Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 35 — Wednesday, September 17, 2014 (HTML)

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); 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	781
B. Stewart
D. Hunter
J. Leahy
J. Collins
L. Isenbecker
T. Soule
J. Thompson
D. Boyd
D. Bumstead
C. Griffith
R. Kalb
A. Graff
M. Wiebe
M. Tremain

D. Ashton (Chair): Good morning, everybody. Sorry about the delay. We apologize. I have to say the folks over on that table, the road crew, have an incredibly hard job. Those that are in Victoria are also helping out, so we have to make our connection, and sometimes we get a bit delayed.

My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for Penticton — Peachland. I'm the Chair of the committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We're an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold the provincewide public consultations for the next provincial budget.

I have to interject into this. The group of individuals that you see around the table are also very hard-working and absolutely wonderful to be on the road with. It's really nice because we are an all-parliamentary committee, so we represent both sides of the House. It does make a huge difference and gives the opportunity of input from across the board.

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 been in Victoria, Prince George, Terrace, Fort St. John this morning, Prince George this afternoon and Vancouver tomorrow.

In addition to the hearings, the committee is accepting written, audio and video submissions and a response to an on-line survey, which is quite short. If you can make a submission or want to learn more, you can visit our web page, which is www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. You can also follow us on Facebook and on Twitter.

We invite all British Columbians to take time to make a submission and participate in this 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.

Today's meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak followed by five minutes for questions from the committee, and I'll be giving everybody a two-minute warning if I think they'll be getting close to the ten minutes. Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike period at the end of the meeting. Five minutes are allotted for each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register at the information table over in the corner.

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

G. Heyman: George Heyman, MLA Vancouver-Fairview and spokesperson for technology and the green economy.

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

J. Yap: Morning. John Yap, MLA for Richmond-Steveston. Great to be back in Fort St. John.

D. Ashton (Chair): Also assisting us today are the backbone of this committee. It's Susan Sourial sitting next to me and Sarah Griffiths, parliamentary committee office. Both of those folks are from that office.

Hansard Services are also here, as I pointed out earlier. We have Ian and Alex sitting over there, diligently looking at and twisting knobs all day. They do a great job at keeping us on the straight and narrow.

So Fort St. John. We have Dianne, Byron and Mindy. Thank you very much for coming this morning — greatly appreciated. We look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you for your incredible hospitality. It's always beautiful to get back up to the north, and it is a wonderful, booming city. I think I saw "energetic," and it is at that, especially the hotel at all hours during the night.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, I didn't mean it that way. I meant others in the hotel at all hours during the night.

B. Stewart: Good morning. My name is Byron Stewart. I'm a councillor for the city of Fort St. John, presenting today as acting mayor. Mayor Ackerman does send her
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regrets. I'm very pleased to be here representing the council of Fort St. John and our community.

As the Energetic City, we are known as a resource community with one of the youngest populations in B.C., supporting energy production that benefits all British Columbians. Our overarching policy position is to protect and enhance our resource municipality so that we can continue to develop as a permanent, sustainable and vibrant community providing a high quality of life for existing and future residents.

We are now preparing for unprecedented growth in the northeast as we await decisions on B.C. Hydro, on the construction of the Site C dam and on the province regarding liquefied natural gas projects.

Our city is taking a proactive approach to this anticipated growth and activity by making some strategic decisions and alliances. We are developing a strategic approach to growth needs within our city and working closely with our neighbouring municipalities as part of the Northeast B.C. Municipalities Coalition.

We need the province's assistance. We are struggling today with insufficient provincial infrastructure, which we require to recruit, attract and retain skilled workers.

We have seen a drop in the number of medical professionals in our community. The Northern Health physician resource plan calls for 31 general practice physicians. We currently have 14 — this combined with a shortage of nurses.

Finally, we are a growing community with young families, and we require additional schools. These service shortfalls are current and in the absence of any investment decisions on major projects.

Public safety is a concern, as we no longer have a police chief and approximately half of our officers are new recruits. We are concerned for officer safety and the safety of the people in our community. In the last few weeks alone we have had a homicide and a significant drug bust, and in one day alone we had five fatalities on our provincial highways.

This all speaks to the need to increase police resources. The city has been adding resources, and we ask that the province also make a similar commitment. We also ask that the province makes it a priority to fill the 1.5 support position that has been position that has been vacant for approximately 18 months.

We also see a need for the province to support us with our road and transportation infrastructure. Our transportation assets are insufficient for our current industrial activity. The expected volume of traffic and heavy industrial equipment required for upcoming projects will require expansion and ongoing maintenance of our traffic corridors. We recognize that the province has invested in our highways, and we thank you for that, but the current level of investment is not keeping up with our current growth.

In summary, we are looking for provincial investment here in the northeast. The investment will likely be both financial and policy development that supports community well-being.

Specifically, we are asking for the following: more public schools to support our growing community and to attract and retain families as long-term residents; increased post-secondary education programs that support retention of the young population and attract newcomers, especially skilled workers in the medical profession. In addition, we ask that Fort St. John be considered for a nursing school, an initiative that has been on the books for many years but remains unfunded.

We ask for a strategic action plan by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure with financial support for implementation. We expect that provincial transportation networks will require upgrades and expansion.

We ask for a joint discussion plan and action on policing and how best to deliver policing services to our city and the surrounding rural community. Our discussion should include revisiting the province, city, staff and officer allocation formula and the retention of experienced officers.

Finally, we ask for a large, highly visible promotional program for the northeast by the province to support current and upcoming provincial employment opportunities. Many provincial ministries remain unstaffed in our community.

We are scheduled to present our issues to MLAs during the UBCM, and we will continue to work with the coalition. We believe time is of the essence. The success of major projects that impact the whole province will be contingent on the health and well-being of our communities. Let's work together to achieve our shared goal of a thriving, safe, healthy and vibrant community that supports the energy requirements and the economic health of British Columbia.

S. Hamilton: Thank you for your presentation. I'll start by saying that I remember your dad, so good job.

I'm just curious on the education file. The enrolment numbers in this area — you see younger families moving in. You see people trying to establish themselves around the new resource extraction business. Do you have any numbers to support the increase in student enrolment? I see the school district is coming a little later on today,
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but what do you have to support the assertion in terms of increased enrolment and the need for more schools?

D. Hunter: We don't have the numbers with us, but we have been in conversations with the school district. They've indicated that there's an immediate need for two elementary schools to support the younger population in our community and that there's also additional need for a middle school.

What the city of Fort St. John has done to assist the school district, because we're a rapidly growing community — new neighbourhoods are certainly coming on line every day — is that we have put some land aside in two quadrants of our community in anticipation that schools will be required and that we'll be having some further conversation with the Ministry of Education. But securing the land was paramount in order to ensure that there'd be a location for the schools to be constructed in.

We can get the additional information if the school district does not have that later this afternoon. We can provide you with the enrolment numbers. They're significant.

M. Morris: Thank you. Good presentation. A couple of questions, one related to policing, of course, which is near and dear to my heart. In conjunction with that one, you mentioned that there are various ministries that have vacancies in the community here right now as well. Are those vacancies due to budgetary concerns, or are those vacancies, including the police vacancy, due to the fact that they haven't been able to attract personnel to come to Fort St. John?

D. Hunter: The response to that is that it's both. With regards to the RCMP, it's our understanding that it's a budgetary issue. The provincial side of the complement has not been increased for quite a number of years, and yet our community continues to grow. It's not just the urban community, but certainly the rural community that surrounds us is growing significantly.

What's also putting pressures on the rural community is the significant number of temporary worker accommodations — i.e., worker camps. That's placing a completely different type of pressure on our communities. We've just dealt with an application through the regional district where a camp was expanded from 500 to 2,000, and that's one of a number.

The increased traffic on our roads and just the type of worker and lifestyle is very, very different, and yet we haven't seen changes in the rural complement. The 1½ support staff — again, I understand it's due to budgetary considerations. However, we're all finding it difficult to recruit into the northeast region.

The three founding positions of any community are education, health and safety. Certainly, our issues around the medical profession and the health care in Fort St. John, the lack of schools and, certainly, the high-profile activity with regards to issues on our highways or within the criminal activity are making it very, very difficult to attract people to live in Fort St. John and region.

It is definitely both, so we're working hard to address those issues as a community. But definitely, some of those are outside our jurisdiction, and we need the province as a partner to support us in them.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you've pointed out well the importance of having that integrated plan that includes all of the various aspects that are needed to keep the community healthy. We may hear this later from the coalition, which I know is coming to present as well, but I wondered if you've had any of those conversations with the province about an integrated approach across ministries and across areas.

Then my second question would be…. I think it's a plus but a challenge, if I read you right. You're seeing more families move up, which is a good thing. It's not just the one person coming to work up here, but the actual family is moving up here, which I think is a plus.

Have you seen a shift — I guess that's what I'm asking — in seeing more families and people coming to settle in, which then, of course, causes the challenge, as you mentioned, in education and health care? Have you got any information around that as well?

D. Hunter: With regard to conversations that we've had with the province with regard to integrated planning, the city of Fort St. John representatives did attend a meeting with Minister Oakes to discuss that opportunity. The ministry is interested. However, due to other priorities, time constraints and budget constraints, they indicated that they may not be able to start those conversations until 2015. However, the city managers, through the coalition, have a meeting at UBCM next week to start those conversations.

The coalition, and we've been one of the founding members of the coalition have developed a workplan so that we can undertake the research necessary to really try to understand what the impacts are to anticipate. There are a lot of numbers floating out there. There are a lot of different scenarios. So for us to plan, we need to understand what that would be — what would impact the scenarios — and then how it would impact communities.

We're working collectively with our neighbouring communities to understand that, and that's the foundation piece. Certainly, we'll share that information with the province, with other jurisdictions. Hopefully, that will help address and inform future investment dollars in our communities.

With regards to families, we're seeing two issues — definitely a lot of young families coming up to Fort St. John. We are an energetic city in a number of ways, with certainly a very high birth rate in Fort St. John. I don't know
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if it's the water in the Peace. It's been attributed to that, and also the long winters. However, we have a significant growing community, a young community, and the pressures on us to provide those services are significant. As well, we've got a growing segment of our community about aging in place and some of the seniors. I see you've got a delegation that will also address that as well.

What we're finding or seeing more is that what used to be a temporary strategy around work-life balance — i.e., the young husband perhaps going to camp to work for a few years to sort of set a foundation for the family — is, in fact, becoming a permanent and long-term economic model for families. So the long-distance commute is no longer seen as the short-term strategy. We're seeing a lot of people arriving in our community that are looking at working in a camp scenario away from home as more of a permanent solution to worklife.

We understand, in conversations with what we call the home communities, that there's a lot of strain on the home communities — and us being a host community. And the long-distance commute…. If that's the direction we're going into, overall, through the province, as a new model for working, then I think we need to really address how we're going to manage that. While work camps have always been in play, they have always been seen as more of a short-term strategy. That's definitely shifting.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dianne, I'm sorry. I have to cut you off at this point. I apologize. I have a couple of other questions — to try and keep on track for today.

J. Yap: You mentioned in your presentation…. You referred to a camp that is going from 500 to 2,000. I wonder if you can provide a little more context on that example. I'm interested, in particular, the extent to which these are out-of-province workers who are coming here. Can you give some sense of, you know, is it mostly British Columbians who are coming here, or is there a significant percentage of Albertans or other Canadians?

B. Stewart: Specific numbers I can't state, but there are a significant number of camp employees that are coming from, specifically, Alberta or outlying areas, as well as the Lower Mainland, on a fly-in, fly-out basis. They're specifically here for camp life and the employment. The benefits that are coming to municipalities are minimal. This, as Ms. Hunter has explained, is a growing scenario, where we have communities that are camps, or camps that are communities, that are a very short period outside of our community.

J. Yap: As a quick follow-up, have you looked at the extent to which that is an impact on the services? You know, if you have a growing proportion or a very significant proportion that are from out of province and they're not supporting through their taxes here, have you identified that?

D. Hunter: The question around temporary worker accommodation is a big one and not understood by anyone. Camps are regulated by a variety of different ministries or jurisdictions, so the first place we're starting is trying to, even ourselves, get a handle on how many camps, how many people and where they're coming from. That work is being led through the coalition as well as the Peace River regional district to try to understand that.

I think it caught everybody by surprise, so the first step is just to understand it, get that information that will help inform us. Then what does that mean? We're not opposed to camps, but how camps interface with communities needs to be addressed.

When I talk about a 2,000-person camp, I'm talking about one of probably five or six. The magnitude of the problem, I believe, is unknown. Northern Health is also doing research in this area on not only numbers but what that means for health issues as well. I would suspect that the numbers are significant from Alberta, but they're also significant from British Columbia.

G. Heyman: Two quick questions of clarification. One, you talked about the nursing school kind of being in the plan. I'm just curious if you know if it's the plan and location that are in dispute or being questioned or if it's simply a question of committing the funds to build it.

The second question is around unfilled provincial government positions in Fort St. John — whether you're aware if that's a recruitment-and-retention problem or if that's part of downsizing through attrition.

B. Stewart: I will take the first question here, regarding the nursing school. There have been ongoing discussions with UNBC, with Northern Lights College, with Northern Health. We have a nursing shortage; we have medical professional shortage. A way of trying to make a focus within that would be to have training here in the north where it is needed.

The city has had discussions where land has been on the table. It is simply budgetary aspects from those other parties that we're looking at.

D. Hunter: With regards to the provincial positions, it's, again, both — due to restraint at the provincial level. There are some ministries that now…. In order for us to receive staff support, we need to go through either Prince George or Victoria. Positions that used to be in Fort St. John are certainly in the region. That's the shift there.

As well, as I understand from some of the ministries, it's just difficult to recruit into this region. While our housing prices are not certainly to the level of Vancouver
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or the Lower Mainland, they're significant for many people moving into our region. Because of the growth and what's happening, our housing prices are becoming unaffordable for some people, recruiting. We're seeing that at a number of provincial levels and even sort of, let's say, where provincial wages are set at the same throughout the province. So when an employee wishes to move into our region, they're finding that it's unaffordable.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much, Dianne, Byron and Mindy, for the presentation. Could we get some additional follow-up?

D. Ashton (Chair): I'll see you down there, then. There have been some additional questions. Any other information that you could put forward to us would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome, folks. Good morning, Jean. Good morning, Jim. Thank you very much for coming. The process is ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for the questions. I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're going to be getting close.

J. Leahy: Good morning. We manage to present every year. If you look at last year's presentation, you might see some of the same things in it that are here today.

J. Leahy: We start out by saying that we have a crisis in our community, and that is not an exaggeration. More residential care and assisted-living facilities are needed. Health care staffing crisis — I know you just heard it from Fort St. John.

Just give yourselves a minute to think about what it would be like if you were 55 years old or more, having a stroke, a debilitating disease such as MS or just having your support body wear out. How would it feel if you were in the hospital waiting for a third house to be built for months for placement in Peace Villa, including daycare to promote because you can no longer live at home?

That happens to all kinds of people. For some reason, with seniors here it seems to be that they get along okay at home. For a certain of period of time they do pretty well, and all of a sudden there's something. They can't handle anything anymore, and they're at the door, and there is no place for them. Or if you were in the emergency room and told: "There's no place for you upstairs." That happens on a daily basis. I can verify that. I spent four months in the hospital here a few years ago, so I know what it's like, and it hasn't changed in four years.

Our goals are to have a third house at Peace Villa. Peace Villa is our residential care facility that's attached to the hospital. We want it for a minimum of 60 residents. Now, this facility has been open for just a little over a year. We knew before it ever got opened that it was going to be full the day it was opened. Well, it was full the next day, and it's been full ever since. So we have people waiting in acute care beds in the hospital for a placement.

There are some consequences to that. If the acute care beds are taken up by seniors or others that need to go for rehab somewhere or to Prince George to be hooked up to dialysis for the first time, that means there are fewer beds for the doctors to put their patients in. It must be very frustrating.

We also would like a daycare with this 60-unit facility. That's to help for their retention and recruitment of people coming here. I'm at the care home daily, and all summer there were new care aides and attendants in, working for the summer. They all said they would like to stay here, but some of them come with a boyfriend, some come with a husband, and they take other jobs, and they have to leave.

There were two or three girls who came together, and they were renting a facility together. When two of them moved, the one couldn't possibly pay the rent, so she moved too. She really didn't want to because she has some family here — but not well enough to stay with.

We do have one positive thing. We are very pleased to learn that Northern Health is adding the third house to its capital equipment request. This is a first step. How long is this going to take — one year, two years, three years? It took at least three years for Peace Villa to get up and running.

The hospital, of course, is not able to provide some of the services that it needs to in acute care because of the lack of space. There can, in any given month, be 12 to 18 patients waiting in acute care beds for placement. They're not all seniors. There's a wait-list of 40 for assisted living. That really means we need another new assisted-living facility. The one we have is for 24 units. If we had another one for 24 units, that would certainly help. But who's responsible for getting it here?

Then it happens that the people in assisted living really should be in the care home. They need a lot of care.

J. Collins: You heard the earlier presentation talking about the growth in our community. I was just sitting back, listening and thinking about what's happening in our town. There are new homes — two-storey, duplex-style buildings — being built all over, plus three, four-storey condominiums, apartments, being built right now. It's staggering, the growth rate in this town. I can't believe it.

Yes, a lot of young people, but there seems to be a lot more seniors also. It's actually a growing population of seniors, maybe because we're all living a little longer than we used to. But it's a growing problem.

We talked about the hospital. It's a brand-new facility. It's 40-odd beds — surgical beds and four in ICU — and nearly 40 percent of those beds are filled with alternate care people that should be somewhere else.

Jean mentioned that if we had a serious accident like what happened on the Coquihalla, when the people went to Kelowna…. I don't know what would have happened. It would have been a very dangerous situation. We couldn't have accommodated anywhere near a situation like that, yet we have traffic. If you've been on the Alaska Highway, it is full of traffic. I mean full, day and night.

We need some more capital expenditures here to take care of our citizens — significant dollars.

J. Leahy: I would just add that sometimes I feel like standing somewhere and telling people: "Come to work if you like, but for God's sake, don't bring your parents, because there's no place for them." There isn't.

Just recently we had a huge drug bust. Guess where it was. It was where seniors have just moved into, on 115th Avenue — nice places. That's the other part of development that's going on. It means lots of social issues for us.

We have talked about some solutions. There are another ten beds at the hospital that can be opened up — okay? We think Northern Health could have some incentives to bring people here. They do have some but just not enough.

Recommendations for the government. Have both federal and provincial governments work with us for housing. There are stats there that you can look at and see what it's like.

Peace Villa — we have a demonstration there for more beds. Talk about some possibilities of working with Northern Health and B.C. Housing.

J. Leahy: The population…. About a year ago we got a message from the provincial government. I'm not sure what department. We were told that North Peace has more seniors over the age of 65, on a per capita basis, than any other community in the province. That shows the expansion, the growth of seniors.

I was born here. It just floors me to see how many there are and the shape some of them are in. I don't know where we're going to put them, because they're not going to get any better. We could maybe get the beds opened at the hospital, but they tell me that it's about a $500,000 bill to open up ten beds. I guess it means staffing for ten, it means more cooking, and it means more cleaning — everything.

J. Collins: The summary of that is that we do need an increased budget, both capital and operating — significant increases. If you can help us with the Treasury Board or whoever — Minister of Finance — it would be much appreciated.

Our community is in crisis, and you will hear that more than just twice. You'll be hearing it all day.

S. Gibson: You've expressed yourself well. Thank you for the passion of your presentation.

I guess my question is: do you have an agency or a volunteer organization of seniors that kind of support each other?

My folks, of course, have since passed away. They were seniors. One thing we appreciated was that there were folks around, other seniors, that looked out for each other.

Facilities are important — I'm not diminishing that — but my question is more to the kind of culture in the community where seniors have a sense of belonging, a sense of community. That's my question.

J. Leahy: Well, certainly we have some of that. It's a little different in the rural areas where people have farmed out there and been there for 50, 60 years. There are less people for things of that nature to take place.

J. Collins: But we do have a good seniors hall, recreation, so there are 60, 70 people who come out twice a week — socialize, table tennis, pool, whatever your interests are. It's a nice facility, and it's very healthy for the seniors.

G. Heyman: Thank you both for a very focused presentation and for also recognizing the complexity of issues
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of not only building but attracting staffing and recruitment and retention issues.

Jean, I just want to personally thank you for your many years of service and activity in the community. I want to acknowledge that.

A quick question. In terms of this particular piece of needed infrastructure in Fort St. John, does Save Our Northern Seniors work with the city and others? The previous presentation and ones we're going to hear later are going to talk about a host of infrastructure needs to do with growing resource activity and the growth of the city and the growth of the population. Are you actively engaged with them as well to sort of create a package of infrastructure?

J. Leahy: Yes, we have a city councillor who comes to our monthly meetings. Northern Health has a representative at our monthly meetings. I work quite a bit with the people at the care home — staff and others.

What else do we have? Well, I sit on the mayor's advisory committee for people with disabilities, and the resident family council at the care home. There are monthly meetings there as well, so residents' families come in to talk about what they would like to see happen and whether they like what's happening or not.

S. Hamilton: Thank you for your presentation and, of course, your continued advocacy. It goes a long way to helping communities like this. I just have one very simple question.

Forgive my ignorance, because I'm not as familiar, necessarily, as to how things work in the more northern communities when it comes to this sort of thing, but has there been any advance of private investment interest with regard to a facility like this rather than just it being a public facility?

J. Leahy: No, not actually. We have another society, a not-for-profit society that has a facility of 118 apartments for seniors. They're just going to add…. They bought the old care home, so they are going to build more apartments in that.

J. Collins: In answer to your question directly about a care home–style facility: no, we don't have anything. There's been no interest in getting into that business in our community, unfortunately.

S. Hamilton: Well, I see it as potential for the future as communities like this start to grow and we start to look at the resource sector as investing in communities.

J. Leahy: I have contacted some people in the Okanagan that do build facilities, and they always say: "Well, there aren't enough people up there." I don't think they look.

G. Holman: You mentioned that you are on the capital list for Northern Health — the facility. Do you know where you rank on that list?

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, Jean and Jim, thank you very much for coming. A good presentation and greatly appreciated.

J. Leahy: I would like to give you one suggestion. This is my suggestion; don't blame Jim. There's a huge cost to all this. We know that. You could put the $10 billion that it's going to take to build Site C, a facility we don't need. There's lots of natural gas to make gas plants, and the gas plants can be where you need them. We don't need that facility, in my mind and more than a few others. I'm sure that all the health authorities in the province would welcome some of the funds.

Just before we get to the next presentation, I would like to recognize one of our peers from the Legislative Assembly: Pat Pimm, who is the member for Peace River North. Pat, thanks very much for coming today. Great to see you.

P. Pimm: Thank you, guys, for coming. I'd like to welcome you to our community. It's always great. I've been on the Finance Committee a couple of times myself. I know the gruelling schedule that you all go through — two meetings in a day and then travel to the next community that night. The work that you do is sincerely appreciated. I'm sure you're going to hear all day long that we need infrastructure in this community, and, in fact, we do, so please take that into your thoughts.

Welcome. Thanks for coming today. Ten minutes for
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the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have five minutes allotted for questions. The floor is yours.

L. Isenbecker: Thank you very much. My name is Lorraine Isenbecker, with Twila Soule. We're here on behalf of Concerned Citizens for Health Care. We're here to talk on behalf of the increasing number of concerned citizens in our community regarding the medical crisis in northern British Columbia, particularly the Fort St. John area.

Universal access to health care is a cherished Canadian tenet, and yet 20,000-plus citizens in Fort St. John and surrounding area do not have access to a family physician, and many other medical professionals are urgently needed to properly attend to our area.

The medical staffing crisis undermines the very social fabric of our area, especially with the northern area expected to lead the economic growth of British Columbia. Change and rearrangement are desperately needed and required in our Northern Health board, as the current state of health care in our area is simply unacceptable.

Eighteen months ago we still had 30-plus residing physicians. A number of those physicians — long-term ones that have been here 15-plus years — visited our local MLA's office to discuss issues that were starting to arise due to their concern over the Northern Health board and our new hospital — the integration of moving from the old to the new. There was quite a bit of crisis.

At the same time, we had all the extended care homes closed and immediately moved into this new hospital. At the time, due to staffing…. They had staffing for 29 beds in the new hospital, and 23 were occupied by extended care, leaving six operating beds for these doctors to work with.

The meeting that we went to was to express the concerns of these doctors and bring many issues to light that needed to be addressed before many family physicians left our area — many more would. Unfortunately, nothing was done at that time. We went twice. They took their times on a Saturday morning, five of them. We were to form a committee, and we were to be let known. We were sitting on this committee to take a look at what we could do to revert this.

Unfortunately, nothing was done at that time, which has led to our current medical crisis. In turn, we now have received an unattached Medeo clinic to help alleviate some of the shortage. However, it is felt that this is only a mere band-aid on a gaping wound, and that money could have been better spent by helping our family physicians lower their monthly costs of running their clinics. This has been expressed by many of our remaining doctors to be a very large reason why so many have left the area to practise elsewhere and could be why it has been so difficult to entice new doctors to our area.

The Northern Health board members receive high wages and employ many administrators. This begs the question: what is the Northern Health board doing to alleviate the crisis we are now facing?

The following changes that need to be made — by 3,200-plus-and-rising concerned citizens to our local health care board — are to help alleviate the crisis, as suggested by local physicians who have worked in our area long term.

An on-site hospital administrator with absolute power to change and improve situations for doctors, nurses and patients — that we don't have right now.

Night supervisors on all wards to be reinstated to ensure proper procedures are followed, particularly in emergencies.

Unification of the Fort St. John Medical Clinic. Northern Health should rent the entire clinic instead of only two-thirds. They already provide the administrative staff for one doctor — they rent two-thirds of this clinic — and six other staff. The other remaining six doctors there are private doctors.

Northern Health, if they did unite it, can charge the physicians an administrative fee at a flat rate, which would be extremely lower. That would go to offset the costs of this clinic and make it a community clinic so doctors are united, and it would allow physicians to more easily work part-time and take vacation time without facing a large overhead cost on top of the loss of income. Now, if this was to occur, I have been told that we possibly could get six to eight doctors to return and some that are part-time would go back to work.

Incentives need to be offered to nurses and other medical professionals as well. Nurses and administrators and technicians are a vital part of our health care system and need to be encouraged to practise in the north, rather than staying in more temperate areas.

Northern Health needs to have an informed meeting with all the remaining health care professionals in the area that they employ and ask their opinions on how best to correct our current shortage. After all, common sense dictates you get the opinions of the very people who diligently work every day providing these services.

Before the new hospital was built and put into use, our physicians were working as a cohesive team. Nurses were happier, patients seemed better able to access health care more readily, and most of us had a family physician. After the opening of the new hospital, our senior citizens were taken out of the Peace Lutheran care home, which was then closed down, and were placed in the new, sterile environment where they were not even allowed to hang pictures of their loved ones on the walls.

With lack of available health care in our area, we cannot expect our senior citizens to use programs such as Medeo, or video conferencing, to access doctors on line. Our seniors work hard throughout their lives to improve our local area and build a solid, thriving community. They deserve our utmost respect and care.
[ Page 789 ]

Our doctors and nurses also put forth their best effort to ensure we receive the best possible care in our times of need and also deserve our respect and support and the respect and support of the Northern Health board.

If this committee would consider financial help for the residents of the north, it could be used to renovate the Peace Lutheran extended care facility with the 40 beds, and consideration should be made to reopen Pouce Coupe's extended care unit as well. This would open up beds at the new hospital, giving it the ability to function properly, as well as helping alleviate the stressful conditions now being faced by our medical team.

We acknowledge that we are allotted funds in the northern area but feel that they may need to be readdressed to ensure the proper allotments are designed to the many different segments of our health care. Extra funding for recruitment and retention are needed to effectively correct staffing in the north.

I feel it is really vital that they have this meeting with their workers, because — on the petitions we have gathered, in the heart-wrenching stories that came to us of what is happening in our health care — it definitely deserves a restructuring.

Basically — unless, Twila, you would like to say something — that would be what I have to say.

T. Soule: We are an ad hoc group — Lorraine, myself, another couple of members of the community. We just came together out of concern. In order to back our voices, we went out with petitions in the community so we could sit here and clearly have power behind our voice so you knew we were not just four strangers off the street. We've listened to what those people have to say.

I don't need to tell the gentlemen and the women at this table that the northeastern section of this province contributes over 30 percent of your gross domestic product, and we are going to be heard.

I don't want to be confrontational, but I am telling you — and I know government runs very slow; the wheels turn slowly — we need to be heard. You can go to Victoria and tell them. The concerns in our region are real.

Of course, I'm with Jean. If LNG comes in, they can also provide the power that they need to run those plants. They don't need Site C. That's a huge amount of money. I'm only speaking personally on that regard.

I don't know how deep those pockets run in Victoria, but I do know that we contribute a huge amount of money to it, and it's time for you to recognize that we need it back. The situation in Fort…. We'll take you out. You need to get out. You need to take a look at the town and see how it's growing.

That's why we're here, and that's the bulk of our presentation. Thank you very much for coming north. Thank you very much for your time.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think it's a reinforcing message that we're hearing this morning that I think will run through some presentations.

I'm just curious. You mentioned that a lot of the challenges…. Obviously some are related to growth and the economic activity in the community, but you also mentioned the shift when the new hospital opened and that that really caused some of the difficulties. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that — whether that was a communications issue, whether there were budget cuts that happened at the same time and why that seems to be a marker in your presentation.

L. Isenbecker: From transferring that hospital…. The time it closed down, with the extended health care and stuff, it really put the strain on the hospital beds. At the time, I don't know if it was the administration or there just wasn't a lot of…. This hospital is designed totally different. It's sort of all separate wings, and there isn't that communication and flow that is needed and expertise between each other, because everybody's got their own little segment.

Then, all of a sudden, the health authorities removed night supervisors. So let's say we get a nurse from Kelowna, or wherever, that comes in — new entry. She chooses to come here. She may have six months' experience, but if she doesn't have a head supervisor or a head nurse and she has a bleed down on a ward, she phones — this has happened — emergency and says, "I need help," and they say: "We're busy. We can't come." This nurse has to deal with lack of experience, really, or lack of confidence to deal with this. She has to deal with the scenario, and then she resigns.

Upon talking to nurses in our petitions we took on our thing, they wouldn't sign petitions due to being scared of losing their jobs. They sort of had a comment thing. They can't be saying much, but they did speak, and they're very unhappy.

It needs to be restructured so there is someone on site all the time, right in that hospital, that can make decisions and can take and start to unite this group and start working to get it to a positive aspect. If we could retain and bring back six, seven doctors, we have solved a big part of our problem already. That's like 14,000 people back into positions and things.

Why would the government, or the Northern Health board, lease a medical clinic that's available for 16 to 20 doctors and pay two-thirds of that, lease two-thirds of it, hire one doctor and six staff? That's a big cost to all us taxpayers. Why wouldn't they just open it up to the 16, provide the administrative staff and say to the doctors: "Now
[ Page 790 ]
instead of $11,000 a month, you guys can pay $4,000 a month"?

And you know what? It's like doctors that want to work part-time. They cannot afford $11,000 a month for their contribution and then take a two-week holiday, which is another $20,000. Would you want to spend $30,000 plus your holiday on a holiday? I don't think so. Nobody can afford that.

Nobody will come to this town. I mean, even people moving here today…. I'm born here. I love this place. It's great people. People coming here need to realize that it is a good community. The only thing is that they're coming here to make a living, and they're coming here for the money, you know, because the boom attracts that.

Common sense just says: put it in a simple solution here, and don't play the paper shuffle. It needs to be dealt with. It needs to be dealt with immediately.

We just started this petition three weeks ago — 3,200 and rising right now. If we continue it on to October 15, we're probably over 10,000 people.

When you look in the eyes of those people, they go: "What are we going to do? We don't have a doctor. My kid is sick." You know where they're going? They're rushing to Dawson Creek. They're going and following physicians to Fort Nelson. We're paying extra costs to Grande Prairie because now the physicians had to take some of them on for MRIs. We've always gone there.

We have the best hospital rate now, probably. Well, you know how much it costs, I'm sure, of all you. We have the best operating rooms in British Columbia. If you want to fly doctors here, then you fly some surgeons here who can't operate in Vancouver. I know Dr. Phang, the colon specialist. He's the best in the province. He said: "I'd do two more days. I don't have hospital time." Bring him here and clean up some of this area. That's my recommendation.

Well, ladies, thank you very much — and again, positive reinforcement for us. Have you talked to Northern Health? Have you talked to the board officials at Northern Health?

T. Soule: We have Concerned Citizens for Health Care tonight. I see you all bringing in your suitcases. If any of you would like to stay, you could.

T. Soule: Northern Health will be represented there, but we haven't been able to garner their ear yet. We believe by Thursday morning we'll have their full attention.

Your presentation — could we get a copy of it? Would you mind? Did you leave one? Okay, perfect. Thank you very much, ladies.

Welcome. Thank you very much for coming today. We have ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questioning, and I'll give you a two-minute warning if required. Please proceed.

J. Thompson: Excellent. Thanks for visiting our community and listening to our concerns and taking them back, taking them seriously and everything else. I see we don't have much representation for the north, so hopefully….

J. Thompson: Hon. Mr. Morris — yeah. You'll have to educate these guys on the flight home.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, I was bugging George all the way up here, coming over from Terrace, because he has a history in this community and communities. Boy, it was a thoughtful…. A lot of thoughtful information came forward from the days of his tenure up here. We do our best to represent the province as a cross-section.

A few things on the list here. We have new and replacement schools, transportation and the Northern Opportunities. I think you have our presentation — which has been the same, or very similar, the last few years — so we'll get into it.

Just looking at a map, on a side note, too, our district is almost 100,000 square kilometres. Some of the statistics on that: we have 5,900 students; we transport about 2,300 of those. Transportation — we'll get into that in a moment.

New and replacement schools. We currently have one of the highest-growing districts in B.C. Surrey has finally fallen behind. They were outpacing us, and I think they have some catching up to do. We're definitely taking off here, as you've heard from all the other speakers — rapid growth and, I think, an obvious focus for the economic driver of the province, really.

Huge pressures here for us. All our statistics line up with the Ministry of Education statistics. I think we have an extra 150 students here this year, so it increased pressure once again. Growth in housing development — you heard from many of the other speakers that it's taking off. Local developers are aggressively building. Availability is dwindling, and land prices are increasing dramatically.
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The latest statistic we have from two years ago, per acre, was $289,000 — up to $600,000 in two years. Developers recognize it. A nearby school is a sales feature for their residential properties. However, we're unable to commit to purchase because we can't get the capital to do so from the Ministry of Education.

The city of Fort St. John has been very supportive, and together we're looking at alternatives to address the immediacy of at least procuring land somehow or tying up land so we can build a school in the future to save the province money.

Again, two years ago, we were doing the same thing when the cost was half. So there are obvious frustrations now with the fact that the school would have been built for free.

We request this committee to relay our request to achieve a commitment of funds to proceed with the procurement of necessary land. Right now we're looking at about a $3 million cost on that.

We're also extremely concerned with a Ministry of Education letter we recently received that says they are uninterested in receiving our capital plans this year from the school districts. So capital is off for this year, it sounds like. It's hard to believe.

We've had other meetings, as well, with the Ministry of Education and members from Treasury Board, who have sat across the table just like this down in Vancouver. They've looked at their statistics and said: "Yeah, it looks like you have enough students for one school, like you say."

Well, actually, it's closer to two schools. We're full. We've done a lot of work in replacing…. We're stripping out libraries to create classrooms, computer labs to create classrooms. We're doing everything we can in those schools out of our operational budget, and no capital dollars are coming forth. We're stretched to the limit at this point and are looking for your help.

D. Boyd: Sure. If we're looking at the transportation, we've included a number of items there, but as you are probably well aware, the transportation budgets were translated into a student location factor. We've been able to point out that there is a major flaw with the student location factor. That flaw is basically because it deals with population density, not with population dispersion. As has been mentioned, our vast area is quite incredible.

To give you a really quick example, we have a school out at Wonowon, which is about 101 kilometres up the highway. Basically, if you're looking at it, for a student that's attending the elementary school there, we get about $1,020. We don't have any high school there, and at grade 7 they move into either Charlie Lake or Fort St. John. If they move to Fort St. John, we now get the Fort St. John rate, which is basically, if they're high school, about $250, compared to the $1,000. So we're transporting them much further and yet get a fraction of the cost. That's the flaw.

We've been told the flaw has been identified. They accepted and acknowledged that there is a flaw. They don't know how to fix it and say it would just make it more complicated. They already created a complication for us. They're afraid that there will be win and lose districts.

We're one of the districts that lost to the tune of $541,000. We were already spending about $200,000 more than we were receiving each year, so we were looking for about three-quarters of a million dollars. Our local communities and regional district came forward to assist us in this one-year period, just to give us an extension on trying to make the government understand that there is a real need to adjust this formula.

There are a few other things that go along with that. If you are transporting people and we can't bus them, then you put more vehicles on the road. You've already heard that the highways here are treacherous right now. I've travelled up to Wonowon three times over the last week, and I saw near head-on collisions continuously on that route. It's just amazing, the difficulty. Also, again, carbon footprint. All of those things are extended from it.

Obviously, there is a major concern here with the transportation. We need immediacy to address it. It is a major issue. It's not a want here; it's a necessity. We must have that addressed, and we are requesting your assistance in doing that.

J. Thompson: We have taken this to the Technical Review Committee and challenged them. The committee's reasoning — points (a) through (d) here in our submission — are also the same complaints we had.

We said that this adds complexity to what already existed. We said there were unintended consequences, where many districts that weren't even spending the funds got now additional funds, and those that couldn't do the transportation without taking money out of their operational budget now get it stripped away. They're already at a loss. Further loss increased after this.

As stated in (c) and (d) as well, these were exactly our complaints, which were just reiterated to us, and why they wouldn't change it in the future. Very, very frustrating.

Obviously, the historical piece, too, is that in these vast geographical regions we've amalgamated schools over the years, not because of declining enrolment, but many, many years ago, all the small, rural schools…. We had them come in, transported people, and now we're saying: "We're not really dealing with transportation. That's not what we do in education anymore." It's, again, frustrating because of the savings they were looking for at that time, right?
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D. Boyd: Yes, if I can speak to this. Northern Opportunities is a conglomerate, basically, of the regional district areas. It involves three school districts — Fort Nelson, Dawson Creek and ourselves — as well as Northern Lights College, local industry and all the communities.

Last year in our submission there was a recommendation that came out of your committee to develop a provincial career training model to meet the educational needs of high school students, based on the Northern Opportunities partnership model and funded accordingly.

To date we've had nothing occur. So we're wondering if there is a status in actually getting a recommendation. I think it was listed as No. 6 of the top ten, and we haven't heard anything. We're becoming doubtful, I guess, as to the impact that these conversations have. I just wanted to share that with you.

J. Thompson: In summary, obviously you're well aware you're going to hear of many infrastructure needs — whether it be transportation, highway improvements, health care, education or municipal support, whether it's policing issues or attending to the camp issues locally. Certainly, education is top of the list in my mind in a lot of ways.

This region needs help and support in the growth to help the entire province, and hopefully, that's taken seriously throughout the group, the Finance board.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. Having gone through some of the funding formula challenges around the school board table for many years, I know the frustration that occurs.

Just a couple of questions. One is the issue of land. I mean, you mentioned the escalating costs, which I think is important for everyone to pay attention to. If you received the resources, if the resources were there, is there land to buy? Is there land to purchase? I guess that'd be my first question.

Then, the second one, just around the funding formula. You mentioned you've taken it to the technical team. You've had that discussion with them. Have they given any timeline? I recognize they've said that it just will create new complications, but of course, that happens with any formula. There's grandparenting. There are all kinds of ways of dealing with the haves and have-nots. I wondered if you'd been given any kind of timeline around that.

J. Thompson: On question 1, the land to purchase, the developers are developing rapidly. They have set land temporarily aside, but we can't expect that they hold that for any length of time. They have developments to put through. Why are they going to take it out of their pockets, so to speak? So that land is available for a very limited time.

D. Boyd: One other thing, if I could share. We have been working very closely with the city of Fort St. John, as they are very keenly aware of the need for infrastructure and the facilities to attract good-quality people in this area. So they have also been working with us, setting land aside in order to incorporate a school site. In fact, there are two sites that the city has been working with us on.

Currently, land is available. We just have to be able to move on it and work with the city to actually provide access to those pieces of property so that we can get on with building. The concern, of course, is now that they've shut us down as far as a capital plan, we're not sure if that means our old capital plan still exists, because typically when a school goes on the site, it's put on year 3. We don't have any choice. It just goes automatically to year 3. We've been on year 3 for these places for many years now, and it never changes. That's a major concern.

J. Thompson: Again, the city can't just buy land and sit on it at these prices either. It's not right for the taxpaying citizens of the community.

D. Boyd: Your second question, the technical review. Basically, we have presented once jointly with Dawson Creek and separately ourselves, on a separate review that we requested. Minister Fassbender provided that opportunity for us. We got our response, and it was then a dead issue. So we have gotten no further expectation that they're going to even consider anything. They've just said: "No, we're not changing it."

I should know this. But doesn't the Local Government Act give municipalities the authority to require land dedication for schools, analogous to parkland dedications? Has that ever come up, or am I completely off base here?

D. Boyd: Basically, they will work with developers and so on to make school sites. We'd still have to be able to procure it. We have no dollars. We have no residual dollars in a capital plan so that we can purchase the actual land.
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S. Gibson: You may be interested in knowing that in some areas of the province developers actually will contribute to the construction of the school as well. So I would encourage you to engage some of the folks that are building subdivisions, approach them and say: "Would you be willing to pay 50 percent of the cost to building the school?"

I'm making that comment in light of the fact that you said it makes it attractive for a residential developer to have a school in the immediate area, and with your growing population, I think it would be something I'd recommend.

J. Thompson: I think that in a competitive environment then you'd definitely have that. We're stretched so thin. They know we need schools. They know the province should rightly be paying for them. In a smaller development in cities this size, I don't know that they could foot the bill for 50 percent and still have an economical reason to do the job. They're not that huge development you see in the city, so I don't know if it would be the same.

D. Boyd: In one case, working with one developer, they were interested in setting land aside within their development at the going rate, the market value. There's no incentive, because right now they know that a year from now, most of that land will be gone. Some of the land that we were talking about before has already gone, and the cost has escalated extensively.

You know, Doug, I have a tendency to disagree with you a little tiny bit. There are opportunities to work between the school board and the municipalities. I don't know enough about this area and would never profess to. But there are opportunities to break down those silos and work not only with the developer but with the municipalities, with the regional district and with the school boards.

It's tough. I mean, we're hearing this all over the province. You asked about last year. There were 73 unanimous recommendations that went forward to the Legislature, which were then forwarded to the ministry. Were there some successes? Yes. Were there enough? No.

Again, it's not a bottomless cup. What staff try and do, along with recommendations that come from this committee and many other committees that the government has, is try and fill as many needs as possible. We know the challenges that everybody is facing, and we hear it. Mark our words; the sympathy is incredible around this table. All we can do is present and try, and it's working together, which I have seen does make a difference.

I would encourage you, and I hope…. You're probably not attending UBCM, are you?

D. Boyd: No. But if I could clarify one thing. This community and all of our regional communities are incredibly involved with the school district. I'll give you one example. We just built a gym in one of our rural schools. We've been looking at trying to build a facility there for basically 40 years that I know of, because that's how long I've been in the district.

It finally was accomplished by the regional district saying: "We'll put up two-thirds of the cost if the ministry will put up one-third." The ministry agreed, but only in a case where their one-third was then split between the district operational dollars and that. So they got a $3.6 million facility for $300,000. So that's what we're talking about.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, but "they" are the taxpayers. There's only one taxpayer out there.

D. Ashton (Chair): What we try and do is…. It's hard for me to say. I would just like to see… I'm glad to hear that everybody is working together, because that doesn't happen all over the province.

We will take your comments. I've put a big asterisk beside some of your likes that you have requested. Please work with the local authorities that are here and also from the province, and see if we can make a difference. The province recognizes what's taking place up here. It's just, again, trying to satisfy the needs of the entire province.

J. Thompson: I think, furthermore, too, of course, we're one of the increasing enrolment year after year after year, which sets us aside to some degree. We do see many schools being built in the Lower Mainland and around Victoria where maybe there are more voters, maybe there's more impact, that sort of thing.

There are schools being built. There's capital money going into schools in the province. I think the last I counted, in the last five years there have been 11 schools built. We need one or two up here — right?

D. Ashton (Chair): That's what we want to hear. Again, I have put a big asterisk beside it in our discussions.

Gentlemen, thanks for coming forward today. I really do appreciate it, and I appreciate your openness and your honesty in the issues that are being faced up here.

J. Thompson: We do appreciate this opportunity to speak to you too, so thank you very much, all of you.

D. Bumstead: Yeah. The list of attendees at the group today intimidated my team, so they said: "You're flying solo."

D. Ashton (Chair): They have a lot of confidence in Your Worship. It's always good to see you, Dale.

First of all, it's a pleasure to be here. Obviously, I want to recognize that we're on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 8 First Nations.

It seems strange, as the mayor of Dawson Creek, to be here welcoming you to the city of Fort St. John, but I'm doing it today as the result of a new phenomenon that's just been announced over the last week in northeastern British Columbia, and it's the Northeast Resource Municipalities Coalition. We sent a presentation out. Hopefully, the panel has that and has had a chance to perhaps review it.

I'm going to touch on three components around our presentation today, representing the Northeast Resource Municipalities Coalition. You've heard, I think, some of the components around the impacts and the influences that are occurring in northeastern British Columbia today, as transpired over the last number of years. Certainly, first of all, from my perspective….

D. Bumstead: Colin Griffith is the executive director of the Northeast Resource Coalition for us.

The coalition, really, has…. I want to talk about that first. It is, as the Chair indicated to the last group, an example of the resource, the municipalities in northeastern British Columbia understanding, recognizing what's taking place in northeastern British Columbia. We hear terms like "transformational" and "generational" in terms of the opportunities that are being created as the result of the natural gas phenomenon that's occurring in northeastern British Columbia.

British Columbia knows logging and lumber and mining and forestry and fishing and tourism and technology, but this natural gas, this oil and gas industry is a phenomenon unique to the province in northeastern British Columbia. Its development of what's taking place here is a difficult process for we who are living it every day to understand, and certainly, for the province of British Columbia — understanding this phenomenon.

First of all, the mayors of northeastern British Columbia took the approach a number of months ago and said that we need to be singular in our voice and our focus and the discipline that we bring to the planning of the infrastructure and services that are required with the development of what's taking place in northeastern British Columbia.

From that, we've had a ton of interaction over the last number of months, culminating into each of the municipalities accepting and endorsing policies with respect to what the focus of the mandate is going to be for the coalition.

It's about planning for the development of this infrastructure and services in northeastern British Columbia — working with the province of British Columbia, working with the industry to ensure that we are proactive in the development of this successfully on behalf of all British Columbians as it relates to, certainly, our region in northeastern British Columbia and for all of us individually in our municipalities.

That's going to be the focus for us in terms of how we move forward to try to ensure that we understand the implications of the infrastructure needs — hydro, transportation, the services.

You've heard about the medical concerns, the education concerns, the demands on our communities for development of infrastructure. So we need to be proactive in understanding how that impacts industry in terms of their needs in effectively executing….

Whoever loads this LNG product on the boats in the most economic, the most cost-competitive price for the world markets are going to be the ones who are most successful. We need to be proactive in how we develop that. That is the purpose of the Northeast Resource Municipalities Coalition, working with the province and working with industry in planning for the development of this.

We're unique in a lot of ways with respect to how this region has every sector of resources — agriculture, mining, natural gas, transportation, tourism — so we need to be effective in terms of understanding how the development of those resources and those resource sectors are carried out on behalf of the province as it relates to each one of us individually.

The impacts to all of us in terms of that growth…. When we hear about the natural gas specifically as this generational, transformational process that's going to take place, I want to give a little bit of context to that for the benefit of the panel, because we are living it.

Today in northeastern British Columbia there are…. I'm going to use terms that nobody kind of usually agrees
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on, even in the industry. The term today in terms of how much production is being produced is about one billion cubic feet per day. In natural gas in northeastern British Columbia today there are about 3½ billion cubic feet of gas, proven reserves, ready to be processed. That's for the domestic market, and that's for the anticipation of the liquefied natural gas.

The LNG plants built on the west coast are significant capital projects. When you hear about them, they tend to generate the conversation, because they are such massive undertakings. One LNG plant on the west coast will produce about 1.6 billion to three billion cubic feet of gas per day at a cost of about $7 billion. Industry tells us that for every dollar that's invested in building an LNG facility on the west coast, $7 will be invested in northeastern British Columbia, in this area, to produce the gas — drilling, the hydraulic fracturing, the processing, the pipelining to get it to the west coast.

For a $7 billion plant, one plant, $50 billion will be invested in northeastern British Columbia. That's why we hear these terms like "transformational." The amount of impact that's going to occur in northeastern British Columbia with the development of just this resource, just this industry, is so significant that it's causing concern for us in terms of we need to be deliberate, we need to be focused, and we need to be strategic about how we see the development of this as it impacts our communities.

Each one of us as municipalities individually is facing and has been facing the demands of the development of the infrastructure as it relates to our communities. The city of Dawson Creek this year spent $10 million just on a sewer trunk line to handle the development that's occurring in our community. The density that we are facing in our community in terms of our development today…. Average density for your community should be about ten to 12 units per acre. We're at 22, 23 because of the demand of infrastructure, the demand of rental accommodation.

That demand that's being placed on our infrastructure was settled a number of years ago through an amazing collaboration and a coalition where, through the mid-'90s…. It's a revenue agreement that we have related to the Fair Share agreement with the province of British Columbia. It relates to every one of us having zero or virtually zero industry within our communities. We don't have the lumber mills. We don't have the processing facilities within our communities. Everything that's being built is being built on the backs of residential taxpayers and the business community.

As a result of that, when the phenomenon of the natural gas and the gas industry was being developed in northeastern British Columbia, all that infrastructure was being built outside our municipal boundaries and outside our abilities to access it through taxation. The province didn't want us to see a taxation formula in place which may discourage the development of the industry. An agreement was reached in the mid-'90s in which a fair-share agreement was referred to that allows some revenue to be flowed to the municipalities and that helps us to ensure we have the capacity to build infrastructure.

The current agreement was renegotiated and redeveloped in 2005. It's due to expire in 2019. Part of the coalition is going to be…. We really need to see that agreement extended. The Premier announced the agreement was going to be extended in 2013, so we're anxious to be able to see that agreement extended.

We're all facing the demands. You've seen it here from the residents of Fort St. John and, I'm sure, from Dawson Creek in terms of…. That demand on our infrastructure is significant. So for us, that's a key component in terms of being able to develop and sustain the development of these resources.

The industry today in the natural gas…. When I talk about $50 billion as one plant, industry are saying to us that they anticipate a sevenfold increase in the anticipated workforce required for the development of this industry.

If there are 5,000 or 10,000 people in northeastern British Columbia directly employed in the industry for the natural gas development, they say that could increase by up to seven times. We're talking about a 30,000 or 35,000 or 40,000 increase in population just in direct employees.

For us, we need to understand that, need to understand our capacity to deliver and provide a quality of life within our communities and encourage people to want to live here as permanent residents. That's the key component for us in terms of what we're looking to.

Industry will be most competitive when they have the employees living and working out of these communities. So from that perspective, it's a real focus for all of our coalition members, as a group and individually, to ensure that we see that focus about how we ensure we work proactively with industry and the province in the planning of this.

C. Griffith: I don't think that would be wise. I think he went from A right through to Z. I think he's covered all of the bases for the coalition very well.
[ Page 796 ]

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. It was interesting to hear about the enlightened policies of the 1990s.

I was wondering about the Fair Share Agreement, because clearly there are infrastructure needs that are not being met and, presumably, not being met by the revenues you're getting through that agreement. It's important to you. Can you give me a sense of the scale of the revenues to the northeast communities and how that…? I'm assuming it's still not adequate, though, to meet the infrastructure needs that you're talking about.

The Fair Share grant this year is $43 million that is shared between all of the municipalities and the electoral areas in the regional district by an allocation formula that has effectively been in place since the early 1990s, with the first Fair Share Agreement in 1994.

The allocation formula effectively equalizes, if you like, access to the industrial tax base, in the sense that some communities do have some industry in their tax base; others don't, right? And what the formula does is takes into consideration the incorporated industrial tax base as well as the unincorporated and tries to equalize to a degree the access and the support from that tax base for all of the communities and all of the citizens. That's how the Fair Share works.

In terms of its adequacy, the position that the coalition has adopted is that they think the system is working relatively well at the levels it's working at, at this point in time, in the sense that since 2005 it has been linked to the growth of the industry.

It started out as $20 million a year in 2005, and it has now increased because of the growth in the tax base. That would be driven, naturally, by the $62 billion that industry has invested in northeastern B.C. in the last ten years, so there's that direct correlation. It works well to that degree.

What is unknown and what the coalition is proposing is that there should be comprehensive, cumulative resource development planning underway.

In fact, the coalition has already started the first stage of that work. That is to look at a series of development scenarios and to take a look at what the population results could be from that so that you can actually start then looking at more detailed planning of both the community — hopefully, the province will do a parallel — and in terms of the infrastructure requirements that they're going to have to have to accommodate the growth. That's what the coalition is proposing happen.

In terms of the adequacy of the grants or the grant in lieu of taxes that is received to date, that really is not going to be known until you determine how many of these LNG plants proceed and just what the total impacts are. As an example, it is very, very hard for Dawson Creek to project what its needs are going to be if, all of a sudden, in the next ten years the population is going to increase by 50 percent. That's why the coalition is saying that we need to start an integrated planning process, hand in hand with the province and with industry, to start to get a handle on what's coming at us.

In terms of the existing levels of population, I think the Fair Share program has been doing what it was designed to do, and that is that it is responsive to the growth of the industry at this point in time. In terms of the adequacy over the longer term, that's unknown at this point.

G. Holman: I do understand that it's a bit of a "How long is a piece of string?" You're not sure what the kind of buildout scenario might be. But we had Fort St. John and others coming to talk to us about existing shortfalls in infrastructure and lack of resources to deal with existing problems. I guess I'm trying to…. It still seems to me that despite the Fair Share program, there are still infrastructure needs that are not being met because of lack of resources. Do I have that right or not?

D. Bumstead: In terms of context, as Colin said, the Fair Share agreement is working for us in terms of what it's delivering. Demands on our infrastructure…. Our city just passed a three- to five-year water plan for our community in terms of being able to provide water, sure water, to our community over the long term. So it is working.

The concern is, as you say, that you can't foresee the future in terms of the demands of what is anticipated. That's why we see the benefits of the coalition planning and doing some of that analysis, getting the metrics in place to understand what we can anticipate and how it impacts us so that we can be effective in that planning process.

M. Morris: Just a couple of questions. I applaud the work that you're doing, and I think you've got a good guy on board there, with Colin kind of steering the ship here for you guys.

With respect to the development of the plants and whatnot in northeast B.C., we're going to see a spike in construction. We're going to see a spike in population growth and stuff. But is it going to be similar to the construction on the east coast or on the west coast with the plants, where you see this spike and then it drops down again? Are you guys looking at continued, permanent population growth?
[ Page 797 ]

D. Bumstead: Mike, what will happen or what they would anticipate happening is we're going to go through a three- to five-year cycle where they're going to build these processing facilities in the region that will process the gas as it flows through the system, remove the liquids, get it to a pure gas and ship it out. We'll see that construction phase go on.

As an example, today if, at 3½ billion cubic feet of gas per day, they're drilling about 600 to 700 wells per year, in order to get up, when you think about three plants at 1.6 to three billion cubic feet, you're talking about tripling the amount of gas required. So the drilling activity that's going to take place if that occurs is going to go to 2,000 wells per year, and that'll sustain itself for over four to five years. Then it goes to 600 to 700 or 800 wells a years for the next 40 or 50 years.

It's a long-term, permanent position of the gas processing that will occur. We're going to see a spike in construction over the next three to five, as soon as they announce the final investment decisions out west, because they will need to build the infrastructure — the pipelines, the processing and all of that. But then the sustainability of producing, manufacturing gas will create long-term, permanent positions in our community.

M. Morris: Just one final comment. Again, with the work that you guys are doing, rural B.C., being dependent on resources all our life throughout all our communities here, I think is going to benefit significantly from the work that you guys are doing. So I hope there's some input from some of these other resource communities that we have throughout rural B.C.

D. Bumstead: It's amazing to me that until 1998 the largest number of millionaires per capita in the province of British Columbia was in Prince George as a result of the resource sector — lumber. It's hard to believe that, right? It's amazing, unless you're living in it, how you can appreciate resource development and how that resource development impacts the economy and the lives of each and every one of us.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sure does, Your Worship. Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity.

Colin, thank you for coming and for your comments today. Greatly appreciated. Again, the hospitality of the north is exceptional.

D. Bumstead: Great, have a safe trip home. See you in February. We're going to do some tours in February.

D. Ashton (Chair): Rosolyn Kalb, come on forward. Rosolyn, welcome this morning. Thank you very much for coming. We have ten minutes allotted for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you'll push into that and five minutes for questions or comments.

R. Kalb: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I will read so that I stay within my time limit. I've been known to babble about my cause. Anyway, good morning to all of you. Again, I appreciate the opportunity for coming here to speak with you today.

My name is Rosolyn Kalb, and I've been a resident of Fort St. John for the past 43 years. During that time, one of my particular interests has been the welfare of animals — all animals in general but particularly companion animals — in our community and the surrounding area. Because of that interest and also because of the cases of animal abuse and neglect that I've become aware of during that time, I decided to join the BCSPCA in 1983.

At that time, we were an official branch, but we had no shelter. In addition to being a volunteer with the local branch, I also became a special provincial constable, which enabled me to conduct cruelty investigations, and I sheltered animals in my home. I was actively involved in the creation of the first animal shelter in Fort St. John, which opened in 1995, and I carried on my involvement as volunteer shelter manager for 14 years until June of this year, when I retired.

I'm here today to speak to you about animal welfare issues in the region. I want to be clear that I'm here today speaking as a private citizen and not as a representative of the BCSPCA, but the knowledge that I've gained and the experience I have dealing with animals is through my past work with the SPCA.

In my view, there's a pressing need for greater government investment in the area of animal welfare. Throughout the years I worked with the BCSPCA, we relied heavily on donations from the public to do our work on behalf of the animals. We had other sources of income, such as pound-keeping contracts we held with the city of Fort St. John and the district of Taylor, but these contracts only made up a third of our operating budget.

The remaining two-thirds needed to be acquired through fundraising initiatives. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it's very difficult to rely on fundraising to cover operating costs, and it's exhausting for staff to care for the animals during the day and then fundraise outside of business hours. While we did receive some gaming funds in the past through the operation of local bingos, that funding was cut many, many years ago.

Did you know that B.C. is one of the only Canadian provinces that doesn't provide any funding for its SPCA? Ontario SPCA, for example, receives $5.5 million per year from the provincial government for its work enfor-
[ Page 798 ]
cing animal cruelty issues. I certainly realize that there are many competing priorities, particularly in our area, as you've heard through these hearings, but as someone who has worked to care for animals in the region for 31 years, I can tell you that when we protect vulnerable animals, we are also helping vulnerable people.

For example, one of the programs we implemented in our shelter was a humane education program for youth, the aim of which was to teach children empathy skills that could help them in their interactions with all beings, animal and human. We wanted to try to deal with the human–animal violence link.

As you know, research tells us that children who abuse animals can be more likely to be abusers as adults. We would visit school classrooms and talk to students about how to treat animals with respect. With very young students, we used our bite-free program to teach them how to avoid being bitten by animals. We also dealt with public safety issues related to animal control by developing spay and neuter and adoption programs for our shelter and working with the municipality to develop bylaws around animal control.

In addition to operating as an animal rescue, the Fort St. John shelter is also the local pound for Fort St. John and the district of Taylor. As a result of that program, we no longer adopted animals out that were not first spayed and neutered, which was huge for us. We also reached out to local First Nation groups to help them resolve their problems with canine overpopulation at the reserves.

I've seen the successes of these programs over the years. More and more, people are making sure their pets are sterilized. It's now rare in Fort St. John to see an animal off-leash. While progress has been made, there is still a long way to go, particularly with spaying and neutering. Although the local shelter is a source of animals for adoption, it is not the only source. We still see animals for sale on websites or being given away. Sadly, many of these animals are not spayed or neutered.

When I came to Fort St. John all those years ago, we had a serious problem with packs of dogs roaming around town. Unfortunately, I can recall several instances where these packs attacked other dogs and even people. We now have a dangerous-dog bylaw which provides the public with protections they did not have in the past. By controlling these animals, we have also managed to cut down on the instances of disease among animals in our community.

We also initiated a feral cat spay and neuter program, where feral cats are caught, sterilized and released. I can remember years ago when we trapped and euthanized over 150 cats and kittens in one feral cat colony in one building in downtown Fort St. John. We had no room for them at the shelter. They were wild and unadoptable, and they were reproducing at a tremendous rate.

While we still have feral cat colonies, they are mainly under control through the efforts of shelter staff and volunteers. Even though the shelter does not have room for them, they will, at least, not be able to reproduce when they are released.

Throughout my years at our local shelter, we were able to provide support to other members of the community. Young offenders often came to work required service hours through the community justice program. High school students volunteered hours to meet work experience requirements for high school graduation. School children often came to the shelter for tours and workshops on animal welfare. Intellectually challenged individuals living in group homes regularly came to the shelter to volunteer.

Seniors who were retired and had no social stimulation also visited us and volunteered their time. Our staff or volunteers also took animals to care centres in the community to visit the residents. This provided socialization for the animals and helped with adoption and some companionship for the seniors. Families brought their children to walk dogs or help out with tasks at the shelter.

As you can see, we touched all aspects of the community. It's important to note that the shelter is not just a place that houses and tries to rehome animals. It's so much more to these and other members of the community.

Because funds are so limited and because it's difficult to predict or count on donations from the public, there are some areas of local need that I feel would benefit from provincial government funding.

Beginning with animal cruelty and neglect, there's a huge need for cruelty investigations to be conducted in northeastern B.C. This area currently has only one SPCA investigator that's responsible for the entire region, including the communities of Tumbler Ridge, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Hudson's Hope, Fort Nelson and other smaller and remote communities. It's an impossible task for one person to handle all the complaints that come out of this area.

Unfortunately, there is no funding available for more investigators. These investigations are not just about dogs and cats but include investigations of large animals like cattle, horses, buffalo and other livestock. The provincial government provides no funding to the SPCA to enforce animal cruelty legislation.

Another area is animal care and sheltering. Tens of thousands of animals depend on shelters and rescue organizations across the province. There is a significant cost of care for animals that come into these facilities, often as a result of cruelty, neglect or abandonment. The local shelter must be staffed seven days a week. There are significant costs because of that, although no one at the shelter made more than $15 per hour. Veterinary bills could also be as much as $3,000 per month.

I can tell you that the economic boom that Fort St. John is experiencing because of the oil and gas development has had a negative effect on animal intakes at the local shelter.
[ Page 799 ]

We have found that when workers come to town to work in the oil patch for the season, they will adopt or purchase a pet. When the work season is over, they leave the community, and often they leave their pet or pets abandoned in their rented accommodation.

The local shelter ends up with these animals. During the last year that I managed the shelter, we had over 1,100 animals come through the door, which is significant for a community of our size.

Another area of need would be with spaying and neutering costs. Large numbers of homeless and abandoned animals suffer as a result of overpopulation. Much of this suffering can be addressed with prevention programs like spay-neuter and outreach to citizens, but there is currently a lack of funding available for that.

As I mentioned earlier, the local shelter sterilizes all its animals prior to adoption, but there are still other animals in the community that are not spayed or neutered, including owned animals. It would be very beneficial to have a low-cost spay and neuter program that could help low-income families have their pets sterilized, but there's no funding available for that.

In closing, I want to thank the committee for your time, and I would urge you to consider funding for animal welfare in B.C. The need is so great. There would be many benefits to providing funding, including violence prevention for humans and animals alike and safer and more humane communities.

I know you may have heard this many times before, but in the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Rosolyn, for the presentation, and thank you for the hours and years, probably, you've put into volunteering.

I've heard the issue raised before by others. It's around the B.C. SPCA and the lack of funding for things that government actually asks the SPCA to take on — things like animal cruelty investigations, where they're asked to take that responsibility but the funding doesn't come through.

I just wanted to clarify. You said that B.C. was one of the only provinces. How many other provinces don't provide funding across this country? Are you aware?

Rosolyn, thank you very much for your care and dedication to community and specifically to pets.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, good morning. Thank you very much for coming. Greatly appreciated. We have one more that'll be in, in just half a second.

Looking forward to your presentation. We've allotted ten minutes for it — I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like we'll push into it — and five minutes for questions and comments. It's Anndra. Is that correct?

A. Graff: Okay. My name is Anndra Graff. I'm the vice-president, finance and corporate services, with Northern Lights College.

B.C. Colleges is a consortium representing B.C.'s 11 public community colleges, serving over 160,000 students annually in over 60 communities throughout B.C. B.C. Colleges offer a comprehensive range of programs, from university studies, bachelor of ed degrees, career, technical and trades education. All college programs are designed to be accessible, affordable and responsive to the evolving needs of B.C. students, communities, businesses and industry.

Today's presentation is from Northern Lights College's unique regional perspective. Our intent is to share with you how we prepare our students to meet the challenges and opportunities facing our region today, how our college contributes to our region's prosperity by providing access and opportunity for all learners and, finally, how we use innovative delivery models, on-line learning and new technology to give our students a competitive edge.

Increased investment by the province will help us respond to the significant labour market challenges and economic opportunities facing B.C. and our region, and it will enable us to continue to provide the range of programs and services essential to the economic and social health of our region.
[ Page 800 ]

The provincial association of B.C. colleges will provide the details of the investment opportunities at the provincial level on October 14 as part of their presentation. Today's presentation will include information on the Northern Lights College's specific requirements and opportunities.

Northern Lights College's geographic region comprises the northern third of British Columbia. Our college region is approximately 325,000 square kilometres, occupied by about 71,000 people.

At NLC we recognize the labour market and budget challenges facing government today. Given the region we serve and the fact that northern B.C. has been dealing with labour shortages for a number of years, we also have experienced effectively meeting those needs through cooperation, collaboration and despite ongoing budget pressures. Over the past five years we have managed to balance our budget, despite status quo levels of reductions at the level of our base operating grant.

Some of the strategies we've implemented to maintain a balanced budget are to streamline operations and to use available soft funding envelopes. Through those soft funding envelopes we are able to deliver additional cohorts in high-demand areas, broaden the scope and impact of our outreach and recruitment activities in high-demand areas and rotate high-demand programs to campuses and communities across our region.

We also have developed shared-service agreements with the local school districts and other partners, such as industry, for additional funding. We also look at increasing tuition each year. We increased international enrolments. We're also looking at strategically disposing of excess properties that we are not currently using.

Despite all these funding pressures, in '13-14, NLC served approximately 7,689 learners. This translates into about 1,500 FTEs, which are full-time-equivalent students.

We've established centres of excellence in oil and gas, in clean energy and also in aerospace. We are also involved in a number of collaborations and partnerships — for example, Northern Opportunities — which is a good example of providing a head start to hands-on learning through collaboration and partnership.

Some of the other working groups we are very involved with are the northeast and northwest regional workforce tables task force and also the Northern Post-Secondary Council. In addition, we are supporting NLC's broad range of programming and service delivery.

These partnerships have been, and will continue to be, facilitated through the work of the B.C. Centre of Training Excellence for Oil and Gas and through clear linkage with initiatives such as the B.C. natural gas workforce table. In order to ensure the ongoing capacity of engagement in these types of strategic partnerships and collaborative initiatives, in addition to stable and predictive multi-year operating funding, NLC proposes the development of multiministry project-based funding envelopes in strategic areas — for example, Northern Opportunities.

B.C. Colleges offer individualized attention, smaller classes, teaching excellence, flexible programming, on-line learning and innovative delivery models that ensure the highest-quality education in B.C.

We are also working with local industry and community partners in finding creative ways to make pertinent programming accessible. It must be noted, however, that despite our combined efforts, the needs within the communities that we serve consistently outpace our ability to provide services. There's a need at the community level for base programming, such as literacy and essential services, in order to help people evolve with their jobs and adapt to workplace changes.

In order for NLC to continue meeting the increasing education and skills-training needs across British Columbia, we're striving to target investment at the level of all types of learning supports that are critical for student success.

Despite our continued efforts to remain accountable and effective and to use short-term funding envelopes to fill resourcing gaps, at NLC we believe that what is required is a fundamental shift in the way we think about post-secondary education provincially.

We also believe that continued reliance on short-term, stopgap funding will ultimately lead to organizational fatigue and reduced capacity to meet the significant, varied needs across our vast region. We are already seeing signs of this across the board. The following are two significant changes that we feel are required.

There needs to be a paradigm shift with respect to thinking about and discussing funding to post-secondary education institutions. There needs to be a shift away from considering money spent on post-secondary as a cost and move towards consideration of money spent on post-secondary education as an investment.

A move to multi-year funding allotments. There is a need in B.C. for strategic funding to build capacity and to produce more graduates annually in high-demand areas. By providing operating grants and deferred maintenance grants in three-year agreements with institutions, the ministry would make it possible for initiatives such as programming rotation and multi-year education planning cycles to be more easily and effectively planned.

In conclusion, as a regional community college we provide critical access to academic, vocational, trades and apprenticeship, continuing education and workforce training programs. Without this local access, many of our students would be unable to participate in post-secondary education, and, by extension, they would be unable to access the jobs that keep our economy moving.

NLC recognizes the fiscal pressures that are currently being experienced by the province of British Columbia.
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We believe that the recommendations presented here can serve to help make the delivery of post-secondary education programs and of the critical support services that are required for success in accessing the thriving job market across our region much more effective and efficient.

S. Gibson: I kind of have a bit of a university teaching background, so I'm particularly interested. Good to have you here today.

A couple of quick questions. What about inadmissible students? I know that's a huge concern provincewide but particularly in the north, where many students don't finish school, or if they do graduate, they don't have university entrance. They're missing some of the key subjects such as French 11 or English 12. How are you working with those folks? They are the ones that really need nurturing, I guess.

A. Graff: Exactly. It's essential skills that they're lacking. There was a funding envelope last year that was provided for that specific purpose, to go out to the aboriginal communities and actually do that work in the communities — getting them literacy, essential skills; getting them back into school. Again, it comes to we have this vast region, and we just don't have the resources to send people out all the time to cover that area.

S. Gibson: Another quick supplementary. How are you at the counselling? That's one of the laments of many students today. Our government is, as you know, directing slightly the attention towards job-ready programs and a little less from so-called liberal arts, where the job opportunities are available but more blurred, less likely.

What are you doing in that area, where students desperately need counselling but many of them are not getting it, in my view, particularly in urban universities?

A. Graff: We don't actually have the resources to have counsellors on all of our campus locations. In those instances, we are trying to connect with Northern Health and know what counselling services are out there, giving the tools to our instructors and faculty members so that they know: "Okay, we have a student at risk. These are the resources you need to go to find." So trying to keep that linkage with Northern Health.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation and thank you for your college. I think we're incredibly fortunate in British Columbia to have a strong community college system that often makes that connection with the students first, so thank you for that.

I wondered if you had any statistics around aboriginal students in your college system, with the numbers.

A. Graff: I currently don't know them right off the top of my head. I know that they can be identified or not identified. It's up to the student to decide that. I don't have that off the top of my head, but I can definitely get that for you.

I'm curious. Your utilization rate and the funding formula that's around that — I know that some of the other colleges wrestle with that, and it doesn't really fit sometimes with rural B.C. Give me your comments on that.

I'd also like to hear a little bit more about your multi-year funding allotments, your ideas there — across the board or just targeted at specific programs?

A. Graff: For your first question on…. If you can repeat that, actually, for me, sorry.

A. Graff: Utilization, yeah. Lots of our funding goes into student supports and actually having access centres in locations where you may only have five students that come in. We think there needs to be a shift in looking at the funding as a resource to those students, not necessarily that it's directed to the FTE.

Those are students that are accessing Internet and services and being able to use a computer in the lab. They're getting education, we're supporting them, yet they were not counting them as FTE, which doesn't go against our utilization rate. There definitely needs to be a shift in that funding, how that's definitely looked at.

M. Morris: And then the second part of my question was your multi-year funding plan that you have in mind.

A. Graff: Across the board. All institutions need that. It allows for better planning, so you know that this is our funding for three years. We can do these programs in Chetwynd or Fort Nelson or Dawson Creek for this year, and we know what our funding is going to look like. Whereas next year we're seeing cuts, and we still don't know what '16-17 looks like, so it's very difficult to plan and have staff in place to support those programs and have all of that outlined.

We heard from the city of Fort St. John, talking about
[ Page 802 ]
shortages of key professionals — police, health care, even provincial ministries. Can you explain your kind of role in that issue?

A. Graff: Yes. We do have a shortage, not only just from senior leadership levels but all the way down to support staff. We are competing with industry; we're competing with other provinces. There is a salary freeze on. With all the colleges across B.C. there's a cap for president salaries, which then caps everybody else. We compete with that, and we have constant turnover across the province of B.C. Currently in all the colleges, nine out the eleven have seen a turnover of their presidents in the last two years, which is quite a bit.

G. Holman: Sorry, I wasn't meaning…. I mean, I'm glad to get that information about the issue within the college system itself. What I was wondering about was other professional areas where there are shortages. Does the college play a role in meeting those shortages, either directly or indirectly?

A. Graff: Probably somewhat indirectly, but we don't have those degree-type programs. We do have, say, business management, where hopefully, those students would be transferring into other institutions to be professionals in this area. But again, training in the area, staying in the area — that's always a….

G. Holman: Yeah, I was noticing your statistic here about 73 percent of the students attending NLC stay in the area, which again speaks to this concern about temporary residents focused on kind of construction projects versus full-time residents.

G. Heyman: Thank you for your presentation. You referred to education as an investment and talked about program areas that were falling behind need because of lack of resources. You mentioned literacy. I'm wondering if you'd identify literacy or any other program area as the most critical need for investment right now, in your view, for which return on investment would be very obvious.

A. Graff: Aboriginal dollars — we currently don't get aboriginal special purpose money that some institutions get. That would be helpful. They currently look at applications, but they only review institutions that currently have that money. Those are the only institutions that can reapply for that funding. It would be nice to open up that envelope across the province.

Literacy. Again, essential services. I can't reiterate that enough. Those are definitely the three main areas.

D. Ashton (Chair): Anndra, thank you very much for the presentation today. Great. Thank you for coming.

Michele and Mary, come on up. Welcome. Good morning, and thank you very much for coming today. Greatly appreciated. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation — I'll kind of give you a two-minute warning if it looks like it's going to go there — and up to five minutes for questions and comments. The floor is yours.

M. Wiebe: I'm the president of the Peace River North Teachers Association, and Mary is our vice-president. For part of our presentation, it's mostly comments as to what we have seen in our local and district over the past number of years.

Even though we have a tentative agreement in committee at this time, I'm really asking that the government continue to put money into public education, that class size and composition are taken care of. I know we have the education fund that is in the tentative agreement — but for us to be able to maintain services to students, that we have that money there in an ongoing manner. I thought I would mention that.

The other thing is that we have in our district the transportation funding, and we have schools in very remote areas. I'm thinking of 101, where they have to bring students into Fort St. John and from Upper Halfway where we have students who actually have to live in Fort St. John to have their middle school and high school education. A lot of these students do not complete their schooling because it is so difficult for them to remain in Fort St. John when they're separated from their families.

I also understand that the funding for transportation is the district's responsibility. That was taken away from…. The government doesn't fund the transportation part, but I believe that funding was found by municipal governments to pay for it this year. But it is an extra cost to parents if it's not looked at in the next year — 2015-2016 budget. I know Pat Pimm has been involved in discussions with our school district. But it's something that is really important to teachers as well as for students to have public education and access to it through busing.

I just want to also mention that while I was visiting the picket line, when I talked to teachers…. We have overcapacity students at our middle schools — at Bert Bowes and at Dr. Kearney. So when I asked them what the plan is, they're like: "Well, we have 30 students in all of these classes." I talked to the school board chair on Friday, and in order to get a portable, it has to come out of capital funds. It's over $400,000 to have a portable brought in. So we don't have any new money for that.

We also need new schools, and I know our school district has talked and met with people in Finance: "Yeah, we need new schools, but you know what? There is no money for that either."

What is the plan? We need two schools replaced. There
[ Page 803 ]
is an area by Finch that has a huge housing development. There is land there for a school, but there is no money for a school. So what are we going to do when our schools are at capacity already? I'm not talking as a president: "Oh yeah, we need more teachers." But we need to have something in our system now. We will have a crisis in the next five years with our population growing because of Site C and LNG.

I just want to talk about the cost of living in Fort St. John. From what I understand, it's 25 percent above the rest of the province — the same as living in Vancouver. If you go around Fort St. John, we don't have any of the things that Vancouver has. We have weather to deal with, cold weather in the winter.

I have a new teacher here from Red Deer. She just moved up with her family. They are living in their fifth wheel at Charlie Lake, one of the campgrounds, because they can't find affordable housing right now to move into. Until she starts working, they can't afford to find housing.

We're in a critical position. As a president, I feel very strongly about supporting my teachers. I don't know how to support them when I can't get them into a house that is under $2,500 a month for rent. When we have so much money leaving our community, I just feel that we're in a crisis situation with teachers coming here.

Mary will probably talk about new teachers. We have about 20 new teachers coming in from Ontario and from the Lower Mainland, because we have jobs up here. We have teaching positions. But if they can't find affordable housing, they can't live here. Their take-home pay is around $3,000. It's not a whole lot of money when you are a first-year teacher coming up to the north to live.

One more point. My children went through the system. My son is 22. My daughter is 20. My son was in grade 4 when the cuts were made to class size and composition, and my daughter was in grade 2. My son is a U of A student. He's a grad student, doing research at U of A. I talked to him about his education in Fort St. John. He said: "You know what, Mom? It was great, because I got to do things with sports, with music, with my academics that a lot of kids didn't have the opportunity to do." He has talked to a number of students that grew up in the big city.

My son was valedictorian in 2010, and what an opportunity for him to have gone to Shad Valley, if you know what that is. He went to Halifax, to Dalhousie for that — just amazing opportunities.

He said that public school gave to him a sense of belonging, critical thinking. He became a problem solver, and doing research, those are things that he has to have. A lot of kids don't have it. He's a hunter. He took his CORE, so he knows how to survive in the wild — these things that a lot of kids don't have opportunities to do. It's not that I'm saying anything negative about living in the north. It was a great place to live.

I'm from Saskatchewan originally. I moved here in 1989 with my husband, so I'm a Riders fan all the way. Sorry, but we're both Saskatchewan girls. I just really feel that we can offer something really valuable to our students here, but we are in and out with teachers. We need to attract teachers here, retain them, and my job would be easier if we had the money in the district to be able to do this. That's all.

M. Tremain: She's covered a lot of the things I wanted to talk about, but we try and help support our new teachers. As Michele said, to attract and retain is a vast problem. Sadly, we've had several resignations recently through this job action. There are people we had hoped to have come here that will not be. I have no idea what we're going to do for our classrooms next week.

Anyway, I just wanted point out that there has been some longitudinal research that shows that 30 percent of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years, which is a huge cost — right? — personally and to our system. I mean, it's expensive to educate people. So they're lost to us.

We had a pilot last year, a mentoring program. It was funded by the Ministry of Education. It was brilliant, and the feedback we got from our teachers was that the sense of connectedness, the belongingness and the support from an experienced, expert teacher was invaluable to keep helping them feel like they can stay in their jobs.

A lot of what we hear from the new young ones is that they survive only, and they want to thrive. So we need funding to develop and then maintain those sorts of programs. Right now we just have no funding, because it was a one-year pilot, unfortunately.

Then, of course, lack of amenities is a big thing we hear. Years ago I was part of the initial fair-share discussions, where we lobbied for more funding or more tax dollars. At that time, I think the Peace produced somewhere in the neighbourhood of a fifth of the provincial revenues, and we were getting less than 1 percent back, in terms of resources. I guess that's what I'm here to ask for — more of that fair share. We need to invest in our new young teachers.

Then in my other role I work one day a week with the local, and then I'm in the special education department. I'm the English-language-learner resource support teacher. I have nominal responsibility for around 300 students. We've got about 12 language groups.

The way the English language learners are instructed here is that it's full immersion. We just don't have the numbers to have reception classes like in Vancouver. So it's quite a different model, and it's woefully inadequate. I'm aware of that constantly. When I walk into a teacher's classroom, they're going: "Man, I've got this kid who speaks Russian and has almost no English. What do I do?" I mean, that's the constant struggle.

That's only a tiny piece of what special education is all
[ Page 804 ]
about, because we have kids with profound physical disabilities. We have learning disabilities, emotional, social, behavioural difficulties, and they land on the classroom teacher because those kids, again, are almost fully immersed, in full-time, full immersion, with support from people like me. But when you're an inclusion teacher who has to cover five schools and maybe 30 or 40 very complex children who probably need almost full-time support from you, again, it's woefully inadequate.

There is a cost to those kids, because they don't reach the potential they might otherwise. There is a cost to their classroom teacher, who knows, at the end of the day, that they didn't do everything they could have done. And then there's a cost to the specialist teachers, because you also know that all you did was hit the surface. So the human cost is staggering, as far as I'm concerned.

Just as a little aside, I'm sure you've heard from people speaking of more support for medical. We had a long-term teacher who had twin babies born. One of them has profound physical disabilities, could not get his…. They have no doctor here. They have no specialist here. They have no support for this two-year-old boy, so he and his wife, who also worked for the school district, felt they had no choice. They resigned and moved to Victoria, where they could get some medical support for this little guy.

There's yet another cost, in many different ways, but it's a cost to our system again, to our education system. There's a teacher and an educational assistant who are now gone because we don't have the things here to keep people here.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you both. I appreciate it. We're just a little bit over.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you've tied together well the sentiment that we've heard today, which is around the planning that needs to be done for the kind of growth that you're seeing in your communities. I think tying education into that is really important to do. You should know that your school district did a great presentation around the transportation funding issue as well. They emphasized the challenges there.

I just want to find out if you have any more information around where your new teachers are coming from. You mentioned the programs that have been supported but, unfortunately, gone — the mentoring program, etc. But I wondered where you're seeing your new teachers come from. Are they B.C. teachers? Are they from all over? Do you do any kind of analysis around where the recruiting is working and what areas you might touch on broader to do recruitment for teaching positions up here?

M. Tremain: I think, for one thing, we have a French immersion school, so it is often for our French teachers that it's kind of a revolving door. I know New Brunswick and Quebec, certainly, they recruit. I don't know what the breakdown is. It's probably 50 percentish from B.C., I would guess, and then the balance from other provinces. I think Saskatchewan they actively recruit. Certainly, Alberta.

M. Wiebe: Yeah, and I know we have two new French teachers from Ontario. They're actually from the Ivory Coast. They've only been in Canada a short time, so they're up here. One of the gentlemen…. His wife is still in Ontario with their children. Once again, I know that's not…. If it lasts till Christmas, I'll be ecstatic — right? — when winter comes.

M. Wiebe: That's right. We've had teachers from the Lower Mainland that were hired that have resigned. "We're not going up there." Then once again, those postings have to go out. It's a real challenge to get people up here. There are jobs.

I always say to the other presidents when I go to a rep assembly or whatever, the AGM: "We have jobs in Fort St. John." Everybody is complaining: "'Oh, we can't get jobs." I'm like: "Really? If you want a job, come up to Fort St. John. I'm not kidding you. Come and see me, and I'll hook you up with HR — not a problem."

It's just to keep them. Jeez, if they can last a winter, usually, or two years — if we can keep them two years, usually they'll stay. But usually if their family is somewhere else….

I had a teacher yesterday resign. I just have to tell you this. He had taught in China before and came here for two years, taught out at Prespatou at a rural school, loved it. Looking on line, got a teaching job in China. He's leaving Friday night to go back to Vancouver, because he was promised — it's a private school — a continuing appointment. If he does one year in China, they will put him in a private school in Vancouver next year. I am just so upset about that. A great young teacher in his early 20s, and I'm, like, what a loss for our district.

M. Tremain: Our school district actually is really good in terms of professional development, I have to say, given that we are relatively remote. There's lots of support given. This young teacher was someone who has had a great deal of support and is going to be great for some kids somewhere else, but not here.

Just a question about the affordable housing issue. We did hear earlier today that the marketplace is responding
[ Page 805 ]
to that. Those high rents are…. So there is new housing coming on. Is that part of the solution, or are they coming in at a level that's not really helping?

I guess a related question…. I should have asked this earlier of other presenters. Are there any groups in Fort St. John that are focused on the provision of affordable housing?

I mean, there is some provincial funding available through B.C. Housing, that kind of thing. As far as you're aware, are there any groups involved in advocating for and trying to get affordable housing projects off the ground, or is it all private market?

M. Wiebe: It's all private market, yeah. I even own a fourplex, okay, and I have teachers that live in it. Is that affordable? My rent is, like, $1,250 a month. That's better than $2,500.

I think the family from Red Deer needs a house, because they have three teenage boys. I think the husband got a job working in the patch, so they will be fine. But until they start working and get that paycheque for your damage deposit and everything else, then that's the concern, right? But everything is private. Yeah. There is no overseer of affordable housing.

G. Holman: Are there any rental projects being built in Fort St. John, or is it all ownership?

M. Wiebe: No, there are no projects. It would be all private. Like, my money would go….

M. Wiebe: Or duplexes — right? — or something like that. I know there is one apartment building, but I don't know who the project manager is or who owns that, but it's probably somebody from Vancouver.

M. Tremain: I was going to say that even with good wages, people are still house-poor here, because — I don't know — 40 or 50 percent of their income is going into rent or a mortgage.

M. Wiebe: But look into what a new teacher makes. Like, their take-home pay is probably less than $3,500. I don't even know if it's that much. I know I have a master's degree, and my take-home pay is, like, a couple thousand over that. We're not in the big money here at all. Education is not big money for teachers. You go in it because you want to make a difference. That's why I went into teaching in 1985.

G. Holman: Sorry to belabour, but have there been any affordable housing needs assessments done for Fort St. John, as far as you're aware?

M. Wiebe: I don't know, but I've talked to the school district about building, like, a strata and having offices underneath. That's what I would like to see our school district get into, or something. Once again, I don't think it's a priority, because it's like everybody has to do their own thing.

D. Ashton (Chair): All right. We have an airplane at some point in time to catch here. I've got Mike and Simon.

M. Morris: Just quick. Good presentation. I know you're facing some significant challenges up here, just like every other sector. When I was with the RCMP, we faced the same thing.

I'm just curious to find out how many actual teaching positions you have throughout the school district that just remain unfilled because you can't attract the teachers up here.

M. Tremain: Well, for instance, speech pathologists — they've been advertising, I think constantly, for two years. We thought we had one. She didn't come. She went to Alberta.

We often take people who have completed their coursework, but their practicum, perhaps…. We have to arrange for it to be a supervised practicum. There's a degree of support from the district that other jurisdictions would not have. So we have to do extraordinary things in order to attract people like that.

An area where we really are lacking is in our substitute teachers, our teachers on call. I'm not sure what the percentage is, but a large number are uncertified people. So it might be a mother who has been volunteering in her child's classroom, and when you're desperate, when a teacher is sick and you have to have someone fill that spot…. Now, I know wherever possible we use certified teachers, but a lot of those people go into classrooms. So we're often left with retired teachers doing that work.

S. Gibson: A quick one and a comment. I want to affirm what you're saying, from the Lower Mainland and being involved in teaching university students.

If they can't find a position easily in their own area, then, by default, they head north — which is good, right? I've bumped into some of these students, and they will say to me, "Now that I've left, I don't want to come back," because they get more for their money. They have more
[ Page 806 ]
of the lifestyle like we've talked about.

My question is this. Can you use testimonials from your current teachers — the teachers that have moved here and discovered they love the lifestyle? Like you moving here…. You were saying, Mrs. Wiebe, that you moved here and: "Wow, I like it here." Can you use those testimonials as a way to advance getting the teachers that we've been talking about — the lament that you're making? That's my question.

M. Wiebe: I didn't say I liked it here. I live here, and I work here. You know, you make the best of where you are. We came up for two years. In 1989 I said: "That's it. We are coming here for two years." I taught in Saskatchewan in '85 for three years. Then we went to Venezuela. I taught there. Then we kind of had this competition: "Whoever gets a job first, that's where we'll move." Well, we came up to a wedding, and I got hired right away. So we moved up here, and I said: "I swear to God, two years and we're back to Saskatoon."

But yes, it is a lifestyle choice. We do have teachers on the school district website, where we have had teachers give testimonials. That is part of the recruitment.

M. Wiebe: Yes, they do take recruitment. That's why I've never been asked to, you know, give one.

You know what? Other than the winter, it would be fine. But I'm over 50 now, and I'm so tired of the cold weather.

M. Wiebe: I know, but I'm over 50. It's a killer. It is. It's just harder. If I could get a job south…. You know what? I'm representing teachers of the north. It's all good.

D. Ashton (Chair): Michele, Mary, thank you very much. Very good presentation. You ended it on a very good note, so thank you. Appreciate the input. We have the notes, and we're here to listen and take it back. Again, a wonderful presentation.

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

1) City of Fort St. John	Dianne Hunter
	Mindy Smith
	Acting Mayor Byron Stewart

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
Other MLAs:	Pat Pimm (Peace River North BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial
Committee Staff:	Sarah Griffiths (Committees Assistant)

Witnesses:	Doug Boyd (Board of Education, School District 60 — Peace River North)
	Dale Bumstead (NEBC Resource Municipalities Coalition)
	Jim Collins (Save Our Northern Seniors)
	Anndra Graff (Northern Lights College)
	Colin Griffith (Executive Director, NEBC Resource Municipalities Coalition)
	Dianne Hunter (City of Fort St. John)
	Lorraine Isenbecker (Concerned Citizens for Health Care)
	Rosolynn Kalb
	Jean Leahy (President, Save Our Northern Seniors)
	Mindy Smith (City of Fort St. John)
	Twila Soule (Concerned Citizens for Health Care)
	Byron Stewart (Acting Mayor, City of Fort St. John)
	Jaret Thompson (Chair, Board of Education, School District 60 — Peace River North)
	Mary Tremain (Vice-President, Peace River North Teachers Association)
	Michele Wiebe (President, Peace River North Teachers Association)

3) Concerned Citizens for Health Care	Lorraine Isenbecker
	Twila Soule

4) Board of Education, School District No. 60 (Peace River North)	Jaret Thompson
	Doug Boyd

5) NEBC Resource Municipalities Coalition	Mayor Dale Bumstead
	Colin Griffith

8) Peace River North Teachers' Association	Mary Tremain
	Michele Wiebe

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES