Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 48 — Wednesday, October 15, 2014 (HTML)

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	1251
M. Howard
J. Winter
A. Shorten
J. Barr
A. Winter
H. Permut
J. Woolsey
B. Cavers
D. Sargent
M. Pamer
A. Sablok
T. Morin Nakashima
D. Baird
J. Johnston
P. Leblanc
K. Peacock
G. Morrison
B. Brunnen
L. Jackson
G. Harvie
D. Luster
S. Kupka
T. Rezansoff

D. Ashton (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Dan Ashton. I’m the MLA for Penticton and the Chair of this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold provincewide public consultations on the next provincial budget.

The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that is released by the Minister of Finance. Following the consultations, the committee will release a report with recommendations for Budget 2015 no later than November 15, 2014.

This year we are holding 16 public hearings in communities across the province. A video conference session was scheduled for October 8 to hear from four additional communities — Dawson Creek, Quesnel, Smithers and Castlegar. This week we’re in Surrey, Mission and Delta.

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. The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 17.

Today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions or comments from the committee. Time permitting, we’ll also have an open mike at the end of the meeting. Five minutes is allotted for each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register at the information table.

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

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. I’ll start with Gary.

G. Holman: Thanks for coming today. Gary Holman, MLA for Saanich North and the Islands. My colleague Jane Shin should be here later, hopefully. She’s having car difficulties.

G. Heyman: Good afternoon. George Heyman, MLA for Vancouver-Fairview and opposition spokesperson for TransLink, technology and green economy.

S. Hamilton: Good afternoon. My name’s Scott Hamilton, and I’m the MLA for Delta North.

D. Ashton (Chair): Also with the committee today is Susan Sourial, sitting beside me, and Sarah Griffiths, over here at the table, from the parliamentary committees office. Hansard Services is also here today with the two nice young ladies over in the corner, and they do an absolute great job of keeping us in line.

I would also apologize for Jane. I know that her car has broken down or partially broken down. She said that she would be here very quickly.

I would like to take the opportunity to introduce one of our peers, Vicki Huntington, the MLA for this area.

Our first presenter is the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia. We have Maria Howard. Welcome. Thank you very much for coming. The floor is yours

M. Howard: My name is Maria Howard. I’m the CEO of the Alzheimer Society of B.C. I would like to thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to come here today to share with you the mission and vision and the strategic focus of our society and to have a couple of asks for consideration.

Alzheimer’s and dementia, as many of you will know, are a very real situation and a very real disease in our province, in our country and around the world. There’s been much attention given to Alzheimer’s and dementia recently, and many things have been happening in the environment — good things and bad things.

They all come together to stand attention for how Alzheimer’s and dementia really are going to start to impact our communities and the way we live and our friends and family — more so than probably they have over the last several years.

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. — our vision is really quite simple. It’s a stretch vision or a stretch goal, and it really is to have a world without Alzheimer’s or related dementias. That is what we strive for.

However, our mission is threefold, and that is to provide programs and services to people who are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia, to provide education to increase awareness and decrease stigma, and to support
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research for that ultimate goal, that ultimate vision, of finding a cause and a cure.

Today I’ve provided you with a document that has quite a lot of detail about the specific areas we’re involved in. I won’t take you through that detail now — you can certainly read it at your leisure — but I will talk to it at a high level and talk about the strategic priorities that our organization feels very strongly, and those that touch our communities and provincewide.

From the programs and services side, the Alzheimer Society of B.C. offers First Link. First Link is an early intervention tool that connects people and their families who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia with help and support as soon as possible. It’s a way for health care professionals to connect their patients and receive the support that they need. We know that that can come in many shapes and different forms, depending upon where that family is.

Our society is committed to rolling out First Link across the province of B.C. so that all British Columbians who are diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s can access, through the tool, through the service, the support and the services they need unique to their situation. Whether they are in the north of our province or the south or in one of our big Lower Mainland cities, they still can get the attention and the support they need.

It is really critical because, as we know, people with Alzheimer’s and dementia go through the journey in a very unique way, depending upon how they react to symptoms, how they respond to medication, their own personal situation for their families. We know that everybody responds uniquely, which means that we need to have supports and services that are there to meet them where they need to be so they can continue to have quality of life, which is still really necessary.

The second strategic focus that we have is education, and we see that in a couple of different ways. Dementia-friendly communities is a new initiative of our society that we will be rolling out across the province over the next two to three years. That is the concept that the support that people need who are living with dementia needs to come from the community in a number of different ways.

That, again, is the focus on quality of life. It’s the focus on safety. It’s the focus on accessibility. By providing education and training to a number of places that people go in their daily lives in terms of banking, the store, taking the bus…. Those are all areas, through proper education and help to people to better understand how to interact with people who are experiencing dementia, that can improve the quality of life and improve our community experience.

Dementia Friends is an initiative that actually has been just announced at the federal level through Minister Rona Ambrose, and this is going to become a federal initiative in partnership with Public Health. The initiative that we would like to set up and start to run within our own province is dementia-friendly communities, and that’s recognizing that community can be a group of people in a community centre. It can be TransLink. It can be any type of group of people who are supporting people who are living with the disease.

The second area, which is also immensely critical, is the dementia action plan. It is wonderful that our province is one of the few provinces in Canada that actually has a dementia action plan. For the past six months there has been a group, supported through the Ministry of Health, who has been refreshing that plan.

The Alzheimer Society has been really pleased to be a participant in that and to join with a number of other partners and talk about how we can refresh the provincial plan and continue to support people who are living with dementia. It is really critical, because the action plan looks at a number of different places that people, again, touchpoint in their life as they’re going through their journey.

The third area of education is training and support for health care workers. It is really important that health care workers who are working with people with dementia, whether in care facilities or in home support or even in respite programs, know how to approach people so that the individual who is living with dementia can have the best quality of life and have a relationship that is person-centred.

We also know that there are a number of injuries that come as a result of interacting with people with dementia and maybe not having the best skills. So it is a way to bring that relationship together and make it one that focuses on helping both parties to have a better quality of life and a better experience.

Our third strategic priority is research. Again, it is so critical to continue to support at a provincial level, at a federal level, at an international level, research that is supporting a cause and a cure. There are lots of glimmers of hope and lots of little windows that are beginning to open, but still there is no significant movement in what causes dementia and what is the best way to actually move for a cure. Supporting research on a provincial level and a number of entities who are focused on that here really becomes a commitment for us.

Dementia is really an interesting concept in that there are a lot of myths about it. It’s really important through raising awareness and decreasing stigma that we deal with those myths.

One of them is that dementia is not an old person’s disease. Yes, it does tend to affect more people who are over the age of 65, but we also know that the average age of people who are becoming diagnosed is getting younger and younger. Individuals who are diagnosed as a 40-year-old or a 50-year-old have a very different experience, and
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it hits our communities, our homes, our economy in a very different way.

As well, dementia, known as a chronic disease, doesn’t have the same type of responses as other chronic diseases in terms of care elements. Residential homes are set up to support people with chronic care, chronic physical care, but people with dementia don’t always have a physical element. They have more of a cognitive element that has a different type of care that is required to help them. So it means our care system has to stop to think about: “How do we support someone with a chronic disease who doesn’t fit into our traditional chronic model?”

The third element about dementia is that while we tend to think of it as a health issue, as a medical issue, it sits across a wide variety of sectors. It is not just a health issue. It’s a transportation issue. It’s a labour issue. It’s an education issue. So it is something that we all need to think about and that we all need to come together and work on.

The Provincial Dementia Action Plan is really focused on looking at all those elements and looking at initiatives that can go forward and help to support the people in our province who today have dementia and for those who we know are going to be diagnosed in the next five, ten, 15, 20 years.

Our ask today is basically twofold — our ask for consideration. We have been really appreciative of the partnership that we have had with the Ministry of Health to date in the funding for the First Link program. Our commitment is to roll this program out provincially over the next two years. The funding that we have received to date sits in a two- to four-year relationship.

Our ask is for consideration that that First Link funding be a standing item that is continued to be looked at as a priority so that we can continue, through the First Link program, to ensure that people, as they receive their diagnosis and as health care professionals are supporting those individuals, get the support and the attention as soon as possible and also when they are ready to make those decisions about how to move forward.

Our second ask for consideration is around the Provincial Dementia Action Plan and its refresh. There are a number of initiatives that have been looked at, that have been discussed. They are all really significant in, again, making the journey of dementia in our province just a better experience for everyone. That is a human cost as much as it is an economic cost. We just ask that as that dementia plan is refreshed and that becomes rolled out as the ministry completes their work, the initiatives that they are recommending and the associations with that are very strongly considered.

Our society is very willing to play a very strong role to support as well as very willing to lead the initiatives that we can add value to. We are really willing to take that on. We just ask that there is an ability to continue a partnership relationship in terms of funding, in terms of strategic planning, so those opportunities for our citizens continue to go forward.

G. Heyman: Thank you, Maria, for your presentation and for times that you’ve met with members of the Legislative Assembly in Victoria, along with a number of your volunteers, so that we can gain a better understanding of what the society does.

I have two questions about First Link. One of them is if you have any research that shows the beneficial aspects, both for Alzheimer’s sufferers as well as more effective and cost-effective treatment that flows from establishing an early connection through First Link. The second part of the question is: have you had any indication that the funding from the provincial Ministry of Health for First Link, other than the fact that it’s only committed to 2018, may not be renewed?

M. Howard: Certainly. On the first question. Specifically, do we actually have empirical evidence that shows that First Link makes a difference in terms of an earlier support, earlier connection with services — that that does either delay or slow down the onset of disease? We don’t have any specific empirical evidence, and the hope is that by having the program run on a provincial level, we’ll be able to gather that in partnership with the ministry. Certainly, we do have evidence from other provinces where First Link has been in production for some time that it does make a difference.

That is really based on the fact that the sooner people can get information and make decisions while they are able to, while they have the ability to make informed decisions, the easier it is to make care decisions — whether that’s around medication, whether that’s around living arrangements or whether that’s around placement in other programs that focus on some of their limitations.

Certainly, if we use the model within chronic disease — and the earlier the support and services the better the journey…. We can apply that model. But the empirical evidence is what we hope we will have within a two-year period.

On the question regarding the funding. No, there has been no indication that the ministry is not interested in continuing the funding. They have been very good in talking about the plans for the program and where this should go. It’s been an ongoing dialogue, and we certainly support that. But we just want to keep it front and centre in the conversation.

D. Ashton (Chair): I’ve only got a minute and a half left, so very quickly, please.
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S. Gibson: Two super quick questions. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. But I notice around me more people that I kind of know, maybe the next generation up…. There’s a higher level of dementia, I notice, than when I was younger. Is it increasing? Just a quick answer, if you want to….

M. Howard: The numbers of dementia are increasing, yes. As people are living older because of better management of other disease states, certainly the numbers of dementia are increasing.

S. Gibson: The other thing, it seems to me, is that when people have relatives that have dementia or some of these ailments, they tend to be resisting. Families almost don’t want to be involved. It seems to me that government can’t do everything. I would just hope that somehow your organization would encourage families to come alongside.

I know a personal family situation, on my wife’s side of the family, where people tend to be: “Wait, hold it. We don’t want to be involved.” Well, who’s going to be involved if it isn’t the people that care about you? I’m not sure if you have a comment about that.

M. Howard: Absolutely. That is the whole premise behind the dementia-friendly communities, which recognize that all of us have to be partners to move this forward. As we can increase awareness and give people the permission to talk about Alzheimer’s and dementia, the hope is that families and caregivers will be more comfortable to take those more dominant roles.

Cancer is something that people have no issue about talking about today. That is where we need to get Alzheimer’s to as well.

G. Holman: Just quickly. Up to 70,000 people you identify as living with a diagnosis. Do you know, roughly, how many of those are living in residential care facilities versus at home? And have you been talking to B.C. Housing about funding commitments in terms of increasing the availability of residential care?

M. Howard: Absolutely. We know that of the 70,000 people that have been diagnosed with dementia in the province, 40 percent are in residential care. We also know that that 70,000 number is fairly low.

In terms of discussions with B.C. Housing, yes, we have been discussing with a number of different partners around how to support a number of different aspects around people and their issues.

D. Ashton (Chair): Maria, thank you very much. Greatly appreciate the input today.

D. Ashton (Chair): If you do have any additional input, Friday the 17th — we can accept it until that point in time. Thank you. Have a good day.

Next up we have the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce. I have John Winter, Jon Garson and Ian Tait. Welcome, gentlemen.

J. Winter: Thank you. Good afternoon. I’m John Winter with the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, and I’m joined today by Jon Garson, who is our vice-president of policy development, and Ian Tait, who will be joining us as well. Ian is the executive director and CEO of the Delta Chamber of Commerce, so on home turf.

The B.C. chamber is B.C.’s largest and most broadly based business group. We represent about 36,000 businesses, all shapes and sizes, in all sectors of the economy and all communities around the province. It’s on their behalf that we’re here to make a presentation today about the 2015 provincial budget.

We will provide a written submission, which does detail the full range of chamber recommendations for Budget 2015. We hope you will have a chance to review this submission, and we would welcome, certainly, any follow-up on questions you may have.

In our written submission we cover several areas, with numerous recommendations. As a broadly based organization, we have recommendations on fiscal policy, the erosion of B.C.’s competitive position and measures to facilitate economic prosperity at the community level.

Given the time constraints, we will focus on the most pressing issues for our members, leading off with fiscal policy.

The chamber is certainly pleased to see the confirmation of B.C.’s position as one of only three jurisdictions in Canada that can actually lay claim to a balanced budget, and we congratulate the government for this not insignificant achievement. To achieve a balanced budget took leadership, and it took some tough choices.

The 2013 provincial election clearly showed that the public want and expect government to be responsible with their tax dollars, and while B.C. has fared comparatively well during the recent recession, we must recognize that the recovery is still uncertain.

More importantly, we must also recognize that governments around the world are all facing a new reality. The realities of global competition and markets will continue to limit government’s ability to generate revenue, while spending pressures will continue to grow to address an aging population. As such, it is essential that we do more with less. We must learn to spend money more efficiently, and more importantly, we must continue to innovate in service delivery.

British Columbians must recognize that this new re-
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ality can no longer mean that conversations start with more funding. Rather, the starting point now must be doing more with what we have. In this light, we were pleased to see the chamber’s policy recommendations regarding fiscal prudence and debt reduction featured heavily in Budget 2014.

However, now is the time to go further. Now is the time for further commitments made by this current government in the last provincial election to be turned into action. Our members will therefore expect to see government continue to hold spending increases to no more than population and GDP growth.

Further, we expect to see government fulfil its commitment with the people by dedicating 50 percent of B.C.’s surplus directly to debt reduction in Budget 2015. We also recommend that legislation be introduced as soon as possible that commits 50 percent of all future surplus revenue directly to debt reduction.

Some comments on B.C.s competitive challenges. While B.C.’s fiscal foundations are strong, our members are expressing concern over the erosion of productivity and competitiveness in this province. B.C.’s economy faces a serious challenge. Our businesses’ global competitiveness has been sliding now for some time. Since 2009 Canada has slid to 14th place from ninth in the world as measured by the economics forum annual list of the world’s most competitive countries.

Additionally, a recent Conference Board of Canada report found that B.C. is lagging behind many of its peer Canadian jurisdictions, ranking seventh for productivity compared to other provinces. This picture is even bleaker when we look at the key investment measure, marginal effective tax rates, where B.C. fares even worse.

To develop solutions to this issue, the chamber has initiated Competitiveness B.C. forums, and we’re presently conducting eight of those provincewide. We’re partnering with the Ministry of Jobs and the provincial government, where we’ve collectively engaged already over 200 CEOs in communities across the province. A full report outlining the findings and the role all stakeholders can play will be forthcoming.

This report will address the broad range of issues that are integral to encouraging productivity growth, including one of the most important productivity measures: skills and training. For the purpose of this submission, we will be concentrating on the tax measures that require immediate attention.

Government has recently been singularly focused on developing an LNG industry. Considerable focus has been placed on ensuring a competitive tax and regulatory environment to encourage the establishment of this new industry in B.C., and this is an important issue and one strongly supported by the chamber.

There is a growing concern in the business community, however, that this is being pursued at the expense of addressing competitive challenges facing the rest of the B.C. economy. Businesses are seeing increased challenges on a range of fronts. For small business, we’re seeing a range of costs that are undercutting their ability to grow and create jobs. These range from higher EI, WorkSafe B.C. or MSP premiums, the increases to the minimum wage, uncompetitive property taxes or increases to power, or electricity, rates.

While these are challenges that impact all businesses, the erosion of the competitiveness of our export sector is even more concerning. Competitive taxation is an issue.

The chamber recognizes that B.C. has one of the lowest tax rates for both personal and business income in Canada. Indeed, the government is to be commended for these actions often taken in the face of significant criticism and opposition. While this means that B.C. has very competitive headline tax rates, this only tells part of the story.

While we accepted the need for an increase in revenue to address the unique fiscal challenges presented by the recession, we were concerned to see an increase in the corporate tax rate as one of the primary measures introduced. As I’ve said, we recognize that B.C. maintains a very competitive corporate tax rate. However, there were other options government could have taken that would have been less economically damaging.

The increase in the corporate rate while maintaining a commitment to lower the small business tax rate was particularly concerning. This disparity in how businesses are treated within the tax system is becoming an area of significant concern to the chamber. There is an obvious concern over fairness. Why should a company’s tax rate jump once it goes above an arbitrary threshold of half a million dollars in sales?

More worrying for the chamber is the growing concern that widening the gap in the tax rates between small and corporate rates is a significant disadvantage to small businesses who wish to grow. They lose their incentive. Such a significant increase in tax is a significant deterrent to small business growth, exactly the opposite of what the tax system should be encouraging. The chamber would go further and state that a return to the 10 percent corporate tax rate will provide stronger returns to the provincial government than a reduction in the small business tax rate to 1.5 percent or further.

We therefore recommend that the corporate tax rate be returned to 10 percent as soon as possible. We would go further and state that the small business tax rate should not be reduced until the corporate tax rate has in fact returned to 10 percent.

Moving past the PST is the next obstacle. While the increase in our corporate tax rate was damaging, it pales in significance in the face of the most damaging tax decision of recent times: the return to the PST. This is without a doubt the most important aspect of our submission. As shown in our written submission, the return to the PST
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is not only impacting B.C. businesses; it’s also undermining Canada’s competitiveness.

B.C.’s and Canada’s competitiveness have slipped considerably in comparison with other jurisdictions. This is largely attributed to the return to PST. An unfortunate outcome of the HST referendum is that the return to PST is treated as a political issue rather than an economic one. While the politics may have been settled by the referendum, the economic front is far from settled. It must be stated that the decision to scrap the HST was the wrong choice by British Columbians, full stop.

Our members have sent a clear message. We believe a move to a value-added sales tax system is not only in the best interests of B.C.’s economy, but it’s also inevitable. The move by all provinces, save three, in Canada and the growing shift to value-added taxes globally mean we can’t stand alone.

With this in mind, B.C. will have no choice but to reform the PST and move forward towards a value-added tax. The only question is: how long do we have to wait, and how much damage will be done to the economy by the lack of political courage to address this issue? Our members are telling us that they are suffering from the return of the PST. Without action, individual businesses and other sectors will find themselves unable to compete.

In the absence of reform, measures must be introduced to address the most damaging aspect of the return to PST. While the chamber recognizes that the PST system already exempts certain machinery and processing equipment, we need to widen this to cover all acquisitions of machinery and equipment. This will facilitate business investment, growing their businesses and creating new jobs.

A final comment on the carbon tax, if time permits, Mr. Chair. No focus on competitiveness would be complete without a comment on B.C.’s carbon tax. At the time of its introduction the chamber network was a broadly based support for the carbon tax. Our members recognized that climate change was an issue that must be addressed, and the most efficient and effective way to do that was to place the price on carbon.

Our members recognized that the tax would have a negative impact on some sectors and on individual businesses. The concern of these sectors and businesses was mitigated by the fact that they would receive a form of tax cuts to mitigate the cost of the tax. While we recognize that the carbon tax remains revenue-neutral to government revenue, we’ve grown increasingly concerned by the manner in which revenue neutrality is being achieved.

Rather than a slush fund for program spending, we’ve seen the carbon tax become a slush fund of a different kind. When introduced, revenue neutrality was achieved through broad-based cuts to personal and business tax rates. We’re now seeing the general taxpayer paying into a pool that is funding niche tax credits that serve limited industries or very specific types of consumption. To put this into context, if the original focus on the broad-based tax cuts were maintained, we would have an incredible $573 million available for further tax cuts for business.

The chamber believes there must be a culture shift around the carbon tax. Central to this must be returning the tax to a shift that results in broad-based cuts to personal and corporate tax. Failing that, designated tax measures must be targeted at mitigating the negative economic impact of the carbon tax on key sectors. If government feels that any of the existing credits are worthy of being retained, they should be folded into general revenue and funded by the general taxpayer.

In closing, local government. In light of comments and reports issued around the recent UBCM convention, the chamber would like to make a comment on local government finance. Once again we heard the same refrain from local governments: “We have too many spending commitments and not enough revenue.”

In terms of infrastructure requirements, it is indeed true that local governments face significant infrastructure needs that are beyond their ability to finance. However, many local governments have neglected their responsibility to maintain and upgrade local infrastructure. This has been a significant contributing factor to the major infrastructure deficit that we’re now facing.

In terms of downloading, the reality is that while the relationship between service provision and funding is a constantly moving target, many of the pressures on local government expenditure are not an imposition but rather a choice.

With that said, we do agree with the UBCM report that we must move beyond the current broken property tax model. Now is the time for the provincial government to initiate a collaborative review process including the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the business community to develop a more sustainable financial relationship. Central to this review must be goals to, firstly, increase the efficiency of local and municipal governments and, secondly, to improve the fairness of the business tax burdens.

Given time constraints, we will leave our comments at that this afternoon. I thank you for your time and would be happy to answer questions you may have.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, John, but you used all the time up. I’m sorry. That was 15 minutes, and I do apologize. I have to keep everybody…. So if there are any comments or concerns from the panel, we can’t do it right now. You’ll have to take it up after. I do apologize, sir, but we have to….

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Thank you for your presentation. Again, if there are any additional submissions,
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please get them in by the 17th. We would greatly appreciate that.

A. Shorten: Thank you. I feel a bit lonely. There’s only one lawyer here as opposed to, maybe, there could be three. This is modern times, and we are not having three people go to every meeting.

D. Ashton (Chair): No. Appreciate it. Sir, you have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions. I’ll give you a two-minute warning at eight minutes. The floor is yours.

A. Shorten: My name is Alex Shorten, and I appear before you today in my capacity as the president of the Canadian Bar Association, British Columbia branch. Again, thank you for hosting these consultations.

The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to supporting the rule of law, improvement in the law and the administration of justice. As president, I am honoured to represent 6,900 lawyers, judges and law students in every region of this province. While it can at times be difficult to provide a common voice for such a very diverse membership, I am pleased to be before you today with what is now the CBABC’s 12th submission to the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

CBA has a proud history of collaboration with government. We are often consulted by ministries concerning changes in law and policy, and we make substantial submissions on a variety of topics. Our efforts are fuelled by the very volunteers who are the backbone of our organization. They put in a lot of time doing this.

In the past year we have prepared submissions on proposed amendments to the Insurance (Vehicle) Act and proposed amendments to the Family Compensation Act. Some of you might have heard of that as the wrongful death act, but it’s the old Family Compensation Act. We are currently completing our contributions on both the draft societies act and the draft franchises act.

Change in the justice system requires ongoing collaboration, and I am proud of the contributions that CBA members make to reform in the justice system. We value our role as trusted advisors and are always happy to provide our recommendations. We were particularly pleased to be involved in a series of Justice Summits convened by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General under the Justice Reform and Transparency Act. The fourth one is coming up in November on family violence, violence against women.

Last year we told you about the CBABC document called An Agenda for Justice, in which we proposed investments in the justice system as resources became available, as well as almost two dozen no-cost and low-cost legislative law reforms designed to make life better for families, businesses, communities and the public.

It encouraged British Columbians and governments to be part of the solution to solving the problems in our justice system. A number of our recommendations, including such things as expanded hours to the family law line, the franchise act and the societies act are examples of that sort of collaboration.

We remain mindful of your need to control spending and deliver a balanced budget. As a member-funded, not-for-profit organization, we fully appreciate fiscal restraint. Yet as B.C. stands on the precipice of what the Premier has called the opportunity of a lifetime, is now not the time to consider what value this will bring to British Columbians? Is it not time to reinvest in a compassionate society which values and protects access to justice as a fundamental right?

We are aware that money alone will not solve the system’s problems. Non-monetary reforms to the justice system are in motion, results have been very meaningful, and the government continues to work on those.

The legal profession, the bar association, has a storied and long past, but that does not make us immune to change or reform. In fact, we pride ourselves on the many recent improvements that have been brought on as a result of our desire to adapt.

One such initiative is the CBA futures initiative, which we embarked upon alongside our colleagues from across the country. This recently launched report seeks to shine a light on the many transformational pressures being exerted on our country’s legal professionals and on the justice system.

The process allowed for a certain introspection that we don’t commonly allow for, but the results were informative. Relevant to our discussion today is the finding that a renewed understanding of legal service delivery must, at its core, have a commitment to affordable services to a broad range of Canadians. We looked at solutions to access issues that range from eliminating the billable hour through to unbundling legal services and even taking legal professionals out of the picture for some services.

Unbundling legal services means that when a lawyer takes a brief, a lawyer only takes part of the brief. We are committed by the Law Society….When we take a file, we are supposed to take the whole brief. We’re looking for changes where the lawyer takes part of the brief, the client may take part of the brief, and another legal service provider, such as a paralegal, would take part of the brief. It’s a way of reducing the costs of legal fees.

B.C. has been at the forefront of these discussions, and we continue to challenge the current situation if it means bettering the system. Government, too, has been actively pursuing reform. The scope of reform undertaken by the government to address systemic issues has been significant and has provided results.
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The CBABC appreciates being a valued participant in the discussions around law and justice reform. It’s with pride that I say that the CBABC has made substantial contributions to the development of these initiatives.

The case for change is compelling, and over the years we’ve been joined by a number of valuable allies. This past summer the B.C. Chamber of Commerce unanimously passed a resolution calling for a timely and effective justice system through strategic investments and a fixed complement of Provincial Court judges. The support of the B.C. chamber adds yet another voice advocating for the justice system.

The resolution represents three years of our volunteer members working with the B.C. chamber and its provincial members. Plainly, it represents the business case for the access to justice. It recognizes that delays in the justice system impact businesses, and businesses in British Columbia will benefit from reforms and strategic investments in the justice system.

The chamber’s position verifies that a lack of funding for legal aid not only affects those who need it most; it reverberates through the whole system and, in fact, the entire province. An example of that is if you’ve got a self-represented person in a courtroom, it takes longer to do a case. If you’ve got a business that needs to get into that courtroom to have their case decided, they’re going to have to wait longer and longer.

Just last year we were pleased to learn that your committee, based on our submission, recommended to the Legislative Assembly that the provincial government incrementally increase legal aid funding, although not quite at the levels that we asked for when we were here last year. The committee recommended a commitment to long-term and stable funding of the court services branch and an incremental increase to legal aid funding.

In fact, the committee has included our recommendations in many of its reports over the years. However, today we return to reiterate that B.C.’s legal aid per capita is still nowhere near sufficient.

Access to justice is not a phrase that we use lightly. It is, in our view, the foundation upon which our society is based, and ensuring that access to justice is meaningful, in practice, falls to our government. CBABC suggests that meaningful access to justice should be viewed no differently than health care or education. It is the administration of justice and the ability to access justice that are the foundation to ensuring that all other social and economic structures in society are preserved and protected.

Access to justice is also impaired by the increased pressures on justice infrastructure, be it human or capital, by the inadequate funding provided for citizens to access legal aid. An investment in legal aid is critical to increasing the overall effectiveness in the justice system, and in this fiscal climate the need to spend every dollar with a view to future gains is particularly relevant.

What is our request? Our request is that in the 2015-2016 budget you make an immediate and substantial investment in legal aid services for both criminal and family matters. We recommend an immediate contribution to legal aid funding of $10 million over the next three years, starting with $4 million this year and $3 million in each of the next two years.

For years now, we’ve stated why legal aid matters. Today I reiterate why legal aid matters now more than ever. Low legal aid funding qualifications backlog in the courts, and the increase in self-represented litigants is barring many and helping few. Families and businesses are both suffering in debt and in silence while we continue to drip funds into a system that’s in crisis. It has been recognized that access to justice means the public first — putting the public first. After all, they use the system.

Before I wrap I just want to point out to you that if you go to the legal aid website you will see the eligibility for obtaining legal aid, whether you can get legal aid. For one person you have to have less than a net income of $1,480. Think about that in the city of Vancouver. You’re probably paying $800 for your rent. For two people it’s $2,070. If you increased that so that more people were eligible for legal aid, you’d have less self-represented people in the courtroom. That’s why we need this money.

The Attorney General, in the mandate given to her by the Premier earlier this year, will continue to pursue justice reform, including integration and court efficiencies, as envisioned in the Cowper report. We remain committed to supporting her as she delivers on this important mandate.

S. Gibson: I’m new to the committee, so I did miss the presentation last year. Thank you, sir, and good to hear your report. We’ve had presentations from notaries public asking that they receive a greater opportunity to do some more of the work that traditionally is being done by lawyers, and, as a way to decrease costs, you mentioned paralegals earlier — including them more in the process.

Would you like to comment on that a little bit — how to use notaries public in a way that doesn’t compromise the legal system but also allows us to keep the costs down of some of these services?
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A. Shorten: I’m happy to answer that question. Currently notaries public and paralegals are being studied by the Law Society, which is the regulator of lawyers, to determine what regulation would be brought in for the Law Society to actually have regulation over notaries and paralegals. The purpose of that is an access-to-justice purpose in order to provide legal services to people who are not getting them now.

In fact, that is being discussed at the Law Society level. There’s a committee that’s now looking at what those regulations would look like.

S. Gibson: What about the idea of using law students as a part of their credit coursework? I know it’s currently sort of being used, to some extent, as a hybrid, but they end up in their final year of law school doing pro bono, effectively — legal advice that has to have, obviously, some restrictions to it. But they give legal aid or aid to those who are disadvantaged, noting your earlier comment, sir.

Legal students who are approaching the conclusion of their studies can use this as part of their credit towards their degree. What’s your comment on that?

A. Shorten: Well, you’re quite right. It’s already being done, to a certain extent, in the third year. I mean, they still are going to school, and it does happen during the summer too.

In terms of going forward, that’s actually one of the things discussed in the Futures report as perhaps being one of the solutions for keeping costs down.

M. Morris: I’m just curious as to what the CBABC approach is to the Cowper report and whether you’ve been working as an association to implement a lot of the recommendations from the Cowper report. Or have you been working with the Department of Justice on that?

A. Shorten: We’ve been working with the ministry. These summits are part of that also, so that’s one of the recommendations that came out of it.

We had some other recommendations for Cowper that didn’t quite make it through into his report, but they haven’t gone away in terms of the people within the justice system thinking about them.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, you’ve got a bad cold. Look after yourself. Vitamin C, hot milk or a hot rum — one of the two.

D. Ashton (Chair): Janice, just quickly. Ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning — and we have five minutes for questions.

J. Barr: Absolutely. In fact, I think my presentation will be shorter than that.

The Richmond Society for Community Living is a non-profit, community-based organization that serves people with developmental disabilities — children, youth and adults — as well as their families. We currently assist over 1,100 individuals and families in the Richmond community. We are one of many organizations across the province that provide early intervention services for children with developmental disabilities or children that are at risk of developmental disability.

As Richmond’s largest non-profit service provider, we recognize the unique abilities of individuals and are dedicated to promoting inclusion of people with all abilities in our community.

During your tour, I suspect you have heard from a lot of different organizations that spoke about the increasing and growing wait-lists for early intervention services for children at risk of having a developmental disability, not meeting their developmental milestones, or having a developmental disability.

The Richmond Society for Community Living is here to add our voice to the increasing, desperate situation of families and children that are not getting their needs met in this province. Over the years our RSCL has endeavoured to provide an appropriate array of services for children with developmental disabilities or special needs
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and their families. These services promote child development. They support families to have their child raised in their own family home.

They also facilitate the inclusion of children into their community. Increasingly, we are seeing children being left behind in our community, being excluded from typical community experiences. This is of great concern. Children are not being left behind because the services are not available. Nor are they being left behind because the community is unwilling. They are being left behind because they are languishing on wait-lists that are growing every year.

The interesting thing…. One of the members mentioned, or questioned, research. Well, the research with respect to early intervention services is unwavering. It is very, very clear that early intervention services for children at risk of a developmental disability are supported by the research. Children that receive early intervention have an increased likelihood of meeting their appropriate developmental milestones and a corresponding decreased need for future care and services. Understanding this situation, we must ask ourselves why we have wait-lists for early intervention services like infant development, supported child development and early intervention therapies.

The wait-lists for early intervention services in Richmond grow every year, with little or no reprieve. Many years have passed without any increase to funding of these services. The Richmond Society for Community Living operates the Richmond supported child development program and the infant development program. Currently we have 94 children and families waiting for services for supported child development.

Supported child development provides families or the child care centre extra support. Children with special needs or issues around development access the support they may need in a child care or preschool setting so they can attend that typical preschool or daycare. Without the extra support provided by the supported child development program, children with special needs are not able to attend preschool or daycare.

Can you imagine yourself…? Can you imagine being a parent of a three- or four-year-old child, and your child is unable to go to preschool — not because the child isn’t welcomed at that preschool or certainly doesn’t need the support of preschool but because there are no funds available to provide the extra support to that child care centre so that child can attend preschool?

It seems to me that child care is one of our basic expectations of early development. There are children in this province and in Richmond that are not attending preschool because those funds are not available. Is this acceptable? I think not. Do we really want any child in this province to be prevented from attending preschool?

These are truly trying times for families and, I appreciate, trying times for the government. There are many demands as you’ve been going around the province hearing from different groups, all with their ask. So I appreciate that this is a very difficult decision.

I can assure you that RSCL, as other organizations that provide similar services, has endeavoured to use the government funds that we receive to the greatest degree possible. We fundraise in our community to expand the availability of these services, but clearly, it is not enough when we have 94 families waiting for service.

I have put in your package our information for you — just the example from the Richmond Society for Community Living. In 2005 we received the contract to provide this service. With the funds we received at that time, we were able to hire 4.3 full-time-equivalent consultants and a coordinator. We were serving 133 families at that time. In 2013 we had the same 4.3 full-time-equivalent consultants and one coordinator — the same funding. We were then serving 334 families, with an additional 94 families on the wait-list.

Each year we’ve seen the increase and our wait-lists grow, and there has been no change in funding. We have now got to a point where children are being excluded from typical opportunities like preschool, and this is truly a sad day.

Supported child development joins other programs, like the early intervention therapies — occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech therapy — that have not received funding in a number of years, as well as infant development. This is the support to families that have a child at risk of a developmental delay in zero to three years. This, too, is a program in desperate need.

In closing, the time has come. The provincial government must reinvest in supports and services for people with developmental disabilities and their families. The province must put families first.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation. I’m wondering if you are aware of any studies or comparisons that would show the downstream, both human and financial impacts, of a lesser degree of early intervention services such as you described versus another jurisdiction that has a higher degree of early intervention services.

J. Barr: I’m not aware of the research that has compared those two — one community or region with increased intervention services and one with decreased. Not that comparison, but there is a wealth of research around the benefits of early intervention and how they do produce actual outcomes.

There was a research done. The fact sheet that I’ve provided, actually, is based on information and a survey
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and study done by the Ministry of Children and Family Development on the availability of funding for the different regions in the Lower Mainland, or the different communities, and the comparison between the different communities. There is certainly a lack of equality across those regions with respect to the funding and what families have available to them.

G. Heyman: If between now and the Friday deadline you come across any other information, research or studies that you think would be valuable to illustrate the point that you’re making, and you submit them, they will form part of the record, and we’ll review them.

D. Ashton (Chair): The handout you’re talking about — we don’t have it. When was that forwarded to us? Was it forwarded to us?

J. Yap: A quick one. Janice, thank you for the great work you do in Richmond. You mentioned that funding has not kept up with the growing demand, but I know that you do a lot of good fundraising. Do some of those funds that you raise in your fundraisers supplement the programs that are the basic programs? Are those for other specific needs?

J. Barr: The first answer to the question is yes. We absolutely fundraise for these early intervention programs. As you may know, with fundraising it is sometimes easier to fundraise for children as opposed to adults. We provide services to both.

It’s also easier to fundraise for capital or hard costs — vans, equipment, our lending libraries. Both of these programs have libraries of books and equipment, specialized equipment, to lend to child care centres and families. Those funds are easily attracted with respect to fundraising, but costs of ongoing operations…. It’s very, very difficult to fundraise ongoing operations for consultants.

D. Ashton (Chair): Any other questions? Thank you very much, Janice. Greatly appreciated.

D. Ashton (Chair): Doctor, ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning — and we have five minutes for questions.

A. Winter: Good. Well, thanks for your time today, Mr. Chairman. I understand you’re in the homestretch. Suzanne Gill, our director of corporate development, is with me as well for any of the really tough questions.

We believe that a number of you know about Genome B.C. and our history, our contribution to job creation and B.C.’s economy, and we appreciate that interest. I think we’ve had the opportunity to talk to many of you on that topic.

Just to summarize. Genome B.C. is a catalyst for research in British Columbia and the applications of genomics across B.C.’s key economic and social sectors, including health care, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, mining, energy and the environment. We’ve had a successful first 15 years, and, if our success continues, we hope someday to have worked ourselves out of existence.

The late Nobel laureate Michael Smith co-founded Genome B.C. so that the province would be able to secure its place in the economy of the future, from human health to forestry and mining. Michael Smith knew that if we didn’t invest in genomics, we’d lose the ability to compete globally and to create jobs in the future.

Let me give you two examples of genomics’ importance in B.C. First is forestry. As you know, our forests generated over $11 billion in economic activity in 2013. It turns out that genomics is critical to ensuring that they remain healthy and productive. In partnership with the province, as well as companies such as Island Timberlands, TimberWest and Western Forest Products, we’re working to ensure that the trees being planted are the most resilient to a changing environment.

One particular example is the red cedar selection project, which is finding the genes responsible for resistance to heartwood rot and cedar leaf blight. A second project, in the coastal Douglas fir breeding program, combines decades of field testing and new genomics tools to identify trees with good growth and high wood density. This research leads to new selection methods which save tree breeders considerable time and effort, as trees with desired traits can be identified at the seedling stage. This leads to healthier and more productive forests, which in turn protects British Columbia jobs.

The next example may be closer to our hearts. We do a lot of research in the area of cancer, and one example is a project that’s cutting wait times and improving health outcomes for women with breast cancer. Our projects
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enable genomics testing in the health care system. The Centre for Clinical Diagnostic Genomics at PHSA is the first clinically accredited lab in Canada to use next-generation sequencing for routine clinical testing of BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 breast cancer genes.

B.C. does approximately 550 of these tests annually, and there’s a wait-list of about 250 people. Technology was put in place in August 2012, and the time for the tests has been cut by 75 percent, reducing the wait times from six to two months. This allows doctors to make decisions about treatment faster. Not only can more tests be carried out, but the cost of the test has been reduced by 15 to 20 percent. This test is being expanded to other types of cancer in the future.

Those are just two examples out of about 200 we have of projects. I hope you can see why Michael Smith believed that Genome B.C. was something that the province had to invest in, or we’d simply end up being late consumers of technology instead of being able to create it ourselves in areas that are most important to us.

Genome B.C. also supports world-class innovation relevant to B.C.’s economy. I’ve mentioned this in forestry and health, but genomics supports the development of important sectors, such as agriculture, mining and energy — including LNG, actually. We attract co-investment and engagement from local and global partners and develop research partnerships with a broad cross-section of provincial institutions.

Genomics in B.C., not just with us, started to produce technologies that can be applied to real problems currently faced by industry and society. We’re also investing in the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs by providing enhanced opportunities to learn. Genome B.C.’s expanding education program, aimed at grades 9 to 12, has reached over 100 communities across the province, from Dawson Creek to Prince Rupert to Port McNeill.

These efforts are provincewide because genomics and molecular biology are relevant to every community in B.C. — which brings me back, really, to my first point, or suggestion: that if we’re successful, eventually Genome B.C. will work itself out of existence. That’ll happen when there’s a general understanding of and support for an incorporation of genomics in society, just like many other technologies, like information technology today. That seems like a lofty goal. It will take quite some time, but we’ve actually made more progress than one might think.

For example, when we were created, the concept was that 100 percent of our funding would come from government. In 2001 that meant that 50 percent of the funds for our first projects came from the province. For our next five-year plan, looking from 2015 out, we are looking for only 24 percent of the funding from the province. How is this possible? It’s really because of examples like the forestry project I mentioned above.

Since 2001 we’ve gone from needing to build capacity and infrastructure in order to prove the importance of the science to having partners in industry who clearly see our value and want to contribute to our research, and not only industry but also in the public sector as well.

Genome B.C. is on track to create $340 million in valuable and innovative research programs for our current five-year — 2010 to 2015 — business plan. We will have used the $85 million received from the province over that period, and thank you for that.

B.C. is the most successful province in life sciences research in Canada on a per-capita basis, with Genome B.C. projects winning over 28 percent of all federal competitions. A study by MNP estimates that the $187 million provided by the provincial government since 2000, to 2015, has already generated 21,000 jobs and contributed $1.4 billion to the provincial GDP.

This has been possible because the private sector has seen the importance of genomics. We’ve worked hard to attract over 300 national-international groups to co-invest over $580 million in the research by the end of 2015, including world-class pharmaceutical companies, philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation, and many others.

Genome B.C. projects operate across B.C. and include universities and teaching hospitals. Genomics sounds complicated, but, in the two examples I gave you, technicians and technologists have been just as important to success as those with advanced degrees.

To date, we have helped 23 companies advance their technologies and market opportunities, which in turn has created new jobs and raised private investment. These companies currently employ 257 people and are advancing and developing 33 products and services. The companies have raised private investment of approximately $200 million and secured over $1 billion in co-development deals.

This all means that B.C. is well placed in terms of job creation now and well into the future. The OECD predicts that the bioeconomy enabled by genomics will increasingly be a major driver in economic growth. By 2030 the bioeconomy in British Columbia could reach over $12 billion in GDP and support 56,000 jobs with the right investment, up from about $2 million in 2010.

What happens next? Genome B.C. has a strategic plan for 2015 to 2020 which commits to raise or bring in $350 million in research and development to ensure B.C.’s continued capability for our scientific excellence in genomics. A commitment by the government of B.C. of $85 million up front, equivalent to $17 million a year, will enable Genome B.C. to attract funds from the private sector and international sources, such as the federal government. We do this by working closely with end users in government and industry.

The key focus of our sector deliverables in our next plan is to move genomics further along the commercial-
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ization and translation pathway while securing benefits from our previous investments in research and development.

This 2015-20 plan also proposes two new programs: first of all, a new entrepreneurship partnership program with people such as the university technology transfer officers, accelerators, incubators and angel investors; and a new industry innovation program aimed at supporting small companies as they commercialize emerging opportunities, driving new jobs, economic growth and so on.

Genome B.C. will continue to attract new partners and co-investment for this plan and is confident in its ability to do so, so long as provincial commitment remains firm. The ability of Genome B.C. to raise the remaining 76 percent, or $265 million, from national-international sources depends critically on the amount of the provincial contribution made up front. If it weren’t for the provincial government’s contribution or support of Genome B.C. and the vision of Michael Smith, we wouldn’t be here today. We wouldn’t be where we are. The opportunities or the outcomes I spoke of, the opportunity to protect our forests and the effect of the changing environment, or the ability to reduce costs of testing and wait times for cancer patients, wouldn’t be there.

Instead, we’re able to invest directly in partnership with industry and philanthropic organizations to find made-in-B.C. solutions to our challenges. I do really believe that this is the best way forward for our economy, for our jobs, for our society and our future well-being. We appreciate your support.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. Just a couple of questions about the economic impacts of the 2000-2015 provincial contribution. You’ve got some data there.

Did you estimate revenues to the provincial government? That’s one question. Also, when a product or service is commercialized, does Genome B.C. or the province share in the revenues, the profits? Basically, I’m interested in kind of the financial return to the province of this investment.

A. Winter: Both good questions. In terms of the provincial government…. Sorry, the first question was really around the tax revenue?

A. Winter: Right. We have done that, I think, once or twice. We did it around one plan, which was the 2005-2010 plan, specifically around revenues coming back to the government.

It worked out that in terms of the B.C. Stats model, which then calculates, in some way that I don’t quite understand, revenues back…. For the $75 million that was put in, for which we then generated $300 million of research, the province got back in direct taxes…. It was around $55 million in taxes and then a share of the federal taxes, which was about another $10 million. So in direct taxes coming back….

The only reason we can do that is because for every dollar we get from the province, we multiply that up by four. That economic activity, through the B.C. Stats model, then results in direct taxes back to the province.

It’s not why you would invest, but it de-risks the province, because over that five-year period that’s what comes back. Of course, you invest in the projects because of the future returns.

In terms of provincial share, it’s an interesting question. We do have agreements with the universities — because we fund the universities mostly — around getting a return. A return, we say, is one-third net benefit. So far we have not got benefit back directly from the universities in that way.

I think if we were to apply that — we’re looking at this for this future plan — to the companies that we would deal with, then I think we would probably expect that back more easily. The universities have to license their IP before we get anything back, whereas the companies, you deal with directly.

D. Ashton (Chair): I’ve got a minute and a half left. Sorry, sir. You’re going to have questions, but I’ve got to cut you off at 15.

S. Gibson: This is a very important area, I think, for our province. With the aging population, I see your organization being involved prescriptively in terms of prevention — some of the areas you’re working on. This is a huge challenge for government today — funding health care increasingly for an older population.

I would like you to speak to that in your organization and how you could benefit the province and government.

A. Winter: Just in a very short answer, then. I think a lot of the discussion that we have today around genomics is: how predictive can that be? In fact, a great deal of the interest — I think particularly on the consumer side but within the health authorities as well — is being able to use the genomic signature, if you like, to forecast a little bit of what somebody should be doing about their own health. That area of prevention, I think, makes it personal. Often we find much more interest because of that personal link.

G. Heyman: You have a figure that by 2020 the bioeconomy could reach $12 billion in GDP and support 56,000 jobs. My question is: is that figure inclusive of jobs that, for instance, might be created in the forestry industry or other industries by the application of the genomics research, or are those additional jobs? And if the answer is yes to that, if there’s some document you could provide us by Friday that could have an estimate of those, that would also be useful.

A. Winter: Yes. Thanks, George. This all comes from the OECD. The OECD has looked at their 23 member countries, and they’ve defined the bioeconomy in three areas: health, industrial and what they call natural resources. But it’s only the jobs that are associated with technology. It’s only the jobs associated with value-added products.

It’s not the jobs associated with cutting down a tree, but there are other jobs in forestry around creating that biomass and turning it into chemicals, for example — that sort of thing. So it’s incremental in that sense.

D. Ashton (Chair): That would be great, Doctor, if you could. Friday is the cutoff, so if you could get it in. And any additional support and information that you think we could use would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for today.

Next up we have the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. I have Harriet and Jim.

Nice to see you, folks. Thank you very much for coming today. Ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning — and then we have questions. You can see there are usually lots of questions.

H. Permut: I’m Harriet Permut, manager of government relations for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. With me is Jim Woolsey, chair of our government relations committee and a longtime Vancouver realtor.

We’re here today to talk to you about a few things: the vital role that home sales play in our communities by providing growth and opportunities, how the property transfer tax — fondly know as the PTT — makes home ownership less affordable and how this affects our community’s economic well-being. We’re also putting forward two recommendations which will lessen the burden that the PTT places on homebuyers.

First, I’ll give you some background about the real estate board. We represent more than 11,500 licensed residential and commercial realtors and their clients — property buyers, sellers and owners — in the greater Vancouver area. Our board boundaries extend from Pemberton in the north to Tsawwassen in the south, from the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast in the west to Maple Ridge in the east.

We share the Lower Mainland with the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. They’re not here today. If you have any questions about information on the Fraser Valley board, we have a little bit in our own presentation here today. The Fraser Valley board is an additional 2,800 realtors in Surrey, White Rock, Langley, Mission, Abbotsford and North Delta. I know some of you are from that area. That’s not us, but we share the neighbourhood with them, so we know what they’re on about.

Together we operate the Multiple Listing Service, and we use MLS data and produce statistical reports that are utilized by business, industry, government, economists and universities. The board and its members care about the quality of life in our communities, and realtors are known for their extensive charitable work. We’re also known for placing the interests of homebuyers first and for speaking up on their behalf.

We’re here today to talk about the need for government to make tax policy changes to support the important role that the real estate industry plays in our local and provincial economies. In 2013 the real estate and construction sectors together produced more than one-quarter, or fully 25.6 percent, of the province’s GDP, according to the 2014 British Columbia Financial and Economic Review recently presented by the Finance Minister.

Construction and real estate also produced 248,700 jobs, making them collectively the largest job creators in the B.C. economy. In 2013 on the housing side alone in the greater Vancouver area more than 28,500 homes were sold on the Multiple Listing Service, or the MLS, generating $1.84 billion in spinoffs, economic activity and almost 14,000 related jobs.

Now we have learned that our province is on track to balance the 2014-15 provincial budget, and the year-end surplus for this period is projected to be $266 million. This is a result of improved revenue, according to Finance Minister de Jong.

From the minister’s September quarterly financial update, we know that the property transfer tax is forecast to bring in $50 million in excess of the February budget figure for 2014-15. I understand that Minister de Jong mentioned this in his presentation to you on September 15. The timing is right to make changes to the property transfer tax. It just makes sense.

During the provincial election campaign last year, the real estate board launched a “Help reduce the PTT” campaign. Our goal was to have candidates commit to reducing the PTT, and once elected, to implement and reduce the tax. To do this, we engaged our members as well as stakeholders, including homebuyers, voters and the media.

Using real estate board data, we highlighted our powerful story and convinced candidates. Once the election
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was over, the candidates were sworn in as Members of the Legislative Assembly. The government held true to its word and reduced the PTT for first-time buyers.

How did we convince candidates? We showed them the numbers, the current version of which you can see on page 2 of your handout — that big table on the back. Here we are back again using our numbers to make our case. This time we’re asking for changes to the PTT for all buyers and not just for first-time buyers.

Given the projected 2014-15 budget surplus, we think this makes sense. Continuing to rely on the PTT for a large share of revenue — the forecast is $854 million in 2014-15 — unfairly increases the cost of homes, reduces access for middle- and lower-income buyers.

I’d like you to take a moment and remember back when you were younger and maybe first married and living in a tiny apartment that you’d managed to buy. Then children started coming, and you wanted to trade up to a bigger home. Today this is possible for fewer and fewer young buyers. The rate of home ownership among first-time buyers aged 25 to 34 in B.C. is now 48.2 percent. This compares to Ontario at 53.8 percent, Alberta at 59.3 percent and Canada-wide at 52.4 percent.

Making adjustments to the PTT would ensure that home ownership is more affordable and that our home ownership rate rises, which in turn is a good strategy for ensuring a secure and prosperous future for British Columbians.

In case it’s not top of mind to you, as it is for us in real estate, the PTT is currently charged at a rate of 1 percent on the first $200,000 of the purchase price of a home and 2 percent on the balance.

We have two recommendations. The first is that the government increase the 1 percent threshold to $525,000 from $200,000 to modernize the PTT to better reflect the current price of homes. The 2 percent would be applied to the remainder of the home price. This would save all buyers of homes priced up to $525,000 a PTT cost of $8,500.

As a bit of history, in 1987 when the tax was first implemented, 95 percent of homes in greater Vancouver sold for less than $200,000, meaning that just 5 percent of all sales had the 2 percent portion applied. Today approximately 96 percent of homes in greater Vancouver are sold for more than $200,000. If the 2 percent portion of the PTT was applied only to the top 5 percent of all home sales today, as originally intended, the $200,000 threshold would have to be raised to more than $1.4 million in greater Vancouver.

If you look at the table on the back side of our handout, you can see we’re not talking about higher-end west side Vancouver homes here. We’re talking about modest, middle-class family homes in places like Coquitlam and Maple Ridge and Squamish. In Coquitlam the PTT now adds over $13,000 to the price of a modest detached home which costs just under $764,000. To purchase that home, the buyer must have an annual household income of just under $121,000. The average household income in Coquitlam is just under $84,000.

If the buyer heads further out to Maple Ridge, the most affordable community in greater Vancouver, that modest detached home will cost just under $480,000. The PTT will still add a substantial $7,600. The home-buying household will be required to have an annual income of more than $75,000 to afford a typical mortgage. The average household income in Maple Ridge is just over $63,000.

Our second recommendation proposes to index the PTT threshold. We’re asking the government to index the 1 percent PTT threshold either using Statistics Canada’s new-housing price index or the Canadian Real Estate Association’s national MLS home price index — also called the HPI — to make adjustments annually. This will ensure that the PTT has the same effect on current and future homebuyers.

Although the PTT applies to both new and existing home sales, the new-housing price index provides a reasonable proxy for all home sales. The MLS home price index offers an alternative method of applying indexation. Information on the national HPI is available at this website. It’s www.homepriceindex.ca.

In closing, I’d like to say that home sales are the backbone of the economic growth of our communities. When homes aren’t bought, there are fewer jobs and spinoffs, and our economy suffers. Let’s not let this happen again, as it did in 2008-09. With the surplus on the horizon, the time is right for government to make the tax policy changes we identify in our recommendations.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. A couple of quick questions. Can you clarify for me, in terms of the first-time-buyer provision, how that works? The threshold was increased to $475,000. So you don’t pay any PTT, if you’re a first-time buyer, up to that level. Then over and above that, you start paying…. What the wording suggests is that if you’re over that level, you don’t qualify at all. That’s one question — just how that works.

The second is: have you estimated the tax revenue impact of your proposal? Sorry, maybe it’s here, and I missed it.

J. Woolsey: On the first one, the threshold is for the 1 percent. For a non-first-time buyer you pay 1 percent on the first $200,000. For a first-time buyer you pay 1 percent on $475,000. And then the 2 percent…. A first-time buyer over that threshold, then, doesn’t qualify.
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J. Woolsey: I’m sorry. It is a full exemption for the first-time buyer under $475,000.

H. Permut: The other question about revenue. The B.C. Real Estate Association, our provincial association, has a written submission they’re making to you. I don’t know if they’ve sent it in yet. I have a draft in front of me. Their economists have estimated the cost of these recommendations.

So their first recommendation is to index the threshold, and they’re estimating that that would cost about $8 million to index. That is the same cost that the government spent last year when they changed the threshold from $425,000 to $475,000. It also was about $8 million. So it’s about the same cost.

The second recommendation: increasing the threshold from $200,000 to $525,000. Their estimate is…. If you take all of it and take out the first-time-homebuyers part, it’s about $143 million. That’s what they estimate, and you’ll see that in writing when they send it in, which will be shortly.

Dr. Cavers is not here. Board of education, you’re waiting for someone else. Is that correct?

And Notaries Public — not here at this point in time. So we’ll take a short recess then.

D. Ashton (Chair): Dr. Cavers, welcome. Thank you very much for coming today. We have ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning at eight minutes — and five minutes allotted for questions.

B. Cavers: My name is Dr. Bill Cavers. I’m a family doctor in Victoria, where I’ve been practising for 35 years. I’m here today as president of the Doctors of B.C. Our association represents 11,000 physicians in the province.

My remarks today will focus on three key areas. First is that the collaboration and cooperation between the Doctors of B.C., the Ministry of Health and the health authorities that started a decade ago is fundamentally changing the culture of health care, and too few people know about this.

The second is that, since this Select Standing Committee on Finance is sitting today, I have actually got some good news from the medical sector for a change — that the collaborative relationships I have mentioned are not only improving health care outcomes for British Columbians, they are also reducing the per capita cost of that care.

The third message is that there is still a lot of work to be done and work that still needs to be supported.

Now into a bit more detail. A little more than ten years ago the Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health took a historic and groundbreaking step. After years of animosity this new era of collaboration started with the 2002 physician master agreement.

At that time physicians chose to move millions of dollars that would otherwise have gone into direct compensation into a special fund allowing Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health to comanage programs to meet the needs of the most vulnerable patients in the province.

The partners formed a collaborative committee called the General Practice Services Committee, which had a mandate to cooperatively support and enhance full-service family practice and benefit patients — especially patients with complex medical needs. The committee has been so successful that its budget has been increased annually from an original $10 million per year to almost $210 million today.

Other collaborative committees have also sprung up, including the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues, the Specialist Services Committee and the Shared Care Committee — which focuses on patient care in the interface between specialists and family doctors and between the community and the hospitals.

These programs each have representatives from the Doctors of B.C., the Ministry of Health and the health authorities. They each work on a collaborative model, and they each make decisions by consensus.

Also created have been divisions of family practice, which are community-based groups of family physicians working together to improve primary care in their own communities. Divisions also work with their partners through a unique collaborative services committee that is comprised of physician, local health authority and GP Services Committee representatives working cooperatively.

There are now 34 divisions across the province, with more than 4,700 active members in their local divisions. Over 95 percent of the province’s family physicians have access to a division.

None of this existed a decade ago. This approach is fundamentally changing the culture of health care delivery from suspicion and discord into cooperation and collaboration. This, in turn, fundamentally needs to be supported into the future.

My second point is that the collaborative relationships are not only improving health care outcomes, but they’re also reducing the per capita costs of that care. I need to use a bit of jargon here. I’m going to refer to an item called the triple aim.
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The triple aim is a concept developed by an international association called the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, and it’s comprised of three key principles. Those are: improving the health of the population, reducing the per capita cost of care and improving the experience of care for the patient and the provider.

Keeping the triple aim in mind, what have these collaborative relationships done? Together we’ve created incentives and programs to support recruitment and retention of doctors into rural areas and into maternity care. We’ve introduced incentives and enhanced training for family physicians to address chronic disease management and mental health issues, not only in adults but in child and youth mental health, end-of-life issues and palliative care.

On September 29, in Kelowna, there was a summative conference of partners between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Child and Family Development, the Doctors of B.C. and the First Nations Health Council to deal with mental health issues in child and youth, and substance use.

Together we’re working to create more seamless care for patients when they move between GPs and specialists, communities and hospitals, so nobody will fall through the cracks.

We have created a valuable infrastructure network of divisions, providing an engaged group of doctors willing to work cooperatively on issues. Right now, through these very divisions, we are in the midst of rolling out the GP for Me program, which is designed to help British Columbians get a family doctor if they want one.

How do patients and all British Columbians benefit from these collaborative initiatives? B.C. has the lowest hospitalization rate in Canada for seven chronic ailments. Through the programs, we have demonstrated an improved level of care for these target populations. We have seen a 29 percent drop in mortality for patients with congestive heart failure.

The head of the B.C. Renal Agency has already said that the proportion of new dialysis patients coming from the diabetic population has been diminishing since the chronic disease incentives were introduced.

Independent evaluation has shown that high-needs patients with diabetes, congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive lung disease who are attached to a family doctor cost the system 50 percent of what a similar patient without a family doctor would cost.

The same evaluation indicates that a rise of only 5 percent in the attachment rate for high-needs patients in the diabetic population will result in annual cost-avoidance savings of $85 million. This same cost-avoidance pattern is seen in other chronic ailments, such as congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Although I do not have a total cost savings for all these populations put together, I can tell you it’s going to be an awful lot more than $85 million annually.

On a different note, we have also dramatically increased the number of practising physicians using electronic medical records — from a mere 12 percent in 2006 up to 95 percent as of today. That means that B.C. ranks with the world leaders in the adoption of computerized records.

My third point: there’s still work to be done. We have no ability to rest on our laurels. There’s still a lot of work to do, and it needs to be supported.

First, in going forward we need to recognize and acknowledge the value and achievements that result when doctors, the health authorities and the government work together collaboratively. To provide the best patient care while controlling health care costs, we must continue to expand our efforts based on what has already proven successful.

In this vein, Doctors of B.C. is currently working with government and health authorities to provide facility-based physicians — hospital-based, primarily — with a stronger voice in health care improvement in programs analogous to the divisions that I referenced. Together we will promote innovation and the best use of taxpayers’ dollars to help meet some of the challenges in our health system.

Second, we need to capture the potential of information technology to better support patient-based care and deliver cost savings. To do that, we must invest in interconnectivity to enable cost savings through sharing access to critical medical information. Although we rank with the world leaders in adoption of EMRs, these systems do not talk to each other, and community-based systems do not talk to the health authorities. This must be addressed.

We need to invest in telemedicine and telehealth to improve access to care regardless of mobility or distance issues and to improve efficiency of care. Most of all, we need to ensure that information technology serves the clinical needs of patients and those who provide the health care, and not the reverse.

We must continue to improve access to health care services. A healthy population is not only an important goal in and of itself, but a healthy population is critical to a productive economy. Access to the right care at the right time keeps people healthier and saves dollars in the long run.

In closing, our health care system is facing many challenges. We each have our individual issues, and we each have our own piece of the puzzle in developing solutions. The Doctors of B.C. wants to continue to be a partner in these solutions, because we believe that we are better when we work together.

M. Morris: Yeah, just one. Doctor, good presentation and a good-news story. Lots of work that needs to be done, though, as you say.

I’m interested in EMRs. I know there are a couple of different systems that have been used throughout British Columbia. I’m just wondering what Doctors of B.C. — what kind of progress you’re making in bringing those systems together here. I know Northern Health has a program that’s a little bit different than what some of the other parts of the province are using.

B. Cavers: I put the analogy into a country road with a whole bunch of very bright street lights and some darkness in between. We now have physicians using computerized records in their offices. They’re very powerful, and we’ve been training them to use them properly.

But again, the interconnectivity is a piece that we’re sadly lacking. We need to be able to be what we call “vendor agnostic” so that I can send clinical information to you that can save you from duplicating services or making an error. We do not have those right now, and we need to bring those in.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. I assumed that you’d be providing copies of the presentation to the committee.

I had two questions. This is our last day of hearings. We’ve heard from a whole range of social service groups talking about the need for early intervention — children-at-risk folks, even literacy. They often make their case on the basis of potential health benefits. Do you have a general view of that?

The other group that’s coming to us a lot this year is advocates around Lyme disease, feeling that it’s something that’s being underdiagnosed and not being appreciated by the medical profession. I know you’re not an expert on either one of these things, but I would be interested in your view.

B. Cavers: Well, being a family doctor, I’m used to being not an expert on a whole bunch of things.

Health literacy is a huge issue in the population. We believe the health literacy level in the general population of B.C. is about grade 6. So we do need to make materials available to patients based on that. We need to be able to engage with them. We do need to take a different step and engage patients in their own care and develop modules and incentives for patient self-management. And we need to do it at their level.

As far as the Lyme disease, I’m not an expert on that. But I would say that categorically, the Doctors of B.C. supports evidence-based care. We do know that there are advocates for very many conditions in the population, and I’d go back to evidence as leading the way.

Doctor, thank you very much. If we could get that presentation in before the 17th, it would be greatly appreciated.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. And any other information that you might like to forward to us — that’s the cut-off date.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. It’ll just add to other 2,500 that we’ve got so far.

Come on forward. Donna, thank you very much for coming today. We’ve allotted ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll give you a two-minute warning and five minutes for questions. Depending on the subject, quite often there are a lot of questions. So I’m pretty sticky around the time. But 15 minutes is the maximum, so if you do go into yours, it affects the questioning. So thank you. The floor is yours.

D. Sargent: Well, I am going to read our submission, but I’ll do it fairly quickly. We like questions.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present our views on the importance of K to 12. We are especially pleased to make our presentation to this committee, which includes a Richmond MLA.

This brief is presented to you jointly by the board of education of school district 38, the Richmond District Parents Association, the Richmond Association of School Administrators, the Richmond Teachers Association and the Richmond Management and Professional Staff. Some of those, if not all, are with us today.

This has been a very difficult year for students, parents and staff because of the labour unrest throughout the province. But we are keen to move forward together. Our focus is on the learner and as a concrete demonstration of what we all stand for in Richmond, we have chosen to present this brief together.

We understand the difficult role that your committee plays in listening to the myriad of needs that are presented and then providing advice about the difficult decisions that come with making budget choices for the province. We recognize that fiscal responsibility means that there will not be enough money for all the needs pre-
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sented. Because of that, we urge you to ensure that education is the highest budget priority.

Studies have shown that the return on investment in public education is more than 250 percent. Well-educated societies contribute more to the provincial economy and use less health care, corrective justice and social services than societies where the investment in education is not as significant.

As the provincial government seeks to be fiscally prudent and grow a sustainable economy, there can be no better investment for B.C. than an investment in public education. So we reiterate: it should be the highest priority.

Recommendations. Last year the select standing committee recommendations included the following that related specifically to K to 12: provide sufficient funding for the K-to-12 system to enable B.C. students to become the top performers; develop a comprehensive capital plan for educational facilities that takes into account increased maintenance and aging school facilities, and continue the seismic upgrading program; redesign programming and direct funding to establish and strengthen trades and technology; review the increasing demands on school district budgets and ensure that funding is appropriately directed to meet the growing support required for students with special needs.

We have consistently advocated for three specific areas of initiative, which we believe are closely aligned with the recommendations your committee made last year. We would like to continue our advocacy in these three areas because our need has not diminished in any significant way.

One, ensure that public education receives increased, stable and consistent funding. For most school trustees the entire period of service has been characterized by the need to make budget cuts. Year after year, the annual budget-balancing process means that resource teachers, teacher-librarians, education assistants, youth support workers and district managers lose their jobs. School districts have been accountable for and adapted to the current funding levels, and staff of all levels have devised ways to ensure that we minimize the impact on the classroom. Our concern is not about the efficiency of the system. It is that our effectiveness continues to be eroded by budget cuts.

In B.C., students are to be the top performers nationally, as envisioned by the select standing committee when last year’s recommendations were made. It is positive that the provincial government is fully funding the recently negotiated pay increases for teachers, but it’s equally important for all wage increases to be similarly funded.

It is also positive that additional funding has been provided to allow for enhanced services through the learning improvement fund. However, this increased funding cannot be seen as the answer for everything the public education sector has been asking for. It is simply the first step. A greater investment is required to ensure that the K-to-12 sector is able to fully achieve its mandate.

We continue to be concerned that funding levels for children with special needs are not adequate enough to allow us to provide the level of service that we believe parents expect for their children. Because the cost of support for children with special needs exceeds the funding provided, we are challenged to provide adequate support to the most needy of our students. The loss of resources means that others, such as gifted students and those who would benefit from additional support, will also feel the impact of fewer available specialized teachers or resources.

Again, this is an area that the committee recognized last year but that continues to be a significant challenge for school districts.

Two, reinstate a capital plan. The committee’s recommendation for a comprehensive capital plan that takes into account increased maintenance, aging school facilities and the need for seismic upgrading is one that is echoed by the Richmond school district. We have a significant need for seismic upgrading throughout the district. So the current direction from the Ministry of Education that districts forgo the prep of a capital plan is particularly concerning.

We would also ask that the seismic funding program take a more broad perspective, however, than only seismic mitigation. Many of the schools that will receive seismic funding also have significantly aging mechanical and electrical infrastructure. We believe there will be much greater impact in efficiency if the upgrading of these systems were to be funded at the same time as the seismic upgrades.

Also of key concern to Richmond is the need to acquire a site in the city centre and the plan for the construction of a new elementary school for that site. Land values in the city centre are high, which means that a significant investment is required.

Three, provide support for proposed new initiatives in education. The Ministry of Education continues to focus on personalized learning as a major new initiative. It recognizes that students learn differently, bring different experiences and motivations to the classroom and require different approaches from their teachers.

In Richmond we have embraced this initiative and are moving forward with our own version of the concept, called Student Success Through Engagement. Investments in a new initiative such as this are extremely beneficial for students. However, full implementation of new initiatives will require time and attention from our educators in order to appropriately address the diverse needs of our students.

The committee’s recommendation with respect to funding of trades and technology programs aligns with
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the position taken by us in that trades and technology programs are one of the options that should be available as part of the personalized learning initiative.

We appreciate the opportunity to present to the select standing committee with this brief that emphasizes our belief in the importance of public education. We conclude our brief with this quotation from Benjamin Franklin, which encapsulates the essence of our presentation today: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

M. Pamer: I’m here as a resource to answer any questions that may arise. I’d be happy to do that. I think Donna did a great job with the presentation.

E. Foster: You didn’t do this, but pretty much everybody that has come along has said that balancing the budget was a great thing, and we have to do it, and we don’t have debt. Then everybody asks us for money. But you didn’t say we should balance the budget. You didn’t do that, but you talked about it being a first priority.

I can tell you, of the whatever number of presentations we’ve had — 50 or 60 or 70 presentations — everybody thought they should be the first priority. They were all sincere, and they all do great work — just to let you know where our challenges are. It’s extremely difficult. I spent 15 years in a high school, so I lived it. I know the challenges.

My question, having both the chair and…. You’re the superintendent, right? Perfect. As the number of students decreases, other than some of this area around here — everybody else in the province has that issue — I see that, if anything, the administrative offices haven’t gone down in size. They possibly have gone up.

E. Foster: That’s the question. How can you have more administration with less kids?

M. Pamer: I’m not sure that would hold true for Richmond, but it is a good question. One of the things…. You get funded per-student, but of course, that funding goes to a whole infrastructure, which includes keeping things organized, etc.

I believe that for our particular school district we don’t have rampant growth in administration. We’re holding steady because there is an important role there, but I would say, from our perspective, it’s not skewed in that way.

Our concern is…. It’s wonderful that this recent settlement was funded, but we have other employee groups where we had to fund those increases ourselves. Costs go up, and your funding doesn’t go up commensurate with that. I think that’s one of our challenges. I’m sure you’ve heard that from everybody else, but it’s very real for us.

D. Sargent: The board has made cuts in our administration, but we also realize that our administration is part of the team and has to lead and, in fact, can save us more money indirectly. If you have good leadership that helps on the ground, it also is cost saving. I think, if you would look at our budget, our administration is very in line.

G. Heyman: Thank you for your presentation. I’m wondering, with respect to the point you raised about children with special needs, if you know an average number of children with special needs in classrooms, as well as a maximum number, and where you think you are in terms of being able to actually get all children assessed to determine if the number is accurate.

Finally, could you expand a bit more on the Student Success Through Engagement and how far along in implementing that program you’ve been able to go, versus where you’d like to be if you had the funding you indicate you need.

M. Pamer: I’ll address the first question first, because there are lots of questions within that.

Generally speaking, what we’re finding is that while our enrollment is going down, as you’ve mentioned, our number of children with exceptional needs is not going down commensurate with that. Those needs are actually, if not increasing, certainly not decreasing. That’s challenging, because we want to find the best environment for all our children.

When you address the class size–composition issue, or mostly the composition issue, we’re really careful to ask those questions. I know our teachers do a wonderful job with this too, and our administrators. What’s the best learning environment for this child? How can we support them best? Do they need to be here all the time? Do they need to be here in different settings, depending on their needs?

We’re struggling with that. We certainly try to create the best learning environment and teaching environment
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with our children. I know, probably, you have heard a lot of descriptions of classroom situations that are of concern. I think our staff does an amazing job with what they have, but of course, more resources would be more than welcome.

That’s the first part of your question. You can ask more later. The next part of it — personalized learning, which is what we’re calling what used to be known as the B.C. ed plan. I guess it still is.

That requires a change in teaching practice and a change in how you deliver your programs — a really hopeful one, and one that people are enthused about, but they need the time and resources to explore that. You can’t necessarily change your teaching practice because there’s an idea that sounds really engaging for students and yourself. You need some time to talk about it, learn about it, etc.

I think that’s what we’re talking about, some support for that professional growth. That’s built into that innovative approach.

I want to thank you folks for coming, and thanks to the support staff in the back that came.

D. Sargent: You’re welcome. Just to add that we did, in your package, give our annual that we present to the community. In there, there are demographics that I think you’d be very interested to see. We come from a district that is 62 percent English language learners. There is more information to your question in that brochure as well.

D. Ashton (Chair): Also, if you have any additional information that you want us to have, Friday’s the cutoff — the 17th. If you think of something going back, or others think of it, please forward it to us. We can accept that up until the end of the 17th. Wonderful. Thanks again for coming.

D. Ashton (Chair): Welcome, sir. Thank you for coming today. Greatly appreciated. We have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll give you a two-minute warning if you’re getting close. Five minutes are allotted for questions. Once again, I want to thank you for making the journey here today to present to us.

A. Sablok: They’re smiling. It’s nice on a rainy day. It’s nice to see that.

It’s become tradition — and I hope you’ll let me do this — that when I speak to folks like yourselves I have a joke from my children. They seem to give me a joke every time I come out here, and the one today is: “Why did the M&M’s go to school? They wanted to be Smarties.”

I’m here today to talk about B.C. notaries. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the work that B.C. notaries do. We’ve been around for about 100 years. In the current format…. It’s changed over the last 85 years, and there was a significant change about 20, 30 years ago about the powers that we have.

We are a total of about 330 notaries here in B.C., all highly trained. We are in a lot of communities. We’re in every city in B.C., and we’re in a lot of the smaller communities. And that’s by choice. We try to make sure that we have a notary available for the communities that we serve. Not only do we work in those communities, but we live in those communities, and we participate in the community events.

For example, myself — I’m quite involved in the BIA in my area, quite involved with volunteering at the community centres. I do go and speak, actually, at the community centres, sometimes for seniors, talking about wills, powers of attorney, just for questions that they might have.

The society itself…. Like I said, we have approximately 330 members. We do get about 1,600 applicants a year. Our course…. We’re able to handle about 20 to 25 students. It is a master’s program at Simon Fraser University. The average age of a notary is 43, and I am close to that, thank you. Fifty-five percent are women, and we are very fortunate to have notaries from many different ethnicities and different languages in B.C. So we’re able to cover, basically, any type of client that we have in B.C.

B.C. is unique to the profession of a notary. There’s only one other province that has the ability to prepare the documents that we do prepare. Basically, we prepare non-contentious legal documents. Families, small businesses in our area in our clientele base — we’re able to service them with the documents that they need.

The general feeling that we have from our public is that
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they are comfortable with us, they enjoy dealing with us, and most importantly, they trust us. A lot of the time it can be a very simple matter of…. You know, they have an insurance claim. Their house was broken into. They need a declaration. They come to us as a notary. They need a certified true copy of their passport or driver’s licence. We can take care of that — pretty straightforward.

They have a child travelling overseas with one of the spouses or even with the grandparents, or it could be that the grandparents are taking the kids to Disneyland. We do the declaration for that.

And then we go one step further. When they need a will done, we prepare that for them. We’ve been preparing wills for quite some time. In my own office we do quite a few wills.

When they’re purchasing a home, which, for many people, is the biggest step…. After their family, that’s probably the biggest step they’re going to be taking, financially and physically — to purchase their own home. We help with that. We take care of the paperwork for that. We work with all the banks and credit unions in B.C., and we prepare the documentation for that.

So we really become part of their future. And if you notice here, that’s basically what I did. I labelled the file today that I’m using as “Future.” The reason for that is that we want to be able to do more in B.C. for our clients. This is not just for what we’re doing now, not just us asking for it. It’s our clientele asking for it.

I’ll introduce Tammy Nakashima. She’s our first vice-president of the B.C. notaries.

A. Sablok: Right now we prepare the documents that we do. We’d love to be able to do more documentation, more matters for our clients, the reason being that if a client comes in and we do their will for them or we’ve done their home purchase for them, we have a relationship with them. It might be one year or five years that we’re dealing with this client.

Now they come in, and unfortunately, they’ve had to use one of the wills because somebody’s passed away. At that point we’re not able to help them with the probate of the documents. There are additional documents that they have.

We have many clients of ours that are builders, or they’re self-employed — janitorial. It could be anything they could be doing. We cannot help them when they want to take their small business, incorporate it and expand it. We’re not able to do the incorporation for them.

What are the items we do besides what I’ve already spoken of? We do power of attorney. We do statutory declarations. There are a lot of documents that we will prepare for clients that are part of their planning for their future. We work very well with banks. We work very well with financial planners, real estate agents, insurance agents. We’re quite familiar with all the documentation that they prepare, just so we can work together as a group.

At the end of the day, it’s to assist the client in what they want to do. We’re just a tool for them to get to what they want to achieve. In fact, we did a survey a few years ago, and 77 percent of all B.C. residents enjoy working with a notary. The cool part of that is that once they worked with us, that number went up to 88 percent. So I guess we’re doing something right once they come to our office.

As I said before, clients themselves have asked: “Can we do additional documents with you? We’ve done this with you. We’re comfortable with you. You understand our family matters. You understand our business. We’d like to do the next step. We’d like to do additional documents.” That’s where we run into a stumbling block.

As I said, we’re all over the province. The Notaries Act — we’ve actually been working with the Ministry of Justice, the Law Society and the Canadian Bar Association to really bring our act up to the 21st century. What that includes is doing additional non-contentious work, really to assist our clients in doing what they are asking for us to do.

The Mortgage Brokers Act exemption. Basically, what the act says right now is that lawyers are automatically included in that. They’re able to do mortgage broker work; notaries are not at the present time. Under the Real Estate Act lawyers and notaries are able to prepare contracts and act as a realtor, but unfortunately, not in the Mortgage Brokers Act. We’re not able to do that. We do have that restriction. What we’re proposing is to be included in a very similar manner that lawyers are included.

Currently we do the work of that. A client will come in. They’re getting a mortgage. We’ll go through the documentation with them. We’ll describe everything. We’ll detail it for them and, of course, execute the documents and report to the bank. That is our responsibility currently.

A couple things, and I’ll be very brief on this. We’re looking at providing greater access to justice for clients that we already service, in additional non-contentious law — such as wills, probate and corporate matters, including incorporation; uncontested family law matters — so if we have somebody who wants to prepare a pre-nuptial agreement, uncontested separations and divorce agreements. Also, we’re asking to be exempted under the registration under the Mortgage Brokers Act.

I just want to thank you for having both of us here. It is actually our honour to be able to come and speak to you today.

We had a presentation from the bar association of B.C., three or four people ago here. One of the things he pre-
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sented on was trying to get the costs of all the legal stuff down. He talked about using notaries and articling students and so on. What you’re basically presenting would fit right into that.

A. Sablok: You know, this is a really good point. From where he’s seeing it, and this is how we see it as well…. What we’ve seen is that the middle class is losing out on access to non-contentious law. We already service that clientele. The restriction…. We don’t look at it as competition. We look at it as one more avenue for a member of the B.C. public to be able to access what they want to do.

A lot of our clients are what we call do-it-yourselfers. They’ve already researched everything that they need to do. They’ve prepared the documents. Now they’ve come to us for a review and execution, and we assist in that.

T. Morin Nakashima: Just to comment a little further. We oftentimes will get clients that come to us. Their lawyer has suggested that they contact us to do a certain kind of work that the lawyer might not even be familiar with that we’re restricted from doing — again, going to the non-contentious law, some of the simpler affidavits.

It may be a cost factor that it just isn’t practical for a client to go to one of their attorneys to look after the work for the amount of time. Their time is better spent on a more complicated matter, and they would rather see notaries handle a simple matter, but we have to send them back because it might be an issue that we’re not allowed to sign that particular kind of agreement.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. Just a little bit of an explanation. I understand, at least intuitively, a greater involvement of notaries in non-contentious issues. That makes intuitive sense to me — kind of analogous to nurse practitioners, if that’s not too bad an analogy. But I don’t understand what you mean by exempting notaries from the Mortgage Brokers Act. I’m not sure what that means.

There was also a suggestion that you’re considering, with the Law Society, regulation under the same entity. Could you explain that? Do you need provincial approval for all of these things or just some of them, or just some of them you work out with the Law Society? Some dumb questions.

D. Ashton (Chair): Akash, we have three minutes left, and I have two others. So please, maybe just shorten them down, if you don’t mind.

For the exemption from the Mortgage Brokers Act, right now I cannot act as a mortgage broker. If I was a lawyer, I could act as a mortgage broker, prepare mortgages for clients that might not be able to get regular funding. They might need second- or third-tier funding. I can’t act as a broker. I can witness those documents. I can’t prepare them or give them advice on it.

It’s important because we do have some clients that need additional funding. They need maybe a bit of a down payment to assist them to do that. If we were to send them out to a second office, now they’re paying additional costs. The whole idea to help these clients is to keep the costs down, so that’s that part of it.

Your second question, as far as us being able to do it. Yes, it has to be…. It’s part of the act. We are in touch with the Law Society. We are in discussions with them to see if we can work as a group to govern us — and that’s the Law Society, the B.C. notaries — to see if we can consolidate a little bit to make it easier for governing of both societies.

S. Hamilton: It’s good to see you again. I’m kind of curious about other jurisdictions, other provinces, and what their notaries public do with regard to the expansion of roles. Can you give examples? Is there anybody else doing this?

A. Sablok: Yeah. In fact, the only other province that has similar powers to what we do is Quebec — and New Orleans, of all places. We don’t have a Mardi Gras here. Their notaries there are very similar to what we do, simply because of the civil law that they have and their act as well. The other provinces do not have that.

S. Hamilton: Quickly, what’s the difference between financing and refinancing? I notice you made a point of just saying refinancing in this list of things….

A. Sablok: Financing is if you were purchasing a property, a new mortgage. Then refinancing is if you’re doing it out of debt consolidation or just equity takeout on your property.

S. Hamilton: You wouldn’t want to get involved in the actual financing component right from the very beginning.

J. Yap: My question was asked by Gary, so I’m okay there, but I just want to say I’m a fan, like Eric, and I hope that you can move forward with some of these
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changes that you’re seeking with the cooperation of the Law Society.

A. Sablok: John, appreciate it. I have to say that, thanks to John, we get a lot of hugs now, because John started a movement called “Hug a notary.”

D. Ashton (Chair): I wish I had that before. He has a conflict sitting up here then.

T. Morin Nakashima: Just a comment. On a daily basis we do get asked to do this kind of work that we’ve presented to you. I’ve been working in this profession since 1977, behind the desk in the lawyers’ offices and then as a notary for the last over 18 years, and I can tell you that it’s been an ongoing request that the public has asked for access to services on both tiers, with notaries and with lawyers. So we do appreciate your consideration on that.

Jocelyn, Doctor, thank you very much. We have a presentation time allotment of ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning — and then five minutes for questions after. Please, the floor is yours.

D. Baird: Thank you for providing the B.C. Dental Association the opportunity to appear before this Select Standing Committee on Finance. I am Dr. David Baird, president of the B.C. Dental Association and a general dentist with 34 years of experience providing care on Vancouver Island. I currently work at the Cool Aid dental clinic, which is a not-for-profit medical and dental clinic in Victoria.

As we do every year, I’m here to share with you dentistry’s concerns on oral health and opportunities for collaboration with government.

The BCDA is the recognized voice of dentistry in B.C., representing over 3,200 general practice dentists and specialists. Dentistry contributes $2 billion a year to B.C.’s economy and directly employs approximately 15,000 dental professionals.

I would like to thank the government for the financial support in improving access to dental care. The grant of $96,000 from the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation enabled the B.C. Dental Association to provide $20,000 of dental care to low-income children in urgent need. The remainder was distributed to the 19 not-for-profit dental clinics across B.C. to assist them in meeting the dental needs of other low-income individuals, including the homeless and seniors.

Over the past year the government has placed considerable focus on persons with disabilities. The Ministry of Social Development’s recent consultation process resulted in the Accessibility 2024 report. The report made several recommendations to improve accessibility to services for persons with disabilities. Of these, the BCDA strongly supports the recommendation to separate disability assistance from income assistance. In the case of dental care, this separation would lead to a needs-based dental program, as opposed to the current program that is entitlement-based.

Under the ministry’s current dental plan a client receives services as outlined in the ministry schedule, up to an annual financial maximum. After that point, only emergency treatment is covered. For example, if a client exhausts their maximum with extensive restorative work, there is no further funding for preventative care until the financial limit is reset. While this may be appropriate for individuals on income assistance who are expected to return to work in the near future, it is not the case for persons with disabilities.

The range of disabilities for patients covered by the ministry is wide, and so are their dental needs. Some disabilities or even the medications used can place a patient at a higher risk of tooth decay, and they should be seen more often than permitted under the ministry’s plan. Their conditions may require a medical setting for their treatment, and if their limit is exhausted, they cannot be seen for follow-up or preventative care.

Lastly, some clients may never leave the program, and for these individuals there are few options except having teeth extracted.

A second issue faced by all ministry clients is the difficulty in accessing dental care due to the very low fees paid by the program, including those covered by the healthy kids program. The ministry’s dental fees have not increased since 2007, though inflation has increased by 14 percent, and dental fees themselves have increased by 18 percent.

This issue of low fees and access to dental services for persons with disabilities was identified in a paper released by the Office of the Auditor General in May 2014 on disability assistance. At current levels, fees are 56 percent of standard dental fees, but the cost of providing care is 64 percent of revenue, which essentially means that dental offices are providing care at a cost to the dentist when treating ministry clients. As a result, some offices accept ministry clients at these fees but may limit the number of clients, while others balance-bill to cover the cost of providing care.

In some communities not-for-profit clinics — such as the Cool Aid clinic in Victoria, where I work, and the
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Vernon Community Dental Access Centre — have been established to assist ministry clients and others, such as seniors, where access is a problem.

In fact, there are 19 not-for-profit clinics throughout B.C. that provided care to 42,000 individuals last year at either reduced rates or for free. But these clinics often rely on volunteers to provide care. Their business model is based on billing the ministry for their clients and then using the funds to subsidize those patients without dental insurance or with limited financial resources. Without a fee increase, their ability to provide care is further eroded.

The BCDA requests that the ministry’s dental fees be increased this year to 85 percent of the current BCDA fee guide to ease access to care for ministry clients and to bring the fees more in line with other Canadian provinces.

Good oral health is critical to a child’s overall health, well-being and development. However, for many of B.C.’s children under the age of five, they suffer from early childhood caries, a severe form of tooth decay.

Left untreated, children can suffer severe pain, which leads to difficulty in eating and sleeping, speech difficulties and poor self-esteem. Their growth can be affected, as well as their ability to concentrate and function. In extreme cases, some children will require emergency medical care for infection, and sometimes even hospitalization.

In fact, early childhood tooth decay is the most common reason that children are treated in hospital ORs in B.C. According to the 2013 Canadian Institute for Health Information report, approximately 2,500 B.C. children between the ages of one and five were treated for dental decay under general anaesthesia annually. Of these, a third were treated in private facilities, with the remainder being treated in hospital.

There’s a direct cost to the health care system for this preventable condition. The average cost of hospitalization alone is $1,500. This is more than doubled when you add in the dentist’s and the anaesthetist’s fees. Not only is this a direct cost to the system; it takes OR time away from other children.

According to the Ministry of Health surgical wait-time list, as of August 2014 one-quarter of the 4,600 children waiting for access to the OR are dental cases. Early childhood caries is preventable, and public education is key to reducing its incidence. A public health campaign, similar to the joint B.C. Dental Association–Ministry of Health campaign in 2005 that highlighted early childhood caries prevention, would be a wise investment of public funds.

As there is an onus on society to care for vulnerable children and the disabled, a similar onus exists to assist low-income seniors. As one ages, so does one’s dentition. For older seniors there is a higher risk of broken teeth. Oral health can deteriorate quickly with increased frailty, limited mobility and excessive medications. Those at greatest risk for dental neglect are long-term-care residents, who are reliant on others for daily and professional care.

The 2012 B.C. Ombudsperson report on long-term care listed the following as barriers to care: the cost of dental care itself, the lack of accountability in maintaining standards for daily mouth care, and limited access to regular professional dental care. The BCDA recognizes the need for a low-income seniors health dental plan as a means to reduce these barriers. In our view, the need is similar to that which led to the creation of the healthy kids program, which provides basic dental care for children in low-income families.

The report also notes the administrative challenges of treating in long-term care facilities. However, there are solutions. For example, in Prince George a dental coordinator position was created by Northern Health to take on tasks such as scheduling, coordinating and assisting the treating dentist in the facility. These are the tasks that often frustrate and discourage dentists and other health care providers from treating in these facilities. This model could be replicated across the province.

We would also ask you to consider HPV vaccination for young males. As in other provinces, B.C. offers free vaccines to females aged nine to 26 to prevent the spread of the human papillomavirus — or HPV, as it is known — as a means of reducing the incidence of cervical cancer. Alberta and P.E.I. have extended their HPV vaccination program to include young males, and we would recommend that B.C. follow suit.

The HPV virus has been clearly linked to a growing number of oral cancers of the throat and tongue which affect both men and women. At the B.C. Cancer Agency it is estimated that 40 percent of newly diagnosed tonsil and oral cancers are caused by the HPV. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization has stated that there’s good evidence for the use of HPV vaccine for young males, to prevent oral and other cancers. As doctors of the mouth — and the mouth is part of the body — dentists see the devastating effect oral cancer has on their patients in terms of the disease itself, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

The B.C. Dental Association remains committed to the oral health care of British Columbians, and we welcome the opportunity to work with the provincial government to enhance oral health care for all British Columbians.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. We don’t have a written version of it distributed to the committee. That would be helpful.
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D. Ashton (Chair): If you wouldn’t mind, if we could get it in by Friday. We’ll have the Hansard, but if we have your copy, it’s a bit easier for us.

J. Johnston: I think it’s been sent electronically. We understood we could send it in electronically.

P. Leblanc: Yeah, you bet. The president of the association, Jon Bell, was going to accompany me here today, but his schedule didn’t permit him leaving Sechelt. Jon Bell is a farmer up in the Sechelt area.

My name is Peter Leblanc. I’m on the staff of the B.C. Association of Farmers Markets. We appreciate this opportunity for input into the provincial budget. Our association represents over 125 farmers markets, and I’ve provided a brochure with a directory of all the markets across the province. We’re a voice for more than 1,000 farmers and over 3,000 small-scale producers and artisans across the province.

Our member markets have a specific criteria of “Make it. Bake it. Grow it.” That means the consumer is having a direct connection with a British Columbia producer. This differs from other markets that would typically sell produce purchased from wholesalers who are sourcing from across the world. Our association collaborates and communicates with a broad group of farmers, provincial ministries, agricultural stakeholders, municipalities and social service agencies.

As you have seen in the media and possibly in your own community, farmers markets continue to gain in popularity. We are taking a prominent role in supporting local agriculture, providing a key asset for tourism across British Columbia, as well as providing health and social benefits. Farmers markets are strengthening local economies and at the same time offering fresh, healthy food for British Columbians.

Last year at this committee, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, we asked for your support to develop an on-line version of MarketSafe, a food safety program for vendors at farmers markets. We’re pleased that the province agreed to take that on, and an on-line course will launch in March 2015. So thank you for that support.

Also, we sincerely thank the provincial government for the continued support for the farmers market nutrition and coupon program. I’ve also provided you with a results brochure from a third-party evaluator for the 2012 and 2013 year of the program.

I’d like to describe briefly the impact that this program is having across the province. This initiative falls under the province’s healthy families B.C. program. It offers coupons to lower-income pregnant women, families and seniors for the purchase of fresh B.C. food at farmers markets.

This year the farmers market nutrition and coupon program is operating in 47 communities. In the directory that you have, those that have a star beside them are where the program is operating. That 47 communities is compared to 34 last year and 21 the year before.

In addition to the farmers markets we work with, we partner with 70 community agencies that offer nutrition and food skills programs. That’s twice as many as last year. More than 1,000 farmers and their families and over 7,500 lower-income British Columbians are directly benefiting from this program.

To describe it briefly, the participants are provided with $15 a week for 16 weeks to pair with their newly acquired knowledge and skills to achieve healthy eating. They make their purchases with fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers market. Because the program provides these fresh fruits and vegetables to lower-income British Columbians, they are able to improve their health, saving health care dollars. With farmers markets fostering social connectedness, we are also contributing to improved mental health.

We have many more communities, local partners and British Columbians who would benefit from this program. In fact, we’re finding that communities are stepping up to the plate and have contributed this year an additional $24,000 to support hundreds more families, seniors and pregnant women in their communities. The demand for the program is growing, and we encourage the government of B.C. to continue and expand funding for this program.

I’m going to mention a totally different initiative, where we collaborated with the Ministry of Justice to develop guidelines for liquor sales at farmers markets.

The Liquor Policy Review recommendation was implemented in late June, and we’re thrilled that 45 farmers markets across the province have local wine, spirit and craft beer producers sampling and selling at their markets this summer. We expect that number to grow next year. Having local liquor manufacturers at B.C. farmers markets promotes B.C. agritourism, creates new economic opportunities for local businesses and helps to complement the sale of B.C.-grown foods.

Another piece that I gave you was collateral from our campaign with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Buy
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Local campaign. We launched a successful provincewide marketing campaign under the Buy Local initiative. Fifty-nine farmers markets engaged with our four-week campaign that resulted in 32 television, radio and newspaper stories as well as vigorous engagement on social media. Our campaign raised the profile of all farmers markets in B.C., and we encourage the government of B.C. to renew funding for the Buy Local campaign.

This year we celebrated our fifth annual Farmers Appreciation Week in September. We were pleased that the Minister of Agriculture, Norm Letnick, raised awareness of Farmers Appreciation Week and farming in B.C. We had 43 markets who hosted Farmers Appreciation Week events, and there were 25 newspaper articles in regional and local newspapers as well as a story in the Vancouver Sun and on CBC radio’s North by Northwest.

A recent study by the Vancouver Foundation and the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia found that 80 percent of the respondents are concerned about dependence on other countries for our food. We are making sure that small-scale farmers have local and viable distribution channels. According to Professor Hilal Elver, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, small farmers are the key to feeding the world. A recent UN report concluded that the six and a half acre small-scale farm is the most effective way to feed the world.

Just this week a new report came out which has been a top news story across the province. According to the report, with the dramatically rising price of food due to the worst drought in 500 years in California, domestic consumption of local food is going to skyrocket. The time is now to support local agriculture and to strengthen farmers markets.

We currently have funding and support from Vancity Credit Union to offer a strengthening farmers market program to farmers markets in the Vancity operating area, primarily the Lower Mainland, southern Island and Sea to Sky.

We need support to offer training and professional development to our members in the rest of the province on topics such as business and strategic planning, marketing, fundraising and board governance. Additional core support would be an efficient way of reaching the B.C. government’s goal of expanding domestic markets.

We’ve identified a number of key areas where B.C.’s farmers markets are working to improve British Columbia, which leads us to the following key recommendations to the government of British Columbia: core support to expand marketing initiatives to meet provincial goals, renewed funding for the Buy Local campaign, developing a small grant program for farmers markets in the north of British Columbia, and continue and expand funding for the farmers market nutrition and coupon program.

M. Morris: With respect to your recommendation there — develop a small grant program for farmers markets in the north of B.C — just give me a little bit of background on why that’s a recommendation.

P. Leblanc: Sure. Well, we do have good funding right now to strengthen farmers markets in the Lower Mainland through Vancity. We’re able to offer some excellent professional development opportunities and a whole curriculum down here. But it’s restricted to the Lower Mainland area.

I think markets outside of the Lower Mainland would benefit from having such a program in order to strengthen their capacity and ability to put together an excellent farmers market, to support the farmers to extend their growing seasons and to introduce them to not only growing but how to market — all of those pieces that we have in place in the Lower Mainland. We’d like to see that support so that we can roll it out to the rest of the province.

G. Heyman: I’m wondering if you are able to tell us…. I’ve noticed a great proliferation of the number of markets in the Lower Mainland area. I’m wondering if you can tell us if you have a percentage increase over, say, the last five years and the dollar volume of goods and produce sold.

P. Leblanc: Yeah. It has gone up quite a bit. When we presented last year, we discussed that there had been a 30 percent increase in markets over the last three or four years.

The amount of dollars…. We worked with the University of Northern British Columbia on doing a social and economic benefit study. The numbers escape me — which we can forward to you — but we have seen over that period of time a significant increase in the dollars being invested and spent at farmers markets across British Columbia.

G. Heyman: You note the UN report that the 6½ acre small-scale farm is the most effective way to feed the world. Is there a particular reason why small-scale farms are considered the most effective way?

P. Leblanc: It has to do, in part, with…. When we’re looking at farmers markets, which is the perspective we’re looking at it from, they find that with the channel of being in a farmers market, it’s the smaller-scale farmers that benefit from being at such a local status. Larger farms have more opportunities — for instance, for export, for being involved with producers and whatnot.

When you have the smaller-scale farms, their food is feeding local populations, so they’re generally going to be providing food to their local area. With an emphasis on the small local farms, there’s more of a guarantee that there is food being locally produced and consumed.
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S. Gibson: The farmers market, I think, is a really exciting thing. Congratulations. Bruce Fatkin runs the one, as you probably know, in Abbotsford. That has been a real winner. And we have one that’s struggling a little bit in Mission, in my riding, but coming along quite well.

My question is…. I look at some of these. Are there some criteria? You’ve got a farmers market right in urban areas. There’s no farming for kilometres away.

This is not a criticism, but they almost look like they’re not a real farmers market, to my estimation, because the food’s coming in from so far, it’s more just like a way to put a little farm market in an urban area. They’re kind of contesting the definition, according to my view. What do you say to that?

P. Leblanc: Well, through the work that I do at the Farmers Markets Association, I’m travelling across the province, and you definitely see differences between the urban markets and the non-urban markets. There isn’t a lot of food grown, let’s say, in Vancouver, so in order for them to support the local agriculture in the valley, they have markets there. They have strict criteria that have to do with “Make it. Bake it. Grow it.”

You’re not going to go there and it’s not going to be food that was purchased at a produce depot or from a wholesaler, but it is going to be grown by a British Columbia farmer. That urban area will set up a definition of: what are the rules related to that so they ensure that there’s integrity there?

S. Hamilton: You know what? My question just turned into a comment, based on your answer just now. I was joking that my wife and I jumped in the car a couple of years ago and there was a farmers market in, I think it was, Cloverdale. “Let’s go see what it’s all about. It’s a different one.” It just seemed to have morphed into something different. It’s a big food truck festival; it’s essentially what it turned into. I was actually going to joke: where are the food trucks? They were just lined up all around the corner, down the block.

In terms of criteria — you know, basically, what criteria have to be satisfied to classify yourself as a farm market — I would like to see some of that, because I was quite disappointed when I got there, to tell you the truth.

P. Leblanc: Yeah, and you know, there isn’t any legal definition for a farmers market that the province has or that we have that we can enforce at this point. When you look at a B.C. Association of Farmers Markets market, if it’s in there, you should have a certain level of trust that the integrity is there for the farmers market. Other places may be using the words “farmers market,” but you have to sort of take a look at what it actually is.

S. Hamilton: I didn’t mean that to denigrate. It’s a good thing. You’re doing great.

P. Leblanc: Yeah, it is, but it is something where we feel we have to protect the brand. You got in your car. If a tourist comes here off a cruise ship and wants to find farmers markets and heads out to somewhere and doesn’t find any farmers, I think they’d be disappointed with that. We’re very careful about wanting to protect the integrity of farmers markets.

D. Ashton (Chair): Peter, thank you for your input. If there’s anything additional you want to put in, you have until Friday the 17th.

P. Leblanc: Great. Well, I’ll answer George Heyman’s question more fully with that follow-up opportunity. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Chair): Wonderful. Thanks for doing it. Have a good afternoon. Thank you for coming.

Up next we have the Business Council of British Columbia. Sir, welcome. Is there a straggler coming, or are you by yourself?

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Welcome. So ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions. I’ll give you a two-minute warning on the ten minutes, if it looks like you’re going to broach through it.

K. Peacock: You know what? I’m just going to hit on some bullet points and some highlights, so I’ll probably even be less than ten minutes and give more opportunity and time for questions.

Our submission this year is quite lengthy. You all have a copy of it. For the most part, I’ll have to leave it to you to read, if you so choose, and to digest more thoroughly. Just to hit on, like I said, some high points this afternoon, we always do a forecast at the Business Council just to provide some context for the budget and our budget submission. This year we are expecting the provincial economy to grow by 2.2 percent. That’s pretty much in line with what the ministry’s thinking or expectations are.

Next year, more importantly, we anticipate a 2.6 percent real GDP increase. Recently we did scale back our outlook just because the global economic backdrop has deteriorated a little bit. Originally, when we were looking out to 2015, we thought perhaps we’d see some early stages of LNG development, but we’ve pushed that back as well, along with some other major projects. So 2.6 percent. Again, not too much below the province, but it’s consistent with the downgrading at the global level.

The IMF just came out with their forecast, and they’ve trimmed their outlook and forecast for the global economy. If you look around the globe, the U.S. is a bit of a bright spot, but Europe’s challenged. Germany’s on the cusp of
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probably going back into recession. Japan continues to struggle in growth, and China’s being scaled back. That’s having a dampening effect on commodity markets, which in turn is going to spill over and impact British Columbia.

Turning to some budgetary items, I just want to say that we definitely support the balanced-budget approach that the government’s adopted. We applaud and appreciate the commitment to fiscal discipline and sound fiscal management, but, given the economic backdrop and the risks that things could come in softer than anticipated, we do note in our submission that if it becomes necessary, adopting some measure of flexibility around that adherence to the balanced budget may become appropriate in the face of weaker-than-expected economic conditions.

We say that primarily because we believe that the government is already running a fairly lean operation. They’ve trimmed, and further cuts may actually drag the economy down and be more of a drag than worthwhile, so some flexibility around there might be appropriate.

We also note that this is an opportune time to take on some infrastructure projects, so government may want to consider taking on some debt. Again, we say that because interest rates and financing costs are extremely low. There’s a little bit of a stimulative effect from taking on infrastructure projects. We do recognize and appreciate that there’s a desire to keep the debt-to-GDP burden as low as possible, but we think there’s a little bit of room there. It is an opportune time, and you do see other governments around the world adopting that approach.

In the short term we only really have one tax measure that we’re proposing, and that is to essentially broaden out the tax credit for machinery and equipment to all businesses. Right now it just applies to the resource sector and some manufacturers, and we think that it would be beneficial to broaden out the tax credit for the PST on the acquisition of all machinery and equipment, including computers and software and advanced technology for use in all types of business.

Then we also have a number of other recommendations that pertain to improving B.C.’s competitive position. As a general backdrop, we think that it’s important that the government view all policy measures through a competitive lens and really keep an eye on B.C.’s competitive position. We say that just because we’re in an increasingly competitive world. Our competitive position has kind of eroded with the return to the PST. We have a carbon tax and a number of factors. These are challenges for export-oriented, trade-exposed businesses in the provinces. We think that needs some attention.

A few medium-term considerations. I’ll leave them for you, like I said, to read, but we do think that there’s good opportunity and scope for a more fundamental reform to sales tax, as was suggested by the expert panel on business taxation. That’s a business transfer tax, but, again, that’s more of a medium-term notion.

Then here, I’ll just highlight this one. We do also suggest that the province consider keeping the corporate income tax rate at 11 percent rather than rolling it back to 10 percent, as they promised to do, and use that fiscal room to help mitigate some of the damage that the trade-exposed industries face in terms of paying PST on their business inputs, as well as carbon tax. Make the trade-exposed industries more competitive, and use that fiscal room from maintaining the corporate income tax at 11 percent.

We touch upon property taxes and think that the province should adopt some fairness ranges for the different property tax classes. This is something that’s been an ongoing issue for the business community, and so we just highlight that again in our submission.

We touch upon capacity. We think there’s room and scope to expand capacity, and the ministry is dealing with land resource development and infrastructure, just to process permits and other things in a more timely manner.

Finally, I guess, we are proposing that the province develop a long-term comprehensive strategy on dealing with infrastructure. We note earlier on that, I think, they should consider spending more at a time of low financing, but that should be within the context of developing a ten-year rolling strategy for infrastructure which would see prioritizing of infrastructure, strategies around financing, dealing with municipal issues — a very comprehensive plan. That’s something else that we are recommending at this time.

S. Gibson: You have a comment in your report regarding local government — in your material here. Many of us on this committee, or some of us, come out of a local government experience. There was some comment regarding failure to exercise leadership and direction vis-à-vis local government issues. I think this was probably written before you may have heard that government is looking into some of that aspect, compensation, and some other aspects of local government.

That study has created some interest. You’ve probably heard about that. I don’t know whether this, as written, predates that, but you may wish to speak to that. It’s something that has come to the attention of government.

K. Peacock: It is. We actually talked to provincial officials about it, and we’re well aware of the concern. Basically, I think we’re just suggesting a more comprehensive, collective manner — maybe even call it collective bargaining — might help some of the municipalities
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negotiate stronger collective terms for collective agreements and whatnot.

S. Gibson: I think, and this is just my own suggestion, if you’d come up with some more concrete information or some suggestions, it would be useful. That’s the kind of thing that would be helpful, because local governments are a creation of the province, so we have direct control over them, ultimately. Thank you for your comments.

S. Hamilton: Thanks for being here, Ken. A little earlier today John Winter was here from the B.C. chamber. I was able to ask him a question off line, because he alluded to it, in terms of the return to the PST and some of the competitive disadvantage, obviously, that’s associated with that.

I asked, and he actually deferred to you. I asked him: is it possible to provide some real hard numbers, some business cases where the detriment has actually affected businesses to the point where they’ve either gone out of business, they’ve moved, they’ve scaled down, they’ve laid off employees? I haven’t seen those numbers yet. We’re hearing it a lot, but nothing concrete has come to me saying: “Rather than just the numbers on a piece of paper, here’s a classic example of how it’s affected our economy.”

K. Peacock: It is difficult, I think, to come across concrete, tangible evidence or examples of businesses going under as a result of it. There is no doubt at all, though, that it does impact most directly the trade exposed to export-oriented sectors. That’s because they’re not in a position to pass on the increased burden that arises from paying the PST on business inputs.

If you’re producing and selling in the local market, and you’re a restaurant, then the restaurant down the street — or whatever, the barber down the street — has the same cost structure. But if you’re exporting into the United States, you don’t have that opportunity to pass that cost. You face global prices and whatnot, so you tend to absorb that.

What happens — rather than pushing businesses right out of business — is you get, as a result, lower profit margins for some of these larger companies. They tend to reinvest less capital. They tend to look at alternative jurisdictions which are more attractive for investing and getting a higher rate of return.

It’s more of an erosion of the export sector rather than “You know what? This company got up and left because of the PST.”

G. Heyman: Hi Ken. Quickly, two questions. You suggest that there be a PST tax credit. I’m wondering, given your support for balanced budgets, where you think the corresponding tax revenue income or expenditure cut should happen to support that.

On the issue of transit and better transportation planning in the Lower Mainland, I’ve heard recently from a number of business organizations and boards of trade expressing concern about the impacts on the economy from congestion. I’m wondering if you’re in any position to quantify the current and potential impacts of failing to relieve the congestion, and the movement of goods and people and services and people, with improved transit.

K. Peacock: So the first one — yes, we are sensitive to the fiscal constraint, absolutely. I think the most appropriate answer would be to phase in over time the broadening of the provincial sales tax.

It looks like the province is on target for about a $466 million surplus if they don’t use the $200 million fiscal allowance. Our rough estimate is that if you broadened out the PST tax credit to all businesses, it would be roughly a $500 million fiscal hit. So the gap’s not too large, but you could, by all means, phase it in over two or three years just to make sure that the fiscal hit wasn’t too substantial and too significant. That would be our answer to that particular concern.

In terms of congestion, it’s very, very difficult to quantify what the congestion is in terms of cost impacts. I think I would start off by saying that we have made a lot of headway in terms of investing in transportation infrastructure in the Lower Mainland region, the Port Mann/No. 1 being an obvious example. The South Fraser Perimeter Road has been a great addition, but there’s definitely scope for more, because things are still congested. I actually drove the No. 1 this morning, and it was far more congested than I had expected because that’s not my usual route.

I completely concur that it is adding huge costs, particularly to the trucking industry, waiting in the long lines. What the dollar value is, is tough to estimate. It’s very, very sensitive to what you value a person’s hourly rate for sitting in traffic at. Any studies that attempt to do that, it’s very sensitive to what that’s valued at — many billions of dollars, though, I would say.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Greatly appreciated. If you have anything else that you’d like to add, please get it into us by Friday. Have a good day.

Up next, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Welcome. Ben and Geoff, thank you very much for coming today. What’d you do to your arm?

G. Morrison: I was getting a little diagnostic done, so I’ve got to keep it still.

D. Ashton (Chair): Keep it still. Keep it hooped around there so you don’t….

B. Brunnen: Yeah. Natalia Ivanova has joined us as well. She’s more of a technical expert for us, so depending on how hard the questions get, we may bring her up to save us.

D. Ashton (Chair): Perfect. Ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning at eight minutes, if required — and then up to five minutes for the questions. You can see there are lots of questions. Please, go ahead.

B. Brunnen: Thanks very much. You’ve all got the handout with you, and I’ll actually be using that to walk through our presentation here today.

The overview of what we’re presenting today is two key aspects of our proposal. The first is focusing on strengthening the competitiveness of the LNG sector in British Columbia. The second is strengthening the upstream competitiveness, particularly from an oil production perspective.

First, a little bit about our organization. We represent 90 percent of total production in Canada. Estimated investment is relatively significant, from a collective perspective, at about $74 billion nationally and is responsible for 550,000 jobs, estimated, across the country, direct and indirect. That doesn’t include induced jobs, which is an additional amount which tends to result as a result of the downstream economic activity that our sector contributes to the economy.

Thinking about the competitiveness of our sector, we’re generally confronted with three key pressures in the western Canadian sedimentary basin. Those are the cost pressures — basically, the increasing cost of doing business in a maturing basin across Alberta and British Columbia particularly but also Saskatchewan, where we’re seeing things such as pad drilling and deep horizontal wells contributing to those costs.

Regulatory challenges and uncertainty with respect to just increasing complexity in regulation is another challenge with respect to access and capital. Thirdly, market access. Those are the key priorities that confront some of our members from a competitiveness perspective. The intent of this presentation is to raise awareness of some of those drivers and identify some solutions to help strengthen that.

From a natural gas perspective, in this slide here you’ll see we have a slide with natural gas prices in North America, Europe and Japan. What we see here is the opportunity that Asian markets can present with respect to a pricing perspective — substantially higher prices than what we’ll see out of a North American market.

While these prices generally look quite good, we are increasingly confronted with increasing pressure to be competitive. There are a number of projects coming on stream and being proposed globally that are seeking to service the same client base, if you will, particularly the Southeast Asian market. There’s a movement in the Southeast Asian market, particularly in Japan, to move away from prices and contracts that are linked to oil prices and more towards a hub type of a price. When we move to a hub type of a price, generally that tracks lower than the oil base price, and we run the risk of seeing lower prices for our product.

From an LNG perspective in Canada, if we move to the next page, our estimates and internal analysis suggest that generally the break-even prices for LNG facilities are somewhere between $10 and $12.50 per million Btu. The cost of the feedstock — i.e., getting the natural gas into the LNG facilities — represents approximately half of this cost.

While we recognize that there is the LNG tax, for example, coming forward, that’s a downstream cost. What we also need to be looking at from a competitiveness perspective is the upstream cost and the economic competitiveness of this industry. Key aspects of that include elements such as local infrastructure, GHG, royalties, incentives and those types of things.

Our proposal today talks about strengthening the B.C. infrastructure royalty credit program. This program is a good program. It’s been in place for some time in British Columbia, and basically, it awards royalty credits to oil and gas companies who invest in new oil and gas roads and pipeline projects in B.C.

That’s a critical component for a lot of our members because, largely, the economics of the natural gas industry and upstream oil depend upon access to this infrastructure, which is largely underserviced or non-existent in British Columbia — which is the competitive disadvantage of this province.

This program is also identified as the natural gas strategy. Some of the key elements of this program are actually published on its website, which you’ll be able to see. Since 2004 it’s leveraged over $830 million in infrastructure royalty credits to oil and gas companies and $1.4 billion in infrastructure capital investments, with return on investment increasing as the investment continues to grow in the royalty production and the energy production continues to flow.

The challenge with this program is that we have a number of proponents that seek to apply for it on a regular basis. There’s a lack of clarity with respect to some of the application process criteria that are out there that actually deters from some of our members maybe being able to access it.

A second challenge that we see with it is that this program operates under a royalty credit program, and it’s only realized via the drilling that comes on stream. There are instances where companies don’t avail themselves of these credits for whatever reason — it may be project economics, etc. — and these credits then disappear. One way that we could address this is by recycling those credits into future budgets.
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The other challenge that we see is that the program is oversubscribed. Not necessarily oversubscribed, but I guess what we’re seeing is that there’s a significant amount of interest and good, quality bids coming forward, but there’s just not enough money in the pool to service all of the proposals that are on the table that would otherwise be funded.

If we think about the amount of natural gas production needed to fuel the LNG industry, even with one of the more significant proponents out there, it would require an increase of 1 billion cubic feet per day, an increase of approximately 25 percent of existing production.

So if we think about it…. If one plant went forward, we would need to see a 25 percent increase in LNG production over and above what is already being produced. That suggests that what we would like to see is stronger investment in the upstream sector so that we can bring this product to market and make it more economical.

To my recommendations on this proposal. One, we ask that the province move forward on clarifying the list of eligible projects that can apply for the credit. It currently applies to roads and pipes, some facilities, but it’s unclear the extent to which it does apply. Some clarity on that space would be helpful.

The second I’ve already alluded to: rolling over the unused infrastructure credits to the following year rather than having those fold into general revenues.

The third is greater outreach to the industry with respect to best practices and approaches for putting forward bids for this program. It’s a competitive bidding program, and we like that. It’s actually a very good program, from what we understand. The challenge is that there are ways that our members could be tweaking our bids and approaches to this in a manner that would position them a little bit more favourably, just based on the existing rules.

Lastly, our recommendation — probably the most significant — is increasing the budget for this program.

On the second component of our recommendation, we see significant potential for developing the deep oil drilling program in British Columbia. We recognize the focus and priorities on natural gas. We encourage the province to diversify its resource base and revenue base so that it’s able to have that healthy diversification from the reliability of its revenues. Our recommendation is to move forward with a deep oil royalty credit program, similar to what was introduced in the province for deep gas royalties.

If we move to the slide at the bottom that says page 15, what we have for you here is a graph that demonstrates the increase in deep gas drilling activity as a result of a change from the British Columbia government to this royalty regime. Essentially what it is, is an incentive for drilling where there’s a royalty relief credit program that exists for deep wells. So you get a lower royalty at the front end based on the depth of your well, and that credit expires over time as your production increases.

As a result, what it does is it recognizes the economics of the program where our members spend a lot of money up front to invest in what, you would argue, is a technologically challenging reservoir requiring significant innovation, to a point where it becomes more viable, the investment comes forward and the payout comes stronger linked to the royalties that would flow with production.

Moving quickly, and recognizing the time, I would draw your attention to slide 19 and what we would anticipate would be the net result of our proposal. We expect, then, what we’ve observed in Alberta…. You can look over the slide deck at your leisure. What we observed in Alberta when they introduced a deep horizontal oil and gas incentive program, called the Alberta emerging issues and technologies initiative, was a tripling of the drilling activity that occurred.

What they’ve done in Alberta is they’ve created a more permanent low-royalty front-end framework that enables companies to make that investment without being confronted with the payout of royalties until they start getting their cash flow and the economics working a little bit better — better for attracting investment, better for attracting capital. Here we expect that we could see a substantial increase in the amount of wells drilled.

From a financial perspective — if we move to the next slide — moving forward with this recommendation, which is to create a deep-oil drilling incentive, similar to the deep-well royalty credit for gas wells, our estimate suggests that we could see an increase of $80 million in incremental royalties in the first three years. That would increase to about $215 million in 15 years.

The other component I think is worth mentioning lastly. What it will do also is that it will put deep oil and gas wells on a more level playing field. One of the challenges that we’re seeing out there right now with the favourable royalty program for the deep gas is definitely a lack of incentive to be drilling for deep oil.

When we’re coming down to an issue of what defines deep oil versus deep gas, there’s a little bit of discretion in that term. With the presence of liquids and condensate in these wells, companies are a little bit reticent to be drilling, in the event that they got classed as oil and that it’d be subject to the less favourable royalty rate. This would improve equity from your play economics perspective in an upstream context. It would recognize the upfront capital costs and would result in positive revenues for the province long term.

D. Ashton (Chair): Ben, you’re at 11 minutes. You’ve got four minutes left for questions, and I have to cut you
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off at 15. It’s up to you if you want to keep chatting about it, but there may be some questions, especially about….

G. Holman: Thanks for that presentation. It’s fairly complicated and technical. I’m wondering about the prediction by some, I think, that over time the price differential between Asian natural gas prices and North American was going to get squeezed — that very strong incentive that’s pushing LNG development in British Columbia. Do you see that happening, and how would that affect what you’re proposing here?

It’s happened in North America — right? — where we’ve seen increased supplies squeezing, reducing natural gas prices. Why wouldn’t that happen worldwide as every supplier in the world aims for those high-priced markets?

B. Brunnen: That’s part of my point here. There’s that risk that we will see a depreciation or a diminishment of that price differential. It looks good now. When you start increasing supply and other LNG competitors bring their product to market and set up their contracts with the markets, it starts to become a buyer’s market. That’s when we can start to see some of the changes in the pricing arrangements, moving away from an oil-linked price, which is where the Asian markets are, to what we call a Hub price, which is the North American–type of approach.

That’s a concern, which is also why we’ve suggested that what we need to do is, in anticipation of that, to make sure we’re as competitive as possible. When we see the upstream gas feedstock cost being some of the higher components of the cost equation to the LNG market, our proposal on the table before you is: find those incentives to make it more cost-competitive upstream so that we can then be more competitive downstream.

On an aggregate basis, we are competitive in terms of transportation costs. That’s where we do have a very good edge. But if we were to look relative to other U.S. proposals that are out there right now, we are actually more expensive both from a feedstock and from an LNG production perspective.

If we want to be competitive in this space, it’s important that we do everything we can to reduce our back-end costs so that we can then compete favourably and achieve the high margin that we seek.

Thank you very much for the presentation. If you have any additional information, would you please get it to us by Friday if you think that you want to add something.

B. Brunnen: Sure. Thank you. If you have any follow-up questions, I’d be more than happy to respond to those as well.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay, wonderful. Thank you for coming today. Look after your arm.

L. Jackson: Mr. Chair, I do have our CEO with us this evening, Mr. George Harvie.

Excuse our casual form. This is not what we normally do. It was our kickoff for the United Way today, so we were at the works yard at seven o’clock this morning. I didn’t get home to get changed. I apologize for that.

D. Ashton (Chair): Ten minutes for the presentation — I’ll give you a two-minute warning — and up to five minutes for questions. Please proceed. Thank you for your hospitality in this wonderful area.

L. Jackson: It’s a pleasure to have you here in Delta. I’m not sure that we’ve done this before, but thank you so much for being here.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, the truth is he lobbied very hard to get us to come here, so he did a good job.

L. Jackson: If I just could commence. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here tonight.

The provincial government and the corporation of Delta have partnered together on many important infrastructure projects in recent years, projects that have supported job growth, created productive industrial land and improved the lives of countless individuals. I’m here today, ladies and gentlemen, to impress upon you the importance of continuing this fruitful partnership with Delta and with other municipalities.

I would just like to take some time here to discuss three specific projects where we have been able to work together to achieve excellent results for our citizens. Firstly is the South Fraser Perimeter Road. The opening of the South Fraser Perimeter Road last December was a great day for Delta motorists, for Delta truckers and the British Columbia economy. This new highway has provided an essential, quick and reliable east-west transportation route through Delta that had previously been sorely lacking.

The new highway has not only provided great transportation benefits, but it has also resulted in significant
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benefits to both our agriculture and industrial lands. Construction on the road led to vastly improved irrigation of our agricultural land in Delta, which has helped our farmers who previously had to deal with high salinity levels and the water used on their fields.

For industrial land, the South Fraser Perimeter Road has led to a revitalization of old, derelict landfills along River Road east corridor and improved access to the Tilbury industrial area. We have been able to leverage the construction of the South Fraser Perimeter Road and partner with local businesses like Ocean Trailer to begin turning these old landfill properties into productive industrial lands.

For Ocean Trailer, this meant an investment of over $7 million to remediate the land, which it was able to accomplish due to a property tax exemption scheme developed by Delta. Thanks to the South Fraser Perimeter Road, our tax exemptions and the example set by Ocean Trailer, we look forward to other, similar landfill remediation projects very soon.

Secondly, I’d like to turn to the Highway 99 corridor improvements. Just as the South Fraser Perimeter Road opened up previously underutilized industrial lands in the Tilbury industrial area, improvements made this year to the Highway 99 corridor have increased the productivity of industrial land at Boundary Bay Airport.

The off-ramp at 80th Street, which was completed in the spring, and the soon-to-be completed improvements at the Matthews interchange improve access to and from the Boundary Bay Airport. Not only does this support development on industrial land, but it also helps the airport grow and improves safety and enhances access for all motorists to areas south of Highway 99.

Boundary Bay Airport offers excellent green field industrial land opportunities, and the Highway 99 corridor improvements encouraged Dayhu Group of Companies to construct two major logistics facilities, totalling nearly 900,000 square feet on 45 acres of land, at the airport. Phase 1 is now complete, and the economic benefits are astounding.

This project will create approximately 1,000 ongoing, good-paying jobs. It generated over $23 million for investment into much-needed airport infrastructure, and it resulted in significant amenity contributions for Delta citizens. These benefits would not, or could not, have been realized without the 99 corridor improvements. With our levels of government working together like this, we can create the ideal conditions for truly spectacular development with broad benefits.

Now, thirdly, I’d like you to turn your minds to the George Massey Tunnel replacement project. As we look into the future, there are many opportunities to work together on projects that support both the local and the provincial economy. The most important of these projects is certainly the George Massey Tunnel replacement project. While we don’t know yet the details of this project, we do know that by working together, as we have done for the South Fraser Perimeter Road and the Highway 99 corridor improvements, the end result will be a great benefit to the local community and beyond.

As the George Massey Tunnel replacement project begins to take shape, we will be focused on ensuring the connections with the local road network and the details of the project work which is best for our citizens. Of course, as has been proven time and time again, our interests will align with the interests of the province, where we seek efficient and reliable movement of goods and people along this vital transportation corridor.

We now have to turn to infrastructure partnerships. These major projects are just three examples of how Delta has worked closely with the provincial government to build new infrastructure. Dating back to the infrastructure stimulus funding from 2009, Delta has partnered with senior levels of government for 16 major projects worth approximately $66.8 million.

Thanks to the partnerships created and the willingness of all parties to proceed on a cost-share basis, these projects were constructed at a cost to Delta taxpayers of less than 43 cents on the dollar. Clearly, the relationships we have created through our successful on-time and on-budget project delivery…. We are continuing to pay dividends for our citizens, the municipality and the province.

I encourage the province to look at this outstanding record of success and plan to achieve even more infrastructure project partnerships for the benefit of our citizens, the business community and international trade. You know that you have a willing and able partner in Delta with which to work.

Finally, I would like to address a question about the Auditor General for Local Government. I would like to just spend a moment or two on this one item that has become a growing concern for us in Delta, and that is the Auditor General for Local Government. As you know, Delta was one of the first municipalities selected in May of 2013 for a performance audit under the topic: “Achieving value for money in operational procurement.” The performance audit has been taking place for over 16 months now. In fact, Delta has spent many hours facilitating two audit teams, with a third team coming again this month.

Multiple deadlines have been missed, and communications between the Auditor General for Local Government staff and Delta staff have been sporadic at best. We have done all we can to assist the Auditor General for Local Government, but at this point we are exasperated by the process. The length of time for the performance audit to date is deeply concerning, because after 16 months of auditing, we have yet to see any results or recommendations. We are now told that the first performance audits will be released by March 31, 2015, without the opportunity for us to provide input on a draft.
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By this time, it will have been nearly two years since the performance audit was initiated, at a budget of over $6 million. In comparison, each year Delta’s independent municipal auditor, BDO Canada, performs its audit on Delta’s financial statements and all fieldwork associated with this process within a three-week period. In fact, the entire audit process, including the independent auditor’s formal report to council, is completed within six weeks.

We expected the Auditor General for Local Government’s performance audit to be similar in terms of time frame and recommendations, which would have allowed us to correct any deficiencies in a timely manner. With no results or recommendations on the performance audit to date, it is difficult to find value for money in this costly and extensive process. Furthermore, if this audit is meant to ensure that the day-to-day business of local government is effective, efficient and meeting protocols and targets, I would really hope that greater consideration is given to completing performance audits on a quicker time frame.

Based on our experience to date, we have some serious concerns with the performance audit process, especially when it is purported to be dedicated to helping British Columbia local government to find value for tax dollars that we spend. It is our hope that some drastic change can be made to this office to improve the outcomes for local governments and their citizens.

As always, in spite of any issues we encounter along the way, we look forward to working together to accomplish many mutual goals and serve the citizens we represent. It is through this collaboration and partnership that we are able to build better communities for all of our citizens. Delta is truly grateful for your support in this regard and we thank you for the opportunity to participate in this evening’s important committee discussion. I look forward to collaborating on future projects that will benefit all our people. Thank you very much.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. We only have a couple of minutes left for questions.

Right off the bat, 16 months…. Maybe we should be auditing the performance audit of the performance auditor. It just seems to be a little bit of a protracted process that’s taking up an awful lot of time and resources, and that means money.

I just want to go back, Your Worship, to some of your earlier comments with regard to the development with the South Fraser Perimeter Road, the development of the Tilbury district. You mentioned Sid Keay. It was, in fact, a contaminated site, a contaminated dump, and there was a reclamation program that was undertaken. Sid Keay has put a large investment into reclaiming that land.

We have other properties along that corridor in Delta that are, in fact, contaminated, and there are some issues with the Ministry of Environment — maybe you’d like to elaborate on them — with regard to the drinking standards act and how it applies to the reclamation of those sites.

D. Ashton (Chair): Your Worship, it has to be very short. We’re almost out of time.

L. Jackson: Okay. I’ll get George to explain that. I am very wordy. George is very quick.

We took the opportunity at UBCM to speak to Minister Polak directly. She’s committed to responding back to us in a positive manner within a year. That’ll be something which will be not only a benefit for Delta, insofar as these regulations would apply more precisely to the rest of the province.

Right now we have great drinking water. We will never use our groundwater for drinking water purposes.

S. Hamilton: No, thank you. Just with regard to that, then, that stands in the way of developing the industrial sites.

G. Holman: Just one quick one. It’s the Ernst and Young review around compensation for staff — perhaps a sensitive issue, given who’s at the table there. Just your view on that. There was a suggestion, I thought, by some — I’m not sure if it came out of that review — about local governments kind of competing against one another for staff.

Do you think that’s a real concern, or is there something more fundamental that’s missed by that focus on staff remuneration?

L. Jackson: I haven’t seen pirating of staff, if you would. I think the majority of people that are in senior staff levels, if they’re comfortable in their position, are happy with staying where they are.

I appreciate the fact that the report has come out. We haven’t really had an opportunity to analyze it from our own municipal perspective. What I can tell you is that we have a very lean machine. As far as senior staff is concerned, we have not increased our senior staff for 15 years. We have the same positions that we had then, and almost in all cases, we have the same people. We’re very, very lucky.
[ Page 1286 ]

I think we stack up very well in terms of remuneration. Certainly, we would like to pursue that as a community and as a council. I haven’t had an opportunity to actually compare other communities with ours at the moment, but we can certainly get back to you with that information if you so choose.

D. Ashton (Chair): Okay. Sorry, Your Worship. I have to cut you off. You’re at 15 minutes. I would like the opportunity of a personal call about some other detail, though, if you would accept it in the future, like in the next week or so. Can I give you a call about something?

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you. Appreciate it. And thank you again for your hospitality here. It was greatly appreciated. We will be back.

D. Ashton (Chair): No, unfortunately there were some commitments that had to be…. This happens. I do apologize. But we’re trooping on with it, and we have enough here to continue. So thank you.

Sir, ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll give you a two-minute warning. Five minutes for questions. Please proceed.

D. Luster: Sounds good. I’m here today to talk about why we should increase the commitment by government in funding the treatment of more people living with hepatitis C. It is a life-stealing disease that is said to infect 80,000 people here in the province.

Currently we treat 1.25 percent annually. I repeat — 1.25 percent of 80,000. For our organization and me personally, this is unacceptable. Our organization is made up of a network of people who are either living with hepatitis C, are caregivers or are employed in fields that are engaged in treating or assisting people who have this disease.

Our organization endeavours to be a voice for people living with hepatitis C in the province of B.C. We are engaged in education, awareness and advocacy for the hepatitis C patient community. The task of bringing attention and awareness about hepatitis C to the general population has been an onerous undertaking, to say the least.

This includes the unmet need to educate primary care physicians and legislators. In meetings like this we hope to bring a better understanding of what the hepatitis landscape is like for patients living here in B.C. and, through that understanding, bring about real and meaningful change.

You will be hearing more in the months ahead about the model that has been very successful in dealing with HIV here in B.C. — treatment as prevention. Although I recognize this to be an important piece of any strategy to combat the increase in infection, it does not address a very important demographic — the baby boomer cohort. It makes up two-thirds of the people currently infected with hepatitis C in B.C.

This group is not considered to be causing new infections, as many were infected decades ago. The group at higher risk for passing the virus on is the intravenous drug user population, which treatment as prevention targets.

As I mentioned, treatment as prevention is an important piece of any comprehensive strategy to address hepatitis C here in B.C. The other important piece is about making treatment available to more people in the largest cohort, baby boomers, sooner rather than later. This group is far more likely to now have advanced liver disease, meaning later stages and cirrhosis in many cases, caused by being infected for decades.

I am myself one who was diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C. I was devastated by the news. I knew virtually nothing about it and was sure that I would die. It was only after three years of ever-worsening symptoms that I was diagnosed. I was being screened for a hernia repair when they discovered that my liver functions were not good. The previous three years I had gone through test after test, to include CT scans, colonoscopy, endoscopy and dozens of blood panels.

Not once did anyone consider me as a candidate for hep C. I suspect this had something to do with profiling or stereotyping people with hep C. I do not blame my doctors, as they were following established guidelines for people at risk. I did not fit these guidelines, and many baby boomers don’t either.

I went on to treatment in a clinical trial. I would not have been able to secure treatment through PharmaCare because my liver was not yet sick enough, according to the guidelines, even though the symptoms were debilitating. It was very real for me, and it is for others. At the time I was treated, the drugs available through PharmaCare were curing people at the rate of 30 to 40 percent.

The treatment was long and difficult, with many side effects that challenged even the strongest. Depression, anemia and a list of other side effects were common and are still, even now, with currently approved treatments. Many simply cannot finish treatment, due to the very harsh side effects. This affects overall cure rates, which
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are arguably around 50 percent. That’s with currently approved treatments. Still only 1.25 percent treated annually. That hasn’t changed, apparently.

In my own treatment, I was given pegylated interferon, ribavirin and the study drug for the first 12 weeks. I was treated for 48 weeks, and it was the most difficult thing I have done in my life. With the new treatments under review now by PharmaCare, the treatment is typically 12 weeks, and soon there will be all oral therapy that has few side effects for more patients.

We believe that an awareness campaign, along with a testing program, is long overdue in B.C. I have personally been campaigning to see more people tested. That started just a few months after my own diagnosis. Many other patient advocates and groups like ours have done much in the area of education awareness over the years, with limited funding or none at all.

New drugs in the approval process now and coming in the next several months have cure rates of 90 percent and, in some cases, as high as 97 to 100 percent, depending on genotype and other factors. These rates were only a dream just a year or two ago.

I should mention that I was cured in the clinical trial I participated in, with one of these new drugs that are extremely effective. I’m one of the lucky ones. We need to see that it is less about luck and more about planning and good practices.

As a small business operator for the last 35 years, I believe that I have a grasp of financial issues. I understand about budgets, forward-looking planning and weighing the costs and benefits of any investment. I believe it is fair to make an analogy with business, as it impacts decisions about funding.

If I am looking at procuring a product or service from a vendor, I look at how it fits into my budget forecast for the current year and beyond. I would be foolish not to consider the longer-term impact of purchasing a particular product or service.

With new hepatitis C treatments that have high cure rates, we have an opportunity to save substantial amounts of money in the next 20 years by treating people in a more aggressive way — sooner rather than later when they are facing multiple hospital visits and stays, advanced liver disease and transplant.

In an article published earlier this year — which also formed the basis of a press release by the Canadian Liver Foundation this last July, titled “Burden of Disease and Cost of Chronic Hepatitis C Infection in Canada” — the cost of not treating people is graphically illustrated in a thoughtful and statistically sound way. Some of the authors are based here in B.C., as we have some of the brightest and best minds in the field of virology, particularly hepatitis C.

I’m of the opinion that it makes sense to treat people with newer, more effective drugs because the likelihood of cure is nearly at 100 percent. Even if the cost is approaching $100,000, we have to treat only once in almost all cases.

With many other diseases, like HIV, there’s no cure. Same with diabetes and so on. The costs for managing other illnesses can go on for years. And of course we fund the treatment of those people, because it is the right thing to do. Why not hepatitis C? The numbers make sense.

I have not really addressed the human cost of seeing thousands of people getting sicker and sicker as a result of more advanced disease, leading to transplants we don’t have donors for and liver cancer that we can’t treat successfully, in most cases.

There are few families that hepatitis C has not touched, as I have learned in my work. There is an infection rate of 3 percent in the baby boomer cohort — which is no surprise to me, given how many baby boomers there are. It is also no surprise that they comprise such a large percentage of people living with chronic hepatitis C.

In the intravenous drug–using community, rates are much higher. This group needs help as well, along with those who are co-infected with HIV or hepatitis B. It is not a case of one being favoured over the other in terms of who is more deserving, as this just perpetuates the stigma.

Stigma is why so few people ever disclose to their families, co-workers or friends about their hepatitis C status. Stigma creates yet another obstacle to care and treatment. People with little or no support from their immediate family and broader community will often put off seeking care and treatment.

There is a real fear in patients of being discriminated against by employers, family and friends because we have framed hepatitis C in terms that are unfair to these patients. This is not so much a social issue. As I see it, it is a health issue. In my view, we should be approaching it in that way.

I’ll close with…. I speak to patients daily, and that’s not an exaggeration. I hear their frustration and feelings of betrayal. Many feel abandoned and discarded. Some are angry. Some are extremely ill, with the end result and inevitable outcome from hepatitis C left untreated.

We need to see a fair and equitable strategy that addresses all of the issues around hep C infection, and we have an opportunity to do that now. We can be leaders in Canada, as we have done in the past with HIV and other infectious diseases. Or we can choose to ignore what is, without a doubt, going to cost us more and more in the future and cost more lives in the years ahead.

Sir, thank you for your presentation. If you do have any other information that you would like to present to us, until Friday the 17th — this Friday — we are able to accept information.
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D. Ashton (Chair): The young lady right there in the back will give you the e-mail address that you can send it to.

D. Luster: Sure. I’d sure like that you all consider what I’ve said. I know I said it rather quickly.

D. Ashton (Chair): We do appreciate you doing it. We have a long list, and we have to stay on time. Otherwise, it just gets pushed into the evening. So I do apologize.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, I don’t want to put myself in the position of saying yes or no. It’s something that has to be addressed into the future. At this point in time we’re taking input, and it’s really not up to this committee. We’ll make a recommendation to the legislative body, and then that goes to Finance.

D. Luster: I would just ask that all of you consider if it was your wife, son, brother or mother how you’d feel about it. But of course, if you’re wealthy enough, you can buy these new treatments now in Canada — or have great insurance, which you probably all do. But for the rest of us….

D. Ashton (Chair): Sir, I would take that one back, because most of us up here are identical to you — identical.

D. Ashton (Chair): Most of us are probably in the same boat as what you’re in. Okay? Have a good day. Thank you for coming.

S. Kupka: Excellent, thank you. And thank you so much for hanging in there on the last day of your consultation, on to the last hour. As a dietitian, I hope that you have been well fed, because it’s really hard to stay awake and be attentive and think and make the kind of processing that you have to make after such a long consultation process.

D. Ashton (Chair): Now I know why the staff hid the goody box: because you’re here today. That’s what they did.

Thank you for coming. We have ten minutes for the presentation, as you may have heard. I’ll give you a two-minute warning, and then up to five minutes for questions or comments. And again, it’s up to the panel to ask. Okay?

It’s great to be here and to be able to speak to the committee, so thank you for your time. I’m seeing some familiar faces and some new faces.

I do have a one-page summary of the recommendations that we’ll be putting into our submission. We will be making a written submission that will be a bit lengthier and hope that some of the discussion that might come out today might help to inform that as we move ahead.

British Columbians can be proud of our ranking as the best in Canada in terms of life expectancy, around cancer mortality and mortality related to heart disease. That’s great news — and certainly, to give the government some credit for the many innovative programs that have been in place.

As part of a national organization, with Dietitians of Canada, I have the privilege to hear what’s happening in other provinces. Often the work that we’re doing around health, and especially prevention and promotion, is of envy to many provinces. At the same time, we cannot be complacent if we wish to continue to have positive population health outcomes while maintaining an affordable spending rate per capita. I know that certainly is a consideration that you as a committee need to put into it.

I’d like to highlight some major nutrition challenges that if left unaddressed really do risk increasing health care costs further, which is something that we can’t afford to do.

Malnourishment and frail and vulnerable populations. About 45 percent of seniors admitted to hospital are malnourished. I spoke to a dietitian who’s at Nanaimo General Hospital. In her hospital she deals in the seniors rehabilitation unit of the acute care system, which is where they try to provide supports to support seniors to go back to their homes. She found through her assessment, and it’s part of a national study, that closer to 69 percent of seniors are malnourished.

What that’s connected with is a longer length of stay, increased readmissions. Both of those are certainly tied to significant costs. So malnourishment is certainly an issue in the frail and vulnerable populations.

Nutrition-related chronic disease. This is probably something that you’ve heard a lot about. We do have some very positive indicators here in British Columbia, leading the pack. At the same time, diabetes rates in Canada have doubled over the past decade. So it’s not something that we can afford not to continue to be very assertive about addressing.

Finally, limited access to healthy foods. Poverty is the root cause of food insecurity, and while child poverty rates have decreased here in B.C., they do remain the highest in Canada.

Dietitians of Canada supports the province of British Columbia’s strategic direction to improve health outcomes for the best possible value. We’ve gone through the strategic directions of the Ministry of Health and certainly are supportive of the direction that the ministry chooses to go.

We’ve identified two priorities that are closest aligned with the work that we do: around a provincial system of primary and community care; and targeted and effective disease prevention and health promotion. Looking in that context of having a well-led and healthy workforce to achieve those priorities, we have three key recommendations.

The first recommendation: to provide services that improve the nutritional status of the frail and the most vulnerable — so taking you back again to the number of malnourished that are being hospitalized. If you picture this: you have an elderly person who is admitted to hospital; they arrive malnourished; they’re there to have a series of tests — X-rays, blood tests…. Through that, they may then, of course, again not have access to their meals, unless they happen to have a dietitian who implemented a protected mealtime policy, which means that they can’t scoop the meal out from under them at lunchtime to go and have a blood test or an X-ray done.

Often what happened before is people would leave the hospital even more malnourished. Then, of course, we have them go home, and we’re so surprised when they come back into hospital. When they go home, even though we may know that they’re malnourished, there are no supports in place for them.

We have two suggestions in terms of actions that could help to address this concern. The first one is actually one you’re going to really enjoy hearing because it isn’t a big-ticket item. There aren’t a lot of costs associated with it. It’s more associated with cutting red tape.

That’s to expedite changes to regulations to enable professional groups to work to their full scope of practice to improve program delivery and services. This is a recommendation that we presented to the Auditor General when we were part of the review of the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation services, looking at nutritional supplements.

There are different categories of nutritional supplements that we can provide to some of the clients of that ministry, and for some of them, dietitians can sign off and some they can’t.

Typically, if there’s a person who’s living in the community who’s vulnerable, who needs to have nutritional supplements, the dietitian would do a nutritional assessment, she’ll fill out all the paperwork, get the papers, and then it still requires, for two of the four supplements, a physician’s signature. Then at that point that would involve a second visit to the physician’s office, which of course incurs cost either by the system or, in some cases, by a patient who already can’t afford it, because there are costs to filling out forms.

That’s something to really look at. Other professions likely have some similar issues. But if we can just expedite some of the changes to regulations that are in place, that would be very helpful.

The second point is one that does require a more significant investment. It’s to provide targeted investments in the creation of new positions in primary and community care to enable a shift towards interprofessional teams that include dietitians.

We have talked about interprofessional teams for a long, long time. They are not in place. In the community I know that two of our MLAs are from Fraser Health. Fraser Health serves 1.6 million people. It’s a huge health region. Every day about 630 clients are served by home and community care — home nursing visits. There are 1½ dietitians servicing that program.

Of all those 1.6 million people, for the 630 a day that actually receive services and are the most vulnerable in the community and are trying to stay home, trying to stay out of hospital and have identified health issues — that’s why they’re eligible for these services — there’s very little support from a nutritional perspective.

The nurse that’s going in, to perhaps do a dressing change and finding the wound isn’t healing, might be able to identify that is as a result of malnutrition that’s contributing to the slow wound healing. Where does she go for her support? Where does she go for her continuing training around nutrition interventions?

That’s where a dietitian can come into place to provide support for the rest of the team and to strengthen the interventions that they’re providing. In some cases where there’s somebody who is homebound and under very high nutritional risk, it may even be worthwhile to have that dietitian go into the home and do a full and comprehensive assessment. That would still be less costly than having that patient hospitalized.

The 1.5 is pretty typical. If you look on the Island, I think there’s probably closer to four, which is a lot more, but 3½ of them of them are in Victoria.

If you go up into the northern part of Vancouver Island,
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there are no dietitians providing services in the home, even for patients who are on tube feeding. Because we have increased complexity in the community, there may be individuals that have a tube feed. It may be a tube that goes through the nose to the stomach. It may be inserted directly into the stomach, or it may be into the intestine, and then they have to put their nourishment through that kind of mechanism.

Patients and families are managing this on their own at home, and they really do need to have supports, because if they don’t have the supports on how to do that effectively, where they turn to is the hospital. We certainly want to be able to provide some support there.

In terms of a targeted investment, I strongly encourage the government to consider the area of home and community care, which is aligned with the current strategic priorities within the Ministry of Health — and specifically, dedicate funds to interprofessional teams, one member of which should be a dietitian.

The second recommendation is to make healthy food choice the easier choice for all British Columbians. For those of you that have met with Dietitians of Canada in the past, you’re probably familiar with the cost of eating. We’ve certainly done a lot around food security, because that’s something that we as dietitians see on a regular basis.

I started off saying that I hope you had full bellies and were well fed, because it’s hard to think and concentrate. It is. That’s why we have some school meal programs, and that’s why I am concerned about hungry children. We all get to go home to a hot meal, but not everybody has that luxury.

We have recommendations in terms of improving access to healthy food for people living on a low income or in poverty. We do have something called the nutritious food basket. We measure what food costs, and so there is an opportunity, then, to set up income assistance rates and minimum wage aligned with some kind of an indicator as to what food actually costs.

Just to be clear, it’s not that food is too expensive. For those of us that are gainfully employed and middle income, it’s not that food is too expensive. The costs around it end up being very expensive, and the food is the elastic portion. If a single mother has to choose between a roof over her head, food for her child or food for herself, she’s going to pick the roof, then food for her child and then probably food for herself. It’s just a matter of priorities. It’s something that’s a little bit flexible in the budget.

So really having a look at the kinds of supports that we put in place for people on low income. Continue to support the implementation of policies and programs that support healthy eating. There are many excellent initiatives out there — just to throw our support behind continuing them.

The last point: ensure a qualified workforce capable of providing evidence-based nutrition intervention.

There are two specific recommendations, one around the education and training. UBC is the one institution that provides training for dietitians. We have about the same number of dietitians in B.C. and Alberta — about 1,200. Alberta graduates 60 dietitians a year; we graduate 34.

We are a net importer of dietitians in B.C. What that means is that we bring in dietitians from other provinces, and then we pay to train them and to become familiar with our system.

A part of that is great, because we do want to bring in new ideas from across the country and even from other countries, but it’s not the most cost-efficient way. Certainly as the demand for the services increase and as retirements start to increase, we’re going to have to focus some more attention on that.

We look forward to contributing to the Select Standing Committee on Health some further ideas around incentives to address the challenges in the north. The extra challenge there is that the positions are so spread out, they’re often fragments of positions. You might need in one small community half of a dietitian or 0.2 of a dietitian. It’s very hard to recruit for that.

Taking one step back, taking a look at the scope of practice of professionals. If dietitians are able to practise to their full scope, they’re able to take on additional responsibilities and expand that so that it’s a position that’s more attractive to recruit for.

In the full submission we also have a comment about the student loan forgiveness program, which at this point doesn’t include dietitians.

S. Gibson: I remember your passion last time you presented. I appreciate it very much. We just had a presentation from the farmers markets, so there might be some synergism there.

Here’s my question, observation. Maybe it sounds critical. I think, notwithstanding people are disadvantaged…. Those folks — single moms, people on fixed or low incomes — have a challenge to buy healthy food. I acknowledge that. But for the most part, for the folks in the middle, people like us around this room, I think we know what’s healthy. I think we know. But I think the problem isn’t so much that we don’t eat what’s healthy; we just don’t choose to.

A dietitian saying to me. “Hey, Simon, you know what? You should quit eating more noodles, white-floured stuff. Quit eating Kraft Dinner or whatever, and switch to a zucchini that’s steamed.” I know that. But I think for a lot of folks, they don’t want to eat healthfully, unfortunately, even though people tell them.

That’s not quite consistent with what you’re saying, but
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I think a lot of people know what’s healthy; they just don’t choose to eat healthy. What’s your comment on that?

S. Kupka: I would agree, in the end, that there is an element of choice that comes to it. I think the key point is to make the healthy choice the easier choice. So picture going to the rec centre. I take my little boy to swimming, and he’s really hungry when he comes out. I go to the vending machines, take a look at the vending machines and see what’s available there. Absolutely, he wants to go for the chips and the candy. That would be his choice. As a parent trying to encourage and support and teach healthy choices, it would be so much easier if what was available, what was accessible, were good options, good choices.

I think that’s where — not to take the choices away from individuals, and especially not from parents and families — to support them to make healthy ones.

D. Ashton (Chair): Sorry, Sonya. We only have about two minutes left, and we have three questions.

J. Shin: Simon raised the same point. I do find that a lot of the time it’s the access, the affordability — just overall patient compliance when it comes to the discipline that it takes for us to make the healthier choices. I suppose the suggestions that you put forward are more for putting out thoughtful consultative processes in institutionalized settings. That’s what I’m taking away.

But on your comment about the red tape around the regulatory forms and whatnot, I was just curious to find out: is it the health authorities or the colleges, or is it the ministry, legislation? Do you know where we go after in order for us to implement your suggestion?

S. Kupka: In the case of the example I provided, the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation would take the lead on that and work together within health human resources. They have a regulatory branch that works with the colleges and governs the legislation that governs the College of Dietitians.

J. Shin: Got you. But as far as your scope of practice is concerned, that will be with the college. Is that correct?

S. Kupka: Correct — under the Health Professions Act. I think it’s been six years that we’ve been waiting for our amendments to come through, so that isn’t the college’s delay there. That’s on behalf of the Ministry of Health.

J. Yap: You mentioned there are 35 that are trained every year. I assume that’s all at UBC.

J. Yap: Has there been any discussion about expanding that at UBC or starting another program in another college or university?

S. Kupka: We’ve certainly been strongly recommending trying to expand it. The limiting factor there is the practicums. Part of the training for a registered dietitian is to have a practicum which is in the health authority. There isn’t a lot of support at the health authority level to coordinate that, to ensure that the graduates have the competencies needed in the field.

J. Yap: It sounds like a very low number, so is there a long waiting list to get in? Is it very hard to get into the program?

S. Kupka: It is. It’s a third-year-entry kind of program, and then you’re guaranteed the practicum. I think there are just over 200 applicants for the 34 positions.

G. Heyman: There’s a study with which you might be familiar that found that the U.S. county with the highest level of population obesity was also the poorest county in the United States. The answer is that the food they can afford is crappy food, not nutritious, and high in fats and sugars.

With respect to your recommendation about improving access for people living on a low income or in poverty, what specific recommendation do you have in mind to do that?

And just quickly on the interdisciplinary teams, interprofessional teams, there’s not much in B.C. In Vancouver Coastal there may be a couple of community health clinics where dietitians are part of the team, and those are actually in the process of being dismantled.

I’m wondering if you’re having conversations with Vancouver Coastal or the Health Ministry to find some other way to enable those to go forward, which is consistent with the Ministry of Health’s long-range plan but isn’t actually playing out on the ground, it would appear.

S. Kupka: I think that’s an excellent observation: the disconnect between what’s happening at the health authority level and the ministry strategic direction. At this point, we’ve been focusing on connecting with the Ministry of Health and putting our concerns forward in that way, because we tend to operate on a provincial level. That’s where I think that the provincial government can put in targeted resources, having it specifically connected to deliverables and outcomes.
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D. Ashton (Chair): Have to leave it at that. Thank you very much for your presentation. If you have additional information, please get it in to us by Friday.

Last but not least, British Columbia School Trustees Association. Teresa, thank you very much for coming.

Ten minutes for the presentation. At two minutes I’ll give you a warning. Then we have up to five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.

T. Rezansoff: Thank you. One month from today is November 15, and the citizens of this province will be expressing their hopes for our public education system through the election process. I clearly have been hearing, as have trustees across the province — and especially after the recent teachers strike — a renewed support for the need for increased investment in public education. A spotlight has been focused on public education as a result of the recent strike activity that we went through.

I can fully appreciate, over the course of the time that you’ve been doing these hearings — and me being here as your last presenter — the many requests for investment that you’ve heard in one area or another of need in B.C. But here’s what we do all know to be true: education truly is the key to success both for the individual and for the province of B.C. as a whole.

I quote you actually from the B.C. Ministry of Education’s 2014-15 service plan: “Young British Columbians are relying on our education system to help them to explore their world, inspire their minds and discover their potential. We owe it to them to support their aspirations by providing the best possible learning experience. Their futures depend on it, and so does ours.”

This is an exciting and challenging time for public education in B.C. — exciting because the role of education in determining the future of our province has never been more evident, and challenging because there is so much to do. The opportunities that are before us are incredible, and we must take advantage of them. B.C. will not reach its full potential unless our students reach theirs.

We now have five years ahead of us that will be uninterrupted by labour disputes in our public education system. We have in place the B.C. jobs plan, the B.C. education plan. We have committed and dedicated trustees, teachers, support staff, administrators. We have parents and the public who are all committed to B.C.’s public education system.

We have a stellar reputation. B.C. ranks among the top in the world — the performance of our students, educationally. The time has never been more critical for publicly demonstrated commitment to new investments in public education by government. With so many pieces in place, it’s not the time to ignore or squander those opportunities. Yes, through the recently negotiated settlement with B.C. teachers, there has been money put into public education by the province, but only a small fraction of the cost of that agreement will actually go towards addressing outcomes for students.

The learning improvement fund, or the education fund, does begin to address some of the concerns that trustees have been voicing for many years about class size and composition, and we’re pleased to know with certainty that that fund will continue through the length of that agreement and that there will be increases over the next five years.

This investment cannot and must not be viewed as the investment in public education. As I said earlier, we have clearly heard from our public during this strike that they supported the need for increased investment in public education. The public cares about this, and they want a strong future for our students in our province.

The ongoing cost pressures related to utility costs, energy costs and all of the rest of it have not been addressed through this recent investment. Our concerns about being able to fully meet the increasingly complex needs of our students, our aboriginal students, special needs, English language learner students, our students with mental health issues — without increased funding, we will not be able to fully address those.

To go back to my first point, the health and prosperity of our province depends on a strong and vital public education system, and it depends on our students being able to meet their potential. BCSTA and its members look forward to working closely with the Ministry of Education with many ongoing initiatives: the shared services, our service delivery plan. There’s a review of our funding formula that we’ll be looking at, and our accountability system and many other initiatives that we’re looking forward to there. As co-governors of public education, we must continue to work together and make the necessary investment so that every student in every part of our province can succeed.

In summary, there are three key questions I think we need to ask ourselves. Where are we going as a province? How are we going to get there? What do we need to get there? I can help you answer the third one by saying that we need well-educated citizens, employers and leaders, and we will only get there through a well-funded public education system.

G. Heyman: I’m wondering if you could elaborate on your comment that only a small fraction of the dollars that were targeted in the collective agreement for what I understand to be increased classroom resources will result in outcomes.
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T. Rezansoff: I just meant that of the total package for that collective agreement, a lot of it was for wages and benefits and the rest of it. Only that $75 million, which in reality was already part of the budget for this year…. It’s just the small amount — I think it’s $19.6 million or $19.8 million — that was for support staff, which was carved out. That is additional. Those are the only dollars — and we already had those dollars in hand — that can be viewed as additional investment that will directly benefit our students.

We are very happy to know that that fund will continue through the length of the term of the agreement and that it will be increased over the years. Overall, provincially, that investment was not fully for the benefit of our students.

G. Heyman: I misunderstood what baseline you were using, so thank you for clarifying that.

G. Holman: Thanks for the presentation. It’s a good way to end the session, as far as I’m concerned. Just a comment on the aboriginal funding. It’s my understanding that provincial funding just goes into off-reserve schools where First Nations kids are attending. Is that right? So you’re suggesting more resources into those schools, or are you actually suggesting resources to on-reserve schools as well?

T. Rezansoff: Well, we’re talking about public education dollars, and we know that our graduation rates for our aboriginal students are significantly lower than they are for the rest of the student population. The resources to be able to adequately meet all of those needs are what we’re trying to get at here. We’re talking about public schools.

G. Holman: First Nations schools on reserves — my understanding is that you don’t have a mandate to put dollars in.

D. Ashton (Chair): Gary has to run. He has to catch a flight. So we apologize. Everybody is just trying to get home tonight from different places.

S. Gibson: This is interesting material, and I appreciate the way it’s presented — a nice capsule. It makes it easy to read.

You say that 83 percent of students do graduate from school. As someone who taught university students, the problem, of course, is that only about half of them provincewide have university entrance. Perhaps they’ve had poor advice, or they’ve been struggling. But they’re missing English 12. They’re missing French 11. So they arrive looking to go to university, and they have to upgrade.

How can we correct that? Is there anything that we can do, working with government and working with you folks, to try to improve that? We’ve got half of our students, even those that want to go into trade school…. They still have to have some kind of entrance equivalency. That’s troubling me, as someone who has spent a fair amount of his career working with university students, that a lot of them just aren’t eligible. I’d like your comment on that.

T. Rezansoff: I think there’s already a really good connection that has been made with a woman by the name of Jan Unwin, who has a jointly funded position between the post-secondary and the K-to-12 system, working to help with those bridges of understanding of what it is that’s needed.

Then there’s somebody else who’s working within the ministry, Larry Espe, who’s very much connected into the B.C. jobs plan and trying to ensure that students have all options and possibilities opened up for them. That’s also part of the B.C. education plan. These are the exciting opportunities that we have that we need to capitalize on right now with these next five years.

The bits and pieces are all there. It’s managing to put it together. Unfortunately, it often comes down to…. There’s a matter of will there, but there’s also a matter of resources to help us be able to get there. We say it at the end: “Give us the resources, and we will give you the future.” We hold that future in our schools. The students are there.

Even the presentation from the Dietitians of Canada — she spoke wonderfully and actually made our point, also, about the connection between education and health and prosperity for all of us as a province. You can’t have one without the other. But it starts in our schools.

D. Ashton (Chair): Where do the resources come from? You mentioned resources. What are they, and where do they come from?

T. Rezansoff: Well, I know that’s an issue of significant debate, especially for the provincial government. But clearly, what we were hearing through the course of the strike action with teachers and that heightened focus on education and the needs…. For parents, especially, and trustees, it’s not trying to say: “It’s here, or it’s there.” But what we were hearing was that citizens were saying: “If I knew that my tax dollars were going to go in support of education, I would be in favour of paying increased taxes.”

As a matter of fact, there was a poll done a couple of years ago where citizens of B.C. were asked: “If you had a
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choice, if you knew that an increase in tax dollars would go directly to education and health, would you pay increased taxes?” It was overwhelmingly…. I think it was, like, 80 percent said yes, they would pay increased taxes if they knew it was going to go specifically to those two areas.

D. Ashton (Chair): But how do you specifically address a tax increase? I’m just asking because this is new to me, in the sense of: how do you specifically address a tax increase to a specific area like that? We’re going to charge X amount across the board, and it’s going to go specifically to health and education. What about welfare? What about everything else that has to transpire in the province?

T. Rezansoff: Well, I know that is the debate that you all have. The point that we’re trying to make is that at the bottom line of it is the connection between a well-educated citizen and the prosperity of the province, which in turn leads to those greater tax revenues, the greater revenues for us as a province in general. The correlation and the connection — a number of studies have been done on that over the years.

It’s clearly understood that the tightest connection to prosperity is to your education of your citizens.

T. Rezansoff: Not necessarily for everything. I think that some of the work that we’re already doing will get us down the road, but there is no question for boards of education that there are struggles in trying to adequately address all of the needs that we have within the existing parameters.

D. Ashton (Chair): I’m just asking questions because this is important to all of us.

D. Ashton (Chair): Your statistics that you started off with say that the kids coming out of B.C. are very well educated in comparison to the rest of Canada.

D. Ashton (Chair): Is that a good comparison — the rest of Canada? Or should we be looking at the world, or…?

T. Rezansoff: We rank in the top five in the world, and the Conference Board of Canada ranked B.C. as number one a couple of months ago, for education. So we are doing something right. We obviously are. Despite all of the angst and the labour strife and the acrimony that we have between sectors within our province, we are doing something right.

Over these next five years that we have, knowing that we will not be having to enter into labour disputes for five years — the pieces that we have been working hard to put in place and the ministry has worked hard to put in place with the jobs plan, with the education plan and all the rest of it — the opportunity and the time, in my mind, is a critical opportunity that we should not waste, that we need to take advantage of.

I want to thank you very much — greatly appreciated. If you have anything else, please get it in to us by Friday. If you think you have anything else that might help with your presentation, we can accept it until Friday at closing, I think — at 4:30 or something.

Just before we close, I want to thank staff, specifically, for all the hard work in these last three to four weeks that we’ve been on the road. And to my peers around the table: it’s been absolutely delightful working with you.

Now the real work starts, so we are going to have to jitney our times. Once we can get everybody, poor Susan’s going to be charged with trying to fit it in so we can get together, and we can start disseminating all this information that we have and come up with a recommendation that we can get to our legislative body so that it can get to Finance.

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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)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

2) British Columbia Chamber of Commerce	Jon Garson
	Ian Tait
	John Winter

6) Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver	Harriet Permut
	Jim Woolsey

8) Board of Education, School District No. 38 (Richmond)	Monica Pamer
	Donna Sargent

9) The Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia	Tammy Nakashima
	Akash Sablok

10) British Columbia Dental Association	Dr. David Baird
	Jocelyn Johnston

13) Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers	Ben Brunnen
	Geoff Morrison

17) British Columbia School Trustees Association	Stephen Hansen
	Teresa Rezansoff

14) Corporation of Delta	Mayor Lois Jackson
	George Harvie

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES