Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 14 — Wednesday, October 2, 2013 (HTML)

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	395
K. Ramsey
M. Benjamin
W. Pratt
M. Whitemarsh
E. Andersen
K. Brooker
P. Barbosa
P. Kent
D. Smith
L. Robert
D. Cooper
R. McElroy
A. Olsen
S. Arnett
A. Frerichs
P. Nix
I. Humphreys
B. O'Hara
S. Vaillancourt
I. Gartshore

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We will get going here. We have a bit of a prelude that we have to go through first of all, because we are live.

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 do 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 the consultation paper has been released, this committee is required to hold provincewide public consultations. All British Columbians are invited to provide input on the budget.

Following the consultations, the committee releases a report of the consultations, along with 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 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 on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, October 16. All the public input we receive is carefully considered.

At today's meeting each presenter may speak for up to ten minutes. Up to five additional minutes is 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 it will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes, will be printed and will be made available on 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. On Twitter we are at twitter.com/BCFinanceComm.

D. Ashton (Chair): 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 could not be here today — and all the committee representatives and staff to ensure what is said today is forwarded to the Legislative Assembly for proper consideration.

Also joining us today from the parliamentary committees office are some very hard-working and dedicated individuals: our Clerk, Susan Sourial, and Stephanie Raymond, who is staffing the registration desk at the back. Michael Baer and Alexandrea Hursey are here on behalf of Hansard Services. Those are the folk who are over there.

We also have two other individuals in here that I'd like to recognize. They're two of our peers: Michelle Stilwell and Leonard Krog. So thank you very much for coming. Welcome.

First on list we have ArtsBC. I have Kathy Ramsey and Michelle Benjamin. Please come forward.

Folks, ten minutes. I'll give you a warning at about two minutes till the ten. Then we have five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.

K. Ramsey: I want to make a quick correction. Michelle is here for the Gabriola Arts Council, which we're both….

M. Benjamin: The Gabriola Arts Council is a member of ArtsBC, but I'm not directly associated with it.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, and thank you for that flyer for the Thanksgiving tour.

K. Ramsey: My name is Kathy Ramsey. I serve on the board of ArtsBC and as past president of the Gabriola Arts Council.

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

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

Gabriola Island, which I also represent for the Gabriola Arts Council, has one of the highest concentrations of artists living and working in our community in Canada, according to Hill Strategies Research studies funded by Canada Council. The Gabriola Arts Council is cited among peer organizations and administrators as one of the province's leading arts councils, and it is known as an active and engaged arts organization serving its community.

Part of this recognition relates to its unique function. GAC provides cultural programs and services in the absence of local government. While Gabriola Island is part of the regional district of Nanaimo, there is no manager directly responsible for a cultural service portfolio for the island. Gabriola Island's local government, the Islands Trust, has no mandate to financially support cultural programming. GAC tries to fill this void, which I think we do a pretty good job of.

I've come before your committee today on behalf of ArtsBC, the Gabriola Arts Council and our joint members to encourage the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to make recommendations to increase investment in the arts and culture sector in B.C. in 2014-15.

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

ArtsBC emphasizes the need for the provincial government to continue to increase its investment in 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.

I'd like you to consider the key considerations for increased investment. B.C. residents of all ages actively participate in arts and culture activities. According to Hill Strategies Research, in 2010, 99.9 percent of B.C. residents 15 or older participated in at least one arts, cultural or heritage activity.

With more artists working in B.C. than in Ontario and Alberta and a larger workforce than the forestry and fishing industries combined, B.C.'s cultural sector is recognized across the country and beyond for its vitality and vibrance. The arts create jobs and produce tax revenues. A strong sector is an economic asset that stimulates business activity, attracts 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 foster young imaginations and facilitate children's success in school. They provide the critical thinking, communication and innovative skills essential to a productive workforce.

The arts create a welcoming sense of place and a desirable quality of life. The arts also support a strong democracy and engaged 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.

One, increasing the B.C. Arts Council's budget from $24 million in 2013-14 to $32 million in 2014-15, with a plan to increase their legislative appropriated investment to $40 million in 2016.

The B.C. Arts Council is not adequately funded to fulfil its mandate or to address current demand for its programs. An increase to $32 million will begin to address existing shortfalls while activating the associated economic and social benefits. A longer-term increase to $40 million will help to make British Columbia more competitive within the national context.

Secondly, community gaming grants provide essential funds for many arts organizations and specific programs not funded by the B.C. Arts Council. Previous cuts created turmoil for the sector, and these cuts have still not been fully restored in spite of ongoing growth in gaming revenues.

We propose increasing community gaming grants to organizations from $135.5 million in 2012-13 to $156 million for 2014-15, with the option to further increase gaming grants in the longer term.
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Thirdly, provide stable, predictable funding for the B.C. Arts Council and community gaming grant programs so that they can offer multi-year funding to arts and cultural organizations. We recommend specifically considering a three-year budgeting model that includes the ability to carry over unspent earmarked funds and that 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 by its artistic creators and cultural workers, even more so knowing that the growth of this sector will be sustained and supported by the provincial government.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation. ArtsBC and certainly the cultural sector are doing an excellent job in terms of getting the message out. I think we've heard it pretty much consistently across all communities — reflecting, I think, the role of creative industries and how they really are in every community across the province.

In terms of here, within the area, what's the scope in terms of the members who are…? There's the Gabriola network. How many members do you have in the area?

M. Benjamin: Our active members in the Gabriola Arts Council are about 450 members, but those are people who buy a $10 membership every year. We serve a much larger community on the island. The population of Gabriola is about 4,000 people.

Of our three major arts and cultural events each year, we get anywhere from 1,000 people who attend our theatre festival and 1,000 to 1,500 people who come to our Thanksgiving Studio Tour, which is just coming up. We serve a broad base, and not just on Gabriola. We certainly bring visitors from off island to our events. We also participate in cultural events in Nanaimo whenever we can, or cultural meetings. They're part of their cultural planning.

K. Ramsey: I represent arts councils from Nanaimo up through to Campbell River, and that is pretty consistent with all the arts councils in the neighbourhood. I think the Campbell River Arts Council has about 600 members but, at the same time, engages everyone from city hall to disadvantaged youth.

M. Elmore: That's pretty impressive — 450 paying members on Gabriola — and I think, certainly, well able to defend. You mention that Gabriola is the cultural capital of B.C. or Canada.

M. Benjamin: We think so. I think we're sixth in Canada for per-capita number of working artists, artists in the workforce.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. As Mable said, yes, the word is certainly out, and we're hearing a very similar message throughout our travels. I noted your comment about the particular issue in electoral areas, in areas that aren't incorporated. I do think it's an additional challenge for arts groups that aren't in municipalities, but I did want to point it out.

I don't think it lessens your argument for funding because groups are coming from funding, whether they're from electoral areas or municipalities. I don't think it weakens your case. I think the point is still well taken, but it is possible through the regional district to establish an arts service. I know because I was regional director for Saltspring for six years and did just that.

You can define that. You'd have to get voter approval, but it is possible through the regional district. Then that might give you a vehicle for matching funding, which might help with applications to the Arts Council or whatever. I just wanted to mention that.

M. Benjamin: Thank you. We do receive some funding through the regional district of Nanaimo, through their grants-in-aid program. It's limited per year, per organization. We do use that to leverage funding with the B.C. Arts Council, but it's great to know that there may be another structure to do that.

G. Holman: You can actually establish a service that's focused on the arts. So there's an annual tax requisition.

J. Tegart: Kathy, I wonder if you could share with us what amount you get from ArtsBC for your region.

K. Ramsey: We don't get any funding from ArtsBC but we do from B.C. Arts Council.

M. Benjamin: We do get $300 from ArtsBC. They fund a small environmental piece of one of our festivals.

J. Tegart: Okay. From the other organization, what do you receive, in provincial money?

M. Benjamin: Yes, this is for the Gabriola Arts Council. Last year we had $9,000 in operating funds, and we received $6,000 for the Gabriola Theatre Festival. This year, because our funding structure is a bit different, we hope to be closer to $12,000 or $13,000 from the B.C. Arts Council for operating funds.

Thank you very much for coming. Thanks, Kathy. Thanks, Michelle, and good luck at Thanksgiving with your project.

D. Ashton (Chair): So ten minutes. I'll give a two-minute warning. I'll try and catch your eye. So I'm not saying peace; I'm saying two minutes. Then we have five minutes allotted for questions. The floor is yours.

W. Pratt: Thank you for allowing me to come here today to make this presentation. My name is Wendy Pratt. I am the executive director of Nanaimo Community Hospice, but today I'm here as the past president of the Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices. I have provided you with three different handouts today. One is this address, another has more detailed information, and one is based on the statistics derived on the work of the federation in 2012.

On behalf of the federation, I am here today to talk to you about something that concerns all of us, yet nobody really wants to talk about it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "hospice palliative care," it is simply the compassionate care and support of those who are dying, caregiving and grieving a loss.

In the past 18 years that I've been involved in hospice palliative care, there's one thing I am sure of, and that is that when death comes to us or to a loved one, we want it to be peaceful, and we want it to be pain-free. Most of us would like to be surrounded by people who care, and we want our loved ones to be supported in their grief.

I'm talking about quality end-of-life care. It is the reason hospice societies were formed, and it's the reason that the ten hospice societies on Vancouver Island came together to form the Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices in 2007. Our goal was simple. We wanted to speak with one voice; we wanted to sit at the planning table to be heard, be respected as a valuable community partner in care; and we wanted that to be reflected in some form of equitable funding.

Of course, funding should be based on results, and you'd need to look no further than the stats that I've given you today to see that the hospices within the federation make a very positive difference in the community. These services are delivered by both professional staff and over 1,400 volunteers across the Island who are highly skilled and trained to provincial standards. In addition, another 5,000 individuals benefited from education delivered in hospice care, and 12,000 benefited from hospice support.

The services provided by hospice societies are listed in your handouts, so I won't go through them again. But what you don't see there is the level of acuity that now exists in our referrals in terms of traumatic grief and loss, and also the downloading of care into the community that is really impacting families at home who are caring for a loved one.

The work is extensive. It's all-encompassing. In Nanaimo we work with children as young as three right up through the teen years. We have a website specifically for teens. We have 14 individual programs for adults and seniors, and Nanaimo alone has direct contact with 2,000 individuals annually. If another hospice can't deliver the same programs we do on the Island, it's not lack of desire. It's lack of funding.

So let's talk money for a minute. In the early '80s Victoria was part of a pilot project to create hospice beds. Today Victoria Hospice receives $3.8 million for their programs, and in addition, they raise an equivalent amount each year to support their programs. Aside from Victoria's funding, however, an additional amount of $141,000 is provided by Island Health to be divided equally between the rest of the hospices — nine hospices, $15,700 each. In Nanaimo that amounts to a little over 2 percent of our budget.

Now a look at the return on that investment. These nine hospices raise a combined total of $2 million annually through donations and grants, and their volunteers give of their time $2.3 million in contributed services, for a total of $4.3 million that goes directly to fund programs and support programs that are for patients and families. I'd say that's quite a return on investment for Island Health.

Each year each member of the federation uses $300 of that funding to fund federation initiatives, and so far we have managed to create a collaborative website, www.advancecareplanningvi.ca, and the training of volunteers to provide community education and individual support around this important yet complex issue, which I believe is a priority for the Ministry of Health.

Biannually we offer a very cost-effective, Islandwide education day with over 200 people attending, and most recently the members of the federation invited our health authority to come together to develop a meaningful partnership that will result in equitable funding and effective
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programs for the future.

Speaking of the future, I'm sure you've all heard of the silver tsunami. Well, it isn't coming; it's already here. I'm 66, and in 14 years I'm going to be 80. And I have some grave concerns about the care that is going to be there for me when I get there.

We need to ask ourselves: what will end-of-life care look like 15 to 25 years from now if no action is taken? Is there adequate care available for those in need today? How do we ensure good quality end-of-life care for the future?

Stats show that 90 percent of us will experience a decline and various plateaus of pain and disability as we age. Research also shows that when a death occurs, it impacts a minimum of five people. That has a tremendous impact on communities, and we know that at hospice.

The work that we do is a preventative type of care. When grief goes unaddressed, it can result in depression, addiction, absenteeism and dysfunction within the classroom and the workplace, and in the most extreme cases, it can result in suicide. None of this is going away. The demand for supports will only continue to grow.

In 2006 the province released the framework on end-of-life care. I was on the provincial board of the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association at that time, and I can tell you that when it was released, we were thrilled. We were excited. But since then, despite the development of an action plan based on this framework, very little has changed.

The federation wants to be part of the solution. We need to ask: is what we are doing good enough, could we do better, and if so, how? What we are doing is definitely not good enough, depending on where you live. If you live in a well-populated urban area, chances are you'll have good access to care and choices around how and where you want to die.

But if you live north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, your experience will be quite different. You have no access to get dedicated acute palliative services for pain and symptom management. You have no access to residential hospice programs where you can choose to spend the last days being cared for by trained professionals and hospice volunteers. In fact, the reality is that you will probably end up on a four-bed mixed-gender hospital ward or in an overcrowded emergency room or at home with caregivers who are overwhelmed, exhausted and putting their own health at risk.

So how can you help? We know that the psychosocial and practical support provided by community hospices is integral to the delivery of quality end-of-life care. We know that residential hospice beds are a key component of the basic quality end-of-life care continuum. And we know that the B.C. framework had it right the first time. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's stop talking and start doing. It's time to make equitable access to basic end-of-life care a priority, not simply in words but in budgets.

If it is truly the goal of the government to put families first, then we would strongly urge each of you to address these issues now. Time is running out. I'm 66 years old, as I said, and I have enough knowledge — actually quite dangerous knowledge — to know that what I expect at the end of my life might not be available for me, and it might not be available for you either.

Thank you so much for allowing me to come and present today. I'd be happy to answer your questions.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation, Wendy. I think, certainly, we've heard the message from other hospice societies about the importance and the need to also look forward and raise the awareness in the general public and have those discussions with individuals and facilitate discussing what happens — also planning end of life. So I think that's an important area that we need to do a better job on.

I know you do a good job of advocating on behalf of the Vancouver Island ten hospices. Is there a specific request that you have in terms of the Nanaimo Community Hospice Society?

W. Pratt: Speaking on behalf of the federation of hospices, our request would be that there be more equitable core funding for hospice societies — that that funding reflect the contribution they give to the health authority. Most of us work within existing health care programs in hospitals and home and community care, and we do not believe that funding we're receiving right now reflects the support that we provide.

W. Pratt: The statistics that we provided to you give a very clear idea of the contribution that we make. We were looking for $50,000 per hospice, and that was just strictly to keep our doors open.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I wanted to say that I really appreciated the data that you presented. It really does make the point about the per-capita funding in terms of the number of clients you're dealing with. The fundraising that you're doing is quite remarkable.

It's a great idea that you've formed a federation. I don't know if other hospices have. It didn't even occur to me to ask that question. We have been approached by other hospices as well. I think the notion of banding together, providing data like this…. I would put that word out, because it's really useful. It really makes your point about
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the inequity in the funding.

E. Foster: Well, thank you very much. I'm quite familiar with the North Okanagan Hospice. I worked on their fundraising and so on when they built the addition to their building. I look at the discrepancy between what Interior Health contributes to our hospice as compared to what VIHA contributes to yours. What's the discussion there?

W. Pratt: There is very little discussion. We have actually been trying to get the health authority to fund us at the $50,000 level just to acknowledge us as viable community partners. They continue to give us the same message over and over again, and that is: "There is no funding. There is no funding."

They actually tried to cut our funding back to $5,000 this year rather than $15,700 per hospice. We really had to put a lot of pressure on them in order for them to keep the funding at that level.

We are now working with them to keep it at the $15,000 level, and right now that is not annualized funding. It's one-time funding every year. We have to go every year and ask again, and we get it at the end of their fiscal funding year. We never know for sure whether we're going to get it or not. It's very hard to budget in terms of that funding.

E. Foster: Is that the total funding you get from them? They don't give you a bed-per-day funding on top of that?

W. Pratt: We don't have beds in our hospice. These are community-based hospices. Port Alberni has beds. They are not actually funded in the same way either, although they are funded through home and community care. What we've been told by our health authority is that residential hospices are not a model they're interested in discussing. We want to change that.

W. Pratt: We have a palliative care unit in Nanaimo. Nanaimo Community Hospice has 50 volunteers that work right on the palliative care unit every day, 365 days a year. We're integral partners in care on that palliative care unit, but that is a VIHA program.

E. Foster: That palliative care — those beds are attached to a hospital, are they?

D. Ashton (Chair): Wendy, thank you very much for coming. Greatly appreciate it. Have a good day — or evening, I should say now.

Next up is British Columbia Common Ground Alliance. M.J. and Steve, welcome. Thank you for coming. So ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have questions. The floor is yours.

M. Whitemarsh: We're here today to talk to you about safety. B.C. Common Ground Alliance is a not-for-profit stakeholder organization and was established to lead the development of consistent practices in safety for digging. Two of the things that we wanted to do when we got together as a group were to raise awareness and to stop accidents.

Everybody thinks that the B.C. One Call is something that is mandated, that everybody has to do, and it's not true. Digging in this province is the purview of those that are digging, whether it's the utility or whether it's an individual.

In B.C. there are over 2,000 documented hits to underground infrastructure every year. Those are the ones that are documented. There are many more that aren't documented and don't get reported.

Membership in BCCGA supports a strong economy and building safe communities so that families can grow and prosper today and into the future. We believe that supporting an association that is stakeholder-driven like BCCGA is one that supports the economy and the strength of the province.

When we have these hits to underground infrastructure, they result in damage that disrupts sewer and water, telecommunications, electrical power, cable television, the flow and supply of liquid petroleum and natural gas. They cause vital facility outages for homes, businesses, financial institutions, hospitals, air traffic control operations, emergency service providers. The costs are incalculable.

Since its inception B.C. Common Ground Alliance has been a strong advocate and partner with the provincial government and various underground utility partners. Through key deliverables, we've been able to create best practices for excavators. We have created an education series, Dig Safe, and we have provided contractor breakfasts that are information-sharing and help get our word out for what we are doing.

We would like to become geographically dispersed so that we have a pan-B.C. hit with what goes on. Right now we're mostly Vancouver-centric. We'd like a better interface so that we can share more information.

We would like to get more people together. We would like to take that fragmentation that has happened and bring it all together so that it is cohesive, so that there is a safety structure that protects British Columbians. It would give greater safety awareness, a consistency of message and a more active involvement of the members.

Currently the resources that BCCGA operates under are membership fees. In the handout we have given you,
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there is a long list of those persons that have seen great wealth in belonging to BCCGA. Those are the ones, through their membership fees, that have been supporting BCCGA financially.

The provincial government, through the community gaming grant stream, has, over the past three years, given us a total of $70,000. Over that three-year period that has certainly helped us to get things done, like the contractor breakfasts and things.

Our ask of you as this committee, realizing that this government has pledged to balance our budget…. We applaud them for that. We've supported that over the last decade. No growth in spending — we realize that, and we support that. We know that we want to get our budget on track, and that's what makes B.C. such an attractive place to live.

But our ask is that the gaming grant funds that are there, that are being used for a lot of fragmented things that do talk about digging and safety within the province of British Columbia, become a more cohesive unit and that the amount of money that we are being given as BCCGA every year be increased to $150,000. That's our ask.

We believe that by doing that, we would be B.C.-centric, rather than Vancouver-centric. We would be able to have much more success throughout the province. We would get more people on board for what we are doing. We would also support the growth of B.C. and the financial stability of the province.

I'm just here to deliver this message. Steve is the chair of the board for BCCGA, and if you have any questions, he would be more than happy to answer them about the logistics that go into the Common Ground Alliance.

Okay. Well, thank you for the request. It's noted and will be recorded. Steve and M.J., thank you very much for coming. Have a good day, folks.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sure. Sir, please come forward. I apologize. We're jumping around. But instead of us having to wait, it would be….

Mr. Andersen, welcome. Thank you very much for coming. Ten minutes, sir, for presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and we have time allotted for questions.

E. Andersen: Panel members, Mr. Chairman, thanks for the opportunity to have a few words with you today.

I don't represent anybody but myself. I'm an economist, and I've lived in B.C. a lot of my life but not entirely. I'd like to just read…. It's what you have in front of you as well.

The dominant theme for B.C. provincial finances is insufficient revenue. Two years ago the S&P credit agency presented its observations and recommendations to the provinces of Canada. There were four issues featured in this report. The first two were concerns about the expense half of budgeting: education and health care. Judging by subsequent anecdotal information, B.C. budgets for these services have been restrained in a variety of ways.

The second two concerns were growing public debt and shrinking or stagnant revenues. Referring to exhibit 1, which is included, it can be seen that while provincial GDP increased from 2004 to the last fiscal year by 54 percent, total provincial liabilities only increased by 40 percent.

However, unlike most B.C. citizens, the credit-rating agencies read more widely and know that on top of the $75.3 billion, 2013, a year ago there was another $96.4 billion of contingencies and contractual obligations, which was reported to you by the then Auditor General. This more than doubles total provincial liabilities, making it a millstone for the economy of B.C.

Judging by the rhetoric around the proposed infrastructure spending still in talks, there appears to be no sense of prudency over the issue of having too much liability. The concern about insufficient revenue is evidenced by the ongoing inability to balance the provincial budget.

Looking next at exhibit 2 — specifically, total revenues as a percent of GDP — it seems clear that once past the global credit peak at 2008 and the beginning of the global economic contraction that we are in, the government has been unable to reverse a deteriorating revenue trend that started in 2009.

Worsening this depressing trend is the fact that some fictitious revenues have crept into making reported totals of revenue larger than they should have been — case in point being in 2012 when the Auditor General took exception to the counting of non-cash revenues of $520 million.

A disturbing feature from the statistics is the apparent divergence between GDP and citizen participation in the economic times of our province. From 2003 to 2013 GDP was reported to have increased by 63 percent, and yet worker participation only increased by 17 percent. That's the number of people registered in the statistics office as working in B.C. year in, year out.

Further evidence of non-participation can be seen in exhibit 3. A fundamental measure of economic activity is the amount of energy — in this case, electricity — used in an economy.
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From 2003 to '13 recorded sales of electricity to the three customer categories remained virtually unchanged, at an annual total of 50,000 gigawatt hours. In that period, sales to residential and commercial customers increased modestly and more or less in parallel with increases of provincial population. Those incremental increases were matched with incremental decreases in sales to heavy industrial customers, particularly after 2009.

The data shown in exhibit 3 could be thought of as a metaphor for the finances of the province — that is, the finances of B.C. Hydro, in case you're curious about it — particularly in respect of who is cast to carry the lion's share of cost increases. The pricing dynamics for B.C. Hydro customers are a prime example of regressive taxation. Over the period '03 to '13 residential customers were obliged to pay nearly 50 percent more for a unit of electricity.

Commercial customers faced a 46 percent increase, but large industrial customers had rates increased by only 40 percent, with most of the increase occurring in the last three years. Aside from the disparity or unfairness of who gets to carry the burden of increased cost…. At B.C. Hydro it was a fictional representation of domestic demand that has created an expensive, overbuilt condition in B.C.

My suggestions. The provincial government has very little fiscal room to accommodate unexpected negative events. This means no capacity to gamble with the public's money or credit at this time.

Two, the government should curb its passion for regressive taxation practices to avoid making living in B.C. become ever more unaffordable and unpleasant.

Three, the financial indicators suggest there is economic and financial leakage from the B.C. economy that could be where to look for new revenues that appear to be needed.

G. Holman: Erik, thank you for your presentation. Just a bit of a quibble. The $75 billion in debt.

G. Holman: Okay, because, as it stands now, I think it's around $52 billion or something like that — which is a billion here, a billion there. Maybe you're defining it differently, then.

E. Andersen: Well, if you've got a credit card that keeps increasing and never is paid off, that becomes more and more to look like debt than it does just a casual liability.

I used the word liabilities, because it's actually true. Debt is being used and misused in the conversations in the province — sorry.

D. Ashton (Chair): I don't want to put you on the spot, Gary — sorry. I was just trying to look for questions and comments.

But I do have a fair bit of sympathy with the comment around "regressive" taxation versus taxation based on ability to pay, and I include taxation user fees. There has been that shift. I personally have some sympathy with that view.

I'm not sure what you mean by economic and financial leakage. Is that a reference to the workforce participation only going up 17 percent while GDP grew much faster?

E. Andersen: No. If you look at one of the examples I've given you — I think it's exhibit 2 — you'll notice I've put revenue — the revenue that you folks give us every year; the comptroller general's report — as a percent of GDP.

Now, GDP is something that measures the gross economic activities in the province. There are three ways of measuring that, but the government happens to use one that is called the total of all expenditures — totally acceptable.

If you look at the percentages, they are heading down. In the last few years they're going into 18 percent, and I suspect they are going to get lower.

If you had kept your percentage up, you would be in the 21-percent- or 20-percent-of-GDP number, which would have meant that last year you would have had an extra $5 billion to $6 billion of revenues.

In terms of leakage — how do you get it? That's a whole other massive topic. I've got direct experience from the '90s where I tried to do some contracting with some local industrial operator in Vancouver. I was asked to make my sales contract a contract with an offshore company. I was going to provide industrial commodities, okay?

That contract was just a piece of paper to an offshore tax haven, owned by the principles of that company, who would then come back in with another piece of paper selling it to their company here. You'd strip away taxable income as far as British Columbia is concerned. All they do is the cost of doing business — profit. But about, I don't know, 10 percent or 20 percent would have been stripped out, away from B.C.

Now, that's one tangible example. The P3 model is another one. The private partner's objective in a P3 model is to maximize certainty of revenue and lengthen the term as long as possible, because his gain is not in completing
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a project on budget at a low cost. His gain is maximizing a piece of equity out of the transaction that only comes by having a contract on the revenue side that he can then take and do the secondary long-term financing.

If you look at the last entry or the last attachment, you'll notice it's an article written by an Australian award-winning columnist who had read a report by a New York company called RiskMetrics that examined the P3 industry in 2008. It's an indictment. All those people should be in jail, if you read that article and think about it.

That is where the leakage, in my judgment, is happening. They're taking and creating equity in B.C., moving it offshore and transacting offshore. Now, in terms of the scale of it — hundreds of millions of dollars.

D. Ashton (Chair): Erik, thank you very much for coming forward. Interesting presentation.

Now Vancouver Island University Students Union, please come forward. I've got Kirsten and Patrick. Welcome. Thanks for coming a bit early. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning. Then we have five minutes reserved for questions.

K. Brooker: Good afternoon. First, I'd like to start by thanking and acknowledging the Snuneymuxw people, whose traditional territory we're operating on today.

My name is Kirsten Brooker. I currently serve as the chairperson of the VIU Students Union, and I also serve as the elected representative on the VIU board of governors and the VIU senate. Today I'm here to speak with you in my role as the chairperson of the VIU Students Union.

With me this evening, I have brought Patrick Barbosa. He's our staff member at our students union, and he's also studying history at VIU.

P. Barbosa: I'm just going to take over. I wanted to start off by saying that the students union at VIU represents about 8,000 ABE and trades and academic students. It's on their behalf that we're here today.

We're here to talk about several issues and, of course, to help address the growing concerns of students and families with regard to access and quality. We are asking for the following areas to be prioritized in the provincial budget.

The first item is a reduction of tuition fees to 2001 levels, adjusted for inflation.

The second is the establishment of an upfront, needs-based grant system in British Columbia.

The fourth is the restoration of operating funding to universities and colleges to 2001 levels.

The fifth is the maintenance of the government's commitment to keep adult basic education free.

And finally, the reorganization of the Industry Training Authority governance body and the establishment of comprehensive trades funding for capital upgrades.

These are probably fairly familiar. You've probably heard these before from students. We try to be consistent in our asks.

I just wanted to start by noting that in British Columbia tuition fees have steadily increased over the last decade from $1,727 in 1990 to an annual average of $5,029 this year. This translates to a 300 percent increase over the course of just one generation.

At VIU this has meant a massive shift in the makeup of institutional revenue, leading to decreased opportunity for students today when compared to students from just 20 or even ten years ago. Government funding in 1990 accounted for about 75 percent of Vancouver Island University's operating budget. Today it accounts for less than 50 percent; it actually accounts for 45 percent of VIU's funding.

Statistics Canada confirms that students from low-income families are less than half as likely to participate in universities as students from high-income families. Of course, researchers at UCLA have found that for every $1,000 increase in tuition fees, enrolment rates dropped by 15 percent. The study demonstrated clearly that that decreased enrolment was mostly from minority groups and from low-income students.

What this translates to is a narrowing demographic of British Columbians who can access post-secondary education, leaving low- to middle-income families last in line.

It's clear that there are two detrimental effects of B.C.'s tuition fees level. The first is a barrier to participation for families from lower-income backgrounds at a time when most new jobs require some post-secondary education. The second is the skyrocketing student debt in British Columbia.

This is why students are asking you to prioritize a reduction in tuition fees to 2001 levels to promote much-needed relief to students struggling to pay for rising costs of higher education. We believe this can be achieved through the current tax structure.

The second recommendation that VIU students are putting forward is to re-establish an upfront, needs-based grants program. B.C. currently has the lowest level of non-repayable financial aid in the country. Financial aid is designed to assist students who cannot afford a post-secondary education to enter the system. Forcing these same students to leave university or college saddled with significant debt does not allow them to fully contribute to the economy.

Let's face it. Coming out of school with tens of thousands of dollars in debt is an unfair burden to put upon someone who is simply trying to become a contributing and hard-working member of our economy. Today average student debt in British Columbia is about $37,000 upon completion of a four-year degree. That's higher than any other province. This comes as no surprise to
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students who are currently working their way through university or college in British Columbia.

British Columbia is dead last among provinces when it comes to the provision of non-repayable financial aid, providing less than 12 percent of its financial aid in the form of non-repayable grants. British Columbia was once a leading province in assisting students but has steadily moved away from providing students with much-needed assistance.

We believe B.C. has an opportunity to reverse this trend by following the examples set by other provincial governments, from both left and right sides of the political spectrum. We're asking you to establish a needs-based grants program for B.C. students.

Continuing the discussion on financial aid, I will now move to the issue surrounding student loans. While student loans may get students who otherwise cannot afford the high cost of education through the door, it does nothing to combat student debt in the province. A majority of post-secondary students in B.C. cannot afford to pay for their tuition fees up front, and those who are forced to borrow for their financial education end up paying substantially more than those who can afford to pay up front.

Looking closer at this inequality, we see that British Columbian students, in particular, are being charged an interest rate that's prime plus 2½ percent on their student loans. That's higher than anywhere else in the country. This means that students who can afford to pay their tuition fees up front pay no interest to government while low-income students who need a loan will pay thousands of dollars in interest.

This is why students are asking that interest on student loans be eliminated. This significant change will only lead to a manageable $30 million increase in provincial expenses, while providing much-needed government support to thousands of students and voters who are soon to be or are currently making repayments on student loans.

You know, we believe that a simple change will actually provide students of today, students of yesterday and students of tomorrow with enhanced opportunity to access education.

I want to speak on the fourth recommendation: institutional funding. You've probably already heard from B.C.'s colleges, universities and institutions during this process that there is a need for an increase to the base funding for our institutions. On the topic of funding, we agree that there needs to be a substantial increase if our institutions are going to continue to provide the high-quality education to create citizens who can succeed and thrive in our global economy.

Students appreciate recent investments in capital projects and for funding aboriginal service plans. However, these projects are just one-time funding, while annual budgets at our colleges and universities have been cut. And you probably know that institutional funding is scheduled to be cut by another 5 percent this year.

All too often institutional budgets are cut. While classrooms are cut and teaching is cut, it also disproportionately affects student services like counselling, academic advising, support for students with disabilities, and learning centres. So at the end of the day, it's quite important that we prioritize funding in the next decade.

Linked to both core funding and tuition fees is the province's commitment to keeping adult basic education free. I know you folks have heard about our concern around cuts to ABE. In 2002 the B.C. government allowed post-secondary institutions to charge tuition fees for basic education courses. Under pressure from students, the government wisely reversed this decision in 2007 and made an allowance for fee-free adult basic education.

Since that time, operating budgets have been cut at our universities and colleges, making it difficult for institutions to continue to offer free adult basic education. We've seen institutions like TRU and Capilano begin to modify ABE courses. Instead of having ABE courses, they're a hybrid of a university model and are charging full tuition fees. So you're basically going for something you can't use towards your degree and being assessed tuition fees as though they're full university courses.

We believe it's important that government prioritize this and establish a funding model that will ensure ABE can continue to be free.

Moving on to our final recommendation. It's around trades and apprenticeship training. We believe trades training is vital to workers, families, the general public and industry as a whole. In B.C. there is a growing understanding of the need for qualified tradespeople, yet our trades programs suffer from the same underfunding as other parts of our public institutions, with the added stress of needing to cover the costs of equipment and specialized facilities.

In addition, we've also seen a focus on the modularization of trades training — basically taking carpenters, breaking them up into programs like framers and sending them out into industry. They get lost in the fray and are sort of not meeting the qualifications that carpenters used to meet in our years gone by.

As government moves forward with a full review of the current industry training governance structure, a relatively inexpensive measure the government can take to improve the representation on the ITA board would be to start including students and actual workers on the board. Currently it's primarily made up with the industry representatives, and we believe that that's a bad decision.

I'm just going to move to the conclusion because I know I have a very little bit of time.

P. Barbosa: All of our recommendations are focused on providing adequate funding for the post-secondary system. An accessible post-secondary system with lower tuition fees, grants, interest-free student loans and a more robust public funding model will raise household incomes, diversify the economy and keep the workforce competitive, ultimately benefiting both the public and private sectors.

In closing, I would like to express appreciation for the opportunity to participate in the budget consultation process and for the committee's commitment to this work. I encourage the committee to consider our recommendations so that we can work together towards a high-quality system of post-secondary education in our province that supports our economy and that is accessible for all citizens.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, that's fine, Patrick. I just had to cut into your question period, that's all. But I wanted to let you finish.

K. Brooker: Currently — I actually graduated this past June with my bachelor of arts in sociology and global studies — I'm hoping to work in the non-profit sector, particularly around community building and poverty reduction.

I'm actually back this year. I'm taking a few business-related courses — accounting, management, computer-based courses. The reality is you can have the theory work and you can know how to grapple with the hard topics, but when it comes down to actually structuring an organization, you need to have computer skills. You need to have the budgeting skills.

M. Elmore: Great. Well, congratulations for completing your degree. Is VIU one…? You have one campus here, in Nanaimo?

K. Brooker: We actually have three campuses. We have a campus here in Nanaimo. We have one in Duncan. We have one in Powell River. And we have a little bit of a satellite campus in Parksville.

M. Elmore: Right. Thanks for advocating on behalf of adult basic education. I think it's an important transition, particularly if, for many different reasons, people don't complete high school — to allow them to upgrade their skills and just improve their chances for a better career.

Are you impacted, as well, by the changes for the funding for English-as-a-second-language courses? Do you deliver those? We've heard that message from some other colleges and universities.

P. Barbosa: In a general sense. It's a fairly small part of our operation at VIU.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. As you know, we are hearing a similar story from other groups throughout the province. The question I asked at the last group that presented…. There are four or five key things that you're asking for, particularly in terms of student funding and institutional funding.

If you had to prioritize, if you had to pick one or two, would you rank one proposal above another? For example, would you rank grants above reducing tuition fees in general — that kind of thing?

P. Barbosa: Sure. I would say, if I was government, I would probably prioritize interest-free student loans, because if you're looking for voters, that's going to affect a huge demographic of citizens, and it's actually going to cost very little.

But as a student and a representative of students, I would say that increasing core funding is probably a prime issue, because pressure on the institution to increase tuition fees comes from a shortfall in funding. We've seen funding at our institutions decrease dramatically over the past years in both real dollars and inflationary dollars. So from my perspective, the need to address funding is by far the most important one.

I was just talking to a peer at Camosun who raised the issue of deferred maintenance. Because of the government's…. There are some small cuts around applied capital allowance that have basically seen a couple of million dollars out of VIU's coffers. What that means, though, is VIU is no longer able to address the maintenance issues, and those are sort of like compiling, right? It's like the Richter scale: year 1 you have a 1 in maintenance shortfall. In year 2 it's now a 2 on the Richter scale, where it's ten times worse because you weren't able to address the previous year's stuff.

Funding, by far, is the biggest issue. But as I said, if I was government and I was looking for something that went a long way in terms of making satisfied voters, it would be interest.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sorry, I have to cut you off. I have one last question. I have a minute left.

E. Foster: I asked this question this morning. We heard the exact same — you guys are sharing notes, obviously — from three or four student unions.

P. Barbosa: Students are fairly united when it comes to our requests.
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P. Barbosa: You know, it depends. It certainly depends on the increase in funding. I guess the start would be how much funding was cut from our university and college budgets last year and how much was cut this year. Off the top of my head, I can't give you that number, but certainly I can get back to you.

D. Ashton (Chair): Patrick, Kirsten, thank you very much. Thanks for being here.

Thank you very much for coming — appreciate it. We have this: ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, just put up my fingers. Then we have five minutes for questioning. The floor is yours.

P. Kent: Thank you for providing the opportunity to present to you. You know our names. I would like to say that I chair the Island Coastal Economic Trust. Mr. Smith is the president of the Nanwakolas Tribal Council and sits as one of our executive members as a provincial appointee. Line Robert is our CEO for the trust.

Why we're here today. We want to share, essentially, the tremendous success of the trust's initiatives — and some of you may be familiar with them; some of you may not — that the government in 2006 developed under legislation to provide economic development investment in communities around B.C. The Island Coastal is one of them, and the Northern Trust and the Southern Interior Trust.

We received, along with the Southern Trust — Northern Trust was somewhat of a different model in terms of the amount of funding to keep them sustained over a long period of time — $50 million. We have, we believe, created a very, very successful model in investing that money into economic infrastructure for the Island and the coast.

We are near $47 million at this point committed to infrastructure. We've invested in that community infrastructure, in over 100 projects in 40 communities. We've leveraged that investment into over $260 million of economic infrastructure. That success has created jobs, and that really was, essentially, the mandate that we were given as trusts to do.

The stakeholders in the Island Coastal Economic Trust made a very, very strategic and strong decision early on to invest that money directly into the economy. That's what this region needed.

During that period of time, since then, we have developed over 5,000 jobs — 2,500 of those being construction jobs and over 2,100 jobs that are sustainable, and once the projects are up and running, will be sustainable in many communities across the Island and the coast. That's very important because many of these communities are remote, and they're small. They've lost a great deal in many of the economic adjustments that we've needed to make, provincially, globally and in communities — resource jobs.

So this economic diversification, this application of investment to these communities has been very, very needed and has had an impact on these communities. Every job counts in some of these communities.

We've had big and small projects. There have been many successes. One of the stories that I'd like to give you — and Dallas will share another with you, as well — was just a simple project. It seemed simple, but it was an inefficient harbour wharf in Fanny Bay. We worked with other stakeholders, other funders, projects, and developed a new wharf facility there. It was a bottleneck to industry growth. We were able to increase that capacity by 44 percent. That created immediate new jobs for the aquaculture industry there.

We did the same, again, for Baynes Sound up in Deep Bay. They project a tripling of its total workforce over the next few years because of that infrastructure that was put in place that created the ability for those communities, those businesses, to increase their industry share.

One of the things that I'd like to bring to your attention is the Geoscience B.C. project. We haven't seen a great history of mining in northern British Columbia. We've seen lots of land use planning; we've seen lots of other things. But mining isn't something that we've really seen a whole lot of. The Geoscience B.C. project brought together local communities, First Nations, local government and stakeholders to secure the funds necessary to use today's technology to do some more survey work, to see what the potential could be for some mining exploration in British Columbia.

We all know that to do any projects of this significance in British Columbia, you need First Nations collaboration. ICET was forthright from the beginning in making sure that everybody was on the same page before we made the necessary investments to do the work. Now we've actually seen a spike in staking in the region as a result of some of this survey work that's been done. First Nations have actually started to acquire some of these tenures and are engaging in training programs in the exploration field.

So we're not waiting until there's a discovery. We're actually getting our northern Island communities in-
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volved in the exploration process — therefore creating jobs, therefore creating capacity that can be taken into other fields.

It has been refreshing to see the non-native community, if you will — as I come from a First Nations community — do that collaboration and actually mean it, and do it from the ground up. I think it's something that we've come to understand on Vancouver Island. That is, there are regional issues that need some regional solutions.

ICET has definitely been a major catalyst in helping all of us in the region, from north of the Malahat to the Island and adjacent coasts, just come to terms with that and what it does take to work together to make sure that these infrastructure investments are long term for all of our communities.

P. Kent: I think, in conclusion, the important part about the way that our trust has been successful is through that collaboration — understanding that we operate as an economic region and that when we work together and we set priorities locally, we can achieve a great deal. I think we have been successful in that model.

I think it has paid tremendous dividends, assuredly to the communities. I think if anyone would ask any of the communities in the Island coastal economic region, they would say that the model has been very, very successful for them. But it has also paid very, very strong dividends to the provincial government.

We project that as these completion jobs make that, it will be over $9 million revenue to the province from these investments — annual revenue. We believe that that dividend is a very, very important part of this concept and these trust initiatives.

We have put forward a business case to government to help to refund a portion of that dividend back into these communities so that we can continue the successful model that we've developed. We're very nimble, we're very flexible, we do tremendous due diligence, and we deliver. That's very clear. Good investors reinvest their dividends.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. We get to listen with both ears, but we also get to try and read the documentation that's given to us so we can see if we have some questions.

M. Hunt: Normally endowments are done as a pool of money that is then borrowed against, and it goes back and forth, in and out, in and out, in and out, and in. You've taken a different model.

Am I correct that you have done these as investments and there's not money coming in, that you have been — I'll use the word "partner" — a partner in investing in the infrastructure instead of it being a back-and-forth relationship? Correct? So as a result, you're running out of money, but you've been effective in that money. So your ask…. I'm looking for bold type here that tells me the ask.

P. Kent: We purposely did not put it in there. We had provided documentation to government through channels to provide…. Line, if you'd like to speak specifically to what we have.

L. Robert: Sure. Yes. We've made a short-term ask for $10 million for the next three years in the spirit of the current economic climate. We understand that it's a difficult time for government, and we share those concerns. However, given the momentum that we have on the ground, the collaboration we've achieved….

We haven't even spoken of the economic development readiness which is occurring in the communities — the complete change in preparation, attitude, investment readiness in the communities since this model has been in place. These were things that were not anticipated at the moment that we were given the funds. The board never anticipated that the other benefits of the program would be so great.

So the situation is now…. We also had a perfect storm with the federal funding, which provided a lot of matching funding in the region. So the funds went out a little bit more quickly. At the time the money was allocated, in the Hansard, government had said that there was a crying need for infrastructure on the Island and that this money needed to be put to work as quickly as possible.

Those were the marching orders that we were given by the government of the time, and both parties were in agreement on that factor. That's why we created this model, to address this crying need for basic infrastructure in our region in order to allow business to grow.

We anticipate that going forward, the money would go out definitely much more slowly than it did in the initial years where there were these major infrastructure projects.

P. Kent: To answer your question directly, too, I think that if we were to look at the impact of that, if we had simply put it in the bank and spent the interest, it just would not have delivered. It simply would not have delivered.

M. Hunt: So it had been $50 million that you used in seven years. Now you're asking for $10 million across three.

M. Elmore: Nice to see you again. Congratulations.
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Also, I think your information really conveys the success of the programs you'll be able to implement here.

Just a couple of quick questions. Do you coordinate at all with the Southern Development Initiative Trust and also the Northern Development?

P. Kent: There's communication on an ongoing basis with both of the other initiative trusts. There's contact continually with the CEOs, looking at best practices, looking at the models, adjustments and pieces that we can do that will deliver on the mandate we were given.

M. Elmore: In terms of your recommendation going forward, for the $10 million over the next three years, is that still with the current model that you have in place?

P. Kent: Yes, that's with the current model that we would have in place at this time, again understanding the government's challenges with regard to fiscal conditions.

With the remaining money that we…. Of course, we did earn investment income on the $50 million as it was going out. So we do have enough to sustain us for a short period of time. But we do think that keeping the momentum going….

A dividend concept is something that could apply to all of the trusts, regardless of the model that they've used. I think the metrics we used are well founded, and it could make a great case for paying out that dividend back to where it needs to go.

G. Holman: Just quickly, thanks for your presentation. I think I met Line at UBCM, where I was pressing her, from a completely parochial perspective, to extend the trust model down further south on the Island.

G. Holman: Just to comment. Your partnerships and your leveraging are very impressive, including with First Nations. Dallas, I appreciated your comment about meaningful participation — working together and not just paying lip service.

The dollars that you've leveraged from federal and non-government funding are truly impressive. The provincial revenues — that's a payback of about a six-year period where the provincial government has regained, essentially, the entire fund over a six- or seven-year period.

P. Kent: Well, we want to be completely clear. That is post-project, so that revenue…. It took us six years to get it out. It will take somewhat more than six years, so it's longer.

D. Ashton (Chair): And Marvin, you needed a follow-up — a real short one, about 30 seconds.

P. Kent: We partner with anyone. We have partnered with many, many different groups — NGOs, local communities, First Nations, private sector investment. We've recognized, also, the new business model that the province accepted with the C3 and have accepted those also as eligible for funding. We believe there may be some quite strong cases for the private sector to get into some of that kind of work — social enterprise work.

L. Popham: My question is specifically around the Kinsol Trestle and the Cowichan Valley trail system. Is there anything in the works right now — an application or a project that's being planned? And what are the financial requirements for that?

P. Kent: We actually did fund, through the Cowichan Valley regional district, a major trail initiative for tourism — and the Kinsol Trestle with that. It was funded quite substantially. I think the exact amount was a little over $1 million to do that restoration.

That's a great example, because on our assessment of job creation, it came out as one of the lower projects. Interestingly enough, though, when it was done, the amazing amount of people that go out there, the tourism delivery to places like Cobble Hill, Shawnigan Lake….

You talk to some of the businesses out there and ask them: how great is that? They can tell you. Their revenue has gone up because people are stopping at the corner store, going to the restaurants, talking about riding their bikes through there. We've done a lot of major tourism infrastructure across the Island and partnered with many communities. That's one of our great successes.

L. Popham: I think it is. It's an amazing project. But I was wondering if there's a continuation of that. I've heard the conversation that there has to be a partnership between First Nations before this can continue through to the city of Duncan. Is that something that you've been working on?

P. Kent: That's an ongoing initiative. Yes, they'll be coming from community. We would accept applications for further project funds if they were necessary.

D. Ashton (Chair): Folks, thank you very much. Your
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Worship, thank you for coming tonight. Dallas, Line — thank you.

Welcome, sir. Ten-minute presentation, sir. I'll give you a two-minute warning. We have five minutes reserved for questions.

Let me just apologize in advance for the handouts. They were quickly put together on my return from the ferry today, as I have spent the last three days at St. Paul's Hospital with a family member who has been in crisis.

First off, thanks very much to the committee for allowing me to come here today. We really want to express our thanks for the funding that we received in the past. This has allowed us to expand our focus beyond the narrow niche of high-performance sport that we've been doing for most of the last 18 years and to now start to look at some community issues.

Specifically, I want to talk today mostly around the issue of physical literacy, which is something that we're starting to see some real traction with here within this region, especially with the local school districts. The demand is growing more and more.

As a result of the increased funding that PacificSport has received, especially in the last three years, it has freed us up to leave aside some of the fundraising duties that we had to attend to, to make ends meet, and instead allowed us to do things like explore how we can support the local B.C. Summer Games, which are coming next year, with a $300,000 grant through the job creation program.

We're at the negotiation stage of that, which is going to provide equipment, supplies and staffing resources. It will once again, hopefully, allow those games to be as successful as the 2002 version, which brought in $2.2 million to the local economy.

The other thing that we're working on is a $250,000 research grant. We've passed the first stage of that, which will bring some significant dollars and allow us to go more in depth and provide some concrete support — scientific data that's going to support why physical literacy is so important.

PacificSport, by way of a background, was established in '95 and originally set up for the support of that high-performance pathway, as I mentioned. Most significantly, probably the last Olympic Games serve as a great example, where we were part of that provincial network that contributed 40 percent of the national team that went to London for the Olympic Games.

B.C. athletes represented 40 percent of the national team that went to the Olympic Games. We also won 50 percent of the medals. Now, for a province that represents just 13 percent of the total population, I think you'd agree we're punching well above our weight. Locally, we had 12 athletes from within this region who participated in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. We've got Michelle right behind us here, who came home with a couple of those medals that came out of that.

Three years ago we were approached by government via the newest agency on the sport scene: ViaSport. We were asked if we could assist in expanding physical activity levels throughout the region, through four sectors: education, recreation, sport and health. We said we would gladly get on board, and it's been the most fun, this last three years of the 18 years that I've been doing this job.

Some key projects that are making a significant impact on the region. In 2011 we trained and certified the PE and education faculty members at VIU. Since then, they've embedded physical literacy and the Canadian Sport for Life into their curriculum and annually crank out between 70 and 80 PE and education students who now have the skills to go and deliver quality physical education at that really critical K-to-3 level.

We've also secured some funds to partner with school district 68 on a physical literacy mentorship program which provides an embedded pro-D support for K-to-3 teachers in five schools within the region. Now, the response from this has been phenomenal.

I just got my hands on a document — I didn't have time to share it, but I would be more than happy to circulate it at a later date if it's of interest: a teacher survey of the physical literacy pilot project. This was delivered in six districts around the province — five schools in each. The approval rating, in a real quick summary, was 95 percent from the participants.

Also in 2013…. Maybe just to back up a little bit…. The reason why this physical literacy issue is important is because we've clearly gone backwards in kids' ability to perform fundamental movement skills — run, jump, throw, balance, coordination, speed and agility.

All those things, for the last generation, have been in short supply, and the key issue contributing to this problem is seen as the absence of PE specialists. While we're not necessarily looking for the additional funding that we would require for us to develop PE specialists now, we feel that what we're doing with this program, the physical literacy mentorship program, gives elementary school teachers that ability to provide a quality PE experience and start stemming the tide for that current trend.

Also, in the spring of 2013 we partnered with school district 68 to deliver an after-school program to five inner-city schools here in the region. Now, giving 30 kids an opportunity to play a little bit after school in and of itself doesn't seem really significant. But then we did have the opportunity to chat with some of the school secretaries and the school principals and found out that on the days when we were in those schools, the attendance rate for the kids participating in that program goes
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through the roof.

Not only that, but their behaviour on those days is impeccable. The staff at these schools are citing our after-school program as the main reason why this is happening.

These are kids who don't have a chance to play, usually because of financial circumstances or parents who aren't very sporty and not terribly supportive of their sporting activities, so it gives them that one chance to get physically active. Of course, we're doing it with the most recent science and physical literacy practices as the base, and we're seeing some great results.

The program has been expanded to nine schools now, and we can't keep up with the demand. We're looking forward to seeing what we can do in making a difference in that regard.

As a sector, sport has a new direction, and ViaSport, as I mentioned, is the new player in town. It's that bridge between government and organizations like ourselves responsible for developing a sports strategy, and I personally really like what it is that they're doing.

They've set up a clear, more transparent granting process. There's a shared communication and data-tracking system set up. There's reduced administration. Overall, they're just creating efficiencies within sport that make us more efficient and allow us to do more with the existing dollars that we've got.

The question is, then: how can you assist us in becoming better — and, I think, the key thing to note — without it costing anything more? I would say that the first thing is that across the board in B.C., the sports sector would like to see and emphasize the importance of multi-year funding for sport. This will go a long way to bring increased consistency, offer the ability to leverage other funding opportunities, sustain programming and strengthen infrastructure. These are all….

One of the raps that sports gets is that it's not businesslike enough. I think giving us some chance to do some longer-term planning will go a long way to helping us get there. We want to get there.

The second thing is that while I'm not asking for any increases in base funding for ourselves, I think we need to look at the possible funding mechanisms for expanding the physical literacy mentorship program. At the current rate of five schools per year in just one district, it would take approximately 35 years for us to get to all the schools in the seven or eight districts that I'm responsible for here.

We need to get on this now. We've got grads coming out of VIU who are ready to sing the praises of physical literacy. We need to turn this around in the next three or four years. One possibility is if we were to treat junk food the same way we treat liquor and cigarettes and tax it so that we can get some healthy programs funded.

Lastly, we need our post-secondary institutions in the rest of the province to follow the lead of VIU and have the PE and education faculties there get on board with the physical literacy movement and get the new teachers coming out there supporting the activities that we're already doing now.

Thanks again for the additional supports that we've received over the last three years. I can honestly say my job has never been more fun.

L. Popham: Thanks for the presentation. I'm curious: how much does it cost per student to have the after-school care?

D. Cooper: Good question. I don't have a breakdown. We are dealing with nine schools, and our budget is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $45,000 to $50,000 — thereabouts.

If it looked like I was reading my e-mail, I wasn't. I was googling a Drew Cooper. Are you the guy on the dirt bike?

E. Foster: Okay. That's good, because this guy doesn't look like he's glued all that tight.

D. Cooper: If you saw my rugby photos, you'd probably come to the same conclusion, though.

D. Cooper: But don't show my wife. I ride street bikes, and she'll think it's me being an idiot.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation, Drew. I particularly appreciated the emphasis on the physical literacy. As you know, we've been hearing this message from other sports groups about multi-year funding. Perhaps I missed it, but what you've brought us is getting to kids at a younger age. That notion is really important, because while the returns to competitive athletes are high, I think the returns in terms of the social returns are even higher if you can get the kids at that age.

Of course, because I come from a philosophy of wanting to tax everything, I really do like the notion of funding this program through a tax on junk food. It's something I will be advocating with the committee.

I really do appreciate the focus on getting the programming down to the everyday level with young kids. I think
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that's a really important proposal you've made.

D. Cooper: One of the points that I didn't speak to here was that the benefits of kids being more physically literate is that they're more likely to get involved in sport and physical activity. What we're finding is that with our after-school program, the games that we teach them in the afternoon are now standard on the playground at lunchtime.

Some of you may already be aware of this, but kids don't play games at lunch. They don't run around. They sit around with screens, and they're playing Game Boys and things like that. It's really scary what's happening.

Now, once we introduce them to games, all of a sudden this is like some light bulb has gone off, and they're starting to do it in the playground. So it's a very interesting education for us as well.

M. Elmore: Five centres. So you've basically got the two students. You've got the high-performance and then working-in-the-community, in terms of promoting that.

In case I missed it, what's the…? I know there's certainly a higher percentage of athletes coming from B.C. What's the proportion for the upcoming Winter Olympics? How's that shaping up?

D. Cooper: My numbers might be off a little bit, but it wasn't as significant a difference on the winter side, in terms of B.C. athletes making up…. We certainly weren't 40 percent of the national winter team, but I think it was possibly double — like 20 to 25 percent instead of 13 percent.

D. Ashton (Chair): Drew, I hope everything goes okay on the Mainland. Thank you very much for coming.

Coastal Invasive Species Committee. Rachelle, welcome. Thank you very much for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questions and comments. The floor is yours.

R. McElroy: Thank you very much, Chair and committee members. I see you have our brochure in front of you. I'll be referring to it during my presentation, so have it close by.

My name is Rachelle McElroy, and I'm the executive director of the Coastal Invasive Species Committee.

The Coastal Invasive Species Committee operates in an area covering approximately 60,000 square kilometres, including all of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast. Our area consists of nine regional districts, 37 municipalities, 15 Gulf Islands and 57 First Nation groups. So we have a large area.

We're a non-profit organization that was established in 2005, and we're one of 17 regional weed committees in B.C. You've heard from a few of us already — Jen in Metro Van and Jo-Ann in Kamloops also Lisa last night. And I'm not the last.

I'd like to acknowledge you for funding invasive plant management and for continuing to fund our programs in such a collaborative way. We work very collaboratively.

Did you know that the way we manage weeds in B.C. is unique to the rest of Canada? The fact that we have 17 regional weed committees and one provincial committee working together, protecting B.C. from the threat of invasive species, is unique, and it works.

Since weeds know no boundaries, that is why we use partnership delivery models. A partnership delivery model is what we use, and it's very effective. It also lessens the debate on who is responsible. It's all our responsibility, so we pool our time and our resources, and we get the job done. And it's such a refreshing way to work.

So thank you for supporting that approach. Of course, it's not perfect. There are gaps. That's why I'm here this evening, members of the committee.

How do you define "invasive species"? It's that they cause harm — to agriculture, the economy, ecosystems, plants, animals, and human health and safety.

To reduce harm and help control weeds in B.C., we have the Weed Control Act. It states that it's the duty of the occupier to manage weeds on their land. But what if we don't want to participate, because no one's watching? Or what if they are so busy running their business that they don't take the time to do their own research about what is invasive and what is not? That is where the gap exists, members of the committee.

To protect B.C., we must invest in prevention and enforcement and work upstream of the problem. That's where the cost savings and efficiencies exist. Let me tell you a bit more about what I mean.
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On Vancouver Island we have a very temperate climate. It's the warmest in Canada, and it's what makes our region suitable for incursions by a host of invasive species that could not survive in harsher environments. Vancouver Island is also a great place to grow plants from other countries. Things just want to grow here. For this reason, we have the highest diversity of invasive species in this province.

The horticulture industry is an entry point for invasive species or what become escaped ornamentals, like knotweed. Originally from Asia, brought here to grow hedges and for erosion control, knotweed grows four centimetres per day and can grow through one metre of concrete, causing infrastructure issues, sightline issues and impacts to infrastructure, human safety, wildlife, rivers and streams.

Referring to the brochure you have in front of you, knotweed is right in the middle here. Our capital region knotweed program this year, where anyone can call in and have their knotweed treated for free, indicated that people are planting knotweed in their gardens. It's unknown to them that they're planting a time bomb.

Last year we spent $30,000 in the capital region on knotweed. We used B.C. government seed funding that was matched, both in cash and in-kind contributions from local government. Prohibiting the introduction of these plants in the first place would save thousands of dollars in the long run.

So why is it that you can still buy yellow flag iris by the bucketload in Coombs? At the same time, we're spending thousands of dollars to remove them from our wetlands.

Members of the committee, that is taxpayer money out the door and profits for the horticulture industry. Not that I want to point the finger at the horticulture industry, because they're busy running their businesses. Let's take the guesswork out of it for them. Invest in prevention programs, and prohibit and enforce the sale of invasive seeds and plants.

Another threat is fire ants — transported in soil, likely potted plants from nurseries — that bite, sting, swarm in response to any vibration, making a park or your yard unusable. Fire ants are found in four of the 37 municipalities in our region.

Gravel pits. Why not impose weed-free gravel and weed-free forage programs to prevent the spread of noxious weeds? The Coastal Invasive Species Committee has inventoried most of the gravel pits on Vancouver Island. And you guessed it. They're riddled with weeds. It's a perfect environment for weeds to establish — knotweed, Scotch broom, gorse, milk thistle, all with pictures on that brochure in front of you.

What happens is that the gravel infested with weeds gets spread along roads, used as infill for new developments and also to create new roads, logging roads — corridors that we drive along and further spread the weeds.

To protect B.C., we also need to invest in enforcement. I get calls from landowners that are spending their money on hiring contractors to treat knotweed growing on their property. At the same time, it's growing through the fence from a neighbour's yard.

Maybe the neighbour can't afford to hire someone to treat it. Maybe they don't want to. Or maybe they're absentee landlords that don't even know and can't be reached. This occurs a lot on the Gulf Islands and Sunshine Coast. This is where the lack of enforcement really begins to hurt.

Is the province serious about managing invasive species? Yes. I see lots of nodding heads. And I believe you are. I see that you have agreement.

Where I'd like to see investment is in enforcement, in prevention. If you invest in both of those things, you're actually investing in jobs. So not only are you protecting citizens in B.C.; you're also investing in them.

I am the last of the week for the weed committees, so I want to leave you on a good note. B.C. is funding a great program. There are gaps, as I've mentioned. The prevention and enforcement are real gaps, but this is doable. It's not too late, but let's not lose our momentum.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation, Rachelle. We've heard the wide range and got a good picture in terms of the different areas and regions across B.C. and the different species that take root there.

My question is with regards to…. You made a reference to regulating the sale of invasive seeds and plants. Are there a number that are sold in B.C.? Or you're talking regulation coming cross-border? What's the situation?

R. McElroy: Well, there are just a number from the B.C. proposed prohibited noxious weeds list that are being sold — like aquatic hydrilla, for example, and some other plants that you can find locally, like garlic mustard.

R. McElroy: Yeah. There are quite a few that are still being sold — even English ivy, which you can buy at a grocery store. There are lots.

M. Elmore: And what's the story with the little grey squirrel here on the…? Is that also…?

R. McElroy: We have the black squirrel. But the grey squirrel can also be black.

S. Hamilton: As Mable was mentioning, we've been enlightened considerably as we've toured around. Other groups that you're obviously associated with have provided us with similar presentations — quite a revelation, in many cases.

I did not realize that we have nurseries in this province that are actually selling these seeds and plants. Some of it's very pretty. You take a look at some of this stuff, and you'd love to have it in your garden, but you don't realize the damage that you're doing.

S. Hamilton: I think, as we move forward, we really have to emphasize the public education component of this. Also, I believe — it's my opinion — we have to start bringing in penalties for people that flaunt the rules — essentially, the nurseries, etc., if they're importing these things and selling them. I think we have to take a good hard look at that. But in the meantime, your organization is doing incredible work.

I was surprised, too, about the little squirrel. Right now, right around this time of year, my hawthorn tree is absolutely alive with these things taking the berries away, so we're doing a very good job of feeding them. There's no doubt about that.

Once again, thank you very much for the work that you do. As we go forward, hopefully, we will have some successes together.

G. Holman: Thanks, Rachelle. Just quickly, is there, for your region and provincewide…? I'm sorry if I missed it, but what's the specific ask in terms of funding? What's the current level of funding, and are you proposing additional funding?

R. McElroy: Currently we receive $53,000 from the province and $70,000 from the Ministry of Transportation. It would be great to see in the neighbourhood of $200,000 combined funding for our region as well.

For the province, you will be hearing from Gail Wallin from the Invasive Species Council of B.C. in Williams Lake, and she'll talk about numbers for the province.

M. Hunt: Two daughters both worked for the SHARP program in Surrey focused on invasive species.

First of all, I am surprised at what you have here as your list, and I'm also surprised at your categories, like "Containing and controlling." I would think some of these, like your knapweed and your knotweed, I wouldn't be wanting to control at all. I want to get rid of them. And I'm really surprised at your butterfly bush. Please tell me what the problem is with the butterfly bush. I love mine.

R. McElroy: It's a very smart plant. It produces five million seeds. As you'll notice, over winter it actually will retain its seeds and drop them in the most opportune time in the spring, so they're very smart. But they are pretty.

M. Hunt: You're right. But I've noticed that you don't have ones in here like your English ivy, like your Vinca, like these other ones that are traditionally sold by nurseries but really go crazy. Now, is that because of you dealing with it localized and here it isn't as critical an issue? Or what's happening?

R. McElroy: This is not the full list — what you have in front of you. It's to give an understanding of our strategy, where we have to make tough decisions with the funding that we do receive. It communicates to the landowner, for example, or to a local government that there is a different action level for different invasive plants.

We want to prevent the introduction of new invasives — a priority — because it's more cost-effective to do so. We want to eradicate those that are in smaller populations but have started to show up, so they're in the "Eradicate" category. We want to contain those that are in larger numbers and prevent them from spreading to other areas. It's similar to when you have a spark, a fire starts. You want to extinguish that, and then you want to contain larger fires and….

D. Ashton (Chair): Rachelle, I have to cut you off. I'm sorry. We're right at 15 minutes.

Sir, thank you very much for coming. Ten minutes for
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presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning close to ten. Then we have five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, committee. [A First Nations language was spoken.] I would like to acknowledge Kwulasultun — the Chief, Douglas White. It's an honour to be here in his territory, the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw.

Thank you for this opportunity to present to the Finance Committee. My name is Adam Olsen. I'm a resident and former councillor of the district of Central Saanich, member of Tsartlip First Nation and the interim leader of the B.C. Green Party.

I'm here today because of some confusion that has ensued after a government press release sent out last week that identified this committee as the body responsible for accepting input for the government's core review process.

Attached to the press release was a letter to the ministers dated September 24, where the Minister Responsible for Core Review, Hon. Bill Bennett, states that under phase 3 implementation, "the public will have an opportunity to provide input to core review as part of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services' 2014 budget consultations being undertaken in September and October 2013." He continues to state that "effective public and stakeholder communications will be an important element of our approach."

Two days later, on September 26, 2013, Kathleen Gibson and Linda Geggie made a presentation to this committee. I read the Hansard transcript, and it appears that even members of this committee were surprised that this was the forum to receive public input on the core review process.

I've reviewed the terms of reference for this committee on the Legislative Assembly of B.C. website and note that nowhere in those terms does it give a specific mandate to this committee to receive input on the core review.

The mandate of this committee is established by the Legislature, as I'm sure you all know, and I've read the budget consultation paper 2014. I've also noted that nowhere in that document does it speak directly to this committee's direct involvement in the government's core review process. That said, I understand that your mandate is broad and generally open to interpretations of the members of this committee.

Although you do not take specific direction from cabinet, I am aware that as a committee you have some freedom to include the core review in your consultations. The core review is a separate government-led initiative that will ultimately have an impact on the budget and on future budgets.

I'm here today to seek some clarification to the confusion that has occurred. I'm hoping this committee will clarify its mandate and let the public know whether it is the body responsible for receiving information from the public and reporting to the Minister Responsible for Core Review.

If the press release is correct and the committee decides that its mandate is to include receiving public input on the core review, then I wanted to be here today to be on the record stating that I have some significant concerns. My concerns encompass those who have presented previously and who have been told they are presenting to the wrong body or those who were not adequately informed that this was the forum for sharing their voice.

If this is the appropriate process, then I would state that it's inadequate. It fails the government. It fails the stakeholders, many of whom are our investors in the numerous ministries and ABCs, or agencies, boards and commissions. And it fails the people of British Columbia.

It's fine for the government to look for money, in my opinion. I do not celebrate the core review. It should be part of the culture of our civil service to save British Columbians money where possible, to streamline processes, to reduce waste and duplication. To me, that should be standard practice, not a big deal.

While the core review is broad in nature, looking at all the government ministries, I'm going to focus on one specific issue that consumed my life as a district councillor: agriculture.

Minister Bennett, in a July 31 Vancouver Sun article, said: "We're going to look at some sacrosanct things, like certain agencies. We're going to look at the agricultural land reserve and the Agricultural Land Commission."

This statement raised the eyebrows of many people. As a former councillor in the district of Central Saanich, my experience is that the agricultural land reserve and Agricultural Land Commission dominate the public and, especially, the in-camera agendas. I want to focus on the in-camera agendas, because they're very critical to the life of our community.

When the minister responsible was quoted as saying that he's going to look at the ALR and ALC, he had to know that this was going to be potentially contentious. The government has stated that the public was going to be provided an opportunity to provide input.

But what is that process? The government has a duty to consult its citizens, consult the stakeholders, the investors, the municipalities like Central Saanich that have 60 percent of their land inside the ALR. None of this has happened. To my understanding, Central Saanich has not been contacted for their input.

As you all know, the issue of food, food security and agricultural land continues to be a very sensitive topic in this province. Frankly, I'm disappointed in this process that has evolved over the last number of weeks.

According to the committee calendar, these hearings began in Vancouver on September 20. It wasn't until the 24th of September that Minister Bennett outlined in his letter to his colleagues that this was also the process to
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receive public input on the government's core review.

Although I was not at the committee meeting where Gibson and Geggie presented, it was clear from reading Hansard that members of this committee had not been notified of your expanded mandate. What is even more concerning was that the Chair, Mr. Ashton, didn't necessarily have a clear response. If the members of this committee are not clear on the process, how can the government be confident that the public is clear on how to provide input to the core review — if that's what the government is wanting to do?

In addition, the ad used to promote this public consultation does not mention that this is the forum for public input on core review. In the minister's own words: "Effective public and stakeholder communications will be an important element of our approach." Certainly, the government does not believe that this process has exemplified "effective public and stakeholder communications."

I had to drive from Victoria to Nanaimo to present today. If the process was clear, I would have presented in Victoria last week.

It is important to repeat the words of Geggie: "we must have proper public consultation in the core review. The land reserve is very important to British Columbians. Over 95 percent support it as a mechanism to protect farmland. If we're going to make significant changes to it, we need to be aware and part of the discussion."

I have four or five years' history with the agricultural land reserve. It's not perfect. There are lots of issues with it. I don't mind having a discussion about it. I don't necessarily believe that this should be the forum we that have or open that discussion.

Specifically to the budget consultation paper 2014, which you are accepting input on, I will make a very brief statement. I'm hoping that in coming years the direction of this government will be to strengthen the ALR and the ALC within its current mandate to preserve agricultural land and to encourage farm business. The industry of agriculture could be very profitable for this province.

I encourage the government to reinvest in enforcement and to limit the non-agricultural activities on agricultural land that have been increasing over the past few years. The ALC and the ALR do a great job of protecting the zoning. It has not addressed the economics of farming, and that's what we've struggled with in Central Saanich.

If this is the process that has been established to collect input on the future of agriculture in British Columbia, then I question the integrity of the information that you will receive.

Look, I'm hoping the provincial government provides a transparent and formal forum to accept input and feedback to the public on the core review and, specifically, the future of agriculture in our province. The discussion about agriculture is far too important and complex, and this accelerated process is clearly insufficient.

It's not too late. The government can fix this problem by creating a transparent process that informs British Columbians of their opportunity to be heard. I encourage the government to do this. I encourage the government to be clear in the mandate of that process. The core review is not about saving the government money. It's about saving the taxpayers of British Columbia money.

Hychka. Thank you again for this opportunity. In future years we will use this public hearing. As a party, we will use this public hearing to provide input into the budget process. It is our hope that, going forward, the government is comfortable consulting with us on future budgets.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you for your comments. For some clarification, yes, you can put the input. We have had a brief discussion amongst some of the members here, including the Clerk's staff, so I am more than prepared to accept the dialogue and the opportunity of people like yourself bringing it forward.

As the parliamentary secretary, and I have spoken to the minister today…. There is going to be ample opportunity for public input into the core review services. You have to understand that it is only starting at this point in time and carries on until 2014. Through your local MLAs and, I'm quite sure, through other public processes, there will be ample opportunity. But anything that is said today will be discussed by this committee and, upon agreement of the committee, will be included in the report that will be going to the Legislative Assembly.

A. Olsen: I thank you for the clarification. It looks like I'll be meeting with Mr. Holman sometime in the near future.

Just in terms of your concluding remarks about the importance of the ALR and the ALC and, hopefully, strengthening them rather than weakening, I just, for the record, have a lot of sympathy with that view.

I guess I do have — for the committee, this isn't about core review — concerns that the objectives of the core review, depending on the particular service that you're talking about, the particular government program you're talking about, may not be appropriate. Those objectives may not be appropriate specifically with respect to the ALR and the ALC, because I think the objectives of that designation and that body are maybe somewhat different than the objectives that have been laid out for core review. They may be apples and oranges.

There is, as I understand it, provision in the process to make a recommendation about which programs and services perhaps should be omitted from the core re-
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view for various reasons. That's something to consider. I don't think this committee necessarily will be making a specific recommendation on that, but that's my personal view, for the record.

A. Olsen: Thank you. My direction today was to simply be on the record with that in case this was the opportunity and, hopefully, to get from the members of the government that there were going to be further opportunities in the future. I think that we were successful in both of those things today.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Mr. Ashton. Thank you, members of the committee. Appreciate it.

S. Vaillancourt: Excuse me. Point of privilege, if I may. It'll only take 30 seconds. I'm a liver transplant recipient, and I've brought registration forms for anyone wishing to take the opportunity….

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. I've got you on the schedule, sir. You're coming up. We're moving through it quickly.

S. Vaillancourt: I know, but there are people here who have been on. I just want them to know registration forms are there if they choose to make that decision.

Nanaimo Youth Services next: Mike, Steve and Ashley. Thank you, folks. Welcome. Tonight for the presentation there's ten minutes. At eight minutes I'll give you a two-minute notice, and then we have five minutes allotted for questions or comments from the committee. The floor is yours. Thank you for coming.

S. Arnett: Good evening. We would like, on behalf of Nanaimo Youth Services, to thank the committee for giving us this opportunity to speak to you. Before I begin, I'd like acknowledge that we are actually meeting on the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw people. Although I'm not Snuneymuxw, it's a tradition for all of us in this community to recognize that.

With me today is Ashley Frerichs, my colleague and a Nanaimo Youth Services employee. Ashley is also the 2012 recipient of the Representative for Children and Youth Award of Excellence for youth engagement.

I also have Mike Hunter, former MLA for the riding and a past NYSA board chair and current member of the board with me.

My name is Steve Arnett. I'm the CEO of Nanaimo Youth Services, and I'm a professional social worker by training.

What we've come to do today is…. Although this is 40 pages, I'm not going to read 40 pages to you folks.

S. Arnett: If you would go to page 3, what you'll see is who we are, in the first couple of pages. We also have won a few awards for our service provision.

We've come here today, in terms of a summary, to urge government to restore the former youth employment centre model of practice with this specialized population group — that former model has a proven track record of a return on investment — before the existing infrastructure and professional expertise are eroded beyond repair.

We come to you today, though, not with a plea and a sense of entitlement as a social agency. We come to you today to try and give voice to a group of young people in all of the communities of B.C. who we believe are an untapped resource and can contribute to the long-term GDP of this community and other communities.

On page 4, as I begin, in terms of the B.C. jobs plan, which is a key policy platform of the government, the Premier is emphatic that the jobs plan is anything but a static document. I applaud her for that. Like anyone who knows policy and planning, we understand that we need to make sure that those are living documents.

She herself says that we need to make sure this living plan lines up with the dynamic needs of our growing economy. Then she sagely notes — and I feel it's great wisdom — that "much that government controls can either stand in the way of progress or can swing open the door to new opportunities." We are here today to ask you to help us to swing that door open.

Minister Bond — who is the B.C. Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training — along with the provinces' Labour Ministers, wants Ottawa to currently reconsider proposed changes to the way the provinces provide skills training to Canadians looking for work, particularly low-skilled workers such as youth, aboriginals, persons with disabilities, social assistance recipients, recent immigrants, older workers and long-term-unemployed Canadians.

What Minister Bond says is that we want to ensure that those who require extra assistance and the kinds of training programs that we have had in place will continue. They make the point, the Labour Ministers in this country, that the Canada job grant program in particular is a
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one-size-fits-all program. It lacks flexibility, and it would limit the provinces and territories in responding to the varying labour market needs.

Our purpose today is to come and say that we echo those sentiments, but those sentiments that we echo are in regard to the current EPBC program, the employment program of British Columbia. It is working in many, many ways. In the report on the last 24 months there are a number of good signs in terms of what that program is doing. However, there is a group of people that are not being served as well as they could be under that program. Those are the folks that we've come to talk to you about today.

We pose the question to you: is B.C.'s current policy approach to the province's unemployed youth and other specialized populations penny-wise but pound-foolish? We hope that the information that I give you in this presentation will assist in answering that question.

Who are we? We're Nanaimo Youth Services. We're a community-based, volunteer board–governed non-profit that's been serving at-risk and significantly disadvantaged youth in the greater Nanaimo and area community since January 23, 1969.

Our primary goal is to create a respectful atmosphere of possibility for youth by providing them with the skills to achieve their goals. What we do is have a continuum of service that includes a one-stop arts centre for recreation and drop-in to divert children from the streets.

We are extensively involved in federally and provincially funded employment services. And we have the only, or nearly the only, dedicated youth employment centre left in the province, where we work with young people — who, primarily, have dropped out of school and haven't finished grade 12 — with work experience, job placements and joint ventures with business.

We also operate the only affordable apartment building for youth in the province. Mike actually cut that ribbon.

Our focus is to remediate those social conditions that impede youth and young adults from transitioning successfully into the social and economic life of the larger community as productive and contributing citizens.

We are here to try — with the three levels of government we work with; the publicly funded institutions; the chamber of commerce; the district labour council; business; professional groups and other local, community-based non-profit organizations like the Rotary; and donor bodies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — to lift our children up and particularly to lift up those children that are in the population of youth, and particularly unemployed youth, who have not finished high school.

They're the people who are invisible, in many ways, to most of us because they're not creating havoc in the community. But as they begin to age, they're not able to participate in the marketplace and they're not able to contribute to their full potential.

You as government — we as government — have invested in those children previously. We've changed the way we do that investment now, and we're here to tell you today that the result of that is that our youth employment centre is beginning to fail after 14 years.

We serve young people 13 to 30, and we serve them with a focus on three particular things. The best social program and long-term income security for at-risk youth in a market-based society is a meaningful job. If it wouldn't be good enough for our children, why would it be good enough for other people's children? And anything that we do will not result in learned dependency.

I'll leave you with the rest of the submission to get a sense of the demographic profile of these young people and the words of business, the labour council and the young people themselves as to their experience.

I'll now let Ashley take over in terms of being a young person who is now a professional colleague of mine and who has some life experience.

I'll start off by telling you a little bit about myself and my background. Seven years ago I became a homeless youth in the Western Communities. I was in school district 62 — Dunsmuir and Belmont. I ended up a ward of the province after a couple years of actually having to struggle and fight with the Ministry of Children and Family Development to make this happen.

Through that process, I had a number of services in that community that were creating almost a web and a net around me that was there whenever I needed to bounce off of it. But I made the first jump every time. That was what really kind of helped me get back on my feet through all of that.

I graduated high school. I went on to college. I'm currently working on university. As Steve was saying, I've received the 2012 Representative for Children and Youth's Youth Leadership Award, and I've been a part of the Ministry of Children and Family Development's former child in care internship program.

That's a little bit about where I was and where I am. But again, those services that were always there and there for you and on the youth level…. If I had walked into any kind of adult service at that point, with them going, "Here's this level. This is how we think that you should be. We want you to do this. You're going to do these workshops and this little program, and off you go," or if they had said, "Here, we're going to do these giant stacks of paperwork," I probably would have walked right out of there and never come back.

It's the relationships that people build and the relationships that got built with me that got me to where I am now, and those are the same relationships that we're trying to build with the youth here in Nanaimo — and, hopefully, in the province — to help them navigate life
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and become citizens of their communities and meaningfully employed, successful and happy in life.

Steve, there are some pretty good testimonials in the back that I got to read through. I know there will probably be questions, so we're at that.

Ashley, congratulations, also, for your award. Very inspiring, and I think it really reflects the strength of your program.

If I understand it, your main recommendation is to go back to the former youth employment centre model. That's your main recommendation.

M. Elmore: You find it just…. You have the ability…. I know we've heard this on this from other areas that service specific populations — women, indigenous people, people with disabilities.

Can you talk a little bit…? What does that mean in terms of the specialized…?

S. Arnett: Okay. Let me just summarize. We've been running a dedicated youth employment centre with the federal government, up until devolution, since 1996. Every year there are a group of young people who don't graduate from grade 12 in this province.

The Focus Foundation, which is in the Lower Mainland, predicts that 9,000 children will not graduate from high school this year in this province. So we were funded and have been funded to have a youth employment centre that reflects the literature of how you engage young people, how they engage, if they've dropped out of school, and how you can begin to bring them back in to joining the community and hopefully leverage them back into the marketplace and community life in general.

We were able to work with people in a holistic way. After devolution the province's model was based on a desire for, perhaps, a different form of accountability. I don't know. But it is essentially a mechanistic, piecework, time-motion-study method of working with people. And so when a young person comes in, we're now not able to immediately begin to engage with them.

We have to have them sign ten pieces of paper, which drives them away. We have to justify everything that we're doing with them — everything from an interview to some kind of training. If it's possible, we have to make them wait and try to gather up half a dozen so that we can apparently be more efficient by doing a workshop for six.

I don't want to be disrespectful, because I don't mean it that way. Nothing in the literature…. We're an evidence-based practice model. I'm a professional social worker with a graduate degree, and nobody trained me to work with young people in such a way that you keep them in thrall for the rest of their lives. They trained me to be a liberator, to help young people begin to assume the roles and the rights of citizenship, to become….

D. Ashton (Chair): Steve, I'm sorry. You're going…. It's very interesting. I'm running out of time.

S. Arnett: The bottom line is that the funding model is one in which I don't think you're getting value for money. I think it's a false economy, and I think you're hearing that from other specialized populations. The way we're funded right now, as opposed to the way the feds used to fund us, is one in which you do get a false economy. It may seem like they're saving money and being more efficient, but we're not getting results out the other side.

That's the bottom line for us. We're not here for a handout. We're not here with a sense of entitlement. We need the tools to work with people and invest, and we will all win. If we do not, globally there's a new phenomenon of young people dropping out of the labour market and out of society in general, and we have 300,000 of those young people, potentially, in this country.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thank you. I'm sorry about the time. Thank you very much. I appreciate your coming. Ashley, congratulations again.

Mr. Nix, please come forward, sir. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning. We have five minutes for questions. As you see, I'm a bit of a bully when it comes to the time. I'm sorry, but we have more people.

P. Nix: Thank you very much. I want to thank the government for this democratic process. You know, I've lived in countries where this would be not possible. My purpose here is to talk about the carbon tax, so I want to thank the previous administrations for instituting the carbon tax. It was an act of political bravery, and I want to acknowledge it. My purpose here is to encourage you to make it bigger and faster and broader and go for it.

I used to be an oil sands consultant. One of my big jobs…. I sat with Suncor. I was making a reclamation plan. I can't tell you the whole story in my short time, but they deliberately changed the words of my report to make it look like the oil sands were less environmentally harmful, and I quit. The big fossil fuel is a powerful force in history, probably the most powerful force. My life has been changed by the oil, gas, coal companies. I've worked for them all — Exxon, Suncor, etc.
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I used to fly up to Fort McMurray and Calgary every week from Vancouver. Now I'm here. I live in the Cowichan Valley, and I call myself a Cowichan carbon-buster. I'm a climate change activist. I stopped a train with Dr. Jaccard a year ago last May. I didn't do that because I'm an exhibitionist or an idiot. I did that because scientists were scared, really scared, about climate change. It's going to ruin my kids' lives and my grandkids' and yours too.

Please, please, if you don't understand that — I haven't got time to make you understand it — get the information. It's the same as gravity, climate change. It's just there, and it's something we've got to be brave enough to confront.

My submission here is to ask you to put a bigger and broader price on carbon in the market and get rid of it. We've got to stop burning fossil fuels and stop exporting them too.

My comparison, since I'm a microbiologist, is to go back to the medieval ages. People would die in cities. In Shakespeare's time the population of England was three million and going down. Cholera, smallpox, the bubonic plague — life was really grim. A young scientist called Louis Pasteur, a microbiologist, found out that the water looked clean, but it was not.

To most people in this country, the air looks clean, but it is not. It's full and getting fuller of carbon dioxide, and that carbon dioxide is going to destroy our climate, our society and our kids' lives.

They had a big struggle in the villages of France and England and Europe. The rich people didn't want…. The solution was a water tax. They put a water tax on the rich people in the villages and built pipes and disinfection systems, and the rich people did not want it. They fought tooth and nail: "Why should we spend our money to help the poor people?" Blah, blah, blah.

Of course, in the end people lived. The economy prospered. The rich people got richer. It was a win-win. But you can imagine the political struggle they had, just like we're having now. For you to act would be an act of political courage. I ask you to take that courage. I ask you to do it.

The just-released United Nations report. It doesn't say anything new; it just reconfirms what they already knew. I'm not going to go into that.

We have a shocking…. The B.C. government pretends to be clean. You know, we have the climate action secretariat. I was at a meeting last week there in Vancouver, where we boast about our green political instincts. But we are exporting coal, gas and oil, and we want to export a lot more. If we do it all, we'll be exporting five to ten times the greenhouse gas emissions that we burn in the whole province.

The whole climate action secretariat, the whole aim to reduce our greenhouse gases, is useless if we continue to export fossil fuels. It's just insanity. There's no other word for it. It's like the Easter Islanders cutting down the last tree. It's insane.

The extreme weather events. A million people a year — how can you estimate; but that's the estimate — are dying from climate change right now. It's killing people now, and it will kill our kids in the future. Sometime — I don't know. Kids, grandkids, great…. Somewhere along the way, a lot of people are going to die. They're dying now. This is a moral issue.

It's not really an economic issue. It's a moral-ethical issue. I mean, economics…. Obviously, we have to use that tool, but this is the greatest crisis in the history of civilized man.

In the U.S. four past leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency, all appointed by Republican Presidents, all now say that a carbon tax is the best way to reduce our burning fossil fuels. It makes the price of carbon high in the market and gives other alternative fuels a chance.

The Obama administration really created new estimates for the social cost of carbon. So somebody that has a microwave oven that they want to sell in the United States, it goes through a bureaucratic process. He's doing it by regulation, because the Republicans and the Tea Party…. He knows it's just hopeless — Congress, Senate — so he's trying to do it by regulatory fiat, and I wish him luck.

Microsoft has the vision. They count the cost of carbon. They have an internal carbon tax, and they pay that, and they get it back if they can do something to reduce their emissions.

So this is not a radical idea. Even conservatives…. You know, I tell my local conservative councillors, some of them, that…. By the way, North Cowichan, where I'm from, we won the prize for our climate action and energy plan. I'm on the advisory committee, so I'm quite proud of that.

Conservatives even should see that a carbon tax would act to conserve society, so they should be for it. But who can explain?

In our municipality we have a 0.5 percent surcharge on our property tax. They don't like to say carbon tax, eh? It's politically risky, but it is a carbon tax, of course. It's a surcharge of 0.5 percent. They're going to make a revolving fund. Invest, get money back and make that fund bigger and bigger.

According to the Pembina Institute, seven out of 12 B.C. communities reported that a carbon tax was a positive element in building the business case for their green projects, and they claimed that the existing small B.C. provincial carbon tax is encouraging a shift away from fossil fuels without harming the economy.

It's a small tax. It already looks like it's starting to work,
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but it needs to be ramped up. We need to make it bigger and faster, and that will take political courage.

A carbon pricing at all levels of government and the economy is needed urgently to phase out the burning of fossil fuels — a win-win for a sustainable earth and for our kids. That's why I'm here. I'm here for my kids. Otherwise…. I made good money in the oil sands. I could be in Europe drinking wine on the Riviera, quite frankly. But I don't fly much anymore because of the carbon emissions of flying. So this is changing my life. It's going to change all our lives if we can just face that fact.

The same science that predicted extreme weather events now says we need to reduce our carbon emissions by 6 percent a year. Jim Hansen…. I don't know if you know him. He's the chief meteorologist at NASA. He's a carbon activist too, a climate change activist, and he's just written a paper. It's 6 percent a year now. That's going to be really tough. If we don't do it, then it'll be 7 percent or 8 percent to avoid catastrophic weather events.

That's what the science says. If you don't believe me, fine. Read it. Go look at the science. Read that United Nations report.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a famous American academic, said that taxes buy civilization. My message to you is: a carbon tax buys us a sustainable civilization.

That's it. I'm at the end. I thought I had something else, but that was my profound ending point. Any questions?

I just have a question. You've thought about this a lot. What do you think we should be…? What should the carbon tax be? What's the number?

P. Nix: How much? Oh, you know, I'm not an economist. It certainly should be over $100 a tonne. It's $30 a tonne now. I have a lot of science friends that think the carbon tax…. You know, the carbon tax is an easy sell compared to what they think. They think we should have a carbon quota.

You should be saying: "Peter Nix, you have seven tonnes to spend this year. Next year it's going to be six tonnes. You can trade that six tonnes for money; you can sell it; you can do whatever you want." Just like in the Second World War, they had a bottle quota. That's what a lot of people are thinking. It's so desperate, that's what we need now.

I'm sorry I don't have an exact answer. It's somewhere between $100 and $200 a tonne, I think, if you read the books.

S. Hamilton: Thank you, Mr. Nix. Quite often when people show up and give presentations, I hit Google. You're quite well-authored, I see — Detoxification of Tailings Pond Top Water.

S. Hamilton: Anyway, that's not my question. I just thought I'd do a little bit of research.

You talked about carbon emissions, obviously. I'd just like to expand a little bit. You haven't taken a position, or you never told us how you feel about carbon credits and the whole scheme.

P. Nix: I'm not an economist. My gut feeling…. Now Jim Hansen has…. They're so badly bungled, they're so susceptible to bureaucratic fumbling and to crookedness, that my gut instincts are that they're not the solution.

P. Nix: I did not want to. I argued with the group that we should take it to the Supreme Court and say: "We're trying to protect our kids. What we did was our right." I paid it, but I didn't want to.

S. Hamilton: Just as a point of interest, a little further down that right-of-way, I live on a little road called Barrymore Drive in North Delta. It goes right past — BNSF, those trains.

G. Holman: Thanks, Peter, for your presentation and your passion. I feel that we don't take the issue seriously enough. We don't quite get it, most of us. That's across all political parties.

Just one comment in terms of the arguments that we have to use to try and engage people on the issue. You described it as a moral and ethical issue. It truly is that. Another tact to take — and I am an economist by background — is that most of the investments that you would make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce energy consumption, usually have a pretty good payback.

Energy conservation, for example. They're good investments, so there's a rate of return from an economic and a financial perspective as well.

P. Nix: In our North Cowichan climate action and energy plan, the economic model says that if we reduce our emissions by 80 percent by 2050, each household will save 4,000 bucks in today's dollars — per year.

P. Nix: It's a big deal. And the public will never get this, guys. I'm on the ground. I've got a "Carbon busted" booth at the farm fair. I'm talking with people. I'm where the rubber hits the road. I'm very cynical. The public will never do it.

You guys have to be leaders, and you have to take the shit, because you're going to get it. The public will not do this by themselves.

Sir, thank you very much for coming. Just before you do leave, and there's about 30 seconds left….

We do what you are suggesting, and what do you do for the rest of the world? That's one of my concerns. You look at China. You look at Korea today. You look at Japan today.

P. Nix: We have to reach out to the rest of the world. China is spending more financial moneys on renewable energy than any other country in the world. Sure, they're doing a lot of bad things, but they understand the problem a lot better. And they have a dictatorship, so they can probably do something.

Democracy is failing us, folks. If you want to be re-elected democratically, you can't do the right thing. I'm sorry; that's what I believe. You have to do the right thing and risk failure of your elected position. I ran for councillor; I failed. Over your dead body, somebody else might succeed. But really, we're in desperation times here.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Mr. Nix, thank you. Very informative and very well presented, except for one word. Have a good day.

Langara College — welcome, folks. Ian and Brad, thank you very much. I expect the same vigour and enthusiasm that we just saw.

D. Ashton (Chair): So ten minutes, and I'll give you a two-minute warning. Then we have five minutes allotted for questioning. The floor is yours.

B. O'Hara: Mr. Chair and members of the committee, it certainly is a pleasure and an honour to be here this evening. We thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. My name is Brad O'Hara. I'm the vice-president, academic and provost. Joining me is Ian Humphreys, who's the vice president of enrolment and business development at Langara College, in Vancouver.

This probably gets to the heart of the question, probably a question that all of you are thinking: what the hell are we doing here in Nanaimo? Well, quite frankly, our schedules didn't allow us to meet with you when you were in the Lower Mainland. Tonight's meeting certainly did, so here we are.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sorry. I apologize for that. It's just that we have X amount of time that we're able to do it. Thank you for coming.

We're here tonight because we have a very compelling message. Langara College is British Columbia's leading undergraduate college. We prepare today's students to become tomorrow's community leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, health care workers, artists, researchers, writers, engineers, accountants and educators, among other occupations.

Through our diverse career, continuing and university studies programs, we serve over 20,000 students annually. Although some of us know Langara as an excellent transfer institution, I maintain that we're a vital component of the cultural, educational and economic fabric of this province.

We've provided you with some handout materials that summarize some of the messages that we bring this evening. One of these is that Langara provides tremendous value to the citizens of this province. Consider the following. First of all, Langara College receives the lowest FTE contribution from the provincial government of any college or university. Now, combine that lowest FTE figure, which is about $6,200 per FTE, with the fact that Langara has the lowest per-credit tuition in our region, at $88 per credit, and it's easy to see why I can make that assertion.

That assertion is strengthened by the following facts. Despite being the lowest of the lowest when it comes to funding, we're fiscally responsible. We've historically balanced our budgets, we don't run deficits, and we deliver. We provide a quality product.

Despite our funding challenges and the challenges of being an open admissions institution, our students receive an outstanding education — so much so that for those who go on to further studies at places like UBC, University of Victoria or Simon Fraser University, they do so quite successfully and typically outperform their peers who started at those institutions.

Although we confidently state that Langara provides value and by far provides the most cost-effective delivery of quality post-secondary education, we have some challenges that have great potential to compromise that outstanding record.

To enunciate further, I'm going to turn things over to Ian, who will explain.
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I. Humphreys: Brad has painted a very good picture of what the institution represents in post-secondary education in the province. However, in the upcoming year and in years foreseeable, we are projecting budget deficits as costs continue to rise and funding is decreased.

Currently the provincial government support to the college, which is slightly less than $44 million, represents only 42 percent of our total budget, and as Brad pointed out, we are the lowest-funded-per-FTE post-secondary education institution by a large measure. Domestic student tuition revenue provides an additional 19 percent of our total revenue. This leaves the college approximately 39 percent of its revenue to generate from other sources.

We do this principally from two sources. The first is our outstanding continuing education program, and the second is through tuition revenue from our international student body. Together, these two sources generate more than $30 million annually in revenue.

Now, we are moving very quickly to meet the provincial government's targets of increasing our international students enrolment by 50 percent. We expect that to occur next year. However, that increase in international students enrolment comes with great risks.

We are currently overly reliant on Asia as a source of international students, and anything that might interrupt the delivery of students from Asia to the college could have disastrous consequences. I would remind the committee about the avian flu epidemic and the impact that had on post-secondary education institutions in Toronto, which saw quite dramatic decreases in students.

What can the provincial government do to help us? The first thing that we would like is to have base funding increased at least to the level of the next-lowest on the tree, which is Capilano University at approximately $600 per FTE higher than we currently receive. The second thing might be a one-time increase in our credit fee from $88, again, to our sister institution of Douglas College's level of $94. These two things combined would certainly help us to overcome any future deficits.

Now, you've probably heard this story before, about capital maintenance. Our second major problem relates to facilities. Building A is our major classroom and laboratory teaching building. More than 40 years old, it is the largest building of its type constructed in its generation. With 250,000 square feet of space, it represents more than 60 percent of our teaching capacity and includes all of our specialty laboratory facilities.

A condition assessment performed by VSA Consulting and commissioned by the Ministry of Advanced Education in 2011 rated the building at 0.46, a relative measure which basically means that major components of the building were beyond their useful lifespan. That included the building envelope and all of its essential systems.

A separate seismic study performed later that year by WSB Consulting indicates that the building has the capacity to resist only 30 percent of the current city of Vancouver earthquake standard and that portions of the building will definitely collapse in the event of an earthquake.

This building is in serious need of upgrading. In order to accomplish this and to allow for future growth, the college needs to substantially empty that building in order to prepare it for remediation.

As part of our master plan, we've completed the construction of our library and classroom building and have planned the construction of two new buildings. The first of these buildings, a new science and technology building, will begin construction early in 2014. This development is being fully self-funded by the college. We'll also commence a capital campaign to raise funds to support the construction of a creative arts and classroom building.

The construction of these buildings will allow us to substantially empty the A Building and commence the completion of a building upgrade. Unfortunately, we do not have the financial resources to actually conduct that upgrade.

The college needs the assistance of the provincial government to accomplish these development projects. We believe that these are serious projects that need to be considered immediately.

B. O'Hara: Ian has described to you some of the challenges that face us. We sit here as proud employees of Langara College. We're very, very proud of the fact that we have consistently and effectively delivered low-cost, high-quality education to the citizens of British Columbia. However, our ability to continue down that path is potentially compromised, given the financial and facility challenges that you've just heard about from Ian. We need some relief in the near future, and we hope that you'll support these needs.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. Your efficiency is quite impressive — lowest funding per FTE but lowest tuition fees in the region.

G. Holman: I guess I'm wondering if there is a model there or if there is an example there for other institutions, although I suspect at least part of that is economies of scale. You have a lot of students attending.

I. Humphreys: We do have a lot of students — 10,000 approximately. One of the reasons, probably, that we are slightly more efficient in delivery is the nature of our pro-
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gramming: 75 to 80 percent of our programming is university transfer. We do not have — and we will admit to this — the trades programs that some other institutions have, so we do not, obviously, carry those costs associated with the maintenance and delivery of those programs.

G. Holman: The funding that you're seeking — it's for phase 3. Phase 1 and 2 you're funding internally.

I. Humphreys: We are funding phase 2. Phase 1 was the library building. Phase 2 is the new science and technology building that we are completely self-funding. Phase 3 would be the arts and classroom building, plus the remediation of Building A.

G. Holman: For the buildings that you've either completed or are embarked on…. Other institutions have come to us and requested greater flexibility in borrowing for non-taxpayer-supported types of investments. Is that part of your proposal, or are you simply seeking grant partnerships?

B. O'Hara: That could certainly be on the table. We're looking for alternatives at this particular point in time. We're certainly open to other alternatives aside from straight grant support.

M. Hunt: I want to thank you for the numbers you've got in here. These charts really give us a better perspective on all of what we're hearing. You know, I get lost in numbers sometimes. When I get to your introduction, Langara….

You said you're educating 21,000 students. Then we get below that, and by the numbers, when we look at the FTEs, you're at 7,400. That tells me a lot of part-time students. Then we get down to the distribution by age, and I total those distribution by age and got around 15,000. Help me with the numbers.

We are funded for 7,056 FTEs. We deliver about 105 percent of that number annually. That is credit studies for our undergraduate population. On top of that we have a robust continuing studies program. We do not classify it as full-time, part-time. It's credit studies, non-credit studies, for which we do receive FTE counting. We deliver continuing education programs to about 12,000 students annually, which collectively round up to about 1,000 FTE.

I. Humphreys: But I could tell you that the average age of that continuing education population is about 34.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation. I can attest to the excellence of Langara and, I think, the value it brings to the area. Vancouver-Kensington is, I guess, an overlap. I have a number of folks who attend Langara for transfer courses.

I think the story…. You kind of sum it up, highlighting it's the lowest FTE in the province — also with the lowest credit, $88 per credit.

In terms of the success of the program, I think there are a lot of different components that really make Langara unique and also contribute to the overall success. Thanks for your materials that you've contributed.

I have a question with respect to…. You generate 39 percent from continuing education and tuition fees from international students. You made a reference to the expansion of international students. Is that where you're looking in terms of the offset for services provided? Can you talk about that a little bit?

I. Humphreys: Expanding international student numbers has become a necessity in order to balance the budget. As I mentioned, it doesn't come without risks. We are enormously dependent upon international students. If we lose them, it could be catastrophic.

But it also puts enormous stressors on the institution in terms of both facilities and services to students. From counselling to all forms of health services, everything that we do tends to be required in greater abundance for international students. So the pressures are enormous there, and we are quite fearful of the potential for failure.

D. Ashton (Chair): Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you for your presentation. Thanks for coming over, and accept our apologies, again. There was just no time.

Welcome, sir. Thanks for coming. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning. Then we have five minutes for the questions.

S. Vaillancourt: First, I would like to say that we all make decisions based on our life's experience. I'm here
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to share mine and to help you make the right decisions.

S. Vaillancourt: I also want to provide you with the opportunity, at any time in the future, to challenge any of the information that I bring forward as being 100 percent factual.

Now, my plea for registration of organ donation was based on my liver transplant, and I always get emotional about that.

D. Ashton (Chair): I've got a glass of water coming for you, sir, just in case. Are you okay?

Now, I moved to Nanaimo in 2003. Since then I have bought and sold. I am now in my seventh home. I hated the property transfer tax, like everybody else, but I didn't have a reason to challenge it because I was making money. It was a matter of personal choice.

When I was diagnosed with ALS, I had some choices to make. I lived in a two-storey home, and I was faced with a devastating prognosis. I decided the best course of action was to move into a level-entry home so that my wife wouldn't have to go through the…. I'm sorry.

S. Vaillancourt: Anyway, I decided that the best thing to do was to move into a home that could accommodate my disability. I was able to find such a home. It wasn't a matter of personal choice: "Oh, I want a nice new home." It was a matter of accommodating my disability. Then, when I got hit with the property transfer tax, I felt like: "Wait a minute. This is wrong." I'm not doing this because I'm flipping houses to make money or I want nice new cupboards or this or that. I'm doing it to accommodate a disability.

I looked into it further, and I found the cost of caring for a person at home, compared to a hospital or care facility provincially funded. The numbers are staggering. I mean, it's going to be a huge saving to the health care system. Ultimately, for myself, having moved into a home that…. We may decide to stay there longer.

When I decided to see what I could do to make it so other people who were not as fortunate as I am, who couldn't afford to do this, might get some relief from the property transfer tax — provide them the same opportunity — it fell on deaf ears, even though in two days and with my current disability — I can only go so far — I was able to collect 200-some-odd signatures by door-knocking. Mind you, in all honesty, anybody would sign to get away from the property transfer tax. When they heard my story, some of the feedback that I got was very rewarding and touching.

Here’s the petition that I had Michelle Stilwell present at the Legislature. Then I get some law clerk saying that it's being rejected because it's going to cause a burden on the provincial purse. Maybe he didn't read the bloody thing. It says that ultimately it will save money. So I e-mailed him back, although they never e-mailed me originally.

I got this from Michelle Stilwell months later. When I provided them with the additional information to consider, I got a response that he wasn't available for comment for months down the road. Then I was provided with the opportunity to speak here.

Interestingly enough, though, after I got this, I had e-mailed Christy Clark. I don't know if you've got that information as well. I got an e-mail back from her, advising me that Finance and the Ministry of Health had received my information and they would be making the decision and would contact me. It's been months, and I haven't heard anything from them.

When I received that from the Premier's office, I e-mailed both ministries and volunteered to meet with them to share my experience and concerns, and I haven't heard anything. I'm hoping you will not be as dysfunctional as that and that I will get some kind of reply as to whether or not you've considered my information to be factual and worthy of you acting upon or not. I sincerely hope that I will get something in return.

The numbers are staggering as far as the savings to the health care system would be, so I don't see it as being a drain on the government purse. Even if it was, which the information clearly shows that it wouldn't be, it's an investment that would be made to help people deal with the challenges they're faced with.

In speaking with the ALS Society — I kept them abreast of what I was attempting to accomplish — they told me that very few people go to that extent. We're not talking about a whole lot of people here.

The other thing to bear in mind is…. Like, for myself, even though I was able to afford to do it, this means that right now I've got some choices to make, because it drained my resources. I currently have Pacific Blue Cross insurance. It costs me 134 bucks a month. I also qualify for palliative care PharmaCare, which is offset because Pacific Blue Cross is paying that.

I also have life insurance for $100,000 that costs me $7,000 a year, and with my diagnosis, I'd be stupid not to keep it. I'm going to have to make some serious financial decisions, and I may very well be forced to defer my
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property taxes in order to make those payments.

I just want you to realize that there are so many benefits that are spinoff to the government, as well, that…. I don't know. Hopefully, just that little graph that I provided you with is enough, and you'll be able to support my position, do whatever you can to help alleviate that burden on people that need the relief.

Now, there are other things I want to talk about as well. The travel assistance program is being abused by B.C. Ferries. I travel a lot on travel assistance. As a senior, I should travel for free. When I show my travel assistance pass, they still charge the medical system full rate for myself and my wife, who, most of the time, has to drive me. I think that's wrong, and I'm hoping that can be resolved.

The other thing is I keep getting a bill for my medical. I've called them, and I've told them: "Look, this is a waste of resources. I've arranged for automatic payment through my bank. Quit sending me this bill." They tell me: "Well, we can't do that. You have to register with us. The government can't trust you to initiate those payments through your bank."

Quite frankly, if the government can't trust me, I guess I can't trust them either. I'm going out of my way to help save them some paperwork and money and waste of resources, and I'm being told: "No, we can't trust you to do that."

Fortunately, I called again today just to speak to someone else, because I wanted to suggest electronic billing, which they told me I could do. But they don't make it easy. I'm going to have to take some documentation over to an office in Nanaimo to register for electronic billing. I couldn't have done that over the phone, even though I was able to prove to them who I was by giving them all the information necessary.

I urge you to look at that system and see if you can save some kind of money there, because I want to save money for the health….

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Sir, thank you. I appreciate it. I have to cut you off there. There may be some questions, but I just want to say thank for actually waiting, because you've been here patiently. I've seen you on it.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, we did. We tried to fit you in, but we had to bump around.

G. Holman: Serge, thank you for coming today. I just wanted to…. I don't know if you have contacted your MLA. There may be some of the issues where the MLA can act as an advocate, around, say, the medical service premium issue — things like that. I know that's the lesser of your concerns. If you haven't contacted your MLA, I would encourage you to do that.

S. Vaillancourt: I have — as well as the travel assistance program. I'm being told that B.C. Ferries collects $30 million a year for travel assistance and seniors travelling, but they don't separate it. It's a matter of facilitating billing for them. It just seems wrong, especially when you see the bonus that they get.

E. Foster: Mr. Vaillancourt, if I could maybe shed a little bit of light on the e-mail that you received from someone at the government after MLA Stilwell had sent in…. The legislation does not permit a private member to cause the government a cost. Now, I realize that you feel that there would be a long-term saving, and I don't disagree with you. I think there probably would be a long-term saving.

But the way the legislation is set up…. Not to say that we cannot make a recommendation on the issues. For example, the property transfer tax for people in your situation — the committee may choose to do that as part of their recommendation to the government.

But that would be why you got that response. The person in legal services does not have the authority — nor does anybody, actually, sitting at this table — to change the legislation. It has to go before the legislative committee and be voted on in the Legislature.

S. Vaillancourt: But the petition clearly outlines the benefit that would offset the cost.

E. Foster: Yeah, well, it still has to go through legislation, because it would be making a change in the legislation. That's the reason why.

D. Ashton (Chair): And this is the right place, sir, to do that. Absolutely the right place.

L. Popham: Mine is more of a comment. I commend you for coming in today. I think you're very brave. I understand that….

S. Vaillancourt: I'm sorry I get so emotional. I blame it on a woman's liver. Not that men cannot be passionate.

S. Vaillancourt: It's been a standing joke. Trust me, I do presentations at city council every year on organ donation, and I come to tears. It's just that certain things set me off.

Anyway, it's a pleasure to have been here. Right now, with my diagnosis, being able to fight for something that I believe is right, that may help others, is giving me that much more reason to live.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thank you very much. Good presentation — we thank you. And thank you for being so patient. We had a big list, and we tried to get to you as quick as we could. This gentleman is next, so thank you.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, it's bipartisan. Sir, you just ruined your presentation for some other members. [Laugher.] This is a bipartisan committee, sir. Thank you for coming.

Ian, thank you for coming. The presentation will be ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute notice, and we have five minutes for questions. The floor is yours, sir.

I. Gartshore: I don't think I'm going to be quite as emotional and passionate as the former speaker. But I do want to start off by saying I really appreciate this opportunity to be with you.

I know it has been a long day for you already. Just being able to come and speak to you and work with you on finding some solutions to some very difficult situations — I appreciate that, because I'm just an ordinary citizen.

Obviously, when it comes time to running a business, which I do, or running a government or household finances, the income needs to be as great as the expenses. It's a pretty straightforward equation.

I'm going to suggest some ways that we might be able to better balance, and continue to balance in the long term, the provincial financial situation. I think you're the people I need to be speaking to about that.

First of all, I want you to be really aware that I am not a person who has ever smoked or used marijuana. I do use hemp oil, but of course, it doesn't have any THC in it. I'm not an advocate for marijuana. What I am is a person who has got some business sense, I think, and some smarts in terms of some other things that we need to focus on, which is that down in the States, Washington and Oregon are now moving to license marijuana growing.

They're going to out-compete the people who grow it here illegally. If we do not change this, if we do not move in that direction…. We are already not taking advantage of income that could be available to us, to the province. But I think we're going to notice even less economic activity in the province from all the money that's sloshing around that, yes, is dirty money but is still contributing to our economy in British Columbia.

My concern is that if we don't move in that same direction, we are actually going to be in a worse financial situation than we are. If we were going to come closer to what they're doing and license it and make it so that it's available in the same way that alcohol is….

As a therapist, as a counsellor, I will tell you that alcohol is way, way worse than marijuana in terms of what it does to families and individuals. It's devastating.

We could be bringing in a lot of extra income by taking this step. I know there's a process going on right now, and I don't know if it's going to be successful. But I think it's a source of revenue that we have to seriously take a look at in this day and age.

Secondly, our forests. That's been a big source of revenue for the province for a long time. We've got an amazing province for forestry, but I also know from reliable sources that a lot of the wood that's being cut, the trees being cut are being left behind or burnt. Those are jobs being left on the ground or being burnt.

If we were to do a better job of bringing that timber to market, we could be more fully productive. We could have a lot more people working, and when people are working and paying income tax, it comes to the province.

Thirdly, I love megaprojects. They're fun and exciting and all that kind of stuff, but the reality is that if we move toward energy conservation and efficiency, we will end up creating way more jobs. That's proven. We know that.

Recently the province eliminated most of the funding for home energy audits. That's just a little piece of what I'm talking about. By doing that, the province has actually turned the economy down and not saved any money. Energy audits spur so much economic activity that the increased tax revenues pay for the incentives — more than pay for the incentives.

I see this as a way of increasing revenue to the province, even though it seems like an expense item, and fostering more economic activity in local communities, which is where we need more employment. And it's good employment. These are good-paying jobs, for the most part.

If we do that and if people are able to save more energy in their homes and businesses with the incentives — and I would consider expanding that program — then what's going to happen is that people will not hurt so much when energy prices, particularly B.C. Hydro prices, go up. If they don't hurt so much, you're not going to feel
[ Page 427 ]
the pressure to take money from B.C. Hydro as revenue.

What I'm suggesting is a way to maintain the revenue from B.C. Hydro that doesn't hurt so much. I hope that's making sense.

So that's increased revenue — all of those — even though it sounds like I'm suggesting spending more money. Well, you are, but we're going to get more money back.

Then the second area is: how do we reduce expenses? That's the other side of this equation. The number one expense is health care. Our health care system is not sustainable. And 60 percent of those surveyed say they think that it's going to crash and burn, and they are right.

I'm going to tell you, not just because of our population aging — which it is, and I'm one of them — but also because our young people are not eating and drinking well. The childhood obesity and illnesses related to eating too much sugar and junk food are on the rise. This is the first generation that may not live as long as the generation fostering them. That's going to devastate the health care system in short order.

There's no way we can keep up to this. I love the old British expression — I haven't heard it said for a long time: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

That is what we have to do in our system here in B.C. Otherwise, we're going to end up being snowed right under the debt of trying to maintain the current system. It's not sustainable. Almost nothing we do is really sustainable, but this is particularly not sustainable. We have to change the model. We need to be encouraging people to stay healthier.

Not too long ago, about 15, 20 years ago, we used to train people to go into homes and help them work with their nutrition. We cancelled that because it was an expense. What we're doing now is we're paying for that, double and triple and more, through the health care system that is now taking the consequences of that action.

We need to be improving people's health so that they don't get sick. That improves productivity, which means businesses do better, which means our economic output is better, which means tax revenues come in. And we do that with the benefit of having a healthier population and, therefore, lower health care costs. We need to truly make it a health care system, not a sick care system. That's what we have right now.

Michelle Stilwell, I know she's got — I haven't met her yet; I'm looking forward to it — this notion that if we can do it at the front end, we will save a lot of money, and I think she's right. I think that needs to be a totally across-the-board, non-partisan movement.

I give an example in the notes here about how I saved somebody's life, as an energy adviser. I went into her home. Natural gas, which we keep on hearing is clean and green and all that kind of stuff, was killing her. It was killing her. I discovered that, and I told her: "I'm an energy adviser. Open windows." She did. Her headaches went away. Her health began to recover. Doctors could not figure out why she was getting sick. That's just one example of a myriad of thousands of ways that we can save a lot of money.

Transportation infrastructure. We can't possibly keep up to what it's doing too. I mean, it's very expensive to build highways and bridges and all those kinds of things. Way cheaper to put money into our current railway. I know the province has promised to put a little bit of money into it. We need to be investing a lot more into that, which is way more sustainable than the highway system is.

We need to be going into an integrated transportation system. The city of Nanaimo is looking at how to do this with downtown, with the waterfront properties that are now looking like we can use them.

Rail, train, fast ferry. I think that Ferries has to have fast ferries between here and Vancouver. Then, less frequent vehicle traffic, because people can jump from here to a bus on the other side to get downtown or take the float, ferry or whatever. If we integrate transportation, we save ourselves a lot of money. We cannot possibly keep up to what B.C. Ferries is costing us. We need to change the model to make it more sustainable.

These are some of the points about how we reduce our costs as a province, as well as, as I said earlier on, how to increase the revenues.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. Perfect. Sir, I have to cut you off at that point in time.

Thank you for your hospitality, for having us in Nanaimo today. It's a nice town, and we've had lots of great input. We're off to Victoria now.

I. Gartshore: Very good. Well, last time I spoke, it was up in Parksville. This is way easier for me by bicycle, I can tell you. So thank you.

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1) ArtsBC; Gabriola Arts Council	Kathy Ramsey
	Michelle Benjamin
2) Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices	Wendy Pratt
3) British Columbia Common Ground Alliance	M.J. Whitemarsh
	Steve Ricketts
4) Erik Andersen
5) Vancouver Island University Students' Union	Kristen Brooker
	Patrick Barbosa
6) Island Coastal Economic Trust	Mayor Phil Kent
	Dallas Smith
	Line Robert
7) PacificSport Vancouver Island	Drew Cooper
8) Coastal Invasive Species Committee	Rachelle McElroy
9) BC Green Party	Adam Olsen
10) Nanaimo Youth Services Association	Steve Arnett
	Ashley Frerichs
	Mike Hunter
11) Peter Nix
12) Langara College	Ian Humphreys
	Brad O’Hara
13) Serge Vaillancourt
14) Ian Gartshore

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

Witnesses:	Erik Andersen
	Steve Arnett (CEO, Nanaimo Youth Services Association)
	Patrick Barbosa (Vancouver Island University Students Union)
	Michelle Benjamin (Gabriola Arts Council)
	Kirsten Brooker (Chair, Vancouver Island University Students Union)
	Drew Cooper (PacificSport Vancouver Island)
	Ashley Frerichs (Nanaimo Youth Services Association)
	Ian Gartshore
	Ian Humphreys (Langara College)
	Mike Hunter (Nanaimo Youth Services Association)
	Phil Kent (Chair, Board of Directors, Island Coastal Economic Trust)
	Rachelle McElroy (Executive Director, Coastal Invasive Species Committee)
	Peter Nix
	Brad O'Hara (Langara College)
	Adam Olsen (Interim Leader, B.C. Green Party)
	Wendy Pratt (Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices)
	Kathy Ramsey (ArtsBC; Gabriola Arts Council)
	Steve Ricketts (Chair, Board of Directors, British Columbia Common Ground Alliance)
	Line Robert (CEO, Island Coastal Economic Trust)
	Dallas Smith (Island Coastal Economic Trust)
	Serge Vaillancourt
	M.J. Whitemarsh (British Columbia Common Ground Alliance)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
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