Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 71 — Tuesday, September 18, 2012 (HTML)

Monashee Room, Castlegar and District Community Complex
2101 6th Avenue, Castlegar, BC

Present: Douglas Horne, MLA (Chair); Mable Elmore, MLA (Deputy Chair); Gary Coons, MLA; Marc Dalton, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; John Les, MLA; Pat Pimm, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA

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

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


CONTENTS
Page
Presentations	1880
S. Lehbauer
B. Auliffe
C. Mercer
M. Dion

D. Horne (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I'm Douglas Horne, MLA for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. This is an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly whose mandate includes conducting annual public consultations on the upcoming provincial budget.

I would like to welcome everyone in the audience. Thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process.

Every year in the preparation of next year's budget, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper. The paper presents the current financial and fiscal economic forecast and identifies key issues that need to be addressed in the next provincial budget. Printed copies of the Budget 2013 consultation paper are available for information at the back of the room.

Following the release of the consultation paper, this committee holds public consultations and invites input from British Columbians on the upcoming budget. Following the consultation period, the committee releases a report containing a series of recommendations to the upcoming budget. This report must be presented to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15.

There are several ways for British Columbians to participate. This year the committee is scheduled to hold 19 public hearings in communities throughout the province. This is our second public hearing. We began yesterday in Surrey. Afterward we are scheduled to go to Cranbrook, Osoyoos, Kelowna, Vernon, Vancouver, Coquitlam, Abbotsford, Fort St. John, Quesnel, Kamloops, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Smithers, Prince George, Courtenay, Parksville and Victoria.

In addition to the public hearings, we also have scheduled video conference sessions to reach out to other locations. This is the fourth time that we've used video conferencing for this purpose. This year's video conferences include schedules for Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Salmon Arm, all to be held on September 25.

In addition to the public hearings, British Columbians can also share their ideas by sending a written submission through the on-line form on our website. We also accept written submissions by e-mail, letter or fax, along with video or audio files.

British Columbians can also participate in the consultation by filing a short on-line survey at our website, which is located at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. There you can find information on the consultation process, download a copy of the budget consultation paper and learn more about the committee's work. All of the public input we receive is carefully considered, and the deadline for submissions is Thursday, October 18.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for ten minutes. Up to an additional five minutes will be allotted for questions from committee members. Time permitting, we also may have an open-mike session. Perhaps some of those down the hall might participate in that. If you're interested in participating, please see Stephanie at the table.

The meeting today is a public hearing, which will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of the transcript, along with minutes, will be printed and made available on the committee's website. In addition to the transcript, a live audio webcast of this meeting is also being broadcast through the committee's website. In addition, the live webcast and archived audio copy of the meeting will also be posted.

I'll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with Pat Pimm.

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

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Mable Elmore from Vancouver-Kensington and Deputy Chair of the committee.

D. Horne (Chair): All right. Also joining us today from the parliamentary committees office is the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees, Kate Ryan-Lloyd, as well as Stephanie Raymond. Gordon Robinson was with us yesterday. He's not here today, so it's Stephanie who's staffing the registration desk.

We'll now call our first presenter, the Castlegar Hospice Society. Suzanne, I believe you're there, so please come forward to the table. As I said, you'll have ten minutes to present and then time for questions. If you go a few minutes over ten minutes, I might be a little bit more lenient this morning.
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Good morning. My name is Suzanne Lehbauer. I'm the executive director of the Castlegar Hospice Society. I'm here this morning to talk to you a little bit about hospice palliative care in our community, our region and in our province. You all have a copy of my presentation that I will be making this morning. As well, at the end there are some frequently asked questions about hospice palliative care that you may find interesting.

We all face end of life. It is the great equalizer, and most of us share a common hope that when death comes to us or a loved one, it will be peaceful. In a perfect world we would be surrounded by those we love. We would be safe, well cared for, comfortable and pain-free. When our life is complete, we want our friends and family to receive the support they need to work their way through grief.

Hospice palliative care is aimed at relief of suffering and improving the quality of life for persons who have a life-threatening illness. Hospice is an attitude, a concept of care. We live until the moment of death. When illness is no longer responsive to treatment, hospice palliative care provides the physical, emotional, spiritual and practical support needed.

Castlegar Hospice Society was founded in 1985, with the first hospice training program beginning in 1988 and the first grief support group in 1989. I have been with the society for about five years now, just over five years. What started out as a job for me has now turned into a passion, and I find myself quite the advocate for hospice palliative care.

Our society is professionally administered. It's a volunteer-driven organization. Our unique function is to provide essential health care services in the form of one-to-one companionship and support to those who are at their life's-end journey, as well as providing support to their loved ones. The society is an integral part of a total care team that may include other health care professionals, social workers and spiritual workers. We operate on a without-borders policy so that all the services and educational programs that we provide are available to anyone in our region.

The executive director and volunteer workers offer a tremendous value-added component to the traditional health care delivery system. Our volunteer workers come from a variety of backgrounds, many previously involved in the health care system, and are extensively trained to meet provincial standards of care.

Although only 19 percent of our yearly budget is received in funding from the Interior Health Authority, in 2011 alone the Castlegar Hospice Society provided more than 6,000 recorded hours of volunteer service, which, when valued at a minimal $16.50 per hour, translates to $99,000 in donated labour. We raised 81 percent of our budget from the local community and grants to support the programs and services we deliver.

We have community education in the form of advanced care planning, grief and bereavement seminars and end-of-life training for health care professionals. I also speak to all of our local community groups, such as Rotary and Lions Club. We administer programs such as a weekly grief walk and support group, Bereavement Buddies, and individual grief support, and I help people navigate through the health care maze.

We have developed many community partnerships that have minimized duplication of services. If the health care system had to pay for the services provided by our society, the cost would be well over $250,000 per year. It makes good business sense to support community-based hospices.

Now we look to the future. Well, I'm sure you've heard about the silver tsunami. It's arrived, and it isn't going anywhere. B.C. statistics tell us that in 2011 our population experienced about 35,000 deaths, and research tells us that each death has a serious impact on at least five people. Hospice programs allow patients to gain more control over their lives, but only about 20 percent of all Canadians have access to these services. It depends on what area of the province you live in.

Only about 10 percent of us will die suddenly. The other 90 percent will decline gradually and, depending on the services available, may or may not die where they want and will experience various levels of pain and ability. If we don't act now, what care will there be in ten to 15 years? What care is there today for people who are in need, and what is the cost of doing nothing?

Well, there's a growing trend among Canadians to want to die at home. This has resulted in the issue of caregiving in Canada as urgent. With the devolution of care to the community and home, families are facing an increased burden to care for loved ones with little formal support. About 26 percent of Canadians have cared for a loved one in the past year. Over 20 percent had to take one month or more off work, and over 40 percent were forced to use their personal savings.

As a result, eight out of ten reported suffering emotional difficulties and depression, seven out of ten reported needing respite, and over 50 percent reported financial difficulties and weaker physical health. As one of our clients said to me as she was suffering complete exhaustion from taking care of her husband: "I feel like I'm failing. I can't be a wife to my husband while he's dying because I am so tired from taking care of him." What a tragedy.

As well, there are those who are forced to care for a loved one at home because there's not a bed available at a facility, they cannot afford private care, and there isn't a hospice facility nearby. Where we live should not determine the kind of end of care we receive.

We're facing a challenge in our community, our region
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and our province. How can we ensure that everyone has the right care at the right time at the right place and, of course, at the right price? Imagine knowing you're dying, you have very little time left, and you have no place to go.

We need to look at the training and education of those who are not necessarily in the medical profession to enable them to meet the needs at end of life. We need to support the organizations that strive to have residential hospice facilities in their communities. We need to look at what programs are in place to support the caregivers and patients who choose to stay at home to die, and we need to look at creative partnering.

We may be a small hospice society, but we are mighty in our goal to ensure that everyone has a good death. I have what I call an army of angels, and they are all the volunteer workers that help me. We have worked collaboratively with other hospice societies in our region as well as funding agencies, members of our local palliative team and our local government to provide inclusive, barrier-free regional programs and services, as well as analyzing where the gaps in our programs and services lie.

To this end, we are dedicated to our ultimate goal of a true regional hospice without borders. We have proven ourselves through the programs we develop and deliver, the partnerships we have formed and the professional training we provide. We have proven ourselves to be an integral part of end-of-life care and need the support of the government.

How you can help? Well, every Canadian has a right to quality care at the end of life and a responsibility to advocate for it. Please champion this cause, our cause, with your colleagues. Please review the core funding that is provided to hospices and look at partnering with them to deliver services in a cost-effective manner. Please look at partnering with Castlegar Hospice Society in their efforts to provide a regional hospice facility and provide the operational funding for this project.

If I could just speak to this project that is my baby, which I've been working on since I started with the society. We have the support of our region, the support of our community. Both our MLA and our Member of Parliament are very huge supporters of the hospice society and our project. We're currently working with the city of Castlegar to find a piece of land to accommodate our facility, and we have an architectural firm that's working very hard to develop a building to go on that site.

We work with Selkirk College and the nursing program, and we will be very pleased to, hopefully, have them on board with us at a later date to do some training with nurses at the facility. UBC Okanagan has expressed an interest in doing long-distance education at our facility as well.

We have all the pieces in place. We have the partners in place. We just need some money, and we need some help.

Please support us as we continue to develop new programs to help those at end of life and those grieving. These programs are proven to lessen the burden on the health system. We need to start acting, and the time for change is now. The future lies in your hands as well as ours. We must make hospice palliative care available to every British Columbian if we want to build and sustain healthy and strong communities.

I have a quote from Harvey Chochinov, who is a well-known palliative expert: "Unfortunately, in end-of-life care, we do not have a vocal constituency. The dead are no longer here to speak, the dying often cannot speak, and the bereaved are…too overcome by their loss to speak."

I respectfully thank you for allowing me to make this presentation on behalf of those who so often cannot speak for themselves.

D. Horne (Chair): Great. Thank you so much. I think we've got some questions from members.

G. Coons: Thank you, Suzanne, for being such an advocate and for what you do here with the hospice society.

You talked about the core funding. I guess my first question is: do you know what the core funding is that is coming to hospices? The other one is that you're talking about your pet project here, your baby, as far as the regional hospice facility, and you're talking about operational funding. I'm wondering what you might estimate that to be, what you're asking for.

S. Lehbauer: We're basing our model on the Kamloops hospice facility and looking at how they developed their facility and the partnership that they have with the Interior Health Authority. They receive about 60 percent of their funding from Interior Health, and that covers their operational costs.

For wages and operations for one year for a six-bed facility to accommodate our region, it would run around $1.2 million a year. We're looking at $2.8 million to build the facility and run it for one year. We want to make sure that we have enough funding in place to be able to go that one year without being dependent on anyone else, but we would like to see some commitment from Interior Health.

We get funding from Interior Health of $14,000 a year, which, as I said, covers a very small percentage of our budget, although we do provide well in advance of the services that are required, specifically in the grief and bereavement area. Probably 90 percent of the referrals I receive are from mental health and substance abuse, because they cannot provide the service or the support that we do. We'd like to see a little bit more equalization of funding in that area.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Suzanne, for your presentation. I appreciate the work. Also, your passion really comes out.
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S. Lehbauer: I am very much an advocate for hospice palliative care. If you had asked me 5½ years ago about it, I wouldn't have been able to say anything.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): I'm wondering. You also referred to your services that you offer outside of Castlegar. What is the region that you represent and what other communities? Also, are there any residential hospice beds currently?

S. Lehbauer: We get people who use our services from our area — Trail, Grand Forks. We've had people from Nelson and as far away as Salmo come in specifically for grief and bereavement support, because there haven't been a lot of services throughout the region.

As I mentioned in my presentation, we have what's called a grief walk. That happens on Saturdays. It's a form of exercise and then a support group. That has been very popular for people coming from throughout our region.

Also, I've done a number of educational programs. I am a trainer for hospice palliative care, and I've brought in speakers like Stephen Jenkinson to do community workshops. Again, we've had people from Osoyoos come for those types of things, from Kaslo and from all up the east side as well.

It's great because we are a small community, and it shows that you can't push a small community off to the side.

S. Lehbauer: In our extended care facility we have two beds that currently are designated palliative, but they are used for other patients as well. As I said, what can happen is that we have someone who wants to go into that facility and needs a palliative bed and that it's not available. That's creating a waiting list. Quite honestly, when you're palliative, you don't have time to wait.

M. Dalton: Suzanne, thank you for your service to the community and to people who are facing end of life.

As far as the budget, you mentioned it was $1.2 million, and there's $14,000 from Interior Health. I wonder how much comes actually through donations from the community. And what are your other sources of revenue, specifically from the government, within that budget of $1.2 million?

S. Lehbauer: Well, we don't have a budget of $1.2 million now. That's for the hospice facility. Our budget just runs around $100,000 right now. If we had a facility in place, we would be looking at $1.2 million a year for a budget.

The funding that I receive. We get some money from gaming. I search out any grants that I can get anywhere throughout Canada, the U.S. Anything we can get money to provide services we look at. We have a very good partnership with Columbia Basin Trust and our city of Castlegar as well.

I'm proud to say that twice we have won the prestigious BCHPCA and Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem Award for enhanced end-of-life care for all British Columbians. That comes with $5,000 each time. We've won it twice for our programs here, so that's something we're very proud of.

As I say, we do get a lot of money through fundraising. We have a golf tournament. I've flipped more hamburgers than I ever want to think about. We do whatever we have to do to raise money, and it's tough. Anyone from a small community who has worked in fundraising knows just how difficult it is. Sometimes you wonder where your time is really being spent.

M. Dalton: To follow up, is much of your work in the community with bereavements at their homes, or do they come to you? Do you go to the hospital? How does that function?

S. Lehbauer: We go wherever we are needed, whether it's in a care facility, in a private home or in a hospital — yeah. Or people come to the office.

D. Hayer: I want to say thank you to your volunteers and all the people who help you. You've been very successful, considering the small town.

Do you have some sort of association where you work with other hospice societies around British Columbia or around Canada who share their best practices or how they've been able to deal with some of the challenges? Also, how many people do you see in a year, approximately?

S. Lehbauer: We are affiliated with the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association as well as the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. I have worked with the board of BCHPCA as well, and we are part of what we call region 7. It's different hospice facilities — hospices from areas such as Trail; Nelson; again, Grand Forks; Kelowna.

We do share our best practices. We have meetings several times a year. We have our conference in Vancouver once a year, which is a great networking period, and also,
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we can share what our woes and our troubles are and hopefully find solutions to them.

D. Hayer: Yeah. We have the Surrey Hospice Society. It does a good job, and they have good volunteers. You seem to also have lots of good volunteers there doing a really good job under difficult circumstances.

S. Lehbauer: I have fabulous volunteers, and I certainly couldn't do the job without them.

B. Routley: Thank you, Suzanne, for your amazing work. I happen to know firsthand…. I had a father-in-law with stomach cancer, and he was able to die at home as a result of the work of hospice there in Victoria.

I know what a difference it made to him and the family, but I also am aware of the huge savings that that would have been to the health care system. They were able to train my mother-in-law how to administer the pain medication that he needed. This went on for quite some time — months, in fact. I'm aware that it would have been a huge saving to the province to have him die in that dignified way, which was the way he wanted it to be, at home.

Again, do you believe…? After having gone through that experience, I believe that a little more money spent on hospice could actually relieve some of the situations that we have in hospitals with people in beds. I know that it helped that he had a spouse that was able to help. I'd hope that was key. I just wondered if you had seen other situations where a little more funding could have actually helped save money.

S. Lehbauer: When you look at the cost of having someone in an extended care facility, I believe it runs about $1,100 a day. In a hospice facility it's about $300 a day. There are the savings right there.

As you said, making the training available, enabling those who wish to die at home and who are able to die at home to do so in a comfortable and pain-free manner, is essential.

We need to make sure that people can die where they want to die, where they're able to die. As I said, I've seen a situation where people die at home for the simple fact that they cannot get a bed to be in, and their families cannot look after them. The stress on the families is enormous, and that affects them in their work and in their personal life as well, again creating more of a burden and more money on our system.

D. Horne (Chair): I'll now call our next presenter, being Selkirk College. Mike, Barry and Cathy, thank you so much for coming today and for being part of these consultations. As you may or may not have heard, you have ten minutes for a presentation, followed by questions afterwards. We may be a little bit more liberal than we are in some places on the amount of time for questions.

B. Auliffe: I'm Barry Auliffe, obviously. I'm the director of communications, and I have two of my colleagues with me: Cathy Mercer, who is our registrar, and Mike Dion, who is our vice-president of finance and administration. They are here to help answer any questions you have. We're a fairly large operation. I don't know all the answers.

I apologize. I'm going to read my presentation. I will glance up every once in a while. But I've got it timed right down, and I don't want to miss any of the points.

First of all, thank you very much for allowing Selkirk College the opportunity to make this submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We appreciate the effort the government is making to garner public input as it takes on the very challenging task of preparing the '13-14 provincial budget during a period of declining revenues, from what I have read.

We are encouraged by the government's commitment to provide infrastructure support to post-secondary education as part of its larger commitment to health and education.

Selkirk College opened its doors back in 1966, which makes us…. We claim to be the oldest community college in B.C. I believe VCC, Vancouver Community College, is maybe a couple of days older than us. Anyway, we've never arm-wrestled them for it, but we've been around for quite a while.

We have campuses in six different communities. In the West Kootenay and Boundary region there are approximately 80,000 folks living in our area. We go from Kaslo in the east over to Grand Forks in the west.

It's interesting to note that every year…. Well, last year approximately 11,500 people registered for some sort of course at Selkirk College. That represents about 1 in 8 citizens. We're pretty proud of that, although we'd like to see it even higher.

The college delivers 60 programs in both the classroom and on-line environments to people within the region,
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the province and, of course, across the country. It's our goal to ensure that the programs that we offer are both comprehensive and at the same time are unique to the area. We have courses such as peace studies, ski resort operation, commercial aviation in a mountainous environment and studio arts. Those are things that are fairly unique to Selkirk College.

We're one of the largest organizations in the West Kootenay–Boundary, with over 550 employees and a payroll in excess $29 million. The most recent modelling showed that the operation of the college has an economic impact of about $75 million annually. Many consider Selkirk College to be an economic engine for this region.

At a time when it's being predicted that between 2016 and 2020 the demand for workers will outpace the supply, when post-secondary education will be required for 78 percent of new job openings and when jobs require ever-increasing levels of knowledge and skill, the sustainability of our province's college system has never been more important, in our eyes.

This is particularly true in our college region, which has the highest gap between the demand for and the supply of skilled workers in B.C. We have a decreasing percentage of the population in the 25- to 44-year range. Of course, the other side of that is that we have a growing senior demographic.

We have an association called the B.C. Colleges group. That's why our president isn't here today, by the way. The presidents are all meeting down at the coast. Working with them, we've identified three areas, or opportunities, where we think colleges can play a major impact in helping the province to meet its challenges.

The first one, fairly obvious, is to ensure that B.C. has a skilled and educated workforce. Occupations in our area that are the fastest growing and have the greatest need for skilled workers are in the health care, trades and primary industry. We have a wide range of programs in all these areas. Each year we graduate hundreds of people into the workforce. In the majority of cases those job openings are due to retirement.

Given the aging population described earlier and the expected economic growth requiring new workers, it will be a challenge to keep up with this demand. It's been quite well publicized that this is a challenge that we have across Canada ahead of us — having skilled workers.

In order to have any chance of being able to meet that demand, our college requires sufficient and stable funding that will allow us to build the capacity and maintain our infrastructure.

The second area where we think we can help is to assist in building strong and vibrant communities. In terms of economic impact, the very presence of hundreds of well-paying and highly skilled jobs — along with a payroll, as I mentioned, of $29 million — contributes significantly to the strength of our communities. It's being calculated that the annual impact of the college and its graduates on the region is over $200 million a year.

There are many stories about folks that have graduated from the college, stayed in the community and had a real impact. One of my favourites is…. I'm from Nelson. We had a student graduate from the ski program. Mike Adams was a developer and, eventually, an owner of Whitewater Ski area. Mike went on to be on our advisory committees, provide learning experience for students and even jobs for some of them. This is the kind of thing that happens in a small community like this.

Also, the presence of a college has an impact on the social and cultural activity. We have the Mir Centre for Peace, just as an example. This means that speakers like David Suzuki and Arun Gandhi are brought into the area. Our contemporary music program attracts musicians who go on to contribute to the cultural identity of the region. Our studio arts program is often the starting point for regional artists.

Again, in order for Selkirk to have a real impact in building communities, targeted annual funding is required, allowing the college to maintain its infrastructure and remain current from a technological perspective.

The third area is about competitive advantage, particularly in a knowledge economy. While a rural college has certain challenges we have to face that the large, urban universities and colleges don't in areas like transportation and housing, we have a lot of advantages. Things like smaller classroom sizes mean that students get personalized attention. Lower tuitions. We have a faculty that's focused on teaching rather than on research and publications.

Something that a community college offers that plays an important role in gaining or not losing a community's competitive advantage is accessibility. We have a lot of stories of people, often mothers, that have stayed home while they raised the family. When the family has grown, they made a decision that they want to have a career. If you live in a place like Nakusp or Nelson or Grand Forks, because we have campuses there, they were able to complete their high school education, complete their post-secondary education and go on to careers in law, engineering or health care. One of the main things about community colleges is the accessibility that they provide to post-secondary education.

In order for a rural community college to remain relevant and sustainable, it must be able to operate on a somewhat level playing field with the institutions in the urban areas. To remain current with these institutions in terms of the teaching environment, equipment, connectivity and bandwidth are absolutely essential. There is competition for students, and we want to keep our students in our area. We simply require the funding to be able to keep that playing field level.

These are the opportunities that we see for Selkirk to support the government in meeting the challenges that
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it has, along with areas where we believe we require support. It's important to know that we are continually working within our operation to ensure the sustainability and relevance of our college.

Some of the areas that I want to mention. The first one is always a big one for us in the senior management group. It's cost containment and administrative efficiencies. Each year we must produce a balanced budget. Because our base funding is very static and because the cost of doing business goes up every year, it means that we have to go out and find effective and efficient ways to do things.

When we go about finding those, we try to do it in the administrative area rather than getting into reducing student services or programs. Interestingly, last year we balanced the budget and we found 60 percent of the reductions within the administrative area, even though it only represents 25 percent of our overall budget.

Selkirk is working with area colleges in an effort to find opportunities for shared services. Examples of collaborations that have taken place include risk management, the use of technology in synchronous delivery of courses. We've got discussions underway to find efficiencies in banking and in the purchase of software through campus agreements.

We form partnerships. We continually seek out and establish working partnerships with industries and organizations. Companies such as Teck, Fortis, Columbia Power and credit unions enable us to build capacity and expand services and support for students and the development of programs. Organizations such as the Columbia Basin Trust and the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust are key supporters and partners with Selkirk, whether in the establishment of student awards or initiatives in areas such as rural development.

The final point I want to make is in delivering on our enrolment numbers. Meeting enrolment targets in this area of the province, which experiences little growth in population and an aging demographic, is an ongoing challenge. We are determined to meet this challenge through embracing, collegewide, what we call a strategic enrolment management philosophy and an attempt to be student-centric in all we do.

A good example of this is the aboriginal gathering place which we recently opened. What that does is it tells incoming aboriginal students that they're welcome at Selkirk College, and then once they're here they have a place where they can feel at home, they can celebrate their culture while they're completing their studies. It's that kind of thing that helps us to get students and keep them.

We're also committed to bringing the world to Selkirk. It's not easy when you're competing with the big universities at the coast. We have aggressive marketing campaigns happening in the Middle East and in Asia. We had 300 international students last year. When you figure our total full-time-equivalent count is just over 2,000, we think that's pretty impressive.

In closing, I believe it's important to reiterate the belief that our college can play an important role in seeing that B.C. maintains its status as one of the best places on earth to live, work and play. We can continue to do our part in providing a skilled workforce. We can make a serious contribution to the development of vibrant, strong communities, and we can help B.C. to maintain its competitive advantage.

We are best able to accomplish this if we're able to create and maintain a 21st-century learning environment. To accomplish this we require the support of government through sufficient and stable funding.

It's our hope that this will be a serious consideration as the government goes about the task of completing the 2013-2014 budget.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you, Barry, for your presentation. We'll start with questions from Dave.

D. Hayer: Well, thank you very much — a very good and very diverse presentation. We also have — it used to be called Kwantlen University College — Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, and they have very diverse courses.

One of the courses I haven't seen before is the peace studies. I was wondering what type of jobs people get after they do the peace studies program. The diplomatic field or something else?

The other part is class-size limit. Do you also have a class-size limit? Is it the same as other colleges, or is there flexibility?

The third one is if you have a program that's maybe underutilized — right? — are you allowed to transfer the funds from that program to a program that might be oversubscribed, that has more students than not?

The first one was the peace studies program. What do students go on to? I think you mentioned one. Diplomacy is a good one. Quite often they go on to further studies in something like law. Peace studies. A lot of it is about conflict resolution, and it feeds into a lot of different careers.

C. Mercer: Our peace study programs. At this time students are taking them as electives in their other courses. They might be nursing students, or they might be forestry students if they have a chance in their timetable to round out with electives. Also, we have a solid group of students that are taking those programs to transfer to university. One of the places they often look to is Royal Roads with their conflict analysis and human security and peace-building programs. I'm a graduate of those types of programs, with a masters degree myself.
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Those are skills that are utilized in every position within organizations or within peacekeeping, etc. It's a very wide field that you can go into with that kind of credential.

B. Auliffe: The final question was…. I forget the middle one. We'll come back….

D. Hayer: The number of students for each class. I was told that at Kwantlen University they can adjust their funding depending on how many students they have. Sometimes you might have three or four extra students, and because the class had a limit and the contract would not allow them to keep them in the class, then they had to start a new class or tell those people not to enrol.

In some of the colleges and universities they have flexibility. They work with the instructor or the professor to adjust the class sizes to accept more students. I don't know if you have the same types of issues or not.

C. Mercer: There are class-size limits within our two instructional collective agreements. Some of those class sizes have to be kept in place for safety reasons. For example, for a welding shop, we're limited to 18 for safety reasons. We couldn't add extras. But our faculty has worked with us in many instances to adjust taking an extra student here or there rather than putting on an extra section.

With limited enrolments in some places, we do have to be creative in order to fill up the institution.

B. Auliffe: Yeah. It's an interesting challenge with a fixed budget. Like, if we have a program that you could have a second stream, we don't get extra funding for that. Of course, tuition does not cover the cost of the program, so that just puts an extra…. We want to have accessibility for students, but at the same time, it's a financial burden.

The final question is an interesting one. If we want to add a new program, we could cancel a program. Once again, we have a fixed amount of money that we receive, and it's always a challenge for us.

If we wanted to launch something new, it's hard to go to the ministry and say: "Can you give us additional money to launch this program?" They go, "Well, cancel something else," and we go: "Well, we don't have anything to cancel. Everything is strong. We don't want to do that." So sometimes it'll stop us from being able to introduce something.

D. Hayer: Well, I was thinking that sometimes there are some programs which are undersubscribed — not enough students are taking them. I have heard, when I used to be on the board of governors of Kwantlen University, that some programs didn't have enough students to continue. What they have challenges with is should you discontinue the program and put the funding in something else where the demand is a lot more?

B. Auliffe: That's exactly what we have to do. But it has to be over a prolonged period of time.

You take something like our aviation program. It goes in cycles. It'll be very strong one year; it can be light the next year. Forestry has gone through the same cycles. We can't make the mistake of knocking something out because it's on a downward trend, but sometimes programs are done, and they've got to be taken out.

C. Mercer: If I could add a note to that, we do have ongoing discussions with ITA on exactly that matter. If we don't have enough apprentices coming in for one line of training or a line of electrical foundation, then our dean in that area is in direct discussion with ITA about doing something else or something different where there is demand. Out of that came our new metal fabrication program, over a one-time basis, seeing if there was demand for that. There was, so we're now trying to move that into our ongoing profile.

First, I was interested in the fact that you have 300 international students. I'd be interested to learn what areas of your curriculum are attracting those students.

Secondly, I know that you have a somewhat aging demographic, perhaps a little older than the provincial average in this area. One thing I don't see in your presentation this morning — perhaps simply because you didn't have time to put it in — was the concept of an elder college. I know it has been very useful in many communities, including my own, and is wildly oversubscribed most of the time. We don't often think of colleges performing that function in communities, yet I think increasingly that is becoming a useful exercise.

Thirdly, you mentioned you're attracting some support from the development initiative trust and the Columbia Basin Trust for rural development initiatives. I wondered if you could maybe elaborate a little bit more on what those rural initiatives are about and to what extent they've been successful so far.

C. Mercer: Yes. Traditionally, our international program mostly attracted international students studying English, and that has really changed over the years. The numbers coming here to study English are declining, and many students are ending up in our career programs. We see a lot of them in our business administration program. We see a lot of international students…. Last year
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we had up to six apply for our tourism program, which is very exciting. This year, for the first time, we've been able to take an international student into our fine woodworking program.

There are some issues around the funding in the trades programs. If an international student studies in that program, we lose that ITA funding. We're trying to work that out, because passing that on to the students, the fees become very high. Students are mostly, now more so, moving into the associate degrees and the diplomas right across the institution, which is really adding to the classroom experience for all students and our globalization goal.

B. Auliffe: As someone that's retiring in a few weeks, I'm going to be looking for an elder college. You'll notice the document is much more extensive than the presentation that I did.

The older demographic. The fastest-growing demographic at Selkirk is 46 years plus, which surprised the heck out of us. There are programs coming in. The government recently has been giving us one-time funding for something called essential skills access. These programs would be in advanced computer operation and administrative skills. If you were to go into those classes, which have been heavily subscribed, you'd see a lot of middle-aged, particularly middle-aged women, taking them, and this represents the 46-plus where our numbers are going up.

Unless our president has been thinking about it and not sharing it, we haven't had a serious discussion about the elder college, but I'll bet it's coming down the road.

In particular, you asked about the rural development initiative. I think you asked about SIDIT and CBT. CBT, the Columbia Basin Trust, is partners with us in the Rural Development Institute, which has been in operation now…. I think Terri has been going for about a year — been actually operational. I'm not real close to it. I'm the communications guy, so I've written some things about it. One of them I'm familiar with is a lot of work on business retention and community vitality that we've done with a lot of the different communities in our region.

A big issue for us is that as people are retiring…. I come from Nelson, and there are a lot of really great little businesses there. I gather over 50 percent of them have no plans for when they retire. They don't know what the heck to do, and it's hard to sell some of those businesses. They've come to the college in terms of things that can be done to see these retirements coming and what can be done to retain the businesses. That's just one example that comes to mind.

C. Mercer: If I could just add to that, the Rural Development Institute built on Selkirk College's regional innovation share. We were able to seek grants in order to create that shareholder position, and the focus of that was rural economic development. Now the Columbia Basin Trust has joined us to a greater extent in order to expand that operation and take a research base to bringing solutions for a regional economy. It's been very successful.

J. Les: I have a supplementary question. Agriculture used to feature fairly predominantly in the Kootenays, throughout the Kootenays.

J. Les: Yeah, but perhaps not as predominantly as it used to be, let's say, a hundred years ago in communities like Grand Forks and other areas like that. I wonder if Selkirk has a role to play in perhaps revitalizing that and being a catalyst for the renaissance in agriculture in the Kootenays, which I think is eminently possible.

C. Mercer: We're reviewing a program proposal right now along those lines. Yes, it is something.... Particularly when we go to the Boundary region, they are always asking for additional programming in that area. Thank you for that.

B. Ralston: Your presentation confirms my view that the colleges are always very close to the labour market in their region, and develop innovative programs that respond to the needs of the labour market and local businesses. That's pretty impressive.

My question was about your…. You mentioned cutting administrative costs. As you know, the Ministry of Advanced Education in the last budget mandated reductions focused on the administrative areas. I believe it's $30 million in the first year. How much was the actual dollar figure of reductions, and are you prepared for further reductions in the administrative area in the subsequent budget — that is, next year?

M. Dion: As far as the administrative services savings go, that work is still in process. Numbers have not been finalized as of yet. Reports will be coming out shortly. Certainly, it is our intention to work with the ministry and the government in realizing those savings out of the administrative areas. As such, as well, this means there's more money available for the classroom.

B. Auliffe: I think, Mike, last year in order to balance our budget — I was part of the senior management group — we were looking at about $1.5 million we had to find. As I pointed out in the presentation….

B. Auliffe: About $37 million. The majority of that came from administrative costs. This year we're reducing our travel by 30 percent, just as an example.

B. Auliffe: No, actually, they're not. Thank you for raising that. But it's one of the areas. We are going to be hard-pressed. Mike is going to be hard-pressed this year to balance our budget into '13-14.

As we've said, the last place we want to go is programs and services to students. I look after the marketing/communications area, and as much as I think what we do is important, it's an area that doesn't benefit students directly — other than finding out what a great college Selkirk is.

We got together, or I talked to the presidents. I think that if we approach this right, we can eliminate this senior management position, so we will remove one. Currently we have seven people in the whole fundraising/communications/marketing area. We'll reduce that by one person.

My previous career was at the B.C. Lottery Corporation. I was director of marketing, and I can tell you it was a different world. There were 35 people and $15 million for advertising lotteries at the time. So it's a bit different.

M. Dion: One more point is that after this last year of administrative reductions, we're now sitting around the 15 to 17 percent of total budget as opposed to 25 percent. It's been a substantial decrease.

M. Dalton: How important is distance learning with the college? Do you use that much?

Another question is: what would you say, of all your satellite campuses, are the ones that seem to be thriving and which one or two may be at risk? Are any of them at risk? Are they all doing well?

B. Auliffe: On distance learning, I will just say this. I believe we're one of the leaders in distance learning for colleges in British Columbia.

C. Mercer: Our distance learning offerings, I guess, are in two ways. Many of the courses…. Like, we'll have English courses on campus, and we'll also have them offered on line. Oftentimes students in a rural community like ours only want to travel to campus maybe three times a week rather than five times a week. So they will choose a distance or on-line offering of that.

We also have a number of programs that are only on line. Students are signed up from all over Canada and the United States in those. Those include nursing unit clerk, pharmacy technician. We have a very successful partnership with the pharmacy bridging program, which takes our pharmacy tech assistants and then upgrades them for the newest requirements.

It is a very important part of Selkirk College and an area that we're looking to grow.

M. Dalton: Now, of those that are taking the distance learning programs, are they mainly around here and receive support, or are they all over the province and international?

B. Auliffe: In terms of the satellite communities, you're referring to Kaslo and Nakusp and Grand Forks. I don't know if you've ever visited any of those.

They're really cute, like Kaslo on the main drag. Those communities are very proud of having a college campus there. The programming is mainly adult basic education, where people are upgrading so they can go on to college or university, and continuing education. They're all very successful. I don't think there's…. I've never heard a reference to one of them not being worthwhile.

C. Mercer: They're very integral to the communities and undertake the programming that's required. At the same time, I would have to say that Nakusp is the one that really has had significant economic struggles up there, and that's affected their whole community.

G. Coons: Thank you, Mike, Barry and Cathy, for your presentation. I understand the importance of a real community college, coming from Prince Rupert and Northwest Community College, and the impact it has on all of the communities and the rural communities — and the concept of remaining, as you say, relevant and sustainable and having that level playing field. I taught school for about 28 years, and a lot of my students came down to the music program and the studio arts program, so I know quite a bit about some of your programs because of that.

You talk about targeted annual funding, and you talk about a sufficient and stable funding that's necessary. You say that base funding has been static while costs have increased. How long has your funding been static, and what is necessary to create sufficient and stable funding for you?

B. Auliffe: The first thing, if the minister came to us and said, "Okay, you guys, what do you want?" we would want to cover inflationary costs. When those aren't covered…. I think that in education there's a separate index for education.

B. Auliffe: Yeah, and it's not the same as the other one. Call it 2 or 3 percent.

It's having that so that we didn't have to start every year by going in and making reductions at the get-go. That would be a really big help.

It would also for launching…. An example. We would
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like to have a combined lab and X-ray technician program in Trail. We believe that in the Interior health facilities, they can't necessarily afford to have an X-ray technician and a lab technician. There is such a thing. It's only available, I think, in Saskatchewan — the training for combining those two. It's an expensive program. I think it's about $2 million in upgrading that would have to happen on that campus. We can't do that unless we knock out other programs to get the money.

If we could get envelopes of money where we could justify a new program, that would be really helpful. But just covering inflationary costs — I think they used to do it in Alberta and Saskatchewan — would be really helpful.

M. Dion: To give you a range of magnitude, we're looking at probably $300,000 every year just to stay even, in terms of reductions. Static means falling behind for the most part. So unless you have supply costs or, say, a commodity cost drop in an equivalent amount, you're always looking for other funds to balance your budget.

M. Dion: Pretty much since I've been there, which is going on five years. We had a small blip up, a blip down, and it's been pretty much static since.

D. Horne (Chair): We'll end…. Actually, I'll ask a question, for a change. I'm interested in the international education side. Obviously, we have many institutions across British Columbia competing for students internationally. Many of our facilities spend significant dollars. When you take a look, obviously, at the additional tuition that those international students bring…. Depending on how successful you are, the net benefit of some of the efforts that go into attracting those students can be questionable at times, depending on how much…. We have institutions that spend quite a bit of money in that area.

I'm wondering about your opinion as to how, perhaps, we could coordinate those efforts better, quite frankly, from an overall standpoint — to attract international students to British Columbia and perhaps be more competitive and actually be more cost-effective in the way that we do that.

C. Mercer: We take an approach in planning for our international education so that they are contributing positively to the institution, so that we're not using operating dollars towards that.

I think for Selkirk College it would be to let us enter the dialogue to talk about what is the ideal number of international students at Selkirk, and not just an ever-increasing target to reach at points that might be inefficient. That would include what the ideal learning environment is with international students as well. We may be reaching that point, so I think that's where it would make sense for Selkirk.

B. Auliffe: It's tough to attract a student to come and live in a community where there's…. It's a small mountain community. They're unlikely to come across people…. If you're from Taiwan, you're unlikely to come across other people from Taiwan or your area. There are certain students like that. It's very tough to compete with Vancouver and Victoria or even the Okanagan. That's why we have to actually send people out, and it's a major undertaking.

D. Horne (Chair): Obviously, having those international students contributes to the overall educational experience of people — definitely. I recognize that.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

Chair:	* Douglas Horne (Coquitlam–Burke Mountain BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Mable Elmore (Vancouver-Kensington NDP)
Members:	* Gary Coons (North Coast NDP)
	* Marc Dalton (Maple Ridge–Mission BC Liberal)
	* Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead BC Liberal)
	* John Les (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
	* Pat Pimm (Peace River North BC Liberal)
	* Bruce Ralston (Surrey-Whalley NDP)
	* Bill Routley (Cowichan Valley NDP)
	John Slater (Boundary-Similkameen BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Stephanie Raymond (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Barry Auliffe (Selkirk College)
	Mike Dion (Selkirk College)
	Suzanne Lehbauer (Executive Director, Castlegar Hospice Society)
	Cathy Mercer (Selkirk College)

1) Castlegar Hospice Society	Suzanne Lehbauer
2) Selkirk College	Barry Auliffe
	Mike Dion
	Cathy Mercer

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