Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 10 — Monday, September 30, 2013 (HTML)

Fernie Salon, Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort
209 Van Horne Street, Cranbrook, B.C.

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (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	287
O. Parsons
D. Walls
D. Teslak
B. Knight
K. Hough
B. Johnstone
S. Loewen
D. Butler
W. Stetski
K. Paterson
L. Molnar
D. McSkimming
P. Davidson
N. Thielen

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We are 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 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 a consultation paper has been released, this committee is required to hold provincewide 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 or attend the hearings. We also have 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, including instructions on how to make a submission, is available at our website, which is 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 ten minutes. Up to five additional minutes are allotted for questions from committee members. Time permitting, we may also have 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 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.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for Penticton. I'll be chairing these proceedings and working very closely with the vice-Chair, Mike Farnworth — who, unfortunately, is away today — and all the committee representatives and staff to ensure that 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, the young lady at the back who is staffing the registration desk. Michael Baer and Alexandrea Hursey are also here on behalf of Hansard Services.

Sir, thank you very much for coming. As I said, we've allotted ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for the questioning period. The floor is open. It's yours.

O. Parsons: Thank you to the committee. My name is Oz Parsons. I'm currently the president of the board of ArtsBC, as well as having recently run the Fernie and District Arts Council. I'm currently writing my second non-fiction book.

ArtsBC is a non-profit registered charity and provincial arts service organization with a mandate to support and advance community arts and the community cultural development in British Columbia. We represent and work on behalf of 220 members. Through our members network ArtsBC provides a vital link between arts organizations in every region of the province, including geographically isolated communities.

Our membership has a broad scope and reach. They
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employ thousands of artists and cultural workers. Their volunteers donate countless hours, and their volunteer boards include many community and business leaders.

I come before you today on behalf of ArtsBC and the members to encourage the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to make recommendations to increase investment in the arts and the cultural sector in British Columbia in 2014-15.

ArtsBC recognizes the provincial government's commitment to British Columbia's cultural life, including increasing the B.C. Arts Council funding for the current fiscal year. The increased investment is a strong indicator of the provincial government's understanding and recognition of the important role the arts and culture sector plays in sustaining and building B.C.'s future prosperity.

ArtsBC emphasizes the need for the provincial government to continue to increase its investment in the arts and culture through the B.C. Arts Council and through gaming revenues. This funding allows community-based arts organizations to leverage money from local governments and the private sector.

The key consideration for increased investment is that B.C. residents of all ages actively participate in arts and cultural activities. According to Strategies Research, in 2010 almost 100 percent of B.C. residents, 15 or older, participated in at least one arts, culture or heritage activity.

With more artists working in B.C. than in Ontario and Alberta and with a larger workforce than the forestry and fishing industries combined, the B.C. cultural sector is recognized across the country and beyond for its vitality and its vibrancy. I'm sure you're all very aware of all the stats on investment and returns in the arts. The arts create jobs and produce tax revenue — a strong cultural sector in the economic assets that stimulates business activity, attracts cultural tourism revenue and retains a high-quality workforce.

The arts have been shown to be a successful and sustainable strategy for revitalizing rural areas and populations struggling with poverty and addiction. The arts assist wellness and recovery as a new area is being discovered. The arts foster young imaginations and facilitate children's success in school. They provide the critical thinking, communications and innovative skills essential to a productive workforce.

The arts create a welcome sense of place and a desirable quality of life. The arts also support strong democracy, encouraging citizens, focusing attention on important issues and encouraging collective problem-solving. The arts preserve unique culture and heritage, building identity and passing traditions along to future generations.

(1) To increase the B.C. Arts Council budget from $24 million in 2013-14 to $32 million in 2014-15, with a plan to increase the legislated appropriated investment to $40 million by 2016. The B.C. Arts Council is not adequately funded to fulfil its mandate or address current demands for the program. An increase to $32 million will begin to address existing shortfalls while activating the associated economic and social climate. A longer-term increase to $40 million will help to make British Columbia more competitive within a national context.

(2) Community gaming grants provide essential funds to many organizations and specific programs not funded by B.C. Arts Council. Previous cuts created turmoil for the sectors, and these cuts are still not being fully restored in spite of ongoing growth in gaming revenues. We propose increasing gaming community grants to organizations from $135.5 million in 2012-2013 to $156 million in 2014-15, with the option of further increased gaming grants in the longer term.

(3) Provide stable, predictable funding for B.C. Arts Council and community gaming grants programs so that they can offer multi-year funding to the arts and cultural organizations. We recommend specifically considering a three-year budgeting program that includes the ability to carry over unspent earmarked funds, which does not penalize successful fundraising.

Arts and culture are significant contributors to the well-being of communities and each province's economy and identity. The people of British Columbia can be extremely proud of what has been achieved in the artistic sectors and cultural workers, even more so knowing that the growth of this sector will be sustained and supported by the provincial government.

M. Elmore: Oz, thanks for your presentation. You mentioned you're a writer, working on your second book. What's your topic?

In terms of ArtsBC. you mention there are 220 members across British Columbia. Is that multisectorals with different disciplines, or is it a particular focus?

O. Parsons: That's arts councils and organizations that work on behalf of the arts, so it's not individuals as such.

M. Elmore: Is it organized regionally? Is there a
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regional structure also?

O. Parsons: Each of the arts councils is autonomous, but they do come together. Some have created regional areas. Yes, there is a regional structure in terms of…. For instance, the East Kootenay representative for a number of arts councils. But that's very informal; that's not a structured form.

M. Elmore: Is it generally region, or by town or city also — just generally, in terms of the network?

O. Parsons: By the councils. So there's Golden, there's Kicking Horse, and there's Cranbrook here, etc.

L. Popham: Hi. Thank you for presenting. I understand how important the arts are as an economic driver in the province, and I'm just wondering: has there been any study specifically for your area, the East Kootenays, to let us know how that's affected?

O. Parsons: I'm not absolutely sure, and I don't want to bring forward a whole bunch of statistics. But I do know that the investment in the arts has been revenue-positive, both on a tax base and on a cultural tourism base.

Sir, thank you for the presentation. I hope you didn't mind me calling you Oz. We're trying to stay on a first-name basis here.

D. Ashton (Chair): Second up, we have College of the Rockies — Dianne and David.

Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning as we get close, and then we've allotted up to five minutes for questions by the committee. The floor is yours.

Mr. Chair, committee members, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present at today's prebudget consultation process.

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

As president of one of the 11 B.C. public community colleges, it's my mandate to prepare a well-educated, highly skilled, job-ready workforce for our region and the province. We offer a comprehensive range of programs from university studies and baccalaureate degrees to career, technical and trades education — quite a broad spectrum of programs.

Our programs are designed to be accessible, affordable and responsive to the evolving needs of our students, community, business and industry. The college recognizes and is sensitive to the fiscal challenges currently facing the province. However, B.C. is facing a looming skills gap. It will take, from our perspective, realistic and scalable multi-year funding of post-secondary education by the province to address the workforce challenges that lie ahead.

There are one million job openings that are forecast by the year 2020. Between 2016 and 2020 the demand for workers in B.C. will outpace supply. The largest percentage of job openings — 42 percent — will require a college education, which is our role, and of course, College of the Rockies will be contributing towards that.

You look at, individually, from universities or from high school educations…. The colleges really do play a significant role. The aging demographics of the population, increasing levels of knowledge and skills require us to be competitive in the global economy and are undeniable facts that are driving demand for more job-ready college graduates.

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

We look forward to further consultations with the ministry and collaboration, of course, with other colleges in partnership to meet the challenges of maintaining a skilled B.C. workforce.

College of the Rockies has seven campuses located throughout southeastern B.C. Our main campus and Gold Creek campus are here in Cranbrook, and we have five satellite campuses located in Creston, Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Fernie. We serve a population of 83,000 people who are widely dispersed within our large 45,000-square-kilometre region.

We also have a very strong international presence through recruitment of international students to study here on our campuses in Canada and through projects and partnerships abroad for our students and employees. A recent survey of international student satisfaction ranked College of the Rockies No. 1 in Canada and No. 2 in the world — something we are very proud of.

College of the Rockies serves approximately 2,300 full-
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time-equivalent students each year through face-to-face and on-line instruction. This includes approximately 160 self-declared aboriginal students and 140 international students from more than 34 countries.

We thank the province for its continued support of aboriginal learning in our region and throughout B.C. However, government policy has created substantial financial challenges for international student operations at small rural colleges by encouraging increased competitiveness for students and revenue within the province and through the restrictive "no annual deficit" directive, which I'll speak about more later.

College of the Rockies issues more than 1,000 credentials every year, including our own College of the Rockies degree, the Bachelor of Business Administration in Sustainable Business Practices. We think we are capable of offering more degrees with the support of government.

Our faculty and staff are dedicated to our students' success. I'm proud to say that over the past 13 years, without exception, we have delivered exceptional programs and services to our students while meeting or exceeding the educational targets given to us by government, within budget.

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

A good example of this is our work this spring with our local mining sector to work toward filling a huge regional skills gap for haul truck operators. Knowing the huge need, we approached and successfully partnered with the province, Canada and the Columbia Basin Trust to deliver haul truck operator training in Cranbrook, Fernie and beyond, using state-of-the-art stationary classrooms and mobile haul truck simulators.

We continually look for ways to play a role in the effort to build a strong regional and provincial economy, and are eager to contribute to ensuring that B.C. has the highly skilled workers we need for other major economic initiatives throughout the province, such as the revitalization of the forest industry regionally and the growth of the liquefied natural gas industry provincially.

Some of the other innovative things we've done and continue to do successfully include rotating and one-time-funded health programs at our regional campuses, bringing those programs to Kootenay-area residents who cannot, for numerous reasons, come to Cranbrook for training; partnering with business and industry to tailor programs to meet their needs. For example, College of the Rockies hires and indentures students as apprentice-employees, and through our partnership with Teck Coal, we place them at Teck minesites to receive their practical training.

We partner with other post-secondary institutions, such as the University of Victoria, to deliver joint and collaborative programs and degrees such as the UVic teacher education degree, delivered entirely on site in Cranbrook with local faculty members, and the bachelor of nursing degree, where our local nursing faculty who hold master's and doctoral degrees deliver eight semesters in Cranbrook. The final two semesters are completed at UVic in Victoria.

We believe we have the ability to deliver all ten semesters, the entire bachelor of nursing degree, here in Cranbrook, which would increase health care expertise in our region and keep our trained nurses here at home in rural B.C. College of the Rockies has the ability, the faculty and the facilities here in Cranbrook to offer our own nursing degree program. All we need is the support of government to do so.

In addition to providing high-quality job-ready training, College of the Rockies is an engine of regional economic growth. Our service area economy receives $134 million in income each year due to the activities of the college and the cumulative effects of our current and past students. This figure amounts to more than 4 percent of our total annual income in our regional economy. We are a major regional employer.

In 2012 College of the Rockies employed 850 people. College of the Rockies and all B.C. colleges are truly educational, social and economic engines in our communities, and are critical to the province as it addresses the looming skills gap.

The baby boomers are beginning to retire, and there are simply not enough skilled workers ready to replace them. For example, Teck Coal estimates that between 320 and 450 journeypeople will retire in the next five years, with another 325 to 450 in the following five-year period in the East Kootenay region alone.

This represents 43 to 58 percent of present journeyperson trade workers in the Elk Valley mining operations. The mining industry in general is being forced to recruit skilled labour internationally.

As the primary providers of advanced skills and education, B.C.'s colleges must play a major role in combatting the large future skills gap, but we need the support of government to do this. At a time when investment in skilled trades training should be on the rise, the system faced reductions in confirmed funding over the last years totalling nearly $20 million.

Continued and enhanced investment by government in B.C.'s colleges is absolutely necessary to ensure we have the workforce in place to meet the challenges of the future. Internal and external inflationary pressures, the cooperative gains mandate, reductions to block funding,
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deferred maintenance, and reductions to funding to support skilled trades training have forced B.C. colleges to undertake extraordinary measures to continue to meet the range of programs and services our students and communities require.

Our colleges can have a significant impact by ensuring a skilled and educated workforce for B.C., helping to build vibrant communities throughout B.C. and helping to enhance B.C.'s competitive advantage in knowledge and skills. But we can't do this without realistic and scalable multi-year investment in post-secondary education that responds to B.C.'s labour market demands. Government needs to provide B.C.'s colleges with multi-year sustainable operating bases.

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

Through increased and sustained investment by the province, we will be able to continue to provide the range of programs and services required by our students and our communities to meet our region and the province's labour market challenges and economic opportunities.

D. Ashton (Chair): Perfect timing. Thanks, Dianne. Thanks, Dave. You did a good job on that. It's just we have to keep everybody sharp around that.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I had a question about the statement you made about changes in government administrative and accounting policies that limit the use of surplus funds. Could you explain that a little more?

D. Teslak: Sure. What I'm referring to there is the "no annual deficit" directive that we are having to follow in the post-secondary sector. So we are not able to use any of our net asset reserves to do multi-year planning to help us in a situation where we have an event in a year that we haven't budgeted for or that arises as an opportunity. We're not able to use our net assets as a sort of savings fund.

D. Walls: Sometimes we may get fluctuation in enrolments. We may get additional enrolments where we might have to add sections or, in some cases, we may not get enough students. A little bit more flexibility in being able to access those net assets that we have would be great.

M. Hunt: While I realize you didn't get to cover everything that was written here, I want to thank you for taking the time to give the personal examples of how the College of the Rockies is personally being innovative and creative in how you're dealing with things, rather than focusing on the general messages that we get from all of the colleges. I really appreciate that, because that helps us to understand better what you're actually doing and the innovation you're doing.

My question is going to your 2,300 FTEs. You describe how they are both face to face and on line. Can you give me the approximate breakout between the face to face versus on line? And how are you using on line? Most of your examples are still creating face to face. I'm just wondering what kind of innovation we're getting on the on-line side.

D. Teslak: We have approximately 35 percent traditional classroom situation, and 65 percent would be both fully on line and some kind of hybrid between on-line and face-to-face and lab-type situations for students.

D. Walls: Yes, some of our programs are completely on line, and others are a mixture. So we'll have students have that flexibility to be in class or, in some cases, they'll take some of their studies on line and do that in their own time.

M. Hunt: Yeah, because there are some that it's natural to be able to do and easy to do on line, whereas others you need the practical side of getting together and actually doing things.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dianne, David, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Have a good day, and thank you for coming.

We have Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — Katherine and Betty. Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you for coming. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning before, and then there are five minutes for questions or comments. So please start.

B. Knight: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Betty Knight. I'm the regional program manager for the East Kootenay and Valemount for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, known as CBAL. I'm accompanied today by Katherine Hough, one of CBAL's 16 community literacy coordinators. Katherine is the community literacy coordinator
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for Cranbrook.

I'm here to speak about the importance of your support for the literacy field in general and, in particular, about the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy and the critical support we receive from Decoda Literacy Solutions — British Columbia's non-profit literacy organization.

CBAL is the Columbia Basin and Boundary region not-for-profit literacy organization. We work closely with libraries, schools, colleges and other community partners to create healthy learning communities.

In addition to working toward their individual goals, these organizations work with us to help citizens of all ages improve their literacy skills and engage in lifelong learning. Adults, families, children and youth in CBAL literacy programs improve their reading, writing, numeracy, computer, English-language and workplace skills.

Improved skills increase confidence, employability, individual and family health and community involvement. Our staff also prepare the government-mandated district literacy plans each year, in partnership with our school districts and other community partners.

CBAL is respected locally and beyond for our leadership in community-based literacy programs. CBAL received the first B.C. Council of the Federation Literacy Award in 2005.

We recognize the uniqueness of each community we serve. Our 16 community literacy coordinators, serving 77 communities in the Columbia Basin and Boundary region, design programs to meet specific local needs. CBAL provides them with an administrative structure, strong communication network, professional development and regular regional meetings.

First, we would like to thank the British Columbia government for the support and funding you have provided to the literacy field over many years through the community adult literacy program and through the legacy 2010 project and its successor, Decoda Literacy Solutions. With the financial contributions of the provincial government, Decoda has successfully combined the activities of the former Literacy B.C. and legacies 2010 literacy projects to continue supporting community coordination and community literacy development throughout the province.

Decoda provides us with a central library of literacy and learning resources from which you can borrow free of charge, professional development opportunities, provincial connections through its website, ongoing professional advice and, crucially, funding that allows us to hire community literacy coordinators — who bring the disparate organizations of our communities together to find solutions and new ways to support each other to meet the unique literacy and learning needs of people who are not served in other ways.

Because of government financial support through Decoda, CBAL is able to hire part-time coordinators in 16 communities — covering the entire southeast of the province — and leverage those funds many times over to provide a wide range of programming for low-literacy adults, English-as-a-second-language instruction for immigrants and refugees, skills training for adults who need to improve their employability, after-school and out-of-school youth programs, programs for parents who struggle to support their children's learning, and to raise both the awareness and practice of literacy and learning in our communities.

Improved literacy affects everything in the life of an individual and a community, from employment to the economy, health, justice, children's success in school and civic engagement.

Katherine Hough, Cranbrook's community literacy coordinator, will speak a bit about one of our programs.

K. Hough: Now in its fifth year of operation, our young parents education program — YPEP — is based on the four-quadrant family literacy model: learning opportunities for the parent, their own learning — grade 12 is their goal; learning to help their child with basic literacy skills — being their child's best teacher; parent and child time together — child-led activity with the parents focusing their attention on their child; and programming for the child.

We provide the coordinator and look after the day-to-day operations of the program, which includes life, work and parenting skills. The College of the Rockies provides an academic instructor, the building and support services, and other local partners, such as Paq'mi Nuq'yuk Early Learning Years, Community Connections, Better Babies and an infant development program assist as well.

Our program accepts parents, moms and dads, who have not completed their grade 12 and who have preschool-age children. We average approximately 12 learners a year. So far, five have completed their grade 12, and all of those have gone on to college. Two others we expect to graduate this year.

The barriers that our learners experience in the program are often due to the same reasons that they were unable to complete it while attending a regular high school. Let me share some of the stories with you.

One, a young parent, only 17 when she started, would not look anyone in the eye, and she did not accomplish much academically that first year. But at the end of it she was able to look at you, and for the first time, the coordinator saw her smile. She was able to come back the next year and accomplish a lot.

Another came with a small child and pregnant with her second. She completed four credits in one year — amazing progress. And when she knew she would graduate, she excitedly called her mother to let her know and to invite her to the ceremony. The response she got: "So what? Why should I come?" She was so devastated that
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she did not attend her own graduation, and it took a lot of persuasion to let us hold a graduation dinner for her.

We have 17-year-olds who could not stand the condemnation and judgment from their peers at the local high school and came to us. We currently have one parent in her early 20s who started last year and came with a plan. She realized she was going nowhere with dead-end jobs and needed to finish grade 12.

She's planning on entering the nursing program. She had her second child on August 26 and was at YPEP when it opened on September 4. She is the exception. For most, it is a struggle, but with a dedicated coordinator and the academic support from the college, these young people are turning their lives around one day at a time.

Without financial support to continue to operate YPEP, these learners aged 17 to 30 would not have the opportunity to improve their parenting, life and work skills and, with their grade 12 diploma in hand, improve their employability and economic prospects for themselves and their families. We know that children whose parents have completed a basic high school education will most often complete grade 12 themselves and are more likely to go on to other educational opportunities, whether in the trades or academically.

B. Knight: The YPEP program would not exist without Decoda funds that allow CBAL to hire Katherine as community literacy coordinator.

As you probably know, there are over 607,000 people in the B.C. education system today. One in five of those students is not expected to complete high school in the expected time or even at all. It's expected that B.C. will have over a million job openings over the next decade. Obviously, we have a labour shortage, but we also have a skills shortage, even within the working-age population we do have.

As a society and an economy, we cannot afford to fail the population that we have and fail in supporting as many people as possible to complete high school and to achieve the literacy and learning skills they need to be successful. It's important to understand that when someone has been unsuccessful in formal education settings, it's often unlikely that they will be successful there without some community-based intervention before they will be able to try again.

Organizations like CBAL provide the informal and non-formal learning that will support and encourage them and help them to develop the skills and attitudes toward learning that can make the difference.

When we first started to do this work we asked ourselves why so many people in B.C. and Canada did not have the skills to be successful in this modern, knowledge-based society. Part of the answer, we felt, was the low value that we as a society put on lifelong learning, and part of it was the missed opportunities we saw around us to offer literacy and learning services to members of our community that, for a variety of reasons, did not succeed and were not currently likely to succeed in a formal learning environment.

We also saw the need to work with parents to develop their knowledge and ability to support their children's early learning and continue to support them as their children entered the school system. Gradually, with the support of the provincial government, many individuals and organizations in our communities and other funders who've come to believe in our vision of a learning society have not only developed many effective literacy programs, but we've also been making a change in how those in our communities understand, appreciate and value literacy and lifelong learning.

B.C. government financial support of our work provides other funders with reassurance that we are a reputable organization they can feel confident investing their money to support. We have many other funders, as I've mentioned before, and we're not asking for increased support over historical levels. We are asking that the government provide Decoda with the minimum amount of funding needed to coordinate the amazing literacy work that is being done throughout the province.

Currently $1 million is allocated in this year's budget. Last year the government contributed $2 million, and Decoda topped that up to $2½ million with funds remaining with them from legacies 2010. They can't do it again. We are asking you to consider to continue to support the field at the level it needs in order to maintain the amazing network and programs and services throughout the province — not just in southeast B.C., although I focused on that — in the future.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, Betty, Katherine, thank you very much. We had a great presentation from Decoda in Chilliwack.

M. Hunt: What I'd like to do is follow up with the back of your brochure, where you also talk about Columbia Basin Trust. I'd like you to talk about them as sponsors, how that works and what kind of money you got.

B. Knight: Absolutely. The Columbia Basin Trust has been a core funder for CBAL since our inception in 2001. They're actually probably the biggest reason we formed the large organization we have, because they were very focused on funding our regionwide initiatives and not small community initiatives.

They've continued to fund us since then, usually with multi-year funding agreements. We're going into the second year now of a three-year agreement. They provide a total of a little over $300,000 to our organization. Our overall budget is substantial. It's up to $2½ million. Part of that is because we administer StrongStarts on behalf of
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local school districts. We have a contract with Work B.C. to provide employability support to their clients.

We do a lot of fundraising. We have a list of funders, on our income statement, like that. But between the government and the CBT, we have the strength to exist as an organization and to approach other funders and to develop our programming.

J. Tegart: As Dan said, thank you very much for your presentation. We did hear from Decoda. But it's really great to hear some of the local stories, because that's what makes the funding real. It's the people on the ground, the grassroots and knowing what a difference it makes, one person at a time. So thank you very much for today.

M. Elmore: Thanks. I'd just like to echo…. Certainly, when we hear the stories of literacy work across the province it's amazing in terms of…. I think one of the strengths is really the community networks and leveraging for the investment from the province. I think it's quite a good outcome.

My question has to do with…. Do you have plans for CBAL in the future — areas that you think are underutilized or challenges that you've identified that need more focus?

B. Knight: Absolutely. We always are looking into the future. One area of change that's coming up quickly that wasn't our choice was the end of the federal transfers for support for settlement services. We have the contracts for English as a second language and settlement assistance, welcoming communities. That's all going back to the federal government, as I'm sure you know. We have applied for that funding and are in the process, so we'll see.

Another area that we are developing more initiatives in is financial literacy. We've just had the Canadian Centre for Financial Literacy come to our fall meeting this month and provide training to all of our coordinators so that we can start providing programs. I've just received all the budgets from the East Kootenay, and virtually every community is planning at least one financial literacy program. It's stand-alone, plus they will incorporate it, as Katherine will, in the YPEP program as well.

Health literacy is something we've been moving into. Katherine and another coordinator have developed a presentation for service providers.

So we are constantly looking at what needs to be done, what's missing, what we can do, how we can do it, where we can get the money to do it, where we can get the training to do it. We're a very forward-looking organization.

D. Ashton (Chair): Betty, Katherine, thank you very much for the presentation. Have a good day. Will you be filing that with us?

Good afternoon, folks. Thank you very much for coming. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning on it, and then we have five minutes for questions or comments. Please, the floor is yours.

B. Johnstone: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bob Johnstone, and I am the president of the Meadowbrook Community Association.

With me today to assist with the presentation is our secretary, Sandra Loewen, on my right. Sandra has taken a leadership role in addressing the noxious weed situation in our area. Her dedication and success have earned her the affectionate title of the Weed Lady. To my knowledge, she's not affiliated with Sensible B.C.

We were going to have almost all of our board members here today, but we started a few minutes early. I'm not sure if we have…. Oh, I think we do. We have a couple of our board members: Marie Kohlman, who is our vice-president; Marty Musser, who is one of our directors; we have John Lyon, who's our treasurer; and we're expecting Dr. Margaret Mays and David Mays, who are our other two directors. That would constitute our entire board, who have come this afternoon.

We also have some representatives, our valued partners. I won't introduce them at this moment, but they're people from the RDEK, people who have been involved in the spraying program and, I think, a representative from the East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council.

Who are we? The Meadowbrook Community Association serves the Meadowbrook and Woods Corner portions of the regional district of East Kootenay, area E. Woods Corner is directly north of the Cranbrook Airport. To the east of that, all the way to the city of Kimberley, is the area called Meadowbrook.

When you flew in on the airplane, you probably came over the city of Kimberley, and then you flew over a rural area flying east. That's Meadowbrook. About the time you turned south, that's Woods Corner. That gives you some idea of where the area is.

Woods Corner is entirely within the agricultural land reserve, and most of Meadowbrook is within the agricultural land reserve as well. The purpose of our association is to preserve and enhance the Meadowbrook and Woods Corner areas for residents and recreational users.

Why are we making this presentation? Our association is concerned with the spread of noxious weeds in our community. The province appears to share that concern because it has legislation on the matter.

The Weed Control Act and regulations make the occupier of land responsible for controlling noxious weeds and give the province the authority to enforce. It desig-
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nates the province as the occupier of Crown lands and provincial highways, and it designates the registered owner as the occupier of private property.

Why are we concerned? Provincial funding for control of noxious weeds in the East Kootenay has decreased over the past three years, from approximately $470,000 in 2011 to $295,000 this year. As a result, existing infestations are thriving, and adjacent areas are being contaminated.

Failure to control noxious weeds has economic, social and environmental impacts. Providing adequate funding for controlling noxious weeds can be justified purely on economic grounds — that is, preserving jobs, profits and property values.

Local control efforts could be thwarted and initiatives abandoned out of frustration. We already have seen that in this area. At one time people in the St. Mary's valley applied for regional district cost-sharing funding, and they've stopped doing that. The province has not kept up spraying the highway and so forth, so landowners have given up. There's not much point in them doing it if, in fact, the province is not going to control the public areas.

What are we doing locally? The regional district, the RDEK, produces pamphlets on noxious weeds. They hire staff to promote control on private property, and they share in the costs of spraying with approved owners. They have a program where you apply. They'll send somebody out to look at your situation. If you're approved, then they will cost-share in the cost of the spraying.

The number of approvals has steadily increased, from 32 in 2010 to 63 to date this year. That's some indication that people are becoming concerned. Individual property owners are willing to take some action.

I don't know if we have anybody, Sandra, in the audience who has taken advantage of the spraying program, but we hope to have a couple of people here today.

For example, we have one 80-year-old fellow who's been a long…. His family used to own 1,000 acres in the Woods Corner area. He now has 200 acres, and he has taken advantage of the program this year because his fields were just starting to be overrun.

I know that my next-door neighbour lives right close to a provincial gravel pit, and he has taken advantage of the program. But there wasn't enough money in the budget this year to do the entire gravel pit. Instead, there was just the perimeter that was done. Well, the deer and so forth don't really just go on the perimeter. They go in the centre part of the pit. As a result, they bring the seeds and so forth onto the property. So we need a concerted effort.

Some owners attempt to control their weeds on their own by spraying and pulling, etc. I've done that this year.

Our association has been calling attention to the need for weed control among residents and facilitating them accessing the RDEK cost-sharing program. That's a role that we feel, as an association, we can fulfil.

Our association has also been assisting provincial officials in identifying infested areas. Sandra walks all over Meadowbrook, identifies areas, catalogues that, shares that with the provincial officials and hopes to help them prioritize.

Last year our association made a written submission to this select standing committee, requesting additional provincial funding and action. The result was a reduction in funding for the East Kootenay of close to $175,000, so we decided we should come in person this year and see if we have any more effect.

What we think is the solution is that we need a partnership between the provincial government, local governments, community associations and individual landowners to, first of all, educate about the threat of noxious weeds; secondly, to control them; and thirdly, to enforce the legislative requirement to address the issue.

In its report we would like the committee to acknowledge the following: (1) the importance and urgency of controlling noxious weeds for economic, social and environmental reasons; (2) the potential to impair the success of provincial initiatives to promote agriculture and tourism if noxious weeds are not controlled; (3) the province's statutory responsibility as the occupier of Crown land and provincial highways and their responsibility to control the noxious weeds in those areas; (4) the province's authority to ensure that other occupiers comply with the legislation; (5) the economic wisdom of investing in efforts to control noxious weeds; and (6) the necessity of funding a stable, adequate, long-term provincewide program for controlling noxious weeds.

That concludes our presentation. We'll be happy to try to answer some questions as lay people. However, there may be some more technical questions. We would ask the committee to allow us to call on, perhaps, some of the members of our partner groups who are here, and they can supply some of that information.

Ten years ago I served as the chief consultant to the Select Standing Committee on Education, so I think I have some appreciation for the work that you do, for the amount of time that you spend in travel, in hearings. I know the dilemmas of trying to come to grips with the final report.

On behalf of our association, I'd like to thank you for coming to Cranbrook to listen to us and for your commitment to our province's well-being. We wish you well in your deliberations and look forward to reading your report.

D. Ashton (Chair): A crescendo of the cymbals is a
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little premature. We were waiting for that at the end.

D. Ashton (Chair): You have by far the largest delegation. So Bob and Sandra, thank you very much.

M. Hunt: You've used the words "noxious weeds," which is a huge umbrella. Give me the specifics. Are we looking at knapweed? What are we looking at?

S. Loewen: Blueweed is a big problem now too. I know that the regional district has been really targeting that this year. For the first time ever, I believe, south of Invermere leafy spurge has been identified. It's actually right across from my property, which is really scary. It's a really bad, bad weed. But we have tons of knapweed.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. You indicated the funding levels have gone down over the past little while, but the number of approvals has gone up, What does that mean — that the dollars per approval are lower? What's happening?

B. Johnstone: The funding provincially has gone down from about $470,000 to $295,000. That's the provincial funding. However, the regional district of East Kootenay has some funds that it will use to subsidize or to match funds for local taxpayers who decide to spray their properties.

The number of approvals through the RDEK has gone up from 32 to 63 in the last three years. Provincial funding has been going down, so there has not been as much treatment of common areas like highway areas and so forth. But at the same time, individual property owners, along with the RDEK, are spending more money trying to control things on private land.

S. Hamilton: Marvin actually had my question answered. I was looking for it in the presentation but couldn't find specifically what it was you were referring to. We had a couple of presentations last week from organizations. I think this committee is going to also understand the importance of dealing with it.

I guess I have one other question, and that is…. You deal with invasive species. It could be weeds; it could be fire ants. You don't have fire ants here, do you? Do you deal with invasive insects, that sort of thing, as well, or are we just talking about noxious weeds?

B. Johnstone: We've just been dealing with invasive weeds. But I know at the coast and other areas there are all kinds of issues — invasive fish and whatnot.

S. Hamilton: Well, yeah. In your lakes and streams here I would imagine you have the capacity to…. There may be situations where you're going to get involved in that sometime in the future.

L. Popham: Thanks for your presentation. Given that most of the land you're talking about is within the agricultural land reserve, has there been an analysis on the agricultural economic losses due to the noxious weeds?

B. Johnstone: No. British Columbia hasn't done that, to my knowledge, and it hasn't been done in this area, to my knowledge. I know that the state of Montana has done that and, as a result, has invested huge sums of money trying to reclaim their farmland.

I understand that British Columbia hasn't done that. Do you know of any…? Is that something that farmers are talking about in your specific area?

B. Johnstone: I think they are concerned about that, because there's a thrust provincially to try and restore grasslands. Of course, invasive weeds could take over grasslands quite easily. I'm sure that the agricultural folks are concerned as well. Certainly, people who have hay farms here are very concerned because as soon as knapweed gets into your hay crop, that's it.

E. Foster: Two questions, or two comments. One's a question, I guess. Anyway, the East Kootenays have been very aggressive in their approach and attack on noxious weeds. I know it's probably one of the highest-funded areas in the province now. You are the highest-funded area in the province — and with a great deal of success, I might add. The question I have….

I live in the Okanagan, and we have a large movement of people there that don't want anything sprayed. They beat on my door every single day. I won't be amongst that group, but we need help on this too, because if we don't spray weeds, we're not going to have any crops.

To your comment on hayfields. I think that's a discussion that needs to be had at the same time, because unfortunately, at this point we don't have the biological scientific ability to rid ourselves of weeds. It's coming, and down the road I'm sure we're going to get there. But if we don't deal with it in the short term, we won't have to worry about it because we won't have anything to farm. So be aggressive on that.

S. Loewen: Last year I started walking around the area and identifying knapweed in particular, and there was a great deal of it. This year when I went out, I'm thinking probably there's been a 30 or 40 percent increase in what was there last year. I was horrified this year, and that's what has made me an obsessive person with regards to weeds.

When you say that we get a huge amount in the East Kootenay for control, I don't see the results. On the highways, in particular, it's really incredible — the spread in the last year.

E. Foster: And you do. As a region, you get the highest amount of funding. Remember that everybody wants a bigger piece of the pie. That's why we're here. That's what we're doing, and our recommendations will go forward on that.

B. Johnstone: We do have a couple of people that have arrived that I wouldn't mind introducing.

Garland is one of the people I mentioned at Woods Corner that has taken advantage of the spraying program.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, thanks. Like I said earlier, the biggest delegation we've had yet. Thank you very much for coming today. Appreciate it. [Applause.]

Thanks for coming, Dave. Appreciate it. What we have here is a ten-minute presentation period. I'll give you a two-minute warning. Then we have five minutes for questions or comments. Welcome.

D. Butler: Good afternoon, committee members. Welcome to Cranbrook, and thanks very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Dave Butler. I'm the first vice-president of the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce. I'm heavily involved in the tourism business, with my real hat on. Certainly, at the local, provincial, national and international scales, our company brings thousands of visitors to British Columbia every year.

The Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce is registered under the Society Act as a volunteer, not-for-profit association. Here in the community we actually serve 450 business members. That's a very high percentage, relative to most of the other chambers in the province.

Your colleague the Hon. Bill Bennett served as the president of this chamber for a couple of years, and we acknowledge his ongoing support for us, for the public and for the work that he does in his riding.

The Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce holds the philosophy that government should seek a balanced budget as well as seek lower taxes and to stimulate the economy. We congratulate government on the recent economic news, the establishment of Moody's triple-A credit rating.

I'm going to talk about a couple of sector-specific things that are relevant to our area here. The first is transportation. Our chamber was first incorporated under the Boards of Trade Act in July of 1910. History will show that this chamber has always been an advocate for the maintenance and upgrading of Highway 3.

As most of you know, I think, that highway crosses the southern part of the province from Hope to the Alberta border. It's a principal access for tourist centres throughout the Okanagan, the Kootenays and into the B.C. Rockies, and it serves many, many communities along the way. It's also a major corridor for the movement of commercial goods in both directions.

Crossing several mountain ranges, Highway 3 can be termed an adventure, especially during the winter months. There are many steep hills, lots of bridges and sharp blind corners. Unfortunately, we don't have anywhere near as many passing lanes as we probably need on a highway of that nature.

For many years — and I know the mayor will be speaking behind me; he'll talk about this, I think, in more detail — there was a group of community and regional district politicians that were working on a Highway 3 coalition. Since 2009 that has been re-established. I think all the mayors and regional district members across the way know of the significant value of Highway 3 from an economic perspective and from a safety perspective.

We understand that the mayors along Highway 3 recently met with the Premier at the UBCM to talk specifically about the Highway 3 — or they call it the Crowsnest — and to make sure that we have that highway on your radar screen, not just Highway 1. Our chamber certainly appreciates the work that has been done along the highway so far. Certainly, there's a fair bit of it. We recommend that the provincial government continue to invest heavily in that highway, both from a safety perspective and for economic growth.
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I want to talk a little bit about skills training as well. I know that that's big on your agenda. A message heard over the past years has been that of the skills shortage. Certainly in the Kootenays, because of the diversity and the geographic size, that's a significant issue for us here. The B.C. jobs plan, as many of you know, led to the creation of the regional workforce tables. Those are to bring people together to best align around regional training to meet local employment opportunities.

We have here in the region a very active Kootenay regional workforce table. Recently they produced a very comprehensive regional skills-training plan. It was identified that in our areas of the Kootenays the current funding model for training presents challenges and barriers to effectively align that training with employer and labour demands. Impacts are very, very pronounced here because of our geography and our lower population levels.

If we are to grow our economy, we must have the people to fill the jobs, and they need to be trained. Tourism is a really good example of that. Lots and lots of new jobs are being created, and we may not have the people to fill them in 20 years or so. We ask the Ministry of Finance to collaborate with key economic ministries to ensure that skills-training programs are prioritized and funded appropriately, as per the jobs plan.

Also, I want to talk a little bit about cross-border shopping. I don't know where else you've been, but this is certainly a big issue here. Many of you know that the port of Roosville and the port of Kingsgate are two cross-border routes between Cranbrook and the states of Montana and Idaho. They're both less than an hour from here. The Alberta border is just a two-hour drive from here.

So cross-border shopping remains one of the greatest challenges for our business community. This is not new, but certainly the problem continues to grow as one of the greatest concerns for our local retailers. Consumers always look at the bottom-line price of goods. They don't understand import taxes. They don't understand the other kinds of structures that are in place. They just look at the bottom line.

We find, in a place like this, higher import taxes on goods shipped to Canada are placed on some of our prices here, compared to right across the border. In addition, retailers in Canada are charged up to 30 percent more by U.S.-based global suppliers for the same products that are shipped to the U.S., literally less than an hour from here. This is not a level playing field. Consumers don't understand this. They simply think our retailers are gouging them.

Recently the federal government also raised the amounts that Canadians can spend in the U.S. and bring back to Canada without paying duty or taxes. For economies like ours, lying along the U.S. border, this has also had a dramatic effect in seeing spending shift to the U.S., further impacting our retailers.

As all of you know, when retailers lose money, governments lose money. So we're calling on the government to work with our appropriate agencies and your federal counterparts in Ottawa to address inequities for retailers. This is a growing challenge in this area, and we really need some help with it.

Let's talk a little bit about tourism next. We have in this area, as many of you know, phenomenal experiences to share with the rest of B.C., with the rest of Canada and with the world. With the incomparable scenic beauty around every turn, we like to call ourselves here the mountain playground, and in fact, we feel that we are the birthplace of adventure tourism in this province.

In November of 2012 we were very pleased to see and be part of Premier Clark's announcement around the creation of Destination B.C., the new destination marketing organization for B.C. We look forward to seeing this new Crown corp promote the province to the world and grow tourism revenues to the province.

We urge the Ministry of Finance to establish and implement a comprehensive funding formula for this new corporation. We believe that the job of a destination marketer is ultimately twofold. The first is to maximize the impacts of periods of strong performance, but equally, minimize the negative impact of periods of weak performance. So in a purely formula-funded model, Destination B.C. might be left with financial resources at the time when it needs it the most.

To make that happen, we suggest that key principles of a successful funding model should include a number of things: an easy-to-understand formula based on the PST which has as direct a linkage as possible to economic indicators directly attributable to tourism; and more money than is currently being allocated to DBC out of the ministry's budget. We are being outspent in some markets, quite frankly, already. We also need a longer-term view of what funds are available so that multi-year planning can occur. Finally, we need to have freedom to manage retained earnings from year to year.

Other than those sectors' specific priorities…. We're assuming you've heard from our MLA and former president, Bill Bennett, about specific budget priorities for Cranbrook. We expect you'll hear more about these from some of the other speakers you'll hear from today.

We suggest two major priorities for Cranbrook in the context of the provincial budget. One is the replacement of Mount Baker Secondary School, and the second is the construction of the Salvation Army shelter, if the need continues to be there. I can confirm that the Cranbrook and District Chamber supports both of these initiatives strongly.

In closing, I'd like to say again thank you for the opportunity to speak today. We understand and appreciate the difficult times facing this government in the coming year, and this chamber is prepared to work with you to find solutions to these challenges. With our colleagues
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in the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, we offer our assistance in collaborating in any efforts to sustain and grow the economy.

M. Elmore: Thanks, Dave, for your presentation — a good presentation, covering a number of topics.

I have two questions. One is just with respect to the need to invest in Highway 3. I agree. I also hear stories of colleagues travelling in the winter, so certainly, safety is a big concern — and the skills shortage. As well as your specific recommendations to update the school here, your senior secondary school and the Salvation Army shelter.

How do you reconcile that with…? I know you had the preface in terms of lowering taxes at the same time. So what's your…? Have you had a discussion in the chamber in terms of how you balance that, balance the need for these investments and where that revenue…? Where can we expect those streams to come from?

D. Butler: I think my response to you probably won't be a surprise, and that is: grow the economy. I think with a really successful business sector and providing really great opportunities for the business sector to grow, you will gain the extra taxes you need through that success, rather than trying to raise the actual tax rates on businesses. I think it's really that simple. Grow the economy, and those moneys will be there for you.

M. Elmore: And then, do you have specific initiatives in terms of dealing with the challenges of cross-border shopping?

D. Butler: It's a really difficult one. I think what I'm hearing is that a lot of the challenges that we're facing are largely federal in nature. So it's not necessarily an issue from a purely provincial budgetary perspective, but I suspect that if there's anything the province can do to work with the feds to look at opportunities of doing the kinds of things that are necessary at the federal level, that's a huge first step.

Beyond that, we'd have to work with the B.C. chamber, if there's some interest in looking at other kinds of initiatives that could maybe counterbalance those kinds of things. Love to talk more about that. I don't have any specifics to give you. I wish I had all those answers because we'd be on them already, I think.

E. Foster: You mentioned the Salvation Army shelter. Would you elaborate on that a little bit for me?

D. Butler: I don't have the specific numbers with me, but in a community like ours we are seeing a growing issue around homelessness. The Salvation Army has developed a detailed proposal — it came up about three years ago — for a significant shelter in this community to respond to the need for low-income housing and dealing with some of the folks that are on the street that have physical and mental challenges, particularly mental challenges. Not dissimilar, but at a much, much different scale, to the east side of Vancouver.

We'd like to be able to get some kind of assistance in place. I know the Salvation Army is working on a very significant fundraising effort. I'm not exactly sure where they're at with that at the moment. We've been, I think, approaching the provincial government through the Salvation Army and through the city to look for some assistance to try and get something happening with that shelter so we can get some of these people off the street, particularly in the winter months here when it's so cold and so miserable.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. Two quick questions. One of them — the cross-border shopping. It's not clear to me…. I'm asking if you've got some thoughts about what the province can do other than advocacy with the federal government. What can we do to help that situation?

The second question. You mentioned the current funding model for skills training was a barrier. Is that just level of funding, or is it the way the funding is administered? Is it more complicated than just the level of funding?

I don't have any specifics on what the province can do. But I think we're working with the B.C. chamber to see what kinds of things can actually occur around that, because it is largely a federal issue. I think there may be some mechanisms that could be put in place provincially to counterbalance some of the things that are happening federally.

The two things that I've talked about — the import taxes and the increased amounts for people coming across the border without paying duty — are federal issues. They alone have had a dramatic effect on retailers — dramatic. I don't have the answers for you. I wish I did. We'd certainly like to talk some more about what that might look like.

D. Butler: The second piece, on skills training. This is not my field of expertise. What I'm understanding is it's less an issue about the amount as it is how the amount is spent and starting to be more closely linked in partnerships between the province, our educators and the
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business community in making sure that those funds are spent the best.

Looking at really significant opportunities of making sure we understand the problem first — great research. What is the skill shortage? Where are they coming from? I mean, being able to put into place some really great initiatives around actually linking those together, working with the business community. Making sure we've got connections to what labour needs coming forward, what business needs, what kinds of things we can do around the actual training programs in the colleges, making high school students more aware of what career opportunities there are — those kinds of things.

I think there are some great opportunities here, but we've got to get on top of it pretty soon.

J. Tegart: I was lucky enough to be at the Highway 3 presentation to the Premier with all the mayors and interested people there. It's great to see the partnerships that are happening and the focus on Highway 3, because a lot of it goes through my riding.

A question around the high school. Is your enrolment increasing? Decreasing? Is it simply an aged building? What's the issue?

D. Butler: Actually, the mayor will be speaking to that. He can give you a lot more detail than I ever could.

L. Popham: Again, a question about the cross-border shopping. I'm very familiar with this problem. We have the same problem down in the Lower Mainland. I'm familiar most with the agriculture community and what they're losing. But I wondered if the chamber had engaged in or is leading a Buy Local program, and also if the chamber has engaged CUPE BC around their Ten Percent Shift campaign, which really is about educating consumers about what they lose as a community when they spend all of their money outside the community.

D. Butler: Thanks for that. Yeah, both great initiatives, and the answer is yes to both. Through the chamber we have a very significant program, which I think will be in the third year this year. It's called our Black Friday program. We've purposely chosen it one week prior to the big Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, really focusing on people trying to spend in the local community. It's been very, very successful. I think last year we had about 50 businesses. This year we're targeting 100. It kept a lot of money right in the community, for sure.

Then the second piece is looking at other kinds of opportunities with CUPE. Definitely looking at the Ten Percent Shift piece, trying to get the thinking changed. In my mind, we can only go so far with a change in thinking. We've got to have some dramatic change.

As I said, the federal change when the duty levels changed…. Literally, the traffic almost overnight increased going across the border. It was really dramatic, and the retailers felt it almost the next week. It was that fast.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dave, thank you very much for the presentation. Some great comments and some great ideas brought forward.

W. Stetski: Thank you. It's great to have you all with us here in Cranbrook for a few days. Just by being here, you're adding…

Thanks for coming forward, sir. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a bit of a two-minute warning, and then we have five minutes reserved for questions from the panel afterwards. The floor is yours.

W. Stetski: Again, on behalf of the city council and the people of Cranbrook, thank you for being here with us. I think it was the Lieutenant-Governor who had a great line last year. She said: "You know, we honour our judges, we honour our cabinet ministers, but we worship our mayors." I'm very pleased to be here as the mayor of Cranbrook.

What you have in front of you is a little bit different, perhaps. I attended UBCM, of course, and I met with the Premier on two occasions and cabinet ministers on a number of other occasions and discussed the topics which are listed in the handout. I then did a news release for Cranbrook citizens, just explaining what we were doing down at UBCM. So what I've done for you today is to add the part in bold, just so you are aware of some of the asks that are coming from the city of Cranbrook. I'll just take it from the top and run you through them.

One of the most divisive issues that are faced by a number of our communities of course, including Penticton, is urban deer and trying to manage urban deer. So one of the initiatives was to meet with the Premier and the mayors from the communities that are really affected by
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urban deer, to talk about a different future — a provincial approach that gives us more tools in our tool box to deal with urban deer.

The deer belong to the province, and we can only do what the province gives us permission to do. Right now the only option is to cull the deer. There are other opportunities potentially, but we need support from the province to do that and, then, potentially some funding. It costs us about $25,000 a year here in Cranbrook to deal with urban deer.

We also did meet, as the Highway 3 coalition, as a group of mayors. Overall, I guess, the ask, looking ahead, is about $600 million that we'd like to see invested in Highway 3 over the next period of time. The priorities right now — and this is agreed to by the committee — are actually around Princeton and in that particular area.

What's really great about this committee is that we do look right across Highway 3 and we provide priorities in terms of where we think government should be investing money. But first and foremost, we really don't want to get forgotten. A lot of focus is on Highway 1 in British Columbia, but Highway 3 is the southern Trans-Canada Highway, so we wanted to make sure that government keeps its eye on Highway 3.

Locally here, of course, right behind you are the railroad tracks that divide Cranbrook. At some point we would like to see an overpass or an underpass to join the two sides of our community together. The trains are getting so long that there are times they can block every access across the tracks, which is of course concerning in an emergency situation — in particular, if we need to get an ambulance or a fire truck over into the other side of our community. That's estimated around $25 million to $30 million, potentially, for an overpass.

Next up, and it has been mentioned previously: a new Mount Baker School. The school is currently 58 years old. There is a bit of a dip right now in terms of the question around number of students. There is a debate in terms of whether we should be building a school that would accommodate 800 students or 1,000 students, and of course, we'd prefer the higher number.

We have seen some positive numbers coming into the school system, looking ahead 12 years from now. So it's a question well worth debating, and that's the cost range between $40 million and $50 million. It depends on how big a school we end up building here in Cranbrook.

Currently our major theatre, the 600-seat theatre, is attached to that school. So if we're building a new school, we'd like to build a new theatre at the same time. So that's that $15 million figure potentially for Key City Theatre.

You heard earlier from College of the Rockies. It's an excellent institution. Currently there are no higher educational institutions east of Kelowna that have the word "university" in their title. We have no university colleges, no universities this side of Kelowna, so a lot of our students that graduate from here end up going to Lethbridge or to Calgary because that's closest to us, really, in terms of higher education.

We'd like to turn that around. As was said by the college representatives, we would like to have more university degree courses offered here at the college. Ultimately, we'd like to retain the great college that we have, but we'd like to have "university" added to the title.

We are ranked No. 1 by our international students North America–wide in terms of the quality of how well they get treated here in Cranbrook, at the College of the Rockies, but when you're selling university or higher education in Asia, not having "university" in our title does have some impact.

Parents don't necessarily want to send their kids across to North America and pay for them to go to school at the college because a college to them is more like grade 12. So for both those reasons, we'd like to have "university" added to our title here. Actually, I'm chairing a committee that's interested in seeing that happen.

The Salvation Army proposal was mentioned — very key to the region, not just to Cranbrook. It's about a $17 million project. What I really like about this project is it's 34 beds on the main floor for getting people off the street. The second floor is the transition centre, with 12 beds for people that want to invest at least a year in gaining skills to get them off the street permanently. That's why it's the homeless shelter and transition centre.

It's supported by the regional district of East Kootenay, and as they said here, they've come up with about $1½ million to $2 million towards that $17 million total.

If I had to pick two priorities, in case you're wondering, it would be the Salvation Army homeless shelter and transition centre and the new high school for Cranbrook. Those have been on our list for quite a while.

Flipping the page, very high as well: agriculture. We would like to develop a greenhouse industry here in Cranbrook. We are the sunniest city in British Columbia. We have a real interest in alternative energy — solar energy, bioenergy and thermal energy. And if we put all that together and combine it with a greenhouse industry, I think we could have a new industry in Cranbrook. Costs: ministry staff and expertise, and then eventually grants, hopefully, to support that.

We are part of the Asia-Pacific initiative. The province initially invested $50,000 in our community. We are partnered with a city in China, Taichung, and a city in South Korea, Wonju. The provincial funding has run out. We did go over to meet with our two friendly cities at our own expense, and we would like to continue the relationship.

It is starting to pay off. We had a delegation of eight people from one company in Taichung last week. It is a very large importer and wants to import wood directly. We introduced them to Canfor, to Tembec and to our mill that's out at Jaffray. Costs — we estimate that about
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$25,000 a year for the next three years would help us maintain that Asia-Pacific initiative.

The last one. We met with the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, and it was potentially changes to the Local Government Act, which would help out with city planning.

Those were the things that we met with the ministers about and the Premier last week. We announced them to our locals through this news release, and now I'm sharing them with you, believing that old educational mantra that, you know, when people hear things three times, they kind of remember it. So I'm hoping that the provincial government will hear from you on some of these priorities for Cranbrook, as well, to reinforce the work that we've already done.

M. Hunt: Dealing with the overpass concept. The way you're describing it to me, I'm going to assume that you don't have the equivalent of two cities divided by railway tracks but in fact the community is dependant on the community on the other side. So it's a residential community, most likely, on one side.

I don't know Cranbrook, okay? Forgive my ignorance. It was my first time to come down this beautiful valley, and I was just amazed at how wide it was. I expected it to be much more like, you know, going into Creston — just flying straight in. So help me to understand. How big is this side that's cut off?

W. Stetski: What we have, basically, on this side of the tracks — let's say the south side — is primarily the commercial area and much of the residential area. On the north side of the tracks are residential areas plus industrial. Our industrial park is on that side of the tracks.

It's really that we have four crossings, potentially — well, we do have four crossings — within Cranbrook. But as I say, with the length of the trains these days…. Of course, they're making them longer and longer. They also shuttle cars back and forth, just behind the hotel here in a switching yard, which blocks the main access across here as well. So that's the interested…. Basically, it is joining two sides of Cranbrook.

W. Stetski: On the north side, probably, I would guess about 1,500 or so currently. The plan was to have another 7,200 people living over there. This was in 2008. So there are a lot of lands waiting to be developed on that side of the tracks, as well, for the future of Cranbrook.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation and for the good work going on — very dynamic — in Cranbrook.

I'm curious to hear about the status of the committee that you chair, in terms of expanding the mandate of the College of the Rockies as a university. What's the status of that, and how's that coming along?

W. Stetski: You know, we're fairly young. Basically, what we did was bring together some of the business leaders in the community — the chamber of commerce was part of that as well — and, in essence, to start to explore the concept. So we're still fairly early on it, but it just makes so much sense from an economic perspective and from a social perspective. It would allow us to keep our kids here longer by having more educational opportunity at the university level.

It changes the flavour of a community. Prince George is a good example. I was involved with provincial parks for many years. We had a hard time getting staff, quite frankly, to go to Prince George. Once the university was established up there, it changed the flavour of the community. People wanted to stay and go there longer.

From all of those aspects, it's really important. We're fairly young at it, but we're going to continue to look for it.

Again, there's nothing currently east of Kelowna that has "university" in its title. I understand that in some cases, colleges became university colleges with very little increase in cost. Their funding didn't increase, but they got their title and were able to then work on offering some more university-level courses.

E. Foster: On the same topic, we had the same exact issue with Okanagan College. It went to Okanagan University College. I would suggest that you talk to the people at Okanagan College — talk to Jim Hamilton and those folks — because it's not all rosy. It causes some great difficulties from the college end of it. The people on the college end felt that they became second-class citizens about the second year. The university end wanted the research money and so on and so forth.

You're dead right about bringing the foreign students from Asia into a community. They want and their parents want the university. You're dead right about it. But there are a lot of issues. I encourage you to talk to the people at Okanagan College, and maybe, as you're moving forward, you can avoid some of the pitfalls that they ran into.

W. Stetski: Thank you. We're quite focused on ensuring that the college side of it remains strong, and we're looking for a teaching university rather than a research
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university, in terms of what we'd like to be recognized for.

D. Ashton (Chair): Mayor Stetski, thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate seeing you again, and thank you for coming today.

D. Ashton (Chair): Kevin Paterson. Welcome. We have ten minutes allotted for the presentation. I'll give you about a two-minute warning. Then we have five minutes for questions or comments from us.

K. Paterson: Thank you for allowing to hear me this afternoon, Chair and committee. For something completely different for you this afternoon, I'll certainly keep you on schedule and keep you on track.

I'm rather humbled and pleased to be able to present to you this afternoon very briefly on behalf of sport. While I don't represent any agency specifically in British Columbia — any sport committee or group or club or organization or anything of that nature — I have been asked to come and speak to you with respect to sport in British Columbia and the impact, particularly, on rural communities in British Columbia.

If you'll allow me to indulge, I have a bit of a story to share with you in order to illustrate the issues, the challenges and the support for sport here in the Kootenays. Again, I want to thank you for the time.

A little bit of background about myself. I am a Kootenay-raised Kimberley kid, just up the road. I left and had the good fortune of coming back to the Kootenays. I will tell you that I was involved in the B.C. Games in the late '70s. I won't say what year that was, but it gives you some context.

I have always been very active in sports. I played collegiate sport in Alberta and was past president of Kimberley minor hockey and a director, more recently, of the registration results when the B.C. Winter Games were hosted between the communities of Kimberley and Cranbrook — which was a phenomenal event for our community.

I just want to illustrate, given that background, a bit of the importance of sport. It's linked to healthy living and the quality of life, and it's very easy for me to share this story. If you'll allow me to indulge with you, I want to give you a bit of an example.

We often hear of famous players, athletes and teams that come out of various parts of the Kootenays. I mentioned such folks as Jason Wiemer, NHLer; Gerry Sorensen, Olympian skier; and the Kimberley Dynamiters, 1937 Allan Cup champions and more recently in '78.

I wanted to introduce you to three other unique and I believe champion athletes, by the name of Justin, Brendan and Rhiannon Paterson. Those are all three of my children, who had the good fortune to grow up here in the East Kootenays. I'm sure many of you can appreciate that for the smaller communities, it's difficult. We don't have the large population to furnish sport teams and travel. You heard the mayor talking about travel. Many a trip was made to Kelowna to some of the nearest competing teams — a seven- or eight-hour journey.

Again, there were great opportunities within the high school system, but our children also had the good fortune of participating in such events as the B.C. Summer Games. All three of my children had the good fortune to participate — one in volleyball, one in basketball and my daughter, finally, in track and field.

From that, they got introduced and learned how to train to compete. Really, the programs that are developed through our province…. We've really put together a sound training ground for young athletes, and they had the good fortune of going through the games experience and moved on to represent the province as Team B.C. players. Again, all three children competed in the B.C. Games in volleyball, basketball and track and field, and then as Team B.C. volleyball representatives in all three sports.

Further to that, they've all gone on to collegiate athletics, played at Lethbridge College. My daughter is at Capilano University currently, and my son had a silver medal with the national Douglas College men's volleyball team. So a really unique career.

I think what really rolls it all together — and I want to share with the committee — is that they're not famous athletes. They have not got a major league contract of any such nature, but they all have gone on to academic pursuits. They've stayed in British Columbia. They're going to finish degrees from those universities in their respective fields of study. They're all, I believe, healthy, well-adjusted British Columbians that are contributing to our economy and our society.

I wanted to share that bit of a snapshot with the committee, just to express the importance…. I know there have been many presenters that come to you today and have specific asks on funding and what they're looking for, for their communities. But particularly, I think it's important just to share with you the impact that sport funding has on athletes who don't go on to become champions per se.

As I said, I didn't want to share that story with you to impress you but, again, to impress upon you the importance that sport plays in the development of good, well-adjusted, contributing British Columbians here in our province.

Again, I’m not asking on behalf of any group. We're not asking for specific funding or for any increases in funding. But we recognize, in small communities with the clubs and organizations that I've been with, that it's very important to maintain that multi-year funding. It
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enables those dollars to be available for communities to leverage those funds and to create some increased capacity for sports activities in leveraging those funds that the province has made available, and to strengthen the infrastructure in sport in British Columbia.

Again, my mantra is that a strong community creates strong athletes, who go on to create strong, valuable contributors to our economy in our province of British Columbia. Through partnerships, we can continue to leverage your provincial funding. We look forward to the support that we've received from the province for sport. Again, I look forward in my own community to working with the province in achieving these goals of a healthy community for not only my children but for future generations.

M. Hunt: I just wanted to make sure I got it right. The three kids — you had Douglas College. You had Capilano College. And did I hear you say Lethbridge?

M. Hunt: Oh, okay, because you said all of them in B.C., and I'm going: "Lethbridge hasn't moved, as far as I know."

K. Paterson: Fair enough. That's correct. He attended and played athletics in Lethbridge. But then he came back, finished his degree at UBCO in Kelowna and was part of the development program for Team B.C. with the U-18 Girls in their club program.

M. Hunt: Now, another little question tied on to that. Are they returning back to the East Kootenays? Or are they out of the East Kootenays?

K. Paterson: One is just managing a fishing-hunting operation along the Skeena in north-central British Columbia. My daughter is completing her tourism degree and likely will return to the Kootenays. My other son is in physiotherapy — so again, very good opportunities that he'd be returning to our region.

Next up is the College of the Rockies Faculty Association. I have Leslie Molnar.

L. Molnar: Good afternoon. I'm hoping I can have Kevin's extra minute, because I timed my speech. It was ten minutes and 30 seconds.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, we won't interrupt you once you get going. I'll give you a two-minute warning. I'll let you go over it a little bit, but it will cut into any questions, okay?

L. Molnar: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for this opportunity to provide input. My name is Leslie Molnar. I'm president of the faculty association of the College of the Rockies. Our faculty association represents over 200 full- and part-time faculty members.

College of the Rockies is a small rural college, but still, we have over 2,000 full- and part-time students. Our college has campuses in six different communities. We pride ourselves on being very engaged in our communities. We're the third-largest employer in the region, and we see ourselves not only as a key provider of education but as an important part of the economic fabric.

College of the Rockies was originally known as East Kootenay Community College. We were born from a provincial initiative to create access for all citizens in B.C., to create and build and fund a network of post-secondary institutions to provide comprehensive learning opportunities.

College of the Rockies started as a series of storefronts in empty office buildings. In fact, one of them was over the Legion, which was really handy for students in those days. Now we have seven campuses.

It's really important to us that we remain a comprehensive college. By "comprehensive," I mean offering a full range of programs that lead to certificates, diplomas, degrees and completed apprenticeships. We really need funding to be able to maintain and strengthen our university transfer programs. These programs allow students to start their degrees here and then transfer to other institutions. We also offer one degree now, and we partner with other B.C. institutions to offer degrees in education and in nursing.

It's vitally important to us that we continue to offer adult basic education at all of our campuses. Adult learners need avenues to re-engage in post-secondary learning. For many ABE students, high school was not a positive experience for them. Our instructors work really hard to make ABE welcoming and meaningful.

ESL training — English-as-a-second-language training — is also important for our college. Unlike Vancouver, I believe we are the only provider of ESL training in the region. No less important is the aboriginal education and the international education that we provide.

Other than on-line or distance education, we really are the provider, the post-secondary institution, in our region.
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Trades training is also, of course, very important. We all know the forecasted growth and the need for skilled tradespersons. The province has recently invested capital funds in trades in our area. We would like to see the operating costs for trades programs fully addressed. Another good initiative, we feel, would be to bring ITA back under the Ministry of Advanced Education so that our funding all comes from one ministry instead of from two.

The B.C. Business Council has made the point on several occasions that 75 percent of all new jobs will require some post-secondary education and training. Access and affordability for students are key to making this happen.

As faculty, we are engaged in the task of helping students to think and look critically at the world around them. No matter what subject we're teaching, our goal is for students to become more confident learners, to become more capable of becoming lifelong learners and more adaptive to the process of acquiring new skills. For the province, the advantage is these people will likely become gainfully employed taxpayers.

It's important for the committee to remember that B.C.'s network of community colleges was established, in part, to provide important access points for people who have lived outside of the metropolitan areas. Not every student is able to move to the coast. Currently I have three children attending post-secondary institutions in Vancouver, and I am very happy that they were able to spend a year here before they moved on to those other institutions.

All public post-secondary institutions are valuable to the citizens of B.C. We all would like to see increases to post-secondary funding, but there are some cost pressures, for rural colleges in particular, I'd like to bring to your attention.

At College of the Rockies we have an impressive breadth of offerings for a small college, but that puts us in a difficult position financially. We rarely have multiple sections of a course. We rarely have multiple intakes of a program. Many of our programs are only offered at one campus, or they have to rotate through the campuses rather than being offered at all of them.

While a larger institution might be able to offer 20 sections of history, we offer one. They might have 19 of those 20 sections full. Not all of our sections, even the one, are full sometimes. It's a real challenge with a small population to draw from.

College of the Rockies serves a geographically dispersed area. It takes hours to drive between our campuses, and that's not because of traffic.

The first reaction when there are cost pressures is to simply cut back programs or move them all to on line or decrease the diversity. But in doing so, we turn our back on the students in our outlying areas and make it more of a challenge — and, ultimately, more expensive — for them to access education.

Another area I'd like to address is student services. Student services help students overcome roadblocks, provide vital support in helping students succeed and increase completion rates.

We've faced funding pressures for years, and our student services have been scaled back over time. When I first started at the college, we had two full-time counsellors on staff. Now we have none. We have no place to send a student who is in distress.

We have one faculty member to provide all of the disability services, and the need for disability services only increases each year. We don't have full-time educational advisers at each campus. Our learning specialist is less than half-time, as is our faculty librarian.

I can't remember a time when post-secondary funding wasn't under pressure. If there was fat in the budget, it disappeared long ago. We're continually being asked to do more with less, but it's very, very difficult to do so. By 2015, for example, the real per-student operating grants to colleges, universities and institutes will have dropped by 20 percent since 2001. Institutions are balancing their books with private funding, entrepreneurial funding, funding from international education and from increased tuition costs to students.

As institutions struggle to bring in other sources of revenue, and with the loss of targeted funding over a decade ago, the number of administrative positions has increased more than in other areas. For example, from 2001 to 2012 the number of excluded administrative positions in our college has increased by almost 40 percent.

The March 2012 financial statement shows that the amount spent on administration was more than double the amount spent on academic programming. I'm not trying to say our administrators are inefficient. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying the cost of bringing in this extra revenue has costs in terms of manpower.

The provincial government stated, over a year ago, its commitment to significantly increase the number of internationals enrolled in B.C.'s post-secondary system. Our college has a strong commitment to international students.

There are many benefits from having international students as part of our community. However, there are also costs — costs that aren't being funded. International students have diverse needs — needs that require more intensive teaching, more one-on-one time. Not only are they learning the topic, but they're also sometimes learning a new language, a new community and a new culture. The plan for international education needs to include additional funding to support the diversity of those students' needs.

Post-secondary students themselves have a real affordability crunch. The budget documents forecast tuition fee revenues to climb by close to $100 million over the next three years. Personally, I'm a strong advocate of tuition-free education, but failing that, a step in the right direc-
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tion would be reviving the B.C. student grant program.

Funding pressure at the College of the Rockies is having a direct impact on faculty as well as students. The number of full-time faculty positions has decreased. There are more part-time or contingent faculty. Of our over 200 faculty members, less than 80 have what we call regular positions.

This approach relieves an immediate cost pressure, but ultimately, it undermines the college's prospects when it comes to recruitment and retention. It is difficult to entice qualified faculty members to move to the Kootenays for less than full-time work. Students are not well served by that approach.

In conclusion, our faculty association would like to see the following priorities addressed or strengthened in the budget. Post-secondary education is an excellent investment for our province, and overall, we would like it to be a budget priority.

More specifically, funding for small colleges needs to be reviewed. The sensible approach, in our view, would be to engage in a thorough review of the funding formula so that regional inequities and core funding needs for the system as a whole could be addressed.

We'd like to see new funding placed to provide post-secondary institutions with the capacity to restore student services that have been scaled back over the last years. These services are an effective way to help students succeed.

Revive the student grant program. Help students deal with the cost of obtaining a post-secondary education. Investment in education makes good economic sense for the province.

Lastly, provide additional funding to fully support our international students. We don't only want to attract international students; we want them to feel supported and to achieve their goals.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. We have heard from a number of post-secondary institutions and faculty associations on our trip, and it's still early days yet.

Right now the funding formula for rural area colleges…. There's nothing in the formula that recognizes the fact that you don't have the economies of scale of larger communities and institutions, and you've got a very dispersed population. So right now, as long as you're in the same category, you get the same per-capita funding as other….

L. Molnar: That's correct. There was a report many, many years ago called the Reed report, where they looked at institutions. They kind of broke it down into what the core things are that you need just to open the door. But then the funding formula was never changed.

G. Holman: Just one other quick one. You made a statement about admin costs. Could you repeat that for me again? We have heard this issue again being raised by a number of the institutions — the concern.

L. Molnar: In the March 2012 financial statements, the amount for administration was a little over $6 million. That was more than double the amount that's spent on all academic programming, which was $2.6 million — academic programming being different than vocational and technical programming.

What I'm saying is that in the last ten years there has been almost a 40 percent increase in the number of excluded administrative positions. A lot of what those people are doing is pursuing the international education, pursuing the private contracts, pursuing the different things — you know, bringing in those other revenue streams to make up for the decreased part of our budget that's now the provincial grant. The provincial grant used to be a lot higher percentage of our total revenue. Now it's less than 75 percent.

G. Holman: So part of the reason, you think, for the increase in admin costs is the reduction in the core funding, which you estimated at 20 percent….

L. Molnar: Right. I'm absolutely not trying to say anything negative about our administration.

L. Molnar: Right. There's very much a cost in order to seek other funding sources, and that may take away from our core mandate, which is to provide comprehensive educational opportunities for our people.

M. Hunt: I recognize you're here representing the faculty association, but in the midst of your comments you, of course, talked about the dispersed area that you have and the population issues. I would have thought that on-line would be viewed in a positive nature. However, in your presentation…. I don't have a copy of it, but if my memory serves me correctly, as you went through it, that was in a list of the negatives of how we're dealing with things.

So I'm having a problem understanding, because I
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would think that because of the costs of education and such — the travelling and all the rest of it — actually, on-line courses, or at least portions of courses, would be a positive for students in a region like this.

L. Molnar: I didn't mean to give you the impression that on-line is negative. I'm probably one of the biggest techie people at our college. But there is a place for on-line learning.

Where it is a negative is sometimes with, say, the adult basic education learners. When you really need to have somebody in the classroom, the on-line way does not necessarily work. Sometimes this is true with our international or aboriginal learners as well.

When on-line becomes the only choice…. Because of scheduling conflicts and only being able to offer one section, sometimes students are forced into on-line education, when they would rather have face-to-face, because we can't offer both modes of it.

On-line is absolutely something that we have adopted. We have great technological resources at the college. But there is a place for it. We almost need this checklist of: "Are you ready for on-line courses?" Learning to learn on-line is a different type of student.

Leslie, thanks for your presentation. You mentioned recommending to restore funding levels to be able to restore student services. Can you talk about what student services have been…? What are you talking about?

L. Molnar: As I said, we don't have any counsellors on staff, so that's a huge problem. We had several students die last year and nothing to deal with the crisis there.

The disability services. More and more students are coming in with learning disabilities and all sorts of other disabilities that need to be accommodated.

The support services in the library. We no longer have a full-time faculty librarian.

Students just need those support services to help them succeed? I go through a box of Kleenex every November as students are crying in my office because they are…. I teach math, so that's a good reason. A little biased.

Sir, thank you. Appreciate you coming. We've allotted ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning if we start getting close on it. Then we've got five minutes for questions or comments. The floor is yours.

D. McSkimming: Thanks for giving us the opportunity to be here. I'm here at the request of council and the mayor to talk a little bit about our funding and some of the things, the programs, that flow through the province to the city of Fernie and all municipalities in the province. These programs have become so important to us in improving our aging infrastructure and keeping up with things and being able to provide services to the city of Fernie as a whole.

The first one is the resort municipality initiative, the RMI. There are 14 RMI communities in the province. Fernie as a community receives just in the area of $400,000 a year. We've been able to use that money to enhance our infrastructure for tourism, people that come to our town, as well as facilities that help the population that lives in Fernie.

We've just recently had completion of a boat launch for the fishermen and the people who use the river, tourists and locals alike. We wouldn't have been able to do that without that. That is a program that's on, I understand, a five-year memorandum of understanding and is nearing the end. It's our hope that this sort of thing will keep up. It's something that we need to continue to grow in that area.

You have to also understand that the location of Fernie is close to the Alberta border. We're sort of the gateway for Alberta and Saskatchewan people to come and recreate in the province. There's a tremendous amount of pressure on our infrastructure because of the influx. We can go from a town of 4,700 people to a town of 10,000 people in about three or four hours on a busy ski day. So those things are important.

Next are the strategic community investment funds. It's what was the small community grant. It's expiring, I understand, in 2014. We receive an annual funding of $470,000. Without these funds, we wouldn't be able to provide the service levels to the citizens of Fernie without either cutting the levels or increasing our taxes on our citizens by as much as 10 percent. So it's important that this keeps coming.

The next one is actually more of a federal program, but I guess we talk to you to keep putting pressure on them. That's the infrastructure grant program. We received $4½ million in 2010-11 to increase our water reservoir, and we are spending $650,000 in 2014. It's really important. Fernie is over 100 years old. We still have wooden storm drains in the ground.

I know there's never enough money, and we'll never be
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able to keep on top of it. We've just received a report on our facilities that puts us in the area of $13 million behind in doing upgrades and maintenance on them over the next five to ten years. We're just never going to make it. Any cuts to these types of things would be very difficult.

We are very fortunate that we have Teck Coal in our valley, which provides in the area of $2.8 million to $2.9 million a year in the mine share tax, but there are an awful lot of other things happening in the valley.

Resource-revenue-sharing, mineral royalties. The province receives about $3 billion a year, in 2012-2013, from sales, use of provincial resources, stumpage, oil and gas, mineral royalties and water rentals.

We feel that with the impact of these things that are happening in our valley on the cities of Fernie, Sparwood and Elkford, some sort of a practical means of sharing the provincial resource revenues would greatly help the local governments. It's something, as an example, that's happened up in the Peace River regional district, where the Fair Share arrangement has been developed.

Again, our unique challenges in the East Kootenays are our distance from Victoria and from the coast and our proximity to Alberta. We seem to be looking after most of their citizens on a recreation basis. We're very fortunate that Bill Bennett, our MLA, has been a strong voice for us, and we're grateful for that.

Quickly, on to another note, it's interesting, following the presenter before me. There's an opportunity on the books right now. The College of the Rockies may be looking at constructing a new campus in our valley. The current facility that we have there has been designated to be replaced or relocated within the next five years.

There's an opportunity there at this point in time because of various local partners — which would have to include you — that would allow us to build a proper campus, a bigger campus that would allow tradespeople to be schooled and educated and live in Fernie as they work for Teck Coal and the other mining contractors — Finning, SMS Equipment, Joy Global, Cummins diesel, just to name a few.

Our current council is completely on side with this initiative. I know that MP Wilks and MLA Mr. Bennett have both expressed support on this. A conference centre is included in this plan, which the city is willing to participate in. There is a private partner, an individual who is willing to gift the land for it.

Right now the problem we have at Teck…. There isn't a week goes by that I don’t talk to somebody in Fernie who's leaving town to go work up at somewhere like Kearl Lake. Teck and the other companies in our valley are losing valuable trades and experienced equipment operators and having to bring in people from the bottom and teaching them to learn their trades or their equipment operating.

Teck has been a tremendous corporate citizen in our valley. They've been very generous with us. I know they're interested in this project. They're interested in helping fund it. They would like to see people learning their trades, being able to work at the mines, work for the contractors and be schooled in the area. The things seems to work better together, and to be able to test them there as well.

Whether you have or have not been to Fernie, it's a beautiful place. I think it would attract people from all across the country for this sort of educational need, and it would certainly be a game changer.

I think there's an environment that exists right now between this particular government and our MLA, Mr. Bennett, the citizens of Fernie, the city of Fernie and the College of the Rockies. The Columbia Basin Trust is on side, and Teck Coal has expressed sincere interest in seeing something like this happen.

I'm not saying we have a small window, but I think the things are lining up, and things are right now. You'll hopefully be seeing this, because it's already in the works. I'm just here to give it a plug, because we feel it's a real game changer for the city of Fernie and for the valley — for lots of the same reasons that the presenter before me gave, as far as keeping people closer to home and providing good education. That's it.

M. Hunt: As a councillor in the city of Surrey, I want to thank you for coming on behalf of your city. I think it's one of the processes that we need to do more of in local government — to take these opportunities to bring forth the local needs. I really appreciate you doing that.

G. Holman: Two questions. Thanks for your presentation. On the College of the Rockies, what's the magnitude of the dollars asked from the province?

The second question is on two of the funding sources you've mentioned, the resort municipality and the small community grant. I probably should know this as a committee member, but is there any indication that those funding sources are going away, or if is there a proposal for them to…?

D. McSkimming: I don't think there's any worry of them going away. I met with our CAO this morning, who used to be our finance guy, so he's all about the money. Whenever he sees any sort of process or any sort of agreement coming to the end of its term….

Not that it wouldn't ever come back. Will it come back less? Will it go away altogether? We don't know. I'm here to encourage you so that it doesn't go away and so that it
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doesn't get decreased.

From the perspective of the College of the Rockies, I have a very rough pro forma on what it would cost to build this project. It's in the very early planning stages, and it's in the area of $11 million to $12 million to build the campus and some residences and facilities. It's a phased approach.

What the province will have to bring to the table…. At this point in time I haven't been privy to those numbers. I know Teck is willing to step up in a large way. They're very, very interested in it. And the Columbia Basin Trust funding is always there, but that's usually down in the 5- to 10-percent range. Where the college is at with that, I don't know.

Again, I'm advocating it because it's an important thing. We're seeing it being drained — these families and these people leaving — because of better opportunities up north. Teck has really struggled at keeping equipment operators and tradespeople in the valley.

Dan, thank you very much for coming today. Before you scoot, you have a huge supporter still. I've had the opportunity to work with Gus Boersma, a former mayor of Fernie and on council. He talks about Fernie on a continual basis, so you've still got a great supporter.

D. Ashton (Chair): One last thing. When we were flying over, there were some settling ponds or something — when we came in today, below Fernie, a red iron-ore colour. They're down the hill from Fernie and on the lower slopes.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, we came in north and landed south, turning north on base and landing south. I saw them below. I was curious if you could answer that.

D. McSkimming: I'm not sure if that's near us. I don't think our settling ponds or our treatment ponds are that colour.

D. Ashton (Chair): They're bright orange. So if they are, there's an issue, right?

D. Ashton (Chair): Welcome, sir. We have a presentation. It's five minutes, if I remember correctly. Please go ahead.

P. Davidson: I'm concerned. I'm retired from B.C. environment. I worked under Mr. Stetski for years. Now I'm president of the naturalists and president of the restoration society for the trench here, restoring natural habitat. I'm an agrologist and a biologist by training.

One of the concerns I have is about the Agricultural Land Commission and the agricultural land reserve status in the province. Funding for the commission has been slashed from…. I don't know the exact figure. I didn't bring my glasses. But it's been slashed by about 30 percent in the last ten years.

This has really hampered the ability to do the appropriate work in terms of being involved in land use planning, setting aside areas that should be retained as agriculture versus those that should be developed for townsites and commercial ventures and industrial areas. Land use planning has kind of dropped off the sights of the commission, and they're chasing referrals for removal from the agricultural land reserve.

They're not really doing the job they intended to do. I'm very concerned that the bigger issues…. What do we want for our agriculture area? Should it not be based on the science of what the soils tell us? Should it not be made by the commissioners that decide what is agricultural land, what should be retained? And should they not be involved in land use planning processes that oversee where these things are done?

Instead, they're responding to case-by-case referrals, which I call chasing your tail — I did a lot of that with B.C. Environment — and are kind of missing the bigger issue. I think we need to change the focus. We need to get appropriate funding back in place, so they can do their job and be involved in land use planning through the vice-chairs and the chair of the commission and through sticking to the agricultural land reserve. Maybe it needs some twigging through a scientific review of the soil's capability.

In the East Kootenay we have excellent soil mapping, actually done by writer Larry Lacelle in the '80s, but it has not been translated into and part of the land use planning process for agriculture in the trench. And we need that. So I'd say update it, use the science, allow these people to be involved in a meaningful process like land use planning and implement the recommendations of the Auditor General.

You know, the Auditor General came up with a bunch of recommendations in 2010, and I don't think any of
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these have been implemented. I'd just say that there are some rules in place. Why don't we use them? Why don't we listen to your own Auditor General?

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thank you. Normally, as I've been told, there aren't questions on it. It's strictly a presentation that comes forward on an open mike. So I want to thank you very much for it. If you physically have some comments to hand in, we can take those also.

P. Davidson: Well, I just have the stuff that the Auditor General recommended. I have something that a professor emeritus of UBC recommended.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, you're more than welcome, sir, if you want to give them stuff at the back. That would be great. Thank you for your presentation.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, Noreen. We've allotted ten minutes for a presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning before that is up, and we have five minutes for either questions or comments. The floor is yours, and welcome.

N. Thielen: I only became aware of this late Friday evening. Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity. My presentation will probably be rough because of the time constraints I had, but bear with me, please. I'll do my best. I may just read it.

I've been a local rancher-farmer, born and raised on the same ranch as my father before me. The land in agriculture is very near and dear to my heart and my family's. We're multi-generational, and to say that we are survivors is probably an understatement. To attest to that, next year will be 100 years that we have farmed on the same piece of property. We've been through a lot, dealt with a lot over those years and generations. Decisions have been made with much thought and consideration, not rash and quick — especially any of major importance.

Everything I will say to you today comes from my heart. I have been threatened in the past — I'm glad to see there are probably not a lot of people sitting behind me — for standing up for what I believe in. My daughters thought I shouldn't say this. If certain people hear what I'm about to say, I might be shot, if they could get away with it.

D. Ashton (Chair): I just want to caution you, if you don't mind. This is broadcast. This is a live broadcast, and it is recorded, and there will be information available to anybody that wishes to get it. I'll just give you that word of advice. Okay?

I'm here today because of the land and how passionate I am about the land and agriculture. I'm not speaking from a speculation perspective or from greed; I'm speaking because of how passionate I am about the land and agriculture and how dependent we all are on that land and the health of that land.

I've heard rumblings of another ALR review and it being looked at under the core review, possibly. This makes me extremely nervous, anxious and outright angry, to put it mildly. If you're looking at trimming dollars from the provincial budget, another comprehensive review or further changes to the ALC or the ALR — which has just completed a comprehensive review, released November 2010 — in my opinion, would be a total outright waste of taxpayer dollars, and many others would surely agree.

Its annual budget of $2.9 million is meagre in comparison to where…. I am sure much larger pots of money than that could use a comprehensive review and trimming — ones that haven't had such a review in recent years.

Proposing changes to the ALR or ALC that would facilitate development opportunities — or arguing to balance agriculture with the needs of development — is only to facilitate development on ALR or agriculture land, no matter how you package it. No matter how you sugar-coat it, inevitably, the outcome has negative effects on agriculture, whether on that particular piece of land or the neighbouring land or operations, if not both — especially in the case of ranching.

If developers and those pro-development on ALR land and their frustrations affect policy of the ALR and ALC, agriculture will suffer, and its long-term viability will be further jeopardized. In ranching, all land is valuable. As one rancher put it, it's called critical mass.

We need and use all classes of our land, and they are all an integral part of the unit. To subdivide, parcelize, alienate or fragment parts of the unit is only cannibalization, consuming yourself and your children's future or the future of future generations. That is not sustainable. Agriculture's integrity is taken away by parcelization and alienation. ALR land is such a small percentage of B.C.'s land base. Please target development somewhere else.

Going back to regional panels would be a giant leap backwards and a huge mistake. Regional panel members are too close to friends and families and their problems or too susceptible to pressure and coercion — speaking from experience, not as a panel member but as one who stands up for what they believe in on committees. Decision-making can be more easily manipulated under regional panels. The ALR and agriculture are less protected by regional panels.
[ Page 311 ]

I've had the opportunity to come to know Mr. Richard Bullock, the current chair of the ALC. I feel he is a breath of fresh air and, possibly, the best thing ever that's happened to the ALC, from an agricultural perspective. I'm very confident in his abilities. He's trying to help legitimate farmers, not speculators.

I believe that is why, for some people, how he is leading the ALC is a problem. He's trying to get to the place where he can fulfil the mandate of the commission and it not be a developer's application processing agency. I feel it was a developer's land commission under the prior chair.

I know firsthand we are living the negative consequences of decisions made under the prior chair. Those headaches and negative effects continue to grow and get larger with time. Developers are never satisfied. They want more and more and more. Speaking from experience, these decisions were detrimental to agriculture. Look at past records regarding the number of applications. The vast majority were not farmers, especially in this region, and a very large percentage were approved.

Agricultural land is a finite asset, especially in this province. The ALR cannot be sacrificed to accommodate more tourism, recreation and population increases. There's other land.

As the cost of transportation increases, the province will require more agricultural production and land, not less. Speculation on ALR land in this province is driven by the potential to exclude that land from the ALR or receive non-farm-use designation, perpetuating the loss of ALR land and agriculture.

To further compound the problem, young farmers, and those who desire to be, cannot afford these speculator-developer-driven land values. The mandate of the ALC is to protect agricultural land and not provide for or enable other development on ALR land. Whether land was historically used, is currently used or none of the above has absolutely, and without question, no bearing on its capability or suitability for agriculture.

Land use only speaks to the owner's ambition or lack thereof, or their objectives. That is one of the lamest excuses or reasons there is for exclusion or non-farm use. If agricultural use, or lack of, is the reason for excluding land or for non-farm use, then one wishing one of those options need only quit using their land for agriculture. That could surely, and would, reduce the land values.

The ALC has recently undertaken a boundary review of areas A, B and C of this regional district, at the urging of many, especially some locals. Now that the area A review is underway — and I went to their public hearing — some are seeing that they won't be satisfied with how this process is going.

I am a member of many organizations and committees, as well as a longtime member of the Kootenay Livestock Association. I'm not sure if you know of them or not. The Kootenay Livestock Association is being run by a subset of members with their own agenda, whose aspirations were, a couple of years ago, to abolish the ALR.

D. Ashton (Chair): Noreen, we're at ten minutes, just so you know. You are going to be cutting into any questions. Okay?

They were told that would not happen. You must know they do not speak for all members, despite what they may say. They have alienated many past members and others because of how they have run that organization. It has to be extremely clear that they do not speak for all ranchers or farmers in this area, many of whom operate longtime family farms and ranches of significant size and who own thousands of acres in this valley.

M. Hunt: I just want to ask one. You describe yourself as a rancher, so I'm going to assume it's cattle. Therefore, in dealing with cattle, you're not actually dealing with the productivity of the soil per se, because we have, for example, Crown leases for ranches where the cows just wander up through the forests and eat whatever.

In your concept of dealing with the ALR, the capabilities of the soil, I believe you said, are not an issue, from your perspective as a rancher. Am I getting that correct or not?

N. Thielen: We do farm. We produce the hay for our cattle. I continually learn about soil science, listen to and speak with very many leading soil scientists out of Alberta and beyond — the Agri-Trend Agrology group. I'm not sure if I'm…. I'm not really answering your question.

I'm saying that I listened to the radio about the big piece of property in the Okanagan that the Bennett family owns that one of the cities there has unanimously approved for development, saying that it hasn't historically been used for agriculture. To me, that's not a reason. It doesn't even qualify. That has nothing to do with whether that land has been farmed or can be farmed.

M. Hunt: But you're not dealing with the specifics of that soil. That's why I tried to focus on your farm rather than somebody else's, because I know my ignorance is tremendous with other people's stuff. I just simply wanted to understand from what you were dealing with on your farm, that its agricultural capabilities are not the issue because you're growing grass on it, or hay.

N. Thielen: Well, in ranching, you need all classes of land. You need areas with trees and….
[ Page 312 ]

I'm sorry. I have to cut you off at 15 minutes, so answer quickly, because I have two other questions coming forward.

N. Thielen: …for wintering, for grazing, for producing forage, for barnyards, corrals, calving areas. We use all classes of land, and they're all key. You start taking those pieces out, and it just hinders you.

L. Popham: Thanks for your presentation. I really appreciate your passion that you've brought forward today, and I appreciate your holistic view of agriculture. I think that we've learned a lot over the last 20 years, and agriculture…. To make it most productive and most healthy, we have to take that holistic approach. So I really appreciate your presentation.

I'm really glad that you brought forward the core review. You're not the only person that has. I think the more people that do…. It represents agriculture really well. And I think there are a lot of people in British Columbia who want agriculture to be a primary focus. So thank you.

Noreen, thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it. Thanks for travelling from where you did.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

1) ArtsBC	Oz Parsons
2) College of the Rockies	David Walls
	Dianne Teslak
3) Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy	Betty Knight
	Katherine Hough
4) Meadowbrook Community Association	Bob Johnstone
	Sandra Loewen
5) Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce	Dave Butler
6) City of Cranbrook	Wayne Stetski
7) Kevin Paterson
8) College of the Rockies Faculty Association	Leslie Molnar
9) City of Fernie	Dan McSkimming

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:	Dave Butler (Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce)
	Peter Davidson
	Katherine Hough (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy)
	Bob Johnstone (President, Meadowbrook Community Association)
	Betty Knight (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy)
	Sandra Loewen (Meadowbrook Community Association)
	Dan McSkimming (City of Fernie)
	Leslie Molnar (President, College of the Rockies Faculty Association)
	Oz Parsons (President, ArtsBC)
	Kevin Paterson
	Wayne Stetski (Mayor, City of Cranbrook)
	Dianne Teslak (College of the Rockies)
	Noreen Thielen
	David Walls (President and CEO, College of the Rockies)

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