Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 21 — Wednesday, October 16, 2013 (HTML)

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

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

6. The Committee recessed from 9:45 a.m. to 9:59 a.m.; from 10:00 a.m. to 10:05 a.m.; and from 10:06 a.m. to 10:07 a.m.

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

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

15. 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	575
J. Leahy
J. Collins
A. Ackerman
B. Vandersteen
L. Ackerman
J. Thompson
D. Boyd
R. Beuschel
L. Atkinson
B. Downie
G. Knox
M. Warcup
R. Goffinet
A. Hadland
K. Forest
J. Shumay
G. Jewitt

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Good morning, everyone. We are the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. This is an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly, whose mandate includes conducting annual public consultations on the upcoming provincial budget.

We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome everyone in attendance today to this video conference session in Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Terrace, Quesnel and Vernon. Thank you very much for taking the time to attend. We really appreciate you participating in this important process.

There may be the odd technical difficulty, but it's because it's my first time chairing a video conference meeting. I'm sure the good folks at Hansard will make sure it all goes well. Anyway, before we begin, I'd just like to read a brief statement.

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. The report must be presented to the Legislative Assembly no later than November 15.

Over the last month the committee has held public hearings in 17 communities throughout the province. In addition, we scheduled two video conference sessions for an additional six communities. British Columbians were invited to present or attend the hearings and to send a written submission, video file, letter or fax. Information on the consultations, including instructions on how to make a submission, is available at our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

I should also mention that the committee has agreed to accept submissions regarding the core review as part of our budget consultations. We have been advised by government that the committee will not be the only avenue for public input on the government's core review. The deadline for submissions is midnight today, October 16. All public input we receive is carefully considered.

During the video conference session each presenter may speak for ten minutes. Up to five additional minutes are allotted for questions from committee members. Today's meeting is a public hearing and will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of this transcript, along with the minutes, will be printed, and it will be made available on the committee's website. A live audio webcast is also broadcast throughout the website.

The committee is also on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook you'll find us under Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, www.facebook.com/pages/Legislative-Assembly-of-British-Columbia-Committees/157086584375374. On Twitter we are at twitter.com/BCFinanceComm.

I'll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. My name is Mike Farnworth, vice-Chair of the committee and the MLA for Port Coquitlam.

M. Elmore: Good morning. My name is Mable Elmore. I am the MLA for Vancouver-Kensington.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Also joining us today are some very hard-working and dedicated individuals: our Clerk, Susan Sourial, from the parliamentary committees office; and also Jean Medland and Alexa Hursey on behalf of Hansard Services.

Now I'd like to start the meeting by going to our first presenters, who are in Fort St. John. They are Jim Collins and Jean Leahy.

Welcome. Please feel free to start. As I said earlier, you've got ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions from the committee.

J. Leahy: Good morning. I'll start off. I'd better tell you a little bit about our society. Approximately five years ago we formed a society called SONSS. Our mandate at the time, and it has not changed, is to work for more residential care beds for the North Peace.

Needless to say, we were thrilled to get the new care home, the 123-bed care home, a year ago, plus the new hospital. However, we also knew that it would be full the day it was opened. There were 87 people from the existing care home to be transferred and 28 people to be brought home from Dawson Creek, so it was full.

Certainly, it was very full the first day it was opened. So we're still working for more residential care beds, because there are people all over the place wanting to get into facilities.

Peace Villa, which is our residential care home, is full — and a wait-list. The hospital cannot provide the services for those who need acute care beds because there is no space, and ALC patients are filling acute care beds.

In the month of June there were 18 patients in the hospital waiting for ALC placement and 40 names on the list for assisted living. Now, that's a two-year wait. Our assisted-living unit is for 24 units.

So you can see that we're loaded. At times, people wait in emergency up to five days, five nights to find an acute care bed upstairs. That's not very adequate either.

J. Collins: Just a note on our hospital. It is a 44-bed unit and, as Jean just mentioned, 18 are filled with patients who should be located somewhere else. This is a critical situation in Fort St. John.

J. Leahy: To go on a little further, we are supporting the prospect of a third house at Peace Villa, which would accommodate at least 26 residents. However, in the last few days we have been told by Northern Health that they are applying for a 62-bed facility. We will certainly support them in that endeavour, because they will be used.

I go on to say that we will support the third house at Peace Villa. Our stats, as they relate to Fort St. John, are actually frightening. To explain it shortly, there are approximately 4,000 people over the age of 65 in the North Peace. So the situation is critical. We have a crisis in our community.

J. Collins: Well, one option we've talked about many times is…. Some communities in B.C. already have a facility called a transition facility. That would help take some of the people out of acute care beds in the hospital — a facility where they would be waiting for placement in a care home, physiotherapy somewhere else in the province or some other care that's needed. It's called a transition facility. We don't have anything, and that might be a consideration for our community.

J. Leahy: There's one possibility in that regard. The old care home does have 40 bedrooms that are sitting there vacant. Perhaps an arrangement could be made with North Peace Housing, who are now the owners of that facility, for a transition place.

The other idea we have is Heritage I, which is an independent living complex. But it's the only accessible place in Fort St. John that has complete accessibility. For instance, it's 35 units. All units are wheelchair-accessible. Some units have facilities that can lower the cupboards. Wheelchairs can go under the sink. A wall oven, a countertop stove — things of that nature.

We think that Northern Health should somehow get the authority to help fill the units in Heritage I, giving them to people with disabilities or people who are over 75 and can manage in an independent living place with home support. It should not be used for low-cost housing. The two age groups do not mix. Believe me; I live there.

North Peace Housing Society would be supported in their endeavour to lease the rest of their facility. So that's another avenue if somebody decides what it could be leased for.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I'll see if there are any questions from the committee. No questions.

I have one for you. You mentioned an existing facility. Can you tell me how old it is — the one that's sitting vacant?

J. Collins: It's still a relatively good, nice-looking building, but it was deemed to be not adequate, because of doorway sizes and various things, for a care home facility. That's why we built the new one. But certainly, it's very adequate for any kind of transition housing or intermediate care.

J. Leahy: North Peace Housing Society now owns that facility. They, in fact, have taken one portion of that building. They're making it into suites for people that want…. It's almost like assisted living except there's no care — absolutely no care at all. But there are meals.

L. Popham: Thanks for your presentation. My question is around the two-year wait-list. I'm just wondering. Do you see any trend at all of people moving out of the community because they feel that the wait-list is too long?

J. Leahy: There are a few that are going somewhere else where they have family members and can get into a facility. But very few. Most people that have lived here for 50 years want to stay here and die here.

S. Hamilton: Thank you for your presentation. My question is around your suggestions regarding private investment to build that seniors housing. You've talked about service clubs or private entrepreneurs. Has anyone in the community been approached? Have any discussions taken place with private enterprise that might be interested in coming in to facilitate something like this?

J. Leahy: People in the community are aware that that
[ Page 577 ]
possibility exists. But this is an oil and gas town, and all they want to build is houses for oil and gas people, with 50 stairs up and down.

S. Hamilton: I understand. And finally, you talked about waiving some of the costs associated with development charges and so on. Has the city council been engaged in Fort St. John regarding this issue? I suppose you've talked to them, have you?

J. Leahy: We have talked with them, but we haven't come to any conclusions. They do donate land.

J. Collins: We have an excellent working relationship with the city. They have donated land for facilities for seniors in the centre of Fort St. John.

S. Hamilton: That's good to hear. I assume that if you also approach them, if it ever got to that stage, they'd be so kind as to probably waive development cost charges and fees associated with the normal facilitation of buildings in civic areas.

J. Leahy: They'd be willing to discuss it, but what we come up with, we don't know yet.

A. Ackerman: Thank you very much. I have three points, and I'll quickly go through them.

I guess bottom line for my first point is that the government needs to move towards and should always keep in focus that we need a balanced budget. There's a three-legged sustainability stool which was recently talked about at the B.C. Energy Conference in Fort St. John: economic, social and environmental. All of those legs of the stool are needed to ensure that we do reach a point of a balanced budget.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is funding for literacy outreach coordinators. I'm on the executive of the North Peace Literacy Alliance, and this past spring we witnessed the withdrawal of most of the funding for literacy coordinators across B.C.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Andy, just a moment. The camera in Fort St. John is not on you. We're trying to get that sorted out. So we can hear you, but we cannot see you.

A. Ackerman: Anyway, the reason why we lost funding for literacy outreach coordinators was a result of an organization called Decoda that receives funds from the B.C. government and then distributes these funds to multiple communities in B.C.

Now, budget restraint had caught up with the government, and in 2012 the government had reduced funding to Decoda by $1 million. However, Decoda still had $1 million tucked away from past years, and unfortunately, they mishandled the entire issue and did not exercise due diligence when it came to redistribution of the funding levels that the government had set for them.

Very few communities were funded for the literacy coordinators, and many were in serious danger of losing their literacy coordinators altogether. In the northeast most of the communities were in danger of losing their coordinators.

In this day and age when literacy is one of the most important issues facing us — in B.C. over 45 percent of the population are not functioning at proper literacy levels — it was not time to receive the message of these massive cuts.

Fortunately, the government did restore the $1 million to save the day, but this cannot continue under the same model. My suggestion is that more diligence be made to those distribution groups that the government relies on to distribute their funds to ensure that this does not happen again.

