Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 6 — Tuesday, September 24, 2013 (HTML)

Sardis and Hemlock Room, Coast Chilliwack Hotel
45920 First Avenue
Chilliwack, B.C.

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Mike Farnworth, MLA (Deputy Chair); Mable Elmore, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Scott Hamilton, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Marvin Hunt, MLA; Lana Popham, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA

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

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

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

17. 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	175
K. Gemmell
L. Gerard
L. Perrin
D. Denault
M. Saunders
N. Jones
P. Kariya
J. Robinson
D. Howe
C. Hames
J. Grenz

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. We are the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. This is an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly whose mandate includes conducting annual public consultations on the upcoming provincial budget.

We would like to welcome everybody in attendance today. Thank you very much for taking time to attend. We really appreciate your participation in this important process.

Every year the Minister of Finance releases a budget consultation paper. The paper contains a fiscal and economic forecast and key issues that need to be addressed in the next budget. Once the consultation paper has been released, this committee is required to hold provincewide public consultations. All British Columbians are invited to provide input on the budget.

Following the consultations, the committee releases a report of the consultations along with a recommendation for the upcoming budget. This report must be presented to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15.

There are several ways for British Columbians to participate. This public hearing is one of 17 scheduled to take place in communities throughout the province. All British Columbians are invited to be present or attend the hearings, and we have also scheduled a video conference for five additional communities. British Columbians can also participate in the consultation by sending a written submission, video file, letter or fax.

Information on the consultations, including instructions on how to make a submission, is available at our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, October 16. All the public input we receive is carefully considered.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for up to ten minutes. An additional five minutes is allotted for questions from the committee members.

Time permitting, we may also have an open-mike session near the end of the hearing. Five minutes are allotted for each presentation. If you would like to register for the open mike, please check with the staff at the information table.

Today's meeting is a public hearing and will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes, will be printed and will be made available at the committee's website.

A live audio webcast is also being broadcast through the website. The committee is also on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook you'll find us underneath the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, and on Twitter we are at twitter.com/BCFinanceComm.

I would now ask members of the committee to introduce themselves. I'll start over here.

D. Ashton (Chair): My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA from Penticton. I'll be chairing the proceedings and working very closely with Vice-Chair Mike Farnworth and all the committee representatives and staff to ensure what is said today is forwarded to the government for proper consideration.

Also joining us today from the parliamentary committees office are some very hard-working and dedicated individuals: our Clerk, Susan Sourial; and Stephanie Raymond, who is staffing the desk at the back.

Michael Baer and Jean Medland are also here on behalf of Hansard Services. I have to say this. Congratulations on being so quick. My gosh, what a feat that you folks do.

As you heard, there'll be an allotment for a ten-minute presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then what'll happen is that there are up to five minutes for questions.

K. Gemmell: Thank you. Before I start the presentation, I do want to introduce my….

K. Gemmell: I wanted to introduce my friends with me. Fieny van den Boom, to my left, is the executive director of the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce. Kirk Dzaman, to my right, is the vice-president of the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce. And my name is
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Kevin Gemmell. I am the president of the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce.

D. Ashton (Chair): While we're doing the introductions, I would also like to recognize John Martin from Chilliwack. One of our peers is an MLA here.

K. Gemmell: I don't think I'll need the two-minute warning. I'm pretty sure four minutes ought to do it. I certainly hope that what we're going to talk about does fit the mandate of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government.

On behalf of the membership of the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee. Our membership does have many concerns moving forward, as we're comprised mostly of small businesses.

We're choosing to speak on one regulation, covered under the Assessment Act — the "Classification of land as a farm" regulation, specifically allowing a home to be assessed at a lower-than-normal tax level, as the home would be classified as part of the farming operation.

Chilliwack, as you may or may not know, is comprised of a large portion of high-quality ALR land. The residents of Chilliwack generally embrace our agriculture roots and the history of farming in the upper Fraser Valley. It is, however, of great concern to business, big and small, with regards to a recent change to the Assessment Act. In essence, the regulation has lowered property tax–assessed values on farm buildings and residential homes on ALR land where the farmland is being rented to a neighbour.

A primary example would be a large home worth a significant amount of money may now be assessed at pennies on the dollar for the purpose of property tax. The municipalities, such as the city of Chilliwack, rely on property tax load largely to balance their budgets. The province's incentive on farmland is therefore off-loaded to businesses and consumers. In Chilliwack, as a heavy farmland or ALR community, there could be a significant increase in the property tax burden to business.

The Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce does understand the fiscal challenges to maintain a viable farming operation. We realize it has become increasingly difficult, due in large part to the state of the economy and other broad societal changes. But that's no different than small businesses challenges every day in Chilliwack and other parts of B.C. that don't qualify for tax reductions.

As the committee evaluates all they have heard over the last two weeks and during the weeks ahead, the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce is certainly hopeful that you will take the information presented to create change that's beneficial to all sectors of the community.

Already I'm done. I thank you for hearing what we had to say, and I certainly would try to answer any questions you might have.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Thank you. I want to commend you for raising a specific and practical issue. I think that's useful for the committee. We get lots of generalizations, but when there's something specific, that's particularly useful.

Have you done any analysis, or has there been any analysis done on the impact to Chilliwack in terms of lost tax revenue on the number of properties that this might affect?

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Has it come into effect yet, in terms of a full budget cycle, or is it just a recent change?

K. Gemmell: My understanding is it came into effect September 1, 2012, so just about a full budget cycle.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): My final question is: have you approached the municipality to see if they are looking at the impact of it in terms of tax revenue?

K. Gemmell: No. Unfortunately, we've had basically two weeks' notice to put a presentation together. We rambled around a number of ideas. We thought, "Jeez, we'd love to talk about HST, but I don't think the government wants to go there right now," despite, as a business person…. We think it's great.

This seemed like something that had the ability to see some real change, but we did not have a real opportunity to dig deep into it. I'd be happy to, perhaps, follow up, if that is….

D. Ashton (Chair): Lana, just before I go to you, I'd like to welcome Laurie Throness, also. Laurie, thanks for coming by. That's Chilliwack-Hope. Am I correct? Thank you.

I'm wondering if the implications have been thought out around incentivizing farming. Whether or not somebody has an expensive house or a not-expensive house on a piece of farmland…. Part of the policy that was developed, I believe, was to make sure that the land where it's situated stays in production. So if there is no incentive to lease land out to even a neighbour…. Have you thought about the implications of that?
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K. Gemmell: I haven't thought specifically, maybe, deeply into those, but my thought would be, if you're talking about, say, a quarter of the land, a quarter-section of land, why is the house classified the same as the rest of the land in production when, in reality, the house itself is not in production? Why would that not be assessed at a higher rate for that piece of the land?

So they're not breaking the parcel up, I guess, is the way to say it. That doesn't make sense to me.

Thank you very much, folks, for coming in. Again, thank you for being a participant. It is on record, and it is being live-broadcast. That's the reason we go through the spiel at the front. So thank you for coming.

D. Ashton (Chair): Lorraine, welcome. The layout is a ten-minute presentation with five minutes for questions. I'll give you a two-minute warning in the presentation. The floor is yours. Thank you very much for coming.

L. Gerard: I would ask, if you don't mind, rather than reading ahead…. The presentation that you're being given is exactly my speaking notes.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to address the all-party Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in preparation of the 2014 provincial budget. My name is Lorraine Gerard, and I'm the executive director of the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association.

We represent organizations and individuals involved in the delivery of hospice palliative care in British Columbia. B.C. Hospice Palliative Care is made up of hospice societies, health care professionals, thousands of volunteers and other individuals who are committed to ensuring that all British Columbians have access to quality end-of-life care. I believe that we at BCHPCA also represent the 32,000 British Columbians who will die in 2014 and the 160,000 people who will be directly affected by those deaths.

I'd like to start by asking you a few quick questions. They're very important, and I won't ask you to shout out the answers.

Are you aware of the end-of-life care options in your own communities? Have you and your loved ones documented your advance-care plans? If you can answer yes to that, you're in very select company. If you have answered yes, have you also discussed them with your physician? And if you answered no to a documented advance-care plan, can BCHPCA and its members help you begin that conversation?

As B.C.'s population ages, the number of people with chronic and/or end-stage illnesses and conditions will increase, and so increases the demand for quality end-of-life care. This is not only an issue of our seniors population. Think about the children we all care about who may develop terminal illnesses or the youth whose sometimes hazardous lifestyles puts them at risk of grievous injury from which there is no recovery. They, too, will require quality end-of-life care.

No one in this room is exempt. We will all lose loved ones to illness, advanced age or serious injury. It could be a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child or a very, very dear friend. Quality end-of-life care is the type of care you and I would want for ourselves or our loved ones once treatment is deemed no longer curative. Quality end-of-life care includes a full range of clinical and other care services which can be provided in a residential hospice, in a palliative care program in a hospital, in a long-term-care facility or in the home.

We know that most people, when asked, say they wish to die at home in familiar surroundings. With the appropriate supports, this can be leading to a peaceful and dignified death. Those supports can include pain-and-symptom management, personal care, respite services for family caregivers, household management, as well as bereavement support. In many communities in B.C. hospice societies staff and volunteers work in people's homes and with families during the time the patient is dying and then later, providing grief support.

BCHPCA believes that quality end-of-life care begins with knowing how you wish to be cared for as you approach your end of life and ensuring those wishes are known. In the event that you're unable to communicate your wishes, your substitute decision-maker can be confident and comfortable to say this is what he or she wanted or would not have wanted for their treatment. Think of the gift of comfort and ease of decision-making that you can give your loved ones by making your own advance-care plan. They will grieve the loss, but they will know they honoured your last wishes.

Let's imagine, like so many people, we decide not to talk about it — "it" being death. We push it aside. We ignore it, thinking it'll be too painful, too upsetting to talk about, so we don't plan, we don't discuss, and we don't prepare. Without a plan, health care teams do not know your intentions, what treatment you wanted, what services you didn't want.

There could be disagreements within the family as to what services should be provided — a further impact on the health care team — perhaps resulting in treatment or care services that the patient would never have wanted. When the person who is dying has documented their wishes, there's no lack of clarity for the health care team or for the loved ones. That plan is the gift we give our
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own loved ones, relieving them of the pressure to make difficult decisions in the future.

The data on the cost of end-of-life care are not complete, but in one province the average monthly cost per person for public health care went from $1,000 in the 12 months before death to $7,000 in the 30 days before death — a sevenfold increase. The costs of such care are due, in a large part, to admissions to hospital for acute care services that might never have been chosen by the patient with the terminal diagnosis. Palliative care services in hospitals have been shown in one study to reduce costs of end-of-life care by 50 percent.

Patients' choices on care services they want, including hospice palliative care, can be documented in their advance-care plans, but more than 85 percent of Canadians have never heard of an advance-care plan, and less than 10 percent have spoken to their health care professional about their end-of-life choices.

These plans are legal in B.C. and will provide the care we choose while reducing the imposition of unwanted, costly and perhaps futile services. BCHPCA is ready to partner with the Ministry of Health in the implementation of the action plan for end-of-life care in B.C.

The provincial government has committed to expansion of palliative care services in the province. We're asking to be at that table planning together for the provision of comprehensive, quality palliative care services for all British Columbians who are dying and for their loved ones, regardless of where they live in the province.

BCHPCA is also committed to educating the public about the need for and the value of advance-care planning and to working in partnership to create systems for their storage and retrieval. These are strategic priorities for us.

We believe that advance-care planning is key to improving quality end-of-life care, and it begins with a conversation. We understand that for many people that conversation is frightening. We need to work together to help people overcome those fears. Let us help you start your own conversations.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): I just want to thank you for your presentation. I think it's a very important issue that you've raised. Your final statements in terms of having your wishes as the individual — you're right. With families, it's particularly important. I know, just from personal experience and also from constituents coming to the office. When the dying person, the spouse for example, may not be the biological parent of the siblings, of the children of the family, the potential for problems is just horrific, just nasty. So advanced-care directives and planning, I think, is essential.

My question is: are the current resources that are available adequate? Do you think there needs to be an increase? Do you think there needs to be an additional focus in some areas where a shift in focus would help raise awareness? What do you think is the best way to go about doing it?

L. Gerard: We are preparing an education campaign to roll out across the province. It's not something we can do on our own. We will galvanize our entire membership, which is across the province. But we do need support. It needs to happen with the health authorities, with BCMA. BCMA is also committed to advance-care planning. There needs to be a commitment and investment to make this happen.

The piece that we know will be important is some type of a registry, some way of storing these plans so that they're retrievable, so people can edit them if they want but that everybody knows where they are. So whether it's a chip on the CareCard or whether it's a 1-800 number, there's some way of knowing that when you or I make our plan, it's there and it's available when the time comes.

E. Foster: Just to echo what Mike said, thanks for the presentation. It is extremely important. After having dealt with the North Okanagan Hospice Society and helped with a friend who passed there, my wife and I certainly changed our plans and got involved. I think that anything we can do to help your association move this forward is important.

As Mike said, it can get very nasty when people get to the end of life and maybe they're not in shape to really make their wishes known. I think it's extremely important, what you're doing, and anything we can do to support it, I think we would be happy — I certainly would be happy — to help.

M. Elmore: Thanks, Lorraine. I have a question with regards to the…. I think it was a good, welcome announcement of the government to expand, to support palliative care services and to bring in the action plan for the end-of-life care in B.C.

In your submission you are asking to be at the table to plan together. What's the status of that? Are you involved in the discussions?

L. Gerard: We have spoken to Minister Lake. It's early days. We know that. We have had a back-and-forth conversation. I'm not sure that a lot has happened yet. There's certainly not been a closed door or any thing of that nature, but we haven't been advised of any beginning meetings yet.

M. Elmore: Okay. In terms of your plans for an advanced-care planning campaign, is that a specific recommendation or a specific ask that you're bringing forward?

L. Gerard: No, we're asking for overall support. We
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believe this is part of social change. This isn't just about writing a document. This is huge.

If you talk about expanding end-of-life care services, you kind of have to know what services are going to be needed and wanted at that time. The only way we're going to know is if we ask people and they are clear in what they want and even clearer, maybe, in what they don't want, which is the piece that is always difficult. If the person has chosen that at this stage they want no further treatment and there isn't the additional acute care services — the diagnostics, all of those extras…. This is a good story.

L. Popham: As we watch Washington State and Quebec start to discuss right-to-die legislation, I'm wondering if that's a discussion that the B.C. Hospice would enter into.

L. Gerard: B.C. Hospice Palliative Care and, actually, Canadian Hospice Palliative Care, to which we all belong, are monitoring those discussions. We believe in the palliative approach, and it's what we are committed to. The palliative approach provides quality care and pain management to natural death. It doesn't hasten or delay death. We're on a very straight line of discussion.

S. Hamilton: Thank you very much for the presentation. I guess I spent a little too much time in the Boy Scouts, because I think I was able to answer yes to all but one of your questions. The question I was unable to answer yes to was the one about having the discussion with your family physician.

I guess this is more of an operational question. I'm wondering. Though we can all have discussions with our family physicians about what our wishes are at the end of our lives, or as we choose it, all too often it happens a little more suddenly.

I'd be curious, through the Ministry of Health, whether or not there's a way of communicating that discussion with whatever facilities are available to us, where hospitals could find that information, essentially, on line. Doctors are using the ability to put that information in, post it up, and it's accessible to other physicians.

Again, it doesn't always happen at a gradual pace. Quite often these sorts of things happen suddenly.

L. Gerard: That's right. It's one of the reasons why we're looking at trying to encourage a system where all plans will be in one place and be retrievable. I know when my parents, both very elderly when they died…. They died 31 days apart in the same hospital. I had the plans in my hand, but their family physician had no part in their care because they were being seen by a hospitalist, which is much more the current fashion.

I think why we're asking right now is because there isn't a system for storage and retrieval. Somebody has to know. The family knows that you've talked to your physician, so if you end up in hospital, there can be a conversation like that. But you're right. If it's an emergency situation — if it's an accident, if it's anything like that — decisions need to be made very quickly.

L. Perrin: I'm doing well. I'm happy to be presenting earlier than my time slot.

D. Ashton (Chair): Perfect. Well, thanks for coming early. It helps us out a lot too.

For today it's a ten-minute presentation that's been allotted. I'll give you a two-minute warning. Also, there is approximately five minutes allotted for questions. At your convenience, please start.

First of all, I want to welcome you all here to the beautiful and productive Fraser Valley. I think most of you are new to this task, except for MLA Elmore. I looked at the former committee composition. I regret, though…. I guess there is no one here from the north, because what I'm going to be talking about is a Fort Nelson issue. In the past, MLA Pimm has been on the committee and really understood what I was talking about, but hopefully, after I've talked to you and you've read what I've submitted, you'll understand it better.

What I'm going to be talking about is a quest for justice. It stems from a longstanding dispute between the government and my client, a small, family-run forest company, and this is the fifth time that I've appeared before this committee with regard to this.

I'm a former federal government worker and very familiar with the Financial Administration Act federally. I run a small business. I'm a public policy analyst. I got my MPP in 2008 from SFU. I've been a consultant and a legal researcher for Omineca since 1994.

John Peterson, who is one of the original owners-partners in Omineca, is now the secretary–general manager of this Fort Nelson–based small business. He's the first generation of four generations of his family now who have an interest in this. They live in Fort Nelson, Salmon Arm, Burnaby and Abbotsford.

This company has joint-ventured with First Nations in
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the north. They're a company who believes in the highest and best use of the wood, of the trees, and have for a long time. They're the kind of forest company that we really want to have in this province.

Why should this committee take this quest for justice seriously? Fort Nelson is the centre of natural gas activity right now and, I guess, the future of the economy of British Columbia, to some extent. Many of the workers fly in from beyond B.C. That means there are no taxes — no income taxes for B.C. and no property taxes for the town of Fort Nelson — whereas forestry processing versus raw log exports 360 kilometres away to Fort St. John means local taxes for Fort Nelson and means taxes for B.C., and jobs.

I'm going to read the last paragraph of my submission first. I have done extensive research on this, and I'm known as a person who is really good at digging things up. I've reviewed over 12,000 documents, and I've witnessed numerous hearings over 20 years. I urge this committee to help encourage the government to resolve this issue.

Once again, Omineca has the support of a number of NDP party constituency associations, including Peace River North, where Fort Nelson is. A number of people have sent letters to the Premier, the Minister of Forests and the Leader of the Official Opposition this year, as they have in past years. In fact, former Finance Committee members, B.C. Liberal MLAs, including even a cabinet minister, and B.C. NDP Forests critics have all tried to intervene towards a resolution in this matter.

On June 5 of this year, after doing some research as far as the Financial Administration Act of this province goes, I sent a letter to the comptroller general's forest forensic audit staff asking that they investigate this matter, that they do a forensic audit on it. My request is based on what I see as a number of breaches of the Forest Act and the public accounts acts of the province.

Some of what I said to Mr. Peck, who is in the investigations and forensic unit, was that I felt that the reason this needs to be looked at is that the ministry long ago failed to apply money available to what they say is a debt, which is at the very basis of this conflict. This dispute was a debt that caused the cancellation of some licences.

Just so that you know, four years ago 500 jobs were lost in the forest sector in Fort Nelson, and they've not come back. They've not come back.

That's why it's so important that this be resolved, because this company is still operating up there — in a very minimal way, but nonetheless, still operating.

What's happened is that we've had interest, excessive interest, applied, and it's contrary to the Financial Administration Act or public accounts act of this province. There've been a number of breaches. Actually, I'd say shockingly, documents were shredded during legal actions, both an administrative tribunal and a civil action. The ministry shredded documents. Their records are inconsistent. They actually placed a lien on Omineca's assets, and when they were asked to provide proof of the cause for that lien, they had to withdraw that lien because they did not have proof.

D. Ashton (Chair): You're getting close, Lynn, to two minutes, and then we're going to need a quick encapsulation of exactly what you're after for all of us, please. You're still okay. You still have three minutes.

L. Perrin: Okay. What I'm after is…. Now I'm going to go to a letter that's attached from Omineca here. First of all, they want an out-of-court settlement. They want the government to agree to either a mediation or arbitration, or there are other legal mechanisms that are mentioned in here. I mean, they could maybe be helped along by a forensic audit. The province, you know, has really stalled dealing with this matter even though a Supreme Court judge's ruling from a number of years ago still stands and there should be damages or some kind of compensation such as what was afforded to Carrier Lumber.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Carrier Lumber case, but this is the twin to the Carrier Lumber case. And in the Carrier Lumber case, there were funds given to the company to do business. There was tenure given to the company to do business because the ministry was at fault for the company's licence cancellation.

We want the government to really urgently sit down and agree to some kind of out-of-court process for a settlement so that this company can stop spending time and money on this dispute and return 100 percent to forestry in this province.

You know, while the older generation certainly is far past retirement, the younger generation is definitely ready, willing, able, knowledgable and skilled to provide forestry jobs up in the north. We need a diverse economy up there. We can't just depend on one resource.

D. Ashton (Chair): There's a minute left, Lynn. Could you just give us a real brief synopsis of the action that you're asking us for?

L. Perrin: Yeah. We would like this committee to, I guess, first of all, have a look at the proposal of Omineca, and we want this committee to recommend that the government follow through and enter into an out-of-court settlement. So we want this committee, for the benefit of the economy in the north, to recommend that this dispute be settled.

S. Hamilton: Thanks, Lynn. Just for the benefit…. And you mentioned it early on in your presentation. There's not a lot of brain trust here in terms of any historical background. The last two pages of what you submitted are a couple of newspaper articles. Would that give us a fairly good concept of the background — what it is we're dealing with here — if we read these articles? I haven't had a chance to look at them.

L. Perrin: Yeah, they would. Also, we've spent a fair bit of time on a website, and there's lots of information on there. We've always wanted to give information — you know, factual information — to anyone that we have asked to look into this. So in my letter and also in Mr. Peterson's letter, which is in this package, there are links to that website, and there are links to the proposal. There are links to a legal mechanism or tools that can be used in this.

S. Hamilton: So essentially, you're looking to settle the dispute, and we can find the background and bone up on the information with regard to that dispute in here.

L. Perrin: Yes, there's lots of information there. If there are any questions at all, please feel free to contact me or Mr. Peterson.

D. Ashton (Chair): Debbie, Maggie, welcome. Thank you very much for coming for the presentation. The presentation is ten minutes; five minutes for questions, if required, from the board here. I'll give you a two-minute warning in the presentation, up to the ten. So please start at your convenience.

D. Denault: Good evening. My name is Debbie Denault, and I am a literacy outreach coordinator with the Chilliwack Learning Community Society.

I am also very pleased to introduce Maggie Saunders. Maggie is a volunteer tutor, the co-chair of the adult literacy task group in our community and the president of the Chilliwack Learning Community Society board of directors. Maggie is a true community literacy champion, and I am so pleased that she can be here today.

It's a privilege to have the opportunity to address your committee. We have come before you to thank you for literacy funding, to tell you that the funding is making a huge impact on citizens and communities and to ask that you continue to fund literacy.

Thank you to the government of British Columbia for the funding that you provide to Decoda Literacy Solutions for the coordination of literacy work across the province. This funding allows us in our community to run literacy and learning programs in Chilliwack. The funds also give us access to literacy resources, tools and networks through Decoda.

Because of the funding we are able to provide people with unique programs and opportunities to improve their quality of life and to achieve their goals. Increased individual literacy levels positively impact everything from health care to employment to the economy. Increased literacy rates improve our collective ability to participate in today's B.C. jobs plan.

Your funding enables us to reach all parts of the community. We reach adults, youth, children and families, seniors, aboriginal people and immigrants.

One example of a unique program which can incorporate any of the groups just mentioned in one way or another is our stress-free math homework for parents' workshops. Our partner is the Chilliwack school district, and our target group is parents whose children are in kindergarten to grade 6 and attending schools where we know that the vulnerability rates of the children are of concern and that the families need additional support in order to learn and thrive.

The goal of the program is to increase the math confidence and knowledge of the adult and to learn how to have fun with math at home with their children. Positive outcomes affect the parent, child and family unit as a whole.

We also attach volunteer tutors to this program, which opens the door to the possibility of adults carrying on their learning after the program with the help of a tutor, if they wish.

Because this is a unique and innovative program, we will be taking it to the Decoda provincial literacy conference and inviting others to learn how to take this program to their own communities.

I also have, in my notes that I gave you, the link to a video so that you can see it, if you wish.

We're not here to ask for more money to operate programs like this one. We are here to ask that you continue to provide the minimum amount of funding required for the coordination of literacy work across the province, which is $2.5 million. This amount has been provided in the past and was reduced and was reinstated. There is currently only $1.5 million in this year's budget.

We're also here to ask that you provide the minimum support consistently over multiple years so that we can
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continue to improve the quality of life for people in our communities. The funding makes the difference in people's lives, and it builds stronger communities. Our community is a testament to that.

In conclusion, thank you for funding. Really, thank you for funding. Thank you for learning a little bit about our local programs. And thank you, in advance, for considering the possibility of $2.5 million of multiple-year literacy funding via Decoda Literacy Solutions.

Thank you for your time, and we would be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, Debbie. We just actually had a presentation from Decoda in PoCo. A very good presentation.

M. Hunt: I just think some members of the committee here are wanting to learn how to have fun with math.

M. Saunders: It is huge, actually — the math anxiety that comes with people. This program is very spectacular in taking that away — just the whole method that they use, of using games and getting the parents comfortable. I love it because I also have another thing that I do, working with adults learning math, and this is almost like the beginning step for that program. They get into their own, and they're like: "Hey, I can do this. If my children can do this, I can do this."

J. Tegart: On the math program, I think that in public schools, for a long time, that's how we have sent kids on pathways that perhaps limited their opportunities later on. It's great that math literacy is one of your focuses.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, ladies, thank you very much. Maggie and Debbie, thank you for coming today. So we're on the record with that. And like I said, it was a very good presentation in Port Coquitlam. So have a good day.

D. Ashton (Chair): And yours was also very good. This was from Decoda, so we heard directly.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much for coming tonight. We look forward to your presentation. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning. We have reserved five minutes for questions from the committee.

N. Jones: Thanks very much for hearing from us today. Unfortunately, we had two other colleagues lined up to do this, but they've fallen ill, so I'm glad that you guys could be flexible. Thanks for hearing from us.

Both myself and Ian work with the WaterWealth Project here in Chilliwack. We're a locally based non-profit, non-partisan group working for better freshwater protection. That's our main focus. We're really geared towards connecting with the local community and hearing from them, and we've been doing a lot of outreach work to hear from them.

I myself was born and raised in the Fraser Valley, and I've lived in the Chilliwack area for about a year and a half. I live in Yarrow, which is in south Chilliwack, and have been really privileged to have direct access to the amazing water wealth that we have here in the Fraser Valley. It's a really unique part not just in the province but in fact in the whole world for our freshwater systems here right now. The pink salmon are running and spawning in the river, and I've been out there enjoying them a lot.

Why water matters to us is beyond environmental reasons. We recognize that healthy, vital freshwater systems are integral to the health of our community as well as the vitality of our local economy.

In the outreach we've been doing, both to just general community members as well as the business community, we've heard from a lot of people in this part of the world whose entire businesses are based on our water wealth here in this part of the valley, from the recreation fishing industry to outdoor tourism. Even just talking to parents and teachers, the fresh water in this part of the world is really an integral part of this community and why people choose to live here.

We know that there will be impacts on the economy of this community if our fresh water was to be either contaminated or depleted beyond recognition. As I'm sure you know, there's been a lot of talk lately about Water Act modernization. There's been a lot of pickup in the media about it.

We know that since we've been on the ground…. We're a relatively new group. We've been on the ground for about five months, and we've had nearly 2,000 supporters join our call, joining our message for Water Act modernization.

There are mounting water issues in B.C. Top of the list for us is unresolved aboriginal rights and title. We know that this issue isn't going away in B.C. and that water is included in aboriginal rights and title. We know that good Water Act modernization would have very meaningful reconciliation with First Nations. So we think that that's very important.

We also recognize that there's a huge absence of useful data on the big freshwater picture in B.C., because for so
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long the government hasn't been asking or requiring reporting. That is a big issue.

We also know that without a big picture oversight on our water as well as implementation of those oversight measures at the local level, we won't really have a good idea of the sustainability of our water systems, both in terms of groundwater…. I'm sure you've heard of the recent commercial appropriation of groundwater by Nestlé. This is happening in other industries too. Without meaningful oversight of that, we don't know where our groundwater levels are.

We also know that this needs to go beyond just groundwater protection to surface water protection as well. With independent power projects becoming more and more, without good oversight of how those projects have a cumulative impact on the water system, there's really no way of measuring instream flow needs for the ecological functions of our water system.

There are also some major industrial projects that impact on our watersheds. Lately there has been a lot of noise about the pipelines moving through B.C.: the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline and the Kinder Morgan–Trans Mountain pipeline. There's a lot of concern from people who have challenges with those pipelines about their impacts on our waterways.

For me, I live in Yarrow, and I go to the Vedder River. That's where I went to see the salmon spawning that I mentioned earlier. Where I take my dog walking by the river is less than a kilometre downstream of where the Kinder Morgan pipeline crosses that river. It's a really vital salmon-spawning stream, so even a small leak on that pipeline would have huge impacts.

We know that there needs to be really strong protections for our surface water, because the salmon are a huge part of our local economy. If that fishery was to be impacted by some of these industrial projects because there was a gap in adequate oversight, that would obviously be very problematic.

Basically, long story short, we need to have a better understanding of the big picture of our water system through good legislation, but in order to have that oversight happening in a good way, there needs to be implementation of those reporting mechanisms and protections on the ground level in local communities.

There has been recent government commitments to modernizing the Water Act. We've heard this several times. We're very grateful for that, and we know that it's on the agenda. We're really excited about that.

Recently the Minister of Environment put out an opinion editorial restating the provincial government's commitment to modernizing the Water Act through the water sustainability act. In that, a real emphasis was placed on groundwater protection, which we're really grateful for. That's obviously very, very important to our communities, but we'd like to see some things beyond that being taken up in the Water Act modernization.

One of those things is that those who are most impacted by decisions about our water need to have a say in decisions. That means that local communities need to have more control over what's happening in their community's watersheds. When oversight of water is happening far away in Victoria or in Ottawa, in many cases this leaves a lot of big cracks for breach of freshwater protection to fall through. So we want to see local communities having more control.

As I mentioned before, beyond just groundwater protection, we also recognize that there needs to be legislated environmental flows for surface water. There needs to be oversight about what's happening in our rivers and streams. These are the lifeblood of our communities, and without adequate oversight of the cumulative impact of projects that are happening in and around those rivers and streams, we really have no idea about how long they can sustain these projects. So there needs to be some protection for those environmental flows.

As I mentioned about the groundwater regulation, this is a really important part of the water cycle, obviously, and where so many communities get their drinking water from. So I think it goes without saying that we absolutely agree with the Minister of Environment and the province that groundwater protection is a part of that modern Water Act.

We also recognize that written into this new policy around the Water Act…. There needs to be processes embedded in it that enable sharing of water and the resolution of conflicts about water.

We really believe that with the establishment of local watershed bodies, these processes could be really enforced by resourcing local communities to be working together so that there is not an absence of people on the ground engaged in issues; so that when conflict arises, people on the ground are already informed, they're already engaged, and they're already participating in the process of stewarding their local waterways for their community's health and for the economy's health.

We also recognize that a modern act would embed better long-term planning for water, accountability to industries that are heavy users of water as well as impacting waterways and large-scale oversight — so really having a good idea of the freshwater picture in B.C.

While we have an abundance here, taking it for granted and just hoping that our water stays okay for the long term isn't really an option anymore. We know, in the global picture, that water is a highly prized commodity, and we know that B.C. has an abundance of it. If we're not stewarding it well, I think that's really problematic, both on the local level because communities need the water and on the global scale. We recognize that because of this abundance, we have a responsibility to take care
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of it and not wait until it's too late to protect our water beyond just the groundwater.

These things — recognition of aboriginal rights and title; more local control; legislated environmental flows; better groundwater regulation; processes for sharing and resolution of disputes around water; and mechanisms for long-term planning, accountability and oversight — are what we'd like to see in a modern water act, the water sustainability act, as it's moving forward.

Assuming that these elements are included in a water act modernization process, we know from looking at the history of legislation that no amount of brilliant writing and legislation will do unless there are resources allocated to implementation, and monitoring the good implementation of that and holding communities and users of water accountable to those laws.

Assuming these elements are included in the Water Act, we recognize that there needs to be resources allocated to local communities for implementation, especially these elements related to environmental flow, because it's the people on the ground who know the waterways. There are so many people in this community who are so deeply connected to their water systems, and if they had the resources to do the monitoring, that would be a huge asset to the government because these people already know the water systems. They don't have to do that learning curve on issues of local control.

This thing of local control isn't just a vision of the WaterWealth Project. Recently the Union of B.C. Municipalities had a motion passed without debate, calling for more resources to be allocated to local communities to manage their water. Historically, for many years on record, they've passed similar resolutions, requesting resources for water allocation. The Cowichan Valley regional district has also been really working hard on this local control issue.

N. Jones: We'll be happy to be in touch. However, I know that following up, if we wanted to submit something in writing, we were to bring it today.

D. Ashton (Chair): Yes, you can, electronically — you bet. Okay, great. Just go to the website, and it'll show you how to get there.

A Voice: Could I suggest you share your print reference of your presentation from today, as well, so you could marry them up?

D. Ashton (Chair): Mr. Kariya, welcome. If you don't mind me calling you Paul, we're trying to do first-name basis here. Thank you for coming for the presentation — ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have questions from the committee for five minutes following. The floor is yours, sir.

P. Kariya: Thank you for inviting me. For members of the committee not familiar with the Clean Energy Association of B.C., or CEBC, our mandate is to develop and maintain a viable private sector power industry in British Columbia that serves the public interests by providing cost-effective electricity through efficient and environmentally responsible development of the province's clean energy resources.

The good news is that, with government foresight and policies on climate action protecting the environment whilst enabling economic development and passing the Clean Energy Act of 2010, all of this has worked to develop a thriving clean energy sector in B.C. today. We have 225 members, which produce about 15 percent of the electricity on the grid today. If you see the light in here, 15 percent of it comes from my members.

More than 1,100 workers are currently directly employed by 60 operating projects. Another 3,000 are indirectly employed through the service sector to the industry.

The most recent power call was 2008, so that's now five years ago. And there's been a standing offer program where companies can sell electricity if they meet certain requirements from B.C. Hydro. So there are currently 14 projects being built.

Truth be told, if one were to think about the jobs plan and the promises of the jobs plan, our sector is demon-
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strating it right now. There is $4 billion in cap ex, creating 2,500 construction jobs, of which 700 are held by aboriginal people. The supply chain for each project is about 55 to 175 suppliers, mostly from British Columbia. Obviously, things like turbines come from offshore.

These 14 projects are equivalent to lighting up about 350,000 homes. Let me give you an example of the types of projects, the names of the projects, where they're located in the province and some of the First Nations associated with them.

You have the Cape Scott wind farm on northern Vancouver Island being developed by GDF Suez, which is the largest private electric provider in the world. They're working with the Quatsino, the Tlatlasikwala and the Kwagiulth First Nations.

You have the Quality Wind farm up near Tumbler Ridge, developed by Capital Power with a couple of Treaty 8 First Nations. You have the Dasque hydro project near Terrace, which is being developed by the Veresen company out of Calgary with offices here, with the Kitselas Tsimshian First Nation.

You have the Forest Kerr project, which are really three projects near Iskut, being developed by AltaGas with the Tahltan First Nation. You have the Haa-ak-suuk Creek hydro project near Tofino, which is actually being developed by the First Nation itself — the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation. Jimmie Creek hydro near Squamish is from Boralex, working with the Squamish First Nation.

You have the Kokish hydro project near Alert Bay, which is being developed by Brookfield Renewable with the Namgis First Nation, and the Namgis hold a 25 percent equity in that project.

You have the Kwoiek Creek project near Lytton, being developed by Innergex Renewable and the Kanaka Bar Indian band. That's a 50-50 partnership, where 50 percent of the equity is held by the First Nation. Actually, the water licence is held by the First Nation.

We have the Long Lake project near Stewart, B.C., which is being developed by Regional Power. The Nisga'a Lisims Government is involved in that.

You have the northwest Stave hydro project near Mission, which is also being developed by Innergex. Several Stó:lō Indian bands are involved in that project.

There are many others. My point is to enumerate that these are located throughout the landscape in British Columbia, in the hinterland where First Nations are located. The jobs are urban. The jobs are rural. The jobs are remote. I think this is the strength of our sector.

The Premier has stated on numerous occasions that the LNG industry is going to be the cleanest in the world, and we support that. We support the load that this industry could bring. We think it's a perfect marriage between the proven clean energy sector to provide electricity, matching up to the load that will be required through LNG, mines and upstream gas.

Therefore, we're perplexed with B.C. Hydro's integrated resource plan, which completely ignores that. It has no accounting for that load, other than very minor electricity, which means that there's no role for the clean energy sector.

Yet the Premier is stating that we're going to have the cleanest LNG in the world. We're mystified by that, because the plan really is to use gas to produce gas. You can do offsets. you can do some scrubbing and whatever, but the scale of development — if we go with what Minister Coleman has indicated that he'd like to see, which is four major projects….

A recent report, yesterday, by Tides Canada, modelling we've done and modelling that's been done by the Coastal First Nations group would indicate it's going to be impossible to reach the standards that have been set that would make it the cleanest in the world.

I'm not here to debate that. I'm here to say that we should be using the attributes of the clean energy sector. The government enabled it. We're producing. We're on time. We're on budget. We've got a proven product, and I think we'd like to help British Columbia with this challenge of the cleanest LNG in the world.

If I could move to recommendations, I'd say that we're here to help support the jobs plan. We're all for this necessary marriage of economic development with protecting the environment. That's one of the principles that we very much stand by.

Many of the developers in our sector are so involved with First Nations. They're in it because they very much support sustainable development.

Many of them come out of mining and other sectors. They could be making money elsewhere. This is not an industry, contrary to what some people believe, where you hit the ball out of the park. It's like a regulated utility. A good return is 12, 15, 17 percent. That's it. The value comes out of the long-term contract that one signs to produce that. Typically, in wind it's 25 years. Typically, in hydro it's 40 years. That's where the value comes from.

We want to participate in the jobs plan. We want to help make our LNG the cleanest in the world. We think we have the formula to do that and would like very much to participate. A key recommendation, then, is that B.C. Hydro's integrated resource plan needs to be changed. It's a plan that does not account for the clean energy sector.

In fact, it's saying that we're long on power, that we won't need power for ten years. And that's debatable. We could argue about that. But what it says is that when it comes to supplying power after ten years, the priorities are Site C and aggressive demand-side management programs. We're all for DSM. We're not against that at all.

The third in the supply stack is spot market purchases, and then the fourth is repatriation of the Columbia River entitlement. There is hardly a mention of the clean energy sector. We're mystified by that.

Why, from a risk diversity point of view, would you not
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have that in the stack, where you've got wind, small hydro, biomass and geothermal? Why would you put it all into a few large projects? It's fair to say that a public utility like B.C. Hydro has demonstrated that it struggles to meet on time, on budget. The risk transfer would be to the private sector, or we could do P3-type opportunities.

The other is that there needs to be transmission development. The very fact that our projects are located throughout the province, where the trunk line of transmission is in the central corridor, down the spine of the middle of the province…. We need transmission development. We would think that's a worthy investment to enable the clean energy sector.

Obviously, then, First Nations are a key player in this. There's no other sector like ours that has worked as well with First Nations. That's not to denigrate the forest sector or mining or any other sector, but I think we've learned from the past mistakes of these other sectors and have demonstrated a unique way of working with First Nations.

Is there adequate clean energy now available for LNG in northwest British Columbia? Are there IPPs that could provide the power for at least some of those plants right now?

P. Kariya: No. They're not developed unless there's a contract. Developers using their own money will bring it to a certain point, which is prospecting, doing the wind testing, doing the hydro testing. That kind of activity has gone on, but if the B.C. Hydro plan sits the way it does, saying that we don't need power for ten years, that will all disappear. You will lose the clean energy sector. That's not a threat. It's just that the investment capital will disappear. You'll lose the supply chain talent.

We have enviable talent in engineering, environmental consulting, environmental monitoring, First Nation relations. Those will just move elsewhere if you have a ten-year gap.

So no, it's not like you have surplus clean energy capacity waiting to be harnessed. You need to plan that. With the proper permitting and that, it will take three to five years. We can do it a lot quicker than Site C, but it still will require three to five years from the time that one gets a green light for a contract to do all of the proper steps to bring these projects to fruition.

G. Holman: Just a couple of more. You indicated that the last call was 2008, but right now there's a standing offer.

G. Holman: So does that mean if you meet certain terms and conditions, B.C. Hydro will continue to purchase power from new projects?

P. Kariya: That's what is supposed to happen. What we're seeing now is that B.C. Hydro is…. They set up the standing offer program, yet they're backing away from it. You do have small developers with some First Nations involved who are enraged that they've met the conditions, yet Hydro is dragging its feet. It will not sign contracts.

To be fair to the colleagues at Hydro, they're saying: "Look, Paul, if we're long on power, which is our forecast, then, despite what we've said, it would be silly for us to enter into contracts. In fact, we're trying to shed contracts." You've read in the media that, where Hydro can, they are trying their best to get out of agreements and that.

There's a debate there. Are we long on power? Are we short on power? When might we need power? Obviously, if you're going to ignore northern mining, northern loads to come, then indeed, you're able to say that you're not going to need power for a long time.

G. Holman: You indicate that you feel a comprehensive assessment of the full range of risk costs and benefits across sectors would demonstrate your case.

G. Holman: But in fact, haven't IPPs been precluded from some such assessments, say, through the B.C. Utilities Commission?

G. Holman: I'm sorry to interrupt. Would the Utilities Commission be an appropriate way in which to assess the full range of costs and benefits?

P. Kariya: Yes, I think it's one vehicle that could be used, and we'd be supportive of that.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): A couple of questions. In terms of the waste in the paper around Minister Coleman's four plants being what they would like, and you're looking at doubling the load that's already produced to service them, how much of that load do you see clean energy supplying — all of it, a part of it, a portion of it?

P. Kariya: When I speak of clean energy, we also represent gas generation, so we're not anti-gas. I want to
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make that clear. What's being proposed for those major LNGs is not to go to electricity. Essentially, you bolt on a jet engine to the compressors. We are supportive of using natural gas for electricity generation, because if you build the wires and you go to electricity, you have optionality. You can bring in, through time, more wind, more hydro, more biomass as those come on stream.

We would be supportive, because gas, arguably, is the cheapest fuel right now available in the marketplace. It may not be ten years, 15 years down the way, but it is today. It's also the quickest to permit and to get through. We would be very supportive of a mix that's fairly gas-heavy to begin with. You build transmission, and over time there's a vision and a commitment to build in more renewables. I think that's a realistic way to go.

The percentages need to be thought through, whether it's 25 percent or 30 percent. I think it would be unfair for me to hold fast on those, particularly because I have members who are competitors one against each other, and you've got gas generators, you've got wind, you've got hydro, and so forth.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): My second question was around transmission being down the central spine of the province. You said that it would be an investment. Who is making the investment — the private sector or the province?

P. Kariya: I think that's a discussable point. I met with a group of First Nations yesterday, and they were saying why couldn't they, that they would be interested in leading a partnership. Some of them — some very well-known First Nations with means in this province — are saying that perhaps, if the conditions were right, they would help lead a coalition. It probably needs a public-private type of coalition.

We've had a study done by a firm, Midgard. The numbers come in…. This is for a 500 KV second line from Skeena substation, Terrace to Prince George. It's somewhere around $1 billion to $1.6 billion, so it's not inconsequential. We know the ratepayer impacts.

I think it's a fair discussion point that can be had with the LNG developers themselves. With the government revenues that are going to be achieved, and government has indicated they are going to be substantial, I think that for the sake of the long-term legacy infrastructure for this province, there's a proposition there to be negotiated.

L. Popham: Thank you for presentation. I've been having discussions with the B.C. greenhouse industry, and the idea is that they are very interested in co-generation, using natural gas. Are those partners that you're working with right now?

P. Kariya: We've had dialogue with some of the co-generators, but in the complex world of electricity in the province, to be fair, many of the co-generators don't see us as a friend. They see us as a competitor.

I'll give you an example of what's a little perverse in B.C. Again, that's not to criticize another sector. But take, for example, the biomass generators that are pulp and paper and forestry. We have about a dozen today in this province.

They buy electricity under the industrial rate at three and four cents a kilowatt. They sell it back to B.C. Hydro at ten, 11, 12 cents. They have very little interest in working with us, because they're concerned. What their message will be is: "Paul, you guys represent high-cost electricity." What we'd say is: "We represent realistic-cost electricity. There needs to be a revision to what we have." They'd come back with: "Well, if you go from three and four cents that we have today, you're going to put us under, and our business plans can't sustain a 1 or 2 percent increase."

I'm sympathetic to them. They are the backbone of unionized jobs in places like Powell River, Port Alberni and that. However, can we all afford to be subsidizing those folks at that level? Yet they get to come in and sell electricity at a higher rate. There's something wrong with that.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dr. Robinson, welcome. Thank you for coming to the presentations. The presentation will be ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and there is an opportunity for questions from the panel to yourself for up to five minutes. The floor is yours, sir.

J. Robinson: I thank the Chair and the members of the select standing committee for allowing us to have an audience with you today. I'm Dr. Jay Robinson. I'm the president of the B.C. Chiropractic Association.

The Chiropractic Association was first created by legislation in 1934. Currently we represent just under 1,000 chiropractors here in B.C. You can go through my little booklet here; it'll tell you a little bit about us. The booklet will tell you some of the things that I'm not going to read out of the booklet. I'll tell you some other things.

What we know about chiropractors in B.C., for those
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of us who aren't familiar with chiropractic, is that we represent 600,000 patients a year here in B.C. That's the amount of people who are seeing a chiropractor at any one time. That actually works out to about 25 percent of the population seeing a chiropractor at any one time.

Chiropractic is a significant part of the health care landscape here in B.C., with numbers like that. We know that about 61 percent of patients have visited a chiropractor in their lifetime. So we've become a significant part of the landscape in health care here in British Columbia but not just in terms of chiropractors and patients.

We've also made inroads into research and other facets of our society. For example, we've got a professorship chair at UBC where research is being performed. We sponsor that; we started that. It's now tenured. We've actually got chiropractic chairs across the country in ten other universities as well.

We've also got chiropractors involved at ICORD, which is the nation's top spine treatment and research centre, at VGH. We're really trying to move that thing ahead.

Chiropractic is well received in our province. Our surveys show that 81 percent of people would recommend a chiropractor. In terms of health care analysis, a satisfaction number of 81 percent is very strong.

That takes us into where we're going next with this. Health care is great, and we've kind of got this far, but we all know that that movie is in jeopardy. For several years health care costs have run 50 percent of our budget, and some people are suggesting that's going to hit 70 percent by 2017. Let's hope not. That'll make TransLink funding kind of interesting.

One of the things we believe in, and we have done in the past, is that legislators should and can practically partner with health care providers to deliver programs that help sustain better funding. More than ever, the Chiropractic Association is willing to assist and partner with the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health in finding new ways to make health care work in our province now and for our future generations.

One of the ways we're doing that is through prevention. We all know that, obviously, if you can prevent something from happening, you don't have to pay for fixing it later. We've got involved with partnerships in the years past with you — with the Ministry of Health and ActNow B.C. We did that, and that was promoting awareness of developmental issues that result when children are improperly wearing or using overweight backpacks.

We followed that up with an Ipsos-Reid poll to see just what kind of impact that had. It turned out that about 73 percent of British Columbians were able to recall the program that the Chiropractic Association and the government had participated in. That was about a $100,000 program, and we felt that at the end of the day, that had been a very positive impact for the kind of money that had been spent.

Our recommendation going forward is that we'd like to continue to partner, and we'd like the government to be able to allocate specific funding for prevention programs.

Some of the other initiatives that we're involved in are programs that we're taking out into the community to kind of make an impact and make a difference.

We've got a Pack It Light, Wear It Right program, which is more on backpacks. We've got the proper wearing, packing, appropriate weight of backpacks — that kind of thing. Chiropractors take this out to the schools each fall and deliver that information so that parents and students can have a better experience with their backpacks.

That led to a partnership with the Salvation Army. At the beginning of each school year we now donate 5,000 backpacks that go out all over the province to families who are in need of that kind of thing. That's proved to be quite popular.

We also do a program with WorkSafe B.C. called Think Twice Lift Once. I always say that wrong. Thank god, I said it right that time. That partnership with WorkSafe B.C. — and now with Acklands-Grainger, as well…. That's one of the largest industry safety suppliers in our nation. That speaks to directly reducing the man-hours that are lost from low-back injuries by B.C.'s workers.

We've gone and supplied tape, stickers and different things on the signage at worksites and things like that. That's turning out to be a really positive step in reducing the kinds of injuries that our workers suffer.

What we'd like to do further on that is educate the public. We believe that the more informed patients are in the prevention of an illness and an injury and the more informed they are when it comes to the appropriate treatment of that same injury and illness, they're going to be able to have a decreased cost associated with that injury and illness. It kind of goes hand in hand.

We would like to recommend that there are education programs through K-to-12 that support awareness of health care needs and allow the patients or people to become a more empowered health care consumer.

Education along that line takes us into a chiropractic school in B.C. Industry training is, of course, important to everybody in every industry, and there is no way to train chiropractors currently in B.C. The closest school is in Portland, and the closest Canadian school is in Toronto. We've been working for several years now to get a school up on the Burnaby Mountain site, where SFU is. It's going to be a research-based school with a lot of awareness in multidisciplinary ideas and things like that. That's how we're focusing it.

We're not asking for funding for that school, but we do want government support in making that school happen and allowing it to happen. Our model for that is a tuition-based school. We're just trying to make it happen and support the needs of our population and the
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needs of our chiropractors. We'd like to recommend the establishment of a B.C. school of chiropractic to support education of B.C. students for spine and spinal-related conditions. That's a major burgeoning illness for society, as well as objectives for the Ministry of Health.

We're very concerned and committed to working together. We'd like to continue to do that. I think I'll stop right here and take a few questions.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. The question I have is around the establishment of the school. What stage is it at? What discussions have you had? Have you had discussions with the province? Are they favourable? Are you close to being able to start construction, or where are you at with that?

J. Robinson: We are at the point where we're waiting for the school itself and the developer. They've been meeting regularly, and we're waiting for them to finally actually start the building of the school, in which case we're moving forward with it.

We have started some discussions. We've not started the discussions towards degree-granting and that kind of thing yet.

J. Robinson: As far as the property development, yeah. At this point we're setting up a private school on their property. We have not transitioned that into where SFU would be granting the degree.

M. Hunt: Mine is much more basic. Dealing with the education and chiropractors, there seem to be so many different schools of it. When I first went to a chiropractor, he was just going to adjust the neck and everything else falls into place from that. Then, through friends on Fraser Street, there was this older gentleman who was really into kinesiology with it. We have followed his disciples — I'll call it that way — ever since, because it just works so successfully for us.

So my question is going to be, since there seems to be so many different — should I use the word "philosophies"? — whatever it is behind the chiropractic essence: what would you be doing? Which one would you be teaching? How would you be looking at all those things?

J. Robinson: Chiropractors traditionally get trained in the core of commonly used techniques. All the different things amount to different types of techniques for all achieving the same ends. You know, you can use a hammer to pound a nail, or you can use a wrench, a screwdriver or a rock to pound a nail. You're still pounding a nail. That's one way to look at what the different techniques all boil down to.

I think there are actually about 107 different techniques. When you actually study the numbers of techniques out there and see what the patient outcomes are, they're surprisingly similar no matter how it's done — which actually has us all scratching our heads a little bit sometimes. But that's what ends up happening.

The modern chiropractic school at the front edge of science research typically is a more blended, hands-on kind of approach. You see typical adjusting — the kind of thing that everyone thinks of as the crunch, that kind of stuff. A lot of soft-tissue types of techniques back that up. That's sort of what's being taught at the front edge of the leading schools in Canada and in the States.

D. Ashton (Chair): Special Olympics — Dan Howe. Dan, thank you very much for coming today. For the presentation, a ten-minute presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning. And there are five minutes allotted for questions from the committee. Please, sir, start at your convenience.

D. Howe: First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Dan Howe, and I'm president and CEO of Special Olympics British Columbia.

When Special Olympics started in British Columbia 33 years ago, we knew that giving people with intellectual disabilities the chance to participate in sport could transform their lives and their feelings about themselves, building confidence, restoring pride and opening a door to a more hopeful future. But we never realized the transformative impact that Special Olympics would have on communities around the province.

Sport does for Special Olympics athletes what it does for any athlete. It builds skills and confidence. It creates friendships. It lets athletes feel things they might normally never feel. But with Special Olympics, it does so much more.

We want to thank all those in government for the financial support we receive through the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development and through community gaming grants. Without this sup-
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port, we simply could not offer the programs and opportunities that we do.

Special Olympics B.C. currently offers programs in 55 communities in B.C. to over 4,200 athletes with intellectual disabilities. Over 3,300 people volunteer their time and energy and skills doing amazing things for amazing people. We provide training in 18 sports — 11 summer and seven winter. For those wishing to compete, competitions are held at the community, regional, provincial, national and world levels. The youngest person in our program is two, while people in their 70s and 80s participate with us.

As many people with intellectual disabilities have very limited or fixed incomes, Special Olympics B.C. is proud to say that no athletes will be denied participation because they can't afford it. While this requires significant support from our funding partners and sponsors, it completely eliminates one of the barriers to participation.

One of the most important focuses of Special Olympics B.C. is to improve the health of individuals with an intellectual disability. People with intellectual disabilities make up approximately 2 percent of the population, yet as a group they experience poorer health than the general population.

One recent study out of the United Kingdom found that men with intellectual disabilities died 13 years earlier than men without intellectual disabilities and that women with intellectual disabilities will die 20 years earlier. The study found that a primary cause of that was preventable lifestyle factors — poor nutrition and a lack of exercise.

In B.C. we're attacking the problem on two different levels. We're in essence trying to double the size of our organization as we try to encourage those who are already in our program to become more active and as we encourage new athletes to join. Thus we need more coaches, more facility time and more competitions as we try to increase the amount of time Special Olympics athletes train.

Special Olympics B.C. is also expanding programs such as our Club Fit program, a fitness program designed specifically for Special Olympics athletes of varying skill levels to improve their health and fitness and supplement the conditioning they receive in other programs.

For example, we have athletes wanting to participate in Special Olympics programs, but their poor fitness levels prevent them from doing so. The Club Fit program allows these individuals to start working on their health and fitness levels in a safe and controlled setting so that they can eventually move on to other sports and a more full and active life. More resources are coming on line for athletes to implement the lessons and tools at home and in their daily lives as well.

The second way we are working on the health of athletes is through the Special Olympics healthy athletes screening program. This program addresses the reality that many people with intellectual disabilities have unique issues around health care and communicating their needs.

The issue is twofold. First, many athletes with intellectual disabilities have trouble understanding or expressing their health concerns. Second, many health professionals have not had the opportunity to receive specific training or are not familiar enough with the population to know how to best question or to draw out the issues at hand.

Special Olympics international research has found that people with intellectual disabilities have a 40 percent higher risk of health issues, yet only one in 50 primary care physicians has received clinical training that prepares them to treat people with intellectual disabilities. The professionals who lead the healthy athlete screenings have received specific training by Special Olympics to help them ask the right questions, and their interactions with Special Olympics athletes lead to referrals back into the health care system that ensure that the individuals will get the treatment they need.

In B.C. the program has grown to where we now offer six areas of screening: fit feet, fun fitness, health promotion, healthy hearing, opening eyes and special smiles. Many athletes and caregivers have been surprised to go through the healthy athletes screening and find health issues that have gone undiagnosed through regular health channels.

One family from Langley found that that happened for their son Carson. Eye examinations from medical professionals at a Special Olympics B.C. healthy athletes screening day led Carson and his family to seek more tests that showed that the 22-year-old was at critical risk from cataracts.

Through these interventions, Carson, an aspiring photographer, was scheduled for surgeries that would help save his sight. Carson's family diligently cares for him and all his medical needs, but the healthy athletes screening program helped bring to light a problem that had gone unrecognized.

Healthy athletes screenings also have a significant impact on athletic performance. One young track athlete who always came in second place in our races attended a screening, and it was found that she had severe vision problems. After practitioners corrected her vision, she no longer had to follow the person in front of her. She was able to pass and win the race on her own.

In B.C. in 2013, 475 athletes have been screened so far, with more to come. Through these screenings, we've found 24 percent of athletes failed the pure-tone screening hearing test; 35.9 percent had blocked or partially blocked ear canals; 69.7 percent of all athletes were found to be overweight or obese; 25 percent of athletes were found to have hypertension stage 1.

Sixty percent of all athletes were given free prescription eyewear when they left our screening area; 15.8 per-
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cent had untreated tooth decay; 73.7 percent had diseases of the gums; 18.4 percent had oral pain; and 44 percent had gait abnormalities. Many issues that had gone untreated were able to be addressed.

To help address some of the issues found, Special Olympics B.C. will be working with UBC dietetic students who will support athletes in an eight-week nutrition program. This will include education and shopping for health food, menu planning on budget, planning for allergies, planning for eating on the road, independent cooking and family menu planning.

We also team up with medical students, nurses, physiotherapists and dental students to help train and educate them to deliver health screening to our athletes. This gives B.C. medical students hands-on experience working with individuals with an intellectual disability.

Special Olympics is working hard on athlete health initiatives because we know that if we can encourage individuals with an intellectual disability to become healthier, health costs will decrease and their physical abilities, athletic performances and overall quality of life will increase.

Tied into our focus on the quality of life, a major initiative of ours is to encourage younger athletes to get involved and stay active. To do this, we offer our active start program for two- to six-year-olds, FUNdamentals for seven to 11 and sport start for 12- to 18-year-olds. By involving individuals at a very young age, it can have a significant impact on their fine motor skills that they will need to hold a pencil later on or their gross motor skills that they will need to climb stairs, as examples. We're also hoping that by developing healthy habits and active lifestyles, they will stay with them throughout their life.

We're also working hard to create more inclusive environments and build partnerships with other organizations — partnerships like the one created with Trinity Western University where the women's basketball coach and the team come out to work with Special Olympics B.C. Langley athletes. Not only does the Special Olympics team learn from these elite players and coaches, but the Trinity Western players benefit from the unique interactions they have with Special Olympics athletes.

Other partnerships, like the one with the UBC Faculty of Medicine, where Special Olympics athletes benefit from medical screening and students from the faculty of medicine benefit from hands-on experience gained in those screenings….

We also receive great support from the sports system and organizations like Soccer B.C., Skate B.C. and Basketball B.C., who open up their competitions and share their resources with Special Olympics, or organizations like GolfBC, Rhythmic Gymnastics B.C. or Powerlifting B.C., who help with officials and equipment. We're reaching out to more schools to create relationships that break down barriers and encourage inclusion, activity and support.

In 2014 B.C. will host the 2014 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games. This is the first time since 1990 that B.C. will host the national games. The province of B.C. is a major sponsor of these games, and we would like to thank you for that.

We want to maximize the impact that these games will have on B.C., and we're working on a number of different initiatives. One of the most interesting and impactful is our new performance project. We want to make sure that team B.C. will be ready to compete in these games.

To that end, we are looking at how these athletes are trained and prepared, and we're challenging all of our assumptions about training individuals with intellectual disabilities in an effort to be better. A major focus of our effort has been on the volunteer coaches of these athletes, as we know that if we can increase their knowledge and skills, it will trickle down to all athletes in Special Olympics.

Our goal is to change expectations and provide an environment where athletes can reach their full potential and they won't be limited by our perceptions. We are revolutionizing the way we coach athletes here in B.C. Sport creates a perfect environment because these important changes cannot be done in isolation.

We are honoured and thankful for the government of B.C., sport bodies, ViaSport and our sponsors for their support. On behalf of all of those involved with Special Olympics B.C., thank you for allowing us to speak to you tonight, and thank you for providing us with the resources we need to do this work.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation and the work you do. I think it's just the stories that you tell in terms of the impact to the improvements of health — the young athlete who was tested, and it was her vision that caused her to come in second. I think that really conveys the benefits of the program.

My question is: what's the budget now, and do you have a specific request for the committee on behalf of Special Olympics?

D. Howe: The budget of the provincial and community programs is approximately $4 million a year. In terms of a request for the committee, we are very thankful for the funding that we do get. Our hope…. What we are trying to do will not change overnight. It's a generational change. We are going to have to work for years to change the habits of the individuals within our program — their families, their caregivers.

To make some of the promises to the athletes that we're making, consistent funding that we can know two or three years down the road would be very helpful. We
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would not want to start down the road and start making some of the great changes that we've committed to and then be in a situation where we cannot provide them with the programs that we're offering because we can no longer afford to do so.

E. Foster: Thank you very much for your presentation. I've been involved as a coach in curling and golf, and it was some of the most rewarding times of my life in sports and so on. My question, too, was on basically your ask. Pretty much everybody that comes here has got an ask. Essentially, yours, I guess, is just to keep going where we're going.

D. Howe: Absolutely. I understand fully the number of asks that you do get from all different sides. I think our ask is…. We need a strong sports system out there. We're not doing it on our own; we're doing it in combination with many different sports that are helping us do all of this. To be able to receive the support that we are currently getting and be able to plan for the future is very helpful.

D. Ashton (Chair): Please come forward. And just before you sit down, I would like to recognize a peer of all of us around the table — John Les. Welcome. Nice to see you, sir.

D. Ashton (Chair): Clint, welcome. Thank you very much for coming today — greatly appreciated. Presentation, ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning up to the ten, and there's five minutes allowed for questions at the end from the panel. Sir, the floor is yours.

C. Hames: I'll introduce myself very quickly. I'm the vice-president and CEO of an organization called Pacific Developmental Pathways. We're a community living service agency operating within the private sector. You may also know that my relationship with John is because I served on city council with him for nine years and was nine years the mayor of this community, so we had a lot of interactions together — all of them positive.

I've had various other times throughout my professional career. I've worked in an advisory capacity to a Crown agency known as Community Living British Columbia for Inclusion B.C., which is a major advocacy organization, and operated as a consultant to various community living agencies across British Columbia — in fact, the country — and speaking and things across North America.

I wanted to talk this evening a little bit about Community Living British Columbia. You'll be pleased to know I'm not asking for money on their behalf. They probably do that enough. I did want to have a broad discussion about the system that is Community Living British Columbia, with the hope that you'll understand that my comments are about looking at the system and trying to make it more efficient and more effective so that the dollars that are spent can go further so that more people can receive support.

I'm not here saying there's not enough money. I'm saying that the system that supports those resources is, I think, fairly inefficient.

You'll probably know, for the sake of other folks who are here or might be listening, Community Living British Columbia is a Crown agency created in 2005 in an effort to develop new service models, greater efficiency in the support of people with developmental disabilities. It's ironic I'm following B.C. Special Olympics. We're both here on behalf of the same group of folks.

What a lot of people don't know about Community Living B.C. is that their appropriation is in excess of $700 million a year. That appropriation is a huge appropriation to a Crown agency.

They support about 13,000 people in the province of British Columbia with that in-excess-of $700 million. When you look at it purely from that perspective, you see that someone could make a case that that's over $50,000 per individual with a disability in our province. Now, I'm not saying that that's too much money; I'm just saying that it's a lot of money and we really need to be careful about how we use those resources.

I think there are three really key issues that I want to talk about. Number 1 is that there's a significant incongruence between the public perception that adult community living services, which CLBC delivers, is an entitlement system where once a person becomes an adult they are entitled to services. In fact, they are not. However, the system — people believe it to be an entitlement.
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If you have a son or daughter with a developmental disability, when they hit 19, the expectation is that there will be services available. In fact, the system is not set up that you are entitled to services; it's set up in a way that says if there are resources available, you'll get services. However, everyone believes that it is in fact an entitlement-based system. Most of the families you would talk to would think that. That incongruence creates incredible expectations among people about what they're about to receive.

The other key issue for me is that typical contracted services in government…. If government contracts to build a road, they have an arm's-length relationship between the government and the contractor. The Community Living B.C. system is so integrated with contractors that it isn't really possible to see it in any other way except that those agencies in fact are divisions of government.

Government is able to use continuing agreements. In fact, though, the system in CLBC is almost exclusively continuing agreements. I've had contracts in place with CLBC and its predecessor for 20 years that have never been tendered, that have never really been looked at, and I'm sure that goes across the sector.

The entire sector, the unionized portion of the sector, bargains together with an entity created by government called the social services employers association, and because of the way it is structured in terms of its funding, there's absolutely no way that you can contain the costs of programs within Community Living British Columbia because of the structure of the organization.

Because there's no competition within the system, if nothing is tendered, if there are no efforts made and you have essentially a largely unionized sector, there's no ability for that system to contain its own costs.

The primary relationship should be between CLBC and the individuals and families that require support, but paradoxically, its legal relationship is primarily with the network of contracted service providers. So CLBC's primary relationships are with the people it contracts with, which are people like me who provide services, not with the individuals and families, actually where that primary relationship should be.

I don't want to speak, because I've got only ten minutes, about the entitlement system, but I do want to speak about the contracting system and recommendations that I think could be made to fix it.

Typically, a government agency determines the services it wishes to purchase and tenders to the marketplace for those services. This serves a number functions, not the least of which is ensuring that pricing remains competitive. As I said before, there is within government the ability to consider some contracts as continuing agreements should certain criteria be met.

In the Community Living system, contracted agencies now function, for all intents and purposes, as divisions of Community Living B.C. The only monitoring that's done by Community Living B.C. is, in a sense, the kind of monitoring that a department would do within its own department of government to manage its budget, not monitoring the performance of the service provider.

The danger, of course, and one that's being researched by a number of agencies at this time, is that the amount of control and the areas of control CLBC is attempting to manage fall outside the typical contracted relationship and into an employee-employer realm. So you function as a service provider largely as an employee of Community Living British Columbia. In fact, as CLBC no longer tenders any of its existing work and uses funding guides, it has, essentially, fixed the prices it pays for services.

With no tendering and a fixed price, there's absolutely no way to drive innovation within the system, no way to drive creativity and certainly no way to drive efficiency within that system.

The current system is driven by the fact that demand for the service is outstripping the available resources. For years CLBC and its predecessors have been obsessed with the resource side of the equation and have developed countless strategies to contain or reduce costs.

In past years the agency would overrun its budget and simply put its hand out to government. In eras of restraint the government would push back, and instead of the issue belonging to the ministry or CLBC — whoever was responsible — it was pushed down to the contracted service sector, and it became their problem.

CLBC and its predecessors have always believed the key to cost containment within community living is tighter and tighter controls on its contractors. They've had the longstanding belief that there are too many contractors, that many of the agencies delivering services are amassing huge surpluses at the expense of the services of people in need.

The irony is that CLBC determines how much money is to be spent, not the contracted service sector. However, the finger of blame is always pointed at the service provider network, as if somehow they've put a gun to the head of CLBC to sign contracts that they can't afford.

So my recommendations, quickly. The first priority of the system should be a major realignment, with CLBC, advocates, and families and individuals requiring support on one side of the system and service providers on the other. The service provider network currently in effect controls the system. For this to be accomplished, the funding relationship has to change.

Currently the funding relationship looks like individuals and families contact CLBC with a service request. They then research and select a service provider. The individual and the family are out of the picture. CLBC negotiates with the service provider to provide that service, enters into a contract, and the service relationship
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is between the service provider and the family, but the accountability relationship is between CLBC and the service provider.

So the money is misplaced. Money never ends up in the hands of the people it needs to. What we need to do is have a system whereby CLBC determines the needs and the family is provided with the funding for the services. The primary relationship is between the family and the service provider, and CLBC exists as the funding agency and the monitoring agency.

About 75 percent of what CLBC does right now is to monitor contracted agencies. If those resources were freed up to go to families so that families could monitor those agencies and families could make those decisions, I think we'd be in a lot better position. I'm cutting through this a little bit and would be pleased to answer questions.

If families were controlling purse strings, agencies would respond. They have the controls in place to protect the service providers from frivolous withdrawals and things like that. But as a service provider, I'd far rather have the family of the person I support controlling the purse strings than CLBC or government.

It's been stated many times: families are the foundation of a society. And the more we can do to empower them at the expense of government institutions, I think, the better. This would work exceptionally well with day services, with home-share services. Group homes would be more of a struggle.

However, we've got to find more ways to empower families so that the primary relationship in this equation is between the person providing the service and the person paying for the service, not between government and the service provider with the family on the outside, begging for dollars. It would require a change.

The primary change would be that it would have to be an entitlement system. If you have a child, an adult child, with a disability, you'd be entitled to some resources. Once those resources are secured as actual dollars or vouchers or some system, then you're free to purchase those services where you like.

The transition isn't going to be easy. The concept of individualized funding is not new, nor is it revolutionary. It's important to recognize why it fails, however. Families are tremendously supportive. Individuals with disabilities are supportive.

CLBC purports to be in favour but would lose a tremendous amount of power and authority with wide-scale implementation. Contracted services say they support the concept philosophically but always seem to have a litany of reasons why it can't work, most of which is that they would rather report to government, where the relationship is currently very supportive and cosy, as opposed to having to meet the demands of families.

D. Ashton (Chair): Clint, can I get you to wrap up, please. It's ten. Thank you.

C. Hames: I'd leave you with this question. If you had a son or daughter who faced the daily challenge of a developmental disability, wouldn't you rather have the money in your pocket so you could make decisions about their support, as opposed to having to go with your hand out to government so they could make those decisions? Thanks.

C. Hames: I actually sent a longer version of the presentation in to the committee's website. You asked for that, so you'll have a much longer version of that.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. What proportion of service providers are for-profit versus non-profit?

C. Hames: Depending on how you measure it…. In terms of actual dollars, I would suggest about 50-50 — in terms of the contracted dollars — and union, non-union, I think, is about 75 percent union, 25 percent non-union. My company is a private sector one I created 20-odd years ago, and non-union as well.

G. Holman: So with the funding mechanism you suggest, do you think it would have an effect on that mix of for-profit and non-profit providers?

C. Hames: I don't think so at all. I think the funding would drive better quality and more efficient and effective services. Families would flock to services that were good and efficient and effective, and they would move away from services that maybe weren't so much so. Currently about 70 percent of the families who have adult children in services don't have much choice about that. They're afraid to make decisions about moving, because there's no money actually attached to their child. The money is attached to the agency and the program. It's not attached to their child.

If you have a longstanding position in some sort of day service or group home and if you said, "I'm not happy," you have no entitlement if you say: "I'm pulling my son or daughter out of there." I'm trying to attach money to folks so that they can do that.

Currently there is individualized funding, and you can
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apply for that, but you're prohibited, as a family, from actually buying service from an existing service provider if you want to use individualized funding. You have to actually hire the person yourself and take all the responsibility yourself for that person, including things like WCB and all the liabilities that come with it. So families are saying: "Well, that sounds like a lot. Why can't I just do this?"

E. Foster: Just a question on…. A lot of the people that transition from Children and Families to CLBC either don't have family to look after them, because they've been a ward through Children and Families, or they have families that possibly aren't really in a position to make those decisions. How do you account for those? Who would speak on their behalf under your system?

C. Hames: I think that you'd have to develop a system of what there is called alternate decision-makers, or folks that become advocates for those individuals. Right now we have a network of agencies that started as advocacy agencies that were doing just that and speaking for people who couldn't speak for themselves. My vision would be that they became entrapped into also providing services. They at first were advocating for services, and years ago the government said: "Well, why don't you provide services?" They said okay. So now on one hand, they're service providers, and on the other hand, they're advocates for service, so there's an inherent conflict of interest.

I think a system like this would see those agencies make decisions about: "Do we want to be a service provider, or do we want to do advocacy?" I think that you would see non-profit advocacy organizations spring up or return to provide some of those kinds of supports. That's what is happening in Alberta. That's what happens in a number of other provinces where the associations for community living don't do services; they simply do advocacy. They can provide that kind of support.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation, Clint. If I understand correctly, if going to an entitlement system…. I mean, most people do think about that when we deal with them in our constituency office. The disability doesn't change just because you turn 19. It's still the same thing. Would the funding model be based on the nature of the disability and the complications that go along with it and the requirements that a particular disability would envision?

C. Hames: Yeah. I think it's inevitable that you have to some kind of needs-based assessment which would trigger an amount of funding.

However, the thing I didn't get a chance to mention was that I think, in doing that, you would want to also make it so that if a family said, "Okay, we get $25,000 a year for services," and if they chose to augment that with more custom transportation or any number of services that they may want, they should be allowed to use that in some deductive way from the tax liability that they face. So it should be tax-deductible dollars that they may spend on that. You could do that.

It's the piece of this puzzle that I'm not that comfortable with. But CLBC is probably an agency that is well positioned to be able to determine the needs of an individual better than anyone else, and there might be six or seven different levels. They do it with home share today — and there are six or seven different levels — and say: "Look, based on the needs that you have, we assess you as receiving this kind of support, so see what you can get out there with that kind of support. If you can't find it, come back, and maybe we need to talk about it more." I think it would be a more efficient system.

D. Ashton (Chair): Clint, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

D. Ashton (Chair): Jennifer, thanks for coming, and thanks for coming early. I greatly appreciate it. We've got some travelling to do tonight. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning on it, and then we have allocated five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.

J. Grenz: Thank you so much for hearing me out today. I know you guys have been really busy, and we're at the end of the day. So hang in there.

I'm from the Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver. My name is Jennifer Grenz. I'm the development and projects manager for the Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver, and I'm actually here today on behalf of our organization and the Fraser Valley Invasive Plant Council. Their manager is here today as well — Jeanne Hughes, sitting right there.

We are two of 17 regional invasive species committees that cover the province and handle much of the education, outreach and control services for private land owners, all levels of government, industry and First Nations groups. What I'm hoping today is that the information I'm providing you will help you gain an understanding of the importance of invasive species remaining a priority budget item for the province of British Columbia.

Why are we talking about this today? Largely, this is because…. Invasive species aren't a new issue for B.C. at all.
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They've been around for a really long time. A lot of money has gone into them. But really, in the past the issue has been addressed largely as an agricultural issue in dealing with weeds and, also, just kind of off the side of desks.

However, now we're faced with a number of new high-risk species as well as species that are at our doorstep that represent a significant threat to B.C.'s economy as well as public safety. As well, a lot of the species that are currently existing within the province have hit a critical point in their population where we are really starting to feel their impacts.

A few of the ways that invasive species are really hurting B.C. are just in public safety alone. The European fire ant, which recently got some media coverage, is of great concern to constituents because that represents the possible loss of parkland.

As well, we have private properties where people aren't even able to use their backyards anymore. We've got entire backyards decked in Deep Cove in North Vancouver because people can't even let their dogs out to go to the washroom. That's how dangerous these ants are. This is a significant risk for tourism in particular if it gets into our parklands, as well as trying to understand what the impacts might be on real estate values.

Also, now we're starting to get into liability issues as well, where if you have municipal or Crown land that started with the infestation and it spreads onto private land, what happens then? Who is responsible? This is a really important and new issue in the province that really needs attention and money put into it.

Other public safety issues include giant hogweed, which can cause third-degree burns and blindness if it gets in your eyes. These are real issues, as well, where we're seeing, even within the Metro Vancouver area, it popping up in parks, laced in the lawn. Children are running across the lawn, and we have these toxic plants. We're just really behind the game in terms of controlling the species.

We also have knotweed species that are causing significant issues for homeowners. In the U.K. you can't get a mortgage or property insurance on a property that has knotweed on it.

Much of the coastal areas do have knotweed on private properties. People are unaware of its ability to actually penetrate foundations. There was a even case on BBC News last year where a house was condemned in the U.K. because of the presence of this species. This species has really begun to take hold in the Lower Mainland. It's a huge issue in terms of property values and trying to understand what that's going to mean in terms of mortgages and insurance as well.

Those are some of the public safety concerns, but the main concern is really with the economy, largely. We're really starting to see some direct impacts, in particular on the development of major infrastructure projects, such as the Port Mann/Highway 1 expansion project as well as the South Fraser perimeter road. Both of these projects have been held up because of knotweed infestations growing on the alignments.

Any holdup in development costs money. This is where, because the species is capable of growing through concrete and pavement, it's of concern when you're putting down pavement for highways. What's happening is that highway projects are having to wait for the plants to be treated and die before they continue with paving.

Why is this an issue? Well, we haven't really addressed the source of this infestation, which is that we don't have any policies in place to keep us from having contaminated materials to build this infrastructure. We really need to take a look at our policy around that.

Then we've got species on our doorstep. You know, the impacts of zebra and quagga mussels in the States have been in the billions of dollars. Between 1993 and 1999 they estimated $3 billion of impacts just to power generation in the States from zebra mussels. And slowly but surely, those species are moving towards our province. We had a near miss last year with a boat that ended up in Shuswap Lake that actually had dead mussels on it. We were just really, really lucky that happened.

We estimate that the economic impacts, if we get zebra or quagga mussels, to hydro facilities will be about $20 million annually, so this is huge concern for B.C. Hydro in particular.

We also have significant impacts to agriculture. In 2008 they estimated $65 million in impacts from invasive species on agriculture. If we continued at the control levels that we were at, at that time, the estimates at 2020 would be about $139 million. Those impacts are basically from crop reduction, poor forage quality and increased management costs to farmers.

We used to talk about a lot of these impacts because we sort of projected them, but now we're really actually starting to see them. That's a really new thing for me. When I give presentations, I used to say: "Well, a knotweed will grow through pavement" or "It will slow down your highway project." Well, now we're actually living that, and that is in a really short period of time. That's where I really feel like time is of the essence to make sure that this is a priority issue.

So what do we need to do? Largely, in the past the invasive plant and invasive species program has been sort of dealing with the flood before turning off the tap. What we need to do is look at prevention of these species and invest in that as opposed to…. An example is that we spend a lot of money in this province treating species that are sold in nurseries. That doesn't make any sense. As a taxpayer, that doesn't make any sense. These are the sorts of things that we need to look at and address from a prevention standpoint as opposed to a reactive standpoint.

An example of that is also things like preventing the introduction of new species that are going to cost us all
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the money I talked about earlier, like having boat inspection stations at key entrance points. This is something that's common across the United States. We don't have that here. Why don't we have that?

We also have regulations in place like the controlled alien species regulation and the Weed Act, but neither of those are very strongly enforced. That's where we need to look at less of a carrot approach and actually effectively enforce regulation behind these sorts of things.

We're also looking towards you guys continuing to invest in management and in controlling species that are already here as well as reducing the impacts of the species that have the greatest impact to our economy — in particular, those like knotweed — and also public safety, like European fire ant.

We're also looking for continued support towards education and coordination, that there's support for multi-stakeholder collaboration, that we're continuing to partner with you in terms of the regional committees like ourselves as well as the provincial organizations to help facilitate education and outreach, management and planning, because weeds know no borders.

Especially in our region we have significant challenges with that. We have 23 municipalities within a very small geographic area and invasive species everywhere. We share contractors. We share materials. It's really vital that we have these organizations in place that help to facilitate that multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Invasive species really are on the forefront of many constituents' minds. The presence of invasive species in the media this year alone was quite amazing. There was coverage this year of snakehead fish, Asian carp, zebra and quagga mussels, fire ants, giant hogweed and knotweed. It was a very busy summer for me.

This is where we have now considerable constituent pressure going to a lot of our local governments as a result of that media exposure. Now we're starting to get questions from constituents like: why did we let this happen? What are we doing about it? Why are you allowed to buy this stuff? Doesn't anyone enforce the laws around this? This is the sort of feedback that we're getting from your constituents.

The good news is that we have a winnable battle. There are examples around the world of having strong prevention programs in place that will prevent all this from happening. We just need to take the bait and get on it.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. Perfect timing. I have a couple of questions so far.

M. Hunt: I had two of my daughters working with the SHARP program in Surrey, dealing with invasive species. So when we bought a new home and discovered that we had four invasive species on our own property…. They thought they were pretty, you know.

J. Grenz: The legislation and the enforcement behind the legislation. That's where we're really lacking. I'm the president-elect for the North American Invasive Species Management Association, and I work very closely with folks in the U.S. They laugh at our legislation. They have banned-plant lists, prohibited-plant lists. You can go to jail for having stuff with you. They take it very seriously because of the…. They're already feeling the costs, billions of dollars, and we're not feeling those costs yet. So we have a real opportunity here to look at what they're doing and try and do that.

S. Hamilton: This is very ironic, because about three weeks ago I got ravaged by fire ants. But they weren't here. They were in Palm Springs. I'm sitting in the hot tub, with my arms up like this. All of a sudden…. I didn't realize. I guess we neglected to cut some weeds back around the far side of the tub. They started to sting. Oh my god, they're worse than a bee sting. I've still got the scars to prove it.

J. Grenz: They're in North Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond. While some money has gone into trying to research what to do about it, largely there's not a lot happening on the ground to try and contain them, prevent the spread and educate constituents about what's happening. We don't even have a full understanding of their range in the province, and that's where we really need to spend the money.

S. Hamilton: I was recently on a website trying to find out where all the pockets were, and they're more prevalent in the southeast United States. Of course, Arizona and California have more, but I'm surprised that I didn't even hear about Oregon and Washington.

They're nasty. You don't even know you're close to a mound. Step even close to them and disturb them, and they'll swarm up your leg like you wouldn't believe.

J. Grenz: Parts of a national park in Maine were shut down. They had to close parts of a national park because of the risk to the public was so high.

You talk about multi-stakeholders. I did have a question here. I apologize. You talked about multi-stakeholders. Beyond legislation, what role might you play in different communities — say, Metro Vancouver and all of the
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member municipalities — maybe to educate their staff so that they know what to look for? Do you have any programs like that, besides…?

J. Grenz: We do, and you fund them. You guys do a great job funding those. Is it enough? I'm going to say no. Actually, it's not, especially for organizations like ourselves where we have over two million people in our region. But the local governments and regional governments really do rely on our committees to provide the collaborative opportunities to talk about what the issues are, what the best management practices are, how much budget they need to be setting aside for this stuff, handling questions from their constituents, and also coming up with overall management plans.

We're working right now on a fire ants research project with the district of North Vancouver. Those are the sorts of roles that we fulfil.

S. Hamilton: Head on down to Coachella Valley, because they know all about it down there. I'm all for strengthening the legislation.

G. Holman: Well, it's a very big topic. Thank you for your presentation. I'm just wondering about more specific dollar amounts attached to the recommendations that you're making here. I take it that there are various levels of governments and entities like Crown corporations involved in this. Specifically, in terms of the provincial government, what kinds of resources are we talking about?

J. Grenz: To actually be able to do this? The Invasive Species Council of British Columbia is going to be presenting to you guys in 100 Mile House. I think they're going to be speaking to that a little bit more specifically because they've done a couple of economic papers. I might leave that question for them.

E. Foster: Basically, you've got a two-pronged attack. One is to prevent the species that aren't here from getting here, which is certainly the easiest of the solutions. The other is, of course, to deal with the ones that we have.

There's great pressure on the provincial government to ban the use of herbicides and pesticides. Help me.

J. Grenz: Well, yeah. I mean, especially with us being in Metro Vancouver. That is a big issue, and I've spent quite a bit of time travelling around North America, actually, talking about issues around urban pesticide use and invasive plant management.

I think there's a lot of social lore around herbicide use that has not helped our case to be able to use them. I have a lot of faith in the Pest Management Regulatory Agency to protect us from anything that may be dangerous. In the case of invasive plant management, for some species, unfortunately, because we have let them get to this level, that's the only tool that we have to use. That's much different than maybe being able to spray cosmetically on your lawn. These are very separate issues. This is about ecological restoration.

I think where we've had great success is in being able to demonstrate it to the public. We've done pesticide application on the news several times and never had any negative feedback from that, because it's very targeted. It demonstrates the recovery of the ecosystem as a result of that, and also protection of people's homes, protection of people's children. It's a very easy sell but is a very separate issue from cosmetic pesticide use.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): I fully support the efforts that you're undertaking in terms of invasive species. But there are a couple of questions that I have in terms of your approach and some of the things that you're looking at.

Loosestrife, for example, was a real problem in the Lower Mainland that had materialized, I think, in the mid-'80s, and it really came to a head. You could see it in Burnaby Lake — you know, the purple haze — but what eventually got it under control was a very specific biological insect that fed only on that and on that alone. So it brought it down.

There was a lot of research done into that. And I'm wondering about that approach to dealing with other invasive species in the Lower Mainland, because one of the things I find interesting is that they tend to get the media's attention, and then it's like all of a sudden it's here.

Knotweed, I think, is a classic example of it. We're reading in the Vancouver Sun, you know, that it's ground zero, it's here now and it's just arrived. No, it hasn't just arrived. It has actually been here for a very long time. Growing up in Port Coquitlam 40 years ago, there were clumps of it all over the place. It was everywhere, and we made swords with it when we were kids.

And now what you see is a lot of money being spent, because of that awareness, on it. You know, groups are going out, and it's really great. There's a school by me where they dug it out and bulldozed it at huge expense, but it's coming back up again.

My question, then, is about the need for more resources going to look at those specific biologic controls that have been proven very effective in a number of cases. In fact, isn't that a key part of the solution that government needs to be addressing, as opposed to just general awareness, and teams going out and digging it up and feeling good? The reality is: it comes back the next year.

J. Grenz: What you say are some really great points. And the government is already quite heavily invested in its biocontrol program. There are several species under effective biocontrol. But it's important to know that bio-
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control is really not control. It's containment. You'll always have populations present.

Knotweed, in particular, has been around for quite a while, but we have hit that point in the population where people are starting to deal with it more directly, where it is having impacts on playing fields, right up against people's foundations, all that. I think that's where you're seeing more attention, because we've just really hit much more of a critical point. I've been involved in this for the last 15 years, and I see it a lot more than back 15 years ago where it was in isolated clumps.

I think what's really important for the government to consider is to make sure that we have a really balanced approach in what we're investing in, that we don't just put everything into control, that we don't just put everything into prevention. We need a balanced program that invests in biocontrol, that invests in prevention, and we just really need to make sure that we hit all facets, because that's the only way we're going to be successful.

I think also where councils like ours are important is to make sure that people aren't digging out knotweed — again, around education about best management practices — because you can dig knotweed forever until you die, and it will always come back. That's where, again, you know, there's so much around public education and also in ensuring that dollars are spent appropriately.

We've had knotweed projects where governments have spent a quarter of a million dollars on a project when they could have spent $1,000 on herbicide instead and it would have worked. Again, this is the sort of information we need to be able to get out to make sure that dollars are spent effectively.

D. Ashton (Chair): Jennifer, thank you for your presentation. I gave you a little bit extra. It was very interesting. You're the last of the day.

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8) Special Olympics British Columbia	Dan Howe
9) Pacific Developmental Pathways Ltd.	Clint Hames
10) Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver	Jennifer Grenz

Chair:	* Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Mike Farnworth (Port Coquitlam NDP)
Members:	* Mable Elmore (Vancouver-Kensington NDP)
	* Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
	* Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands NDP)
	* Marvin Hunt (Surrey-Panorama BC Liberal)
	* Lana Popham (Saanich South NDP)
	* Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Other MLAs:	John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
	Laurie Throness (Chilliwack-Hope BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff	Stephanie Raymond (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Debbie Denault (Chilliwack Learning Community Society)
	Kirk Dzaman (Vice-President, Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce)
	Kevin Gemmell (President, Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce)
	Lorraine Gerard (Executive Director, B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association)
	Jennifer Grenz (Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver; Fraser Valley Invasive Plant Council)
	Clint Hames (CEO and Vice-President, Pacific Developmental Pathways Ltd.)
	Dan Howe (President and CEO, Special Olympics British Columbia)
	Natalie Jones (The WaterWealth Project)
	Paul Kariya (Executive Director, Clean Energy B.C.)
	Lynn Perrin
	Dr. Jay Robinson (President, British Columbia Chiropractic Association; College of Chiropractors of British Columbia)
	Maggie Saunders (President, Board of Directors, Chilliwack Learning Community Society)
	Ian Stephen (The WaterWealth Project)
	Fieny van den Boom (Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce)

1) Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce	Kevin Gemmell
	Kirk Dzaman
	Fieny van den Boom

4) Chilliwack Learning Community Society	Debbie Denault
	Maggie Saunders

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