Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 34 — Tuesday, September 16, 2014 (HTML)

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; John Yap, MLA

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

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES


CONTENTS
Page
Presentations	769
C. Heslop
D. Caron
C. Sousa
M. Jensen
B. Wesley
M. Latvonen
S. Boor

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for Penticton — Peachland — and the Chair of this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold provincewide public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that is released by the Minister of Finance.

Following the consultations, the committee will release a report with recommendations for Budget 2015 no later than November 15, 2014.

This year we are holding 17 public hearings in communities across the province. A video conference session is also scheduled for October 8 to hear from three additional communities: Dawson Creek, Quesnel and Smithers. This week we've just been in Victoria and Prince Rupert. We're now in Terrace, in Fort St. John and Prince George tomorrow and then Vancouver on Thursday.

In addition to the hearings, the committee is accepting written, audio and video submissions and responses to a short on-line survey. You can make a submission or learn more by visiting our webpage at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

We invite all British Columbians to take the time to make a submission and participate in this very important process. All public input is carefully considered as part of the committee's final report to the Legislative Assembly. The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 17, 2014.

Today's meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions or comments from the committee. I'll give everybody a two-minute warning when they get close. Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike at the end of the meeting. Five minutes are allotted for each presenter, and if you wish to speak, please register with the nice young lady at the back there.

Today's meeting is being recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services, and a complete transcript of the proceedings will be posted to the committee's website. All of the meetings are also broadcast as live audio over and via our website.

I would now at this point in time like the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Carole James, MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill and Finance critic.

D. Ashton (Chair): We also have with us today some incredibly hard-working individuals. Sitting to my immediate left is Susan Sourial, who is with the committees office in Victoria. Sarah Griffiths, the nice young lady at the back, is in the parliamentary committees office. Hansard Services are also here recording. That's those two fine people over there, Alexandrea and Ian. So everything you say today will be recorded and transcribed.

If you would like to come forward, first up we have Cynthia Heslop, with the Northern Brain Injury Association. Thank you for coming a little bit early today. It helps us. I'll give you a bit of a two-minute warning, just in case we do run close to that, and like I said, then there'll probably be some questions or comments. So please, the floor is yours.

C. Heslop: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to have a say here or at least give our little request. My name is Cynthia Heslop. I'm the director with the Northern Brain Injury Association, and I'm here to speak on behalf of that association.

I am a registered nurse. I am recently retired from the Northern Health Authority, where my latest job was as a facility manager for a remote and rural health centre on the south side of Francois Lake. Previous to that my job involved working for a number of First Nation communities in the north and for the medical services branch of the federal government as well. So I have done extensive travel in the northern region and am quite familiar with many of the things that we're going to be talking about today.

It is the Northern Brain Injury Association's belief that many geographical and climatic challenges faced by northern B.C. residents should not result in isolation or exclusion from brain injury services for family or for community, so we provide creative and diverse responses to these unique challenges.

The Northern Brain Injury Association, also known as NBIA, was founded in 2002 in response to a lack of services available for brain injury survivors and their families in northern British Columbia. The NBIA was incorporated as a society in 2007 and became a registered charity in 2009.

I come before you today to respectfully request that this committee recommend changes to the provincial financial resource allocation to realistically reflect the current needs of brain injury in British Columbia.

The current rate of brain injury in British Columbia is approximately 22,000 new brain injury cases per year. The current population of brain-injured persons in British Columbia is approximately 180,000 people. The highest risk groups are males aged 16 to 24. First Nations of all ages are at risk, and seniors. Males experience brain injury twice as often as females.

Brain injury holds the highest fatality rate for those under the age of 45. It is the greatest disabler of those under the age of 44, and more children die from brain injury every year than from all other causes combined. Data demonstrates that brain injury is a permanent, chronic condition that plays a significant gateway role in the development of other costly health and social issues.

Here are just a few examples. Fifty-three percent of homeless individuals live with brain injury. The vast majority of those, 77 percent, were injured prior to becoming homeless. Eighty-two percent of the prison population in British Columbia live with an untreated disability due to traumatic injury of the brain.

Up to 10 percent of children have an undiagnosed brain injury that, without help, will affect their lifelong learning abilities. Twenty percent of children diagnosed with emotional disabilities and 30 percent of those classed as learning-disabled actually have brain injuries. After a brain injury, people are up to seven times more likely to develop mental illness.

Brain injury rates for First Nations are three to five times the national average. Now, with respect to First Nations in particular, there are 54 First Nation bands located in northern British Columbia, with more than 80 of those continuously inhabited communities, and they are served by the Northern Brain Injury Association.

Statistics will show that brain injury is a much larger issue than first thought. Just how big is it? Well, brain injury occurs at a rate of 100 times that of spinal cord injury. It is 30 times more than breast cancer. And here's a big one: 400 times more than HIV/AIDS. In fact, brain injury occurs at a rate greater than that of all known new cases of multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, HIV/AIDS and breast cancer per year, combined.

However, due to some funding disparities and despite an ever-expanding need, critical brain injury services have been in serious decline. In the year 2002 there were 45 community brain injury associations or societies providing quality services to about 150,000 survivors of brain injury. They delivered services to survivors, performed community education and were heavily engaged in prevention programs.

In 2014 there are now only 21 local brain injury associations or societies that remain, and these services are now delivered to a population of over 180,000 and therefore are severely restricted due to a lack of adequate funding.

Properly funding brain injury services, education and prevention will result in an enormous reduction of government expense and will improve the quality of life for thousands of British Columbians.

For example, in 1998 preventable injuries cost the people of British Columbia $2.1 billion, which is approximately $513 for every citizen. That amount has since increased by a minimum of 20 percent, but by reducing preventable injuries by just 1 percent, hundreds of families will avoid tumultuous tragedy and $20 million per year will be saved.

It is estimated that 60 to 80 percent of all inmates have suffered at least one brain injury, and most have never received help to rehabilitate or cope with their injury. The current estimated cost of provincial incarceration in B.C. is around $1.19 billion per year. If treatment and assistance were available, a conservative 5 percent reduction of inmates could result, saving just under $25 million per year. That doesn't include the resulting significant reduction in the number of victims of crime.

In 2013 a health and housing in transition study found that 69 percent of the homeless people surveyed in Vancouver had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Research also found that homeless brain injury survivors were most likely to end up visiting emergency rooms, be arrested or jailed or be victims of physical assault.

Given the high cost of emergency department visits and the burden of crime on society, these findings indicate that adequate investment in brain injury services at the community level will dramatically reduce demand for government resources, providing an outstanding return for the province's participation.

However, for decades formal requests for government to adequately fund the complex needs of the B.C. brain injury community have been denied. Denial was due in part to a lack of cohesiveness within the brain injury community and the lack of a cooperative body to receive and distribute the funding. Both of these situations are no longer true.

Today the brain injury community has never been more united and has come together to create a legal entity known as the 2014 Brain Injury Alliance. The alliance's membership and board of directors are comprised of brain injury stakeholders and representatives from brain injury organizations and societies. This is the proposal that they have put forth here that you have now got a copy of.

This provincial cooperation provides an excellent opportunity to correct the funding disparities of the past and
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with vision and leadership provide adequate, stable funding for community brain injury organizations and societies today and into the future. The lack of funding and the ever-increasing unmet needs of the brain injury community have only served to increase government costs.

Before I proceed any further, I would like to note that there actually is a provincial brain injury funding mechanism in place, but the sum provided was inadequate to meet the neurotraumatic needs in 1997 and has become even more so in 2014. This is Bill 8, British Columbia Neurotrauma Fund Contribution Act. It was established for the purpose of funding services and projects respecting neurotraumatic injury and for victims of neurotraumatic injury.

It receives $2 million a year through the Ministry of Justice. However, they have received a total of $36 million to date, but the brain injury services and projects have received less than $1.5 million since 1997.

It is the alliance's belief that if we could have the funding model changed, we could do some good.

C. Heslop: Okay. If you have an opportunity to look on page 6, you will see a huge funding disparity between the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. British Columbia is the only province listed in that survey that gets zero dollars provided by the government for this program. We would really, respectfully request that that funding process be changed.

D. Ashton (Chair): Cynthia, thank you very much. I'm sorry. We just have other people waiting so we have to keep it….

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Cynthia, for your presentation. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about the differences you see. You mentioned some of the challenges for individuals living in the north or in remote and more rural communities.

I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about some of the disparities you see, some of the differences you see or challenges you see.

C. Heslop: Oh, my goodness, where to start. I think our biggest challenge is, of course, the geography.

I'm sure you're well aware that Northern Health and the area that's covered by NBIA is actually bigger than the country of France. If you take that into consideration, the travel challenges are enormous. Our roads, while they are available to most of the communities, are not always accessible 12 months a year. We have many winter road challenges.

The other challenge that many of our community members face is a lack of physicians of a specific kind — specialists in particular. That may mean travel to Vancouver, which is an enormous expense. Few families can really afford that. Even the ones that are supplemented, that get assistance to get to Vancouver, will often be alone or with a minimal amount of family, and 90 percent of those folks then have to find their own way back, which is a huge challenge.

C. James (Deputy Chair): The one other quick question for you, Cynthia, is the issue of on-reserve, off-reserve funding and the challenges that you may see with funding that comes from the federal government for on reserve and from the health authority for off reserve — whether that becomes an issue.

C. Heslop: I don't think that in actual service delivery it is. Where the disparity comes a little bit is in the travel program. A number of First Nations communities are given assistance to travel — I will state, however, that it's minimal — whereas for a non-reserve family, all of that funding for travel has to come out of their own pocket, which can be significant.

M. Morris: A good presentation. The statistics that you quote there are pretty significant. I'd like to look at that a little bit further. The 2014 Brain Injury Alliance is relatively new, and 2014 kind of depicts that. Could you just explain a little bit about that?

C. Heslop: Absolutely. As I say, there are a number of brain injury association groups around the province, and it became obvious that government funding was going to be difficult to get unless there was a proper channel for that to go through. So a number of the groups — particularly Prince George, Kamloops and Fraser Valley — got together and decided to form the alliance and invited all other brain association members that would like to join.

It was their belief that there was power in numbers. Therefore, if we had a body which the government could speak to and that funding could be directed to, it would be a lot more manageable than trying to disburse it to 21 different groups, which seemed kind of unrealistic.

That process took place early this spring, and that was a grassroots program that was driven mainly by the people who formed the alliance, as you'll see in the presentation outline. It's brand-new this spring and doing phenomenal work.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation and for your work. It's very important, and I think commun-
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ities are lucky to have people like you. You mentioned — and I know that you didn't quite get through your presentation — that there's about $34½ million left undisbursed of the funds that were set aside pursuant to Bill 8. Did you have a specific figure in mind for the brain injury legacy fund?

C. Heslop: I believe it is in here. I'm really sorry. I don't know that number off the top of my head.

C. Heslop: No, I think what they were looking for is a substantial amount of money so that…. What the groups want to be able to do…. I don't know if that came through in my presentation very well. We want to be able to have secure, long-term funding so we can plan for more than six months at a time.

Currently the way that the funding comes to NBIA is in small grants. And thank you so much for all the grant money that we do get. But when it's tiny little bits and you have to write a new proposal every six months, you can't plan for long-term programs. What the legacy fund is asking for is a share of that so that they can disburse it amongst the province and plan long term. And I'm very sorry I don't know that number off the top of my head.

G. Holman: Thanks very much, Cynthia, for your presentation. The statistics that you provided are eye-opening. I'm looking at page 3. There's a sense in here of how much money will be required to establish and maintain the fund, recommending $5 million initially per year.

G. Holman: But you argue, above that, that this is not new funding. You want to draw from existing sources. Have I got that right?

C. Heslop: Yes. I think what the hope is, is that some of the neurotrauma fund, which is currently not coming to brain injury, could be redirected. I think that's what they were hoping.

G. Holman: I guess my question is, because this existing funding…. You've listed a number of sources in the diagram on page 3. I mean, that's being spent on something. The people that disburse these funds, use these funds, are pretty smart people, I would say, in general. I guess I'm wondering….

You're saying no new funding, but you would be pulling from presumably other things that the money is currently being spent on. How come brain injuries just haven't seemed to be recognized by the system as a priority?

C. Heslop: To answer the last question first, I really don't know, other than that I think it's because in many cases brain injury is very invisible, so it's very hard for people to understand the extent of it. What happens is that those folks tend to disappear into the woodwork, if I can say that. It's very hard to put forth that these people have a real need.

I think it has been a very hard sell in health care for many years that prevention actually is worth spending money on. I think that's a really tough sell, and I get that. But I really do think if we could do some retrospective studies, we would be able to prove in many, many cases that prevention has worked in a number of ways. I would see no reason why it couldn't work for brain injury as well.

In terms of the finance, I would like to confess in front of everyone here that I didn't draw this up. This was given to me. But I believe that what they're thinking is that if we can pool….

Already ICBC, the Ministry of Justice, some RoadSafe money and some gaming money is what I know funds Northern Brain Injury Association. They're very small grants. I can't tell you the numbers off by heart, but it's not huge. What we've ended up having is a severe reduction in staffing over the years, so our programs don't exist.

D. Ashton (Chair): Cynthia, you didn't get a chance to finish your dissertation. Would you forward that to us, please?

D. Ashton (Chair): We would greatly appreciate it, so we have it on record. I'm sorry I have to cut you off. We have other people.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, you did a great job. Thank you very much for your presentation.

D. Ashton (Chair): Next up, Northwest Community College — is that correct? — Denis and Cathay.

Good afternoon, folks. Thank you very much for coming today. We appreciate it. Ten minutes for the presentation. If it looks like you're going to carry on, I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.
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D. Caron: Okay, thank you very much. I'll just begin quickly with introductions. My name is Denis Caron, interim president and CEO of the college. Today I have Cathay Sousa, the vice-president of finance and admin along with us as well. What we'd like to do first of all is to thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee on behalf of the college community.

We submitted the brief report that you have. This report is quite similar to the one that we presented for the institutional core review, meaning elements are the same. I'd like just to kind of walk you through it and present some highlights. But I'd like to primarily focus on the tail end of it, on the conditions of success, where you may have some questions. We can give you some answers on some of those types of things.

First of all, we'd like to talk about the college and the service region. The geography itself is widespread. We're a diverse population, small pockets of individuals right from Prince Rupert to Smithers to Houston. We have 83,000 square kilometres of area, rural and remote — so a very, very sparse population — and we have 34 communities that we serve. Of those 34, 27 are First Nations communities that are spread out throughout this region. Again, with those come many challenges with that area.

The other thing with the northwest right now is we have the economic boom that is occurring, especially in the mining, LNG. That's all rolling out right now. We're trying to get ready to ramp up for the skills shortage. We're already anticipating that there are going to be many numbers required for the skills trades, for health and business and all the associated training that's required around that, so we're getting ready for that.

We've been very fortunate to get support from the ministry and from business and industry on helping us to achieve the training that we need to do across the region. Some of the accomplishments that we've gone through in the last little while.

We went through the mitigation of a substantial deficit, so we're in a pretty good financial position right now, which is a good place to be. We've developed a five-year strategic plan that we're moving forward on. We've had some facilities, some renewal. We've also been able to get some support from the ministry, most recently a $3 million capital funding for equipment to renew our trades facilities — the equipment in the shops and that. That's helped us to modernize our programming so that we're more relevant.

The other thing we're trying to do is move more training into the community. They were finding it difficult for the students to travel to the college, first of all — even the fact of having a driver's licence to get to the college or to any of our institutions. It's difficult for our students to find housing, and the vacancy rate is low. Tuition — so the cost of all of that. Also, they don't have the learning supports that they had from their communities, so that makes it difficult for the learners to come into the campuses. So we're trying to do more training out into the community.

We've had support through federal funding, through Western Economic Diversification Canada's funding allocations, to do some of that training. We've had support from business and industry, from Seabridge, to help us provide some capital to fund these types of things. We've been moving on trying to accommodate the learner in the community and, as well, to try to revitalize our campuses and programs.

Partnerships. We've also been working collectively with the other colleges, Northern Lights and CNC, on the Northern Post-Secondary Council to try to come with different concepts of how we can work together on achieving efficiencies through the system, I would say. We shared educational support. We're looking at a collaborative programming mix. We're looking at presenting how we can come up with a different formula for FTE funding, which we'll talk about at the tail end.

Those are some of the items we've been working on collectively. We've been working more and more with the school divisions, trying to get to learners sooner. We've been working on some partnerships with introductions to trades in the schools. Collectively, we've been trying to get as much support as we can from business and industry and other organizations.

I'd like to move to the conditions for success. There are three things that would really support our college, our learners and our communities, our business and industry.

One of them is the funding formula changes. Our mix of students here is declared as approximately 46 percent First Nations students. It's probably higher than that, if everyone declared, so we're quite high. Given the learners that we have and where we're trying to meet their needs, it costs more money. We need more supports around the training. The formula we get in the base isn't quite enough.

We get approximately $10,479 per student, and we were looking at perhaps a model similar to Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, which does primarily aboriginal students. They get $14,200 per student because of the mix of students that they have. Because our numbers are so high, we were looking to see if we can get that.

That would equate to about $2.8 million more to our institution to help support our learners. That's one of the things that would help us to adjust our formula change from FTE students, because we do have a different mix of students than across the province.

Secondly, we've been fortunate to receive an $18 million notional approval for funding for a new facility. Our buildings are quite old, especially the trades facility. That's where we're primarily going to do a lot of work here in the next little while. We need to be able to revitalize that campus, so we do have that funding.

What would be very helpful for us is…. We've gone through a concept plan. We've sent all of the concept plan and supplemental reports to the ministry. The soon-
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er that that can be approved and go through that process, then we can get on with…. It'll take a few years by the time this is actually functional and operating. Given where we are with the economy and industry, we're going to have to move fairly quickly on that so that we can react to the coming for all of the training. That'll be key, if we can get those approvals and that.

What it'll allow us to do, too, is that our institutional advancement group can then also go out and talk to industry and business and see how they could support us on this build. Again, it'll be a kind of community project.

The last item that we have is the student housing support. Again, it's zero vacancy rate here in Terrace for students, and it's very high for rent. Our dormitories or our student housing is at capacity right now. We've had to cancel high-demand programs — a heavy-equipment operator program — because students don't have anywhere to stay.

We have struggles when apprentices want to come in to train with us. They have nowhere to stay, so they delay their training. "I'll go next year, when I can get time." But in the meantime, it's delaying training, and it's delaying industry getting the people they need. Again, the cost for our students, our First Nations students, coming into town.

It's primarily in Terrace, the pressure right now, but we also have pressures in Smithers and Houston and the Rupert area as well. We're starting to see signs of that everywhere, because housing hasn't been expanding.

We provided temporary housing solutions to the ministry, where we would have a kind of a camp-style housing, a temporary setup where we could have 50 extra housing units for students. It would be on a lease type of affair. We've presented that to the ministry, and we are hopeful that that could get approved so that we can then move forward and start using that as a means to have students come into our institution, maybe for our January session.

Maybe even for the fall of next year we could start recruiting, because then we'll have space and students know they can come. It would be affordable housing for them. It would be very reasonable for them to be able to afford these things. So we're looking at that piece of it.

Primarily we're looking for…. We have some proposals in. We've had indications that the ministry would like to move forward on some of these things, and we're going back and forth. Timeliness would be very helpful for us so that we can move forward on these types of things.

Again, we're also helping support it with our own funding internally, but also, we're looking at means of getting business and industry to support us as well on these projects.

The formula, the facility and the student housing would really help wrap things around for business, industry and our learners.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation — interested in the housing support proposal and the financing for that. Would the college itself provide some capital there, or would it all be fully funded from the provincial government? Affordable housing, as you say, even with reasonable rents, could sustain a mortgage of a certain level, presumably. I'm just wondering about the financing model for that.

C. Sousa: The proposal that we have put forward ultimately is for…. I don't want to use the words "ATCO trailer" — but that type of leased facility, modularized — because there are other companies than ATCO. It hasn't gone out to bid yet.

We anticipate that the revenue generated from the student rental cost would actually almost cover the lease. So we're looking for the actual operations side of things, the ongoing operations, over this three-year term that would quite likely extend further than that, given the demand that we have, especially on the trades side of things. But there are other programs that could, obviously, access that as well.

E. Foster: We've heard, certainly on this committee last year…. But I sat on another all-party committee a few years ago to do a timber review for the pine beetle and so on. One of the things we heard, especially from the more remote First Nations communities, was that the people, the young people especially, were reluctant to leave.

Have you looked at outreach and taking your show on the road, so to speak, especially with the trades and the pre-trade work, to go into some of the communities and give them a bit of an opportunity to have a look?

D. Caron: Absolutely that's one of the things. We've been fortunate to use trailers to go out. We've provided welding and we've provided heavy equipment operator right out in their communities. Cook helper we've provided in the communities, carpentry.

Yes, you're quite right. They're smaller numbers. However, we've been able to get some targeted funding to help fund some of those programs, but you're quite right. It'll help also ladder them into some other training and/or education at the other campuses.

E. Foster: If I could, just a quick follow-up on that. I don't mean to put you on the spot with this.

It's almost like the pre-trade is the warm-up. Have you found that your success rate is high — your students are now coming out to your facility and you've got a fairly high participation rate afterwards?

D. Caron: Well, actually, it has been good. We ran the intro to trades with the school division. What that's done
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is it allows the students to test-drive four or five different trades in the school, get credit. Some of them decide: "It's not for me." Some of them decide: "It's for me." And then they specifically go into an apprenticeship for the trades that they like.

It's going to eventually save money on the apprenticeship side. Now you've got people who are interested and they're not test-driving it in an apprenticeship. They're test-driving it over here. They're getting credit. We're finding there's value there, and also we're kind of getting a two-year head start on a skilled workforce.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a couple of quick questions. First, a huge thank-you for the work you do in communities, and the partnerships you're building. I think that's most impressive. If you look through the kinds of partnerships, whether it's with the mining association or the school districts, as you've talked about, or community, I think that's the real strength for a community college system — to be able to build those.

I also have to say thank you, because I've had a couple of great meals up at the college with the cooks program over the years.

I just wanted to ask specifically about the issue of the funding formula. Could you tell me…? Have you been given any indication of timing for that or process to have that kind of review underway so that you can have the kind of mix of students that you're seeing recognized in your funding formula?

C. Sousa: You could probably go back four and five years to our presentations that we've been talking about this. As we speak, currently at a provincial level there is a working group looking at the FTE funding formula. We're funded by how many students we have. That number of students never changes, but the funding actually does change periodically.

There's a working group that is looking at it, and there are some suggestions coming forward in terms of consistency and a banding of minimum-maximum per type of program, but we're not convinced that that would actually address the different type of student or the unique student body that we have in the northwest.

We're talking about 27 First Nations communities spread not only to Prince Rupert but also over the Haida Gwaii. Some of these places we get to by dogsled sometimes, so we're not convinced that that will actually…. It will help in terms of the consistency across the province, but I don't think it would take into account this particular — I don't want to call it an issue, but this — difference.

D. Caron: I would just like to simply add that the Northern Post-Secondary Council…. Through there, through CNC, Northern Lights and ourselves, we have been presenting that front as well.

S. Gibson: I have a bit of an interest in this area. I'm coming from a university background, so my question is — two quick ones: what is your completion rate? This is always the challenge, to some extent, to all communities but accentuated a little more even in First Nations, where the folks start and then don't always complete. Are you doing well in that direction? In other words, are people starting and completing the program of their choice? That's my first question.

D. Caron: Well, it would depend on the program that you looked at. If you looked at the trades…. If they get into apprenticeship, the completion rate is fairly high, because they're employed, they're applying it, and it's fairly high. The adult basic ed piece of it would be fairly high as well. I'm not sure if I have the numbers here for the university credit.

C. Sousa: Yeah, I guess the difficulty arises when we start to talk about students who are just picking away at completing, so we don't have those completion rates. We're working on a system that can pull that information, but it really is a truly difficult exercise. As Denis said, in terms of trades, there's a very, very good completion rate. But if you're asking for actual percentages….

Another supplementary. Camosun in Victoria works particularly well, I think, with inadmissible students, those students that are still getting ready to go to university. And, of course, in this part of the world, of our province, it's maybe even more of a challenge, given high school graduations…. I think like 30 or 40 percent don't have university entrance. Can you comment on that a little bit as far as that constituency?

D. Caron: Well, we have the same issues here as well. What we've tried to do is — and we've been able to get some funding through ITA and different groups — essential skills training. We try to wrap around some supports for the learners as they come in, whether it's tied to life skills or whether it's tied to program success.

That's why the cost of doing business is a little bit more — to help drive the success rate, so we're trying to build on that.

G. Holman: Sorry if I missed this, but if you did get the increase in core funding — the bump, the per FTE — would there be more students through the institution, or what would be the outcome of that? I'm sorry, if you said that.

C. Sousa: We would absolutely anticipate that, yes, there would be more students, because we would be able
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to address the regional disparities — ultimately what that funding would be able to do.

D. Caron: That's one of the things…. First Nations Council asked that same question. It would be to wrap around more support for the learners along the path.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, everybody. Cathay, Denis, thank you very much for coming today. Greatly appreciated.

We've made some notes. Now, on your presentation we have this, but we'll make sure…. Just maybe a follow-up, if you don't mind sending it to us — your dissertation that you were reading from.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you, perfect. No, I didn't see the copy, so I apologize. Good. Thanks for coming.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good. Mikael, glad to have you here. It's a ten-minute presentation. If it looks like you're going to punch up, I'll give you a two-minute warning just so that you know. Then what we have is five minutes for questions and comments. The floor is yours.

M. Jensen: All right, thanks. First off, I'll just recognize we're having this meeting here on Tsimshian territory. Our organization actually works across the region, so there are all sorts of territories. But we came from the Wet'suwet'en, and here we are today, back in Terrace, in Tsimshian territory.

Again, I'm Mike Jensen. As it says here, I'm the organizer for the Northwest Community College Students Union. Myself and other representatives have presented to this committee in the past. Some recommendations, I think, maybe have been taken and others haven't, and we're probably going to continue that on today.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about some examples and some asks for funding. I heard this was the discussion earlier, which is probably good. We're keeping it on that topic.

Funding sources and structures have sort of changed at our institution. It's kind of meant a loss to some basic programming, but there's been an increase to some other programming, new programming, mostly industry-based — mining, as an example — and some foundations programs with regards to trades.

What I wanted to talk about was core programming and kind of the flow-through and increase in…. Well, basically, filling up all of our programs — this issue, we feel, is quite key. The adult basic education program is locally known as the CCP — career and college prep. That's exactly what it is. It prepares you to get a career. It prepares you to enter college, gets you the prerequisites, a.k.a. high school equivalent.

It used to be an instructor-led program at our institution and has become a student-led program. This has not been identified as a good thing by students. People were feeling much more supported in an instructor-led environment. A lot of times these are learners who maybe didn't do too well in high school or are older and have been out of the system for a long time and are now coming back, and they really need that — like a "today we're doing this; tomorrow we're doing the next thing," instructor-led format.

One of the recommendations that we're asking for is that you actually restore the funding so we could have instructor-led adult basic education. That's at our institution and obviously, as a provincial committee, across the province. We actually feel that this would be quite a small cost — and certainly a small cost at our institution — but would really open the doors for lots of folks that want to get into trades programs, health care and university credit. These have prerequisites, and people need to achieve those prerequisites before they can move on and kind of fill up the rest of the programs.

A recent example: our LPN program isn't running, and I'm sure there are lots of people around here who would want to take that as a career. It's a good-paying job at the end. But it didn't fill up, and it didn't run. So these are the types of simple, I think, things that we could do to increase the enrolment in those programs. That goes for any program in the higher education form.

Our board of directors has been looking at some of the new industry training and partnerships that are going on. Some of them are quite new. Generally, the discussion is that people are feeling that these programs have more benefit to particular companies or to industry than to, say, the public or to the individual students.

As an example, there's a new one. It's created in partnership with Imperial Metals. By no means am I slagging on them. They have tons of stuff on the go right now. This is more a discussion about, like, the approach to these new programs and what amount to funding sources for the college. In this example there's a program that's created that has 16 seats, but then the company is only able to offer six practicum placements. Obviously, the people that have done a practicum are going to stand a much better chance of getting employed.

What we're recommending is essentially — I don't know what it would look like as far as a government mandate goes — that when these financial partnerships are created, they look like more than just a company partnership — more like an industrywide programming partnership. So industry-specific more than company-specific. We feel it would be more accountable to the public in-
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stitution. Also, it'll create more opportunities, and we'll actually have equal opportunities within a program for future students.

The thing we're always talking about: tuition fees. Let's touch on that quite briefly. I'm sure you're going to hear it from other students across the province as you're going around. We really ask for and recommend that you provide a funded tuition fee reduction. This will obviously increase access to education.

We also recommend — this is part of your committee's oversight — that you pay for this through the progressive taxation system. Research shows that over their lifetime, someone who's graduated from post-secondary by far pays back the government for these expenditures. Just to be kind of frank, it really doesn't make sense to continue pumping out students with ever-growing debts.

One more thing to help with that would be re-establishing the provincial grant system and, with that, eliminating the interest on student loans. We're actually the highest interest in the whole country in British Columbia.

Then in general — I guess this isn't specific to the ITA — we need to see an increase in funding to trades and apprenticeships. Obviously, there's a shortfall. There are lots of temporary measures that are being taken to kind of fill the temporary gaps. It was a long time coming to create this shortage that we have now, and we need to start working on that so it doesn't occur again in the future.

G. Heyman: On your last point, Mikael, the funding for trades and apprenticeships. There's obviously a lot of talk about the need to increase the level of skilled workers for a variety of economic opportunities in the northwest and throughout the north. Are there any current discussions or indicators that some of this funding is coming Northwest Community College's way that you're aware of?

G. Heyman: Basically, you're asking for increased funding for trades and apprenticeships. Certainly, there's been a lot of discussion publicly about trying to ramp up and refocus education training for the skills that are needed for LNG, mining and elsewhere. Are you aware of any practical translation of that on the ground for Northwest Community College?

M. Jensen: Yeah, I get you. We've definitely seen an increase to programming. I think the ask there is specific to apprenticeship programming, whether that be electrical, carpentry. We've seen quite an increase to Foundation, the kind of pre-apprenticeship programming.

So yeah, I think there is more trades-related programming going on, but for several years now the funding received for trades programs from the ITA has been decreasing. That's what we'd like to see reversed for apprenticeship programming.

G. Heyman: Just as a quick follow-up to that, has that been new money, or has that been money that's come from other programs and redirected?

M. Jensen: I can't speak to all of the various funding models. I know the trucks that have all sorts of names on them have everything from "Western Economic Diversification" to "Ministry of this," so I think there are new pots of money coming in for different things. But the core funding for core trades programs through the ITA is what I'm asking about.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. Interesting comment you made around the financial partnerships that should be industry-specific rather than company-specific. It's very interesting and I think a good, broad look at not saying to industry "We don't want you to participate," but: "We want you to participate in a broader sense so that everybody has the opportunity who's going in there." That was an interesting point.

I just wonder if you could tell us a little more about student-led rather than instructor-led. I think we all understand what an instructor-led kind of process would be. I think that's a given. What happens with the student-led process right now, and what kinds of challenges are students running into? I can imagine, but I'd like to hear it from you.

M. Jensen: With a numbers kind of perspective, at our main campus in Terrace we had, for a long time, seven instructors in that department. I believe that is down to three or four. I think it's four. Obviously, the amount of time that can be committed to the various folks is going to depend on how much effort that individual student wants to put in on that day, right?

So there'll be a set amount of time where it's like, "This is math class," but it's not like: "Today we're doing multiplication; tomorrow we're doing division." It's "If you have a question, let me know."

C. James (Deputy Chair): Got it. It's more self-directed. The students are expected to cover the curriculum, but they have to determine how they go through the curriculum.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Got it. Thank you very much. That's helpful.
[ Page 778 ]

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. You did present to us last year, I think.

G. Holman: So maybe you already answered this with George's questions, but is there anything specific that you noticed as an improvement, either as a result of something you proposed or something the college may have proposed?

Maybe you did already answer that a little bit. You said there's more programming. But I'd just be interested if you feel, personally, that as a result of your intervention, something actually improved up here.

Thinking back to the specific things, I can look through our presentation and see what has been announced and send that along. I mean, any opportunity for the public to come and speak and have their opinions written down in Hansard, whether they're read or published or enacted, I think is a good thing.

D. Ashton (Chair): Mikael, thank you very much for coming. It's not just for requests; it's also for solutions. And that makes a big difference to us. When you give us those, it helps us out a lot.

D. Ashton (Chair): We'll take a short recess until the next individual comes, the next presenter.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate your effort to get here today. What we have is a ten-minute presentation allotment and five minutes for questions or comments from the panel. If it looks like you're going to be pushing into that, I'll give you a two-minute warning at eight minutes.

Thank you again. The floor is yours. I'm not sure who will be stepping forward. Is it yourself, Brenda?

B. Wesley: Yes. Please excuse my attire. I had scheduled later on for today what was categorically called a cocktail party between the chamber of commerce locally as well as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and, frankly, learned I was stood up. Just for your information, never stand up a Tsimshian woman in her own territory.

Oil and gas has given the province billions of dollars, and that money is not being downloaded to the municipalities. We here in the municipalities of the northwest don't see any changes or improvements at the infrastructural level. We just see a complete dismantling and decimation of our environment by northern gateway, as well as mining.

Right now Imperial Oil has left their mess at Polley, and they are using what money they have left to create the same disaster at Red Chris. Tenants, by law, pay a damage deposit. The oil and gas and mining companies need to provide full and complete financial coverage in a trust before they go near any place in Canada to do their dirty work.

Cleanup for the Exxon Valdez cost $2.5 billion. This cleanup has never been completed, as of today.

Your finance people ensure there is proactive prevention types of funding which include frequent monitoring of the land, air, rivers and oceans. For example, the environmental parts of government are being shut down. That interferes with the ability to monitor. This oil, gas and mining damage deposit that I'm speaking of should include loss of community and residential property value, also medical for people affected, job loss and how it affects our people locally.

Immediate and long-term results should be seen at the financial level in this regard. This includes continuous restoration and preservation of all wildlife and that of our habitat. Oil, gas and mining funds need to include coverage of environmental damage as soon as their people are on the ground. We are not seeing this here in Terrace.

I would also like to bring up some information that I would like to leave with you. The Skeena estuary is a world-class salmon nursery. Pacific NorthWest LNG, Petronas, is looking at dredging this estuary. In our traditional ways, that is a crime. That's a crime against all life.

I would like to leave this with you. I'll leave it there. It's really important that all of the effects from Petronas be seriously looked at.

D. Ashton (Chair): Absolutely. Lots of time. Can we just make sure we grab that so we can get copies to everybody and have them forwarded? Thank you.

M. Latvonen: Basically, to sum it up, what we're looking at is that we want the government accountable. We want a fund put in place by governments, by our government, to ensure that the northwest doesn't suffer needlessly by pipelines, LNG or otherwise, through environmental damage, illness.

They're saying when a pipeline…. Pipelines break. It's happened. There have been leaks in Alberta. Four years
[ Page 779 ]
one town went without a water supply. What about our drinking water?

Financially responsible. We'd like to see some funds put aside in the budget for when those disasters occur. This is what we're asking for. We need you to be fiscally responsible.

S. Boor: I'd like to comment. To me, the salmon need to be protected — bottom line. It's simple. People come from all over the world for the world-class salmon fishing here, whether it be in salt water or fresh water. I'm employed at a fishing lodge locally. There are many of them around here. They employ local people. Fishing lodges get all their supplies from here. It supports our local economy.

Also, people come from all over the world here. It's not a secret. It's a highly valuable resource, and money needs to be in place to protect the wild salmon.

B. Wesley: I have a couple of friends from Switzerland who come here to fish. One of these people has fished all over the world. He showed me a picture of one of our rivers locally. He asked me: "Do you know where this river is?" I said no. He said: "This river is the Ecstall." He said: "I have travelled the world to fish, so I can tell you right now which of these rivers is the most beautiful." He said: "You have absolutely no idea. You have the most beautiful river in the world in your own backyard."

D. Ashton (Chair): May, Brenda, Susanne — thank you very much for the presentation.

G. Heyman: Thank you for the presentation. As we came from Prince Rupert, we drove in a van along the Skeena. Everyone in the van, especially people who are new to the area, were commenting about how spectacular it was, asking questions about the fishing — where the fish were.

From my perspective, a number of issues have been raised and discussed since the Mount Polley disaster. One of them certainly was ensuring that there are enough funds set aside by companies to pay for any mitigation of damage that is caused.

The piece that was mentioned, as or more importantly, was ensuring that steps are taken to review the plans for any economic development to prevent, as much as possible,

damage taking place before it actually happens, which I think you'd all agree is the best scenario.

Were you speaking strictly about funds set aside by government or funds set aside by project proponents to repair damage or the front end, as well, to ensure that projects are appropriate for the areas and the risks are identified and addressed in the planning stage?

B. Wesley: The oil, gas and mining companies need to take responsibility for their financial component of whatever they are doing. They're doing damage, and then they're walking away and leaving the taxpayer to clean up the mess.

The other thing is that we seriously need to stop subsidizing oil and gas with taxpayers' money, just so they can come into our backyard, make this mess and then charge us again to clean it up. That absolutely does not make any sense fiscally.

M. Latvonen: How we felt about it was that prior to coming in and knowing that the risks involved in a lot of the industry that's being proposed…. Take the worst-case scenario and ask for a damage deposit. Really, lost wages, medical — take it all into account. What is the worst-case scenario? Look at Exxon Valdez, add inflation, and look at pipeline bursts in Alberta. Look at Wisconsin. Look at all of the different places where things have gone wrong.

You can do that with each individual company but say: "Hey, this is what it's cost. This is what we'd like to see you put on the table. This is what we're willing to do." Money budgeted for policing as well.

You're putting our environment at risk. You're putting our livelihood at risk, and this is what we want to see. We want to see a damage deposit so that at the end of the day, we're not scrambling to chase you and suing you and whatever else. The funds are there.

S. Boor: We'd like to see money in place so that any project that does go through is properly checked and monitored frequently, regularly. We're talking about oil and gas here, but Quesnel Lake, which I'm sure you've heard about….

S. Boor: Yes. Are you familiar with that? Okay, I'm just checking. I don't know where you're all from. That's in B.C.

That should never have happened, and they said that that was being monitored and checked. Well, obviously, somebody wasn't doing their job. That could have been avoided.

B. Wesley: And they're up at Red Chris right now. They're going to start the same disaster. This is criminal.

Ladies, thank you very much for coming today. Greatly appreciated. Thank you for leaving the paper. We'll make sure that all the committee members get a copy of that.
[ Page 780 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): Absolutely. If you'd like to leave it, that would be great. Sure.

M. Latvonen: Thank you so much for your time. We're off to have a tar/oil sands cocktail party protest.

At this point in time we don't have anybody else. Is that correct? If it's okay with the committee, we'll adjourn.

Access to on-line versions of the report of proceedings (Hansard)
and webcasts of committee proceedings is available on the Internet.

1) Northern Brain Injury Association	Cynthia Heslop
2) Northwest Community College	Cathay Sousa
	Denis Caron
3) Northwest Community College Students' Union	Mikael Jensen

4) North West Watch	May Latvonen
	Susanne Boor
	Brenda Wesley

Chair:	* Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	* Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	* Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
	* George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	* Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands NDP)
	* Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)
	Jane Jae Kyung Shin (Burnaby-Lougheed NDP)
	* John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Sarah Griffiths (Committees Assistant)

Witnesses:	Susanne Boor (North West Watch)
	Denis Caron (Interim President and CEO, Northwest Community College)
	Cynthia Heslop (Northern Brain Injury Association)
	Mikael Jensen (Northwest Community College Students Union)
	May Latvonen (North West Watch)
	Cathay Sousa (Northwest Community College)
	Brenda Wesley (North West Watch)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES