Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 39 — Monday, September 29, 2014 (HTML)

Van Horne Salon, Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort
209 Van Horne Street South, Cranbrook, B.C.

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Jane Jae Kyung Shin, 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	945
D. Walls
D. Teslak
W. Stetski
S. Lavery
J. Beaupre
C. James
K. Hough
B. Johnstone
S. Loewen
L. Molnar

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. First of all, please accept our apologies. We had logistics issues this morning, being able to pick part of the crew up in Victoria. I do apologize. Unfortunately, it has put us behind, so we're trying to scramble here. The first couple of presenters are having to bounce, and we're trying to bring everybody forward.

We'll start off. My name is Dan Ashton, I'm the MLA for Penticton, British Columbia, and I chair this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We're an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold provincewide public consultations on the next provincial budget. 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 of this year.

This year we're 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 Cranbrook, Castlegar, Kelowna, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Campbell River and Courtenay.

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

We invite all British Columbians to take the time to make a submission and to participate in this important process. All public input is carefully considered as part of the committee's final report to the Legislative Assembly. I have to say that this actually goes to the Legislative Assembly. Being an all-party committee, everybody gets along great here. It's actually a really good way to get information to the assembly and then to Finance.

The deadline for submissions is October 17, which is a Friday. If you do think of something else that you would like to put in, please don't hesitate to forward additional material to us.

Today's meeting will be presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. Time permitting, we'll also have an open mike at the end of the meeting, and five minutes are allotted to each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register with the nice young lady over in the corner there.

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

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

G. Holman: Good morning, everyone. Gary Holman, Saanich North and the Islands, spokesperson for democratic reform.

G. Heyman: I'm George Heyman, MLA for Vancouver-Fairview and opposition spokesperson for TransLink, technology and green economy.

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

D. Ashton (Chair): Also today we have Susan Sourial and Sarah Griffiths from the parliamentary committees office. Hansard Services are also here — the nice folks over here, Ian and Jean.

If you wouldn't mind, if you're walking out the door, that young lady in the white over there — it's her birthday today. What a way to spend your birthday, being dragged around the province by politicians. So just give her a little birthday wish as you're leaving. It would be greatly appreciated.

Again, please. It's College of the Rockies — David and Dianne. Thank you, folks, for being patient.

D. Teslak: Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's prebudget consultation process. I'm Dianne Teslak, vice-president, finance and administration at College of the Rockies. Joining me today is our president and CEO, David Walls.
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D. Walls: I'd like to begin by thanking the province for its continued confidence in College of the Rockies and their acknowledgment of the important role that we play here in the region — I think both economically and socially as well as the educational side.

We're one of 11 community colleges in B.C. that are mandated to prepare an educated, skilled and job-ready workforce for our region.

We offer a comprehensive range of programs from university studies and degrees through to vocational education and career training — and also basic education, as well, that we deliver to those that didn't complete high school for whatever reason.

We are sensitive, as a college, to the fiscal challenges that are facing the province. I think this is the third year that post-secondary institutions will see a decrease in funding. We believe it's extremely important that the province maintain sustainable, multi-year funding for post-secondary institutions like the college.

If you look at the province's blueprint skills document that was issued by JTST recently, it's clear that there's going to be a skills deficit here fairly shortly. The majority of new hires…. Because of the impending retirements and growth that's going to occur, most of those new hires are going to have to have post-secondary education, and many, many of them will need the type of education that we provide. So continuing to provide sustainable funding is very critical for us as a college.

When you look at the mix of our students that come into the college, we have about 65 percent of our students that are local from the region, but about 35 percent come from outside. A lot of those students do stay and work in the region afterwards, and we help with the growth of the East Kootenays. A lot of our young people tend to look elsewhere and go across the Rockies to Alberta to do their education. But we do attract a lot of people in as well, so I think it's key for us to think about that in terms of the impact that we have for sustaining the growth in the area as well as the economic side of the East Kootenays.

D. Teslak: Just a few things in our report I'd like to highlight. Each year College of the Rockies serves approximately 2,300 full-time-equivalent students through both face-to-face and on-line instruction, and we issue more than 1,000 credentials, including our own bachelor of business administration in sustainable business practices degree.

We do this across seven campuses — two here in Cranbrook and five campuses located in Creston, Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Fernie. We serve a population of approximately 75,000 people who are widely dispersed across this large, 45,000-square-kilometre region.

College of the Rockies has a consistent record of meeting and exceeding our educational targets given to us by government. Our grants, on an actual per-student-FTE basis, are amongst the lowest of any college in the system at approximately 27 percent below the small rural college average.

College of the Rockies has historically been innovative, adaptable and nimble in order to meet the education and training needs of the people in our communities. Some of the things we have done and continue to do are rotating and one-time funded programs at our regional campuses, bringing these programs to Kootenay area residents who cannot, for numerous reasons, come to Cranbrook for training.

We partner with business and industry, and tailor programs to meet their training needs. For example, College of the Rockies hires and indentures students as apprentice employees. Through our partnership with Teck Coal, our apprentices are placed at various minesites to receive the practical component of their training. We partner with other post-secondary institutions such as the University of Victoria to deliver joint programs. We have increased access and eliminated barriers to education through innovative program delivery models and student support.

In addition to providing high-quality job-ready training, College of the Rockies is an engine of provincial economic growth, contributing more than 4 percent of total annual income in our regional economy through contributions in excess of $200 million in income each year for the activities of the college and the cumulative effects of our students, graduates and approximately 850 employees.

College of the Rockies and all B.C. colleges are critical to the province as it addresses the looming skills gap. As baby boomers begin to retire, 79 percent of the 22,000 job openings expected in the Kootenays through 2020 will be due to age-related attrition. As the primary providers of advanced skills and education, B.C.'s colleges will play a major role in combatting this large future skills gap.

With the support of government, we know we can do this. College of the Rockies continually aligns our programs to respond to the advanced skills and education needs of our communities and to the government's priorities as outlined in the B.C. jobs plan and blueprint documents. We can and do provide the types of advanced skills and education training necessary for employment. Continued investment in B.C.'s colleges is absolutely necessary to ensure that we have the workforce in place to meet the challenges of the future.

Internal and external inflationary pressures and reduction to block funding has meant that B.C. colleges have had to undertake extraordinary measures to continue to meet the range of programs and services our students and communities require.

As well, changes in government administrative and accounting policies that limit the use of surplus funds — which College of the Rockies creates through our entre-
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preneurial activities, which are not government-funded — restrict our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the changing requirements of our students and in fact limit our potential to be less dependent on government funding.

The current government mandate, which prohibits annual deficits, discourages long-term planning and savings and fiscal responsibility and encourages risk. At a time when we need to be as nimble and adaptable as possible, policies like this inhibit our ability to respond quickly in educating B.C.'s workforce.

There are three main areas where our colleges can have a significant impact. We can ensure a skilled and educated workforce for B.C. We can help build strong and vibrant communities. We can help enhance B.C.'s competitive advantage in knowledge and skills. But we can't do this without a multi-year investment in post-secondary education that responds to B.C.'s labour market demands.

Government needs to provide B.C.'s colleges the certainty of a multi-year investment plan to build the capacity and meet the type of demand to align our programming to the objectives set out in the blueprint for jobs. Government needs to address the administrative and accounting policy issues that are negatively impacting operations. Increased flexibility would allow us to respond to the emerging needs of our industries and communities and be less dependent on government funding.

In summary, College of the Rockies is a great investment. For every dollar that provincial taxpayers spend on College of the Rockies, society will receive a cumulative value of $13.40 in benefits. College of the Rockies is committed to working to ensure our programs are aligned to provincial priorities and are meeting the needs of our communities and industries. We need the solid and sustained financial support of the province and the Select Standing Committee on Finance to help us do this.

You stated at the beginning, and again at the end, that you need stable, multi-year funding. I'm wondering if you could give us a couple of specific examples of what the impact on your programming and service delivery is by not having stable, long-term funding, either today or in the future.

The second question has to do with the administrative and accounting policies that you raise regarding surpluses and if you have any specific suggestions about how those might be addressed.

D. Teslak: With the multi-year funding question, many of our programs are multi-year programs. To not have confirmed funding for multiple years impacts our ability to plan, to implement new multi-year programs, because we're not sure that we'll have the funding multi-year. That's one of the impacts.

On the surplus issue, we have part of our operations — international student recruitment, international project–type operations — that are fully self-funded. We don't allocate any of our grant dollars to those kinds of operations. But when global incidents happen that affect our ability to recruit student numbers, and we may have cyclical dips or spikes in our international revenues, the ability to access that portion of our assets that is specific to those operations would allow us to get through the ebb and flow of global situations.

S. Gibson: Just a few quick questions. I have a background in teaching in universities, so I'm interested in your college and certainly wish you well.

Are you fully enrolled — predominantly — in all your programs, or are you looking for students in certain programs?

D. Walls: I think it's fair to say that we are looking for students, still, in some programs. Many of our programs are full, but some are not fully subscribed.

S. Gibson: A second quick question. Do you have a program for inadmissible students? I was looking in your documentation here. About half of B.C. students that graduate from high school, at least in the Lower Mainland…. It looks like a graduation, but they can't enter university with it. I suspect in the more rural areas it's perhaps a little higher.

How are you handling those students who would like to further their education, but they don't have their French 11 or English 12 — those kinds of things? How do you help them with that?

D. Walls: We have developmental programming through our basic education. They can come and take whatever courses they need to upgrade, or they can come and complete their grade 12. There's that, plus we provide some counselling for them through our educational advisers as well.

D. Ashton (Chair): Real quick, if you don't mind. We have a couple of minutes left, and we had somebody else.

S. Gibson: How are you making your programs flexible so that students don't have to quit their day jobs and they can still work on a credential or some kind of cer-
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tification without having to withdraw from their work in the day? This is a huge issue provincewide.

D. Walls: A good percentage of our programming is also available on line. In fact, some of our programs are totally on line so that they can take them when they want and where they are. We have a fair percentage of programming that way.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for the presentation. You state that your funding has been declining over the past three years. Is that real or in nominal dollars, if you know what I mean? Are you getting the same dollars per FTE, but it's being eroded by inflation, or are the actual nominal dollars declining as well?

D. Teslak: It's a bit of both. It's actual reductions in our block funding grant as well as reduction through inflationary pressures that we're not funded for.

G. Holman: What's the rationale for the reduction in the block grant? What's the explanation for that?

D. Walls: I think for post-secondary institutions as a whole, there were the reductions. I think some of it was tied into the possibility of savings from doing shared services and joint purchases and things like that, but for us here, that actually has limited appeal. It's very difficult to do those kinds of things, as we're a small college.

Travel is an example. For example, we only have Air Canada fly in here. Anything related to air travel would be difficult for us to do.

G. Holman: You indicated that you get one of the lowest or a lower grant per FTE. We've had presentations from other colleges. I should know this because of other presentations, but I don't understand why there's a variation in dollars per FTE. You're suggesting there's a fairly significant variation among colleges. I don't understand why that would be.

D. Teslak: Right, it is historical. Part of our statement is around looking at actual FTE production. So instead of looking at grants per targeted FTE, we're figuring in the production, our utilization rate for what we actually make in terms of student FTE numbers. College of the Rockies has for many, many years been at 100 percent or just over 100 percent of our targeted FTEs, so when we figure in that productivity point, that really sets us apart from others.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, thank you very much for your presentation. Again, accept our apologies for our tardiness.

Welcome, Your Worship. Nice to see you again. It was a short time between visual visits. You've made it home safely, and that was good.

Sir, we have ten minutes for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning if it looks like you're going to push into it — and up to about five minutes for questions from the panel. So, sir, the floor is yours. Welcome again.

W. Stetski: Thank you very much, and thank you for taking the time to come to Cranbrook. I'm here today, of course, on behalf of the 19,319 citizens of Cranbrook, and of course, these are constituents that I share with the Hon. Bill Bennett, our MLA.

I'll get right to it. I want to start a little bit with infrastructure and the ongoing need for dollars for infrastructure. I sometimes tend to dream, and my dream that I have about infrastructure is that someday it'll become an operational item rather than a political decision. I really think that replacing existing infrastructure should just be part of how we do business between governments every year.

If we're building something new, we can leave that for the political announcements and the ribbon cutting. But as you know, the infrastructure in Canada is struggling. A long-term plan that provides guaranteed funding…. In our case in Cranbrook, we'd be looking at about $5 million to $6 million a year. We can only afford one-third, which is $2 million or so a year, in terms of our portion of it. But ideally, we'd like to see about $5 million to $6 million a year in infrastructure program.

Our two priorities for this next year. We estimate about $5.8 million is needed to complete our sewage transfer line that goes from the city of Cranbrook here out to the spray irrigation fields, which, of course, is an award-winning system that we have here in Cranbrook. The effluent from Cranbrook is treated, including ultraviolet treatment, and then gets sprayed out on fields to grow hay crops for farmers, so it's a landlocked system.

We've replaced half the pipe, from about an 18-inch to a 30-inch pipe, which will get us up to about 30,000 population in the future, so half of it's done. We need money to finish the other half, looking ahead.

The second major priority. We have a lake here in Cranbrook that used to be the reservoir for our drinking water, called Idlewild Park. The lake is held back by a dam, and that dam has had a recent review, as was required by the province. It needs some substantial work to keep it going. The lake itself fills in over time because as the creek flows in on the far end, coming down from the mountains, it brings sedimentation. The lake is filling in with sedimentation, which has created some flooding issues for our neighbours adjacent to Idlewild Park.

Our estimate is about $2.5 million required to repair
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the dam, to dredge the lake. It is a year-round recreational facility here in Cranbrook: the quintessential skating pond in the winter that's very Canadian, and we'd like to keep the lake as a fishing lake in the summer as well.

Those are our two asks around infrastructure specifically — about $5.8 million for that sewage transfer pipeline and about $2.5 million for Idlewild Park dam and lake.

In terms of housing, I've got good news for you. Last year I came before the committee to ask for about $16.5 million for the Salvation Army homeless shelter and transition centre here in Cranbrook. Through the hard work of the Salvation Army, $10 million has been cut from that ask, so the ask this year for B.C. Housing is $6.5 million instead of $16 million. Plus, they would need a minimum of about $500,000 a year for operational funding to keep it going.

The project is really important to the entire East Kootenays. It has the support of the regional district of East Kootenay. They're contributing $360,000. That's all of the municipalities throughout the East Kootenays. Of course, the city of Cranbrook is waiving our DCCs and property taxes on the lot as well.

It's now down to a transitional centre similar to Willowbridge, I think it's called, in Kelowna. It's meant to be a way for people to get off the street over time. There will be an overnight component. A small percentage of the building will still be for overnight, but the long-term intent is to house people safely and make sure they have the services and skills to get off the streets in the long run. A transitional centre is the focus for that.

We did meet with Minister Coleman last week and did talk with him about that as well at UBCM. So saving you $10 million right off the top with this proposal.

The other priority for Cranbrook still is, of course, the replacement of Mount Baker Secondary School. Mount Baker is one of the oldest high schools in the province. We have about 1,000 students, on average, that go through Mount Baker School. It'll be 60 years old in 2015, so there's a great opportunity to celebrate the 60th anniversary by announcing the building of a new high school.

The high school here is in conjunction with Key City Theatre, which is our largest theatre venue. It's a 600-seat theatre that brings in all kinds of great entertainment. They're connected. It was done deliberately. The model is to continue to connect them, so Key City Theatre and the new high school would be side by side.

Depending on how you do the math, the high school portion would be around $50 million, potentially. It could be less than that, depending on how the funding formula works. To replace the theatre would be anywhere between $12 million and $16 million, depending on how many seats you put into the theatre. We currently have 600. It does sell out, so the theatre society that we work with would like to see an 800-seat theatre. That is very much a partnership between the school board, the city of Cranbrook, the regional district of East Kootenay and the society itself, all working together for a new facility for Cranbrook.

I'll take you quickly through UBCM last week and some of the ministers' meetings we had and what we asked as part of that. Urban deer, of course. We met with Minister Thomson to continue the discussion around urban deer. The deer are the creatures of the province. They belong to the province of B.C. Municipalities are currently picking up the cost to try and deal with those deer.

There was basically an ask right across the province for more tools to deal with the deer. Right now, as you know, we can only harvest them, although we are trying a translocation experiment, in theory, here in Cranbrook. Things are lining up that we might be able to do that, hopefully, in the next year. But it costs us around $25,000 a year to deal with deer, and we'd love to see some financial contribution from the province to help us deal, in the end, with the province's deer.

We met with Minister Stone — the Highway 3 Coalition, which is the mayors all along Highway 3. We meet regularly to set priorities for the highway. The Premier was also part of that meeting. The focus is going to continue right now to be the Princeton end — some of those great hairpin turns on Highway 3 down by Princeton.

There are two interests that I have. One is branding Highway 3 from a tourism perspective, and there was some interest in that. Also, I'd like to see a standard set for the highway where you'd know that within every so many kilometres — maybe it's 20 — there's a passing lane coming up. There's a lot of dangerous behaviour on Highway 3. It's because we don't have passing lanes, and you don't know when you're going to come across your next passing lane.

We discussed with Minister Wat…. We are part of the Asia-Pacific initiative. We would like to continue that, so we were curious as to whether there was any funding.

We met with Minister Wilkinson to express our interest in becoming an innovation technology centre, including the accelerator initiative.

Long-term concerns, of course: hiring physician recruiters. Some municipalities are now putting money into trying to get physicians to come to their city. That really is a provincial and federal responsibility and shouldn't be a municipal one.

Policing costs: unsustainable in the long run. We pay 90 percent of the policing costs. One of our challenges…. Every 1 percent in property taxes here gives us $219,000. So if we're adding one officer…. It's almost 1 percent in property tax increases just to add one police officer.

Meeting regulations that provincial and federal governments put onto municipalities, of course, becomes costly as well. It's the downloading argument. You've heard it many times in many communities, and we cer-
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tainly experience it here.

I want to thank you personally for taking the time to come to Cranbrook. When I stand before you with what might seem like a long list, it's truly done in the spirit of partnership and cooperation. My constituents are your constituents, and we have a shared interest in doing things that'll help make Cranbrook a better place. Thank you for your time.

I just want to pursue a little bit — it was actually a very short mention in your submission — about innovation centres and the accelerator initiative for Cranbrook. I know they've been successful, even with somewhat constrained funding in other areas of the province. I'm wondering if you could just give us a brief snapshot of what sorts of technology ventures exist in Cranbrook — or considering starting up — and if there are people within Cranbrook who can serve as mentors for other people who are trying to commercialize their ideas.

W. Stetski: The answer is yes. Of course, we have the Kootenay Rockies Innovation Council here in Cranbrook that deals with the accelerator program. We have businesses in Cranbrook that distribute product all over the world. We have a security company here, for example, that sells to militaries south of the border. We have a fellow from Calgary that moved here to retire and started a compressor plant and sells those compressors all over the world.

We have some people that basically know how to do it, and we're going continue to work with them. We certainly would like to see more of the Internet-based companies coming this way in the future. So we have some work to do, but we're going to continue to work with the Kootenay Rockies Innovation Council to see how far we can get down that road.

I have three, four…. I have a whole bunch. They'll have to be real quick. We have about three minutes left. I've got Scott, Gary, Eric, Jane and then Carole.

I was actually quite intrigued about your branding initiative for Highway 3. Maybe you could just speak for a short bit about that — expand on it a little bit for me.

W. Stetski: It used to be called the south Trans-Canada Highway when I was younger — a long time ago. The concept is that we want to get…. We have about 1.3 million vehicles that go through Cranbrook every year now. We would like to see that increased. It's important for the economy, important for tourism. The concept is that you'd take the entire stretch of Highway 3 through British Columbia. The minister involved with tourism was there, as well as the Premier, at that meeting, and they both thought that might be something worth pursuing.

So brand the highway itself, and then each community along the highway, of course, would have their own particular thing that they wanted to highlight. I would picture — from a signage perspective, for example — that it looks the same all across Highway 3. There's some sort of a branding title on the top of the sign, and then each community can insert what they think is truly special about their community. Then we want to get more people off Highway 1 and using Highway 3.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation — really interesting. Just a question on the policing issue — I guess, two. I take it that there's a link there with the housing proposal that you've made. But the other question, too, is…. I notice you're suggesting that police are dealing with clients that historically they haven't had to deal with. So why wouldn't you ask for more social service support and place the emphasis there rather than on more policing? Just interested in your….

W. Stetski: That's exactly where we'd like to see it, actually. As you know, if you don't, for example, have adequate facilities — I'll use that word — to help people with mental challenges, they're out on the street, and police end up dealing with them. It transfers the responsibility for that individual, really, from the provincial government to municipal government to deal with.

Again, it's a partnership. I really think we need to go back to basics where every level of government is very clear on what their responsibility is going to be. The federal government will look after this. Provincial government will look after this. Municipal government will look after this.

We find, because we care about our communities…. And if you've ever been a mayor, you know that you do care about everything that happens in your community. So if that service is no longer provided somewhere, you feel an obligation at the municipal level to pick it up. But we're not funded to pick it up, so we struggle with that all the time, quite frankly.

E. Foster: You made a reference to the rural doctors. Having been a mayor of a rural community, I know what you're up against.

When the communities start competing against each other, all it's going to do is cost everybody a whole bunch of money. I think it's important, and I would ask you, as a mayor — and certainly have asked others — just to get out of that business. I mean, you can't stop some communities, but it's just going to keep going up and up.
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You're going to be buying houses and plane tickets, and it'll put you in the red so fast you won't be able to see. So really encourage the other mayors, and I certainly have, just to get out of that altogether.

W. Stetski: Just a quick note on what's happening in Cranbrook. We have what we call a physician recruitment red-carpet committee. Very first meeting…. It's made up of doctors, the chamber of commerce, businessmen, the city of Cranbrook. What we do is we invite doctors to come here, potentially. We spend three or four days with them in the community, introducing them to everything that makes this a great place.

Right up front, I asked the physicians: "Do you think we should be offering bonuses?" And the physicians' answer was no. A bonus might get the doctor here, but unless they really like the lifestyle and want to be here in the long run, you're just kind of throwing your money away. That's what we focused on: making them feel really welcome.

J. Shin: Hi, I noticed that you're seeking partnerships, potentially, with the Asia-Pacific region, China, South Korea. If you can elaborate a little bit more on what is going on right now, that would be great.

W. Stetski: Right. A number of years ago the provincial government set up the Asia-Pacific initiative. Cranbrook was chosen as one of the cities. We worked very closely with the province. We are partnered with Wonju, South Korea, and Taicang in China, which is about an hour south of Shanghai. We have done the visit, and they have come here.

The question really becomes "What next?" because the taxpayers, quite frankly, don't want to see their representatives travelling across to Asia. We did it once, but I'm not going to do it again until we see some net benefit on the ground here in Cranbrook.

That was my question for the minister. How do we make something happen out of this that will build our economy here in Cranbrook? It's a great relationship; I love it. But we need to see results here on the ground.

D. Ashton (Chair): Your Worship, thank you very much. I appreciate you coming in today. Again, thank you for your hospitality here — a beautiful spot.

Next we have Sandi and Jaimee. Come on forward. Thank you very much for coming today. Again, as I explained to you out in the hall about issues we face this morning, ten minutes — I'll give you a two-minute warning — and five minutes for questions. The floor is yours when you wish to start.

S. Lavery: First of all, thank you very much for hosting a session in Cranbrook. I'm very appreciative, as well as many other people here in Cranbrook.

My name is Sandi Lavery, and I'm here with a student of mine, a third-year University of Victoria student in the teacher education program. We're really here from ViaSport. They've asked us to come and discuss a little bit of what we have started to experience.

Before that, I'd like to just give you a little background of myself. I was born and raised in Vancouver, and I had an ample amount of sport, sport skills, basic fundamental movement skills — all of that — delivered to me at the elementary level by a PE specialist, which does not happen. Since 1990 in education, teachers do not necessarily have specialists, and so it's up to the classroom teacher now to deliver fundamental movement skills and quality sport. That has fallen a little bit by the wayside, and it's really taken on more by communities to try to fill in the gap for sport and the fundamental movement skills.

My background is as an exercise physiologist. I am an instructor, and I am very concerned with health and wellness — through a number of affiliations that I'm affiliated with, we see children now do not have the basic fundamental movement skills — and whether they can go into Active for Life and help reduce our health care costs.

The other area is for sport and elite sport, which is happening quite nicely. But ViaSport would like to really focus a little bit more on making sure that all programs are available across British Columbia, not just in the Lower Mainland.

The personal impact that I've had. I've been a provincial athlete in a couple of different sports. I actually had a scholarship through university. All of those opportunities were there for me when I went through in the '70s, '80s and into the '90s, and I've made my career in that.

I'm now very fortunate to be able to pass all that information on to students and be more of a mentor and have them come forth and take what I have had the opportunity to do to bring it to the youngest members of our province. I'm also a parent, so I do see the real problems that exist through the province.

What I have also seen is the impact of previous provincial funding. It definitely started to improve in the '90s. At that time, we actually applied for a regional sports centre here in the Kootenay region and were denied that because of costs.

In '98 I was on a committee where we also applied again, and that was denied because they couldn't decide whether to build the facility at Selkirk College over in Castlegar or here in Cranbrook at the College of the Rockies. They said, "Well, how about pick a spot in the middle?" which, actually, would be the Salmo-Creston pass. Because of our geographical nature out here, that's just not going to happen.

As a result — and I don't have the facts and figures with me — there was a task force, research done by the Canadian Sport for Life centre. Tom Jones — he ran some research over the last couple of years. In that research it shows that the Kootenays has definitely…. Our baseline sports skills are low compared to the rest of the province.
[ Page 952 ]

We are the only region, East and West Kootenays, that did not have any funding directly for the higher-level regional sports centre or the Virtual Sports Centre. In order to have somebody come here and specialize or teach coaches or work with coaches, those individuals had to come, fly in, at our cost. We're a bunch of volunteers and parents, and that just doesn't happen.

I can refer you to that report done by Tom Jones. It was just done over a year ago throughout the Kootenays, and it does show that they needed to improve their services here in the East Kootenays and West Kootenays. Since that, actually, a lot has started to happen.

ViaSport has recognized that we are the only region without a sports centre — and also not just sports but for active life for the future. They have now been able to partner, just this last June, with Columbia Basin Trust to actually help finance the starting of this sports centre between the West Kootenays and the East Kootenays. With that, it is now just starting, because the funding is finally coming through, and ViaSport is very well developed in the other regional sport centres.

We've developed partnerships with Columbia Basin Trust and ViaSport and all the PacificSport centres so this region can now benefit from what all the other regions in British Columbia are receiving.

With that, I'm going to hand over to Jaimee Beaupre, who has benefited from this recent partnership.

J. Beaupre: Hi. Thanks for having me today. My name is Jaimee Beaupre, and like Sandi said, I'm a University of Victoria student through the satellite program at College of the Rockies.

I'd like to just first speak to the personal impact that sport has had on me personally. I also benefited from a physical education specialist in school, and throughout my teenage years my family made sport involvement a huge priority. When I moved to the Kootenays about ten years ago as an adult, I learned how to ski. Since then skiing has become a huge part of my life. It's been a really tremendous influential benefit to my personal and also work career. I found a lot of enjoyment and fulfilment through skiing and ski-mountaineering.

The point of all of this is that I never would have been able to learn how to ski as an adult if I hadn't had a strong foundation of fundamental skills as a child.

If you actually turn to your first slide there, you can see it illustrates that if you can't run, you won't be able to play soccer, and you won't be able to play baseball if you can't jump. It goes through all of the different sports that are attributed to those fundamental movement skills.

Personally, the impact of this funding, which the Columbia Basin Trust has been impacted through ViaSport, has benefited me with the involvement through ViaSport. I became involved with them in May of this year. The funding that they have provided has allowed me to attend multiple training sessions and become a fundamental movement skills learning facilitator. This has allowed me to deliver training to coaches, parents and teachers in the East Kootenays. Last Thursday I facilitated my second fundamental movement skills workshop to 13 participants. This was also funded by ViaSport through the government funding that has been provided to them in this past year.

I'd also like to take this time, again, to thank you, the committee, for the opportunity to present on behalf of the residents of the Columbia Basin Trust and the East Kootenays. I'd also like to thank the provincial government for all the funding and sport funding that ViaSport has received throughout the past year. Our hope today is that that funding can continue to be granted again next year.

S. Lavery: Some of the core messaging that I'd like to state here is that sport in B.C. is on the move forward. I was also very fortunate to be able to go to a global summit. If none of you have heard about the global summit that was in Toronto last year, I'll leave these. Canada, as a country, is very low. We're at a C-plus for organized sports and a D-minus for physical activity in children. That affects our health care costs. I think children are our future, and if we can maintain some basic fundamental movement skills, we can further develop these children to be less of a burden on our health care system.

I think that's about it. There are four different pillars that are happening. The notes are actually there for you to read. With ViaSport, they have moved in here. Please, I hope you can continue the funding, because our region has felt hardship, and we are able to get young, new individuals, new blood. A lot of my students — they're all going through the leadership program through my classes. They will be able to carry this on forward for all of the Kootenays.

In summary — we're going to use every second here — I would just like to reiterate that I feel really passionate as a new teacher about the well-being of our youth. I have had time throughout my education to be able to spend time in the public school system, and that's why I need to observe firsthand that the majority of students today do not possess fundamental movement skills required to be comfortable with participating in a variety of physical activities. I do feel that the funding that's provided is essential to the development of the well-being of the children of this province and, in particular, those of the East Kootenays.

E. Foster: Thank you for your presentation. I guess just a question or a comment. Would you suggest, then, that some sort of physical education or activity become
[ Page 953 ]
mandatory in the elementary schools? I ask the question because it's been brought up many times, and there's always some push-back on that. Just to clarify that.

S. Lavery: Definitely — or at least a physical literacy expert in every single district, where that physical literacy expert can actually work with the teachers. That would be the minimum that would be needed. If you were to get a physical education specialist back in, that would be the ideal.

E. Foster: One other quick comment. On your webpage — a nice webpage — you've got a team goal and then the graph. It looks like a cigarette.

E. Foster: It does. Well, it looks like a gold filter on the bottom and the white piece at the top.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a couple of questions. You mentioned the report by Tom Jones, and I think we can all gather the report. I wondered whether there was anything specific in there around why the Kootenays. You mentioned the lower participation and, I know, not having a sports specialist, but I wondered if there was anything specific.

Second question. You mentioned the Canadian numbers and the D for sports skills. I wondered if there's a difference between provinces. Does B.C. do better than some parts of Canada?

My last question relates back to the schools issue as well. Are the resources and the support that you're getting from ViaSport right now, which you're doing in partnership with the funding you're getting from Columbia Basin…? Are you able to do some of that programming in schools? Is there an opportunity then? It's just such a perfect opportunity, when kids are there, to be able to do some of that programming in schools.

C. James (Deputy Chair): The first question was around the Kootenays and specifically why it's different.

S. Lavery: Oh, the Kootenays. Yes. What I understand from that report is they've attributed it to the lack of facilities and the lack of organization. ViaSport brings in more of the organization aspect of it all and also the cost. To swim at our swimming pool is very expensive. If you live just out of the region…. Actually, that just changed. If you live just outside of the city limits, it has been on a two-tier system, but that's….

S. Lavery: Oh, it's still there. Okay. That's one reason, and the lack of funding is what ViaSport is seeing. That's why they want to invest some of their funding more into this area.

C. James (Deputy Chair): The D-minus, the Canadian numbers — is B.C. better off than most of Canada?

S. Lavery: Actually, at the global summit I asked that, and they said it doesn't matter. Every province is failing. It actually compared it against 14 other countries, and they found that…. In the report — I'll leave it for you — it said those Third World countries are actually higher in the physical activity and lower in the facilities. So our whole feeling of "if you build it, they will come" is not necessarily so. You need the actual dollars for the programming, not just the facility itself.

S. Lavery: I'm a little bit of a type A personality, so with that and when I have students, my type and my style of teaching is to get the students into the schools and get hands on. I do a lot of research, and I bring it into the schools.

This morning I had a group of students working with 80 kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2 and grade 3 students and working with fundamental movement skills and using the centre for sport PLAY tools. We were doing some evaluation and assessment and also looking at lower-income areas versus higher-income areas.

I'm just interested in that. It's kind of off the corner of my desk. There's no funding that happens with any of that.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I guess I'm not clear what the ask is. You referred to the sports centre, but apparently funding has been gotten together, and that's going to happen. I get the sense that multi-year funding might be important versus just year to year.

S. Lavery: Yes, exactly. ViaSport asked us to come and speak on behalf of them. Because we have gone without for so long, our sports system…. Because we were turned down on three different occasions, people are tired of sitting on a committee, trying to come with the sport council and apply for the general….

You've got volleyball over there. You've got soccer over there. Nobody is talking, so if we're throwing an NCCP coaching course, nobody knows who to contact. We'll only get maybe two people. There's no one organization
[ Page 954 ]
that helps coordinate any of the efforts between all the different sports. A lot of people were kind of: "My kid is in that sport, so I'll help with that, and then I'm done."

We needed that coordinated effort, and that's what ViaSport is bringing to us. We're looking for the funding, please. If they can get funds, they are going to match with Columbia Basin Trust, and we will continue to be able to grow in a more organized, coordinated fashion.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation today. Greatly appreciated. Were you getting us that report?

S. Lavery: I will hand you this one, and there is a website on it. You can all get a report if somebody orders one.

D. Ashton (Chair): Up next we have Summit Community Services Society. Welcome, Cassie. Thank you very much for coming today. We have ten minutes for the presentation. I'll give you a two-minute warning and five minutes for questions. You can see there are quite a few flying around. The floor is yours.

C. James: Hello. My name is Cassie James. I am the community-based victim service worker for Summit Community Services Society. With guidance from the Ending Violence Association of B.C. — also known as EVA B.C. — I have decided to speak today about the pressing needs we have identified for women, men and children in this province who are impacted by violence. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for allowing me a platform to speak on this topic.

At Summit we provide community-based victim services, Stopping the Violence counselling and a new men's counselling pilot project which was initiated in April of this year. As well, Summit runs a seniors program, child care programs and outreach.

Earlier this month the EVA B.C. organization, along with many partners, marked the seven-year anniversary of the domestic violence murders and suicide that resulted in the death of Sunny Park and her son, Christian Lee; her parents, Kum Lea Chun and Moon Kyu Park; and Sunny's estranged husband, Peter Lee, which occurred in Victoria, B.C.

Let us not forget a story closer to home. We are coming closer to the seven-year anniversary of Tammy Ellis's death. As I'm sure some of you will recall, Tammy Ellis was gunned down in Cranbrook at close range with a sawed-off shotgun by her roommate's former boyfriend in December 2007.

A common theme in such tragedies is that there is often a disconnect in systems designed to offer support to those experiencing violence. Central to the tragedy of Sunny Park's murder was that she was not connected to any community-based victim services in the four-year span leading to her death. Instead, she was left to cope with the complex, disconnected systems involving police, marriage counsellors and child protection workers while the violence and threats by her husband escalated — threats that would later be identified by experts as clear risk factors for extreme violence of potential lethality.

I am sad to report that this year, the citizens of British Columbia have stood witness to the outburst of domestic-related murders, attempted murders and suicides that have left 20 people dead just since January alone. This number is unacceptable.

Among the deceased are 13 women, six men — five of these were offenders who committed suicide — and one child. In addition, 11 other people were injured as a result of this violence, 12 men have been charged with murder or attempted murder of their female partners, and one man has been charged with the murder of his ex-partner's current boyfriend.

Some statistics. A global study done by Oxford University concluded that domestic violence worldwide, perpetrated mostly against women and children, costs about $9.5 trillion each year of lost economic output. To compare, recent civil wars are estimated to have cost $170 billion. In homicides unrelated to intimate partners, violence is estimated to cost $650 billion.

Researchers were able to arrive at this ballpark figure by attempting to estimate both tangible and intangible costs resulting from violence, like lost earnings, reduced economic activity and health consequences. This is a global study, but please be assured that British Columbia owns a piece of this pie.

In the '80s governments began to understand that there is a vicious cycle of violence. They recognized that early intervention could save taxpayers billions of dollars down the road due to links between violence and other social and health-related problems such as drug and alcohol misuse, ongoing physical and mental issues and child protection. The list goes on.

Currently there are 60,000 sexual and physical assaults perpetrated against women in B.C. each year, and the violence is on the rise. We know that domestic violence cases are the most numerous case types for B.C. Crown counsel, comprising 14 percent of all cases. In 2012 the Cowper report stated that domestic violence charges by Crown counsel had increased from 9,000 in 2003 to 12,000 in 2011.

Sexual assault, the most under-reported violent crime in Canada, is also on the rise, with an estimate of one in three of all Canadian women being victimized in this way at some point in their lives.

The Premier has been calling for B.C. to become a violence-free province, and we at Summit Community Services Society support this call. However, we cannot do this without investment, without money. Policy alone doesn't save lives. People and programs and services save lives.
[ Page 955 ]

Evidence gathered by EVA B.C. has not been able to find one woman who was receiving community-based victims services that has died as a result of domestic violence. Community-based victims services are key to women's and children's safety. Funding for these services has not kept pace with demand, with awareness or with inflation. In fact, there's been literally no increase in this sector in over a decade.

We at Summit have wait-lists for our Stopping the Violence counselling and for the men's counselling. That is, both programs are full, due to the fact that there is only so much funding available to provide these services. We believe that this wait-list speaks volumes.

There is a need for these services for individuals in Cranbrook experiencing the cycle of violence. Not investing in the front end results in increased costs for governments as the impact deepens, the cycle of violence continues, and the multigenerational cycle is passed on to future generations. We know that there is a moral imperative to provide support services to individuals who experience violence, and we know that there are important economic imperatives as well.

Community-based victims services, counselling and outreach programs provide not just intervention and support to women and families in times of crisis but also carry out invaluable prevention work focused on breaking the multigenerational cycle of violence. But funding for these services has not kept pace with demand, with awareness, with inflation. In fact, there has literally been no increase in the sector for over a decade.

We have seen consistent spending increases, in the billions in B.C., for police, Health and Education in the past ten years, but increases in the anti-violence sector have been almost zero. Not having adequate anti-violence sector services creates barriers and obstacles for women who are attempting to leave violent situations or for women and men who are trying to recover from sexual assault, and also for men who are looking for support.

We know that numerous reports and recommendations have identified that the kind of support provided by these services is critical to ensuring that victims do not fall through the cracks. Funding is needed so communities don't suffer such tragedies already mentioned by myself. Again, 20 people in B.C. since January have died due to domestic violence. I shudder to think what the number will be by the end of this year.

We are just coming forward with two recommendations. The first is to invest in new Stopping the Violence counsellors and to continue to support community-based victims services. As just mentioned, the Stopping the Violence counselling program currently has a wait-list for the Cranbrook-Kimberley area, and we feel that this speaks to the need and the importance of this program in our community.

Number 2 is early intervention for offenders, which is men's counselling. Provide early intervention treatment for abusive men when risk-related behaviours first appear, rather than waiting for post-conviction treatments. Effective and accessible services for offenders are also essential to ending intimate-partner violence. It is essential that programs for offenders not operate in isolation but be included in a coordinated system for services for victims and children. Treatment intervention early on, when risk-related behaviour first appears, can stop an abuser from progressing on a path of escalating violence, ending in murder and suicide.

I want to thank you for your time and attention today. Please know that the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia wants to do everything it can to provide the government with accurate information and analysis that can assist with decision-making on issues pertinent to the anti-violence sector. We at Summit are here as a resource for you, and our door is always open. We look forward to future collaborations as we work toward building a safer British Columbia for all.

J. Shin: Thank you for your presentation. I was hoping to find out the volume of calls or counselling services you offer currently with the funding that's in place, and, when you speak of the wait-list, if you can quantify for us what we are looking at — the number or the length of time that a person has to wait to access the services.

C. James: As to calls, we kind of just take them in as an on-needed basis, when we can provide intake to people rather quickly. But the wait times generally are running around six weeks at this time.

S. Gibson: This is a very poignant matter. It's provincewide. It's systemic. Having friends of mine in a municipal police department, I'm well aware of what you are articulating.

I'd like you to comment on what I see as part of the problem. An important part of the problem is the breakdown of community. People that would normally have a support group or friendships, people they can talk to — that's increasingly a missing component in our society.

People that would, say, 20 or 30 years ago have two or three friends that they can talk to, now with more social mobility and less sense of community are increasingly isolated. A woman who was in a problematic situation doesn't really have anybody to talk to, in terms of trying to engage them in some kind of helpful discussion. They're forced to either keep it to themselves or go to a professional organization, which compromises the confidentiality. Then sometimes violence even escalates. I wonder if you want to comment on that.

C. James: I think that we at Summit provide services to women that are kept confidential, even though, as you
[ Page 956 ]
mentioned, there are limitations to that, and that we don't necessarily push or force any of our clients into doing anything that they don't want to do. We would, of course, recommend not leaving somebody if their partner was particularly aggressive. That's not always the first line of advice that we'd give.

We're really there just supporting people in the moment in where they're at. That's just what we're striving towards.

S. Gibson: The issue of people more isolated — do you want to comment on that?

C. James: To speak to isolation, I think you could argue that 20 years ago they could have even felt more isolated just because the topic was kind of taboo. I think this is kind of making it a relevant topic today, just speaking out to encourage people not to feel isolated.

Then I also do want to speak to, I think, certain communities, maybe new Canadians and other people that are more marginalized, that might also feel this isolation. We do try to strive towards reaching out to all sectors of society at Summit.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation and the important addition it is to the presentation we received in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. Having lived in a northern community, I think it's particularly important that the committee and people throughout B.C. also hear the perspective from a smaller community. Everything can be a bit more intense and strangely isolating in a smaller community.

I don't want to reduce this in any way to an economic issue, but you have raised the point about the cost to the economy as well as the cost to taxpayers. I'm assuming the Oxford study that you reference is fairly recent?

G. Heyman: The other question I was going to ask you. I certainly don't want to ask you to do our research for us, but if you had one or two government studies, which you referenced, specifically in mind, if you could provide that information to the Clerk of Committees, we'll be able to take a look at it specifically.

D. Ashton (Chair): It would be great if you could. You have till October 17 to get that in.

C. James: Okay. I think I read that on my e-mail today, so I can do that for you guys.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Cassie, and thank you to your organization for the work you do in this community and in the region. It sounds like you cover some of the region as well.

I wonder if you could just touch on supports for children. I'm guessing they have a Children Who Witness Abuse program perhaps somewhere in the region?

C. James: Yes, they do. Canadian Mental Health Association does that. My program, specifically the community-based victim services, offers support to children, and it's for people that are primary and secondary victims.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Do you see wait-lists in those areas? One of the areas that we've heard concerns about is…. There's very specific criteria for children who can get into those programs, and there's a real need for trauma support for children.

C. James: Sure. I can't speak to Children Who Witness Abuse, but for my program, at this moment there is no wait.

Katherine, welcome. Thank you very much for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation — I'll give you a two-minute warning — and five minutes for questions.

K. Hough: Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Dr. Katherine Hough, the literacy outreach coordinator for Cranbrook. I do apologize for reading most of this.

I would like to pass along the regrets of our regional program manager, Betty Knight, who is not able to be here this afternoon.

On behalf of CBAL, I would like to acknowledge and thank you for your unanimous recommendation to the B.C. government last year to meet the funding request of Decoda and the community literacy field. Although the government did not fully meet that request, we are sure that your recommendation helped us in the end to receive $2 million of the $2½ million that the field needs annually to maintain literacy services in our communities.

Now, CBAL is the Columbia Basin and Boundary region not-for-profit literacy organization. We work closely with libraries, schools, colleges and other community partners to build healthy learning communities. In addition to working towards their individual goals,
[ Page 957 ]
our partner organizations work with us to help citizens of all ages improve their literacy skills and engage in lifelong learning.

Adults, families, children and youth in CBAL literacy programs improve their reading, writing, numeracy, computer, English language and workplace skills. Improved skills increase confidence, employability, individual and family health, and community involvement.

In the last few years CBAL has also successfully negotiated contracts with the provincial and federal governments to provide English-as-a-second-language and settlement services to immigrants and new Canadians and to provide essential skills and workplace preparation instruction for job seekers in communities in partnership with our Work B.C. centres. Our staff also prepares the government-mandated district literacy plans each year in partnership with our local school districts and other community partners as part of our community literacy advisory committees.

The funding that Decoda requests from the B.C. government for the literacy field is needed to support the work of literacy outreach coordinators throughout the province. Within CBAL there are 16 community literacy coordinators serving 77 communities throughout the Columbia Basin and Boundary region.

No partnerships, no grant applications that leverage the government funding we receive, no awareness events and promotions that encourage British Columbians to be conscious of and value the literacy skills or their need to practise and improve them would be happening without CBAL and our LOCs and the provincial organization that supports them. Most importantly, no programs would be developed and delivered to the over 1,000 adults in the CBAL literacy programs or the 2,000 adults and 3,000 children in our CBAL family literacy programs that took place in 2013 and '14.

Our LOCs work very closely with their school districts to annually develop, revise, write and then implement the district literacy plans. There are seven school districts within our region.

CBAL and Decoda provide the regional and provincial structures for the LOCs to do their work efficiently and professionally. None of our LOCs have a full-time position, and many teach CBAL programs or take on other part-time work that complements their coordination positions in order to have full-time employment.

Whenever we hire a new coordinator, the job description limits our applicants. The range of responsibilities is broad and many-faceted, and includes tasks of budgeting and managing funds, hiring and supervising staff, planning and delivering a wide range of programs, marketing the programs, developing community awareness projects and events, heading their community literacy planning committees, writing the annual community literacy plans, writing grant applications, reporting on the results, participating in professional development annually, building and maintaining community partnerships, and a whole bunch of other tasks.

The coordinators we hire are always highly qualified — wonderful — and come to us with a variety of experiences and backgrounds that give them the skills to be extremely effective. Many of our coordinators are teachers or former teachers at the K-to-12 or college level. Others come to us with experience in post-secondary education from the fields of employment, health, human resources, art, psychology, business administration, law, ethics and many other specializations.

They are dedicated, creative, caring and effective in their work, and we know how lucky we are to have them. These are the people whose work makes such a difference in our communities and throughout the province.

Now, last year for the community I gave you some highlights of our young parents education program. Today I would like to give you a sense of a work day for an LOC.

Well, my day begins at 8:20, as I race out the door down to the radio station for an on-air chat with a host from the two radio stations — rock and country — about CBAL's youth writing program. Twenty minutes later I make my way to the young parents education program, where I spend the next hour and a half connecting with the coordinator, the daycare manager, staff and learners. I field questions about budgets, materials, those who need referrals for assistance from other local or provincial programs, and questions about provincial subsidies. I chat with the learners on their 15-minute break and briefly watch the children play.

Then I head down to one StrongStart centre, greet the parents, deliver the new brochures, provide updates on some upcoming family programs and, if it's not too busy, sit down to paint with a child or read a story. Then it's off to the other centre and repeat what I've done at the first one and remember to pick up the registration forms, making a note to remember to retrieve them from the first centre tomorrow because I forgot to get them today.

Well, then it's a short drive down to the immigrant welcome centre, trying to time things so that I arrive just as the two-hour morning session with our English-as-a-second-language learners is just wrapping up. I spend some time talking with them, asking about their tutors, their families and so on.

As the learners head out, I sit down with a settlement worker to discuss immigrant issues that have arisen this week, offer support and suggestions, and look over the current tutor resources. I remember that I need to call the landlord for our office to talk about the heating issues, so I make that call and then head home for a quick lunch.
[ Page 958 ]

After lunch it's back down to the office to do some of my stuff: updating our community calendars; writing up the minutes from our last community literacy planning committee meeting; calling another member to find out the next dates for our social planning committee and the youth advisory committee, and ensuring that neither date conflicts with the upcoming early childhood planning committee.

I read the minutes from all of those meetings and then call the printer to see when the new brochures for the StrongStart centres and our own CBAL program brochures will be ready. I'm already tired just talking about this, and I haven't even finished my day.

I note that posters need to go up for the youth writing group, which meets twice a month after school, and to call the facilitator to ensure that we have the community covered with the posters, and then a quick call to the newspaper to make sure the poster's going to be published. Then it's into the next-door office space to see how the autobiographical writing for seniors program is going. I've been hearing lots of laughter through the wall, so I'm assuming things are going well, and they are.

After a few minutes chat it's back to report writing, petty cash spreadsheets and answering e-mails — lots of e-mails. Today I won't make it into the seniors intro computer sessions at the library, but I'll chat with the facilitator when it's over to see how things went and if there are any new materials that she needs for them.

By the time I leave the office it's 4:30, and I still have a quick stop at the printers for the brochures, then over to the mall to pick up the materials for the upcoming family program, then to the grocery store for snacks for tomorrow's meeting of the district literacy planning committee, home for a cup of tea, check the e-mails and close off my day.

I thank you for that wee break this afternoon, because in the break between when I was scheduled to come and when I am actually presenting, I managed to go and pick up 100 pounds of apples for four of our programs.

Is this a typical day in Cranbrook? Yes. My day is very representative of the days most of our coordinators put in. On average, the coordinator job is 21 hours a week — some have a few more hours in their communities — which translates to about three full days a week.

The work the LOCs do so well is seen as essential to the well-being of the communities by our partners and community members. The value the communities place on the contribution of their LOC is far above the value of the funds that Decoda is requesting to support them.

We ask you once again to please advocate for our request, as strongly as you are able, to the minister and the provincial government, as you did last year. We do recognize that these are times of tight budgets, but our need is relatively small in relation to the provincial budget and the value the government and the people of B.C. receive from our work, which is far beyond the $2.5 million annual investment that we are requesting.

D. Ashton (Chair): Katherine, thank you, and I do apologize. I had to catch His Worship before he left. I'll pick it up off the transcript.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for a wonderful description of the best bang for the buck around for resources and stretching the dollars.

I think part of the strength of the Decoda money in the individual communities is that you can meet the needs of your individual community, that everywhere is different in the province. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about where you're seeing increasing pressures around the literacy area. Is there a particular demographic? Is there a particular area of the community that you're seeing increasing need over the last while?

K. Hough: In our region our seniors programming has jumped exponentially. We started with a couple of seniors computer programs. They have leapt. Unfortunately, some of the extra funding that I've been able to leverage has not come through this year, so instead of having four six-week programs from October through to April, I'm having to drop that to two, but we end up with waiting lists. We generally have 12 seniors in each of those groups.

Family programming. We have a lot of family programming offered by other organizations within Cranbrook, but I know that in our region family programming is on the rise as well. That's helping parents be their child's best teacher and literacy supporter.

We also, with our young parents education program here, run between ten and 12 adult learners with preschool-age children, and we have a waiting list for that as well. It keeps growing.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I apologize if I missed it, but what's the population that you serve as a coordinator?

K. Hough: For Cranbrook — I serve just the Cranbrook area — it's 18,000 people. We have a coordinator in Kimberley. We also have a coordinator in the Elk Valley. She's situated in Fernie, but she covers Elkford, Sparwood, Fernie, Hosmer, Jaffray. I also cover Moyie and Fort Steele.

K. Hough: My husband actually asks me that sometimes. In fact, I'll say to him when I head downstairs after
[ Page 959 ]
supper: "Give me an hour. Call me." Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

Meadowbrook Community Association. I almost said Meadowlark. I apologize. We have Meadowlark at home.

D. Ashton (Chair): Yeah, it's a large festival. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming, and Marty and Sandra also. Thanks, folks, for moving your day around to help us out a little bit. We sure appreciate it. Please, the floor is yours. Ten minutes for the presentation. I'll catch your eye at about eight minutes, and then we have five minutes for questioning or comments.

B. Johnstone: I'm president of the Meadowbrook Community Association, and I'm accompanied by two directors this afternoon. To my left is Marty Musser, and to the far left is Sandra Loewen. Sandra is affectionately known as the weed lady in our community, not because of any medical use of marijuana but her leadership of our initiative to combat invasive plants in our community. She also serves as our representative on the board of the East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council. So she'll answer all the technical questions.

Our association serves a rural area in the regional district of East Kootenay. If your plane took the usual route into the Cranbrook Airport, you would have flown over both Meadowbrook and Woods Corner, the two areas we represent. As soon as you left Kimberley, you would be flying over Meadowbrook, and as you turned to fly south to the airport, that's Woods Corner. Most of the area is in the ALR. There are mostly farms and larger holdings.

The purpose of our association is to preserve and enhance the Meadowbrook and Woods Corner areas for residents and recreational users. One of our initiatives, one of our priorities, is combatting invasive weeds and plants. We think the province shares our concern because it has legislation on the matter. The Weed Control Act and regulations make the occupier of land responsible for controlling noxious weeds and give the province the authority to enforce.

The legislation designates the province as the occupier of Crown land and provincial highways and the registered owner of private property as the occupier. But the province has the authority to enforce in both.

Why are we concerned? The provincial funding for control of noxious weeds in the East Kootenay has decreased over the past four years from approximately $470,000 in 2011 to $295,000 this year. As a result, existing infestations are thriving and adjacent areas are being contaminated.

Failure to control noxious weeds has economic, social and environmental impacts. Providing adequate funding for controlling noxious weeds can be justified purely on economic grounds — preserving jobs, profits and property values. The province's efforts to preserve agricultural capacity and to promote tourism can be seriously impaired if noxious weeds are not controlled.

We're also concerned that local efforts to do it…. If the province doesn't play its part, local efforts are going to be discouraged and people are just going to give up. If my roadway is infested, it's going to come on my property, and it's going to be impossible for me, as a single person, to do that.

What are we doing locally? The regional district produces pamphlets on noxious weeds. It hires staff to promote control on private property and shares in the cost of spraying, with approved owners.

This demonstrates the interest that people have, I think. The number of approvals has steadily increased from 32 in 2010, when the program started, to 85 to date this year. Some owners attempt to control their weeds on their own by spraying, pulling, etc. I know I do my own.

Our association has been calling attention to the need for weed control among residents and helping them to access the RDEK program. As a matter of fact, we bulk-mailed a flyer on invasive plants information to all households in the Meadowbrook and Woods Corner areas just this spring.

In 2012 our association made a written submission to the select standing committee, requesting additional provincial funding and action. The result was a reduction in funding for the East Kootenays of $109,500. Last year we came in person, and we fared a little better. The funding was not cut, but it was not increased either as we'd requested.

What we think is the solution. We think it really needs a partnership between the provincial government, local government — in our case, the RDEK — community associations like ours and individual landowners. We need to educate about the threat of noxious weeds, we need to control them, and we need to enforce the legislative requirement to address the issue.

What we'd like this select standing committee to do in its report is to recognize several things. One is the importance and urgency of controlling noxious weeds for economic, social and environmental reasons; secondly, the potential to impair the success of provincial initiatives to promote agriculture and tourism if noxious weeds are not controlled; and also to recognize the province's statutory responsibility as the occupier of Crown land and provincial highways and to control noxious weeds in these areas.
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The province has authority to ensure that provincial ministries and other occupiers comply with the legislation. For example, in our area the highways maintenance yard is infested. So we have been petitioning the company to actually do it. But we can only write letters. We need the province to step in and order them to do it.

We want you also to recognize the economic wisdom of investing in efforts to control noxious weeds and the necessity of funding a stable, adequate, long-term provincewide program for controlling noxious weeds and to recognize the need for a significant increase in the current funding for education, treatment and enforcement in the fight to combat the spread of noxious weeds.

S. Gibson: I guess my question is a simple one. Coming from the greater Vancouver area, east of Vancouver in the Abbotsford area, we have a concern about air quality. But, of course, it's not created in Abbotsford.

I guess it's a segue, but my question is: how much of the problem with noxious weeds is really created from outside the community — people coming in or people travelling through, tourists, that kind of thing? And they see the legacy of all of this — the weeds that you don't want. That's really my main question.

B. Johnstone: Yeah, it gets spread. It's hard to know whether it's coming from outside or not, but it's certainly rampant here, especially along highways.

I drove through Golden the other day there, and I noticed the significant change between the border of the regional districts of East Kootenay and of Columbia-Shuswap because they don't have the same program that we do. As long as it's up there, it's going to be spread by travelling animals, vehicles. It really needs a concerted effort.

S. Gibson: I guess a supplementary, if I may. Is there some way that we can communicate, through signage or information discouraging people or allowing them to make some intelligent decisions, to diminish the spreading of these noxious weeds?

B. Johnstone: Well, I know Alberta has signs that say, "Don't bring knapweed into Alberta," on all their major highways. Certainly, that could help here. But we need to get a handle on it.

The first is: what kind of response did you get back from the bulk mailing? I'm just curious whether you saw support, or whether you saw more calls from people who wanted support for the program.

Then the second piece kind of follows up on your last comment. The second question would be: is there a region or an area or even a provincial jurisdiction that you think you'd point to as having a terrific program that should be looked at by British Columbia?

S. Loewen: Back to the original question, too, about how weeds get here. There are many, many weeds in the province that we don't have, and they are getting closer and closer to our boundaries. A lot of them are coming from the West Kootenay. A big way of spreading is through the plowing of the snow, etc., in the winter. As Bob says, the company doesn't take care of the weeds in their gravel pit, so these weeds are in the gravel, in the sand. They're going to spread up and down the highways.

There are, I think, over 100 gravel pits — not all active, in this region — that are just so infested with them. The province is not enforcing their own legislation. They're expecting other people to do it. If there was cooperation between the province and landowners, we'd get a lot farther.

I do know that people in the Meadowbrook area are becoming a lot more weed-aware — very much so. They're looking after a lot on their own properties. But then, as Bob said, in the ditch beside them or the highway beside them or the side road beside them, the weeds are rampant. We need more enforcement. It's what we really need, provincially and regionally.

B. Johnstone: Our association actually sponsored two people becoming certified in spraying. One was an 80-year-old farmer whose fields were getting infested, and one was a young woman of probably about 20. I think she may actually do that as a summer job and be employed as one. One of the difficulties is getting contractors.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. I was struck by your comments about Crown lands or leases on Crown lands — the local MOT contractor not dealing with invasives on their own property. That strikes me as a bit…. Aside from the funding request, there's the responsibility of the province to manage its own lands or lands that it leases. This is a difficulty here. Have you talked to your MLA about that, for example?

B. Johnstone: Yes, we have. We've also approached the highways maintenance people. Last year they did spray. This year we sent them a letter early in the spring asking if they were going to do it again, because it's really needed. Three letters later, we still didn't receive anything.
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There's one property between mine and an abandoned gravel pit, and it is absolutely infested. All that the Ministry of Transportation has funds to do is they will do the edge, all around the property, just to see if they can stop the spread coming into all of our properties. But the problem is we have so many deer in our area that the deer just track it, and they wander through everybody's property. So unless you do the whole pit, it's not going to be really much of a job.

E. Foster: In the area that I live in — and I support your efforts to spray this, by the way — we get quite a push-back about spraying. Do you get issues on that here?

S. Loewen: Just one other thing I want to add to Bob's mention of that particular gravel pit. It's absolutely huge. Last year the regional district named Cherry Creek Falls Park as a regional park. This gravel pit is now growing so large that toadflax is getting very close to the boundaries of this park. It's on a forest service road, so it's going back into the back country too. I don't think it has ever been fully sprayed, and it's just thick, thick with knapweed, blueweed and toadflax. That's what we're up against in this community and every other community in the East Kootenay, actually.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much. I come from a municipality background but chairing a regional district for numerous years. It's Okanagan-Similkameen. Towards the end of my tenure we started getting away from information and trying to be more proactive, which it sounds like is happening over here. Being an orchardist also, the cost is not that prohibitive these days for somebody to go in and actually do that. I mean, respectfully to somebody's budget, to spray a weed perimeter is not that much money.

Positive enforcement on your behalf might make a bit of a difference. If you aren't getting push-back…. One of the impacts of spraying, especially in the more densified areas where I come from, is that people don't want to see it. There's this push towards getting away from spraying these days. Our contractor there, they get out and mow before the seeds break, so it has a tendency to lay that down a little bit more and stop that pickup along the sides of the road. Puncturevine, which I have in the South Okanagan — goodness, I hope you don't get it over here — is absolutely terrible.

Keep up the good work. Again, peer pressure has a tendency to work sometimes, especially with us. So again, thank you for the presentation today and for facilitating moving everything around the way you have.

Leslie, welcome and thank you. I just heard you had a class. You had to run out. Is that…?

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, thank you for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions. I'll give you a two-minute warning.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Should I make it a three-minute warning? No? I'm only being facetious. I'll catch your eye at around eight minutes and let you know.

L. Molnar: Welcome to Cranbrook, and I'm glad that you were all able to arrive safely. I understood you had some fog issues.

My name is Leslie Molnar. I am a mathematics instructor at the College of the Rockies, and I'm also president of the College of the Rockies Faculty Association. Our association represents over 200 full- and part-time members. We teach in a variety of disciplines — arts and science, business, vocational, health programs, trades and technical — so we're a comprehensive community college.

Our college region goes all the way from Creston up to Golden and over to Fernie. We have a very large geographical area, seven campuses that we run and over 2,000 full- and part-time students, and we really pride ourselves on being part of the economic fabric and part of the communities that we serve.

Funding pressures are having a major impact on our institution, and the best illustration I can give you about that is the basic grant from the government. In 2001 the provincial operating grant was around 70 cents of every dollar that the college received, and now it's closer to 53 cents of every dollar that we receive. That's a big change in any public institution, to have to have that type of shift in funding. It means that there are significant college resources devoted to other types of revenue generation just to balance the budget, and it does shape what we can do and influences what we can offer.

Students have been hit hard by this funding decrease. The cost of their post-secondary education has increased dramatically despite the 2 percent tuition cap increase. There are more and more fees for students. There are technology fees and activity fees and fees for printing. We're one of the few colleges that don't charge for parking.

In addition, when some programs are reconfigured, that provides an opportunity to reset the bar for tuition. So then there are increased tuition fees that way as well. And as I'm sure you've heard from other groups, the Canadian Federation of Students estimates that student debt levels are close to $30,000 upon graduation.
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Personally, I have three kids in post-secondary, so this issue hits home for me.

The gradual and steady retreat of the province's share of the costs raises some important questions about how public is public post-secondary and how much access we can have for our units. What it means is that we have to struggle to live within our budget, and we will not necessarily offer everything at every campus.

It's really important to provide this education in our community. Graduates of our nursing program come back into our area. We have chartered accountants that started their education here that come back into our area. We are a mining and logging area, and so then the trades and technical training. The stronger we can have those roots to our area and be able to offer those things….

Our UVic education program. We partner with the University of Victoria. They have an extremely high placement rate for their graduates, and we could feed even more students into that program if we were able to offer all of the prerequisites on a timely, rotating basis, or maybe into the rural regions as well.

There is a really big issue of not being able to offer all courses at all campuses in all semesters and having to rotate semesters and programs, even offering the first- and second-year university transfer courses. We do offer an impressive, I think, variety of courses in first and second year, but in rotations.

For instance, the course that I just left right now was math 101. Math 102, the second half of that course, is only offered every second year. So students who are staying the two years can complete the math 101 and 102, but they can't complete the entire course in one year.

Again, when you think about the fact that tuition is about 30 percent of the…. The students are paying, between tuition and fees, about 30 percent of their education. Probably, many of us in the room went through at a time when tuition was about 10 percent of the total cost of education, so that's a really big shift in the cost of things.

Our college has a very successful international student program. But with more and more international students, there comes the need to fully provide all of the academic services. Our college rates very, very high on international student satisfaction, but there are more and more needs in the diverse classroom. It's great to have them in our classrooms. It adds an awful lot to it, but there are the English skills and the tutoring skills and the support skills that aren't funded as part of that.

It's just important for the reputation of B.C. that all of the students get all the academic support they need. If we want to — as the government has stated that it wants to — double the number of international students that we have, you have to make sure that the students who come in here are not only helped with their homestays and their placements but get all of the academic support and they're not just waiting in line outside of an instructor's office trying to get help with their English essay.

I know the committee has heard from other faculty associations about the local ESL training. At our particular college we don't have a lot of immigrants, so we didn't have a lot of ESL. Most of our training is international education. But that doesn't mean that it's not an important issue to us, when we see the $22 million being cut from the budget and we see the federal shift in the dollars and we don't see the plan for places like BCC to be continuing the English-as-a-second-language training.

That's very, very important to all of us, because as B.C. will need to do its LNG and all sorts of other things, I'm sure we're going to need lots of immigrants, and those immigrants — our new B.C. residents — need access to English as a second language.

Two final points before I just kind of summarize our association's recommendation. The first has to do with trades training. I know that the provincial government had Jessica McDonald, the former deputy minister, conduct a full review of the Industry Training Authority, and she found many deficiencies in the ITA.

They create problems for institutions such as ours, working to deliver trades programs in our region. For smaller colleges, sometimes the numbers that ITA sets before they'll run a section are just not feasible for the area that we have. And sometimes the things that they are willing to put on don't exactly match, so they might be more willing to put on a course at an apprenticeship level, rather than a Foundation-level course.

Then there's the clawing back issue. If you aren't able to fill the sections, then they do claw back that funding, and it still costs the same amount to run a classroom regardless of the number of students that are in there — or pretty much the same amount.

The last point I want to make has to do with the new emphasis on applied research. I hear from my colleagues all throughout the institutions. College of the Rockies is NSERC- and SSHRC-certified, so we do have access to those federal grants. We have not yet been successful in getting those federal grants.

Many of the other institutions have followed suit, and policies are in place. But I think the government really needs to bring clarity and support to the issues of applied research, and I think that the 2015 budget provides an opportunity for the province to really articulate how it's going to support applied research efforts and where it sees it fit within the community.

My summary: funding is critical to the long-term success of our post-secondary educations and students. We would like to see the 2015 budget, at the very least, signal a change from the decreasing per-student-in-real-dollars funding that we've seen over the last few years.

In the next year there is scheduled to be a further 1½ percent reduction in the operating grants. That is sup-
[ Page 963 ]
posed to be targeted at administrative, not at teaching parts, but you can't do the teaching without the administrative support. You bring back on the budget. It makes a big difference, especially in rural areas.

We aren't like the larger colleges where you have full sections of everything. We're like that seventh section that Langara might have — or some other one. Some things are full, but in many of our courses we are just trying to provide the access, and we don't have those same numbers as other institutions have.

The budget really needs to address the issue of affordability for students. A really good starting point, we think, would be to reintroduce the student grant program. Students really need that.

Then I mentioned the issue of ESL funding. I really hope ESL funding is addressed in the 2015 budget. I think there needs to be a long-term, stable funding of provincial ESL programs rather than cutting the $22 million out of the budget.

Lastly, there are major systemic problems in the way that the individual post-secondary institutions are supported. While the provincial operating grant is central, so too are commitments like the funding for trades training, the support for research and innovation. The government, I think, would be well served by undertaking a thorough review of the current funding formula, a review that might address some of the inequities in the system that smaller institutions face each year.

D. Ashton (Chair): Actually, it was your ten-minute warning, because you said it was a summary at three, so I caught you on that.

S. Hamilton: Thank you for the presentation. Towards the end of it you struck a familiar chord. We were in Vancouver hearings about a week and a half or two weeks ago, and we heard loud and clear from the student association at Langara College regarding ESL.

With that, though, I would have made the assumption that due to the greater percentage of population of what I assume to be immigrants in the Vancouver area as opposed to the Cranbrook area, what are the pressures? Proportionately, how many ESL students do you have to serve in this community?

L. Molnar: We have very few ESL students in Cranbrook. I believe we used to be funded for six FTEs for ESL. It's a very small issue for our particular college, big issue for the system.

S. Hamilton: You're speaking systemwide for the association. So you're advocating for everyone.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You mentioned the trades training and some of the challenges with ITA and the hopes that some of those will shift for you. One of the areas that we've also been hearing about — and I wonder whether you've run into the same difficulty — is the issue of finding apprenticeships so that students can get their hours. They may go into a trades program, but then it's a real struggle to try and find apprenticeships. I wondered what your experience is from your college in some of those programs.

L. Molnar: I think that we had experienced similar things as other colleges. It is very difficult to find the apprenticeships, to get the employers to be providing the apprenticeships, especially in the area. The college actually has a very innovative program itself, a mining apprenticeship program, where we take on the apprentices ourselves in that one area. It has been a big problem. And I'm sorry. Trades training is my weakest area of knowledge.

My question is one kind of based on my experiences teaching in a couple of public universities and one private university. I've shared this with others here, and colleagues will have heard this one. The paradox between…. The students that have the most financial need often do better, I have found, than students that have virtually no money problems. My experience was that way, myself.

It's a paradox because we often think that if we give all these students the money they need, there will be the benefit that they'll do well. But I have noticed in my academic experience that the students who tend to be struggling financially often do better than those that have no money problems at all.

It's a paradox. I'm not saying it's conclusive, and to some extent it's anecdotal. I'd be interested in your comments.

L. Molnar: I might see a trend similar to what you've seen, possibly in the new graduates. The average age of a
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College of the Rockies student is 26, and that really is an average. We have a lot of students who are returning, so they're balancing daycare. They are often single parents trying to start a new career. I do actually see people not able to take a full course load and people having to drop out of school. It happens all the time that I lose students in the semester because they have some emergency that comes up with their family or their child, and they're just not able to remain in school.

I think that as there is more and more of the less traditional demographic entering the college system…. Really, that's what we're there for. We are there for access, especially for people in the rural regions.

S. Gibson: A quick supplementary. In my own case, and I'm just one, I have worked almost full-time, and I don't think I'm particularly that bright. I got a couple of degrees in a few years, but I worked full-time. I didn't have any leisure time particularly, but I worked flat out. I think that because I was paying for it myself, I put more passion into it.

I definitely agree with what you're saying. There are many tragic examples where people drop out for financial reasons, so I don't want to diminish that. Thank you for your comments.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you, Leslie. Greatly appreciated. Thank you again for nipping over from the college.

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

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

Witnesses:	Jaimee Beaupre (ViaSport British Columbia)
	Dr. Katherine Hough (Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy)
	Cassie James (Summit Community Services Society)
	Bob Johnstone (President, Meadowbrook Community Association)
	Sandi Lavery (ViaSport British Columbia)
	Sandra Loewen (Meadowbrook Community Association)
	Leslie Molnar (President, College of the Rockies Faculty Association)
	Wayne Stetski (Mayor, City of Cranbrook)
	Dianne Teslak (College of the Rockies)
	David Walls (President and CEO, College of the Rockies)

6) Meadowbrook Community Association	Bob Johnstone
	Sandra Loewen

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES