Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 72 — Tuesday, September 18, 2012 (HTML)

East Ballroom, Heritage Inn Hotel and Convention Centre
803 Cranbrook Street North, Cranbrook, B.C.

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	1891
O. Federko
D. Teslak
C. Bosman
M. Hafke
T. Ryan
L. Molnar
P. Visentin
S. Clovechok
W. Stetski

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

I would like to welcome everyone in the audience and thank you for taking the time to participate. As well, I'd like to welcome and thank the mayor of Cranbrook, Wayne Stetski, for being here. He will be presenting to the committee shortly.

Every year in preparation for next year's budget, the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper. This paper presents a current fiscal and economic forecast and identifies key issues that need to be addressed in the next budget. Print copies of the Budget 2012 consultation paper are available 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 for the upcoming budget. The 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 meetings in communities throughout British Columbia.

This is our third public hearing. We started yesterday in Surrey. We were in Castlegar this morning and are now here this afternoon. We will also be having meetings in Kelowna, Vernon, Vancouver, Coquitlam, Abbotsford, Fort St. John, Quesnel, Kamloops, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Smithers, Prince George, Courtenay, Parksville and Victoria. As well, we'll have video conferencing scheduled for Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Salmon Arm on September 25.

In addition to the public hearings, British Columbians can also have their ideas heard by sending us a written submission by our website. We also accept written submissions by e-mail, letter and fax.

As well, on our website is a consultation forum. It's a short survey that one can fill out, and it's located at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. There you can find further information on the consultation process, download a copy of the budget consultation paper and learn more about this work of the committee. All public input we receive is carefully considered. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, October 18.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for ten minutes, and up to an additional five minutes, depending, will be allotted for questions by members. Time permitting, we also may have an open mike at the end of the hearing with five minutes allotted to each presentation. If you would like to register for the open mike, you can at the back of the room.

Today's meeting is a public hearing and will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. The 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 currently. In addition to the live webcast, an archived audio copy of the meeting will also be posted.

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

P. Pimm: Good evening. My name is Pat Pimm. I'm the MLA for Peace River North, and I live in Fort St. John.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Hi. Mable Elmore, MLA for Vancouver-Kensington and Deputy Chair for the Finance Committee.

D. Horne (Chair): We're also currently missing the member for Maple Ridge–Mission, whose name is Marc Dalton and who will, hopefully, be joining us shortly in the chair at the end.

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, who is at the back desk. And from Hansard are Mike Baer and Jean Medland, who are here taking and recording all of the transcript for today's presentations.

We will get started now. I will call forward the College of the Rockies, Dianne and Orest, and we'll begin. As you heard, you have ten minutes for presentation and about five minutes afterwards for questions. You can begin anytime.

D. Teslak: Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's prebudget
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consultation process. The government is to be commended on giving British Columbians a voice in shaping the 2013 provincial budget.

Joining me today is the College of the Rockies board chair, Orest Federko, government-appointed board member from Cranbrook.

O. Federko: Good afternoon. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to the Kootenays and hope that you're enjoying our beautiful city and the sunshine today. Take advantage of it. It's great.

Before I get started, I would just like to thank the province for its continued confidence in the College of the Rockies and acknowledgment of the important role that we play in the educational, social and economic life of our region.

As board chair of one of B.C.'s 11 public community colleges, it is my mandate to prepare a well-educated, highly skilled, job-ready workforce for our region and the province. College of the Rockies offers a comprehensive range of programs from university studies and baccalaureate degrees to career, technical and trades education. Our programs are designed to be accessible, affordable and responsive to the evolving needs of our students, our communities, our businesses and industry.

College of the Rockies recognizes and is sensitive to the fiscal challenges currently facing the province. However, at the same time, British Columbia is facing a looming skills gap that will take sustained multi-year funding of post-secondary education by the province to address the workforce challenges ahead.

The province of British Columbia predicts that between 2016 and 2020, demand for workers in B.C. will outpace supply. It is also predicted that 78 percent of the new job openings will require some form of post-secondary education, while currently only about 60 percent of our workforce has attained this level of education. The aging demographics of the population and the increasing levels of knowledge and skills required to be competitive in the global economy are undeniable facts that will drive the demand for more job-ready college graduates.

B.C. college communities and the College of the Rockies are at the front line of learning for people and communities. Studies show that graduates are more likely to work in the region where they secured their education, and this is huge in terms of recruitment and retention. An educated workforce in all regions helps to build strong and vibrant communities and is an excellent return on the province's investment.

We look forward to further consultation with the Ministry of Advanced Education and collaborating with our sister colleges in order to meet the challenges of maintaining a skilled B.C. workforce.

Very quickly, in closing I would just like to express regrets on behalf of Dr. Nick Rubidge, our president, who currently is unable to be here this afternoon. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

College of the Rockies has seven campuses located throughout southeastern B.C. Our main campus and Gold Creek campus are here in Cranbrook.

We have five satellite campuses located in Creston, Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Fernie. We serve a population of 83,000 people who are widely dispersed within our large, 45,000-square-kilometre region.

Each year College of the Rockies serves approximately 2,300 full-time-equivalent students through face-to-face and on-line instruction and issues more than a thousand credentials including our own College of the Rockies degree, the bachelor of business administration in sustainable business practices.

College of the Rockies faculty and staff are dedicated to our students' success, and I'm proud to say that over the past 12 years, without exception, we have delivered exceptional programs and services to our students while meeting or exceeding the educational targets given to us by government within the budget.

As a community college, we offer our students education and training that is high-quality, job-ready, personable, affordable and close to home. As more and more British Columbians turn to their community colleges for training and retraining, B.C.'s colleges face financial challenges that limit our ability to serve our communities. In College of the Rockies' case, due to limited financial capacity we have historically had to be innovative, adaptable and nimble in order to meet the education and training needs of the people in our communities.

Some of the innovative things we have done and continue to do exceptionally well include rotating and one-time-funded health programs at our regional campuses, bringing these programs to Kootenay area residents who cannot, for numerous reasons, come to Cranbrook for training, and partnering with businesses such as Teck Coal and the Interior Health Authority to tailor programs with them to meet their training needs.

For example, College of the Rockies hires and indentures students as apprentice employees, and through our partnership with Teck Coal, they are placed at various minesites to receive the practical component of their training. We also partner with other post-secondary institutions, such as Selkirk College and the University of Victoria, to deliver joint and collaborative programs.

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

We are a major regional employer. In 2011 College of the Rockies employed 873 people. College of the Rockies and all B.C. colleges are truly educational, social and economic engines in our communities, and are critical to the province as it addresses the looming skills gap.

There are two major shifts happening in Canada. One, the first baby boomers turned 65 in 2011, and many more will follow in rapid succession, year after year. Two, there are simply not enough skilled workers ready to replace the vast numbers poised to retire. For example, Teck Coal estimates that between 320 and 450 journeypeople will retire in the next five years, with another 325 to 450 in the following five-year period in the East Kootenay region alone. This represents 43 to 58 percent of present journeyperson trades workers in the Elk Valley mining operations.

The mining industry in general — and more specific to our region, Teck Coal — is very concerned about reducing training resources. As the demand for skilled labour exceeds local, provincial and national supply, companies like Teck are forced to recruit internationally. As the primary providers of advanced skills and education, B.C.'s colleges must play a major role in combatting the large future skills gap. We need the support of government to do this.

At a time when investment in skilled trades training should be on the rise, the system faced reductions in confirmed funding over the last years totalling 18 percent or nearly $20 million. While some of the reduction is being covered this year with soft funding designed to support only a very specific group of students, of which our region has few, the very nature of that funding and the criteria around receiving it present significant financial risk to B.C.'s colleges beyond what some of our boards are willing to accept. The end result is that there are fewer seats available and fewer people being trained.

College of the Rockies continually aligns our programs to respond to the advanced skills and education needs of our communities. We can and do provide the type of advanced skills and education training necessary for employment, but we need continued investment by government to do so.

Internal and external inflationary pressures, the cooperative gains mandate, reductions to block funding as indicated in the 2012 provincial budget and the reduction in funding to support skilled trades training have meant B.C. colleges have had to undertake extraordinary measures to continue to meet the range of programs and services our students and communities require.

As well, changes in government, administrative and accounting policies that limit the use of surplus funds that College of the Rockies creates through our entrepreneurial activities, which are not government-funded, restrict our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the changing requirements of our students and in fact limit our potential to be less dependent on government funding.

The current mandate, which prohibits annual deficits, discourages long-term planning and savings and fiscal responsibility and indeed encourages risk. At a time when we need to be as nimble and adaptable as possible, policies like this inhibit our ability to respond quickly and efficiently and do what we do best — educate B.C.'s workforce.

B.C.'s colleges play a vital role in providing advanced skills and education for B.C.'s economy. In order to continue to do so effectively, we ask the province to fund your colleges accordingly.

There are three main areas where colleges can have a significant impact. (1) We can ensure a skilled and educated workforce for British Columbians, (2) we can help build strong and vibrant communities throughout B.C., and (3) we can help enhance B.C.'s competitive advantage in knowledge and skills. But we can't do this without a multi-year investment in post-secondary education that responds to B.C.'s labour market demands.

Government needs to provide B.C.'s colleges with multi-year, sustainable operating bases. In 2013-14 there needs to be an increase to accommodate for inflation and other contractual and statutory increases to operating expenses. Government needs to address the administrative and accounting policies issues that are negatively impacting operations and our college's ability to provide the education programs and services required by students. Government needs to reduce administrative barriers and provide greater flexibility so that colleges are able to respond to the emerging needs of our communities and be less dependent on government funding.

Government needs to examine alternate ways of delivering and managing trades training, as the current system impedes access and completion, resulting in fewer students choosing trades as an education and career path, resulting in the supply of skilled workers not meeting the demand.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that College of the Rockies is the primary provider of advanced skills and education for employment in the East and Central Kootenays. Investing in our college is vital to the future economic health of our region. College of the Rockies is a great investment. We return $3.80 to the provincial economy for every dollar of taxpayer financial support we receive.

College of the Rockies is committed to working with our communities to further the economic and social health of our region and the province by providing programs and services that result in advanced skills and education for employment. Through increased and sustained investment by the province, we will be able to continue to provide the range of programs and services required
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by our students and our communities to meet our region's and the province's labour market challenges and economic opportunities. We need the solid and sustained financial support of the province, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and the 2013-14 budget to help us do this.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much. I believe there are a number of members with questions.

J. Les: Thank you for your presentation — well-thought-out. There are a couple of passages in bold that I want to focus on. I suspect I know what the answers are, but I want those to be underlined as well.

You've made a couple of recommendations. I guess it's the second one. This is page 10, the second recommendation. We need to address the administrative and accounting policy changes that are impacting on your operations and the ability to provide education programs, etc. Is that the GAAP issue?

D. Teslak: Somewhat related to the issue of moving to PSAB accounting standards and the challenges around deferring revenue. I think we have made great strides in having agreement with the Office of the Auditor General to continue to defer restricted capital contributions so we don't have that unfunded depreciation issue facing us under PSAB, which is huge.

But there are other deferral opportunities in operating funds that won't be as available under PSAB accounting. That's one of the issues. The other issue is around the no-annual-deficit directive, which doesn't allow us access to our surplus funds from previous years. Our entrepreneurial activities that produce a surplus — we have always been very conservative and not sort of spent the money before it's in the bank, so to speak. Until we know that it's profit we don't want to plan to spend it, so often those two things can't happen in the same fiscal period. Therefore the surplus ends up going into our net assets where we can't recover it then, because we can't have an annual deficit.

J. Les: I wonder if you could, in the next few days, maybe elaborate on those issues a bit more in written form and get it to our committee. I'd really appreciate it if you would do that. Frankly, I'm fed up with this issue.

For years we've been hearing about this — that you're not able to act normally, I would say, or entrepreneurially. There are a great many good ideas out there in the post-secondary sector, and you've been handcuffed. It's time we got it addressed. I'm happy to hear there's been a bit of progress, but it sure sounds like there hasn't been nearly enough.

If you're telling us that you could be less dependent on government funding, I'm interested. How can we help make that happen? So please get something to us on that in a little bit more detail so that we can make this — I hope, my colleagues willing — one of the foremost recommendations.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. I think you've done a good job really showing very clearly the important role of College of the Rockies in building and strengthening the community, of course addressing the challenges around skills shortages and also being an economic engine here in the region.

You referenced the difficulty of the funding — your recommendation to at least have costs based on inflation every year — and the challenges over the past number of years, having to keep up with that. I had a question in terms of…. You referenced a decrease of funding with respect to your trades training — $18 million. Is that on top of the…? Can you just explain that a little bit more to me?

D. Teslak: Our trades funding, of course, comes to us from the Industry Training Authority as opposed to from the Ministry of Advanced Education. We are very specifically funded for trades training based on the capacity of each intake of trades training.

Many years ago it was determined what the rate per student would be in a particular intake. So for a heavy-duty mechanic intake, each student would be funded at X amount of dollars per week. That has not ever been indexed for inflation. As our internal inflation, even as people move through the increments on the salary scale…. That amounts, collectively as an institution, to somewhere around the $300,000 mark each year.

Not all of that is trades training, but certainly some of it is trades training. Particularly in the trades programs, where there are a lot of consumable supplies for the learning, as inflation — just general inflation — hits those supplies, those programs have to do with less supplies because the funding is not being indexed.

P. Pimm: Good afternoon, and thanks a lot for that. I'd like you to expand a little bit on your partnering with Teck and the program that you have there. It says that you actually hire and indenture the students through the college, and place them. Can you just expand on that for me, please?

D. Teslak: Several years ago now — I'm not sure how many years ago, maybe ten — we developed this program whereby we hire the apprentices as College of the Rockies employees, and we indenture them. We have apprentices in heavy-duty mechanics and electrical. I think that's all — those two program areas.
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We then have an agreement with Teck Coal that they will be placed at their minesites to gain their practical component, and then they will come back to us for their technical training. The students, or the employees, understand upon being hired that when they are finished their apprenticeship, they will get their journeyman's status and will also get a pink slip from us because they will no longer be our employees at that point.

So the apprentices are able to work. Sometimes they move around between the different mines, which gives them great exposure to different worksites and different opportunities. It's been great. I don't know off the top of my head how many people we have graduated from that program, but I would say there are more than 20 per year over the last somewhere around ten years. A lot of apprentices have gone through to journeyman status under our employ.

P. Pimm: Well, I'm very interested in that program because that's not a normal program by any stretch.

P. Pimm: Are they paid at a proper rate for a first-year apprentice, second-year apprentice, third-year, fourth-year? I own a company, so I'm very familiar with how apprenticeships work.

D. Teslak: I don't think that they have an increasing salary structure. I think they get paid the same amount through the whole four years of the program. But I'm not completely positive of that. Is that something else I could document and get to your committee?

B. Ralston: Thanks very much. I agree with the general premise of your submission.

You mentioned in recommendation No. 1 a need to increase to accommodate for inflation. We heard earlier today from people at Selkirk College that their estimate is that the internal inflation, just to keep even, was about 2 to 3 percent a year, and that they were starting on their budget back $300,000 every year just to get back to even.

Is that what you're speaking of? I know this coincides with the decision in the last budget to cut $50 million from the Ministry of Advanced Education over two years. I'm wondering what your view of that is.

D. Teslak: As I mentioned, we have both our internal inflationary pressures, which would be people moving through the salary scale as they increment, which is somewhere — you know, it differs year to year a little bit — around $300,000. And then the general inflation that we face as well, which is somewhere…. Usually I would agree with Selkirk that between 2 and 3 percent would probably be fairly accurate in terms what kind of a lift we would need to just stay status quo.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you very much. It's been great that you came and joined us today, so I thank you for your presentation. We look forward to receiving the additional material on the two points that the members requested. That would be great.

I'll now call our next presenter, the East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council. We have Marty and Chris.

As you, I believe, have heard, you have ten minutes to make your presentation, and then we'll have some questions afterwards. Anytime you're ready to begin, the floor is yours.

C. Bosman: Thanks to the committee for your attention to us here this afternoon. My name is Chris Bosman. I am the chair of the East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council, or EKIPC as we will refer to it throughout our presentation. I have Marty Hafke with me. He is the coordinator of the council. He will be doing the bulk of the presentation here.

The council serves a number of purposes. Chief amongst them is to plan, coordinate and undertake invasive plant treatments on Crown land on behalf of several dirt ministries. The council itself is not responsible for any lands, but it helps the province meet their legal responsibilities under the B.C. Weed Control Act.

Last year, in 2011, we were grateful to have had an audience with this same committee. We were there at that time to express our concern on a couple of different issues. One was the lack of timeliness for annual funding to help sponsor and carry out our activities. The other was the inadequacy of annual funding for invasive plant treatments on Crown land.

This year we're happy to report that the funding for Crown land treatments arrived at a more reasonable time. However, we are still dealing with the inadequacy of funding. It continues to plague our efforts in 2012, to be quite honest. This is an item that Marty is going to speak to this afternoon, again.

The other item that we wish to bring to the committee's attention is the looming crisis that B.C. faces if its government leadership does not take a more active role in addressing aquatic invasive species within our province.

M. Hafke: Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for hearing us tonight on this beautiful late summer evening. We're stuck in here, but I'll try to get through it quickly. I can talk about invasive species issues for hours and hours, but I won't.

It took me a lot of effort to put this into a relatively succinct form for you guys. Again, if you want any additional information later, you can get that from me.

I'm going to assume, for the time we have, that you have a basic understanding of invasive species issues. I'll reiterate what I said last year about them, though.

Invasive species issues are not only environmental issues; they can affect ecosystems, fisheries. They are not only cultural issues — they can affect traditional land use — but they are economic issues: forestry, recreation, tourism, hunting. The key point I'll make is that it costs the B.C. government more to not manage these issues than it does to manage them, and I'll come up with some examples.

The first issue I'd like to raise. This is something new for us, and we've become quite involved in it this last year: the boat inspection issue. Invasive mussels pose a tremendous financial and environmental threat to the pristine water bodies of B.C. Once introduced, these invasive species cannot be treated or removed. Preventing their introduction through mandatory inspection stations is B.C.'s best defence against infestation.

A little bit of background on the issue. Invasive zebra mussels were first introduced into the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s and have since spread across the continent, primarily by hitching a ride on watercraft being moved from an infested water body to a pristine one. These mussels, under the right conditions, can survive 30 days outside of water, attached to a watercraft.

The costs are tremendous. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the impacts in the U.S. to be in excess of $120 billion. The U.S. estimates that the Columbia River Basin just south of us, if it were infested, would result in costs of $25 million per year every year.

To our best knowledge these mussels have not yet been introduced to B.C. — although we did have a bit of a scare this summer with the Shuswap Lake incident — Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. They are also not yet known to be in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana or Wyoming. So in this northwest corner here we seem to be holding them out.

Many U.S. states — and I've listed a number of them there — have watercraft inspection programs in place to prevent further spread of these devastating mussels. In 2012 alone the state of Idaho, just south of us, intercepted 56 boats carrying live mussels, compared with 24 in 2011, and this is a trend we're seeing with other states. They're seeing more boats being intercepted this year than in previous years.

Of those boats intercepted in Idaho alone, six were destined for B.C., three were destined for Alberta, and 16 of those were coming from the Great Lakes. If a boat can travel from the infested Great Lakes water bodies to Idaho, then one can assume, reasonably, that a boat can make that same trip to B.C. through Canada.

Unlike the United States, there are no mandatory inspection stations in Saskatchewan, Alberta or B.C. There is one in Manitoba at the U.S. border. The state of Arizona was infested in 2007. They're currently spending millions of dollars a year in maintenance to irrigation and hydro systems.

The recommended response. B.C. is urged to rapidly implement legislation requiring all watercraft to be inspected for aquatic invasive species, specifically zebra and quagga mussels, at inspection stations located on key transportation corridors in B.C. The legislation should also stipulate that any infested watercraft intercepted be impounded until a thorough decontamination of that watercraft is completed.

Funding for this program should be secured now so that the program can start in 2013. To be honest, I don't know how much longer we can wait without being able to intercept these boats. Idaho's funding model is simple, proven and effective: a mandatory watercraft sticker requirement as a part of their legislation funds their entire program.

That's the first issue I wanted to bring up with you — a very important one. The second issue was the adequacy of invasive plant funding. I'll go thorough this one a little quicker.

As Chris mentioned, the B.C. government has a responsibility under the B.C. Weed Control Act to control noxious weeds on their land. In the East Kootenay the annual funding provided to conduct these treatments has been and remains grossly inadequate to meet the government's legislated responsibility.

Our council conducts invasive plant treatments on behalf of the Crown with a partnership delivery model that is tremendously successful. Chris and I just came from an audit we had with MOE. They had representatives down right before this meeting, and they were very impressed with our delivery model and how it's working — a really good audit, actually.

Sites that have been treated year after year are showing dramatic improvement. The highway corridors in the East Kootenay are looking fantastic.

Unfortunately, the funding we receive to conduct treatments on Crown lands is roughly one-quarter of what's required to treat invasive plant infestations on Crown land. So while the sites that are being treated year after year are improving and we're seeing excellent results, roughly three-quarters of the sites receive no treatment year after year, are going to seed and are spreading. It equates to taking one step forward and three steps back, and this has been happening for years.
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We have the expertise and resources to do way more than we're currently limited to doing with current funding resources. In 2012 we sent detailed funding requests to the various ministries and received approximately one-quarter of the funding requested to do a good job.

The question then becomes: if we can only treat one-quarter of the infestations with the funding provided, how is the Crown meeting their weed-control obligations on the remaining three-quarters of the land? If this trend continues, one can expect that the cost of control will increase over time.

As weed populations increase, so do costs to industry, the environment, tourism and culture. These costs far outweigh the comparatively small costs required to manage these invasive plant infestations.

If a monumental shift in policy is not made soon, then we can expect to lose many more hectares over time and suffer the associated economic and environmental losses that go along with it. The bottom line: it will cost the province of B.C. and its taxpayers a great deal if this issue isn't given adequate resources needed to control it.

I've listed a recommended response at the bottom. The B.C. government is urged to dramatically increase funding for treatments in all Crown land jurisdictions to adequately meet their obligations under the Weed Control Act.

The government is urged to thoroughly review and take into account funding requests submitted by regional weed committees, as these groups are most in tune with what is actually occurring on the landscape.

Finally, the B.C. government is urged to review and make public what percentage of the invasive plant annual budget is spent on the different components of integrated weed management. That includes inventory, data management, education, research, administration, biocontrol and — last but not least — treatment. We recommend that 80 percent of the budget go directly to control and treatment of invasive plant infestations simply because if invasive plant populations aren't being treated on the ground, then the problem is only getting worse.

G. Coons: Thank you, Marty and Chris. These are two important issues, and I think, as you have demonstrated, it's something that needs to be looked at.

I just have a question about the watercraft inspection programs and the Idaho model. You refer to that the sticker requirement funds the whole program. So there'd be an initial outlay expected from the government to initiate the program, and then it should be self-funding?

M. Hafke: Yeah. If you followed that model, there would be a legislative requirement for all boats to have a sticker on them. The way it works in Idaho, people in-state pay around $20 for a sticker. Out-of-state, you might pay a bit more. Then the funding for all those stickers on all the boats funds their program.

Until you have that program in place, there probably would be an initial outlay, and what I'd see as a minimum would be to identify the key transportation corridors where boats are coming into B.C. You'd want to have a full-time crew stationed there, or at least during the times of day when you get most traffic coming through, to stop and inspect boats.

Again, that would have to be a legislated requirement that boats would have to pull over. As an example, in Idaho, if a boat blows through an inspection station, they can be issued a fine.

J. Les: On the issue of zebra mussels. I've been reading over the years a little bit about it, and I know how devastating it is. Can you just expand, for my benefit at least, a little bit more on the Idaho program and how that sticker program works?

M. Hafke: Yes, they introduced that about three years ago, and they sort of fast-tracked legislation in. As I mentioned, it's a legal requirement to have a sticker on your boat. It's similar to registering a vehicle, I imagine.

Then they have inspection stations throughout the state. They'd have a sign saying: "Anyone who has a boat is required to pull in here." They pull in. There's a two-person crew that'll look. "Do you have a sticker?" "No." "Well, you need one. Here it is, and this is what it costs."

Then they'll also inspect the boat to see if it's carrying any mussels on it. If they do find live mussels on it, it automatically triggers an impoundment of that boat, and it would go for a decontamination. But the requirement for each boat to have a sticker — and these stickers cost $20, let's say — funds their entire inspection program.

J. Les: That's fine; that's legit. I just wanted to understand: what does the sticker really mean? But it's their way raising the money.

J. Les: Got it. But you know, what I'm really interested in: if you're caught with mussels on your boat, you're minus your boat. And I think that's pretty good.

M. Hafke: That has to be in concert with the requirement to pull over at an inspection station, and then once a mussel is found, you need some consequence. You can't just have it up to the boat owner to decide if they want
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to keep going or not.

M. Hafke: I think that would be an ideal location. You've got the signage there, you've got the space there, and they're already set up at the appropriate locations where you're getting the major traffic coming through. I think that would make a lot of sense.

B. Ralston: You said you assumed some knowledge of invasive plants, and that may have been wrong. So I just want to give you…. I've heard you present before, and I understand the urgency that you're communicating. But perhaps you could explain your statement: "If a monumental shift in policy is not made soon, then we can expect to lose many more hectares over time and suffer the associated economic and environmental losses that go with it." What are those associated economic and environmental losses?

M. Hafke: Okay. Invasive plant populations, on average, will spread 15 percent every year if left untreated — which, when you do the math, would be essentially a doubling every five years. So these, in three-quarters of Crown lands that are not being treated every year, are doubling in size every five years. Not only that; they're starting to spread onto private lands, resulting in costs where private land owners are required under the B.C. Weed Control Act to manage weeds on their land that have been spread there by Crown land.

There are impacts to range. It limits grazing for cattle. It's a big issue in the East Kootenays here because we've got a very strong ranching background, so for any piece of land that becomes infested as those weed populations grow, that same chunk of land can support less and less cattle.

Environmental impacts. Increase in weed populations results in a decrease in biodiversity, and it's the No. 2 cause globally of loss of biodiversity, second only to construction — building highways, parking lots, things like that. Also associated are extinctions of rare and endangered species.

Impacts to tourism, fishing, hunting, those types of things. I can think of many examples of certain invasive plants that, if left unchecked, would result in specific impacts to industries that we have here in B.C.

D. Horne (Chair): We've gone over our 15 minutes, but I'll allow Mable, our Deputy Chair, to ask one quick question before we go on.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): I do have a brief question. You make a reference in terms of the invasive plant control — the need to review and make public, I guess, an inventory. My question is: is there an inventory that happens, and is it just a matter of making that public?

M. Hafke: Yes, there is inventory that occurs. It is available to see. The Ministry of Forests has a web program where you can see it. More the point of that statement was that when we talk about integrated pest management or integrated weed management specifically, there are a number of activities that occur.

You want to educate the public. You want to do your inventory and all these types of things. But I don't know if it's ever been considered what percentage of resources be allocated to each of those activities. From looking at it, it seems like a lot of resources are spent on inventory, data management — these types of things that kind of make sense as far as doing an integrated pest management program. But if you're not killing weeds.... We're seeing weed populations growing and growing.

What I'd like to see is a review of what percentage of the budget should go to each of those components. I'd suggest that a good portion — I listed 80 percent there — go to actual treatment and control. If that isn't getting done…. I mean, we could talk to people about preventing the spread of these things all we want, but doubling in size every five years, we're losing ground.

Really, we've done a lot of good work here in the East Kootenay. You take a drive to the West Kootenay, down to Montana or Idaho and see what it looks like where they've got really bad weed infestations. Everyone I talk to — the stakeholders around here — don't want to see us in that position.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation today. I would ask one thing as you go, and that is if we could have our researchers look into the Idaho model. Obviously, we had a couple of questions from members on that. If you wouldn't mind sending the committee some more information on their program, that would be great. It would certainly help us. I'll leave you my card, and the submission e-mail address is at the bottom of it.

Undoubtedly, you've heard the drill, and that is that you have ten minutes to give a presentation and about five minutes following for questions. Basically, you can begin anytime now.

T. Ryan: Thank you, Chair, and thank you, standing committee members, for this opportunity to speak with you about Sport B.C. and sport in B.C. and its many benefits.

My name is Twyla Ryan, and I'm a sport coach, official
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and volunteer in sport. My involvement in sport dates back to my elementary school days. I have remained actively involved in sport in one capacity or another since that time.

Currently I'm a gymnastics coach at Key City Gymnastics here in Cranbook and at Kimberley Gymnastics, which is just 30 kilometres up the road. I have coached gymnastics for 41 years and have judged almost that long and have been a volunteer for major B.C. events like the Commonwealth Games and several international and national events, both in gymnastics and synchronized swimming.

I'm the past executive director of Synchro B.C. and the current president of the board for Gymnastics B.C. I'm a member of the board for Gymnastics Canada, and I'm the board chair for Sport B.C.

Clearly, I'm passionate about sport and its benefits, and I'm here to tell that story.

What if a community like this one, Cranbrook, in B.C., had no hockey rinks? Imagine what life in B.C. would be like if children, youth and families had no gymnastics gyms or swimming pools or basketball courts. What if we had no programs or coaches or judges or the ability to host a sporting event? It's a pretty grim picture, don't you think?

Well, at the same time, if we think about how the 2010 Olympic Games brought all B.C. communities together, brought Canada and the world to an incredible spectacle of sport and personal achievement by Canadian athletes, coaches and volunteers.... What an amazing legacy and inspiration that was for every Canadian, young and old.

That Olympic Games and inspiration was for every Canadian, young and old, and it was hosted right here in our own province. It brought sport right into our homes and into our hearts. What if we could keep that enthusiasm, those dreams and those achievements going? It would be pretty incredible.

In terms of the benefits for sport, those of us involved in sport know that involvement in physical activity in sport promotes health and prevents illnesses. There is quite a bit of research that shows that individuals who are physically active have fewer preventable health issues such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Involvement in sport is particularly healthy because it uniquely promotes healthy communities of people. It has been demonstrated that those involved in organized sport are healthier than those who exercise on their own.

We all know about the electronic craze for our children and youth — hours spent in front of large and miniature computerized screens, our popular pastime with our young people. Sadly, these hours are not promoting healthy physical activity.

Sport can be a part of the solution to the current childhood obesity crisis in our country, and there is life skills benefit involved in sport too. Young people involved in sport are less likely to be involved in risky behaviours, have lower incidence of mental illness, lower absenteeism in school and learn about teamwork, striving for excellence and goal-setting. They learn how to fall down but get back up again in both the physical and emotional sense.

Sport is an economic driver. Sport tourism is the fastest-growing segment of the tourism industry in B.C. If you think of the Olympics, the many international and national events hosted in B.C., imagine all of the local B.C. events like B.C. Games and the many provincial championships and how they all boost the tourism economies in the communities in which they are hosted.

Spending associated with sport tourism reached $3.6 billion in 2010. The sport sector provides an estimated 2 percent of all jobs, and these paid positions leverage over 400,000 additional volunteers in British Columbia, who contribute an average of more than 140 hours per year to sport.

And sport is about more than that. The statistics on health benefits and economic benefits of sport in our province tell a pretty convincing story for our B.C. government to continue supporting sport. I believe that I am not alone in saying that sport does even more than the studies indicate. Sport helps to build healthy, whole people and healthy, whole communities. It builds the human spirit and the human condition. It is an endeavour that just makes us better at what we do.

So what about you? The B.C. government has supported sport to the tune of $30 million in the 2010 sport legacy fund, which has provided $10 million in annual programming that has made a significant difference to children, families and communities in B.C.

Look at KidSport. Funding of $400,000 annually helped over 5,500 children from low-income families participate in a season of sport last year, and every dollar invested leverages $2.6 million in community donations. Talk about building families and community. That's a great example. And it's a great example of how sport reaches into the homes and hearts of real people and positively affects the lives of children in B.C.

Our sport sector organizations, those passionate multisport organizations and provincial sport organizations, leverage every funding dollar to $4.77. These are great returns on investment — wouldn't you agree?

Since the budget cuts of 2009 the sport sector has worked hard to become more effective and efficient in its delivery of programs and services, has reduced travel and reporting costs, and has more multisport programming that has helped extend the geographic reach of programming.

These economic times are challenging, and we in sport recognize that. We are not asking for more funding. Mind you, we would certainly stand up, cheer and celebrate if that were the case. But we think that the $10 million annual legacy fund for sport is an effective and
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efficient investment in health, education and community development in B.C.

We are asking you that you maintain status quo funding within the next three-year budget plan. We are requesting that government's current investment in sport be protected by rolling the $10 million annual legacy fund into base ministry programming.

Are we grateful for the support that sport has received in the sport legacy fund? You bet. We have seen the positive results across sport in B.C. We believe and hope that you believe that an investment in sport is an investment in healthy children, youth and families and is also a builder of socially and economically healthy communities.

Thank you for your time today to hear about the B.C. sport story and what sport means to the people of B.C.

T. Ryan: We're the parent organization of all the provincial sport organizations. There are some 65 provincial sport organizations in B.C., and they are members of Sport B.C. We're a member organization.

G. Coons: I just wanted to know, as far as Sport B.C.: what is your budget, and how much does the provincial government give you? Is it currently a three-year envelope — a moving three-year?

T. Ryan: We do not have a three-year envelope. Right now, as you may know, there has been great change in the sport community of B.C. with the creation of the B.C. Sport Agency, and the B.C. Sport Agency now overlooks all of sport delivery in the province of British Columbia. So Sport B.C. has become a multisport organization under the jurisdiction of the B.C. Sport Agency.

Where in the past Sport B.C. was in fact quite similar to the B.C. Sport Agency, we had as much as $600,000 annually for our particular budget, and that was to support PSOs — their programs, their events and all of the services that they provide to the citizens of British Columbia. Now with the realignment of sport and reducing redundancy and being more efficient, Sport B.C. is a reduced organization, still serving PSOs, still helping PSOs at the ground with what they do, and our current budget this year is $100,000.

M. Dalton: You said that there are 65 different organizations under your umbrella, and then you talked about $10 million. Is that $10 million the main, primary funding for all those 65 organizations? Or how does that…?

T. Ryan: Not only our 65 organizations. We're just one multisport organization. B.C. Games is a sport organization, and Canadian Centre Pacific manages the high-performance arm of sport delivery in British Columbia. The B.C. Sport Agency is going to be the new agency for sport in B.C. that manages the $10 million and distributes that funding throughout the whole sport sector.

Sport B.C. is one part of the sport sector, and we are very connected to the ground- or field-level delivery.

M. Dalton: Is it just provincial funding you receive, or do you also receive federal funds?

T. Ryan: There are sometimes federal funds available for specific projects. For example, if the city of Cranbrook wanted to build a new ice arena, they would look to the provincial government and the federal government on partnered funding envelopes that might help us to be able to do that. But the $10 million is not, at this time, involved in those special projects that have federal money.

B. Routley: Could you please clarify? You talked about $600,000 down to $100,000. That obviously sounds like a major cut and that you're going to be forced to cut programs and activities for a variety of sports activities. Could you explain exactly what's going to happen as a result of that, or has there been additional money found somewhere else?

T. Ryan: Sport B.C. is only a small arm of the whole sport sector, and when we're talking about the $10 million annually from the legacy fund, it's for the whole sport sector.

For us, in particular, yes, we have reduced services because there's a centralization of services with the new B.C. Sport Agency. So several multisport organizations in the sport community have been downsized and will have reduced services. However, we will continue to offer services to our PSO members, and they will also receive services from the B.C. Sport Agency.

T. Ryan: It's a provincial sport organization. B.C. Hockey or the Tennis B.C. association have offices that take care of their members, their officials and their events.

D. Hayer: How many volunteers do they have at Sport
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B.C.? How long do they volunteer, and how many staff do they have at Sport B.C.?

T. Ryan: Currently we have four staff. We're the founding organization of KidSport B.C. We have two staff there. Then we have two other staff who deliver financial services and administrative services to our PSO members. We have a volunteer board of ten individuals from all around B.C., and when we host events we bring in other volunteers from our PSO community.

Where the bulk of volunteers come from are the provincial sport organizations — those Tennis B.C. volunteers that help out at events and as volunteer coaches or as volunteer officials. There's a trickle-down effect right through the system, where volunteers really support a lot of the events, activities and programs of their particular sport.

We'll now move to our next presenter, which is the College of the Rockies Faculty Association, represented by Leslie Molnar.

As you've heard several times now, you have ten minutes for presentation and about five minutes thereafter for questions. Begin anytime.

L. Molnar: Thank you. Mr. Chair and committee members, I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of our association, and I'd like to thank the committee for an opportunity to outline our priorities.

You heard a little bit about the College of the Rockies earlier, so some of this may be a little bit of a repeat, but I'll try not to emphasize the same points.

We do have over 2,000 full-time and part-time students. We operate seven different campuses in the East Kootenays. We really pride ourselves on being a public educational institution, a community college with such strong ties to the area.

We're the third largest employer in the region, and we see ourselves both as a provider of education and as a very important part of the area's economic fabric.

Like other community colleges across B.C., we have the mandate to provide the comprehensive learning opportunities for students in this region. We have our own degree program. We partner with other institutions to offer degrees, like nursing and education. We have our own program offerings for diplomas and certificates and apprenticeships.

We cater to new high school graduates, but we also provide avenues for adult learners to upgrade their education and to get back into school or find their prerequisites. At the other end of the spectrum, our computer courses for seniors are very popular.

Our mandate — providing comprehensive learning opportunities — has both a social and an economic dimension to it.

On the social side, we believe post-secondary education needs to be accessible to as many citizens as possible. People deserve the opportunity to go to school where they live and where they work.

On the economic side, we know that three-quarters of all new jobs will require some form of post-secondary education or training. So developing programs and course offerings that lead students to complete their education is not only sensible; it's good for B.C.

Our region of the province depends heavily on mining and forestry. It's always in need of skilled tradespersons, so it makes sense for College of the Rockies to be the primary source of education and training for these people.

Our provincial organization, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, has cited research that shows how government's investment in post-secondary education has a positive rate of return. In my electronic submission I'll provide the links to these studies.

But the point I want to raise here is that there is an economic dimension to post-secondary education, and perhaps this can be acknowledged in the government's approach to funding. Simply put, somebody with more than a grade 12 education, with post-secondary education, earns more over their lifetime, and with our graduated system of taxation, it results in more government revenues. In today's economy — now more than ever — it's always good to invest in something with a positive rate of return.

Simply put, we would like to see more money allocated to our sector. We believe that the core funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education has not kept pace with inflation. Funding has been flat, or it's had minimal increases. When you factor in real per-student operating grants over the last ten years, we can show that there has been a decline.

Students are facing financial barriers when it comes to accessing post-secondary education. I have three in post-secondary, so I can tell you that. There is the very real problem of rising tuition fees, and students today pay a higher proportion of the total costs than, say, I did when I was a student. Textbook costs are on the rise; cost of living is on the rise. Many of our students have dependents. Students are graduating with intimidating levels of debt.

Post-secondary institutions are facing a funding crunch. And I want to say how this is especially true for College of the Rockies, where we have a much less densely populated region than an urban college in the Lower Mainland.

In addition to our Cranbrook campuses, we have campuses in Invermere, Golden, Creston, Kimberley and Fernie. For those of you who don't know, it's 352 kilometres from Golden to Creston. It takes almost five hours to drive the distance between our campuses.

Here in Cranbrook we have wonderful facilities for
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students to learn in. Yet despite that, the capital dollars that we received were squeezed on operating grants to properly utilize them.

You have to understand that in a large college they can offer 20 sections, and maybe the 20th section won't be full. But in a small college like ours, in order to maintain the necessary diversity, it could be that many of our classes are that last section, and they're not completely full.

One way that we're filling our classrooms is to help students access education through educational technology — video conferencing, netcasting, Moodle, Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, computer upgrades. These are all part of the reality of today's classroom. Yesterday I had to use chalk for the first time in I don't know how many years.

Technology is great, but they're very expensive systems to set up and maintain, and they end up taking a large chunk out of our operating grant.

Last year when I spoke to the committee, I mentioned some of the problems we had in the area of trades training, and Dianne mentioned some of those as well. Funding is a major problem. Two of our funding frustrations have to do with the Industry Training Authority's approach to funding courses and programs, and again, it doesn't work particularly well in rural colleges like ours.

The first is that ITA funds on the basis of a full class — 16 students. If there are fewer than 16 students, then ITA claws back the difference. Here in the East Kootenays it's difficult to get those classes. Sometimes we're running classes with ten or 12. That's reality for small colleges.

The second point is that ITA has changed the number of weeks that it will fund for several programs, so the total funding is then reduced because the number of weeks is reduced, and yet there has been no change in the amount of material that needs to be covered.

Both examples put increased pressure on our college because the college ends up covering the shortfall, and that only adds to the funding pressure we face as an institution.

A third problem is not offering a program here because ITA or the ministry has decided to centralize the training. For example, we used to offer a primary care paramedic program, and that's no longer being offered at College of the Rockies. So having that training delivered by the Justice Institute makes access for local students just that much tougher. If a resident here wants that training, they have to move.

Community colleges, as you know, were set up so that students could access post-secondary education closer to their home opportunity. Shifts to centralize programs and services may look prudent, but our experience in the Kootenays is that it places another burden on already overburdened students.

To summarize, the College of the Rockies Faculty Association would like to suggest the following priorities be strengthened in the 2013 provincial budget. One is the affordability issue for students. The current provisions cap tuition, but that doesn't address the real problem. A very good start would be reinstating the student grant program.

We'd like to see an overhaul in the funding relationship between ITA and public post-secondary education because we deliver over 90 percent of the trades training programs in B.C. — colleges and institutions in our sector. That relationship needs to better reflect the true costs of the trades programs that we deliver.

Lastly, we would really like the government to look at a new funding formula for post-secondary institutions that not only guards against the impact of inflation but also recognizes some of the unique cost pressures that smaller colleges like ours face in providing access to post-secondary learning in our own community.

D. Horne (Chair): Great. Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll start with Bill.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation. It is concerning to hear that there are any roadblocks at all in terms of creating more apprenticeships, especially when you hear the industries' needs for the future and, obviously, the problem with so many skills that are really going to be lacking in the future. So there obviously needs to be a look at the funding model if it's not working together.

The program that you talked about being shifted to the Justice Institute, for example, and centralization…. Would you actually prefer to see decentralization? In other words, is it possible to have more programs sent out to rural colleges from large urban centres? Obviously, for students, you would assume that it would be cheaper — just the cost of accommodation.

I'd be interested in your comments on this centralizing versus decentralizing just because immediately what popped up in my head were the huge costs that would be involved for students in just accommodations alone in a large urban centre.

L. Molnar: That's true, and I think there's enough demand out there that the pie could be split up so that the rural colleges could do a lot more of the training, especially in the areas that we already have the capital investments — where we have the building, and we have the equipment, and we have the parts in place.

In the case of the paramedic program, the college made a significant investment in acquiring the equipment and also having the relationships with our health authorities to have the training for it.

I think that we were doing in the neighbourhood of 30 students in intake, and the Justice Institute does hundreds. So it's not a huge part of their pie, but it was a very
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big deal for people in our region.

B. Routley: Just a follow-up question. Is there any body that actually provides for collaboration to take those kinds of ideas further?

L. Molnar: That's been a huge issue. Part of the problem, we feel, is because ITA is not under the Ministry of Advanced Education. It would be really nice if it was under the same ministry so that we were all working together.

Another thing that's always been an issue is the problem of wait-lists. We have people who've applied for our particular program. They say they're coming, but then they get in somewhere else. There isn't a central registry where we can say: "Okay, we just got three spots that opened up at College of the Rockies. Can your overflow come over here?" There isn't that type of system, so we've often thought that a central registry would be a really good thing as well.

J. Les: Thank you for a good presentation. I enjoyed listening to it. I agree with Bill that there's probably more scope available for smaller colleges to provide jobs training in a probably more cost-efficient way for students than in some of the larger areas. So that's something to look into.

We heard from your college administration earlier this afternoon that they could do a lot more if they were allowed to, if they weren't inhibited by stupid accounting policies. I asked them to get us some supplementary information on that. If you could collaborate on that a little bit, I would appreciate that very much.

J. Les: The more we can bang that drum, the better it will be. I'm going to insist that it become one of the committee's recommendations — to do something about it finally.

I'm totally convinced that there are corporate entities that could be brought to the table much more effectively. You've got several large ones in this region that I'm sure you'd love to partner with. Somehow our accounting policies are inhibiting a lot of that — what I would suggest would be a behaviour pattern that could be very beneficial to all parties involved. So it's time to cut the apron strings a little bit and let community colleges blossom.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. I appreciate your very comprehensive perspective and also advocating on behalf of affordability for students. It's a very key component.

I'm interested, as well, in the issue of your recommendation to improve or, I guess, to overhaul the function of the ITA. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I guess you mentioned possibly moving it — having it within the Ministry of Advanced Education in terms of that relationship — and a central registry. Are there other points that you can elaborate?

L. Molnar: Well, a number of years ago the ITA board structure was a little bit different as well. It always, I believe, was meant to be a partnership between industry and business and the providers of the education. It doesn't seem like all of those partners are getting an equal voice at the table, so bringing it under the Ministry of Advanced Education might be one way of helping that.

I had another point that just escaped me. I'm sorry. It just blew right out of my head.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): We can follow up. I can give you my card, and you can forward it.

M. Dalton: Thank you, Leslie. I'm just wondering if you can provide some comments about the number of students there has been, say, from five years ago and beyond and how that relates to programs being offered. Obviously, if the numbers are the same, then there's probably going to be an ebb and flow of programs. Has it been pretty much the same? Has there been an expansion of programs? Or is it just a…?

L. Molnar: I would say the College of the Rockies is very responsive to economic needs. When there's an economic downturn, we have more students in the building than when there are a lot of jobs.

We've had expansion, of course, in the health areas in the last little while, so we are trying to increase our capacity in those areas as much as we possibly can. Especially with our new degree, we have lots of students in our business programs, and I've seen a huge increase in the adult basic education utilization. Those classrooms are absolutely full. The university transfer courses are slightly down from last year in the arts area, strong in the science.

In our trades programs we had to put on a second intake of heavy-duty mechanics. And as Dianne mentioned too, something the college does is rotate some of the programs to our satellite campuses to meet the demand for, say, resident care or something. It will go from one campus to another. We're continually looking at our programming and trying to get the best bang for our buck, so to speak.
[ Page 1904 ]

L. Molnar: International students. There are more and more international students in the classroom, as well as ESL students, so they're adding a great dimension of diversity to the classroom. But at the same time, there are other challenges that go along with people learning a second language at the same time that they are trying to engage in academic learning.

D. Horne (Chair): Well, I want to thank you so much for your presentation today and for being here with our committee.

Paul, as you've heard several times today, you have ten minutes, and five minutes for questions.

P. Visentin: I'm not here to beg. I'm not here to get any money from the trough. So you can all rest easy. I'm not asking for anything. I'm asking for some recommendations, but there's no money attached to it. So you can rest easy on that one.

My wife, Mance, and I own one of the largest fertilizer and weed control service companies in the Kootenays, operating under the name Kootenay Lawn Doctor Inc. We employ four seasonal and two full-time staff. Our specialty is using fertilizers in combination with pesticides to create a healthy, vibrant landscape on residential and commercial properties.

I want you to hear my concerns about the fear and misinformation on pesticides that may lead to increased taxation and costs to all levels of government. The fear-and-emotion campaign against safe, approved products is driven in large part by environmental activists such as Wildsight, the NDP and the Canadian Cancer Society. These groups or individuals will never publicly admit that Health Canada and its staff are the experts on pesticides, although I suspect that there are many that question their organization's public stance.

My presentation is not about who is right or wrong on the pesticide issue. It is about the economics of a ban and what it means to our company and to the government coffers. I speak for over a thousand clients as they continue each year to tell us they do not want any restriction on access to the safe and approved products we use.

There is a value that each and every customer has to the landscape they're maintaining, whether it's a single tree planted by a previous generation or a large turf area used for recreation. I'm sure that committee members and the MLAs across all parties would agree that property ownership is the largest singular investment you'll ever make.

Our clients are no different, and they, like yourselves, want to maintain and maximize that investment, as well as provide peace and enjoyment. Most feel it increases the value of their property, while others have a sense of enjoyment from a well-maintained yard. Some have medical reasons to control pests, such as allergies or stress relief, and the provincial government recognizes that value each and every year with the property tax assessment. Poorly maintained landscapes generally have lower assessments. Ask any realtor, and you'll be told that a well-cared-for landscape increases the value of the property.

Our business grew from 1988 until 2009, when municipalities began to discuss and implement pesticide bylaws. With these bylaws and the overriding lack of direction from the government, our growth has slowed, and we have put on hold any major investment in equipment and materials that would increase our capacity. The landscape companies that use pesticides exist on a year-to-year basis, working under the constant threat of being banned by the government.

As a Finance Committee, I expect you're likely surprised at that statement, as the common perception is that we are all thriving quite well with all the new, mythical, alternative products.

I'm here today to tell you that as a direct result of the bylaws, up to and including this year we have lost over 40 percent of our customers in the communities which have enacted bylaws. Since 2010 we've had to reduce staffing as a direct result of these fear-based pesticide bylaws. We expect that we'll continue to lose more business due to municipal bylaws and/or inaction by the present government.

This is following the same trend that happened in Ontario, where it was banned there. Let's look at Ontario, where a ban came into effect in April 2009. The ban devastated the lawn care industry. Half of the lawn care companies are gone. The companies have lost from 30 to 75 percent of their customers. Small companies with one- and two-truck operations will virtually disappear in 2012. One company had six trucks running full-time, six days a week, and is now down to three trucks operating only part-time.

Gross revenues are down, on average, by 30 percent, and profit margins have dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent, mostly because of the exorbitant cost of the one and only product available.

An operator in Ontario with 24 years of experience in lawn care manages a number of large lawn care companies with over 20,000 clients. Since 2009 he has seen a steady decline of companies due to the lack of viable alternatives. He believes that the entire lawn care industry in Ontario is at the precipice, as they rely on one product, Fiesta, to control weeds. If that product becomes unavailable, then he fears a total shutdown of an industry that pre-2009 was worth $500 million to the Ontario economy.

In July of this year I was able to meet with Minister Lake and hear what he believes should happen with the cosmetic pesticide issue. I asked Minister Lake if he
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would assure me that cosmetic pesticides will not be banned by this government. He would not give me that assurance that my sector of the industry would be allowed to continue. Minister Lake did go on at length to explain that other pesticide-use sectors, such as golf, forestry and agriculture, are safe.

Minister Lake's comments at that meeting lead me to believe that this government has legislation ready to table in the spring sitting that will ban the sale and use of pesticides on the urban landscape. This is very troubling when you consider that MLA Bennett presented the cabinet with his recommendations, which do not include a total ban.

So I'm trying to connect the dots for this committee to show that in B.C. a pesticide ban will have a negative effect on not just my company but all economic sectors of this province. MLAs in this province, whatever side they take, can ill afford to lose any sectors of the economy.

How do you control the spread of invasive pests and weeds, as we heard earlier from Marty Hafke, from urban and agriculture when the prevailing fear is that pesticides are bad? How can a government ban one user from a product, yet allow others to use it when those are banned for health concerns? Why would any province want to ban a perfectly sound, science-backed product just to appease a small minority of self-interested charities and individuals?

If the government of the day decides that pesticides should be banned for sale and use across the province, based on a political ideology, you can expect companies like ours to fold within two years. Where will the applicators be found to stop the spread of invasive weeds and pests when they've all gone out of business?

Introducing new restrictions would provide absolutely no health or environmental benefits to justify the cost. I'm starting to be of the mind that if pesticides are banned from use in residential settings, then all sectors that use those products must be restricted as well.

Our business, along with hundreds of homeowners, has been negatively impacted by the municipal bylaws and the general perception that pesticides are bad. This has occurred because of the misdirected campaigns of individuals, MLAs and organizations across B.C.

The anti-pesticide bylaws brought in by municipalities were allowed because of the concurrent sphere of jurisdiction under the Community Charter, which allows municipalities to further regulate pesticides. I ask that this committee recommend that cabinet review the section of the charter that allows municipalities to further restrict pesticide use.

The province needs to regain control over what is, essentially, a provincial issue. The patchwork adaptations of the charter by municipalities have caused excessive levels of government intervention into an issue that is a provincial mandate.

I spent the last 31 years as a conservation officer working for the Ministry of Environment. During that time I experienced the annual trek to the trough by managers trying to get more money out of dwindling coffers. Most times they were rebuffed and told to do more with less.

If a ban is legislated, just how will the government manage and enforce such a frivolous ideology? Conservation officer numbers are dwindling, and the recent announcement of no new hires to the public service will only compound that downward trend. The remaining staff are overloaded with requests from within the ministry to do more investigations or more patrols.

If a ban is brought in, would you place this as a priority for the CO service to enforce? A recent cartoon in the Victoria Times Colonist sums up the answer. I printed it in there. Obviously, the people here can't see it, but you can see it. So would you ask the seven — only seven — B.C. pesticide officers and technicians with the integrated pest management section to take on the task? Would you do as the municipalities have done: bring in legislation and then ignore the enforcement of it?

A pesticide ban would create another level of bureaucracy, which means that other sections of government will suffer budget cutbacks. As a taxpayer, I do not want this government to legislate based on fears. To jump on the pesticide bandwagon, we lose direct employment in communities across B.C., and we drain the treasury to fund an issue that is based on fear and emotion.

Public policy needs to be based on reality, not on fear and misinformation. This misleading campaign by activist groups would create irreparable damage to the reputation and future competiveness of our industries and our province as a jurisdiction hoping to attract more investment and jobs.

Let's not stigmatize these innovative products and further tarnish the users that rely on them through this urban pesticide issue.

The four recommendations that I have are quite simple. Remove the spheres-of-concurrent-jurisdiction section governing pesticide use in B.C. Recommend that the report written by the Special Committee on Cosmetic Pesticides is endorsed by cabinet and its recommendations implemented forthwith. Ensure that Premier Clark and Minister Lake give assurances to the landscape industry that their livelihood is not at stake. And no new moneys are approved by Treasury Board to implement a ban on pesticides in B.C.

M. Dalton: No, just a thank-you for putting this presentation forward. There's a lot of clarity. Obviously, it's your livelihoods at stake, and we'll definitely look into consideration of that.
[ Page 1906 ]

P. Pimm: I certainly know that…. You mention MLA Bennett and the report that they're putting together. I'm sure that we're going to be dealing with that.

I think that you make some great points here. We have to make decisions based on science. Quite frankly, the science just isn't there, as far as I'm concerned, so I support you 100 percent.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation, a very detailed presentation. I have a question for you. How many provinces actually have a ban on that? You mentioned Ontario. Are there other provinces that also have a ban?

P. Visentin: Some of the eastern provinces — Quebec, Ontario. Manitoba's looking at it. A lot of municipalities have brought it in separately in various provinces as well. I just forget the total number now.

Interestingly, the report that MLA Bennett of the committee chaired into the cabinet…. It's interesting. I asked MLA Bennett the other day, and he said that not one other province, not one municipality, not one of the organizations has ever come to him asking about what they did find in the recommendations.

Yet here we have the province of Manitoba going ahead, just on the verge now of bringing in their own pesticide ban, and they don't even have the courtesy to contact either Health Canada or the province of B.C., which spent an inordinate amount of time and money to deal with this issue and to find out the truth behind it.

In answer to your question, Mr. Hayer, there are a number of provinces that have brought in bans. There are a number of municipalities that have brought in bans. But they've done so without any consideration of Health Canada and the 350 scientists that work at Health Canada, or of consideration to the committee report that was brought in, in B.C. — rather disturbing, when you look at it in that sense.

D. Horne (Chair): I was actually on that Special Committee on Pesticides, so I understand you're in support of the recommendations put forward by that committee as well. Thank you so much.

G. Coons: Thank you, Paul. I just had a question about Fiesta. Do you use that product? That's the only one in Ontario that they're allowed to use?

P. Visentin: It's the only product right now that is registered by Health Canada to use as a herbicide to control weeds. Fiesta is a chelated iron, initially brought in overseas from Germany. The cost is about ten to 12 times that of the cost of the traditional products, the three weedkillers that are being used all the time.

We have used it, personally, in our company. The school district here has used it in the Cranbrook and Fernie area. They found the cost was just absolutely atrocious.

I'll give you an example on the school board. It was $30,000 that they spent to deal with dandelions. The cost that they would have acquired using synthetics would have been $500.

We'll now move to our next presenter, who is the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce, represented by Susan.

S. Clovechok: Good evening. It's Susan Clovechok, executive director for the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce. I represent the 274 businesses in the Columbia Valley that stretch from Spillimacheen to Canal Flats. Basically, it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get from one end of our service area to the other.

We appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. We have a number of topics that I'd like to touch on: land use processes, tourism, carbon tax and property transfer tax.

I'd also like to apologize for not having provided you with written materials this evening in advance, as I operate a two-staff — including myself — chamber and visitor centre. You can imagine that we are the event planner, the small business educator — business mixers, supporting our businesses and greeting all the visitors that come into the Columbia Valley — so we are taxed when it comes to our human resources.

But that's not why I'm here today. What I'd like to say is that the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce is on record as having supported the process for the Jumbo Glacier resort, and we were pleased that after 22 years of meeting all the requirements set forth by the government, the decision was made to approve the Jumbo Glacier resort. The Columbia Valley chamber supports a sustainable economic growth and particular projects such as the Jumbo Glacier resort, whose proponents go through the arduous task of successfully completing environmental assessment studies required by the province.

The residents and business owners of the Columbia Valley value the environment in which they have chosen to live, work and play. We believe that the Jumbo Glacier resort will set the bar as an economically and environmentally sustainable year-round recreational destination. We look forward to the day that we can reinforce that a successful economy and a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive and in fact can be one and the same.

The communities within the Columbia Valley, of which there are 11, must work together as a region to diversify
[ Page 1907 ]
our local economy, and part of that work may look like accessing Crown land for commercial use. We need to feel confident that the process will be taking significantly less than 22 years. Our basic community services are going to decline in quality and availability if our economy continues to decline as it has. Therefore, it is imperative that the government be responsive, proactive and nimble when making land use decisions that would benefit our economy.

As an area with limited commercial land and a local economy that has not recovered from the 2009 recession due to a lack of diversity within our economy, we ask that the provincial government review their processes and timeline for expectations for land uses so that opportunities to diversify our economy are not missed due to excessive timelines and excessive layers of bureaucracy.

That is basically all that I have to say on that particular issue. It is difficult for our small business. Ninety-eight percent of our businesses in the Columbia Valley chamber are considered to be small businesses or microbusinesses, so it's a significant impact and deterrent to our business growth in the valley.

In regards to tourism, which is now our primary economic driver in the valley, the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce operates a visitors centre year-round, seven days per week in July and August and five days per week for the balance of the year. As tourism is now our primary industry, we have recently made the decision to open the centre six days per week from September through to June in order to enhance the level of service to our tourists and our locals.

The centre is operated with funding from the district of Invermere of $30,000 and from Tourism British Columbia for $12,500. Thank you for the $2,500 raise last year. The Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce also subsidizes the centre for approximately $15,000 per annum.

Our ongoing challenge has been to access funds for operating costs and staffing in the summer. In particular, we have an issue with the Canada summer jobs program. Although I recognize that's not within your bailiwick, I believe that there could be a partnership formed or a review of the process and work in partnership with the federal government to create a funding model for summer students that is in line and works in harmony with the B.C. tourism process for funding — so using the same criteria upon which we receive our $12,500 from Tourism B.C. to grant us funds.

Every year many chambers across the province — and I'm sure this would not be the first time or the last time you'll hear this — are seeking funding to staff for the summer to get our tourists and make people feel welcome and spend more money in our communities.

We apply for $20,000 or $30,000. We're definitely throwing a dart at the board when it comes to the Canada summer jobs program. In fact, we would be happy just to say, "You know what? Here's $5,000. This is the bucket of money that is to go into tourism Canada from the federal government," and leave it up to the province to distribute that funding appropriately rather than everybody competing for this bucket of money out of the Canada summer jobs program that I have heard from government representatives is recognized as not a fair process.

I would like to request that we look at ways to evolve that funding program for summer students staffing our visitor centres throughout the province. It's critical to our tourism economy.

The property transfer tax. The Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce respectfully asks the provincial government to make changes to the property transfer tax, a tax that has not been changed, as you well know, since its introduction in 1987. The B.C. chamber recommends — and the CVCC agrees — that the 1 percent threshold be adjusted from $200,000 to $525,000, with 2 percent applying to the remainder of the fair market value, and index the 1 percent property transfer tax threshold of $525,000 using Statistics Canada's new-housing prices and make those adjustments annually.

We believe that this change would strengthen the real estate market in the Columbia Valley and create more affordable housing, which is a significant issue when we've got so many second homes and expectations of homesellers in the valley are high due to our second-home ownership and the primary market for those being out of Calgary. We believe that will increase the opportunity for young families to purchase their first homes and to buy homes while increasing the potential well-paying jobs in the construction business and the businesses that serve that construction industry.

All of those are areas of our local economy that continue to feel the negative impact of the 2009 recession. There are so many other opportunities for people to come and have second homes, whether it's just across the border or even to visit resort communities. We need to find ways to grow that industry and put life back into it. I believe that if that tax adjustment was made, in our community it would have a very positive effect on kick-starting that industry again for us and creating more opportunities and making our area a more popular place to live and work and create new businesses.

Finally, the carbon tax. I drove an hour and a half to get here, so it has cost my organization some money for me to come and present to you today. That is not uncommon for us to do business in the valley. We support the B.C. chamber's position on the carbon tax — that it must undergo a complete review with the specific goal of immediately relieving the extreme pressure on not just the agrifood industry, which we understand is a major issue, but on all industries. It should also address the cost that the tax is having on our economy and how it's a cascading tax that is added at all levels of production, transporta-
[ Page 1908 ]
tion and sale, thereby reducing the overall competitiveness of our economy.

This can be felt no greater than in the Columbia Valley. In order to export any of our products…. Kicking Horse Coffee might be one that you'd be familiar with. We also have a steel fabricator. For him to gain contracts, his cost of shipping is exorbitant and will often lose him bids because of the cost of transportation.

Many of us choose to drive four-wheel-drive vehicles — gas guzzlers, some might say — but the option to drive a small, compact vehicle is not necessarily a safe option where we live. As I drive home this evening, I will be dodging elk, I can assure you, especially at this time of year. I don't want to do that in a small economy car, because I don't win. It wins.

Those are the challenges that we face in rural communities, and it impacts particularly our young families and those individuals that are making a $15-an-hour wage — or, certainly, less than $20 — and have young children. I know of several young families that have chosen to move away from our community because they can't afford to live there due to the cost of housing, the price of gas and the lack of well-paying jobs.

This is only going to impact our school systems, our medical services and all the infrastructure services that a healthy community needs to offer.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much. A very good presentation. I just want to start with a look at your website. It's one of the most impressive. You've done a great job on it.

I have served in the past as B.C. Chamber of Commerce district director and on the Surrey Board of Trade as president before being elected in 2001.

The information you provide, especially on the carbon tax — I agree with you 100 percent. In the past we as a committee recommended it. I hope our government makes a decision on that, trying to make some major changes in the carbon tax.

Property transfer tax is another one that's very important. We have heard it from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board and many other real estate organizations on how it affects not just the Lower Mainland but other parts of the province. Those are good suggestions.

P. Pimm: I'd be remiss if I didn't ask this question. I've asked all the other presenters that brought up the carbon tax, and I ask you. Has your organization as a chamber in this community made a submission to the Finance Minister on the competitiveness of the carbon tax?

P. Pimm: You must do that immediately if you have those concerns, because I think the date has actually passed. I think he has extended it.

B. Ralston: You mentioned families moving out of the community. Can you tell me where they're moving to?

S. Clovechok: Alberta, primarily. The ones that I'm particularly familiar with — Alberta or to Vancouver. I know a couple that have moved to Vancouver.

D. Horne (Chair): I'll end by asking a question myself. We certainly have heard, on the property transfer tax, a number of people who have come forward on that issue. Obviously, it's a difficult one when they're dealing with the revenue that comes from that.

On your recommendation, I guess you were asking for the 1 percent to be increased to $525,000 and then basically the 2 percent to continue from there. Basically, we're talking about, on a $600,000 or $700,000 house, a saving of $4,250. So it's not a huge saving. Do you think it really will impact that much?

S. Clovechok: I think it's a significant saving if you're looking at a combined family income of even $40,000. It's significant. It can make the difference of a down payment or not, especially people getting into their first homes.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you for that. Thank you so much for your presentation today.

You've heard many times you have ten minutes, and then we'll have questions after that. Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

W. Stetski: Thank you very much for the opportunity, and thank you for coming to Cranbrook, which is home to 19,400 of some of B.C.'s finest citizens. Of course, Cranbrook is the sunniest city in British Columbia, so I hope you do enjoy your time here with us.

I wanted to talk about two things just briefly. It's more like a conversation, I guess, because it'll be things that you've heard before, I'm sure. I'd like to just sort of give it a Cranbrook context for you.

First of all, it's around municipalities and their relationship with both the provincial and federal govern-
[ Page 1909 ]
ments in general and our interest in having a new deal, I guess. The figures that get used quite often, of course, are that for every dollar in taxes collected in Canada, 52 cents of that goes to the federal government, 50 cents of it goes to the provincial government and 8 cents of the dollar is collected by municipalities.

So when you look at what we do with that 8 cents of the dollar, of course, it's the infrastructure, which is an ever-aging infrastructure. It's policing; it's fire services; it's recreation. So there are a lot of expectations around that 8 cents on the dollar.

Collectively, mayors across British Columbia are looking to try and get a new deal in general — but if not in general, at least some planned approaches to how we're going to collectively deal with infrastructure moving ahead. A lot of the infrastructure, of course, was built in the '70s. It's 40 to 50 years old, and that's in all of our communities — at least, certainly in the Interior in the older communities. It's at the end of its life expectancy.

Talking to our own staff here in Cranbrook, I don't think I'm interested in being mayor around 2018 because the deficit on infrastructure is going to be tremendous. And unless something changes, we won't have the tax base to support it.

In terms of taxation, just to put it in Cranbrook's perspective a bit, every time we want 200,000 new dollars in Cranbrook, we have to raise taxes by 1 percent.

This last year, for example, we brought in about a 4.51 percent tax increase to raise $900,000 of new money. Of course, when you look at that, to repair two blocks in Cranbrook where we have aging infrastructure and streets that aren't sometimes in the ideal condition — we just call them sort of natural speed bumps — it can cost you a million dollars to fix the infrastructure because we have to go down and start right from scratch with sewer and water and rebuild the roads.

So you can see the kind of…. On roads alone, my engineering staff tell me we're spending $3 million this year on roads. We should be spending closer to $15 million on roads alone just to sort of keep up with the aging infrastructure.

We need to have a little bit different approach, I think, moving forward — and at least a planned approach that benefits all of us and all of you where you live, if we start planning now for the future, to replace the infrastructure in all of our communities which is at the end of its life expectancy.

Some of the other challenges in places like Cranbrook. For example, just down the tracks here a little ways we have the museum, which is the railway museum, basically a national historic site. They're just finishing their plan for the museum. In order to keep the trains…. The museum is based around train cars, so it's the only train car museum, I think, in Canada — passenger trains. In order to keep it, as you should, a museum piece, they want to cover the train cars. So when you look at putting a building over a set of cars to implement the new plan, they're talking about $19 million in infrastructure.

So it's challenging. That's a 95 percent increase in taxes, I guess, if we wanted to do it all here in Cranbrook.

We're looking for a new home for the arts council in Cranbrook, in an art gallery, and that's about half a million dollars to a million dollars.

So one of the things that we'd like government to look at is an infrastructure program for arts, moving forward. I think that would be helpful to many communities, including ours.

Another kind of funding envelope I'd like to see is for the disabled. Councillor Cross and I joined a number of people in wheelchairs a couple of weeks ago for a two-hour trip around downtown Cranbrook. The challenges are really, really quite immense. Of course, we want all of our citizens to feel equally welcomed, equally at home in our communities. Infrastructure or grants to help the disabled, I think, would be very helpful in most of our communities.

Of course, we all have aging populations. So if you put in a ramp or automatic doors that help the disabled, you're also helping senior citizens. You're helping mothers with baby carriages. So there are lots of benefits. You know, we could focus a program on the disabled, but it would help many other citizens as well.

In terms of immediate opportunities to help Cranbrook, there are three large projects that we have on the books and ready to roll.

The first one is the new intensive care unit at our regional hospital. The regional hospital…. We are the largest centre in the East Kootenays. We're the regional hospital for the East Kootenays. That has a price tag of around $20 million. Of course, IHA needs to be part of that.

We have a 60-year-old high school here, Mount Baker School. It's been a great school, but it's 60 years old, at the end of its life. Attached to it is our primary theatre for the East Kootenays, the Key City Theatre, which holds about 600 people. It's attached to the school. It has some structural issues as well, so to build a new high school with the Key City Theatre — so the neighbourhood learning concept — has a price tag of about between $35 and $40 million.

The third thing that's lined up and ready to go is a new homeless and transitional shelter being led by the Salvation Army. What's really exciting about this concept is that it's not only an overnight homeless shelter, but it's a transitional shelter. So as you go to the second floor, it'll be for people that are trying to get off the streets. It'll
[ Page 1910 ]
provide a home for them for a year. It'll provide training classrooms, computer training, etc.

So it's an actual, solid attempt to try and move people up, I guess, in life and also up in floors. That, of course, needs the B.C. Housing Commission involvement, and that has a price tag of about $16 million.

Those three projects are all front and centre in Cranbrook. They would very much help our economy, very much help our citizens, but certainly need the support of the provincial government and, where we can, the federal government, as well, to make it happen.

Those are my two asks, I guess: sort of the medium term, let's call it, a new formula for partnerships between municipalities, the provincial government and federal government around taxation or around infrastructure, certainly, moving forward; and then some opportunities to help Cranbrook short term with some large infusions of money. I know these are fiscally trying times. I appreciate that. But we do have some very serious needs, and hopefully, we can move some of those forward.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation and giving us an update on some of the exciting projects pending in Cranbrook. Certainly, the physical beauty of the place and the Kootenays is…. It's really a beautiful place and also a vibrant community.

I was curious in terms of the projects that you outline, and also with respect to the challenges of infrastructure. We've heard that. It's a common refrain across British Columbia with many communities. Have you had any discussions, or have you had any indications from the federal government if they're looking at this issue or if there are any commitments coming forward from that level?

W. Stetski: Yeah, they're certainly aware of it. Ideally, I think…. Every municipality knows, for example, how much the value is of their infrastructure. If we could come up with some kind of a tri-party agreement that 5 percent of that infrastructure is going to be replaced every year, and there's some fixed funding…. Right now you never know whether there'll be grants available or not.

Of course, most grants are a third, a third, a third. Given the tax regime, you might suggest that municipalities should only contribute 8 percent; the federal government, 52 percent; and the province, 50 percent — rather than a third, a third, a third.

This federal government is certainly aware of the issue. It's not new at all, but I think it's time we sat down and made a plan.

J. Les: Thanks for your presentation, Mr. Mayor. I used to occupy your chair in a different community, and I sometimes marvelled at how little got done with a certain amount of dollars. I became very interested, over the years, in procurement methods — in particular, design-build as opposed to design-bid.

In my own community we managed to accomplish, I believe, so much more as a result of employing design-build, where you make proponents truly accountable and responsible but, at the same time, give them the ability to be more innovative. The traditional design-bid procurement methodology really doesn't open the door to innovation in a way that it should.

For example, your two blocks in Cranbrook that you would like to do. Normally, what municipalities do is they'll hire an engineer. He'll do the design, and then it goes out to low bid. If you do design-build, they will be much more innovative. I guarantee you that. They will also be accountable and responsible for delivering the project as designed and at the price stated and on time.

Those become invaluable. I've had personal experience in ensuring that they were accountable, and you get so much more done.

Previous to my being a mayor, I sat on a couple of public sector projects, one being about a $20 million addition to the hospital. We were a project oversight committee, and our role in life was to approve change orders. I became heartily sick of those.

All it was, was a design-bid process working as it inevitably will. There's no accountability. Something is wrong in the design, and they come back to you and say: "It will be that much more to correct that, plus fees, thank you very much." It's just inappropriate.

One day in my retirement I just may put on a lecture on the various aspects of procurement. I think there's a lot to be said for a design-build. We could get a lot more out of our infrastructure dollars in municipalities, as well as elsewhere, if we were to do that.

M. Dalton: Thank you, Mayor. I know that in the communities I represent, Maple Ridge and Mission, when the stimulus package came through in 2009-10-11, it was very nice to see. There were a lot of projects that came forward. But I do know, for example, that with the feds, they were putting money up front that represented money coming in the future. So we're experiencing that belt-tightening.

How about in Cranbrook? Did you benefit much from
[ Page 1911 ]
that previous stimulus package? What sorts of projects?

W. Stetski: Yes, we did. The prime example, I guess, would be our spray irrigation project here. We dispose of our sewage effluent here by growing hay crops. The system was failing in a number of ways. So over the last three years about $28 million has gone into improving that spray irrigation. Out of that, about $20 million of it came from other places — the provincial government, the federal government, UBCM, FCM.

So, very much so. It definitely would not have happened without the support of other levels of government.

M. Dalton: Were there some other projects too, or was that the biggest one that you received?

W. Stetski: That was the biggest one that we focused on. There have been smaller grants for different projects — trails within the city, for example, and other ones like that. But that was certainly the major focus. If you don't have safe sewage and healthy water, the rest kind of starts to pale, so we started with sewage.

One of the challenges, looking forward, depending on how stringent water requirements become…. That potentially could be a very costly undertaking for a number of municipalities if they have to bring in ultraviolet, for example, in their water systems too.

M. Dalton: Just a couple of months ago I travelled the Trans-Canada from Alberta to Vancouver and saw all the development of the roads there. How about the road coming through here? Have there been many improvements there?

W. Stetski: There has been money put into Highway 3. There is also a Highway 3 mayors committee that goes from Princeton to Sparwood that is quite active in trying to make sure that there's focus put there.

We had, earlier, the College of the Rockies. I don't know. I think maybe you were sitting here at that time when they were making their presentation. I had a chance to talk to them outside after.

They have a trades program. They said they hired the trades students first, and when they graduate, they give them pink slips. Then I asked them: "What's the success rate, once you give them pink slips, of those students getting jobs?" They said 100 percent, and they all get, many times, more high-paying jobs — a 100 percent success rate.

My question to you: what is the overall unemployment situation like? Are there a lot of jobs still around? Is there a high unemployment rate? Are there still a lot of people to fill the jobs of people that are retiring, or no?

W. Stetski: Traditionally, the Kootenays, the East Kootenays, has been a little higher than, say, the Lower Mainland. I'm not sure where we're at currently. I think I remember that 7 percent, 8 percent — somewhere in there — was fairly common.

Certainly, one of the challenges — and the college did mention it earlier — is trying to make sure that they're turning out students that can go directly into industry with the right skill sets. So we do have an initiative underway here in the East Kootenays and West Kootenays to try and make sure that the needs of industry are being matched by the college graduates.

D. Hayer: So there are still some jobs. They don't have the trained staff here, because the programs are not the same as the ones that industry is looking for.

W. Stetski: There's been some concern around that. For example, the chair of ICBC was here recently and talked about the difficulties of getting people to come and work in body shops. Some of the companies in Cranbrook that do a lot of repair work on automobiles were saying that their real challenge right now is they can't get properly trained technicians to come and work on the kinds of cars that are being produced these days. It's different than it used to be.

So these workforce initiatives — which the province has got underway right now, including here in the Kootenays, and which try to make sure that the skill set needed by industry is being provided by the college — are really important. It's underway here.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much, Your Worship, and thank you for being here this evening.

That brings us to the end of the speakers list for tonight. Is there anyone in the audience that perhaps wanted to make a presentation?

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.

1) College of the Rockies	Dianne Teslak
	Orest Federko
2) East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council	Chris Bosman
	Marty Hafke
3) Sport BC	Twyla Ryan
4) College of the Rockies Faculty Association	Leslie Molnar
5) Kootenay Lawn Doctor Inc.	Paul Visentin
6) Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce	Susan Clovechok
7) City of Cranbrook	Mayor Wayne Stetski

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:	Chris Bosman (Chair, East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council)
	Susan Clovechok (Executive Director, Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce)
	Orest Federko (Chair, Board of Governors, College of the Rockies)
	Marty Hafke (East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council)
	Leslie Molnar (President, College of the Rockies Faculty Association)
	Twyla Ryan (Chair, Board of Directors, Sport B.C.)
	Wayne Stetski (Mayor, City of Cranbrook)
	Dianne Teslak (College of the Rockies)
	Paul Visentin (Kootenay Lawn Doctor Inc.)

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