Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 8 — Wednesday, September 25, 2013 (HTML)

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:

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	227
E. Staples
B. Hope
J. Fox
J. Gordon

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We're the Select 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 the time to attend. We really appreciate you participating in this important process.

Every year the Ministry 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 a 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 recommendations 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 and to attend the hearings. We have also scheduled video conference sessions 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 include instructions on how to make a submission. This is available at our website which is www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, October 16. All 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 committee members. Time permitting, we may also have the opportunity for an open-mike session at 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 available at the committee's website.

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

I would now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. I'll start to my left.

D. Ashton (Chair): My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for 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 very dedicated individuals: our Clerk, Susan Sourial, and Stephanie Raymond, who is staffing the registration desk. Michael and Jean are also here on behalf of Hansard Services over here.

Ed, thank you very much for coming. We appreciate that you're here. We'll open the dialogue with yourself. You have ten minutes. I'll give you a quick warning two minutes before it's up.

D. Ashton (Chair): I was wondering about the backup you brought, Ed. I'm not so sure about that. Oh, except for the lovely lady that just sat down.

E. Staples: My name is Ed Staples. I'm the vice-president of a group in Princeton called Support Our Health Care, otherwise known as SOHC. Our society was formed 16 months ago as a direct response to the ongoing reduction of health care services in Princeton and area.

These reductions reached a tipping point in April of
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2012, and that was a direct result of the Interior Health Authority announcing in April that they would be closing our emergency department at the hospital for four nights a week. This prompted an overwhelming response from the people of Princeton and area.

I'm here today, and I requested this opportunity to let you know about our success story and also to give you a heads-up on where this may lead.

On January 29 of this year SOHC held a very successful community consultation facilitated by Dr. Barbara Pesut of UBC Okanagan. IHA responded to the resulting report that came out of that community consultation, and they formed a committee to act on the findings of the consultation and also to develop a framework for addressing the public perceptions regarding our health care system.

I'd like to emphasize the role that research played in this process. Dr. Pesut and also the Rural Health Services Research Network of B.C. provided outstanding support in the gathering of factual information that we used in the development of an action plan.

I'd also like to give credit to IHA and, especially, Susan Brown, who is an administrator for the South Okanagan–Similkameen area who organized a committee to act on the information gathered at the community consultation.

The committee included all of our family physicians, our nurse practitioner, hospital administrators, local government officials, community leaders, the South Okanagan–Similkameen division of family practice and IHA representatives. The committee also included Valerie Tregillus, who was hired as a consultant in the process.

The aim of the committee was to develop an effective and sustainable health care model for people living in and around Princeton. By the end of June the committee had developed its plan, entitled An Action Framework: To Sustain an Effective Health Care Model for Princeton and Surrounding Areas. Subsequently, IHA, RDOS and the town of Princeton endorsed the framework, and the process of implementation was handed over to the newly formed Princeton health care steering committee.

I'm very pleased to report that the steering committee is well on its way. We now have three new doctors coming to Princeton. Two have started already, and a third will be arriving in a couple of weeks. They are presently working on an agreement to set up a group collaborative practice at the Cascade Medical Clinic, which is attached to our hospital.

At the September meeting of the steering committee IHA announced that the emergency department at Princeton General Hospital will be reopened 24-7 on October 11. As you can imagine, that was received very, very warmly by our community.

At that same meeting it was reported that telehealth equipment has been installed at our hospital and training for medical personnel has been completed. IHA has also increased hours of operation for patients requiring lab work at Princeton General Hospital. And the B.C. Ambulance Service announced that they will be installing two publicly available defibrillators in our community in October.

This is just the start. The steering committee has a one-year mandate, and we have very clearly identified measures for the improvement of our community's health care delivery system. We have a long list to tackle, and we are committed to see this through.

What are the implications for this province? The steering committee, SOHC and people that have been involved in this are convinced that the process we've been through and the ultimate success of this new model will be something that other rural-remote communities will be interested in.

In fact, we've already had some response to that. We've heard from people in Kaslo, we've heard from people in Nelson, and we expect that there will be others that will also be coming forward soon. We believe that this model can be applied to other communities that are experiencing similar problems without expending the same time and effort that was required in its development.

However, I think it's important to note that this should not be viewed as a one-size-fits-all formula for communities experiencing health care difficulties. Each community has its own unique concerns, and public perception needs to be respected in the development of effective models for every community.

I think it's fairly clear to most British Columbians that the role of resource development is a priority in this government's economic development plan. When you look at the area around Princeton, we have a newly opened copper mine. We have a new coal mine. There's a silver mine in operation, a large lumber mill, a pellet plant and a variety of other small industries, largely based on the forestry sector.

These industries represent a huge cash cow for the province and have the potential to provide much benefit for the development of our community — but only if our community has the infrastructure and services that will attract and retain residents and businesses. SOHC believes that an effective health care system is one of the pillars of support for any community. Without it our community won't grow, and as our population ages, which it's doing, present residents will move to where the services are available.

I'm not an economist — my wife does our books in our family — but I believe that investment in establishing and improving basic services will develop a healthy economic environment for all rural communities in our province and will lead to an improved tax base for local and provincial government budgets.

I just got the two-minute sign, so I would like to shift my focus a little bit to talk about the health care partnership between the federal and provincial governments and make a couple of comments about that.
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This past week the Health Council of Canada released its report on the progress of health care reform over the past decade, entitled Better Health, Better Care, Better Value for All. The report shows disappointing results for taxpayers and patients alike. In the days following the 2004 Canada health accord, there was a lot of optimism that provincial and federal governments were going to deliver on their promise to maintain and improve health care for Canadians.

As we reach the end of the term of this agreement, it appears that there has been very little discussion and even less action on the transformation that was supposed to take place.

The rational for inaction provided by governments often centres on the fact that rising health care costs prevent any further improvements to our present system. This unsustainability view is, quite frankly, a myth. As a percentage of Canada's gross domestic product, health care spending has remained steady at between 4 and 5 percent since 1975. The myth is perpetuated by governments that portray health care costs as a percentage of the overall budget.

The fact is that health care costs have remained level as support for other government sectors has decreased, resulting in a perceived percentage increase in health care costs.

The other reason for this perceived increase is that private, for-profit clinics' costs are often included in the calculations that are used to present information to the public. The net result of this approach is that any improvements to the system are dealt with in a reactionary rather than a proactive way, where health care funding is seen as a burden rather than as an investment in our country's future.

In closing, I'd like to ask you to consider the following points when making budget decisions for British Columbia.

Please remember the role of research. We wouldn't be where we are in Princeton without the support we've received from UBC Okanagan and the Rural Health Services Research Network. Ongoing support is needed for research-based community consultation processes provided by the province's health authorities.

Secondly, funding is needed from B.C. health authorities to support the development and implementation of rural health care models that meet the individual needs of communities in rural-remote B.C. There's no point in having a model if there's not the funding available to implement the changes.

The third thing I'd like to point out is that the ten-year term of the present Canada health accord ends in 2014. To date the federal government has refused to renegotiate a new health accord with the provinces. We encourage the government of B.C. to take a leadership role in convincing the federal government that a new Canada health accord is in the best interests of all Canadians.

One of the reasons that Princeton was successful in attracting new doctors was the rural physicians for British Columbia incentive program.

D. Ashton (Chair): Ed, you're going to lose your question period. I'm sorry, and I think there will be some questions. I apologize.

This incentive program was provided by the B.C. Medical Association and the provincial government. Through this program, Princeton was very fortunate to receive two $100,000 grants, so it encourages the government to continue funding such programs and make them available to more communities in the future.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Just a comment. Thank you for your presentation. I'm glad to hear that you've had results here in Princeton. I want to make one comment, and that's on the Canada health accord.

There is, unfortunately, a new one in place that was imposed unilaterally by Ottawa just over a year ago, maybe even 18 months. Instead of the 6 percent increase that we have been getting since 2004 on an annual basis from Ottawa, it has been cut back. It will be based on a percentage of GDP. I think it starts out at 4 percent over the next two years, and then it drops to whatever the GDP of the country is. So there is one in place, but it's not a negotiated one. It was an imposed, unilateral one.

E. Foster: Two questions. One, you mentioned the two $100,000 grants that you got. How much of that goes to the docs?

E. Staples: The $100,000…. Each doctor that signs on is committed to a three-year term. They receive $50,000 at the end of the first year, $50,000 at the end of the second year, and if they do not complete the three-year term, they pay it all back.

I believe there's only one doctor that has actually taken that incentive. Two of the other three doctors have not signed up for that. Actually, the first one that signed up missed out on it because she signed before the incentive program came into place.

G. Holman: I guess I'm wondering about the key factor that changed IHA's opinion around the viability of emergency services. Was it the new doctors' arrival? Were there other factors? What was the key factor there that wasn't there before but all of a sudden with the committee was there?

E. Staples: I don't know all of the reasons behind it, but from SOHC's perspective, from the work that we
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were doing with IHA, it started to change as soon as we changed.

We started out in a very confrontational way. We had rallies. We had petitions. We did everything that we could to get IHA's attention and the Minister of Health's attention, and I think we succeeded with that. But as soon as we changed to an approach where we were more interested in collaboration and cooperation and developing a relationship with IHA based on trust and respect, that's when it started to change.

That's from my perspective. I know that there were other things that were going on, but I'm afraid I really don't know all the details of that.

G. Holman: I assume you're providing us the written version of your presentation?

J. Tegart: I'd just like to say congratulations to Princeton. They're a real model for moving from a very reactive, confrontational kind of "oh my god, we're going to lose everything" to "how do we make it work, how do we partner, and how do we make it right for our community?"

For them to be presenting today and presenting ideas around what made it work for them is very helpful to this committee. So congratulations.

For those around the table, Ed had mentioned a key. There was a whole bunch of keys on the key ring, and this is one of the keys on the key ring that made a difference in Princeton and area. So thank you, Brad. You and your group did an incredible job.

I was quite impressed with how Ed finished right up at ten minutes. I looked at how many pages. I'm not that organized. I'm going to actually change my program and jump ahead. I'm going to give you my ask first.

My ask really is basically to continue a lot of the things that we have. There are a lot of good-news stories in Princeton. One of the things I'm going to ask is that we really push to continue the federal program, the gas tax agreement. That's been very good. If we have time, I'd like to explain what that's done with us.

One that we have kind of slipped away from that which I would like to get back is the three-way infrastructure agreement that we had with the feds. That's really important to rural communities when you want to hook up things like sewer and water. That's where you have provincial, local and the community to put these infrastructures in place.

One that I really am impressed with that the government has done, which we've used — and I do want to tell you about this one — is the provincial government commitment to small community grants. That really is proving to be the lifeblood of our communities.

I'm jumping around here a little bit. I hope that's okay. I wanted to mention the fact that the carbon tax was taken off the agricultural piece. That's really important. I think that's something that agriculture needs. We've got so many people involved in agriculture in Princeton. I see them pretty well all having outside jobs. I would really like to see our agriculture people working on agriculture and raising their crops and whatnot and not having to work as flagpeople or whatever it is when they could be used for better things.

Community forests have been really good for us in Princeton. We have a community forest that has worked wonders. We need to keep that. Speaking of forests, one of the things that concerns me that we have to look at is the fact that the lumber industry has been awash with bug-kill timber. All that is going to change. The licences were issued. Uplifts were issued.

What we're coming into now, as bug-kill wood is being removed, is a realignment of that. We're going to have to go back to the original allowable cuts that have been allotted to different sawmills.

Some sawmills went ahead and spent a lot of money to take advantage of that without having the long-term wood supply. They did that on uplifts and whatnot. When that's realigned, I think the fear with some of the lumber companies…. Princeton has had Weyerhaeuser, which was very good. We closed down, I think, in 2008 for a week here and there. It was touch and go, but they managed to keep us going — a tremendous benefit to the community.

We have to really make sure that when we go back, we don't say: "Oh well, these people came in and all these licences…." Now they would like a piece of that allowable cut, which is going to be reduced since the bug kill is gone and we've moved forward.

What we don't want to do is penalize the companies that made the hard choices, worked through it, kept open
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and kept our communities going. When that realignment comes, I think we have to be very careful that we go back to the licensing quotas that we once had. That's something we have to consider.

The other thing…. I wish we had more time, but I'd like to talk at some point about policy. One of the things we've run into is government policy that I'm sure, when it was put in place, made sense. But when you actually get on the ground and try to do the practical things, you run into all kinds of little glitches. I think that happens with any organization, where they say: "Well, this is what we're going to do." But when you actually start to do it, it often doesn't work.

We've got a lot of those in the government which just hold things up, cost extra money and confuse the issue. Dan, I know that you're going to do a core review. I hope we can talk about those things.

I would like to, for whatever time I've got, just tell you quickly about some of the things we're doing. I mentioned gas tax funding and whatnot. We've done two arenas where we replaced the old lighting — $30,000 or $35,000 for each of those processes, two arenas and a whole riding area and indoor arena for the exhibition grounds.

I know when you look at some of the big things the province is doing, these things may seem small. But what we did, for instance, in two of the arenas is we took 58, 400-watt halogen bulbs, replaced them with 200-watt bulbs that give us…. Actually, they're induction lighting, and we get 15 percent more light and half the power consumption.

In those two arenas and the exhibition grounds, that's 30,000 watts of power that B.C. doesn't have to produce, or if they do produce, they can be used elsewhere. That goes on for years and years. It's a huge amount, really, when we start thinking about not just my area, with these three projects, but all the municipalities, all the regional districts in B.C. It's a massive amount of power that we don't have to use or that can be sold elsewhere.

That's gas tax, and I think that's a really important one for us to push the federal government to continue. It's a good one.

I mentioned some of the community programs, and I'd like to tell you just a little bit about one that we did in Tulameen. I spent yesterday with CBC. CBC were out there, and they were filming and recording. All that's going to be coming out pretty soon. It's a real credit to the government, I think.

What happened was Tulameen wanted to put a roof on their outdoor rink. That's about a 65,000-square-foot steel roof. They had $60,000 of their own money. The government provincial program said basically that the province would pay 80 percent, and the community would put up 20 percent. So they had $60,000. That left them $240,000 that they were eligible to apply for.

They applied for the $240,000, got the grant, had the $60,000 and said: "Okay, now we'll do the roof." It's a small community. They priced out the roof and found out the material costs were more than what the grant was. Obviously, they couldn't go ahead, but they did. They came to the regional district and said: "We want to do it." "Well, how are you going to do it?" They said: "Volunteers. We'll get people to donate material and equipment, and we'll do it."

So the regional district, to their credit, with lots of raised eyebrows said: "Okay, let's do it." So we put out a call for proposals. A number of larger companies put them in. One of the companies…. The highest bid was just under $1 million. The lowest bid, I think, was $675,000. The community had $300,000 with their own money and the grant, so they said: "Well, we're going ahead."

I was out with the CBC person yesterday. They are finishing on time, on budget. Jackie's name is on the sign, right at the top. But they did it. It's an amazing thing that this community could actually do that.

The CBC guy said to me: "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" And I had to say: "Yes, we have." We had two other communities that got $15,000 from the forest corp, another provincial project, and bid a community centre, put their own money in, volunteer time — a community centre and a fire hall.

I see this more and more, and I think it is a response to difficult economic times. What's happening is communities, rather than saying, "Well, we're dead in the water," have said: "Okay, what can we do?"

Tulameen got donations from all over. On the list with Jackie's name at the top, there's a whole list of people that donated. They had people coming out of the woodwork, giving them steel and rebar and all this sort of thing, all kinds of free labour.

That happened in three areas in this community, in my region, and I have two others now that are asking to go further. Tulameen has come back and said that now they want a community hall. They'll probably do it for nothing. I don't know.

I think it is really encouraging to see what happens if we can continue with some of these programs and make sure that we get those into the rural communities. It all comes down to return on investment. Here's a $240,000 grant from the province and a million-dollar facility, and that's a pretty good return on investment. So there we are.

E. Foster: A couple of questions, one about the community forest. Who operates your community forest or does the physical operation of it?

B. Hope: Weyerhaeuser is our manager. There are three groups: the Upper Similkameen Indian band, the
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town of Princeton and my area, area H. Weyerhaeuser operates it and does the management, and we oversee how it's done.

E. Foster: What would the net to the village be on an annual basis? I know that depends on the price of logs.

B. Hope: The net to each of us on the first year was $235,000. That's actually what we took. Now, we put aside a reserve, so it's actually more than that. I think it's about $270,000 to each partner. So a great benefit to the First Nations band, to the town and to our region.

B. Hope: Well, it of course varies. I think this year, actually, it's going to be a little better, but that will change.

B. Hope: Yes, plus there was another 20,000-metre uplift. Ninety percent of that is bug kill.

E. Foster: Okay. So you're not going to have the uplift any longer, though. That will be done.

Then your other comment regarding the forest industry. When these uplifts were issued to all the licensees — be they community forests or major licensees — it was very, very plain that when the uplift was done, the allowable annual cut in the province was going down. So everybody is going to take a hit across the province. There's just not enough timber. If one area would have their AAC go back to what it was before, another area is going to get a double whammy.

I mean, if you look at the numbers, they're pretty…. I sat on the timber review committee last year, and we travelled the province. In the bug-kill areas we're going to be about ten million cubic metres a year short of what we had when we started — a lot to do with the overcut that we had to do to salvage it.

B. Hope: Right, and I understand that. I think, however, all the temporary licences were just that — temporary.

B. Hope: The uplifts. So I think what our concern is in Princeton is that companies like Weyerhaeuser, although they've already consolidated — OK Falls was closed and whatnot — are going to get squeezed, and we're going to have failures of good companies that we really need.

E. Foster: My question to you, though, is: if the wood doesn't exist, where are they going to get it? The allowable annual cut is based on the annual growth. If you've taken that much extra timber off, which was the right thing to do…. The wood is either going to be cut, or it's going to die and burn.

At the end of the day, the timber doesn't exist — the cut. If you cut it now, you're not going to have it in ten years, or you're not going to have it in 15 years' time. The allowable annual cut across the province is going down by a considerable amount.

B. Hope: I understand that, but again, I think that has to be divided up — not with the people that came on and got temporary cuts. It has to go back to at least the percentage that it was before so that companies like Weyerhaeuser in our community can continue.

E. Foster: Okay. I just thought you didn't…. Everybody is going to take a hit. Hopefully, it will be equitable. That would be what we would hope. I just didn't want you to get…. It's a guarantee that everybody is going to take a bump. There's no question.

E. Foster: Oh, I know they are. I just didn't want the political push to be…. You understand it, so that's great.

D. Ashton (Chair): Brad, I've got a minute left, and I just want to bring up — I had the pleasure of working with Brad Hope at regional district — a quick story that you're going to give us. The issue of what a delay cost you from the government in a land transfer. Can you do it in a minute?

D. Ashton (Chair): The land transfer regarding the fire hall. Have you got a minute that you can quickly summarize what a delay of the province actually cost the community?

B. Hope: Well, in the Tulameen area it was…. We were trying to obtain a lane — just a lane that we will
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get, and it will come to the community. It's just a transfer. It's like a licence of occupation. It's from government to government.

RDOS needed that so they could do the building. They didn't get it in time, so it cost, actually — if you put in the labour, all volunteered and whatnot — about $55,000 extra to the community in Tulameen in labour and materials. They had to move the steel beams in just a bit and then cut through the cement, run metal ties from one to another to hold it so it would hold the snow load.

You know, within a few months I'm sure we'll get what we would've had, but we went through this incredible process. I've run into that a number of times where it takes two years to get that transfer and four months to do the project. It's what happened in Arras, and I think it's something that we can refine quite easily. It won't hurt the province; it'll certainly help the communities.

D. Ashton (Chair): Your written submission, and Ed's, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much for coming up here.

Welcome. Thank you for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you the two-minute warning, and then we have five minutes allotted for questions.

I apologize. I was actually out spraying weeds this morning when I got the call, so I don't have a handout or anything. I do understand you guys heard from Jen Grenz last night, so you already know all about the importance of weeds. I'm just going to sort of highlight what we do here and what's specific to our issues in this area.

My operating area is 45,000 square kilometres, so we share the same boundaries as the Thompson-Nicola regional district. I go all way up to almost Valemont. This is almost my southern end, and then I go all the way to Clinton. We have a very large operating area, but in that area we also have 40 percent of the provincial AUMs.

Do you guys know what that is? That is grazing animal…. I think it's animal unit whatever, but it's how many cows you can put out on the range — or goats or sheep. In my operating area I have the largest ranch in North America, plus several huge ranches that I deal with. I'm going to be talking to you, really, from the ranchers' perspective, although our committee itself is made of 23 members each representing different areas.

What was interesting is that when I started seven years ago, we were asked by the Thompson-Nicola regional district board of directors to present on…. They had received so many complaints about invasive plants that their question to us was: what's needed? How much money would it take to actually make a win?

We did a joint presentation. It was myself, somebody from the Ministry of Forests and the Ministry of Transportation. At that time our message was really: "We're not ready." We're not ready for the money. We don't have a plan in place. We don't have trained people ready to go.

At that time, there was only a handful of weed committees. But in that time — and it has been amazing over the last seven years to see what's happened — we've actually come up with a strategic plan for the Thompson-Nicola regional district area that involves all of our partners and their priorities and goals.

As well, the regional weed committees have formed. There are 16 representing the entire province. They're all geared specific to the needs in their areas. We do work in collaboration with each other, which is why I knew Jen was here last night. We do regular e-mails, we have regular meetings, and we actually tour the province and look at each other's weeds, which sounds strange. But what grows here does not grow in the north, around the coast.

I think it's really important to understand that these regional weed committees are crucial to successful invasive plant management in this province. A cookie-cutter approach to weeds will not work. Even in my own area we've divided it into ten areas because our region is so diverse. Something for a province can't work.

We have gone from just doing education and outreach to actually doing all the on-the-ground management for all of our partners, which includes all of the provincial agencies. As well, we have many private partners. We partner with B.C. Hydro, Spectra Energy and FortisBC. We have the mines and several of the municipalities. We just basically take all their money, and we do the weed control for them. They're part of the process.

We actually run a biocontrol program that's separate from the provincial program. It's funded by the regional district as a landowner assistance program. We have goats that are out eating weeds. They just left Logan Lake. They're on their way to Clinton. We have prisoners from the Kamloops correction facilities pulling weeds for us, and when they pull, they also grass-seed. And then we have spray contractors.

The good thing about this program that we deliver is that it's multi-jurisdictional. Traditionally, especially with provincial agencies, it had to go to bid. It went to the lowest bidder. One contractor would be going out for transportation, one for forestry, one maybe for the mine, and maybe lots of people just did no work. Here we're hiring one person to go out and do all the work. It's all done with the strategic plan.

The beauty is that we're recognizing our neighbours, right? Right now we have a lot of knapweed in my area, but right on my border with the Northwest Invasive Plant Council, they don't have knapweed. So we recognize their priority of keeping knapweed out of that. As well, our southern neighbours are recognizing our priorities.

What I wanted to bring up with you guys is that I get a lot of calls, especially at this time of year, when the
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knapweed starts to bloom. Most of my calls are from the ranchers because they're paying to use Crown land to graze, and they're seeing a real loss of their grazing to invasive plants. I always say: "People only see what I don't do." It's like housework, right? You only see the plants I'm not killing.

But what I get from the ranchers…. I go and apologize, and I say: "Well, this is what we have." But my funding that I'm receiving from the provincial government is at a critical level. Yes, I'm receiving more this year than I have in the past, but it is still only enough to do priority ones and maybe some of our twos. Basically, if a site is bigger than this table, it is not on our list for treatment. And that's a hard thing to get across to people when I'm explaining.

Our number one complaint is knapweed. People see it. I have 11,703 knapweed sites in my operating area. Now, we do have biocontrol for it. Biocontrol is a good option, but it doesn't work for highlighting the vectors of spread, or if you're on a pasture, if you're trying to use some grazing. We're just not at that level of funding to deal with it adequately to serve our clients.

There's been a big talk with the regional district. It's up to them whether they're going to enforce the Weed Act. The Weed Act is going through some regulation changes, which is great. But if we don't enforce those weed acts, we're kind of at a loss. You know, they're just words on a paper. In our area the TNRD has chosen not to go down the road of enforcement, primarily because the province is the biggest violator of the Weed Act in this area.

About 70 percent of my land that I deal with is Crown land, and my funding at this point is actually…. Non-Crown land is actually more funded than my Crown land, even though 90 percent of my sites are inventoried on Crown land.

Basically, I tell them — all the people that phone me and complain: "We're doing the best job we can with the funding that we have." This is my opportunity to sort of pass it on to you guys that I'm getting these calls. I tell them: "You're preaching to the choir when you phone me."

I think people are understanding, but they've seen a change. Back in the '80s it was search and destroy. People went out and sprayed everything that they could see. That got pulled back, and when I started seven years ago, the Ministry of Forests would hire six crews with summer students that went out and sprayed weeds and collected bugs. We haven't seen summer students in four years now, so it's all coming down to us.

There is a provincial biocontrol program, but we haven't received any insects from them for three years. Any work that's happening here is being really independent. We're seeing a pullback.

I think what's really needed is adequate funding to deal with more than a critical containment. We need to be available to make some wins, but more important than that is reliable funding. It's really difficult, in April, to develop a proper invasive plant management plan when you do not know what your funding level is going to be. Even if we knew it was the same as last year, it would be a starting point, but we have started field seasons not knowing what our budget is at and taking a chance.

J. Fox: I hope you understand the problem of invasive plants, but in this area particularly, it's the constituents who are taking a hit. We have lots of ranchers. I think there's rogue spraying going on, because there's a frustration at the lack of work that's happening at the Crown level when it comes to invasive plants.

J. Fox: Well, right now we receive $98,000 from the Ministry of Forests. It costs us about $100 a site, so that will do our priority ones, and we're receiving about $60,000 a year from the Ministry of Transportation. If you can imagine how many roads are in 45,000 square kilometres…. It's not enough to do…. We're just doing the priority species, and roads are a vector of spread. I'm not sure what the level is provincially, but that's what we're coming down to.

My request to the Ministry of Forests this year for their lands, for critical containment, was $278,000, based on what I have inventoried.

L. Popham: Thanks for your presentation. In the last presentation that we had, MLA Farnworth brought up the use of biological controls. In the United States, I believe, the root weevil is used for knapweed. Is that something that has been used here?

J. Fox: Yeah. We're lucky here in this area because the biological control program that the province runs is based out of Kamloops, so we actually get a lot of primary leases.

Biocontrol is great in certain areas. We are being told by the provincial staff that knapweed is under biological control at this point, but we're having a hard time selling that to our ranchers. We have had four wet springs, and the biocontrol is crashing. They just don't come out unless it's hot and dry.

We are the only committee that supplements that biocontrol program. The TNRD puts $30,000 into our
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biocontrol program, so we supplement the provincial program.

While I think biocontrol is great, it doesn't do the roadsides. It doesn't do the campgrounds, where the knapweed is sticking to the bottoms of cars and being pulled up north, right? We need the funding to get those vector sites.

I think biocontrol is great on the non-vector areas, but if you drive…. Even your drive down from the…. Did you guys go down the Coquihalla? I don't know if you've noticed the purple weed on the side, but the Coquihalla was knapweed-free five years ago.

We're being told by the provincial staff.... I'm not cutting down the provincial staff at all, but they're, "Why don't you do inductive biocontrol?" — which is putting out 1,500 insects. We can't collect 400 insects, let alone 1,500. I strongly believe that biocontrol is the answer in a lot of places, but any good pesticide management plan has more than one tool in the toolbox. Those areas of vectors and spread are crucial.

Parks is our lowest-funded partner, yet that is a huge vector — people coming from different areas of the province and leaving to other areas of the province — and we're just not adequately dealing with that site.

We have the British Columbia Association of Child Development and Intervention — Jason Gordon.

D. Ashton (Chair): No. It means that we get to get on an airplane earlier and get back to Victoria for tomorrow earlier.

J. Gordon: I looked at your schedule, and you deserve to get off a little bit earlier.

Thanks for the opportunity. I really appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. I'm representing the B.C. Association of Child Development and Intervention. It's a non-profit organization that represents the member agencies across British Columbia that deliver services to children and youth with special needs in B.C. Many of you probably have agencies in your community that are members of BCACDI.

In 2012 our member agencies delivered services to over 20,000 children and youth with special needs, and we also have representation right here in Merritt. The Thompson Nicola Family Resource Society is headquartered in Kamloops and has a satellite office here in Merritt. Our agencies contract with the Ministry of Children and Family Development to deliver services such as occupational therapy, speech-language pathology and a variety of other programs.

Why I'm here today is just to talk to you a bit about the emerging evidence in the literature supporting investment in early childhood development that's growing and also some of the challenges and issues that are facing us right now in this sector and some strategies as to how we can have some pretty immediate savings.

First of all, it's a pretty strong moral and ethical argument for investing in children and youth with special needs' early childhood development. We've seen that.

The evidence is growing, and pretty robust now, demonstrating that there is this critical window of time, when children are in their early years, where their brains are particularly malleable. We need to be ensuring that they have the environment where they're able to develop their mobility and their social, emotional and mental health, etc. We know we have that time. Research has demonstrated that. It's demonstrated that we need those opportunities for stimulation, participation, etc.

What is emerging now that's exciting is we're really seeing a growth in the literature regarding the positive return on investment we get by investing in this sector. There was some really compelling research at UBC in 2009 that showed that 29 percent of kids in B.C. right now are entering kindergarten developmentally delayed. They haven't achieved all those developmental milestones they should have for entering school. Here in B.C. — 29 percent.

The economic analysis of the impact of that figure shows that's going to impact our gross domestic product in British Columbia by up to 20 percent over the next 60 years. We have a real opportunity to bring that number down by appropriately investing. We have a job shortage of skilled workers in many of our burgeoning industries, and we probably have a solution to that right in our own backyard just by bringing that 29 percent figure down and making sure that our kids are entering kindergarten ready and without that developmental delay.

If you look at a variety of studies that go into the research into the economic return on early childhood investment, you'll see anywhere from to a 2 to 17 percent return on investment. The stock market right now is probably about 4 percent, if we're lucky. Private equity financiers would be beating down your door if you could offer them an 8 to 9 percent or plus return on investment right now.

Again, we have that opportunity here in B.C. If we're investing appropriately in early childhood development, we're going to gain anywhere from 2 to 17 percent return on our dollar. It's no longer just a moral and ethical issue. I think now it's also a financial support behind that we invest appropriately in this population.

Some of the challenges that we're facing now in this sector. Since 2008, when we had this onset of our financial crisis, the agencies that provide services in our communities have been under a flat budget or a zero-increase
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mandate, so there's been no new funding coming into these agencies since 2008. Now, unfortunately, our expenses have continued to rise — things like heating costs, electricity to run an agency, fuel costs, etc. Some of the employee benefits also have been increasing.

Since 2008 what our agencies have been doing is meeting the needs of our communities through internal efficiencies and through innovation. That's been going well, and we've managed to do it. They've stepped up and done incredible work.

Now, unfortunately, what has happened in spring is there's been another huge strain placed on these agencies. Many of you are probably familiar with a couple of collective agreements that were ratified back in the spring, which are resulting in 4 percent or more of increased operating expenses to these agencies in things like wages and benefits, etc. That's a huge impact on its own but particularly when you've been, since 2008, not having any new resources coming in to meet your demands.

What we're trying to argue here is our agencies are already stretched quite thin. They're already operating as lean as they possibly can. What we're seeing now is that to meet this new increase in operating expenses due to these collective agreements — and the government has not committed any new funding to help us meet those needs — we're having to change our service delivery models in a way that is going to negatively impact children and youth with special needs in B.C.

We know things about wait-lists and wait times for service, and we know those are going to grow because of some of these strategies that we have to put in place.

For example, we used to have a real family-centred model of care, where an agency would go out to the children's home or the children's preschool or daycare, and they'd provide assessment intervention in the environment that that child is spending their day. That's where you see them have their challenges. That's where you provide the strategies for them to overcome these challenges.

Now we're having families having to come into the agencies, because it's more cost-effective from an agency standpoint. But I can assure you that the clinical environment of an agency isn't one that's comfortable for a child. It's new and strange to them, and it's not where you're going to see their challenges. We're not going to even be able to make those appropriate recommendations for how they can get the support they require.

Other changes that we're seeing is we're having to cut back things like continuing education and professional development budgets in our agencies, which is going to seriously impact the ability of our staff at these agencies to ensure that what they're doing is evidence-based and best practice and keep up with emerging evidence.

Lastly, we have agencies that have vacancies or have staff away on leaves of absence or long-term disabilities hoping that these staff members don't come back to work because we need that buffer in the wages right now to be able to still provide these adequate services.

These are all strategies that are short term to try to overcome these increased cost pressures, but we haven't even had a chance to think about long-term strategies as to how we're going to address these costs. In any event, all these strategies are going to impact service delivery on the ground.

We know about wait-lists, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time. What we are seeing is this whole aging out, where a child with, say, a speech and communication difficulty is placed on a wait-list for early intervention and services at age three or 3½, and they just don't even receive any intervention. They graduate from the early intervention wait-list to the school district wait-list. It's impossible to change that 29 percent statistic if we're not able to provide that early intervention.

We have some strategies. Of course, what we've been asking government and we will continue to advocate for is that, at the very least, we see the funds come into our sector to help offset the costs recognized by those collective agreements ratified earlier this spring. We're going to continue to try to advocate for that on a public level and see if we have any success with that route.

What we're also suggesting, though, is there are some immediate changes we can make short term that are going to help us get away from the administrative burden of some of our contracting and procurement processes and be able to deliver those time and resources directly to the service delivery.

For example, MCFD used to have multi-year agreements with many of these agencies that are accredited by an international accrediting body, so there was some accountability there, for sure, and policies and procedures in place. They've switched recently. MCFD seems to be trying to get their house in order, so they've switched to these annual agreements, annual contracts.

So every single year agencies are negotiating with government to negotiate these contracts, whereas if it was more like a two- to three-year term, we'd be saving administrative time from an agency standpoint and also from a ministry standpoint. The contract and procurement process would be much more efficient. You wouldn't need as much staff in that regard.

We also have a situation now where MCFD…. For many agencies, they all hold multiple contracts. So instead of rolling four or five contracts for the programs into one collective, overarching agreement with an agency, the ministry, in order to truly get an idea of where they're at, is dividing these contracts up so that one agency will have four or five contracts for the different programs they deliver, which is again inefficient when it comes to contract procurement and the whole negotiating process.

Where we're trying to push government is if we could get reversion immediately back to the multi-year agree-
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ments and to these bundling of contracts in the one overarching agreement, we're going to save some administrative time both in the sector and on the ministry side. The idea is to have more resources to put directly into services and to help us meet some of these costs pressures that are currently being placed on us in the sector.

Lastly, there are also a lot of innovative therapies happening now, especially in group settings, for children with special needs on the autism spectrum disorder.

Now, one of the challenges with the ASD, autism spectrum disorder, funding models is that we use individualized funding, which has its positives and negatives. I'm not going to get into a lot of detail today, but one of administrative burdens is if eight children come into an agency for a group therapy program, that's eight separate agreements that our agency has to have with each of these families, and then go down to Victoria to get the funding paid back, etc.

So there's another example where, when we have a robust group program happening in agency, if the ministry was to be a bit more flexible in its funding model and simply provide a bundle of funding to the agency for that group program, we're going to save a lot of administrative costs and be able to direct more services to children and youth with special needs on the ground.

We recognize that currently we're facing some challenging financial times, and we feel we've been doing our part since 2008 to really meet the needs and the demands of government and make our operations as efficient as possible yet still effective. But this latest crisis from these collective agreements is just really stretching us to the point of….

It's a crisis where we have some agencies, which have been providing service in communities for decades, at risk of closing their doors. We have agencies going for short-term financial loans — again, just to maintain operations for some of these short-term pressures — and still not being able to put long-term strategies in place as to how they're going to find their funding ongoing.

Our concern, as always, is strictly for short-term financial savings and that there's a group of children — thousands of children with special needs — that are going to remain a statistic and be a part of that 29 percent that enters the school-age system with those global developmental delays. We think we can do better — we know the research demonstrates that we can do better — and that's where we should be putting our dollars.

Government has some good ideas in their early-years strategy that's being launched this year. Our concerns are that the early-years strategy seems to have a focus on child care, which is important and critical, but there's no real vision outlining the strategy for children and youth with special needs, which is our main concern. We want to get a better vision of what's going to happen with these kids and if there are going to be resources directed their way, because currently in the strategy there are no defined areas like that.

Our concern is that we're creating a provincial office for the early years, which is a good strategy but is also just creating more bureaucracy. And right now, at a time when we're facing this crisis, we feel that resources should be delivered strictly to service delivery and making sure that our communities are served appropriately. We can save the time for creating more bureaucracy when we have a bit more flexibility in our funding, which we simply don't have in today's day and age.

In closing, that's my presentation, and I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have.

E. Foster: Thank you very much. Before I ask my questions, I want to qualify…. My wife is the chairman of the board at a child development centre, so you'll know that I'm not going to be too hard on you, because I've got to go home.

E. Foster: I do have a couple of questions. You talked about the 29 percent of children who are tested that aren't ready for kindergarten. Are we testing more? These children — are they different than they were ten years ago? Or is it rather we're identifying more issues and changing the qualifications, if you will? Or is it that they're in daycare instead of at home with their mom getting read to? Just questions.

J. Gordon: That's a great question. I think, for the purposes of my presentation, that research was strictly out of UBC in 2009 as part of that 15-by-15 project that government actually funded on the state of children's readiness to enter kindergarten here in British Columbia. So my understanding is that that was one of the first broad-scale investigations of its nature. And as far as comparison studies and where that's been, I can't answer that question.

E. Foster: Thank you. One more question. You talked about the individualized funding for autism. If you remember, not too many years ago — it was less than four years because I was in the House — we were lobbied extremely hard by families to move to the individualized funding model. Are you suggesting that it might not be the best method of delivering the service?

J. Gordon: I probably don't have enough time to get into a conversation about all of the issues that we feel there are with IFM. I think it is great to have parent choice. Some parents are well informed and make great
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decisions for what's best for their kids, but our idea is just to have some flexibility within that model.

So if we can still have that model, which I think is here to stay and some families are doing well with…. We need to have alternative models that help those families that don't have the capacity to do the research and determine what's best for the child.

There are some communities that don't have the professionals on the ground in order to get those parents access to funds, whereas it's much easier for an agency to potentially recruit a professional to serve an agency than a single family.

I think the other big issue is that we've created a private market to deliver services for autism with these kids by making these public funds available. There are whole issues about…. Some costs are soaring in some communities, and the funds are being used up quicker than I think some families would like.

G. Holman: Another community organization with a similar mandate proposed that the agencies themselves could perhaps consolidate or integrate their service delivery and create cost-efficiencies, but they would need some help from the provincial government, perhaps, to help them do that — to kind of identify who all the agencies were that were getting funding and what was being funded.

J. Gordon: I think government has already started that process. One of the things they've done.... By going to these annual contracts and breaking things out, they're getting a better picture, on the ground, of what they have.

But I do see a lot of our agencies already taking many of those steps you've suggested. We have co-agencies now that are having the same building. Strategies like.... Some of the administrative costs are shared between agencies. So we see a lot of those strategies already in place because of the pressures that have been on these agencies since 2008, with no new funding coming in.

Innovation is great, and internal efficiencies are great. We need to make sure that we're spending our tax dollars responsibly in the most effective way we can. But after five years of doing so and finding these saving and these efficiencies, there's a limit to how we can get…. We feel that we're reaching that limit, and our concerns are now that it's the children and youth in the province who are going to feel the impact of that.

We have nobody else on the list. I want to thank everybody for coming out today — greatly appreciated. Thank you for your presence.

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1) Support Our Health Care Society	Ed Staples
2) Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen	Brad Hope
3) Southern Interior Weed Management Committee	Jo-Ann Fox
4) British Columbia Association of Child Development and Intervention	Jason Gordon

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
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Stephanie Raymond (Administrative Assistant)

Witnesses:	Jo-Ann Fox (Southern Interior Weed Management Committee)
	Jason Gordon (B.C. Association of Child Development and Intervention)
	Brad Hope (Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen)
	Ed Staples (Vice-President, Support Our Health Care)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

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