Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 79 — Wednesday, October 7, 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

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	1891
R. Brown
M. Leonhardt
J. Leahy
S. Barker
T. Santo
J. Nijjar
S. Stuart
B. Vandersteen
M. Mitchell
B. Simpson
B. Knight
C. Lenardon
D. Boyd
D. Walls
C. Johns
M. Collins
J. Willow
J. Stuart Chatterley
A. Gregg
G. Armstrong

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

We’re an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold provincewide public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that 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 have had to modify our planned schedule of in-person community meetings this year, as the Legislature was called back for a fall session, commencing on September 28. In order to accommodate as many presenters as possible, we’re holding public hearings in communities across the province and through in-person sessions or via teleconference, video conference or Skype.

British Columbians are also invited to participate by sending in written, audio or video submissions 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 to contribute to this important process. For those of you in attendance today, thank you very much for your participation.

All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly. Just as a reminder, the deadline for 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. Today’s meeting is being recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A complete transcript of the proceedings will be posted to the committee’s website. All of the meetings are also broadcast as live audio via our website.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. I’ll start with Claire, please.

S. Chandra Herbert: Good morning. Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA, Vancouver–West End, Coal Harbour.

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

S. Hamilton (Chair): Joining us shortly will be Dan Ashton, the MLA for Penticton.

Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial, to my left, and Lisa Hill, Stephanie Raymond and Andrea Frost from the Parliamentary Committees Office — welcome. As well, in our Hansard booth is Ian Battle, Alexa Hursey and Rob Froese.

Without further ado, I will get to our first presenter: Big Brothers Big Sisters — Rhonda Brown and Matt Leonhardt.

Once again, ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to give you a little bit of a warning when there are a couple of minutes left, so you can wrap up your thoughts, and then we’ll go to the committee. The floor is yours.

R. Brown: Thank you for the opportunity to present today, and to be able to present in person is certainly a pleasure.

I’m here with Matt representing the 14 Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies in B.C. We are happy to have an opportunity to talk about the services that we’re providing across B.C. Our shared concern — and, I think, one of the concerns addressed in the budget and with the committee — is services to children and families.

We are currently serving well over 6,000 children in B.C. in unique one-to-one mentoring relationships. We have seen a 25 percent increase across the province in a demand for our services.

Mentors continue to introduce children to new experiences. They offer friendship and support over the long term. We ask for a one-year commitment, but our service is and our hope is that we are sparking a relationship that lasts a lifetime.

In addition to the unique one-to-one mentoring relationship, our mentors become our eyes in the community. For families who are struggling, this is imperative, and mentors are identifying for us where families are needing additional help.

As a result, we had in excess of 3,000 families receive extra supports. We were able to connect children in families who couldn’t afford recreation and sporting activities with those activities. Mentors introduced children to new
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experiences that were community-based through tickets that were available through agencies across the province.

Scholarships were awarded to Little Brothers and Little Sisters — scholarships in excess of $30,000, so life-changing opportunities. As well, our youth attended leadership camps beyond British Columbia on a national scope. So we appreciate our mentors and their dedication to the children that they’re working with and the commitment to really supporting those families.

Our programs are diverse. We offer an array of programs that are designed to meet multiple needs. Each community in the province is delivering a selection of those programs, depending on what the gaps in service are. One of the programs, for instance, in our school base allows us to reach families who are not well enough to walk through our door and self-refer for a mentor.

Those children are being identified by school teachers, principals and school counsellors and are in need of the support of a mentor. The mentor is connecting with them in the school environment so that the relationship isn’t complicated by families who can’t make the commitment. Those programs have become an important part of 39 school districts across the province and are really providing an essential service to our most vulnerable children.

We have, within Big Brothers Big Sisters, over the past ten years, invested a lot nationally in research. We can speak in a very informed way now to our outcomes, and we’re proud of the work that we have accomplished. Our biggest research project was a five-year longitudinal study on mentoring specific to our community mentoring program. A selection of communities across the country were chosen for that research project. As an example, Victoria participated and had 100 families participate over the five years.

We recognize that what we’re seeing in terms of our outcomes has an impact in multiple ministries. Youth who are mentored are employable — 17 percent more likely to be employed over the course of their lifetime and earning in excess of $315,000, on average.

Mentoring can be a preventative tool in crime. Girls with a mentor are four times less likely to develop negative conducts like fighting, lying and cheating, while boys are two times less likely. Children, most importantly, recognize that they have choices, and they’re supported in making difficult decisions.

Mentoring improves graduation rates, in particular in our aboriginal communities. Children who are connected with mentors in schools are less likely to skip classes. They’re more engaged. Their academic performance is improving overall. We’re seeing a 52 percent improvement in fewer school days missed.

We also see an impact in the area of addictions in youth, as they are half as likely to engage in binge drinking, drug use, daily cigarette or alcohol use, and again, it relates back to the support in their social development around making healthy choices and being supported in decision-making.

Mental health is an emerging stressor in most services in B.C. and certainly in Big Brothers Big Sisters. We are seeing as a result of mentoring that girls are two times less likely to be depressed. We are addressing issues in relation to mental health and isolation. Girls and boys are two times less likely to exhibit conduct problems, with boys showing a significant reduction in hyperactivity. And again, both boys and girls are two to four times less likely to bully.

Mentoring also supports, in many communities, the transition of new Canadians into our culture in supporting the children. Much of our material, in terms of training and support to mentors and families and our family recruitment, is available now in multiple languages.

We also are, of course, through most of our programs and, more importantly, through a preventative program called Go Girls, supporting health and fitness and nutritional well-being in young girls.

M. Leonhardt: Again, thank you for hearing us this morning. We appreciate you taking the time.

I wanted to quickly talk about the value of mentoring and refer back to the study from the Boston Consulting Group that Rhonda had referenced earlier. The study found that for every $1 that Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the nation put into their programs, $18 was returned to society. The return could be seen in multiple ways, such as improvement in the economy and cost reduction, in ways that Rhonda had referenced, such as lower numbers of incarceration, etc.

The research compared the lives of 500 former little brothers and little sisters and their families and compared them to a control group. The control group had similar family outcomes and were from a similar economic background.

Some of the key findings from the study. Mentoring recipients thrived, with 80 percent self-reporting that they pursue a healthy lifestyle, compared to 72 percent of that of the control group. As well, 68 percent reported full-time employment, compared to 58 percent among those in the control group. The Big Brothers Big Sisters participants were also significantly more likely to have higher full-time salaries.

As well, our programs are preventative. We invest in the potential of children and families, and as a result, the cost benefit, as I alluded to earlier, can be seen in each community. As a result, as well, risk- and harm-reduction are clearly evident.

The children, families and mentors involved in our agencies commit to a working relationship that involves child safety training, match monitoring and supportive referral. Our mentors are diverse. They’re multigenerational. They’re students, working professionals and re-
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tirees. Most importantly, they’re all concerned for our community and recognize that they can change the trajectory of these children’s lives.

R. Brown: Beyond our outcomes, I think the success of our programs rests in good citizens investing in relationships with children and families in our community. Those relationships are based on consistency, role-modelling at critical times, safety, a caring environment and someone that a child can turn to outside of their family when they need support and advice.

We know that the outcomes for children and youth that we’re serving improve over the course of time. Our priority is to support and monitor matches in the early part of the relationship so that we can ensure that the challenges that a family is exhibiting are not impacting that match relationship and that mentors are prepared and able to cope with some of what they’re seeing and experiencing as a result of being involved with this family.

In that vein, Victoria is testing a pilot right now around mental health, and bringing to bear a number of additional workshops and training tools for mentors who are mentoring children in families who have an identified mental health or addictions issue. Our goal is to get them past that difficult first year in a relationship so that they can continue over the long term.

These children are supported by their mentors as they move in and out of care, in and out of a number of different potential living situations, whether it’s with a grandparent or a family member and then maybe back into their home environment. They become a very critical consistent relationship. We’re working with the Ministry of Children and Family Development collectively across the province to really protect that relationship and ensure that it continues, regardless.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Ms. Brown, I could talk about this all day. I really could. But we’re about a minute into your question period. You can keep going. It just cuts into question period.

R. Brown: I think I just want to…. It’s important to just talk about the fact that we’re here today because the issue is around capacity.

We’re seeing an increase in the number of children coming to our door. We’re seeing an increase in the issues impacting families, and we’re at capacity.

E. Foster: Thank you for the presentation, but more, thank you for the great work you do in our communities. It’s outstanding.

I may have answered my own question. I’m not looking at the box scores here. This is your website that I’ve got up. It talked about donating gloves. Do you run a thrift store?

R. Brown: We accept donations, and we sell those donations to thrift stores. But we don’t actually sort, and we don’t operate a store.

E. Foster: All right. Well, that makes a lot more sense. That’s great. And again, thank you so much for what you do. It’s a great organization.

M. Morris: Again, great work. It was a pivotal moment in my life as a young teenager back in the early ’60s when a gentleman kind of took me under his wing and kept me on the right side of the fence for the rest of my life. My hat’s off to people who do that.

I’m curious, though. You were talking about the one-year relationship that you ask people to commit to. What percentage of people drop it after a year? You do develop relationships with these young people, so I’d be curious to see how many people just walk away from that after a year and perhaps why.

R. Brown: On average in the province in B.C., we’re seeing a commitment of three years to the relationship. What we see, though, is that at that time, there is an end to the formal relationship with Big Brothers Big Sisters. The match is feeling comfortable in moving forward with the relationship, but they’re not needing the monitoring support that comes along when you’re attached to our organization.

They remain involved in a less formal way, but they are involved with each other. They’re not meeting necessarily weekly, because lives change, but they’re in contact through Facebook, phone calls, those kinds of things. Overall, we’re seeing a great success rate in that area actually.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll go to George, and then I’ll have to take the last two questions on notice, I’m afraid. We’re just queuing up our phone call.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your work. I have two quick questions. One, you’ve provided a slide
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that shows an 18-to-1 return on investment, as well as some figures around percentages of mentoring recipients who have particular results. If you can provide to the committee by October 15 any of the background data — for that week — and cite it in a report, that would be very useful.

Finally, I notice in your aboriginal mentoring program, it only looks like about 5 percent of the total. I’m wondering if that’s because it’s relatively recent or because aboriginal communities have different internal forms of mentoring that serve a similar purpose. If you could just elaborate on that a bit.

R. Brown: One of the challenges, actually, is within Big Brothers Big Sisters in that we’re tracking within one program. In the in-school mentoring program, we’re not tracking by culture. So that’s representing one program area only. That’s the biggest reason for that result.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Carole and then Claire, could I get the questions on notice?

And then if you could respond to the committee, as was said by George, before the 15th of October.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a big thank-you, as everyone else has echoed. I wondered about the mentors. You mentioned the capacity and challenge you have with wait-lists. I wondered what the wait-list is like on the other side — whether there are challenges getting mentors, what the numbers are like coming in now, what kind of pressures are there. If that’s information you can send along, that would be great. I can do a follow-up too.

C. Trevena: Thank you, like everybody else, for the extraordinary work that you do. I have three questions which, hopefully, you can supply answers to. You’ve got the work with, you say, 39 school districts. Is this something that you’re looking at expanding into other school districts — and what the response has been from other school districts?

Your ask is for $500,000 to grow the capacity of mentoring services. I’m wondering. This is a very basic funding question. It will be on your website. Is each branch of Big Brothers Big Sisters in each community self-funded, or is it coming from provincial funding and then allocated to Victoria and so on?

I’m wondering how closely you work with other organizations in the community. I represent North Island. We’ve got KidStart, John Howard Society of North Island — very, very strong, doing very much the same work that Big Brothers Big Sisters does. I’m wondering if you look at overlaps, coordination or just leave those in community to do their own thing.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. You do fabulous work.

On a personal note, and I get emotional when I talk about it, before my wife and I had children, I was a Big Brother. He’s turned into an incredible person with wonderful kids. I maintain that relationship. So you should also quantify it by the benefits that accrue to people like me and the people that are the Big Brothers.

R. Brown: Yes. Thank you, all of you, for the work that you do. It’s appreciated.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Next we have, on video conference, Sheila Barker and Jean Leahy from Save Our Northern Seniors. Good morning, ladies.

Ten minutes for your presentation. Then we’ll go to the committee for five minutes of questions. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes to go, so you can wrap up your thoughts. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

J. Leahy: Okay, good morning. Thank you for hearing from us. We manage to present to this committee nearly every year, so you would have some of our background somewhere. We’ll go through a bit of our history of working with seniors, and beds and the lack of beds and so on.

It starts out in 2002 as to what we had open. Heritage Manor I opened up that year, with 35 units. In September 2007, Heritage Manor II assisted living opened with 24 units. In February 2004, there was a public town meeting to stress the need for more long-term-care beds in our community. It did sort of get the ball rolling and more interest in the community and more support.

In 2012, Peace Villa opened with 123 beds. They are operated, of course, beside the hospital, and operate with the hospital, which has 55 beds. Not all the hospital beds were in operation at that time. In 2014, North Peace housing completed apartment No. 3. There were 18 beds in that. And then there was a public meeting by concerned citizens re: our shortage of doctors in the area.

At SONS, we are zeroing in on the third house at Peace Villa. The land is available to put this project on. This project is in the capital works list for Northern Health. Therefore, it is presented to the government every time they make a presentation. That’s our priority — to get that house that would accommodate 60 residents, a daycare and a large activity room.

Our purpose is to keep on advocating for seniors in the North Peace. Some of our community issues: there are always staffing shortages at the care home and the hospital, lack of residential care, assisted-living facilities. A proposed nursing school — we’d like to see a nursing school in Fort St. John. Lack of transportation, handyDART and
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accessible taxis — we do not have an accessible taxi in Fort St. John. This leaves people that arrive here by air…. I don’t know what they do. Something has to be specially arranged for them.

The ambulance service between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson is very sparse. Lack of spaces in the Fort St. John Hospital, lack of spaces at Peace Villa.

With me is Sheila, and she’ll go through our chart that we have. I know you have it. It will explain the situation that we’re in.

S. Barker: Thank you, Jean. In case you don’t have it…. I don’t know if you can see this, but I decided that I would really like to see a visual on how many beds are available in the North Peace and how many people are actually waiting.

I’ve done a very loose geographical presentation on the buildings that have space for seniors, of varying degrees of care. One thing I wanted to point out…. If you’re looking at your paper, the Fort St. John Hospital shows 16 beds plus. Those are beds that acute care patients are in, but those beds are actually being taken away from other people that need a bed. Those are not specifically beds for seniors or people needing long-term care.

The Peace Villa does show that we have the two pods right next to the hospital, and there are people waiting there. The octagon in red is because that’s the building we would like to see built. That would provide us with another 60 beds.

Another thing to point out in this graph, if you’re following it — the pink box. There are 144 people in their homes right now receiving home care. They are not included in the beds or the waiting lists at the bottom of the totals, because they actually are not on a waiting list. But that can accelerate quite quickly. Typically, people that are receiving care at home to the best of their families’ ability or visiting home care nurses often accelerate quite quickly and are admitted to hospital and are in dire need of a long-term-care bed.

The totals, we see, are going up and up with each quarter that we make this graph. As you see at the bottom, as of September, we have 268 people on a waiting list for some facility or another.

I’d also like to point out, on a personal note, that I volunteer doing hair care at the North Peace Seniors Housing. It’s my experience that people that are living in a totally independent building often need a lot of care from their neighbours, people coming to visit, and they are not on a waiting list to go into any higher-care facility.

J. Leahy: Also in that regard, there are 4,000 seniors over the age of 65 in the North Peace. Now, some of them, of course, will be within this chart, but there’s a good number of the others that we know nothing about. If they’re living out in the rural areas, they often get missed, because unless somebody knows that they maybe are in need, they won’t notify anybody. They’re pretty independent, and they think they’re going to manage, but they don’t.

I guess other than that…. That’s why we’re working so hard for this 60-bed unit. You might think it’s frivolous to have a big entertaining centre in there, but it is not. At the present time, the activity room in Peace Villa isn’t even a third enough space. When they try to have some sort of event where everybody’s dancing…. Now, when I say “dancing,” they dance with wheelchairs, so you realize it takes room. They just sit in their rooms. If they can’t get in or can’t go, they just don’t get to be entertained.

The other aspect is the daycare. The staff at Peace Villa would love to have a daycare that they could bring their children to — especially on a 24-hour basis, because there’s no such thing available in Fort St. John.

Those are the things that we’re looking at and wanting. Now, it is going to cost money, but it won’t all come from senior government. Some would come from the regional district. We’re hoping to get some from oil companies, but right now that’s not as easily done as it was a couple of years ago.

The other thing I would like to point out. When we make presentations, people say: “Well, this is all over the province. It’s the same everywhere.” Yes, it’s the same everywhere in some respects. In others, it isn’t.

From Prince George south there are private facilities. There are no private facilities in the North Peace or the South Peace or Fort Nelson. So they do have some options. It might cost them more money, but they do have options in other places. People don’t have options here.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, first of all, very much for the presentation. As a matter of fact, we do have two.

E. Foster: Thank you very much for your presentation. Just, I guess, an observation from your last couple of comments there, and a question. You said there were no private facilities in the North or South Peace or Fort Nelson. Do you have any idea why that is? Looking at the numbers that you have here, the number of folks you have that…. The private guys look at the age of 70 and older when they’re looking to build. Any indication as to why they weren’t interested in being up there?

J. Leahy: I did talk to a group in Kelowna. I can’t remember the names of them right now, but they have facilities there. We asked them to come and see if they wouldn’t build here. They said the population wasn’t big enough. Well, it certainly is big enough. As for the local developers, they build houses as fast as they can to get as much money as they can as fast as they can. So they’re just not interested.
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C. James (Deputy Chair): Good morning. It wouldn’t have been Finance Committee without you, Jean. Thank you for the presentation. Two quick questions.

One is around recruitment of staff. You mentioned the nursing school and the strength of the nursing school. I’m guessing that’s an issue around recruiting and how to keep people in your region. I wonder if you could talk about whether there are some challenges there.

The second question is around home care support and what the availability is of home care support. If people are wanting to stay in their own home or wanting to come out of the hospital into a home, what’s the availability of home care support in your region?

J. Leahy: We are short of home care support in every aspect — in the care home, in the hospital, in the community. We’re still a transient area in some respects. The girls come to work at the care home and bring their boyfriends. But the boyfriends get jobs somewhere else, and away they go. That’s what happens.

As for the nursing, we don’t have a nursing school in the Peace. We desperately need one. There is some satellite sort of — well, like we’re doing here. Some training, but it’s limited. We have a terrible time keeping the care workers.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for putting forward some practical suggestions to help seniors in the north. I found the map helpful, just to get a sense of the scope of the issues that you’re dealing with up there. I don’t have a question because your presentation was very precise. I just wanted to say thank you for doing that.

S. Gibson: I noticed that the population of your area is increasing significantly higher than some other communities in the area. I know the lament has been that you can’t keep doctors and nurses there. There seems to be quite a turnover. I’m wondering how you’re addressing that, because it kind of ties in, to a large extent, with your appeal today.

J. Leahy: There is another group that’s working with the mayor, with the regional district, trying to get more doctors here. The doctors that are here are also helping to recruit more. We have seven coming this fall. In fact, it’ll be this month. But we could use another 20 doctors.

Seeing none from the committee, ladies, thank you very much for taking the time to present. Thank you for all the hard work you do on behalf of your community. I look forward to continuing the discussions.

Next we have Gateway Casinos and Entertainment Ltd. Shiera Stuart and Tony Santo, welcome.

S. Hamilton (Chair): All right. Just to let you know, it’s ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll rudely interrupt you with a couple of minutes left, just to let you know it’s time to conclude your thoughts. Then we can go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

T. Santo: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be able to present to you today. This is the first time that Gateway Casinos and Entertainment has presented to the Finance Committee, and we appreciate the opportunity. My name is Tony Santo. I am the CEO of Gateway Casinos. With me this morning are Jag Nijjar, VP of operations, and Shiera Stuart, director of government relations.

J. Nijjar: Gateway is a Burnaby-based company with over 25 successful years of Canadian gaming experience. We have ten casinos in B.C., employ over 3,000 employees and contribute $567 million a year to the B.C. Lottery Corporation.

Gateway prides itself on its people. We have 3,000 employees in B.C., located all over the province, including Burnaby, Langley, New Westminster, Surrey, Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton, Vernon, Squamish and Mission. Of these employees, the majority are full-time with benefits and retirement plans provided through the company.

We have the new property in Kamloops. With estimated additions in 2015, we’re looking at close to 3,200 employees by 2016, and 54 percent of them are women. We also work well with the unions in B.C., including the BCGEU, USW, Unifor and COPE. The British Columbia Government Employees Union alone represents 1,700 of our employees.

Currently there are 18 operators, 17 casinos and 26 gaming centres or bingo halls in B.C. As mentioned previously, Gateway has ten of these properties. Our Lower Mainland casinos — Grand Villa Casino in Burnaby, Starlight Casino in New Westminster and Cascades Casino in Langley — rank as three of the top six casinos in B.C., based on volume.

The funding model in B.C. is one of the best in the country. Regardless of the size of the operator, the model is consistent. Using Gateway as an example, for every $100 we make from our slot machines, we keep $25 and BCLC gets $75. For every $100 we make on our table games, we keep $40 and BCLC gets $60. The reason for the difference in percentage is due to the human resources employed. More staffing is required for table games.
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In the fiscal year 2014-2015, BCLC generated $2.9 billion. This amount includes gaming, on-line gaming and lottery tickets. If you take out lottery and e-gaming, the casino operators are contributing $1.8 billion towards BCLC. Of that, Gateway contributed 31.5 percent, which is a total of $567 million. That’s what Gateway gave to BCLC for one year. This is the strictly the amount of profits driven by tables, slots and bingo.

S. Stuart: On August 19, 2015, we had our grand opening of our new Kamloops facility. Many of your colleagues were in attendance for this event. Moving forward, all of our new casinos will have some key similarities. We are moving away from the box-of-slots mentality and moving towards full entertainment facilities, which will include multiple restaurants, local entertainment and a gaming floor.

Match Eatery and Public House, our flagship restaurant, is currently in five of our properties and is slated to be in four more by the end of 2016. We also introduced a new restaurant, Atlas Steak and Fish, in Kamloops. This is a high-end steak and seafood restaurant. Our goal with these restaurants is to attract non-gamers to our locations — people who are looking for an enjoyable night out in their neighbourhood, a delicious meal, after-work drinks, a live local band or a comedy show.

These are just some of the offerings that we have at our properties, aside from the gaming floor. To support this, we have invested significant capital into our facilities, including gaming, food and beverage, entertainment and hotel. Over $25 million was spent on investment into our current properties in B.C. from April 2014 to March 2015. While we will get a small portion of that back from FDC AFDCs, we will not see that amount for years to come.

As you know, the communities in which gaming facilities exist are eligible for host government community grants. For example, the city of Langley receives $7 million per year as a host community to our Cascades Casino. This is based on 10 percent of net BCLC profits. For Gateway properties, the municipal grants for casinos range from $1.6 million in Kamloops to $9 million in the Grand Villa Casino in Burnaby.

The host local government grants are used by the municipality either for special projects — for example, the cleanup of Deer Lake or the recycling centre in Burnaby — or to reduce property taxes. Either way it’s a benefit for the host local governments.

Gateway Casinos and Entertainment has the privilege of operating in cities and towns across Canada. As a company, we gain so much from each of these communities and believe it is our responsibility to give back, pitch in and provide support to the causes that matter most to our neighbours.

Through Gateway Gives, we are proud to offer not just our resources but also our time, our know-how and our properties in supporting local efforts in the communities where we operate. In addition to the countless volunteer hours put in by our team members, we contributed $400,000 in 2014 to this program, and for 2015, we’re expecting that number to be even higher.

Responsible gaming is very important to us, and we work very closely with BCLC to ensure that all of our properties are responsible gaming certified. All ten properties have a GameSense booth on the premises, along with an employee from BCLC who is available to speak with guests and provide them with information on addiction and problem gambling.

We support BCLC’s self-exclusion program, where we will work with individuals who feel that they no longer want to gamble and assist them by denying them entry into our facilities for a defined period of time. We use licence plate recognition software, along with other electronic means, to do our best to help people who have been identified as addicts or problem gamblers.

We are pleased to say that problem gaming has decreased. At the responsible gaming symposium early this year, Minister of Health Terry Lake stated that problem gaming has decreased 33 percent. What this means is that the programs that are currently in place are effective in the oversight and identification of members of the public that may be susceptible to gaming-related issues. We are very pleased with these numbers and will do our best to have them decrease even further.

The current gaming model in the province of B.C. is recognized as being the template for Canada, in that it encourages both revenue growth and capital reinvestment, thus ensuring best-in-class properties and products. Any modification to this model has the potential to lead to substandard facilities, such as those in Calgary and various other areas in Canada.

In the spirit of working together, Gateway and Great Canadian Gaming formed the new BCGIA, the B.C. Gaming Industry Association. Of the 18 operators in B.C., 13 have joined this association. The goal of the BCGIA is to work on issues that affect the industry as a whole and to have a united face to the public, to government and to the media. The BCGIA has the ability to address controversial issues head-on that would be challenging for BCLC or individual organizations to tackle alone. We think that this is a terrific step for the gaming industry in B.C.

Gateway is always looking for new opportunities within the province of B.C. We are looking to upgrade our existing facilities and build new ones. We’ve added family-friendly restaurants to attract the casual gamer, and we are continually stretching the boundaries of what a high-end entertainment complex should be. We are proud to be a notable contributor to B.C. and are pleased that the funds given to BCLC are used for health, education and transportation throughout the province.

Thank you so much for your time. We look forward to working with you all in the years to come.
[ Page 1898 ]

S. Hamilton (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you for the presentation. I do have questions from the committee. I’ll start with George.

G. Heyman: Thank you, Tony, Shiera and Jag for the presentation as well as other meetings and information sessions you’ve held for MLAs in the past.

I just want to recognize that the first time I met you, you were describing for us the Gaming Industry Association in its early days. I’m wondering if you can update us, beyond what’s contained within your written submission, of any additional initiatives of the association or a progress report. Of course, I look forward to hearing more updates in the future.

S. Stuart: We have moved quite a bit from the summer, when we hired our BCGIA executive director in July. As I mentioned, of the 18 casino operators, we have 13. We expect to get a few more. Between 78 to 80 percent of all the operators are now a part of the BCGIA. The goal, as I mentioned in the presentation, is to…. We are putting together things for media, like a media plan, and also presentations on working with various other stakeholders like the B.C. Lottery Corporation and yourselves.

What we’re trying to do is to use the BCGIA to talk about things that maybe one individual company might not feel comfortable talking about and also to attack and work with things about problem gaming. Any article that might come out about money laundering, we have the association now that can work with that rather than one individual company.

We will know more next year. We’re currently in the process of kind of finalizing all the different mission and vision statements, as well as trying to finalize all the different operators that will be a part of it. It’s a very good start. We still have a bit of a ways to go, but we’re hoping that by 2016 this will be officially up and running.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation. I’ve got two questions. You’re looking to expand with the family-friendly restaurants. Obviously, there is an age limit to going into casinos. I’m wondering how you’re going to sort of square the attracting families into the casino with a family-friendly restaurant but ensuring that young people aren’t going into the casino.

The second question. I know that just across the border, we’ve got all the casinos, very easy access, and people go down south for that. But we have seen the decline in the Canadian dollar, so I’m sure that there are far fewer people going south for gambling. I’m wondering if you’ve got any stats on people who are staying at home using the casinos here and whether you’re seeing any people coming from the U.S. into Canada and just dropping into the casinos — if you’re keeping stats on that too.

T. Santo: I’ll answer first the restaurant question. We post security officers at every entrance to the restaurant to ensure that underage patrons don’t get into the casino. We’ve very diligent about that. We’re very good at tracking underage gaming, making sure they don’t get into our casino.

As far as the dollar compared to U.S., we at Gateway have seen an increase in our gaming revenues. Not all the casinos in the GVRD have seen the same increase. A lot of that, we think, is due to the new amenities that we added into our casinos as well as our marketing programs.

From what we can tell, when we spot-check the casinos in Washington state, we still see a lot of B.C. plates in those casinos. A lot of that, we believe, is due to the fact that those casinos have a loyalty program that’s integrated between gaming and the non-gaming amenities. They can then give people free meals, free guest rooms, for gaming, which we’re not completely set up to do yet here in B.C.

We’re working with BCLC to really evolve to a full loyalty program that incorporates non-gaming amenities and gaming into building points and therefore would help keep Canadians in Canada to gamble.

To your question about: are we seeing a lot of U.S. citizens coming and gambling at our facilities? Not really a large amount. Normally, our facilities are really local facilities, local destinations. We do have at, for example, our Burnaby property and our Cascades property, where we might get more U.S. citizens gambling there because they’re staying in our hotels when they’re on business or on leisure. But we’re not really seeing a really big influence into our gaming facilities.

E. Foster: More, I guess, of a comment than a question. Vernon has, as you mentioned, a Gateway casino and a Match restaurant. I just want to thank you. Pretty much every weekend there’s some event going on in your parking lot for different charity organizations in the community — flipping hamburgers and raising money. Thank you very much for that. Appreciate it.

T. Santo: One of our charters is to be part of the communities where we operate.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. We appreciate it and all the work that you’re doing. Continue on. We’ll talk to you again, I’m sure.

Next we have our friends from the Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce, Bev Vandersteen.
[ Page 1899 ]

Welcome. Good morning. Ten minutes to present to the committee. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes to go to let you know it’s time to wrap up your thoughts, and then we can go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

B. Vandersteen: All right. Thank you very much. I don’t think I’ll come close to taking up ten minutes.

As you already know, I’m Bev Vandersteen. I’m the executive director for the chamber of commerce here in Fort Nelson. With me is one of my directors, Michele Mitchell, who is also the manager of the Lakeview Inn and Suites here.

B. Vandersteen: All right. Perfect. I think it pretty much speaks for itself, so I’m going to limit myself to a few other comments that I have for you.

As noted in the written submission, this past year has been economically challenging for businesses here in the Northern Rockies. With the continued low gas prices, hesitation on final investment decisions and the rural nature of the gas plains in our area, we’ve been looking back on a really tough year. Unfortunately, our current outlook doesn’t seem to be much better for the near future.

Over the course of this past year, we have seen approximately 52 businesses either close completely or have to lay off employees. This has resulted in over 185 individuals being affected by job loss in the community, not including how that affects their families. In a community of just under 5,000, that’s, of course, a very significant number.

We need to ensure that northern British Columbian communities have strong and sustainable economies and that we’re ready when LNG in British Columbia is finally realized. Fingers are crossed on that one.

One of the significant challenges we have faced over the last two years has been a steadily decreasing access to reliable rail service. While acknowledging that some of this, particularly recently, is due to the slowdown in the gas development, much of the issue actually stems from an unwillingness on the part of rail companies to consult and a total disregard for a community’s needs.

The appeal process, as it currently stands, through the federal transportation act, is cost-prohibitive and almost impossible for a small business to use. Opportunities to diversify our economy are reliant on rail, and it’s crucial that companies struggling in a poor economy have a cost-effective rail system as a means to transport their commodities.

Just to illustrate that, right now we have fuel that is transported by rail. Because companies can’t either access their product or have no confidence in when it will actually arrive, they are shipping more and more fuel along the highway. It takes the equivalent of two B-trains for one railcar, so of course, that’s not cost-effective. It also puts an increased strain on infrastructure along the highway.

As you’ll note, as well, in my written submission, we’re looking for the provincial government to continue to fund infrastructure improvements on Highway 97. There have been several in the past number of years that we’re grateful for, but it’s something that I think needs to continue — in particular, to the area between Ft. St. John and Fort Nelson, which, I don’t know if many of you realize, had the dubious distinction of being named by Global News last February as the fourth-deadliest in British Columbia.

As that industrial traffic increases, due in part to the lack of rail service here, wider roads with more passing lanes become imperative. What we’re really looking for in terms of help from the provincial government — and this is maybe less a budget issue — is pressure on rail companies to ensure that rural communities in British Columbia have strong access.

You’ll also note that I’m, again, putting in my two cents’ worth on the carbon tax. Those of you that have heard me before know that this has been an ongoing bone of contention in the north, and it’s apparently one that I’m not quite willing to let go of just yet.

As an area, we work in direct competition with Alberta, primarily in the gas sector. Our companies are at a significant competitive disadvantage due to the carbon tax. We understand the carbon tax is meant to be revenue-neutral, that it does provide funding for other programs and services and that it’s believed to be necessary.

However, we would request that we look at a tax offset for those companies or industries that are so drastically affected by it — something similar to what was put in place in 2013 in the agricultural sector for farmers and greenhouse operators. Transportation over the distances that we have to travel here in the north to service industry puts us at a really big disadvantage with those Alberta companies that can provide that same service at a significantly lower cost.

We would also look at an offset for British Columbia tourism operators in rural areas, particularly in northern areas, that don’t have access to commodities such as B.C. Hydro. They’re off the grid. That is not a choice they get to make. B.C. Hydro does not provide service to them, so they have to run their own generators and, essentially, full power plants to run their businesses.

Of course, Fort Nelson has B.C. Hydro, and we’ve recently gotten B.C. Hydro into Toad River. Those are the only two spots from here to the Yukon border that have hydro services. They don’t have any choice but to provide their own power plants and to operate those on diesel, for the most part. Tourism brings millions of dollars to the
[ Page 1900 ]
B.C. economy, and those operators really need to be able to run cost-effective, successful businesses.

Again, I would just really strongly encourage you to look at the carbon tax and where we can offset those people that are most affected and keep British Columbia competitive.

That’s pretty much it for me. I think I was well under my ten minutes, so we have lots of time for questions.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. That’s great. I’ll go to the committee for questions, then.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation — very concise and very focused. Appreciate it.

I’m interested in the highway improvements — the discussion about the increased industrial use on the highway because of the problems of the rail. Have you got sort of a percentage of the increase in the use by industrial users of the road?

Secondly, are you just talking about passing places? The government has got the plan to four-lane Highway 97 further south. Are you just looking for the passing places? What would you like to see to improve the highway and not make it one of the deadliest in B.C.?

B. Vandersteen: I don’t have a percentage other than anecdotally and certainly in terms of travelling the highway.

Highway 97 from Fort St. John to Fort Nelson is the only access from Fort Nelson to the south. The traffic has increased substantially, and without passing lanes on our section…. Even if it is just passing lanes, that would be a huge improvement.

What we see happen is people get impatient. I can tell you that just recently I was behind a line of about 15 rig moves and service trucks, and you start to see people passing multiple large convoys on corners and in narrow areas where you can’t see. It’s because they get impatient. There’s not really an excuse for it. But that’s the cause.

Knowing that there were some passing lanes where you could get around traffic would make a huge difference. I know they’re doing that further south on the Taylor Hill. That’s a fabulous improvement that definitely needs to be done. But moving into the future, we do need to look at the stretch between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John as well.

Just a question around…. It’s obviously not the right time, because we’re in the middle of a federal election. So before we got into an election….

You mentioned the issue of pressuring the federal government to hold the companies accountable. I wondered if you had had any conversation with your federal representative or with anyone from the federal government about what seems to be a very basic right, which is the ability to consult with your community and have a say. Have any conversations taken place at all?

B. Vandersteen: Yes. Our current MP is Bob Zimmer. He has been very active in trying to work with us.

The way it is set up, rail companies only have to consult with communities if they actually close a line or close a yard. In our case, they haven’t done that. They have pulled all the staff from the yard, and they only have service when the train actually comes to the community. So oftentimes we will have companies that can see their full railcars sitting on rail property but can’t access them during the week.

Bob has been great in working with us. We also have it in front of the Canadian chamber. We’ll be going to Ottawa next week to present that again.

There is some significant push-back from the rail companies, obviously. They don’t want to see more regulation or more requirement. I don’t know that, as a business advocate, I want to necessarily see more regulation, but I think we have to have regulation that works. Currently it doesn’t.

Okay. Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. We appreciate all the work that you’re doing, and we will talk to you again soon, I’m sure.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning. Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to interrupt just with a couple of minutes to go so you can conclude your thoughts, and then I can go to the committee for questions after that. Of course, if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

As a former member of the committee, I know how full
[ Page 1901 ]
your heads get with all of the presentations and all of the asks that come during this period of time.

What I wanted to lay in front of you…. I asked for the letter that we had sent to the Premier to be distributed.

B. Simpson: Okay. We understand, as a council, that we need to control our own destiny and that we need to get our house in order. We need to use the tools that we have at our disposal to try and shape the community through this transition period. So in the letter that I sent to the Premier, I’ve outlined some of the steps that we’re taking with that view in mind.

By the 2016 budget, over a course of two years, we will have reduced our overall operating costs by 10 percent. We actually may overachieve on that front and get our operating costs down by about 12 percent overall, and that’s with some very minimum service program cuts and minimum staff cuts.

The other thing that we have decided is that we need to be able to take care of our own infrastructure needs. I’m sure you’re hearing from other communities…. One of the asks that we would have is, between the federal and provincial governments, to give us consistent year-over-year funding for supplemental infrastructure moneys so that we can bank on what is going to be available to us to do the infrastructure work that we need to do and to not pin it onto whatever the province or the federal government deems to be our priorities. So give us consistent year-over-year funding that’s not based on priorities determined by the federal and provincial governments.

Because we can’t bank on that, as a council we indicated to the community we were going to raise taxes 5 percent in 2015 and 5 percent again in 2016, specifically to top up our capital reinvestment reserve account so that our community takes care of our infrastructure needs as much as we can. That makes up an inherited deficit that we had on infrastructure of $2.4 million a year that was accruing.

You’ll see the other steps that we’ve been taking in terms of reorganizing our community. This year we’re taking to council a very deliberate restructuring of our tax base. It’s long overdue.

I think Minister Coleman at one point got in a bit of trouble by saying that communities have been dining out on their industrial tax base, and it caused a bit of a furor. I’d have to say that Quesnel has been dining out on its industrial tax base. At one point, 65 percent of our revenue came from industry, with residents only contributing 16 percent to the city’s revenue but getting 80 percent plus of all of the services, programs and infrastructure from that.

This year in council, we’re taking forward a plan to do a very fundamental tax shift — getting our industry contribution down to below 55 percent within three years, bringing up our residential ratepayers. But as council is well aware, that means shifting a fairly large burden onto our residents, who have become accustomed to having very low tax rates. But the point of all of that is that we are doing what we need to do to try and get our house in order to manage ourselves through this transition period.

From the committee’s perspective, what we’re asking the Premier and what we’d asked the committee is that….

There’s a bit of an irony here that a lot of the emphasis from the federal and the provincial government on mountain pine beetle was on the front end when the beetle was running its course, when the trees were red or grey, when the extent of the beetle infestation in the pine forest was becoming known. Now that we’re actually living with the implications of it — the annual allowable cuts coming down, mill closures; we’ve had the first mill closure here because of mountain pine beetle, and we now have curtailments that are the beginning of that next wave of that — we don’t have a concerted response from the province.

So my ask to you on behalf of our community is to say to the provincial government that we need a focused, concerted response now at the community level for communities that are now feeling the true economic and social impacts of the mountain pine beetle. The same kind of energy that, quite frankly, has been put into trying to bring into birth a new LNG industry — we need that same kind of energy put to our traditional industry.

How do we take forestry from dimension lumber and low grade into the truly new value-added, which is the bioeconomy? How do we take mining into best available practices on their excess water and how they deal with tailings, etc., so that they’re sustainable over the long term? We need that focused approach from government.

As far as the Finance Committee is concerned, there are a couple of very specific asks we would like to go in the hopper. One is an outstanding one from the thermal-mechanical pulp industry that impacts us greatly. It’s a request for PST relief on the energy that they use to grind and make their pulp.

The chemical producers get a PST rebate on the chemicals they use to digest the pulp. The thermal-mechanical do not. Under the harmonized sales tax, they did get relief. Now we’re back to PST.

So for us, that means one of our mills, Quesnel River Pulp, which pays about $1 million in taxes to us and employs a couple hundred people, has a PST charge of $2 million per year, plus they need some assistance from B.C. Hydro. That request has been sitting in front of Minister de Jong for almost two years now. They were hoping for a decision on that April 1, 2014. We still need a decision. So there’s a specific request, and I can give the committee some of the letters that have been going back and forth on that.

The other request we have is for infrastructure in our school system. We’re in the process of closing some
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schools down to get within the utilization rates that we need relative to our school population, but all of our school facilities need a facelift, and we may need some capital funds.

As a rural community, we’re caught in the trap of having — in fact, we’ve had for a number of years — the No. 1 high school replacement project in the province. But there’s no funding available to it, because all of the capital funding in the school system is going to seismic upgrades in the Lower Mainland or new schools in growth areas.

As a community that’s trying to remain vibrant and resilient…. People locate here, invest here and make their decisions here based on our ability to sustain infrastructure, and school infrastructure, school facilities, is a fundamental part of that decision process. So the education system needs to free up capital for us to be able to maintain our schools.

The final one with respect to the Finance Committee. We are working with Northern Development Initiative Trust, the beetle action coalition to access funding from them. We need the province to be able to have some kind of economic development funding, to join us as a partner. If we want to take big projects on, we often need that additional leverage funding. I’ve been talking to Minister Bond’s office, and I know she understands that we need a little bit more assistance on economic development from the province.

I’ll stop there. You’ve got the rest of the letter I sent to the Premier in front of you.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay, terrific. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate that. I’ll go to the committee for questions.

S. Chandra Herbert: Hello, Mr. Mayor. A question for you: which school exactly is it that you’re looking to get upgraded and to be rehabilitated?

B. Simpson: Quesnel Junior Secondary. It used to be the secondary school. It’s now a junior secondary. It’s a much-dated building. I taught there when I first moved here in the early 1990s. We called it a see-through building because the cinder blocks have parted, and you used to have to put duct tape up in the winter to stop the wind from going through. That was in the late ’80s, early ’90s.

The boiler is outdated so much that it’s non-repairable. It alone would be $1.5 million, $2 million — just to do the boiler.

The school district is in a structural review just now. I don’t want to be presumptive of the outcome of that, but whatever the outcome of that review is will have capital implications for the schools that they’re going to continue to keep open. That’s when we need to be able to trigger expedited capital to make sure that the plan they’ve got works.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for that. I kind of thought it was that school, because when I went through it this spring, I noticed gaps in the cinder blocks. Well, it gets cold up there. It was pretty surprising to me that you had to deal with that in the schools. Thanks for the presentation.

S. Gibson: Thank you, Mayor. Good information here. I guess, looking through this documentation…. What makes Quesnel’s appeal unique? Would you say that some of things you’re asking for are common to communities in your Cariboo area? Would that be a fair thing to say?

B. Simpson: I think at a base level, in terms of a coordinated response from the provincial government, a timely response to some of our requests from the provincial government and some assistance on major economic development initiatives…. I’d say they’re common to all of the mountain pine beetle–impacted areas. In fact, today, forest-dependent communities throughout the province probably are very common in that ask.

What’s unique to us as a pulp mill town and with a thermal-mechanical mill is the PST ask and some requests that they have around a B.C. Hydro program available to them to reduce their energy costs. That’s very specific and very unique to us.

The rest of them, yes, I think you’re right: it’s a frame that we have. I know MLA Barnett, through the Rural Advisory Committee, is getting some of this floating up. We’ll have to see what the rural dividend is going to do to address those.

We really need that ability to talk to somebody in government, to expedite decision-making, so that when we know what we think we need to do, we can do it very quickly with a very proactive provincial partner.

Seeing none, Your Worship, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. We enjoyed listening to your thoughts. Have a good day.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Next, we have our friends from the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy. We have Betty Knight and Cheryl Lenardon.

Good morning. Good to see you. Welcome. I’ll let you introduce yourselves and let you know that you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to give you a high sign with about two minutes to go, and then we can go to the committee for about five minutes of questions after that.

B. Knight: Good morning. My name is Betty Knight. I work for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy as the regional program manager in the East Kootenay and Valemount regions. I’m accompanied today by Cheryl Lenardon, who is an assistant superintendent with school district 6, Rocky Mountain school district, which encompasses three of our East Kootenay communities. Those would be Golden, Kimberley and Invermere. My region also includes Cranbrook, Creston and Valemount.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the importance of community literacy and literacy coordination to the people in my communities and throughout B.C. Thank you also for the recommendation you made last year that the province establish core funding in the amount of $2½ million to support community literacy throughout the province.

Last year, the Ministry of Education provided $2 million, which, although it’s less than what is needed, helped the field to coordinate community collaboration and partnerships that provide literacy programs and instruction to people who are not served in other ways.

Just as an example, the literacy outreach coordinators in my region bring together libraries, school administrators and teachers, colleges, public health, doctors, counsellors, probation officers, First Nations representatives, early childhood agencies, faith community representatives, food banks, addiction services, Work B.C. and so on to plan and partner to develop literacy assistance for people in their communities.

Literacy outreach coordinators in each community lead these diverse groups in discussing the needs of their clients and the gaps in services that need to be filled. Together, they look at the resources available in the community.

Does the local women’s resource centre or the band hall have a space in which a program could be offered? Does the family resource centre have a staff member with expertise that could be contributed? Are the seniors at the seniors centre looking for an opportunity to read with children or help a teenager with math? Perhaps they’re looking for someone to show them how to use a computer and stay safe while on line.

Could the food bank help? Does the library have resources? Could the college advertise in their calendar? Can the family resource centre refer clients? Would the local paper contribute a display ad, even though we can’t pay this time?

Broad community understanding of the issues grows. Partnerships are made. Services are maintained and new ones initiated. People in our communities are helped with math, with reading and writing and with employment skills. They learn to use technology confidently so that they can access government services, get a better job and maintain their connections with distant friends and loved ones.

Last year, in the Columbia Basin alone, over 5,000 adults, children, teens, First Nations, seniors, immigrants — B.C. citizens of all descriptions — received help, learned new skills and refreshed rusty ones, learned how to support the learning development of their children, improved their English language skills and confidently transitioned to formal education as apprentices or college students after participating in a literacy program.

B.C. citizens need good literacy and learning skills. They need to be able to use and improve their skills so that they can secure employment, train and retrain, be effective partners with their health professionals and be active participants in our democracy.

Formal education is important and necessary, of course, but for many, it is the informal and non-formal learning that happens in community literacy programs that prepares them for formal learning or directly provides the support, instruction and encouragement they need.

In order to maintain this valuable and effective work throughout the province, stable and consistent funding is what the field needs. Currently, literacy coordinators are unable to plan confidently with their communities for long-term services. We cobble together funding from many sources, most of which fluctuate year to year.

Many organizations, institutions and agencies bring some resources to the table to assist in program delivery, but there is no one other than the literacy outreach coordinator that has a holistic view of literacy across the lifespan, knows how to meet the needs of individuals of all ages and in many circumstances and whose job it is to bring communities together to address the issue.

Literacy outreach coordinators are the key to bringing together organizations, agencies, businesses and individuals who are concerned about literacy development and their community members and seek to actively and creatively find ways to help people learn and practise the literacy and essential skills that are so important to successful living in the 21st century.

Cheryl is a long-time member of three community literacy planning committees in the East Kootenay. She has come today to talk about her experience and observation of the benefits that the work of LOCs has brought to the communities that she works in.

C. Lenardon: Thank you. I think I’ll start by just telling you how surprised I was, when I first came to this district, to learn that we had an organization like CBAL. When I very first arrived, my first day at work, I met with the outgoing superintendent and the outgoing assistant superintendent, and they laid out my role for me.

My portfolio includes human resources, staff development, curriculum and achievement for 3,000 students across our district. The way that I came to understand it is that the achievement piece was right in the middle of all that other work, and right at the heart of the achievement
[ Page 1904 ]
piece was improving literacy for all the kids in our district.

I was completely overwhelmed when I was told that improvement of literacy was to be done in coordination with all of our partners across all of our communities. I said: “I can’t do that.” I was told: “Don’t worry. You have help.” The very next meeting that I had was with Betty from CBAL.

She helped me map out our district and showed me how all the five different municipal governments, the different regional districts, the different health regions, all the different agency groupings and all the societies and organizations and informal groups that were all involved in literacy mapped out across the entire region, all of our communities. She said: “We work together over the whole year, and we coordinate all of our work so that cradle-to-grave literacy is looked at and is a big part of our community life.” I said: “We can’t do that.” She said: “Don’t worry. We have help.”

She told me about the community literacy coordinators. Each of our main communities has a coordinator that CBAL provides, and those coordinators pull together all those different partners. There are dozens and dozens of us. They pull all these partners together. It’s like herding cats. We are mission-driven, hard-working cats, but it is hard to get everyone to the table. The literacy coordinators do that. They get everyone to the table, and then they engage us in conversation to make sure that we’re networking, we’re aware of what everyone else is doing and what’s available, we’re aligning our work, and we’re even collaborating on things.

That happens over the whole year. Then they document all that work in a community literacy plan. Then those different community literacy plans — the literacy coordinators and CBAL pull that up into a districtwide plan.

I’d like to think…. I probably am being optimistic in thinking how many people actually read the plan. Now, with Bill 11, we’re not required to submit it to anyone or actually even do it. But the work that’s represented in this plan is felt by everyone across all of our communities. So it continues, and it continues because we have CBAL to coordinate us.

We just spent the week in our school district — we’re in the midst of it — having schools present their plans for improving literacy to trustees so that trustees can approve those plans and know what’s happening in each and every school to provide supports for each child and to engage the parents and the community in the work of those plans.

These presentations are happening, and it’s one of the best things that happens in the year. It’s really wonderful to see. CBAL and the work of CBAL is seen in every single one of those presentations.

When the schools are talking about students receiving one-to-one reading support from community volunteers, or they’ve really engaged a group of kids that was struggling, with the Guys Read program, or they’re running a Parents as Literacy Supporters night, it’s all talking about that work — the direct services and the coordination that CBAL provides.

We all really rely on that. It’s not that CBAL provides a function that makes life easier for us or lets us do other things. If CBAL wasn’t doing this coordination, it would not happen. This is over and above….

S. Hamilton (Chair): Just so you know — I’m just going to interrupt for a second — you’re well into your ten minutes. You’re welcome to continue on, but it’s just a little less question time, that’s all.

C. Lenardon: I’m done. I just want to say that we absolutely rely on this, and so do our other partners, and I can’t tell you how rich it is.

S. Gibson: Thank you very much. A very competent presentation. You do important work, and I think we acknowledge that.

Just looking at some documentation I saw here on the Internet, you have fees for services that you charge. My understanding would be those would be for adults who need assistance with literacy. How do you calculate your fees? Is it based on an honorarium, or is it based on an hourly rate, or is it based on completion of some kind of a schedule or curriculum?

B. Knight: I’m not sure where you were looking. We don’t have any services that we charge for. All of our programs are free of charge to the community.

S. Gibson: I was looking at your annual report. In your report, it has “grant revenue,” and underneath that it has “fee for services.” I presume those fees are what you charge for your students who are adults. Is that correct?

B. Knight: No, that isn’t correct. The “fees for services” has to do with a subcontract that we hold. As I mentioned in my presentation, we cobble together sources of funding. Some of it’s grants. Some of it’s contract. We provide some work under contract, and that’s classified under “fees for service.” We are contracted with Work B.C., and also we hold a couple of CAPC contracts.

B. Knight: No charge for any adults for any of our services — or any children or any families. Everything we do is free.
[ Page 1905 ]

S. Gibson: Okay. So in a sense, those are kind of grants, then, in a way. Your students or….

B. Knight: Well, they’re contracts for services that we agree to provide. For instance, for Work B.C., we have a contract with the Canadian Mental Health Association that holds that contract to provide Work B.C. offices in this region. We subcontract to them to provide literacy services to clients that they see that need help because they have literacy challenges and they are trying to find a job or they’re trying to go back to school. That’s fee-for-service work. But that’s within a specific context. The client doesn’t pay; the contract pays. Does that help?

S. Gibson: Okay, I think that explains it. Thank you very much. That’s helpful.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very interesting. As you say, you’re cobbling together money — grants and everything else — from all over the place.

I’m wondering. One of the things you mention is the long-term funding. Every year you seem to be presenting to us for continued funding. The money hasn’t been coming long term for specific literacy on this one. For your other cobbling together, are those also year-on-year? I mean, is somebody spending a lot of time just searching for grants and trying to keep the organization going?

I’ve got to say, when you mentioned 5,000 people assisted, that’s a very significant number and obviously very important for the community. But if you’ve got to spend all your time looking for the money to keep going, it really does make it very difficult to keep going.

B. Knight: We definitely do spend a lot of time writing grants, looking for new grants, looking for new partners like the Work B.C. contract. We are lucky that we have the Columbia Basin Trust in this area. They have been extremely supportive of CBAL from the very beginning and do provide us with some stability that gives us the ability to have an organization so that we can look for other funds.

For instance, we’ve recently taken on the federal funding for settlement work. That was a huge investment of time to figure out what they were looking for, how to approach that. Could we actually do that work — train our staff, apply for the funding and be on umpteen webinars that tried to tell us how we should do it so that we could get the funding?

It was huge. But it’s important work, and it fits well with what we do, so it was worthwhile to do it. But that’s just one example. If you’re looking at our income statement, you can see how many there are. We try not to leave any stone unturned.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’m sorry. I’m going to have to cut you off there. We’re well over time, and we have another group waiting. But thank you very much for all the work you do. It’s always good to hear from the literacy organizations from around the province. We appreciate that. Thank you very much for your presentation.

Next we have, via videoconference, board of education, school district 60, Peace River North — Doug Boyd.

I’ll let you know…. Ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll interrupt with a couple of minutes left so that you can conclude your thoughts, and then we’ll go to the committee for questions. The floor is yours.

D. Boyd: I will just introduce myself. I’m Doug Boyd, secretary-treasurer for the school district, and I have with me Mr. Bill Snow, who is one of our trustees and oversees the finance committee.

I’ll get right into the presentation. Again, we appreciate the opportunity that has been provided today. One of our first items is transportation, in regard to the busing services that we provide for our students. Since 2011, our district has been expressing concern over inadequate funding for transportation services. A reduction of $541,000 in funding to our district came about when the transportation line item was removed and replaced with a student location factor.

We’ve been able to research this extensively, and errors in that formula have been identified. Those are the formulas by which they generate the funds. We respectfully submit that the standing committee provide their support in ensuring that a remedy to the funding reduction is implemented as quickly as possible.

There are many factors that affect the need and desire to provide transportation for our students. The distribution of schools over time has moved toward centralization, largely due to economics in delivering an array of courses and providing opportunities for students. As a result, longer bus rides become a necessity to reduce safety concerns associated with the number of private vehicles on the road transporting students. Additionally, less vehicles required by operating a bus reduces the negative environmental side effects of multiple vehicles on the road.

We do appreciate that on September 29 of this school year, the Technical Review Committee that was restructured revisited our concerns. We do hope that a resolution will be recommended. This will be the third time that our situation has been reviewed by that Technical Review Committee, and we are hoping for a positive resolve. Any support that we can gain from this discussion here today would be muchly appreciated.

We have an interesting phenomenon in Fort St. John in that we are a growing population. Our student enrolment increases. The student enrolment continues to rise this year, with 143 additional students over last year’s numbers. If you look at that, that’s basically half a school size of 300.
[ Page 1906 ]

This is a continuation of continual growth over the past several years. In fact, two years ago, the ministry reported that we were the fastest-growing district. Where we gained 238 students, at the same time, over a two-year period, Surrey lost some students at that particular time. I think it was 75 students. Keep in mind, Surrey obviously has a pent-up demand. We’re not doing a direct comparison to their needs and ours. We’re not trying to diminish their needs at all.

Our in-town schools — that’s Fort St. John, specifically — are all at or, in most cases, over capacity. Currently we have a gymnasium at one of our elementary schools being utilized as a classroom while we struggle to put a temporary portable on that school site. And obviously, we’re running into colder weather, and there’s great concern that the indoor activities centred around physical education are going to be hindered by utilizing that gym.

We did receive funds to purchase three properties for further school sites. That was in March. However, to date, no school facility has been announced. While we have identified an elementary school in the northwest as our immediate priority, with the ministry and district’s forecast for continued growth, we anticipate the need for all three schools to be in line for construction. Unfortunately, with the short window of time that we have for construction in this area, we need to have decisions made with some urgency attached to it right now.

We thought we were going to be a little lighter on the middle school and secondary areas. However, when the whites of their eyes showed up, so to speak, here in September, the middle schools were full, as well, and the secondary is already at and beyond capacity as well.

In addition, we have two of our schools that were built in 1945, and their structure is now showing the wear and tear of 70 years of use. Part of one of the schools was built with expediency in conjunction with the army’s construction of the Alaska Highway. As a result, major work is required out of concern for the health and safety of our students and staff.

These two facilities have been on our capital plan for several years and are now at the point of requiring immediate attention to be replaced. One in particular is reviewing some of the health and safety issues, specifically their basement area that is used by the students much like a cafeteria setting as well as some classroom activities. Oftentimes it gets flooded out, and we’re having to constantly monitor it for mould.

Recruitment and retention is a major issue that is continuing. As you can well imagine, with the growth of the community and the start-up of Site C, as well as the LNG projects that are ongoing, we’re in a very competitive market for workers.

This year, with our increasing enrolment, we have experienced difficulties in recruiting teachers, particularly in the rural school settings. In early September, we were short 15 teachers. We’ve been scrambling to get them, trying to hire right across the country, and we are still short, as of this morning, three teachers that we’re still looking for. Obviously, we’re not having any applications for some of those at all.

We would ask that the concept of incentives, such as forgivable student loans or supplemental housing compensation, be considered. The cost of living in our communities is reflective of the available energy sector wages and compensation, which makes it very difficult for us in our district to be competitive.

Similar issues are also related to the staffing of support staff positions. In particular, the trades, bus drivers and educational assistants are often in the inability-to-hire category.

Administrative savings is something that you’re probably very much aware of. This year, our district was required to demonstrate $340,000 worth of savings, and next year we are being required to almost double that. It will be $600,000-some in savings.

As a growing district, we do not receive the benefit of funding protection provided to districts with declining enrolment. We do understand the difficulty districts face with loss of students now as well as future impacts. Although it is for an uncertain term, this protection allows those districts to make adjustments to the increased cost in a more gradual manner.

Districts such as ours which are growing — and again, there are not very many of them — face these adjustments and resulting difficulties immediately. In other words, when we have those changes, we’re impacted that very year with the growth associated with it.

We need attention given to the shortfall in funding. We cannot wait for the districts to come out of funding protection before the collective voice is able to express a provincewide concern. This is definitely an immediate concern for us.

Our immediate concern, as a growing district, is that there are associated unfunded expenditures. As enrolment demands are beyond our scope capacity, we must put portables in place. Funds for this are not provided by the ministry and therefore must come out of our operating budget, thus having the potential of reducing educational services to students.

Additionally, we are required to find administrative savings — approximately $340,000 this year, $600,000 and some next year — while our actual costs in these areas are increasing. We request that funding protection and our supplemental funds be provided similar to the support for declining districts. A reduction of required administrative savings would also be of assistance.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much — appreciate that, and I will go to the committee for questions.
[ Page 1907 ]

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s fascinating to see a growing school district in a primarily rural area.

I have a question on the transportation issue. I wondered what proportion of students are coming from out of town needing transportation to come in. Is the school district looking at charging parents for buses? I know that in some districts, a school district has had to start thinking about charging, and therefore potentially restricting access to education if parents are starting to have to pay.

My other one, if the Chair will give me the latitude here, is on the capital side, the facilities. You’re looking at extending three of the schools in Fort St. John and replacing the other two. So you’re talking about five facilities, or is there an overlap there?

D. Boyd: Okay, let’s go to the first question first, and I’ll try to remember them all. The first one is that we have about 2,200 to 2,400 students, depending on the year, as to what we are transporting. It’s not just into Fort St. John. Most of our rural schools are also heavily involved in the transportation.

We’re running approximately 47 bus routes. Our bus routes are very unique in the sense that in most parts of the country, the roads loop — in other words, you enter in one area and come out in another — whereas with ours, we go in and come back out the same road. We’re doubling up on each of those legs because they’re only one way. That’s one of issues that we’re facing.

In regards to the fees, two years ago we implemented a fee, like a charge for transportation. It was very negatively received in our area, especially when we are rural and gas as well as agricultural types of communities — rural in particular. Their concept was: “Well, you closed down our schools in the rural areas because you wanted to consolidate, and now you’re going to charge us to bus us to the school that you had to create for us.” So that was one of the areas of concern.

The other thing is, of course, they feel that the revenue coming out of area is extensive, and therefore, the ministries should be funding that. The other part is that a lot of families are large and could not afford that. We have some families still in our rural areas of nine-plus children. All of a sudden you’re into a situation where that becomes a very expensive proposition.

At that time, the rural districts came forward and provided funding, along with two of the municipalities, for their students for one year only, to give us more time to meet with the Technical Review Committee. We greatly appreciate that. That was last year, and that funding’s done.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Gentlemen, I have one more question, if you could conclude your thoughts on that one. I want to go to Carole before our time runs out.

D. Boyd: There was one question in regards to the facilities. Basically, we are looking at three new schools and two replacements.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I know we may run out of time, so this might be information that you’re able to send to the committee.

One of the other areas that we’ve heard from districts about a challenge — in addition to the administrative savings to have to find in the next while — is the downloading of costs. The issue of hydro increases. The issue of MSP increases. I wondered if you had any figures for your district on what those numbers look like for you — if not now, if you could send them in to the committee.

D. Boyd: We could send them in. I don’t have them right at my fingertips, but there are all of those costs that are associated with it. I mentioned, as well, with a growing district, we also have administrative costs increasing as the schools get bigger. We need administrative support there as well, which then is all an additional cost.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Terrific. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time to present to the committee. We appreciate the work that you do. On behalf of the committee, thank you very much. Have a good day.

Welcome. Good morning. Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with about two minutes to go. That way you can conclude your thoughts, and I can go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, of course, the floor is yours.

D. Walls: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and committee members. I appreciate this opportunity.

I’ll just say a little bit about College of the Rockies. I don’t know if you managed to receive the presentation today. We were on the wait-list, and we only heard yesterday. Hopefully, you have it.

I’m just going to speak to some of the points. At College of the Rockies, we have about 2,300 full-time-equivalent students. That means there are about 8,000 unique students that we do deal with every year. Out of those students, about 11 percent of our student base is international students that come in from about 30 different countries, and we have approximately 8 percent aboriginal students as well.

We’ve just completed a strategic plan that started this year. It’s a five-year plan. In that, we are targeting a significant increase in our international students. I’ll explain why as I get into the presentation here.

College of the Rockies is a college that’s noted for being very financially responsible. We always balance our budget, and we do meet our utilization rates for students,
[ Page 1908 ]
based on our allocated funding. Out of the small colleges, we do better than most. We’ve won international awards for international student satisfaction and also on international projects. We do a fair bit of work overseas on development types of projects. Those all do bring in revenue to the college.

We work at length with our regional employers and community leaders to ensure that our programs are meeting regional demand. In terms of the programs we offer, we have our own degree, which we confer in business. We have joint degrees with the University of Victoria in nursing and teacher education. We have certificate and diploma programs. We have apprenticeship trades programs. We offer adult education, basic education upgrading. Our programs pretty much all align with the provincial blueprint on skills shortages.

One good thing about our college. Our students who do complete university studies here, when they transfer to other B.C. institutions, have much higher retention rates compared to any other colleges and end up with higher GPAs at the end of their university career.

About 50 percent of our budget is generated through other means than the provincial grant — through international activities and students, contract training, continuing education and, of course, our domestic student tuition and our ancillary services. We’ve gone through, now, four years of declining grants. And then moving on, we’ve been told to expect flat funding, which is, in effect, a reduction, because we do have inflationary costs each year that we have to deal with.

Because we’re 50 percent funded from other sources than the grant, it does present some risk to us. Even though the provincial grant has been declining, that portion of our funding obviously presents less risk, because it’s, really, money in the bank.

The other funding that we use to forecast our budget is dependent on things like global markets and what’s happening in the economy. That presents us some risk as we move more and more to that portion of our funding and our revenue. It puts us, as I say, more at risk. We have challenges in that we can’t run a deficit in a particular year. We can’t budget a deficit, and we can’t access any of our reserves that we have. Trying to meet that with some of the challenges that we have in the non-grant-funded is…. The restrictions make it pretty challenging for us.

Moving forward, in terms of flat funding, I think what the colleges — certainly College of the Rockies — would like to see is more flat funding, meaning that there are some increases for inflationary costs as well, whether it’s 1 percent or 2 percent or something like that. We are thankful that the collective agreement costs have been covered for the five years, I guess, going forward. That’s a good scenario. But certainly, we are challenged financially as a college, as I think most of the post-secondary system is as well.

Some of the other things, too, that I think…. The management salaries have been restricted, as I think we all know. Management staff that report to me — none of them have had a pay increase in six years. It’s kind of a fairness issue there, because at the College of the Rockies, the salaries are about 17 percent lower than the rest of the provincial system. So it’s extremely difficult to recruit and retain staff. These are the things we’re experiencing.

I’m going to stop at that and will invite any questions that the committee has.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Walls. I do have questions from the committee.

S. Gibson: I appreciated your…. I believe, sir, you made a presentation last year, when we were on tour, as I recall. Very informative.

One of the things I would like to ask…. I noticed you offer one degree of bachelor of business administration. I know that sometimes in government we try to avoid overlapping programs. Are there programs that you think would be suitable for the College of the Rockies and that would be a unique way to market your university to students outside the area but at the same time provide a credential that would have currency and employability in our province?

D. Walls: The volume doesn’t seem to be very high. I don’t know if we can turn it up here.

I think you mentioned our business degree. It’s a fairly unique degree, in that it focuses on sustainable business practices. It kind of combines sustaining business from an environmental perspective and also from a fiscal perspective as well. It is somewhat unique. It doesn’t overlap with others, because there are lots of business programs within the province, obviously.

S. Gibson: Perhaps you didn’t hear me. My question was: are there programs that you could provide and offer at your university that would be unique, that would be marketable and give students a credential that would make them employable fairly early, as opposed to…? As you know, around the province, we have many overlapping…. You can get a BA in sociology at just about any university in B.C. I’m wondering: as you think about it creatively, are there programs that would be unique that you could offer at the College of the Rockies that would benefit students?

D. Walls: We have a number of programs that are in that category right now. For example, we work very directly with Teck Resources, Teck Coal, in our area. We’ve actually designed a specific apprenticeship program where we take their electrical and heavy-duty employees and train with them in apprenticeship. They actually are college employees, but then, for their industrial train-
[ Page 1909 ]
ing piece, they go out to Teck, and we help facilitate that. It’s very much tied into the employment and the actual workers themselves.

We do a lot of fairly unique programs right now. We’re doing some just in the forestry industry, training specifically. They’re just 17-week programs, so they’re short, and they go out directly into our region. Part of the program is…. They’re actually, right now, out there in the forests. They’re very tailored, specifically, when they come out, to the regional needs of the area.

C. Trevena: Thank you very much for your presentation. I was wondering. We’ve heard from a number of post-secondary institutions, community colleges, about the cuts. They’re starting to charge for adult basic education. I was wondering if this has affected College of the Rockies at all.

D. Walls: Yeah. In fact, at our board meeting tomorrow we will be asking the board to approve tuition fees. So yes, the direction from the province was…. Some of the money that we get from the grants was reduced, with the permission for us to charge tuition fees to recover that amount. We’ll be starting to charge tuition in January.

There are two pieces to it. Nobody likes to have reductions in funding, obviously. But the second piece does allow us to really dig in and look at the effectiveness of the basic education. We’re doing that — trying to improve the effectiveness. The government has provided an increase in the adult upgrading grants. We need to do a better job of helping the students access that grant money.

As I say, it’s a good thing. We don’t like to lose the funding, but it’s making us think around how to make the basic education more effective. Hopefully we won’t lose students. I know that some of the colleges are demonstrating that they’ve lost students right now. We’re going to be monitoring that and trying to figure out how we might put more resources, actually, into increasing the retention rates of the basic education students.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Seeing no further questions of the committee, Mr. Walls, thank you very much for taking the time to present. We appreciate hearing your thoughts. Have a good day.

Mr. Johns, while you’re getting settled, I’ll let you know you have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes left to go so you can conclude your thoughts. Then I can go to the committee for any questions they might have. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

C. Johns: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to address the committee. We were a last-minute addition this morning. It was a Hail Mary pass, if I can use a sports expression, to get before the committee, because last year we missed the presentation here in Cranbrook.

My presentation is to really focus on some of the challenges that our local school district faces with respect to the adequacy of education funding. I’m going to draw on a letter that we have sent both to the Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Education outlining some of our concerns. I want to speak specifically to what some of those cost pressures are.

I also want to highlight a specific example that you are in receipt of from September 16, from the B.C. School Trustees Association president, in which she has outlined a number of the concerns that trustees around the province have.

What I’m trying to do is focus on two things that I think the members of the committee need to take into consideration in their deliberations.

The first letter that we sent with respect to our budget, at the end of June, said, in essence, that to balance our budget each year, our district has to choose to not fund, to underfund or to cut areas that simply do not benefit from the austerity that we have to deal with. Despite the prudent exercise in our district to cut in those areas that have the least impact in the classroom, we remind government that every cut impacts the quality education experience we strive to provide our learners in school district 5.

This year, our district found it necessary to make cuts to 33 distinct areas of our operations in order to achieve a balanced budget and continue to focus on important components of the B.C. education plan. Those 33 areas amounted to $1.3 million in cuts that we had to put in place this year. It will be part of the submission that we formally make — the details of that. In addition to that, over two years, we have to come up with $900,000 in administrative savings, amounting to $2.2 million.

Now, the reason I’m highlighting this as a local matter is because in the Report on the Budget 2015 Consultations — and I believe the same phraseology is used in the Report of the Budget 2014 Consultations — the recommendation urges government to “provide stable, predictable and adequate funding to enable school districts to fulfil their responsibility to provide continued equitable access to quality public education and to meet required repair and maintenance needs.” This came from the findings of the previous two commissions that went around the province.

This letter was signed by the partners of the education community to emphasize our frustration over the lack of predictable funding from the ministry. To wit, Teresa Rezansoff has highlighted, in her submission on September 15 to the budget consultation committee, a number of concerns. I’m not going to go through all those, but I want to highlight one that I think is a very unique and particularly important one in our own
[ Page 1910 ]
community of Cranbrook. Her third point was “a more streamlined and transparent process for the approval of major capital projects.”

My specific example is Mount Baker Secondary School. For the last seven years that I’ve been a school trustee, we have been lobbying the Ministry of Education to give us an indication of where we are with respect to the replacement of a building well over 60 years. I believe we’ve had something in the order of four to five Ministers of Education that have toured through the building, and we have made repeated submissions to the Ministry of Education around the need to replace this.

Our local MLA, Mr. Bill Bennett, is supportive of this, but we don’t seem to be able to get any kind of indication as to what kind of a streamlined, transparent process we can anticipate. We’re talking about somewhere in excess of a $50 million, 900-student high school replacement, with a neighbourhood learning centre component to it, comprised of the Key City Theatre, which has been found, through our community consultation process, to be what the community wants to see — a theatre continued to be attached to new revitalized Mount Baker.

What I’m asking is: is there anyway in which the committee can assist us to get some predictable funding in place for school districts across the province and get some process in place so that we, as a local school district in the community, can benefit from knowing where and when we’re going to get our high school replaced?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for the points you raised and referring back to the BCSTA presentation, as well. I think it’s a good reminder for us about the number of education presenters we’ve had.

Just on your capital piece, to ask a specific question. What’s the response you get back around why, when it has been at the top of the list and when you’ve pushing for it, there hasn’t been a response? Have you had any rationale around why it hasn’t been funded or why it hasn’t made the list as yet?

C. Johns: The best information we’ve got so far is that capital projects are on hold. That’s it.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Even previously when funding was there, it wasn’t funded, and it has been on the list for a number of years. I understand the freezing right now, but there has been no rationale before that, when the capital funding was coming through as well?

C. Johns: Well, if I might, I’d like to tell you what we’ve been told, and that is that seismic upgrades have been a first priority. The second priority has been school districts that have been experiencing enrolment increases and students being educated in portables. Then, the third group would be the group in which Mount Baker finds itself, and that is in a group of schools that are slated for replacement.

I think the other thing I’d like to add is that Mount Baker Secondary is the largest secondary in the East and West Kootenays. It’s been around for over 60 years now, and it’s badly in need of replacement.

Seeing none, Mr. Johns, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee, sharing your thoughts and your ideas. We do appreciate it. Thank you.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We appreciate that. Thank you. Please submit that brief before October 15.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. I’m not sure if we have our Skype call ready. Oh, we do. That’s great.

M. Collins: Good morning to you and to the members of the committee. I’m delighted to be here. I just flew over from foggy Victoria this morning.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Oh my goodness. Well, it’s not very nice over here. Regardless, I thought I’d let you know you have ten minutes for your presentation. I will try to give you a two-minute warning so you can conclude your thoughts. Then that gives me an opportunity to go to the committee for questions. So if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

I’d like to thank the members of the Finance and Government Services Committee for this opportunity to present the views of the British Columbia Healthy Living Alliance, with respect to the 2016 provincial budget.

As you probably know, the BCHLA is a group of nine not-for-profit organizations that came together in 2003 to improve the health of British Columbians. Our vision is a healthy British Columbia. Our focus is on the risk factors and inequities that contribute significantly to chronic disease.

I’d just like to tell you a little bit about setting the scene here on chronic diseases, because preventable chronic diseases — such as diabetes, cancer, heart and respira-
[ Page 1911 ]
tory diseases — affect one-third of British Columbians.

As well as the significant costs, human costs, they also cost the government. These diseases consume approximately 80 percent of the combined medical services plan and the PharmaCare and acute care budgets. This makes preventable chronic diseases a major cost driver of the health care budget.

Fortunately, investments to address the risk factors for chronic disease that support people to live healthier are good value for governments. I’m going to highlight just three policies that we think have great potential.

The first is a sugary drink tax. A healthy diet, we know, is key to disease prevention. We get so many messages about what to eat and what not to eat. It really can be confusing. But we do know that there are two rules that stand the test of time: eat plenty of vegetables and fruit, and there is no room for sugary drinks in a healthy diet.

On the second point, I’d like to highlight how British Columbia could benefit from a sugary drink tax. Now, researchers have stated that rigorous studies have shown that the consumption of soft drinks, more than for any category of foods, is associated with poor diet, increasing rates of obesity and risk of diabetes. Sugary drinks provide nothing but empty calories, and what’s worse than other junk foods is that those calories aren’t even registered by the body.

Now, there’s been much hype about sugary drink taxes lately because they implemented one in Mexico, which has had one of the highest rates of obesity. On January 1, 2014, Mexico brought in a special tax on sugary drinks of one peso per litre, roughly about a 10 percent increase in price. By the end of 2014, there was a 12 percent decline in purchases, and the lowest-income groups reduced consumption by 17 percent. This happened despite very aggressive marketing campaigns by companies and rising consumption in preceding years.

We support a 20 percent sales tax on sugary drinks or, preferably, an excise tax of a penny per ounce, which would be approximately 30 cents a litre. This is the figure advanced by most local and international public health organizations, because research shows that it’s big enough to impact consumer choice. That’s our first one.

The second one is an active transportation strategy for British Columbia. Again, we know that regular physical activity is another key to preventing disease. Community planning and infrastructure have a significant influence on whether people in a community are regularly active and have healthy weights.

For example, a recent study in Metro Vancouver found that those who took public transit were 22 percent less likely to be overweight or obese. Those who commuted by bike or on foot were 48 percent less likely. BCHLA believes B.C. needs to make a serious commitment to healthy communities with a provincewide active transportation strategy.

We’re recommending an investment of between $88 million and $175 million, annually, to build up community infrastructure and boost British Columbia’s physical activity rates. That’s based on the funding formula of other global leaders, who spend between $27 and $40 per person, per year. It would bring us up to that.

The World Health Organization has noted investments in active transportation as best buys for governments looking to boost physical activity. It also delivers many co-benefits to other government priorities, such as local economic development through tourism, climate change mitigation and traffic suggestion.

Our final recommendation is a shift in alcohol pricing. While we know an occasional glass of wine or beer or spirits can be considered a normal part of our social culture, excessive alcohol is harmful to our health. In amounts much lower than problem drinking levels, alcohol is a risk factor for breast cancer, gastrointestinal disease and cardiovascular disease. Shifting alcohol pricing so that it’s based on alcohol content instead of by volume or product type is fair to producers and can nudge consumption downward.

Based on the evidence, we recommend that the liquor control and licensing branch implement a minimum price per standard drink, in which the after-tax price is set at $1.65 per drink in liquor stores and $3.30 in bars. That would reduce the incentive for producers to create fortified and higher-alcohol-content beverages that encourage binge drinking and, instead, promote products with lower alcohol content. It’s also an approach that’s been found effective at reducing demand among youth, who are price-sensitive, and promoting a more moderate drinking culture overall.

Finally, as I said before, one-third of British Columbians are affected by chronic diseases. But that isn’t distributed evenly. Looking at disease rates across the province — and we’ve done a lot of work on this — we see that some groups and some areas are most heavily hit, particularly those with low incomes and in northern and remote communities. We need targeted health promotion programs to address the gaps in health.

There’s so much good work already happening — school meal programs, early childhood development programs, seniors exercise programs, sports for disadvantaged youth. These can make a difference, and they should be sustained. The Ministry of Health is doing some fantastic work to promote health and prevent disease, but the frameworks and plans need to be adequately resourced to achieve the targets and goals. We have recommended that funding for these measures be doubled.

A sugary drink tax, for example, could, potentially, bring in revenues for a provincial health promotion fund. The Childhood Obesity Foundation estimates a sugary drink tax could raise approximately $150 million a year to go into a health promotion fund. The return on investments in health promotion cannot be overstated. Your
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own provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, calculated that British Columbia could, potentially, avoid up to $2 billion in yearly health care costs if we do things right.

I urge this committee to invest in the health of British Columbians. It will pay dividends in the future.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Ms. Collins. Appreciate it. I will go to committee for questions.

G. Heyman: Hi, Mary. Very good to see you again. Thank you for the presentation.

We’ve certainly heard a lot, both in committee and in public commentary, about a sugary drink tax. I’m interested in two areas, specifically, in your presentation. One is about active transportation. In Metro Vancouver, TransLink is responsible for both public transit and bicycle infrastructure — and walking infrastructure, as well, I believe. We’re in a bit of a gridlock in investments.

I’m wondering if you have any ideas about how we might break through that and actually get going. It’s been, I would say, at least a five-year delay since the provincial government and municipalities in Metro declared good intentions but haven’t been able to agree on how to achieve them.

Finally, I’m particularly interested in your comments on health promotion. I think we’ve heard lots at this committee in not just health but social services about the return on investment of targeted investment and promotion and prevention services. You will know this very well from your time in government. We’re stuck in an annual budgeting cycle that has its own drivers.

If you can’t get the return on investment in the first year, it becomes more difficult, even if it makes perfect economic sense long term. Your thoughts on that would be appreciated.

M. Collins: Yes, we were, of course, very disappointed, because we were active supporters of the further investment in active transportation in Metro Vancouver. Obviously, the public did not agree, and they didn’t want to pay an extra sales tax. We understand that.

I mean, there are other approaches. Ultimately, there’s only one taxpayer, though, so someone’s going to have to pay. Road pricing was certainly one of the options that potentially could be considered; or, potentially, with a health promotion fund, as we’ve talked about, perhaps some of those dollars could be allocated.

We’re looking at about an investment of between $88 million and $175 million, as I mentioned before. We’ve indicated that a health promotion fund from sugary drinks could bring in $150 million, so you could do the math. It kind of might work. We’d obviously see other partners at other levels of government having to contribute to this too — I mean, local governments.

If we want to be up there with the world leaders, we’re not spending very much. We’re spending about $2.50 per person at the moment. The Netherlands, which is the leader, spends about $40 per person per year on cycling alone. Winnipeg spends $32 per person per year. London spends $27 per person per year.

There are obviously lots of opportunities to get that, whether it’s from general revenues or from some targeted — I hate to call them taxes — revenue-generating sources for those roads and the cycling and walking paths.

You know, actually, we found, with some of the work we did a few years ago, that sometimes just a small investment in smaller communities — not in Metro Vancouver, but in northern remote communities — to help them develop paths, walking paths, cycling paths…. They could do a lot. It didn’t actually require a lot of money.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I like that, “revenue-generating sources.” I’ll have to remember that — RGS, an acronym.

Any further questions from the committee? Seeing none, Ms. Collins, thank you very much for taking the time to present. We do appreciate hearing your thoughts, and keep up the great work. We appreciate it.

Next, we have Canada’s Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, B.C. committee — Jo-Ann Stuart Chatterley and John Willow.

Good morning, and welcome. While you’re getting settled, I’ll let you know you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes remaining, time to conclude your thoughts, and then I can go to the committee for some questions. The floor is yours.

J. Willow: My name’s John Willow. I’m the regional director for Rx&D here in British Columbia. This is my colleague, one of our members, Jo-Ann Stuart Chatterley. She’s the vice-chair of our B.C. committee and works for Janssen Inc.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present here to you today. I believe you have our submission, the full submission that we’ve provided. What we’d like to do is take our ten minutes to go through, hit the key themes that we’ve presented and the six recommendations in our report. Then we’d look forward to your questions after that.

Rx&D represents over 50 international and national pharmaceutical companies here in Canada. Here, in our local B.C. committee, we have members from 21 of those companies. All our members live here, work here and raise their families here in British Columbia. Over the last ten years, our companies have invested over $1 billion in research and development and clinical trials here in British Columbia.

I think it’s important to know that the role of our committee members here in B.C. is really to be the liaison for British Columbia, trying to make the case to our global
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and our national head offices to do more business in British Columbia versus other places in Canada. That’s the way we see ourselves. Really, what we’ve looking to do is: how can we work with government and other stakeholders to better leverage that role of ours in order to help grow more investments and more opportunities here in B.C.?

The first theme in our submission is the value of medicines. Comprehensive access to innovative medicines and vaccines is an investment in the health and productivity of British Columbians. At 42 percent, we all know that the health budget is the largest single component in the provincial budget.

It’s therefore really important that government takes into account the full value of the public spend on health care. The innovative medicines and vaccines our members develop and bring to market are part of the solution to health care sustainability. They save and improve lives, they reduce the incidence of hospitalization and surgical intervention, and they keep people productive and working.

We don’t have time here today to go over all the peer-reviewed stats that we have in the report. But I would like to just point out that the findings of a lot of these studies and reports all point to the fact that innovative medical technologies, including pharmaceuticals, should be seen as an investment, one that increases social benefits, improves population health, reduces potential health system costs and generates gains in economic growth. From a budget perspective, after disease prevention, pharmaceuticals are the least expensive intervention tool available to provincial health departments.

Our first recommendation. In collaboration with the life and health science community, industry, patient organizations and academia, we recommend that the Minister of Finance work to establish the full value that medicines and vaccines bring to the health care system and the broader economy and then factor those tangible returns on investment into greater funding flexibility for PharmaCare.

Avoiding silo-based budgeting approaches will lead to better system outcomes and a more sustainable approach that is less driven by short-term financial considerations and more by patient outcomes and an increased quality of care. All lead to better overall outcomes and economic activity in the province.

Rx&D is supportive of formulary and drug policies that allow for the right medicine to get to the right patient in a timely and cost-effective manner and supports efforts to manage overall health care costs more effectively. That said, we believe that any strategy or policy that restricts patient access to medication to within a narrow range of therapeutic options has the potential to have a negative impact on health outcomes, resulting in unanticipated costs in other parts of the health system.

Rx&D believes much more can be gained through patient-centred approaches to health care — such as chronic disease management, prevention, appropriate use and adherence initiatives — than can be gained through cuts to individual line items in health budgets. For example, formulary and drug management policies such as reference-based drug pricing or therapeutic substitution incorrectly assume that all therapeutic products used to treat the same conditions are themselves the same and, thereby, interchangeable.

Prescribing health care professionals are best placed to determine appropriate treatments together with their patients. Policies that maintain and increase choice for patients and their health care providers ensure the right medicine reaches the right patient at the right time.

Ultimately, we believe that blunt cost containment tools have a potential negative impact on patients. Limiting the choice of therapies puts costs before patients. Attempting to reduce pharmaceutical costs at the expense of patients’ health and broader cost to the health system is unsustainable health policy.

This leads me to our next two recommendations. Rx&D and its member companies are proposing the opportunity to work collaboratively with both sides of the B.C. Legislature and other key health stakeholders toward the adoption of best practices in evidence-based prescribing, better management of drug use and the monitoring of therapeutic outcomes. Further, we would also propose and recommend that any changes to areas of health care policy as critical as access to medicines by British Columbians must not be done without broad-based, meaningful consultations that include all affected stakeholders. Those consultations must consider options that go beyond blunt cost containment initiatives such as the reference drug program or therapeutic substitution.

Prices for patented medicines in Canada are heavily regulated by the federal government and have increased at or below the rate of inflation for 24 of the last 26 years, according to the federal Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.

Now, we acknowledge the fiscal pressures that governments are facing, both across broad ministries but particularly within health care. They’re there, and they’re a reality. For B.C.’s provincial drug plan, spending on all prescribed drugs, both brand and generic, was about $933 million in 2014. This is only about 5.3 percent of the whole health budget of $17.5 billion. Less than 4 percent of that spend was on patented, brand-name medicines and vaccines.
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The average annual growth rate for the Ministry of Health’s total budget is expected over the next three years to be 2.9 percent, according to government documents. However, the average rate of growth for the PharmaCare budget is going to be just over 2 percent. Public drug plan spending on patented medicines is the slowest growth category compared to all other health spending, and that is common for all provinces in this country.

The bottom line. The direct cost of innovative medicines must be considered in context with other health costs. Innovative medicines provide tangible value and significant overall savings by reducing hospitalization, costly medical procedures and improving the quality of life and productivity for all Canadians.

Our fourth recommendation: invest more in the access to innovative medicines and vaccines. It is the most cost-efficient way of achieving the best health outcomes for British Columbians, and returning on this investment will be significant reductions in long-term potential health costs.

J. Stuart Chatterley: Another theme that we would like to speak to today relates to promoting economic diversity. Rx&D member companies invest more than $1 billion per year in life and health science research in Canada. British Columbia reaps the third-largest overall economic impact of that investment. The province has the potential to create an environment that can generate more jobs and world-class recognition for its knowledge-based economy.

Recently, in response to a request from the B.C. Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, we undertook a survey of member companies to better determine the economic footprint of our sector in British Columbia. Preliminary results from 19 reporting innovative pharma companies confirm their combined investments in B.C. for 2014 of more than $258 million. These 19 companies alone generate 621 well-paying direct local jobs.

In the last decade, our members have invested over $1 billion in this province to support research-and-development initiatives with our partners, such as the B.C. Cancer Agency, the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, B.C. Centre for Drug Research and Development, St. Paul’s Hospital, the personalized medicine initiative at UBC and others.

Getting this environment right is critical for our industry — the broader life sciences ecosystem, sustaining our health care system and, most importantly, our families, friends and neighbours who look to our sector to create safe and effective medicines and vaccines.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Before you go on to the theme, I’ll just let you know you’re well into your ten minutes now. I tried to get your attention a little earlier. It just cuts into question period time, so it’s up to you.

This relates to our next theme with regards to health care sustainability options. The health of British Columbians and all Canadians is at the forefront of our industry’s efforts to support…. Better health comes through innovation while contributing to our shared imperative of health system sustainability. A key driver of pharmaceutical spending is utilization, not prices.

To support the themes of promoting economic diversity and health care system sustainability options, we propose the following recommendation. We encourage this committee to recommend a greater focus by the Ministry of Health, with appropriate resourcing, on appropriate use and patient adherence programs and the establishment of clear metrics for assessing better patient outcomes.

J. Willow: Our last category — I’ll just maybe get to the recommendation — really is about how we get the leaders of government, industry, academia to work more together and on specific health and innovation initiatives aimed at resolving the challenges and seizing some of the opportunities that we have here in British Columbia.

We’ve put a recommendation forward to several ministers with regards to the creation of, for lack of a better name, a B.C. health care and innovation think tank. That’s really aimed at providing the B.C. government insights and real-time feedback that will enhance the province’s strategic capabilities and competiveness.

This group would be like an idea incubator for exploring other ways to improve sustainability of our overall health care system, as well as to shape a competitive environment to help advance job creation and investments in B.C.’s life and health science sector.

I think the whole conversation, in short, between all the partners in health care, where solutions and innovation go hand-in-hand — we really need to generate a better way of having that conversation.

J. Stuart Chatterley: In summary, we believe the government of British Columbia and British Columbians receive great value for their investment in innovative medicines. By providing citizens with appropriate access to medications, not only will the province be making a strong investment in better health outcomes and health system sustainability; it will also create an environment supportive of innovation and investment here in B.C., where industry and government collaborate towards greater economic growth and diversity.

M. Morris: Thanks for your presentation. I’m just curious on your patient-centred health care strategy there.
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Just listening to you, it almost sounded like you were talking about encouraging off-label use or the use of medications based more on what the patient wants.

I’m also curious. Some of the things that you said suggest to me that perhaps you find the common drug review process that we have in Canada and in B.C. here, and the Drug Benefit Council’s oversight of that…. Is it cumbersome for what you’re talking about?

J. Willow: To your first question, no, it’s not suggesting off-label use. What we really think is important in any aspect of the health care system is that the physicians and their patients actually have the ability to choose the right medicine for them for that right disease, for the right condition they have, and in the dosages and time frames that are appropriate.

It’s all about providing that broad access. The decision on what to use and how is up to the physician and their patients, really. Our job is to make sure that we abide by the guidelines that the federal government and the provincial government set forward and make sure that physicians, nurses and health care professionals have the information they need to make the best informed decision. We’re very clear on that policy.

With regards to the review processes. In any jurisdiction, you need to have them. It’s a matter of the timeliness. It’s a matter of the transparency. It’s a matter of consistency and process. Those are things I think any business in any sector would like to have from any regulatory forum, and that’s one where I think there are still improvements that can be made.

B.C. is actually ahead in a few areas, but we’re also lagging in a few other areas — getting time to listing and such. We have a multi-layer aspect in this country, which probably after 25 years of being there could do with some rationalization and modernization to, again, hopefully make new medicines available in a timely manner to the people who really need them.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, you’re the benefactor of odd circumstance. The fire alarms have gone off in the Quesnel classroom that we’re looking at here, so they have evacuated. I don’t know what the story is, but nevertheless, it will give me some latitude with time, and we can continue on with questions.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your interesting presentation and some of the material here.

My question to you is…. The idea of a think tank I think is an interesting one. I think all governments of all persuasions are trying to contain health care costs. If you have innovative ideas of how to save money and provide the same amount of service to our citizens at a lower cost, I think government would be really interested in hearing from that.

Generally, what we have here are people, not you necessarily…. Folks want to spend more money, but they’re never quite really sure how we’re going to get it, how we’re going to find it. If you have innovative ideas, with your professional background, on how government can provide the same level of medical care at a lower cost, I think you’ll have a huge audience.

J. Willow: That’s exactly the trick. It’s that we all bring something to the table and a different perspective around the conundrum of health care sustainability. Our companies…. I mean, we bring more than just products and have dollars to invest. We have vast expertise in other jurisdictions, as you mentioned. Being able to bring those into British Columbia and have that discussion….

The thing about the think tank concept is: let’s do it at a level where it’s not mid-managers or directors in companies or in government. Let’s do it at a decision-making level, inform, put the cards on the table and the ideas, and then: which ones can we really agree are worth pursuing? Then let’s move down the path and start doing it.

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in a lot of things, but we need to get the right people around the table to talk about it in an open and honest way, with the intent of collaborating where it makes sense.

J. Willow: Like you say, that challenge of cost, every jurisdiction is faced with. I think the key is: how do we factor in the downstream value of what different aspects of the health care system can bring to both health care and also the broader society aspect?

That’s something where government has admitted numerous times that that work on estimating the value of what, for instance, a cure drug like the hepatitis C drugs that are on the market and have just been listed…. Ten years from now the odds are we’re going to have eradicated hep C in this province. What’s the cost of that to the whole system rather than have it continue going like we have the last ten, 15, 20 years?

S. Hamilton (Chair): Continuing on with our borrowed time. As soon as somebody walks in there, we’ll have to cut it off, but I still have time for Carole.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your discussion around collaboration. I might have a debate with you around the blunt cost containment wording around reference drug programs. I think your point around the doctor and the patient needing to make the decision is quite correct. But needing to make the decision based on all of the research and independent information, I think, is also a really important factor there. I think I might have a little bit of debate around that issue.
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In your recommendation 1, you talk about recommending that the Finance Minister work to establish the full value — we’ve just talked about that — to support additional funding flexibility for PharmaCare. I wonder if you could tell us what you mean by that.

J. Willow: Basically, PharmaCare operates right now in a very hard, concrete silo. For instance, we’ve been told that the great move to list the hep C medications…. They underestimated the pickup on that and the draw to virtually 40 to 50 percent — underestimated what the cost is. They have to make up that cost within that silo, which means less money for other maybe new medications or other things happening.

Why not be able to work between the silos where a drug like those for that disease…? Yes, they’re costing more because of the pickup. However, the benefit downstream is going to be huge. Is that factored into that decision-making framework? We don’t hear that, and that’s something I think any business, any government needs to look at — that return on that investment.

S. Hamilton (Chair): You got some serious bonus time. With that, if you have any further thoughts, any elaboration you’d like, please submit it to the committee with respect to this presentation. You have until October 15. I’d welcome you to do that.

J. Willow: We’ll be more than willing. If there are any other questions that anybody has to provide us, we’ll provide those answers back too. Thank you for your time.

In the meantime, I understand they’ve been putting out fires in Quesnel, so we’ll turn to them. We have the Quesnel and District Chamber of Commerce — Graeme Armstrong.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome. Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with about two minutes to go. You can conclude your thoughts, and then I can go to the committee for questions after that. So if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

G. Armstrong: Chairperson, committee members and guests, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. The Quesnel and District Chamber of Commerce supports the consultation process for the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. As a strong advocate for business interests in Quesnel, we feel that it is a process that is important as it includes the needs of the community and contributes to the overall health of the economy and the province.

As you know, Quesnel has been a community in transition for the past three years. We’ve faced two mill closures and a current mill curtailment affecting a large number of full-time employees. Quesnel is a forest industry hub and Canada’s largest wood manufacturer. Due to the pine beetle infestation, forest fires and challenges to overseas markets, the biggest economic driver in our community faces an uncertain future.

That being said, there are many opportunities for our economy to diversify, grow and thrive here in Quesnel with continued support from the province. We would like to discuss four main points that we feel need attention in our community, those being forestry, health care, transportation and infrastructure, and skills training.

First, with forestry. The city of Quesnel was built on the foundation of success through the forest industry. With pine beetle infestation, rapidly increasing energy rates, forest fire devastation and struggling foreign markets, this industry is facing challenges that affect our forest-based economy.

Quesnel is one of B.C.’s most forest-dependent communities and the hardest hit by the mountain pine beetle. It is important that the government continues to support this sector in the following ways.

First, allocate resources to timber-harvesting land base stabilization opportunities in the Cariboo to promote fibre supply in operating areas through certainty. There are a wide variety of constraints placed on portions of the land base that prevent harvesting from occurring in specific locations, such as visual retention — i.e., high tourism areas — and old-growth management areas. There are some opportunities to put both of these constraints in the same area rather than holding them on individual spots on the map. When they occupy their own portions of the map, the net result is too much timber being locked up.

Second, dedicate investment in operational resource inventory data to improve mid-term timber supply information for strategic areas of priority.

Continue to work to align allocation of forest resources to First Nations with history engagement, career development and training, along with business-to-business developments to continue growing First Nations opportunities with the forest sector.

Next, increase resources to more effectively and efficiently address the forest health impacts to promote and protect mid-term timber supply. This includes more timely forest health surveys, permit approvals and rebuilding an effective contractor base to harvest and haul the volume.
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Next, increase resources to licensees working on low-volume, long-distance and otherwise marginal lodgepole pine salvage stands. This will enable licensees to better access portions of the otherwise non-contributing forest harvesting land base and extend the mid-term timber supply.

The next area is health care. While we have recently recruited new doctors and nurse practitioners to our community, our medical professionals are still struggling to keep up with patient care. Quesnel is still short of our required number of doctors according to our demographics. The doctors that we have recruited cover some of the departing doctors on a short-term basis, but it still leaves us short in terms of our needs and is not a long-term solution.

We feel that the financial incentives provided by the health care system that are available for doctors and specialists to locate to the northern communities are important to help us address the ever-growing need for services. We would like to see these programs continue. This includes incentives for student doctors of the north who stay in the north upon graduation.

We’d like to encourage investment in more diagnostic equipment and operating capacity and to make much-needed upgrades to our emergency room at G.R. Baker Memorial Hospital to help meet the ever-growing demand of [audio interrupted].

Next, transportation and infrastructure. Quesnel is a forest industry hub with hundreds of logging-vehicle movements running through the community daily. In addition to this traffic, Quesnel has Highway 97 running through the middle of the community. For 60 years, Quesnel has been talking about a truck route, an opportunity to move this traffic, both logging and long-hauling, off the main corridors of our community to expedite the flow of traffic and to ensure that the goods and services using Highway 97 can move through our province in a timely and safe manner, to improve air quality and to move dangerous goods away from the hospital, also located on Highway 97.

Several options have been discussed in the past, while studies have been done to further explore these options, but nothing has been done to move this project forward. The proposed east-west connector would support moving and expediting long-haul loads and shorten travel times for log haulers.

The connector would also allow access to further develop the road to New Gold’s Blackwater mine project. It would have a very positive impact on Quesnel’s economy by providing new employment and business opportunities.

New Gold expects to hire 1,200 to 1,500 workers during construction and up to 500 full-time workers to operate the proposed mine. Already, during the 2013 exploration season, Blackwater projects hired more than 150 employees, including local and regional contractors. An average of 65 percent of the exploration workforce was from the local region, and 23 percent were aboriginal people. At the peak of its exploration activity in 2012, the project hired more than 400 employees on contract.

Quesnel has a low cost of living and a high quality of life. We have endless outdoor recreation opportunities at our doorstep, and a friendly and vibrant community. With access to opportunities such as the Blackwater mine project, we stand to offer an exceptional way of life that would further attract future residents and businesses.

Next is skills training. Many of our local businesses have expressed a need for more skilled employees. The chamber believes that many students who have been moved through the high school system would benefit from trades training while still in high school, to get them started. By providing funding for appropriate programming in high school, students would have access to training that would make them highly employable much sooner.

The current model for this training through the province is difficult to apply in smaller communities. With more training, we would have a more diverse workforce that would be able to adapt to the changing [audio interrupted] of the province and here in Quesnel. This would allow our workforce to be in a prime position to take advantage of the opportunities available through major projects in northern B.C., such as B.C. Hydro’s Site C dam and LNG.

We have an exceptional local college, with a busy trades centre, and our central location could act as a training hub for trades training for these new projects. This would boost our economy and assist with providing workers for northern projects.

In conclusion, Quesnel has been in transition for a number of years, but we are a resilient and positive community. We are a community made of hard-working individuals and organizations that are committed to moving forward and being successful. We ask that the provincial government partner with our community by helping to facilitate the necessary infrastructure and to allow us to thrive and prosper in the decades to come.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. I will go to the committee. There are some questions.

G. Heyman: I appreciate, first of all, your comments about incentives to retain doctors in your community, as well as finding greater equity in emergency services and other equipment. Although I’m from Vancouver now, I lived in northern B.C. for a long period of time, and I’ve experienced those kinds of difficulties personally.

I have a couple of questions. You talked about the need to devote more resources to forest health surveys. I
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agree with you. I’m wondering if you have some details of gaps or specific priorities that you would recommend as a starting point.

Also, your suggestion that there could be some combining of old-growth management areas and visual values retention areas, which are critical to the tourism industry…. Obviously, the areas that are retained for visual purposes are pretty defined and specific. I’m fairly sure you’re aware that it’s not just a matter of preserving a defined amount of old growth. It’s important to retain old growth in certain areas for wildlife corridors and ecosystem health.

I’m wondering if you have, either now or later, some specific and concrete examples of how that could be done, while retaining the most important values of old-growth protection as well as visual values retention.

G. Armstrong: I’ll just speak first. Neither of us are foresters, so I don’t think and I won’t claim, that we both understand entirely, but I think all the forest companies in [audio interrupted] and certainly [audio interrupted] support the idea.

A. Gregg: I can give you a little bit more information. Basically, we consulted with our two main operations here, with [audio interrupted] and West Fraser management. We have some more specific information from them, and I’d be happy to put that forward to you — our information.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Yeah, the deadlines for submissions is October 15 for any additional information to committee. If you could provide it, make sure we’ll receive it before the end of that day.

M. Morris: My question was along the same lines that George’s was, so I’ll wait for the information to come in. There’s a bunch of variables that need to be taken into consideration for the things that you’ve spoken about here. It’s quite a complex issue. I wish we could grow trees longer than the 100 and 125 years that it takes, but nobody has come up with that yet.

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. We appreciate hearing your thoughts. Have a good day.

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1) Big Brothers Big Sisters	Rhonda Brown
	Matt Leonhardt
2) Save Our Northern Seniors	Sheila Barker
	Jean Leahy
3) Gateway Casinos and Entertainment Ltd.	Tony Santo
	Shiera Stuart
	Jagtar Nijjar
4) Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce	Bev Vandersteen
	Michele Mitchell
5) City of Quesnel	Mayor Bob Simpson
6) Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy	Betty Knight
	Cheryl Lenardon
7) Board of Education, School District No. 60 (Peace River North)	Doug Boyd
	Bill Snow
8) College of the Rockies	David Walls
9) School District No. 5 (Cranbrook)	Chris Johns
10) BC Healthy Living Alliance	Mary Collins
11) Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D), BC Committee	Jo-Ann Stuart Chatterley
	John Willow
12) Quesnel and District Chamber of Commerce	Graeme Armstrong
	Amber Gregg

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES