Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 70 — Wednesday, September 16, 2015 (HTML)

Present: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; Claire Trevena, MLA; John Yap, MLA

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES


CONTENTS
Page
Presentations	1549
A. Taylor
B. Tremblay
B. Szuta
J. Exley
R. Brunton
S. Evans
K. Rogers
S. Lehbauer
A. Patt
T. Armstrong
D. Kitchen
M. Benton
D. Weeks

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Scott Hamilton. I’m the MLA for Delta North and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We are an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold provincewide consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance. The committee will issue a report by November 15, 2015, with recommendations for next year’s budget.

We’ve had to modify our planned schedule of in-person community meetings this year, as the Legislature has been called back to session starting September 28. In order to accommodate as many presenters as possible, we’re holding public hearings in communities across the province through in-person sessions or via teleconference, video conference or Skype.

British Columbians are also invited to participate by sending a written, audio or video submission or completing an on-line survey. You can make a submission or learn more about the consultation in general by visiting our webpage at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. We invite all British Columbians to make a submission and contribute to this important process, and for those of you in attendance, we thank you for taking the time to participate today.

All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly. Just a reminder that the deadline for those submissions is Thursday, October 15, 2015.

Today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. If time permits, we’ll also have an open-mike period at the end of the meeting. Five minutes are allotted for each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register with Stephanie 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.

Now I’ll start with some introductions, and I know the members of the committee will take the time to introduce themselves. I’ll start to my right — John.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Carole James, MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial, to my left, and Stephanie Raymond from the parliamentary committees office. Michael Baer and Alexandrea Hursey from Hansard Services are here to record the proceedings, as I mentioned earlier. Thank you very much.

With that, we’ll get started with the Nelson CARES Society, Advocacy Centre — Amy Taylor. Ms. Taylor, welcome. Thank you for taking the time. As I mentioned before, you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up when it might be time to start wrapping up, and then we’ll go to questions for five.

A. Taylor: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Again, my name is Amy Taylor. I’m the manager of the Advocacy Centre, which is a program of Nelson CARES Society.

Imagine having to sleep in your car with your kids because you had no money and no place else to go. That’s the situation a woman who contacted our office last week found herself in as she was trying to get income assistance. Her situation highlights some of the current problems with the income assistance system, which is what I’m here to talk about today. I’ll come back to this family in a minute.

The Advocacy Centre works with people who are dealing with the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation to access income assistance and disability benefits. All the people we see live in poverty. Many are homeless. Many have experienced trauma or abuse. In addition, they may have physical, cognitive or mental health issues, limited education, literacy issues and limit-
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ed access to resources such as transportation, telephones, computers and Internet access.

Over the last five years, the ministry has drastically changed the way it delivers services. It has moved from a system of local offices and workers to a centralized model of service delivery that relies heavily on technology.

Here’s how the system generally works. A client contacts the ministry in person, by phone or by filling out the on-line application for income assistance. A service request is created in the integrated case management system, or the ICM. A worker, who may be located anywhere in the province, picks up the request and processes it. The worker may contact the client to get additional information or for an intake interview. The worker makes a decision and documents it on the system. The client may be notified in writing. More typically, the client contacts the ministry, and the front-line worker looks up the decision on the system and relays it to the client.

It all sounds very logical. However, there are some real problems with how this works in the real world. The ministry has drastically reduced its in-person office hours through office closure and reduced hours. Most recently in our region, the remaining three offices — which are in Nelson, Trail and Grand Forks — had their hours reduced from six to three hours a day.

The primary mode of contact available to clients is the ministry’s centralized phone system. Clients phone a toll-free number. There is a complicated phone tree. If people can get through the phone tree, they have to wait on hold for an extended period of time or request a callback requiring them to stay by the phone. In my experience, wait times are currently about an hour to an hour and a half on the call centre. Once they get through, calls can get disconnected. Then the client must get back on the phone and go through the whole process again.

Because of the long wait times, people without a phone find it very difficult to access the service using public phones. Many of the clients have pay-as-you-go phones, and the cumbersome telephone system eats up their valuable and already limited minutes.

The toll-free call centre number is the only way for clients to contact the ministry by phone. They get a different person every time they call, and they cannot ask to be connected to a specific person. Clients may have to explain their situation over and over and may get different information depending on who they talk to. Many clients feel uncomfortable trying to explain complex situations over the phone to a faceless stranger. Having to do this over and over makes it even more difficult.

Clients’ point of contact with the ministry is through front-line workers who staff the offices and phone lines. The front-line workers do not have authority to make decisions. More often than not, they have to put in a service request to have someone else call the person back. This may take days. Information is relayed through notes on the ICM file. Information is often lost or miscommunicated. Clients may never get to talk to the person who is actually making the decision.

If clients miss a callback from a worker, often the worker will not leave a message. If they do, the callback number is the call centre. Since you cannot connect to a particular office or staff person through the call centre, the client again leaves a message and waits for a callback. I frequently encounter situations where a benefit has been denied to someone because the worker could not contact the client. However, the client has no knowledge of the worker’s attempt to call them and has received nothing in the mail.

Clients must complete applications for assistance on line. There is no other option, and the ministry does not have a dedicated service to assist people with this application. It is only offered in English. The on-line application has over 90 screens and takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete. This creates a real barrier for people who are not computer-literate or who do not have access to a computer or Internet access. It is difficult to use public computers to complete the application, and with the reduced office hours, it is difficult to get to a ministry office to use the computer.

There are long delays in processing service requests even where a request is marked as urgent. Applicants who qualify for an expedited intake interview because they have an immediate need for food, shelter or medical attention still wait over a week for an intake appointment. I have a client who had to cancel an appointment with a specialist because the ministry did not process the request for transportation funds in time. Another client waited over one month to have his request for crisis funding for firewood processed.

The story of the family living in their car starkly illustrates how the current system is unable to meet the needs of those it is designed to serve. This family became homeless when the place they were living in was destroyed. They immediately applied for assistance on line. Four days later they found out that their application was not successfully submitted through the on-line process. They applied again. It was another 11 days before they received a call from the ministry intake worker, despite their repeated contacts with the ministry to let them know how urgent the situation was.

Every time they called or went to an office, they were sent away to wait for the call. None of the front-line workers in the local office or in the call centre were able to help them. Once the worker did contact them, it was still another two days before they received any assistance, even though they had explained that they were living in their car. They had no way to contact the worker directly to find out what the delays were about and could only leave messages with the office and call centre.

With its reliance on centralized call centres, on-line services and the ICM and with the concurrent reduction
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in in-person services, B.C.’s income assistance has become increasingly bureaucratic, inefficient and inaccessible. It is unable to meet the often urgent needs of people living in poverty. I’ve actually been doing this work for 17 years, and the deterioration in the system’s ability to respond is nothing short of shocking.

This is where my submission with respect to the budget is. It is crucial to increase the resources available to the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation in order to allow it to address the gaps in the system and ensure that we are meeting the basic needs of the most vulnerable people in our province.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for your time. I appreciate that. I will go to the committee for questions.

M. Morris: You’ve been doing this for 17 years out of Nelson. It’s a very compelling story that you’re relaying to us here today, but have you done any work with the ministry to try and rectify the gaps and the slowness of the system? How have you made out with that?

A. Taylor: Our centre…. There are regular quarterly meetings with the service quality manager and advocates in the region, and we consistently give feedback about the issues we’re experiencing. There have been consultations. We speak with the supervisors. We speak with the service quality managers. We assist clients in giving feedback where they’re able, but many clients are not in the position to follow up because they’re just trying to sort of get by. So we have given feedback to the ministry about these issues.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Amy, for bringing forward your story, and thank you to you and your staff for your work.

I wish I could say this was the first time I’ve heard these kinds of concerns, but we certainly hear it in our communities as well. I think what I’ve seen is that the community agencies end up picking up what should be ministry work and what used to be done in ministry work.

I wonder if you could share if there’s a greater pressure in a particular area. Are you seeing more families? Are you seeing more seniors? Are you seeing more young people? I wonder if there’s any demographic that you’re seeing a greater pressure on right now than others.

A. Taylor: Nothing stands out for me. I would say, though, that a lot of the people we work with have a disability — often either a cognitive or a mental health disability. But the folks with disabilities are the ones that are struggling the most to deal with the more cumbersome system. They don’t have…. It gets more frustrating. They’re just not able to cope with it, and a lot of them will just give up and are doing without benefits they may be entitled to.

We do see tempers rising more than we used to. In the offices, people’s fuses are really short because they’re under such strain. I do feel like people with disabilities are finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the new system.

C. Trevena: Again, Amy, thank you very much for the stories. To repeat what Carole says, sadly, we hear a lot of similar stories.

My question is on the telephone system and the bringing in of the telephone system at the same time as ICM and that move. Do you think that some of the problems would be solved by reopening the offices and having the individual case workers back in place so that clients of the ministry were dealing with somebody every week or every two weeks who knew their files individually, either in the office or if it was still by phone — that at least they had the name? Do you think that this would be a step to rectifying some of the problems?

A. Taylor: I think it would certainly help. I mean, I’m not opposed to a phone system. Especially in a rural area, that can be really helpful for folks, because sometimes people are travelling an hour to get to their local office. So having the phone option…. But the difficulty is that it’s just not sufficiently resourced. So there are the waits and, again, yes, not being able to connect with someone in your local area or the same person so you get to know the workers a little bit and they know where you live and what resources are available.

I think that would certainly help — to move back to that sort of more local approach to service. Also, give back discretion and authority to front-line workers so that the clients are actually talking to the people making the decisions and there isn’t sort of this middle bureaucracy where information gets dropped and lost and delays happen. If it’s just more of that immediate contact, I think that would help as well.

S. Chandra Herbert: You started to answer the question I was going to ask, which again, was about individual workers. I’ve heard from constituents who get bad advice, get told incorrect things. Then the worker who gave the bad advice is never able to be found because they’ve never had a name. They never were told who the person was, and they can’t track it down. So you have somebody within the system who could create real problems for people’s lives. They’re trying, but there are not very many of them.

So I guess we’ve centralized it now. A phone system can work. But ideally, do you think having a dedicated worker for people, that this is the person you called, point of contact…?

A. Taylor: I know a lot of my clients would love that — if they just knew the person they were calling, if there was a way to get in touch with that person. These are
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such basic and crucial issues people are dealing with and very personal, and there are a lot of emotional aspects to this. That human interaction is so important in this kind of service. When you get this impersonal and more bureaucratic system, it just doesn’t work for this kind of service.

S. Chandra Herbert: I was going to say thank you for raising the issue of clients having to tell their stories multiple times. When you don’t have a phone and you’re on a public phone, many people can hear your story. I can understand why that wouldn’t work. It would also waste government time and the staff time to have to go through it all over again.

D. Ashton: Amy, thank you for your input. Top three: better communication, local resources, one more? I’m not trying to put you on the spot, but what would be your top three? Local resources for a point of contact for the people that are requiring the service?

A. Taylor: I’d say other options with respect to the application process. That’s a real issue. Basically, you just go on line. There really isn’t any support to do that, to go through that application. For some folks that’s really challenging, to get through that. So have other options.

I feel like the ministry needs to take back that responsibility of taking the application. It seems like they’ve given that away. “Do it on line. Hopefully, a community agency can help you if you can’t do it yourself.” I think they need to take back that role and, where people aren’t able to do it on line, have an option for folks to go through the application with a worker or whatever needs to happen to make that work.

E. Foster: Just quickly. I saw someone in the audience when we were passing my iPad back and forth. We’re not checking the ball scores. I’ve got your website up here.

Could you leave a copy of your presentation so that we could have it — or send it to us or something, please?

A. Taylor: I could send it. Mine’s a little scribbled on right now, but I’m happy to….

E. Foster: Okay. If you could forward that so that we could have a copy of it, because there’s a lot in it. It would be nice to be able to go through it afterwards.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Hansard could provide us with a transcript as well, if we choose.

Ms. Taylor, thank you very much for presenting to the committee, taking the time out, and thank you for the work that you do.

Mr. Tremblay, welcome. As I mentioned earlier, a ten-minute presentation — I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up — and then five minutes for questions at the end. Thank you very much. The floor is yours.

B. Tremblay: Good morning, all. My name is Brent Tremblay, and I am the president and chief executive officer of Kootenay Savings Credit Union.

I’m here representing the seven credit unions that serve the Kootenay-Boundary region of B.C. The credit unions are Columbia Valley, Creston and District, Grand Forks, Heritage, Kootenay Savings, Nelson and District and East Kootenay Credit Union.

I first want to say a sincere thank-you to the committee and your staff for making these pre-budget hearings possible. As just one of many local businesses, I can say that having the opportunity to comment on the budget process demonstrates government’s commitment to staying engaged with its citizens.

Today I will tell you a bit about the Kootenay-Boundary credit unions. As part of the B.C. credit union system comprised of 42 credit unions, we are member-owned, cooperative financial institutions whose purpose is to help build strong and vibrant communities in all British Columbia.

The Kootenay-Boundary credit unions account for 403 direct jobs in the region, housed in seven head offices and 27 branches in our local communities. Additionally, we provide financial services to over 85,000 members, spanning from Canada’s smallest city, Greenwood, to Radium Hot Springs, which are two of 11 remote communities where we are the only financial institution.

My credit union, Kootenay Savings, was established in 1969 when three local credit unions, based in Trail, Fruitvale and Castlegar, merged. All of these credit unions had been established in the 1940s. This was the first merger of credit unions in the province. At the time of formation, we had an initial membership of 11,000 members
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and assets of $14 million. Since then, we have developed into the 12th-largest credit union in B.C., with a membership of over 38,000 and assets just under $1.1 billion.

Our head office is located in Trail, and we have 11 branches scattered throughout the Kootenays, including one right here in Castlegar. In six of these communities, we are the only financial institution. We also own a wealth management subsidiary and are partners in an insurance subsidiary with Nelson and District and East Kootenay Community credit unions.

Employment at Kootenay Savings is far more than just a job. It is a sense of career, of team, of community and of family. Together with our subsidiaries, we employ over 280 people, and we are proud to be on the list of the top employers in the Kootenay region for 2015. Just a few years ago we were honoured with being recognized as one of North America’s 50 most-engaged workplaces.

One of our values at Kootenay Savings is responsibility to community. Values are great in theory, but how do we put them into practice? Here’s an example. In 1997, my credit union established the Kootenay Savings Community Foundation for the purpose of funding local community and regional health, educational, cultural, social and economic development initiatives. Since inception, close to $3.8 million has been distributed to fund worthwhile initiatives.

Additionally, in 2009, the Kootenay Savings Community Foundation provided funding to three locally based community foundations that were just being established and start-up funding to an additional three communities that did not yet have local foundations. As a result of this funding, these communities now have their own local foundations. The total amount distributed at that time was $1 million, and since then, we have annually provided operational funding to these local foundations.

In 2012, Kootenay Savings was recognized as one of the top 20 corporate donors in the province. It is interesting to note that of the top 20, four were credit unions.

In the Kootenays, we get the importance of investing locally and what that really means to the community. Cities and regions spend millions on economic development, and a large part of that is on attracting small businesses. But sometimes attracting small businesses is not the issue. Most of the time small businesses simply don’t have a financial institution that believes in them.

At Kootenay Savings, we believe in investing in small businesses and are the largest small business lender in the Kootenays. We currently have a total of 1,163 small business loans, totalling over $210 million.

Here’s a quick story about a local business we helped get up and running. In the late 1990s, Endre Lillejord had a vision to provide seniors housing in the Kootenay-Boundary and established Golden Life Management. At that time, he began to approach the chartered banks with this idea. The chartered banks did not believe that there was a market for seniors housing in the Kootenay-Boundary and were not interested in providing funding for his venture.

He then approached Kootenay Savings, and along with other partner credit unions, we provided funding to build a seniors complex in Cranbrook, and the rest is history.

Since that time, Golden Life Management has built and operates an additional nine seniors housing complexes throughout the Kootenay-Boundary. These seniors residences provide a variety of seniors housing options, right from independent living to respite care.

Today, Golden Life Management employs over 1,000 Kootenay-Boundary residents and contributes millions of dollars to the Kootenay-Boundary economy. All of this would not have been possible had Kootenay Savings taken the same view of his vision as the chartered banks did.

The economic conditions in the Kootenays have been a persistent challenge in recent years. The lasting effects of the recession have taken a toll. Tourism has slowed, population levels flatlined, and a once-hot housing market faced an avalanche of inventory and a trickle of sales.

Regional forestry and agriculture are bright spots for the economy. The gains are overshadowed by consistent coal market struggles. Weak steel demand has pushed Teck Resources to shut down its coal mines in the East Kootenay in a bid to lower production by nearly 25 percent. Lower production will very likely continue to be the norm.

The region has failed to generate sustained employment momentum over the past four years, with losses concentrated in construction, manufacturing and trade sectors. Unemployment remains high at over 7 percent. Average employment is expected to partially rebound this year after last year’s plunge but will remain well below previous levels.

The regional population grew by a half percent in 2014, following four years of contraction, and it is forecast to decelerate by 0.3 percent this year and next before expanding thereafter.

A challenging economic environment in the Kootenays is resulting in an uphill battle for our local communities to remain prosperous. We are doing our best to provide as much support as we can, but our shrinking margins are a major factor making it more difficult to do our job.

As you know, 2016 is when our provincial preferential tax rate is scheduled to begin being phased out. This phase-out will directly have an impact on our margins and how we are able to use them to support our 38,000 members and our communities.

The amount we are able to lend to local residents and businesses will be impacted as a result of the tax increases. In 2020, once fully phased in, the tax rate is expected to reduce the loans we make by almost $9.6 million each year. Though this may seem like a negligible amount, it is not. These figures mean dozens of post-secondary
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grants we can’t provide, community programs we can’t fund, homes we can’t finance and businesses we can’t afford to get off the ground, like Golden Life Management that I mentioned earlier.

To conclude, I want to express how very grateful we are for the committee’s support over the past two years. I sincerely hope that you will give consideration to the current provincial income tax rates for B.C. credit unions being maintained and the temporary deferral of tax increases being made permanent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your time and attention. I would be happy to answer any questions.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Tremblay, for taking the time to present to the committee. I will now go to the committee for questions.

D. Ashton: Brent, nice to see you again — thank you very much — to reinforce what you and your peers had said to me several weeks ago. Once again, on behalf of myself, I just want to thank you for your incredible communityism that you show in all the communities in this area. Keep up the good work and please keep bringing forward…. We are getting very good response from not only yourselves but from all across the province in regards to the issue that you brought forward towards the end. So once again, thank you for bringing it to our attention.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation. We heard from one of your colleagues yesterday. I expect we’ll hear from more over the course of our tour, as we did last year.

I think the issue that’s being raised by credit unions about the importance of the role you play in local economic development as well as local financing, in particular in communities that chartered banks choose to abandon, is something that I hope this committee will pay significant attention to, and ultimately, I hope the Finance Ministry will as well.

It’s a great success story in B.C., the work of credit unions. I think the one factor that needs to be considered here, in addition to the ones you raised, is that when you promote economic activity, you generate another source of taxation revenue for the province, as well as well-being for the community.

C. Trevena: Again, thank you very much for your presentation. To echo some of what George said — the importance of credit unions for the community — I think you expressed it very well in your examples.

You mentioned that if you lose the preferential tax rates, it will reduce loans by $9.6 million. Yesterday, we got a presentation from First West Credit Union, and they estimated the cost to themselves. That’s the reduction in the amount of loans you’d be able to give. What will the cost be to the Kootenay Savings as a total? Is it possible to estimate that?

B. Tremblay: As a total, by the time the tax is fully phased in, that would be upwards of an additional $1.6 million in taxes.

C. Trevena: Right. And that’s in addition, then, to the loans that you’ll not be able to give?

B. Tremblay: Yeah. The lending part is a result of the fact that money won’t go into our capital base, and we’re limited by our capital base as to how much we can lend.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. It was my privilege to work for a credit union for eight years.

S. Gibson: Yes, I think we’ve talked before. I just want to acknowledge the community dimension that you emphasized today. Particularly, you point out how credit unions are unique in a number of the communities in the Kootenays where the banks are either not present or have withdrawn, so I think it’s something that this committee is certainly aware of. Thank you for sharing eloquently your comments today, sir.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll echo Mr. Tremblay, a lot of the sentiments that have been expressed. I’m very, very impressed when I go out into my own local community. I mean, everything from parades to sponsorships and bursaries — you are very much woven into the fabric of many communities throughout the province.

When we consider the number of people in this province that are employed by small businesses…. A number of those small businesses, with all due respect for the large institutions, may otherwise have been snubbed by them. Credit unions, in many cases, have come to the plate and helped assist getting businesses off the ground. It would never have happened without their help, so it’s not lost on me — the concerns that you’re expressing.

Once again, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee, and have a good day.

I will now call on Barb Szuta and Joan Exley, Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy.
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Welcome. As I said before, you have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up, and then we’ll go to five minutes for questions. The floor is yours.

B. Szuta: Good morning. My name is Barb Szuta, and this is my colleague Joan Exley. We work for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, which is known as CBAL. CBAL is a non-profit literacy organization in the East and West Kootenays and part of the Boundary region. We serve 77 communities, and we have about 10,000 people participating in our programs each year.

We’d like to thank you for coming to Castlegar so that we can have the opportunity to speak with you today about the importance and the impact of our community literacy work. We’d also like to thank this committee for the recommendation it made last year to annually fund provincial literacy coordination in the amount of $2.5 million. We received $2 million last year.

J. Exley: We’d really like you to take away two important messages this morning. One is that strong literacy skills are essential to all British Columbians, and the second is that annual core funding in the amount of $2.5 million for literacy coordination is critical to make that happen. I’m going to speak to the first point, and Barb is going to speak to the second.

When some people think about literacy, they think about: “He can read,” or “He can’t read.” But there’s much more to literacy than that. Literacy is about reading and writing and numbers, certainly, but it’s also about the skills we have in speaking our ideas, in critically thinking to solve problems, in using technology to access information and communicate. It’s about being able to use those skills to do what you need to do in your day.

Those skills might include filling out a form at work, looking something up on the Internet, being able to support your child in their learning at school, communicating in a job interview. They might include developing language skills for a new Canadian to settle in a community.

Literacy skills are wide and all-encompassing in somebody’s life. Think for a minute about all the skills that you need to go through your day at work and at home. Now think about what it would be like to not have those skills.

I’m often asked in my work to define what literacy is. To me, the way I think about it is that literacy is having the skills you need to be successful and engaged in your life and in your community.

A lot happens for individuals, and indeed whole communities, when literacy skills go up. If you look at the Decoda Literacy Solutions website, you’ll see research that shows that as literacy goes up, employability goes up, health is improved, crime in a community goes down, workplace accidents go down, people are more likely to vote, volunteerism in a community goes up, and new Canadians settle more successfully.

B. Szuta: Joan mentioned that there are two points we’d like you to walk away with. Our second point is that annual core funding of $2.5 million for literacy coordination is essential for us to be able to do our work. There’s no doubt that this committee understands the importance of this work, because of the recommendation that you made last year to provide Decoda Literacy Solutions with money to support community literacy coordination across the province.

Community literacy programs are different from the programs found in the K-to-12 system and the post-secondary institutions. In many communities, these programs, which are free, are often the only ones locally available to support literacy learners. If an adult in my community needs ESL tutoring or classes, they only have my classes to come to. Our programs do not duplicate what is already out there. They address people’s literacy needs that otherwise would not be met.

This is especially significant when you consider that half a million British Columbians have significant literacy challenges. That means they can’t read the directions on their medication bottle. They aren’t able to read their child’s report card, or they wouldn’t be able to fill in a job application.

Literacy coordination supports the work of collaborating with community partners, building literacy networks and capacity, leveraging funds and developing community literacy plans. I will offer 17 different programs in my region, and every single one of them will involve one or more community partners.

A coordinated approach allows CBAL to develop and deliver a broad range of programs for families, school-age children, youth, adults, seniors, aboriginal learners and new Canadians.

The work we do in community literacy coordination is based on a solid foundation of collaboration and connection. These are the bridges that build between service providers. Back doors are opened, shared programming happens, and intentional planning occurs. This is the work of community coordination. It is very powerful.

J. Exley: There are lots of stories coming out of all our communities about the power of literacy and the power of a coordinated approach in the way that community literacy happens. I’m going to share one with you today.

A woman in my community of Nelson entered a Love 2 Learn program, which is a family literacy program. She was new to the community. She felt quite isolated. In this family program, she met other parents. She developed a network of support in the community. She learned about supporting her children’s learning and began to feel less isolated.
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She also found out about our adult literacy programs and our language classes. She had two goals at that point. She wanted to learn to read to her children at bedtime in English, and she wanted to finish school. She worked with a literacy tutor on those goals.

Pretty soon, she had another child. She kept going with both family programs and adult programs. When her children got older, she finished high school. She went on to the college. She got her diploma, and now she’s employed in our community.

The neat thing about this story is that it shows that web of support that happens in communities when service providers join together and when there is a coordinated approach to literacy in a community. That’s what we’re here to talk to you about: that coordination piece across the province that’s so important.

The other neat thing is that as she went through her learning journey, she wasn’t just working with literacy agencies. She did family literacy, adult literacy. She went to the college. She got involved with the library. She started working with our employment agency as she worked on her job skills. It’s that real net that we create in a community that’s so vital to so many things that happen.

I think she sums it up really well. She spoke at an event for literacy and actually went and spoke with our local MLA about the importance of literacy in her life. This is a small excerpt from what she said. She says: “It took a long time, but now I can see that I’m not lost. I can see my future, and there is a future for me. That’s a really big thing. I am now independent. I’m able to work at a good job for my family. I had not any skills, and now I have skills.”

As you think about what we’ve said today, we really want you to take away those two key messages. One is that strong literacy skills are essential for all British Columbians, and that that annual core funding of $2.5 million to have that coordinated approach is essential to make that happen.

B. Szuta: We want to thank you for your time today. We appreciate having this opportunity to be heard. Once again, we urge you to make the recommendation to support community literacy coordination in the amount of $2.5 million annually, which is the minimum amount that we need to do our work.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to present. I’ll go to the committee for questions.

S. Chandra Herbert: I was just going to say that your presentation is so comprehensive and persuasive, I don’t have any questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I think you’ll hear a lot of “ditto” around the table.

I want to talk, as I did with the other group, a little bit about where you’re seeing pressures around literacy — the demographics, changing communities, the number of people coming in for literacy programs or reaching out.

I wondered if you’re seeing a particular demographic coming forward right now. Are you seeing more newcomers? Are you seeing more seniors? What kinds of people are coming for literacy programs in your communities?

B. Szuta: Ten years ago, I joined CBAL, and what we had were just family literacy programs. Over the course of those ten years, we’ve seen quite a shift in what the literacy landscape looks like. Now we have…. Certainly, ESL has been a big area for us, and adult literacy has become just on the forefront for us.

The other piece. We have these different literacies that keep on popping up, like health literacy, computer literacy, financial literacy. Those are also ones that come along. I would say those are the things that we see most often.

J. Exley: I do. I think the other thing that’s happened over time is the way I think about literacy being skills. It’s the skills you need to be involved in your life and your community. Those skills are changing over time.

Certainly, we see a lot more people needing technology support. That’s seniors, but it’s also adults who are needing to up their technology skills in order to enter the workforce.

Community literacy is that bridge that takes people who need to develop their skills into the other things, that coordinated approach where someone comes, and they need to up their skills to access the college, to access workplace programs. We see a lot of that technology support as well, just to bridge into the other literacies that people need.

S. Gibson: I had an interesting experience a few years ago. A very successful businessman in Abbotsford — I got to know him well. He’s very well known in my community. I just found out he’s illiterate.

The reason I mention that anecdotally is, how do you recruit people or find people that are ashamed of being…? This guy is about my age — by all accounts, very successful. I’m one of the few people in Abbotsford that knows he can’t read or write. He uses his daughter with the business to do it.

How do you find the people like that who should be coming forward, but they’re ashamed to, so they don’t really hit your radar normally?

J. Exley: I’m really glad you brought that up, because that piece that’s coordination…. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about programming money. We’re talking about coordination money.
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We’ve done a lot of work in Nelson in taking time and human resources to reach deep into the community, because you don’t find those people easily. They don’t tend to step forward. So there’s a lot of work between the agencies in a community, where you’re going to the places where you might find those people.

The other thing that’s happening more is that literacy agencies are having more storefronts. There’s a lot of work being done in communities to make literacy about skills, not about reading and writing, so it takes some of that stigma away.

When people hear the word “literacy,” they see that there’s a learning centre, that people are coming through the learning centre maybe to do a computer class or a family class. That’s when people find out about it, and then they’ll quietly come in and say: “Do you do some of this work too?” That’s when we do that confidential, one-on-one reading and writing.

To me, that’s the most important piece, and it’s the hardest piece. But without all the other pieces that are a bit easier to access, you don’t find those folks, and they’re there for sure.

B. Szuta: I’ll just add to what Joan is saying. So often, we’ll have people come to us. They will come in for something that is more acceptable for them to come to us, like computer support that nobody feels ashamed that you’re not swinging with the times.

But then, over the course of working with a learner, often a good relationship is developed. You will find…. I have the exact same example where a very well-known businessman came to me to do some iPad work. In the course of it, he said: “I am dyslexic. I have struggled with this all my life.” He had tremendous coping skills. So then, there’s the opportunity to work with that learner.

I think one of the things is that we try to get people in our doors any way we can. Then we try to get them more comfortable so that then they open up and they can reach out. But you’re right. Nobody walks around the streets like: “Ah, I can’t read. I’m coming to you.” It’s not like that.

J. Exley: We call it literacy by stealth. It’s the back door. You’ve got to keep the back door open.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll wade in, just as an aside. I’ve been on this committee now…. This is my third year touring. We’ve heard a lot from literacy groups throughout the province. The one thing that impresses me the most is how you guys can stretch a buck. I see it trickle down to the local communities, but it seems that you are so engaged at so many levels, and I often question how you do it. Through the good work of Decoda and yourselves, you make it go a long way. Congratulations for that.

B. Szuta: Thank you. It’s through the work of partnerships. I mean, seriously, if you look at my budget, there are so many in-kind contributions that are in there, and it’s that network. I think the coordination money is to support that. As soon as we start to lose that, we just don’t have the time to go and outreach like that.

We are often the hub. We hold pieces. People come to us, and we are the ones that help to make the connections for different groups.

J. Exley: I think the important thing for you to remember is that coordination piece. If that shrinks anymore or disappears, all of that leverage stuff is at risk of collapsing. That’s the fear that we have.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, thank you very much for taking the time to present. Thank you for the work that you do — very much appreciated.

Next, we have school district No. 20. I’d like to hear from Rosann Brunton. Welcome, Rosann. As I mentioned before — ten minutes to present. I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up, and then we’ll move into questions for five. The floor is yours.

R. Brunton: Thank you very much. First, I want to say I appreciate the work that you’re doing, not only in the service that you’re doing in your individual districts, but also to take the time to be on this committee. I myself was newly elected as trustee on the board of education for school district No. 20 last November, so I’m obtaining an appreciation of what it actually means to be in service.

I didn’t expect to be presenting today, so I don’t have anything formal. But since there was a time slot open, I wanted to take the opportunity to make our views known, from the school district’s perspective, on the upcoming budget.

Our school district 20 comprises quite a large geographical area. We go from Robson, which is just north of Castlegar, all the way down to Fruitvale, which is south of Trail, and then to the west to Rossland. We have quite a significant geographical area.

I want to commend last year’s report from the committee with respect to K-to-12 education and the recommendations you had with respect to sustainable and adequate funding, not only for supports within the classroom to provide quality education but also for the capital projects that we are incurring some need for.

From our perspective, if we just take our localized school district, we have 11 school sites. One of those school sites also includes our board office, which has been a recent change. We also have, of course, our maintenance facilities. We have approximately 3,500 students, and our operating budget is about $35 million. I’m sorry that I don’t have all the exact numbers right now, but we’re in the ballpark.

Approximately 90 percent — I’m sure you’ve heard this from almost every school district in the province
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— of our operating budget goes to salaries and benefits. There has been an increase to the funding provided by the provincial government, but that is in direct correlation, of course, to the signing of the collective agreements.

When it comes to our individual ability to provide services within our schools, we have a very small 10 percent of our budget to be able to do that work — so $3½ million to $4 million to provide what we need to provide, above and beyond salary and benefits, in our schools and to provide the services and the quality education that we’re looking for.

In our last five years, we have had to cut our budgets. When we move into our budget cycle, it isn’t about what we can do to provide for. It’s what we have to do to take away — a very negative position to be put in. Five years ago we were looking at just over $1 million, then just over $1 million again and the last three years between $700,000 and $1 million. So significant reductions in our budgets.

We are looking at next year having exactly the same situation that we have been in this past year. We do not see a change coming forward with respect to being able to go into a budget cycle without having to look at what we can take away.

What’s happening at the schools because of this? We’ve had some great partnerships become developed within our communities. We don’t want to take away the positive strides that are moving forward because of some of the pressures that we’ve been under. We are working in collaboration with a lot more of our community partners, which is great, and we hope to continue that. We do not want to have to do those things to provide quality education. We want to be able to develop those partnerships to be an adjunct, to be a positive benefit to the education we can provide in our communities.

We are now looking at schools having to individually fundraise, and we’re seeing principals and their own individual partners fundraising for their schools. We have one example of a school within our district that did a lot of work to provide green spaces on the exterior of our schools and to incorporate those green spaces into the curriculum as well — so not just to make it look pretty but to make it become part of what learning within that kindergarten-to-grade-7 sector is actually partaking in.

Through that work, they were able to apply for sort of a sponsorship grant and to receive a significant amount of money from Staples to be able to provide the technology within the school that they needed. This is the kind of thing that individual schools are now looking at trying to do. As a school district, the money is just not there to provide, so they’re looking externally.

We’re also putting pressure on our parent advisory councils within the schools, themselves. They’re being asked to participate more in fundraising themselves and to provide funding within the school. A lot of that is extracurricular, but we’ve actually seen some significant funding being provided by PACs just to help out internally within the class.

I’ve talked about the increased community connections that we have been doing. As well, just within the classroom itself, we have teachers now that, to be able to run their class year after year, do have to provide their own assistance within the classroom because, again, the supplies are just not available. The money is just not available to continue that progression.

What we would like to see are some changes. I can’t put a specific qualifier on this. The funding formula that currently is in place with respect to dollars per enrolled student. We, in B.C., are one of the lowest in the country. We would like to see that increased — or, if not increased, then some type of change, modification, update, to that formula which would allow for us to, of course, obtain more funding.

The other significant area is our capital projects. We have a lot of very old schools. We do receive annual facility grant money from the government in addition to the operating grant, but when we’re talking about all of the work that is required, that money is necessary just to maintain our facilities, not to provide the upgrades that are required. We are now in situations where we have boilers in our schools that are at their end of life. We are doing the work we can to band-aid the solution, because to do a boiler upgrade in one school would take more than the AFG money would provide to us.

Those are the kinds of capital projects we are under, trying to not only maintain our schools but to provide the upgrades that they need. We are in a situation where the pressures that the school district is under put us in a negative position. I said that right from the outset. We’re feeling the effects both at the board table and within the classrooms. The children are feeling are the effects. We’re looking at cleanliness of the classroom — having to make those types of decisions of what do we clean and what do we not clean.

Transportation. We’re moving into a system this year where we’re going to be looking at transportation, developing a committee to decide how we want to progress with transportation in our district. As you can imagine, being such a large geographical area, transportation is a significant issue for us. We don’t have the infrastructure from a public transit system to be able to rely on.

Technology within the classrooms. I talked about the fact that one particular school was able to externally provide a grant to be able to increase the technology in their classrooms. This includes not just computers or iPads or the actual physical technology but also connectivity — making sure that we can provide enough Wi-Fi Internet connectivity within the schools as well.

We’re looking at the supplies, our libraries, our library resources and, as well, as I said, the in-class funding being done by the teachers. We’re seeing the impacts from the
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parents’ perspective, from the staff’s perspective, from the children’s perspective and, of course, at the school board as well.

Thank you very much for letting me present. Please ask me any questions. I may not have the exact answers today, but I can definitely provide them to you.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. That was the two-minute signal, actually. I wasn’t trying to stop you.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for taking the opportunity to present.

S. Chandra Herbert: Congratulations on becoming a trustee, and thank you for presenting to us today.

I wondered about the carbon tax, the carbon-neutral requirement that school boards have. I’ve heard from some that wonder about…. Well, they put the money in, but they don’t see it back. You mentioned end-of-the-road boilers, which I know can be incredibly inefficient — cost you a lot of money to maintain but also in your power bills. I’m just curious if you had any thoughts about how that carbon-neutral government program is working for your school district.

R. Brunton: As I’m sure you’re aware, we provide funding back into the program every year. We estimate about once every five years, we see that return of investment, for lack of a better term, back into our school district. We were the recipient two years ago, I think, of a grant from that program, which allowed us to upgrade boilers in one of our schools. So yes, that program did provide us with that ability.

We do see that as a negative line item every year, but every five years or so, we do see a particular amount coming back to our district.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your service as a school trustee as well. I hear a lot from boards about the challenges of the funding and the fact that decisions…. I think every school trustee that I talk to knows they need to be fiscally responsible, but they say to me they’re making decisions simply based on budget, not based on what’s good for education. I think that’s a huge frustration.

You may not have the numbers now, but I wondered if you could get them to us just on the cost in your budget for the increase in hydro rates and the increase in MSP premiums. Those are two areas that I know have been increased by government, and then school boards end up picking up that cost. I wondered if those were areas that you could get the numbers to us, of an additional cost to your board that isn’t funded.

R. Brunton: Absolutely I will. And you’re correct. That has been brought up at our budget discussions — those two particular key issues. As you can imagine, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I will definitely forward them along.

M. Morris: You do a very good job representing your district. You’re well-spoken and well-versed with what’s going on there.

I’m just curious. What’s your student population? Has it increased? Has it decreased over the last ten years? What do you see? What does the trend look like here for you guys?

R. Brunton: We have seen a decrease over the last, let’s say, decade. We have definitely seen a decrease. Currently we’re at about 3,500 students. In the projections we have right now, we’re at the crux. We’re at the bottom. We don’t see us decreasing any further. In fact, we see us increasing.

Just for an example, one school in Castlegar had 10 percent more students this year than was projected. So that’s a positive within our school. We were able to absorb in that particular school the increase in numbers. We do have another school in Trail that has seen such increases that we’ve had to put portable after portable, and now we have a little portable farm at that school to accommodate those extra students. So we are now seeing an increase. We’ve reached our trough, and we’re moving forward.

C. Trevena: That sparks one question. I had another question. With the limited capital resources, you’ve got portable after portable. Assuming that they decide they’re going to continue increasing in Trail or at least stabilize, how are you going to be providing permanent classroom space for those students?

My initial question was on transport. Are you, as a rural school district, now looking at having to charge parents for using school buses if they’re living out of town, and if that’s the case, how would you equalize that for those kids who are in town and don’t need school buses?

R. Brunton: That’s a very good question. What we have done in our last budget cycles is recognize the need for increased revenue in some shape or form or decreasing our costs. We have decided that we would take this next school year to work in a public consultation forum. We’re going to develop a committee of select individuals where we’re going to talk about school transportation.

All of those questions will be brought up at that table. Do we want to charge? How much do we want to charge? How do we balance out the needs within the community? Everything from those kinds of things to busing routes, etc. That’s going to be our next year’s focus. We want to
[ Page 1560 ]
do it with our partners, as opposed to just making the decision at the table.

R. Brunton: Yes. We’re in a unique situation with that school in that our projected demographics need to be supported by an independent party. We need to hire somebody to do a demographic study to be able to provide, then, to the ministry where we see our student enrolment going and therefore obtain the grants to either upgrade, provide additions to our schools, etc.

We are in a position now where we’re looking at the cost of being able to hire that individual, that company, which is a significant amount of money. That’s our next year’s plan — to look at how we can absorb that within our budget and hopefully be able to move forward in that respect. So everything that you want to do does have a cost associated at the front end.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, seeing no more questions, thank you very much for taking the time to present, and thank you again for the service that you do. Often it’s thankless and it’s full of critics and challenges, but I’m glad that people like you are in the community and willing to take it on. Thank you again.

R. Brunton: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And thank you for allowing me to speak.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Now we have a conference call. Hopefully, on the line we have Sharon Evans from the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I do appreciate it. We’re going to work our way through this. I’ll let you know that you have ten minutes for your presentation. I will rudely interrupt, because you can’t see me signal, and let you know you have two minutes left, and then we’ll go to five minutes for questions from the committee.

S. Evans: Sounds good. I have a clock in front of me, and I have a written script.

S. Evans: Good morning. My name is Sharon Evans, and I’m the president of the B.C. Schizophrenia Society’s Penticton branch. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf of our community and the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.

Our branch is currently run by 24 volunteers who deliver some key programs, including Strengthening Families Together, Kids in Control, Teens in Control and partnership presentations. These programs educate families struggling with mental illness, support children and youth who have a parent with a mental illness, and educate professionals and the general public about mental illness.

The branch also supports individual family members with information and advocacy. In 2014-15, we had 798 phone, e-mail or in-person contacts with families, including 22 new families. This is in a catchment area of approximately 82,000 people.

Our branch not only supports Penticton but surrounding communities as well, including Summerland, Penticton, Oliver, Osoyoos, Keremeos and Princeton. Services are delivered over the phone or in person, which can amount to 18,000 kilometres of driving in a single year.

We’re very proud of the work we do, but we could do so much more if we had additional resources and paid staff. For example, we could provide specific programs to educate students and teachers from secondary schools about mental illness. Symptoms of severe mental illness like schizophrenia typically begin in the late teens and early 20s, so it’s critical to educate this group about warning signs and how to get help.

We could also have greater presence outside of Penticton, which would mean more consistent and equitable services for smaller communities. We’ve heard from other agencies that having a person knowledgable about mental illness and the needs of families is critical.

In other health regions, BCSS has regional coordinators trained to provide specialized support for families challenged by severe mental illness in the home or at the hospital; to deliver programming to aboriginal communities; and to increase mental health literacy among agency service providers, schools, hospitals and policing agencies. In our region, this would increase awareness of our services and enable us to better support families and to provide more integrated services among local service providers.

Public awareness of mental illness, education about symptoms and treatment, and support for families as they care for an ill person improve outcomes and the chance of sustained recovery for people living with a mental illness. At the same time, emergency room visits, police interactions, drug abuse, homelessness and suicide are reduced.

Currently BCSS staff and volunteers are meeting with local MLAs across the province to present a plan to support the continued work of the society in partnership with the B.C. Ministry of Health.
[ Page 1561 ]

You have a copy of our case for support that seeks funding of $3 million over four years. This funding will continue the society’s work of the past 33 years in proactively championing mental health literacy, access to services and supports for families and their ill relatives equitably across all of B.C.

I’m not going to read the case for support. I understand you have a copy of it. It’s twice as long as what I’ve just said. But I would certainly entertain questions and discussion.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay, thank you very much. You still have plenty of time left, but maybe that’ll be all taken up with questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Sharon, for your presentation. I wondered if you could just give a couple of examples of the kind of support that you provide and the difference that it’s made — individuals or families, just so the committee has an idea of the impact that services can make in an organization like yours.

S. Evans: Well, for example, if you look at what our families need, they need to know…. Okay, so your family member has been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or whatever. What do those words mean? What kinds of behaviours can you anticipate? How can you intervene? When do you need to…? What kinds of changes do you need to make in how you talk to them? What’s the importance of their medication? But also for our families, and more importantly so, is: how do you look after yourself?

This is an age group, often, where the family caregiver ends up being part of that whole sandwich generation. They’ve got this younger family member who has developed a serious mental illness, and then they’ve got older parents who also need support because they have issues around their aging. So what do you understand? What do you know?

I think it’s things like teaching people that the behaviours that they’re seeing, some of the words that they’re hearing are not because the person is being difficult but because the person has a very serious illness — so helping them understand what that illness plays out like. For one of our families, they told us…. Our families consistently tell us that it makes a huge difference.

In fact, I have a volunteer who coordinates our annual art show. She wrote a very lovely piece and pointed out that at our age — I’m 69, and she’s a little bit younger. She has a brother who’s been ill most of her adult life, and she was always resentful of him because she never really took the time or couldn’t find out about his schizophrenia. Learning that the behaviours that he was exhibiting weren’t intended to harm or hurt or anything has made a real difference in how she thinks about him and how she feels about him. She’s very pleased with the change in her attitude.

S. Gibson: Yeah, this is an important issue in our society, and it seems to be growing, perhaps surprisingly, even in rural areas, where the family unit is breaking down perhaps more…

My question is: what percentage do you think, as someone who’s hands-on in this field, is kind of familial — that is, it’s something that is created out of a dysfunctional family situation — and what percentage is purely environmental or biological, if you will? It’s my sense that with the breakdown of the family, a lot of these issues are percolating to the surface more than they would have done if there had been a stronger family unit.

S. Evans: Well, I think one of the pieces of that puzzle that I can offer you…. In some ways it’s like trying to do a puzzle where there are lots and lots of black pieces and they all look the same. In Penticton, we recently had a survey done, within the last two or three years, of the kids ages 12 to 18. What was discovered, I think to everybody’s shock, was that 37 percent of that age group live in single-parent homes in poverty. So what kids are experiencing at home is mom going, “How am I going to feed you? How am I going to keep a roof over your head?” I think we are, with some of the increases in anxiety, seeing that.

I also think that there’s more willingness or more…. People are out in the community. I started my psychiatric nursing training exactly 50 years ago this month. If you had gotten sick in Penticton at that time, you would have gone out of the community, and that was true across the country. You would have gone to a psychiatric hospital. It would have been unlikely that you would have stayed in your own community. So I think having people in the communities is what’s making…. People are simply more visible. They’re not being hidden in places like Riverview several hundred miles away from Pouce Coupe. I just love the name, so sorry. They’re there.

But I also think that there are so many more stressors that kids are coping with in school. “What am I going to do? Am I going to be able to get a job? Even if I have a good education, am I going to be able to work to the level of my education?” It’s just a lot more complicated.
[ Page 1562 ]

We do need to support…. This is where the health literacy aspect of it comes in. You know, health literacy is…. Literacy is not just about knowing what the words are; it’s being able to put it together. “Do I know how to handle it when I’m feeling anxious?” Well, if we don’t teach people how to handle it when they’re feeling anxious, they get stuck in a rut, and they don’t know how to move ahead from that.

Listen, we don’t have a copy of your presentation. Would you mind just calling the office. It may be in transit to us, but if you call our office, I’ll make sure that everybody on the committee gets a copy of it.

S. Evans: I know Ana Novakovic from BCSS said she was sending it to the committee, so I didn’t really think about it. Right now I don’t have access to a computer. I’m getting a new one.

D. Ashton: Okay. We’ll track it down. I’ll make sure that everybody gets a copy of it.

S. Evans: Good. I hope you can come for dinner on the seventh. Listen, I’ve got to sell a ticket somehow.

D. Ashton: Now I’ve got everybody asking to come. You’re going to have a whole bunch of people there.

Seeing none, Ms. Evans, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee.

S. Evans: Thank you very much for giving us the time. It is coming up to be Mental Illness Awareness Week, so I hope that you will keep your eyes open for the various posters and stuff from the Mental Illness Awareness Week committees in your communities. “There is no health without mental health,” says the World Health Organization.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. I’m sure every member of this committee will engage at some level and help however we can.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’m going to hope that we have Kenya Rogers on the phone — the University of Victoria Students Society.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’m Scott Hamilton. I’m the Chair of the committee. I’m just going to let you know what everyone else knows. Ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll rudely interrupt you when you have minutes left, just because I can’t wave. Then we go into five minutes for questions from the rest of the committee. I’ll turn the floor over to you.

K. Rogers: Thank you so much. My name is Kenya Rogers. I represent 17,000 students here on the University of Victoria campus. Here with me, also, is our communications staff, Seamus Wolfe, who will be around to answer any questions if they come up. I’ll get started.

High-quality, innovative post-secondary education and research generate a strong economy and widespread social benefits. These benefits are only possible if post-secondary education is funded and managed appropriately and made accessible to all those who wish to pursue it.

The post-secondary education and research sector must be dynamic and maintain a long-term vision. However, as elected public officials, the members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services already know this.

Every year, after hundreds of presentations from groups like ours, you submit your report. We could, as groups like the Research Universities Council of British Columbia did last year, ask for a reversal of the $25 million cut to operating grants to post-secondary education institutions. We could, as we and groups such as the Canadian Federation of Students and the Alliance of B.C. Students did last year, ask for a reduction or elimination of student loan interest rates and the introduction of a needs-based grants system. We could, but you know this already. In fact, you recommended it.

Let’s read a couple of the recommendations last year that had to do with post-secondary education. Recommendation No. 27: “Increase operating grants to post-secondary institutions to address unfunded cost pressures.” No. 34: “Establish a student grant program
[ Page 1563 ]
that addresses student needs and provides incentives for completion.” No. 35: “Reduce the interest charged on B.C. student loans, and review existing eligibility requirements for student loans.”

As far as we can tell, from the ten recommendations this committee submitted that concerned post-secondary education last year, not a single one was acted upon. In fact, after a careful look at all of the recommendations this committee has submitted since 2002, it seems that the only ones enacted were in 2007, which was to eliminate tuition fees for adult basic education.

In reality, since the relatively laudable recommendations of this committee last year, things have gotten even worse. Even though the recommendation on adult basic education was reiterated in 2013, last year the B.C. government reversed this policy and now charges tuition fees for high school–level courses for the most vulnerable in our society.

Tuition fees have continued to climb with absolutely no tangible financial assistance for the vast majority of students, except for a small grant for a small group of people whose education may help this government’s pathological focus on developing liquid natural gas in this province.

Instead, students are still graduating with the highest levels of debt in this country, on which they are charged the highest interest rates in this country. Now Finance Minister Mike de Jong is sending ICBC after those who are struggling to pay down that debt.

Instead of playing into a game of faux democratic theatre and recommending piecemeal policies that will be ignored, here are the students of the University of Victoria’s actual recommendations to achieve a system of post-secondary education which is accessible to all, which is of high quality, which recognizes the legitimacy of student representation and the validity of students’ rights and whose role in society is clearly recognized and appreciated. Today I have five recommendations that I would like to share with you.

Recommendation No. 1: immediately freeze tuition fees and work to eliminate them over the next ten years. This must include compensatory increases to post-secondary operating grants.

Education is a right. In 1976, Canada ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which committed signatories to recognize the right of everyone to education at all levels. By signing the covenant, Canada acknowledged the right of everyone to free primary and secondary education, along with the progressive introduction of free post-secondary education. Canada’s commitment under the covenant recognizes that investing in education is not only about economic prosperity but also a key component to creating a more just and equitable society.

In the 20th century, Canada invested in primary and secondary education to ensure that it was free to all, with the understanding that mass public education would enrich society and reduce social and economic inequity. By bringing fairness back into the provincial tax system and generating more revenue, the cost of post-secondary education can easily be eliminated for all students in British Columbia, with billions of dollars left over for other much-needed social programs.

Instead of recognizing this reality, this government and college and university administrators claim that institutions must charge students tuition fees because there is not enough public funding to adequately fund institutions. Implementing free post-secondary education only requires political will and a government that prioritizes education and social services.

Recommendation No. 2: immediately eliminate tuition fees for adult basic education and English-as-a-second-language programs, and invest at least $7.5 million into these programs. Public education from K to 12 is a basic right and is free in every province in Canada. ABE programs are meant to advance the education and employment potential of marginalized groups and individuals seeking to improve their lives. Indigenous people, immigrants, women, adults with disabilities, and single parents disproportionately use and benefit from these programs.

Unfortunately, the B.C. government announced in late 2014 that ABE would be cut by $6.9 million and that institutions could once again begin charging tuition fees for ABE, including English as a second language. As a result, doors of opportunity are closing for thousands of British Columbians who are working hard to gain the knowledge and skills they need to get better jobs, to support the economy and to create better lives not only for themselves but for their families. This government needs to reverse course and reaffirm its own arguments when it reinstated free adult basic education the first time.

Recommendation No. 3: increase the per-student operating grants by 20 percent, the amount in real terms that it has dropped since the B.C. Liberals have been in government, then peg annual increases to, at least, inflation. Core funding is the most essential aspect of research in education. The University of Victoria estimates that a majority of its buildings are seriously threatened by deferred maintenance costs.

Budget constraints that limit the hiring of staff and professors have led to increases in class sizes, and that degrades the quality of education at UVic. The combination of rising costs and the reduction in operating grants negatively impacts the capacity of professors and students to conduct the world-class research necessary to drive the B.C. economy.

Over the past two decades, upper administration costs have far outpaced all other institutional costs, a result of both mushrooming positions and pay scales. Budgetary pressures due to the lack of core funding force universities to constantly download costs onto students.

A current example of downloading costs can be seen in increases to non-academic fees, such as rents on campus or the housing increases of 13 percent, which happened to student housing this year at UVic.

Furthermore, funding a stable and high-quality system of post-secondary education should not be done off the backs of international students or at the whim of international economic fluctuations.

Recommendation No. 4. Eliminate student loans altogether and establish a far-reaching grants program, just as the province of Newfoundland and Labrador did last year. Last year the Conservative government of Newfoundland and Labrador completely switched their provincial loan program into a system of upfront, need-based grants.

K. Rogers: While doing so, the Minister of Education directly linked the need for accessible education as an investment in the provincial economy. Meanwhile, B.C. remains an outlier — the only province without a needs-based grant system, where students receive the lowest proportion of non-repayable student assistance in the country.

Recommendation No. 5. Immediately end any role of ICBC in collecting student loans or penalizing those with student loans and instead expand the loan forgiveness program.

Students across B.C. are appalled at the legislative proposal made in February 2015 to revoke the driver’s licence of former students who are unable to pay their student loans. The proposal is punitive, shortsighted and completely misses the point — that a post-secondary education in B.C. has become a massive debt burden to students. Default on student debt is a symptom of a much-larger problem.

In conclusion, in the media and during lobbying sessions with some MLAs, our generation is often characterized as being entitled. The stark reality is that we’re not entitled at all. The generations before us, especially the baby boomers, have had everything that we don’t: affordable education, affordable housing, a booming economy and a strong job market. When post-secondary students graduate, they now face 13 percent youth unemployment, 27 percent underemployment, out-of-reach real estate rental markets, and they will graduate with $27,000 to $35,000 worth of debt.

Student debt in Canada is now a staggering amount of over $15 billion. This is the reality of our so-called entitled generation. We’re looking to this government to take action and develop a long-term vision for our province that has higher education as its basis.

Fully funded education at all levels ensures opportunities and social justice for all British Columbians, including our most marginalized communities. Education is a right.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Kenya. Thank you for taking the time to present to the committee.

G. Heyman: Thank you, Kenya, for your presentation and your clarity. I’m assuming that we will or have received a copy of your presentation.

I’m wondering if you have any addenda or if you will be able to submit at a later date any comparative figures you have for British Columbia and other jurisdictions in Canada with significantly lower tuition rates and/or refundable grant programs with respect to comparative completion rates or education interruption rates.

K. Rogers: Thank you so much. We have plenty of data doing those comparisons, and we could definitely forward some of our research to you folks — certainly.

G. Heyman: Thank you. Seeing as you can’t see me, it was George Heyman who asked the question.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. I have four happy years of memories at UVic, so it’s good to have that in common.

You brought up the word entitled. It’s not a word I ever use, but you introduced it into the discourse today. When I talk to employers today, so many employers lament the declining work ethic of young people. It’s mentioned to me so many times that I think it must have some currency.

Given some of the points you make, and many of them are well expressed and articulate, how do you react to my comment that students really need to have ownership of their education through paying for much of it?

I know, myself, I have shared this previously — that I did two degrees in 4.5 years working almost full time. It was a good experience for me. I took ownership of my education, and I found satisfaction in really paying for most of it, if not all of it. Yet today we’re hearing the lament from students that they want, basically, government now to pay for all of it, and government can’t afford that, of course. I’d be interested in your comments, with reaction.

K. Rogers: I think one of the things that is complicated about answering such a question is that, of course, anecdotal evidence about the reality of the way that our student membership responds in the workforce is not necessarily the most useful. However, I will say that the reality of our membership here is that so many of us are working full-time or part-time positions, and we’re trying to push our way through university.
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I know you mentioned that you experienced the same thing. I think it’s important to recognize that tuition fees have been steadily increasing. In your time at UVic, you realistically would have been paying a fraction of the tuition that we’re seeing students now paying.

Also, the reality is that we’re entering into a very complicated workforce, where it is very difficult to get a job. It’s a stagnant workforce at this point, and wages are stagnant as well.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Kenya. I have great hope for the future when I hear presentations like yours — great leadership coming forward.

The other piece I would add onto your comments would be the issue of the cost of living and the cost of housing — those additional challenges. Many people 15 or 20 years ago didn’t have the same kinds of pressures that young people are facing.

I wondered. I think George mentioned it in his request for more information, but I just want to emphasize that one of the things that I hear often from students at UVic and other universities is the challenge of having to take much longer to be able to complete their degrees because of the complications of having to pay high tuition, the complications of not being able to get grants and the complications of costs.

I wondered if you have any statistics around students and the time that they’re taking for completion — if you could add those in to the information that George was asking about as well.

I will also say that in terms of housing rates…. As I mentioned in my presentation, this year we saw our residence students face a 13 percent increase to housing. Over just one year, we’re seeing those increases happen. That affects our rental market throughout Victoria, and that increases the rental market throughout the city as well.

I will also say that in terms of completion rates, with the high interest rates on student loans, what we’re also seeing is that folks who are accessing loans…. By the end of the time that they’re able to complete their degree, they’re paying up to 27 percent more than folks who aren’t taking out a loan, just because of the high interest rates that they’re paying. That’s also an important note to make.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for pointing out that your generation, and including my generation, put a lot more of our money into our education than previous generations did. Governments used to pay a lot more subsidy for education than they do now. While many in my parents’ generation and others will say, “Well, we paid for our education. Why can’t you?” in fact, the government paid for the vast majority of their education, and wage earnings were a lot more powerful than they are today.

I guess I wondered…. Something I’ve heard from a number of university campuses is the growing need to use food banks. Is that something that you’re seeing at UVic? They’re a relatively new phenomenon. I think they started in the ’80s, really.

I’m actually the director of the food bank here at UVic, in our Student Union Building. Last year we had over 4,000 users at our food bank. We have a designated fee, because we have to be able to keep food in there for our students. By the end of every week, our shelves are bare. It is constantly growing. From my time here, I’ve seen the participation in the food bank from students almost double per month. It has become an absolutely essential service on our campus at this point.

Thank you for bringing that up, because that is actually something real and tangible. We also have a lot of data about our food bank usage as well.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Kenya, for taking the time to present to the committee. We’re out of time now, but we look forward to you continuing to do the good work you’re doing on behalf of the students at UVic.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Next on our agenda we have the Castlegar Hospice Society and Suzanne Lehbauer.

Suzanne, welcome. While you’re walking up, I’ll let you know you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up, at which time we’ll wrap things up. Then we’ll go to the committee for about five minutes of questions, if that works for you. The floor is yours.

S. Lehbauer: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and committee members, for having me here. This is my fourth year of making a presentation, so I know I recognize some of you.

Before I start, I wonder if anyone here…. Raise your hand if you don’t think you’re going to die. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.

My name is Suzanne Lehbauer. I’m the executive director of the Castlegar Hospice Society. I’m here to talk to you a little bit about hospice palliative services and the lack of funding that we find in rural B.C.

Castlegar Hospice has been around since 1985, and we provide services in the areas of hospice and palliative support, grief and bereavement. I’m a hospice trainer, so I do training not only in Castlegar but throughout our
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region as well. We also do advanced-care planning. We help people go through that maze that is the health authority. As well, we provide referrals to other agencies.

We offer a tremendous value-added component to what’s called the traditional health care delivery system. My volunteer workers come from a variety of backgrounds, many from the health care industry themselves. We get about 10 to 12 percent of our budget in funding from the health authority, so we have to raise the majority from local community, provincial, federal grants.

Last year, I had more than 6,000 recorded hours of volunteer service, which is a lot for a small community. We have educational programs. I do a number of grief support programs, with my youngest grief-support client being five years old and my oldest being 92. So we have quite the range.

I sit on a number of various committees, including the West Kootenay Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Postvention committee. I do workshops for them in terms of suicide-specific grief support.

Now, what are we going to see in the future? Well, only about 10 percent of us are going to die suddenly. The rest of us will decline gradually. Depending on what services are available, we may or may not die where we want and we will experience various levels of pain.

What I’m looking at from you, what I’m looking at from this committee, is for you to review the core funding that hospice societies receive. Right now, in this area, generally we receive about $14,000 a year. We did get a letter earlier this year saying that we were getting an increase to help us with our increased costs. It amounted to $139. So one, that’s what we’re looking at — for you to look at the core funding for the hospice and palliative care in rural B.C.

Secondly…. I’ve given you a handout of my presentation. There’s also a little cheat sheet with it that’s on a project that Castlegar Hospice has taken on. It’s called hospice without borders. I started working on this project about seven years ago.

There is no hospice facility — in other words, a residential hospice — east of Vernon up until you get to the Alberta border. We do have some apparently designated hospice rooms in our long-term-care facility or in our regional hospital, but they may or may not be available if you need them.

Anyone who has experienced a loved one going into a hospice centre or hospice facility knows that you just can’t compare a room in the hospital or a long-term facility to what you get at a hospice centre — not to mention that there’s a cost saving as well.

Statistics show that patients who receive proper hospice palliative care are less likely to be going to emergency rooms and end up saving about $7,000 to $8,000 per patient to the health care system. There’s also an average cost of about $300 a day for a hospice room in a hospice facility, as compared to anywhere up to $1,000 a day for a room in an acute care facility.

I would like to ask that you take a look at our brochure for our hospice without borders, which would serve the Kootenay-Boundary region. Of course, every community would love to have their own hospice centre. Wouldn’t it be great if we could? Fiscally, it’s not something that we can see unless you have someone who can pay for it.

With the support of our surrounding hospice societies, mayors and councils in the various communities, our regional districts, we are moving forward with this project. We have the Hon. Roger Simmons, who has a background of about 30 years in politics, who is working with us as a project consultant.

At this point, we have started to look for capital funding, and we are looking to the agencies in the area, like Columbia Basin Trust, Teck Cominco, Zellstoff Celgar, to make that commitment to the community. Of course, there will be a point when we will be coming to the provincial government as well.

So I would like you to look at this brochure. I’m certainly available to answer any questions that you have on it in the future. You can contact me via phone or e-mail. I know we have a very limited amount of time right now.

I’d like to close by saying that British Columbia is always touted as the best place to live. We live until the very moment that we die, so we’d like to see B.C. be the best place for everyone to die as well.

Thank you very much for your time. Again, you’re No. 4 for me, so thanks again for allowing me to come back.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Ms. Lehbauer, for taking the time to present to the committee.

E. Foster: I just looked at the brochure. Actually, I was looking at it on the website too. Your numbers are exactly the same on both, which is always nice. You’re looking at $3.8 million to open the doors, correct?

S. Lehbauer: Right now…. The city of Castlegar, actually, in the fall of 2013, donated a piece of property in Castlegar. It’s worth just under a quarter of a million dollars.

In small communities, there’s always: “Why isn’t it
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here? Why isn’t it there? We want it in our community. We want it here.”

Before this even started, we looked at a number of pieces of land. We engaged an architect from Nelson, actually, to come in and look at some pieces of land. We looked in Trail and Nelson and places in between. We came up with three pieces of land that we thought would be appropriate for the facility that we’re looking at, that would look at a bit of an expansion with it. All three were in Castlegar, and the city of Castlegar was kind enough to come forward with that piece of land.

I should also mention that this centre not only would offer hospice palliative care, respite care and pain management, but the president of Selkirk College, Angus Graeme, has certainly indicated that they would like to partner with us, as well, to utilize the facility as a placement centre for their nurses in the nursing program, in the home care programs, etc.

E. Foster: If I could ask it again. The land is great because that’s a quarter of a million dollars. It’s a big chunk of your $3.8 million or whatever it is. Do you have any financial commitment, say, from Teck or any of these people at this point?

S. Lehbauer: At this point, we are waiting for a financial commitment from the Columbia Basin Trust. They are in the process of doing their due diligence on the project. Then we have places like Zellstoff, Celgar and Teck that are waiting for the buy-in from CBT. Of course, as anyone in the non-profit world knows, we’re looking for money all across Canada and in the U.S., yes.

E. Foster: Okay, just one more question, if I could. How many beds do you plan in your first phase?

S. Lehbauer: And that’s based on research done by the Fraser Health Authority.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation, Suzanne. I thought your sentiment at the end was a wonderful one, that we should have the ability to die well here. I know how difficult it is to establish hospices. I represent the north Island, and we’ve got problems trying to build our own hospice house.

I just wondered. Once you’ve built the hospice house, assuming you get the money and you get the fundraising, it’s the onward operating cost. At the moment, you’ve got about 10 to 12 percent of your budget from health care and the rest is coming from grants from the health authority.

I was wondering if you see sort of an equity across the health authority for funding for your hospice society at the moment for the work you’re doing within Interior Health and where they’re funding elsewhere — and also, an equity across health authorities, because each health authority is obviously funding their own, so if you’re seeing other health authorities putting more money into, at the moment, just operating costs.

My final question, as part of this. You mentioned the $14,000 that you get. Is that from the health authority? Or is it from another part of the provincial government?

Secondly, when we started the project, I, of course, went to numerous hospices throughout B.C. They all have general funding that comes from their particular health authority, and that is about 70 percent of the cost. That’s covered by the health authority.

C. Trevena: You say that there’s nothing from Vernon to the border. You’re obviously providing service — the work you are doing. Is there at the moment an equity within Interior Health? Do you think you’re getting enough money to provide the service that you are doing without the hospice house?

S. Lehbauer: No. And there are various, of course, hospice societies throughout our region. I think they will all answer the same question to you — no. People who work for hospice or volunteer for hospices, I’m sure many of you know, certainly are a special breed. Every day I am just in awe of the services that we provide at virtually no cost.

C. Trevena: Well, thank you very much for the work that you do and that all hospices do. I think you provide a very important part in our society, so thank you.

S. Lehbauer: And we’ve heard the commitment previously from the government that there’s going to be a doubling of hospice beds throughout B.C. When you have zero beds, what are you doubling?

You made a reference to talking to other hospice societies. Certainly, in my community in Richmond, we have an active one. In fact, we have a hospice that is part of Richmond Health Services, funded partially by the health authority.

You talk about how one of the keys to funding is to find people to support and donate, and it sounds like you’re on that path, so I commend you on that.

One other case in Richmond was that many years ago, probably 15 to 20 years ago, a group of individuals who happened to be connected to a Rotary club developed a passion for building a hospice. Year after year they raised funds that helped to create the initial funding to build this facility, and then they found other partners — the Salvation Army, for example — that went into the project with them.

I guess my question is: how has been the level of community support, individual support, to come on board with you on this?

S. Lehbauer: The local community support in terms of our Lion’s Club and our Rotary club has been exemplary. They’re very much on board with us and certainly supported us. They support us financially now through smaller donations, and they’re very much on board for the hospice facility.

I know that the Lion’s Club has made it a regional promotion, so we’re very pleased with that as well.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll have to cut it there and go to Carole. We’re just about out of…. Well, we are out of time, but I want to go to Carole for one last question.

C. James (Deputy Chair): One quick question and a huge thank you. Thank you to all the hospice groups, because many of them, as you say, don’t have facilities but are providing the support the best way they can with a bed in a hospital or one room that’s been put aside if they don’t need the bed for something else. Not ideal — but providing that support.

With the discussion that’s going on across the country right now around dying with dignity and the, I think, broader discussion that’s going to happen in that regard…. Certainly from my perspective, hospices are critical and provide that support for many people to look at dying with dignity. I just wondered whether….

I mean, you may not want to mix the two issues together, because they don’t necessarily go together, but I think it is an opportunity to talk about hospice as that bigger discussion occurs across the country around how we’re going to address dying with dignity in Canada.

S. Lehbauer: Yes. I look at it as a huge opportunity for us to bring into focus the need for excellence in hospice palliative services. And we don’t want to let our citizens in B.C. or across Canada down.

I’ll tell you what, just quickly, our philosophy at Castlegar Hospice is, because I’m asked non-stop how this is going to affect…. We promote excellence in service for hospice palliative care, and we respect the wishes of our clients as they fall within the parameters of the law.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, thank you, Ms. Lehbauer, for coming forward and presenting to the committee, and thank you for the work that you do.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll let you know the same thing I’ve told everyone else. We get ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to give you a two-minute heads-up, and then we’ll go to five minutes of questions from the committee.

A. Patt: Good morning. I am Amanda Patt. I represent no group. I’m merely a resident of B.C.

I’ve read the B.C. budget and fiscal plan for the upcoming year, and I think it’s a terrible plan, and I’m going to tell you why I think it’s a terrible plan. I’m coming to you today because you are the standing committee who can bring recommendations forward to say that we want changes. This type of plan is not the type of plan that I think will move B.C. in the direction it needs to go.

So I’ll get started. My primary concern is that this is still a financial budget. This is not a triple-bottom-line budget. This is not a budget that respects the environment and its people and then its economy. That fundamental flaw leads us to make decisions in the budget in the allocating of the money that are flawed — that focus primarily on bottom line and businesses, not about protecting our very baseline resources of the living organisms in B.C.

The second major problem with this budget is that it claims a surplus. This is not a surplus budget. They’re taking on, as far as I can calculate, $9.711 billion in extra debt — almost $10 billion in new debt over the next three years. That is a terrible plan.

And what are they spending most of that money on? Most of that money they’re spending on industry — $8.8
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billion on the Site C Dam and a whole bunch spent on liquefied natural gas. That whole bunch…. I’m having trouble finding those figures, because they’re buried in the fiscal plan in little bits and pieces. At least $444 million a year for development, plus its own special business tax, its own income tax.

These are not things I, as a British Columbian, want to see our government spending money on. They are shortsighted. Developing resources in this way is not green and is going to cost a lot more money later in terms of the results on climate change, putting more carbon in the atmosphere, and in terms of social costs.

We’ve been hearing a lot of presentations from people today, a few financial groups but mostly social groups. Every social group I know is saying that costs are rising, services are being utilized more, and there are more caseloads. What that means for everyday British Columbians is they’re not having a high quality of life. Every service institution is seeing that.

We spend a lot of money on health care and education. Everybody wants to spend money on those things, but those costs are ballooning. At some point, we’ll have to reach a point where we cannot increase the funding. We’re going to have to change the nature of the system.

The economic system in the globe right now is very volatile — fluctuating, slowdown, weakness, uncertain. We’re all tied together. There are going to be really serious upsets in the next coming decades, and I want British Columbia and Canada to be really prepared. There’s going to be an environmental challenge, climate change, the end of fossil fuel use, population growth, mass migration, the loss of coastal cities and the loss of breadbasket areas of the world. These sorts of budgets are not preparing us for that sort of future, and that scares me and makes me angry, as a resident of B.C.

Our raw resources are going to be worth more left in the ground and on the ground than they would be harvested. Trees, for instance, provide many, many ecosystem services than simply cutting them down and calling them fibre or timber.

One thing I noticed in the budget is that we make a lot of money off human vices: tobacco, liquor, gambling. Now, that’s unfortunate, but we should do the same with other vices. It’s about regulating and taxing, harm reduction. It’s about controlling those vices and then, incidentally, making money off them too.

One specific measure that I wanted to talk about in this budget is the revenue-neutral carbon tax. I am appalled at the way this has been implemented. It takes in around $1.24 billion a year, and they always spend more than they take in. But it’s not spent in a way that is useful or sustainable. It’s frittered away irresponsibly. The carbon tax is much too low in its rate of taxation. It taxes only a narrow range of emissions, and most of our major industries are exempt.

For instance, it doesn’t cover deforestation, metal smelting, cement production or the CO₂ emitted from liquefied natural gas. It doesn’t cover the coal or other fossil fuels that we export. It doesn’t cover coloured fuels that industry uses. Every major industry is exempt.

Then, the money generated…. In this budget, it lists a whole smattering of all of these little tax breaks that really are odd and don’t make any sense together — for instance, reducing personal income tax brackets by 5 percent but lowering the general corporate tax from 12 to 11 percent. That is not what this money should be for.

A carbon tax was implemented to try and discourage the use of fossil fuels while putting the revenue towards green, renewable energy. That money is being completely misspent. We have an opportunity here to not fund things like liquefied natural gas — which are really destructive, backward-stepping places for industry to go — and to utilize the carbon tax to go into the future and into green, renewable energy, and we’re not taking that opportunity.

If I don’t, as a resident in British Columbia, want us to fund major industries, what do I want us to fund? I want to see us funding our protected, biodiverse natural spaces. I want to see us funding soil- and water-wise organic agriculture. I want to see us funding responsible land management, energy-efficient housing, livable cities, green jobs. I want a budget that has a triple bottom line, that respects us as the people of British Columbia and respects that the organisms that live in British Columbia, our environment, are our brothers and sisters. They are what support us in so many different ways.

That is my summary of this B.C. budget and fiscal plan. I hope that the Committee on Finance and Government Services can take my main recommendations forward. This sort of plan, which focuses on financial bottom lines and on economy and on industry, is not what British Columbians want. I hope you’ll take that forward for me.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Patt, for taking the time to present to the committee your thoughts.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much. I’ve noticed that you’ve been here most, if not all, of the morning listening to other presentations from members of the community about community needs, so thank you for that as well.

I have, basically, one question for you. I understand a number of corporations around the world have increasingly used triple-bottom-line accounting. It is not the general practice for governments or Auditors General to accept a triple-bottom-line accounting system, but I’m wondering if you’ve done any research or are aware of any jurisdictions that use it in their budget presentation either as a main budgeting tool, which I’m not aware of, or as a contrasting budgeting tool or organizations that
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will take a jurisdiction’s budget and present a comparator in terms of a triple-bottom-line budget.

A. Patt: I am not specifically aware of any that do. I’ve been a student at the University of Victoria, taking environmental studies, biology and also an unfinished diploma in environmental restoration. Whether our governments and businesses are ready to adopt this sort of financial triple bottom line…. I suspect they’re not. I suspect a lot of the recommendations or main ideas I’m bringing forward are not yet ready to be listened to.

That worries me because this generation, my generation and also the ones coming after me are going to live through the incredibly massive problems that this short-sightedness is going to cause. Not understanding that an intact ecosystem provides so many services…. Cutting down and destroying that ecosystem to harvest one thing provides a little tiny bit of money. Because our accounting only has a mechanism to look at the money, it looks like a good idea in the short term, but in the long term it’s not a good idea at all. My generation is going to be the one living through that.

If we can begin to address these things with the seriousness they deserve, then it’s going to be much easier, in future decades, if we’ve got the ball rolling now when we still have options, when we still have forests, when we still have an economic base, when we still have a choice about how to use the last of our fossil fuels. When we still have a choice is the time to make that choice, rather than to let it fall apart.

S. Gibson: Well, thank you for your passion today. It’s always refreshing to hear somebody that’s got a real energy and a real interest in the issue.

I notice that you’re advancing the legalization of prostitution — which, as a matter of fact, is more a federal jurisdiction than provincial, in any event. I’m given to believe that prostitution and pornography — those related areas — are really an exploitation of women, but you seem to feel that it’s good to legalize it. I was just wondering if you want to make a few brief remarks on that.

A. Patt: I don’t have a lot of vices. I don’t smoke tobacco or liquor. I don’t gamble. I think a lot of these things are immoral and should not happen. But the reality is they do happen, and it’s very unfortunate.

I think legalizing, regulating and taxing these things is not for the purpose of condoning these things, because I absolutely don’t condone them. It’s because when something’s illegal, there’s harm done not just in the activity done but in the fact that it’s underground, in the fact that the money from that activity is going to support the worst causes, like crime or terrorism.

It’s that there’s a social stigma around those activities which is causing a great deal of further harm to the people engaged in those activities. So I completely don’t condone these things, but I think one mechanism for harm reduction is to bring these things out into the light, and instead of using a legal tool, use social pressure, like we’ve done with making drinking driving unacceptable or smoking in public places unacceptable. Use social pressure rather than legal pressure.

This isn’t the main focus, by far, of what I want to talk about, but I did read the entire budget, and that was something I noticed, that we make a great deal of money from our vices. But my main focus is the triple bottom line — the environment and the social well-being. I think the harm reduction from legalizing and regulating these things could be one small component of increasing our social support system.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We are out of time, but I’ve got time for one quick question.

C. Trevena: I’ll be very quick, and I think it’s more of a comment than anything else.

I’d like to thank you for presenting to the committee and for listening to the other presentations. As you saw, we hear a lot from social organizations and other organizations. It’s very rare that we actually get an individual to present and also somebody who’s done so much research and has gone through the budget in such detail and so thoughtfully. Your thinking here will definitely add to our discussions, and I really appreciate you coming to present to the committee today.

A. Patt: Thank you. These concerns are more than just a budget. I see this in the wider society in general. I don’t think we’re taking these issues as seriously as we’ll need to, so this was an opportunity for me to speak to people who actually have an opportunity to speak to the people who make decisions. I’m really grateful to get the chance to use my skills that I’ve learned in school — researching and writing and public speaking — to, hopefully, suggest and make a difference.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, and we’re grateful that you showed up and decided to present to the committee. You’re very passionate about how you feel and very articulate in the way you present yourself as well.

Next we have the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C. — Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Kitchen. Ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll rudely interrupt you after you have about two minutes left so you could wrap up. Then we’ll go to the committee for about five minutes’ worth of questions.

T. Armstrong: First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to make a presentation to the committee.
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We greatly appreciate your time. We’ll try not to take up the ten minutes in presentation. We’ve submitted a very short, six-page brief to the committee.

Just by way of introduction, the Co-op Housing Federation of British Columbia is a non-profit cooperative association. We represent the housing cooperatives in B.C., all of which have been funded and developed from the early 1970s until just recently.

As you probably know, most of the housing co-ops in British Columbia, all save just under 20 of them, have been developed under a combination of federal government–sponsored housing programs. There are currently more than 260 non-profit housing co-ops in the province, with more than 14,500 homes. They provide mixed-income homes to people in very diverse, member-controlled housing in communities all across the province.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Excuse me. Could I just interrupt you for a second? For Hansard’s purposes, I need to know who’s speaking at the moment.

T. Armstrong: I’m sorry. My name is Thom Armstrong. I’m the executive director for the federation.

T. Armstrong: Sure. There are more than 14,500 co-op homes in the province. They provide homes to a variety of households, incomes, backgrounds. Co-ops are found to be generally very diverse communities and a much-valued stock of affordable rental housing in many communities where affordable housing stock is at a great premium.

As I said, most of the housing co-ops in the province were developed and funded under federal co-op housing programs, the first of which was launched in 1973. Over time, as those agreements have been administered through CMHC, as a result of discussions between the federal government and the provinces, responsibility for housing has been devolved from the federal to the provincial level.

That leaves the low-income members of federally funded housing co-ops in a bit of a conundrum. As those agreements with CMHC expire — and most of them were 30- to 35-year agreements — the rent-geared-to-income assistance that makes their homes affordable expires at the same time.

We’re talking, by the time we reach the early 2020s, about just under 4,000 low-income households, most of which are people that you would find to be the most vulnerable in today’s very competitive and challenging housing market. We’re talking about single parent–led households, new Canadians, seniors, people with permanent disabilities. In other words, the very people that would have the hardest time finding alternative housing if they could no longer live in the housing co-ops that they’ve called home for these many years.

Now, the federal agreements have just begun to expire. This year is the first really significant year of agreements coming to an end. The spike in the expiry of agreements occurs in 2017, which, in budget terms, is virtually tomorrow, and by 2025, you’ll see just under 4,000 low-income households without the supports that currently make their homes affordable.

The proposal that the Co-op Housing Federation is making, given the constitutional trajectory that we’ve seen over the years, is for the province to introduce and fund a rent supplement program for low-income co-op members along the lines that currently exist in the ILM rent supplement program, which the federal and provincial governments have cost-shared since 1986. But that rent supplement program is currently administered by the province.

In terms of the impact on the provincial budget, the addition of a co-op rent supplement program is actually a very modest undertaking. This year, it would add just under $2 million to the amount the government already spends on assistance to low-income co-op members. By 2020, that amount would rise to $12 million, and by 2025, the total expenditure for the province on low-income rent supplements for co-op members would be just under $18 million.

It’s not a huge amount of money compared to the consequences of the increased demand on the social safety net in B.C. that would result from 4,000 low-income co-op residents finding themselves unable to afford the cost of their housing.

We think that the track record of B.C. Housing in administering the existing ILM rent supplements bodes well for a cost-effective, efficient absorption of co-op rent supplements as those federally funded agreements come to an end.

I should add that it’s not our intention to let the federal government off the hook in making this proposal to you. We would, certainly in concert with the province and our colleagues from across the country, be part of an effort to persuade the federal government to reinvest some of the savings that it will realize as those federal housing agreements come to an end.

We think the most effective reinvestment would be in the form of increased housing transfers to the provinces so that the jurisdiction with responsibility actually is properly resourced to discharge that responsibility.

Finally, I would say that we’re not asking the government to fund or to reinvest in the assets represented in the physical co-op homes themselves. We think that the co-op housing sector, in partnership with its members and in partnership with the credit union and financial sector, can manage the reinvestment in the community asset that housing co-ops represent.

What housing co-ops can’t do as non-profit associations is both reinvest in the physical asset and provide
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reduced housing charges for those 4,000 low-income members.

That is the gist of our proposal. We think that a provincially funded rent supplement program would be the most efficient and most cost-effective response to the expiry of those federal program housing co-op agreements. We would very much like to be a part of the effort to introduce that in the next budget and to work with you to make it a reality.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Armstrong. I appreciate you taking the time, and I’ll go the committee for questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the creativity in coming forward with a proposal.

I think co-ops have huge strength in our province. We often struggle with how to manage housing, how not to ghettoize housing by building simply social housing. I think co-ops, from my personal perspective, are one of those perfect models where you have people of differing incomes. As their income goes up, they’re able to pay more towards the rent, which assists other people who are living in the co-ops. I think it’s a wonderful model.

There’s a great deal of concern, certainly in my community, about what’s going to happen when those federal agreements expire. I like the approach around the co-op rent supplement, using an existing program and just expanding it with a unique way of providing that support. I think it’s a creative idea and approach.

It would be great to see a federal government actually reinvest the money back into building more co-ops. This is what I’d love to see, eventually. We can dream.

But thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your creativity around bringing forward an idea.

E. Foster: I guess this is kind of a question on how your operation works. I’ve run into, over the last six years that I’ve been an MLA, different housing societies — in an lot of cases, with CMHC holding mortgages — and their mission statements were to provide affordable housing, quite often for seniors in the area.

They’ve kept their rents way too low. So 25 years in, 15 years in, they have no money in the bank to put on new roofs and do upgrades so, as we bring the new projects in, try to get a little more money coming in at the front end to offset those costs down the road.

T. Armstrong: We certainly have. I agree with your description of a challenge that I think the entire social housing sector is facing.

One of the ways that the Co-op Housing Federation has responded to that is by identifying the need for a program that we call asset management planning. We are busy delivering building-condition assessments and financial forecasts to our members to allow them to counteract the situation that you just described.

I think it fits well with the strategy that we’re proposing, because our mission is to upgrade and reinvest in those physical assets. We don’t believe that a housing co-op — or a non-profit housing society, for that matter — ought to provide affordable housing just for one development cycle or one cycle in the useful life of their buildings.

We think that co-ops and non-profits need to position themselves to reinvest in that asset, so it becomes affordable homes for future generations as well.

We’re prepared to do that and take up that challenge, but the low-income members who need assistance in bridging the gap between what’s affordable to them and the real, break-even rent in the co-op or the non-profit need that help through the rent supplement program to keep them in their communities.

E. Foster: I’m not glad to see you have the same problem, but I’m glad to see that you’re addressing it, because I find with the housing societies that in a lot of cases, they were overwhelmed — a bunch of volunteers. Possibly we can connect on this, and I can get some of your ideas and help them out. They’re really struggling, and the facilities are in rough shape in a lot of cases. With rent controls and so on, they’re not able to raise the money they need to do the work.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation. I’m particularly interested in this topic, living in and representing an area of Vancouver where affordable housing is a huge issue, and not just for low-income people.

I grew up during the heyday of co-op housing, and many friends live in co-op housing. They’re models of mixed-income communities. I think one of the capitalization problems you’re talking about is a result of federal government policy, I believe, that incented co-ops in a perverse way not to set money aside, which is unfortunate, because we’re now reaping the downside of that.

I wanted to take the opportunity to first of all echo Carole’s comments about your creative solution, but while we have you on the line, I’d also invite you to submit to us in a supplementary document any practical ideas that you have for provincial government actions that could perhaps reinvigorate new co-op housing possibilities in British Columbia, particularly in areas where affordable housing — not just social housing, but affordable housing — is really critical.
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D. Kitchen: Perhaps I could speak briefly to that. For your records, I’m Darren Kitchen. I’m the government relations director here at CHF B.C.

We’re currently moving full steam ahead on a number of projects, the most advanced of which is a project in partnership with the city of Vancouver and also with B.C. Housing to build 358 units on three sites in Vancouver. We aim to have those under construction by the end of the month. We have ongoing projects in Surrey and Richmond. We’re talking to partners in Victoria to move these developments ahead and incorporate them into our land trust so that the developments will happen. They will be mixed-income communities. Through the land trust, they will be dedicated to that mission in perpetuity. I’d be happy to brief you further on that — any of you.

Seeing none, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Kitchen, thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for the work that you do, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Next we have the Legal Services Society — Mr. Mark Benton, sitting there patiently all day long.

M. Benton: Like many of your other presenters, Mr. Chair, I’ve had the pleasure of being at a number of these. I make a point of being late on the agenda on the half-days, partly because, for me, I get to hear what I think you hear through your entire series of hearings.

You get to hear about health problems. You get to hear about poverty. You get to hear about education. You get to hear about capacity issues, of people that interact and have a social life in British Columbia. You get to hear about how complexity is making it more difficult to access all of that.

I run the legal aid plan. That’s what I deal with every day. It’s helpful to be reminded that that’s the story of our lives, and it’s terrific — I want to acknowledge your work and the work of the Legislature in having this committee — that you come and seek it out. I think it’s easy for all of us to find ourselves in a place where we have our agenda that we press, and we consider our successes to be successes on those agendas, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about success on that broader public role. I know that’s what brings you to this table and brings you to this room.

I want to add the dimension that I think hasn’t been spoken about yet: how the justice system works, what needs to be done and the need for justice system policy that actually serves British Columbians better.

I’m going to talk a bit about what we’ve been doing. I’m going to pick up on some of the themes that the Legal Services Society has pressed at previous meetings here and close with what I think are some real prospects for how this moves forward. As is often the case with work in the justice system — I know you’re talking about this coming year’s budget — I’m probably talking about the next three years’ budgets in this presentation.

As I indicated, I’m the CEO of the Legal Services Society It’s B.C.’s legal aid plan and its principal public legal information provider.

Mr. Foster, three websites, right? We’ve got one for the Legal Services Society. You’ll also find one there targeted to the aboriginal community and another one just for family law. The family law site alone gets almost a million hits a year — very high volume. Lots of demand for legal information. Lots of demand sitting there, largely unmet. You want to look at the one that’s just the Legal Services Society.

I’ve been doing this work for more than 30 years now, in one way or another — access to justice work, either representing legal aid clients or, for the last decade or so, running the legal aid plan. I’ve learned that there’s a high commonality about people who have legal problems: they want not to have the legal problem.

They don’t want to go to court. What they want to do is get an early, lasting resolution to that problem, and they want the way there to be reasonably transparent, authoritative, fair, inexpensive and timely.

Canada does really well on the first three of those — authoritative, transparent and fair. We’re great. We score in the top ten in the world on that. But we’re not so good on timely and inexpensive. In fact, we’re really bad. We’re one of the more expensive places in the world to go to get a problem resolved, but that need not be the case.

I’m going to talk about a couple of things that have been emerging over the last couple of years, particularly at the Legal Services Society, where we’re learning how to do things differently that we think offer real prospects for improving the system. The process itself, I think, offers a suggestion about how we need to approach justice funding and justice innovation differently.

You’ve got my speaking notes in your package. I’m going to refer, from time to time, to a slide deck called Legal Aid Today, which is in the package as well. It provides more detail about legal aid and what it’s doing. I’m really not going to talk too much about that, but of course, I’m happy to answer any questions you have.

Three years ago we made a submission to government, at the request of the then Attorney General Shirley Bond, about how legal aid could make a contribution to making justice work better. That was filed. Part of our mandate is to advise the Attorney General on access to justice. It was a completely within-mandate activity. What it suggested was a series of discrete projects to show how justice efficiencies could be increased.

Now, it’s not just about efficiency. Justice is really about effectiveness. Justice is about resolving those problems. How much money we spend getting there is important, because why would we spend more than we need to? What’s more important is that British Columbians are getting an effective justice system, and that’s really the broader theme that I want to touch on.
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Five projects were funded. Two years ago the Legal Services Society budget was increased by $2 million for three years. Five projects are being funded. I’m going to talk to you about two of them today, because they’re the ones that I think are going to need to go to scale.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about some of the details of those. They’re described at pages 10 and 11 of the handout called Legal Aid Today, if you want some more detail. Funding for those projects expires in 2017, so we’ve been working hard to get credible evaluations done on them.

I’m going to start with one that’s in the criminal law area. It’s called the expanded criminal duty counsel program. Most of you may know that what happens in a criminal court on remand day is that there are one or two lawyers there who represent the people who aren’t represented. Their job is to try to help them through the system, sometimes in a kind of concierge model. Sometimes they’re actually getting a resolution.

What we’ve been focusing on is moving away from concierge, in terms of what happens next, and into resolution, in ways that are appropriate and sustainable. The difficulty with those kinds of programs is that they don’t save my organization any money. Those people who show up unrepresented typically aren’t eligible for legal aid.

What it does do, however, is get them through the system faster and fairly. The system costs us, in British Columbia, a fortune. There’s a judge there. There are court clerks. There are sheriffs. There are in-custody facilities. There’s the capital cost of the building — all those things that the more people you have in for more time cost us more money.

What we’re finding is that instead of putting in a different lawyer every week, having one lawyer there so that the cases bridge over one to another is not a big additional cost for us but quite an intensive approach to helping people get a resolution more quickly.

There are lots of preconceptions about what happens in criminal court. Like almost all the rest of our preconceptions, if you think it’s all about one size fits all, you’re almost always wrong — unless you are buying a toque. Really, tailoring our services to make them work for people is what we’ve learned, in quite profound ways.

When I heard Amy Taylor talk this morning about the problems of designing single-access-point systems to serve broad and challenged populations, I was reminded of many of the mistakes we’ve made at the Legal Services Society whenever we’ve gone to that place.

Now, you need to go to scale. We need systems that work well for people and are simple and have points of entry that work. But making them work in ways that resolve problems requires a lot of focus and a lot of work on what the outcomes are for those people. The focus needs to be on the people and the outcomes and what effectiveness is, not merely on efficiency. Efficiency is a tool that we use to get to effectiveness.

One of the things that we’re finding in criminal legal aid is there are different ways to do it than have done traditionally. What we believe will come out of these evaluations…. We’re using a national evaluator to come in and look at how much money is actually being saved in the criminal justice system to justify expanding the system to scale, and you can expect I’ll be back next year to tell you what those evaluations say. I’ll have them this time next year.

But what we expect them to say, because of what our preliminary results look like, is that 96 percent of the cases that we’re handling are resolving in 18 days on the criminal side. Those kinds of numbers are unheard of in my experience.

That’s one. Now, the piece there is that’s scalable pretty much across the province in ways that will help cut down on the waiting times. Pull those people out of the system sooner, and it frees up more system time to deal with those other cases, because the system time tends to be fixed by the number of judges and prosecutors. What it allows, then, is money to be available, which we suggest ought to go back into other access-to-justice initiatives.

The other initiative I want to talk to you about has, I think, more profound opportunities associated with it. This is the Parents Legal Centre. It’s targeted with a staff lawyer, paralegals and support staff who work with aboriginal families and social workers where there’s a risk that a child will be apprehended. The idea is to get an early intervention by a knowledgable lawyer — in this case, it’s an aboriginal lawyer with lots of experience in the field — who speaks to Ministry of Children and Family staffers, and together, they come up with something that works for the family and keeps the children safe.

This is the sort of thing that is more a negotiation and a conversation. What’s happening in those cases right now is we’re finding that we’re getting mediations happening, often within ten days. These aren’t cases that go 15 to 18 months in the system. They have turnaround times that happen within weeks. What that means is higher continuity of care for kids, less disruption of the family, less stress in the family arising from legal problems.

We see pieces coming out. We have traditionally seen legal aid as an aid to fairness in the courtroom. What’s happening here is that we’re beginning to see it and measure it as ways that it makes differences in people’s lives that help them move past the legal problem, get back to having a life that contributes to British Columbia, to the economy and to our social fabric.

These kinds of investments, we think, are what the future needs to be in British Columbia. I don’t mean just for the Legal Services Society. We need to be looking at discrete investments that look for outcomes that we believe are the ones that the justice system ought to produce, which is stable outcomes, particularly for families and allowing people to get past the problem and back into lives that are productive in the province.
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S. Hamilton (Chair): We are out of time, but you can continue on. It just eats into the question period time, that’s all.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Benton. I will go to the committee.

S. Gibson: A couple of brief questions. What is your view on restorative justice, and how does it relate to your mandate and the work that you do that is so important in our province?

M. Benton: I think that restorative justice principles are a fundamental part of the solution to many of the problems that we’re looking at right now, particularly when we look at the calls from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for different ways to approach criminal justice and child protection issues with the aboriginal community.

I think if Mr. Ashton was to ask me what my top three are, that’s number one — looking at aboriginal justice and how it works in B.C.

My second question. You acknowledged that 6 percent of the population are First Nations, but 30 percent of the population in the justice system, entering it, are aboriginals. It’s my view that one of the advantages that non-aboriginals have, in many cases, is that they understand the system and the implications and the repercussions of it, where our First Nations friends seem to have a lack of knowledge even or a sensitivity to how the system works, which, unfortunately, makes it easy for them to access this system.

M. Benton: I think that there are a number of interesting and really promising initiatives that are emerging right now. We’re doing a project that we work on with a Chief Judge of the Provincial Court, of First Nations courts, where you actually involve aboriginal people directly in the court process. One way to frame this would be it has made it more culturally approachable, in ways that offer real promise. When I talk to corrections folks, they see it as getting better results, which means lower recidivism.

I think there is lots of work that could be done there that actually isn’t expensive work. This isn’t a big-ticket item. This is a different approach than the traditional judges and lawyers and courtrooms approach.

M. Morris: Having been involved in feeding the criminal system for many years in my role as a police officer, I did see abuses in the system a number of years ago.

I guess more of a comment than anything else. I’m really pleased with what I’m hearing. You say today some of the innovative things that you’re looking at and making the system work better. I’ve got quite a few friends, criminal trial lawyers, and I hear from them all the time about the system. But I do think that you’re making some headway, and I fully support that.

I did flip to the aboriginal legal aid part of your website, which is very impressive. I was going to ask this question of some of the other folks that were here, because the websites are all really good. The people you’re trying to target. Are they going to be able to find this?

M. Benton: Within the aboriginal population, the younger people, sort of 25 and under — lots of mobile phone apps. That app is a scalable one. If you’re using a new phone, it scales right down to that size. So it’s a smartphone-friendly app.

E. Foster: You’re talking to probably the least techie person at the table here.

E. Foster: I don’t have an issue, but the reason I bring it up is…. You’re trying to reach a group of people that are going to be very difficult to reach. Do you have any other…? Do you have outreach?

M. Benton: Actually, we’ve worked hard. We had some fairly major reduction in our service framework in 2002. Since then, we’ve worked hard at building strong networks. Amy Taylor, who was speaking earlier today, is part of the network we have with Legal Services Society so that low-income people can access our services even though we don’t run offices. We do the same kind of outreach into aboriginal communities.

One of my focuses for the last little while has been sitting down with the elders from those First Nations courts I was mentioning earlier to find out what they think we ought to do differently. When I was saying earlier…. Mr. Ashton asked what my top three were. The reason that’s number one? They have high expectations that we in British Columbia are actually going to do something with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations — really high expectations. I think it’s going to be a challenge for all of us to even come close, because it just doesn’t seem to be on the radar quite as much as it ought to be.
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You’ve got the two foci for your ask here, the two out of the five that you had the money for before. But what I see in my constituents and I hear from many, many people around the province is simply access to justice.

You hear from both sides of the court saying: “We can’t cope.” We hear from people coming to the constituency offices saying: “I don’t know what to do.” While these are supremely important projects that are running, how do we try and square that circle? How can we get more access to justice for low-income people — for both the court system and for their ability to have that fairness?

M. Benton: I sit on a variety of both national and provincial committees that try to address this issue. This isn’t peculiar to British Columbia. The problem is one of the extent of the funding that’s available to provide the service. In B.C. right now, of ten provinces, I think we’re the seventh best funded. So quite a ways down — eighth maybe. I think P.E.I. and New Brunswick fund legal aid less. It’s one of the reasons why we have less service.

Generally, the thinking around access-to-justice issues is that they’re about cost and complexity. You can reduce both cost and complexity, but there still is lots of space needed for publicly funded legal services.

I’m assuming that you’re going to hear that from many of the rest of the justice system stakeholders, which is why I haven’t focused on it today. It’s not because we don’t believe it’s important. We speak to the Attorney General and make annual statements about the need for more services and better funded services. But my pitch today is about strategic investment in justice reform that makes access to justice better, because we think it’s system change that’s going to be needed, not just additional funding.

I think your organization, like many organizations, is going through the challenge of: how do you provide that prevention work? How do you do the work that needs to be done while you still need to continue to provide the support for people who are using the court system, who are stuck in the court system or have to go through that process? I think it’s a real challenge, so I certainly support funding for that shift — to help people stay out of the court system, to help people who are there be able to address it through another route.

What percentage of the support that you’re providing right now would you say is in that prevention end? Maybe it’s not possible to tease it out yet.

My organization gets about 95 percent of its funding from the provincial government. It’s that other 5 percent that’s mostly going into the prevention side. We get it from foundations. We get it from funds we raise. Sometimes we charge other levels of government to provide service. That kind of revenue goes…. We have an income stream from the Notary Foundation, notary trust accounts.

About $5 million of the close to $80 million we spend in a year goes into that. That’s actually more than most legal aid plans spend. We’ve had that focus for some time, largely because we’ve started focusing on what the clients tell us they want rather than what others tell us they need.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Benton, for the presentation and for taking the time to come and present to the committee. I appreciate that. Have a good day.

Now, hopefully, on the line still — thank you for your patience — is Dr. Daniel Weeks, University of Northern British Columbia.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning. You have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll rudely interrupt you with about two minutes left, and then we can wrap that up and go to questions for about five minutes after that. Does that work for you?

D. Weeks: Absolutely fantastic. I’ll do my best to stay well under my ten minutes.

I want to do two things here this morning. I want to give you a very quick update, I think, on some of the successes up here. I think it’s important for you to know that the investments you’ve already made are doing extraordinarily well.

Then I want to talk a little bit about some needs — but, really, more system needs. I’m going to try to stay away from really specific needs. Some of the system needs will address our unique challenges up here in the north by virtue of the investments I’m going to mention to you.

Let me just start off by saying that it’s our 25th year. We had an incredible anniversary, and it’s quite inspiring to be an institution that has made such progress in its 25 years. I would say it’s in no small part to the foresight of the government of the day and the ongoing investments that have been made. In particular, I’m so pleased that the research that goes on at this institution is such a valued contribution to the needs of British Columbians, Canadians and beyond.

Most recently many of you will know of our work, the research we did around the Mount Polley tailings pond breach. This has turned what, on the one hand, is certainly an ecological challenge into an opportunity to make sure that, going forward, this government and this province do excellent work in stewarding the environment.
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You will also know we were again second in Maclean’s magazine in our cohort. It’s, again, a testament to the quality of the institution.

We recently — in fact, just yesterday — got full approval to launch our new master’s program in wood engineering. The opening of the Wood Innovation Centre up here is quite a feather in the cap, again, to the province and, I think, quite forward-thinking. Honestly, I’m excited to tell you we’re ready to go on a much more fulsome engineering program, as well, that will help meet the skills gap up here. We’re making presentations to our own ministry very, very soon on that.

In addition to our 25th, the northern medical program had its tenth anniversary. Again, another program very uniquely tailored to the north, and I think it’s because of that unique tailoring that it’s been so successful. We now have data to show that more of the physicians trained in the north are staying in the north. This was always the hope, and certainly the data is now showing that that is the reality. I think that approach could be modeled in a number of other professional programs, as well, if not more generally in our academic programs.

You’ll all know we had the Winter Games and what a major opportunity that was, not just to showcase British Columbia but northern British Columbia as well.

Another area that I’m excited to tell you about, in terms of the value of our research. Northern Health, up here, has just started using software that’s been developed by a team of professors and students, actually, in our computing science department, which is helping understand the process by which we transfer patients between health facilities. So again, we’re doing basic research, but research that we carry right through to the application, I think, is so relevant.

As I talk about the 25 years, it’s interesting. We’ve done our first survey of our alumni, a very, very large survey. The data is just coming in. We’re beginning to mine that data. But I know you’ll be interested to know that more than 90 percent of our students are certainly satisfied with the education and university experience they had here in Prince George. And 80 percent of our graduates are actually working in the very fields that they were studying while they were here. So it’s a very relevant education and certainly one that positions them well to succeed as they go forward.

Moving forward, I made a very important announcement just several weeks ago. I’ve appointed for the first time in the history of the institution a senior adviser to the president on aboriginal relations. We are really engaged in a very large academic planning exercise right now that will kind of re-vision and reposition our work in our region and, in particular, our work with our aboriginal partners.

Moving from all those great successes and thinking about what some of the system needs that I see in the post-secondary climate here are. Obviously, I don’t know what my other colleagues at the other research universities or other post-secondaries are talking to you about. But at a very high level, I think these are relevant to all of our institutions.

One in particular that comes up as universities think about skills, the skills gap and what we need to prepare for the future is around graduate student spaces and graduate student funding. British Columbia is actually one of the few jurisdictions in Canada — it might even be the only jurisdiction — that does not have a targeted program for graduate student scholarships.

We’re of the belief here that while we are challenged, as almost every jurisdiction in Canada is right now, with undergraduate student enrolment, our graduate student enrolment is not only strong, but it’s growing. I think an investment there would be a very wise use and preparation for the future.

I know that the research universities of British Columbia have put forward a plan, and I think this committee will actually see something in the future related to this from RUCBC, about the idea that we could have a scholarship program that’s merit-based, for up to 1,000 students, that would cost somewhere around $15 million per year. They’ll make the case, I think, in more detail about what the benefits would be of that.

The second area of investment I think would be critical for all of us in this system — certainly, the research universities — is an ongoing commitment from government around the support for the B.C. knowledge development fund. This is an incredibly important fund for researchers in the province. In order to continue to leverage the kind of funding that comes from outside…. Research universities bring about $700 million each year into British Columbia.

In large part, that success is a direct consequence of having something like BCKDF available to our researchers for the kinds of matching funds that are necessary sometimes to leverage those dollars. I would tell you that in the north here it’s particularly important, because we don’t have a lot of other options. There are not a lot of head offices and direct contact with the industry and companies that could provide that kind of support that might be more accessible to those that live in the urban centres.

The third thing that I know you will be aware of is much more operational. Universities now, the research universities in particular, but beyond…. We’re all looking for approval to be able to engage in the self-finance of capital projects. This will continue to be a growing issue for us.

We believe that there is a good business case in many instances to make. If we had the latitude to be able to accelerate some of the infrastructure needs that we have, we believe that this is not only a way to move the institutions forward quickly, but I think it’s a way in which to
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relieve government, in some cases, of some of the kinds of infrastructure needs that we would be expecting to get support for.

We are also aware that the government is developing a ten-year skills plan that’s very specific to technology and high-tech development. I would, to whatever extent this committee can, encourage participation of the research universities in the development of that plan. I think we could do a lot at the front end to help.

Bottom line is: costs are higher here in the north to train our students. We know if we can get them up here for a visit, they like it here, and they stay. I could give you many, many examples of that.

I know you’re going to get lots of requests from many other groups during your committee work. I’m just going to tell you, quite bluntly, that any investment you can make at all up here is good for me. I’m probably the only president that realizes when you invest more in roads, I get excited, because I know that that makes it easier for people to travel up here and send their sons and daughters to go to university here.

Any investment in the city, the region, our roads, whatever it is, these are all good things for the university. Any investment in the north is good for me, and I encourage you to really listen hard to all the others that are going to present before you. I’ll leave it at that.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Terrific. Thank you, Dr. Weeks. I appreciate you taking the time to present.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you, Dr. Weeks. It’s been an ongoing theme for a little while now — this argument that we should let universities, colleges, invest in themselves and maybe take on a little debt so that they can finance, whether it be new residences, new buildings, etc.

I’m curious. In your case, what would that look like? Obviously, interest rates are low right now, so I can understand why you’d want to do that. It would, also, of course, add jobs. What kind of investments are you looking to do there at the University of Northern B.C.?

D. Weeks: We are just going to pull together our campus master planning committee. We have not had an active committee for a number of years. As you know, it’s timely every five to seven years to dust that off and have a look at it. We are going to do that now. We are going to be refurbishing our residences in the very near future. We will need to think about new residences as we go forward. That would be one area. We believe, in those cases, there’s always a very good business case to make as well.

I was mentioning to you earlier about our ability now. We are ready and poised to launch a much more fulsome engineering program. We will be partnering with some other institutions to do that. We can get it off the ground with the facilities and infrastructure we have right now, but over a ten-year horizon, we need to start thinking about new laboratories and new teaching spaces for things like engineering.

You’re absolutely right. It’s not only that interest rates are low. One of the things I’m really excited about. This city is so poised to partner with us. I just had lunch with the mayor the other day. The mayor said: “Dan, if you have anything you want to get off the ground here in terms of infrastructure, if there’s land that the city owns, we’ll figure out a way to get it to you. If there’s some way we could partner, we’ll do that.” I have a very motivated city, and I think with a little bit of latitude to make our own business case, we could do a lot.

M. Morris: Sorry I haven’t caught up with you yet. I’ve been sucked up in this vortex of work that we have here. I just want, basically, to compliment you on the work. I know you came in at a time when there were issues there, and you’ve done a heck of a good job. I do hear you on this, on the three main issues that you’ve presented. Shirley and I are working on that.

I think I’ve got my colleagues on this committee here, as well, convinced. We are recruiting on behalf of UNBC. We hear from all the other universities in the province here. They seem to be full, and they seem to be at capacity, and we’re always saying that we’ve got room up north here. So we’ll send them north for you.

S. Gibson: I was just going to affirm that as well. I’m really hoping that we’ll become, as government, more focused on overall enrolment for all universities. So if somebody applies to where I taught at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford…. We had people applying and were rejected, but they could have easily come up north to your university.

I just want to say that I appreciated the tour I had recently, and I think you’re an excellent ambassador for the university but for post-secondary education in general.

A quick question. When universities like Capilano, UFV and Vancouver Island morphed into universities, what was the impact on you? My understanding is that there was a negative impact on UNBC.
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D. Weeks: Absolutely. It was devastating. Whereas many of our students would come from the Lower Mainland, they now have options that take them to different locations. I think the thing is…. I’ll try to say this as tactfully as I can, and I agree with you about the idea that if a student can’t get in one place, they should be able to easily go to another.

I think we often call what we have here a system. But to be perfectly honest with you, it’s not really a system in the sense that we have some overarching coordination of it. I would encourage us to think that way. I know that there could be some additional challenges to doing this in the south. But one way to start…. I would like us to think this, and I’m going to push this idea. Maybe we need an overarching system approach, to the north at least, to begin us.

Let us work together here to steward students through the colleges, as they go after whatever training they want there, or if they want to leverage that to attend university. We could do that as a system much more effectively and, I believe, much more cost-effectively. But we have to do more than just call it a system. We actually have to operate as a system.

D. Ashton: Dr. Weeks, Dan Ashton. Your fresh approach last year struck a chord with me, so keep it up.

Quickly, sir, on your academic teaching cycle for tenured professors, what is your sabbatical time as opposed to the teaching in classrooms — year-wise, ratio?

D. Ashton: Do they teach for three years and have a year of sabbatical, teach for four years…?

D. Weeks: No, usually it’s five to six years, roughly. Sometime over that period, then there’s a sabbatical that comes up.

Sabbaticals, also, are all contingent on the ability for people to take the sabbatical. Obviously, we can’t just let everybody go at the same time, so there is a stewarding of that process so that there is not a negative impact on the institution.

D. Ashton: And that’s done for research specifically for their profession within the university?

D. Weeks: Absolutely. This is not time off. This is to be viewed as time to do focused work as part of their workload.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Seeing no further questions, Dr. Weeks, thank you again for taking the time. It was good to hear from you, and I’ll look forward to, maybe, again next year. Thank you again for the work that you do.

Now, that’s it. We are going to adjourn. Lunch will be served, I think, just around the corner here.

Before I wrap up completely, I wanted to make mention and apologize to the city of Castlegar and the presenters from last year. We made a decision based on odds, risk and logistics, and we were unable to attend the scheduled hearing. But I’m glad we were able to make it back to the city again this year, though.

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Chair:	Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
	Spencer Chandra Herbert (Vancouver–West End NDP)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)
	Claire Trevena (North Island NDP)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

9) Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C.	Thom Armstrong
	Darren Kitchen

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