Decoda is not the only agency that government gives funds to, to provide funding across the province to various non-profits. If there is no due diligence then what will happen again is what happened this past spring, where literally most of the province was cut out of funding for literacy coordinators. So I think, really, the government needs to put some focus to that.

My last point is investment in highway infrastructure in the northeast for oil and gas development. As you are all aware, the province is on the edge of some very exciting growth around LNG. It is estimated for every $1 billion invested in LNG in the northwest, the northeast will have $7 billion invested in getting the natural gas from the ground to the northwest.

This will mean more pressure on an already overtaxed highway system in the northeast. Government needs to ensure that highway expansion keeps up with development, or we will see the continuation of the current situation between Fort Nelson and the B.C.-Alberta border. If we don't, we're going to see increases in highway accidents, injuries, fatalities and more congestion on our already overcrowded highway system.

What I'm speaking of is divided highways and not the current model where we don't have any division between the four lanes, in some cases. That's a very dangerous situation.
[ Page 578 ]

My point is that with all the money that is going to be spent, we have to ensure that money is spent on infrastructure to keep up with the plans for the province, or we will end up with a very congested highway system. That's not just here; it will be in the northwest as well.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good morning. Do we have the Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce with us — Bev?

D. Ashton (Chair): I pass along my apologies. I hope you will accept them. My plane was late this morning, and it was a real rush getting in here. I want to thank Mike for stepping in. Thank you, folks.

Bev, we have 15 minutes allotted, ten minutes for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning — and then five minutes for questions. So if you wish to start, please go ahead.

B. Vandersteen: Okay. First, I'd like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to speak to you. This has become an annual presentation for me, so I apologize for some of the stuff that's going to get repeated.

I did prepare and submit a written report, which I'm assuming you have in front of you.

B. Vandersteen: Okay. I'm not going to read from that, but I do have a couple of items that I want to speak to on it and a couple of others that I'd like to present as well.

In 2013 the select standing committee wrote in their report that natural resource development, particularly in the northwest and northeast regions of the province, is poised to become an increasingly significant component of the B.C. economy. Released in February of that year, the B.C. Natural Gas Strategy estimated that development of liquefied natural gas is expected to produce approximately $20 billion in new private sector investment, including 800 long-term positions and 9,000 jobs during construction, as well as the thousands of spinoff jobs that are expected to be created.

Fort Nelson still operates in a fly-in, fly-out, or camp, model. The province needs to place incentives to encourage companies to have those employees situated locally. This is not my area of expertise, but tax incentives or royalties to companies to require them to support local hire, to use local companies and to put their operators in the communities near those jobs and plants and facilities, rather than flying them in and out from other provinces.

This does not help the province of B.C. or communities in terms of provincial taxes or municipal taxes. It puts increased stress on our infrastructure without any of those contributions as well.

A company that recently was applying to establish a camp here in Fort Nelson — when I asked why they wouldn't use local facilities and rental properties and that kind of thing, I was told that their workers have mortgages to pay in Alberta, so that wasn't one of the options that they were considering. It's really important that we stress the need for local hire.

In terms of our written submission on the carbon tax…. This is one I keep bringing up every year. I understand that the province undertook a review of the carbon tax program last year and as part of that review has decided to continue with the carbon tax, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse in terms of trying to convince the province to eliminate it. But I would like the province to consider the implementation of a carbon tax grant program for northern or rural communities.

We need to recognize that for B.C. residents in the north and in rural areas, this is an unfair tax. While it's intended to put a price on carbon emissions to encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the province says that the intent is "to encourage consumers to make choices that reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and for businesses…to shift from fossil fuels" and invest in more efficient practices.

Our businesses here, like businesses everywhere, will do everything they possibly can to reduce costs and bring up profitability, but the use of diesel fuel and gasoline is unavoidable here as well as in other rural communities. We have an area that's approximately a little bit over 85,000 square kilometres. A trip to the heart of the Horn River Basin, where the majority of the gas development is happening right now, takes approximately 3½ hours to drive one way.

We don't have provincially sponsored recycling programs. We don't have buses. We have no public transportation, so our businesses are really hampered and restricted by the carbon tax. We're also right next door to Alberta, where that carbon tax does not exist. This puts us at an extreme competitive disadvantage, and it also punishes our residents, because we don't have any of those other options available to us.

I'd like to commend the province for their work to introduce a carbon tax exemption for farmers and for greenhouse growers that came into effect in 2012, I believe, and would ask that they consider a carbon tax grant program for northern communities and rural communities that do not have other options available to them.
[ Page 579 ]

My next point is around community infrastructure for health care. I wrote about this in a fair amount of detail in my submission. The province needs to ensure that all B.C. residents have access to the same quality of health care. Currently in Fort Nelson that's not the case. We still have no maternity services here. As a young community….

People and families cannot have their children in Fort Nelson. Mothers are required to leave at least two weeks prior to their delivery date. This splits up families, and it puts all kinds of stress on them. We need the province's help in making sure that this situation gets rectified.

The Northern Rockies has worked very hard on it, and we have had some successes. We've gained a couple of doctors, and we'll continue to work. But certainly, that support is essential.

One of the largest issues we've had and experienced is issues with B.C. Air Ambulance in getting people out in a timely fashion, and this is just critical to care. In this past year I know of an instance where somebody with appendicitis actually drove the highway to get themselves to care in Fort St. John. The outcome was fine, but that could just as easily have not had a positive outcome.

I know that the previous speaker spoke of this as well. We need the province to continue to support the growth of business through the establishment of programs for the education of skilled workers. This is going to be a huge issue as we move forward in the province.

I'm not going to speak in a great deal of detail on it, because it is in my written submission. We did spend quite a bit of time on this at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. This is an issue across the country. It's not unique to British Columbia.

One of the things that I see as a potential issue or concern moving forward is that we're going to be competing not only with world markets but with the Canadian market for skilled workers. This is something that both the provincial and federal governments really do need to put a keen eye onto, to develop strategies. B.C. has a declining population growth, and we need to figure out where those workers are going to come from as well as educate our own youth in our communities.

Northern Opportunities is a fabulous program. We need to keep the onus on that program to make sure that those positions, wherever possible, are actually done in local communities and not centralized.

A number of our youth, particularly First Nations, don't want to leave their homes and travel out to other schools, so we see a disconnect in the education of many of our youth. Encouraging those youth to get into the trades and skilled worker positions as well…. I wrote in there that most of our students are still coming out of the humanities, and my children are no exception. So we really do need to encourage and just promote what we know are fabulous careers out there.

Then the last couple of points that I put in there are things that my members and my board believe could promote the development of local communities and local hire, hire people living in our communities, without having a huge cost to the province.

The first one is the creation of a pooled registered pension plan. This was in front of the federal government last year, and we haven't heard anything more on it. I think that we have some huge ability to promote and maybe retain some employees if we can provide small companies, which are the backbone of the B.C. economy, with the ability to provide pension plans. Many aren't able to do that on their own. It's not cost-effective for them. But if we could provide some kind of pooled pension plan that these companies could participate in, that may help with recruitment and retaining of workers.

Introduce a northern travel deduction. Everybody's familiar with the northern residence allowance, which definitely helps in terms of an incentive to have people live in the north. The northern travel deduction is currently optional for companies to provide to their employees.

We'd like to see an actual improvement in the northern travel deduction provided on our income taxes. It would be a huge incentive to have people live here in the north, especially since their families most often don't. This would then give them that ability to travel out without a huge cost to the government, since they would now be living and paying taxes, hopefully, in the province of B.C.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Your Worship, what we have is ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes of questions from the committee. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and I'll try and give it in between your breaths or at the end of a sentence or something like that, just to give you a quick heads-up. So the floor is yours. Please start.

L. Ackerman: Perfect. Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee.

As you know, Fort St. John has experienced quite a tremendous growth rate over the past several years and is poised again to be the hub of further growth and activity in British Columbia. With that in mind, we are here to bring you some very valid solutions that will assist other communities as they work to ensure that the resource projects are successfully achieved with the greatest economic gain to our province.

First and foremost, what we would like to impress upon the committee is to please recognize that although the majority of the voters happen to be in the south, the north is creating wealth. So when we look at policies, they need to be broad enough to ensure that they're not cookie-cutter-type policies that really do not allow for flexibility to ensure achievement of success.

Some of the particulars that we would like to impress upon the committee include expanding the mandate of the municipal government Auditor General to include the examination of financial impacts of programs being downloaded onto local government. Local government, as you know, is unable to do very much other than increasing our property tax rates, and that's not always feasible with one taxpayer.

Grants that come with strings attached that are not flexible for communities really can throw a local government off of their official community plan and their vision for their community. So we're requesting that ad hoc granting process be eliminated in favour of one that's sustainable, accountable and quantifiable and allows for the long-term planning by local governments.

Northern communities need to be able to create quality of place in order to support families that work in the industries that will create that first-dollar GDP for the province. Therefore, we need the right policies in place to support this.

For example, we really do need assistance with medical professional recruitment and retention. We need college funding to be appropriately delivered to the communities where the pressure is felt. Programming like Northern Opportunities needs to be recognized for the value that it is bringing to the trades training and to be funded accordingly. And provincial RCMP funding needs to be considered.

When all of these resource projects are being considered, ministries need to work together, as opposed to silos, in which we see them operating now, so that there's a collaborative effort to support municipal needs.

In particular, in school district 60 here, the school district did receive approval from the local governments for school site acquisition charges. Mr. Chair, I can tell you that that was approved two years ago and is sitting on someone's desk in Victoria while the land prices in Fort St. John, I can guarantee you, have not remained status quo. We need two new elementary schools and soon a new middle school, and unless the school district is able to collect those fees in our developing community, we're going to have issues here.

Housing for our vulnerable population needs to be addressed. The city of Fort St. John donated land to seniors housing sometime ago. Those properties have now been put into the hands of B.C. Housing, whose operational mandate has changed. The housing that has been built on land donated by local government for a particular purpose needs to remain there. We do know what our community needs.

Last but not least, I really think that some kind of value-added tax needs to be implemented to ensure that our businesses here in northeast British Columbia are competitive with our neighbours over in Alberta. We have the opportunity to move this province forward. With your help, I believe that we can do that.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, thanks, Lori. Boy, you had some of us just writing as fast as we could, so thanks.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Just in terms of the schools that you're talking about, are these replacement schools or brand-new schools that are required for your growing population?

M. Hunt: Lori, I'm just wondering, concerning the issue that you skirted by, which is skills training: what community college or local university campuses do you have in Fort St. John?

L. Ackerman: Okay. Well, just touching on that trades training, Marvin. The Northern Opportunities is a collaborative with Northern Lights College, school districts 60, 59, 81 and industry. So industry is at this table.

D. Ashton (Chair): Any other questions? Well, Your Worship, thank you very much for the presentation today. It's greatly appreciated. We'll look forward to seeing you at our next function.
[ Page 581 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): Hi, gentlemen. Thank you very much. It's Dan Ashton and the committee in Victoria.

We've just switched over from Fort St. John. We're trying to keep on schedule here. Are you folks on the list? Is it Literacy, or Kersley Farmers Institute?

P. Zeeger: My name is Paul Zeeger, and I'm with the Kersley Farmers Institute. But the presenter, Lynda Atkinson, is not here yet, because we are scheduled to be at 10:20.

D. Ashton (Chair): Yes, we're a bit ahead, sir. That's why we're just trying to keep the momentum going. We can come back to you then.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Well, folks, thank you for trying. I appreciate that. We'll come back to you then.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good morning, gentlemen. I'm assuming that you folks are with the board of education?

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, great. My name is Dan Ashton. I'm here with the committee. We've just had a temporary recess. We're grabbing a couple more members. We'll be with you in, like, 30 seconds or so. Okay?

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming. We have mostly everybody here.

The presentation is up to ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and we have up to five minutes of questioning from the committee. So please, start.

J. Thompson: Excellent, thank you. I'm Jaret Thompson, chair of the board of education here in school district 60. Doug Boyd is the secretary-treasurer for the school district. We appreciate your time today and your consideration for our presentation.

I'll just jump right in here. We have nine items on the list here. We'll start with the wage increase.

Ministry funding allocations have not kept pace with the increased cost of employee benefits such as CPP, EI, WCB, extended health, MSP and pensions. The recent cooperative gains mandate requiring school districts to come up with a savings plan in order to facilitate the government-negotiated compensation increase for support staff will again have a major impact.

These percentage increases also further exacerbate the lower rate we're at, as the percentage grows our gap. Our ability to deliver educational programs that meet the diverse needs of our students is seriously compromised.

On a transportation item. We've had many prior submissions on this particular item, most recently in 2011. Our district has expressed a concern of inadequate funding for transportation services. At that time, increasing operational costs required expenditures well over the revenue generated. In 2011 the transportation budget line was removed and replaced with an ill-conceived student location factor. That's reduced our funding by $541,000 from a previous $2.85 million budget.

We have shared data that with the new funding allocation, there were losers and winners, with the winners often being districts that were previously not spending their full allocation, and they've received increased funds.

Obviously, we don't think this makes sense. In this district, with a vast geographical area, we have 54 buses on the road every day. It makes it fairly difficult.

Two years ago, prior to the actual implementation, we were promised a review. That has not occurred, and we respectfully request immediate attention to this matter.

Wage comparison in our area here, especially concerning trades. We have a lot of difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel, in particular with trades. To give you an example, with our contract, we have an hourly salary of $25.42 for a journeyman electrician.

We can locally fund up to a $4 increase per hour that comes out of our school operating budget. Local industry here pays upwards of $52 an hour for about an average — even to the lower end of a lot of private outfits. Even
[ Page 582 ]
to look at the city and the municipal government end of things, they're paying $37.46, which is a huge gap. It makes it nearly impossible to retain personnel, let alone recruit them.

We constantly lose personnel to the labour market here and are forced to contract out the work. This increases the costs — having to pay the contractors' rates, which would be in the $80 range — and then it also takes increased time to perform the work and get them familiar with unknown facilities — new people coming in that don't know the schools and so forth.

We therefore ask the committee to recognize the significant gap in wages for us locally and request that we be provided with the necessary funding to allow us to respond to the required local adjustments in a timely, effective and fiscally responsible manner.

D. Boyd: In that situation, the labour market adjustments were funded by government for a period of time. That was then dropped. We requested the allowance to continue that process, to the tune of $4, just so that we could, at least, be in the reasonable market, but again, that had to come out of existing funds and programming areas to do that. We're, again, suggesting that it is imperative that the government recognize that there is a local difference here within this region, and districts must have the funding for that.

J. Thompson: On the school site acquisition item. The communities in our district are facing growing populations. The forecast for extensive work opportunities due to plans around LNG, mining and potential B.C. Hydro Site C construction will require additional school facilities to augment the schools in our area that are already at or beyond their operational capacity. We are one of two or three growing districts in B.C., year to year, out of the 60 schools districts that are provincially dealing with declining enrolment. Not a lot of focus on increasing-enrolment districts, aside from maybe Surrey, which is close to everybody.

Given that context, we're having a difficult time getting the school site acquisition charge implemented. We submitted a proposal to the government for approval, which has yet to be approved. It sits in Victoria, I believe — not going anywhere. This is a big concern to us, because a loss of potential revenue for building schools in the future won't…. It's lost.

D. Boyd: The site acquisition charge is one way of recognizing local input into acquisitions of land for proposed sites. That has been sitting on someone's desk in Victoria for over two years now, and we've failed to be able to do it.

In the meantime, the cost of land is escalating quite rapidly in this area, and the available suitable sites are diminishing. We've had a couple of local developers approaching us to see if we want to locate schools in their development area, and we've been unable to respond to them because, again, we have no site acquisition nor any ability to purchase land. With the growing population and our schools at full, or nearing full, capacity, we need to address that immediately.

One of the areas of concern, as Jaret has mentioned, is the industries that are basically having major plans of growth here. In talking to three different industries, between the three of them over the next while, if all of their projects went through in the northern part of the province, they would need 12,000 to 14,000 workers. You can see the impact that that will have on local areas where they're resource-based, such as ours.

Again, we need some immediate reaction to this in order to address the issue. Our shortfall of space will hit us in September of next year with projections that are currently being produced by the ministry.

J. Thompson: On innovation initiatives. Innovation and creative strategies to meet the needs of the 21st-century learner are being encouraged by the ministry. The B.C. ed plan is an example. We applaud those initiatives. However, at the time, as budget resources diminish and costs increase, it makes it fairly difficult for us. We certainly want to help with this innovation.

D. Boyd: The rest of the items — I believe you have them all in written format there. The ones that we've talked about are the special needs, the growing needs in this area, the annual facilities grant, funding protection and distant education.

The one that we'd like to focus in on a little bit is the difference in allocations for distant education students and regular students. It has increased now to over $1,000, and yet the requirements for those people are still there. We have difficulty matching those costs associated with the revenue.

D. Ashton (Chair): Gentlemen, thank you. A good presentation. I just want to say that Her Worship Lori Ackerman touched on the school site selection also, so she has reinforced that with us.

M. Hunt: Two questions. First of all, on the school site acquisition, is your expectation that that's held up in the Education Ministry or the community services?

D. Boyd: We believe it's in the capital branch of the Ministry of Education. That's where we submit it for approval.
[ Page 583 ]

M. Hunt: The second question is…. I'm not understanding the challenge on the distant education. Theoretically, distant education is done by computer and the Internet. Therefore, we don't have the same costs, so could you please help me understand what the challenge is with the funding?

D. Boyd: Part of our issue is that we also have to pay additional fees for our staffing because of the northern allowance that they receive. That is generated…. It used to be that we would get that over and above our funding, and now it's built into the body of the operating budgets. That allocation is now being split up across the province. Even though some districts don't have to pay that, we are having to pay it, and the teachers associated with that do that type of thing.

Oftentimes, when you're talking about computer-generated, we don't have the benefit of all of our programming being simply computer-generated. Our bandwidth does not accommodate that at all. Many of our rural areas need to have the visitations that occur with teachers going out and visiting homes and so on to facilitate that.

It is a costly venture for us. If you're talking about computers and families in the rural areas, I live literally two minutes out of town, and I don't have high-speed Internet.

M. Hunt: If I can just add on that. You're having the teachers go to the students' residences rather than the students coming to some more central location. Correct?

D. Boyd: They do both. We do have the teachers going out and visiting homes, as well, to facilitate their learning.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your presentation today — greatly appreciated.

D. Ashton (Chair): If we can go to Quesnel, please. Good morning, folks. Thank you very much for being patient with us. Do we have Literacy Quesnel Society there, please? Is it Rebecca?

D. Ashton (Chair): Hi, welcome. Thank you very much for showing up this morning. The outlay is ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and I'll try and catch you between breaths or in a pause in your report. Then we have up to five minutes for questions. Please start at your convenience.

R. Beuschel: Thank you. Good morning. My name is Rebecca Beuschel. I work as the literacy outreach coordinator for a non-profit society called Literacy Quesnel Society. I work on a part-time basis, at 20 hours per week for approximately ten months of the year.

I would like to start my presentation by thanking the B.C. government — in particular, the Ministry of Education — for providing funding to Decoda Literacy Solutions and for supporting community literacy across British Columbia. With the funding Decoda receives, it is able to support community groups such as Literacy Quesnel Society, and we, in turn, are able to provide literacy activities, support and services for people and groups in our community.

The beauty of this model is that our society in Quesnel is able to respond to the unique needs of our community and support people that might not otherwise receive learning support. We are able to move freely within the parameters of community literacy to develop and deliver literacy programs relevant to our stakeholders and community members.

There is no other group in Quesnel doing the work we are doing. There are some groups engaged in literacy work, and we collaborate with them to strengthen the opportunities for learners here in Quesnel.

We've successfully developed partnerships and collaborations with established institutions such as school district 28 and the city of Quesnel, with service clubs such as the Quesnel Rotary Club and the Lions Club, and with other non-profit organizations such as the Quesnel and District Child Development Centre and the North Cariboo Aboriginal Family Program Society. There are many other groups we collaborate and network with on a regular basis, but as my time is limited this morning, I will not describe them all.

We have a centrally located office space, and we are visible in the community at events and through social media. These actions have been instrumental in our society securing additional funding for activities. We have recently received funding through the Forest Legacy Foundation, and our local Tim Hortons franchise chose Literacy Quesnel as the recipient of the funds raised through its Smile Cookie Week sales campaign.

These additional contributions allow us to continue offering programs such as supporting parents who have asked for help understanding how to help their children with homework. They've allowed us to continue providing quality age-appropriate books for families with new babies and for children at different community events.

We are able to offer workshops and raise awareness about the perils of spending too much time being plugged in and the impact that can have on everything, from a young child's developing speech to a teenager's brain chemistry to a parent's emotional connection with their child.

We have plans and desires to help seniors stay in their
[ Page 584 ]
homes longer by helping them understand how to stay connected with family and friends through technology. We want seniors to expand their social connections safely, and we have the experience to be able to help them with this.

We have plans to help strengthen the parents' knowledge in the areas of learning difficulties. We have commitments to help train volunteers who want to work with adults with low literacy.

We are intending to gather feedback on what literacy programs people will use at a community forum, our first literacy-focused forum in five years. We would like to help young people understand how to handle their money responsibly through a series of financial literacy training sessions.

We would like to collaborate with Work B.C. and have developed a relationship with them already to help them successfully place clients in the workplace. This work takes time and effort and understanding.

We have the expertise and the passion to carry out the work. We have the money for this year to continue on our quest, and therein lies the problem. We only have a guarantee of the funding to be able to deliver on these objectives for this year, and then usually only for one year at a time. We're not asking for more money. We're asking for the continuation of the $2.5 million that is the amount determined as necessary for the delivery of this type of community literacy work.

In recent years Decoda has made up the difference when the Ministry of Education could not provide the full $2.5 million required, but Decoda has limited resources. Currently there is $1 million in this year's budget, and we are respectfully asking that you consider providing the full necessary amount of $2.5 million.

To put the money into perspective, the work our society does, which I outlined a couple of minutes ago, is coordinated using $30,000 per year from Decoda. We use this funding to help pay for rent, contract fees, to pay me as the literacy outreach coordinator and to keep our lights on so that we can be the face of literacy in Quesnel.

Much of my time is spent developing relationships and partnerships so that we can collaborate with other groups to provide support necessary in the community. We stretch every dollar as far as we can to ensure that people in Quesnel have access to quality resources and current and relevant information and support.

Supporting literacy development will save the province in health care expenses. Adults with limited literacy encounter barriers when they interact with health care providers and with the health care system. This leads to poorer health outcomes and increased rates of hospitalization.

Helping these adults is what we do. Beyond print literacy, people are required to have skills in oral communication, problem-solving, computer use, numeracy and continuous learning. People are expected to access information on many levels, and they need to be equipped with the skills to do this.

We would like to be able to initiate projects in the workforce and work with employers so that we can understand and respond to the needs of their workers. We would like to be able to help future workers strengthen their abilities to succeed by supporting their learning needs and developing their skills.

The B.C. jobs plan predicts openings for one million jobs in B.C. over the next few years. There are people who might have the hands-on skills to complete the task but not the certified status to qualify. We must be ready to improve and prepare our current and future workforce.

We would like to collaborate with industries such as mining, forestry and health to research what it is they need for workers in particular fields. We would like to help develop plans and programs to assist in getting these one million jobs filled. We would like to be able to help seniors stay in their homes longer by helping connect them to each other, to their families, to their community.

We would like to be able to work more closely with groups that already exist — groups such as Better at Home, the women's resource centre, Work B.C., the native friendship centre, our local aboriginal organizations and the band in our region.

Separately, we have the individualized expertise to help pockets of the community, but together, we can collaborate and help alleviate the issues of the skills shortage. But we are unable to cultivate these important connections and build relationships if we do not have the funding to help people do the work and if we cannot keep our lights on.

We're here to demonstrate our support for the work Minister Fassbender and his staff are doing to support community literacy development throughout the province.

Please consider fully funding the provincial literacy organization, Decoda, so that Decoda can fund groups such as ours. With $2.5 million, Decoda is able to support 102 literacy groups representing over 400 communities provincewide. Those communities are able to leverage that money, and last year were able to make use of $6.9 million for literacy and learning.

I would like to reiterate my point about funding. We're not asking for more money. We're asking for a commitment to reinstate the $2.5 million, the amount required to continue building literacy in communities across British Columbia. We're asking that this amount be committed on a multi-year basis so that groups such as Literacy Quesnel can continue working in and for our communities.

D. Ashton (Chair): Rebecca, thank you for your
[ Page 585 ]
presentation. We've heard loud and clear from not only your organization but from other literacy organizations around the province with respect to themselves and Decoda.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, welcome. Thank you for coming. You may have heard. The presentation — up to ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questions. Please, the floor is yours.

L. Atkinson: Thank you. I do appreciate the opportunity. We just have sort of three areas that we're looking at. They're all in the area of agriculture, because Kersley Farmers Institute, of course, is a representative of agriculture in this region.

It is important that, provincially, we protect farmland. I know that there have been some presentations on ALR. However, Minister Bennett did say that everything was on the table, so we did want to address that as a very important area for us.

The ALC needs to be funded appropriately and must protect farmland. If we continue to allow buffer ALR land to be turned into housing or commercial developments, within a few generations there will be no more ALR land in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. Some of the best agricultural land in Canada is already being traded off for other political interests and turned into shopping malls. ALR land is important to all the people of the province, not just individual municipalities where political pressure continues to increase to move ALR land into urban planning.

It is important that, provincially, we safeguard class A and B land in the Lower Mainland — and others, by the way, but A and B especially — even though the pressure to remove land from the ALR is so great. Yes, we can source our food from other nations, but increasingly, consumers are concerned about how that food is raised and processed.

We would like to buy healthy B.C.-grown and -produced food. To do that, we need to continue to support, provincially, all the ALR land, especially that good land in the Lower Mainland that is under so much pressure. The right-to-farm legislation is also very important to uphold in conjunction with the ALR as the urban margin gets closer to the ALR land.

The second point I wanted to make has to do with agricultural funding. B.C. per capita spends very little on agriculture — we believe one of the least in all the Canadian provinces. We especially need to optimize the federal funding available through the Growing Forward program and then not use that money to pay for government employees but get it out to the producers, to the innovation programs and, hopefully, re-establish provincial funding for Farmers Institute as it has been in the past and sustainable funding for the B.C. Agriculture Council as well.

Another part of that funding is the issue around research. Research funding needs to be maintained. There is a problem in B.C. with moving agriculture research funding into the university system. It's very difficult to get long-term studies that are optimum in agriculture through that university system. When the master's or doctorate program individuals leave, often that research is stopped. It is very difficult to get long-term studies that are optimum, and the B.C. university systems are not similar to many other provinces, for example, Saskatchewan, where the facilities in Saskatoon are amazing and they have a really substantial research program.

In B.C. most of the agriculture programs are small, and the research is not coordinated provincially, which means many sectors may not be represented. I understand that a lot of that funding is federal, but I think the B.C. government has the opportunity to have some influence on how that money is spent. And the closing of the research stations in British Columbia is unfortunate.

In this area, we are concerned about foreign ownership as well. We're concerned about the number of properties that have been bought up by foreign companies, where the agricultural developments are stripped out — in other words, they take out the buildings, they take out the fencing, and they take out all of the development that the farmers have done — and the good land is being ceded to hardwoods, not for production but for carbon credits.

These companies are able to pay high prices and take the best agricultural land in the area, often on the benches by the Fraser River. That land is being bought up, and this is what's being done with it.

It is our understanding that B.C. has the least restrictive regulations for foreign ownership of any of the provinces. This beautiful province, which is seen as a jewel throughout the world, should not have the least restrictive regulations for foreign ownership.

Yes, as a farmer, we might be wanting at some time to sell our property to the highest bidder, but as a farmer now, I, personally, am thankful that our neighbours did not sell their farm to a foreign owner who totally would change the land and is not part of our community. Instead, they chose to sell to a young farmer family — I believe, possibly for less money — who is there to help us as we are there to help them, is willing to help keep the shared fences up and can be a strong community family.

We appreciate the opportunity to address you today and hope that this process will continue. We realize that some of the ideas that we have presented are not directly
[ Page 586 ]
related to finances in the short term; however, we need to take a long view in our decision-making about this province. In the long term, agricultural land and agricultural industry are very important. We must make sure we make decisions that will be considered as appropriate decades from now, not just for the next four years.

So if we can go over now to Terrace, please. Just a short recess till the mayor comes in.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thank you for joining us. We have ten minutes allotted for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're going to be close — and then up to five minutes for questions. So the floor is yours, sir. Once again, thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is Brian Downie. I am the deputy mayor, and on behalf of the council and the mayor of the city of Terrace, I'd like to thank you for allowing us to present to today's event.

The city of Terrace has engaged the province in discussions for several years around the need for long-term regional revenue-sharing programs for the northwest. Northwest communities need additional revenue beyond property taxes to meet the increased demand on our infrastructure and services due to the growth related to the unprecedented industrial development already underway or planned for our region.

In this respect, I'd like to just refer back to the last ten or 12 years when the economy in northwest B.C. has gone through some difficult times. We are looking forward to the future, but we do have these challenges.

Preliminary work that we're undertaking to establish growth projections indicates that our population will increase considerably by 2020, depending on which projects go forward. The demand this growth places on the community and regional services such as water, sewer and road infrastructure, a transportation corridor between communities, housing, health, policing and the Northwest Regional Airport is significant. It will not be sustainable without the support of additional revenue from the province.

I'll just paraphrase…. I believe you've got the paper in front of you. But I'd like to make a statement that we were encouraged by the support offered by the province during our recent Union of B.C. Municipalities convention and, after that, the funding of $150,000 announced for conducting an assessment of the regional needs in our communities. We look forward to participating in the process with other northwest municipalities and working with the province to develop the plan for infrastructure upgrades to support the LNG and other industrial development in the region.

We have several short-term and near-term priorities, including health services, transportation, trades training and housing. I'd like to just paraphrase these so we leave time for questions there may be.

First of all, under health services, Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace has recently undergone a facility assessment and has a concept plan for a replacement or renovation of that facility. That plan will be forwarded to the province by the end of this year, end of 2013, for consideration by Treasury Board. Delays in completing the plan have been because of the challenge of anticipating what our future will look like in terms of population and the demands on the health services field.

The project of major renovation or replacement of Mills Memorial has been agreed to as a priority in the region by both the northwest regional hospital district board and the Northern Health Authority. The intent is to provide an intermediate-level hospital in Terrace with adequate space in it to accommodate modern equipment and trauma services to support the industrial development in the region. This is a critical piece, as you can anticipate. With the numbers of workers that will be in the region to construct and then service the LNG industry, the existing facilities will be requiring support.

Our recommendation is, and we ask, that Treasury Board support the concept plan for the renewal or replacement of Mills Memorial Hospital when that is submitted and that we look at adequate funding for the project to be included in the province's current capital plan.

D. Ashton (Chair): Yes, sir, please continue. You've got about five minutes. We'll get the presentation, then we'll summarize at the end with some questions, if required, or comments.

On transportation. With the advent of the Port of Prince Rupert six years ago, rail traffic has grown dramatically, very nicely, with coal, grain and containers. Our recommendation to address infrastructure requirements,
[ Page 587 ]
not only in Terrace but in other parts of northern B.C., is that the province initiate an Asia-Pacific northern infrastructure strategy to address barriers to trade and transportation and impacts to northern communities, and that communities, local governments, be considered northern stakeholders and contribute to that strategy.

Trades training. With the skilled-worker demands of the new industries, the training institutes in the area — namely Northwest Community College, Coast Mountains school district No. 82 and the University of Northern B.C. have identified opportunities and needs for innovative trades-training programs.

Northwest Community College has developed a concept for a trades and innovation centre. Coast Mountains school district has developed a concept for a northwest regional centre for trades and employment in a currently decommissioned high school.

I understand that Coast Mountains school district will be presenting in writing to your panel. Our recommendation is that you consider the funding required to address the need for trained, skilled workers in northwest B.C. That would require, for Coast Mountains' project, funding for a feasibility study and cost analysis so that there's adequate basis to go forward.

Lastly, on our near-term priorities, is housing. With the demands of the new industry, already we've seen the contractor workforce in Terrace increasing with out-of-area contractors. Our housing is quickly being consumed. No longer are we the most affordable housing in the province. We are now quickly getting to the other end of the scale.

As a result of this, we have almost no rental accommodation. What that means is the people that are in the vulnerable populations — fixed incomes, or not in the economic stream — are finding themselves in a position where rents are increasing to become not affordable.

Our recommendation is that the province, through B.C. Housing, consider a partnership with the city of Terrace to provide new, low-income rental units in Terrace.

Thank you for the opportunity to present, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

We don't have any at this point in time, so sir, thank you very much for coming in this morning. As it is, this is being broadcast live and is being transcribed by Hansard, and we do have your report in front of us.

SkeenaWild Conservation Trust — they're not close by, are they? Have you seen them this morning yet?

D. Ashton (Chair): Hi, Greg. Good morning. Thank you very much for coming. We have our other members coming in. We took a short recess here, but we will start. What it is, Greg, is that there are up to ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then there are up to five minutes for questions after. Sir, please proceed. Once again, thank you for showing up.

G. Knox: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I appreciate it. My name is Greg Knox. I'm the executive director of SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, a local conservation group that does work in the northwest region of B.C. Today I'll be talking about budget considerations for air quality impacts around LNG and other development in the Terrace-Kitimat area.

I just wanted to tell you a little bit about the Terrace-Kitimat airshed. It's one of the most confined airsheds in the world. We have really steep mountains and prevailing winds that come up, blowing pollution or wind up the valley, so it becomes really confined.

There are currently existing emissions from the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum smelter in Kitimat. They're going through a modernization at the moment, building a new plant, so that's going to have impacts. It's going to have a reduction in a lot of their emissions, but it will almost double the sulfur dioxide emissions coming out of that plant, which has impacts on acid rain. Their own reports show impacts on acidification of local lakes and streams as well as increased visits to local hospitals.

Then, on top of that we have a lot of proposed development, as you likely know. There are three LNG facilities proposed. There are associated terminals and pipelines. There's an oil refinery proposed, an LNG power plant proposed and an oil terminal and pipeline proposed for the area. Impacts from the LNG facilities will be large increases in nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxides, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

The reason there are such huge increases is because the companies have said they want to burn gas to produce electricity to cool the gas to minus 162 degrees Celsius so that it can be liquefied and loaded onto ships. Anywhere from about 7 to 25 percent of the gas coming through the
[ Page 588 ]
pipelines will be burned to produce the electricity to cool the gas. The amount of natural gas that will be burned is equivalent to about 2½ times what Metro Vancouver burns in an average year or about 60 percent of all the natural gas burned in B.C. every year. That's a National Energy Board statistic.

This will result in a 500 percent increase in nitrogen oxides, a 42 percent increase in sulfur dioxides, a 24 percent increase in particulate matter, a 35 percent increase in volatile organic compounds and a 10 percent increase in carbon monoxides over what is currently being emitted today, if all three LNG developments go ahead.

Of course, this has impacts on health — increased hospital visits, especially for people with respiratory illnesses such as asthma; for businesses in terms of sick days and lost production; potential losses to tourism because of the unsightliness of air pollution and the smell, etc.; and also acid rain, wells acidification, water acidification, which has impacts on fish and local tourism industries and commercial fishing.

So how does this relate to the budget? Well, we need funding to study the health impacts from all this proposed industry. Of course, your government announced a $650,000 study of air quality impacts a week or so ago, which is a good start, but it doesn't contain a health component.

We believe that a comprehensive health impact study should be done by Northern Health and that it would cost significantly more than the $650,000 currently allocated. It should be noted that Northern Health currently has no resources to study or provide input on all these proposed developments and these increased air emissions and the resulting health impacts.

Also, the Ministry of Environment recently completed a study on the air quality impacts from proposed development from these LNG facilities and another proposed development, but this report hasn't been released publicly. So I'm not sure if what's being allocated in the $650,000 study, which is to be completed by March 31, 2014…. We're not sure if that's just simply redundant, if that's already been done in this existing Ministry of Environment study, and why this report hasn't been released to the public so we can see if it is redundant or how it's complementary.

It also should be noted that we believe to mitigate the impacts on local residents, these facilities, especially these liquefied natural gas facilities, can use clean energy to liquefy the gas.

Currently they're not required to use clean energy or energy off the grid. They're being allowed, as proposed, to burn the natural gas coming through the pipeline which, of course, adds all this pollution.

There's also pollution control technology that exists, and we think it should be mandated and there should be resources allocated for proper health and environmental monitoring of impacts. We feel that by doing so, this will help reduce costs to the B.C. taxpayers, reduce the public health and environment impacts, and it will help fulfil the government's promise of the cleanest LNG in the world.

I think local residents are expecting that. There's a lot of concern that there needs to be proper resources allocated in the budget to actually fulfil that promise.

D. Ashton (Chair): Greg, thank you. When we were in Smithers we had a young lady from the Bulkley Valley also give us a presentation about similar concerns. So thank you for bringing it forward again.

Well, sir, thank you very much, again. Everything that you have said is recorded in Hansard and is available on line.

D. Ashton (Chair): Kitimat Health Advocacy Group, regarding child development centres. Rob and Margaret, welcome.

M. Warcup: Thank you. Good to see you on the screen. Rob's going to come and join me here too.

D. Ashton (Chair): So welcome. Ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questioning. I'll give you a two-minute warning. The floor is yours, so please start if you wish.

M. Warcup: As you announced, I'm Margaret Warcup. I'm with the Kitimat Child Development Centre. I'm the executive director. I'm also a strong participant in many of the community things that are happening in the northwest, as I live in both Terrace and Kitimat and have been here as a health care provider for many, many years.

We've spoken to the standing committee before, and I thank you for this opportunity to re-emphasize some of the points that we've put forward in previous submissions as well. I've got a couple of key points, and then I've got a submission to send in. I didn't read the blurb accurately. I understand now I have to e-mail it to you, so I'll do that as soon as I get back to the office.

As a child development centre providing services in Kitimat for over 40 years next year — and the same is occurring in Terrace and Smithers in our northwest — we are experiencing a lot of challenges with the economic boom and the increased demand for services for children and youth with special needs.

We've reviewed the current early-years strategy that's put forward by the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the early-years framework from the Ministry of Education, and we're struggling in both of these initiatives to see where the commitment for fund-
[ Page 589 ]
ing for children and youth with special needs is lying. We don't see it identified as a priority or as something that's protected as a core service so that those vulnerable children are receiving the services that they require.

Our funding for services has not increased since 2008, and we continue to have zero-base budget increases for these services. That means, especially for us right now — but I think it's throughout the province, because I listen to my colleagues as well — there's a widening gap between the demand for services and the actual ability to provide services.

We have a couple of recommendations. One is to address what has happened with the collective agreement, where we've been faced now with wage increases plus increased hours of service that we must provide as non-profits, contracted agencies with the ministry, and no increased funds being given to do that.

We understand and fully participate in the initiative by the Ministry of Children and Family Development to look at how we can do savings. But we have been doing that for years and years, and now we're at the point where it'll be very difficult to find those savings — in fact, impossible. What it is meaning is reduced services to children.

We recommend that we continue to work on multi-year contracts, because the ministry has gone down to one-year contracts. I understand it fully as to why they wanted to clean up the contracting and make it consistent throughout the province, etc., but one-year contracts affect you being able to do a long-term business plan and actually find efficiencies.

So we need to move back to those multi-year contracts at the same time that some of the changes being proposed do occur, such as what the actual reporting mechanisms and accountability structures are that need to be in place, including accreditation, which we support.

We also are asking the Finance Committee to look at what is happening with funding for school-age therapy services for children and youth with special needs. That's been on our agenda for a number of years as an outstanding issue that's not been addressed.

We support the continued funding of the representative of child and youth care services and the expansion of their services to age 24. We still struggle with the transition of young people to adult services in the north.

So those are the key points that I wanted to put forward, and then I welcome questions. And then there's more detail in our brief that goes forward to you.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, Margaret, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. Just a question about the move from multi-year to one-year. When did that happen?

M. Warcup: That happened about three or I'm going to say four years ago, relying on my memory. It was with the previous deputy. It was at a time — I've been working on some of the provincial committees as well — when we were pushing that contract reform occur with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and that there be equities throughout the province.

One of the solutions they put forward was to have one-year contracts while they got their work done. It's now been four years. It's not done yet, and it's affecting how we do business. I'm not saying that they shouldn't continue to make changes in contracting. But that one-year contract stuff — they could maybe clean it up. It's just not working for us.

Well, Margaret, thank you very much for the presentation, and Rob did a good job in there. He had your back the whole time. Have a good day, folks, and thank you again for the presentation.

R. Goffinet: Okay. My name is Rob Goffinet. I am speaking here, as I have before, for Kitimat Health Advocacy Group. We will be submitting a brief, seeing that I can only touch a few things. We are a function of Kitimat council. I'm a member of Kitimat council, but right now I'm speaking as a Health Advocacy director.

What we just want to do is speak in favour of your deliberations toward health care funding for Northern Health. Kitimat is not requiring nor requesting large amounts of increased health care funding for our hospital and health care centre but simple augmentation in the Northern Health budget for things like making sure that we have specialty services to back up the two operating rooms that we have.

We are in favour of the capital reconstruction of our emergency room. It is to raise the trauma capabilities in preparation for what we hope is five to ten years of aggressive, heavy construction.

We need and we're in support of ultrasound and upgrading of imaging equipment to get our hospital up to trauma capability. In your budgeting we would hope that you would look positively upon funding Northern Health in their mobile MRI units. We are not lobbying
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for MRIs sited in our community, even though we need trauma capability. We're in favour of a mobile unit that would serve the entire region.

Kitimat council and KHAG — we are totally behind and are in favour of primary health care in the community. We would hope that you would look upon the $100,000 retention and recruitment aspect of the Ministry of Health for new physician siting in a community like Kitimat, that you would look favourably in the new budget. We are totally in favour of that. In fact, our community is benefiting by one or two doctors, we hope, making use of that in your budget.

We back up Marg. The community services groups in our community are filling in as the stressors, positive stressors, begin to impact upon Kitimat — Kitimat Community Services, immigrant supports within the community, new worker supports. Anything in your budget deliberations that you can see could be supported, Kitimat and the development of the LNG on the north coast greatly, greatly needs.

Housing. In the housing ministry and in the community ministries…. Housing is in a temporary, probably five- to ten-year crisis, and we are trying to come to grips with that. Anything in your budget deliberations that acknowledges housing as a…. It is unintended and kind of a blessing of the boom in the northwest, but it is impacting greatly.

I was sitting in the room when the young man from SkeenaWild talked about the air quality in Kitimat. We are totally in support of the Environment Ministry being funded for not only baseline air and water quality studies but the ongoing monitoring.

We believe in Kitimat that with the modernization of the RTA aluminum smelter and the greatly diminished pollution profile of the new smelter, in effect, the LNG industry should be able to be accommodated with proper monitoring within the airshed. This is what we hope, and we would encourage not only baseline monitoring right now but ongoing monitoring in the future.

I will outline even further in a written brief that I submit tonight. It's a pleasure, again, to speak to you.

M. Farnworth (Deputy Chair): Yeah, hi. What role is telehealth playing in the delivery of health services in your area, and is there opportunity to expand its role?

R. Goffinet: Thank you, yes. Telehealth — distant imaging, X-rays, ultrasound, distance evaluation — is being used. We are totally in support of that, and that really augments, with distance specialists, trauma care, the ER and our two ORs in our hospital. So yes. Within the health budget, distant imaging, consulting like this over the Internet or television — it is used in our hospital, and we endorse it.

D. Ashton (Chair): Rob, thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation and also to Margaret, sitting behind you. Have a great day, folks. We'll talk to you later.

So we're back without people there. The first one is at 11:35. There are a couple of minutes, so we'll recess.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, sir, thank you very much. Sorry. We had a temporary delay there for a second.

Welcome to the Finance and Government Services Committee. There's ten minutes allotted for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, sir, and then we have five minutes for additional questions. Please start at your convenience.

I'm a food producer from an area called Baldonnel. I'm director of area C for the Peace River regional district, and I'm making this presentation as a citizen.

Our natural resources are not making a significant contribution to provincial coffers. If you look at the provincial budget — you may have this in front of you — I have noted that the sin taxes are equal to or slightly more than the income from natural gas, forestry and minerals. It shows the natural resources are somewhere around $2.5 billion contributing to the $42 billion budget. The sin taxes are that — sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.

I think there's a problem that there's no clear fiscal policy. I'm basically talking provincially here. I'm suggesting we need to look into the Norway situation. The Norwegians — 4½ million people, the same as us and same range of resources. They do have the highest standard of living in the world. They have the free medical, the free education. I guess it's utopian.

They have $600 billion in savings, and what do we have? We've got — as far as I know, and I can be corrected at any time — a provincial debt in excess of $96 billion, plus we have the B.C. Hydro debt, which accumulates to about $70 billion. So we're in the hole about $170 billion.

The CEO and president of Hydro, Reid, acknowledged that the shareholder loan contribution to the provincial
[ Page 591 ]
budget, which this past year was $516 million, is actually borrowed money.

I think we're really in trouble with the way we're looking at things. This is the elephant in the room, this accumulating provincial debt.

What to do? At the least, I'm asking the committee to take a look at some ways of maybe getting outside the box. Somehow we've got to maybe examine what Norway's doing in terms of their fiscal strategies.

I really do believe that a core review of B.C. Hydro is needed. It should be coming all under the BCUC umbrella. The Clean Energy Act — I just think that that is an example of hypocrisy.

The one thing that you could maybe look at is the natural gas royalties. It shows this past year as $144 million. It's just contributing nothing to the province. Business people in this community are generating more income than that from the industry than we're getting from revenue.

Part of the issue is that the royalty rates on petroleum products should be based on the principles of fair market value in the private marketplace. Right now if you have private mineral resources, such as in the Montney reserve, 12 to 16 percent of the net market production accrues to the owner of those resources. Ours are about 2 percent. I think Encana's got one in Fort Nelson that's 2 percent, and then they get royalty credits. I really don't think the royalty credits should be in the marketplace. They should be minimized or eliminated.

We need to eliminate the carbon tax north of Hope. It's all costing us money. To fill my harvest machine is $700 each day, and I think about $50 or $60 of that is the carbon tax. For what purpose? I would ask that question.

Our ag budget needs to be enhanced, and I think there has to be enhanced funding for the ALC to keep that in place. We need to look at succession planning for farmers, young farmers. We need more infrastructure. We're losing our ag infrastructure. It's a fraction of 1 percent of the people still engaged in agriculture.

Then the last one is that there needs to be a greater emphasis on forestry renewal. The forest sector — actually, this past year it was about three to four times the amount of income generated for the provincial budget. It was $543 million, versus natural gas at $144 million. It's at least two to three times if you look at your projections going ahead. So I think more emphasis has got to be placed on that.

I would specifically encourage the committee to examine the factors surrounding the stalled forestry sector in Fort Nelson. That licensee that has held that has not adhered to their obligations. There's no forest industry operating there now. This licence should be terminated, and a renewal could be done of that northern forest sector. I think it would be very positive for our northern communities.

I think we need to…. At least I think you as a committee need to look at maybe resolving…. There are some long-term outstanding obligations to Omineca forest industries. I think if we could get that one solved and then revitalize the local forest sector…. This could be done by allocating the wood supply to the Northern Rockies regional district, which could then license the community entrepreneurs.

I just really feel that the current fiscal policies over the past ten years have really failed, where debt has just continued to increase, when, really, we should be in a positive position in terms of our financial affairs, just like our own homes. We all try to be debt-free. I just don't see the province doing it.

The legacy fund that the Premier has made reference to has got some life in it if there was really a plan in place. But it does need to be planned, and that comes back to the royalties. We've got to look at the royalties and see where we can do a better job of generating more income from our own natural resources.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, sir, thank you very much. Boy, you had us writing quickly there.

Well, sir, thank you for your presentation. What we couldn't get down on paper Hansard is recording, and it will be transcribed for us. You were talking pretty quick there.

A. Hadland: Okay, well I didn't want to miss anything. I hope this goes somewhere. I made a presentation the last time, and you know…. I guess we all hope that things can be better, but I certainly hope that you're listening to the presentations.

D. Ashton (Chair): Yes, we are. You can fax it in to us, also, if you want — or e-mail.

D. Ashton (Chair): Perfect. Would you send it in? That'd be great. Thank you. Have a great day, sir.

D. Ashton (Chair): Is Ken Forest there at this point in time? Have you seen a gentleman around?

A. Hadland: No, Ken's not in. We're ahead of schedule here. I was slated for 11:35, and that's only three minutes past.
[ Page 592 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): Good morning, sir. How are you this morning? Is it Ken Forest?

D. Ashton (Chair): Hi, Mr. Forest. Thank you very much for coming. We were on a bit of a recess there.

For the presentation, sir, we've allowed ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questions or comments. Please, if you wish to start, go ahead.

K. Forest: Thank you. I see you're the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. One of the reasons I'm here is because I've heard that there is a possibility, the option open, to take another look at the ALR and the ALC — the agricultural land reserve and Agricultural Land Commission. I'd like to speak to those particular areas.

You know, I was in Cuba a few years ago and then the Cook Islands a couple of years after that, and when I went to stores, there was nothing on the shelves. Very, very little there. What there was was extremely expensive, and it hit me then that food is kind of a precious commodity. I think, for a couple of days on one of the islands that we were on, we had Canadian canned salmon and bread for two days. We take food for granted, and we need to start paying more attention to that.

I'm going to outline a few things around B.C. and around the world. I really apologize in advance for throwing some numbers at you. I know it's around lunchtime, and it's hard to think about anything other than food for your stomach rather than some of these numbers.

Today B.C. imports about 54 percent of its food, or a little bit more. Less than 5 percent of British Columbia is put into agricultural land and has agricultural land capabilities. So we don't have an awful lot of land in B.C. to produce our own food, and putting that land into places like real estate, golf courses, reservoirs, dams — things like that, that 5 percent — is really not in our best interest in the long-term future.

B.C. really will not be able to rely on the United States or on other world countries for its food supply in the future. There are a number of reasons for that. One is climate. One is population. One is fossil fuels. I'll just touch on those.

A drought is one of the single biggest negative impactors on food supply. In 2010 Russia saw most of its grain production disappear. In fact they stopped grain exports, and it's a grain exporting country. In 2011 Texas saw a major drought and lost more than half their cattle. In 2012, last year, the mid-U.S. drought caused grain, corn and apple production to be cut down by more than half.

The world's agricultural aquifers are drawing down — some of them down more than 50 percent, many of them down more than that.

Carbon dioxide is increasing. We've passed the 400 parts per million this year, and by 2100 it's expected to be between 500 and 1,000 parts per million.

What does that mean? It means temperatures 5 to 7 degrees Celsius warmer than we have right now and, for each one of those, an increase of 7 percent in our humidity in the atmosphere. That humidity doesn't come out all over the place in an equal sprinkling. It comes out in downpours. Take a look at Colorado. Take a look at Calgary this year.

In about 35 years — about 2047 — the coldest year in any particular area of the world is going to be hotter than the hottest year in the past 150 years. For that one-degree warming, if that happens in the Midwest United States, for every one degree there'll be about a 20 percent drop in grain production. That's quite serious. That means our food supply is going to be impacted quite a bit in the future.

There's something called atmospheric rivers. They're areas of high humidity that go in long streams off the Pacific, and they hit the coast, and they happen about every 200 to 300 years. They're called ARk rivers, and the last one to hit was in 1861. It produced a lake in the central valley of California 700 kilometres long and 400 kilometres wide. It killed a thousand people, and it killed 80,000 cattle. It currently has a market value of about $20 billion a year.

If that kind of ARk river hit California today, 40 percent of North America would lose its market garden produce. The current climate forecast models are that we're going to expect ARk rivers like that, up to three times that size, somewhere in the next hundred years.

Population is quite important — by 2050, nine billion people on the planet, adding 80 million people a year, but between right now and tomorrow at this time, 219,000 more people all looking for something to eat.

Fossil fuels are important to agriculture. We run our machinery on them. We produce fertilizer from them. We transport our food from them. And in the not too distant future they're going to be more expensive to do that.

In the 1940s and '50s a barrel of Texas crude would be taken out of the ground and used to get 16 more barrels. Today that one barrel coming out of the ground can give us 2½ barrels, because places like the Gulf or the Arctic or the Alberta tar sands are more expensive to take oil. When it becomes more expensive, so do our transportation costs for food.

Soil is probably the most important commodity that
[ Page 593 ]
we have in this province. An estimated one-third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil faster than it can be replaced. It takes up to 600 years to produce two centimetres of topsoil. It's not replaceable. If we have lots and lots of money, we can't buy more of it. It's not replaceable. The United Nations Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that worldwide there is 25 percent of agricultural land now highly degraded and that in the future will not be producing food.

Food costs. Oxfam, the international aid and development organization, this year reports corn prices could spike 500 percent by 2030 and that another U.S. drought in 2030 could raise America's corn prices 140 percent on top of that. Food prices may jump as much as 180 percent overall by the year 2030.

A 2008 Ipsos-Reid public affairs poll concluded that 91 percent of B.C. residents agree — and 50 percent strongly agree — it is important that B.C. produce enough food so that we don't have to depend on imports from other countries or other areas. The same survey indicated that 80 percent of B.C. consumers are willing to pay price premiums for that food grown in B.C. Local food production is going to be paramount over the next several decades, perhaps not for the people that are in this conference but certainly for our kids and our grandchildren.

The agricultural land reserve and the Agricultural Land Commission need to be in place. They need to be enhanced with policy, regulation and enforcement powers. Losing any farmland will ensure that anything else we protect will be meaningless if we cannot simply just feed ourselves here.

Any comments or any questions of Ken? I don't see any, Ken, but could I just ask a quick question? ARk rivers — is that a-r-c or a-r-k rivers?

K. Forest: It's a-r-k. It means "atmospheric rivers," and the "k" stands for 1,000. The 1,000 indicates that it's something that happens about every thousand years. In fact, it's not. It's something that happens about every 200 to 300 years. The ARk river that hit California was in 1861. The one prior to that was in the 1600s. There was nobody there then.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thank you. I appreciate the presentation. For your coming in today, thanks on behalf of all of us here at the committee.

K. Forest: Okay. I would like to say one other thing, and that is that I did send in a written presentation. The presentation that I sent in has 19 referenced sources.

K. Forest: Thank you. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look through that, because those sources are quite important. There's a lot of science behind them, and I think that that science is really going to be helpful for you.

If we'll switch over now…. North Okanagan. Is there any chance that we can see if they're there a few minutes early?

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, welcome. Thank you very much for coming today and for being there for the presentation. What it is is a ten-minute presentation. I'll give you about a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questioning. So the committee is here. Please start at your convenience.

J. Shumay: Thank you very much. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to present to the committee. My name is Jan Shumay. I'm the executive director of North Okanagan Youth and Family Services Society and the co-chair of the North Okanagan Child, Youth and Family Committee.

G. Jewitt: My name is Gay Jewitt. I work out in Lumby, which is about a half hour from the Vernon area. We serve the Cherryville, Lumby, Middle Lake and White Valley areas. It's quite a rural area, the rural of the rural, and I'm the executive director there.

J. Shumay: We're here to actually bring forward two concerns — one in the role of chairpersons for the North Okanagan Child, Youth and Family Committee, and then one as the individual executive directors of our agencies.

The first one we wanted to talk about was the parenting after separation program. It recently changed from being a three-hour presentation, including the family justice counsellor, for parents that were wanting to go through the court process to address issues of custody, residency and support.

The program is designed to look at the best interests of the children, to really have parents refocus their energy from the frustration, anger and trauma around separation and divorce to how they're going to co-parent. The family justice counsellor talks about the mediation process and encourages parents to consider that; looks at the
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legal process and explains how that works; and then the terminology. It's three hours. It's mandated. And each person is given a certificate at the end. The facilitators are trained counsellors that work very closely with the families during that period of time and allow for some questions and answers.

As of October 1, five communities out of 17 went to an on-line version only. Some concerns that we have about that, of course, are that families come in and they're emotionally charged. A fair amount of defusing happens in the first half hour of the whole program, as well as at the end. The other is for those people that have literacy issues and aren't able to go through an on-line program and/or those that don't have access to technology. We're really concerned that for these parents, this is a significant loss for them as they go through this really challenging process.

G. Jewitt: I think as a community agency that provides counselling supports, works with local schools and works with local physicians to provide supports for families through transitions, we can say that we notice the families that have attended this program…. Being rural, I have serious concerns that it'll be far less accessible.

We know when they've been to the program. There is an attitude shift. We always make it our first suggestion that they attend, but right now I do worry that those that are living out at Cherryville, which is an hour drive, and don't have good Internet access will not follow up with the program and will not do it on line. It'll be the children that'll have the disadvantage, so that is a huge concern for us.

J. Shumay: I think the other benefit of a face-to-face program is that the parents are being offered resources that will also assist them and their family as they go through this process, again reducing some of that conflict or tension in the family and refocusing their energy to co-parenting and looking at the best interests of their kids.

G. Jewitt: We have noticed that not only do we refer to the program but the program has referred to us. We like that. People have gone to the program because it is court-mandated, but then, after they've attended, they've come out and got family support.

J. Shumay: The second issue we wanted to bring to your attention is the recent wage lift that was negotiated through CSSEA on behalf of unionized and non-unionized agencies in the province. Both Gay and I are working in agencies where we provide, through our services, counselling and support services to children, youth and families in our respective areas. The recent wage lift being asked to be found through cooperative gains, which was ratified with the understanding that the cooperative gains would actually be found through large-scale government efficiencies, is now being asked to be found through the non-profit sector and through their agencies.

I just wanted to give some context in terms of how that would impact a place like North Okanagan Youth and Family Services as well as Whitevalley Resource Centre. For NOYFSS that'll be about $77,000 over two years, which is about 9 percent annually of our operational costs.

On top of that, we have a 5 percent increase on long-term disability, extended health and dental. This equates to about $9,300 a year, plus a significant contribution rate in the municipal pension plan as of July 4. For NOYFSS, again, that's about $13,000 per year.

We also have a significant bill with the unfunded liability through HBT and then, finally, through the MPP. When the MPP came on board — the municipal pension plan — there was an opting-out option, a one-time-only. So in our agency we had three people that chose to opt out. They were sort of in the latter part of their career. Those positions are no longer funded.

These increasing costs in already a non-profit agency that really does tremendous magic with very minimal money…. Simply, we can't bear those costs. From a non-union point of view, although they may not implement the wage lift in such a case as in Whitevalley Community Resources, the gap between how they pay their staff and how the rest of the unionized agencies are paying gets so significant that they're unable to even recruit or retain employees. For all of us, this is the lowest-paid sector. These issues are really significant.

We also believe that we do an incredible job in working with children, youth and families, and we're able to fundraise to support other programs that we have — both agencies do that — and work collaboratively on projects together to share our resources and, again, increase the ability of the dollar.

G. Jewitt: I think that as a non-profit, it's non-unionized. We shouldn't be, but we are at a disadvantage in terms of not having the budgets or the dollars available to pay the same wage rates as other agencies. We've always been sort of low on the totem pole. We tend to get young, enthusiastic social workers, which has some very good points, but it also means that we're going to have a hard time retaining them.

We do a lot of work. We train them. We orientate them to social work, but then we lose them after a couple of years, and this gap will create even a bigger problem for us. That would be a problem for all of us.

G. Jewitt: It is. It's like a 20 to 25 percent difference in
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salaries. I do realize that some people like working rural. And that's good, because otherwise I would have a bigger problem. But recruiting new people is going to be a challenge as time goes on.

J. Shumay: Basically, in summary, it's our feeling that the proposed actions on the part of government concerning parenting after separation and through the cooperative gains mandate will have a long-term negative impact on the function of our agencies and result in increased court actions by disgruntled parents.

We would welcome any questions you may have around our presentation. We're actually hoping that you did get a copy. We did send it to you.

E. Foster: Well, ladies, thank you very much for the presentation. And Gay, you didn't have to worry about anybody knowing where Lumby was. I've made sure that they're aware of that.

I appreciate your comments on the difference between urban and rural. Being one of only a couple of rural members here on this committee, it's important that we hear the rural perspective. The other thing, too, on the wage uplift, your presentation is one in a long, long list of presentations we've had, from different agencies around the province, that the smaller agencies are feeling the same pinch. Thank you very much. I appreciate your input.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. A couple of quick questions. I just want to be clear that the concern on the parenting after separation program is that that involves the shifting of five of the programs to an on-line delivery system — which, in your view, does not achieve the same level of service. Have I got that right?

G. Holman: And in terms of your budget, you're estimating at roughly $77,000. And that comes from….

J. Shumay: That would be from the wage lift for North Okanagan Youth and Family Services. After the freeze…. Otherwise, parenting after separation is about $17,763 a year, to deliver 21 sessions.

G. Holman: Okay, thanks. I just wanted to get a sense about your current budget and, you know, kind of the trend over the last several years. Have you been dealing with roughly the same budget level over that period of time? What has the trend been over the last while?

J. Shumay: The trend has been that our budgets have been flat, and our operational budgets have not had an increase in several years.

M. Hunt: Thank you for the presentation. Since I'm new at this job, I'm also new to the concept of "parenting after separation." From just your overview of it, it sounds like it's an absolute essential. But you're saying that it's mandated in 17 communities. Mandated by whom?

J. Shumay: It's operated in 17 communities but not mandated in all of them at this point. Some of our rural communities have not had mandated programs, mandated by the court system. If parents are looking to address any custody issues, any support issues through the court process, they have been required to attend parenting after separation, to get a certificate, in order to get a court date.

M. Hunt: Okay, so this is done as a prerequisite to the court date within the system. That would specifically be funded by MCFD, then?

Well, ladies, thank you very much for appearing. You are the last of the public input that we've got. Thank you very much for coming forward. We really do appreciate what you've brought forward to us today. Have a good day, and thanks for making the time and effort to come forward.

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1) Save Our Northern Seniors	Jim Collins
	Jean Leahy
2) Andy Ackerman
3) Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce	Bev Vandersteen

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

Witnesses (Fort St. John):	Andy Ackerman
	Lori Ackerman (Mayor, City of Fort St. John)
	Doug Boyd (School District 60 — Peace River North)
	Jim Collins (Director, Save Our Northern Seniors Society)
	Ken Forest
	Arthur Hadland
	Jean Leahy (President, Save Our Northern Seniors Society)
	Jaret Thompson (Chair, Board of Education, School District 60 — Peace River North)
	Bev Vandersteen (Executive Director, Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce)
Witnesses (Quesnel):	Lynda Atkinson (Kersley Farmers Institute)
	Rebecca Beuschel (Literacy Quesnel Society)
	Paul Zeeger (Kersley Farmers Institute)
Witnesses (Terrace):	Brian Downie (Deputy Mayor, City of Terrace)
	Rob Goffinet (Kitimat Health Advocacy Group)
	Greg Knox (Executive Director, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust)
	Margaret Warcup (Executive Director, Kitimat Child Development Centre)
Witnesses (Vernon):	Gay Jewitt (Chairperson, North Okanagan Child, Youth and Family Committee; Executive Director, Whitevalley Community Resource Centre)
	Jan Shumay (Co-Chair, North Okanagan Child, Youth and Family Committee; Executive Director, North Okanagan Youth and Family Services Society)

5) Board of Education, School District No. 60 (Peace River North)	Jaret Thompson
	Doug Boyd
6) Literacy Quesnel Society	Rebecca Beuschel
7) Kersley Farmers Institute	Lynda Atkinson
	Paul Zeeger

9) SkeenaWild Conservation Trust	Greg Knox
10) Kitimat Health Advocacy Group;	Rob Goffinet
Kitimat Child Development Centre	Margaret Warcup

12) Ken Forest
13) North Okanagan Child, Youth and Family Committee	Jan Shumay
	Gay Jewitt

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES