Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 7 — Wednesday, October 12, 2005 (HTML)

2005 Legislative Session: First Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
MINUTES AND HANSARD

4. The Committee adjourned at 8:50 p.m. to the call of the Chair.

Blair Lekstrom, MLA
Chair

Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Clerk Assistant and
Committee Clerk

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		167
	T. Kasten A. Strong M. Crawford F. Anderson G. Swannell T. Jeanes R. Tenisci B. Delesalle D. Scott T. Archibald D. Goldney C. Davis N. Bepple R. Olynyk R. Barnsley T. Monteleone J. Studer N. Lane T. Friedman D. Frolek

Chair:	* Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L)
Deputy Chair:	* Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt-Metchosin NDP)
Members:	Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) * Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) * Gordon Hogg (Surrey–White Rock L) * Richard T. Lee (Burnaby North L) * John Yap (Richmond-Steveston L) * Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP) * Jenny Wai Ching Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) Nicholas Simons (Powell River–Sunshine Coast NDP) * denotes member present

Witnesses:

Frank Anderson
Trish Archibald (Kamloops Women's Resource Centre)
Roger Barnsley (President, Thompson Rivers University)
Nancy Bepple
Michael Crawford (Thompson Rivers University)
Cynthia Davis (Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre)
Bruno Delesalle (Executive Director, Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia)
Dr. Thomas Friedman (President, Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association)
Deborah Frolek (Executive Director, Kamloops Child Development Society)
Dodie Goldney (Kamloops Women's Resource Centre)
Trevor Jeanes (Kamloops Flyfishers Association)
Tim Kasten (Canadian Home Builders Association — Kamloops)
Nathan Lane (Executive Director, Cariboo Student Society)
Terry Monteleone (President, Cariboo Student Society)
Ron Olynyk (Thompson Rivers University)
Jessy Sahota (Cariboo Student Society)
M. Dal Scott (Highland Valley Copper Corp.)
Anita Strong (Chair, Council of Canadians — Kamloops Chapter)
James Studer (Cariboo Student Society)
Geoff Swannell (Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association)
Ron Tenisci (Tenisci Piva Chartered Accountants)
Don Tretheway (B.C. Wildlife Federation — Shuswap Region)
Dave Whiting (Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia)

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Good evening, everyone. My name is Blair Lekstrom. I am the MLA for Peace River South, and I have the privilege of chairing the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are in the process of touring British Columbia to hear from British Columbians as to what their priorities are in next year's budget.

Our committee is mandated by the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia to have a final report submitted to the Legislative Assembly by the 15th of November. Following this evening we will be in Cranbrook tomorrow, as well as Kelowna. Next week we will conclude our public hearings in Vancouver and then begin deliberations as a committee on putting our final report together.

Our process for this is that our presenters have a 15-minute time slot: ten minutes to present to the committee and five minutes for committee members to ask questions of the presenter, should clarification be needed. We have Hansard staff with us. These are public meetings, so everything is recorded and transcribed and is part of the public record in British Columbia.

With us from Hansard are Adam Wang and Marilyn Pollard, over behind the equipment. As well, from the Clerk of Committees office we have Kate Ryan-Lloyd — who will be joining us on my right very soon — as well as Jacqueline Quesnel, who is at the back desk.

Just prior to asking the committee members to introduce themselves, I want to thank the people who have already come out this evening to participate in this, and thank Kamloops and the surrounding area. Also, at this point I would like to introduce a member from the Legislative Assembly, our Minister of Employment and Income Assistance and your MLA, Claude Richmond. Welcome, Claude, and thank you very much for being here.

With that, I am going to ask members of the committee to introduce themselves, and then we will begin our public hearing process.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): I am Maurine Karagianis, MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin and your Deputy Chair.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. We will begin our presentations this evening. We are going to begin with the Canadian Home Builders Association, Kamloops, and Mr. Tim Kasten

We have altered the agenda. Our first presenter is a few moments late. We are fitting this in.

T. Kasten: My name is Tim Kasten, Hillside Contracting. I'm a residential builder here in Kamloops. I'm also president this year of the Kamloops Home Builders Association. It's my pleasure to speak to you this evening on behalf of the builders and suppliers here in Kamloops. We have a very active local membership of 136 members, the third-largest in B.C.

For the past several years we have been enjoying some prosperity, finally, in the residential construction business in Kamloops. We've had a few lean years, but these last few years have been very good. The enhanced state of the B.C. economy has been a significant factor in the increase of our business, and we'd like to thank the government for putting policies into place that attract investment into this province, particularly into the interior. We would ask that you continue to reduce red tape and business taxes so that business will continue to thrive in this province, especially here in the interior.

We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and to share some of our thoughts on fiscal policy with your government.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right, Tim. That was very short and to the point. Are there any questions of Tim regarding his presentation? I know Tim was fit in just prior to our scheduled beginning here.

If I could, Tim. The construction industry in the area right now — how are you doing with skilled tradespeople, skilled workers? Is it a challenge to get people here?

T. Kasten: That's one of our constant challenges in the economy right now — finding skilled tradespeople. We are starting to see an influx of people moving back to B.C. from Alberta. I've got several on staff at my company right now who moved away five or six years ago. Their comment to me was that the only problem living in Alberta is that you have to live in Alberta. They're happy to be back, and they're enjoying a strong economy.

I'm also sitting on the board of the Residential Construction Industry Training Authority. It's newly formed with the ITA. We're looking forward to making

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): That actually brings up a question that I've had for some time. We've seen a move in the skilled trades to specialization — moving away from full certification and Red Seal. How do you feel, representing homebuilders, on that shift away from fully certified tradesmen?

T. Kasten: I think it's been a long time in coming. The old system was a bit antiquated. There were a lot of things wrong with it. I'm a journeyman carpenter myself. I did my four-year apprenticeship the traditional way. There were a lot of things I was taught in school which no longer apply. It's good to see a change. That's why I've accepted to sit on the board — to have my hand in the new changes coming about.

I think we're moving in the right direction. There are going to be some growing pains. There's going to be a little bit of resistance, I think, from more of the established, old-school institutions, but I think we're headed in the right direction.

T. Kasten: Real estate in Kamloops is climbing. We're seeing a strong market here. I think it's a spinoff of the lower mainland and the Okanagan. A lot of people are attracted by our prices here. That's why we're starting to see an influx from the lower mainland.

R. Lee: Locally, is there any promotion of the skilled trades training in high school? Is your association doing something?

T. Kasten: Yes. The senior secondary apprenticeship program — is that what you're referring to? The school district here is…. With the Home Builders Association, we are participating in that, getting young kids — grades ten, 11 and 12 — working for us in the summer. I have one myself who goes to school up in Barriere. He works for me in the summers. He's started his apprenticeship now at 16. It's a good step in the right direction.

J. Kwan: I've heard comments from various people, from the business community particularly, who are concerned about trades training, apprenticeship training. Some folks are trained by, particularly, smaller businesses only to be raided by larger organizations or larger businesses. Therefore, all of their work, having trained and invested in getting the person up to speed, so to speak…. They lose that skill set. Have you heard that? What are your thoughts around that? How do we fix it?

T. Kasten: It is a major…. We call it poaching. Guys come onto the site…. I've had a lot of my guys approached by other companies: "What are you making? Are you happy?" We have to treat our workers right.

One of the problems I see is that we do spend a lot of time and effort training these young guys, and we really don't get a payback for a couple of years. It's not until they're two or three years into working for me that I can set them loose on a job and finally start to, you know, make some money off it.

We've approached our local MP, Betty Hinton, about this problem, requesting that maybe there's some avenue that we could get some tax credit or some kind of training benefit for training these young kids. I mean, building and the trades is a great career to get into, but it costs us money to train these kids. Those are some of the challenges that we have.

J. Yap: Part of the process with our prebudget consultation tour is to ask for feedback on what you'd like to see in the upcoming budget. If there was one thing that you'd like to see in the budget for 2006, what would it be? Have you thought about it?

T. Kasten: I haven't had much time here. I can't really pin that down. I guess getting some assistance on training would be one thing in terms of budget.

I'm encouraged with the government and the turnouts of the election. We're a very strong supporter of this government, and we want to see continued growth. I guess that's the message that I have here today. Stay the course. Bring these people back from Alberta. Bring them in, and let's get a strong economy and keep it that way for many years to come.

Tim, I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and speak to us here this evening.

Our next presentation to the committee this evening comes to us from Anita Strong, who is with the Council of Canadians.

A. Strong: Good evening. First, I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to do this presentation to you tonight and for coming around and listening to what the people of the province have to say. It's my hope that these sessions will help guide you in your policy-making for the upcoming sessions of the Legislature.

My recommendations would on the surface appear to fall more into the federal jurisdiction. But I believe that not only do they affect provincial policy to an equal extent, but also that provincial policy needs to be guided by a larger overarching policy, a philosophy which puts people before profits. I'm speaking of the way that we see our natural resources, especially our energy, and how we use those resources. The natural resources of this province belong to all the people, to all British Columbians, and they must not be sold off to

No other developed country in the world has squandered control of its energy resources the way Canadian governments, both federal and provincial, have done and continue to do. The most immediate example, and the one which weighs most heavily on the hearts and minds of all British Columbians, is the proposed sale of Terasen Gas to Kinder Morgan of Texas. You must do something to stop this sale. Not only is gas and oil not merely a business that you don't want to meddle in, but it's of enormous strategic importance not only to B.C. but to Canada as well. The U.S. and the Bush administration certainly see it as such.

Terasen does not own the gas supplies, of course, but it owns the pipelines. Once these are in the hands of Kinder Morgan, we'll have no control whatsoever over its new investments, but the White House certainly will. If the Terasen Gas sale goes ahead, we can be virtually certain that the White House will be talking to Kinder Morgan about the U.S. gas needs.

The citizens of B.C. could well end up subsidizing the export of our own precious resource. Using the profits made from B.C. customers, Kinder Morgan would build gas pipelines to the U.S., increasing dramatically the percentage of natural gas that we send south and contributing to higher gas prices here. Unless we abrogate NAFTA, we'll continue to export that increased percentage until the gas is gone.

That brings me, of course, to NAFTA and its detrimental effects on British Columbians. In the aftermath of the softwood lumber decision, former proponents of free trade and, more recently, deep integration seem to have had an epiphany: NAFTA doesn't work for Canada. Some have called for forceful retaliation against the U.S., while others have even uttered words that only a few short weeks ago would have brought scorn and ridicule: abrogate the deal.

In reality, even if the U.S. had conceded on softwood lumber, complied with the NAFTA panel decision and repaid every dime in duties they imposed, the bottom line would still be the same. NAFTA is a bad deal for Canada. Here, in no particular order, are five reasons why.

NAFTA undermines democracy. Foreign corporations have used the infamous chapter 11 to challenge environmental laws, municipal land use controls, water protection measures, the activities of Canada Post and even the decisions of juries in appellate courts.

NAFTA strips Canada of sovereignty over its energy resources. Under NAFTA's proportional-access provision, our government has lost the ability to act in favour of Canadians should a crisis or shortage force us to reduce the supply of energy.

NAFTA commodifies water. Canadian water is defined as a tradable good under NAFTA, and the so-called water exemption is inadequate.

NAFTA threatens health care and other public services. The current NAFTA safeguards protecting health care from privatization are also vague and inadequate. Furthermore, they're limited to maintaining medicare as it stood in 1989, so they don't provide protection for a possible expansion of Pharmacare into new areas like home care.

NAFTA serves as a platform for deeper integration with the U.S. Our business and political leaders are pushing for deeper ties with the U.S. In order to avoid trade troubles, they would see Canada join common security projects, give up sovereignty over our natural resources and harmonize our food and health policies with lower U.S. standards.

We here in B.C. should be pushing the Canadian government to respond to the softwood lumber crisis with something more than idle threats, stalling tactics and weak-kneed retaliation on some obscure U.S. product. We should be pushing for the abrogation of NAFTA, so that we can once again pursue national interests and not blindly follow the American empire-building model in which we have no say. In this era of globalism, where the U.S. would have us believe that nation-states are quaint institutions of the past, the fact is that they neither believe nor practise this notion.

If we owned our own resources, we could create jobs that actually mean something for our economy. Without the restrictions of NAFTA, economic diversification could be done very inexpensively, and we could then start to build up small local-business economies for local consumption and trade. This will have to come anyway with the end of the oil economy that has ruined the real economic structure of the whole world, making it dependent on exports and imports and making the middleman class virtual global dictators.

This economy would never survive under the present system of cheap imports, which distort the real picture. What we need is to realize that if product X costs $10 to make in Canada but can be imported for $1 from China, the ultimate cost to the Canadian or B.C. economy will be at least $10 or $20 or whatever — through unemployment, welfare, sickness, crime, substance abuse problems, traffic accidents caused by road rage and booze, family breakdowns, loss of educational opportunities for young people, pollution, etc., etc. But these costs are never accounted as liabilities by neoclassical economists. Indeed, some of them may be jacking up the GDP, as will the exploitation of the beetle kill. After all, road accidents serve the same function.

I'd like to see a government that looks further ahead than four years. We need a provincial and national economic strategy which we generally stick to regardless of which party is in power. If that means taking back control of our resources — fine. If it means taking back control of key manufacturing industries, so be it.

Our resources should be used to invest in our long-term future, not spent in general revenue. If our resources and our other key sectors are Canadian-owned and the profits from those ventures stay in Canada,

then it will create a virtuous circle which will inflate the coffers of general revenue year after year.

The B.C. government must direct the B.C. Utilities Commission to reject the Terasen deal, in Canada's national interests and in the interests of B.C. citizens. This should be done explicitly as a move to defend Canada's energy interests, and not just as a response to U.S. bullying on the softwood lumber issue. Just as corporations structurally integrate and buy from themselves in order to grow and increase their bottom line, so the government should be doing on behalf of the people of B.C.

We need to have the competitive advantage of owning our own resources and using them to attract businesses and people to our province. It is your responsibility to provide for the children of the future. Even if many of today's citizens are unaware of the implications of the sale of Terasen for the future, our grandchildren will inherit an impoverished province if you continue on this extravagant giveaway. Future generations will look back and wonder what on earth possessed you to squander their birthright for the sake of a short-term balanced budget. I'm asking you to please live up to you responsibility.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you for coming, Anita. I'm going to look to members of the committee to see if they have any questions from your presentation here this evening.

I suspect that I share a lot of your sentiments expressed tonight. The committee, though, as John pointed out in a question to the previous presenter, is to submit a report to the Legislature respecting next year's budget. Are there some specific items around taxation, revenue, expenditure that you would want to see included in it — either you or the Council of Canadians locally?

A. Strong: Well, what I and the Council of Canadians look for is for taxes to be distributed fairly and not fall more on the lower-income earners. Corporations and royalties on our own natural resources should be taxed fairly so that the tax base is more in line with what it was a couple of generations ago, and that's what I'm hoping to see would happen.

D. Hayer: I've just got a question about taxes. You were talking about income tax. Anybody in British Columbia that's earned less than around $16,000 per year…. So if you have two people making $16,000 each, they can make about $32,000 as a family without paying any provincial income tax. Do you think that's the right step to go? Should that be increased? If increased, to what amount?

A. Strong: I'm not sure what amount I would increase it to. What it costs to make a decent living in B.C. is what is considered poverty now in Canada. Is it $35,000 a year, or whatever? We shouldn't be taxing people who are making poverty wages, and more of the tax burden should fall on the people who have a higher income, as it used to be — a progressive type of taxation. Corporations pay only a small fragment now of what they used to pay, and I think you know that.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I see no further questions, Anita. Again, thank you for taking the time to come and present to our committee.

Our next presenters before the committee this evening are from Thompson Rivers University school of social work, and joining us is Michael Crawford.

M. Crawford: Good evening. I had actually hoped that a colleague of mine would appear because they are the ones that have the prepared notes and I only have some notes that I scribbled here from memory. So, my remarks will be rather general and perhaps you can draw further details out of me during the question period.

I want to thank the committee for holding these meetings around the province. A number of years ago when there were budget deficits, it was interesting to come and listen to the presenters inform the government about ways in which they could manage the deficit. Now, although the debt is projected, of course, to grow over the next number of years, the government is promising to produce surplus budgets over the next number of years. So the question really is: how should we spend our surplus?

Governments probably have as difficult a time managing deficits as they do managing surpluses. I want to suggest to you that the further right on the political spectrum political parties go when they form government, the harder it is for them to manage surpluses. The Liberal government over the last four years under Gordon Campbell has had a very clear idea about how to manage deficits, and that was: reduce the size of government, increase privatization, reduce services, lower taxes and remove regulations. In essence, then, throw the economy open to the free market system. That's largely what this government has done.

The problem with that, of course, is that it causes social chaos, and that's really what we've seen over the last four years. We've seen the gap between the well-to-do and the poor skyrocket in this province. We've seen increasing numbers of people who we would consider as millionaires, the very, very well-to-do, in this province. We've seen the closure of women's centres, we've seen regulations on welfare change, and we've seen increasing lineups at the Kamloops Food Bank and food banks across British Columbia.

That was the social cost of the Campbell government trying to wrestle the deficit. The plan seems to have been: reduce revenue and reduce spending, but reduce spending by more than you reduce revenue, and hopefully, we'll come out ahead. I think that's what's happened.

We were helped along the way by a strong Canadian dollar and, of course, high demand from offshore for our natural resources. I think that, probably even more than the low taxation rate, has stimulated the economy.

My recommendation to the government, and my hope, is this: that the government would reinvest in health, education and social services over the next number of years. Of course, I'll talk more about social services than I will about health and education, because that's my field. My hope, particularly, is that this government will seriously look at social assistance rates in this province and raise them.

For those of you who may not know, a single, employable person on welfare in British Columbia now receives $510 a month. It would be a challenge to all of us, I think, to try and survive anywhere in this province, rural or urban, on $510 a month. I think it's time to look at that, to stop worrying about where we sit in relation to other provinces, to stop thinking in terms of, "We need to motivate people by giving them minimal levels of assistance," and start thinking in terms of what human need really is and what it actually costs to live in this province. When you do that, I think you have a much harder time allocating only $510 per single individual in this province.

We need to invest in social housing in this province. The number of homeless in British Columbia seems to be growing. Homelessness is not just a blight on the province. It's actually problematic for what this province really wants to be. The Campbell government has put a lot of money into developing tourism. I don't think tourists want to go to any location where you see an increased number of homeless, increased street begging, panhandling and that sort of thing. Really, all you need to do is go to any major city in the United States, and you'll see where we will be if we carry on, on this path: people with mental illness and people that are homeless wandering around the streets; families that are homeless wandering around the streets, trying to eke out a living in an extraordinarily harsh environment.

Last of all, I would really encourage the replacement of women's services in this province. For a very small amount of money the government has removed women's services in this province for a very small amount of money. The government has removed women's resource centres across the province. Now, I know not as many of them have closed as we feared last year, but they aren't receiving any provincial money. They are receiving a little bit of federal money, but they're surviving on charity — a model which this government seems to prefer over decent provisions from the state.

Those are my three recommendations: increase welfare, increase social housing and return services to women in the province. Thank you very much.

J. Kwan: I'm wondering: in terms of the caseload issue around income assistance for your members, what's that looking like?

M. Crawford: I don't know, Jenny, what that is, but I know that the morale in the social assistance end of things is absolutely horrible. Day after day of handing out less money to people than they need to meet their basic human needs is just the most discouraging job around.

Morale is very low. Turnover is higher than we would like it to be. If you listen to concerns that come to us from consumers of that service, the initial wait time, I think, is now three weeks before you're eligible to get an appointment.

By the time you decide you actually need social assistance, you're asked to wait a further three weeks. Then getting in to see welfare officers is very difficult for some of the consumers, and so I imagine the caseloads must be quite high.

J. Yap: Those three recommendations you've made, basically, will encompass an increase in investment or spending in these areas. What would be your recommendation on how to fund these investments? Would it be through taxation or through debt?

M. Crawford: I think in the minibudget you presented in September, you gave a $400 million gift to small businesses. You reduced business taxes from 13½ percent to 12 percent. That's my recollection. That, by some estimates, equals $400 million. Can you take that $400 million back and spend it on some of these areas? How much would it cost to keep women's resource centres open across the province? It wouldn't cost even a fraction of that.

The equation, really, that I'm concerned about is that you're tipping your hat a great deal to business, and you're ignoring basic human needs in this province. Where else does the government get its revenue except through taxation? That's probably the equation.

M. Crawford: Indeed. You can't actually…. If the government at all wants to accept its responsibility to care for its citizens and to ensure that every one of its citizens has enough to eat, shelter over their heads, decent clothes to wear and are able to raise their children in ways that don't end up with their children being a burden on the state, then the state actually has to provide for those basic human needs for people who are unable to meet them themselves.

I think what the government has done over the last four years has abdicated that responsibility. They've said: "That's not our job. That is the job of the charity sector." So we see that much of the assistance given to individuals in need is being given through a charity model, through supporting the Rotary club or supporting Salvation Army or supporting some religious group in the community.

I don't think that's adequate. I think the state needs to take back that responsibility and ensure that it raises the revenue through taxation and that human need is meet in the province.

I'm curious as to whether or not you would be able to provide us with any statistics for the local numbers of women who are currently without services — information to back up some of what you've proposed here.

Certainly, we've heard from a previous speaker that the economy is very good in this region and very good in this community, so what you're presenting to us speaks a different story. Are you able to produce some of that information for us so that we have some statistical background to rely on?

M. Crawford: I certainly could. I could send that to you through your Internet site.

M. Crawford: I'd be pleased to do that. You'll, also, hear later on from Trish Archibald and Dodie Goldney from the Kamloops Women's Resource Centre, who will be, I think, presenting you with some of that data.

R. Lee: I don't know about the unemployment rate. It seems that across the province it's the lowest in 25 years for unemployment. I think that's good for social development. Also, the rate for the disability benefit has been increased by, say, $70 a month. I think that's also good for the community.

I think my question is really on education. Do you see anything positive in terms of higher education in this area?

M. Crawford: Positive in terms of higher education? I think you'll hear later on this evening from Dr. Friedman that the faculty of Thompson Rivers University are interested in provincial government's funding Thompson Rivers University adequately. It's nice to have the name "university." It would be nice to be funded as if we were a university. As you know from a presentation that was given to you in Victoria by the college presidents group…. I think you heard that colleges are horribly underfunded compared to universities. I think we're continuing to be underfunded, even though your government was kind enough to give us the moniker "university."

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Michael, I want to thank you for coming and presenting to our committee here this evening.

F. Anderson: Good evening, Blair. First of all, I want to apologize to the committee for my tardiness. I had an urgent matter come up. I know the committee's time is valuable, and I hope that didn't cause too much of a disruption.

I didn't bring copies for you, but I will forward them on. I want to start off by saying that I made presentations to the Select Standing Committee on Finance back in 2002 and again in 2003. I mention it because my message at the time, particularly in 2002…. That was when the cuts to the public service were just taking effect. They were actually in the stages, at that time, of carrying them out.

I made a presentation basically saying that I didn't think the cuts were really needed and that even if the government felt, from a financial standpoint, that they needed to make those cuts, they could've done it in a more humane way through attrition. Certainly, the demographics in government reports clearly indicated that that was possible. Instead, it was decided to head down a path of deep cuts to services and to workers.

I'm going to tell you quite honestly that I didn't feel my voice was really heard in 2002 and 2003. I thought it was ignored, maybe even ridiculed. I felt that the direction the government was taking was made from an ideology as opposed to listening to average British Columbians like myself, which this committee should do. I admit that I'm a bit skeptical, but I hope that's not the case this time.

Many of the decisions in the past led to closed offices. I'll give you one example: the Ministry of Forests in Lillooet. That is now an empty office that the government pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in lease payments for — an empty office. Yet now forest companies are out there, knowing they pretty much have free rein to do whatever they want because the closest forestry personnel to them who would be monitoring them are in Merritt, which could be, depending on where the forestry operation is, a day's drive away.

From courthouse closures to human resources office closures and forestry offices, as I've mentioned, and hospitals — and the list could go on and on — many services in towns around this province, I believe, have left the poor most vulnerable, and they don't adequately protect the public's interests in our resources or in our environment. Also, reductions in services like Pharmacare, home support…. We have seniors who aren't able to leave their homes getting home support now where, you know, they may get a bath a week. I don't know how many people on this panel would go dirty that long, but somehow we're not treating people with the kind of dignity where they can.

Cuts to legal aid. We had stories — when legal aid was so severely cut, and it hasn't been restored at all — where, for example, there was a dispute between a couple that had split up. The husband is sitting in Alberta and able to get legal aid to assist him, and the wife is sitting in British Columbia and can't get legal aid to assist her.

Income assistance, as Michael Crawford so well spoke about, increases in education, parks and recreation, eye care…. The list goes on. I would contend that those things discriminate against the poor. If we're

talking about budget surpluses and we're talking about situations where we can increase services, we ought to look at ways that we can stop discriminating against the poor in such a fashion.

I also want to talk about deregulation and industry self-regulation that, I believe, has simply been taken too far. Let me say that I used to work in the forest industry. I can tell you clearly from my own past experience that industry performs according to what you inspect, not according to what you expect. We simply have taken the inspection services out and told them to do what they want. You can write whatever legislation you want on regulation. You've deregulated that, but you can write all kinds of regulation if you want. If you don't have adequate inspection services in there, it really, at the end of the day, doesn't matter.

I could tell my son that I want his room clean, and never inspect it. Maybe when he runs out of clothes, because they're all on the floor, now it's a big problem. You know, you could see the exact same thing happen in our forest industry. A lot of those kinds of things where you may have a hillside that erodes away and lands in a creek — that doesn't happen overnight, usually. To me, if we don't restore services to inspecting those to ensure that the public interest is protected, we're going to pay a huge price down the road.

I mention some of these things because I think a lot is made these days about debts and deficits. Yet I think we have a more serious debt that will impact our children. It's the debt in our social programs and in our inspection services, particularly in the resource ministries. When you're looking at surpluses, I would suggest it is those deficits that need to be addressed.

I also want to make this point. When you're restoring services that have been cut, you should consult the front-line workers. I've got to tell you this government has been spectacularly unsuccessful in that. I know for a fact that just this past summer one particular ministry had severe cuts and restructuring going on, and even the management directors were not consulted. It's a top-down approach that may be efficient in pushing through an ideology, but it often leaves things on the ground in chaos.

Finally, I want to say when you… Well, not finally, but a couple other points. One of the things I want to say is when you talk about finances, I'm sure there are often discussions on tax cuts. I don't think we need to endure another round of tax cuts that often simply come out of services. But I will say this: if tax cuts are being considered, I would suggest you look at the MSP premiums that this government doubled.

The increase has been a burden on low incomes and seniors. I know some are going to say: "Well, yeah, but some of those low-income people don't pay the whole shot — right?" Well, I can tell you I know a lot of people that are paying the whole shot, and it's a burden.

The rich don't need more tax cuts. The provincial budget should serve the economy as a tool that supports the social programs and social justice purposes and enhances our sustainability, not erodes it.

The last thing I want to talk about is the constant legislating of collective agreements instead of properly negotiating them. Being involved in negotiations…. Negotiation means give and take on both sides. Neither side gets exactly everything they want. It appears to me that that doesn't seem to be what I've seen occur in so many cases with this government, where instead of doing a negotiation, it's, "Here's the mandate, and either accept it or the subsequent reaction is a legislated agreement," and actually a very predictable reaction. That really often comes down to money.

If you're going to allow a proper democracy with proper collective bargaining, then you have to enable the negotiators at the table to have the leeway to be able to actually negotiate an agreement and not just ramrod something down somebody's throat. It makes people think that maybe some of the freedoms we enjoy are being taken for granted. That's why some people are protesting against that, quite frankly.

Sure, the most obvious example right in front of you today is the teachers, but I think it's a message that this committee needs to hear, because this is a finance committee. If the finances of the province are such that people are in good enough shape, why can't you give a mandate that says that you can actually negotiate? Let's get back to a democracy in that fashion instead of one that basically forces people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

I'm going to look to members of the committee to see if they have any questions regarding your presentation. I'll begin with Maurine.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Frank. I think your presentation was extremely compelling. I know you didn't bring notes for us, but I've made a note to myself to re-read your transcript, because I think you've made some excellent points and you've made them very well.

You mentioned earlier that you are a negotiator. Is that what you do for a living? What sector do you actually work in?

F. Anderson: Yeah, I work in the union sector, and I've done some negotiations. I have four children. I negotiate every day.

L. Krog: I could start with a funny question and ask you who wins in those negotiations, but as a parent of two myself, I think I already know.

You said cut MSP premiums if there are going to be any further tax cuts. I want to ask on the other side:

what do you think the government should be doing with the surplus of $1.3 billion?

F. Anderson: I think, as I indicated, Leonard, that there are some services that need to be restored. For me, some of the services that particularly hit the poor people in legal aid and women's resource centres and Pharmacare are important. I think, like I said, if you're going to look at tax cuts, then you should look at the MSP premiums.

I can tell you for a fact…. For example, my own father, who pays that MSP premium, struggles to pay it and his rent and feed himself and so forth. It's really discouraging when you see that people have to do that in this country, where we should be providing medicare for them where they don't have to make those kinds of decisions.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Frank, again, thank you for taking the time. Just one of your comments about your voice may not have been heard…. I can assure you — I've been part of the committee in 2001 and 2002 and again now — every voice is heard.

Unfortunately, the wishes of every presenter that comes before us…. Although it's reviewed, we take a broader scope. We try and address that. It's a very difficult thing, whether you're looking at where you have to cut spending or increase spending, but your voice is heard. I want to assure everybody who comes before the committee that we're here to listen. That's the job of this legislative committee, and I can assure you that each of these members will do that.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Our next presenter on the list here is Sean Horne. I'm not sure if Sean is here. I am not seeing Sean here. We'll move on to our presenters Trevor Jeanes, Geoff Swannell and Don Tretheway. I think you're bringing the view of a consortium of associations.

G. Swannell: I think I'll make the presentation, at least for the initial part. Any questions, perhaps, any of the three of us could answer at the end. I'm Geoff Swannell, and I'm representing the Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association. Immediately on my left is Trevor Jeanes, past president of the Kamloops Flyfishers, and on my far right is Don Tretheway, past president of the Shuswap region of the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

What we'd like to do is make a presentation on behalf of the forest recreation sites, roads and trails program of the Forest Service that probably went back quite a few decades but in 1971 was organized into the recreation program of the B.C. Forest Service.

What that resulted in by 2002 was 1,200 campsites throughout British Columbia in often the only locations on some lakes — where they're on lakes — that have public access. They're in recreational areas throughout the province that are easily found on maps that are available and are a great attraction to both tourists and residents alike. By 2002 there were also 7,000 kilometres of trails, 90 interpretive sites and 13 designated heritage trails created and maintained under the recreation program of the Forest Service.

Over the years these sites have proven themselves to be not only appropriate but popular, efficient and effective. The program of recreation in the Forest Service offers access, guidance and opportunity for widespread public forest recreation with minimal services, facilities or costs associated, particularly when compared to the revenues and microeconomies in the province that are dependent on forest recreation, which I'll touch on in a few minutes.

Basically, the forest recreation sites provide an outdoor recreation experience that's different from many available in our provincial parks, so they weren't a duplication in that sense. Forest recreation campsites are all that some families can afford and are everything that those who enjoy an unorganized outdoor setting want. As I mentioned, there are 1,200. I'm sure you're probably familiar with some yourself and probably have used them. They often have a minimum of facilities — perhaps not even a park-type eating bench, but sometimes a pit toilet, a safe place to have a fire and a bit of level ground, with directions on how to get there available through maps. They're widespread introductions to our forests.

The recreation sites and trails program, along with Forest Service roads, is nothing less than the major means by which provincial visitors and the public are introduced to, access and enjoy our forest lands. Some 41 percent of B.C. residents participate in outdoor recreation in our forests. There was a forest range and recreational resource analysis done in 1998, and I'd like to quote a bit of information from that to show you the extent to which forest recreation and the forest recreation sites are of value to this province.

They discovered in this analysis of 1998 that there were annually 47 million recreational visits to our provincial forests and another eight million by non-residents. Together, residents and tourists spend $2.5 billion each year supporting 42,000 forest-related recreation jobs of the 70,000 supported by outdoor recreation in general. You can see that the forests are a source of a good proportion of all outdoor recreation. The forest recreation sites and trails program is a key to forest recreational use and highly beneficial related provincial economies.

In approximately 2002, with the cutbacks and budget reductions that were required to assist us to

where we have apparently received good reports on all fiscal sides…. They were apparently necessary, and they worked toward that end. There were staffing and budget cuts. Some of the trails and sites were not looked after at all. Some were put on a privatized service basis where subcontractors were contracted to look after sites and trails. The Forest Service, with reduced facilities, looked after some, but some were not looked after at all.

In February of 2004, in the Speech from the Throne, we were pleased to hear that it was the government's promise to reinstate funding to maintain forest recreational roads and recreational sites in the heartlands. We were very encouraged to hear that. It has not happened to the extent of full restoration, and we believe that it's now the time to catch up with the lost maintenance on existing recreational sites and to fully restore funding to maintain an enhanced forest recreational site and trail management.

We ask that the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services exercise their influence to do these suggestions and supportable arguments: (1) to restore recreational sites, roads and trails funding, and staffing levels to those of the early 2000s; (2) provide temporary funding, beginning in 2006, in addition to the restored base budget, to bring neglected recreational sites, roads and trails back to original standards; and (3) provide the new forest recreation site administrators — the new Ministry of Tourism, Sports and the Arts, which I understand will be taking over the administration of the forest trails and sites program in the next fiscal year — the mandate, legislative tools, staff and funds to continue the valuable work with the Forest Service recreational sites, roads and trails.

Basically, that's where we stand on that. If the facts and figures are looked into, I think we can see that the approximate $4 million to $6 million funding of the early 2000s was appropriate in terms of the services and better standard of living and the potential for increased tourism and recreation those sites provide.

There's one other thing I want to mention related to the forest recreational sites, and that's a process of map reserves called UREPs. U-R-E-P — that stands for use, recreation and enjoyment of the public. These were map notations that were recorded by the equivalent of the Lands branch. I'm not sure what that is now. They were contributed with ideas for sites that were based on that simple definition of what a UREP is: the use, recreation and enjoyment of the public. The Ministry of Environment or Forest Service over the years — probably starting in the '50s, certainly in the '60s — would make map notations of locations on sites of exceptional recreational potential.

It's turned out that many of these sites which have minimal protection…. I think it would be difficult to alienate them from Crown land, but it could be done. If there's going to be development on them, the site designation requires that land managers have a second look to see that it doesn't result in contrary effects, rather than the use, recreation and enjoyment of the public.

They have some protection, but many of the forest recreational sites were at one time UREPs. As a forest recreational site, they enjoy far more protection in the sense that they are going to be maintained in perpetuity for the use, recreation and enjoyment of the public.

That's one reason why we support the idea of UREPs, and we hope that's continued. Specifically, even with the transfer of the sites and trails program from Forest Service to the new Tourism Ministry, we would very much like to see original funding restored with extra funding on a temporary basis to get the sites and trails back to their original condition. Thank you.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you, Geoff, Trevor and Don for coming before our committee this evening. I know there are a couple of questions.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Geoff, excellent presentation. Just briefly there, you touched on the idea of private contracts and private subcontractors looking after parks maintenance and management. I'd like you to elaborate a little bit on that. You mentioned that some parks have not had that kind of contracting management and some have. How do you feel about that as a method for government providing management of parks?

G. Swannell: These aren't — if I used the term perhaps correctly — parks per se but recreational sites, many of them campsites, and trails, interpretation sites and historic locations. Basically, that's what they are. The work that Parks branch does, of course, is entirely different. This is all what's done by Forest Service up until probably the end of this fiscal year — these recreational sites.

I guess every district manager was told, where there was an interest by an entrepreneur for the fee for the usage of the site, to feel that it would be business-sensible to have a contractor, make a contract and have an individual who looked after the sites to standards that the Forest Service provided and still was able to make enough money to make it worthwhile. Many of the sites were put open to bid. I don't know exactly what happened. My estimation is that those that were more apparently able to create enough money to maintain themselves through that process were bid on, and many weren't. Probably the more distant ones are the ones with lower levels of use. It didn't apply to even the majority of the rec sites after 2002. Many were cared for under contract.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Do you see those contracts still in place, and are they still managing those sites and trails to an acceptable level? I happen to be a user of those services in my own community on the Island, so I'm just curious. I know my observations of what's happened on the Island with some of the

G. Swannell: My experience is that, yes, there are still contractors taking care of sites and trails, and as far as I'm aware, they're meeting the standards of the contract as originally signed. I don't have a problem with contracted maintenance, personally. That, in combination with those that are maybe not feasible to be supported through commerce, you might say, are going to have to have somebody to look after them. That's one of the things that we would like to see restored and that would be the new Tourism Ministry in this case.

L. Krog: Thank you for your presentation. My constituency is Nanaimo, and the fish and game club there just celebrated its 100th anniversary. I've just got to tell you that you've got a fairly modest list of requests tonight versus what the Nanaimo Fish and Game Club were looking for when I met with them last.

I'm just wondering if you have any comment about funding, by what used to be the Ministry of Environment, with respect to games officers and things of that nature. Have you got any comment in that regard?

G. Swannell: One of my compatriots here will answer part of that. I would like to say that there's always available space for a few more conservation officers. The territories they cover are staggering.

Inventory is probably an area that would deserve a good fiscal shot in the arm. It's hard to make decisions in terms of wildlife and habitat without the basic inventory. I think that hasn't been done to the extent that maybe it could have been in the last ten years or more. That would be one area where I think money would be well spent.

L. Krog: Don, it looks like you and Trevor both would like to add to that. I'd be happy to hear.

L. Krog: In terms of conservation officers, one of the concerns raised by my local fish and game club is that there simply aren't enough. I'm just wondering if you have any comment on that.

T. Jeanes: Well, I mean, the ministry had budget cuts as well as everybody else. One of the venues that was cut was conservation officers. We've experienced all kinds of problems with that. I don't know how deep you want to go. We came here, specifically, to talk about recreation sites, to get your support to bring them up to standard, to bring them into an area whereby tourists and local people can use the rec sites without the problems we've got today.

The conservation officer issue is a much larger issue. We have people putting perch in lakes. We have perch in Forest Lake now that have a very real likelihood of going down into the Adams River and upsetting the salmon run, the sockeye salmon spawning grounds in the Adams River. That's really a no-no, and there are no conservation officers to look at it.

This year they did a blitz on Shuswap Lake. I believe the figure…. I'm quoting off the top of my head. Someone can correct me. I think something like 52 percent or 54 percent of the people checked didn't have fishing licences or thought their Alberta licences were good enough in B.C. This is because we don't have the people to go out in the field.

There are now three fisheries officers in Kamloops, and the one man in charge has to look after 600 lakes. Those are the lakes that are being stocked. The other two officers look after another 800 lakes. They don't have a chance to even get on those lakes once a year, yet they're supposed to make proper decisions as to what is happening there.

There's no question that we've neglected the fishery, certainly, and wildlife isn't any different. Our fish and wildlife are beautiful resources. We have something like 70 percent of the species in Canada in British Columbia, and people come here to participate in hunting and fishing and also admiring and encountering wildlife. We do lots of things to try and protect it, but we sure as heck need help out there in the field to make it work.

We have directed this, specifically, at recreation sites because those are things that bring in a lot of money. They bring a lot of tourists. They bring a lot of people.

Everybody that goes fishing buys a boat. They've got a truck to pack the boat. They've got fishing rods and licences and all the other things that go with it. There are a lot of dollars being spent in the community and throughout British Columbia to have that happen. If you figured it out per pound, your cost of fish per pound when you brought it home would be astronomical. It's far cheaper to go buy it in the grocery store, but it's a healthy lifestyle. It gets people out.

This is what we'd like to encourage. We'd like to see the tourists coming for the Olympics experiencing that as well. We should have those campsites up and running and in good stead.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, gentlemen, thank you very much. You certainly have a valuable point. Whether you go hunting or fishing, the cost per pound by the time you put it on your table is significant. Thanks very much, gentlemen, for coming this evening.

We are going to move on to our next presentation this evening, coming to us from Tenisci Piva Chartered Accountants and Ron Tenisci. Good evening, and welcome to the committee.

R. Tenisci: I'd like to thank the standing committee for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you. Just by way of background information, I'll introduce myself. I'm a chartered accountant. I've been practising in

My focus in business has always been with the small business community. The business sectors that my clients participate in are service, retail, construction, land development, manufacturing, wholesale, restaurants, technology and not-for-profit. I've probably missed a few, but the idea is that we have a fairly broad sector of clients. We deal with the grass-roots business people, who contribute significantly to the economic growth and prosperity of the province.

The recurring message that we get in our daily consultations from our clients is: how does the government manage the taxes collected, both at the provincial and federal levels? One level gets more criticism than the other; it's not you people. We're referring to fiscal responsibility — okay? Any successful business starts with good fiscal responsibility, good fiscal management. Of course, they pay attention to all the other applicable criteria to make you successful in any business, be it marketing, human resources or a host of other things that you need to be proficient in, depending on the type of business you're in.

You probably realize that the government is the largest business in the province. As such, you've got a huge job to do. Sound business practices should be at the top of your list as well, because that will result in a strong, healthy economy for the province. That moves down to the private sector and the people who have their own businesses. It results in job creation and delivery of efficient products and services, which then translates into success for all of your constituents. That's everyone's bottom line.

I'm coming to you today to primarily bring forward two recommendations. One is in the area of fiscal responsibility through a debt management program, and the second is to encourage investment and innovation through the monitoring of tax cuts and tax incentives primarily aimed at the research and development sector of the economy.

Let's first talk about long-term debt management. The provincial government recently made two improvements to their fiscal policy. One is the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, which, for one thing, has allowed me to sit in front of you and discuss things. There's also the Balanced Budget Act, which has helped restore B.C.'s fiscal credibility.

The Budget Transparency and Accountability Act has, also, been recently amended for the use of generally accepted accounting principles in government financial reporting. B.C. now is probably the most transparent and accountable government in the country.

The Balanced Budget Act is helping keep revenues in line with expenditures. With today's government, through their success, it's actually helped to reduce debt levels. The reduction of debt levels will translate into the reduction of approximately $1.6 billion of debt servicing which is on our plate today. It would be nice if we could use some of that. We're not going to be as fortunate as Alberta and recover that whole $1.6 billion, but we can make efforts to recover some of it and maybe move those moneys into health care, education, highways — whatever the priorities are of this province.

Our next logical step, then, in your ongoing improvements to fiscal responsibility would be a debt management plan whereby we try and eliminate some of the debt over a period of time. In the early '80s our debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio was approximately 10.4 percent. It's gotten higher over the years, to a high of 21.3 percent debt-to-GDP as early as 2003. Fortunately, through the government's efforts and your fiscal stewardship to date, with the strong economy and a budget surplus, that is coming down. I believe the government is projecting that to drop to just below 16 percent by the year 2007-2008.

These things have resulted in B.C.'s credit rating being upgraded by the three major credit-rating agencies in the province. I believe it's time to formally formulate a debt management strategy to get back to our previous level of in and around 10 percent, say within a ten-year period. Who knows? One day we might be just as good as Alberta.

With regards to Alberta, B.C. does have the second-lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in Canada. With Alberta being our closest neighbour, they're the ones we have to compete against. If they have better fiscal management, they're going to be a stronger competitor and attract more of the businesses and human resources that we're trying to go after. That could be a problem for us if we don't address this issue.

My next issue is the investment and innovation segment. The government did come to the table in the recent budget in September by reducing the corporate provincial tax rate to 12 percent from 13.5 percent, which to me is a clear indication that you're looking to attract and retain small business for the province. It puts us just half a point behind Alberta. I don't think that's a significant difference to attract them to one place or the other. If we can attract stronger investment that will lead to business growth, it would translate into better revenues for our government, which allows us to provide better services, again, to our constituents. I would recommend the continued monitoring of, say, the competing jurisdictions and their tax rates to make sure that we stay in tune and remain competitive.

With regard to innovation, innovation, obviously, leads to productivity. I recommend that the government continue to encourage innovation, which ultimately stimulates our economy. Innovation involves people with ideas. They're techies, they have brilliant minds, and they have thoughts that a lot of us wish we had. It's generally in the technology area, which would include research and development spending, and spending on patents as well.

Spending in these areas allows the investors to gauge how our economy is doing, whether it's a good place to invest. It's also a leading indicator by anticipating what our future productivity will be. If you're doing a lot of investing in research and development, it's

With regard to patents, B.C. has exhibited some slow but steady gains in patents. As of 2004 we're third behind Alberta, Ontario and the national average. In B.C. in '04 we generated 39.8 patents per one million of population. Worldwide, there has been a boom in patents over the last ten years, primarily in Japan and the United States. With those two countries leading the way, that does signify the importance of patents in today's knowledge-based economy. Businesses need to protect their inventions and help them to grow.

This rapid growth in biotechnology and information communications and technology is leading the way, and that leads us to research and development, which is a prime attraction for these innovators. The most widely recognized determinant of how successful your economy will be through innovation is through the dollars spent on research and development. A recent Canadian study conducted in 2004 with regard to research and development indicates that technical competency and past activities are the primary factors affecting innovation. If we can see money spent on R and D providing technical competency for innovation, it will result in a stronger manufacturing market, not only in the country but in B.C., where our focus is.

It's interesting to note that from 1999 to the year 2002, research and development did grow in B.C. to the tune of 25 percent, and that was primarily in the fast-growing biotechnology field. We lag behind Ontario in dollars spent. Research and development dollars spent as a ratio of gross domestic product: B.C. was 1.2 percent; Ontario, 1.9 percent, as the leader; and the average for Canada was 1.8 percent.

The B.C. government has taken steps by reducing tax measures — the rate and the R-and-D credits — but we recommend that you keep your eye on future tax cuts and research and development credits in order to increase innovation, especially through research and development, because the results of this sector will bolster the economy, which will then filter down to the individuals and provide, I guess, prosperity for all of us. These are my comments, my recommendations, and I'd be glad to listen to any questions.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thanks very much, Ron. I'm going to look to members of the committee.

J. Yap: Thank you, Mr. Tenisci, for your presentation — some great points. Obviously, it would be wonderful if we can work towards no debt, as is happening in Alberta. Realistically, we're around 17 to 18 percent, and depending on the measure used, it might be 21 percent, whether you look at taxpayer-supported or total debt as the ratio to GDP.

Over the next ten years there will be significant infrastructure investments that will have to happen. Even if we do engage in public-private partnerships, we still have to recognize the related debt. My question is: what…? I know you mentioned 10 percent as an ideal and zero as wonderful in the long run. What level do you feel would be comfortable? For the foreseeable future 10 percent is probably not in the ballpark, and likely, there will be pressures beyond where we are today.

R. Tenisci: I know there are pressures for the infrastructures because, for one thing, we've got the lower mainland with the 2010 Olympics. I mean, we do have to spend money when it's needed, but those infrastructures will lead to long-term prosperity well after the Olympics are gone. Regardless, we're estimating that by the year, I think, 2007 or 2008 you'd be around 16 percent. I would hope for a level of 10 percent if we go beyond that — say, ten years from today.

I have a house. We all have houses, we all take mortgages out on our houses, and we don't have the luxury of passing on our mortgage to the next generation. We have to look after our own mortgages — the same with any businesses, including the provincial government.

J. Yap: Some might argue, though, that just as families have mortgage debt against the house, some level of long-term debt for infrastructure is reasonable.

R. Tenisci: Yes, I think so. If you leave it at 10 percent, you're always going to have that, because we don't know down the road. There's always going to be new infrastructure as the world changes and as technology changes. I'd be happy to live with a long-term 10 percent rate.

R. Lee: My question is on research and development. How does B.C. compare to other provinces in terms of the public sector R and D and the private sector R and D? Do you have any data?

R. Tenisci: No, I don't have the data on the breakdown between public and private sector in R and D; I'm sorry.

R. Lee: Okay. My second question is…. To benefit from the R and D, we need more commercialization of the product or the patent so they will be getting to the production stage of the innovation. Do you have any ideas how to encourage more production, based on the research and development?

R. Tenisci: Well, based on research and development, the more dollars that are available for research and development, then the more you will encourage people to get into that field. People with the ideas will come forward if they know that there's going to be money there to assist them in their research projects. Of course, they have to put their money up before they get their tax credits from the government, which is good because that promotes the economy at the same time.

There's always going to be a lag. The biggest problem that the research and development people face is

getting their product to market, because a guy with R and D has got running shoes and jeans on and is sitting in the back room plunking away at his computer, or whatever. He's not necessarily the marketer. The biggest thing in making it successful once you have this idea, you do your cursory review of whether there's a…. You have kind of an intuitive feel for the fact that there is a market for this product, so you go ahead and develop it, and by that time perhaps things have changed. Once you've got it developed and working, there's a completely different field in bringing that product to market — right?

I don't know how to do it, but one thing I would suggest is perhaps the government assists in the marketing of this product or provides money to do the crucial market study that's required, and it's required on a fairly timely basis. Most of these guys, even if they had the money, wouldn't know how to do the market study. Maybe the government needs to give some thought to providing the resources and the people to do the market study.

R. Tenisci: Yes, the venture capital could be very helpful in providing those resources.

L. Krog: Actually, John's already asked my questions around the issue of deficit and debt versus debt acquired for purposes of capital acquisition.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Ron, I want to thank you for coming and presenting to our committee here this evening.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Our next presentation this evening is from the Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia, and joining us are Bruno Delesalle and Dave Whiting.

B. Delesalle: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I would like to take a minute to thank the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the opportunity tonight, and I'd like to introduce Dave Whiting, who's on the board of directors for the Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia. I am the executive director for the Grasslands Conservation Council.

Understanding that this forum that we have tonight is to assist government in fiscal planning, the submission from the Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia does not fit quite neatly into some of the categories that we see on your website and maybe some of the other presentations that you'll have tonight, but we do believe that what we have here in our submission is of provincial significance and really warrants your considerations.

The Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia is a society and a charitable organization, and it is the only organization of its kind in British Columbia. It has a well-defined niche and tremendous support from a wide range of organizations and individuals, including the ranching community, environmental organizations, government agencies and first nations.

We're often referred to as a strategic alliance of organizations and individuals with a broad set of experience and expertise dedicated to the conservation and stewardship of grasslands around British Columbia. You may know, but maybe not, that grasslands only represent about 0.8 percent of our provincial land base, so they're very, very small. Although they're small in scale, they are found in many of the regions throughout British Columbia, and they provide critical forage for wildlife and livestock. They support the ranching industry here in British Columbia, which is a key industry in the central and southern interior. They provide a wide variety of recreation and wildlife viewing opportunities. Recreation and tourism is a growing industry here in British Columbia. They are also home to over 30 percent of B.C.'s species at risk.

I would also like to just draw your attention to communities like Kamloops, Vernon, Penticton and Kelowna. All of these communities in the central southern interior tend to focus in the valley bottoms where grasslands exist. There are increasing pressures on our grasslands from urban expansion, subdivision of large ranches and the fragmentation of our grassland land base. There are invasive plants. Recreation and inappropriate land management practices are also creating increasing pressure on our land base and are threatening the long-term sustainability of our grasslands around the province. There are increasing problems. Pressure on our grasslands is really increasing, and we've seen that particularly over the last five years.

The province of British Columbia has clearly stated its vision and objectives through service plans for the Ministry of Forests and Range, through the Ministry of Environment and through the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, and the objectives are as follows. The government will ensure sound environmental stewardship. The government will promote best management practices and sustainable management. Government will manage and restore rangeland ecosystems. Government will promote sustainable management of B.C.'s resources. Government will limit the diverse effects on the environment and also on grasslands; will promote sustainable agriculture; and will achieve sustainable management, using scientific and economic information in decision-making processes. These are all some of the strategic objectives that have been pulled out of the service plans from those key ministries.

There is recognition both within government and outside of government that although these are important strategic objectives, they are not possible without partnerships and without collaboration. I think a lot of

Although government has also recognized that a sustainable environment is central for providing economic and social opportunities for all British Columbians, this is a very difficult and very ambitious objective. That is why we're here tonight. The GCC submission really builds on six years of work.

The Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia. Although we're a small non-profit and charitable organization, we have established and will continue to establish key partnerships with the province, with regional governments, with municipalities, with the cattle industry and with first nations. We are establishing those partnerships really to achieve conservation and stewardship for grasslands around the province. That's not an easy task.

We are providing governments with data, with a geographical information system, with various other information and the tools to achieve more effective land use planning and decisions regarding the conservation, the stewardship and the management of our grassland land base around the province. We are promoting sustainable management and monitoring of the range resource by working with the cattle industry and working with the Ministry of Forests and Range.

We are also promoting and developing best management practices for the recreation sector. As some of you might know, we have worked over the last three years on developing recommendations for government, which are going to be presented in one month, for licensing and registration of off-road vehicles. We have also developed best management practices for recreation in general, and we have just finished producing some best management practices brochures for the motorized sector. We also want to continue on those types of initiatives with the non-motorized sector.

My presentation here is quite short today, because I didn't want to take too much of your time. But our submission to the standing committee is really about trying to get government to support the partnerships that we have been working so hard to establish and to support the non-government sector in helping you deliver on your mandate.

I've read out some key strategic objectives today, and I think it's very important for us to continue working on these strategic partnerships.

The GCC is implementing several key initiatives, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time tonight going over those initiatives that I have put in our submission. I didn't want to waste your time in doing that, but there are some key initiatives that we have been delivering over the last six years and that we are in the process of delivering over the next three to four years. Some of these initiatives have traditionally been delivered by government.

As you know, the non-profit sector has begun to pick up a lot of the slack from government, and we are providing an important service to British Columbians and an important service to the government of British Columbia. I believe we are doing so effectively and efficiently.

The non-government sector, however, cannot work in isolation. We are here tonight to ask you, the province, to support this partnership. We need your commitment, and we need your support for the conservation of grasslands. We want to ensure that we achieve gains on the ground regarding conservation, but we also want to promote sustainable communities. We want to promote sustainable industry in the province, and that is really working proactively with the ranching industry.

I just wanted to finish with one statement. The Grasslands Conservation Council has been very, very successful over the last six years, I believe, in bringing a very diverse group of people to the table. Government ministries in the past have had a difficult time in communicating. Interagency communication has been difficult. What we have been able to do is bring all the agencies to the table, the ranching sector, conservation groups, hard-core environmentalists and all those other skill sets needed to start to solve some of the problems that we have around the province in terms of managing grasslands, managing rangelands and trying to develop some of the tools that we need to achieve conservation while not stopping development. We appreciate that development is not going to stop — but to start to work proactively towards some of these solutions.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you, Bruno. Thank you, Dave. Are there any questions from members of the committee regarding the presentation we've just heard?

L. Krog: To put it in a nutshell, you'd like about $900,000 — $300,000 a year for three years.

L. Krog: I might say, on the record, that it doesn't strike me as an awful lot of money for the value of what's being requested.

B. Delesalle: No, and actually, I think that's a very good point. One of the benefits with the Grasslands Conservation Council…. We have a partnership with the government now. It isn't a lot of money. The efficiencies for government are tremendous, particularly with some of the large interagency communication and with all the stakeholders around the table. Some of these initiatives can take a lot of time and resources. I think the non-profit sector has proven, and we have proven, that we can do it very effectively.

J. Kwan: In your presentation you referenced in-kind support from various ministries. What do you mean by that? What kind of in-kind support are you referring to?

B. Delesalle: As an example, there's one initiative called the priority grasslands initiative, where we have

mapped all the grasslands around the province. We're currently in the process of trying to prioritize those grassland ecosystems based on a set of criteria and values. What used to be the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management, now the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, is providing us with office space. We have one employee, who is our GIS analyst and who is actually housed within one of your ministries. So we have a desk, we have a computer, and we have access to a database. We have an agreement between the province and ourselves in terms of delivering this project. That information will be accessible and, in fact, is going to be housed on the government's site.

That is an in-kind contribution. Government is devoting, I believe, about $7,000 of in-kind contribution, which is computers, office space and technical support.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Again, gentlemen, I want to thank you. I believe that concludes the questions from members of the committee. The importance of grasslands and our conservation…. I come from the Peace River area and fully recognize this well. I definitely feel the province and the people of our province are gaining a greater understanding through the efforts of people like yourselves. So thank you very much for the work you do.

We will move on. Our next presentation comes to us from Highland Valley Copper. Mr. Dal Scott joins us.

I'd like to welcome you here to Kamloops, part of the heartland of British Columbia. I work for Highland Valley Copper and have worked there for 35 years. Highland Valley Copper and its predecessor companies have been mining copper in the Highland Valley since 1962. We've been in business mining copper in the Highland Valley as long as B.C. Hydro has been in existence, and we've been contributing wealth to the province of British Columbia.

We're the largest copper mine in Canada. We have 900 people working for us — probably 100 staff and 800 United Steelworkers of America, who whistle on their way to work. Last year, in 2004, our total revenues were $760 million. Our assets in the Highland Valley have an ensured value of $1.1 billion. Our current mine life has been recently extended from 2009 to the end of 2013, and we're examining options to extend the mine life further.

Our total operating costs and costs that we spend here in British Columbia are about $300 million a year. Using a conservative multiplier, that $300 million, as it trickles through the economy of B.C., creates about $750 million worth of economic activity in the province.

In the Kamloops region we have a direct payroll of $99 million — people that live in Kamloops, Merritt, Ashcroft and Cache Creek. We spend $58 million in the Kamloops region to purchase supplies, services, consulting services and the like. So we spend a total of $157 million in the Kamloops region each year with 302 suppliers.

We contribute a lot of taxes to the three levels of government. Last year, in 2004, we paid $29 million at the minesite. That includes property taxes, payroll levies, licensing fees, federal and provincial sales tax by our employees, EI, CPP, etc. In our B.C. Hydro bill we paid another $14 million that went directly to the province. Today we're going to suggest that maybe part of that $14 million, the provincial sales tax on industrial process power, be eliminated; 33 percent of our power bill flows straight to Victoria.

In corporate taxes that are paid by our senior partner, Teck Cominco, last year we paid $220 million, of which $104 million was federal income tax, $56 million was B.C. income tax and $60 million was B.C. mineral tax. From the mine directly to three levels of government flowed $263 million last year.

Now, from the other $450 million, of the $750 million economic activity that we generated in the province flow far more taxes. I'd like to suggest that maybe $133 million flow, which would give a total amount of taxes flowing to the government from Highland Valley Copper of probably $400 million.

We worked hard to increase our productivity over the years. Our manpower has been reduced. That's through using the latest state-of-the-art technology and larger trucks and the like so that as our manpower is reduced, it's been through attrition or retirement. We have worked hard to keep our place competitive in world markets.

Electricity costs us 14 percent of our operating costs. Last year our power bill was $42 million. It's our largest cost input after labour. We've worked hard at reducing our power consumption. In 1973 we used 28.82 kilowatt hours per tonne. Last year we had a record low of 18.82 kilowatt hours per tonne. That's been done through large expenditures in energy conservation projects over the years to help keep ourselves competitive in world markets.

As we go into the future during the next couple of years, as we rearrange our facilities to extend our mine life, we'll be moving our in-pit crushers out of the pit to the pit rim and eliminating 12,000 horsepower in overland conveyors so that in the future we're continuing to try to reduce our electricity consumption.

In B.C. Hydro's payments to the government over the years…. When Bethlehem Copper, one of our predecessor companies, was formed in 1962, real charges came from the government through B.C. Hydro bills. When Lornex was built in 1972 and Highmont in 1980 and when Lornex expanded in 1980, again, the real taxes were incorporated in B.C. Hydro's tax bill. Since then, the provincial government discovered water rentals and distributions to the government and radically increased taxes in lieu of school taxes flowing to the government. The graph on page 6 shows how taxes increased through B.C. Hydro as indirect taxes to the people of B.C.

These indirect taxes of $14 million that we paid last year have a large bearing when prices go south as to whether you keep operating or not. It's a form of how to redistribute wealth in the province.

We're proud of our mine. Our mine has been the safest large mine in B.C. in 13 of the last 18 years. Our mine-rescue team won the western North American championships last year. They won it again this year too. The mine experienced a record low in time-loss injuries during 2004. At the end of October this year, we beat last year's record.

Our mine has had numerous environmental awards and has won numerous energy efficiency awards. Our mine is known around the world as one of the most efficient copper producers in the world. We provide 1.3 percent of the world's copper and molybdenum production. At 0.4-percent copper, we have the lowest grade amongst our competitors. We mine extremely thin stew.

Our employees in the mine were the largest contributor to the Kamloops United Way last year. We understand what some of the people earlier were talking to you about.

When you look at the world cost curve in 2003, we're fairly high on the curve at 76.6 percent. As we expand our mine life we'll move higher on the curve, because there are more stripping and capital expenditures involved in extending our mine life.

We've been told by some people that when things go south and you hit the low part of the cycle in world commodity prices, if you're down around the 50-percent mark, you keep running during the tough times. We kept running during the last tough times, and we believe that if you do what we suggest, you'll help keep us running when prices of copper head south in the future.

We've worked diligently and are continuing to reduce our exposure to low electricity prices through investments and to reduce our unit electricity consumption while improving our productivity. B.C. is the only province in Canada charging provincial sales tax on process electricity. This hinders Highland Valley Copper, the B.C. mining industry and other resources' competitive position within Canada and internationally. It's difficult to compete within Canada and in international markets. It's important that the government of B.C. keep taxes flowing from the economic activity generated by Highland Valley Copper. We suggest that $400 million of taxes flowing to you people is an important thing to keep coming.

We suggest that one way to keep the taxes flowing from the three-quarters of a billion dollars' worth of economic activity generated by Highland Valley Copper each year in the province is to help reduce its cost structure. This can be done by eliminating provincial sales tax on industrial sales of process electricity, as is done in every other province in Canada. No other province is stupid enough to put high taxes on a cost pace that causes our companies to be non-competitive in the international marketplace.

This will help Highland Valley Copper from becoming a swing producer, like Gibraltar was during the last copper downturn, at the bottom of the price cycle. It will also help all other mines, wood, and pulp and paper companies in the province continue to operate at the bottom of their price cycles. Things are not that great in the pulp business, and it's my understanding that in the wood business, with the higher Canadian dollar, things aren't too swift this year either. This will help keep the economy strong in the Kamloops region in the B.C. heartland, and it'll help keep more taxes flowing to Victoria.

In addition to that, I'd like to suggest that the mine supports the Mining Association initiative to electrify Highway 37 from Meziadin Junction north to Dease Lake. We would suggest that the province could find funds to do this out of B.C. Hydro's distribution to the province. By investing money in those transmission lines, you'd be increasing B.C. Hydro's equity base, on which you people earn a 14-percent rate of return. So it's growing the economy similar to what was done before, in Wacky Bennett's days. It's a good thing for the province.

We also suggest that the province commit $10 million in matching funds to help develop the Britannia Earth and Minerals Discovery Project at the old Britannia mine on the way to Whistler. We'd suggest that it's a good tourist trap for all the people coming home from the Olympics.

J. Yap: Thank you, Dal, for your presentation. In your conclusion there, you talked about electrifying Highway 37, which is something we've heard from a number of sources through this tour so far. I'm sure we'll keep hearing it, but this is the first time I've heard of a return. You've put 14 percent here. Is there a study or a business plan you've seen or you've prepared that comes up with that figure?

D. Scott: A dividend that B.C. Hydro pays to the province has a return on equity approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission, and it's currently a little bit more than 14 percent.

D. Scott: Every dollar you put in there will come back to you in that manner.

J. Yap: Sure. That's the hope, of course, but in terms of 14 percent, that's the current return to Hydro on its investments.

J. Yap: Right. To be clear, this is not specific to this project — this potential project. It's the current return on B.C. Hydro.

D. Scott: On B.C. Hydro's capital base. By adding to that capital base by helping build this transmission line, it will increase the capital base and will cause that return to come back to the province.

L. Krog: I must say I'm impressed that you continued to operate it at 0.4-percent grading and did so, obviously, efficiently and maintained the wages at the same time. I wanted to ask, though, specifically around the issue of the sales tax on your electricity: has that been in place in British Columbia since whenever? Or have other provinces met, come to zero, over time? Did they formally charge you? Can you tell me a little bit about that from a broader perspective?

D. Scott: In the graphs that I provided on the bottom of page 6, you'll see that sales tax has pretty well always been charged, but it's being charged on taxes on the top of taxes within B.C. Hydro. We feel that it may have been appropriate in Wacky Bennett's days to charge sales tax on electricity, but we think the government is getting all kinds of other indirect taxes out of B.C. Hydro, and now is the time to get rid of them on industrial process power.

Alberta doesn't charge PST. Saskatchewan and B.C. do not charge a sales tax on process electricity. In Manitoba, I believe, for industrial power they assume that 80 percent of the power used by industrial customers is process power. The rest is used for lighting and heating their facilities, so they don't charge taxes on the 80 percent that's process power. In Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes they don't charge provincial sales tax on process power used for industrial processing.

When you go east of Toronto, you get into tax harmonization. In the Maritimes the federal and provincial taxes are harmonized. Provincial sales tax on industrial power is treated in the same way GST is. That is, you pay it, and then you get it back.

J. Kwan: The provincial sales tax on processing electricity that you're asking for an exemption…. How much is that worth in actual dollars? Do you have any sense of…?

D. Scott: It's my understanding that industrial customers in the province of B.C. spend about $450 million on their power. Now, some of them are already exempt. They don't pay PST on their process electricity. Those are electrochemical producers and people that run smelters and metallurgical refineries.

But mines, pulp mills, sawmills and other industrial customers pay PST on process power. It's my understanding that the cost to the province would be something like $35 million a year.

D. Hayer: My question was asked, but I want to make one comment regarding Britannia earth and mineral discovery project. I think it would be good not only for tourism but also for educational purposes for the students. Many of them live very close to it, within a one-hour drive.

D. Scott: We agree. We've been through Britannia, before they do all this, and learned a lot. We were very impressed, when my family went through it many years ago. I think these dollars — I believe they're sort of matched by the federal government and by mining companies — would provide a very good educational opportunity for people too.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Mr. Scott, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to come and present to our committee here this evening. You've raised some valuable points — ones that we have heard from other presenters in other areas, as well, who have shared some of the issues, particularly around the hydro issue that you brought forward. I want to thank you. The contribution, in your presentation that you've put forward, that Highland Valley Copper has to this region is quite amazing. They're very fortunate that you're operating here.

Our next presentation comes to us from the Kamloops Women's Resource Centre. Joining us this evening is Trish Archibald and Dodie Goldney.

T. Archibald: Good evening. We're going to share this. We're sorry that we didn't have the copies for you tonight. We will have them later tonight.

D. Goldney: We work in a non-profit. We have printer issues. There is another appendix coming before the end of this evening. Appendix C is actually on the photocopier right now. I will bring it to you before nine o'clock.

I'd like to start by talking about British Columbia's international obligations. As a Canadian province, British Columbia is mandated to uphold the same international laws as our nation has agreed to uphold. Canada and individual provinces, including B.C., are required to report periodically to the United Nations regarding

what measures have been taken to ensure compliance with international human rights treaties, such as the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.

In January 2003, on the occasion of Canada's fifth report to the UN, a provincewide coalition of B.C. non-governmental women's organizations prepared its own submission. The coalition, called the B.C. CEDAW Group, had learned that British Columbia's presentation to the UN committee described measures that were in effect between '94 and '98. Almost all of these measures had been changed or abolished since May 2001. The B.C. CEDAW Group drew the UN committee's attention to the many cutbacks to programs and services that had taken place after '98. There is a copy of the submission attached to this report.

After hearing the testimony of these B.C. women's groups, the UN committee reported back that it was concerned about "changes in British Columbia which have had a disproportionately negative impact on women, in particular aboriginal women."

The UN committee listed a number of cutbacks that were of particular concern to women, including the cut in funds for legal aid and welfare assistance and changes in eligibility rules; the cuts in welfare assistance; the incorporation of the Ministry of Women's Equality under the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services; the abolition of the independent Human Rights Commission; the closing of a number of courthouses; and the proposed changes regarding the prosecution of domestic violence as well as the cut in support programs for victims of domestic violence.

The committee went on further to urge the government of British Columbia to analyze its recent legal measures as to their negative impact on women and to amend the measures where necessary. A copy of the UN report is not attached to this submission. That's the one that's coming this evening.

Going on. As the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has noted, British Columbia women have lost much ground over recent years. Women have lost the Ministry of Women's Equality, which was initially replaced with the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services, and we had a junior minister responsible for women's equality. Later that was reduced to the junior minister responsible for women's and seniors' services. This ministry has now become the Ministry of Community Services, which contains a department of women's and seniors' issues.

Women and girls, although representing 52 percent of the population in B.C., have slowly but steadily been downgraded in importance. Nowhere is women's equality to be found as part of the mandate.

Women in B.C. have also seen the abolition of the provincial mental health advocate, the minister's advocacy council on women's health and the B.C. Human Rights Commission. Additionally, all 37 women's centres in the province lost core funding on March 31, 2004, leaving many communities without the advocacy services of those centres and leaving many centres struggling, reducing services and even closing in some cases.

Legal aid for family, poverty and immigration law also fell under the knife, and community law offices all over the province have closed. In particular, the complete eradication of poverty law funding also nearly obliterated advocacy for individuals who are denied access by governments to their rightful benefits as citizens, such as disability benefits, public pensions and income assistance when in need.

Both legal aid and women's centres also provided advocacy to individuals facing denial of their rights by private businesses. Additionally, employment standards offices around the province have been closed, and the director of employment standards is no longer required to investigate complaints. Workers must now navigate the process alone, with the aid of English-only self-help kits.

Women have also lost ground when it comes to equality in the workplace. For example, the equity and diversity branch was axed, and the pay equity provision in the Human Rights Code was repealed.

T. Archibald: The advocacy chill. These cutbacks, as well as policy and legislative changes, have created an advocacy chill around the province, where those who either experience discrimination and violation of their rights themselves or work with those who experience them have been afraid to speak out for fear of the consequences. Individuals risk losing jobs. Groups risk losing funding or opportunities.

Further, advocacy has served and continues to serve the necessary role in our society of shining a spotlight on the deeply rooted problems facing society. The gains of the civil rights movements are one example of why bringing these problems to the light has been so necessary; so, too, are the gains of the women's movement and the environmental movement.

Advocacy is generally defined as either enabling those who need help to find their own voice or speaking up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Advocacy also exists to help address the problem of power imbalance between many individuals and their relationships with governments.

Whether advocating on behalf of an individual or advocating for systemic changes, these public interest advocates are essential to the functioning of a healthy democratic society. Without public interest advocacy, many citizens do not have access to the policy decisions that affect their lives most intimately. Unless measures are in place to ensure that citizens who are disadvantaged and without representation can be heard by governments, then governments do not hear them.

Whether or not governments welcome the voice of dissent, governments in a fair and democratic society are obliged to hear from it. A responsible democratic government will build in checks and balances to ensure

Checks and balances are found in a number of forms. Government must acknowledge first and foremost that it has a responsibility to all citizens in British Columbia, not just to those with the highest incomes and easy access to the political table. A healthy government always wants to ensure that all of its decisions are affecting their citizens in the way that they are meant to. If a government is being honest and forthright, they will have their legislation, policies and services evaluated by the various user groups on an ongoing basis.

When a government refuses to hear from public interest advocates and dismisses legitimate policy criticism as political opposition, it betrays a fundamental principle of democratic governance. Governments do not exist in a vacuum. Governments exist to serve their citizens. A good government will do all that is necessary to ensure that all citizens have equal access, equal voice and equal participation.

Governments must remain cognizant of the difficulties public interest advocates face when searching for funding. Those who need advocacy organizations are usually not able to fund them. If the disenfranchised citizens of our province had access to those financial resources, they would not be disenfranchised. Additionally, many advocacy groups do not have access to charitable tax status. Their inability to give tax receipts often discourages individuals and businesses from donating to these organizations.

A government that behaves ethically, responsibly and with integrity will not fear being held up for criticism and accountability to its citizens. It will have no fear of funding advocacy organizations. rather, a good government welcomes the opportunity to increase the fairness and justice available to their citizens and will provide the resources necessary to ensure a fair and just society flourishes.

What women and girls in British Columbia need. After more than four years of cutbacks to programs and services, as well as policy and legislative change, it is time for the government of British Columbia to not only acknowledge the impact these cuts and changes have had on women and their families but also address the inequalities that have been perpetuated in our province.

Martin Luther King Jr. said that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. It is therefore that we, women of Kamloops and taxpayers in British Columbia, demand — and not request or recommend — that future British Columbia budgets will include the following: that the government of British Columbia abide by the recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in future respect all international human rights treaties to which Canada, and therefore British Columbia, are legal signatories; that the government of B.C. increase its outreach to public interest advocacy groups and provide the resources necessary to ensure that a diversity of voices are heard at all future budget and policy consultations; that the government of British Columbia respect and acknowledge the hard work of public interest advocates and advocacy organizations and the role they play in shaping a more inclusive British Columbia by providing adequate and appropriate resources, including financial support, to advocates and advocacy organizations in British Columbia; that the government of British Columbia restore and enhance funding to the Legal Services Society of B.C. for the purposes of providing family law, poverty law and immigration law assistance to those in need; that the government of British Columbia restore and enhance funding to women's centres across B.C. so that women's centres can continue to advocate for and on behalf of women and girls as citizens of this province; that the government of British Columbia create a special fund that will support existing grass-roots organizations and assist with the creation of new grass-roots organizations to advocate for the rights of aboriginal women, who are the most vulnerable and marginalized citizens of British Columbia; that the government of British Columbia restore the B.C. Human Rights Commission, the provincial mental health advocate and the ministry's advocacy council on women's health, or create their equivalents; and finally, that the government of British Columbia restore the B.C. Ministry of Women's Equality or create a new and equitable body expressly for the purpose of working toward women's equality in B.C.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you, Trish and Dodie. I'm going to look to members of the committee if they have questions.

L. Krog: Thank you very much for your presentation. Can you advise the committee what the total of the cuts to the funding for women's centres was?

D. Goldney: It was just under $1.7 million per year for all women's centres in British Columbia. We received $47,174 per year for our centre.

T. Archibald: That was about half of our funding. That's why our photocopying was late. We have a very small budget. We're down to one staff person, which is Dodie.

L. Krog: You're in pretty much the same horrible shape that the Nanaimo Women's Resources Society is in as well.

D. Goldney: There are varying degrees of that across the province. Some women's centres have managed to secure project funding, but that doesn't pay the

overhead costs of keeping the facility going. It doesn't pay for administrative costs.

One of the big issues facing our organization is how we can manage the administrative work. Those projects have created difficulties within women's centres. There are some where they're not necessarily able to manage those projects without the administrative support.

L. Krog: Did you notice an increase in people requesting assistance — not that you could provide it, given your budget — after the cuts were made, particularly to community law offices?

I was president of the community law office board in my community for a number of years in the '80s, and my sense is that poverty is very much a women's issue, if you'll forgive me. Without the community law office to assist those folks, did you see an increase in your own office?

D. Goldney: Well, one of the huge problems facing Kamloops is that kind of advocacy. We had to reduce our hours when our funding was cut, so it's difficult to say whether we saw an increase. We went down from being open four days a week full-time to being open two half-days a week.

Prior to that we served just about 3,000 women and girls per year. All of those women were kind of left hanging.

Our advocacy funding was through the Legal Services Society in Kamloops. That funding was cut. There has been some money to come through E. Fry from the Law Foundation, which provides a part-time advocate. That contract runs out at the end of March and isn't going to be renewed, so at the end of March, Kamloops is going to have no advocate whatsoever.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Excellent presentation. I'm interested in one of the things you've put forward here. You talk about support for new grass-roots organizations to advocate for the rights of aboriginal women. Do you actually have the seeds of such an organization already here, or is this a concept that you're putting forward?

D. Goldney: I think there are a number of aboriginal activists in communities working on this issue. In Kamloops, for example, there's the white buffalo women's resource society, which is out of Interior Métis Family and Child Services. There are women working out of the friendship centre. There are unfunded pockets of women who are struggling to do this work. Some women are working through, for example, the SHOP program, which is Social and Health Opportunities for People in the Sex Trade. Some may be working through other organizations. They really do need the funding to put together an organized effort, and we really support that.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Do you know whether or not they have access to federal funding? I know there are a number of federal funds that are very specific to aboriginal communities and aboriginal initiatives.

T. Archibald: I'm not sure, but my guess is that federal funding tends not to be long-term funding. It's startup grants, and so that becomes….

T. Archibald: And project directives, and when they're project-directed nowadays, they come with no administrative overhead costs attached. So there's no way of paying your rent and the other infrastructures that you need to run an organization which then has programs. The federal government has three-year startup program grants, and then you have to start searching for other types of funding.

It's a difficult market, to go out and become a charity for fundraising, because you're competing against many, many organizations — those with diseases that tend to be more palatable for people to give to. Also, when you're actually in the area of advocacy, you can't get a charitable tax number because you go against the rules.

You have to work around that. But at some point we're worried that if we work around that, we give up what the women's centres are really all about. We don't want to give up that part of our mission.

We're not convinced that there is a lot of funding out there for women's centres on the charitable level. There's some, but it's not the $50,000 to $70,000 that is really necessary to run a basic centre, not even a well-funded place.

J. Kwan: Right, $1.7 million for 47 women's centres across the province, and according to your report…. The B.C. Coalition of Women's Centres, who wrote a report in 2001, indicated that they served 300,569 women. I'm just looking at the stats in terms of value for money: $1.7 million for 47 women's centres, serving 300,569 women per year is quite something.

I want to ask this question. Since the funding has been lost and as the women's centres are struggling to provide for the services and so on, the government will say that the transition houses are providing that service. I'd like to hear from your perspective. That is not to say that transition houses are not providing services. My understanding is that they provide for a continuum of services.

Where are things at now in light of this loss of funding? How are people making ends meet? Have you been talking to the transition houses, for example?

D. Goldney: One of the important points that needs to be brought up is — and women's centres would never begrudge women's shelters funding — that women's shelters are often secretive organizations. They're not streetfront. They're not necessarily accessible to the public. You need to phone. You can't access

them on a drop-in basis. They don't necessarily serve street-involved women. There is a specific set of rules. Those women's transition houses were set up to serve abused women when they're fleeing relationships and their families. Their main service is to provide shelter, so they're not able to take or cope with, necessarily, street-involved population. We may see women come in the door who are dealing with prostitution. They may be dealing with drug issues. They may be living on the street.

D. Goldney: Mental health issues are a huge, huge problem facing women on the street. Women with mental health issues have been pretty much abandoned and turned loose. There's nowhere for them to go. They're sleeping in the streets. They're sleeping under the bridges. They're going home into unsafe situations with men they don't know for a place to sleep at night. They're dealing with mental health stuff, and it's really not safe for them. They can't necessarily stay at the transition house. They do not necessarily even know how to access a transition house.

One thing that a women's centre provides in a community is a drop-in centre where women can come in off the street and get to know the people who work there and volunteer there. That's really important, because low-income women and street-involved women have a lot of trust issues. It may take a woman ten visits to feel safe enough to walk more than ten metres in the door. When we were open four days a week, we spent a lot of time developing relationships with women, so it might take four months to get them into the treatment they needed, but that's what we did.

T. Archibald: I'd just like to add, too, around the shelters and transition homes, that their advocacy purpose is much different than a women's centre. They certainly advocate for individual women. It's around family violence, which is certainly their focus, and the safety of women. They certainly do a lot of referrals and help the women. They're definitely a necessity in our society.

Women's centres do much more political advocacy kind of stuff — like tonight. We're trying to be out there all the time looking at equality for women, especially the marginalized women. It's a very different purpose, and the transition homes and shelters have not picked that up because that's not being funded.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We do have one further question. I'm not trying to rush you, but we do have a schedule and a number of presenters.

One comment is that the child tax status is a federal issue. It's Revenue Canada.

My question is on disability benefits. We know that there's some increase in the number of people on the disability benefit already. Over the years do you see any increase in people denied access to benefits?

D. Goldney: Yeah, and I have a working relationship with the local advocate who works out of E. Fry. That's pretty much all her job is right now — trying to get those disability applications through. People are routinely denied — probably 50 to 75 percent of the time — on their first application. It's a lot of paperwork. It expects a lot from doctors. Doctors put in a great deal of time filling these out, and often they are not educated as to how to do it properly.

It can take an entire day for the advocate to do one application. I know she works probably seven days a week now. I see her on line at three in the morning doing these. It's still really, really difficult to get disability, and the stress that the people are under while they're waiting for those applications to go through is enormous. She says she probably hears five to seven people per week talk about suicide.

R. Lee: It seems that in our office we see a reduction in the number of people.

D. Goldney: Being denied. That may be in your community. I don't know what that's going to look like when the advocacy positions are gone, because Law Foundation funding was interim.

T. Archibald: One of the things happening, though, is that because people don't have access, they're just not even applying anymore. Our poverty and our marginalized people are now hidden in this province. We no longer see them, and so we think they don't exist. They're hidden because they don't have access. They don't have advocates. They don't have people helping them any longer to achieve the things they need to live a reasonable life. I'm not even going to say decent, but at least a reasonable life.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Trish and Dodie, again, thank you for coming and presenting to our committee here this evening.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Our next presentation this evening comes to us from the Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre, and joining us is Cynthia Davis.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): It was. Good evening. Thank you for joining us this evening.

C. Davis: My report isn't going to be lengthy, so I'll help you catch up on a few minutes there. I hope I gain points from that.

C. Davis: I've presented to the committee before, two years ago. My message is similar. I believe it's an important one and one that I feel is my responsibility to share and bring forward again. That's why I'm doing that with this particular issue and with sexual assault centre dollars. I'll just begin, and you all have your copies there.

Two serious negative results for our community in Kamloops from the total elimination by the B.C. government of 100 percent of sexual assault centre program dollars across the province in the spring of 2003 were: (1) no crisis line in the Kamloops community and region and (2) no counselling for adult male victims of sexual abuse and sexual violence.

These situations, and similar, have happened too many times in Kamloops in the past two and a half years. I'm giving you one example of each that has occurred. There have been many more, and they're similar. The only things that have been changed are the people's ages for confidentiality sake. They're similar.

A 19-year-old female was sexually assaulted, taken by an RCMP officer to the hospital, examined and then discharged to the parking lot alone at 3 a.m. She lived ten kilometres from Kamloops and had no way home. No buses ran until 6 a.m. She didn't believe there were any hostel beds in Kamloops available for a woman who had had any alcohol that day, and there were no crisis lines to call in Kamloops. She called the 1-800 VictimLINK line, explained her desperate situation and was told there was nothing they could do for her from Vancouver. The only advice they offered her was to call the Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre at 8:30 a.m. the day after tomorrow.

The second situation. At midnight a 28-year-old mother was unable to sneak out to a pay phone and away from her abusive partner to ask anonymous-only questions about suspected sexual abuse of her children. There were no crisis lines in Kamloops to call, so she called the only line available, the VictimLINK 1-800, where she was told to call the Kamloops Sexual Assault Centre in the morning and ask these questions. She and her children were abused for two more months before she was able to sneak away to a phone during daytime hours.

Our third representative situation. A 23-year-old male was sexually abused from the age of five to nine by an older male. He had never told anyone. He had also never received counselling for this abuse and was living with his pregnant girlfriend. They already had one child who was three years old. This male became very concerned that he had real potential to become a sexual offender towards these two children because of his own sexual abuse and no counselling. He could find no free counselling in Kamloops, and then even the sexual assault counselling centre told them that 100 percent of their funding to counsel male victims of sexual violence and abuse was eliminated by the B.C. government in the spring of 2003, so they had no resources to help him with the situation.

A 58-year-old woman experienced a series of serious flashbacks of previous violent sexual abuse during the middle of many nights. She called the 1-800 VictimLINK line, and they said they couldn't help her because they didn't do crisis or counselling calls, but that she should call the Kamloops Sexual Assault Centre in the morning. Over the next few nights, as she became more suicidal, she instead called the 1-800 suicide line for B.C. and was told that because she was from Kamloops — a B.C. community with no crisis line — they could not talk to her at all and hung up. The next week she made a suicide attempt, which resulted in her having a permanent brain injury.

In the spring of 2003 the B.C. government eliminated 100 percent of the sexual assault centre program dollars from every sexual assault centre in British Columbia. This perhaps rash gesture was likely able to be enacted because the sexual assault centre programs in B.C. had become an isolated entity within the government ministries. That is, it was moved a couple of times between ministries and finally left sitting in no man's or woman's land in the Ministry of Solicitor General.

These approximately one million provincial dollars, spread among all the sexual assault centres in the province, were perhaps one of the easiest targets for early and total elimination in the government's initial attempts to save money. However, because the total elimination of these dollars was never based on lack of service delivery, lack of need or inefficient use of resources, our centre, at least, believes a serious injustice continues to occur for citizens in communities such as Kamloops because of these financial losses to services.

We also believe these were essential program dollars for our community's safety and well-being. None of these program dollars have yet to be returned to any sexual assault centre in the province.

In Kamloops our sexual assault centre efficiently and effectively ran a 24-hour-a-day, 365-days-a-year crisis line for this community and surrounding region for more than 20 years, utilizing approximately 70 Kamloops volunteers annually with these funds. From 1997 to 2003 our crisis line was the only crisis line serving this region. Now Kamloops is one of the only communities of its size in Canada with no crisis lines, no information lines and no suicide lines.

This has been absolutely devastating to anyone in personal distress or at risk of violence in our region. Our centre believes that at least six women who might have been helped by a local crisis line have died in Kamloops in the past two and a half years.

Women in need, especially, accessed our crisis line. We averaged 600 serious calls to the crisis line per year as well as regularly tallying 2,000 help and abuse information calls per year. Callers assessed as serious were those who had just been assaulted or abused, who were at imminent risk of violence or who were presenting with high suicide ideation in the middle of the night. Our counsellors regularly talked to a person in distress for 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the situation. We were also able to liaise with the RCMP and the Royal Inland Hospital at serious and timely occasions.

In summary, in the spring of 2003 the B.C. government eliminated 100 percent — approximately one million — of the sexual assault centre program dollars across the province to save money. It then put approximately $400,000 to $500,000 per year of those dollars into a 1-800 provincial VictimLINK line. These 1-800 lines might, in fact, be of benefit to some communities in B.C. that already have good and existing crisis lines in place. However, the 1-800 lines appear to have virtually no benefits for those people in distress who live in B.C. communities such as Kamloops where there are few or poor social resources currently in place.

We now strongly urge the B.C. government to promptly return all of the program funding eliminated from sexual assault centres across the province in the spring of 2003 back to sexual assault centres so that we can reinstate essential and very needed services.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you, Cynthia, for coming out. I'm going to look to members of the committee if there are any questions.

J. Kwan: Are you aware of how many other communities are in situations like Kamloops, where they're without a basic infrastructure of services or support for people in crisis?

C. Davis: No, I don't, because it depended on the community and what structures they had in place. Kelowna, I believe, still has four existing crisis lines, even after the sexual assault centre crisis line was eliminated. That's a similar population. So I think it would depend, community to community, on where it is. The isolated communities, I believe, were much harder hit and might be left with no…. I know a lot of this region has no crisis lines at all.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Are there any further questions from the members of the committee?

Cynthia, again, thank you for coming out and speaking to our committee here this evening.

N. Bepple: I'm coming as an individual, and I'm also a member of the Association of Cooperative Educators. My job here in Kamloops is as co-op coordinator at Thompson Rivers University. I'm speaking as an individual and as a member of the Association of Cooperative Educators.

As an individual, my first point is that a strong economy is about having not just lots of jobs but lots of good jobs. What do I mean by good jobs? Good jobs, of course, pay better, but in today's economy what is the determining factor? Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the U.S. Clinton administration, wrote in his book The Work of Nations that it is people who create knowledge, ideas and opportunities who have benefited most from globalization: engineers, designers, planners, business entrepreneurs — people who can solve problems, create new products, find opportunities. Reich identified that these are the people whose salaries have risen the most over the last few decades.

Reich identified that education is one of the best ways of creating these types of workers and, subsequently, one of the best ways for government to improve its economy. What he argued in his book, and what I'm arguing tonight, is that government needs to invest in people through education.

Currently Venture Kamloops 2003 reports stated that there are only 1,500 high-tech jobs in Kamloops. In 2003 there were 4,000 jobs in wood manufacturing, but wood manufacturing had lost 200 jobs since 2001. With globalization, more and more basic production jobs will go offshore. That doesn't mean we will have no production and manufacturing, just that it will be advanced manufacturing — like at Coe Newnes/McGehee, a world leader in sawmill machinery employing 500 people in Salmon Arm — which requires high levels of engineering and stays in B.C. and, in fact, grows.

To grow knowledge-based jobs, we need an educated workforce. But what would help even more is to link the students getting the training with the companies, particularly small and medium-sized companies that need to be innovative and creative to grow and thrive.

This is where I put on my second hat as the co-op coordinator. I've been a co-op coordinator for close to five years at Thompson Rivers University. During that time I've talked to thousands of companies to see if they would like to hire a co-op student — that is, a student who works for four to 12 months during their diploma or degree program to gain real-world experience. Employers like co-op. It's a great way to recruit new staff; 60 percent of co-op students return to co-op employers on graduation. Even those who go to other companies stay longer with their first employer.

Small Kamloops companies need skilled workers to grow, but on the other hand, the benefits of co-op students often cannot offset the training costs for a small or medium-sized firm. Over the last four years very few wage subsidies have been available. As a result, many companies have not been able to employ co-op students. The average wage right now for an IT co-op student is between $14 and $15 an hour.

I urge the B.C. government to consider a tax credit to companies that employ co-op students. This proposal is supported by the B.C. Chamber of Commerce. Not only will it benefit B.C., but specifically, it will benefit smaller communities. Currently in Kamloops co-op students are leaving to work in larger firms in larger centres. Once they've left Kamloops on a co-op, they often don't come back. Fort MacMurray is full of TRU grads who went there as co-op students.

B.C. needs more knowledge-based jobs, not service-based jobs. With forestry-based jobs shrinking, Kamloops needs them even more.

One final point. Reich also pointed out in his book that while knowledge-based jobs will reap high wages, there will always be people doing service jobs, and these jobs will never pay as highly. When the average home in Kamloops is $220,000, which requires a $60,000-a-year salary for a mortgage, and the average wage for a woman in Kamloops right now is $20,000, housing for single parents, for elderly women and for others on low and fixed income must be a priority for the government. B.C. Housing needs support to continue its outstanding programs in providing housing options for B.C. citizens.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you, Nancy. I'm going to look to members of the committee to see if they have any questions.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. How much capacity is there for industries in Kamloops for taking co-op students?

R. Lee: Yeah. I mean, what is the capacity, let's say, in the future if there were incentives for companies?

N. Bepple: I suppose it would benefit Kamloops but also the whole province, because almost every single institution in B.C. has a co-op program. Here in Kamloops there are probably between 50 and 100 students employed each semester as co-op students, but there are many other companies that have indicated interest.

For a small firm with maybe three or four people, to take on a new employee every four months and invest in the training cost is quite difficult for them. Many companies are interested in co-op locally, but they can't afford the training that goes into it.

R. Lee: So in terms of tax incentives, how much will be a real incentive for the company to continue the service?

N. Bepple: Even a thousand dollars would be a good offset. The average wage right now for an IT co-op student is about $2,200 a month. You could say, "Well, the company doesn't have to pay that," but the thing is that there are larger companies that can afford that. The small firms have to compete with the larger firms in terms of wages, so a thousand dollars would offset two or three weeks' worth of training for a company.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Nancy, thank you again. I want to express our appreciation as a committee. You have raised an issue that we have heard from other presenters, particularly the tax-credit issue for co-op students towards the companies. Again, thanks for taking the time out of your day to come and speak with us.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Our next presentation this evening comes to us from Thompson Rivers University. Joining us are Ron Olynyk and Roger Barnsley.

On March 31, 2005, the Hon. Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Columbia, presided over the inaugural convocation that formally created B.C.'s newest provincial university — Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. As part of the continued expansion of access to post-secondary education and training in our province and as a vital strategy in economic development and diversification around Kamloops and the interior region, the creation of our new university by the amalgamation of the British Columbia Open University with the University College of the Cariboo has had a dramatic impact on the social, cultural and educational climate of our community.

Looking to continued investment in post-secondary education as a vital necessity for our region and our province, we ask the committee to consider three important strategies to ensure TRU will continue to lead the way in preparing British Columbians for the future.

Firstly, continue to educate Canadians in the global context. Canadians must be highly educated to lead and compete in our global economy, and British Columbia must be at the forefront of that expertise and leadership. The benefits of a highly educated and trained provincial workforce include not only the economic prosperity it creates for both individuals and government but also the savings that it generates through initiatives and innovations that promote physically and mentally healthy lifestyles in communities across our province. Therefore, post-secondary education must be at the top of the government agenda in terms of investing in education to support our provincial priorities.

Secondly, respond to the priorities in our growing economy. As part of our new mandate, TRU is responding to the priorities of our provincial economy, from training professionals in health care and advanced technology to the launch of masters-level education to meet identified shortages. As TRU continues

to expand and create new opportunities, we will face the challenges of inflation and the higher cost of delivery in some priority programs. In responding to these important priorities set by government, we would ask that these factors be taken into account to ensure that TRU can continue to grow and lead the way in regional and provincial economic and social development.

Thirdly, learning is at the heart of our campus. In the formal launching of the new university, the Premier announced that government would support the planning and construction of a new library learning commons as the most critical new development for the university. With the current facility already ten years out of date, TRU must move quickly to build this new facility, given that it will take up to two years to complete the planning and design phase of a new library and four years to complete. Recognizing that the inflationary costs of construction are certain to rise significantly during this time period, we ask government to ensure their support is based on a realistic projection of costs four years out, with adequate funding to meet the inflationary escalation of construction costs.

The TRU board of governors is prepared to finance a portion of this project, but resources are limited, and delays will further add to the cost. We wish to move forward as quickly as possible and request that the government works with us to achieve this new facility.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Ron and Roger, for coming. I see we have a number of questions. I will begin with Maurine.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): Excellent presentation and, obviously, an exciting endeavour here for this community.

You've alluded to a number of things, including the new library and, throughout this, continued reference to adequate resources and things. What kind of financial commitment do you have from government at this point towards your capital projects?

R. Barnsley: We have very good support on our capital projects right now. The main project going on in construction on our campuses is that we're renewing the Williams Lake campus. That's a fully government-supported project that has…. We acquired the Anne Stevenson Secondary School, and it was decommissioned by the school district. We have taken over the site. We're retrofitting the building, adding on trade shops and putting on an office building, and that's fully government supported.

We are also constructing two facilities that are government supported to enable the transfer of the British Columbia Open University–Open College to Kamloops. One is the construction of a warehouse facility, because BCOU — or, now, our open learning division — has a great paper demand, as you can imagine, to distribute distance learning materials. That's about a $3½ million project that's proceeding.

We also are building an office complex to house the approximately 150 jobs that are coming with that project.

We're extending our print shop. That's approximately a $2 million project. We're self-financing that project. One of the more exciting construction developments we have on our campus right now is the construction of a $45 million student residence project. That is a P3, a private-public partnership, and there is no government money in that. So it's a very exciting development that we're moving ahead on.

What we're pointing out to you now, though, is that to really…. The next major capital project is the library, or what we're calling the learning commons approach. That building is so far out…. I mean, it's going to take us four years to complete it. We are discussing with government right now what the costs of that will be. We're going to do fundraising for it. Our students are also paying a levy per credit to pay for the building, but given — and I'm sure you've heard this before about the inflating costs of construction in the province…. We're asking, please, for the government, as they're looking at this, to be sensitive to the inflationary costs of capital projects.

L. Krog: I'm not asking you to commit yourself, obviously, but you must have some idea of the range of potential costs for this new library. What is that range, if it's to be done right?

R. Barnsley: Well, let me approach it in another way. The targeted cost of the project for the library building itself looks…. It's so hard. Ballparking it — between $30 million and $40 million. But then there are a couple of other projects that go by, because the existing library will be retrofitted into instructional space, and then we'll do another retrofit to our science building. There are some domino effects after that.

The provincial government contribution…. When the Premier announced the building, he announced a sum — $12 million or $15 million, in that range — and we are now looking at a feasibility study for a national fundraising campaign. We can't put an actual figure on that. What we've committed to is to work with government to make this project a reality. All we're saying is that from the time of the announcement and the time we get it built, under the environment we're in, which is an environment we all like because people are working and things are happening, one of the costs of that is inflation. We need a way to work with government to see this project to conclusion.

J. Yap: My question, actually, was answered, but I thought of another one while you were speaking. Thank you for that overview of your capital project. It sounds like you've got an exciting program and plans in place. It was intimated by a previous presenter, also from TRU, that the government created Thompson Rivers University and gave you the name change but had not stepped forward with additional funding to make it a real university, not just a name change. What is your response to that?

R. Olynyk: Yeah. If I get myself in trouble, he'll help me out, as he always does.

One of the commitments that we made to government when we went forward was that…. We honestly felt that becoming a university and having the name would open particular doors and opportunities for us, and it didn't necessarily mean additional costs, from an operating perspective, for government. We still work within that framework. In terms of what we get as an operating grant, we can manage within that. We are very resourceful, as I think you can see from what Roger talked about with regard to our capital projects. We do many on our own, if we can; we deal through P3s. We do whatever we can to accomplish the end.

R. Barnsley: Let me make a comment, and with respect, I want to correct your language — all right? We are a real university. The reason I say that is because in British Columbia, we have developed our traditional universities — UVic, Simon Fraser, UBC — as research-intensive universities. They have been comprehensive universities. Even when the University of Northern British Columbia was created, it was created somewhat in that mould. There were doctoral programs put in and now the medical school. Even though it's a third to half the size of Thompson Rivers University, it was created in that mould.

Our vision has always been, first of all, that we maintain our comprehensive program structure, which includes, by the way, trades and technical and employment-related programs. We always saw ourselves as a place where scholarship and research would take place, because that is what a real university does. We have done that, and we continue to do that to build our profile, but we want to be a primarily undergraduate institution with the focus being on teaching. That is a less expensive program than a research-intensive university.

Now, we will continue, as we will, to develop our institution. We may come back at some time and ask government for more money to grow and to develop, but we hope by that time it's a credible response. We hope that you'll see that the product that is being developed here is exactly the product, but right now we are working effectively within our resources.

J. Yap: That's good to hear. Just for the record, there was no need to straighten out my understanding. My impression is that Thompson Rivers University is fully functioning and a real university. My reference was simply to the previous presenter, who made a comment that suggested that government was committed only to a name change and not to supporting the university.

R. Barnsley: Yeah. Well, there's no question that there's a great deal of interest in our community to really push up the research and the scholarship. I mean, I'm supportive of that, but that will find its way as we work forward on this. We don't want to lose sight of what our mandate is, the mandate that we were given in our legislation, which is to be primarily teaching-focused and to become very good at undergraduate education. We have an opening to do master's-level programming. We're developing that, but we will work…. This is a partnership. We'll work together with government to make this work very well.

R. Lee: Some of the universities are quite good at attracting donations to facilities. Are you planning to actively seek more donations to the library?

R. Barnsley: Yes. What we're doing — in fact, I signed the contract today — is that we have just engaged a fundraising consultant to do a feasibility study for us that will rate our ability to raise funds for particular kinds of projects.

Clearly, you don't go into a fundraising project saying you're going to raise $25 million if you find you can only raise $5 million, but also, you don't want to just go after $5 million if you can raise $25 million. What we're looking at is we're making a commitment in probably the next two to three years. We will be very much involved in fundraising.

We have challenges, though, because being in Kamloops does not give us access to the corporate boardrooms in the same way that if you're in Vancouver or Toronto or whatever. We will find a way to develop that profile and those networks over the next two to three years, but we are definitely moving on a capital project of which a large part of that project will go toward the learning commons. We hope to do other things in terms of scholarship programs, bursary programs, athletic scholarships — those kinds of projects.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, seeing no further questions, Roger and Ron, I want to thank you for coming and speaking to our committee here this evening during our prebudget consultation process. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to do so.

R. Barnsley: We always thank you for the opportunity to do this and to raise the profile of education in our institution. Thank you very much.

R. Barnsley: We would really enjoy the opportunity to show you around our campus. Individually or collectively, we would love to show you there.

I should tell you that, universally, we get the response: "We had no idea such a facility existed in the interior." We're very, very proud of it.

Our next presentation this evening comes to us from the Cariboo Student Society. Joining us this evening is Nathan Lane, James Studer, Terry Monteleone and Jessy Sahota.

T. Monteleone: Good evening. I'm Terry Monteleone. I'm president of the Cariboo Student Society. This is our executive director Nathan Lane, our vice-president of internal affairs Jessy Sahota and our arts rep James Studer.

I am speaking today on behalf of 8,000 members of the Cariboo Student Society at Thompson Rivers University. We're glad to have the opportunity to talk to you today about some of the concerns that the students at our university have and to offer some recommendations as to how we would like to see the province use next year's budget to improve the circumstances for students both in the interior of B.C. and across the province.

The recommendations we have prepared to present to the committee today are designed to create a post-secondary education system that is more accessible to students at TRU but also to students across B.C., because we recognize that what affects one student here in Kamloops affects all students.

I'd like to begin today by summarizing the recommendations we'll put forward so that the committee may keep them in mind as we speak. They are as follows: (1) reduce tuition fees for all students in B.C. starting next September; (2) increase per-student operational funding for British Columbia's post-secondary institutions; and (3) distribute non-repayable B.C. student aid in the form of grants, not loans. These are the recommendations that the students at TRU feel will ensure that anyone who needs or wants to pursue post-secondary education in the Kamloops region or anywhere else in B.C. will be able to afford it.

Before explaining our recommendations in detail, I'd like to tell you a little bit about TRU. Roger has told you a little bit, but we'll give you our perspective.

TRU has actually been around since 1970 and has previously operated as both a college and a university college before transitioning into a full university. This means that students in Kamloops have now experienced post-secondary education in every form that is offered in this province and can provide a unique perspective to post-secondary education issues.

TRU primarily draws students from the interior of British Columbia. However, there has been an influx of students from other parts of the province, and with the addition of the B.C. Open University and strong recruitment efforts abroad, TRU now has students who are from virtually anywhere in the world.

In terms of the university's course offerings, the institutions have taken a very unique approach. Most other universities regard trade and technical programs with disregard. At TRU our administration has decided to build a comprehensive learning institution which values both academic and vocational training.

Students at TRU can take courses in a broad range of subjects and credentials. They can study in a liberal arts program, a vocational program, a science program, a business program or a continuing education program. Students are thrilled to see the kind of institution that is being built.

J. Studer: Not too bad. All right, I'm just going to continue on with what Terry was talking about.

In order to make sure that the comprehensive institution that is being built at Thompson Rivers University is accessible to all students who wish to study there, tuition fees need to be reduced. It is undeniable that financial barriers are the number-one reason young people have difficulty or are denied the pursuit of a post-secondary education.

Keeping this in mind, it is important, then, to make sure per-student funding is at a level that allows the institution to be able to afford to offer a broad range of courses and credentials, without being pressured to increase tuition fees.

Our institution has a great vision for a comprehensive university that serves both the community of Kamloops and the global community at large. We, as students, support this vision. Nonetheless, we know that core funding at Thompson Rivers University has dropped significantly since 2001. In the 2001-2002 year the university's grants from the province paid for 60 percent of the cost of a student's education. Last year this number fell to 55 percent. It is crucial that per-student funding increase in order to maintain or improve the quality of instruction offered at the institutions in Kamloops and around our province.

Students and administrators at TRU are extremely worried that if per-student funding doesn't increase, our tuition fees will continue to skyrocket, and more students will be forced out of our institution because they simply can't afford it. If this happens, the institution will be unable to fulfil its goals as an institution. Students in British Columbia can't see the cost of post-

secondary education be downloaded onto their shoulders anymore, and institutions have no place to turn if per-student funding is not increased.

One particular example of this at TRU is our infrastructure. TRU is a growing institution, and as a university, there are services that the institution will have to provide for students that we simply don't have yet, as we'd never provided them as either a college or a university college.

One example of this is our library at TRU. The facility is not equipped for students doing university-level research, and it is crucial that per-student funding be increased to ensure that the cost of developing this much-needed infrastructure is not passed on to the shoulders of students, who have already seen their portion of the institutional funding increase drastically and are barely treading water as it is.

Furthermore, increased per-student funding will also ensure that students in the Kamloops region can access vital programs, such as apprenticeship and trades training courses. At TRU this is crucial as these courses are a great part of what gives us a unique university environment. There is simply nowhere else in the region for students to get these programs, and we know that if students leave to get them, they aren't going to come back.

Also, being able to study these programs in the context of a university setting offers students an opportunity which is rare in North America. You will not find a university whose vision and calendar is as comprehensive as that of TRU's anywhere else in Canada. An increase in per-student funding is important, not only to allow this comprehensive programming but to ensure that the cost of these programs is affordable.

For institutions, offering vocational programs does cost more than offering a first-year, lecture-based class. Therefore, these courses are offered at cost, which results in incredibly high tuition fees — all of this while B.C. faces an impending skills shortage in our province.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants just released a report estimating that over 900,000 new jobs in the next decade will require certified skilled tradespeople. The report also stated that employment in construction and related fields made up almost half of all jobs created in B.C. last year. How will we continue to fill these jobs if institutions don't offer the programs or if students simply can't afford to take them? If British Columbians in the Kamloops area are going to participate in the economy of this province, then trades training needs to be affordable, high quality and offered locally through TRU.

The institution has already done its part in choosing to move forward with a vision of a comprehensive university, clearly indicating that it values vocational training. Will the province increase per-student funding to show that it values these programs as well?

Another example of an area where sustained increased per-student funding is required is in adult basic education. The introduction of tuition fees for adult basic education in the past two years has created barriers to access for some of those who need education most. Students need the province to recommit to its 1998 decision to eliminate tuition fees for adult basic education and provide funding to institutions to allow for the cost of providing the program.

What does this all mean for students? The need for increased per-student funding is underscored by the massive hikes in tuition fees that students all across British Columbia have faced. Over the last four years tuition fees have doubled for the average student in B.C. In fact, students in British Columbia are now paying, on average, $4,872 per year in tuition fees.

Just so we can state for the record, tuition fees in 2001 at TRU were under $1,600 if you were taking ten courses per year. They have now risen over $4,000 for that same course load in just three years. It doesn't take a math major to figure out that this increase was slightly higher than the rate of inflation. Therefore, it is our recommendation that the province take steps to reduce tuition fees for all students in British Columbia. That would make sure that no students who want to pursue an education are left out because they can't afford it.

Tuition fees increased this year by only 2 percent thanks to the province's implementation of a tuition fee cap. Although students are glad to have some relief from recent increases, it's only the first step. This province needs to commit to reducing tuition fees to make education affordable for everyone.

The next steps for the province are to legislate the tuition fee cap, to work to reduce tuition fees and to start that reduction next September. Now more than ever it is vital for the province to invest in making post-secondary education more affordable for the average students in Kamloops and across B.C. This will pave the road to a brighter economic future for British Columbia, one where everyone has the chance to make a meaningful contribution to the economy by doing what they do best to help their family succeed.

Now is also the time, thanks to the federal government's recent budget, which contained an amendment that will send $1.5 billion to the provinces to reduce tuition fees. Students very much look forward to working with the province to see that B.C.'s portion of that money is put toward reducing tuition fees. It will be an investment that will benefit students, the general public and the province in encouraging students to pursue further studies, and will create a flexible workforce.

The benefits of providing accessible education are clear. For example, Paid in Full, a recent study by UBC economist Robert Allen, shows that those with a post-secondary degree will, over time, pay up to an additional $50,000 in tax revenue to the province, helping B.C. pay for education, health care and other important priorities in the future.

Another way to help students access their education and succeed in their studies is to distribute non-repayable student financial aid in the form of grants. The average student in Canada, according to the Canadian Association of University Teachers, graduates

with over $25,000 in student debt. That number is sure to increase as tuition fees go up and as valuable programs, like the former B.C. grants programs, are lost. Without a doubt, this number deters many students from middle- and low-income households from ever considering post-secondary education.

Many students need to borrow through the Canada and B.C. student loans programs to pay for the high tuition and upfront costs of an education, but the B.C. loan reduction program is, unfortunately, not as effective as the grants program was for reducing overall student debt and helping students do well while in school. While the loan reduction program may have looked good on paper, it simply doesn't work. Students need to know that they will have money to survive while they are studying, not that they had a few hundred dollars reduced of a debt they won't see until three years from now.

In conclusion, the recommendations put before this committee today are meant to make a post-secondary education at any level accessible for the citizens of Kamloops and the citizens of the province — whether they're returning to high school after decades away, training for a career in trades or pursuing a university degree. These recommendations will also have British Columbia achieve a goal of having the best-educated province by 2010 and an economy that is flexible, healthy and sustainable.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. Well, thank you for your presentation. It was well-thought-out, obviously, and well-presented, and I appreciate that. I'm going to look to members of the committee if they have any questions.

J. Kwan: I'm wondering about the decline in access to post-secondary education as a result of tuition fee hikes. Do you have any statistics or numbers to sort of illustrate what the decline might have looked like? I raise this question because, for the first time, we got some numbers from another presenter. You might know him, actually: Rob Mealey. He gave us numbers and showed us where the decline was and how many. I'm wondering whether or not your society has started to collect that kind of data.

N. Lane: I can actually answer that question. As far as enrolment data for this year, we don't have it. We're in the process of compiling that data right now. We do know that while enrolment was up 4 percent this year at TRU — the exact numbers aren't in — there are fewer students studying now at TRU than were studying in 1999-2000, despite the fact that TRU is a full-fledged university. We know that enrolment on the whole in the long term has actually declined at TRU, while the last couple of years have seen a slight boom. Just to echo some of the statistics you have, enrolment is down. We speak with other student unions quite regularly as part of an initiative we're doing as a province, and it's down at most institutions.

J. Kwan: If I may just continue, then. It will be very useful, actually, when you do have that information. If the committee doesn't exist then, forward it to the MLAs so that we can have access to that information.

J. Kwan: Bill 79 is a bill that Rob brought to our attention and that New Brunswick brought in. It's called the Tuition Break for Students in New Brunswick Act. I'm just wondering whether or not you're aware of this bill and what your thoughts are around that.

N. Lane: Yeah, absolutely we're aware. I'm kind of a little biased. I actually worked with a group of students who worked on the particular bill, who initiated it there. I'm very fond of the idea, and I think it's a way that can ensure that the money that was dedicated to the province here in British Columbia goes to the students who need it most. I think it was an effective method in that province, and it would be an effective method here.

J. Kwan: There were no dollars attached to the bill, and I didn't get a chance to ask Rob when he made the presentation at the time. Do you have any sense of what kind of percentage, in terms of reduction in tuition, that you're looking for or that you're advocating for over time? To start with Bill 79, is it 5 percent, 10 percent? What might that be?

G. Hogg: In the report Jenny's referencing that Rob gave us, he mentioned that it's traditional belief that if you track participation in the universities, it's usually inversely proportional to the economy. If the economy's going well, the number of students reduces, and the inverse is also true. He also provided us with numbers with respect to the unemployment rates in his area.

Do you have any correlation in terms of that? It seems like just looking at the participation rates or registration rates in isolation of other variables is a somewhat naïve approach to looking at what's going on in a more systemic way. If you're able to get those figures or reference those that Jenny was looking at, it would be helpful to have that contextualized with the other kinds of reference points or touch points to help us understand the impact that it's having.

I think that in the first statistics I saw, when it was the increased tuition rates, the participation rates were way up as well, so there didn't seem to be a positive

correlation. At least, that's what we were hearing from the presidents' councils. We need to see that. All I'm saying is that I'd like to see that in context.

N. Lane: I don't have the specific statistics in front of me, but for the report that was provided by Rob Mealey, a lot of those statistics were researched centrally for the entire province. I imagine he provided you with the section that would represent the College of New Caledonia, but those same statistics are available for a majority of the institutions across the province. I'm sure those could be forwarded on.

G. Hogg: He highlighted his and differentiated that the inversely proportional relationship had said: "But it doesn't apply here." He didn't tell us whether…. It sounded as though he was saying that by exception it did apply in the rest of the province and that they were unique. But that would be an assumption.

N. Lane: I know that in Kamloops in particular, it doesn't. My sense is that in the lower mainland and on the Island, the trend does apply.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming out this evening to present to our committee. I can assure you, as we do all presenters, that it will be given full consideration in the development of our report. Thank you very much.

Our next presentation comes to us from the Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association. Joining is Dr. Thomas Friedman. Good evening, and welcome.

T. Friedman: Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. This is the fifth time as president of the faculty association that I've had the honour of addressing this committee. I see some familiar faces and some new faces.

First off, let me tell you that the faculty association at TRU represents all those involved with the educational process, including instructors, of course, laboratory faculty, counsellors, librarians, co-op coordinators and other educational coordinators.

We have approximately 650 members, and we are both a certified trade union under the Labour Relations Code and, also, a professional association. That is, our task is to defend our members' rights and to bargain as a bargaining agent for them but also to ensure that our members enjoy professional respect and that they engage in appropriate exercise of their professional status.

We very much wear two hats at any given time. I'm going to come to you with both hats on. First, I want to say that I certainly agree with the TRU president, Dr. Barnsley, that in your prebudget planning I think you owe it to all British Columbians to re-emphasize your commitment to public education in this province — public post-secondary education. I think you're being given some additional tools by the federal government to do that, and I expect that our students and our members — our faculty — will benefit from that investment in public education.

The creation of TRU as a university opened many doors, and a lot of them have to do with partnerships — partnerships abroad, partnerships domestically. The nature of those partnerships is very valuable. It has increased our profile in the world. It has increased our experience for our students and our faculty.

Those partnerships cannot replace an investment by the provincial government in the operation of our institution. We strongly believe that education, particularly on the post-secondary level, is a public good and that as a public good it has to be adequately supported.

As you know, on April 1 of this year Thompson Rivers University was created by legislative act. We are very excited about that. Our members feel that it is the necessary and logical end of a process that began in 1970, when we were a one-year and then a two-year community college — Cariboo College. We're very proud of our institution, but we're also aware that the legislative act gave us a new mandate. It gave us a responsibility beyond that which we were already fulfilling as a university college.

I'm here to ask that you recognize that the provincial government has given us new duties, new obligations, and those are going to cost money. I want to be really clear that even though I support the fact that the creation of the university on its own may have opened up a lot of financial possibilities for us, including fundraising, I still think there has to be a commitment by the government to recognize our increased mandate through an increase in our operating grant.

Let me tell you that I and my members are not looking for a grant anywhere close to that received by the research-intensive universities. That's not who we are. As Dr. Barnsley says, we are primarily an undergraduate teaching university.

What does it mean to be a university? Why did we want this change from university college to university? Why did the community want it? It's because a university is recognized as going beyond merely educating students; it's also playing an important role in the economic development of a community. I think you'll recognize that an investment in the operation of a university will pay huge dividends in terms of economic growth in the community. It's already paid dividends. I know, from talking to people, that our housing market is booming. Many people in the real estate industry are saying that it's the university presence that makes a big difference.

We don't want to be a research university. We are primarily an undergraduate teaching university. But the integration of research and teaching is a necessary precondition for being a university. We are a university. We want to maintain our credibility and the respect that we've garnered in the community. The only way we can do that is if we give the tools to our members to provide students with an enhanced education.

I respectfully disagree with Dr. Barnsley when he says that the institution can operate within the existing operating grant. Perhaps he'll change his mind when he sees our bargaining demands come November. I don't want to play out any labour-management issues in front of this committee.

We're excited about meeting these challenges. Our members are ready and willing to meet these challenges. All they need to have are the resources to do that. If they're possible within the existing grant, wonderful, but I don't think they are.

We're really changing our whole institutional presence. We're going national, as the saying is. We're going to be in the Maclean's rankings, we hope — and not at the bottom. That's our expectation. The only way we're going to do that is if, first of all, we can attract faculty, we can retain faculty and we can give faculty enough time and resources to provide students with that kind of education.

The last thing I want to mention is to strongly support, on behalf of my members, the need for a new library at TRU. You may know that the building that houses our library is really inadequate when it comes to a university. With 8,500 students, the library resources right now are shameful. They're an embarrassment. I would really hope that the government recognizes that the hallmark of what a university is, is often found in its library resources. That's where our students, obviously, are going to turn when they're looking for all the sources of information and research that they're going to be required to do. I can't say strongly enough how we support the contribution of the government toward the construction of the new library.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Your presentation was obviously to the point and very direct. Again, I thank you for taking the time to come yet again to present to our committee.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): That concludes the portion of the meeting for the registered presenters. We do go to an open-mike session. Joining us this evening is Deborah Frolek, who is with the Kamloops Child Development Society.

D. Frolek: Good evening. Welcome to Kamloops. I think this committee's pretty tough. I know you've had a long day. I promise that I will make it as painless as possible. I know other people have promised you that before.

I went in detail about our mission and a couple of things, but I really do have something to say, again, about child care. I was here in 2003 and 2004. I see all new faces, I think, except for one or two. I just wanted to say that I have been the executive director of the Kamloops Child Development Society since 1973.

This is a non-profit community service agency. We've been promoting excellent and integrated programs and inclusive child care, developmental preschool and out-of-school services to children, youth and families for 37 years. I think we're really good at it, and I really think that this committee, in the last two years, looking back, has listened to a lot of the things that we've had to say about child care.

Recently the adjustments that were announced on October 1, with the threshold changes for families acquiring financial assistance for subsidy…. The subsidy rates themselves, subsequent to that, have increased, which is helping care providers provide better care.

Alone, the increase in the thresholds has been the most positive change I've seen in three decades. I really have to congratulate the government for putting the money in the pockets of marginalized children and families. I think that's what it's all about.

The missing part — and I know we have a lot of things to thank Mr. Dryden for, and the feds…. But most of the focus has been on kids from zero to six, and we have a lot of kids with a lot of needs from six to 12 and young youth. I don't think they deserve to be left out of the equation. I really would like this committee to lobby to invest more in direct services to children.

Wording around care. I heard the federal government, our Premier and everybody talk about early learning and care, but when it comes straight down to it, the care is down $42 million. Everybody else is getting more money. I think it's really critical, and the wording around child care is misleading. Early learning is really important, but the care part can't be left out of the equation. Care is the pillar of early learning, and they have to be funded equally.

We also need to include the care for children over six. Keep the focus simple. Let's fund the people who are actually wiping bums and noses, and let's forget about the people who are telling us how to do it, and I really think we'll have a better outcome. I don't know how to put it even less painlessly than that. We have a lot of good people out there.

Talking about the true tuition, for example. I'll get to that. I don't want to skip around.

Just to be informed advocates. As representatives of this committee, I know that you demonstrate that you're pretty tough, and you're in this position because you care about what happens in your communities and for our children.

Policy development. I know it's reflecting best practice, and spending priorities must focus on the most pressing needs. We can't afford the luxury of having more people telling us how to care for kids. We have to put more money into actually caring for them.

Many recommendations have been made to improve services to all children. Please keep them in mind. The reports of Justice Tom Gove…. He's a good man. He's spent a lot of time looking at all things that happen with young children and youth in this province. Our previous child and youth advocates and our current child and youth officer, Jane Morley…. They have some really important things to say, and I think we need to pay attention to them.

Those are common themes. They're not going away. They've been here for 30 years. You guys have got another crack at getting this done, and I think you can do it.

Recently, just to be cautious, the government has had all sorts of investigations — children-in-care statistics, unfortunate occurrences and tragedies. Children aging out or leaving care. That's the buzzword, and it's been a benchmark to reflect success of policies that the various ministries have had. Children who are left alone, who are vulnerable, who have special needs and who are easily persuaded, can age right back into care the next time the stats come out next month. Even though it's good news when it happens right, it's really bad news when it doesn't happen right. I think we've seen some clear examples of that in the media in recent weeks.

Needs for resources for children include: when are kids not kids? We can't leave those kids that are six and over out of the equation. They really need safe places to be. They need to be in programs that are licensed, accountable and visible. Like other people previous to me said, when they start dropping out of the support systems, the safety nets, when they're on the ground, those kids go underground, and we know what we're facing with the number of youth that get in trouble.

Undervalued caregivers. Over the years of being a rather right-wing child care advocate — I'm sort of an anomaly — I have heard many people say: "If we could only strike and draw attention to the plight of child care." Well, recently this government has given us a really good opportunity to get right at it. We have kids right now that aren't in care in Kamloops because there's strike action.

I think they have to really carefully think out this early learning and care going into education, just to soften up the education room and space that might be available and costing school districts money. That's not a reason to set up a child care policy. It's going to come right back and bite you, and it's going to bite hard.

We need to look at attracting and retaining qualified staff. The students that were here just prior to me…. I know that since 2001, when I tried to get early childhood educators, most of them young moms with families and kids of their own, with their own child care needs…. It now costs those moms double what it cost them four years ago to get their basic ECE training, and the training now takes them two years, not one year — and that's a minimum requirement. So those are really things that are keeping young good people out of the field of child care.

Future spending. New funding from the federal government gives us new opportunities. We don't need to marry them and have them tell us how to do it. There are lots of statistics and reports on the other side saying that early learning and care in schools is causing a lot of grief. So look at all the information that is around, and put your good minds to work there.

We need to put the care back into early learning and care, to place the emphasis on actual direct child care provision by qualified people in settings that keep children safe and visible. Respectfully submitted. Thank you.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Deborah, thank you for coming tonight. You have been sitting through a number of presentations. Again, on behalf of the committee, I want to express our thanks for what you've presented here.

Are there any questions? It's unusual. We are in the open-mike session, where traditionally there are no questions of presenters due to time constraints. We do have a few minutes, so if there are any questions, I would entertain them.

D. Frolek: If any of the people on the committee want information, I can forward it to you through our MLAs. I have also, I think, attached my e-mail on the front of the presentation. I am, believe it or not, a distributor of information by e-mail to around a thousand people on different child care committees, so if you want to find it, I can probably find it for you and get it back to you.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay. We do have two questions. Jenny, and then Richard.

J. Kwan: I'm going to ask, I hope, a simple question on the question around the child care subsidies that were reduced. Then the government did bring back some components of the subsidies. Could you tell me the amount of the dollars that the government brought back to the subsidies? Does that make up for the cuts that were made?

D. Frolek: Totally. I was not happy when they reduced it by $300 three years ago, then gave them $100 a whack every ten months. That did not work. The subsidy threshold itself has gone up to $38,000, so that a single parent or a family, their income…. They can still qualify for the subsidy. It used to be down around

$18,000, so it's more than doubled. The actual threshold itself is out of the ballpark. It's totally different this month, as of October 1.

J. Kwan: What's the amount of dollars that people get by way of actual subsidies?

D. Frolek: The actual subsidy rate went from $368 a month to, I believe, $550. That would be a three-year-old to a five-year-old child in a day care program.

D. Frolek: Yes. The increments have been very equally distributed across the board. The glaring omission has been for those kids in out-of-school programs, those little, vulnerable guys that I say are still kids when they're over six, who go home and are latchkey kids. That hasn't changed significantly.

The piece that has changed is that families could maybe have a good portion of their out-of-school care paid for by subsidy if they met that new threshold that determines their eligibility. But the actual subsidy piece itself hasn't changed that much. It's not really comfortable to be offering a lot of out-of-school care because you're not compensated well enough.

J. Kwan: Last question, on the federal government funding that's been announced. When you say, "Put the care back into the care component of child care," what do you mean by that? Are there specific things that you think the federal government dollars being provided to the provincial government…? Where should they put that money, specifically? That is, where should the province put that money, specifically?

D. Frolek: Absolutely. Paul Martin has his own biases as to how that money should be spent. He doesn't live in British Columbia. Each of the provinces has their own formula for how they should spend that money.

Political posturing…. Sometimes you dance with somebody else to get the outcome you want, so he's done it. I think what you really have to look at is, five years down the road, do you want all the school districts in the country going to the polls saying: "Now you're not just going to be paying school tax but tax on universal child care"?

I don't think that was the intention of the accord around child care across this nation. I think the intention was to give the actual care equal value to the early learning part. We have wonderful Roots of Empathy and Mother Goose programs. Lots of people talk about what you should do with your kids. What I'm saying is that you need a few more kids having proper care with trained early childhood educators. The learning comes through proper care. You can give them all the Mother Goose and Roots of Empathy you want, but if they're hungry and their diaper needs changing, you'd best get somebody feeding and getting that kid on a new diaper.

That's where we really break down. We need more places, more hands-on people actually working with kids and not just talking about it.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): For our final question this evening, I'll go to Richard.

I'm interested in hearing more about the proposal on caring for children up to the age of 12 and beyond — youth over 12. What kind of a proposal do you think would be important?

D. Frolek: You see your Boys and Girls Clubs struggling. I have funding up until the time a child is in an out-of-school program. Once they reach 13, there aren't a lot of programs for them. You see your local youth clubs….

I have actually talked to our board of directors and our community policing saying: "Could we use our facility in the evening for a couple of evenings a week, where we could teach kids, give them some life skills? How about nutrition? How about how they stretch their dollars and make proper meals?" Many of them are doing the housework and the meal planning for their family — if they're eating at home at all. Maybe we can give them….

I don't care if they hang out and watch a video and have popcorn if they're in a safe place, if they've got recreational and social opportunities and maybe people to help them with literacy things or their homework, if that's part of what they can do in the evenings.

There is no money for that. There isn't anywhere somebody who can go in and tap for that. I thought you might be able to do something like a club, like Boys and Girls Clubs, where you can have a membership. Maybe social workers in town who know that some of these kids need to stay off the streets will contribute $50 a month or something and have it as a club.

There are no licensing regulations or health regulations around youth. It's like children are no longer children once they're 12. As Mr. Hogg knows, our institutions get filled up pretty good with those kids, because they get tricked into doing all sorts of things that we'd rather they not be doing.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Deborah, again, thank you so much for coming out this evening and speaking to us.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet. Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.

Other MLAs:	Hon. Claude Richmond (Kamloops L)
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd

1)	Canadian Home Builders Association — Kamloops	Tim Kasten
2)	Council of Canadians — Kamloops Chapter	Anita Strong
3)	Thompson Rivers University School of Social Work and Human Service	Michael Crawford
4)	Frank Anderson

5)	Kamloops Flyfishers Association	Trevor Jeanes
	British Columbia Wildlife Federation, Shuswap Region	Don Tretheway
	Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association	Geoff Swannell
6)	Tenisci Piva Chartered Accountants	Ron Tenisci

7)	Grasslands Conservation Council of British Columbia	Bruno Delesalle Dave Whiting
8)	Highland Valley Copper Corp.	M. Dal Scott
9)	Kamloops Women's Resource Centre	Dodie Goldney Trish Archibald
10)	Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre	Cynthia Davis
11)	Nancy Bepple

12)	Thompson Rivers University	Ron Olynyk Roger Barnsley
13)	Cariboo Student Society	Nathan Lane James Studer Terry Monteleone Jessy Sahota
14)	Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association	Dr. Thomas Friedman
15)	Kamloops Child Development Society	Deborah Frolek

Committee Staff:	Jacqueline Quesnel (Committees Assistant)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES