extreme weather, the mitigation aspects on all these things is so very important to us and we feel it very viscerally in terms of the work that we have to do. So we're excited for this new pocket of money. We were obviously worried when it went away and I think we'll appreciate the opportunity for the province to listen to local governments now and going forward obviously on these important files. So I do say I promise the Climate Solutions Council a very happy flat appointment and I'm thankful for the work that we've done there with the minister and the ministry of environment and climate change to help shape this funding stream. So thanks again I'm turning it back over to Minister Robinson and a dear friend of mine and who we miss in municipal affairs but it's been a great job in finance. Minister, over to you. Thank you, Arjun, and I miss you too. So I would now like to introduce Neil Johnston, the incoming CEO of the Fraser Academy at K-12 school which specializes in education for learners with dyslexia. The Academy was one of the first schools in BC to purchase an electric school bus under the Clean BC Go Electric program. Neil joins us from Vancouver. Neil? Minister, I'm delighted to be here today on behalf of Fraser Academy. Fraser Academy benefited from the specialty use vehicle incentive program in 2021. We are very proud to receive this grant rebate. As a non-profit in charity it was very much key in helping us afford a new electric bus for students and to continue our efforts to become a greener and more responsible organization. Fraser Academy knows it has to play an active part in addressing climate change. Purchasing this electric bus with the support of the Clean BC programs was so important for our entire community. It helped us introduce our first electric bus to our fleet which may well be the first electric school bus in the province. We were actually able to proudly purchase it from a local company called Green Power Motor Company who is also leading the way in BC and helping organizations reduce their carbon footprint. We know that today's youth are rightly holding government and organizations more responsible for addressing climate change. Our students were thrilled, absolutely thrilled actually to see us take this further action. This also showed to our staff and community that we are increasing our commitment to be a more environmentally conscious organization. Thank you again for the opportunity to apply to Clean BC programs. 100% they incentivize and help influence our commitment to be greener and more responsible. We had hoped to benefit from future programs as we continue these efforts and we certainly applaud today's announcement by the Prime Ministers. Thank you for your leadership as BC importantly continues to address climate change. Thank you Minister. Thank you Neil. Thank you for sharing the perspective of students and their passion for knowing that as a government and as all orders of government that we're working hard to make sure that the planet that we call home is there for future generations. So investing in the low carbon economy supporting cleaner transportation and energy efficient buildings, initiatives to decarbonize and reduce emissions and reduce emissions and reduce emissions. So we are working together to support the next generation of communities innovative programs that reuse and collect plastic materials from the existing waste stream giving BC a chance to advance a circular economy and fundamentally change for the better. Moving forward with clean tech innovation and partnership opportunities. This is the clean BC so that we can all have a stronger future. Thank you very much for joining us and I'm here to help coordinate responses to any questions that you may have. Thank you very much. A reminder to media on the line, please press star one to enter the queue. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up. Our first question today comes from Bell Puree, CBC. Hi there. My question please is for Minister Heyman. I know we have a lot of money to reduce pollution, emissions, environmental goals. But the inter-government panel on climate change report has been released and it says of course that Canada can expect heavy rainfall and flooding to continue like we had in the last year. So things have already happened in BC. How is the government preparing to manage more of these disasters in years ahead? Minister Heyman? Thank you very much, Bell, for the question. We are doing a number of things. In the last fiscal year, we phase one of our climate preparedness and adaptation strategy while we put out the more complete phase two of the strategy for public comment. We are very, very close to announcing the implementation of a range of measures from phase two of that program, whether it's flood plain or flooding, whether it is support for communities and the province to do climate monitoring and modeling and a number of locations around the province. We have seen other initiatives through a year round wildfire service to work on mitigating the risk of wildfires. We are helping communities that were devastated by the atmospheric river flooding to rebuild, but we are not stopping there. The $83 million in this year's budget, budget 2022 for the climate preparedness and adaptation strategy will help us determine where communities are at greatest risk and what we need to do to lower that risk and ensure that people remain safe in the impacts that we will see from climate change in the future. Bell, do you have a follow-up? No, I'm fine. Thank you. Thank you. We go to Lisa. City news. Taking a different topic here and I'm hoping Minister Robinson you might be able to help me out with some of these. Looking at the Ukraine in Russia and BC's investments in Russian backed or Russian owned entities I'm wondering what BC can do what the province is considering doing as far as the best thing from those how soon that could happen and what would be the future process be used for any entities owned here or properties owned here that might be owned by someone who is in Russia and backing this I guess ultimately backing Russia and backing this invasion on Ukraine. Thanks, Lisa, for the question. You have likely already heard that we have taken Russian spirits and beers out of our liquor stores. We took last week. I've already asked staff to take a look at the landowner transparency act to see what information we have. The RCMP have full access to that and we're working in coordination with the federal government making sure we're continuing to do our part as British Columbians to make it really clear about this egregious act being taken by Russia on Ukraine is not acceptable and we're continuing to explore the leadership of the federal government to deliver our commitment to support the people of Ukraine. Lisa, do you have a follow-up? I'm asking on behalf of a colleague who is working on this story today realtor, real estate industry on the sale side of things is frustrated with the cooling off period that the province has said it's going to harm their ultimately harm them and their ability to do so. I'm wondering what your response is to that? We've been saying all along that when you have an overheated market we're seeing people really challenged and really stressed with having to make decisions on the spot without getting inspection and making sure the financing is in order and that's creating real challenges for people who are making probably the largest financial decision of their lives and that's why we said we would bring in cooling off period and we asked the BCFSA to do the consultation with all components with all stakeholders in the real estate industry understanding what's the best way to move forward on this and I know that I've certainly heard from the realtors and their concerns but that's why we asked the BCFSA to do the research to provide us with an analysis about how to best move forward. For the next question we go to Richard Zussman, global news. The next question is from the specific minister on Lisa's first question. Should the BC investment management corporation divest more than $450 million in investments in Russian government and Russian owned companies? BC investment management corporation is separate from government because of the risk of conflict of interest and so we don't direct them and so I think it's really up to them to make decisions on behalf of the folks that invest with them. Richard, do you have a follow-up? Considering the minister of finances whole with BC IMC you could no doubt provide some overall guidance. Is the position of your government one that the major pension investment fund should or should not be investing in these major Russian companies? Again, it is arms length and it's completely separate for good reason so that there is no conflict of interest and so they do make their decisions independent of government influence. For the next question we go to Dave Branko, CKPG radio. Good morning. For Minister Heyman please. Regarding the BC wildfires what role does the BC wildfire staff as a year round service play as a way to fight climate change? Thank you very much. I think the purpose of establishing the BC wildfire service as a year round service was partly in recognition of both the earlier and the longer fire seasons as well as the intensity but it was also a recognition that those professionals who fight wildfires if we want to keep the most skilled and experienced wildfire fighters as part of the wildfire service they need some security of income and also we want to and we need to take advantage of their knowledge about fire behavior to help us predict and take action to mitigate the risks whether it's working with indigenous people on traditional cultural prescribed burning the history that BC has had of our own prescribed burning programs we've had in the past to reduce interface fuels there are a range of measures that the wildfire service will be I'm sure undertaking the detail of course you'd have to get from the minister for us but this is an important shift in British Columbia's approach to both wildfires and ensuring that we knit together the measures to protect British Colombians from the impacts of climate change with those professionals . Thank you very much. We have time for one more question we'll go to business in Vancouver. A lot of what you spoke about today is essentially a recap of what was in the provincial budget last week. I presume what's really new here is this new fund for local government is it 76 million? I was just wondering is that the main thing that's new here and also just maybe hoping to get some explanation of what sort of initiative that funding might fund at the local level? Thanks for the question. A couple of differences and they're significant. One is significantly more dollars because we realize the challenges of this scale and grade and also a deepening of the partnership with our local municipalities and modern treaty nations as the ones on the front lines will be able to implement this is the co-development of making the program as we talked about flexible and also something that people can rely on when councils and mayors, modern treaty nations are making their plans knowing that they have something in place that they can count on and that's the kind of flexibility that they need to make the programs work for their communities and the best way to fight the climate crisis make their communities more resilient for the number of the things that we've talked about that's what's innovative in this and it's a marked improvement as the president of UBCM and others have said over what was previously done in support of communities fighting the climate crisis Wilson, did you have a follow-up? Okay, thank you. Thank you for being available and joining us.