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

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

5 p.m.

Skeena Room 2

Best Western Terrace Inn, Terrace

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 5:04 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 6:35 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

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Issue No. 31

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 895 ]

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010

The committee met at 5:04 p.m.

[J. Les in the chair.]

J. Les (Chair): Okay, we're all set up and ready to go. Good afternoon. I'm John Les, the Chair of this parliamentary committee. I'd like to welcome everyone who's here this afternoon. We've just flown in from Prince George, and by the time today is out we will find ourselves in Courtenay.

This is, obviously, part of the preparation for the oncoming year's budget. In preparation for that, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper by September 15 which contains a current fiscal forecast and also identifies the key issues that need to be addressed in the next budget.

That paper provides a focus for the consultations of this committee, and it includes information on how members of the public may provide their views on budget priorities. The budget consultation paper is available on the information table at the back of the room.

Our committee is the parliamentary committee which is responsible for conducting public consultations on the forthcoming budget, and we are to report back to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15. This year we are holding 14 public hearings in various places around the province, and in addition we are conducting three sessions where we are communicating with people through video conferencing, which actually works quite well. Technology has improved immensely.

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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 and e-mail, and also video and audio files. Further information on how people may participate using one of these methods is available on our website.

Our committee carefully considers all of the public input that we receive, whether it is oral here today, on line, in writing or by audio or video clip. The deadline, however, to receive submissions is next week — Friday, October 15.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for ten minutes, or 15 if they wish, but then there won't be a five-minute question period. There's 15 minutes in total. Time permitting, there's an open-mike session at the end of the meeting.

Keep in mind that today's meeting is a public meeting. It's recorded and transcribed by Hansard. A copy of the transcript, along with the minutes of the meeting, will be printed and made available on the committees website. A live audio webcast of the meeting is produced and is also available on the committees website.

For the record, all of the committee members are here. I don't think we need to go through all of the introductions. I will, however, introduce the staff: Susan Sourial, the Committee Clerk; Heather Warren, who is staffing the registration desk; and a particular tip of the hat this afternoon to Michael Baer and Jean Medland, who've done yeoman's work in getting us up and running almost on time for this meeting.

With that, I'd like to introduce the first presenter, who is Byng Giraud from Imperial Metals.

Byng, dig right in.

Presentations

B. Giraud: Thank you, Chairman. Just a quick comment that it's nice to have on your committee what we call our mining MLAs: John Rustad, who represents the area where Huckleberry mine is operating; and Mr. Donaldson, who represents what we hope to be the Red Chris mine. So it's good that you guys are also part of this committee.

I'm going to move through the first bit of our presentation, which has been handed out to you, fairly quickly in the interest of possibly some questions. The second slide is essentially just a list of our significant projects — the mines we operate and the major projects we're working on. On page 3 are some other properties that we have in British Columbia.

I point these all out because, with the exception of a small property that we have 100 miles west of Las Vegas, Imperial Metals is a B.C. mining company — B.C. management, B.C. mines, B.C. employees. We like to say we are B.C.'s mining company. Although there are larger mining companies based in B.C., they are much more geographically diversified. So we rise and fall as you folks do.

Again, some background on some of those mines, in terms of our employees. You'll see on page 5 some of the taxes we pay.

I'm going to take you right to page 6 to get on with it. We've been looking at what we contribute to the B.C. economy. We like to make that point, given that we are British Columbians. What's interesting in this pie chart on page 6 is that it shows where a lot of the money we've spent has gone. About a third of it is taxes and employee withholdings, as you'll see. About one-third, at the bottom, is what we pay our employees. Then you'll see the third up to your left-hand side. It's reinvested by the company.

That goes right back into the ground, literally, here in British Columbia. You'll see that the net to shareholders is zero. There have been no dividends from Imperial Metals. All the money we make goes back into the ground or to our employees. It stays here, with the exception, again, of that small operation in Nevada.

The next page, page 7, talks about our other operation, Huckleberry mine, which is 50-50 owned with a Japanese consortium. There has been a dividend paid
[ Page 896 ]
out of that, so we've taken our $17 million. That dividend was to Imperial Metals, so it just went back to us. Since we didn't pay a dividend to our shareholders, it just went back into the ground.

We wanted to emphasize that because it's going to help with some of the other things I'm going to raise — what we do with our money and why some of the things we suggest we believe are not simply in our own interests but in the broader interests of the province.

Page 8 — the number's moved to the top — is just a quick description of Red Chris, which is the project we're spending most of our time on. It's up by Iskut, north of here in Mr. Donaldson's riding. And again, a further map on page 9.

Why are we here? I live in Delta. Our company is based in Vancouver. I've told you where some of our operations are. We take our commitment to communities very seriously. I'll be spending some time with some local community leaders here later this evening. We felt it was significant for us to make this presentation in the areas in which we operate. We could line up with everybody else in Vancouver, but this is a small way of showing our commitment to rural British Columbia.

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This talks about the employees that we have and will have in rural B.C. We only have 33 people in our Vancouver office. The rest of them are in these areas.

Our issues. Some of these will be delved into more deeply and repeated. You may have already heard from different parts of the mining sector — Geoscience B.C., the Mining Association of British Columbia, the Association for Mineral Exploration B.C. These organizations represent us very well. We thought maybe it would help a little if we, as an individual company, also presented to your committee.

These are the five topics: HST — I don't need to give that one an introduction; electrical power — I've got actually two slides on that, maybe delve into that a little bit; reinvestment in key permitting agencies, which is essentially the staffing and resources of, in particular, Energy, Mines but also ILMB and Forests.

This last one was actually a change at the last minute. I've not discussed it with the folks from Northwest Community College, who are here, but I did discuss it with the mayor and some councillors at UBCM last week, and I have discussed it with Minister Hawes, so hopefully I won't be too off base with that, and they won't be too surprised by what I have to say.

HST. There's no question the mining industry supports the HST. I know it's controversial. I know there is a lot of politics to this, but just from a purely factual point of view, why we support it, this slide talks about what we paid by Mount Polley. In 9¼ years of operation we paid $8½ million in PST. We can't pass that along to our buyers. We sell our products on the international markets. They're commodities. There's a world price set — London Metal Exchange and what have you. We get what we get. If the price is too low, which has happened in the past, it can sometimes shut down.

Again, referring back to those pie graphs. Why I wanted to emphasize those is that it shows that the money we maybe saved…. You know, there's talk about: "Well, this is business getting off the hook from taxes." The money we've saved has not gone to line anybody's pockets. It's gone right back into the ground, again literally, in investing in this province — upgrades, infrastructure.

We're putting in a new magnetite facility at the Mount Polley mine in Williams Lake, an area that's been heavily affected by the pine beetle. We're trying to build the Red Chris project up in the northwest, and we know the unemployment rate in this area is high. We think we would be good stewards of that money, and it would help us be competitive internationally.

Frankly, given that it's about $500,000 a year per mine, sometimes investment decisions in tight times — and they're not tight right now, to be fair — can hinge on those kinds of dollar figures. I'll leave it at that.

Power rates. Perhaps you haven't heard as much about this one from other presenters. We are a member of an organization called JIESC, Joint Industry Electricity Steering Committee, essentially a sort of subgroup of the major industrial power users in this province — pulp and paper, chemical mining and that sort of thing. We work with B.C. Hydro, and we have a pretty good relationship, and work with the government to make sure that we are competitive. Frankly, inexpensive power, competitive power, is one of B.C.'s chief competitive advantages. We are competitive in some things and less competitive in others. This is clearly something that's helped build the province.

Our estimates, based on consultants we have — and again this is a real arcane area when you start getting into DSMs and FITs and all the acronyms that B.C. Hydro has — look at some significant power rate increases over the next few years. There's a figure put here, about 41 percent by 2013.

As government, perhaps you have less direct control over this because this is done by B.C. Hydro, but I'm going to argue on the next page here that there are some things that you should be looking at. We're on both sides of the issue in some situations. I think, given that we're going to see increased power rates in industry and as individuals over the next few years, it's something that government has to pay greater attention to, because all the economic development efforts you do as a government can be undermined by the fact that power becomes prohibitively expensive.

The rate drivers that we'd like to have examined — and some of them that are directly government-related…. Increase plant infrastructure expenditures. Again, we're on both sides in this. This is smart metering. It's Highway 37, which we support. It's Site C, which we support. It's all that stuff. This is a large capital expenditure.
[ Page 897 ]

Increase government benefits — something you do have control of. There's an error in this. It should say "2013." That's return on equity, it's water rentals, and it's taxation from B.C. Hydro. So the government of B.C. is taking a big chunk from B.C. Hydro, which is limiting its flexibility in terms of the rates it sets. It creates trade revenues in terms of trading power, which has happened recently.

We are concerned about the efficiency of B.C. Hydro. There's been a huge increase of employees, for example — it's not the only measure — over the past couple of years. I think they're pushing 6,500 employees, from two or three years ago with something over 4,000.

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We have concerns with the issue of self-sufficiency under the Clean Energy Act. Self-sufficiency is a laudable goal. How it's done needs to be looked at. Again, this is where government is influencing what B.C. Hydro does. And deferral accounts, which I'm not going to get into because, frankly, I don't understand it.

Geoscience B.C. You'll hear from them, or you may have already heard from them. We think there should be more money given to Geoscience B.C. They're going to be running out of money shortly. I'm going to give you a specific example that will supplement what we've heard from others.

At Huckleberry we did some testing, tested some targets that were identified by Geoscience B.C. in 2008. Here's a direct payoff. That resulted in 16 diamond drill holes for 5,714 metres. Without giving away the farm, this is roughly, from Energy, Mines' own figures, what…. So $65 to $130 a metre is what you'd spend on drilling. Let's say $100 a metre. There's half a million dollars right there that we spent as a direct result of Geoscience B.C. That sort of drilling may actually help extend the life of that mine. Now, that's a decision yet to happen — but clear return on investment in Geoscience B.C. for a world-class organization.

Reinvesting in MEMPR and the other permitting agencies. Controversial, I guess, because we as a business and a member of business organizations are oftentimes talking about government having to balance its books and be fiscally accountable. But on the other hand, if you are harming the ability of the Energy, Mines and ILMB and some of these other permitting agencies to get their permits done in an efficient and effective manner, it's actually costing money.

Again, I provide an example. Imperial Metals, our exploration budgets…. I asked my boss yesterday. All exploration budgets, excluding the Sterling property, the Nevada property, is about $32 million this year. I don't know what the exploration figures will be this year, but that could represent between 10 and 20 percent of all the exploration done in B.C. by our company.

Our ability to spend that money is directly impacted by how fast permits are done and how effectively they're done. That's money in the ground. That's money spent, particularly in the more depressed regions of the province. So what I'm asking is that…. While we understand your fiscal challenges, we think Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources — which is, frankly, the golden goose these days, with producing revenues from oil and gas, mining and electricity…. We're worried about cost pressures for that agency.

The last thing here, and this is the one that hasn't been tested…. A very local issue — Northern Lights College is pulling out of their Dease Lake campus. There's infrastructure up there. We have need to employ First Nations people at our mines. We want more of them involved, but they do not want, as I understand it, to move far away from where they live. I understand that, coming from a small town myself.

We would like to see…. Again, maybe NWCC might have a different opinion, but this is what I've discussed with mayors. We would like to see — Imperial Metals; this is not the mining industry broadly — government look at providing the support NWCC needs to perhaps take over that campus.

They already have the programs. They have excellent programs for First Nations and others. Those programs could be provided at Dease Lake to Tahltan and Kaska and other folks. We believe that would improve our ability to hire those people for the jobs we expect to be providing with our Red Chris mine, and we might be able to help directly as opposed to just moral support in making that happen.

Those are my five points.

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

M. Mungall: Thanks very much, Byng, for your presentation. I have two questions. The first one is about hydro rates. One of the reasons that hydro rates are increasing in B.C. is directly related to the private power projects that B.C. Hydro is forced to purchase power from. I'm just wondering how that is impacting your industry. It's certainly impacting residential rates. I'm wondering how it's impacting industrial rates.

Then my second question relates to the HST. You made mention of investments, and you're relating it to the HST. Now, my understanding is that you would not have received your input tax credits back yet, because it's not the end of the tax year. But also I'm wondering if you would have made those investments whether or not the HST was there. Evidence from other jurisdictions is suggesting that a lot of the investments that are often credited to the value-added tax would have actually been made anyway. So I'm just wondering if you can comment on that, please.

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B. Giraud: Okay. On the IPP, I would be dishonest to say that it's not something we've looked at as one of the
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factors. I listed a number of factors on our presentation. It may be part of it. I wouldn't want to point a finger. Certainly, any time that B.C. Hydro, through its own decisions or government policy, is required to spend more money than it might in a normal course of business…. That's of concern. This is a parochial interest on the part of our industry — cheap power. It takes a lot of electricity to crush rocks. So it would be one of the factors. Whether it's a deciding factor, I want to leave that for you folks to argue about.

On the HST — possibly. Would we have made those commitments? We're a B.C. mining company. The projects we look at, as we look at future projects, are in B.C. We're not going anywhere unless we really have to. That doesn't mean that we would like to be competitive with companies like ours operating in other jurisdictions.

PST is difficult to administer. If you've ever dealt with a PST auditor, you know it's not a nice experience. We have strange situations where fuel used on the mine site is treated differently than fuel that's used off the mine site, so there are more considerations than strictly investment. That was the point I made. Would we still make those investments? Possibly, because we believe in this province, but frankly, it's not as competitive — with an HST in place.

N. Letnick: Thank you for your presentation. I'll just continue the HST question if I may.

What are you doing to bring your staff, all the employees, to the same understanding about HST that you have?

B. Giraud: Well, our mine managers in our operations…. The meetings that take place on a mine — safety meetings and those sorts of things…. There's a lot of interaction from senior management and employees. The industry has made its positions clear. Companies are making their positions clear. But this is one of those situations where a lot of top-down direction is not necessarily going to change people's minds.

We're laying out the business case. This is helpful to us — HST. Half a million dollars a year per operation is not chump change. It may affect business decisions. That money, in some cases, is returned either directly to the employee — I think it's happening in Endako — or, in our situation, it's invested right back in the province.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for some new information, actually. The Dease Lake campus — that was interesting. We met with the Minister of Advanced Education last week, so hopefully, you'll be involved in those discussions coming up soon.

My question had to do with trying to broaden out the issues that you've brought us, representing Imperial Metals, to a wider mining perspective. We heard in the northeast around the lack of Ministry of Environment staff and one Fisheries biologist for the entire region, for instance, and how that's led to a delay.

You mentioned ILMB, but has it been your experience that a lack of staffing in other ministries as well has created additional delays? Is it just in the permitting process, or is it also in the groundwork in order to get to that permitting stage?

B. Giraud: Well, I think the most noticeable is in permits, because you've submitted something and you're waiting for it to come back. Let me say that the work that's being done — for example, with the office in Smithers we work with, Loren Kelly is leading a committee of all the different agencies that are helping us permit Red Chris mine — is exemplary. They do exemplary work. Loren Kelly should get sainthood.

But beyond permits, almost everything we do is getting delayed. The backlogs are occurring. It's sort of hit-or-miss depending on the experience of staff and the amount of staff. We work all over the province, so we're having turnover in staff because people are either seeking new jobs or they're getting out of the sector, and we require highly qualified staff. You talked about biologists and that sort of thing.

So permitting is where we see it most — it's the most obvious — but generally things have slowed down for the natural resource sector in terms of getting the permitting and approvals that they need.

B. Routley: As a follow-up on the HST, it's interesting to listen to your comments, given that…. I'm assuming that you, along with other British Columbians, were shocked and surprised by the announcement, unless you were consulted and expecting the HST. I'm wondering about that, whether you were consulted and have some inside knowledge that the rest of us didn't have about it, and I can hardly blame you for being gleeful about getting half a million dollars per mine. I can see why you would want to throw into the fray and advise us as how….

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That's a good thing on the pie chart, but it really comes down to transferring tax from big corporations onto British Columbians. But anyway, I'm not here to debate with you, and I guess I'm drawn into that, somehow, today.

The question is about the waiting, the uncertainty for business. Given that you're excited about the HST, what about waiting for a full year until the people of British Columbia can decide one way or the other? Do you think we should get on with this, or are you okay with waiting a year? Is business okay with the uncertainty about whether we're going to have an HST or not?

B. Giraud: Well, as much as I'd like not to get drawn into your politics, the reality is that we weren't apprised of anything any sooner. We're just one company which sort
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of epitomizes big business. I mean, we have two mines, 250 people each. And, I guess, maybe that's a sin.

The Business Council of British Columbia and the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, both of which we are members of, have been advocating for this policy for some time. Why wouldn't we be happy when a policy that we've been pushing for is brought forward? That's all I have to say.

J. Les (Chair): We'll leave it there.

A final question.

J. Rustad: First of all, thanks for your presentation, and thanks for the work you're doing in my riding. It's much appreciated by the people in Houston, and I know that they fully support the mine and are hopeful for the future expansion of the Huckleberry project.

You've mentioned power. One of the challenges that Huckleberry had, of course, this summer was the wildfire and the uncertainty for the power line. It shut the mine down for a period of time when the fire had threatened that power line. I'm just wondering: how much power will your new mine in Red Chris require? If we don't have that power within the province, if we were forced to buy that power from outside of the province and there was an interruption with that, what would that end up meaning for the potential viability or future of that project?

B. Giraud: Well, we expect we'll need a 138-kV power line from Bob Quinn to our Red Chris facility. It's all a pool of power. We're hoping with the grid — the way it operates with the lower 48 and Alberta — that that sort of interruption wouldn't happen. But if an interruption, as you'd pointed out, to Huckleberry…. If that would have happened, it shuts the mine down. It's not easy to start and shut a mine down.

I guess that you're getting into the whole issue of self-sufficiency. We are not necessarily opposed to the whole issue of self-sufficiency. We just believe that it's one of these factors that needs to be taken into consideration when trying to make sure that power rates remain competitive. Self-sufficiency can be defined in many ways. What we hope is that that self-sufficiency objective is not being pursued at the price of just being competitive power producers.

J. Les (Chair): All right. Thank you very much, Byng, for being here this afternoon.

Our next presenter is from Northwest Community College — Cathay Sousa.

C. Sousa: Welcome to rainy Terrace. I am the interim president at Northwest Community College and the vice-president of finance and administration, so I'm wearing two hats tonight as I address you. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's prebudget consultation process. We commend the government for giving British Columbians a voice in shaping the 2011-12 provincial budget.

Northwest Community College recognizes and is sensitive to the fiscal challenge that's currently facing the province. At the outset, we do wish to acknowledge and thank the provincial and federal governments for the $17 million investment in our new campus at Smithers via the knowledge infrastructure program. We visited it last night, and it's well on its way.

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Northwest Community College, along with the other ten B.C. community colleges, is committed to providing students with advanced skills and education for employment. As more people turn to the colleges for these advanced skills and education in this knowledge-based economy, the college system faces both physical and financial capacity issues. If they are not addressed, it's going to limit our ability to serve future British Columbians with post-secondary. The demand, the type of education and the timing for delivery of services is beginning to place unprecedented pressure on B.C.'s colleges.

As one of B.C.'s 11 colleges, I would like to just take this opportunity to introduce you to Northwest Community College, provide you with information regarding some of our successes and strengths, provide you with a little bit of information on our challenges and, hopefully, give a few recommendations to you.

Northwest Community College last year served over 10,000 students in our credit and non-credit programs. Our enrolments have increased substantially in the past five years, and in 2009-10 fiscal enrolments we realized a 96 percent utilization rate, with enrolments up 11 percent as compared to the previous year.

Our region has a population of approximately 72,000 — 32 percent of whom are aboriginal. This is by far the largest percentage of aboriginal population as a percent of total population of all college regions in British Columbia.

Our region encompasses just over 102,000 square kilometres. To put it in perspective, that's approximately an area the size of France.

With Northern Lights' recent announcement of their intent to close their campuses in the Dease Lake and Atlin areas and our expectation that government will transfer the Tahltan college services and corresponding funding to Northwest Community College, we anticipate that our college region and area will grow substantially, and we will indeed encompass the entire northwest quarter of the province.

The geography that we have profoundly affects the access and delivery of our educational access services in the region. The communities are most successful in the summer. Travel may require floatplane, boats, ferries, long hours of ground transportation, air if you have
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the fiscal capacity to do so. The geographical distances and lack of public transportation often prohibit students from commuting to and from their communities, especially during the winter, as travel is often hazardous and quite often impossible.

We are a community college that celebrates the diversity of our northern communities and our populations of aboriginal and non-aboriginal community members. We reflect the diversity of our population in our programs, services, workforce and our operational processes.

As a community college, we play a role, and a very important role, in the growth and development of all of our communities by providing programs in health careers, technical applied studies, aboriginal programs, university transfer and associate degrees, trades and apprenticeship and developmental education, including students with disabilities and partnerships with local literacy groups at all of our campuses.

Within this vast area we have ten communities where we actually operate physical facilities, and throughout the region these locations reflect the population densities. We also serve at this point in time, before the addition of the Tahltan region, 27 First Nations communities, and we have offered community-based programs in most of these communities over the past three years.

On-line education is available throughout the region, and video conferencing is available at five of our campuses.

Northwest Community College is unique in that 46 percent of our students in our credit-based programs are of aboriginal descent. The number of aboriginal students served by Northwest Community College is by far much greater than any other non-aboriginal post-secondary institution in the province. In fact, it's two times as many as the next one.

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

We play an important role in providing British Columbians with advanced skills and education for employment. Although the northwest region has been striving to relinquish our dependence upon a resource-based economy — let's put mining aside for now — as we have suffered significant economic decline in major industries over the past decade…. Most recently the closure of the Eurocan pulp and paper mill in Kitimat hit our area particularly hard.

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The unemployment rates in our communities are higher than the provincial average — in particular, First Nations communities, where the unemployment rate can range from 37 percent to 80 percent. The region is impacted by population decreases in the urban communities and population increases in the majority of our First Nations communities.

In spite of the weakening economy and the fact that the northwest region does remain the worst hit economically of any in B.C., our region still finds itself with a lack of skilled workforce at technical, trade and professional levels. The college plays a critical role in addressing the labour needs of the northwest economy, and expanded program offerings are essential to development of the economy.

Students who are trained in the north are apt to stay in the north. Also, the First Nations population is not a transient one. Most want to work and live near or in the communities of their birth.

The northwest ranks among the lowest in educational levels in the province. This is a key area of focus for our college, and we're aggressively working with community partners and agencies to improve the statistics.

Additionally, we are developing and delivering what we call access programs at all our campuses and our 27 First Nations communities to create opportunities for those who actually lack the entrance requirements for post-secondary — so a step into post-secondary.

We have witnessed increased demand in many of our programs and in many of our university credit, adult basic education and especially these interdisciplinary access programs.

As more people turn to colleges for training or retraining, our college faces both physical and financial capacity challenges that are limiting our ability to serve our communities. Many of our students are learning with outdated equipment and technology, which makes providing for the skilled, job-ready workforce challenging.

In order to deliver more cost-efficiencies, we need to modernize our facilities and upgrade our systems. Our information and communications technology infrastructure, like at many colleges, is a hybrid one that has grown over time. By upgrading our infrastructure to one that is more homogenous, we will gain efficiencies. If we could implement a robust collegewide wireless access system, it would enable students to use their own computers, which would lead to reduction in the high cost of maintenance and computing labs.

As northerners with a power line and mining rapidly coming on board, we're greatly concerned that the consideration of how we will provide local workers with the opportunities that will undoubtedly come our way is not necessarily reflected in the budgeting or planning of the industry trades authority. Little seems to be made of the exceedingly high unemployment rates in our communities, especially the aboriginal communities. Small numbers do not mean there is no need; it may mean that there is critical need.

Two major shifts are happening in Canada. The first baby boomers turn 65 in 2011, and many millions across Canada and hundreds of thousands in B.C. will follow in rapid succession. Our economy is quickly moving towards a more knowledge-based economy, and there are
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simply not enough skilled workers to replace the vast number that are poised to retire.

Two years ago the government was identifying the skills gap at approximately 300,000 people by 2015. The Conference Board of Canada predicts a shortage of 150,000 tradespeople in B.C. alone.

We need to grow our workforce to combat the skills gap through a variety of strategies. Increase the workforce significantly with workers that have advanced skills and education, including participation of underrepresented groups such as aboriginal and disabled workers. We need to improve the transition to the workforce for immigrants, including credential transfer, advanced skills and education for employment.

J. Les (Chair): Cathay, could I stop you there just for a minute?

C. Sousa: Yes.

J. Les (Chair): It's a very long presentation. If you read through the whole thing, not only will you be way over time, but there'll be no time for questions.

C. Sousa: Oh, but that's my plan.

J. Les (Chair): If I could maybe just stop you there, I have three members already who want to ask you questions. I think that would be a more productive use of our time. Members obviously have a copy of this and can read it and glean from that the information they need.

C. Sousa: Okay, as long as I can get to the budget challenges after the questions. I think I'll have the time.

J. Les (Chair): Why don't you do the budget challenges now, then? Then we'll get to questions, because we've only got five minutes left — okay?

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C. Sousa: Yup. So in terms of our budget challenges, the restraint on the base funding, the reduction in funding for trades from the Industry Training Authority and especially the 74 percent reduction of the annual capital cost allowance from $827,000 down to $215,000 for all ten campus locations have meant that Northwest Community College has had to undertake innovative and extraordinary measures to continue to meet the range of programs and services.

I would like to highlight one of the successes in partnerships that we have, and that's the Northwest Community College School of Exploration and Mining, which is a partnership between education and industry, and the phenomenal employment rate that we have achieved through that program — successful students, the majority of whom are aboriginal and First Nations students.

J. Les (Chair): Good. So why don't we go to questions now, and then we'll kind of tend to finish on time.

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

One of the questions I had was…. Other colleges have brought up how important it is to see the transition rates go from high school to college. Do you guys have particular programs that are doing successful transition for high school students?

C. Sousa: Yes, we do. One of the newer ones…. They're called ACE IT students — accelerated trades training. Students in grades 11 and 12 come into the trades programs. We're in partnership with five different school districts. We have professional cooking. We have carpentry. We have students going into millwright. That's been extremely successful.

There are dual-credit programs where students in university-type programs and/or business are taking physics, for instance, at the college, and then they actually gain credit at the high school level. The high school transition studies show that the numbers are increasing into the colleges across the province.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation so far, Cathay.

I was able to visit the environmental monitor assistant program graduation — I believe that's part of the School of Exploration and Mining — at your field site in a camp situation. I'm wondering if you'd have a recommendation to the committee around the funding for that program. I understand it depends on annual grants. Would your recommendation be that those kinds of programs be part of a core operating budget?

The other question is on the ITA. You talked about the budgeting and planning of the Industry Training Authority. Do you have a recommendation around that? Is it a matter of core funding as well for that?

C. Sousa: Well, in terms of the School of Exploration and Mining, you're right. We rely on annual grants, so every year it's: is the grant going to come? We are pursuing trying to get annualized grants. At least you know it's a commitment to five years or something, so that we can plan for the future instead of planning on sort of an emergency basis every year. Providing that security would make a huge difference in terms of strategic planning for the School of Exploration and Mining.

In terms of the Industry Training Authority and the planning and the acquisition of capital equipment, we do find that there are challenges with that. There's a consortium that is working together to try and work through that, but there needs to be recognition that there are some problems, some challenges that we have to overcome.
[ Page 902 ]

J. Rustad: Thanks very much, and thank you for the recommendation in your presentation on Northwest College on page 4 for the size for the exploration program. I do believe that is a huge benefit. I had the pleasure of visiting it this past summer, and it was quite an eye-opener to see how the program worked and also those success rates.

I'm just wondering. What is the partnership that you have with the private sector? I see that you need $500,000 a year. That's what you're asking for in terms of ongoing, stable funding. What is the overall expense of the program, and what are the partners bringing to the table in terms of that? Like I say, it is very successful. Obviously, the success rate — 82 percent of students finding work — is very impressive coming out of a program like that.

C. Sousa: We rely on grants from the federal government as well as contributions from the provincial government. I wish that I had the statistics in front of me. I don't have the total operating budget that we sort of rely on.

J. Rustad: That's okay. You could e-mail that information to us.

C. Sousa: I actually will do that.

[1745]

J. Rustad: Great. Thank you.

J. Les (Chair): All right. So we'll leave it there, Cathay. As John has requested, if you could send that information to the Committee Clerk, and then it will be distributed to all of the committee members. And anything else that might cross your mind between now and next week, Friday, we'd be happy to look at it. Thank you very much for coming.

Next we will hear from the Haisla First Nation — Ellis Ross and Dolores Pollard.

D. Pollard: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our rainy part of the world as well. We had good weather last week.

My name is Dolores Pollard, and I'm the elected chief councillor for the Haisla Nation. Ellis Ross is also here. He's an elected councillor and holds the chairmanship for our economic development committee, which includes a lot of rights and titles issues on consultation and accommodation. So he holds a very important portfolio for our elected officials.

Thank you to the committee and to the Clerk for granting us this time to speak with you. We have a few main points we ask you to consider in your deliberations, and they all have to do with aboriginal rights and title, accommodation and economic development as it relates to Crown land. We would like to propose interim solutions as to how we can work together for our common economic goals.

After my presentation we'll be pleased to answer any questions you may have for us.

The Haisla Nation recognizes the dilemma of uncertainty surrounding our lands and resources. However, in light of the ongoing discussions and negotiations to resolve this, we also recognize the common concerns and interests we share with the province and Canada and ask that you consider our perspective as well as our proposed interim solutions, that we can work together for a win-win solution.

In respect of our aboriginal rights and title, the importance of lands and resources to the Haisla Nation is of utmost importance as it is the basis of who we are as a people and as a nation. Our culture, history and ancestry are embedded within our lands.

The lion's share of our traditional lands is provincial Crown land, and from another perspective, all provincial Crown lands within traditional territories are subject to the challenge of aboriginal rights and title. This is where we come to an impasse and sometimes halt any progress towards more economic certainty for our region and for our province.

The coexistence of Crown and aboriginal title creates serious challenges for both the Haisla and the province. For the Haisla Nation, the Crown's refusal to recognize our aboriginal title and rights makes it exceptionally difficult to address the serious economic and social issues facing our people.

For the province, any decision you make on Crown lands is potentially illegal and invalid if you have not adequately consulted with us and accommodated our constitutionally protected aboriginal rights and title.

For B.C. and many potential proponents, investors and partners, the end result is a lot of uncertainty, which is of no benefit to any of us in the long term.

On behalf of the Haisla Nation we propose to you today ways in which we can try to reconcile our interests and address some of these challenges that may prevent further development and success of our local, regional and provincial economies, as this pertains to our current initiatives such as the Kitimat liquefied natural gas terminal and the Pacific Trail pipeline, for example, as well as potential future initiatives which will be of benefit regionally, provincially and on national levels.

As you are aware, the Haisla Nation are strong proponents of the Kitimat liquefied natural gas terminal — which I'll refer to from this point on as KLNG — which is proposed for our Bees Reserve, and the Pacific Trail pipeline that will feed this terminal.

The LNG terminal alone is estimated at $3 billion to $4 billion investment, and the PTP is also another huge investment for this province and Canada overall.

The project itself will assist the Haisla Nation as well as the region and the province, not just for the short-term benefits but also for the long-term lasting benefits of regional jobs, contracts and employment.

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[ Page 903 ]

Even more important than this, our ability to ensure that all parties benefit from projects such as KLNG and PTP, is that we were able to ensure that proponents and investors recognize that even with the absence of a treaty, the Haisla, its proponents and partners are able to work together toward common goals — in this case, economic development for all.

In order for us to continue to demonstrate this success of initiatives such as KLNG, as well as PTP and other spinoff projects, we ask the province for support of the following three items.

First: support for our addition-to-reserve status. We have signed a benefits agreement with KLNG and are in the process of finalizing the land lease. In short, we are doing everything that we can to make this project a success. We look to British Columbia to do the same.

We have applied to the federal government for an addition to reserve to our Bees Reserve to facilitate the potential expansion of this project once the project is up and running. This application needs provincial support in order to succeed.

We are requesting British Columbia's active and full support for this addition to reserve, as this would help our nation meet its obligation to advance the economic and social issues facing our membership. It would also allow British Columbia to meet its obligation to accommodate Haisla Nation aboriginal rights and title while at the same time proposing large scale regional economic development. This is an opportunity for a win-win for the province, for our region, for Canada and, yes, for the Haisla Nation.

Our second one is accommodations. We also ask that the province seriously investigate using lands to assist in accommodations to the Haisla Nation, like the Crown land that lies between Rio Tinto Alcan's private lands and our Bees Reserve. There are no improvements on the land in question except for an old logging road. We believe that this land could be very useful as we contemplate additional economic development opportunities that are in early discussion stages with us, and which could follow the KLNG project.

Our third issue is in regards to the First Nations commercial and industrial development agreement protocol, which I'll refer to as FNCIDA. FNCIDA allows for an agreement and a federal regulation under which certain provincial laws would be incorporated into federal law and therefore be applicable to Bees IR No. 6.

An FNCIDA agreement and regulation is essential to KLNG moving ahead. In the short term an interim regulatory agreement needs to be put in place quickly. An interim regulatory agreement is first put in place while a final agreement and regulation are negotiated, and this process can take up to two years. This is important to the development of KLNG — an agreement negotiated between ourselves, the province and the federal government under this program.

A final agreement, an FNCIDA agreement, and regulation need to be reached in a timely manner. The federal government has told us that the Haisla Nation has been accepted into the FNCIDA process. Canada has established a dedicated technical and legal team that has been directed to address the issue full-time until the agreement and regulations are in place. For our part, we have directed our technical and legal teams to advance the FNCIDA agreement and regulation on a priority basis.

British Columbia, through the Oil and Gas Commission and legal counsel, has been very supportive of the regulatory objective. We ask for the province of British Columbia to ensure that the necessary technical and legal resources are allocated to this project to ensure its timely completion. The importance of KLNG and the economic opportunities it creates for the Haisla Nation, for the region and for the province as a whole cannot be overstated.

In conclusion, both our governments face serious hurdles as we try to address the enormous and unresolved issues flowing from the coexistence of Crown and aboriginal title. These challenges won't be resolved overnight, but with good faith and hard work we can build practical and creative solutions that will move us in the right direction.

[1755]

It is on this basis that we ask the province of B.C. for their support in helping us move forward on these important economic opportunities that will be of benefit to us all and move us in the right direction.

I hope I was under my ten minutes. We have time for questions and answers.

J. Les (Chair): You did great.

D. Pollard: Straight and to the point.

J. Les (Chair): Bang on. Bruce has the first question.

B. Ralston: You mentioned the Crown land that's adjacent between Rio Tinto Alcan's private lands and the Bees Reserve, and you talk about seeking provincial government support for the transfer of those lands.

Is this part of an overall negotiation, or is it simply that you're looking for an interim measure to accommodate this specific project?

E. Ross: Well, that's where we are asking B.C. to be creative. We came close to a land agreement on lots 305 and 306 adjacent to our Indian Reserve No. 2, and our people voted it down because they didn't trust treaty.

So now we are asking for economic purposes — not for residential or anything else — to look at that Crown land that's in between the fee simple land and come into some sort of partnership and some sort of agreement with the Haisla Nation, because you are going to have
[ Page 904 ]
to get there somehow anyway. It's going to have to be a question that has to be answered when we go to the consultation and accommodation process.

B. Ralston: I have a little bit of an idea of the geography, but how much land are we talking about here?

E. Ross: Well, it's not really that much. Most of that side of the channel there is taken up by Alcan private land, but we do have an agreement with Alcan to have first rights of negotiation if anybody wants a piece of that land. They get the intent, and the only thing that we'll say to them is: "Look, we're not doing this to lock it up. We're not doing it to own it outright. We're looking to use it for economic purposes and to try and make the playing field a little bit level when it comes to economic position." It's like KLNG.

B. Ralston: So a long-term lease might accommodate that.

E. Ross: It might have. I've heard a number of different situations. I've heard some sort of partnership between B.C. and the Haisla. I've heard a lease. I've heard outright ownership. There are a number of solutions. But B.C. put the resources toward their front-line people and has given them the authority, as well, to actually negotiate these kinds of initiatives. That's what we're looking for.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation and for the work you're doing on behalf of the community and the creative ways you are trying to get economic development going in the region. I just want to make sure that I understood this correctly under No. 3, the First Nations commercial and industrial development agreement protocol.

Am I interpreting correctly what you've said here — that Canada has established a dedicated technical team and legal team, but you're asking B.C. to do the same because it's causing, perhaps, some delay? Or are you asking for that, as well, from B.C., and is it not there yet?

E. Ross: They have a representative, but they don't have the full resources that it's going to take to get this moving along as quickly as Canada would like, or as quickly as Haisla would like. B.C. oil and gas is there, but they admit to us to us that we don't have the resources to actually go full scale on what everybody else wants. That's what we're here for — not just here, but we're going to different levels of government within the B.C. government — to say: "Put some resources toward this — not just one or two people. Do your legal work and technical work. Put some money toward that."

J. Les (Chair): Michelle?

M. Mungall: Sorry. My questions have been asked. Great presentation, though. Thank you.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. We appreciate your presentation.

D. Pollard: Thank you very much for hearing us.

J. Les (Chair): The next presentation will be from Andrea Eastham of the Northwest Invasive Plant Council.

A. Eastham: Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to address the committee this evening. My name is Andrea Eastham. I'm a professional agrologist, and I've been the program manager for the Northwest Invasive Plant Council since 2007.

This evening I want to briefly describe invasive plants and why they are an issue, describe how IPs are managed currently in British Columbia, describe the Northwest Invasive Plant Council or NWIPC and bring forward two major issues where the provincial government commitment is required.

I think most if not all of you know something about invasive alien plants. Increasingly, we've always dealt in B.C. with terrestrial plants. Now there are aquatics looming on our borders, which scares me. Also, a lot of invasive plant groups are becoming invasive species, certainly in other provinces, and we're starting to see that change here.

[1800]

A lot of what I'll say is about invasive terrestrial plants, because that's what we've been working on, but it really applies to invasive alien species and their introduction into our area. An alien species is just that: it's not indigenous to British Columbia, probably not to Canada. Most of them come from Europe and Asia, in our case.

Invasive alien species is really a global issue. Some of our native species are invasive alien species in other countries. With increased trade and travel, this is increasing globally.

Invasive plants negatively impact the environment. They're harmful to humans and animals. They have negative economic impacts on agriculture, forestry, utilities, transportation, recreation and tourism. They negatively impact biodiversity, rare species, wildlife and fish habitat, and water quality. They increase wildfire hazards, suppress forest regeneration, are toxic to livestock, reduce forage, have eliminated fine seed production in the northwest — we have no more producers left as of last year, and that's because they can't keep it weed-free — and have added costs to all our agricultural producers.

In a report published by the provincial Invasive Plant Council in 2009, the authors attributed combined damage of at least $65 million in the year 2008 — this is in British Columbia — due to just six plant species. The
[ Page 905 ]
Northwest Invasive Plant Council, my council, has about 65 species on its list currently.

The latest CFIA report estimated a cost of $19 million per year in the province of Manitoba — just to the losses and their cost controls for one plant species, leafy spurge.

Invasive plants in B.C. are managed mainly through regional weed committees such as the Northwest, by the Ministry of Forests and Range, the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

As I mentioned, there is a provincial council that acts as an umbrella organization. They mainly do education, awareness and outreach — those sorts of projects.

The NWIPC is one of the oldest committees in the province. It's existed since 1992. It was kind of a loose getting together of the people that were responsible. They have jurisdictions where they have invasive plant management as one of their mandates.

These people got together. They started getting together annually and started to realize that if they came up with a common strategy so that one guy isn't killing one kind of weed, the other groups are killing the other kind of weed and nobody's ever getting anywhere…. They developed slowly over time. Then in 2005 the provincial government approached the committee and asked them to pilot becoming what we call a single agency or pooled-resource agency.

That means that the different partners — provincial government ministries, regional districts, municipalities, mines, etc. — would pool their funds, and then we would turn around and be able to treat the weeds regardless of jurisdiction.

In 2005 the NWIPC became a council. It's a non-profit agency with a board of directors and about 650 members currently. We're the largest council in the province. My area goes from Atlin to just south of Hixon, and it goes from the Alberta border and includes Haida Gwaii. It's about 40 percent of the province.

We work annually with about $800,000, and the majority of this funding has come from the Ministries of Agriculture, of Transportation and of Forests and Range. This year, so far, we've received no management money from the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

One of the things that you hope with a pooled-resource group is that all your partners won't have a bad year the same year. So while the MAL money has been non-existent so far this year, the MOT money has increased. You just kind of hope it never gets too low. But our overall funding this year will be significantly lower than we've ever had before.

IP sites have to be checked and treated two to three times per year for many years. Some spotted knapweed sites, because the seed is so long-lived in the soil, we might have to manage for 20 to 30 years before we can eradicate them.

[1805]

We use every tool available, and we develop new treatment scenarios with time. Sites have been eliminated using our approach, and more and more of the province is actually looking at our successes and starting to go to this pooled-resource approach to weed management. But we also found 400 new sites last year, so they keep coming in. Missing a single year of treatment can put a site back to a state as if it has never been treated.

Last January I got to attend the Invasive Plant Council of B.C.'s annual forum and got scared, because all I heard about were aquatic invasive plants, which are even more expensive to manage than terrestrial. If you can imagine trying to inventory the whole northwest to see what's out there for plants, you should start trying to pay divers to have to go and swim every lake.

It was pretty scary. We had a lot of speakers from the four northwestern United States — because that's where a lot of our weeds come from; they have a lot more than we do already — and how much money they are spending on inventory, treatment and prevention. We heard about them putting chemicals into their lakes to kill these weeds.

They showed us maps of where their U.S. boaters were going to recreate in the different western provinces of Canada. The only dot in my area is in Burns Lake, so as far as we know, that's the only known infestation at the moment. But we don't actually know, because we haven't been able to inventory.

That brings me to my two major concerns. One is prevention programs, and the other is permanent funding. With the prevention programs, this isn't something that the different local weed committees can develop. This has to be done at the provincial level. When I came away from that forum in January, I wanted the government to start putting a fee on every guy with a boat and a boat trailer and washing stations and whatever other programs have to be put in place to just stop people being able to come to our province and leave their invasive alien species here.

Bruce Bennett is with the Yukon Invasive Species Council. The Yukon and Alaska do breathe down my neck, because they spot weeds in B.C. up in my corner and let me know, and try and make sure I do something about it.

His story was that a boat from Ontario with zebra mussels on it was able to travel from Ontario across every single province, and we don't know how many lakes he put his boat into. He went up to the Yukon, put his boat in some lakes up there and never got stopped until he tried to get into Alaska. They check every boat coming into Alaska, and they don't let them come in if they have invasive alien species on them. So he had to clean them off on the Yukon side, and then he was allowed into Alaska.

I really believe that our province needs to spend money now on preventing the introduction of these spe-
[ Page 906 ]
cies, whether that's fees or cleaning stations or checkpoints that would stop these accidental infestations; or programs, laws, fines — whatever it takes to prevent the intentional introduction, because species come in both routes.

Prevention has been shown to be the most cost-effective method of invasive alien species control, and a provincial program would create permanent jobs in preventing introduction. It would decrease the need for us to use chemicals, and it would protect the ecosystems and, particularly, the agriculture industry.

In terms of permit management programs with permanent annual funding, we really need a committed level of funding, not fluctuating funding, and in the ministries that we deal with — if it's still dealt with through the different ministries — permanent staff that are actually dedicated to invasive plant or invasive species management.

This can be through the different ministries, but just so you know, B.C. Parks, though they have a mandate to have only native species in their parks, have no invasive plant program. They have no dedicated staff, and they have no dedicated funding, though yes, because regardless of jurisdiction, we treat in their parks, the other partners are paying for that work.

[1810]

So we count, and we inventory, and we produce nice swag like the carabiners. That's mine. I thought you didn't really need more paper. I thought that might help you learn to identify some of these invasive species, if you don't know them already, and maybe understand our program a little better. But this is not these regional weed committees and the Invasive Plant Council doing nice swag and this education stuff, which you're always preaching to the already converted. It's not going to stop.

When I hear the billions and millions that others are spending…. Why do we want to go there, and is this something that really has to happen at the provincial level?

Though the NWIPC is very grateful for the support we have received in the past, we do feel a little bit like the little boy with his finger in the dike. Unless the province steps up as an entity to address the harmful invasions of species, we're going to end up in the same situation that we see in other parts of the world.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Andrea. I have a couple of questions.

J. van Dongen: Thank you, Andrea, for your presentation. I appreciate your dedication on a mission which isn't particularly glamorous. I think a lot of people don't understand the damage that is being done and will continue to be done by — I'll use the term — noxious weeds.

I wanted to ask you: when the deal was made in 2005 to pool all the resources, what was the basis for the funding formula at that time — the three ministries and whatever other agencies were involved? What was the basis for the pooled program?

A. Eastham: Well, to try this as a pilot for three years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands gave the Northwest $250,000 a year for each year of the three years. They were given the money all upfront, so they had to manage that money over the three years.

During those years, the Ministry of Forests and Range has been fairly consistent in their funding, though it has fluctuated. I think the lowest was $120,000 and the highest was $200,000, so it goes up and down.

Ministry of Transportation has been in a gradual increase, and I don't think we'd exist this year without them. They're giving us $395,000 this year.

The problem with not getting money from the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands is that most of our other money from all the other jurisdictions…. We also get it from regional districts, municipalities, Endako Mines, a lumber company once. I'm always out there trying to get more people to throw money into this pooled fund. That money is really tied to doing the on-the-ground work, the inventory, treatment and monitoring. Only a small percentage can go to run the whole program.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands money was really what we counted on to pay people like myself and to run programs, whether they're education and awareness…. We have what we call a 50-50 program. We are trying to encourage landowners to control invasive species on their own property.

J. van Dongen: The Ministry of Environment was never part of that partnership at the time.

A. Eastham: No.

J. van Dongen: But previous to that they had involvement in integrated pest management, didn't they — in noxious weed control, prior to that?

A. Eastham: I'm not sure, prior to that, how much involvement, but they have never…. Ministry of Forests and Range actually has staff whose jobs are invasive plant management. They're with range branch.

J. van Dongen: Okay.

A. Eastham: Again, like someone else mentioned, when you get to the north half of the province, there's usually one person to do the entire north, and then there are, like, five people to do the rest of the province.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, we're going to move along.
[ Page 907 ]

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. A very important topic, I think. I know from our discussions before and discussions I've had with the B.C. Cattlemen's Association in Kamloops that it's a provincewide concern.

My question is…. You mentioned regional districts. I was at a regional district meeting recently where they were concerned. They realize the importance of the problem too, but they don't necessarily feel like it's totally their responsibility to fund it — right?

You said your funding this year with the Northwest Invasive Plant Council is significantly lower. How much lower, and what…? To me it sounds like not a great load of money to do a very important job, so how much lower is it?

[1815]

A. Eastham: The year is not over, and I never give up. This time of year I do a lot of presentations. I'm doing one to the Bulkley-Nechako regional district council on Thursday, and then next week I'm at McBride, so I'm always trying to get new partners and get them to commit in whatever ways they can and work with us. But I think that overall we're going to be about $200,000 less this year.

We've certainly put less money on the ground just because we don't think we're going to have the money to…. We have to pay contractors to do this work, and our season is pretty much done. We're pretty well finished. We would like to fund more First Nations crews. We basically give them $10,000 seed money, which isn't a lot.

B. Routley: Actually, to follow up on what you just said, my question was about how that $800,000 is spent. Is there a certain number of employees that you have? You mentioned 400 new sites, so I'm not sure. Are you planning on getting at all 400 new sites, or are you going to attack so many per year? Just kind of describe for us what it looks like on the ground from a planning perspective for you. How do you attack the problem?

A. Eastham: If anybody is interested in details, the Northwest does have a website, and our strategic plan and profile go on there. This does predate its becoming a council, so this developed while it was a committee. Really, the strategy…. There are lots of different strategies. When you've only got so much money, what are you going to do with it? How are we going to deal with this?

Our strategy does evolve. It's really input from the members. Our strategy has been changing slightly in the last couple of years, and we're bringing in new tools, which are great tools. One of them is called containment lines. We have some containment lines, like common tansy in Terrace. We have this huge, big area that we just drew a circle around, and we said: "Sorry, folks, you're going to live with common tansy, because there's nothing we can do."

Then we have committed to treating every common tansy site outside that containment line. With lower funding, maybe the containment lines will get bigger, but basically what we do is try and focus on species where we think we have an opportunity for control and on sites where we have an opportunity for control. We don't really often tackle large sites.

We would like to be involved in rehabilitation, but we've just never had the funding to actually rehabilitate a heavily infested site or a large site.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Andrea, for a very interesting presentation.

The final presentation this afternoon is from the Northwest Community College Students Union. I believe we have Mikael Jensen and Danielle Branco.

Whenever you're ready.

D. Branco: My name is Danielle Branco, and I am the external affairs coordinator for the Northwest Community College Students Union, Terrace campus board of directors.

I'm here today representing over 1,200 members — 1,200 students that actually pay dues to be in the student union. These are students from six major centres, including Terrace, Kitimat, Smithers, Houston, Hazelton and Prince Rupert.

I will summarize four recommendations that we, the student union, would recommend: a reduction of tuition fees to 2001 levels; to establish an upfront provincial grants program; to eliminate the interest charged on B.C. student loans; and to restore per-student funding to 2001 levels, accounting for inflation, and index future funding levels to inflation.

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Affordability has been seriously compromised in B.C. by the tuition fee increases resulting from provincial funding cuts to post-secondary education. Since their deregulation in 2002, tuition fees in British Columbia have risen dramatically to an average of over $5,000 for an undergraduate student and to over $8,000 for a graduate student every year.

Statistics Canada reported that those in the top income brackets are twice as likely to have attended a post-secondary education as those in the lower-income bracket. However, the accessibility gap is wider in rural communities — where wealthier Canadians are 5.6 times more likely to pursue higher educational goals than those in the lower-income counterparts — and between aboriginal and non-aboriginal British Columbians.

In B.C., after the massive increase in tuition fees made possible by the government deregulation, Northwest Community College received a record number of applications but experienced a sharp decline. When we actually looked at the enrolment numbers, the major barrier to the students actually enrolling in these programs was funding.
[ Page 908 ]

Tuition fees at Northwest Community College have increased seven times in the last nine years and are about double what they were in 2001. About half of our members are First Nations. Tuition fee increases have eroded the ability for their bands, and a similar number of their members, in 2001 for higher tuition fees as….

They eroded the post-secondary student support program benefit to a point where all the programs don't make enough. They don't make enough to fund all the students, and the band councils actually have to make a difficult decision of whether they send a few students to school or whether they don't send any. Ultimately, they are figuring out who should go to college and who should not. I thought education was a right.

While the individual benefits of obtaining a university or college education are more often cited by advocates of higher tuition fees as justification for students to pay more, the earning premium of those with a post-secondary education has been grossly exaggerated. In reality, the vast majority of university and college graduates, average-income earners, adjusted for inflation, are averaging additional potential earnings through the university education of only $148,000 extra in a lifetime. That's far below the $1 million exaggerated number that we were given and that is frequently advertised by certain organizations.

By exemptions, both high- and low-income earners, earning graduates, will be taxed accordingly in ways that are fair and reflective of their income through the country's progressive taxation system. Conversely, tuition fees act as an additional tax that is blind to the actual financial resources or future earnings. Thus, it is a progressive taxation system, not the user fees, that can be counted on for their individual and collective support for accessible post-secondary education.

The most equitable way to finance a widely accessible system of post-secondary education is through a more progressive income tax system, where affluent Canadians pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than do lower-income Canadians. The system is necessary for the equitable well-being of all the members of society, yet it has been and is being eroded by both the provincial and federal systems through continuous tax cuts.

The reduced fiscal capacity caused by the tax cuts in the last number of years will eventually make it impossible for the provincial government to address the needs of its ever-growing population.

After the B.C. government cut the provincial grants program in 2004, B.C. fell to dead last in Canada for the provision of non-repayable student aid — a full 60 percent below the national average. To make matters worse, the provincial government further cut StudentAid B.C. by $17 million in the summer of 2009.

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Student financial assistance in British Columbia provides support to students without the resources to pay upfront costs for attending the post-secondary education of their choice. B.C.'s record-high student debt levels lead all provinces, behind only the Maritimes. That is the direct result of high tuition fees, coupled with the forced reliance of B.C. students on loan-based financial aid.

Students in British Columbia receive the least amount of non-repayable assistance in the whole country. Only 12 percent of StudentAid B.C. is not in a loan form. That study was conducted before a further 14 percent cut to StudentAid B.C. in 2009 — the B.C. budget update.

At present, student financial assistance in British Columbia is not adequately responsive to the ever-increasing proportion of the cost of education that students are required to bear each and every semester. The B.C. loan reduction program forgives approximately $72 million in student debt each year. While the loan reduction program focuses on helping students with debt management, it does nothing to help improve access for students who cannot afford the higher tuition fees in the first place.

The back-end measures, such as loan remission and debt reduction programs, assist the students with their debt once it's already incurred but do nothing to reduce the need to borrow in the first place.

While the loan reduction program does provide students with one tool for debt management, it remains inferior to the predecessor program, the B.C. student grants program, both in funding and in scope. The student grants program more effectively relieved the financial pressures that students faced while in study and enabled more students to be more successful in their studies instead of having to worry about how they would make the next semester's tuition fee payment or how they were going to pay rent that month.

Northwest Community College students are deeply immured in debt created by a system of increasing tuition fees and mirage student financial aid. The Northwest Community College Students Union recommends ending the debt sentence with a net framework for student aid that includes grants programs and zero interest on B.C. student loans.

Following graduation, student loan borrowers pay interest on their public student loans at a rate of prime plus 2.5 percent — a rate substantially above the government's cost of borrowing, of prime minus 1 percent. In fact, every province but Saskatchewan charges lower interest on the provincial portion of the student loan than the province of British Columbia.

In recognition of how fundamentally unfair it is to force the lower-income families to pay more for a public service, the Newfoundland and Labrador government fully eliminated interest on the student loans in 2008. We're asking: why can't B.C. do the same?

Charging interest on student loans is unethical. In fact, forcing students to borrow to pay for their educa-
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tion creates a system where those who cannot afford to pay it now will actually end up paying more later for the exact same thing that they would have got originally. How fair is that?

Northwest Community College recommends that the government immediately eliminate interest on provincial student loans. The annual impact of such a move would be negligible on the provincial treasury. It would only cost the provincial government $30 million to eliminate the interest charged on student loan debt in B.C.

During the first mandate the current B.C. government cut base funding for post-secondary education. In an attempt to mitigate the resulting financial crisis on campuses across the province, institutional financial woes were transferred to the students in the form of deregulated tuition fees. In addition to skyrocketing fees, the system has seen program cuts, longer wait-lists for programs, deteriorating labs and wretched facilities.

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Between 2001 and 2006 the budget of the Ministry of Advanced Education increased only 9.6 percent. That's less than the rate of annual inflation, which was 12.9 percent over that same period. Moreover, this modest increase has done nothing to address the decline in the B.C. per-student funding, which has fallen nearly every year since 2001.

Northwest Community College recommends that the government increase core funding to our institution, restoring per-student funding to the 2001 levels.

J. Les (Chair): Can I stop you there, Danielle? We're fast running out of time. I do have three members of the committee who would like to ask a question, so if we could take your conclusion as read, and if it's okay by you, I'd like to give members an opportunity to ask some questions.

D. Branco: Not a problem.

J. Les (Chair): Great.

M. Mungall: One of the things that's been coming up, or one of the things that I've been asking of a lot of student unions, is whether they are operating a food bank and if they can provide the statistics of usage of that food bank. The reason is that food bank use is fairly new for post-secondary institutions in B.C., and it's an indicator of the level of poverty that students are experiencing.

M. Jensen: I can answer that. I'm Mike Jensen. I work for the Northwest Community College Students Union as their organizer. The students union is actually currently in a process of rebuilding their financial aid structure, so I can't give you an answer to the question around the food bank of the students union. The food bank has been run by the institution, Northwest Community College, for a number of years. But I can get those numbers to you in the future.

J. Les (Chair): Yeah, sure. If you get that number before the end of next week, send it to the Clerk of our committee, and then it will be shared with all the committee members.

M. Jensen: No problem.

N. Letnick: Thank you for your presentation today. One of your statements says that the university education bump in lifetime earnings has been wrong. It's actually $148,000. If you can supply your source to the committee, it would be appreciated as well.

D. Branco: No problem.

J. van Dongen: My question follows up on Norm's, Danielle, on the premiums for university training. Does that suggest to you that maybe, particularly in this region, we need to have more focus on trades training, such as the college is doing with the mining industry? I mean, it seems to me that there's a need there, and there are certainly additional pay scales available to students. Does there need to be more focus on trades, in your view?

M. Jensen: I should jump in there.

Essentially, in regards to trades, one thing that students are definitely noticing is the lack of students' ability to participate in the decisions around the ITA and such. Currently ITA doesn't have any student representation, so it's actually something we're looking to be more involved with — students across this province.

So I can't give you an exact answer, other than that it's something that we would like to be participating more in, in those decisions.

D. Branco: I just have one final statement, because I know that you guys are concluding.

J. Les (Chair): Well, I have another question first, and then….

D. Branco: Oh, okay.

D. McRae: Two very short questions. First of all, what is the average tuition at Northwest Community College? The second one is: what programs are you guys enrolled in at Northwest Community College?

D. Branco: Currently I'm enrolled in the social service worker diploma program at Northwest Community College. I paid $1,800 for five courses, which is a total of 15 credits, first semester, and my book fees were over $1,200. So you're looking at a person who works a full-
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time job at night and goes to school during the day and has three young children, because I want to make a difference.

I know my personal student loan debt, over taking two programs, has been almost $20,000, and I'm only 2½ years into it. So I think that that's slightly unfair. I would like to ask the committee: why should I have to pay more to be taxed harder to get less to give more to others?

J. Les (Chair): On that note, we will conclude your presentation. Thank you very much for coming. Certainly done with passion.

I believe that concludes our hearing this afternoon. I'm not aware of anyone else who has asked to speak. With that, we'll adjourn this meeting and recess until tomorrow morning in Courtenay.

The committee adjourned at 6:35 p.m.

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