2011 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Thursday, October 13, 2011

1 p.m.

North Ballroom, Best Western Plus Kelowna Hotel

2402 Highway 97 North, Kelowna, B.C.

Present: Rob Howard, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Bill Bennett, MLA;
Mable Elmore, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; Pat Pimm, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA;
Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA; Jane Thornthwaite, MLA.

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 1:01 p.m.

2. Opening statements by Rob Howard, MLA, Chair.

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

4. The Committee recessed from 2:54 to 3:04 p.m.

5. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 4:35 p.m.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Finance and Government Services

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Issue No. 56

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 1643 ]

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011

The committee met at 1:01 p.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. I'll get us started. My name is Rob Howard. I'm the MLA for Richmond Centre and the Chair of this parliamentary committee. I'd like to welcome everyone to the session today.

Each year, in preparation for next year's budget, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper which guides the committee's annual consultation process. The budget consultation paper presents a current fiscal and economic forecast. It also identifies key issues that need to be addressed in the next budget.

There are well-published global economic challenges in Europe and the States, and what we are seeing is that governments which have not been fiscally responsible are being punished. In B.C. we have maintained our triple-A credit rating and are committed to balancing our budget by fiscal 2013 and '14. This will serve us well to protect and grow our job base.

These challenging circumstances mean there are difficult questions ahead, and we look forward to hearing about your priorities in these challenging times. Print copies of the consultation paper are available at the information table at the back of the room.

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

This year we will hold 13 public hearings in each region of the province. We have also scheduled two video conference sessions to hear from residents of eight rural communities living in more remote areas of B.C. This is the third time we have tried this consultation method.

We opened our hearings in Vancouver on September 15 and then travelled to Fort Nelson, Smithers, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops and Courtenay before returning to Victoria. This week we've been in Surrey, Chilliwack and Cranbrook; today in Kelowna; and tomorrow we wrap up in Richmond.

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

Committee members carefully consider all the public input we receive, whether it's an oral presentation made here today, an on-line survey form, a submission in writing or an audio or a video clip. Our deadline to receive submissions is Friday, October 14.

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

Today's meeting is a public meeting, which will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes of the meeting, will be printed and made available on the committee's website. In addition to the meeting transcript, a live audio webcast of this meeting is also produced and available on the committee's website to enable interested listeners to hear the proceedings as they occur. An archived copy of this audio broadcast will also be retained on the committee's website.

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

B. Routley: Bill Routley, MLA, the Cowichan Valley. Good afternoon.

M. Elmore: Good afternoon. Mable Elmore, MLA from Vancouver-Kensington.

B. Ralston: Bruce Ralston, Surrey-Whalley.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. Doug Donaldson, MLA, Stikine; Deputy Chair of the committee, and I live in Hazelton in northwest B.C.

P. Pimm: Good afternoon. Pat Pimm. I'm MLA from Peace River North, and I live in Fort St. John.

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

B. Bennett: Good afternoon. I'm Bill Bennett from Kootenay East. I live in Cranbrook.

M. Stilwell: Hello. Moira Stilwell, Vancouver-Langara.

D. Hayer: Good afternoon. Dave Hayer, MLA for Surrey-Tynehead.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Members.

Also joining us today is Susan Sourial, our Clerk, to my left. Also with us is Arlene Carlson, who is staffing the registration desk. She must have just stepped out of the room. There she is.

Hello, Arlene.

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And we have Hansard Services staff, Michael Baer and Monique Goffinet Miller, who will record and prepare the written transcript of this meeting.
[ Page 1644 ]

So with that, I will call our first witness. We have Lenetta Thordarson and Mark Abrams from the Kelowna Community Foodbank. Welcome. You've got 15 minutes. At the ten-minute mark I'll try and give you a heads-up. You can stop and take questions or go straight through — your choice. The mike is yours.

Presentations

L. Thordarson: Good afternoon. My name is Lenetta Thordarson. I'm the associate executive director for the Kelowna Community Foodbank, and joining me today is Mark Abrams, our community investment officer. We welcome the opportunity to present to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

The Kelowna food bank is a non-profit charitable organization whose operating budget is not government-funded. While our mission statement is "to assist in alleviating chronic hunger and poverty in the Central Okanagan," moving forward, our organization's real objective is to change the word "alleviate" to "eliminate," with a focus on prevention. This reflects a changing role for food banks, a role we are eager to embrace.

In 2010 the Kelowna food bank served nearly 40,000 people, of whom approximately 10,000 were children. That represents 13,000 households, with a total value of food distributed of $3 million. As key stakeholders in the provision of several nutrition improvement programs and critical food delivery initiatives addressing the needs of at-risk families, children and seniors, we are considered one of the principal stewards of food security in our community.

We are members of Food Banks Canada and Food Banks British Columbia which support us on national and regional levels through advocacy and awareness programs, food-share resources and leveraged corporate partnerships, all of which contribute toward efficiencies and economies of scale that greatly assist in the effectiveness and cost of delivering our services.

We are seeing a growing demand, while, like many organizations operating in the charitable sector, we also see reduced support from all levels of government. This results in a reliance on the private and business community that has become increasingly burdened with the need to provide support. We see that donor fatigue in our community.

We are also seeing a changing face to food bank clientele. As more business and professional people find themselves out of work, not just low-income renters faced with hard choices but homeowners who are also at risk of not being able to make that next month's payment find themselves at our doors.

It's time to stop stigmatizing and change public and government perceptions of "it doesn't affect me," because it truly can. A growing number of Canadians living in B.C. are one or two paycheques away from insolvency.

M. Abrams: Our society today is faced with the enormous challenge of increased demand on all health, social and welfare systems, and the escalating costs associated with dealing with negative outcomes rather than prevention. Virtually all current research indicates that two of the key social determinants of health are economic security and food security. We believe it is time to really shift the focus toward prevention.

The Ministry of Finance Report on the Budget 2011 Consultations, released November 2010, cited health care and prevention over cure as key priorities, with nutrition as one of the key focus points. Yet the preliminary proposed budget plan that we've seen — identified as table A6 and table A7, "Revenue by source 2006-2007 to 2012-2013" — only provides for a marginal increase in revenue generation through Medical Services Plan premiums and federal health and social transfers, with little substantial spending increase in the areas covered through health and social services spending.

A paradigm shift is needed in how government perceives and responds to issues and outcomes of poverty and child poverty, wage gap and living wage, affordable housing, hunger, nutrition and food security. The Cost of Poverty in B.C. report prepared by SPARC-BC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states that 12 percent of British Columbians, or more than half a million people, live in poverty.

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We have the highest poverty rate in Canada. Poverty in B.C. represents a direct cost to government alone of $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion annually, or close to 6 percent of the provincial budget. The cost to society overall is considerably higher — $8.1 billion to $9.2 billion, or between 4.1 percent and 4.7 percent of B.C.'s GDP.

In contrast, the estimated cost of a comprehensive poverty reduction plan in B.C. is $3 billion to $4 billion per year. When it comes to inaction versus poverty reduction, you need only do the math.

L. Thordarson: In British Columbia, and especially evident in cities like Kelowna, the wage gap continues to grow. While some education programs assist in providing for a marginal increase in salary potential in some sectors, the fundamental reality is that the living wage continues to go up while few jobs are being created at income levels that bring wage earners close to meeting that requirement.

The Food Banks Canada report, Creating Quality Sustainable Jobs and a Resilient Workforce in Canada, identifies several areas of concern and makes recommendations addressing the radically changing labour market, inadequate supports for disadvantaged workers, and the low pay and poor quality of too many jobs. These issues are echoed in the reports of several other fair employment advocacy groups.
[ Page 1645 ]

Food Banks Canada also reports that low income is the fundamental reason people turn to food banks. The number of people living with low income in Canada has not dropped below 2.7 million individuals in any year in the last decade. That was taken from a snapshot of HungerCount 2010.

M. Abrams: Affordable housing continues to be a major concern in many areas of British Columbia. In its 2009 Central Okanagan poverty report card, the Poverty and Homelessness Action Team of the Central Okanagan reports that there remains a critical shortage of affordable housing in the Central Okanagan. While some progress is being made at the municipal level in Kelowna, there still remain a large number of low-income families and seniors not able to access affordable or subsidized housing.

To quote one survey respondent: "When you are third generation living in the area, it's difficult to sever ties and move away. All our family is here, but we're being driven into heavy debt trying to stay." Again, the outcome is that when faced with no other options, those who are challenged to afford to pay rent, pay bills and buy food have little choice but to come to the food bank for assistance.

L. Thordarson: Hunger, nutrition and food security are critical issues in the development of children, and B.C. continues to have the highest child poverty rate in Canada, for eight years running.

Dr. Paul Hasselback, chief medical officer for Interior Health Authority, recently stated:

"Food banks act as an unpleasant reminder of society's failure to stop poverty. There is nobody more adversely affected by that failure than children who, when hungry, start out at a crippling disadvantage that often leads to a life impeded by educational underachievement, substance abuse and violent behaviour — all things that eventually cost society a lot more than the price of a few meals a day."

B.C. has the highest child poverty rate. Approximately one in six children in B.C. lives in poverty. That's the equivalent of a whole grade at any school. Further, we could reduce the cost of health care in Kelowna alone by as much as 25 percent if we focused on the eradication of poverty.

M. Abrams: The Kelowna food bank is concerned with the record use of food bank services along with reduced access to government grant funding points to assist with the provision of food security programs.

We would like to see an examination of better practices and priorities, vis-à-vis concentrating on prevention as a priority, rather than outcomes. Poverty reduction and child poverty; the expanding wage gap and a sustainable living wage for families at risk; affordable housing and all of the related issues of hunger, health, education and welfare — all of these issues have a direct impact on health and the cost of health care in our province.

The Kelowna Community Foodbank shares a vision with our community — to empower rather enable dependency, to create positive outcomes through prevention that benefit all political, societal and social service community agencies.

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This will result in reduced costs to health care; better educational outcomes; a positive workforce impact on productivity; reduced criminal activity; better socialized youth and families; and in general, a more harmonious society.

L. Thordarson: We reject the notion that providing healthy, nutritional food and support to our at-risk population enables dependency. We work to empower and encourage capacity-building through our support and with that of other partnering community organizations.

We embrace the philosophy that healthier children and families are healthier, happier, more productive and create less shame and drain on social, welfare and health care programs within our society. We encourage a prevention model in order to improve opportunities and create capacity-building.

Finally, given a reasonable option to live in a dignified, self-reliant way, we're certain most people will follow it.

M. Abrams: Premier Christy Clark has identified some key priorities to be addressed by her admin: jobs, families first and an open government. We believe these may go partway toward addressing some of our issues too.

It's a start, and we would like to see much, much more. We understand there are finite resources available, and we continue to support investment in all sectors with competitive provincial programs and incentives that will result in workforce stability and expanded sustainable job creation.

We support a reduction in expenditures on superfluous infrastructure. We encourage better allocation of resources directly to grass-roots-level agencies that have the ability to create and produce much more cost-efficient results in program delivery, both in program and capital expenditures.

We would like to see more accountability in allocation processes at all levels of government, and we encourage increased investment in positive generation of social enterprise program development, along with a change to taxation models to reward more direct community contribution in that area.

We thank you for your time, and we welcome your comments and your questions.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation. I think you really addressed the questions put out in the budget document very well.
[ Page 1646 ]

Two quick questions. One of them. Our MLA office, in collaboration with the Smithers Chamber of Commerce, did a living-wage calculation for Smithers, and it was, I think, about $15.85 an hour, bumping up to over $17 if a family needed two cars for employment purposes, which is often the case in rural areas. I'm just curious if you've used SPARC resources or your own to calculate a living wage for Kelowna.

Secondly, do you have any direct ideas around taxation models to reward more direct community contribution in the area of social enterprise or — that last sentence in your presentation?

L. Thordarson: I'll maybe take the first question.

Yes, Kelowna has calculated its living wage just recently. It was published, I think, at just over $17 an hour for two parents. Each parent would need to earn about $17 an hour for a family of four.

M. Abrams: Addressing the second question — thanks, Doug — it's a good one, because we are involved right now in the examination of several models that could fit into that category of social enterprise.

We see it as an opportunity to be much more self-sufficient than we are now, but it takes a partnership with not just the local community and business community but with government to create incentives — use the model of the film industry — whereby others who wish to contribute and participate in some of these programs can also realize not just the benefits of the outcomes of coming up with a great idea that actually has commercial value but some incentives to get them started along the way.

Specifically, I don't have one in mind that I can share with you. But I can say that we're looking at a couple ourselves right now.

J. Thornthwaite: Just following up on that point, you should contact our parliamentary secretary for social innovation, Gordie Hogg, because he's working on exactly that.

But my question. You said "to work on better allocation of resources for grass roots." Are you saying that the funding is too top-heavy?

L. Thordarson: Well, I find that a lot of the time some of the funding goes to agencies that aren't actually doing the work. When it comes to, say, food security initiatives, there's a lot of funding that's available where it's going to agencies that maybe are doing research or data collection on food security as opposed to the actual direct delivery of service, such as a food bank where we're needing the funds and food to supply food, just at that grass-roots level.

[1320]

That's really what we're talking about in terms of that particular piece — just making sure that the money is getting down so the work can actually get done.

J. Thornthwaite: Could you give us examples, then, as a follow-up? Not now. I mean, you can send it to us via e-mail. That would be helpful. Thanks.

L. Thordarson: Okay. Perfect. I will do that.

R. Howard (Chair): Yeah, you can either send it to the Clerk or to myself. We'll make sure it gets distributed.

L. Thordarson: Perfect.

R. Howard (Chair): We've run you out of time. Thank you very much for coming forward today. Great presentation.

Next up we have BrainTrust Canada Association — Doug Rankmore, Maribeth Friesen and Richard Ingram.

Welcome to the three of you. As you probably know, you've got 15 minutes. I'll give you a heads-up around ten. You can stop and take some questions, or you can go straight through — your choice. The microphone is yours.

R. Ingram: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is Richard Ingram. I'm the president of the board of BrainTrust Canada. I live and work here in Kelowna. I work as a portfolio manager in private industry, so not-for-profit is a very interesting experience for me.

What I'd like to do is give each one of you a concussion management card to take home to read and to use in your home and in your life. We've provided these to the ski patrol association of Canada. It's part of what we want to talk to you about today, so if you'll give me a second, I'll do that.

That, in a nutshell, talks a little bit about why we're here. Acquired brain injury is not something you're born with. It's something you acquire in your life. It could be a concussion. It could be a stroke. It could be a seizure. It could be a workplace accident. It could be an auto accident. You suffer brain damage. You're forever changed.

I have a family member. One of my cousin's children, at 21, was in a car accident. He severed his spinal cord. He has partial use of his arms and hands — nothing else. After a two-year stint at G.F. Strong he went back to university, got a bachelor's degree and went on and got a law degree. He works in his father's law office in Duncan and practises law, specializing in helping the handicapped.

Do you know why he could do that? He could do that because he had a brain. His body didn't work. He needs a wheelchair. He needs special assistance to get in and out of bed. He needs help getting dressed. He needs help going to the bathroom. He needs help doing every other function in his life, but his brain works.

The other issue is that if you have a brain injury, you're forever changed as well. Your mood changes. Your ability to interact changes. There are lots of social interaction challenges.
[ Page 1647 ]

We were here a year ago, as well, and talked about this, and it was noted as an area that required more attention from you. We're back again today because it is an area…. The ABI world — or the acquired brain injury world — in British Columbia is not a coordinated effort.

BrainTrust Canada provides counselling services. We have a staff of 14 in Kelowna and Vernon providing counselling services. Our caseload is only half of the demand. In other words, for everyone we have in our office, there's at least one more in the community that could use our services.

We also provide prevention and injury and awareness programs, and you have an example of what we do. The actress who died in Mont Tremblant, who hit her head — if they'd had that card and they had followed that card, they potentially would have diagnosed the injury and been able to respond.

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We really hope and encourage the provincial government to do a variety of things. I'm going to turn it off to my peers. We need a coordinated program on prevention in the province.

Our organization was chosen as charity of choice by the B.C. broadcasters association this summer, which gives us the public service broadcasting acknowledgment of all the broadcasters in the province for a year. We're told that that's over a million dollars of public service announcements to protect your head.

What do we do after that? Where do we get that kind of money? Where do we launch that kind of a campaign?

We also have a shortfall in service delivery. I mentioned to you that we're only able to look after half of the people who need our service in the community. And our community is one of the better served. There are areas in this province that have no ABI service or counselling programs.

We also would like to develop a coordinated approach to having research available to understand how to work better or more efficiently with those people who do acquire a brain injury. How do we help integrate them back into their families so they're not on the streets or in jail? How do we make sure that they can live within the community, given reasonable expectations?

Those are some of the issues that we see in our community and in this province. I'm going to ask Doug to talk a bit more, if I could.

D. Rankmore: Thanks, Richard. My name is Doug Rankmore. I am currently the chair of the BrainTrust Canada Foundation. I'm also currently acting as the CEO of the Kelowna General Hospital Foundation. I had a career prior to this, and the last time I presented to this committee was as CEO of BrainTrust Canada. My career spans about 35 years working in mental health, physical disability, developmental handicaps and the latter part of my career with brain injury.

In all my career I have never seen anything like acquired brain injury, and that's from a lot of perspectives. Certainly from clinical presentation, there isn't anything like it. After your brain injury, many people are left ambulatory, are able to carry on a conversation, are deemed well and are discharged. The vast majority of those have cognitive disabilities following that aren't readily observable, and they end up spiralling down in our community, starting with losing their job, losing their family, losing all their friends, turning to drugs and alcohol, becoming homeless and ending up in the corrections institute.

As Richard said, we've been here before, and in my career I've probably talked to ten ministers, 20 deputies, an uncountable number of assistant deputies and managers in health services and across government. Very little has been developed in brain injury. Part of the reason for that is because it's not obvious to people. Part of the reason for that also is because of the squeeze for money. When you have capital expenditures in a health authority for replacement equipment of $100 million, it's very difficult to allocate resources to people who don't appear disabled but who actually come up in our system later.

A really good example of that: many of you may have seen things in the media lately around concussion management and early-onset dementias resulting from that, depression, other mental health problems. This is the cover of an article from Scientific American called "Blowing the Whistle on Concussion." This is an article from 11 years ago. Up until two years ago the NFL denied that concussion had any effect on the brain.

This is something similar we see in all service development in brain injury. In my opinion, in my career I haven't seen a more important health and social service issue anywhere, but it's one that has not received the attention that it really needs because it's, number one, across ministries, across budgets and across causes.

I'll just provide you with some basic statistics on it. Most of our statistics come from the Center for Disease Control in the U.S., because in Canada we don't count brain injuries. There are no….

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R. Howard (Chair): I should tell you that you're at about ten minutes. I've got a long list of questioners, but your call.

D. Rankmore: You bet.

In B.C. it's about 15,000 new cases each year, 160,000 people living with brain injury in B.C. at any given time, and 42 a day — more than multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and breast cancer combined — every day. It's the greatest killer under 45, the greatest disabler under 44 and kills more children than all other causes combined.
[ Page 1648 ]
Hard to believe, but an absolutely incredible statistic that hasn't yet been addressed.

One of the things we're in front of you for today is to advocate for funding of the ABI innovation fund. It is a fund that will provide the development of data, materials, education and consultation to be able to develop a service system for people with acquired brain injury in B.C.

I'll open up to questions.

M. Stilwell: Hi. Thank you for the presentation. As a physician, I'm keenly interested in this. I think that your topic is becoming more and more timely. I think you're getting to a tipping point, based on recent media.

My question is about sports and concussion in children. Do you have a set of recommendations for awareness and educating coaches and teachers so as not to create a wave of children who will require being seen by a physician? What are the current recommendations that you have around that?

D. Rankmore: You bet. Certainly education of coaches and parents is a critical component to it. There are some great examples in B.C. right now. Football B.C. has developed a comprehensive set of materials. There are draft materials available from the Centre for Disease Control for kind of entire sporting regimens or within sports. Those materials are available. There's just no mechanism to get them out there, to promote them, to train people in how to use them, follow up and evaluate.

B. Ralston: Following along the same line, obviously the most high-profile debate on concussion is taking place in hockey across the country. Do you meet with coaches and the executive of, say, the minor hockey association here in your city to spread some of this important information that you have?

D. Rankmore: Yes, we certainly try to. Any opportunity we can, we've held seminars, public seminars, brought in speakers — that sort of thing. We've sent out this material to sporting associations, but we don't have the resources to be able to go and follow up and provide that training.

Brain injury, particularly the impact of concussion, is a very sensitive clinical issue. Just sending out a card and a set of materials is insufficient to be able to train and educate coaches and parents on the outcome — of multiple concussions, particularly.

R. Ingram: It's very much a one-off, depending on the organization. Not all sporting organizations are organized enough to be able to take that on and deliver it to their coaches. It's not mandated anywhere. It's not mandated like a criminal check or a pedophile-type check that you do when you have to work with children. It's not mandated anywhere.

B. Bennett: I'm curious about the diagnostic side of this. It's implicit in the statement that if a young person, for example, has a concussion and there's damage that's not picked up immediately, things are potentially going to end badly, which suggests to me, being a non-medical person, that if you miss it, you're too late. There's no sense diagnosing it later because it's too late to do anything. Correct me on that if I need to be corrected.

Is it ever too late? Are there things that can be done? Primarily, also, how do you diagnose someone who has had a couple of concussions playing hockey when they were 16 or 20 — you know, at age 30 or 40?

D. Rankmore: No, it's never too late. It's too late to stop, potentially, organic damage. It's too late, potentially, to stop that cascade in terms of development of later dementia, but it's not too late to stop what those result in: 60 percent of people living on the streets had a brain injury prior to becoming homeless, and 80 percent of people in prisons live with brain injury. That type of secondary prevention and that type of cost to our public system is very preventable.

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Brain injury is permanent. Now, many concussions…. And I'm hoping that you don't all walk away thinking brain injury is concussions. It's a very small amount of brain injury. So 80 percent of brain injury is not concussion; It's actual tissue damage that results in permanent disability. But it's those secondary effects.

Certainly, we can do a lot to prevent the initial brain injury, as well, through enforcement of helmet laws, education of people in sports — you know, all kinds of prevention initiatives. But once the tissue damage is done, there is no repairing brain tissue.

B. Bennett: And diagnosis is — what? — MRI? Is that how you…?

D. Rankmore: Diagnosis for gross, catastrophic injury is CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs, but a lot of the outcome of injury is not picturable — particularly concussions — because it's at the neuronal or axonal level. There are breaks in each axon broadly across the brain, and so you may lose 100,000 or 100 million axons in a concussive injury, which you can also get in a car crash, but you won't see that on MRIs or CAT scans.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, all three of you. I'm sorry we've run you out of time. We've actually run you over time. We still have MLA Elmore and Thornthwaite on the list, who will have to catch up with you after this or outside of this, but thank you for taking the time.

R. Ingram: I appreciate the opportunity. I'll look forward to some positive results.
[ Page 1649 ]

R. Howard (Chair): Next we have up the B.C. Fruit Growers Association — Joe Sardinha and Glen Lucas.

Welcome, Joe. How are you today?

J. Sardinha: Hello. I'm great, thank you.

R. Howard (Chair): As you know, you've got 15 minutes. About ten, I'll give you a heads-up. Over to you.

J. Sardinha: Thank you once again, for an opportunity to present prior to the provincial budget and in this review process.

My name is Joe Sardinha. I'm president of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association and a Summerland apple grower. The fruit here right now that I just placed on the table is fresh from our orchard this morning. We've just begun Ambrosia harvest, and it's a little bit late — our harvest this year.

Needless to say, welcome to Kelowna. Kelowna is also home to many of the 760 commercial tree fruit growers that are members of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association, and also they are producers that contribute to the $80 million in farm-gate sales generated in the tree fruit industry.

The B.C. Fruit Growers looked at this year's challenges in terms of the provincial budget and budget process. We thought that addressing the fiscal challenge and getting B.C. working should be the theme of this year's budget process. It's going to be a lot more difficult for government to balance the books due to the results of the provincial referendum on the HST. Therefore, we feel very strongly that it is time to refocus investment in the resource sectors. That will stimulate economic activity, create jobs and ultimately generate provincial revenues that will be needed in the future for government programs.

Of note, the member association representatives of the B.C. Agriculture Council met very recently, and they were united in their approach — unanimous in their disappointment of the provincial government's 20 years of government cuts to the agricultural budget.

It should be no surprise that all agricultural sectors in B.C. have shrunk, and those that have not, such as dairy, poultry, eggs and wine, have protected markets through government regulations or marketing boards. The commodities that have shrunk are being hit by high taxation or subsidies provided to our competitors. For example, the carbon tax makes our production costs higher than our competitors, and our competitors continue to receive more government subsidy and program support.

So what are the results of cuts to the agricultural budget? Two very, very prominent items come to mind. One is that output is shrinking as the competitive position of some sectors continues to erode. I can tell you that the apple, hog, beef, potato, onion and carrot sectors have shrunk dramatically. Some commodities have avoided the shrinkage, and certain examples of those include cherries, blueberries and nursery, but we see definitely that there will be challenges on the horizon for these as well.

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Secondly, farm income is negative, and it is more persistently negative in B.C. than in the rest of Canada. In fact, the last four years have shown negative net farming income in B.C. I consider this to be both very unusual and unacceptable for a province with such a diverse agricultural sector.

Having said all of this, B.C. agriculture has many strengths that have allowed it to survive so far. We are a very resilient bunch of farmers out there — a strong entrepreneurial spirit, high quality and advantages in terms of producing in a northern climate, innovation. We've seen lots of innovation in the tree fruit industry. The replant program is a great example of innovation, not just in planting systems and varieties but also in water conservation and other environmental aspects. And consumer preference for B.C. products and a willingness to pay a premium that we see from many of our customers.

Those are some of the things that have helped to keep us afloat, but we continue to be underfunded, as an agricultural sector, in the province of B.C. when compared to other Canadian provinces.

What can government do to address the problems of the agricultural sector? Well, I can tell you that making profitable agriculture in B.C. a priority, with effective programming that meets the needs of agriculture, certainly should be one of the main thoughts. We need to get the basics right. Certainly the jobs will follow. I notice that there's an increasing focus on jobs in this province, and globally for that matter. Just ask our U.S. counterparts what jobs mean.

Our families provide the first step in the value chain as farmers. Without the first step of ensuring that agricultural production is viable, the agricultural multiplier — which happens to be one of the highest — does not work. We need our government to provide a competitive economy through competitive taxation rates, especially the carbon tax, and we need to find ways to mitigate the loss that the farming community has had in terms of reverting back to the PST and GST system.

We need our government to finally address the long-term downturn in agriculture by investing in the sector to the same degree as other jurisdictions. We have been at a huge disadvantage when we look at our American counterparts, for instance, and also interprovincially. Jobs will be created through investment activities, and that includes things such as the renewal of farm and processing infrastructure and through operations.

We propose that the province reverse the trend of diminishing agricultural budgets, not only for the sake of farm families but also for the benefits of a strong and
[ Page 1650 ]
thriving farm economy, which creates the first link in the value chain.

We have noted — and certainly in past presentations here, we've said this before — that successive Social Credit, NDP and Liberal governments have, during good times or bad, reduced the agriculture budget as a percentage of agriculture gross domestic product in this province.

We've also been looking at another possibility, and that is to direct a fraction of the Columbia River treaty agreement funds, which flow annually to this province into general revenues, to the tree fruit, potato and vegetable sectors. Those are the three sectors that have been affected by what I am going to say next.

You may ask: "How does the tree fruit sector have a claim on the Columbia River treaty funds?" Our sector, the tree fruit sector, has been pummelled by the overproduction of apples in Washington State. Since the regular supply of irrigation water was made possible by the Columbia River treaty and the damming of B.C. rivers in 1964, the Washington State apple industry has grown from the same size as B.C.'s to 25 times the size of the B.C. tree fruit industry.

With some of the Columbia River treaty benefits directed to each of these affected sectors, tree fruit, potatoes and field vegetables would then have the resources to encourage further private investment and innovation infrastructure and other elements of industry development.

We have provided you with a graph also. Please take note. This is from Stats Canada. It does show the percentage of agriculture GDP, actually a running history of it — ten, 11 good years of history in terms of expenditures by provincial governments in each of the Canadian provinces.

I will note that Quebec and Ontario are probably what we consider competing provinces in terms of tree fruits. I will note that Nova Scotia also has a very good tree fruit industry, and their levels are much higher than ours.

I would now like to quickly move to address some of the questions that were asked of the presenters, namely: "How can we maintain B.C. as a preferred destination for investment?" I'd like to say that B.C. is not a preferred destination for investment in the agricultural sector. In some ways, B.C. agriculture is viewed as a high-cost venture, especially with our land costs, that is operating with diminishing government support, increasing regulatory burden and unfair taxation. The government needs to address these competitive issues.

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"With current fiscal challenges, what measures can government take to help families?" We strongly feel that providing nutritional food for youth will help families and reduce future health care costs.

There are three areas that need attention. Firstly, the Buy B.C. program must be introduced. This is long-promised and overdue. The school fresh fruit and vegetable nutrition program needs to be expanded to all B.C. schools as originally proposed. And it is time for government to implement a policy for its institutions by preferentially buying B.C. agricultural products. The public already supports B.C. agriculture, so why is government not doing the same for our institutions as well?

"What programs and spending are your priorities?" Well, clearly, from our point of view, agriculture programming is our priority. We believe this will create the spinoff jobs and economic activity, especially in the rural areas where jobs and economic activity are needed the most.

Another side issue to the underfunding of agriculture, and what I've said about shrinking sectors and the challenges that we face, is that a growing percentage of ALR land is vacant and unproductive. It does little to contribute to the economic activity we need to sustain the provincial economy and, ultimately, all the programs and services that B.C. citizens depend on.

The government, of course, needs to live up to its commitment to the ALR by keeping the land productive. In order to do that, we need to have equitable funding put back into agriculture that will put us on a level with other provinces.

"How do we create the jobs that future generations will depend on?" That is purely by investing in the agricultural sector today. It will become the basis for future generations to develop and adapt future jobs in farming, food processing and the related tourism industry.

"How important is our credit rating?" Well, I can tell you that the B.C. credit rating for our sector is less important than getting agriculture on a strong and competitive and profitable footing — specifically a profitable footing. Our credit rating will falter if government does not get the basics right, and providing a competitive level of investment and resource for agriculture needs to be a prerequisite to getting that road map in line.

I would now just like to summarize. For the committee's information, we have presented for the last ten years. I'm hoping that the tenth year is the charm, that some of our recommendations will finally move forward and we will actually see some new investment in agriculture and in agricultural budgets and new prioritization for one of the really basic industries that this province depends on.

So hoping that the tenth year is the charm, I will summarize with these recommendations. We recommend placing the agricultural budget at an average level with competing provinces, providing an additional $116 million in annual funding immediately; alternately — and I talked about the Columbia River treaty — redirecting $9.25 million annually of the Columbia basin treaty funds, which come in the form of $200 million to $300 million annually into the general revenues of this province, to invest in the tree fruit, potato and
[ Page 1651 ]
vegetable sectors affected by the treaty; (2) increasing budgets for the critical health and nutritional promotion programs and providing very strong direction to ensure that 100 percent of B.C. schools have access to the school fresh fruit and vegetable nutrition program; and (3) by reinstating the Buy B.C. program.

We do have some comments in terms of if there are other additional new resources. We think that the prudent debt reduction must be postponed until the economy recovers. I think that stimulating the economy is more important. We believe that health care costs must be managed and that tax cuts are not necessarily a priority unless, of course, you take my comments on the carbon tax for agriculture being counter to that.

Addressing tax inequities between rural and urban areas is important, because we believe that the carbon tax is being handled disproportionately between the urban and rural sectors, and investment in economic development programs is definitely required.

Once again, I want to thank you for allowing us this opportunity to present to this committee. Each year I've noticed that the makeup of the committee is different, but we hope that our message…. You know, we stayed fairly strongly on our message. Some years we present some new ideas as things evolve for our sector and for the challenges of agriculture. We recognize that there are fiscal challenges in this province, but the agricultural issue has been a longstanding one, and we need to do something to rectify what has really been a disservice to those of us who are stewards of the land, keepers of the ALR and providers of food for this province.

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R. Howard (Chair): Thanks, Joe. We're just about out of time. We'll try and squeeze in a question or two.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much, Joe and Glen. I've been here six consecutive years, so not all the faces have changed. I did have a question about the Buy B.C. program. You've put it forward every year, yet you seem to have been singularly unsuccessful in persuading the government, even the executive director of the Ag Council, Steve Thomson, an MLA from this area who became a Minister of Agriculture. Nothing changed. Why have you been so unsuccessful in persuading the government to adopt this program?

J. Sardinha: I think, in all honesty, the Buy B.C. program was…. It was a program introduced under the New Democratic Party when they were in government. It was a valuable program — widespread adoption by the industry. To this day, the retailers still use that little "Buy B.C." logo on many of their flyers. The grocery chains still use that. You'll see it in the corner of their flyers. I think it just went hand in hand with the cuts that were being made to the Agriculture budget, that Buy B.C. became a victim of that.

Then, in terms of industry continuing to ask for reinstatement of the Buy B.C. program, I'm sad to say that it became a partisan issue. One party created it, and perhaps the other party didn't want to bring it back.

I know that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on a study to develop a new provincial branding program with new tag lines and new logos, and nothing came of that. I also know that the current government, in a previous mandate, also undertook to do an agricultural plan, and in that plan it recommended bringing back a provincial branding program and putting in funding for it. Nothing has come to fruition.

There's been a lot of disappointment on the industry's side, because we felt that we had something real that was making a difference, not just for the tree fruit sector but for vegetable producers, for beef producers, for everyone that produced a commodity or food in this province. We had a program that was having a dramatic effect.

R. Howard (Chair): Joe, thank you for that. I'm sorry, but we've run you out of time. We still have MLAs on the list: MLAs Thornthwaite, Donaldson and Pimm. They'll have to catch up to you outside of this. Thank you so much for coming forward, and thank you for the apples.

Next up we have the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce.

Welcome, Bryn. You probably know that you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up, and you can stop and take some questions or go straight through. Your choice. Over to you.

B. Gilbert: Good. I think we may be brief, so hopefully we should be able to stay within that time frame with no issues.

As you mentioned, I'm Bryn Gilbert. I'm currently the treasurer of the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce. I've been on their board of directors for approximately five years. With me today — who isn't sitting here — is Caroline Grover, who is our CEO as well.

For those of you that don't know, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce is the biggest chamber of commerce outside of the Lower Mainland, and currently we serve about 1,100 members. Those members range from individuals to some of the largest corporations in the area.

Thanks for the opportunity to come and talk to you guys today and share some of our recommendations on behalf of our members and some of the issues that we think should be considered as part of the 2012 budgeting process.

What we've tried to do is generally move things into — I guess I'd call it major headings. The first one we're going to talk about a little bit is crime and safety. Obviously, having a safe place to live, work and do business is important to our membership and of course to our community as a whole.
[ Page 1652 ]

One of the major influences that can have a negative effect on crime and safety in our area is organized crime. In response to this, a dedicated organized crime task force was established in our region with an initial funding commitment of three years. Our understanding is that the funding for this task force was largely provided by the federal government to the provincial government, who in turn took responsibility for establishing the task force.

That funding was up for renewal in 2011, and we're very encouraged that the funding was renewed. However, we also understand that the same level of federal funding of this program may not be available moving forward. As a result, we're concerned that funding for other areas within policing will be scaled back in order to facilitate the continued funding of the organized crime task force.

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Therefore, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce is recommending that the provincial government retain the current level of policing in budgets, along with the renewed organized crime task force funding.

The next major area we wanted to touch on briefly. A few items on there have to do with the training of workers. Training of workers is another major area of concern for our membership. There continues to be a skills gap between the skills that businesses require and the skill sets of those that are currently seeking employment. As businesses in the province struggle to meet the day-to-day demands of operating their business, they lack the ability to adequately train new employees.

The B.C. Chamber of Commerce was a leading voice calling for the introduction of a training tax credit, which was introduced by the province in 2006, and we are certainly appreciative of this initiative. However, that program focused on apprenticeships in mainly traditional industries, and as a result, many small businesses have not been able to benefit from this program.

As such, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce recommends that the provincial government provide funding to be used by employers seeking training credits that are not being served by the programs currently in place.

One of the other areas that was identified, in relation to training of workers, as having potential to provide assistance to business looking to fill their skills gaps is the use of co-op student programs. Although there currently exists a co-op infrastructure within the province, many small businesses find the cost of participating prohibitive.

This is an issue that had been raised by both the Kelowna chamber and the B.C. chamber for a number of years. The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce continues to recommend that the provincial government introduce a co-op tax credit to business employers equal to 15 percent of wages paid to qualified co-op students. This approach would assist businesses' access, train employees and provide valuable hands-on training for students.

The next and final area that we want to talk about a little bit has to do with taxation. The first taxation-related item we wanted to touch on is property transfer tax. The property transfer tax has a negative impact on the affordability of housing throughout the province, and it also negatively impacts the competitiveness of B.C. as a place to work, invest and do business.

This issue has been brought forward in the past by various groups, including the B.C. Real Estate Association, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and the B.C. Chamber of Commerce. The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce continues to recommend that the provincial government undertake an immediate review of the property transfer tax system and that the provincial government move to eliminate the property transfer tax within three years.

Another taxation-related issue identified by our membership is the current B.C. property tax assessment system. This system is important in ensuring that there is fairness and predictability in assessments while at the same time continuing to value properties on a regular basis and enabling municipalities to rely on a stable source of revenue.

Other jurisdictions, most notably Ontario, have introduced major property tax assessment changes, and we believe the B.C. government should consider implementing similar changes.

Specifically, the Kelowna chamber recommends that the B.C. government make changes to the property tax assessment system which include adopting a four-year assessment cycle, commencing with the 2013 taxation year; a mandatory phase-in of assessment increases, commencing in 2013 and applying to subsequent taxation years, initially for residential, farm and managed forest properties; establishing a review panel for a stakeholders consultation process to consider whether the proposed mandatory phase-in program should be expanded to other property classes — in particular, to commercial, industrial or multi-residential property classes; and that the government establish a stakeholders consultation process aimed at improving the fairness and effectiveness of the present property tax appeals system.

The final tax-related item we'd like to touch on briefly is HST, in particular the transition away from a harmonized system. The Kelowna chamber was generally in favour of harmonizing the sales tax system in the province, while at the same time recognizing that there were areas that needed to be reviewed to ensure that the impact to certain businesses and industries that were negatively affected by harmonization was minimized to the extent possible.

Now that the referendum has concluded, the uncertainty surrounding the transition away from a harmonized sales tax system is severely hurting our local and provincial economy — in particular, construction development industries, which are major economic drivers in British Columbia.
[ Page 1653 ]

Moving forward, we, along with other stakeholder groups, would urge the B.C. government to move quickly in establishing a transition plan and communicating that plan to all British Columbians.

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Specifically, the chamber recommends that the province and the federal government seek a speedy resolution to the obstacles impeding the return to pre-HST taxation conditions; that the business sector be provided with transition dates as early as possible; and that a policy be drafted quickly, and quickly endorsed, that would establish a treatment of HST paid during the transition phase.

That really touches on what we wanted to go over today. We've also provided a written submission that has a few more details on some of the background and summarizes our recommendations. I guess we'll move on to questions.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation and for reinforcing what we heard last year on some of these from your organization.

The organized crime task force. I just wanted to get it clear in my mind what the recommendation is hinting at. Is there a worry that because the province now appears to be the main funder of the task force, it's a case, perhaps, of robbing Peter to pay Paul — that it will reduce the policing budget?

B. Gilbert: Exactly, yeah. Policing in other areas that might get cut back in order to free up the funding to continue to fund that organized crime task force — that's really the big concern. Obviously, all areas of policing are important, so we want to make sure that it's not just a clawback from other areas.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you for your presentation. With regard to the training, what were the suggested training credits for what industry base?

B. Gilbert: Really, I guess it could be as broad as possible. I guess one of the challenges right now is that any business out there…. I work in the accounting profession. We have lots of people that we'd like to train and provide training for. They're not part of a Red Seal program or something, so then those training credits aren't available.

I mean, the chamber of commerce has other people that, again, we'd like to provide training for and increase their skill set. It's pretty broad to different areas. It's basically just expanding that and making it available to a broader base of skill sets and a broader amount of training.

B. Routley: Just a follow-up question on that. Is it your position that that would result in more training — to have that kind of help, to have that subsidy for training?

B. Gilbert: You know, I think it really would. I think a lot of businesses right now, when they're looking at where they're at…. If they're looking for places they can cut a bit of money, a lot of times they'll look at those training things they're doing. They're really making that choice to say: "Maybe that's a discretionary item we can sort of cut back on." I think if there was some help there, there would be training going on.

R. Howard (Chair): Bryn, I apologize. I'm trying to keep time and read and listen all at the same time. Could you talk a little bit more about the assessment, the four-year phase-in, that you're talking about?

B. Gilbert: Yeah. If there are large increases in assessments or if there are increases in assessments, the idea would be that rather than have the whole amount take effect one year, effectively what would happen is that it would come in at sort of a 25 percent rate over three years — that kind of thing. So there's a little bit less of a hit in one year to a property owner.

The suggestion right now would be that there would actually be a reduction of the amount of the increase to the land assessment of 75 percent the first year, 50 percent the second year and then 25 percent the last year.

R. Howard (Chair): In an escalating market that escalates over years…. Have you looked at it? Is there a point where you ended up getting hurt because you've delayed the inevitable?

B. Gilbert: Well, no. It would always get phased in over a period of time. I can't see a situation where you'd all of a sudden have a big jump in one year.

R. Howard (Chair): So you just keep phasing.

B. Gilbert: Uh-huh. We're also talking about not doing the assessments every year. It's a four-year assessment period.

R. Howard (Chair): And each year a new four-year period starts?

B. Gilbert: No, you do a four-year assessment that remains as the amount for a four-year period. Then at the end of that four years you'd do another assessment. If there's an increase, then you phase that in over, effectively, a three-year period. You just kind of smooth out the process.

R. Howard (Chair): You smooth out the process for the first year, but in subsequent years, if the property keeps escalating….

B. Gilbert: Yeah, I guess you could presumably get in a situation where you do have that.
[ Page 1654 ]

B. Ralston: Just following up on that, then. I know class 4, for example, has been under review by the government for a couple of years, and no result has come of that.

[1405]

Don't you risk, in principle, undermining the assessment system if you move in a rising market or even a declining market? And the flip side could be true if there's a dramatic fall in prices. If you move away from the market value…. Isn't the strength of the assessment system that it fairly closely reflects market value?

B. Gilbert: I don't think we're suggesting going away from a market value system. It still is going to be in some ways a market value system. It's just avoiding, particularly when there are large escalations up or down, having that market value system create large fluctuations in the amount that businesses are paying on a year-over-year basis.

It still will reflect market value. It'll just reflect market value over a longer period of time.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Bryn. We've run you out of time. We appreciate you coming forward.

Next up we have the Okanagan-Kootenay Cherry Growers Association — Christine Dendy and David Stirling.

Welcome to you both. As you have probably heard, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up. You can stop for questions or go straight through — your choice. Over to you.

C. Dendy: Thank you very much. I'll start off, and you can leave all the difficult questions for David.

I'd like to thank the hon. members of the committee for this opportunity to present to you today. The Okanagan-Kootenay Cherry Growers Association is an organization of the major commercial cherry growers in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions. We were established primarily to invest our growers' funds in research and development of horticultural practices and share information to assist our growers in producing, packing and marketing better cherries.

We are not in conflict with the BCFGA, and I'm sorry if we're repeating some of the remarks they have made. Hopefully, that will reinforce some of them, and hopefully, we won't be contradicting any of them.

Through the development of export markets with premium-quality cherries, our industry has expanded very rapidly in the last 25 years and has been relatively successful. We are facing very uncertain economic times, as are all, and we are facing them given such factors as, obviously, the U.S. dollar at the moment. All of our export sales are in U.S. dollars, so that has certainly had a negative impact on the revenues of our producers.

Carbon footprint issues and fuel costs of air freight, which we use heavily for our exports; energy costs; and the impact of the carbon tax are hurting us. Water shortages and concern over security of water for agriculture, given the increasing urban demand and, in our own water district, exorbitant costs to meet new domestic water system requirements, which are imposed by new regulations on domestic water quality by the Ministry of Health and which will have related cost impact on the operation of our water district's irrigation system.

We have a lack of skilled and unskilled labour and a dire shortage of professional advisers to assist new growers, as the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture no longer provides extension services, and there are very few private consultants.

We have an aging base of growers with concerns of succession. We have a lack of effective government action in negotiating legal access to export markets such as China — for which, with the high reputation we have established for B.C. cherries, we have already proven a strong market demand — and government policy directions which ignore the basic needs of the agriculture sector in favour of piecemeal initiatives that are not universally accessible by all growers and are not in touch with our fundamental needs.

We need a strong Ministry of Agriculture. I think Joe was already talking about that. B.C. agriculture represents 11 percent of the primary B.C. GDP. We are individually pretty small, but we think we're a lot more important than your government seems to think. The Ministry of Agriculture has become a revolving door of ministers and senior staff, which means it's sort of a low-priority ministry and a training ground for other ministries. This shows how highly government regards agriculture.

The only place in which agriculture was even mentioned in the 2011-2012 budget was in the table of expenditures, in which it is noted that while the total expenditure budget was increased 3 percent, agriculture paid for that by taking a 5 percent cut, and this is after ongoing cuts over the previous years. In the recent throne speech agriculture didn't even merit an honourable mention.

While the Ministry of Agriculture gives lip service to all kinds of initiatives to support agriculture in all sorts of ways, when it comes down to it, the pot is empty, and hardly anybody is at home. And if they are, they aren't allowed out to travel and see what's really happening out in the province.

The last budget stated: "The government is committed to keeping B.C. tax rates competitive. That's the edge we need to create new business and strengthen B.C.'s traditional resource ministries."

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What we got, as I think Joe was previously talking about for the BCFGA…. We lost the HST through government blundering and a promise of a return to
[ Page 1655 ]
the Dark Ages of a PST system that penalized agriculture by taxing inputs of food, which is supposedly tax-exempt, and for cherries, much of which are exported and should not bear provincial sales tax in the first place.

We worked with you on tax reform for a decade, starting in 2002, and unfortunately, it has been a waste of time. The loss of the HST is a hit for $20 million annually to B.C. agriculture.

No relief was the other thing we got on continued increases in the carbon tax on our energy inputs and no help forthcoming from government, other than verbal claims of support. I've footnoted what those were.

We're not actually seeing any programs and benefits where we can learn to be more flexible and do the adaptation ourselves. The revenues of this tax are not being made available to our industry to help us adapt. This year alone our organization is spending thousands of dollars of our own money for research on drought management, climate adaptation research for cherries and our own conservation projects, without a nickel of B.C. government support.

We did feel that there was an option for the provincial government to at least hold further increases on the carbon tax. That, we have just been advised, is not going to happen, and we're just going to face more increases on that.

We're selling a highly perishable product, and our market prices are largely determined by our Washington competitors. Increases in our input costs, such as the carbon tax, don't get passed on to consumers. We can't do that. They directly reduce our profits and our taxable income.

In the case of our fellow farmers the greenhouse growers, who you may be familiar with, the carbon tax issue has put all plans of further investment and expansion of a thriving industry on hold. Investors are looking south of the border to shift or expand their businesses. I don't know whether you've had a presentation from them, but you probably will hear about it anyway.

The third point was the promise of further reduction of income tax. Thank you, but this is of little use unless one has income to pay taxes on. If the province hopes to have tax revenues to reduce the deficit, our industry needs to be competitive and profitable.

So how does our little B.C. cherry industry fit into the government's recent throne speech objectives of job creation and economic development through increased competitiveness, innovation and development of export markets? Job creation is a function of economic health. If our business is good, growers reinvest their profits in developing their farms. If it's poor, we have to take measures to save employment costs. It's quite simple.

By example, my own orchard will have an employment bill of just under a million dollars this year. We employ about 140 people seasonally, many of whom are students as well as some transient workers and those who sometimes have difficulty fitting into the regular workforce. We also have full-time staff.

We're in a very high-risk industry, but if the prospects are good, we will expand, as will others. If the future is dismal, given the huge risks in cherry farming, we will not.

I think that when you're in the valley here, you can look around and see large tracts of bare land where growers have pulled out apples. Many have turned to cherries or to grapes in expectation of better returns, but many are leaving land fallow, counting on real estate speculation for their future return. Fallow land and horse pastures do not provide employment.

Help us reduce our risks, and give us a supportive business environment in regulations, in risk management and in programs which support our industry, and we will continue to grow. The jobs will follow.

For training and resources….

How am I doing on my time? Am I way behind?

R. Howard (Chair): You've got — what? — three minutes to get to ten.

C. Dendy: Three minutes. Okay. I better skip through some of this, then.

For training and resources, like other farms, we're having difficulty finding staff with horticultural training. We definitely need more sources of training in B.C. Training in the universities and colleges now is specific to landscape turf management and nursery trades, I think, so that is an area where we really do need some help just in order to have people who are hireable and to help both the employees and the farmers themselves. There are a lot of farmers in transition from apples to other horticultural products, and having further access to education is most helpful.

Here in the Okanagan, under innovation, we have the outstanding benefit of a federal research station at the doorstep, in Summerland, which has been instrumental in the development of new varieties and timely horticultural research on cherries. We used to have a very active provincial agriculture office and laboratory here as well. These are all gone.

Six important research positions are vacant in PARC at Summerland. That's a federal issue, but we do hope that you will support us in understanding how important critical basic and applied research is in developing our industry. That's how we got to where we are in the cherries, and that's our future. If all of the directions are going to quick innovation programs and forgetting the fundamentals of research, we are really in big trouble. Please notice that.

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Increased competitiveness for our industry comes through doing a better job, growing a better product,
[ Page 1656 ]
getting it to market with a quality that yields a premium price. This means being on the leading edge in varieties, production methods, packing technology, shipping and being able to respond and adapt to new challenges.

We have a fraction in production of what our competitors in Washington and Oregon produce, and we have higher costs, so we have to do better and earn higher prices. We can, but we need government help to level the playing field in international trade. That's the work industry cannot do alone.

Export market development. We are doing that already. We have done that already. B.C. cherries are shipped all over Europe, Asia, even Russia and India. We've built a reputation for quality B.C. cherries around the world. We even find Washington cherries being packed in B.C. so they can be exported again in B.C.-brand boxes. That hurts.

We've built a demand in countries which we can't even legally ship to, but it is there that we need government help to do the things that we cannot. The barriers are not technical problems. They are trade issues that can be resolved by government will. We need strong, meaningful government trade negotiation assistance — not money — just to do the job of cutting through the bureaucratic obstacles that get thrown in the way.

We also need the government to stand by Canada's trade and international food inspection protocols, which CFIA enforces, rather than leaving it for industry to defend and pay the tab to maintain access to the countries we already have agreements with.

Further export market development. Please come and talk to us. We know what would be effective, and we would love to talk about it.

My last comment, if I may slip it in, is business risk management. We've talked about the costs and everything — you can read the rest of it yourselves — but the fundamental programs which make it so much more possible for us to take these risks in the business and commercial environment that we're in are the business risk management programs, which are primarily federally funded; the crop insurance; and the AgriStability. These are provincial and federal programs, and they are really the backstop which makes us able to go out and do the things that we do. Please support them.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. We have a whole bunch of questions and not enough time.

M. Stilwell: Thank you. I really appreciate…. Actually, I learned a lot, but I'm interested particularly in your comments about training and innovation.

With respect to post-secondary horticultural training, is there a jurisdiction or institution that you admire or would like to see B.C. emulate?

C. Dendy: Yes, Washington State, where they have the land grant basis, where both the research and the universities are combined in the work that they do. It's been very, very effective, and it works out. It becomes university education, research and extension. It's a very integrated and efficient system.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to make note that former MLA Al Horning has joined us. He's in the audience, so welcome to him.

You raise many points and many points that need to be addressed. The training and resources recommendations you make. It's a pretty stark picture that you paint in that. You talk about B.C. universities, colleges and trade schools not offering horticultural programs.

It seems to me that if we want to have local people for local jobs, that's the kind of training we need in a jobs plan. Have you worked with local…? I know we have a presentation from the Okanagan College later on. Have you worked with them or tried to make any advances in that kind of training?

C. Dendy: No, not recently. But we have had some senior employees who…. Because they did have programs on the calendar, they said they might offer them at some time in the future. You could sign up, and if they had enough people, then they might offer them. We tried to sign people up, and they said they weren't taking names. This was a few years ago.

D. Stirling: Just further to that, there is a community college in Creston. Sorry, I don't know the exact name. One of our directors that does a lot of the research that is conducted through our association used to teach at that program, but it was shut down. There were lots of students. There just wasn't the funding to keep supporting the program.

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C. Dendy: Ideally, I think we would want to work with somebody like him in developing a program which can be accessed by people not all in one area. It's not as if farmers can go off and go to school. Having Internet training and that kind of thing would be very helpful.

D. Stirling: It appears iPads are fairly popular in today's society.

C. Dendy: So iPads would work too.

P. Pimm: Thanks for your presentation. Personally, I think that the ag should have…. In school curriculum, as well, it should be right there. But that's just my opinion. I come from a fairly large farming area, as you probably well know.

My question goes to the carbon tax. I think this was a great initiative. Certainly, it's had some problems in the farming industry. Can you explain to me what it's going
[ Page 1657 ]
to mean, if there are future increases in the carbon tax, to your industry?

C. Dendy: It's just going to mean more costs. We can't pass them on. We are, individually, with our own funds working on some aspects of research to see if there are things that we can do. But there are very few resources and no financial resources to help growers adapt so that they can reduce their power and energy costs.

We can't stop tractors. You can't change things overnight. It's very, very difficult to reduce the power costs which you have on a farm.

P. Pimm: Is "devastation" too strong?

C. Dendy: Devastation?

P. Pimm: Thank you. I'll stop there.

D. Hayer: My question is: have you met with the minister to find some solutions? Even if the carbon tax is going up, maybe they can find some solution for the agriculture industry to fund….

C. Dendy: With the Minister of Agriculture?

D. Hayer: Yes.

C. Dendy: Yes, we had a meeting with him last week, with the B.C. Ag Council, and it was at that meeting that we were advised that we should not expect to have any reductions or holds put on the carbon tax. So we were very, very disappointed.

D. Hayer: Were they able to find any other alternatives, some other solutions to the carbon tax that can help the industry?

C. Dendy: Not that we're aware of. They didn't mention any at the meeting.

R. Howard (Chair): I thank you both. We've run you out of time. We appreciate you taking the time to come out and present to us.

Next up we have the Central Okanagan Child Development Association — Wendy Falkowski, Sherry Greenlay and Terri Nakayama.

Just as you're getting set, I'm sure you've heard that you'll have 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up. You can stop and take questions or go straight through — your choice. The microphone is yours.

W. Falkowski: Good afternoon. I want to thank you very much for taking this opportunity to let us present today. My name is Wendy Falkowski, and I'm the executive director for the Central Okanagan Child Development Association.

The Central Okanagan Child Development Association is a non-profit and has provided services to children with a variety of special needs, ages birth to school-age entry, for the past 45 years. The organization has been accredited since 2007 and in April of 2011 was awarded with 100 percent compliance on 754 standards required by CARF International.

Over a thousand children come through our doors each year. We have wait-lists of over a hundred children. That's a lot in a small community such as this.

As you are aware, by providing early intervention services before school entry, children have a better chance to be included in the mainstream. Most children who receive early intervention, including those with autism, will eventually contribute to the community, hold jobs and become taxpayers. We hold contracts with the Ministry of Children and Families and Interior Health, as well as offering a fee-for-service autism therapy program.

We have always done our level best to put contract funds into direct service and have stretched the funds in order to hire more therapists. However, it is virtually impossible to do that anymore because of continuous rising operating costs, and our contracts have not reflected any of the changes in over four years.

There is an urgent need for more therapists, as referrals have increased in leaps and bounds because of changes in how children are diagnosed and because they are being diagnosed at an earlier age.

Example: the early hearing program. Children are being referred to us for speech services at birth. That procedure tripled our referrals for speech services. Consequently, children may not receive therapy for three years, almost too late.

We came forth with two recommendations. Our first recommendation was to create a fair budget to include increased funding for early intervention services for children with disabilities. Why? It is a proven fact that by providing services to children in the early years, they will lead more healthy, productive lives, which in turn saves tax dollars further down the road in the school and medical systems.

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Recently funds have been set aside to pay for patches for adults who want to quit smoking. People choose to smoke. Children do not choose to have a disability. So why not be proactive and sink those funds into creating a better health program to teach children how to make healthy choices?

The B.C. provincial early intervention therapy program guidelines, located on the MCFD website, state, "Therapists provide one-to-one services to assist children in achieving their highest attainable level of independent functioning," and "Direct therapy is most appropriate when specialized
[ Page 1658 ]
techniques, requiring the skills of a qualified therapist to administer, are needed, or the child requires individual skill development in order to be included in a group."

We no longer are able to provide the direct, one-on-one therapy that is required of us. Due to shortfalls in funding, we are now leaning more to a consultative model, which does not keep up with the guidelines outlined by the province or respective colleges, nor does it provide adequate service for the child in need. We want to continue to do this job, but we need help to do it.

Children need direct therapy. The current system of funding is not fair or equalized. All children with disabilities, not a chosen few, need services, and we have an obligation to provide them.

Our second recommendation is: change funding for children with autism from fee-for-service back to a block funding system in three levels, thereby reducing the deficit to the provincial budget. Why? In recent discussions it was stated that the cost of the autism program far exceeds funding set aside. More children have been diagnosed with autism than expected, and consequently, other programs in early intervention have been or may be reduced. Is this equalizing?

The COCDA was part of the original autism block funding pilot project. We were contracted to provide anywhere from 25 to 30 hours of service per child per week, which include a clinical advisor, consultant, behaviour interventionist, occupational therapist and speech and language therapist. Statistics have proven that any less than 15 to 20 hours direct service a week per child for children with autism becomes a band-aid for the child.

On a fee-for-service system we can only offer minimal services, as the funds do not cover near what is mentioned above. Children are placed in our early intervention program to receive speech and occupational therapy. However, they may age out before services are available to them, because of long wait-lists.

Families decide how the funds are spent. This, to me, poses a problem. As a contract holder with MCFD, we are required to be CARF-accredited in order to receive funding, yet families can use autism funds to pay private organizations that are not accredited. So exactly what kind of services is the child receiving? Are they receiving services from qualified interventionists?

Providing block funding for autism would create a win-win situation for the ministry and child development centres. As time is short, please refer to my handout for more details and how this would work, in my opinion.

Who is responsible for the child in that picture you have in front of you? Who is responsible for the child with disabilities? Is it you? Is it me? That child is our responsibility. That child is B.C.'s future. She didn't choose to have a disability, so why are we punishing her? If we support the child today, the child will support us tomorrow.

T. Nakayama: Thank you for this opportunity to speak. As a parent with a child with autism, a staff member of the Central Okanagan Child Development Association and the chair of the Advisory Council for Exceptional Students in school district 23, I have some points that I hope will help you with your upcoming decisions.

Eleven years ago I had the opportunity to write a letter directly to the Ministry of Children and Families regarding autism funding. I was informed that I was one of the deciding factors in the decision about how the funds were distributed and used, and I thank you. I want you to know that the support you gave my son at an early age has paid out tenfold, and his journey has gone beyond even my expectations.

Before the autism program, my son was non-verbal, easily agitated and very sensory-disoriented. Even the sound of the lights humming was too much for him to handle, and his future was not at all certain.

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My son was one of the first to benefit from the Thompson-Okanagan project at the COCDA, and he received funding for eight months. After pleading my case, this funding was extended for another six months, and the results were astounding. My son today is a 16-year-old grade 11 honours student on his way to earning a Dogwood. He has learned to cope with sensory issues, and as far as behaviours and anxieties go, he now tells me not to sweat the small stuff.

I'm absolutely certain he will succeed in life relatively independently. What I am also absolutely certain of is that without early qualified autism intervention, he would not have had the opportunity to become the person he is now. He started his first job last week, mentoring another student with autism, and he has paved the way in this school district, teaching students and teachers alike that it is okay to think differently.

In summary, my son is who he is because of early intervention, which included direct therapy, education and parent training. After all, the parents must lead the journey. They just can't send the child for a band-aid and all will be well. It is a lifestyle they must learn.

We, as a family, kept our commitment to you, the funder. We implored you to invest early and save later. My son has not received any further autism funding since ten years old, so the costs have already been saved. He is entering the workforce with the goal of becoming a visual language interpreter. All of this and more because you had the insight to believe in him early, and he has not let you down.

I implore you to go back to this way of thinking, restore funding to accredited early intervention centres. The investment is priceless.

S. Greenlay: Sherry Greenlay, bookkeeper.

Twenty-eight years ago I gave birth to our first child, who was born with a very rare genetic disorder, Pena-
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Shokeir. He died in my arms at ten weeks old. Two and a half years ago, my daughter gave birth to their second son with an unrelated rare genetic disorder. He had pneumonia so many times in the first year that we lost count, and we almost lost him.

Just after his first birthday, he had heart surgery in Vancouver. We watched him grow stronger but struggle to become mobile. Months later, when he finally walked, he kind of walked like this. He fell a lot, but he didn't know how to protect his face. He drooled so badly that my daughter changed his shirt every hour. He fell through every medical crack in the beginning but began to blossom after a health nurse referred us to the COCDA.

They listened to our concerns and, without a diagnosis, began to treat my daughter's son. Now at 2½ he walks, runs, climbs up slides and can break his falls using his arms. Learning to drink from a straw has helped with his drooling, and we have hopes that he will eventually talk, with intensive speech therapy.

My daughter's wish is to hear him say: "I love you, Mommy." We just got his diagnosis a month ago. It's called Sotos syndrome. The write-up says there is no cure, but with early intervention he should hit every milestone, albeit delayed.

Some might think that my grandson was a lost cause and that maybe our families would be better off without him. As a mother who has been there, no one should ever know that pain. Sometimes bad things just happen to good people for no reason. It's times like these that we are so thankful for a hand in showing us how to deal with life's injustices and forge ahead.

Last night my daughter said to me: "Mom, the services Chassis receives from the COCDA means the difference between him needing constant care his whole life or being able to go out and get a job some day and become a contributing member of society." My daughter is only 26, pretty young for such heavy thoughts.

Our journey down this road is just beginning, and if we support Chassis today, he will support us tomorrow.

W. Falkowski: That's why we feel that funding needs to be expanded into the early intervention years instead of being reduced.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. We're just about out of time. We have time for a quick question.

[1435]

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

I have a question about the autism…. You're saying that we should equalize service versus equalize funding. If we were to go that route, are you saying that then some of the children would not get as much funding because they were in an urban setting as opposed to the ones that were in the rural setting, because they had all the extra expenses required to travel somewhere?

W. Falkowski: If you went through block funding, the block funding would go to a centre such as ours. Some children require more services than others. So that would be determined like in any other case, like we do in physiotherapy or speech — just how much service the child needs to move on and be productive in school. After that has been determined, that's how it would balance out in services. They would get the services they need. The funding that we use for them might be more, but it might be less, depending on what their need is.

The block funding. That's how it's worked in early intervention now for speech, occupational therapy, infant development, physiotherapy and supported child development. That's all block funding, and it provides us the opportunity to make those decisions in connection with the family.

J. Thornthwaite: So you want more flexibility from your funding that you get from us?

W. Falkowski: Yes.

R. Howard (Chair): I want to thank you. We've run out of time, but thank you for taking the time to come and present to us this afternoon.

Next up we have Kelowna Joint Water Committee — Bob Hrasko and Graeme James.

Welcome, gentlemen. As I'm sure you know, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up. You can take some questions then or go straight through. Your choice. The microphone is yours.

B. Hrasko: Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm Bob Hrasko. I am the administrator of the Black Mountain irrigation district, and I'm representing five large water utilities that operate within the municipal boundaries of the city of Kelowna. With me is Graeme James. He is a city councillor, and I think Graeme is going to start off with our presentation.

G. James: Good afternoon. As Bob said, my name is Graeme James. I am a councillor for the city of Kelowna. I'm also a director of the Okanagan Basin Water Board, and I've been on the Kelowna Joint Water Committee for the last three years. I guess I'm the political water guy for the city of Kelowna.

I can attest to the progress and the commitment that the water utilities here in Kelowna have made towards the common goal of providing clean, safe drinking water to all areas of Kelowna. We are also looking at the most cost-effective way to produce that clean, safe drinking water.
[ Page 1660 ]

We also are in discussions on governance. If you're not aware, we have five water utilities here in Kelowna. We've come to the point now where we need the province's input on the governance issue, so we're waiting for that.

As you know, the upgrades to water to bring it up to the Canadian drinking water standards are very costly. We therefore request that the province fund water utilities separately, and then after we do that, we can approach the federal government for matching funding. We'd like to look at it as sort of sewage grants, where the province comes to the table, the federal government comes to the table and the municipality — in this case, the irrigation districts or the municipality — funds those with a common goal.

B. Hrasko: We have five utilities in Kelowna — large utilities: the city of Kelowna utility, the Black Mountain irrigation district, the Glenmore-Ellison improvement district, Rutland waterworks and the southeast Kelowna irrigation district. What has happened, and the financial bind that we are in, is the result of a number of things.

Provincial policies do have an impact on us. The health regulations and the requirements for health regulations have increased in the last few years, and our water utilities that were originally designed to be irrigation suppliers and support the agricultural community have turned into domestic systems.

[1440]

Now we have these volumes of water where we have to provide Canadian drinking water–equivalent quality to the domestic customers, and they're interspersed throughout the agricultural lands.

The agricultural land itself is an issue because the land use is fixed with the ALR. The population density in those areas is low. The ability to pay for improvements.... Because of the low density, the per-capita contribution is very high.

Another policy that is out there is that the Ministry of Community Development does not support funding towards improvement districts. There are approximately 280 improvement districts in the province, and the majority of them are tiny. What you have here in Kelowna are the four largest ones that exist in the province. My district alone, Black Mountain irrigation district, provides more water than the entire city of Penticton, domestic and irrigation supplies. So these are big utilities we're talking about.

There are also 14 tiny utilities that are interspersed within Kelowna. We know about them. We're aware of them. We have plans on how they would be integrated into the bigger utilities in our long-term planning. We do have a broad view on how the water quality needs to be improved in town.

I'm not sure if everybody has the handout that we supplied at the start. Okay, great. On page 3 there's a map that shows the entire service boundaries and which utilities service the areas in town. There's a large, urban, high-density area that the city of Kelowna services and Rutland waterworks, which is the RWW, and that's all of the domestic areas.

Then as you get up into the benchlands and the surrounding areas, there's a great deal of agricultural water demand. We supply that from the creeks by gravity. It's a very cost-effective, ingenious system that the engineers from the early 1900s developed in this region, and they still work. We pressurized the pipes in the early '70s or late 1960s.

The province supported this area extremely well at that time but couldn't afford to put in the second domestic system at that time, like a small-diameter one for the in-house use. You can also see there are large blocks of unserviced land — the white areas on that map.

We were here earlier, in 2009, just as the improvement districts, asking if…. I think some of you were on the committee then too. We made the presentation, and the committee actually recommended funding towards the improvement districts at that time. But what happened is then Community Development came back and asked us to do some more homework. "Make sure that the projects and the things that you're developing and working on integrate well. Regardless of if there are political boundaries or not, are these the best cost-effective and technical solutions needed by the city of Kelowna?" That was Minister Bennett at the time, who happens to be sitting over here.

He gave us a very good letter and told us to do our homework. Since then we've had an improved working relationship with the city of Kelowna, a very good working relationship with the city of Kelowna staff and councillors. We're on the verge of completing an integrated water supply plan that looks out to basically serving all the lands in the city for the foreseeable future. We went about it in a very logical and comprehensive way so that there'd be no questions that we didn't do all of our homework.

What we came up with, at the top of page 5, were…. Well, actually there's a staged approach on the bottom of page 4. We're looking to access the cleanest possible water in the region and start with that for the drinking water, which means going to deep-water intakes in Okanagan Lake and using only Mission Creek. We've got three large intakes on Okanagan Lake and one on Mission Creek.

Then the other creeks in the area are all designated and going to be converted towards agricultural supply, and then from that adding UV disinfection to make sure we kill the Giardia and the Cryptosporidium. As of right now only one of the five utilities completely meets all of the regulations set by Interior Health, which is our regulator, and that's Rutland waterworks.

The other utilities.... There's still work to do in the city with adding UV disinfection on the south end. There's
[ Page 1661 ]
also a great deal of work that has happened in the last few years — over $10 million in water quality improvements without any funding that has happened in the region. That continues to go on. We're continuing the work on the projects here.

[1445]

As you can see on page 5, we have the project costs on all of the different stages of work. What we have to achieve for Interior Health is to reach the end of stage 3. That's the minimum requirement for us. It amounts to approximately $41 million for the five utilities.

The recommended place where we want to get to is the end of stage 5. That gives us additional redundancy. It gives us better interconnections. It gives us the ability to manage the major resources in the region, one of them being Mission Creek. It improves fish habitat. It does a whole range of things by getting to the end of stage 5.

To put in secondary separation and filtration is a big ticket. We don't have to go there yet. We don't want to go there yet. We have the plan to go there if we have to, but that number is a large number for the city of Kelowna.

Right now, with the five utilities, we have a rate impact sheet at the bottom of page 5. It shows the water rate increase required to get to the end of stage 3, which meets all of the Interior Health regulations for the foreseeable future.

As you can see, the rate impact is substantial — 150 percent. There's a 56 percent increase in the existing rates required for Glenmore improvement district. There's a 150 percent increase in rates required for southeast Kelowna irrigation district. That's because of the low densities and the high volumes and what's needed for these projects.

We've looked at this a number of different ways on how to best use our existing infrastructure and make the best use of our resources, not throw anything away, necessarily, but also knowing where we're going in the long term so that whatever we do now does not impede or result in a problem in future projects or for future integration or for whatever future governance form might occur. The technical solutions are solid.

In summary, what we have are projects that are preventative. They provide preventative health benefits to all of the residents of Kelowna. There are 118,000 residents within the city boundaries. Most of the people work across the water utility zone boundaries. So they'll work in one area, they'll play in a different area, and they'll live in a third area. That's the way when you work across the city.

The water improvements affect everybody here. We supply an incredibly large volume of water. We're probably the second-largest supplier of water, next to the GVRD, in terms of total annual water supply, because of the irrigation.

The citywide approach. We're nearing completion on it. I think we've achieved everything that the minister has asked us to achieve, but that'll be up to the Ministry of Community Development staff to judge. I understand that Glen Brown is going to be here on Monday — he's the senior executive staff member — to go over this with us.

At the end of it, any funding that comes through…. We're not fussy about how it comes here, as long as we get some help for these tough districts so that the water rates don't end up at $1,200 a year for the single-family connections, which is high, especially for the fixed-income people in the community.

Water is a core service. Everybody needs it. Everybody uses it. If we can keep the rates low in the long term and achieve what we need to, that's our objective as the utilities of Kelowna.

That summarizes what I have to say.

Have you got anything to close, Graeme?

G. James: Just that one of the aspects is that we want to maintain a cost-effective approach to agricultural water too. It's very important. Glenmore-Ellison improvement district, Black Mountain all service large tracts of agricultural land, and that has a major cost in it. We don't want to see those costs rise at all. We want to maintain low costs for the agricultural users.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, gentlemen. We have a few questions.

B. Bennett: Thanks very much, guys. It's good to see you guys sitting together, and it's good to see the response at this stage. It's a couple of years later — or not even a couple of years, I guess.

You're to be commended. The whole group is to be commended for the work that you have done and the constructive way you've gone about getting closer to something that's going to force government to take you up on it, because you've done everything that the government has asked you to do.

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You need money to do this, obviously. You need the government to go through your study and make sure that you've responded in a complete and satisfactory way.

You said Glen Brown is coming up. You're aware that right now there are no federal-provincial infrastructure programs, so is it your plan to try and get everything teed up and have our support in principle — the provincial government's support in principle — so that when the first infrastructure program comes along you're ready to go get your application in? Is that the plan?

B. Hrasko: That's part of the plan. I think where we're at is we have to do the improvements, so even if the money isn't there, the utilities are going to continue to work on their projects. So they will set it up. They would
[ Page 1662 ]
love to have approval in principle, and if and when the grants maybe come available that we're in line, at least — that we're eligible. That would be great. That's all we can ask for, I think.

But the utilities are continuing to work on their plans. They're depleting their reserves. So what's happening is we're in that catch-22 where if you don't spend the money, nothing happens, and if you do spend the money, you lessen your ability to contribute the one-third, so you have to borrow it in the future. So you know, I think all of the utilities are continuing to work on their projects that they have to.

G. James: I think some of the aspects are that we don't want wide varieties of costs associated with delivering water in certain irrigation districts. Some irrigation districts aren't as well populated, so the cost is that much more, which in turn makes the agricultural water much more expensive. That's a disadvantage that the agricultural users can't really afford right now.

B. Ralston: I appreciate the work that you've done. I remember the presentation a couple of years ago.

Is it the case that the land use within each improvement district is essentially frozen? Is there change, as suburbanization or further development intrudes into some of these water districts, that there might be an opportunity to assess, as part of the development process, a levy that would assist in at least defraying some of the capital cost?

B. Hrasko: We do have development that does occur within each of the boundaries of each of the improvement districts and within the city. There are development cost charges and capital expenditure charges that are assessed in a new development on a per-lot or per-acre basis. We do recover, and that money goes in the reserves. Some of it is eligible to be used for water quality upgrades, but most of it is for capacity replacement.

So yes, a portion is available.

G. James: The city has also…. Because some of the irrigation districts have wide tracts of agricultural land, we've also put in, in our new OCP, a growth boundary, so we're not allowing growth in some of those areas. That does have an effect on the income for those irrigation districts.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate you taking the time to come out today.

Committee members, we've had two withdrawals: Bridge Youth and Family Services, and Predator Ridge. That's why we jumped around a little bit a little earlier. I think we'll take a recess now until three o'clock.

The committee recessed from 2:54 p.m. to 3:04 p.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): Next up we have the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kelowna and district branch — Shelagh Turner.

Welcome, Shelagh. As you probably know, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up, and you can stop and take questions, or you can keep going. Your choice. The microphone is yours.

S. Turner: My name is Shelagh Turner. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kelowna branch. We are part of a national charitable organization. Our collective vision is to create a mentally healthy people in a healthy society, and that vision provides a framework for our work.

CMHA Kelowna is one of 19 branches across B.C. serving over 85 communities. We provide a variety of mental health services to the public through our branches, including supported housing.

We understand that the current financial climate has put considerable pressure on the provincial government and budget. We hope that we can provide some useful input on five critical areas where dollars should be directed within the area of mental health and substance use.

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Our provincial organization — CMHA, B.C. division — and various branches have been presenting to this committee since 2004. Each year we've identified one of our top priorities as supported housing, and this has not changed this year.

So our first investment area is to invest in affordable housing and supports for people who need it most. Suitable supported, affordable housing continues to be out of reach for many people in British Columbia who are living with mental illness and/or an addiction.

Estimates of the numbers of homeless have been well reported, and over the past few years some significant headway has been made. In our community there are significantly less visibly homeless people on our streets due to a collective effort to address that problem. Now we know that the number of people who are called the hidden homeless or couch surfers has risen exponentially. Addressing this problem is much more challenging.

Since 2008 here in Kelowna approximately 150 new units of affordable housing for adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness will have been built by the end of 2012. This is great progress, but this is a really dynamic population, as all of you know in your communities. Each person tends to have complex issues that we need to keep our eye on, creating a continuum of affordable housing with flexible supports so that people have the support they need when they need it in order to stay housed. So we've done a good job of getting people housed. It's keeping them housed that's our challenge.
[ Page 1663 ]

CMHA Kelowna's homeless outreach and community navigation service has been really effective at helping people find a roof over their heads. But like every other community, we don't have the resources to meet the volume of complex needs that impact multiple systems. Brain injuries, serious mental illness and substance misuse require significant human and clinical resources. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, unfortunately.

The bulk of our outreach team's work is in helping people to navigate those complex systems so that they have access to a GP or specialist care, so that they can get dental care, income supports, identification, counselling, social support. The list goes on and on. None of it's a surprise to any of you. It's keeping people housed and having the resources to stay with people, providing them with that support when and where they need it.

The challenge people face is that often what is affordable in the market housing is a nearly unlivable basement suite that people have to share with two and three others, who probably have similar issues. It's untenable. This living situation may work for a while, but the reality is that when people are dealing with serious and complex health issues and mental health issues or addictions, it's nearly impossible to make progress when you're living in this kind of environment.

Invariably, eviction is not far away, and our outreach team has kept data on our work. On average, for every person that we house in a year, we have to rehouse them three and four times. It's an incredible expenditure of energy.

We're good at the crisis end. It's keeping people sustainably housed and having that long-term support that's not there. That's where we hope there's an investment in the future. It not only makes good economic sense now, but it's also an investment in breaking the cycle of homelessness.

Investment area 2 is to fund the ten-year mental health and substance use plan for B.C. and maintain core service levels and capacity. The ten-year plan, Healthy Minds, Healthy People, which took a lot of energy and resources to put together, was finally introduced in November 2010, but there was no additional funding attached.

We had this great plan, but no funding for figuring out how to make it happen. This is invariably what happens with these kinds of documents. A lot of energy gets put into then, but we're crippled by the size of the problem, and we've got funding for this, and there's inertia against us, I guess, from progress.

[1510]

So I'm hoping there's a significant investment in programs to address prevention and promote positive mental health across the life span, just as the mental health and substance use plan suggests.

This plan provides a good start for looking at these issues from a multisectoral and collaborative perspective. Our challenge is not to get paralyzed by the size of the problem. I'm sure you've heard all of the stats about how one in five people will experience a mental health issue at some point in their life, and everybody knows somebody — a friend, family member or colleague — who experiences a mental health issue or substance use issue.

The problem is big, and it's not getting any better. So if we work on prevention and promotion strategies as well as supporting people to achieve mental health — because serious and persistent mental illness will not go away — if we do that at that two-pronged approach, we will go a long way to addressing these problems.

CMHA branches across the province are reporting an increased demand for service, as well as clients with increasingly complex needs. We're seeing the gains that were made in the area of homelessness slip away. There isn't enough funding for the support aspect of housing, and this is vital not only to assisting people get off the street but also to assisting people with mental illness and substance use to get well.

Funding these types of programs is economically and socially vital. Costs to police, emergency and in-patient units significantly rise when these types of programs are underfunded or not funded.

There are now more seniors falling through the cracks. They're isolated, lonely, inactive and depressed, and this is unconscionable. We're all heading that way, so we want to make sure that services are there for us. There seems to be no funding to address this in a community setting.

Cuts to mental health and addiction services are unacceptable, particularly during recessionary times because we know that the demands for these kinds of services obviously increase. So we urge the provincial government to ensure that current levels of support for mental health and addiction services are maintained. Core services need to be protected and even increased in some communities. As well as funding prevention and promotion programs, fund that ten-year mental health plan and substance use plan.

Investment area 3 that I'm hoping you will address is to protect gaming funds for charities. Our own organization experienced a 50 percent decrease last year in our gaming funds. Those funds are absolutely vital to real people in our community. We did receive at the end of the fiscal year a 25 percent top-up, so we are 75 percent of what our former funding was. It's not huge dollars, but we were the lucky ones.

There are many organizations in our communities that support young people, that support families, that support the arts. They support building community capacity, and they support the disability community. Those funds, those gaming dollars, are critical to communities, so I urge you to make sure there's no downturn in the investment in that and that you protect the gaming funding.
[ Page 1664 ]

With increased limits to on-line gambling, we anticipate a greater need for services to treat problem gambling and other addictions, and we recommend additional gaming revenue be directed to organizations that provide these services.

Investment area 4 is to increase income assistance rates in B.C. I'm sure this is probably a recurring theme in the disability community for all of you — you've been hearing it — but poverty is the root of many of our province's most pressing problems. It's a complex issue. Children, families, seniors and adults are all at risk when they're living in poverty.

Income assistance rates in B.C., particularly for people with disabilities, are woefully inadequate, and recent research indicates that of people with disabilities, over 60 percent are living well below the poverty line. The shelter rate of $375 per month has not kept pace with the rental markets, so please — I implore you — address income assistance rates, particularly for people with disability.

[1515]

Finally, investment area 5 is to fund and support innovative initiatives and approaches. Finally, as an innovative and flexible way to address the upstream issues of prevention and promotion and intervening early, the community action initiative was created. The purpose of the community action initiative is to maximize collaborative action and build synergies across sectors and cultures by funding and supporting community-based activities that address substance use and improve the mental health of British Columbians.

The CAI is currently stewarding $10 million, an innovation investment by the provincial government. There's so much more that could be done. It's having a significant impact in the following ways. It's helping to change communities and government to address mental health and substance use issues by facilitating new partners and creating innovative and culturally sensitive community-based solutions.

The CAI convening grants encourage community organizations to establish partnerships, plan and collaboratively prepare grant applications and funding proposals. We're creating new models of success and going beyond business as usual. It's not just about funding services. Putting an emphasis on competing for grants, we encourage our funding agencies to work together to get better results.

In summary, this kind of innovative thinking and supporting these five critical areas and having flexibility in funding will help our province address our most pressing social, health and economic problems. It will build a healthier population. It will enhance community capacity and create some baby steps towards addressing poverty.

M. Stilwell: Thank you, Shelagh, for your presentation. I was interested in your number one area of interest — homelessness. But I'm also interested in the idea of not just housing and supporting housing but turning off the tap upstream. I'm interested in what you think of the state of acute and community-based services for child and youth. And is there an innovative program that you have, or would like to have, which would help move upstream to turn off the tap of homelessness?

S. Turner: I wish I could come up with one or two innovative programs that would address it. I think it's a big multisectoral issue. Homelessness — yes, we need roofs over people's heads. When people are stably housed, they can get on with things. If families are stably housed, they can start working on their own health and the health of their children.

Your question around acute mental health services for children and youth…. Well, my understanding is that most kids…. Well, 40 percent — that's not most but just under half — of the kids that need help are not getting access to help.

If we don't support kids, young people, to become mentally healthy or get the services they need, the trajectory is not positive. They will grow up to be adults with issues. They may get in trouble with the law. They will probably be visiting emergency and using support services more than if we took that prevention approach.

I hope that answers your question. I wish I had a really pithy one-line answer like: "Yes, $200 million would address that problem." But it's a big issue.

M. Stilwell: Are there child psychiatry services in…?

R. Howard (Chair): I'm sorry. I'm going to have to cut us off, Shelagh. I've run you right out of time, and I still have MLAs Donaldson and Routley on the list. They'll have to catch up with you outside of this. Thank you for taking the time.

S. Turner: Thank you very much. Good luck with your deliberations.

R. Howard (Chair): Next up we have the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society — Tanya Gregoire. Hello, Tanya.

T. Gregoire: Hello.

R. Howard (Chair): How are you today?

T. Gregoire: Good. How are you?

R. Howard (Chair): Very well, thank you.

You will have 15 minutes in total. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a little heads-up. You can stop and take some questions or go straight through — your choice. The microphone is yours.

[1520]
[ Page 1665 ]

T. Gregoire: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tanya Gregoire, and I am a Tahltan youth from the Iskut First Nation, located near Telegraph Creek, B.C. My family consists of my father, who is French Canadian and grew up in Quebec; my mom, who grew up in Cassiar; my twin brother and my little sister.

At the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Centre I have a huge passion working as the aboriginal diabetes worker as well as the roots practitioner, where I primarily work with aboriginal children and youth in care, who are often disconnected from their family, culture and community.

Looking back on my life, I would have never imagined that I would be sitting here today. At the same time I am extremely grateful.

For this reason, I am here to talk about two main ways that the friendship centre has positively impacted my life. Throughout my life I have seen the intergenerational effects of colonization. My family has experienced depression, alcoholism, homicide, sexual abuse and physical abuse.

One of my biggest challenges has been struggling with my own cultural identity. I remember reading an article by a person named Fanon, who stated that many aboriginal people have largely reacted against the colonization process — such as residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, racism and abuse — through inward expression of violence, as many have turned that violence inward upon ourselves, resulting in various forms of self-hatred and self-abuse.

This belief further creates feelings of insecurity, depression and unresolved grief in many aboriginal people. Because of this and many other reasons, I have struggled with my identity as I ignored my aboriginal heritage. As a result, I have faced many challenges, including feelings of being lost, disconnected and broken.

My main struggles I have faced were growing up as a youth. I remember walking into my first day of high school. I didn't realize how these experiences, challenges and obstacles were going to shape who I am today. During high school I never noticed the invisible line that separated aboriginal students and non-aboriginal students.

In my high school there was an apparent segregation between these students. Having both aboriginal and French Canadian background, I often felt I had to choose between being associated with aboriginal and non-aboriginal students.

Looking back, there was one situation that greatly impacted me. In my school there was a career and personal planning class set aside for students that was made easier, which was known to everyone in the school as the easy class. Looking around the classroom, I noticed that almost everyone in that classroom was aboriginal. Sitting in that classroom, I wasn't asked if I wanted to be part of that classroom either. It was just forced upon you.

I remember feeling so ostracized and less than everyone else, like I wasn't worth as much or wasn't smart enough. As an aboriginal person, I truly believe I have internalized these subtle messages as well as other negative messages, resulting in feelings of shame for being an aboriginal person.

Many times my friends would make fun of my aboriginal culture. One time my friend started to dance around, making fun of traditional dances. While everyone was laughing, I couldn't help but feel ashamed, so I stayed silent, and I didn't voice my feelings. I still feel guilty for not standing up for myself, my family and my culture. This feeling of shame, self-hatred and guilt was a continual cycle that ran through my mind.

Like many other people living in urban areas, I moved away from all my friends, family and support in community to Kelowna. The last time I visited my First Nation community was ten years ago. Being away from my Tahltan's unique culture and family, I often felt disconnected and unbalanced.

Especially because I was still ignoring my aboriginal culture, I also didn't access any supports such as the friendship centres. As a result, I found Kelowna to be very isolating, having nowhere to go, and I had no sense of belonging. However, I cannot tell you enough how much the friendship centre has helped me realize that I do have a voice, I can make change, I am a part of the youth movement, and I should be proud to be aboriginal.

At both the friendship centre and the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres there are many significant people who have believed in me when I didn't even believe in myself. They have helped guide me to where I am today.

[1525]

Professionally, I have seen how the friendship centres have impacted others. There are other people whose families are the friendship centre. For some, they face depression and isolation, and the programs and supports offered help them heal and grow.

I have a powerful quote from Lilla Watson, a Brisbane-based aboriginal advocate and organizer. She spoke these words to social workers and community developers who approached her community. She gave direction to those who would join with people living in poverty. She stated: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together."

There are two areas that I would like to talk about, including a long-term capacity fund and investment as well as a comprehensive strategy. Along with amazing success stories, friendship centres suffer the effects of chronic underfunding. Provincial capacity funds have not seen an increase in more than 20 years, and in 2009 this funding was further cut by 17 percent.

Coupled with unprecedented urban migration, high birth rates, a doubling of the aboriginal youth population
[ Page 1666 ]
and dramatic increases in service demand, friendship centres are often doing more with less. Although our government has made important investments for First Nation communities on reserve — and it is essential that these investments continue to be made — off-reserve aboriginal people do not have access to these funds.

Our off-reserve community is in desperate need of a long-term investment. As an aboriginal diabetes worker, the increase of diabetes is of great concern. The program focuses on diabetes prevention, education and management.

As many of our programs are supported by short-term funding, I have noticed many of our families falling through the cracks as funding has stopped for a period of time, until contracts are renewed. Therefore, developing a long-term-capacity fund can help friendship centres continue to provide the wide range of social, educational and health programs to off-reserve aboriginal people.

Secondly, recognizing that more than 145,000 aboriginal people are living off reserve — that that is more than 70 percent of B.C.'s aboriginal population — the need to work together to develop a comprehensive strategy for B.C.'s off-reserve aboriginal population, including friendship centres, is greatly needed.

As B.C.'s friendship centres offer solid infrastructures that have been in place for more than 60 years, we play a key role in the off-reserve strategy. As part of this comprehensive strategy, with continuous dialogue between all parties, a jobs and social development strategy for B.C.'s off-reserve aboriginal population will help to close the socioeconomic gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal British Columbians.

The strategy will create jobs and help to achieve significant cost savings to government in the areas of social justice, social services, justice, education and health. Moreover, a jobs and social development strategy for B.C.'s off-reserve aboriginal community will address the structural barriers that have precluded aboriginal people from fully participating in B.C.'s economy. An investment in a jobs and social development strategy is needed to address the fact that aboriginal people, the youngest and fastest-growing population in B.C., continue to rank at the bottom of every measure we use to gauge well-being, health and economic potential.

Poverty rates for the off-reserve aboriginal population are almost double the poverty rates of non-aboriginal families in B.C. In addition, one in two aboriginal children is living in foster care, compared to one in a hundred non-aboriginal children.

In the near future aboriginal people will be the second-largest source of labour — immigration is the first source — that will go to support B.C.'s economy. An off-reserve strategy that includes friendship centres will target and remove the social and economic barriers that preclude full job market participation.

I know that there have been previous questions asking whether money could be spent better on an action plan or spent on a long-term-capacity fund. I am not here just to ask for help and money but to continue healing together.

[1530]

For this reason, I believe developing a comprehensive strategy where we all sit together, as well a capacity investment, will be most effective in making change.

Like I said before: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you're here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together."

My final words are that we have to be able to be willing to trust, to talk about our pain and to show our pain. But most importantly, we must gain the ability to recognize, honour and voice our true strengths, gifts and capacities that are often silenced. This path to healing starts when all of us make the commitment to work together to liberate aboriginal voices across B.C.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Tanya. We have a few questions.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation that combined personal and provincewide recommendations. I'm the MLA for Stikine. Tahltan territories are within the constituency I represent, so I know your villages well — Telegraph Creek, Iskut and Dease Lake as well. You're very lucky to be from such a beautiful area.

My question is around…. We know that connection to culture, with young people especially, in First Nations ensures better success at education, better participation rates all around. It seems to me that friendship centres are the best-positioned organizations to provide that connection to culture within urban centres.

Could you describe how the friendship centre experience that you went through enabled you to participate more and participate successfully in the mainstream economy?

T. Gregoire: Well, I started going to the friendship centre probably two years ago. That was through schooling that I was there, and they were helping me. The people there, especially the executive director…. I feel like she really saw the potential that I had.

When I first started working and volunteering, I really didn't have that self-esteem. I didn't have that confidence or self-esteem because I wasn't connected to my culture.

The people at the friendship centre, like the executive director, saw my potential and really pushed me. She really pushed me to come into the B.C. Association of Friendship Centres' quarterlies and be the youth rep for the friendship centre, where I ran for the Provincial Aboriginal Youth Council. I'm currently on that council for a year.
[ Page 1667 ]

Just looking back, in the past two years I've seen myself grow so much as a person. Yeah, I can't express how much they've helped me with that.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. I can see why they would think you have lots of potential, because obviously you do.

Just one suggestion. One of the things that I've seen when I've gone to events where aboriginal people are doing dances…. It would be really neat if the invitation was put out to non-aboriginal kids as well. Maybe they feel left out. I've always felt that way too.

My comment is: have you or anybody that you know approached the federal government with regards to their emphasis on on-reserve funding versus reserve funding to assist you in what you're talking about with regards to funding for off reserve?

T. Gregoire: Can you say that again? I just want to make sure….

J. Thornthwaite: The emphasis from the federal government has always been for on-reserve aboriginal people. I'm just wondering if folks such as yourself had approached the federal government representatives to lobby for increased emphasis on off-reserve aboriginal people, because that's where the majority of aboriginal people reside at this point.

T. Gregoire: Well, I've been really connected to the B.C. association, which is a lot where the lobbying happens — in the higher-up. I know that there has been a lot of lobbying going on. I'm not a hundred percent sure what they've done with the federal government, but I just know that, especially in the past year that I've been involved, there has been a lot of lobbying to governments, I think both federal and provincial.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Tanya. We've used up all your time. The whole committee really appreciates your coming forward.

[1535]

Next up we have Okanagan College — Lance Kayfish and Jim Hamilton.

Welcome, gentlemen. As I'm sure you know, we've got 15 minutes for you. At ten minutes I'll give you a heads-up, and you can take questions or push straight through — your choice.

L. Kayfish: Well, thank you, Mr. Howard and committee members, for the opportunity to provide advice on the priorities for the upcoming 2012-2013 budget. As the board chair and representative today for Okanagan College, which spans from Revelstoke down to the U.S. border, let me start by assuring you, the committee, that the taxpayer investment in higher learning is paying significant dividends.

Our advice today is going to be direct: maintain and increase funding for B.C.'s colleges. We know that's a message you've heard before, and we know government is facing many very real fiscal challenges looking forward. We remain confident that for a sustainable B.C. and prosperous future, education must be protected and remain a top priority for this province. It's an investment that pays real dividends, as I'm sure many of you know, in terms of increased employment, lower social benefit costs and increased tax revenue.

The story in this region is best told, I think, by the increase in the number of students enrolled here in the Okanagan. At over 8,000 full-time-equivalent students, Okanagan College is now bigger than Okanagan University College was in 2005, and last year University of British Columbia here in the Okanagan reached 7,000 FTEs in student enrolment. That growth equates to doubling the post-secondary capacity in this region, and that means opportunities that are paying real dividends to the community and to citizens of this province, such as Sattu Dhaliwal.

Sattu is one of more than 1,300 people who received credentials from Okanagan College last year, and she is now the marketing coordinator for Accelerate Okanagan. That's an organization, along with Sattu, helping to attract and nurture high-tech businesses here in this region — businesses that have the potential to grow and sustain British Columbia's economy.

Knowing what's coming at us in terms of demographics and opportunities fuels a consuming interest in how British Columbians can use the college system to our collective advantage in the years ahead. Last year Okanagan College delivered learning and touched the lives of more than 20,000 individuals here in this region of 397,000. That's a big impact.

This fall's enrolment numbers — a record at 4 percent over last year's — mean that we'll exceed government targets for the seventh year in a row. That's important because we know that there will be a million job openings in British Columbia by 2020. Most of those, 78 percent, will require post-secondary education, and the great majority of those will require paralegal and other sorts of technical credentials, where colleges excel.

Affordable access to schools close to home is a vital fuel for economic growth. Providing that access has helped Okanagan College achieve the best record of any institution in this province, growing the number of aboriginal students attending. Last year 1,336 aboriginal students enrolled at Okanagan College, up from only 423 five years ago. That's an increase of 315 percent, and that's a number we're very proud of and will be continuing to strive to improve on.

We know there's more to be done to encourage greater First Nation participation in post-secondary education. That's why we work directly with many of the bands in our region, offering the right programs and developing
[ Page 1668 ]
new ones, and why we have worked to create a more welcoming, inclusive culture at our college and all our campuses. And we've turned to also delivering some programs on band land.

However, at the same time that we're encouraging more students to take post-secondary education from a variety of areas, a lack of capacity meant that this fall Okanagan College turned away more than 300 qualified students from a number of programs, programs including civil engineering technology, human service work, dental assistant, aircraft maintenance and early childhood education.

Moreover, students who were ready to register to take programs such as business administration, criminal social justice and human kinetics decided not to because they couldn't get the courses they wanted, bumping up against the capacity limits we were having.

Now, 300 might not seem like a massive number, but one thing I can tell you about it is that we don't really know the true impact of the students that aren't able to come to our college, because there's a certain point where we do stop taking applications. The reason for that is we don't want to create false expectations, and we don't want to continue collecting application fees when there isn't a chance. That's something we’re working on.

[1540]

But what I can tell you today is that we believe there are a number of students who aren't getting the programs and the courses they want. This comes at a time when our provincial labour market strategy calls for significant improvements in the percentage of high school students moving on to post-secondary.

Ours is a region that lags behind the province in two very important areas. The first is transition rates from high school to post-secondary education, a goal that has been identified by government, and the second is the number of post-secondary seats per thousand compared to the provincial average.

Without further investment, we will be increasingly unable to meet student and employer demands. Students are ready to invest money, time and effort in their futures, and we cannot accommodate them. The worst-case scenario is one that's been, I think, succinctly put as people without jobs and jobs without people.

Picture B.C. a few years from now when career opportunities and industry needs go unfilled because we have people available but the workforce lacks the skills and the training required. At the same time, we could have people who are relying on the social safety net because they don't have the skills needed to get those jobs. That could be a double-whammy situation for British Columbia.

Whether the skill shortages affect our growing ports, slow down production of our mines or put a bug into our growing tech sector, it's a problem. Much emphasis is put on developing the infrastructure that will support B.C.'s growth and development in the years ahead — pipelines, gas fields, ports and transportation networks. And the most important part of that infrastructure is the human capital to drive it.

Industry is asking for new programs, and we're ready to respond. As a sector, we have been without government redress for the pressures of inflation for several years. I know that's a message you've heard from others and Jim Reed of the British Columbia Colleges group.

I can tell you that as an institution, we have struggled with our budget. We have absorbed and found efficiencies and done what we can, with the support of our staff. We've sought and found industrial, municipal and philanthropic support to help make both programs and buildings happen, but there comes a pinch point.

But I do want to talk about a success, and that is the example of The Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Building Technologies and Renewable Energy Conservation that's recently been completed in Penticton.

I see some smiling faces. I'm glad to see that, because it's something we're very proud of.

That's a success story, which was born from a partnership, as many of you will know, between the federal government, this province and our community, where we are engaged currently in a $5 million capital campaign that, I'm happy to report, is going very well.

The construction of that building alone has spawned innovations and opportunities for B.C. companies, opportunities to showcase a lot of very different technologies and approaches. Companies such as PCL, Structurelam, Summerland-based Swiss Solar Technology, Salmon Arm's Dinoflex and CEI Architecture are all examples of industry that is eager for us to use the building to develop the programs they need to accommodate a clientele that's increasingly focused on sustainable development and technology.

However, we do face a risk of falling short of taking advantage of all the opportunities afforded by the centre of excellence — which, by the way, may be the most sustainable building of its type anywhere in the world. It has been built as a living laboratory, which provides tremendous opportunity. The lack is in the funding support for programs that industry is asking for and that industry is keen to support. The loss there might be one of several leveraging opportunities.

Investment in post-secondary education, particularly in colleges, addresses the provincial agenda in a variety of ways. But today with you, committee, I'd like to mention two.

The first is that providing needed access to quality post-secondary education is one of the best ways to serve the families of British Columbia. The second point that I'll raise is that support for post-secondary education is a key mechanism for ensuring that this province is seen as a preferred destination for investment. Investors, we know, shy away from areas where the required skilled workforce isn't present.
[ Page 1669 ]

In closing, I'd like to point out that as you're thinking about infrastructure investments, you'll realize the often-quoted $3.80 return on investment for every dollar spent on B.C. colleges is much, much more than a statistic. It represents opportunities and the future of our students, the communities we serve and British Columbia. At this critical time we must take the time to think about the cost and implications of not making that investment. It is not something we can just catch up on.

[1545]

Those are our comments today. We thank you, committee, for the time to present to you. I'm here with Jim Hamilton, who is the president of Okanagan College, and together, we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you.

M. Stilwell: Nice to see you, and thank you for your presentation. I just want to try to connect the dots of what we hear from people in the post-secondary sector, particularly the colleges, of student debt — which we're worried is high — local labour market information so that you're getting maximum labour market attachment and return on investment, and the programs you're offering.

For example, when people from the agricultural sector presented, they said they were having difficulty in this region with finding staff with horticultural training, which would seem a natural. So I just want to understand. Do all of the programs you are offering currently have maximum enrolment, or are there programs that you would like to let go of in the face of your own local labour market information?

J. Hamilton: I'll answer that one, if you don't mind. Thanks for having us here today.

M. Stilwell: Can you explain my question first?

J. Hamilton: I think your question was asking us to connect the dots between demand and supply, and then asking the harder question of whether or not there are programs that we could let go of in order to fund programs like the ones Lance was talking about earlier around our centre of excellence, in particular, in Penticton.

We have very few — I would say none, but I don't think that's completely accurate — programs and none of any size that are lacking students. So we don't have excess capacity. In fact, we've run every year, as you may recall, in excess of government's projections, their targets for us, and our own projections. It's not a matter for us of being able to decide that we will scrap a program, let's say, that's part of our business program in order to bring on line a program in horticulture, if that's what the agriculture community wants or anything else. All we're really doing is shifting the problem from one place to another.

That's the issue we face here. We are in direct connection with our employers. We have program advisory committees consisting of people from the field that advise us on every single program that we offer. We listen carefully to them. We do our own studies, and we try to meet those demands.

One thing I will say, though, is that it is possible for us to be a little bit more innovative. You heard Jim Reed talk to you earlier about the need for flexibility and talking about my least favourite subject — accounting rules and principles. We're finding ourselves severely restricted in terms of flexibility in how we use money we have in the bank, so to speak, for some of these issues. That's something that's really important. I know Jim has talked to you about that.

I also think it's possible for us to be a little more innovative in how we work with industry. Let me give you two examples. A few years ago a major transportation company in the province came to us. They couldn't get enough commercial transport mechanics, so we went to the Caribbean with the employer. The employer picked out likely candidates. We provided the gap training. They wrote the Red Seal exams, and those that passed had guaranteed employment with the company.

We're doing the same thing right now with a mining company. That's the kind of thing that we would like to do more of, and that means bringing employers to the table more than employers have come to the table at this point. That is definitely one of the things we could do. But the most important thing for us is just to recognize that we're facing as a province and as a community that looming skills gap, which has kind of receded a bit, thanks to the economic recession. It'll be back in front of us with a vengeance.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation, and congratulations on the First Nations enrolment increase. Good job on that.

My question is around the 300 people that were turned away. You alluded to the fact that those numbers could be much higher, because you don't accept applications after a while, not to raise expectations. We've got a jobs plan with no emphasis on training, so it begs the question: jobs for who? I wonder: were those 300 in a variety of programs? Can you give me a bit more detail on that? What's the makeup of it generally?

L. Kayfish: Maybe I'll start, and Jim can fill in the gaps if I miss anything. They are in a variety of programs. I did mention a few of those programs. A good example would be our civil engineering technology program, which is a critical program for a lot of different types of construction that occur throughout the province. It supports those technical professionals and paraprofessionals to business and industry. That one, I think, was oversubscribed to the tune of well over a hundred students.

[1550]
[ Page 1670 ]

So there are some areas of significant magnitude, and there are other areas of smaller magnitude that are spread throughout.

What I was alluding to with not being able to track it is something we're working on. In the past we've had a policy of not creating that false expectation. But what we do know from talking to our staff anecdotally and getting the feedback from Jim and all the staff is that there are a number of students that are seeking opportunities within the program structure we already provide that we're not able to offer.

The other thing that Jim has talked about a little is that we often have employers that come to the college looking for different types of training to fill the skills gaps they need. They're often players who are interested in providing and supporting the different programming opportunities that we might be able to offer and present, but they can't do that by themselves, so they're looking for us to be able to come to the table with the support for those programs.

J. Hamilton: One of the programs which Lance didn't mention, which is one of our most heavily pressured ones, not just at our institution, is nursing. We cut off applications to all of our health sciences programs once they hit a certain point. We hit that point every year. We don't know how many more people there are who would apply if we kept taking applications.

We've tried to operate from a student-centric basis. We don't want to take your money for an application fee if there's no hope of you getting in this year. That's the principle on which we operate. We cut it off at a point where we know we'll fill the program and, hopefully, won't leave too many people without an opportunity to study.

It's a variety of programs that are involved in this. One of the things that caught us a bit by surprise this year was our business administration program. As you may know, we have the largest business degree program in the college system, and it's one that's recognized internationally. This year all of a sudden we've got a lot of pressure unexpectedly from people wanting to transfer into our program from other institutions, and now we've run into capacity problems there as well. It is a significant issue for our college, and many other colleges, I know, have spoken to you.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, gentlemen. We have some other questions, but we've run you out of time, so we'll have to catch up with you after this. I appreciate you taking the time to come out and present to us this afternoon.

Next up we have the Kelowna Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art — Heather Martin. Welcome, Heather. As you know, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up, and you can either stop for questions or go straight through — your choice. The microphone's yours.

H. Martin: Wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee. My name is Heather Martin, and I'm currently the interim artistic and administrative director for the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. I'm also a professional practising visual artist.

I have been involved with Alternator for eight years as a member, volunteer, board member and, for the last two years, as staff. Since May of this year I've been appointed as interim director to help our organization move through a period of transition. That will be ending as of November, when we hire a permanent director.

The Okanagan Artists Alternative Association is a charitable organization and a not-for-profit society that operates the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. The Alternator produces contemporary exhibitions of visual and new media art by artists from across B.C., Canada and internationally.

The Alternator is an artist-run centre and is part of a network of over 170 centres across Canada. Artist-run centres run parallel to municipal galleries and represent an internationally recognized cultural industry in Canada. The Alternator Centre is funded through private donors, foundations and fundraising events as well as national, provincial and municipal funding agencies.

Historically, the government of British Columbia has been supporting our centre through two revenue streams: the B.C. Arts Council and B.C. gaming grants. However, since 2009 provincial funding to arts and culture industries in the Central Okanagan has dropped by 55.3 percent through the loss of access to B.C. gaming grants.

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Our association is thankful that the provincial government has revisited cuts to the B.C. Arts Council and returned funding to the 2008-2009 level. This shows awareness of the multiple roles a centre for contemporary art plays in our community. As an indication of our commitment to fill these multiple roles, I will outline just a few of the important impacts of our activities. Today I will focus on the economic impact of creative industry, its effect on tourism and, finally, its role in job creation.

According to the March 2010 economic impact assessment produced by the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus, the creative sector in Kelowna is an important contributor to the local economy. The total economic impact of jobs in the creative sector in Kelowna — including direct, indirect and induced employment — is worth $73 million, while the total economic output reflecting the value of goods and services produced is worth $144 million.

According to the 2006 report on the economic impact of arts and cultural organizations in B.C., the government
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provided $9.5 million to grant applicants. The 300 organizations that received funding spent $155 million on operations and generated a GDP of between $130 million and $156 million. For every dollar of spending, the spinoff and direct value added is in the range of 83 cents to $1.

In addition, the B.C. government received in the range of $10 million to $13 million in provincial taxes for an investment of $9.5 million in grants. In Canada, consumers spent over $27 billion on cultural goods and services in 2008, which is an average of $841 for every Canadian resident. Between 1997 and 2008, spending on artworks and events grew by 59 percent, more than any other category of cultural spending. Export of service by the creative industries in 2008 totalled $16.5 billion.

In 2008 B.C. residents spent $3.8 billion on cultural goods and services, which is 2.9 percent of total consumer spending in the province. This is more than four times government spending on arts and culture in the province.

A respected U.K. study, which examines the impact of arts and culture on regional cities, testifies that arts and culture stimulate and sustain economic growth in smaller cities. According to the 2010 study, arts offer more than just colour and escape. They are the very vanguard of tackling pressing national concerns, from deficits, demographic change and public skepticism towards institutions. In the U.K., arts and culture are central to tourism, which was worth £86 billion in 2007 and directly employed 1.4 million people.

Information published in the most recent Tourism Kelowna economic impact report from 2006 confirms that Kelowna is an international destination that consistently attracts tourists from around the globe. Tourism is a major economic contributor in our region. We are convinced that given the opportunity, attractions such as Kelowna's cultural district, with a range of galleries, museums, theatres, festivals and cultural events, can play a much greater role in tourism revenue.

Statistics Canada estimates that there were a total of 1.2 million people visiting Kelowna in 2004. Each visitor to the area spent an average of $425 during their stay.

Visitors spend approximately $346 million in Kelowna every year, and this results in 6,900 direct jobs. The tourism industry also generated roughly $220 million GDP and $390 million in direct economic output for the province of British Columbia.

Even though, at present, cultural industries contribute to tourism revenue, I would argue that this sector has a great potential that has not yet been fully realized. I will just mention that arts and culture festivals and events have an impact not only on our local community, but they also enrich the range of options offered to visitors to our region. This enlarged repertoire of opportunities and services increases tourism potential and the prestige of our city, invariably resulting in increased revenue and job creation.

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In 2010 the loss of B.C. gaming grants, combined with the general economic climate, had a detrimental effect on our area, resulting in a 10.5 percent loss of art employment in the arts and culture sector in Central Okanagan.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art was on a three-year contract with B.C. gaming, and as of 2011 is losing one part-time job directly as a result of cuts to B.C. gaming grants. That's my job. When my temporary contract is finished as interim director, there will not be a position for me to return to with our centre.

Between 2009 and 2010, 200 workers lost employment in cultural industries across the Central Okanagan. Within the province of B.C. these same circumstances have resulted in a 6.3 percent rate of unemployment in the arts, entertainment and recreation sectors — the highest level seen in 15 years.

Returning to the 2010 UBC Okanagan economic impact assessment, in the creative sector in Kelowna there were 1,199 direct jobs generating $37.8 million in wages annually. On a per-capita basis, there are currently 9.9 creative sector jobs per 1,000 inhabitants in Kelowna. I will also stress that creative industries provide a great source of indirect and induced employment, totalling 564 jobs in 2010.

To sum up, arts, culture and creative industries in general have an untapped potential to increase direct revenue, job creation, investment in our region and ensure sustained economic growth. This opportunity should not be missed, and restoring funding to arts and culture is the only choice that will ensure that this great potential is fully realized.

On that note, we at the Alternator Centre respectfully request that eligibility for B.C. gaming grants by adult arts organizations be restored and that B.C. gaming funding levels to arts and culture be returned to the 2008-2009 funding levels.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. We have a question.

B. Ralston: Your description of the economic impact of the arts, I think, has been presented by other groups. Kamloops had a number of groups who presented. I note in the past that there were more arts groups from Kelowna, but you seem to be the sole representative this year.

My question is a little bit more basic, though. What is the total budget of your organization, and what was the contribution of gaming grants to that budget before it was cut?

H. Martin: This year our approved budget is $160,000. We have now finished our final payment from B.C. gam-
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ing. Next year, without gaming, we are looking at an operating budget of $109,000. The loss for our organization was $34,000 a year.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. Just of note, your second recommendation around restoring funding is the recommendation this committee endorsed in a previous report, so we heard from you last time and other groups as well.

My question is going to be a bit more general, because you are the only representative today from the Okanagan regarding the arts scene. But you talked about 200 people losing employment in the Central Okanagan region, and you talked about the indirect and induced potential revenue those 200 jobs could play a role in.

There's concern about losing the momentum that these people have created in organizations. Have a lot of those people moved on? Are they still around, and what impacts has that had on the sector and being able to maintain momentum?

H. Martin: Well, in Kelowna we face specific challenges, being regional, in that it is hard for professional artists in our community to maintain a high enough living wage. Generally, we lose a lot of professional artists and arts administrators from our community normally.

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Yeah, we lose people. If there are not opportunities, they need to go where there are opportunities.

That said, the community support for our organizations has increased. The people in our community love the arts and want to see them sustained. For example, our organization, losing capacity from a staff perspective, had an increase of volunteer in-kind hours of more than $5,000 last year, and it's steadily increasing every year.

So we are finding ways to work within our communities and keep our doors open, but we definitely are losing our trained professionals to other places — for example, Ontario.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Heather. We appreciate you taking the time to come forward this afternoon.

Next up we have PacificSport Okanagan — Doug Nicholas.

Welcome, Doug. As you may know, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up. You can stop for questions or go straight through — your choice. The microphone is yours.

D. Nicholas: Thank you very much, and I thank you today for the opportunity to speak with you. As mentioned, my name is Doug Nicholas. I'm the general manager of PacificSport Okanagan. We're a multisport training support centre for athletes and coaches. It's a not-for-profit society based here in Kelowna. It currently services 16 partner sports and is connected to a network of five regional centres and to the Canadian Sport Centre Pacific's three national campuses across the province.

The Okanagan regional sports centre has developed a variety of sports services to meet the needs of athletes, coaches, practitioners, volunteers and sport organizations within the region. We've established partnerships with municipalities and sports service providers to assist in the coordination and delivery of events and sport development programs.

I'm here today, firstly, just to thank you for your investment in sport throughout the province. The sport and arts legacy fund, I think, speaks volumes to the government's commitment to ensuring B.C. leads the nation as a culture that values sport excellence and, most importantly, sport as a vehicle for health promotion and prevention.

Secondly, I'm here today to request your continued support of our sport performance and our sport participation initiatives. I believe a strong and vibrant community sport program is an important element in community-building, and participation in sport is a critical tool for building healthy families and healthy communities in British Columbia.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Games marked the beginning of a new era for sport in Canada. Across the country we experienced firsthand the power of a sport to unite communities, to break down social barriers, to inspire people to live a healthier lifestyle and pursue excellence.

Now building on the momentum of the games, the network of centres has diligently worked with their sport partners to provide a performance pathway that's aligned with the Canadian Sport for Life framework. It helps develop a long-lasting sports system and supports our communities from playground to the podium.

The evolution of the sport and arts legacy fund into the base funding for sport would cement an enduring legacy of the 2010 games.

In the Okanagan, thanks in part to the provincial government's investment, the PacificSport regional sports centre has developed and delivered a number of programs and services that have benefited thousands of people, ensuring that everyone has a place to play and a way to get in the game.

Along with my written submission, I've provided you with some information on these programs. They're on the one side there, and I'll speak to them. Just for example, the XploreSportZ sport discovery program — there's a little flyer like this — provides an opportunity for children to test-drive a variety of summer and winter sports in a fun and supportive environment under the direction of certified coaches.

The Ignite Athlete development program — again in there — strives to develop well-rounded athletes with a foundation based on explosive power, balance, strength and speed.
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The sport education program — I've provided an example of that with the upcoming sport leadership conference here in Kelowna — provides innovative current and interactive seminars, courses, workshops and conferences that give practical information designed to help participants succeed both inside and outside of sport.

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The sport school program, which you may have heard of, introduces student athletes to a high-performance lifestyle, and it offers a flexible academic timetable that supports their competitive training schedules.

These programs and others like them have had a tremendous impact on our sport community here in the Okanagan, and they have contributed positively to the health and well-being of communities as a whole here in our region.

I would say that as result of PacificSport's positive sport programming, children and youth are getting physically active. Young athletes are developing foundational athletic skills. Families are adopting healthy and nutritious eating habits. Coaches are learning how to effectively communicate, plan a practice and teach fundamental movement skills. And students are meeting the demands of both sport and education.

The positive benefits of sport programming stretch beyond these tangible examples and are also noticed in terms of employment opportunities, economic spinoffs and lower health care costs.

PacificSport Okanagan strongly believes that sport supports the health of B.C. communities, and it recognizes that we have an important role to play. The positive results of strategic program investment are increasingly evident in the communities and on the podium, and we are committed to building on these results.

Again, I thank you for your continued support for sport. Together we will help athletes win medals for Canada, inspire our citizens to use sport as a vehicle for health and the pursuit of excellence in their own lives and build vibrant communities from the ground up through sport for life. Respectfully submitted.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you, Doug. Really appreciate you coming forward.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much. We've heard from PacificSport a few times in our travels, so it's good to hear from you, from the Okanagan. Two quick questions.

The PacificSport regional sports centre presence in the Okanagan. Is it a programming presence? Do you also have a facility presence, or do you use the existing facilities?

Secondly, I notice you've got 2010 Legacies Now on the logos here. Are you still receiving funding from 2010 Legacies Now?

D. Nicholas: To answer your first question, as far as the facility, right now we have partnerships established with the municipalities within our region. The main partnership is with the city of Kelowna, and we're based out of a facility called Sport Kelowna. It's basically an administrative office that houses the city of Kelowna sport and rec department, Tourism Kelowna and PacificSport Okanagan.

We've come together to form this Sport Kelowna partnership, and we work on a number of initiatives throughout Kelowna and throughout the region as well. Then we've established satellite offices in Penticton and in Vernon to work on initiatives in the North Okanagan and South Okanagan.

We don't have a facility per se that we can provide programs out of, but we have partnerships with each of the municipalities that allow us access to various facilities within the region.

The 2010 Legacies Now. There's been a transition, I think, that's been taking place, where they're moving over to the new B.C. Sport Agency. We have had a partnership with 2010 Legacies Now. They've provided support to us — significant support to help with our sport participation initiatives, in particular. Now that's being transitioned over to the new B.C. Sport Agency.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you very much for taking the time to come and present to us today.

Next up we have UBC Students Union Okanagan — Neetu Garcha and Kirk Chavarie. Welcome. As you may have heard, you've got 15 minutes. At about the ten-minute mark I'll give you a heads-up and you can stop and take some questions or go straight through. Your choice. The microphone is yours.

N. Garcha: Great. Hello, everyone. On behalf of the UBC Students Union Okanagan, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here today and present in front of the Standing Committee on Finance. My name is Neetu Garcha. I'm the external coordinator for the UBC Students Union Okanagan.

K. Chavarie: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kirk Chavarie, and I am the executive chair and financial coordinator for the UBC Students Union. UBC Students Union Okanagan is a not-for-profit society which represents approximately 7,800 students at the UBC Okanagan campus.

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While the members have a diverse array of concerns, including accessible transit, sustainability initiatives and housing costs, this submission will focus on the issues directly related to post-secondary education. The central issue is one of access. While the current government has done a commendable job on building capacity and increasing the numbers of seats, another aspect of ac-
[ Page 1674 ]
cessibility has suffered. Per-student operating budgets have declined, resulting in a very real financial barrier to accessibility.

There are three aspects of this problem that we'd like to highlight. The first one is tuition fees. While the current government has placed an inflationary cap on tuition fees, this follows a period of deregulation, which, unfortunately, saw university boards act irresponsibly and raise tuition fees to unreasonable levels.

The second bullet point is non-repayable financial aid. B.C. currently ranks dead last among the provinces in terms of non-repayable financial aid as a percentage of aid per student.

Interest on student loans is the third one. Student loans, when used as a revenue generator, amount to a two-tiered tax on students who use loans to finance their education. Currently B.C. is tied for the highest interest rates on student loans in the country.

The provincial government can demonstrate its commitment to students and their families by taking some steps to correct these missteps.

N. Garcha: The blame for the problem of rising tuition fees is often laid at the feet of university boards. Now, this is not entirely unjustified. During the period of deregulation, most post-secondary institutions in our province acted irresponsibly and raised tuition fees unreasonably high. However, it could also be argued that the provincial government created preconditions under which this sort of ever-higher thinking on tuition fees could prevail.

While the current inflationary cap on tuition fees is a welcome relief from the period of deregulation, it does nothing to relieve the pressure created by rising tuition fees. This pressure is most keenly felt by students from lower-income backgrounds or racialized communities.

The Frontier Centre recently released a study which suggested that there was no correlation between rising tuition fees and the average income level of post-secondary entrants. This conclusion was based on the fact that the study did not show a strong correlation between the varying tuition fee levels of various provinces and the income of entrants in those provinces. This is a spurious conclusion which ignores various geographic factors, as the Frontier Centre itself acknowledges on its website.

A far more appropriate measure would be to measure the tuition fees at a given institution against the sociological profile of the entrants. At UBC Okanagan rising tuition fees have created some disturbing trends.

The average UBC student used to work eight hours a week to finance their education. Now the average student works 30 hours a week to finance that same education. Only 30 percent of students at UBC Okanagan are actually from the region. This constitutes a negligible increase in education opportunities for students from the Central Okanagan. When combined with the sharp increase in tuition fees, this constitutes a failure of UBC Okanagan's mandate from the provincial government as a community university.

The UBCSUO would like to see the government take steps to reduce fees to 2001 levels and undo the damage it has done by forcing universities to finance their government-mandated growth on the backs of students.

K. Chavarie: B.C. currently ranks dead last in non-repayable financial aid as a percentage of student aid. This speaks to the government's level of commitment to post-secondary education. In concrete terms, the government commits less to the non-repayable financial aid than any other province in this country. This is part of why B.C. leads the nation in student debt, averaging approximately $27,000.

With that in mind, any further financial commitment to students and their families would be a welcome change. There are, however, a few principles that we hope will guide the province's investment in the future of its young people.

The first one is that upfront grants are much better than back-end grants. While back-end grants are good, they do nothing to alleviate the sticker shock associated with record-high tuition fees. The psychological barrier is part of what has led students from middle- and lower-income families, as well as students from aboriginal and racialized communities, to increasingly stay away from post-secondary education. It is a matter of confidence. The possibility of a grant sometime in the future doesn't have the same impact as a guaranteed upfront grant.

The second one is needs-based grants being much better than income-based grants. Income-based grants are a way to address the funding needs of students from low-income backgrounds. However, they don't take into account variances in the cost of living. This is particularly a concern at UBC, as Kelowna and Vancouver are both high-cost communities. Needs-based assessments paint a truer picture of the economic situation of applicants.

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With these principles in mind, it is incumbent upon the provincial government that purports to put families first to ease the financial burden on the families of students and to ease the burden of student debt, which is a very real barrier to graduates starting families themselves.

N. Garcha: Any system of student loans does need to set its priorities very carefully. The most fundamental question that must be asked is: are these loans designed as a form of student aid or designed as a form of revenue generation?

These are, unfortunately, competing virtues. As interest rises, loans become more effective as a revenue-generating tool and less effective as a service. Clearly,
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the provincial government views student loans as a revenue generator.

The interest on B.C.'s student loans is tied for highest in the country. At prime plus 2.5 the money is loaned out at a much higher rate than the cost of borrowing. This only exacerbates the havoc that huge student debts wreak on the lives of graduates.

While student loans are unsecured, if they're being provided as a service, there is simply no excuse for them to be loaned out at a higher rate than mortgages. In addition, the revenue generated from student loans — approximately $30 million — in no way justifies levying this two-tiered tax on students.

Ideally, we would like to see the interest rates on student loans eliminated entirely, as the Conservative government of Newfoundland and Labrador has done. This would require a commitment of $100 million on behalf of the provincial government. However, at the very least, the rates should be dropped to reflect the true cost of lending.

Thank you very much for your time, and we open the floor to some questions.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, both.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for the presentation. A good presentation, and we've been hearing from a lot of students on our finance tour.

Actually, I used to be on the board of governors of Kwantlen University before I was elected, and then I have three children who are in post-secondary university right now. Ever since 16 years old, they have all worked, supported towards their tuition fees. So I can relate to what you're saying, because they always tell me.

One thing I remember…. Before 2001 when students were attending university, sometimes it was taking them an extra two or three years to complete their university degree or diploma because there were not enough classes, because the funding for overall education didn't go up. So even though the tuition fees were frozen, it was taking much longer, and some students were saying: "You know, it's not really a good idea. It's better to have higher fees."

My question is: where are we sitting when we compare your university fees to the other ten provinces in Canada? Are we the highest in Canada? Are we the lowest in Canada or somewhere in the middle? Do you know how our tuition fees at universities relate to other universities throughout Canada?

N. Garcha: I'm not sure, in terms of specifics, where we rank, but we are in the top five, leading the nation. In terms of student debt, we're actually the leading the nation. The average student debt in B.C. is $27,000, and our tuition fees themselves, I believe, are also in the top five in the nation.

D. Hayer: When you say top five, can you provide — maybe not today; you can send it to us by tomorrow because tomorrow is the last day to provide submissions — if we are No. 1 on top, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5? It will just give us some idea to sort of get that information too. But I do have the information about the student debt.

K. Chavarie: This is UBC-specific, then?

D. Hayer: Yeah, UBC-specific would be good.

N. Garcha: Sure, yeah. We can provide that information by tomorrow.

D. Hayer: I would appreciate that. Thank you.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. Another question.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation.

I was wondering if you have any information or stories for us, at least, about the completion rates, or the lack thereof, of completion rates by students that are debt-averse somehow.

Are there those kinds of situations where students are not completing their education because they've already found themselves at such a debt level or they're forced to work to try to do both things at the same time? Do you have any information for us on that?

K. Chavarie: I think that this is something that a lot of students communicate to us when they come by our facility and speak with us in terms of debt.

One of the major concerns to us as a student union is students who start their education and then, like you said, halfway through can no longer afford to continue their studies, which basically puts them in the position of having to drop out of university, which is no good for anyone.

When it comes down to it, there is a student with about $10,000 or $12,000 in debt, two years of university under their belt. They start getting hit with interest rates, and it's going to be one heck of a crazy process trying to get back into the system if you're just trying to pay that off with a part-time job. There are so many different stories of students working far over the 30 hours.

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We're fortunate as a student union up at UBC Okanagan that we run a lot of our own food services in the institution. We have many students coming and looking for part-time that are picking up jobs in the kitchen, upwards of 30 to 40 hours, while they're doing their six courses of study. I think that when you start comparing those two, work and education, it's really difficult for students, honestly, to balance both. Work is a stressful atmosphere. Then you get into the classroom, and it's even worse.
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Many stories come forward through students. I mean, we could tell many stories the rest of the day. But we see quite a few students coming through our space and talking about this.

R. Howard (Chair): One last question.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for the presentation. I think people expect students to work at the same time as go to school, to a certain point, and also work throughout the summer months to try to raise money and also access needs-based grants to help their education.

The numbers you give — that a UBC student used to work eight hours a week to finance their education, and now the average student works 30 hours a week — that's pretty stark. That's almost a full-time job; 35 hours most people consider a full-time job.

You know, we're in a real skills shortage. How does that necessity lead to delays in people completing their education and therefore not being able to fill the skills gap that we have? It's spread out — the length of time for people to get degrees.

N. Garcha: If I understood your question correctly, I think the fact that students are having to invest so much of their time in working to pay off their loans while they're completing their degrees increases the time that they spend in the post-secondary institutions. A four-year degree gets increased to five or six years. While they're spending those extra one or two years getting their degrees, they're increasing their loans that they're taking out and their debt. Thus, the interest rates are also increasing.

Although it could be more effective, in the sense that they're in this post-secondary institution for a longer time, it's actually not. It's only because it's their only option at that point. You can't be taking five courses, which is a full-time course load, and be working 30 hours a week. It's just not a realistic schedule.

K. Chavarie: I think it's really specific in Kelowna itself, just in terms of how many students are staying in Kelowna and working and leaving. Many of the students are trying to complete on time so they can get into the workforce and pay off, but we're also seeing students basically leaving the province — because there aren't enough jobs as well — straight out of university to pay off their debts.

There are students who are in the business management faculty or any of the arts programs that are graduating and going and working as vendors or at skateboard shops because there are no jobs in Kelowna itself — to really be job-specific of what they're graduating with.

R. Howard (Chair): We're out of time. Sorry. MLA Stilwell will have to catch up with you later. Thank you both for taking the time to come out and present to us this afternoon. We appreciate that.

Members, we have one open mike — Mr. Wes Kmet.

Welcome, Wes. As an open-miker, you've got five minutes.

W. Kmet: Welcome to Kelowna. Thanks for allowing me to speak. We've got some real challenges in B.C. and all of Canada. Hopefully, through your wisdom and what you hear from all of us, we can make some changes.

From what I've seen in my…. I came here in '89. Just looking at Kelowna, there are some changes. One thing that comes to mind is that development has been a major funder of activity here and jobs, in many ways, in the city and the area as it has grown. But one of the things…. The not directing the social problems in the downtown core, just as a little example, was a major impediment to really developing the downtown core properly. Kelowna could have been so much better.

Anyway, we obviously can learn from mistakes. That's just one little thing that comes to mind as to how we can really make changes.

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Sustainability is a big thing. Two days from now we're going to have an Occupy Kelowna event. There are going to be events in Vancouver. There obviously are many opportunities to make some good changes here, and people are demanding it.

I think that, obviously, everybody works hard as MLAs and city councillors. I just came from an event at Waldorf School, where the government gave $20,000. I saw the mayor was there, and Steve Thomson and Ron Cannan. Things like that.

Anyway, just to give you my background, I poke my nose into everything. In fact, Ron Cannan said: "Well, you're everywhere." I said: "Well, yeah. Okay." And I sort of am.

One of the first things that I can see is that, overall in the province, we need to bring the gap between the rich and the poor closer together. It's really outrageous what's happening in North America and the people that are suffering. It's just incredible. I mean, it's really sad. I know the downtown core better than anyone because I now live downtown, and I ride my bike 99 percent of the time. So I see what goes on in the streets all the time.

I'm sure you all know of things like the Trouble with Billionaires, and many other things that are out in the media, talking about those gaps, so I won't go on about the CEO salaries and the 1 percent that own so much of our stocks and bonds — you know, almost half — and all of those kinds of things.

We need to somehow increase the idea of a living wage, where more of the middle class and/or the…. There have been some changes in what I've seen from the last ten years since '01, and they're steps, small steps, which help — everything from addictions centres to all
[ Page 1677 ]
kinds of different things. There are slow improvements — the Insite, which is federal, I know, and various things like that — but we've just got to do so much more. And we can. There's just no question.

So what's the problem? Downloading has been happening, which is pretty sad. You guys provincially get it from the feds, and there's probably some of that down to the city, and things like that.

One of the things that I should get on with here is: more money for transit. An example here in the city is a part of Glenmore, where I was five years on the neighbourhood association, was a ComPASS system. They're doing it in Boulder, and to make a long story short, they save 16 percent of vehicles in a city which is almost exactly like ours. They pay $10 per household for a full family for a bus pass — incredible. Some of the talk here at the university here some time ago by the professor who was working on this was that maybe Kelowna's would be $20 or $30. That's one suggestion. I'm going all over the map. I'm not representing….

Part of our challenge is that we have to stop the cars and all of those kinds of things. I mean, 50 percent of our taxes go towards roads and bridges and all of that kind of thing, and we know what happens with pollution, congestion — one vehicle and all of these kinds of things. That way it would stop some of the oil and gas industry, whether you're talking pipelines or your XL or Enbridge or all of these lovely things.

We need to become much more sustainable, to buy local. Whether it's through supporting agriculture much more…. That's one of my pet peeves. I think we've done a terrible job in the last little while with support for agriculture. I mean, I see it. It's just really bad, the pressure on the ALR and farmers. I grew up on the farm, in the Prairies. You know, that's the basic…. If we can't even support them, we're really going down the wrong path.

R. Howard (Chair): Wes, you're at five minutes, so I'll just give you an extra minute to wrap it up.

W. Kmet: Okay, thank you. So we need to give more money towards assistance for new alternative energy sources.

The war on drugs is a bust. There are articles on that. Our system, whether it's a shortage of judges or all of that kind of stuff…. It's just wrongheaded. You know, what can B.C. do within the world? But it all takes little steps.

I can go on, probably, but I haven't really prepared because I…. These are just some of my thoughts.

R. Howard (Chair): It's okay. You did very well for a five-minute presentation. You squeezed a lot into it. Thank you very much, Wes. We appreciate you taking the time.

Well, Members, we will adjourn now and reconvene tomorrow at nine o'clock in Richmond.

The committee adjourned at 4:35 p.m.

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