Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 36 — Wednesday, September 17, 2014 (HTML)

Cranbrook Centre Room, Ramada Prince George
444 George Street, Prince George, B.C.

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	807
A. Hagreen
D. Jones
R. Gill
C. Ray
C. Pohl
J. Mastromatteo
S. Warrington
T. Bennett
A. Reed
D. Clarkson
P. Davidson
S. Ramsay
E. Moliere
H. Domshy
L. Smith
D. Roze
M. Partyka
P. Thompson
D. Weeks
A. Kehler
K. Playfair
H. Reiser
H. Oland
A. George
J. Marren
A. Koehler

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming. My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for Penticton and for Peachland and the Chair of this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We're an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly, with a mandate to hold provincewide public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that is released by the Minister of Finance. Following the consultations, the committee will release a report with recommendations for Budget 2015 no later than November 15, 2014.

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

In addition to the hearings, the committee is accepting written, audio and video submissions and responses to a short on-line survey. You can make a submission or learn more by visiting our webpage at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We invite all British Columbians to take the time to make a submission and to 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, 2014.

Today's meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses much like yourself. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questioning or for comments from the committee. Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike period at the end of the meeting. Five minutes are allotted for each of the presenters. If you wish to speak, please register at the information table at the door coming in.

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 through live audio via our website.

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

D. Ashton (Chair): Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial, sitting next to me, and Sarah Griffiths. They're from the parliamentary committees office. Hansard Services is also here doing the recording. They're these nice folks right over here — Ian and Alexa.

I would ask at this point in time for you to start. As I said, there'll be ten minutes allotted. If it looks like you're going to be pushing into that, I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have questions.

Thank you very much for coming, and once again, thank you for the hospitality that Prince George always shows us when we're up.

A. Hagreen: Sorry we weren't able to provide you with our typical sunny weather, but we've got Vancouver weather. Sorry about that.

Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. I've handed out a copy, and I'm going to actually be pretty well reading this verbatim.

My name is Alison Hagreen, and I'm the executive director of the Prince George Brain Injured Group. The acronym is PGBIG. I'm also on the board of directors of the Northern Brain Injury Association, the NBIA — as is Doug Jones, whose representative, Cynthia Heslop, presented to this committee yesterday in Terrace. I'm on the 2014 Brain Injury Alliance as a director, as is Doug Jones as well. Wearing these three hats, I'm honoured to speak to you today on issues facing survivors of brain injury and their families here in Prince George, across the north and throughout the province of British Columbia.

History. It wasn't that many years ago that using the term "brain injury" was considered distasteful. There was a common perception that people living with a brain injury were lost causes, possibly dangerous and definitely not very bright. Survivors were left to their own devices — the most frequent response — placed in long-term-care beds, even if they were only 20, or shuffled off to mental health services, where, for the most part, they didn't fit in.

That all began to change in 1989, when the B.C. Ministry of Health published Restoring Hope, which formally recognized brain injury as a discrete disability.

The province subsequently committed to the creation
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of a provincial brain injury program, whose objectives were to set standards and to fund community services. Acute and post-acute services would remain the responsibility of the Ministry of Health — subsequently, the regional health authorities — and PBIP, the provincial brain injury program, would fund community rehabilitation, cognitive and other therapies, case management, social inclusion, supports for families and preventative education programs.

As was so often the case at that time, B.C. quickly became a national leader in the field of service development for this population. Progress was slow but incremental, and services began to evolve and grow.

In 1997 we were all excited when the B.C. government adopted a program of surcharges on motor vehicle fines. Modelled after several similar funds in the United States, these funds were to target services and projects directed toward researching and preventing neurotraumatic injury and toward rehabilitation for victims of neurotraumatic injury.

Unfortunately, the benefits of this $2 million annualized fund have not been made available to provide rehabilitation supports to the very people who the fund was designed to serve — that is, victims of neurotraumatic injury. In 2002 the Minister of Health made a decision to dissolve the provincial brain injury program, and the approximately $10 million annualized funding was divided among the health authorities.

At that time there were 42 community-based brain injury service groups in the province. There are now 16. Services are deteriorating, and we hear rumours of greater threats to services. Across the province, survivors of brain injury are not getting the services that they need and deserve. Where programs exist, there are often long wait-lists, and many exclusionary criteria have been set up to block access to service.

In some jurisdictions community brain injury rehabilitation and supports are being replaced by generic programs and drop-in centres designed for anyone with a label who isn't able to manage on their own.

Prince George Brain Injured Group, the Northern Brain Injury Association and the Brain Injury Alliance are not advocating for soft services such as drop-in centres and free meals, although we agree that these are important services for those living in poverty and social isolation. Many of those people, of course, are people who are living with an acquired brain injury. We're advocating for funds to provide case management, therapeutic activities, cognitive rehabilitation, relationship supports for families, employment assistance and other mid-range professional services.

B.C.'s reputation as a leader is long gone, and we're now among the have-not provinces. Little Saskatchewan provides over $5 million annually to community-based brain injury recovery, over and above what's provided by the health system. In Alberta it's $15 million, and I won't even mention Ontario. B.C. provides none at all. Unlike in many of the American states, here in B.C. there's no provincial vision or strategy for brain injury. We're no longer falling behind. We're pretty close to the bottom of the barrel.

Here in Prince George we're grateful to the Northern Health Authority for their annual contributions, but really, it accounts for less than half of what it takes to provide the services that we currently provide.

There's so much more that we used to do but aren't doing anymore. There's so much more that needs to be done that will not only benefit survivors and their families but will benefit the community as a whole.

That brings us to a discussion on issues and recommendations. First issue: British Columbia is one of the only jurisdictions in North America where there is no targeted government funding. We would like to thank the MLAs who have met with brain injury programs leaders over the past 12 years. I know a number of those people are sitting here today, but we'd like to remind them that listening is not enough.

We want to especially recognize the ongoing efforts of MLA Mike Morris, who's here today — thank you, Mike — and who's currently reviewing the way the neurotrauma fund is being utilized. We're certainly keeping our fingers crossed on that issue, but even if he is able to access a portion of this money, we're talking about a maximum of $2 million annually for the whole province. That would be a good start, but it is only a start.

Our recommendation. The Prince George Brain Injured Group supports the Brain Injury Alliance in its quest for the creation of a brain injury legacy fund which would access funding not only through the neurotrauma fund but from the Ministry of Justice, from ICBC and from the new incarnation of the Ministry of Transportation, RoadSafe B.C.

Two, brain injury is not just a health issue; it is also a justice issue. North American statistics indicate that 80 to 86 percent of all correctional system inmates report at least one significant loss of consciousness followed by altered functioning prior to their first incarceration. Findings from a 2013 study completed by the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre, P.G. Brain Injured Group, Northern Brain Injury Association and the Northern John Howard Society are fully in line with these statistics, indicating that 82 percent of inmates at that time were living with a previous brain injury.

Our recommendation: Ministry of Justice funds allocated as recommended by the Brain Injury Alliance would provide brain injury recovery programs, education and supports to both institutionalized and non-institutionalized survivors of brain injury who are involved with the justice system.

Training for corrections service personnel is also an important aspect of service, which leads us into point
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three, because stats like these make us wonder: if they hadn't sustained an injury in the first place, how many of these people might have avoided their interactions with the justice system? The issue is that 80 percent of brain injuries could have been prevented, and so can 80 percent of future brain injuries.

This fact must, of course, be put into context. Life itself is a dangerous activity, and we're not advocating that we wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and stay in bed. We're not against contact sports. We're not against cell phones. We don't think throw rugs, stairs or motor vehicles should be banned. But we do think that we're not doing enough to prevent injuries, so our recommendation is that education, engineering and enforcement are the three necessary components of injury prevention.

We support the recommendations contained in the Brain Injury Alliance document British Columbia Brain Injury Legacy Fund — you should all have received that yesterday and again today, I believe — endorsing that the use of a portion of the brain injury legacy fund be allocated to hands-on, community-based injury prevention programs. Historically, community brain injury programs have assumed this role. Many of us ceased this programming, as they must allocate their minimal funds to provide services to survivors, which leads us to our fourth and final point.

However we look at it, brain injury is one of the most expensive of medical issues. Why would we invest so much in the saving of a life and then not invest in that person's potential to resume their role as a functioning, taxpaying community member and citizen of this great province?

In 2013 the Prince George Brain Injured Group received — this is just an example — $40,000 from the federal government — a federal government fund that will not be available next year, by the way — to provide employment services for some of the 300-plus survivors of brain injury that we serve annually. That $40,000 made it possible for 51 survivors to earn in excess of $67,000. Those dollars were all spent in this community, contributing to the local workforce and the local economy. Imagine if the government spent $40,000, or let's say $40 million, on an LNG project and found a year later that your return on investment was 150 percent. I think you'd be pretty happy with that.

The province of B.C. reports that 835.6 residents are hospitalized annually following a brain injury. That's from a new document just published this week by the federal government. At $26,900, on average, per hospitalization, that's $10.4 million annually in direct health care costs — not follow-up; just those initial hospitalization costs. That makes the cost of recovery services and post-acute assistance look small in comparison. But we're not doing it. In B.C. we're increasingly saving lives and not providing people with the services they need to rebuild their lives.

There is a huge economic impact. The federal government just this week published Mapping Connections: An Understanding of Neurological Conditions in Canada. This document reports that the indirect economic costs for traumatic brain injury will increase from $7.3 billion in 2011 to $8.2 billion in 2031. That's a lot of money and a lot of suffering.

Preventing injury and providing survivors with the recovery services they need is the only way to ameliorate these costs. We support the funding proposal, once again, of the 2014 Brain Injury Alliance.

D. Ashton (Chair): Alison, thank you. I let you run because you were almost done. So you're into your questions, but that's fine.

You've been working with the brain injury group for a long period of time now. How long is that?

M. Morris: So you were around before these cuts were made that you were referring to in your report back in….

M. Morris: Okay. What kinds of outcomes were you having initially when you were funded to the level that you were prior to 1997 or 2002 or whenever the cuts were made?

A. Hagreen: You know, organizations grow, so when we first started, of course, we were very, very small. It takes quite a lot of time, especially with something like brain injury…. Originally people didn't want to even talk about brain injury, so numbers were small. Professional relationships were small and very limited. We were seen as a bunch of do-gooders, which is absolutely true. I'm not ashamed of that. But we didn't have a lot of professional credibility.

I would say that now more than three-quarters of our referrals come from physicians, the rehab unit at the hospital, Corrections, the RCMP and from other professional services. Things have grown, and so what has really happened…. Have we seen actual funding cuts to our services? Only minimally. But what has happened is our reputation has grown. And this is provincially. You'll find that provincially there is a lot of professionalism among the brain injury programs.
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The need has increased dramatically. People are no longer ashamed to say: "I have a brain injury." So have we seen a lot of cuts? No. Has the need grown dramatically? Yes.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, both of you, for your presentation and for your work as well in this area. I think probably all of us, as MLAs, have had those stories from parents or others coming into our offices talking about the challenges.

Two quick questions for you. One, you haven't mentioned anything — and maybe it's because there are no programs or services — about the area of residential care. I certainly hear in my community concerns about people with brain injuries ending up in long-term care and seniors care homes because there's no other opportunity, and it's obviously not a good match. I wonder if you have anything to say about residential care.

The second question is: what would be your priorities for programs? If you were looking right now, if someone gave you a wish list or was able to provide some more resources, what would be the priorities right now, from your perspective, that are so needed in the community?

Yes, in fact, the Northern Brain Injury Association had people up in Fort St. John yesterday doing a presentation. There were people there from the long-term care facility, and they said they have four very, very young men living in that long-term care facility. The Prince George Brain Injured Group does have a residential program, which was created in 1992, and it's five beds. That was intended to be the first of a number of such programs. It is the only residential program in northern B.C. for people with acquired brain injury.

So really, residential services…. I would put them very, very close to the top of the list, to answer your first question. Very, very close.

Your second question about what I would say was necessary…. I would say the second most important is the case management services. Finding your way through our very complex services is difficult for people who don't have disabilities. We're becoming more and more bureaucratized. It's quite phenomenal. So I would say case management second, for sure.

D. Jones: Also, our groups are heavily involved in prevention and developing programs, as well, to train people who help people with brain injuries. We've actually had some programs, one in particular, that have gone to different parts of the world. I hesitate to say worldwide, but it's in Japan right now, I guess.

D. Jones: And developed right here in Prince George. So prevention is key and developing programs to help trainers and, as Alison says, of course, helping people survive their brain injury.

A. Hagreen: Truly, I think that right now the expertise in brain injury is quite high, and I think B.C. could get back right on top.

D. Ashton (Chair): Alison and Doug, thank you very much for your presentation, and thank you for giving us this for the recommendations. That always helps a lot. Please stay in touch, and if there is anything else that you feel should be submitted, please forward it to us. Thanks for coming in today.

Good afternoon, ladies. Come on forward. Prince George Chamber of Commerce. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're going to push into it. There's up to five minutes for questions or comments from the committee. Please, at your convenience.

C. Ray: It's also the end of the day, so we won't take our allotted time. I would like to start off by saying thank you very, very much for having us here and for being here in our community today. We are representing the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. The Prince George chamber is the fifth-largest chamber in British Columbia. We represent almost 850 local and regional businesses.

Here today, speaking on behalf of those people, are our current president, Ranjit Gill, and our current vice-president, Cindi Pohl. Unable to make it to the presentation was Derek Dougherty, past president, but he was intending to be a part of it. Just walking into the room today is a man by the name of Albert Koehler. I wanted to point him out because, among many other things, he is also a past president of the chamber. I am Christie Ray, the CEO.

R. Gill: Past investments and successes are noted in the packages presented. The members of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce are aware of and highly appreciate these investments. The current global circumstances require cautious allocation of the fiscal resources of the province.

As we continue the transition back to a balanced budget, it is critical that cuts to expenditures avoid crippling future growth, especially in the top third of the province, where a large portion of the tax and resource-
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related revenue is generated. Equally important are strategic new investments where they can maintain momentum into a sustainable, knowledge-based resource economy connected to the world.

The Prince George Chamber of Commerce believes in investments in the future of the region and the province are best guided by core principles rather than another wish list of expenditures. Also, the business community in Prince George sees a complementary connection between the economic bottom line and the social and environment bottom lines. In the context of the above two observations, the Prince George Chamber of Commerce offers the following five principles and examples, in no particular order, as its advice to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

C. Pohl: The five recommended principles are as follows: (1) community sustainability and business stability require economic diversification and areas of strength; (2) support businesses through effective infrastructure and workforce, both locally and regionally; (3) education and skills development in Prince George and region are key foundations; (4) healthy communities are necessary for healthy businesses; and (5) efficient settlements of land claims in a fair, just manner.

R. Gill: The Prince George Chamber of Commerce looks to a future of our northern region with pride and optimism. Recognizing that the government is attempting to use available resources in ways that reflect the priorities of the people of the province, the Prince George Chamber of Commerce has attempted to communicate to this committee not a list of spending priorities but a modest list of principles against which we ask the government to weigh all of its spending decisions.

We applaud the time you put into this consultative process and ask that you consider the five basic principles that we've outlined for you today as you move forward in developing your budget for 2015. Good luck in your endeavours.

S. Gibson: I'm familiar with your chamber. You guys have a good reputation provincewide. I know that. I guess my question is: what do you see the province helping you with in terms of achieving your objectives in maximizing the success of business in Prince George?

I just had a quick look through this, and they're more thematic. As you said, they're more general. What is one thing, one takeaway, that we could have as a committee to say: "Here's what we would like you to help us with to improve the business climate in Prince George"? Give us one.

C. Ray: I'll speak to that, and it's an interesting question. It just so happens that we have recently put out an advocacy survey for our chamber members — so recently, in fact, that we haven't compiled the results properly yet. But in looking initially at just the raw data that came in a couple of days ago — I included a few of those stats in the package that was given to you — really what comes out is that the lack of skilled labour is still the number one concern for our members. I believe it was 31.3 percent. It does mention it in here. I think it was 31.3 percent listed having sufficient employees and labour as the thing that will hinder them in their operations moving forward.

By the same token — and, also, I did include it in the package — 75 percent of them indicated that expansion was in the near future, to some degree. So essentially, businesses want to expand. However, they have been letting us know that the primary barrier to that is in finding enough people to work in their organization. That's our members' number one concern.

S. Gibson: Yeah. So more employees with a skill set can hit the ground running and immediately contribute to the economy.

C. Ray: And there are several ways to do that too. I mean, various groups in the community have put together programs to attract skilled labour from other areas, whether it's internationally, nationally. We've even run a few programs trying to encourage new immigrants to B.C. in the Lower Mainland and Island areas to consider Prince George if their skill sets aren't being utilized fully. There's a lot of that.

There also are things…. We did mention that we realize that the government has done things to work on education elements, helping labour pools that maybe could be utilized better with training. The aboriginal training component, the hotel training — some things like that have been done. Really, we just wanted to encourage effort on both of those fronts to address the problem.

M. Morris: Basically, that was my question too. You know, if you had one direction that you wanted us to kind of hit the hardest, what is it? I appreciate that, and I appreciate the work you've done.

You guys are working with IPG — Initiatives Prince George — with their new marketing strategy in….

C. Ray: They've consulted us, for sure. We're not directly working with them. But yes, of course, we do work together closely.

M. Morris: Okay. Good work. Appreciate you guys
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coming in and making a presentation today.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for the presentation. I don't actually have a question. I just wanted to put on the record and thank you for what I consider to be a very well integrated approach to the relationship between healthy commerce, healthy business and healthy communities and the holistic way in which you've approached it. It's refreshing.

I'm wondering. In our travels through the interior of the province, we've heard communities struggle with attracting people to come here to the Interior to live, to work, raise a family. Are there any specific initiatives that the chamber has developed to sort of address that? You're not in the far north of the province. You're in the centre of the province, but you are kind of outside of urban British Columbia. What initiatives have you got underway?

C. Ray: Well, one program that we actually just recently ended — it was funded through the Immigrant Employment Council of B.C. and the Vancouver Foundation, and you guys before that — was called Consider Prince George. It really was an advertising program, 11 months, where we put together a well-rounded advertising campaign that used social media really extensively, and other forms of advertising, to try and encourage recent immigrants to the Lower Mainland and the Island — to consider the lifestyle and coming to live and work in Prince George.

Just a quick note on that. In the survey I mentioned before that we just did for advocacy, it was mentioned that what was felt to be the No. 1 barrier to doing business better was the employee issue. The No. 2 was actually the perception and reputation of Prince George. It's a shame, because Prince George is an amazing place, but it's not necessarily out there a lot. One thing that the Consider Prince George campaign did was to advertise some of the really amazing pieces of our community and our region and work on that issue.

R. Gill: We also have a very strong organization called the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society. It's very well received. It supports the immigrant communication in a very positive way, and kudos to them. They've won major awards. But they do focus on immigrant families, language barriers and all that kind of stuff, especially for the spouses of the people that are coming here who have a job. It's a way for them to integrate into the community as well as to meet other people who are in the same boat.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just very quickly. First, thank you for your presentation, but also, thank you for the partnerships it sounds like you've built across all of the issues that are important to the chamber with other organizations and groups.

You mentioned the survey that you've just done. I wonder, when you get the information, if that could be forwarded to the committee. I think it would be interesting for all of us to have that information directly from your businesses for us to be able to add to our information base.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good point, Carole. That would be good. If she can get it in for us, that would be wonderful.

Seeing no other questions or comments, Ranjit, Cindi and Christie, thank you very much for coming today. Again, thank you for your northern hospitality while we were here.

D. Ashton (Chair): Nice to see you again. Jan, David, thank you very much for coming. Welcome. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning if required, and then we have five minutes for questions and comments. Please, at your convenience.

J. Mastromatteo: Good afternoon again, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee this afternoon. With me for this presentation, as you've noted already, is David Rourke. He's the president of the Faculty Association at the College of New Caledonia. Both of us have made presentations to this committee in previous years, and both of us share the concerns of faculty and students at CNC that post-secondary education is critical to our region and that the 2015 provincial budget needs to better reflect the priority when it's tabled in February.

There are a number of issues that we want to cover in our presentation. All of them relate to funding and policy choices in post-secondary education that I'm sure this committee is thinking about. But there are issues that deserve budget support in 2015.

Let me start with a brief overview of our college. CNC is the oldest public post-secondary institution in Prince George. We have an enrolment base of close to 4,000 full-time-equivalent students.

Our faculty association speaks on behalf of over 300 full- and part-time faculty who work and teach at CNC's five campuses here in the central Interior.

CNC provides an important and increasingly unique post-secondary service to this region. CNC, along with other community colleges throughout the province, provides a critical path for thousands of adult learners who
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are not necessarily part of the direct-entry system, the stream of students who move from high school to post-secondary institutions. CNC is committed to bridging the gap that exists between the high-skilled demands of employers in this region and how those demands can be filled by students living here.

It's important to note that the learning that happens at our college is more than just a list of credentials and prerequisites. Learning is about students expanding their understanding in their community and maturing their sense of how they see themselves in their community.

That community can be measured by a postal code, or it can be seen as a sense of how they see themselves in their community as a more global view. Either way, post-secondary education helps transform the students. The transformation is something that every one of our faculty sees every day in their students.

It may be clichéd to talk about inquiring minds, but it's at the core of what post-secondary education is all about: getting students to look and think critically about the world around them and, through that process, become more confident as learners, more capable of becoming lifelong learners and more adaptive to the process of acquiring new skills.

As faculty, our members see that transformation as their students gain confidence and insights and become more involved in their community. They see adult learners make the sometimes difficult but always rewarding transition to new careers and new skills. All those transformations make a difference to the individual student and to our province as a whole.

I'm sure that the committee members are aware of the funding pressures facing post-secondary institutions in our province. At a provincial level the core funding, our operating grants from the Ministry of Advanced Education, is not keeping pace with enrolment demands or the unique cost pressures within the public post-secondary education system.

The budget and service plan tabled by the Ministry of Advanced Ed in 2014 included some disappointing measures. By 2015-16, for example, real per-student operating grants to colleges, universities and institutes in B.C. will have dropped by 20 percent since 2001. When a funding squeeze plays out over the course of a decade and a half, as it has in our province, other parts of the system get drawn into the funding plight.

The first and most significant impact has been on tuition fees. In a word, they've skyrocketed. The impact can be seen on two fronts. Student debt levels are now approaching $30,000, according to the Canadian Federation of Students — a direct result of tuition hikes.

Just as troubling is the fact that institutional budgets now rely more heavily on revenue sources other than their provincial operating grant. That last point has translated into a substantial rejigging of the balance of provincial support for post-secondary education at the institutional level.

Let me give you a specific example here at CNC. If you looked at the audited financial statements for our institution over the last six or seven years, you'd see a trend line developing that is disturbing and really speaks to the issue of access and affordability for students here in the central Interior. In 2008 the provincial operating grant accounted for almost 73 percent of total revenues at CNC. By 2014 that figure had dropped to 60 percent. What made up the difference was largely tuition fee revenues.

The fact that the Canadian Federation of Students is seeing student debt levels rise over the same period is consistent with the shifts of the funding. The problem with this shift is that it places a financial burden of access to post-secondary education more squarely on the shoulders of the students, a shift that becomes a barrier to lower-income households who want to see their kids access institutions and, in doing so, open up their lives to better prospects.

When you consider all the concern in B.C. about the growing gap between needed skills and the current labour market, at the very least the 2015 provincial budget should include new measures that will significantly reduce the cost of post-secondary education for B.C. students.

The funding shortfalls at CNC have meant a steady decline in program offerings over the last decade as well. On average, CNC has either cancelled or suspended six to seven program offerings every year since 2001. Those cuts translate into 122 fewer faculty teaching at our institution.

The range of cancellations and suspensions covers a broad spectrum, everything from university transfer courses like history and English to business-career programs as well as several trades and technical programs. Every one of those programs has student interest but lacks the funding support needed to keep them in place.

It's worth pointing out that despite the cuts in programs and course offerings at CNC, the ranks of our administration continue to grow. How you square that circle is hard to justify, in our view, but the reality at CNC is that we've seen the number of excluded staff increase by about 10 percent over the last decade, during which time the ranks of faculty have been cut and the shift to part-time or contingent teaching faculty has become more entrenched.

Before detailing any specific recommendations for the committee to consider, we want to focus on the government's recently announced plan to re-engineer post-secondary education. The announcement was made several months ago, but few details have emerged since. The plan has some worrisome concepts.

The first is that government wants to redirect up to 25 percent of the provincial operating grant from post-secondary educational institutions to fund high-demand career programs. Given the current deficiency in the
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provincial operating grant, the 25 percent figure will likely have negative impacts.

The second concern is that what counts in terms of high-demand careers — engineers, geologists, actuaries, accountants and health care technicians — will all fall into a category of high demand, but how a student arrives at that credential can vary very widely. Will the Ministry fund undergraduate liberal arts programs that a student takes en route to one of those credentials? The answer at this point is unclear. So, too, is the pedagogy — or more accurately, the lack of sound pedagogy — underlining the government's proposal.

Critical thinking skills are not something that can be simply pulled off a shelf, yet the approach to meeting high-demand careers drives quickly past the whole process of building those critical thinking skills. It may be popular in some quarters to criticize liberal arts programs as superfluous, but the reality is that strong communication skills and critical thinking are deeply embedded in liberal arts education.

In terms of specific priorities, the 2015 provincial budget needs to include the following, based on our analysis.

First, although provincially funded ESL is not a big program area at CNC, we do share the concern of other faculty, because successful ESL students eventually become part of the broader base of post-secondary education students. So the current cuts to ESL will adversely impact all post-secondary institutions.

Second, a revitalization of the student grant program would help financially stressed students better cope with rising tuition fees and heavier debt loads.

Third, student support services have suffered as a result of underfunding. The 2015 budget needs to provide funding support for those services as part of a broad effort for the government to ensure that students are able to complete programs and degrees in a more timely way.

Finally, the funding that post-secondary institutions receive needs to be better responded to in terms of the cost pressures they face. Any proposal that reduces already low levels of provincial funding needs to be reconsidered. A more sensible approach, in our view, is to engage in a thorough review of the funding formula so that regional inequities and core funding needs for the system as a whole are adequately addressed.

D. Ashton (Chair): Good timing, Jan. Thank you. It was a very good presentation.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for community colleges. I think we're very fortunate in British Columbia to have a strong system. Your points are important for us to recognize if we want to keep that strong system there with community colleges.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your enrolment. I think it's important to note that your college covers more than just Prince George. You mentioned the campuses, but what kind of numbers you're looking at and whether you do a breakdown around First Nations — the number of First Nations students that enter into your programs as well.

J. Mastromatteo: Firstly, certainly the raw figures are approximately 4,000 full-time and part-time students at CNC. Over the years those numbers have been dropping. Certainly, the mix of programming has been squeezed, and more so the smaller the communities.

More and more the campuses…. We have five of them. Certainly, Prince George is the main campus, but we have Mackenzie; Vanderhoof, which also includes a campus at Fort St. James; the Lakes campus at Burns Lake; and Quesnel. More and more, those regional campuses have had to fall back on cost recovery partnerships, cost recovery programming and thus, not the kind of fundamental programs needed so that people can make the transition to careers.

I think, to speak a little to your second question, we have great variation in the numbers of First Nations students at the different campuses, and they reflect the communities that those campuses are in. For instance, on the Prince George campus we have somewhere between 12 and 15 percent identified First Nations students, whereas a campus like the one in Burns Lake has upwards of 60 percent, so there's a real variation.

I think CNC has had some success in increasing the numbers of First Nations students, but as everyone knows, they're abominably low in terms of the whole post-secondary system.

S. Gibson: A quick question. My understanding is that your students would be somewhat older than your traditional university students, unless I'm misunderstanding, so it would be more mature students. What efforts are you making to allow those students to go to school off-hours or outside the regular work time so that they can work, have a regular job during the day, if they have a normal work situation, and then they can benefit from education at your institution off-hours?

This seems to be a trend in our society, allowing mature students to go back to school without interfering with their careers. Could you comment on that?

J. Mastromatteo: Certainly. To speak to your first point, definitely, our student population is much older than, say, in the traditional universities. At one point early in the decade — or the century, I guess — we had an average age of about 29. I think that's fallen. I'm not quite sure. About 27, maybe even a little bit younger. But
[ Page 815 ]
you're right — primarily adult students.

I think there's been real pressure on the institution to continue to try to offer evening or weekend or courses more flexible that could meet the needs of students that are working either part-time or full-time. More and more of the students need that kind of flexibility.

But it has become increasingly difficult to offer that programming. Fewer programs, fewer sections of classes mean that you can't offer the numbers of evening courses and other alternatives that we once could.

S. Gibson: A supplementary. What about on-line or mixed modal, where students are away? They're still a part of or in your catchment area. They can't access your campus, but they do have access to on line or a capacity to use technology to access on-line courses. Is that something you're also looking at?

J. Mastromatteo: Certainly, CNC's been growing its on-line offerings over the last decade or a little longer than that. At the same time, community colleges have, I think, a primary responsibility to students that don't necessarily do so well outside of a classroom — so fundamental education where people are upgrading or returning after years of not being in school. There's a great deal of research that shows those people do far better and there's far higher success if they are somehow given access to classrooms.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I just want to be clear on some of the facts that you were presenting to us today. Core funding — is it going down in absolute terms or just on a per-student basis? I think you also said that you had a reduction of 120 in your faculty and that the number of students was going down. I just want to make sure I heard that right.

J. Mastromatteo: Yes, that's what we're presenting here. I think, to speak to your first question, looking at the 20-percent funding reduction overall, my understanding is that's based on a calculation around FTE students, so per student.

Just quickly, you indicated that one of the outcomes of the reduction in core funding, however calculated, was that tuition fees were skyrocketing. I think that was the term you used. But I thought there was a cap on tuition fees for colleges, so I'm wondering about that.

Also, you were mentioning…. I remember last year, as well, colleges telling us about the growth in the ranks of administration and finding it difficult to understand why that was happening at the same time that the direct delivery of services seemed to be declining. So a couple of questions there.

J. Mastromatteo: I'd like to speak to your first question. I've lost it, however — the first part of that question.

G. Holman: You mentioned tuition fees skyrocketing, but I thought for junior colleges they were capped.

The other question is: why is it…? I mean, you asked the question yourself. Why do you think administrative costs are going up?

J. Mastromatteo: To speak to the first part of your question, the tuition, we're looking at it in terms of a historical overview. So in 2001-2002 there were huge increases in tuition. At our own institution, over one year there were two increases that amounted to a 70 percent increase.

G. Holman: Right. It's got to come out in some way, though — that constraint on tuition fees.

J. Mastromatteo: Uh-huh. I can only speculate, certainly. We have no idea why there's been the growth there has been, but we're told there's an awful lot more work around reporting duties for administrators — to the ministry, for instance — that there's been a great increase in workload there. Other than that, I don't think we can speculate on why the seeming contradiction.

D. Ashton (Chair): Jan and David, thank you very much. Greatly appreciate your presentation. Nice to see you again.

We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questioning. I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're going to be…. Please proceed.

S. Warrington: Thank you very much. Good evening, Chairperson and our hon. members. It's a pleasure for us to be here. I am joined today, as you know, by
[ Page 816 ]
Tim Bennett, our trustee and chair of our management and finance committee, and our secretary-treasurer, Mr. Allan Reed.

It's been a number of years since the board of education has been able to present to the select standing committee, and we welcome this opportunity today to provide a brief overview — you'll see it in our written submission — of our district. Our most important and urgent part of our presentation will be to identify four complex issues of significant concern to us. We will also conclude with our recommendations for your consideration.

As you know, school district 57 is on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh people here in Prince George and in McBride, and also the McLeod Lake Indian Band in the Mackenzie region and the Simpcw First Nations in Valemount.

We have a large, diverse district. We are actually known to be the second-largest district geographically in the province.

We have approximately 12,800 students enrolled in 31 elementary schools, eight secondary schools and our Centre for Learning Alternatives. During the 2013-14 year we have employed 1,337 full-time employees, and we administer an operating budget of $122.8 million.

At the outset I need to emphasize we manage a very lean, lean budget. In spite of our challenges, we operate a very efficient district, and we are very proud of the programs that we are able to provide for our students.

I would like to also note that in preparing our submission, we considered the Minister of Education's accountability statement, and we considered the five key elements of the education plan. We also considered the B.C. skills-for-jobs blueprint. Our recommendations today must — and I emphasize "must" — be addressed if we are to successfully support these goals outlined by the government of British Columbia and our shared goals as a district.

We are here today to outline four significant challenges facing our district as we strive to provide the complexity of programs and services needed to address, first of all, our rural and urban challenges; secondly, our growing vulnerability of student population; and third, the urgency for operating and capital funding needed to address the conditions of our aging facilities. Finally, we're here once again to urge the government to provide sustainable funding required to meet the growing and challenging needs within our district in our public education system.

We acknowledge that our challenges are not unique to our district. However, they represent the framework within which we strive towards commitment of learning that enriches the life of each student.

Our trustee Tim Bennett will now discuss our challenges and our recommendations.

T. Bennett: Thank you for the opportunity to present today. As you heard from Trustee Warrington, we have a very large school district. It is the second-largest geographical district in the province. First off, we would like to look at the rural-urban context. All of the schools are very important to the communities and the neighbourhoods they serve. This is very true in our outlying communities. Our district stretches as far east as Valemount and as far north as Mackenzie. We also stretch south down to Hixon.

Especially in these rural communities, our communities rely on the economic viability of our schools being in those communities. These schools are not just to offer academic programming to students, but during the time school is not in session these are used for athletic, recreational and cultural opportunities for the entire community.

With the current per-pupil funding model, the school district is challenged to provide a complete educational program with the funding available. In addition, the school district faces recruitment and retention challenges to properly staff schools in these communities with qualified teachers. Although the teachers' collective agreement does provide for a rural pay grid and a supplementary allowance, recruitment and retention issues continue to challenge the board of education in our rural communities.

These rural communities are also very vocal and challenge the board of education to not just retain but to also maintain the school buildings, given that the school building is a central role to the economic and social viability of the community. To help us ensure that we are providing a quality and equitable education to all students, we would like to recommend to government that they revise the funding formula to recognize the importance of maintaining vibrant elementary and secondary schools in rural and remote communities.

I would now like to look at our vulnerable students and families. Our school district has a significant segment of the population defined as vulnerable. According to the Ministry of Children and Family Development's social services index of 1,572 schools in British Columbia, five of school district 57's schools are in the top 50. This shows that we have a very high percentage of vulnerable students in our district.

Our schools are often the most safe place and a stable period of time in the daily lives of our most vulnerable. Public schools are increasingly called upon to provide health and welfare services beyond the basic education of our students. These services often involve cooperation and collaboration with other ministries of government, including the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Health, through the Northern Health Authority.

Please don't get us wrong. We as a system are very happy to provide these services to our most vulnerable
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families. Unfortunately, this interministry cooperation and collaboration does not include additional funding to provide these services.

School district 57 recognizes the importance of improving conditions for learning. Despite strong instructional practice, many of our learners continue to struggle academically. We recognize that our district works with many learners who require more than just academic interventions. These students, again, are among our most vulnerable.

To meet the needs of all of our learners, we have worked closely with teachers, principals and all staff to identify the practices and interventions that, while they may not completely eliminate the effects of poverty and social-emotional vulnerability, will allow a most likely avenue to improve the life chances of all our students.

Through the collaboration efforts of schools, departments, the senior learning team and global research, we have identified and created the essential eight practices that support student learning. The most important of these to our vulnerable families are the cultural competencies of all of our staff, social-emotional learning and addressing poverty in student learning.

Our budget processes and practice have identified funds to support these initiatives because of their importance to establishing the conditions of learning. However, the current funding model does not provide sufficient funds to this or other challenges faced by vulnerable students and families.

We ask for the government's help with this, and to recognize the critical role our schools play in the lives of vulnerable children and families, through appropriate funding of services provided by our schools that are the responsibility of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Health.

Now I'd like to address our aging school facilities. Through the Ministry of Education's facility condition index, 71 percent of our schools are rated as poor. I would like to address, though, that despite the high poor rating, our facility services department, maintenance staff and custodial staff ensure that each of our schools provides a clean, safe and well-maintained facility for learning.

We were disappointed to learn in July 2014 that there were no capital plan submissions for the 2014-2015 year. With that, as well, one of the schools listed as poor required $400,000 of repairs to the roof to ensure that it was structurally sound. This school had appeared in the 2013-2014 capital plan. Because this represents 12.5 percent of our school district's annual facility grant, the work needed to go to ensure that this school was ready for students, and other important maintenance work was postponed.

We ask that government please increase the annual facility grant over the next five years by $10 million per year to address the known provincial shortfall of funding to extend the useful life of schools and facilities and to reinstate the annual capital plan process and revise the process to ensure that the needs of all districts are equitably met.

The last one is regarding sustainable budgets. The development of our 2014-2015 budget identified a shortfall of $5.3 million. This was primarily addressed by asking schools and departments to reduce their budgets by 0.5 percent and using the rest out of accrued surplus. This surplus was the result of previous boards of education making very difficult decisions, including the closure and restructuring of schools in 2010 and closing 14 schools — seven in 2002 and seven in 2003.

Over the last ten years the district annual budget has been balanced through the appropriation of surplus in seven of these ten years. Such a practice is neither fiscally responsible nor sustainable. The board of education is committed to a sustainable budget practice and asks that government fully fund all collective agreements and provincially mandated inflationary increases, such as B.C. Hydro, teacher and municipal pension plans and Medical Services Plan increases.

T. Bennett: I would just like to say that as trustees, we remain united that our single most important challenge is continuing to provide the quality of education expected by the community.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for the presentation. Your comment about the $400,000 that you had to spend on the roof — the fact that there was no…. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but did that essentially have to come out of your operating funds, then, because there was no facility grant for that year, or did I misunderstand that?

T. Bennett: The roof repair to the one building was on our capital plan in 2013-2014. There was no capital funding allocated to that project. The roof repairs needed to be done in order to ensure that the building was structurally sound. So that money needed to come out of our annual facility grant. Therefore, other projects that were going to be funded through the annual facility grant are now put on hold because there were not the funds to address those needs.

G. Holman: Okay, so it didn't come out of operating. It came out of the facility grant.

G. Holman: I'm looking down at the bottom of page 5. You said that seven schools closed since 2002, and it looked like 14 from 2000. I'm sorry, seven since…. Anyway, it looks like a sum total of 21 since 2002. Is that right?

M. Morris: Thanks for your presentation, It was very good. I understand I'm going to be meeting with you folks here shortly down the road here as well.

What kind of a decline have we seen in student population in the school district in that period of time since 2002, for example?

A. Reed: Chairperson, our decline in student enrolment from that period of 2002 is from about 18,000 FTE students to 12,000, so about a third over that period of time — 18,000 down to 12,000.

M. Morris: Is the overall budget impacted? I know we've heard from other school boards so far, and there are some issues with transportation and how that funding is determined provincially and how it impacts on the provincial budget. Is that a big issue for school district 57 as well — the transportation of students on buses and the funding formula that's applied to that?

S. Warrington: Actually, we don't have the same type of transportation system that other school districts do. Our transportation system is contracted out. Certainly, we manage to maintain our budget of 4-point-some-odd-million dollars to support that student transportation. But I have to emphasize that we are a large, diverse district, and we transport children from large distances and small rural communities to schools, and that is a challenge. It certainly is.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you've identified some important areas, and I think you've also described well the challenge of this school district that is both rural and urban. One of the challenges of Prince George is you face both of those areas.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about recruitment and retention and some of the areas that you've worked on to try and look at that, and what the numbers look like. Have you put any programs in place? Have you been doing any kinds of programs to look at retention and recruitment of teachers?

Then the other question was around the capital submissions. Have you been given any update from government around when that will change, when the opportunity will be for putting in capital submissions in this next while?

S. Warrington: It's our understanding that there won't be any capital submissions for this year, and that is a concern for us.

In terms of the recruitment and retention issue, it is very difficult to get specialist teachers in our rural communities. With the declining enrolment in some of our rural communities, as you will see noted in our report, to be able to provide the programs that we need for those students, it is hard to recruit teachers who would be able to stay in the community, given that there may be uncertainty around their job options.

We've tried all kinds of strategies to ensure that we encourage recruitment and retention to those communities by offering as many opportunities as we can to those employees. But it's mostly in our specialist areas that we're finding the greatest challenge.

S. Gibson: On retention and recruitment, I think we're aware as we travel, especially up in northern and central rural communities, it is a challenge.

My question is…. I noticed UNBC has an innovative program with their medical school, which I had the opportunity to tour here last year. I was impressed by the fact that they were taking young students from smaller communities in north and central B.C. and giving them training so that they became doctors, general physicians. Then they would return back to their homes with their families and the friendships, so they ended up going back to where they started.

Have you looked at a program like that? I was very impressed with it, to be honest, as someone from the Lower Mainland. What about a program like that for teachers to get people from Valemount, Mackenzie and other more remote areas to come and take education and then return back to their communities? More likely to be retained as opposed to somebody coming from, say, Abbotsford, where I live — coming to Valemount, feeling out of it, maybe socially estranged and then leaving after only a year. That's my question.

T. Bennett: Sure. I know that our district has a very close relationship, both with UNBC and all post-secondary institutions, and I know that our senior staff, especially in the human resources department, are trying as many initiatives as they can to ensure that we're getting teachers in our district and in the communities where we need them most.

It is a challenge, and I know that our senior staff are working very hard with all strategies to ensure that we're getting teachers in these communities.

S. Warrington: We definitely hire students from UNBC. We try very hard to recruit students that come to our district from within our district and that are trained in our district through UNBC. So yes, we do have a very close relationship with the education department at UNBC.

G. Heyman: Quickly, with respect to your comment about recruitment and retention difficulties as well as maintaining facilities in rural communities, do you have any comparative figures of school completion rates or advancement to post-secondary between areas where there's been a real recruitment and retention problem for teachers and areas where there's been less so, particularly with aboriginal youth?

S. Warrington: Actually, our graduation rates have improved. There has been a strong emphasis in our district to ensure that we are working with all our students from all our areas, whether they are McBride, Valemount, the rural areas. Their success rate is equal to that success rate that we have in our urban centres.

We strive very hard to provide the programs that will ensure their success, but I can surely emphasize the importance of the funding that's required in order for us to grow those rural communities. There needs to be a different funding formula that addresses those needs so that we can ensure that we are providing all the programs that they require in order for them to be successful.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sharel, Tim, Allan, thank you very much. I'm sorry I have to cut you off.

Allan, before you go, $400,000 in investment income was rolled into last year for some offsetting. That's accumulation of surpluses plus investments that the school district has?

A. Reed: It's primarily related, yes, to the surplus cash that we do have in our management there, much of which is invested in the government's central deposit program.

Welcome, David. Thank you for coming. Ten minutes for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning if required — and we have five minutes for questions and answers. When you're ready.

D. Clarkson: Thank you, Mr. Chair and hon. Members, for the opportunity to speak to you guys today. My name is David Clarkson. I'm a full-time student at UNBC. My program is in health sciences, and I'm intending to minor in economics. Today what I'd like to talk to you about is opportunities to improve our post-secondary education system.

Every year the government invests $1.9 billion to train skilled workers to meet the growing needs of our economy. In return on this investment, the 25 publicly funded institutions in the province produce nearly 60,000 credentials every year for students who complete their studies.

Unfortunately, not everyone does complete their studies. In fact, a recent longitudinal study of student outcomes in the province found that the six-year completion rate was just under 70 percent. This is important because there's a cost to taxpayers and the economy when students do not complete their programs. In fact, based on the publicly available data, I've estimated the economic impact of both attrition and delayed graduation to be $760 million per year.

In addition to the opportunity costs and lost productivity of attrition, this includes taxpayer losses from their investment, amounting to $560 million per year. In other words, about 29 cents of every taxpayer dollar invested in advanced education does not actually contribute towards the fulfilment of a credential.

As you guys can see from data from the Student Transitions Project, which is found at the red tab in your handout, this is approximately consistent with the credential completion rate of 69 percent over six years.

One important limitation of my estimates is that they are based on this study, which primarily focused on baccalaureate students. As a result, it's not clear how this data may be applicable to students who are not in baccalaureate programs or how best to apply the findings across the entire student population. However, I am satisfied that my estimates provide a reasonable approximation for the purposes of my presentation today.

For reasons that I'm about to explain momentarily, I'd like to submit to you that financial pressures on students arising from shortfalls in the existing student financial aid regime are a major contributing factor to both attrition and delayed graduation among students.

Unmet financial need is a phenomenon which exists when the costs of post-secondary education exceed the ability of a student to pay, even after he or she receives the maximum amount of student financial aid presently available. Although the ministry was not able to provide me with exact figures before my presentation this afternoon, I'm certain and confident that based on what data is available, this phenomenon affects thousands of students to the tune of millions of dollars every year.

Unmet financial need is a problem because it results in financial hardship, which students respond to by either delaying or postponing their studies in the pursuit of employment to make up for the shortfall in their finances.
[ Page 820 ]
The phenomenon was well described in a publication by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, which posits to us the following scenario.

Consider the student who has high levels of financial need. If that student is adequately funded, she will be able to pay her tuition and fees, rent, groceries, etc. Now, imagine her classmate, whose financial aid package, even when combined with the income from a part-time job, is insufficient to pay the bills. One can assume that this student would be preoccupied with an urgent stack of growing unpaid bills, which are likely to pressure him to abandon his studies.

In their research, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation followed undergraduates for five years to understand the relationship between financial aid and persistence to graduation.

If I could direct your attention to the blue tab in the handout, in figure 4 you can see that generally the amount of aid received is negatively correlated with the probability of graduation. In other words, large sums of student debt reduce the likelihood that the student will finish his or her degree. However, in that same figure you can see that when student loans are supplemented by non-repayable financial aid, students are considerably more likely to graduate than those who only receive loans, in some cases by two to four times.

What I'm proposing today is that the government adopt a B.C. student grant program for low- and middle-income students. This is very similar to a program that was launched by the federal government in 2008 and is available in many other provinces in the country. This program would cost $210 million over three years, which represents approximately 23 percent of the projected surplus over that same time.

To be clear, this is not a new idea. This committee, in fact, three times over the last four years has recommended the adoption of such a program. Unfortunately, it's likely that budgetary constraints at those times made that financially unfeasible.

Such a program would be worthwhile for three key reasons. First of all, it would pay for itself insofar as it would increase the return currently made by taxpayers in the post-secondary system. Secondly, by combatting attrition and delayed graduation, it would improve the throughput of universities, allowing more students to graduate every year without the need to construct additional facilities or add additional funding. And thirdly, this program will also improve access among the lowest-income British Columbians by providing them with additional financial support during their studies.

I'd like to leave my presentation there and welcome any questions at this point.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, thank you, David. A very good presentation, and thank you for the facts and figures. It gives us an opportunity to read through. It's a bit difficult in this short time frame, but thank you.

G. Heyman: Thank you for your presentation. I'm wondering if you are aware of and can tell us which other provinces in Canada have a non-refundable grant program for low- and middle-income families, or, if it's easier, which ones don't.

D. Clarkson: To the best of my understanding, British Columbia is, in fact, the only province without a program that's available to every student. However, there are programs in this province available to students with disabilities or dependents and also to students who are in key labour market priority programs.

One other point of interest, perhaps, is that I believe the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has actually entirely replaced its student loan program with a non-repayable aid scheme, which, as you guys can see from the report from the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation, likely results in the highest rate of persistence to graduation.

I guess I have a little bit of interest in this as someone who has taught at a university and also knocked off a few degrees over the years to allow me to do that. I shared this with another group in another town. One of the paradoxes that I have seen — I want to share that with you, and maybe you'll be interested in it — is I have found that the students that have the most financial need in many cases often finish, where the students that are bankrolled, perhaps by family or some other means, don't tend to finish.

This is anecdotal. I think you've done a reasonably good job of connecting your assumptions with your conclusion. In my own case, I remember taking a program where most people didn't finish. Because I was paying for it myself and working almost full-time to do my degree, working 30 hours a week trying to pay for it…. Only nine of us graduated out of 48 in the program. I'm not particularly that smart, really. I was paying for it myself, and I had to finish it.

My comment is: I agree with your assumptions here, but I'd like your reaction to that. I think the other side of it is that you take better care of your own car than a rental car. That metaphor sometimes applies here. I know it's not consistent with what you've shared, but I'd be interested in your comments.

D. Clarkson: Of course. By way of analogy, I teach swimming lessons. What we've found is that children
[ Page 821 ]
oftentimes would not want to be there. These children aren't paying for their swimming lessons, of course. They're just there by means of their parents and oftentimes difficult to teach. However, that's never the case with adult swimming lessons because they themselves are there paying for it, wanting to be there.

If that's not the best analogy, what I can tell you is that those students who are paying directly themselves for the programs are likely doing so because they have identified the value in taking that program and are committed to it, whereas many other students have the privilege of additional financial support. They also have the luxury of time to postpone their studies or not complete them because there is less of a cost directly to them.

S. Gibson: All the students I taught over the years — when they were running into trouble it often wasn't so much financial. You use the word "attrition." They just kind of lose interest. They're doing a BA in sociology, and they suddenly say: "Okay, interesting, but what am I going to do with this?"

Now, your program that you're taking in health sciences — you're going to land a job when you finish. You know that.

S. Gibson: But with a BA in sociology, it's going to be more problematic. I think that's also something that should be implied or considered in light of your interesting information, which I appreciate having today.

D. Clarkson: Maybe one thought on that as well is that someone who is three years through their sociology degree — there's already been a considerable investment made in that education regardless of who's paying for it, including taxpayers.

What I'm suggesting is that the reason may be that they don't see paying a few more thousand dollars to finish their degree…. They may not finish, but if there is additional financial support, the value to society of them actually having finished that credential is probably far greater, unfortunately, than the unrealized value in their education.

I'm looking at figure 4, trying to understand it. My understanding is that what the graph shows is that the probability of completion goes up with the amount of aid. It's scalable. Am I interpreting that correctly?

D. Clarkson: What you can see is that students who have…. There's generally a negative correlation. Students with very large amounts of financial aid, as you can see, particularly in the case of only loans….

That debt becomes a factor that weighs against the likelihood that they will graduate. Then looking above that, you can see that when supplemented with loans, there is still that negative correlation, but it's offset quite considerably. If you guys can see — unfortunately, I didn't print this in colour — the lightest line there, there is actually a positive relationship when the financial aid is solely from non-repayable aid sources.

G. Holman: It's only the grants that show the very clear positive correlation? Only the needs-based grants.

D. Clarkson: Unto themselves, yes. However, the decline of the slope of the correlation indicates that when supplemented with grants, the completion rate is still much higher than with loans only.

G. Holman: What I'm trying to get at is that it seems to suggest to me that the more assistance provided, the probability of completion goes up.

G. Holman: So your proposal is to match the federal loan. Let's say the province was to say: "Well, we agree with the concept, but we can't afford that, so we can only provide, say, half the amount." That impact…. The outcome of scale was what I'm trying to get at.

D. Clarkson: Absolutely. This is a scalable program. What I've requested is $210 million over three years. That amount is definitely flexible. I believe last year the Research Universities Council of B.C. proposed a similar program that was in the amount of $36 million per year.

Maybe to better answer your question is that there's this unmet-need component. The maximum amount of aid that a student can currently receive is $11,525, but typically, the costs are more. So if they were to receive more aid, regardless of the nature of that aid, it would likely increase persistence because those students can now afford to eat and pay their rent.

D. Ashton (Chair): David, thank you very much for your presentation. Where is health sciences taking you?

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, your attention to detail will serve you well at that. Very good job. Thank you very much for coming.

Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council — Sandy, Pennie-Lynn and Emily.
[ Page 822 ]

Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions and comments. Please, the floor is yours.

P. Davidson: Ladies and gentlemen of the select standing committee, thank you for allowing us to be here today. My name is Pennie-Lynn Davidson, and I am representing the Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council.

The Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council is a group with direct experience in mental health issues. We strive to provide the consumer perspective on promoting positive change in public policy, the mental health system and the community of Prince George.

Mental health issues directly affect one in five British Columbians, making it one of the largest health issues in the province and, correspondingly, an area that consumes a lot of government resources. As a result, we need to ensure that we are making the best possible use of those resources.

An equally important need is to ensure that the voices of mental health consumers are being heard in their care and their rights are being respected both within the health community and in government programs they need to access. It is in this last that we are falling short.

Prince George has no independent advocate available to work with people with mental health issues as they navigate through health care and government resources and no one to ensure that their rights are being respected during a time when they may be particularly vulnerable. It is this deficiency that has brought the consumer council here today.

A loose patchwork of assistance exists in Prince George, with some agencies, such as the British Columbia Schizophrenia Society and the Canadian Mental Health Association, having part-time navigators or peer support workers. Mental health navigators can point clients in the right direction regarding services or information, while peer support workers provide personal support to help individuals achieve their goals. While both of these are important roles, the scope of these jobs, and often direction from their employers, prevent workers from assuming the role of advocate, leaving mental health consumers on their own.

A further serious complication exists in that nearly all local mental health organizations, including the two already mentioned, receive at least some of their funding through the Northern Health Authority's mental health and addiction services, putting them in direct conflict in many advocacy situations.

Let us disclose here that the Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council receives all of its moneys through initiatives largely funded by mental health and addiction services. This conflict has created the understandable situations where local agencies do not want to or cannot supply advocates in situations where this major source of their funding is in an oppositional position.

An important example created by the advocate vacuum is at review panel hearings. These are requested by individuals who are currently being held involuntarily at a psychiatric facility and would like their status to be reviewed. While the Lower Mainland has programs that provide legal representation or advocates for these patients, such programs rarely reach this far north.

With our local groups not willing to act directly against mental health and addiction services — represented, in this case, by the hospital — and few patients able to afford private legal representation, most patients are either under-represented or not represented at all. This puts patients in an intimidating environment at a time when they are often least likely to be capable of clearly articulating what they need to communicate. Well-meaning family members or friends can volunteer to assist, but without adequate training and experience, this may not result in improved outcomes.

Other areas where an independent advocate would have a large, beneficial impact include helping individuals with a mental illness to navigate the provincial disability system, obtain appropriate housing, meet with doctors and mental health care teams, interact with police or court officers and work with people who may or may not be part of the traditional mental health system, to name only a few from a very long list.

As well-meaning as professionals can be, there is a strong need for an independent voice who can speak for individuals who may not be able to speak for themselves at that moment. A knowledgable advocate can help ensure that these interactions are more productive for both mental health consumers and service providers, reducing frustration and wasted time on both sides.

We cannot overstate the need for an independent advocate being made available to individuals living with a mental illness in Prince George. This advocate must have experience in the mental health field, knowledge of existing programming, conflict resolution and mediation training, and a passion for preserving the rights of his or her clients. But most importantly, this advocate must exist outside the normal chain of health funding in order to do his or her job well, free of the shackles of conflicts of interest.

Government services are subject to frequent administrative, personnel and policy changes. A separate, funded advocacy position is needed to help individuals with a mental illness navigate these changes successfully.

An independent advocate will cost money, but we believe that money will be returned through savings in other areas. In addition to the mental and emotional benefits, mental health consumers who are able to have their voices heard and their needs met are much more likely to achieve long-term wellness. This, in turn, can lead to decreased costs in health care, policing, family services and other areas.
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We do not wish to take up more of your time than is necessary. In closing, we urge you to explore further the importance of a full-time, dedicated and independent advocate in Prince George. Advocates can help ensure better care, better health and better outcomes, which is vital in a compassionate and fiscally responsible society.

Comments from anyone else? We still have a few minutes — anybody else at the table?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your work. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more.

You mentioned the example, which I think is an important one, of hearings that are occurring and no one to help represent the individual who is struggling with mental health issues. You also mentioned that's different in larger communities — that sometimes they have advocates or other people who can go along. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about the solution that might be there in other communities, just so we can look at the gap here in Prince George.

Then the last thing is I wondered if you could just tell me a little bit about the work that you do and the work that your council does here in Prince George.

P. Davidson: All right. Regarding review panels, hearings, people who have requested a review panel are eligible for legal aid, if they qualify. Unfortunately, we have a small legal base here, so even when people do qualify, it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a lawyer who can attend on that day and time.

My understanding — I don't have statistics for it; it's anecdotal — is that it rarely happens that someone is able to prove, in the time period, that they can qualify and also meet with a lawyer and have a lawyer present.

C. James (Deputy Chair): It's often a short time for someone to go up for a hearing.

P. Davidson: I believe that within 14 days they have to convene a panel hearing.

M. Morris: Good presentation. Do you know if there are any other independent advocates in the province of B.C. right now?

P. Davidson: We are still trying to interact with other communities in the province to find out what they have as far as advocacy and, most especially, how that is funded to ensure an independent advocate.

E. Moliere: We have heard that in the Lower Mainland there are independent advocates. Do I know that for a fact? No, I have not got that confirmed. We hear it within the community, and we hear about it when we're talking to somebody in the Lower Mainland — that there are independent advocates. Do we know that for a fact? No.

M. Morris: Okay. A good presentation, and I know where you're coming from. We've had some discussions on this in the past. I do know from my previous life that there's a lot of interaction with police and mental health patients throughout the province and throughout the communities that so desperately need some help to navigate through that system, so well done. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Chair): I'm going to go back to Carole because I cut her off, and I do apologize. Sorry, Carole.

I wondered if you could just tell us in a couple of minutes some of the things that you do as a council, some of the support that you provide or some of the work that you're doing.

E. Moliere: Yes. In 2011 we heard within the community that the Prince George hospital needed…. People were realizing that they fell short on the psychiatric ward. We were getting that by feedback from patients that were coming off the ward. As an independent group, we set out to do a survey. We did an anonymous survey, and we put them throughout the community, gathering them daily.

We found out what people's experiences were, we collated all the information, and we presented it to Northern Health. With that, there have been changes made, and we're very proud of that.

We also are going to do a revamp of the same survey we've just spoken about so that we can see where we were in 2011, where we are now and where they have to still continue to move forward to make it a safe environment for patients to be there and to get their health better.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. This is really an educational experience in general, but on this particular issue, I wasn't aware of the conflict problem. Thanks for bringing that forward.

You do say that you want to provide additional data on
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the costs, on the budget range. Further to Mike's question, too, about examples in other areas — that would be really helpful, and, also, some idea of the geographic area that the service might apply to.

I know you're concerned with Prince George, but I suspect maybe there are some economies of scale there for northern B.C., or you could think about that, like the geographic area this kind of advocate could work in.

S. Hamilton: On that theme, in terms of workload…. Thank you, by the way, for your presentation. It is enlightening. It's the first group of this sort that has come forward to this panel that I can recall.

In my constituency I have a constituent — a client, if you will — who uses the services of a mental health advocate. There's an old adage that 10 percent of the people take up 90 percent of your time. I know this person is very high maintenance for this advocate, and it's a significant problem for him to maintain his caseload.

What sort of framework do you see this person working under? That's my first question. What sort of framework do they work under in their role? Because they can't do it themselves. You have a constituency here of a lot of people, a large geographical area, as Gary was saying a moment ago.

Do you see one individual coming in, in a role like that, getting overwhelmed at the beginning? Again, what sort of framework do you see them reaching out and working under in the long run?

S. Ramsay: Actually, I think there needs to be a couple of people, because the need is so great. Years back there was an advocate who worked out of Canadian Mental Health, and she was very busy — overwhelmingly busy.

With her caseload, she was involved with the review panel. She was involved with families wanting information about treatment about mental health. She was completely run off her feet, but she was really good at being able to point people in directions where they should actually go to.

Right now Northern Health has got one area, the CRU area, that everyone goes to and is interviewed. Then from there, they are triaged off into the different programs. I can see that part of the work of the advocate would be triaging over to CRU, so they'd get into the right programs.

When we did this, we looked at Prince George in itself. We didn't look at the outlying areas. We know that there's a great need in all the areas, but we were concerned about Prince George.

What brought it to the forefront was that one of the employees from Canadian Mental Health who was doing advocate work for a client was told that she had to stop because it was a conflict of interest and that they were worried that funding was going to be pulled from their program.

This woman became completely overwhelmed and actually quit her job because she wasn't able to do what she felt in her heart she needed to do.

I think there needs to be two, because if they are going to work with the RCMP, if they are going to work with health and they're going to work with families and with clients — and if you take the percentage of how many people in Prince George, saying that we have a population of around 80,000 — that leaves us around 17,000 people to serve. That's a lot of people. We're not saying all people will use that service, but out of there, there are a great number that probably will use that service.

We were hoping that this committee would look at funding two people, and from there, they can keep the statistics on how busy they are and their workload so they see if they need others, or, if this program could be implemented throughout the province.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sandy, I have to cut you off right there. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, again, Helen, for coming. If I remember correctly, last year you were here.

H. Domshy: Then once we got away from your level…. Anyway, let me sound official.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. You've got ten minutes to do that. Then we've got five minutes for questions and comments, so please start.

H. Domshy: Good evening, Mr. Ashton, and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Thank you for coming to Prince George. I've lived here for 39 years, and it seems to be a pretty tough thing for people to want to come up to Prince George, so we appreciate your presence.

My name is Helen Domshy, and I'm the literacy outreach coordinator for the city of Prince George, and we
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are in our eighth year of operation. We'd like to thank the B.C. government for the funding that they provide to Decoda Literacy Solutions for the coordination of literacy work across the province.

I also want to thank this committee in particular for the funding recommendation that you made last year, which was to support funding $2.5 million for community literacy work in B.C. As you know, your recommendation was not taken. The action that was taken was to underfund by $1.5 million. We are grateful that the Minister of Education eventually provided another million at the end of our fiscal year, so we were only under then by half a million.

So here I am. I'm back, cap in hand, to ask you to renew your original recommendation of $2.5 million for our next year and — I think, importantly — to request that this endorsement be made on an annual basis.

I know your part has been played when your recommendations have been submitted, but perhaps you could watch the next steps in this process and encourage the committee to designate the literacy funding as your committee has recommended. You probably can't, but I felt obligated to say it. In other words, support us if you can after your work is done.

The funds we're asking you for support literacy outreach coordinators, and that supports the coordination piece. However, it seems to me that not a lot of value is placed upon the coordination piece. Let me explain what I mean by that statement.

Last spring, after the public outcry about money and funding, in Prince George an anonymous donor stepped forward and funded nine literacy programs for children to the tune of $20,000. Didn't want to be identified; still doesn't want to be identified.

So what did he do with his $20,000? He delivered Ready, Set, Learn, a program — he did it twice; helped the student at the Learning Difficulties Centre; vision testing and media work; breakfast for literacy; two different sites for Mother Goose; kitchen table learning; aboriginal infant development program; homework help for kids.

The year before that the forest legacy fund decided that they would designate funds directly into communities that had a mill, like Canfor. And we and Quesnel got it. We got $20,000 from them.

So what did they do? They funded Make the Connection, which is aboriginal infant development program; a Mother Goose program; Vantage Vision and Reading; Ready, Set, Learn, again; Partners in Learning; aboriginal parenting and literacy skills; Bridging the Gap, which is a program involving federal parolees; and Breaking the Cycle literacy program, which is a program that comes out of Prince George Regional Correctional Centre.

So to get back to my point, although these programs were offered and delivered by their individual agencies, someone had to coordinate the partners and the funders, and the coordination piece was not written into the funding proposals.

Coordination, as I see it, and I saw it then, is the act of organizing: making different people or things work together for a goal or effect to fulfil desired goals in an organization. It's a managerial function in which different activities of the project are properly adjusted and interlinked — the process of causing things to be the same or to go together well. The creation of partnerships sometimes produces a brand-new program or supports an existing one as one of the functions.

Your funding supports the coordination role, and it's important for many reasons. For example, to call for proposals, develop the final submissions for the funder, write letters, getting cheques, designing and insurance reports get done, contributing to the district literacy plan, generally helping the process run as smoothly and as efficiently as possible — it's all part of the big picture.

This year we'll be working on a new vision for adult literacy, bringing several partners to the table to work on something new. We're not sure what it's going to look like, but it's going to be something new.

Health literacy is another area that we're looking at, and our hope will be that the end result will be a new partnership. First aid for kids and a workshop to look at the new way of teaching grammar are both suggestions that I'm looking at, at this time. This work, and the time that it takes to organize it, is what you're supporting.

Although many literacy outreach coordinators design and deliver programs, as I do, another important role is to support literacy in our community. The support comes in many ways — for example, communication, by listening for literacy needs as reflected by the community, by creating partnerships to develop a program or project to meet a newly identified need, doing research, by being part of an agency board, being literacy resources themselves.

You would think that the cost of coordination would be written into the proposals that I submitted to my two wonderful donors. The funder and I both wanted all the funds to go to the programs. My steward has been known to waive administration fees towards this end. When that $20,000 came into my steward's account, they didn't take their routine 10 percent because they, too, wanted every cent to go to the programs.

Everyone does the best they can to make ends meet. Since my funds were reduced by 20 percent, I have decreased my hours. As usual, some of the coordination funds have been designated to help reduce or eliminate registration costs for some literacy programs.

Financial barriers have been identified in Prince George as a barrier for people to access literacy programs. Here in Prince George my funds are used to deliver programs such as plain and clear document and design, kitchen table learning, the story café, Family Literacy Day and the delivery of specific literacy initiatives such as the emotional literacy series that we delivered last year.
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The essential collaboration for us is the community. We listen to them as they support our programs. They advise us of what they need in a particular situation, and their constant evaluations of the programs are essential for our growth.

The agencies that work in partnership with me are indispensable in identifying programs specific to literacy needs. We know that collaboration works well when the specific literacy needs of Prince George residents are clearly identified and a concrete plan of action is developed.

I partner with many groups on a formal basis and many more on an informal basis. We all share the goal of improving literacy outcomes here in Prince George. For example, my partners — Carney Hill Neighbourhood Centre, Child Development Centre, College of New Caledonia, community members, Elizabeth Fry, Immigrant and Multicultural Services, Learning Difficulties Centre, Northern John Howard, PG Public Library — you know where I'm going with this, so I'm going to skip to the end of that. I've got a whole bunch here. I have supporters.

The bottom line here is that we need to keep going. Children need to learn how to read and grow toward their own economic future. Adults need to learn skills and trades, the economic future, as our city, province and country depend on skilled workers. We can't afford, as a province, to have unemployed or underemployed citizens due to lack of education or training. People need personal economic security as well as full participation in their life and in their community.

The citizens of B.C. need to access literacy in many ways. These are the reasons why your recommendation to establish a $2.5 million annual working budget for this project via Decoda Literacy Solutions is so important. You have a vital part in the support of this project, and we need you.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, Helen. Appreciate it. Thanks again for a good presentation. It stuck out from last year, so thank you.

G. Heyman: Just a very quick comment. Thank you so much for your work and also for your excellent summation at the end about the importance of literacy to every aspect of the general health of British Columbia and the community, as well as the personal, economic and social health of people who benefit from accessing literacy programs.

I don't have any questions. We've had other presentations. Obviously, you've impressed the committee in previous years before I was on it, and I'm sure we will be discussing it in full.

We're on a first-name basis here, by the way, because it gets to be a tongue twister by the end of the day. So we'll make sure that everybody knows that we work very, very well together on this committee.

M. Morris: Good to see you again, Helen, and I congratulate you and all the supporters on the work that you do in this area.

H. Domshy: I'd say the last four, anyway, I guess. We didn't start off with that kind of money. We started off with a little bit of money that filtered down from the 2010 Legacies Now project. That's what we started off on. This project has always had, in Prince George, between $30,000 and $40,000 a year to run on. I've been around for eight. We've been consistently funded. This is the first time we took a drop, but that's okay. We still kept going.

M. Morris: The next part of my question is: being government and being held accountable for how we spend our money, and we have to make deliberations here to make to the Treasury Board as to how we're going to be spending the money in 2015, what kind of metrics do you have in place locally here to measure the successes you've had with the amount of funding that you've been able to garner so far over the years?

You've got metrics in place that say: "We've been successful in this age group, in this age group." Could you supply that to this committee in some form?

Decoda Literacy Solutions gets us to do a report every year in June, and all the people that have been funded and work with me on projects all file their information through me, and I file it back to them. It goes to a database, I think, at UVic, and the results are available. It will, indeed, tell you — and it'll break it down to Prince George — how many people, how many adults, how many this and that. They like to give out that kind of data, and I can certainly get it for you.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I'll echo the appreciation from others. Also, your point around the coordination — I think that's critically important. You've pointed out the anonymous donor and the resources coming in. It's actually better use of the money if it's coordinated, rather than going to programs and services that may not get us best bang for the buck. So I think that's a really important point that you make around the coordination. I just
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wanted to emphasize it.

Then my question would be taking a look at the priorities and the pressures that you're feeling through Literacy Prince George. Is there an area that you're seeing the greatest need right now? Is there an area of greatest pressure that you're seeing in your association and seeing through the community?

H. Domshy: For sure. We did several pieces of research now, since we've been around eight years, and it's been consistently demonstrated that the gap in literacy services is for adults here in Prince George. If I am looking to refer an adult who wants to learn to read at whatever level, I have very few choices. One of the choices is facing funding problems all the time, as are we all. This is why I want to try to pull something together this year to try to help out with this identified gap. It's going to be a lot of fun, but I'm going to coordinate it.

S. Hamilton: Thank you, Helen. Again, your plea hasn't been lost on us. I said earlier this week when the Decoda folks were in Victoria presenting that I don't know another organization that gets as much bang for their buck as Decoda does in the way they so frugally distribute the money around the province.

Carole touched on, actually, what I was going to ask in terms of your greatest need and your greatest challenges. Just to talk about what Mike mentioned in terms of your metrics, as they roll up provincewide, I've noted 400 communities, 475 family literacy programs, almost 700 workshops and seminars, and 2,000 volunteers around the province. And you do that with the meagre funding that you do get.

One quick question, though: besides the funding that you get from the provincial government, what does Decoda operate on, in terms of an annual budget?

H. Domshy: Mine? Nothing. If we didn't get money from the provincial government, we wouldn't do anything. I've had two funders over the last two years, and they've just dropped down from the sky.

It was the most amazing experience of my life talking to this guy in the spring, and he's sort of: "So I’m going to give you $15,000." I'm thinking: "Oh my god." Then we had a conversation. He said: "I want to give you $20,000." I thought: "Oh my god." I still haven't recovered from that. I still have slight arrhythmia.

D. Ashton (Chair): Helen, thank you very much. Thank you all — a really good, positive note that Prince George does care and does step up. Thank you again for your input, and let's see what we can do for you again this year. Have a good day.

Child Development Centre of Prince George and District — Darrell and Les. Thank you very much for coming. Good to see you. So ten minutes for the presentation….

L. Smith: Ten minutes will be fine. I'll probably be finished long before that, and I'm sure you'll have some questions.

L. Smith: My name is Les Smith, and I'm the director of programming at the Child Development Centre here in Prince George.

First of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation to the committee. I'm going to relate to you a little bit about the story of the state of early intervention services for children with special needs within the Prince George region. It's a bit of a historical story.

I've been at the Child Development Centre for 20 years. I started there in 1993 as an occupational therapist, and at that time, the Child Development Centre offered early intervention services which included occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech-language therapy services to approximately 400 children each year. We had three occupational therapists, four physiotherapists and two speech-language pathologists at that time.

We were very lucky to be able to see the kids at the centre in their homes and in their community preschool and daycare centres. That hasn't changed; we still do that. We didn't carry wait-lists at the time, because we were lucky enough to be able to see the kids. The only time we ever had a wait-list is if we couldn't recruit for a position.

At that time, the Child Development Centre's early children education programs were also designated by the Ministry of Health as approved programs for children with special needs. That all changed, of course — I believe it was in 1996 — when full inclusion came into the province. Because of that, more children were then able to access preschool and daycare programs within the community, which we supported and applauded. We still do that, because children should be with other children and with their peers.
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Throughout the years, we did see a 2.75-fold increase in the number of children referred to the Child Development Centre, as well as an increase in the complexity of the needs of the children that we see. Today approximately 1,100 children access our services, which is nearly 18 percent of children under the age of five in our community.

There was a small increase in the staffing complement, whereby we were able to add a half-time position for each occupational therapy and physiotherapy and a full-time position for speech and language pathology. We were also instructed at that time that we would be providing travelling outreach services to communities like Mackenzie, which is two hours to the north of us, and to the Robson Valley — in particular, McBride and Valemount, which are two hours and 3½ hours, respectively, to the east of us.

The supported child development program was created around 1995-96, which allowed children with special needs to be supported in the community early childhood education programs. This has been a real boon for British Columbia and for the children that require these extra supports. Unfortunately, there are many more children with special needs than there are people who can provide support.

When we first started the program, we were able to offer support to all the children who required it. Today we are not able to do that. We do have our support staff providing support to approximately 75 children in about 24 different programs across the city, but we have greater than 25 children waiting for those support services.

So what's prompted the increase in the referrals to us? First of all, there's increased risk of developmental vulnerabilities. The percentage of children at risk in the Prince George area is greater than the provincial average and has increased year over year. At the present time 34 percent of children entering kindergarten are at risk of developmental disabilities. This equates to about 340 children entering kindergarten each year in the Prince George region.

What does this mean? More children are requiring early intervention services. Not all children are accessing the services they require.

If you think that we are providing services to 18 percent of those kids, where is the other 16 percent that aren't showing up until they reach school? And what are the consequences?

This is probably not new information for you. The human early learning project at UBC has produced much of this information. What the consequences are, are that more children are dropping out of school or being kicked out of school. More children are becoming involved with the criminal justice system. Fewer children are developing the skills that they require to be employable in the future. If you think we have trouble getting tradespeople now, wait till 15 years in the future.

Increased absenteeism of parents is happening because they have to stay at home to look after their children. There is increased employee turnover, increased risk of poverty, increased risk of dependence on the welfare system, increased health care costs due to poorer social determinants of health and poorer overall health status, a smaller tax base because fewer people are working, a shrinking economy, higher provincial and national debt.

What can you do? Well, for us in Prince George, an increase in funding to address the needs of early developmental vulnerabilities for children in Prince George by providing $450,000 annually to the Child Development Centre of Prince George and District will allow more early intervention therapists and support staff to be hired to address the current needs of children with developmental vulnerabilities and developmental delays. Across the province this figure would be much higher.

Why? In the long term, education costs will be reduced because fewer children will have additional support needs. Crime costs will be reduced because children who experience quality early care at home and in the community are less likely to engage in criminal behaviour. The tax base will increase because more employees will be able to be retained in the labour market. Health care costs will be reduced because children will be healthier, and our population as a whole will be healthier. The economy will eventually grow.

M. Morris: You made a comment about the increased risk of developmental vulnerabilities in the children in Prince George. There's a higher average, or it's higher than the provincial average. Do we know why?

L. Smith: There can be many factors as to why. Do we have specific reasons? Not really.

When we look at what is happening in the city, there are pockets where children are much more vulnerable than in other areas. For example, the Hart community, which is to the north of us, has a 42 percent vulnerability. In the Bowl area, which we're in right here, there's a 56 percent vulnerability.

Is it related to poverty? Not always. Is it related to two parents working? Possibly. Is it related to overall health status and education of the parents? Again, possibly, but there's not one thing that we can point our finger to.

M. Morris: Just a follow-up to that. Part of, perhaps, what we're talking about here is the reduced parental capacity. People just don't understand what their responsibilities are in parenting anymore. Do you have a supplemental program that you might be doing, working with parents, as well, to try and…?

L. Smith: Yes, we have parenting programs that we conduct also. As Helen mentioned earlier, we were one of the deliverers of the Ready, Set, Learn program also.
[ Page 829 ]
Our child and family service worker offers parenting programs on a regular basis.

The difficulty is in trying to get the parents there. When you've got two parents working, the only time that they have to be with their kids is in the evening. They don't have time to take off work to come to a parenting program. They don't have time in the evening to come to a parenting program because they are doing the parenting at that time. It's a bit of a vicious circle.

D. Roze: One of the things that we've seen recently is a big increase in children that have extraordinary behavioural management issues. Again, the time for parents to come, when it's all they can do to maintain their household with a misbehaving child, is difficult as well.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I find the statistic about 18 percent of children under the age of five are currently your clients….

G. Holman: That's quite stunning. I take it you are partnered with a literacy group, one of many.

G. Holman: I just wanted to get a sense of your current budget and how much of that is through provincial kind of core funding.

D. Roze: Our budget is a little over $3 million. The therapy budget that we have is a little over $1.1 million, and the supported child development program is a little under $1.1 million.

For us to be fully funded, it would probably require a doubling in the therapy budget and a 50 percent increase in the supported child development budget. The money that we're asking for is kind of the desperate needs to get as many children as possible into the program.

G. Holman: Okay, and of the $3 million, how much of that is provided from the province through core funding?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you kind of mentioned it in the response to Mike, but I wondered if…. One of the challenges that we're hearing is more challenges that children are coming in with, more complex — more complex needs, more acuity in the…. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

I also wonder whether you have any statistics around the percentage of children that you see that are in care. Do you do a breakdown at all around kids in care and kids referred by the ministry?

L. Smith: We do. The majority of our kids are not in care. That I can say with certainty. About 15 to 20 percent of the children that we see are in care. Are they more delayed than other children? I can't say for certain. But yeah, that is the case. I mean, we do have….

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just the complexity — children coming to you with more complex needs, with more severe needs.

L. Smith: What's happening, and Darrell touched on it a little bit…. We're seeing more of an increase in children who have neurodevelopmental difficulties as well as behaviour management issues. That is what's increasing in the complexity.

There is a recent study that was published, actually in Pediatrics just this past month, that showed that overall in the population in the United States — and I think we can extrapolate this for Canada as well — there's been a much higher increase in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and behavioural challenges. Where they've also seen an increase in the complexity of cases is actually with the more affluent families where children with physical disabilities are much more frequent than in the past, where it's been with less affluent families.

The reasons for that they don't seem to be able to explain. It just seems to be a trend that's happening now.

S. Gibson: A quick question, further to what Mike was asking before. You were somewhat hesitant about explaining what the causality is, and I understand why. You can't speculate. But isn't it true that the family unit as a support group is declining in much of our society? So the children don't have that mentoring that they used to have, like I used to have as a kid with my mom and dad. My suspicion is that most of your clients are coming from families where the home itself is either fragmented, dysfunctional or there are tensions. Is that a fair comment?

D. Roze: I think it's a fair comment for the behavioural management issues. I don't think it's a fair comment for the neurodevelopmental issues at all.

D. Ashton (Chair): Darrell, Les, thank you very much. Appreciate the input.
[ Page 830 ]

Can we take a five-minute recess, please? Five minutes, and I'll hold you to it.

Northern British Columbia Graduate Student Society — Matt. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning — and then we have five minutes for questions or comments from the committee. Please go ahead.

M. Partyka: My name is Matt Partyka. I'm an English graduate student at the University of Northern British Columbia, and I'm also the executive coordinator for the Northern British Columbia Graduate Student Society at UNBC.

I'd first off like to thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns and constructive solutions with you today. Before beginning, I would also like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the Lheidli T'enneh traditional territory, which our student members live, study and work on.

Our student society currently represents approximately 750 graduate students from across British Columbia. These students predominantly study in one of three campuses in the northwest, Peace River–Liard and south-central regions. However, we also represent a number of students from other regions, like the Lower Mainland. Consequently, our students demographic consists of a wide range of age groups as well as numerous domestic and international students from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

As a society, we advocate for these students and provide value-added services in order to make their lives and educational experiences better. Our core mandate is to advocate for an accessible and high-quality system of post-secondary education without physical or systematic barriers.

I am here today to represent this mandate through three main recommendations. The first is a government-funded reduction of tuition fees. The second is the elimination of interest rates on B.C. student loans. The last is the creation of a system of upfront, needs-based provincial grants for graduate students.

Our first recommendation is that the government provide funding to reduce tuition fees across British Columbia in order to improve accessibility to our public education system. Higher tuition makes it difficult for lower-income individuals to access post-secondary education without incurring a debt sentence through student loans.

Our government currently calculates that the average student debt for a four-year degree program for an undergrad is $20,000. However, due to the high cost of schooling, many students now must take on part-time or full-time jobs, thus extending their stay in university and increasing the amount of debt they accumulate.

In addition, if students continue on to grad school, this number increases greatly. Basic tuition for graduates at UNBC alone, for three years, amounts to approximately $13,400, and the costs only increase with specific programs like education, social work, nursing and business, to name a few.

In addition, and with specific reference to our members, a significant portion of graduate students belong to an older demographic and may therefore have families and other fiscal responsibilities which make it difficult to afford current tuition levels.

In order to preserve the investments we have made in our undergraduates, we want students to be able to continue with their studies and engage in graduate research projects that are fundamental to our social, cultural and economic development. Reduced tuition fees would go a long way toward accomplishing this.

I have "office administrator" here, but my title recently just changed, so it'll be a little different in the paperwork.

M. Partyka: Yeah. As an executive coordinator, I work on the front line with graduate students, and I come face to face with their needs every day. My experiences range from helping graduate students access food banks to helping them find scholarships and funding opportunities in the hope of alleviating their financial strains.

A decrease in tuition would alleviate this pressure from graduate students and help keep their time devoted to their research projects. It is not surprising that the typical grad student can spend somewhere between two to five years working on their project when a significant portion of their time is devoted to making ends meet.

Our second recommendation follows naturally from our first. We would also like to see the elimination of interest rates on B.C. student loans. Currently at prime plus 2.5 percent, B.C. charges more interest on student loans than anywhere else in this country. As it stands, this system preserves unequal accessibility to a publicly funded system of education.

Since the majority of students who apply for student loans already do so because they need assistance to afford post-secondary education, high interest rates only serve to punish those in need. Loans also deter undergraduates from pursuing graduate studies, due to the massive amounts of debts they have already incurred.

We need students to be productive, innovative members at all levels of our society, and we need to provide
[ Page 831 ]
them with a financially viable way to do so. We also want students to finish their studies without financial burdens so that the money they earn can be directly invested back into our communities.

Financial debt means that students are less likely to purchase homes, start families, invest in business ventures and make large purchases, which are important to B.C.'s economy. Once again, however, student debt does not just have an adverse impact on the economy. It also affects students' ability to devote time to their studies and complete their degrees.

That brings me to our last recommendation, which is the creation of a provincial means-based grant program for graduate students. As there are no such grants currently provided, those students who cannot afford tuition must incur the aforementioned burden of student loan debt if they wish to continue with their studies. Again, we want to preserve our investment in these undergraduates by providing them access to research opportunities that can benefit our economy and our society, and we want them to be active members of our economy as soon as they finish their studies.

In closing, our recommendations stem from the belief that education should be equally accessible to all British Columbians. We believe that a mutual concern for an affordable education is in the best interests of our province, as it promotes social and economic development and participation on a broad scale. We encourage the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to use these recommendations to improve post-secondary education in the province.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for the presentation and, in particular, for noting some of the differentiated circumstances of graduate students, more mature students, from undergraduate students in general.

There's a lot of opinion on the role of tuition in the system, with legitimate differing opinions. My question is: if in fact there was no interest or lower interest on student loans and a needs-based grant program, would your first recommendation actually be necessary?

M. Partyka: Yes and no. Part of the thing is that we want accessibility for all students. While some students may decide to take out loans or decide to apply for grants, not all students are able to get grants or are able to get student loans, and high tuition still affects a large portion of our student population. So while the last two recommendations would go a long way towards alleviating the first, it still wouldn't rectify the situation for all grads.

M. Morris: Good presentation. The big part that's missing for me is any idea what this is going to cost the province. These are great recommendations, but there's an astronomical amount of dollars attached to them, as well, that somebody in the province has to pay for. Have you guys costed any of these out?

M. Partyka: I have not myself. In preparing this presentation, I basically was made aware that I would be presenting maybe a week and a half ago, so a lot of the information that I have here is more general and broad. I don't have numbers to speak to that at the moment, but I think where we would sort of expect some of this money to come from would be progressive income taxes that tax more affluent members of our society in order to provide for those in need.

G. Holman: Thanks, Matt, for your presentation. George did essentially ask the question I was going to ask, which is: of the three recommendations you made, how would you rank them in terms of bang for the buck — particularly given that in the recommendation about tuition fees in general, it seems like the first statement in the rationale is that higher tuition makes it difficult for lower-income individuals?

It seems your whole focus is on greater equality of access for lower income. So it does seem to me, based on that, that you'd get a higher bang for the buck focusing on the latter two. I just wanted to point out that at last year's Finance Committee we made recommendations more or less supporting both of those without attaching dollars to them.

On the needs-based grants, though, you were suggesting that just for grad students. Is that deliberate? The other ones appear to apply to tuition in general, undergrad and grad. Is that because undergrads get access to federal grants, or was that deliberate?

M. Partyka: It wasn't deliberate. I'm not saying that we don't advocate for undergraduates to get grants, as well, through our province. The reason I sort of stayed with that…. There's a bit of mixing in my presentation between undergraduates and graduates, and it is a bit unclear at times. But we definitely would recommend that there would be grants created for both undergrads and graduates. But as a representative of the grad student society, I'm here to represent the interests of grad students in particular.

S. Gibson: Quick question, Matt. Do you and most of your colleagues work almost full-time? Would that be a fair comment?

M. Partyka: Yeah. Throughout my undergrad and my graduate studies I've held two jobs at the same time
[ Page 832 ]
as I've worked. As an undergrad it's quite a bit easier to get away with that, because as a graduate student, as I've mentioned before, a lot of graduates have other responsibilities to their families or what else they have — volunteer opportunities or any sort of stuff like that.

S. Gibson: I just wanted to say I applaud that. That was kind of my paradigm as well. I had to work really hard. Keep going. It's okay to work almost full-time and do a degree. It's a challenge, but it's very rewarding, and you have a lot of who you are embedded in your education, unlike some of your colleagues. They don't have that commitment because they don't have their own investment in their education. It's just a word of encouragement. That's all.

M. Partyka: I agree. Definitely, it's difficult to get through an education without having some work experience — and find work. I think my generation is finding that more and more once they get out of school. They go to apply for a job, and people are looking for experience.

M. Partyka: Yeah, exactly. The idea is to alleviate some of the burden, especially with graduate students. Basically, your whole life is devoted to your thesis project for the amount of years that you're studying it. So you're looking at one specific area of research for two to three, maybe even five, years depending on how long it takes you. It is a big time commitment. It's almost like taking on another full-time job to do a thesis.

D. Ashton (Chair): Matt, thank you very much for your presentation, and thanks for coming today.

Welcome, sir. Thank you very much for coming tonight. We've allotted ten minutes for the presentation, as for everybody. At two minutes I'll give you a two-minute warning and then up to five minutes for questions or comments. Go ahead, please.

P. Thompson: Well, good evening, friends and neighbours and hon. members. My name is Peter Thompson. I am the managing director of Two Rivers Gallery. Two Rivers Gallery is a museum of contemporary art. It's a charitable organization, incorporated under the Society Act. It is what most of you will refer to as a non-profit organization.

Now, that irks me. I have a problem with the term "non-profit." It's a bit like categorizing fresh fruit as non–ice cream. There is nothing wrong with fruit or ice cream, but it is kind of silly to categorize such an important sector of our society and our economy as what it is not, rather than what it is.

I need you to think of this sector as the social economy. The social economy is comprised of a broad spectrum of organizations which have a range of social objectives and a variety of market and non-market strategies for pursuing them. It's comprised of a variety of organizations with a social mission, including voluntary organizations, mutual associations, co-ops, community economic development corporations and social purpose businesses.

A diagram which illustrates the variety of the social economy shows the range from regulated to non-regulated, from commercial to non-market and from economic to social objectives. Globally, the social economy has evolved not only as a third sector that exists alongside private and public sectors, but it is a source of much innovative thinking that can help the public sector to address many of its contemporary challenges: fiscal constraints, lack of public engagement and the very challenging problems of change management.

I'd like to use Two Rivers Gallery as a case in point. Earlier this year the Department of Canadian Heritage sent us a post-doc researcher. They talked to us, and they declared that we were a bright light in British Columbia. Now, this might mean that we do great things even though the department gives us no money at all. But cynicism aside, it led me to examine the strategies that we use to pursue our mission.

Among those strategies, the most important is our affinity for pursuing partnerships. We're an arts organization, so of course our story needs to have dramatic structure. There are two fundamental dramatic structures: tragedy and comedy. In a tragedy you die; in a comedy you get hitched. At Two Rivers Gallery we work very, very hard to get hitched.

In fact, we're shameless about it. We get into bed with a host of different partners simultaneously. School district 57 — we have a very longstanding and productive program. As the government has been forced to cut arts education, we have stepped in to fill the gap.

It's not as though we're magicians or anything. It is not as though we are necessarily smarter than the public sector or the private sector. The reason we can do that is we have leverage. We have volunteers, and it is incredibly important, for the public sector in particular, to understand how to leverage partnerships with the social sector.

We have a very productive program in the hospital with Northern Health. Being, particularly, a kid in hospital is alienating and a terrible experience. Our programmers can make that experience better, and making the experience better makes people heal faster. We don't pretend to be clinicians, but the clinicians are very, very happy to have us there helping them. And we do it ridiculously cost-effectively.
[ Page 833 ]

The B.C. Cancer Agency, medical research, corporate professional development. I want to tell you about our collaboration with the Cancer Agency. You wouldn't think that an art gallery and a cancer agency would necessarily have a lot to talk about, but we do.

Our core competence is creativity. That's just other the side of the coin of innovation. What we do is we try to take creativity and innovation thinking skills into our community in order to make our community better.

This year we collaborated with the B.C. Cancer Agency to devise a new way of treating some facial cancers. It was done, essentially, by volunteers collaborating with medical physicists at the B.C. Cancer Agency, using a toy that we bought at the gallery, a 3-D printer. Artists use 3-D printers, and artists are always looking for new ways to approach what they do.

MakerLab is the program that we started to buy the 3-D printer, and it's a critical part of our efforts to build creativity and innovation skills in our community. We are building an environment for the creation of new ideas, which may lead to real-world applications or new business ventures but fundamentally leads to better understanding, by the entire community, of the importance of innovation throughout society.

Partnerships are a potent catalyst for innovation. Public sector funding agencies need to be able to support this type of adaptive change. The B.C. Arts Council has helped us. We have got help through other sources, both public and private — provincial, particularly — but public sector funding bodies need a much greater understanding of the fundamental need for risk capital in the social economy.

One of the critical parts of supports to charitable organizations across the province is gaming funds. A few years ago the B.C. government revamped and improved — credit where credit is due — the processes for applying for gaming funds. But the limitation on the use of these funds to programs which have been established for more than three years squanders the opportunity for charitable organizations to access risk capital. We need to fix this.

G. Heyman: Thank you for a fascinating presentation on your work. I'm wondering if you could be a bit more explicit about how you'd like to see the criteria for gaming fund applications changed.

P. Thompson: I think there are models that you can steal, both from the charitable foundation world and from places like the B.C. Arts Council — quasi-governmental agencies who are already trying to dip their toes into this, solving this problem. Essentially, we need not a single stream of charitable funding through gaming. We need it to be more nuanced. We need funds set aside which are for risk capital.

We understand that governments in particular have to be very careful with the public purse, and so this leads to an inherent conservatism and a reluctance to fund anything that isn't proven in its ability to deliver value to a community. But in the long term, we really need to have a stream within gaming funding which is allocated to start-up programs — i.e., risk capital.

G. Heyman: Just for clarity, MakerLab would be that kind of program that requires risk capital.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. Interesting programs, and an amazing facility. It was one of the first facilities that I visited when I moved to Prince George and became part of the community.

One of the other areas that we're hearing about from the arts community is the issue of a lack of capital grants, and I wonder whether that's an issue for your organization as well.

P. Thompson: Our organization is a bit anomalous because our major capital expansion was in 2000 — 14 years ago — which is still recent enough for us not to be facing that critical problem. But we will. Many of our colleagues got their capital funding back in 1967, and so they're a large cadre of arts organizations which definitely need access to capital grants to refurbish their infrastructure.

It's the same problem that governments face. We have to replace our sewers, and we have to replace our capital infrastructure in the arts programs as well.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation — really interesting. Just, I guess, kind of similar to George's question, is it fair to say you're not necessarily asking for more dollars to be allocated to the B.C. Arts Council or to B.C. gaming? You want them to broaden their scope, their eligibility, to include, as you put it, risk capital for social enterprise. Have I got that?

P. Thompson: Almost. Bear in mind that I'm not not asking you to give us more money, but there's a difference between the B.C. Arts Council, which has moved in this direction with some success, and gaming funding.

Gaming funding is a much larger source of funds for the social economy generally, not just the arts. The fact that it is not nuanced enough…. I am arguing — not only on my own behalf, not even only on behalf of the arts, but across the social economy — that funding agencies, particularly major ones like gaming, need to understand the need for risk capital within the social economy.
[ Page 834 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): Peter, thank you very much. Thank you again for the presentation. Have a good evening.

Thank you very much for coming tonight. We have a ten-minute allocation for time. I'll give you a two-minute warning if required. Then we have five minutes for questions or comments from the board.

D. Weeks: Fantastic. Well, I'm going to try to speak for a few minutes. Then I'm going to turn it over to my colleague here.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you. My name is Dan Weeks, and I'm the brand-newly minted president and vice-chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and I am thrilled to be here. It's a thrill for me to make this one of my first duties. In fact, I am 16 days into the job — so easy on the questions.

I want to start by saying, first of all, that the government's own predictions about the enhanced level of economic activity that we expect in the north in the coming years is just one more reason for us to be looking north. Over the past 25 years the University of Northern British Columbia has proven to be a university that was in the north and for the north. This has been a good thing for all British Columbians, not just those in the north.

We were founded on a mandate to provide quality educational experiences and to produce students with credentials right here at home that they could use to participate in our regional economic activity with those credentials and participate in the workforce here.

Our experience. We now know that annually we produce more graduates in the north than all other universities in British Columbia combined. About 75 percent of the students that graduate and that choose to stay and work in the north are graduates of UNBC and the northern colleges. This is a phenomenal testament, really, to the power of education in the north and for the north.

We've been particularly successful in a couple of areas that I want to talk to you about for just a few minutes. Those are our students that are working in the health and resource sectors. While we've been successful in those areas, we also know that even though our graduates tend to stay in the north and want to stay in the north, we're not entirely fulfilling the regional needs, those needs identified by government.

Two important gaps that we believe UNBC is well positioned to assist government in are the projected needs in both engineering and health science professions.

In engineering you may know that we partner with UBC for an engineering degree, environmental engineering, but this is just not meeting the regional needs for new engineers. Continued and further support of our expansion of programming in these areas would help address that growing need. Now, I understand that this committee has been supportive of such expansion in the past, and I hope you will continue to support it. We might even see the goalposts move forward just a little bit.

In the health area the 2000s were really defined by significant expansion of the health sciences program at UNBC. This included the start of the very successful northern medical program, the nurse practitioner program and the PhD in health science.

Evidence is already showing that retaining graduates from these programs to stay in the north is very successful. However, again, there continues to be a need for nurses in northeastern B.C. and, in particular, physiotherapy education in the entire region. There are chronic shortages in other allied health professions. This has been identified by Northern Health and in fact the government's own job skills plan. As you well know, this significantly affects the sustainability of northern communities, and we believe we are well positioned, again, to help government with these chronic shortages, with your support.

The experience of UNBC over the past 25 years tells us that, really, UNBC is an important gateway for northern B.C. to attract individuals to the north that will stay in the north and contribute to our economic vitality.

Finally, I'd be kind of remiss if I didn't reiterate that UNBC was created to be a research university that will conduct research that is fostering innovation and lead development in the north. Quite frankly, to put it bluntly, we're knocking it out of the park.

Just a few weeks ago a group, including government and private partners, made an announcement which led to some significant funding for a sustainable communities demonstration project. This is just a perfect example of how our location, our educational programs, our teaching and our research infrastructure all come together to lead an important community development area around energy.

Starting next fall, we'll have new, graduate-level programming in engineering that will foster our increased capacity for innovation in wood products and wood buildings — right across the street. I'm sure you see it every time you go out there for a coffee. We're very excited to get moving out there and really see what we can do with this incredible facility.

I just want to say to you: as the new president, I am committed to ensuring that UNBC continues to be responsive and responsible to the region and the need, as articulated by our industry and communities. To that end, [ Page 835 ]
to do that, we need continuing support from government to help us address those needs.

Finally, I just want to say, before I turn it over to my colleague here, Angela…. I know you're hearing many presentations today, and they're all excellent, I'm sure. Quite frankly, I urge you to listen to all of them carefully, because at the end of the day, what's good for everyone that's speaking to you here, what's good for this region, is good for UNBC. So please, as many folks as you can support and help guide…. We think this is a wonderful thing.

I'd like to turn it over to Angela for a moment, who is the president of our student society, to give you a very important perspective from a student.

The role of post-secondary education in Canada is changing at the moment, but it is still relevant. Students need practical experience through experiential learning opportunities such as getting out of the traditional classroom setting, applied student research and opportunities in the field. We need the hands-on experience in order for us to be relevant in the job sector when we leave university.

The cost of education is often prohibitive for students. The undergrad demographic at UNBC is a bit older and is more diverse than your regular demographic of universities, maybe, in the Lower Mainland. We're older than 18 years old, and we have different needs and priorities than other students. We need financial incentives to bring people to the north — and financial relief as well.

I grew up in Hope, B.C. It's just in the Fraser Valley. You know where that is. I applied to UVic, and I applied to UNBC. I came to Prince George because of the cost. It's cheaper to be up here, but once people are up here and once people experience the north, this is where they stay, often. We need that draw in order to get students here, because once they study here and work here and play here, they stay after graduation, and that helps us build community afterwards.

Funding for professional programs and student projects outside of the classroom will draw students to the north. Our engineering and health care programs should be expanded. They're already very good, but they can be enhanced as well. Our potential for agricultural research and extension of current research with a northern focus would be very relevant. There's a huge interest in agricultural research from students, faculty and administration in the north.

UNBC grads are building communities in the north and contributing to the local economy in a variety of sectors. Regardless of your priorities for development in the north, you will need people of all professions and skill sets, in addition to industry, to live and work here. If they have studied in the north, they are more likely to stay, but first we have to get them here.

G. Heyman: Thank you both. I don't want to impose on your 16 days on the job, but I'm wondering if you could go into a bit more detail or maybe some examples of research-and-development activities at UNBC with respect to clean tech or the clean economy generally.

D. Weeks: The announcement we just made a few weeks ago will expand our energy capabilities on campus to include more buildings and, in fact, will increase them. In our capital plan, our master plan for the development of the campus, we are already thinking ahead of how we'll plug new buildings in. But this will put more of our buildings, if not all of our buildings, onto a much more low-carbon and sustainable energy profile.

In addition, what's really important about it is that it becomes a demonstration project. This will not only just be about how we heat the buildings and turn the lights on. It will also be about using these facilities now to demonstrate what can be done. It'll be open for research. It'll be open for…. We hope to bring in students for tours from high schools. It's a living lab, in some ways, around sound energy practices.

You made a comment. I'm always glad to see out-of-town students coming to UNBC and talking the great story that we have up here. You mentioned lower costs, coming to UNBC. Could you just elaborate a little bit more on that from a perspective…? Is it tuition? Is it living? Is it just overall costs? What is it that drew you here that we can expand on and tell everybody about?

A. Kehler: Well, it's all of those things. The cost of living is way lower, especially compared to Vancouver and the Island, and tuition costs are a lot lower as well. It is the lifestyle as well. Prince George is an excellent place to live. It's easy to get outdoors and do everything else that contributes to the experience of being in the north. It is really about being outside, and you don't bump into someone every five feet. But cost is definitely a big factor overall.

D. Weeks: We did confirm that Angela is from the north side of Hope, so she's really a northerner. She's on the north side of the Fraser. But I think the other piece — Angela's absolutely right. I can already appreciate that really the absolute benefit of UNBC, its strongest asset, is being in the north, being in Prince George, and one of
[ Page 836 ]
its biggest challenges is being in the north and being in Prince George, all at the same time.

The cost of living, as Angela has put out, is not the factor. It's really getting students here. It's getting them past that psychological barrier that "it's all the way up there." Those are the kinds of things where we really need incentives to get students to think about taking a chance.

We're putting a program in place right now where we're going to offer…. It's a small program — we hope it can grow with some private funding, and who knows where else the funding might come from — where we can reimburse students who might want to come up and have a look, just have a look, and we can provide them a small financial incentive to do that. You can't jump on the SkyTrain and go look at the campus. This is a commitment to come up and look here. But we know if we can get them here, they'll stay. Angela's proof of that.

D. Ashton (Chair): Vanderhoof is the centre, so you're still southern B.C., right? That's what I look at.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I was going to ask about recruiting as well. I think you just need to have Angela meeting people when they arrive.

I just wondered. You've talked about engineering, the opportunities for expanding engineering and health care. Would those be the priorities, if you were looking at priorities right now from UNBC's perspective, for expansion of programs and services?

D. Weeks: We have many priorities. We're, first, a full-service university. We don't just do certain programs. We have to offer all supplementary areas. But I think it is fair to say that…. Well, two things. One is that we think these areas are very relevant to government's expressed need, and therefore, we are good partners and want to be good partners, so we're going to align some of those initiatives around those needs.

We also believe that these are really niche areas of growth for us, because across the country it does not matter where you are — if you're in Cape Breton or you're in Trent or you're in northern B.C. — the issue now in Canada is to differentiate yourselves and what is unique. So why would a student come to Prince George and not go to Point Grey? Because we have the best wood innovation engineering program in the country. That's what we want to do.

S. Gibson: A quick question. Angela, I'm surprised you didn't go to the UFV, where I teach. I'm just down the freeway from Hope. I'm Abbotsford riding.

A. Kehler: I did go there for a year, and then I took a break, and then I came up here, actually.

My question is more about the flexibility of the university with an older demographic. How do you innovate to the point where a student doesn't have to give up everything to go to university? This seems to be a trend, especially in the U.S., where, according to the research, people say: "Hey, I want to go to university, but I don't want to quit my job. I want to work on a degree." Tell me a bit about the flexibility that you're building into your program.

D. Weeks: We're thinking about that all the time. In fact, we're engaged right now in a core review of our own academic practices. We're looking at launching…. We're in the midst of…. We'll be searching for a new provost, a new vice-president academic this year. We were going to use that transition to look at really evaluating our own academic programming, and we're thinking about turning this thing upside down in so many ways.

You know, the old days of "You're open from Monday to Friday, nine to five" doesn't fit. I can tell you that in my last position — I was in Alberta at another university — we really thought a lot about how you accommodate the older learner, the weekend learner, the after-work learner. These are all things that are on our minds now, and we are engaging in that right now at UNBC.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. It's really an amazing success story at UNBC.

Two quick questions. Do you have a co-op program? I'm familiar with one at the University of Victoria. I guess the second question…. I'm interested that there's not a specific ask here. Or am I missing something?

The other post-secondary institutions that we've heard from and are likely to hear from are complaining about resource constraints, core funding per student going down, that kind of thing. Now, I haven't heard you….

D. Weeks: You know that stuff. You know the challenges we face, and they're not unique to UNBC.

D. Weeks: We have challenges. But the message I want you to leave here today with is that we have the capacity
[ Page 837 ]
to provide solutions for you. We just need your support to provide those, to help you. We're here to help. That's our role.

A. Kehler: We do have a co-op program. It's quite limited because of lack of staff, I think, and lack of interest, to be honest, because of the structure of the program. But it could be improved for sure.

G. Holman: It seems to me that that would be an incentive for students if they knew that they could get job-related experience and actually start earning money in the sector.

D. Weeks: If I had more time…. I mean, co-op is interesting, and not to diminish its value, but it is an '80s and '90s model. I think the new model really is more about student innovation, student entrepreneurism through experience, where you teach students not to have a work experience that leads them to get a job at company X. You teach them that they could go work at company X, but they could create their own career, and that's the future.

Angela, thank you very much. You did a good job, too, so make sure you keep the jacket. See you later.

D. Ashton (Chair): I can only do that, sir, if somebody didn't show up. I apologize.

H. Reiser: Just so that you know ahead of time, we didn't collaborate with our faculty association. So points that they raise, you may hear again.

D. Ashton (Chair): It's good to have it. It's good also to have the reinforcement, so thank you.

Keith and Henry, ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning. We've got five minutes for Q and A.

K. Playfair: Good evening. As it says, my name is Keith Playfair, and I'm the chair of the board of governors for the College of New Caledonia. With me is CNC's new president, Henry Reiser.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you our thoughts regarding the 2015-2016 provincial budget, government policy and funding for the post-secondary education system.

Today we will present some information about CNC, and in doing so, we will be addressing three major points. First, we'll try and help you understand the important role that CNC plays in education as well as economic and community development across the north-central Interior. Second, we will explain how CNC is well positioned to help the province achieve its goals as outlined in the skills-for-jobs blueprint. Finally, we will describe how the province can help CNC reach its goals of providing skills training and access to post-secondary education for all learners — I want to emphasize "all learners" — in northern British Columbia.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Henry, and I'll come back to you in a few minutes.

H. Reiser: Okay. So who we are. CNC was established in 1969 and has a total of six campuses across northern B.C. — Prince George, Quesnel, Mackenzie, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James and Burns Lake — plus a number of smaller locations on First Nations and in smaller communities.

CNC offers more than 50 programs in health sciences, trades and technologies, social services, business and university studies. CNC provides education to an area approximately 400 kilometres north to south and 550 kilometres east to west. The area is 220,000 square kilometres, which is greater than the size of England and Scotland combined. The vast geography, cold-weather temperatures and average snowfall of 216 centimetres per year make travel and heating costs much higher than in other areas of British Columbia.

Who we serve and how we contribute. We provide education and skills training to about 4,700 students per year across six campuses and another 10,000 students through continuing education, as well as 390 international students. The average age of our students is 27, and last year 52.5 percent of our students were female and 47.5 percent were male.

A total of 17.4 percent of CNC's learners are aboriginal, with three of our campuses having more than 61.8 percent, on average, aboriginal learners. We are proud that we have been able to increase the enrolment and participation of aboriginal learners by 33 percent in regular credit programs since 2005 and by over 80 percent in all programs and service areas.

CNC students and alumni contributed $201.7 million to the regional economy in 2012-13, according to a report commissioned by B.C. Colleges. The report also states that for every $1 of public money invested in CNC, taxpayers receive a cumulative value of $2.20 over the course
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of the students' working lives. CNC's 2012-13 students will receive, on average, a rate of return of 18.9 percent on their investment in college against cost.

How are we unique? Our involvement in the Key Centre in Fort St. James has helped provide grassroots access to education to the most marginalized First Nations people in the area. The community-driven partnership between industry, business, post-secondary education and the aboriginal community members has provided a safe, welcoming environment for everyone in the community. According to the mayor, crime in the community was reduced by 17 percent in the first year and 25 percent in the second year.

More importantly, the Key Centre is providing access to education and jobs, including one man who acquired his first job in his 30s thanks to the centre's support and services.

CNC's FASD — fetal alcohol spectrum disorder — program of on-line education is renowned and has helped increase awareness and understanding throughout the world. The program has hosted international FASD speakers in an effort to create a strategy for prevention initiatives and education.

We are collaborative. This year CNC partnered with Canfor and school district 57 to create the Canfor trades program, which introduced grade 7 students to carpentry and electrical trades. A total of 29 students from five Prince George elementary schools completed the trades program funded by Prince George's largest industry employer.

Shirley Bond, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training and Minister Responsible for Labour, called the program an innovative approach to helping elementary students to discover the trades at an early age, putting them on a lifelong path to a well-paid career.

CNC has also increased its entrepreneurial activity. In the last few years, with industry and private donors, it raised more than $3 million for equipment for students, scholarships, bursaries and endowment funds. We also have more than $4 million in industry-funded projects in progress.

CNC continues to be involved in the Northern Post-Secondary Council, which is a collaborative effort between the University of Northern British Columbia, College of New Caledonia, Northwest Community College and Northern Lights College, to ensure students' success and shared resources in northern B.C.

We are well-aligned with the province. CNC is currently delivering and developing programming to align with the careers outlined in the B.C.'s Skills for Jobs Blueprint. CNC is continuously encouraging partnerships with industry and the federal government, as mentioned in the Blueprint. For example, CNC is currently working on more than $3.3 million in applied-research projects, in forest innovation, green electricity production and sustainable food production for First Nations, with an additional $3.5 million in industry and federal government projects in the works.

Our challenges. CNC has experienced a $9.67-million-in-deficit budget since 2008, with an additional $1.8 million in reductions expected in 2015-16. The projected deficit may result in reduced program offerings on all campuses, possible program cancellations, reductions to services and further employee layoffs. CNC is disadvantaged because of its age and longevity — the problem with being successful, I guess.

In general, CNC's tuition rates are well below the provincial average. Because its rates were established many years ago and with only 2 percent increases allowed over the years, it has never caught up. For example, CNC charges 18.2 percent less than the B.C. average for its trades training. If CNC was allowed to charge the average trades tuition, it would be an estimated $1.4 million in revenue annually.

We understand that it's not realistic for you to allow us to raise CNC trades tuition by 28.5 percent, which is BCIT's levels. Instead, we are asking you to consider creating a northern allowance or standardized tuition to help CNC offset this challenge as well as the issue surrounding its vast service area and cold climate.

Most importantly, please reduce government reporting or resource it. Increasing government reporting requirements have become problematic for smaller institutions like us, which lack capacity to keep up with increased reporting demands. The recommendations for the ITA report and the outline of the Blueprint suggest even greater emphasis on reporting and accountability, which will increase institutional workload again.

The problem is that much of the work submitted has little return or benefit to the reporting institution. In fact, the excessive reporting actually hurts smaller institutions like us because it draws valuable resources away from strategic planning.

Where are we going? CNC is currently working on an exciting digital delivery strategy, DDS, which will take advantage of improvements to broadband and Internet connectivity in northern B.C. via improved fibre optics and satellite technology.

CNC is seeking industry as well as federal and provincial government support for the initiative, which will use technology to provide synchronous, instructor-driven courses to a wider student group at a reduced cost. Once we pilot the DDS, we will share it with Northern Post-Secondary Council and others to improve the breadth and depth of courses and programs available to learners throughout B.C.

As outlined in the Blueprint, we are continuously harnessing innovative solutions. For example, CNC's heavy equipment operator — HEO — program in Mackenzie is made possible due to a sponsorship from industry and First Nations in the area. Students in the 12-week program are receiving training on industry-owned equipment while
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working on real-world projects, not working in a sandbox, and this is for industry. The unique collaborative partnership is allowing students to gain theory, practical field experience and real-world job experience at the same time.

K. Playfair: The changing face of post-secondary education leadership in the north. Henry has been with us 3.5 months. He will become the senior president in northern British Columbia at the end of October.

Part of the reason for this compensation freeze for administrators over the last five years, which makes recruitment and retention extremely challenging…. The problem is that the compensation gap between employees and administrators has compressed to the point where many administrators make a lower hourly rate than the employees. It's important to note that two of the NPSC…

K. Playfair: …presidents left their posts for more lucrative positions in Alberta and Ontario this month. Just as a side note to that, when coming from industry…. There are a lot of you folks around the table here that…. I guess you're all MLAs, and if you want my two bits' worth, you're not paid what you're worth. I mean, it's just a fact of life. If you ask for leadership, you pay for leadership. It costs us somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 to recruit a new president.

If we're rolling them over and they're going to Alberta for around $150,000 more than B.C. is paying and going to Saskatchewan for around $100,000…. This is my understanding. I haven't seen the papers, but that's what I was told. If that's the case, we're spending more money trying to recruit new folks to come in, so we're a training agency. Maybe that's what the college is all about — train a new president to go someplace else.

It seems to me that we're spending a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of resources recruiting new people to come in when maybe if we just took care of what we had, we wouldn't have to do so much recruiting.

D. Ashton (Chair): You're three minutes into your question period. I don't mind. But I'm sorry; I have other people waiting. If you want to do a quick follow-up, you've got a minute or so.

H. Reiser: Okay, how the province could help: help fund CNC's digital delivery strategy; create a northern allowance or standardize tuition — either of these two would mean millions to the bottom line; continue to help fund applied research; approve and provide funding for CNC's civil engineering technology program; provide consistent, long-term funding for aboriginal learners; and allow CNC to maximize return on surplus funds. The rest of it is in the text.

S. Gibson: We've heard from school districts and from other post-secondary institutions the challenges of recruiting and retention. What about succession planning? We've heard that once people come here, they'll sometimes leave — that that's the problem.

What about more succession planning, taking people who are currently in the college and promoting them rather than going outside? Again, I'm not meaning to overdiagnose or micromanage but, rather than going out and spending $150,000, promote from within.

K. Playfair: We tried. We tried really hard. They said: "Are you crazy? We're not going to take that job on for that money. We're making more down in the dean's position," or wherever they are.

H. Reiser: The reason why I took this job, other than the challenge to help CNC come around, was because I wanted to live in the north and I wanted to live in the Interior. Otherwise, I would never have considered the job.

D. Ashton (Chair): Gary, I'm sorry. Just short and sweet, if you don't mind, please.

G. Holman: Yep. Two quick questions. The faculty association for New Caledonia identified rising administrative costs as a bit of a frustration, in their view, kind of diverting resources from direct service delivery. They did mention reporting requirements as one of the causes. Is that your view as well?

H. Reiser: Absolutely the truth. But in fact, you were misled a bit. Our increase in administration is not the same as in faculty. The faculty who were let go…. New faculty were hired for new programs, and that point wasn't raised.

G. Holman: Okay. Just one other. Your last point about maximizing the return on surplus funds: could you just quickly explain what that means?

H. Reiser: With the magic of accounting and how this is going on in Victoria is beyond…. I have an advanced
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degree in engineering, and I don't understand how this is calculated. We have accumulated surpluses, and for a number of different reasons, we cannot access, all of us at once, those surpluses to address issues like we're facing right now.

D. Ashton (Chair): We'll make note of that. Thank you, very important. Keith and Henry, I apologize. Thank you for waiting. I do appreciate it. I'm sorry I couldn't fit you in. We have others waiting, so I have to carry on.

Okay, we have Heather — welcome — Initiatives Prince George. Thank you for coming today. Ten minutes for a presentation, five minutes for questions. If you run into your QP, I'm sorry, I'll have to shorten it up because we have somebody else.

My name is Heather Oland. I'm the CEO of Initiatives Prince George. We are the city's economic development corporation.

Our four main purposes — I just want to touch on really briefly. The first is to facilitate current business retention and growth, because we know that most economic growth comes from businesses that are already invested in a community. In fact, we've just completed face-to-face interviews, 40 to 60 minutes, with 175 Prince George businesses across all sectors of the economy. We have a very good understanding of the opportunities and challenges that are faced by Prince George businesses.

A second purpose is to attract businesses to expand and diversify the economy, and I'm going to touch on some asks around how I think the province can help us do that.

We advocate for increased workforce capacity and population attraction because the single greatest limiting factor to the growth of Prince George businesses and our ability to attract new businesses is employers access to the skilled employees that they need to grow their businesses.

Ultimately, we are a marketing organization, so it's our job to market and promote Prince George as a great place to live, work, play, invest and study.

Just briefly, I'm sure I don't need to remind you of this, but British Columbia is a small, open trading economy. That means that we depend on the products that we export to fill the province's coffers and to create prosperity in our province. And 77 percent of all of the provincial exports are generated in the rural land areas of the province, so that means that supporting rural and resource-related economies is an incredibly important part of ensuring the province's continued prosperity.

Currently in northern British Columbia there are $23 billion worth of resource and resource-related projects underway and $140 billion proposed in the coming decade. With more than 50 percent of all major capital projects that are proposed in B.C. located in the north, the north is an incredibly important part of the province's economic development strategy.

Over a million job openings are anticipated in B.C. between 2010 and 2020, and one-third of the job openings will be due to the new jobs that are created as a result of economic growth. That brings some challenges for Prince George and for the north that you've heard a little bit about already in terms of retention.

Just briefly about Prince George. The Prince George economy grew at nearly double the rate of the B.C. economy since 2010. So Prince George has grown at 4.7 percent, whereas the province has grown at 2.4 percent. If you are looking for a shining, bright light, you're in it. You are in the largest city in one of the fastest-growing regions of the country. Certainly, our economic achievements have been significant.

Prince George's role is as the supply and service centre not only for industry but for business, for health care, for education, for cultural amenities, for shopping, and we boast an affordable quality of life and the amenities that we need to attract that skilled workforce.

There are some particular stats in your package, so I'm not going to go through them all other than to say they just demonstrate for you the kind of growth that's occurring in Prince George. I think it's important to note that we've seen a cumulative employment growth of 14 percent in our city since 2010.

I think it's also really important to note that, in the professional services category, we've seen growth of 29 percent. That underscores the fact that this truly is a growing, diverse and increasingly urban city, although we've only seen a population growth between 2007 and 2012 of 4 percent.

So that's good. It's good, steady, sustainable growth, but it's not enough. This city needs to be 100,000 people if we're going to truly capitalize on the economic opportunities not only for our own residents but in terms of the wealth generation for the province.

There is a map in your presentation that just illustrates what $140 billion looks like. It's a hard number for people to get their heads around, and it also is meant to underscore Prince George's role as the supply and service centre and the transportation centre of that activity.

I think what I'm going to do is just, again, underscore that in 2013 Prince George was in the top-ten Canadian cities in which to find employment and that at the end of 2013 there were only 11 other cities in the entire country that had a lower unemployment rate than we do. This city is functionally fully employed, not to say that we don't have underemployed people here, because we do.
[ Page 841 ]

Certainly, providing the education that UNBC and CNC and school district 57 has spoken about is incredibly important to make sure that everyone has access to opportunities. In addition to that, the ability to attract new population and new investment is incredibly important.

I just want to talk a little bit about the provincial government's platform in 2013. In recognition of the critical role rural British Columbia plays in generating wealth and economic opportunity for the province, commence revenue-sharing discussions with rural resource communities, especially those in northwest B.C., to help prepare for future growth.

When we look at the provincial investment that has occurred in the north and occurred in Prince George, incredible investments in health care, education and infrastructure…. The province has done that in recognition of Prince George's role as a service centre for northern B.C.

But the continued investment…. We thank you for those investments. You can see from some of the presentations that those investments are paying dividends to the province. Continuing those kinds of investments in northern physical and human resources is essential to the continued growth and diversification of the B.C. economy.

If I had to prioritize — certainly, the board of Initiatives Prince George and our shareholder, the city of Prince George, have had lots of discussions about that — resource as revenue-sharing and fair share in terms of where wealth is generated and the kinds of investments that are needed in the northern communities to make them livable, wonderful places where we can attract investment is incredibly important.

Continued infrastructure investment to increase the economic activity — the Cariboo connector, the Pine Pass, Highway 16 west, telecommunications, continuing along that path — is important.

Dark fibre is something that has come to our attention. There is no dark fibre north of Kamloops, and that's a hindrance. We've actually been shortlisted in this city for several data centres that we have not been able to capitalize on because of the lack of dark fibre north of Kamloops. We have all of the other competitive advantages for that kind of significant investment, and we're losing out on that because we don't have a key piece of infrastructure. Dark fibre and telecommunication should be considered today just like the railroad was considered many years ago — truly nation-building and something we would like the province to consider.

Continued investment in education capacity. I think it's important to invest in education where employment opportunities exist. This is where the growth is, and this is where employment opportunities exist, so certainly investment in that, in the areas of innovation, design, business development, engineering, professions, trades — the presidents of the university and the college have spoken to that — as well as in community infrastructure.

We hear a lot about skills training. We hear a lot about jobs. Educated citizens build livable, wonderful, diverse, healthy communities, and part of being able to attract and retain the population that we need is also investment in arts and culture and recreation.

One thing, actually, I did want to point out in terms of the infrastructure investment — it's something that I've certainly seen in my line of work, when it comes to investment attraction — is that there are other provinces in this country that have comprehensive incentive packages for investment — Alberta, Ontario. The province of British Columbia and certainly our city and this area of the province are losing significant investment opportunities because we can't compete with some of the investment incentives that are happening in Alberta and Ontario.

There are certain things that cities and communities can do around incentives. We certainly have a wonderful downtown incentive package here in our city. But support from the province and looking at that as a more global provincial program, I think, is important so that we're not pitting communities against each other, but we're actually actively attracting investment into our province.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you, Heather. Just for information, the back of page 2 and the front of page 3 on my copy are the same slide, so if there's something missing, maybe, could you forward it to us?

S. Hamilton: Thank you, again, for your presentation this year. I remembered some discussions that we had back in January when I was up, centring around telecommunications. I have a background in telecommunications, and I'm a little curious about your comment regarding dark fibre. First of all, do you know what dark fibre is? It's unlit fibre. It's private. It's unused, but I'm surprised to hear that there's no private fibre that comes to Prince George. There's no private fibre.

I know the provincial government has span capacity. There's lots there; it's used. I'm surprised to hear that there is no private fibre that runs to Prince George.

H. Oland: I'm not an expert in this. I understand that the city itself has some dark fibre within the downtown, and I believe that the university does have access to that as well. But in terms of comprehensive, redundant, expandable, it's my understanding…. I've just recently been
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told that that is possible through the B.C. trade and investment office north of Kamloops — to support some of the kinds of data centres and other kinds of investments.

S. Hamilton: Usually what will happen is telecommunications firms will come in. They'll make the initial investment, and then they will lease the fibre that they're not using. By virtue of it being called dark, it's just not lit — right?

S. Hamilton: Nevertheless, it does surprise me, and I'm going to look into that. I'm shocked.

Could you just explain a little bit what you see as to that being detrimental in terms of business growth in the community?

H. Oland: Certainly, in terms of the innovative and tech sectors and some of the growth in that kind of industry, it's a limiting factor, as I've been told.

G. Heyman: You talked earlier in your presentation about expanding and diversifying the economy, and by some of your answers I think you clearly identify technology and a thriving tech sector as perhaps the greatest opportunity, but if there's another high-opportunity area that you're thinking of, can you identify it?

My other question is: are there any particular features of a comprehensive incentive package for investment that you would like to talk about?

H. Oland: Certainly. First of all, our target sectors that we're focusing on are professional, scientific and technical services; transportation and warehousing; construction; forestry, mining, oil and gas; and manufacturing. We think it's important to play to your strengths, so diversification where there's already growth and great skills in our economy is important.

We are very blessed in this city to have a number of different types of economic development type of organizations. One of those is called the Innovation Central Society, and it's funded not wholly, but in large part by the B.C. Innovation Council, and certainly there are a growing number of young entrepreneurs in the tech start-up phase in this city.

G. Heyman: If there were any particular factors in a comprehensive incentive package that you wanted to highlight as being particularly beneficial.

H. Oland: I think one of them is around exemptions with the reinstatement of the PST. Some exemptions have been brought to our attention about things when it comes to machinery replacement and that being a burden cost for large investments.

The other kinds of things that we hear about are the ability to have funding made available through the first six months of a start-up, whether that's a grant or a loan, when it comes to product purchase to get people started, and also training for new employees is another part.

I think there are broad strokes in an incentive package. When I speak with developers and with investors, explorations around the needs of particular companies or particular sectors, it can vary. I think some flexibility and some common sense when it comes to that approach is important.

M. Morris: Actually, George asked the same question I was going to ask. That was great. Thanks very much, Heather. You're doing a great job, and you're a great asset to the city of Prince George.

D. Ashton (Chair): Heather, thanks for coming tonight. Greatly appreciated. Say hi to Mayor Green for me, please. Good luck, and thank you for all the information tonight. If there is something on page 3….

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Good. I was curious if one was missing. That's what I was worried about.

Prince George Public Library. I have Dr. Anne George and Janet Marren. Welcome, ladies.

Thank you very much for coming this evening. Greatly appreciated. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for our questions or comments of the panel.

As you know, my name is Anne George, and I represent the Prince George Public Library board of trustees. The library is the largest in northern B.C. and the 12th largest in the province. It's a municipal library serving the city of Prince George, and through a service agreement it also serves the regional district of Fraser–Fort
[ Page 843 ]
George. The service population exceeds 90,000 people, and we coordinate services with other northern libraries — from Valemount to Burns Lake and 100 Mile House to Mackenzie.

I could be repetitive of your last speaker and tell you all about Prince George and why we need a better library, but I won't. The board of trustees of the Prince George Public Library would like to express its continued concern for the long-term financial health of the public libraries in the province.

Now we're going to be repetitive from what we said last year. For the last two years the committee has recommended that a separate provincial library budget line item be reinstated rather than folding the funding for public libraries into the overall education budget.

A separate budget line would demonstrate the government's support for public libraries and the value of the services provided. We thank you for the past recommendation and urge you to make this recommendation again this year. We ask that the province consider the full range of contributions made by public libraries beyond those related to the mandate of the Ministry of Education.

While libraries do provide many programs and literacy opportunities for school children in grades K to 12, they also provide diverse collections for all community members, preliteracy and literacy programming for preschool children and their caregivers, research and information support from trained professionals, digital literacy for all ages, job and training skills, research and support for small businesses and access to community spaces that contributes to the vitality of our communities.

Libraries remain a major contributor to social and economic developments in our communities. British Columbia's public libraries are the only fee-free source of lifelong learning, and provincial investments ensure equitable access to information for all ages, incomes and education levels.

We request that per-capita funding for public libraries be considered in light of the annual consumer price index increases. The disappearance of the line item and the lack of commitment to stable funding beyond 2014 have created uncertainty about provincial support. This negatively affects long-term planning and investment for public libraries.

We urge you to acknowledge the unique and distinct role of the public libraries by making a commitment to stable, ongoing funding for libraries; considering consumer price index increases when establishing per-capita funding for libraries; and restoring the separate library line item to provide transparent accounting of library funding.

S. Gibson: I was on a board, the Fraser Valley Regional Library board, for many years as a municipal appointee. The newest library we built we built in conjunction with a new high school. It was a good initiative, fairly unusual.

What's your feeling about that as a way to save money but also kind of spread the load around? Younger people today are not using the library as much as they used to with the advent of Google and other research means.

A. George: That was done in Vancouver in one library as well, in one school library situation.

We have only two branches, and our main branch is downtown in Civic Square, which has a number…. And it's well used: 1.1 million people enter our libraries every year. So we do keep entering our libraries.

S. Gibson: Second question: what about e-books? What are the trends you're seeing there?

J. Marren: Sure. We're finding that our digital collections are expanding. They're being well used. Connected with that, we're very concerned about digital literacy for all of our users and all of the community members, so we do a lot of digital training alongside that.

Because we serve a spread-out population — we have a low population per square foot, I guess, when you include the regional district — we're finding that a lot of our regional district residents are making heavy use of our electronic collections. They're downloading their music and their e-books and even their on-line magazines though our systems.

That's wonderful for them and wonderful for us. It's a great way to get information out to people and provide this service. But along with it comes that really strong need for us to make sure that nobody's left behind in terms of technical training. We have ongoing demand from our staff to provide this training and to help people learn how to learn all these electronic devices and keep up with them.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for your advocacy on behalf of public libraries.

I think I'll disagree a little bit with Simon. What I've seen right now is that the Internet and the access to social media has in fact started increasing use of libraries. I certainly see that in my own community, that in fact more people who aren't able to afford it at home are going to
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libraries, are utilizing libraries for resumés, for job searches — for all those kinds of opportunities. I think it has in fact broadened your base of people who are accessing libraries.

I just wonder. From the provincial libraries perspective, perhaps, more so than Prince George, is there a jurisdiction that you look at that you'd see as a shining light? Across the country is there a place that you look at that you say: "They're doing a terrific job of supporting public libraries in their province"?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Uh-huh. Is there somewhere else that people point to and say: "If only we could have that kind of support"?

J. Marren: I think one thing that we have found out in comparing ourselves with other provinces is that our per-capita funding for public libraries is very low compared to other provinces. That's one thing that's always been a concern for B.C. libraries.

G. Holman: Just a quick question about the trend in use over time. Is use trending up? To the concern expressed that libraries are becoming a bit passé, is your usage increasing over time? Do you know that?

J. Marren: Our usage is holding steady. It's changing in its…. I would say it's increasing. What we're finding is more of a demand for public space and the use of the library as a place to come together in a community hub to create and to discover and to share expertise. That has really, really grown.

Our program attendance last year increased by 21 percent in Prince George. Our wireless, Wi-Fi, use increased by 50 percent, so people were coming in to use our wireless access. Our people count went up as well, the people that came in the doors. And then our electronic usage is rising every year as well. That's our off-site remote uses. So no, I would say our usage is increasing. Those statistics are all showing an upward trend.

Certainly, our teens…. Somebody mentioned teens. We've got the only teen librarian in the north. Certainly, our award-winning teen programs have drawn a lot of that age group into our library in Prince George.

A. George: It's not necessarily building a new space but attracting teenagers into the library.

D. Ashton (Chair): Doctor, thank you very much. Janet, thank you, also, for coming tonight and for your presentation.

To the committee, we have one person for the open mike. Since we haven't faced this on the tour, the rules of the road and the rules of the committee are that a person can come forward and utilize the mike for up to five minutes, but there are no questions or comments. If the opportunity is required, I extend that. I'm sure the gentleman would discuss what may need to be discussed after the mike is closed off.

We have Dr. Albert Koehler here tonight. Dr. Koehler is a councillor of the city of Prince George.

Sir, pleased to meet you. Thank you for coming back. I saw you here a little bit earlier. We've had a full schedule tonight. Again, thank you for coming. The mike, sir, is yours for five minutes.

A. Koehler: I appreciate that. First of all, I would like to thank you for being here and, well, hanging out so long. I know when we have a long council meeting, I'm getting tired, so you probably are tired by now, as well, and wish that nobody is coming anymore.

I was the president of the chamber a while ago. At that time I was once before this committee, and three years later I was also before this committee and started at that time a society. It was called the society of northern B.C. technology and engineering. Unfortunately, I was somewhere else when the new president of CNC was here and the new president of our university.

The former Premier once said the north is the breadbasket of B.C. The current Premier says the north is the heartbeat of B.C. Somehow we are not really looking at that. I'm coming from the advanced education side. We just need more skilled people, educated individuals.

We heard from the chamber — and we're already a long time on this file — that we need more tradespeople. We need more whatever has to do with trades. But we also need more technicians and technologists and engineers.

I was involved in a survey three or four years ago, and that survey has shown that if we were to have right now around 600 individuals trained as technicians, technologists and engineers, they all would have a job, which means the gap between supply and demand is growing daily. Since we are not fulfilling, I would say, the obligation to train the right people, we are foreclosing on economic opportunities.

It has to do with money. We have to throw more money at the advanced education system. Your colleague Mike Morris knows this and where I'm coming from. It's not to blame anybody, especially not our MLAs, because I know they are kind of really pulling and pushing to get us going with our university. But we need more money to provide the programs that are needed in the north. Not for me — I have had all of this — but for B.C., for the benefit of B.C. It has to do with innovation, and we come down to innovation only if we train individuals who are trained
[ Page 845 ]
to innovate. We don't have enough of those.

I can speak only five minutes, and I will not really come up with a long list. I have been before this twice. I have had a motion accepted at UBCM with that a while ago. It was two years ago. But things are not really happening.

We have the Wood Innovation Design Centre now, which is a really good start — no doubt — because I was always preaching for adding value to our products. I had a meeting this morning with some individuals of administration of the university — unfortunately, the president wasn't there — to eventually have more space in the Wood Innovation Design Centre, which comes down to money.

In order to really provide what not just B.C. needs — what we need and everybody — we have to get more advanced education into Prince George. We need all of them. We need, certainly, the tradespeople. I started out as a tradesperson and then studied engineering and science — it was something like that — afterwards. We need them all, but if we don't have that level of technicians to engineers, the other ones will have fairly soon no job anymore. The question is: who creates mills, sawmills, mines, pulp mills? It starts out with engineers and technicians so the rest, later on, have a job.

A. Koehler: You're most welcome. I just wanted to raise awareness of that issue.

D. Ashton (Chair): Perfect. And perfect timing. Have a good evening. Thank you again for staying.

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

4) Board of Education, School District No. 57	Sharel Warrington
(Prince George)	Tim Bennett
	Allan Reed

6) Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council	Pennie-Lynn Davidson
	Sandy Ramsay
	Emily Moliere

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

Witnesses:	Tim Bennett (Board of Education, School District 57 — Prince George)
	David Clarkson
	Pennie-Lynn Davidson (Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council)
	Helen Domshy (Literacy Prince George)
	Dr. Anne George (Chair, Board of Directors, Prince George Public Library)
	Ranjit Gill (President, Prince George Chamber of Commerce)
	Alison Hagreen (Executive Director, Prince George Brain Injured Group)
	Doug Jones (Prince George Brain Injured Group)
	Angela Kehler (President, Northern Undergraduate Student Society)
	Dr. Albert Koehler
	Janet Marren (Prince George Public Library)
	Jan Mastromatteo (Faculty Association of the College of New Caledonia)
	Emily Moliere (Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council)
	Heather Oland (CEO, Initiatives Prince George)
	Matt Partyka (Northern British Columbia Graduate Student Society)
	Keith Playfair (Chair, Board of Governors, College of New Caledonia)
	Cindi Pohl (Prince George Chamber of Commerce)
	Sandy Ramsay (Prince George Mental Health Consumer Council)
	Christie Ray (CEO, Prince George Chamber of Commerce)
	Allan Reed (Board of Education, School District 57 — Prince George)
	Henry Reiser (President, College of New Caledonia)
	David Rourke (President, Faculty Association of the College of New Caledonia)
	Darrell Roze (Executive Director, Child Development Centre of Prince George and District)
	Les Smith (Child Development Centre of Prince George and District)
	Peter Thompson (Two Rivers Gallery)
	Sharel Warrington (Board of Education, School District 57 — Prince George)
	Dr. Daniel Weeks (President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Northern British Columbia)

1) Prince George Brain Injured Group	Alison Hagreen
	Doug Jones

2) Prince George Chamber of Commerce	Christie Ray
	Ranjit Gill
	Cindi Pohl

3) Faculty Association of the College of New Caledonia	Jan Mastromatteo
	David Rourke

8) Child Development Centre of Prince George and District	Les Smith
	Darrell Roze

11) University of Northern British Columbia	Dr. Daniel Weeks
	Angela Kehler

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES