2010 Legislative Session: Second Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Monday, October 4, 2010

2 p.m.

Sterling Room, Pomeroy Hotel and Conference Centre

Fort St. John, 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; John van Dongen, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 2:00 p.m.

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

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

4. The Committee adjourned at 4:39 p.m. to the call of the Chair.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Finance and Government Services

Monday, October 4, 2010

Issue No. 29

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 827 ]

MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2010

The committee met at 2 p.m.

[J. Les in the chair.]

J. Les (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. I am John Les, the MLA for Chilliwack and Chair of this committee. I'd like to welcome everyone who is here this afternoon and thank you for taking the time to participate in our important process.

Each year, in preparation for the upcoming year's budget, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper by the 15th of September. That paper presents a current fiscal forecast, and it also identifies key issues that need to be addressed in the upcoming budget. It provides a focus for the consultations of this committee, and it includes information on how members of the public can be involved in presenting their views on budget priorities. Copies of the consultation paper are available on the information table in the back of the room.

Our committee is the parliamentary committee which is responsible for conducting public consultations on the forthcoming provincial budget. Our committee is required to report back to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15 of this year.

This year we are holding 14 public meetings in each region of the province. We've also scheduled three video conferencing sessions to hear from residents of rural communities living in the more remote areas of British Columbia. It's the second year that we've tried this consultation method.

We started our hearings in Vancouver, in Surrey on the 20th of September, and the following week we travelled to Lake Country, Penticton, Kamloops, Cranbrook and Castlegar. We also did a video conferencing session in Nanaimo, Haida Gwaii and Smithers.

This week we are visiting Fort St. John, Prince George, Terrace and Courtenay before returning to Victoria for further video conferencing sessions in Fernie, Golden, Creston, Merritt, Vernon and Port McNeill. Our last public hearing will be in Abbotsford. I think somewhere in that list we missed Whistler, where we also held a public meeting last week.

In addition to public hearings, there are a variety of other ways that British Columbians can share their ideas with us. We accept written submissions by letter, e-mail, video and audio files. Further information on how people may participate using one of these methods is available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

Committee members carefully consider all of the public input that we receive, whether it's an oral presentation made here today or by survey form, submission in writing or audio or video clip. Our deadline to receive submissions from anyone is Friday, October 15 — next week, Friday.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for ten minutes, with up to five additional minutes allotted for questions from the committee. Time permitting, we may also have an open-mike session near the end of the hearing, with five minutes allocated for each presentation.

Today's meeting is a public meeting. It will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of the transcript, along with the minutes of the meeting, will be printed and will be made available on the committees website — same address as I said before.

In addition to the meeting transcript, a live audio webcast of this meeting is also produced and available on the committees website to enable interested listeners to hear the proceedings as they occur. An archived copy of the audio broadcast will also be retained on the committees website. So you're speaking for posterity, for sure.

I'll now ask other members of the Finance Committee to introduce themselves.

J. van Dongen: John van Dongen, Abbotsford South.

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

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

D. McRae: Don McRae, MLA for the Comox Valley.

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

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Doug Donaldson, MLA for Stikine, in the northwest, and Deputy Chair of the committee.

B. Ralston: Bruce Ralston, Surrey-Whalley.

M. Mungall: Michelle Mungall, Nelson-Creston.

B. Routley: Bill Routley, Cowichan Valley.

J. Les (Chair): Also with us today, to my immediate right, is our Committee Clerk, Susan Sourial, and staffing the registration desk at the back of the room is Heather Warren. Also with us from Hansard Services' staff are Michael Baer and Jean Medland, who will record and prepare the written transcript of this meeting.

With that, I'd like to call for the first witness today. From the Fort St. John Community Arts Council — Tara O'Donnell, Brent Hodson and Lisa Bush.

Welcome to all of you.

Presentations

T. O'Donnell: Good afternoon. Thank you for having us. I'm Tara O'Donnell. I'm the executive director for the
[ Page 828 ]
Fort St. John Community Arts Council, and I would like to introduce Brent Hodson, a director on our board, and Lisa Bush, our chair of the board.

[1405]

We'd like to talk to you today about how the arts are important to northern communities like Fort St. John. The Union of B.C. Municipalities has determined that attracting and retaining professionals is a common issue to communities like ours, and we're no exception. The arts build quality of life and help attract and retain these professionals.

B. Hodson: We had a part here about how arts generate revenue. The arts are a powerful revenue generator, particularly in small communities. According to the government's own calculations, every dollar given to the arts comes back immediately as tax collected at $1.36 in general revenue.

T. O'Donnell: We're struggling right now, and part of that problem is that we have very little access to gaming funds. Basically, our arts council cannot receive gaming money at all, which was very, very helpful in the past. Most of our 28 member groups don't have access either.

Funding to the B.C. Arts Council has been disproportionately cut compared to other sectors of the economy, and this means, obviously, more pressure on other funding organizations and foundations.

Then I don't know if you can make out…. That was our attempt at humour. But there are so many mouths to feed. So really, it's hard to stretch the dollar to basically help all of these organizations.

J. Les (Chair): What kind of birds are they?

T. O'Donnell: I think they're robins.

J. Les (Chair): No, they're not robins. I'm not sure what they are, but they're not robins.

J. van Dongen: Stylized robins.

B. Hodson: The B.C. government cut the arts sector by $20 million last year. Currently British Columbia ranks 13th out of 13 provinces and territories in terms of per-capita arts funding. Now the national-provincial arts funding average is $26 per capita, while B.C. is a distant last in Canada at approximately $6.54 per capita.

T. O'Donnell: I feel like I should be doing like the comedy act: "Ouch! Those cuts hurt."

Did you know that last year Fort St. John was declared the music capital of northern B.C., a title we're very proud of and that the mayor proclaimed? We have a lot of people that are really excited about this.

Spotlight 2010 is a concert that just happened about two weeks ago. It was a concert featuring all local musicians, and it sold out a 400-plus-seat theatre. I don't know how many other communities could say that — all local artists. Talk about community support for the arts.

So please restore arts funding to 2008-2009 levels.

J. Les (Chair): That's it? You're ready for questions?

T. O'Donnell: We're ready.

J. Les (Chair): Great.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you for your presentation. Can you tell us why you did not get your gaming grant money? I'm assuming that I know the answer, but I'll ask you this question. Would you prefer the gaming grant money to be replaced and/or in addition to B.C. Arts Council, or would you like to be exclusively dependent on B.C. Arts Council money?

T. O'Donnell: The gaming money was a big issue because it was a significant portion of our budget. We do feel that gaming money belongs back in the communities. That's part of why we welcomed it into our community. I think it would be important. So with reduced access to that, in lieu of that, I guess, yeah, we would need to somehow make up that difference, whether it comes from the B.C. Arts Council or not.

J. Thornthwaite: Why were you rejected from gaming grant money this year?

T. O'Donnell: Well, it was last year. Arts councils are no longer eligible for gaming funds. There are very specific criteria that can receive gaming funds, but community arts councils no longer have access.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Hi. Thanks for the presentation. I especially liked the Richard Florida information about quality of life attracting professionals and not necessarily the lowest taxation.

My question was around the more pressure on other funding organizations and foundations. We've heard from other municipal councils about the pressure that they're feeling from arts groups coming to them and asking for more support because of the lack of support from the gaming grants, for instance.

Have you had similar experiences here? I notice Fort St. John municipality isn't presenting today, so maybe you could fill me in a bit on whether you've been approaching them as well and the kinds of answers you've gotten.

[1410]

T. O'Donnell: Yes, our municipality has been supportive and has given funding to the arts council and different organizations in arts and culture here, but there's obviously a bigger pressure on them to step up. And of
[ Page 829 ]
course, we've pursued other foundations and sources for funding.

It's very difficult to kind of make up the significant loss that we've received. In fact, there are further cuts coming down the line for our B.C. Arts Council. Just our basic assistance is cut by over 50 percent for this upcoming year.

M. Mungall: Thank you very much. In my community, the Nelson community arts council had to shut its doors altogether because of the funding cutbacks to B.C. Arts Council as well as B.C. Gaming. I'm wondering: exactly how have the cuts impacted your organization?

T. O'Donnell: It's tough. Right now we're just starting to kind of realize that that may very well be a possibility for us as well. We employ a full-time staff member; that's myself. We do operate out of a facility and pay commercial rent. Those are two big issues that we're very concerned about keeping. I mean, if the funding is not there, then how can we operate at existing levels?

M. Mungall: Would that destabilize the arts sector in the area, without that coordination?

T. O'Donnell: Massively, I feel — massively.

M. Mungall: And what would that mean for the tourism sector in this area?

T. O'Donnell: Well, the arts council and tourism here…. They work hand in hand. It's kind of a symbiotic partnership. We even partner with the city to do some festivals that bring in a lot of cultural tourism. I think that it would be a terrible shame to lose that. I think that it would be a detriment to our community.

B. Ralston: Could you tell me what your budget was before the cut and how much the grant was that you no longer got?

T. O'Donnell: Well, our budget is about $260,000. In the past we've received approximately $20,000 in gaming. Then B.C. Arts Council for this upcoming year — it will be cut about $4,000 at least.

B. Ralston: So you're down $24,000 on, originally, a $260,000 budget.

T. O'Donnell: Essentially, yeah.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. No further questions?

Then thank you very much for coming today. Appreciate it.

I think we're going to move around a little bit on the agenda here. I understand Andy Ackerman is here. He's ready to go, so we'll go with Andy next.

A. Ackerman: I only have one comment. I think I've lived in most of the ridings that you're all from.

My name is Andy Ackerman, and I have lived in the Peace region for 25 years. I worked for the provincial government for 37 years, and I've been involved in numerous non-profit organizations at the national, provincial, regional and local level. I have my own consulting business right now.

I think your thing says four. I've changed it to three because somebody told me once that anybody that has any more than three priorities doesn't have any at all. So anyway, I want to focus.

I'm the president of the B.C. Library Trustees Association, so I wanted to speak to you today a little bit about funding for public libraries. Up until last year we received $17.6 million worth of provincial grants to assist operations — this is for all the public libraries in the province — running programs such as Books for Babies, OneCard databases and AskAway.

Last year our budget was cut by 22 percent, to $13.7 million. Also, funding for some of the key programs was substantially reduced. In 2010 we just got $300,000 of those cuts back but nothing close to what is needed to ensure that our public libraries remain current with the growing demands of the public.

I just want to give you just a little bit of some facts. Some 61 percent of the population in British Columbia carry library cards — that's of the entire population — and we estimate another 25 percent use libraries without cards. So basically, about 85 percent of the population use public libraries on a regular basis.

The OneCard system was implemented to make it easier for British Columbians to access libraries. In 2009 there were five million transactions using the program, and yet the funding for this program was cut by 50 percent.

[1415]

Now, the number of patrons is growing. As I said, it's not like the population of users is reducing. In Fort St. John, for our service area of 34,000 people, we received 90,000 visits last year to our public library here. That's substantial. The Whistler library — I was just there last week — received something like 300,000 visitors for a population of 10,000. As you can see, libraries are quite well used.

To add to all of this, the functional literacy rates in Canada have now dropped below the 50 percent level. Functional literacy means things like reading a newspaper, filling out an application form — even balancing a chequebook or calculating a tip. So that's quite alarming. We seem to be seeing trends that are very disturbing.

Local libraries are also facing budget challenges. Library infrastructure deficits in B.C. are at a critical stage in many communities as well. The libraries provide a myriad of services outside of lending books. Last year, during the downturn, the Vancouver Public Library, for
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instance, offered services such as helping those unemployed look for jobs and how to look for jobs — teaching them how to find jobs on the Internet and various other places. Also, a lot of libraries provide free tax preparation services for low-income people, and we have a lot of outreach programs for seniors.

I did also attach a fact sheet on libraries for your reading pleasure. I'd like to urge the government to restore funding to public libraries to the pre-2009 levels and to continue to look for more ways to increase library funding. This request is now supported by a resolution passed last week at UBCM, as well, for the same thing.

The second piece that I wanted to talk to you about, which is dear to my heart too, is the emergency management training funding. Prior to the reductions in 2009 the provincial emergency program provided a quarter of a million dollars for emergency management training to local governments.

In 2009 this funding was cut, but PEP managed to get gaming grant funding to carry on this through the B.C. emergency managers association. However, that was short-lived. I was very concerned about that because I call grant money soft money. In other words, nothing is guaranteed for life. Guess what happened this April 1. They weren't approved.

There is no funding right now for local governments for emergency management training from the provincial government. What gets me more concerned is that we live in a province that is subjected to disasters all the time — flooding, fire, pandemic. You name it; we've had it. And it continues to go on.

What I would like to do is have the government restore the funding directly to PEP so that they can provide funding to local governments for this, because right now what's happening is that the number of courses is down almost to zero. Although we have a generation of trained people out there, what we are talking about here is that as that generation moves on, the numbers of trained people dwindle, and that impacts on the communities.

Thirdly, the deterioration of regional-local-provincial staff. As I stated, I worked for the government for 37 years, and the trends that I'm seeing now…. I know the government is in a period of austerity, but it's getting to the point of cutting to the bone. Vacancies are not being filled. That's serious business.

For the northeast here, in the Ministry of Environment right now, we have one fisheries biologist and one wildlife biologist to manage a region that has the largest number of wildlife in the province and the largest variety of fish in the province and that's also facing oil and gas, forestry, mining — all the kinds of development that put pressure on the environment.

I think that the government really has to take a good look, at least at some of the ministries, and restore funding so that they can fill those vacancies.

It's not just Environment. It's all over the place. We are in an era where the province has signed agreements with First Nations for collaborative management, and if you don't have people to do that on behalf of the provincial government, then what happens? We let other people down.

I realize that there is only so much money to go around, and I know that there is a point where you just don't have any, but on the other hand, when the taxpayer is grumpy at best, I think the province needs to fix at least these three things, and it will make at least some of us happier anyway.

M. Mungall: Thanks very much. I'm shocked to see the staffing levels for the Ministry of Environment for such a large region. Can you tell us how that is impacting this area on the ground?

[1420]

Before you do, I do want to point out to my colleagues that if you don't have one already in your wallet, do get one. It's the B.C. OneCard, and it makes your wallet even nicer.

A. Ackerman: That's correct.

J. Les (Chair): Under the heading of "What's in your wallet?"

M. Mungall: Exactly. What's in your wallet? Better be a B.C. OneCard.

A. Ackerman: That's great. The situation here, as has happened in other ministries, and I know it's part of the government's cutback austerity program, is the fact that this region has never had a large number of staff to start with, and there have been vacancies occurring. People have retired; people have moved away — all that kind of thing. If you don't fill those vacancies, then basically you wake up one morning, and there's hardly anybody left.

That's what has happened. I know that everybody would love to have full staffing all the time. But we're in a region here which is not, I would say, a low economic contributor to the provincial coffers. I think with all that's going on out there with respect to resource development, ministries that are required to provide input on those types of projects should be funded a lot better than those that basically, I guess, would not.

M. Mungall: Are they struggling to provide input into the development as a result of such low staffing levels?

A. Ackerman: Well, absolutely. What happens is if you're asked for input and you want to give an environmental perspective, that's part of their job. That's part of their mandate. If you have a stack of applications like this in front of you and you have one person to look at
[ Page 831 ]
those, you know what happens. Either the deadline has passed and they continue on, or people are so stressed out that what happens is staffing levels start to drop because people just get tired. They just walk away.

It's something that I think the government really has to take a look at and see what kinds of pressures are in different regions and staff those positions back up.

M. Mungall: On that note, I'm wondering if projects are not able to go forward for development because the stacks of reviews are so high, or if they're going forward without proper environmental due diligence, or both?

A. Ackerman: I think what happens is that things get delayed — okay? Staff do the best they can. I managed the staff, which were basically…. I remember walking into some of my staff's office, and the applications waiting for review were higher than this table. Some of these projects are huge, so what happens is either things do take longer, or people just tend to get more creative, or whatever. But people try very hard to fill their mandate. On the other hand, there is a limit to what they can do.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for that presentation, especially…. You're very current with the UBCM resolution information being included.

A. Ackerman: I was there last week, yes.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I represent a rural area, and I believe that all three topics are a major concern to rural areas, as you've well pointed out.

Two quick questions, one on the library infrastructure deficits. I know that many smaller communities are facing that. Are there any recommendations from the Library Trustees Association about how to address that — you know, mechanisms?

Secondly, on the Ministry of Environment staff, can you give me an idea of what the historical levels were, previous to the cuts that you've experienced?

A. Ackerman: Certainly. From the infrastructure situation, the B.C. Library Trustees did receive funding from the public library services branch to conduct a three-year study on the infrastructure needs. They've finished phase 1, which is getting out there and finding out what kind of infrastructure is needed. That could be anywhere from a brand-new library to fixing things up to finding more space — all that kind of stuff. We're still at that stage where we're doing some investigation, but the big find right now is, obviously, that it's not a secret that there are some major infrastructure challenges facing libraries today.

With respect to staff, when I left in 2007, we had in this region four wildlife staff, and I think it was two or three fisheries staff. We also had a branch called ecosystem management. Those are the ones that do all the reviews and look at the potential impacts of any project on the environment. I think there were three or four staff doing that, and now they're basically down to, I believe, one or two.

So do we need to get them back up to where they were, at least minimal? Because that would be minimal in 2007, and for a region this large and this ecologically sensitive, it certainly needs to be more.

[1425]

J. Rustad: Thanks for the presentation. The wildlife issue is certainly an issue around…. In order to manage wildlife, you need to be able to have some ideas of what's out there. We rely a lot on trappers and guides for that information, so I don't disagree with you on that.

I want to ask you a little bit about libraries, though, with the changing trend in technology. Several of my colleagues have various readers, and instead of going to the library and getting books, now they're downloading books and reading them. I'm just wondering what impact you foresee that having on the traditional library that we have within our communities.

A. Ackerman: I don't see it as a challenge at all. Libraries have for about the last ten years been keeping up with that demand. We have a lot of virtual access now, a lot of databases.

But the problem with the cuts that happened is that access to those databases, particularly in smaller rural libraries, has diminished because the funding for those is now reduced substantially. It costs money to license that software every year, and if you have reduced funding, then you can't. What happens is that instead of maybe 20 databases, you now maybe have five. But the virtual access in the use of libraries has increased substantially, and libraries have been keeping up.

The other piece in the challenge our public put out there always is when people say: "Well, it's not about books." Well, I haven't found a two-year-old yet that uses a reader, and I haven't found a ten-year-old that uses a reader too much. Our children aren't as digitally…. I was listening to a show the other day where just because our children are able to text back and forth doesn't mean that they're technologically advanced. It just means that they can text back and forth.

I think what's happening is that libraries today are meeting that challenge. We're finding, too, that our libraries are being accessed more and more because we provide free Internet services. People are coming in and using libraries in a big way in that way too.

We're never going to get rid of books. Vancouver Public Library, for instance — you can go in there. You can take your reader in there. You can download on there, but it's only good for, I think, three weeks, and then it disappears on you. So it's really no different than borrowing a book, but it does provide the services.
[ Page 832 ]

When I was in Richmond Library a little while ago, I watched an eight-year-old go in there and punch a button, and down comes the program that they want, and away they go. They get whatever they want, self-check it out and away. This was an eight-year-old.

We're having to keep up with that challenge, but libraries are still the largest central data bank in the province for information and will remain so.

J. Les (Chair): Just one more question from myself, Andy, if I might. I take a lot of the points that you've made. They're serious issues. Here's our dilemma. You say we need more services. We're still running a deficit. What do we do? Run a larger deficit? Do we increase taxes? What's the solution?

A. Ackerman: I think that if you ask the people — and you are — what the solution will be…. Obviously, everybody wants more. My wife's a politician, so I hear it all the time about everybody expecting everything from everybody, from all of you, all the politicians. I think that we have to judiciously, when we do get that money back and the economy starts to improve…. I think that's what your group is all about. It's saying: "Okay. If we do get more, if the coffers start to increase, where do we put the priorities? Where do we start to build our infrastructure again?"

That to me is where priorities have to be made — for instance, in libraries. Libraries are all about literacy. Is literacy a huge issue today? Yes, it is. That's a national issue as well as a provincial issue, so perhaps maybe the federal and provincial governments have to get together to look at that one. We don't want to wake up one morning 20 years from now and find out half our population can't read. That's the kind of thing that we have to….

Do we want to raise taxes? No, we don't. Lord knows we've heard enough about that in the last little while. I think as our revenues start to increase, that's when we start putting our priorities into the basket.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, so what you're really saying is that once the deficit is gone, then we need to address some of those priorities that you're suggesting.

[1430]

A. Ackerman: Well, absolutely. Or as it's slowly dwindling and we do get a little bit more, we can do both. I think we can have a deficit as long as you're paying it off, but we can also take care of some of those extra revenues that are coming in and put them in the right places. So you're building as you're paying off. I think you can do both. Most people do that personally, so I think that we could do that provincially.

J. Les (Chair): Michelle has another question.

M. Mungall: Just kind of following up with what the Chair was asking about, one of the issues that has come up that some other groups have said is: no more tax cuts. So to ensure that we are able to generate that revenue for the programs that you bring forward, as well as other programs, and following the line of your argument, I'm guessing — but I would rather be certain — that you're not looking to see any more tax cuts in the upcoming budget.

A. Ackerman: Well, I think that if there are going to be tax cuts, you have to be very judicious in how you do that, but I would say that right now the needs tell us provincially — all of us — that we need to start looking at what our priorities are going to be for the next five to ten years.

As we get the revenue…. We're living in a part of the world here that produces a lot of revenue, so maybe we need to look at programs to produce more revenue — like incentives. We have incentives here in the northeast for oil and gas, and those types of incentives are the ones that drive, I think, the continuing feeding of the piggy bank from this part of the world. I think we need to look at those kinds of things as well.

So no, I'm not saying tax cuts. I don't think we can afford that right now. I think what we need to say is: let's look at how we generate more revenue, what kind of programs we put out there to do that. Then all of these things would be looked after.

These are not big issues. The emergency management thing is a quarter million dollars. I hate to say it slips off the tip of my tongue, but when you look at the top, the total provincial budget, it's not a lot of money for the benefit you're getting.

J. Les (Chair): All right. It looks like we're done. Thank you, Andy.

Next we're going to hear from the B.C. Cattlemen's Association. Ron Buchanan is here, along with Mike McConnell. Good afternoon.

R. Buchanan: Good afternoon. I'm Ron Buchanan, a rancher in the North Peace. I'm the president of a small local of the B.C. Cattlemen, the Upper Cache Creek Cattlemen. I'm a director to the provincial Cattlemen's Association. In the B.C. Cattlemen's Association I serve as the chair of the taxation and finance committee, and I'm also the vice-president of the B.C. Cattlemen's Association.

M. McConnell: I'm Mike McConnell. I'm a rancher in the Dawson Creek area, and I'm also the president of the Peace River Regional Cattlemen's Association.

R. Buchanan: The B.C. Cattlemen were pleased to present to this committee on September 22 in Kamloops. We fully support that presentation.
[ Page 833 ]

In the handout you will see that there is a backgrounder on the wild predator program. There were questions outstanding from that presentation, and that backgrounder is just to answer those questions.

There was another question asked that we'd like to answer. The question was: what does the B.C. cattle industry contribute to the GDP annually? The B.C. Cattlemen's office tells me it's approximately $500 million annually that our industry contributes to the GDP.

In the handout there's a little bit of a brief summary of the B.C. Cattlemen's presentation. I'd also like to bring forward another area of support that I think is direly needed. That is support for the MAL budget.

[1435]

You will see in the handout a graph that shows — I think John has it there — the percentage of support that the provincial government supports as a percentage of the GDP that the industry generates. You'll see that B.C. is by far the lowest of any of the provinces. I'd like to make some generalized statements as to why I think that needs to be corrected.

B.C. does come in at 5.5 percent of the GDP — provincial support at 5.5 percent of what the agriculture industry generates. The provincial average for all the provinces is 13.8 percent. Just to bring us up to on par with the average of the rest of the provinces, we need to add about…. An additional $116 million would need to be put into the MAL budget just to bring us up to an average of what the other provinces support their industry at.

Our population is growing. The desire for locally produced food is growing. I know we've heard that from many sources. The production of red meat in the world is dropping. The production of red meat in B.C. has shown the largest drop of any of the provinces in Canada.

The public is becoming more aware of food security. It's just not a given anymore that we are a country that has food security entrenched in it. Food security has to be looked after. Agriculture is really at the mercy of climate, and if any of you do adhere to the fact that climate change is a reality, we have to be aware that agriculture is very vulnerable under these conditions.

Much of the land that we ranch on is land where ranching is the highest and best use of that land. The land that we ranch on isn't suitable for growing corn or wheat or soybeans. Our industry takes a product — grass — and converts it into a very high-quality protein product. I think we have a great opportunity and a greater responsibility to view agriculture as an essential industry and support it.

Those were just generalized, I guess, comments about where I think we are in B.C. as a province and an industry working together. I guess I'm asking that you view agriculture a little more seriously and put more money into the MAL budget, particularly for programs, not maybe just to increase the bureaucracy. There are many programs that B.C. cannot avail itself of that are out there in the other provinces. They aren't available to B.C. just because of lack of funding.

M. McConnell: I'd like to continue on, then. In the B.C. Cattlemen's presentation they had a recommendation regarding forest and range. In that they talked about range and forestry being complementary or compatible on the land base.

In the Peace River we have a bit of an anomaly with aspen harvesting. In fact, aspen harvesting and grazing are competing uses on the same land base. Unlike a mature coniferous forest, there is a dense canopy, and very little light gets down to the forest floor, so there is really no grazing value there.

When conifer is logged, it opens up, and the natural grasses and stuff take off. It is replanted to trees. There is a period of ten, 15 or maybe 20 years when there are grazing opportunities that were never there before. Then the canopy closes in, and it goes back to what it was before.

We have very little native grasslands in the Peace. Most of our native grazing is under the fairly open canopy of a mature aspen forest. Now, that's open enough. You can ride through it on a saddle horse. In some cases you can travel through it on an ATV. The cattle work through that, and that's their main source of grazing.

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When this aspen is logged it suckers back from the roots into dense stands. A mature stand will be, say, 1,000 to 1,500 stems per hectare. It can sucker back up to 100,000 stems per hectare — 50,000 to 100,000. What happens is that this becomes a physical barrier. The cattle physically can't move through this. This results in a 90 percent loss of the grazing that existed pre-logging. The only grazing that's available is on the roads and the landings.

Over time these dense, immature stands self-thin, and eventually you'll get back to this open, mature aspen stand. Aspen logging has only been going on here for 25 years, but we can go back further to land clearing that's reverted and to old fires. After 40 years the stands are still way too dense for the cattle to be able to use them, but research has shown that six or seven years after logging you can manually thin these dense stands to the point where the cattle will move through them again. You can sort of create an artificially mature forest at a very much earlier age.

The problem is that this costs a lot of money. We need funding to do this, because what's happened is that the government has issued two overlapping tenures. When the forest tenure exercises his rights, he's causing the grazing tenure holder to lose his rights. We've got lots and lots of examples where the grazing that was authorized in a tenure grazing licence has been reduced, because following a bunch of aspen harvesting, the grazing isn't there anymore.
[ Page 834 ]

This is a Peace River anomaly, because this is the only place where there's any amount of this open aspen that's used for grazing. In the rest of the province and here conifer logging and livestock grazing are quite compatible. There are some glitches, but they are compatible uses on the land base. When these aspen-harvesting tenures were issued, I guess we weren't aware enough of how this was going to be different from conifer logging.

Have we got time to talk briefly about the Agricultural Land Commission? Andy Ackerman referred briefly to all the oil and gas that's going on here. We would like to see funding restored to the Agricultural Land Commission so that it can achieve its mandate of protecting lands for agricultural production and encouraging the business of farming.

Up here we have this delegation agreement to the Oil and Gas Commission. It seems really, really strange to us that we would be asking a group that is supposed to be expediting oil and gas exploration…. We have delegated the authority to them to look after the agricultural land reserve. It's because the Agricultural Land Commission is no longer adequately funded. We see this as another important issue.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. We've got time for questions.

N. Letnick: Thank you very much for your presentation and allowing us to enjoy your city.

Two questions. One has to do with the aspen logging. Are you suggesting that when the government gives out the tenures for the aspen logging, we also include in there a provision for them to come back later and thin out the growth? Or are you saying that the general taxpayer should be footing the bill for that?

The second question is: now that we have the harmonized sales tax, how has it affected your businesses?

M. McConnell: I'll talk to the aspen-logging question. It's pretty hard, when you have made an agreement with somebody and you've agreed to charge them 50-cent stumpage for aspen — which is very, very low compared to what they charge for conifer — to come back and say: "Oh, by the way, now, fellows, you're going to have to pay $500 or $700 a hectare to thin this."

N. Letnick: New agreements. If we were starting from scratch with new people, would you like see it come out as part of their cut — operating costs? Is that what you're looking for? Or would you like the…?

M. McConnell: Well, we're not really particular where the money comes from. We see it as sort of government's problem that they've tried to download on the tenure holders. When they issued the tenure to these fellows to harvest aspen, they didn't tell them: "Oh, by the way, when you're impacting the range, you're going to have to ante up this other money."

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That is the big problem. Where is the money going to come from? Maybe there might be some opportunities in this land-based investment strategy that the Ministry of Forests is working on now for all this money that was being used under different silviculture programs and so forth. It could be funded. There might be a slice in there that would be available to deal with these kinds of issues.

R. Buchanan: Norm, on the question of HST, the B.C. Cattlemen, I guess, requested from the government that we be exempt from the PST — this was a few years ago — mainly because we were trying to offset the carbon tax that was impacting our industry.

With the HST, as it is now, we're quite pleased, although a lot of our membership is on the other side of the fence. But we're quite pleased with operating under the HST.

I guess I could tell you that we are going to try and — I hate to use the word — educate. We've asked Minister Thomson to provide us with some information, and we're going to try and distribute it to our members — to see that we don't, I guess, do ourselves harm with being on the side that tries to repeal the HST, because we do see a lot of benefits under the HST.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for a very informative presentation. I congratulate you on building on the questions that were brought up at a previous session by your organization in Kamloops, because it helps us.

The question I had was around the programs that exist in other provinces that are a result of those provinces funding their Ministries of Agriculture to a greater degree. What are some of the programs that you would see of benefit here?

Also, does that relate to…? I've toured some of this area before. I know — and I don't blame the ranchers for this — that many end up alienating some of the land because they can make more money off a gas development rather than ranching.

Would some of the programs that you see in other provinces be of help to address this? If so, can you describe those?

R. Buchanan: Well, I think that as far as programs that stem the alienation of the land base, if we can make the people that are on the land profitable, they're going to be the greater protector of that land.

Some of the programs that the other provinces are privilege to that we haven't been privilege to. The AgriRecovery program has been triggered in the other prairie provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
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We've had very similar circumstances in B.C. — drought — where it could be triggered in B.C. It would be a great benefit to the industry if it was. It's one of the federal-provincial agreements where the provinces and the feds have got together and said….

Let me take a couple steps back. The Growing Forward agreements that both the provinces and the feds have signed on to — AgriRecovery is part of that. That would be a great benefit if it could be triggered or if it was available in B.C.

Money for traceability. Food security and traceability go hand in hand. Some of the other provinces have money available for traceability, and we haven't had that money available.

J. van Dongen: Ron, you made a statement that for a lot of the lands in the Peace River, the highest and best use is cow-calf operation or a certain cattle operation. I think you would probably say cow-calf.

I think the committee would benefit from you expanding on that a little bit. Are you thinking both Crown and private lands? I think it is a big economic opportunity for northern B.C., and I'd just like you to fill in the blanks on that for me.

R. Buchanan: Okay. I think that provincewide, not just in the Peace, for a lot of the land that we ranch on, ranching is the best use. Specifically in the Peace, we have issues of climate. Some of the areas can grow grain and canola very successfully; some are impacted by short growing seasons, early frost. Ranching suits that bill excellently.

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Topography is another barrier to cultivation of some of the lands. Some of the lands are just too steep to cultivate, but they grow grass excellently, so ranching is the highest and best use on those areas too.

Soils. Some of the soils aren't suitable for some of the crops. They're very prone to erosion. When they're kept in grass, erosion isn't a problem. Grass is actually a very good carbon sink, so we're quite excited that our industry maybe can take advantage of those down the road. I guess I'm straying a little bit there. Some of the soils just aren't suitable for cultivation because of the types of soils they are.

J. van Dongen: So what you're saying is that you can take a whole wide range of soil types, climates and types of forages and convert them into meat production through a cow-calf operation.

R. Buchanan: Yes.

J. van Dongen: And there are just certain limitations, such as fencing, etc., where the government needs to help to foster the industry.

R. Buchanan: Yes, John.

B. Ralston: You referred in the paper to what you call deteriorated infrastructure, and I know from the last time in Kamloops that you mean run-down fences and stuff.

Does part of your discussion with the government on some of the things that you proposed here, all of which seem pretty sensible, on Crown range also involve an adjustment in the fee for grazing leases?

R. Buchanan: I think the Kamloops proposal makes mention of an initiative that was…. I think we had a memorandum of agreement signed between forestry, the B.C. cattlemen and Ducks Unlimited where some of the adjustments in the grazing licence fees…. Some of those fees would be used for range infrastructure improvements. There was that adjustment, I guess, in grazing fees. There wasn't going to be a higher fee, but those fees were going to be directed towards range infrastructure.

M. McConnell: Can I comment on that briefly? The issue here is that the tenure holder is the one who has borne the brunt of the responsibility and the cost of this infrastructure, but it isn't his. It's the Crown's infrastructure.

If he digs a dugout, that's well and good, and then his cattle have got some water. But it's not his. It's the Crown's dugout, and people sometimes lose track of that — that all this money and time and effort that goes into Crown land is the Crown's assets, not the tenure holder's assets.

J. Rustad: Thanks for your presentation. I know we're just about out of time, so I'll try to be very brief.

I just want to focus in on the aspen. I know that other areas in the province don't really utilize aspen from a forestry perspective. There was a plant down in the Cariboo area. Up here, of course, they've got quite a plant that's designed to utilize the aspen. From what I understand, the profit margins on that are quite narrow, so my concern is that if the cost structure associated with utilizing aspen stands goes up, we may lose that plant.

I guess I would ask the question, which is a question that can't really be answered easily: how do you weigh the challenges and the needs of one industry with the challenges and needs of another industry in finding a way to be able to get a balance so that both can thrive?

M. McConnell: It's my understanding also, right now, that either in the pulp aspect or the oriented strand board — we used to call it waferboard — the economics are very poor right now. But the Louisiana-Pacific plant in Dawson Creek, when times were better, was one of Louisiana's most profitable plants in North America.

Maybe what we should be looking at is that there is quite an overlap between grazing tenures and the aspen
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harvesters' cutting territories, but there's a lot of area that doesn't overlap. Some grazing tenures are fully committed. Some there's a fair margin. Maybe something that could be looked at is when the financial conditions are such as they are now and there isn't really much money there to work with, maybe the aspen harvesting could be done in areas other than grazing tenures or in these areas where there's a large margin.

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Then when times are better and there's more money, they could log in the areas that are fully committed, when they had funds to replace what they were taking.

J. Les (Chair): And the final question is from Bill.

B. Routley: Yes, my interest is about the predator containment or control and compensation program. Do you know how much has been spent to date out of that program, and if so, where it has been spent, in what regions?

The other question is about…. You're suggesting that there should be ongoing funding in your last paragraph here, under that section. It says that you're in desperate need of establishing stable long-term funding for the program. What does that mean? Are you asking for the existing funding rate to continue? Is that what that means?

Finally, if I can ask three all at once, on south Vancouver Island I had some concerns of predators impacting sheep and other livestock than just cattle. I wondered if this program is covering people on south Vancouver Island and if you know who that is. Who is it?

R. Buchanan: The program does cover sheep. They should be covered under the program.

What has been spent provincewide to date? I don't know, and I don't know the spending per region, but I can certainly get that for you.

M. McConnell: In one of the earlier pilots the B.C. Cattlemen's Association was administering the program. In this last pilot that's running now, it's being administered by the B.C. Ag Council. But we will get that information for you.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. Like your counterparts in Kamloops, you took a lot of time, but that's okay. We're here to please.

Our next presenters are from the Save Our Northern Seniors Society. Jean Leahy is here with Rick Bourdon. While they're making their way up, I'd just like to note that the mayor of this fine city is here, Mayor Bruce Lantz.

Good afternoon to you.

J. Leahy: Good afternoon, and thank you for allowing us this opportunity to express our concerns and ideas. Rick Bourdon is a local city businessman, and he's here to help me if I forget something. I'll probably get his elbow or something, and he'll butt in.

J. Les (Chair): We'll make sure he doesn't do anything nasty like that.

J. Leahy: We are very appreciative of the nursing and care aide programs at Northern Lights College, both in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, that allow local people the opportunity to train in their hometown. This will certainly help us when staffing our new care home and hospital in 2012.

SONSS is a group that was registered as a society in 2003. We are constantly approached by seniors who do not require a subsidy but require a safe place to live. Many of these frail but independent seniors are forced to live in apartment blocks that are not necessarily safe places for them.

We haven't always been involved in housing, except for the care home, Heritage Manor — places like that that are independent living. It's getting very serious, finding a place to live. I'm sort of experiencing it myself. I'm looking for apartments that are safe. There's no guarantee that any of the ordinary apartments that everybody else lives in are safe. A good example is last week where a lady got crushed.

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Heritage I is a 35-unit independent living apartment building, and it was completed in 2001. At that time a third of these were rented to seniors at market rent. Today, this is managed by B.C. Housing, and a lot of the pioneer seniors do not meet the criteria of low-cost housing, nor do they want to be forced to hide their money in order to get in. There is one other safe facility for seniors that has 90 units, all full and a wait-list of 42. Actually, it's now 47. It's owned by a North Peace housing society.

We are requesting that government change the policy of B.C. Housing which allows the building of facilities for low-income people only. It would be our desire to see another independent living apartment built by government to be at least 50 percent rented at market rent to seniors. We are a fast-growing community with an increasing number of seniors, and we just have to be prepared for them. We're not prepared now.

I know people say: "Well, if you have $100,000…." That's the criterion for getting into Heritage Manor. If you have more than $100,000, you don't qualify. Well, a good number of our houses that we're able to sell right now are less than $300,000. Anything to buy…. A one-level building — I just read the paper before I came — is $330,000, so $100,000 doesn't really cut it anymore. That's basically what we're asking — that the policy be
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changed so that at least 50 percent can be rented to seniors at market rent.

Then we have one other item, liberation therapy. Several of our Fort St. John residents have travelled to other countries and had positive results with this treatment. We'd like to go on record as urging government to commit to doing the trials in this province. I included in your package some of the testimonies from people that have gone locally. They're very happy with their results. In every instance, there's improvement. Nobody is sorry that they had the treatment. I'll just let you read those in your spare time, because they're quite lengthy.

The one page that's at the front…. This young man has had MS for 18 years. He's so happy; it's unbelievable. On the other page is the story of a man that lived in the care home. He has gone to Mexico for treatment. He came back home. He did have a disruption when he got to Calgary. He had pneumonia, so he had to stay in the hospital there for a while.

He's now back home in the hospital, but his predicament before he left was that he had to have glasses to read, he could hardly talk anymore because he was so short of breath, and he was cold. His feet were actually purple. He has come home able to talk, he doesn't need his glasses anymore, and his feet and legs are warm and pink. It's absolutely wonderful what's happening.

I put in an article from Maclean's, where neurologists are talking about the program and governments are talking about the program. Some are suggesting that governments are reluctant because there's a danger. We don't see that there's any more danger in MS patients having this therapy than there is in a heart patient having this therapy. The danger right now is probably in these long trips to India, Mexico, Poland and those places. It's not fun to sit in a wheelchair in an airport with four- and five-hour delays or waiting for the next flight.

That's why we're urging that you consider doing the trials. I would never dare to tell you that these people that have come home would participate, because I don't know if they will. They might be reluctant, since some of them paid for this themselves. For others, the community gathered the money.

J. Les (Chair): All right. We have a couple of questions.

M. Mungall: Thanks very much, Jean and Rick, especially for bringing in the newspaper articles about people locally who have gone through liberation therapy. I mean that on a personal level, because my mother-in-law is actually headed to Mexico this week for liberation therapy, so I'm going to be able to read this later on and have a little bit of my worries, maybe, put aside.

My question is actually around the housing issue that you brought up, specifically around Heritage Manor I. I apologize if I missed something here, but you mentioned that when it was first opened, one-third of the units were rented at market rent. Is that still the case? I'm not clear if that's still the case.

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J. Leahy: No, it's not.

M. Mungall: No, it's not, eh?

J. Leahy: No, it's isn't, because B.C. Housing's policy changed, so only low income can get into Heritage.

M. Mungall: Okay, it's 100 percent only low income. So those seniors are being forced to move. Is that the situation?

J. Leahy: No, the one's that were in there originally are still there because it was grandfathered in that they would not have to leave if the policy changed.

R. Bourdon: It's attrition that's taking care of it.

M. Mungall: Okay, I see. Thank you.

J. Les (Chair): Maybe I'm still confused. So the people who are able to pay market rent but don't qualify as a result of being disabled or what have you can't move in.

J. Leahy: No.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, I've got it now.

R. Bourdon: I think what we want to address as much as anything is the level of qualification. I think some of the adages of past years have outgrown themselves, and maybe it's time to look at a new number.

D. McRae: I have two questions, if I may. Thank you very much for your presentation. First of all, I'm from Vancouver Island, and our conditions are rather different than they are here, I'm sure, as are our industries.

Could you, first of all, explain approximates for market value of what rent would be up in this region? I know there are lots of pressures on housing from various industries.

J. Leahy: I can tell you right now that I've been looking at apartments. A two-bedroom is $1,300 a month.

D. McRae: A two-bedroom — okay.

J. Leahy: Now, a two-bedroom apartment at Heritage is $1,000.

D. McRae: Thank you very much. The other question or more of a statement is…. I'm understanding that MS
[ Page 838 ]
Society of Canada doesn't support the liberation treatment. I'm not an expert on medical means, by any stretch, but I know that UBC has started a pilot project with some other provinces and universities. Do you have any understanding or knowledge about why the MS Society of Canada is not supportive?

J. Leahy: The MS Society is saying that it hasn't been proven, so they can't recommend it. We're not donating to them anymore.

D. McRae: Fair enough. You are aware of the UBC trial that is going on?

J. Leahy: Yup.

B. Routley: Thank you, Jean and Rick. Just so you're aware, we had a very emotional presentation about the liberation therapy — in Penticton, I believe it was — on the very same issue — a lady who was very passionate about wanting to see us look into this.

My question about the level of qualification being raised from $100,000 to…. Were you suggesting, like, in the $300,000 range? Is that because people would need to be able to, for example, have an RRSP to live on or that kind of thing? They might have RRSP money that they're augmenting or adding to their pension. So is that why you are suggesting they should still qualify for moving into a seniors home, based on that as a level of qualification?

J. Leahy: No, I wasn't really suggesting a new particular rate. What I'm saying is that if you have $100,000, you don't qualify for the present public facilities, like B.C. Housing facilities. So that forces you to go to the other apartments that are $1,300 a month to rent. Well, your money doesn't last long if you're paying that kind of rent and you only have a couple of hundred thousand.

The new apartments that are being built for sale — 1,000 square feet, two bedrooms, single-car garage and one level — are $340,000.

J. Thornthwaite: Thanks for your presentation. This is a different angle than what we're used to getting. I noticed that we just had a press release come out that apparently there has just been another $1 million given to Fort St. John for this eight-unit development for seniors and disabilities, but that's affordable senior housing, so that would not fit the actual criteria that you're talking about.

J. Leahy: That's subsidized.

J. Thornthwaite: Can you give me an example? Obviously, you're speaking on behalf of Fort St. John and the northern seniors society. I'm just wondering what other areas, from a provincial perspective, would be under the same pressures as you're indicating here.

J. Leahy: I don't know the circumstances in other jurisdictions, but South Peace and North Peace are certainly in the same scenario. The subsidized facilities will be managed the same because they're managed by B.C. Housing.

[1510]

J. Les (Chair): Just on the housing thing. Affordability. You mentioned $1,300 a month. Certainly, that's an issue. But earlier in your presentation you also made reference to facilities that were safe for seniors. Can you expand on that just a little bit — what your definition is of what makes a facility safe? I think I've got a hunch or two, but I'd like to hear you tell it in your words.

J. Leahy: Well, for instance, I would like to be able to move into an apartment and know that there aren't drug deals being made day and night, that there aren't parties going on day and night. In an oil and gas industry town, you get all kinds of people renting. I would not feel safe living beside some of them.

J. Les (Chair): You would agree, Rick?

R. Bourdon: I definitely would agree. I am a landlord on top of it all.

J. Les (Chair): So you know firsthand.

R. Bourdon: I know firsthand.

J. Leahy: I guess the other thing is that the apartments that are being built…. I understood that it was supposed to be 10 percent of the facilities that would accommodate wheelchairs, for instance, or be accessible somewhat.

Well, that doesn't happen. There's a ramp, and if your wheelchair isn't too big, you could get into some of them. But they're really not wheelchair accessible inside. There are no walk-in showers. There are no bars of any kind. For seniors like me, when you have a cane, you need some accommodation that you're not going to trip over everything. And there are a lot of seniors in worse condition than me.

J. Les (Chair): Very good. That's all the time we have today. Thank you for a very good presentation. Very much appreciated.

Next we will hear from the Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce — Andrew Tylosky and Nic Weswick.

A. Tylosky: Good day, and thanks for allowing us this opportunity to speak with you.
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N. Weswick: We have some handouts here you can see being passed out in front of you. We just wanted to go over a bit about the community, a bit about the chamber of commerce here locally and address some of our concerns.

Basically, as you can see, there are about 400 members within the chamber of commerce, representing small and medium-sized business primarily, operating in the North Peace area. We provide networking, training and advocacy to our members with a collective voice, and we are members of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.

We've included a couple of pages of headshots, basically so you can get a feel for who we are and probably get an idea of the typical, average age of the chamber as compared to most.

The following slide is titled "The powerhouse of the province." This is in reference to our levels of productivity and economy up here. We have an overall population in the region of about 60,000 people. The median age is 31½, which is 6½ years younger than the provincial average of 38. We have a record-setting birth rate every year. It was 602 in 2008, which is No. 3 in the province; 607, I believe, is the unconfirmed number for 2009. The region's average income is $47,206. Fort St. John city limits is $53,508, which is higher than the B.C. average of $40,802.

A. Tylosky: What we want to get across with those statistics is that we may be very small in population but we are quite big in the bigger picture of the economic impact that this area provides to the rest of the province.

On the next page you'll find some information that some of you might be familiar with about the impact of, particularly, the oil and gas industry. We're talking almost $8 billion in capital spending; $9.24 billion, the total sales value of oil and gas production in 2008; and $4 billion to the provincial government in oil and gas revenue in 2008.

Of course, the energy industry is the single largest source of revenue to the province. This revenue is coming primarily from this area of only 60,000 people. So when you compare us in population to the rest of the province, we certainly pull our weight.

From the chamber-of-commerce perspective, we have some priorities that we'd like to make you aware of and things that we would like to see. We believe that a lot of these the government has taken very seriously, so hats off to you for that. But we just want to take this opportunity to tell you once again.

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Primarily, the chamber and all businesses are interested in low business taxes, and the province has been very good at that. We want to reinforce that we like that, and we would like to see that continue, but we also want to see our wish list, and everybody else's, come true as well. I'm sure you'll find a way.

Primarily, from our chamber's perspective, we have an issue with making sure that this area is on a level playing field, that our members are on a fair regulatory and taxation playing field with Alberta. We certainly have some advantages.

We would like to see proper enforcement of British Columbia's regulations. B.C. has somewhat stricter transportation regulations, for example. Of course, we've got the HST. We have the carbon tax. We would really like to see the government step up the enforcement and make sure that those taxes are being collected on behalf of the government, making it fair for our local members who pay those taxes — such as carbon tax, for example — to the government.

We're British Columbia–based companies, so we pay that every time we fill up in British Columbia, but a truck coming from Alberta, for example, may very well bring enough fuel to do all of its work in B.C. and not pay a cent of carbon tax. And, of course, we'd like to ensure that the CRA is working with the B.C. government to ensure full collection of HST and both carbon tax.

The next priority we have…. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to hit our highways in the middle of the rush hour that starts about 6:30 in the morning. We have a tremendous amount of heavy traffic on, primarily, the Alaska Highway and other highways in the area that are carrying the equipment as well as all of the population between the various communities.

We understand there have been some steps taken on moving this forward, but we'd just like to take this opportunity to underline some of the areas of our concern. They include the South Taylor Hill, the Taylor Bridge, Pine Pass improvements and four-laning the highway, perhaps through the Pine Pass but definitely through connecting Fort St. John and Dawson Creek and also through to the Alberta border.

Alberta has now basically four-laned the highway, and we'd like to see that carry through, not only for the fast movement of transportation but for safety. And we'd like to see commercial vehicle inspection stations properly staffed and located in strategic places.

Next priority from the Fort St. John chamber is telecommunications and data connectivity. We're realizing now that a proper Internet connection is very important to business, just as power is or water or sewer service. We had an issue arise over basically the last 14 months. Businesses have been basically without Internet or data connectivity for the better part of four entire business days, which is much higher than would be acceptable.

This is caused by the fact that this area does not have a redundant Internet connection to the outside world. All of our fibre optic lines go through Alberta, and occasionally, there's been an awful lot of road construction along that highway. They get hit by construction crews and we're out for hours. Usually it happens right in the middle of a business day.
[ Page 840 ]

From a business perspective, that impact is unacceptable — from our perspective. We'd like to see all levels of government — some of this falls into federal jurisdiction, but there's certainly a level of provincial involvement as well — and private industry work together to bring redundant fibre connections to this area, as is standard, really, pretty much anywhere else in the province and around the country.

Next priority: economic diversification and development. Obviously, our big industry here is oil and gas. We also have agriculture industry and forestry and then the service industry as well. This area is really already a hotbed of innovation in the oil and gas industry. There are a lot of inventions going on, a lot of commercialization happening. But we believe that there are certainly further opportunities for innovation and commercialization, particularly in the clean energy area, which I know is a focus for the government; technology; and certainly, with science.

We are the land where it is practised, and so when you practise things, you can always find a better way to do things. The government has a key role to play in the success of developing innovative new industries in the province.

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Also, the elephant in the room being the Site C dam. This is no secret. This may or may not go ahead. But when we're looking at infrastructure, primarily, the government must realize the strain that the dam construction would have on this area during the roughly ten years it would take to build the dam and the impact the dam would have on the community post-construction.

There would be a significant impact on this community. We've heard anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 construction workers working on the dam. In this community of 20,000 people in Fort St. John, it's going to have a massive impact on a lot of levels, particularly with infrastructure, also with social impacts. As the government moves forward, keep that in mind as you're making investment decisions about this area.

The dam site is really…. For those of you not familiar with the area, it's basically about seven kilometres that way, not far from where we are right now.

If you guys have any questions, comments….

J. Les (Chair): We always do.

N. Letnick: Thank you very much for your presentation.

Two questions. One has to do with the Site C dam. Have you and your municipal leaders looked at other jurisdictions to see what has happened elsewhere, including around here, with these kinds of construction projects and what we can do in partnership to try to mitigate those impacts that you're talking about and take advantage of them?

The second one. You talk about being on a level playing field with Alberta. The elephant in our room actually is HST. Have you found that the move to the harmonized sales tax has helped you provide that level playing field because now the taxes that your businesses pay they can get back in input tax credits?

A. Tylosky: Well, I think the HST…. There are certainly some definite advantages. A lot of the confusion and the frustration that we hear from our members is simply related to education. People don't understand it.

Another issue that we run into is that when you're looking at a bid from a British Columbia company and it's $10,000 plus HST, and you're looking at a bid from an Alberta company and it's $10,000 plus only GST, the guy in the field making the purchasing decision may just go to the Alberta bid because it's a lower total value, without understanding the full way the HST works.

That's probably the biggest issue we hear from members. There are definite benefits to the HST. Personally, I understand those, and I think the B.C. chamber certainly understands them. The chamber does not have an official position for or against the HST, but there are benefits.

I think there are some disadvantages as well. But a lot of what we're hearing comes straight down to education. Not only in British Columbia either. Some of it comes from Alberta. There may be an opportunity to work with Alberta somehow on educating them, on how they deal with the HST doing work in British Columbia.

N. Letnick: And the second question?

A. Tylosky: The Site C dam. Well, I think the book on how not to build the dam was written when they built the W.A.C. Bennett dam in the Peace River Canyon. That's a story of basically how not to build a dam. I think we have the confidence that the government would do a much better job this time around.

But we still hear a number of concerns related to some big questions about the dam that haven't yet been answered, and those we would like to see answered. There have been some seminars in town talking about, I believe it was, one of the dams down south. The former mayor came up and gave a presentation. So we've done some….

We're certainly aware of it. But again, there are just so many questions that are left unanswered at this point. Again, local governments generally don't have a position on the dam. We don't have a position on the dam as the chamber of commerce because we don't yet…. We haven't brought that to the table yet because we don't have all the information. So that's the biggest issue for us at this point.

M. Mungall: Thanks very much for your presentation. It certainly brought up, actually, a lot of questions, but I
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know that the Chair will cut me off if I keep asking all of them.

J. Les (Chair): I've never done that yet.

M. Mungall: I'll just go with one question. You mentioned that there are further opportunities for clean energy technology and science in northeastern B.C., so let's put Site C aside.

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I'm guessing that there are other opportunities than that, as well, for clean energy, meaning non-carbon-based energy. I'm wondering if you could highlight that.

A. Tylosky: More on the South Peace there are a lot of wind energy programs being developed — a wind farm on Bear Mountain, another one under construction near Chetwynd. That's one area.

If we're looking at clean technology, a lot of the innovation can come just from improvements on how we're currently doing things — reducing carbon emissions through natural gas and through oil and gas development. There are some stories of innovations that have been built on ways that take a process that's been done in the oil patch for however long and then somebody's found a better way of doing it — such as to do with reducing flaring. There are a number of them.

I'm not up on all the specifics, but I know there are a number of innovations that have come out of this area that help fuel — pun intended or not — clean use of energy and clean use of technology in the area.

M. Mungall: Just a quick one on top of that. What about solar power in this area? I'm just wondering, because I come from an area that's cloudy all the time.

A. Tylosky: You know what? We have ton of sunshine here. I don't know the stats off the top of my head, but I know that we certainly have a lot more sunshine than Vancouver or a lot of parts of the Lower Mainland.

Solar is potentially…. I don't know if it has really been explored here, but it's certainly a possibility. I think the issue would arise in the winter. We have very short days because we're north. In the summer we have long days. There is lots of sunshine. In the winter, even, you come up here, and it's sunny for two or three hours. It's very nice.

N. Weswick: I've heard that we're No. 2 in the province for days of sunshine, so it's definitely an option.

D. McRae: Thank you very much for your presentation.

You alluded to it earlier, with the carbon tax on gas — going cross-border. Two questions, I suppose, from it. I'm not familiar with the region, too, like I mentioned with Brent. How do gas prices compare — a very simple measure in lots of different communities — say from Fort St. John to just across the border? Do you see a lot of consumers making the trek to Alberta for shopping? How does that affect the chamber of commerce?

N. Weswick: Absolutely. I mean, the gas prices are consistently lower in Alberta, obviously, for consumer goods. Even though I know that both Andrew and myself will always register and pay the provincial portion of the HST, that may not be the case for everyone who goes and shops cross-border. There is a difficulty there to try and convince local people to stay in B.C. to purchase goods, especially if they're portable.

A. Tylosky: Yeah, Fort St. John is quite often one of the highest places in the country for gas prices, even without the carbon tax. That's primarily, I think, something do with the lack of competition in the area with that and the fact that we're a pretty hot economy, so people can charge market rates for it.

We are generally at least…. I was in Grande Prairie, across the border — oops, I was there; I had to go there — and gas was about, I think, 12 cents a litre cheaper in Alberta. So it's substantial.

When you're looking at buying, as a consumer, primarily, a big-ticket item — a hot tub, a TV or something like that — Grande Prairie is two hours away. You can make a weekend out of it, and the HST…. Talking to our members that are retailers, we haven't really heard of a massive impact, because a lot of those items were PST-able, but no doubt, it's something we have to be aware of and cautious of.

B. Routley: Yeah, I guess that fits with the question that I had about restaurants and new-home construction. Are you hearing anything from those sectors in regard to the HST and the impact locally?

A. Tylosky: We haven't heard anything from our members regarding impacts the HST may have had on the restaurant business. Going into restaurants, I haven't seen a big impact; I haven't heard of one.

But certainly, with new-home construction, we would share those concerns that you've heard from the rest of the province about new-home construction, because there is a fair bit of building going on up here. Some big new subdivisions are under construction, and those builders would share the same concerns as the rest of the province.

B. Routley: Is your organization okay with waiting for another year to get a provincial result on this, or would you be urging us to recommend that they move forward on this more quickly — on a vote?

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[ Page 842 ]

A. Tylosky: Our organization doesn't have an official stance on this, but I can tell you certainly personally that, yeah, we'd like to get it over with sooner than later.

J. Rustad: Thanks for the presentation. I applaud you in your comments about wanting to keep taxes low. As you know, our rates of small business taxes are going to zero, and we have the most competitive corporate taxes in the country.

In the next breath you asked for expanded services. I just wonder: how do we…? I guess I understand that as the economy expands, and there are more dollars available, there is an opportunity to be able to think about some different services. But how do we link the fact that taxes and services are connected — that you clearly can't talk about low taxes without talking about impact on services or vice versa?

For your members, how do you have that conversation? How do you try to link those two questions?

A. Tylosky: Tax low, and make it up on volume. I don't know.

A Voice: Wal-Mart of government.

A. Tylosky: Yeah. Wal-Mart of government. There you go.

I mean, we understand that's an issue, and a big one. But I think a lot of what we're asking for would fuel very quick economic activity that would then generate tax revenue.

Even when we're looking at things like making sure that the carbon tax and HST is being collected properly…. I mean, you may have to put up a little bit more in cash to enforce that and make sure that it's all being collected, but the government would ideally see direct cash as a result of that investment.

The same thing with transportation. The cost to business of a truck rolling over on the highway and the highway being shut down for eight hours because there is not enough room to get around the incident has a massive impact on the profitability of companies and therefore a massive effect on how much taxes we pay.

Yeah, I think if you tax low and make it up on volume, that might be your key.

N. Weswick: Kidding aside, I think that we wanted to show you some stats in terms of the revenue generated in this area to show you that we just want to see some of that money reinvested in this area to provide infrastructure to keep that economy strong as well.

A. Tylosky: Keep those dollars flowing — $4 billion, or whatever it was, to the provincial government. We're happy to spend it.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. I think you're bang on around the transportation and communication, especially in rural areas like I live in and you guys are living in here in the northeast — the reinvestment in those infrastructures that is necessary to fuel the rest of the province.

The question that I had was around the Site C dam points. Can you elaborate a bit on the impact the dam would have — from what I heard in your presentation, a negative impact — on the community post-construction, just to keep that in mind? Is that from a social point of view, or what were you getting at there — post-construction?

A. Tylosky: There are a lot of questions about the dam that we don't have answers to yet and that haven't been answered through the process that B.C. Hydro is engaged in. I mean, a lot of people will say that there are obvious social impacts during the construction. We're looking at post-construction. We've heard 35,000 jobs created. That's the figure, I believe, that the government is using in promoting this, but the actual dam may only employ ten people. Growing a community like Fort St. John by a third, just to build a dam over ten years, and then having all those people leave when the dam is done — what impact would that have on businesses?

I understand the city of Fort St. John is engaging in a study to kind of figure some of those questions out, but I think it is something that the government needs to be very aware of. You know, will we have a road across the dam that would connect us to Chetwynd? Would the lake that the dam would create be usable for recreation purposes? We don't know that, because we don't know if the banks would slough in — those answers. So to say that there would be a business advantage of having a lake just outside of town…. We can't say that that's a factor, because we haven't heard from the government if indeed that lake would even be useable.

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It creates a certain amount…. There's some uncertainty there. If B.C. Hydro and the government were to come up with those questions, we may be able to take a position more formally on the dam and also start planning either-or — I mean, if it goes ahead or if it doesn't.

J. Les (Chair): I think everybody else has asked a question, so I have a final question. As you should, representing business, you commented favourably on low business taxes. But all of your businesses have employees who, I'm sure, would enjoy low taxes as well, if they were available. So looking at it from an employee perspective, would the same axiom hold? As you said — and I think I'm quoting you correctly: "Lower taxes, higher volume."

A. Tylosky: Sure. Absolutely. Lower personal taxes means more money in people's pockets to spend, so busi-
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ness is definitely in favour of that as well. But again, we know we're kind of asking the impossible by saying to keep it low for everybody. It's a gentle process that you guys have to find.

J. Les (Chair): Keep in mind that we've had major tax reductions in this province before, seven or eight years ago, and the only thing that happened is that revenues to government shot up.

All right. Thank you very much for coming.

I'm now going to welcome Heather Wilson, who's from the B.C. Seniors Games Society, zone 12. She's here a bit earlier than she was originally scheduled. She's from an hour and a half away from here and has just driven the speed limit all the way here to be here and make a presentation.

Good afternoon to you, Heather.

H. Wilson: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. With your permission, I'll read my presentation, and I did make copies for you all. This presentation's made on behalf of zone 12 of the B.C. Seniors Games Society. For anyone unfamiliar with the organization, I thought that a little background might be helpful.

The B.C. Seniors Games Society is a volunteer organization. It has one part-time administrative assistant. Its purpose is to produce an annual multisport games event for the residents of British Columbia who are over 55 and to showcase to young and old in every community that age is no deterrent to leading an active and healthy lifestyle.

The Seniors Games have been in existence for over 20 years and are held in late summer or early fall. Twelve individual zones make up the society, and their responsibility is to promote the games and to register participants within their areas. These 12 zones cover the whole of the province.

Funding for the games themselves is provided by the Healthy Living and Sport branch of the government under an annual contract of $110,000. Under this contract the host city receives $85,000 — that's the city where the games will be held in that year — and the society itself receives $25,000. B.C. Games is contracted to manage the seniors event using their rules, policies, procedures and guidelines, for which it is funded $55,000.

So as you can see, the Seniors Games Society fits into the government's mandate with seniors health and sports directorates as a preventative health program.

Each year provincial attendance at the games is between 3,500 and 4,000 people, which means they can only be hosted in larger centres, which are often in the Lower Mainland or on Vancouver Island — many miles away from the Peace River area.

Zone 12, our zone, consists of the communities of Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Hudson's Hope and Tumbler Ridge and also includes Fort Nelson. This in itself is a vast area and necessitates long drives to rotate meetings throughout the region to make sure that all communities are included in plans and preparations for the games.

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This year the zone signed up 116 members and sent just under 80 participants to the games, who competed in such sports as carpet bowling, cycling, golf, swimming and table tennis. They proudly brought home 21 medals — 11 gold, six silver and four bronze. Our oldest member is over 90 and is a golfer. For those who can't manage active physical sports anymore, there's cribbage and whist and one-act plays to keep the brain alive. Twenty-four to 28 sports are included in the games every year.

The competitors themselves are responsible for paying their own games registration fees, a sports fee if applicable, their society membership fee and their own travel to and from the games plus their accommodation en route and whilst they are there.

This year's games were held two weeks ago in the Comox Valley and Campbell River and were a great success. But in order to get there, the participants from zone 12 either had to fly, drive themselves or travel by chartered bus, which we organized at a cost of over $12,000. It was a two-day trip in both directions, and all costs were borne by the competitors, in addition to their hotel rooms on the journey and at the games. This year the cost to each participant who travelled on the bus was more than $500, and sometimes it can come close to $1,000, depending on the distance and the costs of accommodation.

The zone holds fundraising raffles to help offset these costs to individual competitors, and this year we're also participating in the Rotary community megalottery. We also keep a small percentage of the annual membership fee. This is our total income, apart from the small grant from the regional district for local travel. We have approached some corporate sponsors in the area requesting some financial assistance, but to date we've been denied because we didn't meet their specific criteria.

Up until this year we've been able to apply for a community gaming grant through the gaming policy and enforcement branch. This year we received $12,000 of grant funding, which, together with the proceeds from our raffles, enabled us to help the participants offset their costs.

Bearing in mind that most seniors are on fixed incomes, the burden of these costs is often a serious deterrent to them attending the games, which could well affect the overall objective of encouraging seniors to become involved in healthy pastimes. Due to our northerly position within the province, zone 12 has the highest per-capita expense of all zones that travel to the games, and it says a great deal for the enthusiasm of the membership that they undertake this long and costly journey.

In March of this year community gaming grant funding criteria were changed. Adult sports groups are now
[ Page 844 ]
no longer eligible to apply for funding. With this change, seniors sports groups became ineligible also, the result being that our zone cannot now apply for a grant for 2011 and subsequent years.

Youth sports groups are still eligible as well as sports organizations serving people with disabilities, with which we totally agree, but it seems illogical to us to exclude the older population from the criteria when one takes into account the health care costs which could in all probability be added to the system if seniors live sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles. It's our serious concern that without the funding assistance we've been able to provide in the past, many of our seniors simply will not be able to afford to attend the games.

Participation in the games provides seniors with an ongoing incentive to keep fit and active in mind and in body throughout the year. Playoffs are held during the preceding months, and the competition is fierce. The possibility of competing at a provincial level is a great incentive, with its promise of a trip out of the area to meet and compete against seniors from other regions. New friends are made, and old friendships are renewed. It enhances their lives, and for many, I believe, it is the highlight of their year.

It's well proven that investing in prevention leads to better health. A report released just last week by Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall states: "A strengthened provincial strategy and investment in prevention can improve the health of British Columbians and potentially avoid up to $2 billion in yearly health care costs."

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The report goes on to state that "focused prevention activities, together with a provincial, population-based healthy living strategy, could reduce the burden of disease on families and communities; delay the need for health care services; reduce the impact of disease, disability and premature death on the economy."

We believe that since the games began over 20 years ago, this one annual event has encouraged a huge number of seniors to work at keeping themselves fit and healthy. We sincerely hope that the games will continue for many years to come, to allow existing and future seniors to achieve their full potential.

Unfortunately, however, without the gaming grant funding, it is possible that many seniors from rural and remote communities will be denied the opportunity to attend. These are often the very people at risk of sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles. Winter in the north is long and cold, and many of the older population choose to remain secluded in their homes rather than go out and socialize with others in senior citizens centres or the many excellent sports facilities available to us. They need incentive to encourage them to become socially and physically active. We believe that the games offer this incentive, so long as it is within their financial means.

Therefore, we would urge the provincial government to reconsider and reinstate funding to seniors sports groups through the community gaming grant so that all seniors of British Columbia have the opportunity to participate in the games — in their games — and enjoy the health benefits that are associated with it.

The government recognizes these potential health benefits by funding the games. Therefore, we believe it should encourage all seniors to compete in them.

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

D. McRae: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm just glad to see that 80 participants came down from the region to Comox Valley. We were very proud to host the games. I agree. I think they were a great success, and I hope everybody had a good time in Comox Valley and Campbell River.

H. Wilson: That's what I hear.

D. McRae: One question I had is…. I know of several people who participate in the games. When you deal with people over 55, you get that whole spectrum of income. You get people who are very well off and, obviously, some who struggle. Would it be something that you'd be open to — the idea of basically having a means test to help subsidize those who need it? Those who are of means — allow them to pay their own freight? Or is it just a broad spectrum that you'd like to go with?

H. Wilson: How one would do a means test, I don't know. That would be very difficult. It certainly would be difficult at the local level. Possibly, if funding is restricted, if more funding could be given to the rural areas that have the furthest to travel, that would be a definite advantage.

We do find that when we give the cheques out to the people, those that really don't think they need it will give the cheques back. Then we use that as a donation for the others.

M. Mungall: Thanks very much, Heather, for your presentation. While I'm merely a senior athlete in training and not able to participate in the games, I do believe that they'll be in my area, the Nelson-Trail-Castlegar area, for the next round. So just let me extend an invitation to anybody who'd like a tour of Nelson. I'd be happy to give them one.

That brings us to the point that you're making — the difficulty of travel for rural people, particularly from the north. My question is: is there anybody who is saying that if they don't get support, they just will not be able to participate? You're raising the concern that that might happen. Is there anybody who's saying right now that it will — that that is their experience?
[ Page 845 ]

H. Wilson: We haven't heard that yet, but when we do have our open meetings at the beginning of the year and we're saying, "This is what it's going to cost you to go this year," there are people who say: "Well, I don't think I can manage it this year." I've seen a few people not go just simply because they couldn't afford it.

J. Thornthwaite: Thanks a lot for your presentation. As a dietitian in my other life, I know very well the benefits of prevention.

[1550]

My question is about your comment about corporate sponsors. We just had a presentation from the chamber of commerce earlier, and we do know that a lot of the revenue that our province gets is from this region. I'm just wondering, if you are requesting financial assistance, why and on what criteria they would be denying you for all of the positive reasons that you offer to the community.

H. Wilson: They seem to be very specific. We just fell between the…. We were in the gap. We just received letters. We wrote letters. We received letters back saying, "Sorry, you don't meet our criteria," from two or three companies.

J. Thornthwaite: So you don't really know what their criteria are.

H. Wilson: No, we don't. We haven't actually followed up. It has worked so well for us, being able to secure this $12,000 that we knew we had a year before. It wasn't going to go up or down or be taken away at the last minute. That's why we preferred…. Also, we feel that as the government promotes the games and puts a lot of money into the games, there should be some assistance given to those who can't afford to travel.

B. Routley: You make a compelling argument, certainly. Starting March of this year there was a change in rules for the funding. I was wondering about what your group had as far as an opinion of the kinds of dollars that would be spent in areas, for example, like Comox.

When you have that many seniors — 3,500 to 4,000 — in an area for an event, I would imagine that that would also…. There would be not only some wealth creation in that community but also a lot of tax dollars expended that could help offset the cost, certainly, to the province.

Do you have any idea what the total cost to the province has been for the Seniors Games?

H. Wilson: I don't have anything else other than the figures that I've given you. There has been some discussion that the host community, perhaps, makes lots of money itself. Should that amount, therefore, go to the host society? That's an internal society matter that has been discussed. It's still the way it is at the moment.

I can tell you that it is a pretty rousing, exciting town when you get all those seniors coming into the community. It really rocks. The smell of Tiger Balm is everywhere. It's great.

J. Les (Chair): All right, Heather. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon, and drive safely.

I don't believe we have the board of education here yet, but we have someone who has requested to do an impromptu presentation. That's Ken Forest.

K. Forest: Thank you very much. First of all, thank you for attending to this. It's really nice to see this actually occurring.

I was going to come and listen today. My daughter came to me a day and a half ago, and she said: "This is happening, I have to work, and I would like you to come and just sit and listen."

As I was listening, I thought: "Well, maybe I should say something too." So I've been listening to a lot of things here, and I'll just give you a little bit of background.

First of all, my name is Ken Forest. You've seen that. I'm a landowner out between here and Hudson's Hope. I do belong to an organization, but I am not representing that organization. They don't know I'm here. But I think to be fair and upfront, I'll tell you who they are. They're the Peace Valley Environment Association, and they're looking at the impact of Site C. But I am not representing them, because they don't know that I'm here. If you want to ask me some questions about that, feel free afterwards.

My background. I came here in 1974 — actually, in 1967. Now I'm dating myself. I went up to the St. Elias. I was doing a lot of mountain climbing. I landed in Fort St. John, and I said: "This is where I want to live." When I met my wife in 1972, we took a tour through here. We had job offers in Calgary and Vancouver. We decided to come here.

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The thing that brought us here was the Peace River, the Peace River country and the opportunities that are here. Since that time I've managed to pick up a number of degrees in biology, chemistry and teaching. I worked as a principal in a school until I retired a couple of years ago, so I have a vested interest in this area. We moved out onto a piece of land. I hand-built a log house with a chainsaw, and we're still in it. So I really like this place.

People say: "And when are you leaving? When are you going to go down south? When are you going to go to the Okanagan or Vancouver Island or the Lower Mainland?"

I'm not going. I like it here. But I also watch what happens. I'm kind of a steward for this place. That's why I belong to the Peace Valley Environment Association.

I hear a lot of people asking you for things. I don't envy your position. I know that you have limited re-
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sources, so I'm not going to ask you for something. I'm not going to put my hand out for some dollars from you right now and try to see if you can juggle your dollars a little bit.

In the leadership position that you're in — and you carry a lot of power in the province — what I would like to do is put some seeds of thought into you when you're making decisions. When you sit down, maybe you'll give some thought to this.

I can't focus on everything, and there are a lot of things I'd like to talk about. I'm going to pick one, and that is agriculture. Then I'm going to pick another one, and that's energy.

For agriculture, right now British Columbia is about 46 percent to 48 percent self-sufficient. That means more than half of everything we consume here in terms of agricultural produce comes from somewhere else. If you walk over there and pick up a piece of fruit off of that table behind you, the chances are that it travelled 1,000 to 1,500 to 2,000 kilometres to get here. More than half of our food does exactly that — when you go to any store, any time, to pick that up.

What does that say about our province when we're running 46 to 48 percent self-sufficient in our own food, and we're not paying too much attention to it? Energy right now seems to be taking precedence over our ability to feed ourselves. I think that's a concern.

The next 20 to 30 to 40 years. Maybe we'll all be in the grave by then, but our children won't and our grandchildren won't. They're going to be here to inherit. What are they going to get? What are we going to leave them? I'm a little bit concerned about that, because my daughter said: "Would you go and talk? Would you talk to these people about this?"

What about climate change? We watched what happened in China. We watched what happened in Pakistan this year. How about in British Columbia with fire? How about in the North Peace? For 20 years I've had a spring. This year I lost it.

How about this? Last year I planted tomatoes outside without a greenhouse. They came up, and I got great tomatoes without a greenhouse in the North Peace. But they went to seed on their own, and the seeds grew up in my garden wild this year. The plants came up. I got tomatoes, and I didn't plant them — in the North Peace. I live on the banks of the Peace.

How about my neighbour Ken Boon at the bottom of the hill, who grew cantaloupes and watermelons this year? How about the fact that yesterday I was eating grapes that I grew? Climate change is something that we need to pay attention to.

How about oil? Well, the forecast — if you listen to Jeff Rubin, senior economist for CIBC World Markets — is saying that we're going to hit peak oil, if we haven't hit it already. At some point in time trucking stuff from California or bringing kiwi fruit from New Zealand is going to get pretty expensive.

We're going to change. We won't have a choice. We're going to change. Maybe we should plan on some of that change.

How about the Peace River Valley, 5,000 acres of class 1 and 2 soil? Eighteen percent of everything in British Columbia sits in that valley, for growing.

What is class 1 and 2 soil? You could expand that if you talked about what could be irrigated. How about orchards down there during climate change? How about growing enough food to keep this province self-sufficient, at least in the north? How about flooding the entire thing, which makes it gone forever? Can you replace soil? You can't. It's 200, 300, 400 years to replace soil. We have a few decades.

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We're going to need that valley to help feed ourselves, but then do we trade it off for energy? Do we say, "No Site C" — so we're going to starve for energy in order to get food? Why does it have to be like that? Why can't we think outside of hydroelectric and flooding valleys and destroying river valleys? I don't know why.

The second thing that I want to talk about is energy. I appreciate that the province needs an energy supply to be self-sufficient. I applaud that. I think that's good. The wind turbines here that I'm seeing developed in the Peace River country — I'm really happy to see them. I would like to put one on my place. I can't afford it right now. There are no subsidies like there are in Saskatchewan and Ontario. There are no benefits. There are no tax breaks. If I put a windmill on my own place so that I can buy an electric car and plug it in, I have to foot that bill myself out of my pocket.

There's no background to helping people that want to become more self-sufficient themselves. But there is another energy source. I know I've asked this over and over, and I can't get an answer. Where can we get more energy? Nobody wants to talk about this one. Let's take a look at geothermal. Nobody discusses that. I hear about wind. I hear about tidal. I hear about solar. I hear about biofuels. But I don't hear about geothermal.

How about in B.C., where there are 16 viable spots in this province along the rim of fire — the only province in Canada that has that, where there are hot spots — six of them viable. Meager Creek is running right now, and it could expand.

J. Les (Chair): Just maybe finish your next couple of sentences, and then I've got some questions. I've already given you about twice as much time as we normally give to open-mike participants.

K. Forest: Oh, have you? I'm sorry.

J. Les (Chair): No, don't be sorry.

K. Forest: Well, okay. Let me just finish it off with this thought.
[ Page 847 ]

Here's a completely diverse thought. We had a Gulf oil spill and a big fire, and a lot of carbon dioxide went in the air. So let's take a look at putting oil onto supertankers at Kitimat. Where are we going to get it? How about across an Enbridge pipeline? What's that going to do? Suck oil from the tar sands. That increases their productivity by a third — millions of barrels of oil a day going down towards the coast for B.C. in a seismically active area.

Well, the tar sands need natural gas. Where are they going to get it? How about the Horn River in northeast B.C., one of the largest gas fields in British Columbia? Fine. That's great. Where are they going to get their energy to process and truck that gas to the tar sands? How about let's dam the Peace? And let's take the energy from the Peace River Site C dam and truck 500 of 900 kilowatts up to the Horn River so that the tar sands can get their energy to truck their fuel across to Kitimat for burning in Asia. Or how about some geothermal? I don't have any stocks in geothermal.

I'm finished. Sorry.

J. Les (Chair): That's good. I actually have three quick questions for you, starting with John.

K. Forest: And I'm not a database, so I don't have a lot of numbers.

J. Les (Chair): That's all right.

J. Rustad: Thanks for taking the time to come today. I think, actually, your numbers on self-sufficiency are probably a little high. I think actually we produce less than that for food for the province.

I have one question for you, and that is: what rate would you be willing to pay on your electricity?

K. Forest: I'd double it.

J. Rustad: I understand that. But I mean for the general population, and that includes our industry, that includes agriculture, that includes everything else in the province that has to be competitive. When you look at things like dams and our heritage assets, wind power is four times more expensive, geothermal is six to eight times more expensive, etc.

I don't disagree that we need to be looking at those, but the question is: how do we support a healthy economy? How do we support seniors in homes and everybody else that needs power, that needs electricity, and meet all those demands at the same time? How do we balance that?

K. Forest: You know, energy in our world, especially in this part of the world, is some of the cheapest stuff we have. What we're paying for oil and what it really costs are two different things. What we're paying in British Columbia for electricity — and I know British Columbia likes the idea of some of the lowest rates anywhere in Canada if not the world…. Maybe we should be paying for what it costs.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. It linked together lots of different issues, which I always enjoy.

[1605]

On your last topic, I'm sure you're aware the Union of B.C. Municipalities just last week passed several resolutions, one calling for a legislative ban on supertanker oil traffic on the north coast and the other rejecting transportation of tar sands oil through a pipeline across northern B.C. This was all communities in the province.

But my question is on alternatives. I don't know if you have any knowledge in this regard, but maybe you could lend it to us if you do. The feed-in tariffs for solar and wind power energy — these are tariffs that incent this kind of development. They're available in Ontario and in other countries, but they weren't part of the Clean Energy Act that was brought in recently by this government.

I'm wondering if you have a view on how those wind and solar projects can be incented to come on stream faster and perhaps alleviate the need for other energy sources.

K. Forest: I would like to think that there would be an incentive for people to get off fossil fuel and to even get off hydroelectricity. I'd like to see diversification of electricity across the province so that there's a lot of different kinds of electricity being produced from different methods in different locations, so that 80 percent of all of the electricity heading for the Lower Mainland doesn't come from here after Site C is built. I wouldn't want to see us captive to that.

If we wanted to have people having geothermal running their own house or a windmill in their backyard, if they have a place to put it, or solar panels on their house, then there should be some kind of financial incentive to get them moving on that.

There have been small financial incentives across the federal and even B.C. government to get people to put insulation in, put triple-pane windows in their house to seal up hot air leaks and so on, but I haven't seen anything around energy. I think there should be something like that.

Could we see some direction in that? Should there be something, some direction in that? Yes, I think so.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm well aware of what you're trying to get at as far as we don't pay the true cost of energy, nor do we pay the true cost of food either.
[ Page 848 ]

My question, of course, is: all of your ideas are good — and I've also read Jeff Rubin — but what do you suggest we do to reduce the demand for oil? Because that's what we're doing, fulfilling a demand.

K. Forest: We can't get off oil right away. We will never get off oil. Oil goes into a tremendous number of things other than just burning. It goes into pharmaceuticals and plastics and a ton of other things. We will never get off oil, and neither do I think we need to.

But I think we need to take a look at a diversification of energy sources and away from hydroelectric, in B.C. in particular, and from fossil fuels, because we're going to have to. The planet will become uninhabitable if the temperature hits greater than two or three degrees Celsius higher than it is right now.

You know, I just went up to the Yukon this summer, and I canoed for 2½ weeks down the Wind River and the Peel River. There's nothing in there, but they want to put uranium mines on that river, and they want the energy. The Yukon government this year said no. I can't believe they said no. They actually said no.

They said: "This area is more important the way it is right now. It's a higher value than sucking that place dry, putting roads and mines and everything else across that particular area." There are other areas they're going after.

I'm not sure if I answered your question.

J. Les (Chair): Well, if you didn't…. I can think of a few questions I'd like to ask you, but then we'd likely get into a debate, which we'll have to do one evening — you know, next door or something.

Thank you, Ken, for coming this afternoon. You've certainly given us a lot to think about.

K. Forest: Can I just say one thing?

J. Les (Chair): Sure.

K. Forest: Would you think about this? Because I didn't have a handout. It's not in front of you when you leave, so….

A Voice: It's all stored in Hansard.

K. Forest: Oh, great. I want you to think about it when you're looking into your kids' eyes, or your grandkids'. That's when I want you to think about it.

J. Les (Chair): I have quite a few of those.

The next presentation and, I believe, our last presentation is from the board of education, school district 60. We have Jaret Thompson and Doug Boyd here. Good afternoon.

[1610]

J. Thompson: Good afternoon. Thank you for giving us the chance to speak here and everything. I'm Jaret Thompson, a trustee of the school district here in Fort St. John, school district 60, and Doug Boyd is secretary-treasurer of the school district.

I'll just get right into it. We have appreciated the one-year extension to support recruitment and retention issues with local market adjustments. As you are aware, these adjustments will come to term in June 2011, putting us back in a position where we are unable to participate in a competitive market for skilled labour recently advertised by the city of Fort St. John. It would put our tradesperson at approximately $7.60 lower per hour. Salary differences with the local industry are generally even greater.

As in previous presentations we'd 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.

D. Boyd: During the last two submissions we've made to this group, we've raised concerns that funding for transportation services was still based upon the cost of providing that service from ten years ago. I think this is probably a group that is very familiar with that, and it has been under review.

We are now into another year, and no changes have occurred. Our vast geographical areas require 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. Fuel increases alone over the past ten years have been substantial. We respectfully request immediate attention to this concern.

Ministry acceptance of our alternative proposal to address full-day kindergarten through district reconfiguration and a partnership with the city of Fort St. John to utilize available space in the Enerplex addressed the immediate pressure facing our schools. We are very pleased with that acceptance — in fact, extremely proud of the fact that the city felt the need to join us in a partnership agreement of this nature which is, I think, very unique.

Both ministry and local projections indicate a continued increase in the student population. We are currently operating with 18 portables in place and with the projected growth would ask that the ministry review our capital plan submission in order to be shelf-ready.

Additionally, as you've heard from the previous speaker, if Site C does occur, because it is being contemplated right now, consideration must be given to the impact and our district's ability to provide educational services to newly arriving students. That is going to happen very quickly. With the current process of actually making decisions on the capital planning, it's many years to get those funds in place. We're asking to be at least shelf-
[ Page 849 ]
ready if, in fact, that does occur. That would at least alleviate some of the concerns.

B.C. Hydro has estimated about 350 additional students to what we are already projecting, which is about a 1,000-student increase by the year 2017. So we're into that 1,300 student population.

I'm not sure if you want us to answer questions or that as we through or…. What's your preference?

J. Les (Chair): No, we'll let you finish your presentation first.

D. Boyd: Okay.

We are currently being asked to be innovative and creative in meeting the needs of the 21st-century learner. We applaud these initiatives and are extremely excited to place a great deal of energy into meeting these expectations.

However, at the same time we are being told to reduce administrative costs. Without appropriate funding and realistic administrative expectations, how will these valuable directions be addressed?

I think we are, in fact, one of the leaders in the province in heading towards 21st-century learning, and we have to understand that we're already ten years into this century. We don't have a lot more time to play. It took us basically the 20th century to perfect a 19th-century learning system, which we're still in. We need to address it, and funding needs to be available to do that.

Once you restrict administrative costs, who is going to be able to be the ones that actually lead us through that process?

Ministry funding allocations have not kept pace with provincially negotiated salary increases or increased costs of benefits such as CPP, EI, WCB, extended health, MSP and pension. This underfunding is having a major impact on our ability to deliver educational programs that meet the diverse needs of our students.

[1615]

If you understand part of the system in this area, our teachers were given a $2,200 recruitment, retention type of bonus. That occurred for two years. Now that is built into the block funding, which is averaged over the province. Even though we're one of the few that have to pay for it, we're actually only getting a portion of the dollar amount to accommodate it. That is obviously a concern for us.

Our district is currently allocating approximately 99 percent more than what the ministry provides to support students with special needs. We feel that this is an extremely valuable expenditure in regards to meeting the needs of individual students who are, in fact, at risk. This not only affects our ability to address specific needs of individual students but makes it increasingly difficult to balance our budget, as you can well imagine.

I think it was a year ago that we were at about 109 percent, just so that you know that we're still hovering around that. It doesn't seem to change very much, and it depends on the needs of those students and our ability to address them.

New requirements imposed by the province to use mandated programs to calculate and report carbon emissions as well as to purchase carbon offsets have added to our operating costs. These underfunded requirements have obvious effects on our operating budget and, in addition, make it difficult to meet administrative cost reductions.

We had a program, for example, that addressed everything — this SmartTool that was mandated, required. We had the ability to do it already, yet we now are forced into an agreement where we have to have that specific tool to address the needs that we were already addressing. Administratively, why are we doing that? In fact, for this past year we basically used our tool and then transported it or integrated it into the other. It's a duplication of services that was unnecessary.

Early intervention for reading. Money should be allocated to early intervention for reading. We learn to read until grade 3, and then we have to read to learn. Across the province there is not enough allocated towards early literacy. The Canadian Council on Learning has estimated that literacy across Canada will remain virtually unchanged to 2031 with no signs of improvement, and 40 percent of Canadians and 35 percent of British Columbians are not at the literacy level required to function in everyday society.

Literacy is more than reading, writing and math. It is about how well one can read, comprehend and critically think. These skills are necessary for success in schools, graduating high school — not just walking the stage — and success in the workplace.

Higher levels of literacy lead to civic engagement, better health resources, less workplace accidents, higher wages, job security, etc. And it begins with being able to read. We have children graduating and/or leaving high school locally and provincially without adequate reading and comprehension skills.

We thank the committee for its attention to our submission and encourage the government to provide for the flexibility of the school boards to address student needs based on their local knowledge. That is our presentation.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you. First question to Norm.

N. Letnick: Thank you very much for your presentation and educating the young people of our province. It's much appreciated.

Have you found, in your experiences, any non-financial incentives that work to produce the best outcomes in our students, whether it's through excellence in teaching or some other method? If you could talk about those.

D. Boyd: Most definitely. One of the things that is not a cost item is obviously the flexibility to do what we really need to do locally, rather than having to go through….
[ Page 850 ]

If you look at the Manual of School Law or the regulations and procedures that are associated with it, the paperwork that is necessary to follow, it's a nightmare in getting anything accomplished oftentimes. By relieving us of that and having the ability to do local decisions to address these specific needs, still keeping in mind that there is a certain mandate that we have to follow, that would be very helpful.

We've always asked…. Flexibility is probably more important than additional money in many ways, because then we have the ability to address some of the specific individual student needs as well as more global.

N. Letnick: Can I ask a brief follow-up? If you do have a list — you don't have to give it today but by October 15 — of some of those items that you're talking about specifically, in addition to the generality you just gave, I really think the committee would appreciate getting that from you.

D. Boyd: Well, if I can, I can share one situation with you because I've already mentioned it in the thing, and that was the Enerplex. The Enerplex is the joint partnership where we're putting a school for about 250 students in this building that was constructed by the city here, which has two ice arenas, a speedskating oval and a running track. It's a beautiful facility, and it was underutilized in some of the space. It took us basically three years to get some recognition that that was an innovative project that would meet the learning outcomes.

[1620]

That took time, effort and money to travel down to convince people to make a decision on it. It was well accepted locally and quite reasonable in the approach, and it was dealing with 21st Century Learning. We're really proud that we've got it at this point, but we had to jump through a whole bunch of templates to get that, and that was really time-consuming. In the end, we didn't get it because of our innovation. We got that project approved because it was an alternative to full-day K. To us, it was basically making us jump through hoops rather than really doing it for a realistic, rational reason that we had.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you for your presentation. As a former trustee, a parent as well, and now an MLA, one of the things that always comes up, with regard to your comment, is about how well one can read, comprehend and critically think.

In a follow-up to my colleague's question, what suggestions can you give us, from your experience on the school board, to help our recommendations to help the Ministry of Education have quality teachers and maintain quality teachers — the ones that have got the energy, the gumption and the youngness, etc., to really do what you're asking? What can we do as the Ministry of Education to try to encourage that excellence in teaching?

D. Boyd: That's a very heavy discussion. I think we could spend a lot of time on it. Just generically, what we're looking at is…. We do a lot of professional development in our community to bring people up to that level, because I don't think the universities have the opportunity to do that. Oftentimes when we get new people, we say: "Look, what you've learned is extremely good background. What we're going to do is put you in a classroom where it becomes real." We're trying to make that connection for people and giving them a real, formal training in how reading affects it.

Oftentimes we look at specialists in some of the areas, but if those specialists don't know how to take it and actually instruct on the utilization of the language skills, then it's not going to help. You know, simple things that we try to train teachers in the field on….

Basically, how do you take a textbook or a book of knowledge of some sort and hand it to a child and then just ask them to regurgitate stuff? Why isn't it that we're looking at placing in their hands the ability to dissect that and say: "Here's the vocabulary that you're going to experience. Go through that vocabulary, learn it, and then read the topic"? You then read it so that you have an understanding and a comprehension of what you're actually learning. Those are all incorporated into every subject. Far too often we think of reading as a subject, rather than as embedded in all learning.

I don't know if I'm answering your question, but those are the types of things that we really need to start to emphasize. It starts with the training program itself.

J. Les (Chair): It sounded like a bit of an indictment of the teacher-training system.

D. Boyd: Not really.

B. Routley: Two areas. There are the wages that you talked about as being $7.60 lower for tradesmen. What particular trades are you talking about — electricians, carpenters, plumbers, or what else?

D. Boyd: All of our tradespeople get basically a standard rate. There's not a whole lot of differentiation between the two of them. This particular one that I cited was an electrician. There are two levels of electricians in the city, and this was the lower one that we chose, as far as the cost factor. The other one is an even greater difference. We were very concerned about this, because we continually have lost people.

Again, a lot of it is because of the type of industry that's generated around here, to go into the oil patch and so on. We just can't compete, so we have to compete on the basis of quality of life, of what we're trying to give
[ Page 851 ]
people and so on. But there comes a point where quality of life and dollars start to connect. I think that's what we're facing.

It's a known fact. We deal with the BCPSEA, which is the B.C. employers association, and they understand our issue but say they can’t do anything about it because they're restricted as to what the finances will allow for any adjustments to that. It really dramatically affects their ability. We have run this district oftentimes with no electrician or no plumber or no carpenter.

Part of that is that when we lose them we have a long time to replace them. But it costs us five times as much to get a contractor to come in to do that work. It doesn't make sense because, in essence, it's costing us more at the end than it would be to pay them a higher salary on a regular basis and have good, well-trained people.

[1625]

We do have good employees, but we have to understand why they do leave us. That is one of the biggest reasons. Financially, it's not feasible for them.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your articulate and concise presentation, even if it was nine-point font or whatever.

My question is around the recruitment and retention of the overall staff, and it links to an earlier presentation. It links to the presentation by the Fort St. John Community Arts Council around creating a quality of life and an attractive place for people to live. I don't know if you've encountered that as well and the links between trying to recruit staff, whether it's in classrooms or otherwise, and the links to the Fort St. John community as a whole being an attractive place that is dependent on community grants to funding organizations and how that can reduce costs, perhaps, on the bonus part and things like that.

D. Boyd: One of the issues that we're facing right now is that…. We've used the expression: "When you're named after a fort, sometimes you have to try harder." And it's not opposed to the name of the city. But it's basically when you go into many areas…. I was a principal of a high school here for 12 years. I recruited every year, and we went right across Canada to recruit the best possible people that we could get. We had a lot of people in certain areas, but our specialty areas were very restricted. Right now we are looking for a metals teacher for the end of this month, and we have not got one application. So it's very difficult when you are competing.

There's a graduating group that is going to be happening in November here from one of the universities, and we can't get anyone to come here, because they don't have the knowledge that the people that are here do have about living here. It's an absolutely wonderful place. I came here in 1974 and thought I'd stay two years, and I'm still here. So it gives you an idea of what can happen.

I think it's the old adage that once you should drink the water of the Peace, you'll know you've been born again and have come to heaven.

J. Les (Chair): Now you're waxing lyrical.

D. Boyd: Yeah. Again, part of the issue for us is that we're facing the retention and recruitment. When full-day K came, there was talk in the southern district that they have to have a specialty kindergarten. We just have to have somebody that is willing to take that on and learn by doing pro-D.

We spend an incredible amount of dollars on professional development. You can't find better pro-D anywhere in this province. I guarantee you that. However, we are the training grounds for everyone else. In fact, one of the people at a meeting that our superintendent was at stood up and said: "Hey, we don't have to worry about a lot of pro-D because we just rape and pillage Peace River North." And it's true. We lose our people. But we've accepted that.

What we've said is: "Okay. Let us be the best farm team that we can be, if we're going to be the training ground for the southern districts or for other districts." Let us have the dollars that we'll put into that, because we have now developed the expertise over the years, and we are doing a wonderful job of it. But it's repeated, and it's costly. When you do that, it's not just once that you're training an individual. You're training people every second year or sometimes every year in similar job positions. So I think that has to be an expectation. There is built into the system right now an inequity as to the ability to recruit and retain.

We're in partnership with a group called Northern Opportunities. It's the three school districts regionally. It's Northern Lights College, BCIT and the industry, involving Spectra Energy, EnCana and a few others that have come, and a First Nations group as well. Through this consortium we've been able to develop a delivery system. Part of their thing is basically putting dollars into training individuals so that we can in fact have a better quality of life.

One of the things that maybe answers your question, Doug, in regards to that is the idea that…. When we approached industry, we said: "Look, we're doing a wonderful job with trades training." At the high school where we had 900 students, we had a hundred apprentices for the last five years — a hundred apprentices on site. In addition to that, we had 75 dual-credit students and then another 150 prep students. So that was dealing with just about 30 to 40 percent of the student population. We thought: "What about the other 60 percent, say? What are we doing for them?"

[1630]

We felt that we could in this district deliver an individual learning plan for each of those students — a
[ Page 852 ]
career prep program for every single student. So that's what we've embarked on. When we approached industry and said, "Look, would you be supportive, through Northern Opportunities, on this?" they bought into it without even questioning it. The reason for it was that they, too, see the value of not only providing education to train locally, but when we're doing health sciences, it attracts the people that are trained in that area to be here to provide the services for their employees.

We're looking at health sciences. We're looking at the area of teaching, even — just looking at every single aspect.

If a student wants to go on a career pathway, we should be able to deliver that career pathway for every single student and not lump them into an area. It's a difficult plan. What we're looking at, basically, is that we can take a program and say, "What are the underlying, common themes within each of those different fields?" and taking that and developing a cohort and delivering it. Then, when they get to the college through our dual-credit program, they can then branch off into their own specialty areas, where the college can deliver it, and we can't.

So we have some really good ideas, but we need the flexibility. We need the money. We need the administration opportunities to develop those, because they just don't come off without some effort behind them.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Thanks.

D. McRae: Thank you very much for your presentation. One of the challenges I see in education…. I look at your asks on this list, and they're very fair asks. But one of the problems is that basically, when you start looking at the province as a whole, you start looking at hundreds of millions of dollars, and you're quickly into billions — if you could spend money without worry.

I guess maybe a question that's more pertinent to your chair or maybe the elected officials is: if we're looking at these kinds of dollars, where do you propose the government pull these moneys from? Do you think the population in this region would be supportive of raising personal income taxes or cutting services or growing the economy? That's a tough one we're facing all the time. It's such a huge ask of dollars.

Yet at the same time, if you were here earlier, you might have heard many people who don't really want to see taxes go up substantially either. So we have to find where we pull the moneys from. One thing is to ask. Another thing that's really helpful is to give us some indication where you think your residents might want those moneys to come from.

J. Thompson: I don't have the answers to that. I don't think any of us do. As a new trustee, this all new to me. I can't answer your questions ably. Maybe Doug.

D. Boyd: I can maybe shed some light on it. Basically — and we've mentioned it already in the presentation here and in some of the responses — right now we're asked to go through a lot of hoops that are costly. We're asked to do a lot of reporting that is costly.

There are ways, I believe, of cutting some of the administrative costs that allow us and provide the flexibility for it. So when we use the term "cutting administrative costs…." Administratively, provincially and ministerially, that could happen.

Again, how it comes about…. We'd have to sit down and go through it and articulate that a lot more clearly than we are right now, but there are ways and means by which…. It doesn't necessarily mean more dollars but more flexibility to administer it without having to do the expenditures.

I give you the example of the SmartTools. BCeSIS, as you probably are aware, is having nothing but issues right now. It's a good program but not well-thought-out as far as how you deliver it to the whole province. Yet when we went into BCeSIS, we thought we would hire a staff member to do the training on that for one year. Well, that's five years ago that we've been on it, and we're still having to do that. We can't keep up. We're having to hire other people to do it.

Those are the types of things that you have to look at and think through. If a decision has been made, how is that going to be administered locally? Then allow us that flexibility to do it.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. A final quick question to from Bill.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation, again. In the special needs area, I understand you're spending almost 100 percent more on special needs. We heard in Vancouver that there'd been a tremendous increase in the number of special needs children in the last five years. I think it had gone from 6 percent of the kids to, now, 8 percent of children in the district that have special needs. I was interested in whether you're seeing the same kind of trend in this area in the school district.

[1635]

The other one is.... I assume that you dealt with a compliance budget, because you spent 99 percent more than the ministry provides. So you had a compliance budget. What would a success budget look like? Like, how much extra would your school district have had if all of these things that you've outlined that you came up short on were fully funded?

D. Boyd: Bill, I haven't gone through and actually costed out that part of it, but I can answer your other question in regards to the comparison with other districts. We have, in fact, seen this similar type of growth, in particular with autism and areas that I think the health author-
[ Page 853 ]
ities are probably dealing with extensively as well. We're not immune to that. In fact, we do have a large percentage of our student population that is in that category. I don't have the specific numbers, but I know that it is growing increasingly.

Our special ed department is constantly coming to us and saying: "We need more of this" and "We need more of that." In addition, parents are becoming very knowledgable in what their child's needs are and asking for that support to occur within the school. We have to honour that. In many cases they're a hundred percent accurate about what the needs are, and we're trying to do it with the limited dollars that we can.

So we basically stretch the dollars wherever possible, cutting back on other things so that we can deliver that and still deliver a quality program to every other student as well.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, gentlemen. I think one or two of the answers you gave kind of hinted at other information you could provide the committee. If you can, please do. We're open to receiving more information by e-mail, through our website and what have you until the end of next week.

Some of that flexibility you talked about — I'd love good examples, if you could come up with them. I know we had similar presentations last year. We've actually been able to make some progress there, but I'm sure there are more things that we can do. So please avail yourself of that opportunity. With that, thank you for coming today.

That's all of the scheduled presentations that I'm aware of. Is there anyone else?

The gentleman in the back, who I believe is the mayor. We'll have to make it quick.

B. Lantz: I don't intend to take a lot of time. I hadn't planned on speaking, but having spent the afternoon listening, a couple of things come to mind. The first of them is to simply thank you, not only for coming to Fort St. John to hear what people in this area have to say but also to the other areas in which you've appeared. I'm sure that's greatly appreciated.

I can say that I agree with virtually everything that's been said so far, but you don't need anybody else to pull that one on you.

One thing that does come to mind that I haven't heard and that I would like to put forward for your consideration. Speaking from a local government perspective, one of the issues that we traditionally have is that…. As senior government minimizes some of the things they do for organizations and groups and sectors in society, guess who those groups and organizations turn to. They turn to local government, and they say: "You know, we've taken a hit. You need to make up the shortfall."

To the best of our abilities we do that, but at the end of the day, the point I want to make is that there is only one taxpayer. So if the provincial government, for example, or the federal government is reducing taxes to reduce that impact on the taxpayer, be advised that there's a tipping point, and at some point the local government is going to have to increase its taxes to the very same taxpayer that you're trying to benefit.

It's kind of like juggling one-handed, and I'm sure what you're doing is like juggling one-handed. But it is a consideration, because at the end of the day, if we're going to keep the level of services that make our province the best place on earth to be in, then somebody has to pay for those services. Finding that balance, obviously, is what you're about.

I wish you the best of luck on that, and I thank you again for coming to Fort St. John.

That's as quick as I've ever been on anything.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Your Worship.

No one else? If not, this meeting is concluded.

The committee adjourned at 4:39 p.m.

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