2009 Legislative Session: First Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Friday, October 9, 2009

9 a.m.

Douglas Fir Committee Room via videoconference:
Courtenay, Cranbrook and Dawson Creek

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: John Les, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Norm Letnick, MLA; Don McRae, MLA; Michelle Mungall, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA; John Rustad, MLA; Jane Thornthwaite, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: John van Dongen, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9:02 a.m.

2. Opening statements by John Les, MLA, Chair.

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

4. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 12:25 p.m.

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

Friday, October 9, 2009

Issue No. 5

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 127 ]

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2009

The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[J. Les in the chair.]

J. Les (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is John Les. I'm the MLA for Chilliwack and Chair of this parliamentary committee.

Today we're actually breaking some new ground with respect to parliamentary committee consultations. For the first time we are holding simultaneous public hearings in Courtenay, Cranbrook and Dawson Creek via the technology of video conferencing. Just to reassure everyone, however, the presenters who are taking part in today's video conferencing sessions have the same standing as witnesses who appear before the committee at a normal public hearing.

I'd like to welcome each presenter and thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process and using this new methodology.

Each year, in preparation for next year's budget, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper by September 15. This consultation paper presents a current fiscal forecast, and it identifies key issues that need to be addressed in the next budget. The paper provides a focus for the consultations of this committee and includes information on how members of the public may provide their views on budget priorities.

The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services is the parliamentary committee which is responsible to conduct public consultations on the forthcoming provincial budget. Our all-party committee is required to report back to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15 of this year.

We will hold ten public hearings in different parts of the province. Public hearings have also been scheduled in conjunction with the demands of the ongoing fall session of the Legislature here in Victoria. To date, we have held hearings in both Vancouver and Victoria. In mid-October — in other words, next week — we will be travelling to Smithers, Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna and Surrey. Then we will begin the work on drafting our report, which must be completed no later than November 15.

Also, we're still working on including another video conferencing session for October 21.

If you've not yet received the Budget 2010 consultation paper, a copy is available on the committee's website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

In addition to public hearings, there are a variety of other ways that British Columbians can share their ideas with the committee. We accept written submissions by letter or e-mail, and for the first time we're also inviting video or audio files. Further information on how you may participate using one of these methods is available on the website at leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

Any public input that the committee receives, however it's received, is given the same full consideration as any oral presentations that might be made at a public hearing. Our deadline to receive submissions is Friday, October 23.

[0905]

Today we're going to hear from presenters in Courtenay, Cranbrook and Dawson Creek who have registered in advance with the Office of the Clerk of Committees. To provide a smooth transition between witnesses, we will be rotating between the three communities based on the schedule that we have put together for today. As with traditional presentations, each witness or organization may speak for ten minutes, with up to five additional minutes allocated for members' questions.

As this is the committee's first attempt at video conferencing, I'd like to quickly review the conferencing procedures. First, I'd like to remind everyone that they are on camera and visible at all times to other participants. However, while we are both live-streaming as well as archiving the audio feed of today's proceedings, the video component of these proceedings is not being broadcast outside of the conference facilities.

Second, the equipment being used today is sensitive and will pick up all background noise, so please try to refrain from shuffling papers or coughing into the microphones. This will allow for clearer two-way communications between our location here in Victoria and the video conferencing locations.

Finally, there is a lag of several seconds in the video conference feeds. It's therefore imperative that witnesses and members wait until they have been acknowledged by the Chair before speaking. This will allow Hansard to switch the camera feed to the appropriate speaker.

I'd like to now ask members of the Finance Committee here in Victoria to introduce themselves, starting with Bill.

B. Routley: Hi, I'm Bill Routley, MLA for Cowichan Valley.

B. Ralston: Bruce Ralston, MLA, Surrey-Whalley.

M. Mungall: Michelle Mungall, MLA, Nelson-Creston.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Doug Donaldson, MLA, Stikine, and Deputy Chair.

J. Rustad: John Rustad, MLA for Nechako Lakes.

J. Thornthwaite: Jane Thornthwaite, North Vancouver–Seymour.

N. Letnick: Norm Letnick, Kelowna–Lake Country.

D. McRae: Don McRae, MLA for Comox Valley.
[ Page 128 ]

J. Les (Chair): Joining us today, as well, I'm pleased to introduce our Clerk, sitting to my left, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. Our Clerk of Committees, Craig James, is joining us today from Courtenay, and our research staff, Jonathan Fershau, is assisting the witnesses in Cranbrook. Behind the glass here in Victoria are members of Hansard Services, Jean Medland and Gail Swetlow, who will record and prepare the written transcript of today's meeting.

With those formalities out of the way, I'd now like to call on Bob Wakulich with the College of the Rockies Faculty Association in Cranbrook.

Bob, if you're ready to go, the floor is yours.

Presentations

B. Wakulich: Okay. I'll probably be staring at the speech more, because there's this three-second lag when I talk. I thought it'd be easier to talk just by talking from the speech.

Good morning. I wish I could say, "Welcome to Cranbrook," to the committee members. I can appreciate that virtual technology is a great tool, but there is a lot to be said for face-to-face communication, and it might prove beneficial if all of you could be here physically. That way we could show you around a little and let you see how public services in our community make a big difference in our quality of life and in our regional economy.

I'm also sure that if the committee members were in Cranbrook, they might have received some feedback about how people in the East Kootenays feel about some of the provincial government's latest initiatives. The harmonized sales tax isn't an issue that our faculty association wants to raise specifically, but I do know that it has prompted a lot of discussion around here lately.

With that said, I want to talk to you about the College of the Rockies. I'm here representing CORFA, the college's faculty association. Our college has close to 2,000 full- and part-time students, and we operate seven different campuses in the region.

We pride ourselves on being a very engaged public institution with strong ties to the area. We are the third-largest employer in the region, including both public and private employers. We see ourselves not only as a provider of key education and training services but also as a very important part of the area's economic fabric.

One of the significant attractions of the College of the Rockies is that it provides an essential pathway for direct-entry students and adult learners, both of whom use our institution as a starting point. For many of these students, choosing the College of the Rockies makes good economic sense.

Staying close to home to go to school is a lot cheaper than moving to a major centre in the Lower Mainland to start or complete a post-secondary education. A recent study also showed that students who start at smaller institutions have a better chance of moving on and succeeding at the bigger ones because they get more direct contact and guidance from their instructors.

Our college has a broad mix of students, both young and old. Our average age is 26. With that kind of mix, our institution needs and tries to maintain the capacity to provide many different entry points into post-secondary education.

[0910]

Unfortunately, that capacity has been eroding as funding has been constrained. In 2008, for example, we lost — along with every other post-secondary institution in the province — 2.6 percent of our provincial operating grant, and the budget letters since then have not been very encouraging. What that means at an institutional level is that we have to keep doing more with less and less. Our enrolments are up this year, but parts of our overall funding continue to be pared back.

The idea of cost efficiency seems to have a nice ring to it, but the stark reality is that we more often than not end up cannibalizing programs and services to make up for funding shortfalls. For example, with the recent reduction in building maintenance funding, the college is once again searching for ways to deal with a shortfall that we didn't think we'd have back in the spring.

Among other things, this probably means that our facilities are going to be cleaned a lot less. At a time when public concern about H1N1 is prominent and public health authorities are stressing the importance of basic hygiene, the funding allocations appear to be headed in the opposite direction.

There's also some irony in this, because we've been on the receiving end of capital funding to expand our facilities over the past five years. We have several new buildings at our Cranbrook campus, but now we're hard pressed to find ways to fully operate and maintain them.

I mentioned earlier that the College of the Rockies prides itself on strong connections with our community. Part of that connection comes from being able to encourage the community to use our facilities, but funding cuts mean that we're less and less able to afford to do that, creating a whole new range of contradictions in trying to be a community-engaged post-secondary institution.

There are other areas that I want the committee to consider in terms of budgeting for post-secondary institutions. Affordability continues to be an issue across the entire post-secondary system, creating an enormous barrier at a time when our province needs to be training and educating more post-secondary students, not fewer. The skills shortage is real, and post-secondary education is a major part of that solution. Students need and deserve affordable tuitions and far more manageable financial aid than is currently available. It would be nice to see this escalating problem addressed in the 2010 budget.

The province continues to send confusing messages to post-secondary institutions by telling them on the one
[ Page 129 ]
hand that block funding is there to get them latitude to configure programs and courses in ways that make sense at a local level, but then the ministry sends out budget letters that detail specific program initiatives.

This isn't a debate about targeted funding, but it is a comment on how the provincial government defines block funding. If institutional autonomy is considered to be an important part of provincial policy, it would be useful for the committee to have a look at this issue and, hopefully, resolve some of the contradictions of bringing in new programs that have a tendency to negatively impact the current ones.

Provincial funding has not kept pace with the demands that we know are there for our programs, and it has not addressed the gap that exists in the funding of rural versus urban post-secondary institutions. I might as well get bold here and suggest that the committee might want to recommend bringing all the stakeholders together to revise and renew the allocation formulas.

My final point has to do with federal transfers. B.C. has signed labour market and labour market development agreements with the federal government. Federal transfer money is moving through the Ministry of Advanced Education, and the money is designed to help provide education and training for those who are unemployed or are making career transitions.

The public post-secondary system is very well positioned to deliver most, if not all, of these programs. It would be good public policy for the committee to make a recommendation that strongly supports the use of public post-secondary institutions for delivering those programs.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I would be glad to take any questions. With any luck, I may even be able to answer a few of them.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Personally, you've made history today, so I'm now open to questions from members of the committee.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Bob, for your presentation. I actually lived for a decade in the catchment area of your college, so I'm familiar with your operations and with the great work that you guys are doing.

You articulated a number of excellent points, which we've heard from other presenters as well, around the dichotomy between capital funding and the operating money to actually do something with those capital facilities, and affordability. We've heard some great presentations from the Canadian Federation of Students.

[0915]

My question is along those lines. You talk about enrolment being up, but having to do more with less. I'm wondering if you could expand on that, about what that has meant on the ground for students, and then perhaps just touch on revised allocation formulas, especially as they relate to that and relate to the rural situation. That's what we'd really like to hear about from you today.

B. Wakulich: I suppose one of the things about less for college in this area is the fact that…. Like I say, we're the third-largest employer, and a lot of what we do ends up having a multiplier effect here. I find it strange that that never really gets factored into allocations.

With something like the Olympics it's a major point of discussion, but for the ongoing operation of colleges, especially the smaller colleges, it doesn't seem to be a major factor brought into play. We've had cutbacks in programs over the last couple of years that are not because there isn't demand for the program in the area. It's the fact that we have to kind of make choices.

Can we maintain a certain program at a certain level of enrolment, or do we move on and try to bring in new programs that have funding initiatives attached to them? In many ways this creates the obvious problems between the people trying to make the best use of the money and the people who are trying to maintain what they figure is a good academic and vocational balance at the college.

Because of the fact that we're an entry-level institution and spend most of our time dealing with the first- and second-year students on a much more personal level, I think the actual kind of delivery we give should be taken into consideration in the funding. Many of the students we get…. If they hadn't come to College of the Rockies or one of the smaller colleges, I don't think they would have survived their first two years of university or a lot of other programs.

We can spend time walking them through it, whereas…. I'm not trying to disparage the bigger colleges and universities, but when you have first-year classes of 300 or 400 students, it's kind of hard to talk to your prof, let alone a master's student that is taking care of the students' needs and concerns.

We don't have a master's student base here. The instructors are doing all that. We don't have markers. We don't have any of the support that they have at the bigger colleges and universities. So you get a lot of value for the instructors that you pay out here.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you.

Just to remind committee members, when you're asking the question, look to the camera opposite. The cameras are focusing on you specifically when you ask the questions. We're learning as we go here.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. And yes, I would have liked to have been to Cranbrook, but we're being fiscally responsible this way.

My background is as a school trustee in the K-to-12 system. Funding formulas are also a definite issue that has come to light. So could you be a little bit more
[ Page 130 ]
specific as to what recommendations you would have for the committee on how you would recommend changes to the funding formula?

B. Wakulich: Well, in terms of how funds are allocated, it seems that there is not really anything tied to, let's say, legacy funding at the college level. I'm not really sure whether the Finance Committee can address this in a budget.

The College of the Rockies…. I imagine the other colleges are in the same boat. They're very bare-bone operations. We do not get a lot of legacy funding because a lot of our students move on to the bigger institutions, and any legacy funding that exists…. They end up getting it, because we're kind of at the end of the chain.

Also, a lot of the colleges are newer, so the legacy funding doesn't exist. So we do not have as much — what would you call it? — flexibility or discretionary funding, I suppose, to play around with. I don't really think acknowledging that in terms of trying to maintain strong regional ties….

[0920]

Like I say, we're the B.C. hinterland — right? We're the people who are maintaining the Interior. I think you do have to consider the fact that we're still in building mode here. We're not in settled-in mode. I think it would be nice to acknowledge the fact that the building is still happening and that it needs to be encouraged.

B. Routley: Good morning, Bob. You used an interesting term that I think a lot of people can relate to, and that's the feeling that their programs or other services that are important to them are being cannibalized. Could you give us an example of a program that you feel is being cannibalized by what's going on?

B. Wakulich: Well, I mean, at the college over the years we've seen student services counselling get cut back. Just last year we had an entire criminology program cut. Our second-year university transfer program got cut back. Like I say, in some cases the numbers were low, but in other cases it was basically just a way to eliminate an area in one fell swoop and make it a lot easier to cover costs in others.

I'm not blaming the management for doing this, because I think they get stuck with these budget allocations and they have to try and make do with what they get. It does create a lot of conflict. We had a lot of students last year who, when they cancelled criminology and cut back second-year university studies, were coming to the instructors and saying: "What are we supposed to do now? We were planning to be here for two years." We didn't have much to tell them.

I don't think the examples would be much different in a lot of the other smaller colleges in the province either. We try to make do, and I think we do a good job. It's just that over the last four or five years of cost efficiencies, we're running out of places to be efficient. That's all.

J. Les (Chair): The final question goes to Michelle.

M. Mungall: Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate your comments about how it's better to be face to face. Like Jane pointed out, we're under some cost constraints, but I'd argue that in the era of climate change we're going to have to start getting used to video conferencing. We're starting to do that today.

I also appreciate your comments about how, if we're going to revise the funding formula, it needs to be done from a coordinated level and working with all the stakeholders.

But my question isn't about that. It's actually from a very different perspective, and that's one of transportation. I've spoken to many students in rural areas, and transportation is one of their most difficult things when it comes to accessing classes to begin with. I was wondering if you can comment on that not only from an instructor…. Maybe the faculty are also having the same problems as students are.

J. Les (Chair): And if you could keep the answer to about one minute, because we're starting to run out of time.

B. Wakulich: Sure could. Our area has recently gotten in public transit, and it has actually helped a lot for students. We do have students travelling fairly long distances in this area, and I do know that, for instance, a car is essential. I think that's reflected in student aid. But car maintenance and transportation problems, I think, are an inherent part of living in the Interior. It just kind of comes with territory.

I think some of the government initiatives that have happened in the last five years have actually dealt with some of those issues quite effectively. That's about it.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Bob, for making your presentation this morning. We appreciate it.

Our next presenters are again with the College of the Rockies. I think we have Nick Rubidge and Marko Maryniak.

Good morning, gentlemen. Whenever you are ready, we are.

[0925]

N. Rubidge: My name is Nick Rubidge. Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's prebudget consultation process. The government is to be commended on giving British Columbians a voice in shaping the 2010-11 budget. I'd also just like to acknowledge one of our region's MLAs, Michelle Mungall, who is also on the committee — so an opportunity to say hello to our local MLA.
[ Page 131 ]

Joining me today is College of the Rockies board chair Marko Maryniak, government-appointed member from Fernie. Listening to the earlier witness, Marko had to drive about 120 kilometres to get in this morning, and we had fresh snow today — not an uncommon situation in the Kootenays.

M. Maryniak: First of all, I'd like to thank the province for its support of our college through the knowledge infrastructure program and the province's and federal government's $12.7 million investment in the expansion and upgrading of our main campus in Cranbrook. This construction project is creating jobs and will leave a lasting legacy. Thank you for your investment in our college and our communities.

I would also like to thank the government for consistently putting a priority on post-secondary education, a priority that I trust will continue in the 2010-11 budget.

College of the Rockies recognizes and is sensitive to the fiscal challenges currently facing the province. As board chair of one of B.C.'s 11 community colleges, it is my mandate to prepare a well-educated, highly skilled, job-ready workforce for our region and for the province.

B.C.'s community colleges and the College of the Rockies are at the front line for people and communities affected by the economic downturn, and we at the College of the Rockies are a catalyst for economic and social recovery in our region.

N. Rubidge: I'd like to take the opportunity today to tell you a little bit about College of the Rockies and describe how community colleges are vital in preparing B.C.'s workforce. I'll describe briefly how College of the Rockies is responding to the needs of the region and our communities, describe how B.C. community colleges are leading the economic recovery and investing in B.C.'s future, and articulate what we're requesting the government to provide.

College of the Rockies has seven campuses located throughout southeastern B.C. Our main campus and Gold Creek campus are in Cranbrook, and we have five smaller campuses in Creston, Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Fernie. We serve a population of 83,000 people, widely dispersed within our large region. That's an area a little bit larger than the country of Switzerland. So in comparison with some other rural colleges in B.C., we're relatively small. When you compare us on the European map, we're significant.

Each year College of the Rockies serves nearly 2,300 full-time-equivalent students through face-to-face and on-line instruction. Last year we issued more than 1,000 credentials. Approximately 5 percent of our students are self-declared aboriginal students, and more than 100 international students from more than 20 different countries enrol at the college each year.

The College of the Rockies' exceptional faculty and staff are dedicated to our students' success. I'm proud to say that over the past ten years, without exception, we have delivered exceptional programs and services to our students while meeting or exceeding the education targets given to us by government, and within budget.

As a community college, we offer our students education and training that is high quality, job ready, personal, affordable and close to home — all really important attributes in today's economic situation.

Our region, like all regions in B.C., is facing serious economic challenges as a result of the economic downturn. High levels of unemployment and the resulting increased need for training and retraining is evident throughout the college region, and we are responding. Our enrolment is up 8 percent over last year, and we have wait-lists.

We've had to turn away students this fall in many programs, including bachelor of science and nursing, practical nursing, health care assistant, dental assisting, computer and Web design, early childhood education, human service worker, tourism, business operations, office administration, bookkeeping, heavy-duty mechanic, commercial and transport mechanics, hairdressing, professional cook, plumbing, welding and English language training.

We've also seen an increase in demand for programs such as adult basic education — which is upgrading — business administration, automotive service technician, firefighting, as well as in the university studies area.

[0930]

We've seen an increase in demand from secondary school graduates as well as displaced workers, workers retiring, requiring training and retraining — as have colleges across Canada and the United States.

The importance of and need for community colleges for economic recovery wasn't lost on President Barack Obama, who was quoted in a recent newspaper as catapulting America's two-year colleges to the top of his public education agenda by proposing to spend $12 billion on improving community colleges over the next decade. I'm not sure if that influenced the Nobel Prize committee in awarding his recent prize for peace.

But as more and more British Columbians turn to their community colleges for training and retraining, B.C. colleges face physical and financial capacity challenges that limit their ability to serve our communities. Many of our students are learning with outdated equipment and technology, which makes providing a skilled, job-ready workforce a bit of a challenge. In College of the Rockies' particular case, due to limited financial capacity, we've historically had to be more innovative, adaptable and nimble in order to meet the education and training needs of the people in our community.

Some of the innovative things that we've done and continue to do exceptionally well include health programs that rotate between regional campuses and bring these programs to area residents who cannot, for numerous
[ Page 132 ]
reasons, come to Cranbrook for training. Partnerships with businesses to tailor programs with them to meet their training needs include Tembec, the Elk Valley coal mines and Interior Health Authority. And we have partnerships with post-secondary institutions, such as Selkirk College and University of Victoria, to deliver joint and collaborative programs.

Some of the innovative things the College of the Rockies has done in the past few months in response to our community's training needs as a result of the economic downturn include partnerships with Steele O'Neil and Kootenay Employment Services to deliver targeted initiatives for older worker training programs in Cranbrook, Kimberley, Invermere, Canal Flats and Creston — sort of around the region — and partnerships with Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, Community Connections Society of Southeast B.C., the aboriginal early years services and the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Child and Family Services to deliver young parents' education programs for parents of a child under school age — the parents of whom are working to complete grade 12.

We have doubled the number of practical nursing students we admitted this September to address the increased demand, and yet we still have a wait-list. We've been working on delivering carpentry training for displaced Canfor Radium mill workers. That gives you a range of the sorts of things that we've been doing in response to some of the challenges of needing to retrain the workforce.

We've got a partnership with the Ministry of Advanced Education and 15 other public post-secondary institutions to develop a new employment skills access program which provides unemployed individuals who are not eligible for employment insurance with access to training and tuition for courses and job search assistance.

In addition to providing high quality, job-ready training, the College of the Rockies is an engine of provincial growth. The College of the Rockies' service area economy receives about $134 million in income each year due to the activities of the college and the cumulative effects of our current and past students. This figure amounts to 4.3 percent of the total annual income in our region's economy.

Taxpayers see a real money return of about 21 percent on their annual investment in College of the Rockies. For every dollar of provincial and local tax money invested in College of the Rockies, the college returns $3.90 to provincial and local governments. The students enjoy an annual return of about 13 percent for their investment of time and money at the College of the Rockies. For every dollar students invest in our college, they receive $2.40 in higher future earnings over the course of their working lives.

College of the Rockies and all B.C. colleges are truly education, social and economic engines in our communities and are critical to the economic recovery of the province. However, the colleges themselves are in a somewhat difficult financial position, struggling with a provincial funding system that doesn't work for smaller institutions. In order to provide a skilled, job-ready workforce, College of the Rockies and all B.C. colleges require a level of base operating funding for the 2010-11 budget that supports increased demand for our programs and services.

[0935]

We require a restoration of the annual capital allowance funding to ensure that we're able to maintain and enhance the operational efficiencies of our facilities, and we require funding for programs and services to address training for people traditionally unrepresented, such as our aboriginal populations, our young single parents and other adults requiring increased literacy and upgrading.

New immigrants and the disabled. These groups have been identified as being a critical part of the labour market strategy to advance B.C.'s economic recovery.

Being at the front line for people in communities affected by the economic downturn, College of the Rockies provides responsive and needed educational training close to home. We need the province and the Select Standing Committee on Finance and the 2010-11 budget to help us do this for the betterment of British Columbians. Thank you for your time, and I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much. I have four questions so far, starting with John.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for the presentation. I know we're very tight on time, so I'll try to keep the questions that I have very brief.

The two things I'm quite interested in with the College of the Rockies…. Obviously, having a skilled workforce is critical in terms of the resources and the resource industry in the rural areas of our province. In the area I come from, the College of New Caledonia is taking some great strides around expanding the amount of training it's doing.

I'm just wondering: over the last five or eight years, how has your level of training seats available for skilled training increased? Have there been any changes? Have you been able to enhance the kinds of programs you offer?

The second question I'll ask is around the community development trust and the worker training funding — the $5,000 per unemployed forest worker that's available for training. I'm just wondering how many of those forest workers are taking advantage of that and coming to your college to receive some additional training.

N. Rubidge: On the first question that you had in terms of the number of increased training opportunities over the last five years, as you're probably aware, the
[ Page 133 ]
money for trades training comes specifically from the Industry Training Authority. We have been successful in expanding the number and range of trades that we do offer in the college.

We've added plumbing, we've added electrical programs, and we have increased the number of apprenticeship program sections that were available in the other trades. So we've been able to expand the number of trades training opportunities for people within the region, which has been a great support to the local employers.

The challenge that we have is the way in which we get funded. You get funded on a per-student basis. So if you've got ten students rather than 14, then you get 10/14 of the amount of money needed to run the program. Yet the class costs us exactly the same money as it would with 14. If we're in the Lower Mainland, it's much easier to run programs with full classes.

While we've significantly increased the utilization rates of our classes, we're still faced with some of these small diseconomies of scale. That, I think, is the sort of challenge I was referring to in the way in which the funding gets allocated.

In terms of the forest worker program, I don't have the exact details, but we are trying to increase the number of…. We provide access to forest workers. We've got a number of students that come back, like the Canfor group I mentioned in Radium, where we're retraining ex-millworkers as carpenters.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you. We're going to have to go to short questions and short answers.

N. Letnick: Well, I don't have a short question, so I'll cede the floor to somebody else.

J. Les (Chair): All right.

D. McRae: I just wonder if you could give a range of tuition costs for the average student depending on program, just to give me a ballpark. I know it would change, probably, depending on programming.

[0940]

N. Rubidge: Yes. It would be about $2,500 for an average undergraduate-type program. That would compare very favourably with that at a university. You can do two years at the college and save enough money on that to have your third year, when you transfer, for free. So in that respect we're a very cost-attractive institution for the students.

We do have other programs where the fees are in excess of $10,000. Those tend to be some of the mountain tourism types of programs, where we've got extraordinary costs associated with having to access small classes with guides and mountain equipment and that sort of thing. So it does vary from program to program, but that gives you some idea. And of course, our adult basic education programs are free.

M. Mungall: Thank you very much, and it's always nice to see a Kootenay face.

I guess my question revolves around the increase in MSP premiums and, of course, the HST. I've talked to a few other institutions, and they're concerned about how the HST is going to be applied and that it's going to add even more costs to their bottom line — and, of course, the MSP premiums increasing.

How do you figure that's going to impact some of your programs, especially the wait-lists? I have several friends on your wait-list.

N. Rubidge: I'm delighted to hear it. I hope they eventually get admitted.

M. Mungall: Me too.

N. Rubidge: The MSP. Yes, that has a direct increase, as do the increases across the whole benefits package for the college. At the moment those tend to be unfunded increases, so we have to accommodate those increases. We don't have any choice about that. As we build our budget, we have to make reductions elsewhere to accommodate those increases.

The HST. We had an interesting discussion yesterday at our board meeting where our auditors were present, trying to get a sense as to what sort of impact that will have upon us. At the moment it's too early to say.

The questions we have are around the extent of the rebates that we get. At the moment we do enjoy sales tax rebates, so what we don't know yet, until we get more clarity from the government, is the extent to which those will continue or whether they will continue. Obviously, if they don't, then we will be looking at the total…. We have to accommodate it within our budget.

I probably should be directing that question towards the committee: like, what will be the impact on sales tax for us?

J. Les (Chair): Thanks to both of you for your presentations this morning. We appreciate the effort you have made to come out, especially seeing as you apparently have snow on the ground. So drive safely.

N. Rubidge: Thank you very much indeed.

J. Les (Chair): We will now electronically move to Courtenay, British Columbia, to be followed thereafter by Dawson Creek. Dawson Creek, stand by, and Courtenay, the floor is yours. I believe we have Murray Presley.

M. Presley: Good morning. My name is Murray Presley, and I'm the managing partner of the chartered accounting
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firm of Presley and Partners. I'm also a member of council for the city of Courtenay and a director sitting on the board of the Comox Valley regional district. I'm very pleased to be here today presenting to the Finance and Government Services Committee.

Presley and Partners was established in 1982, and our firm specializes in serving small business clients in the logging, fishing, construction, real estate and retail industries. We are active in our community and believe in the resilience of Vancouver Island's people and businesses, even in these difficult times.

I appreciate the opportunity to present here today on behalf of my organization. As a city councillor and regional director, I'm keenly aware of the challenges that all levels of government are facing with respect to budgeting. The need for social services has increased while government revenues have declined, leading to some very difficult decision.

Resource-dependent communities on Vancouver Island were dealing with recessionary pressures long before the financial meltdown last fall. The coastal forest industry has been in free fall since the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2007.

[0945]

In our region, year-to-date consumer bankruptcies increased 59 percent over 2008 numbers. Total building permits were down 25 percent, and business incorporations dropped 20 percent.

However, there were some bright spots. Business bankruptcies declined 15 percent from the 2008 levels, and capital investment in our region was worth $33 billion as of the last major project inventory. This was 17 percent of the total provincial investment, and 64 percent of the proposed investment is earmarked for projects outside of the capital regional district.

This is great news for communities that have been hard hit over the past two years. It is crucial that the government does everything possible to attract investment to our province's important business community, so that we can keep people working and providing for their families.

I believe that the government has made some important headway in this regard. The announcement that B.C. would be moving to a harmonized sales tax as of July 1, 2010, was welcome news. Maintaining a competitive tax regime is an important component of overall economic health. In resource-based communities there is significant savings to the businesses that employ our taxpayers, allowing them to reinvest or hire more employees.

I would like to focus my comments today on some important points around the implementation of the HST as well as property tax multipliers, which is an important issue for all local governments — municipal and regional districts.

Firstly, as our government begins the process of planning the transition and the implementation of the HST, I would urge them to involve commodity tax experts and industry. While the HST is far and away an improvement over the current provincial sales tax system, it is important that implementation is done carefully.

Some of the issues to be considered are not necessarily a construct of the new system but stem from the current administration of the GST. When the GST was established many health care providers were considered to be tax-exempt. Tax-exempt status means they do not charge GST, but they also do not receive rebates for the input tax credits.

Once B.C. implements an HST, independent contractors within health care services will be at a 12 percent disadvantage when competing against public sector providers. Many of these contractors are working in the sector such as seniors care. Due to our aging population and the fact that government funds much of these costs of these sectors, these inequities should be addressed by the federal government.

In 2008, 15 percent of B.C.'s total population was 65 and older, and on Vancouver Island 26 percent of the total population was over the age of 55. Courtenay and many other communities along the coast have become popular retirement destinations.

It will take innovative solutions, utilizing both public and private resources, to ensure that people's needs are met. An even playing field for health care providers is an important part of that equation. As the cost of health care rises in every jurisdiction of the country, governments at every level must use tax dollars efficiently and to the greatest effect.

The province has an opportunity to work with the federal government and Ontario to ensure that these types of issues are considered when discussing implementation of the HST.

The second issue that I would like to address today is in regard to property tax multipliers and their negative impact on business and industry in many communities in B.C. As it stands, local governments have become accustomed to having businesses and industry heavily subsidize services. When legislative power for municipal tax rates was passed from the province to the municipalities in the early 1980s, the rate multiplier for heavy-industrial-to-residential cap, as they call it, was 3.4 to 1. In many communities this multiplier is now up to nine times the residential rate.

In B.C.'s forestry and pulp and paper sectors this translates to wage reductions and/or job losses for employees. Suppliers and contractors have also taken a hit through price rollback and severe contractual rates concessions, and reductions in the amount of work have reduced sales, leads to reduced harvesting and to reduced income.

If some of these companies relocate or shut down, this will not only eliminate the economic base for local government, but residents may leave the community or be delinquent in their taxes.

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In 2008, when we look at the tax gap ratio for Vancouver Island communities, businesses paid on average 3.2 times the residential rate for taxpayers. This ranged for a high of 7.27 in North Saanich, which was the worst municipal tax in the province, to a low ratio of 1.79 in Oak Bay.

These inequities could put businesses at a competitive disadvantage with neighbouring communities and are a disincentive to growth throughout the region. If local government is not providing additional services to businesses, then there's no justification for tax multipliers.

It appears that just because businesses don't have a vote — and you can say this is taxation without representation — local government can tax them as they see fit. To drive businesses to look outside their area, possibly outside of their country for reasonable taxation, is to drive them away. What may be politically expedient in the short run may be very dangerous in the long run.

This disparity is also ultimately bad for communities. As we have seen recently, this reliance on overly taxing businesses and industry puts local governments in a vulnerable position. For example, when the Harmac pulp mill went into receivership in 2008, the city of Nanaimo was faced with a significant $2.6 million hit to their budget. Harmac contributed 72 percent of all industrial tax revenue to the city. And that was only the tip of the iceberg.

With forest companies bleeding red ink, many are now saying they cannot afford to pay their tax bills. For example, the Celgar mill in Castlegar pays $29.49 for every thousand dollars of assessment, while residential taxpayers pay $2.44 and Celgar's tax bill is 40 percent of the municipal budget. As long as local governments are reliant on one or two large taxpayers to subsidize residential services, their budgets are vulnerable to huge shortfalls.

That said, property taxes are one of the few revenue generators available to local government, and our citizens rely on us to deliver a wide range of public services. While the inequity between residential and business property taxes should be addressed at the local government level, I would also encourage the provincial government to work with local governments to find new funding.

I'd like to close by saying that when you recognize the fiscal constraints the government currently faces, as all levels of government are facing these same issues…. As such we must all work together to ensure our economy recovers as quickly as possible, while delivering vital public services to the taxpayers.

That concludes my remarks. Thank you very much, and I would be pleased to respond to any questions or hear your comments.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Murray.

D. McRae: Hello, Murray. The HST. You mentioned how it has…. You work a lot with businesses related to the resource sector. Could you give some specific examples — not the business but just the line items — of how the HST is going to help forest-based companies be more competitive?

M. Presley: Okay. For example, I belong to the logging contractors. Now, they've always had an exception for their logging equipment, and that's equipment that does the logging. But logging trucks and road-building equipment weren't exempt, so they always had to pay the GST and PST. The GST they got back but the PST they didn't. Now under this harmonized HST, they will get back what used to be the provincial sales tax.

Now when they're buying a logging truck or a road-building excavator, they're going to get back what was formerly the PST component, which they never got back before. And when you're buying pieces of equipment that are worth three or four hundred or a million dollars that has a significant effect.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, and the final question goes to Doug.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Murray, and thanks for your patience around the new technology we're using today — new to us, anyway.

[0955]

I have a question for you. Your CA comments as far as the decrease in administrative costs around the HST. I have a CA friend, so I understand and have heard that comment before. I'm just wondering how you reconcile your perspective as a CA with that as your municipal councillor role.

As you're no doubt aware, at the UBCM last week the councillors from around the province voted not in favour of the HST. I'm wondering why you believe that your fellow councillors are not in favour of the HST.

M. Presley: That's a good question. Unfortunately, I don't think my fellow councillors have all of the information. They hear snippets of this, saying: "It's bad. Oh, I'm going to have to pay more for a haircut" or "If I go to a restaurant, I'm going to have to pay more for my meal." But what's really important is that the person has a job — for instance, in the resource industry — so he has the income, so he can go into the restaurant to buy the meal.

I think, in due deference to my fellow councillors, that a lot of them don't understand the other side of it. They hear a lot of misinformation. I would advise any councillor who is not sure to go and talk to their local chartered accountant — certified general accountant, whatever — and try and find out the complete impact of the HST.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Murray. We understand that you had to improvise a little bit this morning, so thank you for putting up with that. You came across just fine.
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Our next presenter is from Dawson Creek. I believe we have Doug Boyd and Linda Sewell from school district 60.

L. Sewell: Hi, and thank you. Just to clarify, we're not from Dawson Creek. We're from Fort St. John. We've had a nice drive here this morning. It took an hour to get here. We're from the Peace River North school district out of Fort St. John. I'm the trustee that's representing us today. I'm the chair of the finance committee, Linda Sewell, and with me is Doug Boyd, our secretary-treasurer.

We thank you, first, for this opportunity to speak with you this morning. We've always taken advantage of this opportunity that you've provided, and we also appreciate that you are modelling the cutbacks that are necessary in our economy today.

First of all, I'd like to say that there are a few features that are unique to our geographical location. We have a very large geographical area for our school district, we have extreme cold, and we have expensive labour as a result of a predominantly oil and gas industry.

As a board, Peace River North has always been fiscally responsible and prudent, and we've looked for opportunities to save on energy costs and, as a result, put more into the classroom. We are committed as a board to modelling social responsibility, and that includes saving our environment.

What we would like to say is that we want you to recognize that without the funding for our unique geographical factors, which has been eliminated this year, and the annual facilities grant, we will be unable to address the adjustments and conversions to meet the provincial criteria for going carbon-neutral.

For example, we have an HVAC on the books right now for $1.2 million that we are looking for the provincial government to match. That's dependent on the AFG to meet that grant opportunity. That would make for a more efficient heating system with fewer emissions, which will allow us to put more money back into the classrooms, which is what we're all about.

I thank you, and I'll turn things over now to our secretary-treasurer, Doug Boyd.

D. Boyd: Again, we really do appreciate this opportunity. We have appreciated the attempt to support recruitment and retention issues with local market adjustments. Those have been very beneficial in elevating our wages to try to compete with the oil and gas industries. We are really happy that they're there, but they also cost us a lot of money.

[1000]

As you are aware, these adjustments come to term in 2010, putting us back into a position where we are unable to participate in a competitive market for skilled labour.

We therefore, as in previous presentations, ask the committee to recognize the significant gap in wages for us locally and request that we be provided the necessary funding to allow us to respond to required local adjustments in a timely, effective and fiscally responsible manner.

We really believe that this downturn is a temporary situation. As such, we are facing the same demographics in five years' time that we were facing six years ago. Those are the issues for us. The aging population is not going to change, and we are still going to have a recruitment issue. So we need to involve moneys for training and recruitment of the skilled labour.

Until last year, as Linda has mentioned, our district was one of five that received supplemental funds for unique geographic features. That's specifically with the enrolments and capacity factor section of that grant. Since this was removed without any consultation, we can only assume that it was eliminated because it affected only five districts.

To date, the only explanation we have received — and that came about from a telephone inquiry — was that it came from a committee recommendation. However, we as a district did not have any input into that recommendation; nor was there any inquiry as to the impact the $499,000 that we lost would have on our operation. This amount, combined with other cuts, makes it more difficult to meet the needs of our students.

The late August announcement regarding the AFG grant, annual facilities grant, and enrolment cutback-holdback funds not only impacts immediate projects but will also interfere with our ability to effectively address the climate action initiatives that we had planned.

Our planned projects designed to reduce energy costs and consumptions have been placed on hold. It appears these last decisions will negate the planning our board has undertaken to be fiscally responsible while meeting the stated goals of the government regarding student achievement and green initiatives.

Due to our northern location, facility maintenance schedules must capitalize on the window of opportunity provided by the summer months. Delay in communication, as occurred this year, combined with the announcement of zero funds has left our board without the financial means to carry out planned facility updates for the balance of the year.

Additionally, in a few months we would normally be starting to plan the 2010 spring and summer projects. However, we have no indication of future availability of annual facilities grants.

Last year in our submission we raised a concern that funding for transportation services was still based upon the cost of providing services from nine years prior. We are now in the tenth year, and no changes have occurred. Our vast geographic area, as Linda previously mentioned, requires an extensive transportation system with a fleet of approximately 60 buses on the road each day. The escalating costs on a fleet of this size have obvious budgetary issues.
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Most of our schools are currently operating beyond nominal capacity. We are a growing district, and that, I know, is unusual in this day and age.

Additionally, we are currently operating with 18 portables in place. Both ministry and local projections indicate a continued increase in student population. In fact, by 2017 we are projected to have another 900 to 1,000 students. This does not take into account any potential growth from the possibility that Site C may bring.

This, combined with recent announcements of full-day kindergarten, will place further demands on available space. We have asked the ministry to review our capital plan submission specifically for serious consideration of a partnership with the city of Fort St. John to use available space provided at the newly constructed Enerplex. We are looking at innovative and cost-effective means to address our current and future needs.

To just expand on that a little bit, this is a very large facility with two NHL ice rinks end to end, with an Olympic speed skating oval 15 feet above that and with another running track above that. It's a huge facility that the city has taken it upon itself to construct. They have approximately 12,000 square feet at each end of that facility.

[1005]

We are looking at innovative ways that we can capitalize on utilizing some of that space, with the idea that that would be duplicating or dipping into that taxpayer dollar that's already spent. With a little bit more money, we can actually meet some of our growing capacity needs.

At this point, those are all of the items that we've identified in our submission. We thank the committee for its attention to our submission and encourage the government to provide the flexibility to school boards to address student needs based on their local knowledge and innovative ideas.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. We have some time for questions.

J. Thornthwaite: It's good to see a school trustee presenting, as I was a school trustee up until June of this year. Also, congratulations that you are a growing district, because there are so many districts across British Columbia that are decreasing.

I wanted to ask you more details about the Enerplex. I've recently met your MLA, Pat Pimm, and I know he's had conversations with the minister about this. I'm asking specifically what ideas you have that could help us in the Finance Committee as well as in the ministry, as a partnership with the city in utilizing that very comprehensive and impressive complex that you've got there, with regards to partnership with the school district and how you see that fitting in for all of your students.

D. Boyd: As I mentioned, we do have that shortage right now. The nominal capacity for our in-town schools has met its maximums for the most part. We have a couple of schools that have a little bit of room, but very little.

What we're looking at doing is a reconfiguration of our district. We thought that rather than building add-ons to a number of schools, what we would do is try to consolidate that by shifting our configuration. We currently run a junior high — 8, 9, 10 — and then a senior high — 10, 11 and 12. By going into the middle school — not just by changing the name but really addressing the philosophical ideas with the middle school — we would address the student needs, but we would also address some space needs.

By doing that, we would be creating space in every elementary school, moving the grade 7s into the middle school, and all of the grade 10s from the district that are currently in junior high into the high school.

The high school, then, would go into what we're terming a campus model. That would require us to build one site, or take over one site at this time, to accommodate the student needs and the capacity.

By taking over the Enerplex space, that gives us a real good start at doing that. It won't necessarily meet our long-term needs in their entirety, but it will address the needs in the immediacy. We will then look at the types of programs that we can add to, in particular with careers.

There are going to be three ice surfaces, for example, in that facility, which is a career opportunity for many students. We have the HVAC systems that are operating in there and the refrigeration units and the compressors that are all providing a training ground for students to enter into that career, which also matches off with the oil and gas industry needs. It's the identical compressor used in the field in the oil and gas industry.

We are looking at entering into agreements with Northern Lights Colleges. We're already starting to offer programs that could be based there that extend out. We're looking at health care. We're looking at early childhood education. We're looking at some of the trades areas that we're already doing.

Our high school of 900 students already runs approximately a hundred students in an apprenticeship program each and every year and has been doing that for the last four or five years.

We started off offering courses in university college level while the kids are still in high school. We have always had trouble recruiting teachers. This gives us an opportunity, because we have a local training program for teachers, to start the training for teachers right out of our own high school and while they're in high school. The same with early childhood education.

So we're looking at this as a base, as a springboard, to be thinking outside of the box for every single avenue.

I know that was a lengthy answer to your question.

[1010]
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L. Sewell: I'd like to add something onto that, Doug, as well. One of the things that is also of benefit to our students is that this is an opportunity for daily physical activity, for them to get involved in sports. There is a curling rink, as well, right next door and the arena, the swimming pool. So all those facilities are right within walking distance for them.

D. Boyd: In addition, with the Olympics speed skating oval, it will be an attraction for other students who will be coming from the world, basically, to us, because it'll be one of two in Canada.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. We have about 2½ minutes left, so we will get as many questions in as we can.

J. Rustad: I have one question with 15 parts. Sorry — just joking. And recognizing the time here, if you want to e-mail some of the responses, if you think it's going to take a lengthy response, please take that approach.

First of all, hi to Linda and Doug. It's good to see you both again.

The question I have is around…. You mentioned the cost on busing and the challenges. One of the things, when I was school trustee in school district 57, is that we actually — before I was a trustee, years ago — took that service and went out of house with doing it. We significantly reduced our costs. We eliminated our capital component that was required. Every nine years we got an entire fleet of new buses. I'm just wondering if you've considered that approach.

Then I'm just going to throw in the other questions, so if you can maybe e-mail back, that would be great.

First of all, on facility usage, that's exactly what we need to be doing. It's one taxpayer. Whether it's municipal, provincial or federal, it's one taxpayer. We need to utilize those facilities as best as possible. I just want to congratulate you on looking at that approach, and anything I can do to support, that's where we need to go.

You know, I've got a passion in trades. I'm interested in the approaches that you've taken with companies in that area around trying to advance some trades-training opportunities within the high school system.

And finally, have you looked at your financial services? Do you think it's possible that you could be looking at, perhaps, a multidistrict model for providing financial services, such as bookkeeping, payroll, those sorts of things, to try to find some efficiencies and some savings?

J. Les (Chair): Okay. If you could perhaps e-mail us a response to that. I'll try and get all of the questions in if I possibly can. We've only got about a minute left here.

N. Letnick: I'll make it short.

At UBCM last week some of the trustees were talking about looking towards the government to give them some flexibility for local taxation, local increase of revenues for operating. Do you have any comment on that proposal by them?

J. Les (Chair): Maybe you could e-mail us the answer to that question, as well, because I would suspect it would take you more than 30 seconds to give us a fulsome answer to that.

L. Sewell: Oh no, I could do it in 30 seconds.

J. Les (Chair): Oh, you could? Go ahead.

L. Sewell: That would lead to haves and have-nots in our province and inequality in the education for the individual student.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. The supplemental funds that were removed without consultation — your second bullet point, supplemental funds for unique geographic factors — can you let us know how long those funds were in place before they were removed and what exactly they were for? As well, how much they were and the consultation…. You just got a phone call? Did you get a letter back on that?

D. Boyd: We didn't get a phone call. We actually initiated the call ourselves to find out.

J. Les (Chair): Perhaps the additional information relevant to that question — you could forward that to us by e-mail as well.

D. Boyd: Most definitely.

J. Les (Chair): I do have to run along here, because we have other people in other communities who are waiting to make a presentation, but on behalf of all committee members here this morning, I'd like to thank you both for making the effort to present to us this morning.

Moving along now, back to Cranbrook, on behalf of the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society, I believe we have Dan Murphy.

Good morning, Dan.

D. Murphy: Good morning. I'm not 100 percent familiar with this system, but I understand there's a little bit of a three-second delay, so I'll try to observe that.

Thank you for allowing me to make this presentation. I'm going to try to keep it short and simple. I know you're listening to a lot of presentations today.

[1015]

Firstly, the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society. We've been incorporated as a society since 1997. We're a coalition of nine different environmental, ranching, wildlife and hunting organizations in the East
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Kootenays. We represent some 3,000 members within our member organizations.

I guess what's unique about our organization — as Bill Bennett, our MLA, always noted when he met us back in 1996-97 — is that historically these organizations used to fight, particularly over the land base — whether it should be going to elk or it should be going to cows and that sort of thing. Basically, our organization is dedicated to grassland ecosystem restoration.

One thing all our members agree upon is the need for the work to be done. They may fight after they get the grass — whether it's the elk or the cattle — but this is one area where they've been able to come together and be really effective as a group. That has been duly noted by many other people.

I also want to mention that we're a registered charitable society. We are part of a larger group, which is also a very interesting partnership. We belong to the Rocky Mountain Trench ecosystem restoration program, and we have a steering committee and an operations committee.

Our steering committee is a combination of the government agencies, the "dirt" agencies — the Ministry of Forests and Range, the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture. Then we have the NGOs like ourselves and the Kootenay Livestock Association, East Kootenay Wildlife Association. We also have Parks Canada, the forest industry, Tembec and Galloway Lumber and the Columbia Basin fish and wildlife compensation program.

We're also a very diverse group that have been working together since 1997 to try to meet our objectives and goals. Basically, we identified in the Rocky Mountain Trench, which is the low-elevation area between the Rocky Mountains and the Purcells — 1,100 metres and under.

These are critical winter areas for ungulates and for summer grazing for cattle. We identified in 2006 that historically and ecologically, there should be 250,000 hectares of open range and open forest ecosystems. Unfortunately, we identified at that time, too, that 118,000 hectares of this open range and open forest needed some kind of treatment — either logging, slashing, burning or all of the above.

Anyway, like our organization, the Rocky Mountain Trench ecosystem restoration program has been very successful. Since 1997 to the end of March of this fiscal year, 2009, we've raised over $5 million. Some of these are duplicated areas, but if you log a hundred-hectare area and then slash it and burn it, you've actually treated 300 hectares. But it's the same 100 hectares.

We've had some 62,000 hectares of treatment, which would represent about 22,000 hectares on the ground. To the end of this year, March 2010, we will have raised over $8 million towards our cause, so it's a great partnership between government, NGOs, other organizations — and the public, of course. We've proven what we can do as a group.

At this point I want to thank the provincial government because they have been right beside us all the way. Particularly our MLA, Bill Bennett, has done a super job for us in keeping our cause in the forefront.

One of the reasons that we've been really successful in our endeavours is the involvement of the Ministry of Forests and Range. I'm not sure the exact year they established district programs, where we have some district staff that do planning for us and do prescriptions and that sort of work.

[1020]

In 2006 the provincial government established a provincial ecosystem restoration program, and they've taken the Rocky Mountain Trench model and have been able to adapt it in 11 other forest districts in the province, with a goal of having it established in 17 districts. They've used the Rocky Mountain Trench as that model.

They've also branched out from grassland restoration. They include other types of ecosystem restoration like watershed restoration and what have you. We think we've got a good thing going here.

We know that the government is facing hard times. We read the newspapers. We know that your revenues are down, particularly from the resource industries. We know what's happened in the resource industry here in the East Kootenays. We've been hit hard by it. There have been a lot of layoffs, so we know what you're faced with.

We know that education and health have to come first. We understand the hardships — that you as a committee have to go to government and the types of recommendations that you have to make.

We'd just like to make three really simple basic recommendations. One is that…. I'm not working for the Ministry of Forests today. We have heard that they have experienced a lot of cutbacks this year and that they're expecting more cutbacks next year. I guess what we're asking the government to do is if they can maintain some level of core funding so that we can keep some staff, particularly in the planning field, because all the work we're doing is on Crown land.

Although we can help as an NGO to raise money through a variety of different ways outside of government, through foundations — and we've been successful at doing that — and through the Columbia Basin Trust and other organizations, we have to have a certain basic level of planning that comes from the government.

One reason why we've been really successful is because here in the Rocky Mountain forest district, they've developed a five-year plan where we've laid out areas that require treatment. That five-year plan has gone through a first nations consultation process and a stakeholder process. We've been successful, thanks again to the provincial government. We've been able to secure about $4 million here in this last year between the job opportunity program and the community adjustment fund program.
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One of the reasons we've been successful is because we've had this five-year plan. But we require one government employee to sort of maintain that plan on an annual basis. If we see those kinds of jobs lost in government, it's going to be really hard for us NGOs and other partners to be able to help without that sort of basic core funding. So that's what we're asking.

We realize you have to make cuts, and we know that we're going to lose some funding in the ecosystem restoration program. We're just hoping that you don't cut us right to the bone or cut us out completely.

I guess the other thing we'd ask you to do is look at our tenure system. A lot of the ecosystem restoration work — and we've discussed this with the Minister of Forests — has to go through the competitive tenure process. Sometimes that puts hardships on us when we're trying to do restoration work.

We're not in the business of producing timber and pulp, although we try to utilize that wood as much as we can. Sometimes we're dealing with very smallwood biomass that can't be sold as pulp and can't be sold as sawlogs, even when there are markets. We have to come up with ways to deal with this smallwood biomass.

That's our third recommendation. I know the government has been very involved in this. We'd like to see you continue on with initiatives to deal with smallwood biomass, particularly with bioenergy projects. This will help us reduce the amount of burning that we have to do, which gets us into air quality problems. It helps to create jobs. It also helps to reduce fuels around communities.

Sometimes when we're doing ecosystem restoration work, we're killing two birds with one stone. If we're doing grassland ecosystem restoration work around communities, we're also reducing fuels around communities that can cause fire interface problems.

[1025]

That's my presentation. I didn't have the clock out, John. I'm not sure how much time I've used up here, but I'm certainly open to any questions.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Dan, for your presentation. You've left exactly four minutes for questions.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for your presentation.

I'm particularly interested in the last point around the interface with communities and the fibre supply issues, as parliamentary secretary for silviculture. I don't know if you're planning — and this is a little bit outside of Finance Committee stuff, so I apologize — to submit to the province anything on the discussion on silviculture. But I'd be very interested in knowing your thoughts around that and how that could be married with your objectives for your society.

D. Murphy: Well, we have the same problem in grassland restoration that they have in urban-wildland interface. That's that we've got smallwood, this biomass, that we have to get rid of, and I'm talking about smallwood that isn't any good for pulp. It isn't any good for sawlogs.

In our case, in grasslands ecosystem restoration, because of the absence of fire — predominantly since the Second World War but really since settlement going back to the turn of the century — we've taken fire out of the ecosystem, and we've had an encroachment of trees in these historic and ecological grasslands.

So our problem is that we've got too many trees, and we're trying to get rid of them. That's the same problem that they have around almost every community in B.C.

I personally think that, yes, we can get rid of a lot of this material when there are pulp markets and when there are sawlog markets. But there's a lot of biomass out there. The only way we're going to get rid of it is if we develop some sort of bioenergy industries, and maybe it's not just one industry.

There are huge markets in Europe for pellets. There are companies that are doing this in the Okanagan and up north. Of course, here Tembec is involved in cogeneration in their Skookumchuck pulp mill. That's an excellent way to get rid of biomass.

We can look at community bioenergy projects where we can generate energy for communities to heat hospitals and schools and that type of thing. There are just a whole bunch of things we could be doing out there, and creating jobs.

J. Rustad: If I could just follow up on that. First of all, thank you for that. In particular, how we can manage the idea of the grassland interface with the needs of perhaps more intensive silviculture and some of the issues around that. So if you could submit something to me on that, that would be great.

D. Murphy: Okay. Just to clarify that we're dealing with the NDT 4 areas, which are….

J. Les (Chair): Just hang on. I'm trying to keep us on track here. The next question goes to Doug, and then we're going to have to finish up.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation, Dan. I concur, and I've heard from others around the core funding needed in the planning — up in my area especially around Ministry of Forests and the shortsightedness of cutting back, shooting ourselves in the foot.

I commend you on your fundraising abilities of your non-profit, to put the money back into the lands around the communities. I'm curious. When there are marketable logs coming off that land, considering that you're
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a non-profit society, do the revenues generated from the companies as they process those logs contribute straight back to your non-profit for the work you do on the land?

D. Murphy: When we hold a tenure…. And actually, we do right now. We have a forest licence to cut. In 2007 we did some harvesting, and we were actually able to sell some of the logs as sawlogs. We actually created a profit, and we were able to take that profit and pump it back into the program.

But since 2007 things haven't been so good. In 2008 we had a pulpwood market, and basically it was a break-even. Probably since June 2008 we've had a marginal pulpwood market, no sawlog market, and it's been really hard for us a non-profit society to even get involved in some kind of licence.

[1030]

We'd like to see the government move towards stewardship contracts in some cases. The companies here, like Tembec, do get involved, and they'll get involved with non-replaceable forest licences. They're one of our partners in our steering committee, and they sometimes can utilize these areas for pulpwood. But it's the real small stuff that doesn't even make pulpwood that causes us all the grief.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Dan. Unfortunately, we've run out of time, but we really appreciate your taking your time this morning to present to us.

D. Murphy: Thank you, and I just want to again thank our MLA Bill Bennett for all his support.

J. Les (Chair): I'm sure he appreciates the kind reference.

The next presentation. We're now heading back to Courtenay, and we will hear from Steve Beasley with the Malaspina Students Union.

Steve, over to you.

S. Beasley: Good morning, everyone. Before beginning today, I would like to acknowledge the K'omoks people whose traditional territory we are on here today.

My name is Steven Beasley. I'm the executive director of the students union at Vancouver Island University, formerly Malaspina University College. I'm a geography student, and I'm a member of the university senate.

I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for hearing our presentation today and note our appreciation for the opportunity to participate in this process. Our students union represents more than 10,000 students at Vancouver Island University, who study in Duncan, Parksville, Powell River and Nanaimo.

We exist to advocate for students and provide services that assist in making students' lives easier and to offer extracurricular experiences that improve the student experience overall. Additionally, our constitution directs that the students union include as part of its core function the responsibility to advocate for a system of post-secondary education which is accessible to all, of high quality and one which is rationally planned.

It is this aspect of our mandate that leads me to address your committee today. First, I'd like to speak about funding for B.C.'s colleges and universities.

In 1982 public funding of our institution, Vancouver Island University, which was then Malaspina College, was $15 million — not a great deal of money in today's terms. But in 1982 that $15 million was enough to fund 82 percent of the….

J. Les (Chair): It seems that Courtenay has gone down. We will stand by. We might be able to pick up an audio on the phone. I think we have our next presenter in place in Cranbrook.

There he is. He's back up.

Steve, it sounds like you're back up. For the last three or four minutes you disappeared somehow. Maybe just start your presentation over again. Technology is a great thing, when it works.

S. Beasley: I'll start by saying that our student union represents more than 10,000 students at Vancouver Island University, who study in Duncan, Parksville, Powell River and Nanaimo. We exist to advocate for students, to provide services in making students' lives easier and to offer extracurricular experiences that improve the student experience overall.

[1035]

Additionally, our constitution directs that the students union include as part of its core function the responsibility to advocate for a system of post-secondary education in British Columbia that is accessible to all, of high quality and that is rationally planned. It is this aspect of our mandate that leads me to address your committee today.

First, I would like to speak about funding for B.C.'s colleges and universities. In 1982 public funding at our institution, Vancouver Island University, which was then Malaspina College, was $15 million — not a great sum in terms of today's values. But in 1982 that $15 million was enough to fund 82 percent of the institution's budget.

Over coming years inflation and enrolment pressures eroded that funding level so that by 1992, public funding only covered 71 percent of the institution's operations, even though the dollars in real terms had increased to $27 million.

Proportional cuts to public funding for colleges and universities continued throughout the 1990s. By 2001 only 61 percent of our institution's revenue came from government, though we received $33 million of funding.

That brings us to the mandate of the current government. This government has overseen huge increases in student numbers and funding for colleges and universities in British Columbia, for which credit is definitely due. But like
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other governments that came before, increases in funding have not nearly kept pace with the growth in costs and the growth in enrolment. Today Vancouver Island University receives less than 50 percent of its funds from government, meaning that it has crossed the line into becoming a privately funded institution.

As we look towards the future, the numbers only get worse. With projected $2 million to $3 million deficits each year for the next two years, coupled with the prospect of frozen levels of funding from the province, we will go further and further towards privatization.

The story at other institutions is no different. Across the system, per-student funding has declined by 15 percent in the last eight years, and every year this underfunding is not addressed the situation worsens. That is why we are today asking that your committee recommend that government restore operating funding to universities and colleges to 2001 proportions.

The declining government funding to universities and colleges continues to fuel pressures to increase tuition fees. Tuition fees in British Columbia were an average of $2,527 in 2001-2002 and have increased to an average of $5,040 last year. In comparison to other provinces, B.C. went from having fees 30 percent below the national average to now surpassing that average by 7 percent.

For the past eight years we have set the record among provinces for the highest rates of increase in tuition fees in Canada. Again looking to our institution, Vancouver Island University, as an example, in 1999-2000 the institution collected approximately $7.3 million in tuition fees from domestic students alone. By 2004-2005 that number had more than doubled to $16 million. Now VIU projects to collect $19.3 million in tuition fees in the current academic year. That is an enormous increase in just ten years.

There is ample evidence that financial barriers are the most significant obstacle to many citizens in achieving entry into colleges and universities. I'm not going to spend any time repeating all the data presented by the Canadian Federation of Students British Columbia in support of that fact, but suffice it to say that the data is clear, well researched and already on record. For this reason, we urge this committee to recommend that tuition fees in British Columbia be progressively reduced to 2001 levels.

I'll turn now to the issue of student debt. With per-student average debt upon graduation at $27,000 for a four-year program, B.C. has the highest student debt in Canada outside of the maritime provinces. It is important to know that this figure only includes public student loan debt and that according to Statistics Canada, average debt increases to over $32,000 when you include private loans.

Members should be aware that following graduation, student loan borrowers pay interest on their public student loan substantially above the government's own rate of borrowing. Members may not be aware that nearly every province in Canada charges a lower interest rate than British Columbia.

Students with high debt levels upon graduation pay more for their education through higher interest rates than those who borrow less or nothing at all in order to get the same education. A system in which low- and middle-income students are expected to pay more for the same education as those who can afford to pay for it up front is fundamentally inequitable.

By keeping interest rates as high as they are, the government is penalizing those students and families with the least amount of financial resources. Meanwhile, in terms of the impact on the provincial treasury, the annual cost of even the complete elimination of interest on student loans is relatively negligible.

[1040]

Accordingly, we ask that the committee recommend that government progressively eliminate interest charged on student loans to ensure that those who can least afford an education no longer have to pay the most for that education.

Higher-than-average interest rates are not the only factor driving high student debt levels in British Columbia. Our province is last among all provinces in the provision of non-repayable student financial assistance — at 60 percent below the national average. Additionally, provinces with comparable tuition fees to B.C. — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario — all designate approximately one-third of their financial aid as non-repayable, while in British Columbia 12 percent of our aid is non-repayable.

Given B.C.'s relative wealth as a province, it is not reasonable that we are lagging so far behind other provinces in terms of support for low- and middle-income students. Because B.C. families deserve no less than other families across Canada, we ask that the committee recommend the creation of a provincial system of grants that are upfront and non-repayable.

The issues of institutional funding, overinflated tuition fees, skyrocketing student debt are presented here together because they are absolutely tied. Cuts in funding create increased pressures to increase tuition fees which, when increased, in turn create higher levels of student debt. This means that our universities and colleges are pushed into privatization, and our students are forced into higher levels of debt.

As I noted earlier, the mandate of our students union is to promote a post-secondary system that is rationally planned, accessible to all and of high quality. In B.C. we have allowed the system to erode to a point where it no longer meets either of those first two standards and will inevitably fail to meet the third unless something is done.

The recommendations presented today — reducing tuition fees, increasing institutional funding, eliminating student loan interest and creating more non-repayable
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systems of student financial assistance — are not final solutions to the issues facing students, universities and colleges. They are the beginning of a process to reverse the erosion of our public system that started 25 years, three governments and seven Premiers ago.

We ask that the committee members come together and demonstrate the leadership needed to change the course of our public colleges and universities for the better and to improve the lives of B.C. families.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Steve.

I have a question from Michelle.

M. Mungall: Thanks very much for your presentation, Steve. When you talk about student debt, you're talking about my own life story.

My question is around the HST. We know that debt is quite cumbersome for students, not just speaking from my own experience but from the students I talk to from all over British Columbia. With the added increase in tuition fees and debt and so on and so forth — the increase in the cost of living — how is an increase in provincial sales tax, moving to the HST and, of course, that applying to many more goods and services…? How is that going to be impacting students?

S. Beasley: Any measure by government that pushes the cost of the provincial treasury away from a more balanced system between the corporate sector and citizens and resource extraction, and pushes that responsibility onto citizens through regressive taxation methods like the HST is, of course, a concern to students — as it is, as I think we've seen, to many sections of the B.C. population.

The debate that I think we would like to see is about what a progressive system of taxation would look like. Students in British Columbia pay for all of their education — absolutely. They pay for it over their lives as citizens of British Columbia. They pay through their income taxes. They pay through things like provincial sales tax.

The debate that's not going on in British Columbia right now is about what kind of taxation is more fair. We have a very polarized debate about people not liking the HST and wanting the HST to be eliminated, but no one is talking about what kind of taxation would be better.

What's unfortunate is that the better taxation is taxation that's scaled based on people's income, the very type of taxation that this government has been eliminating year after year after year and has replaced with regressive flat taxes — like the HST, like tuition fees and like MSP fees. These are forms of taxation that are much, much worse for low- and middle-income people in British Columbia. They're forms of taxation that lead to a greater gap between the rich and the poor.

So there should be no surprise when five or ten years from now, we talk about how the gap between rich and poor in British Columbia has increased. It has increased because of regressive taxation.

What we'd like to see is a discussion about how we can afford all the public services that citizens require through progressive taxation.

J. Les (Chair): Final question to Bill.

[1045]

B. Routley: Interesting presentation, I think. You make a lot of sense to me, particularly your last few points. If you ever consider running for MLA, I'd vote for you if you….

S. Beasley: As long as I didn't run in your riding. [Laughter.]

B. Routley: Yeah. Well, that might be possible soon. Yeah, the bottom line is….

With the HST versus another kind of taxation system, you made some excellent points. I guess what I'd like to know is: would students choose, for example, the tax cuts for the forest industry? We're told that giving a $140 million tax cut for the forest industry is somehow going to revitalize the industry. I'm sure you're aware that the real problem is markets.

With that $140 million, if you had it to spend, would you spend it on the future of education in the province, or would you spend it on tax cuts for big corporations?

S. Beasley: I think the answer to that, based on my presentation, is fairly predictable. I would not spend it on large tax cuts for corporations. In fact, the one thing I would say…. You know, Nanaimo is a resource community, and the forest industry matters a lot to the people who live in our community and to the students who go to our institution.

I think the point we made there, in terms of the forest industry specifically, is that the record of the current government is that the industry has been handed over to large corporations, that all of the rules that existed previous to 2001 forced forest companies to actually mill the wood in the communities where that wood was cut. We required that there be secondary processing of forest products in British Columbia.

Now we see that corporations are free to take out B.C. wood without employing British Columbians, so it's not a shock, if you study forestry policy, that there's a decline in employment there.

If we are going to revitalize our economy in British Columbia, we are not going to do that without properly funding universities and colleges to be able to retrain people to engage in the kind of entrepreneurialism required
[ Page 144 ]
to rebuild communities like Nanaimo, like Campbell River and like Duncan, British Columbia.

Even if the forestry practices were changed to better support small producers that actually employed more people overall, the same quality of wood is not there as was there 20 years ago. B.C. needs to move beyond a resource-based economy into thinking more entrepreneurially about what it can do to be a new world leader in resource manufacturing, as opposed to just simply extracting trees, shipping them to someone else and shipping jobs along with those trees.

That's what I would say. It's not just about where the money goes. It's about having a more forward-thinking leadership on issues of resources, of the economy and of education.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Steve, for your presentation. I suspect there's going to be a little bit of a shuffle at the end of your table there, because next we're going to hear from James Bowen with the North Island Students Union. We're ready to go whenever you are.

J. Bowen: Hello. I'm James Bowen. Actually, presenting with me today, as well, is Jaden Keitlah, who I think is in the camera there. Thank you for allowing this time to speak with you today.

J. Keitlah: Good morning. My name is Jaden Keitlah, and I'm the treasurer on the board of the North Island Students Union. I'd like to acknowledge that we are on K'omoks territory here in the Comox Valley. Thank you for allowing me to speak to this committee about the priorities of students and their families from across the north Island.

The North Island Students Union represents more than 4,000 students attending North Island College. These students represent a diversity of communities from Bella Coola, Port Hardy, Port Alberni and the west coast of Vancouver Island to right here in the Comox Valley. For many years our organization has campaigned on behalf of students and their families in these communities for accessible, affordable, high-quality post-secondary education in Canada.

[1050]

Some of you have heard in the past that North Island College students' priorities are increased government funding for universities and colleges to ensure that a high-quality education is available in their communities, and the elimination of any and all financial barriers to ensure that this education is accessible. This would include an immediate decrease in tuition fees.

Year after year students seek relief from the province for their burdensome debt levels and the high costs of their education, and year after year they are faced with ever more scarce resources to fund their education. Education remains unaffordable for many, and last year's budget had nothing in it to make education more affordable or more accessible.

Instead of increases, last year students saw the provincial government cut $55 million from the post-secondary education budget. This year a similar quiet, unannounced cut was made in the student aid budget, but students took notice. These cuts have students questioning why their education is worth less than for the generation of students preceding them.

If the provincial government values people's education less than it once did, one would assume that there is less need today for an educated populace to fill these positions in today's labour force.

However, this is not the case. Studies show that at minimum, 75 percent of all new jobs in B.C. will require post-secondary education. Additionally, as the baby boomer generation continues to recede into retirement, many more already existing positions will require well-educated workers to fill them.

It's clear that there is an increasing demand for educated workers, educated individuals, while at the same time there is less opportunity for individuals to access the education they require and that our society and economy require.

Ensuring access to education isn't just about ensuring that there are enough people to fill available positions in the workforce. More importantly, it is about improving the lives of those who need it most. It is about the overall well-being of the people in the province of British Columbia, many of whom live in regions in the north of Vancouver Island, which are in dire need of a new direction.

If there is someone from the north Island region that my college serves who thinks that investing in education isn't a good way to increase the overall standard of living in this province, I haven't yet spoken to them. There is a substantial consensus throughout our province and the rest of Canada as a whole about the benefits and necessity of post-secondary education.

But this government has gone against the will of the majority of citizens in this province and certainly against the hopes of the students at North Island College. They have neglected to invest to ensure access to post-secondary education. Growing numbers of students are either unable to attend or being burdened with debt loads upon graduation approaching an average of $30,000, along with a lifetime of interest payments.

Given the situation we face today, we have four recommendations. I have no doubt that you will recognize them as being many of the same from students from across the province.

These are: (1) use the additional $110 million received from the federal government for post-secondary education this fiscal year to reduce tuition fees; (2) reinstate the upfront grant system to mirror the federal government's new grant program; (3) reduce student loan interest rates
[ Page 145 ]
to the government rate of borrowing; (4) the restoration of per-student adjusted for inflation to 2001 levels and indexed to account for inflation — and ensuring that universities and colleges carbon neutrality mandate is properly funded.

These are goals that many other provinces with less means than B.C. are already beginning to adopt. Until such time as there is a federal post-secondary act to ensure fairness across the country, it falls on the government of B.C. to ensure that the people of British Columbia are afforded the same opportunities as the rest of Canada.

For two years students have been calling for an immediate 10 percent tuition fee reduction to provide relief to students struggling to pay the costs of higher education, housing, transportation and other increasing costs of living, and to increase access for those who are just on the cusp of being able to afford attending a post-secondary institution.

This reduction can be achieved by using the $110 million in extra federal funding announced in the 2007 federal budget without having to create any new fiscal pressure on the provincial coffers.

[1055]

A new grant system for B.C. would ensure that low- and middle-income families have the necessary resources upfront in order to pursue post-secondary education and training. It is important that any government aid in the form of grants is in the form of upfront grants. If not, it is far less likely that those most in need of aid will access it. It is also a much better form of aid for students that are currently in the system and contemplating dropping out due to lack of funds.

There is already a program in place federally which the provincial program could be modelled after. If implemented, the needs-based upfront grant program would greatly support students in the greatest need and dramatically reduce the amount of debt graduates walk away with upon completion of their schooling.

Our third recommendation also relates to student financial assistance in fairness for students from modest backgrounds. A reduction of interest rates is primarily an issue of fairness. Why should low- and middle-income students be expected to pay dramatically more for their education than those who can afford to pay for it up front? By keeping interest rates as high as they are, the government is penalizing those students and their families with the least amount of financial resources.

Our recommendation is that the government immediately reduce interest rates to the government's rate of borrowing and then eliminate them, to ensure that those who can least afford an education no longer have to pay the most for their education. This would have a significant positive impact on students past, present and future, and the cost to the province would be relatively small.

Our fourth recommendation today is to see a reinvestment of operating funding to our universities and colleges. I've already mentioned cuts to operating funding from the previous year, but the reduction in funding isn't just a one-time cut due to financial hardship. There has been a systematic underfunding of the post-secondary education system for the last several years, years in which the provincial government saw significant budget surpluses.

Year after year colleges and universities have had to make do with significant reductions in funding. At North Island College this has led to program eliminations, faculty and staff reductions and the closure of several college centres. While the government has publicly touted funding increases as high as 40 percent to post-secondary education, the reality is actually a significant decline in funding, when measured on a per-student basis.

That means that with tuition fees doubling since 2002, every year we return to school to pay more for less. Please reconsider this trend, and show all current and future students that their education is worth as much as the students who came before.

Tied in with the issue of core funding is our final recommendation of adequate funding so the government's mandate of carbon neutrality for all public institutions is met without a detrimental effect to the education of students. North Island College does not have the type of infrastructure that will allow for a great deal of cost-recouping in a shift to carbon neutrality. Students at smaller institutions will be harder hit in the shift to carbon neutrality if the costs associated aren't supported by the government.

In total, today we have four recommendations that could immediately begin to improve B.C.'s post-secondary education system. Students are seeking a 10 percent reduction in tuition fees, an investment supported by over 80 percent of British Columbians. We are seeking an upfront grant program that will complement the new federal grants. Eight-seven percent of British Columbians support greater funding for grants.

We are seeking the reduction of interest on student loans to the government rate of borrowing and then the elimination of interest. We are seeking to have per-student funding restored to 2001 levels and indexed to a minimum inflationary increase annually, in addition to funding to make campuses environmentally sustainable.

We are urging this government to recognize that the most important investment it can make for the province's future is in post-secondary education. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm just wondering. You know, back in 2001, when we started some changes in the post-secondary education system, we undertook one of the largest expansions to post-secondary education that this province has ever seen in terms of creating the ability for students to
[ Page 146 ]
actually be able to attend. It used to be only the students that had the As and high Bs in terms of their record.

B. Ralston: Mr. Chairman, is there a question?

J. Rustad: Yes, there is a question here, thank you.

That now has been expanded so that students with even a C or C-plus average now have an opportunity to attend college. What I'm wondering is: have you noticed the expansion of the number of students that have had access within your areas?

[1100]

The second question around funding for education and funding for the recommendations that you have. I'm just wondering whether you would encourage us to either (a) look at raising taxes or (b) increase our debt and increase the debt burden on our children in order to be able to fund those recommended increases.

J. Bowen: There's no doubt that since 2001 — we've all seen it — there's been an increase in the capacity in the system. I mean, the government's mandate at that time was to increase, I think, the number of seats in the province by 20,000. That, I think, at this point has largely been carried out, or at least in part, but there has been an adverse effect in terms of the costs for students.

I started going to school at North Island College in 2001, and when I started, my tuition fees were $120 per class. Within three years that had over doubled. So there's no doubt that in that doubling time, there are students who started their education who would have dropped out and students who would have, potentially, sought that education who could no longer afford it. So there has definitely been a negative impact in that time.

The second question, with regards to whether we'd like to see increased taxation. I think that's difficult…. It's kind of a false dichotomy. You create a paradigm where I either have to say what's happening now is good — cut taxes; the education system is the way it is — or increase taxes. But I think it's far more nuanced than that.

I think some of the questions for the last speaker got to that — in how taxation works. I mean, right now we're increasing flat taxes, which inherently are more difficult for people from lower and middle incomes to deal with. The vast majority of their income is on goods and services, so the vast majority of the money they spend is at an increased tax rate, whereas people with far more expendable income aren't affected as much because they're not spending that money.

I think it's a difficult question, but I think over the last eight or nine years we've been going in the wrong direction with regards to taxation and investment in public infrastructure.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to say thanks for your time. Thanks for the time you took to give the presentations to us today. It's awesome, and it's good to hear from people in your demographic.

I have just a quick question. We've heard from other colleges and universities about trying to do more with less because of the cutbacks in their budgets. Can you give us any personal examples, or of friends, that can typify some of the services that have been cut back, that you've experienced?

J. Bowen: Sorry, it's kind of difficult to hear the question. You're talking about specific examples of some of these cuts?

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Yes, the impact that you've felt or friends — stories from friends who've felt the…. Yeah, that's it.

J. Bowen: Well, just personally, I know that in the last round of cuts the person who deals with financial aid at our college…. In the financial aid area of the college the number of hours got reduced fairly dramatically, so students who would necessarily be working to fund their education would have less opportunity to access, essentially, the people working in financial aid.

That's just sort of one example that I know of. I don't know if….

J. Keitlah: I think the example that came to mind immediately for me is the fact that the position of the aboriginal educational coordinator was cut at my campus, which is a person I valued on campus in terms of feeling welcome as an aboriginal student. That position is gone at all of our campuses now, which is frustrating.

J. Bowen: I think, to that point, one of the things that is something we bring up quite often is that every time there's an increase in the cost of education or a decrease in funding, people who were going to access the system but now can't or those who were in the system and drop out…. Their voices are lost, so we don't get to hear from them anymore. I think that's sort of a hidden cost that isn't often considered when these types of changes are made.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Thank you both very much for your presentation this morning.

[1105]

We are now going to move back to Cranbrook. I believe we have Rhonda Barter standing by in Cranbrook.

Good morning, Rhonda.

R. Barter: My name is Rhonda Barter. I'm from Creston, B.C. I was going to deal with the arts, but this is more of a life-and-death issue. As one mother said to me before I left, "It's a lawsuit waiting to happen," because someone is going to get injured or killed.
[ Page 147 ]

I'm going to, first of all, read a letter that I wrote to three of our school board trustees; to Michelle Mungall, our MLA — hi, Michelle; to the Ministry of Education and to the director of operations for busing; and to the principal of our high school in town. It was also sent to the principal of the elementary school that the children go to — to catch buses in west Creston.

I'm first going to read a letter from August 30. It's addressed to "To Whom it May Concern."

"This is a letter dealing with inadequate bus services as a result of budget cuts for children in rural areas of school district 8. I'm a parent that lives in west Creston. I have two teenagers that want to attend Prince Charles Secondary School. If able to get to school, they would be in grades 11 and 12 this fall.

"They were home schooled for all their lives up to this past January. They were doing fine with home schooling until they got to upper-end math. Last year the math instructor was in Nelson. This was difficult for my child in 'Principles of Math 11,' as she was not able to ask the questions she needed to work her way through math, and so we need to get them to the school.

"Before enrolling my children with PCSS, I conversed with Sharen Popoff, the principal, and she said math 10 is often the pivotal point when home schooled students enrol. My child did very well last year and received an A.

"Both my children would like to continue going to school this year where they are enrolled, but now it looks like they will not be able to because of lack of transportation, and because of sporadic transportation, it will be very difficult for their education to go some days and not to go others.

"Being in grades 11 and 12, one should be there every day. They would like to be there every day, and I, as a parent, would very much like to see them go every day and fully commit to doing their schooling. But also as a parent, their safety and their lives are more important to me.

"Even last year the distance to the bus stop was treacherous in winter and dark days. The road out here is made up of very steep up-and-down hills with little shoulder or no shoulder, no lights, and wild animals. But they only started public school at the end of January, so I drove them until it became light enough to make their way safely.

"I wrote letters complaining that, at that time, the bus used to come to the end of the street where I live, because I knew this year was coming up. Well, instead of moving it closer, they have moved the bus pickup spot farther away.

"Now they completely cut out a bus — and with more dangerous curves, hidden spots, little or no shoulders, no lights, an area where motorists have to boot it up and down a hill in winter conditions to make it because of hairpin turns, hoping that nothing is around the corner when you try to drive up and, if you go down, hoping nothing is there because you might not be able to stop.

"This does not even include the wild animals. Cougars have eaten our lambs. This past winter I could not get up and down my driveway because of moose. What's actually happened is a whole bus has been cut, and this is a common complaint with many parents in this area.

"There's also a huge time element involved. This includes walking distances in extremely cold weather. Even in daylight in pristine conditions, it would take about 45 minutes each way to get to the new bus pickup spot. It is 1.8 kilometres, but it's because of the up-and-down nature of the road.

"There really is no pickup spot. The bus just has to stop in the middle of the road on a T-section, and you've got to hope that there are no cars coming down that will hit the bus.

"In pristine conditions they would leave at 6:45 a.m. and return home at 4:30 p.m. That's in good conditions. That is almost ten hours. Plus, they have to eat, sleep, shower, shovel our driveway. I'm a single mom with a sore knee and elbow, and I'm not able to do it myself. Being in grades 11 and 12, they are probably looking at about two to three hours of homework a night, and that's proved to be true so far.

"There is no extra time to just be. If it snows, I cannot take them down to the bus stop without the driveway being shovelled. And in bad conditions I will not be able to get back home because the road does not get plowed, for it is now not a bus route. So the road doesn't even get plowed.

"I have done everything I can to fight this, including letters and conversations with the director of operations. I am not the only parent in this area to do the same. We will not risk our children's lives, no matter what age they are" — and there are younger children in this area too.

"When I said to the director of operations: 'Let me get this straight, because I'm going to quote you. You think walking up and down steep hills with hidden curves in dark conditions, no lights on slick roads, winter conditions, hairpin turns, cold — it is hard to drive on these roads — wild animals...? Our lambs were killed by cougars a few years back, and that was in the paper. You think these are reasonable conditions?'

[1110]

"Direct reply: 'Yes, I do.' I said: 'Good, because I'm going to quote you. Just thought I'd let you know that.'

"So there was a meeting this past Thursday" — that was August 27 — "and I only knew about it the day before. Some parents did not find out about it, for there were only four parents present. They told me later they didn't even know about it. Not that that matters, even if there were two parents, because we live in a country that prides itself on accessibility to free public education for every single child.

"There was one school trustee present, and the parents were told by the trustee that boards may provide transportation, 'but we don't have to.' This was after the parents shared their heartfelt concerns for the length of time children are gone, their safety, and wanting to educate their children, etc. We were told there was just no money and that we chose to move to the rural areas, so it was our responsibility. And as we explained to those present, most of us moved to that area after checking that buses would be provided, or we wouldn't have moved there.

"We were told by the director of operations that it would cost about $50,000 to do an extra bus run, although the trustee disagreed and said it was more than $75,000. The trustee asked me: 'Where should we get the money?'

"I was later told by a retired trustee that that is not my job but actually the trustee's. I said: 'I would like to see the budget to figure that out.' So she showed me with her fingers that the budget was about this thick, and did I want to go through that. I replied that even the provincial government has a succinct version of their budget, so they must too. So they gave me a website, and with some searching I found a 13-page budget.

"One of the moms said: 'Give us a budget, and we'll make it work.' I found some suggestions that might get our children to school safely and timely" — and these are just to think on. "One of them is $100,000 that goes for offshore students. If we can take care of them offshore, maybe we can get them from west Creston, which is really basically only 12 minutes, but it's the terrain of the roads that makes it a danger.

"Over $4 million for school administration in this area, but almost $300,000 for education administration, almost $600,000 for business administration. It seems probable that in all this administration, another $50,000 to $75 thousand can be taken out. Almost $300,000 is for grounds administration. Maybe some of the $50,000 to $75,000 can be taken out of this.

"This was the real stickler. Back in June we had a consultant come and talk to us parents about why they were going to start cutting. We thought maybe it was to talk about why we're not getting this adequate already. And that time he said that 2.2
[ Page 148 ]
kilometres is fine. And I asked him. I put up my hand and said: 'Where are you from?' He said: 'Surrey.' And I said, 'You know, we're talking about rural B.C. here. It's not flat. There's no lights' — all those conditions that I previously listed.

"I was told that they paid that consultant almost $50,000. That would have so been, well…. They could have asked us parents what we needed there, not cut more.

"I was also told — and I phoned Annette Hambler, who is one of the trustees that mainly represents our area — that she moved in the board of trustees to have that bus put back. But she never got a seconder, even by Vernon's mayor, Mackenzie, who was at that meeting, and Mel Joy, who knows about this too, who's had letters written to her by the parents.

"When that snow gets piled up on the sides…."

I've got pictures, but I couldn't e-mail them to you because I'm on dial-up. I'm in the mountains. They'll be sent with Jon here.

It shows, and I don't think you can see these apparently, how close it is. But when the snow piles up, and you can see it by the hills here, there is really nowhere for the kids to walk. There. I'm not sure if you see them or not.

J. Les (Chair): Yeah, we can see them not too bad.

R. Barter: And this one…. Did I do them too fast?

J. Les (Chair): No, that's fine.

R. Barter: Okay. Now this is the one where the bus stop used to be. It's flat. The bus would back in there, and he picked up the kids there. It was far away and it still had hills, but it was doable — very, very difficult and still dark, and it would still be treacherous. It used to come to the end of the road. This is where it used to be. It should go to the end of the road like it used to be a long time ago, but now it goes in a farther way.

It would be great to just get it back here. And a lot of parents are in this area. This is a particularly…. Our area where the bus has been cut is the most dangerous on Simmons Road right now, because the other dangerous areas.... The bus is going up and down.

"But when that snow gets piled on the side, then there's even nothing to walk — except for on the road and those cars come spinning up and down, and there's just no way to pull over.

"You're trying to get up that hill, up that mountain to your place. There's no signs for where the bus is pulling off on the new spot. It's hard to stop. The bus is blocking the road for people coming up and down. There's no place to park your car if you even take your kid down there, if you can make it up and down the road."

So that's my presentation.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Rhonda. We have a couple of questions. And the first question….

R. Barter: And I'll send these pictures. I just want to say I'll give these pictures to Jon.

[1115]

J. Les (Chair): That'll be great if you would send the pictures along with Jonathan.

M. Mungall: Thank you, Rhonda. It's nice to see you. Just to let you know, on the issues around education for our area, I did have a meeting with the Minister of Education earlier this week. Unfortunately, she had to cancel. We have rescheduled, and this is one of the issues that I'll be bringing up with her.

So I want to move on, though, because you started off by saying that you were going to come and talk about the arts. Of course, I know how involved in the Creston arts community you are, so maybe if you don't mind just giving a couple of words on your concerns around the budget for the arts.

R. Barter: Well, I know that it's a huge job supplier, and I know that 1.1 million jobs in Canada are to do with the arts. That's more than forestry, fishing, utilities — all combined. It's a huge area, and apparently, according to Jon, there has been lots of coverage here. But Creston survives on the arts. That is a huge area.

People move to the Kootenays to do art. So we need that money, because that's what funds music festivals. It is what funds museums, and in a lot of ways, it funds art holdings. It funds theatrical things. We just had ACToberfest in Creston, which is the Theatre B.C. — a great thing there. We survive on funding. Yes, that is a huge thing.

Thank you, Michelle, for talking to the Ministry of Education on that. It is so important, and I will be writing a write-up on that and submitting it. Jon gave me the e-mail, and we'll be doing that too. This was a matter of life and death, so I wanted to get to this one prior to that.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. As a former school trustee, I understand where you are getting at with regards to the transportation issues. Just a clarification. One of the reasons why we do have the international students is that they do contribute a significant amount of revenue for the Ministry of Education, which is actually a positive.

My question to you is: obviously, you've spoken to the school district, but are you suggesting that you would want the Finance Committee, and therefore the Ministry of Finance, to overrule the autonomy of school boards with regards to your particular issue?

R. Barter: I just want the bus back — whatever it takes.

J. Les (Chair): All right. Thank you very much for your presentation, Rhonda.

We now need to move on and move back to Courtenay where we have Dr. Martin Petter from the North Island College. Good morning to you, sir.

M. Petter: Good morning, and I want to thank the members of the committee for the opportunity to participate in today's prebudget consultation process.
[ Page 149 ]

Are you hearing me okay? The picture is breaking up a bit.

J. Les (Chair): I think we're doing fine. There's a lot of paper shuffling going on somewhere — Cranbrook. I think we're fine now. Go ahead.

M. Petter: Okay. I'll go ahead, but please signal me if the voice or the picture starts to break up.

My name is Martin Petter. I am the vice-president of education at North Island College, and also with me is Susan Auchterlonie, director of community college relations at North Island College.

I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the college, tell you something about what we do, describe how increased demand is affecting our teaching capacity, how we are vital in preparing B.C.'s workforce, how we are responding to the needs of our community, how we are leading B.C.'s economic recovery and investing in B.C.'s future, and outline what we are calling on the government to provide.

North Island College serves a population of about 155,000 across a geographic area of 80,000 square kilometres. If you want to have some sense of how big that is, it is about the size of Austria. It includes northern Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland coast from Desolation Sound all the way up to Swindle Island on the midcoast. Within our region are situated 36 first nations.

We have annual revenues at the college of $35 million, and we offer a comprehensive range of programs and services from adult upgrading and literacy, university transfer, trades and apprenticeship training, health and human services, to fine arts, tourism and hospitality, and business. Credentials offered include certificates; diplomas; associate degrees; degrees, including our own degree program and those offered in collaboration with other institutions; and post-baccalaureate diplomas.

[1120]

J. Les (Chair): It looks like Courtenay has gone down again. We will stand by for a few minutes. They got back up last time this happened.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): That beeping indicates that we are trying to reconnect, just so you know. That's what that sound is.

M. Petter: Hello. I think we lost contact for a while. Should I go back a bit, or…?

J. Les (Chair): No, I think just carry on.

M. Petter: I'm just not quite sure where it happened.

J. Les (Chair): We didn't lose very much, so just carry on.

M. Petter: All right. So we offer a range of credentials. We have four different campuses — Port Alberni, Comox Valley, Campbell River and Port Hardy — and four centres in Ucluelet, Cortes Island, Gold River and Bella Coola. In addition, we are offering an on-site program in Ahousat under contract with the Ahousaht First Nation.

Our college is unique in a number of ways: the size of our region, the number of communities in which we operate, the high percentage of aboriginal residents we serve and the fact that our region has experienced extraordinary economic turbulence due to slowdowns in the resource sector — forestry, fisheries and mining — on many of which our residents have traditionally depended for their livelihood.

Our exceptional faculty and staff are dedicated to our students' success. As a community college, we offer our students education and training that is of high quality, affordable and close to home.

As I mentioned, our communities are facing many social and economic challenges as a result of the economic downturn — for example, higher levels of unemployment due to mill closures and associated reductions in the logging industry, mine closures and now a slowdown in new home construction.

We continue to work with our communities to provide the training and retraining that our residents require, enabling them to remain in our communities or find suitable employment elsewhere. Many of our residents affected by the economic downturn face three choices: to retrain for a career that will allow them and their families to remain in their communities; secondly, to retrain for a position elsewhere — for example, northern British Columbia or northern Alberta — while leaving their families in their home communities; or, perhaps, to relocate the entire family unit elsewhere where employment is available.

This year college-wide registrations have increased 17 percent over the same position in 2008-09 — in a single year, a 17 percent increase. University transfer and developmental program has increased by 20 percent and career and technical programs by 15 percent. Trades foundation programs have also increased by about 20 percent, but this has been offset by a decline in our apprenticeship enrolments of approximately 21 percent. However, wait lists remain in some of our programs, particularly in our health programs — bachelor of science in nursing, practical nurse — as well as in some of our first-year science courses.

We have seen an increase in demand from workers requiring retraining, as well as from recent high school graduates who are choosing to remain at home for their first year or two of post-secondary education for economic reasons.

As numbers rise, our college faces both physical and financial capacity challenges that limit our ability to serve our community. Pressure on existing space, especially in
[ Page 150 ]
relation to accommodating increased demand for first-year lab science courses, is immense. Financially, we are stretched to fund additional course sections and program intakes, as well as to upgrade capital equipment. Students in some of our programs are learning with aging equipment and technology, which makes providing a skilled, job-ready workforce challenging.

Not being able to upgrade capital equipment and purchase new technology threatens the ongoing viability of some of our programs. These are the programs where we are experiencing high demand: trades, health and science.

In order to deliver more cost efficiencies, we need to modernize our facilities — especially our health and science labs. We need to reconfigure the existing space and construct new space to accommodate the increased student demand and new technologies. Construction of additional facilities and trades programming is already underway as the result of receiving funding under the knowledge infrastructure program, for which we are very grateful.

[1125]

In terms of how we are preparing B.C.'s workforce…. Some 2,811 students are currently enrolled at North Island College, which is an 18 percent increase from last year. That's just a student head-count increase of 18 percent. In the 2008-09 academic year we graduated 485 job-ready graduates. The majority of the graduates completed programs in health, trades and technology, business and university studies. On average, 91 percent of our graduates obtained employment, with many choosing to stay in our region.

As I noted earlier, college-wide registrations have increased 17 percent over 2008-09. Additional programming in response to increased demand is being offered in the following areas: business certificate — an evening intake has been added for all four campuses via interactive television; health care assistant — three additional intakes have been added; practical nurse — one additional intake has been added; and professional photography — one additional intake has been added.

Additional courses have also been added in first-year sciences — biology, chemistry and microbiology for the first time — and in English to accommodate demand. We have also expanded our employment and career counselling services with the appointment of an employment service adviser.

We are partnering with local organizations and first nations for relevant programming that meets their individual requirements. One example is our partnership with the Tseshaht First Nation, which saw NIC delivering essential skills education on site at the Tseshaht, followed immediately by a special intake of the residential building maintenance worker program to prepare Tseshaht citizens to maintain and care for their housing complexes.

A second example relates to our work with school district 85, Vancouver Island North. The school district has hired a number of employees without credentials to deliver a StrongStart program and to act as education assistants in its classrooms. They came to us to see whether we could offer early childhood education and human service worker teacher assistant programs specifically for their employees to provide them with the appropriate training and credentials traditionally associated with the positions.

We responded immediately to offer both programs on a part-time basis at our Port Hardy campus, allowing school district 85 employees to continue working while attending college.

We are helping the B.C. economy in investing in B.C.'s future, as are B.C. colleges generally. Some 96 percent of B.C. college graduates stay and work in B.C., and B.C. colleges and their graduates contribute $7.7 billion of the income of the provincial economy.

The North Island College service area receives roughly $352.5 million in income each year due to the annual activities of the college and the cumulative effects of its past students. This figure represents 4.8 percent of total income in the regional economy.

NIC's contribution may also be recognized in the fact that it returns $3.30 for every dollar of taxpayer financial support. The college plays a key role in educating and training the workforce in our region, with specific strategies targeting traditionally under-represented groups such as aboriginal students and first-generation learners.

The general downturn in the economy — coming on top of mill and mine closures and reduction in logging, fishing and new home construction — has resulted in many students being retrained in NIC programs such as trades, business, bachelor of science in nursing, practical nursing, health care assistant, human service worker, education assistant, and math and English upgrading.

In addition, we are offering a number of continuing education programs targeted specifically to workers requiring immediate retraining such oil and gas…heavy equipment operator, residential building maintenance worker, applied computer skills, vocational tourism and driver training.

North Island College students are now employed in many sectors of the local economy, such as health, tourism, hospitality, education, service occupations — particularly in the growing area of retail trade — and many have chosen to start their own businesses. Our community has benefited greatly because our students and graduates choose to stay in our communities.

This is what we would like to put before you as our recommendations, what we feel is the requirement — what we should have considered the requirement — from government.

Firstly, in order to provide a skilled, job-ready workforce, we require an increase in base operating funding for 2010-11 to support the increased demand for our programs and services.
[ Page 151 ]

Secondly, we require a restoration of the annual capital allowance funding, which was recently reduced, to provide equipment and technology to meet the education and training needs of our students and their future employers, as well as to provide continued operational efficiencies and to mitigate the ongoing degradation of our facilities.

[1130]

Thirdly, we require funding for programs and services to address training for people traditionally under-represented, such as adults requiring increased literacy; our aboriginal population, which is the fastest-growing adult population in B.C.; new immigrants; and the disabled. These groups have been identified as being a critical part of the labour market strategy to advance B.C.'s economic recovery.

In conclusion, North Island College, like other B.C. community colleges, plays an important role in building a stronger British Columbia and is critical to the economic recovery of the province. Being at the front line for people and communities affected by the economic downturn, North Island College can provide responsive education and training close to home. North Island College is committed to working with our community to further economic recovery by building a skilled, job-ready workforce.

Thank you very much for your time, and I would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much. The first question goes to Don.

D. McRae: Thank you very much, Dr. Petter. One question I had was about the new trades building being built at the Courtenay campus. I was wondering if you could….

M. Petter: I'm sorry. I'm having difficulty hearing.

D. McRae: Sorry about that. The mike is a long way away from me. How's that now?

J. Les (Chair): Better.

D. McRae: How will the new trades building at the Courtenay campus impact the enrolment for North Island College? Could you explain how it benefits from it?

M. Petter: Yes. We will be able to offer, for the first time, a carpentry program in the Comox Valley. There's been a great demand for that. There's a lot of interest in having that, and we were always struggling to try and find a way to offer that program, because we didn't have a suitable facility; nor could we find one. So that is going to be a very great advantage.

It's going to give us a dimension that we haven't previously had. We also have room in that building to do other kinds of applied programming to respond to needs as we become aware of them. There'll be a general classroom as well, which will help us across all the programs we deliver.

M. Mungall: Thank you very much for your presentation. You've outlined some of the budget pressures that you've been experiencing. That brings me to two topics — one a student previously brought up. Then the other one, of course, is the increases to MSP and how that will impact your budgets.

The student brought up the aboriginal coordinator. Because of budget pressures you had, you had to cut the aboriginal coordinator. Losing that coordinator position — has that negatively impacted the post-secondary accessibility for first nations students?

M. Petter: Yes. I think I heard the question. It was a bit broken up, but I'll try and respond.

We had a base-funded aboriginal coordinator position, and we did have to eliminate that position. It has been replaced with an aboriginal adviser position, but that is dependent on funding which is coming from the aboriginal service plan, and that's not base funding.

Although we have it at the moment, we have no idea how long it's going to continue. We absolutely have to have — we feel this is critically important to have — aboriginal advisers to help our aboriginal students find a level of comfort on our campuses.

We're also in the process of constructing gathering places, both in Port Alberni and in Campbell River, which we hope will also make it easier for aboriginal students to come to our campuses and feel that they can undertake studies in a comfortable way.

J. Les (Chair): The final question goes to Norm.

N. Letnick: Thank you, Dr. Petter, and thanks to all the staff and faculty at North Island College for training our youth. Appreciate that.

It really comes down to more money for post-secondary education.

Can you hear it okay?

J. Les (Chair): Just carry on.

M. Petter: It's breaking up, so I'm just getting little bits of it.

N. Letnick: The question is, Dr. Petter: where should we get the money from? Should we get it from health care? From education, K-to-12? Should we get it from raising taxes or increasing the debt?

M. Petter: That, of course, is what I call a Hobson's choice — isn't it? It is not something that I can provide
[ Page 152 ]
advice on, because I'm not at the table with the facts and all the figures.

[1135]

All I'm saying is that if this province doesn't invest in post-secondary education, given what's going to be happening in terms of retirements and baby boomers leaving the labour market and given the importance of raising literacy levels so that our own population can participate in the knowledge economy, we're going to be in serious trouble. It's a question of investment in the future of this province. Those are the priority decisions that have to be made.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Dr. Petter. We appreciate your presentation this morning, in spite of the slight technical difficulties.

Now I'm just checking. I don't believe there is anyone else in Dawson Creek, so we will move back to Cranbrook. I believe we have Rebecca Blair and Tom Newell from the Creston Valley Teachers Association. Good morning.

R. Blair: Good morning.

T. Newell: Good morning.

J. Les (Chair): Carry on. The floor is yours.

T. Newell: I'll begin. My name is Tom Newell. I'm a citizen of Nelson, and I'm currently the president of the Nelson District Teachers Association, part of school district 8. I make this presentation as both a citizen and a person who is representing a large group of educators in the Nelson area.

In response to the first question, "What is important to you?" I'll begin with a brief statement, and then Rebecca will also make a statement.

I believe — and in hearing from teachers as I go from school to school in our area — that the message is that it's most important that we develop a society that supports families and individuals. The teachers in our classrooms experience families and individuals on a firsthand basis, on a daily basis. For them, what they see as the key impacts on people's lives are health care, public education, preschool and day care services. These are the key factors that they see affecting people on a daily basis.

For an opening statement I'll leave it at that and pass it over to Rebecca.

R. Blair: On behalf of the Creston Valley Teachers Association, I would like to state that our priority is directed at a budget that ensures quality public education services. We need to see funding that ensures adequate support for special needs students, for consideration to the needs of families living in poverty and for this government to consider the inequities they created when they arbitrarily cut grants such as they did with the annual facilities grant, the funding for PACs and other grants that have been cut to the arts recently.

The second question: "Should government continue to protect core services such as health and education?" I think the question itself is very misleading. We know that education services have not been protected. Districts have not been provided with adequate funding to ensure such services — even such things as transportation, which is essential. We know that boards have not had the funding provided to allow for other increased costs, such as increases to medical coverage and salary increases.

If education is a priority, then what was the rationale behind the shortsighted elimination of the grants I mentioned previously, such as the annual facility grant and the funding to PACs? This government needs to honestly establish education as a priority and keep its promise to have this province the best place on earth.

Teachers in our local are actually donating to the hot lunch programs because too many of our students don't even have enough access to proper nutrition. Our students have not been protected adequately.

Adequately fund education by honestly establishing the children of this province as a priority. It's not about increasing revenues. It's about the priorities in your spending.

T. Newell: I'll just carry on a little bit in response to question No. 2. In the wording of it, our experience in the education system…. I've been president of the local for six years, so I've been quite involved in the district budgeting process. Our school district has an inclusive process and involves partner groups and stakeholders in their process.

[1140]

I've watched as the core service of education has not been protected. In response to that, we've seen in our classrooms the poverty rates. We've seen that welfare rates haven't been increased.

Recently — this past summer, I think it was — in looking at Stats Canada numbers, it seemed like B.C. had the lowest per-capita funding of education in the country. When you look at the statistics around health care, even though the numbers of dollars spent are increasing, the per-capita spending on health care has risen only marginally over the last eight years. Being rural community residents we really, especially in Nelson, have noticed that the support to the rural communities has been struggling over the last eight years.

We think, in speaking with teachers, that there's a real desire to reclaim that historical strong support for the core services. As I said earlier, education, we feel, has been quite hard-hit over the last eight years. The model of block funding is one that really is…. Saying that one student's value is how to fund a system, when a school might cost the same amount to run depending on
[ Page 153 ]
whether there were 100 or 120 students in that school, is a slow way of eroding the stability of the system.

What we're seeing and what teachers are saying to me is that all aspects of the system within the school are under tremendous pressure. The classroom resources are eroding. The district is struggling to try and keep up with technology. They're having a heck of a time. The infrastructure has long been struggling. Now with the AFG grant cut at the last minute, it has really put tremendous pressure on that system. The transportation budget, from what I've seen over the last six or eight years, has not increased, even though we know that the costs have increased. We've seen real, real struggle trying to maintain library services.

As Rebecca mentioned earlier, when it gets right down to one of the key issues for teachers, I can say that probably the most difficult aspect for teachers is seeing the lack of support for students that are struggling with special needs. Through the process, the bar has risen for the identification of these students, so it's more and more difficult for students to be designated with a special need over the last eight years. The queue for evaluation is lengthening, and trying to develop the appropriate services is increasingly difficult.

Then we have our students that are struggling slightly below grade level. Our learning assistance programs, if you will, are really…. We have schools where we've had to reduce the learning assistance support just to provide teachers for the students.

I heard a reference to how this funding happened. I think we need to look at how we're funding the private school system. I think we've seen that the increase to the funding to the private school system went up 10 percent or 12 percent over the last year.

The second step could be to create a separate tax so that the citizens know that this tax is going to revitalize the education system, and it could be targeted to the higher-wage earners. Third, I think that you need to raise the minimum wage and the welfare rates. Fourth, reinvest in our once-proud day care system. Fifth, support the arts and culture community.

All of these expenditures are actual economic drivers in communities, where the bulk of the economy takes place. The economy exists within communities, and we in the public schools of British Columbia see on a daily basis the impact through the families that we're in contact with. We see the impact of the policies that have not worked.

[1145]

R. Blair: Regarding the question as to whether the government should actually reduce taxes, it's questionable whether the government has actually been cutting taxes. I'd like to maybe talk a bit about that definition.

The individual and corporate income tax has been reduced, but charges to services have actually skyrocketed. Based on the poor performance of the B.C. economy, by virtually all national standards — child poverty rates, per-capita spending on education, employment rates, welfare rates, minimum wages, day care spaces available, the apprenticeship program, the exponential widening of the income gap, growth in the reliance on food banks, homelessness — it's now clear that the government's eight-year economic policy is not working.

It is important to note that all of these trends were in place prior to the economic downturn, so that cannot be legitimately used as an excuse. It is time to call a tax a tax and have an honest dialogue with the people regarding taxation rates. Citizens want services, and those services do cost money. But they also create jobs and rejuvenate an economy, especially at a local level.

T. Newell: On your fourth question, regarding the control of deficits during difficult economic times. Often the tough times provide opportunities to change policies that aren't working. One of the lessons of the Great Depression was that governments can be a powerful, positive resource in the economy, especially in the area of developing social programs that can become the underpinning of an evolved society.

Now's the time to invest in public education. Now's the time to reach all of our children. Now's the time to give them the start that they deserve. Now's the time to build for the future.

I believe that the economic ideology of the last number of years hasn't been working and that we, during the tough economic times, have been hit hard due to what has been eroded over the last number of years. I think that our economy is built from the community level. That's where we need to start to rebuild the economy, and our schools are the real core of many, many communities.

We believe that this province has tremendous potential. I think we just need to get back to an economy that supports more of a social network. The key underpinning of that would be a strong, stable public education system. Thank you. That's the end of the formal presentation.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you. Michelle would like to ask a question.

M. Mungall: Yes. Thanks so much, Rebecca and Tom, for presenting. I know both of you drove quite a distance. Tom, you drove a good 2½ hours, and Rebecca, a good 45 minutes to an hour, just to be in Cranbrook. So thank you for taking the time to do that. It's always nice to see familiar faces when I can't be at home.

The theme you kind of brought forward was about how public education relates to the broader economy. It made me think of ARES School, actually, in Creston, where there are a large number of children who have special needs, who are children at risk. Yet they don't have the number of TAs to meet the demand to make sure that those children meet their potential in life.
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Bringing that to the broader economic story that you're kind of telling, maybe you can comment on…. When we aren't funding sufficient TAs in our schools, how is that impacting the local economy? How are parents able to participate in our local economy when they don't get the supports that they need in school?

R. Blair: I'll comment from two aspects — as my experience as a teacher prior to being a local president. I worked in an alternate school program where the kids are high needs, where the kids there are the kinds of kids that need help to just get jobs and work in the community. When they're younger — the situation you're describing at ARES — you'll have parents move out of the community if they can't get proper services. They'll move to a larger community where they can get services.

The students I worked with in the high school situation…. If they don't get proper support and help, they become a cost factor to this government, because you end up paying for them in a lot of different ways rather than having them be a functioning part of society where they've got jobs.

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So parents are impacted at all levels. When we don't have those supports in place, families are struggling to find that support. They'll move out of the town. Or we have kids sitting and needing support within the system. That's actually costing money when they don't become a contributing member in society.

T. Newell: Could I just add a piece to that?

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Go ahead.

T. Newell: I think that intrinsic in the whole picture is also the frustration that teachers face when they are unable to fulfil to the extent they want to their calling, their vocation. That's an underlying message that I continually hear from teachers — their discouragement and frustration.

They see, if the resources were available, what the potential of this child could be. But due to the lack of support in the classroom, that child is just not getting the full opportunity that the teacher wants to be able to provide to them. I'll just close with that.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. We have one more question from Jane.

J. Thornthwaite: Yes, thank you very much for your presentation.

I just wanted to follow up from Rebecca — her comments with regards to the taxation. We'd heard something from school district 60, from Fort St. John. When asked a question about whether or not they would be willing to go back to taxation for school boards, the answer was no, because they did not support have or have-not districts or communities.

Were you saying exactly the opposite — that you would like to be able to have some communities be allowed to tax according to whatever their community allows? Or did I read that wrong?

R. Blair: I think there's going to have to be a blend in that. I think we're going to have to resolve this. We do not want districts to have and have not.

A little tiny town close to where I live in my district is Jewett. I'm not sure how much their economy could support taxation to directly support a little school that is very important. I think they're going to have to look at businesses and industrial areas being taxed specifically for educational purposes but maybe not site specific.

For example, the big brewing company in Creston can certainly afford a taxation level donated towards education that may not be specific to Creston.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentations this morning.

We're now going to move back to Courtenay. In Courtenay, I understand, we have from school district 79 Ann Andersen and Richard Nelson.

Good morning. Go ahead whenever you're ready.

A. Andersen: I'm Ann Andersen, chair of the board of education of the Cowichan Valley, and this is Richard Nelson, who's president of the Cowichan Valley Teachers Federation. The Cowichan Valley school district has a student enrolment of some 3,300 students and a budget of approximately $72 million.

The district is one of 34 districts in B.C. whose funding was frozen at the 2008-09 levels. The per-pupil amount in the funding formula has remained at $5,851 per full-time-equivalent since 2007-2008. That funding has failed to keep up with inflation and with downloaded costs to the districts from the provincial government.

As of now we have 40 classes with more than 30 students and more than 200 classes with more than three students with a special education code, and that doesn't include students who we know have special requirements but haven't been tested.

A freeze on new construction means that we cannot replace a school in the rural community of Lake Cowichan, and that's a school we were forced to close due to mould and other deterioration.

It is critical that the government protect education. Provincial goals for the future can only be achieved if they are supported by well-educated, literate, productive citizens. There are increasing societal demands on education. The mandate of public education has been expanded to include community literacy and early learning. There is increasing complexity and diversity in our communities and among our students. Boards of
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education need more resources to improve outcomes for aboriginal learners.

To protect public education, we recommend that the provincial government increase investments in literacy, particularly early literacy, including full funding of full-day kindergarten; increase funding and services to students with special needs; increase support for aboriginal learners; increase the ability for boards of education to attract and retain top-quality teachers and leaders.

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Provide boards of education with HST exemption or rebates similar to municipal governments; increase funding to boards to realistically cover increasing costs for supplies, staffing, maintenance, fuel and transportation; increase capital investments in education to ensure students' safety and appropriate capacity; immediately restore and increase the annual facilities grants to boards; adequately fund school districts for the costs associated with becoming carbon-neutral.

This is why school district 79 is supporting these recommendations from the British Columbia School Trustees Association. As the ministry knows from the two budgets that we submitted earlier this year — a compliance budget and a student success budget — the Cowichan Valley board of education worked diligently through the spring of 2009 to address a funding shortfall of $15 million to our operating budget for the coming school year.

We went through a capital planning process with a high degree of stakeholder representation, and we were able to deliver a balanced budget. But this process meant sacrifices to programs and services and concluded with reservations about the negative impacts. Among other measures, we had to take the drastic step of adding a week of school closure to spring break. The recent funding cuts to the annual facilities grant created cutbacks to our district's major facilities program and, in our view, are ill-advised. We are left with less than a million that we feel compelled to hold in reserve for emergent issues.

Short-term savings in the long term don't mean savings at all. It could impact safety and sustainability. All the other cuts that have been made affect children in the classroom as well, and it's unknown the impact that the new HST will have on local budgets. The board and its partners in the Cowichan Valley school district fail to understand the logic behind granting school districts public funds — taxes — and then requiring them to pay a multitude of taxes.

Our district's overriding goal is success for every student. And this is a thought: a provincial focus on education is a focus on our collective future.

R. Nelson: It's a pleasure to be here working alongside the district. I represent the Cowichan Valley Teachers Federation. My presentation section here focuses on the needs of students entering the school system. I've drawn heavily on evidence from HELP, the human early learning partnership. They have been working, using an instrument called the early development instrument or EDI, to look at readiness for learning of children entering kindergarten.

In Cowichan we've had the benefit of about a decade of data-gathering to gauge the vulnerabilities of children entering kindergarten in the district. I'll go to some of the findings of the EDI research.

EDI looks at five different measures in a holistic way: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, communication skills and general knowledge. These results can be used to guide community planners and policy-makers in making decisions about priorities for early child development supports and services.

Now, the data for Cowichan is drawn very closely along the lines of school district 79, the structure and the communities that are served in Cowichan. Since 1999 there have been three waves of data taken. A number of children — 617 children in wave 1 in 2000-2004; 604 children in wave 2 in 2005-2007; and in the most recent wave, 530 children — were in the data. That was taken in the past year, 2008-09, with some data from 2007-08.

Highlighting the findings from the data and its analysis, across the district 23.6 percent of children were vulnerable on at least one of the five scales of development in this most current wave — a small decrease from wave 2, which saw 22.6 percent vulnerable, and returning to a similar level in wave 1 back in 2000-2004 of 23.7 percent. So about one-quarter of the children in the Cowichan Valley population are vulnerable in kindergarten.

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If you compare that to the province, we see that provincially it's quite similar. The 2008-2009 EDI data shows that provincewide 28.6 percent of children in kindergarten were vulnerable. The vulnerable children in B.C. are not spread evenly throughout the province. Rather, EDI research reveals a large geography of opportunity, one that's much like our topography in the province. Some children face steep difficulties while others do not.

The disparity is significant. On the low end, some neighbourhoods report rates of vulnerability that are below 3 percent of children. Others report vulnerability rates of over 60 percent. In the Cowichan Valley the range across the district is between 10.2 and 39.1 percent.

The B.C. government has an overall goal to reduce the vulnerability rates measured by EDI to 15 percent by the year 2015. We call this the 15-by-15 policy framework. My sense is that recent directions in education funding run counter to the government's articulated goal of reducing EDI vulnerability to 15 percent by the year 2015.

Public schools function in a central role for community coordination of services to assist families in attaining school readiness for children. I have a chart in my presentation that shows what has happened in Cowichan since about 2001-02 through the 2006-07 year. There's
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been a tremendous loss of supports such as: teacher-librarians, down 39.3 percent; counsellors, down 14 percent; special education workers, down 27.1 percent. These percentages are adjusted to take into account declining enrolment.

In Cowichan, as Ann pointed out, there is general agreement across the education community that current funding fails to meet the district's legitimate goals. I've tried to briefly outline some of our greatest concerns — student vulnerability and an under-resourced education system.

I encourage the committee to take to government that this need exists and that in order to support our families, we need to maintain adequate funding for public education.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much. We have a couple of questions.

B. Routley: Thank you, Ann and Richard, for your comprehensive and thoughtful presentation today.

I have a couple of questions. I'm interested in the compliance budget versus the real requirements of the district. Could you give us a little bit more information on how that came about, and also, the concern raised about the facility grants cut and the impact on rural communities like Lake Cowichan?

A. Andersen: Yes, certainly. The compliance budget and the student success budget came about when we realized that we couldn't meet the goal of our school district, which was success for every student. Our student success budget came in at $15 million more than the compliance budget — $87 million compared with $72 million.

I have to tell you that a fair number of those millions came from the superintendent, who brought a document to point out what we would need for success for our students and to raise our graduation rate, which is, of course, our goal.

As far as the AFG is concerned, that will have an impact on Lake Cowichan — maybe — because we hoped that we would be able to earmark $1 million of our AFG grant towards the building of a new elementary school in Lake Cowichan to replace the one which has been closed because of mould and deterioration.

At the moment those kids are in a school where they have to be bused for quite a long while to another rural community, where they are in a school that is officially closed. So the freezing of the construction is really hurting Lake Cowichan.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I have a question for Ann. We hear from the Minister of Education about increases in budget for education. That may be so, but what I hear from the B.C. School Trustees Association is that costs increase higher than any budget increase. So there's an outstripping factor there.

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You mentioned a couple of things in your presentation about expanding mandates, supplies and maintenance. We've heard from others about costs of salary increases and increased MSP.

My question is: for your school district, do you have a figure, or can you tell us about how costs have far outstripped any kind of increased funding? If you can't, could you supply us those numbers in written form for us to consider as a committee?

A. Andersen: Absolutely. The most recent changes to the funding, which I didn't include, are the Medical Services Plan…. We have 8,300 students and around 700 teachers. The Medical Services Plan hikes starting in January are going to cost us $21,000 this year and $42,000 next year. The non-payment of the holdback funds, which were taken back by the provincial government, is almost $63,000.

As well, because of the cuts in the AFG, we had hoped to put together a program to make us carbon-neutral, but we won't be able to do that, so it's going to make…. The estimate for those offsets is $31,500, which we'll have to find from somewhere.

The numbers of our special education students…. Everything is increasing. You know, yourselves, that transportation…. The busing budgets have been frozen for about eight years now. The slight increase that we received from the province does nothing to help us with supplies, with fuel — all those things. You probably heard that from other boards of education as well.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentations this morning. We appreciate you taking the time to do this.

We are now going to move back to Cranbrook, where we have another presentation from school district 8. My understanding is that we have Pat Dooley and Lenora Trenaman standing by. Please proceed.

P. Dooley: My name is Pat Dooley. I am the superintendent of schools for school district 8, Kootenay Lake, and I am speaking on behalf of the board of education and the partner groups in school district 8. With me I have Lenora Trenaman, who is vice-chair of the Kootenay Lake board of education. Previously you heard from our two union co-presidents.

We have sent a presentation to you, so we hope that you've received the materials. My intention is not to go line by line but rather to speak to and highlight some of what has been prepared on behalf of our partners.

I would like the committee to know that the preparation of this submission did evolve out of a board motion at the last board meeting, where they asked us to put together a presentation with our partner groups that looked at the cumulative effects of some of the funding decisions and other initiatives of the provincial government on public education.
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I want to start by saying that I recognize, and I know our board of education recognizes, that we are experiencing a global economic crisis, that we have economic problems in our province, in our local communities. We also appreciate the attempts to try and keep education a priority. That certainly makes sense to us.

I'm certain that this committee is well aware that a strong public education system is absolutely fundamental to future society, and that the stats are very clear. If we are able to graduate the majority of our students, if we're able to close the achievement gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students, we will impact our province and our society very positively in every way, including financially.

What we have tried to get at in the brief are sort of three things. I'll talk a little bit about some of the recent budget decisions, as well as some of the budget decisions or some of the budget realities that could be facing school districts and boards of education in the future, and then talk a little bit about an increasing number of new initiatives that are coming without any support.

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I need to say as well that this is my 35th year in public education; my 11th as a school superintendent. I have always been proud to be a member of the B.C. public education system. Worldwide, we are probably the best. I believe, and I know that our partners and our board believe, that currently, some of the things that have come at us are really impacting our capacity to keep that worldwide reputation and to keep us strong.

The pressures that we have coming at our operating budget are immense. I want to just highlight a few of those. Probably the best thing to do at this point is to go to some of the recommendations that accompany this submission.

First of all, and I know you've heard this many times, the unprecedented August 27 announcement to boards of education that the annual facilities grant would not be with us this year and that we would not be receiving our last instalment from the last school year has left us unable to plan thoughtfully. It has left us in what we believe to be a crisis situation in our school district.

The first mention I will make is of the devastating effect of not having a grant that enables us to attend to infrastructure, for example, which is currently a federal priority and that we had understood was also a provincial priority.

The cuts to the parent advisory councils, B.C. School Sports and library services, as well, have not only left us struggling financially but also seem to be out of sync with the Great Goals for a Golden Decade and directions around making our province highly literate, our students fit, etc.

We have some things that could potentially have a tremendous impact on our operating budget. I'm talking about the impact of HST. If we are not able to have some exemptions and capacity to get rebates, there is a potential impact on our district alone of approximately $360,000.

We have been in funding protection, and while funding protection has been wonderful — I don't want for a minute to say that is has not been well received by districts who are facing declining enrolment — the position we find ourselves in now is that we have had our population, for the first time in eight years, not decline. Rather, it has increased, and we are unable to get confirmation that that will necessarily mean more money. We find ourselves planning for about 115 students we hadn't counted on, with the same budget. That's very difficult.

The climate action initiative is another example of an initiative that is a great idea and speaks to certain values. But without the funding, this has potential to impact our operating budget as well.

We have very supportive…. I know the research on the importance of early learning. We all do. The StrongStarts and the focus on all-day kindergarten once again are fabulous initiatives, but they're coming at districts without any additional resources in terms of staffing, etc. That is, again, making it very difficult.

We have seen an increase in requirements around data collection, and I'm going to speak specifically to SADE, the student achievement data extract, which is really placing a strain on our human resources to try and extract data around student achievement and student enrolment in courses on an every-three-months basis. I question, as an educator, what value that is going to add to our students, and if staff time wouldn't be better spent.

I'm going to just speak specifically, because those are sort of the gist of what we were getting at. As I say, there are three themes. First of all, some of the funding cuts have the potential to be really devastating in terms of student safety and, in the long term, around infrastructure. Some really have the potential to decrease boards' flexibility in their operating budget, and that will have a profound and direct impact on the classroom eventually. I know that that has been an intention — to not touch the classroom. Then thirdly, the number of new initiatives without resources to support them is another theme.

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Eight recommendations. I'm going to just touch on them briefly.

First of all, we believe that the annual facilities grant needs to be restored, and it needs to be restored in order that our province is in sync with the federal vision around the importance of infrastructure and that we make sure that we don't further impact the classroom with declining buildings, grounds and, ultimately, more money needed for repairs.

We do recommend that you look at your processes so that we are able to plan with predictability and stability. This school district has demonstrated its capacity to pay back over a $3 million debt and to face a number of real challenges. What we'd really like to be able to do is to be
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able to predict that, indeed, 115 students more than we anticipated will guarantee us and enable us to look at what that means financially.

We recommend that you make sure that your funding is aligned with your stated values. If literacy is a priority and fitness is a priority, cuts to library services and cuts to B.C. School Sports are examples of things that make it look like the values and the funding are out of sync.

In terms of new responsibilities for school districts trying to meet the needs of early learners, we recommend that there really needs to be additional resources put towards school districts. I recognize that StrongStart has come with a budget, but the costs of StrongStart are actually higher than that, and the human resources needed are higher again.

The fifth recommendation really asks you to take a look at rural B.C. The rural task force is only a few years old. It recognizes certain realities in rural B.C. that are different than in other places in the province. We ask you to take a look at that rural task force again and really try and address the issues experienced by districts such as ours where, as an example, the AFG has left us with just over four tradesmen to serve a geographical area that is so vast that for an electrician to respond in one part of the district and then travel to another part of the district is just not realistic for us.

Recommendation 6 asks you not to take a one-size-fits-all solution to problems. While we appreciate that there was perhaps $98 million in unspent AFG funds, our district did not have a surplus, yet we were hit with a one-size-fits-all approach through the elimination of the grant.

We ask that you think about our students and think about making sure that we are aligned with the needs of the 21st century. And ask for help. We have experts in our partner groups. We really ask to be given the opportunity to help solve and shape the system of the future.

The final recommendation, really, is that you take a look at the increasing initiatives, increasing workloads that are being placed on school districts, boards of education and their staff. Stick with the ones that are going to make a difference to student learning, but perhaps take a look at the ones that will have a questionable impact.

Thank you for listening.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you for your presentation.

We have a couple of questions.

N. Letnick: Thank you for your presentation.

All-day kindergarten. I thought all-day kindergarten was going to be fully funded. Wasn't that the announcement? But you said that you wanted funding to follow all-day kindergarten.

P. Dooley: All-day kindergarten will be fully funded. However, we have been told that there will not necessarily be an increase in funding to support the resources that are needed to get us ready for all-day kindergarten.

For example, to prepare reports to get our schools ready…. That will fall on the plate of an already overworked senior staff, similar to the children in care initiative, which is a great initiative, and StrongStart, which is a great initiative as well. All of those have come without support for district staff, early literacy facilitators, etc., to put those programs in place.

M. Mungall: Thank you very much, Pat. It's good to see you.

[1220]

My question is: I was listening to you and reading the report…. With the HST, MSP increases and other budget pressures you mentioned, including the lack of funds to help prepare for new programs like all-day kindergarten, I'm wondering how this is going to directly impact students in the classroom.

Also, please send my best to Erin and, I hope, her new little one.

P. Dooley: Thank you. Yes, there is a new baby — a baby girl. Thank you for asking.

M. Mungall: Yay. Wonderful. Congratulations.

P. Dooley: The HST. I guess the point we're trying to make — and there was a graph to be included, which I hope has made its way to you — is what we have seen over the years is actual impact on our operating budget. For example, the previous speakers mentioned the fact that the transportation allocation has not changed since 2001. Gas prices have meanwhile gone up. We need to find those gas price increases within our existing operating budget.

Every time you have to do something like the climate action charter — $71,000; or premium increase — $32,000; or increased gas prices.... All of that has to come out of our operating budget, which means that we have less money for the classroom. So that's really one of the key points that this brief was designed to make.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm just curious, particularly around the maintenance and your maintenance staff travelling, as a former trustee. We had maintenance staff travelling around the district. We actually looked at the possibility of trying to combine maintenance work between municipality staff and school district staff so that we could avoid a lot of the lengthy travel.

I know your school district is a very large school district geographically, so I'm wondering if your board has looked at that and looked at those opportunities to be able to provide that service in a combined way.

P. Dooley: I can say that our board has certainly made some overtures in that direction. I know that we've done
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a recent transportation review, and one of the recommendations is that we look at trying to add value to our system by looking at how we can work with local transit, for example. So that's one example.

But we do appreciate the point, and I think there's certainly openness. One of the things that we have talked about is hosting a joint meeting with our city councils to look at how we might work together and take more of a shared services approach to things.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Hi, Pat, and thanks for your presentation.

Two quick questions. The climate action initiative and the ability of rural, isolated districts, like yours and the one I come from, to meet those goals. Given the fact that it seems highly unlikely that you'll be able to meet those goals, have you heard back from the government about whether you'll be given an extension to meet those deadlines?

And the second question. We heard from North Peace school district earlier today about supplemental funds for unique geographic factors that they received. In fact, they don't receive them any more. They were removed without consultation.

In their presentation they mentioned five school districts around the province that were receiving these funds. Was yours one of them, and if so, are you still receiving those funds? Were you consulted before they were removed, and how much were they?

P. Dooley: I believe we are still receiving the funds, and I'm not sure if we've asked for an extension, so I couldn't really answer your first question.

I would say, though, that it's part of my point around a one-size-fits-all. All of us agree so much with directions around early learning, around environmental stewardship and so on, but when you have a community like Jewitt, there is no capacity to work with local transit because they don't have local transit.

It makes it very, very difficult for us to try and meet the goals of a climate action charter with some of our rural realities. I'm not sure if we've asked for an extension; I'm sure we will be. And I believe we are still receiving the unique geographical features.

I guess our bottom line is that part of what was worked into the unique geographical features, for example, was our transportation funding, but we haven't had any change in that since 2001.

J. Les (Chair): With that, we are out of time. I want to thank both of you for presenting to the committee this morning. Thank you for your time.

I believe that that concludes our meeting today. There are no further presentations in any of the other communities, so thank you all very much. This has been an interesting exercise and, I believe, fairly successful.

The committee adjourned at 12:25 p.m.

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