Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 58 — Wednesday, October 10, 2007 (HTML)

2007 Legislative Session: Third Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		1447
	P. Adams
	B. Wiren
	N. Bepple
	A. Strong
	J. Bailey
	L. Marchand
	M. Murray
	D. Sage
	F. Murray
	V. Janz
	V. Zirnhelt
	R. Turner
	M. Anderson
	D. Tretheway
	H. Karpuk
	C. Kabloona
	M. Greenwood
	R. Olynyk
	R. Barnsley
	J. Arner
	D. Frolek
	R. Tenisci
	M. Grenier
	K. Broughton
	P. Harrington

Chair:	* Bill Bennett (East Kootenay L)
Deputy Chair:	* Bruce Ralston (Surrey-Whalley NDP)
Members:	Iain Black (Port Moody–Westwood L) Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) * Randy Hawes (Maple Ridge–Mission L) * Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) Richard T. Lee (Burnaby North L) * John Horgan (Malahat–Juan de Fuca NDP) * Jenny Wai Ching Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) * Bob Simpson (Cariboo North NDP) * denotes member present

Witnesses:

Paul Adams (SBC Firemaster Ltd.)
Marlene Anderson (Positive Action Toward a Caring Health System)
Janis Arner (Child Care Resource and Referral Program, Kamloops)
Jann Bailey (Executive Director, Kamloops Art Gallery)
Roger Barnsley (President, Thompson Rivers University)
Nancy Bepple
Kesten Broughton
Deborah Frolek (Executive Director, Kamloops Child Development Society)
Matt Greenwood (B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, Kamloops Chapter)
Mike Grenier (President, Pagebrook Inc.)
Paddy Harrington (Kamloops Foundation)
Valerie Janz (Make Children First)
Cheryl Kabloona (B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, Kamloops Chapter)
Hank Karpuk (Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association)
Lori Marchand (Administrative Director, Western Canada Theatre)
Chris Murray (Kamloops Society for Community Living)
Fairleigh Murray (B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, Kamloops Area Office )
Mona Murray (Kamloops Society for Community Living)
Ron Olynyk (Chair, Board of Governors, Thompson Rivers University)
Douglas Sage (Canadian Mental Health Association, Kamloops Division)
Anita Strong (Chair, Council of Canadians, Kamloops Chapter)
Ron Tenisci (Tenisci Piva Chartered Accountants)
Don Tretheway (Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association)
Rick Turner (Positive Action Toward a Caring Health System)
Brent Wiren (CEO, SBC Firemaster Ltd.)
Vi-anne Zirnhelt (Make Children First)

B. Bennett (Chair): Okay, committee members, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our committee. This is the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Bill Bennett. I'm the MLA for East Kootenay. My home is the great city of Cranbrook over in the East Kootenay, and I chair the committee. I'm going to let my ministers introduce themselves.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Bruce Ralston, Surrey-Whalley, and Deputy Chair of the committee.

J. Horgan: John Horgan, MLA for Malahat–Juan de Fuca, which is just north of Victoria.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you. I also wanted to just take a minute and introduce my colleague the hon. Claude Richmond, who's Minister of Employment and Income Assistance, in the back.

Beside me here is Les Gönye, who is our Clerk for today's meeting. Les actually comes from Australia. He works with the Legislature in New South Wales in Australia.

Jacqueline Quesnel is on the back desk, and we also have two folks here from Victoria from Hansard Services, who stream the audio of this meeting out over the Internet and also record it.

Our purpose in coming to Kamloops today is basically to listen to you. That's why we're here, and that's what we're going to do. We then report back to the Minister of Finance later this fall. I think we have to have our report done by November 15. We will have recommendations within that report that will go to the Minister of Finance so that she can use the recommendations in preparing her next budget, which will come out in early February of 2008.

The Minister of Finance has prepared a budget consultation paper that is guiding us to some extent in our consultations across the province. We're completely open to all suggestions, and we're not limited in any way in terms of what we hear and what we consider, but Minister Taylor's budget consultation paper does give us some ideas as to what she would like us to focus on.

There are copies of that consultation paper in the back. If you haven't seen it, please go back and grab a copy and have a look at it.

Today we're going to hear from several people who have preregistered with the Clerk of Committees office. We'll get started here in just a second.

At the end of the meeting today, as long as we have time and we haven't gone too far over our allotted time, we'll also have an open-mike section of the meeting where if there's anyone in the room who has a burning desire to speak to us and tell us what they think, and they haven't preregistered, then they'll get that opportunity. That's a five-minute opportunity.

For those who are making formal submissions, you have ten minutes to make a formal submission. As Chair, or if my colleague Bruce is chairing at the time, we'll try to give you a hand signal to let you know when you're at nine minutes. If you get your submission in within ten minutes, that leaves us five minutes after for questions and answers.

Let's get rolling. Our first witness for the hearing today is SBC Firemaster, Paul Adams and Brent Wiren.

P. Adams: Good afternoon, hon. Chair and hon. members of the committee. My name is Paul Adams, and I am in a new role in public and government relations with SBC Firemaster. I'm joined by Brent Wiren, who is the chief executive officer of SBC Firemaster Ltd. We're here today to discuss pellet fuels, biomass and bioenergy in potential solutions to the mountain pine beetle epidemic in British Columbia.

SBC Firemaster group of companies has been around since 1982. During those 25 years we've packaged approximately 14 million packages of dry firewood, utilizing 350,000 cubic metres of dry logs, which has produced direct salaries of about $15 million going directly into the Princeton local area and a further $50 million in purchases from various suppliers in British Columbia.

As we've grown over those 25 years, Firemaster has diversified and expanded its operations. We now have operational bases here in Kamloops, in Langley and in Sumas, Washington. The majority of our business is now in the wood pellet sector as well as in firewood. We're also in utilizing wood fibre for various things such as animal bedding and other products.

We have a huge potential to expand business here in British Columbia with the mountain pine beetle epidemic and the amount of fibre that is available for utilization. However, we have two significant barriers that are currently in our way. One of those is that the Canadian dollar being as strong as it is, and the U.S. dollar declining, has resulted in it being very difficult to remain profitable in that market.

It's therefore very important for us to expand not only our local market here in British Columbia and in Canada but also into overseas markets. SBC Firemaster is currently looking very strongly at the Chinese market. The Chinese market is obviously a huge one, and we have the potential to enter that market in providing

Part of the problem that we have in British Columbia is the fact that the softwood lumber agreement has skyrocketed stumpage rates on timber. Previously we were paying a standard rate of 25 cents per cubic metre on all fibre which was being utilized for firewood and energy fuels. That has now gone up to, in some cases, as much as $20 but hovering around the $12 mark — an increase of 4,800 percent in stumpage rates.

If you combine that increase in stumpage rates and the strong Canadian dollar, you can see that keeping our product both profitable and competitive with fossil fuels is becoming increasingly difficult.

The second problem is that we've failed to really highlight and showcase bioenergy and biomass here in British Columbia. We recognize that the provincial government has done significant things to start promoting other industries, including looking at hybrid vehicles and some of the work being done with B.C. Hydro and Power Smart.

We commend the government for that work. We would appreciate seeing more being done in the way of enhancing the pellet fuel utilization here in British Columbia.

We looked at other jurisdictions in proximity to Canada and what they've done. Even within Canada, the Northwest Territories has significant incentive programs which allow people who are going to replace their existing wood-burning furnaces with high-efficiency ones or people who are going to install pellet stoves — which are all high-efficiency appliances — to get a rebate directly back from the government. You'll find, at the back of this little package I've put together, detailed information on the Northwest Territories initiative.

Another example of that type of rebate program can be found in the American energy policy introduced in 2005, which will be put in place early in 2008. It actually includes a 25-percent government rebate, up to a maximum of $3,000 on these types of technologies.

I strongly believe that showcasing bioenergy and biomass products here in British Columbia is going to be a significant asset to start opening doors into other markets.

One of the huge problems that we're faced with is the situation with stumpage. Being a secondary producer — in that we basically take scrap wood and things that other primary producers cannot utilize and we make it into pellet fuels — we're being given the same stumpage rates as the lumber sector.

It is a strong belief of SBC Firemaster that this fibre being utilized for energy should not fall under the softwood lumber agreement. We think it would make a lot more sense that fibre being utilized for energy once it's been harvested from the forest floor should be moved from the Ministry of Forests and into the Ministry of Energy and Mines. We think that would give the ability to somewhat circumnavigate the softwood lumber agreement and make it so that stumpage fees are not applicable to the energy product that we produce.

I'll talk a little bit about how our market is expanding overseas and where that falls in place with the Chinese government. There were announcements made by the Chinese government in 2005 that they intend to reduce their emissions of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and other pollutants from coal-fired generation by 10 percent by the year 2010.

Basically, biomass and bioenergy are an instant solution to that problem. By getting involved in coal-fired generation — that is, blending pellet fuels and biomass with the coal and burning it in their existing boilers — they can have that immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Wood biomass contains none of the contaminants that you're going to find in any of the other fossil fuels. It's green energy, and it's carbon-neutral.

We're dealing with such a huge problem in the way of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, and there are very few industries in place to provide a long-term solution to that epidemic. We believe that the B.C. government needs to assist in promoting us, both domestically and overseas.

On that point, I think I'll hand it back over to the committee for any questions you may have.

B. Simpson: Thanks for this presentation. We may want to talk off the record about some of the presumptions you've got in here around softwood lumber, because I don't think they're accurate. The stumpage association with softwood lumber for your product line — I don't agree with how you've positioned that at all. But we can have a discussion about that.

The issue is how the Ministry of Forests assigns stumpage, and the reason stumpage went up is because of a change in sawlog grades on April 1 of last year, not because of the softwood lumber agreement. We can talk about that if you want.

What I was interested in was the subsidy program that you are suggesting for the pellet stoves. I'm wondering if there's an appetite to go one step earlier than that. I met with Pinnacle Pellet in Quesnel, which manufactures these high-efficiency furnaces and wants to get into the manufacturing side more often. More jobs are associated with it and so on. They say that a large part of their cost burden is in research and development and certification — getting the European standards and the U.S. standards.

Would you support us looking at assisting in the research and development and some kind of financial support for the certification process as part of your overall package?

P. Adams: I think any assistance that can be provided in moving the technology forward is certainly going to be an asset. As I say, for our company right now, the main problem lies in the strength of the U.S. dollar and the fact that we're paying these excessive stumpage rates.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much for the presentation. Bob is the opposition Forests critic and I'm the opposition Energy critic, so both of us have been spending a lot of time steeping ourselves in not just your product but in the shift that we have to make.

I tend to think that your suggestions here…. Again, Bob and I have done a lot of discussion on this. I'm sure the government caucus members have been speaking with the Minister of Forests about the challenge of taking what has traditionally been a product used for one purpose or for several wood-based purposes and putting it into the energy field. It's a shift in thinking that government is having some challenges with, as is the industry.

My question would be: how would we make that shift, cognizant of the existing trade restrictions that Bob touched upon and cognizant of the tenure issues that are a problem as well, in terms of the magnitude of the excess fibre that we have today? How do we make that shift? It's not here.

What's the magic bullet that makes us go from the old technology to new technology, from the old way of doing business in the woods to a new way of doing business in the woods? That's ultimately the challenge for your company and for the sector.

P. Adams: Basically, we've got a situation where we have demand that exceeds supply as it stands at this point in time.

J. Horgan: Isn't it the other way around? Don't we have more supply than we have demand?

From a global standpoint, we're in a prime place to utilize this standing deadwood that's sitting. How do we retool, and how do we come up with solutions to just dealing with waste products? I think that is a transitional situation that we'll move into over the years.

I think our initial goal is to highlight that biomass and bioenergy are clean and efficient energy products that should be utilized on a broad scale. We should be showcasing British Columbia as being an efficient user of its own resource, rather than looking simply at our overseas market.

Europe has done an outstanding job of promoting bioenergy and biomass fuels. We're shipping something like a million cubic metres of pellets over to Europe on an annual basis.

B. Wiren: The stumpage aside, I think the value to the manufacturers and the value proposition, based on the U.S. market and the U.S. dollar, drive the promotion of this capacity here in British Columbia. I think that with the rise in the Canadian dollar in relation to the U.S., even with stumpage issues aside, we still have a challenge to manufacture pellets.

It's through opening up markets that don't have the same kind of freight component, like we see in Europe, that is going to really drive the economy here, whether it's in the Ministry of Forests' basket or the Ministry of Energy's.

It's obvious that the Ministry of Forests has to maintain the stewardship of the fibre itself, but if there is some way that we can take and really promote this as energy, as opposed to a traditional fibre in the sense that it's been used for lumber….

J. Horgan: Could you touch the tenure issue as well? How do you get your head around that? Or you can say pass.

P. Adams: I'll say pass, because to be quite honest with you, I haven't spent enough time looking at the tenure issue itself.

B. Wiren: There are a lot of good ideas out there for how to promote this fibre. I'm assuming you mean tenure, in that we've got this industry right now that's based….

Then you look outside of that and look at the damage and the damage control that we have to do now, and you say: "Certainly there's something that we can do as a biomass energy industry to at least partially solve these issues."

J. Kwan: With respect to the Chinese market that you mentioned in your presentation, it was stated that you've met some high-ranking government officials, etc. Can you shed some light on which part of China you have been targeting? Are you looking at shipping the pellets overseas for commercial enterprises? Or are you looking more at the home heating component?

B. Wiren: I've met with the members of the committee in Beijing on environmental pollution control. That's a standing committee that analyzes ideas on how to reduce their emissions. We're looking at the co-firing idea, where we would promote the concept of….

Right now they're taking power generation stations off line, retrofitting and then bringing them back on line on 100-percent biomass, which puts a massive burden on the local farming community and on the feedstocks. It's a social problem, because they're driving the price of food up, and they really can't afford to do that in some of these remote areas where they're promoting this capacity.

What we're saying is: look, you can't solve everything overnight. If you start to add biomass — wood, specifically — into the existing coal-fired power generation plants, which is a model that is directly after the European model and which is why we have such a

healthy pellet industry here in British Columbia right now, the freight gains that we can realize by going to China instead of going to Europe more than offset what the difference is in the fibre as a sawmill residual or a logging residual.

Two areas. We're looking at residential heating in the north of China. There is some technology that has pellet-fired air conditioners, believe it or not, in the south of China. We're looking at commercial heating, commercial hot water and for large-scale energy production.

B. Bennett (Chair): Paul and Brent, thank you very much for your presentation. It was quite interesting.

N. Bepple: My name is Nancy Bepple, and I originally started looking at issues that affected the interior of B.C. when they were looking at changing the boundaries of the ridings. They've cancelled those hearings, but I thought it would be important to present the information here.

The talk is called "Highways — Dollars and Death." The B.C. population is about 4.1 million, and 77 percent of that is in the lower mainland. I'm not sure where your colleague Bob Simpson is from. Is he from the lower mainland?

N. Bepple: Quesnel? Oh, good. I'm hoping that he and Bill Bennett will carry the flag on this.

So 77 percent is in the lower mainland, 15 percent is in the southern interior, and 8 percent is in the north in terms of the population.

In terms of highway fatalities, ICBC reported that there were 442 in 2005. So 227 were in the lower mainland and the Vancouver Island area, 128 were in the southern interior, and 87 were in the north. It doesn't match in terms of the population. Some 51 percent of the fatalities are in the lower mainland, despite having 77 percent of the population; 29 percent of the fatalities are in the southern interior; and 20 percent — one in five — are in the north, despite having only 8 percent of the population.

I'm here to say that for people living in the southern interior and in the north, highway fatalities are a big concern. If you look at it in terms of proportions, per capita, people in the southern interior have three times as many highway fatalities as people down on the coast.

People in the north have 3.7 times the number of fatalities. Whatever you decide to do in terms of your spending or your recommendations, I would like you to address those huge highway fatalities. Maybe not in terms of numbers — there are always going to be more on the south coast — but per capita it's much, much larger up here.

Enough about death. In terms of highway projects, the Ministry of Transportation reports the following highway projects. On the south coast there is the Sea to Sky Highway, the Gateway, the border infrastructure, and there are minor projects — $3.85 billion for the south coast.

The southern interior. There is the Kicking Horse Pass — some of which is completed — the Kelowna bridge project, half of the Cariboo connector and minor projects for $635 million. The north has half of the Cariboo connector listed, and $78 million of minor projects for a total of $178 million.

If we look at spending as a comparison to population, in the south coast $3.85 billion accounts for 83 percent of the Ministry of Transportation's spending. They have 77 percent of the population. So they have more than their share, based on population.

The southern interior doesn't do too bad. We have $635 million for spending. That's 14 percent. We have 15 percent of the population. The north loses out; $178 million is 4 percent of the spending, and they have 8 percent of the population. So they're far behind per capita.

Highway spending per capita for the southern interior is 0.86 times that of the south coast. For the north, it's only 0.44 times. So both regions lose out.

In conclusion, I just want to reiterate that the southern interior has three times the fatalities of the south coast, and we get less spending on highway projects — 0.86 times. The north has 3.7 times the fatalities of the south coast, and they only get 44 percent of the spending per capita.

As a final note, I just want to point out that last summer the government announced that Alexis Creek was shutting its ambulance service for 29 days. Alexis Creek is 110 kilometres from Williams Lake. There were many places outside of the lower mainland that had ambulance service cutbacks in the last year.

If the government is not willing to spend money in the interior on highways, then as a minimum, I would like that the government consider maintaining or enhancing the ambulance services. With the number of fatalities per capita, we deserve better service with the ambulances.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, Nancy. You've obviously done some thinking and some work. That was a very innovative presentation. Appreciate it.

R. Hawes: Thank you for your presentation, Nancy. Just a quick question. Is it possible that there would be more fatalities per capita, say, in the north, where you have fewer urban roads and more rural roads or highways, where speeds are higher, than in the lower mainland where you have controlled speeds? For example, in the greater Vancouver area, people are driving 50 kilometres an hour versus maybe 100 on the highway.

When you have an accident at high speeds, the chance of death is greater. Is it possible that that needs to be factored in here?

N. Bepple: There are many reasons. But four times the number of fatalities? In a way, it doesn't really matter why there are three or four times as many fatalities. The thing is: is the government going to do anything about it?

In terms of my own personal experience, for two years I commuted between Salmon Arm and Kamloops. I moved to Kamloops because I think every five kilometres there's a fatality. I mean, that's a double lane for much of the way. Yes, they are improving it slowly.

I guess for me, it would be a priority to look at: why is it that outside of the lower mainland…? If you looked at it in reverse, and you said: "Would the lower mainland tolerate that rate of fatalities…?" I don't think so. What can we do to reduce the number of fatalities? Whether it's putting in more passing lanes, whether it's double-laning some of the highways — those are all things that could be considered.

If you look at the major highway projects — Kicking Horse Pass, Sea to Sky Highway — they are looking at improving highways to reduce fatalities — right? There must be a reason for that.

R. Hawes: I guess the other thing I would ask is: where you've got money being spent on highways, could it be that the bigger spending goes to where the priorities might be in terms of the condition of the roads? Perhaps some of the expenditures being made in other parts of the province are because the roads were in worse condition.

You know, there are lots of reasons, and I think it's tough to quantify. This is a pretty simple analysis for what would be a very complex type of question, if you wanted to look at it in the way that you've looked at it.

N. Bepple: It might be complex, but at the end of the day there are three to four times as many fatalities outside of the lower mainland. Is the government going to come up with some strategies to look at ways of reducing those fatalities?

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): It occurs to me, as I'm listening here, that maybe one of the causes for the high rate of fatalities is the greater distance from emergency wards and therefore longer time from the time of the accident to the time of getting critical care. I'm wondering if you've considered that as a factor. Obviously, that would call for more or better ambulance service rather than, necessarily, road improvements.

N. Bepple: Well, that addresses the last slide, which is questioning how ambulance services have deteriorated in the southern interior and in the north. It may be that it's difficult to get those services for a number of reasons. But when we have that many more fatalities per capita, I think it should be a priority to ensure that we have those services.

It may be that in Alexis Creek they cited that there were less than a hundred call-outs. That's not very many, maybe, compared to the lower mainland, but per capita it makes a huge difference.

I would say that all of those things have to be looked at. The starting point, though, is that the fatality rate is up to four times as high here.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just briefly, you're not disagreeing that rather than spend more money on highways, it might be better to spend more money on improving the ambulance service. That might be one of the courses that might reduce this fatality rate.

N. Bepple: I think ambulance service is a necessity, but as a taxpayer in the interior I don't feel so bad that I have about the percentage per-capita spending in my area on highways. But if I was someone in the north, who was in a region that's generating huge wealth for the province through oil and gas and mining, I think I would be quite distressed that I wasn't treated fairly.

Highways don't move from one place to another. The highways you have are where you live, and I think it's fair that per capita, people of the north should expect a reasonable spending where they live on the highways that they drive.

I was involved with the reforestation one time. Some of the areas where we did the tree planting were Tatla Lake, Alexis Creek, Dawson Creek, Houston, Golden, Invermere. We went on the off-road highways too. I remember driving on those gravel roads at much higher speed than what we would drive in my constituency in Surrey.

One of the things with this Kicking Horse…. You have $44 million and $68 million. I think there are a few hundred million missing from that. I think it was a much larger project, if I remember.

N. Bepple: Well, I got these figures from the Ministry of Transportation site, and they didn't list the third phase.

D. Hayer: It was about $650 million or something — is what reminded me. Gateway programs in my constituency, the Port Mann bridge and Highway 1…. In my constituency, if there's no traffic, it takes about five minutes to drive from my office to the Port Mann bridge. Most of the time when traffic is there, it takes about 45 minutes to one and a half hours, so lots of people living there say: "Look, we will not take it."

It's almost all the time. At one time, rush hour was only in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening. Now it sometimes starts from morning almost till evening. There are different types of challenges. When some of the people who are transporting goods from

here or taking goods from here to there get stuck in traffic, they also complain. They say: "You know, we're wasting a lot of money." So different challenges.

N. Bepple: I can appreciate that. There is a balance between spending on highways for economic reasons and spending for safety. But outside of the lower mainland, safety is a huge priority, so I think that has to be considered.

In terms of the Kicking Horse Pass, I took the numbers off the Ministry of Transportation site.

N. Bepple: Perhaps, but the spending in the north still comes out as being far, far less per capita.

The next witness is the Council of Canadians, Kamloops chapter — Anita Strong.

A. Strong: I'd like to thank you for taking the time to listen to these submissions. As you heard, I'm Anita Strong, and I'm representing the Council of Canadians — our chapter here in Kamloops.

The media in the last few months have been full of dire warnings about global warming and what our roles and responsibilities are with regard to climate change. Also, we've been brought face to face with the possibility of fuel shortages and natural disasters, which could isolate us from our regular food supplies.

Major food crises in the form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — BSE — and avian flu have cost our producers and our economy millions of dollars and have disrupted local supplies of meat and eggs for months.

I'd like to suggest that the food production system which we employ and support in B.C., as well as in the rest of Canada and the developed world, is unsound in that it produces cheap food by maximizing production and minimizing consumer price. Unfortunately, it has many hidden costs which impact greatly on the above scenarios.

It doesn't make sense, in light of global warming, to be importing apples from New Zealand and beef from Argentina when these items are produced right here in B.C. Furthermore, California and Chile, for example, may not be growing produce in the near future if climate change continues on its current course.

It doesn't make sense to concentrate huge numbers of animals together when we know that bacteria and viruses thrive under these conditions. It doesn't make sense to allow ourselves to become so dependent on foreign sources of food that if blizzards or earthquakes were to strike, we'd be out of food in a matter of days here in the interior.

In addition to these hidden costs, we have seen the incomes of Canadian farmers decline steadily over the past several decades. These declines have led many farmers to adopt practices which go against their better judgment. Practices such as increasing farm size, amounts of fertilizer and pesticides used, and bigger and more machinery have failed to even balance flat or falling commodity prices. The number of family farms continues to fall.

It's critical to B.C.'s local economies that small-scale farms be able to thrive. In addition to the direct agricultural jobs involved, there are processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming and disposing of food and food packaging. There are innumerable tourism, hospitality and restaurant jobs at stake as well. Then, using the B.C. government's own multiplier of seven times, as opposed to only two times, for sourcing a product outside of our communities, the value of buying local becomes even more significant.

The political environment — along with the social, economic and natural environments — has a huge effect on these food systems. Small-scale agriculture needs the support of government in order not only to thrive but to merely survive. We need to know that our agricultural land is protected. It's disturbing to see how many applications for exclusion from the ALR are granted.

We need to know that our irrigation water is protected. I know that water policy is a federal matter, but inasmuch as Canada does not have a water policy, we're counting on our provincial governments to help us put pressure on Ottawa.

B.C.'s farmers are aging, and without an adequate income, agriculture doesn't seem to have much appeal for young people considering it as an occupation. We'd like to see support from the provincial government in the form of low-cost loans, support for local co-op producer and processor initiatives, as well as such things as local procurement policies for government agriculture-related needs.

At one time there were tomato canneries in Kamloops, but economies of scale ensured their demise. Times are different now, and small-scale processing would seem to me to be much more viable in today's climate, both social and environmental. Victoria could perhaps assist by helping to develop appropriate technology for small-scale agriculture.

You could help with the design, construction and evaluation of equipment for production, handling and storage of horticultural products. You could help with food-processing system design as well as food safety. You could help by providing project funding for all of these areas, which brings us to the new meat regulations.

I don't disagree that it's important to protect the safety of our meat supply and that we need uniform meat inspection requirements across B.C. However, in light of the fact that one of the stated goals of the meat inspection regulations was "to ensure that there are sufficient provincially licensed slaughter facilities in appropriate locations across B.C. by September 30, 2007," and another was "to increase livestock slaughter

capacity in B.C. and build a basis for expansion of capacity in the future," I believe we've fallen short of those goals.

If I may step back a step, the supposed impetus for the new regulations was the fear of BSE and the avian flu, among other things. But small- and medium-scale producers of meat have been largely free of those diseases as well as those stress-related ailments brought about by overcrowding, subtherapeutic antibiotics and high-protein supplements. Likewise, the smaller-scale slaughter and processing end of the chain results in far less of the contamination associated with volume and speed.

Consequently, as small- and medium-scale operations are far more effective at avoiding the hazards that lead to food contamination, it would be preferable if you were to look at the stated goals above and try to implement them rather than asking the processors to first complete the work and then obtain a licence before they're reimbursed.

It would have been preferable to provide the funding as a forgivable loan. Very few small operators have the wherewithal to come up with the financing upfront. Also, I'm not sure that $50,000 or even $100,000 will have a large impact on the cost of upgrading or of building a new facility.

Another cost which I believe is unreasonable for a small operator to absorb is that of having an inspector on hand before, during and after the slaughter. Monitoring of slaughter and inspection of facilities by government-certified meat inspectors quarterly should certainly be adequate if trained and certified operators are on site at all times. I believe that the cost of this inspection should be borne by the government, as it is for restaurants and other food-processing establishments.

In essence, then, what I'm asking is that you take a close look at small- and medium-scale agriculture in B.C. Consumers are asking serious questions about how food is produced, processed and distributed. There's an increasing realization that the production and consumption of food leads to global warming.

We're seeing the rapid emergence of and support for local and regional farmers' markets, good-food boxes, collective kitchens, community gardens, field-to-table festivals, nutritious meals for children and youth, fairly traded products such as coffee and chocolate and, of course, the hundred-mile diet. In short, an alternative to the global industrial food system is growing.

The government of Canada has endorsed a Canada food security action plan that declares the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. Food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The continuing rise in the use of food banks would seem to negate any manifestation of these declarations.

We have in Kamloops an excellent food policy council as well as the beginnings of a food producers co-op, among other initiatives. It is our hope that government officials will see working with communities' citizens as just as important as serving other interests.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, Anita. We have some questions — at least one question — for you.

J. Horgan: Thank you, Anita, very much for your presentation. We've been travelling across the province, and everywhere we've gone, we've had someone comment on the new meat regulations and the impact that's having on primarily small producers.

If I understand your presentation and those that we've heard to this point in time, the movement by both levels of government to address food safety was a result of industrial food production, not local agriculture. So in the form of a question, because the Chair always likes me to ask a question rather than make a speech: in the communities that we've been to…?

September 30 has come and gone. The deadline that had been extended has now passed. What is happening in Kamloops to address the arrival of this deadline? Are slaughterhouses shutting down? Are producers no longer raising livestock?

A. Strong: We've always had a problem with not having a real local slaughter facility here. People have had to go down by Salmon Arm or a variety of other places. We do have the university meat-cutting course, but I don't think they do the actual kill there.

For this local food producers co-op that's getting started now, it would be in their mandate and their interest if financing was in place to introduce something like that. As you know, Kamloops is a cattle-raising area, and it would be to everyone's benefit to have local slaughter facilities here.

J. Kwan: I know that you make mention of local procurement policies for agriculture-related needs and so on. I know that the Council of Canadians has taken a position on TILMA, but in here you mention it in relation to this arena. I'm wondering whether or not you can share some thoughts on that.

A. Strong: Well, I did a presentation on TILMA last year at this committee. I'm sure that if the government were to take a position on local procurement and it was seen as being an advantage by someone outside the province, they could contest that. The government would perhaps not be able to do that.

J. Kwan: I raise it in the context of, most recently…. The Union of B.C. Municipalities had just passed a resolution overwhelmingly raising concerns and questions around TILMA. Therefore, as it relates to our procurement practices and policies — agricultural goods and so on — I think there may well be huge ramifications. Given that you centre your presentation very much on that, I thought there might be something else you might want to add to it.

A. Strong: I don't know what can be done about TILMA now that it's signed and in place. Obviously, as you pointed out, it's very detrimental to us being able to do what we want to do on a municipal level and even on a government level.

B. Bennett (Chair): Anita, we were in Kelowna this morning, and we heard from the tree fruit growers and also from the B.C. Food Processors. There's a potential recommendation shaping up around the hundred-mile diet and eating and producing local and so forth. So if you have any other thoughts on that…. I'm not asking you right on the spot here today, but between now and the 19th of October, get your thoughts in to us, and encourage your friends in the agriculture industry to do the same thing.

Our next witnesses would be the Western Canada Theatre and Kamloops Art Gallery — Jann Bailey and Lori Marchand.

J. Bailey: Good afternoon, and welcome to Kamloops. Thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation on behalf of the Kamloops art community — a community that supports three art galleries, two museums, four theatre companies, one professional symphony, over 40 arts organizations and hundreds of artists working in all disciplines.

I'm very pleased to say that there are a number of our supporters behind us. I'm going to ask them all to stand up and take a bow.

My name is Jann Bailey, and for the past 20 years I've been the executive director of the Kamloops Art Gallery. As one of the longest-standing art museum directors in Canada, I've also had the privilege of being president of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, the Canadian Museums Association, the Western Canada Art Association — you see, the longer you stay in the field, the more you do — and a member of the British Columbia Museums Association, among others.

In addition to running what I think is one of British Columbia's most progressive art galleries, the largest in the interior, I've also had the privilege to work over the last year and a bit with Michael Audain and others on the B.C. renaissance committee, which supports the development of foundation funds throughout the province.

Over the years I've had the privilege and pleasure of speaking to both federal and provincial finance committees. Thankfully, this one is not being televised on CPAC, so I don't have to watch myself for years to come.

L. Marchand: My name is Lori Marchand. I'm the administrative director of Western Canada Theatre in my ninth season of serving this wonderful company. I am currently a member of the theatre advisory for Canada Council, and I'm involved with the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres on both the advocacy and diversity committees.

Jann and I are also members, as you may have guessed, of Arts Future B.C., a coalition of not-for-profit arts service organizations representing 903 organizations from across the province as well as thousands of individual artists.

J. Bailey: The Vancouver Foundation's document Vital Signs indicates that arts have the power to enrich, educate and inspire and to transform our environment and connect with our community. Cultural differences contribute to the vibrancy of our communities and to our overall well-being. These elements craft our unique identity as a region and set us apart from other places.

Lori and I think this is true for the Kamloops region as well. In a parent survey entitled Growing Up in Kamloops, 95 percent of the 217 respondents indicated that community arts play a part in their lives. Young children are very active, and parents feel that participating in the arts is an important creative outlet that aids in their children's overall education.

The four primary cultural organizations in our community — the Kamloops Museum, Kamloops Symphony, Western Canada Theatre and the Kamloops Art Gallery — have close to 100 years of cultural leadership between them. All have developed important programs for children and families.

L. Marchand: In creating these programs and continuing to offer an array of arts activities, we have become provincial partners in helping B.C. achieve its five great goals, which are to make British Columbia the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent; to lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness; to build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities or special needs, children at risk and seniors; to lead the world in sustainable environmental management with the best air and water quality and the best fisheries management; and to create more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada.

J. Bailey: Those of us working in the arts and experiencing the day-to-day joy and excitement know that arts help create connections and assist in building stronger communities, contribute to our economic strength and foster employment. We are also well aware that the arts stimulate discussion and creative thinking and promote health and well-being.

Lori and I could roll out study after study that support these points, but rather than do so, we have come today to respectfully ask you to take a leadership role. Speak to your colleagues about the importance of the arts in their communities and the importance and possibilities of increased core funding to our sector, and take our message to the Minister of Finance, to Minister Stan Hagen and to Premier Gordon Campbell. We are asking you to help them understand how investment in the arts through the British Columbia Arts Council will help British Columbia achieve its five great goals.

The British Columbia Arts Council is the only program that delivers sustainable, long-term funding to the arts sector. We are requesting, as we've done in the past several years, an increase of $18 million, bringing funding up to $32 million, closer to the national average. This increase will allow our provincial arts organizations to better plan for the future, develop essential organizational capacity, gain some much-needed financial stability and grow into strong, fiscally secure, sustainable arts organizations.

L. Marchand: This much-needed increase to our portfolio will assist arts organizations throughout B.C. to have the critical core funds to properly research and care for their collections and facilities, continue to connect with their audiences and do what we do best — work with our communities in bringing the arts to life in this great province.

J. Bailey: The province of British Columbia recently forecast a provincial surplus four times higher than originally estimated — $1.6 billion, up from the projected $400 million. The future continues to look very promising, with growth expected to become even stronger in the next few years leading up to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

British Columbia's arts and cultural sector contributes significantly to the economic strength and employment opportunities in this province. This much-needed injection of funds will assist our industry to keep pace.

L. Marchand: Both Jann and I have worked, as we indicated in our introduction, for several national service organizations. Therefore, we are well aware that government spending per capita on arts and culture in British Columbia is below average. At $14.2 million, the B.C. Arts Council has one of the lowest budgets of any provincial arts council in Canada.

Provincial government funding in British Columbia from all sources makes up an average of 7 percent of the operating budgets of performing arts organizations. This is the lowest in Canada. The cost of increasing the B.C. Arts Council's budget to $32 million would amount to barely more than 1 percent of the projected provincial surplus. We are asking for an increase to our core funding through B.C. Arts Council, which will enable us to better compete with our provincial colleagues from across the country.

J. Bailey: British Columbians appreciate and value cultural goods and services. They spent $3.1 billion on cultural goods and services in 2003 — 3.3 percent of total consumer spending. B.C. consumer spending on culture per capita is 11 percent higher than the national average, greater than any other province except Alberta. It is obvious from these statistics that your constituents in many regions throughout B.C. use and value the myriad cultural products produced.

Lori and I are here today to ask you now to support in a more significant way the producers — the galleries, museums, theatres, symphonies, arts councils and artists — by breathing financial life into the arts in B.C.

L. Marchand: Jann and I have both seen a dramatic change in this city over the last 25 years. It no longer has a resource-dependent, boom-and-bust economy. Both tourism and the Thompson Rivers University — developed from community college to thriving university with a significant international and first nation student population — are mainstays of the local economy.

J. Bailey: We are unique within the country, which we know from our involvement in the community-university research alliance projects. A good part of our growth and success is because our community wants us here. Major employers use us in courting qualified individuals to fill their management positions. We have strong membership and subscriber bases, good support from our corporate partners, and our city is exemplary in their support.

L. Marchand: We provide the infrastructure for a thriving cultural community with a 150-kilometre radius, a nationally rated art gallery, a beautiful 700-seat theatre, as well as 150-seat flex space, a box office and trained personnel available to the entire community. This also means that when movie productions roll into town — which they seem to do, bringing with them stars like Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Harrison Ford — we have the trained personnel and the carpentry and wardrobe shops here to accommodate them.

All of this has to do with sustainability — sustainability in which the B.C. Arts Council is a significant partner. But the contribution is not keeping up with growing demands. As an example, the cost of a flight between here and Vancouver when I started eight years ago was about $120. It's now $400.

This major increase is critical to us since, as a professional theatre, 75 percent of our cast have to be members of Canadian Actors Equity Association. We currently have four members who live in Kamloops. I

I'd also like to mention the emerging artists who live and create their own work in the community. We can help and do help everywhere we can, but when 50 percent of the applications to the B.C. Arts Councils are declined because of lack of funding, where are the growth opportunities for these young artists? You can't take from the operating companies, because that just destabilizes the infrastructure on which everyone relies.

The answer is new money and increased investment, both to help address growth and development in established companies and opportunities for these emerging artists who will be the voice of the future.

We are miracle workers that turn one investment into multiples. The city of Vancouver has determined that every dollar invested in the arts leverages $11.50 from other sources. We work with the city. We work with the school district, and our school district encompasses all the outlying areas here. We work with all arts organizations, large and small, to serve our mandates within this region.

Please assist us with an increased investment to the B.C. Arts Council to continue our work in this regard. Thank you for the Arts Now programs and for the B.C. arts renaissance fund. These are valuable contributions for significant projects, but it is the sustainability provided through operating funding from the B.C. Arts Council that is so critical to our continued health.

J. Bailey: We are asking you to demonstrate your political leadership and assist cultural development in this great province. It is time for bold decision-making that will transform the cultural landscape of British Columbia, ensuring our place as one of the most dynamic and creative on earth.

The federal external advisory committee's report on cities and communities, commissioned by the Harper government and chaired by former B.C. Premier Mike Harcourt, is a blueprint for building a nation recognized as a global player on the foundation of strong communities. It outlines four key dimensions in creating sustainable communities: economic, environmental, social and cultural.

The report states: "Cultural sustainability ties together the other three dimensions and is essential to community success." In short: "Canadian communities need to sustain culture to achieve vibrant, secure and sustainable cities and communities." The committee's report recognizes that culture is often given short shrift and is sometimes seen as a frill or a luxury, and it feels this needs to be redressed. This can only be rectified by our political leaders, who look at the big picture.

We would like to end with a quote from the Speech from the Throne, province of British Columbia, February 2006. "The new world is truly a global economy driven by information, ideas and discoveries. It is a creative economy where art and culture are the building blocks of innovation, invention and understanding."

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, ladies. We appreciate that. I gave you some extra time so that you could finish up.

J. Bailey: We actually timed it. It was right on the mark. We were probably a little nervous and speaking a bit slower, stumbling a bit more.

B. Bennett (Chair): No, that's fine. The arts community across the province has presented to us almost everywhere we've been with a very strong message.

It's interesting that the arts community always brings its own cheering section, too, to all the different meetings.

B. Bennett (Chair): Our next witness is the Kamloops Society for Community Living, Mona Murray.

M. Murray: Firstly, I'd like to thank the provincial government and the committee members for taking this process for public input on the budget considerations. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for all of us.

I think you've each got a copy of the submission. My name is Mona Murray, and I am the president of the board of directors for the Kamloops Society for Community Living. However, firstly and foremost, both Chris and I are parents of a developmentally disabled daughter who has just turned 32 years of age.

I would like to address the committee on the value to be gained by every British Columbian by rethinking the manner in which we as citizens include adult disabled persons in every aspect of our communities — educational, employment, social and home-ownership.

There is no doubt that we have made great progress since the transition from institutional living to independent or semi-supported living arrangements for disabled persons. I believe that all of society has benefited from the social values gained by recognizing these persons as members of our community in terms of where they live. However, there is still much work to be done to further include disabled persons into our workplace, social situations and post-secondary educational settings.

These are items that all adults seek in terms of lifelong fulfilment, and we need to understand that disabled persons have the same goals and aspirations. If they are not able to do all things in the same manner as the majority of adults, we know that they are capable of doing some things that would both value them as

individuals by adding value to our community and by becoming productive and contributing citizens with jobs, homes and a social life.

The government's decision to set up a new Crown corporation to deal with disabled persons was a wonderful start to this process. Community Living B.C. certainly has the correct intention to work with parents and families to provide as much support as possible for disabled persons to live independently, work and play to the best of their abilities.

Although the framework is now in place, it is somewhat discouraging to parents that there is now a lack of funding for supporting persons as they move towards housing, work, education and social inclusion.

My past business life included a 25-year career in real estate and property management, including residential, rental and condominium properties. I know from firsthand experience that the housing available for the shelter amount given to a single individual disabled person is nowhere near adequate to provide safe and accessible housing.

It is likely that many of you would not let your son or daughter live in properties that would fall in the range of $400 to $450 per month. The government needs to consider a substantial increase to the monthly shelter allowance to a more realistic figure of $600 to $700 per month.

Many disabled individuals would like to own their own homes. Certainly, if a home could be purchased without the burden of a large mortgage, then monthly disability pension plus some employment would be sufficient to pay strata fees, property taxes and insurance.

There is no doubt in my mind that there's a financial benefit to set up a housing cooperative for persons with a disability. This could take the form of a non-profit society governing a variety of housing units, for a co-op model whereby the disabled individual could live where they wanted to for as long as they wanted as the owner.

The goal of owning your own home gives every person the incentive to be employed. Many persons with a disability want to be employed, not just for financial reasons but to feel included, as all others, and to feel a sense of purpose in life.

Employment of some form is possible for many disabled individuals, but some initial assistance is required, such as funding support workers and offering incentives for employers for initial startup. Once a person is gainfully employed and the employer recognizes the benefit of an employee who will likely remain long term and be loyal and hard-working, both parties will benefit. In today's employment market, where good employees are hard to find and retain, this could be the right time for disabled persons to move into employment situations, provided that sufficient upfront support can be offered.

Post-secondary education should be available for persons with a disability, not just some specialized courses but with a full curriculum, with a disabled person doing what they can with support from fellow classmates and peers. Alberta has successfully expanded their post-secondary system to include persons with a disability in all courses, to the benefit of the disabled person and other students.

B.C. needs to look at opportunities to include disabled persons in all forms of post-secondary education, even trades and apprenticeship programs for trades. With the current shortage in trades and the tourism-hospitality industry, it again seems like the right time to consider disabled persons for additional education and training.

As members of the Kamloops Society for Community Living, we'd like you to see disabled persons as individuals with varying abilities, not disabilities, and to believe in the philosophy that we are only as good as we treat those less able than ourselves and that if you extend a helping hand, you will be rewarded with a positive outcome.

We have made ten recommendations for budget consideration. First would be to increase the shelter allowance for persons on a disability pension to an amount that would allow for better rental choices and perhaps home-ownership choices.

There is a current incentive offered of a hundred dollars per month for a person with a disability, provided they do about 20 hours a month of volunteer work, but there's a waiting list for the hundred dollars. In some cases some individuals have been waiting five years to get the extra hundred dollars. Once you're on the list and you're getting it, you don't get off. Our recommendation would be to eliminate the waiting list.

Increase funding for individuals who wish to become employed or to continue their education by providing some initial support. It is conceivable that the disabled person will eventually be employed. Some of them could in fact be self-employed. That's a possibility as well.

Increase the amount that disabled persons can earn on a monthly basis from the current $500 per month to $1,000 per month. This would allow disabled persons to work towards purchasing a home of their own.

Initiate an incentive program for profit and non-profit societies offering services to persons with a disability, whereby those producing results will achieve continued or additional funding so that there is an accountability process. I mean by that statement that if the government spends funds in a certain area, then certainly some results can be achieved.

Consider funding the personal plans prepared by families for their disabled sons or daughters. If families can provide the solutions in a cost-effective manner, consider their requests seriously.

Consider offering incentives to employers who employ disabled persons on a permanent basis, regardless of the number of hours worked per month.

Consider offering incentives for home-ownership by persons with a disability, such as waiver of the property purchase tax.

Consider offering incentives for real estate developers who include 5 or 10 percent of their new project

as set aside for specialized housing for disabled persons, and perhaps some tax considerations.

Consider housing options that are for individuals rather than one entire building being set aside for assisted living. Consider that a better community will be created if there is a mix of individuals in a housing project. I think the thrust of what we're trying to say is that individuals want to live where they want to live. They don't want to be told that that's the building they have to live in. We'd like to see them living in homes of their choice.

I'm more on the economic side. Jenny is more adept at the social policy. In my community the notion of a group of disabled individuals pooling their rental income for a proposal such as this would be absolutely groundbreaking. I'm wondering what is prohibiting that from happening now. This sounds like one of those good ideas that should be happening. Why is it not happening?

M. Murray: It is. Fortunately, our daughter is involved in one of those. We are involved in a housing co-op with two other families, so we have three developmentally disabled adults living, with a fourth unit with a caregiver in it. So we have pooled our resources, and we're fortunate.

We don't have enough money for other support for our daughter, though. All of that money is going to the co-op to house her. We need some support for other areas. But we know many families who don't have what we have. We're one of the fortunate ones. There should be many more of those models out there like that.

M. Murray: Some of it is the funding. As I say, people have applied through Community Living B.C. — parents and families — for the individual funding, only to be told that there is no more funding available. They're on a wait-list, as we are, for extra funding.

The interesting thing about this is when you look at the numbers. If our daughter had been put into a group home scenario, which she did not want to do and never wanted to do, as taxpayers that would be costing us $80,000 to $100,000 a year for her for 24-7 care. She doesn't need 24-7 care. For substantially less than that she could have a very full, happy life.

She gets $10,000 on a disability pension and another $14,000 from Community Living for housing funding. She lives on that, but that is a far cry from the $80,000 to $100,000. So there are benefits.

R. Hawes: Thank you for the presentation. There are some excellent, excellent ideas in here.

I have two questions, sort of along the line of what John was asking. Have you talked to the municipality at all in terms of, for example, offering incentives to real estate developers? Have you talked to the municipality to see if they are also interested in assisting, whether it be density bonusing or…?

M. Murray: Yup. We are working with the city of Kamloops, which has been excellent. We do have a new housing project, a market housing project that is soon to be marketed with a number of units that we will be involved in. There are certainly some tax breaks that have been given in that regard. So yes, we're pursuing every avenue available.

R. Hawes: My other question isn't on your list, actually. I am very familiar with some people who have developmental disabilities that have kind of partnered up. They want to get married. Because they want to get married, their disability payments are going to be reduced.

M. Murray: That's the whole point of what I'm trying to say. Don't penalize people because they want to get ahead and live like the rest of us. My daughter wants to go to work, but if she makes more than $500 a month, it gets deducted. So you think: what's the incentive here? Let her do her best. She wants to become a responsible citizen like everyone else.

J. Kwan: Thanks very much. Following on the question around the wait-list. You mentioned the wait-list and that your daughter is one of the lucky ones to be able to access it. Do you have any sense of what the wait-list is looking like here for the Kamloops community?

Secondary to that question, in terms of a co-op program, would an equity co-op housing program work? That would be for home-ownership, and then the ceiling when you sell it would be capped at 10 percent to 20 percent more than what you actually paid for it, to keep the cost low over time.

M. Murray: I think that's an excellent idea. Just don't make it a co-op all in one place, on one block. It has to be a co-op that consists of units throughout the

community. It might be a mobile home in Barnhartvale, as one. People want to live where they want to live, and we'd like to help them achieve that.

M. Murray: I'm not sure what the wait-list is. I just know that we know of many people still waiting, and there are more coming.

J. Kwan: Is it possible for you to find out for this committee at a later time and to submit that information?

M. Murray: I could ask that question. I want to say that we've had excellent results working with the local Community Living B.C. office, so I could certainly try and find that out. They're open to these ideas too.

J. Kwan: That would be great. I'd be interested in getting a sense of the $100-per-month wait-list for the volunteer component. I actually have that issue in my riding as well. Just to get a fuller sense of what's going on across the province would be very useful and helpful.

B. Bennett (Chair): Folks, thank you so much for coming in today to present to us. We do appreciate it.

Do we have the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kamloops division, here? Douglas Sage. In the event you haven't heard my little speech about timing, we try to keep the presentations to ten minutes. If you're getting close to ten minutes, I'll give you a signal and let you know. And we have five minutes left for questions after that.

D. Sage: I'll know when my time will be up, because you'll be nodding off. I'll be ready then. I imagine you're all pretty tired by now, so I will keep my remarks brief.

I did try to bribe you a little bit with some ballpoint pens. If you'll notice, on those pens there is some artwork by Vincent Van Gogh.

It's fitting to follow the arts council and the previous speakers, because we have many of the same issues that they do. We applied for an arts council grant and were denied, and I clearly understand the reasons why now. They just don't have the money to give.

Vincent van Gogh, of course, was a famous artist with a mental illness. That's the reason why that pen is there.

I'll keep my remarks brief. I know that the theme for your budget consultations is environment. How does mental health fit with environment? We interpret environment in a broad sense, and for us, it certainly includes the social and living conditions as part of the environment definition.

What I want to do is give you a couple of quick overviews. I imagine that mental health is not the most exciting topic that you'll deal with. Many of you have heard these kinds of things before, so I don't want to belabour the point. But I do want to give a little context as to why you'll probably hear from my colleagues in the CMHAs in various communities that you go to.

How much are you aware of the length and extent of mental illness in B.C.? Are any of you familiar with the prevalence?

I'm sure you hear about the statistics. One in four people in B.C. will have a diagnosed mental illness. That means that about the same number of people that have a chronic heart condition or a chronic thyroid condition…. That's the amount of people that have a mental illness.

These things are kept private and secret because of the stigma that's involved. CMHA is embarking on a major effort to try to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.

Another thing you may not know about is that 21 percent of individuals with mental disorders need help but don't ask for it. A significant but unknown percentage of the population has a mental illness, but it's not diagnosed, so it's not counted.

The estimated annual cost of mental illness for the Canadian business community is about $10 billion in lost productive time and other associated costs. Some 86 percent of the hospital admissions for mental illness don't happen in a mental health facility. They happen in just your local hospital, which means beds that you would have thought would be treating other kinds of illnesses are being tied up by mental health clients.

About 60 percent of inmates in your jails have a mental illness. Probably a little more than half of the patients that your family doctors are seeing in their offices have a mental illness. I can tell you these things as a reason to give you some incentive to pay attention to the costs of mental illness that are hidden and are buried in all these other departments and other costs.

My pitch is to try to help the government come to some different perspectives on how to integrate and tie services together in order to save those resources and make them go where you intended them to go in the first place.

You might be interested to know, for example, that about a quarter of all the deaths of people between the ages of 16 and 24 are suicides, and a lot of those people have significant mental illness. We're seeing mental illness grow rapidly in the youth population.

The handout gives you a summary of mental health and addictions issues in British Columbia. This was put together by UBC, and it was based on medical statistics right out of the hospital systems.

You can see that out of the 14 mental illnesses and areas addressed, B.C. ranks number one in nine of the 14. There will be critics who will say: "Why is B.C. doing so badly, if we're number one in nine of the 14 areas?" I think it's important to point out that it's a sign that B.C. is doing extremely well. It means that B.C. is a place where people can come forward and identify themselves as having a problem.

It's easier to get some service in B.C. Certainly, B.C. is spending more money on mental health than any other province per capita. I think this is a reason to celebrate what the health authorities are doing and what the Ministry of Children and Family Development is doing. These kinds of numbers show that B.C. is probably ahead of the pack.

Typically, these kinds of numbers are seen as a failure. "If we've got more of this bad thing, then it must be bad." What it really means is that the prevalence, or the incidence, of mental illness is probably the same across the country — there's no reason to suspect that B.C. would have a higher degree of illness — but we have a higher degree of people coming forward.

I guess that's the context I wanted to talk to you about. The heart of the matter is probably a little bit too detailed for this kind of forum. Mental illness isn't currently seen as an open societal kind of conversation yet. It's still something that we all hide or we don't talk about openly. It's not seen as the responsibility of all of us. It's seen as something that the health authorities have to take care of or that it's up to government, somehow, to do this.

We'd like to make sure we're recommending to you some avenues that involve more players and that get the community more involved. You heard from our previous speakers, I think, pretty much the same message in a different way.

We'd like to see more integrated services that are specifically designed to help people with a mental illness. The previous speakers talked about the $500-a-month earning ability. People with a mental illness don't get that opportunity. They have that right, but if they have a chronic illness that flares up, they're not going to be able to do that. The rules are so inflexible they can't make up that lost income up the road. They're more likely to lose their jobs because of their mental illness, and it's harder to find a job.

The way that the structure of rent supports happen is that it's intended for people to share accommodations. People with mental illness have a hard time with that. Again, some flexibility for that type of disability would be very helpful. Specifically, it would be good to see some more investment in housing aimed at the homeless and those at risk of homelessness. A lot of those people have mental illness.

Establish working groups that address the barriers that the mentally ill live with. CMHA would be happy to participate in those kinds of things.

We would like to see a fund created for non-profit societies to make application to that would give us a chance to pilot some of these flexible projects at a really low cost to the government, which would demonstrate savings. The idea of the program would be to show you how we could save you money. A small investment produces that outcome.

We would like to see some change in the regulations, in income support and other departments, that inhibit some of our people from getting what they need. I have two individuals going in for surgery this week. Their meal allowance is $4 per meal, based on the regulations.

J. Horgan: Douglas, one of the challenges the MLAs and Members of Parliament face is that quite often people with mental illness in our communities see us as a last resort. They've tried other agencies and outlets, and they end up coming to us, hopeful that we can direct them and redirect them.

I've only been doing this for a short while, since the last election, but I think the biggest challenge we have in our communities — whether we be rural, urban or suburban — are mental health issues. We can't hear enough of it, so I commend you for coming and thank you very much for doing so.

The specific question I'd like to ask in terms of how we can advise the Minister of Finance is on this notion of a fund for non-profit societies to access, you said for pilot projects. Can you expand on what those types of projects would look like and how large a fund you might recommend?

D. Sage: The sky's the limit on the amount, especially if you're going to give it to me.

Seriously, I used to work in government, so I'm a big fan of "Let's start small and do it right." If that works, then expand it.

We participated in a pilot project last year that helped homeless people get off and stay off the street, and our success rate was exceptional. This was sort of leftover funds, one-time funding. "Oh, let's spend it on this and see if it works." It worked so well that you folks are funding all 14 of those pilot projects again this year because you saw that it saved you money. That's one example that has already worked.

A lot of our clients can't access income support the way that the regular population does because they have learning disabilities. They have cognitive disabilities. They don't understand. They get frustrated and angry. They treat the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance people badly, and then, of course, those folks can't really help our clients.

What we've found is that if one of our staff members makes those calls, the answers and the questions get solved very, very quickly. Things move ahead much better. We're certainly not funded to do that, but an organization such as ours could carry out that role, could be that advocate, if we had the funding to do it. It would make your jobs in government much easier. That's one small area.

I have a fellow who went for four months trying to get dentures. He's got a severe health problem, and he needs to have proper nutrition. He couldn't get dentures because he couldn't get through to the MEIA people what his needs were, and how he was approaching made it very hard for them to help him.

These aren't villains I'm talking about in government. These are people who work hard and do the best they can. They often get treated very badly. But when someone like me stepped in, he got permission for his dentures 30 days later.

I think that's an important thing to note. It's not about a government that tries to put in obstacles and barriers, but they're there, and they're there to a higher degree for people with mental illness.

The amount of money? I don't know, but sizeable enough that several communities could suggest different ideas and try them out. And if they work, hallelujah. Let's save that money in every community.

J. Kwan: In your presentation you mentioned that some 60 percent of the people in jails are suffering from mental illness. I've heard it from different places as well. Jails have essentially become homes, if you will, for people suffering with mental illness, and because of the lack of supports outside of that system, that's where people are landing.

I'm wondering whether or not you can shed some light on that issue. In the jail system itself, what sort of mental health support is there? Is there any assessment work being done to assist the people as they exit the system — many of whom, by the way, are constituents in my riding — to hopefully provide supports to them so that they don't end up being in that revolving door?

D. Sage: It's a difficult question to answer honestly. I remember I told you I worked in government, so if I look like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, you'll have to stop me, and I'll start again.

It's not an easy issue for prisons to deal with. They do a lot. Some of what they do is not effective, but it's not because they don't try. Any kind of program or approach has to have a willing participant in it. If the inmate is not a willing participant, they're not gaining much from it. It's very easy to point a finger at a prison system or at some other level of government and say that there's more they could be doing. Yes, sometimes that's true, but often it's not.

I think that organizations like CMHA have to step up to the plate and help some of those people as they adjust and come out of a prison setting, where it's very structured and very easy for them to live, into a society that is very difficult for them to live in. They have much more acceptance in jail than they do on the street. The issues are complex, and the needs of the individuals are very complex. There can't be a one-size-fits-all solution to that.

Certainly, the recidivism rate would tell me that this would be another good pilot project, another good avenue to see. Is there something that an organization could do? It might not be the CMHA; it might be a different type of non-profit. But there might be some way to assist with the recidivism rate and with the complex series of barriers, again, that people with mental illness face when they come out of jail.

I don't know if I answered your question completely, because it's really very complex.

B. Bennett (Chair): Douglas, thank you very, very much. That was quite interesting.

F. Murray: I hope you'll bear with me, because in order to shorten this to the allotted time, I'd prefer to read from my submission. You have copies.

The BCGEU represents more than 65,000 women and men who work in a wide variety of occupations in more than 550 bargaining units throughout the province. We represent provincial government employees, such as child protection social workers, environmental protection officers, corrections staff, forest fire fighters, administrative personnel, liquor control, licensing and distribution staff. In addition our membership includes people who work in child care, health care, community social services, the financial sector, post-secondary education, first nations governments and highways maintenance.

We are B.C.'s largest union in the child care and community social services sectors, and the third-largest in the health care. Our members in the private sector provide financial services in banks and credit unions, and they work in hotels and casinos as well.

We welcome this opportunity to present our proposals for the 2008 provincial budget. I am aware that representatives of this committee received an incredibly comprehensive submission from one of our vice-presidents, Lorene Oikawa, in Mission on October 5. Today our submission will focus on a far more limited number of areas. In brief, what I would like to touch upon today are specific recommendations in the following topic areas.

Generally speaking, health care. We're going to advocate that we protect public health care and that we increase spending on community-based health care, in particular home support, residential care and mental health and addictions services. Given our aging demographics and the limited number of long-term care facilities, the government must prioritize expanded home support services.

Child care. Fund a high-quality, public, affordable and comprehensive child care system. Review current child care–related policies that create systemic and financial barriers for single parents trying to support their families. Re-establish a comprehensive and ongoing not-for-profit program that will address both the immediate housing crisis and ensure housing affordability for the homeless.

Welfare. We're going to advocate that we increase welfare rates to have a meaningful relationship to actual cost-of-living estimates and that we index welfare rates to the CPI.

An immediate, significant increase of the minimum wage. It has not been increased since 2001. A scrapping

In our view, the money is there. The B.C. economy has been booming. Economic growth and financial stability have been steady in recent years. Growth is predicted to maintain a level of 3 percent this year and 2.9 percent next year.

The economic outlook in B.C. government's quarterly report states that even though our appreciating dollar will likely have fallout for our exporting film and tourism industries, overall global demand will outweigh this and bring economic growth. In other words, the expectations are for a continued strong economic growth in B.C.

Why it should be spent. In the Ministry of Finance budget consultation paper 2008 there was an assertion that is worthy of repeating: "When times are good, it's important to use the surplus in a way that looks to the future and generates benefits for years to come." We couldn't agree more heartily.

These are supposed to be the good times. The red-hot economy has meant that wealth has been accumulating in the province. Prosperity does not erase poverty on its own. The booming economy on its own is leaving many British Columbians behind. Strong public leadership is required to realize a more equitable sharing of this province's wealth. This is the time to use B.C.'s wealth to invest in our social structure.

Health care. The BCGEU, as I said earlier, represents a good number of health care workers in many diverse areas of the province. As we recently recommended in a submission to the Conversation on Health, the provincial government should use the surplus to increase spending on community-based health care. In particular, we re-commend investment in home support, residential care, and mental health and addictions services.

Home support is an essential component of the health care continuum. It allows seniors and those with chronic conditions to live independently with dignity, in their homes. The Premier's Council on Aging and Seniors Issues recently recommended a new vision for home support services, one focused on prevention, maintaining quality of life and avoiding the high cost, financial and human, of institutional care.

At any given time in Canada, one person out of five will experience a mental disorder. There are more than 25,000 hospitalizations each year in this province for mental illness or addictions-related reasons, at a cost of $347 million. A comprehensive and fully funded mental health and addictions strategy must be a priority. I would echo the sentiments of the previous speaker on that.

Child care. The government must fund a high-quality, public, affordable and comprehensive child care system to improve upon the current inadequate patchwork quilt of services. This will take a significant investment of public resources, at the very least to restore the 2001 cuts to provincial child care spending that we've been living with unnecessarily through years of economic boom.

Child care is important, too, and it has significant benefits for children and their families. There's a great social benefit to child care. Research shows a clear economic argument in favour of child care. There is a 2-to-1 return on investments in child care coming in the forms of various long-term economic and social benefits. Society as a whole benefits from kids with strong starts, and child care and early learning play an essential role. Also, giving all moms options makes sense for women and for society as a whole, especially with forecasts of labour shortage and our commitment in B.C. to continue to push for equality in the workplace.

In preparing for tonight's presentation, I personally spoke with a young single mother of two elementary school–age children who lives in Kamloops. She's been struggling with this challenge for the last eight years. Her reaction to my search for information was to proclaim: "Where do you want me to start to list my frustrations over child care?"

Her first concern is that there is a virtual absence of licensed evening child care for parents who must work shifts. In a booming economy where it seems all employers are searching for workers, this vital sector has faced successive funding cuts to the point that it is almost impossible to recruit and retain dayshift workers, let alone any alternative shifting arrangements. A person in the situation described must search out unlicensed care for their children.

Policies around the allocation of provincial child care subsidy provide less of an allowance where her children are cared for in her home. She explained to me that the rationale provided was that when her children go to someone else's home, there is a need to compensate that person for wear and tear on their home and extra costs for utilities.

She explained to me that the going rate for child care for her two children was anywhere from $800 to $1,000 per month, depending on the caregiver. Because the subsidy is calculated on her earnings, her full-time subsidy covers only $705 per month of her $1,000 per month actual cost. If she were to earn more money, her subsidy would decrease or become nonexistent altogether.

She has a good-paying, part-time union job, but if she works full-time, she will make too much money under current policies to receive her day care subsidy, and she will lose her B.C. bonus as well.

While child support payments from the estranged spouse are not considered income for the purposes of taxation federally, provincially you have to claim all support payments in the month they are received, and that income is then used to determine if you still qualify for the day care subsidy that month.

At the time that one initially applies for the subsidy, the system requires that one must also register for the family maintenance enforcement program. In this way, the payment of spousal support is also monitored. The irony is, however, that if a spouse fails to provide support for a number of months and then starts catching up, the retroactive payments would

likely result in periodic months of a greatly reduced subsidy or ineligibility for the subsidy altogether.

The single mom and her children in this scenario suffer during the months that the spousal support has not been provided, and then they are penalized again at the end of the spectrum when there are periodic catch-up payments that sporadically increase monthly household income. In those months her day care subsidies decrease accordingly and may be eliminated altogether.

There's more explanation there about how there is less incentive for women to then pursue full-time work, because if they earn more than $2,300 in take-home pay per month, they get no subsidy at all. If they're facing a thousand-dollar bill for day care for their two children that month, that leaves them $1,300 for rent, food, clothing, dental bills, diapers, whatever. They're saying there's a disincentive for them to work full time.

The province then doesn't get their income tax. The children are left wanting for something, based on the current system. The system also tempts people to be not altogether honest in reporting their income, for fear of losing their day care spot.

On housing, the housing crisis is not isolated to the homeless. This just reiterates what we presented last week. And on the welfare issue, poverty has been a major issue in the province and is at the heart of social exclusion. This budget should significantly increase welfare rates to have a meaningful relationship to actual cost-of-living estimates and index welfare rates to the CPI.

We continue to support an immediate, significant increase of the minimum wage, a scrapping of the training wage and an indexing of the minimum wage to CPI. A full-time minimum wage should result in incomes higher than Statistics Canada's low-income cutoff.

B. Simpson: Thanks for this. The part that you have on child care…. The way you have positioned it is quite compelling, to give us that one particular case. We have had multiple submissions on this. We've asked chambers of commerce and business groups about the impact that they're seeing in terms of employee retention and some of the workforce issues.

It would be helpful to us if we had a sense of what the more macro impact is. You've raised the issue of shift workers. Do you have a sense of how many of your members would be struggling with this aspect of freeing themselves up to be able to attend work on a regular basis, or shift work in particular?

F. Murray: I think it would be difficult for me to give you an accurate guess, because demographically, we're aging in some of our sectors, as everyone is, and we're into succession planning.

In our financial and hospitality sectors there are more young women of child-bearing age. They are the women I hear from. So it depends what sector of the community we're talking about.

B. Simpson: If there's any information you could give us on that…. One of the things that I think as a committee we're curious about is that impact on the economy. Particularly, as you have indicated, we're trying to attract more youth into the labour force. We're trying to retain more women in the labour force, because we do have those critical shortages. Those are the target areas that would be susceptible to the issue of inadequate child care and inadequate child care funding.

Anything that you could do, you can submit it to us. If there's some data that you could provide to us, that would be great.

D. Hayer: Do you have some numbers for how many unlicensed day care spaces are here? What's the difference between licensed and unlicensed? Do you support unlicensed day cares too?

F. Murray: Locally, in Kamloops and in this region that the GEU actually services, we don't represent any child care workers. It's more our organizations at the coast. There is a critical shortage of licensed day care here in town. I know, because we had a forum at the university last spring on this. People try to register their children now when they're pregnant with the child to try to find a spot by the time they're three years old. That's what the waiting lists are like.

I think the primary difference between licensed and unlicensed care is the level of training and the fact that the premises are inspected and have to meet all of the health regulations, whereas an unlicensed care might be the mom next door with an unfinished basement that might provide some safety hazards — you know, the kids falling down the stairs.

F. Murray: The unlicensed day cares often go undetected, because they are usually resources that are available within the neighbourhoods.

J. Kwan: One of the issues that's emerging in the child care sector centres is around wages. In fact, retention and attraction of early childhood development workers in this field has become extremely difficult.

We were just in Cranbrook. A presentation was made for that region that there is a need for over 3,000 child care spaces and that there are only about 800 licensed child care spots available, to the point where

people are actually losing families coming into the region because they can't find child care. One of the issues that the presenters made centred around workers, the inability to get trained workers as well as losing workers into other sectors because they can't compete. The suggestion was that the wage is at about $12.50. That's the average wage.

I'm wondering: here in Kamloops do you have any sense of what the average wage is for early childhood development workers in the field? What sorts of problems…? Are you experiencing problems with retention and attraction?

F. Murray: At the child care forum we hosted last spring, that was a theme that emerged over and over again. People are saying: "I went to university. I got an early childhood educator certificate, and they want to pay me $12. I've got thousands of dollars in student loans to pay off. I need to go look into some other line of work to pay off my student loan."

It is a shame, because a lot of these people are highly skilled. I know that the child care at TRU echoed the same difficulties in retaining staff. People will get out of school and take it as a stepping stone because they know that they can find the work. But they don't stay long enough, so there is extra cost to the day care centre in training, retraining and turnover as people look to exit and go to something that will pay them a living wage.

J. Kwan: What's a competitive wage for early child development workers, then, to address this issue of retention and attraction?

F. Murray: I couldn't speak with a lot of authority on that. We don't represent them. I would say that currently in other social services sectors you've got people earning nearly $20 an hour who are working as community outreach workers — you know, providing services to homeless kids, and stuff like that. I would say that the rates would have to be competitive with that.

B. Bennett (Chair): Fairleigh, thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate it.

Our next witness is Make Children First, and I believe there are two presenters, Valerie and Vi-anne.

V. Janz: This is a great segue, because some of what we have to say is directly related to our last presenter. Thanks for having us here today. I'm speaking on behalf of the Make Children First initiative in Kamloops. We represent over 50 people working together to support the healthy development of children in the early years — zero to six.

Our coalition is a diverse, multi-stakeholder group that includes representation from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We are represented by various child care and support programs for families and children with special needs; aboriginal agencies, including rural and urban aboriginals; as well as parents and grandparents in the business community. We have a great cross-section of individuals working together with us.

Our coalition has a strategic plan. Its goals are consistent with B.C.'s strategic plan goal to make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent. Under the B.C. strategic plan, one of the action items is to ensure that children reach school ready to learn. That's really what I'm here to talk about today. I'll address some of our concerns on a global basis and then a little bit more locally.

Again reiterating a lot of previous presenters, the research is telling us that in spite of a thriving and prosperous economy in B.C., spending on social services and services for young children has decreased as a percentage of our gross provincial product. There are more children in B.C. living below the poverty line now, in 2006, than there were in 1997. My research shows that in 2006 we had 24 percent of children living below the poverty line. In 1997 it was 13 percent.

Some 25 percent of children in the province enter kindergarten with unidentified vulnerabilities. The total number of children in the province entering kindergarten with vulnerabilities has actually increased in the last three or four years. From the B.C. strategic plan website, 40 percent of adults do not have the competency for basic everyday reading.

Locally, in Kamloops, how is this impacting us? We have, locally, 20 percent of our children entering kindergarten with unidentified vulnerabilities. The number of families accessing our local food bank is increasing. That is numbers of families with children under six years old. Wait-lists for therapies and intervention services are up to one year — sometimes up to three years — for children needing service.

We have 800 children on wait-lists for child care, and we are short about a thousand spots. We don't even have space for a thousand, and then we have 800 children on wait-lists. Staffing shortages for trained early childhood educators are preventing child care centres from opening. The cost of affordable housing is well beyond the monthly allowance provided by income assistance.

So really, locally and provincially it's not a good picture for the young children. Listening to the fellow talking about the jail population, if we ever interviewed that population on what their early childhood years were, it would be interesting to see what they had to say.

We're here really talking about the budget consultation question 4, which deals with balancing the costs of health care with other needs. When it comes to programs and services for young children, we're recommending our government take a proactive or prevention approach to the budget to reduce long-term social and health costs. There's a lot of research out now saying prevention is the best medicine for long-term social and health costs.

There are three recommendations. The yellow sheet is really about the collaborative planning, equality and sustainability. With collaborative planning, you need a

systematic and integrated approach to policy development and implementation, and interministerial planning — that's provincial ministries of Education, Health, and Children and Family Development — along with the federal government.

Funding for early childhood services comes in these silos, and it's a mishmash. It's hard to tell whether it's new money or old money, or who's doing it. With the legacy 2010 provincial goals, there's a lot of money coming. But who's doing the planning? Where is it going? It's hard, as a community, to figure out where it all is. There are just too many streams; it needs to be better planned. Like I said, for this area it's not always about more money. It's certainly about the planning.

With regard to equality, provincial spending should benefit children of working and non-working families equally. There have been some great initiatives recently with StrongStart opening for non-working families, but what are the benefits to working families?

Our school system. The Ministry of Education spends, in the 2007-2008 Ministry of Education budget…. It's almost $8,000 per year of spending. Really, there should be equivalent benefits in spending for children in their early years, since we know how important this is and the impact on the rest of their life.

The third recommendation around sustainability has got to do with operational sustainability. I'm sure you've heard this throughout the province as well. Community service agencies — I'm including support services, intervention services and therapies — I believe, haven't had increases even to the inflation rate. They're really struggling, and it's not going to be long before it impacts service delivery and on the families.

The child care system, which Vi-anne will speak to more specifically. Certainly the child care system is in chaos. We really need a comprehensive child care strategy for B.C., including a system for accountability and quality assurance.

Those are my recommendations. I'm going to pass it on to Vi-anne to speak specifically around child care.

V. Zirnhelt: Good evening. I and another executive director with our group of early childhood educators talked about how the interministerial planning could start to be ramped up for a budget in the province and the building of a child care system. What we looked at was the StrongStart programs that have been so successful in their pilot years. Now they're into their second years, and they're continuing to open more.

This is wonderful. We see the beginning of a universal program coming. But what is happening now? It's actually targeting 30 percent of our families in British Columbia in that it's available for non-working families. We say that if you made that so that the other 70 percent were able to have that universal care for at least 20 hours a week, you would have the beginning of a comprehensive child care system in the province.

These are not exact figures, but I'm saying that $7.4 million would make a universal 20-hour-a-week program. That would assist for sustainability in the programs as well as be able to help raise our wages, which we're having such difficulty with.

In Kamloops…. I can only tell you that my co–executive director couldn't be here tonight because she had to go and work on the floor. One of her workers had given her notice and was leaving the program. She just asked me to share that information with you.

Currently we have two wonderful facilities that are part of the successful capital funding projects. They represent 28 spaces in one and 40 in another. Neither one of them is in a position to open because we can't find staff for them. In September of this year we had in our centre an out-of-school care program, and we were in a position to close that program for lack of staffing.

One of the questions that you asked in the previous submission was on the current wages. We have increased our parent fees in our centre to a point where currently in the city of Kamloops we have only one family that is subsidized, out of 44 families. So we are no longer servicing families that are in need. We basically have professional, double-income families that we service in our program.

The current wages. Our board of directors has struggled. As well, the other centres in Kamloops are struggling because there's a bidding war going on right now. For entry level, we're up to $14.50, which is at the 2003 level from government information that was sent out. They go up to $17.50.

B. Simpson: We are hearing this as a theme for the budget cycle this year. We heard it somewhat last year, but I think it's taken another level up this year.

We get lots of presentations for more money to be spent, more programs to be developed. As you've heard, because you've been sitting in the back there, we've had a number of presentations for money to be put in various programs.

It strikes me that in this case, one of the things I haven't heard a real succinct, cogent argument made for is the investment side or the business case component of this. What will we save as a society? What will taxpayers save if we put the money on the front end as opposed to getting the costs associated with not making that investment?

You're talking here about collaborative planning. Really, these are agencies that bear the costs of not addressing the child care issue and not putting resources into children at those early ages.

Are you aware of anybody who's actually done a business case? I know people bandy about that a dollar invested saves you $8 later and so on. That's loosey-goosey stuff. Is there a cogent business case that exists anywhere that says: "This is what you save"?

V. Janz: There are a few in the States on the long-term…. Yeah, there are a few different numbers. There are one and two, one and seven. It was called the Perry Preschool. The difficulty is following the children over a long term. It was in the States — the Perry Preschool. They followed children from an inner-city area who received early childhood services. They followed them through the lifespan and then used a cohort that didn't. I think that was the one and seven.

They're all bit loosey-goosey because it's hard to follow children over 40 years. It's hard to keep everything else the same — those environmental influences and changes in family circumstances.

Most of the early childhood research — in the sense of the long-term research out of Vancouver, Clyde Hertzman's work — is showing that the kids who are measured on the EDI in kindergarten, certainly, by grade 4…. Their grade 4 FSA results were not good.

They'll be doing those in grade 7, and that will be the best provincial picture. I believe those kids go through grade 7 this year. Really, that's because 50 percent of the kids who were vulnerable on four or five of the domains in kindergarten were failing by grade 4 or not writing their exams and failing these government standard tests. That will be the best indicator of long-term results, because you'll have those kids three times.

B. Simpson: In a cost-control, reduced-taxes world, I think it's important that we try to get as much of that data as we can. Anything you can do to help us look at it from the business case perspective then helps us rationalize it against all the other asks that we have. Thank you.

R. Hawes: Thank you for your presentation. I would be curious to know if you're seeing early childhood educators disappear into the licence-not-required field, where they're opening their own day cares at home.

V. Zirnhelt: Some of them are. Some of them are going into other fields. There were two staff that left one of our local early childhood sites, and they went into plumbing. We're really the victim of our own success, I think.

Many in the current market will work for a period of time in the field and try to pay off their student loans. They can't, so then some of them will go back and finish their degree in education or something like that, which will put them in a different wage bracket.

R. Hawes: I was just curious if you're seeing a growth in registered licence-not-required day cares here.

V. Zirnhelt: I don't know if those statistics…. The CCRR is coming. Certainly, there's a big increase in people just doing it out of their own homes.

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but British Columbia is the only province that pays a subsidy to…. I can be a personal friend and just get that. There are no requirements as to where those subsidized dollars and subsidized spaces go to. I do know that some of our families have gone into unregulated care, but there's no way of tracking that.

R. Turner: Good afternoon, sir. I actually represent a group called the Kamloops Citizens Concerned about Public Health Care. But most of our information does come out of PATCHS, a group I'm also associated with. There is considerable overlap between the two groups.

Both groups, incidentally, are voluntary organizations. We're not funded by anybody — not by any church or anybody else. Both groups are the result of experience in this area with health care that was received either by us or by loved ones.

As a result of both Marlene and me getting involved in health care issues, we've learned a tremendous amount — as have the 60 or 80 people who are our members — about issues in Kamloops. They may or may not be issues that are important all over the province. We don't know if that is the case or not. But we do know they are issues that are very important in Kamloops.

I think the first one I want to stress — and it's on the sheet we typed up for you — is the issue of advocacy, especially for old people. Through our own experiences and the experiences of our members, we are very much aware that there are a lot of old folks out there who, when the time comes for them to get their health care, are unable to speak for themselves in an effective way. Some of them suffer from dementia. Some of them suffer from all kinds of the ravages of age and time. They can't speak for themselves.

Many of them fall through the cracks. We have tremendous confidence in the doctors, nurses and other health staff, but we know from the experience of our loved ones that a lot of the old folks fall through the cracks.

We have seen people go to the hospital with one problem and not come out of the hospital. They didn't die from the problem they went in with. Marlene can comment on that further, if you like, as a result of the experience with her father. These folks need an advocate. They need someone who is with it mentally and physically and who can speak for them in an effective manner with the health care folks at our hospital.

Our hospital serves 225,000 people, according to Mr. Neuner. I think he is second in the hierarchy of the inland health authority in terms of administration. He was kind enough to give us three hours of his time a few nights ago. I think it is the hospital that serves the largest population in B.C. Vancouver is a bigger area, but there are more hospitals there.

Of those 225,000 people…. A lot of the folks, when they get old and go there and can't advocate for themselves, suffer because they don't have someone to stand in their corner, speak for them and address their needs in an articulate and meaningful way.

We are learning, too, that it is more and more the case that old folks who are in homes for the elderly need somebody to advocate for them. I think we've recently heard of events at Beacon Hill. I don't profess to know the details or the facts, but quite obviously something has gone wrong there.

The old folks there need someone who will speak for them, someone who has the time and some kind of knowledge and awareness of standards and so on to come by places like Beacon Hill, Royal Inland Hospital and advocate for those folks to make sure they get the care they deserve.

Many of these folks have paid into the system since the time they were born. They were born and raised in B.C. They built this province, and they have paid many, many dollars into the health care system. It is time for them to reap the benefits. Unfortunately, at this point in time they simply can't speak for themselves. That's our first point in regards to advocacy.

I'm just going to talk briefly about equipment and facilities, and then education. Then I want to turn the microphone over to my friend Marlene, who will talk more. She has a much more detailed and passionate understanding in terms of long-term care for older folks.

As a result of our discussion with Mr. Neuner the other night, we are aware that a lot of the equipment — the diagnostic equipment and even the operating rooms — at Royal Inland Hospital could be used more often. He uses the word "culture." We live in a culture where people want to work eight till four or eight till five. Oftentimes these rooms and this equipment are left unused.

Someone talked earlier about cost savings. I don't have facts for you, but I do know that if you can get to someone and diagnose their problem early, then it is a tremendous savings to the taxpayer and to those folks who contribute to the health care system.

The earlier the diagnosis, the earlier the remedy. The less in the way of complications, the less severe the illness becomes. There's a tremendous savings to everyone involved if that equipment is used in a timely manner. Perhaps more money needs to be spent on doing something about that culture of working, if you like….

I come from a background as a smelter man down in Trail — the day shift hours. There's nothing wrong with an afternoon shift, if the incentives are there. Maybe we need to deal with that culture more.

Mr. Neuner also made us very aware that there is going to be a need in about five years. I think he used a figure like a million jobs, and we're only graduating 600-and-some thousand people to fulfil those jobs. So jobs are going to have to be done more effectively to make up that 300-and-some-odd thousand workplace vacancies that won't be filled, certainly not by the people we graduate, because of the numbers game.

Also, there needs to be more encouragement in health care. We're all aware that in health care, if you get on these things early, you stem the spread of disease. You have someone who goes back to work much earlier and draws from WCB or various health care plans less often.

I often heard my employer's personnel officer Simon Mason complain, "Why are we paying for two teachers when we're only getting the services of one?" when one of the teachers was sick. Certainly the sooner you get to someone's health and remedy those problems, the more the school board would save. They would only have to pay one employee.

We would encourage more awareness among young people of the opportunities in the health care field — doctors and nursing and all the other specialties coming about through the technology — and even opportunities for them to get some experience through co-op programs so that some of those vacancies will be filled in the future and so that we won't be in a crisis situation five years down the road when many of today's doctors and nurses retire.

In terms of long-term care, I'm going to turn this part of our presentation over to Miss Anderson.

M. Anderson: I'm Marlene Anderson, and I won't go through the handout that I've given you, because you can read that on your own. Basically, I started PATCHS because of what happened in that handout. It stands for Positive Action Toward a Caring Health System. Based on a lot of people that come to our groups, they've had a lot of similar problems at the hospital or through other health care facilities.

We're just trying to get to the basis of what's going on there and why care isn't given. Obviously, a lot of it has to do with staffing, and they're under a lot of pressure. I'm sure you've heard that all before, as far as getting more staff. For the long term, we're concerned, obviously, about the growing elderly population that's going to be an onslaught to this situation.

There are not enough long-term health facilities out there. On the ones that are out there, I'm sad to say, I'm getting a lot of feedback from people who have a lot of problems with them. I don't know, as far as inspection goes, if there can be some sort of inspecting going on — almost like an undercover thing — so that people aren't aware that, yes, we're coming to inspect their facility, and they're all prepared and ready to do that.

They need to be inspected without them knowing, to see exactly what's going on with these places. The stories I'm hearing are just atrocious, and it's sad. If money can be spent somewhere along the line where people can go in and just see what's going on at these facilities….

We need a lot more of them. Marjorie Willoughby Snowden Hospice, for one, is just an excellent facility. I've never heard one bad word about it in Kamloops, but there are only six beds. They're in the process of adding six more right now, but we need to have who

knows how many more facilities just the same as that throughout Kamloops and the surrounding area for people who are in their last days.

We also need to have the long-term facilities set up so that they have assisted living, so that they can go in and have some care there, just so they're comfortable knowing that people are around if something happens. Then they move from there to more nursing care and extended care. They go on from there to long-term full nursing care and then on to hospice. I know there are already places like that, but there needs to be a lot more. The structure needs to be looked at and restructured. That's what I'm trying to get at. Basically, the inspection part is a big problem.

Also, the at-home health care, when people are discharged — if that could be restructured in a way that people can qualify for home care differently…. The way it is right now, it's very hard to get it. When they do get it, the nurse is kind of in and out, and that's it. Well, they can't stay at home on their own if they're only getting half an hour of care from somebody. They need maybe different people throughout the day there.

If we could get them more care at home and in their own surroundings, they wouldn't have to be left in the hospital beds costing a lot more money, so that other people who needed to get into that bed couldn't get in. That's one area that needs to be looked at, for sure.

H. Karpuk: Correction there, Mr. Chair. We're re-presenting the Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association, which is a member of the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

B. Bennett (Chair): So you're not speaking for the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

D. Tretheway: No, we're speaking on local issues with regard to Kamloops Fish and Game club.

You've got a printed presentation before you, and we'll try not to take too much time in going through it.

We would like to acknowledge the Chair's founding of the all-party outdoor caucus in the provincial Legislature. We congratulate you on that, and we'd like to see more members of the Legislature join you. We've seen a few increases along the way, but we'd like to see more.

We've been here before. In previous presentations, we've made representations with regard to what we're going to speak to today: the Forest Service rec sites, fish and wildlife management in general, and the use or misuse of the habitat conservation fund to achieve fish and wildlife management.

We're glad and grateful that the rec sites were not turfed totally out of government when the Forest Service dropped them and that they're still within government under the Ministry of Tourism, Sport and the Arts, or MOTSA.

There was a Speech from the Throne promise in 2004. I'm skipping around a little bit here — the statement of the government's promise to reinstate funding to maintain forest recreation roads and sites in the heartlands.

However, although they're still within government, there hasn't been much money spent on them. If you refer to the four photographs attached to the back of your presentation, you'll see three pictures of picnic tables in one of our local recreation sites that are in a very bad state of repair. The fourth one is the remains of a table or some sort of facility that's been trashed and thrown in the ditch.

This is typical throughout our region, and from what I've heard from people that have travelled around the province this past summer, there's a lot of that sort of downgrading of the facilities happening provincewide. Is this really the message we want to send to tourists with the slogan "The best place on earth"?

Government studies have shown — and we presented this to the panel in previous submissions — that the cost of maintaining the recreation site program…. The financial spinoff to the provincial economy of outdoor recreation is great, and we've cited one of the government studies there.

With regard to fish and wildlife management, we've had some major cuts to our fish and wildlife manager's budgets since the early mid-1900s. About 50 percent or better of the budget of the early mid-'50s has been reduced. I can tell you as a retired wildlife biologist that the effectiveness of managers of fish and wildlife has also been greatly reduced.

The enlightened management of fish and wildlife requires a scientific basis. Indeed, the present provincial government has stated that management of B.C.'s fish and wildlife will be based on science. However, in general that is not currently happening. As I've said, as a wildlife biologist I can tell you that it cannot happen until our regional biologists are once more provided adequate resources in the form of staff and budget to (1) collect the data that they need and (2) implement the proper programs based on those data. That is especially true for ungulates such as deer, moose, elk, etc. — the management of those species.

Currently, our wildlife branch staff has limited amounts of up-to-date data on ungulates because of inadequate resources, as mentioned. They do not conduct annual studies that would provide them with a good assessment of what is happening to the herds. Thus they are put in a position to only approve very conservative hunting regimes, such as limited entry hunts, or the LEH, for antlerless animals until it becomes obvious that there is a problem.

By then it is often too late. The impact on agriculture is significant, such as the case with elk in the East Kootenays — Mr. Bennett is well familiar with that — or the herd size becomes greater than the carrying capacity of its winter range and large numbers die of

The LEH program was originally initiated in 1973 to reduce the problem of large concentrations of hunters in certain areas and was intended only to be used for the harvest of species in low numbers where harvests had to be tightly controlled. Now it seems that the LEH has become an often-used substitute for the scientific management of many of our big-game species provincewide.

Further, the provincial government is on record as wanting to increase hunter numbers by 20,000 by 2014. Those numbers have declined drastically over the past 30 years, and we believe that there is a direct correlation between that decline and the increased use of LEHs, because the LEHs reduce opportunity.

If hunter numbers are to increase, then hunting opportunities will also have to increase. That can only happen by reducing the number of limited entry hunts and increasing the number of general open seasons based on sound scientific data for deer, elk and moose.

We are aware that the Ministry of Environment has hired a consultant to conduct a survey of B.C. hunters' views on the LEHs. We support that initiative and eagerly await his report, which is due this coming December.

Anecdotal evidence from hunters and ranchers locally suggests that deer populations in management 3 — that's around here — are increasing. We have heard similar reports for neighbouring regions, the Cariboo and the Okanagan. However, there are no hard data to verify those observations. That's because the managers haven't had the resources to collect the data, and they continue to rely heavily on ultra-conservative limited-entry-hunt antlerless-deer seasons. We recommend giving our managers the adequate resources now to collect the data necessary to avoid major conflicts with agriculture and/or a major die-off in the event of a severe winter.

With regard to the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, that fund was created to support projects that benefited wildlife and fisheries but were beyond the responsibility of government to fund. The Habitat Conservation Trust Fund results from a voluntary surcharge on hunting and angling licences. It is not a surcharge that was imposed on us by government. During the 1970s the B.C. Wildlife Federation lobbied the provincial government to implement such a surcharge on our licences. Finally, in 1980 the provincial Wildlife Act was rewritten to include that.

Since the fund's inception government employees have seen it mostly as a slush fund. They've attempted to withdraw money from it to fund basic ministry functions. In recent years, more and more of the operational budget for fish and wildlife is being derived from the HCTF, while less and less is from general revenue and/or basic revenue from licences.

We agree in general that the work must be done, but we do believe much of it is work that one would logically expect fish and wildlife managers to do routinely as a matter of course with funds from their base budgets. Those adequate funds no longer are provided by their political masters, so they are forced to go to the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, cap in hand.

One final point is the labour provided by the clubs in region 3. For the first nine months of this year a conservative estimate of volunteer technical and physical labour for Ministry of Environment — most of them for fisheries projects — is 400 man-hours. Our club alone can account for 300-plus man-hours of volunteer time.

Once again we realize the work is necessary, and we enjoy being involved in conservation projects. However, there can be too much of a good thing, and we believe that many of the projects that are funded via the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, and those for which we are asked to volunteer, ought to be funded from the base operational budget. During a time of financial plenty, the province should not be expected to run much of its fish and wildlife management with habitat conservation money and volunteer labour.

We therefore recommend that adequate funds from the surplus be used to fulfil the government's promise to (1) maintain the Forest Service recreation sites, roads and trail in the heartlands and (2) adequately manage our fish and wildlife resources on a scientific basis. To accomplish the latter we recommend restoring Ministry of Environment staff and budgets to at least the pre-2002 levels. And that's 30.

J. Horgan: Thank you, Don, very much for your presentation. Quite often I lampoon my colleagues for talking about their neighbourhood when we're in someone else's neighbourhood, but I have to in this instance, because it speaks to the reduction in hunters and the reduction in opportunity.

I come from the Island, and there are increasing obstacles to accessing private forest lands. Gates are going up to prohibit people coming who have come for generations — families who have come and hunted and fished in these areas. The province stocked many of the lakes that are behind these fences now. In my mind and in the minds of many of my constituents, this is a public resource and should be available to those who are licensed to harvest it.

Do you have similar issues in and around Kamloops with respect to private forest lands? I don't know if you do or not. If so, what measures do you think government should take to allow the public back on what we've always considered to be public lands?

D. Tretheway: We're quite adamant about maintaining access to Crown lands. We do lobby our local politicians, and we seem to get a sympathetic ear in that regard. But we don't have those problems like you have on Vancouver Island.

We have a few situations where some of our larger ranches have fishing lakes on their property, and they have controlled the access and now charge access fees, and that sort of thing. In those cases, our fisheries managers don't stock them anymore at public expense.

They're expected to maintain them. If they're making sure that the access is private, then the private people provide the fish.

B. Simpson: Thanks for the presentation; it's quite helpful to us. One aspect, feeding off of John's comments, is the public road or the forest service road access. I've been travelling the province as the NDP Forests critic, and that's become the major issue: how do we continue to maintain those roads, and how do we prevent some roads from being decommissioned so that you've got access for recreational users and hunters and fishers?

One of the things that's been raised is the possibility of a user fee or a permit fee for using those roads. Have you heard about that, and do you have a position on that?

D. Tretheway: I haven't heard specifically about that, but I don't think it would get too much support in this part of the world. There was some kind of public subsidization to the forest industry to produce those roads in the first place. Some of those roads do need to deactivated for conservation reasons, and we do support that.

B. Simpson: Right, but you wouldn't support a permit fee or a user fee of some kind.

There's one other thing. Maybe Hank would like say something about an experience around access that he had in East Kootenay when he went over there to hunt this year.

H. Karpuk: I've been asked to send a letter off to Bill, which I will afterwards. I've gone through the federation members in the East Kootenays. It's not a reflection on you, Bill, but the general hunting synopsis there really needs to be looked at. It's so restrictive with road closures, etc.

This past fall myself and a fellow member went down to take advantage of seniors open season for cow elk. We hunted in the area between Canal Flats and Fairmont, in that nature trust area. There's a power line that basically runs from Findlay Creek to Dutch Creek. There's only one road that you can hunt on, and that's the power line road. In some places between that road and the highway, if you hunted off that road and you shot an animal, it could be anywhere — if you were in the middle — up to two and a half, three kilometres from the road.

Not having access after shooting an animal…. There was no point, really, in shooting an animal, because if you're that far in, you can't retrieve the animal with a motorized vehicle. So what's the point in having a season?

We passed up a number of opportunities to hunt deer. When we looked at how far it was back to the vehicle, you know, what was the point? We're into the high 20s. For a person 65 and over — I don't care what kind of shape you're in — in that kind of weather, if you can't get an animal out, what's the point of shooting it? It's a recipe for a heart attack.

B. Bennett (Chair): I think that, given the demographics of our province and taking a look at the three of us here who hunt, we're not getting any younger. We're not getting any spryer. If in fact the province does want to increase the number of hunters, I think we are going to have to take a look at all of those kinds of access issues.

In the East Kootenay and elsewhere in the province the B.C. Wildlife Federation, over the past 20, 30 years, has promoted the idea of closures, and in many cases, rightly so. But things change. We've got 35,000 elk over there and 10,000 deer. Maybe there are some of those access restrictions that should be lifted. In fact, I wouldn't say maybe; I think there definitely are.

H. Karpuk: There are restrictions. I think what you need to look at as a whole…. If you're trying to increase the number of hunters, these restrictions are…. We're losing more hunters. I myself won't go back until they lift those restrictions.

B. Bennett (Chair): We're out of time, guys, but let me make one recommendation to you. The recommendations you made around the funding for the Ministry of Environment for fish and wildlife management and the recommendation you make with regard to the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund and how it's used will have more authority, I think — my personal opinion — if it also comes from the fed. It seems to me a natural kind of recommendation to come from them. So make sure they send that in as well.

D. Tretheway: You're going to be down in the lower mainland soon, I understand. I hope that they will be doing something in that regard. This evening I will be e-mailing this presentation to our new executive director.

The B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, Kamloops chapter, Matt Greenwood and Cheryl Kabloona.

C. Kabloona: Hi. Matt and I are here representing the Kamloops chapter of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, or BCSEA for short. BCSEA has its headquarters in Victoria, with chapters in eight cities throughout B.C. The aims of the organization are to

promote the understanding, development and adoption of sustainable energy, energy efficiency and conservation in B.C.

We're very pleased to have this opportunity to provide input into your decisions. Our president Guy Dauncey spoke at the Victoria hearing of this committee. Our presentation here follows the same theme as his and has been developed by our four-member steering committee after consultation with about 150 local members of our e-mail list.

First of all, I'd like to tell you about our experience hosting the first Kamloops Energy Fair in May of this year. At our energy fair we had exhibitors showing renewable power generation, insulation for the home, more efficient household appliances and hybrid vehicles. We had speakers who talked about new technologies and home-energy upgrades. Everyone that we dealt with was amazingly receptive. That's the buying public, businesses providing the products, sponsoring organizations, the city of Kamloops.

We all realize that there's a crisis in our global climate and that we must reduce our carbon footprint. Concern about the environment has gone mainstream. We're working from a grassroots level to promote environmentally responsible choices. We need you, the government, to make the higher-level, provincewide changes.

We have a number of recommendations. We won't go over all of them here, for the sake of time, but they're included in the summary that you have. We welcome questions on them as well.

Our first recommendation is a yes to carbon tax. I've read that this is being considered for B.C., and we're in full support. A carbon tax is a fair way to shift the environmental costs to those who burn fossil fuels and to motivate consumers and industry to use renewable forms of energy instead. Just last week Quebec implemented a carbon tax amounting to just under one cent on every litre of gas or diesel fuel.

We recommend that B.C. bring in a carbon tax starting with a rate of $50 per tonne of CO2, which I believe amounts to about 11 cents per litre of gas. We've all seen gas prices rise tremendously over the last few years, so I'm confident that the economy can adjust to this. We recommend using these funds as an investment for the prevention of and adaptation to climate change, including support for greenhouse gas–saving technologies, public transit expansion, and many others.

M. Greenwood: The carbon tax point leads into our support of the idea of tax-shifting generally. The one thing that almost all economists have always agreed on is that taxing things you don't want will generally cause there to be less of them while relieving of tax on the things you do want will encourage more them. There are almost countless ways that this principle could be applied to great effect in B.C. The direct carbon tax is only one of them.

For example, consider a plastic tax on excessive packaging and grocery bags. It's a proven technique for greatly reducing the amount of plastic ending up in landfills. What about levying a steep environmental fee on all those cheap, disposable batteries and simultaneously lowering or eliminating sales taxes on rechargeables — which, according to the latest numbers I could find, still enjoy only a rather dismal 10 percent or so of the total battery market? Or what about adding to the federal government's automotive feebate program with an additional charge for gas guzzlers and a rebate on the most efficient vehicles in any given class? The list goes on almost indefinitely.

Similarly, the budget should provide strong incentives for the development of environmentally responsible, renewable energy generation capacity throughout the province — but not through a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, follow Sweden's example and establish regional control of generation methods that allows for incentives and carbon-saving goals and that allows different regions the capability of choosing the method most suited for their individual area.

For example, solar hot water is great provincewide, whereas solar electricity and wind are great in the interior but not necessarily throughout the province. The coast may develop wind and wave generation. The Kootenays need micro- and macro-hydro. Some areas have biomass capability.

All renewable methods should be given incentives equally so that each region of the province can use its natural resources to the fullest, rather than emphasizing one or two industries that all regions may not be able to utilize.

We urge the government to begin taxing aviation fuel, in addition to the carbon tax, to level the field with other transportation and, further, to immediately freeze all public funding for airport expansion in the province. The simple fact is that air travel poses the single greatest threat to the climate from any single source of carbon. The amount of air travel in which a person engages is the primary determinant of how much carbon he or she is responsible for.

Frequent flyers can add hundreds of tons of emissions per year. A growing number of climate scientists are warning that the steep growth of air travel is totally incompatible with a sustainable level of GHG emissions. The trend must be reversed.

On a constructive note, several good capital costs projects might include installing electric car–charging points in the urban areas; retrofitting all public buildings to LEED compliance and upgrading the building code, in the process, to make LEED compliance basically mandatory; and the replacement of the millions of sodium street lights along highways and in cities with LED street lights, solar-powered if possible.

The technology has only recently become available, but Toronto recently unveiled a pilot project LED trial, and the results have been hugely positive. The city projects that converting its 160,000 street lights to LED could save it $6 million a year in electricity costs, reducing greenhouse gases by over 18,000 tonnes — the equivalent of removing 3,600 cars from the road. Imag-

ine the savings to the Ministry of Transportation for every street light in B.C.

Finally, while not strictly a budget matter, we'd like to point out once again that the recent Meat Inspection Act, which took effect on October 1, prohibiting the direct farm-gate sale of meat and poultry, is an unfortunate move in precisely the wrong direction. Food is one of the very largest indirect contributors to individual greenhouse gas emissions.

This act will cumulatively add tens of thousands of kilometres to the food we eat, when instead we should be doing everything we can to reduce the distance our food has to travel to get to our plates. If the government is serious about doing everything it can to reduce provincial emissions, then we urge you to please reconsider this act.

In closing, we urge you all to show courage and leadership in making the tough decisions that the struggle against climate change demands. Recognizing the pressures of short-term electoral politics, climate change above all demands long-term thinking.

The relatively recent Stern report from the U.K. — a short summary is also provided — puts the economic cost of inaction — or worse, feeble action, which lulls the public into thinking that the problem has already been solved with no particular effort on their part — at 5 percent to 20 percent of total global GDP, while strong, effective measures might cost as much as 1 percent. You do the math.

It's critical that we do the right thing now for future generations as well as ourselves. Saving the earth's livable climate is the foundation issue for everything else.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I'm wondering if you've had a chance to make this presentation to the two Kamloops MLAs, who are both cabinet ministers.

M. Greenwood: We haven't. We basically prepared this for this committee, but we'd be more than happy to present to them as well.

J. Kwan: Just a quick question on retrofitting existing buildings. Any comments on some sort of government programs that would retrofit homes for people as opposed to, or in addition to, institutions and things like that?

M. Greenwood: Yeah, absolutely. Really, anything helps. In fact, architecture is a surprisingly large component of the greenhouse gas emissions due to any particular home. Depending on how the home is designed, you can realize tremendous savings if care is taken during the design process or with the technology that goes into building it.

That's why we also suggested that in the process of upgrading any buildings, the building code itself be upgraded to make that sort of thing basically standard as opposed to an expensive extra.

Yes, incentive programs for existing home retrofits are just as important. The public buildings just may be more easily done.

B. Simpson: Thanks for the presentation. I didn't get a chance to ask this question of Guy when he presented in Victoria.

The combination of a carbon tax and tax-shifting doesn't address the issue of a just transition and the impact that a carbon tax could have on the poor and on a regional basis. Many people who live outside the lower mainland still depend on private transportation because public transportation isn't an option.

Have you done any work or has the Sustainable Energy Association done any work on what a just transition would look like? How do we address the issue of the growing disparity? How do we make sure that the carbon tax isn't punitive in adding to the burden of poverty that's already there?

M. Greenwood: Again, the carbon tax wouldn't just go into general revenue. Ideally, it would be used to fund transitions at the same time, and that could look like all sorts of things. It could fund bus passes for low-income people. It could fund the expansion of transit in general so that transit becomes more accessible, and people who might not be able to afford a car could still get around.

It's never just about taxing. That's the point of tax-shifting. It doesn't just make things more expensive. It makes the right things more expensive, and it makes the other right things cheaper so that people can find themselves guided to the alternatives that are most effective to accomplish the goals in front of us.

You could check the website too: www.bcsea.org. They have lots of policy papers and things like that there as well.

D. Hayer: What kind of an initiative do you personally take to be more environment-friendly, either in transportation or other things? I'm just wondering, because you're both presenting.

M. Greenwood: I don't, no. Basically, I try to car-pool where possible, and the bus and the train are quite good, relatively low–emission ways to travel.

C. Kabloona: I travel by plane more often than I should. I recently bought an offset, because I think that if I'm going to travel by plane, at least I can do that to mitigate the harm that I'm doing when I fly.

B. Bennett (Chair): I think as politicians we have to get a grip on how much we fly, and I'm sure that we could fly less. We had to fly to get here today. I apologize for that. I think it's a good point, and going forward we are going to have to think about exactly those kinds of things.

M. Greenwood: By the way, if anyone has some spare reading time — I know you all have tons of spare time — this is an excellent book. It's quite recent, 2007, and it's U.K.-focused.

M. Greenwood: It is called How to Live a Low-Carbon Life. It basically outlines how U.K. citizens and, by extension, any western citizen can go from 12 tonnes of carbon emission per head down to under three. The suggestions in here are some of the most practical and easy to do that I've seen. It's a really, really good read. I'd recommend it for everybody.

Thompson Rivers University, Ron Olynyk and Roger Barnsley. Gentlemen, welcome to our committee.

R. Olynyk: I'm Ron Olynyk, the board chair. This is the academic, so keeping him under ten minutes might be difficult.

B. Bennett (Chair): We may not be able to allow him to speak, in that case. [Laughter.]

R. Olynyk: We've also got it in pamphlet form, which you're just getting passed around, the presentation that we're making tonight. Dr. Barnsley will speak to that.

R. Barnsley: Thanks, Bill, and thank you to you and your committee for coming to Kamloops. We appreciate that.

Let me read into the record the presentation that we've provided for you. It really is the oral remarks I'm making this evening.

On behalf of the board of governors and the over 10,000 people in this region who are students, faculty and staff of Thompson Rivers University, I thank you for this opportunity to make the presentation here today.

When you consider that our institution directly involves the daily lives of some 12 percent of the population of Kamloops and many others in Williams Lake, imagine the impact — financial, social and cultural — that our university has on this region. Indeed, the city of Kamloops is now prospering as a true university city.

I use the term "our university" quite deliberately, because I am sure that you will recall that it was the voice of the people in this region that played an important role in bringing us to where we are today. There is no question that across our many communities people of all ages and all backgrounds truly appreciate the vision of government in responding to the need to expand the scope of post-secondary education in our province.

In creating Thompson Rivers University almost four years ago, government gave us a mandate to extend education and training to all corners of our province. In doing so, it allowed us to create the most flexible and comprehensive university in Canada today.

Nowhere else in this country can you find a university that meets the needs of such a diverse group of learners. From adult upgrading, trades, apprenticeships and job-entry training through professional diplomas, undergraduate university degrees, postgraduate specialties and master's degrees in critical fields such as environmental studies, Thompson Rivers University has the ability to contribute to every sector of our provincial economy.

Beyond this comprehensive range of programs, TRU has also integrated and connected education at all levels and created new opportunities for degree completion for journeyperson tradespeople and diploma-credentialed health care professionals. In fact, every graduate of a two-year college diploma in British Columbia and every credentialed tradesperson now has access to degree completion through TRU.

As Cariboo College and later as the University College of the Cariboo, we served the interior for over three decades. In doing so, we created professional programs such as respiratory therapy that served the needs of the entire province. Today as TRU we serve the province with many other unique programs, with the flexibility to deliver courses and programs on our campuses both here and in Williams Lake and through distance and on-line delivery with our provincial mandate as the British Columbia Centre for Open Learning.

I remind the members that in becoming TRU, we assumed responsibility for the British Columbia Open University college and have successfully completed the transition of all the programs and services to Kamloops.

It would not be an overstatement to say that what we have achieved thus far and the plans and vision we have for the future are being watched and emulated in other parts of this country and elsewhere in the world. As a comprehensive primary undergraduate teaching-focused university, TRU is a model for new universities in the 21st century.

We are a university serving many needs in our province, and by doing so, we are driving the economy of this community. We also have an obligation to engage in research and scholarship that fosters innovation and economic, social and cultural development. Not only are these activities happening here in the regional context; it's also global. International relationships and global experiences are fundamental to our university, and the implications of this are significant for both our institution and our community.

You'd be interested to know that TRU was recently successful in winning a third consecutive training contract with China Net Communications, the official telecommunications provider for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. We have been doing that training in Beijing.

Through our international arm, TRU World, we work closely with the city of Kamloops and Venture Kamloops, the economic development office, and have created new business partnerships and opportunities for them in China that add to the economic development of this province and this city. In fact, with them we are leading a delegation from here to China, which I believe leaves this weekend, to look at sister relationships and economic opportunities.

Government has clearly recognized the importance of post-secondary education in both the domestic and international context to the future of our province. As part of our provincial university system, TRU is proud of what has been achieved through the unique combination of our broad program base and our flexibility to connect credentials and deliver at a distance.

At the university we have opened the doors to new programs. Among them is our work in developing seamless transitions with the secondary school systems and in the creation of partnerships with community colleges across the province.

TRU is unique in our ability to provide transfer opportunities to college students in both university transfer and diploma and certificate programs, and through our British Columbia Centre for Open Learning we can work with colleges to expand their offerings across the region.

TRU is also committed to the creation of new partnerships and opportunities for aboriginal students and first nations communities. This is one of the key aspects of our new strategic plan, and we have already responded to government leadership in this area with a proposed major initiative to create the infrastructure and support needed for aboriginal learners to achieve success on our campus and in their own communities.

While funding for these initiatives is currently limited, we would encourage government to support initiatives that do achieve success with a commitment to ongoing funding that speaks to the importance of achieving and extending this success to aboriginal students and first nations communities for many years to come.

Education and training for all is the foundation of our economy, but as we know, there is also an inverse relationship between employment and participation in post-secondary education enrolments. Today in our vibrant provincial economy many people are choosing work over studies. Many recent high school graduates and students who were in the process at colleges and universities are choosing to stay in the workforce, to the detriment of FTE targets across the province.

In the face of this, however, I am proud to say that Thompson Rivers University has been able to maintain enrolments again this year, which I believe speaks volumes to the value that students and parents see in a comprehensive university. Students from all corners of our province are coming here to take advantage of our unique opportunities.

However, we know that this inverse relationship between jobs and participation in education is a cycle and that the cycle will be repeated. Our advice to government is that this is not the time to step back in any way from investing in our post-secondary education system and specifically in Thompson Rivers University.

During this period when, provincially, demand is exceeding capacity, we must have the means to continue building on the scope and quality of our programs to ensure that access remains open for the students of both today and tomorrow. At some point in the future more students will decide they need to enter or continue with their post-secondary education studies, and as the institution with the greatest flexibility to respond to this need, we must be prepared to respond.

Institutions must have the means to continue to grow and create new opportunities, not just for the future of individual students but for the economic future of the province as a whole. Students must also have the means to take advantage of these opportunities.

Just as we encourage government to increase their investment in post-secondary education, we would also ask government to invest in students through more scholarships and bursaries. The increased costs that we face as institutions — costs which we respectfully suggest must be recognized in our annual funding allocations — are the same costs that face students and families who want the education and training we provide.

The many benefits that TRU provides and the opportunities that we create in our communities are essential to our province. Every dollar invested in TRU has a ripple effect across the entire province, and every dollar invested in allowing students to attend our university has a ripple effect across our communities, our economy and our society.

As a member institution of the University Presidents Council, TUPC, we are also committed to investing in research and scholarship at our university. While the focus of research funding has tended to favour larger research-focused universities, I would submit that as a teaching-focused university, such investments are equally vital to the long-term prosperity of both our institution and our province.

Research that drives innovation and discovery is integral to teaching and learning, and the students of Thompson Rivers University are proving the value of such research activity in our teaching-focused environment. These students are the future of our province, and we ask government to ensure that the students, the faculty and the community of TRU are provided with the means to grow and prosper. The return on this investment is priceless.

I'd like to add, for just another minute, that what I pointed out in there is that we are a member of the six-university consortium in the province, the University Presidents Council, and they will be making a separate presentation to this committee.

One of the points was the Campus 2020 report and pointing out that it did set out standards of excellence and accessibility. We clearly support that.

It's pointed out how important Campus 2020 brought out in terms of providing resources and targets for those low-income students who are in our province and also for aboriginal students…. We want to point out how strongly we support that.

We reinforce the recommendation that TUPC would have given you this morning, where they urged the government of British Columbia to adopt the B.C. access and excellence strategy targets and to commit to the funding required to attain them. I think you will have heard that before.

The second point I would like to make is that — and we've talked about it in ours — we cannot afford to risk the quality of our programs that we've currently established in the province. They would have talked to you about inflationary pressures that we face and other ongoing needs to keep current and keep the kinds of programs we need. We want to support their recommendation that we must continue to improve the teaching and learning environments in our universities. We can't lose sight of that at this time.

The final point I would pick up is that we are very pleased with the leadership that the province is now showing in environmental sustainability and the environmental challenge we face. We want to support the provincial government in these efforts. You heard Matt Greenwood just give a very clear statement, and TRU is also committed to achieving this.

We, with TUPC, support the recommendation that we want to contribute to the provincial greenhouse gas reduction goals through initiatives to reduce the impact of campus-based activities and to deal with research that will lead us in that direction.

I went faster than I felt comfortable doing, but we want to leave time for some questions.

J. Horgan: We did hear from Don Avison this morning. I asked him this question, and he gave me an answer that I'm hopeful is going to be similar to the one that….

R. Barnsley: Oh, my goodness. Can I have time to text message him and see what it was?

J. Horgan: I'll lead you a little bit, so it'll help. You referred in your presentation to enrolment sometimes being converse to employment. Don made the case that this is something we should be conscious of, but we should still be planning for the future.

As I heard you read your presentation, I didn't think you were going in that direction. Maybe you could expand. For this region what has the economic upturn and the decline in unemployment meant to you now, and what do you see in the next five years?

R. Barnsley: Well, my sense of it, John, is that we went through periods of continued growth. We've seen it stabilize over the last couple of years, where we are basically at a flat level domestically. Interestingly, our international students continue to grow because there's a large market out there.

You know, this region has primarily been a resource-based economy for many, many years. We know the cyclical nature of resource-based economies, so even though you see a lot of infrastructure development around here, there's still a lot of mining and forestry and agriculture and the tourist industry. Those things are quite vibrant, but we know that those kinds of industries are sensitive to the economic situation.

I hope we never see another downturn, but I've been around awhile, and I've seen the cycles. I've been in university life for 35 years, and I've watched as those downturns happen. A number of people have chosen to step out for a while, probably to mitigate debt, to get the money so they can go back, and we expect them to come back.

All I'm saying is that I think we need to take this time of non-growth, at least at TRU and throughout the system, as a chance to improve quality and make sure that we continue to build the kind of institutions we want, given their importance to individuals and the provincial economy. Then, when we will inevitably, I think, get that growth again, we should be prepared for it.

D. Hayer: My question is about transferring credits from one university to another. Do you find many people are taking the first two years of courses here and then transferring to other universities? Or are they doing the reverse — taking courses in colleges and other universities and coming here to get their final degree designation?

R. Barnsley: The history of British Columbia has gone through the development of the community colleges and then the university colleges. They were largely focused on transfer to the established universities of the time. As a result of that, British Columbia built up what is probably the world's best transfer system — very interesting that that happened.

We've noted over the years that our number of transfer students continues to diminish and our number of transferring-in students continues to grow. With the becoming of TRU, we have been given a provincial mandate to provide transfer opportunities for students in community colleges throughout the province, both through our open learning and through our bridged and laddered programs. We're seeing a growth in

transfer students after two years, and we're seeing far fewer of our students transfer out after two years.

R. Olynyk: That's probably one of the main reasons why our enrolment has been stable. The retention has been much better, and that's been since we became a university, without a shadow of a doubt.

B. Bennett (Chair): Gentlemen, I'm sorry that we're out of time here. We did have more questions, but we are really running behind.

R. Barnsley: We appreciate that. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you.

J. Arner: You all have the handout. That's just talking about who we are as child care resource and referral, who uses our services and basically pointing out some value of our program so that we can have that sustained funding.

The CCRR services provide an essential cornerstone to the infrastructure which supports the child care system. There are many players in the child care system, which range from child care providers to families to children. We are one of those players. We support that child care system.

All the services we offer have one underpinning value or common factor, and that is to help support a system that will provide quality child care and quality early learning experiences for children. That is our mandate, and our services follow in line with that. We are a funded program, of course, with the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

This past year child care has been a hot issue and in the news quite a bit. CCRR was in the news quite a bit as well. There was some shifting of money and some cutting of money, and I just want to thank the different levels of government within our province. The CCRR is still here and hoping we will be here for many more years to come. We are an integral part of that child care system.

We have services that provide support to families and children. We believe that social support for families and children is important. There's a growing body of scientific evidence that points to the importance of the early years, zero to five. I'm following TRU, who were talking about post-education, and I'm talking about early learning education for our children that has the quality and the nurturing quality to it.

We know that between zero and five the brain is developing rapidly. It's the only organ that's not fully developed when children are born, so early experiences have a very big impact. The evidence is showing that children who have good-quality early learning experiences will be the children that go on to succeed in high school and in post-secondary education.

We offer training workshops for parents. We are a hub. It's a word that's been tossed around a bit. We've been doing that for years, and you're probably going to hear that more. We are a hub of services.

For parents, it's parenting courses. We have a contract to do the Nobody's Perfect parenting. We do childhood development consultation with parents and workshops for parents. We provide an interactive centre, which is a social support for parents, care providers and day cares that want to come and be part of an interactive group. The centre is set up for early learning experiences with all the different curriculum areas that you would see in any quality preschooler, day care or child care environment.

On the other side of that, we provide support for child care providers. We provide the training so that individuals who want to provide child care in their homes are then able to do that, and we give them consultation and support throughout that process.

We partner with other agencies out in the community — part of that whole hub attitude — so that we can work together as a community and provide the best we can to see that happen and to ensure quality child care.

We also provide and coordinate workshops and training for care providers. In our community we see an overwhelming amount of licensed family child care providers and group day care providers, and then we're also working with other individuals to become registered licence-not-required — all with the main focus of having some quality child care.

We work hard in that regard to continue that service. We want to be storefront. We want to be accessible to the public.

Some of the other services that we provide are subsidy support. We have the subsidy applications. We also receive the training so that we can help day care providers with questions and support that they might need when they have families. We also have the families coming in looking for the applications and also for support in completing them. We also help them problem-solve through any little glitches that they may be experiencing.

We coordinate other workshops. There's a list of them. In part of the hub we have infant massage, conflict resolution, play-and-learn — so development-type workshops. We coordinate first aid, workshops for parents and workshops for the day care providers.

I think that's all. I wanted to keep it fairly shortand concise but wanted to get it all in. Are there any questions?

R. Hawes: Thanks for your presentation, Janis. I asked this question earlier, and they suggested you probably would know better. We've heard a lot about

some of the early childhood educators. Their wages are driving them out of that field.

I'm curious to know if you are experiencing early childhood educators that are going into LNR, licence-not-required, facilities and running their own because the hourly rate, if you're running your own business, can be a little bit higher. You're working out of your house. The overheads are not the same.

J. Arner: We do experience that. Definitely, I have to agree that that is part of the system that we need to address in order to keep a sustainable child care system. So that is looking at the early childhood education, their wages, to keep them wanting to come back and do that very important work.

We do have calls from individuals that are leaving licensed groups so that they can open up licensed family child care in their own home and have, I guess, the control of numbers of children.

In some cases they may have child care issues of their own, where they're having to find child care, which is really, really difficult to find right now. There are wait-lists all over the place. Early childhood educators are quite often parents themselves, so they face the same challenges. And of course, the pay probably isn't matching what the costs are for child care for themselves, if they're a parent. So we do get that.

We also get parents that are frustrated. There's an economic concern that parents aren't able to rejoin the workforce because they're not finding the child care. Particularly, if they've got two or three children, they're going to find it really difficult to be able to afford it, but also to find the space. We hear stories about that on a daily basis.

They're being creative. Some are actually pursuing the licensed family child care so that they can be home with their child and then take other children in.

J. Arner: We have some, but the majority of our day care providers that we're supporting are licensed family child care providers. Then, of course, we have the licensed group that are also on our program.

We do get the licence-not-required, but they actually have to become registered with us if they're going to be referred out to families seeking child care. There is a criteria and an application process that we would take them through.

J. Kwan: I guess, first of all, that congratulations are in order because I think you're one of the few CCRRs that survived the chopping block.

My question is: in your region here, can you shed some light on what the child care situation is like? You mentioned wait-lists. How long is the wait-list? How many children or families would you estimate are in need of accessible, affordable, quality child care services?

In your presentation you advised the committee what CCRRs do, but I guess my question to you is: what is it that you're asking of the government, from a budgetary point of view, that should be put in place for next year's budget? I'm not quite sure if I got that from your presentation so far.

J. Arner: I guess I was trying to point out the value of what we do and that we need to continue funding to keep the CCRRs operating and doing the work that they do. I wanted to let you know what that work was.

In our own region we probably have an average wait time, depending on the centre, ranging anywhere from 12 months to two or three years waiting time for families to find child care. When we did our survey, in all of Kamloops we maybe had four available spaces. It was ridiculous.

What is happening in day care is that we have licensed family, which can only take seven children. Of those seven children, they only can have one infant. You may get some day cares that may have a space, but they can't accommodate the age of the child from that family that's looking for child care.

J. Kwan: Can you give us a number? When you say 12 months to three years, how many children and families are we looking at? Do you have a sense of that?

J. Arner: I do, but I didn't bring those statistics with me. I apologize for that, but I can definitely get that to you.

D. Hayer: You said that you also provide distribution of subsidy applications that provide support if they need it. Do you also keep track of the number of unlicensed child care spaces in your region?

J. Arner: We have about 200 in our region that are licensed, either family and including group.

B. Bennett (Chair): Janis, thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate it. I know I have a very active child care resource and referral program where I come from in Cranbrook, and I work closely with them. I know it's a challenge.

Committee members, we did have Christina Mader on here, but I think Deborah Frolek is going to present to us instead. Deborah is with the Kamloops Child Development Society.

D. Frolek: Welcome to Kamloops. My name is Deborah Frolek. I've been the executive director of the Kamloops Child Development Society and centre since 1973.

I've provided you with a brief reference. Basically, my reference is to the announcement that was made recently of $20 million for child care providers. I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate the efforts of government on getting the $20 million out and specifically designating it for child care providers.

I guess the caveat — the precaution, I would say — is that there are many initiatives under the umbrella of child care. I just want to ensure that the money goes to child care providers and the people that are not just talking about child care but are the actual doers — the people who are providing child care, because there's a huge difference. It's really important that the targets are met for child care provision.

There are many boards and boards of directors in this province that won't have the luxury of having a $20 million fund. Many of them are supporters of the government, and they do a good job in the community. I think we need to respect them for their contributions and not overlook the struggles they have in providing child care services directly to the families and in these communities.

Again, it's really important that this money is targeted for child care provision and gets distributed as soon as possible. I was delighted to see that the announcement came with time constraints and an agenda to make sure that money gets out into the community.

An alarming precedent is in the work and in the process allowing the use of public child care funds to build and enhance private assets. Many of us have applied for capital grants, and we've had community dollars matched by government.

This is a direction that's a total shift in government policy, and allowing almost anyone to create child care spaces…. I just want to caution that it can have long-reaching consequences. We need to be careful that those assets, when they're developed in community, remain community assets governed by community boards and people that are consumers of the service.

In British Columbia our regulated — I'm looking more towards the licensed child care — providers are the only safety net we have to keep our children safe and visible. We need to be positive that any shift in government policy and spending won't deter from that and won't interfere with our ability to keep children safe and visible in the future.

Those are basically my comments. I hope I sparked some questions because I didn't take ten minutes.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much for your presentation. Would you and your agency support a universal day care or child care program here in British Columbia?

We had the makings of that when the former federal government and the current provincial government were talking about massive infusions of dollars some — it seems like — weeks ago, and then it evaporated. What would your group or your personal position be on that?

D. Frolek: I think the government has taken some great steps towards making child care affordable — specifically, the threshold for the funding that was initiated in 2005 where the child care funding threshold for parents to be eligible for subsidies moved from $24,000 to $38,000. That made many more parents qualify for the costs of their child care to be subsidized. That was a huge step, and this government hasn't done anything to touch that. I think that's probably the biggest safeguard we've had, and it has contributed greatly.

I don't think a lot of people understand that for a child under five, parents are looking at a minimum of $800 a month for child care. When we have ratios in licensed child care that I've been experiencing of four children to one staff, it equates to bringing in $3,200 a month.

If you are to pay your child care workers a decent salary and perhaps offer them $15 to $20 an hour with benefits, that means the $800 has to somehow grow to $1,200 a month to make that cost-effective. When people talk about the sustainability of child care, I think you need to be listening to the people who are actually delivering the service so that you know what the true costs are.

Many of those families do qualify for subsidy. They may pay $200 or $300 or maybe even $600, but it's based on income-testing. I have no desire to get into that. All I do know is that many more parents in the last two years are being subsidized than there were prior to 2005 when those thresholds were moved. That's probably the biggest factor we've had.

Unfortunately, with the federal transfers going into a $100-a-month bursary or whatever — child credit or cheque per child…. That has done nothing to stabilize the child care situation. It was a poor decision that does put the money in the families' pockets, so I can't be critical. As long as the money is in those pockets, then perhaps it is being spent wisely. But it certainly doesn't ensure that there is a solid, sustainable service for our most important resource, and that's our children.

D. Hayer: Sometimes I've heard of some people who are working in the child care system, and they have a couple of their own kids. They decide to maybe set up an unlicensed child care system where they can look after up to four. Some of them are actually well trained in looking after children.

Do you think those people can provide, even though they are unlicensed, good service too? Or do you think that government should stop allowing people to have unlicensed child care spaces?

D. Frolek: It's kind of a two-tailed situation, because you have those families that are affording…. They choose to take care of their children in their

home, and they are opening their homes to other children and providing a quality service.

I don't think the powers that be meant for people to have more than seven children in their home at one time. My mom came from a very large family of 21, and it's impossible to have seven of them under the age of five unless you're blessed with twins, which our family was.

There are some natural limitations that…. I think common sense should prevail. I would be reluctant to have my child in a home situation where there are seven small children, and I welcome the fact that only one of them would be an infant. I don't see, with that person being the sole caregiver, what safety net there is if there's a fire or the person suddenly takes ill or there's an accident with children. What do you do?

The second part of that is that we're putting a lot of money in supports to the private, underground kind of child care that we're fostering by opening it up to private individuals. When you consider the costs of training and the monitoring by licensing and the cost of your child care resource and referral programs and all the parenting programs that are attached, is it truly a cost saving?

The point is that it's out of the government's jurisdiction. So what safety net do we have to make sure those kids are visible and safe? The whole issue of minority children, too, when you have children with challenges…. I'm a strong proponent of and believe in social role valorization and the philosophy of normalization. If children are kept invisible, where are they integrated into community events?

Sharing a conversation with a colleague of mine just before I arrived here this evening…. She was talking about the importance of her child being integrated into the community, where the community is looking after…. "Did you see that girl on the street corner? And who is that guy? You know, they were holding hands."

This mom has a lot of safety nets in the community just because her child was in a public site, and she is having a community help to raise her child. Some of those things don't naturally occur when you've got systems that are underground.

Committee members, ladies and gentlemen, that completes the formal portion of our hearing today in Kamloops.

We now go into our open-mike segment. We're going to try and get four people in, the first of which would be Ron Tenisci, a chartered accountant.

R. Tenisci: I'd like to welcome you all back, because I see just about all of you are familiar faces for me.

I'm Ron Tenisci. I am a chartered accountant with a local firm called Tenisci Piva, chartered accountants here in Kamloops. We have mostly small business clients, and we know that they can be impacted significantly by the ups and downs of a resource-based economy, which Kamloops is. While there are always risks, such as the strength of the Canadian dollar, the local economy has been showing positive results.

You're probably aware of the fact that the CA Institute released a regional economic report early this year that looked at the Thompson-Okanagan development region, which is our region. It found that business and corporations had soared by 117 percent in the last five years, and at the same time, bankruptcies were down by 37 percent in the same five-year period.

The numbers continue to go up in 2006. We know that last year there were 9,700 new jobs in the region and 43,000 new jobs in the last five years. On a percentage basis, these are the strongest gains in the province in this region here.

Of course, people vote with their feet. In that sense, they have been voting for Kamloops and the Thompson-Okanagan region. Last year the population growth was about double the provincial average — 2.3 percent compared to 1.2 percent provincially. I don't know if that means we've got a lot of Roman Catholics in this area or what, but those are the results.

There's no doubt that our economy is doing well. As the Finance Minister said in a recent quarterly report: "B.C.'s economy is proving to be quite resilient in the face of external challenges." I've never seen the economy here in Kamloops this strong in the 30 years that I've been here. I see it being stable for a good number of years. I do have some recommendations to the committee to take advantage of our strong economic and fiscal position, perhaps to better position us to withstand any future downturn in commodity prices, because that's our main resource here.

I believe you have heard from the Institute of Chartered Accountants on its recommendation to harmonize the federal and provincial sales taxes. That was also an issue a year ago. I won't get into any details except to say that whenever you can reduce the administrative burden on small businesses, it has a positive impact on productivity and makes the business sector that much more competitive. It's also important to point out that the provincial sales tax increases the costs for small business, and these costs get passed on, of course, to the consumers.

I'd agree with the chartered accountants that it would be a valuable exercise for you people to conduct a comprehensive study examining sales tax reform. This study should examine the costs and benefits of a harmonized sales tax and/or replacing the PST with a B.C. value-added tax modelled after the GST.

That's a pretty ambitious undertaking, but we think it could have some merit. I work with small businesses as my profession, and I can tell you it's not efficient to have two levels of government applying different sales taxes with different sets of rules.

Another taxation policy that can have a positive impact on productivity is the corporate income tax. Our government has done a great job keeping B.C.'s general corporate rate close to Alberta's, and that's been a positive development for us in our investment climate. But the 2007 B.C. Check-Up report showed that

Corporate profitability is important to ensure that businesses have the financial resources to spend on research and development as well as training programs for employees, and also machinery and equipment. While many factors are at play when it comes to profitability, the general corporate income tax rate is one lever that you people have. It may be worth looking at a reduction in the general corporate tax rate to stimulate spending on research and development and skills training by the private sector.

Another comment on taxation. It's worth pointing out that the government's strong fiscal position has come after significant personal and business tax reductions in recent years. The highest marginal rate for B.C. now is 43.7 percent. I can remember it being the worst in the country at 56 percent, so we've taken great strides over the years.

A competitive economy that encourages investment is the best way to ensure that the government has the revenues that it needs to fund the important programs and services like health care and education, which in this area — along with population growth and construction — have been sustaining this economy.

I'd like to thank you for allowing me to make my comments. I would hope that you would take some of these under consideration.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, Ron. I appreciate you taking the time.

M. Grenier: I'd like to thank everybody for giving me an opportunity to speak. I wasn't on the roster for speakers. I was just hoping I could walk on tonight.

I'm president of a company called Pagebrook Inc. that's developing a resort development community here called Tobiano. Some of you may be familiar with the Six Mile Ranch project, which is what Tobiano is all about. I'm happy to report that Tobiano is well under construction and meeting all the objectives that everybody had hoped.

I'm speaking to you tonight because I think that there's a way that you could actually save some money in government and re-deploy some of the great ideas that have been brought out tonight. I want to speak to you quickly about the exciting world of infrastructure development and, in particular, water utilities development.

In this province we have public facilities, public water utilities, and we have private water utilities. There's a huge gulf between the type of infrastructure that's being built by public utilities and what is much smaller infrastructure for the private utilities — typically a hundred houses or fewer in the private utility world, and many thousands of people and many hundreds or thousands of homes in a public utility environment.

Tobiano is something in between. Government policy right now is skewed towards private developers of this smaller scale–type development. We're certainly not public, so we're not public infrastructure–related. We don't have the access to the capital, federal government programs, MFA financing — the sort of thing that takes place in a public environment.

What we do have is access to the capital markets — private sector markets. I guess about 19 months ago our bank governor David Dodge said: "Hey, governments can't build all this public infrastructure alone. They need to access private capital."

In this province we have regulations that talk about how you go out and set up a public utility or a private utility. If I could point out that in this province we have what's called the Water Utility Act…. Under the Water Utility Act the current thinking under 2004 policy is that…. They state that a CPCN application — certificate of public convenience and necessity, which is your licence to run these utilities — is reviewed to ensure that the water system proposed is suitably designed to provide adequate service and that the utility will be a viable business operation.

Of course, you would want your private utilities to be viable business operations. So far, no problem. The next line in here says that building a utility plant to service an area having no customers initially and financing that plant to receive a return on investment is clearly uneconomic.

Now, if I substituted the word "apartment building" for "utility plant," and I said, "Building an apartment building to service an area having no tenants initially and financing that apartment building to receive a return on investment is clearly uneconomic," you'd say: "How do apartment buildings get built?"

Well, they do get built, and they get built by private sector finance accessing long-term capital through the public markets. But in this province there is a mindset, born out of all utilities across North America, that these things had to be built at one time by the public sector, and that they could only be built by the public sector.

Well, Tobiano is a testament to the fact that we're actually building a utility system that is at a municipal standard, being operated in every way like a municipal system. It needs to do the things it needs to do to build these things and to make them a success on a long-term basis.

I'm working with the utilities commissioner and the comptroller of water. They're great people to work with, and they're looking for ways to make their policy work. Fundamentally, they're talking about private utilities not really accessing public debt — private debt, like capital market debt.

I can go to the BDC, the Business Development Bank. I can get 30-year financing, just like an apartment building, and get a 30-year mortgage, and fund and operate these utility companies. If we access the capital markets to build utilities, like private utilities, we free up money for government to do other things — the money that is so scarce for health resources and everything that's going on.

I would simply encourage the government to look at allowing the capital markets, as David Dodge had

suggested, to participate in the utility market. That is something that the comptroller of waterworks needs to hear from you guys.

B. Bennett (Chair): Can you please put that in writing for us and get it to the committee as soon as possible?

K. Broughton: I'm a farmer, not a public speaker. I was listening to the news the other day, and they were talking about the carbon-neutral targets for 2010, which the Union of B.C. Municipalities was encouraging municipalities to sign on to.

I found out from the UBCM website that there's a voluntary registry that lists the accomplishments of municipalities so far. Kamloops had only one. It was the Kamloops energy plan, the community energy plan. It's 67 pages long.

I won't read it all to you, but let me just read this. "In 1996 Kamloops joined the 20-percent club of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities." The 20-percent club was to lower emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels. This is our actions in 1996, this energy report, and that commitment.

I went down to city hall and spoke with Jen Fretz of the environmental services and with David Duckworth, who is in charge of public utilities and works. I asked them how we were doing on this commitment. They said: "We have no idea because we haven't measured our carbon emissions, our GHG emissions."

It makes it difficult to meet the targets if you don't know what your emissions were or what they're going to be. I suppose at that point I was scratching my head and thinking about when I went to Community Futures, which some of you might be familiar with.

Community Futures assist people in entrepreneurial training and funding if possible. There are two hoops you have to go through. First, you pitch your idea. Then if your idea is accepted, with feedback from the mentors, a little while later you pitch your business plan. If your business plan is successful, you might be able to receive funding.

It seems strange to me that any municipality can sign up to the climate action charter plan, the PAP, without any hoops to jump through. It's disappointing to read that we were promising to be in this 20-percent club and are finding out that the actions taken so far have been so….

If you read the 69 pages, we have met some targets. Kamloops has done well in certain areas. We have a good Water Smart plan that encourages people to conserve water. We have met other targets in transit. We have bike racks on our buses. But overall, the plan was made, was shelved and collected dust for ten years. We're now ten years later, and we don't have much to show for it.

I'm asking the panel: what do we have to guarantee or to suggest or even to hope that this 2010 target is going to be met? When I asked Jen Fretz and David Duckworth what our plans were between now and the end of the year, they said there were none. No actions were planned.

They're waiting for $70,000 worth of funding to come through to finish their plan. Their plan will start in January. If 2010 is the deadline, they have two years from now, and every month counts if you're going to make this deadline.

I suppose that at the end of the day, you guys have to decide how you're going to give out money in terms of meeting these targets. A suggestion that I might have is…. Municipalities move at government speed. If you want to meet this target, you need solutions that move at the speed of business and that move at the speed of…. BCSEA, for example, gave a good presentation tonight. I think that those are the types of institutions you need to turn to.

One other thing. Kamloops has nine providers of geothermal energy. So the private sector is there. The question is: are they going to have the momentum from the public? Are they going to have the education, the marketing — all of those things — that will push people to make those decisions?

At the moment that's not the case, and that seems to be where the province plays a big role. I was ready to applaud. I was ready to tip the hat to the Premier when he made these announcements — the 2010 and the 33 percent by 2020 — but looking at what we've accomplished so far, these don't seem like targets that were intended to be met.

I guess I would ask each of you: how are we going to make it? I'll leave it at that.

B. Bennett (Chair): That's actually why we're here. We wanted you to tell us how you want us to make it. That's one of the main purposes of this process.

We do appreciate your presentation. I would say to stay tuned. Watch the provincial budget carefully because that will tell you how the province is proposing to meet these targets.

K. Broughton: These nine companies that are doing geothermal retrofits could do calculations that estimate the GHG gases that they have saved. According to some of the market plans, one tonne of carbon dioxide gas makes one credit. If you're trying to decide how to give out the money, you might use the credits that people already have in their pockets from the successful programs to kick-start the funding, or at least, use that as a hoop that they can go through.

I'm not convinced that our municipal government, if you rely on them to carry out the action plan, is going to be able to meet the targets. Some municipalities might be making it. Fine. Channel the money to them,

in that case. But if the performance isn't there, giving them another $70,000 to make a new plan isn't all that encouraging to me.

I'd like to suggest one last thing for your own personal tour. I don't know how many more cities you have left, but the farmers' market was today in Kamloops. If we'd had a day's notice, we could probably have made you guys a pretty nice meal because we do appreciate all the hard work you're doing.

K. Broughton: You were in Kelowna this morning. Fresco is a restaurant right downtown on Water Street that buys almost exclusively from the farmers' market. Every community you go to will have a farmers' market, and they can probably tell you the restaurants or the hotels that buy locally. If you wish to make that contribution, that's there for you.

B. Bennett (Chair): We have a box of Okanagan apples on our aircraft, for whatever that's worth. Thank you very much.

P. Harrington: Thank you, members, and welcome again to Kamloops. I've only got a few comments here. Some of them are concrete, some are suggestions and some are things that we hope you would consider.

We're a community foundation, and we serve the Thompson, Nicola and south Cariboo. We're one of 35 serving in B.C. — the notable one being, of course, the Vancouver Foundation. All of your members here on this panel have a community foundation serving them. That's one thing that we want you to know: we are out there.

We build legacies and partnerships for our communities, mainly through endowed funds. For this brief presentation I'd like to address three topics. One is a thank you, one is an example and one is some suggestions.

In 2005 the government put $25 million in trust with the Vancouver Foundation to help endow the arts in British Columbia. On behalf of probably all the community foundations, we thank you. This was vision, and it offered legacy-building to ensure financial viability to the arts community. To my knowledge, over $15 million has been matched already throughout the province, which immediately translates into $30 million generating income for that community. Your vision is appreciated.

I want to show you just a little example of what the province of Manitoba did. Working with the Winnipeg Foundation, the province came up with $100,000 a year for five years. The goal of that money was to provide scholarships and bursaries to rural Manitoba.

The first year raised $165,000 and the second year $330,000. For that $200,000 investment from the province of Manitoba, it already has $700,000 working for it. These are examples we think you should take into consideration when you make your budget recommendations.

I'm making some further suggestions. Offer matching funds to community foundations to build legacies. Use a field of interest such as youth and education. You've heard Dr. Barnsley suggest maybe that's something to look at. You've heard the other people make their presentations. Most of them the Kamloops Foundation has made a grant to. We're quite involved with the community.

Think of the seniors and heritage. Every time we look in the mirror, is that person looking back getting older a little bit all the time? Of course he is.

Environment and recreation. You've heard other presentations tonight to work on. You've also got other fields of interest such as health and welfare, children and families.

How do you do it? I can make some suggestions. I would suggest you put $5 million aside for five years on each of those. That's $25 million a year. Now, if the public…. This is an attraction. It's easier to raise money for a specific cause if there are matching dollars out there.

This is something you, as government and opposition — you're all on this committee together — could work as bipartisan, as the Americans call it, or work as a partnership. This leaves a legacy. It shows vision by all of you. We certainly would welcome that in the community foundation.

You have some opportunities right now because you have this thing called the 2010 Olympics. It's B.C.'s 150th year as a province next year. You have these opportunities to invest long term in your project. As for partnership, there are others suggestions that are too numerous to mention tonight.

Maybe, on your gaming laws, for those grants that you make to charities, insist that a certain percentage is endowed. It's a no-brainer to me. What it does do is it ensures the financial viability and the sustainability to these organizations, for the good work they do in the community.

That's all the presentation I have tonight. I certainly appreciate a hearing. It's such a short notice. We certainly recommend questions, if you have any.

I'll be highlighting this as a presentation to your committee. You can see that what I've said is right on the front page of our work — that $1 equals $2. I can't stress the thank you enough, and look at opportunities in your recommendations to do this in other fields of interest because it goes all over the province.

If it should happen that you do think this is a good idea and make these recommendations, we certainly ask for input from all areas of our province. As you've heard from other presentations tonight, what happens in the lower mainland may not happen in Skookumchuck or New Hazelton. They're different areas. You have two members here from rural areas, or from outside the lower mainland.

Your wealth is generated from the interior of the province, in this province, through the resource industries. Think about the input we can have, especially on

the education needs. If you live in the lower mainland, you have a university right close to you, and we're quite fortunate in Kamloops. But again, if you live in these other areas, not only are you paying for tuition but you're paying for the transportation and accommodation.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, Paddy. We appreciate it. You and I are the only two people in the room, I bet, who know where Skookumchuck is.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you to everyone who attended and participated today. We appreciate that very much. That concludes our hearing, and we are adjourned.

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1)	SBC Firemaster	Paul Adams Brent Wiren
2)	Nancy Bepple
3)	Council of Canadians, Kamloops Chapter	Anita Strong
4)	Western Canada Theatre; Kamloops Art Gallery	Jann Bailey Lori Marchand
5)	Kamloops Society for Community Living	Mona Murray Chris Murray
6)	Canadian Mental Health Association, Kamloops Division	Douglas Sage
7)	B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union	Fairleigh Murray
8)	Make Children First	Valerie Janz Vi-anne Zirnhelt
9)	PATCHS	Marlene Anderson Richard Turner
10)	Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association	Hank Karpuk Don Tretheway
11)	BC Sustainable Energy Association — Kamloops Chapter	Matt Greenwood Cheryl Kabloona
12)	Thompson Rivers University	Roger Barnsley Ron Olynyk
13)	Child Care Resource & Referral Programs	Janis Arner
14)	Kamloops Child Development Society	Deborah Frolek
15)	Tenisci Piva Chartered Accountants	Ron Tenisci
16)	Pagebrook Inc.	Mike Grenier
17)	Kesten Broughton
18)	Kamloops Foundation	Paddy Harrington

Other MLAs:	Hon. Claude Richmond (Minister of Employment and Income Assistance, Kamloops L)
Clerk:	Les Gönye

Committee Staff:	Jacqueline Quesnel (Committees Assistant)

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