Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 83 — Monday, October 15, 2012 (HTML)

Community Room, Riverlodge Recreation Centre
654 Columbia Avenue West, Kitimat, 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	2246
D. Henning
C. Sousa
E. Ross
M. Warcup
R. Goffinet
M. Jensen
D. Penner
C. Rumley
E. Archer

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

This is an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly, whose mandate includes conducting annual public consultations for an upcoming provincial budget. I'd like to welcome everyone in the audience and thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process.

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

Once the paper is released, the committee holds public consultations and invites input from British Columbians. Following the consultation period this committee reports back to the Legislative Assembly. This report must be presented no later than November 15.

There are several ways for British Columbians to participate. This year the committee has scheduled 18 public hearings in communities throughout British Columbia. We've already visited Surrey, Castlegar, Cranbrook, Kelowna, Vernon, Vancouver, Coquitlam, Abbotsford, Fort St. John, Quesnel, Kamloops — and Prince Rupert this morning.

We've also had video conference hearings from Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Salmon Arm. After today's meeting we're scheduled to travel to Smithers, Prince George, Courtenay, Parksville and Victoria, where we will end on Thursday.

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

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

I'd like to start the meeting today by having the members of the committee identify themselves. We'll start our introductions with John Slater.

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

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

D. Hayer: Good evening. My name is Dave Hayer. I live in Surrey-Tynehead. That's where the new Port Mann Bridge is, the widest bridge in the world. I was just talking here to Paul Chhina, who has lived here for 40 years. He said this is one of the best places to live, in Kitimat.

M. Dalton: Hi, I'm Marc Dalton. I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. It's my first time to Kitimat, and it's great to be here.

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Hello. I'm Mable Elmore, from Vancouver-Kensington. I'm the Deputy Chair of the committee.

G. Coons: Good day. I'm Gary Coons. I'm the MLA for North Coast, and I'm from Prince Rupert.

B. Routley: My name is Bill Routley, MLA for Cowichan Valley. It's good to be here.

D. Horne (Chair): Also joining us today from the parliamentary committees office is our Clerk, Susan Sourial, along with Stephanie Raymond, who is at the back of the room at the reception desk, who's also staffing us today. As well, Jean and Steve with Hansard Services are taking care of the broadcast and recording of today's proceedings.

I'll now go through how we move forward. Each presenter will have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes for questions from committee members. Time permitting, those that aren't signed up for a time to present today can visit Stephanie at the table at the back and sign up for a five-minute open mike at the end of today's presenters.

Today's public hearing will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services, as I said. A copy of the transcript, along with the 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 website.

I'd like to start. We'll call our first presenter, being the Northwest Community College, represented by Cathay and Dr. Denise Henning.
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D. Henning: Well, good evening on a rainy afternoon. Thank you for being here in the north, in the northwest region. I first want to honour the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation, on whose territory we're meeting today.

My presentation is very brief, direct and to the point. Northwest Community College has faced many issues, over the past two years particularly, and now we are fully focused on futurizing Northwest Community College as one of the major threads that tie the very diverse communities together.

Our two requests we would like to just place in your hands today. One, a building is needed at our Terrace campus to replace the current 1960s building, which hasn't the room or infrastructure to teach using new technologies that are currently being used in the field. This facility is targeting areas of the trades, health services and technology education and training.

The second request we would like to place in your hands is a funding formula that is more suitable, that sets Northwest Community College up to successfully meet the needs of our learners, our industries and our stakeholders in the northwest region.

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

M. Dalton: Thank you, Denise and Cathay. I'm just wondering if you could let us know what the breakdown is, or how many students attend the different campuses in the different communities. We were in Prince Rupert earlier today, and I believe they have a newer building, about 2005. What do they have here in Kitimat, if anything?

D. Henning: We do have a facility here in Kitimat, which has been underutilized in that we have a site that is a leased facility and that's located in conjunction with the mall. If you were to drive by it, you probably really wouldn't notice much about it. But it does have two or three classrooms, it has a computer lab, it has office space, and it has equipment that can do things like first aid tickets and the tickets that are needed for industries that are particularly growing and developing and about to kind of run over us at the moment.

C. Sousa: We have eight major campus locations, as you can see in that overview that I provided to you. I wish they had done this on a percentage basis.

Overall, in terms of just unique people, we have approximately 7,200 students who take a particular course or program, but when we convert it down to the almighty full-time-equivalent that you've probably heard of before, it's approximately 1,700.

In Hazelton we're talking 120 students. Our small campus in Houston would be approximately 40 students; Kitimat, approximately 50 students; Nass Valley, 25 students. So very small campuses, until we get to Prince Rupert, and then we're talking approximately 333 — again, full-time-equivalent students, when we do the calculations. Haida Gwaii, three small campuses, 37 students. Small numbers, until you get to approximately 145 in Smithers, and then Terrace, approximately 800 student FTEs. So a lot of heads spread across a huge geographic area pretty much the size of France.

D. Henning: Mr. Dalton, if I can just add to that. We have learning centre pilot projects that we are running. The reason that we have started running pilot projects for learning centres at Northwest Community College is that we accept any student that is taking post-secondary education, regardless if they're at UBC or if they're at UNBC. We do share campus space with UNBC at Prince Rupert. I'm sure you found that out today.

Any student that is going to school and wants to use our facilities, our libraries or our computer lab facilities is welcome to come in at no cost. At any time on our campuses, particularly our three larger campuses, you would see anywhere from, I would say, 200 to as many as a thousand students — depending on what time of the year it is, whether they're getting close to finals and they're trying to write papers — that would not be a student that would be counted. So when we talk about a funding formula, our goal here is that no matter who you are, we want to meet you where you are.

B. Ralston: I want to talk a little bit more about what you mean by a funding formula that meets the needs of your institution. We heard this morning from Rocque Berthiaume, who's the president of the union, and he told us that in order to meet the college's budget, there was a requirement of a layoff of a number of teachers and professors. I think he said 20.

In addition, my colleague Doug Donaldson, who's the MLA for Stikine, has used the example in public fairly repeatedly about, although in Smithers there's a new building and there's a program to train largely aboriginal students for mining jobs, yet it has been able to secure predictable, regular funding that goes beyond each year.

Your institution has an impressive record of accomplishment. Can you explain how the present funding formula works against the unique needs of your institution in this region?

D. Henning: Yes, I'm going to give you an example. We submitted a copy of this for your references.
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C. Sousa: It's a little bit difficult to actually determine that. When we receive our budget letter from government, it's based on the number of FTEs. There's no other way for us to do this, other than to say we have an operating envelope, a base grant that we receive, and if we divide that by the average number of FTEs that we're supposed to deliver, then we can get an average cost per FTE.

Northwest Community College has an aboriginal and First Nations population of a minimum of 41 percent and as high 49 percent, depending on which studies you're looking at. In terms of self-declared, it's 41 percent.

Given our unique aboriginal population, given our unique geographic demands, the sheer size of our institution geographically, we thought if we would compare that to, for instance, the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, which is British Columbia's First Nations college university, their funding per student, on average, just looking at the 2011 budget letter, is approximately $14,100.

If we use that same calculation in Northwest Community College, our funding is approximately $10,400 per student. If we applied that difference, just on the 41 percent of the students that we have that are First Nations, which have unique needs — and we all recognize that those unique needs are also needs that cost dollars — we estimate that the funding difference is approximately $3,700 per student. If we only said we're responsible for 1,700 FTEs in our funding envelope and multiplied that by just the 41 percent, times that difference of $3,700, that's a difference of $2.6 million.

D. Henning: In reality…. I am First Nations. I'm from the United States, but I am First Nations, and my lived experience is very similar to many people that I work with here. What I want to say in regards to….

It's not First Nations people only that have needs. Many of our learners who graduate with grade 12 are below par here in the northwest region. We have the lowest literacy and numeracy rates in the province, so for students that we generally will have and do an assessment with, we will find that even though they have a grade 12, their levels of reading and literacy may only be at grades 9 to 11. So they're not prepared nor have those essential skills that are needed for them to enter into and successfully complete a program.

G. Coons: Thank you, Denise and Cathay, for your presentation. In our travels we're hearing about the formula and the inaccuracy of it, especially in rural communities and rural colleges, whether in the Kootenays or wherever or in the north. And it seems that you mentioned at the end of your presentation here that you're underfunded by approximately $2.6 million, which is significant, taking into account the high proportion of aboriginal students, etc., and the needs.

We've been pushing for that for quite a few years in the region, saying we need to be treated, as you mentioned, the same as Okanagan College in Kelowna or Camosun College in Victoria, where they've received new facilities. You're probably on the list, I would think.

My question is…. Getting to the new trades, health and technology centre, Rocque Berthiaume from the Academic Workers Union talked about that and stressed the importance of it and working with the college on that, especially when you start looking at….

As you mentioned, there are going to be a million job openings by 2020, the government says, and in the north there's going to be a gap of 20,000 to 30,000. We should be filling those jobs and working towards that in our facilities in the north. So maybe you could just expand on the importance of a new trades and health centre and how you envision what that will be doing for our area.

D. Henning: I want to begin by saying that Northwest Community College could never meet the needs at all that are going on in the north — period. Northwest Community College, Northern Lights College, CNC — none of us alone can meet the needs. We very much are about partnership.

We have the Kitimat Valley Institute, the WWN in the Nass Valley, and we work together collaboratively. So when we talk about this building, there also needs to be room for programs that we need to broker with BCIT. Another institution is Camosun, especially in Prince Rupert — but to be able to offer trades to meet the needs regardless.

When we talk about the building, I'm not really asking for something more. I'm asking for replacement of. Yes, there is a bit more square-footage space. We have a mice-infested, below-code facility that would require more than $5 million just to upgrade, and even the upgrades that we could get would not bring us up to code.

We need to replace that building. We need to be proactively — when I talked about futurizing the institution — reading economic predictions about post-secondary education into the future. Canada and the United States are predicting that by 2030 at least 35 percent of all post-secondary institutions will close. They will cease to exist because we financially cannot sustain them. When we talk about doing business in the north, where we see such huge economic growth, we need to futurize the institutions to ensure that.

For example, as we have an aging population, that is really not only affecting the southern partners; it's affecting here. We need to have health services. One simulator alone for a nursing student is $3 million. That is what they are trained on in the southern partners that we have. They're trained on a simulator. That is the technology that's used today. This building cannot, even with reno-
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vations, accommodate that technology.

The other thing is that we have no technology, nor the ability to have the technology, with the infrastructure that we have that's required for the trades. We have a new mobile facility, simulators for heavy-equipment operators. We have had to suspend our heavy-duty mechanics program because our facility will not meet it. Yet heavy-duty mechanic is one of the highest that are required right now for the industries that are here.

We have women in the trades. I'm an advocate of women in the trades. I can tell you stories of women whose lives were changed immediately by going into the trades, yet we only have one toilet in the whole facility, and we do have nursing labs that are there.

We are not just asking for more. We're asking for it to be replaced. We're asking for the same amenities as the students in our southern partners — that they have for their students. That's all we're asking for.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation, coming over and saying what your needs are. My question to you is…. You talked about BCIT, working with them. We have a Kwantlen University trade and technology campus in the Cloverdale-Surrey area. They also train some people for here.

Do you work closely with companies, like Rio Tinto Alcan metals, that are here or the companies that are looking at working with or setting up LNG plants — I think TransCanada has an information booth here — to see what their needs are going to be? Maybe you asked about that so you can provide the training and the skills they really need. And if the students are trained here, then they're most likely to work and stay here rather than having to come from other parts of B.C. or Canada.

D. Henning: I think that there's much research that's been done in northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta that indicates that students that are raised in the north, are trained in the north, will stay in the north.

Secondly, Northwest Community College is one of the secretariats for the regional workforce tables. The industries and other community leaders from throughout the northwest region are sitting at those tables, and we are working side by side and trying to understand what their human resource needs and training needs are into the future.

Are we doing the best job? No, we're not. We need to partner, we need to partner more strongly, and we need to strengthen those partners as we go forward. But I think that what we're asking for with this building is not just for Terrace campus. It's for all campuses.

We are also focusing on mobilizing as much as we can because we have communities like Kitkatla, Metlakatla, Lax Kw'alaams — communities that you can only get to by ferry or by flight. Many of the people that are in those communities don't have vehicles or don't have drivers' licences. So it's our intention to meet those needs and meet our students where they are demographically, socially, transitionally and academically.

We'll now call our next presenter, who is Chief Councillor Ellis Ross. As was pointed out — and I was remiss — we are on the Haisla territory.

I thank you and welcome you to the committee. As you heard, I believe, you have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Begin anytime.

E. Ross: Thanks for coming today. I really appreciate you travelling here today. As you've probably heard, the Haisla territories are an area of extreme interest today, with at least three LNG projects at various stages of development and other economic development opportunities being actively considered.

I want to thank the government for its progressive and practical attitude in its dealings with us. Last summer Premier Clark challenged us to find a way to get things done away from the treaty table. As a result, on September 14 we signed a term sheet that provides the opportunity to formalize a lease agreement with the province to give us greater control over the development of the lands on the west side of Douglas Channel. It is our intent to develop these lands for the benefit of the Haisla people and for the region. We have discussions underway with the various proponents.

Let me also thank the government and the opposition for their consistent support of the LNG export opportunity that we're trying to take advantage of. We're pleased to see both parties working to agree on such an important issue.

While we welcome the many projects that are being considered for our territory, they do place a large burden on our council and staff resources to deal with the number of referrals that are being sent our way from the province. Right now we're looking at 17 referrals specifically to the PTP pipeline, and there are ten more to come.

We don't have the in-house resources or expertise to evaluate these referrals and to determine if a particular case is one we have to be concerned about or not. As a result, we're spending tens of thousands of dollars each month on external consultants we have to call on to analyze the referrals and give us direction. I have no doubt you guys are in the same boat.

We don't have the money to do this endlessly, so we ask that the committee recommend two things to the government to help us manage this problem. First, provide us with each referral to allow us to adequately study the
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case at hand without drawing on our own resources, and work with us to develop a new approach to managing referrals, such as a regularly scheduled monthly meeting at which a senior government official outlines each referral to us so that we can make a decision about which need to be studied fully and which can be processed on the spot.

In closing, let me urge whichever party forms the next government next May to continue the current attitude and direction regarding First Nations relations. We are seeing genuine progress now in many areas of the province, and we are seeing unemployment and social costs of poverty start to drop in some communities. Please don't use the May election to undertake yet another long review of aboriginal policy or to change over senior staff who have been doing a good job, an effective job.

I want to give you some context as well, in terms of what we're asking to do in terms of your bureaucracy. Mainly what we're talking about is continuity of what came out of the environmental certificate. Now I'm talking about the Pacific Trail pipeline. We've already agreed in general about some of the conditions in the environmental certificate, but now it's coming down to the specific referrals that we're having problems with, and there are just too many. It's death by a thousand cuts to us.

What I'm proposing here is just practical. If you even want, we can have the proponent in the room at these meetings so we can discuss the activity that's being contemplated in these referrals.

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

B. Ralston: Since you have suggested that you might be able to give a bit more detail about managing referrals…. I understand this, certainly, for groups that are considerably less sophisticated than yours. It's just overwhelming, so if a group that's as deep into the development process as you are with the Kitimat proposal, I think that really says something about the complexity of these referrals.

So how would it work? You talk about a regularly scheduled monthly meeting. Can you just explain a bit more what you have in mind and the mechanics of that and how that would be an effective first step in beginning to untie the knot?

E. Ross: Okay. I can give you an example of something that worked with the federal Crown. It was called the disposal-at-sea issue. In the certificate…. The certificate outlined a process to dump 10,000 cubic metres of clay into Douglas Channel, which we agreed to. We thought the environmental impact was minimal, and if we had timed it right, it could have been managed.

Well, the specific referral came out as 2.3 million cubic metres. That was a dramatic change. What happened was that the federal Crown came to our table, explained the issue, explained the timing, explained to the proponent that it couldn't be done. There was just too much to be doing. So now we're working out remediation, and now we're starting to find middle ground between the federal Crown and the proponent.

What I'm proposing, similar to that, is that we sit down with senior officials, with the proponent in or out of the room, and just talk frankly about what each referral proposes in terms of the activity on the ground. That way it's put into plain English, where a politician can understand it.

Out of 17 referrals within a given month, maybe five of them get addressed because of technical or environmental concerns, but the other remaining referrals get approved on the spot just because of the lack of environmental impact. That's what I'm proposing.

G. Coons: Thank you, Ellis. Thank you for allowing us on Haisla territory. I always appreciate coming to visit.

I do see that the referral funding is a huge issue. I hear it throughout the riding I represent — the five or six coastal First Nations trying to keep up with projects. It seems Kitimat and your territory are sort of the pulse of what's happening these days.

I'm just sort of wondering. I guess it's a huge concern for First Nations — not only the Haisla but many First Nations — about the lack of funding to actually do this. Just a comment on that.

The other thing. Could you give us an update, if you can, on where you're at with LNG projects?

E. Ross: The specific project that's taken most of our time, because they went through the environmental certificate process, is the KN LNG project. We're doing everything within the process with the Crown that we can. We think it's moving along fine, but it's really the company now that's got to make some major decisions about how far they take this project. It's their commercial decision that we're waiting for, along with everybody else.

The reserve site is now cleared off, and I think what they're doing right now is trying to assess the disposal-at-sea issue, because they've got a lot of clay they've got to deal with. I think they're going to come back with another proposal that lessens the amount of clay to 1.3 million cubic metres.

Other than that, they still have plans to blast. They're still doing work on the right-of-way, and they're still doing work on the bridge and the access.

M. Dalton: Thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate your desire to work together and your commonsense approach. I think that's refreshing.

Could you just tell us a bit about how many members there are with the Haisla and how many have moved to, say, the Lower Mainland? What types of connections do
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they still have with the community?

E. Ross: I don't have those numbers with me, but the band membership list has approximately 1,700 band members. In the past, just like everybody else, a large amount of the population moved to Vancouver. But a large number are moving back.

The problem we have is that our people are so transient, and they don't really forward their addresses. So what we've done in the band office is start to put together a process that actually makes it painless for them to forward their address to us.

We do know there are a number of people living now in Terrace and Kitimat to be close to the opportunity. We do know that. But I think that when we're done with our process, we should have some firm numbers.

M. Dalton: To follow up on this, those that are doing the referrals and looking at it with the Haisla — are they people, contractors, that you've hired from outside, or are they people from within the Haisla?

E. Ross: They're consultants. The environmental consultants that we need…. We don't have environmental…. We have one environmental consultant trained that we actually helped and supported the training of. But as soon as she got the training, she went to greener pastures because we couldn't really afford to pay her the amount that she's actually….

What's the result? We try to find different ways of paying for the consultant on a number of different referrals.

You know, I'm asking specifically for a process to deal with the natural gas referrals, but really, all our referrals get covered by our same consultants. Right now, at a minimum, we're paying $40,000 per month on referrals. So we're looking for capacity. We're looking for in-house expertise, but I think we're a long way before we get to that level.

P. Pimm: Thanks a lot, Ellis. It seems to me like you're in for some very exciting times ahead. Can you explain to me how your relationship has been with the OGC and how that process is working for you?

E. Ross: It's not bad. You know, I really feel that we're all trying to pick our way through the referral process, because nobody knows what the real method is for dealing with rights and title within the referral process. That's why I think this should be just continuity coming from the environmental certificate.

The Oil and Gas Commission we didn't actually work with one on one. We've had a couple of meetings with the politicos of the Oil and Gas Commission. They understand what our difficulties are, but they've got a job to do. I think it's those kinds of people that we can work with — if you guys commit more funding to those types of agencies — along with other agencies: your environment department and your wildlife department, anybody dealing with rights-of-way, like B.C. Hydro.

B.C. Oil and Gas is giving us the bulk of the referrals, and we have a good relationship with them. It's just that we don't understand the technical and legal language that comes out in these referrals.

P. Pimm: I'm sure that will be an issue. It's a new process for the area. I do know that the OGC has a good relationship with the different First Nations in our region. They seem to have a good process for getting permits put through the system. I know that they've got a very good department that deals with it as well, so I think you should see some good success in the future with that as well.

E. Ross: Yep. We should. But really, what we've got to do is basically be open and transparent about what our answer is going to be on these referrals to our people.

We've had incidents on the reserve there where the federal department came to our band office, explained it in full, told us what their remediation plan was, and we were okay with it. It doesn't make an official report from us. It doesn't make the media, because the processes in place are being enacted the way they should be.

The only thing left is referrals. If you've ever seen a referral, ten or 15 pages long…. Imagine 17. Literally a filing box of referrals comes onto your desk one day, and they want your opinion on what your rights and title interests are. It's impossible. You've got no choice but to give it your legal, give it to your consultants and say: "Am I covered? Are these guys trying to pull one over on us?" For the most part, everyone's being honest. But you've got to be careful.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much, a very good presentation. Especially, every time you hear the amount of…. You were saying you're looking for ways to simplify the process and use some common sense in there.

Now, when you talk to the government, trying to see if maybe you can have a meeting where your government is represented, the government is represented, your party is represented and the private businesses are represented…. The issues which can be solved quickly can be solved, and for the ones that need extra help, you can find some expert and maybe some funding for it so that you get the answers in a timely basis. What has been the response
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from the government when you talk to them and discuss the same issue — the provincial government?

E. Ross: The provincial government, I think, has probably got larger things to think about right now. But the federal government is on board. We've already had interaction with the Department of Fisheries, and they like it. The provincial government…. We're just starting to throw this subject out there. We're just starting to put together how it would work, and nobody said no.

I really think that the provincial government is just trying to figure out now: how do we do it quicker? How do we do it better? I think the land agency people are waiting for the answer from the higher-ups. It's never been done before. I'm not getting positive feedback, but I'm not getting negative either. We're just starting to formalize this proposal to committee like yourselves. We're making progress.

E. Ross: Aboriginal Relations. We've been dealing with them mostly on this land deal that we just got through with. We'll be going after Energy, and we'll be going after FLNRO next. We've talked to the Minister of FLNRO, and we've gotten no negative response.

I think it's really that everybody's starting to understand that the referral process is actually a pretty complex one and probably the meat and potatoes of where all of the issues lie. It's not in supplier end. It's not in the offtake. For the provincial government relationship with First Nations, it really boils down to the referral, so I think we sit down, and we work it out together.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. I'd like to ask one question — because we've had many presentations to the committee — a little bit, completely, off the topic of what you've presented. That is to do with friendship centres.

We've had a number of the friendship centres from around the province present to the committee on funding and the programs that they deliver. From your standpoint and the Haisla Nation's standpoint, what's your interaction with the various friendship centres, and what's your view on the services and the support that they provide?

E. Ross: We don't have a friendship centre. I know there's one in the city of Kitimat. We're actually neutral on it. We're okay with it. We're just starting to reach out to those agencies that actually help our people out in the urban settings. We're trying to find ways to get revenues diverted to them. We're okay with those types of services, but right now we're focusing on food banks and those types of institutions. We haven't had the time to really look at friendship centres, so we're pretty neutral on those types of topics.

I'll now call our next presenter, the Kitimat Child Development Centre Association, represented by Margaret Warcup.

Margaret, welcome to the committee. You have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

M. Warcup: Thank you. This is my second time to present, so I will speak quickly.

On behalf of the child development centre in both Kitimat and the Bulkley Valley…. I'm presenting on behalf of Kerri Kluss from Smithers as well, as well as representatives from our provincial association, BCACDI, who will have been presenting to you throughout the province with similar things.

We want to put forward a number of recommendations. The background on the number of children we treat and our services is in the handout that I gave you. I'd like to just review the recommendations that we would like to put forward for you to consider.

Firstly, we recommend the funding for children and youth with special needs be deemed a core service. The maintenance or increased funding of levels from MCFD for these health and social services is critical for us. We would specifically like attention drawn towards the therapies — occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech-language pathology and family support services — which have faced no increases for many, many years. Therefore, we're having a hard time keeping up with serving the children that we need to serve or want to serve.

The other services that go along with the therapy services — infant development, healthy babies, supported child care, etc. — also require a commitment from the government to maintain that happening.

We also recommend that something be done about the human early learning partnership 15-by-15 comprehensive policy on early capital investment in British Columbia so that our children and families can be healthy and fruitful in the future.

Our second recommendation is that we immediately address the funding and the policy direction, which you've already started, for the provision of school-age therapy services. There are massive gaps for children in schools for therapies that they require.

Our third recommendation is that funding and policy direction, which has also been started but not implemented, be funded for transitional times for children and youth with special needs as they move on to adult services. There are massive gaps again in that area in our province.
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We recommend funding from the government, which is occurring already for some of us, to all contractors to be required that they become accredited either by CARF or COA or some other accreditation agency. We recommend this to include all contractors funded by government funds, including aboriginal agencies, your Ministry of Children and Family Development offices, your not-for-profit and your profit agencies that are providing services for children and families. They need to be meeting standards of services.

Our next recommendation is…. We are currently facing service delivery challenges in our region because of the implementation of the new integrated caseload management system, ICM, within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We recommend that there be a complete financial audit and look at what's happened to spend those millions of dollars, and it's taking away from our direct, hands-on services with children. Hopefully, nobody…. But we know there are families at risk because of the diversion of those moneys.

Our next recommendation is that we put forward that there are efficiencies obtained when the government contracts with not-for-profit agencies and you enable those not-for-profit agencies to have adequate funding within our funding to cover our administrative costs.

We do a lot of community fundraising, and we have phenomenal support. We have a telethon this weekend coming up that gives us lots of extra money so that we can maintain our services, but our contracts should have enough adequate administrative funding in them to maintain their viability that way.

We currently, because of the changes occurring in MCFD, only have one-year contracts occurring in our province, and that is affecting the sustainability of a business plan so that you can provide services for children. We recommend that the Finance Committee look at your budgeting so that it is not just one-year and short-term contracts, so that you can have an effective plan in there.

We acknowledge at the end of my brief that a lot is happening in the northwest. There are lots of economic things happening, but to have economic health, you also have to have a social health and have educational infrastructure supported so that your families are healthy.

In finishing my submission, we support what you're going to hear from the health advocacy committee and from Cheryl Rumley later tonight in terms of the need for housing for everybody in our communities in the north. I welcome questions.

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

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation, Margaret. I was wondering if you can expand a little bit more on recommendation No. 2, with respect to the provision of therapy services in schools. What types of therapy are you thinking about, and what needs do you see?

M. Warcup: Right now in British Columbia — and it started over 15 years ago — there is matching funding for the school system in the Ministry of Children and Family Development to provide physiotherapy and occupational therapies within the schools. Speech-language pathology is often a direct employee of the school districts.

That matching funding has not kept up. It's not implemented consistently throughout the province, and it is only for consultations. If your child receives surgery and you need to have intensive therapy, you're not going to get it while your child is at school. We need to do something so that school-aged children are receiving the therapy services that they require.

B. Routley: If you could expand a bit more on the wait-list for therapies such as speech language pathology…. I have personal experience in this area. I have a grandson with autism. I know that he would not have learned how to speak without speech pathology and speech therapy at an early age. Had he not received it from the time he was three till he was six, I'm not sure that he'd speak at all today.

It alarms me when I hear of long lists and waiting lists for this, and I have heard of it in the southern regions of the province. I wondered if that was the same kind of problem that you're facing here.

M. Warcup: Well, it's not the same problem, because we don't have the population, but it is a problem of recruitment and retention of professional staff, especially speech-language pathologists.

I'll stick my other hat on. I'm very pleased that UNBC is being funded to do physiotherapy, but I think we should be funding to do speech-language pathology there as well so that we can recruit and retain therapists in our province.

The other thing — and part of my recommendations here — is that you do more than one-year contracts and that you give us integrated contracts. A therapist is not going to come unless they know they've got job security and funding within their contract to stay in an area and provide services.

The other part related to your funding — and I'm glad you shared about your family member — is the accreditation part. I think all providers should be accredited. Those that are doing it for profit in private business…. It's great. I owned my own private clinic for many, many years. But there has been a shift from public services into private services because of individualized funding for children with autism, and that's causing the marketplace to have some challenges that we need to look at through accreditation.
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D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation. You have six recommendations. Have you looked at it to see how much the total cost to the government will be if they were to act on all of the six recommendations? Will that be new money, or would that be money probably saved within the system, transferred from one program to another? Any suggestions?

M. Warcup: Well, I think you've got huge savings with ICM, but I'm not sure. I think that needs to be really looked at as to how that's being spent.

The moneys for therapies. I think it has to be new and increased moneys. I think there are some efficiencies that can be happening there. But if you're going to maintain therapies in the province, you have to invest in it that way.

Accreditation is already being funded. Just apply it to everybody. Don't have the exceptions.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation today, and I'll call our next witness.

Our next witness is the Kitimat Health Advocacy Group represented by Rob Goffinet.

R. Goffinet: Thank you, Chair. On behalf of the Kitimat Health Advocacy Group, KHAG, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to address your committee on some issues regarding the provincial budget and health care in our community.

It's very good to see you again. I remember last year in Smithers I presented, and it's good to see you again.

As you may remember from that talk, KHAG is a community-based group of over a dozen organizations interested in our Kitimat General Hospital and Health Centre and with Kitimat health care services in general. Our committee is open to participation by any interested citizen in Kitimat and has been incorporated as a society since 2003. We receive financial support and encouragement through the district of Kitimat mayor and council, of which I am a sitting member.

May I raise a couple of major concerns? Number one is the sustained capital funding for Northern Health in the 2013 provincial budget. With almost all of the proposed large economic development projects in B.C. being sited within the Northern Health Authority's geographic region, either upstream in the gas fields of the Peace River country or downstream here on the coast with Prince Rupert and especially with Kitimat as the preferred site for massive LNG facilities, it's absolutely crucial that the health care facilities of the north in general be maintained and, where necessary, expanded.

May I use an example of Kitimat? Our rapidly changing demographics have required the expansion of our emergency room facilities to the tune of almost $300,000. This is to make more efficient use of the acute care and operating room functions of our excellent general hospital, the reason being that multilevel care is taking up 20 to 30 percent of our acute care beds often, and that impacts on our excellent two operating rooms, with an orthopedic and a general surgeon anchoring our hospital in Kitimat.

With the sustaining capital fund cutbacks of almost 90 percent in the past month by Northern Health, this emergency room project in Kitimat came painfully close to running into difficulties. Only the advanced state of these capital plans saved this project from being delayed or cancelled. With your deliberation for next year's budget we would urge that you would devote more, not less, funds for capital projects all across the north, not only in Kitimat.

On the same topic of capital funding, we would urge your committee to advocate more funds for the construction and staffing of multilevel-care facilities in the north.

At this time, as Kitimat is welcoming thousands of new residents to construction and maintain our new industrial development, ranging from the multi-billion-dollar Rio Tinto Alcan smelter upgrade to the several natural gas pipelines, LNG processing facilities and marine terminals that our colleague Chief Councillor Ross has told you about. We are, in Kitimat, for the first time welcoming a sizeable and ever-increasing proportion of our population in retirement. This has never happened here before.

Kitimat, in fact, is one of the jurisdictions in B.C. with the highest demographic increase in its senior citizen population. We are, as a community, doing everything we can to accommodate and to plan for this changing demographic. Kitimat is consciously using our multi-million-dollar, second-to-none recreational facilities and programs as primary health facilitators. We are studying ways to adapt our housing stock, our community programs, to create an age-friendly community.

We are active participants in the Kitimat Interagency Committee, and we work with the Community Development Institute at UNBC to better understand and react to the changing needs of our community. We've formed, within this year, a Kitimat General Hospital Foundation to fundraise and to support the capital requirements of multilevel-care construction, as well as other health care initiatives of Northern Health within our community.

We would ask that the provincial budget of 2013 do its part to support these initiatives and capital outlays of our foundation, our local government and community organizations such as those that have just presented to you and those that will follow me, as well as, please, adequately and fully funding the Northern Health Authority, in which almost 90 percent of the heavy economic development of B.C. is now going to occur.

A second point that I want to bring up is: sustain support in the budget for initiatives like primary health, healthy communities, age-friendly initiatives, home care
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services and aging-in-place initiatives. As a health care advocate sitting before you and appealing for sustained health care funding, I am aware of the cost of the acute care component of the provincial budget.

As a community, through organizations like KHAG, we try our best to encourage and support acute care services in Kitimat through offering financial support for the recruitment and retention of trained personnel at the Kitimat General Hospital. We forward financial support toward succession planning in our speciality services, as well as the recruitment of family physicians and even specialized training for Kitimat General Hospital personnel.

All of this is Kitimat's support of the efforts being carried out by our own Northern Health. We in Kitimat are also doing everything we can to support the acquisition of updated equipment for our hospital through joint work between our local Max Lange Foundation, our Kitimat Hospital Auxiliary, our brand-new Kitimat General Hospital Foundation and the coordination of possible legacy projects between our new corporate community, Northern Health and the district of Kitimat. Now, saying all of this, we are committing our resources not only to maintain and augment acute and multilevel care, but we are committing to the concept of primary health care in our community.

We're attempting to use our programs and our expenditures at the community level to promote healthier lifestyles, more inclusive social interactions and better housing that will in the long run, hopefully, produce a healthier citizenry that will place less, rather than more, demands upon the already burdened medical system.

We have committed to doing everything we can to make Kitimat a healthy and age-friendly community. But we will rely heavily on what the 2013 provincial budget can and should deliver — namely, augmented funding to Northern Health for the promotion of primary health initiatives which recognize, coordinate and financially support our local health and social initiatives; as well as, please, fully and adequately funding acute care and multilevel-care facilities and staffing levels within Kitimat and across the north.

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

G. Coons: Thank you. And thank you, Rob. Over the years, ever since there was a real dilemma when Kitimat was in the throes of people leaving and a real concern about services and population — what are you going to do with empty houses? — we've really seen the switch in the north, especially, as you mention, with 90 percent of the heavy economic lifting being done in our region, in the Northern Health region.

There was just a report about camps put out by Northern Health — you know, work camps of hundreds if not a thousand people plus and how we as a Northern Health region are going to deal with that. I think there's so much that we have to analyze and put forward. But you talked about adequately and fully funding the Northern Health Authority. As for Kitimat, what would be the three top things that you'd want to see from Northern Health funding to make your goal in KHAG move forward?

R. Goffinet: One of the major concerns is the multilevel-care construction. With the capital funding cutbacks to Northern Health, they have signalled that they could not realistically look upon the construction of multilevel-care facilities in Kitimat. That's why we have stepped forward to augment all their funding and commit with Northern Health to fundraise $6 million to $8 million for an extension to our multilevel-care facility. But we realize by building that that we also have to be responsible for the sustaining funds to bring in and have the personnel to staff it.

Your deliberations in the north. We know that upwards of five to ten years ago we never thought of the need for multilevel-care or seniors accommodation in a place like Kitimat. But you're right. The massive turnaround within five to ten years in the demographics of our community has been stunning. And as we accept brand-new, healthy, young families, we are now the host and the family and the desired location of a burgeoning retirement community — multilevel care.

What we have in Kitimat is a beautiful ten-year-old hospital with, as I said, two operating theatres. We are very, very worried that if multilevel-care patients take up too many of the acute care beds, that will put in jeopardy the two operating rooms of our hospital. In a community like ours that has gone down to 8,000 but is now about 10,000 — and we hope it will climb to 12,000 to 14,000 people — we require a fully functioning local, not a regional, hospital.

That's our real priority: defending our two operating theatres. And the way we're thinking of doing that is through supporting Northern Health by fundraising for multilevel care. We're basically putting our money and our resources where our desires are.

P. Pimm: Thanks a lot for your presentation. I can certainly relate to you. I have a hard time with this being north because I'm from the real north — another 1,600 kilometres the other direction to get to my north. But we have the same kind of problems getting and retaining physicians.

A couple of quick questions, though. How many people in Kitimat? How many doctors in Kitimat? And please explain to me what you mean by the 90 percent
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capital cutbacks. I didn't quite get that piece. So those three quick ones.

Sustaining funds. Northern Health cut back from $10 million to $1 million their capital sustaining funds in the last couple of months because they've got a budget crunch.

Doctors in Kitimat. We've just got two more. We have a cadre of South African doctors that are excellent recruiters. They are filling the needs of family physicians in Kitimat quite nicely. We have a full complement of doctors, and at the moment, through our advocacy and supporting of retention and recruitment, we have a full complement of RNs, LPNs within the acute care part of the hospital.

R. Goffinet: The population used to be below 9,000. It's now climbing toward 10,000, we believe, or even 11,000. But the problem is that we got hit with the federal census at the lowest point of our population, so between now and the next census Kitimat will be having a burgeoning — thousands of people moving into our town. But we don't have them documented, so a lot of the funding is based upon outdated — thank goodness — population figures out of the last federal census.

D. Horne (Chair): We're now over time, so thank you so much for your presentation. I'll now call our next witness.

Our next presenter will be the Northwest Community College Students Union, represented by Mikael Jensen and Kathryn Chicoine.

Welcome, both. You have ten minutes to present, followed by five minutes of questions. Your time begins now.

M. Jensen: Okay. Thanks to the committee, and thank you to the Haisla First Nation, on whose territory we are speaking today.

You probably heard from some of our students union representatives while you were in Prince Rupert this morning, I believe, so these remarks are in addition to those. We are speaking here on behalf of all members of the students union — that is, across the region.

Members are in university credit, trades, arts and humanities and nursing, as well as adult basic education students. Locally, adult basic education is known as career and college prep. Our members live in Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat, the Hazeltons, Smithers, as well as Houston and some of the outlying communities of the northwest.

Many of the members that we serve are permanent residents that are seeking employment locally, and they wish to get an education in the communities that they live in. This is good for both retention of workers in the area, but also the people who are being educated here know the area. As a union, we firmly believe that students in the north and northwest B.C. and northeast B.C., as well, deserve equal access to high-quality post-secondary education.

We provide advocacy services and events to our members. We are a member — Local 66 — of the Canadian Federation of Students.

Today we're just going to talk about tuition fees, funding, as well as adult basic education in the northwest and accreditation for some trades programs.

The system of high tuition fees, high user fees is really kind of twofold. We're suggesting it's, one, a hypocritical system. I'll explain that in a minute. Also, it's not very ethical.

The reason I say it's hypocritical is that all of the folks, essentially, in the positions of power that are suggesting we need to pay more year over year in fact paid a much lower percentage of their costs of education than students are today. Really, we're just suggesting that students of today should be granted the same access as previous generations.

We went from having one of the most affordable systems in the country in the '90s and, really, into about 2002, when the government suggested a market-based approach…. Our members are, I would suggest, very proud to say that we were part of stopping this market-based approach, limiting it to a 2 percent cap on tuition fee increases year over year. But for the most part they know the damage had already been done at that point.

We're suggesting it's unethical because the system of loans essentially says students who can't afford to pay the cost up front have to pay an additional cost in the form of interest payments on the loans that they do take out. So this is saying that folks who actually have quite high financial barriers in the first place now need to, in fact, pay more for education than somebody who can already afford it.

We do recognize that the increases in user fees, tuition and ancillary fees are directly connected with the decrease in core funding to our campuses. Colleges and universities were left short, and they had to find some way of increasing revenues. Tuition fees are kind of…. Students being the slowest-moving target at the time, that's where a lot of that was made up.

At our institution tuition fees have doubled since the year 2001. What we're calling on this committee to suggest to government is that we increase per-student funding to 2001 levels and roll back tuition fees to the same thing — 2001 levels.
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In the past two years there've been a lot of cuts at Northwest Community College. We've lost electives for most programs. There are much fewer accredited Red Seal trades programs available in the region, and there are some severe cuts to adult basic education, which we're going to talk about in a minute.

As an example of these cuts, last year there were eight instructors for adult basic education, if you combine Terrace and Kitimat. This year there are now three between both communities. In fact, right here in Kitimat there's an awesome little campus — I suggest you check it out before you go — but in fact, there are zero instructors there.

I'm essentially saying that if we want to finish high school, we need to move to Terrace or take the bus at 6:30 in the morning to do that from Terrace. Mind you, the wait-list started for that program in August, so there's not a lot of opportunity, not a lot of seats for that program.

Obviously, there's a construction boom here. People need the most basic form of accreditation, which is high school education, to get on with a lot of companies. So that is a very significant barrier that should be fixed. People getting their grade 12 equivalent is key both for them getting employment but also for transferring into the higher-education type of programs like Red Seal trades, university credit — anything like that.

It kind of makes the situation a little bit worse. The government forced the college to cut faculty in these programs in April and also cut the maintenance budget in April. Then in August they actually made announcements indicating there was money coming forward for campus upgrades. These upgrades actually included the campus in Kitimat.

Essentially, there's the situation now where we have a campus with new floors but no instructors. I think it's quite well encompassed by our outgoing provincial representative. Her quote went like this. She said: "The new floors in your classroom are great. However, if there is no teacher in the front of the room, the new floors are irrelevant." This is just one of the problems identified by our members. We're suggesting that the priorities are skewed in that there is construction taking place without instructors in the classroom or, in some cases, on the campus.

With adult basic education — locally it's called CCP — our members pay actually the second-highest level of ancillary fees in the province for access to this high school education. Northwest Community College ancillary fees for a year will add up to $168. The highest in the province is actually College of the Rockies at $360 a year. But all other institutions offer this program for under $30 a year in mandatory fees paid to the institution.

At Vancouver Island University, to use that as an example, students there…. The institution, I think, recognizes it as a recruitment tool for all programs, but fees at that institution are $7 per year, so in fact it's actually 24 times more expensive to get your high school equivalent at Northwest Community College than at Vancouver Island University.

For obvious reasons, we are recommending that ancillary fees be eliminated across the province for adult basic education. It is currently deemed a tuition fee–free program. However, these ancillary fees are still applied, and especially for people living on social assistance, this $168 is actually quite a significant barrier for these folks.

Part of this is the case that the funding that comes to the institution is block funding. It comes in one lump sum, and it's essentially up to the institution to figure out what they're going to do with it. Essentially, of late, bloated administration, I would suggest, still kind of skews the funding towards management of programs rather than the staff and the faculty that actually teach the programs.

So the number of seats available to members in adult basic education, Red Seal trades and university credit have all declined over the last few years. That adult basic education cut that I was talking about amounts to a 55 percent cut across the region.

M. Jensen: Okay. I'd better make it quick, then. Time flies when you're having fun, I guess, as they say.

To encompass university credit very quickly, most of the programs are still offered, but the number of courses that are offered aren't sufficient for people to finish those programs in the time that they should be.

An associate's degree would normally take a student two years to finish, but the number of courses are so few that it's actually taking these students upwards of three years now to complete what is a two-year program. That's obviously made worse on campuses outside of Terrace. Lots of members have come forward this year, and that's really their biggest complaint — the availability of the courses they need to graduate on time.

D. Horne (Chair): You can have another 30 seconds, but you're already over 30 seconds, so go ahead real quick.

M. Jensen: I can encompass it, really, in one sentence. To us, accreditation is key for the programs that are coming forward. There are lots of basic-level training programs, but we're seeing a reduction in Red Seal trade programs where people can gain provincial accreditation, which is recognized nationally. They can take that training with them for the rest of their lives.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much. We'll start our questions with Mable, our Deputy Chair.
[ Page 2257 ]

M. Elmore (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. We've heard from other areas, as well, in terms of the relationship between high tuition fees and high student debt loads and that it translates to a lower completion rate for students. We've heard that message pretty consistently across the province.

My question specifically is around the campus here in Kitimat. You mentioned — I didn't quite catch it — that you don't have instructors. Is that in reference to your adult basic education? Just what is the situation here in Kitimat in terms of your instructors?

M. Jensen: Yeah, what I was mentioning specifically was around adult basic education instructors. There used to be two based on campus in Kitimat, and there are none now. There are still…. I assume that at some point in the year there will be students on that campus, but it will just be programs that are run there as they get filled and, basically, as they are identified.

M. Dalton: I wonder if you could let us know what the trend is among young people, among people in general, taking post-secondary courses, whether it be the trades or university — just how that compares to even a few years ago.

Then secondly, I just want to comment. As far as the adult education for designated courses, my understanding was that it was a deposit put down, but all that money is refunded. Is that not the case?

M. Jensen: You're talking about ancillary fees for high school equivalent, adult basic education?

M. Dalton: That's right, yes. I mean, not all courses are covered but for specific courses.

M. Jensen: It would vary institution by institution. At Northwest Community College the fees are $168 for a year. That's paid to the institution. That money is used by the institution for various things and is not paid back to students — no.

M. Dalton: Well, just overall, the amount of students, the amount of people that are taking post-secondary courses — is that trending upwards, or is it remaining the same or increasing?

M. Jensen: I can answer that by saying this. The number of seats in the classroom that are available to people is obviously going to be related to the number of people entering and attending the college. The number of seats that exist on the campus has seen a steady decrease and thus the number of students there also.

I would suggest that the demand is as high as ever, but it's the availability of the courses that is no longer in place. So for CCP, adult basic education, for example, with the cuts that came, it has drastically reduced the number of, like I say, seats in the classroom. The waiting list for that program started in August.

B. Ralston: I just want to make sure that I understood this correctly. You're saying that in order, as a prerequisite to enter, say, a training course or a preapprenticeship course for a Red Seal trade, you would need high school equivalency or adult basic education training and have completed that successfully in order to be admitted. Is that what you're saying?

M. Jensen: Some of the basic entry level, like preapprenticeship, I'm not 100 percent sure. I can answer that question and get back to you on that. As for entering the accredited programs — so Red Seal trade programs, nursing programs, anything like that — it's definitely a requirement for that.

B. Ralston: Is your sense that there is student demand, that there are people that want to go into that so they can get the Red Seal training? I understand your secondary argument is that despite the predicted labour shortage and the number of huge projects that are coming to this region, the institution has been forced to cut back training in Red Seal trades, which seems to me to be very, very shortsighted, but that's an issue that we'll take up later.

M. Jensen: Yeah. I would suggest that it's kind of exacerbating the problem that has already been created, in that the graduation of journeypersons has been reduced. I think over the last ten years that's been reduced, and I'd say that is in part why we have a skills shortage now. Pulling more funding from those programs — I don't see how it's possible that that could improve that shortage. You get what I'm saying.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much. Two things. If you could provide the information to respond to Bruce's question to us, that would be great. As well, if you wouldn't mind providing a breakdown of the $168 that the institution charges and exactly what they call those fees and what those fees go to, that would be great. Thank you so much for your presentation today.

Actually, I do have one question for you. That is, you made a point in the last little segment before I cut you
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off there on the amount that goes to administration. One of the recurring themes that we've heard over and over again is that with the cut that came this last year that was supposed to go to administration, it seems like institutions across the board cut programs and time in the classroom rather than what that cut was supposed to go for — administration. I think — and you yourself agree about the fact — that administration seems to be becoming overbloated.

I'm just wondering, from the student union standpoint, if you have done anything to address that with the institution itself and whether or not you've been advocating for additional cuts to administration.

M. Jensen: Well, I don't think anybody wants to suggest anyone should lose their job, but as students, we're definitely suggesting that the priority, when you're making cuts, should be things outside of the classroom. We're hiring more administrators year over year but having fewer and fewer instructors. That doesn't really compute for students.

I'll now call our next presenter, being the Residents Advocating for a Safe Inclusive Environment, represented by Diana Penner.

D. Penner: Residents Advocating for a Safe Inclusive Environment are a group of seniors, basically. We had a meeting, hoping that we could just simply answer questions on line on your on-line survey. As we started going through your on-line survey, we had so many comments that I felt that we needed to do a presentation.

I'm sure you've heard much of this before. However, I think if we're all saying the same thing, perhaps it means more. I'm not sure.

From this committee, I'm just going to respond to the six subject areas that were identified in the on-line survey, the first one being priorities to keep life affordable for British Columbians. Our committee wanted to speak to that. Some of the things and the comments that they made were: "Stop downloading responsibilities to local governments unless they are financially supported." "Reduce or eliminate sales tax on necessary items, such as food." This is creating a hardship for people in the aging population.

HST was set up for highway improvements so communities like Terrace could perhaps improve their transport network. We would like to suggest that we don't have a second or third overpass, and yet we have train traffic that's increased phenomenally in the last two years. Safe crossings on highways should be a priority in the northwest, where rail traffic is increasing and has expanded substantially, through highway over- or underpasses.

Bridges should be upgraded. We still have one-way bridges that were built in the early 1900s and still haven't been approved.

Snow removal for communities who have snow for up to five months of the year, such as Terrace and Kitimat, should be budgeted to receive sufficient funding for adequate snow removal equipment and the needed personnel to clear snow before it becomes a danger to both pedestrians and motorists.

Privatization of road clearing and maintenance. Worker safety and workers benefits have degraded in service. These should be the responsibility of the governing body of the province and should be funded accordingly.

Number 2 on your survey was allocation of $44 billion in expenditures. We're wondering what exactly is included in the 23 percent "other" allocation. Please don't anybody actually answer this at this time, because we want to save our minutes of questions, but we are wondering about that.

Health care, we think, should be the highest allocation, and according to your allocation device or pie, it is the highest allocation. But we believe that the percentage that's spent on real health care versus upper-level management or administration needs to be increased.

Health care needs to be expanded to meet the overwhelming need for long-term care beds, for emergency care, for the shortage of triage care, the wait-list for specialized care and the shortage of skilled practitioners in our community. The shortage of all of the above speaks to the need for a walk-in clinic, which has been requested and refused by Northern Health. Meetings with Northern Health have resulted in no action, no change and no additional support for health care, which has been identified by the community as a whole.

Schools should be supported to avoid use of portables at all costs. Currently a local middle school in Terrace has two portables sitting there, and the senior high school has four portables in use. This is problematic when it comes to keeping kids in the school and problematic when it comes to dressing to go to the portables in the winter — bearing in mind, like our northern MLA, that it's cold.

Post-secondary education should be accessible to all, in all communities. It's been identified by both the NWCC group that was here earlier with Cathay and Denise and by the students union that that is problematic. So many things have been cut in that regard that the students can't actually access it. It's become a catch-22, and it's become problematic as a result.

Trade centres and training should be delivered on site to the communities that are in need of trained workers.
[ Page 2259 ]
Hiring should always be to locals first and should include all unemployed and not be restricted to local First Nations because of agreements put into place. Policies that prevent job training or specific training should be reconfigured to meet the needs of B.C.'s growing economy.

Number 3 on your survey was opportunities to address fiscal changes to natural gas royalties. Our comments are to review all royalty systems and policies — oil, fur, gas, etc. — and adjust the royalties to reflect the current situations within those resources.

We thought that you should expand services in health and education at the grass-roots level. In your search for efficiencies, please trim from the top down rather than the bottom up. Reduce expenses and wages of upper government administration. Sorry, guys, but we had to say that.

Reduce budgets for government top-level roles and their office support networks. We don't think that we're getting as good of a bang for a buck as we would like to, unfortunately.

Creation of jobs for the future is No. 4. On No. 5, we've actually come up with the same points, so I'm only going to list the one. Stop shipping jobs out of the country. No more outsourcing — not until the Canadian unemployment rate drops to 1 percent. Terrace, especially — it's high. I've been unemployed for a year. I'm quite qualified, and I can't get a job.

Educate and empower B.C. people to meet the ongoing and upcoming economies that exist, can exist or may exist by investing in the people of B.C. Manufacture locally wherever and whenever possible. Strengthen all areas of the province by helping communities and regions to become self-sustaining.

Number 5 was conditions needed for job and economic growth. I can reiterate exactly the same points that I just said, but we really and truly believe that they're the same thing. We need to stop shipping jobs out. We need to educate and empower B.C. people. We need to manufacture locally, and we need to strengthen all areas of the province to become self-sustaining.

Number 6 on the survey was B.C. as a safe haven for investors. We think: tax outside investors. Restrict outside investment from taking resources without first investing in local infrastructure, local employment and training. Preserve the resources for B.C. first, Canadians second, others third. Improve B.C.'s economy by investing in the populace of B.C. through education and skill expansion.

Number 7 on your survey was for additional comments. We have a lady in our group who suffers from brain injury, and she immediately said: "Prevention and safety. Expanded use of helmets in all sports." We know this is a policy legislation thing, but we wanted to bring it forward regardless.

Mandatory reduction of plastics to manufacture packaging policies. Mandatory funding for local recycling plants and programs in all service communities.

In the end, the hope of RAFASIE, which is our short form, is that as the demographic of the north increases, a large percent of the local population is aging in place. We heard that earlier, two speakers ago. Age-friendly communities require affordable local health care that meets the needs of an aging population. Access to service needs to be available for all users regardless of income and mobility. Long-term care and assisted housing need to be increased to meet the needs of this growing population.

That's the summation of our meeting when we looked at your survey. Thank you for the opportunity.

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. You actually didn't offend any of us here when you made that comment. MLAs make about the same amount as directors in the government, so there are many people that make much more than an MLA in our structure. Thank you for your comments. We'll start our questions with Bill.

B. Routley: Thank you for your presentation. Obviously, you spent some time canvassing your community to get some input. Your comment about shipping jobs out of the country and no more outsourcing until the Canadian unemployment rate is down to 1 percent….

Could you give us some examples of the kind of outsourcing of jobs that you're talking about?

D. Penner: One of them just came out on the news this morning, I believe, or yesterday, and that was with regards to the amount of jobs that are going to be coming from China to fill the ongoing shortage of trades. And I'm thinking to myself: "Hello. I could come up with at least 500 people right now that aren't working and that should be trained right here first, before a single person from China comes across that border to fill those positions." That's one example.

G. Coons: Thank you, Diana and Tina. You gave us a whole list here of a lot of thoughts and ideas and concerns from the greater Terrace area. I've dealt quite a bit with privatization of road-clearing and maintenance and where we need to and should be going, and holding the contractors accountable.

Again, the creation of jobs for the future — I still have to go to that. This morning when we were in Rupert, I talked about the 200 foreign workers coming in — Chinese workers, to work in the coal mines — with a bit of shock and dismay that this was happening. We continually hear from the college on the lack of resources, the lack of training, the cutbacks. Again, that disconnect.

You mentioned it, with where we should start looking. Start at the top, not at the bottom, as far as administration or whatever. We keep hearing that. But as for your
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experience and background in this region…. You just talked about that you could find 500 people to do that. That's a huge concern for Terrace, especially, and this whole region — like, living in Prince Rupert, with the unemployment rate at double figures. We aren't sticking to the mantra of "B.C. resources for B.C. people."

Logging — what would you do about forestry in the region? That's a key one. We have lots of log exports. Is there anything that came across with forestry in your research?

D. Penner: The biggest thing that seems to be coming across is that we have a whole bunch of people that are able to do the job. Different reasons — compensation, bureaucratic stuff, I have to say, more than anything else — are keeping people out of the job.

For example, I sat in a workshop that KMP was putting on, which they were giving to enlighten people in the community as to what it was that they wanted at their site. In that process of sitting there, there was a young fellow who has all of his…. Now I'm going away from the forestry. Forgive me as I go this way. He had all the trades training for carpentry and had come from Alberta to work at the KMP site.

He has to go through all sorts of red tape with regard to…. Bechtel is the contractor that's on site. He has to go through a whole list. He had been waiting. He has gone to every single one of these little meetings that they have for the last three months. He came in from Alberta, is staying in a trailer in town, in an RV park, and he's waiting because there is a promise that there will be a job for him.

This was his third month sitting in that same thing, waiting for the red tape from Bechtel, for the i's and the t's and whatever it is they need to be crossed. He's fully qualified. He's not working, and he's spending money to stay in an RV park in the hope that he will have work. And he was only one of 25 people in that room, all as frustrated as he was.

P. Pimm: Thanks for your presentation. It'll take a while to absorb all of it, obviously. You do show one thing here that interests me a lot: "Hiring should always be locals first and should include all unemployed and not be restricted to local First Nations." I'd like you to expand on that a little bit.

Then one other point, where you say that there shouldn't be any outsourcing until the rate drops to 1 percent. I'm curious how you would ever get to 1 percent. So explain that to me. We're at 4.8 percent in my region of the province, and I believe that everybody that wants to work is working.

D. Penner: Yeah. I don't know how you get there, to tell you the truth. But I know that we're way, way over that right now, and we're still bringing in jobs from other places.

P. Pimm: Yeah, and for the young fellows that are tradespeople that are working here, I'll leave you my number, and they can give me a call. I can assure you that we'll put them to work.

P. Pimm: "Hiring should always be locals first and should include all unemployed and not be restricted to local First Nations." I'm curious about why the second part is in there.

D. Penner: A lot of the jobs…. When they're contracted to big firms such as KMP, for example, there's a conditional agreement that's written with the First Nations people, and the First Nations are granted in the provision of the employment within that contract that they will get jobs first and that they will get a certain amount of those jobs. It's happening with the transmission line. It's happening with KMP.

I don't have any problem with the fact that we want to employ our First Nations people. Please don't get me wrong as far as that goes. However, when we have…. Whatever happened to equality? That's one of the reasons why I'm asking this.

I'm confused as to why a person who is qualified — for example, this young man who was sitting there for three months — can't get the job. There are X amount of jobs being held for X amount of people — in this case at KMP, which would be the Haisla — but they're not qualified, and they can't fill those positions. Yet nobody can go into those seats, because they don't happen to be a Haisla member.

Do you see what I'm saying? This is why I've wrapped it that way. It's not that…. If all the Haisla people were employed and we still had additional jobs for those people to come in, that would be a different story. They can't employ them because they're not skilled, and yet those spots are being held for them. Somewhere along the line there's a problem with that. That equation doesn't work. It's not fair, and it's not equitable, and it causes a rift in communities.
[ Page 2261 ]

D. Horne (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. That comes to the end of our allotted time.

We'll now call our final witness on our schedule today, and that is the Tamitik Status of Women Association. Cheryl, I probably need to apologize, because I probably blew the name completely, but as you've heard several times, you have ten minutes to present, and your time begins now.

C. Rumley: Thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to talk with you this evening. My name is Cheryl Rumley, and I work for the Tamitik Status of Women. I also want to acknowledge the opportunity to be here with you tonight on Haisla territory.

I've worked for the Tamitik Status of Women for about 16 years. I've lived, worked and played and raised all three of our children in Kitimat. But what I'd like to say tonight is two points, the first one being housing and the second one being domestic violence.

In terms of housing, our agency has an outreach program, and that is the work that I've been doing for 16 years. Part of that program…. There's a mandate to help women in a relationship situation, whether they have experienced abuse or they're leaving an abusive relationship, to find affordable housing. That work I've been doing for about 16 years. As a result of that, we have been on the ground, shining a light on housing issues in our community for a really long time.

I guess you probably all know that Kitimat is on the map for having double-digit vacancy rates for a really long time in the province of B.C., and what I really want to say tonight is that in a very short time, probably less than ten months, we have gone from a double-digit vacancy rate to…. Some say 4 percent; some say less. This, I believe, is putting a lot of pressure on the citizens in our community, especially women who are living in unsafe situations.

For example, one of my colleagues was renting an apartment last April for about $425. That same apartment now runs for about $650. In speaking with the rest of my colleagues in the province, they also have dealt over the past few years with issues around affordable housing — supportive housing, affordable housing.

What I feel is unique about Kitimat is that we have not done the work, both in our own community and with the province, to have options around supportive and subsidized housing, whereas when I talk to many of my colleagues in the province, there are those options in their communities. So this is something that…. Now our housing task force is on the ground, working together to be able to provide grants and proposals to work in this area.

We go back and think about the person renting an apartment in Kitimat for $425, and it's now $650. If that's someone who is trying to leave an abusive situation and, for a series of unfortunate circumstances, has to go on assistance on a temporary basis to provide safe housing, that single person gets $610 a month both for their shelter and for their support. If they're looking at trying to rent a one-bedroom place for $650, we've got a pretty big shortfall happening.

Even though our community has rallied together for Good Food Box and Food Share and food bank programs, this is not enough. We really need the help of the province to work together toward affordable and supportive housing.

In terms of that work, like I say, this is something that's happened over a really short period of time, so that has also put a lot of stresses and tensions on the community around people being able to find affordable housing.

The next point I wanted to talk to you about is in relation to a report that was recently released by the provincial agency that was just developed in March of 2010. I didn't print out the document for you, because it's a government document and you guys would probably all be able to find it. That is from the office of domestic violence in response to the tragedy surrounding the deaths of the three children.

I'll just read it out to you. It's Honouring Kaitlynne, Max and Cordon: Make Their Voices Heard Now. This was as a result of a report from the Representative for Children and Youth.

What I wanted to talk to you about is…. In this report there are eight recommendations. A lot of the recommendations in this report speak to training.

I've been doing this work for 16 years. It's one of the most extensive goals for training initiatives around training for the health system, for the justice system, for the child protection system — and I think that's wonderful — based on information and awareness. I think it's really a great report.

My concern, which I share with you tonight, is: how will this be resourced? Will this be money taken from other social development programs? How will this be resourced? Will there be new money? We're talking about training Crown counsel. So it's very extensive. I'd really like to know how it's going to be resourced.

We currently have a situation where the organization that has been doing training for many, many years for the anti-violence sector, for victim service programs continually gets their funding cut. So this kind of seems odd to me, where we have a report that…. Its goals are very noble, but where will this money come from when we have training programs that are currently being cut? That's a concern that I want to share with you this evening.

In terms of B.C. and domestic violence, we are more than the national average in terms of reported spousal assaults. We now know that there's an increase in children
[ Page 2262 ]
witnessing. In 2004, in spousal assault situations, children witnessed approximately 40 percent of the time. Now, the new information that we're getting is over 50 percent of the time, so I really think there's a lot of work to be done.

I do not see that it's a time to take money from social development programs. I really think there's an interconnectedness with housing here. I have had women go back into abusive relationships because of the lack of housing options.

D. Horne (Chair): Well, thank you so much for your presentation. We'll now move to questions from members.

Seeing none, that brings us to the end of our official program for the day. We do have one gentleman who signed up for the open mike, so I'll now call him forward. That is Ernie Archer.

Mr. Archer, please come forward. Now that we're into the open-mike session, which I believe you heard at the beginning, you'll have five minutes to present. I'll let you know when you've got about a minute left. Then we'll have a few questions from members, if they have any, and we'll go from there. Perfect. So you have your time now.

E. Archer: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here, and I'm going to give you specific instances of the problems we have. One of the problems we don't have…. Our doctors, nurses, our physio and our lab are good — exceptional. Everybody gets taken care of when they want to and how they want to. Our biggest problem in this hospital is food.

I was in a hospital last year after an accident for 105 days, and I lost 33 pounds because the food is not edible. Now, I worked as purchasing supervisor for Alcan in Kemano, and I bought a kitchen for over there almost identical to the one we have here. It cost $120,000. As I look back on it, the only thing it's being used for is to boil water for coffee, and it's bloody expensive coffee.

I've been on the committee or chaired a disability commission for the last ten years. Anytime somebody gets a bad meal in that hospital, I can tell you, because my phone is going to ring. It does quite frequently.

We had a case of stinky food. It stunk so badly the family had to take it out of the room. They took it home, and they froze it. They brought it to me. I gave it to Kitimat council. Nothing has been done with it, as far as I know now. The last I heard, it's in the freezer here. That same night they had mouldy chicken. I can see that happening.

A woman goes in to feed her father. There's a hamburger stuck out of his mouth, and she tried to figure out why. She took it out of his mouth and tried to cut it. She couldn't because it was frozen.

I had three dietitians try to convince me that they're cooking in that kitchen. Unless they've got a freezer somewhere down the hallway…. It's only 300 feet from the kitchen to multilevel. So they're not getting their money's worth.

Being in purchasing for a number of years…. The cost of transportation is excessive to get it up here. I'm sure that with the money you save on transportation — getting the stuff to SYS in Kelowna, getting it on your truck after it's cooked, shipped to the different hospitals…. I'm sure you could save money.

I don't have any figures on it because I don't have the contract to find out what it's costing per day and per patient, but when you think of the fact that some of these people in multilevel care are paying $7,000 and $8,000 a month to be there, that's garbage they're getting — absolute garbage. They shouldn't be getting it for that kind of money.

The reason I know is that I was asked if I wanted to go in there. Rather than doing that, we spent over $100,000 remodelling our home so it's livable. I hope I never have to go back to the hospital.

You go in the hospital and ask somebody what their complaints are? The food. Ninety percent of what comes out of the kitchen goes back. It's a waste of money. I can't see why somebody can't hire staff for the kitchen so that we can get decent food.

In the old hospital we had people that were in there who said the food was great. I know I told the hospital administrator that if he wanted, I'd write the contract for him. But if he hires somebody…. If he sees a Portuguese woman, hire her. You can live off her soups. I guarantee it.

SYS. I asked the question the other day. Nobody could answer. Was SYS buying from XL meats in Brooks? That would make a difference. Are they getting their fish from a sea farm? One of the problems they had is…. You get fish, supposedly fresh, with meat sauce on it. It's not edible.

Right now I have a menu that they put out, and there are only four meals out of the month that don't have mashed potatoes. I just hope somebody here convinces people in this hospital or in Northern Health to get their act together and find us some way of getting the food cooked here.

I never got a quicker reaction in telling a dietitian in Prince George that I hoped the next time I meet her I'm not sitting across the table from her at an inquest for why somebody died of malnutrition in Kitimat General Hospital.

D. Horne (Chair): Mr. Archer, thank you so much for your presentation. I think we've got the gist of it.

G. Coons: Yes. Just a comment, Ernie. Thank you so much. We've heard other issues, concerns, about food in my community, Prince Rupert. It's something that I honestly believe we should be resourcing locally and getting local produce and local meat. Any trucks coming in from
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Kelowna should be coming in with fruits and vegetables.

E. Archer: Thank you very much. Anything, please. I've been writing the newspapers and everything else, and I don't seem to be getting any action. Maybe you gentlemen will help me out.

That brings us to the end of our presentations here in Kitimat. I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

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1) Northwest Community College	Dr. Denise Henning
	Cathay Sousa
2) Haisla Nation Council	Councillor Ellis Ross
3) Kitimat and Bulkley Valley Child Development Centres	Margaret Warcup
4) Kitimat Health Advocacy Group	Rob Goffinet
5) Northwest Community College Students' Union	Mikael Jensen
	Kathryn Chicoine
6) Residents Advocating for a Safe Inclusive Environment	Diana Penner
	Tina Brower
7) Tamitik Status of Women Association	Cheryl Rumley
8) Ernie Archer

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:	Stephanie Raymond (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Ernie Archer
	Tina Brower (Residents Advocating for a Safe Inclusive Environment)
	Kathryn Chicoine (Northwest Community College Students Union)
	Rob Goffinet (Kitimat Health Advocacy Group)
	Dr. Denise Henning (President and CEO, Northwest Community College)
	Mikael Jensen (Northwest Community College Students Union)
	Diana Penner (Residents Advocating for a Safe Inclusive Environment)
	Ellis Ross (Chief Councillor, Haisla Nation Council)
	Cheryl Rumley (Tamitik Status of Women Association)
	Cathay Sousa (Northwest Community College)
	Margaret Warcup (Executive Director, Kitimat Child Development Centre Association; Bulkley Valley Child Development Centre)

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