Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 38 — Monday, September 22, 2014 (HTML)

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; Jane Jae Kyung Shin, 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	921
C. Giroux-Schmidt
P. Leitch
P. Klassen
S. Thompson
J. Mikes
R. Truscott
M. Effa
P. Leslie
L. Jagger
I. Humphreys
M. Plant
M. Weedon

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for coming. We just have to go through a few preliminaries before we have our first guest up. My name is Dan Ashton. I'm the MLA for Penticton and Peachland and Chair of 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. This week we're in Whistler for UBCM.

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

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

Today's meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by a five-minute question period from the committee. Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike period at the end of the meeting, and five minutes are allotted for each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register, and we register with Susan here at the front.

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

J. Shin: Hello. My name is Jane Shin, MLA for Burnaby-Lougheed, and I'm the deputy spokesperson for trade, multiculturalism and immigration.

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

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

S. Hamilton: Good afternoon. My name is Scott Hamilton. I'm the MLA for Delta North.

D. Ashton (Chair): Also assisting us today is Susan Sourial from the parliamentary committees office, and Hansard Services are here today, with Michael Baer and Jean Medland over here.

First of all, welcome. Nice to see you — a pleasure. Again, we have ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning if I think you're going to be creeping up into there. Then five minutes for questions or comments from the committee. The floor is yours.

C. Giroux-Schmidt: Thank you, and I'll apologize now if I break out into a coughing fit in the middle. I've been fighting a cold, so bear with me.

C. Giroux-Schmidt: Hi, folks. I think I know most of you, but I'm Colleen Giroux-Schmidt, the senior director of regulatory affairs for Innergex Renewable Energy. I want to thank you for this opportunity to make a presentation to your committee.

For those on the committee not familiar with Innergex Renewable Energy, we are a leading Canadian developer of independent renewable-power projects. Active since 1990, we develop, own and operate run-of-river hydro, wind and solar facilities and carry out our operations with more than 170 employees in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and in Idaho. We are a publicly traded company, and our shares are listed on the TSX.

Innergex has been active in British Columbia since 2004, and if there is anything that we are identified for,
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it's for our First Nations partnerships, which I'll speak about more.

Today in British Columbia we operate 13 run-of-river facilities and have four under construction which will come on line by 2016. All of the electricity our projects produce is sold to B.C. Hydro under power purchase agreements. We are currently in the middle of deploying $1 billion of capital investment in the province and have created hundreds of new local jobs in construction and contracting. We are proud of our recently constructed northwest Stave and Kwoiek Creek projects, where 40 percent of the workforce was First Nations.

Innergex strives for sustainability in all aspects of our business: the energy we produce, the contribution we make to local communities, the revenue we generate and the returns we provide to our investors. In other words, we work to develop these projects that balance social, environment and economic priorities.

At Innergex we believe that climate change is real and that renewable energy provides a clean, cost-effective and sustainable alternative to fossil energy. As you are well aware, it is a challenge for government to plan their energy needs with the long-term view and commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We applaud British Columbia for its leadership on this file and are committed to continuing to work with both the government and communities to ensure this continues.

We develop renewable energy because we believe it is the right choice for our current electricity needs and also because we believe it is the right legacy for future generations. We believe that there is a valuable role for renewable energy in making sure that B.C.'s LNG is truly the cleanest LNG.

At Innergex our development approach is founded on the concept of partnerships that benefit communities, the environment and the economy. In B.C. Innergex has entered into more than 20 impact-benefit agreements with the First Nations on whose traditional territory our projects are located.

In addition, on our Kwoiek Creek project, which many on this committee are familiar with, we are 50-50 partners with the Kanaka Bar Indian band. What is amazing about the Kwoiek Creek project is that the Kanaka Bar have been working to develop the project since 1978. It was an amazing achievement for us to be able to stand with Kanaka Bar earlier this year and watch the project in operation.

What it fully means to the community is hard to define, but the legacy of the project will be improving lives for generations to come. This ability to partner and share ownership with First Nations is something Innergex has done across Canada, including partnering with the community of Rivières-du-Loup, the Mi'gmaq communities of the Gaspé Peninsula and the Ojibway of the Pic River First Nation.

For us, partnership means shared information, shared efforts and risks, and shared economic benefits. These types of partnerships, which Innergex has been at the forefront of in Canada, can work to enhance government-to-government relations across the province. The combination of local First Nations knowledge, expertise and labour, combined with the renewable energy industries' technical and financial experience can lead to long-term economic benefits for generations to come.

I want to take a moment to talk about a new partnership we've entered into in B.C. that may serve as a great model for the province moving forward. As part of the In-SHUCK-ch Nation's treaty negotiation, Innergex and In-SHUCK-ch have recently signed an agreement for a 50-50 partnership to development six run-of-river facilities in the nation's traditional territory.

The best way to describe what this means is in the word of Gerard Peters, the chief negotiator for the In-SHUCK-ch Nation. "A successful treaty means we must begin to pay our own way, and our green energy projects will make that possible. For the In-SHUCK-ch Nation, this means moving away from dependency and taking our proper place within Canada." This is beyond just generating cost-effective clean energy. This is nation-building.

Renewable energy projects are, in many cases, the on-ramp to the economy for many communities and First Nations and can be a catalyst for sustained prosperity and independence. The capacity built through the experience on a run-of-river or wind project can be applied by the community on other economic activities, whether they are forestry, aquaculture, tourism, LNG, mining or…. The sky is the limit.

At Innergex, environmental sustainability is part of what we do, producing electricity from renewable energy sources to meet today's needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

For Innergex, developing sustainability means harnessing the water, wind or sun in ways that avoid, minimize or compensate for any effect on the surrounding ecosystem, hopefully leaving the planet better off in the end. Ultimately, it's about acting responsibly. For almost 25 years Innergex has earned a reputation of upholding the highest environmental standards. We continuously strive to improve our environmental practices.

We are also committed to continually working with both provincial and federal regulators, along with the ENGO community, to ensure that we are advancing knowledge on the interactions between our projects and the environment and that we have appropriate regulations to ensure the values that are important to British Columbians are protected while maintaining viable economic activities.

To that end, in the past year we have contributed $300,000 to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to carry out a five-year study of
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the grizzly bear population in the Upper Lillooet drainage and nearly half a million dollars for the spotted owl program.

First, there is broad societal support for leveraging the amazing foundation of large storage hydro that we have in B.C. and meeting our future electricity needs with distributed renewable energy projects.

Second, enabling a portfolio of renewable energy projects provides distributed economic benefit across British Columbia.

Third, these projects are also distributed temporally, which provides not only family-supporting jobs but also careers.

Fourth, renewable energy projects build capacity within the workforce that is transferable to other activities — LNG development and mining, for example.

Fifth, these projects are an on-ramp to the economy for many communities and First Nations.

As you head into the budget process, I would invite you to consider these points and ensure that the decisions taken consider more than just rates and costs. The broader socioeconomic benefits that renewable energy projects produce have tremendous value for this province.

It has always been my view that your sector has always been a leader in resource development and working with First Nations, and you've touched on it here. That's tremendous. I have a comment and a question.

I was intrigued to read in, I think, yesterday's media clips that the Rockefeller family are going to divest themselves of their fossil fuel investments and replace them with clean energy investments. That's an interesting affirmation of your work, your sector.

In your concluding comment, point No. 1, you talk about large-storage hydro. As you know, the province will be making a decision soon on possibly a third and final dam, Site C. What are your thoughts on that possible decision?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: That was a question I was trying very hard to stay away from, John.

I think there we would say that B.C. has a great alternative in clean energy. A distributed portfolio brings a lot of additional and different benefits, and we'd encourage you to consider that.

G. Heyman: Thank you for the presentation. My question flows a little bit from John's. I know that the minister, when he saw the report from Clean Energy B.C. about the possibility of providing a similar amount of power to Site C from an array of renewables, commented that he wanted to take a look at it, but no decision had been made.

My question is…. I haven't read the report. I apologize. It may well be in there. Can you comment on the potential comparative economic or jobs that would flow from a portfolio of renewables versus one big project?

Also, I know that a lot of progress has been made recently in both dropping the price of solar and making the availability of various forms of storage for intermittent power cheaper, smaller and generally more efficient. If there was a move to produce the next big tranche of power for B.C. from renewables, is there, in your view, enough firm power in the existing installations to supplement it and make the whole system work?

With the report that was in the paper…. It actually hasn't been publicly released yet. It was, unfortunately, leaked to the media, so not….

I believe Clean Energy B.C. is striving to have that released at their Generate conference later in October. A second piece of work that's also going to be released at the same time is an economic benefit study that's looked at the clean portfolio vis-à-vis Site C and what that could mean. I can't comment on that yet, but it's coming.

In terms of is there enough firm energy, that was part of what the portfolio looked at, and through a combination of distributed renewables, you do get some firm, because all the projects equalize out over time. There are also two Resource Smart projects that B.C. Hydro has in terms of adding additional capacity to two of the existing dams that will help meet that need.

M. Morris: I've seen some First Nations communities get turned around because of run-of-the-river projects. It's really helped them out.

I'm curious. You talked about the In-SHUCK-ch agreements that you have. Whereabouts is that?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: If you look at the Sea-to-Sky corridor coming up this way and Harrison Lake coming up this way, kind of in the middle of nowhere at the top. They don't have a heck of lot of other opportunities up there, so for them, run-of-river projects are really the only option for economic development.
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M. Morris: And are those communities, or a lot of their communities, currently on Hydro power, or are they using diesel-electric? Do you know what they're running on?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: I believe they're not grid-connected at the moment. It's not a great living situation up there.

C. James (Deputy Chair): This may be part of the report as well, so feel free to pass it on, and we'll come back.

You mentioned LNG and renewables. Obviously, there's a big debate about how LNG will be produced and whether they'll be burning their own, whether it will be renewables, etc. I wonder whether you have anything more to say about that, whether there's been further study or whether you'll be coming out with any recommendations.

C. Giroux-Schmidt: In terms of Innergex, we're actively working with different LNG proponents to find out ways that we can work with them to provide renewables, whether it's with the wood fibre project here on the coast where we have a lot of operating assets and relationships, and also those companies working up in the north.

We have a wonderful wind farm that's right along the pipeline route that we're hoping to develop, and we're keen to work there.

In terms of industry, I would anticipate that there'll be some comment on it. It's difficult for one industry to dictate how another ought to be doing its job, but I would say that across the board, the more opportunity, the better, and everyone is keen to play.

D. Ashton (Chair): Colleen, thank you very much for your presentation — greatly appreciated.

Next up we have the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of British Columbia — Peter and Suzanne and Paul.

D. Ashton (Chair): If there's one named Mary…. That was it — Peter, Paul and Mary. [Laughter]

Thank you very much for coming today — greatly appreciated. You probably heard it was ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're pushing there, and then we have up to five minutes for questions. So please, the floor is yours.

P. Leitch: Thanks for hearing us today. I see lots of friendly faces around the table, which is nice to see.

British Columbia's motion picture industry has been a real success story over the last 30 years in the province. We've built an industry now that's a billion-dollar industry and that employs approximately 25,000 people. It's a very innovative industry. It's a green industry. It's one that has been a really great alternative to enhancing the other benefits that B.C.'s economy offers. It's a great contributor to B.C.'s economy.

It's growing in different ways. The visual effects community is one of the fastest-growing communities in the industry right now. We've got a strong post-production community that we're looking to build upon.

The physical production — mostly in British Columbia we do service work, so 80 percent of the business we do is business that comes up from the U.S., from Los Angeles. We're very good at it. It's world-class productions that come up here.

Just talking to John…. Of course, we've got a production, Once Upon a Time, that really shows the clear links between our industry and tourism in terms of attracting tourists to the province.

With innovation comes other opportunities. We've got a very strong gaming component now in British Columbia. Some of these skills now — between visual effects, creation of film, post-production and that sector of the industry — have been really recognized, so we're getting world-class companies in the game business adopting British Columbia as their home.

We're seeing companies from Los Angeles relocate here because of the talent pool that we've got here and the benefits of shooting in British Columbia. We call it a world of looks. In B.C. we've got such fantastic, diversified locations right throughout the province.

With another Night at the Museum III, which recently completed here, they had to create Egypt, and they decided to go up to Kamloops. They spent a lot of money in the economy up there and did some fantastic work up there. On the Island we did a show called Godzilla. So we are really reaching out into these other areas of the province.

Creative B.C., which is the entity that was formerly the B.C. Film Commission, and B.C. Film, which administered the tax credits…. They've united under Creative B.C. They've been great at promoting other areas of the province as well. We're really excited about the industry.

I'd like to turn the podium over to Paul Klassen to talk a little bit about the impact on labour here.

P. Klassen: By the numbers, we just wanted to mention that the industry supports over 25,000 well-paying, knowledge-based jobs. The majority of the direct work is concentrated in the Lower Mainland, but the people who perform these jobs and the families they support come from all reaches of the province.

The production industry contributed an annual average of $1.1 billion in production spending to the B.C. economy for the past decade, the majority of which is new money coming into the province. This figure does not include ancillary spending and economic spinoff to regional and municipal governments and to other sectors, such
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as hospitality and tourism and the multitude of small- to medium-sized businesses that supply goods and services to the motion picture production industry in B.C.

The total contribution to the B.C. economy since the incentive program started is over $15 billion. Over $1 billion of private investment has been made in industry infrastructure, and there are 24 post-secondary institutions located across the province which offer internationally recognized industry education and training for next generation of production professionals.

The film and television industry is the cornerstone of B.C.'s creative economy, which is worth a combined $4 billion in GDP and represents 85,000 jobs across the province. The creative economy is internationally recognized as an important sector, and it is growing at a faster rate than the economy as a whole.

Film and television production showcases the beauty and diversity of B.C. to the world. Not only does the industry promote tourism, but it provides real economic impact wherever film crews and facilities are found. Peter mentioned a couple of examples, and we have some figures.

Since 1990 film production in the Okanagan has generated a multi-million-dollar economic impact. Since 1996 Vancouver Island has benefited with more than $250 million in direct spending. In the last ten years the Thompson-Nicola valley had $25 million in direct spending in the region. Just last year the Kootenay-Columbia area generated $1.5 million and 70 hires for crew and cast in the region.

S. Thompson: I'd like to touch upon post-production, which is a very important sector of our industry. The post-production sector is comprised of hundreds of creative and finishing editors, post supervisors, colourists, coordinators, engineers, IT people, data wranglers, composers, etc. These are both in sound and picture finishing.

We're the people that stitch, colour, build sound, create credit rolls, digital-fix images and technically package the content for theatre, TV and on line. This part of the sector is a 30-year industry in our province and is a major investor in infrastructure, in the millions of dollars.

With that history, we're primed to become a leader in digital innovation and content creation. The future of post-production is a key ingredient to the digital future of our province.

World-class businesses and infrastructure. Training for youth in excellent educational institutions. We have wisdom of experts in the field with years of experience. We have talent, technological innovation, proximity to our customers and connectivity to the world to add to our foundation. These are all the building blocks for a new digital age, whether your screen be theatrical, TV, hand-held or on line.

Here are some of the outcomes of growth potential of post-production with the enhanced DAVE. Foreign production will be encouraged to stay here and finish after they shoot. Examples: Once Upon a Time, The Flash, Arrow, Whisper — all television series currently shooting here in British Columbia.

Domestic B.C. producers will be able to leverage their TV deals from the broadcast decision-makers in Ontario and bring more work to British Columbia. Examples: Motive, the TV series; Continuum, the TV series.

B.C. producers will be able to partner with others around the globe and create co-production business relationships and bring their post and production back to British Columbia. Examples: Europe, China and India.

Finally, like the success of visual effects, we'll see an increase of post-production from other jurisdictions as clients decide to bring their post-production here, regardless of where they shoot, for the talent, innovation and infrastructure. When post flourishes, so does transmedia, digital distribution models, gaming, web series, publishing, music apps and so on.

When we keep our own content in the province, we grow exponentially into new business life cycles, and that creates jobs for British Columbians.

P. Leitch: One of the importants of post-production is that we felt it was so important to develop as a film centre here that we put it in as one of our asks. It was adopted, and now the bureaucrats have really looked at it. They're preparing changes in regulation to have it covered by the digital animation and visual effects credit. We'd like to, first of all, thank the government for its insight on that. It's going the right way. It's going to be presented to the Finance Minister shortly.

The other asks that we had were that Victoria, which we really see as a jewel in the entertainment and film sector…. It's now covered under the distant-location credit, which really opens that area up for television series, which are really a mainstay in terms of creating employment. It's certainly how I got into the game back in 1987 with 21 Jump Street.

Speaking of that particular show, it's interesting. It was produced by a gentleman named Steve Beers. We brought up an awful lot of department heads in that time because we didn't have the skill sets we do today.

Now he's doing another series, the first time I've seen him back here. He just was doing a series called Bones in Los Angeles, but he's back here doing a series called Backstrom. There's some American cast, but 100 percent of the crew is all B.C.- and Canadian-based. You can see how that transition has happened in terms of the skilled people coming up here and creating jobs. That's certainly what's happened in Suzanne's part of the business, in the post-production area.
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The last thing is that we want to establish more of a presence in Los Angeles. We were very fortunate to get some funding from WED last year. I'd like Paul to briefly maybe talk about our familiarization trips that we brought people up here on.

P. Klassen: One of the things that the WED funding has allowed us to do is really expand our marketing activities. Not only were we able to finance additional marketing trips down to Los Angeles to meet with producers that we have established ties with; we really expanded the number of production companies and producers we were able to reach out to. In most cases we tripled the number of contacts that we had out there.

In addition, we created a new program where we can actually bring people up here to British Columbia. We have some criteria involved, as far as making sure that we reach out to established producers that have active projects. We've seen some real success, both short term and long term, and spinoff success, because these people come up here for the first time and see exactly what we have to offer. They go back, and they tell their friends. We expect that this will pay dividends in the future as well.

P. Leitch: Thank you very much. I just wanted to thank you for being such an important partner in this industry in British Columbia.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation. There are some days when I feel like I'm the MLA from Richmond-Storybrooke, which of course is the name of the town that Steveston stands in for, for Once Upon a Time. This has also, I think, touched other communities, but certainly, in Steveston it's added another good reason to visit Steveston — not just for seafood and the heritage and retail but the Storybrooke experience.

Two questions. One, in regard to the impact on communities, has the association thought about ways to work with communities to leverage that, to enhance the experience of hosting an ongoing production?

I'll give you an example. A year or so ago I was at a community event, and some cast members from Once Upon a Time attended to provide their support to a community cause. Is that something that is part of the mix that you and your members can think of, to kind of show communities that it's a really, overall, great experience for communities?

P. Leitch: Yeah. It's something that the industry is really, I think, known for — an industry that gives back. Whether it's to the food bank or contributing services or adding a feature at a park or whatever, if the industry can give back that way, we like to.

One of the challenging parts of the industry is that they're working 12- to 14-hour days. Most of the companies — it's nice, great, fantastic that we're establishing more B.C.-based companies — are based in Los Angeles. This workforce is getting out there and doing the work and then sort of getting home after working these long hours. It's challenging in some ways.

We like to host tours, where we can, at our studio, and other facilities like to. I know Suzanne has been open to that. Where we can do it, and especially with people and young people that are interested in getting engaged in the industry, our doors are open for that.

We try our best. Certainly, if there are any ideas about how to get more engaged, we'd like to. We've met with Tourism Vancouver, and we think there's real opportunity there. We've noticed that other jurisdictions — around North America, especially — really market the idea that a film has been in a particular area. We're probably the low-key Canadians a little bit that way.

G. Heyman: I'll try to be quick. The first question is…. I think we all know that Creative B.C. does good work. Is there any area in which Creative B.C. is currently working, or could work, that you think could or should be enhanced to the benefit of the industry?

Is it your experience…? Anecdotally, I've been told by a couple of people in the animation industry that they could hire more people than B.C. training institutes are capable of turning out. Is that a common issue in other parts of the industry as well — or in animation — in your view?

Finally, is there any, in your view, correlation between the growth of local domestic production and the growth of foreign productions coming to B.C.?

P. Leitch: To take your last point first: 100 percent. The industry was created as a result of the expertise coming to British Columbia first, training the people on the ground — so absolutely 100 percent on that one.

In terms of workers, you've got animation, visual effects and potentially post-production where you're going to demand more workers than there are trained. We're training the workers, but it's just a matter of time. The temporary foreign worker legislation has caused us some concern, and we're working very closely with the federal government right now to hopefully rectify that.

P. Klassen: Creative B.C. is doing a fantastic job. Obviously, they have a limited amount of funding, so they can do more with additional funding. But they are, I think, going into their new role quite well and certainly maintaining strong ties with our industry.
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P. Leitch: One of the things they'd like to do at Creative B.C. is put on programs to engage more young people into the industry and sort of have incubator programs also, in terms of creating creative talent like writers to stay in B.C. so that we can own our own copyright. Also, they're looking to explore international markets.

D. Ashton (Chair): I have Simon and Jane — less than a minute. I would just invite members of the panel, if you do want to carry on the questions…. We do have other presenters.

S. Gibson: I see the sample of films and TV shows. I was rather hurt that the movie Slither wasn't on the list. Slither was a movie about crazed slugs that take over a town, and it was actually filmed in my riding — so rather hurt that wasn't on the list. Danny Virtue's studio, incidentally, is also in my riding. Some of you know Danny.

My question is a little bit related to George's regarding international productions here. You know sometimes you'll see a movie that's got French and Germans and Italians behind it. We're very dependent on Los Angeles, which I understand — proximity and all those good things. Are we working with other film production companies in other countries to try to broaden our global scope? That's my main question.

P. Leitch: Just quickly, we just did a co-production treaty with India, and we're on the Premier's trade mission to India next month. There are ten of us going, looking to discover that market and where the opportunities are. We've been over to Hong Kong, to London. We're keeping our eyes open for sure.

S. Thompson: To add to that, I think that with post-production this will give our domestic producers leverage when they get into the partnerships with other countries to offer something to bring back home.

J. Shin: I just want to thank you for your presentation. I'm a big fan of the industry, and I think we can definitely leverage it better.

Actually, the question that I wanted to raise about pursuing Asian markets — some of the developing films and opportunities in India, China, Korea, for example — we've already touched on that. So that we can put it in perspective a little bit, how do we fare in the North American market as far as the amount of contracts there are? What percentage of it, would you say, are we able to bring to B.C. — have it filmed and post-production work be done in B.C.? Do we make up about 10 percent or 20 percent? What does it look like?

P. Leitch: Well, it's $1 trillion worldwide. If you look at Los Angeles, we're talking between $40 billion and $50 billion, just to give you an idea of what's done in California.

P. Leitch: You know, there are limitations. But we'd like to, as Suzanne said, offer all the services so we can get a bigger chunk of the pie when shows come here.

S. Thompson: Typically with the foreign productions that come up from Los Angeles right now, a lot of them do not finish in British Columbia. We hope to expand on that, and we hope to give our domestic producers more leverage so that they can bring work back here too.

S. Hamilton: All kinds of great things happening in the industry, and thank you for all your hard work.

Let's talk about some of the challenges. It's my understanding that the foreign worker program causes you a little bit of grief from time to time. Would you like to talk about that?

P. Leitch: Yeah. We've now got a national coalition. We met in Toronto last week. I've met personally with Minister Alexander and Minister Kenney to make sure that actors aren't caught in this two-year time limitation, as well as they were classified as low-income earners. Also, just the cost — $1,000 plus, plus on top of that — to bring all the actors in, when they're bringing all this money into the economy, is a bit frustrating for us.

We're working closely with the federal government. We're going to stay on it until it's resolved, because we want to create jobs for British Columbia. That's our main goal.

S. Hamilton: Of course. Thank you, and I imagine we'll be hearing updates as those talks proceed.

P. Leitch: Very well. It has kind of offset our desperate need last year where other jurisdictions had a higher tax credit. But we've got a lot to offer here, and now the dollar has mitigated that a little bit.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, Peter. I appreciate that. Suzanne and Paul, thank you very much. I'm sorry to cut you off. We have a whole bunch of other people lined up. Thank you for your presentation.

Next up we have Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear
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Initiative. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you very much for coming. I'm not so sure you were in the room, but you have ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. I'll give you a two-minute warning too, okay?

J. Mikes: Thank you. My name is Johnny Mikes. I'm the field director for the Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative. I'm based here in Whistler.

Coast to Cascades is a coalition of a diverse number of groups, both in the corridor here, locally — small groups like the Whistler Naturalists, Lillooet Naturalists — and we have quite a provincial representation with some of the larger environmental groups.

We're an interesting mix of organizations in that, in terms of the grizzly bear hunt, some of our coalition members probably fall on different sides of the hunt issue. One of our key groups that we work with is the Pemberton Wildlife Association, which is a B.C. Wildlife Federation associate. What all the groups in our coalition have in common is that we're all dedicated to the recovery from threatened to viable status of the five threatened southwest B.C. grizzly bear populations.

Why grizzly bears? Why now? Grizzly bears are at a crossroads in southwest B.C., where the speed of development is outpacing grizzly bear conservation measures, and grizzly bears, in addition to being an iconic species, require a diverse range of seasonal habitats — high elevation, low elevation, berries, roots, salmon. As such, they're a surrogate for a healthy environment. By stewarding the landscape for grizzly bears, we'll ensure that we have a healthy environment for not only people but a wide range of species.

The province lists B.C.'s grizzly bears in two ways. Either they're threatened, or they're a viable status. The first of the three maps in the package shows you in red where the nine threatened grizzly bear populations in British Columbia are located, primarily in the south, and the yellowish colour is the viable populations. The third colour — the swath through the Interior, the Lower Mainland and the Peace River Valley area — is where grizzly bears are rated by the province as extirpated.

The second map in the package shows more of a zoom-in on the five populations in southwest B.C. and, on the grizzly bear icons on each population, shows the 2012 provincial population estimate for each of those population units. There's a report coming out — we hope, shortly — that may update those populations. Some, perhaps, will be stronger; some will, perhaps, be worse than is shown on this map.

The third map gives a sense of where what we call the Coast to Cascades region — because these populations are overlapping the southern end of the Coast range and the northern end of the Cascade Mountains…. The Coast to Cascades region is on the current line of extirpation. They're the southwest-most grizzly bear populations on the continent.

If you look at that map, grizzly bears used to range all the way down into Mexico. Over time that line of where grizzly bears exist has moved up the continent into southwest British Columbia. So just behind these mountains here is where we're holding the line of extirpation of grizzly bears moving further north into the continent.

The threats to bears in our neck of the woods here are the combined threats of habitat development and increased human-caused mortality that a lot of development and having a lot of people around brings. Grizzly bears in threatened populations are among the populations in B.C. that are not legally hunted.

But we continue to lose grizzly bears in southwest B.C. through a number of ways: hunters mistaking them for black bears; poachers; conflicts, let's say, over easily avoidable problems like chicken coops, livestock feed and garbage; and also, people sometimes just simply not knowing enough about grizzly bears and perceiving them as a threat.

Our issue is not with the hunt; our issue is to recover these populations. If the province deemed to ban the hunt tomorrow, for example, these bears would still face the same problems they faced around habitat, around illegal human-caused mortality, lack of connectivity between isolated populations in the mountains and genetic isolation of some of the populations.

The ways to get around or to solve the problem and bring these bears back from threatened status to viable status…. The population numbers vary quite a bit between the different populations. Even those threatened…. The South Chilcotin region's population has about 203 bears in it, but that's not uniform across that population unit. That's a big area. In some areas the numbers are quite low; some are quite strong. But we view that as an existing and potential source population for some of the population units that have lower numbers and are more endangered.

Grizzly bear recovery has been successfully accomplished in a number of places, including the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in the United States. In 1975 they had about 136 bears. Now, today, they have over 600 bears. There are other areas in the United States, in the Rocky Mountain states, where they're actively working at expanding grizzly bears. In fact, just a few weeks ago the U.S. federal government announced a process to study recovery of grizzly bears in their North Cascades, immediately south of the B.C. border, south of our Manning Park area, and in through there.

The science has been done to a large degree in this part of the world over the last, probably, ten years almost. The province has invested quite a bit. Colleen had mentioned some of the contributions that have come from industry, such as the IPP sector helping fund some of the collaring work, the DNA work. So that science exists. A fair bit of money has gone into it, and there is the opportun-
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ity now to actually capitalize on investment and make that investment in the grizzly bear science work for the recovery of these bears.

The recovery for these populations is strong and widespread. The Squamish First Nation's land use plan speaks to it. The Stl'atl'imx have a resolution by their chiefs to recover grizzly bears to numbers that will be strong in perpetuity, within seven generations. As I mentioned, the United States is looking at recovering bears on their side, and that will definitely mean necessary cooperation with the provincial government here.

The LRMP, the Sea to Sky land and resource management plan that was widely supported by multi-stakeholder support, First Nations support and local government support, had a lot of really good stuff in it around grizzly bears. It hit all the right notes. It talked about moving the populations from threatened to viable status, conserving critical habitat, reducing mortality and reducing displacement from critical habitats.

The only thing with the Sea to Sky LRMP is that in the 2008 document, and even probably back as early as 2004 or sooner, it was identified that these populations were in trouble. Six years later, while some of the science has been done, the recovery planning hasn't been done.

The LRMP set some great goals about recovery, and they specified doing a complete recovery plan for each of the four populations that overlap the Sea to Sky plan area. If you look at the second map of the package, that would be the Stein-Nahatlach, Garibaldi-Pitt, Squamish-Lillooet and South Chilcotin ranges.

The situation is serious here, for some of the populations in particular. In the Stein-Nahatlach population the 2012 figure was that it was 24 bears left. They estimated six breeding females in that population. We know that three of those females have been shot in the last two or three years — I forget the exact number — so three of the six breeding females estimated gone. Garibaldi-Pitt — they say two. We're thinking now, what we're hearing the scientists say, is that there are probably no bears living in there currently, that it's just occupied temporarily by transient bears moving through, possibly for seasonal salmon or seasonal food sources.

At least ten grizzly bears in the last decade have been killed in this immediate vicinity. The pictures on the page that has two photos on it — a serious situation. The two bears on top, Jinx and Jewel, who are a mother-daughter pair that were killed — first the daughter, when she became of breeding age. Then the mother last year was thought to have been shot by a poacher. The bear on the bottom was a bear that was killed illegally just up past Pemberton and left at the side of the road.

We in British Columbia are at real risk of seeing the line of extirpation move up. The loss and further decline of these populations would run counter to the 1995 grizzly bear management strategy in the province.

But we think there's a real good news story available here. We think it's a fairly cheap, inexpensive and easy situation to direct government staff to do the recovery planning. No extra staff would be required. The investment in the recovery planning would be low, and it could make a real difference to these bears.

Again, 2008 was the LRMP. It's six years later. We'd love to see some action on not having these bears disappear off the landscape.

S. Gibson: Very interesting. It's something I'm interested in as well. I appreciate your presentation today, sir.

I'm reminded that the last grizzly in California that was of the original group died in 1923. The last one was shot. And in Oregon the last one was shot in 1929. That's a long time ago. This is kind of the corner, as your map shows. The grizzly is kind of hanging on in this part of the world.

My understanding is, to be more specific with a question, that grizzlies need an area — somebody told me; I don't know if this is true or not — the size of Vancouver, Burnaby and Coquitlam for one grizzly bear. So isn't, really, the challenge for the government or this province to set aside vast areas? The downside of that is, of course, we want to also ensure that we have resources that are used wisely for the economic growth of our province — forests, mines, petroleum and others. So how do we reconcile that? That's my question.

J. Mikes: Sure. Well, the grizzly bears in southwest B.C. have managed to hang on in the backs of the valleys. When you look out to the west when you go outside of your hotel room tonight, there are probably four female grizzlies that den in the upper Callaghan Valley alone. These bears are really staying out of trouble. They're minding their own business, and they're raising their young in the more remote places.

The area that a grizzly bear needs for its home range — the males typically wander broader, and females less so — really depends on the amount of food that is there. We're confident that we can have more self-sustaining numbers in these populations without affecting development.

Now, if every person wants to build their trail or every person wants to have their road or every person wants to have their IPP in every last single valley, then we won't have grizzly bears. But they shouldn't be viewed as a threat to economic well-being. We're confident that it can be managed that way. We think that, for example, there are forestry prescriptions that can be done in a progressive way that will enhance habitat for berries for bears, so there's a win-win between industry and the animals.
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Just two quick questions. The first one. You mention that science has expanded. I know there has always been and there is ongoing debate about statistics, around numbers on the grizzly population, so I just wondered if you could comment on whether that's an issue with this area and with this population.

Then the second question is…. You said new resources aren't needed. What is needed? Is it a focus? Is it setting it as a priority? Is it making sure that the staff see this as part of their workplan and work that needs to be done?

J. Mikes: Yeah. In terms of the population numbers — I think we've all see it in the media — it's contentious about what the overall provincial population numbers are. But there's been a tremendous amount of work done locally here, north of here and to the northwest of here — a very detailed study. We're, again, waiting to see the results of that. Those numbers, I think, are going to fundamentally back up the general population balance between the numbers we see here. It's not universal across the five populations, but I think there's going to be quite a high degree of confidence. There's some really good science.

In terms of what's needed in terms of the recovery planning, if staff was directed to do that and were freed to do that, we would want to ensure the conservation officer service is well-funded to deal with education and some of the illegal mortality issues. Of course, the scientists will say that we always need more science, and they'll want to spend money on science. But I think, fundamentally, we have it.

Probably, some of the costs would come in a few years. There are going to be two populations or so where augmentation, bringing grizzly bears in from more populous areas, might be needed, and those things will cost. But there's also the opportunity for partnering. I think the non-profit community would have an appetite to be partners to some degree in helping government in its work.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much, Johnny. Greatly appreciated. Thank you for the handout as well.

Next up we have Canadian Federation of Independent Business — Richard Truscott. Good afternoon, sir. How are you this afternoon?

Thank you very much for appearing before the committee. Ten minutes. I'll give you a two-minute warning, then up to five minutes for questions. As you can see, there are quite a few questions today.

First of all, thanks very much for the opportunity to appear before you today and to give you some advice and some information on the provincial budget and to inform your prebudget work.

I do have quite a few slides. Of course, I'm not going to be able to get through all that. The information is there. If you have some questions beyond the conversation today, I'd be more than happy to follow up with you after. My contact information is on one of the last slides, and the recommendations are on one of the last slides.

Before I get going, I also just want to point out that, of course, Small Business Week is coming up in October. We as an organization place a specific focus on Small Business Saturday, which is the second Saturday during Small Business Week, being October 25. We have a whole bunch of stuff that we run throughout the week and really focus on that final Saturday. I just wanted to point that out before I get going.

Just quickly, a little bit about CFIB before we dive in to the issues. CFIB is a non-partisan political advocacy group. We've been around for 43 years. We represent 109,000 businesses across the country, including about 10,000 here in British Columbia. Essentially, these are all independently owned and operated private companies. It's essentially the non–stock market economy.

The average size of our member businesses is only about ten to 15 employees, so these are not big businesses by any means. They represent every sector of the economy, every region of the country. Every imaginable business that you can think of would be a member of CFIB. One of the things that makes us truly unique and perhaps sets us apart from other business organizations is that we do meet with our members in person at least once every year. We update them on the things we've been working on, we get them to sign petitions, and of course, we renew their membership. We are entirely member-funded.

We also have limits on the amount of the membership dues so that no one single business can dominate the organization. We're very much a grass-roots, democratic-based organization — one member, one vote. It's not what Richard Truscott thinks about these issues or about policy; it's about what our members tell us is important to them. I just want to make sure I point that out.

In addition to our lobbying work, we also have business counsellors that can help our members with the practical, day-to-day operations of running their business. When they're trying to figure out occupational health and safety rules or they have some issue with government red tape, that's the sort of thing we can help them with.

Just quickly, small and medium-sized businesses, of course, are not just the backbone of our economy, representing over a quarter of the gross domestic product of this province, but also, more than half the jobs in B.C. would be represented in that small and medium-sized business sector.
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Of course, small businesses are also the heart and soul of our communities. This is something we ought to remember every time we think about small business and about policy that affects small business. These really are our neighbours, our friends, our family. I'm sure we all know people that run small businesses. In no way is it an easy task. Anyway, I just want to make sure that we keep that in mind when we're debating policy.

Just quickly on the B.C. business environment. The confidence level among small business owners is very high. We have something called the monthly Business Barometer that we publish, of course, once a month. There's another one coming up this week. It tracks the confidence level among entrepreneurs here in B.C. and right across the country, asking them how they feel about the performance of their business within the economy looking forward.

We're in pretty good shape in B.C. It's 71 points on the scale of zero to 100. Anything between 65 and 75 is the area of a strong economy, so we've had that. B.C. is about five points higher than the national index, so a nice cushion there, and also third in the country. The confidence level of small business owners was at the highest of any province for several months in 2014, so that's good news as well.

We asked our members about how confident they are that the provincial government is committed to improving the climate for small business in B.C. You can see in the results on the slide that things are pretty split. We have 57 percent of our members saying that they're either somewhat or very confident that the government is committed to improving the business climate for small business, but there is a sizeable number, 36 percent, that say they're not very confident and another 7 percent that are not confident at all. As you can see, a fairly even split — maybe a little bit more in favour of the somewhat confident side or very confident, but not by a large margin.

In terms of budget priorities, our members are very focused on ensuring that the government balances the budget. When we ask our members whether they agree or disagree with the following statement, "Balancing the budget should continue to be a top priority for the B.C. government," you can see overwhelming support for that statement — 87 percent of our members agreeing with that statement.

In terms of the most effective way of reaching that goal, you can see some of the items on the page. Really, what stands out for me is the fact that our members are very focused on making sure that governments control growth and operating spending. Of course, the biggest line item in the operating budget is wages and compensation for public sector workers, so it's very important that governments stay the course on that — that they're controlling the growth in those budgets over time.

So 28 percent of our members are saying that it would be a good idea to bring in some new revenue through additional resource development, and only 1 percent are saying increased taxes — perhaps not a big surprise, but very illustrative of their perspective nonetheless.

In terms of resource development — and I'll see how many more of these slides we'll get through — we asked our members about whether they agree with the following statements on B.C.'s resource development. One of the ones is: "What reflects your view in terms of B.C.'s resource development?" You can see that our members clearly do support additional resource development but with appropriate environmental safeguards. I think that, largely, is reflective of how a lot of British Columbians see these issues.

On the oil pipeline and the five conditions, again, our members are not supportive of outright development without any conditions. They are supportive, however, if those five principles are met. You can see 63 percent of our members agreeing with the five conditions as set out by Premier Clark.

On LNG development, just quickly. This is new data. We again asked our members to agree or disagree with a series of statements. We asked them whether or not they believed that development of the LNG and other resource projects will benefit the province. You can see overwhelming support, 85 percent of them agreeing with that.

However, when we asked them whether or not that LNG and resource development will directly benefit their business, you can see they're more evenly split, that middle bar — 34 percent agreeing with that statement and 36 percent disagreeing. There's clearly a disconnect. There's clearly some uncertainty among our members, among entrepreneurs, as to whether those big resource projects will actually benefit them as small businesses operating throughout the province.

On red tape. I'd be seriously remiss if we didn't say something about red tape. This is something that affects our members in a big way. We made a submission to the B.C. government core review, of course. The four main recommendations you can see on the page there. And No. 2 — I'd really like to point out that that's a very important one for our members.

We're not just talking about government departments. We're talking about ensuring that we're looking at all government agencies and entities, such as MMBC. That's, of course, been in the news in the last year. It's really important to make sure that we're capturing all of the government enterprise, all of the government agencies and bodies that are out there.

In addition to counting the number of regulations, we also think it's important to think about these issues in terms of the time that an entrepreneur spends in responding to and complying with all the rules and regulations.

Unfortunately, governments too often think about these issues through the lens of the big business, which
[ Page 932 ]
often has a team of people or a few people that are responsible for compliance. Of course for a small business, that falls entirely on the shoulders of the business owner themselves. That is a critical piece.

Also, leadership at the cabinet table. We have a small business minister, but we believe that the regulatory reform file itself would be well served by having a minister of regulatory reform, transparency and accountability at the table to champion those issues with their cabinet colleagues.

With that, I guess I'll cut it off there. There are some additional slides on which specific rules and regulations that our members find most burdensome. There's also some information about our members' views about harmonizing the PST.

Again, just to summarize, all the recommendations are on one of the final pages, and my contact information is there, if you have additional questions beyond the conversation today.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you today. I look forward to your questions.

G. Heyman: Thank you for your presentation. You had a slide that said, I think, that 43 percent did not have confidence in the government improving the small business climate, but you didn't go into that in any detail. I'm wondering if you have some reasons or particular issues that would be behind that figure, which is substantial enough to be concerned.

My other question has to do with the most burdensome regulations. The highest one was workers compensation and occupational health and safety, or maybe it's occupational health and safety specifically. I'm assuming that your members don't want to dismantle the compensation system, so I'm wondering if you can just be a bit more specific about what's under that.

R. Truscott: Sure. I'll start with your first question. In this survey we didn't ask for additional detail, other than we always collect members' comments about what they think is lacking in terms of the government's approach on a particular file — in this case, the overall environment for small business. We could certainly do some analysis on those member comments and provide that to the committee, but we didn't ask a follow-up question as to what specific things.

We often do ask our members, though — and we can provide this to the committee — prior to election campaigns or prior to provincial budgets, what the important issues are that affect them the most, so larger buckets of issues where we can provide that kind of insight. What are their priorities when it comes to creating a good environment for small business?

Just to summarize really generally, it's making sure the tax environment is conducive to the formation and the success of small business, to make sure that red tape is being controlled.

Again, it's the sheer magnitude of all the rules and regulations. It's somewhat akin to death by a thousand paper cuts for a small business. If they're busy filling out forms and waiting on hold to get an answer from government, that means they're not doing what they should be doing, and that's running their business. That's what they're passionate about doing. Also, helping employers deal with the shortage of skilled labour and the shortage of labour generally. So those are just some broad areas.

Your question about the specific regulations — we didn't get to that in my formal presentation, but I'd be more than happy to address that. Yes, workers compensation and occupational health and safety are at the top of the list and, as I mentioned, I think the big issue for business owners. They agreed that those are important things — that workplace safety is critical, that the environment is important to protect. Those are all important objectives, but it's how you get to that.

Again, too often our members say that they feel that those rules and regulations are being put onto small business in a way that's not sensitive to their needs and sensitive to the nature of small business. I mentioned before that a bigger business will have a person or a team of people responsible for all that compliance. For a business owner, that falls entirely on their shoulders.

I think it's really the lens in which we look at these issues and the way that those regulations are complied with by small business. I think that's the critical piece here. We can't just use a one-size-fits-all approach. We have to think about how this looks to a small business owner. Of course, it's not just provincial regulations. It's federal, it's municipal, and it's other government entities and agencies that also have responsibility for regulation.

D. Ashton (Chair): Richard, I'm going to have to cut you off. There's a minute left. Somebody else has a question. I'm sorry.

J. Shin: Actually, your last comment is the point that I wanted to raise here. We are looking at about 385,000 registered small businesses that are under the small business classification in B.C. Given that about 85 percent of them are considered microbusinesses and that, in fact, about 55 percent of them, which would be about 216,000 businesses, operate more like a self-employment, no-paid-help operation, I think it would be dangerous to report some of these findings as the representative opinion of all small businesses.

For example, I wouldn't be convinced that workers compensation would be a top concern for a business that operates without any paid help, because there are no employees. I was curious to find out if there's anything that…. I certainly couldn't find it in this slide.

Is there a breakdown of the demographic of the members — the 10,000 that you have in B.C. — so that I have a better idea as to what sample or what faction of the so-called small businesses in B.C. are the ones that are voiced in these particular survey results?

R. Truscott: We can certainly provide that to the committee — about our membership. We would have less sole proprietors than you'd see across the rest of the economy. A lot of people really discover the value of CFIB once they get a payroll, once they are employing people and they realize how much work it is and how much responsibility that is to run a business.

We represent, more broadly, employers as opposed to all small businesses, including sole proprietors or the self-employed. I can certainly provide that breakdown to the committee. It would be a smaller proportion in the self-employed category than you'd see in the rest of the broader economy.

J. Shin: Right. To add to that, very quickly. I just wanted your comments on this. This is something that's been puzzling for me for a while as far as seeing the small business classification that's currently in B.C. — that a lot of the time when we think about small businesses, we are thinking about mom-and-pop shops, less than two or three employees, family working at the shop together.

I feel as though the members that you represent at CFIB are definitely going towards the larger tier, where…. It's because anything under, I think, 50 employees is considered a small business in B.C., so we're looking at ten or 15 employees, like you were saying, would be representative.

Is that something that your organization would maybe lobby or suggest to the government — as far as having a better-classified small business landscape in B.C. instead of clumping them all up together?

R. Truscott: Yeah, we often have the…. When we talk about small business, we do talk about micro — zero to five employees; small, being five to 50; and medium, being 50 to 500. But I know that some governments use the classification of 100 and less employees as being small business.

Regardless of how you classify it, small businesses seem to have a lot of interests in common, a lot of concerns in common, and those are the things that we represent — on tax reform, on cutting red tape, on helping employers deal with labour shortages.

D. Ashton (Chair): I have to cut you off there. Sorry about that. Could you…? We need that information before the 17th of October. It would be greatly appreciated if you could get it to us before.

R. Truscott: Sure. I made some notes, and we'll get back to the committee with that information.

M. Effa: I think you're mistaken — just as a point of order — about WCB. I'm a contract employee. I'm a voluntary contributor to WCB….

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, thanks. We're here to have your presentation, if you don't mind. That'd be great. I'd appreciate it.

M. Effa: But for accuracy, a point of information. She was saying that the people that are self-employed, mom-and-pop, do not pay WCB. I'm paying WCB contributions.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you, but we'd like to hear from you. What we'll do is I would ask you, after we have other people…. This isn't a debate; this is a presentation of your information.

You have ten minutes, sir, for your presentation and up to five minutes for questions from the committee. I'll give you a two-minute warning if I think you're getting close, okay? Thank you, and welcome again.

M. Effa: Yes. My name is Myson Effa. I run a small hotel in Pemberton, British Columbia. I'm wanting to bring to your attention…. I don't know if you know that the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains tourist-marketing region is being completely unfunded by the provincial government. There are six marketing regions in the province, and ours is completely disappearing.

I'm dumbfounded that the whole tourism region is being nuked but all the others appear to remain intact. To paraphrase Animal Farm, we're all equal, but some are more equal than others. We in southern small-town B.C. expect the same government support as the rest of small-town B.C. and the big southern cities. We do not accept that we are second-class citizens. We demand our rights of equal and same support as all other small towns.

I'm extremely confused how the Premier and cabinet keep touting tourism as one of our top industries, or the top industry, yet by unfunding, it is tantamount to dismantling the most populous and biggest-dollar tourist regions in the province. This is false economy. Saving a penny is going to cost you more than a dollar. This will lead to loss of employment, loss of sales tax and income tax revenue, increase in unemployment services, retraining, not to mention urban blight.

Destinations B.C.'s current party line, that the municipal hotel tax will fill the gap, is insulting to our intelligence and, to be frank, a complete crock. Vancouver et al. are not going to fund marketing for Pemberton. The city of Vancouver collects the municipal hotel tax to market Vancouver, not Pemberton nor Lillooet. For Destination B.C.'s staff to state otherwise is completely ridiculous and, not to put it too bluntly, completely disingenuous.
[ Page 934 ]

I'd been talking to them. When I actually contacted Destination B.C., or attempted to, nobody senior would speak with me. Our Tourism Pemberton board was unable to speak to anybody on the Destination B.C. board. The tourism associations of each little town are the members of Destination B.C.

I was a member of the Theatre Row Business Association when there was a fake business association board that did not allow members of Granville Street…. It was called Granville Street Merchants Association. They did not allow the merchants on Granville Street to attend any of the meetings, and they had fake meetings. We went to the registrar of societies, and they deregistered them.

I think you should seriously think of having Destination B.C. disincorporated. I was grateful that they spoke to me, as somebody in the tourism industry, but they need to speak to the board of Tourism Pemberton and the boards of all these other tourism associations in all the small towns in Vancouver, Coast and Mountains that are disappearing.

They don't seem to know what the hell they're doing. The provincial government has put a woman — apparently, who's an accountant with absolutely zero background in tourism — in charge of it. Her sole reason for work, I guess, is to cut money. I don't know if she's going to be paid a performance bonus and for how many millions she does, she'll get 10 percent. I don't know what's going on, but it's ridiculous.

She thought: "Okay. We'll just take over the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains website." She's not aware of their marketing campaigns. I said: "What about all the literature? What about all the maps?" They're using a very successful program — it's been going on for ten years — called the circle route, where people drive from Vancouver up through here, back down through the Fraser Canyon to Vancouver. It adds another night on a stay in Vancouver, because on the return trip they rest. Vancouver benefits that way. All of our little towns in the area benefit.

If the program starts again under Destination B.C. after they take it away from Vancouver, Coast and Mountains, they shouldn't reproduce all the maps, all the guides, all the graphic arts. That's ridiculous. That's a complete waste of money. They shouldn't just take over the websites. They should ask if Vancouver, Coast and Mountains, out of their goodwill, will give them this material so that they can reuse it.

They've been distributing this material specifically for RVs and motorcycles — at RV shows and, for the motorcycles, at dealerships all the way down to northern California. Last week and the weekend before and the weekend before that Pemberton and Whistler have been full of motorcyclists, and not all from B.C. Many are people from the Island and northern B.C. travelling through, but a lot are coming up from the States because of this.

I just can't believe what's going on. This is supposed to be our big industry, tourism. And the largest section — you're nuking it. What the hell is going on?

I'm not going to be quiet on this. I'm going to be seeing the big hotels. This is tantamount to when I was in Vancouver. I ran a small boutique. We lost all police services on Homer. I had a little community meeting. Some of the large landowners stayed after the meeting, and they sent a letter to the city of Vancouver that they had set up a trust account and that we were going to withhold 15 percent of their tax.

I think this Hilton hotel, every large chain hotel, should tell the provincial government they're going to withhold 3 percent of their sales tax because we are not getting the same services as everybody else in B.C.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Myson. I just wondered: do you know the amount of cost that they claim they'll save through this process, and what's the timeline for the ending of the program on the coast, Vancouver coastal?

C. James (Deputy Chair): After March? And do you have any idea of the dollar figure that…?

M. Effa: The time limit is so slow, and I wasn't able to send electronic documents. The woman that set up the appointment said everything had to be printed. You couldn't send electronic documents.

We're a very small business with two employees, 22 suites in the hotel. I wasn't going print 15 copies of 40 or 50 pages, with appendices, so no. If you would get in the modern time….

Pemberton is a village of 1,00 people, and I'm able to submit documents electronically. I can't believe it. This is the provincial government? What the hell's going on, if in the tiniest village in the province you can submit documents electronically?

M. Effa: Completely defunded — 100 percent of the money is taken away.
[ Page 935 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): Have you heard about other organizations in the province, what the direction is with other organizations?

M. Effa: Destination B.C. — the first party line was, when I complained, that there was no funding being cut. Then I said to them that Vancouver, Coast and Mountains has told all its members that the funding is being been cut. No, it's not. I said: "Then, have you served them with a letter requesting a retraction?" They said no. I said: "How can you have the position that their funding is not being cut if you haven't requested a retraction?" Then they admitted that the funding's being cut. Then they said: "Don't worry. We'll have another program." Then I said: "What are the programs? There's nothing there."

Then, when I made this what seems spurious threat to have them disincorporated because they weren't responding to their membership, weren't answering to their members — I had dealt with that one other time a decade and a half ago — they actually phoned me up. But they haven't contacted Tourism Pemberton board. They're saying: "Well, maybe we'll have something, and there'll be a grant that you can apply for."

I don't know if you know about grants. The first five years I was in Pemberton, they wrote two or three grants to the provincial government every year to expand the library and never got anything. We built it ourselves with volunteer material and labour.

It's just ridiculous. W.A.C. Bennett invented this marketing with Beautiful B.C. magazine and Tourism B.C. Then it was divided into these separate sections, and then they were turned into non-government agencies and Crown corporations. Vancouver, Coast and Mountains is not even a Crown corporation. Now that it's completely separate from the government, you're going to throw it away, but you're not disassembling the other five. I mean, it's ridiculous to cut the funding for any of them, but that we have none and that everywhere else in the province has a marketing thing is just ridiculous.

D. Ashton (Chair): I just checked with Susan. We do accept electronics. She didn't know what happened. So could you do me a favour, and before….

M. Effa: Well, I was told verbally that I could not, and then I read the PDF….

D. Ashton (Chair): Could you please resubmit to this committee before October 17. I'd love to have the dissertation that you wanted to bring in today — please. And it will be disseminated to everybody on the committee. Please, would you send it to us electronically, and staff will give you the e-mail before you leave. Okay?

Next up we have Whistler Sport Legacies. Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you very much for coming today. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and we have up to five minutes for questions. Please, the floor is yours.

P. Leslie: Thank you very much. My name is Patricia Leslie. I'm the director of the Whistler Athlete's Centre. The Athlete's Centre is one of three venues located in Whistler that is a legacy of the Olympic 2010 Games.

Whistler Sport Legacies' vision is to become a centre for sports excellence, and our mission is to grow sport. We'll be getting there by providing world-class facilities for athletes for their development, training and competition.

Personally, I played sports throughout high school. I was never at the national level, but I've seen throughout my life the impact that sport has. We're here today to thank the provincial government for the initial funding that was provided to Whistler Sport Legacies and also in support of ViaSport, which is an organization that is provincially funded.

We consider sport to be an essential service through school, community centres and through sport associations, training athletes to the highest level.

As I said, I've seen sport firsthand be a positive impact in our community and, of course, now at the legacy of our venues.

L. Jagger: Hi. I'm Lucinda Jagger. I'm the vice-president of sport for the Whistler Sport Legacies.

I just wanted to comment briefly on the power of sport. I'm one of many Canadians that have worked at every level of the Canadian sport system. My life in sport truly began when I learned to ski at the age of nine. When I was 11, my family moved to Whistler, and Nancy Greene talked my mother into putting me into ski racing. I won my first medal that year and watched Steve Podborski win the overall FIS World Cup title in downhill.

I was hooked. I had a dream and the goal of doing something I loved. That love of sport took me to a career in sport. I've travelled throughout the world. I've attended four Olympics, supported the Canadian team at three of those Olympics and was part of the first winter sport gold medal for China on snow. This is the power of sport.

We have been working collaboratively with ViaSport and its partners, and we have been better able to deliver sport services locally and as a provincial hub for camps and events. Led by ViaSport, we have been able to be part of the sports effort, delivering on relative aspects of ViaSport's three-year plan.
[ Page 936 ]

We encourage sport for life at all ages and abilities. We, WSL, engage British Columbians in Whistler and throughout the Sea to Sky, to participate in sport. We leverage new and existing partnerships, both federally and provincially, and we build a strong and sustainable sport system for Whistler. This is part of our vision that Patricia just recently presented.

One thing in sport is that we have to learn how to measure a true impact for society and what it does for society economically, from a health perspective and from a social wellness and happiness perspective.

Tracking of this through organizations such as ViaSport and working with an organization like Whistler Sport Legacies has allowed us to become more efficient in how we deliver sport and to have a better and more coordinated delivery of sport locally, provincially and federally for a common target and objective of health and wellness for Canadians and for our objective of pursuing excellence for Canada.

What has Sport Legacies done recently? Recently WSL has been able to support physical literacy through multi-sport programming and coaching education, either coordinating the service delivery or supporting delivery on our venues. We provide adult sliding at the Sliding Centre and adult programming at Whistler Olympic Park. We have developed entry-level jumps for ski-jumping at Olympic Park, diversifying the sport sector in the Sea to Sky corridor. Whistler Olympic Park is accessible for all ages.

Finally, and probably one of the biggest wins we've had recently is that we were able to bring together all the Sea to Sky Nordic clubs to have a single point of entry for children and in program delivery. This is significant. This is really part of being able to target and use resources better. It goes to principles within LTAD for reducing early specialization and optimizing athletic development through early diversification in multiple disciplines.

P. Leslie: Community engagement we've been involved in. For the Sea to Sky school district, we've introduced 3,000 kids to Nordic sports through a school program through the weekdays during the winter season. We have an affordable recreation pass for kids. It's $25 to introduce them to those Nordic programs.

We've been hosting major events in Whistler and contributing towards animation within the village. One of those examples is that we've been able to bring Olympians back into the resort and be guest pilots in our public program.

We've attended sport club events such as Strut Your Stuff. We've invited local sport organizations to attend our events such as the Whistler State of Sport. We have extensive volunteer outreach engaging the community.

L. Jagger: To go into partnerships, we facilitate the introduction of the sliding sports, the Whistler Sliding Centre, though the B.C. Luge Association, one of our partners. We work with the resort municipality of Whistler to create dual-area passes with Lost Lake and Whistler Olympic Park.

We support sports in requesting funding for major events such as world cups and world championships. We provide a gymnastic facility to our local gymnastics club. We partner with ViaSport for coaching development. We ensure Canada's high-performance athletes and Olympic team members have access to world-class training facilities through our partnership with Canadian Sport Institute Pacific.

We partner with regional and national bodies to offer multi-sport programming and expose children to Olympic sport disciplines. These partnerships ensure that children have high-quality access to sport at affordable rates.

We also partner with Canadian Sport Institute Pacific and Own the Podium to bring together targeted Sea to Sky winter sports for the Whistler State of Sport. At our most recent State of Sport, generation 2022, we had 24 sport organizations and 58 participants.

We also have five MOUs with national sport organizations regarding facility access, sport development and event hosting.

P. Leslie: Whistler Sport Legacies is also finding successes by building the sport system. Our legacy venues are producing athletes. Five local athletes have been selected to try out for the 2014-15 Canadian luge champions team.

We're investing in the development of a 20-metre and a 40-metre jump to start developing ski-jumping athletes in the Sea to Sky corridor. We're making sport affordable and accessible with accommodation through the Whistler Athletes Centre. We're providing free or subsidized access to Whistler Olympic Park and the Sliding Centre for high-performance sport. We're ensuring that international field-of-play standards are being met. That we have to do through the Games Operating Trust funding that we receive.

We're providing free office and warm-up space for the sport-specific legacies, the sports that participate at our venues. We're doing the development of snow storage for early-season training out at Whistler Olympic Park so that our local athletes can get on the snow sooner in the season.

L. Jagger: A few other things that we do. We provide leadership to sport in the Sea to Sky. The Whistler State of Sport provides a broad planning forum for every level of sport to come together. This is unique in Canada, with the targeted purpose of increasing the pool of podium-potential athletes.

We also support the development and implementation of individual sport plans for the purpose of strengthening
[ Page 937 ]
their sport programs. We've done this for luge, bobsleigh, skeleton, the Nordic sports — including cross-country, ski jumping, biathlon — and then for freestyle skiing as well. We facilitate and host planning meetings. WSL acts as the point person providing communication and accountability to establish plans and actions as follow-up to these meetings.

In closing, to support sport is expensive. We are working very closely with ViaSport by connecting sport within the Sea to Sky region, particularly Squamish and Nordic sports. The sliding sports spend more time engaged in Pemberton. We want to enhance community health and pursue excellence in sport.

M. Morris: A good presentation. I think Canada has come a long way in the last decade or so with international sports and the Olympics and whatnot.

We've got the Canada Winter Games coming in Prince George in February, and I know there are Nordic sports involved there. Have you guys had any collaboration with any of the ski clubs or any of the other sporting facilities that we have in Prince George? I guess I'm curious to see what kind of preparation you guys have made for participation in the Canada Winter Games.

L. Jagger: Thank you very much, Mr. Morris. The one thing that we are doing is a snow storage initiative — which is, basically, building a mini-glacier. We will be storing snow year over year. Seventy targeted British Columbia athletes from all over the province will be coming to Whistler Olympic Park in early November to train and prepare for their season. Part of that targeted group will be Canada Games athletes.

J. Shin: I'm sorry if I missed this during your presentation, but I was hoping to get a better idea of the demographics of the clients, the children that are able to access sports through your organization. For example, it's great to know that there are some affordable programs and certain subsidies to certain programs that you have. But what will be…? If you can give me an idea of what an average child accessing your service would look like and of how you get those people, that'd be great.

L. Jagger: At Whistler Olympic Park, our demographic is in large part what I would consider the learn-to-train and train-to-train stage of development, which is U-16. They are from the Sea to Sky, in large part from Pemberton and from Squamish — Squamish being a fairly large contingent. I would say that they would be middle-income families.

It's the same for luge. Luge would be our next phase of development for children. It is a small group, but it is a growing group, and we have one of the world's best tracks. We're in an excellent position here in Whistler to support the development of future Olympians.

As Patricia said, we have five athletes that are actually trying out for the Canadian junior team. We had our first podium last year and a Nations Cup from a local girl. That's been built out within six years.

The challenge in sport and in Whistler is that the mountain sports become more and more inaccessible to children, and sport — period — is inaccessible above the train-to-train level for children. It gets very expensive very quickly to travel to competitions and attain the level of coaching required to achieve excellence.

J. Shin: Just to follow up on that very quickly, a lot of the public schools are facing challenges right now. I was just curious to find out…. It sounds like it is for train-to-train, sort of the upper-level form, or are there any other programs that are more for entry, leisure level for people to access?

L. Jagger: Yeah, absolutely. By bringing together the Nordic clubs at the beginning of the year, we are able to be that one entry point for children when they come to Whistler Olympic Park. That would be U-9.

The other initiative that we're doing this year is the Olympic com-b programs. We're piloting it. Kids in Sea to Sky get to try five Olympic sports over six days throughout the school year, and it comes in at a very affordable cost of $40 a day, including equipment, coaching and facility access.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just quickly, you mentioned in your presentation that you'd received start-up funding for the first four years of your organization. I wondered, thinking of 2010…. We're getting to the end of that four years. What is that funding, and what's the long-term prognosis for funding?

P. Leslie: Initially we received $2.7 million, and that has been stretched over the four-year period. We are now transitioning into a point where we are actually generating revenue through our public programs. Those are programs that we put into the venue schedules, such as public bobsleigh and public skeleton, which is a tourism product at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

As those programs grow, we're able to generate revenue to offset our operating expenses. We are primarily funded by the Games Operating Trust. That money was needed for start-up and to ready the venues for a long-
[ Page 938 ]
term use. They were initially just built for the Games, and there were some additional things that were needed in the venues, such as…. At the Whistler Athletes Centre, there was no kitchen facility. It's a lodge-style accommodation, and so with a self-serve kitchen athletes are able to stay there and make their own meals.

L. Jagger: I just want to build really quickly on that. We are in a precarious position. There is the Games Operating Trust, of which we receive 40 percent to operate Whistler Olympic Park and the Whistler Sliding Centre. There is no cushion for any capital and no cushion for the upgrades that will be coming and facing us in the next five to ten years.

Next up we have Langara College — Dr. Ian Humphreys. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you very much for coming today. We greatly appreciate it.

I. Humphreys: Well, thank you for having me. I'd just like to say that I made this presentation to the committee last year in Nanaimo and this year in Whistler. I think two or three years from now I should be in Vancouver.

D. Ashton (Chair): I'll have to say that respectfully. We're showing you the province, just like the rest of us get to see.

I am here to present on behalf of the college. I have a prepared statement, and then I would be happy to entertain questions.

For those of you who know Langara College, we are located centrally in Vancouver. We provide what we believe is high-quality university, career and continuing studies education to more than 21,000 students annually. We have over 1,700 courses, 130 programs, an incredibly expansive academic breadth and depth that allows students of all ages, backgrounds and life stages to choose their own educational path.

We believe that we are one of B.C.'s leading undergraduate institutions, and we provide more successful transfer students to our province's universities than any other college.

We also recognize that British Columbia's continued prosperity depends to a great extent on our people, and colleges in B.C. such as Langara have an important role to play in preparing our workforce with the skills and knowledge for occupations expected to face the greatest worker shortage, many of which will be in the Lower Mainland.

We are helping to address that important economic challenge by providing accessible post-secondary education programs related to the highest-need occupations in health, with nursing programs, massage therapy, dietetics, health sciences; in business — in accounting, in finance and administration; in natural and applied sciences, including bioinformatics, chemistry, computer science, engineering, Internet and web technologies; and also in art, culture, recreation and sport. I also want to mention a very successful social service worker program.

We're also mindful of the important role that our aboriginal and First Nations people will play in addressing the needs of our growing economy. Meeting the educational needs of the growing population of young aboriginal people in B.C. is critical, and Langara College is responding to this need in a number of ways.

We're extremely proud of the fact that Langara was the first public post-secondary education institution in B.C. to pass a formal aboriginal education policy. In 2013-14 we enrolled 459 aboriginal students, self-identified. We could actually have more, but we are not sure because we do not require students to identify. That is far in excess of the target that was established by the ministry.

We have recently greatly expanded our aboriginal gathering space. We have signed memorandums of understanding with Nicola Valley Institute of Technology to provide seamless pathways for aboriginal learners in diploma and degree programs. This fall we actually launched our elder-in-residence program at the college with Gail Sparrow, the former chief of the Musqueam First Nation, as our first elder-in-residence. We continue to build those very strong ties with the Musqueam First Nation.

Langara College is also very supportive of the government's goal of increasing international students' enrolment in our province's education institutions by 50 percent by 2016. We have a long history of welcoming international students to our campus. I'm pleased to report that since 2012-13 we have actually seen a 40 percent increase in international students at the college. By the end of this year we will have met the target of a 50 percent increase. By 2016 we suspect it will be even higher.

We do face some challenges, though, as an urban institution. Those of you who have visited our campus would know we have quite a small footprint. In fact, the college itself provides limited space for many of the services that we believe we have to provide to our students. By the ministry's own standards, at less than five square metres per FTE, we are well below the required space that we need to service the number of students that we have.

Nevertheless, we strive to provide much-needed infrastructure to continue to meet the needs of our students. To that end, we developed a facilities master plan, a 20-year plan for the campus. The first phase of that plan was
[ Page 939 ]
completed in 2007 with the opening of our LEED gold standard library building and in 2009 with our new student union building and the refurbishment of our classroom and administrative building.

The second phase of that plan, a new science and student services building, actually broke ground at the beginning of this year and is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2016. Further phases of the plan include the development, hopefully, of a creative arts and classroom building and the refurbishment of our A building, which is our major classroom and teaching building. I'll come back to that later.

We pride ourselves on providing students with affordable and accessible education pathways and for consistently meeting or exceeding our ministry targets. We have done this in a fiscally prudent way, we believe.

Notwithstanding this prudence, however, in the upcoming year and for the foreseeable future — and this is probably the part of the presentation that you all expected — we are projecting budget deficits.

We recognize that we are not allowed to actually operate with deficits. Our fiscal prudence means that we tend to budget very conservatively, which can have very serious consequences for institutions such as ours.

Currently provincial government support of the institution, which is approximately $42 million, represents only 40 percent of our total budget. This makes Langara College the lowest-per-FTE post-secondary education institution by a long way.

Domestic student tuition revenue represents another 19 percent of our revenue. Again, with a per-credit fee of $90 for first year courses, we are the second-lowest-tuition-fee institution in the province. Taken together, we continue to be by far the most cost-effective deliverer of post-secondary education in the system.

Unfortunately, while we could applaud the college's fiscal prudence, our current situation does leave us to generate 40 percent of our revenue from other sources. We do this principally from two main avenues: our outstanding continuing education programs and through tuition revenue that is generated from our international students enrolment. Together, these two revenue sources provide $34 million of income to the college.

Our reliance on that activity does not come without risk. We rely heavily on the Asian market for international students. Any interruption of the flow of students from Asia would be devastating for the institution. Anything that happens in the economy that might upset our continuing education enrolments would be equally problematic.

What could the government do to help us? Clearly, with domestic student tuition representing only 19 percent of our revenue, the 2 percent limit on fee increases really, for us, translates at 0.4 percent. It's very difficult for us to operate with a 0.4 percent increase each year, as that is far less than even the meagre increases in inflation. So we continually fight that battle.

From a facilities perspective, building A, which is our major classroom building, is 45 years old. It represents 60 percent of our teaching capacity. It has been surveyed many times and found to be below standard, at the end of its useful life, and it needs to be replaced.

We have seismic reports that demonstrate that in the event of an earthquake, portions of the building will collapse. It's imperative and incumbent upon me to actually bring that — and we do, every year — to the attention of the government. That building needs to be replaced.

To accomplish that, we need to effectively empty the building, and we are trying to do that by our facilities master plan. That will put us in a position, with the support of government, to actually upgrade that building.

I'd like to end by saying that we're proud of our accomplishments, but we are concerned about the future. We believe that without significant help from the government, both the college and, potentially, post-secondary education in the province, will be in for difficult times.

J. Shin: Thank you for that. I want to see if you can give us an idea, pending the $6 million deficit over the next three fiscal years without any sort of relief from the provincial government, of what kind of consequences we're looking at as far as your forced program cuts or service cuts or students that will be displaced or the faculty that will be let go.

I. Humphreys: I'd like to start by saying that in reality we cannot solve that budget deficit problem by cutting programming. Programming in and of itself is close to being a cost recovery situation. Certainly, with the input of international students, as much as we can, we can try to make that a cost recovery proposition.

We are looking at cuts to services principally. We are looking at streamlining certain programs within the institution. For example, we have a nursing program which is highly regarded but might be considered a Cadillac program. We might have to cut that program back, provide less opportunities for students in practicum placements, to save money. That would be a direct impact on students.

We would do anything in our power not to have an immediate impact on access of students to programming, however. So it will be all on the service delivery side.

M. Morris: Good presentation, sir. Of course, I'm from upcountry in Prince George. We've got a lot of post-secondary institutions throughout the province here that, from my perspective, all seem to be in competition with
[ Page 940 ]
one another, in large regard, for the international students, for nursing, for some of the other programs that we have out there. To your knowledge, have there been any steps towards more of a collaborative effort in partnering with some of the other institutions?

Secondly, you're talking about seismic upgrading and stuff to the building and looking for other facilities. Is there an opportunity maybe to transfer some of the programs that are currently in that building to other institutions while those upgrades are being done so that we're not looking at having to rent more space and whatnot? There are all kinds of different solutions there.

I. Humphreys: Absolutely. I'll deal with the second part of the question first, if you don't mind, and then get back to the collaborative piece.

It certainly has not been lost on us that Emily Carr is scheduled to open a new campus in 2017, which will massively increase their capacity. They will also be vacating premises on Granville Island. We are unclear at this time what impact that leaving of that old facility might have.

Certainly, their new facility and their old facility combined together might give us an opportunity to empty some of our arts programming out of our A building, which would potentially lead to capacity for us to actually deal with those issues. That's the first thing.

As far as collaboration goes, we work closely with many post-secondary institutions. We are principally a university transfer organization. So 80 percent of what we do is…. Students will come through and flow to other institutions.

We have very close working relationships, particularly with the universities, who are very interested in our international students transferring as well. We have the University of Northern British Columbia offering programming through Langara College. We'd like to expand those offerings as well, although it's a fine line between having people come to the Lower Mainland to deliver programs from institutions in Prince George. But where there is a program match, such as the degree program in social service work, we're definitely looking at those opportunities.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you've identified very well the strengths that community colleges provide, particularly around skills training and, in fact, matching up with the blueprint for education that the government is talking about.

I just wondered whether you've had any conversations, either individually at Langara or through the college association provincially, with government around their blueprint and what role colleges are going to play. At this stage most of the discussion has been universities.

I. Humphreys: Right. We are looking forward to the discussion with the government about the skills blueprint. We have had no formal conversations yet, although we do have the ministry, through Claire Avison, visiting us in early October. Hopefully, that plan, elements of which are still embargoed, will unfold and become more public at that stage. But we are preparing ourselves for that.

S. Gibson: I kind of come from a background of working with smaller community colleges as well — University of the Fraser Valley out in Abbotsford. I was there I guess — what? — 13 years.

My question is: how about accessibility? This is a huge area that is growing in the U.S., and it has not yet come to Canada, in my estimation. If somebody wants to take a program through you, they can only take it during the day. Yet a lot of universities south of the border are changing their whole paradigm so that people can even take courses from 11 till midnight to allow them to be flexible. What kinds of things are you doing there?

I. Humphreys: I'd just like to point out that in many of our programs, we actually run from eight in the morning till nine and ten at night. Most of the programs in our School of Management, for example, are delivered in the evenings as well.

We have the largest on-line education delivery of all post-secondary education institutions, with the exception of UBC, and through our continuing education program on weekends and in the evenings as well. So we're very mindful of the fact that people need flexibility in delivery and consider ourselves to be enormously accessible.

I. Humphreys: Well, some of our post-degree diploma programming in nursing is delivered in the evenings as well.

But you're right. Nursing tends to be a full-time daytime operation, but it could be expanded into evening delivery. We'd need more FTE support to actually encourage that to happen. One of the biggest limitations of nursing, of course, is practicum placement, and the Ministry of Health limits our access to practicum placement.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dr. Humphreys, thank you very much. Thank you for coming out to Whistler. Do us a favour. Phone in early next time, okay? We'll get you in, in Vancouver. Have a good day, sir.

D. Ashton (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Bioenergy Network. Welcome, folks. Thank you very much for coming. Very good timing, Michael and Marnie. We have ten
[ Page 941 ]
minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning, and then we have up to five minutes for questions or comments from the committee.

M. Plant: On the very back page of the presentation you will see that Michael Weedon, our executive director of the B.C. Bioenergy Network, has just been awarded, through the CanBio group — the national Canadian Bioenergy Association — an outstanding bioeconomy builder award. We're very proud of this, and Michael was too embarrassed to say on his own behalf that he's an award recipient of this stature.

It's indeed a pleasure to join you. We'll work within the time limit of ten minutes. I'm here to, really, talk about a funding opportunity to create jobs and exports. We think there's a spectacular opportunity here in B.C., given some of our natural bounty and some of the opportunities.

I'm going to start with a description of an ask that will support the development of this particular objective, and then I'm going to go through and describe the magnitude of the opportunity and why this opportunity exists. Then, finally, we'll just wrap up.

We are recommending that the province continue the support of B.C. Bioenergy Network by supporting the organization with $2 million in funding annually for the next five years to support the development of two programs. One is the development of next-generation solid fuels from woody biomass — that's next-generation white-pellet industry — and secondly, the development of drop-in transportation fuels from woody biomass.

This program, in conjunction with project funding, is designed to optimize the utilization of 5.3 million tonnes of unused roadside wood piles as well as between 7.6 million to 25 million tonnes of non-merchantable and mountain pine beetle–killed timber in B.C.

I'd like to share with you on slide 3 our approach to new technology development, because it's the new technologies that are going to permit the extraction and utilization of this resource. Here's an example of three projects that we've been involved with in B.C. with the original funding of the B.C. Bioenergy Network of $25 million in 2008. We've developed technologies in conjunction with entrepreneurs and municipalities in utilizing landfill gas.

Here are three examples. Cedar Road landfill. This was actually our very first investment, where we take landfill gas and turn it into gas and then create electricity. The second project is up in Columbia-Shuswap, where we work with FortisBC to extract landfill gas to upgrade it to put it right onto the natural gas network. Finally, we're working with a company with some great gas cleanup technology to support an agricultural application to utilize the Delta landfill gas. This is at Vancouver Landfill.

Okay, on page 4. The opportunity is, really, to utilize roadside piles that typically are burned on an annual basis. Here's a picture of such a log pile. Those logs will be taken to a mill and utilized, but the remainder of the material, the tops and the branches, typically are piled and burned on an annual basis.

Then, of course, we've got the non-merchantable and mountain pine beetle stands, which represent a substantial resource.

You might ask yourself: why haven't we dealt with this resource in the past? Really, we'll deal with that problem head-on on page 5. Many will say it can't be done. We can't utilize this resource, get any more fibre out. It's too expensive to access. Well, indeed, the dollars of removing that fibre are important, but fortunately, if we move to page 6, we're going to see some changes that are taking place.

There are new technologies that are available that will allow us to economically extract that fibre, to put it to good use. Two examples here are shown on page 6, what I describe as first-generation torrefaction technologies. This is the processing of wood fibre so that it has the characteristics of coal. It has the energy characteristics of coal.

That's one aspect. The next aspect is: how do we ship materials as economically as coal? I call that second-generation torrefaction, where we're able to process the material and densify it in a way that it can be shipped just like coal, on a very economical basis.

Then another opportunity that is in front of us is to take woody biomass, gasify it and then turn it into drop-in diesel. These technologies are available for the industry to utilize today.

Let's just take a look. Why would these technologies allow us to extract and utilize that fibre? Well, if we go to page 7, slide 7, we can see the basic selling prices of white pellets. We have a substantial white pellet industry in the province that's grown to 1.9 million tonnes over the last decade, basically using wood residuals. But you can see that first-generation and second-generation torrefied materials are going to lead to higher selling prices and lower transportation costs that will lead to much higher economics — dollars that we can afford to bring the fibre out of the forest and turn it into a wood fuel.

Then, finally, liquid fuels have much higher netbacks — $300 to $475 per tonne, which compare very favourably to our lumber netbacks that exist today. The fact that these new technologies have higher returns will allow us to utilize more of that forest.

You may ask: "Well, how big is this opportunity?" On page 8 we can look at the job potential and the export
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potential. We've formulated some estimates between low, medium and high, high being the utilization of the vast majority of the residues that I've identified, but even on a modest basis, we're looking at 20,000 jobs as being an opportunity — substantial opportunity. That represents about $1.5 billion in export potential, up to, potentially, $5 billion, if we fully utilize this resource. There's a great opportunity here for us to look at.

Next slide. You may ask yourself: how do you get there? Well, you get there through demonstrating these new technologies. They don't happen on their own. Money is very conservative. We know that. But here's an example. On September 4 this year there was a great announcement in the United States where a company moved forward with a $275 million project to take corn ethanol or agricultural residues and turn that into cellulosic revenues — taking the corn husks and the stover. These are the residuals that are thrown away.

Of course, the CEO is very proud of this announcement. Cellulosic ethanol has been referred to as a fantasy fuel, but now it's a reality.

What we do at the network, slide 10, is that we've developed some expertise on how to develop and foster these technologies and make them happen. We need to know that these technologies are ready to demonstrate. We need to support the funding, and then we need to nurture them through commercial scale-up and wider adoption.

Just in conclusion, we are asking the provincial government to, on a collaborative basis, support others to fund this network with an additional $2 million per year over the next five years to focus in on the utilization of non-merchantable timber and mountain pine beetle stands as well as to utilize the roadside piles that exist. This will create great opportunities — job opportunities and export opportunities — and really create and develop a new industry here in B.C. Those are my formal comments.

E. Foster: Sir, thank you for your presentation. How do you propose to economically remove the waste from the bush?

M. Weedon: Well, you saw on that one slide that there are significantly higher netbacks, selling prices, economic returns that are available. In the most modest case, $40 per tonne in the case of first-generation torrefied product.

E. Foster: When you say — I need to clarify — $40 a tonne, are you talking $40 a tonne for the waste material or $40 a tonne for your product at the other end?

M. Weedon: Forty dollars additional amount for the product made from that waste material. Now, to give you an example — we have in the appendix a slide — for a mere $7 in reduction of cost to get fibre out of the woods, if you will…. We can double the amount of fibre that you can get out for a mere $7. So when you compare that to the $40 opportunity — and this is the most minimum case — you can move a lot more fibre out of the forest. Okay?

E. Foster: Okay. So, we'll back it up, then, again. I guess maybe I didn't ask my question properly. I'm a forester, and I was in the log industry my whole career. Anything you can put in log form in a truck, you can bring out. You can bring it out for chips, for pulp, or you can bring it out for bioenergy, because you can put weight on a truck. What's left over, the tops and the limbs and some of the rotten stuff that won't even make chips…. You can't get weight on the truck to bring it down the hill. Your tonne-hour rate goes up considerably in order for that truck to even cover fuel.

We hauled pulp logs out of the bush over the years. If we could cover the costs of the trucking, we took them out. We have tried over and over and over again to come up with a way to get the residuals out of the bush to even cover the cost of the fuel for the trucks, and we could not come up with a plan.

M. Weedon: Yes, I understand the difficulty of doing that with some of the older technologies or the realities of the products that are being produced by the forest industry. For instance, to produce diesel, you could afford to pay up to $100 per tonne to bring that wood out of the forest, and you can do it for considerably less, so there'd be a profit margin left for the fuel producer.

E. Foster: But $100 a tonne. We've got to have this right. You're looking for a lot of money. At $100 a tonne, I'll haul No. 1 logs to you.

M. Weedon: Yes, and that's the whole point, Mr. Foster. With these new technologies, since they're reasonably profitable, or society values diesel fuel to move, that will provide the economic incentive to bring that log out of the forest — and not for a dimensional wood use but for a fuel use. These are fairly profound changes that are facing us today. I think there's going to be some transformation of the forestry industry in years ahead.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just two quick questions, one following up on the issue of cost. The other concern that I hear often from folks is the issue of road access, the ability to utilize the road infrastructure that's already there that companies have built. Will there be a cost? Companies have worries about liability, etc., using others. I wondered if you had any discussion around the use of that infrastructure?

Then the last question was just related to First Nations and what kinds of discussions you're having right now with First Nations around the possibility of any kind of industry.

M. Weedon: Okay, to address your first question with respect to use of roads and maintaining those roads and the liability, these are issues that we've discussed with many of the parties interested in employing these new technologies as well as the existing forest industry. I think the opportunity here is that because the returns are likely to be high, there's going to be the opportunity for people to share in those costs.

Clearly, a road needs to be maintained in a proper sense, and those that have underwritten the liability for reforestation are somehow compensated in some way to be able to share that responsibility. That is contemplated. Those issues need to be worked out and can be worked out on a business-to-business basis or maybe through some policy amendments.

Now, with respect to First Nations, I think that getting forest residuals out of the forest where they are near First Nations communities or where there's an opportunity to use the non-merchantable or mountain pine beetle dead…. There are opportunities. We're working with one group that has announced their intention in the north to work with one of these new technologies in a torrefaction plant, but they're in the process of acquiring the financing to make that happen.

I think that, really, there would be numerous opportunities throughout the whole province with respect to the fibre. Wherever there's forestry today, there's an opportunity for employing these technologies.

G. Heyman: Can you clarify for me if the different relative selling prices are a function of transportation costs, quality of the fuel or both? And is there an opportunity for the sale of carbon offsets by the owners of the non-merchantable timber or wood waste?

Finally, I thought I heard you say — I don't think you meant it, but I better check — that you foresee the use of merchantable timber in producing biofuel at some point.

M. Weedon: No. If I said that, I misspoke. I intended to describe non-merchantable fibre. In fact, we've gone through a fibre study and done a very detailed analysis using some of the solid-wood models, and the whole opportunity that is described here is on wood residuals that are not being used or dead forest or non-merchantable.

Your second question related to: is it possible for this to be utilized with a carbon offset program? Indeed, this is being utilized by one of the first torrefaction opportunities in the province in Merritt, a company called Diacarbon, where they're building the first torrefaction plant in the province — 40,000 tonnes per year. It's small, but they will be supplying torrefied materials to Lafarge.

Indeed, the whole opportunity for that has been a result of the carbon-pricing policies that exist in the province. And of course, wherever you can reduce the consumption of a high-carbon-intensive fuel such as coal or oil, you will have the opportunity to reduce the amount of carbon that we're using in our economy.

D. Ashton (Chair): Just quickly, please, if you don't mind. I've really pushed the limits on this one.

G. Heyman: The cause of the relative cost difference in the three kinds of fuel.

M. Weedon: Okay. So first-generation torrefaction — the $40 is just being more efficient on transporting that to market. The second phase is relating to reduced transportation costs, shipping — just like coal. Then when you come to diesel, it really is…. I mean, the price of oil has gone up tenfold in the last 20 years. It's the value our society places on the convenience of a liquid fuel, so it's pricing.

D. Ashton (Chair): Michael, thank you very much. A huge amount of passion we can see in this.

If there's any additional information that you would like to forward to us, October 17 is the cutoff. Please just direct it to our attention, and we'll have it and have it distributed.

M. Weedon: Very good. We do have a package for you in addition to what's been presented here today. Thank you very much.

So to the committee, Douglas College has been substantially delayed. They were before this presenter, so they're 20-plus. However, there's a large accident right outside of Whistler that has compounded that. We don't have any ability…. So I'm looking to direction from the committee.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sorry, George. Douglas College is about 25 minutes late now. Apparently, there's a large accident outside of Whistler that's probably stopped everybody. But many of us have additional meetings that we have planned today. Our issue would be to…
[ Page 944 ]

D. Ashton (Chair): …adjourn and give them the opportunity…. We would get their presentation. They just couldn't do it in person.

A Voice: Maybe we could squeeze them in somewhere else at the end of the day, give them an extra….

D. Ashton (Chair): That might be something too. Is that okay? So we'd let us work with it. Would that be okay for everybody? Is everybody okay with that? We'll try and squeeze them in, or they can just give a written presentation.

I'll call adjournment, then, to the meeting. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for coming in today. Greatly appreciated.

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

2) Motion Picture Production Industry Association of BC	Peter Leitch
	Suzanne Thompson
	Paul Klassen

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

Witnesses:	Myson Effa
	Colleen Giroux-Schmidt (Innergex Renewable Energy)
	Dr. Ian Humphreys (Langara College)
	Lucinda Jagger (Whistler Sport Legacies)
	Paul Klassen (Motion Picture Production Industry Association of B.C.)
	Peter Leitch (Chair, Motion Picture Production Industry Association of B.C.)
	Patricia Leslie (Whistler Sport Legacies)
	Johnny Mikes (Coast to Cascades Grizzly Bear Initiative)
	Marnie Plant (B.C. Bioenergy Network)
	Suzanne Thompson (Motion Picture Production Industry Association of B.C.)
	Richard Truscott (Canadian Federation of Independent Business)
	Michael Weedon (Executive Director, B.C. Bioenergy Network)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES