Finance and Government Services - Number 9 - Wednesday, October 10, 2001

2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		273
	K. Parkinson	273
	M. Walden	275
	P. Bech	277
	M. Walters	279
	S. Davidson	281
	G. Hunter	283
	M. Davison	286
	G. Ringdal	288
	C. Peck	290
	W. Peppard	292
	D. Bell	295
	G. Myre	299
	Y. Ortiz	301
	L. Kriwoken	301
	C. Sinclair	302
	J. Samra-Jawanda	303
	H. Daykin	304
	G. Dean	305
	R. Papiernik	306
	J. Higginbotham	306

Chair:	* Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L)
Deputy Chair:	* Tony Bhullar (Surrey-Newton L)
Members:	* Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) Jeff Bray (Victoria–Beacon Hill L) Ida Chong (Oak Bay–Gordon Head L) * Brian Kerr (Malahat–Juan de Fuca L) * Kevin Krueger (Kamloops–North Thompson L) * Lorne Mayencourt (Vancouver-Burrard L) * Barry Penner (Chilliwack-Kent L) * Ralph Sultan (West Vancouver–Capilano L) * Joy MacPhail (Vancouver-Hastings NDP) * denotes member present

Other MLAs Present:	Elayne Brenzinger (Surrey-Whalley L) Dave Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) Brenda Locke (Surrey–Green Timbers L)
Clerk:	Anne Stokes

Witnesses:

Poul Bech (Steelhead Society of B.C.)
Don Bell (Mayor, District of North Vancouver)
Sheila Davidson (Child Care Advocacy Forum of B.C.)
Mark Davison
Harold Daykin
Geoff Dean (Kwantlen Faculty Association; Kwantlen Student Association)
Judith Higginbotham
George Hunter (B.C. Technology Industries Association)
Layne Kriwoken
Gaetan Myre
Yvette Ortiz
Richard Papiernik
Keith Parkinson
Charlie Peck (B.C. and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council)
Wayne Peppard (Allied Hydro Council)
Glen Ringdal (B.C. Automobile Dealers Association)
Jagrup Samra-Jawanda
Coleen Sinclair (Ministry of Children and Family Development)
Mike Walden
Margaret Walters

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to call our meeting to order at this time. My name is Blair Lekstrom. I am the MLA for Peace River South and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are here this evening during our prebudget consultation to listen to British Columbians' input into their priorities and needs and requirements, their views on next year's budget and what they would like the government to look at in our context of trying to deal with the many challenges that face British Columbians right now.

We have a number of people with us this evening. We have Hansard staff here with us, Catherine Schaefer and Wendy Collisson, as well as our committee assistant, Jacqueline Quesnel, at the back table. Anne Stokes, over to the left, is our Committee Clerk.

We have been mandated by the Legislative Assembly to inquire into and make recommendations with respect to the prebudget consultation report prepared by the Minister of Finance. In particular, we are required to host public consultation meetings throughout the province. This is one of 16 that we will be attending and listening in on over the next two and a half weeks. We have concluded a number to date, and we will continue right up until the end of this month with our public consultation hearings.

As well, for the people who are unable to attend the public sessions or weren't able to find time to get to the sessions or get to an open mike, we do have the ability to accept written submissions. They will be given due consideration equal to the verbal presentations we hear before us this evening and throughout the month. So I would encourage you. If you listen through the session and think of something that doesn't come to your mind this evening, but it comes in the next week or two, please submit your recommendations and thoughts to us through the website. There is access to that and information located on the back table as well.

Before we hear from our first presenters, I would like the other members of the committee to introduce themselves. I will begin to my left with Mr. Bloy.

H. Bloy: Good evening. I'm Harry Bloy, the MLA for Burquitlam. I look forward to hearing your suggestions on how the government can improve its budget in the coming year.

T. Bhullar (Deputy Chair): I'm Tony Bhullar from Surrey-Newton. I look forward to hearing your presentations.

R. Sultan: I'm Ralph Sultan. I represent part of North Vancouver and part of West Vancouver.

L. Mayencourt: I'm Lorne Mayencourt, the MLA for Vancouver-Burrard, but I was born and raised in Surrey.

K. Krueger: I'm Kevin Krueger from Kamloops–North Thompson. I have a cold, and I talk funny. This is not my natural colour of hair. It was a Terry Fox fundraiser, folks, and I'm sorry about the way I look.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, thank you very much. You may see members of the committee coming and going throughout the evening. Our schedule doesn't allow for dinner breaks, believe it or not, so during the session, as individuals, you may see one or two leave at any given time. It's certainly not out of rudeness; it's out of necessity to maintain life, actually. So that's what will be taking place there.

Without further ado, I would like to move into the presentations this evening. I certainly look forward to hearing what British Columbians have to say on the direction our province has to head in. Our first presenter this evening is Mr. Keith Parkinson. Is Keith with us? All right.

The format for this evening is the same as every other public hearing. We allow 15 minutes for the presenter — usually ten minutes in the presentation, and then, if there are any questions from any members of the committee, the remaining five minutes are utilized for that. We will try and maintain as tight a schedule as possible so that we can hear all of the presenters that have booked in. As well, at the end of the evening there will be an open-mike session for people who haven't had a chance to register or throughout the evening have heard some things or thought of different issues they would like to add to the discussions here.

K. Parkinson: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and committee members, for giving me this opportunity. My name is Keith Parkinson, and I reside in the Tri-Cities area. I'm appearing here this evening as a concerned taxpayer. I don't represent any special interest groups or any political party. I really haven't prepared a glossy speech or anything for you people. I didn't find out about this process until just the other day. It sort of came upon us very abruptly. I don't know how long it's been in the making, but I wasn't aware of it at all. Therefore, I just thought I'd take this opportunity, even with the bad weather, to come out and see you and see whether I could make a couple of comments anyhow.

I'm not going to take too much of your time. I just have a comment and a couple of issues I'd like to raise

with you people. First of all, the comment is that I'm quite surprised to see Joy MacPhail sitting on this committee. When she was in government, you could never get hold of her for ten years. All at once, now she's out in the public process. This is my first opportunity to get a chance to see her, so I'm delighted to see that. Whatever happens, who knows?

I'd like to congratulate the Premier at this time with regards to withholding official opposition status from a two-person opposition. I think he did the right thing. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't ever have an opportunity to come forward to let people know what they think, because there's no process available for us to do that. This is the first opportunity I've had to say that I wish you people take this back to the Premier and congratulate him on doing that. I think it was a good position that he took.

The other thing I'd like to say is regarding the teachers and the B.C. government collective bargaining coming up very shortly and the outrageous demands they're going to be asking for wages. In my opinion, it's just a catch-up. They had ten years where they could have negotiated these big percentages with the previous government. Now, all at once, they want to get caught up because there's a different government in there.

I really take exception to that. I'm a union worker. I haven't had a raise in three years. I have been without a collective agreement for 1½ years. We don't anticipate any increase. We feel our jobs are very important too. We'd like our employer to respect us just like they respect the other employees. However, due to the times and the circumstances, sometimes you can't get what you want. I'd like you to seriously consider that. They've had ten years with another government that supported them. Yet all at once they want to get caught up.

The other thing I'd like to state is that I hope this government takes a serious position with regards to SkyTrain and will stop any further funding. I think it's gone far enough, and I think we've spent enough money. The taxpayers have just been overburdened with taxes. This is a project that has to be seriously looked at. There are probably many more projects, but one of my pet peeves is the feeling that this project has to come to a halt. There shouldn't be any more funding at all coming from the government with regard to SkyTrain.

I recommend, for the record, that you people continue to stop the waste that we've had for the last ten years. If you continue to do that, I think you're in a good position. There's been a lot of waste. There's been a lot of catering to special interest groups. A lot of this stuff has to go.

Another recommendation is that we get rid of all these commissions and boards. I don't how many there are. One time I heard the number 500 or so bandied around. If there are that many, it's about time that we got rid of them because we don't need that many.

I want to thank you very much for your time. Hopefully, you'll take my comments seriously and consider them. So thank you very much. Do you have any questions?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Parkinson. I will look to members of the committee if there are any questions.

R. Sultan: Just one point of clarification for the witness. I believe there are more like 800 or 900.

K. Parkinson: Well, there you go. I think that should be brought out publicly more. We don't hear enough about the number of these commissions, boards, committees and stuff. It's just out of control. It has been out of control. Hopefully, you people will take this back to whomever you take it to and suggest that we keep cutting them back. We don't need them. It's committee onto committee onto committee. Everybody's answering to everybody, yet you don't get a resolve to anything.

K. Krueger: Thank you, Mr. Parkinson. We appreciate what you've said. What was your view of the tax cuts? Did you see an appreciable difference in your paycheque?

K. Parkinson: Yes. In my tax bracket I appreciated it. I did notice a difference. I think it was a good thing what the government did. I don't know about the higher echelons, but for us low-income people I noticed a big difference.

Again, what I respect and appreciate is that the government is putting that money back into my pocket, and I can use it for what I want. The previous government just kept picking our pockets and using it for stupid projects that fell by the wayside, like the ferries. I could go on and on. You people know all this stuff anyhow. We just kept getting taxed, and it was money being spent foolishly. Yes, I do appreciate having the opportunity to have the money come back into my pocket so I can use it the way I see fit.

K. Krueger: We believe that the tax cuts will stimulate the private sector economy. We think that a healthy private sector economy is the only way to fund the social programs that British Columbians really do depend on — health care and education. We've had some flak, given the North American economic downturn. People think that somehow we're taking money away from others by allowing people to keep their own money, instead of taxing it away.

Do you mind saying what you've done with the tax cuts? There's some indication from people that they don't believe that people spend it in the economy. What has it meant to you and your friends?

K. Parkinson: It means extra money in my pocket, which I've spent. I just recently bought a computer. Therefore, if that's generating the economy by spending it…. I bought something I needed instead of giving it to the previous government, which just blew it on things that were unnecessary. I enjoy the opportunity

to be able spend the money. I think that in the long run — maybe right now, because of the way the economy is and the way things are going on, it's going to take a while — it's going to be proven that you made the right decision.

You've got to get away from these special interest groups trying to whitewash you with: "Oh, it'll never work. This is wrong." It was an excellent idea the Premier came up with. If they don't want their money, let them send it back to him and tell him what they want him to use it for. We'll see how much money goes back in a year or two. It won't be too much.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I see no further questions from the members of the committee. Mr. Parkinson, I'd like to thank you for coming forward and making your views known to the committee. Again, we appreciate the time you've taken to come forward tonight.

M. Walden: Good afternoon. My name is Mike Walden. I'd just like to welcome you to my back yard. As one of the panel members said, I was born in Surrey, but besides that I grew up about three blocks from here. Actually, my mom has lived in Surrey for 60 years, so Surrey is definitely home for me.

I'm here tonight to raise my concerns over the future cuts to the provincial government and what they're planning on doing in cutting government workers — the 20, 35 and 50 percent that the media has been picking up on.

For the past 15 years I've worked with a team of dedicated contractors and government workers in an effort to help young people in this province get back to work. Each new government tries the same thing: getting young people and the unemployed back to work. I congratulate them for doing that; it's definitely an effort that needs to be put in.

I'm here to tell you that this takes a considerable amount of time for both the contracted service employees and the government workers, each party depending on each other to get the job done. Far too often plans of government are made without having the necessary background to achieve their goals. If we just go back to the recent past under the Harcourt government when we had Skills Now — a definite, great plan. Under the Clark government, we brought in Youth Works, which again was a great plan providing training. Recently the plan of this government is to look at trying to help young people get back to work by a little bit more encouragement.

The government cannot expect the youth today to find jobs that maintain self-independence, which are off government help, unless they have the skills to obtain that job. Everyone in this room probably knows a young person trying to start out. Some of you up front probably even have children in this age range. So I'd just like to create a profile here. Let's take a 19-to-24 year-old living in this province in Surrey or Langley. You add no computer skills to that mix and also add limited life skills. Most of the ones we deal with who are on income assistance or government funding through the federal government have grades 8 to 10. Many of them have trouble reading and writing. A great majority of these also have some form of multiple barrier such as drug and alcohol problems, sexual, physical or emotional abuse, mental or physical problems, depression and also no money to look for work. Income assistance rates today range around $500. I'd like to see most people in this room try to live on $500 a month when rent is around $400.

Currently, it takes a young person one to three weeks to get help, to get in to see a financial assistance worker to determine eligibility. From there, if it's determined that they're going to need training, it can take anywhere from another two to four weeks to see a training consultant. If that person has some kind of physical or emotional or mental disability, it can take another six to eight weeks to see a vocational rehab consultant who works with persons with disabilities. That's just to see a government worker for help. As I said earlier, we work hand in hand with contracted services that do anything from diagnostic services to job clubs to skills development. Just to get into a job club can take a client another two to four weeks depending on the cycle of that job club. If they need diagnostic services, it can take another four to six weeks.

My point here is that this is just for programs that are sponsored by the taxpayers of British Columbia and by federal funding. If a client decides now that they want to go into a community college, there again, with the math and English assessment, it usually takes them another six months to a year to get their skills up to a level where the college will accept them. The college won't even accept them until they have met this entry-level requirement. Then once they've met it, it takes sometimes a year on a wait-list to get into the course.

My concern is if government cuts the budgets to the ministries by 20, 35 or 50 percent, the wait for these youth will be increased, and they will therefore stay on income assistance longer. Removing money from contracted services, reducing the amount of government workers, will have a negative impact on the success of getting youth attached to the labour force. Any attachment to the labour force may lead to only a short-term attachment. What I'm indicating is that if we force a youth to go out there and get a job at Wal-Mart that lasts two weeks or a job at McDonald's that lasts a month and then they get laid off — this is a continuous pattern — what we're doing is lowering their self-esteem, making it harder and harder for that attachment to the labour force to continue.

I'm here tonight to plead on behalf of the youth in this province. Hopefully, the government will have some compassion and look at what it takes to get people in this province, who are the future of this prov-

ince, attached to jobs that can fulfil their lives and develop a future for them.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Walden. We do have a number of questions.

K. Krueger: It's a discouraging picture that you paint, but it's obviously from the heart. What is the organization that you work with?

M. Walden: I'm actually a third-generation public servant, and that's the way I like to see it. I'm here, like my father and his father before that, helping youth in this province get back to work. I focused on youth, because that's where my focus is, but I'm a public servant working for the taxpayers of this province.

K. Krueger: The 1990s were an incredible boom time, economically, for all of North America except British Columbia, Canada, and Chiapas, Mexico. We were literally two odd bookends at opposite ends of a continent that was just thriving for ten years. Given that and the discouraging outcomes you're seeing and reporting to us, surely you agree that the ways we have been doing things up till now haven't led to the kinds of results you're looking for.

What do you see as a different way to stop this problem of youth falling into those terrible situations you describe, while also dealing with the ones who've already fallen into it? You have your forest fire fighters who work to put out the forest fires, but you have other people who try and make sure that there are no new forest fires or that they don't get bigger. Have you had a chance to kind of blue-sky think about all of that?

M. Walden: Well, I guess if you go to that question, you have to go back to where the children have come from that are now the youth of this province. If you have somebody that's had a good upbringing and had the parenting and support they need to carry on, and if they've finished high school or at least reached high school, their chances of employment are just incredible in this province. The jobs have been there, and the jobs are there in the nineties.

In the picture I painted, there are lots of problems out there, and the problems occur before they become 19. Maybe you need to look at trying to develop a program that helps the youth before they are actually out there looking for work.

Like I said, the drug and alcohol problems, the mental disabilities and the depression are just overwhelming in this age group. That's all I can say to that one. It usually starts before they turn 19, and it just carries on.

L. Mayencourt: My question is very similar to Kevin's, in that I'm just wondering if you have any ideas of what we could do at an earlier age that would help kids. You know, a lot of the self-esteem problems and the repeated failures and stuff like that get ingrained pretty early. What could we do early on that might give them better skills so that they don't become the problem child or the kid who ends up on welfare, bouncing to McDonald's and Wal-Mart and what have you?

M. Walden: I would love to give you the answer to that, but I don't have the answer. I mean, I don't have children myself, so I haven't had to go through their teen years. I deal with them once they've already gone through and had that problem. I haven't worked with the ones prior to that. Probably your better bet is to ask your high school teachers, because they're the ones who deal with those children on an ongoing basis.

L. Mayencourt: I'm new to politics, so I haven't really got my full understanding of how the ministry works. With skills development for youth…. Is that something that we always contract out, or is it something that's done by the ministry? Is there an agency that we have, say in Surrey, that does that on behalf of the ministry? Do they do a great job?

L. Mayencourt: I guess what I'm referring to is, you know…. There are programs that are developed, I've heard — skills development programs — that are run through the Ministry of Human Resources. Let's say we've got a kid on welfare, he's 17 and living in a basement suite, and he doesn't have any job prospects. What does the ministry do with that person? You've said that they would go through an assessment, get appraised or assessed, and they would be referred to some training program. How do we do that? Do we do that within the ministry? Do we contract that out? Do we do a good job of it?

M. Walden: It's hard to answer that question. One thing is that your programs out there are not just provincial government programs. They're federal government programs; they're charity programs that are put on. A community church could put on a computer program that clients can get into. There's a whole gamut of different programs out there.

What happens a lot with the federal and provincial government workers…. It's matching the client up to the best program. That happens continuously. It depends on where the funding comes from. A federal government worker can work with somebody that's been on EI in the last three to five years and is now on income assistance. We all know that the federal government seems to have a little bit more money than the provincial government when it comes to that sort of funding for courses and stuff, so it's hard to answer. It depends on the nature of the barrier that the client may have. The client may have barriers where you need somebody with the in-depth knowledge of diagnostic testing to be able to determine if that client needs further…whatever.

R. Sultan: Mr. Walden, if we define success as really making a very large and significant difference in the lives and prospects of these difficult youth that you're working with, what is the success ratio in the full package of programs?

M. Walden: I couldn't guess. All I can tell you is what the youth tell me. There's lots of youth programs, and definitely in the Surrey area the Scope program runs a youth program. I think that's under a Nisha contract or whatever. My suggestion is: go out and talk to the youth that are actually in some of these programs, and you will actually hear what they need to get back into the workforce.

M. Walden: Well, the answer is what they tell me every day: they want a job. The problem is that there's no one out there to offer them the job. Right now in this province, if a youth goes out there and looks for a job, they won't even get short-listed unless they have grade 12, because there's so many people looking. They'll take a pile of applications, and they'll go, "No grade 12; grade 12," and then they'll look at these. Even if you're the best person for the job, the employers don't take the time to look any further than…. This province has a really high requirement for pieces of paper, and if you don't have that GED or that grade 12 diploma, you will maybe not even have the opportunity to sell yourself to that employer.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I see no further questions. Mr. Walden, I want to thank you for coming out and expressing your views. I can assure you that like all of the other presenters, the information you put forward will be given due consideration in the development of our report. Thank you.

Just prior to moving on to our next presenter, I would like to welcome one of our colleagues, Elaine Brenzinger, who is the MLA for Surrey-Whalley. Welcome, Elaine.

At this time we will go to Poul Bech with the Steelhead Society of British Columbia.

P. Bech: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present to your committee tonight. I'm here on behalf of the Steelhead Society of British Columbia. I will be making a submission regarding provincial fisheries management.

I expect some of you may be asking: who is the Steelhead Society, and/or what is a steelhead? I'll briefly answer that before proceeding further. The Steelhead Society of British Columbia is a non-profit society with a 31-year history of advocating for wild fish and wild rivers generally and, more specifically, steelhead and their habitat. Our membership consists mostly of B.C. sport anglers but also includes people from across North America, Europe and Asia.

Most simply, a steelhead is a seagoing rainbow trout. More accurately, from a scientific viewpoint, a rainbow trout is really a landlocked steelhead. Steelhead spawn in coastal streams, unlike other Pacific salmon, but like Atlantic salmon all steelhead do not die after spawning, and some may spawn more than once. Newly hatched steelhead juveniles generally spend from one to three years feeding in freshwater streams, after which they migrate to saltwater. After another one to three years of feeding in the ocean, steelhead return to their natal stream to spawn. On their way back to spawn they'll generally weigh between three and ten kilograms. Sometimes they get much larger. The largest steelhead in the world returned to a couple of specific tributaries to the Skeena River in northern British Columbia.

Steelhead are sought by recreational anglers in rivers during their freshwater spawning migration. They have an international reputation as a challenging sport fish, and anglers travel from all over the world in order to fish for them.

Steelhead require careful management and protection because their populations are naturally low in comparison to other Pacific salmon species. Steelhead spawning populations in most streams number in the hundreds or low thousands, as opposed to salmon populations in the same streams which would often number in the thousands or occasionally millions.

In this submission I will not restrict my comments to steelhead, but rather will address provincial fisheries management generally. Statistics I've used in this submission are from the provincial Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, B.C. Statistics or the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Under the federal Fisheries Act, responsibility for management and regulation of the freshwater recreational fishery is delegated to the province. The main objectives of provincial fisheries management are to ensure abundant and diverse freshwater fish populations and habitats with an emphasis on wild, naturally occurring populations and to provide sustainable freshwater fisheries.

Fisheries management is not straightforward. A biologist once compared fish population assessment to peering through a frosted windowpane, trying to see what's going on in the outside world. His analogy has merit. It is much easier to count, for example, trees in a forest than fish in a stream or ocean. You can see the trees, but you can rarely see the fish. The fish swim away; the trees don't move. Because of this, fisheries data is comparatively expensive to collect. Consequently, fisheries management decisions are often based on uncertain or incomplete information.

To make things worse, the risks involved in making a mistake are very high. For example, the steelhead populations of most rivers are genetically distinct. Having evolved over thousands of years, the best survive in that specific stream or habitat. If the steelhead population disappears, it's gone forever. Also, the costs of rehabilitating fish habitat, once destroyed, are many, many times greater than the costs connected to simply protecting that habitat in the first place.

The benefits of a healthy freshwater fisheries resource are substantial. Over 600,000 sport fishing licences were sold in British Columbia in the year 2000. This included more than 50,000 out-of-province anglers. Approximately 6,400 private sector jobs are directly supported by recreational fishing — for example, fishing guides, retail and wholesale sales, tackle manufacturing. Business revenues from direct expenditures on angling activities were about $660 million in 1999. This does not include substantial and likely greater indirect expenditures — for example, air flights for visiting anglers. It doesn't include the increased value of recreational property in quality fishing areas.

Some personal examples of indirect expenditures would include my four-wheel drive truck and a locally manufactured $10,000 camper that I bought in 1998. Last time I looked, there were four small boats in my garage along with tents, stoves, sleeping bags and endless other camping gear. I spend several thousand dollars each year on new and used fishing books, which I collect almost as feverishly as I fish. If a quality fishing experience was not available to me, I would not have made these expenditures. I imagine many others like me would not have made such expenditures. In fact, without a quality fishing experience, I doubt I would continue to live in British Columbia.

There is also an unknown number of people that are non-consumptive users of fish. I'll call them fish-watchers. The only statistic I could find on this group is that approximately 50,000 people visit provincial hatcheries annually. Many more visit streams to watch spawning or migrating fish. Examples would be Adams River and Hells Gate. This group represents an additional, undocumented but substantial contribution to the provincial economy.

Recreational fishing is a very healthy activity — for anglers, that is, not fish. For myself, it represents most of the physical exercise and fresh air I get. It constitutes the best relief I've found from the day-to-day stresses of life and work we all face. Fishing is a family activity, where age is rarely a barrier. In my adolescence, my parents took me fishing or camping almost every weekend. I hate to think how much trouble I would have found my way into, and still might be finding my way into, if they hadn't. Common sense tells me that a healthy fisheries resource results in savings to the health care system, the justice system and other social programs.

Due to major impacts like climate change, this is a time of great uncertainty, if not crisis, regarding fish populations. You need only look to the rivers of the east coast of Vancouver Island. Only 15 years ago the Campbell, Quinsam, Oyster, Puntledge, Qualicum and Little Qualicum, Englishman and Nanaimo rivers provided world-class steelhead fisheries. Now, a few short years later, these rivers contain only remnant steelhead populations. They are necessarily closed to angling, while fisheries managers seek a solution to a problem they don't yet understand. They know the low populations are likely connected to extremely low, unprecedented ocean survival rates, which are probably connected to increased water temperatures in the Strait of Georgia. To fully understand the mechanics of the problem and hopefully find a solution will require a substantial commitment to research and population assessment and monitoring.

I note that most of these rivers receive substantial plants of hatchery steelhead, but that didn't prevent the fishery from crashing. There is no quick, cheap fix. Meanwhile, the angling and tourism businesses that depend on these fisheries in whole or in part are suffering. I used to travel to the Island several times a year to fish these streams. I hope I will find reason to do so again some day.

My understanding is that the annual program cost for freshwater fisheries management is currently $10.7 million, which represents a cut of almost 20 percent over the last decade. Program cost is now almost equal to the amount that anglers pay directly in provincial licence fees each year, which is approximately $10 million. In other words, fisheries management is funded almost completely by the main users of the resource with no actual substantial cost to the taxpayers. When considering the financial and other benefits of a healthy fisheries resource, this is incredibly good value.

Tourism business operators in British Columbia have expressed extreme concern that the events of September 11, 2001, have impacted and will continue to impact their viability. In this time it becomes even more critical to support the fisheries that are so important to a large component of tourism in this province.

The New Era document committed the government to "adopt a scientifically based, balanced and principled approach to environmental management that ensures sustainability, accountability and responsibility." In our submission, this promise cannot be met if funding for fisheries management is further reduced. The Steelhead Society urges the government to maintain or increase funding for freshwater fisheries management. The only likely result of further reductions in funding is a legacy of fish populations lost forever and the consequent loss of revenues, jobs and the province's international reputation as a supernatural land of wild fish and wild rivers. Thank you.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Bech. I will look to members of the committee.

K. Krueger: I always wonder about catch and release, given what you said about mortality rates of the steelhead populations, the delicate, fragile state of some of those populations and the unique genetic strains in particular rivers. They're a different kind of

fish, but at the last hotel we were at in Chilliwack there was a poster up where a fishing guide was advertising his services. In one of the pictures a half-dozen people were holding a gigantic sturgeon, and in another a sturgeon was leaping out of the river. We know that stress kills fish, and it can do it quite easily. Does catch and release kill fish?

P. Bech: Sometimes. I think it's pretty hard to kill sturgeon. They're amazingly hardy creatures. With steelhead and trout, particularly in warmer temperatures, there is a low percentage of mortality. There are a million studies, and it all depends on the conditions. It's probably somewhere between zero and 5 percent, depending on the situation. There is a low kill rate.

K. Krueger: Does the Steelhead Society try to track that, to keep statistics?

P. Bech: Certainly. Our position right now is that it's important to maintain a fishery.

K. Krueger: I had dinner with an Irish lady recently, and she was laughing at British Columbia. She said: "How come everybody always says, 'Why doesn't the government do something about it?' We're the only place in the world where you hear that. Everywhere else people assume it's up to them to do something about issues."

We have these well-intentioned rich folks coming to British Columbia tree-hugging and everything else, apparently willing to spend millions of dollars on their causes. I wonder if the Steelhead Society of B.C. couldn't get people like that interested in helping with these programs. The government can't afford to do something about all the issues. I share your love of fish and fishing, and I'm sure every British Columbian treasures these wonderful natural assets. Has the society tried fundraising for conservation purposes? I think you might be able to do it worldwide.

P. Bech: We do, and we do so worldwide. The Steelhead Society has a non-profit corporation attached to us that does habitat restoration work, and we do fundraise all over the place. However, the way I look at it is that they're our fish, in terms of the province collectively, and I don't think it's appropriate to look to a millionaire from some other country to fund the management of our fish. I think it's our responsibility and something we have to do. It's something we all have to be part of.

K. Krueger: Well, they certainly presume to have a say in what areas of British Columbia should be designated parks and a lot of other things. I wouldn't be at all shy about taking in money if I were you. I think it's something worthwhile pursuing, because there are people all around the world who care about the issues you're raising with us today.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I see no further questions. Mr. Bech, I would like to thank you for your presentation this evening. Thank you very much, Poul.

We will move on. Our next presenter is Sheila Davidson with the Child Care Advocacy Forum of British Columbia. We are just slightly ahead of schedule, so Sheila may be coming in. I will look if Mr. George Hunter is here. Mark Davison — is Mark with us? Are there any presenters who have a booked time and are sitting with us in the crowd right now? If you would like, we could certainly take in your presentation now, ma'am.

M. Walters: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Margaret Walters, and I'm the youngest of a very large family living in the best community in British Columbia: South Surrey. My family came from the Prairies to paradise when I was very small, and I was raised and educated in this small community where you knew your neighbours or, in my case, were related to them.

My family worked at the local hospital for a total of 60 years, so health care has provided for me and my family's livelihood. I have been very involved in my communities. I taught swimming and other things for many years. It was only natural that I would get into health care. Geriatrics was natural, having two elderly parents and coming from a community made up mostly of seniors. I work in a long term care facility, for the last 22 years, with all forms of dementia, Alzheimer's and generally older citizens.

The last few years have been very difficult due to the increasing care needs and less and less funding, which is increasing our workload. The health care freeze is not going to put my workers and co-workers and my residents at ease. We see the increase in patients that need more care, and we are just stretched to the limit. We are already providing an 18-to-1 ratio.

We are not just health care providers, but we are their families — their daughters, their sons, secretaries, medical referral personnel, activity workers, nutritionists, spiritual providers and most of all comedians, as we like to keep them happy. Some residents live in my facilities up to 20 years. Will this cutback in social services and Pharmacare hurt my residents? Yes, very much so.

Last week I sat down with my niece, who has a sick four-year-old child, and asked her if these cutbacks in social services and Pharmacare would affect her. She said: "Definitely." The impact would be huge on her and her daughter. She said it would be impossible to provide the care that Gabrielle required — physiotherapists, special needs language teachers, mediations that would have cost her an enormous amount of money — and she requires 24-hour care. My niece's life has been on hold for the last four years, and my great-niece passed away today at 1 o'clock. My niece would

like to now give back to the community what she got out of it. She got support, caring and love from all.

Please extend the cutbacks to both social services and Pharmacare. The impact is too great. Extend your mandate on a balanced budget within four years to perhaps six or more years. Thank you for your attention and allowing me to speak on this important topic.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Walters, for coming and presenting this evening. We do have some questions.

J. MacPhail: Thank you, Ms. Walters. I'm very sorry for your loss today. Are the residents that you care for able to live in their own community? Are they Surrey residents?

M. Walters: They're Surrey residents, yes. They live in a facility; I work in the facility.

J. MacPhail: In my community we have a facility that looks after older Chinese. They're not all Chinese, but there are older Chinese. Do you have specific services that you provide?

M. Walters: Multilevel care, yes. It used to be considered just intermediate, but it is no longer.

J. MacPhail: Is that why residents stay for 20 years — that they move through the levels of care?

M. Walters: They move through the level of care, or they stay at that level of care. We can't put them in another facility because we're not able to do that.

L. Mayencourt: I'd like to also express my sympathy to you. I really appreciate your coming here today under those kinds of circumstances.

Like you, I live in a community where there are a lot of seniors. One of the big concerns we have in our community is the ability to stay in that community. You've been in your neighbourhood for years. We've made a commitment to increase the number of spaces for long term care over the next three and a half or four years. One of the challenges we're going to face is how we do that when we haven't got enough money to do that. My question to you is: within your community, how would people react to a facility that was built by someone else and provided to the province — in other words, a private and public partnership — as a way of achieving that goal so that people who live in your community could stay there?

M. Walters: I think it would be very difficult. They would be living there and paying for the services — right? Some people in my community are very limited…. They have some services in my community that are for low-income, which is really good, but they also have the higher level of facilities available for people who can pay. I feel that the care should be evenly spread out. It shouldn't have to be the rich get the better care and the poor don't get good care. So I don't see that.

L. Mayencourt: You'd just like to see that there's good access regardless of your income level.

L. Mayencourt: Do you think that people who have a little bit of extra money should have that option? I support the view, by the way, that we should be able to live in our communities in a seniors facility, if that's what we want to do, and there should be good access. But do you think it's wrong that…?

M. Walters: No, I don't think it's wrong. I just think that good care should be provided no matter what your income status is.

L. Mayencourt: Okay. The place that you're at — is it a provincial facility?

M. Walters: A board runs it, but it's serviced by the government. They fund it.

L. Mayencourt: So it's on contract too. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

R. Sultan: Thank you, Ms. Walters, for drawing our attention to a large problem today for the government and for our society. I fear it's going to be a horrendous problem in the future. I just wondered if you could share your wisdom and foresight on what we should be thinking about as a government.

Let me just give you my simple statistics. I just returned an hour ago from visiting my sister in Chilliwack extended care unit, and I'm reminded of the sort of conditions you work under when I visit my dear sister. I'm told by the staff that the ratio there is more like 6-to-1. These are people who have more severe problems than perhaps your typical patient.

Any way you cut it, I think the projections are that maybe a third of the population, if not now, will shortly be in this situation. Whether it's 18-to-1 or 6-to-1, presumably another 3 percent or 4 percent of the population, at least, is going to be occupied looking after us. Here we have maybe 35 percent or 40 percent of the population either in such a facility or being employed in such a facility. This is kind of a crushing outlook. I'm wondering if you could give us your insight into how we're going to cope with it. Is this huge burden going to fall entirely on the government? What should we be thinking of?

M. Walters: I think home care would be a really good avenue to eliminate some of this having to place people in facilities. Once they come into our facility, they deteriorate very quickly being institutionalized. I think that if they stay in their own homes and their own communities with their own doctors and their own familiar surroundings, they probably could be healthier longer. I think doctors are going to be more aware of what happens in geriatrics and the lifespan of a good geriatrics disease — you know, how to process it through rather than just throw them into an institution and expect them to get the best care.

I think we have to educate the people out there that home support is a very important thing. Community involvement is very important. A lot of these people come into the institutions because they have nowhere else to go. They're lonely as well. But they do deteriorate. They actually go down in their status. We have extended care. That ratio is very nice, 6-to-1, but 18-to-one is impossible to care for. I mean, it's a hit-or-miss. It's unfortunate that our most valuable citizens in our lifetimes are feeling this now.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Ms. Walters, again I will thank you for your presentation. Our thoughts are with you.

Moving along with our presenters this evening, we will call on Sheila Davidson with the Child Care Advocacy Forum of British Columbia. Good evening.

S. Davidson: The Child Care Advocacy Forum of B.C. represents six provincial associations of child care providers: the School Age Care Association of B.C., Western Canada Family Childcare Association, Early Childhood Educators of B.C., the Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre, the Coalition of Child Care Advocates…. And I've forgotten the sixth one. It'll come back to me.

I'm here to speak to you about publicly funded child care. I'm here to speak because I believe this is a very important and critical issue for your government to consider. I understand that there is a bit of a split at your caucus level, where a number of you favour dollars supporting publicly funded child care and a number of you feel that it is not a place where your government is ready to go. I'm hoping I can persuade you differently.

You've been given a package of information. I'd like to give you some information. Did you know that more than three-quarters of mothers with children aged six to 14 are in the workforce? Seven out of ten of those mothers have children under the age of six. Labour participation of women aged 15 to 44 will rise from the current rate of approximately 71 percent to about 80 percent by the year 2011. Almost 400,000 children are born each year, and 86 percent of their mothers are back in the workforce before those children are a year old. Women in the Canadian workforce contribute approximately $25 billion a year in federal and provincial taxes.

A 1998 national poll found that nearly 90 percent of Canadians think high-quality child care is important to help ensure Canada's future social and economic well-being, and 81 percent of those people think governments should develop a strategy and plan to improve child care. There has been a 400 percent increase in the use of paid child care services for preschool children since 1967. For every dollar spent on child care today, there is a $2 economic benefit. In 1998 the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 was estimated to be $160,000, and 33 percent of this was attributed to child care costs.

A child's brain development in the first six years of life sets the foundation for lifelong learning, behaviour and health. Children's well-being and development suffer when they have poor-quality care. Even an advantaged family background can't protect them.

Currently Minister Lynn Stephens has a survey out in the province. She states: "Government wants to create solutions that are sustainable over the long term. We want to work in partnership with communities so that services meet identified needs. We look to develop options that respect and build upon the knowledge, commitment and accomplishments that already exist in communities." The minister goes on to say that everyone benefits from a healthy, sustainable child care system and that stakeholders across the province are in the process of responding to this survey.

In October 1999 the previous administration released a discussion paper, "Building a Better Future for British Columbia's Kids." Ten thousand people responded to that discussion paper. Of those people, 94 percent said that government needs to be involved in the lives of children and in child care, and it needs to put public dollars into that support.

Many situations in people's lives have changed since the 1950s. I've already given you statistics about the number of women who are in the workforce. In the federal election, I was at a round table town hall discussion and asked the question about child care to the panel there. The MP in our community, Val Meredith, responded that she didn't believe that federal dollars needed to go into child care — that when people needed child care, they could see their aunt or their mother, who would help them with their child care needs.

That situation is no longer available to most people who are currently working in this province. Families need to have accessible, affordable child care. They need to know that their children are going to be well cared for by well-qualified and well-remunerated people. Without that satisfaction, people can't do an adequate job within their worksite, nor can they go to school and study adequately.

The previous government did instigate a new program called Child Care B.C. That program would have allowed any family who needed child care to have access to the dollars to support the child in a child care environment. This government has stopped that program and is looking at other options. I encourage you to consider very clearly and very strongly the needs of

the youngest children in our province and to recognize that if we do not support them now, we will pay the price in the future.

Currently, there's an agreement in place with the federal government. This year $39 million went into early childhood development services in the province. Next year that amount will be $51 million. This year $11 million has been spent on child care. There is still $15 million that is uncommitted. The minister responsible for early childhood development, Linda Reid, has stated that early childhood development is an area that the government is looking at very strongly. I urge you to consider the needs of child care as part of that early childhood development strategy. Thank you for your time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson, for your presentation this evening. We do have some questions, I believe.

J. MacPhail: Nice to see you here. I had a mom come into my office just before school started. She has two children in after-school care. Her tax cut for the next five years is more than eaten up by the loss that she'll face next year in the slashing of the child care program. However, she did not know about the consultation. How is this consultation occurring with the Minister of State for Women's Equality? How do ordinary parents get involved?

S. Davidson: If ordinary parents are involved in a child care program, I would expect that they're being encouraged to respond. It is available electronically, and I understand that it was mailed to a number of health departments, schools, etc. I didn't receive the mailing, but I certainly received the information electronically.

I think you've raised a good point, though, Joy, when you talk about the tax cut. For families with school-aged children, Child Care B.C. gave a reduction in fees of $100 per month. If that program had continued, in January of 2002 it would have moved into the infant-toddler environment. Infant-toddler care is very costly. The woman before me was talking about residential care, and I think she was talking about ratios being 1-to-18. In caring for infants and toddlers, the ratio is 1-to-4 — one caregiver to four children. Many programs with infants keep a 1-to-3 ratio. Actual costs of running an infant program are approximately $1,200 per child per month. Most families don't have $1,200 per child per month. Child Care B.C. would have allowed families to spend $14 a day. So for approximately $350 per month they would have had licensed child care.

I know that Minister Stephens is interested in the infant-toddler situation. She has stated very publicly that she wants to look at it.

L. Mayencourt: I've had the opportunity to see the report that was prepared last year and to meet with many members of the coalition. My niece is in the business of child care. We talked just a moment ago about the tax cuts and how that didn't pay for the child care. I'd just like to talk for a minute about the fact that even without the tax cut, we're faced with about a $3.8 billion deficit, which means that we've got some really tough choices to make over the next little while. Regardless of whether the tax cuts happened or not, we'd still be faced with this.

With that in mind, how do you take this very worthwhile program and get the most benefit for the province that we're in? If you had an opportunity to take some of that program and target it somewhere, where would you put it?

S. Davidson: I would definitely put it into infant-toddler care, because as I've already said, it's the most costly. If we look at the needs of children on a developmental level, certainly the first three years are absolutely critical.

I think what we need to do is develop a long-term strategy to approach the situation, because we need to support children throughout their preschool years. Unless we develop that strategy and have a long-term plan, we will continue to only use stop-gap measures for meeting child care needs. Then children lose because they are not getting the consistent caregiving, which is absolutely critical to their healthy development.

L. Mayencourt: In my neighbourhood, which is the West End, we have a couple of houses that are just being redeveloped. Inside of them they're each going to have a home-based infant and toddler care program. In other words, someone will set this up and operate it. Is that a good model for this?

S. Davidson: Different models work in different situations. First of all, in 1990 Vancouver made a commitment that any new development had to have a child care component attached to it. That has been a role model for a number of other municipalities. The problem, the difficulty, with child care is that it's very costly. The return is not seen for a number of years. Colleagues in community justice, in social services, would say that if you support young children today, you won't have the difficulties when they are 14 and 15. Certainly Gordon Hogg would support that.

I think that it takes a bold government to give bold leadership. Unfortunately, that has not been done in

this country. The previous administration started to do it, and they had a very good plan. Their plan was only the second in North America to publicly fund a system for all children.

You asked me whether family child care in houses is a good idea, and I said that different systems work in different places. I support family child care provided that it's licensed and it's regulated. When it's licensed and regulated, it means that numbers are kept down and children are getting adequate care — care that they need to develop appropriately.

T. Bhullar (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Ms. Davidson. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for your presentation.

G. Hunter: First of all, I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to be here to present to you today. I tried to get there in Vancouver yesterday, but I understand you've been jam-packed. I think that's a very positive sign for the province. Given the short time we have available, I've submitted a brief with the committee. I will just focus, for this presentation, on a couple of key points.

I represent the B.C. Technology Industries Association. It's an association with about 465 corporate members, and those corporate members represent about 18,000 employees in the province in the technology sector — roughly a third of the total technology community in the province.

My first point has to do with the transformation that's currently taking place in the global economy. In my opinion, the current government finds itself in the midst of the most important transformation the province has ever undertaken. Like every other developed nation in the world, Canada and B.C. are in the process of transforming from a resource-based economy to one based on knowledge. This is a transformation that would be difficult even in the most robust of times. But as fate would have it, the current government finds itself in the midst of the first major economic downturn in a decade, combined with a new world war on terrorism that has perhaps created the greatest period of global economic and political uncertainty we've seen since the end of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, it's important that the government of British Columbia continues to understand that this global transformation is continuing to take place. We as a province must and will move forward with the transformation. We have to, if we're going to continue to be a developed nation and a developed province in the world economy to come.

The people of the province understand this. They know that the knowledge-based economy represents the future of the province. On a regular basis we poll the people of the province through Ipsos-Reid, and we've asked them the same question for a year and a half. We ask them to pick the industry sector that they feel is going to contribute the most to their future prosperity. Again, the people of the province consistently identify high technology as the sector they believe will add the most to their future prosperity. They understand the world that's happening. They understand the changes that are taking place.

Fortunately for the province, the technology industry is strong. The technology industry has consistently outperformed the rest of the provincial economy for the past decade. In the year 2000 growth in technology employment was 16 percent — four times the provincial average. At 61,000 employees and 7,800 companies, the technology sector is rapidly taking its place as a leading pillar of the B.C. economy. When I say "rapidly," I really mean it. Just think about this: five years ago no one knew there was a high-tech industry in this province. I can tell you that within the next five years, high technology will be as big as the forest industry in terms of employment and contribution to GDP. That's how quickly this transformation is taking place.

Despite these very difficult times — the technology industry is not immune to the world economic slowdown — the industry continues to grow. In fact, we're still showing positive growth for this year. Companies continue to be funded. Talented people continue to be hired. This is very, very positive for the future of the province.

The second point I want to make is that the future growth and success of this industry depends on people and on research and development. By definition, the success of a knowledge-based industry is dependent on the talent and skills of the people employed in the industry and the resources at their disposal for acquiring knowledge.

To promote the growth of our sector, the focus of public policy must first centre on people: educating them, training them, recruiting them and keeping them. To ensure that we have enough new engineers, scientists and professionals from a wide variety of disciplines, B.C. must create an educational environment that fosters superior talent and knowledge right from kindergarten through the post-secondary education experience. B.C. must also develop a provincewide training environment and infrastructure that supports and promotes lifelong learning and permits every individual within the province to identify and pursue a career path in this exciting new area.

Most importantly, B.C. must create a climate of personal opportunity that promotes the retention of talent produced within the province and the country. When I say "personal opportunity," I mean the opportunity to succeed. Part of that means a competitive tax

environment — that's true — and a competitive investment environment. But it also means an excellent education system, social justice, an adequate system of health and safety. These are all great concerns to our industry.

Finally, B.C. must have a public policy environment that promotes and facilitates the recruitment of talent from outside the province and country. Again, a competitive personal tax environment is needed, coupled with a progressive immigration system that facilitates the entry of highly skilled workers and their spouses from around the world.

B.C. also needs to dramatically increase the amount of resources available for research and development. B.C.'s per-capita spending on research and development is less than half of the Canadian average at present. Increases in R and D spending can be achieved not only by additional provincial spending but by developing a provincial strategy for accessing larger amounts of federal dollars. You may or may not know this, but we currently receive about half of the national average in terms of federal funding for research and development. By promoting a positive provincial and federal relationship, it's certainly my belief that we can dramatically up the numbers of dollars coming from the federal government to British Columbia for research and development. The background and data that support these assertions are provided in more detail in my written submission.

In my last comment I would like to acknowledge the government's actions today, because they have been considerable. First and most importantly, the current government, I certainly believe and the members of my community believe, understands the nature and magnitude of the transition taking place within the B.C. economy. The fact that the Premier co-chairs an advisory group on technology is a clear indication of his clarity of vision.

The government, by its decisive action to improve the business climate by enacting major cuts to personal and business taxes and through its commitment to a doubling of the number of high-tech graduates, has clearly demonstrated that it understands that B.C. must have a globally competitive business environment and a talent pool that will foster both the knowledge-based industries and those traditional industries within the province.

Through its adoption and use of technology to improve government services and a commitment to bridging the so-called digital divide, the government has also shown it understands that the opportunity presented by the knowledge-based industries must be made available to all British Columbians.

I applaud the government's actions to date and encourage them to stay the course they've chosen. It will lead to a richer, more prosperous province in the months and years to come. I would add that the BCTIA is not requesting any further policy initiatives that have to do with the budget, but there may be additional policy initiatives coming from the Premier's advisory council.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, George, for your presentation. We do have some questions.

H. Bloy: Hi, George. Thank you very much for the presentation. Do we have high-speed Internet access in the whole province now?

G. Hunter: Well, there isn't really high-speed, broadband access completely throughout the province, nor is there completely throughout the country, although we have the highest level of connectivity of any place in the country.

H. Bloy: Okay, No. 2, I guess. It was nice to hear the tax cuts are working. I did talk to people in Electronic Arts, and they said it allowed them to go down to California to actually hire people instead of walking around having a beer every Friday afternoon saying goodbye to somebody. Has it been of assistance?

G. Hunter: It has made a very definite difference. In fact, we feel that the environment we have now makes us competitive in North America, which is the toughest environment in the world to be competitive in when it comes to attracting individuals.

K. Krueger: Thank you, George. Your industry is always exciting to hear about, and it has been a bright spot on our economic horizon for a long time. Last winter, when California was having rolling blackouts and brownouts and so on, there was a lot of talk about Californians looking north to a province that has a reliable supply of surge-free power, a dollar that is a real bargain compared to the American dollar and all sorts of reasons why high-tech companies might decide to migrate north or establish satellites here. Is that happening?

G. Hunter: We're seeing that the ability the province has to offer not only high-quality but also reliable power will be a significant competitive advantage in the future. If you ask, and we did ask, companies in California about their issues around energy, they say: "Well, for now we're going to throw a generator in the back, and we'll see how that deals with our situation."

It's clear that as they look forward to their new enterprises, when they think about their new facilities, they're going to look for areas where that isn't an issue anymore. We're seeing, in fact, that it is a competitive advantage right now in some subsectors.

For example, the call centre industry looks on the availability of consistent high-quality power as a major advantage — that, coupled with the highly educated workforce we have in the province. It's part of a bigger equation that is making our province look more and more attractive all the time.

K. Krueger: My second question, and no offence intended at all…. I don't know if you were in the room when the gentleman from the Steelhead Society was presenting, but I quoted an Irish friend of mine who laughingly said to me recently that only in B.C. and Canada do you hear: "The government should do something about that."

I'm puzzled why an industry that has been so wildly successful…. We were hearing of dot-com billionaires right, left and centre for quite a while, and you never see them sort of carve off a couple of hundred million of that and give it back to a government that funded R and D. Why does an industry as successful as this one look to taxpayers to provide R and D money?

G. Hunter: It's part of the global environment we're living in. British Columbia has a handful of cards, and it has three aces. The missing ace, up until very recently, was the fact that we didn't have a competitive personal tax environment. It's reasonable, as part of government's ability to provide that framework or setting for industrial development, for them to provide a competitive business tax environment and personal tax environment.

In fact, we're not lower than the United States…. The dramatic cuts that have been made by this government haven't given us superiority, but what they've done is allowed us, with the other array of attributes that are positive to the province, to present a very good case for British Columbia as a site for technology.

In fact, we're in a position where we're embarking on a marketing effort into the United States, because we now believe we have a story we can sell. If we'd gone down even a short period of time ago, we'd probably have been laughed off the block. Now we're in a position to be able to say: "Okay, maybe we haven't got the lowest taxes. We're not lower than Washington State. But we've got good energy; we've got a very talented work pool; we've got reliable, loyal engineers; we've got tremendous education." So as a package it's beginning to look very good. I think building that package is a responsibility of government, and it's a responsibility of industry. We're trying to do our part as well.

R. Sultan: As a forecast, Mr. Hunter, how many people do you think will be working in your sector, say, ten years from now? Secondly, if you were in charge of the government and in fact could influence what universities and research institutes, funded largely by government, looked like and did, what changes would you make?

G. Hunter: I need a crystal ball for both of those. I think that the size of the technology industry is limited only by our imagination. B.C. has the capacity to grow very dramatically. We've been growing at rates from 5 to 16 and 20 percent per year for the last decade. Circumstances permitting, we can continue to grow at rates similar to that. We have to understand that there is some difficulty right now. The markets of fund growth are facing a bit of a challenge at the present time, but we have that capacity to grow. We have long said that our industry, within the next handful of years, will be of a similar size and impact as the forest industry of today. That's a good indicator. I hope we could be much larger than that, in fact. We are not limited by a supply of wood. We are only limited by our imagination and by our ability to get things going. It's a blue-sky opportunity.

Your second question regarding educational institutes. It is clear to me that smart people are the heart of our industry. I would like to see an environment in which all of the educational institutions, particularly the post-secondary educational institutions, established more collaboration with industry. We'd see a greater flow of intellectual capacity back and forth between the industries and the universities. I'm not even opposed to — shudder, shudder — private sector universities that are driven by a mandate to create excellence working with the industry and providing that excellence to the students. We should not limit ourselves to any preconceived ideas of what education should look like. We should adopt a stance that clearly defines some objectives, and we should identify the path that gets us there most quickly with the least cost and the greatest impact.

L. Mayencourt: Thank you very much for your presentation, and it's nice to see you again. We've been travelling across the province. We've been to some of the northern communities: Prince George, Kamloops, Peace River. Those economies have really been hurt by the softwood lumber agreement and by mining tanking. A lot of that technology stuff ends up in downtown Vancouver and in Victoria. How do we get that spread around to some of the more remote communities like the north?

G. Hunter: What we're looking at here I call sort of building community capacity. The core of any technology cluster has to do with what's in that local community. Yes, those small communities actually suffer a bit of a brain drain to Vancouver and Victoria, so they're faced with a difficult situation. The way we address that is by giving them the tools they need locally. So getting access to broadband is important. Certainly the major towns and villages around the province should have access to broadband.

More importantly, we need a training infrastructure so that a young person, no matter where they are — whether they're in Prince George or Creston or wherever in the province — can both identify a clear path to their personal opportunity and then find the training capability locally, hopefully. Having that training infrastructure in place and available to those students in the regions is very important.

One of the best ways to stimulate that — at least one of the ways that we're looking at, at the present time — is by really encouraging mid-tech. The call centres are a good example. A call centre comes to town

and employs a couple hundred people. All those people get trained in the technology that they utilize day to day in the call centre. You encourage the development of training programs at the local college and schools that support people getting into that program, and you provide a basis for the next level of technology. You go from mid-technology and, hopefully, up to high technology.

I would not underestimate those communities. I've been to Prince George; I've seen what they have at UNBC. They are doing a tremendous job with their science programs in terms of meeting local needs. One of their programs is IT, dedicated to forestry. What would you expect? Bio-tech, dedicated to forestry. This is the way to actually develop a cluster in those regions, and we should encourage that.

Again, I applaud the government. The Premier and the government have a very direct and clear focus on what is known as the digital divide. There is a clear intent on the part of the Premier, through the Premier's advisory council, to come up with some very specific solutions to ensure that that infrastructure gets put in place so that everybody in the province — anybody who wants to — can have access to this opportunity.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I see no further questions at this time, Mr. Hunter. I want to thank you for coming forward and taking time out of your schedule. Thanks for the presentation.

Just prior to moving on, as I indicated earlier, for the people who did come in late, there will be occasion when members of this committee will be coming and going. To meet the schedule, supper has to be dealt with during the hearings. It isn't out of rudeness that it will take place; it's out of necessity.

Mr. Dave Hayer, one of our colleagues and the MLA for Surrey-Tynehead, has joined us in the room. Welcome, Dave.

M. Davison: Hello. My name is Mark Davison. I'd like to thank the hon. members for the opportunity to speak. I'm a public citizen just voicing three opinions tonight. I have quoted quite a few newspaper articles in my presentation. I have included a written copy, so I won't be reading all the articles.

I'll start in with my first topic: changes to Crown corporations that generate revenue. There has been much talk of deregulation of B.C. Hydro and expressions of interest for the purchase of Powerex, a subsidiary of B.C. Hydro. The last two years have seen volatile swings to the power market which produce great windfalls for the province.

The annual reports of the past five years show what a great asset B.C. Hydro is to the province. In 2001, $372 million was reported as dividend to the province; $429 million was paid to the province and local governments in the form of water rental fees, taxes and grants in lieu of taxes; $103 million was transferred into the rate stabilization account, which is now totalling $859 million — this is the rainy day fund which, in case of high-market prices later, we have for a buffer zone; $310 million rebates directly to the residents and corporate customers in B.C.; for a total of $1.214 billion. Powerex, at this time, showed sales of over $5 billion. The 2000 annual report of B.C. Hydro showed $343 million as a dividend to province; $447 million paid to the province and local governments in the form of water taxes, rentals and grants in lieu of taxes; $129 million was transferred into the rate stabilization account — a $819 million total. Powerex showed $1.1 billion in sales for that year.

In the 1999 annual report, $326 million was paid as a dividend to the province; $440 million was paid to the province in the form of water rental fees, taxes and grants in lieu of taxes, for a total of $766 million.

In the 1998 B.C. Hydro annual report, $366 million was reported as a dividend to the province; $457 million was paid to the province and local governments in the form of water rental fees, taxes and grants in lieu of taxes, for a total of $823 million.

In the 1997 B.C. Hydro annual report, $279 million was reported as a dividend to the province; $465 million was paid to the province and local governments in the form of water rental fees, taxes and grants in lieu of taxes, for a total of $744 million.

B.C. Hydro continues to prove its worth each year. Powerex has grown to become a major revenue generator for the province of B.C. Any change to the status of a major revenue generator — such as B.C. Hydro, Powerex, the liquor distribution branch or the B.C. Lottery Corporation — must be determined by a public referendum. It is my understanding that the ultimate shareholder of a provincial Crown corporation is the taxpayer of B.C. They should be consulted before there are any major changes to or sales of their revenue-generating companies.

My second topic tonight would be rate freezes to public sector employees. As a worker under PSAC wage guidelines, I have been held to zero-zero-and-2 wage increases for more than ten years. In that time I have seen the management of ICBC, B.C. Hydro and MLAs receive drastic salary increases. The MLA increases are reflected in the attached articles.

Since 1996 my hourly wage has climbed from $25.34 to $26.10, an increase of 3 percent. For the same period, the consumer price index has risen 6.5 percent. When I look to my relevant costs today, gasoline costs have doubled, vehicle prices have increased by 30 percent, and food prices have increased substantially. I am appalled by my meagre gains.

Having seen the hypocritical practices of the previous government, I am hopeful that this government will see the value of restoring consumer confidence by allowing fair-wage settlements for the public sector employees of this province. Accompanying articles go into detail.

My last topic this evening is the pension plan for MLAs and ministers. In the past, Premier Campbell has been very vocal about the credibility of the MLAs regarding their own pensions. In the attached Vancouver Sun article entitled "Liberals Turn with the Others

When It Comes to MLA Pensions," dated July 23, 1997, Mr. Campbell talks of a bill to roll back the pension plan to 1991.

These were strong words spoken six years ago, but they still ring true, and I hope he remembers them.

We are presently here to look for ideas to reduce government costs. We hear there are to be cuts of up to 35 percent in many aspects of public sector funding. From what I've read about the pension benefits for MLAs, a significant reduction in expenditure could be made by making the MLAs' pensions more reasonable.

I'll read over the highlighted portions of the pension act enclosed in my package. Under "Pension," section 14 says that this is for service before June 19, 1996. Under "Eligibility for allowance" it says that a member to whom this part applies who ceases to be a member after serving for seven years or for more than two parliaments becomes entitled when the member is 55 years of age or the member's age added to the member's years of service add up to 60 years or more.

We continue down to section 20, the calculation of allowance. This section applies to persons who ceased to be a member after December 31, 1973, and before January 1, 1985. The annual superannuation allowance payable to a member who qualifies under section 15(1) is the amount equal to 4 percent of his or her highest average legislative allowance multiplied by the number of years of service as a member, not exceeding 18 years.

In respect of service as a minister, the annual superannuation allowance calculated under subsection (2) must be increased by an annual superannuation allowance in the amount of 4 percent of the highest average income as a minister multiplied by the number of years of service as a minister, not exceeding 18 years.

Continuing to section 21, calculation of allowance. After December 31, 1984, the annual superannuation allowance payable to a member who qualifies under section 15(1) is the amount equal to 5 percent of his or her highest average legislative allowance multiplied by the number of years of service as a member, not exceeding 16 years.

In respect of service as a minister, the annual superannuation allowance calculated under subsection (2) must be increased by an annual superannuation allowance in the amount of 5 percent of the highest average income as a minister multiplied by the number of years of service, not exceeding 16. These are also payable to the member for his or her lifetime. That completes my reference to the document.

Starting at age 55 or with age and service adding to the number 60 in order to be eligible for a pension, they seem to be overly generous. With the added substantial consideration of 5 percent per year of service for an MLA and 10 percent per year of service for cabinet ministers, we can begin to see excesses. These are further exemplified in the enclosed newspaper articles. They reflect some of the leading headlines of retiring ministers of late. To sum up, I pray that the hon. Premier will remember his words from yesteryear.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Davison. Just possibly one thing touching on the pension plan, which is nonexistent in government, and this goes back to 1996. There was a citizens forum put together that reported back to the Legislature. There is no government MLA pension plan, as you presently explain, going back to then. What there is now is an RRSP contribution to which the individual member can contribute — very similar to what the private sector operates under. It was at the same time, I believe, that the salaries were dealt with in 1996 where the tax-exempt status of MLAs was also removed. A portion of the income they received was previously tax-exempt; it is no longer tax-exempt.

M. Davison: Well, I was totally unaware of that, in that the pension act document I read was updated as of 2000.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I think if you look at the dates in it — and it is somewhat confusing…. A member that had practised and was a member of the Legislature prior to 1996 received the benefits up to that time and then accrued contributions beyond that, past that date. It is somewhat confusing for the general public, including myself, going right up to the election. It's very interesting, because I think most British Columbians believe that MLAs still receive this great pension. It's not a place to go if you're interested in making a lot of money, I can assure you. In the private sector, I think you'd probably do much better. You bring up an interesting point and allow us a very interesting time to put that information out there. I think it was a good move back in 1996, when the tax-exempt status was removed, when the Legislature went to a more, I believe, fair and equitable pension system. Unfortunately, it wasn't communicated to the people of British Columbia very well.

M. Davison: Well, it doesn't seem to be included in this pension act that I've taken from the Internet in its entirety. There is no mention about any of that, so my apologies if I made an assumption there.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Again, it's a very valuable point. It's very valuable information to put to the public, so I appreciate you bringing it up and allowing us the chance to put forward the facts as they exist today, in today's environment.

Seeing none, I want to thank you for taking the time to put together your presentation and to come

forward and present it to our committee here this evening. Thanks very much, Mark.

We will move on. Our next presenter this evening is with the B.C. Automobile Dealers Association: Glen Ringdal. Good evening, Glen.

G. Ringdal: First of all, thank you very much for this opportunity. I appreciate the fact that you gentlemen take your time. My own personal MLA happens to be here. That's very nice to see. I didn't realize you'd be here, Harry, so it's nice to see you.

I'll get right to my point. I'm here this evening to speak for the B.C. Automobile Dealers Association, representing new vehicle franchise dealers in B.C. — 330 dealers, 16,000 employees and $5 billion in annual vehicle sales, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars more in parts, service and collision repair.

Our association recently held its major fall board of directors meeting. I want to report to you gentlemen the tremendous sense of enthusiasm and optimism that has been created in our group from, first, the election of the new government and, second, the moves that you have made or indicated you plan to make during the first few months in government.

Two actions have been specifically important to our industry: (1) raising the luxury tax threshold from $32,000 to $47,000, with the expectation that it will be entirely gone when the economy allows, and (2) the income tax cut, placing real purchasing power back into the hands of B.C. families.

At a time when interest rates generally are the lowest we've seen in years, combined with the incentives that many manufacturers have in place to help unclog the supply pipeline that has built up during the sluggish sales earlier this year, the tax cut will really help many B.C. families move into a new car — one they have needed for years. For those of us in the new-car business, of course, this is good news. But for those of us who care about the environment, it's even better news because, simply stated, newer cars mean cleaner air.

All of us have become more environmentally aware over the past decade. We care more about our personal role in pollution and its causes. We make choices that protect or enhance our environment for today and for the future. I challenge you to find any industry that has taken its role in environmental protection more seriously than the automotive industry. Pushed by international environmental awareness as well as by dealers and organizations like our BCADA, vehicle manufactures have accomplished great things in reducing harmful emissions and overall pollutants from our vehicles. In fact, it will interest you to know that a new car today is 20 to 40 times more environmentally friendly than the same car just ten to 12 years ago. That means it would take up to 40 new 2002 cars to emit the equivalent pollutants of just one — one — similar vehicle manufactured in the late 1980s.

Families that have had to make do with their old 1988 vehicle, for example, will — thanks in great measure to your tax cut — be able to move into a new vehicle. It will be a safer vehicle, a more efficient vehicle and a dramatically more environmentally friendly vehicle. So we certainly applaud that move.

We also applaud your stated intention to revamp and overhaul many programs affecting the automobile industry, as well as other industries and ordinary — if there is such a thing — British Columbians. I speak particularly of the WCB, ITAC, ICBC and the government service itself.

On the WCB. It is the contention of our industry that the WCB must be overhauled completely and its personnel replaced, from top to bottom. The recent removal and replacement of most of the board of administrators was a good first step. We want you to go much further and replace bureaucracy with brains.

As you well know, during the nineties the economic needle did not move favourably for the average wage earner in B.C. Wage rates have stagnated, corporate profits have dwindled, and government deficits have ballooned. What was happening at the WCB between 1990 and 2000? The number of claims fell from 217,000 in 1990 to 184,000 in 2000. That's a decline of 15 percent, but WCB staff numbers rose from 1,911 to 2,869, an increase of 50 percent. WCB administrative costs rose from $132 million to $245 million, an increase of 85 percent. WCB claim costs rose from $858 million to $1.3 billion, an increase of 51 percent. WCB cost per claim rose from $172 to $447, an increase of 160 percent. WCB regulations increased from 2,700 to 4,000, or 48 percent. Need I say more? The current practice of paying a worker 75 percent of his gross earnings on a tax-free basis gives most workers who receive this amount more take-home money on compensation than while working. What kind of incentive is that?

On ITAC. Our provincial apprenticeship program is also in need of a major overhaul but not elimination. The funds allocated to it must be redirected. ITAC should not be a regulatory or program-setting agency. Instead, it should devote all of its energies to two functions: testing and certifying students, and promoting and recruiting for the apprenticeship program itself. Industry and schools that deliver the programs should work directly with the Minister of Skills Development and Labour and the Minister of Advanced Education in providing the infrastructure of each industry's apprenticeship program and designing the curriculum of each.

ICBC. We know that Nick Geer has been given the responsibility of redesigning our publicly owned insurance agency, and we are making separate submissions to him in that regard. I do want to say this to the committee: we are not in favour of dismantling ICBC but merely trimming its sails and making it more responsive to its partner industries and responsible to its funding partners — namely government and the premium payers.

British Columbians have become used to the notion of a not-for-profit basic insurance company, and we don't want to lose that. We can easily look across the provincial borders and see what can happen to rates in a purely competitive, free market system, and we don't like it. We want ICBC to serve the interests of small

body shops, just as we want it to protect young, unproven drivers from being treated unfairly in the interest of competition. Please don't tell ICBC it can do anything it needs to do to turn black while not raising rates. Raise rates modestly, trim the fat from ICBC, but let's keep the basic principle of government-owned insurance while we allow competition on a very cautious basis. I would ask that ICBC be instructed to live up to its obligations; to negotiate fairly with our industry, particularly the collision repair shops; and to rescind its policies that discriminate against smaller shops, particularly those in rural B.C.

Government service. As the government contemplates a serious reduction in government manpower, I hope you remember than many of us in industry, and as individuals, are willing and able to assume responsibility for some of the functions that are now performed by government. My case in point is the regulation and administration of the motor vehicle industry itself. We have recommended to the Hon. Rick Thorpe, Minister of Competition, Science and Enterprise and the minister responsible for the Motor Dealer Act, that we in conjunction with consumer advocates are willing to take over regulatory functions for our industry — in essence, to become self-regulating with a consumer conscience. We will do that under a council established by the provincial government.

The council will also assume the existing functions of the Motor Dealer Standards Association, which is currently conducting training classes for sales and dealer professionals and is establishing a code of ethics and raising the standards of performance in our industry. Under the motor dealers council the costs of regulation, investigation, dispute resolution and licensing would all fall away from government. Of course the council will sustain itself not with funds from government but with revenues earned from the services it provides.

In conclusion, may I commend this government on the good work it is doing in coming to grips with the cost of government, the costs and services provided by quasi-government agencies and the programs with which government has been saddled over the past ten years. We look forward to further cost-cutting in the future when we can afford it and to further tax reductions, to further dollars and to more responsibility and more choice in the hands of our citizens and our industries, including the B.C. automobile industry.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Ringdal, for your presentation. I think it was very well thought out and very well presented here this evening. I will look to members of our committee.

L. Mayencourt: Thank you very much for your presentation. You mention in here that with respect to ICBC, you'd like us to very carefully introduce competition. Of course we've made a commitment to British Columbians that they will have a competitive auto insurance system. I'm not sure what you mean by "cautiously" introducing that. Could you clarify what you mean? Are you thinking we might do it less than cautiously?

G. Ringdal: It could happen, I suppose. I hope not. The talk has been that it might be from dollar one — i.e., the entire insurance package would be available for competition. One needs only to look across the border to see what the prices are for similar coverage in provinces other than British Columbia where open competition does exist and where there is not a government model or norm that gives reasonability to prices.

The other area where it comes into play is in the system of allotting business, for example, to collision repair shops. We have some programs that have been introduced recently in ICBC called Express and Valet. Those are designed on the theory of giving the customers better service. What they absolutely do is disenfranchise many of the smaller dealers in smaller shops — not necessarily automotive dealers but shops — from being able to be competitive anymore. The insurance company then focuses its customers onto the dealers that have qualified for this program. Those that don't qualify because they can't possibly afford it in different locations and in different competitive situations are essentially cut off.

That system operates quite regularly in some free market insurance systems and very strongly in the United States. But they have other safeguards that do give protection to smaller shops. Some of those jurisdictions in California are a very good example. There are ways of doing it that can be very, very harmful to business and certainly harmful to the customers, and there are ways of doing it that aren't nearly as harmful but yet allow for the competition.

I must say that our industry has viewed ICBC as very friendly over the years. In recent years it has adopted some notions and some policies that are certainly contrary to the interests of our industry — again, I use a broad-brush industry there, not just dealers — because it has been currying great favour with the premium payer, also known as a voter. It seems to me that there is room for modest increases in rates that will allow for the corporation to maintain its solubility, but there isn't a need for it to get into such a high competitive mode as it's been indicating in the last couple of years, by providing services that quite frankly aren't required.

L. Mayencourt: Do you think that ICBC should be providing the motor vehicle branch services like licensing and…?

G. Ringdal: No. A lot of those services, quite frankly, could be farmed out in various ways — even to private industry. That whole function could be privatized and/or could be considered as an adjunct or a part of a motor dealers standards council, which I men-

tioned in my talk. We already are anticipating accepting a number of functions there, and we could accommodate the motor vehicle element.

I think, though, that might not be the best idea. It might be a better idea that that maintain a separate function under the minister, which he could in fact put into the hands of another body, whether it be private or a different government service. It needs to be, because safety issues are involved there. I think safety issues have to have a higher public purpose than just business.

H. Bloy: Hi, Glen. Thank you very much for your really thorough report. What you look after is a self-regulatory association now, the vehicle franchise dealers of British Columbia. How is the public protected from all the independent dealers out there right now? How would we look at that?

G. Ringdal: Under the proposal that we've put forward, it's a joint proposal of the BCADA and the ARA — which represents, let me call them, quality used car dealers that aren't franchise dealers — and also the RVDA, representing recreational vehicle dealers. So the three of us went together on the proposal that has gone forward to Minister Thorpe. The nub of it is that there will be a licensing body. This motor dealers standards council would be the licensing body that would allow the organizations that could in fact sell vehicles.

I'll be very blunt. We want to get rid of the people who have given our industry a bad name. We call them curbers; we call them brokers; we call them gyppo lots; we call them a number of things. Many of them would absolutely not qualify to be dealers. They would not get dealer plates. You can get a dealer plate in B.C. today for almost no reason. It's very, very easy to get a dealer plate. Then you have all of the rights of the largest franchise dealer, and that's not right, because there's no responsibility that goes along with it.

Those individuals and corporations that have put their reputations and their investment on the line in the selling of vehicles would have the opportunity to be licensed and to be governed by this council. They would have to live up to certain standards of professionalism and ethics. There would certainly be a system of dispute resolution and a method whereby consumers could go and get fair justice before they ever had to go to the expense, for example, of going to court. That's always a last resort.

We're trying to make it so the car-buying experience is one that is much more secure and respectable, in all senses, and that is easier and much more friendly for the customer. Right now the notion of going to buy a car ranks right up there with root canals, in most people's experience. That's not good. That's not good for our business. Why the heck would we want that? We want to bring a higher standard and much stronger professionalism to the industry, which will benefit the consumer and will ultimately benefit our industry.

H. Bloy: Can I change the subject for one moment? I wanted to thank you for bringing the Grey Cup to British Columbia last year. Will we be winning it again this year?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I would like to thank for your presentation. It's certainly very well thought out and well presented. I can assure you, as we have the other presenters, that the information you've put forward to us will be taken into consideration in the development of our report. Thank you very much for your time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just prior to moving on to our next presenter, I would like to recognize Brenda Locke, one of our colleagues and the local MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers. Welcome, Brenda.

At this time we will move on. Is Charlie Peck with us? Charlie is with the B.C. and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council. Good evening.

C. Peck: Hi. My name's Charlie Peck. I am the business manager of the IBEW, the electrical workers union. My part-time job is as president of the BCYT. The British Columbia and Yukon Building and Construction Trades Council is the umbrella organization for 13 unions involved in the construction industry in our province. Together the affiliates represent 48,000 highly skilled workers across the province.

Just 90 days ago the B.C. provincial budget enjoyed a surplus. Today we are facing a deficit of over $2 billion. Meanwhile the core review, a survey that may eliminate up to 50 percent of government expenditures — excluding health and education — has imposed a deadline of October 31 for ministries to pass approval-in-principle and implement plans.

The speed and ad hoc nature of the cuts are shock treatments to our economy. The alarm bells are ringing for thousands of government workers as well as for the retail businesses that depend on civil servants as service providers and consumers. Last week on Wednesday, October 3, we witnessed new dramatic announcements by the Minister of Finance. A three-year freeze on education and health budgets was announced by Minister Collins. The freeze amounts to a 9 percent cut in these two ministries when we take into account the cost of inflation and settlement of new collective agreements.

The freeze will do nothing to fulfil the vision for education and health outlined in the Liberal election campaign booklet, A New Era for British Columbia. That document called for a top-notch education system for students of all ages and for high-quality public health care services that meet all patients' needs where they live and when they need it. Instead of saving money,

the magnitude and haste of core review is causing more waste and new inefficiencies. Investment capital requires a stable economy and sound infrastructure. Instead of welcoming new investment, core review is scaring and freezing access to new capital.

Let me take a few minutes to give committee members one example of the destruction being caused by the core review process. The underground economy, mostly in the construction industry, is estimated to cost government billions each year in lost taxes. Two years ago Denis Desautels, then auditor general for the federal government, estimated that the provinces and the federal government lost over $12 billion a year to underground economy tax cheats. Two recent investigations into the scope of the underground economy in construction confirmed the auditor general's estimate. Based on the data and evidence from these exhaustive studies, a conservative estimate of the lost tax revenues to the province of B.C. is $1 billion annually.

Last year core review measures officially shut down the provincial response to deter the underground economy. Until last week, the joint compliance team initiative of the provincial government and the federal departments of Human Resources Development Canada and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, formerly Revenue Canada, was a cooperative effort to ensure that employers and employees in the lower mainland residential construction industry were aware of the legal employment requirements.

The provincial component of the joint compliance team had no authority to force non-complying employers to meet their obligations under the employment standards laws. Instead, the B.C. government section of the joint compliance team, which comprised three full-time employees and one co-op student, limited their interaction with employers and employees to an education function — i.e., "Did you know that you're required to provide employees with a minimum of two weeks paid vacation? Did you know that employees are entitled to statutory holidays?"

The joint compliance team carried out spot checks on residential construction sites from November 1, 2000, until October 3, 2001. With the change in government, they were ordered to stop their work. During the eight months of activity, the team interviewed over 1,500 people at over 400 randomly selected construction sites from Hope to Whistler. Of the 1,500 interviewees, some 700 identified themselves as subcontractors, 687 said they were employees, another 69 were owners, and 51 were general contractors. Of the 687 employees interviewed, 54 percent said that they were not getting one or more core entitlements under the Employment Standards Act — either annual vacation, stat holiday pay or overtime allowances. Of the 700 who identified themselves as subcontractors, preliminary evidence shows that over 200 were in fact employees. The hours and duties of their workday were set by someone other than themselves. Adding these subcontractors to the employee list, the percentage of workers not receiving their core entitlements jumped to over 65 percent.

The high percentage of workers cheated out of their overtime, vacations and stat holiday pay was an indicator of the other illicit activity, specifically tax fraud and avoidance. The CCRA is following up on these cases. One example kind of illustrates the huge potential for recuperation of unpaid provincial taxes. The first company that the joint compliance team visited employed 70 people. Of these, the CCRA identified 35 as non-filers of tax returns. There were seven who had false social insurance numbers. The CCRA already had 25 of the employees on their files. Until the joint compliance team uncovered these individuals, CCRA had no way of finding these people.

While the provincial component of the joint compliance team had no authority to order compliance, in a surprise gesture roughly 25 percent of employers who classified their employees as self-employed voluntarily converted the workers to their payrolls. Employers knew what they were doing was wrong, but they felt they had to cheat in order to compete. These employers were happy that the government was finally showing up on jobsites.

The fact is that illegal activity in construction is insidious. It forces otherwise honest people to join in on the corrupt practices. Those businesses that operate legally and that provide their employees with the minimum legal protections and pay their taxes are the first victims of the underground activity. Most honest construction contractors will go bankrupt from the activity of their ruthless competitors.

The work of the joint compliance team is but one small example of the damage being done as a result of core review. Slashing government services, regulations and enforcement in one area will wind up costing somewhere else. An excellent example of this recently came my way, by the elderly and sick who had begun to fight back against proposed cuts to the Pharmacare program. I repeat it here as a metaphor for the many other programs slated for the chopping block.

Helping to fund preventative pharmaceuticals keeps our sick and elderly out of hospitals. Using the public purse to pay for drugs today saves possibly painful and unnecessary remediation expenditures tomorrow. Imagine the cost of hospitalizing patients who show up at emergency wards because they couldn't afford to buy their preventative medicine to reduce their chance of heart attack, fend off cancer or fight AIDS.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I would hope that you would review this and recommend that this initiative be revisited, because we believe it was a worthwhile endeavour.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Peck, for coming out and making your presentation this evening. I will look to members of the committee if there are any questions — possibly just one from myself. I think it's no secret to say that we're facing some very significant financial challenges in British Colum-

bia. I look to your presentation with the issue of core services review, looking at that, I believe, as any business should. When a new owner takes over per se, if I could use those words, they should evaluate how they're providing the services.

Ideas on possible savings that we could look at. I know you touched on Pharmacare, something that's growing at a rate that truly isn't sustainable. These are not easy decisions or decisions that are going to be made without compassion. The reality is that as a province, it's very similar to a household. If you've lived beyond your means, there comes a time when you have to rein yourself in, and that's the position we're in, in British Columbia. I'd look to you for some recommendations, if you had any at the present time, as far as spending.

C. Peck: As far as Pharmacare, that isn't my main objective tonight, but the revenue lost to the province through the underground economy is something the province has to look at. I think the estimates of the lost revenue can be backed up through the tax system, as well as revenue through provincial sales tax — evasion of those types of things. They're all direct revenue to the province.

The estimate of a billion dollars annually is significant, and to discontinue trying to pursue that issue is wrong for the province. If the province is tight on finances in some areas, to disregard the underground economy is wrong. I think it should be pursued. That amount of money is significant, and I don't think it should be overlooked.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): If I could just possibly follow through, I agree. I think we've created an environment where we've almost forced people to thrive in the underground economy from one end of this province to the other. It has taken some time to get into the position we're in, when we're talking about that economy in particular.

A time frame. If we were to set the table properly in British Columbia to try and correct that underground economy, do you have a time frame in which we could see this revenue generated coming to government versus going into the underground? Are we talking one year to realign ourselves? Are we talking months or a number of years?

C. Peck: Unfortunately, I think the federal and provincial governments were only…. I've presented another document that's an outline of the backgrounder from Revenue Canada's point of view. I believe they worked in the neighbourhood of two years to just do the lower mainland area. As we outlined, they interviewed 1,500 people during the eight months previous to the program being cut. The information is what is shown.

I don't have the information as to the revenue that was lost during that eight-month period, but I think that's an indication that if we're serious about revenues…. Whether it would take one year — you know, whether you'd completely clean up the underground economy in one year — I couldn't say that, but to ignore it is wrong.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. I want to thank you again for making your presentation and bringing a very interesting perspective on an issue before this committee. As I indicated to the others, it will certainly be given due consideration in the preparation of our report. I thank you very much, Charlie.

Moving along, our next presenter this evening is with Allied Hydro Council. He is Wayne Peppard.

W. Peppard: Good evening. First of all, I'd like to thank the consultation process for allowing us this opportunity to come forward. I am speaking here on behalf of the Allied Hydro Council. I'd like to give you just a little bit of history of that. It was brought in approximately 30 years ago — 29 years ago, I believe — under the W.A.C. Bennett government. As a visionary, W.A.C. Bennett certainly saw that there was ample opportunity within the province of B.C. with the resources that it had, particularly water, to provide energy. To that effect, an agreement was reached between, at that time, Peace power corporation and Columbia Power Corporation to build the dams that were going to be necessary, which were going to be built on the Peace and Columbia systems. For 30 years we have been building those dams under this agreement. Our modifications of this agreement have been developed and have served this province very well.

That's what brings me here today to talk about revenues and to talk about B.C. Hydro and hydro power. There are many other things I would like to talk about, but I'm going to leave those to those people who come here with their special interest. I'll try and stick with what I have. I'd like to also apologize because I didn't get a prepared statement together. It's been a very quick and very busy couple of weeks for me, with the weekends and everything.

There are just a few issues I'd like to bring forward that were brought out of your own document. I'll start first with the business of B.C. Hydro and privatization, which is very largely in the news these days. There are concerns that we have about privatization. I must assure you that I represent unions that are in the private industry, and it is to our benefit — all of our benefits — that the province be healthy, that the economy be healthy and that local economies be healthy. That's the way we all move forward and are able to sustain the lifestyles that we have come to expect in this province. However, it is scary when I look over the papers and see the amount of information that's being put out through the media on the fear of privatization. I would like to just say here — and I'm reading from The Globe on October 5: "Ms. Odowichuk said future steps in the process for B.C. Hydro, including potential changes to transmission and distribution operations, are being considered by the utility and by members of the recently appointed energy task force." She goes on to say: "…including the sale of some or all of the divisions." And it wraps up at the end of this article, talking about:

"Over the last few years, B.C. Hydro has become a major player in the western North American electricity market. In the year ended March 31, 2001, the utility reported electricity trade revenue of $5.5 billion, up from $1.1 billion in the previous fiscal year."

We were able to do that because of the foresight of governments that have come before so that we were able to build and have the capacity to provide that electricity, so that we were in a position to be able to collect those revenues. That's what's important, and that's what I'm speaking to today — $375 million in 2001 and $1 billion in 2000. Over $3 billion has been collected in the last five years. That's a lot of money into the coffers of the province of B.C.

What I'm getting at right here is that under the privatization that the previous election was run on and the notion that B.C. Hydro could be on the block under the core review, and also looking at budget restraints, it is of serious concern for us, being the people who have been responsible for building these dams.

I would like to assure you that the people I've talked to in B.C. Hydro from the top down are extremely pleased with the agreement that we have reached and with the services that have been provided through our unions. This agreement allows all contractors, whether they're union or non-union, to bid for the projects. It allows them to bring their core people with them to start the projects. It also allows for what we have achieved on the Keenleyside project: in excess of 80 to 85 percent local hiring. That's hiring people within 100 kilometres of the jobsite of the project. What that does to a local economy, I don't need to express to you people. You understand what that means.

In retrospect, what has happened there is that the projects that had been written into the agreement have been filtered over a period of time so that we no longer have the boom and bust we did in the earlier years when we were building the dams under the W.A.C. regime. What we have now is an acceptance that we have to have local economies that thrive, but also ones that don't have those deep valleys where the unemployment rises and those people are put out of work. We've managed to put times on those projects so that they happen not up and down, up and down, but in a constant figure so that the jobs are over a longer period. There is less cost to that, because there's less payment as a result of overtime and things like that. But also keep in mind that we are trying to keep the projects on line, on time and on budget. We are doing that. We've done that for every project we've done, including Stave Falls.

Speaking of Stave Falls, I'd also like to mention that I was talking to a B.C. Hydro person at the Seven Mile project a week and a half ago. He was saying that he was so pleased with the expertise of the people we have provided, because these men and women who work on these jobs…. It is their fathers and their relatives who have built the dams for the last 30 or more years. What we are proud of and what we should be selling is an extremely good expertise in building projects like this.

There are some other issues that have to be dealt with, but power is important. It is a revenue builder. We would hope that when you're looking at B.C. Hydro, at privatization — should those be the issues coming up — there be some good consultation with those of us that work in the industry. Not only those of us who work in the industry but those communities and businesses that have benefited and the people who represent those communities in the municipalities…. Everyone I speak to is very proud and happy with the work we've done and the revenues generated for the province and for those local economies as well. If we have a healthy local economy, then we also have a healthy provincial economy. That's what I would like to make a major point of today.

I'm just going to give you a little quote from another document on privatization and deregulation of energy supplies. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I will get one to you as soon as I can: "Much of the argument in favour of privatization and deregulation glorifies the alleged benefits competition may bring to the industry and its customers — lower costs, greater efficiency and more consumer choice. However, some governmentally owned utilities embrace the privatization movement for another reason: to reduce or eliminate their debt load by putting it on the backs of electric consumers."

It is consumers we are really concerned about as well. We do not want to see privatization meeting the objectives of simply this government and then have those costs relayed back onto the consumers. Those consumers aren't just the homeowners. Those consumers are the businesses, the pulp mills, the mines and the communities along all of the lines that are supplied through the transmission and distribution services.

The point I'd like to make once again is that in deliberations on this, we take all these issues into consideration. Hopefully, that debate will happen with everyone involved and not be just a decision made politically by the government.

Finally, I'd also like to say — I've read this in your document — that I do believe very strongly that the uncertainty related to aboriginal land claims has a very negative impact on economic growth and activity. That has to happen throughout the energy sector.

I did meet with Mr. Ebbels a few weeks ago, and that was probably the thing we talked about the most. He wanted to know how our relationship was with aboriginal peoples. I expressed our concerns. We've been reaching out over the years. Through our agreements, we've got equity hiring that ensures people will have the opportunity to go to work. Also, in the period we're talking about, the training they receive will allow them to reach apprenticeship at the end. It's not like what happened on the Island Highway project, where there were problems with moving from one point to another. People could not follow the projects.

We are working very hard, and I welcome the opportunity to speak here today. I hope you will consider

my comments here this evening with respect to the budget and the revenues that accumulate from energy sources, particularly with hydro and the people I represent.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Wayne, for your presentation. I look to members of the committee.

R. Sultan: Mr. Peppard, you don't have to convince us of the high quality of the people and their level of technical expertise in your organization. I say that with a bit of pride because, in a tangential way, I was part of the organization myself many, many decades ago. I helped build the Seton project, I helped build the Bridge River project, and I even helped build the transmission line between Kitimat and Kemano.

Having said that, we are living in different times. After the fiasco of California, clearly there is a new sense of caution by anybody looking at the supply of electrical energy in British Columbia. My own personal hunch — and I have no particular special knowledge or insight here to offer; I'm just going by what I read in the newspapers like you, I suppose — is that certainly this government at some point has to consider some variations in the ownership theme around B.C. Hydro, but consistent with our election promises which are cast in stone and won't be broken. I'm sure of that.

My question to you is: what would you do if you were God and could play around with the ownership structures of the various component parts of this fine enterprise, without destroying the whole, but nevertheless trying to bow to twenty-first century competitive realities, in particular the flexibility that the Americans keep jamming down our throat? They run all these business experiments — some work; some don't — and at the end of the day they tend to run circles around us.

W. Peppard: I'd act cautiously to begin with. I wouldn't move too quickly on this issue because — how does the phrase go? — if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. As a new government, I agree with you. I recognize that you ran on these issues. You, as any new owner, have every right to review how the operations go and make those changes that are necessary. What I'm trying to say is that I hope, in doing that, the dialogue is open and that you speak to and with the people who are concerned about it.

I've been involved in construction for years. I've worked for many contractors. You have good ones; you have bad ones. Even when you have good ones, you have bad people within them. Unions have good people and bad people too. We try to do the best we can, whether we're in a business or within a union. When we get out on that project, the idea is to deliver that project on time and on budget and to deliver it so that it's to the benefit of everybody around. Those are the things we have to look at. If it's working and has been working well, that's the contention I have.

I'm not God. I guess the closest thing to God we have right now is you, with the number of seats you have in the Legislature and the ability to change things as you please. All I am saying is: in looking at B.C. Hydro, go slowly. When you're looking at deregulation and privatization, talk to the people who work there as well as the people who run it. I know from talking to the people who run it, they have a lot of concerns.

In talking to Mr. Ebbels, I know that the IPPs are very much a part of the new program, among the other things I read in the paper about Mr. Bell. Those things help the private industry as well. This has no blame attached to it whatsoever. But with IPPs, very often in that private market a lot of flipping has been happening. Even between the time a project starts to the time that it's finished, it's been flipped. If it's there to make profit for a business, then that's fine and dandy. Nobody has any problem with that. If it becomes a problem for the energy system and for delivering that energy system and if it becomes an operational problem, I have concerns.

I've watched the energy and particularly the dam projects over the last number of years. I've worked on them since I was very young as well. I've been in the industry for 30 years. When I talk about the pride, you agree with that. The pride is that those people that are building those things know what they're doing. I have a lot of concern, when I see a client flipping a project before it's even finished, as to what their real intent is and what their commitment is both to that local community as well as to the province and to that energy system. I don't see that there, and I do see it in B.C. Hydro. They are proud of what they do, and they have these concerns as well.

B. Penner: Thank you, Wayne, for your presentation. You should know that our Chairman represents the electoral district of Peace River South which, more than most ridings in this province, is directly affected by some of the dam projects undertaken by B.C. Hydro — or B.C. Electric previously. You're looking at a person, not just our Chair. I'm sure other people on this panel are also very interested in B.C. Hydro, and I include myself in that.

First of all, I'd like some clarification from you. You represent the Allied Hydro Council. Just so I understand, that's a conglomeration of different unions that work just on the construction projects. Or does it also include maintenance projects?

W. Peppard: No. The Allied Hydro Council represents the affiliated unions or construction unions for allied hydro projects only.

W. Peppard: That's correct. For example, the Elk Falls project was done under a project agreement under the Allied Hydro Council.

B. Penner: Okay. Just to clarify or to reaffirm what my colleague Ralph Sultan stated during the election campaign, the Premier and the B.C. Liberal Party made it clear that we would not privatize the dams, trans-

mission and, I believe, the distribution assets of B.C. Hydro. Again, I don't have any special insight or knowledge here, but I would suspect that what you might see happen is that rather than one publicly owned entity owning all three of those major components, there might be different public entities owning those different components. I'm particularly thinking of transmission.

The reason why I could think of a good rationale to move that into another corporate entity, albeit publicly owned, is twofold: one, we're dealing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, in the United States. It is starting to cast glances our way at our transmission system. Seeing that it's tied and owned directly by the same entity that owns and operates our dams and our generation system, there is some suggestion that that's an unfair advantage. Of course we want open access to the U.S. market, assuming they pay us for electricity, so that we can take advantage of sales opportunities.

This discussion about creating a regional transmission organization, or RTO West, is something I've been monitoring and watching over the last couple of years. The discussions are still, in my mind, fairly nebulous. There have been a lot of discussions. There have been some draft memorandums of understanding, and B.C. Hydro has signed on to those. But they're only drafts. I share your concern that we don't go too quickly. I think there is significant concern about entering into this, but at least at this point it's in our interest to participate in negotiations and discussions while reserving the right ultimately, perhaps, not to finalize any agreement.

The second reason why it might make sense to have a separate entity control our transmission system is because of those IPPs that would like to get built in British Columbia. I've met with a number of developers of these projects who feel that B.C. Hydro has a vested interest in not giving them a fair or reasonable deal on the electricity. The IPPs have only one customer to sell it to, and that is B.C. Hydro. B.C. Hydro may tend to see these as competitors to themselves since they also own generation and therefore may not bargain fairly.

That's the allegation. B.C. Hydro denies it, and I'm not in a position to say one way or the other who's right, but it would at least remove that immediate suspicion on the part of private investors that the game is rigged somehow at the outset. I'm not saying it is, but that's the allegation that frequently comes up. It's frustrating for me, but I think it's also frustrating for the people of B.C. Hydro to hear that constantly.

There is an energy review that's taking place currently. I encourage you to contact Larry Bell, the Chairman of B.C. Hydro, with your suggestions. Say that you'd like to have your views considered. Feel free to contact any of us in the Legislature, any of your MLAs, because I think you're absolutely right. Electricity is absolutely crucial. We have benefited tremendously by the foresight that you've mentioned by previous governments.

We've really had a unique asset in British Columbia that maybe some of us take for granted, and we shouldn't. That is those hydro dams. The reason why we're able to secure such incredible profits…. I noticed your remark that we're a major player. Actually, in the overall energy grid we're fairly small in terms of our total capacity, but we have the ability to turn it on and turn it off with a switch because they are hydro dams. If we were running fossil fuel plants, natural gas or coal, we can't do that economically. You can't stop-start. We are in a unique position because 90 percent of our generation comes from hydroelectric facilities. We are uniquely situated, and if I had my way, we would continue to invest in more hydroelectric projects even if, in the short term, they may look more expensive than natural gas or coal plants.

W. Peppard: I'm pleased to hear that. Thank you very much, and I will get hold of Mr. Bell on the energy….

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Wayne, I would like to thank you. You've spoken on an issue that certainly, as my colleague has said, is very near and dear to myself and my riding. My father worked on the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, and I grew up around that. It certainly has been a huge contributor not just to the province but to our region, and I understand fully the magnitude of what hydro means to our province. I thank you for your presentation.

Moving along, I see our next presenter has just entered the room: His Worship Mayor Don Bell from the district of North Vancouver. Good evening, Don. Welcome. Your timing is excellent.

D. Bell: Well, just in time. That comes out of the grocery business — my background.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to make this presentation to you tonight. I see some faces that I know. Mr. Sultan is one of the MLAs serving our municipality, so I'm very pleased to see you all.

What we wanted to do tonight is just give you an idea — and there is a copy of the presentation that you can have for your reference — about some of the challenges that municipalities in general and the district of North Vancouver in particular are facing; the steps that we've taken to try and address those in the spirit, I know, that your government is looking at in terms of attempting to be more efficient — cost reduction, more efficient delivery of government services. We've been doing that for some time. We're in the process, and I guess we've been at it for at least, since I've been back, about ten years in one way or another. I know that you people at the provincial level are getting your feet wet and having your baptism by fire.

What I'll do is leave some of this for you to take and look at, but I'll try to hit the high points so that you can determine the areas that you want to go back to. I'll tell you some of the challenges we've faced in local government and, as I said, particularly in North Vancouver. First of all, under the previous government we faced the loss, over a three-year period, of the unconditional grants, which at one time were known as the municipal grants — the per-capita grants they were

called at one time. The names have changed over the years. Our municipality received approximately $3 million a year, and we lost $1.5 million one year, and then two years later we lost the other $1.5 million. All municipalities in British Columbia faced this problem to one degree or another. Ours, we feel, was particularly heavily hit. That represented somewhere in the neighbourhood of a 7 percent potential tax impact, to give you an idea. At that time 1 percent in our municipality was slightly in excess of $400,000. That will give you an area — a little over 7 percent. Those grants hit all municipalities particularly hard.

The attitude of the previous government — from the kind of comments we heard back — was that the local government would take it. They would likely do what the provincial government previously hadn't done; that is, we have to have balanced budgets, and we would just bite the bullet and do it. That's what the municipalities did. There was a protest arranged at the library, and a number of municipalities from all over British Columbia showed up. Nevertheless, the loss of those grants was there.

What was particularly galling was that we had just, through the Union of B.C. Municipalities, signed a memorandum of understanding with municipalities and the government that they would not blindside us — that if there were going to be needs, we would sit down and discuss the challenges and talk about phasing in or a transitional approach so that we could understand what was going to happen. But we did indeed get blindsided, the first shot. After that was "We're not going to do it," and then they hit us again. That's the first issue.

The second thing was the appropriation of traffic fines, which had been a source of revenue to the municipalities. The third was Bill 55. Bill 55 — I know that your government is looking at it — was the reduction in railway taxation. In our municipality that meant, over a four-year period, a loss of $800,000 a year — again, about a 2 percent hit.

I'll address that other issue in a moment. I went over and appeared before various ministers of the provincial government, and it was made clear at that time that in their opinion — and I can certainly understand it — it was important to support the economy of the province and that the railway was critically important. All we would suggest is that municipalities who happen to have a disproportionate share of rail infrastructure shouldn't be penalized. It shouldn't be the taxpayers of any one or two or a half-dozen municipalities that end up supporting the provincial economy.

If there's a need for this and if there is a need for subsidization and a need for rationalization of fees, then it's something that should be distributed in the broader basis to the whole province that in fact benefits. You know, the rail line isn't just the community's that it physically touches. The rail line, I can tell you from my experience in my business years with Safeway…. I'm no longer with Safeway, but we used to ship our trucks up to Quesnel on B.C. Rail, and then we would truck them around the rest of the northern part of the province from Quesnel, for example. We had drivers who were housed there.

Our case was that the hit on the taxation, the railway loss, was another substantial hit. The other was, generally, the downloading of programs. My request to you as government is that as you look at this and you start to see areas to create efficiencies and to cut the cost of government, please try to be honest — and I'm sure you will be; I just say this as one politician to another — and try to look at it in a way that recognizes that there's one taxpayer. We hear this all the time.

There are three levels of government. We acknowledge and certainly appreciate your government acknowledging under the community charter that in fact local government will become an order of government from the recognition of the provincial government, and that's very important to us. But there's one taxpayer, and there's at least three of us who've got our hands in their pocket to be able to provide the services they require from the various levels of government. When one level of government — and the provincial government has faced this in the past from the federal government — gets downloading, it just gets pushed down. The taxpayer still pays; it's just who takes the responsibility for that.

The downloading, coupled with the loss of traditional grants, was really…. The services that were eliminated fell to the municipality to provide. We've seen this sort of continual filtering down and a burgeoning of costs on municipalities. You may have heard this story from other municipalities. I just wish to reinforce those points.

Then there is the reduction in services at the provincial level, which again was more or less parallel to the official downloading of programs and then the elimination of programs at the provincial level that resulted in those agencies and groups in particular coming to us and saying: "We've been cut off. Can you fill in?" Local government is a level where it's very easy to get hold of us, telephone-wise, shopping or out on the soccer field with the family.

Finally, an issue that's exclusive to the district of North Vancouver, which I'll come back to, is the capping of taxation on Vancouver Wharves because it was a subsidiary of B.C. Rail. The loss of, in our particular case, where full taxes weren't paid.… In other municipalities in which B.C. Rail was located — in fact, our sister municipality, the city of North Vancouver — the full taxes were paid for B.C. Rail facilities there. In our case, from B.C. Rail and the Vancouver Wharves as a subsidiary, we lost — which I'll point out to you — over $3 million per year. Again, it's a 7 percent per year loss that we've had to accommodate.

I'm here crying the woes to you. I'll tell you what we have done, just so we're not sitting here simply with our hankies out. We're trying to say we've acted responsibly, as you're trying to do, and said: "Okay, we have to reassess what we do as government. We have to prioritize the kinds of things we've done, we are doing and we intend to do." I'll cover those.

Basically, things that we've done and intend to do more of: organizational changes — just as you're contemplating this — including process improvements and staff reductions, which have been achieved through a flattening of the organization. We've eliminated layers of management. We at one time had six directors; we have four. We've taken the approach to try and end up cutting red tape in the way we service our community, particularly the business community.

For residents who come in and want to maybe make an addition to their homes — add a garage, put a bedroom on or a second storey — what they used to have to do…. If any of you have done this in your municipality, you go to one department. You put your application down, and they take it and consider it. A week or two or three — whatever it works out to be — later, you go back and get that permit, and they say: "Okay, next you go to this department." Sequentially, you go through a series of issues that not only take your time but are an additional cost.

What we decided to do is take, again, a branch out of the retail business and go at what we call one-stop shopping. Now our residents walk into our municipal hall. They go to one of three geographic areas, because we have a linear community spread out between Capilano, the central area, which is basically Lynn Valley, and Seymour, which is the eastern area. You go in and they say: "Where do you live? Where's your business?"

You go to that counter, and there's a clerk. One clerk deals with you there, and that person then takes your application and shepherds it through those five departments for you. You don't have to come back five times. Not only that, they're not done sequentially; they're done simultaneously to the extent that it's possible. We have parallel processing rather than sequential processing. That cuts down our time. It cuts down the loss of time, and in business time of processing is money lost.

I might add, by the way, that in the fire department we're down one or two deputy chiefs, for example. So we've done this flattening we've talked about. We've cut out the management level. We've tried to consolidate departments and reorganize where we have had more effective linkages of departments. Instead of silos that we're offering, which have a cost if they're not coordinating, we've consolidated those.

We've done public consultation and community surveys — we do this annually, and we do it every three years in a major way — to determine community satisfaction with our service levels and to help us identify issues: if we do have to make cost reductions, either where we can do things more effectively or where services are no longer required and do not still rate the same priority that they've had in the past.

We've created a citizens finance and budget advisory committee. We get the citizens who have skill and knowledge in the financial area to come and provide us with their input and abilities. We've created a value analysis task force to specifically advise council on corporate performance and efficiency. We have appointed a waterfront task force on the industrial waterfront to tell us about their problems and how we can help them be competitive. You're aware of the ports competitive review.

I should tell you that the provincial downloading equated to about 16 percent in the last four years. We've got some details attached for you. We absorbed that. We absorbed the wage costs; we absorbed the downloading. We absorbed anywhere from 4 to 5 percent per year in terms of increased efficiencies. We improved reductions in services where they were no longer a high priority or improved efficiencies.

The projected cost increases during that period, 1995 to 2001, amounted to 42 percent. Through the cost reductions and the efficiencies I've talked about, we absorbed 25 percent, and 16 percent was passed along to district taxpayers by way of tax increases. We're very proud of what we've done; we feel we've acted in a fiscally responsible way.

Senior government downloading, coupled with holding tax increases to a minimum, has placed considerable stress on the district's operating reserves and our operating fund surpluses. These are currently now at an absolute minimum. I've got a summary here that will be in the material. I won't get into it, but it just backs up with facts that which I've said.

The final issue I wanted to touch on briefly is the issue of Vancouver Wharves. This was a private company in competition with other companies offering competitive port services. When it was acquired by B.C. Rail, they came to us, and the government ultimately capped their taxes at a flat $2 million a year.

For example, the loss to the district of North Vancouver in 1998 was $116,000; in 1999 it was $989,000; in the year 2000 it was $3.386 million; in 2001 it was $3.6 million — for a total since 1997 of over $8 million that was diverted, or not paid, but should have been paid through Vancouver Wharves. They indicated that they needed this to be able to survive. That subsidiary has turned a profit. Our concern was that the practice appeared to be discriminatory in that our municipality got these reductions, had the taxes frozen, and other municipalities didn't. In fact, our sister municipality, where B.C. Rail operations were, did not.

So there is an extensive issue here. The principle is that if there's got to be subsidy to provide a provincial interest, it shouldn't be on the taxpayers of any one municipality who happen to have that business or that rail connection located there. It also meant that other industrial waterfront taxpayers were paying increased taxes to subsidize a competitor in the same kind of business a few thousand yards down the beach.

I'll just give you a final comment. We supported the ports competitive review. One of the problems with the previous government was that when it was set up, there were only two municipal politicians involved: the mayor of Prince Rupert and the mayor of New Westminster — both fine people, but not enough to recognize the impact of the ports on municipalities. The GVRD expressed concern about that at that time. We've taken steps in our municipality to assess the needs of the port industry. We were seriously considering freezing the taxes on them last year. We were unable to. We

were faced with a tax increase of just under 7 percent, even with all the changes that we've made.

I'm here to answer any questions. I know that was fast and furious. It's a lot of ground to cover. You do have the backup file that you can take home and read during the quiet moments that you have. Thank you very much.

For backup, if you have questions, I have John McPherson, who is our chief financial officer. I also have Councillor Heather Dunsford, who is one of our councillors here with me today.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Your Worship, for your presentation. I will look to members of our committee if there are any questions.

R. Sultan: Mayor Bell, on behalf of the committee let me welcome you and Mr. McPherson here. I would just like to add that you come from what is arguably the most family-friendly community in British Columbia, which I happen to represent in part, as an MLA — not that that biases my opinion whatsoever.

As a piece of incidental intelligence, I was staggered by the statistic that one household in five in Mayor Bell's community participates in an organized soccer program. I personally find that staggering. It explains in part why Mayor Bell's councillors have recently approved a multimillion-dollar artificial turf soccer field.

D. Bell: Don't make it sound worse than it is, Ralph. It's about $1.5 million.

D. Bell: I was staggered today to find out that we have 2,500 boys and girls playing field hockey who are going to use this field. It's going to be open in two weeks. And one artificial turf field, by the way, gives us the equivalent of ten grass fields — lower maintenance costs. This is one of the decisions we had to make up front: to invest some capital so that we get lower operating costs in the long run and lower capital ultimately.

R. Sultan: Then I would have to concur with your deep concern that the previous government has downloaded onto you this subsidy for B.C. Rail — a fine institution that serves the entire province. I don't know why your taxpayers should shoulder this particular burden exclusively. On the issue of railroad lands, which affects many communities across the province, and in regard to CP Rail specifically there have been some rumblings from other communities as well. So perhaps you're gaining some allies in those fights. Let me say that as your MLA, I support you strongly in both.

In raising those two issues in particular, could you give us a bit of a report card? Are you getting some sympathetic vibes out of Victoria?

D. Bell: Yes. During the UBCM we met with Minister Nebbeling, who has raised this issue believing that Crown corporations should in fact pay full municipal taxes. I understand that to be a government position. He raised this previously while in opposition. I've sent letters to the Premier. We've met with other ministers as well, in particular yourself, Katherine Whittred, our MLAs on the North Shore, and I used the opportunity of meetings with Minister Plant and Minister Abbott to twist their arms as well. Some of these gentlemen have municipal backgrounds. John Les and others can understand very clearly where we're coming from.

B. Kerr: Mayor Bell, although I'm on Vancouver Island right now, I lived in Canyon Heights for 25 years. Both my kids graduated from Handsworth, and I coached soccer and baseball there, so I know North Vancouver very well. I'd like to comment on what you've done here with regards to cutting your costs. I think that's pretty important. That's essentially what we're trying to do in core review. Was there a decrease in the service to the public when you reduced your costs, or did you just find a better and more efficient way of providing the same service or better service?

D. Bell: I would say, primarily, that it was a better and more efficient way. I'd likely be lying if I said there weren't some service reductions. We've minimized that. In fact, our direction to staff two years ago, when we directed a zero increase for the total budget, was that there be no reduction in service levels. We've reduced our surplus levels, our surplus accounts, our contingency accounts. It was a combination of three things. One was efficiencies — restructuring to in fact provide the same services more cheaply. Those were the efficiencies I talked about — the one-stop shopping and those types of things.

The other was to determine where we could eliminate services that were no longer needed. I won't call it Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman — you know, with buggy whips — but you have to look at your operation and ask: "Are we still doing something because we've always done it?" You have to go back and re-analyze that. Our residents expect a high level of service, as you know, and we try to provide that.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): It's interesting listening to what you've gone through with the realignment of your provision of services. It is very similar and reflects exactly what the core review process in government is now going through. I thank you for your time this evening; I thank you for your input. Your report and information here this evening will be given due consideration in the development of our report.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We will move on. Our next presenter this evening is Gaetan Myre. Good evening.

G. Myre: I'm Gaetan Myre. I work for B.C. Hydro. I'm an IBEW member. I once ran in Burnaby North as a Liberal MLA. I lost. [Laughter.] That was in '91.

G. Myre: I have a few comments here that I put together. I was told that I was going to be here only a very short moment ago, and I'm not all that well prepared, so you'll excuse my presentation.

G. Myre: From what I've gathered, most of our members are worried about the deep cuts — not so much that you are going to do cuts, but the depth at which you are going to do them. We understand a great many of those people have already got in 30 or 35 years of service, and we might be paying them off — I don't know — a month per year of service, so that would end up as two to three years of paying them while they're on leave. Then they would follow on to their retirement. That's quite a chunk of money to be spending instead of just letting them run out their time. Recently there was apparently a director or a CEO who was let go a month and a half before his term was over. That cost us a parachute of $500,000.

As upper management leaves, we've seen what has happened with PGE and Southern Cal Edison, which have had deep cuts themselves. Their management was not wise or knowledgable enough to see the forthcoming shortage that resulted in billions of dollars of loss to those companies and billions of dollars of California taxpayers' money to recuperate from those losses. So we're worried that if the cuts are too deep, we will rob ourselves of expertise.

Inasmuch as Hydro is concerned and the separation into GenCan, TransCan, etc…. I've worked all over the States and Canada as a lineman, and so have most of us. It's not really a deep worry. As a matter of fact, we think we're going to make more money privatized than not, because then we won't be under freezes over and over again. We won't be losing people like we have.

In Surrey, I remember our line room, which covers from the airport to the Fraser to 0 Avenue and to 242nd. We used to have 150 people to maintain the area. We're now 35, and if there's a storm, you're going to be out for a long time. There are just not enough people. You cannot get some from the States anymore. They don't have any either.

At our union hall, usually from different states we have calls that come in for over 1,000 people that are needed yesterday. Their systems are falling apart. They have not put in any maintenance in years and years. Here Hydro has put in maintenance, but not to the extent that they normally do. So in another five or ten years you're going to run into the same scenario: poles falling down, transformers blowing up and not enough people to fix them.

With us, the apprenticeship program has been accelerated, which is a very good thing, but there are only so many apprentices you can put on. In the line section, the transmission and the substations, starting five years from now you're going to lose 50 percent of your people. It takes five to six years to train a lineman. If you cut that — and it has been done before — a whole lot of them end up dead, because we work everything live. You have to know through experience what to do. The actual mechanical work itself is very simple, but the proximity to energized wire is what makes the trade very risky.

What we're worried about is that the projects — the dam, the transmission, etc., — are assets that were paid for by the people of British Columbia. Right now our dividends are low electrical rates. If you privatize distribution, we will be on the market to buy power like every other town in the United States. Then the rates will go up. That company will use that money to do whatever it wants to, whereas now the savings accrue directly to the consumer. Whether you're a small factory or an individual, you can use that money to invest or spend as you see fit.

I've met many, many people from Thailand, etc. They are here as small manufacturers now. The wages are expensive here, and the conditions are fairly expensive, but they have electricity. In Thailand one individual told me that he could only work two hours a day. I don't care how cheap your power is. If you can only work two hours a day, there's not much production that you can do.

It goes on and on from people from different parts of the world. There's an individual from Lebanon who has a high-rise. At the beginning of the summer he has to estimate how much power he's going to need to carry him through for air-conditioning. Out there it's essential. He has to pay up front for the number of kilowatts he's going to use. Once that money has run out, there's no such thing as buying it out. That's all he gets. If it happens to be a cool year, then that money is gone.

For the well-being of this province, we are increasing in population constantly. I think it is essential that we keep at least the generation and the transmission. Also, I can't see us losing the dams, because as soon as we do, we'll have liens by the native tribes trying to take them over as soon as they're out of government hands.

I don't know if they will win or not, but I can assume that. Most of our transmission lines run across thousands of miles of reservation land, and so do our dams. You can sell it for the next ten to 15 years by the time you got out of the courts, so I think it would be much better to consider possibly bringing in partners.

As far as the United States trying to buy everything, well, they're running out of resources, whether it's water or oil. Their minerals are getting depleted. They're running out, so it is their game plan to buy anywhere in the world they can. Canada is a very sure producer, because we're close to them. We're friendly to them. They don't have to fight to go and get it, like the oil in the Middle East we see now, just to keep the supplies available — the war and the amount of money they'll

have to spend just to keep a minimum amount of peace in the area so we can harvest the oil out of there.

Why we are now very worried is because we have been under a freeze, a wage freeze, for the past few years, and yet we're told we're free to negotiate. If you can't negotiate what you need, then your civil rights are tampered with, as far as I'm concerned. Right now we're losing a great many people. Many of the new apprentices coming out and becoming linemen are now waiting to see the next agreement, and we're frozen in wages. Like they say, they have a long time before they retire, and the retirement at Hydro is not all that great anyway

I left Los Angeles in 1986, and I was working for contractors where there was an annuity fund. A friend of mine retired two years ago, and he has a pension from there. He also cashed out $365,000 (U.S.), which is nothing to sneeze at and which we don't get here. There is the disadvantage that you are in L.A., and we all want to stay here.

What I'm trying to say is that most of us voted for the Liberal Party and gave you a vote of confidence, because what we wanted to see is the abuse stopped. The overregulation, the strangulation of opportunity had to go. In your cutting out, your weeding out, we don't expect you to go that far that it would actually start hurting.

I've read somewhere that whether it was gas, electrical or whatever you wanted to regulate, it took the government five years to get expertise in order to be able to assess what was happening within certain industries. I think we should keep some of our top people in there, even if you have to pay them more, so that we keep the expertise and the new managers who are learning don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they work.

In our industry, as I've said, most of the people either are going to retire or are young ones. Even though there's a recession in the States, as you've heard before, in order for California to be able to support their people, they have so many power lines to build that they have ten years of solid work. They don't have the number of people.

A friend of mine had a crew near Sacramento. There's a lack of trained people out there. He had to transfer a line, which normally would have been done energized, and all the customer would have had to contend with is a big truck parking in front of their store. In order to do it with the untrained people he had, he had to shut down the power. I thought that he would have had a lot of recrimination up there, but he didn't, because they are so used to it. I don't think it's very pleasant on a Monday or Tuesday, when all your customers are coming in and you have to shut power and stay out of business for a few hours. In order for us not to do that, we have to accelerate our apprenticeship program so that more young people can get in.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Mr. Myre, we're going to have to draw to a close. Our time frame is….

G. Myre: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to rant on. Like I said, I was not prepared.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): You've done very well. You touched on some interesting things. I think the importance of hydro cannot be overemphasized for what it means to British Columbia. The one comment you did make is to try and do this with no pain. I guess I don't want to be the "doom and gloomer," but I'm a realist. I think the challenges that we face as British Columbians — not just as government, but all of us…. It's going to take all of us to face a little of this pain together, to get back to where most people would like to see us: enjoying British Columbia.

With that, I know that our time frames are short. We do have a speakers list. We do have time for one quick question. I will go to Mr. Penner, and then we will move on.

B. Penner: Thank you, Mr. Chair, for indulging my interest in B.C. Hydro matters. I would like to thank Mr. Myre for his presentation.

You should know, at the outset, that a good personal friend of mine, whom I've known since I was a young boy, is a lineman, has been a member of the IBEW and just recently left B.C. Hydro to work in the United States. I miss him, and I'm sure his family and co-workers do too, so I'm very alive to the issues you mentioned about the frustrations that B.C. Hydro workers are feeling and the opportunity that awaits them south of the border. That said, in my recent phone calls with him, he's been a little disappointed in his paycheque. It's not as big as he thought it would be, and he's finding out that when he's working overtime there, it's time and a half and not double-time.

You talked about how, in different parts of the world, people can't take electricity for granted. When I've toured some hydro-generation projects here, I'm continually amazed by what I call the mystery and the miracle of electricity. I don't understand how it's generated. My brother's an electrician, and he's tried to explain it to me many times without much success.

In British Columbia we do need new sources of generation capacity. We're already a net importer of electricity this year. We also need new transmission capacity. We're not alone, but going forward, we're going to need not just new generation but also new transmission capacity. On one hand, this is good news for your members because their services are going to be needed. On the other hand, it poses a question to government of how we fund it. Where is the capital going to come from? Again, I invite you to hold us collectively to our campaign commitment not to privatize the transmission, distribution or generation assets. But as I said earlier, I think you might see that rather than a B.C. Hydro monopoly, owning all three of those components, there might perhaps be three separate Crown

corporations — I'm just speculating — that end up controlling those different systems.

During the campaign our commitment was to re-regulate B.C. Hydro because in the past number of years, under the previous government, the B.C. Utilities Commission was hamstrung in some of its duties to oversee the activities of B.C. Hydro. So our commitment, far from deregulating B.C. Hydro, was actually the opposite: to re-regulate B.C. Hydro — or whatever it ends up being called in the future — under the Utilities Commission for the benefit of all British Columbians.

G. Myre: If I may comment. We are ending up in the 28-year cycle, where we have low water and will be needing power. As far as cogeneration, there are some in the Charlottes and several other places where Hydro buys from private people in order to remove their generators. That's already ongoing. I thank you very much for your time and your consideration.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I thank you very much for coming forward with your presentation this evening and taking time out of your schedule.

Moving right along, our next presenters are Yvette Ortiz and Layne Kriwoken. Welcome.

Y. Ortiz: Good evening. I must say that I'm really nervous; I've never done this before. Please excuse me if I do something inappropriate. I'm hoping this will be brief, and Layne will continue after that.

I'm here as a single mother, an immigrant and a front-line worker for Immigrant Services. For the last 30 years my family, who were originally from El Salvador, established and integrated themselves into this community which we now call home. Throughout the years my family was able to access community services which assisted my parents in learning English and myself participating in school, employment training opportunities and other services that facilitated an integration process.

I feel that all these services ensured that our family became active and took leadership roles in our community either as volunteers or active and responsible citizens and now myself as a single parent to two young B.C. residents. This is why I made the decision to work as a front-line worker in an immigrant services agency as a secretary. I felt I could contribute positively in this role, as my family experienced this firsthand.

However, over the course of the last few months my decision and enthusiasm to assist people have been strongly challenged. There has been a reduction of services for immigrant communities. If these reductions continue for immigrants to B.C., they'll face challenges and barriers which only specialized community services can assist them with. A reduction in community services will have a domino effect for immigrants who require English-language training, mental health services, employment training and settlement counselling. Where will immigrants go if there is minimal access to these services?

This community will become isolated and disenfranchised. The government will be using more tax dollars to find remedies and seeing negative results of underfunding. I've also seen the experience firsthand with colleagues who decided to leave and who were also as enthusiastic as me about helping the community. Because of less work hours or the economic uncertainty of things, they've had to leave their jobs. I think I'll conclude with that, and I'll let Layne continue.

L. Kriwoken: I'm here tonight to speak to you about my involvement with immigrant services. For about ten years I've been working with and for immigrants, primarily in language programs but also in employment services with the non-profit societies as well as small businesses under government contracts.

First, I'd like to say that it's been a privilege to work in that community. There's a high level of dedication and commitment amongst those workers, and the clients are a very motivated group of individuals. I think that adult immigrants are superior role models for all members of the community. I think the effect of early and sustained assistance of adult immigrants is un-deniable. The immigrant services cover all areas in society. As the government is aware, they have taken half of the immigrant services funds provided by the federal government and put it into the general revenues with the justification that immigrants are in all areas of government services.

There are two points that I want to cover tonight. One is my involvement in the Settlement Sector Association, and the second is my experience at the First National Settlement Conference this June in Ontario. Regarding the Settlement Sector Association, I'm on the operating team of BCSIWA, which is the British Columbia Settlement and Integration Workers Association.

We are an umbrella agency of workers in the settlement and immigration sectors. We have the responsibility to accommodate professional standards, development and training. We try to tackle the mainstream national initiatives, and as well, we strive for recognition on a national platform. We do all this on a minuscule budget of less than $40,000 a year. We have two part-time positions. I think it's an understatement to say that this is not on par with other professional associations in the community.

Again, there is an incredible amount of crucial work being done by caring volunteers, but it is unreasonable to rely on volunteers when we're dealing with these kinds of standards and we're trying to work with various government agencies. There is a need for continued and indeed increased provincial support at the grass-roots level to allow those individuals to sustain and develop a dedicated settlement sector.

The second point I'd like to make is in regards to national standards and provincial comparisons. I had the privilege to be invited to speak at the first National

Settlement Conference at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, which was held this June. It was sponsored by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, CIC. It was the first time that individuals from immigrant-servicing groups from across the nation had the opportunity to meet, exchange information and network. I was speaking on the role of language programs to facilitate employment, investment and involvement in the community. I was looking forward to discussing with other professionals from various regions how they were coping and, hopefully, excelling with similarly demanding and limiting constraints.

To my surprise, I found that virtually every other province had substantially more immigrant services available than we did here in B.C. It was not what I was expecting to see. This includes those provinces still under direct federal funds and sponsorship, as well as those provinces which, like B.C., have taken on the responsibility regionally.

A few examples, I think, will illustrate quite clearly. Manitoba, which has taken on the provincial responsibility of immigrant services, puts 100 percent of the federal funds directly into the immigrant services that are needed, as well as adding provincial funds to those areas crucial to the communities in that province. Again, here's a reminder that the B.C. government only puts in half of the funds the federal government provides.

Halifax, which is in Nova Scotia, neither the richest province nor one of the provinces with a majority of immigrants, has a full-time integration counsellor in every school to promote and ensure equity and fairness to all students. In comparison, we have some lower mainland school boards which have a handful of part-time counsellors to deal with major second-language groups only.

Ontario, which in the past has faced challenges similar to British Columbia, provides a level of ESL education two standards higher than British Columbia. British Columbia provides ELSA level 3, which is a lower intermediate. Ontario goes up to level 5. As well, they have an outreach program of on-line services. They provide computers and programs to those adult immigrants who are outside the urban areas.

T. Bhullar (Deputy Chair): I'm sorry; we've got to be moving along. We have a little bit of a list here, and perhaps you can give us the abridged version of what you have to say.

None of these services are offered to that degree here in B.C. A reminder: this was in June, before there were the across-the-board direct cuts of 10 percent to all immigrant services, based on the federal contribution. I would just like to stress, from my own experience and my involvement with my colleagues: remember the crucial role of immigrant services in all areas in your prebudget. Thank you.

L. Mayencourt: Before you guys go away, I just want to encourage you to stay at that. We have several great immigrant service societies that operate in the greater Vancouver area and perform a very valuable service to the larger community of British Columbia. I would encourage you to do that. I know that Minister Abbott has sat down and met with a number of the executive directors of those service societies to understand what you're talking about. I can assure you that what you've just told us will get into our report. So hang in there. I think that's very valuable work that you do in your community. Please stay with it.

T. Bhullar (Deputy Chair): On behalf of the committee, I wish to thank you for your presentation. It was an excellent presentation.

C. Sinclair: Good evening. I felt a little bit compelled to come and talk to you this evening, because for 30 years I've worked in the government for the people of British Columbia in the area of child protection. I don't need to go over all the briefs and reasons why our ministry is having difficulty and why there is such a need. I am concerned, however, about what's going to happen in the future.

For many, many months now, our ministry has been faced with the problem of recruitment, of training and of obtaining qualified people to do the job of child protection, which is one of the most stressful and important jobs that anyone could be doing in the public service. There is no person, no citizen, no professional who becomes aware of a child in need of some service or protection who is not going to be reporting that to one of the very few social workers in each community who is responsible to immediately look into those complaints.

Right now where I work, which is an area that is high in poverty, it is extremely difficult to get to all of the protection cases. We have to put on the back burner a number of cases where there's really only a request for some support services.

I want you to know that for 30 years, I've always worked in child protection. I have done a variety of jobs in that area including resource development, which included the recruitment and development of resources for children who were in our care. I had a budget of approximately $6 million that I had to manage for the year. It was never easy to meet all of the needs. It was one of the most difficult jobs. There were never enough resources, and there was a never-ending stream of children and their families who needed those resources.

More recently I've become aware of the fact that…. I think we talked about it last night. You've heard about FTEs. In our ministry, not that long ago we esti-

mated that for every FTE of a government worker working in the ministry, there was probably the equivalent of ten who worked in contracted services. Last night you heard very poignantly from one of the people who works in information technology, which is very different from the job that I do, but which is one that I depend on. We, too, have an information system which we rely on very heavily to do our work. That person told you — and I believe him, because I also saw it as a resources person — that not always do contracted-out services bring the results you would like to have, nor are they the least expensive.

If you're needing to look at reviews of things, please look very carefully at the contracted services within our ministry. I would also suggest to you that there is a need to be very careful about looking at any further cuts. You have all probably heard — I'm sure you have, because I've heard your leader, the Premier, talk about it — the need to support front-line social workers in the area of child protection. That problem has not been resolved. It has not gone away, and it could get worse. The needs of children and families in this province, particularly if there are going to be setbacks in financial support to them, are something which leads to the need that is even greater for our workers to be involved.

When our ministry was formed, there was a significant change made in the Ministry of Human Resources in terms of the benefit programs which were granted to poor people. I believe, as a social worker, that it is outrageous that parents have to come to us and say: "I cannot feed my child, I cannot find a liveable place that is decent, and I cannot properly care for my children." It is not right for parents to have to come to an agency such as ours and ask that their children come into care for a temporary period of time because of those kinds of reasons. That's not acceptable in British Columbia.

I have seen lots of money being spent to support families in the living arrangements that they are able to find, which are substandard. Those people have to continually move and do not have a consistent place to raise their children. If you wanted to look at some kind of reallocation of funding, perhaps you could look at some things like better housing — subsidized housing. People who have families need a place to live. They cannot sustain a proper family if they're not able to manage to get their children to a regular school. That kind of disruption is absolutely unnecessary.

I was going to say a whole lot of other things, but I'm quite used to responding to questions. I do want to tell you that I have participated…. We were talking about soccer here tonight. At one time in my working life I also found time to be the president of the Royal City Soccer Association. I coached my son's team for a number of years. I'm not just a silly old bureaucrat; I'm somebody who has made some connections with the community. I've always worked in the community where I live — if not directly in the city, then very close by.

I'm very familiar with problems that municipalities face and what workers are facing. Right now all of these young people who we've recruited and trained over the last five or six years are very frightened about losing their jobs. This is a very new concept which has come to them, because for years now they have sometimes been struggling to carry loads that two or three people have had to carry.

I want you to be very cautious. Contracting-out is not a cost-saving measure, believe me. When you're looking at changes to one kind of system that's involved with the social network, be very careful. The impacts that happen in Human Resources because of major changes there…. Certainly your rolls drop. You don't have as many people on income assistance, but are you comparing how many children are coming into care and how many people are perhaps going to jail and how many people are becoming more and more depressed and perhaps are committing suicide? Those are things that you don't necessarily think of. I would like to challenge you to perhaps think about some of those things and find ways of measuring that, because I don't believe that is commonly done.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Sinclair. We do have a number of presenters yet to go. I'm sure there are many questions, but with the indulgence of the committee, I would like to move on and get in as many as we can.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): The challenge you have put forward is one that we have to approach with balance, and I can assure you that we will.

Our next presenter this evening is Jagrup Samra-Jawanda. Good evening, and welcome.

J. Samra-Jawanda: Good evening. It's getting late, so I will be very brief. I've lived in Surrey for 25 years. I attended elementary school and secondary school in Surrey. Then I went on to work in the elementary and secondary schools. I volunteered for Surrey parks, recreation and culture. For the past nearly ten years I've continued to work with children, this time in a transition-house setting for abused women and children. I work there full-time. I still make time to volunteer at my daughters' schools — one's in preschool and one's in kindergarten — twice a week. I'm very involved in my community, and I always have been.

Tonight I'm worried about the services for our children. I'm especially concerned for women's services. A 25 percent cut would mean, for example, that in Surrey, where there are four transition houses, one of them would have to close down. All of them are almost always full. I'm wondering where these women would go.

All the other communities would have less space too. If space could be found further out — for example, in Chilliwack — it may be too far for the women and children. They'd be somewhere that perhaps they're totally unfamiliar with and isolated from friends, family, support systems, schools and work, if the mother is working. In September alone there were 41 women and 27 children refused space, so we're talking about a very high demand already.

I guess the other option would be a 25 percent cut within each transition house. What do you cut out — the socks, the underwear or the diapers that the women need because perhaps they've come with only the clothes on their back? We could buy a cheaper quality of food. That's another option. We could cut the staffing, which would mean there's no one to go with the women to court, to legal aid, to income assistance or to go with the police to do a standby so the women can collect their clothing and toys for their children.

I want to put out the question: would any of you want your daughter, mother or sister to be phoning transition house after transition house only to find out they're full? They're terrified. They're expecting their abusive husband or partner to be home any second. They perhaps have nowhere to go. There's no middle management. There's only a supervisor and an executive director. There is no imagined fluff.

Recently an abused woman was compelled to stay at a motel for at least three days. She had three children. She was there and had no idea where she was. She was scared and confused. She did not speak English. She even considered that perhaps she was in a prison. She didn't know that the cards were keys to the rooms. This is already happening. Any future budget cuts would dramatically increase the number of women waiting in hotels to get into a transition house. These are no extras that we can do without. These are fundamental core services in question here, essential services that are already stretched extremely thin.

I suggest that any review of current programs be discussed directly with the appropriate agencies and addressed directly with the staff. I strongly suggest that we become proactive in schools on a regular basis, not just hit and miss, to educate the students about dating violence before these young men and women begin to date. I strongly suggest that we invest in the future of our children now, because they are our future leaders. They are our future MLAs. Thank you for you consideration and your time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much for coming out this evening and putting your presentation forward to our committee. As I indicated to the last speaker, I know there's probably much interest and many questions, but in the interests of time, I will defer the questions. If members would like to discuss anything of what you've said afterwards, I would encourage that to happen. Again, I thank you for bringing your views forward this evening.

H. Daykin: I gather there's enough copies up there for everybody here. For anybody that's interested, there's a few extras.

Good evening. I'm not going to read this brief. You can read it if you are interested. I hope that the little I'll say will get you interested. Basically, I've got one main idea and four subsidiary ones. Incidentally, who am I? I'm nobody. I represent only myself, but I've had a lifelong interest in furthering education. I've been quite a consumer of it, but I'll go no further about that.

An objective. I think we should seriously consider the idea of being able to claim, by the year 2010, that a great many of our school districts genuinely have something that can be called a world-class K-to-12 education system. If we did that, I think it might start helping a little bit towards producing a reverse brain drain. In other words, maybe some Canadians might start coming back from route 128, which is the Boston science area, or Silicon Valley, etc., partly because they now have a few kids and would like to bring them up and work in an area that has a world-class K-to-12 system.

I want to put a radical idea to you under this. In addition to the other disciplines of chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc., we should add another one as an elective on an organized basis — and by the way, don't spend any money on it until 2004. In the meantime, on an almost zero-cost basis, I think we should get ready to start offering — starting with grade 9 to at least grade 10 — as a chain of electives, courses called something like Inventing and Innovation 9, Innovation 10, etc.

A very distinguished voice has gone out in favour of this, the former four-year editor of the Harvard Business Review. In her book World Class, from which I got this objective, she said that it would be a useful thing if quality courses in innovation were extended to the schools. She said this in a tone and setting that implied that nobody's doing it now, at least in the United States. Something that would go with that rather neatly would be if Shirley Bond doesn't pronounce a death sentence on Tech B.C.

Wouldn't it be neat, for example, if one could say that in addition to having a chain of courses at the high school level on an elective basis, such as I've mentioned, in many of our school districts south of the Fraser River — which is sort of my bailiwick because I organize junior chess in that area — one could follow up on that chain of courses by going to Tech B.C., just this side of the river near the Pattullo Bridge, and take follow-up on those two things, just as somebody who has been studying the violin for ten years can go to an academy and not do a repeat of the kindergarten stuff he has been doing earlier.

There's one university that has already started, quite some years ago, to teach innovation as a subject. That's McMaster University in Hamilton, and the man who teaches it is an ex-R and D director for Procter and Gamble.

I mentioned two other ideas. There's a new resource available that nobody knows about for getting

much better-equipped high school counsellors in our high schools in British Columbia. That's the two-thirds of all software programmers who are out of that occupation after 20 years. This is the statement we found on this, and the reference is given at the back of my paper. In short, within 20 years two-thirds of all those people who get a college degree in computer science and become software programmers are gone from the occupation. Surely many of those might be excellent candidates, hopefully on a fast-track basis, to become high school counsellors. If you were to ask them what their qualifications are for being a high school counsellor, their prime job is to give advice on what our young people can do after they leave high school in order to get into the new economy. The answer to that question would be simply this: "I've been there and done that."

The fourth idea I want to give — and I'll do this very quickly — is that there's a precedent for an earthshaking idea, particularly at the elementary level of education. That is the earthshaking idea that we should start offering incentive pay. No less a politician than Tony Blair got 100 percent behind that idea in appropriate places in the United Kingdom. Do you know why I mention that? I'll say just that the place to do that is in grade 1 in British Columbia.

I would like to see it possible for a 13-year teacher who's got a great track record at teaching kids to read at the beginning, grade 1, to get a raise above that 13-year increment plateau she's settled on. It's she, most commonly. She could be offered a raise to stay in teaching at what she does magnificently and not be sucked off to a silly job like a vice-principal somewhere else. That's all.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Daykin. I know five minutes is a very limited time in which to get your points through.

G. Dean: Following the precedent set by my predecessor, I've made more copies than I needed for the panel.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I would just also like to recognize at this time Judith Higginbotham, who is a councillor for Surrey. Welcome. How are you?

G. Dean: Thank you very much to the members of this committee for taking the time to do this. I'm here representing the Kwantlen University College's faculty and student associations. Those two associations have come together because we're really concerned about the extremely low level of access to public community college that's available in 14 constituencies that Kwantlen serves: Surrey, Delta, Richmond, Langley and White Rock. This is an issue that relates both to the residents of this region in terms of their personal development and also to the economic development of the region.

You've heard — and as I've been sitting here, I've heard — various echoes from other presenters that relate to my comments, particularly George Hunter's comments from the B.C. Technology Industries Association. I don't think I need to belabour to this panel that post-secondary education is a crucial need to many people within British Columbia. In fact, it's probably of higher need to the residents of this region than of many others that I'll refer to.

I also want to note that we strongly support the vision statements in the core services review, particularly the first that we should have something on the order of a world-class education system in B.C. — I certainly take that, as I'm sure you do, to indicate post-secondary education — and further down the list, if I remember correctly, that we want to make high-tech one of the largest motivators of our economy.

We can't do that without significant support and, in this region anyway, increased access to the local community college. If we're going to double the number of high-tech graduates in the short term, we're going to need to significantly increase the capacity of our community colleges. Particularly in this region, as the largest community college — I'm not speaking officially for that college — Kwantlen University College has got to increase in size, or we're not going to be able to do that doubling.

I also want to recognize other comments that it's not just high-tech. When we're talking about retirement of tradespeople, teachers, nurses and social workers, where do those folks get educated? Sure, they do some of their work at universities, but a huge number of them get out of the welfare trap, which has also been spoken of, and onto those kinds of employment through access to their community colleges.

I would think that your average person would expect that a college that serves a larger region should have a larger number of seats available for its public. Strange, that's not the case at all. Maybe you know that; maybe that's news to you. The graph I have circulated to you illustrates that. I only want to refer to within the lower mainland, because we, the faculty and student associations, recognize that colleges in Prince George, the northwest region or up-Island have very different circumstances. But within the lower mainland there's still one hell of a disparity.

The Kwantlen University College region, Richmond through Langley, is not just the lowest in terms of access per person in the region in British Columbia, but it's the lowest within the lower mainland also. People in the 14 constituencies that make up this region have a 60 percent less chance of easily accessing their community college than people elsewhere in the lower mainland. They have less than half the possibility of getting into a course or program at their local community college than people in Vancouver or the North Shore have.

So I put that before you. We've got to address that situation if we're going to have (a) the world-class education system and (b) the doubling number of high-tech grads that the vision statements and the Premier have spoken of. I want to put before you, on behalf of

the faculty association and the student association, that I believe government should consider that kind of inequity in figuring out how to allocate pieces of the budget in the future.

Particularly, I want to let you know that we've put a seven-year plan before the college board. It's not something that I'm sure you would immediately recognize. The kind of change that needs to happen to overcome this inequity isn't something that can be dealt with overnight or even over one year.

We've asked the college board to adopt a seven-year plan to address the issue. That's what we would like you in your capacity to pass on to government: design and implement a seven-year plan to get Kwantlen University College up to the average of the rest of the lower mainland in terms of access opportunities per resident of this region.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Dean. You did a very effective job in a very limited time, and I thank you for taking time out of your schedule to present this evening.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): No. We are going to move on. We do have a couple of presenters yet to get to if we possibly can, and I note that it is 9 o'clock. With the indulgence of the committee we will hear briefly from our next presenter, Richard Papiernik.

R. Papiernik: Mr. Chairman and members of the standing committee, hello. My name is Richard Papiernik. I live in Delta. I'm here as an ordinary individual representing myself. First, I'd like to thank the committee for coming to Surrey and providing me with an opportunity to be heard. I hope to see you again here every year.

I have scanned some of the Hansards of the previous public meetings and some of the Budget 2002 consultation paper. It appears to me that some speakers are still fighting the last election and have not answered the five questions in the paper. I'm not going to answer the first four questions. I will leave it to others to comment on expenditure and revenue priorities, re-establishing B.C. as an economic leader, and performance measures and targets. However, I will attempt to answer (e) regarding other ideas in the government's fiscal plan.

Before I proceed, I need to state that some of these principles may already be reflected. Others are qualified as "where appropriate." A balanced approach needs to be achieved. A one-size-fits-all plan may not work. So here goes.

My recommendation to the committee is that you adopt the following seven principles with a provincial financial plan. Promote equality of opportunity. We should all have an equal opportunity to pursue our respective goals. We should have a level playing field and equal treatment by government.

Live within your means. My children should not inherit debt from this generation. We should pay our own way and pay as we go.

Cost recovery. Where appropriate, the cost charged to deliver a service should generate sufficient revenue to recover costs. For example, our municipal water utility charges are exactly the same as what is charged by our regional district. All parties see what they get and what they are paying for. There is transparency in the process, and it is fair.

User pay. Where appropriate, users of services should pay for the services. I suspect that one of the biggest problems we have in B.C. is because of the lack of user-pays. To put it another way, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Value for money. Question: are we getting the biggest bang for our buck? Where appropriate, service providers should be cost-competitive with the private sector. We should only have monopolies where it is clearly in the public interest.

Share the pain. A good settlement is one where no one is happy. If you have to make cuts, spread out the pain. Where possible, split the agony into thirds amongst the stakeholders.

Share the gain. One day you will get a fiscal dividend. One day there will be a payback time. Share the gain equally with all the stakeholders.

To close, I hope these principles can work for all. We need to be inclusive, transcending left- and right-wing adversarial ideologies.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Richard, I would like to thank you. Again, similar to what I said to the other presenters, it's very tough to get the information across in the time frame at the open-mike session, but I think you've done a very effective job. You put out some very straightforward answers to the questions we have in our prebudget consultation paper, so I thank you for that.

We do have time for one more speaker. I would call on Ms. Judith Higginbotham at this time. She will be our last presenter this evening in the remaining 30 seconds. No, I'm just kidding; we have five minutes.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to our city, the city of Surrey. We're very much a growing city — probably the fastest-growing city in the lower mainland and, at points or times in the past ten years, in Canada. We are close to 350,000, and we're growing like Topsy. As a result, we haven't caught up with all of our social services, our education services and our health services.

I'm here this evening to tell you that in the next year, when you are slowing down and realizing how you're going to spend your money in the term of your office, I would ask that you think very carefully and listen and understand what growing communities like Surrey need. We probably have the highest school population in the whole of British Columbia. Our population is now growing, and the highest number of

our kids are in secondary school, so our needs are in secondary schools and certainly post-secondary education. As a result, we're looking at trying to expand on two fronts, one of which is on a junior college front, Kwantlen College, and the other is Tech U.

I'm not making excuses for the past government and what they tried to do and how they tried to fund it. All I can say is that their hearts may have been in the right place; their heads and their financial books maybe were not.

Let's look at Kwantlen College. We've turned away close to 3,000 students this year in the enrolment at Kwantlen College because they cannot get a place for education. You have a paper here that was handed in by a previous speaker showing that close to 10 percent fewer, or certainly a large percentage, of the kids do not have access to university or college education. That's because they do not have a college close by or did not have access to a college close by. If we wanted to go to college, we had to go to Simon Fraser University or UBC. As a result, we're sorely undereducated, and that's because we did not have access to education. We either had to have a car and drive, or we had to physically move and pay for those expenses. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of people can afford that.

Let me say that 750,000 people live south of the Fraser River. Barry, you will know that. We are as large south of the Fraser as they are north of the Fraser, but because north of the Fraser, Vancouver, Burnaby and New West are older and established cities, they have all the social structures in place. We do not. Therefore, when we are trying to hang on to what we have, which sometimes is fairly new, we need to tell you that we need it desperately.

I have just come from a reception at Tech U, where I have seen technology that I didn't know existed. We have close to 400 students, 200 teachers and a new college there. We in the city believed in it so sincerely, we literally gave, for one dollar, nine acres of prime city land to Tech U and said: "Build it. These are the terms of the contract. We believe in it so sincerely, because we need it so desperately, that we will give you our land and allow you to build it. Now you have to build it, and if you don't, give us back the land. Those are the terms of the contract." It's all tied up in what is happening now in Tech U and ICBC. We had no say in ICBC and the funder whatsoever.

We did have — and I was a founding member — the University College of the Fraser Valley, which goes back nigh on to ten years in trying to form and make sure we had a university here.

If there's anything I can plead to you and say…. I have no qualms about you looking at your budget and trying to rightsize it and making sure it is more responsible, but I'm saying to you that it is so important that we have secondary education south of the Fraser and have it accessible.

Kwantlen College is a discovery park too. If you look there, there's close to 85 acres. Kwantlen College only needs a little postage stamp of that area. On $3.5 million — that's all they asked — they will then get a business plan together, sell off that land and pay for and build their own university. All they're asking is for you to lend them the money so that they can get on with the business of building the university.

Those are my two druthers. I want you to know I'm absolutely delighted that Liberals were elected, but I must say that you did make a promise, and you said that health and education would be a priority. I know that once you rightsize the budget, you'll remember a growing community like Surrey and the Fraser Valley and give us the access and the type of education we need and have worked hard to get.

We're a large community. We have a tremendous staff, a wonderful staff. We will be able to deal with your charter. If you sign that charter, we will start looking at ways we can pay for our roads and our bridges. We will look at contracts and look at tolls. But we're asking you to write in that charter the ability to finance and raise funds in a way other than property taxes. We in the city of Surrey are in fact very limited on how we can raise funds, but we can raise money. We're saying that we understand. You downloaded a lot of mediocre and inferior infrastructure on us. The Pattullo Bridge is one, the Fraser Highway is another, No. 10 is another, and 120th is another. Those are areas that certainly were not up to snuff. You sort of snookered us somewhat when you downloaded those to us. Now we have to upgrade them. We can do that if you sign that charter and give us the ability to do that.

B. Penner: Sorry, Judy. Who do you mean by "we" when you say that we downloaded?

J. Higginbotham: The provincial government. Ted Nebbeling at the UBCM said: "We've given you this charter." With respect, we've been studying it for a few years.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Judith, our time is very short. There are airplanes to catch.

J. Higginbotham: Yeah, I know. The three things I wanted to get were Tech U, Kwantlen College and the charter and giving us the ability to raise more money and raise taxes. I'm looking at the bottom line, and I've had a chance to look through.

Check out B.C. Hydro. B.C. Hydro has a new way of doing its financial statement in its budget. It's called triple bottom line. It looks at the economics, the environmental responsibility and the social responsibility. Whenever they look at how they spend their money, they make sure that they balance the spending of it in their economy. I would throw that out to you. In Surrey we need education, education and roads. You can help us get those things quite easily.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I imagine there are lots, but there are flights that a number of people have to catch. Knowing the time frames at the airports, it's going to be a considerable task already for them. I want to thank you, Judith, for coming and putting forward your presentation to us.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just in closing, I want to thank everyone who came out and participated and listened here this evening. I want to thank all of the members of the committee for their indulgence in running a little late tonight. I wish you luck in getting to your airplanes. The meeting is now adjourned. Again, thank you very much.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES