2008 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 38th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

9 a.m.

Sam Steele Room

Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort & Convention Centre, Cranbrook, B.C.

Present: Randy Hawes, MLA (Chair); Bruce Ralston, MLA (Deputy Chair); Robin Austin, MLA; John Horgan, MLA; Richard T. Lee, MLA; John Rustad, MLA; John Yap, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Harry Bloy, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; Diane Thorne, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9 a.m.

2. Opening statements by Randy Hawes, MLA, Chair.

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

4. The Committee adjourned at 11:16 a.m. to the call of the Chair.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Finance and Government Services

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Issue No. 81

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 1935 ]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

The committee met at 9 a.m.

[R. Hawes in the chair.]

R. Hawes (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I'm Randy Hawes, and I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. I'd like to welcome all of you to this process, which we think is a very important process, and I'd like to thank you for taking time to participate.

In preparing the estimates for the budget for 2009, the Minister of Finance is required to release both a fiscal forecast and a budget consultation paper by September 15 of each year. The consultation paper is required to provide a description of the major economic and policy assumptions underlying the fiscal forecast, as well as to identify the key issues that need to be addressed by the public in preparation of the next budget.

The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services is charged with carrying out public consultations on the minister's behalf. This is an all-party committee, and it is required to report back to the Legislative Assembly by not later than November 15.

So far, we've held public hearings in Kitimat, Smithers, Fort St. John, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops and Penticton and, yesterday, Vancouver. Later today we'll be in Nelson, and then we're in Courtenay and Langford, near Victoria. In mid-October we will also meet in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley at four final locations — Abbotsford, Surrey, Burnaby and Coquitlam. Then we begin work on drafting our report.

If you'd like to review the budget consultation paper, we have copies available at the registration desk in the back. As well, information on how you can make a presentation to the committee is available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

As a reminder, any input that the committee receives in writing or in electronic form is given the same consideration as any oral presentations that might be made here today. Due to the recently announced federal election, we've also extended the deadline for submissions to October 24.

Today we're going to hear from a number of presenters, who may speak for up to 15 minutes. We suggest that you take ten minutes and allow five minutes for questions, but the time is yours. You can take the full 15 minutes or any part thereof. I will give you a heads-up when you're at ten minutes, and if your presentation goes longer, I will tell you when you have two minutes remaining.

Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike session at the end of the hearing. Open-mike presentations are for five minutes, and no questions are taken.

I'll now ask the other members of the Finance Committee to introduce themselves, starting with Richard.

R. Lee: Good morning. I'm Richard Lee, MLA for Burnaby North.

R. Austin: Good morning. I'm Robin Austin, MLA for Skeena.

J. Rustad: Morning. John Rustad, MLA for Prince George–Omineca.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Bruce Ralston, MLA for Surrey-Whalley. I'm Deputy Chair of the committee.

J. Yap: Good morning. I'm John Yap, the MLA for Richmond-Steveston.

R. Hawes (Chair): Joining us shortly will be John Horgan, from Malahat–Juan de Fuca, who has been delayed for a few minutes in a meeting.

Joining us today, I'm pleased to introduce our Clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. Also with us is Stephanie Hansen, who is on the registration desk at the back of the room, and the staff of Hansard, Michael Baer and Tamara Checknita. They are recording and will prepare a written transcript of the meeting. As well, it is being broadcast live on the Internet.

With that, I'll call our first presenter for the day, Susanne Ashmore.

Susanne, the floor is yours.

Presentations

S. Ashmore: Good morning. I have two questions I'd like to ask — and a show of hands, if you'd be interested. The first question is: how many of you own recreational property? How many of you would like to own waterfront recreational property?

I'm a resident in a rural community that is basically recreational. I live at Wasa Lake, and I've been living there for 28 years. I also would like to disclose at this moment that, although I am presenting as a private citizen, I am the chair of the improvement district at Wasa. I'm on the area commission to the RDEK.

I also am a volunteer on the board of the Kootenay River Network, the British Columbia Lake Stewardship Society, and I have standing with a group of government and non-government people with the East Kootenay integrated lake management partnership — all dealing with the issue of recreational development and how it is affecting our rural areas.

The paper that I'd like to present is on why the Finance Committee and the Ministry of Finance should be interested in recreational property. The reason is that I view it from all of the time I've spent on different boards, as well as a private citizen, as not recreational property per se, but.... It's now becoming, in my mind, a blue-chip stock. As a blue-chip stock, it gives dividends
[ Page 1936 ]
to government in terms of the revenue tax stream it represents.

[0905]

Now, looking at my proposal, the reason why it is a blue-chip stock is that it offers up these advantages. There is very little waterfront compared to the demand, particularly in British Columbia. When I grew up in Ontario, the percentage of waterfront to population was large. Here, the percentage of waterfront to population — in particular, to Alberta population, which is a booming economy — is small.

So the value goes up, the demand goes up, and because of that, to government. We basically won the land lottery because we have done nothing to get it. It has just basically happened to us. Because of that, it offers these advantages. When people buy rural property, they generally improve it. They add value to it. When they add value to it, you get better tax revenues from that. The assessment goes up because they just continue to improve and improve.

Because they pay the highest tax rates, they don't qualify for the homeowners' grants, because they don't have them as principal residences. In fact, they have one or two or three residences. So that's an additional advantage to the government of British Columbia, because you're getting a hundred cents on the dollar.

They also are from out of province. They're seasonal. They don't use a lot of the government services, and they don't vote. That's a bit of a double-edged sword. It has repercussions for them, and actually, it has advantages for government and us in the communities.

Because of all these advantages, they don't make demands on things like hospitals, schools, roads — those types of things. Yet they're paying a lot of money to government to live here for very short periods of time.

Even though we are getting a slight levelling out in our values, we're finding that more and more people are doubling, tripling and quadrupling up to be able to afford at least one recreational property. So the densities are going up, and that's becoming a problem in communities such as Wasa.

On the flip side — and this is a personal observation I make in Wasa — by the sheer volume of their numbers and the degree of development that we're experiencing, particularly in the East Kootenays, the impact on the health of the lake and watersheds is becoming more and more pronounced. They're bringing the city values that they have to the country, and that is causing a lot of problems in our areas.

For example, they are coming to a property and trying to improve it by constructing beaches, which do have impacts on habitat and fish values. We do have guidelines that you can develop a certain percentage of your property as a beach, but a lot of times they are developing 100 percent of their properties, all along the entire foreshore of their property. They're bringing lawns to the waterline, which basically result in runoff issues, algae blooms.

There is a bit of a problem with lax building setbacks, so they're trying to buffer right up as close as they can to get to the water. There's also contamination from septic systems and treatment systems. Septic systems are only as good as the way you maintain them. They go in well. They're accredited. But over time, there's deterioration, and a lot of people don't know how to maintain them.

They bring dredging and grading to their frontages, and breakwalls and docks, which present a hardscape, as well as contamination from preservatives in the wood. Also, government seems to be ineffective because of the interlocking jurisdictional issues by multi-levels of government.

The problem is that we're not looking at what is in the best interest of these recreational properties. Government looks in terms of their specific duties and responsibilities, and they don't look across the whole scope of all the different governments. I can give you a list just from what I've been dealing with on these volunteers' communities.

[0910]

You have the RDEK with the building permits, and that deals with setbacks. You have Interior Health and the new septic regulations and private operators. You have the Ministry of Environment and the Water Act. You have integrated land management, which deals with permits for lake wharves. You have parks and protected areas, which has jurisdiction on some of the lakes. You have the Department of Fisheries and Oceans with the Fisheries Act. You have the Ministry of Transportation on easements. You have the Department of Transport on boating. You can see how the whole value of these waterfront properties, in terms of what they're giving to you financially, gets lost in this mix.

If you’d like to take a look at this picture, I'll animate it for you somewhat. The property owner here bought a subdividable property in 2005. He paid a little under $400,000 for two properties. This year he sold one of those properties for $100,000 more than he bought the two properties for, which in effect gave him that waterfront for free.

What he has done now is he has developed the cabin on the property that has waterfront. He has added value for the government because now there are two properties getting taxed: the first property that will usually give the government about $3,000 or $4,000 and the new property that will probably be valued at around a million dollars. So that's the benefit to government that that property owner is giving. He comes from Alberta.

The problem with that particular picture is that he's contravening the Water Act in terms of…. That small machine is working on Crown land — that's our property — and he has done it without a permit. The first time he applied for a permit — there was a previous
[ Page 1937 ]
application — the government gave him a letter saying that if he did continue to work on the waterfront, legal action would be considered.

Basically, what that means is that the letters become a paper tiger because there is no backup. So the second time he doesn't even ask for a permit. He has just gone ahead, and now he is working on about a hundred feet of waterfront. So whether or not we want to talk environmentally, he's basically working on our land without a permit and with the potential problems of what I've been talking about.

What I envision is an idea. This is something for a policy-maker to parse and take apart and see if it holds any water. I'm suggesting that we look at taking a percentage of the tax money specifically from these properties and apply them in three areas.

The first area. We need funding at a grass-roots level because what it is, is we're pitting people that are trying to raise funds at a bake-sale level versus people with deep pockets, whether they are developers or property owners. The field is very unequal. What these small communities and societies offer to government is that they are cost-effective because a lot of us are volunteers. We are not being paid. We're looking after the values of these properties.

We have a vested interest because we reside in these communities, so we're motivated. We also can give you a bit of a neighbourhood or lake watch because everyone knows everything in these small communities. A lot of people coming to a small community don't quite understand that. They don't usually understand how quickly information can get around when we know everyone. Also, you don't need conservation officers to a large extent. As well, we have technology — camera phones, tip sheets and that type of thing.

The second item that we should throw funding at is funding for government and science. There are not enough feet on the ground at the moment. We are not seeing you as showing the flag, and you need to show the flag because there is no buy-in from these communities.

The third item is legal funding. You need to prosecute. You need to show that you are actually willing to back up things like the Water Act and different rules and regulations, because when you have one person break the rule and not get punished, then it's open season. There's a prevailing atmosphere of non-governance in these communities as it relates to the Water Act and things that are happening on the waterfront.

[0915]

I want to wrap up on the health of the lakes and watersheds. This is where the two ministries — Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Finance — meet. Maintaining the healthy environment ensures a healthy dividend flow from these properties, and that's good for you. Preservation is cheaper than restoration. That's my presentation.

R. Hawes (Chair): Before we get to questions, I must say that many of us would probably agree with many of your comments. The right to tax for property tax, though, lies with the local government. I know you've said that it's a multi-jurisdictional thing, but the provincial government does not tax residential properties or recreational properties or, frankly, any properties. If there's Crown waterfront, there are leases on which the government can collect some money, but for the most part, it's property taxes that you're talking about, and that's local government.

I know that local government isn't going to do these things. So we would be talking about, perhaps, considering your recommendation as something government should fund, but it would not come from property taxes. Local government would…. Definitely that's not an area that I think we want to be treading in.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I know Wasa Lake, but I'm not familiar with the tenure structure. The Chair alluded to it as well. There is now a policy of what have been, traditionally, long-term Crown leases on waterfront land through the bureau of land management, making them available for sale to private owners. Thus, they would no longer be public in the long run. Do you have any views on that?

S. Ashmore: I think that we should be really looking at the amount of waterfront that actually still exists in its pristine condition. As far as leases, I'm not familiar with leases and the pros and cons. Most of the waterfront at Wasa is privately owned, up to the average high water. But I think that if government still owns public property, they should look at access. People value these properties at a much higher value than governments actually understand.

If it's in the vested self-interest of the public to continue to have leases, I think we should err on the side of caution. I think we are so far behind developers and the ideas of development that we should go much slower and really look at the whole picture.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm John Horgan. I apologize; I missed the start of it. But I just want to commend you for standing up for public spaces and saying to developers that there are people in the community that would prefer that there be a managed and controlled growth rather than just greed.

I have an issue in my community that's just emerging today that enrages me, and I'm so delighted to see a citizen come forward and say: "Enough is enough." So thank you very much for coming.

S. Ashmore: You're welcome. And even though this may not apply to you and your area of expertise, I still feel it bears looking at as a policy in terms of how you
[ Page 1938 ]
can reallocate taxes. I'm not talking about raising taxes. I'm talking about identifying and reallocating taxes on these areas.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, Susanne, thank you very much.

The next presenter — the College of the Rockies Faculty Association, Kathy Bonell.

K. Bonell: First, I want to say good morning, of course, and welcome to the Ktunaxa territory and to the Cranbrook community. My name is Kathy Bonell, and I am here this morning representing the College of the Rockies Faculty Association. I'd like to thank you again for taking the time to solicit community input on the 2009 budget.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the College of the Rockies, it is a community college that consists of seven campuses. There's one campus in Fernie, another in Golden, Creston, Invermere, Kimberley, and then there are two campuses in Cranbrook. So the College of the Rockies really has a significant relationship with the people who live in this particular region.

The college provides programs and services to over 2,000 students that are studying on either a full-time or part-time basis. The college this year — the 2007-2008 year — reported over one million contact hours, which is a significant number of contact hours for a small community like ours.

[0920]

Each campus offers a number of programs that reflect the needs and interests of students in their respective parts of the region. Aboriginal studies; adult basic education; transitions; criminology; child, youth and family studies; nursing; welding; plumbing; mechanics; carpentry; university transfer; dental assisting; mountain tourism; human kinetics; tourism management; hairdressing; English language training; office administration; business administration; computers; and finance, are just a few of the types of course work that are offered at our particular college and that students get to select from.

Learning at the College of the Rockies occurs through a number of different mediums. Faculty teach in and facilitate bridging programs, dual-credit programs, perceptorships, practicums, apprenticeships, preapprenticeship programs, recorded programming, video conferencing and more.

We have relationships with students in the communities throughout this province, in other provinces and abroad. While a significant number of programs are completed at each campus, not all programs are site specific. My point here is that so many colleges, teaching universities and universities throughout the province work hard to meet the needs of students, business and industry by reaching out to and serving students. But to do so requires money. Obviously, that's why I'm here today presenting as well.

As an instructor at the College of the Rockies for the last 20 years, I — like so many of my colleagues in other disciplines — have witnessed the benefit of public post-secondary education firsthand. Public education includes certification, but it also includes heightened self-esteem, better wages and better living conditions for individuals who attend college, but also for their families.

When one person in a family has a formal education beyond high school, it sets the stage for family members in the next generation to do the same. Our province reaps the benefit of public post-secondary education not just for the generations that are attending right now but for that next group that's coming up.

Public post-secondary education has a positive impact on the province's economy, but it also has a positive impact on the social functioning of communities. I know that I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know, but I want you to understand that for the first time in years the College of the Rockies is carrying a deficit. It projects a deficit budget not just for this year but for the next three years.

The 2.6 percent reduction in provincial funding put this college and our campuses in what we're experiencing as an internal competition environment. The college has made it clear to faculty and to students and to families that it will not, in this current fiscal environment, continue to operate programs as it has. Even if the programs are successful, even if they're fully subscribed, they're at risk at our college if the money is needed to develop new programs or to operate some other aspect of the college system.

So you can see how the government has created an internal competition for us, and we're quite concerned about it. This pressure has resulted in the reduction of services in a number of programs. I just want to speak to them if I could.

We have a transitions program at the College of the Rockies that has been a part of the way that we've done business for the last 15, 20 years. It's a program that serves adult students with cognitive disabilities. Well, this year the college made the decision to cut the number of contact hours to this particular population from 25 hours of programming to 12.5.

The college also closed its preschool. It's a licensed preschool. It's been in operation, again, for over 20 years. It couldn't hold onto it for one semester because we had more students registering on line than we had face to face. So they said that they had to make a decision about whether they were going to keep it or cut it. They're in a fiscal position where they have to make a decision about what they're going to support and what they're not.

The play group is something they decided not to support, because they had zero students registered in a face-to-face format at the time that they made that decision. They took those dollars, then, and directed them into other programs. So we're in — I don't want to say crisis — a very scary place.

[0925]
[ Page 1939 ]

In addition, the students register in courses assuming that those courses are going to be offered in the fall, in September. They find out three weeks, one week, a couple of days before the start date that the college isn't going to operate it because it has implemented a ten-student-or-less practice. If we have fewer than ten students registered in a particular section or a particular course or program that's not needed for certification, it goes.

People could move to Cranbrook, or they could move to other communities in this region, and then discover that the college isn't going to offer what they felt the college had made a commitment to offer to them.

We had a new plumbing program. Another example is a plumbing program that the college offered — brand- new program, lots of excitement around it. We had fewer numbers of students registered in that particular program than anticipated, and so the students were called days before and told that the college was going to postpone it. It wasn't until a mom went to the college and said: "This can't happen. My son has incurred all these moving expenses to be here to take this program." So then the college reinstated the start date. But it's not a good way to do business.

This is a college that is fiscally responsible, and it is a college that has met, or almost met, its FTE targets. So it's not because we're not doing a great job; it's because we only can do so much with the resources that we have.

In addition, the college is now collapsing courses. Instead of offering two different levels of a French course, a first-year French course and a second-year French course have been collapsed together. A university transfer psychology course has been collapsed into a vocational child development course. So again, this is not the type of programming that we aspire to. I've got so many examples that I think you probably don't need them all.

I know that this government is concerned about balanced budgets, but this province can afford to fund public post-secondary education. Not every student and family can afford to move to another part of the province to access course work or to even pay for course work. We need your support, and we need adequate funding from the province to continue to sustain the programs we have, to reinstate the courses and programs that have been lost, to continue to expand course and program offerings and to offer courses and programs that are affordable to students.

There are a number of recommendations that this committee could make that would make a difference to the public post-secondary education sector. They include immediately restoring the 2.6 percent funding that was cut from the provincial operating grants in mid-March, earmarking $2 million from the existing budget surplus to allow public post-secondary institutions to increase programming in a way that's accessible and affordable and making a long-term commitment to reduce tuition fees over the next five years to ensure that middle- and lower-income families are able to fully participate in public post-secondary education.

My background is in early childhood education, and so when I share these recommendations with you, I don't do it lightly. I get to see firsthand the benefits to families when a parent attends college, gets certification, increases employability, gets a better wage and sometimes gets a job with benefits or puts money into a pension plan. That changes how families exist, and then that changes how communities function and exist.

The other thing that I would encourage this province to do is to see if there is a way that you could change the research guidelines so that colleges like the College of the Rockies and other smaller colleges can get access to some of the research funding. That's an area that we haven't been able to tap into, but I can see tremendous potential for us in that particular area — not just us but other colleges and universities in the province.

The other thing that I would hope that this committee would recommend is bringing back student grants so that students are not incurring such huge debt loads when they leave the college system.

Again, as an early childhood educator, I know of students that leave the college system with a $20,000 debt load, and they're going to be making a little over minimum wage.

[0930]

It's not conducive to supporting all the careers in the way that we would hope that education would, or what it could provide to people who decide that they want to work in careers that aren't paid well. So we want to make it possible for them to pursue that kind of education as well.

I urge you to advocate for increased funding for public post-secondary education so that our college and the colleges and universities in this province of British Columbia can provide the comprehensive programming that it needs to serve, convenient to the students, families, communities, businesses and industry.

I thank you for your time. Do you have any questions for me?

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you. I think your presentation was pretty concise and straightforward, pretty understandable.

J. Horgan: I'll just let you know, Kathy, that we've been hearing from other faculty associations in other colleges concerned about the 2.6 percent, so we've certainly heard that message in other communities. If you're not getting questions, it's because we've exhausted that, I think.

K. Bonell: It's not new. Okay. Really, you could look at our books. It has made a significant impact on our college. I believe it was $400,000 that we lost. This is the
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first time in years that our college has been in a deficit, and there's a direct correlation between that cut and our ability to serve our communities. Again, it's not just one community; it's the whole region that we're trying to serve.

J. Rustad: Thanks for your presentation. It's good that we've heard from a lot of educational facilities around the province.

I've got a question with regards to the College of the Rockies. I was curious about the policy, I guess the internal policy, of the college to have ten or less students to drop a course. Other facilities that I've worked with do it based on if the enrolment back in May or June, or whenever that date is, isn't sufficient, then they make the decisions about that as opposed to waiting for the last minute. Why does the college here do things differently?

The second question, actually, is just that I'm wondering. A lot of colleges sometimes can have some surpluses that have built up over time. Has the College of the Rockies been able to utilize that to help with the current situation?

K. Bonell: In answer to your question No. 1, it's not a formal policy; it's a practice that has been implemented this year. We have a responsibility to generate a certain amount of FTEs. Again, the College of the Rockies has been really good. If they don't meet their targets, they're very close, like 90 or 95 percent. So FTEs are the driving force — right?

If you have to have so many FTEs and you have a course that might have six students in it, there's a sense that the college can't wait and offer that course with a hope that more students would register in the first week, which is very typical for our college.

The child, youth and family studies program opened an additional maybe six to seven sections of courses because students registered that first week of September. But they're saying that they can't wait. They have to use that money and open other sections if there's a wait-list. They can't offer it all. So it's not a formal policy, but it's a practice that has been implemented this particular year.

And yes, the college has had its revenue from past years that it used to offset the loss of the 2.6 percent provincial funding last year, so this year is our first year that we'll have a deficit.

R. Lee: The College of the Rockies has a good reputation on some programs and is actually attracting some students from the Lower Mainland. Do you have any statistics and stories to tell?

K. Bonell: It's attracting students from…?

R. Lee: From even the Lower Mainland, and foreign students.

K. Bonell: It does. It has a huge international program, and it has a positive reputation. What we're discovering is that education is not site-specific. Because of the modes of teaching, students are able to access the college in other ways.

[0935]

Now, I know that the college did have a program on the mainland, but this is off-the-record dialogue about its engagement in a public-private partnership that wasn't very successful. I believe students who took the access to PN program on line…. The students have thousands of dollars of debt, and they don't have certification.

The college has severed its ties with that private organization. I don't believe that it's even in operation anymore. But our college is still trying to survive the impact and the outcomes of engaging in that kind of partnership to generate FTEs.

I don't know if that answered your question or not, Richard. We do have a good reputation. We have relationships with universities and colleges in Australia and other parts of the world. International education is huge for us.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Kathy. A great presentation.

K. Bonell: You're so welcome, and thank you for the opportunity. I definitely will make sure that you have hard copies of my presentation as well.

R. Hawes (Chair): Our next presenter is Children First, and Gail Brown.

G. Brown: Mr. Chairperson, members of the select standing committee and members of the public. You're receiving a little package of information.

I notice that by reviewing your website for this committee, you collectively have 25 children and eight grandchildren, so this presentation….

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, I have nine...

G. Brown: Oh, nine. Wow.

R. Hawes (Chair): …myself. So it's a little outdated, I guess.

G. Brown: Okay. This presentation is about infants and young children in the East Kootenay and their needs. Each of you has been given a child. If you just open your folders and look at the first thing in your folder, you have been given an East Kootenay child who is under the age of six years old.

This is your child. Please read about your child. Turn the card over and read about your child. Your child has some needs listed on the card. Each of you has a different child with a different set of needs.
[ Page 1941 ]

Now if you would pay attention to the next item in your file folder, which is a chart. If you have a pen handy, if you would please tick off your child's needs on this chart. Your East Kootenay child has some needs for services, and here is the chart of services available that all your children collectively need. So if you could just take a pen and tick off the needs that your child has in the little box beside the list of services.

These are not real children. These are examples that I made up for the purpose of this exercise. Some of your children will have more needs than others. You'll notice that the chart is divided into three sections: early intervention services, child care services and therapies/medical services.

It looks like everyone's found all the services that their child needs. Some babies and young children need more services than others.

Next, please take out the plastic transparency sheet — everyone has the same sheet — and put this sheet over top of your chart of services. The blacked-out services are those that your child will be able to access in Cranbrook and area. The services that you have ticked off and can easily read are those that are not available today, September 29, 2008.

[0940]

At the bottom centre of this transparency you'll see a small area called "Estimated costs." This area, the East Kootenay of B.C., requires an increased investment. This estimated cost represents the increased investment which I'm estimating is needed in this East Kootenay area under those categories.

When I look at the child care part of it, it's clear here. The examples that you've been given on your children — the children that you have received…. There may be child care services in our area, but there's no child care available to those children in your examples.

Child care in our area is subject to wait-listing. There are virtually no seats available to families in our area. So that's why, on your chart, it is clear. This is a service that requires a great deal of investment on the part of government so that we can improve families' abilities to participate in work, in the economy of our area.

But I must say that for all the services on this chart there are wait-lists. So it's not just child care, which I'm sure you're familiar with, that has wait-lists. It's all of the areas.

The last sheet in your handout, I believe, is the sheet on sensitive periods in brain development. You may have seen this before if you were at caucus meeting. This outlines the reasons why we should invest in young children early on.

There's an urgency to invest in young children's development because there are sensitive periods and critical periods in development. Missing those means that overcoming deficits in child development at a later date is much more costly to the government, the system, the parents — everyone. By investing early in child development services, you actually increase opportunities for children. You increase their potential, and you save money.

In the past we've been using Alberta services in the East Kootenay. Our access to services like B.C.'s Children's Hospital is very difficult. We're a long way from B.C.'s Children's Hospital. There's an interprovincial agreement that allows us to use Alberta Children's Hospital. But Alberta Children's Hospital is getting busy. It's serving over a million people right in Calgary alone. We are in their catchment area, but we need to have services of our own. It's not working as well as it used to.

For those reasons, it's imperative that we have a capital investment — some investment in our child care services, our early intervention services and our therapies in medical. Our service delivery system here is worse than in the north. It's worse than Terrace and 100 Mile. The investment has not been made. We're like the north of eastern B.C. The investment has never been made here in the way that it has been in the north.

For those reasons, we are asking you to put forward a claim for some investment in our children.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for the presentation — very vivid. I liked the participatory style of it.

What interaction have you had with the new child and youth advocate, who is, I think, very sensitive to these issues and has not hesitated to raise them when she deems it necessary? What relationship or meetings have you had with her?

G. Brown: I haven't had meetings or developed a relationship with her yet, but we're working on doing that, for sure. I have to get to Victoria to do that, so that's a bit of a distance.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Well, I'd encourage that. Certainly, she has shown a willingness to travel to any part of the province where she is invited.

G. Brown: Thanks for that suggestion. I'll follow that up.

[0945]

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation. I've worked with a number of Children First groups in Prince George and in the surrounding area and communities. One of the biggest challenges is actually finding, attracting and keeping the professionals that are required to provide the services.

I'm just wondering: has the health authority or other service providers in the area been trying to attract things like, for example, a speech pathologist and others?
[ Page 1942 ]

G. Brown: Yes.

J. Rustad: But have they been successful in being able to attract them? That's the challenge. There are a lot of professionals that, unfortunately, are in high demand but short supply.

G. Brown: That's true. One of the ways to retain professionals is to offer them salaries that are commensurate with those that they would get in other areas. Another way to retain those people is to have them work in teamwork, in collegial environments. So those are things that we can do better here.

I believe we're going to have one speech-language pathologist starting sometime in October, and I believe we might have a pediatrician coming, but I don't know when.

These are services that are very, very basic to child development for children who have extra needs and that we are really struggling with by not having in our area. So collegiality is something that you see at child development centres or child health services or just services that are kind of moulded around those professionals. We need the opportunity to do that, and that's never happened in our region.

J. Rustad: The reason why I had raised that is that when I used to be on the school board, of course we had a standing offer to any speech pathologist to move to our district. It was for the last 20 or 30 years. We had varying levels of services that we were able to provide, but that was certainly one that was extremely difficult to be able to find because there just aren't very many around.

G. Brown: I also think that participating with local planners, local community planners.... As you know, a Children First initiative is all about local planning and mobilizing the communities to participate in planning by developing strategic plans for their communities around service delivery for young children and families. So that's my role; that's what I do.

Our communities are ready to engage in that kind of planning, but we don't have the funding or the wherewithal. We don't have the access to budget, and because we're so far away from Kelowna, which is the centre of this Interior region, which is the size of the state of Washington, we're a long way from access to tables where those planning decisions occur. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to present to this committee. It offers one opportunity to have our voices heard.

R. Lee: The government has put in programs to increase, to double, the number of doctors and nurses. For pediatricians, it takes a few years to train them.

G. Brown: Yes, it does.

R. Lee: So hopefully in the future.... But how can you encourage your local students to get into that kind of program? Because local students are more likely to come back to serve.

G. Brown: I don't have students. I have people in communities. These are people from municipalities, from local businesses, from local charities, that gather together and do community planning for young children and families in their communities and develop a strategic plan for that service development in their communities.

The things they can't touch in their planning are the high-cost items like child care and medical services and the things that cost a lot of money. So in attracting a pediatrician....

I'll give you an example of what happened in one community. I won't name the community. Because many of the communities in the East Kootenay are tourist kinds of spots, tourist locations, one community found a pediatrician that wanted to ski, owned a place at the ski hill and would do pediatric services one day a week.

That was about the most that we could do to attract a pediatrician. But we could do more of that. There's more of that to be done.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Just as an observation. I live in the Fraser Valley, and I can tell you that there's a huge amount of difficulty attracting pediatricians into the Fraser Valley as well. Actually, there's an international shortage of specialists like pediatricians, so it's very difficult.

G. Brown: Well, the north has pediatricians flown in from the Lower Mainland on a regular basis. They have locums who serve their communities — who are dependable people — go to their child development centres, which have their appointments set up. We have not had that. Our parents in this area have to go elsewhere.

[0950]

R. Austin: I just want to make a quick comment. We have pediatricians in Terrace. You mentioned Terrace. We have pediatricians, too, I believe, aside from the ones that are flown in, but they are courtesy of the South African government. If it wasn't for our being able to poach medical professionals from South Africa, we would have almost no health care services, certainly in northwest B.C., so this is a huge challenge.

G. Brown: I don't mind poaching. Anything would do. I agree that we are importing our medical specialists from other countries. That doesn't negate the needs of young children and infants in our area. These are serious issues that should be overcome, because those are the kids that are growing up to be people like you — right? — and me. You know, it's not that they are….
[ Page 1943 ]

J. Horgan: Better you than us — to grow up.

G. Brown: Yeah. I think that investment is really worthwhile.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. It's very unique and, as Bruce said, participatory. It was a great presentation.

Next presenter is Fernie Real Estate, Tammy Monsell and Dan McSkimming.

T. Monsell: Good morning. Welcome back to the East Kootenays. Thanks for coming back to our region. I think we had the benefit of meeting most of you this spring up at Island Lake resort in Fernie.

My name is Tammy Monsell. I am the owner of Fernie Real Estate Co. and also a director of the chamber of commerce in Fernie. I want to thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and to be invited to this today. I brought with me Dan McSkimming, who's been a city councillor in Fernie for the past six years. Just last night he threw his hat in the ring to become our next mayor, so we're pretty excited that he was able to come and speak today as well.

We've been experiencing a change in our market in Fernie, as I'm sure you've seen across the province. We've enjoyed pent-up demand and escalating prices since 1997. We're thrilled. I'm sure that you were all able to fly through the fabulous new airport expansion that you've approved through the budget process in the last few years. We feel that the airport expansion is going to have the most significant impact on our area, other than the 2010 Olympics.

On December 17 Delta Air Lines will start to connect us to the world. They're going to be flying through and giving us the opportunity to attract new golfers, skiers and buyers to our Fernie market. As a company, we head off to the U.K. on the 20th of October to go do the London ski show. We've taken advantage of that for the last ten years to bring new people to our communities. This year we'll be expanding to the Boston ski show, as well, as a result of the Delta connection.

Many of you joined us this spring at Island Lake and enjoyed the views that people from around the world are attracted to. You had the opportunity to travel the No. 3 Crowsnest Highway to Fernie. It's a gateway for the Alberta recreators that are becoming more increasingly populated on that highway. We're also seeing a tremendous increase of transport trucks through this corridor, and they seem to travel in packs of three to five, making it very difficult for the regular traffic to get by.

The Alberta border to Wardner. There are only two designated passing areas in that stretch. As you may or may not be aware, from the Alberta border to Fernie is about a 40-minute car ride.

One of the passing lanes is just before the notorious rock cuts. It's a spectacular location. It's where our weather pattern changes and allows us to have the tremendous snow that we have in Fernie.

The other passing lane that we have is between our bridges in Fernie. The significance of this is that when we're hoping to get people to stop within our bridges, they are using that opportunity to get past the cattle truck and the pig trucks that they've been following for the last 40 minutes. Instead of slowing down and taking advantage of our services, they're flying through our community.

When you add the increased airport traffic to the highway equation, we see that there's a significant need to make this a safer place for all of us to travel.

In 2003 the Premier established a task force for resort communities to realize their full potential. I'm sure most of you are familiar with that document. In 2005 this best-practices guide was implemented.

[0955]

I've highlighted page 36, which talks about transportation and access to a resort community as the single most important consideration in determining the market potential and economic feasibility of a resort. Major highway access defines the size of the market support for any project. Transportation infrastructure is expensive and is usually provided by governments.

I have also attached for you, courtesy of the RCMP locally, copies of the last five years, because we wanted to see what kinds of things were happening on our highways. The second page there summarizes the accidents for you: 157 personal injury accidents, 14 serious injury accidents and 11 fatal injury accidents. Just last week we had two of our longtime residents in Fernie die on our highway. We hate to see that kind of thing happening in this time frame. It is a significant problem.

These are already serious numbers without adding the increased traffic. We want this to be the best place on the planet to live and recreate. So we would ask you to consider putting into your budget some funds to assist us in fixing the dangerous rock cuts area, similar to what was done at Steamboat Hill in Moyie — that Elko area.

Last year I was personally travelling to the airport in January to fly to Vancouver for a meeting when a cattle truck had tipped over on the highway. You probably remember hearing about that. Highways and the RCMP were reporting the highway as open for hours. Unfortunately, there was misinformation. It was a minus 25 Celsius day, and we sat for over two hours, trapped in our valley, before actually turning around and going back — not able to get the proper information.

The danger for us, of course, as a community is people running out of fuel in the cold, not knowing what's happening, not being able to assess the situation. If there'd been a labour and delivery or a heart attack patient, they would have been trapped in our valley — no way
[ Page 1944 ]
of getting to the Cranbrook regional airport. So we need more and safer, proper places to pass in our areas.

Morrissey, Hosmer and Galloway are areas that the RCMP are recommending. They're very long, straight stretches with room to expand the highway for safe places for drivers to pass and help alleviate the frustration that they're feeling. They drive beyond their abilities as a result of the frustration that they're feeling.

We are looking forward to welcoming more visitors to Fernie. As the Premier stated, the Kootenays has the biggest opportunity for growth in the province econonomically. You have seen in the past the value of budgeting to expand the airport for us here, and we really appreciate that. We'd just to like to make it a safer place for locals and visitors alike. Help us fine-tune the access that we have, which we see as the most important significant consideration for economic feasibility for our resort town.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on that. I'd like invite you back to come and see us in Fernie. We're expecting La Niña to drop another 29 feet of snow on our community this year, which is why people love to come and ski with us.

I'd like the opportunity to pass it over to Councillor McSkimming at this point. Thank you for your consideration.

D. McSkimming: Mine will be fairly short and to the point.

We have a situation in Fernie, and in the Elk Valley with the regional district at this point in time, with the closure of our landfill sites — something that was put on us in our valley about ten, 12 years ago.

Currently Fernie is getting ready to start construction, hopefully in the next six months, on a new waste transfer station. When we started down this road ten, 12 years ago, the budget was $1.8 million dollars to build that waste transfer station. Because of many problems and "not in my back yard" and all the issues of finding a location for it and people just turning their backs on it…. It's going to become a reality now, but the price tag is now $5.5 million.

The closure of our dumpsite, our old landfill, is in the order of $3 million. Sparwood and Elkford have not closed theirs yet. They have waste transfer stations, but their landfills have just been left open. The environmentalists and those of us who live in the valley know that that's probably not the best way to do it. They need to be closed. The bill on that is going to be another $3 million each, it's estimated. Otherwise, they will just leave a fence up around it, and it will just sit there.

So the total bill is going to be in the area of $12 million to get this sorted out. We're certainly not coming here asking for $12 million, but I think the valley will need help. The regional district, which is responsible for this, has made some inroads with the government at the provincial level and so have the city of Fernie and the districts of Sparwood and Elkford.

[1000]

I guess we're hoping that somewhere in the next year or two there'll be grants or some sort of aid available for us to be able to finish this job we went down the road on. Again, there've been a lot of delays, and there's a lot of blame to be spread around on why it took so long. But with every month and every year that goes by, the prices just keep going up on everything.

In our valley the waste transfer station alone, at $5.5 million, will represent…. Forty percent of the price tag will be to the citizens of Fernie, and we're going to have to pick up that. We're going to have to borrow money through MFA and whatnot, and it's going to have quite an impact on us.

It's not a really cool issue. It's not a fun issue to talk about — garbage — but it's something that is really going to affect us in the next three or four years and something I know we've dealt with on council. I'm hoping, if I am still around after the election, that it will be on the front burner for us.

That's all I have to say. Thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate your coming to our valley.

J. Rustad: Front burner, I take, wasn't an intended pun — dealing with waste management? Thank you for the presentation. I just want to clarify…. Actually, a question, I guess, first, with regards to the waste management. Have you applied to the Building Canada fund that we have in place, the provincial-federal joint funding agreement that we have for funds for those particular projects?

D. McSkimming: Not that I'm aware of at this time, no.

J. Rustad: That's one route you could consider that is in place. I think there's about $270 million that's in place around the province for capital projects like the ones you describe. That's certainly something I would encourage the municipality and regional district to apply for, perhaps jointly.

D. McSkimming: Absolutely.

J. Rustad: The other question, I guess, that I have is…. On the Finance Committee we've got to try and make some decisions as to some recommendations to come forward. From what I'm hearing, you would like a fairly significant emphasis on capital infrastructure and more spending, particularly for road infrastructure and transportation infrastructure.

Are there other issues? We've heard from other real estate boards, but that is certainly for you…. I guess the question is: that's your number one priority, and that's what you would like to see us be focused on?
[ Page 1945 ]

T. Monsell: I think that because Fernie…. You know, we enjoy the benefits of tourism significantly. We're a mining community that has done very well. We used to be a mining community with a really good ski hill. Now that transition is happening, with tourism becoming a big impact.

I think that getting folks to our area is as hard as it's ever going to be right now. Most of our people have to come through the Calgary International Airport, and having Cranbrook change into an international airport is absolutely the most significant thing for us in our valley. Getting them there safely in the winter is, I think, probably the most important thing that we can focus on for the long term.

We've been talking about this for about five years. We just didn't have the stats. With the RCMP cooperating with us this year.... They would like to see some ability to lower the speed in our community as well, to help them do what they do to keep people safer, but it also creates more frustration because people just want to get where they're going.

On Thursday afternoon every weekend it's an RV, car, truck, boat, bike show out our front window on the highway. Alberta is coming to recreate in British Columbia, and we are grateful for that, because they have a tremendous economy. But we also have to make sure that the added volume that they're bringing doesn't create unsafety for them.

Any money you could throw at us would certainly be appreciated. I know that you guys are busy building the highway to the Olympics, and that's tremendous. But if you could keep us in the back of your mind, we'd really appreciate consideration for that.

R. Hawes (Chair): I think the Kicking Horse Pass is in there somewhere too.

T. Monsell: Yes.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just for the record, could you give a little bit more detail about the Delta connection? You've mentioned it a couple of times. I've heard of it, but maybe just some more detail, just for the record here.

T. Monsell: It's fantastic. The local groups of tourism — places like the DMO that we've just created in Fernie, even our organization — threw money in a pot to secure Delta Air Lines to come in and guarantee their revenue for the first year. They're using Salt Lake City as a hub.

An example of fares for us here in the Kootenays, starting in January to April, was $139, connecting through Salt Lake to New York City and Boston. You can imagine what kind of opportunity that allows us, as marketing people, to go out and start attracting people to come to our community. We're really grateful for that. This first year they'll run charters from January until, I believe, April 17, so it's certainly going to start to expand. It gives us the opportunity to….

[1005]

We already have a lot of easterners, but as I mentioned, in the past they used to come through Kalispell, Montana — Seattle to Kalispell — making it three stops, which was very inconvenient. Now, bringing it right into Cranbrook will give them…. We expect them to hop off here and ski Kimberley and ski Fernie and experience a bit more of our entire region.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): How many flights a week?

T. Monsell: I believe it's going to be three flights a week to start. It's pretty fantastic, really.

R. Hawes (Chair): I just had a quick comment on your landfill problem. I live in Mission. We did get an infrastructure grant, which is what Building Canada is, for a landfill site there and a big problem with closure. It was about $7 million to close the landfill there, and I think $5 million of it came through infrastructure funding, so you definitely need to be making an application. Now, that's no guarantee that it will be approved, but you definitely need to make the application. Without it, you can be assured that you will not get the money.

D. McSkimming: We realize that we're not going to get the full ticket on this at all, but you know, any assistance we can get and direction like that is…. We're grateful.

R. Hawes (Chair): I guess my other question is…. I'm not sure, but I know that where I live there's a fairly substantial reserve that gets built from the funding. From what everybody pays to use the landfill, a significant amount has to go into reserves for closure, ongoing expansion, a new site or whatever. I'm assuming that you're doing that, and you've built a reserve.

D. McSkimming: The regional district is doing that. The regional district is in charge of all the solid waste management in the valley. It's just that we get the bill — you know, our proportionate share of it — so we're all working hard together to secure the funds and get this done sooner than later, before the price tag gets any higher.

R. Hawes (Chair): Lastly, another quick question, just for my own information. Do you have a recycling program?

D. McSkimming: There is limited recycling right now. We've had a real problem getting contractors and people to come to Fernie and do that.
[ Page 1946 ]

R. Hawes (Chair): So your landfill is actually, then, filling up with a lot of material that could be recycled.

D. McSkimming: Well, the landfill is closed. We're operating on a temporary transfer station right now, right beside the old landfill.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay.

D. McSkimming: But the rules of the waste transfer station states that it should be relocated onto a major artery. All our garbage is actually taken to Alberta. It goes to Lethbridge at this point in time. The trucks come through the valley. We found a place on the highway that will work, where we're going to start to build in the spring on this.

On the recycling aspect of it, we do recycling, but it's not as comprehensive a program right now because of the problems of attracting businesses and contractors who will do that for us. So it's not a full scope. We have now even just a bottle depot in Fernie. We were without one for almost a year because they couldn't find somebody to run one in town. It goes to the cost of living in Fernie. It goes to all the issues of trying to attract people there. Again, it's not a very exciting business to be in, so it hasn't been the easiest.

If I can just make just one more comment, as far as the highway goes. We can't also lose sight of the fact that Fernie, Sparwood and Elkford are serviced by the regional hospital in Cranbrook, which was a decision to centralize. It's a great hospital. We've had family members use it, and it's been a great resource for us, but in the winter the highway is closed because of those rock cuts. It's a safety issue for the families. It's not just the tourists bringing in the money but those of us with families and whatnot and the elderly who need that service. They also helicopter them into Calgary, but of course the weather is hard on that too. I just wanted to bring that up.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation, and I think we've heard you loud and clear.

The next presenter is Andrea Goertzen. We have Andrea Goertzen and Jennifer Asselin.

J. Asselin: I'm just here for moral support.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, you're welcome.

A. Goertzen: Good morning. MLA Hawes, I'd like to thank you for the invitation to come and speak here today. As you know, I actually gave an impromptu presentation last year. I was attending the meeting, and I realized that nobody was here speaking to the issue of affordable housing.

I thought a lot about this over the last week and what I would present to you. Part of me is at a loss for words.

[1010]

All I want to express to you today is that I believe this province is in serious trouble when it comes to housing people — affordable, attainable housing. The middle class seems to just have been wiped out over the past years.

Last year what happened in Fernie was that a lot of our low-income housing was taken out of the rental pool, and these people were forced into a zero percent rental market. These are the people that need help the most. I came here, and I spoke. Jenny Kwan was very interested.

MLA Bennett told me that he would participate in helping these people find homes. I really thought that I had made some progress — piqued some attention — but it turned out that there would be no government involvement. MLA Bennett opted not to get involved because he didn't want to start a precedent of helping some people find housing or grant money to help them afford housing in the community. He was afraid that it would obviously start a precedent across B.C. In the end, there would actually be no government involvement at any level to help these people.

Instead, it was left up to concerned citizens. Charlie Mears, a gentleman in town, unselfishly surrendered his apartment so Gina Desrosiers wouldn't have to leave Fernie. The others were not so fortunate, and these are people that are longstanding members of society. Their parents helped set the foundation of Fernie. They had to get on a bus and leave town, and we don't even know where some of them ended up.

There's been a lot of discussion over the last year regarding affordable housing in our town. The municipality has a strategic plan, but we never get past discussion. There is still a zero percent rental market in Fernie. What happens there in the winter, because it is a resort town, is that people come in and the rent skyrockets. So any young families just can't afford the rent, so they have to move on.

I feel scattered. I want the government to take this seriously. Part of me feels that democracy ends when the last ballot is counted. I've sat down with Jim Abbott, Bill Bennett. I've talked to MLA Kwan. I feel as though the constituents have to sit across from our government, our elected officials, and convince you and fight for our right, for our basic human needs.

I didn't really come here to present to you something that I'm asking in specific for money from this budget. I believe that all of you in your hearts realize that this is a huge problem.

President Kennedy's speech to a university…. Something caught my eye in that. He said that it all comes down to the basics. We all live on this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We are all mortal. And we all cherish the futures of our children. For some of us, the future looks bleak.

[1015]

I moved back to my hometown five years ago, to realize that the only option for me was to live in low-income housing. I'm a single mom. I work hard, but there's
[ Page 1947 ]
nowhere for me to progress to, because there's just such a gap between low income and then the wealthy.

If I represent any of the population, we're not happy. And you guys need to hear that. You need to represent us. You need to take care of the people who vote you into power.

The United Nations. The rapporteur was here last year, and he's not happy. The UN is not happy with how Canada is dealing with homelessness. I mean, I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you this.

One of the most upsetting things to me this week was MLA Bennett's explanation for public servant pay raises — 23 to 45 percent. Who in God's name gets a raise like that, especially when the constituents are not happy?

I'm not saying that you don't all have a tough job. I respect you very much. I'm not claiming to know your jobs, to have the understanding of how a government is run. I am simply here today as a constituent, as a voter, as a representative of people who are struggling under the administration of this government. And I believe that it is up to you, as representatives, to listen, to hear me.

There are so many things that were running through my head, what I want to say. Actually, I don't know how much time I have left.

R. Hawes (Chair): Six minutes.

A. Goertzen: Six minutes. I'd like to take a couple minutes just to sit here in silence and think about the people who do not have roofs over their heads.

R. Hawes (Chair): I think there are some people who'd like to ask you questions.

A. Goertzen: Absolutely.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for the passion you bring with your presentation. It's touching.

There are some challenges, and I want to reflect a little bit on my home community when we tried to put in some housing projects. Of course, there was resistance from the neighbourhood, and it took years to get the project off the ground at the community level.

I'm just wondering if in Fernie…. You mention that there's a strategic plan that's in place. Has there been property set aside or has there been a location set aside that the community would like to put some social housing in? Then, have they approached the government with regards to a plan to try to move that forward and get some housing in place?

I have one other follow-up, if I can.

[1020]

A. Goertzen: Would you like me to answer that one first?

J. Rustad: Yes, if you could, that would be good.

A. Goertzen: Yes, they have. They have allotted…

A Voice: …the portion next to the New Horizons.

A. Goertzen: And they did talk to B.C. Housing about it. But apparently Fernie has more than a lot of other communities in B.C. I understand that, but when there are still people struggling with no homes, I am wondering who makes the decision on how much is enough.

J. Rustad: I'm sorry. If this is a personal question, you don't have to answer it. I am just wondering. Did you apply for the rental assistance program? Has that been a benefit for some of the people that you know that are in a low-income situation to help assist them with housing?

A. Goertzen: None that I'm aware of, because when you live in the low-income housing, you don't qualify for that. So no, there is actually no one that I know that has qualified for that. I know that last year when some of those people were being evicted, MLA Bennett looked into some extra funding. I'm unclear as to exactly what that was, but then he said that they didn't qualify for it.

R. Hawes (Chair): Your presentation clearly has a lot of passion behind it, and I know that you have a mayoral candidate that was here earlier. I'm not at all familiar with the local politics, but I know I would certainly be encouraging you to ask your local council to keep the pressure on Victoria to get B.C. Housing to provide the funding if the social housing is needed.

I know the government is looking to partner with communities that actually are prepared to put up the land, and there are not that many communities that are prepared to do that. So if Fernie is prepared to do that, I would be certainly hoping that your mayor would be able to convince Victoria that the funding is required.

A. Goertzen: Okay.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much.

The next presenter is Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society and Dan Murphy.

D. Murphy: Good morning. I just wanted to introduce Susan Bond here too. She's with me. She's our communications director.

I think you're getting your handout there. You can be relieved that I'm not going to read it, but I'll just leave it with you for backup. If I forget something really important, hopefully Susan will help me out here.

My name is Dan Murphy, and I am the coordinator for the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society,
[ Page 1948 ]
known more as the Trench Society. For the obvious length of the name, we've shortened it up to the Trench Society.

I guess I did want to open my presentation by thanking the government. This is our third presentation to this committee. It's my first, but my predecessors have made two — one back in 2005, and I'm not sure when the other one was. There have been great inroads in our program. I wanted to thank the provincial government.

I'll talk a little bit more about the program in a minute, but I wanted to specifically thank Bill Bennett, our MLA. He has been with us in the trenches for the last ten years helping us out, and he's still with us now. He has been a great supporter, and we really appreciate Bill's support.

[1025]

Basically, just very briefly — and there's a lot more detail in the handout, and if you go to our website there's even more — we are an alliance of nine ranching, environmental and hunting groups throughout the East Kootenays. We represent some 3,000 members in total. We're dedicated to our cause. We see ourselves as a grass-roots organization dedicated to grassland ecosystem restoration.

For some of you who don't live in the Kootenays, or possibly you live in the Kamloops area or Merritt area or other areas that have grassland situations, basically we're talking about the Rocky Mountain Trench. It's the low-elevation area between the Rocky Mountains and the Purcell Mountains, from about Radium down to the U.S. border.

Mother Nature managed these lands for many, many years as grasslands, and so did the first nations, basically by introducing fire into the ecosystem. That's the way Mother Nature handled it. She used to burn these areas off periodically and kept the trees out and the grass in.

Then we came along — the white man. Pretty much after the First World War, and really significantly after the Second World War, we got really good at fighting forest fires. So basically we started putting out forest fires. We removed fire from these ecosystems, and the trees started to take over.

So what we're left with now is, we've estimated, about 250,000 hectares of what should be grasslands, and probably about 115,000 hectares of that needs to be treated because the trees have taken over.

They're poor tree-growing sites. It's not where the forest product companies want to manage trees. Mother Nature meant them to be grasslands, and that's what they should be. They're very important winter areas for ungulates — deer and elk and what have you. They're also very important to the ranchers for domestic livestock grazing.

Our organization…. We're part of a bigger program in which the provincial government is involved in, the Rocky Mountain Trench Ecosystem Restoration program. We've been leaders in the province, in fact, to the point where they sort of modelled a new provincial program that was introduced in 2006. Now they're introducing this program into other parts of British Columbia based on what we've been able to do here.

There's a provincial program delivered by the Ministry of Forests and Range, and there are also regional and district programs. Of course, our experience is here in the Rocky Mountain forest district.

We also have — and the government was responsible for helping, along with our organization, to set it up about ten years ago — a steering committee. We think it's a unique steering committee. It's made up of all the government agencies that are involved in forest and grasslands, and also non-government organizations like our own, stakeholders and other organizations that are doing restoration work in the area, like the national parks and the B.C. fish and wildlife compensation fund, the Habitat Conservation Fund and those sorts of organizations.

Over the last ten years, with big help from government, we've been able to raise about $4.3 million, or spend $4.3 million, in the East Kootenays, and we've been able to treat about 20,000 hectares, which is really significant.

I think the really significant part about the steering committee is — and it's well documented back to 1950 — that the ranchers and the wildlife people used to fight a lot in this valley. I guess there are some still fighting, but through this program we've been able to draw these different organizations together. They've been able to become focused on the land and focused on grassland ecosystem restoration.

They might fight later about who's going to use the grass, but they will agree that the work needs to be done.

That's sort of our program in a nutshell. I did want to mention that unique steering…. Also, industry — Tembec Industries is on that committee — and all the stakeholders. It's quite an interesting….

Unfortunately, after ten years we're still a long way away from our goals. These goals have been supported by government in the Kootenay-Boundary land use plan, which is a higher level plan that was developed some years ago.

[1030]

It's also an objective in the Forest and Range Practices Act, or at least the intent is there. There's some argument over the legality of it. It's been well documented by our steering committee in our targets in the Blueprint for Action of 2006, which I gave you a copy of there.

In a recent publication by the Forest Practices Board, which monitors forestry and range practices in British Columbia…. They've indicated in a report as early as this July that actually the grasslands in the Kootenays and their area are in decline and that we're probably somewhere in the neighbourhood…. This can be argued, but we're only meeting about 80 percent of our stated goals in the land use plan and the Forest and Range Practices Act.
[ Page 1949 ]

So they've sort of commissioned the Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Environment to report back to them by the end of December on how we're going to resolve these issues. It's well documented that we're not meeting our goals.

So why am I here? Because we're hearing rumours that the money that's now going into this program won't be around in 2010. We're concerned about that. The Ministry of Forests and Range has been a big player. The provincial government has been a big player in this program. I guess that's why we're here today, and we want to encourage you to continue supporting this program, because we're a long way away from meeting our goals.

Basically, I'll just sum up with three recommendations that we've come to you with. Of course, these can be discussed in much more detail, but I'll just sum it up.

Basically, our first recommendation is for the government to continue with the program, to continue with their support with staff and funding and to continue on and work with us other stakeholders to achieve our goals. That's our first recommendation.

I guess the other recommendation we would like to make…. We made this recommendation in a presentation to the forestry round table that came through here earlier this year. We presented a letter that went to the former Minister of Forests.

Unfortunately, we're constrained in our ecosystem restoration work. Basically, a lot of the restoration is log, slash and burn. So we unfortunately happen to fall under timber tenure, which is not where we should be. The timber tenure system is set up to manage the forest to produce logs for the forest industry.

We're doing restoration work. We're doing a treatment. But because it involves harvesting, we get lumped into the timber tenure system, and this makes it really difficult for the bureaucrats, the dedicated staff at the Ministries of Forests and Environment, to help us, because their hands are tied by legislation.

We're asking if you would look at your legislation and develop legislation and policies that would allow the government to work outside of the regular timber tenure system.

Now, in our work we do some harvesting of trees, and quite often there is a stumpage related to that. We don't have a problem paying fair stumpage, but a lot of the land that we treat does not have merchantable timber on it. Overall, it's a cost to do these treatments.

What we're recommending is similar to what B.C. Parks does. When B.C. Parks does restoration work in their parks, if they harvest timber and they sell it and there's a profit and a stumpage, then that stumpage goes back into their program to offset their costs for their restoration program within the parks. If it's good for one ministry, we think: why can't it be applied to this situation? We're not saying that we should be completely outside the stumpage system, but if we do have to deal with stumpage, we'd like to see that money come back into the program.

[1035]

Then I guess the third thing that we wanted to recommend…. I think the government is already quite involved in this, particularly up north with the mountain pine beetle situation and in central B.C. We're asking the government to invest and innovate in smallwood and biomass utilization — i.e., bioenergy, such as co-gen, pellet mills, fuels made from bioenergy, all those things.

The biggest part of the forest that we have to remove in order to get these grasses to come back and for them to flourish and sustain…. A lot of it is small; it isn't even pulpwood. We're lucky, in a strong pulp market…. Unfortunately, the poor lumber market right now is not producing enough chips for the pulp industry, so right now we're able to sell pulpwood to companies like Tembec. That's helping our program a lot. It's a cyclic market. If we didn't have that, it would be really tough, because these treatments are expensive.

We would like to see the government work with industry and with the stakeholders in this whole field. It could actually develop into something. Rather than this being waste wood, it could actually be something that could be profitable and be an industry in itself, as it is in other parts of the world.

Again, thank you very much for listening to me.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Dan. Your presentation is pretty clear.

Questions?

D. Murphy: So you will remember us after the Olympics.

R. Hawes (Chair): I would suggest to you that probably even right now Bill Bennett is pushing to make sure that the funding remains. As you've said, I think he's a big supporter.

Our next presenter will be Janice Brulotte.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

J. Brulotte: I just wanted to wait until everything was passed out. I'll probably read a little bit and also do a little bit of my own impromptu speaking.

I'll start off by saying thank you very much for this opportunity to be here and to be able to present this. I noticed it in the paper yesterday, and I'm so glad I did. I'm really happy that I was able to come here today and have this appointment in front of you to make you aware of underfunding for special ed in the school system. I'll just start off by reading my presentation, and I might add a little bit as I go on.

The picture that you see clipped onto my presentation is of my daughter Grace, who is 12 years old. As you
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can see, she's a really happy, bright-looking girl, and she's a real sweetheart. I'm here standing up for her and for kids that are just like her in the province of British Columbia. Kids that are special ed kids are called 1701s in the public school system. So I'm going to start off.

My name is Janice Brulotte, and I am from Fernie. I am a wife and mother and self-employed business owner. My husband Buddy and I have four children, and our fourth and last child, Grace, was born with a very rare congenital birth defect called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita. It is a neuromuscular condition in the family of muscular dystrophy.

Grace has never been able to walk, feed herself with her own hands, touch her own face, comb her own hair or take care of herself functionally in just about every area of her life. As you can tell from the picture, it has not affected her mind, nor does it, in most cases, for any child with AMC.

Grace is 12 years old, and even though she cannot do a lot of physical things other kids can do, she has done many other amazing things, such as drawing and painting, playing the piano with basically just her right pinky finger — and I do mean playing very well. She is in her fifth year of voice lessons and can be seen on YouTube.

[1040]

She was a reporter for the B.C. Winter Games for wheelchair basketball this past year for SET-BC, an organization funded through the Ministry of Education that provides technology such as laptops and voice communicators for kids with more severe disabilities. She is also currently a freelance student reporter for the Fernie Free Press and does a monthly column.

Recently she found out that she may be one of ten disabled students chosen to be a student reporter for the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics. She was also on the Variety Club Show of Hearts in 2001 and has been featured twice on CBC's the Fifth Estate.

But I'm not here to brag about my daughter, even though I'm very proud of her accomplishments. I'm here for the very specific reason of asking you, the Select Committee on Finance and Government Services, to seriously consider putting additional funding in place for children in the public school system who are known as 1701s. This term is used for any child with special needs, varying from ADD, ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy and conditions such as arthrogryposis.

I would like to tell you something that you may not be aware of and wouldn't be aware of unless you lived in my shoes and had a child born with severe disability.

Grace receives the highest level of funding and is supposedly fully funded for the entire school day. That means she gets an EA — an educational assistant — all day long. That is until this year, when Grace went into the high school, and we had a rude awakening. The administration told Grace that she would have to eat her lunch in the special ed resource room, meaning that she would be put in a room segregated from the rest of the school population, with kids with severe disabilities and their EAs, who would feed them and toilet them.

Grace was extremely upset and began to cry when she was told this, because for six years she had an EA attend to her needs over lunch-hour, but it was with her peers within the lunchroom.

My husband and I protested to the school and the board, because in essence they were going against her rights to inclusion within the society of her peers. I asked the school board why they were making this decision, and they told me that it was because Grace's funding was not sufficient enough to allow her to have an EA help her in the lunch hall outside of the resource room.

They told me that even though Grace brings in the highest level of funding of $32,000 per year, it cost the school actually $35,000 for Grace's basic needs to be met — a funding shortfall of $3,000 per year.

I was told that Grace's funding was not only for her EA's wages, which last year were $27,000 gross, but that it also paid for her desks. She has a total of five desks because when she sits at a desk she can't raise her arms, and so she has to have a lower desk, a specially made desk. A portion is paid for the special ed teacher's wages and other miscellaneous things throughout the year.

Now to my point. I would like to see a portion of my tax dollars budgeted toward increased funding for children specifically like Grace who absolutely cannot function without an aide for most of her needs, especially over lunch-hour, where she socializes and is felt to be a part of the normal goings-on of a young preteen girl. Their social lives are everything to them — if you have teenagers, you understand that — Grace included, regardless of her disability.

Society — that being her peers — needs her too. Otherwise, how would the rest of us so-called normal people ever learn how not to be so shallow? This starts at the school level, where if our kids grow up with kids like Grace, they don't look at them as weird or outcasts.

I am beseeching you on behalf of all special needs children in the province of B.C. that when you're planning the budget of 2009 and for many years to come, please do not forget these kids, who always seem to be forgotten. Society seems to believe they do not play a viable role in our community's lives.

The special ed department is, according to the school board, very underfunded. I am now aware of that fact, as I have seen it firsthand in the life of my daughter Grace at school.

[1045]

It would cost the school approximately $44 to $55 per week to fund an EA to help a 1701 student like Grace over lunch-hour within the main lunch hall. That works out to approximately $178 per month, times nine months,
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because of the school year…. Kids don't go to school on the weekends, and sometimes they have Fridays off, so I kind of worked it out to nine months. So that would cost the school board approximately $1,602 per year.

When you consider the fact that it costs billions to fund the Olympics, which I'm not against, then it is a pittance to ask you to increase funding within a reasonable amount of money so that kids like Grace can be a part of the inclusive society that was introduced by the Canadian government itself with a promise to provide funding to achieve that goal.

As it stands, Grace must either continue to go into the resource room and be segregated, or she has to be taken out of her regularly scheduled class instruction time 25 minutes before her lunch hour because that is the only time her EA is funded to provide for Grace's needs for eating and toileting. She still is not being included, as she has to sit with the aide alone in the lunch hall before her friends come out to eat lunch.

I thank you for your time and for your understanding and, hopefully, for your willingness to add increased funding in the upcoming budget 2009 to the special education department.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I guess I would ask you a question. I'm not sure what kinds of questions the school board has been asked as to where the funding goes. I mean, to say that there's a special desk — which is, I'm assuming, a one-time purchase….

You know, I'm not quite sure that it's a question, in Grace's particular case, of more funding, or is it maybe that the school board needs to look at how they're allocating the funds?

J. Brulotte: Well, from speaking with the school board, they just kept saying to me over and over again, every time I'd call them: "We're underfunded in this area, and we just don't have enough funds to provide, and we need more funding." So I just thought to myself that this is a perfect opportunity to be heard and to make this known.

I'm hoping, if money does go into this area, that it doesn't just get thrown into the pot, that it's earmarked for this case. As happens in so many cases and as in my child's case, even though she receives the highest level of funding, there are lots of kids that are 1701s that receive very little funding, maybe only $5,000 or $6,000, because they have, say, mild autism or ADHD, and they don't need an aide completely throughout the day. But because they're also underfunded, a portion of my daughter's funding could go to that child. It's kind of spread out over the table.

My concern, too, is that when the budget is planned and if some extra funding does go into this area, it does specifically get earmarked…

R. Hawes (Chair): And targeted.

J. Brulotte: …yeah, and targeted towards this area. Again, it's also an issue of inclusion, specifically for kids like my daughter Grace, who are very intelligent and bright and need to be socialized and want to be socialized.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for what is really a touching personal story. I appreciate it, because that really brings the problem to life in a way that the statistics don't.

We did hear in Vancouver from a group called Parents for Successful Inclusion, which is an advocacy group based in Vancouver that puts forward, I think, much the same concerns. Their view seemed to be the same as yours, that it should be a segregated addition to funding that's directed so that the school board isn't pressured into using that to cross-fund other purposes.

Certainly, this case that you brought to us really does cry out for an answer, so thanks very much.

J. Brulotte: There was one other thing I wanted to mention. I don't know if you saw it in the news last week on BCTV. There was a father whose daughter had cerebral palsy, and she wanted to be a part of an overnight school trip. Because the school board would not fund that child's EA to go with her, the father had to go with her. Consequently, they had to be, again, segregated from the rest of her peers. She really couldn't completely be included in what was going on, because she had to stick with her dad rather than her EA.

R. Hawes (Chair): I think she didn't go at all, in the end.

[1050]

J. Brulotte: Yeah. So I just want to tell you, as a parent of this amazing little girl…. I get emotional when I think about her because she has made such an impact on the lives of so many people. To have her shoved into a room over lunch-hour is just a real crime. Sometimes, as I said in my report, we think these kids cause a huge money load for the government, but they really do make a difference in this world.

R. Hawes (Chair): Our job is to make recommendations to the Finance Minister with respect to the budget. I don't have to tell you, because I know what you do advocating on behalf of your daughter….

I would strongly recommend to you that…. It is election time at the local level. I truly believe that the school board, for $3,000, can probably…. I mean this is an exceptional case, so it would seem to me that the local school board should be able to deal with your daughter in a more appropriate way.
[ Page 1952 ]

At the same time, we know what we need to do. Perhaps the school board has something they need to do as well.

J. Brulotte: Well, I've tried and tried and tried. I keep getting stonewalled.

R. Hawes (Chair): It's election time.

J. Brulotte: Yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Next we have the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce, Connor Stewart.

Welcome, Connor.

C. Stewart: Very short presentation. I have a handout there for you with some more background information on something that we're just reiterating a bit. I'd like to thank the committee for providing this opportunity for individuals and organizations to speak to opportunities that they would like to see addressed. It's certainly very welcomed.

On behalf of the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce, I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate some recommendations previously put forward through policy resolutions at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce AGM. The recommendations have already been forwarded to the appropriate ministers. However, considering that there are funds required for both of the proposed resolutions, I saw it relevant and was advised to speak to it again at this opportunity. I've brought the copies, which are handed out to you there.

On the first one, "Facilitating the Movement of Goods and People Between B.C. and Alberta" we are requesting that the provincial government examine the costs of making major improvements to Highway 3 to help facilitate the growth occurring in this expanding economic region, as well as to improve on the safety of travelling this section of the highway.

Traffic has been increasing quite rapidly, over the past few years especially. It's a main goods transportation artery from the rest of Canada into the Kootenays, to the coast and into the northwestern United States. Some improvements have been made on the Alberta side, and we feel that B.C. should be looking at doing the same thing.

On the second one, with British Columbia being a carbon-rich province, we are requesting "that the provincial government…invest funding to develop a carbon-neutral fossil fuel research and development stream that will deliver technology that can be deployed on a domestic and international basis."

Our province has amazing potential to be a massive energy provider. It's an extremely important part of our economy, and advances and investments in technology need to happen for this to be a reality. While keeping the environmental concerns front of mind these days, there are other ways through technology advancements and progression to ensure that this very important resource remains a vibrant sector in our province.

That's what I've got.

R. Hawes (Chair): You were absolutely right. Your presentation is short and concise and to the point.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation.

I was noting in B.C. Stats that the recent increase in British Columbia exports is largely due to increases in coal exports, so certainly, as we experience some of the shock waves that are coming out of the United States, I think that in the future coal as an export for the province is going to continue to be very important.

[1055]

When you say "initiatives to look at scientific discovery," are you thinking of carbon sequestration, or do you want to look at the full range of technology that might be available?

C. Stewart: Well, full range or with some potentially emerging legislation that's hampering or slowing down the ease of extraction of these resources. So it's looking at it from a more advanced view through technology on how these same resources can be extracted but in a more environmentally acceptable manner, while we can still keep it in the economy, still keep that sector vibrant — being able to extract the same amount, if not more, but having less of an environmental footprint, which is certainly foremost on many people's minds these days.

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation. I'm just wondering. With regards to the Highway 3 corridor and the study, I know that government has helped to fund a number of studies on other transportation corridors. I just wanted clarity on this.

What you're talking about is: you want to know what the economic and, I guess, social impact is of that corridor traffic flow and what the potential benefits would be through expansion or improvement to the corridor. Is that what you're asking for?

C. Stewart: Yes, to have a closer analysis at cost and if it can be included, due to the increased traffic and safety concerns. With the increased traffic, there are a few corners that have been specifically identified and a couple of bridges going through. There is one specific section coming out of Sparwood that is very dangerous, and the more traffic, the danger just keeps increasing.

So it's to get a cost analysis: "Okay, these are some sections that have been identified as issue areas. What would we be looking at in improving them to eliminate
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or lessen the concerns in those areas and help with the flow of traffic as it continues to increase?"

R. Hawes (Chair): An earlier delegation from Fernie actually made a very similar request.

R. Lee: You know that with the highway there are also side roads into the regional districts or the cities. Are there any coordinated plans to improve the whole system? Then some of the resources would be coming from the regional districts and the cities as well.

C. Stewart: Yes. On the roads coming off the highways, or the secondary roads, to be quite honest with you, I'm not sure of anybody that has been identified or if that would be part and parcel. So I'm not sure I actually understand exactly what you're….

R. Lee: The question is…. Not only the main highway should be improved, but traffic coming out from the highway.

C. Stewart: Like entering or exiting?

R. Lee: The merging entrances and exits. There could be some responsibility for the cities and also the regional districts. So my question is: is there any coordinated plan in the request or in the overall improvement in traffic safety?

C. Stewart: By different municipalities, do you mean? Not that I'm aware of — that there's anything specifically being looked at. I know no one who is doing the research and the background on this. It was just kind of the main areas, and it was specific corners and bridges and a couple of straight stretches where passing was really a concern. Then we were able to get numbers of how the traffic has increased over the past couple of years, just increasing those concerns.

That wasn't a part of the backgrounder that I was really looking into, so I'm not too familiar if there are any initiatives or any plans in place by any of the municipalities in looking at improving those entries or exit points.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Connor. I did have another question. I think not only you but others have made a strong case for major improvements to Highway 3 in this region.

The government's policy on new infrastructure seems to fluctuate, and on some occasions we're told that a toll may be required to pay for new highway infrastructure. Would you support new highway infrastructure if a toll were imposed? Personally, I don't, but that may be the government policy.

[1100]

C. Stewart: I'm speaking on behalf of the chamber of commerce and the members of them, so I would have to refer that back to the board to see if they would be in support of something like that or not.

R. Hawes (Chair): I think I would suggest that…. You are talking about highway improvement here, not new infrastructure necessarily.

C. Stewart: Correct — just improvements to the existing….

R. Hawes (Chair): I'm not aware of any areas where the government considers a toll on just an improvement to existing infrastructure.

J. Rustad: I was just going to make a similar comment in that there has been several billion dollars worth of road work that has been done in terms of road improvements around the province over the last number of years, and none of them have been tolled. Certainly, if there needs to be improvement on that road, I would be very, very surprised if somebody wanted to consider a toll route.

C. Stewart: Yes.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Connor. I think we've heard you loud and clear.

Our next presenter is the Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia, Ken Atwood. Welcome, Ken.

K. Atwood: As announced, I'm Ken Atwood. I'm pleased to be here today. I'm a chartered accountant working here in Cranbrook with BDO Dunwoody LLP. In my presentation today I'd like to provide an overview of the region to give some context for the specific recommendations that I'll be presenting.

As you are no doubt aware, this region has felt the impact of the downturn in the forest sector. Communities like Midway, Grand Forks, Castlegar, Cranbrook and Adams Lake were hit particularly hard, with Pope and Talbot, Midway Forest Products, Tembec, Interfor and Galloway Lumber all reducing their shifts or closing their doors. These companies have been cornerstones of our local economy. Forestry continues to be a vital industry in the region and throughout the province, and 2009 is going to be another tough year for this sector.

While we face challenges in the forestry sector, our economy has been a bright spot on B.C.'s economic horizon. In fact, our region was top in the province in some key areas and experienced decade-high growth.

A recent report by a chartered accountant institute found that our region's economy added 7,600 new jobs
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in the last year. That 10.9 percent gain in jobs was the highest rate of job creation in B.C., at almost 8 percent above the provincial average.

Strength in construction has been driving job creation and ski and golf resort development to the tune of $2.6 billion and continues to account for the majority of ongoing major project activity in the region.

An impressive array of new projects valued at approximately $1.3 billion was under construction last year. These included the Wildstone golf and residential development in Cranbrook, as well as, recently, Shadow Mountain golf and residential development. Also, there is Whiskey Jack Resort development in Sparwood and the Elk River golf and residential resort near Fernie.

This strong job creation spurt and inflow of new residents…. The region's population grew by 1.6 percent, surpassing the provincial average and achieving the highest rate of population growth in the past decade.

With all this activity, it's not surprising that the Kootenays witnessed the highest number of annual business incorporations in the past decade as well — a 21.1 percent increase over the previous year, compared to the provincial average of 2.3 percent. Conversely, business bankruptcies dropped to their lowest rate in the past decade.

While the Kootenays' economy is ticking along, we must be ready for the impact of the softening global demand for commodities as the U.S. economic downturn reverberates throughout the globe. We have seen exports in B.C. decline both as a result of the U.S. economy and also due to the high Canadian dollar value.

In terms of the provincial budget, we know that the province cannot control commodity prices or exchange rates. However, the government can certainly enhance our competitive position and provide strategic investments that can assist our economy and fiscal position. The government has the ability to improve our competitiveness through tax policy.

An example of this is the last provincial budget, where the capital tax on financial institutions was eliminated. This was a very positive step towards strengthening our financial services sector and attracting jobs and investments.

Similarly, government has the ability to make more positive changes. I would suggest increasing the small business tax threshold for small business sectors for them to be able to grow and prosper.

[1105]

In Alberta the small business tax threshold was raised in their last budget to $500,000, which is consistent with Ontario and Saskatchewan. It would seem appropriate that B.C. match other jurisdictions and also increase our small business tax threshold. Similarly, the government has the ability to make our businesses more competitive through simplification of tax administration in B.C. The simplest way to achieve this may be sales tax harmonization. Small businesses currently struggle with administration around two separate sales taxes: the GST and the PST.

The lack of a harmonized sales tax translates into higher costs for businesses in two ways. First, B.C. businesses require separate recordkeeping, reporting and remittance for the GST and the PST, creating unnecessary costs around accounting and administration. In addition, businesses deal with two sets of auditors enforcing compliance — one at the federal level and one at the provincial level.

The second way. The provincial sales tax paid on the purchases of inputs for businesses — for example, supplies and materials — is not a tax credit, like the GST. Thus, it's increasing the costs on small businesses.

I would recommend to government that it seriously consider the harmonization of the provincial sales tax with GST. The first step would be the initiation of a study on sales tax reform that could look at the cost benefit of such a move.

In terms of government investments, the province has done a good job on infrastructure. Investments in transportation and other infrastructure are very beneficial to the province, whether it be highway expansions, bridges, hospitals. These types of investments benefit us all.

The Kootenays continue to see increased investment in capital projects, with major public infrastructure and utility investments under construction. These include the Cranbrook Airport expansion, B.C. Hydro's Aberfeldie redevelopment project and the B.C. Transmission Corporation's substation improvements.

That concludes my presentation. Thank you for the opportunity.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Ken.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. It's nice to hear that the economy here is booming.

We also heard about affordable housing issues, not only in this area. I believe that in a lot of areas people are not willing to invest in the rental market. Fundamentally, as an accountant, can you see any way that we can encourage more rental market and affordable housing?

K. Atwood: Yeah. Investment in infrastructure, investment funding at the local community level to provide incentive for people to construct these types of residential units that can be rented out. I mean, it's no surprise that it's very difficult in Cranbrook for people to find housing — not only housing but affordable housing.

I think definitely it would start with a study at the local-economy level on what is driving the major construction and why it is not focused towards the development of rental units. After that study's been performed, I think a lot of answers would fall out of that, which would guide a more focused budget as to what can be done to help out that situation.
[ Page 1955 ]

R. Lee: Some really good suggestions.

J. Rustad: There's no question that small business is a major driver of economic activity in the province. So I'm just wondering if you have…. I like your suggestion around raising the threshold, having had a small business myself and knowing what that threshold is like and the difference it makes going from one to the other.

Do you have an idea around what kind of savings that would represent for companies and also whether or not that would actually create more incentives for individuals to consider starting small businesses or growing their small business?

K. Atwood: Yeah. Increasing the threshold will do two things. If the owners are motivated only for, I guess, personal profit, they will be taking that profit out of their business and be taxed at a personal level. However, those that are motivated to grow are rewarded for that by paying a lower threshold of tax. That threshold is only applicable if the revenues stay within the company.

[1110]

Increasing that business threshold, especially as this economy is booming and as costs are increasing and everything that we're seeing — the cost for supplies and also the sales revenue that's generated — allows these business owners to invest back into their companies, creating more jobs, creating more enterprise in the area, attracting more people to the economy.

Increasing the threshold would translate into tax savings. I think the lowest rate now is approximately 17 percent on small businesses at the lower rate, where it can jump up into the 30 percents for the higher rate. The difference between those, by increasing the threshold to $500,000, translates into a lot of tax savings, which can be invested back into local economies and into business development.

R. Hawes (Chair): One of your peers that presented in another city estimated probably an average of about $10,000 annually for small businesses that choose to reinvest. I don't know if that figure is accurate…

K. Atwood: Yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): …but it's probably not far out.

J. Yap: Thanks, Ken, for presenting. In regard to the harmonization of provincial sales tax and the GST, we've heard a number of presenters make the same recommendation. I'm wondering if the Institute of Chartered Accountants has undertaken a study or a review of this and whether there's already a cost benefit that has been indicated by that review.

K. Atwood: I'm not aware that an actual study has been conducted on the cost benefit. It was one of the recommendations for this budget that funds be set aside for that. The cost benefit would come out in the fact that now there'd be less cost that businesses would have to incur for the accounting and administration around two taxes.

The second would be regarding PST. This is not an input tax credit like GST, where they get that back. They get to claim that GST back. For PST that doesn't happen, so that would be additional savings towards businesses, especially small businesses, allowing them to focus and invest that back into their companies.

R. Hawes (Chair): I guess the only comment I can make is that I know there are a lot of tourists that visit from the United States and other places that will purchase goods and then see two sales taxes. They find that pretty objectionable. They may be used to one from wherever they came from, but it's not often they see two — from that perspective.

K. Atwood: Yes, it's discouraging.

R. Hawes (Chair): From a tourism perspective, even, it may be a beneficial thing.

With that, I want to thank you very much, Ken. We've heard your points.

Now we've come to the portion of open mike. I'm not sure if there are any presenters.

S. Manjak: My name is Scott Manjak, and I'm a city councillor with the city of Cranbrook. I've been serving for nine years. I've also been a director of the regional district for nine years.

I see that I'm pretty much the only spectator. It dawned on me, serving as a councillor for the last nine years, that when we go through our budget process we usually have no one in the audience. It always struck me as curious as to why more people don't participate, given that, as a city councillor, setting our budgets is probably one of our most important tasks.

I found today's session very informative, but the reason why I came to the mike was to welcome you to Cranbrook on behalf of the city. I think your committee is doing valuable work for our province. I know that most of you were probably here in June, I think, for your caucus meeting — certainly from the government side. I just wanted to take the opportunity to welcome you and thank you for the work you do.

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R. Hawes (Chair): Well, thank you. Many of us have served at the local level. I can tell you personally that when I was at the local level, we often struggled to get people to come in to talk about the municipal budget — and found the chairs empty. Then when the tax increase was announced, we would get lots of feedback. People like to participate after the fact.
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S. Manjak: Absolutely — after the fact. That's my observation too. It always strikes me as curious. You're right. Once we get through that process and we set the rates, there's always lots of discussion afterwards.

As I said, I feel that it's probably our most important role, because we're dealing with our citizens' money and determining how to spend it properly. As you well know, at your level there are competing interests out there, and you just try to find a balance that tries to meet the overall needs of our community and province.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for coming, and thank you for serving, because nobody serves on a local council to make money. They serve for a completely different purpose. Thank you very much for serving — for ten years?

S. Manjak: Nine years, mid-term. And I am running again in the next election, so it might be longer.

A Voice: Best wishes and good luck.

R. Hawes (Chair): Congratulations.

With that, we are going to adjourn our meeting. We're going to be convening again this afternoon in Nelson. For those of you who might want to make your way to Nelson, we'll see you there. Otherwise, thank you for coming.

The committee adjourned at 11:16 a.m.

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