Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 79 — Wednesday, October 3, 2012 (HTML)

Conference Room, North Peace Cultural Centre
10015 - 100th Avenue, Fort St. John, B.C.

Present: Douglas Horne, MLA (Chair); Mable Elmore, MLA (Deputy Chair); Gary Coons, MLA; Marc Dalton, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; Pat Pimm, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA; John Slater, 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	2128
B. Hodson
L. Ackerman
J. Leahy
M. Little
J. Little
J. Banman
I. Critcher
L. Mackay
K. Goodings
R. Brandl
B. Court
M. LaBoucane
A. Hadland
F. Jarvis
L. Phillips

D. Horne (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I'm Douglas Horne. I'm the MLA for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I'm also the Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier of British Columbia.

This is an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly. Its mandate includes conducting annual consultations on the upcoming provincial budget. I would like to welcome everyone today in the audience and thank everyone for participating in this important process.

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

Upon the release of this consultation paper, this committee holds public consultations and invites British Columbians for their input. 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 18 public hearings in communities throughout the province. We have already visited Surrey, Castlegar, Cranbrook, Kelowna, Vernon, Vancouver and yesterday Coquitlam and Abbotsford. We also held video conferencing hearings, and we heard from Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Salmon Arm. After today's meeting we're scheduled to travel to Quesnel, Kamloops, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Smithers, Prince George, Courtenay, Parksville and Victoria.

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

As I said, British Columbians can fill out a short on-line survey on the committee's website, which is located at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. There you can find further information on the consultation process, download a copy of the budget consultation process and learn more about the work of this committee. All of the public input we receive is carefully considered. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, October 18.

At today's meeting a presenter may speak for up to ten minutes, and up to five additional minutes is allotted for questions by the committee members. Time permitting, we may also have an open mike at the end of the hearing for five minutes allocated to each presenter. If you would like to speak at that time, please register in advance at the back of the room.

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

I'd like to start by having the committee members introduce themselves. We'll start with John Slater.

J. Slater: My name is John Slater. I'm the MLA for Boundary-Similkameen, and I live in Osoyoos.

P. Pimm: I'm Pat Pimm. I'm the MLA for Peace River North, and I live right here in this great city of Fort St. John.

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

G. Coons: Good morning. Gary Coons, MLA for North Coast. I live in Prince Rupert.

B. Routley: Good morning. My name is Bill Routley, and I'm the MLA for Cowichan Valley.

D. Horne (Chair): Also joining us today from the parliamentary committees office is our Clerk, Susan Sourial, along with Jacqueline Quesnel at the back of the room, who is staffing the registration desk. Michael Baer and Jean Medland are also here on behalf of Hansard Services. I have to say, as they were carrying the many cases off the plane last night at 12:30, we really do appreciate all of the help that they give us.

I'll now call our first presenter, the Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce, represented by Brent Hodson.

Brent, welcome to the committee. As you've heard, you have ten minutes to present followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.
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B. Hodson: It's nice to see you guys up here again. We just provided a submission to you guys. My name is Brent Hodson. I'm the president of the Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce. The Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce is made up over 450 small and medium-sized businesses in the area. We provide networking, training and advocacy to our members. As well, we are a member of the B.C. chamber, and we attend their AGM each year. Our board consists of 13 directors and one manager.

The businesses and residents of the Fort St. John area are the backbone of the provincial energy economy. The population of Fort St. John is approximately 20,000 with a trading area of approximately 60,000 people. Our median age in the northeast is around 31.5 or 32, as you may have heard, which is six years less than the provincial average of 38.

In 2001 our Fort St. John Hospital — the older one, not the brand-new one that just opened up recently — had the highest birth rate per capita in British Columbia. We had 627 births in Fort St. John in 2009.

The number of small businesses per 100 people is high when compared with other Canadian cities of the same size. Fort St. John ranks 71.2 compared with other communities ranging between 50.2 and 69.

As you know, our area features a large energy sector. So $7.9 billion of capital spending by the energy industry happened in 2008, as well as over $9.24 billion in the total sales value of oil and gas production in 2008. In 2008 B.C.'s total oil and gas revenue equalled around $4 billion.

Now, the energy industry in our area is the largest single source of revenue from the province. I'll give you a figure of 2008. It was $4.09 billion mostly generated from this area and from the Fort Nelson area.

Many of the companies from neighbouring provinces enter into our province to take advantage of our vast resources and leave nothing in return. We suggest the province pose a levy or a tax on out-of-province companies doing work in our province. These companies do not purchase their fuel or supplies in British Columbia, thus reaping rewards and revenue but not leaving any revenue in British Columbia.

Our priorities for the last year and a bit include low business tax and transportation in the north, including air travel. We've been a big push for twinning the Alaska Highway, Highway 97, and Highway 2 from the Alberta border to Fort St. John.

MLA Lekstrom, when he was Transportation Minister, did announce improvements and some twinning of the highway from the Alberta border, but we'd like to see the entire highway four-laned from the Alberta border to Fort St. John. Even just driving from Fort St. John to Dawson Creek has become a hassle now with the large amount of traffic that industry has put onto the roads.

Missing from the announcement a little while back were some timelines and the budget figures associated with the improvements, so we'd like to see a plan announced for further improvements to the highway corridor.

We would also like to see some more airport improvements, hoping that federal and provincial governments can work together to develop a long-term strategic plan to guide future investments in the province airport infrastructure, as needs need to be taken care of before the wants.

Fort St. John may be facing more airline travel in our airport, as we were invited earlier this year to speak with WestJet in Calgary. Myself and a few other members from the community went and spoke with WestJet and provided a ten-minute presentation to them. We should be finding out later this year if they'll be coming to Fort St. John.

Another big transportation push that we've been dealing with is with the taxi service in Fort St. John. We'd like to see the taxi bill of rights extended to the entire province.

As well, as many of you know, telecommunications and data connectivity are critical to any business nowadays, just as power, water and sewer are. So we'd like to ensure that there are more connections for this area, as well as other lines.

There have been a few occasions in the last couple of years where a fibre optics line has been cut further down south, and that has stopped all Internet traffic for this area. So we would like to see government and private industry work together to install a redundant fibre line, recognizing that Internet connectivity is critical to stable business operations and to economic development.

Also, natural gas prices that consumers pay are considerably higher in the north, and turning the thermostat down is not an option. There are the fuel costs, reducing the cost of fuel in the northeast. Level the playing field by making the fuel prices level with other communities only 45 minutes away.

The carbon tax. I know the carbon tax is a touchy subject. Recently at the B.C. chamber the northern part of the province wanted to scrap the carbon tax, while the southern part of the chambers wanted to keep it because they like it. I know there was work earlier this year on finding out what kinds of changes people wanted to the carbon tax.

We find that there are a lot of people in our membership, as well as in the Dawson Creek membership…. The carbon tax has put a burden on their business, especially with fuel and transportation. Some businesses are losing business to Alberta because of this. So we'd like to see some changes done to the carbon tax or maybe just getting rid of it altogether.

Our area's primary industries are related to oil and gas, agriculture, forestry and the service industry. As many of
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you know, our area is a hotbed for the industry. As well, we're seeing a lot of innovation. We'd like to see further opportunities exist for innovation and commercialization with clean energy technology and science in northeastern B.C. As well, we'd like to see government support, as we find that is critical to the success of innovation and new industries in northeastern British Columbia.

Finally, the Site C dam. As many of you know, this is a project that B.C. Hydro has been working on. I see Lori Ackerman, the mayor of Fort St. John, is here, so I'm sure she'll talk on what the city has been doing.

We'd like the province to recognize the additional strain that the dam will have on our community and our infrastructure, especially during the construction period. So we'd like to see an increase in our policing, our medical response and air travel, as we find that those are some of the areas that will be hit the hardest, and also recognize the impact that this project will have on our community post-construction.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll start our questions with Pat.

P. Pimm: Thanks a lot, Brent. Your presentation, as always, is very similar to how I think as well, so not too much difference there.

One question I have been asking everybody that has even mentioned the words "carbon tax" is…. The Finance Minister put a link on his website, and he's taking submissions on carbon tax. Did you guys present to the Finance Minister?

B. Hodson: Yeah, we submitted information to him. Earlier this year at the B.C. chamber AGM, our chamber, with some other of the northern chambers, had redrafted the policy that we were going to submit to the B.C. chamber, so we had submitted that information on what the wording is.

We know that the carbon tax is revenue-neutral. But we understand that you can't just take away the carbon tax, because you guys have set in place either income tax credits or things like that to make it so that it became revenue-neutral. There was a list of other things, and yes, we did submit those.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation. I wondered if you had any labour supply issues or shortage for any of your 450 small and medium-sized businesses.

The second question was…. Your energy impact. You talk about companies from other provinces — I assume from Alberta, possibly Saskatchewan — that come over and take but don't put back into the province. I guess that's the summary of what you're suggesting. I wondered if you had any ideas on how you might levy some kind of tax on companies doing work in our province.

B. Hodson: Yeah, for sure. As with the labour issue that you mentioned earlier, yeah, many of our members have been facing labour problems with finding employees. Last year and a lot of this year we've been working with them on a lot of the immigration programming.

When the immigration task force came to our community, we presented to them. So we were very happy when they announced the two-year pilot project for northeast British Columbia earlier this year for the provincial nominee program.

We've been working with our membership and with other groups such as SUCCESS and with both the provincial nominee program and the ministry that takes care of that, hoping to provide more information to our membership as well as do more events in Fort St. John so that businesses can attend these sessions to learn more about how their business can take part in this programming.

There are a lot of businesses in the community and in our membership that do take part in these programs. Sometimes they find the application process, or just the process at all, very time-consuming and tedious. We hope that with this two-year pilot program that was announced and with the additional staff, they can seek the help that they need to make sure they fill out the paperwork correctly and follow the programming correctly as well.

Talking about other provinces, we're actually working on a policy that we'll be resending to the B.C. chamber, as well, to possibly reflect the province to impose a tariff or a tax on Alberta companies who are not leaving any footprint at all in British Columbia, even though they're benefiting from the resource.

What we're looking for is for out-of-province companies to put a lock, a block, etc., to define where they are, doing the work on all their invoices. We do realize that this goes against the TILMA agreement, but we find that it is a one-sided agreement that only benefits Alberta to come and use our resources. They bring their own gas, so they're not paying the carbon tax, and they're still billing Alberta companies, so there's no HST staying in the province.

I think by doing the invoicing of where they're working, it's showing where they're working, so that can be taken from their viewpoint. But there was also talk of doing some kind of enforcement as well, hiring enforcement people to drive down the dirt roads that we do have in our area, go out to a well site, go out to a field, see where people are working from and ensure that the paperwork and all that stuff is there.

M. Dalton: Thank you, Brent, for your presentation. Just following up on Bill's comments, do you see any downsides as far as imposing some of the recommendations, levies, upon Alberta companies or outside com-
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panies? It would be good to have some research on that. That would be my first point.

The second one. If you could just expand a bit on the taxi bill of rights — what the issues that you're facing right here are.

B. Hodson: Yeah, for sure. There may be an issue imposing these things on Alberta companies. We essentially could slow down the industry because they're not having these extra companies in the area doing the work. But we know there are companies in this community that aren't working because Alberta companies have been hired to do the job that they could do. There are companies that are sitting with their trucks in their parking lots waiting for the work, and they're not getting the work because of the Alberta companies. So there's that issue.

The second part, with the taxi bill of rights…. In our community we have a taxi company that holds the majority of all the licences, and their service is terrible. You can call a cab, and it won't show up for two hours — if you're lucky.

There have been times when — you know, Friday, Saturday nights, the end of the night in the bars — people are waiting, and it's getting to minus 30 or minus 40. As well, the taxi drivers themselves smoking in vehicles, sometimes with the passengers still in them, as well as just the costs. We'd like to see the bill of rights extended to ensure that we do see better service provided by the taxi companies that hold the licensing.

Last year we did see a new driver and a new company receive one licence, so we were very happy with that. A lot of the community had been pushing to see a new taxi company come along. We were very surprised when he was granted his licence. It was a huge shock to a lot of us because that hasn't been done in quite a while in this area. So we'd just like to see the taxi bill of rights extended to ensure that we do get better service and the rights are there.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. Very interesting to hear about the higher than average concentration of businesses in the area.

My question has to do with the issue of permitting. We've heard from other areas, tourism and other companies, in terms of backlog or wait times for permits.

B. Hodson: Yeah, there have been a few companies that have come to us and said: "In the past we've seen something that would normally take five months almost become two to three years waiting for a permit."

I know, talking with Pat's office, that he's been doing a lot of work on getting more help for the permits, especially with the industry permits. I do believe the ministry has hired more people. There is still such a backlog that the times are still long, but I do know it's being worked on.

We haven't had to go to bat too much on this issue, but we do realize that it is there and is an important issue. We'll continue to monitor it and have a look and see where things go.

B. Ralston: Just a quick comment and then a question. Interesting to hear that you're advocating for more regulation in terms of, I suppose, policing Alberta companies. The system is largely designed on the basis of self-declaration and enforcement. If there is no self-declaration, then it has to be enforced. I don't know whether that will meet with much response, but I appreciate what you're saying.

The question was about the opportunities for innovation and commercialization that you spoke of. Do you see that being centred…? I mean, a lot of the majors are here, and they have that research capacity. I'm thinking of Talisman or Shell or people like that. Or do you see it centred in, say, Northern Lights College as a separate area? Have you thought a little bit about how that might take place?

B. Hodson: With the use of water in fracking, water has become a very, very valuable resource, as we've seen with the South Peace and especially Dawson Creek. They've been in water restrictions all year this year as their water sources have been very low.

We'd just like to see industry work on innovations to their technology that they're using to extract the natural resources so that maybe they don't have to use water. They can find a different technology or something so there's not a huge impact on our environment.

Also, to go to your other part, with all the increase in funding and the announcements in the last little while, we have seen great changes to the Northern Lights College system in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek. Fort St. John is the natural gas campus, and Dawson Creek has become the clean energy campus. We think that's great. Hopefully, we can get some innovation into the system locally as well.

We'll now call our next presenter. I'll change up the list a little bit and invite the mayor, Lori Ackerman, to join us next.

Your Worship, thank you for taking the time today. As you've heard, you have ten minutes and five minutes for questions. So go ahead.

L. Ackerman: Thank you for this opportunity to present, and welcome to Fort St. John. It's an honour and a privilege to represent B.C.'s energy capital here as the mayor today.
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For those of you who haven't been here before, Fort St. John is the second-largest community north of Kamloops. We are one of three cities north of the 56th parallel in Canada, with Yellowknife and Whitehorse being the other two. You are in the heart of Canada's most northern agricultural area, and we are the service centre for B.C.'s energy industry.

I just want to say: MLA Coons, I will have Mayor Mussallem and Mayor MacDonald here later today. We're going to be doing a tour of the natural gas industry.

If you wish, after this presentation is done…. I am the executive director for the Science, Innovation and Technology Council, and the CEO for the B.C. Innovation Council will be joining us on the tour of the natural gas industry as well.

Without a base GDP coming into British Columbia, there will not be an opportunity to invest in our future, our children's future, their quality of life and their careers. As B.C.'s energy capital, we support energy projects that not only ensure economical advancement but also are socially and environmentally sustainable.

Our number one issue facing us in this community is the potential dam on the Peace River — the Site C. It will be located exactly seven kilometres from where we sit.

If you're in Kelowna, if you're downtown, that is at the intersection of Highway 33 and Highway 97. If you're on Kitsilano Beach driving to UBC, that's halfway there. That just gives you an idea of where it's located.

There's a lot of emotional conversation around this, and rightly so. The city of Fort St. John, however, has chosen to take a proactive approach to promote our needs. I believe that Noah was not in favour of the flood, but he built the ark.

Our community consultations are now complete, and we are developing our response to this project. We've developed a document to have the conversation with the community, and we've spent most of the summer doing that. There are 11 points in here talking about how the community can move forward and advance as a community.

If the province chooses to move this project forward, it should do so only after ensuring that those impacted are appropriately and completely compensated — not unlike the stand that our Premier is taking with Enbridge.

For industries and businesses to be successful they need employees, and you've heard from our chamber president that we do have a shortfall in workforce. It falls on the shoulders of municipal governments to create attractive communities so that these businesses can recruit workers too. It falls on the shoulders of municipal governments to create communities that provide good experiences to retain those employees. This community has worked hard to build the assets we have that provide some of the aspects of quality of life in a resource winter community.

We need a good infrastructure plan and financial sustainability, which are Nos. 2 and 3 on our priority list. It would be Nos. 1 and 2 if we didn't have Site C. We need a partnership of governments to come together to ensure predictable and reliable investment into infrastructure in the communities. We have water pipes, sewer pipes and asphalt that age as we speak.

The cost of doing business increases for everyone. We need to eliminate the ad hoc granting process in favour of one that ensures sustainable, accountable and quantifiable long-term planning by local governments. We need socially sustainable and healthy communities.

Care must be taken to ensure that decisions made in Victoria and Ottawa — the policies and the programs — do not impose downloads on communities. Just a few recent examples. The lack of sheriff services meant that the RCMP were doing the job of sheriffs here in Fort St. John, when they could have been out in the community keeping our community safe. JobFest was a great idea, but the contractor required a venue and a facility to operate in, in case of inclement weather. That is staff time, and it's not free. I don't keep staff around just waiting for an event to happen. They have a full-time job for a reason.

Community programming needs to be reinstated. I recall a conversation when we were looking at having a gaming centre here in Fort St. John. We were assured that gaming funds would continue to be distributed to ensure that our social infrastructure would be strong and resilient. That has changed, but the need has not changed.

Restorative justice is just one example. That was a partnership started with the community, and the province has backed out. That saves the provincial government here in the neighbourhood of $300,000 to $400,000, and we can't get $25,000 as a partner.

Fifty-three percent of infrastructure is owned and managed by municipalities, and we do it with eight cents out of every tax dollar paid by the taxpayer. That is a fact. I am a taxpayer, and so are you. And we vote provincially, municipally and federally. There should be an equal partnership.

We have seen industries understand that to be competitive and grow, it takes a partnership sometimes. So you need to follow their lead. We need a partnership of governments that work together with existing resources to ensure our constituents a quality of life.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll now move to questions.

P. Pimm: Thanks a lot, Lori. You talk about the Site C presentation. When and where are you going to be presenting that to the government? I know we're working
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on that a little bit, but what are your plans in that regard?

L. Ackerman: We just wrapped up the community consultations a couple of weeks ago. We're pulling together a high-level document, and I will be taking that down to the Premier and the Energy Minister, most likely towards the end of October or beginning of November.

G. Coons: Thank you, Lori. It's really interesting — Site C. It will be nice to see the consultation that you've done. I guess there are a few phases here — the preconstruction or the consultation, the construction phase and the post-construction phase. As you say, it's going to be a huge hit on community infrastructure and services, whether it's policing or medical or whatever.

What are the key issues in that, when you start looking at where you are right now? You're talking about a labour shortage and a huge influx of workers. What do you want from the province as far as…? Again, the three phases. I can't even imagine what the construction phase is going to look like. Then when they leave, it gets into…. So just more a picture of what your concerns are really looking like.

L. Ackerman: Our focus is to ensure that our official community plan is maintained. We have a plan that is extremely robust. It is a plan that takes us out 25 years to ensure that our community is economically sustainable, culturally diverse, accessible and environmentally sensitive. We have done a lot of work in that area, and we are moving forward as much as we possibly can, considering the construction window that we have here, etc., to build a strong and resilient community.

In between the city of Fort St. John and the dam will be a 500-man camp. On the other side of the river will be a 1,200-man camp. That cannot be operated in an insulated fashion, and that is what is being presented to us. We understand camp work. We understand the social implications of camp work.

When I hear the proponents saying that they will have a shuttle bus to bring those folks into town to make use of our recreational facilities, our taxpayers are paying for that recreational facility. What I don't need is a higher use for a short period of time that we're not getting any benefit for. They're not captured in a census. They're not captured in any kind of benefit program.

When we look at the consultation process that B.C. Hydro is taking right now, it is very piecemeal. I've always said that you don't buy a vehicle after taking a look at the tailpipe and the fender and the next day the steering wheel. You need to take a look at the entire vehicle. So our approach to consultation with the community has been very holistic and not chopped up. We just have concerns that our voice is not being heard.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. It's, I think, very comprehensive and really shows great leadership and insight looking to the future. I'm wondering if it would be possible to get a copy of the document.

L. Ackerman: I have a few more in my vehicle, so I'll pop out and bring them back in and leave them with your staff.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Great. Also, is there a consensus, or has the city taken a position in terms of the project, and what has been the response?

L. Ackerman: The city is not taking a pro or a con. We've chosen to be proactive and promote our position. Our decision whether or not we come out and support this will be based on what kind of feedback we get from B.C. Hydro when we present our document to them and the provincial government.

M. Dalton: Thank you, Lori. Could you elaborate on your position on Enbridge, please?

M. Dalton: Yes, or the community. You've expressed some frustration there, so if you could just elaborate a bit more on that, I'd appreciate it.

L. Ackerman: Well, we live and breathe pipelines here, so I understand the safety of pipelines. I don't have a concern about the Enbridge pipeline, but then I understand how they work. I do understand, however, the concern, the fear of the unknown from my colleagues across northern B.C., so it's important for them to understand pipelines.

The position that Premier Clark is taking with Enbridge, where those impacted should benefit from it, is the same thing that we see with Site C. Those of us who are impacted by the construction and the loss of the valley should be benefiting from it.

B. Ralston: Last year on the Finance Committee we were in Fort Nelson, and Mayor Streeper expressed some of the same concerns you have about managing growth and building the necessary hard infrastructure and social infrastructure to support the amazing growth that you're seeing here.

In the past the program of Fair Share was established.
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I'm wondering: have you thought about, given the infrastructure demands that you've quite reasonably set out here, what modifications or augmentations or changes to that plan might assist in financing some of the necessary infrastructure here?

L. Ackerman: I don't see the Fair Share program needing to be changed. If there was anything to be changed, I would suggest that it might be the ALR demands. I have a map of the city that shows our boundary expansion over the years. It's very difficult to be able to provide a community when you don't have the land to do so.

What we get is sprawl happening outside of our city boundary that relies on the city services. If the Charlie Lake area was to incorporate, they would be the third-largest municipality in northeast B.C. But they're unincorporated, and their services are minimal. They do have a bit of a sewer system out there in a certain area.

I don't see a change needed to the Fair Share program as it sits. We need conversation with government as to how…. The ALR is constraining the community, and now we're getting sprawl in the rural area.

B. Ralston: The Northern Rockies regional municipality is huge and does encompass the entire region, yet they seem to have some of the very same problems that you do. Simply extending the boundaries doesn't seem to have been the solution in Fort Nelson. Do you have any comment on that?

L. Ackerman: Well, it would be the ALR. I know that Bill can't get land out of the ALR.

D. Horne (Chair): Your Worship, thank you so much for your time today. We'll now move to our next presenter.

Next on our list is Save Our Northern Seniors represented by Margaret Little and Jean Leahy.

Welcome, both. As I believe you may have heard, you have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

J. Leahy: Thank you very much for your time. We usually present whenever you come here. We didn't want to fail you this year, so we're presenting again.

Save Our Northern Seniors. We formed a society approximately five years ago, maybe a bit more. Our main goal was to work for more long-term-care beds in the North Peace and better support in the community for home care, and we supported the assisted living, intermediate care, extended care — all those things that are available for seniors in one manner or another, some of them not very much.

We wanted to raise the awareness that our community is growing and that we are going to continue to need more beds, not less; advocate for members who are sent to other facilities by increasing the number of beds here; and enable our seniors to live their years in their own community with dignity, respect, safety and so on, and be with their families.

Universal health care. The federal government intends to end the current federal-provincial-territorial agreement on health care in 2014. This is frightening and will mean the end of universal health care. Canadians support our system and expect the federal government to share the responsibility. We therefore support the Premiers of Canada in forming an innovation working group. There must surely be ways to provide higher-quality, more patient-centred care with lower costs in mind.

As well, we support our Premier with her discussions with Prime Minister Harper and the continued sharing of universal health care. She can have some clout. We just hope she uses it.

My mom is 92, and she still lives in her own home with home support. Our family is quite expert on getting people to come into the home and help look after her. But there are many, many people out in the community who do not have the home support care that they need. It is a major issue.

We recognize that there is a shortage of home care workers, and we appreciate the work that they do when they come into the homes. It is extremely important to keep people in their own home.

My mom has told me over the last few months that if she had to go to a facility, she wouldn't be around very long, so our family will do whatever we can. What we want as Save Our Northern Seniors is to provide that opportunity for other people in our community. We need to have incentives to encourage people to enter the field of home support. With the shortage of care beds, respite beds and adult daycare spaces, these people are in demand.

The scheduling of workers is very difficult, and it's extremely important to have consistency, to have the same person. My dad had dementia, and it was a rotating door of care workers. Can you imagine if you had dementia and every day you had somebody different come and you would have to explain over and over again what was going on when you didn't have the capacity to explain what was happening to your own body? It's extremely important for home care supporters to be consistent and available when they are needed.

People want to stay in their own homes. They don't want to go to a facility, but they have major difficulty getting enough care hours. Rural elderly people are not always able to get home care. It's hit-and-miss. It depends on who's available, how many workers are available on any particular day.

The concept of volunteerism is absolutely terrific. This
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community thrives on volunteerism. However, it doesn't work for people who are receiving home care. They also need consistency. They need to know that somebody is going to be there at a specific time to be able to take them shopping or whatever.

Volunteers cannot provide regular or sustainable services for those who are in need. In addition, there are very few people in this community who are available to volunteer, because they're already volunteering with a lot of other services.

The cost of home care support. That needs to be addressed. When my mom and dad started getting home care, there was a cap of $29 a day. The home care workers come for approximately three-quarters of an hour because that's all they can. That's what is fitted into the schedule.

We had one person last year paying $87 a day for three-quarters of an hour. Do the math. I don't believe, even if you have money, that you should have to pay the top dollar. There needs to be a cap.

I understand the cap. I understand that it has to be that way and it's based on your income. But if you think of my mother's generation and father's generation paying $87 for three-quarters of an hour…. It's not in the cards. So a lot of people just say they're not going to have home care. We feel that the system needs to go back to putting a cap on the costs for home care.

J. Leahy: Just to back up a bit about what Margaret is saying about home care and the cost, the biggest fear among seniors is: "Am I going to outlive my money?" At $87 for three-quarters of an hour, don't ever think they're not scared to death.

Facilities. We have people in our facilities who are not elderly. They're paraplegics, or something has happened to them. Some of them just plain have ailments. So they take up rooms in the care home too, because it's the only place we have for them.

We have a new residential care facility with 124 beds, which includes two respite beds. Now, we were thrilled to death to get that, but we did realize a year ago that the day it opened, it would be full, and it is full. There are 20 people in the hospital, who have been assessed, waiting for long-term care. There are more being assessed every few days. So we're again in a crisis. We were hoping we would not have that happen to us.

As well, there are 16 adult daycare people that use the facility daily. These are people who cannot stay home alone, so common sense tells you that down the road, not very far down the road, they're going to need more care.

In the North Peace we have 4,700 seniors over the age of 70. So along with the spinal cord injuries that happen — there are a lot of quad accidents here, things like that, accidents in the workplace — we are going to need another facility.

Assisted living. We of course appreciate the 24 units we have. We were promised, when it was put in place, that there would be 24-hour staffing. That has not happened, and I don't think it's the fault of anybody. They cannot find a nurse to stay at night on a permanent basis because they work alone. They don't have any social life because they're in bed in the daytime. So they just don't stay for the job.

It is important. When my mother lived in assisted living for a while, she was terrified in the middle of the night to wake up and know that nobody was there to call. There is the Lifeline, but that means calling the ambulance, and there again, seniors do not want to bother anybody. So they might fall out of bed, and that's where they'd be till morning.

Affordable housing. Affordable housing is very short here. Accessible housing is even shorter. I do sit on the affordable housing committee that the city has, along with Mayor Ackerman. I just attended the council of senior citizens — it wasn't really a convention — meeting in Vancouver the last two days.

I know we're on the right track with our affordable housing plans and ideas. We do have to convince developers. When you think that it takes only $1,000 to $1,200 to have wider doors and wider bathrooms and a wider entrance when you're building the house, it's ridiculous that we don't have that, because there are lots of people that need extra space. Think of the furniture mover — less walls banged to heck. It needs to be done when you build the house, not later.

M. Little: As I said before, there's a definite shortage of staffing, and we need to have incentives to keep people in the area, to train in the area like they do with the teacher training program that we have here. People do not want to work in a system where the pay is less, with threats of cutbacks and layoffs. The people in our care homes here and our facilities work really hard, and we have nothing to say but praise for them. However, they need help.

The other major issue that Jean wants to talk about is the quality of food. I could go on and on about recruitment and retention. I can talk to you later about it.

D. Horne (Chair): Sure. Unfortunately, your time is almost up, but Jean, if you could end really quickly.

J. Leahy: Briefly, I'll just talk about the food. The food is not good. It's the precooked, packaged frozen food. In some cases it's terrible. There's lots of discussion about it with the staff. I sit on the resident family council — have for 15 years now. It's always been a subject. We are going to work on it.

By the way, the Alberta government, as of the first of December, is going to have homegrown, cooked food
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in all their facilities. I have a DVD that I just got in the mail yesterday about that episode. If anybody wants to see it, they could.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. At the beginning you made a comment on the fact that the provinces and federal government are negotiating on the revisions to the way that health care is delivered in Canada.

Not to worry. Obviously, there are many negotiations that happen between levels of government. I think the belief that medicare as we know it is going to end is not necessarily going to happen. I think you should rest a little bit easy. We as governments do work together fairly well from time to time, although that's not terribly evident from time to time. I think Canadians on the whole see that as a very important part of the fabric of our country. To think that's going to end, I wouldn't see as a real possibility.

P. Pimm: Well, thanks a lot, ladies, for your presentation. It's always a pleasure to see you. I'm not sure who I spend more time with in my community — Margaret or her husband, Jim, or Jean. It's kind of a combination, I'm sure.

One of the things you've told me is that you're on the affordable housing committee. Now, we just have a new hospital. Have the discussions around any sort of affordable housing taken place in regard to the old hospital, the old facility? Are any of those discussions happening at this point in time?

P. Pimm: They're not happening there? Maybe they should be — just throwing that out there.

B. Routley: Actually, I was going to follow up with a question about the…. Obviously, the new residential care facility is already full. So I wondered if there was any plan in terms of trying to find more facilities. Also, on the question about the number of seniors in the area, you've got 4,700 seniors over the age of 70 currently. I wondered if you had any information on how that's going to change over, say, the next five years or ten years.

And in terms of the shortage of available housing, what kinds of costs are seniors looking at right now? You talk about rent being astronomical, but just to give the committee some idea of what that is: what kind of rent is it for, say, a one-bedroom apartment here? If you can find it, I guess.

J. Leahy: Well, for any that I've been told about, one-bedroom apartments are never less than $800 and usually more. If they're in good condition, they're more. You could maybe rent some, ones that aren't fit to live in, for less, but nobody is going to do it.

B. Ralston: I just wanted to follow up, Jean, on your question about food. As you know, there is some discussion about requiring, in British Columbia, the local purchase of food for facilities like hospitals and long-term-care facilities. I'm wondering: if Alberta has taken that step, do you have any information on what the relative cost might be? I mean, sometimes the justification for the precooked, frozen packaged stuff is that it's quite a bit cheaper to prepare, obviously. I'm wondering if you had a comment on that.

J. Leahy: Well, Ontario is also experimenting with homegrown food. In three facilities they've determined that it is cheaper to use the local food and cook it. It's certainly more healthy, and they notice the difference in their patients, how much good it is doing them. So we're kind of watching that. Scarborough is one city, I remember, that has been trying it.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation today and for being here with our committee.

Jim, it's good to see you again. You've got ten minutes to present and five minutes for questions. You can begin now.

J. Little: Okay, I'll try and speed through what I have. The first paragraph goes over the committees and stuff that I've attended and the ministers that I've actually presented to, with the assistance of Pat Pimm in many of these cases, and it has been appreciated.

A budget should provide service to the residents of the province but should also facilitate investment and employment opportunities in the province. In addition, identification of the outstanding issues has been presented to government on numerous occasions and must be resolved by the 2013-14 budget commitments. The issues are as follows.

Crown land in most of rural B.C. is what is available for industrial expansion and for the expansion of many northern communities like Fort Nelson. An efficient and timely allocation system for Crown land does not presently exist for the northeast and elsewhere in the north, with the exception of those tenures administered by the
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Oil and Gas Commission.

The current allocation system needs to be changed to again become client-oriented, as existed under previous agencies or ministries like the Ministry of Crown Lands, British Columbia Assets and Land Corporation and the integrated land management branch.

I have attached statements from the Ministry of Crown Lands, hon. James Chabot, minister, to this submission. This should be the government's mandate for revenue, for investments and for the province. That's the last page of your presentation here.

Application process for Crown land. Currently this process is not timely or efficient and has no known acceptance or completion time frame for a client or municipality to track an application. In comparison, the Oil and Gas Commission has a known time frame from receipt of an application to completion of tenure of around 60 days.

The application process needs to be redefined, or investment in the province will be restricted to those areas where parameters are clearly defined and an investor can make decisions on a known completion date, as is the case for oil and gas companies. It is noted that national energy project applications have been transferred from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to the OGC, and those applicants now can expect the same quality of service as exists in the OGC.

Applications for aggregate tenures have become even more difficult to achieve with the multiple processes that exist. An application for an aggregate tenure requires the following applications to be made. The land application requires the development plan to be referred by FrontCounter B.C. to all agencies and First Nations prior to being continued in the application system. If the land is not on an existing road or access, a further application is required for the access road.

In recent approvals there have been duplicate requests for contours of the site after the trees have been removed. A contour survey averages around $6,000, and if a contour survey is completed for the Mines notice-of-work application, this should not be a further requirement for the land application.

It appears that most new applications are now requiring an archaeology study to be completed on the application area. This requirement has even been made for replacement applications and is at least a further $6,000 cost to the client.

The Mines application for a notice of work requires the completion of a Mines NOW application, which includes a development plan, contours of the area for the current landscape and projected contours for the site once the aggregate has been removed from the area of claim. This application is again referred to agencies and to First Nations, but recently, with the addition of new field staff at Mines, it has become more efficient. The notice of work will not allow work on the site until all other tenures are issued.

A licence-to-cut application is required for the site. This can require crews at the site and is dependent on what forest cover exists over the area. This application is again referred to all agencies and First Nations. This tenure will not be issued until the land application has been issued, and the length of tenure does not necessarily coincide with the length of time for the other tenures.

On application, a statement of self-assessment is required for all applications. This is one page and may require the notification of DFO. That's the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It is noted that this application process can take as long as four months to even get entered and for a receipt to be issued. First Nations referral will be discussed in point 4 below.

An average time to receive tenure for an aggregate application has been between 18 and 24 months and as long as four years. Mackeno Ventures worked with senior officials on processes to streamline the application process, but to date these have not been implemented. Direction for change must be given to those in the system to implement required changes.

Pat has helped me at a number of these meetings when I've been in Victoria, and I thank him for that opportunity. The majority of applications for aggregate in the northeast are for oil and gas projects. Currently the petroleum companies can apply and receive tenure for aggregate for their own use for up to 250,000 tonnes per year from the Oil and Gas Commission. Tenure is again received in less than 60 days.

Those clients that are not petroleum companies are at a disadvantage to tender aggregate sources for sale and use. They are required to apply for quarry tenure through the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, as described in point 3.

The First Nations review of applications is required for any Crown land application. They're sent out to First Nations. In the northeast this has become very cumbersome, as there's a mixture of referrals and committees working on First Nations consultation.

The Crown land application tenure technical team meets every 45 days on new applications for those treaty 8 members. There are three of them: Doig First Nation, West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation.

For all other applications within treaty 8 territory, all the other members of treaty 8 are referred to. The Kaska Dene are also referred to. The OGC is able to facilitate the First Nations quickly, and they supply First Nations with the funding capacity for the support of their involvement.

Direct sale of land for private use includes community use, commercial use, industrial use and residential use. The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has advised that Crown land purchase is the lowest priority in their operations. Historically Crown land purchases funded significant portions of the provincial budget and also provided sites for expansion of
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industrial, commercial and community infrastructure.

Clients I represent currently have in the system four commercial applications that were applied for in January 2012. These four applications are still outstanding. When these properties have been sold, we'll realize close to a million dollars for the province. In addition, three of these sites are required for establishing commercial buildings and yards. Each will result in more than a million dollars in investment per location.

By not making this type of application or use available in a timely and efficient manner, investment has been forgone this year, and revenue to the province will probably not be received this fiscal year.

A further industrial site at the Fort Nelson rail yard has finally been completed after three years from the initial application. The purchase price of this land is almost $500,000, which the province will finally receive this fiscal year. The planned development is on hold, as the initial requirement for the site has been delayed in view of the current energy issues.

Replacement tenures for existing land tenure, leases, licences of occupation and investigative use permits are not treated in the same manner across the province and may not require all the same information. In the northeast, replacement tenures are dealt with as if they are a new application. It generally takes the same time to complete a replacement tenure as to get a new tenure.

This is quite different from what happens in other offices of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. The Vancouver Island and Smithers offices of that ministry allow the continuation of the use of the site, subject to application having been filed for replacement tenure. In some cases clients are even offered the replacement tenure. It is noted that the lease or licence tenure document allows for a month-to-month tenure to exist until a new tenure is in place.

A company operating in the helmet area of northeastern B.C. applied to replace two of their quarry tenures prior to the expiry of these tenures in December last year. They were not allowed to work on the area until the tenures had been replaced, which has only recently occurred. They lost the ability to sell a million dollars' worth of sand from one quarry, of which $250,000 would have been paid to the provincial government in last year's budget. Again, the province lost revenue.

Replacement tenures should be allowed, subject to an updated management plan being provided within a reasonable time frame. Replacement tenures could involve substantial improvements — like lodges, quarry developments, etc. — and are not comparable to a new application for Crown land.

Recommendations. The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations must have the required funding to continue their programs for sale, lease and administration of Crown land. There must be political direction made to achieve the goals, expected results, for applications for Crown land.

The current system is in need of improvements so that applicants know the time frame required to receive tenure or sale, the actual requirements for the application — development plans, consultation, survey, etc. — and that the rules won't change when personnel change.

First Nations consultation must be streamlined. If required, the application fee should provide funds to assist the First Nations consultation process, similar to what the OGC provides.

Agreements need to be made to allow First Nations rights to be protected but also to allow access to the land base for investment in communities and private developments. This could include a premium fee paid to facilitate a process similar to the OGC process, which allows the completion of tenure within a 60-day period. Clients represented by our company and others would be willing to pay this fee if tenures were received in a time frame like the OGC tenures are received.

Quarry applications and tenures concerning all aggregate use in the petroleum and mining sectors should be issued by the OGC and/or the Mines branch, as their process enables investment in new infrastructure in these areas in a timely manner. With most of the people that I've applied for, for quarries in this area, 90-plus-some percent of the quarry materials go to energy projects, be it oil and gas and/or wind energy projects, etc.

In conclusion, timely processing of tenure approval equals more revenue to the province; delayed processing in tenure approval, no revenue to or investment in the province. Increased funding in the direction of the current application process is required to meet an expected economic development investment in the north.

I've made attachments, which I presented to the Hon. Mary Polak and Pat Pimm in June and also to Hon. Steve Thompson and MLA Doug Horne. In any event, I will be available for any questions.

In summary, even though I focused the majority of this on the northeast, there are a number of Crown land needs in the north, and it includes Gary's area. Right now there are at least two sites that I know of that are applied for, for liquid natural gas development on the coast. Those sites need to have direction so that they get along in the process on a quick basis.

P. Pimm: Thanks, Jim, for your presentation. I think I've heard this presentation about 38 times now — or very similar to it, at least. Obviously, it is a major issue up here, and permitting.

On the gravel issue we talked about a while back, we had, I think, 38 applications for gravel pits. These are not mining permits. These are gravel pits. At that point
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in time I was told by FLNRO that each and every one of them had now been put in the First Nations consultation. That was back in March. I'd like you to give us an update on your portion of those that were there in March.

J. Little: I still have about six of them outstanding, of my portion. The two that I mentioned here, which were the replacement tenures, are the ones that really frustrated me, because basically nothing had changed. Their development of the one quarry where they could have sold a million dollars of sand stopped in process because it got caught up in the First Nations consultation deal.

In this area of B.C. they have a band in northwestern Alberta that actually is referred to because they're part of the treaty 8. We could not get anyone from there to meet with. We were told we had to meet with these folks and everything else. We couldn't meet with them.

Then they wanted to get flown over. We said, "Okay, we'll work something out," and then they would never answer our phone calls. End of the day, they finally made the decision that they'd move forward the replacement tenure.

We need to have an open door. It's like a show in here. It's, in large, a combination of what we have to do for First Nations. You have your CLATT table. You have the rest of the treaty 8, and you have the Kaska.

I'm not saying First Nations rights are not important. I'm saying that we have to have a process that moves along, and either you get a yes or a no. That's what people want to know. If you make an application for Crown land, they want to know: "Can I do something? Can I put my money here, or should I go to Alberta? Is it available?" That's the story.

P. Pimm: One of the things — I'm just going to put this on the record — that I've been advocating for is that we get a stronger agreement that models the OGC agreement in a very strong way.

P. Pimm: If that means we have to give more funding to the First Nations, then so be it. Let's do it. Let's get some certainty for the industry and for the area, and let's get on with this.

J. Little: The people I represent are quite prepared to pay a significantly higher application fee if they know they can get some kind of result from it.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much. We have heard declarations by ministers that the backlog is being addressed and substantial progress is being made. From what you've said here, it doesn't sound like that is in fact the case on the ground. There are significant administrative barriers to gaining any momentum and reducing the backlog. I take your point about missed government revenue.

Your recommendations, I think, are pretty straightforward. I understand that they've been made repeatedly. Why do you think progress hasn't been made?

J. Little: Okay. I guess I've got to be a little honest. Sometimes what's happened is that the bureaucracy has got hung up in it, and Pat can vouch for this.

WorkSafe B.C. has got caught up in this stuff, and the OGC and Mines and everybody. Nobody wants to sit down, yet we almost had it. Pat was at the almost, back when. Last August we met with Hon. Rich Coleman and that. When I left that meeting, it sounded like we were there. That just evaporated in terms of accurate stuff on what got stalled, and nothing's happened.

I understand there's a committee meeting tomorrow in Victoria, and they're supposed to look at the process again. I only just found this out. Otherwise, I would have put something on that in here.

Unfortunately, the direction the committee has taken, which actually I have great fear of, is that they're talking about putting private gravel developments into the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. If you're going to put private developments into that thing, you're going to have a lot of folks that aren't going to be happy because they don't want to go to a process that's going to take four years to get your tenure.

D. Horne (Chair): Unfortunately, we've passed our allotted time. Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll now move to our next presenter.

J. Little: I do appreciate the opportunity to present, and as I've told Pat before, if there's anything I can do to assist, anything I've mentioned here, I'm available.

D. Horne (Chair): Our next presenter is the B.C. Grain Producers Association, represented by Irmgard and Janet.

As the presenters get themselves prepared, I will note, because he didn't have a chance to introduce himself earlier, that Dave Hayer, the member for Surrey-Tynehead, has now joined us. And because he would want me to say it, I will note that Surrey-Tynehead has the widest bridge in the world.

D. Horne (Chair): With that, welcome to the committee. As you've heard, probably, several times now, you have ten minutes to present and five minutes for questions. Your time begins now.

J. Banman: Thank you. Good morning, committee. I'm Janet Banman. I'm the general manager for the B.C.
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Grain Producers Association.

J. Banman: We are pleased to make this presentation on behalf of the B.C. Grain Producers to contribute to your comprehensive review on the effectiveness and future role of B.C.'s carbon tax.

The B.C. Grain Producers Association is a not-for-profit association representing 95 percent of the grain growers in the province of B.C. Our mandate is to improve the viability of the grains and oilseed industry in the B.C. Peace River region. The association and its members maintain sustained liaison with other agencies to benefit the fuel crop industry.

The B.C. Grain Producers Association's preferred position on the carbon tax is that it be exempt from any agriculture production in the province. Barring that, develop a B.C. biofuels industry and make provision to enter into a carbon-trading system that would make grain and oilseed production in the province competitive with our neighbouring provinces and trading partners. The implementation of a federal carbon policy would be a great solution to equality in the national economy as well.

I. Critcher: What impact has the carbon tax had on the production of grain and oilseed in B.C.? I guess that was one of the questions we asked.

The following will illustrate that the B.C. carbon tax has added additional costs to the production, transportation and processing of B.C.-produced grain and oilseed. There is the direct cost of the carbon tax on energy and hidden costs like fuel surcharges, higher grain-drying rates and increased freight costs on production items, as well as rail freight to port. These are all passed on to the producers.

Was the intent of the tax achieved with the current policy direction within the fuel crop industry? The carbon tax intended to reduce the amount of fossil fuel used in order to reduce the release of GHGs. The fuel crop industry, with the right incentives and protocols in place, could help in the reduction of emissions with the use of biofuels and adoption of production practices to generate offsets.

Adding additional costs to the production of grain and oilseed is counteractive to the intent. Incentives and investment into innovation and projects to kick-start a carbon strategy would have been a better approach.

J. Banman: The graph shows the size of industry in B.C. Chart 1 is a breakdown of grain, oilseed and pulse production in B.C.

We see, with the first bullet there, that 5 percent of B.C. land is in the agricultural land reserve. Approximately 40 percent of that land is in the B.C. Peace, and 43 percent of that is used for all crops, including forage and forage seed. Of that, 325,000 acres are in grains, oilseeds and pulses. We have approximately 290 producers doing that.

The financial impact on grain and oilseed sector in B.C. is on chart 2 — the carbon tax on B.C. grain, oilseed and pulse acres. In 2010 a pilot project measured the annual consumption and cost of energy on five individual grain farms in the B.C. Peace. Grain farm energy summary — it has been updated from 2010 to the current rate.

As you can see by the graph, the total acres of the five farms was 16,600. Divide that by five, and you get 3,320 acres. Total tonnes of carbon used was 703, and average, 140.6. The cost of carbon per tonne is $30, so that equals $1.31 per acre, and the total carbon tax paid was $21,090 for those five farms. That's a breakdown of an average of $4,300, for $49.20. Just to note, a farmer has to grow approximately 15 acres of food crop just for that carbon tax.

Chart 3 is the contribution of carbon tax paid by the grain producers in B.C. We have 325,000 grain, oilseed and pulse acres at $1.31 carbon cost per acre, according to chart 2. That's $425,750 annually, and this only reflects the direct cost of the carbon tax.

Disparity of production in B.C. Increased energy costs due to the carbon tax component put B.C. grain and oilseed producers at a serious disadvantage to those from the eastern provinces and other trading partners, as the province of B.C. is the only jurisdiction in Canada to charge this tax. Also, there are no carbon offsets, as in other provinces, and no clear alternatives for other fuels available.

In Alberta, for example, many producers whose fields border our own do not have any additional taxes, including the carbon tax. Therefore, their fuel prices are lower. A producer in Dawson Creek, B.C., pays 18 cents more per litre of fuel than his neighbour 30 minutes away in Hythe, Alberta. This disparity creates a vast economic disadvantage for B.C. producers.

Also, there are no carbon offsets available to B.C. grain farmers. Albertans have the advantage of being able to sell their sequestered carbon on the offset market. Even though some B.C. grain farmers will use the same practices, we do not qualify for the offset market in the province of B.C.

Alberta was the first province with legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the regulation of large emitters. This targets industrial facilities in Alberta that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents.

Regulated facilities must reduce their emission intensity by 12 percent, based on an average of the facilities' 2003-2005 emissions intensity baseline. There are three methods of reduction listed under the regulation: (1) facility upgrades with the installation of new technology; (2) pay $15 a tonne carbon dioxide emission into a technology fund to invest in research and development
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and building technology for the future; or (3) purchase Alberta-made carbon offset credits that represent management improvements that are science-based, additional to business as usual, and verifiable by an independent third party.

Agriculture and forestry are two industries that can remove carbon from the atmosphere. Agriculture can also reduce emissions through management improvements.

The agriculture industry has an opportunity in the emerging offset compliance market both for environmental and for economic benefits. The value of an offset credit depends on the type of project, how well the project has been compiled and, ultimately, what a buyer is willing to pay. Typically, these credits will trade for up to $15 per offset credit for the cost of compliance if companies choose to pay into the climate change and emissions management fund.

Smaller projects like reduced- or no-till projects are typically grouped together by an aggregator to create a sufficiently large volume of offset credits to be able to market the credits to large industrial emitters.

Aggregators have different pricing models. Some aggregators offer a flat fee to purchase the right to sell the offset credit. Offsets are calculated using government-approved protocols. They are calculated according to a variety of soils and can range from 0.089 tonnes per acre to 0.165 tonnes per acre per year for annually seeded crops.

Companies such as Carbon Credit Solutions are recognized as world leaders in the field of carbon credit aggregation and the development of soil sequestration projects. Since its inception in 2008 Carbon Credit Solutions has aggregated and sold over 1.3 million tonnes of verified carbon credits in the Alberta offset market.

The B.C. Grain Producers propose that legislation be put in place to permit the sale of carbon credits in B.C. and to have a recognized protocol similar to that of Alberta. Not only would the global atmosphere benefit from the reduction of carbon, but producers could also be more competitive with their eastern counterparts.

No cost recovery. Agriculture products, unlike many other businesses, have prices set by external factors. A carbon tax on food production is absorbed by the producer as a cost of doing business.

Food prices that have risen as a result of the increase of the price of fuels for transportation and storage off the farm have been passed on to the consumer. Should the producer be permitted to raise the price of food in correlation to their rising tax cost, food prices would likely become too expensive for the average B.C. citizen to purchase.

I. Critcher: In conclusion, we realize that a federal policy on carbon pricing may be some time away and recognize that it may be the best solution for widespread economic equality in all of North America.

The volatility in the market since the inception of this tax, on top of three droughts in the past five years in the B.C. Peace and declining production insurance margins, have generated very high-risk components in the viability of grain production. It would seem prudent that B.C.'s leader offer support, not deter the advancement of farming in B.C., by creating strong communities, a strong rural economy and a viable agriculture industry for generations to come.

This could partially be accomplished through the abolishment of the carbon tax for food production or the legislation of cost recoveries through carbon credits. We think the intent of the carbon tax is better served by working with the agriculture industry to come up with innovative solutions to manage GHGs, instead of putting a tax on the way we produce food.

Grain farmers have a huge land base at their disposal. Let's utilize it for the benefit of all.

Food scarcity seems to be a glib topic discussed the world over these days. Unfortunately, however, it may be your hunger and my hunger that will eventually make sustainable food production the top priority in B.C.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll begin our questions with Bruce.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much for the presentation. I'm looking at page 1, in the last paragraph, where you talk about: "The right incentives and protocols could help in the reduction of emissions." I take it, then, that your main position here is that legislation should be put in place to permit the sale of carbon credits in the same manner as Alberta.

You've also mentioned, I think, technological innovation. Are there any other specific solutions that you're offering at this point?

I. Critcher: I guess the intent with the carbon tax is actually to clean up the environment. In regards to that, there are practices available to the agriculture industry…. Obviously, more needs to be explored. But there's the way you do your cropping, the way you do your tillage, how many passes you make over fields, what best management practices you are using.

There are techniques and things out there already. They could be adopted. But if there is no incentive to do any of it and the viability isn't really there…. If you're just doing it to help all but there are no incentives in place to do them, people will not do them.

Some of our more progressive farmers here — we are already adopting certain practices. The zero-till, for instance, is very widespread now. It has been widely adopted since the mid-'90s, and it's getting more and more.

You could also do cropping rotations in order to have more green crops in your field at any one point in time. But that means you have to take acres out of production,
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which would be the regular crops. Can you afford to do it or not?

It's obviously an economic issue involved in what adaptations you use on your farm.

B. Ralston: Some of the practices you've spoken of…. You'll forgive me. I'm not from an agricultural background. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that. Would they not, just in themselves, reduce the use of carbon in your production process if you take fewer passes over the field? That's still good practice. I mean, don't you reduce your fuel use by doing that?

I. Critcher: Yes, but you have to also switch equipment if you're going to go and do different practices. For instance, on our farm…. We have a grain farm, which actually did part of that assessment, the energy assessment. We have switched to zero-till back in 2003. The farmers which have adopted zero-till practices, very early adopters, were in the mid-'90s. Now we see more of a tendency to go that route, but you actually have to invest in the equipment in order to do that.

The other thing is that we were part of a protocol back in 2006 from the soil conservation council of Saskatchewan. They did a pilot project, and they needed to sign up X amount of producers in the different regions to be part of the pilot projects in regards to the carbon sink. We were part of that. There was a protocol established, what we had to do. We had to go and use zero-till practices. We had to minimize the amount of time we went over our fields. We had to go and treat the residue. We could not burn the residue. That was part of it.

We had to chop the…. Residue management is very important, because the more cover you have on it, the more it needs to decompose and emit again. You need to do it very finely. We had to invest in a special chopper on our combine to go and spread the residue widely. So there were certain things — I don't remember all of them, but there was quite a list of things — we had to do in order to be in compliance with that. That was a pilot project. Actually, in that, we got paid. I think at that time it was $4.29 an acre. That was 2006.

Since then only Alberta has adopted, basically, offsets — an offset market — and has established its own protocol and verifiability. You have to do that in the long term. You cannot change practices halfway through. You're signing up for a long term. So if anything happens that you have to do differently, that you have to burn or whatever, you can actually physically not do it.

There is quite a bit of responsibility back on the producer. In the end, it will also be a financial responsibility, because you cannot use the normal management practices you would use. You are in compliance with certain protocols you have to adhere to.

D. Horne (Chair): We're actually over time now, but I'll allow a quick question from Pat.

P. Pimm: This is one of the best presentations I've seen on the carbon tax from anywhere in the province, so thank you very much for that.

As you're probably aware, this committee last year made recommendations to the Finance Minister to not increase any further increases in carbon tax, which he's done. Also, we made a recommendation to look at a competitiveness study as well. And he's put out submissions. I just want to confirm that you guys have put this presentation to the Finance Minister and submitted it in that carbon discussion. Very important.

J. Banman: We have not. As an association we haven't, but as part of the B.C. Ag Council, we have made a submission.

P. Pimm: I think you should make this…. A separate one, as well, would not hurt. I can tell you right now that there are groups that are advocating for huge increases to the carbon tax with no exemptions. Tides Foundation, Pembina Institute. I'll go on the record as saying that. They presented to us last week, or this week earlier. I can't remember. Anyhow, thank you very much.

I. Critcher: Yes, we noticed that in our research, when we were researching on it, how many opinions there are out there and the conflicting reports.

We'll now move to our next presenter. Our next presenter is the Peace River South Teachers Association.

Lorraine, welcome to the committee. As you, I believe, have heard several times now, you have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

L. Mackay: Thank you very much. On behalf of the teachers of Peace River South, I'd like to say how grateful we are for this opportunity to present our concerns to the select standing committee.

British Columbia's public education system is faced with the challenge of preparing our students for the world of today as well as the world of tomorrow. It is essential that public education provide high-quality education for our children in our schools.

According to our provincial government, the education plan will meet the individual needs of our students. However, a public education system that is not sufficiently funded will have a significant negative impact on
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the potential of our children and on the provincial economic growth.

Public education in British Columbia is currently underfunded. British Columbia's operating expenditure is currently $412 per student below the Canadian average. The costs of providing services for students and operating the schools continue to rise faster than the funding provided by the provincial government.

This political decision by the provincial government will have a lasting effect on the health of our society. We wish to address three areas of particular concern to the teachers of school district 59: the supplemental funding for students with special needs, funding for teacher-librarians and teachers' salaries.

In school district 59 we have approximately 250 teachers. They strive to engage and support 4,000 students. Our district has 23 schools; five of the schools have less than 50 students.

The school district encompasses the communities of Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Tumbler Ridge and a number of rural communities. More than a third of the region's population lives outside of municipal boundaries and within the large geographic area that contributes significantly to our very high busing costs.

The early development instrument, which is referred to as EDI, indicates that 38 percent of school district 59 students enter kindergarten vulnerable in at least one area of their development. This is significantly higher than the provincewide rate of 30.9 percent.

The highest level of vulnerability for Peace River students is in the areas of language and cognitive development, and communication skills. Students who enter kindergarten ready to learn do much better educationally than those who are vulnerable.

Regarding special needs. According to the 2011-2012 final operating grant summary, 181 students with provincial designation of special needs attended school in school district 59 last year. The summary breaks down the funding of these students into three levels.

Level 1 are those who are dependent and handicapped, or deaf and blind. We had seven of those in our schools last year. The support funding from the provincial government is $36,600.

Level 2 are the moderate to profound intellectual disability, physically disabled, chronic health impaired, visually impaired, deaf, hearing-impaired or autistic. We had 103 students with those designations last year. The support from the government is $18,300.

Level 3, intensive behaviour interventions or serious mental health illnesses. We had 71 students who had that designation. For that the school district receives $9,200 in funding.

Students who have special needs that do not receive supplemental funding outside of the base allocations were not included in the summary. The designations that do not receive funding are mild intellectual disabilities, gifted, learning disabilities and behaviour disabilities.

In school district 59 level 2 funding means an education assistant who will assist in supporting students with disabilities such as Down syndrome, autism or visual impairment for approximately half a day. The other half of the day the classroom teacher is expected to teach and meet the needs of the students with special needs as well as all the other students in their classroom.

Often there are multiple students with special needs within a classroom configuration, a situation which is anticipated to escalate in size and scope with the removal of the class composition limits in June 2012.

In school district 59 students who require intensive behaviour interventions or have serious mental health illness receive approximately one hour per school day of support, usually delivered by educational assistants and planned by classroom teachers.

The funding provided by the provincial government does not recognize that our special needs and challenges continue throughout the day. The funding schedule limits the amount of remediation, the accommodations, the differentiation that would truly support our students.

In comparison, Alberta provides funding for children with complex needs, the equivalent to our B.C. level 1, on an individual basis. Funding for students with severe disability, such as those in level 2 — including those with severe emotional and behavioural disabilities, which is level 3 — is $25,051.20 FTE.

If we just looked at increasing the level 2 funding to that in Alberta, that would mean an increase of $695,353 for a school district, and that's a huge amount.

Another concern that our district is facing right now and the teachers in our district are facing right now is the cuts to libraries. Between 1997 and 2002 the provincial government provided funding that allowed all school districts to hire non-enrolling teachers, based on a set teacher-student ratio. Specific ratios were established for teacher-librarians, counsellors, learning-assistance teachers, special education resource teachers and teaching support for ESL students.

For example, in 1999 the funding of the provincial government provided, on a minimum prorated basis, one teacher-librarian for each 702 students. This language was stripped from our collective agreement by the provincial government in 2002, and while districts around the province have tried to maintain non-enrolling staffing levels that support students, funding shortfalls have taken a toll on many of these positions.

Across the province and within our district, the hardest hit position has been that of teacher-librarian. Of the 23 schools in our district, only six have qualified teacher-librarians. Most of our libraries are understaffed. For example, we have one high school that has more than a thousand students and has only one teacher-librarian, and that's split between two campuses. One of our other
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elementary schools has 480 elementary students, and they have a 0.8 librarian. Those are the lucky schools. Most of our schools don't have a teacher-librarian at all.

Libraries are changing from a place where students find books into the information centre of the school. Teacher-librarians are crucial in teaching students to derive meaning, evaluate and assess the reliability of the many sources of information in print and electronically that are now available.

Research demonstrates that a qualified teacher-librarian has a positive impact on student achievement. Teacher-librarians assist students in achieving high levels of literacy, learning, reading, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and technology skills.

The Ministry of Education has stated that it wishes teachers to focus on literacy in the primary grades. That's their focus for this year. Teachers have always promoted literacy in their classrooms, no matter what the subject matter. Yet when students go to the library to search out books, magazines and other sources of information and reading for pleasure, they are met with either closed doors because they have no staff, antiquated books because there is no librarian to purchase new books and no budget in the school to purchase books or to purchase the resources, and no teacher to assist them in their quest for literacy resources.

The third area that we wish to bring to the attention of the committee is not a surprise to anybody. Over the last year there's been lots of media about the teachers feeling that their salaries have fallen significantly short of those paid by our nearest provincial neighbour, Alberta.

Because of our close proximity to Alberta, this shortfall is particularly challenging for the teachers and the school districts of the B.C. Peace River area. Teachers from our district are moving to take teaching positions in Alberta. They've received significant salary increases when they took their new positions. One teacher reported back to us that the salary increase amounted to $14,000, and a teacher who contemplated moving to our district from Alberta stated that she could continue to work three days a week in Edmonton and make the same salary as if she worked five days a week in the Peace River South district.

Teachers of school district 59 receive $2,300 per year as a provincial remote recruitment and retention allowance on top of their regular salary. This allowance was implemented to recognize the challenges of attracting and retaining teachers in isolated communities, but the allowance is inadequate in meeting the cost of living experienced in our area.

The Peace River area is currently experiencing an oil and gas boom, and the oil and gas industry not only pays high wages but also provides significant living-out allowances. Gas companies rent out blocks of apartments for their staff, and these actions reduce the number of homes available to rent or to purchase and drive up the costs of rentals and purchases as well.

In Chetwynd half a house rents for $1,500 per month. In Dawson Creek many homes rent for $2,000 per month. Add this to the high cost of heating that we have here during the long winters and the cost of running a vehicle, since the public transit system is inadequate. Since salaries and benefits are negotiated provincially, school district 59, on its own, is not able to address this problem locally.

When you consider that most of our new teachers begin at the base salary of $47,000 and then have the $2,300 allowance on top of that, they tell us that they can't come to our district to live because basically they can't afford to rent a house for $2,000.

D. Horne (Chair): I'm sorry. You're actually over time now. I should have given you a minute notice. Hopefully, I think we've…

D. Horne (Chair): …got the gist of it, and we'll start our…. Actually, because I've made a couple of comments earlier — we've had a number of teachers groups before the committee — I have to say how pleased I am that this is the first time we've actually had a teachers group before the committee who hasn't used the word "cuts" once. So thank you so much for that.

We actually had a teacher who came to the committee yesterday who, when faced with the facts, said that he respectfully disagrees. I'm not certain if he disagreed with my putting the facts on the record or with the facts themselves. But anyways….

M. Dalton: Thank you, Lorraine, for your presentation. I'm a public school teacher by profession. I know one of the things that happened recently — I think the last contract; previous to this one here, I should say — is that the number of steps to reach your highest level has been reduced to ten. So new teachers can get to the top salary much quicker. I'd be making about $85,000 if I were teaching right now.

It's difficult. I know you mentioned Alberta. It's tough to compare. We try to live within our means. Alberta is actually losing control of their budget. They're billions of dollars in debt, and it's our future generation — the students that we're teaching — that will pay the consequence for that without it being restrained.

I noticed by your averages that the teacher-to-student ratio is about 1 to 16 — say, 250 teachers to 4,000 students. So I would venture to say that's still a pretty good ratio. School districts are given the option of how to use the non-enrolling teacher — I'm a teacher-librarian myself — so there is some flexibility, and I know that they
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have to make those decisions.

I'm just wondering, with regards to special needs…. I know that's a tremendous challenge in the classroom. Your thoughts about maybe improving the education within teacher training. Do you think that there's a place for that with regards to, specifically, all the needs that we're facing as teachers with kids from diverse backgrounds? Do you think there needs to be more focus put into that?

L. Mackay: I think that's one of the areas that our school district has been trying to address, but when you're looking at some of these students in our classroom, what you're actually looking at is their physical care that happens during the day.

Really, you can anticipate as much as you can, for students who have severe behaviours, as to what sorts of triggers there'll be and try to anticipate that during the day, but you're never going to be 100 percent. The same thing with children who have Down syndrome. I mean, they continue to struggle throughout the day, regardless.

You may, in fact, be able to address a tiny portion of that through professional development or in-service, but the overall fact of the matter is that there are children in our classrooms who need ongoing care throughout the day, and a lot of those students are not receiving that.

To respond to your suggestion about the harmonization in the grids for pay, our district wasn't one of the ones that were affected by all of that.

L. Mackay: Yeah, we've always struggled here to attract teachers. Because of that, for the most part, our grid has been shortened down to seven steps, and it's been like that for 25 years. That's just a recognition of the district and how difficult it is to attract teachers to this area.

Again this year we still don't have all of our positions filled. We have an extreme shortage of TOCs because we have no teachers who are willing to move to our area. That's just the way it is up here. I mean, it's very difficult to attract them. The AHCOTE program, the teacher education program that was established locally, hasn't been able to run for the last couple of years because of not having enough applicants for the program.

D. Horne (Chair): Unfortunately, we've reached the end of our allotted time, so thank you so much for your presentation.

We'll now move to our next presenter, which I believe is the Peace River regional district and Karen Goodings.

Karen, welcome to the committee. As I believe you've heard several times now, you have ten minutes to present followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

K. Goodings: I will certainly allow you to get caught back up on having a bit of spare time, because my intent this morning is to read into the record just a letter that we have submitted from the Peace River regional district to both Premier Clark and, at that time, the Minister of Finance, Kevin Falcon.

I want to start by saying thanks for coming to the Peace. I think it's just really important that you get an opportunity to maybe feel what we talk about when we say expanse and space and all of the other issues that we sometimes deal with in the north, although we do love it.

The letter was written on August 30, and it was after consultation with the other directors on our board, which has representation from all seven municipalities and the four electoral areas. I will not go so far as to say they were unanimous, but the support was there.

"At its August 23, 2012, meeting the regional board discussed the request for input into the provincial review of the carbon tax and submits the following comments:

"(b) that the tax is ineffective and discriminatory to residents who live and work in the north for the following reasons. One, access to transit systems is very limited. The majority of the vehicles used are trucks, which are required for working in remote rural areas. The third point was that vehicles must be left running during cold periods. And the last point: more fuel is required over a longer period of time to heat our homes and businesses;

"(c) that the tax applied to the agricultural industry is detrimental, as it raises the price of food to consumers but doesn't address the cost to producers.

"Agricultural producers, as caretakers of our land, recognized the benefits of using less fuel long before the carbon tax was brought in."

I think you heard it this morning from our grain producers — Irmi Critcher and her presentation, which was just excellent. She put a lot of effort and thought into her presentation.

"Agriculture is an industry that cannot recover the costs as they are price-takers, and they are not price-makers. In other words, they cannot demand a price for their produce but must accept what the market offers. The only way they can make ends meet is to cut costs, and one of the biggest costs is fuel.

"They cut those costs by going to zero-till, swath grazing and many other methods too numerous to mention. The producers are and have been doing everything in their power to reduce their expenses. Instead of being rewarded, they are being penalized through the carbon tax. The carbon tax creates an uneven playing field in this global market and is unfair to the agricultural producers in the province of B.C.

"Thank you for the opportunity to submit our concerns regarding this tax. We look forward to the removal of this unfair tax burden, especially to our food producers."

D. Hayer: Thank you very much, Karen. I just want to say thank you very much for coming over and presenting,
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because we have heard from the other side who sort of think the carbon tax should be going higher.

I was on the Finance Committee last year, when there were many people saying it's affecting their business negatively. They can't compete because other people who they are competing with don't have the carbon tax. Their prices are too high. They're losing their market there, and they're losing jobs here. Also, the B.C. Grain Producers did an excellent job. So I really appreciate it.

Do you think that if the carbon tax keeps going up, it will make the situation much worse than it is now and the government should just freeze the carbon tax where it is, or do you think it should be totally eliminated until some other provinces or other states or other countries follow us in this type of program?

K. Goodings: I think the consensus at the board level was that it should be removed, at least for the agricultural producers who have no ability to recover. We all recognize the importance of our environment. We all recognize the importance of looking after it. I think your ag producers are probably one of your best in doing that, because if they don't look after their land, they can't grow anything — right? The carbon tax has been an issue for ag producers, that I'm aware of, ever since it was brought in — for sure.

D. Horne (Chair): I have to apologize to Gary, who we'll have up next, as I didn't write his name down in the last session and missed him. I guess you could have up to ten minutes for questions, if you'd like.

You talked about…. Your first point here that it should be dissolved — you know, gone. In the debated discussion what alternatives came to your table with this? We all acknowledge we have to do something. This was something that was put into place. Coming from the north coast…. Again, we had major issues with the inequities of it, as you outline here. The grain producers talked about carbon offsets and paying into a technology fund. I'm sure the debate at the table was very diverse. Maybe you could touch on that.

K. Goodings: Well, for sure there is a tremendous amount of support at our board table for protecting our environment and for reducing our carbon footprint. That, I think, is unanimous around the table. How we go about doing that is where the disparity comes in, because many just don't believe that the carbon tax is actually accomplishing what it was intended to do, which is to remove that carbon.

You could put on a tax, and people will end up having to pay that tax because they have no choice. In the case of our oil and gas workers, for instance, who travel long distances in the cold, they don't have the ability to plug their vehicles in, so they must leave them running. They end up leaving their vehicles running. They have no choice. It's either that or be stuck out in the bush somewhere where they can't get back to their residence.

Those kinds of issues…. While we really appreciate the fact that the carbon footprint needs to be lowered, we just don't see the tax as being the instrument to do that.

What is the instrument? I guess common sense. I think you need to go to the point where you are sharing rides. You are doing what you can do to not have that footprint. I just don't think the carbon tax is the way to go. I don't know what the answers are, though.

P. Pimm: Thanks, Karen, for coming and sharing your points. I've been asking everybody if they've made the submission. The way you wrote that letter tells me that you've made the submission to the Finance Minister, so that's great.

Your points are very well taken. We've heard from other submitters to this process that they don't think there should be any exemptions to any industries. What would you say to that?

K. Goodings: Well, I think there are some industries that, as I've said with agriculture, have done absolutely everything they can — maybe not for the right reasons. They may not have been thinking about lowering their carbon footprint, but they were thinking about the bottom line, because, of course, if they can cut their fuel costs, they've helped their bottom line.

You know, those kinds of things…. You can only go so far, unless we go back to horses. That could create carbon as well. We don't necessarily have the ability to make it any less.

It's the same with the oil and gas industry. How do you not move the equipment to the site? You have to do it.

P. Pimm: The oil and gas industry, for example. They put two and three people in vehicles every time they move somewhere. They don't use three vehicles to go out and go to their sites.

I use the example that my house to heat in the wintertime is $300. My apartment in Victoria is $6. So there's quite a change.

I do thank you for listening to the people. It's a difficult task that you have, to try to figure out exactly what you should be recommending.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your pres-
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entation. I don't believe we have any other questions.

R. Brandl: I was asked to present something on the carbon tax, which I have. I notice you getting a lot on the carbon tax. But I'm touching on a few other taxes and fees as well.

In my view, the tax is an unproductive tax that adds to the cost of doing business with, at best, very questionable benefits. Farming is a fuel-intensive industry. An average farm in this area is about 1,500 acres. It takes about 12 litres of fuel per acre to produce a crop. That adds approximately $1,400 to the cost of production. If you take into account the millions and millions of litres used by other industries in this area, that's a huge amount added to production costs.

That's not the only difference in the fuel costs. In July I purchased clear diesel at Bay Tree, Alberta, which is just across the border from Dawson Creek, for 98 cents per litre. In August I purchased clear diesel in Sexsmith, Alberta, just north of Grande Prairie, for 95 cents a litre. At the same time, marked fuel in B.C. was $1.14 and $1.15 a litre, respectively.

Clear diesel in Alberta has 12 cents per litre provincial tax. If we removed that provincial tax from the clear diesel price, there's a difference of approximately 30 cents a litre. That's up to nearly about $1.40 a gallon.

In other words, every time I fill my slip tank, it's costing me $100 more for marked fuel in B.C. than clear fuel in Alberta. If you compare that to farm price in Alberta, the tank costs me an extra $168. When I'm seeding and harvesting, I use a tankful every day.

By the way, clear diesel in Fort St. John at that time was $1.32 per litre at the pumps.

Over the years they've had half-hearted inquiries into the exorbitant price of fuel in this area. It always gets swept under the rug. The only difference there should be is a penny or two extra freight and whatever extra tax is applied.

The oil companies are benefiting from a very favourable royalty rate in B.C. They're certainly not generous with the consumers in this area. Customers do not have the power to demand answers. The government has the power but refuses to use it.

I've noticed in media reports that some people are in favour of the carbon tax, even increasing it. I've also noticed that most of these people are city mayors and other benefactors on the receiving end of this tax. Considering the majority of the revenue is generated outside their jurisdictions, they're benefiting from a tax outside their boundaries. I can understand why they're in favour of keeping or increasing the tax.

In B.C. we have the highest fuel tax west of Quebec — before we had the carbon tax.

I've got a letter here that I'd written to Kevin Falcon three months ago. It probably went in the file 13, but I'll read it to you: "It's not just the carbon tax we have to deal with. We have a number of other taxes which residents of other provinces do not have."

I'll list a few of them now and how much they cost me. Medical premiums cost me $1,400 a year and rising. Alberta's nothing. Saskatchewan's nothing. Ontario's nothing.

Government vehicle insurance costs me more than double what I would pay in Alberta and Saskatchewan. An extra $2,500 a year it costs me. According to an ICBC official, the Liberal government just took $1.2 billion from ICBC. Now, ICBC was put there to provide reasonable insurance at a reasonable cost. It wasn't put there for a cash cow for politicians to milk every time they spend too much money.

A 7 percent sales tax costs me about $1,500 a year extra. Alberta has none. Saskatchewan has 5 percent on new goods only. Fuel tax here is 21 cents a litre, Alberta 9 cents, Saskatchewan 12 cents. We also pay carbon tax on hydro and heat to heat our home. We're even charged GST or HST on the carbon tax. These extra taxes cost me about $5,000 a year. For all this, we do not receive any services that are not available in other provinces. Our property taxes are much higher than most communities further south, partly because the industrial property tax goes to Victoria and partly because things cost more up here.

Now, if I were to die, B.C. has a huge probate fee — $13,000 per million. Alberta has a flat fee of $400, regardless of the amount. That's what it costs to actually provide the service. So $1 million might sound like a lot, but when you consider that a home in this area can cost a half-million or more, it doesn't take much to make $1 million.

The Liberals' answer to every problem seems to be to add another tax. The carbon tax is only the straw that broke the camel's back. No doubt people who are in favour of the carbon tax probably live in Vancouver and Victoria where they enjoy subsidized public transit and a warmer climate where their heating and fuel bills are a fraction of ours.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. We'll begin our questions with Bruce.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much. Some of what you said was…. I think recently Martyn Brown, who was senior adviser to Premier Campbell and now out of government service, acknowledged basically what you said about the cumulative effect of all these taxes and fees.

I wanted to ask you a further question about…. You talk about oil companies benefiting from a very favour-
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able royalty rate and that government has the power to inquire into this area but refuses to use it. What would you like to see there?

R. Brandl: Over the years you've had many inquiries. They all come up with some gobbledegook about market conditions and all sorts of stuff like that. Well, I was talking to a manager of one of these oil companies here in town, or field salespeople. He said they operate here in Alberta. When that load of fuel leaves the refinery in Alberta, if it's going to B.C. it's billed out at a higher price than the one that's going to a place in Alberta. The difference in the fuel price is not just the taxes and the transportation.

Thanks for presenting today. You and I have had this discussion a couple of times in the past, and I appreciate it. That's why I asked you to come in and get this on the record in front of us today. I appreciate you coming and doing that. We do have some different issues, but this submission that you've just made.... Would you send that submission in to the Finance Minister, or have you already sent that in?

R. Brandl: That letter was sent in three months ago. I'm not sure if anything was ever done with it. These are facts and figures. These facts and figures can be verified. It looks like, with all the fees and taxes we have in B.C., you can't afford to live in B.C. You can't afford to die in B.C., either.

P. Pimm: Well, I'll follow up to see if the Finance Minister has got that as part of his submission to the carbon tax review.

G. Coons: Thank you, Roger, for your in-depth presentation. Thank you for your contribution to the economy here.

The Chair did mention…. I didn't get a question with one of the other presenters, the teachers. In their last statement they said: "We suggest that the government look at a fair tax regime that establishes corporate taxes at an appropriate level." We've had other presentations that said that the tax regime that we have right now isn't fair, where people who make a lot of money aren't paying a fair share of their taxes, and corporate taxes seem to have been going down over the years.

When we start looking at your concern with other taxes that we pay or downloading onto people like yourself, do you consider that we have a fair tax regime right now in British Columbia, or does that need changing?

R. Brandl: In my opinion, ever since Gordon Campbell took over, they've been taking taxes off the corporations and everything else and loading them on the consumer. That's what it looks like to me.

G. Coons: So you would agree that we need a fairer tax regime and process out there.

R. Brandl: Some of these taxes shouldn't even be there. If you wonder about what you're going to do without that revenue, I can give you some pointers on that too sometime.

M. Dalton: Thank you, Roger, for your presentation. I know that there are certainly groups that are here advocating for increased carbon taxes and raising the taxes, not just corporate taxes but across the board. It's good to hear some voices that are opposed to that. I just want to note that as far as income taxes….

Since the previous Premier has come in, more than ever there are people that are…. But also we have the lowest personal income taxes up to about $120,000. I mean, there are a lot of negative things. I'd like you to know that we'd all like to see this reduced, and we're working towards that, but there are some positives too.

R. Brandl: People don't mind paying some taxes if it's making some money, but all these other taxes you pay whether you make any money or not.

D. Horne (Chair): Now, apparently, Dave has one quick question here, and we'll just end there.

D. Hayer: You made a very good presentation, and many of the facts written are correct in here. Some of the politicians are saying that maybe we should increase the carbon tax and not decrease it and also maybe increase the carbon tax and utilize it for paying into putting more transit services on maybe the Lower Mainland. Maybe you can give me your opinion on that, what you think.

R. Brandl: My opinion is that a lot of this money is better left to the people who earned it in the first place.

D. Hayer: So we should not increase the carbon tax or maybe decrease it?
[ Page 2148 ]

We'll now call our next witness — the B.C. Bison Association, represented by Bruce Court.

Welcome to the committee. As you've probably heard a couple of times now, you have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

B. Court: I'll read our presentation on behalf of our president, Bill Bouffioux. He's asked me to come in his place.

The B.C. Bison Association is strongly opposed to the present carbon tax on fuel. How can a government say that it supports farming and cheap food for its citizens and impose a tax on fuel used to produce food? Believe me, with the present price of fuel, no one uses more than absolutely necessary. For example, the carbon tax on 500 gallons of fuel is $168. Ranchers, through their pasture management, sequester tonnes of carbon each year for the province and yet are penalized with this unfair tax.

The other issue is readily visible. The continued drought is posing a hardship on ranchers across the Peace, with many ranchers having to start feeding their winter supply of feed as early as September 1. I understand ranchers in parts of Ontario and Manitoba have already been assured of some assistance. Can we expect some assistance from B.C.?

If I may, I'd like to make one other presentation. I apologize for not having written it, but it is to do with the reassessment of agricultural land for tax purposes. It's an issue that affects several of our members in the Bison Association, and it's an issue that affects me personally.

I'm fairly new in the bison industry. When I was fencing my property, in order to put bison onto my land, I left one-quarter unfenced. As it had approximately three-quarters of a mile of riparian area around it — a wetland on one side, a creek on the other side — it's difficult to fence. It offered little for my bison, but it was prime wildlife habitat, and I thought I was doing a good thing by putting it aside.

I was quickly informed by taxation that because I did not have this land fenced, I wasn't using it agriculturally. Therefore, it would have to be reassessed as residential land. This land is two miles from the closest road. It's two miles from the closest fence. And ever since then I have been taxed as if it were a residential piece of property that I was speculating on, holding.

This is a totally unfair tax. It goes against everything that the province claims in terms of sustainable agriculture. It goes against the environment, as anybody that tries to do something that's environmentally friendly, to do something for the wildlife, is penalized for what they've done.

Particularly, this tax is totally unfair — even immoral, in my opinion — on retired farmers. As they become too old to farm their land, they inevitably lease it to someone. With the drought conditions we've experienced, the amount of hay you get as a lessee is not enough to claim farm tax status, which means that in many cases people are having their home quarters reassessed as residential. With barns, the shop, the house, it becomes extremely expensive. It forces old farmers, who have had nothing in their whole life, off their land and into an old folks home. That's wrong.

B. Ralston: Just on the issue of assessment, this may be something you've done already. There is an appeal mechanism to the assessment authority. Did you go there, and what was the result?

B. Court: I went to the one in town because it was now residential. They told me I shouldn't be there, because I have 11 quarters of land and the other ten are all used for farm. I was obviously a bona fide farmer, and therefore, their panel didn't…. It wasn't to do with agriculture, it was residential, and I was in agriculture. So they said: "Take it back to Prince George, and they'll deal with it there. It's obviously a mistake."

I had spoken to Pat Pimm at our annual meeting, and he had suggested…. He felt that the idea of the tax was that there are a lot of people in the Peace River that buy farmland to sit on it because of oil and gas revenue and other such things, and the idea is to stop people from speculating on agricultural land. But people that were actually in agriculture were not supposed to be penalized by this. Because you had 10 percent of your land that wasn't being used, you shouldn't be taxed.

Anyhow, I went to Prince George. I went above the lady that had been talking to me and went to the head person. I believe his name is Benson. Anyhow, he's the head person in charge of taxation of agricultural land in Prince George, and he shut me down right away. He said his mandate was clearly that it was a privilege to have agricultural taxation. If you weren't using it, you didn't deserve it.

Three times in my conversation with him he wanted to know the name of the MLA that had suggested to me that this wasn't his mandate so that he could "set him straight." And that's a quote, which left me going: "Wow. You know, we have elected representatives that are supposed to represent our interests, and he's going to be set straight by a middle manager from Prince George." So that ended my….
[ Page 2149 ]

P. Pimm: I haven't received that phone call, actually. I'll be happy to get that number so I can call him, just in case he forgot to call me and let me know.

B. Court: To be honest, I had just met you, and I'm not a name-dropper. At that point in the conversation my mind went blank, and I couldn't tell him what the name of the MLA was, so that's why he didn't call you.

P. Pimm: I'll be very happy…. I want you to come to my office, and we'll get that situation looked at, number one.

But you bring up the assessment thing. That is something that's a huge issue for us. The point that I'd tried to make at that one point in time is that because of our ALR, we're not allowed…. Because of the ALC, they won't allow any subdivisions, so people do go buy quarter sections of land, and they try to get farm status, basically.

I don't agree with that, number one. I'll go on the record as saying I don't agree with that. But I don't agree that we shouldn't have more five-acre parcels either. I think that's something that we should be looking at.

The ALC up here doesn't agree with allowing five-acre or two-acre parcels. In fact, they even go so far as to chase the kids from the farm into town, because they won't even give them a little piece off the farm.

We're trying to address that. In fact, this week, I think, we're having a meeting with the ALC and the regional district — maybe it's next week — to address some of that stuff.

The assessment piece is one that we've been working on through the government. It's something that has to be dealt with, quite frankly. I thought split assessments were actually dealt with.

My question is back to the carbon tax issue: did you actually present to the Finance Minister your position on carbon tax?

B. Court: I believe Bill has sent it in, but I can confirm that with him when he returns next week.

D. Horne (Chair): I don't see any further questions. Thank you so much for your presentation.

We'll move to our next presenter. Our next presenter is the North Peace Justice Society, represented by Michelle.

M. LaBoucane: Hello, my name is Michelle LaBoucane, and I represent the North Peace Justice Society. I want to thank you for allowing me to present to you today.

The North Peace Justice Society manages the restorative justice program in Fort St. John and the outlying areas. We have one paid employee and 22 volunteer facilitators and board members.

The restorative justice program is a diversion program that can be used instead of, or with, the traditional court system. As we all know, the traditional court system is costly and time-consuming. Victims leave feeling excluded from the process, and offenders often don't have to face the victims.

Our focus is on offender accountability and an equal voice for the victims. We use the community justice forum model, where we bring together victims, offenders and their supporters to discuss the harm that has been done and how everyone has been affected.

Once everyone has had the opportunity to discuss the offence and the effects, the discussion turns to how to repair the harm. It sometimes takes the form of letters of apology to the victims, restitution or community service hours. By using this program, there are lower recidivism rates, balance is restored for the victims, and there is community reintegration for the offender.

It's estimated we save the provincial justice system over $400,000 per year in Fort St. John alone. Compare the savings to the cost of our program, including wages and other operational expenses, at above $80,000.

We average about five hours on an individual file. If that same file goes through the court system, it costs the province about $7,405 in wages. This does not include things like communication costs, hydro, etc. It would cost about $1,437.50 for the restorative justice program, including operational costs.

This program is a crime prevention program that helps the community. We've had many businesses, large and small, use our program. In the past year we have returned over $8,500 in restitution for local businesses and have had over 300 hours of community service completed at various not-for-profit organizations. We have had 74 referrals from the RCMP from September 1, 2011, until September 1, 2012.

The B.C. justice reform initiative released their final report to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, the Hon. Shirley Bond, called A Criminal Justice System for the 21st Century. In the executive summary portion of the report, section 2.10.4, the recommendation was to include a performance goal for the increased use of the
[ Page 2150 ]
restorative justice program and that expanded funding should be made available.

Over the past year there were nine regional round tables discussing the B.C. policing plan, and on page 15 of the summary, section 5.3.1, for the justice system reform, one of the suggestions made by the round-table participants was that the restorative justice program should be an integral part of the justice system. Every round table — all nine — mentioned that restorative justice was an asset to their communities.

I recently had a conversation with somebody who felt that the general public wasn't ready for restorative justice. I beg to differ. People would like harsher sentences for murderers and pedophiles, yes. But the feeling I get is that the general public would like meaningful reparation and quick, decisive action. Restorative justice can do that if it's given the resources.

B. Ralston: The mayor was here earlier this morning and said that initially the restorative justice program here started out with funding, and I think it was ended. She mentioned, I think, the figure of $25,000 was being requested, and there was no approval there. So can you comment on that?

Secondly, you do say in the brochure here, the one from the ministry, that in rare cases restorative justice programs may be used to address…. They mention domestic violence. Has that been a feature of what a restorative justice program, when it was funded, did here as well?

M. LaBoucane: I cannot say what files were done in the past. I do not have access to that information.

As it stands right now, the yellow pamphlet that you're reading from is the provincial information that is sent out by the ministry. At this point we do not take domestic violence files unless they're court-mandated, and we have not had a file court-mandated.

As for the $25,000, we apply to the city every year for a grant. We do know that this is hit or miss, and we do know it's possible that we may not get that funding in the future. The problem with restorative justice — and it's not just in Fort St. John; it's all across Canada — is that it's looked at as a community program.

We save the federal government, we save the provincial government and we save the municipal governments money. But we struggle for funding.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation. My question is: is every criminal eligible for the restorative justice system? Or is it only certain people who are eligible for this program?

M. LaBoucane: In Fort St. John we target first-time offenders, and they must show remorse. Generally, our referrals come to us from the RCMP, and an officer can tell if somebody has true remorse or not. It generally keeps us fairly busy.

M. LaBoucane: We have had everything from theft under $5,000, which includes everything from shoplifting to theft of vehicles, joyriding and mischief under and over $5,000. We've recently taken on an arson file.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. Mayor Ackerman spoke in favour of the program and the benefits that it brought the community. I just wanted to clarify. My understanding is she indicated that it was the provincial funding that was a possible shortfall for the program, but that there was support from the municipality. Is that correct?

M. LaBoucane: Originally, when this program was started, there was a $25,000 input by the province, and that was cut back in 2002. The city of Fort St. John has maintained the $25,000 every year since the program was initiated in 1994.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): And what funds do you get from the provincial government?

M. LaBoucane: It was the first time. It was a very public thing. We actually appealed our gaming grant denial, so it was a very, very wonderful event. Thank you for that.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): So you fundraise, then. If you get $25,000 from the city, then the majority would be community-based fundraising.

M. LaBoucane: Yes. Part of the problem is that crime prevention is not a…. I hate using this term, but it's the only way to explain it. We're not a fuzzy, warm type of program. When you're out and you're doing community fundraising and you're applying to different oil compan-
[ Page 2151 ]
ies and stuff…. They support our community amazingly well, but we always end up kind of off to the side. Crime prevention is kind of taboo. People take crime personally, so it becomes very, very difficult.

M. Dalton: I know in our community in Maple Ridge there were challenges year to year with the restorative justice program as far as funding. About two, three years ago we've been able to get gaming funds on a regular basis, so I'm glad you got it last year. Hopefully this will be maintained year to year. It's been very successful in our community, and that sounds like the same with you.

What portion would you say is youth diversion within the people that you deal with?

M. LaBoucane: Last year we had a 50-50 split with adults and youth. This year we have about 80 percent youth using our program, which is awesome. If we work with these kids early, again, there go our recidivism rates. We keep these kids from doing inappropriate things out in the community. It's been very, very successful with our youth.

P. Pimm: Well, Michelle, thank you for the work that you guys do. It is a great organization.

I know that around the province not every community has restorative justice, and each one does things a little bit differently. The repeat offenders, the folks that you guys deal with — when you compare them to repeat offenders that go into the other system, it just isn't comparable at all.

Hopefully, we can maintain your funding again, and hopefully, we will get some action from the Ministry of Justice as to the new review that's gone out. I think that should be very positive.

I guess the questions I've got for you are: how many cases — I missed what you said there — and how much do you save the province each year?

M. LaBoucane: We had 74 files come through our office this year, which is up 12 files from last year. We save the province over $400,000.

The other thing is…. When we spoke with Geoffrey Cowper on the restorative justice programs, the conversation was to try to come up with funding for the restorative justice in a unique way so that it's not pulling out of the federal budget, it's not pulling out of the provincial budget, and it's not pulling out of the municipal budget.

My suggestion is that maybe we should take a look at the civil forfeiture fund and use that to do preventative crime programs. Not just the restorative justice — there are other ones in the province that could be funded as well. Use the money that is used from the proceeds of crime and put it back into the prevention.

D. Horne (Chair): We've reached the end of our allotted time, so we'll call our next presenter. Thank you so much for your presentation today.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much. We'll pass those around. As you've heard several times, I believe, you have ten minutes to present, five minutes for questions, and your time begins now.

A. Hadland: Sure. Karen Goodings is the existing chair of our regional board, and I'm director for area C. We do have that board agreement that's already been presented.

I don't think we need the carbon tax. It's unfair to the north. We are definitely at a competitive disadvantage with our Alberta neighbours, and that is everybody. That's the people who live in town, the guys with the small contracting firms and the farmers. You have heard from the farmers.

Right now, if I've got it figured out right, that tax is funded 99 percent by the taxpayer. The beneficiaries, at least if I'm reading my information right, are outfits like Lafarge Cement, which are a major contributor to pollution in the Lower Mainland. I think there are three or four of those cement outfits. Canfor was a beneficiary, EnCana, Interfor. I don't know who else.

To me, that's a wrong diversion of these funds, if you're going to have that tax.

The other thing I hear is that we have no public transportation system here. I just drove up from the Lower Mainland yesterday, and there was probably a $250 fuel bill just to keep my vehicle on the road to get here. Of that, I reckon there probably was over 20 bucks of tax. I think it's ineffective.

We are disadvantaged — and I'm going to repeat it — by Alberta. One of my contractor friends figures we actually have a 17 percent disadvantage in terms of competing with our Alberta neighbours, and this tax is part of that.

Home heating. Now, I've put out a thing here. It's (b). I don't know if you see this, (b), the very first page of that. It's a two-page thing. Some of you may have a double-backed one.

Anyhow, the top one's my farm fuel bill. I buy approximately $40,000 worth of fuel a year. This is just one delivery. It was about $7,300 for that one load, and the carbon tax was $534.

You heard the farmers here. We are doing our best already. We do zero-till. We do a lot of effective methods for minimizing carbon use. I won't get into detail here. We
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are doing our share, and yet we're paying…. You know, if you multiply that, I've got a significant carbon tax bill.

The next page is my home heating. I don't know if anybody else has presented this. This is for two months — my total bill for heating my house. This is a northern issue. You know, we're talking about a carbon tax. That's a southern policy. It doesn't fit with what we need in the north. Anyhow, my heating bill for this particular time, which was in the coldest part of the winter, was $415, I think. The carbon tax was 56 bucks.

I will draw your attention to the fact that the HST is charged on the carbon tax, and that was mentioned to you earlier by Roger. And you can't get anybody to change that. We have tried. It's just a damn waste of time.

Anyhow, just looking at that, the cumulative effect is on everything. Everything we transport here is multiplied, so that carbon tax just trips through this economy. It is expensive to live in the north.

I was a little distressed when I heard the Vancouver mayor doing the rah-rah for the carbon tax. I just was not impressed. The rural areas, the northern areas, are net contributors to that whole infrastructure, and here he wants to suck more out of us.

I think that the taxes are just getting overwhelming. My constituents and my friends just think this is crazy. There's really no science. It's hypocritical. If you sell coal to China, are you contributing? I just can't think of anything that's good about this thing.

There are alternatives. I presented (a) here. It's got a big "a" on the front. It's in green. Some of it's black.

Anyhow, I copied a copy. It's a third-quarter report on our revised financial forecast. There are yellow lines on there. If you look there, you'll see the carbon tax is highlighted. It's right on the right-hand side of the page. It's for 2010-2011. I realize this is not dead current, but it's symptomatic of the problem. That carbon tax is $741 million. I've got to make sure the b's and the m's don't get mixed up here.

Just underneath that is the tobacco tax — 734. It goes on. The fuel tax is 940, because we pay that one also. Really, all of those taxes are coming from the individuals. If you go to the top, the personal income tax, which is the highest…. I think it has actually been replaced by the harmonized sales tax. I think that thing has actually bypassed, surpassing the personal income tax.

The interesting one there, tucked in between, is a corporate income tax. I just don't think that we need to cater to the corporate body as much as we're doing. I think that they've got to pay their fair share. Right now it's on the backs of the individual or the small business. It's just very clear to me.

Anyhow, if you do the comparison, you come down to natural resources, which is where our revenues should be coming from. That's less than half of the carbon tax. Now, it's my view that we're not getting fair value for our resources.

On the agenda I laid out there — for everyone, that's (a) — I talk about the opportunity that we could run this province without being on the backs of the individuals. We could really fund this province with our resources.

I won't belabour it any further. I've probably run out of time here. You don't have much time here.

D. Horne (Chair): No, you actually have plenty of time, if you'd like to continue. But we could have lots of questions, if you'd like.

What I've got here…. At least, I've roughly figured out…. I just had time to do this, this morning. This is just right hot off the press, off my press. It's not all dead accurate, but it's representative.

The revenue from resources, I reckon, is about 11 percent — from all our provincial resources. That's the wood, the minerals and the natural gas. I think that's got to be really looked at. You're the committee that's looking at revenue options.

Right now I really believe that natural gas is that option. We have a tremendous resource, given it's supposed to be 150 years. Every time I turn around, there's a royalty holiday or credits given to somebody.

Just for your information, there is private royalty paid in this. The mineral resources are owned by the individuals in this community. The area is called the…. It used to be the St. John Indian Reserve 172. It's now called the Montney.

Those people have the rights to the resources underneath there. They get paid — and it varies — between 12 and 16 percent royalty. They don't give any royalty credits. They run it like a business. I think that's how we need to run this province — like a business.

The last announcement, where there were some concessions made to the guys that are fooling with that LNG idea…. I think it's deplorable. Those are the last people, entities, that need a royalty holiday.

I'll just throw out one last thing here. The natural gas is a golden opportunity for our whole community.

I've got another thing I'll hand out, if I can try and bore you with paper. I've got a commentary from a guy that was from Norway and lived here in Canada. He thinks we're crazy the way we're trying to give away our mineral resources. It's very clear.

I don't know if anybody knows about Norway. Norway's got 4½ million people, basically the same as B.C. They've got coastal shoreline just like we do. It's about one-third the size. Anybody know how big their war chest is — how much they've reserved from this resource, their petroleum resource? It's $600 billion.

I think we should be ashamed of ourselves. Anyhow, it's covered off in here. There are some comments from
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some analysts who say that, really, we've missed the boat. But we still could get on the boat if we wanted to. There's still an opportunity.

The last thing on this, (c). I just make a note. There's a five-year strategy for natural gas. A resolution was passed at UBCM. We've got to look at all the uses so that we can really make effective, real jobs within the province. And we need to look at the secondary and tertiary options. We're not doing that.

LNG. I think that's just a short shot in the dark. If anybody looks at the international marketplace, China's got more shale gas than we do. And it goes on. There's Africa.

I think that we've got to relook at those policies. Royalty holidays and royalty credits are poor business. Have them pay the fair market value. We can build the roads.

Anyhow, that's it. Just one last thing on that financial statement. B.C. Hydro in 2010-2011 actually was contributing $591 million to our budget. I don't know. As far as I can figure out, our utility is bankrupt. The known debt is around $20 billion, including that deferred $6.5 billion. There's hidden debt. We don't know what that is. So how can they have a profit that they put into provincial things?

Mr. Chairman, that's my rant, my comments. I'll hand this thing out on the strategies. If you have time, it's got the thing about Norway in here. It's worth a look, worth a consideration.

D. Horne (Chair): Thanks, Arthur. The Clerk will come and grab it for you and hand it to the members.

I will, on the one point that you made on the carbon tax and the HST on the carbon tax, note that on the bill the provincial portion of the HST is actually refunded. It's the federal portion that's not. It's the line below the HST. It's the credit of….

A. Hadland: My apologies. I didn't think I had enough time to discuss all that, but you're right.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much. I can see why you're a well-known figure in these parts.

Looking at the carbon tax. When the B.C. Liberals introduced the carbon tax…. In the legislation there is a requirement to report the offsetting. It was designed as what they called revenue-neutral. There were offsetting income tax reductions to both corporate income tax and personal income tax.

In the budget each year is filed a report. Actually, I think last year the tax raised less than the offsetting income tax reductions.

If we follow your advice and abolish the carbon tax, then, in order to even come out even on it…. You're talking about running it in a businesslike way. You would be in favour of increasing corporate income tax and personal income tax to recapture the revenue that the carbon tax was taking. Is that correct?

A. Hadland: You know, these are not easy questions to answer, and I can't pretend to know the answers to that. I think we've got to focus more on the revenues we receive from our resources. We had a real golden opportunity when we had such a viable timber resource, and we didn't save any money. Every party didn't set aside any money. There was a real opportunity there.

Now we have another opportunity coming by, and I think it's just like the train going down the track. We'll miss it unless we really get proactive on how to capture the most. I really think that that Norway thing is a model, and I think we need to look at that one.

M. Dalton: Just a comment on Norway. What they do is that all of the revenues, the royalties that come in…. They do not spend that into their general budget. The only thing that they use is actual interest from those royalties. They're saving. Smart move.

A. Hadland: Not only that, but I think they have a participation package that goes with that too, if I understand it right. They actually have ownership of part of that gas. They retain ownership through the company structure. I'm pretty sure.

D. Horne (Chair): I don't see any further questions, so I thank you for your presentation, and we'll move to our next presenter.

Our next presenter will be the mayor of Taylor, His Worship Fred Jarvis, who I note has been in our audience since the beginning. He's one of, probably, the longest-term members of our audience.

I thank you for your interest in our committee, and thank you for presenting today. As you've heard several times now, you have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

F. Jarvis: I thank you for that, and I thank you for your comments. I also want to thank you for coming around. It has been known in the past that we've really got to fight to get our way, and our MLAs have done a lot to do that. Now, with the amount that we're supporting the province in this part, I think we're starting to get a little bit more noticed. But sometimes we kind of wonder if we aren't
[ Page 2154 ]
shrinking back. So we're not going to let that happen.

I didn't initially make a presentation. I wanted to be here and see what all happened. In listening and in seeing there were still some empty spots, I thought I should just quickly make a few comments on behalf of our citizens within Taylor.

Taylor is a little different than quite a few communities. For so many years the people elected the local government to represent and run the community, yet our community was primarily built on industry. It's still got that industry. There are a lot more residents now, so it's changing a bit. But it's very heavy with the industry. They're very, very important citizens to our community, to what we've got and what the community is.

The industry does not have a problem with supporting the residents in that way. In fact, it helps them to have a better profile with their plants and so on. They always get argued: "Well, we don't want to live around them." They can prove that it's very good to live around them and that you can have a good life too.

There have been a lot of issues presented today, and that's why I was here — to hear them coming up and to hear where people were coming from. I wanted to support….

There are a lot of very good issues that are very pertinent to all of the communities. But on Site C, Taylor is…. The river runs right through Taylor, very close to where the dam would be — not that far upriver. The biggest thing is what it'll do to the air for humidity and for fog. It has always had fog, but there are indications that the warmer water will make more fog. It will warm the air as well.

Our potable water is very susceptible to what happens in the river. The temperature makes a substantial difference. The turbidity…. There are a lot of things with the dam that we are very concerned about. We are dealing with that, but it's something that we need to look at.

The other aspect is that it's a very, very important source for the industry in the cooling in their plants and so on. Spectra Energy has the pumphouse, and that water is used in the pulp mill, in the NGL plants. There is a substantial amount of industry that uses that same stream of water.

It is used in one plant and moves on to the next plant before it goes back to the first plant and then is prepared to be released back into the river again. So it's not just everybody pumping their own water out. They use the same water, substantially. The industries have actually come together and done that as a group. You know, there's forestry and oil and gas. Often that doesn't happen between them, but they've worked very well.

The changes in temperature are the biggest thing for them and, also, if there's turbidity and so on. It really heats their pumps and so on up there, their cooling system. And if the water is warmer when it gets there, then they've got a lot harder time to keep the temperatures down in the plants. That's what the water is all used for.

So for Site C, those are the sorts of effects that we need to deal with. I'm not sure how it affects the committee, but I just want to enlighten you about the community and the importance of the industry.

The other aspect is Highway 97, the Alaska Highway. It comes right down through the valley, right through the middle of our community. As was mentioned earlier about the twinning of the highway, a lot of people just want to make sure that they've got a road that's going to still be coming down that hill. It's very scary to a lot of people, especially if they haven't been over it. It's a huge amount of traffic that's been put out onto that highway, partly, I believe, because the railway does not service us very well.

They did not give the service to the industries to move their products. Everything ends up going on trucks, and once they got going on trucks, it was so much more reliable. They could schedule things, and they knew when it was going to run. With the railway, they never know when it's going to run, and so therefore the railway runs with a lot less.

We're really fearful that we're going to end up with the next thing to nothing for a railway because it keeps not giving the service to keep the clients using it in the industry. Instead, it's been put onto the highways and the roads, which are very expensive to build and very expensive to keep up and to keep it for the traffic traveller.

In closing, I'd just say that it's a very important job that you're doing. There are a lot of decisions to be made. I think that this travelling around the province could be looked at as a lot of costs, but I think it's a very good cost, to do this. You should be able to give a lot better service by doing it — to have the firsthand knowledge. We're really pleased to have committees and government people coming to this part of the area and recognizing what really is here.

A lot of the difficulties with our seniors, our justice system…. We're very, very concerned about those sorts of things in the community of Taylor. Like they say, the fastest-growing population is the seniors because people don't go away now. They stay here and retire. That was never the….

I came here in the '70s, and it was all young people. Anybody, when they quit working, doing their thing — they were gone somewhere else. If it wasn't southern B.C., it was…. Lots went to Saskatchewan but lots to the States and so on, to the Island. Now that a lot of those people are coming back that were gone and ones retiring nowadays aren't leaving, we really are pushed hard for keeping our seniors and keeping our medical up.

It's tremendous having this new hospital, but I really agree with the things that SONSS and Mayor Ackerman mentioned about the seniors and the hospital and the
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seniors centre and so on. From the community of Taylor, those are the sorts of things that we really hope you take serious looks at.

D. Horne (Chair): Thanks so much, Fred. That was great. We'll start questions with Dave.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much, Mayor Jarvis. I understand you have about 1,380 people in your town there. I come from Surrey, where we grow by about a thousand people every month. We have different types of challenges. Your MLA, Pat Pimm — MLA for the city — is always telling us in caucus how his Peace River community is very important. They provide a lot of revenues, a lot of jobs in this area, and people can find a lot of work here.

My question to you is: living here for a long time, do you still find there are more jobs available than people you can find here? How is the economy, from your perspective, now and in the future, over the long term? You have very knowledgable information, especially over the many, many decades here.

F. Jarvis: There are a couple of things there on that one. There's a huge difficulty with talented labour, talented workers, but there's a great difficulty with workers, period. It's an open door. As fast as they come in, they go out. There just never is enough to keep things going with continuity. It's a totally different kind of employment that is a very, very hard employment on the family, on social life, and that's why we've got to have our communities built up. There is a great shortage of employees.

The other aspect is that the type of economy we've got here does shake out the population. There's a huge number of people that really fall through the cracks in the bottom and don't have very good living conditions, who just can't qualify for or obtain the higher-paying jobs.

The lower-paying jobs in the economy we've got just don't give you a living. There are a lot of people living in very poor conditions because of that. I think they don't get noticed very much, because all that gets noticed is the huge, high population of high-paying jobs and so on. The people that fall out the bottom get totally lost in the chaff.

B. Ralston: Thanks very much, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you coming here and making a presentation on behalf of your community. The question I had…. We heard from Mayor Ackerman. She's a colleague of yours in the region, obviously. They've got a plan to consult. They've given us a copy of the leaflet.

I know the scale…. They've got a little bit more money in the treasury in Fort St. John. But are you involved in working with Fort St. John on that broader discussion about the impact of the Site C dam? I appreciate that it may not be quite in the same way, but what do you have to say about that process?

F. Jarvis: As a community, we are involved in the same way as they are, just on a little different scale but the same type of scenario. Maybe not quite as much, because they've got a lot more people to respond to them. We can do that a little differently.

But then on the regional level we're all working together in this area. In this area the communities and the local governments, when it comes time to join together and move forward, can take the task on, and we'll come out ahead. We'll work together.

We do have lots of squabbles, but we try to keep them at home here. We don't take them to Victoria. We take our forces of the group. As has been talked about, the Fair Share.... That's exactly what got that — the fact that the whole area got together and stayed together. We built a force to be reckoned with. That's how it happened.

We do work together well, and we are all doing very similar things, just in a little different way because of our differences in the communities.

D. Horne (Chair): Your Worship, thanks so much for your presentation today. Unfortunately, we've reached the end of our allotted time, so I'll have to call my next presenter. Good to see you again.

Our next presenter is the B.C. Library Trustees Association, represented by Lori Phillips.

Lori, you'll have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions, and your time begins now.

L. Phillips: Thank you very much for the opportunity to address the committee today. Again, I'm Lori Phillips. I've been on the board of the Fort St. John Public Library for the last six years, and I'm the current vice-chair. I'm also a director on the B.C. Library Trustees Association representing over 700 board members throughout the province.

We're here today to express our concern about the long-term financial health of public libraries in this province. In particular, we are concerned about the Ministry of Education's decision to fold the provincial library budget line item of $14 million into the overall Education budget.

A separate line item for the public library funding is important for many reasons. It reinforces the fact that the provincial government makes an important financial contribution to public libraries throughout B.C. The mandate of public libraries is to serve all members of the public, all ages and all walks of life. This service is not restricted to the Ministry of Education or the K-to-12 education sector. Elimination of the library budget line item is at odds with the government's stated goals of accountability and transparency.
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Lastly, trustees are responsible for setting the library budgets, and the removal of the line item has created some uncertainty around future provincial library support and negatively affecting long-term planning and investment.

Public libraries are about more than just books. We provide equal access to information and information services for all British Columbians — a community-centred agenda, including the families-first focus, which is as important and crucial today as it was when B.C.'s first public library was established in New Westminster in 1865.

British Columbia has maintained one of the best library systems in Canada due to the hard work and diligence of a partnership which includes the provincial government, the municipalities and regional districts, the staff and the volunteer trustees of the libraries. We ask that you keep this partnership strong while demonstrating the government's ongoing commitment to literacy by reinstating the budget line item that clearly identifies the provincial government's commitment to financially supporting libraries throughout the province.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We'll begin our questions with our Deputy Chair, Mable.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Hi, Lori. Thanks for your presentation. When was the line item folded in, the specific line item?

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): So the last budget. Have you had any discussions with either the minister or…? And what's the response been?

L. Phillips: We've had discussions with the libraries and literacy branch specifically, and then BCLT representatives met with Minister McRae at the UBCM recently. Minister McRae indicated that he would be willing to take a look at the budget. But again, he's new to the portfolio, so it's hard for him to commit to anything.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): And the libraries…? Sorry, what was the section that you discussed the issue with in the ministry?

L. Phillips: Oh, libraries and literacy branch. It's a small department within the Ministry of Education.

L. Phillips: Jacqueline van Dyk is the director of that. She hears our concerns. We have a good communication with that branch and also with trying to develop a relationship with the new minister. We're just trying to keep the lines of communication open.

When the line item was subsumed, the reasoning was it demonstrated that the Ministry of Education considered the libraries a key part of the province's government. I'm sorry. I can't recall. I should have brought it with me. My apologies. It was a public document. That's for sure.

D. Horne (Chair): If you could get that later, probably it would be helpful to the committee to pass that along. That would be great.

I was a teacher-librarian. I know in the past we received so much for students in high school — I think it was about $20 — specifically for books, and so much for elementary school kids also. That was a little less. I want to know if that has been removed.

With regard to the amounts given designated towards teacher-librarians, it's been quite some time, my understanding is, that that was just given to school districts — I know you're not with the school district in and of itself — and then the school districts mandated where the funding went and had the decision.

Can you speak, first of all, to the books and to resources — not just books but the library resources in schools? Then if you can clarify my comments with regards to the allocation of funding for librarians.

L. Phillips: I really don't know how that works within the school districts because there isn't a library trustee function for the school districts. I honestly don't know how that's worked.

In terms of the public libraries, the public libraries are accountable to the provincial government for the funding that they receive. We report out on that annually. The majority of the provincial funding provided is designated for programming — so not for operational use.

G. Coons: Thank you, Lori. Coming from Prince Rupert, there are lots of issues up there with our library and funding. But this is interesting. I didn't know about this line item. Even though it may seem, "Oh, you aren't losing the funding; you know, it's still there," things sort of disappear before your very eyes.

When you start looking at this, what are some of your fears and concerns as you monitor it? Obviously, there
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has got to be a close monitoring and seeing what's going on. We've had many presentations from teachers associations and school boards about the loss of school librarians. So I'm trying to visualize this also — whether or not there's going to be a real switch to something through the Ministry of Education that's going to really impact public libraries. What are your key concerns?

L. Phillips: I think that one of the primary concerns with the line item disappearing…. When the financial difficulties began…. In 2008 we were funded at a certain level, and by 2011-2012 there's been a 22 percent decrease in funding to public libraries. That has been really obvious because the line item is there for everyone to read. Now that it's been subsumed into the main education library, it's harder to track — for us as well — how that money is going.

We can track that, I guess, on an individual library basis because there's a funding formula per…. The provincial library has a funding formula for providing funding to public libraries. Libraries and literacy directs that funding anyway, so I'm sure there is some tracking internally. But on a provincewide basis it's certainly a lot harder to track when it's not an individual line item.

J. Slater: Thanks, Lori. I was a trustee for seven years, and in the Okanagan regional district we kind of looked at sharing some of our facilities. In other words, the elementary school is two blocks from the library. Why would we have two libraries and double the staff, etc.? Have you guys looked at this provincially and seen how it would work in certain communities?

L. Phillips: You know, Pouce Coupe is a good example of that. Pouce Coupe got a new library in the last three years, and they built the new library as part of the elementary school. So it's a shared space, and it's been an interesting process. I don't know if you guys care, but it's kind of a different mandate in a school library than it is versus a public library, so it's been an interesting relationship to see how that goes. I know that Okanagan has had quite a bit of success with that.

Is it something that we've looked at provincially? It's certainly something we're aware of. The neighbourhood learning centres are an option, and there's been one built in Clearview here, I think. It's just opened, I think, in the last month or so. It's certainly something we're welcoming, but infrastructure money is tight, I guess, and it's hard to come by.

The Fort St. John library is an example. We've had a needs assessment done, and we're short by about 10,000 square feet to serve our client base. But the money is really not there to move. So I think that's something that the libraries as a whole would be willing to look at, but it hasn't really fully developed yet.

D. Horne (Chair): I want to thank you for your presentation and for being with us today.

That brings us to the end of our agenda here in Fort St. John. I don't see anyone in the audience who is looking to speak at the open mike. With that, I'll look for a motion to adjourn so we can move the committee to Quesnel.

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1) Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce	Brent Hodson
2) City of Fort St. John	Mayor Lori Ackerman
3) Save Our Northern Seniors	Jean Leahy
	Margaret Little
4) James Little
5) BC Grain Producers Association	Janet Banman
	Irmgard Critcher
6) Peace River South Teachers' Association	Lorraine Mackay
7) Peace River Regional District	Karen Goodings
8) Roger Brandl
9) BC Bison Association	Bruce Court
10) North Peace Justice Society	Michelle LaBoucane
11) Arthur Hadland
12) District of Taylor	Mayor Fred Jarvis
13) British Columbia Library Trustees Association	Lori Phillips

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:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Jacqueline Quesnel (Administrative Coordinator)

Witnesses:	Lori Ackerman (Mayor, City of Fort St. John)
	Janet Banman (B.C. Grain Producers Association)
	Roger Brandl
	Bruce Court (Vice-President, B.C. Bison Association )
	Irmgard Critcher (B.C. Grain Producers Association)
	Karen Goodings (Chair, Peace River Regional District)
	Arthur Hadland
	Brent Hodson (President, Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce)
	Fred Jarvis (Mayor, District of Taylor)
	Michelle LaBoucane (North Peace Justice Society)
	Jean Leahy (Save Our Northern Seniors Society)
	James Little
	Margaret Little (Save Our Northern Seniors Society)
	Lorraine Mackay (President, Peace River South Teachers Association)
	Lori Phillips (British Columbia Library Trustees Association )

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